Common? Not a Bit; a Most Singular Man in Our Cookie Cutter Culture

I see Common is in a new movie. I will see it.  Common is a great actor.

Common is the name of a Rap artist and very solid actor. He is a south side kid from Calumet Heights, under the Skyway and over by the Avalon Theater, around 87th. and Chicago Ave. sliced by Stoney Island.

Rap, Hip-Hop and Gangstah Rap is not to my tastes.  However, no genre is all bad or all good and true genius emerges unexpectedly from music panned by old timers, just as novelty pop had been in my 1960's era- Alley Oop is no novelty tune; it is the swagger of American manhood: " He walks thru the jungle tearin' limbs off a trees/ Knocks BIG monsters flat on their knees." Q.E.D. Look at that caveman go!

Every American male should be baptized in this song*. The cats don't bug him, because they no better/ He's mean-motor-scooter and bad go-getter.

In the first decade of this new century, roughly 2006, I bothered Leo High School's Executive Assistant,Miss Natasha Adams, almost daily about a tune that was played on WGCI 107.5 FM.
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" 'Tash, who does that song again?" I would ask. . ..every time I passed Miss Adams' desk.

"Common."

" Who are they?"

"Common is one man."

"Common what?"

" Just "Common," Mr. Hickey, like Cher?"

"Is that his real name?"

" No, he has a real name and he graduated from Luther South."

" I like that song. What's it called?"

" Corner"

"Corner, by Common?"

" Yes."

" One word?"

"What?"

"One word - he got a thing for one word?"

" Songs over, Mr. Hickey.  Scat!  I must type these letters for Mr. ( President) Foster."

"Why one word?"

"Ask Mr. Foster."

" Thing for one word.  Weird."

" Hickey! Go raise money and leave me alone, please."

"One word - Hickey!  Like Common."

"No, not like Common!  Go!"

I got.

I liked Corner.  I did not care for most Hip-Hop, but this was authentic and deep and included the OGs of the genre The Last Poets.  I was introduced to the Last Poets just before I began teaching in Kankakee, IL and teachers like Dave Raiche, Jim Frogge and Nick Novich were most hip to the Last Poets.  I loved Jazz and Nick Novich pointed out the jazz nuances reflected in the scatting and percussive hammering of inages by The Last Poets, a la Sun Ra and Rashan Roland Kirk.

I next became steeped  in Common watching that wonderful tale of the transcontinental railroad Hell on Wheels.   He was riveting.  Common played the role of a recently freed black man as a tower of dignity and fierce intelligence.

The young man is no screaming Samuel L. Jackson minstrel show player. He uses his powerful and studied voice like the musician he is and paints the vocal tower of singular poise that matches his physical grace.     <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XcbaXH2PN8I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> See what I mean?

Also, Common never manages to make a complete goof of himself and presents youngsters with a solid image of a centered man.  He is not a media creep and political weasel like Chance the Rapper seems to be, nor is he a knuckle head with a death wish like Chief Keef AND  HE DOES NOT SCREAM AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE ABOUT NONSENSE LIKE SAMUEL L. JACKSON@# Dialit down.

Common exudes dignity.

Few actors can carry this off - Spencer Tracy and Anthony Quinn come to mind. No notices anyone else when they are on screen. Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Common are about the two best examples of this quality today.


* alternatives:

•  Expressway to Your Heart - Soul Survivors
• The Joint is Jumpin' - Fats Waller
• But It's Alright - JJ Jackson
• It's a Shame - The Detroit Spinners
• Cook Jerk - The Capitols
• In Crowd - Dobie Gray and Ramsey Lewis
• Love is a Hurting Thing - Lou Rawls
• Ain't Peculiar - Marvin Gaye
• Young Blood - The Coasters
• Um,umm,mmm.mmmm - Major Lance

  

My Writing Exercise: A Heavy Mule at the Pierian Spring

Some have at first for Wits, then Poets past,
Turn'd Critics next, and prov'd plain Fools at last.
Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.

I was told by my teaching mentor, " If you plan to teach writing, you had better write for at least two hours before you come to teach."  That meant getting up well before "It's time to get up."

It also meant that I needed to steal myself to a habit of engaging my craft.  Aristotle wrote, " We are what we repeatedly do,"  The famously taciturn President Calvin Coolidge said, "  Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

A grammar school coach, Tom Spatz said, " Losers have potential."  He also, asked me if I had polio a few years earlier, when he saw me dribble a basketball.

I still dribble a basketball like an exceptionally challenged human being. All Up in here!

However, since signing my contract at Bishop Martin D. McNamara High School in May of 1975, I have written for two hours before I went to teach my students.

This habit did not make me a great writer, but it did help me become something of an effective teacher.

Reading, speaking and writing forces one to engage other human beings.  Reading introduces thoughts, deeds and manners of expression far beyond our immediate social circle.  Speaking helps us say what we mean.  Writing requires exactness.

I write whatever comes to mind and that is a mixed bag to be sure.  What I hope will happen by end of my scribbling and correcting and modifying will be short, satisfying defense of all the things have made my life fun, fruitful and favorable to someone who reads what I have written.

Lessons learned from good people, who have provided for other people as tradesmen, butchers, milkmen, nurses, police officers, firemen, coaches and teachers mean as much and often more than picked up from pages from Balzac, Turgenev, Gorky, Joyce, Tacitus, or Swift. The harmonies of sounds pulled from the din of a loud basement full of relatives and family friends at a Christmas Party among picnic tables lifted from the forest preserves covered in table cloth and loaded with potato salads, cold cuts, pots of Italian beef, corned beef, Kapusta, Mostaccioli, cakes and soad bread; with blaring accordions, fiddles, tin whistles played by Cuz Teahan, Jimmy Neary, Tom Masterson and Kate Neary, or a powerful HiFi loaded with Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Prima and John Coltrane.  Cousin doing Irish step-dancing, or Sugar push and out back steps to Gene Krupa.  Then of course just free-form, white guy moves to This Old Heart of Mine by the Four Tops.

An uncle pulls you aside and tells you to knock off whatever the hell it is that you think you are doing.

Your aunt tells him to go and have another beer and mind his own business and to turn the car keys over - Now. 

Scores of kids scream with delight, or terror.  Several cry because they being picked on and comforted until they can go and pick on someone for themselves and all is good.

Words impact from everywhere.

The meanings of those words will be lost on the world, unless someone remembers what the hell was said.  Memory can often be very convenient.

Memory is the burden carried by one who writes and that burden only gets eased with writing down the words.

Sometimes words seem like leftovers from a party.

Pump Room Alternative Scouting Report - Part 1

Lonnie Walker's Underground Wonder Bar is great spot!





Bar Bernard in the Elsian Hotel is opulent.


I have a bad feeling that Ian Schrager's plans* for the venerable Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel include peeling off the Walnut and other warm woods and replace the atmosphere with glass and stainless steel. The guy who developed Studio 54 is going to maintain the grace dignity of the Pump Room? Please.

Warmth and Welcome is what it is all about.

On the Northside, Warmth and Welcome have always gone together. The master bar owner Nick Novich has made a legendary career of welcome stamped by his trademark Pineapple logo.

Bernard Callaghan's South Side fireplace woody warmth and Irish Pub coziness makes Keegan's Pub in my Morgan Park neighborhood a home base for hilarious and Bowie-knife wit from the wage-maker wags and public service professionals who wet down the week with Guinness and Smithwick's Ale.

However for the last two and half years, I have enjoyed the traditional grace and elegance of the Pump Room. No visit to that stately and lively gin-mill can be experienced without my morphing from a rumpled chino and crew-neck sweater English teacher into a worsted wool suited and starched white shirt and snappy cravat accessorised swell who knows how to mind his Pees and Cues.

From the doormen who recognize each and every regular, to the lovely, gracious and attentive greeters at the top of the Stairway to Heaven and right on up to the welocoming brass rail of the horseshoe bar where Angel, James and Tony practice the alchemy of liquid refreshments, the Pump Room is a Night Spa of a Vacation. Ian Schrager looms.

In the event that my worst fears will be realised, my beautiful and elegant best friend and I have begun a scouting report for the concerned Pump Room regulars - Max, Jesse, Beth, Maynard, Charlie, Steve, Diane, Carol, Yancy, Bob, Clay, Bozo, Joe, and so many more great folks. Cabaret Singer Nan Mason and her great band have been given notice. Nan follows in the wake of the loss of the Brilliant Andrew Distel in brake-job on the Pump Room.

Last night, my Angelic Beauty and I stopped by for Lime Rickies and witty patter with the Pump Room crew and then walked off in search of a venue that might absorb some of the shock of the Pump Room's fade into history.

Our first stop was Bernard's on the 2nd floor of the Elysian Hotel where the very attentive Food and Beverage Manager Brian O'Connor pointed out the beauty and overwhelming sights of the Bernard Bar.

Overwhelming is the word. This place and the people in there are beautiful. A mutt like me sticks out like spats on pig in the well-lighted majesty of the Elysian Hotel. My exquisite Lady Love - a diminutive Dresden Doll who bears no small resemblance to screen Goddess Jennifer Jones - decided that the opulence and upscale nature of the Elysian might overwhelm more than welcome and we headed to the elevators.

Right across the street was a saloon gem that I had not visited for almost twenty years.

Lonnie Walker's Underground Wonder Bar! Begging like a St. Cajetan second grader at the sight of Fat Tommy's Hot Dogs in Kennedy Park during baseball season, I convinced my smartly turned out arm-candy that a trip underground was essential - Baby it's cold outside.

The last time I enjoyed the Wonder Bar was in the company of my late wife Mary ( that girl could work a beer glass!) and the three Mulligan Brothers in the late 1980's. It is as an Old School Saloon and as fun now, as it was then. The young bartender is singer Lonnie Walker's son and a percussionist. My Angelic Companion and this handsome dred-locked young gent talked jazz as the talented Heather Horton opened the music for the evening. Ms. Horton does covers of John Prine, Bonnie Raitt and other great artists, as well as her own compositions.

Guinness Stout, Bass Ale and 312 Pale Ale are the draft delights and the back bar was heavy with high end hooch - Maker's Mark, Grey Goose & etc. as well as a number of Single Malt Scotch and Irish Whiskies as well as a broad assortment of cognacs.

The atmosphere is inviting and the music eclectic. The only drawback to Wonder Bar is the tight and narrow space it affords. It might not accommodate the large number of Pump Room Refugees.

I gave the Underground a Half-Thumb Up as did my half-pint Angel. Tight quarters, folks. The place is great fun, but would not be sizeable enough for all of the Pump Room Refugees.

Side Note - I was ordered to keep her name out of such affectionate and Whipped Boy offerings by your humble servant. This Dude Abides.


The search will continue.

In the mean time whine, wheeled and cajole until your better half assents to a trip to Lonnie Walker's Underground Wonder Bar! click my post title for more.

Stay tuned, Boys and Girls. Next Stop - Coq d'Or in the Drake Hotel - It's Got Wood!

*
His keen instincts for the mood and feel of popular culture were honed during the 70’s and 80’s, when he and his late business partner, Steve Rubell, created Studio 54 and Palladium. Rubell and Schrager soon turned their attention to the hotel business opening Morgans Hotel in 1984, introducing the concept of the "boutique hotel" to the world.

Following this were the equally well received and highly successful Royalton Hotel and Paramount Hotel, in which Schrager again broke with industry convention by creating "lobby socializing", where the hotel lobby became a new kind of gathering place for guests and New York City residents alike, and "cheap chic", where affordable luxury was offered in a stylish and sophisticated environment. Schrager also received international recognition and acclaim for his one-of-a-kind "urban resorts"—the Delano Hotel in Miami and Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. This was followed by the Hudson Hotel in New York, where Schrager realized his "hotel as lifestyle", and continued to refine his concept of "cheap chic", as well as expanding to cities such as San Francisco with the Clift Hotel and London with St. Martins Lane Hotel and the Sanderson Hotel.

http://www.ianschragercompany.com/ian_schrager.html

Jazz Singer Terry Sullivan Swings with Strings at Gallery Cabaret -Monday August 31st 8 P.M.

Ms. Terry Sullivan is a writer ( Cultural & Arts Editor for Chicago Daily Observer, choral director of St. Cecelia Chorus of St. John Cantius Catholic Church, and a seasoned Jazz singer, who Chicago nightlife pioneer and jazz enthusiast Mr. Nick Novich ( Nick's Place & etc.) likened to ' the sweet voice of Blossom Dearie.'

Terry Sullivan Quartet will grace the stage of Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown on June 29th from 8-10:30PM. Get a start on your Summer with the vocal stylings of Ms. Terry Sullivan and Great American Song Book!

Terry will break out the Jazz accompanied by guitar, bass and drum. The Show begins at 8 p.m. at Gallery Cabaret!

Gallery Cabaret
2020 N Oakley Ave
Chicago, IL 60647-4153
(773) 489-5471


The Gallery Cabaret has been operating in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood since 1990. According to owner, Ken Strandberg, the Gallery Cabaret harkens back to a time when "you could walk into a joint, buy a drink, and enjoy live entertainment like comedy or music just for being there and being a patron." The Gallery has offered free entertainment 7 nites per week since it opened. Over time, many up and comers have graced the stage, like The Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Material Issue and Liz Phair (while they were still up and comers!). The Gallery has also hosted numerous comedy acts and poetry readings and slams. Every month, local artists have their work on display at the Gallery. Currently, we also offer cable TV including your favorite sports, until prior to showtime, and early bird drink specials from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm. We also have Darts and Golden Tee Golf. Can't wait for music to start? We have TouchTunes internet jukebox with access to 1000's of songs.

Nick Novich - Entertainment Empire -Educated Entrepreneur

Nick's on Halsted and Armitage was a breakthrough saloon in 1977. While Disco lounges proliferated in the suburbs and on the urban fringes, and faux cowboy barns lured in the Urbane Cowboys ( why is it that only lawyers seem to wear the goofball cowboy hats while wearing Hickey-Freeman suits and Johnson-Murphy tasseled loafers?), Nick Novich - English Teacher, Football Coach, Serbian-American Jazz Cat - established what would become the 'spot' for the hep and those who have the good sense to listen to the hep.

Nick was my mentor as a baby teacher at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, Illinois. Nick established the football program that Rich Zinanni would drive to five State Football Championships, following Novich's foray into Liquid Refreshment and Alternative Conversation Entertainment.

Nick Novich is one of those people that God blesses all of us with by putting his/her talent, soul, intesity, courage, confiction,humor and loyalty into our paths at times in our lives. I have been blessed to meet many such talented people - Max Weissmann, Terry Sullivan, Mike Joyce, Boz O'Brien, Bernard Callahan, Carlos Nelson, Mike Holmes, Marquis Ball, Thomas Hayes, Lonny Newman, Tom Kotel, Billy Higgins, Marty Tully, Jack Higgins, Rose Keefe, Richard Lindberg, Steve Rhodes, Jim Frogge, Paul Tutt, Willie Winters, and Terry McEldowney to name just a few. Nick Novich could command this regiment of talented people - singers, writers, coaches, artists, boxers, pipe-fitters and saints.

The original Nick's Place had been a bust-out joint of the filthy Old Style sign variety, where gents in full need of an alcoholic topping off could be assured of Sunnybrook and ten ounce domestic beer. Physics teacher and football coach Jim Frogge and I took a trip up to the DePaul area one Saturday and helped Nick toss some of the old fittings and were rewarded with cold Ale at Glascott's Grogery.
It was here that Nick laid out his strategies for alternative entertainment - "Music - the jukebox can not be dominated by what WLS tells people to listen to - I am the Captain of my bar and we will listen to Dr. Horse, Etta James, Sun Ra, Stanley Turentine, Blossom Deary, Curtis Mayfield and the Impression, anything that Jerry Butler sings, piano concerti by Glenn Gould, . . ."

I asked, "Any Planxty, or the Dubliners?" Nick, looked at me with hopeful tolerance, " In time, my Son, you will grow into the man I hope you can become. Eat your vegetables and read your Yeats."

Nick's was not a 'Fern-Bar' it was a clean, well-lighted place where actors, artists, politicians like the great and visionary Danny O'Brien who would die in a Michigan accident, and school teachers with nickels and dimes could congregate, converse, consume Imported Beer on tap, as well as hand-crafted Wisconsin ambrosia's like Point and the absolutely heavenly Eau Clair All Malt - from the Chicago Keeley's Half & Half recipe.

Nick commanded a welcoming house of Hep. Bigots, loud-mouths, louts, skanks, pests and sharks were solidly shown the door.

Ten Years ago Nick moved to his current Milwaukee Ave. location and has opened a wonderful place in Uptown.

This past December, Nick hosted a gathering of writers Richard Lindberg, Rose Keefe and others for a talk about Chicago Crime figures and Nick was thick in the soupy mix of facts and legends concerning Big Mike McDonald, Bathhouse John Coughlin and the legendary Paddy Bauler. Nick knows the 42nd and 43rd Ward histories. Nick lives literature and history.

Last night, Nick and I caught up on the phone to discuss the sorry state of American Education, how bullies flourish in an institutional setting like Notre Dame, and the power of music to sensitize and spark the best in the human species. "Have your boy lie on his back with eyes closed and listen to Coltrain, or Miles Davis and he will emerge a different person."

Nick could lead people to a great watering hole but getting a horse of a former St. Rita football player who has subsisted on a diet of LaLaPalooza?'

Go to Nicks! Go to Flat-Iron! Go to Nick's in Uptown! Get better.
Entertainment.

Contact - Nick!
Nick's Beer Garden
1516 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622 773-252-1155 http://www.nicksbeergarden

http://www.nicksbeergarden.com/

'Who's To Say?' Part 2. Maybe John Dewey Should Have Had a Beer with John Kass at Nick's Beergarden.

"nature itself is wistful and pathetic, turbulent and passionate" - John Dewey 1859-1952.

What in the hell does that mean? But then again that is the point. John Dewey is the father of American Public Education, the leading thinker of the American Progressive Movement, one of the leaders of American Psychology, founder of the University of Chicago Laboratory School and the one of the leaders in Nuance.

Dewey was a New Englander and a smart guy who studied the German thinker Hegel. Hegel developed modern thought based upon the notion that Germans were smarter than Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen and Arabs. Hegel and his buddy Schopenauer developed Dialectical Materialism, which gave Karl Marx something to write about in the dusty stacks of the British Museum developed the notion of class warfare as the new parousia(παρουσία) , or Second Coming.

John Dewey took a job at Rockefeller's swell new school south of Canaryville's Stockyards - The University of Chicago - and established himself as the leader in the Pragmatist Movement begun by William James. Pragmatism is rooted in the empiricists of the 18th Century and candied up with the Romantics and the Dialectical Materialists of the 19th Century. Two Dollar words for 'if you can't really see it, give it a pass.'

This is a nice way of killing off any metaphysics - the stuff you can't see: Faith, Belief, Trust, Compassion, Piety, Fidelity all that nonsense. E.G. 'Were any of us, really, in the cell with John McCain? Can we be actually certain that he was, in fact, a prisoner? Honor?' or how about 'What is an Unrepentant Terrorist? Bill Ayers we all know IS a "Distinguished Professor of Education" so why is this an issue?'

John Dewey, who it seems, died a few months before I was born, it appears, influenced the use and application of 'Who's to say?'

'Who's to say?' is the means by which a shared belief can be kicked to death. It is also the advent message for all bad, worthless, tasteless, obscene, and dangerous idiots to have their time in the spotlight. How else might one explain the development of Reality TV and Bill Maher?

Aristotle influenced Christian ( Aquinas), Jewish (Maimonides), and Muslim ( Averroes/Avicenna)thinkers who have helped people make sense of our lives through an understanding of an Ordered and Unified Universe. Faith, Belief in Universal Truths and all that stuff that Dewey and the smart guys killed off - or tried to - is reflected in an Absolute ( God/Higher Power/Big Banger/Truth).

No less an Aristotelian than Chicago Tribune's John Kass gave us an exercise in a long over-due return to sense over Dewey with a brilliant essay called to my attention by Saloon Keeper/Coach/Jazz Historian and Snappy Dresser Nick Novich*.

'Kass wrote the most stirring caveat to Americans with his essay on capturing Wild Pigs. Read it, Hickey!' I had in fact missed that one. Here is Kass, discussing one of those metaphysical terms 'Liberty" - Kass as metaphysician answering the 'Who's to Say?-ers' and John Dewey-

Fear happens. The 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, and the federal government—always eager to extend its reach—built its massive security bureaucracy, down to those spy cameras installed on the streetlights of so many cities and towns, thrilling America's mayors and the police chiefs. We're told the cameras keep us safe. We've become used to the eyes.

And when the economic crisis happened—when the credit bubble burst and the excesses of Wall Street caught up with us, and so many people lost their jobs and their retirement savings got whacked, and they started losing their homes—naturally people became fearful.

When you're worried about your family, you're not interested in the history of blame. You're interested in keeping a roof over their heads. You're interested in solutions. The solution so many want these days is more government.

Some of that is a proper demand for reasonable regulations on the markets and on lending that were eased during the Clinton years and continued. But today's crisis has also led to the massive federal bailout of the financial industry, with Washington picking who wins and who loses. We're told that this arrangement is only temporary. But partnerships involving almost a trillion dollars that grant even greater leverage to Washington have a way of becoming quite terribly permanent.

So the leviathan grows, and the bureaucrats and the corporate types attached to this bailout deal see the world in strikingly similar terms. They share the same type of mind and they share the common purpose of maintaining the status quo. Why wouldn't they? They're on the inside.

The casualty will be the entrepreneurs, those on the outside, the ones who create the spark and offer up the products or the ideas that fire the economy. The entrepreneurial mind isn't willing to settle and wants to make more than $250,000 in salary or whatever the federal government deems proper. They don't want proper. What they want is to take risks and reach the American Dream.

Such men and women will be on the outside for decades now. When they get close to victory they'll get whacked with tax increases and the rug will be pulled out from under them. The rich will have their wealth. But new entrepreneurs will be hamstrung and without that creative spark, no government-administered economic system can survive. History has taught us this over and over again.

The bailout happened so quickly we haven't fully considered the effects. Will we recognize America 40 years from now? How long before we understand how fundamentally America has changed? What kind of generational conflicts will this new government market policy instigate? Will our children speak of liberty, as we once did before we forgot?

These days, liberty isn't in vogue. It's so, so olde. We forget to consider liberty as America's founders conceived it—as one of the rights given us by God. Liberty was something an entrepreneur could understand. But even before this economic crisis Americans were given a new word from the corporatist/bureaucrat dictionary: empowerment.

"Empowerment" kinda, sorta evokes liberty but not really, since "empowerment" is something a government confers upon its people (or its serfs) when government decides the serfs (people) are ready.

While writing this I received one of those chain e-mails, but this one wasn't about a politician or the widow of the Nigerian oil minister. It was about how to catch wild pigs. I don't know if you could actually catch wild pigs this way, but it really doesn't matter. In this method, you throw bucketfuls of corn on the forest floor. The pigs eat the corn. A month later you put up one side of a fence and more corn. Eventually, the pigs return, get used to the fence and keep eating. And another side of fence and more corn and so on, until you close the gate and you've caught the pigs. They've lost their freedom. They can't figure out what's happened.

We're not pigs, we're Americans, rightfully worried about the economic future. But the times are changing, and the Boomers should consider the costs and consequences of what they're being offered by our politicians before the last side of the fence goes up. ( emphasis my own)
jskass@tribune.com

Boomers ( broadly, to be sure) are 'Who's to Say?' Dewey Devotees. Kass and other close-knit ethnic types who share the traditions of Faith and Culture deconstructed by the Progressive Deweyites give us a great opportunity to examine the agendas behind the people who demand a a rhetorical answer to 'Who's to say?'

Well done, Brother Kass.



*

Nick Novich is proprietor of many great neighborhood watering holes in this wonderful city.

http://www.nicksbeergarden.com/