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My back pages – Page 2 – Ennis Smith

My back pages

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My back pages

Happy Birthday, Wherever You Are…

May 27, 2015

Music, My back pages

Tim Hauser 1941-2014, Founder of the Manhattan Transfer

October 19, 2014

Photo: Hauser, left, with Siegel, Paul and Bentyne “Boo-bop-boooo-bop…” It was all I needed to hear–til this day those first four notes of “Tuxedo Junction” can still elicit the pleasure it did when the Manhattan Transfer released it on their debut album back in 1975. Hearing this matchless quartet for the first time was a…

My back pages, New York, Soujorns, Travel

Vacations like other people

August 25, 2014

The sea air is a drug that addles reason. How else to explain the amnesia that comes over me every summer on the first bike ride back to the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island? I forget that its approach involves two short steep hills—the first brings you up to Little Ram’s Head Island, a…

Film, My back pages, Television, Theater, Vespers

Robin Williams, Funny Boy 1951-2014

August 11, 2014

We had a few things in common. Both of us were sons of the midwest (he hailed from Chicago; I was born in Cincinnati). Both of us were born on July 21. About the last–I once worked as an extra on one of his films. It was Cadillac Man, and I was thrilled, though not…

Music, My back pages, Vespers

Horace Silver, Jazz Supernova 1928-2014

June 19, 2014

Thanks to Horace Silver, the magical moment occurred shortly after I first moved to New York, one of many that effectively, resoundingly, shot down (or made me re-consider) all my country Midwestern notions about…everything. I’d say I was hooked from the moment I heard that sneaky vamp. “Come on Home” was the first cut on…

Criticals, Current Affairs, Gay, My back pages, New York, Short Cuts, Theater

In the theater, giving sorrow words

March 29, 2014

We go to the theater to renew our ties to the world. Sometimes we’re reminded of things, lives, people we used to know, or feelings we’ve tucked away long ago. When it’s working, a play can unearth those buried treasures, though the effect isn’t always pleasant. At a recent performance of Mothers and Sons, a…

Art, Books, Current Affairs, Fashion, Film, Literature, Music, My back pages, Politics, Television, Theater

Gone Girls

August 25, 2013

Some are born to leave their mark. Lately we’ve lost so many who have that late summer feels a touch more autumnal; now we have to get used to life without Eydie Gorme, Elmore Leonard, Dennis Farina, Emile Griffith, Walter DeMaria, Virginia E. Johnson, Esther Williams, James Gandolfini, and Michael Ansara, not to mention Helen…

Architecture, My back pages, New York

Disappearing Acts

March 25, 2013

Before: Thirty years ago I thought, This is too good to be true the first time I laid eyes on the view from my living room window. The overcast day could not disguise the miles and miles of sky that unfurled. That, combined with the space of 5 rooms sold me. My spouse at the time hadn’t…

Current Affairs, History, My back pages, New York, Vespers

Random Thoughts on Mortality

February 3, 2013

1) Woke up from a dream involving my ex. I and some friends and strangers found him sprawled on a divan in what seemed an abandoned office building. Like a pieta he was sprawled, and looked the way he had at the end of his life—thin, riddled with Karposi’s sarcoma, listless. 2) No surprise, but…

Current Affairs, My back pages, New York

Did she jump or was she pushed?

December 31, 2012

It’s every commuter’s nightmare. Though actually there are several: the train stops just outside the station and sits for what seems like hours. Someone pulls the emergency cord. You discover that you’re trapped in a car from 125th to Columbus Circle with a religious zealot spewing a bottomless pit of bigotry laced with profound stupidity….