My son is in the stage crew for his high school's production of "West Side Story." It's a fabulous production, with a huge cast and cute Sharks and Jets and re-created a sweet brick tenement fire escape.
When the junior who plays Tony was climbing the ladder the other night (during my second viewing of the show - third and final time tonight. I think I have most of the lines memorized. I could totally step in and play one of the Sharks) I was thinking, this play still holds up after 50-plus years, but if this were 2012, our hero would NOT be going over to Maria's apartment to declare his love. He would be texting her. Maybe G-chatting. And her friends would have dissed Tony for the booty call.
So I am thinking - this story needs to be updated for 2012, told through social media.
I bring you WSS2012:
Twitter:
@Riffbudboy: Jetssssss rool!!!!!
@Bernardoz: @anitasababe Que pasa, sexy? Whatch u doing
Facebook - Tony: @ work @ docs. So bored. I feel like Somethings coming. Could be? Who knows? (Riffbudboy, Action, Anybodys like this)
@Anybodys: The principal says I have to wear a dress. F that. #igottabeme
Twitter:
@maria: @work and so bored. I sew all day and sit all night. #america problems. Can't wait for dance at the gym w/@bernardoz and @anitasababe #tonight.
@anitasfuego: @ the dance with BFF Maria. Cute white dress!
@Bernardoz: Mambo! #jetscantdance
Facebook - Tony: I just met a girl named @Maria. #truelove
Facebook: - Maria: @tony I know you are not someone else. We have zero friends in common. Text me later QT! :)
(Tony is now friends with Maria and 4 other people. Suggest friends for Tony).
Facebook- Anita - Checked in at America I like to be in America!!!
Twitter: @anitasfuego @maria - where are u? U didn't answer my text.
@bernardoz: I am going to kick some Jet ass. #dontlookatmysister
@riffbudboy: Did you say #Jet #ass? RUMBLE!
@berndardoz: YEssssssss. I am bringing #sticks #bricks #fists.
@tony - Buenos noches. can't we all just get along? #12feetofftheground.
@maria @tony - meet me at the bridal shop tomorrow. @anitasfuego is cool with it. #theresaplaceforus #idontmeaninthisneighborhood.
Facebook: Riff: The Jets are gonna have their way TONIGHT!
West Side Police Official Page: Our community police officer, Officer Krumpke, says there better not be a rumble on his beat. Click here for more playground rules and regulations.
Twitter:
@Bernardoz: uh-oh. trouble. #fightouttahand.
@Riffbudboy: I need backup
Facebook West Side Police Official Page: Disturbance reported at 57th Street playground. Possible two stabbing victims/ More info later.
@anitasfuego OMG OMG @maria
@maria: whats wrong??!?!
Facebook Tony checked in at Doc's Drugstore
Doc's Drugstore Official Page: Repost this as your status if you think the world has gone to hell. What's it gonna TAKE with you kids? #RIP
Twitter
@Tony - CHINO! Come and get me!!!!!! #idareyou.
@maria - @tony hold my hand. We're halfway there, Anton.
@tony - @maria!!!! They told me you were dead.
Facebook - Maria: Descanza en Paz, Tony, mi verdando amor.
"So you're scared and thinking maybe we ain't that young anymore," I said as we pulled out of her driveway. "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night."
"Also, I've got snacks and hand sanitizer."
A short car ride to a long charter bus ride to a walk down Eighth Avenue to a subway ride to W. 125th Street in Harlem, there we were, in line to get in to Sirius XM's private party.
Because I will talk to anyone for any reason, we made some friends in line. Let's pretend this is a Springsteen song, and I will give them all names: you have Bobby Jean, lesbian biker from the Jersey Shore, with her sister, we'll call her Crazy Janie, who smoked half a pack of cigarettes while we talked about Bruce shows we have seen.
Over there is the Mission Man, a guy in a Duke sweatshirt who drove 15 hours from Boone, NC, with his teen son. Also, meet my new friend Rosalita, freezing in her faux fur vest. She lives in Brooklyn.
In Harlem, with some of our likeminded friends.
We're all damn happy to be here, though. This was an excellent PR event for Sirius XM. At every turn (and ID and security checkpoint, there were several) were cheerful SXM staffers who asked if he had everything we needed and reminding us to pick up our swag. One of the staffers told me really there were only about 500 sweepstakes winners out of tens of thousands who entered. The remaining seats in the 1,500-seat Apollo Theatre went to radio execs, corporate muckity mucks and celebrities. More on the celebrities later.
Yeah, you up there. I'm looking at you, Snarkshelf. I really am
Up to our seats on the Mezzanine level. From my vantage point on the middle level, I could spy Ben Stiller (who didn't dance once), Tom Hanks (who apparently didn't sit down once), Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. Stars fanned out like a little private orbit around the white-haired Sirius XM CEO. Nora Ephron was there. So were John McEnroe and Michael J. Fox.
On our level, no such glitterati. Just a lot of Baby Boomers, jeans with some stretch and everyone with the iPhones, taking video.
No worries, it was open bar! That doesn't mean much for BFF Justine and I, who maybe drank one beer between the two of us. Not so for our seat mates Terry and the last of the Duke Street Kings. XM wanted people where they were supposed to be around 6 p.m. Bruce started playing at 8:15. That's a lot of beer for some people.
It was a little like a being at a New York Giants' tailgate. Terry nearly fell over and one of the Duke Street Kings had to hold on to her the rest of the show. (And when they left, they forgot their swag bag T-shirts. I scooped them up. Score!)
Showtime! OK, so I have seen a lot of Springsteen shows dating back to 1978, but as one old friend said the other day "you have never been 1,500 people close to him." That is the truth. And being this close was pretty awesome.
From where we were sitting, there was a little bit of a camera obscura effect, meaning when everyone was standing up - which they were a lot. Duh, it's Bruce, not the National Symphony Orchestra - we could see neither the crowd below or the back row of the E-Street Band (which, by the way now has enough members in it to stretch all the way over to F Street. They sounded great though).
Time for some seat jumping. We inched our way a mere 10 rows down to the railing of the mezzanine level and it was like a different concert. I could see the sweat stains on The Boss' shirt. I could notice that Patti has had a little work done. I could see how much fun the six-piece brass section was having.
Taking full advantage of the intimacy of the location, Bruce did lots of audience touching and surfing. The brass band accompanied him up the aisles during the bridge out on "E Street Shuffle." He gave Ben Stiller a lap dance during "Waiting on a Sunny Day." He hung from a railing. He made his way up through a side box to my row, where he finished singing a Wilson Pickett song on a lighting scaffolding not 10 feet away from me.
Also getting his appropriate tribute: the E Street Band sax player Clarence Clemons, who died in June. He introduced the band early, asking the crowd "Is there anyone missing?" Maybe on the surface. Metaphysically speaking, the band is still together.
"If you're here and we're here, then they're here," Bruce assured everyone (referring also to bandmate Danny Federici, who died in 2008).
Fans also showed Clemons more love during the "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" encore. "The change was made uptown when the Big Man joined the band," gave way to three minutes or so of cheers for Clarence.
Clemons' nephew, Jake, took over saxophone duties smoothly. In fact, the E Street Band has been tinkered with and revamped in several ways to accommodate the variety of styles on the new album, "Wrecking Ball."
You've got Little Steve on mandolin, a pianist on accordion, violinist Soozie Tyrell on guitar - even Bruce banging a giant drum during "Jack of All Trades."
After 2 1/2 hours, some old favorites ("Thunder Road," "Badlands," "Promised Land," "The Rising") and some of my new favorites ("Rocky Ground," "Wrecking Ball") the band called it a day. Back to some more rehearsals and a U.S. Tour that starts next week.
Filing out of the Apollo, I was walking next to a man in a porkpie hat, horn-rimmed glasses and a purple tartan topcoat. Oh, hi, Elvis Costello. (Think, think, think of something to say NOW).
"Hey, Elvis Costello," I said. "When are you and Bruce going to play together again?" (Quick, Justine. get your camera, quick.)
"Oh I dunno," he smiled, patting me on the shoulder. "I think he's doing pretty well without me."
That is the truth, Elvis Costello. That is the truth.
It went something like this!
PS - Here is the setlist.
1. We Take Care of Our Own (2012) 2. Wrecking Ball (2012) 3. Badlands (1978) 4. Death to My Hometown (2012) 5. My City of Ruins (2002) 6. The E Street Shuffle (1973) 7. Jack of All Trades (2012) 8. Shackled and Drawn (2012) 9. Waiting on a Sunny Day (2002) 10. Promised Land (1978) 11. Mansion on the Hill (1982) 12. The Way You Do the Things You Do (1964) by Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers, recorded by The Temptations. 13. 634-5789 (1966) by Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper, recorded by Wilson Pickett. 14. The Rising (2002) 15. We Are Alive (2012) 16. Thunder Road (1975) 17. Rocky Ground (2012) 18. Land of Hope and Dreams (2012) 19. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out (1975)
Chardon students at a candlelight vigil for the victims on Tuesday.
I had not thought about my high school General Business teacher in a long time.
Why would I? I was not the kind of student who kept in touch. I barely kept in touch when I was actually attending high school 30 years ago. I moved away. I have probably written 10,000 checks since Mr. Iammarino - "Coach I" to pretty much everyone at the school, especially his wrestling team - taught us how to fill out the "pay to the order to" section.
Come to think of it, I should have thought of Coach I every time I paid a bill.
A school shooting is an unspeakable tragedy, anytime and anywhere. Young Danny Parmertor was doing pretty much what my own teenage son does each school day. Hanging around a table with his friends. Maybe eating. Maybe talking about guitars or Xbox or complaining about meddling parents.
Then an alienated kid with a gun came in. Now three boys are dead.
As I said, unspeakable. How does that happen?
Sadly, it can happen anywhere, and we are likely to find out as the story unfolds how TJ Lane, the shooter, got his hands on a gun and how he slipped through the counseling cracks.
If it can happen in Chardon, it can happen anywhere. In fact, it often does. Columbine High School was a nice place. So is Chardon, about 15 miles from the town in which I was raised.
Chardon is the kind of rural-suburban place where one goes antiquing. Maybe apple picking. That kind of place. A "let's go for a ride in the country and see the fall leaves" kind of place.
As long as kids can get their hands on guns, it is a "school shooting can happen here" kind of place. As is my neighborhood. And yours.
Ohio laws say a person must be 21, pass a national background check and fill out a firearms transaction record to purchase a gun. They don't need a state permit, firearm registration or owner's license. Also, a gun buyer can avoid the background check by purchasing at a private sale. And last summer, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a "guns-in-bars law," making it legal to carry concealed firearms into bars, restaurants, malls and other public places.
You can't smoke in any of those places, but you can pack heat. Nice.
We'll find out more about the shooter's mental state in the days to come, but the sickest irony about this story is someone could have helped him. Maybe someone like...Danny Permertor's grandfather.
You know that teacher. The one everyone liked. The kind of teacher who put in 40 years in education in order to guide young minds and mold young athletes. The coach who, even in his 70s, still helped out with the middle school team just for fun.
He was he one kids listened to. I am sure in 40 years of coaching more than a few boys came to the program - which had a run of a dozen state champions in the 1970s and 80s - fidgety, belligerent or lazy. Despite a community of cozy affluence, there were probably some with troubled home lives, as that can happen anywhere too. I am certain they looked to the coach for guidance and support.
Wrestling, like many sports, is a road to discipline. Want to succeed? You have to listen. You have to sweat buckets and do countless drills in a padded room. You have to think on your feet and plan your next move. You have to maintain a GPA that will let you stay on the team. Your arm might be twisted within a few inches of actually snapping off (or so it seems); you cannot let on that it hurts till the match is over.
You have to cut weight. You try losing nine pounds by Friday. It's possible, if you are committed.
My brother, the oft-mentioned Spike, was one of Coach I's wrestlers three decades ago. He says he learned everything - or at least the life lessons one needs to get to where they need to go - from wrestling.
Spike started high school as one of the fidgety ones and ended as a runner up in the state tournament. Coach I's influence figuratively screwed his head on right, and he is quite successful today. He still lives in town, where the old wrestlers are a wide network. They would not let someone slip through the cracks, even at age 50.
I wish TJ Lane had had a Coach I in his life. It's beyond tragic that the coach won't have Danny in his.
I am going to go write a check to the Chardon Healing Fund.Click here if you want to do the same.Sign it just the way the coach taught us: with the number close to the end of the box, so no one commits forgery.
Then email theOhio governor.Sign it just the way I tell you: Governor Kasich - Strengthen gun laws now. Peoples lives are depending on it.
