May 2008 Archives

NOBODY EVER CALLED the West Philadelphia portion of Lancaster Avenue pretty, let alone beautiful. Chaotic, tumbledown, hardscrabble, frustrating Lancaster Avenue is anything but pretty even on a gorgeous day. It's all tire stores and barber shops, lumber yards and church steeples, rave-seeking hipsters and three old black men with canes sitting in the shade watching the trolleys roll by.

Lancaster Avenue has its charms, but charming it is not, especially in that stretch of urban frontier between 40th and 60th, that graceless twenty blocks of commerce and rude temptation flanked by poverty and despair. It takes imagination to find beauty amidst such unrelenting grimness, imagination or perhaps, a brush stroke from God. A sunset painted amid the wires overhead and the trolley tracks below. A glow of promise as solid as concrete. A reason to believe. And if not believe, a reason to hope.

It is a beautiful city we live in, even on its tattered edges.

MEMORIAL DAY IS A HOLIDAY in which we honor the service and sacrifice of all of the great fallen patriots in every American war from 1775 until the present day. We honor these men and women with parades, speeches and wreath laying ceremonies at thousands upon thousands of small town American war memorials.

And then after these dignified and heartfelt services have been concluded by midday, most Americans retire to their backyards or favorite picnic places for a barbecue and to see who will get liquored up and injured before nighttfall playing backyard sports like horseshoes, badmitten or volleyball.

An ankle makes an exquisite and sickening sound when it snaps under the weight of an out-of-shape middle aged man wearing sandles and brown socks during a volleyball game he has enthusiastically entered into in the wine-addled confused memory that he is both young, athletic and has actually leaped more than four inches off the ground in the past five years.

This memory of what happened to a colleague haunted me as I took the grassy court in a backyard volleyball game at a friend's house in Bensalem during a Memorial Day barbecue. My long-haired leaping gnome days are well behind me, cemented, you might say, when both my knees were sawed off, sanded down and replaced by surgical steel hinges. Still, except for the pale foot-long Dr. Bartolozzi scars running down the middle of my legs, you'd never know I was thisclose to being on a walker before surgery. Some people still confuse me for an athlete.

And yet Memorial Day is about sacrifice and suds and after several bottles of the latter, I timidly agreed to partake in this timeless American pasttime known as risking injury for no good reason. The grassy playing surface was dimpled with holes dug by the household dog and patched with fresh moist mud. I almost felt like shouting, "We who are about to cry, salute you." Meanwhile, the dog, who could play goalie for Argentina so quick was he to dart to and fro at ankle level after a slobbery tennis ball, looked like the very premonition of disaster.

And so, let the games begin.

I am pleased to report that no adult or child was seriously injured in the commission of this fun (although Tom had to play one-handed most of the day after having his fingers jammed blocking a spike). Afterwards, our host, Steve pointed to the other piece of backyard for-amusement-only equipment. "Clark, you ready for the trompoline?"

MEDIC!!!

I'LL NEVER FORGET THE FIRST TIME PAT CIARROCCHI and I sat down behind a bank of typewriters to bang out a script for the evening news on KYW-TV in the autumn of 1985 when the Inquirer went on strike and I went on TV. Directly across from Pat, at the typewriter that fronted hers, sat Jack Jones, the Facenda-voiced "first black TV news anchorman" in Philadelphia. A good guy.

While lost in my own wordiness seeking a story worth telling, I heard Jack Jones and Pat Ciarrocchi repeating a phrase as they wrote their stories. "Baby talk.," Jack said. "Baby talk," Pat said. "Baby talk,"Jack admonished. "Baby talk," Pat agreed. It was pretty spooky. Especially because I understood what they meant. Don't try to tell television stories in grown up language. The worst part was that neither Pat nor Jack believed it. "Baby talk" was just a shorthand phrase for the KISS principle -- Keep It Simple, Stupid.

And this was 1985. (I'm sure you remember the great television news renaissance in the mid-to-late 1990's when TV news directors had not yet successfully been gentically cloned.) Oh, I'm sorry. That never happened . The rennaissance, not the cloning. Twenty-some years later local television news is simpler than ever. It has become a vehicle to to deliver traffic and weather reports every ten minutes. It is a formula that hasn't been challenged in more than a decade. Every station does the same thing with interchangable anchors and field reporters As comedian Fred Allen said back in the 1950's, "Imitation is the sincerest form of television."

And yet there are some great people in local TV news who have maintained their dignity, grace and genuineness in spite of the industry's retreat from substance. Two of those people are Pat Ciarrocchi and Ukee Washington, co-anchors on Channel 3's early news. For the last eight years Pat and Ukee have co-hosted an event called Celebrate the Children, a musical performance by pre-school-aged kids who receive weekly music education classes by travelling music teachers from the Academy of Community Music, a non-profit school of which I am a board member. Pat, Ukee and I have shared hosting duties at the annual event at either the Academy of Music or the Zellerbach Theater at the Annenberg Center since May of 2000. Yesterday during the performance I presented both Pat and Ukee with the Academy's "Heroes" award for their generosity and goodwill all these years.

And yesterday, like every other year, both TV news personalities threw themselves into the event with spontanaeity and warmth, singing and clapping with the children and generally hammng it up in a most charming and authentic way. They are Philadelphia originals in the best sense of the word and I am proud to call them friends.

Yo, Pat! Yo, Uke! Thanks for being the real deal.

WHEN I WAS 17, it was a very good year. It was the year I graduated high school. I had a steady girlfriend and a hundred dollar car. When I was 21, it was a very good year. It was the year Sara and I married and the year our son Danny was born. I was a senior at Temple University and we were so broke we traded down from a one-bedroom apartment in Center City for $125 a month to a one-bedroom apartment in Manayunk for $85 a month. Our first Christmas tree was free because we found it on Dec. 26. We had no idea, any of us, about what it meant to be a parent or a baby. But we made it work somehow.

When I was 24, Emily arrived, almost shot from guns so eager to be alive on the day she was born. The midwife at Booth Maternity Center could have used a catcher's mitt. And that's the way it was for a long time. Mom, dad, son, daughter. A rich man's family.

When I was 35, I was beginning to think I'd made a clean getaway. Honorable fatherhood acquired. Great kids. Good job. No complications. Sara and I were at last able to go out on a date without hiring a babysitter. We were becoming a couple again instead of Mom and Dad. And we were still young.

Don't ask about when I was 40. That was the very best year. Molly decided to be born almost 16 years after her sister Emily. I call such family planning a Catholic seven-ten split. She was both a surprise and a gift. That was the year I finally understood that God is love and Love is Molly. And that is the answer to the question why.

When I was 54, it was a hurricaine year and our first grandchild arrived that September with the winds of Floyd. Her name is Daphne. Daph-ne DeLeon. Daph-ne DeLeon. I can't help but sing her name to the tune of Waltzing Matilda. "She'll be a Daphne DeLeon with me."

And now I'm 58, the new 21, and I love Lucy all over again. My little girl Emily became a mother last Tuesday to a perfect baby girl. Her name is Lucy Ann. And, boy, do I got some 'splainin' to do to my little Lucy during the best years of her Pop Pop's life.

THESE YOUNG BOYS PLAYING RUGBY THESE DAYS. What they could learn from the old boys, even if those old boys are just a couple of years or 20 removed from their playing days at Temple University Rugby Club. The annual Temple Alumni Game was played Saturday at Memorial Hall field in Fairmount Park, and I'm pleased to say that the old boys in red jerseys had their way with Temple's current squad of players.

Unlike last year's 25-22 squeaker won by the Alumni, this year's spanking was closer to 48-22. I can't say exactly because even the referees weren't keeping score. But the alumni tacked on eight of nine splendid tries to the young boy's four. It was a great turnout and a terrific party afterwards that continued late into the night at the Temple Rugby house near campus on 16th Street near Oxford.

Five of my former players from Temple RFC 1989 when I coached showed up for the game and acquitted themselves with distinction, if not blazing speed. Like athletes in any sport, the first thing to go is the legs, but the last rugby skill to desert an old boy is the cunning. And the extra pounds don't hurt in applying the cunning to action.

Now, if we could only teach these young boys to sing.

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER two o'clock yesterday afternoon when I wrote the following email to my friend, Al Nitzsche, who works for a TV news station in Baltimore. We had been trading emails about the cop beating video, which as a national news story had completely eclipsed the murder last Saturday of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. I was already more than two hours into watching the live TV coverage of Liczbinski's funeral when I wrote:

"I don't know whether to be touched or appalled by this. All three stations (make that four, including Channel 29) are covering the cop's funeral live. It started at noon. It continues even now. Dear God, they're talking about following the funeral procession to the cemetary in Bensalem.

"They're covering it like the funeral of a head of state. The full Catholic mass at the Cathedral with Jim Gardner (a hat) explaining the ritual. It's been raining hard in Philadelphia all morning. It's clearing now as they bring the casket out of the Cathedral. Bagpipes are playing, drums are drumming.Michael Nutter just looked at his watch.

"Inside the Cathedral the dead officer's son spoke. He said tonight is game one of the NHL Eastern finals between the Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He asked everyone in the Cathedral to sing the Flyers cheer with him loud enough that his father could hear. And then the entire Cathedral sang,'Let's Go Flyers! Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.' I honestly don't know what to make of this."

I still don't. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the whole thing. In life, I can't imagine Stephen Liczbinski ever dreaming that his death would cause Channels Six, Ten, Three and 29 to suspend their regular programming, includng the noon news, to cover his funeral. I didn't know Sgt. Liczbinski, but I'm sure he would be the first to laugh when I add, "but he's no Jack Kennedy."

Al, crusty curmudgeon that he is, replied quickly:

"Trying to attract viewers, and not be the guy that DOESN"T carry it. Plain and simple. Not that deep.
Sheepish, disingenuous bull shit. I know that's MY line of work these days. And I hate it. And everyone else."

Did Philadelphia really need all four network affiliates to devote close to two-and-a-half hours of programming for live coverage of a somber religious rite. The Pope's mass at Yankee Stadium didn't get this kind of blanket coverage. And I fear Al is right. It wasn't a decision made by four individual news directors who honestly believed it was in the public's best interests to devote this much air time to the funeral of a slain Philadelphia police officer. This over-the-top live broadcasting had the stink of cover-my-ass all over it. Nobody wanted to be the "guy" didn't do it. And it's not like each didn't know what the other was doing. "Oh, Jeez, if I had known three, six and ten were doing this I wouldn't have spent all this money and lost all that advertising revenue."

No, they did it because nobody would criticize them for doing it (except for guys like me and Al). They did it because they didn't know what else to do without appearing insenstive to a city's grief. They clicked into their default mode. They didn't want to be the only kid in class who didn't jump off the roof when the rest of their friends did. They didn't want to be the station who dared to air The Young and the Restless, All My Children, Days of Our Lives or Divorce Court like they do ever other weekday. Thank God Channel 17 didn't interrupt Jerry Springer. At least viewers had a choice between dreadfully off-key priests singing and shirtless hillbilly misogyny.

And then into the midst of this insincere media genuflection in front of the coffin of a murdered hero comes the son, Matt Liczbinski, doing a Flyers cheer in the FREAKIN' CATHEDRAL , for crying out loud. I didn't know whether to shit or go blind. Like I said to Al, I didn't know whether to be touched or appalled. Matt, who mentioned that he was 24 (and I know I wasn't the only one quietly doing the math -- Sgt. Liczbinski's 40th birthday was Tuesday) described his father as being the kind of father who could beat up any other father in the neighborhood.

This was a compliment. I understood that. But it sounded as dissonant and off key as the priests' singing,
Matt went with his heart, and I appreciate that, but no sooner had he said that than he led the hushed Cathedral mourners in a Flyers chant. And then he was gone. That was it. My dad could beat up your dad. Go Flyers.

And there were four TV stations capturing the honesty live.

And you know what the worst part is, for me, because it revealed something to me about the way I think. My immediate reaction was, "He just jinxed the Flyers." What a sorry asshole I am. But beyond that, it puts pressure on the Flyers. Someone asked me later, "Do you think the Flyers know?" Well, DUHHHH. We're talking live TV coverage by four network channels in a world where a snarky comment on someone's blog gets emailed to China within seconds. Yes, the Flyers know. And I'm sure they are as in awe of it all as I am.

What does it all mean? Stephen Liczbinski is the new Kate Smith? Will they win one for the Gipper? Will we forget that this Gipper wasn't Ronald Reagan dying quietly off screen but a Philadelphia cop torn in half by an assualt weapon fired by a burqa-wearing bandit whose family can't find a mosque willing to bury him. Is it fair to say that all this is unfair to the Flyers. I'm not talking if they lose. But what if they win?

God bless America, but I'd hate for a dead cop to be the lucky charm that wins the Stanley Cup.

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS, PHILADELPHIA. It's going to be a bumpy ride. As bad as it is to have a cop-murdering fugitive on the loose, the helicopter video of a dozen Philadelphia cops beating the shit out of three guys who probably deserved it is only going to make the execution of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski with an assault weapon more tragic. More maddening. More racial.

Three black men blow away a white police officer on a quiet corner in Port Richmond, one of the few ethnic enclaves in Philadelphia where the name Liczbinski sounds like the guy living in the rowhouse to your left or right. White neighbors rush to his aid, try to stop the bleeding, hear his last words, "Tell my wife. . ."

Yes, there is rage out there. And unspeakable hurt. The kind that makes grown men double over and sob in solitide, like Capt. Miller in a ditch in Saving Private Ryan. He wipes his eyes and goes back to his duty. And in the end he gets shot by the same German soldier he let go.

But nationally the image of Philadelphia police will again be on the news, not in heartbreak, but in brutality. And it's not fair, is it? None of it's fair. It's never been fair. But as a wise man once said, "we must learn to live with what we can't rise above." We owe it to ourselves, our children, and our city. We owe it to the family of Stephen Liczbinski. God bless his soul.

WELL, HELLO-O-O-O-O BETTY! That's the name of this comely clown who I met Friday evening during the Second Annual Clown Crawl through Old City during the booming First Friday art openings. Betty is a member of Carnivolution, a troupe of grease painted carney performers who swallow swords, eat fire, lie on beds of nails, lift cinder blocks with their ear lobes, and staple dollar bills to various body parts. They also perform in a kickass rock fusion band called The Hydrogen Jukebox, and they appear every second Friday evening of the month, from this Friday through October, at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum at 3819 Hamilton Street in the Powellton Village section of West Philadelphia. It's a freak show worthy of the $7 price of admission.

Actually, Betty and I go way back -- at least two weeks -- when we started to work as actors in a movie about the incredible Ellen (that's the nickname for the museum featuring the works of the late Ellen Powell Tiberino, her husband, Joe Tiberino, and their children Raphel, Gabriel and Ellen, accomplished artists all. In the movie under production on weekends and whenever the cast and filmmakers can get together I play the role of a TV reporter (don't I look like one in the photo above) who is investigating the influx of clowns who have migrated across the Schuylkill from subterrainean caverns and sewer inlets in Center City where they practice their clown craft in
secret.

Betty plays a beautiful and gifted clown who can swallow two-and a half feet of a stretched out wire coat hanger and then bend her head forward and look you in the eye with the hook part of the hanger sticking out of her mouth. And people ask me why I like clowns!

IN A MATCH FILLED WITH UPS AND DOWNS for both rugby clubs, Division II playoffs-bound Brandywine RFC allowed a 20 point lead to evaporate late in the second half but held on to defeat Division I Delaware County rival Media RFC 36-32 Saturday afternoon at Media's home field in Bridgeport. Pride drove both teams in a match that swung back and forth in a first half with four lead changes. Brandywine, which heads to Texas in two weeks for the sweet sixteen playoff round in the Division II national tournament, took over in the second half with a hatrick of tries to take a 33-13 lead.

With 10 minutes remaining in the match, Media found its offensive afterburners and rallied to within a single point. of the suddenly vulnerable red and black jersies. Brandywine turned away the yellow peril with a nifty drop kick between the uprights with two minutes to play, eliminating Media's possibility of winning on a penalty kick or a drop goal of their own (they had two in the match).

The boys from Brandywine are 15-1 on the season, their only loss being a 51-10 spanking at the Maryland Exiles.