Category: Larry Brody Post

Why I Love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Incomparable Kareem (Malcolm Garret photo via pexels.com)

…I know what most people think, but, nope, it’s not Kareem’s astounding basketball career that makes me a true believer (with apologies to certain guy named Stan Lee), it’s that Kareem is as good a writer as anyone in this day and age could ever read.

Especially his non-fiction – most easily found on his substack website – which gets right to the heart of things, demonstrating a rare combination of clear thought and warm heart.

For example:

Life in the Red Zone (May 19, 2023)
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

 Life in My Seventies, Study: Billionaires Not that Smart, Study: Loneliness as Dangerous as Smoking, NBA Social Justice Champion Finalists, Elon Gets It Wrong (Again), Joan Baez Sings, and More

I recently turned 76, and for the past six years, I’ve been living in the Red Zone. The Red Zone is when famous people keep dying at around the same age as you are. (Last month Tim Bachman, co-founder of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, died at the age of 71. So did Lasse Wellander, the longtime guitarist for ABBA. He was 70.)

The Red Zone is like the section of a car’s gas gauge just past E that, when the needle hovers over it, you’re never sure exactly how many miles you have left before the car conks out. You’re still going strong, but you’re not sure for how long.

Of course, it’s not just famous people dying, but those are the ones I read about with their 70-something ages prominently displayed like flashing warning lights directed at me.

I don’t dwell on death. I don’t fidget over impending doom. I’m not crafting pithy last words. (I might just use Oscar Wilde’s last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”) Quite the opposite. Like most people over sixty, I’m actually happier than when I was younger (“Older Americans upbeat about aging, future”)….

Read it all at Life in My Seventies, Study: Billionaires Not that Smart, Study: Loneliness as Dangerous as Smoking, NBA Social Justice Champion Finalists, Elon Gets It Wrong (Again), Joan Baez Sings, and More (substack.com)

LYMI,

LB

Love Seeing The Silver Surfer Animated Series Back in the News

(via cbr.com - the image accompanying the original article below)

Strange But True Dept:

CBR.Com, a major player in the comics/film/tv industry, has an article of great interest to me today, so I thought I’d share it. Brace yourselves, kids. It’s called 10 Best Animated Shows With Only One Season and starts like this:

10 Best Animated Shows With Only One Season by Lily Emalfarb

Entertainment is one of the most unpredictable industries, and animation is no exception. Many beloved shows were only granted one season due to budgetary restrictions, cancelations, low ratings, or even creative choices. Despite only having a single season, many shows developed large fan bases and huge cult followings that were left craving more with the worlds they fell in love with….

After which it continues with this:

10 Silver Surfer

Created by Larry Brody, Silver Surfer centers around the comic book character, Silver Surfer, as he travels the galaxy in search of a planet that isn’t Earth for his master to destroy. One of the most powerful superheroes, creators brought a new life to Silver Surfer’s character, showcasing his strengths without The Fantastic Four.

Silver Surfer gained immediate praise from fans and critics, making its cancelation shocking. The show only lasted for thirteen episodes, and while there are many rumors regarding its cancelation, Brody claimed it was due to a legal dispute, though some believe it was a result of Marvel’s bankruptcy. Regardless, fans remain hopeful that there will be an up-to-par reboot.

I recognize that Ms. Emalfarb doesn’t consider this the best of the Top Ten – that’s a show called The Midnight Gospel that I’m definitely going to have look at, but I’m excited that recognition has been given to the show and as a result everyone at late, lamented Saban Entertainment who contributed to it.

Thanks, CBR.Com, for brightening my morning. I loved working on Silver Surfer and also “remain hopeful that there will be an up-to-par reboot,” especially one that brings the old animation crew back together for more idealistic interstellar surfing.

Read the entire article HERE

LB: Live! From Paradise #240 – “Thoughts on Turning 65”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

I’m not the first person to observe with a feeling (probably inflated) of wisdom that as our lives amble, zip, and sometimes sputter along paths we’ve chosen—or had chosen for us—many different milestones measure our passage.

First day of school.

First communion.

Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

High school or college (and, these days, junior high and preschool) graduation.

Marriage.

The birth of a child or two, or more.

Divorce.

Grandchildren.

The deaths of our parents.

The death of our mate.

A host of others, some intensely personal, others appropriate for us all.
Obviously, many of these moments are wonderful. And, just as obviously, many are 180 degrees in the other direction.

But just a few weeks ago I encountered the most terrifying and, yep, depressing milestone of all.

Like a whole lot of bad news, it came in the mail.

I’m talking about my Medicare card.

I’m not talking political-socio-economic philosophy here, I’m talking psychological reality.

Staring at that little card waiting to be separated at its perforations and slipped into my wallet, I could think of only one thing:

In less than one month—under 30 days!—I’ll be 65.

Yikes!

Was that for real? Could it possibly be true? Once upon a time various of my grandparents were 65. I remember them well. Doddering, deaf, terrifying when they were behind the wheel of any vehicle on any public, or for that matter private, thoroughfare.

And my parents. They both reach 65 too. Shriveled. Barely able to see. Terrifyingly driving each other to doctors and hospitals as bouts of illness became more and more frequent…and severe.

But those old codgers were from other generations. Immigrant oldsters born in Europe at the turn of the 20th Century. Generation Gapped adults of what Time Magazine called “the best generation,” born in the Good Ole USA just in time for the Great Depression.

That’s not me.

It can’t be.

I’m a young, vital, physically fit baby boomer. I’ve trained with weights for over 50 years. Worked at a gig that demands the utmost in concentration and creativity for 40—

Uh-oh.

There are things, some important, some not-so, that I’ve done for 40 or 50 years?

Friends I’ve had for that same length of time?

Stories I tell that begin not with “Once upon a time” but “Back in the day…?”

I am so…so…what’s the word? Back in the day I never had trouble picking the exact one I needed, but now….

Now I’m old.

Medicare old.

Social Security benefits old.

“Grampa Larry” old.

I may not be doddering—yet—but when I stand beside my children I feel nowhere near as tall as I used to be. My doctor recently recommended a good hearing aid so I could appreciate all the now-missing “sha-bop-sha-bops” on oldies radio. The prescription that just a year ago covered the farthest distance of my “progressive lenses” now is too weak for even the middle…

And, difficult as this is for me to admit, I wouldn’t want to be in another car driving on the same road Grampa Larry was on, nosirree. In fact, just yesterday a neighbor young enough to be my son posted these much-too-true words to me on Facebook:

“Hey, Brody, stay on your side of the road!”

He added an “LOL,” but that was just an act of mercy, after a surprisingly close call.

“I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

So wrote T.S. Elliot back in the day long before the day I go back to. He was referring to fashion, a teacher of mine who had heard him speak about his poetry told a lit class I was in.

“At the time Eliot wrote this,” she said, “the style was for young men to wear straight bottoms and for older ones to fold their pants into cuffs.”

I’m still wearing straight bottoms on my jeans, but even though I’ve beaten Fashion, Time’s got me on the ropes.

Having become a grandparent several times over has been wonderful, but what comes next doesn’t seem nearly so good. I’ve spent much of my life throwing myself at the future but fear that the best I can hope for next time I do that is that I’ll be bounced groggily back.

What bothers me most is that after all these years I still haven’t figured out what the Universe is all about.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure the Universe hasn’t figured me out either.

Hmm, whaddaya know?

Gotcha, U-dude.

LB: Live! From Paradise #239 – “Sonny Boy”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

Hollywood’s been feeding us a lot of remakes lately, filling theaters with new versions of stories we’ve seen before.

I’m no fan of this trend, but a couple of days ago I found myself taking part in a remake of my own.

A new version of my first meeting with the Old Billionaire.

Same place. (The Paradise Mexican restaurant)

Same time. (Lunch, of course.)

Same purpose. (“Time we got to know one another, don’t you think?”)

The Old Billionaire, however, had been written out, replaced by a younger demographic.

His Son the Harvard Grad Genius, a slightly overweight man in his late 40s. Unlike his father, who always seems to belong anywhere he is, HGG appeared completely out of place in his natty Armani ensemble. Not only was this the first time I’d seen anyone wear a suit in the Mexican restaurant, it was the first time I’d seen anyone who wasn’t a preacher wear a suit anywhere in Paradise.

HGG arrived half an hour late, entering with a frown and checking out the buffet as he walked to where I waited at my table. His handshake was crisp and professional. “Sorry. Business emergency. You know how it is.”

I shrugged. “Don’t have to worry about those things much myself. There’s something to be said for retirement, semi or otherwise. Hey, how’s your dad?”

“He and Mom are in Rome,” HGG said. “First leg of Dad’s Round the World Farewell tour.”

“Farewell tour?”

“That seems to be the plan. They’re going everywhere, doing everything either of them always wanted to do. Dad says he’s going to stay out on the road until he runs out of road, can no longer remember where the road is, or drops dead.”

HGG’s voice was warm, but I wasn’t sure about his eyes. They weren’t making contact with mine. His monogrammed cuff links seemed to interest him more.

The waitress—not Carrie, who’d made such a big impression on the O.B. when we’d first met, but her latest replacement—trotted over to ask what HGG wanted to drink.

He opted for water. “Agua fria,” he said. Then he turned his head back in my direction, although his gaze still went inward and not at me.

“I know you don’t like me,” HGG said. “You think I treated my father badly. Forced him out of the business. Well, I did force him out, but he earned that when he let his mistress embezzle for all those years.

“You think I’m ungrateful. Cold, calculating. But you don’t have a clue what it was like growing up as the O.B.’s son. For all of my life, Dad’s operated under one major, overriding principle. And I don’t mean, ‘Profit’s the name of the game.’

“Dad’s basic game plan,” HGG continued, “boils down to, ‘Find out what the other person wants more than anything else. Make sure he knows you can give it to him. And then don’t give it. Ever. Because as long as he’s wanting, he’s yours. You own him.'”

HGG’s water arrived. He sipped it absently. “Dad applied that principle to his personal life as well as his business. To his family! Think about it a minute. Think about what it’s like growing up with that.”

I didn’t want to think about it, but I did. “That kind of thing never entered my relationship with your father,” I said. “Because I already have everything in life that I want.”

“Which is why you and he could be such good friends. Why you could respect each other. But as his son there was a lot I wanted. Needed. That the old SOB refused to give.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I said.

“Not because I want to. But I need to, yes.”

“Why aren’t you looking at me while you tell me?”

HGG’s breathing quickened. “Because telling you is like telling him. And I’ve always been afraid to look at him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again blared. It was HGG’s ringtone. As he pulled the phone from his pocket, he stood up. His eyes met mine at last. “Gotta go,” he said. And, mouthing silently: ‘Thanks.’

I watched HGG stride out and get into an SUV much like his father’s.

I didn’t know if what he’d said about the O.B. was true, but I could feel my heart aching for him.

I’m glad I’d said I was sorry. But still, I don’t like him.

And now I can’t stop thinking about the original version of this meeting and wondering about my world-traveling friend.