Tales of the Piano Bar, Part 3

It’s the third Saturday of the month and Mykonos’ Montparnasse Piano Bar, the Greek Aegean’s own La Cage aux Folles, is back again with another story. For those who may not have read the bar’s first two tales, over the past thirty years the Piano Bar is where tourists and locals go to see and be the characters making up Mykonos’ legendary 24/7 in-season lifestyle.   In the off-season, the bar’s sole purpose is to provide stories for this blog. 

The Piano Bar is the creation of Nikos Hristodulakis and Jody Duncan, and they’re behind the bar every night, but this story comes straight off the piano stool.  David Dyer, pianist extraordinaire of Aspen and Mykonos fame, is truly a caring guy though you might not think so from this story.  Nor may it put you in the mood for a cocktail, but as a new “tail” is promised with every Piano Bar old tale, in honor of St. Patrick’s day there is a suitably green Grasshopper chaser for the story. 

Speaking of green…as seems to be more and more the case with Piano Bar tales a word of caution is in order.  If you’re of the squeamish sort, not given to thoughts of the purpose for that little bag in the pocket of the airplane seat in front of you, then perhaps you should skip the story and go straight to the booze.  Then again this story is all about booze.  And music.  Play on, David. 

Montparnasse Piano Bar Tale #3:  “The Mysterious Performer,” as told by David Dyer from behind his piano trying to ignore Jody and Nikos making faces at him from behind the bar.

Piano Man David Dyer

I’ve spent more than half my life performing in glitzy, resort area piano bars and like to think that I’ve developed a Zen-like acceptance of whatever might be going on about me as I play.  Yes, there are those who come to hear me, but I do not work in Carnegie Hall, so accommodation must be made for those who come to find a good time in drink, or a still better one in true love (good luck). 

But then there are those nights when everything goes so uncontrollably haywire you simply don’t know what’s going to happen next. 

Kathy "Babe" Robinson

This past June I was accompanying the wonderful Kathy “Babe” Robinson at the Piano Bar.  We were into the 1 AM set and Kathy was doing a quiet ballad when a ruckus broke out at a table diagonally across from her.  She kept on singing but during my instrumental part leaned over and muttered, “Some woman’s puking in the middle of the table.”

I smiled and said, “Everyone’s a critic.” 

Kathy laughs at the pop of a cork, so it was a miracle she held it to a giggle as she struggled to finish her song, now a duet of sorts with a bent over and retching lady.  Frankly, I was surprised the entire room didn’t lose it to laughter.  It was one of those helpless, beyond schadenfreude moments where no matter how sympathetic you may be to the sufferer (albeit self-induced), you just can’t keep it together. 

At the end of Kathy’s ballad she leaned over to me and said, “Let’s do ‘Somewhere That’s Green’ from Little Shop of Horrors.” 

Now, I take great pride in my warped sense of humor, but this was beyond the pale/pail.  I said, “’Green,’ as in puke?  Are you nuts?   That’s just too tacky and obvious.  We can’t do that.” 

And since I wouldn’t go along with her, she had to sing a different number.  Or rather Kathy and the still retching lady sang another.

I looked around the room.  Everyone, including the waiters, was fighting not to laugh, except for Jody and Nikos who had given in completely and were rolling on the floor out of sight behind the bar.  The only ones in the place not showing the slightest bit of giddiness were the retching lady and her friends.  They kept handing her napkins as if nothing were wrong.  The scene was so surreal I could hardly concentrate on the keys.

When Kathy finished her song I said,  “What the hell, let’s do it, we’ve lost the audience anyway.”

A word about the audience: the Piano Bar is where Broadway and West End performers hang out on the island with others into show tunes.   So, when I started to play the lead-in to “Somewhere That’s Green,” there was a sudden hush followed by a fit of laughter from those who knew what was coming.

Call it coincidence, but at that precise moment the woman’s friends decided the time had come to leave the bar.  Two men helped her up.  I’d only seen her bowed over at the table and when she stood, or rather was lifted, she was not as I had imagined.  She was in her late sixties, elegantly dressed, and sophisticated in appearance—except for the wobbliest pair of legs I’d ever seen.  The men desperately tried to keep her from falling as they steered her toward the door.

They’d just reached Kathy when she sang the line, “Somewhere that's green.”  The woman made the men pause, and stared at Kathy, as if daring her to sing on, which of course she did: “There's plastic on the furniture to keep it neat and clean in the pine sol scented air.”

With that perfectly placed lyrical observation on the evening so far, the woman’s face lit up in the widest ear-to-ear grin you could imagine.  I’d never seen a happier looking person in all my life.

I lost it, Kathy lost it, the whole place lost it.  But that was not the woman’s exit line.  That moment came at the front door where she’d paused again, waiting for Kathy to laugh her way into the big finish, final lyric, “A picture out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine far from Skid Row…” 

At that instant the “far from skid row” lady punctuated her farewell with a broad wave to a now utterly hysterical crowd and disappeared into the night.  Dead drunk or not, the lady hadn’t lost her timing.  As for who she was…

STOP!!!  Sorry folks, but this is Jody interrupting to say, “What happens on Mykonos, stays on Mykonos.”  As a consolation, though, here’s Nikos’ Montparnasse Grasshopper recipe:

Use a cocktail shaker or a blender.  Both produce fantastic cocktails, but the blender version is larger, thicker, frothier, and not as strong in taste as the shaker version.  For both methods the ingredients are the same: 1 ½ ounces green creme de menthe, 1 ½ ounces white creme de cocoa, and 1 ½ ounces milk or half and half.

For the shaker version fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice cubes, add the ingredients, shake well, and strain into a cocktail glass (a large martini glass looks great).  Garnish with a green maraschino cherry on the side of the glass, but a red one will do nicely.  For the blender version, add the ingredients to a half-cup of ice cubes, blend until smooth, and pour into a large margarita or daiquiri-style glass.  And don’t forget the cherry. 

Thanks, guys--I think. 

For those desiring a bit more of a literary finish to this week’s blog, permit me to share with you this photograph of Leighton Gage and another silver haired guy at their joint book tour appearance this past Wednesday at the Reston, Virginia Barnes & Noble.  Notice please that there are no cocktails in evidence, only books.  

Jeff ­— Saturday

Reading out Loud

Just thought I'd take a step back from all things London or English and share a revelation with you this week. A revelation to me anyway. We all know how important rewriting and revision is to the writing process. Some would claim it's the most important part. It is for someone like me, who finds it quite easy to get words down on the page - I can write upwards of 10,000 words a week given a prevailing wind - but often finds those words are bad ones. I don't let it worry me and plough on, knowing that when it comes to the second and third drafts, or more, the bad words will be weeded out and the right ones chosen. Or, at least, at the end the good will outweigh the bad.

However, I've had to work differently on my current book (being written under a pseudonym, to be released next Spring, and at the moment I can't tell you more, though in the future I hope to). The publishers would like to take a few sample chapters to the London Book Fair, which takes place next month, to lure the interest of some foreign publishers. This means for the first time I've been editing as I go along. I can see why I haven't done it before. It's tortuous, and makes for pretty slow going. Or at least it was. That's when I had my revelation.

I started reading what I had written out loud. As if I was sat in a bookshop giving a reading (the equivalent of strumming a tennis racquet and pretending I was on stage at the Astoria when I was young, though not as fun). I've only ever given one reading and it wasn't that enjoyable an experience. I'm no actor. Funnily enough, give me a talk to give, some outline notes, and I can be as fluent as they come. Hand me something to read and I become stilted and tongue-tied. I could make Chandler sound banal and awkward. I don't think I'm alone. I remember listening to Mark Billingham and Ann Cleeves read their work at Harrogate last summer. On the page, for my money, Cleeves' was the better written passage. Read out loud, Billingham's sounded far superior. He's a stand up comic, learned in the art of performance; she isn't. It showed.

But, in my office, reading to my imaginary and very sympathetic audience, and not having drunk seven glasses of cheap 'Book Launch' red to calm my nerves, I've discovered a fluency. I've also discovered a great way to improve my writing. Before, digesting silently a page full of words, I found it quite easy to convince myself a phrase or a word was right. Reading out loud, there is no doubt when you come across something clunky or asinine or plain wrong, and are compelled to put it right. It has given me more awareness of the pace, rhythm and tone of my writing. I have a better idea of tension, how it builds and sags. Dialogue, in particular, becomes much sharper when you give it a real voice. In my head, it's acted like Cary and Katherine at their wisest and wittiest; after all, the best actors can make the dullest words shine. I'm more Ulysses Grant than Cary, so when I read it out loud all the imperfections and awkwardness are exaggerated. Again, there is no place to hide

Now I'm sure there'll be those of you out there who will be thinking, 'Yeah Dan, like, duh! We've been doing that for years Einstein.' (See? Told you it got sharper...) I'm sure many writers read their stuff out loud, and now I can see why. Plus I can get a sense of how long the podcast of my novel will be.

cheers

Dan - Friday

The truth hurts, but silence kills

Last week Michael wrote about Justice Cameron and the Constitutional Court, a keystone of South Africa's democracy.  Several years ago, after a visit to Johannesburg, I wrote a piece about the very same spot where the court is now built, and its gruesome history.  It seems appropriate to remind ourselves in South Africa not only of where we are, and where we want to go, but also of where we came from.  So I'm repeating this piece today in that context.

Johannesburg is built on a series of ridges running east to west.  These hills, or koppies as they are typically called in South Africa, have bare rock at the top. With spring water running over them, these rocks reflected white in the ever-present sunshine of the highveld.  This gave the region its name – the Witwatersrand or the Ridge of White Waters.

In 1886 gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand – not the type of gold that an individual could pan, but rather small amounts of gold embedded in large amounts of hard rock – a few grammes per tonne.  Thousands of people flocked to the area – only 50 kms south of Pretoria, the capital of the country called The South African Republic (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR)) that with various hiccoughs had been independent since 1852.

This influx posed a problem for the ZAR government, which comprised white boers (farmers) who had trekked from the Cape Colony to get away from the hated English.  The blacks in the ZAR had no political rights, of course.  In order to entice more boers to come to the ZAR, the rules for citizenship were very easy – stay a couple of years and you could vote. With the huge rise in foreigners (uitlanders) on the gold mines, the boers realized that they would soon be swamped, so they kept changing the franchise rules to make it nigh impossible for the uitlanders to get the vote.  This was one of the issues the British (through Cecil John Rhodes) used to go to war with the boers.  Rhodes, of course, wanted access to the gold mines.

Outside rampart of The Fort in modern Johannesburg

In 1896 Kruger build a fort on the top of one of the koppies not far from the centre of Johannesburg, partly because he was (rightly) nervous of a British invasion and partly to keep watch over the uitlanders, who were clamouring for the vote.  After the Anglo-Boer War, the fort became a jail.

When I was a kid, my family lived north of the centre of Johannesburg, below the northernmost line of koppies.  We did most of our shopping in the suburbs, and only rarely went “into town”.  The two main reasons for going into town were to enjoy a movie at one of the gorgeous cinemas (the Colosseum, with stars blinking in the ceiling, the Metro, or His Majesty’s) or to go to the dentist – the smiling Dr. Cogan.

The Fort as a jail

The road out of town took us up Hospital Street, passed the Johannesburg General Hospital.  At the top of the hill was The Fort.  All one could see were the earthen walls topped by a rampart and a tunnel through the wall that ended in a huge door.  “If you don’t behave, that’s where you will end up!” my parents would say. We were terrified of The Fort.

I recently visited The Fort.  It is now known as Constitution Hill and is the home of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.  It was a very emotional visit for me because once again I was confronted by the barbarity that the white government had inflicted on those whom it regarded as enemies of the state – in reality anyone whom it wanted to keep out of the way.

The conditions were atrocious.  In the words of one political prisoner – Alex la Guma – “One of the reasons for my disease (Typhoid) is found in this jail.  Filth.  The mats are filthy, the blankets are filthy, the latrines are filthy, the food is filthy, the convicts’ clothes are filthy.  The latrines overflowed and made a stench.”

Naked search

Not only were the conditions awful, but the treatment was also – prisoners stripped naked in public, then searched; beatings; solitary confinement.  And overcrowding.  Cells made to house relatively few had to house large numbers.  This incidentally gave rise to the gang system in South Africa, new inmates being forced to be servants to those higher in hierarchy, who in turn answered to the gang (or cell) bosses.  The photo shows how prisoners were forced to sleep in the overcrowded cells, tightly packed, head to feet.

Folded blankets depicting the sleeping conditions in The Fort

The Fort was home on various occasions to many of those who fought for their freedom:  Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli, Robert Sobukwe, to name a few, as well as many others unknown to the outside world.

Gandhi quote

I walked around with heavy heart, and often with tears in my eyes - disgusted at how badly people can treat each other. 

But then my mood started to change.

I started to see what had become of The Fort.  Built on the suffering of so many, the area had become the focus of democracy in the country – the home of the highest court of the land, the Constitutional Court.  A place of hope.

Symbolic khotla tree

Part of Constitutional Hill is a museum – a reminder of the horrific past – and part a beacon for the future.  The new court building incorporates parts of the old jail – the stairwells of the Awaiting-Trial section – and is built on the metaphor of a traditional African khotla or gathering of tribal elders, meeting under a tree, to dispense justice.  Inside the building is a stunning art gallery with breathtaking two- and three-dimensional works.  Nearby, in some of the cells is powerful artwork by schoolchildren, looking forward by looking back.

Wood sculpture

Woodcut

Child's poster about the future

The Great African Steps

Running between the old jail and the courthouse are the Great African Steps, built from bricks from the demolished jail buildings.  As I walked down the stairs, the stone wall of the notorious Number 4 Block was on the left and the open glass and light of the Constitutional Court on the right - a walk between the past and the future, between apartheid and freedom.

I eventually left The Fort in a positive frame of mind.  In a couple of hours I had witnessed how low man can go, but also how dignity, pride, and optimism can raise man to unimaginable heights.  I am embarrassed to be a South African of the past but immensely proud to be a South African of the future.  As I walked out, I passed this Truth and Reconciliation Commission poster - and I thought "how apt".  It would serve all institutions to follow its truth.

Truth and Reconciliation poster

Stanley - Thursday

What the French are obsessing about, Chirac, ETA, diamonds in the drain

Here's the update on Chirac; no guillotine and not even a trial.
Following up on Chirac’s case from last week’s post - his criminal trial began Monday, but it was quickly suspended. Mr. Chirac, 78, the first head of state to be tried since the Vichy leader Philippe Pétain was convicted of treason in 1945, is accused of padding the Paris payroll with ghost workers who were political cronies while he was mayor from 1977 to 1995.
But on Monday, his lawyers challenged a previous decision to dismiss a statute of limitations on the charges, arguing that it violated the Constitution. The judge suspended the hearing, saying he would rule later on whether the issue should be evaluated by the Court of Cassation, which could delay the trial for months. So, as some Paris pundits predict, a lot might happen before then. Or not.

This weekend a Basque ETA leader, one of four ETA suspects, was discovered in an operation by French police and the antiterrorist unit. This strikes home since Murder in Passy, my new book set in 1997, deals with the ETA and the Basque struggle. Even now they are still making headlines.
Arriola, alias 'Xarlas', the "new military chief of ETA," was arrested in a house where firearms and documents were seized.
ETA is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in its four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings to force the creation of a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.


Spanish authorities believe their campaign against ETA has crippled its operational capacity, with dozens of arrests, including a number of top leaders, made in co-operation with France.
ETA declared on January 10 a "permanent and general ceasefire" to be verified by the international community.
It was the first unilateral declaration of a permanent ceasefire in ETA's campaign of bombings and shootings for a homeland independent of Spain. But Spain's Prime Minister rejected the declaration, saying he wanted nothing less than ETA's dissolution, and the authorities have vowed to hunt down ETA members.ETA had announced a ceasefire in March 2006 within the framework of negotiations with Madrid. But nine months later, it set off a bomb in the car park of Madrid's airport, killing two men.
There has been no attack on Spanish soil since August 2009.

Remember those jewels thieves in drag who robbed Harry Winston’s off the Champs Elysees a few Christmasses ago?
Part of the loot has been discovered in a sewer drain on the outskirts of Paris. Nineteen rings and three sets of earrings – one pair valued at €14 million were dug up from a drain hidden in a plastic container set in a cement mold inside the sewer. The bold Harry Winston jewel robbery on Dec. 5, 2008, netted the thieves – some dressed as women and wearing wigs – gems and bejewelled watches worth up to €85 million
The Harry Winston boutique is on a street off the Champs-Elysees Avenue dotted with fashion houses and cafés. The robbery, carried out while Christmas shoppers strolled outside, was among the most audacious in France in recent memory.

The heist's suspected mastermind, had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a drug trafficking case. On a tip, Police discovered stolen jewellery and €760,000 at his house. And in the drain.
A guard at the Harry Winston boutique put police on the trail of the suspects. When investigators learned that an Israeli was expected in Paris to buy some of the stolen jewels, police moved in to make the arrests.
Cara - Tuesday on the book tour

Carnival in Rio 2011 – The Summing Up

It’s over.

There were two nights of parades.

Twelve samba schools performed.

Each was given 82 minutes to cover the 700 meter long performance strip.

Doing it quicker diminishes the impact. Taking longer, costs points. This year, one of Rio’s greatest samba schools went over their allotted time by more than 20 minutes – an all time record faux pas.

The total performance time, each night, was in excess of eight hours.

An average of 3,500 people represented each school.

Add it up: that comes to more than 21,000 performers a night.

Unfortunately, the Sambodrome, the “stadium” where the event is held, was built back in 1984.

And it only holds about 70,000 people.

That’s far too small for today’s demand, and tickets are hard to come by.

So most people watch it on television.

The networks that do the coverage take it very seriously. They’d be crucified if they didn’t.

Rede Globo is the largest network in Brazil, the largest commercial network in the world outside the United States. Their crew, this year, numbered just under 2,000 people. And more than forty of their cameras were working at the same time.

More than a million tourists came to town for the event.

The large majority didn’t manage to get in to see the parades, but most

of them had a great time anyway.

There are always lots of other things going on during Carnival week, things like Carnival balls and blocos, tiny samba schools that circulate 

through many neighborhoods.

Sometimes people ask me if it’s safe to come to Rio for Carnival.

The answer is yes. Even the thieves seem to take Carnival off, and the Sambodrome, on parade days, is considered to be the safest place in South America.

Next year Carnival will kick off on February 17^th.

Tickets cost from twenty to five-hundred US dollars. You should expect to spend at least two hundred to get a good spot.

And, if you really want to go, it’s not too early to place your order.

Expensive?

Yes, but it’s unique.

And, if you go, you’ll never forget it.

Leighton - Monday

The Unimaginable

The scope of what's happened in Japan is unimaginable. It'll be days, perhaps weeks, before we have a real sense of it.

As the news comes in, the impulse will be to go to statistics, and the early statistics are hair-raising.

One-half of the 17,000 people living in the town of Minamisanriku are missing.

One-third of the 74,000 people living in the city of Kesennumaya are missing.

The town of Iwate, with a population of 23,000, has been destroyed.  No one has a count yet.

Wooden Japan, in towns like Natori (above) and Sendai is aflame.  Ironically, wooden structures generally seem to have sustained less damage from the earthquake than concrete structures, but were swept away like matchboxes in the tsunami and have gone up like tinder in the gas fires that followed.

The main structure of the nuclear plant at Fukushima exploded, but at the time I'm writing this, no one knows whether the explosion presages a meltdown of the core. Nor can anyone predict what will happen to one other, almost equally compromised, plant.  Officials say they'll be giving out doses of iodine soon to help ward off thyroid cancer.

That fact seems to me to be almost infinitely sad.  In the aftermath of forces so great they threw thousand-pound shipping containers around like toys, doses of iodine will be passed out.
And yet maybe that's the best possible response.  Do what's necessary -- do what can be done -- as calmly and graciously as possible.

Already, some grocery stores in the less-devastated areas are open.  They're imposing unofficial daily rationing, selling off only so much of their stock every day to make it last until new supplies can be delivered.  People are queuing up politely, taking what they can get.  There has been not one report of looting or post-quake predation of any kind.

Because so many cell towers went down, two television stations opened their doors to people who waited hours in line for a chance to step before the camera and take thirty seconds or less to send an appeal to the ones they couldn't find or hadn't heard from.  Please be safe, they say.  Please get in touch when you can.
No one seems to have exceeded the thirty seconds.

After the Kobe quake, even the Yakuza set up booths and tables to give away food and water. There was no looting. Out of the inestimable horror of this event, perhaps Japan will remind us what it can mean to be human, and that Hemingway was right when he defined courage as grace under pressure.

And for what it's worth, I send them my prayers.

Tim -- Sunday

My Turn to Kvetch

Kvetch: an ancient Greek term meaning “to complain incessantly, but not to the level of bitching.”

A rainy day in Manhattan's Kips Bay

So, where to start?  Right where I sit is probably as good a place as any: a Manhattan dermatologist’s office on a rainy, windy, miserable day, wondering what that mysterious rash on the back of my legs may be.  The pain is yet to come.  No, not from the rash or paying for the visit—he’s worth every penny—but getting from the sitting to a standing position, for I’m also strapped into a back brace and leaning over like a politician trying to pick a school kid’s pocket. (Warning: Bitching Level Approach Alert (“BLAA”)).

I don’t need a doctor to tell me why that is.  It’s the residual effect of my Sunday night/Monday morning air odyssey into New York City.  The same one I first complained about Monday on Leighton’s blog.  Did you miss it?  Too bad, here are a few choice bits leading up to this kvetch:

“It was a dark and stormy night. Yes, last night surely was. And as I sat into the second hour on an otherwise deserted eastern Pennsylvania runway with 200 pilgrims from Minneapolis diverted by prudent flying (and wind shear) from reaching New York City, all seemed lost. We were in Allentown.  Billy Joel lyrics kept running through my mind.”

But it didn’t end there.  We finally reached NYC’s LaGuardia airport at two in the morning.  So did hundreds from other flights, all of them waiting in the rain in a line for taxis.  Godot would arrive sooner than my cab.  I’d been up since 4 AM Sunday and had to be up again in time for an 8 AM meeting, then another at eleven, and the rest of the day spent among lawyers, my former breed.

By the time I made it home from LaGuardia I had barely enough time to catch a few hours sleep before the meetings.  But I made it through them all without dozing off (too often) and was back in bed by eight…falling off to sleep, perchance to…

I never should have answered the phone.  “Jeffrey, where are you, we’ve been waiting since seven!”

OH, NO.  I’d completely forgotten dinner plans I could not miss.  It was with friends who’d shared extraordinary insights for my just completed novel, and were offering even more for the next.  So, forty minutes later I’m sitting on a barstool, and remained there for three hours talking, eating, and drinking.

Next morning my back said, “And just where do you think you’re going?”  For most of the day we negotiated over the subject of my being able to walk, but finally reached an agreement that allowed me to make my NYC book signing that evening at Greenwich Village’s Partners & Crime, provided I wore a corset-like contraption and popped ibuprofen like jellybeans.

The plan was a simple in and out and back to bed.  But, I should have known better, for no event involving Greeks, food, and wine ever ends predictably.  This one went on until nearly midnight, shifting venues along the way.

Today, I’m paying the price for dissolute ways.  My back’s out, I’m scratching like a dog with fleas, and wondering what in the world to write for my blog.  I feel as if a Kathy Bates Misery moment would be an improvement.  BLAA, BLAA.

Whoops, got to run, time to see the doctor.  I’ll let you know what happens.

Pause.

Ahh, relief.  It’s just poison ivy, contact dermatitis to be precise.  But how, you may ask, did I contract poisoned ivy in the middle of a winter book tour?  Perhaps touching up against some contagious sort of material in a book aisle?  Possibly, but I doubt it.  More likely it’s tied into a two-day break I took clearing brush at my farm.  Maybe I should consider this a warning to stick to writing and leave the chainsaw work to critics?

Office of the world's greatest dermatologist

Bottom line, all is right again with the universe because this super doctor is also a magician.   He made my back feel better and changed the outlook on my day with just a few simple words added to his poison ivy diagnosis: “By the way, Jeffrey, I loved Prey on Patmos and am a big fan.”

How little it takes to cure a writer of kvetching.

Jeff — Saturday