Notes on writing

“But in order to exist in any form, art must be giving pleasure.” – W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare

"Being a professional means doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them." -- Julius Erving

I have been writing for money since 1981. How am I doing? You tell me.

My writing career took off in fits and starts, with plenty of detours, dead ends, and nonsensical tangents, personal and professional. At this point, I’ve written three books, published two of them (busy selling Number Three as we speak), and composed thousands of essays, articles, and stories. I’m a non-fiction writer, although I have recently been tempted to make something up, a challenge about which I am exceedingly nervous.

Over the course of 45 years, I have learned a few things. These are some of the things that get me through the day – and I take it day to day.

1.     Building a chair

You can’t think of it as “art”. That’s too intimidating. Usually your work is considered art only after you’re dead, and sometimes not even then. Instead, think of yourself as a craftsperson. When you write something, you are building the equivalent of a chair. (The metaphor’s not mine, I stole it from Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) The first thing you have to make sure of – is it functional? Does it do what it is meant to do? Does it hold up or does it fold up? Can it sustain your weight? Is it durable? Is it comfortable? That is the baseline of acceptability. Beyond that, you can speculate. You can make it anything. Are you building a throne? A milking stool? It’s up to you.

2.     Find your style by telling the truth

When I was just starting out, I was obsessed with the idea of my style. What was it? How could I find it? I began by imitating writers I admired. First, I copied Raymond Chandler, reveling in his terseness, his absurd, over-the-top similes, his hard-bitten outlook. The result was awful. I moved on to other influences – John Steinbeck, most prominently. Again, I found myself butting my head against a wall. I did not know what I was doing.

Then I starting working as a journalist. This was an invaluable experience for me because it taught me discipline. (I believe Hemingway said everyone should be a journalist, but only for five years!) For in journalism, there is always a deadline, usually one about four hours away. It forced me to talk to multiple people, gather information, think of how to present it, execute it, and send it out for the world to read in that abbreviated time frame. If it sucked, it sucked. I made many, many, many mistakes – fortunately, I wasn’t working for the New York Times, so my failures were small ones and nobody got hurt.

I got through the job by focusing on simple clarity. Tell the story as simply and honestly as you can. Make it understandable. This does not mean writing down to people. Respect the reader, but do so by being clear and straight with him or her. It helps to keep an “ideal reader” on your mind. Write for that person.

What do I really feel, think, taste, touch, smell, see, hear? How do I process that? This is difficult. This is what cannot be faked. That is where your truth is, and your true voice.

When I moved on to bigger projects, I found that there was a way I had of writing that sounded distinctly like me – informal, kinda jokey, friendly. That was my style. Through sheer repetition, I removed all the parts of my writing that got in the way between me and the reader. In simply communicating effectively, I have established a mode of expression that is uniquely mine.

Now, am I happy with my style? I read other writers, and am jealous of their eloquence and perception, their seemingly effortless ease. But this is the voice I was born with, the limitations I have to deal with, and now when I reread myself, I say, “That’s OK. That sounds like me.” I just do my best.

3.     Repetition

There is no such thing as inspiration. Malcom Gladwell’s “10,000 hour” rule, which states that that much practice is required to endow someone with mastery of a subject, is right on point. The only way to get better as a writer is to write. Not take classes, not look for magic formulae. When I was in college, I attended an interview with the playwright Edward Albee. “Who here wants to be a writer?” he asked. Hands shot up. “Why aren’t you writing, then? Get out of here,” he said.

I work at it every day, six days a week. On average, I can produce about 1,000 usable words a day. Everyone has a different production capacity; as you go along, you will find out what yours is. On good days, my output creeps up to 1,500 to 2,000 per shift. On lousy days, I still manage to crank out a few hundred words. Keeping at it is essential. The comedian George Carlin had a time clock at his desk at home, and he punched in and out every day, just like a factory worker. He sat there and ground it out. You have to, too. If you can’t do that, don’t try. You’ll just make yourself crazy.

Being a writer is much like being an old-time prospector. You head off into the wilderness, looking for a likely spot. You dig and dig, and sift and sift. You live on bacon and beans, and wear worn-out, patched-up clothes. Sometimes you strike gold. Most of the time, you get enough of a return to show a little profit that grubstakes you for your next attempt.

Someone smart whose name I can't remember said writing a book is like filling a swimming pool using a teacup. It requires patience. Do you like being alone with your thoughts for long periods of time, every day? Are you undaunted by the prospect of sitting there patiently, pulling words out of yourself like teeth? Congratulations, you may be a writer.

 4.     Rewrite

The first draft is always terrible. I hate first drafts. The blank page still makes me sweat. What gets me through, what allows me to write ANYTHING down, is the knowledge that I can fix it later. The first draft is just a mess of words that fight toward your goal of being understood. The first draft is filled with wrong directions, mistakes, and vile stupidities. Get over it. I LOVE rewriting. Once I have something down, I can shape it into something usable. When you are starting out, it seems impossible to wrestle something into an acceptable form. Once again, keep at it. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.

5.     Read

Throw away your video games. Life is too short. Read, read, read! Keep reading. I read fiction and non-fiction, poetry, plays, the back of the cereal box. I read deathless prose and complete shit. I love it all. There is no way you will get to read one-tenth of what you want to read in this life – but you can die trying. Don’t try to cheat by reading only what tops the best-seller lists. You will not discover the magic trick that will make you a great writer. In fact, most people who are good writers were stimulated by reading something so bad that they declared to themselves, “I can write something better than this crap!”

6.     Do what you can do

You have to live somehow. You have to take that day job. You have a life, people you love, obligations, hindrances. You have to write in the cracks of your working day, early in the morning, late at night. The conditions are never ideal (again, writing in the middle of a loud, busy, newsroom filled with constant interruptions on four things at a time is excellent practice). You have to forgive yourself for not getting as far in a day as you wanted. I have few readily marketable skills. I didn’t get a degree. I have raised three children, been married twice (the second one worked!), held every kind of menial job there is. I waited tables for seven years. And I kept writing.

I continue to scrape along. It’s in my blood now, I can’t help myself. When I don’t get to write, I moo like a distressed cow with overfilled udders. I do OK.

The writer typically swings between complete self-loathing and delusions of grandeur. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Don’t aspire to “be a writer”; aspire to write. It’s fun!

CU in outer space: Missions, experiments aim at deep-space exploration

From Boulder Magazine! Photo by Bonnie Chaim.

 A half a century after the last human visitor stepped on the moon, mankind is looking to the stars again – and the University of Colorado at Boulder is leading the way.

Boulder’s hometown university is a key player in space science and exploration, and has been since 1948, when CU scientists participated in the launches of captured German V-2 rockets on suborbital missions at a missile range at White Sands, New Mexico. Since then, CU has worked with NASA (founded in 1958) and other space agencies to provide expertise, research, and personnel for expeditions beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

CU-Boulder receives $120 million in aerospace-related research yearly, and the university boasts of more than 20 aerospace-related academic departments, centers, and institutes. To date, 20 CU-Boulder scientists, faculty, and alumni have gone into space, on 52 missions. Hundreds of CU-Boulder-built scientific instruments have flown into the outer reaches as well.

One of the most significant upcoming journeys to feature CU involvement will be this spring’s Polaris Dawn launch. This commercial flight will spend up to five days in orbit and will feature the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk, laser-based communications testing, and much scientific research.

One member of the four-person crew, Mission Specialist, Sarah Gillis, 29, is an almost-Boulder native (she got here at three months of age), and a graduate of CU-Boulder. If the launch goes as scheduled, she will be the youngest American ever to orbit the Earth.

Her primary focus will be to conduct many of the 38 scheduled science and research experiments during the mission. Many are focused on human health, both on Earth and on long-duration space flights. One of her collaborators on the ground is CU Assistant Professor Torin Clark, assistant professor in BioServe Space Technologies, who with fellow CU-Boulder aerospace engineer Allie Anderson will lead five experiments that study how astronauts experience motion sickness, disorientation, and similar issues during space flight and upon their return to Earth.

“We’re studying how the astronauts’ brains are affected by the environment,” Clark says. One experiment involves inducing motion sickness. “That’s not one we’re looking forward to,” he quips.

One long-term goal of the mission? To prepare humans to return to the Moon, and to reach for a landing on Mars, by the end of this decade.

“I was in high school when Apollo 11 landed,” says Dr. Jack Burns, CU professor and head of the Network for Exploration and Space Science, a collaboration among several universities, NASA, and significant regional commercial entities such as Ball Aerospace and Lockheed Martin. “If you would have told me then that it would have been more than 50 years before returning, I would have said you’re crazy.”

Burns is an articulate exponent of space science and exploration, over a 50-year career that includes 21 years at CU. He posits the creation of what he terms a sustainable space program.

“When you look at the history of American space missions, Apollo was not sustained once the political goals were finished. Now we are concerned not with a one-and-done, ‘flags and footsteps’ approach, but a public and private infrastructure for space exploration, something that would grow and develop over time, including what NASA calls an Artemis base camp on the Moon by the end of the decade,” he says.

“We look to set up a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon,” Burns continues. “We will be learning to live of what the Moon provides, doing things like getting water from the ice at the poles. All this with an eye to look forward, to going to Mars.”

Of CU’s dominant affiliation with space studies, Burns says, “It just all came together. As a strong and well-known research university, it just continued to build over time. Of course,” he adds, “Boulder’s a wonderful place to live as well.”

Super Mario: America’s greatest tenor and the seductions of schmaltz

By BRAD WEISMANN

“ . . . the house had been hit in a raid, and among the losses was my record collection, all save one, which I still have . . . I daren’t play it much; it creates such vivid memories. I have to go for a walk; even then it’s about three hours before I can settle down again.” Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall

Sitting in my head for decades is a root musical memory of the vinyl disc RCA Victor LM-1837. It’s got the ungainly title of “Mario Lanza sings the hit songs from The Student Prince and other musical comedies.” On the album’s cover there floats Mario’s big, ripe, grinning head, cut out and set against a blood-red background. Inside, a flood tide of rich phrasing and incredible vocal pyrotechnics. My father, an operetta aficionado, played it all the time. My mother, normally allergic to this kind of thing, shared an affection for it with him. They had been carting it around all their married life. By the time we kids got to it the vinyl was scratched and pitted with affectionate use.

Why was Lanza so important to both of them? What did he mean to them?

Between 1945 and 1955, you couldn’t buy a beat in pop music. Somewhere between swing music and rock and roll, a great wave of sentimental balladry took hold in America. As soldiers came home from World War II and inaugurated the Baby Boomer generation, big bands faded and singing stars – Perry Como, Vaughn Monroe, Vic Damone, Frankie Laine, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Patti Page, Nat “King” Cole, Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher, Jo Stafford, Andy Williams, the Chordettes, the Ames Brothers, the McGuire Sisters – took over the airwaves and jukeboxes. The county was awash in violins and vibrato.

Now, in 1940, big bands were riding high. The Swing Era was inaugurated by Benny Goodman’s breakthrough concert in Los Angeles’s Palomar Ballroom in 1935. Ten years later, it was over. Many factors contributed – the drafting of many musicians in World War II, the crippling ASCAP strike of 1942-1944, and most importantly the phenomenal explosion of interest in Frank Sinatra, who went from being one of Tommy Dorsey’s juvenile singers to a number-one sensation. Suddenly, instead of a vocalist serving as one component in the ensemble, he or she was pushed into the spotlight. Song choices and musical arrangements were now shaped around a vocalist’s range and persona.

Into this setting stepped the ambitious 26-year-old Lanza. His slowly developing career took off after his performance at the Hollywood Bowl on August 28, 1947. The 4,000 in attendance included many people from the film industry, including MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer. Mayer quickly signed Lanza to a contract. Three films later – “That Midnight Kiss,” “The Toast of New Orleans,” and “The Great Caruso” – he was the first to sell a million copies of an operatic recording, 1951’s “Great Caruso” soundtrack, one that has never gone out of print.

 Then he eased out of the onerous pressures of Hollywood, trained himself to an exemplary degree, and became a long-lived and beloved opera star, the greatest tenor of the 20^th century.

Of course, this did not happen. In fact, this is precisely the opposite of what happened, and that flicked the switch on the tragic nimbus that still hovers behind Lanza’s memory. The singer, the only child of a passive, shell-shocked WWI veteran and a domineering, frustrated-musician mother, was spoiled as a child. His lack of discipline and impulse control as an adult, mated to childish willfulness, led to a lifetime of self-destructive behavior.

Lanza seemed bipolar, swinging abruptly between extravagant spending, womanizing, and boasts that he was greater than Caruso, and long periods of crippling stage fright, depression, isolation, paranoia, and compulsive bouts of eating and drinking. (He repeatedly went on sometimes-successful crash diets to reduce his weight for filming – yo-yoing between 180 and nearly 300 pounds.) He would sabotage his voice by singing loudly all night before a concert – then cancel the concert due to a sore throat. (Like Pavarotti, he was famously called out for lip-synching in public; his sloppy erotic divertissements with Judy Garland and others are on record.) In the end, he stormed and strutted like the stereotype of the preening Italian tenor.

MGM announced that Mario Lanza would play the lead in Sigmund Romberg’s “The Student Prince” in 1951. However, this marked the point at which Lanza’s diva-esque behavior would drive the studio to suspend him, cancel the film, and sue him for damages. After pre-recording his songs for the film shortly before his conflicts with the studio became unworkable, Lanza found himself frozen out of the production. Finally, Lanza submitted to the ultimate insult – his vocal tracks would be lip-synched by a slimmer and more cooperative actor, Edward Purdom. The authorities finally divorced Lanza's wonderful voice from his troublesome self.

The movie was released two years after Lanza’s recording sessions. By that time, he had made one more film in the U.S., “Serenade,” and would be off to Italy, from where he would not return alive.

Lanza was possessed of the finest natural tenor voice many have ever heard. It is full, ringing, clear and expressive. When Lanza was focused and disciplined, his breath control, diction, tone, interpretive skill, and sense of dynamics was unsurpassed. However, when in distress or out of shape, these abilities would lapse and audiences would hear some of the qualities complained about by many critics – a forced, metallic quality, pushing for effect, poor breath support, and an impulse to constantly go for “toppers” – stunning bursts of  volume and flashy high notes, whether the material warranted it or not.

Being an overnight sensation meant that Lanza was pushed into recording lots of forgettable pop. However, while his health permitted his versatility and sensitivity to the material meant that he recorded many fine interpretations of ballads. Too, his renditions of many romantic and lyrical canzone Napoletana (Neapolitan songs) are considered definitive.

Lanza’s voice is so compelling and penetrating, he sings with such commitment and intensity, that it is difficult to be unmoved. Tied in with the conventions of the day – heavily orchestrated accompaniment, echo, stereo reprocessing – the result is super-extravagant schmaltz of the highest pitch. It’s a collision of the high-art operatic and the lowbrow, sentimental mush of the time.

Success destroyed Lanza. The money, fame, and adulation sudden film stardom brought were just as addictive as the women he chased and the booze he poured into himself. To his handlers, Lanza was a machine that printed money. Very few of the people who did business with or for him had any regard for his sanity or long-term career. Studio heads, music producers, managers, agents, lawyers – he quickly grew a protective carapace around himself -- one that required massive amounts of income to sustain. It was in no one’s interest to say no to him.

So, if Lanza’s life was a tragedy, whose fault was it? It depends on which biographer you read. Six different biographies range in their depictions of Lanza from a suffering saint to a contemptible cur. Some are clearly written for gain, retailing Lanza’s flaws to sell books. These include books in which the authors felt no compunction about making up reams of imaginary dialogue, as well as the inner thoughts of its subject and everyone around him.

Another pushes the myth that the Mafia killed Lanza. In fact, Lanza’s self-indulgent lifestyle weakened his heart considerably and contributed to the phlebitis that killed when a blood clot left his leg and migrated to his heart, causing a fatal heart attack.

One reliable source is Armando Cesari’s “Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy,” which includes a painstaking list of his recordings, films, concert, and radio appearances as well as a Cesari-curated CD of rare live and home-recorded tracks that bolster his extensive, solid analyses of the singer’s changing voice.

Roland L. Bessette’s “Mario Lanza: Tenor in Exile” is its equal. Bessette is painfully honest about many embarrassing incidents in Lanza’s life, but balances them with equally affecting stories of his kindness and his bouts of professionalism. At book’s end, Bessette speculates that Lanza’s inherent character flaws would have prevented him from having other than the life he did. “He had . . . the best career he could have had.” All who examine his life declare his voice a natural talent so immense that it crushed the man who had to bear it.

This is where my parents come in. My father, raised in a comfortable middle-class household, was heir to a taste for light classical music and operetta, from Gilbert and Sullivan through Herbert, Friml, Lehar, and the rest of those composers of tuneful pleasantry from the turn of last century. My mother, out on the farm, had no such musical pretensions, and grew up on country music and white (aka unswinging) gospel. But she was quite imaginative, well-read and had a flair for the dramatic – thanks to her, we had a well-stocked assortment of musical comedy soundtracks.

Somehow, Lanza hit the sweet spot for both of them. It served as a sort of soundtrack to their courtship. Later, it became a humorous and affectionate reference for them. Much later, it became something no one wanted to hear around the house. It had become an unbearable reminder of a romance that played out into a marriage overwhelmed by alienation and despair.

“The Student Prince” is powered by a classic romance plot: he’s a student prince, she’s a barmaid . . . complications ensue.

We kids played Side One over and over, crooning and swooping about the house, making melodramatic gestures of cross-eyed devotion in jerry-built costumes we thought mimicked the elegant finery of the principals. There was nothing more exhilarating than to imagine that I might one day be as captivating as Mario, with a magnetic voice that no one woman could resist!

“Overhead, the moon is beaming

White as blossoms on the bough

Nothing is heard but the song of a bird

Filling all the air with dreaming

Could this beauty last forever?

I would ask for nothing more, believe me

Let this night but live forever, forever and ever more!”

Lanza’s sound penetrates the thick, warm orchestrations, creating a kind of gem-scattered brilliance on a velvety background.  It’s not hard to see how Lanza and his music became a metaphor for the world of unattainable, disturbing fantasy the protagonists of Peter Jackson’s film “Heavenly Creatures” seek. For a while, it was our fantasy world as well.

Likewise, after years of contemplating my parents’ emotional dynamic, and sometimes overcoming its shadow on my own relationships, I have to come to a conclusion parallel to Bessette’s concerning Lanza  – they had the best marriage they could have had.

As for me, to the extent that I grew up thinking that love was supposed to be one long operatic epiphany . . . well, life took care of that. I spent many years chasing that addictive love high. Complications ensued. Now on much more solid ground, I can finally detach myself from all the regretful associations and really hear that voice for what it is.

And there, distilled in those romantic melodies, is still a kernel of what drew my parents together. Whether it was illusory, or never meant to last, those songs embody a majestic passion that must have consumed them, once. It’s comforting to know that.

SOURCES

Mario Lanza: Tenor in Exile

Roland L. Bessette

Amadeus Press

Portland OR

1999

Amore: The Story of Italian American Song

Mark Rotella

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

New York

2010

Lanza, His Tragic Life

Raymond Strait & Terry Robinson

Prentice-Hall

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

1980

Mario Lanza: Singing to the Gods

Derek Mannering

University Press of Mississippi

Jackson, MS

2005

Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy

Armando Cesari

Baskerville Publishers

Fort Worth, TX

2004

The Mario Lanza Story

Constantine Callinicos

Coward-McCann

New York

1960

Mario Lanza

Matt Bernard

Macfadden-Bartell Corp.

New York

1971

From 5280 Magazine: "Sweet Sounds" -- jazz in Denver

Benny Goodman and his 15-piece outfit worked at Denver's Elitch's Gardens from Friday, July 26 through Thursday, Aug. 15, 1935. They bombed -- the conservative Denver audiences wanted sweet jazz, waltzes and novelty numbers. Goodman, who had enjoyed success and national exposure via his "Let's Dance" radio band remotes from New York City on NBC, fell into despair here. He thought he would have to disband after finishing his bookings in California. On Aug. 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, the crowd went ballistic over his hard-driving swing sound , inaugurating a decade during which cutting-edge jazz and popular taste were one.

I was lucky enough to get to write a wonderful feature story about jazz in Denver, past and present. Space did not permit me to go into as much detail as I would like; I have appended below information about local venues for those who want to get out and hear what's happening!

P.S.: If you have more information about local jazz clubs, nights, events, performers or ensembles, please feel free to share this info in the comments section.

DENVER JAZZ VENUES AND NIGHTS

Dazzle

930 Lincoln St.

www.dazzlejazz.com

303-839-5100

Jazz @ Jack’s

500 16^th St., Ste. 320

www.jazzatjacks.com

303-433-1000

El Chapultepec

1962 Market St.

www.thepeclodo.com

“Straight-ahead” jazz Wednesday and Thursday evenings

Herb’s

2057 Larimer St.

www.herbsbar.com

Jazz, blues, funk and more on mixed schedule; Open Jam every Wednesday at 9:30 p.m.

Vita

1575 Boulder St., Ste. A

www.vitadenver.com

303-477-4600

Jazz and blues, 6:15 – 10:15 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays

Burnsley Hotel

1000 Grant St.

www.burnsley.com

Jazz Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings

Meadowlark

2701 Larimer St.

Meadowlarkbar.com

303-293-0251

Jazz jam every Monday at 9 p.m.

Tennyson’s Tap

4335 W. 38^th Ave.

Tennysonstap.com

303-455-4469

Laura Newman Trio w/Ellyn Rucker

Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.

The Bitter Bar

9^th and Walnut, Boulder

Thebitterbar.com

303-442-3050

Mark Diamond Jazz Duo, Tuesdays, 7 to 10 p.m.

Boulder Outlook Hotel

800 28^th St., Boulder

www.boulderoutlook.com

303-443-3322

Jazz jams, 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th Sundays, 7:30 to 10 p.m.

Blues jams, 2^nd and 4^th Sundays, 7:30 to 10 p.m.

DENVER JAZZ MUSICIAN GALLERY

All the artists listed below came from Denver, spent a significant part of their lives here, or currently reside and work here.

PAST GREATS

George Morrison, Sr.

Paul Whiteman

Jimmy Lunceford

Andy Kirk

Glenn Miller

Paul Quinichette

Ted Alexander

James Romaine

Billy Tolles

Spike Robinson
Phil Urso

CURRENT MASTERS

Bill Frisell

Paul Warburton

Dianne Reeves

Dave Grusin

Don Grusin

Freddy Rodriguez, Sr.

Rene Marie

Ellyn Rucker

Fred Hess

Ron Miles

Art Lande

Ralph Sharon

Cedar Walton

Bill Graham

Charlie Burrell

Sam Gill

Pat Bianchi

Laura Newman

Paul Romaine

Hazel Miller

Kenny Walker

Mark Simon

Mark Patterson

John Gunther

Eric Gunnison

Matt Wilson

Tyler Gilmore

Andy Weyl

Brad Goode

Eduardo “Bijoux” Barbosa

Jeff Jenkins

Keith Oxman

Marc Sabatella

Justin Adams

Ron Bland

Colin Stranahan

From EnCompass Magazine: I write about swing dancing in Denver

Lovely! Thanks so much to the kind folks at EnCompass for commissioning and running this feature story from me on the swing-dance revival scene in Denver -- in their Jan./Feb. 2012 issue.

Great opera villains, Part Two

Edouard de Reszke as Mephistopheles in Gounod's "Faust" -- the Devil gets all the good tunes.

With the chill in the air, opera season is here, and I’ve been looking at the juicy parts the typical operatic villain gets to sing.

While it’s perceived as a pastime for the rich, most of its history saw opera as an opiate of the people. Yep, common folk would flock to see these larger-than-life stories, enjoying the extremes of acting, production values and musical embellishment just as we get off on 3-D IMAX films today.

As we will see in this installment, the gorier the fates, the more florid the emotions and the more special effects that could be piled on, the happier the hoi polloi was. In the first part of this story, I talked about my top three: Scarpia in “Tosca,” Don Pizzaro in “Fidelio,” and Claggart in “Billy Budd.” Here are some second-tier nasties and a catalog of the mayhem they wreak. Enjoy!

1.    Iago, “Otello” -- Verdi

Position: Junior officer in the Venetian army

Iago just misses out being in the top three by virtue of Verdi’s chief virtue – the fact that he couldn’t write a poorly-rounded character to save his life. Like Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy, Verdi gives every one of his parts a soul, and the inherent balance in this approach keeps Iago from dominating the proceedings.

When I first read “Othello” as a kid, I didn’t get it -- I wondered why it wasn’t just called “Iago.” With the passage of time and the revelation of some top-notch performances, it’s become apparent that Othello is the author of his and Desdemona’s destruction, even if Iago is holding the poison pen.

What’s his problem?: Basically, Iago would much rather have civil service procedures and seniority determine promotion. Otello preferred Cassio to him, therefore, he seeks vengeance against the Moorish general. (In Shakespeare’s source play, he also refers to the fact that O fooled around with his wife.) Iago aka “Honest John” proves how smart he is by concocting a brilliant series of implied statements that drive Otello to suspect his own wife’s fidelity and eventually to strangle her to death.

M.O.: Iago would have made a great lawyer. Using only half-hinted assertions and a bit of circumstantial evidence, he propels the murderous plot.

Good tunes?: Plenty! It’s Verdi, after all. From his baldly cynical “Credo” through to the Act II and III finales, Iago is a great part to sing and to play. My favorite Iago, Sherrill Milnes, sings here.



Payback: Well, he kind of dashes offstage when the jig is up at the end of Act IV. We are told that the cops are in hot pursuit, and certainly he can never show his face in Venice again, but his ultimate capture and disposition of the case are never explicated. Maybe he talked his way out of it – if anyone could have, it was him.

2.    Alberich/Fafner/Hunding/Hagen, “Der Ring des Niebelungen” -- Wagner

Position: Dwarf, Giant/dragon, angry husband, sneaky warrior

What’s their problem?: Alberich starts the whole thing by renouncing love and grabbing The Ring, to gain complete magic power over everything. Wotan tricks him out of it, but then Wotan has to hand it over to the twin giants Fasolt and Fafner for getting his Valhalla palace complex built. Then Fafner kills Fasolt and turns into a dragon. Hunding is a lout who just happens to have the bad luck to have married the twin sister of Siegmund, Sieglinde. The brother and sister run away and “get married” (knocked up) and Hunding kills Siegmund. Way later, Hagen son of Alberich schemes to get the Ring back from Siegmund and Sieglinde’s kid, the hero Siegfried. He stabs him in the back to do so.

M.O.: Stealing, oppressing other dwarves, bullying, murder, transforming into dragons, uncouthness, treachery, backstabbing.

Good tunes?: I don’t know . . . do you like Wagner? Then yes. There are lots of good bits and lots and lots of slower parts where everybody kind of goes over everything that’s come before just to catch us up and keep us all in the loop. If you like the idea of 15 straight hours of one epic story spread over four different operas, this is your baby.




Payback: Alberich is always in background, cursing folks and plotting for control, but ultimately foiled as the cycle begins again. Fafner gets offed by Siegfried. Hunding makes Wotan so mad by killing Siegmund that Wotan just waves his magic spear at him and he dies. Hagen drowns trying to grab the Ring. It’s so Tarentino.

3.    Count di Luna, “Il Trovatore” -- Verdi

Position: Nobleman

What’s his problem?: He loves Leonora, but she loves Manrico, the troubadour of the title. Actually, he is one of the more sympathetic villains in opera – his feelings for the heroine are real, his jealousy is not unfounded. He just has to be the bad guy.

M.O.: He has a squad of guards that are about as effective as the Keystone Kops. Time and again, Manrico and Leonora slip away from him. He duels Manrico, who beats him but refrains from killing him due to the fact that subconsciously he realizes that they are really brothers . . . I think. It’s not until he captures Manrico’s mother, the crazy gypsy lady Azucena, who is NOT really Manrico’s mother, that he gets the edge on Manrico.

Good tunes?: Pull “Il balen del suo sorriso” out of its Act II, Scene 2 context, and raise the register a bit, and it will do the trick for any tenor-ish lovesick hero.



Payback: He doesn’t get Leonora, who does the right thing and kills herself. He then executes Manrico. It is a truly horrifying final moment for the Count. Azucena tells him he has killed his brother, and the Count screams, “And I must live on!” CURTAIN. But . . . wait a second. He’s going to take the word of a crazy gypsy lady? Not too convincing.

4.    Don Giovanni, “Don Giovanni” -- Mozart

Position: Nobleman

What’s his problem?: Sex addict. He will sleep with anything that moves, providing it’s female. He’s a player. He doesn’t care what lies he must tell, who he has to step on, and does not scruple to murder.

M.O.: Swordplay (both kinds) and sweet talk.

Good tunes?: Hey, he’s the (anti)hero.



Payback: Dead-guy statue drags him to hell. For the audience, this is a perfect case of vicarious hypocrisy – they get to watch Donny G. have his way with all of womanhood, and then suffer his just desserts. It’s a win-win . . . except for the title character, of course.

5.    Rigoletto, “Rigoletto” -- Verdi

Position: Jester, single parent

What’s his problem?: Another one of Verdi’s patented antiheroes. He a 16th-century standup comic, but he doesn’t know when to stop being “on,” bringing down a curse (“la maledizione!”) on himself.

M.O.: Barbed words, and underworld connections (he hires a hit man, Sparafucile).

Good tunes?: Oh so many, but especially his pitiful “Cortigiani, vil razza damnata” in Act II –



Payback: He dooms his secret daughter to seduction and deflowerment by his boss, the callous but charming Duke of Mantua (another famous villain who gets off scott-free). Due to a severe case of Opera Logic, his revenge plan goes awry and he ends up getting his own beloved deflowered daughter killed by the aforementioned Sparafucile. “LA MALEDIZIONE!” CURTAIN.

6.    Mephistopheles/Mefistofele/Nick Shadow, “Faust”/”Mefistofele”/”The Rake’s Progress” – Gounod, Boito, Stravinsky

Position: Unholy adversary.

What’s his problem?: This is an immensely complex theological matter that would take volumes to weigh properly. You might say he doesn’t really have a problem – just a sinister mission. As the old joke says, the Devil said to the preacher: “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be out of a job!”

M.O.: He pretty much has all the dark power of the universe behind him. The only effective countermove is the grace of God, usually employed conveniently at the last second.

Good tunes?: As the great Brazilian writer Machado de Assis put it in his analogy of the world as an opera stage, “God is the librettist. The music is Satan’s.”





Payback: Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. There are always more souls to wager over with the Deity.

7.    Enrico Ashton, “Lucia di Lammermoor” -- Donizetti

Position: Lord of Ravenswood (impoverished)

What’s his problem?: He’s got to marry off his kid sister to Lord Bucklaw in order to get his hands on some ready cash. Too bad she’s in love with Edgardo, who also happens to be the rightful heir of Ravenswood.

M.O.: Murder (he killed Edgardo’s pappy), psychological torment and threats.

Good tunes?: He gets to rave on about his schemes to set up the action, exposition-style, in Act I, Scene 1. Often overlooked is his vigorous confrontation with Edgardo in Act II, Scene 1, in which he informs the poor lad that Lucia is e’en at that time dancing the horizontal mambo with Bucklaw, and they challenge each other to a duel.




Payback: Newlywed Lucia kills Bucklaw, then goes nuts and falls down dead. So much for paying off the mortgage. Unless there’s some kind of prenup that lets Enrico grab the loot. It’s worth checking with the local solicitor.

8.    Barnaba, “La Gioconda” – Ponichelli

Position: Spy for the Inquisition

What’s his problem? This horny little snitch lusts for the lady of the title role. When she spurns him, he threatens her poor old blind mother -- and just about anyone else who crosses his path.

M.O.: Denouncing people, and making dirty deals, all to try to get into La G’s pants.

Good tunes?: Well, just one – “O monumento!”, in Act I. Ponichelli is really Verdi Jr., and you can hear a lot of “Rigoletto” in “Gioconda.” Barnaba is a classic bureaucrat – he not only identifies his self-interest with that of the state, but he is quite happy to feel smug and virtuous about it, even as he plots the most evil schemes. Here’s Mateo Manuguerra --



Payback: None whatsoever. True, he doesn’t get to bounce on the midnight trampoline with La G, but his last line is truly disgusting – to her corpse, he announces that he drowned her mother the night before. What a jerk.

NEXT TIME: Don’t mess with the Gesler, and others

Badass bass/baritones: the lure of the great opera villains, Part One

Tito Gobbi as Rigoletto: a jester with an agenda.

I love to sing. Ask around; a lot of bystanders have been injured in the process.

There’s something thrilling about carrying a tune, whether or not you’re particularly good at it. After high-school choir and a little musical theater, though, I was done as a singer.

I still love to listen, though – especially opera. Why? Maybe it’s the fact that it’s a magnificent mash-up of music, theater, dance, and art. Maybe it’s that the operatic world can contain so much. Opera is a crazy, emotional, illogical, overblown, splendid world in which concepts and people lurch about in enormous and ornate settings, bellowing beautifully out into the darkness.

But I rapidly began to identify with the bad guys. Although opera has changed and grown in the past 100 years, its core repertoire is, depending on your orientation, numbingly or comfortingly familiar. The heroes and heroines sing high; the villains, weirdoes and comic relief sing low.

I wonder why. Maybe it’s a reptile-brain association – higher, lighter voices belong to the young and innocent, and deep growls come from the aged and jaded, the predators.

But the tenors are so damn irritating . . . they get the best arias, they get the girl, they get the big applause, and they are so, well, whiny. They do not so much act as they are acted upon. They are tormented by love, fate, adversity, and it’s a fair bet that they could whip up a poignant aria about the difficulty of tying their shoelaces if pressed.

The villains are so much more fun to play. No villain? No plot! Ask any actor – a hero must be played with a kind of blankness about him that allows the audience to slip in its identification with him. But a bad guy – oh what cackling fun! And in opera, there is nothing subtle about being a scoundrel. One gets to boom forth, gnash the teeth, leer, gesticulate until one is stabbed, shot, struck, drowned, poisoned, arrested or otherwise molested. (And sometimes the opera villain gets off scott-free!)

So here’s a purely personal list of my favorite bass/baritone baddies, with a palate-clearing addendum of not-so-nasty lower-range roles as well.

1. Scarpia, “Tosca” – Puccini

Position:

Chief of police and royalist, Rome

What’s his problem?:

He wants to ravish the heroine and kill her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, who is a revolutionary sympathizer.

M.O.: An army of spies, firing squad, and torture, physical and psychological. He puts Cavaradossi to the rack, and then tells Tosca that he’ll let him go if she does the nasty with him.

Good tunes?:

Absolutely. Scarpia knows how evil is is, and has no remorse about it whatsoever. Listen to him revel in his dastardliness at the end of Act I, performed by Cornell Macneill, the ultimate Scarpia:

Payback:

Stabbed to death by Tosca with a butter knife (ouch!) at the end of Act II. However, he’s such a rotter that he ends up killing both the lovers after he’s dead. THAT’S follow-through.

2. Don Pizzaro, “Fidelio” – Beethoven

Position:

Prison governor

What’s his problem?:

He just hates that Don Florestan, husband of the heroine Leonore, whom he has unjustly imprisoned for trying to expose Pizzaro’s evil deeds. Leonore disguises herself as a dude in order to spring Florestan from jail (opera is complicated). Pizzaro plans to have Florestan killed and buried before the king’s minister stops by to check on how things are going down there in the pokey.

M.O.:

Deliberate starvation of prisoners, denial of exercise-yard privileges, intent to kill by stabbing.

Good tunes?:

Meh. Mostly, he serves as a plot point, but boy is he scary! He has a nice Act I kill-the-wabbit moment. Here’s Walter Berry:

Payback:

Pizzaro makes the classic bad-guy mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight. He is overcome and foiled and ends up a prisoner in his own jail.

3. John Claggart, “Billy Budd” – Britten

Position:

Master-at-arms, the HMS Indomitable

What’s his problem?

He hates Billy Budd, 'foretopman, the gentle hero of the tale. He vows, for no other reason than the existential hatred of evil for good, that he will destroy him utterly.

M.O.:

Flogging, harassment, spies, perjury.

Good tunes?: His aria “Handsomely done, my lad” in Act II is one of the most chilling delineations of evil in any medium. Here’s James Morris:

Payback: Claggart accuses Billy of mutiny in front of Captain Vere. Billy strikes Claggart in the head, killing him instantly. Vere, in turn, if forced by military code to hang Billy, though he knows Claggart’s charges were false and that Billy is a saintly figure.

NEXT TIME: Barnaba, Iago and a bunch of other jerks

New from me at "Senses of Cinema": Examining Nicholas Ray's "Knock on Any Door"

Did you know Bogart and Brando almost co-starred in this early noir by Nicholas Ray? I look at a flawed movie that helped Ray prepare for his masterpiece, "Rebel Without a Cause," and that eerily presaged the cultural shift in consciousness that became America's Generation Gap. Thanks to Senses of Cinema for the opportunity to talk about this painfully awkward yet important and overlooked work.

Midget Wrestling: A Pilgrimage

Blixx attacks Meatball -- from the Micro Wrestling Federation website.

I.

“”Midget’ has generally considered a pejorative term, according to most subjects, bringing to mind the circus sideshow entertainers of the past.”

Joan Ablon, “Little People in America: The Social Dimensions of Dwarfism”

The show is ready to begin. The wrestlers are attended by two large, beefy men who serve as emcees and bodyguards. Dressed in matching “I Support Midget Violence” T-shirts and black pants, the ringmasters frequently caution the growing crowd back with harsh words and sweeping gestures.

Finally, one of them grabs the mike and calls out, “Are you ready to watch six midgets beat the shit out of each other?”

The crowd roars in response.

II.

My high-school show choir, an elite bunch, performed at a bunch of charitable jaunts. Clad in our uniforms of brown corduroy and wildly patterned polyester, we’d sing Christmas songs for the inhabitants of the old folks’ home, or go to the grade schools to show off our skills.

Once, we visited an institution for the disabled. Down the glum corridors we ambled, peering back at the crippled and feebleminded warehoused there, tucked away from broad daylight. We performed our routine in a low-ceilinged cafeteria, fluorescently lit and crammed with the unfortunate.

Our teacher encouraged us to interact with them as well. In an exercise room, a few of us messed around on the therapeutic equipment.

A chair-bound young man wheeled himself in. One of us was wielding a rubber medicine ball.

“Toss me the ball,” he said. “Throw the ball at my legs. C’mon, I’ll kick it.”

The ball sailed across the room, caromed off his inert legs. He grinned at the thrower.

“Asshole,” he said.

III.

“Some reporter discovers a little person who’s not a circus person and they’ll meet. And then someone will do an article. I’ve seen articles across the country about little people – and it’s from an average-size person’s perspective of ‘Oh, my God! They’re just like us!’ Invariably, they use a catchy title, something to do with short or big, you know, ‘Tall on Success,’ or ‘She Doesn’t Come Up Short.’ They think they’ve discovered something. And it’s sort of like the Indian group that gets ‘discovered’ by the anthropologist and (the Indians think) ‘We knew we were here! You didn’t create us!’”

Unnamed interviewee, “How Dwarfs Experience the World Around Them”

I wanted to see midgets wrestle for a long time.

This baffled my loved ones to no end, and made me concerned for my soul.

“What’s the attraction?” asked my sisters, separately, eerily. Friends made “Wizard of Oz” jokes. My wife said, “Why midget wrestling? Why not midget everything? Midget baseball, midget football?”

What in the hell is wrong with me?

Years ago, pissing in the men’s room trough of a dive bar in northwest Denver, I peered blearily at the ads posted face-high in front of me. Midget wrestling, coming to a junior-high-school gym near us soon!

I couldn’t convince anyone to go with me, and I chickened out. It haunted me for years. I swore I wouldn’t let another opportunity pass by again. When a dark obsession forms, the best thing is to succumb to it. Really.

So, when I finally watched the two tiny men grappling under the harsh ring-light, I thought of Jacob and the angel.

^“24And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

²⁵And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

²⁶And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

²⁷And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

²⁸And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.”

It leaped out at me from the pages of my Children’s Bible Illustrated, alongside the harsh black-and-white dynamic of the accompanying Doré engraving. Throwing down with God!

The only other childhood example of “wrassling” was the quaint, barefoot tussle of hillbillies in the Sunday funny papers, in “Li’l Abner” and “Snuffy Smith.” Throwing down with barefoot, backwards Appalachians!

IV.

 The Micro Wrestling Federation held its event at the 3 Kings Tavern at 60 S. Broadway.  The club has the feel of a basement rec room taken over by teenagers, with all its attendant self-conscious coolness. The color scheme there is red and black; it boasts walls plastered with skateboard decks, save for a corner pasted with set lists from various bands that have played there. Vinyl records are stuck to the ceiling of the restroom.

For entertainment purposes, there is the usual cohort of pool tables and a quartet of pinball machines, three of which work. An art gallery lurks in the basement, chained off from viewers for the present. A small music stage is tucked into the back of the room.

The clientele is -- whoever is cool in the area, or trying to be – is scruffy, hairy and tattooed. The horde makes regular rotations out to the sidewalk to puff cigarettes. The drink of the night is PBR tallboys and Jager shots. I am not drinking. I am by far the oldest person there, to the extent that I was scrutinized worriedly from time to time by passersby, perhaps thinking I was a cop or someone in charge.

So it’s not an event on the level of sleaze I expected. My imaginings of midget wrestling inhabited the same territory in my mind as cockfights, bare-knuckle alley brawling, live sex shows and other prohibited actions attended by the desperate, the burnt-out, the pathological.

A portable ring is set up and ready, next to the stage. On the opposite side of the room, on top of a pool table covered with a sheet of plywood, is an improvised merchandise table, with product from the wrestlers as well as the bands whose performances will frame the night’s mayhem – The Sexy Convicts and Lyin’ Bitch and the Restraining Orders.

The Sexy Convicts are a horrible, masked punk band. I can barely make out what the lead singer is saying – at one point I think I hear lyrics referencing to donkey sperm, and at other times he howls, “You’re a fag, and you’re going to die of AIDS!” and “You will be drenched in feces!” It’s the kind of music that you like if you like it on all fours. Some of the crowd likes it, especially the male contingent; most of the ladies step outside for a smoke.

After about an hour of this, the ensemble takes the stage. Two young men in the crowd have video cameras, and many others snap shots with cameras or cell phones.

The performers are all men with dwarfism, none billed as over five feet tall. They all pose triumphantly, defiantly, hooting back at the hoots from the darkness. There is long-haired Blixx, from Spartanburg, S.C., billed as 3’7”, 75 pounds. There’s Ricky Benjamin, 4’2” (as with any other athletes, we want measurements, statistics). There’s Little E from Philly. Justice, another South Carolinian, is “4’4” and Totally Hardcore.” J-Mazing, 3’11”, is from the Philippines and Meatball is from Chicago, 4’6”.

Blixx, adorned in black eyeliner, black lipstick and pale base makeup, talks to the crowd. His voice is not pinched or high-pitched, just an unassuming, slightly twangy baritone. He gets ready to face Ricky Benjamin, who is adorned in a red, white and blue singlet.

“This guy is tough,” Blixx says of his opponent. “Last time we fought, I wound up with $50 stapled to my nuts!”

V.

“…bouts with midget wrestlers, often engaging in embarrassing comic relief encounters, enjoyed a brief vogue.”

Scott Beekman, “Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America”

Two stars of the 1950's midget-wrestling scene.

 As kids in Denver in the late 1960s, we were exposed to the AWA – Verne Gagne and Wally Carbo’s American Wrestling Association, which dominated the Midwest from 1960 until Vince McMahon’s WWF, for better or worse, nationalized the sport in the late 1980s. KWGN Channel 2 used to broadcast these syndicated events, under the name of “All Star Wrestling,” from WTCN-TV in St. Paul/Minneapolis to our astonished eyes every Saturday morning.

 We sat entranced as the heroes battled such villains as Baron von Raschke, “Mad Dog” Vachon, Nick Bockwinkel and Black Jack Lanza. Evil manager Bobby “The Brain” Heenan would scream and scowl at the camera, while the unflappable AWA announcer Marty O’Neill stood by, tendering the microphone towards him gingerly, as though he might snap it off with his teeth and swallow it any minute.

Bobby "The Brain" Heenan smirks left as Nick Bockwinkel demonstrates a move on a hapless announcer.

 We began to practice moves – the Bell Clap, the Polish Hammer, the Atomic Drop and Flying Clothesline. We added to our arsenal of mayhem moves by sneaking in cartoons and Three Stooges shorts on the side. (You’ll be glad to know that the maneuver of hitting someone in the ring over the head with a guitar is codified in professional wrestling liturgy and is named “El Kabong,” in honor of its originator, the Hanna/Barbera equine sheriff, Quick Draw McGraw).

Sometimes, on Saturdays when we would go into the city for one reason or another, we would drive past the line of enthusiastic wrestling fans trailing out of the old Auditorium Arena entrance at 13^th and Champa Streets. When we were told what is was, our cries of “We wanna go!” were greeted with puzzled incredulity by my father.

And so we ended up playing out our wrestling fantasies on the couch, in the backyard, practicing our bombast as well – poking our faces into imaginary cameras and screaming, “THE BELT – THE BELT IS MINE!”

VI.

The routine of the midget bout is as choreographed as any in the average-sized wrestling world would be. The combatants whirl each other around, grimace, bounce off the turnbuckles. The confrontations are as choreographed as ballet – each man sets up to prepare for each combined move, and then they execute with ferocious efficiency, feigning blows and kicks. The trick seems to be to give with the attack – the opponents channel the driven energy of the punch, hack, kick or fall through themselves and into the percussive, taut canvas drumhead of the ring.

J-Mazing leaps out of the ring and onto Justice -- form the Micro Wrestling Federation website.

 These men are skilled – they flip and fly and crash, dropping each other with high kicks, choking and punching as the emcees feverishly narrate the contest. Blixx knees Ricky, who collapses to the canvas. Blixx circles, taunts, banters with the refs, while Ricky drags himself painfully back to vertical.

It’s the acting that makes the show. Taken simply as a set of moves and clutches, it’s not much more than balletic combat. The grimaces, the sneers, grunts, the pauses to take a cock-walk around the ring, gesturing to the crowd for more feedback, higher volume, this is what gives it juice.

The mayhem is not farcical – everyone plays it straight in the ring. The association with a little-person performance is that it will be parodic – that pants will drop, pies will be tossed. But aside from the usual bad-boy moves, and an occasional humorous blow to an interfering referee, it’s as real as the deal is going to get.

There is as much stalking and taunting as anything else. The torment follows the same narrative arc – the heel (bad guy) socks it to the face (good guy) for an extended period of time, dealing out punishment slowly and deliberately. There are few holds, per se – percussive crashes and drops are preferred, like a flesh-formed demolition derby. Then, our designated hero stages a miraculous comeback, eventually dropping his opponent like a sack of flour.

Wrestling match as mortal, and moral, combat -- Stanislaus Zbyszko (left) bear-hugs Mike Mazurki in Jules Dassin's 1950 film noir, "Night and the City."

VII.

“We are equal, we are serious athletes, and … we have the will and determination to succeed.”

Jack Darrell (Meatball)

Wrestling is a ritual drama that’s not a sport, but it says that it is a sport, it insists that you take it seriously, even if the ones asking you to believe don’t believe themselves. The gospel of kayfabe – the credo of staying in character in your wrestling persona, on and off stage – bloomed in our hearts.

In American pro wrestling, freak show and morality play are molded together into what is lamely referred to as “sports entertainment” – in other words, it’s fake, it’s fixed, it’s mock. Combats are rigorously scripted, or “worked,” both on and off the mat; improvised, inadvertent, spontaneous or sincere action is referred to as a “shoot” and discouraged (unless it, doubling back upon itself, is actually a worked piece of business).

After childhood, I lost the desire to watch pro wrestling – until, through the postmodern ironies of El Borbah, lucha libre brought me back into the sport’s mythic orbit.

Charles Burns’ cartooning in the Spiegleman/Mouly RAW comics anthology of the 1980’s included the surreal adventures of El Borbah, a 400-pound private detective in purple tights and a wrestler’s mask.

 El Borbah got his look from El Santo, the heroic Mexican luchador (pro wrestler) who became a comic-book hero and film star, all while wearing his full-face silver mask. For three decades, Rodolfo Guzman Huerta assumed the persona of Santo much as Clayton Moore did that of Lone Ranger.

 In the ring he fought other masked men such as the Blue Demon and Rey Mysterioso; on screen he battled mad scientists, vampires, robots, she-wolves, monsters and headhunters. In Mexico’s lucha libre, the wrestlers exemplify a much higher moral standard than America’s unsavory lot of selfish, preening grapplers.

 In Mexico, none of this shame is present. Wrestling is second only to soccer in popularity; wrestlers endorse products and serve as role models. The mythic richness of the territory imbues the participants with the respect that is given to those to traffic in quasi-sacred encounters. Even the meanest of the rudos (bad guys) adhere to a luchador “code of honor,” giving what many Americans consider to be a lowest-common-denominator entertainment a dignity lacking in many more high-profile kinds of U.S. contests, e.g. pro sports, “reality” shows, and the like.

Mexico also has more respect for its little people. There is an official professional wrestling division dedicated to “Mini-Estrellas” (Mini-stars), limited to performers less than five feet tall (although competitors up to five and a half feet have snuck in). Mascarita Sagrada is a pint-sized Santo.

VIII.

The audience loves it. Drinking more and growing louder, they scream profane encouragement. After Ricky finishes off Blixx, Justice goes up against J-Mazing. This time, the two opponents have at each other with a folding chair, cookie sheet and garbage can. The fighters proffer each other their noggins, taking the blows, reacting wildly, and leaping back to snarling form in a trice. (I suspect the props will be hammered back into shape later, for use at the next gig.)

IX.

Court dwarves Maria Barbola (center right) and Nicholas Pertusato (far right) in Velasquez's 1656 painting "Las Meninas."

 “In freak shows, the exhibited body became a text written in boldface to be deciphered according to the needs and desires of the onlookers. . . . Safely domesticated and bounded by the show’s forms and conventions, the freak soothes the onlookers’ self-doubt by appearing as their antithesis.”

Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “Extraordinary Bodies”

In a culture that no longer (officially) sanctions discrimination on the basis of race, sex, creed, color or sexual orientation, the cult of the body still reigns supreme. Betty Adleson’s study “The Lives of Dwarves” outlines the paradigm with clarity:

“Both height and beauty confer enormous social prestige . . . the herd often rejects the odd-looking member. Predators choose the most deviant individuals as quarry . . . “

Sociologist Erving Goffman’s rigorous study of stigma is cited profusely by Adelson. He divides stigma into three categories: abominations of the body, blemishes of individual character, and tribal markers such as race, nation and religion. Adelson postulates that physical difference is the most powerful and unyielding of the causes of aversion.

Adelson writes, of deformity or disability, “These conditions may pose a threat to the normates’ sense of bodily integrity, evoking fear of dysfunction or death.” The same impulse that slows us as we drive past a car wreck or submit ourselves to the shocks and thrills of the horror movie also compels us to pluck out difference in the street, to remark on it, or struggle not to. To layer over our pity or terror with some sanctimonious rationalization about what we’re seeing. In Adelson’s words, “ . . . even a single difference in a stranger may reduce him or her from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one.”

The push/pull is eloquently described: “On the one hand, they may viscerally draw back; on the other, they may register either sympathy or admiration for affected individuals, especially for those who have accomplished much despite obstacles.”

It’s seemingly impossible to separate the condition from the person. Dan Kennedy in his book “Little People” writes, “Rather than seeing dwarfism as one of many attributes of a person, dwarfism is seen as the person: he is a dwarf, not a person. That’s why some people within the dwarf community would rather talk about persons with dwarfism rather than dwarfs.”

More disturbingly, Kennedy refers to Goffman’s concept of the phenomenon of “minstrelization,” of acting in accordance with a stereotyped preconception of how a member of a certain social group should act. Finn Carling, a Norwegian writer with cerebral palsy who focused on those rejected by mainstream society, stated in his autobiography “And Yet We Are Human” according to Kennedy “that ‘the crippled’ are expected to act ‘inferior to themselves,’ to ‘play the part of the cripple,’ lest the able-bodied be somehow disturbed and forced to rethink their sense of identity.”

Rosemarie Garland Thomson, in her study “Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature” goes into more detail:

“(Disabled people) must use charm, intimidation, ardor, deference, humor or entertainment to relieve nondisabled people of their discomfort. Those of us with disabilities are supplicants and minstrels, striving to create valued representations of ourselves in our relationships with the non-disabled majority . . . If such efforts at reparation are successful, disabled people neutralize the initial stigma of disability so that relationships can be sustained and deepened. . . . If, however, disabled people pursue normalization too much, they risk denying limitations and pain for the comfort of others and may edge into the self-betrayal associated with ‘passing.’”

Harry Earles as the soon-to-be-betrayed Hans in Tod Browning's 1932 "Freaks."

 I dial through the cultural sources of images and information that use dwarfs and midgets – Poe’s story “Hop-Frog,” dozens of paintings of court-ennobled/domesticated little people, particularly Velasquez’s painting “Las Meninas,” Zemlinksky’s opera “Der Zwerg,” Lagerqvist’s “The Dwarf,” de la Mare’s “Memoirs of a Midget,” Tod Browning’s film “Freaks,” Gunter Grass’s “The Tin Drum.” Those indelible Muchkins from “The Wizard of Oz.” Work about them, not of them.

David Hevey, in his work “The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery,” calls it, most tellingly, “enfreakment.” This no-bullshit book attacks the neutering of the disabled by the charity industry, how its images and text paints them as pitiful, inarticulate, “tragic but brave,” helpless, only ennobled through the actions of others, the kindness of strangers. They “enflesh the theories of their oppressors.”

So who am I kidding? Why am I in on the spectacle? Is it misplaced “scientific” curiosity? A simpering sort of tenderness? A way to congratulate myself on my depth of understanding? To pat myself on the back for my tolerance? What is it that needs to be tolerated, anyway?

Meatball surveys the crowd -- from the Micro Wrestling Federation website.

 X.

The fight spills off the ring, out into the crowd, across the floor, over to the bar and back again – an old-style brawl. The crowd follows the pair, maintaining a cautious distance, shifting as they shift. In this sense, the miniature size of the adversaries works well – regular-sized opponents would be too large and clumsy to dive from the top of the bar onto each other. A feigned attack is more skillful and taxing than a real one.

Once the first two bouts are finished, the intermission is announced. As the crowd mills about, talking excitedly, the wrestlers come out and pose for pictures and sign T-shirts, under the watchful eyes of the referee/emcees, who discourage people who have drunk enough to forget about boundaries and want to manhandle the performers – setting them on their laps, for instance, or holding them contemptuously in the air. It’s getting sloppy in here, but there are limits. These little men won’t tolerate being treated as pets or toys.

The second-half action begins, and an emcee cajoles the audience into providing him with four $20 bills. The next two combatants are going to staple them to each others’ bodies. Not with Swingline Tots, either, but with real staple guns that require both their hands to operate.

I’m done. Any residual curiosity has drained away at the prospect of watching this unconventional revenue-sharing plan. I hit the exit. A drunk hits me up for 50 cents on the sidewalk as I leave.

XI.

“Let everybody tell you no . . . then prove them wrong.”

Blixx, 2008 interview

My experience was a safe and unpleasant evening’s diversion. Not a pathetic spectacle but a gruesome assault on the senses.

Within the familiar ritual of combat, the tiny warriors exhibited both their skills and their differences. They pandered to the crowd’s most lurid appetites, but they also transcended their supposed limitations. The crowd, myself included, had its curiosity satisfied and its relative normality confirmed.

As a former comic, I remembered what it was like to be in the spotlight, telling crass jokes in this dive and that for years. The halo of attention, which threw me into sharp relief, thrust the onlookers into darkness, turned their individual voices into a dull roar of approval and laughs. I exploited my differences in that arena, made jokes out of my discomfort and my desire to bridge that gap by placating my paying customers.

In the real world, the little person can’t hide his or her difference. It can’t be disguised or eradicated. They are always “on,” always under scrutiny. I can’t blame some of them for wanting to make a buck from it. It turns the tables on the observer, doesn’t it? After all, who’s the bigger freak – the one on display or the one who pays to ogle it?

The men in the ring surely felt some of what I had – the thrill of attention, the satisfaction of mastering a difficult art, and the harnessing of stigma for profit. How pleasant it must be, I thought, to scale down the world from the height of the squared circle, to push ourselves into the faces of disgusting sameness, of horrifying normality.

And what about my complicity? I’m trying to make a buck off of it, too, after all. I ally myself mentally with who I perceive to be the downtrodden – but there I am, paying my way into the freak show, standing ringside, looking on with the same gawping fascination. Perhaps I can elevate their condition, moved out of what Leslie Fiedler terms “terror and sympathy” to call them prodigies, phenoms, curiosities, monsters, mutants, marvels, lusi naturae, mirabilia hominem.

And do I envy them, and finally can label my shame. I envy them because normality coats my own nondescript surface, the freak below undetected. They are mythic and mysterious; their bodies loaded down with associations, and have something to fight against and for, openly. Inescapably and unambiguously branded, martyrs to biology I thought but now not really no, just how we are taught to see them.

We need an Other against which to measure ourselves, one below us to despise, one above us to envy. I catch myself on both sides of the pool of light simultaneously. I’m the Other, too, if need be, if you need me to be. I can’t stop you. And from that helplessness comes the only realization that’s useful to me. If anyone can impose any identity on me, then no one can. There is no Other, and we’re all one. Koom-bai-yah.

And the tiny men in the ring are athletes, are heroes, are the distinctive and indelible characters that their choices and actions declare themselves to be. They are brigands, snatching your sense of ease from you. They spit in the face of those who want them to be cute and helpless; they defy those who wish they’d conform to a sense of decorum, to be well-behaved “people with dwarfism,” to put it with the most excruciating political correctness.

“People with dwarfism.” AKA the unavoidable accompanying condition, the hunch in the back, the missing eyes, the blight proffered for the payment that lets the viewer off the hook of complicity, the money that says I see you, now move on. Pack up your show.

Isn’t it worth it to don the tights and enter the ring if only to uncuff oneself for a moment, in the middle of the heat and bright light of exploitation, from the “with”? To get out from under the qualifier and just be? To fly through the air with the greatest of ease?

XII.

I am watching TV with my mom. I must have been seven years old or so. It was the movie “Ship of Fools,” and Michael Dunn, that most excellent actor with dwarfism best known as Dr. Loveless in “The Wild Wild West,” was on the screen.

“I wish I could be his friend,” I said to my mom.

“Why?” my mother said.

“He could stay in my room,” I said. “I could take care of him.”

“What do you think HE would think about that?” she said. “Do you think he would like that?”