It sounds like a classic saying that would cross his lips. A friend recently corrected me on this. Let's just pretend it came from the famed Yankee backstop. He probably didn't say many of the other logic-challenged things attributed to him.
Yogi was a player with the image of a character who played in the nation's leading media and cultural center. He may have said a malaprop or two at one time. The image makers then went to work on him. It's a harmless bit of exaggeration.
To the extent it built his personal riches, Yogi was likely happy to get right on board. "Yogi Bear" was born. In the recent past he did a TV commercial for Aflac, sitting in a barber's chair and speaking typical Yogi-isms.
Casey Stengel inspired a similar image of eccentricity. He managed baseball in the same city: New York. It's a city that can devour you or put you on a pedestal. Just be careful.
It was once a sign of celebrity if you socialized at the Toots Shor nightclub in NYC. That faded in the late 1960s like so many institutions of another age. It has gone the way of the Dean Martin "rat pack." You know, with Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra and Joey Bishop.
I suspect the "lifestyle" those guys projected was sort of a myth and they were simply entertainers who had found their niche. We can be entertained by things that seem odd or undesirable. Entertainment can be a dream factory.
We wouldn't want to raise a child that spoke malaprops the way Yogi Berra (according to the popular image) does.
"That restaurant is so crowded, no one ever goes there anymore."
Nostalgia can be really big in the entertainment industry. As I began college we saw the eruption of "back to the '50s."
The 1950s iconography was truly ripe for the entertainment industry. I'm not sure we've seen anything quite like it since. We got the musical group "Sha Na Na" with "Bowser," remember? We got the TV series "Happy Days" but that was campy. "Happy Days" was a caricature of the craze.
We certainly got movies. There was "American Graffiti," such a hit that it launched careers. It had its dark side but at the same time celebrated the iconography.
Then there was "Grease" which presented John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, megastars. Allegedly (LOL) there was a sequel to "Grease" but that movie has been written off as a failure.
I'm not a fan nor student of either of the "Grease" movies. I recently caught the closing portion one night on a cable movie channel, and wondered if it was the original or the sequel. Yes, the Travolta/Newton-John pairing did appear on he screen but I wasn't sure if they were in the sequel. Remember, Roy Scheider was in "Jaws 2."
I'm told Scheider was locked in by contract. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when he had a discussion with his agent about this.
I watched the "Grease" movie for a while and began to think "this can't be the original movie. It seems ridiculous."
Since it was the sequel that conventional wisdom (CW) has labeled "ridiculous," I felt the movie I was watching could be "Grease 2."
Occasionally the cable channel superimposed "Grease" at the bottom of the screen (sans the "2").
"Is that a mistake?" I thought.
An actress who I remembered as Stockard Channing sang a song that I thought was completely flat. There was a drag race, set up as climactic, that looked ridiculous, almost like Fonzie jumping the shark.
Even when the movie concluded I wasn't sure what I just saw. Some quick research at our public library computers indicated I had in fact watched the closing portion of the original "Grease."
What judgment was I to make? Was the movie simply overrated or over-hyped at the time? Remember, Hollywood had more power back then to tell us what was good, back in the top-down communications universe when the general population had to just sort of go along. We were told "Annie Hall" (Woody Allen) was genius. And, "The Goodbye Girl."
I hate to even mention movies like "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea."
I hate to even mention movies like "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea."
The '70s could be phlegmatic. Other adjectives are welcome.
Frankly I consider "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to be just another western. I saw nothing special in "the French Connection."
I remember when Hollywood writers seized on the idea that Stockard Channing had found success despite being "ugly." The same meme was extended for Bette Midler. We all went along because in those days we consumed media, we didn't create it.
Anyway, the notions about women being attractive, or not, were ridiculous. Women considered "attractive" were the type the rat pack would drool over. Or Bob Hope, who loved having a singer of pedestrian talent in his troupe, who'd stand by him and be the butt of dumb-blonde type patter. This is the universe in which we once lived.
And what of the "Grease" universe? And "Sha Na Na" and "American Graffiti?"
They portray a world that never really was. I would suggest the appeal was much like for the movie "Titanic." Kids sat enthralled and entertained by a world in which kids could get by being irresponsible.
Where were the parents of the kids of the type seen in "Grease?" They were home taking care of business, getting a good night's sleep etc. They worked and worried and made sure they could get enough assets to support their silly children. They went to church on Sunday.
It dawned on me: There was an explanation why I came away from watching "Grease" thinking it was insipid (so insipid I felt it had to be the "bomb" sequel).
The reason is that I'm 56 years old. I don't find the conduct of those kids to be entertaining. I'm more apt to find it disturbing or at least pointless.
The songs can have a nice melody ("Tell me more. . ."). Maybe that's the nicest thing that can be said.
Olivia Newton-John was a shimmering top-level celebrity at the time but faded. Travolta has stayed very much with us.
Travolta helped preserve the disco era in our consciousness. This wasn't a nostalgia movie, rather it was made at the height of the infamous (CW again) disco era.
It's odd how disco just came and went. What was it all about? Pointlessness? Many would say that's what the '70s were all about, a time when we were nursing our wounds from Viet Nam and found escapism to be appealing.
Like "Grease," the movie "Saturday Night Fever" glorified frivolous and irresponsible behavior by youth. Thanks, I think, Mr. Travolta, for foisting such simplistic and myth-based eye candy on us. We did go through the turnstiles, so to speak.
We would never choose to step into a time machine and go back to the 1950s. Heavens, the real world was far more drab than popular culture suggests. Women were pigeonholed. Girls didn't play sports - they were groomed as homemakers. Gays were scared and secretive.
And if you were black? Need I explain? Or if you had heart trouble that today could be remedied by bypass or other methods? Just imagine.
Bobby Darin died because bypass methods were just developmental at the time.
No, "nostalgia isn't what it used to be."
That quote, incidentally, was spoken by someone named Peter DeVries. I wasn't going to conclude without sharing that.
Fortunately we live in a world now where Hollywood doesn't have so much power to tell us what we should like. Ditto regarding the paternalistic New York Times newspaper, or magazines like Look and Life.
The communications tech revolution has democratized everything.
We can make our own judgments like I did watching that "Grease" segment.
Today I'm on the same page with the parents, not with the kids.
"Tell me more?" Tell me more about reality, please.
- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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