The Nanny Attraction

"Nurse and Child" by Mary Cassatt

The local CBS TV station in New York City recently ran “The Nanny Attraction,” (“Moms Taking Steps to Defend Families From ‘NannyAttraction,’” CBS-New York, 2/15/16) The segment aired on the ll:00 o’clock news anchored by Maurice Dubois and Kristine Johnson, a news program that recently broke the bank in the area of insipid news by running a segment on a postman who was chased by dog. An example of their medical coverage is a story reported by their resident authority, Dr. Max Gomez entitled “New Lip Implant Offers Natural, Soft Look” (CBS-NewYork, 2/11/16). But cutting to the chase any woman stupid enough to hire a good looking young nanny deserves what she gets. Don’t they read ("The Curse of the Celebrity Nanny," The Daily Beast, ll/11/15)? Ben Affleck, Gavin Rossdale, Jude Law, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robin Williams and Mick Jagger are all pointed to in in The Daily Beast expose as examples of  celebrities who had or were suspected ot have had affairs with their nannies. Investigative reporting? The brunt of the in-depth examination by CBS's Hazel Sanchez had to do with various consultants who help prospective parents to profile nannies in order to make sure they’re stable. But this again misses the point. We assume any good-looking nanny is a gold digger. So the one doing the profiling should not be the parents, but rather the nanny who, before spreading her legs, should analyze the spreadsheet of the man whose affections she may end up stealing. ‘Watch out what you want for you may get it” is the homily that should be emblazoned on the consciousness of nubile nannies looking for Mr. Right. A fetching nanny is going places and the last thing she needs is to book passage on a sinking ship.

Three Trailers

Mark Wahlberg is playing against a Teddy Bear come to life in Ted. Eugene Levy is an embezzler forced into a safe house run by a Southern Mammy (Tyler Perry) in Madea's Witness Protection and Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold  Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Jet Li do not play celebrity competing chefs on Chopped but chop off some heads in The Expendables 2. It’s hard to tell a book by its cover or a movie by its trailer, but in a world of exceedingly listless trailers, these trailers are all a source of hope. The movies themselves are likely to be another matter all together. A smoking, drinking and  cursing Teddy bear who looks under women’s skirts, rags on his owner and even beats him up is definitely an imaginative invention to be reckoned with. The notion of the toy or puppet come to life is of course goes back to Pinocchio and is a staple of the fantasy and horror genres, but Ted is plainly a ribald comedy that will have to work hard to extend its high concept for ninety minutes. Madea's Witness Protection comes on heels of the death of Henry Hill, the famed Lucchese crime family lieutenant, who was the subject of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. The trailer’s success depends on the fact that Eugene Levy’s character could never be played by Ray Liotta who was Hill in the Scorsese film and the humor of the trailer at least depends on the fact that Levy needs protection from his protectrice. The very thing that makes The Expendables 2 a trailer worth seeing is precisely what will mitigate against its success as a feature length film. Thinly drawn stock characters and action sequences which require the use of stunt men usually don't sustain a narrative.

The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer

Austrians trying to speak English are gris for the comic mill. There are Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famed malapropisms and Sasha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, the fashionista.  And then there is the surface old world charm. Who would have believed that under Schwarzenegger’s affability masked an adulterer or that Kurt Waldheim, the former UN Secretary General was a Nazi. Michael Sturminger’s The Infernal Comedy : Confessions of a Serial Killer tell the story of Jack Unterweger the Austrian serial killer and journalist turned celebrity  (whose was freed after international protests by well known figures like Elfriede Jellinek and others)  Sturminger has created an opera starring John Malkovich as the character of Unterweger on an author tour promoting his Confesssions and  bastardizing  English in the process. Magazines become maggotzines, Wikipedia is Vikipedia, “because,” one of Sturminger’s favorite words becomes “becawse.” Interestingly Malkovich isn’t really part of the opera unless you call his stand up routines a recitative. Rather he stalks the orchestra which renders bits and pieces of romantic Mozart, Vivaldi,  Beethoven works in which Sturminger’s sopranos play Unterweger’s jilted lovers. The operatic crescendos are in stark contrast to Malkovich’s deadpan in which he makes pronunciamentos like “I want to be someone and would rather be a killer than a no one.” Malkovich’s Unterweger has an Asberger’s like disorder but like a lot of disturbed people also has something to say. He’s a human triple entendre in a polyphonic setting. We experience this the moment we walk into the Opera House at BAM to find the orchestra on the stage and not in the pit. Is this a recital,  rehearsal or symphony that has been mistakenly billed as an opera or has the task bar on our computer been mistakenly moved to the side or top so that we are viewing the screen of reality upside down? One wonders if Alban Berg, the great Austrian composer of Wozzeck were alive, what he would have done with the story of Unteweger’s life?

Guys Just Wanna Have Fun

Add Crystal Harris and Hugh Hefner to the list of high-profile breakups that includes Tipper and Al Gore, Mark and Jenny Sanford, John and Elizabeth Edwards and, most recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. Will Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner make it through their own recent scandals? And whatever happened to Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer? It’s Scenes From a Marriage (or would-be marriage in the case of Hef) American style. Let’s analyze the ashes of some of these marriages on a case-by-case basis. There’s a 60-year age difference between Hef and Crystal, and the breakup comes on the eve of the release of her single “Club Queen.” Hef had previously been married to Mildred Williams (the mother of Christie Hefner) and then, much later, to Kimberly Conrad. But his former girlfriend Holly Madison was the Cassandra when it came to his most recent nuptials. “I think it’s possible Crystal could break Hef’s heart,” PopEater quoted Madison as saying. Moving through the list: Schwarzenegger fathered a child with his maid and Sanford fell in love with an Argentine woman and abandoned the state he was elected to govern. Could Al Gore’s troubles have had anything to do with the kind of behavior he exhibited towards his masseuse, Molly Hagerty? Could John Edwards have been one of those men whose infidelity hides a darker truth, the inability to cope with illness, even though he insists that he strayed while Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission? Ironically, sex is the apparent pitfall for everyone but the geriatric Playboy himself. Not that reports about Hefner and Crystal’s breakup have explicitly ruled out the couple’s sex life as a cause, but one can’t help thinking that the yawning generation gap was the ultimate factor, particularly in a youth culture that Hefner himself helped to spawn. On the other hand, age didn’t deter Dominique Strauss-Kahn when he made his unreciprocated advances on the then 21-year-old Tristane Banon. And then of course there is Humbert Humbert and Lolita.

In the Media

Question: will Anthony Weiner take over Eliot Spitzer’s slot on CNN’s In the Arena and will Alan Berger, the agent who handled Katie Couric’s new deal with ABC, be able to sell syndication rights for her new show to one of Silvio Berlusconi’s television stations? And what about a Spitzer/Weiner report modeled on NBC’s old Huntley/Brinkley or PBS’s Macneil/Lehrer News Hour? If they bring on Dr. Ruth Westheimer as executive producer, there is no doubt that Spitzer/Weiner could provide the first real competition for two HBO warhorses, “Real Sex” and “Taxicab Confessions.” With Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger dominating the news in the way that Pamela Anderson once did with her famed Tommy Lee honeymoon tape, there will be a need for seasoned commentators to handle the flood of impropriety generated by office holders on the international, national and state levels. For some of us it seems like only yesterday that Bill Clinton was asking Monica Lewinsky to light his cigar (or was it the other way around?), but impeachment proceedings now seem quaint compared to a two-time presidential candidate possibly on his way to jail for allegedly using campaign funds to cover up his affair. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Huma Abedin was covering the Edwards debacle for Al Jazeera.

Media Challenged

Now that Mildred Patricia Baena has been identified as the mother of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love-child, one question remains: will there be enough reporters available to cover Schwarzenegger’s breakup with Maria Shriver? Unconfirmed reports that Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s victim lives in a housing facility for people with AIDS and that she spit his semen onto the floor of the hotel only increase the pressure on chronically understaffed newspapers and online outlets like The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Drudge Report (“IMF Accuser in Apt. for HIV Vics,” New York Post, 5/18/11) The fact that ad revenues in print and online media probably peak with each newly leaked celebrity transgression doesn’t really solve what is essentially a staffing problem. For instance, both Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen should be paid royalties by publications like The New York Post that profit from their misdeeds. However, it is unlikely that any print publication is going to hire more reporters on the basis of an upswing in the kinds of meltdowns we’ve seen of late—primarily because such events, while profitable, tend to be fickle as sources of income. Maria Shriver, who herself was a television anchor before she gave up journalism because of her position as the governor's wife, should be the first to realize how marital breakups like the one she is experiencing tax the resources of information-gathering organizations. The fact that she has indicated she won’t talk further on the subject of her ruined marriage is admirable though unfortunate since, in effect, she’s the ultimate stringer. What better person to report on a husband’s marital infidelity than his jilted wife?