In a Bakersfield month I lose twenty pounds eliminating milk and cottage cheese and meat and an avalanche of pies, cakes, cookies and other heart-clogging, prostate-bashing carcinogens, and switching to soy milk and fresh vegetables and fruits, and marvel that I don\u2019t feel starved but worry I still haven\u2019t abandoned the comfort and control of my kitchen and tried to sustain the regimen on the road. Oh, I\u2019ll be okay, I assume. I know Pasadena pretty well. I can operate there. <\/p>\n
Regrettably, I first try to find some obscure art galleries in cloudy Eagle Rock but usually encounter only abandoned buildings with paint-peeled walls and locked doors often framed by musty blankets or curtains behind barred windows. At one gloomy gallery a young woman opens the door about a foot and steps half way out, keeping the door tight to her right shoulder, and says this place is now just a studio, and unlike most artists she doesn\u2019t invite me in. <\/p>\n
\u201cIs this a high crime area?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOh, no,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
Despite much stress-inducing driving and map reading and U-turning, I find one grimy gallery still, evidently, in business, but it\u2019s closed during advertised open hours and only three small paintings are hanging, across the street from which a printed pharmacy sign advertises \u201cpotencia sexual.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tI hope to maintain some of that so must eat right. Okay, specifically, how do I on the road? I\u2019ve already overdosed on apples and bananas and bread without butter, and am uninterested in mounds of those still in the plastic bag but can\u2019t just jet into the nearest fast-food-saturated-fat factory. I can\u2019t even go to a restaurant. I guess I could, if I order right, but I\u2019m not thinking well. My protein must be crashing. That\u2019s it. I\u2019ll escape forlorn Eagle Rock, as Barack Obama did thirty years ago when he left Occidental to matriculate at Columbia, and visit a supermarket in upscale Pasadena. But, despite scores of overnight trips to this cultural oasis, I realize entering town that I\u2019ve never been to a market here. Why would I in a place with so many fine restaurants in Old Town and the whole town as well as greasy spoons along the celebrated route of the Rose Bowl Parade, Colorado Boulevard? I remember where one is, though, and drive there to see a building that doesn\u2019t sell food anymore and perhaps never did. <\/p>\n
\tI turn left a couple of times and onto a big street running parallel to Colorado and soon see one of Southern California\u2019s most respected markets. It\u2019s big and pretty and I can\u2019t guarantee it doesn\u2019t have soy milk but am unable to find it so hungrily seize, for the first time, equally-touted almond milk and ignore what I see on the label: a meager one gram of protein \u2013 compared to six in soy milk \u2013 and a load of sugar. I forget I\u2019m supposed to be focusing on produce with power and instead buy only carrots and cabbage and, due to abject inexperience, can\u2019t think of anything else before hurrying to the checkout line. <\/p>\n
\tIn my hotel room I self-pityingly liken myself to a starving member of the Donner Party. I\u2019m weak and disoriented and can only groan I\u2019ve got to have fuel. With culinary maladroitness I stuff fingers into the cabbage and carrots and shove them onto a plain slice of bread then put another piece on top and chomp away on a bland and energy-challenged sandwich that\u2019s not enhanced by gruesomely-sweet almond milk. I still can\u2019t figure out how to do it on the road. While considering this I pick up the local newspaper and read George Gershwin will appear in an autobiographical play that night at the Pasadena Playhouse. Surely they\u2019re already sold out, I assume. And I\u2019m too tired and dispirited to call much less go. <\/p>\n
\tI convince myself to at least lift the phone, and learn they have good seats left for only sixty-five bucks. I\u2019m in. I will be after my nap. One hour later I timidly arise and dress and drive about three miles to the Pasadena Playhouse, once the grandest venue of live theater in the West. It\u2019s still important but has long been overwhelmed by large and glitzy Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles. In exotic contrast the Playhouse stands as an adobe-like testament to Mexican and Spanish architecture from the Nineteenth Century. Its external walls are soft and soothing and sexy. I don\u2019t feel qualified but try to enter with dash, and thereafter chat with a couple of matrons who\u2019re taking tickets. They guide me to a seat in the fifth row.<\/p>\n
\tI\u2019m anxious to see George Gershwin. As a child I owned and frequently listened to a record of \u201cRhapsody in Blue\u201d and other classics played by the composer. His magic still rouses me, and I applaud as he comes out, dressed in a black suit and his dark hair combed straight back. This won\u2019t be a formal concert where the artist\u2019s music shields him from the audience. George is talking to us. He explains he was born Jacob Gershowitz in 1898, son of Russian immigrant parents who settled in lower Manhattan and despaired about his \u201cwild\u201d antics on the street. Brother Ira, two years older, was evidently more subdued. George may never have realized he was a musical prodigy if, while playing stick ball, he hadn\u2019t heard violin rhythms waft from the apartment window of neighbor Maxie Rosenzweig. Now the piano his parents had bought for a disinterested Ira was commandeered by George who soon envisioned himself playing for others. <\/p>\n
\tGeorge proudly tells us he left high school at age fifteen and immersed himself in music and was poised to capitalize when \u201cmusical comedies exploded\u201d a few years later. At age twenty-one he wrote the song \u201cSwanee\u201d but didn\u2019t know what to do with it until invited to a party in a Harlem whorehouse. Serendipitously, Al Jolson was the host and liked the tune he inevitably heard George play since he loved performing his songs at parties. \u201cSwanee\u201d was a hit and \u201cI Got Rhythm\u201d followed and young George Gershwin became a star in the Roaring Twenties when woman wore a \u201cminimum of clothes and a maximum of cosmetics.\u201d Ira served as lyricist and the brothers created \u201clike two parts of one brain.\u201d <\/p>\n
George plays the piano beautifully when he isn\u2019t telling stories: on a train he began writing a \u201cmusical kaleidoscope\u201d that became \u201cRhapsody in Blue.\u201d He was thrilled to debut the work, on Abraham Lincoln\u2019s birthday in February 1924, but nervous and aggrieved to learn he\u2019d be the twenty-second of twenty-three performers. A tiring audience had endured three hours of music when George took the stage and many were already leaving. A few stirring notes from the composer and his orchestra pulled them running back to their seats. He followed with \u201cPiano Concerto in F\u201d and a profusion of hit Broadway shows, including \u201cStrike up the Band\u201d and Show Girl,\u201d and bought a five-story home where he lived with his \u201cwhole\u201d family and regretted doing so.<\/p>\n
Despite knowing little about opera, George explains he undertook a \u201cvast work.\u201d His most special girlfriend, Kay Swift, a talented musician with a husband she admired while loving Gershwin, \u201chelped organize\u2026\u2018Porgy and Bess.\u2019\u201d The composer invested most of his money in the production but critics \u201cpanned\u201d the opera, it soon closed, and he \u201clost everything.\u201d <\/p>\n
On to Hollywood George and Ira Gershwin charged, determined to write hit songs. They succeeded. And occasional headaches weren\u2019t going to derail the dashing composer. He visited Paris the first time in a decade and wrote \u201cAn American in Paris,\u201d which some critics called \u201cpedestrian,\u201d probably because they lacked brain protein. <\/p>\n
George looks out at us and emphasizes that Henry Ford was also bothersome. The automobile grunt called jazz \u201cNegro music and monkey talk\u201d and warned that jazz is a \u201cJewish creation of moron music\u201d and underscores the insidiousness of the \u201cJewish menace.\u201d <\/p>\n
George Gershwin would\u2019ve responded with waves of brilliant music if headaches hadn\u2019t worsened and made work difficult and then impossible until he collapsed in Los Angeles and fell into a coma and his skull was opened and a cyst removed revealing a tumor deep in the composer\u2019s brain and surgeons closed him up and he died in 1937 at age thirty-eight.<\/p>\n
But the great ones never actually die. They\u2019re alive. And so is George Gershwin at the Pasadena Playhouse playing \u201cRhapsody in Blue,\u201d the orchestral parts as well, stretching left hand over right to engage the keys, touching all the notes, pounding them, to evoke something that endures.<\/p>\n
I confess that ten minutes after the show even George Gershwin can\u2019t suppress my hunger but his music has inspired me to pursue what should\u2019ve been obvious: Subway. There\u2019s one only a few blocks east on Colorado Boulevard. But what if it isn\u2019t open? What will I do? It is, and I order two foot-long vegetable sandwiches, without fatty cheese and avocados, and plan to eat one in my motel room that night and the other in the morning. Instead, I gobble one in the car and the second in my room. I feel great again and optimistic I\u2019ll be able to flourish on the road.<\/p>\n
Editorial notes: Hershey Felder wrote and starred in \u201cGeorge Gershwin Alone.\u201d He also created and performed \u201cBeethoven, As I Knew Him,\u201d \u201cMonsieur Chopin,\u201d and \u201cMaestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a Bakersfield month I lose twenty pounds eliminating milk and cottage cheese and meat and an avalanche of pies, cakes, cookies and other heart-clogging, prostate-bashing carcinogens, and switching to soy milk and fresh vegetables and fruits, and marvel that I don\u2019t feel starved but worry I still haven\u2019t abandoned the comfort and control of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[594,595,307,596,597,598,599,92,357,99],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n