Strauss-Kahn Scrum with Maid, the NY County D.A., and Me

One day sometime in autumn,1981, down on the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial and where the Viet Nam Memorial would shortly be unveiled, I joined a college classmate and his rowdy soccer club for a game of - not soccer, but rugby.  Among the players: Cy Vance, Jr.

Cy Vance, Jr. May Throw Out Case Against Strauss-Kahn

Then a law student at Georgetown U., Jr. was noted more for his father's recent stint as Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter (a performance that received mixed reviews), than in his own right.  But it turns out that he is now the Manhattan DA.


And just look at Jr. now!


Although some are heckling him...

Watergate Doug Feaver - You Heard It Here First

Got The Feaver

<< ------ Who's the beatnik?  He's the night city-desk editor who answered the call in the wee hours of Saturday morning June 18th, 1972 about a bungled break-in by some ersatz plumbers at the Watergate apartment & office complex.  39 years... and it seems like only yesterday!

Doug Feaver was my cubicle neighbor in the Post newsroom for 6 months in 1999 while I worked on a "top secret!" editorial technology project for washingtonpost.com. A painstaking, personable, and funny guy, Doug had seen it all - and 'though he was by then only 5 years or so from retirement, he kept up exceedingly well with the rowdy young journo's.

I'd watched my dad build an entire back patio of bricks and railroad ties by hand during the summer of 1973, his energy fueled by the live radio coverage of the U.S. Senate Watergate hearings, chaired by Sam Ervin and starring a cast of astonishing characters ("Abplanalp," anyone?), and a featuring the almost-daily detonation of a new bombshell in the fascinating disintegration of the second Nixon administration.  Years later to be inside the Post newsroom was pretty cool, but to meet Doug was to shake hands with history.  A true newsman's newsman.

Where it all began . . .

"On the average there are roughly fifty burglaries daily in the District of Columbia. Some are reported at length in our newspaper. Most are reported in smallish type in a crime column.

Obviously, this burglary was different."

—Washington Post managing editor Howard Simons in 1973

Mary Amons: My Real DC Housewife

When I met her in 1981, Mary Schmidt (now Amons) - star of Bravo hit/cancelled series "Real Housewives of DC," was the schoolgirl daughter of CTM Chairman Robert L. Schmidt - he who introduced me to the sports, politics and TV worlds and several of the notorious who are named in or cued up for this blog.

Mary Schmidt & hubby-to-be Rich Amons, pre-glamour

The Schmidts lived next door to candy mogul Forrest Mars, Jr. and family in McLean VA, and Bob's nice wife Patty was daughter of Ukelele Hall of Fame 2001 inductee Arthur Godfrey.

I learned a lot by working for Bob Schmidt who is one of the greats: a hardworking, inspiring and personally decent executive; Kennedy administration veteran, college football star, and tireless organizer and promoter of charities like the Georgetown U. Lombardi Cancer Center and So Others Might Eat.

In the early 80's, cable TV folks thought that PBS had the golden goose, and they set out to clone it.  Bravo (Cablevision/Rainbow, pre-NBC) was [then] a high-end, daypart-only entry that competed with similarly high-end Arts & Entertainment (ABC/NBC/Hearst) and pay entry CBS Cable for the cultural high ground.  How quaint now to think of these lofty aspirations... and Lo (Low!), How The Mighty Have Fallen!  Bob had been president of the National Cable TV Association during the launch of HBO, TBS and ESPN and other pillars, and was by the early eighties in the thick of all the ambitious new programming development, particularly the emergence of regional pay sports nets.

Hail, Mary

But if I somehow then could have painted for Bob a vision of the cable TV landscape of 2011, with all those high-brow plans in tatters across a field of pandering, reality-TV detritus, he would not have recognized what Bravo (and the rest) might one day become.  And for suggesting that mischievous daughter Mary might one day star in as curiously exhibitionistic a show as the Real Housewives franchise, I think he might have given me the heave-ho.

* * * * *

post script: My Coto friends Dave and Betsy live down the block from original "Real Housewives of Orange County" stars Jeanna (Nov. '80) and Matt (Oakland A's) Keough, (and a quick and lively hop-step 'round the corner from Jenna Jameson, at whose doorstep reportedly forms a line two blocks long of costumed fathers on Hallowe'en...).  But Mary Schmidt Amons is my Real Housewife.

Thanks Debbie G. for the tip on what's become of our little Mary!

Lucy Wilson Benson - Absolute Class

I can't tell you enough about how much I admire this lady!  My friend Lucy Wilson Benson serves as Chairman of the Board for the Amherst Cinema Arts Center, operator of the Amherst Cinema and the Pleasant Street Theater.  It has been my privilege to meet and get to know her whilst serving on the Board myself for the past four years.

In Virtue, One Gains Knowledge...

"You Never Can Tell!"  A devoted Smith College alumna, (Class of '49), Lucy married an Amherst man - Physics professor Bruce Benson - and has scaled the heights.  The phrase "distinguished career" is so often overused, but it fits Lucy like a smart Peck and Peck suit.  She became local, then state, then (1968-1974) national head of the League of Women Voters. Jimmy Carter named her Undersecretary of State, at the time the highest ranking woman ever at the State Department. 

''Don't ask me what it feels like to be a woman Under Secretary of State, because I don't know. I do know what it is like to be an Under Secretary of State, however.''

Lucy later served our state exceptionally as MA Secretary of Human Services under Governor Mike Dukakis.  A woman with clear head, a quick tongue - always constructive and right to the point.  A lover of life and funny as hell.

Two Beauties of the Silver Screen

Here is a nice profile written a few years back, in the Amherst College campus paper, about LWB.

I am proud to know Lucy - she went out to change the world after college, did so, and has remained our "United Nations of Amherst" treasure.

And her hair is spectacular!

Happy Mother's Day, from Ben Stiller and Kate Hudson

Ben, Kate, have you called your mothers yet today?

Happy Mother's Day,
Anne Meara, the cheek-pinching mom,
and same to you Goldie Hawn, the mom I'd like to pinch!

With love,

TOM

To Boldly Go... To Vega$, with George Takei!

R.I.P., The Desert Inn, 1950 - 2000

VSDA-'93:

Vega$, baby: staying at the Desert Inn.  The classiest and most understated of the casino hotels.  Where Russ Meyer had shot those magnificent stills of Uschi Digart in the roaring '60's.  One morning, running late and headed to the Hilton for a long day in the Video Software Dealers Association (home video biz) exhibit hall, I blast out of my room into the hall and nearly flatten the fellow from across the hall who's doing the same.  Sulu: George Takei!

Desert Rat George Takei

"Headed to the show?" I ventured, thinking fast.  "Yes, as a matter of fact!" His voice was smooth and soothing, and his wide smile practically beamed.  I thought his face looked buffed and polished, like he'd just come from a spa treatment.  "Share a cab?" I suggested.  "I'd love to," said Lieutenant Sulu. "But I'm meeting my agent here for breakfast first. Come by the Paramount booth!"  I promised I would, but never made it to the autograph-signing.  No matter.

I had dinner with Russ Meyer that evening, and told him about my brush with Hikaru Sulu.  "That cat?? He's light in the loafers!" exclaimed Meyer.  "Isn't he President of the California State Sunbathing Association?!?!" 


See also:  Hob-Nobbing with Nimoy

Russell Smith & Co. - In Studio with the Amazing Rhythm Aces

All The Aces: Russell & ARA

Christmas week, 1977 I was in Nashville with my girlfriend's family, visiting her songwriter brother.  One night that week we went by, late, to the Jack Clement Recording Studios where Casey had lately been doing session work.

Tennessee band Amazing Rhythm Aces was in town and in tight, and laying down vocal tracks that evening for the album "Burning the Ballroom Down."  A bottle of Jack Daniel's sour-mash whiskey helped Russell Smith get exactly the right pitch and growl.  I was thrilled to watch Russell's painstaking process of one take after another singing the lead to two songs: the greazy, Skynyrd-esque "A Jackass Gets His Oats," and the one that ended up to be the album-closer, "Spirit Walk."

I've made the Nashville scene again, been in the studio on other occasions, and seen bigger stars, but this seminal evening, for me, was the fascinating topper.  Hard work and good fun, - with a great result!

"Still and all, her legs were long..."

Russell Smith & James H. Brown, Jr.

Coffee with Mariel - My Personal Best

Let Me Hear Your Body Talk, Mariel Hemingway

A perk of my service at Discovery Channel: to represent Discovery's interests on the planning committee setting up the first annual Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in the early '90's.


As you can imagine, this involved very hard work visiting Jackson Hole, scouting party locations, and rubbing elbows with the beautiful people.


None more beautiful than Mariel Hemingway.  As the first Festival unfolded, with all the action centered in and around the spectacular Jackson Hole Lodge, the coffeeshop became the place to go for meetings and schmoozing.  So there we were on the second morning, tucking into pastries and coffee ourselves, when in walked Mariel, husband, and trailing producer.

Coffee Was Enough - DAYENU !!

She was pitching a crusading wildlife film on - who knows what - and sat down right across the counter from us.

At a not quite intimate distance, Mariel and I faced each other for about ten minutes.

I caught her eye and smiled. She ordered her coffee black.  She smiled. And that's it.

It was enough!

"... and she drank the good coffee, and it was good."