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bayoubashsims · 5 years

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~ A Marvelous Marriage ~

“Gunther Goth, the heir to the Goth family fortune, has married Cornelia Crumplebottom of the Crumplebottom clan, last evening at the Goth family home, Abundant Richness, in Valley View Drive at Moonlight Falls. The event was attended by the relatives and friends of both families as well the most prominent members of Moonlight Falls society, including the beloved Goth family matriarch and eldest member of the clan, Minerva Goth. This marriage is a tremendous event as it unites two of SimNation’s most influential families in holy matrimony. The evening ended on a high point with the couple and the guests dancing to the centuries-old Crumplebottom Waltz.”

Read more for my headcanons on the family members. Long post ahead!

~ The Newlyweds ~

The charismatic and stalwart Gunther ‘Shrimpie’ Goth has been entrusted with a great responsibility since he is the only son of Victor and Gretle Goth. The future of the family company rests in the capable hands of Gunther, and his marriage to Cornelia is meant to seal the deal. He has shown that he has what it takes to tackle the challenges of a growing corporation, and his bravery in the matter is highly regarded among the Moonlight Falls society, and soon, beyond the Old Country.

He has had his dalliances and past mistakes (like his previous marriage to the late Lolita Goth), but now he seems eager and ready to start anew and continue the family legacy. He understands now that he must follow his head more than his heart if he wants to prevail. As his father always said, ‘Duty, Gunther. Always duty!’ and sees this marriage as a new venture where he must cooperate to earn success. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elegant as ever, Cornelia ‘Nellie’ Goth (née Crumplebottom) was brought up to be a refined society lady, but she always knew that life was more than just debutante balls and perfect elocution—she knew her worth as a woman and that she had power, like a battering ram covered in a lace handkerchief. She is artistic and has many talents, and she is as good a hostess as Gunther is a good host.

This sensibility was what led to her penultimate betrothal to the Goth family heir. Though a part of her felt insecure over the fact that she would be marrying a widower, she knew enough that she and Lolita are different people. Still, she sometimes fears that she cannot compete with a dead woman, and that her rather austere nature wouldn’t match with what she has heard about Gunther’s late young wife. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ~ The Goth Family ~ Minerva ‘Grandmama’ Goth knows the value of establishing oneself. She herself came from another place—Midnight Hollow—when her family decided to settle in Moonlight Falls. She is more than just the dowager matriarch of the Goths, she is a pioneer and a champion for both tradition and progress. Before she became the feeble grand lady of today, she was, in her time, an excellent horse-rider and horticulturist, with a type of cactus named after her. She is a living example of how one must never forget one’s roots and that one’s value depends on what one sows. With her sharp wit and her extensive wisdom, she never forgets to remind the people around her (especially her family) when they fall short, and she seeks to counsel her new granddaughter-in-law Cornelia to help usher her in becoming a Goth family matriarch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Victor ‘Father’ Goth, much like his own father, knew that the key to a successful enterprise is hard work. Though he has been affluent all his life, he taught his son to look out for himself because things might not be as easy as it was back in his day. Fortunately, Victor has always been true to his name--a victor in his ventures, which makes them both grateful and relaxed that there’s always a capital to fall back on.

Still, Victor is relentless in his labor, and it often worries his wife Gretle when he sleeps in the rocking chair in the hallway and not beside his loving lady. Though generally an amiable and dapper man, he can be a cold and careless person and perhaps his family could have benefited more from the attention that he instead gave to his career.

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Gretle ‘Mother’ Goth is one of those mousy ladies who inevitably become responsible for managing estates, families, as well as events and functions because of her position of birth, but is not actually equipped to be so. In fact, she often suffers from a fair share of criticisms from her mother-in-law in being the chatelaine of the Goth family home. She can be prone to fainting spells and her moody nature would be passed down among her descendants to be the ‘infamous Goth family foul mood’.

She has a great many attempts at maintaining the family’s social position, and though these actions often succeed, they wouldn’t have been so if not for the hard work of the people around her (that she would often badger to a point of consternation). This often rubs her own family the wrong way, especially with her daughter Frida, whom she wishes would find a man to marry soon. She had always said that she will not die peacefully until Frida is properly betrothed.

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Samuel ‘Uncle Sam’ Goth is quite different from his elder brother Victor. Though he is just as hard-working and ambitious as him, he is in fact one of the most eccentric members of the family (the so-called ‘weird uncle’) and would more often be seen in the background--courtesy of his own family. He often argues that as a Goth, he is a valuable member of the community and unlike Victor, he often offers a fresh and different perspective of things.

Though Victor may be quick in building connections, Samuel is excellent at forging new friendships. Unfortunately, though, his friends are often of the most odd sort and would often clash with his family’s more conservative sensibilities. Still, without him, things would be a bore and would lack a great deal of jellybeans!

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Frida ‘Sharkie’ Goth is often saddled with a lot of pressure from both her family and her society since they see her as this bookish spinster who has little attention for what they value. She shrugs this off more often than not, and when she’s not she plays along filled with mirth and discomfort. She is more interested in what books may offer her in the fields of history, art, and nature.

The nicknames Sharkie and Shrimpie came from a nursery game Frida and Gunther played as children, so since they were little, she has always been very close to her little brother Gunther, who would often be the person to convince her to go through whatever nonsense their mother would put them through just to get it all over with. But when none can convince her, rest assured, she would be happily shut off in her room or off somewhere quiet with her nose in a book.

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~ The Crumplebottom Family ~

Simon ‘Daddy’ Crumplebottom came from a long line of men who knew the value in a Simoleon and made sure that this was something every family member understood, especially in the prune caning business. They may have been old money just like the Goths, but the Crumplebottoms always favored a more down-to-earth and sensible life. Simon himself is a very sweet and agreeable man, and believed that there is goodness in everything. Still, his frugality often gets the best of him, and it’s up to his wife to set him straight about the necessity for his daughters to have new dresses or more allowance as they grew older. Though he often relents for his girls, he has always been stingy with himself, and would often only eat toffee for his meals, despite warnings from his wife that he would lose his teeth if he keeps this habit up.

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Prudence ‘Mummy’ Crumplebottom is known all around as a proper matron with the best-behaved girls. She raised them well and provided them with lessons in everything that made them into proper ladies ready to be released into a vicious world where they may lead life with their strong elocution and their genteel refinement. Though she is a prominent society lady, she is no fool and can be as smart as any man with her knowledge and diction.

Because of her keen, intelligent eyes, she would often teach the people around her that she doesn’t let anything pass her by. In her walks around town, she would ‘maintain’ her community by letting other people know that she knows and she cares. This nosy yet sympathetic nature is something she wants to pass on to her daughters, but she’s never quite sure if they would have what it takes to be someone like her.

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Agnes Crumplebottom is Cornelia’s little sister and the maid of honor, prone to passing fancies and giddiness induced by the gentleman callers that would often come by the Crumplebottom house. Though this is often a source of headache for the Crumplebottom family, her parents made sure that she would at least be equipped with the right demeanor to face these men. Still, she causes more problems with her flighty nature and her tendency to take things personally.

Despite her many suitors, Agnes is not a sociable person and only interacts with people that would give her the attention she desires. She is a through-and-through daddy’s little girl, not just because of how much he was doted on by his father, but because of how much she resembles him in their ignorance.

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Robert Crumplebottom is a cousin of Cornelia and Agnes’, and Gunther’s old school chum as well as his best man. A dashing, lanky man, Robert has always been his aunt and uncle’s favorite nephew. Robert is a talented artist and entertainer, and is well-known for his advances in puppetry. Indeed, the guignols of SimCity benefited a lot from his artistry, but greatest of all is that his work is for charitable purposes. Many widows, orphans, disabled, and displaced pirates have benefited from his causes and SimCity always anticipates his annual winter charity performances.

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Elmira Clamp practically grew up with Cornelia and Agnes and was very close to her Auntie Prudence, who taught her that ‘...the best mouth is a shut mouth!’. Indeed, this was a fine respite from her own family’s house--located between an airport and a construction site that never seemed to finish. It was unfortunate for her because her father was the lead drummer of an experimental rock band called ‘Nothin’ But Drums’ and her mother raised howler monkeys.

Growing up with Cornelia and Agnes, she shares a similar demeanor with them but is probably the most conservative and fussy because of her personal traumas. Though Cornelia and Agnes was hoping that Elmira would be a bridesmaid for the wedding, Elmira declined because of her preoccupation in raising her ward and nephew Ian Arneson, and they came to the wedding a bit late and not even in the correct dress code.

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Ian Arneson was placed as a ward of his Aunt Elmira because of several unfortunate circumstances in his life. Elmira isn’t much of a parent, but she raised Ian the best way she knew how--based on how she was taught by her Auntie Prudence and from the books she has on childraising. Unfortunately, she often pushes these things aside because of her own inhibitions and shortcomings, which resulted in a very shy and bookish child.

Ian often feels uncomfortable in how much Elmira pushes him to strive (or telling him to be quiet when he’s working on his little mechanical projects), but feels that there isn’t anything that can be done about things now or ever, and despite everything, he loves his Aunt Elmira dearly and just wants to help her dreams in having and managing a library.

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Beatrice ‘Bee’ Crumplebottom is the eldest of the three sisters who came from the magical branch of the Crumplebottom family. Bossy, temperamental, and bookish, it is quite clear that she is a Crumplebottom. Though she’s entrusted to care for her sisters, she’s more interested in having them following her way most of the time. Still, they had to buckle up their act for their Cousin Cornelia’s wedding, especially since they were the bridesmaids!

Belinda ‘Linda’ Crumplebottom is the middle of the three magical sisters, and though she is often the one to keep her sisters in line from their antics, she often wonders if there’s more to life than to be with her sisters. Still, her concern for others is something the Crumplebottom family values, and that’s why she was to be the bridesmaid along with her sister Beatrice.

Bianca Crumplebottom is the youngest of the sisters and has shown her talent in being the black sheep of the family. A self-centered little diva and a snooty brat, Bianca brings out the worst in her much older sister Beatrice. To counter this, her relatives have given her the position of being flower girl, giving her a chance to shine as a cherubic angel for a few minutes before turning back into her old, demonic spawn self.

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mexcine · 4 years

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Suspenso en comunismo [Failing Grade in Communism] (1956) film review:

I'm always interested in the socio-political content of films, and Suspenso en comunismo is an entertaining and interesting example of "soft propaganda" produced during the Franco era in Spain.

[One caveat: the version of this film currently available runs about 77 minutes; apparently the original duration was 95 minutes. One suspects the extant version represents a copy shortened for television broadcast, rather than edited for content; some scenes end abruptly with fades to black, and there are a number of gaps in the plot. It is possible I'd change some of my comments on Suspenso en comunismo if the full version was to turn up (a VHS tape release allegedly runs 90 minutes--it's unclear if this film has been issued on DVD, and every online version I’ve discovered is the short one). ]

[Another bit of prologue: many online sources translate "suspenso" as "suspense," but the verb "suspender" has a number of meanings, and the relevant one is "to fail an exam." Since Suspenso en comunismo deals with three students at a "School for Communism" and their eventual rejection of that ideology, "Failing Grade in Communism" is the translation I have chosen. At least one online source lists a similar title.]

Suspenso en comunismo is "based on an idea" by Miguel Mihura, a prolific and popular Spanish writer whose works were often adapted to the screen in Spain and elsewhere, and who also contributed to the scripts of Spanish films such as 1953′s Bienvenido, Mister Marshall! Mihura's "idea" for Suspenso en comunismo is more or less a variation on Ninotchka (1939), minus Greta Garbo's character. Instead of 3 foolish Soviet emissaries who visit Paris and become corrupted by Western decadence, Suspenso en comunismo features 3 Spanish Civil War exiles sent back to Madrid to disrupt the Spanish tourism industry, but discover Francoist Spain is actually a pleasant place to live and work.

The film is obviously propaganda aimed at a domestic Spanish audience, but it's mild and good-natured. It doesn't even have the slight satiric bite of Bienvenido Mister Marshall!, which depicts some Spaniards as all too willing to jump through various hoops in hopes of receiving Marshall Plan dollars from the USA. In Suspenso en comunismo everyone in Spain is happy, friendly, and prosperous.

One surprising aspect of the film--if one has the impression that Francoist Spain was ultra-conservative and this translates into restricting women to "traditional" roles--is the portrayal of all 4 main Spanish female characters as independent business owners. Pensión (boarding house) proprietor Donosa Iruetagoyena is stereotyped as an ultra-religious beata, but her establishment is well-run. Widow Isabel operates a gift shop, doña María manages a large farm, and her grown daughter Manolita owns a small grocery (which has at least one male employee). It's made clear that at least the latter three women achieved their status in life by dint of their own hard work and not through the efforts of the (absent) men in their lives (although María and Manolita received an indemnity from the Spanish government when it took over their house in town to open a branch of the Banco Agrícola). To be sure, by the film's end María, Isabel and Manolita have all found new men (in the persons of the 3 returned refugees), but there's no suggestion that these men are needed for any reasons other than sentimental.

In contrast, the film's Communist (non-Spanish) women are not depicted so positively. The partner of the "Comrade Delegate of the Southeastern Sector" (of France) is officially referred to as "Comrade Girlfriend"--at the end of the film, she abandons the Communist Party, marrying a wealthy nobleman. The spinsterish Tatiana is the director of the "Communism school" attended by the three protagonists (in her day job, she's a waitress): she openly flirts with Govi and offers to recommend him for the mission to Spain if he reciprocates her affections. Later, when Govi and Demetrio are sent back to the school for reeducation, Tatiana already has a new, handsome "teacher's pet."

The basic plot of the film: Spaniards Govi, Demetrio and José went into exile after the Nationalists won the Spanish Civil War in 1939. They now live in a French town, work as bakers, and attend a Communist school. They're chosen to return to Spain and disrupt the Spanish tourism industry by blowing up power plants in Madrid. Crossing the border, the trio mistakes a Spanish priest for their initial contact: he helpfully directs them to his sister in Madrid, who rents rooms. Govi and the others think their landlady's son Pedro, a burly Guardia Civil (played by future spaghetti Western stalwart Fernando Sancho), might be their next contact, but--after 10 days--realise he's not.

They leave Madrid for the town of Villanueva, planning to construct the bombs there. Villanueva is José's home town, where his wife María and daughter Manolita still live. José eventually reconciles with his wife, Demetrio decides to marry widow Isabel, and Govi falls in love with Manolita. However, their failure to bomb Madrid has been noticed: José escapes but Demetrio and Govi are abducted by other "comrades" and sent back to France, sentenced to repeat their Communism school course from the beginning. However, the two men decide to return to Spain, convincing the border guard to let them through so they can attend a big fútbol match in the capital. As the film concludes, Govi, Demetrio and José are in the stands cheering their team.

[There is a running gag about fútbol, with various characters discussing an upcoming match and saying "there could be a surprise" outcome, but one suspects that there may have been an earlier, now-cut sequence where the three comrades attend a match, since there isn't much fútbol content otherwise, and yet it assumes considerable importance in the final moments of the film.]

Suspenso en comunismo is quite entertaining, but there are a few odd bits. As noted, the film opens in a French town (in fact, the trio doesn't arrive in Madrid until nearly 30 minutes have elapsed). Govi, Demetrio and José live in a boarding house run by a widow with three young children. The children attend their elementary school "graduation," a long and seemingly pointless sequence. The ceremony is attended by the town prefect and other officials, everyone sings the "Marseillaise," and...that's it. I suppose this is supposed to be in contrast with the "graduation" ceremony in the Communist School (which follows immediately), but the linkage is weak and the grade-school scene is too long (in fact, the whole opening section--leading up to the introduction of the Communist school--is too long, over 7 minutes).

Later, the 3 Spanish would-be terrorists are interviewed by Cochensko, the Russian leader of the Communists in France; he lives in a rather lavish house (yet with the ubiquitous portraits of Lenin and Stalin on the walls) but the oddest thing about this sequence (in which the plan to disrupt Spain's tourist industry is elaborated) is that Cochensko allegedly has a cold and is constantly sneezing and sniffing an inhaler throughout--this isn't amusing and has no bearing on the plot. It's unlikely actor Rafael Calvo really had a cold, since he appears later in the film (in footage obviously shot at the same time) and doesn't sneeze a single time.

Towards the end of the film, the trio returns to Madrid and goes out on the town, visiting various bars (including at least one real-life business, the Gaviria American Bar, which they'd visited earlier in the film), getting drunk, picking up 3 bargirls, and watching a private flamenco show before passing out. Aside from yet another similarity to Ninotchka, this sequence is pointless time-wasting.

In fact, the basic premise of the film is a bit skewed. It has a contemporary setting (Suspenso en comunismo was released in January 1956), and at least one character makes a particular point of having been away from Spain for 16 years (i.e., 1939 to 1955). The question then arises: what have these people been doing for the past 16 years, have long have they been attending the Communist school, and why have the Communists suddenly decided to attack Spain? [There is a vague reference to the Soviets fearing tourists from "foreign countries" will infect Spain with "pacifism."]

The three protagonists are fairly distinct characters (unlike the 3 wayward Soviets in Ninotchka, but then again, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski weren't that film's main characters). Govi is the youngest; women (the French maid at his boarding house, Tatiana, Manolita) are rather inexplicably attracted to him despite his glum, doctrinaire attitude: "I don't believe in love or the family...nor in friendship." Govi's age reaffirms the curious nature of the film's premise and timeline: actor Juanjo Menéndez was 26 years old when he made Suspenso en comunismo, and assuming his character is approximately the same age, Govi would thus have left Spain at age 10 (although it's possible he was exiled later), again raising the question of what he's been doing all these years.

Middle-aged Demetrio, played by Alfredo Mayo--a former member of Franco's Nationalist armed forces and a major star of early Franco-era cinema--says he was in a French concentration camp for "some years" after fleeing Spain, and although he's initially a loyal Communist (although not as fanatic as Govi), he abandons his principles when he meets attractive widow Isabel.

José (Antonio Vico), the oldest member of the group, is a baker turned bomb-maker who abandoned his wife and daughter at the end of the war and cut off contact with them. When he returns to his home town of Villanueva, he's impressed by how prosperous it appears; he's welcomed home by his family (after his wife first slaps him for leaving them). José spends much of the film tinkering with a bomb which turns out to be harmless, either due to his deliberate actions or his incompetence. He eludes the Communist agents sent to retrieve the hapless trio of would-be terrorists, preferring to stay in Spain with his wife and daughter.

As noted above, Suspenso en comunismo is a "soft" propaganda film. It openly mocks the Communists but shows rather than talks about how pleasant life in Spain is under Franco. There are some subtle bits of dialogue: Govi asks Manolita if she and her mother were "afraid" when her father went into exile and left them alone, and she replies "Afraid of what?" [Implying that in Franco's Spain a single mother and her young daughter are perfectly safe and in fact can become very prosperous.]

The Communist school is prominently multi-national, with African, Asian, and Middle-Eastern students (men and women); the walls feature large portraits of Lenin (and possibly Stalin, although it's not a very good likeness if it is him) as well as painted slogans by Goethe, Diogenes, etc. The film's title music is a dramatic version of "Ochi Chernye" (Dark Eyes), which has a stereotypical "Russian" connotation in popular culture; in the Communist school, rather than singing "The Internationale," the students raise their clenched fists and sing something to “Ochi Cherynye!” Tatiana, the instructor, says "the great Lenin" was "born in 1870 and decided to die in 1924," and that he invented the submarine and other things. In another amusing bit, Tatiana welcomes the "Comrade in Charge of the Southeastern Sector" to the school and he says, "To you, it's just Comrade," and she smiles with pleasure.

Since presumably Suspenso en comunismo was primarily aimed at a domestic audience, some things are assumed and thus unsaid. The Nationalists portrayed the Spanish Civil War as not only Communist-inspired but also an attack on the Catholic Church. However, religion and the Church make only passing appearances in Suspenso en comunismo. Early in the film, Govi, Demetrio and José are working in a cake shop; the owner asks Demetrio to finish decorating a cake because the town priest is waiting for it. Demetrio grimaces and puts down his piping bag, a demonstration of hostility. Ironically, the trio enters Spain on a bus full of religious pilgrims: stopping at the border, they mistake a friendly priest for their contact. He's puzzled by their curious response to his request for a match for his cigarette (they're giving the counter-sign, which means nothing to him), but cheerfully recommends they stay with his sister in Madrid, giving them her address on a card. As noted above, the sister is extremely devout (religious art on every wall of her home, in stark contrast to the Communist rooms we've previously seen), but friendly. The church in Villanueva is not exceptionally prominent, although it does appear in at least one scene in the town.

It would be interesting to know at what point the Franco regime welcomed back political exiles, and under what conditions. Govi, Demetrio and José would seem to be among those least welcome to return to Spain, since they’re dedicated Communists who have little compunction about agreeing to a carry out a mission of terrorism in their homeland. Suspenso en comunismo suggests they’re decent people who’ve been brain-washed by the Communist school, but this ignores the fact that they were (at least José and Demetrio) “Reds” as far back as the Spanish Civil War, in which they presumably took an active part on the “wrong” side. And as the film concludes they’ve seen the light and have been reintegrated into Spanish society--apparently Franco (at least in this instance) didn’t hold a grudge.

The performances and production values of Suspenso en comunismo are all satisfactory. There are several sequences which show the protagonists strolling through the streets of 1955 Madrid which seem intended to show off the city (the choice of various Madrid power plants as terrorist targets seems calculated to provide an opportunity for the film’s audience to see how modern and advanced they are) and are certainly of historical value. The film is quite entertaining but its socio-political content is particularly interesting today.

#Suspenso en comunismo #propaganda #Spanish cinema #Franco

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chiseler · 7 years

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AL SMITH’S LOG CABIN

The lowest East Side, between the Brooklyn Bridge (completed in 1883) and the Manhattan Bridge (1909), was once a maze of narrow streets lined with row houses, corner saloons and groceries, warehouses, pickle factories, stables. The heart of it was an Irish and Italian working class neighborhood of large families who attended the venerable St. James church and school. It was not a slum or a ghetto, and the residents would have been highly insulted to hear it called that. With the construction of the bridges, followed by high-rises and the FDR Drive in the twentieth century, many of the old streets, and the buildings on them, disappeared.

There’s not much of Oliver Street left, just a couple of run-down blocks in Chinatown between Chatham Square and Madison Street, where it dead-ends. It preserves a row of humble, three-story brick houses, currently looking rather forlorn and exhausted, showing every day of their more than a century’s existence. A brass plaque on the wall of 25 Oliver identifies it as the Alfred E. Smith House, listed on the National Historic Register. Al didn’t grown up there, as is sometimes averred. But he lived there a long time and raised his own kids there as a young politician. Had he succeeded in his bid to become the first Irish Catholic President of the United States, 25 Oliver Street could have become a site of American mythology to rival Abe Lincoln’s log cabin. But Al didn’t make it, 25 Oliver is in bad need of a paint job, and today’s mostly Chinese neighbors pass it without a glance.

His father, also named Al Smith, grew up on a block of Oliver Street closer to the river that no longer exists. Al Sr. was a brawny, handsome, wide-mustached working man, a cartman, or hauler of goods, with a horse-drawn truck. After his first wife died he married a girl who’d grown up near the stables at Dover and Water Streets where he kept his horses. (Her parents had come from Ireland on a clipper ship of the famous Black Ball Line that pioneered the Liverpool to New York run. They found rooms to let three blocks from where they stepped ashore and never ventured farther into America.) Al Jr. was born at 174 South Street on December 30 1873, above a little grocery store. He grew up as the Brooklyn Bridge was built. In old photographs it vaults right over the rooftop of the small, narrow house. That whole block has long since disappeared.

As Al remembered it later the waterfront was the neighborhood kids’ playground – there weren’t any others. The rigging of the ships at the docks was their jungle gym. They dove for green bananas that dropped over the side, and bought their pets from sailors who’d carried them up from South America and the Caribbean. At one point Al kept a goat, four dogs, a parrot and a monkey in the South Street attic. He never lost his classic New Yawk accent, salting his speech with dese, dem and youse like a true Bowery Boy.

In 1886 Al Sr. worked himself to death at the age of forty-six, when Al Jr. was twelve. His mother took a job at an umbrella factory and brought home piece-work. Al worked after school delivering newspapers and helping his sister run their landlady’s candy store in the basement where they now lived on Dover Street. He left the St. James school at the end of the seventh grade, when he was fourteen, and never went back. As a teen he worked a number of jobs, including twelve-hour days, six days a week, at the Fulton Fish Market. One of his tasks was to stand in a lookout and watch for the fishing fleet pulling into the harbor. You could tell how much of a haul they were carrying by how low they rode in the water. Later, when fellow politicians, who were mostly lawyers, bragged to him about matriculating from the U of This or That, he’d reply that he graduated from FFM. He grew up quick. By fifteen he was frequenting the neighborhood’s saloons, drinking beer, smoking cigars with the other men.

He was still too young to vote when he started hanging out at the Downtown Tammany Club, around the corner from Oliver Street at 59-61 Madison. It had something of the look of a volunteer fire hall. Men from throughout the neighborhood streamed up the wide stairs and under the double-arched entry into the meeting hall where politics was discussed, elections fixed, jobs and favors dispensed. It was later knocked down for the playground of P.S. 1, also known as the Alfred E. Smith School. Tammany was starting to purge itself of its most corrupt scoundrels, and young Al Smith fell in with the reformist wing. This led to his first patronage job as a process-server, tracking people down to hand them summonses and subpoenas.

He came under the wing of Big Tom Foley, for whom nearby Foley Square was named. Foley operated a very popular saloon at Oliver and Water Streets. In her 1956 memoir of her father, The Happy Warrior, Al’s daughter Emily remembered Foley as “a genial, smooth-shaven, moonfaced man” who was very well liked and highly respected in the neighborhood – a dude in the ward, as Ned Harrigan would have said. Although he lived uptown at Thirty-Fourth Street Foley spent most of his time in and around the saloon and was active in local politics and the St. James parish. As he thrived financially and politically he spread his good fortune around the neighborhood, the way a successful Tammany man was supposed to. When Smith was a boy he and other kids would flock around Foley on the street, and he’d hand each a nickel, which seemed like a fortune to them. (Years later, Al would frequent a popular barbershop in the ward, run by an immigrant from Salerno who played Caruso on the Victrola. Bartolomeo’s runty, homely son lathered the customers before his dad shaved them. Al once tipped the kid a nickel. Instead of spending it on a lemon ice or a Charlotte Russe, the boy, Jimmy Durante, saved it as a souvenir.)

In 1903 Foley anointed the twenty-nine-year-old Smith to be the Democrats’ nominee for what was then the Second District of the State Assembly. Smith appeared before a crowd of cheering neighbors and Tammany stalwarts in a suit he’d just ironed in the kitchen of his Peck Slip apartment. His other suit was in mothballs. As the Tammany Democrat candidate he was a shoo-in, handily beating a Republican, a Socialist, and a Prohibition candidate, who got five votes.

Smith spent the next twelve winters as an assemblyman, shuttling from the Lower East Side to Albany, where he’d live during the weeks while the legislature was in session, returning home on weekends. His re-elections were always sure things. The affable guy with the honking voice and the taste for suds and stogies was liked and admired by all his constituents, not just his fellow Micks. Besides Durante, another of his fans was a Jewish teenager from up on Henry Street, Izzy Iskowitz, who volunteered to make sidewalk stump speeches for him at re-election time. They were in effect the first public appearances by the performer later known as Eddie Cantor.

In 1907 Smith moved his family, which would grow to five kids, to 25 Oliver Street, which he rented from the parish; the rectory was next door at 23. Emily recalled that they couldn’t afford many luxuries on her father’s salary of a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, but they weren’t poor. They took summer vacations on the beach at Far Rockaway in Queens, and enjoyed an occasional family dinner at the then-new Knickerbocker Hotel in Times Square, followed by a trip to the nearby Palace Theatre, the flagship of vaudeville houses from the 1910s until vaudeville’s end. On Sunday mornings after church they’d often walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to visit family on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights. Sunday evenings the Smiths would have friends over, including another young assemblyman, Jimmy Walker, and his (soon to be beleaguered) wife. Jimmy, who’d started out an aspiring Tin Pan Alley songwriter before his father pushed him into politics, would sit at the Smiths’ piano and play songs like his one bona-fide hit, “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?”

Along the way Al Smith began to sport the brown derby that, along with the cigars, became a familiar feature of his public image. He was elected governor in 1918. Emily remembered the children’s wonderment when the family moved from the little house on Oliver Street to the executive mansion in Albany, with its reception room, music room, library, breakfast room, a dinner table that could seat thirty, and nine bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Plus a small army of servants who magically appeared at the press of a bell. When Smith lost his reelection bid in 1920 and the family returned to Oliver Street, the kids glumly went back to sharing bedrooms and fighting over the two bathrooms.

Smith was briefly convinced his political career was over. Yet that same year, at the Democrats’ national convention in San Francisco, his name was put up for the first time as a possible presidential candidate. As the band struck up “The Sidewalks of New York” (rather than the Ned Harrigan song Smith wanted), the entire convention began to sing along, then waltz in the aisles, and partied for the next hour as the band played one popular tune after another, finally getting to Harrigan’s “Maggie Murphy’s Home.” Ever the skeptic, H. L. Mencken thought it was the free-flowing bootleg bourbon – Prohibition had gone into effect six months earlier – rather than political conviction that got them all going, and in fact Smith was not yet a serious contender. The Democrats nominated Ohio governor James Cox, with Franklin D. Roosevelt as his running mate. Warren G. Harding trounced them.

New Yorkers gave Smith the governor’s mansion back in 1922, and the Smiths moved out of Oliver Street for the last time. In June 1924, the Democrats held their convention at Madison Square Garden. Roosevelt delivered the speech throwing Governor Smith’s brown derby in the ring. Smith and Roosevelt were the most unlikely bedfellows. Smith liked to tell a bitterly humorous story about the first time he’d called on Roosevelt in his mansion back in 1911, and the butler didn’t want to let him in the door. A vast gulf of class and breeding separated the former fishmonger from the upstate aristocrat born with silver spoons in every orifice. Roosevelt had grown up in a household where he was surrounded by German and Scandinavian servants, because his father refused to hire the Irish or Negroes. And he had the upstater’s severe mistrust of anyone associated with Tammany. Yet the two had gotten over their differences and become allies, if not quite friends, working together for reform in the state.

Smith loyalists once again erupted in a prolonged celebration at the end of Roosevelt’s speech, but in fact Democrats at the convention were deeply divided between the urban progressives who backed Smith and the rural and Southern conservatives who were convinced that the nation would never elect an Irish Catholic from Jew Yawk. Smith’s background was in fact a serious drawback at a time when Republicans still characterized Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” Like many other New York politicians, Smith had been against Prohibition, which condemned him with its supporters around the country. He was only a mildly liberal Democrat, but any Democrat running in the Republican boom times of the Roaring Twenties was running up a very steep hill. And finally, there was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had been reborn in the 1910s, riding new waves of xenophobia, racism and anti-communism, and was a much bigger and stronger presence in 1924 than it had ever been. The Klan issued a “Klarion Kall for a Krusade” against Smith should he be nominated.

The convention dragged on for two weeks and more than a hundred ballots. Chairman Cordell Hull passed out a few times from the summer heat – air conditioning was still a way off. Another Lower East Sider, Irving Berlin, was a celebrity observer. He dashed off a campaign song, “We’ll All Go Voting for Al.” It didn’t help. The more conservative John W. Davis got the nomination and went on to lose badly to Calvin Coolidge. (Berlin would soon write a more successful campaign song for Al’s friend, “It’s a Walk-In with Walker.”)

In 1928 the Democrats finally handed Smith their presidential nomination. There were some faint reasons for them to be hopeful. The Klan had peaked and was slipping back into being merely an ugly nuisance on the lunatic fringe. People were tiring of Prohibition and considered it a failed experiment. On the other hand, the nation was still enjoying unprecedented prosperity under the Republicans, except in the farm belt. Farming was a much bigger sector of the economy then than now, and farmers had effectively been in their own depression since the end of World War One. They weren’t likely to be convinced that a guy from New Yawk would do better for them than a Republican. And Smith’s opponent was not just any Republican. He was Herbert Hoover, one of the most popular figures in America at the time, an orphan from Iowa who by hard work and smarts had achieved the American dream of riches and power. He was also known as a great humanitarian, the American who had almost singlehandedly organized a massive food relief program for starving Belgians during the war.

As the campaigns rolled out, Hoover – who was coincidentally the first Quaker candidate – never played the religion card. But the Klan and other anti-Catholic fringe groups did, and so did more mainstream Protestant spokespeople, somberly questioning if a Catholic could be the leader of the country when he owed his allegiance to Rome first. In the end, though, it was probably the combination of Hoover’s popularity and the unprecedented boom times – the big crash wouldn’t come until October 1929 – that sank Smith. He ran as the friend of the little guy at a time when a lot of the little guys, except for those farmers, were doing all right. Hoover gave Smith a severe shellacking, carrying all but eight states. Most galling of all, even the state of New York went for him.

A private citizen again in 1929, Smith accepted a job as president of the corporation that would build the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Empire State Building. Construction proceeded even after the stock market crashed that October, and the building opened in May 1931, with Smith and Governor Roosevelt leading the ceremony. Listeners to the live radio broadcast heard Smith ballyhoo the edifice as “the tallest thing in the world today produced by the hand of man.” His Lower East Side roots still showed in the way he pronounced world woild. To the average New Yorker the building was a towering beacon of optimism in what had become very dark times, but as a business venture it was a bust. Unlike the successful Chrysler Building that had opened in 1930, the Empire State Building had so few tenants signed up that wags nicknamed it the Empty State Building. It would continue to bleed red ink for twenty years.

Despite the thrashing in 1928, Smith entertained hopes for the Democratic nomination again in 1932, which put him at odds with another contender, Roosevelt. Without officially declaring himself, Smith made it clear he’d accept the nomination if offered, and his supporters at the convention were as boisterous and loud as ever. But he’d had his shot. Roosevelt carried the convention, and the two patched up their differences in public so that the Democrats could beat Hoover that fall.

As Roosevelt’s New Deal policies grew more radical in extending federal power during his long presidency, Smith’s opinions grew more conservative and oppositional. He helped found the anti-New Deal, pro-business Liberty League, making him a pariah among Democrats. He even went completely off the reservation to back Republicans Alf Landon in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. Roosevelt trounced them both. Once America entered the war, however, Smith was one of the commander-in-chief’s most diligent boosters on the home front.

When his wife died in May 1944 Smith went into broken-hearted decline. He died of cirrhosis that October, a couple months shy of his seventy-first birthday. The whole city mourned his passing. Besides the little house on Oliver Street and P.S. 1, you still see his name all over his lowest East Side neighborhood, on a playground, a rec center, and a giant public housing complex.

by John Strausbaugh

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos

Robbie Lawler versus Rafael dos Anjos is as close as you will get to an assurance of violence. A statistic came to light earlier this week that through thirty fights with major organizations, Lawler has attempted a grand total of zero submissions. No guillotines to dissuade the takedown attempts of an opponent, no triangles to distract his man and allow him to scramble up, and no hunting for a downed opponent’s neck to open the chance for a good punch or body blow on the ground. As an elite mixed martial artist it probably isn’t a great strategic move to limit yourself so obviously to pursuing a single means of victory—but that tidbit does stand as statistical evidence to irrefutably prove something about Lawler that so many other fighters simply assert about themselves as part of the rhetoric. Robbie Lawler truly is only in there to knock his opponent out.

Rafael dos Anjos seems to be MMA’s quiet man. Conor McGregor brutally asserted before their ill-fated match that all Dos Anjos had to offer was the UFC lightweight title he then held. In a promotional respect, he was absolutely correct: Dos Anjos will not promise a blood feud or bring the banter to the pre-fight proceedings. McGregor changed tactic about five times through their one press conference in pursuit of a storyline or a rise out of the lightweight champion, and Dos Anjos was having none of it. Whatever ill will Dos Anjos might have for his opponent is stored in the back of his mind until the moment the seconds are commanded to leave the cage. Any beef he has with you he will stoically pound out across the canvas. His run of victories during his lightweight title campaign is perhaps the most impressive in the history of the UFC’s most competitive division. Nate Diaz, Benson Henderson, Anthony Pettis, and Donald Cerrone were all made to look helpless by Dos Anjos in quick succession before he was ousted from the championship by an Eddie Alvarez haymaker. After a tough and convincing loss to Tony Ferguson, Dos Anjos made a change and moved up to welterweight. Besting the stalwart journeyman, Tarec Saffiedine and submitting the game Neil Magny, Dos Anjos has moved himself into the title picture and this match up with Lawler has a good chance of title ramifications—Georges St. Pierre’s whims permitting.

The New Welterweight

One of the changes that Dos Anjos made was leaving Kings MMA and head trainer Rafael Cordeiro. Dos Anjos was always something of a ronin, balancing his time at Kings with trips to Evolve’s Enter the Dragon style gym full of combat sports champions in Singapore. It did seem, however, that Dos Anjos benefitted from this juggling. Cordeiro is unparalleled in his ability to build confidence and aggression in his charges. One dimensional grapplers put on striking clinics after some time under Cordeiro—but often they fight in one gear: all-out attack. Most notably, Fabricio Werdum and Wanderlei Silva look like world beaters when their opponents are covering up, and much less scary against calm, collected counter strikers. Where so many of Kings MMA’s famous students simply pump hands, throw the odd kick and keep the opponent’s head down, Dos Anjos became one of the truest pressure fighters in mixed martial arts. He looked after himself going forward, he preferred to have his opponent working and exposing themselves rather than simply covering up, and he was surprisingly hard to hit clean.

Dos Anjos’s beatdown of Anthony Pettis for the UFC lightweight strap remains one of the finest examples of a pressure fighting gameplan in mixed martial arts. Hammering the legs and body, pushing the pace but also fighting on the counter, and diving in on his man’s hips whenever he thought he had the chance—Dos Anjos looked a marvel. At welterweight he has looked something like that, but was dragged into prolonged wrestling sessions in his bout with Tarec Saffiedine, and quickly knocked Neil Magny off his feet with a low kick and never permitted him to rise.

Old Robbie

Robbie Lawler is a year and a half removed from his unlikely UFC title reign. The longtime middleweight enjoyed a career resurgence after cutting down to welterweight in February of 2013. He was considered a bit long in the tooth back then, yet four years on he is still very much in the title picture. After a surprising and swift knockout loss against Tyron Woodley in 2016, Lawler took an entire year before his next outing. This is something that is often advised by coaches after a knockout loss and while ideas on "the chin" are more old wives tale than science, many fighters have seemed to benefit from a break from the grind before jumping back into sparring.

Lawler’s fighting style varies from fight to fight. Sometimes he’ll show you everything and the kitchen sink, sometimes he’ll simply swing for the finish. A constant feature, however, is the southpaw right hook. Where he used to leap halfway across the cage leading with these, he has crafted it into a sharp counter punch over recent years, and a slick follow on from his surprising left straight. Against Rory MacDonald, Lawler looked surgical in his boxing: darting in with jabs and one-twos that took their toll on the young challenger. He threaded the needle on a beautiful left straight onto MacDonald’s broken nose to see the fight called off.

Yet against Carlos Condit and Donald Cerrone, Lawler was a little wilder and it was in the periods of swarming on his opponent that he had his best success.

Being a knockout puncher with the ability to adapt that to his opponent is what sets Lawler apart from the many, many bangers out there in MMA, and indeed from his younger self. He still just wants to smash his opponent in the mouth with his fists, but he’ll find the best way to come at it. Nowhere was that more obvious than in his two fights with Johny Hendricks. In the first, a whopping 94 percent of Lawler’s offense was targeted at Hendricks’s head. Come the rematch, almost 40 percent of Lawler’s blows were hammered home to the midriff of Hendricks, who soon slowed and allowed Lawler to snatch the title.

The Match Up

Through his two matches at welterweight, Dos Anjos has relied heavily on his strong wrestling and top game. He was largely unsuccessful in his work against Tarec Saffiedine in the clinch, but was able to easily hold Neil Magny down despite being a newcomer to the weightclass. Holding Robbie Lawler down is no mean feat, however. The size disparity between the two seems quite marked and Lawler spent much of his career struggling to get up from under middleweights. If Rafael dos Anjos’s rebirth at welterweight is built—in his mind—around his grappling, he may be in for a nasty surprise.

With that being said, one of Dos Anjos’s great strengths plays into a noticeable Lawler habit. Lawler almost never deals with low kicks. It was one thing when he was getting his feet punted out by world class kickboxer, Melvin Manhoef, but once Johny Hendricks began landing every low kick he threw it became clear that it was the method, not the man that troubled Lawler so much. Against Hendricks, Lawler was aiming to land hard counter shots—slipping and shoulder rolling punches and returning with his own. His head movement, however, meant that he was bending at the waist and standing heavy on his lead leg. Hendricks would flurry a few punches at Lawler, then punt Lawler’s lead leg with no chance of Lawler picking that leg up or withdrawing it. Dos Anjos prefers to work one or two shots at a time but a few flurries into low kicks might work a treat here. As both men are southpaws, Dos Anjos’s powerful left kick will be denied the open side body kick, but could be used to buckle Lawler’s lead leg inward.

Lawler’s strategy in this fight could go either way. If he really is that much bigger than Dos Anjos come fight time, he might do well just to push forward and bang it out against a man who has spent most of his career as the bully. Lawler has always excelled in trades and has become more defensively savvy over the years. If Dos Anjos looks to crowd him he might well do best to dirty box Dos Anjos—looking to get the single collar tie and work the elbows that both he and Donald Cerrone played with in their bout or the Rigondeaux style hold-and-hit uppercuts. Or even those gnarly knees to the body from the Hendricks bout.

For a more proven method against Dos Anjos, Lawler could try and apply the lighter feet he showed against MacDonald. Eddie Alvarez’s victory over Dos Anjos is sometimes recalled as a lucky punch, but through constant lateral movement and direction changes, Alvarez caught the then champion walking onto punches on a few occasions. The disadvantage of pressure fighting is that you are simultaneously trying to take up space and avoid getting hit, it’s a paradoxical way to make your living. For this writer, Lawler is at his most enjoyable when he is mixing in his under-rated kicking game and using the movement necessary to maintain the space this requires. Robbie Lawler might be the most unlikely man to have a wicked triangle kick—a snapping kick with the ball of the foot which goes into the opponent's ribs at an upward forty-five degree trajectory—but it is just one of many slick little moves he has in the bag of tricks and rarely goes to.

Ferguson and Cerrone both showed that Dos Anjos is a sucker for straight kicks to the body as he moves forward.

There are a heap of questions going into this fight, but not just over how the two match up and whether the smaller man can handle the power of the bigger one. There are also questions about the future. Is the welterweight class really a viable one for Dos Anjos at the highest levels? How much can Robbie Lawler really have left in the tank after this long? Will the winner really be any closer to a title shot or will St-Pierre swoop in to set the order of things back half a year? Some of those answers we might not like, but with the way these two fight, and with Mike Perry vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio just before it, you’re unlikely to be bored.

Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

Text

Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos

The New Welterweight

Old Robbie

Robbie Lawler is a year and a half removed from his unlikely UFC title reign. The longtime middleweight enjoyed a career resurgence after cutting down to welterweight in February of 2013. He was considered a bit long in the tooth back then, yet four years on he is still very much in the title picture. After a surprising and swift knockout loss against Tyron Woodley in 2016, Lawler took an entire year before his next outing. This is something that is often advised by coaches after a knockout loss and while ideas on “the chin” are more old wives tale than science, many fighters have seemed to benefit from a break from the grind before jumping back into sparring.

Yet against Carlos Condit and Donald Cerrone, Lawler was a little wilder and it was in the periods of swarming on his opponent that he had his best success.

The Match Up

For a more proven method against Dos Anjos, Lawler could try and apply the lighter feet he showed against MacDonald. Eddie Alvarez’s victory over Dos Anjos is sometimes recalled as a lucky punch, but through constant lateral movement and direction changes, Alvarez caught the then champion walking onto punches on a few occasions. The disadvantage of pressure fighting is that you are simultaneously trying to take up space and avoid getting hit, it’s a paradoxical way to make your living. For this writer, Lawler is at his most enjoyable when he is mixing in his under-rated kicking game and using the movement necessary to maintain the space this requires. Robbie Lawler might be the most unlikely man to have a wicked triangle kick—a snapping kick with the ball of the foot which goes into the opponent’s ribs at an upward forty-five degree trajectory—but it is just one of many slick little moves he has in the bag of tricks and rarely goes to.

Ferguson and Cerrone both showed that Dos Anjos is a sucker for straight kicks to the body as he moves forward.

Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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flauntpage · 6 years

Text

Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos

The New Welterweight

Old Robbie

Yet against Carlos Condit and Donald Cerrone, Lawler was a little wilder and it was in the periods of swarming on his opponent that he had his best success.

The Match Up

Ferguson and Cerrone both showed that Dos Anjos is a sucker for straight kicks to the body as he moves forward.

Tactical Guide to Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes