July 3, 2014

EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER THAN YOU THINK, or TEGUCIGALPA WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY

It took our friends at Kartemquin Films only about 8 years, start to finish, to make the classic documentary HOOP DREAMS. James Joyce began work steadily on Finnegans Wake in 1922 and it was published in 1939—17 years of writing in Paris.

Our Lost City in Honduras project, both an adventure and a documentary, is approaching 20 years for me, and an extra year and a half for our leader, Steve Elkins (aka “Dr. Helkins,” in the Latin American media).

Steve, Bill Benenson (the documentary’s accomplished Producer/Director), and I now see the light at the end of the jungle… the dense, difficult Mosquitia Jungle. We’re in the process of arranging a full-scale voyage of discovery as soon as possible.

My notes date back to 1995. My first trip into the area was in 1998, aboard a U.S. Military Huey. We dipped into the valley where we thought the “city” was likely to be located (from the satellite images and scientific speculation) and took some stills and video from above.

The major breakthrough we accomplished was in spring, 2012: the absolute identification of structures and remnants of human habitation by use of LiDAR, airborne laser mapping, of three target areas in the jungle. As far as we know, nobody had ever taken the risk and expense to explore an unknown archaeological site with remote airborne imaging. In fact, Steve and Bill have been recognized as Leading Global Thinkers of the year by Foreign Policy Magazine.

What started with vague rumors heard in the early 1990’s by Steve and a couple explorer pals, Captain Steve Morgan and Bruce Heinecke, has now grown into a major project including 13 PhD’s, mostly younger than Elkins, Benenson and Weinberg. Dr. Chris Fisher is the lead archaeologist, savvy in remote-sensing and ground-proofing. Dr. Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz, Honduran-born Houston-based LiDAR specialist (and pilot), has been mapping, planning and looking at millions of images in countless configurations during the two years since we were all in Honduras.

Every member of our team is fascinated and spurred on by the unknown that lurks in what Fisher and others speculate is a pre-Mayan settlement that has been abandoned for at least hundreds of years. Some have called it preternatural—outside the ordinary set of assumptions.

Cultural anthropologist and former Smithsonian Latin American curator Dr. Alicia M. González has speculated that this settlement (commonly known as “Ciudad Blanca” or “Lost City of the Monkey Gods”) could have been a stopping point along the ancient trade pathway that stretched from South America to North America.

To uncover and do full scholarly analysis of whatever is there will likely take many decades. The documentary we’re producing won’t take that long: Images are likely to be seen on TV, in magazines and online worldwide shortly after the expedition. Our documentary, which will tell the whole history and backstory of our quest, will follow within a year or so… only 21 years after I first heard about it. Not so long, really!

Of course, this isn’t the only documentary or TV project Steve or Bill or I have been involved with in those 21 years. And we did have a few years of downtime on the project caused by Hurricane Mitch’s destruction and equally volatile governmental storms.

As we have wondered for all these years: “Who knows what the monkey gods will have in store for us next?”

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IT’S ALL IN THE TIMING

We all have our own rhythms, circadian, eating and sleeping patterns, and how long it takes to do what we do. And we’re all mostly consistent.

Some have the drive to create on a schedule for their whole lives: Woody Allen has directed and released a full-length feature every year since 1965—actually, an amazing total of 56 in 50 years! John Updike wrote 56 works of fiction in 44 years (including three published in 2009, the year he died).

I understand that kind of need and pattern…I’ve added it up and it turns out that I have produced weekly TV shows for 22 years. We all seem to get into our grooves. Most people, at least for the first 20 years of work life, do 40+ hours on the job. Whether you’re making movies, writing novels, teaching, lawyering, laying bricks, or writing code, we all do it our own way in our own rhythms. I guess we can sum it up by repurposing the title of one of Woody’s worst movies: WHATEVER WORKS.

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SCREENS… NOT THE WHOLE ANSWER

I still read all the time… at least 8 hours a day.
But now, it’s mostly on a screen.
I miss the paper, the covers, big pictures I can hold, and tables of findable contents.
Sure, I still buy some books, but I find they pile up more than ever as I keep squinting at the computer screen. If the piece takes longer than 7 minutes to read online, I’ll usually get distracted… unlike a good book.

With Kindle or on the iPhone, iPad or computer, I don’t underline or use highlights. It’s hard to go back and find something I’ve read earlier. If someone asks what I’m reading, I might take a moment to recall the title. With a “real” book it’s right there in my hand… they and I can see it all.

Maybe I sound like a Luddite… and to use an overused cliché, Mr. Back-in-the-Day.

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MY HERO

That’s the wonderful website that my old friend Jeanne Meyers has kept going for almost 20 years. myhero.com. We all have people we admire who inspire and help overcome the lapses of confidence all of us have… at least I’m sure I have. Maybe that’s one reason Ernie Kovacs was a hero. He never looked back.

For those of you under 90, Kovacs was probably the zaniest guy who ever was on TV. He had the freedom to show his genius in the 1950’s, every week, LIVE, of course. He did optical tricks, silly bits, with recurring themes and variations on musical shtick. Nobody has come close in the 60+ years of TV since. He died in 1962 in a Corvair car crash, ten days before his 43^rd birthday… it would have been wonderful to have experienced how he grew as TV and technology changed. He definitely understood what TV could do better than anyone. His closing line was, “Thank you for inviting me into your house—but couldn’t you have cleaned it up a bit?” But because of his constantly lit cigar (presumably a Dutch Masters, his sponsor), many of the inviters probably were just as happy to have him in the box, not in their living room. He pushed the limits. I loved him for that. He’s the guy who said:

“Television: A medium – so called because it is neither rare nor well done.”

Click for a sample.

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MORE MEDIA BURN, THE BOOK

This edition, rather than reprinting a segment from the book (still-in-progress, 43 years later), I’ll let others provide the basic themes with their quotes:

BOBBY WOMACK (1944-2014)

I don’t wanna be a star because stars fall from the sky, and when they hit the ground they turn into a rock and a rock ain’t no good unless you bust someone in the head with it.

—quoted in the Guardian, May 12, 2012

J. SONG (10/6/55)

“Most celebrities only get to be celebrities because they are single-minded in pursuit of advancing their own careers, and they don’t care what relationships, laws, or ethics that they have to break to get there. Single-mindedness may be what it takes to create a great athlete, artist, or writer, but it can make for a lousy human being.”

MARY TYLER MOORE

“Somebody stopped me on the street the other day, and he said,
‘Mary Tyler Moore! Do you know you’re an icon?’
And then off he went.
And I turned to my husband,
Does he also know that I’m a doody-head?”

—quoted by Liz Smith, New York Post

DAVID HALBERSTAM (1934-2007)

“I have very few photographs, but many in my mind.”

SENIOR, COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO*

“I am a television major… more people are watching television than are on the phone or online combined. I want to show the humanity and kindness of the world through TV. Maybe if people see random and continuous acts of kindness on TV, it’ll influence them to be nice to each other.”

*What Makes Teaching Fulfilling

MAX FRANKEL

“American TV dotes on death, the violent kind. It oozes sentimentality in memorializing the victims of tragedy. But, in death, as in life, TV news recognizes mainly mayhem and celebrity. Not even in death does it take the time and effort to dwell on noteworthy careers, selfless service, dedicated philanthropy, brilliant invention, artistic genius.”

—New York Times Magazine
(written to celebrate “Lives Well Lived” and obits in the Times)

FELSON

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”

—Felson (whoever that is… I stole it)

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I was just about ready to finish the links and send this edition—so I could get back to work on some of my “real” jobs—when I opened up a bound volume of my father’s Weinberg House Organs that I hadn’t looked at in decades. Similar to what happens to people when they start watching archival video on mediaburn.org, I found myself involved and absorbed in comparing his times and ours, his observations and mine. Then, I was blown away by finding that in the edition of July 3, 1955, Louis Weinberg Jr. was writing about his concept on the effects of time in his times. There are no coincidences, I guess.

I quote directly:

Speaking of the need for education – I, like most of my friends, never pretended to understand even in the most superficial way the theory of the late Albert Einstein. All I know about it is that it was a tremendous concept, without which the Atomic Age might never have arrived, and in some way it interpreted TIME as a missing dimension – whatever that might really mean.

I still don’t know anything about it – but I have learned through experience that TIME is a dimension many of us take too much for granted.

The man who makes a great president in one era of a country’s growth may be the worst possible choice at some other time. The man with strong individualistic, driving urge that builds a business may be a very poor leader, indeed, for the same business at another period in its history. And, conversely, the man whom the present situation sorely needs may be a man who could never have built the business in the first place – had he stood on his head.

All of which leads to what? Simply to a realization that has been a long time growing in my mind – that the time element is one of the prime elements to be seriously considered when making a decision or selection. In my opinion, it is often a more basic, telling consideration than the more orthodox, static factors that many of us are inclined to think are basic.

Apparently, the fruit hasn’t fallen very far from the tree.

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As I have since March, I close with an update on José Abreu…

The guy is a phenomenal hitter—not to be confused with a “phenom” who fizzles. Abreu, the “Cuban Clobberer,” (as predicted here during spring training) has been the brightest star of our White Sox so far this difficult season.

Currently (as of 7/2/14): He leads the league in home runs (26) and slugging percentage (.624). He has more homers in his first 71 games than anyone in major league history. He now is on a 17-game hitting streak and was Rookie of the Month again in June.

And every time he comes up, you gotta watch… so fun!

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And that does it for the bang-up Fourth of July edition. A few close friends and readers of the Weinberg House Organ have recently encountered serious health problems… we send our love and, best we can, our prayers for recovery and peace.