Quote of the Day (Kate Braestrup, on Grace)

“There is the grand, beautiful, unconditional, limitless love we want to give to one another, the love that bears all things, endures all things, believeth all things, the love that sees. And then there is the stingy, shabby, nearsighted human love we find ourselves giving. The aching, immeasurable distance between one and the other can be filled only by grace. “—Kate Braestrup, Beginner's Grace: Bringing Prayer to Life (2010)

Song Lyric of the Day (Meat Loaf, Feeling the Fever at Week’s End)

“Every Saturday night I felt the fever grow

Do ya know what it’s like

All revved up with no place to go.”—“All Revved Up With No Place to Go,” written by Jim Steinman, performed by Meat Loaf from his Bat Out of Hell LP (1977)

Some time ago, I was discussing with a colleague of roughly my age the unique show-biz moniker of the former Marvin Lee Aday. What did reporters call him, I asked? Mr. Meat Loaf? Mr. Loaf? Or, more informally, Mr. Meat?

“When you’re that big, you’re called anything you like,” my colleague answered.

The photo accompanying this post shows the rock ‘n’ roller in his older—but, oddly enough, healthier—self. He undoubtedly prefers to be seen and thought of this way, and, at least partly in this spirit, I’m showing the comparatively slimmed-down version of the man.

(Note, however, that my sympathies only extend so far. I refused, upholding one of the few principles I still possess, to watch Meat Loaf's appearances on Celebrity Appearance. Somebody, somewhere needs to drive Donald Trump and his works down into the deep blue sea, where neither can be heard from again, and it might as well start with me.)

But in my late teens, the singer was, as my colleague said, “that big,” and then some—not only in girth (you never knew if one of his hell-for-leather appearances of the time would end in an onstage heart attack), but in his overwhelming presence on the rock ‘n’ roll scene, and all because of a single album: Bat Out of Hell. God knows, my copy of his platinum seller got a workout, and especially the tune that ended Side 1 with a bang: “All Revved Up With No Place to Go.”

This wasn’t an anthem for doomed youth, but for stymied youth—enough energy in a single teenage boy to power the Grand Coulee Dam, yet all going nowhere.

Lately, now that I’m over the half-century mark, with the ol' energy levels decidedly lower, I’m half-tempted to retitle this “All Slowed Up With No Place to Go.” 

Except, perhaps, when I hear the great growling sax that starts this monster of a song (producer Todd Rundgren succeeded in doing here with rock 'n' roll what Phil Spector did with pop--push the boundaries of sound and energy to their earthly limit).

Then my brain thinks it’s senior year of high school all over again, and I inexplicably (very inexplicably, for those who know me) feel like “a varsity tackle and a helluva block/And when I played my guitar, I made the canyons rock.”

Movie Quote of the Day (Dr. Evil, Showing Who's Boss)

“Throw me a frickin’ bone! I’m the boss! Need the info!”—Dr. Evil (played by Mike Myers), in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, written by Mike Myers, directed by Jay Roach (1997)

Song Lyric of the Day (Janis Ian, in an Antic Mood)

“Look at me, I would like to dance

But I haven’t the clothes for romance.”—Janis Ian, “I Would Like to Dance,” from her Aftertones LP (1976)

Here we honor Janis Ian, not merely an unusually talented singer-songwriter but, in her way, something more unusual—a success in her teens who has managed to survive to today, her 60th birthday.

How much Ian has become the queen of the misfits can be seen in the film Mean Girls, where a character is named for her. In creating the role, screenwriter-star Tina Fey kept thinking of her as “the Janis Ian type,” until, in an inspired pop-culture reference, she simply stuck the name on her.

If the history surrounding her songs is any indication, Ian has had precious little reason to smile over the years. “Society’s Child,” the 1966 tune about a taboo interracial romance, was championed by Leonard Bernstein and brought huge radio play—and also huge controversy and death threats. In the next several decades, she also dealt with her mother’s multiple sclerosis, an abusive husband, divorce, IRS problems and a music industry long anxious about revelations of her lesbianism.

In a prior post I discussed what might be Ian’s biggest hit—and what is certainly her anthem for the marginalized and misfits--“At Seventeen.” Casting about today for other lyrics throughout her sizable songbook, I thought of “I Would Like to Dance.” It’s not only one of my favorite songs of hers, but also one that catches her in something that, given the often depressing events of her life, she deserves—several minutes of sheer inspired giddiness.

I enjoy the piano-dominated version from her live release, from her Bottom Line/Encore Collection. But as good as that is, I think I still prefer the studio version. Maybe it’s because of the last minute or so when the music really takes flight, even breaking into a few chords of the theme for “I Dream of Jeannie.”

Quote of the Day (Jacob Burckhardt, on the Borgias)

“Whether it were that father [Rodrigo Borgia, a.k.a. Pope Alexander VI] and son [Cesare Borgia] had drawn up a formal list of proscribed persons, or that the murders were resolved upon one by one, in either case the Borgias were bent on the secret destruction of all who stood in their way or whose inheritance they coveted. Of this, money and movable goods formed the smallest part; it was a much greater source of profit for the Pope that the incomes of the clerical dignitaries in question were suspended by their death, and that he received the revenues of their offices while vacant, and the price of these offices when they were filled by the successors of the murdered men. The Venetian ambassador Paolo Capello reported in the year 1500: 'Every night four or five murdered men are discovered -- bishops, prelates and others -- so that all Rome is trembling for fear of being destroyed by the Duke (Cesare).' He himself used to wander about Rome in the night-time with his guards, and there is every reason to believe that he did so not only because, like Tiberius, he shrank from showing his now repulsive features by daylight, but also to gratify his insane thirst for blood, perhaps even on persons unknown to him.”—Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)

As soon as you take Hollywood to task for peddling dubious history, they bring up that Shakespeare wasn’t exactly accurate about Joan of Arc in Henry VI, Part I, or about the title character in Richard III.

So I don’t hold out much hope that the new Showtime series The Borgias will reflect historical reality. The image accompanying this post is a good example. While the real Pope Alexander VI was, to put it charitably, a hefty fellow, actor Jeremy Irons has that Cassius-like “lean and hungry look.” Still less do I think that most viewers will go beyond the Neil Jordan production to learn more about the infamous family on their own initiative.

But once in awhile, I tire of cursing the darkness and instead light a single candle, and you can consider this “Quote of the Day” a kind of public-service announcement in that regard. If you want to know more about the family, you can do a lot worse than this.

Burckhardt’s classic study of the Renaissance doesn’t focus on the Borgias. But his few pages devoted to the family are, as this passage indicates, as extraordinarily vivid as they are concise—and they have the advantage of not being juiced up by Hollywood.

I’ve written previously about the “warrior-pope” who succeeded “Borgia pope” Alexander VI, Julius II. I wasn’t too high on Julius as a man of God, or even as a human being. But Buckhardt makes the case that, compared with his predecessor, “in all essential respects he was the saviour of the Papacy.” It seems that, no matter what else he did, at least he didn’t resort to rampant simony, nepotism and murder as ecclesiastical policy.

So get yourself a real history of the Borgias or, better yet, the entire Renaissance. It’ll have all the pageantry, violence and sex of a Hollywood production, but those won’t be the only qualities on display in these works, and you might come out learning something of infinitely greater value.

Quote of the Day (William Cullen Bryant, on a “Weedy Lake” for Waterfowl)

“Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?”—William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), “To a Waterfowl”

(Photo taken at the Wild Duck Pond in Saddle River County Park, Ridgewood, N.J.)

TV Exchange of the Day (“Friends,” Comparing “Little Women” and “The Shining”)

Joey (played by Matt LeBlanc): “Is that true? If I keep reading is Beth gonna die?”

Chandler (played by Matthew Perry): “No, Beth doesn't die. She doesn't die. Does she, Rachel?”

Rachel (played by Jennifer Aniston): “What?”

Ross (played by David Schwimmer): “Joey's asking if you've just ruined the first book he's ever loved that didn't star Jack Nicholson?”—Friends, “The One Where Monica and Richard Are Just Friends,” Season 3, Episode 13, teleplay by Michael Borkow, directed by Robby Benson, original air date Jan. 30, 1997