Bobby Fischer and Steve Jobs

by William H. Benson

October 22, 2015

     Hollywood just released two biographical movies. The first was on Bobby Fischer entitled Pawn Sacrifice, and the other was on Steve Jobs, entitled Steve Jobs. Bobby’s passion was chess, but Steve’s was computers and marketing. Chess experts now consider Bobby one of the three greatest chess players ever, and Steve revolutionized the personal computer industry.

     A certain level of mystery surrounds both Bobby and Steve’s birth.

      Bobby was the older, born in March 1943 in Chicago. His mother, Regina Fischer, was separated from her husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, at the time she gave birth to Bobby. Since then, it is speculated that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian-Jewish physicist then living in the United States, was Bobby’s father, but Regina never confirmed that, and Paul was not involved in the family. Thus, Regina raised Bobby and his older sister, Joan, as a single parent, who worked as a nurse in New York City. 

     Steve was born in February 1955, in San Francisco. His biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a native of Homs, Syria, who had studied economics and political science at the University of Wisconsin. It was there that he met Joanne Schieble, daughter of a Wisconsin farmer.

     After Joanne became pregnant in 1954, she fled Syria and moved to California where she gave birth to a boy and placed him up for adoption there. Paul and Clara Jobs adopted Joanne’s boy and raised him in and around Cupertino, a San Francisco suburb.

     Bobby grew up in New York City, on the east coast, and Steve in San Francisco, on the west coast.

     At sixteen Bobby dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School, saying, “You don’t learn anything in school.” Steve’s GPA at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California was 2.65, meaning he received B’s and C’s. For a year, he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out because his parents could not afford it. Instead, he travelled around India for seven months.

     Formal education failed to interest either Bobby or Steve.              

     Bobby found his passion when just a child. In March of 1949, when he was six, he and Joan bought a chess set at the candy store, and Bobby taught himself the game by reading books on chess. He then began playing in New York City’s chess clubs, where the best players recognized his talent.

     On October 17, 1956, Bobby won the “brilliancy prize” for his innovative play against Donald Byrne, in what Hans Kmoch of the Chess Review called “The Game of the Century.” On move number seventeen, Bobby dared to sacrifice his queen, but went on to defeat Byrne by a crushing offense.

     Kmoch said, “The following game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy of thirteen against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record among chess prodigies.” A year later, when still fourteen, he won the U.S. Championship.

    After Steve returned from India, he teamed up with an electronics geek named Steve Wozniak to market Wozniak’s computer projects. Whereas Wozniak was interested in design and technology, Jobs promoted and marketed the company that the two created. It was wildly successful, and Steve Jobs became a multi-millionaire at twenty-five.A California dreamer converted himself into a businessman.

     Throughout his playing career, Bobby wanted to take his chess skills to the next higher level, and so he never stopped reading. He taught himself Russian and other European languages in order to read the chess periodicals. A Latvian player once asked Bobby, “What do you think of the playing style of Larissa Volpert?” He replied, “She’s too cautious. But you have another girl, Dmitrieva. Her games do appeal to me.” Bobby had learned to read Latvian, evidence of his deep commitment to winning chess.     

     In 1972, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bobby Fischer won the World Chess Championship when he defeated the Russian chess champion, Boris Spassky. Bobby turned down all endorsement offers which would have made him rich, but instead, he surprised everyone and retired from competitive chess playing for the next twenty years. He flitted about the world, a fugitive from America.

     In 2006, Bobby said that the openings in chess are crucial and that players “today have so many examples of what to do from this position, and that is why I don’t like chess any more. It is all memorization and prearrangement.” Few had studied and memorized though as well as had Bobby Fischer. For his endgames, he liked to combine a rook with bishops and a pawn to force a checkmate.

     Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008, at the age of 64, in Reykjavik, of renal failure following a urinary tract blockage, and after he had refused medical treatment. In October of 2003, doctors diagnosis pancreatic cancer in Steve Jobs. He received the best treatment, but he too passed away on October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. Bobby and Steve’s endgame had arrived too soon.

     Daring, smart, intense, driven, ambitious, and almost superhuman, these two American men dared to imagine and dream at a level that few others could ever hope to see nor achieve. Enjoy the movies.

Mel Blanc: Comedy and Tragedy

by William H. Benson

October 8, 2015

     Mel Blanc was known as “the man with a thousand voices” because he created voices for numerous cartoon characters. For Warner Brothers, Mel was the voice of Wile Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Pepe LePew, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. “What’s up, doc?” Then, for Hanna Barbera, he was Barney Rubble and Cosmo Spacely.

     On occasion, Mel also appeared on Jack Benny’s television program.” In one classic routine Mel would wear a wide-brimmed sombrero and a serape, acting as if he was from Tijuana. Jack would approach Mel and ask him a series of questions, and to each question Mel would reply with the single word “Sí,” pronounced “see,” meaning “yes” in Spanish. An astonished Jack would stare at the audience in a deadpan glare.

     Jack then tried another tactic. He thought of questions that would require a different answer than “Sí.” Jack asked, “What is your name?” Mel replied, “Si,” pronounced “sigh.” By now in a rage, Jack asked Mel, “Well, then what is your sister’s name?” Mel replied, “Sue.” “Well, then, what is your sister’s occupation?” “Sew.” Jack would explode, “Now cut that out!”

     Among humor’s many forms, Jack and Mel stood at polar opposites. Whereas Mel gave voice to a thousand or more characters, Jack created just one, and that was himself. He only played the part of a tight-fisted guy who played his violin and was instantly provoked. Because he rarely, if ever, revealed his real self in public, there was little distinction between his program’s character and himself. The public loved his character, and so he refused to alter it or create new ones, unlike other comedians.

     For example, people loved Jackie Gleason’s comic monologues, especially when he included his routine phrases: “How sweet it is!” and also his departing line, “And away we go!” Jackie dared though to experiment with other characters: Reginald Van Gleason III, Rudy the Repairman, Joe the Bartender, and Poor Soul. His most well-known character was the New York City bus driver, Ralph Kramden, of “The Honeymooners,” Alice’s husband and Ed Norton’s neighbor and best friend.

     Red Skelton also created his own cast of characters: Clem Kadiddlehopper, Freddie the Freeloacer, Gertrude and Heathcliff, Sheriff Deadeye, San Fernando Red, as well as Junior, the Mean Little Kid. Red proved his versatility when he performed pantomime on his television show in “The Silent Spot.”

     Bill Cosby achieved fame when he told stories of his days growing up in Philadelphia among a hilarious circle of childhood friends, such as Fat Albert and Old Weird Harold. He expanded his comedy routine when he dared to imitate Noah, who received divine instructions to build the ark.

      Cosby’s reputation has suffered in recent years, when more than fifty women have accused him of Quaalade-induced assaults, going back to the 1960’s. If true, it demonstrates the truth that “How a person behaves in public does not always equate with how he behaves in private.” Comedy in public, but tragic actions in private.

     Bob Newhart is now called “the world’s first solo straight man.” He would pretend he was talking to someone on the telephone, but his audience would only hear his side of the conversation. For example, he once played a slick Madison Avenue promoter who called Abraham Lincoln and suggested that the President should “boost his image.” One can imagine the laughs.

     Certain comedians—such as Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, and Henry Winkler—were typecast into a role that they could not abandon. Jerry Lewis played the role of a zany, unintelligent, and incompetent adolescent better than anyone, but he struggled to transcend that character. Don Knotts was Barney Fife, but after that role ended, he searched for years until he found Ralph Furley on “Three’s Company.” Henry Winkler was Fonzie on “Happy Days,” but he failed to find a character since then.

     Life is not always fair to comedians. Gifted and talented does not always ensure constant success.

     Lines from the musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” “Nothing with gods, nothing with fate, weighty affairs will just have to wait. Tragedy tomorrow, but comedy tonight.”

     On January 24, 1961, at Deadman’s Curve on Sunset Boulevard, just north of UCLA’s track and field stadium, Mel Blanc suffered a head-on collision. The Aston Martin he was driving folded him up inside of it, and police had to cut him out. Both of his legs were broken, as well as his pelvis and skull. He lay in a full-body cast and a coma at UCLA’s hospital for days.

     Into the third week, a bedside nurse named Louis Conway glanced at the television and saw Bugs Bunny. Conway walked over to Mel’s bed, and asked, “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” Mel startled everyone in the room when he replied, “Eh, what’s up, doc?” The nurse then asked Mel, “And Porky Pig, how are you feeling?” “Ju-ju-st fi-fi-ne,” replied Mel. “Tweety Bird, are you there?” Mel replied, “I thot I taw a putty tat.” And with that Mel himself woke up and asked what had happened.

     Each character had survived intact, and each had awakened before Mel did. It is now known as “the day that Bugs Bunny saved Mel Blanc,” a day when comedy and tragedy had united.

A Fork in the Road

by William H. Benson

September 24, 2015

     Yogi Berra played catcher for the New York Yankees for nineteen years, from 1946 until 1965. Noted for his funny expressions, such as, “It ain’t over ’till it’s over,” and “I didn’t say everything I said,” his most quoted malapropism is the gem, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Yogi said that when he was giving directions to his house during a conversation he had with Joe Garagiola. Yogi meant that from that fork in the road, either way led to his house, but his words came out funny.

     Robert Frost wrote a poem about the day when he too came upon a fork in the road. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry that I could not travel both.” He ended the poem. “I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

     Frost’s poem carried over into the comics. Beginning in the August 2009 edition, number 600, of the “Archie Comics” series, Archie Andrews sees himself in a yellow wood staring at two roads, or two futures, while images of his two high school sweethearts hover over each road. He wonders what his life will become if he marries Veronica Lodge, the spoiled rich brunette, or if he marries Betty Cooper, the sweet blond next door.

     First, he dreams of a life married to Veronica, working for her tycoon father, and raising their fraternal twins. Then, he dreams of a life married to Betty. He wakes up and asks both girls out for a date for that Saturday night, and when they discover his duplicity, they dump milkshakes on his head.

     Michael Uslan, the author of those particular “Archie Comics,” explained. “The story arc is all about choices and consequences. These choices don’t impact just the people getting married. They have a butterfly effect and alter the lives of friends and family as well.”

     The butterfly effect is when small events that happen in distant places can influence events around the globe. “The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in South America could affect the weather in Texas. The tiniest influence on one part of a system can have a huge effect on another part.”  

     When working towards a decision, people often feel wistful. Robert Frost stared at those two roads and said that he was “sorry that I could not travel both.” Then, once a person makes a choice, regrets can appear if he or she chose too quickly or not quick enough, or he or she can feel pleased with the choice. Robert Frost must have felt pleased because he said, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

     Which way do we go? Cupid’s line dance song, the Cupid Shuffle, offers little help. “Now walking by yourself. To the left. To the left. To the right. To the right!”

     The Monte Carlo simulation is a method used in finance, sports, games, and even politics to determine outcomes that are dependent upon a list of assumptions and variables.

     For example, LeBron James asked the question, “Which is better when you are down by three with three seconds to go— shoot a hard three and go into overtime, or take an easy two and hope to steal the ball on the inbound pass?” Computer wizards can run hundreds of simulations based upon his and his teammates’ two and three-point shooting percentages, their abilities to rebound the ball, as well as their opponents’ skills. The computer then generates the better answer for each change in each variable.

     Without all of that, I would give the ball to LeBron James and tell him to shoot and win the game.

     The middle of the road is a hard road. It requires focus to avoid the extreme views that appear on either side. A drive into the ditch can lead to excitement, but there is more risk in the ditch. The middle of the road requires that a person focus and judge which road is the correct one for him or her.

     The American voters will make a series of crucial decisions soon. In sixteen months, we will inaugurate a new president, and then the wistful feelings we may feel when we voted for a candidate will give way to either regrets or to a pleased feeling with the president’s performance.

     Then, there is the four-year civil war in Syria that has caused the Syrian people to flee their country in an exodus bound for Europe. Should we stand and watch while the Syrian government bombs its own people? Should we watch when immigrants desperate for sanctuary are turned away at Europe’s borders? Choices of which road to take are not easy.

     Then, there is the fate of liberal democracy, the government that promotes human values. Last week a writer for the New York Times asked, “Are Western values losing their sway?” Russia, China, and the Middle East have not adopted those values, despite the USA’s many attempts to proselytize them.

     To be human is to choose, and our lives are composed of a series of choices we have made, some good and some not so good.

     One of Yogi Berra’s friends announced, “Hey, Yogi! I think we’re lost.” He replied, “Yeah, but we’re making great time.”

Brandywine versus 9-11

by William H. Benson

September 10, 2015

     Two historic events occurred on September 11. The first was at Brandywine Creek, west of Philadelphia, in 1777, and the second was 9-11-2001.

     In the first, General George Washington’s ragtag army tried to stop General William Howe’s superior troops from taking Philadelphia, the city where the Second Continental Congress convened.

     Washington’s army failed when Howe outflanked Washington and forced American troops to flee the battlefield. The terrified delegates to the Second Continental Congress streamed out of Philadelphia, reconvened at York and Lancaster in Pennsylvania, and on September 26, General William Howe and his British soldiers marched into Philadelphia.

     The second was 9-11, when nineteen terrorists—recruited, trained, and financed by Osama bin Laden—captured four passenger jets, when in flight, and then flew them into New York City’s World Trade Center and Washington D.C.’s Pentagon on a suicide mission.

     The first was a battle, fought between two opposing armies, both English, but one fought for King George III and Parliament, and the other fought for Congress and for independence. In the the second, foreigners came to America, took advantage of our nation’s freedoms, and executed a surprise attack upon innocent Americans, who were busy at their jobs, working for wages.

     In the first, Howe wanted to take Philadelphia in the vain hope that Washington would surrender. According to eighteenth-century rules of warfare, if an army captured the enemy’s capital, the enemy must surrender. Instead, Washington marched his pitiful army to Valley Forge, just twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia, and there he built a fort and settled in for a cold, harsh, and hungry winter, while Howe enjoyed Philadelphia’s comforts, food, lodging, and entertainment.

     When Benjamin Franklin heard that Howe had taken his city of Philadelphia, he remarked, “You are mistaken; Philadelphia has taken Howe.”   

     In the second, the 9-11 terrorists had no desire to create their own country. They had no declaration of independence, no statement of intention. By their suicidal mission, they wished to inflict terror, destruction, and death on a massive scale. They had zero chance that America’s government would collapse or its economy would dwindle. It only stiffened American resolve to find, capture, and kill those responsible.

     Despite Howe’s success at Brandywine Creek, critics back in England scoffed at his failure to destroy Washington’s inept army. In October of 1777, Howe heard the criticism, and was so upset that he submitted his letter of resignation and complained that Parliament had failed to support him.

     Although all the world’s leaders condemned Osama bin Laden’s murderous crusade in America, he did not resign. How could he? How can any terrorist resign? His only allegiance was to himself and his own twisted notions. For the next ten years, he was a hunted man, glimpsed on occasion on self-promoting videos. In one video he released in 2006, he admitted, “I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers. . . . I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers with the raids.”

      Then, on the night of May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy Seals landed helicopters inside bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, stormed into his house, and shot and killed Osama bin Laden. Images from “Zero Dark Thirty” now reflect upon justice and retribution.    

     Thus, both aggressors—General William Howe and Osama bin Laden—received criticism, but whereas Howe retired with grace and dignity, bin Laden did not.

     In the first, those Englishmen who lived in the American colonies revolted against Parliament’s numerous schemes to tax the colonies. The colonists insisted that they paid their taxes to their respective colony, and they could find no reason to pay an additional tax to Parliament. Members of Parliament thought otherwise. Hence, the conflict.

     In the second, Osama bin Laden believed that U.S. foreign policy harmed and oppressed Muslims in the Middle East, and that he and members of Al-Qaeda possessed the right to kill civilians, including women and children. Thus, he supported a violent jihad against the U.S., and hence, the conflict.

     An estimated 300 of Washington’s Patriot soldiers died during the battle at Brandywine Creek on September 11, 1777, but a total of 2,996 people died on 9-11-2001: 2,606 at the World Trade Center, 125 at the Pentagon, 246 airlines crew and passengers, and 19 hijackers.

     Washington lost the battle at Brandywine Creek, but four years later, on October 19, 1781, he won the war when the British surrendered at Yorktown. Osama bin Laden achieved his dream of massive death across America on 9-11-2001, but his day arrived on 5-1-2011.

     Brandywine led to independence, but 9-11 led to a war on terrorism, to seek and destroy Al-Qaeda.

     The two historical events—one near our nation’s founding and the other more recent—illustrate the results of human conflict over two divisive issues: taxation and violent jihad.

Riff and Parade

by William H. Benson

August 27, 2015

     “Life is a lot like jazz,” said George Gershwin. “It is best when you improvise.”

     During the 2004 political debates, the radio host Don Imus described the two vice-presidential candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards as “Dr. Doom and the Breck Girl,” because Cheney appeared glum, dour, like a bulldog, whereas Edwards appeared well coiffed, “like a pretty girl in a shampoo ad.”

     A journalist in Florida named Roy Peter Clark then riffed on Don Imus’s comment. Riff is a jazz term that describes improvisation, when one musician borrows and builds on the musical phrase of another. In Clark’s hands Cheney and Edwards became “Shrek versus Breck,” “Dr. No versus Mister Glow,” “Cold Stare versus Good Hair,” and “Gravitas versus Dental Floss.”

     We now enter the 2016 presidential campaign, and it is a crowded GOP field. Real estate mogul Donald Trump leads the pack with an approval rating of 24% in the polls, and in the first debate on August 6, he hogged ten minutes of airtime, the most of any candidate.

     He brags, “I am a man of great achievement. I win. I always win. Knock on wood. I win. It’s what I do. I beat people. I win.” This is from the man who wrote the book The Art of the Deal. One wonders, “How did this bragging billionaire with so little substance on the issues even get on the stage?”

     A riff on the first debate. “Trump versus the trumped.” “’You’re fired!’ versus ‘I need to get hired.’” “The wild view versus the mild few.” “A clown versus the frowns.” “Exasperating versus uninviting.” “The cold stare and funny hair versus the horrified glare and less hair.” “The outrageous versus the ungracious.” “The Grumpy Cat look versus the bulldog spooks.”

     The columnist Maureen Dowd points out Trump’s major difficulty. “How does he curb the merciless heckler side of himself, the side that has won over voters who think he’s a refreshing truth-teller, so that he can seem refined enough to win over voters who think he’s crude and cartoonish?”

     Refined he is not. “George Will is a dope,” Donald Trump says, and George Will says that he has “other and better reasons for thinking it might not be altogether wise to entrust him with the nation’s nuclear arsenal.”

     Timothy Egan writes in The New York Times, “Normal politics can’t explain Trump. For that you need Freud. Trump fits the classic definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth is junk, but at least it fits a pattern.”

     Life in America is a parade. Most stand on the sidewalk to watch, and we call them spectators or fans or voters. Only a few march in the parade, and those we call celebrities, stars, athletes, champions, or politicians. Certain spectators yearn to join the parade, to make the transition from fan to celebrity, from follower to leader, from politician to statesman, but few do so. Most are poorly equipped to handle the stardom or leadership. They falter and lose their way.

     For example, because of his musical talent, Elvis Presley led the parade for two decades, but he possessed zero talent to deal with the celebrity status. He faltered, lost his way, and died at forty-two.

     The parade demands our attention. It says, “Turn on the television. Watch this movie. Listen to him sing. Read this novel. Watch him pass the ball. Listen to this glib politician. The parade is passing by, and if you glance away, you will miss something exciting that will thrill you for a moment.”

     The parade’s quality is another matter. More often than not it is of low quality, even trashy, junky, degrading, or uninspiring, with scant fulfillment or substance. A Hollywood executive named Fred Friendly said it best. “Television and the movies make so much money at their very worst, why would they want to achieve their very best?”

     The English writer, Samuel Johnson said, “When familiarity and noise claim the praise due to knowledge, art, and elegance, we must beat down such pretensions.”

     Donald Trump represents all that is “familiarity and noise,” like a sugar high, but who among the Republican candidates stands for “knowledge, art, and elegance?”

     Matthew Continetti in the Washington Free Beacon approved of Senator Marco Rubio, saying that his “’crisp and compelling answers’ made him the clear winner of the debate, proving he’s a true ‘political talent,’ who appeared ‘confident, energetic, eloquent, and knowledgeable,’ with a great command of both domestic and foreign policy detail.” David Harsanyi in TheFederalist.com said the same, that Rubio is “the most gifted and well-positioned candidate in the GOP field.”

     More debates will follow, the parade marches on, and we shall see if Rubio’s “knowledge” can trump Trump’s “noise.” If life is a lot like jazz, then Rubio and the others might have to improvise. They might have to riff on Donald Trump’s bizarre statements. They might have to “beat down such pretensions.”