Blog Posts for Bob Levin

Catching Up

Bob Levin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:54:09 -0800

The in-house techno-wizard, Adele, has solved my computer problems and I am now able to read others' blogs here, as well as post my own without going through the always-reliable Huntington Sharpe, allowing him to direct his talents and energies elsewhere. Anyway, here's the link to my latest piece at Broad Street Review ...

Memory, Loss, and the '50s Phillies

Bob Levin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:29:21 -0800

My newest piece is up at The Broad Street Review: Here's the link: http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/main/article/my_ball_team_my_... here're the opening paragraphs: My father and two of my uncles sat at the breakfast room table, the radio between them. I lay on the floor, rigid with tension, the linoleum cold as clay under my back. When Dick Sisler homered, I was so happy. I ...

What's New

Bob Levin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:40:43 -0700

My latest remisiscence is up at THE BROAD STREET REVIEW. It opens:In the mid nineteen-fifties, when I was growing up in West Philadelphia, there were six movie theaters withing walking distance of my house. The Byrd, on Baltimore Avenue. The Commodore, on Walnut. And the Locust, Nixon, Rivoli, and State on 52nd Street. The Rivoli seemed to show nothing but black-and-white films no ...

Dylan Again

Bob Levin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:57:07 -0700

Due to over-whelming demand - well, Chris Rodell asked me - here's my report on Bob Dylan last night, outdoors, at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. Terrific show - and, no, he didn't do anything from "Christmas in the Heart." He did an hour and forty minutes, including pre-encore break. Seventeen songs, seven from "John Wesley Harding" or earlier, ten from "Slow Train ...

A Boy and His Dog

Bob Levin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:55:10 -0700

Here's the opening paragraph to
my latest reminiscence about growing up in West Philly in the
1950s:

Until I was three, we lived with my fathers parents at 10th and
Baimbridge. My grandfather had been a doctor in South Philadelphia for more than
three decades. Patients paid him in cash or backyard produce or homemade wine.
He was also, I learned much later, a ...

Rock'n'Roll

Bob Levin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:55:07 -0700

Here's the opening paragraph of my latest reminiscence: I bought my first record in 1954, when I was 12: Little Walters My Babe. The 2008 film Cadillac Records reveals Walter as scotch-soaked, pistol-packing and tragedy-fated. But if I thought of him at all, it was as a tiny guy with the same name as my cousin. No cult of personality compelled the release of my 89 cents. It was ...

Love

Bob Levin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:05:06 -0700

Perhaps the assembled literatti can help me
fill in a metaphor. For a sentence in progress I am looking for someone or
someones, in life, fiction, film, opera, song or myth, done in by love -- more
preferrably killed -- most preferrably by a rival. So far the nominees
have been Jay Gatsby (indirectly), Rocky Raccoon (who, close textual reading
reveals, seems to ...

Google Settlement

Bob Levin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:55:08 -0700

Apparently the William Morris Agency has recommended its clients reject the proposed Google settlement. Here is the Authors' Guild's response: William Morris's principal mistake is that it appears to think that the uses that the settlement permits Google to make are interminable. This leads the agency to draw a series of erroneous conclusions: that authors can't negotiate higher ...

Son of Indignity

Bob Levin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:30:02 -0700

Faithful readers will recall that for my last appearance in The Comics
Journal its Table of Contents credited my interview of legendary underground
cartoonist S. Clay Wilson to someone else entirely. Now, in TCJs latest war
against celebrity journalists, the final tweakings of its spectacular splash
page of my newest article, "How Michel Choquette (Almost) Assembled the Most ...

Chronicle iii

Bob Levin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:00:06 -0700

Credit must be given where credit is due. Friday, when I called to report my lack of progress to George, he was absent from his post. Instead I spoke with Janice. She promised to "escalate" matters. While I was imagining, with no small degree of gratification, the launching of missiles in the direction of my deliveryperson, I received a call from Benson. Benson requested ...