Happy Birthday to my Pops Jimmy Izo (above left dancing like a maniac with me at my wedding) who turned 64 this past weekend. To celebrate, I took him over to the East Coast National Sports Card Show at the Westchester County Center. It was a nice stroll down memory lane for both of us. I used to frequent those card shows on the reg back in the 80’s, and he was enjoying the nostalgia of looking at all the baseball and basketball cards from his youth and sharing the stories of some of the great players of his generation. It was a nice father/son morning. Then we met up with our wives (my Mom and Dana Izo) for some Greek food, and my Mom was talking about The Beatles song “When I’m 64”. I thought it would be cool to post it up here to rep for my Dad. Check out the cartoon clip from The Beatles movie Yellow Submarine:
And here’s a nice reggae cover of the song from the Easy Star All-Star’s project Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band :
By the way, Matisyahu is featured on that album too, on their cover of “Within You Without You”…listen HERE
…I’m about to post the new Matis’ mixtape with DJ Roz right now so stay tuned.
John Hughes, the writer/director of everyone’s favorite 80’s movies (above in the glasses with the cast of The Breakfast Club), died of a heart attack yesterday. It’s only right that we show him some love here at Westcheddar, since I basically grew up quoting his movies endlessly. His catalog is extensive, and everyone has their favorites, so I won’t argue which are his best. But a couple are very close to my heart. Here’s my Top Five:
Weird Science might be my personal favorite. Gary (Anthony Michael Hall is my dude) and Wyatt are the coolest gips ever! And Chet rules as the dickhead older brother. Just last week I showed it to my all boys middles school group during a summer camp rain day, and none of them had ever seen it. Needless to say, they were cracking up during the whole movie, which just shows how timeless these movies are. I mean, what teenage boy wouldn’t want to use their computer to CREATE their very own, real life dream girlfriend?
Plains, Trains, and Automobiles is my Dad’s favorite movie of all time. I’ve cried laughing with him watching this during countless Thanksgiving afternoons. It’s a total tearjerker, but it’s laugh out loud funny too. You can’t go wrong with John Candy and Steve Martin.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is such a gem of a movie. Ferris is the coolest high school student ever. And Cameron is that dude! “Rooney!!!” And Sloane was super bad. I have an inside joke with my close friends, which is that I love movies about teenagers that take place during the day (as opposed to dark action flicks that take place at night). Well this may be the most fun of them all. It made me want to skip school. My wife can quote the whole movie word for word, which was one of the things that made me fall in love with her. And of course, it eventually gave birth to my biggest hit song.
The Breakfast Club is the movie that just gets better and better every time I watch it. It’s a genius look at high school life (in detention). I can see a piece of myself in every character. Of course Brian, the nerd (again played by Anthony Michael Hall), is so hilarious. And Bender, the rebel, is amazing too. This is the obvious choice for his best movie, and it probably deserves the title. And the edited for TV version rocks. “Flip you! No, Flip you!!!”
National Lampoon’s European Vacation is my curveball pick to round out my Top Five. People will argue that the original is better, or that Christmas Vacation takes the cake, but this was the one that I have the most love for. I think it was the first movie I ever saw tits in. And Clark Griswold is the funniest Dad in the history of movies. Hughes didn’t direct this one, but he wrote it. After traveling to Europe with my family in middle school, I appreciated it even more.
I know, I know, I missed alot. My boy Matty B will be pissed I didn’t put his favorite Sixteen Candles (above)on my short list. It certainly deserves Top Five status, and Anthony Michael Hall’s rookie nerd role is amazing. But again, this is MY Top Five, and it just didn’t make the cut. But really all John Hughes movies helped shaped my existence. I gotta shout out a couple others that deserve honorable mentions too. Home Alone and Home Alone 2 are awesome holiday kids movies that were a big part of my childhood, and another one I really like that gets slept on sometimes is The Great Outdoors with John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. Good family fun. And I recently watched Pretty in Pink for the first time in at least a decade, and it was excellent. Anyway, check out Rolling Stone Magazine and Spin Magazine’s tributes to John Hughes, and also a nice little video montage I found of the eight movies he directed (he wrote and produced a bunch more, click HERE for a complete list). It’s a fun/emotional watch…
And finally, take a look at this star studded John Hughes tribute from back in 1991 when he was awarded Producer of the Year by the National Association of Movie Theater Owners…
RIP John Hughes. He will most certainly live on through his movies. I doubt I will ever go longer than a week without quoting from one of them. Feel free to share your favorite movies and/or quotes in the comments section….
Congratulations to Rickey Henderson, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this afternoon in Cooperstown, NY. Rickey was my first ever favorite player in any sport. I was born and lived in Oakland until I was just shy of 6 years old (1978-1984), and when my family moved east to live in New York, Rickey came with us and started playing for the Yankees. Crazy right? Not only was he the most exciting player in MLB, but he was my hometown hero, and he threw lefty and batted righty just like me. His career stats are pretty crazy. He holds MAD RECORDS, including of course the single season and career record for most stolen bases. Check his Wikipedia page for more:
Rickey was inducted along with RBI kingpin Jim Rice (see picture above), another great player I followed alot during my childhood (even though he was on the Red Sox). 80’s baseball was the best, wasn’t it? I don’t even follow sports that much any more, but back then I lived and breathed baseball.
I’m actually planning a trip with my father to go to Cooperstown and reminisce on the good old sandlot days. We went up there a couple times when I was a kid, once for a White Plains Capitals game on the Cooperstown field (check the pic above with my Pops on the far left and me 4th from the right in the back row), but we haven’t been back since. Anyway, watch this great special on Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff batter of all time…
Ok, now that Rickey Henderson is in the Hall of Fame, it’s time to induct my other favorite baseball player of all time, Don Mattingly aka Donnie Baseball!!!!!!! There’s actually a website dedicated to getting Mattingly into the Hall of Fame. Sure, he never won a World Series, but the man deserves to be in there. Check it out…
I still haven’t been to the new stadiums in the Bronx or Queens. Holler at me if you’ve got some extra tickets. And stay tuned for Westcheddar’s feature (coming very soon) on one of the greatest and nerdiest baseball games you can play in the comfort of your own home. No, it’s not a video game. It’s Dice Baseball. I’ve been playing with the kids at summer camp and they love it. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you (or remind you) how to play. By the way, when is Paul O’Neill going to be eligible for the Hall of Fame? We gotta get him in there too!!!!
*Bonus*
I dug into my Isenberg archives for these two pictures. Above is a great shot of my uncle Steve with Don Mattingly, giving him some sort of New York Newsday Player of the Year Award (SI used to be the Publisher of Newsday). And below is a picture my Dad got me after a game one time at Stan’s, you know, the store across the street from the old Yankee Stadium under the train tracks. Now this the Yankees lineup I grew up with. Can anyone name all the players in this picture? Leave your answers in the comments section. Hollerrrrrrr….
Stevie Wonder picked the perfect song out of his bottomless catalog of classics to memorialize Michael Jackson yesterday. “Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer” is one of the first R & B tunes I learned how to play on the piano. I performed it on a few different occasions with my childhood friend Liz Farrell back in our high school days (she’d sing and I’d tickle the ivories), and many times in my twenties during late night sing-a-longs with drunken pals. Stevie Wonder is one of my absolute favorite musicians of all time. I spent most of my first two years of college studying his catalog. He’s got some bangers, but it’s his ballads that I really love. Here’s the clip from yesterday’s service at the Staples Center of Stevie singing “Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer”, which coincidentally I first heard in a Poetic Justice scene where Janet Jackson is listening to old records in her house…
I thought I’d add to this post with a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Lately”, performed back in the good old 90’s by Jodeci on MTV Unplugged. Wonderful (pun intended).
This marks my 200th post on Westcheddar, in just over a year’s time. Thanks for reading, watching, and listening. Stay tuned.
Anyone who is from my generation was raised on Michael Jackson’s music. His catalog is phenomenal. And I’m sure everyone has a classic MJ memory from their childhood. Mine is that when the “Thriller” video came out (I was probably 4 years old and still living in California), I ran out of my neighbor’s house about 30 seconds into it, straight shook. Ha! As for his influence on hip hop, well check out this map, detailing who sampled what…
And take a listen to his various collaborations with hip hop’s greatest artists, including Biggie and Jay-Z, HERE…
Had a great Westchester afternoon with my Dad yesterday. Went out to lunch in Yonkers together then took a walk at Pepsico Gardens in Purchase. We talked about life, family, our wives, work, friends, old times, and new plans. Then we met up with the rest of the Izo clan for dinner at Turquoise in Larchmont to celebrate Father’s Day and also my parents’ 40th anniversary. Lots of laughs. Anyway, here’s an article my father wrote for the Journal News (our local Gannett paper) about his son’s use of slang, published back when I was a senior at White Plains High School in 1996. Check it out…
Hope all the fathers out there enjoyed their holiday. Shout out to all my dudes with seeds…
Nowadays, we can go out and buy virtually any TV series on DVD, or even download brand new episodes and old classics directly onto our computer or Ipod. But one show I guarantee you will never find in any Best Buy or Itunes store is The Wonder Years. I read somewhere it’s because they could not get the rights to use all the great music that’s scattered throughout the show. This is truly a travesty because The Wonder Years is arguably the best television show of all time. It’s my father’s all time favorite show, and we would watch it together as a family regularly when I was growing up. It was funny, heartwarming, serious, historic, and just realer than the other programs of that 80’s decade, like The Cosby Show and Family Ties (and those are amazing shows don’t get me wrong). The setting, the great characters (older brother Wayne is my favorite), inter-family relationships, the issues of the time period, the superb narration, and of course the music! What a great show. I hope they figure out how to release it on DVD one day. Until then, check out the link below to a great Youtube channel that has pretty much every episode of The Wonder Years in order from the first season on. I’ll get you started with the pilot…
Remember this game above? That’s right, NHL ’93 for Sega Genesis. Man, I used to play this all the time. Of course, video games have come along way since this 16-bit classic. But if you’re interested in playing these old games once in a while and you’re not a game nerd that has the old systems lying around, there’s a couple great websites where you can play any Sega Genesis game you want right on your computer! Seriously, it’s sick. Nintendo too. Last night, I was surfing around looking for some cool games that my young kids at work could play during our holiday break, and I stumbled upon a GOLDMINE. I tried a couple out, and they play pretty well too, you just have to adjust to using the keyboard, but it looks and plays exactly like you remember. I played a couple of my old favorites, and it was a blast I can’t front I felt like a pimply little pimp again. NHL ’93, NBA JAM (He’s on firrrreeeeeee!!!!), NBA Live ’96, Madden ’93, Sonic. The Nintendo games are even crazy too. Tennis?!?!?!? Excitebike. Baseball. Tecmo Bowl. Super Mario Bros pt. 2?!?!?! I’m telling you, these sites have EVERY GAME. And it’s all free. Check these links, then thank me later.
Now I know you can get lots of old games on Nintendo Wii, and of course the new video games blow these away. I mean, Guitar Hero is crazy. Have you seen NBA 2K9 for PS3? It’s unbelievable. But for the pure nostalgia and accessability of it all, these internet sites are great. And the games are so fun to play. Trust me, I see the games these little kids like to play in my lab up here at the BGC, and they’re not that rad. Some are cool, on sites like miniclip.com and gamegecko.com, but I think once I put them on to these old Sega Genesis and Nintendo games they’re gonna be hooked. By the way, what’s your top 5 favorite video games of all time? Let me know in the comments section if you dare…
There’s a great baseball book of essays by Donald Hall titled “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons” that my Dad gave to me when I was a kid. We used to play catch all the time together in our backyard, and have shared many other father and son sentimental moments through sport, like battling in ping pong in our basement, or going to Knicks games together. And non-sport bonding too, like when he taught me how to parallel park, or when we drove to Maryland together for college orientation the day after my last high school final. This video below sums up the beauty of the father and son moment, the true male bond. It’s a video of a 7 year old kid in the backseat of his Dad’s car riding home after his tooth surgery, smacked out of his mind on dental drugs. His Dad, who filmed the video, definitely got a kick out of how twisted his son was off those drugs. The kid is totally bent, like he’s in a cab riding home after a night of college bar hopping! It’s hilarious, and truly a beautiful father and son moment…
Michael Howard Friedland is a very skilled guy. He’s good at a lot of things. He’s athletic, musical, intellectual, and let’s face it, he’s extremely socialable. But the thing that always blew me away about him, ever since we met in 9th grade at White Plains High School, was his ability to do magic, especially card tricks. Sure, he’s pulled a quarter or two out of my ear, but it’s these card tricks that are really amazing.
After graduating from Tufts University, Friedland got into the business world, and excelled in it. But now, he’s decided to pursue other interests with his stage show A.D.D. LIGHTFUL. The show sold out it’s first run in Manhattan last fall, and now he’s back with a second set of shows, which show off his magic, musicianship, and charming personality. I wonder if the show is any better than the night he transformed a Greenwich Village sushi restaurant into an all out sing-a-long, which included restaurant patrons and staff joining him in an impromptu piano playing set (there happened to be an upright piano against the wall next to our table that was calling his name) highlighted by his fun-filled rendition of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long”. Is it possible?!?!?!?! Check out this exclusive Westcheddar interview with Mike to find out more about the show, his roots in magic and music, and if he actually has A.D.D….
ip: Ok Michael, my dude, we go way back. I vividly remember you stumping me with amazing card tricks when I first met you in Mr. Hazelton’s 9th grade biology class. Tell me where your interest in magic started and how old you were when you got into making us mere mortals feel like total mush heads.
mf: Mr.Hazelton. Wow. I think I learned most of my first card tricks during his class. It was only a year earlier that I started studying magic seriously. Eighth grade was when, as we say in the business, the bug bit. I saw a magician perform close up magic while I was away on vacation in Florida. He made some coins appear out of thin air, changed a one dollar bill into a hundred right in front of my face…some cool stuff. Once I got home, I went to White Plains public library, and I took out and read every book it had on magic. That is to say, well, both of them. And from there, I never stopped. As you know I played basketball freshman year, since you and I road to practice and the bench together…but after that, I started practicing magic for a few hours a day every day after school. That’s how it started.
ip: You appeared quite regularly on our cult classic public access television show Prime Time with Dan and Andrew back in high school, pulling cards out of your mouth and other areas of your body. Did you put on any other magic performances back in those days?
mf: Sure….many. Some casual, some formal. I remember doing a First Holy Communion for an Italian Family. It was great. I was like 15 years old and at the end of the party the father pulled me over and shoved three hundred-dollar bills into my hand. I performed at a few bar mitzvah’s, office parties, and even a few sleight of hand competitions…not to mention for friends and family all the time. But Prime Time was a great experience and a ton of fun. I especially enjoyed watching Dave Epstein beat himself senseless just to get on the show. As an artist, I think you have to respect that kind of dedication.
ip: I also recall a fine performance our senior year as the lead in The Music Man. What made you want to get into that musical world so late in your high school days?
mf: Well, it was more accidental than deliberate. I’d pretty much given up on sports after dislocating my shoulder for the one hundred and twelth time, and I started to get into performing with all of the magic. I played guitar and piano as a kid and always loved music, but never dreamed of performing in front of an audience. But the spring musical our senior year turned out to be the Music Man, and I started hearing rumors that Mike Backes, who the show was basically picked for, was not planning to audition in order to pursue other interests. So, there was this BIG void. If not Mike Backes, then who? So, I bought the movie of The Music Man, and studied it for weeks and weeks before the auditions so that by the time it was time to audition, I already knew the part cold. It was, and is to this day, one of the hardest periods of work I’ve ever put in. It also reinforced my love of performance and mimicry.
ip: At Tufts, you joined a pretty popular acapella singing group. Tell us about that. Do acapella singers bag a lot of chicks?
mf: Do a cappella singers bag a lot of chicks? My guess is it’s bell-curve distributed, but I really don’t know. I sang in a coed group called the Tufts Amalgamates. We were very ambitious with our music. Tufts has great a cappella, and the all mens group, the Beelzebubs, is one of the better known groups in the country. I didn’t want to be in an all mens group for some reason…it seemed like a lot of fun, and those guys probably did get laid a lot, but it just wasn’t the experience i was looking for. There was something fun about being in the Amalgamates–a great challenge. It’s very hard to sing a cappella in general, but mixed groups, I think, are even tougher, so to make it sound good requires a lot of work and dedication. And the people I sang with were really, really fantastic. Some of the most talented people I’ve ever met. Did you know that Jessica Beil auditioned for my group while I was abroad my junior year? Well, she did, and she didn’t get in. When I learned of this, I went into a deep, prolonged period of depression that didn’t end until…gosh, did it end? No, actually. That knowledge still haunts me to this day. Then last year there was that book, Perfect Pitch: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory that shed a lot of light on the subculture, and also highlighted some bigtime celebrities that sang in college, inclduing Masi Oka from the show Heroes, and Anne Hathaway, among others. College a cappella is becoming something of a springboard. In fact, I now sing in a group called Duwende. You’d never know it’s a cappella. It’s just good, solid music.
ip: Wow, Jessica Beil huh? They really blew it on that one. Anyway, you’ve recently transitioned from the business world back into the arts and performance arena. What compelled you to do that? I’m sure it wasn’t about the money.
mf: No, it was not at all about the money. Here’s how I look at it. There’s something called the Ten Thousand Hour Rule. If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, then you’ve heard of it. It’s basically this; in order to become an expert at something, one of two things is required. Either ten years, or ten thousand hours of practice. So, when I graduated from business school last december, I started thinking, man, what am I willing to devote ten thousand hours of practice to? And I realized, maybe things would be easier if I just focused on something that I’d ALREADY put ten thousand hours into, and then some! That was magic and music.
ip: So you sold out your first round of your new show, “A.D.D. Lightful”. First of all, fun name for the show, but why the reference to A.D.D.? Do you suffer from the symptoms of the disorder?
mf: I’m sorry, what was the question? Oh right, ADD. Yeah, I think I do have ADD, though I like to think I thrive on it rather than suffer from it. I’ve pursued lots of different things in my life…not just magic and music, but real estate, investments of all kinds, worked at a newspaper, studied philosophy in college, went to business school, considered becoming a psychologist, a rabbi, and more. I’ve never really found something to focus on day after day, year after year. So ADD just seemed like a natural description of my life, so I wrote a show about my life and experiences, all woven together with magic.
ip: What should we expect from the show? It sounds like it’s a mixture of all the things you’re interested in, like magic and music. Anything else?
mf: Yeah–music is really a small component…I don’t even do something musical in every show. But there’s definitely more to it. A major portion is devoted to card cheating technique, where I do a small expose session, teaching the audience about real cheating techniques and then demostrating what they look like. I also talk about memory, because as you know I was on a memory infomercial. Then I talk about cognotive philosophy/psychology, which was my college major…and more. I don’t want to give away too much:)
ip: What was it like putting the show together? You’re basically a one man band, right?
mf: I enjoyed putting the show together. Business is fun, but having primarily worked in investments, I was always doing analytical work. The show was a chance to be creative, and i really loved every minute of the process. It showed me that being creative is necessary for me to be happy.
ip: Our chemistry teacher in 10th grade, the legendary Mr. Doherty, used to call you “Copperfield”, which never got old by the way. Out of all these new crazy magic dudes out there like David Blaine and Criss Angel, who’s the nicest? And what’s the craziest magic trick you’ve ever seen someone do?
mf: Wow. Great question. I knew David Blaine and Criss Angel back in high school. Had I known then that they were going to be famous, maybe I would have kept in better touch…though I doubt it. I’m happy for those guys. Who’s the nicest magician…tough to say. Some of my closest friends are magicians….lots of fascinating, great guys. My friend Ryan Oakes is a great magician and a great guy. And a former a cappella singer himself! Best trick…actually, the trick that fried me the most in recent years was done by Ryan one night while we were hanging out at a bar in the city. He asked me if I had a quarter. I did. He took out a Sharpie and asked me to initial both sides of the quarter. Then he ordered a diet coke, which came in an unopened can. The place served all sodas from cans, if you’re wondering. Then, he took the quarter in one hand and the can in he other, and he slapped the coin onto the side of the can…and instantly, it was gone. His hands were empy, and when he shook the can, i could hear something rattling inside. He popped open the can, slowly poured out the soda, and as the last drops poured out, I could see something lodged in the mouth of the can. We had to cut open the can in order to get out the coin…my quarter, with my initials on it.
ip: Sick. So what’s next for Michael Friedland. We know the show is coming up in a couple weeks, but beyond that, what’s next?
mf: I wish I knew. Hopefully more performances. I’m planning to start a business on the side, but in this economy…it’s anyone’s guess. My goal is to keep performing, keep improving, and hopefully start doing some lecturing here and there. That’s the dream anyway.
For more info on A.D.D. LIGHTFUL, click the link to Mike’s website…
And take a listen to his various collaborations with hip hop’s greatest artists, including Biggie and Jay-Z, 
Westcheddar 