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It was my first visit to Las Vegas. I was covering a Mets trip to the Coast in 1966 or so, and there was a day off between LA and San Francisco.
My pal Vic Ziegel of the good old New York Post said, “Let’s go to Las Vegas.” Vic had been there before. Flights were cheap. Food was cheap. The only thing that wasn’t cheap was the gambling, but I don’t gamble. Long story. I watched Vic play blackjack and I watched life in Las Vegas. The hotel lounge was also inexpensive. By doing the math in Rickles’ obituary in the Times Friday, I deduce that he was around 40, but in a way he was ageless. Bald. Profane. Cranky. What’s it to you? He had a theme: Anybody who came to see him in that lounge was truly desperate. He pointed out a young couple and wondered if they were married, or cheating on spouses. He pointed out a young man: “He’s thinking, I’m in Las Vegas, I can get rid of my pimples.” Then he recognized Vic as a member of the tribe. A landsman. “Look at that nose,” he said. “What’s your name?” “Vic.” Somehow, Rickles deduced that Vic was the sportswriter from the Post. “Vic Ziegel!” screamed Don Rickles from Jackson Heights, Queens. (Queens boys are a yappy lot.) “I love you guys!” – meaning the good old Post. (I did not count.) Rickles thought about it for a while. “What’s a Ziegel?” he asked the crowd. Comedic pause. Then he touched his own beak. “It’s an eagle. A Jewish eagle. A Ziegel.” That’s all I remember, except laughing a lot. I’m sure Vic could re-create the entire dialogue but unfortunately Vic left the stage in the summer of 2010. He had introduced me to a lot of good stuff on the road – “Beat the Devil” in Cambridge, Mass., him chatting up jazz musician Roland Kirk in some all-night coffee shop on the square in Cincinnati. And Rickles. In 2015, I saw an aging Don Rickles on the Letterman show; I noticed the immense respect Letterman had for him, getting him through the gig. Now Rickles has bowed out. But every time I went back to Las Vegas – to write about boxing or an entertainer – I remembered Don Rickles in that lounge.
Janet Vecsey
4/7/2017 10:05:40 am
Mike said, "it's the end of an era". I agree. He was SO funny. Thanks for this.
George Vecsey
4/7/2017 11:18:27 am
Jane, he had a bit of Pop in him, or vice versa?
Brian Savin
4/7/2017 10:40:48 am
A truly wonderful story about a comedian who spanned the generations: I never liked him. My Father never liked him. My Grandfather never liked him.......
George Vecsey
4/7/2017 11:23:02 am
Brian: small doses....can't say I watched him on TV, but then again (as he says in faux-ribbing on that Letterman clip) the hosts were mostly sappy. (I liked Steve Allen as a kid, Letterman as a grumpy aging guy, but nobody else then or now.) No use for the Sinatra-Martin shtick. But in the lounge, on his two feet, using the milieu of Vegas to poke fun at people who were there, he was funny, quick on the uptake. Thanks for your angle. G
Roy Edelsack
4/7/2017 12:26:44 pm
I would never hijack a thread but George, you did mention the great Roland Kirk, the most musical of jazz musicians. I saw him end a quartet session at The Vanguard in 1968 by leading his group off the bandstand and down the aisle, each fellow grasping the fellow in front of him on the right shoulder, "three blind mice" style, while dancing to a rhythm beat out by Kirk by jangling the change in his pocket.
Joshua Rubin
4/7/2017 12:34:18 pm
I am a bit too young to have had the chance to see the 60s jazz greats while they were in their prime (or alive). Coltrane, Dolphy etc. Kirk in his prime was making some incredible and intense music. I wish I had been able to see him.
George Vecsey
4/7/2017 01:31:30 pm
I never saw Rahsaan Roland Kirk perform...but in 1965 on a Mets trip, Vic and I had Saturday off ---PM papers had no Sunday edition -- and we got credentials for the Derby, right down the Ohio. Epic day. We got back to Cincinnati around 11-12 or so and stopped for late snack near the hotel. He spotted Kirk with a few friends. Then we got the score from the evening Mets game and Vic could not resist. He went up to Kirk and said, "Roland, Roland, the Mets won." And Kirk said, "I can tell, man, 'cause you so happy." How often did we use that line with each other, our friends, our wives....It was Roland Kirk's line. Heard him on WLIB a lot in those days. GV
Altenir Silva
4/7/2017 03:01:14 pm
Hi George,
George
4/7/2017 04:07:32 pm
Dear Altenir: you are raising him right. GV
Mike from Whitestone
4/7/2017 08:51:34 pm
Keep telling these tales GV. What a great segment. I admired Rickles as he got older, staying witty and sharp, a good lesson on keeping busy up between the ears. I had a good example of that in my life who left the stage last year. It is admirable.
George Vecsey
4/8/2017 01:33:13 pm
Mike, I think I know who you mean. We all need somebody older to set an example...I have three friends in their 90s who still teach me. Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |
