Woody Weingarten

The documentary short “Eddy’s World,” about 98-year-old toy inventor Eddy Goldfarb, screens in the Legacy Film Festival on Aging. (Courtesy Sheila Malkind)

That pair, as well as many choices in the fest that for the second consecutive year will be 100% virtual, accentuate the positive.

“We want to avoid doom and gloom,” Malkind says. “I believe that no matter what our age, we’re still interested in being alive, in doing whatever we can do. Life can still be exciting in many ways, and we have to take advantage of that possibility, of making old age palatable.”

Former teen folk musicians address “aging and death with humor and inspiration” in “The Ten of Us.” (Courtesy Sheila Malkind)

Other films she touts are:

• “Eddy’s World,” a documentary short by Lyn Goldfarb that centers on the filmmaker’s father. Reports Malkind: “It’s about a toy inventor who’s now 101 (he was only 98 when the film was made) and shows a man who’s delightful.”  Eddy, best known for “chattering teeth” (but who created more than 800 other toys), cheerfully states in the film, “I think that when you do create work, it stimulates your brain and that helps keep your body healthy.”

• “Dear Audrey,” is, Malkind says, “a beautiful film on Alzheimer’s that shows kindness and understanding. It’s very moving — at one point [the husband] goes into the facility where [his wife] is and sleeps in the same bed that she’s in, showing his love and tenderness.”

• “My Mother Dreams: The Satan’s Disciples in New York,” a short film about a widowed Midwestern housewife who becomes obsessed with a Hell’s Angels-ish bikers’ club, won a 1999 Academy Award for best live action short.

• “Golden Age Karate,” a very short short, is about a 15-year-old martial arts champion who teaches senior citizens self-defense at a local nursing home, “giving them the tools to feel in control, connected, and cared for.” It’s part of an 84-minute festival program with a self-explanatory title: Vitality.

Sheila Malkind (Courtesy Sheila Malkind)

With a U.S. Census forecast that by 2035, there will be 78 million people age 65 and older in the country, Malkind aims to flip the attitudes and depiction of older people in Hollywood movies, who “are often still portrayed as irrelevant, sometimes absurd, or they are stereotypical wise elders with limited face time, who give sage advice to the younger, more active characters.” She says, “Most American films do not attempt to portray the richness and variety, nor the triumphs and challenges, of older people.”

Malkind, who grew up in Brooklyn, moved to Chicago, and then relocated to San Francisco in 2003, earned two master’s degrees from Chicago schools. Despite wearing a brace since her stroke, she often walks 40 or 50 minutes in the hills with her son beside her.

It’s seemingly impossible for her to have anything but an upbeat attitude.

A quote on the festival’s website from 19^th century writer and philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott, who said, “To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent. This is to triumph over old age,” contrasts nicely with a playful quote from Malkind: “I always looked forward to getting older — it’s a part of life, so what the heck.”

Screenings in the Legacy Film Festival on Aging cost $12 per program and $65 for a pass. Visit http://legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org/.

This story was first published on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit site supported by Bay City News Foundation http://www.baycitynews.org/contact/. 

Woody Weingarten can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.

It’s not too late.

To see this year’s Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, that is — an event that features three standup comics who can make you laugh out loud. Repeatedly.

My wife and I did.

It might help if you’re Jewish, living with a Jew, have best friends who are Jewish, or have spent hours and hours of stimulating and amusing conversations with seatmates on El Al plane trips to or from Israel.

Truthfully, though, non-Jews are just as apt to find the show extremely funny.

That’s because all three comedians on the bill, despite each occasionally leaning on a Semitic background, mostly launch anecdotes and one-liners about everyday stuff from their own lives.

The headliner, deadpan Mark Schiff, who’s toured with Jerry Seinfeld worldwide for 15 years and had specials on HBO and Showtime, relies on material about medical conditions and his wife; Ladman, a 67-year-old who holds the record for appearances on Kung Pao with five and has appeared on The Tonight Show nine times, deals mostly with her aging issues; and Orion Levine is a 29-year-old funnyman who rips into his family.

The event has been produced for 30 years by mistress of ceremonies Lisa Geduldig, who capitalized on the idea that hordes of Jewish people spent every Christmas Day in a movie house followed by dinner in a Chinese restaurant, the only kind generally open on the holiday.

So, calculating that she had a built-in audience, she conjured up the idea of an in-person comedy dinner show in spite of never having produced anything before. Her intuition was right, of course, and she had to turn away 200 people her first time out.

Geduldig has noted that the “audience began as 99% Jewish and has expanded to include Chinese-Jewish couples, interfaith ones, singles, families, gays, straights, undecideds, those who are far from home, and just generally people who like smart comedy mixed with Chinese food.”

This year’s anniversary show can be viewed in-person or via a YouTube Live livestreaming. Dinner begins at 5 p.m. with both the in-person show and its live livestreaming cousin an hour later — tonight and tomorrow night.

The show also highlights one lighthearted video anecdote from Geduldig’s 91-year-old mom, Arline, from Boynton Beach, Florida.

The Chinese restaurant site this go-‘round, believe it or not, is Sherith Israel, a synagogue at 2266 California Street in San Francisco — because the New Asia Restaurant, where the event had been held since its fifth year, was closed by the pandemic.

In-person attendees, by the way, receive a special swag bag that includes a pair of wooden custom-printed Kung Pao chopsticks, a packet of Yiddish-proverb fortune cookies, and sundry knick-knacks.

Masks — to block Covid, the flu, and RSV — are recommended when not eating or drinking.

Tickets, which range from $30 to $100, are available at https://www.koshercomedy.com. Part of the proceeds will go to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

 

 

Unlike our federal government, I don’t snoop.

Unlike countless other organizations, I do no surveillance — electronic or other.

Unlike cable news networks and Wikipedia, I don’t spread misinformation, gossip or rumors.

But I do grab snippets of tête-à-têtes from restaurants, park benches and street corners.

And, because what I overhear might end up as fodder for a column, I typically jot down what I catch. This, in fact, is the third compilation of succulent morsels I’ve picked up.

Perhaps these delicacies will beguile, titillate or shock you — maybe even as much as they did me.

To wit…

While asking questions at Town Hall about a new neighbor’s construction project, I overhead a nearby San Anselmo employee say, “I absolutely need to unwind, un-stress and un-overload.”

“I’m done with him,” said a teen girl in the Marin General lobby the week before. “He’s now just a speck in my litter box of life.”

Outside Trader Joe’s in San Rafael, a sly geezer declared — albeit a little too publicly — to his vastly younger female companion, “I have a feeling some prankster put crushed Viagra in my miso soup at lunch.”

A long-haired, college-age guy philosophized outside The Bicycle Works co-op in San Anselmo: “We all know what to do about Killer Bees, but how can we handle Killer Sharks — you know, those anti-middle-class Wall Street venture-capitalist types — or the Killer Publicists, the marketers who clutter up popular films with irrelevant product placements, or Killer Second Amendmenters, those pro-gun jerks who think every kid’s room should be stocked with an Uzi?”

Addressing a diner who’d obviously over-tipped, an elated server in Il Fornaio in Corte Madera gushed, “Grazie, merci, danke, arigatou, toda and asante. Oh, I forgot — thanks a lot.”

A dowager in deep blue dress, diamond necklace and studs outside Mag’s Local Yogurt shop in Larkspur lapped up some vanilla one sunny p.m. “I’m supporting Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio,” she said, “and have donated to both their campaigns. I’m also speaking for them locally, sort of reversing things by putting my mouth where my money is.”

“Arguing with a spouse,” one mid-lifer in front of the Fairfax police station said to another, “is like having a nuclear war — nobody wins.”

I heard, in the Post Office in Ross, a sentence that could never apply to a compulsive-obsessive neatnik, maker of priority lists and lint picker-upper like me: “He’s having a real romance with disorder.”

But I agree with the disheveled mother who chided her ear-budded son outside Bananas at Large in San Rafael, “Once there were songs; now there’s only noise.”

And I definitely could share a grin with the gray-haired gent in pristine white shirt, power tie, filthy sneakers and tattered jeans in San Anselmo’s library who proclaimed, “I love it that I’m old enough to still appreciate — in the face of all this damned technology — paper clips, rubber bands and a plunger.”

Decked-out matron watching road construction in Mill Valley with a gal-pal: “These days more than ever, perseverance trumps perspiration.”

Cynical senior in Fairfax’s Good Earth Natural Foods generalized,  “Those that can, do; those that can’t become politicians.”

A twenty-something father, near the stone dinosaur at Millennium Park in San Anselmo, appeared to be wasting some psychology on his toddler daughter, “Okay, don’t have fun. Don’t have any fun.”

Matronly blonde outside Luther Burbank Savings in San Rafael was waving her arms in a friend’s face: “Our government has definitely completed its wrong-headed transition from the Gold Standard to an Ink Standard. The only question remaining is: How much money can The Fed print?”

A young guy with an unusually high forehead had collared   a sidekick at Drake High School, “There’s only one word to describe her — feckless.”

Loaded down with books on the Kentfield campus of the College of Marin, a student was chatting with his clingy girlfriend. “A few minutes ago John was quoting ‘The Huffington Post,’ then Wikipedia. That’s cool. But I’m still hoping he’ll really go retro and quote ‘Esquire’ or ‘Elle.’”

Finally, while munching on a delicacy at Terra Linda’s High Tech Burrito, a Millennial said to a worker cleaning tables, “Would your family be the basis of a soap opera, sitcom or reality show? Mine could be all three.”

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com/

 

I’d planned to see Diana Krall last winter, but she got pneumonia and canceled.

I didn’t take it personally. But I was disappointed.

A few nights ago, I went to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa to see the 50-year-old Canadian.

I was anything but disappointed.

She was fantabulous — both her vocals and piano artistry.

I can’t remember her contralto voice being quite so hoarse or husky before, but I do recall a similar inability to sit still throughout her concert.

My legs shook and my toes tapped — at the same breakneck pace as her foot keeping time.

I also can’t recall her being so self-deprecatingly funny.

Including an oops, immediately followed by the admission, “I hit the wrong key.”

Although some critics of her current “Wallflower” national tour have trashed her 12th album as filled with schmaltzy, sultry covers of pop tunes dating to the ‘60s, I regarded her live selections from that same-titled album only a fleeting distraction from her life’s blood — rollicking jazz.

To ensure that genre remaining predominant, Krall employed five dazzling sidemen.

Most notable was fiddler Stuart Duncan, who bowed, plucked and strummed his way into my heart and ears despite his instrument being a jazz rarity. Though each virtuoso may have deserved equal time, Duncan resembled George Orwell’s pig in “Animal Farm” — more equal than the others.

Together, Krall and crew romped through two unbroken hours of songs, coaxing a good third of them into the showstopper category.

With the best of the best being Tom Waits’ “Temptation,” which spotlighted each guy in electrifying — and sometimes electrified — solo riffs.

Krall, who switched periodically from piano to synthesizer to create a countrified twang or clipped rock ‘n’ roll beat, dipped heavily into standards, a mainstay of her previous concerts — in this case such classics as “Exactly Like You,” “Deed I Do” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.”

She also invoked the ghosts of Oscar Peterson, playing a few lightning-fast bars from an arrangement of his before claiming she hadn’t learned more, and Nat King Cole, paying homage to that singer-pianist via “You Call It Madness But I Call It Love.”

Only for an instant did she border on boring me — with two straight extracts from the “Wallflower” album.

Instead of sticking with historic conventions, she’d undoubtedly have done better using The Mamas and The Papas’ “California Dreamin’” and The Eagles’ “Desperado” as springboards to jazz inventions like those that thrust her into celebrity.

During the show, a large screen at stage rear projected static wallflowers, blossoming flora and a stylized shot of her twin boys.

I found those accents superfluous to the musical marvels onstage.

Ditto the lights that occasionally blinked from the amps.

I enjoyed, however, Krall’s drawing laughs by inserting strains of “Moon River” into a tune she admitted was “not usually known as a funny song,” and smiles from a confession that “my left hand and my right hand aren’t talking to each other very well.”

I also loved the frequent, idiosyncratic flipping of her long dirty-blonde locks from her face.

And I smiled admiringly when she took her bows alongside her backups — Duncan; guitarist Anthony Wilson; bassist Dennis Crouch; drummer Karriem Riggins; and keyboardist Patrick Warren — rather than alone.

As I look back, I think this Sonoma County performance outranks my previous favorite, a freebie Stern Grove outing in San Francisco where not even the heat or mosquitos could quash my Krall pleasure.

This time, she, who’s been married since 2003 to chartbusting pop-rock singer Elvis Costello and who’s sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, ended a 20-minute encore with “Ophelia,” which again brought the sold-out Person Theater crowd of more than 1,600 to its feet as a single unit.

That segment also had included a swingin’ version of  “The Frim Fram Sauce,” which had been popularized by Cole, and a snoozer, Bob Dylan’s “Wallflower.”

Some fault-finders are hell bent on chastising Krall for “selling out” by concocting a heavily stringed, non-jazzy pop album.

Almost as stubbornly as denigrators bombarded Dylan when he switched to electric guitar.

Count me not among them — in either case.

Upcoming star turns at the Person Theater of the Wells Fargo Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa, will include comedian Lewis Black’s “The Rant Is Due: Part Deux” on Sept. 11, vocalist Frank Sinatra Jr.’s “Sinatra Sings Sinatra” on Oct. 8, and Rosanne Cash with John Leventhal on Oct. 16.  Information: www.wellsfargocenterarts.org or 1-707-546-3600.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or www.vitalitypress.com/

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

Jim Dunn’s retired from directing colossal musicals for The Mountain Play in Mill Valley.

But he hasn’t quit doing them elsewhere.

Exquisitely.

Need proof? Check out the Ross Valley Players’ production of “The Pirates of Penzance” at the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross.

The company’s professionalism, congeniality-packed presentation, and mastery of the 136-year-old musical comedy/light opera may raise your perception of community-theater.

It did mine.

I’d expected it to be fun, but I hadn’t imagined it to be as impressive as it is.

This two-hour show’s as good as anything anywhere in the Bay Area.

Some folks may be more familiar with Capt. Hook’s crew, from this summer’s “Peter Pan” Mountain Play, or Johnny Depp in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie franchise, or, for that matter, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

But Gilbert & Sullivan’s tender-hearted pirates, I believe, are funnier.

And more enchanting.

Even though their actions defy logic and common sense.

It’s almost impossible to watch the 22 performers spilling over the stage at The Barn, the RVP’s home, without feeling good.

Especially when the dainty daughters of Major-General Stanley prissily twirl their parasols, the bobbleheaded British bobbies stumble and bumble like Keystone Cops, or the decidedly un-menacing pirates engage in unison foot-stomping — all courtesy of imaginative choreographer Sandra Tanner.

Most audience members grinned from the first lines of the first number past the final curtain.

Like me.

Before the show, Dunn admitted to early birds he chose the show mainly because it was in the public domain, which meant the RVR wouldn’t have to pay royalties (as it would most modern musicals).

But he also informed one woman that, in contrast to the vulgar “Book of Mormon” he’d recently caught, he loved “Pirates” because of its old-fashioned innocence and it being a crowd-pleasing summer diversion.

In my view — one that dates back 70 years to a time when my father introduced me to the frenzied rhythms and lyrics of Gilbert & Sullivan, whose sprightliness and cleverness dad relished — Dunn utilizes his own fondness for G&S to inject a comedic music-hall over-the-topness that works extraordinarily well.

His direction, especially turning minor details into major laughs, is brilliant — as might be anticipated from an 83-year-old who’s been directing and teaching theater arts for half a century.

Everything works.

Even having two couples seated in extra-fee boxes on stage and waving teeny Union Jacks.

The cast as a whole is uncommonly good.

In a word: superb.

But several are even better than that: Norman A. Hall’s Major-General Stanley is letter perfect, setting a sky-high bar for other comic performers. Phillip Percy Williams’ Pirate King weaves exaggeration and energy into a smile-inducing, ideal blend. And Joni DeGabriele magnificently flaunts her coloratura, fancifully flutters her eyelashes and unsubtly scrunches up her face as Mabel, wannabe bride.

They’re all accompanied by the piano talent of Music Director Paul Smith, who, from the first note of the overture to the last note of the show, keeps well within the parameters of feel-good.

All that’s amazingly supplemented by the classic, colorful costumes of Michael A. Berg and the enchantingly spare but picturesque sets by Ron Krempetz.

The irrational plot finds Frederic mistakenly apprenticed to the pirates until age 21 by his nurse. But because he was born on Leap Year’s Day, he’s stuck for an extra 63 years — despite having fallen for Mabel, daughter of Major-General Stanley. The pirates are sympathetic to orphans, so all who run afoul of them claim they’re orphans — including Stanley. Pirates pursue Stanley’s daughters. Police pursue pirates.

It all ends with everything in harmony — or in unison, if you prefer accuracy.

The best of the 28 musical numbers are — as always — the rollicking “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” and “The Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One.”

Nitpickers may gripe about some British accents coming and going like the tide off the shore of Cornwall, the play’s setting, or the old theater’s lack of air conditioning.

Clearly, their joy-ometer is off.

I spied no children in the audience opening night. A pity. Kids would undoubtedly find the frisky silliness to their liking.

As did the child in me.

“Pirates of Penzance” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Aug. 16. Night performances, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Matinees, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $17-$33. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

[Woody’s [rating: 3]

Anna Deavere Smith beat the odds — and became a theatrical powerhouse.

Despite being an African-American, despite writing one-woman shows with multivarious characters all played by Anna Deavere Smith, despite staging controversial in-your-face portraits of racial conflict.

Now she’s battling the odds again.

But is likely to fail.

In the unique Berkeley Rep’s “Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education,” she takes on the entire American educational system and its undermining attitude toward poor people of color.

It simply may be too wide a target.

The experimental piece — part drama, part audience participation — covers dense terrain and poses tons of questions.

But it provides only amorphous answers.

I kept waiting for a specificity that never came.

Part of Smith’s “Pipeline Project,” which is seeking to alter school-to-prison practices she contends have decimated the future of a generation, “Notes” is based on 150 interviews she conducted.

In sub-divided sections of an 80-minute first act, she impersonates a riot videographer, an Oakland mentor, a Stockton councilman, a Stanford shrink, UCLA and Johns Hopkins professors, a protestor from Baltimore (where the playwright-performer was born), a Native American ex-con, an emotional support counselor and a high school principal — plus a Philadelphia judge who cried when sentencing a young man because society also was guilty.

She recreates the individuals’ stories precisely as told to her.

That, according to a National Endowment for the Humanities website profile, means “complete with false starts, coughs, laughter, and so on…‘If they said ‘um’…I don’t take the ‘um’ out.’

As in the 64-year-old’s previous shows, Smith’s performance is phenomenally good.

Although her olive drab jacket/shirt and dark pants stay put, she changes personalities by altering facial expressions, verbal pace and timbre — and footwear.

Projected film clips of cops beating blacks and of rioting underline the painful pleas of her portrayal of youngsters being forced into the criminal justice system, of white officials who find few alternatives.

I found it depressing.

But not as disheartening as the ostensibly novel audience breakout sessions about which in a pre-show briefing Susan Medak, Rep managing director, said, “You are the second act.”

The mostly white 23-member group I attended — one of 20 clusters in all — just didn’t come alive.

Its discussion was buried in idealistic but impractical notions, though the writing pads we’d been given carried the printed motto, “The change starts with you.”

Participants proffered suggestions to “move beyond our comfort zone,” “fight racism” and “stop police brutality” — without explaining how.

I had the distinct sense I was at a rally that couldn’t gel.

Smith, who labeled this special presentation “The California Chapter” and a “work in progress,” punctuates all the heaviness with humor.

The opening night audience chuckled accordingly.

If a bit uncomfortably.

It also appeared to dismiss Marcus Shelby’s plucky but sometimes sorrowful jazz bass accompaniment.

Smith, who’s probably best known for her TV roles on “Nurse Jackie” and “The West Wing,” initially gained fame through two early ‘90s documentary theater inventions, “Fires in the Mirror” and “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.”

The first, dealing with the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

The second, about the Rodney King verdict aftermath, won two Tony nods.

“Notes” is in effect a variation of the theme.

Smith, who won a MacArthur fellowship for blending theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and “intimate reverie,” believes she’s now delivered “a chance to reimagine and recreate a new war on poverty. Education is a crucial part of that.”

In a dramatic coda, she utilizes circa 1970 quotes from black writer James Baldwin that the problem is “the children and their children.”

Not that much, I guess, has changed.

Yet 45 years have passed.

Smith’s UCLA character adds a thought in “Notes.” The “biggest problem in our country,” he proclaims, “is indifference.”

Anna Deavere Smith’s latest magnum opus may be many things, but uncaring isn’t any of them.

“Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, the California Chapter” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Aug. 2. Night performances, 8 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays through Fridays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Matinees, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $25 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

David Brewer, a cherished friend for two decades and a surrogate brother for the one I never had, died a few days ago.

I’m fragile.

In deep mourning.

And reevaluating my life and priorities.

David’s passing didn’t come as a shock. He’d been battling a melanoma for years, and the resultant metastasis for months.

But death — despite my belief the soul, or spirit, transcends it — feels so damned final.

The empty hole it leaves can seem infinite.

It’s likely you have a friend like David, someone you could be even warmer to — no matter how close you have been.

On his deathbed, my psychologist/consultant buddy, still boyishly good-looking despite being sixtysomething, and still a pigheaded St. Louis Cardinals fanatic, revisited his spiritual feelings.

He re-told me of his “awakening” at 19, when he’d deduced that spirit was an embodiment “of compassionate love” rather than the anthropomorphic being others worshipped.

Though the Novato resident had been brought up an ardent Christian and I a Jew, we’d found a joint comfort zone.

I miss him.

But I consider myself lucky — blessed, in fact — to have had him in my life so long.

As a loving, trusted friend.

As a colleague in a men’s group for 10 years.

As a pet sitter in my San Anselmo home for Kismet, my purebred rescue mutt.

I have fond memories, too, of others who’d been essential parts of my life but, in Hamlet’s words, have shuffled off this mortal coil. And there are many: My parents and grandparents, a woman I lived with in Philadelphia, two first cousins who died in their teens.

All told, death in double digits — more than sufficient for any lifetime.

But David’s death has shifted my perspective.

No longer am I irked by the constant road construction on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in San Anselmo.

Or the dog poop I barely miss while walking Kismet in Creek Park.

Or the incredibly long wait at The Hub’s traffic lights.

Instead, I linger longer to watch two newborn fawns in my yard, to catch the wonderment of a sunrise from our deck, to see toddlers frolic in a Ross or Fairfax playground.

My wife, kids, grandkids and friends unsurprisingly have leapt anew to the top of my what’s-important list. I vow to phone and email more.

Yet retain my right to not text.

I choose to elevate my sensitivity at Marin Man to Man, my support group aimed at helping guys whose partners have breast cancer or another life-threatening disease.

And to spend added hours with the 11 friends facing severe health challenges.

I intend, too, to fully appreciate that I’m comparatively healthy — still breathing and able to pound my keyboard long enough to cobble columns together.

Did David’s death, or life, mean more than any of the 8,000 killed in Nepal’s late April quake? He and I’d often pondered that kind of question, always concluding life anywhere was equal to either of our own.

I’ll remember him as an imperfect perfectionist who left behind a lengthy string of wives, girlfriends and broken hearts, but moreover that he was himself even in his last moments — exuding life and love.

Shortly before being hospitalized, my pal, the compleat organizer — he was forever arranging a last-second movie group or dinner klatch or something-else cluster — had corralled a small group of friends. In a sense, it was his last hurrah.

He knew the prognosis.

My 8-year-old granddaughter traipsed along. David, child-less, had attached himself to her years before but decided on the spot that day she’d be his “date” for the party.

So he showered her with attention, including the hugs for which he was famous, and bought her a huge cookie.

Too soon afterward he proved that death can incorporate dignity.

And courage. And joking.

He and I and my wife, Nancy, reminisced and laughed several times during our final conversation.

I doubt if he’d primped for our appearance, but he undeniably did for at least two women who followed us individually.

In tribute to his tangible influence on my life, I hope to assuage my sadness with an amped up zest for living and doing. And to continue fighting for the environment, for the homeless, for equal rights.

I’m sure David would approve.

Contact Woody Weingarten at http://vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

This year’s five-day Marin County Fair had something to please almost every Jane and Joe — adult or kid.

With a bonus for me.

Why?

Because not only did I enjoy the ever-better entertainment and art exhibits and midway, and a breeze that made July’s heat tolerable, I got to interview typically “invisible,” behind-the-scenes folks who normally don’t get their names into print.

Take, for instance, Karen Katich of Martinez.

She’s been portraying Princess Leia of  “Star Wars” for years. It’s one of her favorite things.

Why?

“Because I saw the original ‘Star Wars’ 11 times when it first came out, and more than 1,000 times since.”

She loves “kids’ eyes getting the size of saucers when they see me, fulfilling their fantasy.”

Anne Garner owns Eleven Roses Ranch in Clearlake Oaks and brought Clydesdale horses for folks to admire.

Plus a couple of 1,600 pound draft mules.

John, the male, apparently was feeling his oats, to use a phrase about 150 years older than the 74 years the fair’s been running.

He repeatedly tried using his teeth to unknot the rope that tethered him to a gate, and upstaged her by playfully nuzzling her blouse again and again.

She explained that he “enjoys chewing garden hoses, rolling in the dirt, and bullying everybody.”

However, she added, “he’s really a coward, afraid of his own shadow.”

She frequently runs into fairgoers she “saw a year ago,” and especially likes “seeing the little kids so excited.”“It’s fun,” she told me, “because everybody’s happy they’re here.”

Rick Creelman of Fairfax is a ukulele player, a regular at Friday night jamborees at Del Medina’s home in San Rafael.

He came to play with 50 or so UFOs, Ukulele Friends Ohana (which means family or community), though the stage held only about 30 so the rest had to perform while roaming the audience.

This is the group’s fourth fair. They participate, Creelman said, “because it’s fun, a sing-along rather than a real concert.”

It’s also, he noted, “a chance to introduce people to the ukulele and that it’s making a comeback.”

Edward Johnson is a utility worker who lives in Rohnert Park. His fair duties include “doing the trash, keeping the restrooms clean.”

A favorite memory, he revealed, was when he and an assistant supervisor were locking up and unsuccessfully began tugging at a door — from opposite sides at the same time.

Bill Hernandez of Petaluma has been with the Marin County Sheriff’s Department 24 years.

A sergeant, he’s “done one shift a year at the fair” that long. “It’s fun to get out with people who are having fun,” he declared — a contrast with other assignments (patrol, jail, gang enforcement and street crime).

He remembered folks “trying to swim across the lagoon to get to the island” when the gates were shut because the fairgrounds were full.

Christian Williams, a Santa Rosa resident, manned an ice cream giveaway booth.

He and a co-worker handed out, on average, 22 three-gallon tubs each day — one scoop at a time.

Williams was gracious to most freebie-seekers — including me — but flummoxed by a kid who skittered away before I could get her name after she asked, “How much is the free sample of ice cream?”

Emilie Owens of Medford, Oregon, emcee for the pig races, has been doing the fair four years.

She loves how noisy her audience gets.

She recalled cheerleaders forming a human pyramid to embolden their favorite porkers.

And she recollected four pigs sprinting from the trailer onto the raceway to make it an unscheduled eight-pig contest.

Another time, “some pigs got free and just ran around the fairground.”

Zach Lien’s an L.A.-based contractor for Two Bit Circus, which ran the fair’s STEAM Carnival component.

“STEAM,” he elucidated, “is an acronym standing for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. Our games combine those concepts. We teach kids to work together as well as individually. I personally love to watch them trying to figure something out while playing, and it’s fun to watch adults and kids playing a game simultaneously.”

What’d I, personally, think of this year’s extravaganza, which drew 78,000 people who paid admission and 27,000 more who didn’t?

I relished that there weren’t lines for indoor bathrooms or outdoor port-a-potties, that I could find places to sit on bales of hay, that I could easily spill out the dirt that invaded my shoes.

As always, there was too much to do before I tired. But my best measuring rod was that I’d planned to stay an hour and a half.

And left five hours later.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net