To get myself in the mood to write about Frank Sinatra this week, I’ve made a martini in honor of this weekend’s Swingin’ with Sinatra Martini Night at the SLO Little Theatre, the site of next week’s Art Bash! (See you there Saturday, Feb. 27).
I didn’t have any gin (or vodka, for that matter), so I had to substitute Jameson whiskey, and I didn’t have any ice, so it’s warm. Oh, and I didn’t have any vermouth or olives, so I’m chasing it with a Miller Lite. It’s sort of an Irish martini, but still, it’s getting me in the mood for this Saturday night.
Mmm. I can imagine it now (insert weird imagination music). I’m wearing a sharkskin suit and my hair appears to have been recently combed with freshly buttered toast. Chicks dig this because it’s the early ‘60s. I’m in Vegas at The Sands—private table, natch—and Sinatra is feigning drunken disorientation from the stage when he quips to the audience (while making direct eye contact with me …weird), “How’d all these people get into my room?”
Ha ha! I don’t know, Frank, you old dog!
Is this what it’ll be like at Swingin’ with Sinatra? I’m not sure, so I call Mary “Triple Threat” Meserve, who wrote, produced, and directed this bio-play. I don’t even have to ask Mary a question. She just starts talking.
Mary gets pretty excited about this stuff. She really likes the research part of her job, and she tells me about how Frank, “that skinny little guy,” was born a whopping 13 pounds, and he was stillborn because the doctor had to pull him out with forceps and mangled his face, and then something about a nurse dipping him in ice water and he “came to life crying.” Then there’s something about Frank’s mom doing illegal abortions for neighborhood girls and getting in trouble. It’s all in the show, she promises.
I actually have a weird fascination with Sinatra that has nothing to do with my childhood fantasies about his daughter, whose boots were made for walking (hubba hubba!), and even less to do with that biography from Sinatra’s old valet, who claimed Frank’s frankfurter was a foot long and plumped when you cooked it. It’s bigger than his songbook! No, mine is more of an Ocean’s Eleven, everything comes easy, hey-I-get-to-sleep-with-Ava-Gardner sort of fascination, and it’s reflected in the Frank Sinatra section of my record collection.
If you stacked all my records on top of each other, I’d have a not-too-shabby 15-foot stack. But a full 6-inches—about half the purported size of Frank’s schlong—is all Sinatra, 29 albums in all, three of them double albums.
The man knew how to swing, and that’s what I plan to do this Saturday, this time with a real martini.
Glen Starkey takes a beating and keeps on bleating. Contact him at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
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