Last Saturday Shal and I attended a Memorial service for Gene Scott, Shal's former boss and founder of Tennis Week magazine. It was at a church on the Upper East Side and was attended by thousands. There were only five speakers and two of them were John McEnroe and Billy Jean King. That was cool but not very emotional. Then Mrs. Scott and her two children took to the podium. The wife I'm guessing is in her 40's, the son is 9 years old, and the daughter is 11. After the wife spoke, the children took turns reading from a list of "Why we love our Dad". Holy fucking heart-breaking. Not a dry eye in the house. A man passed out near the front and had to be carried out by six other people. It was a very refined, WASPish affair, so everyone did their best to hold it together. It was literally exhausting. At the conclusion of the event, Shallon and I high-tailed it back to Hoboken and spent the rest of the day getting shitty. Really the only way to deal with it. I plan on writing more about funerals tomorrow, but it feels disrespectful to include it here.
Here is a link to his obituary.
http://www.sportsmediainc.com/tennisweek/index.cfm?func=showarticle&newsid=14974&bannerregion=
This prompted me to repost an old email I wrote pre-blog. This email was originally written in August 2000. I'm posting it unedited.
Last night Shallon took me to the Roger Smith Hotel in the city for the
opening night of Artennis, an art exhibit for charity put on by her former
boss at Tennis Week. It was in the penthouse and a pretty fancy gig (I even
wore a suit), with the obligatory wine and hors' douvres (I have no idea how
to spell that, but Tom, it's a fancy word for appetizers). John McEnroe was
there for about twenty minutes, wearing a Stanford b-ball cap, shorts, and a
tee-shirt, but he's really rich and famous, so what can you do? The
nuveau-rich can be so crass. Anyway, he sure as shit didn't talk with me,
but we were next to him when he saw a portrait of himself done by Tico
Torres, who is the drummer of Metallica, I think. McEnroe HATED it, but
such is the life of a rock superstar. As McEnroe left, George Plympton
walks in. (FYI: He's a writer, mostly sports related, but quite famous in
those circles. Always on TV for one thing or another.) I'm standing with
Shallon and Heather (sexy redhead, used to live with Shallon on Monroe St.)
and they insist I talk to him. I freeze up cause I don't want to bug him,
so they call him over. I open up with a little discussion about Sid Finch,
the fictional pitcher for the Met's that he did an April Fools story about
for Sports Illustrated 15 years ago, and just recently re-visited in the
"Where are they now?" issue of SI about a month ago. I am on! I know all
about Sid Finch because I thought it was hysterical then and now. English
born, raised by Tibetan monks, throws 168 mph while wearing one boot, and I
remember talking with my father about whether or not it was a goof (Hi
Dad!). So I buttered up Mr. Plympton and then got down to brass tacks: His
long realtionship with my hero, Dr. Gonzo himself, Hunter S. Thompson!
Boom! He just got back from Owl Ranch, Aspen, CO, where he had been
interviewing HTS. We talk for almost twenty minutes about HTS, and various
misadventures they had together. He said the interview earlier this week
went on for 24 hours straight! He was cracking up talking about the tapes
of the interview, cause all you can hear in the backgroud is "hacking coughs
from the hashish pipes and marijuana cigarettes, the clinking of ice from
HTS's glass of Wild Turkey, and the sound of, eh, inhaling nasally of
various recreational drugs." I was in heaven, and needless to say made a
brief but unsucessful inquiry as to how I could hear such tapes. He went on
to talk about midnight golfing with HTS about 15 years ago under the
influence of "various recreational drugs". He said they could never find
their balls but it was the funniest thing he'd ever done, until HTS pulled a
shotgun out of his golf bag! He implied things got pretty horrofic after
that...There is a lot more to this part of the story, but those are the
highlights. He left shortly after that and we raided the red wine and
munchies. As a coup de grace (Tom, it's like saying the "icing on the
cake") for the evening, I was invovled in a discussion with the remaining
folks left at the party, and the woman who designed the display held the
floor. She was mid- to late- 20's with long, straight black hair, a black
low cut blouse, and black leather skirt. She was talking about how a writer
described her as a "Junior Morticia Adams", and she complained that she had
no where enough of a chest for that description (she didn't). She went into
this rap a second time and gestured to her chest as she did so. Not missing
a beat and without even thinking, I respond, "Well, that must be the junior
part." Pause. Everyone cracks up, I'm turning beat red and can't believe I
said this. Shallon's former Boss and wife, who are very elegant, high
society people, laughed the loudest, thank God, and I was not man handled
out of the party, as is so often the case. The night ended with me being
accosted by a Nigerian man in a white robe, who I believed to be drunk, but
it may have been his accent. He claimed to be fast friends with Shallon and
knew alll about me. It took about five minutes for me to extract my hand
from his, and ruined my gracefully departure, but hey, it was a hell of a
night. Best wishes all, Jay
4/6/06 Holy run-on sentences! I promise more tomorrow concerning the various styles of funerals, memorials, and burials/cremations. I hope to make it funny and not as morbid as that last sentence would imply. Cheers Motherfuckers!
