< ned > the autumn of his years

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He is either 82 or 115 now, depending upon whom you believe, and doesn’t perform even in private anymore, but only in solitude, and then only impersonations. His Walter Brennan is said by those who’ve seen it to be utterly hysterical, his Schwarzenegger less so, but of course he’s had far fewer years to work on it. He and his wife, the former Barbara Marx, Karl’s widow, play a little shuffleboard when he’s up to it, and some hearts if old friends like the late Sammy Davis Jr. and Maya Angelou drop by. He makes an occasional mental note to have Jilly Rizzo dislocate the kneecaps of the little Jewboy punk who blew the whistle on the incestuous subtext of his and daughter Nancy’s 1966 hit “Something Stupid,” and keeps his record 751 Grammy awards so shiny that you could tweeze your own eyebrows in them.

He continues to make many of his own heart-healthy, lo-fat vegetarian meals, but mostly the so-called Chairman of the Board reminisces. He kicks off his flipflops if he has the strength, smokes cigarette after cigarette after cigarette in spite of his physicians’ stern admonitions, and remembers how it felt to make love to Ava Gardner, Eva Gabor, Eva Peron, Eva Braun, Mia Farrow, and, more recently, Alicia Silverstone, Winona Ryder, and the post-feminist author Elizabeth Wurzel, the latter two simultaneously. Closing his famously blue eyes and sipping his Bud Lite, he can almost feel the late Nancy Reagan’s nimble tongue in his mind’s left ear, can nearly hear Angie Dickinson’s husky cooing in his right. Doing so, though, he is not reminded of the famous cartoons of the era during which young women in bobby sox precociously had his name tattooed on their tongues, cartoons in which two miniature versions of Goofy, for instance, would try to coax him into opposite moral choices. Trying to watch a tape of The Godfather, in which he was portrayed by Al Martino, but not really, he is nonplussed to discover that Babs has taped a cooking show over his favorite part, that in which Marlon Brando disgustedly scolds Al for being a wuss unfit to march in the big Columbus Day parade down Main Street.

“Frank, honey,” Babs will occasionally call to him as he attempts a bowel movement, her voice clotted with concern, “are you all right in there?” He has always cherished his privacy at such moments, and Barbara’s intrusions, be they with his wellbeing in mind or otherwise, invariably irk him. The couple’s MFCC is on record as having suggested that Frank post a sign on his bathroom door reminding Babs of his low threshold for embarrassment, but he let the last of his writers go months and months and months ago, in ’86 or something, and isn’t about to start doing his own writing, not at his age. It’s all about self-respect, self-respect and his inability to master the word processing program that came “bundled” with his and Babs’ PC. He doubts that that SOB Tommy Dorsey would have done any better.

He is said to enjoy gangsta rap even less than he enjoyed rock and roll in its early days, but that doesn’t preclude his playing tennis with one or both of the Ices, Cube and T, a couple of times a month. He also runs an occasional marathon and reads aloud about the American Civil War; he is thought to find something inherently soothing about the names of the great conflict’s principal battlegrounds. He dotes on his albino Lhasa Apsos, Eternity and Joey Bishop, and still hasn’t forgiven the Kennedys, though he can’t recall for what.

As his days grow short in this, the very, very, very late autumn of his years, he is thought not to be preoccupied with his place in musical history, even though Nancy lacks the pipes to manage an effective posthumous duet with him, as Natalie Cole did with Nat “King,” and to be considering converting to Judaism. Sometimes his depression is such that he doesn’t even bother putting on his toupee. On such occasions he will commonly try to hoodwink Eternity or Joey Bishop into thinking it’s edible. Doing so usually makes him laugh, and at Frank Sinatra’s age, even if it’s the younger one, laughter is probably the best medicine.




		He is either 82 or 115 now, depending upon whom you believe, and doesn’t perform even in private anymore, but only in solitude, and then only impersonations. His Walter Brennan is said by those who’ve seen it to be utterly hysterical, his Schwarzenegger less so, but of course he’s had far fewer years to work on it. He and his wife, the former Barbara Marx, Karl’s widow, play a little shuffleboard when he’s up to it, and some hearts if old friends like the late Sammy Davis Jr. and Maya Angelou drop by. He makes an occasional mental note to have Jilly Rizzo dislocate the kneecaps of the little Jewboy punk who blew the whistle on the incestuous subtext of his and daughter Nancy’s 1966 hit “Something Stupid,” and keeps his record 751 Grammy awards so shiny that you could tweeze your own eyebrows in them. He continues to make many of his own heart-healthy, lo-fat vegetarian meals, but mostly the so-called Chairman of the Board reminisces. He kicks off his flipflops if he has the strength, smokes cigarette after cigarette after cigarette in spite of his physicians’ stern admonitions, and remembers how it felt to make love to Ava Gardner, Eva Gabor, Eva Peron, Eva Braun, Mia Farrow, and, more recently, Alicia Silverstone, Winona Ryder, and the post-feminist author Elizabeth Wurzel, the latter two simultaneously. Closing his famously blue eyes and sipping his Bud Lite, he can almost feel the late Nancy Reagan’s nimble tongue in his mind’s left ear, can nearly hear Angie Dickinson’s husky cooing in his right. Doing so, though, he is not reminded of the famous cartoons of the era during which young women in bobby sox precociously had his name tattooed on their tongues, cartoons in which two miniature versions of Goofy, for instance, would try to coax him into opposite moral choices. Trying to watch a tape of The Godfather, in which he was portrayed by Al Martino, but not really, he is nonplussed to discover that Babs has taped a cooking show over his favorite part, that in which Marlon Brando disgustedly scolds Al for being a wuss unfit to march in the big Columbus Day parade down Main Street. “Frank, honey,” Babs will occasionally call to him as he attempts a bowel movement, her voice clotted with concern, “are you all right in there?” He has always cherished his privacy at such moments, and Barbara’s intrusions, be they with his wellbeing in mind or otherwise, invariably irk him. The couple’s MFCC is on record as having suggested that Frank post a sign on his bathroom door reminding Babs of his low threshold for embarrassment, but he let the last of his writers go months and months and months ago, in ’86 or something, and isn’t about to start doing his own writing, not at his age. It’s all about self-respect, self-respect and his inability to master the word processing program that came “bundled” with his and Babs’ PC. He doubts that that SOB Tommy Dorsey would have done any better. He is said to enjoy gangsta rap even less than he enjoyed rock and roll in its early days, but that doesn’t preclude his playing tennis with one or both of the Ices, Cube and T, a couple of times a month. He also runs an occasional marathon and reads aloud about the American Civil War; he is thought to find something inherently soothing about the names of the great conflict’s principal battlegrounds. He dotes on his albino Lhasa Apsos, Eternity and Joey Bishop, and still hasn’t forgiven the Kennedys, though he can’t recall for what. As his days grow short in this, the very, very, very late autumn of his years, he is thought not to be preoccupied with his place in musical history, even though Nancy lacks the pipes to manage an effective posthumous duet with him, as Natalie Cole did with Nat “King,” and to be considering converting to Judaism. Sometimes his depression is such that he doesn’t even bother putting on his toupee. On such occasions he will commonly try to hoodwink Eternity or Joey Bishop into thinking it’s edible. Doing so usually makes him laugh, and at Frank Sinatra’s age, even if it’s the younger one, laughter is probably the best medicine.