The Art of the MF: Dean Martin by Raymond Embrack

Hey pallies, likes how totally rad is this dudes. Likes in just the last 10 minutes I was googlin' the last's days worth of Dino-mentions in blogs, when I came across a post mentionin' our most beloved Dino and Mr. Tony Franciosa and since Dino and Tony both played Matt Helm (Tony on TV), I thought likes it might be quite a cool Dino-reference. But, likes when I gots to the pad...for some reason the post did not exist...perhaps the blogger was reworkin' it.

Anywho, likes I thought that I recognized the pix of the blogger dude and well as his tag, so likes I decided to search the blog to see if likes he had any other Dino-prose. Likes was I totally totally thrilled pallies that the blogger, none other then famous and great novelist, Mr. Raymond Embrack, had a stunnin' September 2011 post not only puttin' the accent on our King of Cool in the coolest, hippest, and randiest way possible, likes it also gave a special nod to likes our humble little ilovedinomartin blog.....now how amazin' is that! And, the ilovedinomartin Dino-gram Embrack refers to was posted way back in 2008.

So below, from the self tagged blog, "Rayond Embrack," are his humblin' honorin' words 'bout our simple little Dino-blog, as well as his amazin' Dino-essay first appearin' here on Thursday, November 06, 2008 as, "Dinoinsights collected from the internet by Raymond Embrack." Embrack's Dino-perspective is as deep and dark and true as when he first scribed 'em. Enjoys 'gain or for the first time, "The Art of the MF: Dean Martin."

Mr. Embrack, so sorry it has taken me so long to find and share your kind words for ilovedinomartin, but know our deep Dino-appreciato for puttin' your readership on to our little bit of Dino-devotion here on the 'net. And, pallies, likes to read this in it's original format at Embrack's blog, simply clicks on the tag of this here Dino-report. Dino-always, ever, and only, DMP

Friday, September 30, 2011

The Art of the MF: Dean Martin

In 2008 I had the honor of having a blog post picked up by a blog devoted to Dean Martin. The post was a montage of choice writings about Dino I had collected. You can dig the post at the link below. You can go to the site's front page by clicking Dino himself.

http://ilovedinomartin.blogspot.com/2008/11/dinoinsighted-collected-from-internet.html




On that same night of July 13, as Kennedy's nomination was being announced, Dean opened at the Sands."I'd like to tell you some of the good things the Mafia is doing," he said. There was a momentary hush, then a long, slow wave of rising laughter.


Dean Martin did what he wanted -- drink, screw around, play golf, make a bundle. He took plenty from everyone and didn't give back much but a kind of low-level radiance. He was a gambler, yes, but even more a dealer. I control your destiny and I don't give a damn.


In its way, Martin's is an exemplary American story: how to succeed without really caring. And America loved the ease with which he held an audience, even if he held it in contempt. But is this an exemplary life? Is Dino worthy of Nick Tosches' big, reckless new book?


Biography usually quests for an existence that makes a difference. Dean's specialty was indifference. His TV show was flash encircling stupor: the Golddigger chorines did their cooch; the cue-card girl had the script written on her bare midriff. And in the middle, so laid-back as to be supine, was Dino -- on the cutting edge of lumpen-American mediocrity.


This is just what Tosches sees as crucial in Martin's life: that he was the signal showman of an America that was "fulfilling its destiny as the chrome-crowned glory of post- literate, polyvinyl civilization." Dino was what we wanted and deserved. Just about everybody liked Martin but, as Dino warned a TV producer, "nobody gets to know me." Even Martin's most expert appraiser, his long-suffering wife Jeannie, says he's an enigma. "He's either the most complex man imaginable or the simplest," she tells Tosches. "There's either nothing under there or too much."


Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, in emptiness itself.


First of all, Dean Martin was Italian and, if you don't think that's a big deal, you must be Sicilian. I learned a couple of very interesting Italian things from "Dino." Like, right here - I can't believe I never heard of this before - "Lontananza", that's the Italian word for the distance a guy keeps from other guys cause other guys . . . Well, what fuckin' good are they? Who the hell needs em?


"The sum of Dino's instinct had to do with the old ways, those ways that were like a wall, ways that kept the world lontano , as the mafiosi would say: distant, safe, and wisely at bay."I learnt another good Italian word from this book - Menefreghismo, the quality of a Menefreghista - "one who simply did not give a fuck"!


Dean Martin was the ultimate Menefreghista. "One wondered, watching Dean," a critic wrote "whether he cared whether his show went over or not." Yeah, who gives a fuck about these silly ass songs and this crappy show in this slimeball nightclub? How else could a guy as cool as Dean be in the same act as a doof like Jerry Lewis? "Yeah, go right ahead and come into the club dressed up as a waiter and spill a tray full of drinks right in the middle of my goddam song - I could give a rat's ass what you do."


Still, no one filled or fulfilled Dean; as Jeannie Martin notes, "He was always content in a void." Eventually the drunk act ceased to be an act. His chilling apathy is the only bodyguard he needs.
Posted by Embrack at 7:08 PM