Dean's World

My good friend Paul Burgess recently sent me an extraordinarily beautiful birthday gift: Songs In The Key Of Life by Stevie Wonder. I'm listening to it as I type this. I've been meaning to get this for myself for years Paul, so thank you.

As odd as it sounds, until I got this I had never realized that "Isn't She Lovely" is about Stevie's newborn daughter. That has to make it one of the most beautiful pop songs of all time.

I also received an enormously wonderful collection of gifts from mi hermano Valentin Prieto

Val sent me two t-shirts with the Babalublog logo, one perfectly sized for me and one perfectly sized for The Queen. We both put them on immediately. We'll probably put some pictures up next week some time. He also sent me some delicious Cuban pastelitos, and some Cuban-made (and legal) cigars which smell delicious and which I anticipate savoring very soon.

When I got Val's gift I thought of something I saw a few years ago on, of all places, the cable channel Nickelodeon. They used to feature something called "Nick At Night," where they'd run old TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s. One night they were doing an "I Love Lucy" marathon in which they ran not just old episodes of the show but also rarely-seen footage of Lucy and Desi. One night they showed some footage from around 1959 or 1960 with a bunch of celebrities in front of a live studio audience who were doing a tribute to Desi Arnaz.

It wasn't an episode of "I Love Lucy," it was just celebrities sitting around and talking about Desi and how much they loved him--again, this was maybe 1959, 1960, somewhere around there, all in black and white.

It is a strange thing about history that most people think of Desi Arnaz as no more than Lucille Ball's straight man. Of course he was Lucy's straight man, but anyone who knows comedy knows something else: the straight man is almost always the most important member of a comedy duo. And truth to tell, Desi was one of the greatest straight men who ever lived.

But Desi Arnaz was still more than that. He was a great musician. Seriously, he wasn't just a bongo player, he was a very serious musician. But even more than that, he was one of television's greatest innovators. Most people don't understand this about him, but he was the first person to produce TV shows that were filmed and then edited. He was also the first person in television to use not just one camera but three, cutting and splicing to produce a seamless presentation.

Furthermore--and this is no exaggeration--Desi Arnaz created what we call "the situation comedy," aka "the sitcom." Say whatever you like about that format, its limitations and stereotypes and weaknesses, but Desi Arnaz invented the situation comedy.

A couple of years ago, mi hermano Val told me he wanted to set up a weblog to celebrate Cuban heritage and to promote the idea of Cuban freedom. I was more than happy to help him set one up. Val had a frustration though: what would he call it?

I suggested something that would celebrate the great Desi Arnaz. Val loved it, but he worried that it would seem stereotyped. I knew where he was coming from on that. Indeed, one thing that has always annoyed me is how often people stereotype Cubans as either pinstriped, fedora-wearing gangsters or as "Lucy's husband." Val and I talked about it several times, and went back and forth on the name for his blog, and finally Val just said, "Screw it. Let's call it the Babalu blog. People who don't get it will never get it, and Desi was the bomb."

So Babalublog was born. It became an island of freedom on the web without a bearded dictator.

And this gets back to that get-together of Hollywood celebrities who were celebrating Desi Arnaz and saying wonderful things about him. Near the end, Desi got up on the dais and thanked everyone for saying so many wonderful things about him. He spoke of how he, a poor Cuban immigrant with no money in his pocket, absolutely nothing but a pair of bongos and a desire to succeed, had been welcomed into America's bosom. He spoke of how no one cared where he'd been born or what language he spoke, they just gave him every opportunity to be who he was and to follow his dreams.

Then, just like the Latino he was, he began to choke up as he thanked America for opening her arms to him.... and his wife looked up and him and, saying nothing, grasped his hand in pride.

Desi Arnaz was a great Cuban. He was also one of America's most beloved sons.

Viva Desi. Viva Babalublog. Viva Cuba libre!