The Wizards of Id

By David Rakoff

Jun 13, 1997 | lifestyle features have heralded the Return of the Swinger and the End of Moderation for the better part of two years now. Apparently, collectively weary from decades of having to watch what we eat, smoke, drink and most especially say, "we" are returning to a simpler time of boomerang coffee tables and pupu platters. A time when, at worst, "Mad Cow" was a frothy drink for the ladies. A time when chicks knew how to shut up and cats "swung." Think back to the old "What kind of man reads Playboy?" ads; high fidelity systems, scotch, Sulka dressing gowns, the work of Leroy Niemann, etc.

Restaurants featuring smoking areas with cute, retro names like the Havana Room -- I'm still waiting for the Missiles of October Lounge -- are springing up like mushrooms, or rather, metastatic tumors. Even my formerly staid neighborhood, once the elegant home to Washington Irving, New York's only private park and the charmingly prim National Arts Club, is rank with the smell of the Death of Restraint: prime rib, Bombay Sapphire, Ketel One, tobacco and, of course, the unfortunate result of all of these at the end of a long evening, vomit.

I hate the Nouveau Swingerati. I will freely admit it. I quite enjoy a good martini, and will occasionally still take one in the privacy of my own home, although I'd sooner eat glass than be seen drinking one in public. I am also fairly obsessed with Frank Sinatra. I know the words to most of his songs and can emulate the phrasing on the important recordings more than passably well, not to mention sing both the Betty Garrett and Frankie parts of "Let's Go to My Place" from "On the Town," thank you very much. But you won't catch me out in public singing "Angel Eyes" while swirling an olive through my gin.

Swingers have ruined my life. The martini is now tied with the cell phone as the leading semaphore for "Hello, I'm a schmuck." (The cigar, it should be noted, is something entirely more direct than a mere semaphore). And my beloved Frank has been co-opted as the god of Cool by precisely the kind of thick-necked douche bags I've spent my entire life assiduously avoiding. Not yet even dead, Frank hovers, shimmering perpetually above us all, like a beacon, like Noah's Dove.

So, it was with a mixture of trepidation and the anticipatory bloodlust of a hatchet job that I went to the Museum of Television and Radio to see "The Rat Pack Captured," a 90-minute version of a recently discovered 1965 kinescope of a benefit concert by Frank, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., hosted by Johnny Carson -- allegedly the only known video recording of an entire Rat Pack performance.

Next Page: A caricature of dissipation; shiny-faced, eyes lowered to half-mast, beatifically stoned

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