The Best I Can

Following the Heard - 2010

2010-12-19T18:20:00.003-06:00

Put it all out on 8tracks for you to enjoy: the music heard in 2010 I found most worth listening to again. The cover's above and the links are below:

Part A
Part B

What's for dinner

2010-09-14T18:40:00.000-05:00

2010-09-04T08:25:00.003-05:00

What?

Chill

2010-06-22T07:50:00.000-05:00

Multimedia message

2010-05-21T12:11:00.002-05:00

Moblog of blog

FW:

2010-03-28T16:49:00.002-05:00

Oh this should be good!

The Black Cat

2009-10-24T10:58:00.016-05:00

"This is a tricky house," says the honeymooning husband, Peter, no apostle, but a mystery writer (or should I say "writer of mysteries"?) hunkered down in Hungary in the house redesigned, rebuilt, upon the remains of a fortress lost in great battle and the thousands of bodies given up their lives in the loss -- a stage manufactured in all senses by the Bauhausian engineer Hjalmar Poelzig. Peter comes to his tricky conclusion without having yet experienced the lower levels of the tower. Before the aforementioned battle the tower served as gun turret, now it holds the strange scene you see at the top of this posting.

What for the huge piece of graph paper attached to the wall – used in guiding the missiles? How floats the woman? Why does Bela (call him here “Dr. Vitus Wedergast” though you could never pronounce it in just the same perfect way the former count can when first we meet him in this film) Lugosi recoil in horror? Is it the woman? The shadow of the cat? Or, is the reaction no acting but a real revulsion toward Karloff, who plays Poelzig, who gets top billing though he’s only the heavy. (“Here comes the heavy,” he reportedly would say during the filming before he made each entrance.)

The scene always lingers somewhere in my mind, in the place reserved for favorites: My favorite Bela Lugosi vs. Boris Karloff film, possibly because it was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer -- who had a scary story of his own, which I will relate some time soon. To view the entire film above in a larger frame, go to the Internet Archive where this admittedly-murky print is housed.

Nothing really here to see of Edgar Allen Poe's original story, except perhaps for the spirit of perverseness... or in honor of Poe and this particular story I should most definitely type PERVERSENESS.

"Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart -- one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself -- to offer violence to its own nature -- to do wrong for the wrong's sake only -- that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree -- hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart -- hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence -- hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin -- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it -- if such a thing were possible -- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."

Click this here underlined phrase to hear "The Raven" album by Lou Reed -- a peculiar and sometimes-difficult piece of work, Reed putting to music his interpretations and sometimes rewritings of Poe. Much of the blocked quote above is used in "I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)" and the spirit of PERVERSENESS made more convincing with backing vocals by the Blind Boys of Alabama. Listen to it at the link above and come back when you can.

While you are gone: What you've seen so far in this posting remains rough and I will keep coming back in your absence with additions, with new thoughts to smooth out the inconsistencies. A new way of doing things here, but perhaps just another example of what we call PERVERSENESS.

Doorway to the Unknown

2009-10-07T08:16:00.001-05:00

As long as you live...

2009-09-15T12:08:00.002-05:00

"Remember this as long as you live: whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people...anyone who tries to tell you that a man can't be a good American because he's a Catholic or a Jew, a Protestant or whatever: you can be pretty sure he's a rotten American himself. Not only a rotten American, but a rotten human being! Don't ever forget that!"

So spoke Superman, warning youngsters about the so-called "Guardians of America" in a story entitled "The Hate Mongers Organization", from the Superman radio show in 1946, as quoted in the excellent new book "Flights of Fantasy -- The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV's Adventures of Superman" by Michael J. Hayde.

Following the Heard - 2009 continues

2009-07-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

Blink of an Eye

2009-06-17T09:01:00.005-05:00

It's been much longer than I thought. You've been patient about the recent sparse postings, so how about a nice reward -- a free and legal show of the Waco Brothers at The Hideout in Chicago? It's courtesy of the band themselves and the Internet Archive ...

The Wacos are a so-called "alternative country" group created by The Mekons' Jon Langford. This may help some people: think of how The Clash would sound if they explored country music instead of dub or rap in 1980. Or, how about just taking a listen by clicking the 'play' arrow on the bar below? Once you've enjoyed the show (and you will) you can get more of their stuff here...

See the possibilities

2009-05-22T07:00:00.001-05:00

Rut = Row

2009-05-14T06:52:00.002-05:00

Harmony out of Memory Land

2009-05-13T06:51:00.003-05:00

Woke up to the refrain of Ted Lewis singing his hit from the 1920s, "Walking Around In A Dream", and though I can't yet find a legally-shareable clip of the song itself, I ran across a 1929 clip of Lewis and his band which you may view below.

Yes, that's Noah Beery as the Big Pirate in the scene. It was part of Warner Brothers 1929 revue "The Show of Shows" reportedly largely lost, except for clips like this. I'll have to see what else I can find of it on the YouTube.

The Invention of "What"

2009-05-12T07:00:00.005-05:00

My reasons for posting the following are not yet fully-formed in my mind. Take it then at your own leisure, at your own pace.

From Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air":

"...in Priestley's age at least, leisure time was where ideas happened. You can't dabble in scientific experiments when you've got to use all your cognitive resources just to put food on the table, or when you don't even have a table to put the food on. Priestley was a professional minister and educator, in that he was paid directly for those labors, but in some fundamental sense he was an amateur scientist, particularly through the first two decades of his life. Like most of his Enlightenment-era peers, he was a hobbyist where science was concerned."

Priestley reached the top of Maslow's pyramid. His journey unburdened by worries about his next meal or the roof over his head; someone is paying him to think and to pass on knowledge. The latter action made Priestley something to talk about, as well. Though he was mistaken in some of his beliefs, he expended energy in putting his true and false thoughts to paper and mailing them to friends and associates around the world, including Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's thoughts on sharing information could be best said in his own words (quoted by Johnson in "Invention").

"These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, 'till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occassion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher."

This sounds much like what we see going around the Internet -- on blogs, and comments, and discussion groups -- the sharing of thoughts and ideas in various stages of completeness and validity. Much like this post here. My own leisure time for the day is at an end and I must now click 'publish post' but will return tomorrow with more stuff.

Good Samaratinism

2009-05-11T07:23:00.004-05:00

The adventurer Doc Savage and his men, after keeping the pirate Tom Too from taking over the Luzon Union, leave behind a legacy for the country, The Savage Memorial Hospital. "The institution was to operate always under one inflexible rule -- payment from no one but those who could afford it."

Thus ended another rousing adventure in Doc Savage magazine, "Pirate of the Pacific" by Lester Dent, cover-dated July 1933, only a few months after what many consider the absolute nadir of the Great Depression. Roosevelt had been President for only a few months, as well. I've been trying to find if their philanthropy carries some special classification in economic terms. It's not charity because it's not giving services away to everyone, just helping those who need it. “Good Samaratinism”, perhaps?

This year and its economic problems brought out similar good Samaratinism in people from different fields...

In restaurants, we've got: The S.A.M.E. Cafe in Denver, a restaurant with a priceless menu -- priceless in that there are no prices on the menu's items. They ask that patrons pay what they can afford for the meal, stating that everyone deserves the same service, the same quality of food, no matter their economic circumstances. "S.A.M.E." stands for "So All May Eat" and those with no money at all get the chance to work for the meal -- serving, cleaning, etc. The food itself comes from the high-end of the culinary world (spinach souffle instead of cold beans). It's not a soup kitchen, with dignity for the food as well as the customers. NBC ran a spot on it, which you can view here.

In the field of Medicine, we have news of doctors offering their regular patients one free preventive visit per year.

And this doctor who gives free treatment through 2009 for his patients who have lost their jobs.

If the economy continues to be depressing it's great comfort to realize the examples above are just the ones we've heard of, and that the reporting of their examples has undoubtedly led to the raising of other helping hands. It may not solve all the problems we've got, but it adds a little weight to the side that says that the problems are worth solving, that the human race is worth saving.

NOTE: The image above comes from the cover of a Doc Savage magazine reprint which you can purchase here.

Following the Heard - 2009 so far

2009-05-10T15:37:00.007-05:00

We're rapidly approaching the half-way mark of another year, and musically the tone feels kind of 1969, kind of 1979. Will 1989 and 1999 also make an appearance before we're through? Time of course may tell, but may not fully reveal itself until we're further down the road. Just glad we've got another Marianne Faithfull disc. Dylan's on sale again too, and sounds like he's continuing the fine form of his other 21st century discs, and will undoubtedly appear here in another few months.

Here's the rundown:

1) What's In the Middle - The Bird And The Bee
2) Lucid Dreams - Franz Ferdinand
3) Keep The Streets Empty For Me - Fever Ray
4) The Brave and The Snake - P.O.S.
5) Bang Bang - K'naan
6) Cost of Living - Living Things
7) Straight to Hell - Lily Allen (featuring Mick Jones)
8) Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9) Heartbroken, in Disrepair - Dan Auerbach
10) Hold On Hold On - Marianne Faithfull
11) Bozos - Amadou & Mariam
12) Middle Cyclone - Neko Case
13) Nothing Seems The Same - Heartless Bastards
14) Gasoline and Matches - Buddy & Julie Miller
15) Right Side Of My Brain - The-Dream
16) Happy House - The Juan MacLean
17) The Loneliness of Magnets - The Handsome Family

If you'd rather hear the songs, than just read about them, check out a version of this mix on my 8tracks.com site here...

Further on up he rode

2009-05-05T08:16:00.001-05:00

It did not take me a month to get this much further into Forest Park (far further than I have ever rode before) but it took me that long to finally blog about it. Stephen Berlin Johnson's new book, "The Invention of Air" is correct about the importance of Leisure Time and I hope to have enough of it soon to continue recording these adventures.

Two-tired

2009-04-04T13:16:00.002-05:00

Excitingly, exceedingly, exhausted ... my first trip of the season out on the bike and made it all the way to WU. Unfortunately this is only a quarter of my trip!

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho

2009-02-17T21:17:00.006-06:00

During the usual wait for the first of several traffic lights to change my way one morning I noticed a lackadaisical fellow loping along at his own westward pace – a very slow pace considering the cold and his lack of coat, but one with a purpose slightly skewed from those more often adhered to during a rush hour in February. He was playing a slide flute and, by the way that he walked, whistling with it an uncommonly slow march. Could not hear it over the music I had blasting behind my rolled-tight windows, but though the beat seemed more of a dirge, the pleased expression on his hairy unkempt face sang otherwise. His big blue eyes saw warmth and joy, somewhere, and he did not care how long the journey, or how cold the morning light

Several long blocks westward I came to another light and stopped, about to look back in my side view mirror to see if the sliding flautist still marched my way, when another marcher came to view a block or so ahead. Another marcher, yes, but one driven eastward by different beats and a definite purpose, of places to be, dressed neatly, sharply, in brown camouflage fatigues. Despite his well-defined manner, his location and neighborhood made it more likely he was home on leave and keeping fit, adhering to his own daily rush hour of regimen.

My light changed and, before I reached the next one, I thought about what would happen when the joyful jaunt of my first marcher crossed paths with that of the second.

A few days later I sat at the light, going home from work: Pony-tailed runner with wrap-around sideburns jogged a pretty fast pace westward down the street, head back, eyes in a half-squint into the sun. He wore red white and blue sweats. Ahead of him another guy -- with a flute, a regular silver flute. His hair was also long, (but loose) and he wore a long-sleeve crazy paisley printed dress-shirt and jeans, hiking boots, clomping along as he too ran into the sun. His pace kept him -ahead- of the sweat-suit runner and he blew his flute the whole time. I rolled down my window, to see what I could hear as they passed me by. It sounded not so much like a song; could make out only two notes up and down the scale, up and down, up and down, up and down and he continued to run, to keep ahead of the sweat suit. Up and down, up and down, then ahead of me, red turned to green and I lost my sight of them in my mirror, in the dusk.

If we were to call for help...

2009-01-30T13:24:00.017-06:00

A few years ago someone got in trouble over a fight at school. He was only five years old or so. The school asked him to write a short essay on what he did, why he did what he did and why he was sorry for what he did. So he did. And he signed the essay: Mothra.

Happy birthday to you, young Mothra! May you continue to fearlessly flap your wings towards the future...

Although it's not the birthday of the -original- Divine Moth, still in his egg in the picture above, now's as good a time as any to celebrate.

The music for this celebration comes from the same source as this posting's title: the Mothra song, originally performed by the Peanuts in 1961. Not many know the lyrics were in Malayan rather than Japanese.

Hear the songs here.

Stills from Mothra's first battle with Godzilla (along with the original Japanese trailer) reside here. Of course, there's the 90s version of the song from the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, put together with some of the big moth's greatest hits below...

Ten years later they redid the song again...check it out below. Still trying to find the first 1961 version, but you can enjoy it yourself if you will only give -in- to the song and see the movies.

Mothra is something you’re not really supposed to think about. It's something you just believe in -- a giant Tinkerbell who, in this case, can shoot rays from her antennae.

Let yourself go and fly away to a place where large graceful things can bring beauty and Armageddon-time destruction at once.

Yes, I believe a giant moth can fly, that it can fight off fierce fiery attacks from giant radioactive creatures of the deep, as well, and that somehow it finds time to save the planet and its children. If you’re lucky you can get a ride when the day is done. If you don’t believe, well, you might be too old. Too bad...

Listen To Me!

2009-01-24T11:40:00.017-06:00

The Neko Case posting below exposed me to some different ways of presenting music files to the blog -- legal ways, of course.

The link below will bring up an experiment I ran a couple of years ago with the Electroplankton music software for the Nintendo DS.

CAUTION: Laurie Anderson talked about "difficult listening music" in reference to tuneful works which might make you think. The thoughts engendered by listening to the following are probably less beneficial to the world at large.

Click this to hear my Electroplankton Experiment

More sophisticated use of the DS and Electroplankton can be found in the video below:

Or how about this use of the new Korg synthesizer software for the DS? Some might say it sucks...

...But not me!

BTW, both videos are the work of musician Jetdaisuke. More info here.

Their Dreams They Dreamed Awake

2009-01-24T10:48:00.007-06:00

If I'm doing this right, by posting the following link to a free MP3, five dollars will be donated to the Best Friends Animal Society. That's the deal for all bloggers.

Download at... http://www.anti.com/media/download/708

The MP3 would be worth -your- while, regardless of the charity, as it's Neko Case's new single -- People Got A Lotta Nerve -- from her upcoming album "Middle Cyclone" which you can pre-order here. Very glad to literally hear she's got something new in the works as it's been a long time since the New Pornographers (their New Challengers came out two years ago?) or her solo stuff (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was almost three years ago?). Hopefully she'll also make her way here for a show...!

The Spirit is Willing, but...

2009-01-04T10:57:00.010-06:00

The recent film of “The Spirit” is not really a story, to paraphrase the character's creator Will Eisner, “for little boys.” In other words, it is not for comic book fans who expect to see a faithful rendering of the Eisner classic strip. They really ought to know better. How many films based on comic book properties made it to the screen without revision and revamping? When will they learn?

Nevertheless, this type of revamping is sacrilege in some quarters. Those aware of comic book history revere Eisner, not just as an artist and writer who created his own characters – most notably, The Spirit – but who put a lot of thought into the form of the stories he put to paper. The limitless possibilities he saw of how to put together a story in comic book pages makes his work one of the few inarguable cornerstones of the industry.

What many forget is that the form itself in Eisner’s work more often than not overshadowed substance. Moreover, when Eisner went for the substance later on in life, trying to tell the Big Story with capitals B and S, he became to me a boring preacher instead of a stimulating artist. (Think Sullivan trying to make "O Brother Where Art Thou" instead of "Ants in Their Pants 1939"...)

For the star of this story: Eisner himself never really fleshed out the Spirit as a full-blown character, but rather used him as a tailor’s dummy on which to design his latest fashion. Mysteries, comedies, westerns, science fiction, combat, and romance: all fictional genres eventually made their way into the Spirit’s life “story.” The only constants: he got beat up a lot, he generally met incredibly motivated and beautiful women, and he always wore a blue mask and a red tie.

So here comes writer/director Frank Miller with his film revisioning of Eisner’s character. Miller is a successful comic book writer/artist, who not only knew Eisner well (a book of their conversations on the art of comics was published a while back) but who also creates stories of style over substance. His Sin City stories probably claim the largest fame -- best known by those not comic book fans -- as Robert Rodriguez made them into a largely successful film a couple of years ago.

To Miller’s credit, this is not Sin City II, and “The Spirit” is not a shot-by-shot recreation of Eisner’s stories. He has created a stimulating amalgamation of his work and Eisner’s and for frustratingly long moments in this film, it successfully wows us with a campy piece of visually entertaining work. Where it bogs down is in the all-too-frequent scenes where tedious dialogue goes on and on and on and on without much in the way of something visually interesting to sustain us.

That is the crime here and the root of my frustration. The entertaining parts are extremely entertaining, but because of the bad parts and the extremely bad reviews, not many will know that Miller, like Eisner’s Gerhard Shnobble, knew how to fly in this film. He just did not fly often enough.

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Will Eisner’s The Spirit, to see what all the fuss is about, pick-up “The Best of The Spirit”. It’s a decent sampler of his work with the character. If you would like to see a more successful comic book re-imagining of Eisner’s character, check out both Darwyn Cooke’s excellent modernization and Alan Moore’s “The New Adventures of The Spirit”.

p.p.s. Of course, any book links above should be ignored if you live in the St. Louis area. You don't need any links because you can more-easily visit the friendly folks at Starclipper (see link to the right) who, if they do not already have the books in stock, will be glad to place your order.

And now, we fly off with an Eisner-drawn Shnobble...

BONUS REVIEW: Writer/artist (and Will Eisner fan) Kyle Baker weighs in on the movie.

Things I Read Today

2008-12-10T18:17:00.022-06:00

Henning Nelms' "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers":
"The Japanese define an artist as 'one who has the ability to do more and the will to refrain.' This definition covers showmanship as well. Showmanship adds glamor and drama. However, if we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret."

***

William Gibson's "Spook Country":
"She was fascinated by how things worked in the world, and why people did them. When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself."

***

Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" (Issue #5):
"If your superheroes can't save you, maybe it's time to think of something that can. If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real ...

Was there ever a word you tried to imagine? The sort of word that could remind you who you truly were inside? Maybe it's more than a word ... it's a face, a scent, a voice. Like a memory of a place where someone cared only for you. A name."

What Have You Done?

2008-12-08T10:50:00.008-06:00

Twenty-eight years ago, when I heard a voice on the radio say "John Lennon is dead" ...

Instinctively I steered directly to my old job, to the student newspaper office at Illinois State, to see what I could find on the UPI wire machine and to help with whatever the staff was planning to run. There I met another friend who had the same idea. We were both townies, both still lived near after our respective college "careers," still kept in touch with the newspaper staff. Both of us puzzled at the emptiness of the front offices and the lack of activity in the production room, until the new editor came in. He guessed what we were there for, saying, "Yeah, we heard the news, but wanted to meet the printer's deadline."

1980 and things had changed before our eyes, those who came after had already chosen a new and unexpected path from our own. We would have run a special issue, "deadlines be damned," but these "kids" (three or four years our junior) were too young by birth to carry any unconditional love for Beatles. That's how it was in the those days: you were either old enough to remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show or you thought Paul McCartney was just the guy who had a band called Wings.

1980: To most of the disaffected youth we knew, Jimmy Carter gave peace a bad name in his failure to deal with pretty much everything, while Reagan picked up enough of those who still felt they had to care about something, coloring the campus world in hues far different from the post 60s era we tried fruitlessly to keep flowering. Hindsight shows a view of us being too busy with a culture we were too young for, that we never got around to making one pure of the past and unquestionably our own. What kind of youth movement revels in the past, instead of rejecting it? Or, is that the way it always appears to be from the outside?

Whatever the past, our future would be one without Lennon the man. His works, his words, his thoughts would continue and we could use whatever time was left to make some sense, something good with them.

So this is Christmas and what have you done?

Not done yet, John...

Leave your own memories here.

WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.

Following the Heard 2008 - the Finale

2008-12-04T19:27:00.010-06:00

Let's see how this finale to the year stands up with the two previous parts...

1) Angry*The Bug
2) The World Is Gone Wrong*BB King
3) You Only Live Twice*The Postmarks
4) I-Tunes Song*Homeboy Sandman
5) Kyotei Daiski (Favorite Games Mix)*Omodaka
6) Transformer*Marnie Stern
7) Clampdown*The Clash
8) Limbo*KatJonBand
9) Parisian Goldfish*Flying Lotus
10) Cobrastyle*Robyn
11) Never Give You Up*Raphael Saadiq
12) Sandcastle Disco*Solange
13) Riddle Me This*Aaron Parks
14) Official*Q-Tip
15) Live Your Life*T.I.
16) Folks*Mighty Underdogs
17) Harps & Angels*Randy Newman
18) That's Not My Name*The Ting Tings
19) Golden Age*TV on the Radio
20) Stop This World*Ne-Yo

Where'd everybody go?

2008-11-28T11:42:00.002-06:00

The day after thanksgiving ... across the street from where I've lived this last week...

Trouble with a Capital 'T'

2008-11-26T08:30:00.002-06:00

My backyard for the holiday ... better not get used to this kind of life.

Getting Home

2008-11-18T20:34:00.005-06:00

I got 'home' --the word -- on my phone ... thanks to the patient counsel of my godson. This post is the proof, so disregard my previous message. Home on the range. Give me a home. Almost home. Be it ever so humble...

Phone Good

2008-11-17T09:18:00.009-06:00

I've noticed a consistent problem pattern while learning how to text message with my LG phone. It uses the T9Abc mode, the so-called predictive mode that gives you the most common result for your pattern of keypunching -- for example, when I press 4-3-5-5-6 the word “Hello” appears.

The accuracy of the mode is very impressive. I also appreciate that the mind gets some type of exercise during composition of the most innocuous phrases, as well, when the word you want does not appear. You just have to come up with another word. However, I really wish I could type the word “home” – you know, like when you want to say, “I’ll be home, soon.” “Home” – pressing 4-6-6-3 -- always comes out “good”. “I’ll be home, soon” becomes “I’ll be good, soon.” “Call me when you get home” becomes “Call me when you get good.” “Are you home?” becomes “Are you good?”

Moreover, if it had been around during the Sammy Sosa/Mark McGwire baseball battles it would have been extremely inaccurate. “Home run” becomes “Good run.” Or Dorothy would have been texting over and over "There's no place like good. There's no place like good. There's no place like good."

What would E.T. have done with this? “Phone home" becomes “Phone good.” Sounds more like an endorsement of AT&T by the Frankenstein monster… but perhaps that is what this somehow has all been leading up to, another form of advertisement. “Phone good.”

Et Stew, Brute?

2008-11-15T17:48:00.005-06:00

Our second snow of the season means it is probably time to dust off the Crockpot again. The recipe to first strike my fancy this go-round is good old reliably-comfortable Beef Stew.

Not sure where the recipe came from, but it was handwritten off somewhere on the web before I had easy access to things like printers. If the original author finds it here, please let me know your identity so your due credit may be finally paid-off.

INGREDIENTS:
2 lbs. stew beef
¼ cup flour
1 tsp. paprika
4 lg. carrots
3 lg. potatoes
1 can condensed beef broth – 14.5 oz.
1 ½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 lg. onion
1 can tomato sauce – 8 oz.
1 small can mushrooms or a liberal amount of freshly sliced ones.

Cube up the potatoes -- after washing them -- and layer them in the bottom of the cooker, layer on top of that your sliced-up carrots. Cover that with the meat. Sprinkle the soy sauce, salt, paprika, pepper and flour next. Over that mixture spread out the onion which you’ve chopped. Then add the beef broth and tomato sauce. (If you’re using canned mushrooms, I usually put them last – if you’re using fresh mushrooms I usually put them on after the meat.)

Cover and cook on either the low setting from 7 to 8 hours or on the high setting from 4 to 5 hours.

Very different from my first stew made of Sunday pot roast leftovers when I was probably 7 or so years-old. Cubed up the roast beef and mixed it with the potatoes, carrots, and gravy, but realized there were not enough potatoes so I grabbed some from the bag in the pantry, cut them up and heated the mess together for my mother’s lunch.

People over 30 may realize what happened, may remember when potatoes in a bag usually came still covered with chunks of the earth in which they grew. Yes, I skipped the step of washing the potatoes first.

She took a bite, pulled a clump of dirt from her mouth, and told me about the pre-washing step. She also proceeded without complaint to clean out the bowl – except for the potatoes.

Buried Treasure

2008-11-12T10:42:00.010-06:00

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, more-familiarly known as "Bod", finds life in the graveyard – and finds life good. The graveyard is his whole world; where he plays with friends, where he sleeps in his adopted family’s home, where he learns what he needs to survive. His friends and family are the buried dead of the graveyard whose spirits live on eternally.

Orphaned as a toddler by a mysterious man named Jack, Bod grows up among the spirits and other beings (most especially his guardian, Silas) who watch over Bod, teach him their ways and, as best they can, the ways of the world outside the iron fence. Too soon for all concerned, the ways of that outside world intrude in a dangerous way and Bod must learn his final lesson from the spirits: how to live.

Author Neil Gaiman (Coraline and Stardust, among others) wrote this Young Adult fiction as a take on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. Being more familiar with the Disney cartoon than the actual stories, I do not find too many exact, one-to-one, characterizations here -- and that is not a bad thing at all. Sure, “Jack” is Shere Khan the Tiger, Silas is most-likely Bagheera, while Bod is, of course, Mowgli – but in the end, it does not matter.

Here is what matters:

Silas said, "Out there, the man who killed your family is, I believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you."

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes," Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

An exciting and clever book, nevertheless "The Graveyard Book" really won me over with its great heart and honesty. There is no sugarcoating the terror, and the trickster Bod often falls over his own faults. His foibles are not necessarily well-intentioned ones, either.

It is a book in which the experience of reading it winds up like life itself. At the end of our own time, many most likely do not want an end. We would want to keep going or sometimes would even want to start over. I felt a strong urge to start re-reading “The Graveyard Book” again at the end of the final page. If not for the fact it also makes me want to get out there and live even more. No time for someone else’s stories -- live your own.

I Believe I Can...

2008-11-11T18:52:00.009-06:00

All too many mornings begin with this sad sad sight on my floor.
However, this morning marked the first time I noticed the label on the Kapla Blocks box behind him. What is most essential for this toy to learn: flying or falling? When will he learn what he needs to learn?

Another shot (or two) of the good life

2008-11-08T20:18:00.002-06:00

Haven't been to a ritzy Clayton restaurant in a while, and with these prices it will be an even longer while before I go again. At least the beverage cost remains reasonable...and it was in celebration of a wonderful birthday. Priceless in many ways.

The Best -We- Can

2008-11-07T15:42:00.003-06:00

Photographer David Katz created a flickr stream of his behind-the-scenes shots of Obama and family going through election night this past Tuesday. More on all this later, but in the meantime check out the President-elect's new government site change.gov ...

Just Plain Crosseyed

2008-11-04T08:46:00.005-06:00

Still waiting three hours after arrival, but I know I'm next through the door... and after that I will not be able to take anymore pictures. Poll worker seen above tells of the seniors living here in the center who were up in the lobby at 3:30 a.m. in hopes for being first in line. They ended up waiting just as long as I have so far before casting their vote. Hope they're sleeping, now. I know I'm off to work after this is over.

Crosseyed & A Little Pained

2008-11-04T08:08:00.004-06:00

Still waiting ...

Bi-State WUSTL Red bus has come through several times now -- the driver giving us the thumbs-up with her horn. Somebody was discovered to have a birthday today and the "Happy Birthday" song was taken up loudly by most of the couple hundred people in line. One little girl goes down the line with her Batman trick-or-treat bag, offering her own treats to thank people for their patience. Somebody waits in their parked car, blasting Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and many of the better singers in line take up the song as well. The poll workers had come out earlier to remove some campaign signs placed past the 25-feet-from-the-poll rule. No one says anything about the song possibly breaking the same etiquette.

Crosseyed & Painless

2008-11-04T07:03:00.006-06:00

After an hour ... still waiting ...

Polling place opened 30 minutes late, but still troubled. Group-mind pretty together, with good-humored grousing about as ugly as it gets. Only one person gave up, promising to come back later. Talking Heads' "Crosseyed & Painless" remains the morning theme song moving through my mind -- probably because of the chorus "Still waiting, still waiting, still waiting..."

Face the Magic

2008-09-01T21:40:00.008-05:00

Behind all of the main faces above smiles street performer Masaji Terasawa, known more familiarly at the annual Missouri Botanical Garden as "The Candyman".

For me, most of the magicians I've seen make me spend most of the entertaining time trying to figure out how they do what they do. Not so with The Candyman. His magic is subtle, sewn so tightly within the fabric of his entertainment you don't even think about it being there. He's not trying to wow, just trying to smile. Like comparing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Kelly always looks like he's trying too hard to entertain, while Astaire doesn't seem to care about anything but the clouds beneath his feet.

What is the Question?

2008-08-31T12:58:00.007-05:00

Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow

Marcus is a slightly above-average computer geek in high school with nothing much to worry about but grades and girls. When he and his friends find themselves detained by the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack on San Francisco they find other things to worry about, other more important decisions to be made. They use their superior knowledge of how the Internet works to defend their freedoms and expose the cost paid when we willingly give up those freedoms to the government.

Found myself emotionally invested in the welfare of these kids, and I cannot remember the last time I was this thrilled and horrified at the same time while reading. “Little Brother” is a page-turner in the best sense.

"Little Brother" will also make for some good conversations about the Internet and Freedom with the young adult readers in your household. My only quibble is that I kept hoping for a less cartoon-like presence on the dark side of things. Marcus' dad was probably the closest we got to seeing why people make the choice to give up their liberties, but a more-reasonable DHS person or a non-thuggish conservative classmate would have been a good addition. The people who seem the most reasonable can be even more-terrifying than the obvious beasts.

Marcus’ friends do not necessarily go willingly, if at all, on the hard road he travels. Their own personal choices can add other ingredients to the conversation proposed above. Another note: though this is billed as a “Young Adult” novel, the younger person in your life might not be ready for some of the story. For example, Marcus is dealing with teenage boy hormones and interacts with girls in a manner you might not be comfortable with exposing to your own “Young Adult.” Read this for yourself first before passing it on.

I find myself most excited about this book because it is not asking us to "Question Authority" as many DHS supporters would assume. It is asking us to "Question". Period.

Author Cory Doctorow keeps the book in a free downloadable format on his website, though you can also purchase it through the normal channels like Amazon or your local bookseller. His website also offers links to sites where his book is discussed, as well as sites like cubeecraft (from where the Little Brother image above was borrowed) and Doctrow-affiliate boingboing carries a BBTV episode on guerilla t-shirt silkscreening based on the book.

Let me know if you find any answers...!

Shelter from the Storm

2008-08-31T11:46:00.003-05:00

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)
Starring Karloff, Melvyn Douglass, Charles Laughton and Lilian Bond
Directed by James Whale
(72 minutes) B&W

“No beds!” shrieks the overly-religious Rebecca Femm to her brow-beaten brother and the storm-tossed visitors to their old dark house – meaning in her mind that the sinful will find no comfort within the home, but to her brother it is a literal truth as the house is old and dark but not large enough to contain housing for visitors. In a larger sense, though, it means “no rest for the wicked and innocent alike.” It is, after all, a dark and stormy night, and this is a James Whale film from 1932.

Our anxiety awaits no cue from background music here – though not a silent picture the soundtrack lacks the usual stereotypical swell of crescendos or ebb of diminuendo. Our anxiety about the characters’ fates comes from out of our own apprehension and experience. We hear behind the dialogue nothing but sounds of the world at its tempestuous worst: banging doors, breaking glass, sudden cock crows, unexpected thunder, scattershot blasts of rain against wood and glass and stone.

There are also occasional screams, and dialogue like what opens my bit of fluff here. On the other hand, if you do not care for the negatives of sister Femm, perhaps you would rather hear something positive from her hospitable brother Horace. “Have a potato,” he offers – and you need to see the film to know the magic of that line.

You need to see the film, period. You should see it twice: once to get rid of your probable-preconceptions to a very old black-and-white terror tale containing no blood and little physical violence; the second time to appreciate the subtle bits you missed while waiting for the business-as-usual during your first viewing. After that, you will want to see it again. You'll have plenty of time to see it again, because after the second time you will find yourself strangely unable to rest. Almost as if there were no beds for you, too...

Hyohakusha

2008-08-29T15:41:00.010-05:00

Why so scrawny, cat?
starving for fat fish
or mice . . .
Or backyard love?

Basho wrote that, or at least he wrote the original Japanese from which this translation came.

I read it just this morning in the recently-released “Basho: The Complete Haiku” -- been enjoying a leisurely stroll through its pages these last couple of weeks. I’m also waiting the arrival of Basho’s “The Narrow Road to Oku,” his travelogue, which from what I've read of it before sounds intriguingly blog-like. Always seeking perfection, he constantly revised his words there, as do I the words on this blog -- though I realize perfection remains walled-away from my own efforts, protected from completion in the mythically-remote realm of possibility.

Thinking about these short sparks of multiple meanings -- wondering if it is better to have only one precise thought behind the words, or if the world is a much wilder exciting place if the words and their order can bring us constant new possibilities with every re-thinking -- can cause too many sleepless nights.

Thoughts of Basho also brought memories of over ten years back: sitting alone quietly in the midst of the Portland Japanese Garden, wondering about picking up and moving there from the Midwest. Fortunately, at that moment came the cry of a baby from somewhere around one of the heavily greened walls, and I knew I had to go back to find out how my then very-young godson would turn out. I made the right choice…This weekend offers the possibility of a trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens with my godson for the annual Japanese festival. Look for pictures of that trip posted here soon.

In the meantime, to get yourself in a haiku state of mind, check out either this archived posting at the National Geographic site about the travels of Basho (from which the picture at the top of this post is borrowed) or the YouTube video below found today at boingboing.net, featuring a Japanese techno group Omodaka's rendition of “the world’s oldest Japanese song” Kokoriko Bushi (tune for stringed instrument). A boingboing reader also provided a link to a traditional version of the original tune here.

Have no idea of the words here, but in the techno version I keep hearing what seems to be chorus based on Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing.”

And in conclusion, more from Basho...

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!

For those who made it all the way to the bottom, here's what the title of this post means:

"one who moves without direction"

Take from that what you will... but take care.

More conventional thinking

2008-08-29T07:28:00.006-05:00

NOTES FROM LAST NIGHT: Does Obama’s attempt at a united-we-stand campaign represent the ideal American Dream, the shining mansion on the hill with its doors wide-open to anyone who is willing to work hard to maintain its splendor, the country that leads by example not by fear? If so, it is not hard to see McCain and company’s cynical campaign of fear as a representation of America as a shadowy underworld without options or opportunities, those who feel they are your ‘betters’ determine what you do.

ROUGH THOUGHTS AFTER NOT MUCH SLEEP: Re-read Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" today because it seems to me the voters who previously went against their own self-interest and voted Republican could easily represent those prisoners of the cave -- hindered by the blinders of their preconceptions so that they see only the shadows of life, not life itself as it really is (or at the greatest 'least', life as lived to its greatest potential) -- the cave itself formed by underground fear of the unknown brought to their eyes by those who would profit from their fright.

To A Wider Universe...

2008-08-28T14:19:00.010-05:00

Years ago, I spent a lot more of my time thinking about the artist Jack Kirby and his works. He is still in my thoughts, but even though I am not as manic about figuring out what the big It of his work means, anymore, I still take time in-between reading new stuff to dip back into his work. There are still plenty of unexpected new ideas found in the old stuff.

Anyhow, in celebration of Kirby’s 91st birthday today, you should either order Mark Evanier’s wonderful Kirby biography or, better yet, read some Kirby-created stories.

Guaranteed entertainment and amazing brain food on every page, and maybe, you'll come up with some meanderings in your mind from the experience, something like I did below in some old pondering of his 2001 series for Marvel Comics back in the mid-70s. As said before: I am not sure what Kirby really means, and I am still not quite sure what I mean with the words below. Do not hold that against, Kirby though. Just read some of his stuff for yourself and see where your own mind goes.

***

NEW SEEDS: Kirby's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

“Perhaps here, a way of being may find the why of being...until then, the New Seed decides to seek the answer himself. What if it turned out to be merely -- simple!!” That’s what Kirby wrote in the final page of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, #7, June 1977, the penultimate chapter of his exploration into the ideas he found in Stanley Kubrick’s famous film. To me this is Kirby telling the reader: “You’re the New Seed. I’ve given you something to grow with, so...grow!” But it also warns me, I think, of digging too deep into his plot of ground, earth-bound and above -- that sometimes the most satisfying, most truthful answers are the simple ones. However, what truths, simple or otherwise, did Kirby see in the film? What kindred thoughts stirred him enough to adapt it to comics, but to carry on past the final scene? Here’s my theory...

“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it,” Kubrick was quoted in David Anthony Kraft’s essay on the movie, which appeared in the edition of Kirby’s 2001 film adaptation. This thought puts the filmmaker in the same school of art as Kirby who has been deemed an intuitive artist -- a story-teller who makes his artistic decisions by gut instinct.

Or, like the comic book fan in 2001 #6: “There is, in many men, a sense of the dramatic which governs their lives. In Harvey Norton this instinct is vital and strong! He acts upon what he feels is the truth, and lets the devil take the hindmost...” Harvey Norton’s life, like the other characters in this series, formed itself dramatically to the “truths” his decisions shaped -- just as Kirby’s instinctual drive toward his own truths forged the shape of how he told their stories and why their stories fit into his ultimate picture.

The ultimate picture, the overwhelming theme, would seem to me to be: imagination is what sets us apart from the beasts and is our first step to “what’s out there”. Our creative urges have been with us from the beginning and it’ll be there to guide us at the end. What we do with it, if anything, is what determines how big our next progressive step into the unknown will be. Any step into the unknown is progress, according to Kirby here, because, “pass” or “fail”, it’s the test of life that must be taken. In addition, it’s the answers to the test for which we quest on this odyssey.

The monolith itself, mysteriously appearing to various people throughout time, signifies to me simply a symbol of the inspiration that spurs us to create -- the act of creation itself being a necessary function to humanity, what’s needed to fill our hungers: from the gnawing physical hunger felt by early man to the ”something more” craved by those with bellies-filled. “Where are we going?” Kirby asks in page 1 of the first issue, and he answers: “Somewhere in the dawn of time, we began --somehow, in these perilous times we keep moving on -- and some time in the future, something will happen to change us! . . .The monolith may be the cause! It does not belong to this world -- yet it does belong to us all!”

The Beast-Killer in issue #1 finds inspiration in the monolith, he comes away with the extra-spark jumpstarting his way to improve his tools and better fill his plate. He runs his own life apart from the pack, the others who “shun the stone-spirit and cannot hear its voice!” His ancestor, Woodrow Decker, stuck on a planetoid and whining about his fate, seems at first to be a strange recipient for inspiration -- “he has the drive for discovery -- but lacks the will to fight...” Then, a strange Kirby-creature appears and attacks, and Kirby writes: “Yet, in the cracks and crevasses of the ruin, there are things which have fought for life -- and survived uncountable eons -- where life should be negated...” Moreover, when it attacks, Decker fights to save his friend. It appears to me that the ruin is not only on the planetoid, but also within Decker himself, and the things that fight for life could include his strength of character. This fight is why he’s able to go on through the monolith for the ‘final’ inspiration.

Like any true artist and others we see go through the monolith, Decker sees things there beyond his comprehension and to survive the experience he must change. “Decker must become something else!!” Kirby writes, if he’s to go forward in his journey of growth and discovery. Then the old self dies and the new self, in the form of the New Seed, is born. “It is not the first of its kind. There have been others. There will always be others, as long as earth breeds human life...”

The next three issues continue this thread and contain their own separate, more complicated story: Vira the She-Demon and her ancestor Vera’s story are connected to the story of Marak and his descendant Marik (and Jalessa) in that the matriarchy established by Vira’s inspiration passes down in time to Jalessa’s authority. And it’s Jalessa’s land and power which Marak seeks to conquer. Vira, Marak and Jalessa all use their inspiration for growth, but while Vera, Vira’s far-future descendant, passes through the monolith like Decker and becomes something more, Marik remains curiously the same. Why he doesn’t become a New Seed is the curiosity: in his final phase he finds again his true love and his mind and soul seem satisfied. Is it because he finds his soul is satisfied, needs nothing more, that he doesn’t go on -- that for the ‘artist’ to continue growing he must remain ‘hungry?’

Next, we meet in issue #7, Harvey Norton, a comic book fan, who, though he finds fantasies easily catered to, remains hungry for something more. His fellow-fans have become almost repugnant to him, a dark reflection of himself, perhaps, that he sees for the first time. The whole world is a fantasyland and Harvey, with inspiration drawn from within by the monolith, realizes “I-It’s not real! It’s film and solar lamps! It’s wave machines and plastic sand! I-I’m a captive -- in a man made cage of illusions -- a world-wide Comicsville -- which has less substance than my own dreams...” In a scene like the famous favorite from NEW GODS #7, Harvey meets the monolith for the second time. His dream of something ‘bigger’ takes him away from Comicsville, out into space where he meets his ‘more’.

His love of comic books serves him well in space. While his fellow fans seemed to be satisfied with seeking only more of the same, repeatedly, Harvey took something else from his fantasies: a heroic ideal.

His final encounter with the monolith spurs on the ‘final’ change, his mutation into a New Seed taking on the trappings of a superhero, Captain Cosmic. Harvey “looks back upon a life of great adventure and a never-ending future of jousting against injustice.” Moreover, “what is the new seed, but man’s admission to a wider universe...”

What is the New Seed? We come full circle to my opening paragraph because it’s in issue #7 that Kirby offers some of the answers. Unlike the other parts, it begins with the creation of a New Seed and we follow its journey. It still learns. It still sees. “Find the reason for being and unlock the secret of the universe! To do this there must be life -- there must be a living will to seek...” The continual quest, the odyssey, the journey is what makes life worth living. To do less, to stop the search, to stop questioning, is when we die as humans because this failure to use our potential, I think Kirby says here, runs contrary to a promise we need to keep.

What more potential could come from this series? Kirby took a turn in issue #8, beginning the saga of Mister Machine and leading into the Machine Man series. It would seem to counter Jon Cooke’s feeling in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #11 that Kirby did not understand H.A.L. from the original movie. This last three-parter explores the soul of a machine and explains, to me, one possibility of why H.A.L. went mad: he wasn’t raised as human.

I don’t know the real reason why Kirby chose (or Marvel wanted him to choose) the 2001 book and I don’t think it’s been explained why the book stopped when it did. Sales? Licensing problems? Whatever the case, I don’t think Kirby needed to go on here. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY remains to me one of the few late Kirby series that gave just enough.

As with most of Kirby’s work, “just enough” is everyone else's cornucopia. Or, in this case, everyone's Monolith.

Following the Heard - 2008 continues

2008-08-23T19:50:00.008-05:00

Finally, enough new music for another mythical mix of notable ear-pieces heard by me in 2008. While waiting on the new stuff I've been moving my lists for the old stuff, the previous 50 years, to another blog: followingtheheard.blogspot.com.

Really trying hard to give one track per artist this year, though if like Lil Wayne they come out with more than one album in a year they can qualify for more than one spot.

Double Dee and Steinski are the exception. They get two for their one album, mainly because ten years ago I never thought they would team up again, nor that their club date in Manhattan would be so easily available.

I also never thought there'd ever be a collection like What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective -- collecting 42 pieces of Steinski's work, solo and with partners like Double Dee. Without access to his work, I was unable to add him to previous annual mixes. We can thank the small-press called Illegal Art -- based, strangely to some, in the wilds of central Illinois -- for the long-overdue release, and you can read about others like it here in a 1986 article by Robert Christgau.

Steinski also just finished off a 12-minute mix of Sinatra tracks, mashing the Chairman of the Board's music with dialogue from several of his films, including The Manchurian Candidate. "Candidate" gave mind to a title for the new concoction: What Was Raymond Doing With His Hands?

You can download Raymond from the 'Raymond' link above (it's at the Village Voice site) along with a pretty good retrospect interview with Steven.

Anyhow, the "winners" of this 2008 round are, in order of their appearance here:

1) We're In A Lot of Trouble - Double Dee and Steinski
2) Get Up! - Earthworms
3) A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
4) Love No - The Teenagers
5) La La La - Lil Wayne
6) Ragged Wood - Fleet Foxes
7) The Ditch - Blood on the Wall
8) Joke About Jamaica - The Hold Steady
9) Caravan - Cassandra Wilson
10) Tape Song - The Kills
11) Brain Burner - No Age
12) In Step - Girl Talk
13) I'm Wild About You - Al Green
14) Little Toy Gun - honeyhoney
15) I Feel Like Dying - Lil Wayne
16) Lights Out - Santogold
17) The Kelly Affair - Be Your Own Pet
18) America - Nas
19) Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno
20) Who Owns Culture? #2 - Double Dee and Steinski

Congratulations to all!

Royal Reflections

2008-08-16T09:52:00.008-05:00

Elvis surrounded by adoring autograph-seeking fans and glossy still-unadorned photos of his own pensively smiling head shot makes for a good general picture of his life, as if he finds himself trapped in a hall of mirrors, in a place where reflections can be questions. Which Elvis is the real Elvis? Is Elvis all of these Elvises?

Of the fans, themselves: all we see are hands, all kinds of hands undoubtedly – hands to shake in fellowship, clawing greedy hands, hands to wipe a tired brow -- no faces to call their own here either, except the face on the photos of Elvis about which they can say in many ways “This face belongs to us.”

How many faceless, faceful fans will leave him if he stops being the Elvis they want him to be? Is that the only way out of his hall of mirrors: to disappoint enough fans, to make enough of them disappear to allow him an opening and new path to exit himself?

Thirty-one years ago, he accidentally found an exit from the hall, leaving even more Elvises behind, casting new reflections and asking new questions still unanswered.

If you find yourself doubtful where you stand on these questions and answers, refresh yourself with a listen to what he left behind, and then make up your own mind.

The Order of Things in the World

2008-08-13T07:09:00.006-05:00

Some day I will write some more-specific words about the classic films Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Abel Gance’s “La Roue”. Both are available in fine DVD editions and everyone who loves movies should watch them, enjoy them.

I hope that my thoughts about them then will be greater than the piece of fluff that just popped into my head:

Though they appear in the “L” section of my personal movie library, in Italy, “La Dolce Vita” would appear in the D section. “La Roue”, in France, would appear with the other R titles.

For that matter, why does Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” come to us from Criterion as “Beauty and the Beast” instead of its original French title “La Belle et la Bete”? Why didn’t the company then release “La Dolce Vita” with its translated title “The Sweet Life”? (Yes, I realize commercial reasons lurk as answers here…)

Additions to this posting will come when I can figure why these facts feel important enough for me to post them in the first place…

Gon Today

2008-08-12T11:16:00.012-05:00

Ain’t he sweet? Cute, loving, and full of mischievous fun, Gon is definitely the kind of carnivorous little dinosaur it is a pleasure to know. However, if you tick him off (or, in one case, if his temper takes off when he is stuck with a tenacious tick) you might as well say “so long” to life as you knew it.

Nothing stops Gon from getting what he wants, whether it is the biggest fish, a pile of fresh fruit, or the most horrifying revenge you could imagine. Whole forests destroyed and mountains topple down in his wake if that is what it takes to complete Gon's current quest.

Created by Masashi Tanaka, he first appeared in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 1991. These completely wordless stories of a tiny orange dinosaur, anachronistically alone in today's wilderness, draw you effortlessly along with their amazingly lush and detailed illustrations. Frenetically paced action, occasionally slowed down by sometimes-sappy rest stops, mix together well with a dark sense of humor.

Make no mistake about the word “dark” and do not let the cute picture above fool you. There occasionally pop up in Gon stories what some consider overly graphic depictions of violence, but nothing worse than actions frequently seen on Animal Planet -- plenty of ferociously chewing teeth, head-butting and bloodied claws. Gon has a temper. He is not a role model, unless you use his actions to point out how a serenely peaceful scene can be completed destroyed by one person’s temper tantrum.

Not much on the Internet available about Tanaka, and Gon himself seems better known as a playable character in the Playstation Tekken 3 game. DC Comics reprinted several volumes of the Gon stories beginning in 1996, but I have not found any information on whether this collected all of the Gon stories, or whether Tanaka is working on new material with the character. DC began reprinting their reprints last year, but in the original manga flipped format, and there has been more talk about an animated movie.

Speaking of which, thanks to the recent Starclipper blog's Gon posting, I found an “end video” from the Gon chapter in Tekken 3. I never would have imagined Gon animated so faithfully well. If you want a quick look at what the Gon books are like, in spirit and character, this clip tells the tale. For those who are already fans: be prepared to smile.

Absence Makes the Mind Grow Fonder, Too

2008-08-10T14:53:00.015-05:00

Woke up late on Saturday to find that not only was Fred MacMurray having a birthday, but also Turner Classic Movies scheduled in celebration a whole day of his films.

MacMurray’s career contained two genuine classics -- “The Apartment” and “Double Indemnity” – along with a long list of pretty-good-but-not-great work including “Murder He Says” and “The Caine Mutiny.” Reviewing a list of his jobs it surprised me how many films he made with director Mitchell Leisen, though I was always especially fond of the screwball comedy work he and Leisen put together with Carole Lombard like “Hands Across the Table” and “The Princess Comes Across.”

The part of his career usually ignored by critics is the Disney stuff from the late 50s - early 60s. Had not seen any of that in years – for some reason I have never seen “The Shaggy Dog” or “The Absent-Minded Professor.” Of course, the only one I had seen at the theaters appeared when I turned on the television: the “Absent-Minded” sequel “Son of Flubber”.

It is probably best to judge a person when they are at their lowest. What choices do they make then? How do they behave to others? If “Son of Flubber” was MacMurray’s nadir, then using those basics of judgment he must have been one heck of a human being.

My one memory of the film: MacMurray’s absent-minded Professor Brainard -- wearing a Twenties-style college prep gear complete with coonskin coat and school pennant -- follows in flying flivver the ratty rival for his wife’s affections. His faithful dog sits by his side through the trip.

What I had almost forgotten: He aims his Flubber Gas gun at the rival’s car, causing a rain cloud to form and a thunderstorm to commence inside the car causing a wreck. (Quite a fine line between comedy and drama…)

What I had completely forgotten: The crazed joyful look on MacMurray’s face while he stalks his prey.

That’s entertainment!

Most importantly I had also forgotten this: Near the end of the film, after being hauled to court when one of his creations breaks all the glass in a particular area of town, the district attorney asks him if he is found innocent and set free will he continue to teach. Professor Brainard answers the question:

Well, it seems to me a lot of people are going around these days selling fear – all kinds of fear. Fear of bombs, bugs, smog, surpluses, fall-out, falling hair…we find ourselves apologizing, hiding our heads, jumping at shadows. I remember when Groundhog Day only came once a year in this country.

I see a lot of students from my science class (here) in the courtroom. They may not be the most studious group of young people in college today, but I’ll say this for them: so far they are unafraid.

They have good will, enthusiasm and an infinite capacity for making mistakes. I have high hopes for them. The road to genius is paved with fumble footing and bumbling and anyone who falls flat on his face is at least moving in the right direction – forward. And the fellow who makes the most mistakes may be the one who’ll save the neck of the whole wide world some day.

Finding no transcripts of this on the Internet I later unexpectedly found a cheap copy of the film at a local shop (5.99!) and made a transcription of my own – apologies if I have misheard some of the above. Screenplay writers Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi – longtime Disney drones – despite the tremendous bit quoted above missed the mark here for the most part, along with another long-time Disneyite, director Robert Stevenson. This is not a great classic film, though the crazy stuff I mentioned above keeps happening enough that I am surprisingly looking forward to watching it again.

Even without the craziness, the courtroom finale and its words showed a worthwhile theme that if explored more by the rest of the film might well have moved it closer to the upper-levels of MacMurray’s credits. Regardless of the fine quality of the words, it is difficult to imagine them spoken more convincingly than how Fred MacMurray speaks them.

Since Fred spoke them, they become just another reason to celebrate his birthday. Thanks, Fred!

UPDATE: Apparently this was TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” celebration of MacMurray – his birthday, not until August 30. So… happy –early- birthday, Fred!

Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana

2008-08-01T12:04:00.010-05:00

“Almost 30 years since Dr. Hunter S. Thompson spoke to a crowd at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana, an unruly crowd of stoners and drunks and miscellaneously adjective-deprived states far removed from what society back then deemed normal. They followed the bouncing beach ball to whatever beat bellowed from the PA, but what they followed to find themselves there I never knew -- which was too bad because at the time I was a reporter. I carried a pad.”

I wrote that on the Blackberry while waiting for the documentary “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” to begin. A memory of the last time I saw Thompson -- renowned "new journalist" -- writing the words brought back some truths maintained in my mind all these years and by the time the end credits rolled on the movie I saw the lack of those truths became the problem with the film itself.

The details in my mind of that evening too many decades ago:

-Thompson had no speech; he answered questions from the audience.

-Arriving late, he showed up shortly after the bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass with some ice appeared.

-Most important: After the audience ran out of questions about drugs and wild life, he began to get questions about writing and journalism. The more of these types of questions, which brought out more emotional and detailed answers instead of one-liners, the more of the unruly crowd slipped out of the auditorium into the night.

So to what did my wondering eyes appear when I dug up the old article, my first-hand account at the time of these memories above? Only the first two details appeared. I left-out the good stuff in the third detail, the stuff that really mattered.

The best way to experience the life of Thompson is to read his works, most especially “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972” and “Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas” and I will admit the film could potentially steer people towards Thompson’s writings but it also steers away from the truth of the matter at hand. The same truth I left out of my own long-ago report…

Thompson at his best would write about what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to hear. “Gonzo” fails in that it concentrates on celebrating the crowd-pleasing upside of his madness, the fun of feeding a fantastic appetite for booze and pills, but barely touches the inevitable downside and cost of such a lifestyle. Sure is cool to see somebody get fucked-up and shooting off guns, yessirreebob! But what happened to the last twenty years of his life? How did his thoughts and writing deteriorate until the most radical reaction he could muster was blowing his head off with a gun?

Roger Ebert’s review contains a much clearer description of what I'm trying to get here:

In all the memories gathered together in "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," there was one subject I found conspicuously missing: The fact of the man's misery. Did he never have a hangover? The film finds extraordinary access to the people in his life, but not even from his two wives do we get a description I would dearly love to read, on what he was like in the first hour or two after he woke up. He was clearly, deeply, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and after a stupor-induced sleep he would have awakened in a state of withdrawal. He must have administered therapeutic dozes of booze or pills or something to quiet the tremors and the dread. What did he say at those times? How did he behave? Are the words "fear and loathing" autobiographical?

Most importantly to me, vividly and emotionally, is the scene narrated by his wife who tries to describe what he was like while he was writing. We see him typing away in his personally peculiar fashion, not attacking the keyboard as you would imagine by the tenor of his words, but instead his fingers dance across the keyboard as if they’re doing the old soft-shoe to Whispering Jack Smith singing his 1927 hit tune “Me and My Shadow”. Thompson has a smile on his face, in heaven as the thoughts of his mind and actions of his body synch together in perfect rhythm.

Now I have a hankering to hear Warren Zevon sing “The Hula Hula Boys” and you need to read Thompson’s “The Curse of Lono” to find out why.

The Measure of Love

2008-07-30T18:39:00.006-05:00

LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932)
Starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
(94 minutes) B&W

“Isn’t it romantic?” the tailor (Maurice Chevalier) queries his customer, and continues in song:

My face is glowing, I'm energetic.
The art of sewing I found poetic.
My needle punctuates the rhythm of romance.
I don't give a stitch if I don't get rich.
A custom tailor who has no custom
is like a sailor, no one will trust 'em.
But there is magic in the music of my shears.
I shed no tears, lend me your ears.
Isn't it romantic? Soon I will have found some girl that I adore.

The customer picks up the catchy refrain, takes it with him past the taxi stand. There the song passes to a writer who takes the tune in a taxi to the train station, where it plays into the minds of some lovelorn troopers. They then march in step across the countryside to the tune now locked to the beat of their hearts. Their joyous noise gets picked up by a gypsy boy who takes it to camp in the strings of his violin, which plays its way to the uppermost tower window of a nearby castle, where the princess throws open her window and completes the song into the night, wondering when her prince will come. So the simple tailor is connected to the world and then to the true love of the princess (Jeanette MacDonald) by a song.

Isn’t it romantic?

Yes, it is, and much more modern than a 1930s musical has a right to be, but Mamoulian’s then-revolutionary camera work and the fact that he worked out the songs in pre-production with Rodgers and Hart to move along with the camera and the story keeps things flowing along at a surprisingly still-fresh pace.

I cannot take much of MacDonald’s high-blown but lovely operatic singing, but will admit it works well when paired with Chevalier’s down-to-earth singsong patter. In fact it makes them, to me, a much better and more interesting couple than what we see and hear when she duets in other films with the similarly operatic Nelson Eddy. When she sings with Eddy, her own “kind,” life feels narrow and as expected, but when she "lowers" herself to sing with a more pop like “dittier” like Chevalier the world becomes larger with more possibilities.

The scene described in my opening here better demonstrates this feeling: though the song itself is changed and sometimes mangled on its road from the tailor to the princess its message remains true. Moreover, other songs in “Love Me Tonight” like “Mimi” in similar meme-like fashion move from those resting comfortably in their boudoirs to those getting their hands dirty in the kitchen. Those on high, those below, and everyone in-between have an important commonality – “important” because concentrating on the common binding thread makes the future a day well worth the living. Isn’t that romantic, too?

Summer can be scary

2008-07-18T19:39:00.001-05:00

He is here ...

Root for the home team

2008-07-17T20:58:00.005-05:00

"He is now cycle"

Only my phone knows what that means. I typed "He is now awake"...

User error or another sign of conspiracy, a gathering of all technology together against us?

Probably user error.

Phoning in the Colors

2008-07-01T10:53:00.002-05:00

Need to see some green today . . .

Can't talk now, I'm eating

2008-06-27T12:59:00.003-05:00

Best face forward for shopping

2008-06-27T11:54:00.003-05:00

And this comes direct from the phone...

Posting on the Go

2008-06-27T11:18:00.004-05:00

This posting comes to you via e-mail. Not sure how it will work. The previous postings came from a mobile phone, though after the first two, new posts are not appearing... Will e-mail work? If it does be sure to check out what's below!

http://machineanimalcollages.com/Pages/Installations/AttentionChicken.html

Youth is not wasted

2008-06-27T10:28:00.002-05:00

This post comes to you from my phone... hopefully...

Don't Bug Me!

2008-06-20T07:46:00.003-05:00

More posting this weekend... as long as I do not run into Red Kryptonite -- in which case postings will be delayed another twenty-four hours.

Thank you for your patience! And don't forget to support your locals in tomorrow's Race for the Cure!!

Another new line for playtime

2008-06-13T21:42:00.005-05:00

Yet another free web tool: sketchcast.com. Business applications aside, for me it's another way to keep the mold from taking over the inside of my rusty brain pan. Let's see what pops out when you click the 'Play' button below...

It's probably my favorite of what I've sketched so far. Decide for yourself, by examining the rest of the bunch here.

Jung at Heart

2008-06-08T09:25:00.005-05:00

Conversation going on about the new Indiana Jones movie -- questions whether Indy is a Communist sympathizer, a ‘pinko.’

When Indy and Co. entered the alien room, my first thought was "sleeper cell of fellow travelers." Then we hear the dialogue about the collective unconscious. During all the loud sights and sounds, as Cate Blanchett’s Soviet agent met her fate near the end, didn't she scream, "I was wrong!"? I thought perhaps there she was realizing this collective was not the ideal for which she had hoped...or did I not hear her correctly?

Speaking of collectives: what about those prairie dogs, monkeys, and ants? Do they not all exhibit some sort of collective unconscious? The behavior of these creatures has been one of the most-criticized portions of the film. Nevertheless, could not their actions be purposeful, planted clues to the nature of the skull?

I don't really care, mind you. Indiana Jones has always been an apolitical cuss, whose passions are for the acquisition and sharing of knowledge. If you want to judge his actions and the film within the framework of a political system, how about calling it instead a parliament – which is a group of owls, which is a hoot…?

Rack 'em Stack 'em Robots!

2008-05-23T08:31:00.002-05:00

Though not as ticklish to the imagination as Kapla blocks, these wooden Stacking Robots from Schylling still manage to strike enough of my fancy that I am already thinking about when I will be picking up a second set. Right side up, up side down, sideways left, sideways right: does not matter which direction you go, as long as there is balance and every robot works together the population will hold together. Of what does that remind me?

Following the Heard - 2008

2008-05-04T14:03:00.010-05:00

Above is the cover image for the first part of this year's musical mix.

See if you can figure out who's on it by the image alone. I'll update later with the rundown....

And the answers are:

1) Strange Times – The Black Keys
2) Do U Buy It? - Lyrics Born
3) Voices - Madonna
4) We Call Upon the Author to Explain - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
5) Puppets - Atmosphere
6) The Rip - Portishead
7) This is How You Spell HAHAHA - Los Campesinos!
8) Can't Be Beat - Quiet Village
9) Old Enough - The Raconteurs
10) Fatalist Palmistry - Why?
11) 3 Dimes Down - Drive-By Truckers
12) Out at the Pictures - Hot Chip
13) Alice - Moby
14) That Hump -Erykah Badu
15) Sober Driver - Dengue Fever
16) Surprise - Gnarls Barkley
17) Blind - Hercules and Love Affair
18) Faulkner Street - Hayes Carll

Now, how many of these artists can you recognize? What images from the cover above can you associate with these artists and their 2008 work?

You can hear many of these songs randomly streamed from my 2008 radio 'station' on last.fm.

No Time for the Future

2008-04-23T08:21:00.019-05:00

Starclipper of St. Louis hosted another gallery of local artists rendering and re-modeling Munnies, in celebration of the shop’s 20^th anniversary. The theme this time: “The Future” and, appropriately enough it was a series of unexpected events (what do you expect from “The Future”, anyhow?) which kept us from finishing ours in time for the opening. But finish them we did.

First off: “Yet Pack Man!”

While most robotic Munnies wear jet packs, “Yet Pack Man!” wears a pack for flying ahead into days yet to come, hence the “yet” instead of “jet.” Completely designed and decorated by my co-designer with Model Magic, Munny markers, cotton balls and paint. He got his goggles courtesy of a glow-in-the-dark Munny who would not need them.

Unexpected moment: marking up the goggles’ lens gave us a cool reflective surface…

And then there’s this one: “Riding a Head into the Future”

Unexpected moment: every step of the way. The original plan for this one involved cutting out the head of a glow-in-the-dark Munny and attaching a working clock, setting its time one hour into the future. As per usual, my vision exceeded my abilities and the cutting of the head came out more ragged than I had planned.

I attempted fitting two old broken watches (left to me by my grandfather) inside the goggles which came with the Munny, but found the fit too tight, so opted for making my own goggles out of Model Magic. I also took the top of his skull and glued it over the front mishap of a hole for a more-interesting shape. A third broken heirloom became a timely belt. Then I took some glittery silver gel to sparkle in contrast to the phosphorescence of the main body. It still lacked some balance in my eyes, so I took a miniature white Munny (to match the Model Magic) gave him a clock face and painted him with the silver gel then glued the final ragged leftover piece from the glow-in-the-dark model to the top of his head. Voila!

Good boy?

2008-04-22T21:21:00.005-05:00

Have -not- been a good boy, have not been updating this blog. Postings resume this week. Be a good scout: prepared.

Thinking of Anything Else

2008-03-04T15:11:00.009-06:00

ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)
Starring Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo Marx, with Margaret Dumont
Directed by Victor Heerman
(97 minutes) B&W

Searching the middle for a beginning or an end…

Chico Marx noodles around on the piano during the party celebrating not only the return of Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding (three chairs for him) but also the unveiling of Bogarde's famous painting, "After the Hunt." Chico, going here as musician Senor Ravelli (if we don't show up you can't afford us), and his fingers continue drinking in the sounds of the same bars over and over and over.

"I can't think of a finish," he finally says, though that does not stop his fingering the keys. "Funny, I can't think of anything else," says Groucho.

Butlers, ingénues, and other characters tell jokes, but the Marx Brothers live the jokes. Punch lines are not the point for them, in their repertoire they use fishing lines, instead -- casting out for bigger and better fish.

When Groucho cannot think of anything else, it is not a punch line it’s a clue to their humor: (supposedly not comedy attractive to women -- like the Three Stooges, or Abbot & Costello, it's a guy thing). And yes, there we find ourselves off on a different tangent but that is what makes the Marx Brothers to me.

Tangents, atypical roads take us unexpectedly to places for which we usually are not quite prepared; unexpected, yet also usually ingenious as is revealed upon multiple viewings of their work. You do not always know how they will finish, and often there is no satisfactory end, either because “The End” winds up a bust or because you do not want them to leave quite yet.

All of this high-faluting nonsense is to say, I find them very funny people. I hope you do, too.

Special note: Some of the Brothers' best words came from the mind of George S. Kaufman, whose website supplied the picture up top, and of whom you should read more about here.

Put Your Lips Together

2008-02-29T13:55:00.003-06:00

Take a deep breath. Some thoughts following not yet fully formed...

Looking into the concept of breathing, I found a link to meanings of the word psyche.

psyche

1. Breath, to breathe, to blow, (later) to cool; hence, life (identified with or indicated by the breath); the animating principle in man and other living beings, the source of all vital activities, rational or irrational, the soul or spirit, in distinction from its material vehicle, the body; sometimes considered as capable of persisting in a disembodied state after separation from the body at death.

2. In Mythology, personified by Plato and other philosophers, it was extended to the anima mundi, conceived to animate the general system of the universe, as the soul animates the individual organism. St. Paul (developing a current Jewish distinction between spirit or breath, and nephesh, soul) used the lower or merely natural life of man, shared with other animals, in contrast with the spirit.

3. The soul, or spirit, as distinguished from the body; the mind.

4. The conscious and unconscious mind and emotions; especially, as influencing and affecting the whole person.

5. All that constitutes the mind and what it processes.

6. Term for the subjective aspects of the mind, self, soul; the psychological or spiritual as distinct from the bodily nature of humans.

This takes my thoughts to where they still too-often go these days, even after almost four months of not smoking. Apart from the occasional lava-lamp bubbling beneath my brain, without thought or warning will come a sudden in and out of a sharp breath from my mouth. Someone else noticed this, thinking I was practicing some kind of meditative zen technique. What actually went on: my body tries to smoke, even without a cigarette in hand. Breathe in and puff out. Therefore, by the definitions above, the mere act of breathing constitutes expelling our life force, our animating spirit.

When I get the chance, I put these exhalations to work as I finally found something, like smoking, involving breathing in and out and annoying people at the same time: playing the harmonica.

To play all the notes in the scale you alternate breathing in and out like in the image below.

And once again mixing some of the definitions above together the spirit, the unconscious mind get translated into the vibrations created by the ‘blows’ and ‘draws’ – in this act they become something else.

Meet the New Boss...

2008-02-17T13:02:00.007-06:00

I love Metroid games -- more so for the puzzles than battling the bosses (bigger badder characters you need to beat if you plan moving further through a game) because I'm not much good at beating the boss creatures for some reason. I've tried Metroid Prime 2 on the Gamecube, and Metroid Hunters on the DS, but I just can't beat a boss. OK, I beat the first boss on the DS, but couldn't get past the second one. My hope for the Wii was that the controls would give me an easier time with these foes along the way. So far so good, as I finally survived my first Metroid boss battle, but I also survived long enough to succeed against Boss Rundas in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption!

Here's a Gamespot video of how I should have handled it. The video only lasts about 4 minutes -- it took me about 10 times that long to succeed. Oh well, success is success...

Inevitable Alterations

2008-02-12T13:51:00.004-06:00

The mind searches furiously for a key to it all. What is it? What went wrong? Why? How? The body meanwhile does what it must to survive! Escape is not sought nor desired nor even possible. The alteration, subtle at first, then mounting in intensity, growing bolder, more visible, more disruptive as time went on -- the alteration was inevitable.

For the chaos, the tumult raging all about this last of his superior breed could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire to which he alone remains heir. The energy -- the creative force -- could be disciplined only so strictly, held seething in check only so long, before it burst forth ravaging, mindless uncontrollable. That's the answer! So obvious in retrospect! An organism ceases to live when it ceases to grow. The element of change, which loomed so terrifying -- was in fact the only hope of salvation.

To resist, to dam the flow, to go rigid...was to abandon all hope.

Steve Gerber wrote that (or at least co-wrote that) in the first issue of the comic book Omega the Unknown. Gerber and co-creator Mary Skrenes have always closely held the book and its mysteries to the vest, so we probably will never really know who did what. Just another mystery of life without an answer. What is it?

We feel most comforted by stories with answers, with endings, where there is a chance to frame everything into one picture. All the answers we need in a glance. Steve Gerber will not be ending any more stories. Dead at 60. Why? How?

It is common in the world of comic books for the artist to have a unique style. Uncommon is the comic book writer with an irreproducible personal voice and viewpoint in his work. Steve’s work is uncommon in this vein. …Could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire…

One of my favorite Gerber stories, the revival of the Metal Men. The overall theme of the story tells us of the sometimes-hard-to-find good in everyone, but now I am seeing something else in the background. Doc Magnus overcomes his madness in the story because of his work – not only in that he creates, but also that his Metal Men creations save his day by the end, by bringing him clarity and peace at last. I hope Steve too had peace at the end and that he recognized the outstanding quality of his work.

I hope other generations of writers and artists can continue to wrestle with the lessons of his works and their quality. For those of us who bought his stuff off the stands, his stories will continue in re-readings. The sadness, as always, is in the stories he never got the chance to tell us or to finish.

It is another element of change, and to do right by ourselves we must make the best of it we can. As we could often find something good in the baddest of Steve's villains, we could also heed the card left by his anti-hero, the Foolkiller, which said: Today is the last day of the rest of your life. Use it wisely, or die a fool.

Good night, Steve…we're a much wiser bunch because of you.

The basic nuts and bolts of Steve's life can be found here.

More information from a personal perspective may be found at the site of his friend Mark Evanier. Donations may be made in his name at Hero Initiative.

I've Still Got A Secret

2008-02-08T14:47:00.001-06:00

More reasons to smile...

It’s pretty much still a secret, but the program “I’ve Got A Secret” – which ran on the CBS television network from 1952 to 1967 – began again in re-runs on Game Show Network (GSN) at the beginning of the year, at the primo time of 2:30 a.m. CST. If your Tivo is tired of the more modern re-runs and if you are looking for old-school entertainment packed with unexpected and occasionally poignant moments from history, you could do worse than getting some of these into your digital memory for future viewing.

No one thought of future viewers when these first aired. They probably did not think much beyond the show for the following week. “I’ve Got A Secret” after all, was not a game show in the standard sense. Generally played for laughs, the draw was more for those seeking a variety show. The contestants brought a unique secret for the panel to guess, and if the panel was unsuccessful, then the contestant won eighty dollars. In the first few years of the show, they also won a carton of Winston cigarettes courtesy of the program’s then-sponsor.

The variety of the show came from the different types of secrets and guest stars: on one night, a couple revealed they themselves had just found out NASA picked their son for the new astronaut program. An Indian in full authentic regalia, who, it turned out, was the man who posed for the so-called Indian head nickel followed them the same evening. On another night, a lady came from Michigan with the secret her house and all its furnishings were made entirely of paper. Or on another, a group of people in various forms of injury – one with a black eye, another with a cast on their leg, someone else with their fingers wrapped and another with a broken nose showed up with the secret that they had all injured themselves doing The Twist.

If you'd like to check them out before setting your Tivo timer, here's a You Tube clip of a typical 1962 episode (it's only Part One, but it should also offer you the chance at Part Two and Three at the end):

The panel here is my favorite of their various regular groupings: Bill Cullen, Betsy Palmer, Henry Morgan, and Bess Myerson...

Bill Cullen should be familiar to fans of game shows in general given his long-running hosting job for thirty-some years. He was the original host of the Price Is Right, back when it was successful enough to have not only a daytime, but also a regular nighttime version. Its popularity even gave it a spot as a plot on the Flintstones.

Betsy Palmer, delightfully daffy, an aspiring actress who got her best-remembered role years after IGAS was over -- as the mother of psycho serial slaughterer Jason, in the original Friday the 13th movie.

Henry Morgan was one of those wits you used to see a lot of, not really an author, a comedian, star, he just ... was. His curmudgeonly-wit did not endear him long with sponsors, so his solo-efforts on radio and television never lasted long.

Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America, but she was also quite intelligent and stylish and later went on to the anti-war movement and regular work with various New York City government administrations.

Panel moderator Garry Moore, like Henry Morgan, is something you do not really see much of these days -- not really a star of any sort, but whose easygoing charm made him welcome in American homes via the airwaves for years. Moore is famous today for discovering and nurturing the talents of Carol Burnett, though to Bullwinkle fans his fame is for his having a partner/sidekick named Durwood Kirby.

I am not sure why, but until viewing these re-runs I had forgotten how much of a crush I must have had on Betsy Palmer. There is something about her still uniquely appealing to me. You can read more about her, and “I’ve Got A Secret” in this article from T.V. Guide, from 1962. (The picture up top was taken from this same article.) Look out there for the fellow with the carrots in his ears…

Of the couple mentioned above, whose son NASA chose for the astronaut program, they were Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, and you can read about their experience on IGAS here in an excerpt from "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong."

Game Show Network will hopefully go back further to earlier re-runs than 1962 of the show, but at times they've been squeemish about playing episodes with such a prominent sponsor as Winston was in those days. Some time you may get to see David Niven (who's secret was that he was sitting on a block of ice while answering questions), the entire United States Air Force of the early 1900s (back when it was only one guy), and a man who witnessed Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre.

Don't keep this a secret...

What can a Cat Man do?

2008-01-27T13:29:00.000-06:00

“My name is Joe. I pick locks. I pick my nose.”

So goes the Cat Master, the leading character in King City, by Brandon Graham. Well-regarded on the Internet comics blog scene, Graham’s first volume is as entertaining, crazy and well drawn as advertised.

Joe’s lock picking practice makes for a natural beginning to the action but we follow this arc into spies, drugs and his bucket, with which he carts around his special cat.

The cat, when injected with cat juice, becomes anything. I mean, ANYthing, from a periscope to a key-copying machine to a parachute.

Though Graham’s end notes shows he thinks a bit too much about his work, the effortlessness of what he’s put down on the page here shows he’s able to use this thinking subconsciously and unobtrusively to the reader’s advantage. And not just with the personality-filled pretty pictures and ideas.

He does well with not only the dialogue between characters but also Joe’s frequent monologues. My favorite is when he considers his long-lost love, who Joe remembers while looking into the mirror:

“That girl used to put glue in her hair and jump on the bed and taste like grape candy. And how do you get over that?”

A gallery of Brandon’s work, including his depiction of Joe's cat seen above, is at http://royalboiler.deviantart.com/gallery/

King City is available at better comic books shops and bookstores carrying manga from Tokyopop. He’s also got another series, Multiple Warheads, coming soon from Oni Press.

When a Huddled Mass, no longer tired, nor poor, gets ugly, angry and possibly even

2008-01-27T10:53:00.000-06:00

We never get a good long glimpse of the giant something tearing up New York City in Cloverfield but for most of the movie, we clearly feel the terror and madness such a visitation would invoke amongst those experiencing this kind of a first contact.

Producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) and director Matt Reeves appear to understand we do not need exploding eyeballs and full-frontal decapitations to feel fear. We can be afraid and go ‘ooh!’ in our theater seats, held rigid in suspense, through a movie that is only rated PG-13.

For those who do not know what the movie is about… A gigantic vaguely glimpsed monster tears up New York City. Several friends try to escape together and we experience their trek through the videotape they made on their journey.

Our only knowledge going into this is the beginning of the tape, which tells us someone discovered the videotape in what was “formerly known as Central Park.” We do not know who shot it, who survived, or who found it, or even how long ago the taped events took place. Some of our questions receive answers. I will have to see this again to find out if there were more answers than I originally gathered.

And that’s just one way to see the film… Abrams and company infected the Internets with various viral clues, like websites promoting products which may or may not have anything to do with the creature. Slusho.jp is worth visiting as is the manga prequel to the film. Or you could visit the Cloverfield Clues blog.

If this is correct, then while the United States was responsible in large part for the original appearance of Godzilla, Japan may have finally returned the favor.

What rushes through our veins

2008-01-22T19:05:00.000-06:00

I read this a little too quickly last year, but some of its scenes keep cropping up in my head...

In Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, the search is on for the Secret Constitution of the United States, dragging private detective Michael McGill through all the dark secret places crawling beneath America's red white and blue crust. But despite the prevalence of perversions and addictions there's a bump in the road that sticks with me in this election season:

McGill and his guide Trix travel through the sexual and pharmaceutical byways of the nation and eventually the clues take them to Las Vegas, to the newly-opened Freedom Hotel. The Freedom is shaped like Rio De Janeiro's giant Jesus, but in the Vegas version Jesus is dressed in an Uncle Sam suit. And all the flag-waving grows tackier from there. It's the kind of a place where they'd have red, white, and blue toilet paper.

Trix gets upset with the receptionist and McGill drags her to the elevator:

"These people just work here. They didn't build it." explains McGill... "you want to kill people for being dumb?"

Trix answers in the affirmative, so McGill continues:

"Look," I said. "You don't get to keep the parts of the country you like, ignore the rest, and call what you've got America. You didn't vote for the president, right?"

"Fuck no."

"No, I bet she did. Half the people in America did. More than half the people in America believe in God. You don't get to just ignore that. I know you like telling me about new stuff and showing me that there's a whole other society in America and all that shit. So now I'm showing you: this is what the rest of the people have, okay?"

And this is not the point of the book, it's just one of the points along the way. Read it for yourself.

We're one side of things from others, but if all we see is our own truth, then how are we better than those "narrow-minded idiots" we see skulking around on the "Other Side"?

Flipping through channels: Bill O'Reilly had on some woman who was a born-again Conservative of some kind, shaking her head that she found she was lying to herself all the time she was "Liberal" and she couldn't live with the lies anymore, so she became saved by Conservatism. I don't know who she was and I don't really care: she could have been someone interviewed by Keith Olbermann about how they couldn't live with the lies of being a Conservative. The sincerity was the same.

This isn't mathematics where only one answer is possible, this is people-stuff where answers are neither neat nor permanent.

Advance the Mask, Again

2008-01-14T18:28:00.001-06:00

NPR's All Things Considered broadcast a nice piece this afternoon on the history of the Lone Ranger, and you can read about it, and listen to it, here...

This connects with my previous post that began playing with music and soon went down another trail to the Ranger and the goodness of doing good.

Because I still stand by that post, I'll disagree somewhat with the article's quote from Professor Gary Hoppenstander, who says "I think what (the mask) plays into is the audience's sense of escapist fantasy. The idea is that in their imagination, in their dreams, all they need to do is don their own mask, and they, too could have these grand and exciting adventures."

Yes, that's true, but there's probably a lot more going on. Michael Chabon notes some of it in the NPR article.

Regarding the mask again -- there's a lot of thought put into what the mask looks like to others: in the Ranger's case, for instance, he's seen as just another outlaw. In Batman's case he's seen as the nightmare of criminals. I'm wondering now, not what is seen on the outside, but how is the outside seen from the inside of a mask. Does the world look different when no one knows who you are...?

Give Him His Space

2008-01-09T21:41:00.000-06:00

Before I forget...

Happy Birthday to Space Godzilla who was borne to American audiences in January, 1999. Perhaps we'll get a decent print of your movie here some time -this- year!

Concession Stands

2008-01-09T20:30:00.000-06:00

"It is going to take a person who is himself an innovator like myself … to be able to go head to head with Barack Obama and win." said Mitt Romney before New Hampshire's primary.

He's made past comparisons of himself and his candidacy to Obama's, and his speech last night after his second-place finish shows he's been working on the style, but has not come close to the substance, of Obama. Romney said:

"They've heard Washington say that they're going to stop illegal immigration, but they haven't.

They've heard Washington say that they're going to get us off of our dependence on foreign oil, but they haven't.

They've heard Washington say they're going to get people insured that don't have health insurance, but they haven't. They've heard Washington say they're going to improve our schools and make them the best in the world, but they haven't.

They've heard Washington say that they're going to protect our jobs and make sure that the jobs that we have are the best in the world, but they haven't done that.

They've heard Washington say they're going to balance the budget, but they haven't done that.

They've heard Washington say that they're going to make life easier on the middle class and reduce the burdens on the middle class, but they haven't. "

Whereas Obama's New Hampshire concession speech went like this:

"But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

And so tomorrow, as we take this campaign South and West; as we learn that the struggles of the textile worker in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America's story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea -- Yes. We. Can."

Can we see the difference between the two?

Yes we can...

Following the Heard

2007-12-31T16:07:00.000-06:00

My own end-of-the-year compilation of a mythical musical mix... cutting things down to fit on two CDs.

CD One:
1) Grip Like A Vice*Go! Team (from Proof of Youth)
2) Umbrella*Rihanna (from Good Girl Gone Bad)
3) Friday Night*Girl Talk (from Night Ripper)
4) Make A Plan To Love Me*Bright Eyes (from Cassadaga)
5) You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)* White Stripes(from Icky Thump)
6) To The East*Electrelane (from No Shouts No Calls)
7) Secrets*The Pierces (from Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge)
8) Us vs. Them*LCD Soundsystem (from Sound of Silver)
9) The People*Common (from Finding Forever)
10) Dickie, Chalkie and Knobby*The Mekons (from Natural)
11) Cat Brain Land*Melt-Banana (from Bambi’s Dilemma)
12) D is for Dangerous*Arctic Monkeys (from Favourite Worst Nightmare)
13) 20 Dollar*MIA (from Kala)
14) Stay on the Ride*Patty Griffin (from Children Running Through)
15) Double-Up*Lifesavas (from Gutterfly)
16) One Minute to Midnight*Justice (from Justice)
17) Gotta Work*Amerie (from The Internet)
18) Rehab*Amy Winehouse (from Back to Black)
19) Go To Sleep*The Avett Brothers (from Emotionalism)

CD Two:
1) Radio Nowhere*Bruce Springsteen (from Magic)
2) The Mountain*PJ Harvey (from White Chalk)
3) The Real Thing*Jill Scott (from The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3)
4) (I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free*Grinderman (from Grinderman)
5) Japanese Slippers*Fiery Furnaces (from Widow City)
6) Three to Get Ready*Dave Brubeck Quartet (from the soundtrack to Inland Empire)
7) Can't Tell Me Nothing*Kanye West (from Graduation)
8) Way Back When*Buck 65 (from Situation)
9) Killing the Blues*Robert Plant & Alison Kraus (from Raising Sand)
10) Paper Planes*MIA (from Kala)
11) Turn Me Around*Mavis Staples (from We'll Never Turn Back)
12) Smoke Detector*Rilo Kiley (from Under the Blacklight)
13) Spider Pig*Hans Zimmer (from the soundtrack to The Simpsons Movie)
14) J Dillalude*Robert Glasper (from In My Element)
15) I'm Not There*Sonic Youth (from the soundtrack to I'm Not There)
16) Challengers*New Pornographers (from Challengers)
17) Jigsaw*Radiohead (from In Rainbows)
18) Flashlight Fight*Go! Team (from Proof of Youth)
19) D.A.N.C.E.*Justice (from Cross)
20) Hello/Goodbye (Uncool)*Lupe Fiasco (from The Cool)

Justification later...

Happy New Year...!

Looking Up

2007-11-24T10:42:00.000-06:00

Things are beginning to look up...especially from the belly of the new "Enchanted Caves" at the City Museum.

Drawing Out the Pain

2007-11-09T15:15:00.000-06:00

Posting continues its sporadic nature as nicotine withdrawals make focusing more difficult than usual.

In the meantime, two offerings of my own creation from:

stripgenerator.com

Click them to go to the strip-generator site, where you can click them again for a more-readable size...

Everyday You Meet Quite A Few...

2007-11-01T15:28:00.001-05:00

Critic Wilfrid Sheed’s latest book, “The House That George Built,” carries us through the golden years of Tin Pan Alley, with each chapter concentrating (more or less) on an individual composer like Gershwin, Berlin, Carmichael and the best of the rest. In his better moments, the prose brings each mentioned song to mind and I kept stopping the read so I could give a listen to the tunes about which he was talking.

However, it’s not for the music that I put these words down. In his chapter “Jimmy Van Heusen: On the Radio with Bing and Frank” Sheed describes how tunesmith Van Heusen ("Swinging on a Star," "Moonlight Becomes You," "All the Way," "Call Me Irresponsible" to name a few) spent his war years:

"Four days in a row, up at four A.M. to test-fly new Lockheed warplanes until noon, under the name of Chester Babcock; then off to Paramount to write songs for the rest of the day as his other self, Jimmy Van Heusen; then a two-and-a-half-day break, during which he only had to get up whenever the studio did, to write songs all day this time. Then back to Go, and you can sleep as long as you like when the war is over, buddy."

"What twenty-first-century sensibilities might find harder to grasp is not the deed but the cover-up. Imagine the glory at the Lockheed base if he ever so much as let one colleague know that he had recently written that song they were all humming, "Sunday, Monday, or Always"; and imagine the megaglory of tipping off Louella Parsons, the gossip queen, that you were not just another Hollywood draft dodger, the kind people hooted and whistled at in the street, but a hero on two fronts, the entertainment one as well as the real one, in which he was entrusting his life again and again to the skills of Rosie the Riveter between songs. Ronald Reagan would have told Ms. Parsons even if he hadn't done it, as an inspirational story. But the hell with it. Jimmy was not the inspirational type, and besides, he was only a great songwriter, not a minor movie star, so he mightn't even have inspired anyone that much. And finally, of course, there was his job at Paramount to worry about. No doubt his bosses would have crooned his praises in public -- but who wants to make movies with a guy who might go down in flames any minute, and hold up your next picture? Who did this guy think he was anyway? Joan of Arc?"

"In retrospect, the myriad changes of sensibility that occur in this country seem like earthquakes that no one notices at the moment they occur. In the 1920s, a writer could genuinely think of himself, and be thought of, as a star. In the thirties and forties, he was just a working stiff to all concerned. From the 1990s until today, a guy with Van Heusen's war record would undoubtedly have sold the book and movie rights and established his own website as the Singing Test Pilot or the FlyingTroubador.com In the 1940s the worst thing that you could be was a hotshot or a big deal. "What are you?" as the kids used to say. "A wise guy or Boy Scout?" To this, there was no correct answer except to put up our dukes and pray."

Sheed occasionally falls prey to generalities and self-contradictions -- you can see a couple of them in the above-example. What all this brings up to my mind, to the background swing of Dean Martin leering "Ain't That A Kick In the Head" (another Van Heusen tune): Are there still those out there doing good because it is the right thing to do? Are there still those who do the right thing, not because the deed means some reward -- and by 'reward' I mean not just money, but also glory and an improved self-esteem -- for the do-gooder?

The Lone Ranger would ride off into the sunset without waiting for thanks; Superman would say no thanks were necessary because "it's what I'm here for." The more-common cliché for a mask these days, though is "if gangland crooks knew my real identity they would try for revenge against me through my friends and family." I like the more noble idea: if no one knows who you are when you do the good deed then it's a strictly-anonymous affair, without reward of any kind. Only good for goodness' sake.

"All the monkeys aren't at the zoo," goes Van Heusen's Swinging On A Star, "every day you meet quite a few..." Like the monkeys, perhaps there are heroes met every day as well -- subtly working their good through the world -- and we're just too slow or cynical to notice them until our thanks are too late to matter...

Put This In Your Pipe

2007-10-29T17:35:00.000-05:00

From the diary of a nicotine fiend on the first day of his last attempt at quitting cigarettes, circa October 2007:

Whatever kind of cave dweller has the biggest brow, that is what I am convinced I look like today. Am I Neanderthal? Cro-Magnon? The feeling goes on right now and all through the day: eyes screwed back deep inside my head looking out from under the shadow of what feels like a big enormous sloping brow. All the weight on the top of my head has rolled itself up to the center of my frontal lobes. Every other part of my being is more a foggy memory; of something, I remember having once in what must have been good old days. Because of the disconnect from the rest of my self, typing this out feels like my fingers are being operated from a mechanical claw at the carnival, trying to pull free the really good prize at the bottom of the pile.

Sense of smell has improved remarkably, for such a short amount of time, a matter of hours -- though visiting the restroom across the hall has made me question how much I should relish this heightened awareness of the olfactory.

Gone to Shell

2007-10-25T19:21:00.000-05:00

The awful awful diseases, killing me by degrees. Back out of my shell with posting again shortly -- by this weekend.

Steady Hands

2007-09-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

With steady hands and balanced mind, you too can take pleasure in another Dr. Toy award winner, this one from the “10 Best Toys of 2006”: Kapla Blocks.

It is not possible to describe Kapla Blocks in any particularly exciting way: they are blocks. Wooden blocks. They do not light-up; they do not erupt with loud noises. They are just blocks. Wooden blocks... More precisely, they are wooden planks (made of “pine from renewable French forests”) measuring 1” by 4 ½” by ¼”. Each exactly alike, though you can choose from seven different colors.

They act as blocks because what you do with them is… stack them. It is how you stack them that counts, as you can use the plans included with the kit, or use your imagination to create countless oddities.

Think of them as a creative-form of Jenga.

At top is a picture of my first creation, made from the basic barrel-set of 200 planks. Though they did not have a systematic plan for it, there was a picture of a completed one, which I used as a guide. I am not sure how many I used for it, as there were quite a few left over. What I am sure about is that I need to get more of these things.

What Are You Looking At?

2007-09-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

When you squeeze and squint your eyes to focus, is it something in your mind trying to make your eyes smaller? Is it because when you had tiny eyes, when you were a child, you could see much more?

Try to see again as a child, walking to work – all the details: grass, hedges, fences, but then try harder, forcing your sight into more of a focused lens closer to blades of grass, leaves and branches of hedges, painted wooden-pickets of fences.

Then tighten more your gaze that you might see:

Black busy bugs travel over, under, and around each towering green and brown-rusted blade bending beneath the weight of their eternal unknown mission. Twisted hedge trunks turn in synch with its community of leaves -- each uniquely shaped from the other but all working together to embrace the changing sunlight. Dimpled white daubed spackling of rough-cut wood smile back at you with what an untroubled mind now recognizes as a sea of happy faces.

Slow down and try to see the details again, become less goal oriented, and try to take in what wonders there may be before you. Do not cloud your mind with what you expect awaits at the end of the trail. Forget about the pending deadlines, the scheduled appointments, and what-might-go-wrong. Let yourself go to the unexpected pleasures of the moment.

Playing the Nintendo WII game “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” in co-op mode, with younger people:

The game allows you to play as a character from the Marvel Comics’ “universe” – you can be Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine, or one of the Fantastic Four, and your mission is to battle an army of monsters and villains through the levels of cityscapes and underworlds and places-that-have-never-been.

Because it’s co-op mode, everyone must move together. If one person lingers on one side of the screen, the other players are unable to move further down whatever path lies ahead. This can be frustrating if you are the adult in the group. Your mind automatically steers toward the future, to the goal needed to continue the game.

Generally when playing with the younger set, however, you often find yourself stuck, unable to move on because one of the children remains on his side of the screen. “Could there be some secret treasure or insight I missed where he lags?” I wonder. Looking to where his character remains on the screen to discover what my group member has found, I see nothing but joy. “Look at me, I’m Spider-Man!” he shouts gleefully, pressing buttons and moving the controls – exhilarated by his ability to skillfully manipulate the hero into shooting webs and bouncing off walls.

He does not care where he's going -- what he's able to do now is what's most important.

Trying to see as a child can help you appreciate more the work of certain artists, as well. Look past the uncomfortable sights and sounds of David Lynch films, for example – forget about goals and fulfilling resolutions before “The End.”

Lynch’s eyes also see as a child. He marvels at not only what his story-telling technology can do with lights, movement, and sounds, but also how they can change the original meaning and mood into something even more marvelous.

His most recent work, “Inland Empire”, is now on DVD, and the extra features reveal no more of the film’s meaning than the film itself – their revelations instead light up the eyes of Lynch, telling us how we should view not only the movie, but perhaps the world itself.

In the extra feature, called “Quinoa” Lynch prepares one of his favorite meals for us: a grain and broccoli delight that cannot possibly taste as good as Lynch’s pleasure in preparing it. Every detail and step is slow and precise.

Patiently observe the director tapping out a small amount of vegetable bouillon cubes. “I’m gonna set this right here – prepare it for later. I’m going to open that drawer, right here, and get a little knife. Then I’m gonna just bust this up, like so, into little pieces. Then I’m gonna let it wait there. It’ll be happy waiting right here.”

He continues: “Then I’m going to go over here and get these paper towels. And I’m going to get a paper towel and fold it for later ‘cause that handle gets so hot you can’t believe it!”

Later as he waits for the dish to complete its cooking, he talks more about the making of the film:

“It was a phenomenal world that appeared in this regular warehouse that became a magical world. So many magical things came out of that, and it grew and grew and no one will ever know how it grew that way ‘cause nothing was planned. It was partly planned but the final thing, you couldn’t have planned it like that. No one could have ever planned that.

“When you do something you don’t know where it will end up and how it will marry to something -- how it could marry to something in the future. So no matter what you do – some things you do and maybe they don’t feel so correct -- when you do it feels finished or kind of finished. Or something’s not quite right, it isn’t finished – for whatever reason you sort of walk away from it and later unbelievable things can come out of that."

"It’s just like the perfect thing you’ve been looking for.”

Here Today in a Still Tomorrow

2007-09-21T07:05:00.001-05:00

ALPHAVILLE (1965):
Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina,
Akim Tamiroff and Howard Vernon
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
(100 minutes) B&W
(French w/ subtitles)

The private detective comes to town, seeking some truth. As usual, he's the outsider, but in Alphaville no one appears to pay him much mind when he starts snooping around, making inquiries, taking pictures. In Alphaville no one questions anything.

Its motto -- "Science Logic Security Prudence" -- represents their way of non-life, monitored and controlled by a central computer. The scientist who created the computer reasoned that people have become slaves of probability, so he concluded: for perfection to exist you need to weed out the factors that could cause improbables.

Regularly scheduled executions handle the weeding. Capital crimes include not only reading poetry, but showing emotion -- like shedding tears over your wife's dead body. The dictionary (in Alphaville called "The Bible") arrives in new editions every morning without certain words that were there the day before. ("So no one knows the meaning of the word' conscience' any more. Too bad...") There is no "day before" or "day after." Only the present exists. The past is a memory that can only cause sorrow and pain, while thoughts of the future -- perhaps the most unwanted improbable of all here -- might create a hope for something better than today.

That the hope is always there is the truth they and their computers cannot compute and can never delete.

All Together Now

2007-09-21T06:45:00.001-05:00

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950):
Starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
(138 minutes) B&W

An awards ceremony opens the film with the top prize about to be announced and we are told how important the proceedings, how famous the attendees. A cultured snide voice speaks almost-rudely over the presenter's dialogue, letting us know, "It is not important that you hear what he says." The characters in the story had better heed the wisdom in that, and so too should the audience.

For the characters, it is more important to see the actions, not hear the words. For the audience, "All About Eve" is all about words – deriving momentum only by its terrific ability to sustain witticisms in powerful steady streams of dialogue, in what is essentially a backstage drama about a conniving up-and-comer stealing the thunder from the old blood of the theater.

The cast is responsible for the words retaining their power after all these years -- especially George Sanders as the cultured snide critic, and most especially Bette Davis in one of the last great roles of her career.

Thin Disguise

2007-09-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936):
Starring William Powell
and Myrna Loy
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke II
(113 minutes) B&W

The second whodunit comedy featuring Dashiell Hammet's Nick and Nora Charles, follows them home to another round of blackmail, infidelity and multiple murders. The mystery is solved with all the unusual suspects gathered, but what no one seems to suspect is how the secrets revealed uncovered not only the solution to the crimes but also the dark side of what Nick and Nora might well have been.

Nick frequently jokes, between sups from his ever-filled tumbler of alcoholic beverage, how he only married Nora for her money. Here we meet Nora's wealthy cousin Selma, married to a fortune-hunting drunk. Nick also seems to have enjoyed a past full of loose women, and so too has Selma's husband. Selma herself feels frantic, on the edge, trapped in the family mansion with the horrific Aunt Catherine, surrounded by secrets and putting up appearances. Nora escaped all that by marrying Nick.

Everyone here, except Nick and Nora, keeps secrets. Appearances are more important than truth. Nick and Nora have nothing to hide, and their open-door policy about themselves allows life constant entrance.

Political Commentary

2007-08-31T10:52:00.000-05:00

My two-year-old niece played pleasantly, happily with her toys in front of the television while waiting for her parents to take her to school.

On the television, the Today show presented a panel discussing the Larry Craig situation. A clip of Craig would run, then the panel would discuss. Another clip of Craig would play, followed by more discussion. And so on.

Every time Craig’s clip ran, my niece would frown up at the screen, pigtails shaking, and shout, “Be quiet!”

She returned to playtime during the moderator's discussion, but when Craig came up again, she repeated her request: “Be quiet!”

"Be quiet!"

"Be quiet!"

And then went back to her toys.

A friend to all children...

2007-08-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

Though she was a friend to all children, she carried nothing but claws for all but two adults. She liked to steal corn chips and sips of cranberry juice. She was 23 years old. Now she is gone. Rest in Peace, Bernice…

Happy Birthday Captain America, Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos, Fighting American, Boys Ranch, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The X-Men, Etc. Etc.

2007-08-28T07:16:00.000-05:00

It must have been early 1966 when I first encountered the work of comic book creator Jack Kirby, who would have turned 90 today. I did not then get to read a story he drew – I merely glimpsed the work in question, in passing, from a few respectful feet away, held by boys a year or two older than I was. The gang huddled together, backed up against the lockers waiting to enter the classroom, and they turned each page slowly only when each member was ready to find out what happened next. They chuckled in pleasure, in anticipation, to themselves, one of them exclaiming “Oh, yeah!” as another page turned.

It was several years before I actually read the story myself. I had no desire at first sight to find out what was hidden beneath that horrifying ugly cover of a devil-horned giant, with a bald, naked silver guy (on what might have been a surfboard) chasing three normal looking blue-suited humans and one orange rock man.

It was probably disturbing to me as well that the rock man had no shoes. Batman was on TV that night though, and I had questions about the show to ask of classmates my own age. The cover left my sight, but I did not realize then it was still in my mind.

Later months and years went by: my hipper younger-brother occasionally purchased some other comics by that “Marvel” company. I immediately recognized the characters as the ones I had glimpsed before. Kirby’s artwork was not to my taste but like all comics then we read them indiscriminately out of some sort of unspoken childhood obligation.

The artwork on the insides was as disturbing as the covers, but without looking them up again, I can still remember my first sight of the character called the Black Panther – like a living black shadow, ready to pounce upon the creations of another guy called Psycho-Man.

Then there were the Inhumans: Gorgon with the hoofed feet, Karnak with the sensitive hands and big head, Medusa with the living red hair, and their giant dog Lockjaw with the perpetually pouting lower lip.

There was also a story of the bald, naked silver guy on the surfboard fighting a really ugly robot. I remember the end of the story where the robot -- called, of course, Quasimodo – defeated by the Surfer’s “Power Cosmic” showed his loss with a face in anguish greater than I had ever seen before.

These were not the homey, safe DC Comics of Batman, Superman and the Flash. These were the powerful forms of the Marvel Comics Group, and their stories seemed to me always drawn by Kirby. His story telling between the covers thumped my head the hardest. Perhaps my disturbance came from a combination of the power of Kirby’s story telling, along with how gritty and urban they appeared alongside the seemingly more sedate and conservative DC Comics.

Artists of the time tell how Kirby created a style of story telling barely constrained by the limits of the page. What Scott McCloud called "The Invisible Art" of Comics, was how the best comics drew the reader's eye from panel to panel, from page to page. Kirby drew instinctively this way and reading his work, following the frames of what his mind said was the best way to tell this story, can become addicting. My mind became educated to the unfamiliar style and I began to keep my eyes out for more.

I later found that Kirby had been creating comics since the beginning of the industry, most notably his first hit: co-creating Captain America with partner Joe Simon. The two moved from company to company in those days, coming up with more ideas and characters, creating the first romance comic, as well as turning out significant work in westerns, science fiction, combat and supernatural stories; and of course, more super heroes. After twenty years experience under his pencil, Kirby teamed with Stan Lee to birth “The Marvel Age of Comics” where the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and Spider-man all began. Though Lee was the glib front man, putting words to the pictures, a whole lot of the more-significant ideas, according to subsequent research and interviews, most attribute now to Kirby.

Eventually Kirby wanted more money, more credit from the company he’d led to greener pastures, so his children would not have to worry about insurance or college. Unable to come to an agreeable contract with Marvel he moved to DC Comics and came up with the so-called Fourth World series of books: “New Gods,” “The Forever People,” and “Mister Miracle - Super Escape Artist.”

Words and pictures both by Kirby, they were his most-personal effort to-date. The “New Gods” stories somberly carried a serious weight of the past, with super-beings of two opposite worlds caught in an eternal planet-shattering battle, while “The Forever People” showed the cost of that war on the young but, dressed-up in the fashion of the late 60s youth movement, it also told the tale of hope for the future. “Mr. Miracle” was about another cost of war – individuality – and to me it represented Kirby himself the most. He had escaped the slums of New York by natural talent and tenacity, fought in Europe against the Axis tyranny, slipped through the knots of mediocrity tied tight by corporate interests. As long as he kept his ideas flowing by the power of the mind he could always survive.

Of course, the Fourth World did not last long. Kirby never gave us the big finish he’d had in mind, and no one can tell where the characters could have gone because no one is Kirby.

The later years of his life, while not as productive – his work no longer seen as hip or cool he did not get the jobs from the major publishers – found him in a controversial bid for creator’s rights, as he used the legal system in an attempt to get his original artwork back from Marvel.

While younger artists without half his creativity got big deals and solid contracts, Kirby went without. He never saw his creations become multi-million dollar motion pictures, or his works become hard-bound collector’s editions.

For those of you not impressed by the comic book, you can also view Kirby’s influence outside the four-color printed page:

You could crawl out from under a rock and check Star Wars (Lucas has admitted being “influenced” by Kirby’s “New Gods” series as much as by Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress”). Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” based in large part on his research into the life of Kirby.

Kirby worked harder than most. When I was first getting into comics, it seemed at least two or three books a month on the stands carried his stories. Right now, it seems that DC, Marvel, and newer publishers like Image Comics have more Kirby in reprint form the first few months of this year than any time while he was alive. You can find these in your local comic book shop. If you ask for a Kirby comic in a shop and they do not know who Kirby is, then you should find another shop.

In order of importance, I would recommend “The Fourth World Omnibus” and “Fantastic Four” – after that, you could try others like Kamandi, The Eternals, and Captain America. If you become extremely fanatical after that, you might even enjoy the more-quirky Devil Dinosaur.

The New York Times ran a great piece on Kirby over the weekend, and Kirby’s friend and historian Mark Evanier (his great blog you’ll also find linked to the right) will finally get his long-awaited Kirby biography on the bookshelves this October.

There is also a virtual visit and more information in store at the Kirby Museum and a very good Kirby documentary included on the ‘deluxe’ edition of the first Fantastic Four movie.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kirby! As a schoolmate of mine said a long time ago: “Oh, yeah!”

Shine On

2007-08-18T09:06:00.000-05:00

The first in an irregular series remembering 20th century cultural icons...

Laurel and Hardy were probably not popular entertainment’s first Odd Couple, but due to their large volume of quality comedic work in film, they were among the most influential. One of the better pieces about them on the Internet is Mark Evanier’s article here.

When first encountering their screen antics I preferred the mild-mannered put-upon Stanley – the skinny Bow to the ever-exasperated know-it-all roundness of Ollie the Fiddle – but over the years, as I get older, I see more the perfection of their pairing. They’re like the Baby New Year and the Old Year Past figures seen every December 31: Stanley is the baby with Innocence we wish we still had, while Ollie is the adult of Experience who thinks he’s seen it all. His pride is ours, and we know he will at some point fall – in a “prat”, of course.

Woody Allen’s “Reasons to Live” from “Manhattan” could well have included the following clip. It’s from the marvelous The Flying Deuces, which you should rent or own, and though the two minutes offered here does not display their usual comedy shtick, it makes the case for our keeping the pair forever in mind.

All you need to know: The dead-head duo decides to quit the Foreign Legion, making a leisurely exit from the fort. Unaware they are about to be put away for desertion they take the time to dawdle when a familiar tune wings into their ears.

One of the most charming moments ever put to film and, at the very least, it’s a “Reason to Smile”…

A Line Is Drawn

2007-08-16T11:35:00.001-05:00

Clowns have been fooling around reportedly since the days of the Pharaohs. Evolving from the familiar court jesters to the more defined characters of the Commedia Del Arte and the sad-faced fools of the circus, their most consistent reason for being is to make us laugh by looking at ourselves.

Brothers Max and Dave Fleischer were probably not laughing much at themselves in the first decade of the 1900s, nor were they pondering the history of comedy and laughter. Their mental efforts were focused on an idea of rotoscoping for the movies – filming a live-actor then tracing over the figure in the film-cells to give an effect of a literal moving picture. Needing something interesting to trace, as well as something that would not cost a lot of money (given their probable respective income at the time, as noted here) they remembered a clown suit Dave owned and decided to see how that would work with their invention. The result was one of animation’s first real stars: Koko the Clown.

A good number of Koko’s early cartoons, along with some entertaining documentaries on the history of the Fleischer Studios and animation are available in the recently released Popeye the Sailor DVD collection.

Koko’s character is most-like the “First Zany” clown of the Commedia Del Arte School – a clever rascal who often attempts to go against his master’s wishes. The “master” in Koko’s case is Max Fleischer. On film and in real life Max Fleischer is God in his studio, forcing Koko (played on film for later rotoscoping by Brother Dave) into sometimes-cruel and more-times petty situations. And while Max may come up with an initial story, Dave as Koko supplies the beats that make the several minutes of life so energetically entertaining.

In “The Tantalizing Fly” from 1919, possibly their first Koko cartoon, Max "draws" Koko on a large blank page, despite the constant interruption of an annoying fly. The fly is from real-life – it is unknown how they animated the pest’s movements.

Max tries to put this uncontrollable menace under his thumb with a fly swatter, missing the target and hitting instead poor Koko – literally drawing stars and a moon from the clown. Koko yanks away the pen from his "boss" and tries to bop the endless pest himself – but instead rains ink in heavy drops everywhere on the page and into the real world of Max’s face.

“I’ll draw a fly trap,” Koko announces and inks out a bald man snoozing in stillness, cross-legged on a chair. The fly goes for the tempting target of the hairless head, circling the man’s pate. Every time Koko raises the pen for a final blow, the fly flits off until Koko sneaks behind the man, smashes in, and…hits the head instead of the fly. The man jumps up berating the clown for the rude awakening. Koko sticks out the pen and sucks the man of ink back into his nibs.

Koko then tears the page and dives through the hole. Max turns the paper over where Koko’s back is to the audience, captured in mid-dive downward. Max shakes the page over the inkwell and Koko goes back to his original state – a pool of ink sliding back into the inkwell. The fly follows and Max’s hand seals the deal. The End. Four minutes since The Beginning.

Though Max is God and Creator in most Koko stories, his creation’s antics show that the clown too can be a creator – sometimes quite literally, as when Koko takes control of the pen from Max.

An actual plot for the films is not generally part of the creative process in the early efforts. These cartoons usually consist of nothing more than “one damned thing after another”: one action takes you off on another tangent. No thoughts for the future, only the here and now are important. Every action a reaction, breeding another action and so on until the end when every character, except Max goes back to the inkwell to rest until the next cartoon.

MODELING (1921)

Two years and a handful of cartoons later and the brothers Fleischer have already made what appear to be great leaps in their understanding of the new technology they were building as needed. In “Modeling” from 1921 they combine not only live-action and rotoscope, but they have also added animated drawing and stop-motion Claymation to their toolbox.

They've also included a semblance of a plot: While Max draws Koko, a visitor in an adjacent studio sits for a bust modeled after himself. Mayhem ensues.

Koko continues living under the quick-tempered whim of Max but he still takes what is thrown at him (sometimes literally – here, a glob of clay) and makes the most of it, joyously. No thought for tomorrow weighs him down. His life span, each incarnation of his new life, only lasts the length of the new cartoon before returning at the end to the well of ink from which he is born anew each time.

The childishness is natural. Koko retains no thought more than an instinctual instant reaction to whatever appears in his path. Skates drawn on his feet, a new background of frozen lake applied behind him and after a bit of flailing around he soon takes to the ice, as with each new situation, like a pro.

You know how each new life of his begins; you know how it will end. You do not know what he will fill up his life with in the time between.

Here is ‘Modeling’… Again with the sales pitch: You can buy it along with a hefty helping of Popeye here.

The silence of these shorts may be overly-deafening -- we're so accustomed to some sort of music and sound-effects with our cartoons. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives collection, contemporary to these Kokos, is a good soundtrack though others have tried light jazz (when the cartoons first came to television as in the example above) and techno.

The Fleischer’s later cartoons during the “talkie” phase utilized their good taste in music for their soundtracks – featuring Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and others. A documentary on the Popeye set notes their studio was located near New York’s Tin Pan Alley where the great tunes of the day by Gershwin, Berlin and others was in the air, in the midst of creation. Their silent Kokos however, the fluid story without a real story, demonstrate their tremendous musical spirit.

Koko may dance to a song only the Fleischers can hear but his movements amid the constant creation on-screen will make your mind and heart sing. Moreover, perhaps you might even reflect on how you spend the unknown amount of time allotted yourself.

Blues in the Green

2007-08-03T11:28:00.000-05:00

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938):
Starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland
Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley
(103 min.)
Technicolor

Robin Hood leads Maid Marian through the green of Sherwood, away from the reveling of his Merry Men. The merriment belies their business of taking care of the poor.

He is strange to her, she says, not because of his anger at the tyrannical and bloody discrimination of the Normans against the Saxons, but because he actually does something about it. "You must hate the Normans," she says.

"Norman or Saxon, what does it matter?" replies Robin. "It's injustice I hate."

This scene comes and goes quietly about half-way through what's remembered mainly as a simple swashbuckling adventure story, based on the old English legends of the laughing outlaw who robs from the rich to give to the poor. A swashbuckler, though, is not only an adventurous daredevil, but also a laughing braggart.

Robin Hood, then, stands cocky in a similar light to the characters most frequently found in the music of the blues: a Mannish Boy. He has to laugh to keep from crying.

A Technicolor blues.

Munny Munny Munny Munny . . . MUN-ny!

2007-07-25T07:15:00.001-05:00

What's a Munny? It's a 7-inch-high soft vinyl figure made for you to make of it what you will.

Created by Kidrobot in 2005 they've become popular among artists and toy collectors but have also been inching out of this niche market into the more mass cultural area with kids and 'regular' adults. It’s not enough just to give them a home and a name. Their blank faces and bodies cry out for your imagination, as well – along with whatever materials necessary to make your imagination come to life. Paints, clay, crayons, markers -- even x-acto knives and blowtorches could be useful, though some tools and dress-up material may take a little practice to get them right.

Munnys are actually cute enough to leave as-is, dressing them only in the variable "secret" accoutrements found in each box.

The fellow above is a Munnyata: a Munny piñata dressed in colorful crepe paper and glue. He won’t be alone for long. Soon he’ll be joined by a blindfolded Munny carrying a big stick and wearing a toothy grin, all a-smile at the thought of the candy inside Munnyata. We'll probably hang the Munnyata by a wire for display, and it's possible we'll figure out how to stuff an assortment of treats inside his little body. Several more ideas are in mind and I'll post them here when ready.

You can get more information on Kidrobot founder Paul Budnitz with this interview, and purchasing Munny and other Kidrobot items may be done at their website. If you're in the area, you should visit Star Clipper to make your purchase -- while looking for the Munnys you'll probably run into other things worth buying, but that's OK, too...

UPDATE: The second Munny is on its way, slightly delayed while my co-decorator takes a break.

Strange Visitor

2007-07-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

Black and white citizens from the silver screen in my childhood dreams huddle together under the towering shadows cast by the bright white sun on the skyscrapers of gray steel and stone. The huddled adults – all dressed up to go nowhere in Sunday suits and hats -- point up to something like always, with a look part fear and part wonder, at something strange they've never seen before.

They look up at something from beyond the light, or perhaps from the light itself. I cannot tell. I am the exception, the lone strange child of the scene. The adults look confused, despite their view of what the something is. It may be a bird or a plane.

In the sky there is music swirling up, up: a softly whooshing wind of harps segues into a thunder of trumpets heralding the sound of a tornado. Then, a cliché, without warning, there is silence and the gentle touch of a powerful hand on my tiny shoulder.

"Would you like to fly?" asks a voice as genuinely warm and friendly as the smile of the man with the question, the man who was neither bird nor plane but was most definitely the cause of the confusion. He is a mystery man to others, with many secrets to his name. I know his secrets. I know his name. I answer "Yes!"

We flew into the sky until I woke up with a smile, knowing that I had dreamt the dream before and I would dream it again.

I did not know how far the dream would take me because I did not know this friendly flying fellow was more than just a television character. I did not know there were also over twenty years of radio, movies, newspaper funny pages and, most of all, comic books, telling his tales.

His stories seemed already endless, like a dream, and stories are tales of things that can happen, possibilities of life. Perhaps that is why the huddled masses looked so long in wonder up in the sky. Possibilities in our lives, the belief that we have the power to make things happen if we try hard enough, is what gives us hope -- and with hope we all can fly like the strange visitor in my childhood dreams. Like Superman.

Adam's Rib - Another old Connecticut custom

2007-07-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

ADAM'S RIB (1949):

Starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn
Directed by George Cukor
(100 minutes)
B&W

Hollywood's most popular depictions of love and romance usually run along the magnetic line of "opposites attract", because a relationship in constant friction seems to rub the audience in the right way. Not that you really want to -think- about the opposites who get together by the end of these films -- in most cases, you can't imagine them really living happily ever after. "Adam's Rib" is a comedy about one such couple of opposites, but rather than tell the probably humorous tale of how they got together, it really does think about the relationship and tells us how and why they stay together. Its sometime-dated handling of feminist politics still holds up for the most part, largely due to the acting of Tracy and Hepburn.

Adam (Tracy) is a lawyer in the district attorney's office called to prosecute a woman who shot her philandering husband after catching him in the arms of another woman. Adam believes in the case – not a fan of philandering, he sighs indignantly at the thought of citizens taking armed action into their own hands; going outside the law when it suits their purposes. The law is the law.

Adam's wife Amanda (Hepburn) -- a practicing civil attorney -- believes the gunplay was an unfortunate end to a bad situation; that it was the husband whose own deeds brought about the shooting. To make matters for their own marriage worse, Amanda takes on the case to defend the wife and turns the trial into a showcase of the inequalities foisted on women by men.

This is not really a comedy, but a drama -- with humor coming from our understanding and belief in the characters. The film-in-the-film (an 8mm amateur production celebrating the end of their mortgage) shows what a comedy would be, all mugging and slapstick and cornball plot. David Wayne’s character is the only -true- comedic character here and he’s a perfectly-obnoxious skunk.

This movie does not take sides -- neither Amanda nor Adam is completely in the right. What's "right" here is their marriage, the elements each brings to the partnership and why these two opposites must stay together to be 'whole'.

After all, the rib is not only literally a bar on a cage -- it also protects the heart and allows it to keep pumping along.

Don't Look Back

2007-07-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

Stumbling back from a pre-Fourth of July barbeque …

Dead-tired from beer, ribs and too much of everything else I manage a decision to drift away on the couch with whatever might be playing on the television. The ‘On’ button brings up TCM’s broadcast of the 1952 film “Above and Beyond.”

All I know about the movie is what I can see. Robert Taylor is a pilot, the head-pilot from the way he’s behaving – giving instructions to the crew. His voice gives no room for nonsense, but his eyes are troubled. It’s a secret mission and he’s the only one with the knowledge of where they’re heading and what they’re supposed to do, the only one on the plane aware of their assignment to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. As they near Japan, he reveals to the crew their purpose and they discover that Hiroshima is the best target. I hear in my head David Lindley’s El Rayo-X recording of Smokey Robinson’s Lot-quote: “Don’t look back…”

Flying over the city, the bomb bay opens, the bomb falls, and… silence. No dramatic music. No serious banter from the crew. No ominous narration.

What an effectively interesting directorial choice for a Hollywood picture of the 1950s, I think. Then I realize this silence is not part of the picture, as the Emergency Broadcast System sound erupts from the speakers. I’m not tired anymore. This can’t be. Not now. Not like this…

Then the slow scroll of large white text crawls across the screen: “THIS IS A TEST. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY YOU WOULD BE INSTRUCTED TO TURN TO CHANNEL 14 FOR DETAILS.”

My heart settles down, the soundtrack to the film restored, as the crew grimly observes the fiery destruction of their work. No one is happy, no cheers and high-fives, no “Go USA” chants. When Taylor asks for confirmation of the hit, he repeats back what he hears: “Success.” The way he pronounces it, though matter-of-factly, resigns the word and their work to fate. You can hear slightly sarcastic quote-marks around the word.

“Just great,” I think and continue my stumbling on to bed, where I’d discover an old book better for sleeping-off to than anything else I might find on the tube that night.

Ragtime Revisited

2007-07-02T22:16:00.000-05:00

Jon Savage, the author of "England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond" -- one of the best books on the Punk Scene of the 70s and ... beyond -- sends his thoughts further back in time for another cultural epic, "Teenage -- The Creation of Youth Culture."

Hard to imagine there was a time when the term "teenager" did not even exist, but Savage here attempts to open our eyes to that period, beginning with the late 19th century, when the most-famous disaffected youths were either murderers or poets. It's still a little hard to imagine more than merely coldly intellectually as, unfortunately, Savage's text, a couple of hundred pages in, feels mighty dry. Perhaps "England's Dreaming" burned a little brighter with emotional context because those years chronicled were experienced first-hand by his younger self, whereas these years he could only dig up from some pretty old works. Savage reportedly steps up the emotional content later in this book along the way, but in the meantime, there's much to learn here for my original topic, ragtime.

Savage wrote (p. 56-57):

Staffed by recent immigrants and the children of the lower middle class, the popular music industry readily struck a chord with its core audience, being unafraid of raw emotion, sentimentality, and heart-wrenching scenarios.

However, for many young Americans, lachrymose weepies like "After the Ball" did not fit the bill. They wanted something that better accentuated their sizzling synapses, and they began to find it in the new music that was all around them, even if it was still ignored by the music industry. In "Maggie," Stephen Crane's heroine and her gangster lover enter a downtown saloon where an "orchestra played negro melodies and a versatile drummer pounded, whacked, clattered and scratched on a dozen machines to make noise." The drifting sound of the music "made the girl dream."

Stephen Crane's 1893 novel, "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" (which can be read online here ) is a horrifyingly descriptive tale of growing up in the multi-cultured slums of the day. The seemingly-noisome pounding, whacking, clatter, and scratch of the music described above made a terrible and beautiful kind of sense: Terrible in its reflection of their everyday life, beautiful in that they were able to make something artistic and moving from its chaos. If you consider ragtime making a new beat out of old songs, putting a different kind of rhythm to the generic waltzes and marches, then it's not difficult to see the music as a reflection of the status quo as filtered off of a broken dirty mirror.

Savage continued:

Popular music provided one way that blacks could begin to enter American society. … life for most Negroes was grim. The lynching statistics – over one hundred a year during the 1890s—were only the tip of the iceberg. "Most had no future nor hope of acquiring any," writes Louis Armstrong's biographer James Lincoln Collier. "They could look forward to nothing but work, poverty, disease and death. A philosophy of carpe diem [was] the only sensible position in such circumstances."

A hard core concentrated on pleasure, on the heightened sensations of the moment, in the red-light areas to be found in cities all over America: Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas, New Orleans. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the spread of these districts provided regular employment for the large pool of traveling musicians. Playing in the saloons and clubs became a viable rite of passage for many young black men and women. The wider American public's taste for Negro music had already been whetted by the popularity of minstrelsy, and by the late 1890s, it was ready for something less ersatz.

Therefore, the black artists of the day (like the punks of the 70s) saw “No Future” written on their possibilities and said, “Nothing tomorrow? So let’s see what we can do -today-, then…” The spontaneity necessary to feel alive could not be bound by notes on a page, it could only be freed by the rampant rhythm of their hearts – by the never-before-heard melodies only hinted at by Sousa and Strauss.

The youth of the day, in looking for the Reality behind the masks they saw their parents wear and prepare for their own future, their years-ahead all planned out like more notes on a page, found ragtime.

More to come after I've finished the book, but in the meantime a tangent question:

If ragtime put new beats to old music, have hip-hop and sampling brought us full circle -- with old beats put to new music?

Ragged Time

2007-06-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

Ragtime, created at the turn of the 20^th Century, has been touted the first true American style of music. Growing from more-traditional forms like the waltz and the march, its “rag-time” plays out stodgily in either a 2/4 or 4/4 beat. The left, sinister-hand keeps the steady rhythm while the right-hand syncopates, plays up and down and all-around with the melody.

Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) is perhaps the most famous piece of this type and Joplin himself ragtime’s most well-known composer. It helped his fame and resurgence in ragtime’s popularity that George Roy Hill’s Academy Award-winning 1973 film, “The Sting”, used Joplin’s rags for its soundtrack. This is where I came in...

If it hadn’t been for the film, and the Top Ten status for Marvin Hamlisch’s rendition of Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” I would probably have never heard of Joplin or ragtime. A teenage boy wanting to make an impression with friends could not exactly wow them with Beethoven’s Fur Elise, or a Clementi sonatina. But, “The Entertainer,” – now that’s entertainment. From there, it was to other pieces from “The Sting” like “The Pineapple Rag,” “The Ragtime Dance, “The Easy Winners,” and (what I later learned was only the last-half of) “Solace.” Then I was able to tackle the “Maple Leaf Rag.”

Life goes on, and after over twenty-five years of not having a keyboard and the ability to regularly practice, a piano finally rolled back into my life. Scott Joplin and ragtime came back, too. It wasn’t enough this time to simply relearn “The Entertainer” and “Maple Leaf Rag” – this time I started exploring the other pieces in the misnamed (as it’s not really complete) “Scott Joplin: The Complete Ragtime Piano Solos” I’d carried around since 1973.

I took on unfamiliar rags like “Weeping Willow,” “Cascades,” and “Palm Leaf Rag.” I finally even got around to bothering with the book’s introduction, which contained “School of Ragtime” by Scott Joplin – his tutorial written for the novice, amateur player.

He wrote: “What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians … That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at ‘hateful ragtime’ no longer passes for musical culture.”

For his ‘Exercise No. 1’ he reiterates what appears at the beginning of most of his rags: “Play slowly until you catch the swing, and never play ragtime fast at any time.”

This is where my blog comes in.

It’s going to grow slowly and hopefully steadily, but always its aim will be to put out here “the best I can” at the time.

To stretch things out further than I should: Ragtime’s heart-sided hand with the beat, keeps time and holds onto the roundabout syncopation of the right-hand -- representing thoughts all-too-loose and ephemeral in my mind. With the help of this music and making sense of no-sense, perhaps I can begin to catch the swing of things -- and from there move along a little faster.