Brigham's Blog: May 2010

31 May 2010

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion
It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.
It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial
It is the VETERAN, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.

28 May 2010

I have moved on from S.E. Hinton to John LeCarre and am now reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The 1965 movie with Richard Burton is my favorite spy film, it is so unremittingly bleak, unsentimental and unglamorous (which was a welcome switch from all the 007 nonsense going on back then).

Last night I watched a remarkably clever 2007 episode of Dr. Who: Blink (it's only 50 minutes - watch it!). Not only is it a stand out Dr. Who episode, it's great science-fiction. But then, I'm a sucker for a good time-travel story... I also like the way the Doctor isn't really the main character in the show; he just sort of informs it and others have the lead roles. Interesting, even somewhat bold for a television series - you have to have a long-established, well-known character in order to get away with that.

I really like the term given to the weeping angels: "quantum locked." In others words, if observed they're immobile, an idea associated with a theory called the Quantum Zeno effect. An advanced, abstract idea - but yet again those astonishing ancient Greeks were there first! Really, was there ever so brilliant a group of people alive on the earth at any one time?

Time-travel stories: One of my favorites is the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect." Remember that one? The Enterprise keeps blowing up? My wife finds it somewhat tedious - and it is - but I think it's fascinating nevertheless. And, like all great science-fiction, it contains the necessary element: the wonder of it all.

I recall very well when I was first fascinated by a good time-travel story. It was the Richard Matheson-written Twilight Zone episode "The Death Ship," which I'm sure I saw as a re-run in 1965 (it first aired when I was six - I wouldn't have appreciated it if I saw it then). The plot: A space ship crew lands on a planet where they find their wrecked ship and their dead bodies. Why? How? Great stuff... The captain of the crew was played by Jack Klugman, and it is a truism that Jack Klugman - Jack Klugman! - stars in the Zone episodes that are among the very best. I don't know why that is... it's kind of like the rule about the even-numbered Star Trek movies being the best ones.

When I was eight I saw a low budget movie entitled The Time Travelers (1964); it was goofy and dated. At the time I thought it was amazing. When I saw it as an adult I found it intriguing but, overall, pretty sad. (Although it seems to have an enthusiastic fan base, judging from the IMDb message board.) Once again, I'm a sucker for a time travel story. I wouldn't mind seeing it again when they get a cleaned-up version on DVD.

Anyway, I like to think about time travel. In 2001 I even wrote an article on the subject that got published in a national Civil War reenacting magazine. The article is called Time's Arrow. In it you can read my goofy theory of Human Chronal Orientation. (I'm a Type III.) Hey - disprove my theory if you can!

I can't leave this topic without mentioning the oddest of all time travel mechanisms, the one Christopher Reeve employs in the chick flick Somewhere in Time (1980). He dresses himself up in 1912 fashion, locks himself in a room and - to wonderful John Barry incidental music - convinces himself he's really living in another time. Ha! What a conceit! A horrible film, but as a reenactor I had to see it. The whole illusion is shattered and he travels back to the present when he finds a 1980 penny in his pocket... (!)

Still, there is one question raised by this film that I have always wondered about: can a man really die of a broken heart? I'm sure the answer is, directly, no. It was first raised for me in a 1956 production of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) I saw as an eight year-old. In it, Anthony Quinn crawls into the catacomb where Esmeralda's body lies and wills himself dead. I cried my eyes out at the idea.

Weight: I lost a measly .8 pounds last week - yikes, I'm at a plateau! I need to either exercise more or eat less, not an appealing decision. Total weight loss in six weeks: 10.8 pounds.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

27 May 2010

Back in 1973 I bought the piano sheet music for Erik Satie's Gymnopedies. (You know the first piece, probably.) Since I liked the work and realized that it was comparatively easy, I decided to learn it. Easier said than done, especially for me as a seventeen year-old. (I am now much more focused and likely to achieve success at things than I was back then. It wasn't until I got through the Marine Corps that I began to gain confidence.) So, after futzing around with the piece half-heartedly, I gave up, and the sheet music got stored away for 37 years.

Now I'm seven months into my piano lessons and, after finding the music again when I went through a storage closet, last night I decided to once again give it a try. I was immediately delighted to see that the notes aren't strangers to me, and that after about a half hour I was able to haltingly play the first 3/4rds of a page or so (it's a three page piece). It's still beyond my level, and I'll probably set it aside for a few months more, but I am heartened. My progress at the piano is now more apparent to me. Hooray! Old dogs can learn new tricks.

I am now watching a film noir entitled The Fallen Sparrow (1943). The plot is kind of vague; I'm half-way through it and I'm not entirely sure where things are headed. Its chief attraction is its star, John Garfield (born Julius Garfinkle). A noir stalwart, he always projected a sort of energetic half-mug/half-gentleman personality - a New York City guy's guy. Most people know him from the excellent noir "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) - a film I saw with my Dad on late night TV back when I was thirteen. It gave me my first taste of film noir, although the term hadn't become popular back then. My Dad had talked it up to me and so I watched it with him - and liked it a lot. I took a mental note for future use: Hmmm. Maybe I like these adult crime movies...

I am now reading another book by S.E. Hinton (pictured above). "That Was Then, This Is Now" is another one of her inarticulate and less than convincing dramas about middle school aged kids in tough neighborhoods. I find her an underwhelming writer. The fact that she's become as successful as she is seems to be reinforcement for the argument that we Americans have become dumbed down, or that we pander to the youth culture way too much. But... perhaps I am being too critical. Perhaps confused middle schoolers deserve their own literature, too. I don't know... My tastes were always kind of highfalutin'. I was reading Edgar Allen Poe, Sherlock Holmes and Arthurian lit when I was in middle school. (And yes, I confess, the Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows novelizations - until I realized that I was reading the same book over and over again.)

I've been listening to that Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" CD a lot. It's been a revelation. As I wrote, I never thought I'd like that kind of jazz but I seem to be playing that music over and over. It's as good as everyone claims it is! That's what I really like about yard sales - the surprise factor.

Also a surprise - I bought a CD called "The British Are Coming, Vol. 2." On it is a song that totally blew me away when I heard it for the first time earlier this week: The Marmalade's "I See the Rain" from 1967. GREAT SONG. Check out that great heavy bass sound. Wikipedia says that this Scottish band used two bassists (one playing a four and the other a six stringed bass), but I don't see evidence of that in the video. When I first heard this song I thought, "Wow... sounds like early Hendrix." Guess what? Jimi Hendrix liked it and called it the best cut of 1967.

The video is interesting... note the goofy Romeo jacket on the lead singer. I'm here to tell ya that sort of thing was the height of grooviness in 1967. And the Danelectro Longhorn guitar (I think they're ugly). Finally, the glyph of the little black boy on the bass drum. What's that about? It's a "Robertson's Golliwog." See, Robertson's sold marmalade. Get it?

26 May 2010

So... yesterday I was minding my own affairs at work when I heard a couple of crazy, hyper, tiny voices that I remembered from somewhere, issuing forth from an office down the hall. Thinking about it, I recalled my wife's birthday. The Five Families moms gave her one of those Hallmark cards that play an audio file when opened. I checked down the hall and confirmed, yes, it was one of those cards - this one featuring two cartoon characters, one green, the other pink. "I love those guys," said the woman who got the card - exactly echoing the sentiment that one of the Five Families moms said when Cari opened her card. "I wonder what the guys who do the voices look like in real life," the woman mused. About four minutes later I had the answer. (I suspect my best and greatest calling is working at a library reference desk...)

The characters are called Hoops and Yoyo, or hoops&yoyo, to use Hallmark's styling of it. Yes, they have their own website - everyone has his own website. (I have ten. Twelve if you count this blog and Facebook.) A photo of the guys doing the voices is here. Not surprisingly, they're Hallmark employees. And that's all I intend to write about this critical bit of information.

I finished reading "The Amboy Dukes" last night - it was excellent. Unsentimental, unsparing and hard-hitting. I am surprised it's out of print; it's a minor American classic. It causes me to want to read Irving Shulman's follow up books. But right now I'm reading S.E. Hinton's "Rumble Fish" - a book for junior high schoolers if ever there was one. A yard sale purchase, of course. Do you suppose I'd pay real money for an S.E. Hinton book? The phrase "dumbed down" describes it well. And it was made into a film! (Which was booed when it premiered.) I'm sure the film is more literate than the book... it has to be.

Burbankia update: Memorial Field. Not much to write about this, really, other than to state that I have been there only twice in my life, to see my high school's football team get beaten by John Burroughs High's football team in 1965 and 2007.

I didn't watch any films noir last night - my wife was watching "The Biggest Loser" finale on the big television. Reality shows... paugh.

Instead I watched a DVD of the dedication ceremony at Larry Maxam Park, in Burbank. I found it unexpectedly affecting. Yes, I was in the Marine Corps like Cpl. Maxam was - but there the comparison ends. He was in the Marine Corps that was receiving and giving fire in Vietnam; I was in the Carter Era one that had me within an easy drive from home for nearly four years. It's almost as if I was in an Industrial Arts Boarding School with military trappings than the real military, and I feel guilty and conflicted about it. I recognize that's it's the luck of the draw - there was only a Cold War going on from 1974 to 1978 - but in the presence of real Marines I feel like shrinking away.

It's yet another one of the depressive, over-analyzed things in my life that makes me, me.

25 May 2010

Last Saturday I bought Miles Davis' 1959 "Kind of Blue" CD for a quarter. I looked at it and thought, "Huh. I know I don't like jazz and probably won't like this, but it looks pretty compelling. For only a quarter, I'll take it." I had never heard of this album before buying it. What sold me was the retro Columbia pressing; I like old Columbia Lps. Even better, it has the cool retro "walking eye" logo on the CD. Not entirely a case of judging a book based on its cover, but not far from it.

Come to find out - via one of you readers - that I stumbled across what is arguably the greatest jazz album ever recorded. And I've been listening to it repeatedly ever since... maybe I like jazz after all. It's not too much of a reach for me - after all, I've been listening to jazz-influenced classical pieces by Stravinsky, Hindemith, Ravel, etc. for years. And I do own the 1967 Stan Getz Burt Bacharach album... and some Herbie Mann... and Julie London - my favorite female vocalist - was a jazz singer.

I used to think I didn't like old school country until I started listening to Porter Wagoner. It appears my ears just got stretched again. (I seriously doubt if there's a variety of rap I'll ever like, however.) (Wait. Do the Beastie Boys count?)

I must confess to being somewhat puzzled with the term "modal jazz," however. (It's used in the wikipedia article as being descriptive of this Lp.) I know very well what modal music is... I'm not sure I get how this music is "modal."

The Columbia walking eye: The other night, at a Five Families dinner, we discussed tattoos - I came up with various farcical suggestions. I stated that because my tastes and interests are so scattered I had no idea of anything I could possibly want indelibly inked onto my body save perhaps an eagle, globe and anchor USMC insignia. But it occurs to me that the Columbia walking eye might be a sensible option. On the sole of my foot, perhaps. One foot a Columbia walking eye, the other the RCA logo with Nipper, the Dog. After I'm dead my body can be laid out, barefooted, with the logos facing the mourners. "Wes liked to collect records," the Bishop will explain.

Nix. No tattoos.

I am now reading Irving Shulman's once-famous book about teenage crime, The Amboy Dukes. Written in 1947, it seems very dated. (For instance, the protagonist wears a zoot suit.) But as it seems to have formed a basis for the 1950's national obsession about juvenile delinquency it is formative and interesting to me.

My paperback is from 1956 and is fragile - I have to turn the pages with care. Copies of this out of print book are expensive; a quick check at amazon.com shows copies at $19.75, $25, $30, $45 - even $109. And these are all paperbacks! I paid $4 for mine. Watch - now that I'm interested it'll go back into print. That happened to me with Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York. I paid a lot for an old hardcover copy and then learned that Martin Scorsese was going to make a film based on it - and it went back into print. I see now that this led to a minor boom with Asbury's other works - some of which I have added to my amazon.com wish list!

(Father's Day is coming.)

Asbury's book was a favorite of my father's when he was a kid. He told me about it when I was a kid, I found it in the Burbank library and read it - and then he re-read it. We then discussed it. Good times.

I watched a film noir police procedural last night: 1948's "Walk a Crooked Mile" - about those pesky Communists, led by a goateed Raymond Burr. Noir stalwart Dennis O'Keefe is an FBI agent; he's joined by Louis Hayward as a Scotland Yard inspector. Together, two mighty democracies - the United States and Great Britain - combat the forces that would tear down our way of life, Dum Dum Da Dum Da Daaa Dum Dum (old school march music plays us into the closing credits). It was... okay. Nothing special. It needed a bit of DAME-HUNGRY KILLER-COP RUNS BERSERK to put it over the top, if you catch my drift.

24 May 2010

Ugh, Monday. The weekend was so fun I'm suffering from culture shock.

I bought four CDs at various yard sales on Saturday: "Kind of Blue," a Miles Davis recording from 1959, the Monkees' 1967 "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd." (arguably their best recording), a 1993 Chris Isaak album I didn't have and a Rosemary Clooney/Nelson Riddle collaboration from 1960. The Chris Isaak CD is quite good. The cover was designed to look as if it was off an old Lp, and they even mixed some vinyl noises between the tracks! I'm listening to Kind of Blue as I write this... never been a Miles Davis (or even jazz) fan but I like this recording.

One of my occasional habits on Fridays is to buy an acai smoothie at Robeks, walk over to the Alexandria train station, a block or so from work, and sit by the tracks and watch the trains go by during lunch. "Railfanning," I think it's now called. I did this last Friday. Normally I might see one freighter go by - last Friday I saw three. One was going by slow enough that I could see some hobo boxcar art in chalk, and I'm pleased to have seen the logo of The Colossus of Roads (aka "buZ blurr") go by. This one is featured on "Who is Bozo Texino?" - a hobo documentary I have. More about buZ blurr here. I think you'll agree this particular one is quite artful.

On Saturday I sat in a Dodge Challenger SRT8 which was on the local showroom floor. 425 horsepower - nice. $46K - not nice.

You've heard of the Oscar, the Emmy and the Tony. Ever hear of the Patsy? Probably not - but Burbank has the pawprints!

I watched three films noir over the weekend:

Bewitched (1945) - An annoying treatment of multiple personality disorder. People back in the 1940's seemed to have loved films about psychoanalysis... these make terribly dated and inferior noirs, to me. Ech - but at least it was short (just over an hour).

The Crooked Way (1949) - A minor entry in the cycle plotwise (yet another amnesia storyline) but a major entry for the presence of cinematographer John Alton with his celebrated "mystery lighting" which gave film noir its distinctive look. What do I mean? Venetian blinds. The Big Combo's fog. Imposing tough guys. Raw Deal. Bedroom window. You get the idea. I've read lots of film noir books, but only one by a cinematographer: Alton's "Painting with Light." Planet Alton is a shadowy place where conventional right and wrong is subverted by odd planes and angles of light. As one reviewer wrote, "How can a character be judged as all good or all bad by a viewer if he's constantly intersected by light and dark? What is the cinematography telling us about him?"

The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) - Those dirty Commies! They're just like a mob... once joined, you can never unjoin. That's what this film is about... and it's a good one. The shootout at the end - characters dodging around in a dimly lit warehouse - is especially good.

Sigh. Back to work... I'm glad a three day weekend is coming...

21 May 2010

I watched "The Devil Thumbs a Ride" (1947) last night, an enjoyable RKO quickie (62 minutes) starring film noir's reigning murderous psychopath Lawrence Tierney. I am not entirely sure this is a true film noir; it is way too cheery. True, it has multiple deaths in it, but the whole thing moves along so breezily that it's difficult to capture any sense of desperation or fatalism, which are essential (I would think) to any real noir. It's really a film noir romp - if there is such a thing. This film is described as having one of Tierney's better performances, but, frankly, he's not very scary here. He seems way too chummy. (I have blogged about Tierney before.)

The book I'm reading, "Ragged Dick, Or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks" by Horatio Alger (shown above), has my gaydar going off. If I didn't read in the preface that Alger had a thing for boys I'd have wondered from the text.

By the way, my gaydar is excellent. My wife can testify that I've made some fairly spectacular calls in the past. There was once a website called "Gay or Eurotrash?" in which I scored 100%. I'm just saying.

The $20 movie ticket: No movie is worth $20 to see, especially the crap Hollywood churns out these days. And I think films about blue people are juvenile. So there.

Star devouring hottest known alien planet. This is interesting, except that isn't a Hubble photo on the page - it's an artist's depiction.

I've been listening to the Beatles' song (actually, John Lennon's song) "Rain." It is one of my very favorite Beatles songs and Exhibit A in the argument that the Lads from Liverpool had an absolutely killer rhythm section. Ringo's drumming is syncopated and interesting (he claims that this song has his favorite drumming) - and Paul's bass is incredibly groovy. It drives the song. Nobody was playing such full frontal basslines in 1966, nobody. For me, the bass dominates the song, not the guitars - and that's no mean feat. But then, I am an advocate that Paul was one of the best and most influential bass players, ever.

Weight: I lost no weight at all last week, which is annoying. I should have; I felt sure I did since my pants are fitting noticeably better. Perhaps it was the big lunch at Jimmy Johns last Friday and the party on Saturday that did it... Anyway, no weight loss to report. I have lost ten pounds in five weeks. Better luck next week.

Have a great weekend!

20 May 2010

I watched "Hot Summer Night" (1957) last night, a late period noir. One online wag called it "Ma and Pa Kettle Meet Cornell Woolrich," which I think is frantically funny, but perhaps this now rather obscure reference is one only noirheads like me would find humorous.

It's a curious film in that it has many strong individual performances from the cast - yet the film considered in total is not all that impressive.

While we're on the subject of the cast it's time to introduce yet another old school character actor - a Dark City denizen that I see popping up from time to time in these old crime films, Jay C. Flippen (shown above). The wikipedia link calls him a "gruff-faced actor who often played police officers or weary criminals," which is just about perfect - but I can elaborate.

I used to go to the race track with my Dad as a kid. Flippen was the kind of guy I'd often see there, wearing a shabby hat and slacks pulled way up over his stomach, held in place with a thin belt. He's clutching a tip sheet in one hand and a beer or a cigarette in the other. It doesn't matter what horse he's playing - it'll come in show and he's holding a win ticket. Once, when I was a teen, I stepped into a shabby Burbank hotel called the Hotel for Men to buy some Rolaids or make a phone call - I forget which. The lobby smelled, and various Jay C. Flippen types lounged about watching a fight on a small television.

Flippen has a great role in Hot Summer Night, one of his best. He plays an experienced old con who calmly instructs the trigger-happy goon in charge how to manage the mechanics of a hostage for ransom situation. At one point, he dispassionately watches the goon empty a revolver into two fellow gangsters, and takes over as the brains of the organization. Whether he lives or dies doesn't matter much - he's old. (59!)

Perhaps Flippen's oddest role was in the Stanley Kubrick heist noir, The Killing. In it, he has a bit part in the complicated sequence of events that comprise the heist. It all begins to go south from a series of miscalculations, one of which is when Flippen makes a pass at Sterling Hayden ("Whaddaya say, you and me could go off and enjoy ourselves - let this old world take a couple of turns..."), which is gently rebuffed. This scene is jaw dropping, given the 1956 date of the film. Flippen's character, distraught over being rejected, gets drunk and helps screw up the heist.

The wikipedia article said Flippen was once in vaudeville and jazz when young. Was he ever young? Here's proof - visual evidence that we were all young, once upon a time, even Jay C. Flippen.

I am now reading "Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks" by Horatio Alger, Jr., a paperback yard sale purchase for a quarter. I'm not sure which is worse, the book title or the fact that Alger had a thing for boys. The latter. Anyway, it's one of those late 19th C. rags-to-riches stories Alger wrote for boys with the goal of making a more presentable American capitalism. Or something like that... I'm just at the preface.

I did Scouts last night with my Webelos Den. While in the gym of the church I found a most depressing artifact: some boy's scribbled copy of rap song lyrics on notebook paper, containing the most vulgar words and sentiments. How did I know it belonged to a boy and not a girl? In typical rap fashion, the lyrics demeaned women - I can't imagine a girl wanting a copy of such a thing.

But I could be wrong! It's a strange new era, what with the popular culture being led by the nose by criminals, the terminally ignorant and the contemptible. But I should talk. The classic films noir I love were once considered sensationalist trash (DAME-HUNGRY COP KILLER RUNS BERSERK!) and hardly self-improving fare. The passage of six decades or so makes them seem tame - even artsy - by comparison with current fare. "Slouching towards Gomorrah" was Robert Bork's and W. B. Yeats' phrase, and yes, I feel we are certainly moving in that direction.

Raising my kids properly was tough enough; I fear for how they'll manage to raise theirs in this culture. It seems the odds are against them.

On that cheery note I'll close.

19 May 2010

Cari and I are doing another Honda Marriage Encounter trip next month. We have purchased a Honda Civic for my youngest daughter to drive while at college, and will be driving it about 2,300 miles to Orem, Utah - we last did this in early 2008. This time we avoid the snow! Cari liked the Little House books when she was a girl, so we'll be making a stop in Mansfield, Missouri to see Rocky Ridge Farm, the Laura Ingalls Wilder home. We're also stopping in Atchison, Kansas for Cari to visit something or another - I forget what.

The Honda we got is pretty nice... it's a 1999 Civic with only 51,000 original miles on it (and I have the Carfax report to prove it). It should be a reliable car - you can reportedly get 200,000 miles on a Honda, easy. As you can see from the photos, it looks brand new. Very clean. It's a bit smaller than the Accord we drove for Julie last time; I don't know how much child requested stuff we'll be able to transport. My challenge will be to see if I can fit Julie's disassembled Sting-Ray bike in the trunk with the luggage.

Speaking of Sting-Rays, yesterday I talked to a guy I used to reenact with who is a big Sting-Ray fan. He owns two, and recently bicycled around the White House on one. As he's in his 50's it sounds like a pretty juvenile thing to do to me. But perhaps you'd say that running around in a Civil War uniform on the weekends is a pretty juvenile thing to do, too. And you'd be right. I had a 1964 Schwinn Super Deluxe Sting-Ray, myself. When I was nine.

You may or may not know that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are reportedly working on a movie treatment of the 1960's Gothic soap opera I used to like, Dark Shadows. (I was a big fan as a kid.) I think Johnny Depp is totally wrong for the Barnabas Collins character. But his ego says otherwise. My DS contact sent me this (my italics): "It's unlikely, while everybody intends to make the picture, and we're still working on the script and all the rest, it's unlikely that we can start it earlier than the beginning of next year," he continued. "Johnny had committed and he has to do Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides first. He had a long-standing, firm, unchangeable contract to do that. That's a big project and he doesn't start that until later in the summer. So there you have it and we're waiting in line." Zanuck went on to say that the film was "still very much alive" and that they are currently working on the script. Finally, since the show ran for several seasons and incorporated so many different elements of sci-fi and horror we wanted to know which elements he was hoping to incorporate into the film and if the lead character would still be the vampire Barnabas Collins played by Johnny Depp? "Well the main character ... yes," answered Zanuck. "But one of the problems we've had with the script is that there are hundreds of episodes of this and boiling it down to an hour and a half or two hour movie with one story has been a real challenge and that's what we are doing now. But it will have all of the elements of the TV show . It won't be high camp, obviously. It won't be soap opera, which the show was. No, it will be scary, it'll be very funny and it will carry the Tim Burton stamp of uniqueness," confirmed Zanuck."

Translation: It'll suck big time.

Last night I watched an entertaining Orson Welles film from 1949: "Black Magic." It's not what one could call High Art - Welles is too hammy for that - but it was fun. I note that reviewers are calling it "noirish." Frankly, I don't see it.

I'm almost done with my David Feldman Imponderables book. Here's a good section: Why Was "pi" Chosen as the Greek Letter to Signify the Ratio of a Circle's Circumference to Its Diameter? I thought I read somewhere that "pi" was a Greek letter that had negative connotations to ancient Greeks (like the way we have an "f" word), and expressed their disgust with a number that was not rational or whole. Guess that was wrong.

18 May 2010

David Lynch directs Marion Cotillard in a sixteen minute Dior handbag commercial. If you've ever seen any of Lynch's other work you'll recognize that this draws heavily from his (hand)bag of visual and aural tricks. Since it's a long form advertisement, however, the only important question is, did it make a Dior handbag more desirable to own or buy? Not for me, of course. Will it work on my wife? I suspect not. Waste of time.

I watched an interesting semi-film noir last night, "Storm Warning" from 1951. The plot: Ginger Rodgers, Doris Day and Ronald Reagan have a run-in with the Ku Klux Klan. However, oddly, this Klan is noticeably light on the racist rhetoric (in fact, there was none) and seem instead like an organized mob. Steve Cochran, a film noir stalwart, plays a moron quite successfully. This film draws heavily upon a more well-known work, "A Streetcar Named Desire." It's not a world-beater of a film, but instead an enjoyable way to spend 93 minutes.

I so miss Ronald Reagan...

I spent some quality time with my spinet last night, top open, tuning it up with my new adjustment wrench and chromatic tuner. The bass octaves went 20 cents flat or more after the professional tuning I had done on it in October. It's not a big deal because at my level of play I rarely use those notes. Still... it's nice to get all the keys spot on. I'm playing a simplified adaptation of the big exotic theme from Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto that sounds a whole lot better now that my piano is in full tune. (Well, duh.) There's one flatted note at the beginning that didn't so much sound as banged. Now it's fixed.

I can see why piano tuners dislike spinets. Getting the mute in between the strings to muffle them can be a real challenge on the upper part of the keyboard - there isn't a lot of space to wedge the mutes in without interfering with the felt hammer. You have to start muting from the bottom - which means performing some bodily contortions. I bet when I first called my tuner and told him I had a 42 year-old spinet with sticking keys to tune he mentally went, "Oh, no."

By the way, the cardinal rule with used pianos according to Fine's Piano Book is consult with a tuner before buying! Seriously, after reading Fine's book I wonder that anyone buys used pianos at all - there are so many things that can wear out, break or go wrong. This book also includes formidable rules about moving pianos - things me or my fellow volunteers have never, ever done in my thirty years or so moving pianos of widely varying sizes as part of church-related household moves.

I'm becoming used to the sound of my piano, as clunky and as ringy as it is. (My son-in-law tactfully called it "vintagy.") There are some key combinations that, when I strike them hard, make upper strings ring unpleasantly. Whenever I play a better instrument I am surprised by how balanced and mellow the tone is. Once, I started playing my teacher's piano and had to stop - was I playing the right notes? Indeed I was; they just sounded a lot better on a Kawai upright.

Pianos are fascinating. I once sat down at an old, large c. 1900 player piano in the little red schoolhouse not far from where I live, while a yard sale was being held there. This instrument used to be a player piano - my family had one when I was a kid - but the roll player mechanism was removed at some point in its life. I expected full-bodied tones on the bass. What I got sounded high and thin. I'd like to go back to further inspect the piano to see if the soundboard cracked... I'm kind of toying with the idea of offering to tune it up for free, just to get some experience. But I might break a string (it happens, even with experienced tuners) and then I'd feel awful and the owners resentful.

17 May 2010

Friday night my wife and I made sense of all the stuff that was in our storage closet - the one where the shelf pulled off the wall last week. I reinstalled the shelf and we went through all the clothes. I also went through my "Pants of Historical Sizes" box and sorted them into "too tight" and "too loose" categories. We gave a lot of clothes away to a charity and the closet is now much more usable. Hooray!

Yard sales were great this past Saturday. In fact, there were more than I could go to. (After about 2 1/2 hours I start to get burned out and want to carry on with the rest of the day.) I bought myself a couple of tall flat pack furniture cabinets for the garage for only $10 each - things look a lot tidier in my garage now. One of these days I'm going to get cabinets for the garage, remove the shelves, paint the place and really clean it up. So that's two rooms in the house we squared away.

The story of Mike the Headless Chicken. I heard about this over the weekend and had a difficult time believing it. But it's true. Weird.

Detroit to demolish 3,000 buildings. (Including the house Mitt Romney grew up in.)

I walked by a Mazda 3 the other day. It reminded me of the logo of British R&B group Dr. Feelgood.

My daughter sent me this link: creative sinks. Some of them look like a real pain to keep clean...

I watched an epic French film last night: "The Wages of Fear" (1953) by director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Plot: "In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerin shipment without the equipment that would make it safe." It could also have been called "Truck Ride to Hell," since any little bump could jar the load on the flatbed and blow everyone up. C'est la vie.

And that's all for this dreary, rainy Monday.

14 May 2010

A friend told me yesterday about plans to award servicemen with a "restraint" medal; that is, an award for troops preventing civilian deaths in combat. Thinking this was some kind of joke I did some research - here's the news as reported on CNN. To my mind this is the very height of folly - and I am surprised that such a thing originates with the Brits. With their military experience they should know better. On the face of it who could object? Fewer civilian deaths is good, right? Don't we want our troops to be humanitarians?

Everyone involved with this ill-advised idea should be forced to read "Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell, a book I read a few months ago. In it, Luttrell, a Navy Seal in Afghanistan, describes an operation that went badly wrong. He and his fellow Seals in Seal Team 10 were sent to kill a Taliban warlord. While on the move they were discovered by two adult men and a teenage boy - civilians that Luttrell strongly suspected would report their position to the Taliban. While the purely military decision was clear - shoot the civilians - Luttrell chose restraint, mainly because the only thing Navy Seals fear are liberals back home wanting to place them in jail for doing their jobs. An hour later the Taliban troops attacked and the result was that Luttrell became the only survivor (grievously wounded) of Seal Team 10. What's more, the Taliban shot down a rescue helicopter dispatched to retrieve the team, killing sixteen Americans aboard. Luttrell is convinced that the three civilians informed the Taliban of their location.

It is a harsh reality but William Tecumseh Sherman was accurate when he said that, "War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." Let us hope that our senior military officers abandon this ridiculous restraint award (most often to be awarded, I am guessing, posthumously). At the worst it will encourage yet more American deaths, at the least be an award for merely following orders.

I'm a hater - I hate Che Guevara. Here's why.

On to lesser fare.

I am now reading an Imponderables book I got at a yard sale, "Do Penguins Have Knees?" It joins "When Wild Poodles Roamed the Land," "Do Fish Sleep?" and "Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?" on my bookshelf. Here's a characteristic entry, dealing with Rhode Island (which is not an island).

People knowing of my interest in English history have been asking me if I plan to see the new Robin Hood film. So I checked out the trailer. I see Maid Marian is in armor (in accordance with Hollywood's feminist sensibilities) and Russell Crowe, age 46, plays Robin at an age about six years older than the average lifespan in medieval England. What's more, a friend reports the usual claims from Hollywood about how carefully authentic this production is to the times (with a 46 year-old lead?). I think I'll pass. If I have a yen to watch a Robin Hood production I'll settle with the British Robin of Sherwood series from the Eighties.

I'd report on the film noir I watched last night, only I didn't watch one. A closet shelf pulled down off the wall and I was busy trying to reorganize all the stuff we've stored in that closet. I used the opportunity to store my daughter's pink drum set in the attic and to give away some unwanted and ill-fitting rugby clothes to a young rugger of my acquaintance. I don't plan on playing rugby again anytime soon, if at all. The chronic right shoulder pain - now probably arthritis - I got from my last season nearly four years ago advises me against it.

I went to the Quantico Marine Corps Museum with my daughter and her boyfriend earlier this week. While there, I took some pictures of the tiny little spot in the museum that describes my USMC era, the Vietnamese refugees in Camp Pendleton, California - photo one, photo two. (And my wife helpfully pointed out yesterday that I wasn't really even a part of that - I was at Camp Pendleton after the refugees left.) It's funny, though... while at the museum I talked to an older jarhead who described the biggest problem of the Vietnamese refugee camp - litter. My keepsake from the era is a "Don't Litter" sign I took off a telephone pole.

Weight: I lost only 1.2 pounds this week, mainly because with the visit of my daughter and her boyfriend I only counted calories for three days. I clamped on the feed bag on the other days. Anyway, I have now lost ten pounds in four weeks, which is not bad. That's 2 1/2 pounds per week. Nutritionists would nod approvingly.

A number of communities near me are having yard sales, I see; what used goods await me? Have a great weekend!

13 May 2010

Hey, I just bought a copy of Irving Shulman's "The Amboy Dukes" for only $4! My son found a copy at a Google store... groovy old cover art, too. This paperback dates from 1956 - the year I was born! Looking at amazon.com the old copies get pricey - up to $100 or more for books from the 1950's. And it can't be found in a library.

So who is Irving Shulman and why should I want a copy of this book? It's an outgrowth of my interest in old school gangs. From wikipedia: "The Amboy Dukes, published in 1947, was about the grim and sometimes short lives of teenage Jewish street criminals in Brooklyn during World War II. It sold five million copies and led to his being hired as a screenwriter by Warner Bros. Two subsequent novels, Cry Tough! and The Power Brokers, followed the equally grim experiences of the some of the characters who survived The Amboy Dukes, but with somewhat less emphasis on their Jewishness. In The Amboy Dukes two members of the gang accidentally shoot and kill one of their teachers -- a third member of the Dukes kills one of them before the story is over. In Cry Tough, another member of the Dukes, Mitchell Wolf, returns from prison and after trying to "go straight" becomes a member of an organized crime family. In The Power Brokers, Wolf and two other alumnae of the Dukes are sent to Nevada to run one of the crime family's casinos in Las Vegas. Shulman's message in all three books is that crime does not pay." Irving Shulman is perhaps best known these days for his novelization of West Side Story, which I have. His works are generally out of print and unavailable in libraries.

I saw a rather obscure thriller last night, "The Tall Target" (1951), an account of an assassination attempt on the life of Abe Lincoln while he was on his way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. A Civil War film I've never heard of - that doesn't happen very often! This one starred a favorite hard-boiled actor, Dick Powell, and was directed by Anthony Mann, who made a number of fine films noir. I couldn't call this film a film noir, but it's not far from it. It mostly takes place on a train, And often uses the familiar noirish "mystery lighting" (as legendary D.P. John Alton called it). A good little film!

My friend Don and I have been exchanging e-mails about Bad Civil War Art; a favorite pastime. There may be a new photographic shtick in vogue among Confederates. A photo is taken of some marching Rebs and Photoshopped about 60% transparent, then placed in a forest. Ghostly Rebs... whooooo...

I forgot to mention that I saw the original of what I consider the all time best historical art painting at Mount Vernon the other day: Arnold Friberg's 1975 "The Prayer at Valley Forge." I once saw a rip-off of this featuring Robert E. Lee - paugh.

Friberg is one of my tribe, that is, a Mormon. Back in the 1950's he did some celebrated paintings illustrating the Book of Mormon. These are rather amusing because the characters are buff - even the kids. When I was at BYU I took an archeology class where the professor decried these paintings as giving the wrong idea about pilgrims from Jerusalem, who were probably slender and darkish Mediterranean types. But I had that figured out on my own. I once read somewhere that Friberg stated that he made the Book of Mormon characters homerically proportioned because they were mighty men of God. Funny. The mighty men of God I know are all about average size - some rather puny.

Anyway, an entertaining little read about Arnold Friberg and these paintings is here. I didn't notice any robust chickens.

12 May 2010

Back at work. Meredith and her boyfriend leave this morning for the flight back to Utah and thus the household returns to its usual empty nester routine.

We went to Mount Vernon yesterday; that place is now a four hour attraction. They installed a new museum and "education center." The center is quite attractive and glitzy in the current immersive fashion. For instance, they now have a theater where one is treated to an exposition of Washington's Revolutionary War career with computer animated graphics, cannon fire, vibrating seats, dry ice smoke and even artificial snowfall. They also make a big deal out of some forensic work dealing with what Washington actually looked like.

This was on a History Channel production I once saw; using high-tech digital scans of existing sculpture, etc., they were able to reproduce what they think Washington looked like at various ages for displays within the center... it's impressive, save for one detail.

When George Washington was nineteen he contracted a severe case of smallpox which left his face pockmarked. (Contemporary artists chose to not show this, as was the custom.) But there are no pockmarks on any of the manikins in the display. To my knowledge, only the statue in the Masonic Museum in Alexandria gets it right. I suppose the Mount Vernon Ladies Association arrived at a decision point To Pockmark or Not to Pockmark and decided not to startle the public with a too realistic view.

But we had fun - it's a good visit. $15 admission.

I saw a passable film noir the other night, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer in "My Gun is Quick" (1957). It was... okay. Nothing special. The gold standard for Mike Hammer films remains "Kiss Me, Deadly" (1955) - a darling of critics. Ralph Meeker plays Hammer as a sneering, self-centered, greedy opportunist who gets in way over his head. This film has received considerable critical review and deserves it. It took a couple of viewings for it to work its magic on me, but it is now one of my favorite films.

I am now reading J.R.R. Tolkien's short stories "Smith of Wooton Major" and "Farmer Giles of Ham." I first read them when I was in the Marines sick in bed back in 1975. Yard sale paperback... as I recall I enjoyed them more than the Ring books which I found - and still find - pretentious.

That's all for now. Sigh. Is it only Wednesday? That's the problem with annual leave. The more you take the more you want. I'm a time off junkie.

10 May 2010

I had planned to take today - Monday - off from work but my daughter and her boyfriend decided to visit Richmond later today, so rather than burn a day of leave simply poking around the house I'm at work. Telecommuting, that is... I'm at home on a remote connection to my desk PC.

They flew in Friday morning. We picked them up at the airport and dropped them off at the Holocaust Museum. Then Cari and I were joined a small tour party that took the Capitol Dome climb. As I've been interested in skyscrapers recently it satisfied my desire to be somewhere high. (Actually, unless you're up in the Washington Monument looking out those tiny windows, you can't get any higher in D.C. This is much better.)

It isn't readily available to the public, you have to "know someone." It was really, really cool. Captioned photos here, on my Picasa Album. This trip was the result of a visit to the new Capitol Visitor's Center last November. I looked up into the dome, saw the two galleries and wondered, "How do I get up there?"

I bought four books at various Saturday yard sales, one of which being the recent Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf that people are raving about. I've been meaning to read it. There was supposed to be a big neighborhood yard sale at one street - and it's usually a big deal - but just as I arrived the heavens opened up and everyone fled back to their cars, packing their stuff. The rain quickly ended, and when I returned nobody was there. I suppose they'll try again next weekend.

I am having a great time doing tourism with my youngest daughter and her boyfriend... we went to the Marine Corps Museum Saturday and tomorrow - which I'm taking off - we plan to visit Mt. Vernon. I understand they have added some new multimedia attraction there which people have told me is quite good. As Mt. Vernon is only about ten minutes from my house I should see it. We also did the usual D.C. monument tour. We went to see the FDR Memorial... it must be quite complicated. Every time I visit some lights are off, or some of the waterfalls aren't working, etc. This time it was a combination of both.

I'm not a fan of this memorial. For one thing, FDR never wanted anything elaborate, just a single stone about the size of a desk. Secondly, there's the whole fuss from the disability advocates about showing him in a wheelchair - something he never wanted the American public to see. One gets the feeling that this monument is political correctness run amuck. Finally, some of the art is just plain weird. One "room" has columns festooned with all sort of odd symbols signifying... well, it's hard to tell, really. The wikipedia entry is here.

Meanwhile, in Burbank, a fellow named Joseph Brown remembers the Battle of Los Angeles. At least I think that's the occasion he's describing...

7 May 2010

We picked up my daughter Meredith and her boyfriend at Dulles this morning at 5:40 AM. (Yawn - had to get up at 4:15.) The rest of the day is tourism. In fact the next five days are tourism.

Weight: I weighed in this morning at 1.6 pounds less than last week, which means I have lost a total of 8.8 pounds in three weeks.

Have a great weekend!

6 May 2010

I am now reading a hobo book by Jim Tully, "Beggars of Life"; my daughter Julie gave it to me for my birthday. It is quite good. Not as good as Jack London's account of riding the rails, but very good. Here's Chapter III entitled "Amy, the Beautiful Fat Girl." I think it's pretty funny.

I watched a ho hum noir last night, "Miami Expose" (1956), which suffered from being overly formulaic. Nothing about it stood out. Batman's butler - Alan Napier - played the gangster. (I mean the Batman in the 1966 TV series.)

I also saw a truly first class film noir: "Obsession" (1949), a little known movie starring one of the most fascinating British actors of the post war period, Robert Newton (shown above). We Yanks primarily know him as the definitive Long John Silver in Disney's "Treasure Island" (1950) - and if you've ever seen David Lean's incredible "Oliver Twist" (1948 - arguably the best film ever made) you saw him steal every scene he's in as the murderous Sikes, full of rage and evil. In Obsession he is also murderous - but oh, so cunning, calm and deliberate. It really was a revelatory performance. What a talent! He's like Charles Laughton, he steals every scene he's in.

Oddly enough, one of the most memorable actors in Oliver Twist - it was a perfect cast - is Sikes' dog, who displays terror when Sikes murders Nancy. I have often wondered how they got the dog to whine and cringe like that. From wikipedia: "When filming the murder of Nancy scene in Oliver Twist, the dog was genuinely terrified of Newton's characterization of Bill Sykes. The clawing at the door by the dog was unrehearsed and left unedited by director David Lean." It's an amazing scene... I've never seen its like in movies. Nancy's murder isn't shown directly - it doesn't have to be. You experience it via the dog's reaction!

(Speaking of dogs, there's a hair-raising scene in Obsession when Newton is about to calmly put a little dog into an acid bath. That must have given English audiences the absolute willies... it did me.)

Newton is also credited for having originated the vocal mannerisms that we normally associate with pirates. From wikipedia: "The voice of Captain McAllister in "The Simpsons" (1989) is based on his portrayal of Long John Silver. Often credited with originating the style of speech generally equated with pirates. After his spectacular turn as Long John Silver in the Disney version of Treasure Island, actors playing pirates in film, radio, television, and theatre, all tended to use (and still use) the same pseudo-Cornish accent Newton came up with." Arrrr!

I am sorry to report that Robert Newton had an alcohol problem and died at the age of fifty. But I always look forward to seeing him light up any film he's in. And Obsession was excellent.

(By the way, it also featured Naunton Wayne as the Scotland Yard Inspector. Wayne made a career playing with Basil Radford as cricket mad old-school Brits. Again, these are great British post war actors whom I always look forward to seeing.)

Blog updates may or may not happen in the next few days. My daughter is coming out to visit and I'm taking some time off. Her boyfriend is coming with her and we're going to be visiting the local cultural and historic sites. Same thing as usual - I'll blog if I have time.

5 May 2010

Science is often disgusting: The Corpse Flower Blooms.

The subject - among other things - yesterday was skyscrapers... which caused me to poke around in the subdirectory where I keep my 11 Oct 2005 trip to NYC photos, which was the last time I was there. I'll never forget that trip. My pal Mike and I got up the observation deck of the Empire State Building just as the sun was beginning to set and the lights of the city came on. Wow! Here's a shot towards the Chrysler Building. You can see the Trump World Tower in this shot - it's the tall, skinny, featureless black building to the right of the Chrysler Building. All residential. Trump World Tower apartment 82-C - that's the one I want. Check out the view!

Here's a shot towards the north. You can see clouds on the horizon; they were moving south and contained some rain. It was very cold when I took this shot. But, still, I didn't want to leave. Funny story: That morning I noticed a gent and a teen (an exchange student, as it turned out) in the line with Mike and I for the Ellis Island Ferry in New Jersey. Hours later we saw them again on the ESB observation deck - we met and said isn't this funny? Ha ha. We parted. But a little voice told me to look for them again. Sure enough, we're sitting in a kosher pizza joint on the way back from Rockefeller Square and they walk in!

The antenna mast. From my 6 April blog entry: "That Charlie LeDuff book I'm reading - 'Work and Other Sins' - is interesting. I just read a section about a guy whose job it is to replace the ten inch, 620 watt flashing aviation beacon atop the Empire State Building. Normally, 17 million watts of power radiates from the antenna mast; in order for a man to climb it to change the bulb, four television stations have to go off the air and sixteen radio stations have to be rerouted to other antennas. It's a steady thirty mile an hour wind up there and about zero degree Fahrenheit."

Looking down from the Empire State Building observation deck - I'm sure you know that they light it with different colors depending upon the occasion. This shot shows the blue filters over the lights. Tonight it'll be all in yellow to promote Project Sunshine (I don't want to know).

Earlier in 2005, somebody posted a stunning panoramic shot to wikipedia commons. I want to go back!

(That's okay... this Friday I'm taking a tour that is certainly off the D.C. beaten path and a special deal. I'll bring my camera, of course. Expect photos and an explanation next week...)

4 May 2010

Yesterday's topicality of skyscrapers prompted me to look through wikipedia on the subject, and the question arose, what is the world's tallest skyscraper these days? It's this one, the Burj Kalifa in Dubai, built upon patterning systems found in Islamic architecture.

(At this point a little shoulder devil successfully dared me to write, "Will radical extremist Christians fly a passenger jet into it some day?" but that's very unlikely to happen. The only baleful things extremist Christians involve themselves in is embarrassingly bad television and tall hair. I wonder... do you see many "COEXIST" bumper stickers on cars in Dubai? I'm guessing not.)

The Burj is 2,717 feet high - look at this shot. Yikes! How would you like to be the crane operator? The BK was designed by an American firm. I'd be an advocate for something 2,718 feet high in Manhattan purely as a matter of national pride - but we don't seem to have a whole lot of that these days, what with our ceding our manufacturing base, borders, debt and world leadership to other countries. (I'm ignoring what the shoulder devil is urging me to write about the present administration and Congress.) Besides, a 2,718 foot structure would be all out of proportion to what's already in Manhattan. At 1,776 feet (that's intentional) the upcoming Freedom Tower, a.k.a. One World Trade Center, will be plenty tall enough to dominate the skyline.

I am concerned, however, about the proposed National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Will this be yet another politically correct, let's-not-offend-anyone effort? I hope not but my hope gland is seriously depleted these days. For instance, take a look at the justly reviled "Tear of Grief" monument in Bayonne, NJ. (Bayonne!) Yeesh. The grassroots stuff is kind of nice, in total contrast... I hope this sort of thing has a place in the new monument. And it's hard to fault the simple searchlight memorial.

It puts me in mind of a monument I once saw at Lexington or Concord, I forget which. The late 18th C. wording was illustrative. As I recall it mentioned something along the lines of the miserable hirelings of the British Crown who, led by Satan and all his imps, came here to bury the spirit of liberty but received instead six feet of good Massachusetts earth, God rot their souls. Tactful it was not but passionate it assuredly was. I bet the September 11th museum will be far more mush-mouthed.

(After a google search I think this may have been the monument, but as I recall it was whiter and smaller. Perhaps this isn't it. Clearly, a repeat visit is called for.)

Before I leave the topic of 9/11 I suppose I should mention that I visited the Ground Zero site on a family vacation in 2003. My son took this photo of me. A friend at work said of it, "Oh, nice smile. Why didn't you give the camera two big thumbs up while you were at it?" This cutting remark caused me some mental stress until the Iceman, a rugby friend who helped clear debris at the site, absolved me of any wrongdoing by inappropriate cheerfulness.

For me, a trenchant final word on 9/11 was left by an unknown person who wrote on one of the plywood walls near the site, "We gave peace a chance and this is what we got." Indeed.

My wife and I watched "The Queen" (2006) last night; a wonderful film. Helen Mirren gives such a convincing performance of Elizabeth II in the days when Britons went all emotionally wobbly.

What's happening in Burbank? My pal Mike found this old time Pacific Electric Railway Map while at Knott's Berry Farm. Check out the Trolley Trip descriptions at the bottom - what fun!

Piano lesson tonight, and I'm not badly prepared for it, either. On Saturday during a party I witnessed an impromptu performance by a son in one of the Five Families (our empty nester social group); he's a piano student at CNU. He blazed through a piece by Mendelssohn that caused me to think, "I need to go home and practice!"

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