Brigham's Blog: September 2011

30 Sep 2011

You know what one of life's little joys is? A shared laugh. I was in the physical therapist's facility yesterday for my usual shoulder workout when one of the therapists - a male - started talking to a guy who just came through the door. They were both about the same age and the same height, wearing grey slacks and plain pastel-colored long-sleeved shirts.

They both were clean-shaven and had their short brown hair done up in that currently popular style among young men where the front is flipped up - I suppose there's a name for it but I don't know what it is. It looked like a guy looking into a mirror and talking to his reflection. At any rate I smiled and then caught the eye of a black guy who was also looking at them; he smiled and then started to laugh and so did I. Apparently we both had the same thought - white dopplegangers. It was a merry moment.

On Wednesday night my wife had her church book group over to the home for a discussion of what novels they intend to read in the coming year, so we had a living room full of women contentedly chatting, sipping herb tea and munching cookies during a colossal rain storm. Every now and then I looked down upon the scene from above, where we have a sort of balcony. The thought had occurred to me that where women gather happily, there is civilization. I suppose some may regard this as patronizing, but it isn't my intent. I honestly feel this way. It kind of reminds me of a quote by the historian Will Durant: "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs and write poetry. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river."

I finished watching Watchmen (2009) yesterday. It exists in three different versions, all with different running times: the theatrical release (the one I saw) was an overlong 162 minutes. A "director's cut" version is 186 minutes and the "ultimate cut" is 215 minutes. The problem with the movie, however, is one that no extra minutes will help: the story is basically an uninteresting muddle with plot inconsistencies big enough to drive trucks through. It doesn't need more time - it needs less, and a tighter script and direction. But that's my take. I suppose there are fanboyz out there who await a 300 minute "super ultimate" cut.

(Which reminds me... have you ever watched the deleted scenes section in a typical DVD features section of a film? I have found that 9 times out of 10 there are compelling reasons to leave those scenes out of the film. I think that when it comes to movie making, less is usually more. All of Finnish movie-maker Aki Kauismaki's films are no more than 90 minutes because he thinks that if you can't say what you want to say in that amount of time or less, you probably shouldn't try. I tend to agree.)

Last night was an evening of films that didn't meet the mark. My wife started to watch the highly regarded (by people my kids' age) Garden State (2004), but quit because she found it boring. As for me, I tried watching Louie Malle's comedy Zazie dans la Metro (1960), a tale about a foul-mouthed twelve year-old girl in Paris, but I found the humor too broad and unfunny - so I gave that up. Then I turned to the Russian retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story, The Scarlet Flower (1977), and fell asleep during that because it was, well, slow-moving and dull.

A fellow on Facebook called my attention to a series of BBC comedy shorts, Henry 8.0, starring the inimitable Brian Blessed as the Tudor Tyrant himself, Henry VIII. The idea is, what if Henry VIII was alive today, married and living in a suburban home with Internet connectivity? It's hilarious!

Well, the weekend approacheth. Yard sales, of course, and then my wife works on Saturday. I may therefore putter around the house or I may drop the top in the convertible and go somewhere. I don't know.

Have a great weekend!

29 Sep 2011

New York City wants more of a tough, "film noir" look for Times Square - the "wet pavement" look. Maybe they'll start enforcing a dress code as well: trench coats for men and nylons with seams on the back for women. Everyone smokes. Rental fedoras, that sort of thing. The LED color changing signs (a mid 2000's fad) will have to go in favor of neon. No Asian built cars. I mean, how far do they want to take this?

On my rugby site (the Rugby Readers Review) I collected my past blog entries about rugby and posted them, at the top. Click here. I haven't been giving this site any attention as of late... I really should be adding more articles to it, as my website statistics show that it has been my most popular site in August and September. (Possibly as a result of the Rugby World Cup which is getting played right now.)

Recent viewing:

Return to the Bat Cave - The Misadventures of Adam and Burt (2003): An amusing little farce about Adam West and Burt Ward taking part in an adventure having to do with their once having portrayed Batman and Robin. The best parts were the dramatized flashback segments depicting the shooting of the series, where young actors portray Adam and Burt in the Sixties. Did you know Lyle Waggoner once tried out for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, but was passed up by Adam West? I think Waggoner's far more credible in the role - but it appears the producers were looking for camp, not credibility. As a ten year-old I loved Batman when this series premiered in 1966; I was very disappointed in the campy treatment of the character.

Ishi, the Last Yahi (1992): This is the sad tale of the California Indian Ishi, who was the last surviving member of his tribe, the Yahi. I undoubtedly learned about him back in third grade when we did California history, but I've forgotten the story. My wife, however, remembers it. During his life the newspapers took an intense interest in him, calling him the "wildman," the "caveman," etc. Exploitative doesn't begin to describe it. Anyway, sad story.

Stone of Destiny (2008): A wonderful comedy/thriller about the real life story of when some Scottish nationalists broke into Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 and stole the Stone of Scone (aka the Stone of Destiny). Prior to 1996, when it was returned to Scotland, it sat on a shelf under the seat of the coronation chair, aka King Edward's Chair. (When Ethan and I were there last March the chair was moved into a glassy room to the side where preservation work was taking place.) While my interest is more with the English than the Scots, I can still appreciate a good story. This is a good story.

Watchmen (2009): I'm about 2/3rds of the way through. I will grant that this production is visually interesting, and that engaging themes are being worked out (What is heroism?, who watches the watchers?, etc.). The characters seem well wrought and the script is decent. But I'm finding myself mentally checking out and looking at my watch from time to time. This film get isn't really engaging me. But... that's no surprise. As I sometimes say, I am not in the target demographic for this film.

I am enjoying the Raymond Chandler book I'm reading, if, at times, the writing becomes over the top. Take this paragraph, for instance: "His eyes were deep, far too deep. They were the depthless drugged eyes of the somnambulist. They were like a well I read about once. It was nine hundred years old, in an old castle. You could drop a stone into it and wait. You could listen and wait and then you would give up waiting and laugh and then just as you were ready to turn away a faint, minute splash would come back up to you from the bottom of that well, so tiny, so remote that you could hardly believe a well like that possible. His eyes were deep like that. And they were also eyes without expression, without soul, eyes that could watch lions tear a man to pieces and never change, that could watch a man impaled and screaming in the hot sun with his eyelids cut off."

Got all that?

28 Sep 2011

I watched the USA vs. Italy match of the Rugby World Cup last night... heartbreaking. A 10-27 loss. Oh, it was meant to be - the Italians are all professionals and play the likes of England and Wales often, the U.S. are comparatively amateur - but I was hoping for an upset. Still, the Eagles played well. They did the ferocious tackling for which they're known and were game with the ball in hand. In fact, I wondered why they kept kicking their possession away when they were driving forward. Sadly, they also made ball handling mistakes and were penalized again and again by the referee. I know it's bad form to blame a loss upon the ref, but it seemed to me like the Eagles were playing against an Italian XV as well as the referee. At any rate, the Eagles' World Cup play is finished and they do not advance beyond pool play into the quarter-finals.

The scrum seemed to play a disproportionate importance in this particular match, the Italians' fourth try being directly related to the ability of the Italian forwards to shove the Eagles pack backwards at will. This was, frankly, embarrassing, and was certainly a matter for much discussion by the match commentators. Listening to them, you'd think it was all due to the propping ability of the hirsute Man of the Match Martin Castrogiovanni on the Italian side - the locks got no credit at all.

A scrum is an unusual thing in sports; there is nothing else quite like it. A writer once described it as one man pushing four men up three men's bums. I'd take exception to this crass description, but, let's face it, the scrum is not an elegant structure. It's the eight brawniest guys in the club, almost always sweating mightily, facing off with the eight brawniest and sweatiest guys in the opposition club in an interlocked formation, all (well, most) pushing mightily, veins standing up on necks and muscles straining. I have been involved in many scrums in the 83 matches I have played for my club, Western Suburbs. The fact is that, yes, the props are essential to this set piece. Recognizing this, rugby play requires a player who is a qualified prop to be held in reserve during play. You can't have rugby without the scrum and you can't have the scrum without props. However, let's clear things up a bit in regard to who is doing the actual shoving. (And, by the way, I have had arguments on this subject in many a after-match party. But as I don't drink my opinion is more sound, uninfluenced as it is by the dulling and numbing effects of alcohol.)

The two props and the hooker constitute what is known as the front row; the two locks make up the second row. Collectively these hard drinking, hard bitten men are known as the "tight five," reason being because they are interlocked via arms and waistbands very closely indeed. (There's that inelegant factor again - there's no telling what you will find sticking your fingers into a prop's waistband, your hand jammed into place between his ample belly and the tops of his thighs.) The Hooker really doesn't push much because he's mainly concentrating on heeling the ball back, or trying to get the ball from the opposition hooker. He's in his own little mano-a-mano (or footo-a-footo) fight. And while a prop does push, I tend to think of it as more or a man-to-man wrestle with his opposition counterpart and directing, or channeling, the push he gets from others. I have played prop on a number of occasions - I enjoyed it, actually - and this is my take, anyway.

The two second row players are fittingly known as the "engine room" of the scrum because they're the ones doing the majority of the pushing. The second row players, or locks, are usually the tallest men on the pitch, with long leg muscles. As I am nearly 6' 4" and over 250 pounds, I'm a natural for this position and it's what I nearly exclusively play. On the great majority of humans the leg muscles are far more powerful than the arm muscles, being larger. So these are the muscles called into play in the scrum. I have often been involved in scrums where I pushed so hard with my lower body that I was seeing stars and got dizzy afterwards. Certainly, the scrum takes a lot out of you. I was in a couple of matches where the scrums were so badly matched - an experienced pack versus an inexperienced pack - that the referee called for uncontested scrums as a safety measure. The amount of saved energy this gives you in a match is amazing - it's a whole 'nother game!

There are also what are called loose forwards, so-called because they are loosely bound in the scrum. There are three of them: the open side flanker, the blind side flanker and the creatively-named eightman, who, yes, wears an "8" on his back. Any notion that these gentlemen are doing any of the actual pushing in the scrum is more a matter of generosity than fact. In my experience, when we're having problems in the scrum and find ourselves moving backwards (as the Eagles did in the match with Italy), the loose forwards seem to exist mainly to exhort the locks to "keep your butts low" repeatedly. Doing any real pushing themselves seems not to play into it; they represent the business consultants of rugby when it comes to the scrum. When things go well they're quiet. When not, they yap.

So pushing is the province of the second row. But then, I am biased! The subject of rugby positions garners a lot of commentary, mostly humorous. One of my favorite series comes from a prop/writer named Didds: Props, loose forwards. There are also more concise and easier-to-understand descriptions of the rugby positions: from an Old Boys perspective, Prop-centric, claimed to be unbiased and "all manner of men". Behind all this humor is considerable truth.

For myself, I am rather proud of my accomplishments in the scrum. I can only think of a couple of games where my pack was repeatedly and decisively pushed backwards. One was in a Y2K match against the Quantico Marines - no dishonor there as they were awesomely fit, cohesive and, of course, Marines - and the other was a b-side match against some brutes in a rival club's a-side. It was a long afternoon, that one. There may have been a few other matches where we had difficulties, but I don't remember them. I have especially happy memories of what are called alumni matches, where we old guys (age 35+) played the mainstream of the club (ignoring, for a moment, that guys aged 35+ are often in the mainstream - I always was). It was fun to see the look of surprise on the faces of the young a-side pack when they realized that they were getting shoved about at will from a pack of aggressive old guys who could substitute mature muscle mass and superior knowledge of technique for energy. When we played motleys vs. a-side in practice I always made it a point of pride to attempt to embarrass the better pack - and sometimes we did. The Suburbs Old Boys (S.O.B.s) had an awesome scrum that was rarely, if ever, troubled by the efforts of other sides.

My! Has it been eight paragraphs already? Clearly, I have warmed to my subject... I could write about rugby and the scrum all day.

27 Sep 2011

I am now reading Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, a book I found at a yard sale for a buck. It's the 1944 edition which has Dick Powell on the cover as Phillip Marlowe; the book is a nice film noir artifact - I'm sure it would fetch more than a dollar were I to put it on e-Bay.

Powell was always known as a song and dance man in breezy 1930's musicals, so when RKO released a filmed version of Chandler's book with Powell as Marlowe, they had to rename the story Murder, My Sweet (1944), as audiences at first thought it was a musical. Ha! All the Chandlerisms are in place in this novel: "...he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." "...gaudy lampshades that were now as gay as superannuated street-walkers." "She was as cute as a washtub." My favorite: "She had a face like a bucket of mud."

Last night I tried to watch a remake of The Lion in Winter starring Patrick Stewart as Henry II and Glenn Close as Eleanor of Aquitaine, but as I didn't really like the original movie I gave it up. I like the characters - the first Plantagenets - intensely, but have always been lukewarm about James Goldman's play. The 1968 Peter O'Toole movie is chiefly of interest to me because of John Barry's unique score. The dialogue - based, it seemed, on hip 1960's patter - is rather bad.

Henry II: You are better at this than I thought you would be.
Philip II: I was hoping you'd notice.

Groan.

I am about half-way through watching the Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008), a film about the 1960's/1970's Baader-Meinhof gang of German terrorists. (They called themselves revolutionaries, but this is mere propaganda. They were terrorists.) The cast is totally unlikeable; I keep hoping one catches a bullet, or the bomb explodes while they're preparing it. I understand everyone gets killed or dies in the conclusion, so it's a film with a happy ending.

Vietnam protesters in Germany... why are Germans protesting the war in Vietnam? Because it was chic. When I was on a work assignment in Berlin at the start of the Gulf War in early 1991, when students were marching in the streets chanting "No blood for oil," etc., I got into a brief conversation with a German onlooker. "Why are they protesting a war that does not affect them?," I asked. The German shrugged and said, "Because it's hip and because it's a nice day outside." My government sponsor told us Americans to keep a low profile and not to mingle out in the crowds, but it seemed I stood out - that it was obvious I was an American. People would come up to me speaking English... and I didn't know enough German to feign ignorance. In short, I am a lousy candidate for CIA work.

I was not totally impressed with the German people I met in Berlin the way I am with Londoners and Britons in general. The Germans seemed rude and not at all outgoing. I hit it off immediately with the Royal Air Force folks I worked with, however. But then, I am an incorrigible Anglophile.

I also checked out a DVD from the library, Los Olvidados (1951), a favorite Luis Bunuel Mexican film about juvenile delinquency and poverty. (Trailer here.) It's sort of a conjunction between the Art House film and the 1950's J.D. flick. Once seen it is never forgotten - especially a scene where wayward Mexican youths torment a legless man on a cart. Sadly, however, the DVD was in Spanish only with no English subtitles. (Who does that?) I learned something new, however, that I didn't know the first time I saw this film in 1995 or so.

The theatrical release version of the film has a very bleak ending: the lad Pedro, who is almost redeemed by Mexican youth authorities at a progressive work farm, is beaten to death in a barn by the film's main thug El Jaibo, who is later shot to death. Pedro's body is put into a sack and tossed into a garbage pile; this is the last scene. (See it on youtube.) However, the Mexican authorities, who didn't approve of Bunuel's negative depiction of Mexican life, forced him to also film an alternate ending. This bit of film was only discovered in 2002. In this one, Pedro survives his fight in the barn with El Jaibo, and knocks his opponent senseless. In the last scene his is shown returning to the farm camp for youth with the money El Jaibo stole from him. There is hope! At the International Cinematographic Festival in Saltillo, Mexico, earlier this year, the last surviving member of the cast, Alfonso Mejia (who played Pedro), introduced the alternative ending to the film. Here it is.

This classic world cinema is badly overdue for the premium Criterion Collection DVD treatment with restoration, alternative ending, commentary and interviews.

Odd as it seems, however, even with legless men on carts and children being tossed into garbage pits, Los Olvidados is not the most harsh and unflinching Hispanic youth drama I have ever seen. That honor belongs to Pixote (pronounced pe-SHOW-tay), a 1981 Brazilian film that was indeed, very difficult to watch. Why? Read the wikipedia link.

26 Sep 2011

Yard sales were few and far between on Saturday; I bought nothing.

The service project at the thrift shop went well later that afternoon... I now know where all the discarded sweaters in Northern Virginia go: into black bags marked "winter" and in a room in the Back Porch Thrift Shop in Alexandria. MOUNTAINS of bags. No kidding. We pulled sweaters out of bags and hung 'em up on rods for an hour, just to clear a room where a class was going to be held the next day. But there was still a mountain of these in another room. An amazing operation. For the second hour I sorted donated books and was in pig heaven... romances go here, history goes here, best sellers there, craft books here, etc.. I was sent here to Earth to make order out of disorder, I'm convinced.

Digging through old DVDs I found that I had recorded but never watched Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981), a fun little rock and roll flick co-starring my favorite London East End Bully Boy, Ray Winstone. Winstone played a borstal boy (youth prison thug) in the very gritty Scum (1979) and a Will Scarlet with anger issues in the early 1980's series Robin of Sherwood. I'm somewhat surprised to find that he never made it into one of the Harry Potter films... Anyway, I always enjoy watching him break a beer bottle over someone's head in a film. It's all right, innit?

I also watched the Will Smith sci-fi detective thriller I, Robot (2004), which was good as big budget Hollywood films go. One of the things I really hate about modern films, however, is product placement. From the wikipedia article: "The film contains product placements for Converse's Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Audi, FedEx, Tecate and JVC among others. The Audi RSQ was designed specially for the film to increase brand awareness and raise the emotional appeal of the Audi brand, objectives that were considered achieved when surveys conducted in the United States showed that the Audi RSQ gave a substantial boost to the image ratings of the brand in the States." Well, then - an artistic success all around. (That was heavy sarcasm, folks.)

I think under the auspices of some Federal Trade Act, films that grant product placement ought to be required to so explicitly state in the closing credits. Why? Because film producers and directors don't want to do that, fearing that the artistic credibility of their mindless mass market big budget explosions epic will be compromised in doing so. Phooey on them. This is, by the way, is yet another reason why I prefer older films to newer ones. Other than an occasional Pabst Blue Ribbon sign seen in a background in a film noir, product placement doesn't exist. You pay $12 to see a modern film in a theater just to be subjected to not-so-subtle advertising? Phooey again!

There was no product placement whatsoever in the filmed opera I watched over the weekend: the Bolshoi production of Modest Mussorsgky's Boris Godunov. The Coronation Scene has always been a favorite; that music is distinctive and amazing. (I once heard it used in a commercial for a headache relief product!) Mussorgsky's friend Rimsky-Korsakov gets a lot of flak for making Mussorgsky's orchestration more "professional" in posthumous editions (with the intent to popularize the work, which he did) but it's hard to argue with that wonderful, vibrant music orchestrated in the coronation scene.

I watched the United States-Australia rugby blowout Friday night: a 67-5 loss. The U.S. coach sent fourteen starters out against three starters in the Australia side. It's against the "play to win every match" philosophy in American sports, but all those starters made sense: why injure your best players in a match you have no hope of winning when the next match, against Italy, presents a better opportunity? And it also gave everyone in the squad a chance to play in the World Cup. Oddly enough, this match was a case of when you see a guy with a black eye who says, "Yeah, but you should see the other guy." Australia suffered a lot of injuries in this match (including one player who was knocked out)! The Eagles have a reputation as being a hard-tackling, physical side. I think that was maintained here.

Holy mackerel... I read that in some experiments there may have been some sub-atomic particles (neutrinos) clocked at speeds faster than light. This is huge. It changes everything in physics... but my friend Avery said, "Hold on... not so fast. This is from an Italian. Remember the Fiat?" Good point. We shall have to wait and see if this is validated by others, with the results agreed upon.

23 Sep 2011

I drove into work today; into my new location some miles north of where I normally work. It took me 25 minutes to drive 12.3 miles - but a stalled truck had been blocking a lane. Maybe it's somewhat quicker. Not a bad commute at all. I got to work about a half hour earlier than I normally do. I'll have to adjust things a bit when I move into that new office on 3 October.

The paragraph above describes the current commuting situation. When the Mark Center (aka BRAC-133) - a big Army building - opens, there's no telling what will happen when all those thousands of people come and go every day. I fail to understand why they (Alexandria authorities and Virginia's hapless Department of Transportation) gave approval for that campus. Do they want the already slow traffic on I-395 to stop entirely?

Out of habit I brought my book with me to read on the bus and train. Needless to say, there was no bus or train trip.

I took the Soul Train back to my present office. This is what I call the shuttle bus provided to get personnel from one building (my present building) to another (my new building) and vice versa. The driver, a black man somewhat older than I, plays his music on the bus CD player. Problem is, one of his CDs was skipping badly. Since he and I seem to have the same taste in 1970's Soul and R&B, I think I'll make him a new Al Green or Spinners CD. Can't have skipping CDs. I hate that. The Spinners... Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? - It might be one of my very favorite songs, ever. It was a hit during a particularly happy time in my life, when I was sixteen and seventeen. It has very good vibes for me and my spirit leaps whenever I hear it.

My other probable all time favorite song is I Only Have Eyes for You, the Flamingos' 1959 romantic nocturne (although I also like the corny but sweet 1930's version). But I have blogged about this before...

Cari and I finished enjoying Windsor Castle: A Royal Year (2005); as the title suggests, it's about Queen Elizabeth's castle and palace complex at Windsor - a place I intend to visit next time I'm in London, should I be fortunate to get out there again. Did you know it takes the royal clock technician 16 hours to advance and retard the 450 palace clocks each year? Wow. A fascinating place with a long and splendid history.

Tonight I have a Cub Pack Meeting to attend at 7. No matter how long it runs, however, I'll be home at 8 PM to watch the Universal Sports broadcast of the Australia vs. U.S. Rugby World Cup match, period, end of sentence. I am not sanguine of an American victory. In fact, that would be the upset of all upsets. The best we can hope for is some hard tackling from the Eagles (the U.S. is known for it) and a respectable loss. Read this amusing account of an Eagles loss to Wales, which may be suggestive of what's about to happen.

Tomorrow there are yard sales, of course, and then at 1 I volunteer at a Thrift Store. I'm not sure what it is I'll be doing - sorting? - but I know what I won't be doing: lifting heavy weights. The surgeon and the physical therapists assure me that even though it's been 8 1/2 weeks since the shoulder surgery I can still re-tear the repaired tendon. So maybe I'll supervise. :)

The countdown continues to my daughter Meredith's wedding in Las Vegas on 8 October. I just got finished with the last photographic step for her bouquet. "Photographic step for a bouquet?" you ask. Meredith wanted a bouquet with tiny photos of other family brides interspersed therein - it's a fashion now, I guess. I suppose she saw it in some magazine. So I made tiny photos of her mother, grandmothers, sister and sister-in-law (along with in-law brides) to go in tiny metal frames. It's interesting. Being a genealogical thing and a look backward, I naturally approve.

Wow. Paul McCartney's bass line for Hey Bulldog isolated. Totally groovy. NOBODY was playing bass like this in 1968. Or like this in 1966. Good looks and musical talent way off the scale... it's just not fair!

Have a great weekend!

22 Sep 2011

I saw a really silly TV special from 1960 last night, the Frank Sinatra Welcomes Home Elvis Show. It was a lot of show-bizzy Rat Pack silliness that only rarely featured Elvis. There is the famous and somewhat weird duet they do... Frank sings an Elvis song and Elvis sings a Sinatra song (both rather badly). I found myself fast forwarding through a lot of it.

It was interesting to hear girls in the audience screaming for Elvis; Sinatra was no stranger to that at the start of his career. To his credit he matured into an artist who later sang songs about aging and growing older, wiser and - sometimes - regretful.

This is a blog topic of its very own, but I, for one, am tired of rock and roll. I can barely stand listening to a Who song anymore. Sure it's the music of my youth and all that, and there was a time in my life when the themes of defiance and rebellion seemed relevant. But those days are long gone and I've moved on, and I now look for music that means something other than Resist Authority. It's a very good thing I discovered that I liked classical music when I was sixteen. The music of my youth also means orchestral stuff I can listen to from then without wincing. (Which was the case with a Sweet Lp, "Desolation Boulevard," I used to listen to a lot - I couldn't believe I wasted so much time with it when I listened to it again as an adult).

Back to last night's viewing: I attempted to watch 1967's Valley of the Dolls, based on a super-smash blockbuster novel of the same name (which I have never read and likely never will). I recall this film's publicity very well when I was a kid... as I recall, the appeal to audiences back then was along the lines of Sex! Drugs! Pills! Sex! Girls! Sex! Pills! It's the book and film everyone is talking about! So why aren't you? Get with it or you're not hip! You get the idea. I got about twenty minutes into it and gave up, it was so corny and dated. And Patty Duke, whom I know can act, is unwatchably way over the top in this one.

And now I've got that wretched Theme from The Valley of the Dolls stuck in my head. Arrruggh!

Now that I think about it, I don't think there is any film from 1967 I like. I think that year must have been Hollywood's nadir. Oh, wait... there is one: Point Blank, a neo-noir starring Lee Marvin that has metaphysical trappings. I liked that one. But generally, I find I don't often enjoy films made from about 1965 to 1970 or so. It seemed that directors and producers felt compelled to adopt youth culture mannerisms and appeal to the detriment of plot, script, direction and character development. There were a lot of self-indulgent and silly films made then that now look badly dated to me. For instance, I watched Easy Rider for the very first time about five years ago and was bored silly. Why was this film so highly regarded? Ditto Antonioni's Blowup (1966). Ditto Love Story (1970). I can go on and on.

Yesterday I briefly played the Brand Name Game with a friend via e-mail. What's that? You recite brand names of products you have some allegiance to or fondness for. Mine:

Ford (my parents were Ford people, not Chevy people)
Volkswagen (Always loved the Beetle)
Coke (not Pepsi - but I am disappointed that Pepsi makes a cane sugar "throwback" and Coke does not)
Breitling
Fender (not Gibson - Fender has a SoCal vibe)
Hewlett Packard (there was a time when my HP41C engineering calculator was my dearest physical possession)
Schwepps (I used to drink bitter lemon - turbocharged lemonaid - a lot)
L.L. Bean
Burger King (not McDonald's or Wendy's)
Disney (Only on the basis of Disneyland, I assure you)
7-Up (not Sprite)
Levi's (although I hate their politics)

...and these are people, not really brand names, but it kind of applies: Beatles, not Elvis.

21 Sep 2011

Apropos of nothing, I was thinking about the Chelsea Drug Store recently, a place I have never visited. (I briefly blogged about it a year ago.) It was a trendy media store in London that was seen in a sequence from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971); it was the futuristic "disk-bootick" Alex is shown walking through, trolling for devotchkas. A fascinating web site describing this sequence is here. When I first saw this film as a sixteen year-old (!), I thought, "What a cool place! It looks like Tower Records!"

Unfortunately the Chelsea Drug Store is now a McDonald's. Next time I'm in London I may want to eat there just to be able to say I did. The place is also mentioned in the Rolling Stones' song You Can't Always Get What You Want: "I went down to the Chelsea Drug Store/To get your prescription filled…” My wife always figured that this reference had something to do with illegal drug use, an entirely reasonable assumption in the case of the Stones. I see there is a Virgin Islands version of the Chelsea Drug Store which has as an advertising slogan, "Get what you Need."

Anyway, the Chelsea Drug Store, as depicted in the film, appeared to be the flashy sort of 1970's place which catered to the media desires of the youth culture and the New Left - as I realized back then, very much like Tower Records in Los Angeles, on the Sunset Strip, one of my teenage haunts. Tower Records was a hip place to visit practically any time of the day or night to get a record, a copy of Mother Jones or Rolling Stone, some Zig-Zag rolling papers or find some audio accessory you needed. A comfortable hang out for counterculturalists, in other words. The place seemed to be always staffed by grumpy hippies. Mannnn, these customers are a draggg. One establishment type was in here asking for a Tchaikovsky quadrafonic tape, you know, man? Tchaikovsky. Bummer.

It occurred to me that the modern counterpart to the now-defunct Tower Records is the Apple Store, which, as I wrote, I visited on Monday evening. Despite its closed source, proprietary, big corporate reality, Apple has successfully convinced people that it's the countercultural alternative to the Windows world of business computing. Certainly it has attracted a league of the faithful who annoyingly assure me, "It just works." (Except when it doesn't - my son loaded Lion, the newest operating system, on my wife's Apple laptop and it's annoying the hell out of me.)

At any rate, strolling in the store and calling up ghastly Internet images of bloody rugby players from my club's website to put on the iPad screens (hahaha - I'm subversive!), the atmosphere and experience seemed strangely familiar. Then I realized it was almost exactly like visiting Tower Records as a teen, except nowadays the thing is computing, streaming video and mp3s rather than audio components and Lps, cassettes, 8-track cartridges and open reel tapes. The same left wing counterculture exists in both places, however... nobody ever got thrown out of an Apple store for being an Al Gore environmentalist. Neil Young's Let's Impeach the President (Bush), anyone?

My wife and I looked at the wall rack of grossly overpriced iPhone protective cases. (Thirty frigging dollars for a small hunk of plastic?) I'll settle for a black one; let's face it, anything other than that or a NFL design will look gay. My smart wife will, as usual, opt for something red to go with her red leather wallet and checkbook case. Trad classy - that's her aesthetic.

Today I partially prepare us for the near future extra monthly iPhone data charges by calling Cox Cable - our Mortal Enemy in the Digital Age - to cancel our pitiful cable television service. Untethering ourselves, so to speak. We pay almost $26 a month for crap. We can now rely on broadcast television for stations - which I call Back to the Sixties. I put up a good, American-made antenna in the attic and it does a great job of pulling in the local D.C. stations and network affiliates. Mirabile dictu, it even has Universal Sports, so I can watch Rugby World Cup matches! Why buy cable TV?

We have also considered untethering ourselves from the wired phone network as well, but... we're in our fifties. Unlike young people, we're used to high quality voice comms that doesn't go down whenever there's a cell phone usage peaking event like an earthquake or some extremist representative of the Religion of Peace piloting a passenger jet into a skyscraper. And on that uncharacteristically eyebrowing raising phraseology I'll close for the day.

20 Sep 2011

Yesterday I demonstrated how NOT to eat. Per request I took Meredith to the local IHOP for breakfast; I had bacon, eggs, ham, sausage, pancakes, hash browns and orange juice. Later that afternoon I went to McDonald's with my pard Chris and had a quarter pounder with fries, with about a gallon and a half of Diet Coke. I was about ready to watch a NASCAR race then. For dinner we went to Mike's in Springfield (been going there since 1987), where I had the World's Most Perfect Steak and mashed potatoes - with a bit of the flourless waffle chocolate dessert. Waugh! Talk about strapping on the feed bag...

I said farewell to Meredith last night... I next see her in a couple of weeks at her wedding in Las Vegas. As I have written before, I hate saying goodbye to my visiting children.

I finished watching Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (2006) yesterday; I quite liked it. Gratuitously violent in the trademarked Gibson style, but as I've never seen a film about pre-Columbians like it, I enjoyed it. I liked the way it was presented in all subtitles... it made it seem unlike the usual Hollywood product. Mel may have his demons, but he makes intriguing movies. Pretty good. Just avert your eyes during the tapir testicles eating scene.

Earlier in the week I predicted on my rugby club's message board that I thought Australia would win the 2011 Rugby World Cup, presently being played in New Zealand. (The New Zealand All-Blacks, one of the perennial top three clubs in the world, is favored to win.) Keeping in mind that I am the world's worst pundit, my reasoning was that the Australians have won the championship twice already. It would have been three times but for a an English drop goal kick in 2003, and Australia are consistently world-beaters, ranked almost always in the top three. No sooner did the electrons have a chance to settle on the server's hard disk than an upset occurred: Australia got beaten by Ireland. Ireland!

Ireland is famous for what the commentators call "disruptive play." In other words, they start fights. While that occasionally has its place in rugby - it tells the other side that they will not be physically dominated - it takes surgical precision and an avoidance of mistakes (penalties) to beat one of the top three Southern hemisphere rugby powers (New Zealand, South Africa or Australia). Apparently Ireland mustered that somehow. I didn't think they had it in them.

On the 23rd the U.S. Eagles will play Australia. It was never in the cards that the U.S. (currently ranked #17) could defeat Australia (currently ranked #3 - they were #2 before the Ireland match), but we're all hoping that the Eagles will be up to the challenge and play their best game. Now they're going to have to play their best game with a seriously powerful side who are eager to make amends after a poor showing. Ouch.

My wife and I went to the mall with Meredith last night, and visited an Apple store. Now, I know from my son, who sells cell phones at Best Buy while he's in college, that the word is that Apple is planning to release the generation 5 iPhone next month. My plan is to purchase a discounted refurbished generation 4 iPhone when that happens. (The 4th generation phone has the Face Time video teleconferencing functionality I like, plus an advanced camera that will allow me to retire my malfunctioning point and shoot Canon. Otherwise I'd settle for a gen 3.)

So, stepping into the Apple store I casually asked, "When does the next gen iPhone come out?" The blue shirted employees who heard this question all immediately adopted a blank look on their faces and - almost in unison voices of flat intonation - said, "We don't know." Subsequent questions gained no further light or knowledge. I had the distinct feeling that they had been drinking some Apple corporate Koolaid and that I was getting The Pro Forma Response. Pretty off-putting from a company who has always represented itself as the aw-shucks-we're-not-corporate-we're-like-You-and-Me. Hmf. We shall see.

On a whim I put the SIMM card back into my crapped out LG Xenon to test it and yes, as I suspected, it liveth once again. For the time being. The touch screen is a wee bit hinky, but I think I can use it until Apple resolves The Big Mystery. I got the feeling that perhaps the problem was that there was a software subroutine running endlessly somewhere, just waiting for a dead battery and drained capacitors to halt. Perhaps I was right. Or maybe it's sunspots. Or bad mojo.

Hey! Speaking of mojo I read a funny comment in a Julie London video: her celebrated solo version of Bye, Bye Blackbird with a solo acoustic bass (video here). The comment is, "How the hell, in the presence of Julie London's weapons-grade mojo, does this guy keep playing the bass?!" Hahaha! Weapons-grade mojo indeed!

19 Sep 2011

Yard sales were great this weekend. I took my visiting daughter Meredith, and I found all sorts of stuff, not the least of which is the Build Your Own Stonehenge kit. I also found a very cool coffee table book about the British (Music) Invasion by Barry Miles for only $1.

Meredith attended her bridal shower at our house, hosted by a friend, and all went well. There were 23 women in our living room, chatting merrily, as women do. It was quite pleasant, although I high-tailed it out of there for most of the time. There is something about getting a room full of women together for a social occasion that causes me to think, "This is civilization." I showed most of the women my cleaned-up, painted and designed garage as a part of the home tour and got the gratifying oohs and ahs I was hoping for.

I watched a couple of 1959 episodes of Peter Gunn (an old detective show known primarily for the bass riff heavy theme score by Henry Mancini) over the weekend on Retro Television. Great show! What really impressed me was the thorough 1950's television film noir style: the odd angles on the camera shots, the black and white photography, the subdued and impassive acting from Gunn and the cops, the cool jazz score, the mysteriously lit interiors (one featured a wax museum) and city streets.. very nice. I always like a good, dark, mysteriously-lit warehouse or empty factory scene. Peter Gunn also had a very impressive interstitital (advertising bumper) sequence... I'd show you, but I can't find it anywhere on youtube, drat it. You get a good idea of this show's visual style in the opening minute and half of this episode... An eye, a horn, some jazz, a murder. Very stylish, very 1950's cool. I think I need to watch this show again!

We watched Robert Zemeckis' I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), about some teenagers trying to crash the Beatles' hotel in 1964. It was... cute.

At Meredith's urging we also saw Dazed and Confused (1993), which purported to show what high school life was like in 1976, but my wife (Class of '75) and I (Class of '74) didn't really recognize it as such. Perhaps the differences can be accounted for by the fact that we went to Southern California schools and this film was set in Texas, I don't know. There was a lot of hazing in this film that simply didn't exist for us back then. (I believe the motto of the Class of '74 was "apathy.") I could see what it was hoping for, however: it was trying to do for 1976 what American Graffiti (1973) did for 1962, but, no, it was nowhere as artistic or as well-written and directed. American Graffiti remains one of my all-time favorite films. It is practically perfect.

And finally, I watched an "eh" film noir, Flight to Hong Kong (1956), starring Rory Calhoun as a man trying to double cross the syndicate. I might be wrong, but nobody ever gets away with double crossing the syndicate in these films. especially when the syndicate is administered by the likes of a pre-Colonel Klink Werner Klemperer: bald, Teutonic, coldly efficient.

I also got some hammock time in over the weekend, ahhhhh. I listened to Vaughan Williams' 5th Symphony, which I first heard on the radio one day and found a recording of at a library, lucky me. A pleasant, mostly undramatic symphony with many modal tonalities and redolent of the English countryside. It's probably one of those works that caused one of VW's harsher critics to write, "One gets tired of musical depictions of cows looking at fields." Hmf. I like VW's folksongy pastoral works...

I'm about half way through Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (2006), a blood-flecked treatise about pre-Columbians being rather unpleasant to one another. I'd write "savage," but that word has unenlightened connotations, and, being a longtime trained federal government employee, I've had all such judgemental opinions thoroughly trained out of me in the quest for commendable diversity. Being a Gibson production it's grossly violent in a Mayan sort of way. Where else are you going to see beating hearts wrenched out of rib cages? Only Mel. Anyway, it's hard for me to connect the pleasant, holiday atmosphere visit of a Mayan ruin in Belize last December to the gory scenes depicted in this film. That's artistic license, I suppose, or historical fact.

Roll on, Monday.

16 Sep 2011

The United States won the Cold War - again!

Last night I watched the rebroadcast of the Rugby World Cup USA vs. Russia match last night... very satisfying. It was only the third World Cup win by the United States, but the captain, Todd Clever, is in trouble. It'll be interesting to see how that gets resolved; I hope that little indiscretion won't cause him to miss a match. It won't be the same squad without the Hair Monster.

Prop Mike MacDonald had a great match - he was all over the place. He was cited as the Man of the Match for his efforts. That's good work for a prop. Usually built like beer kegs or fireplugs, props anchor the scrum (which is more like wrestling), normally they're huffing and puffing about the pitch. At least the ones in club play I'm familiar with. But this MacDonald is an exceptionally mobile gent. The US vs. Russia match represents his 64th cap (international match), more than anyone in the U.S. That's impressive.

I found a bunch of broken links on my rugby club's website - rugbyfootball.com - and fixed them. The current webmaster came clean; he did it. I thought it wasn't like me to turn over a site with a bunch of busted links...

I am now reading Ghosts of the Tower of London by G. Abbott, a former Yeoman Warder aka "Beefeater." At least one of the ghostly occurrences (small stones striking a Yeoman Warder on his foot and leg) can, I think, be attributed to the Yeoman Warders playing tricks on one another. They appear to be fairly jovial fellows.

It reminds me a bit of Neil, a friend who used to be in a Confederate reenactment regiment before he wised up, came to his senses and starting falling out with Mister Lincoln's Army. He and his Reb pards used to wait by a popular hill - "Spook Hill" - near Burkittsville, Maryland. The story was that ghostly Rebs would push your car up the hill if you left it in neutral, an optical illusion which I could never get to work. He said, "In the early 80's some pards and I dressed in our Confederate uniforms, hid at the spot, where the ghost would push cars up the hill, and when cars pulled up WE would push them up the hill. The faces on the people in the cars were priceless. The best was a car full of high school girls. One in the back seat turn in looked right into my face; she let out the loudest scream I have ever heard. The car took one jerk forward and was gone, and we jumped back in the woods. I laughed so hard my sides hurt for hours..."

And I once spoke to a Confederate reenactor at Antietam who confessed to occasionally hiding out behind the Dunker Church with friends, faces besmeared with mud, leaping out towards cars driving by, scaring the hell out of the driver and passengers. So, remember, if you're ever driving through or near a Civil War battlefield and see something like this, don't automatically attribute it to Visitors From the Beyond.

Like many other kids my age in the 1960's and very early 1970's, I used to run from school to get home in time for the 4 PM broadcast of Dark Shadows, the soap opera about vampires, werewolves and other supernatural phenomena. The show, while unintentionally campy, was great fun. It still is... and it still holds my esteem for having the all-time best incidental music for any television show. Composer Robert Cobert's musical cues were moody, mysterious, weird and engaging. They did much to establish the mood of the show.

Those two Hollywood misfits - and I do not use the term in a complementary sense - Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, are now filming a new movie adaptation of Dark Shadows. Despite the fact that he's totally wrong for the role of the angst-ridden Barnabas Collins, Depp is playing that part, more a case of ego, I think, than good judgement. Some still images were leaked, and I am not encouraged. Depp looks ridiculous. He looks more like Michael Jackson than Barnabas Collins, and I am getting definite This Is Going to Suck vibes. But I suppose this could be one of those Hollywood publicity misdirections; Depp might only look like this in this one scene, and looks totally different during the rest of the movie. Or he doesn't really look like this at all.

Whatever. I suspect that, in the end, the most credible and sincere updating of the show will prove to be the 1991 rebooted prime time series that was overseen by the original creator, Dan Curtis. A year or so ago I saw all of those episodes and, at the end, thought, "That was quite good. Excellent, even." There was also a 2004 pilot for a possible series, but that got nowhere.

I always liked the story of how Dan Curtis got the idea for the series. It was in a 1965 dream, he claimed. A mysterious young woman on a train was making her way north to be the governess for an affluent family; her voice could be heard, "My name is Victoria Winters..."

Tomorrow there's an interesting twist on the usual yard sale route. A Mormon church ward is putting on a "swap meet" where you can come in, select what you want for free, and leave. Last time I went to one of those I got five good CDs. I'll have Meredith with me this time... her bridal shower starts at 10 AM (I won't be at that), but if I get up earlier we can perhaps do an hour or so.
Have a great weekend!

15 Sep 2011

Russian teens are really brave. Or stupid. A combination of both, actually. Looking at this made my palms sweat.

Hey, check out NASA's search for planets elsewhere in the universe: PlanetQuest. Boldly searching for exoplanets where no one ever went before...

I picked my youngest daughter Meredith up from the airport yesterday; she's in town for a week for her bridal shower and some other related activities. At her request that evening we watched the famous 1949 MGM musical On the Town with Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and... that other guy. (It's a family in-joke. Poor Jules Munshin - nobody ever remembers him.)

Then - once again at her request - we watched the incredibly stupid How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, a 1965 Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach epic. Well, that is to say I watched as much of it as I could stand. Mere words cannot convey how totally idiotic this production is. Brian Donlevy is in it. My own personal observation is that no actor has appeared in so many totally different kinds of films as did Brian Donlevy. He pops up everywhere. He did beach party flicks, he did Japanese monster films, he did Civil War films, he did film noir, he was Quatermass in British science-fiction, he was the Great McGinty, he did goofy musicals like Song of Scheherazade, he was in Westerns, he did war films, he cornered the market in the strict but fair stereotype in Beau Geste... he did Broadway, silents, talkies and television. This guy must have never turned down a script!

His own life is fascinating: at age 14 he took part in Gen. Pershing's expedition to Mexico to hunt Pancho Villa, (reportedly) served in the Lafayette Escadrille in World War I and spent two years in the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He married Bela Lugosi's ex-wife. He was interested in writing poetry and gold mining and owned a tungsten mine, and wrote short stories. A pilot, he once crashed a plane and miraculously walked away unhurt. From IMDb: "Sassy-talking, rugged-looking, square-shouldered supporting actor said, however, always to have gone through this necessary morning ritual before arriving on the movie set: 1) insert dentures; 2) don hairpiece; 3) strap on corset; 4) lace up elevator shoes." Brian Donlevy's first name was really... Waldo.

I also watched a couple of episodes of the Powerpuff Girls with Meredith; it used to be a favorite cartoon of hers. Blossom! Bubbles! Buttercup! I had forgotten how clever and funny it was... By far the most curious and bizarre super-villain in this show was Him, who was an effeminate devil. (Is that a tutu he's wearing?) He may have been The Devil - it was never made clear. At any rate, the character fit in rather strangely with the rest of the show because he represented a rather adult concept - pure evil. The Powerpuff Girls creator said the character was inspired by the Chief Blue Meanie in the Beatles' Yellow Submarine film. Yeah, I can see that - especially with the voice. He was also creepy looking. Video here.

You may recall a few days ago I mentioned the Iceman in my rugby club and how he got up to Manhattan and helped sort through the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11. I linked to this page on rugbyfootball.com but didn't have the photos up. Well, they are up now. Take a look... they're amazing. For some time after 9/11 we had thousands of people (not at all connected with rugby) coming to that site looking at the photos.

Never forget.

I had to figure out how to get my FTP software running again after I accidentally changed the port setting from 21 to 80. That took some head scratching! But then, looking through rugbyfootball.com - the website I used to run for my rugby club - I'm finding broken links all over the place, and missing files. What's going on? I thought I had that all fixed up when I turned it over to the new guy. Not like me at all. So, in the evening I'm restoring great numbers of files via massive FTP transfers. I hate broken links. It's supposed to be the World Wide Web, not the World Wide Disappointment.

Don't forget! U.S.A. Eagles vs. Russia Rugby World Cup broadcast (The Cold War Returns), tonight, 8 PM, Universal Sports!

14 Sep 2011

Ever get the feeling you've been in a place before, or have experienced something in the same way as if you've repeated yourself? It's an uncanny or slightly weird feeling, and, as usual, the French have a name for it, deja vu, "already seen." Besides being a neat 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Lp and song, it's a common phenomena. I once read one explanation: the external sense information you experience is mistakenly getting put into the section of the brain which normally processes long term memory, and so the currently unfolding events "feel" like memory. Could be, but nobody knows. I do know I get deja vu after seeing hundreds of films noir, "Haven't I seen this plot already?" (Usually I have - there are only so many.)

Apropos of deja vu, a couple of nights ago I watched the 1992 Star Trek Next Generation episode Cause and Effect. If you aren't familiar with it, it's the one where the Enterprise becomes trapped in a time loop, and constantly plays out the events leading to its destruction. It has the all-time ever best pre-titles teaser segment: the ship is shown getting blown to pieces! It's a favorite episode of mine because I find the idea of time loops interesting. But this Star Trek episode is not the first television show to explore the idea - far from it.

There's a 1980 episode of Doctor Who entitled Meglos. In it, the Doctor and his companion are stuck in a repeating loop which they call "chronic hysteresis." The use of Greek suffixes and prefixes makes it sound more scientific... Being a Time Lord he understands right away what's going on, and breaks the loop with a simple (and silly) act which is not repeated, "throwing it out of phase." In Doctor Who the notion of the time loop is sometimes invoked as what Time Lords do to people who trouble them or threaten the universe. Annoy the Time Lords, get stuck a la Bill Murray's 1993 Groundhog Day without halt.

When I was a kid my friend Jimmy and I saw a freaky 1964 movie entitled The Time Travelers, the end of which featured a time loop. Or at least that's what we thought it was. The travelers once again enter into their device and the scenes in the movie were repeated over and over in a blur and then - nothing. We couldn't figure it out. When I saw the film again ten years or so ago I came away with the distinct feeling that the writers couldn't figure out how to end the film, and so chose this corny device.

But this is still not the earliest example I can recall. I remember seeing the Twilight Zone episode Death Ship, which starred Jack Klugman (he's in all the best episodes) as the captain of a small crew of men who land on a planet only to find themselves... dead! The crew speculates that they are trapped in a time loop. Creeped me right out as a kid, especially as the music was especially ominous and eerie. Bernard Herrmann's oboes, perhaps. This was broadcast in February 1963. This is the earliest time loop story I'm familiar with, but, according to wikipedia, the even earlier TZ episode Shadow Play, from 1961, is a time loop story. Thinking of it, yes, I agree, indeed it is. Dennis Weaver keeps getting marched to the electric chair. Grim story. And it appears that this is the first treatment of the idea in television, well done, Rod Serling!

Good news! Soon, you'll be able to order Martino's teacakes - a classic Burbank treat - by mail via their website. Mmmmm... teacakes...

I watched a red-baiting film noir from 1958 last night, The Fearmakers about crooked polls and surveys which seek to influence opinion rather than capture it. Novel idea. As is usually the case with film noir, the poster art is deceptive and over the top - but amusing. I like the animalesque hand reaching down to grab the Capitol building at the top, and the leggy gal at the bottom (who appears nowhere in the film dressed like this or in this pose). Masters of Fear! Monsters of Intrigue! Merchants of Murder! This film was shot in and around D.C., and has a neat ending sequence where Dana Andrews punches the Commie Fellow Traveler in the jaw on the steps to the Lincoln Monument: "...and this is for all the guys in Korea!" A seated Lincoln looks on approvingly as Dana Andrews intones Lincoln's quote about fooling some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time - then kisses the (rather weird looking) girl. (By the way, Lincoln may not have ever actually said this.) It was fun but, as my son says, "Meh." I checked that box in watching it.

Finally, a reader wrote yesterday, "Not to sound weird, but have you been thinking about Andy Kaufman at all? As I was reading your blog post, his name was screaming at me from the page. Weird, I know." Nope; I never think about Andy Kaufman. Don't like him.

13 Sep 2011

I discovered three great songs over the past few days. The first is F.M. (No static at all) by Steely Dan, the theme song to a film of the same name I've never seen. My wife and friend ask, "You mean you've never heard that song before? How can that be? It was a hit." Well, in 1978, when it came out, I wasn't listening to the radio, that's how. Anyway, I found it on a Steely Dan hits collection CD at a library and immediately liked it. It's in my head now as I write, in fact. No static at all...

The other came to me by a circuitous trail of thought triggered when a friend mentioned Tiparillos on Facebook! These were much-advertised small cigars; I found a curious old ad with a mind-numbing backbeat and chant, "Cigars, cigarettes, Tiparillos?" This, in turn, lead me to wonder, who was the blond who did cigar advertising in the 1960's? The Internet quickly supplied the answer, Muriel Adams (with her electronic sisters). So I read her obit, and came across mention of a song she famously performed on the last Lucy-Desi Show, as America's most celebrated married couple were on the verge of divorce, That's All.

It's a song that forms part of the Great American Songbook, but I've never heard it before. (Nat King Cole and Judy Garland, unsurprisingly, did excellent versions.) Great old tune! The backstory is interesting: after Adams finished the crew all had tears in their eyes. It was an emotional shoot, given the wrapping up of a famous TV show and the fact that Lucy and Desi were no longer on speaking terms, and shortly thereafter Lucy filed for divorce. Poor Muriel lost her husband, Ernie Kovacs, to an auto accident shortly thereafter. And how come I wasn't aware of this bit of Hollywood lore?

Seeing Muriel Adams caused me to think of my favorite chanteuse, Julie London. Pulling up some youtube videos for her, I came across the third song, a great, haunting gem from 1958 that must have been in Liberty Records' vault and only released in 2002; I've never heard it before: Dark. A new favorite by Julie!

Speaking of Julie London, based on record reissues and media, I suspect she's enjoying a reappraisal and resurgence, and I say it's well past time. For me she is right up on the front rank of female vocalists with Judy Garland and Ella Fitzgerald. True, Judy and Ella probably had more range - and Judy could endue a song with more dramatic impact than anyone - but with her smoky, closely-miked voice Julie London completely owned the torch song (that is, reproachful love songs) and the bluesy jazz ballad. I've been watching a 2006 BBC feature about her, and the commentators all point out that it was rare for beautiful women to be excellent singers - but Julie was. I once saw a reissue of her Calendar Girl Lp at a Tower Records back in the 1980's and was tempted to buy it. Why oh why didn't I?

I saw a wonderful recent film last night, The Eagle (2011), based on Rosemary Sutcliff's historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth, about the Romans in Britain c. 120 AD. Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell are both excellent as the leads; Bell especially so - he really looks like a pagan Briton. What makes me say that, seeing as how I have never seen one? When I first saw him in this film I immediately thought of a bronze artifact - a small head - uncovered at Glastonbury Tor in conjunction with excavations seeking to establish the Arthurian, or sub-Roman, role the place may have had. It's in an Arthurian book I bought when I was fifteen. You don't see the likeness? Never mind, then, it's just me being fanciful...

I am hoping that the same creative team tackles another one of Sutcliff's novels - my favorite - Sword at Sunset, her 1963 novel that attempts to create an historical framework for a King Arthur who actually lived as a Romano-British warlord.

I am now reading Jed - A Story of Battle and Prison of Peril and Escape by Warren Lee Goss. (The spine says, "A Boy's Adventures in the Army '61-'65.") I had read Goss' Recollections of a Private, a classic work about the Civil War, many years ago. This is one of those rip-roaringly quaint postwar novels for youthful readers and is copyrighted 1880. I saw it on the bookshelf of my friend Don and immediately asked if I could borrow it based on the spine design alone! (I maintain that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.) It is a beautiful book, a vestige of long past days when craftsmanship meant something. For me an electronic reader will never be able to supplant the feel of a wonderful old book in my hands; there is nothing like it.

12 Sep 2011

Interesting weekend. Yard sales were few and far-between; I didn't buy anything from them. I got a couple of neat books instead from a library sale - the library is always the last stop in my route: an English pamphlet about ghosts in the Tower of London which probably sold for $20 (unfavorable exchange rates) in one of the gift stores located therein and a nice hardbound Time-Life book about Civil War soldier life.

The Rugby World Cup has begun! I watched the New Zealand All-Blacks beat the Tongans in the first match of the tournament Friday, although the second half looked much better for Tonga. So it was the expected win, but not a convincing one for the Men in Black. I also saw the United States Eagles play Ireland; same story there. It was the expected win but not a convincing one for Ireland, 22-10. There should have been a much bigger points spread. The boys in the red, white and blue were doing some fierce tackling in the first half - 68 tackles, only 9 of which were missed. And up until the last minute of the first half the score was Ireland 3 - Eagles 0. Not bad at all, until Ireland scored a try. Wasn't it great to see rugby broadcast on NBC in high definition? Yes, it was. But I don't know how sports fans do it - three hours of pre-game, game, half-time analysis and a post game show wiped me out. I got a headache. I can't sit still that long! No wonder there are so many NFL fan beer bellies...

Eagles Captain Todd Clever was picking Irishmen up and dropping 'em down, but I suspect that if he got a haircut and didn't look so much like Billy Ray Cyrus the Eagles would play better. Just a thought. Ponytails, after all, are much more of a soccer thing than they are a rugby thing. The next match this Thursday is a Cold War battle: United States vs. Russia. Only this time the war will be fought in earnest on a rugby pitch, never mind the Olympics, chess games, International Tchaikovsky Piano Competitions or nukes.

9/11, ten years ago yesterday... my famous Little Voice (the one I always regret not listening to) told me not to go to work that day, so I took the day off and went to lunch with my daughter Meredith in the school cafeteria. Needless to say, I said nothing about the jets hitting the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon (my little voice again). One of the teachers later whispered to me not to since some kids have family working at the Pentagon, duh. Like much of the rest of the country I watched the whole story unfold on television. I understand that it took some of my co-workers many hours to get home that night due to traffic problems.

The big issue for me that night was whether or not to cancel rugby practice! I was one of the club's officers at the time, and in rugby - at least in my club - there is a cultural bias against canceling practice. It just isn't done. If heavy rain shuts down the field we use and we don't have an alternate, well, that's different. We will often meet at a pub somewhere and do a chalk talk. Anyway, we officers exchanged e-mails to discuss it, and I pointed out that the civil authorities were telling people to stay off the highways in the D.C. area. So that settled it.

The next big issue was, do we play the match that weekend or not, out of respect to the fallen? One club canceled its match but we played ours. I made a point of mentioning on the web site and in my e-mails that rugby is a game played by free men - the Taliban doesn't play rugby. I remember it being kind of weird, the after-match party at the pub with 9/11 footage being shown on the televisions...

Later on we learned about the heroic 9/11 - rugby connection, Mark Bingham. And for a while it became a rugby thing to wear a rugby jersey while flying, sort of a way of telling the flight attendants, "Should you need some physical backup in the case of on board terrorists, ask me. We get violently physical for recreational fun." Later on I learned that a couple of the firemen in that famous photograph were ruggers, and found a hilarious photo of the FDNY club mimicking the pose. I can only imagine the ribbing those poor guys took...

One of our Old Boy players, "the Iceman," a rescue specialist, drove to Manhattan, lied to the authorities to get in and worked 20 hours days helping sort through the rubble at Ground Zero; he took stunning photos which we showed at our annual banquet that year. I wish the images were still up, but they're not and I can't FTP onto the site to re-load them, but here's the introductory page.

So, you see, I have inescapable mental connections between 9/11 and rugby.

Our enemies commemorated the 9/11 anniversary by triggering a truck bomb in Afghanistan that injured seventeen U.S. military members. (No U.S. deaths, thank goodness.) But the homeland remains safe and unattacked. Credit must be given, I think, to former President George W. Bush, who counter-punched after 9/11 effectively and put the Taliban on the global defensive. He sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and took the war to the enemy, and set up the civil structure to help prevent another attack. It obviously worked. It would be the job of another president to pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden, but we achieved that war aim as well. And who can credibly insists that Bush had no influence upon that? Had it not been for Bush, the structure would not have been in place to find bin Laden. So... while he is certainly not my favortie president dfor many reasons, I must give credit to George Bush. Living as I do in the D.C. area, I do think about homeland security.

I saw a disappointing film noir over the weekend, Man-Trap (1961). I would have never thought that seeing shapely Stella Stevens cavorting about drunkenly in her skivvies would get old, but it did. As did the drunken swinger couples friends who frequently dropped in on her and her hapless spouse Jeffrey Hunter. Yeesh. Move out of THAT neighborhood!

I also saw a Brit noir which was an okay whodunnit, City After Midnight (1957).

But other than that it was a rugby weekend.

9 Sep 2011

I saw the shoulder surgeon for my post-op checkup yesterday and he said I'm doing fine, but he claims I am "pushing the envelope" in terms of movement and the things I'm attempting to do with my healing shoulder. This is alarming because I do not think of myself as an envelope-pusher and am not at all pushing any envelopes, but such is my desperation for compliments that I feel pleased at this label. I am so pathetic!

Yesterday, to my great delight, I learned that we get Universal Sports on the bedroom television which is connected to the antenna in the attic; it's channel 4.3. Why delighted? Because they're going to be showing Rugby World Cup matches on that channel, beginning today. Schedule here. So I connected my old cathode ray tube TV downstairs in the basement to a digital box to enable me to watch on the larger set as well. Awesome! As I reported yesterday, this Sunday we watch USA get clobbered by the Irish, 1 PM, NBC.

Did it pour yesterday? Yes, it did. In Northern Virginia we had heavy and, at times, torrential rain, for what seemed like hours. (This was after the ground had become thoroughly saturated from rain all week.) Seeing that the water was pouring over my front gutter and noticing that it was causing ground water levels to rise in front of the house - and fearing basement water damage - I put on my swim trunks and grabbed the ladder to shimmy up and clear the clogged gutter drain. (I had cleared it before Hurricane Irene - I don't why it plugged up again so soon.) I also did a gutter in the back which was clogged.

Normally I'm not a fan of being atop an aluminum ladder in a pouring rain while I can hear thunder and see lightning, but I felt I had no choice. It took me less than about ten minutes, but I got thoroughly soaked. The only water incursion we had was that a rag I use to wipe the screen of the basement television got a bit wet from being on the floor of my little VHS and DVD closet; some water had gotten in there. No big deal, however - it didn't seem to cause any damage. I don't think I have ever seen this much water come down!

Roads were closed all over the county and trees fell, causing power outages. One of the Five Families moms took a photo of an intersection near her: it looked like a miniature version of the Muddy Mississippi flowing across the road.

Cari and I watched Backbeat (1994) last night; it's the story of the early Beatles, but specifically the story of John Lennon, Stu Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr. Stu Sutcliffe was the young painter-turned-bassist and Kirchherr, a fey German lass, was the Beatles' first Muse. Anyone who has read a biography of the Beatles has encountered them in the Hamburg chapters; as it turns out, the story of the Beatles before they became world-famous is just as interesting as their story afterwards.

Stephen Dorff, who played Stuart Sutcliff, is a professional musician in real life, but he did a great job of pretending to not be able to play his bass well - as was the actual case with Sutcliffe. (Paul McCartney, a much more skilled musician, wanted him out of the band for that reason.) I make fun of two fret finger bassists - it looked like Sutcliffe (Dorff) was playing with one, hand constantly moving up and down the fretboard. Well done!

Sheryl Lee, the stunning blond who played Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer ("wrapped in plastic") portrayed Astrid Kirchherr. She seemed to be perfect for the role.

The black and white German images of Sutcliffe and Kirchherr have a dreamy quality about them; was this really a part of the Beatles story? I'm so used to the typical photojournalist images, "Over here, boys, smile!" "Jump for the camera!!" "John, look over here" - that kind of thing.

Anyway, Backbeat - good film, especially if you want to understand the Beatles' Hamburg career.

We're going to see the "Spirit of America" show the U.S. Army Band is putting on in D.C. tomorrow; it ought to be interesting. And, of course, yard sales. The rain is finally supposed to be letting up this weekend, hooray.

Have a great weekend!

8 Sep 2011

Before I go anywhere else topically I have been urged to remind you that ON SUNDAY 11 SEP ON NBC AT 1 PM THE U.S. VS. IRELAND RUGBY WORLD CUP MATCH WILL BE TELEVISED. This bit of rugby evangelism comes at the request of my friend Bob Fawcett, with whom I used to play the game. He wrote this article highlighting the occasion. (If you're in Internet Explorer and see all sorts of boxes in the text, go to "View," "Encoding," and then select "Western European Windows" to make it look right. I've been struggling unsuccessfully with HTML encoding problems for a while, now, and haven't found a satisfactory solution. Can anyone help?)

Bob loves rugby. In fact, on the way into work today I caught Bob telling a co-worker to tune in this Sunday, such is his enthusiasm for the sport. As for me, I figure that anything I'm attracted to is too weird for the general public, so I don't bother. People think I'm eccentric enough.

Speaking of too weird for the general public, I watched Santa Sangre (1989) last night, a Alejandro Jodorowsky film childishly awash in blood and weird vibes. Roger Ebert gave it four stars for Jodorowsky's stunning individual vision, but I think professional film critics are contract bound to write like that. As for me, I started fast forwarding through it just past the midway point because I was getting bored with all the bizarre imagery; at two hours, it continues well past its welcome. I'd give it, maybe, two and a half stars. Ever since reading a write up of Jodorowsky's cult film Topo (1970) back in the Eighties, I've wanted to see a film by this director. I don't think I'll bother seeking out Topo now.

I have discovered that I have a limited interest in "genre" or "specialty" directors like Tim Burton or Sam Fuller - you know, the kind of directors who produce highly individualistic works one knowingly watches and says, "Yes, that has all of Burton's dark and Gothic trademarks." Stanley Kubrick is great but he's always Stanley Kubrick, if you know what I mean. Quentin Tarantino is another example. I like the directors who have a style, but overall it's made secondary to the work. For instance, I greatly enjoy David Lean and Michael Powell films. There are themes and traits that you can point to as being typical of these directors (for instance, in a Michael Powell work the setting is often as important as the characters), but overall you feel that you've witnessed a stunningly well-directed work after having seen one of their films, not that you've seen a "Michael Powell Film" or a "David Lean Film." I think Carol Reed is another such, as is Billy Wilder and William Wyler.

I like Sir Alec Guinness a lot, and I think it's because, once again, he always insists that his personality take second place to the work. It's rather hard to think of "An Alec Guinness Film." Bland-faced and understated in demeanor, he has "been" many kinds of people on film - not just Alec Guinness in the way Jack Nicholson is almost always Jack Nicholson. (By the way, I think Jack Nicholson is probably the most over-rated actor in Hollywood. With the exception of Chinatown he's been playing the same type of character in every film. Arched eyebrows, snarky demeanor - a little of him goes a long way, in my opinion.)

The same thing exists in the world of classical music and conductors. I have far more respect for a conductor who emphasizes the composer's work rather than insisting upon showy, personal gestures. Charles Dutoit good, Leopold Stokowski bad.

I just learned that one of my favorite juvenile actors (and later BBC producer and director), John Howard Davies (shown above), died recently. As a boy he starred in David Lean's cannot-be-bettered 1948 Oliver Twist, the very fine The Rocking Horse Winner (1949) and what I think is the definitive Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951). If you liked Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers you can thank Davies for their existence. R.I.P.

Whoa, check out Yu Muroga's Japanese tsunami footage! Now there's a video keepsake for the children and grandchildren...

I've been having problems with my garage door - it goes up when you want it to go down, and you wind up fighting with it via the wall-mounted button - so I did some telephone troubleshooting with the Genie Tech Babe. According to her I needed new safety sensors (the electric eye which prevents the door from crushing, say, one of the neighborhood's feral cats). So we went to Home Depot, bought new ones and I installed them. Only time will tell if the problem goes away; it was intermittent.

Today at 2 PM I see my surgeon for a six week evaluation. I expect this will be uneventful, as my shoulder is doing fine. I can lift my arm with only some stiffness - I expect that will go away with time and physical therapy - and while I do feel some soreness, that seems to be from a different part of the shoulder. Before I got the surgery I talked to people who have have the rotator cuff work done, and heard some horror stories about the pain and immobilization, etc. I haven't had that at all. The whole experience has been pretty much pain free, actually, a fact I chalk up to superior French-Canadian genetics. Call me Das uber-mensch. (Or, L'homme superior.)

Brigham's Blog