Brigham's Blog: February 2012

29 Feb 2012

Leap Year Day!

Whenever we have one I think back on one of the thoroughly worst evening rugby practice sessions I have ever endured, Leap Year Day, Y2K. From my season four rugby journal:

"2/29/00 - A unique practice session. We did the 'Harpold Fitness Salon' with shuttle runs added in (drop, do two sit ups, sprint over to Harpy, do two, and repeat - exhausting), and I threw up twice into my mouth while on the run. Stomach acid lends a really interesting taste to a mouthguard. Then, while doing rucking drills, I got a bad case of stomach cramps and had to drive over to the 7-11 to use the restroom. (Like to died.) Something I ate, mixed with the practice session, must have really disagreed with me. But, being the tough guy I am, I drove back to finish off practice. So, while hoisting a new guy in lineout practice, he bent his legs backwards on the way upwards and kicked me right in the... well, you know where. It was a special evening with the boys in the Western Suburbs Rugby Club, that's for sure."

Wow...twelve years ago. What business does a 44 year-old have running with guys half his age, repeatedly throwing up into his mouthguard, enduring raging diarrhea and getting kicked in the gonads? I mean, what was I thinking? Or trying to prove?

Well, I'll tell you: when you do crazy things like this, life becomes real. It takes on a savor it doesn't ordinarily have. As it happens, I described this in an entry two days later: "The evening was chilly and windy; kind of wild, actually. Every now and then a gust would throw leaves over the goal posts into the lights. It was a good, invigorating practice. When we circled up at the end I felt strangely young and exuberant, and there was no place else I wanted to be and with no other company than with my brother ruggers in Western Suburbs RFC. Most of all, I felt alive. You wouldn't think that the simple matter of running and tossing a ball around for a hour and a half would account for this, but so it does. This is something I never would have believed before. The people who are skipping practice are the ones missing out."

In hindsight I might now write that the ones who have never tried rugby are the ones missing out. I am convinced that there is simply no game quite like it.

Do I wish I were playing now, at age 55? Yes and no. No: I'm a "Done that - check the box" kind of guy with a pitiful attention span and an unfortunate desire for constant stimulation. I've done rugby. Move on. Yes: I would again like the camaraderie, exercise and game day fear and performance anxiety. The wonderful survivor's high when you walk off the pitch after a match tired, but without any bones broken. (Winning the match is even better, but the only real loser in rugby is the guy who didn't play that day.)

However, there's an old saying from a good rugby friend, "Weenie Boy": You only have so many games in you. When he first met me and ascertained that I never played sports when younger (and subsequently had good, usable, unwrecked knees), he likened me to a 1974 car which was garaged for many years and taken out for a drive. There are some miles left.

But that was in 1998. Better to keep the car in the garage, I think.

I closed that season's journal with this: "It's true: for me, right now, rugby is life. I hope I'll be able to read these later on in my declining years and recognize that I did the most with what I'm
capable of, and not squandered my ability to run, scrum, ruck, maul, socialize, help administer and write. Ya gotta use what you have when you have it." I knew that I'd be sorry if I didn't play!

I finished watching that corny drive-in movie style vampire film. (The one where a respectable M.D. accidentally takes pills which turn him into a blood sucking ghoul.) Actually, it wasn't bad; it sustained interest, and the lead did a convincing acting job. The scene where he sends his pre-teen daughter away for her protection was affecting and well done. Yes, this is the tragedy that happens when a man becomes... A VAMPIRE.

(My son says that he is totally done with vampire and zombie films. No, he isn't. He'll be back.)

Webelos Scouts Den meeting last night was funny. I always leave these reflecting that the ten year-old male is indeed a curious creature. Was I ever thus?

28 Feb 2012

Wheeeeeee! Take a ride on the Euthanasia Coaster - and die.

I watched another one of those great Terry Jones historical documentaries, this time about Ancient Egypt: The Surprising History of Egypt (2002). He is a wonderful presenter and I haven't seen one of these productions yet that isn't insightful, interesting and, at times, hilarious. (There's a scene where he has an ancient Egyptian garment made for himself out of linen, and wears a wig and eyeliner - men did that back then - and, well, walks like an Egyptian down the street. It's great!) This is the way history should be presented, with verve!

I also watched a film noir that was okay if a bit on the boring side, Double Jeopardy (1955). No, Alex Trebek doesn't make an appearance, but it might have enlivened things if he had.

I've also begun watching one of those 1950's drive-in movie grade monster films: The Vampire (1957). Note the poster above: "A new kind of killer to stalk the screen... it claws, it drains blood." Nope, haven't ever seen one of those before... The plot: "A small town doctor mistakenly ingests an experimental drug made from the blood of vampire bats which transforms the kindly medic into a hirsute, bloodthirsty monster." All this via the miracle of a simple-to-swallow pill!

Yes, of course it's awful. But that's part of its charm. That and the fact that Netflix streaming's digital delivery of the well-exposed black and white film stock is so crisp and clear you can see every detail of late 1950's life. For instance, it's obvious that the vampire bite puncture holes are clearly dabbed on eyeliner. You can also see sweat stains on women's blouses, which is something I never, ever saw on television. I'm also getting a kick out of doing freeze frames on the street scenes and identifying the various Culver City and Santa Monica neighborhoods via the street signs and Google maps. (The "L.A.P.D." on the stop signs in these old films are instant visual giveaways that we're somewhere in Los Angeles.) I also enjoy looking at the 54 year-old billboards and signs in the shop windows.

Last night I started watching some dreadful indie film production about the Civil War, but gave up as soon as I realized that this was a film made by, for and starring Civil War buffs and reenactors. There's one sequence where a former Confederate soldier is looking at a battle flag he has stashed away in a trunk, and muses about the horrors of war. I did a freeze frame on his remembered battle sequence, and could see members of the 21st C. public looking on, almost out of the shot. It also looked like there was a modern visitor's center in the distance of another angle. As expected, the acting was also iffy.

I don't know where Netflix gets these... it seems that the standards for inclusion into the family of Netflix streaming productions is ridiculously low. I once started watching a production about Vikings vs. Indians in the New World. "Hm," I thought, "This might be interesting. Never saw that matter handled in a film before." I was lulled into a stupor by the incredible boredom of the production until an extended sequence showing a Viking defecating in the woods. Without going into disgusting details, this sequence went on WAY longer than any viewer would want it to go. Needless to say, the many (bad) reviews this production received included mention of this very scene: "If you want to see Vikings crap in a forest - this is the film for you!" etc.

Another indie production my son alerted me to was filmed in Northern Virginia; the wooded street scenes including shots of palatial McMansions on quarter acre lots was unmistakable. There were also some familiar landmarks seen here and there - but this film was unwatchable, it was so dull. At some point you no longer care that it's local.

As thoroughly tired as I am of typical 21st C. Hollywood product, with its inevitable multiple explosions, CGI, Amazonish female heroines, over-emphasized message and thorough political correctness, the opposite extreme - unprofessional bad indie productions - is unattractive, too. Isn't there a happy medium? In other words... creativity?

27 Feb 2012

We had a great time Saturday visiting the National Geographic Museum in D.C., where the Staffordshire Hoard was on exhibit. Fascinating! Since this was about Anglo-Saxon England, it was right up my alley. Me. A Saxon warrior.

I didn't get any shots of the hoard items since photography was forbidden. (I hate that... I need scrapbook photos...) What was truly amazing was the very close work needed to make the tiny jewelry details in Anglo-Saxon garnet and gold art. Those craftsmen either had a way to magnify their work that we don't know about - or they were all terribly nearsighted.

Taking my usual walk on Sunday I came across something I had never seen before: an electric tombstone. Photo one (day), Photo two (night). Neat! That way the zombies have a place to gather. Also seen last night: The Moon, Venus and Jupiter. Two more gimme photos: I'm guessing a male came up with this logo and Annoying little green men.

Latest addition to the garage decor.

I watched a bunch of films noir recently, from the Mike Keaney collection:

The Whispering City (1947), the city in this case being Quebec! Can film noir take place in the frozen great white French north? Why, yes... and this wasn't a bad film, either. More or less a standard noir plot, no real surprises. It's one of those artsy noirs where classical concert music is featured, this time a "Quebec Concerto" for piano and orchestra. Everybody becomes rapt when it plays... but it sounded like undistinguished, generic, late Romantic period music to me. Like a bad copy of Grieg's piano concerto.

Special Agent (1949), again, a decent if unsurprising noir, this time with a railroad theme. George Reeves, the 1950's Superman, is one of the baddies. One of the railroad engineers takes part in some dramatic forecasting: "Say, Johnnie, if anything happens to me take care of my daughter, will you?" Guess what happens to him? In noir, it's almost like wearing a red shirt in a Star Trek episode.

Strange Bargain (1949), one of those domestic noirs, that is, where a family man gets ensnared in murder, or in this case a suicide (or is it a murder?) made up to look like murder. Yes, there are plot complications. Henry Morgan takes time out from his usual roles as a mental deficient to play the dogged police investigator.

Illegal (1955), an Edward G. Robinson flick. I've never seen him in one that wasn't worth watching, simply because he's in it! Fortunately this courtroom drama had a solid plot and direction.

Spin a Dark Web (1956), a boring Brit noir. I quit watching after about a half hour.

My piano work this week has entirely gone off the rails. Instead of working on the songs the teacher gave me, I found an odd bluesy piece I really liked - and so I've been working on that constantly. And the last piece in my beginner-intermediate book is a funny one with indeterminate notes. There's an odd sort of chordal notation which has an asterisk near it that says, "Play a low register white note cluster." WHOOM. Cool.

My wife has been sick with a cold; when we got back from the Hoard she really started feeling bad. My turn is coming.

24 Feb 2012

Yesterday I mentioned seeing a 1950's prison flick, Riot in Cell Block 11, which was quite good. I forgot to mention, however, that despite its above average casting, acting, plot and direction, it has one of those Hollywood cliches that drives me nuts: ineffective tear gas.

I've seen it many times in these old crime films: the police fire gas canisters into a room or amongst a crowd, and guys cough unconvincingly, wave their arms and sort of mill around. Sometimes the tough guy - James Cagney comes to mind - quickly ties a railroad bandanna around his mouth and continues to fire his pistol or tommy gun at the cops despite the canister. The police might just as well have wafted theatrical dry ice smoke at the baddies, for all the effect it has.

I've been exposed to military use CS gas, and it's nothing like that, I assure you. When I was in Marine Corps boot camp, the chemical warfare training session involved stepping into a small shack where a merrily smoking tear gas canister was placed on a centrally located table. At first we enjoyed the comfort of our properly-fitted gas masks. Everybody breathing naturally? Good. Then, after being barked at, we removed our masks and attempted to get through as much of The Marine's Hymn as we could. As I recall, I was somewhere around the word "Montezuma" when the gas's effects began to be felt. It is positively incapacitating. You can't breathe, and you begin coughing and sweating. Your lungs burn, your nose begins running ferociously and your eyes water so that you can't see. Your face gets itchy (histamines being released, I suppose). Never mind casually trying a bandanna around your mouth and returning fire - all you want to do is run away or lay on the floor and convulse. The stuff is potent!

One time I was driving my big cable truck across Camp Pendleton when I drove through some CS gas loose in the air; I supposed some infantry unit was using it upwind. I instantly remembered what it was I was reacting to. It was all I could do to keep the truck on the road... I hit the gas and quickly opened the windows and vents for fresh air. Finally I pulled over and wiped my eyes. And that was gas diffused in the open air! So... let's have none of this ineffective cinematic tear gas. It doesn't work that way!

I listened to the Bartok String Quartet #2 the other day, driving into work. I couldn't make much sense of it, save that it seemed to be a somber, melancholy and difficult work. It is not accessible, that is to say, one doesn't instantly like it. I read a wonderful lecture about the piece given by a British musicologist, and was relieved to read: "The third movement, marked simply Lento, is fragmentary, contemplative and (to my ears, at least) suffused with resignation and perhaps melancholy. I struggled quite a bit, musicologist that I am, to find a suitable formal template, but gave up, and was then relieved when I read that Bartók himself had described it as 'difficult to define'." Good... it's not just me!

The Third Quartet, which I listened to this morning, is a different matter. It's wild and interesting, full of unique Bartokian sounds and techniques, and belongs to his "radical" quartets, numbers 3, 4 and 5. (I discovered the 4th some time ago and like it a lot.) I like it!

I watched a wonderful Francois Truffaut film last night: The Story of Adele H. (1975), the true story of the bitter romantic disappointment of Victor Hugo's daughter Adele. It starts a nineteen year-old Isabelle Adjani who is not only drop dead gorgeous (as the image above proves), but can really act - she received an Academy Award nomination for this film. Excellent movie, highly recommended.

Hey, I lost 3.2 pounds last week. Nice! (Dental surgery does wonders for quelling the appetite; last night I cracked the temporary crown off my tooth, which added a real crunch to the Trader Joe's onion ring snacks I was eating.) I have now lost 15.4 pounds in seven weeks, just over two pounds per week, average - which is what I was shooting for.

A Burbankia reader remembered a wooden bicycle track in Burbank in the 1950's; subsequent Los Angeles Times research by yours truly revealed it to be the "Flying Saucer Velodrome," where cycling races were held in the 1950s and early 1960s. I didn't even know the place existed. We haven't dug up any good photos yet...

The Cub Scout Pack Blue and Gold "Banquet" is being held tonight: potatoes are the dining fare.

Have a great weekend!

23 Feb 2012

It's February and Captain Russian, my comic book creation and alter ego, is 45.

I drew my first issue in February 1967, when I was ten. All that is described here. Issue #2, the premier of his friend/enemy Captain Camouflage, is here. (It is notable that, despite my having to spell the word "camouflage" many, many times, I still cannot spell it correctly on the first pass. You'd think I'd learn it.) Issue #41 (nominally about the Mafia but actually about a teddy bear) is here, and issue #44 ("War on Poland Hill" - where Cap meets a faithless, sensationally unattractive woman) is here. Looking back on it, I think the reason why I drew so many of these with this particular character was just because I liked to draw swastikas; it was fun to draw and had a politically incorrect naughtiness about it. (Note that Captain Russian's swastika runs the other way from Adolph Hitler's. That was unintentional; I meant to draw Hitler's.)

By way of explanation: Captain Russian was a product of my thorough confusion about World War II history. I was reading and enjoying reprints of the WWII era Captain America comics at the time, and wanted to come up with a character of my own who was sort of the opposite of Captain America. In 1967 America's greatest enemy was the Soviet Union - every kid knew that, we had practiced "duck and cover" in schools in case they pushed the button down - but that was two words and cumbersome to spell. "Russian" was more appealing. So, Captain Russian. I have no idea why I bedecked him with what I intended to be German NSDAP swastikas, save that, as I said, they were fun to draw. In retrospect I find it odd that in actuality, Captain Russian is an American named Steve Polders. (Captain America was actually Steve Rogers - get it? Rogers? Polders? Well... I don't get it, either - it made sense to a ten year old.)

Adding to my confusion was that, at first, the Soviet Union signed a treaty with Nazi Germany and then became their bitter enemies. Finally, I note that I drew swastikas all over American jeeps and other soldiers! The whole thing was far too complex for a ten year-old... all I knew for sure was that Captain Russian's defeatist attitude mirrored my own and that I liked to draw those wings coming out of his ears.

Speaking of Soviets! I spent the morning sitting in traffic and listening to Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony (1953), claimed by the composer to be about Stalin. Written after the dictator's death, the scherzo, according to the composer's son Maxim, describes the brutal face of Stalin - but the rest of the symphony is also unsettled, turbulent and somewhat unpleasant. As it should be. But wait! This symphony also has the composer's own glyph, the four note series known as the DSCH motif, which represents his name. Who wins this mighty musical struggle, Stalin or Shostakovich? I am uncertain.

I watched a couple of interesting films noir:

Riot on Cell Block 11 (1954) - One of the better prison films, but then, director Don Siegel knows what he's doing. This one has a favorite character actor and noir stalwart, Emile Meyer, as a compassionate prison guard. He's much more interesting as a menacing slob, frankly. This film also stars one of Hollywood's scariest heavies, Leo Gordon - but young, buff (wearing wife-beaters) and psychotic. A fine film!

Do You Know This Voice? (1964) - I always cringe when I pop a noir tape into my player and see that it's British, especially when I see the name "Walter Lippert" associated with it. That almost always means a mannered, polite snoozefest. For some reason Brits only infrequently delve into the hyperbolic territory of the best American noirs: driven, desperate, violent, over the top. I have a phrase for it I like to use: DAME HUNGRY KILLER COP RUNS BERSERK! This isn't one of those... but it's not bad. Dan Duryea, the dame slappinest actor in Hollywood (I'm convinced he was paid by the slap), plays a killer in this. The story sort of futzes around for most of the movie's running length but has an enjoyable resolution with a nasty little plot kink. Not bad for a Brit noir.

22 Feb 2012

I have an appointment with the dentist this morning. During church on Sunday I was chewing some gum when, whoops!, what's that?, I pulled a gold crown off a tooth. This time I think I'm going to have a tooth-colored crown put on. I don't like gold. First of all, bling isn't my style, and secondly, I'm tired of Photoshopping out the flash reflection whenever I smile. (Why do I have gold in the first place? The dentist suggested that only it would hold up to the pressures I exert on my molars.)

I mentioned that I was reading a book by Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony. He has an interesting commentary about so-called humanists (George Bernard Shaw was one) who were careful not to judge Josef Stalin too harshly, or judged him not at all. Excerpt here. Powerful reading. I'll quote musicologist Robert Greenberg again: "There are no more communists or apologists for communism. There are merely those who haven't done their homework."

For the past couple of nights I've been watching a highly entertaining KTLA Channel 5 40th anniversary television retrospective (1987) on local TV. It's not on DVD or Netflix - it's available only on that great archive of old, odd and amateur moving images, youtube. Some of those shows on KTLA were so weird they're entertaining. In the early Seventies, the channel played roller derby games, which my dreamy gal pal Angela and I loved. And wrestling, of course. Cheesy but so different from mainstream TV broadcasting. Visual slumming.

In the early days there was a show called Korla Pandit's Adventures in Music... - what a concept: a young fellow wearing a turban sits at a Hammond organ and plays music, never saying a world. Just gazing into the camera lens with his eyes. Ha! Anything was tried in the old days.

I believe KTLA also ran the Sheriff John Show. As was the case for many baby boomer Los Angelenos, the Sheriff was a friend of mine. I miss local broadcasting like this, I really do. It had a flavor that the glossier network product just can't match.

Short blog entry today. Sorry. Read the Shostakovich excerpt and it'll be longer.

21 Feb 2012

A nice weekend! On Saturday we visited Warrenton, VA, a place we have never really explored before. Video here. Nice Main Street district... they survived Wal-Mart and the other Big Box stores, apparently. Good job!

On Sunday nothing much happened other than I washed and waxed the VW convertible; on Monday we to-be grandparents visited Springfield's big Buy Buy Baby store; that video is here.

Mythbusters! I investigate a story I was told when I was in the Marine Corps. Just exactly what was the connection between Marine General Smedley Butler and Stonewall Jackson's arm?

I watched a bunch of films:

Highway 301 - A pretty good film noir starring Steve Cochran at his most murderous.

The Girl in Black Stockings (1957) - So incredibly dull I fast forwarded through it. It supposedly took place in Utah, but I didn't recognize any locations. (It took part in the Southern part of the state.)

Female on the Beach (1955) - The female in this case being a fifty year old Joan Crawford, who has a love affair with 37 year old Jeff Chandler. When people claim that old films are over-wrought, too melodramatic and corny, this is exactly the kind of film they're thinking of. I tuned out after about twenty minutes but my wife kept watching. Not so much a film noir as a Joan Crawford film.

Blonde Sinner (1956) - As my friend Mike Keaney accurately reports in his book of British films noir, the opening five minutes or so, a stalking and murder, are spectacular. And it's all down hill from there as Diana Dors - the British Marilyn Monroe - awaits execution in prison for murder. We see her drink cocoa. She has narrative flashbacks. We see her smoke her ten cigarettes a day ration. Another flashback. Time for a walk outside. We see her lie in bed and chat with her guards. Etc. Boring! Except, of course, for some of the narrative scenes where we see Dors sport a brassiere so sharp you could open envelopes with her.

Hope and Glory (1987) - A somewhat oddball World War II dramedy about life in Great Britain during the Blitz. I quite enjoyed this lively production. It dealt with the war as seen through the eyes of a nine year-old boy. Recommended.

Marwencol (2011) - The moving documentary story of Mark Hogencamp, a fellow who was beaten and brain damaged and works out his own therapy using G.I. Joe and Barbie dolls in fanciful World War II settings. The photographs which describe his story lines are pretty interesting. (An especially good one appears above.) This is an unusual documentary, to be sure: the intersection of mental recovery, WWII, playing with dolls and cross dressing. Recommended. Note: "Marwencol" is his 1/6th scale Belgian village, a portmanteau of MARk (himself), WENdy and COLleen (two women he is honoring).

Best thing about the weekend: I lost 1.2 pounds.

Let the rest of the week roll on...

17 Feb 2012

Emotional mood this morning: Nettled. I stepped on the scale for my weekly weigh in and discovered that I didn't lose any weight. In fact I gained .8 pound, no doubt a result of overeating on three days this past week. $#%!&*@$!

Today's poster boy is Patrick McGoohan as Disney's Scarecrow (sort of a Batman with straw) from the 1964 production Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. It was a quality production from the start of the theme music to the final high-pitched squealing laugh. McGoohan had an enviable career; he always seems to have been involved in classy productions. He was, of course, the creative drive behind the fascinating The Prisoner. And despite the fact that Braveheart (1995) was badly historically flawed, he played a impressive King "Longshanks" (Edward I). I love the scene where he throws the homosexual out of the castle window to his death. It never happened in real history, but it's just so stunningly politically incorrect that it brings a smile to my face. I like to believe that he and Mel Gibson came up with that scene in a pub.

My memory is pretty good - it forms the basis for my Avocado Memories website - but sometimes I get things badly wrong, especially when it comes to song lyrics. Case in point: When I was a kid I used to occasionally read a popular comic strip of the times, Dondi. It originally was about a big-eyed Italian war orphan adopted by some American G.I.s in World War II. (Read about it here.) As the years went by and World War II faded back in time, the origin story changed - it had to, because Dondi wasn't allowed to age. I think I may have seen part of the 1961 film adaptation on television, too. So I knew who Dondi was.

In 1966 there was a song played on the radio occasionally that I was sure had something to do with the comic strip character: Dondi!/Dondi!/Where you gonna go now?/Who you gonna run to?, etc. Sounds like something having to do with an orphan, right? Wrong! When I became interested in the music of Herman's Hermits some forty years later I came across the familiar song, Dandy, their cover of one of Ray Davies' social commentary songs. What I thought was a song about a war orphan is in fact a laddish song about a self-absorbed and horny young man. Oops! (One suspects that perhaps Davies was influenced by Alfie, from the same year.)

I also do badly with country music ballads. So... why did the lights go out in Georgia?

By the way, my all-time favorite Herman's Hermits song is No Milk Today, a straightforward tune about a failed romance. Note how the camera lovingly dwells on that high-tech Epiphone guitar at the beginning of the clip. I can almost hear the cameraman wondering, "What are all those switches for?" Same song, 44 years later. Peter "Herman" Noone has aged well!

Found this on the web the other day: The Interstate 5 River Cats, which every Los Angeleno of a certain age will remember, an example of when public works intersected with artistic Bohemia. I am very sorry I didn't stop and take documentational pictures back in the 1970's, when I used to drive by these on the way home from Camp Pendleton each Friday.

Also, check this out: The Scale of the Universe, called to my attention by my astronomy-loving daughter Julie. If this is the type of thing Asian teenagers can do, we Caucasians are doomed!

I had a pianistic milestone last night at my lesson. When I was seventeen in 1973, Becky, a girl I knew, had a sheet of music with what looked like a lot of notes on her piano. It was a piece called "The Bear," by some Russian composer (I noted approvingly - I liked and still like Russian music). "Can you play that?" I asked. She sat down, said, "It's an odd piece," and played it, a loping but memorable work. I was mightily impressed since I was nowhere near that level in my own lessons. (In fact, I think I had only begun.) Last night we came to the same piece in my beginner-intermediate book, and I demanded that we go to it after I explained to my teacher why I knew it. It took but one play through to see how it's constructed, and it seems ridiculously simple. So. Did I have no cause to be impressed back in 1973, or should I instead take stock of where I am now and feel gratified?

Three day weekend! I have no plans, other than to finish a drywall patch job I started. Have a great weekend, Dear Reader.

16 Feb 2012

Some time ago I blogged about the Borodin Second Symphony. The other day I was happy to find a clean, crisp digital recording of the 1966 Evegny Svetlanov Melodya recording I used to listen to on Lp.

I've noticed that, most of the time, when I get to know a concert piece I always prefer the tempi, balances and performance, etc., that I got used to on the first recording to any others. Other recordings can be good, but I always seem to want to hear the piece as I learned it. And it's just not like me to have multiple recordings of the same thing, although I know many classical music listeners do that. ("The 1962 Von Karajan Beethoven's Ninth differs from his 1980's digital era Beethoven recordings and the Bernstein/New York in that..." etc. ) I feel like there is so much good music to know and so little time to know it.

I am also pleased to note that, whatever limitations the Soviets may have had with stereo equipment in the mid-1960's (tube equipment and Ampex tape machines, perhaps?), they could still produce good sounding recordings. This CD sounds just as open, ambient (nice hall, wherever it was!) and musical as the Lp I had, but clearer and with no vinyl noise. Very good.

However, I also found what I think is a Russian recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Ivan the Terrible with a sound quality like beer cans. Ugh. Nasty.

Last night I watched a late period Paul Newman flick, Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), about the development of the first atomic bomb. It was awful. Every Hollywood cliche in the book is in it, along with some bad writing, and, what's more, it ran overlong. I watched a number of sequences in fast forward mode.

Really, the only part I wanted to see was the "demon core" sequence (a slip of a screwdriver makes fissionable material start to go critical and emit a lethal radioactive flash), which has come to fascinate me for some reason. I first learned about it by a totally bogus and irresponsible sequence on the show 1,000 Ways to Die about two terrorists who supposedly died this way. I can find no proof that any terrorists ever did. Anyway, the demon core sequence was the only good part of the movie, I thought. John Cusack dies a horrible death from radiation poisoning. (Insert snide comment about cracking eggs and fluffy omelets.)

So. When I inspected the IMDb page for the Newman film, I noticed the name "Del Close" (shown above) as one of the actors in the film. Hm. Where have I encountered that name before? I opened his bio page and read that he was an early associate of the famous Second City comedy troupe. That explains it - I've encountered him before in a book about SCTV, a favorite sketch comedy show. But, wait... it gets interesting. He was forced to leave Second City due to major substance abuse (LSD) problems in 1965, and spent some of the Sixties getting fried with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. He later returned to Second City and taught and directed a new generation of comedians, including John Candy. But check this out, from the IMDb bio page: "Del Close played Polonious once in 'Hamlet,' and won a Joseph Jefferson Award for it. But the role he really wanted to play was Yorick. He had to die to do it, but now he may get his wish. Under the terms of his will, Close, who died March 4, 1999, has left his skull to the Goodman Theatre."

I can just imagine the hushed crowd in a darkened theatre when a voice comes on the PA system: "Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight's performance of Hamlet will posthumously feature Del Close as Yorick." Ew.

Did this really happen? No. From IMDb bio, "...in July 2006, the Chicago Tribune published a story questioning the authenticity of the skull. In October 2006, it was revealed that Del's skull had been cremated with the rest of his body and the skull at the Goodman Theatre was a fake." Ah.

Zombie films are in. Perhaps I ought to will, say, my pancreas, to appear in one.

Del Close's death made for an amusing story, article here.

Last night I dropped by the local film noir expert's house, picked up two bags full of VHS noirs, when through them for ones I have already seen, and winnowed it down to one bag of about 30 films. What fun ahead!

Tonight I have my weekly piano lesson. I am well on my way with two of my three pieces. The third is tricky: there's an idiot repeated chord figure in the right hand and the melody is played with the left. That's unusual and I'm not doing especially well with it.

15 Feb 2012

I listened to most of the Bartok String Quartet #5 for the first time on the drive in this morning. Movement two sounds like an example of his celebrated "night music." (Eerie, mysterious music and lonely melodies which invoke the night - far removed from Mozart's elegant Nachtmusik.) Let's look it up...

(Time passes)...

Yep! I'm right; it's on the wikipedia list. Cool! Called that one.

My opinion about Bela Bartok is changing. The more I think about it, and the more of his music I get to know, the more I am coming to believe that it was he, and not Igor Stravinsky, who was perhaps the greatest composer of the Twentieth Century. Stravinsky dabbled in styles: lushly late Romantic, neo-classical, serialist. Bartok didn't. He found his own expressive style early on and developed it as he got older. And, as I blogged once before, I really like the Bartok "sound," an exotically Eastern European, somewhat dissonant tonality. He really was unique.

I found a bunch of funny rugby images linked on a friend's Facebook page; yesterday I cheerfully grabbed them and put them on my rugby website. After all, some of the images were ripped off from my page, so it's only fair.

I read an interesting quote in Shostakovich's book Testimony last night: "It is not enough to love Soviet power. It must love you." Make no mistake about it, a powerful government is to be feared. You needn't take my word for it, however: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington.

The wedding at our house went well last night; Cari bought a nice white cake at the Swiss bakery which she gave to the bride. (After I got a piece.) I took some photos, but this being a family affair the photos won't be posted to the Internet anywhere. Instead I'll give the bride a CD. I have to admit that during the ceremony I had a big smile on my face - a wedding conducted in our living room! It seemed very Virginian somehow. I suggested that after bridal showers, high school drama booster meetings, Christmas and New Year's parties, and now a wedding, we need to clear the furniture and perhaps hold a square dance.

My evenings are about to grow darker, and more desperate. My friend Mike Keaney has some more film noir VHS tapes to give me; I'm stopping by tonight with plastic bags. No telling how many obscure and rare films he has on tape. I'm looking forward to it.

It's funny... back when I was watching films noir on television nearly every night my youngest daughter - who went to bed in an adjacent bedroom - said that she got used to falling asleep to the sounds of gunfire, women screaming and police sirens. Ha!

I read an interesting book about the Volkswagen Beetle last night. It stated that the main design feature of the New Beetle I own - a 2007 - is the circle. Indeed, this morning I counted no less than thirteen of them within view on my dashboard. I've never noticed that before. I also learned that the New Beetle saved Volkswagen in the United States. By 1994 their sales in the U.S. was down to a pitiful 49,000 cars; the reintroduction of the Bug in 1998 changed all that. Dealerships couldn't keep them in stock. Today Volkswagen is a major player in the U.S., but it's important to remember, I think, that it's due to the humble Bug.

While on the subject of Volkswagen Beetles... I note that there's an entry for the Punch Buggy game kids like to play. (If you see a VW Beetle you say, "Punch Buggy!" and slug the kid next to you on the arm. Kids being natural lawyers - always looking for loopholes in parental rules - you can also say "No punchbacks" as a protection against getting punched yourself.) Anyway, every now and then at yard sales I'll pull up near a group of kids and see one punch another when they notice what I'm driving. Back when I had my '73 air-cooled Beetle my scouts used to erupt in a frenzy of slugging when I'd arrive. According to wikipedia, an air-cooled model can allow two punches. I wasn't aware of that game modification. Perhaps arrival in a KdF wagen (the World War II Bug prototype) is grounds for manslaughter.

Some nights ago some friends came over for dinner; afterwards the wife pulled out a board game. I always complain loudly about board games, mainly because the husband of this particular couple makes a point of becoming unbelievably obnoxious during play. (He's famous for playing the most maddening game of Crazy Eights on earth.) Really, I'd just as soon sit around and chat. Anyway, I played "Ticket to Ride" for the first time. As board games go, it's rather fun, and far simpler than "Settlers of Catan," which was the last board game we played with this couple. Of course, it helped that I won by a large margin. The goal is to build railroads across the United States. Perhaps being an engineer it was simple for me to analytically put section after section together to go from Los Angeles to Miami (and L.A. to Atlanta), then from Calgary to Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Woo woo! Do I want to play this again? Not especially.

14 Feb 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! We are celebrating the Day of Love in an unsurpassable way: we're having a wedding conducted in our living room! It's a long story, but, simply put, rather than have a wedding conducted in the church office, Cari offered up our house this evening. So our Bishop will (re)marry a couple there.

Creepy vintage Valentine's Day cards. When you care enough to send something unsettling. Actually, want some fun? Do a Google image search on "vintage valentine's day" and see what comes up. All sorts of oddness. Graphical style sure has changed!

I wish we were in Provo, Utah today. There is an honored, semi-legendary pizza place there called Brick Oven (but I prefer to call it by the name it had when I was going to college, "Heaps of Pizza") which serves the most wonderful deep dish pizza. On Valentines Day they used to write "Swoon Yer Sweetie!" on the windows and make 'em heart-shaped... cool. When Cari started making pizzas she did that, too. Tonight before the wedding we're going to a pot luck dinner, however. I would be very surprised to see a heart shaped pizza there.

I watched a good Russian war film last night, Prisoner of the Mountains (1996). It's based on a story by Tolstoy, and has some stunning scenes of the Caucasus mountains (you know, where all of us Caucasians come from).

I had my annual physical today. And what did I learn? To drink a bottle of water before having the blood work done. According to the lab technician I was somewhat dehydrated and it was hard to find a vein, so she moved the needle around once under the skin to find the vein; I hate when they do that. It's not high on my list of life's little pleasures.

Oh, I also learned I may have a floating xiphoid. (It's the small bone at the base of the sternum.) I discovered that it hurts somewhat to move it. So, as in the old Henny Youngman joke, I won't do that. I think I may have damaged it when I sustained a rugby injury - a nearby rib was forced out of the cartilage a bit. "Popped the rib," in the language of those in the scrum who do that rather often. It's a distinctly unpleasant feeling - a bit like being deboned. I yelled when it happened to me. I took a hit to the chest, and then when I took part in the scrum, with all its funny torsions and pulls, I knew something had gone wrong. That took more than a month to heal, as I recall...

...and that's it for today's organ recital.

I am continuing to read Shostakovich's Testimony, a common theme of which are people he knew who simply disappeared, their memory official covered up. He cites a near-fatal article which appeared in Pravda about one of his operas, "Muddle Instead of Music." Read it yourself and see if it doesn't come across as nonsense. Its publication made Shostakovich paranoid for decades. "Formalism." Note one phrase: "...that may end very badly." Translation: Under Stalin's orders the composer gets dragged to the Kremlin and is shot.

To quote Professor Robert Greenberg, "There are no longer real Communists or apologists. There are simply those who haven't done their homework." Well put, professor!

13 Feb 2012

Somebody reminded me of a nighttime visit my mother and I did when was five or six, and so, in a flash of inspiration, I wrote up an account of it for Avocado Memories: The Evening of the Pointing Finger. Looking back on it, I wonder why this evening was so memorable to me. Perhaps I'll see Diane in the next world... Were you really blind?, I'll ask.

Yesterday I watched a three and a half hour "American Experience" PBS documentary about Ulysses S. Grant, my favorite Civil War character. The historians continually make the point that in post Civil War America, Grant was hands-down the most popular figure in America, surpassing even Abe Lincoln. He was idolized and lionized. He was also the most popular American abroad; after his second presidential term he spent two years abroad in a continual round of honorary appearances, banquets and meetings with heads of state.

It seems that one (bushy-haired) academic has figured out a new angle for Grant: Preserver of the Rights of Freed Slaves. According to her, the reason for the rather poor opinion of him now is that the Confederate Lost Cause is poisoning judgement about him. Hmmmm... okaaay. I haven't some across THAT one in the 30+ years I've been reading books about U.S. Grant, but, hey, whatever gets you a fellowship.

The fact is that Grant was a rather poor president because the skill and ability needed to command vast armies is very different than the skill required to manipulate Congress and public opinion.

Some time ago I blogged about cave paintings. My friend Gavin points out that the Chauvet art may not be the oldest after all. Article here. The Chauvet art still beats these Spanish scrawlings in terms of artistic merit and quantity, however.

It's interesting... I sometimes consider issues of data longevity: What format will last longer, digital data on DVDs and hard drives (if maintained), or paper? It appears that if you REALLY want something you write to last, make yourself a pointy stick with charcoal on the end and scrawl what you want upon the wall of some cave. That can last up to 35,000-40,000 years! Far older than Egyptian writings on papyrus or cuneiform script on clay tablets, cave scrawls are the oldest example of data permanence.

Hey, I found another cool graphic to go in my garage over the weekend: VW Logo Spec. Ethan found it. I printed it up as a 12" x 18" print at COSTCO for a couple of bucks and framed it. Looks good in the VW Bay of my garage.

Speaking of VW's, I stopped my my local dealership to take another look at the 2012 model Beetle and get some literature. I'm still not won over, but I'm less turned off than before. They won't come out with a convertible model until next year, or so I'm told. I love my convertible... it's just so fun driving around with the top down!

I have started reading Shostakovich's Testimony. The man seemed to be miserable and nervous all the time. No surprise there. The way it worked in the Worker's Paradise was that if some bureaucrat pronounced you guilty of "formalism" (whatever THAT means) in Pravda, it could be only a matter of time before the 3 AM knock on the door and you simply disappeared, as did many of Shostakovich's artistic peers during Stalin's Reign of Terror. He half expected to meet this fate at any time. I hope the coals in Hell are well stoked up for Joe Stalin.

10 Feb 2012

I listened to the Miaskovsky 21st Symphony in F-sharp minor yesterday while taking a walk. It's a piece that's important to me for reasons I cannot describe. It's not well-known or played very often, and, at a typical playing time of about fourteen minutes, it is also not a world-shaker like Beethoven's Ninth. But I absolutely love it. Written in 1940, it is a one movement symphony; you can hear it performed here.

I remember a Southern California winter's day when I was sixteen or seventeen; it was sunny and windy, and the sunlight in my living room was occasionally interrupted by the hypnotic movement of the branches of the big eucalyptus trees in our neighbor's yard. I played this work on Dad's big console stereo: Morton Gould, Chicago Symphony Orchestra - I still have the Lp. Whenever I hear this work - and this has been going on for forty years, now - I think of that occasion. The music has become inextricably mixed with bright, windy days and even some of the days of my youth. It makes me dreamy and reflective. Perhaps I should arrange to have it played at my funeral. (Cari, Mike, Bob - take a note.)

I started watching a fun documentary last night: Eames: The Architect and the Painter (2011), about the design duo of Charles and Ray Eames (shown). Ray, despite her mannish first name, was Eames' wife. Charles Eames, of course, was one of the great 20th century designers - he defined a lot of what came to be called mid-century modern. It can honestly be said that helped make the Fifties zing. You can still see his chairs and seating systems everywhere, and if you search on e-Bay you will see vintagey things described as "Eames" quite frequently, whether or not there are actually an Eams design. He has obviously long ago arrived at the third level of notoriety every actor wants to attain...

Level One: Who is Charles Eames?
Level Two: Get me Charles Eames!
Level Three: Get me a Charles Eames type!

You've seen Eames chairs before... this style was especially ubiquitous. We had some - in aqua and coral plastic - in our house when I was growing up. As I recall, we sometimes left them exposed to the rain and Eames puddles would form in those bowlish seats.

This style inevitably makes me think of Robert Morse in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967); corporate Mad Men, if you catch my drift. ("I believe in you...") However, I think it was really intended as a lounge chair for the home. There I am getting things all mixed up again.

I loaded Bejeweled, a video game, onto my iPhone last night. Another dangerous distraction. I saw my youngest daughter playing it over the Christmas break and was hooked by the colors and motion. The action in this game is truly hypnotic. It reminded me instantly of the bedtime stories I used to make up and tell to her and her sister. These always involved princesses with color-coordinated jewels ("There was once a princess in a green gown who had a beautiful emerald ring..." or "There were once three sisters, one with a diamond necklace, one with a ruby necklace and one with a sapphire necklace...")

One of their favorite stories was actually at least 2,400 years old - the Contest Between the North Wind and the Sun. It impressed me when I heard it as a small boy and never forgot it.

I remember once lying on my youngest daughter's bed with her on top of my back; she wanted to tell the story that night, so I let her. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it dealt with princesses and gemstones and seemed to go on forever. It had a very meandering plot, so I dozed. When I woke up it was still going on. As she got a bit older I used to inject rugby into the stories just to tease her: "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who played tighthead prop in her rugby club..." DAD! NO RUGBY! Ha ha!

I am looking forward to the time when I can tell granddaughters bedtime tales about princesses and their gemstones.

My piano lesson went well last night, but that was with three confidence-building pieces. I got assigned three more difficult ones for this week. I'm still struggling to recognize bass clef notes with the same facility I had before.

Somehow I lost nearly four pounds last week despite a Superbowl Sunday, when I made an absolute hog out of myself, and a dinner with some visiting friends (and cake) earlier this week. I've now lost thirteen pounds since New Year's, and have recovered yet another pair of pants that previously didn't fit. Huzzah!

The weekend arrives again, and with it a Canadian cold air mass from the friendly snow-people in The Great White North. Whatever. I won't be outside much so it's no big deal. I have no idea what's on for this weekend other than a dinner party on Saturday with some friends.

Have a great weekend!

9 Feb 2012

Brazos!

That's the rally cry of the (geriatric) Texas Rangers, as seen in The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again (1970), which I watched last night. This sequel was marginally better than the original. I actually enjoyed watching these old made-for-TV films. The plot and writing is strictly rudimentary and b-film quality stuff, but it's fun watching Walter Brennan, Edgar Buchanan, Chill Wills (who sometimes seems hilariously crazed) and Andy Devine. It's an AARP buddy film.

My pal Don is forming a quasi-real, virtual sort of conceptual fantasy unit based on the real life 37th Iowa "Graybeards" Civil War regiment. (You may recall my blogs about them last week.) It makes perfect sense as we age but continue to take part in reenacting. It occurred to me last night that we have now gotten our battle cry: Brazos!

I also watched Attack! (1956), a Robert Aldrich war film starring Jack Palance (he of the animalistic facial features), Eddie Albert, Buddy Ebsen and Lee Marvin. Most of the film was pretty good, but the final act was hyperbolic and over the top in a way that normally only Sam Fuller can achieve. Really hammy acting... and Palance acted out what seemed to be film's most protracted death scene. This film may have contained Eddie Albert's finest acting job; he portrayed an unusually craven coward and self-seeker. After the war, of course, he married a glamorous blonde, settled down in the Haney Farm in Hooterville and took up farming. It also co-starred everyone's favorite world-weary World War II dogfaced G.I., Robert Strauss ("Animal," in Stalag 17). He played a soldier from Yonkers, of course. I know actors hate to be typecast, but it's fun for audiences, which is why Hollywood does it. Strauss was one of the best slobs in the business.

I had some money left over from Christmas that was burning a hole in my pocket. I had figured that I'd buy some media (CDs and books) from amazon.com, but yesterday decided instead to invest it in some more genetic detective work. So I purchased a 37 to 67 marker upgrade of the YDNA sample I sent in to FamilyTreeDNA some years back. (This enabled me to link my documented Clark line into another family of Clarks whose documentation goes 200 years further back in time. I just don't know what the link between the families is, although the genetics allow me to be 99% certain there is one.) The coordinator of the Clarke Surname Project has suggested that a refinement of my markers will perhaps enable me to find out what branch of the YDNA Clark family I hail from; this will help me narrow my research.

The basic markers test, 25 or 37 markers, enables you to link into a family. A more detailed set of markers can help determine what branch you descend from. The more markers you know, the more mutations and unique identifying characteristics you have. What's more, if you share all 67 markers with somebody else, you are much more certain of having a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) fewer generations back.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this whole genetic genealogical effort as people get more refined tests for the surname databases, and the databases grow in size and entries. "History unearthed daily," is the company's motto, and it's a valid claim. It's a fascinating effort; some of the areas of it are rather complicated. Y-DNA Single Nucleotide Polymorphism?

Mickey Rooney was great! Check out this video, where he jitterbugs with a woman a foot taller than he is. Try not to smile...

8 Feb 2012

Burbank, California has a number of attractions, one of them being the Big Boy Bob and its Friday Night car show, as the video shows. I've been there one Friday night - it's a lot of fun. But as much as I'd like to be able to endorse the Big Boy hamburger, I cannot. I was unimpressed the last two times I've had them. Too salty. You go there for the scene. So does Jay Leno, apparently, every now and then. I'm impressed with him - he seems to be a down-to-earth kind of guy. A car nut who happens to be a star rather than the other way around, it seems. (I suspect Conan O'Brien's opinion of him is somewhat different.)

I saw an interesting and creative recent science-fiction movie the other night, the best and most unique I've seen since Robocop (1987), actually: District 9. I got the DVD from my son over the holidays; it didn't look promising. I'd never heard of the film and figured I'd watch the first half hour or so to see how bad it was and then move on. Surprise! The plot was different (from IMDb): "An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology."

The story exposition is fascinating: For reasons unknown, a gigantic alien mothership hovers over Johannesburg ("Not Washington, not New York, not London..." says the narration) with no contact or appearance from the inhabitants of the ship. After some months government personnel breaks into the ship to find half starved, bug-like aliens whom, for humanitarian reasons, the government relocates to a compound. The compound quickly turns into a slum. Integration into Johannesburg society does not go well, and a multinational relocation scheme is established to rehouse the million or so aliens.

I was completely hooked in the first ten minutes. Even the action scenes, which I usually find boring and the same old explosion-after-explosion thing, were good. So who in Hollywood came up with this creative and unique film with impressive, big budget CGI? Nobody - it was made in South Africa and starred a South African cast! Of course, memories of apartheid were a subtext in the alien slum settings. It was fascinating to see the Nigerian warlords and arms dealers deal with the aliens - whom they call "prawns" due to their appearance - in much the same way whites dealt with blacks in that troubled nation. And, as is often the case with the best science fiction movies, the theme of humanity was highlighted: What does it mean to be human and how does this change in dealing with aliens? Do aliens have human rights?

I thoroughly enjoyed this film; it was refreshing to see a more or less worn out genre treated creatively and with intelligence. Recommended.

Just for kicks I watched another DVD my son unloaded: The Over the Hill Gang, a comedy western television production from 1969. I've heard of it but have never seen it; at first I thought it was a Disney film, but no, it isn't. It's a silly work with a b-script, but the fun is in seeing Pat O'Brien, Walter Brennan, Chill Wills and Edgar Buchanan square off against Jack Elam, Andy Devine and Edward Andrews - all venerable actors at or near the end of their careers. Gypsy Rose Lee is thrown into the mix for good measure. (Literally. At one point she wears a form-fitting gown and demonstrates that it's possible for middle-aged burlesque stars to keep their figures!)

Did you know Gypsy Rose Lee was an author? I didn't.

Apropos of nothing, I believe the Warren Commission. That is to say, I believe that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. This isn't sexy and it doesn't make me appear to have any unusual deductive abilities, I know, but that's where my examination took me. I mention this because lately it seems I'm the only one among my friends I ask who believes this, so thoroughly has the JFK assassination conspiracy theory taken root in this country. I partially blame Oliver Stone's wretched JFK (1991) for this. (It plays wild and loose with documented facts.) But my observation is that, as per the old maxim, Truth is the Daughter of Time. It'll be 49 years this year since the assassination, and no credible friends, family, witnesses or participants of a conspiracy have come forward with anything like a convincing tale. I'm thinking none ever will, and it's not because of the efficiency of the conspiracy (they are hard to maintain); it's because there is nothing there.

Perhaps it's post-Watergate mistrust of the government that has helped to propagate the belief in a conspiracy. At any rate, after visiting Dallas on a business trip once and touring the Sixth Floor Museum, I spent some time researching the JFK assassination and attempted to convince myself one way or the other about a conspiracy. The conclusion I came to was that the Warren Commission had it right - there was only a lone gunman. I can find no convincing evidence that he didn't act alone.

7 Feb 2012

Yesterday I criticised the 2012 Volkswagen Beetle as not being Beetlelike and unauthentic. What did I mean? Take a look at these four images. The first dashboard, from a classic air-cooled Bug, is pristine and attractive. Note how simple and stylish it is. With the possible exception of the pull knob on the ashtray, there is nothing here which doesn't need to be here. It's a model of clean, uncluttered design. Now, true, you couldn't get away with this now for various safety reasons, but this is the ideal.

To a lesser extent, the dash on my 2007 Beetle is also like this, but modeled after the curved windshield Super Beetle models. (I owned two Super Beetles, a '74 and a '73.) Now look at the dash on the 2012 model. It's just... complicated. The point at which the driver interacts with his Bug the most - the dashboard - isn't the least bit Beetlelike. It doesn't even try to suggest the previous cars. (Yes, I'm cheating a bit by not showing the right hand side of the dash, which is plain, but the driver's side instrumentation just ruins it for me.)

Last week I posted an interesting photo to Burbankia, Lockheed workers rolling out assembled P-38 "Lightning" warplanes. This image should cheer any lover of liberty because the P-38 was the scourge of Nazi Germany. Indeed, there is flyer testimony that these planes terrified Nazis. Anything that would terrify Nazis has to be praiseworthy, right?

I like this photo because I know this intersection very well; I used to ride my bike up Buena Vista St. (left to right) past it. Later, with my driver's license, I'd drive past it on my way to work at the family business, The Lincoln Cafe, a hole in the wall which catered to Lockheed workers. In fact, I lived on Lincoln St. 2 1/2 blocks away to the left of this photo. I know that marked Buena Vista and Vanowen intersection very well, too. I once led an expedition of two into a flood control waterway tunnel and emerged back into the sunlight there. We carried rolled up burning newspapers for light like the angry peasants in a Frankenstein movie.

Vanowen ran parallel to the railroad tracks and ended at a tee at Buena Vista; you had to take a left and head towards Lockheed (and this photo site) or a right and down towards my neighborhood. During the Sixties, at this tee, there lived a single mother whom I am convinced was one of the most unfortunate women in Burbank. She owned, or more likely, rented, a house which was set down at the end of Vanowen. Despite the fact that the Burbank traffic engineers put red flashing lights and barriers in her front yard, drunks heedlessly roaring down Vanowen frequently wound up in car wrecks in her front yard when they didn't turn onto Buena Vista. I said that it was set down; what made it worse was that her house was inset somewhat low into the ground at that point, so that cars got some air time on the way into her front yard. This happened innumerable times in my youth; my Burbank pal Mike says it still does. (In fact, there was a crash about three weeks ago. He says the street hardware there always looks new!) She had an emotionally unstable son whom all the neighbor girls were afraid of. I was never glad of his company at the nearby park. As I recall, he talked about sex constantly. At the time I thought that if ever a kid was destined to be a rapist, it was he. Life must have been hell for that poor woman.

Inevitably, I was a Lockheed employee for a time (my father worked there and it was the biggest employer in town), from April 1979 to February 1980, and I labored in the area shown in this photo. A menial maintenance worker, I used to drive a small, gasoline powered Cushman scooter and picked up various bits of trash found collected in this area. Once, somebody had called in a bomb threat in the building later erected where this shot was taken. Lockheed management cleared the building and deployed myself and some other dispensables from floor to floor to empty waste cans. When our labor senior steward learned of this, he told us to cease and desist immediately. It was the one and only time I felt like the union was on my side.

Lockheed was driven out of California by the strident anti-business regulations as well as the environmental costs levied by the state legislature. The astronomical Worker's Comp rates didn't help, either. Making calculations with a Google street map based on the lengths of P-38s from Lincoln St., it appears that there is a Marriott Hotel swimming pool now where this image was taken. Where there was once bustling wartime activity there is now leisure activity.

Two last bits of hometown trivia: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, part of the Disney Corporation, was named for the street in Burbank. Why? Because the Disney Studios sits on the lower end of the street, about 2 1/2 miles away. On the northernmost terminus of Buena Vista St. sits St. Francis Xavier Church, which Mike and I have always informally called the "Flip Off Church." Why? Here's what you see from the street.

6 Feb 2012

Went to the D.C. Auto Show on Saturday; it was lots of fun! Here are four very short videos:

2012 Volkswagen Beetle Turbo - I'm not impressed. They managed to design the "Beetle" right out of the car. The cues are all missing. What we have instead is a Beetlesque Golf, or something else entirely. It's probably a great little car, but I'm not buying into the advertising that they have somehow gone back to the design's roots with this car. In the attempt to make it more masculine/sportier/sleekly-lined it's just not a Beetle anymore. The endearing quirkiness is gone.

1962 Fiat 500 Nuova - Fiat had a huge presence at the show this year, buoyed in large part by the popularity of their relaunch of the 500 in America. I'm not sure I'd buy one - they're way too small and I'm not certain they've gotten past the "Fix It Again, Tony" category, but they did make a splash.

Lincoln Mk Z Concept Car - My pal Mike and I used to cruise around in Burbank in Lincolns. This is some designer's idea of the 21 century ride, I reckon.

The American Pride Camaro - Take THAT, Red China!

I was impressed with the new Hyundai Azera. Very nice. Impressed enough to trade in our one year old Sonata (1/4 paid off) for one? No.

I saw a couple of suprisingly good films noir over the weekend:

The Last Lullaby (2008) - Lean and economical, there are no distractions in this film. It's just the plot and characters, sparingly told. It reminded me a lot of cult favorite Blast of Silence (1961). The title makes no real sense with the story, by the way. I imagine it was selected because it sounds noirish.

Brother (1997) - A Russian crime film that was just noirish enough in some thematic elements (squalid urbanism, betrayal, a conflicted protagonist) to qualify. I was surprised by this one... St. Petersberg (the Communist era Leningrad), was a nasty looking place. Surely some free market wealth has improved things, has it not? But then... this film was made only six years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I also re-watched one of my faves, Kiss Me, Deadly (1955) on a Criterion DVD release, with extras. I was flattered to notice that mention of my Gaby Rodgers interview made it into the commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini (a couple of well-knkown noir writers), but I half-expected that. As far as I know, the details of her direction by Robert Aldrich to portray a drugged out lesbian appear nowhere else.

Who is Gaby Rodgers? She's the principal femme fatale in this production, and it is she who opens the item everyone is seeking, a box containing some fissioning atomic material which is always spoken of metaphorically. If the scene where she opens the box reminds you a bit of the ark opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, well, they did it first here.

The commentary makes ample mention of the fact that only real thing shared between Mickey Spillane's novel and this film is the title and the Mike Hammer character. Screenwriter A.I. bezzerides didn't like Spillane's novel at all, and Spillane didn't like the movie. I've read the book... the movie, for all its oddball features, proto-mythical jargon, classical references and freaked out atomic ending, is far better. A critical favorite and a classic.

I watched most of the Superbowl with friends last night. I had "no dog in the hunt" and didn't care who won. The Madonna halftime show was a yawner... as usual I am far more impressed with the display technology than with the musical performance. It's time for Weird Al Yankovic to star. When the subject was proposed to him, he tweeted, "But Sunday is my laundry day!" which is precisely why he needs to do it. That's the attitude that's needed. The people who have performed have taken themselves way, way too seriously. I see him walking out to the center of the field tracked by a single spotlight, accordion strapped to his back, for some lame song ("Lady of Spain" - an accordion classic, comes to mind). Then a ridiculous multimedia affair ensues with lights, explosions, tanks, etc. A total send-up of the usual show. Well, that's my concept, anyway.

3 Feb 2012

I saw a mind-blowing documentary last night: Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 2010 Werner Herzog production about the art in the Chauvet Cave of Southern France.

The cave was only discovered in 1994; due to a rock slide it has been more or less sealed for 10,000+ years. I heard about this film last week via a non-endorsement from a friend at church. He thought it was rather dull. I evidently liked it a lot more than he did. According to scholars, the art in the Chauvet cave are the oldest cave paintings known, with the earliest dating to 35,000 years ago. Amazingly, some are 5,000 years or so newer, done in the same style, a remarkable thing, I think.
This film was released in 3D, but I saw it in glorious 2D via Netflix streaming. From some of the reviews I've read the 3D version can cause horrendous headaches.

The art - horses, bisons, bears - is stunning. And the cave is filled with bear bones, claw marks on the cave walls and calcified structures. (No human bones!) It's an amazing photographed trip down into the cave to see these. But... why did ancient man never attempt to draw himself? Wouldn't that be wonderful, to see a 32,000 year old rendering of a face? (The only human art which emerges from this era is, well, fertility-porn, for lack of a better name. Venus figurines. The fact that there's so many of them suggests that males haven't changed much in 35,000 years.)

There is also an interesting sequence where a scientist demonstrates a replica of a paleolithic flute. Of course, where the holes are placed determines the flute's tuning; the scientist pointed out that the scale of the instrument is pentatonic (much folk music is pentatonic in nature - we associate it with Irish and Scottish tunes) and demonstrated it by playing the Star Spangled Banner! The National Anthem is pentatonic? I didn't know that... But wait... when I attempted to play this tune upon the black (pentatonic) keys of the piano, I couldn't. Some of the notes were flattened. Apparently he meant a hemitonic pentatonic scale, which has some flattened notes. Or those are different flattened notes and he's just plain wrong, I don't know.

As always, what puts this over the top for me is Herzog's sometimes whacked out narration and interviewing style. He interrupts the scientists he interviews and asks odd questions. At the end of the production, as a postscript, Herzog points out that some miles up the river from the caves is one of France's largest nuclear power plants. The warmed water from the plant is discharged into a sealed artificial wetlands preserve, the home of crocodiles, lots of them. Some of them have mutated into albinos, and Herzog lovingly lets the camera play upon them though a glass wall as they swim. He muses, "Vat if ze albino crocodiles made their way to the Chauvet cave? Vat would zey think of ze paintings?" Hahahaha! I hope Werner Herzog does more documentaries... I love these.

On the way into work this morning I listened to Bela Bartok String Quartet #1. An early work, it doesn't feature the snapping, percussive effect (called the "Bartok pizzicati") found in his 4th quartet, or the richer harmonic textures of his mature style. I've got all of these on CD now... I look forward to listening to them.

Speaking of music, I had my first piano lesson since June last night. (I took time off after the shoulder surgery.) My teacher says it wasn't nearly the train wreck she had expected after such a long time off, but I am adrift on sight reading the notes in the bass clef. She said it'll take me about a month to get back to where I was. I have three pieces to practice by next week, when I see her again. No Angry Birds to distract me.

My daughter's Christmas present finally got to me yesterday, an old paperback copy of Irving Shulman's Cry Tough! (1949), long out of print, as are most of Shulman's novels. (I blogged about Shulman some time ago.) It's the sequel to The Amboy Dukes (1947), the unexpectedly gritty and realistic look at Brooklyn gang life in the 1940's. In fact, it's far grittier than the Mickey Spillane novels I've read. Shulman being the go-to guy for books about gangs, he was given the assignment to novelize West Side Story in the early Sixties; that's excellent, too, and is a paperback I own. I think it's time for a reassessment of Shulman's work - I think moderns would like his writing. I plan to find copies of his later stuff. Two down, five to go.

I am happy to report that I have lost two pounds this week, and today am again wearing a pair of trousers which didn't fit me before. What's more, wearing them I've been able to take my belt in one more hole. I've lost 9.2 pounds since January 6th. It was a New Year's resolution of mine to lose some weight... I still haven't followed up on my other resolution, which was to write an article about my VW Bug stories. I've started it, but it sits on my PC's desktop, staring at me accusingly.

Anyway, I was planning to celebrate two pair of trousers put back into circulation with a walk down to Guapo's to try a dish of Mexican fried ice cream until I looked it up on the Internet. 825 calories. Yipes! I think I'll save that for some other milestone, 15 or 20 pounds lost, perhaps.

I'm planning to go to the D.C. Auto Show tomorrow with friends; ought to be fun. Have a great weekend!

2 Feb 2012

Happy birthday to my daughter Julie today! Phone call to follow. We've got to get her hooked up with Face Time...

As reported as our weird national annual tradition, Groundhog Phil saw his shadow today, so there's another six weeks of winter. If it's like what we had recently, bring it on. We had wonderful shirtsleeve weather yesterday in the Nation's Capital. I took the top down on my way home. Photographic proof. 70 degrees! In fact, this is such a mild winter the forsythia bush near the library is getting fooled. Normally we don't see that thing yellow out until late February or March.

I was in a meeting the other day and heard somebody use the sentence, "She gets kind of anal about it," followed shortly thereafter by, "We want to keep our hands clean." By "anal," of course, this fellow means the phrase "anal retentive," meaning persnickety or unduly obsessive. But nowadays this has been shortened to simply "anal." Yes... I want to keep my hands clean of that kind of English usage. It leads to unfortunate mental images.

I watched a fine bit of propaganda the other night: In Which We Serve, the 1942 Noel Coward written and directed film about the British Royal Navy. David Lean, one of my favorite directors, had a hand in it as well. Produced primarily to boost wartime morale, it still holds up jolly well. Coward plays the captain of the H.M.S. Torrin, an exemplary stiff upper-lipper. John Mills plays Ordinary Seaman Blake, a heroic cockney, and Kathleen Harrison, as always, plays an excitable but stout-hearted wife and mother. By the end of this one I was damned proud to be English. Wait...what?

I also watched a neat old Bogie film, Sahara (1942). The plot is, at the very least, improbable: Bogie and a handful of others shoot up what looks like a division of a German Army and compel them to surrender! But it's fun watching Rex Ingram (Hollywood's Cool Black Guy from the 1940's) shoot Nazis with a Tommy Gun. He's also fond of his tank, see? So he won't have no spoofing or jokes made at her expense. He's kind of sensitive that way, see?

I found a new CD of John Barry music to listen to, his score for Swept from the Sea (1997). I have no idea what the film is about. I've blogged about him before (almost a year ago, in fact, after he died) - he's the composer who did the scores to a lot of the James Bond films, Dances With Wolves, Body Heat, The Lion in Winter, Somewhere in Time, etc. One of the greats. There is definitely a John Barry "sound," dramatic and deeply psychological. Listening to the Swept from the Sea music, it causes me to wonder what the action is in the film that is being set to the music. It sounds like somebody is plotting a murder or a conspiracy.

Barry practically owned spy music in the 1960's, and there's a Barry "sound" for that, too: often a ostinato with the main theme played by some exotic instrument. His music for The Ipcress File is a perfect example. His theme for The Persuaders is another.

A little weight loss victory this morning: I am now wearing a pair of trousers I haven't been able to get into since I don't know when. If I can keep this up I'll be able to pick through my "pants of historical sizes" box in the closet. That's where I store pants which are too small or too large for me to wear. Needless to say, perhaps, most are too small.

Tonight I have a piano lesson. I'm rebooting that effort, after not having sat at a piano since June. (Last year's shoulder surgery and recovery was my excuse.) I am not entirely looking forward to this as learning to play the piano is hard work. It's difficult to train the eye-brain-fingers team to create something that is a reasonable approximation of what's on the page. But I also don't want to quit so easily. Someday I'd like to be able to play, and justify the procurement of a horizontal instrument. I have removed Angry Birds from my iPhone to remove that distraction - that's how serious I am trying to be.

1 Feb 2012

My son pointed out this animated .gif to me. Makes me want to lop off my ear and sit under a starry night. Have you ever noticed how the morphing process gives some faces a momentary three dimensional look? Odd.

I mentioned that I would link my amazon.com review of Thinking Small when it got posted; here it is.

Last night we had burgers at Five Guys. Part of the fun is checking out the customer art posted on the bulletin board. Example one, example two.

Ever since learning of the upcoming grandson, my wife has turned into a relentless knitting machine. I don't believe those needles have stopped clicking since we touched down after Christmas. Here's the little sweater. What's really neat is the crocheted blanket she's mailing. She pinned a note to it that it was made by her grandmother for Ethan after he was born. That means it'll be used by her grandmother's great-great-grandson. What a neat heirloom! I wish I had something from a great-great-grandparent! (I have one photograph of a little old German lady sitting amidst pots of flowers. That's my great-great-grandmother Margaret Hohenstein.)

I have noticed that my health seems to be a lot better this winter than in winters past. That is, I haven't (yet) gotten my usual bad cold that develops into bronchitis or something very much like it. I think I know why: Since early October I've been driving into work rather than taking public transportation (the Metro rail and bus). So I haven't been exposed to as many germs. I bet that's it.

One thing I forgot to mention about The Wonder Years in yesterday's glowing review: People think that the so-called Baby Boomer generation (born between 1945 and about 1960) was a monolithic thing, that these were the young people who protested the war in Vietnam, attended Woodstock, marched on campus, wore insipid clothes, took drugs, listened to Ravi Shankar and put flower stickers on VW Bugs and Transporters. Not so! It is a fact that the generation who protested Vietnam also fought honorably in it. In addition, there is a social division among the folks born during 1945-1960; it's so pronounced that I suggest it's two different groups entirely. In the show, Kevin's sister, who is about five years older than he is, is a suburban hippie who bought into the more publicized movements of the era. She leaves home to live with a guy (causing her father considerable emotional grief) and constantly spouts anti-war, anti-authority, feminist rhetoric. When she finally agrees to wed, she has a hippie wedding presided over by a Hindu. Kevin - who is my age - didn't buy into any of that. This squares with what I have observed growing up.

I disliked and distrusted hippies and the entire drugs and free love youth movement of the 1960's, and so did a lot of the people my age. It was their older brothers and sisters who were taking part in that, and when the Seventies arrived - when we came of age - the 1960's culture was largely passe. While there was a New Left that put Jimmy Carter into office, the hippie torch really hadn't been successfully passed.

According to an article in that ultimate fount of wisdom, wikipedia, a better description than Baby Boomer for the generational cohort Kevin and I belong to might be the "Generation Jones" moniker, the idea being that there's a childhood experienced with high expectations that didn't come to pass, which led to a certain unrequited, "jonesing" quality. I wrote about this in an article I called "The Patio Culture and the Promise of Joining the Adults' Club" (a promise which, I argue, was never entirely fulfilled). In other words, I wanted to be a member of the G.I. Generation like my parents, but by the 1970's that was socially impossible. (Thanks a buttload, Baby Boomers.)

Anyway, it's nice when great generational sociological writers agree. :)

I find this whole American generational labelling thing interesting. Well, it beats astrology as a parlour pseudo-science, anyway. My children (born between 1983 and 1990) are Millennials. I worry about them... it's beginning to look like this is the first time in American history when we are not automatically assuming that our children will fare better than we did. I'm not talking about things: a big house, possession of consumer goods, nice cars, etc. Those are nice but, ultimately, not important. I'm talking about economic opportunity, personal liberty, freedom from terror and crime and the assurance of a stable, family-based society. And last but not least the continuance of the traditional American Anglophone culture. All of it seems to be crumbling away, little by little.

I have blogged before about how I am interested in the sub-Roman, or "Arthurian" period of British history (the period around the 5th and 6th centuries AD). Among the various themes in Arthurian literature is a vanishing of the light and of culture; the ending of a time of stability and glory and a descending into darkness and the hardscrabble existence of the early Middle Ages. I hate the idea that I may be seeing the same sort of thing in the United States of America - that my existence may have begun at the postwar height of the American culture and ends with the descent into irrelevance well underway. It's painful to bear witness of that. When he was running for president, Bob Dole said, "There was once a better America. I remember it." Elections being the cyclical resurrection (often artificial) of hope, perhaps this is why Dole didn't win. He wasn't being hopeful. But I think he was being accurate.

Brigham's Blog