31 August 2012

The last day of August... geez, this year is rushing by quickly...

The Republican National Convention? Yes, of course I watched Mitt Romney's speech last night, and Clint Eastwood's. I normally try to keep politics off this page, and today will be no exception - except to state that I found Eastwood's speech rather weird. Were it me, I would not suggest that the President of the United States told anyone to perform a biological impossibility upon himself. That was tasteless and beyond the pale, I thought. But the conventioneers seemed to love it. I'll write a political blog or two closer to the elections - I simply have to - but I'll give you a fair content warning. :)

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going through old, more or less unseen negatives from about 35 years ago, when I was in the Marines. I posted a bunch of these to my Picasa USMC Photo Album. Here's one I don't think I've ever seen because the negative is so dark (and, back then, I didn't have Photoshop or the skills to make a decent print out of it): An infrared shot of me and a nitrogen bottle. I had to look twice - it doesn't even look like me!

I've blogged about infrared photography before; back then, it involved a red filter and a special roll of Kodak film. When shooting people the process lends a ghostly look to skin and eyes: Erv, Erv again. Also, Camp Pendleton's Tactical Town, modeled to look like a European village because back in the Seventies planners figured that World War III would start in the Fulda Gap in Germany. It took me a minute to identify who the Marine was sitting atop the castle battlements.

I also found another negative of LuAnne Virkler, the Queen of Base Telephone. Why did I take so many pictures of her? Back then, a pretty WM (Woman Marine - they're just called Marines now) was a rather notable thing. Plus I was a young man - you know...

I made two new images of Dad and I on a Sunday drive down Mulholland Drive in my Bug. Dad, Me. But that seemed more fun when he was doing the driving in his Karmann-Ghia. If only I could do that one more time. It's true, it's so true... we don't properly value the parents we have when we have them around.

Our visiting company of earlier this week, the McDaniels, are making their way back to California via Interstate 40. Today, by driving through Arkansas they drive right through the center what is now called Tropical Depression Isaac - 25-30 mph winds, heavy rain. Yikes! Next time, guys... take a plane!

(My maternal grandfather was named Isaac. When he was young he was a prizefighter, "Kid Wedge." I throw that in for free.)

Weight: All that tourism, fun and careless eating I did last week and this made me gain two pounds. Arg! However, it's odd. My mental goal this year was to get back to a weight where I looked okay in clothes and my Civil War togs. But I checked: I now weigh twelve pounds less than I weighed in that photo. But I think I look fatter. What gives? The solution is evidently to stop looking in the mirror so much.

The World's Most Adorable Grandson (tm) indulges a photographer while reading and naps. Toujours les naps.
Ahhh... a three day weekend. Last night I swat (past tense of sweat) mightily mowing the lawns so I wouldn't have to clutter my weekend doing that. Yard sales, of course, plus the last weekend at the pool. Maybe some films.

Have a great weekend!

30 August 2012

EGAD, isn't this week over yet?

When I visited Gettysburg with the McDaniels last week I bought a DVD at the bookstore, Civil War Battles. I noticed on the back that the producers acknowledged the 1980's reenactment footage taken by Classic Images, Inc. Knowing that my friends and I are in this footage in various places, I decided to hunt around in this four hour DVD. In among all the blue-coated Federal troops seen in the columns on the march and in the battles, you can see a unusually tall and dorfy private either wearing gaiters or with his trousers bloused. That's me. Youtube video coming once I do a good search and perform a Handbrake rip of the best sections of the DVD.

By the way, I loaded the now traditional Clark-McDaniel Porch Photo. I also posted "Nature Boy," taken at the Botanical Museum. Haha!

Last night I got a 1958 Naked City DVD in the mail from Netflix; unfortunately I had rented this same set from the late lamented Video Vault some years back. Too bad. This was a wonderful series, well-written, directed, paced and acted. Drama for adults without having to resort to being adult, if you know what I mean.

I recall seeing daytime reruns of Naked City on the television being watched by the mother of my childhood friend Jimmy. (Naturally, the title caused us some giggles.) It's funny... seeing it, I distinctly recall thinking, "This doesn't look like something I'd like now, but when I'm older I bet I'll like it a lot." It seemed that as a child I had an odd sense of almost fully knowing myself.

I've also been casting around among old black and white negatives from my time in the Marines, negatives that I never made prints from. So I've been looking at images I haven't seen since 1976 - 1978, when they were taken. This one, for instance. I have long forgotten what the name of this Marine was. Nice guy, however. Quiet.

If you're in a telephone central office you can easily use a butt set (a telephone you hang from your tool pouch) to make or intercept phone calls by attaching it directly to the switch, those white bread box looking things seen behind the Marine. I did this, once, and intercepted two guys talking about making a drug deal; as I recall, one was calling from the hospital. I suppose what I should have done was document the numbers and report the incident to the Military Police - it could have been that one of them was stealing medications - but for some reason I didn't. What I did instead was mess with them by interjecting comments during their conversation. The idiots kept repeating their calls - it was easy to hook on when I saw the switch move. They were getting quite paranoid - what fun!

I also found a strangely-lit photo of myself; I had made the mistake of shooting directly into a light source. I had looked at the negative and regarded the shot to be an unrecoverable mistake and moved on, live and learn. But with the level adjustments one can do with Photoshop, my twenty-one year old self emerges from 1977.

My time in the Marine Corps coincided with my new interest in photography; I had traded for a Petri FTEE 35mm SLR from another Marine, and was enjoying myself snapping photos while on the job. Obviously, I still enjoy photography.

Last night I started my latest book, Truman G. Madsen's Joseph Smith the Prophet. I have the honor to know the family and have met the author on a number of occasions. His grandchildren played with my children when they were all little, in fact, back in the 1990's they were the Power Rangers. (Ignore the imitators who appeared on television.) Anyway, I have only started the book but it is quite readable and promising. Among Mormons it's a best seller - I can see why.

Did I mention that, as a result of visiting the place last week, I'm applying for a Library of Congress reader's card? The process is something of a gauntlet, but I'm hoping someday to be able to inspect their old Columbia Masterworks Lps to find more Phillip Featheringill collages. And why am I doing this? Because Obscurity is my middle name, that's why. I suppose you can expect blog updates once I undertake this worthy goal.

Gibson Wesley Clark, the World's Most Adorable Grandbaby (tm), is readied for church and enjoys reading a book while on tummy time. I understand my son got him to laugh the other day. It is absolutely killing me that I can't see that child more often. What's the point of watching one's weight, taking one's blood pressure meds and in general preserving oneself for grandchildren if they're 2/3rds of a continent away?

29 August 2012

Our company, my Burbank High pal Mike and family, has left on their long drive back to the West. It will take them days. Here's the photo album documenting the things we saw and did. I have one last photo to add to it, the traditional porch photo... I'll do that later.

Nature Boy... hahaha!

Today's image is one of the American soldiers stationed at Ft. McHenry, as depicted in the fort via a cutout. It appears to me that whenever artists depict American soldiers of the War of 1812 period, they always make them look somewhat haughty and insolent, like British soldiers. What's up with that? Does the look go with the uniforms? Perhaps I'm mistaken...

Upon a visit to Federal Hill in Baltimore I once again observed that General Sam Smith gets short shrift in the history books, and it is a shame. Follow the links and read about him... would that we had more Americans - and Marylanders - like him these days!

On Monday I added a scan of a booklet to Burbankia, Your Burbank Home (1928), a quaint work where civic pride was fully evident.

I am now reading a book about catapults: What they are, how they were used, how to build one. Perhaps I'll build one to propel the annoying neighborhood feral cats into the next county.

28 August 2012

No blog update today... sorry!

27 August 2012

27 August 2022 - I retire ten years from today; I'll be 66 and 4 months, my Social Insecurity full benefit retirement date. Unless, of course, Congress decides to screw that up, which they show every inclination to do. Or the system itself may collapse, which is also likely. Still - it's nice to dream. (And, I suppose that in actuality I'll be retiring at the close of the calendar year. I understand there is some tax benefit to doing it that way.)

Saturday morning yard sales were fun, mainly because I did them with my visiting friend Mike. There were eight or nine... I got a hardcover book about Volkswagen Beetles and a small framed medieval brass rubbing. I also got to show him the Saturday Asian. (After I finish my yard sale route I got to the nearby public library to check the Lp sales and to use the restroom, and nearly every time I do there's an elderly Asian man using the sink to wash his hair and, probably, himself. I call him the Saturday Asian. Sure enough, he was on schedule.)

On Saturday we visited the Manassas battlefield and the National Portrait Gallery and Gallery of American Art. I saw a nice little cigar store Indian I coveted.

I got some photos posted from last week's  great McDaniel D.C. Area Tour. More coming. I am definitely getting better at this whole tour guide thing. I learned some tricks, and I liked seeing Grant's pen. For some reason I missed that last time I was at the Gettysburg museum.

While visiting the Library of Congress last week, a thought came to mind. I collect early stereo era (1958-1967) Columbia Masterworks Lps. Each of these has a Library of Congress registration number printed on the back. Why not become a researcher and look 'em all over some day... see what they have? Maybe take pictures and do a book. Hmmm. 

Last night I saw a Wes Anderson film I actually liked, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). It was clever and amusing... it reminded me a bit of Babe (1995) in terms of creativity. But, in general, I don't "get" Wes Anderson. I didn't like The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) or  The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004); I thought they were rather dull.

I finished reading Bob Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow, which concludes my reading material as a result of seeing The Pacific. I liked E.B. Sledge's book With the Old Breed better, but this one was also good. My next book: a coffee table book about Mormon art I can probably finish quickly. Haha... coffee table books about Mormons...

There's a bar/restaurant (mostly bar) in Del Mar, CA I am yearning to visit, Bully's. It was established in 1967; I remember that because of a family trip that year. The thing is, it has bits of colored glass set in concrete in the front - the daylight hits it and makes interesting patterns on the inside. When I first saw that from the outside I recall thinking, "I bet that looks great on the inside." It took me years to finally visit and find out. Photos here - scroll down. Yes, it does look great. I like the guy in the hat (see above); I call him "The Bully."

Recently I reflected back on my Thotful Spot in Del Mar and posted a photo album. Apropos of nothing, a woman in church yesterday (who saw my Facebook link on the subject) came up to me and told me that she was moving to Del Mar next month - just up the street a block or so from my spot! I'm sure my mouth hung open as if to say "That's SO unfair!," but I encouraged her to visit the place for me, and to send a photo. Also to try dining at Bully's - they have a good prime rib. (I had it when I visited with my Dad in 1978.)

  

24 August 2012

Mmmmm... Pret.

Having a fun time with my friend Mike and family... I'll post pictures when I can get around to uploading them into an album.

The first day's tourism was Ford's Theatre and the Lincoln Museum across the street, the National Archives, the Grant Memorial and the National Botanical Garden. Video: Three story Tower of Lincoln Books. As the photo at left suggests, we had lunch in a D.C. Pret a Manger, my favorite London sandwich shop.

Yesterday we went to Gettysburg and spent the day; it's an all day kind of place if you watch the film, see the cyclorama and go through the museum as well as stop at all the battlefield tour sites and do any shopping in town. (Plus it takes an hour and a half to get there.) We ate at the Farnsworth House - all were pleased thereby.

I took a video. Also, Gettysburg Address monument.

Today it's the Capitol tour, Teddy Roosevelt Island and an Evening Parade at the Marines facility on Eighth and Eye.

Gibby photos - the one with the Lego is funny. I hope he likes them because he is going to inherit a lot of them!

22 August 2012

Brooklyn beer lover!

Today is my father's one-hundredth birthday!

The photo at left is Dad in what I think was a shoot for a beer ad. It was taken by a photographer girlfriend of his, probably in the early Fifties. Ruppert Beer - for New Yorkers.
 
Wesley Harry Clark, Sr., born on this day in 1912, was from Greenpoint, New York, which is essentially the same as Brooklyn. He certainly had what has come to be known as a Brooklynite demeanor: down to earth, cynical, world-wise and generally unimpressed with authority and pomp. The Archie Bunker type, without the pervasive ignorance. (Dad was rather well-read.) My father's most obvious characteristic was his active sense of humor, which I am happy to say I inherited. You can click here to see photographic evidence of Dad's sense of humor.  Dad was a World War II veteran, and I have documented his service in a web page on the subject. Although I've done 99% of the known genealogical work in my family I'm unsure of whether Dad's name was "Wesley Harry Clark" or "Harry Wesley Clark." At various times in his life he went by both names, and seemed to prefer "Harry" as a first name. His birth certificate of 22 August 1912 is no help since it lists him as "Baby Clark." I presume, since I grew up "Wesley Harry Clark Jr.," his Christian name was Wesley. It seems that very little my parents told me about my family turned out to be true under the intense light of genealogical documents and historical fact, so I'm unsure about this.

Dad was the nurturing type in that he often told me that he loved me and hugged me frequently. What's more, he never saddled me with any of the damaging macho posturing that I see getting passed on from fathers to sons. I never felt like I was in a one-upmanship contest with him and I always knew that he loved me.

My lifelong interest in classical music stems from the perception that Dad enjoyed it. I found a couple of LP's of light classics in the record collection and realizing that Mom wasn't highbrow enough to have purchased them, I made the deduction that Dad liked the classics. Actually, Dad liked almost everything in music and was quite eclectic in taste. When I was 16 he bought the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ, Superstar on a whim. (I got to really enjoy it.) He got a Santana record because he liked Latin music, and even liked my David Bowie Diamond Dogs Lp - well, the title cut anyway.

Dad also read books frequently, or for as long as he could given his poor eyesight. He liked W. Somerset Maugham's short stories and the movies made from them. I don't recall his reading any of the "classics"; his taste seemed to run to best-sellers. I remember sneak reading a copy of a paperback about the Boston Strangler that he left around on the kitchen table, which had some highly inappropriate passages that got permanently etched into my long-term memory. He also read some Harold Robbins crap that I peeked through, and I can recall Playboy and Argosy magazines being left around the house in my very early years. The moral here is that parents need to be careful about what gets into the house (and children's brains)! However, for the Sixties Dad had what was probably termed worldly and cosmopolitan taste.

Dad's swing shift work at Lockheed Aircraft Company meant that he went to work at 3:30 in the afternoon when I got home from school and returned home long after I was put to bed. Therefore, I mostly saw him on the weekends. As is so often the case between fathers and sons I never got a sense of what work meant to him - it was something he spent time away from home to do to put food on the table. It was obviously not a clean job: he returned home with paint in his hair and on his clothing and watch, like a loathsome latex Swamp Thing. It was also not a healthy job - in his early years as a painter he smoked and had to give it up due to the fact that the paint fumes alone were giving him breathing problems.

One of Dad's hangouts in Burbank was paint-related: Standard Brands.

Dad worked at the Lincoln Cafe - our family business - during his retirement, and since it depended upon the ebb and flow of Lockheed workers during their lunch breaks Dad saw a lot of the people he had worked with, and understood a lot of the work-related conversations they got into. He seemed to enjoy it more than painting because it provided an outlet for him to act and show off. I discovered that being a successful bartender (that is, a bartender that people like) involves some presentation ability, in that the area behind the bar is almost like a stage.

I have blogged before about how much he liked to drive down to Del Mar, CA, to play the horses. Yes, there's a web site.

Dad's final days were involved in tracking how we were doing with Cari's pregnancy. He looked forward to the birth of my first child and his fourth grandchild, and I will always remember that he bought diapers for the blessed event. Despite the fact that Dad was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and was as world wise and street smart in a way that only a Brooklynite could be, he had a tender spot in his heart when it came to small children. Unfortunately, however, he died of a stroke on 20 August 1983, two days short of his 71st birthday. Ethan was born four months later, in December.

I miss my father. I'm now 56; there are many times when I would very much like to be able to chat with him about his times, and about what life has been like for me. Compare notes. But that, of course, is impossible. 

We can do that in a future plane of existence, I think...  

Happy birthday, Dad!

21 August 2012

My daughter called my attention to this: President Nixon's We Had to Leave the Astronauts on the Moon speech (just in case they had to). Wow.

I added an extensive Picasa photo album of my time in the Marines... I got started formatting pictures and got on a roll. I essentially duplicated my scrapbook. Happy days.

Well... were they, really? Yes, they were. I was young, and I was learning a lot and becoming my own person. There's an old proverb: "No young man on his own with tuppence in his pocket is ever sad for long." Of course, that was the peacetime Marine Corps. The wartime USMC could be a VERY different matter, as I am once again learning will reading Bill Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow.

The cutest and most adorable baby in the world (my grandson) is shot with mystery mood lighting, does a growl and, in a video, talks to his mother. That piano music I used, by the way, is the opening theme to the movie Curly Sue (1991). Overall the movie was disappointing, but I have always liked the lullaby that composer Georges Delarue wrote for the opening sequence, which depicts the title character's earliest years. It's perfect baby music.

Last night I watched what is one of my favorite action films, The Three Musketeers (1973) - you know, Richard Lester's production with Raquel Welch, Oliver Reed and Michael York. What colossal fun! Best Musketeers, ever. I will probably get around to watching the sequel soon (the film was shot as one longer film, but was cut in half and released as two shorter films - much to the dismay of the various actor's agents as they realized that the producers were making two films for the price of one).

Let's see what's on Fox News' Faces and Features...

The hover vehicle. Riding a Segway has been on my "bucket list" (stuff to do before kicking the bucket) for some time; if this ever catches on it'll be on it as well - mainly because it looks like something promised to us all by the 1960's futurists who were writing exciting articles for Boy's Life. But... I'll believe it when I see people actually using them.

Keith Richards: Really, did anyone in the 1960's expect that this guy would outlive Davy Jones of the Monkees?

Phyllis Diller died - I liked her a lot. Everyone did. How could you not? She was funny, self-effacing had a laugh like a klaxon and a husband named "Fang."

Scott McKenzie died - A waggish friend on Facebook asked, "Did they bury him with flowers in his hair?" I didn't know John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) wrote San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in your Hair), but now I can hear it. It sounds like a Mamas and Papas song. By the way, I was introduced to the tune via an overlong guitar break by Jimmy Page in The Song Remains the Same 1976 concert film, where it's quoted.

My Burbank pal Mike and his family are on the way! Last I checked, they were in Nashville, Tennessee. They arrive sometime today, and, per our emerging tradition, we will meet at the Springfield Five Guys for burgers. I am planning to take the rest of the week off for local tourism, so don't expect any blog entries.

20 August 2012

Seen in a grocery store: It's Coke for dinner tonight!

On Friday night we had dinner at the Clyde's in Georgetown with some visiting friends; the restaurant has interesting German posters on the wall.

There were a number of Saturday morning yard sales but I didn't see a single thing to buy. Phooey!

As is my occasional weekend practice I selected three films from the library to see which I liked best.

The Phantom of the Opera (2004): After the Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway production. Dreadfully long and tedious, with repetitive music that is the Andrew Lloyd Webber version of being condemned to ride the Small World ride at Disneyland endlessly. An hour and a half's worth of plot in a two hour and twenty minute production. My wife called it the "epitome of overwrought," and so it was. An awful film which tries to get by on costumes and sets at the expense of pace, direction and plot..

I am interested in the subject matter, having seen the 1925, 1943 and 1962 films from the same source material, the Gaston Leroux novel (which I have read - I used to have a cool wartime paperback with a nicely wrought cover.).  Hm. I see there is also a 1989 version starring Robert Englund that got produced while we were busy raising kids. The reviews aren't very good. Maybe I'll just pass on that and not be a compleatist. And yes, I have seen the Phantom of the Paradise (1974), the Brian DePalma glitter rock adaptation.

No Man's Land (2001) - Bosnians vs. Serbs. One of each is stuck in a trench between the lines; the U.N. and the international press also gets involved. This is a different kind of war film, to be sure. Being an American, one isn't sure which side one is rooting for. The protagonists look more like tubby, middle-aged historical reenactors than soldiers, and while a lot of this film's running time works as a sort of black comedy (one gag involves deciding who started the war by being the guy holding the gun - he wins the argument), it has a tragic conclusion. An excellent and engaging film.

The Battle of Algiers (1966) - An Italian film about the French government vs. Algerian Muslim rebels/terrorists/freedom fighters (depending upon your opinion) in the Fifties and up to Algerian independence in 1962. A definite curiosity among films. Pauline Kael called this a "Marxist Poem," and so it is. It is also an excellent, engrossing movie. Thanks to lower quality prints made from an internegative, it looks like a documentary, or a newsreel - which was the director's intent. The producer, Yacef Saadi, is one of the film's stars - and was a fighter involved in the original action depicted by the film. He plays himself! Since this fellow was a bomb-thrower, this is the only film I know of produced by what we Americans would call a terrorist!

Another oddity: There is a scene where an Algerian prisoner is led to the guillotine, shouting slogans encouraging the rebels. In real life the actor was an actual prisoner, slated to die himself. Also interesting: In 2003, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon screened this film for officers and civilian experts who were discussing the challenges faced by the US military forces in Iraq. The flier inviting guests to the screening read: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas."   

This film wasn't shown in France until 1971, and that was only because director Louis Malle put himself on the line to become a champion of it. I have a French friend who calls it "a disgusting communist film," and I can see why he wouldn't like it. I, however, think it is rather well-balanced insofar as showing the aims and goals of both sides. Despite the fact that there is a torture scene in this, the French do not necessarily come off looking like the bad guys. And the Algerians do not necessarily come off looking like noble freedom fighters, either.

A thought provoking film, to be sure.    

Hey... Ten years ago today I was in San Diego. Wish I was there now.

My Burbank pal Mike and family are now in Fort Smith, Arkansas; they're on the way up here for vacation. I will take some time off to run them around to the local attractions and points of interest, so later this week there probably won't be any blog updates...

17 August 2012



Smile when you call him Slim.

 I watched Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove - Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) last night. It was somewhat funnier than the first time I saw it. Keenan Wynn as Col. Bat Guano - haha! And, of course, Peter Sellars as Dr. Strangelove, the former Nazi scientist possessing a right hand with a mind of its own and who inadvertently screams "Ja, mein Fuhrer!" from time to time.

I like Slim Pickens the best in it, as the gung-ho Texan B-52 commander: "Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones." I love that line. Fun fact: Bonanza's Dan Blocker was offered the role, but thought the movie too left wing and declined. Pickens got the part instead.

Slim Pickens is one of my favorite character actors, and a guilty film noir pleasure of mine is When Gangland Strikes (1956), the most light-hearted, good-natured, folksy, aw-shucks, Ma-and-Pa-Kettle-Meet-Film-Noir I have ever seen (assuming any critic who values his film school diploma will call it a film noir). It features Slim as the comic relief. He and two other rather comical folks are all chuckling and laughing in the final scene in the manner of a 1950's teleplay. But... there's a rather shocking shooting of a hapless and comical-looking bowler at the beginning (with a big bloodstain in his back you don't normally see in a period noir), and a rather surprising murder about three-quarters of the way through. An odd, genre bending movie.

I see that a new film, Compliance, is getting some negative attention. It features a "chilling" baddie calling fast food restaurants and talking employees into strip searching other employees. I'm sorry, but this, to me, seems like a real forehead slapper of a premise. How incredibly LAME. The article states that it is loosely based on real events: "During the years of 1994-2004, more than 70 cases were reported in 30 states of a man calling up fast-food restaurants and requesting that employees be strip-searched." Requesting is the operative word, here, I think. I'd imagine that anyone with half a brain would tell the person on the phone, "If you're a cop show up here in a squad car. Good bye. (Hangup)" Geez.

Bob Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow was my reading material last night. It's excellent thus far. Unlike E. B. Sledge (whose book about World War II in the Pacific I have just read), Leckie was a professional writer, and it shows. But this isn't necessarily a better characteristic for a war journal. What's prized is not necessarily literary complexity and professionalism, but simplicity and a straightforward narrative of the fighting man's own experiences - which is what makes Sledge's book a classic. It is significant that the Memoirs of U.S. Grant is prized because the language is so simple and direct.

The World's Most Adorable Baby gets a bath and recovers from a sneeze.

This week I've been listening to the music of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, a library CD. The Copland piece is Dance Episodes from Rodeo, which is redolent of two-fisted men in Stetsons, big sky and cattle; this from a Jewish homosexual communist from Brooklyn! You undoubtedly know the famous "Hoedown" from this work. The Bernstein piece is Fancy Free, ballet pieces faintly in the style of the "Dance at the Gym" from West Side Story. The plot, such as it is, concerns three sailors and two girls. Predictably, tension and a fistfight ensues.

Rockers who found religion. I knew about Alice Cooper. The article doesn't say what his childhood religion was, but he raised as a Bickertonite, an off-shoot of early Mormonism.

Ringo Starr found religion? I didn't know that.

The weekend looms... no plans, other than to attend a wedding reception. Yard sales, of course.

Have a great weekend!

16 August 2012

The lady's not for turning.

Last night I integrated all those books I was given onto my shelves, which meant moving some other books around. (The various high school and college yearbooks now go into a closet.) Looks very impressive, all those film noir volumes. Visiting my basement and seeing them, people might even assume I know what I'm talking about.

It's hard for me to credit, but a guy who was my son's soccer coach in 1990 is now a recently retired three star general in the Marine Corps! He moved back into my old neighborhood and I talked to him and his wife last night. Wow... a three star. When I was a young Marine, captains made me quake. Now his son, who my son used to play with, is a Marine captain himself. Tempus you know what.

I have always been impressed, and even a little awestruck, by this fellow. It's so rare to meet someone who has fully attained the limits of his potential.

I resumed reading Robert McCrum's Globish last night, but with a determination to toss it if I came across one more fawning passage about Obama. (McCrum seems to be his biggest fan. I am not.) How about this one: "The election of Barack Obama in 2008 completed the unfinished business of the American Revolution." Phooey. Into the trash it went. If I want that kind of prose from liberal sycophants I'll tune into a broadcast by Chris "Thrill Going Up My Leg" Matthews.

I pulled out the next book in my reading stack, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the great book about evangelical Protestantism published in 1678. Whew. Normally I like what are called the classics - and Penguin paperbacks, of which this is one, are especial favorites - but I just couldn't get into it. People in the seventeenth century must have had formidable powers of concentration - or were easily amused. Bunyan's prose was a massive bore to me. I think I paid a quarter for it. Trashed.

This has happened before to me. I tried reading Alexis de Tocqueville's two volume Democracy in America, but gave that up as being too hard to slog through. However, it was entertaining and revelatory in places. I liked the following passage about Plymouth Rock:

"This rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of the Union. Does this sufficiently show how all human power and greatness are entirely in the soul? Here is a stone which the feet of a few poor fugitives pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation, a fragment is prized as a relic. But what has become of the doorsteps of a thousand palaces? Who troubles himself about them?"

And I also couldn't get through Machiavelli's The Prince - way too many references to the contemporary leaders and politicians of his time. It was like being privy to a conversation wherein people you don't know from Adam are being discussed in minute detail. So I gave up on that one, too.

Call me a mental lightweight if you will, but I like to at least look forward to reopening the pages of the book I'm reading.

I was about to start a book about historical plagues when - hooray! - I got an e-mail alert from the library that Bob Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow, about the Marines in World War II, has arrived on hold for me. It's one of the books which form the basis for The Pacific, which I recently watched and which forms my current infatuation.

My wife put The Iron Lady (2011), the biopic about former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in our Netflix queue, and so we watched it last night. I had my suspicions. How fairly could Hollywood treat one of the great conservatives of the 20th century? Not well at all, is the answer. This film was a political hatchet job. When Thatcher wasn't being portrayed as a pitiable and delusional old woman, she was overbearing and tyrannical. Phooey again. Okay, Meryl Streep's acting was good - but so what? Fine acting is easy to find in Hollywood - it's good plots, scripts and direction which are wanting.

Some historical objectivity would be nice, too.

Lots of funny and interesting images on my photographic Drop Box. Well, I think they're funny and interesting, anyway.

15 August 2012

My noirhead friend Mike Keaney gave me 138 books yesterday on the subjects of  film noir, war films, gangster films and various other cinema-related subjects. He told me to take what I wanted from it and get rid of the rest, so I'm keeping 76 of them and unloading the remainder. All at once I have a big film noir book library in addition to what I already have!

Once I start wading into these you can expect a whole lot of film noir in this blog, I guess.

Lost Egyptian pyramids - "Her Dimai and Abu Sidhum 'pyramids' are examples of natural rock formations that might be mistaken for archaeological features provided one is unburdened by any knowledge of archaeology or geology." Hahaha! Way to slap her down, Prof!

The Pumice Raft - Another oddball story about strange things seen from the sky...

It's the Dog Days of summer - the doldrums. I'm bored out of my mind and life seems very work a day and dreary right now. It happens every August.

That's all.

14 August 2012

This being August, in a wistful mood I assembled photos and constructed a My Thotful Spot photo album. This is a place in Del Mar, California I've been making pilgrimages to for the last forty years. I used to go there every August when Dad and I would go to the racetrack for his birthday. I discovered the place forty years ago this month. It would be nice to be able to disapparate like a character in the Harry Potter series and go there for a while. Even nicer would be to own some nearby property in Del Mar, but as the zillow page in the album reveals, that ain't gonna happen.

Socrates once claimed that it was the examined life that was worth living, and this was the place I would go to to ponder what came before in my life and what was next. A lot of the time I didn't know - it's not given to us to know that - but most of the time I could foresee finishing high school, or college, or raising kids, starting rugby, etc. and could guess. If I ever learn that I have some incurable, fatal disease I want to make a special trip there to sort of round things off. And, of course, write a blog entry about it.

And after death I'll haunt the place - ha, ha, ha!

I finished reading E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa; it has been an excellent read. It's as good as everyone says it is, and is in the same category as Private Yankee Doodle by Joseph Plumb Martin (Revolutionary War) and Hard Tack and Coffee (Civil War) - essential reading in the field of American solider journals. I knew the Marines' war in the South Pacific was hellish, but I had no idea until I read this.

My Marines civilian pal Erv - who fought at Guadalcanal - is my hero!

I have Bob Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow (the other book which provides the basis for The Pacific) on hold, but until it gets in I'm back reading Globish, the book about how English became the international language. I encountered another lauded example of Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric again ("Change we can believe in")... geez, author Robert Mccrum might as well get a room with the guy. I wonder if he got shivers up his leg when Obama spoke like Chris Matthews did.

Speaking of presidential campaign slogans, here's a page full of them. I am annoyed that U.S. Grant's "Let us have peace" is not among them. It was quite popular and appealing in the day. You have got to love Woodrow Wilson's "He kept us out of war" - except, of course, that he didn't. Grover Cleveland's "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of Maine" is catchy, no? (Blaine responds in the same spirit, with a dig at Cleveland's alleged illegitimate child, "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" Cleveland supporters responded, "Gone to the White House - ha ha ha!") And Silent Cal's seems surprisingly modern: "Keep Cool With Coolidge."

My favorite is succinct, Eisenhower's "I Like Ike."

We've had visitors so I haven't watched any films recently to report on. I got my wife Dr. Strangelove - Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb from the library. She wanted to see it. I like the part where Slim Pickens rides the nuke as it's being dropped, but that's about it. I think it's the least of Stanley Kubrick's films - but I haven't seen Eyes Wide Shut, which I understand is also a contender for the title. (I avoid Tom Cruise movies.)

Gibby's big face and novelty onesie. Apparently the plain, non-humorous onsies my kids used to wear are now passe.

Seen in the parking lot at the Marine Corps Museum. My kind of people, the people who park there...

13 August 2012

A decade ago in rugby, from my journal: "Tuesday evening, 8/13/02 - In a stunning lack of commitment to the game, I didn't go to practice. It was 97 degrees outside when I got home. I reasoned, 1) Rugby practice will be held for the next two and a half months - the pool will only be open for another week and a half, 2) Me and the wife ought to spend some time together, preferably in the pool, 3) Guys my size and age have heart attacks doing exercise in weather like this." Rugby championships were never won this way!

Yard sales were good on Saturday. I found the six DVD boxed set of Band of Brothers for only $7 and a 2 DVD set of Disney Silly Symphonies for $4 (grandchild viewing). My kids were practically raised on the "The Cookie Carnival." From Band of Brothers I watched Ron Livingston's "Actor's Boot Camp" featurette, wherein the production's military consultant Dale Dye runs the Hollywood types ragged for a week. I love that.

We have some visiting family members, and last night I took them to the usual Air Force Memorial - Pentagon Memorial - USMC Iwo Jima Memorial route. Only this time, when I activated my car's sat nav to get me from the Pentagon to the Iwo Jima site, the system had me going down what I thought was Eads St. in the parking lot but was really a buses only lane. So I stopped when I had realized that I had been led astray and asked a Pentagon cop how I get back out. He yelled some advice I couldn't hear, so I got out of the car to approach him. Big mistake! He started yelling, turned on his lights and swooped up behind me, asking for my driver's license and registration. I got written up for a warning. That's the last time I trust my sat nav until I get well clear of the Pentagon boundaries!

(The two little boys in the back seat - who were enjoying the whole incident - probably convinced him that this carload of people didn't fit the typical profile of a terrorist bomber.)

By the way, air mattresses for temporary use bedding suck. Don't ever buy one. We have three of the things and every one of them leaks. A person goes to sleep on an inflated mattress and wakes up on the floor. Phooey.

I watched the coverage of the Olympics closing ceremony last night - I don't know why. The camera work was pretty bad: a bunch of people assembled a sort of bust of John Lennon which could only be seen well for about a second before they starting dismantling it, and they totally missed a human cannonball. Sloppy. I shut it off when Jacques Rogge started talking. (Yawn.)

Newest Gibson photos.

On Saturday I visited the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico to look over the sections about Peleliu, Okinawa and Guadalcanal - which I'm reading about in E.B. Sledge's most excellent book. I also walked some of the trails around the facility and looked at the various commemorative monuments the survivors of Marine units put up. Very impressive. In another ten years or so that facility is going to be amazing. (It's rather amazing now, actually.)

While there I found a film clip by a Marine captain describing the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; Burbank's Medal of Honor recipient Larry Maxam is described therein. I took an iPhone video. 5 1/2 minutes.

Yesterday in church while I was teaching a lesson to the older men, I asserted that World War II was worse than World War I in terms of deaths. A fellow disagreed and said that World War I was far worse - if you lump in the Spanish Flu Pandemic. Well, possibly... but historians don't really do that. They are considered two different historical events, although associated by circumstance and even possibly cause. Anyway, I encourage people to do their own research.

And then discover that I'm correct. :)

10 August 2012



BOOM-shaka-lacka-lacka-BOOM-shaka-lacka-lacka

 Here's why, in rugby, you're always coached to get low in the tackles.

I added some books to my Avocado Memories Sixties Toys Page - I'm surprised I haven't thought of this before. Books - especially encyclopedias - were important to me as a kid. By the way, I first uploaded this page to the web in 1999. People are surprised that I've remembered all the toys I had when I was a kid, but I point out that I've been adding to this page as I remember things for the past thirteen years! (Sometimes it also takes me years to find an image of something I had, case in point, the Garret astrological bank. For a long time I was wondering if I really had one or misremembered something else.) Unsurprisingly, this page is popular with people my age. We all pretty much had the same toys.

I tried to watch a 1951 Edgar Ulmer science-fiction flick the other night, The Man From Planet X, but it was so dull I fell asleep through it. I then found a video on Netflix that there was absolutely no sleeping through: The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, 1971 from a Dutch television broadcast. Wow - what a great act she had going, with Ike on a Stratocaster (wearing a sort of industrial jump suit and a bad haircut), the leggy Ikettes and a great R&B horn section. Sensational! I've been hearing River Deep Mountain High in my head ever since...

Last night I watched one of those "classic album" documentaries, this one on Elton John's 1973 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an album my wife says defines her high school years. I've been listening to "Bennie and the Jets" since my senior year in high school; it used to play on the radio first thing in the morning as I attended my electronics shop class. While rifling through the capacitor bins looking for parts for my projects, whenever the song got to that part just after Elton's piano solo, where the crowd cheers, I always thought, "They're easy to please." Guess what? That song was recorded entirely in the studio - the crowd noises you hear in it are from a Jimi Hendrix concert! Producer Gus Dudgeon put that and various echo and slap back effects in the mix to make it sound live! I had no idea!

It took me a while to warm to the title song. When my parents bought the Lincoln Cafe in June 1974, we inherited a juke box, which had this song on it. It was one of the few on it I liked, and so I always played it. That's when I got to like it. Disappointingly, they didn't talk about the cheesy but atmospheric "Funeral for a Friend" opening sequence, or the inner jacket illustrations. How could you talk about the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road Lp and not even mention the illustrations? They helped sell the songs!

"Candle in the Wind": Lyricist Bernie Taupin said that he wasn't an especial fan of Marilyn Monroe, and that the song - about a life ended too soon - could have just as easily been about James Dean or Jim Morrison. But I half suspected this. I have always thought that the line reprimanding the tabloid media for mentioning that she had been found dead in the nude fell flat against my ears. I've always wondered, would a person who really admired Marilyn Monroe include this detail in a song about her, even to castigate the press?

I was pleased to see that I lost 2.8 pounds this past week. That means I have now lost just over forty pounds since early January. Good! Now I can have that celebratory banana split I've been putting off.

Japes and larks on my Picasa Drop Box.  

Our visitors - my wife's cousins - arrive tonight. I'm not sure to what extent I'm doing the D.C. tour guide thing - I think the plan is to use our house as more or less of a crash pad with an occasional sit-down dinner provided. We shall see.    

I still plan to do yard sales tomorrow morning. Nothings tops that. There are still all sorts of bargains out there, waiting for me.

Have a great weekend!

9 August 2012

My grandson Gibson ("Gibby") had his check up yesterday.

Last night my wife and I tried to watch one of the first Merchant-Ivory productions, Shakespeare-Wallah (1965), which starred a very young Felicity Kendal (pictured). It was too dull for me and so I bailed after about a half hour. Cari bailed about twenty minutes later. I had previously only watched one other Merchant-Ivory production, Howard's End (1992). It moved at such a glacial pace that I could feel my blood congeal while watching it. I have completely forgotten what it's about. A butler, I think. I have no requirement to see explosions or gunfire in a film, and am a natural fan of a British flick, but these are just way too low key for me. 

My afternoon training yesterday was supposed to be "Handling Difficult Relationships and Conversations," but what it really was was Mincing Words and Equivocating in a Feminized Workplace. It didn't help that the instructor overused acronyms and organizational behavior industry jargon and didn't define terms, and that the handout and slides had misspellings. And yes, we did break up into little groups. I hate that.   I am so ready for retirement.   Excuse my tone... but I always get frustrated in August. It's the month I watch other people go on vacation. We have no plans. In a sort of desperation I sent away for a Disney Cruise DVD and we watched it the other night. Someday, perhaps.  

The DVD reminded me of when I was on a business trip in Orlando some years back. I sat in an intentionally abbreviated presentation for the Disney Vacation Club. (I told the people that I had a plane to catch and could only spare 45 minutes, which was more or less true.) I was amused to see that the staff at the various Disney timeshare condos greet guests with a cheery "Welcome home!" In the video presentation the vacation club participants are shown to be charmed by this, but I find it a somewhat cynical co-opting of an emotionally powerful word. A Disney timeshare, as pleasant as it may be, is not home. You didn't choose the furniture or the pictures on the wall, and you didn't raise your kids there - nor were you raised there yourself. It is "home" in only the most tenuous, impermanent way.  

But I can see why Disney would want to convince people it's home. If you are simply selling memberships to a timeshare condo scheme you are in direct competition with others who are doing the same thing. But if you are Disney, you are in the business of selling dreams, magic or home. And you can charge more!

The genial and well-schooled Disney gent who pitched the deal to me phrased it this way: "Wes (did I say he could call me by my first name? I did not), what we're discussing here is investing in your family's long term vacation plans." Bzzzt! When you invest money you expect to gain money. Another co-opted word!  

Overall, I was not impressed with the Disney vacation plan. Running the numbers, I found that it was less expensive to simply book rooms at one of their nice resort hotels without the yearly obligations and fees. And when I got home, I bumped into the father of one of my daughter's fellow high school drama troupe actors who told me that he's in the business of reselling timeshare condos; an independent broker. When I mentioned that I had the Disney presentation, he smiled. This is a fellow who makes a living on the fact that timeshare schemes are not what people had envisioned when they signed on the dotted lines. Naturally, he told me that I could get a lot more bang for my buck by dealing with him.

Still... I can see the attraction of what Disney is offering. Nobody does service quite like Disney, and visiting a Disney created facility - a theme park, a water park, a restaurant, a cruise ship, a hotel - is an experience in watching apparently boundless artistic creativity coming to life. I love that. And there is a certain attraction to knowing that, yes, we will be going on a good, expensive vacation every year. But, no... I didn't bite.

(I blogged about the Disney Vacation club before: Scroll down to 16 and 17 June 2008 entries.)  

Oddly enough, the entity other than Disney who often uses the phrase "Welcome home!" is the United States government; I'm referring to the customs people at the airports you must see when you arrive from a foreign land. In that context the phrase is appropriate and, yes, rather charming. (Did I really just write that the United States government charms me in some way?)  

My wife once worked for a now-defunct small magazine entitled Welcome Home - she was an editor and sometime writer. It was a volunteer effort by a Northern Virginia based group called "Mothers at Home," who were organized to support and encourage women who chose to stay at home to raise the kids. (Well, in the ideal circumstances, help raise the kids. There's a father, too.) I believe the organization is now defunct as well, but here's a 1998 Washington Post article describing it. It's a pity the organization is no longer around - they did good work. The Red Cross nurses of the Mommy Wars.  

Perhaps the oddest use of the phrase "Welcome home" was last weekend, at the 2nd Bull Run reenactment. As we were marching back to camp from a drill session I heard somebody mutter it. Home is where the heart is - not where the ticks, grasshoppers, porta-potties and spiders are. But it makes me think of a song lyric from the Who's Quadrophenia: "The numbered seats in empty rows/It all belongs to me, you know..." After thirty years of Civil War reenacting, a tented camp does belong to me.

Welcome home!

8 August 2012

I muse about the King Arthur Flour package I saw on our kitchen counter.

Gibson "The Brick" Clark gets a check up and meets his great-grandfather. (Scroll to the right using the arrow.) A four generation encounter! 

Look at this: Really, is there anything more pathetic than a futurist? (Especially when in a mood to assert politically idiotic things like Isaac Asimov.) 25 years ago they predicted what the world would be like in 2012. How close did they come? 

I am now reading E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, a World War II Pacific theater classic; it is as good as everyone says it is. Curious thing: Sledge comments upon the reverence and respect the younger generation of World War II Marines had for the Marines of the period between the wars... okay, that's fine and commendable. But it is apparent to me that the Marines who fought at Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa and Iwo Jima take a back seat to no generation. They may have been the very best Marines who ever lived. Certainly the Japanese they faced were unlike any other enemy Americans have fought before or since in terms of ruthlessness and fanaticism. There were 22,000 Japanese dug in at Iwo Jima; the Marines had to kill 21,000 of them in order to secure the island. Were the Germans of World Wars I or II like this? Or the Koreans in the Korean War, or the Viet Cong in Vietnam?

Sledge has some interesting prose describing one Gunny Haney (a "Gunny" is a Gunnery Sergeant, a senior enlisted man). The Gunny was in his 50's at Peleliu, and was certainly a representative of the Old Breed. His interesting habit of showering and scrubbing his genitals with soap and a stiff bristle Army brush is described. Sledge opines that Haney was not born of woman, but issued to the Marine Corps by God - ha! I've known some senior Marine sergeants like that...  

I understand that every year the Marine Corps Recruit Depot - my alma mater - runs a "Boot Camp Challenge," which is a three mile track with an obstacle course open to all civilians and teams. Sixty Drill Instructors are lined up at various places in the course to help motivate participants (in their inimitable fashion). The next will be run September 29th. Hmmm. I'm half crazy enough to want to take part in one. Perhaps in two years, when I'm 58. It'll then be 40 years from when I was there doing the very same obstacle course as an eighteen year-old recruit. Yes? No? Hmmm. 

(Also of note: I read E.B. Sledge's account of USMC boot camp at San Diego in 1943. I was surprised to read that it was pretty much the same program I went through in 1974.)

Last night I saw one of the most thoroughly odd films ever to have come out of classic Hollywood: Spectre of the Rose (1946), a psychological thriller/film noir/ballet production from Republic Studios, who normally produced low budget Roy Rogers Westerns. It starred a couple of attractive ballet stars, the handsome and impeccably buff Ivan Kirov and the darkly beautiful Viola Essen. Gruff-voiced Lionel Stander, whom I last saw in Guadalcanal Diary as the hard bitten Marine pal of William Bendix, portrays a sort of poet/arts buff who has the habit of trotting into the scenes and annoying everyone by grumbling improbable dialogue like, "You are a wilted carnation in the buttonhole of Broadway."

In fact, the lines spoken by just about everyone in this production are damnably peculiar.

Ivan Kirov: Hug me with your eyes!
Viola Essen: I am.
Ivan Kirov: Harder! 

And so it goes. It's one of those productions that's all about not art, but, AAHRT, and features one of the most thoroughly homosexual characters I've ever seen in an old film, Michael Chekhov, as a queenish Russian impresario whose hair billows up in a strange gray wave. He's based on real life Serge Diaghilev of the Ballet Russes, I suppose. (In point of historical fact, Diaghilev was a homosexual.)

A campy, must be seen to be believed flick.

Government training this afternoon: "Handling Difficult Relationships and Conversations." I'm something of an expert at this, having had to work with my stressed out and angry mother at the family business for years, but we shall see what further "tools" I can acquire for my "toolkit" as we "break into small groups" and play out various "scenarios" facilitated by a facilitator.

(Sigh.)

7 August 2012

I finished watching Papillon (1973) last night. I thought it overlong and rather badly acted; I had no idea Steve McQueen was such an inept comedian. No wonder he always maintained a closed mouth "cool" persona.

Papillon falls into the category of films of good reputation which, once I've seen them, cause me to wonder if we all saw the same films. (Other examples are E.T., The Sting, No Country for Old Men and The Deer Hunter.) I have about four other Steve McQueen films to watch in a boxed set I once received - that'll take a few years. Perhaps a decade. Papillon certainly set the schedule back.

I also watched a very late period noir of the heist film sub-genre, Blueprint for Robbery (1961), starring J.Pat O'Malley as an old Irish crook who wants to pull off one last job in order to finance his return to the Old Country. It wasn't especially bad and it wasn't especially good. The shadowy warehouse scenes shot in the industrial section of Los Angeles were cool, however. The scenes where the robbers show up at the armored car facility wearing grotesque rubber masks seems like an early inspiration for the recent Batman film with the Joker, although the producers probably got that from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, a better known film.

I've been listening to a ten minute work by Gustav Holst, The Perfect Fool, a ballet piece. It's from an Lp I bought in Richmond and digitized recently. It's quite good, and I can hear echoes of his far better known The Planets orchestral suite. The way a composer uses an orchestra is very much like a fingerprint; I have been able to identify pieces I didn't know upon a first hearing simply by the way they sound. It goes like this: "Hmmm. That sounds like William Walton's Shakespeare music; I bet it's by Walton. If it is, the only major work by Walton that I haven't ever heard likely to be played on this radio station is Facade. I bet that's what it is." And it usually is. I first saw this process at work by a janitor who listened to the classical station while he worked at the local elementary school as a part time job during college. I was immensely impressed and wished that I, too, could do that. I have for decades.

Is English the international language? I mused upon that yesterday based on a book I'm reading and got a couple of comments. The book which postulates this - Globish by Mccrum - will have to wait, however, as my library hold came in: With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by Cpl. Eugene Sledge, USMC. My library hold is a result of seeing The Pacific last week. Semper Fi!

I unexpectedly got all Yankee soldier yesterday and repaired my broken suspenders with a much thicker and durable piece of leather from some scraps I've been saving for decades. I also blackened my brogans (shoes). If this trend continues I may find myself shining brass - but that would be getting carried away.

The 150th anniversary Battle of Antietam is next month; it should be better than the last event I did because it'll almost certainly be cooler weather. But I wrote that last paragraph as if there were only one 150th Antietam event. In fact, there are two: here's the other one. I don't know why event sponsors do that: it needlessly divides the reenactor community. (And another baleful result is that it caused me to use the cliched word "community" to describe reenactors. I hate that.) I suppose both claimed in the various reenactor media that theirs is more authentic, better organized, more attractive and on better land, attended by the better sort of reenactment regiments, etc. This sort of thing has been going on since at least the 125th anniversary series.

I added the 2nd Bull Run "Yellin' Reb" to my Know Your Enemies article (excerpts from the Army of the Potomac Enemy Recognition Manual #TR-10A which, in case you don't get the joke, doesn't really exist). I've always liked that piece. The way it works is that I find some ridiculous portrayal of a Confederate soldier - VERY easy to find - and then I write a fanciful bio for him, which I incorporate into the manual.

I once got an e-mail from the father of Ax Reb, who was amused by the piece and stated that, yes indeed, his son was indeed fearsome trouble. (I had seen this photo in an article about a reenactment which took place in the early nineties.) I figure Ax Reb is now in his thirties... I wonder if he still reenacts.

The name "Psychic Injury Reb" came from a medical disclaimer I was once required to sign as a condition of attending a battle reenactment; I indemnified the organizer from any "psychic injury" I would experience as a result of attending. I think the only psychically injured party was the lawyer who came up with the silly phrase.

"Super Reb" and "Blazing Rebel" were 1989 4th of July fireworks. I wonder if the Chinese still label them this way, given that Confederates are so much more politically incorrect now.

"Abusive Reb" is some kinky homoeroticism I saw in a Civil War history magazine. "Really?," I thought. "That illustration accompanies a legitimate historical article? Really?"

"The Young'uns" are, in fact, Tom Sawyer and his gang. "The Graceliners" were attendees at an Elvis convention and "Granny Moses" is, of course, the immortal and beloved Irene Ryan.

"Stonewall Camel," by far the most lethal, is a corporate mascot.

The Dog Days of Summer continue. I dislike August; traditionally it seems to be the month when everyone but me is on vacation. It's too hot to get enthusiastic about anything and work becomes especially tedious. Can we do away with it and its colder counterpart February, please?

6 August 2012

As I mentioned Friday, I fell in for duty with Mister Lincoln's Army in the 150th anniversary Battle of Second Bull Rull, located at the Cedar Creek battlefield in Middletown, VA. It was about a three on the Event-O-Meter: It was too hot to be much fun and the battles were kind of lame. I have always maintained that the weather is a good 70% of any reenactment - nothing sucks the excitement out of an event like heat and humidity. Photo coverage here, in my Picasa Photo Album. Be sure to check out my video of Yellin' Reb - perhaps soon to be Viral Reb. Note that Yellin' Reb is not wearing a wool sack coat. I'd have a lot more energy, too, were I able to abbreviate my uniform.

The photo above shows the Tres Amigos: Me, Don and Chris.

Despite the PowerPoint presentation which suggested otherwise, it was the usual long hike to where the battle would be held, marching up and down the hillsides. We were so wiped out we didn't even bother to visit the sutlers. This was my eleventh event on that site and, frankly, I've gotten tired of it. I'm giving Cedar Creek a long rest.

The funniest memory: The event sponsor created small cloisonne medallions as event tokens, both as a keepsake and as a way to prove that you paid for registration. Great - it looks nice on my scrapbook page! But they attached them to blue ribbons. Not so great, because a bunch of Yanks were walking around with these completely anachronistic things around their necks on the outside of their sack coats. It looked ridiculous; like an army of Draculas (you know how he wears a medallion with his evening dress?). I told my pard Don this, and in his best Bela Lugosi voice he said, "Good evening." So every time I saw a Yank wearing one of these I heard that in my head. Still makes me smile. That's the thing about an event where the weather is hot: you become goofy and odd little things seem funny and turn into running gags. I remember at one hot 1980's event the notion of Stonewall Elvis amused us constantly. 

Ten years ago on this very day I started rugby practice for my ninth season. As was my custom, I did a little write up: "First day of practice. It has been four years since I took up this game. Given that it takes so much time and attention and causes so much weariness and injury, it's remarkable that I've stayed with it this long. What is rugby's hold on our hearts and minds? Anyway, I am guessing that this season will be played at somewhat less than the level of commitment I displayed last season. Practice no longer seems essential, and if I miss a match on a Saturday it's no big deal. I was dreading the first day of practice, but, as usual, I needn't have. There is a natural self-pacing instinct within me that prevents me from killing myself or attaining any remarkable skill or fitness. The new head coach Scott "Schnauzer" Delaney got things started off with some new drills and fitness runs, as well as the infamous "bleep test." This is essentially doing 20 meter sprints according to a tape recording of bleeps that go off at shorter and shorter time intervals. Anyway, my level was level six, step four. Nothing notable about that; most did far better than this. (A few mutants were up to level 13 or so.) BUT... I was not the first to drop out, nor was I the second or third... anyway, 46 years of life on planet earth have taught me again and again that I have my very own path and pace. The weather was in the low eighties and nice, and practice was mostly fun. I left early as my legs were growing sore - no sense in killing myself at practice, especially since my first match isn't for a month; and then it's an old boys game."

I'm kind of sorry we didn't do this with my son when he was growing up: Thirteen tasks for a thirteen year-old son.

I have thrown together an Art of Philip Featheringill album. I'm hoping that somebody who knows about his stuff a lot more than I do finds it by google and enlightens me. I'd like to see more by this fellow.

I'm 90 minutes into the 150 minute escape from prison epic Papillon (1973). So far I'm kind of Eh about it. It's not a good film but not an especially bad film. Roger Ebert said that it was good that he finally escaped so we could stop watching the film, which is sort of how I'm feeling about it.

Now reading Globish, by Robert Mccrum. It's sort of a sequel to The Story of English, and looks at how English continues to evolve as the world's major language. The difference between the first book in the early Eighties and the second is the rise of the Internet, which has solidified English as the contender for the title of international language. It's an interesting book, but I am quickly becoming tired of the author's references to the soaring, unifying and inspirational rhetoric of Barack Obama. As Mccrum's a Brit, perhaps he's soured on him by now. I certainly have.

According to this book, English is now becoming what Esperanto was intended to be: a common international second language. The "Globish" variation that Mccrum cites (I haven't read any examples of it yet) is a simplified English without grammar or syntax which can be used to help two people from two different parts of the world communicate. According to Mccrum people do it all the time.

3 August 2012



Cpl. Eugene Sledge, USMC

 John Lennon shills for the Los Angeles Tower Records on the Sunset Strip, 1973. (Brushes away tear) It makes me miss the good old days when my pal Mike and I used to go there in the Seventies. It really was a wonderful place - as you can see, the place was stocked to the rafters with records.

I finished watching The Pacific last night, all the episodes and all the featurettes. I admit, I was wrong: It is every bit as good as Band of Brothers was - in some ways, better. (It was about the United States Marine Corps, for one thing.) The two HBO miniseries stand as the best war productions I have ever seen, bar none, and I am amazed and gratified to see that Hollywood can still produce something other than films based on theme park rides, comic books, Saturday Night Live skits and TV show sequels when sufficiently motivated.  

The Pacific doesn’t shy away from depicting what is conventionally and vaguely known as “the horrors of war.” My friends all told me that this production was gritty, and yes, it was quite memorable in that respect. Examples? A bored Marine sitting atop a small stone rise is shown making a game of idly dropping pebbles down into the open brain pan of a Japanese corpse gripping a machine gun. In another scene, a Marine digging a trench accidentally sends his shovel into the chest cavity of a rotting Japanese soldier buried in the mud. Heads and body parts abound on the battlefield… which is probably all as it should be. In an earlier post I decried what I called PG-rated combat violence - this production has none of that. It is honest, more honest than anything else I have ever seen.

It also goes where few productions about war have gone: trophy hunting. One rather unpleasant Marine is shown using his K-Bar knife to pry gold crowns from the mouths of dead Japanese. This sort of thing actually happened. When I was in the Corps I once chatted with a Guadalcanal Marine (who shall remain nameless), who reported using his telephone lineman tools – “TL’s,” pliers – to pry out the teeth. I’m sure I looked on aghast as he told me this. I wasn’t yet aware of George Bernard Shaw’s advice that "Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times."  

The Pacific got into the minds of the Marines who were there; it was a more psychological work in that way. And we also got more of the Marines' civilian war life, both before and after the war. So... well done and highly recommended. NOTE: It is very cool that my friend Mike sent me a reproduction WWII USMC uniform shirt from the production as a Christmas present last year. (Who wore it? None of the stars as they're all average size. Some huge extra, I guess.) I'll start wearing it when it gets cooler...

The Pacific is partially about the experiences of Cpl. Eugene "Sledgehammer" Sledge. After the war he wrote a book, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa; I'll have to read it now, as well as Bob Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow. Both formed the basis for the production.

The other night I started, but did not finish, a film entitled The Noah (1975) starring character actor Robert Strauss as the last man on earth (the old nuclear holocaust scenario). Video trailer. An hour and 45 minutes long, it was a problem of the script not living up to the film's length, so I tuned out. The film's advocates call it "shattering." I called it boring. Too bad - I like Robert Strauss ("Animal" in Stalag 17). But even he couldn't carry this one.

Recent grandson Gib pictures starting here. They are fun to look at because he is now smiling more readily. This shot is just adorable! I wish I had taken one with Ethan like that when he was a baby...  

Earlier this week I learned what a "whiffletree" is, and how it applies to the IBM Selectric typewriter. Check out this very clever and entertaining video. I had no idea that the Selectric represented such an interesting advance in technology...

No yard sales tomorrow. Tonight I head up to Middletown, VA, where I will be encamped with Mister Lincoln's Army to take part in the 150th anniversary of the Second Battle of Bull Run. I do this against my better judgement as it is summer and I have sworn off doing summer events. (Heat + Humidity + Wool uniform = Unhappiness.) However, I'm about 38 pounds lighter than last year and that helps. I'm taking a camera, as usual, and will probably be setting up a Picasa photo album, as usual. After action report on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

NOTE: By the way, sorry about the repetitive post yesterday. I was away to the races on the subject of the rugby scrum, and after I had finished I realized that I had pretty much written the same post almost a year earlier. I am losing my mind with age! (But at least I am consistent.)