Movie Monday: The "See a Sixties Movie" Edition

I've been sitting here for awhile trying to figure out what to write about for this week's Movie Monday post. The problem is, I haven't seen many movies lately, certainly no new films, and nothing I have seen has really been worth writing home - or anywhere else - about.

But then, while I was looking at the onscreen cable guide during a break for ads in the "Criminal Minds" marathon I was watching (I've been watching a lot of "Criminal Minds" lately; good show), I saw that "Cactus Flower" was going to be on Turner Classic Movies in about half an hour. It took no time at all to decide that the "Criminal Minds" marathon could go on without me for a couple of hours.

I first saw "Cactus Flower" when it was originally released in 1969. I loved it then and I've loved it ever since. It is a flat-out funny movie, for all that it starts with Goldie Hawn's character attempting suicide by turning on the gas in her kitchen. Her neighbor quickly smells the gas, however, and puts a stop to the attempt by kicking out the window and coming to the rescue with a little mouth-to-mouth (this is where the comedy begins). Talk about a "meet cute" beginning; this is definitely an unexpected twist on that tired old concept.

It turns out that Hawn's character was trying to kill herself because her boyfriend, a womanizing dentist, won't leave his wife to marry her. The boyfriend (portrayed by Walter Matthau), as it turns out, isn't even really married; that's only what he tells the girls he dates so that he won't have to get seriously involved with them. Hawn's character gets the idea that the only reason he won't leave the (nonexistent) wife is for the sake of their (equally nonexistent) children. So, the girlfriend insists on meeting the wife. The dentist enlists his assistant/receptionist (portrayed by Ingrid Bergman) to pose as his wife, and she in turn borrows her nephews so that it will appear that they have children. The receptionist enjoys the role; it turns out she has been nurturing on the dentist for some time. Lie builds on hilarious lie until things get quite out of control.

I'll admit that "Cactus Flower" is a film of its time, being made as it was when the world was quite a bit different than it is today. I still find it very, very funny. And it is notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, this was Ingrid Bergman's first Hollywood role in twenty years (she'd been, in effect, banished from Hollywood in the late 1940s for having had a child out of wedlock, something that one just didn't admit back then, even in Hollywood - maybe especially in the Hollywood of the time), and she is wonderful as the receptionist. Additionally, it was Goldie Hawn's first real role in a film (she'd been in one film previously, but only as a chorus dancer in a Disney film), having previously been known only for her featured role as a ditzy blonde in the sketch comedy series "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" on television. It was an impressive performance, winning her an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress her first time out.

Here is the original trailer for the film, from 1969:



Well, I'm going to finish watching the movie now.

Music Sunday: The "Early Beatles" Edition...

I'm in a Beatles mood today. And so, without much chit-chat at all, here is some Beatles Music.



And, from the same era, "I Saw Her Standing There". This was my favorite song when I was in the second grade:



From the film "A Hard Day's Night", "And I Love Her", another one of my favorites:



The Beatles' second film, "Help!" also contained some great music, but "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is probably my favorite. Here it is as it appears in the film, with some bonus footage after the song:



Here is a performance of the title song, "Help", but not from the film but instead in a live performance. I've sort of always thought that this song could have been subtitled "John starts getting real", and is sort of a hint of things to come from not only John Lennon, but from the entire group, a turn away from the purely pop song. Just a beginning, but then every journey starts with the first step:



A bigger turn, on the next album, "Rubber Soul", is "Norwegian Wood". An altogether darker Beatles:



I think six songs from the pre-Sgt. Pepper's Beatles is good enough to show the direction the band was going. By this time, they weren't the "four lads from Liverpool" that had emerged into the American consciousness in February 1964 on "The Ed Sullivan Show". The amazing thing is, it was actually only two years from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", released in December 1963, to "Norwegian Wood", which was released on "Rubber Soul" in December 1965. It would only be another year until the band started recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in December, 1966, although it wasn't released until June 1, 1967.

And that's when things really started changing, although some people probably took the clue when "Yesterday and Today" was released in June of 1966, originally with controversial album art depicting the band with raw meat and mutilated, bloody baby dolls, known as the "butcher cover". That cover was, of course, quickly recalled and papered over with something much more benign. Still, with that cover it was pretty clear that The Beatles were ready to walk away from their earlier more innocent and family-friendly image.

Step AWAY from the reality show trap...

Amazing, the things you find on the Internet.

I just read a small blurb about the latest high-IQ child invited to join Mensa. She's Anala Beevers, a 4-year-old from New Orleans. We don't know exactly what her IQ is, but the criteria to join Mensa is to score in the 98th percentile or higher on an IQ test that the organization approves. In other words, you have to be smarter than all but 2 percent of the people in the world. So, in Anala's own words, she's "really smart."

No problem there. Being really smart should be considered a good thing. It isn't always, but it should be.

Where the problem comes in is in what her father is quoted as saying: "She needs a reality show."

Yeah, no. What she most definitely does NOT need is a reality show. What she needs is a normal childhood, nurturing in whatever she decides to do with her clearly formidable intellect, and a lot of understanding. She needs to be encouraged to develop whatever intellectual gifts she has, but she also needs to be given enough slack to fail at things, that the world isn't going to fall apart if she gets less than A grades in every subject in school. She also, however, needs to learn that her high IQ and a couple of bucks will get her a cup of coffee and little else in the real world, and to learn that there will be people who will dislike her and belittle her for no other reason than that she has that IQ. She needs to know that having an IQ does not mean that every subject in school will necessarily be easy for her.

Some of that might sound harsh, but I'm speaking from experience.

No, no, no. I'm probably not as smart as Anala is. I don't have any clue whether or not I'd be welcome in Mensa, and I really don't care. I've never had aspirations to find out. I don't know exactly what my IQ is; the authorities at school would never even tell my parents exactly what it was when I was tested in elementary school. However, I do know that when I was in school, I was invited into an MGM (Mentally Gifted Minors) program in my school district that, I later found out, quite by accident, had as a minimum entrance requirement a minimum measured IQ of 140. I also know that when I took my SAT and ACT tests in preparation to apply to colleges, I scored in the top 1 percent of the population on every section of those tests except the math portion, at least according to the college counselor who I spoke to when I first enrolled in college. We won't talk about how I did on the math portion; let's just say that I either did not get the math gene or I don't have the patience to put in the time I need to in order to "get" higher math.

Anyway...let's just say that I know what kind of hell the "smart" kid can go through, in school and in life, especially when he or she doesn't keep his or her head down and attract as little attention as possible. Kids, as everyone who has ever been one knows, can be incredibly cruel to anyone who doesn't fit in, and because of the values of US society, anyone who is perceived as being "too smart" often has a difficult time fitting in. I did learn to keep my head down and draw as little attention as possible and I still didn't fit. God forbid what would have happened if they had had reality shows back then and I had found my way into one.

So, basically what Anala needs the most is for someone to sit her father down and explain to him a few of the realities of life, including the fact that while his family, including his daughter, might make a bunch of money from a reality show, that is probably the only benefit his daughter would get from it. She does not need that kind of attention. Her life is likely going to be difficult enough without it.

And it isn't just the kids who are going to make this child's life difficult. There are going to be the adults who are threatened by her intelligence, and who may very well make her life hell because of that. There are going to be the teachers who will assume that she doesn't need any help with any of her studies. No, really. This happened to me. When I was taking geometry in high school (the first time), I just didn't get it. I tried and tried and tried. And when all of my trying didn't get me anywhere, I tried asking questions in class. The response from the teacher was always, "I'm not going to answer your question. I've seen your records. You're smart enough to figure it out yourself." Except that I had tried to figure it out; I hated asking for help enough that I would never, ever had asked if I could figure it our for myself.

The other thing is, as hard as it is being perceived as the smart kid in school, it doesn't get any better when you grow up and go out into the world. It doesn't even take anyone knowing where you test out on the IQ scale. You just have to appear to have interests (interests that aren't sports or pop culture) outside your immediate field in the working world. That alone is enough to label you as "too smart for your own good." And the thing is, bosses usually don't want anyone working for them who they think are any smarter than they are. They don't have to know for sure; they just have to suspect.

Now, I haven't written any of this so you'll think, "Oh, the poor smart girl, she has it so hard." Aside from not being able to find work presently, which I've written about before and which is extremely frustrating, I'm more or less okay. It's just that, from years of experience, I have a realistic view of how it is to be seen as the "smart one" in the real world, and I really don't want Anala Beevers, or anyone else, to have to go through some of the crap I had to, especially up through high school.

But really, Mr. Beevers...Just say no to the reality show.

I think I'm having one of those days...

I've got a bit of a dilemma going here, and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

During the month I did not have a way to access the Internet at home, there were all kinds of things going in the world that I really wanted to write about. Important things. Things that have the capacity to impact the lives of everyone who lives in the United States and, often, even the lives of people elsewhere in the world.

Things like the Zimmerman trial, which turned out to be more along the lines of putting the live of Trayvon Martin, who is no longer here to defend himself, on trial. I also wanted to write about the related issue of how Rachel Jeantel, a witness in the trial, got raked over the coals and pretty much put on trial herself in the media, not so much for what she said as how she said it and what she looked like.

I wanted to write about the Supreme Court. One day they gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act 0f 1965, opening the door for outrageous abuses from the far reaches of the Republican party that could make it much easier to carry out their voter suppression schemes by enacting legislation in the states that could make it much harder for groups (the poor, college students, the elderly) that traditionally are more likely to vote Democratic, to exercise their right to vote. Then, the next day, the Court turned around and got it right for once, gutting the Defense of Marriage Act and throwing out California's Proposition 8, allowing same-sex couples, in California at least, to marry legally again after Prop. 8 had overturned that right, which had been granted by the California Supreme Court.

I wanted to write about the ongoing war against women in some state legislatures and even in Congress, where ultra-conservatives have been showing their willingness to sneak around and break the rules in order to try to pass restrictive legislation that limits women's right to abortion, sometimes their right to access birth control, and so forth. I also wanted to write about ancillary issues to this, such as the remarks in Texas, by a woman (a state legislator, if I recall correctly), who made comments indicating that pregnancy caused by rape shouldn't be an issue in relation to abortion because, she said, rape kits take care of that kind of thing, when in fact all a rape kit does is gather physical evidence that a rape has taken place. And, I wanted to write about Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator whose filibuster (the old-fashioned kind) kept one attempt at passing restrictive abortion legislation in Texas from succeeding, not to mention the continuing willingness of the governor of Texas (that would be Rick Perry, in case you'd forgotten) to expose himself as the horse's rear-end that he so obviously is in his comments regarding Senator Davis.

I wanted to write about the continued foot-dragging and, this week's knuckle-dragging (I'm looking at you, Representative Steve King of Iowa), surrounding the effort to pass a bill on immigration reform. King's comments implying that all but a very few illegal immigrants are drug mules, thankfully, even earned him condemnation from members of his own party, but just the fact that he felt comfortable making those comments is, well, dismaying to say the least.

There was so much that I wanted to write about all of that and more, so much that needs to be said, still. But most of it is so upsetting and depressing that I don't want to even think about any of it, much less write about it. Even the one hopeful thing in all that , the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage, managed to bring out the troglodytes who want to not just prevent same-sex couples from marrying but also want to regulate everyone's behavior in the bedroom, even that of straight married couples. Yes. You read that right. Virginia Attorney General and candidate for Governor of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli thinks it is a good idea to make pretty much any sex act that is not of the penis-in-vagina type a felony. This, from a member of the Republican party, members of which seem to always be crowing about how they belong to the party that wants to get government out of people's lives. As far as I can see, there isn't anything more intrusive in people's lives than wanting to police the intimate lives of consenting adults.

I feel like I should be writing about all of these issues, but every time I sit down to write about any of them in detail, I just...can't. I either get angry and start ranting (and if you read this blog with any regularity, you know I can get a pretty good rant going), or break into tears because it feels like I'm just pounding my head against a brick wall. So, instead, I end up posting video clips of prehistoric fish, like I did yesterday. Because, you know, I'd really rather be writing about cool stuff. Fun stuff. Stuff like prehistoric fish, like exploring our plant and the universe, like good books I've read and good movies I've seen and music I like. I'm having trouble finding a balance right now, and I'm finding that frustrating.

This will all work itself out and I'll find my direction - and a reasonable balance between writing about the things I want to write about and the things that I feel like I should write about. I'll find a way to articulate my thoughts about things going on in the world without ranting and without making myself crazy, and I'll find the time and space to write about the better stuff, too.

Until then, I'll try to make it interesting around here. For me, and for all of you, too.

Here, have a fish...

I've been busy today, with meetings and preparing for a presentation that I have to give next week at CVP.

But, I'm also reading a book about the coelacanth right now. I've been sort of obsessed with this particular fish since I first saw one preserved at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History when I was in about the third or fourth grade. They are fascinating creatures, two species of fish - one living in the West Indian Ocean off the coast of southern Africa and one living in the waters around Indonesia - that were thought to have been extinct since around the time the dinosaurs died out until one species was discovered in the take from a fishing vessel off the east coast of South Africa in 1938. Until this discovery, the coelecanth was known only from the fossil record. The Indonesian species was scientifically unknown until 1999.

These species are very old, with biologists suspecting that they have evolved very little in the past 400 million years or so. Because they are so rare, and because they remain in very deep waters during the day and in fact live most of the time in caves deep in the ocean, very little is known about how they live or how long the individuals of the species live. It has been discovered that the female of the species retain the eggs of their young in their bodies rather than laying them and that it takes them about a year to gestate, after which they hatch within the mother and then the mother gives live birth to them.

The photos in the book I'm reading are not the best, clearest that they could be, so I took some time to look around YouTube to see if anyone had any footage of the fish live and in the wild. And, indeed, there is some footage, which I thought I'd share with you:



Yeah, I know. I get enthusiasms for some unusual things. It keeps life interesting, in a good way.

Another anniversary: the return of Apollo 11

Saturday, I wrote about it being the 44th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing. That day 44 years ago is something that most people who were alive and conscious of world events at the time remember.

But today is the anniversary of a day in the US space program that is at least as important but which rarely gets recognized. It is the 44th anniversary, today, of the return of the crew of Apollo 11 from the Moon, and it is the fulfillment of the second part of the goal set by John Kennedy of sending men to the Moon and returning them safely. Kennedy also said on the day in 1962 that he set this goal that we, as a society, chose to do that not because it was easy, but because it was difficult.



And it was difficult, and was done with, it is said, significantly less computing power than is contained in the low-end laptop I'm writing this on right now. The landing was, of course, important. But so many things could have gone wrong to strand the astronauts on the moon, or strand them orbiting the moon, or send them careening out into the solar system with no way to get back...and those are only a few of the things that could have gone wrong.

So, I think it is important to also mark the day that Apollo 11 and its astronauts made it back home safely.

Not that there wasn't at least one hiccup in the landing procedure. When the command module splashed down into the Pacific Ocean, it landed upside down and stayed that way until the astronauts activated flotation devices that righted it. I suspect that at least a few folks at NASA flashed back to the splashdown in July of 1961 of Liberty Bell 7 after a suborbital flight, part of the Mercury program, when Gus Grissom nearly drowned after the capsule's hatch blew unexpectedly, sending the capsule to the bottom of the ocean and nearly drowning Grissom. But, all was well and the three astronauts were picked up and deposited on the ship that had come to meet them.

Even that was not the end of the mission, however. Once on the ship, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were decontaminated and put in quarantine for three weeks just in case they had brought any bad bugs back from the moon. Still, this is a day to remember. We not only sent men to the moon, we managed to bring them back alive and in one piece each.

How much is too much?

I'm trying to think of something good to say about all the press coverage surrounding the birth of the child of the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, and I really, well, can't.

Now, I'm not saying anything uncomplimentary about the Prince and the Duchess and the new prince; I saw the tape of their emergence from the hospital with the new baby and I think they handled the moment very well, considering all the publicity surrounding her pregnancy and the birth. It isn't their fault that the press has been covering this obsessively pretty much since the two of them got married and the speculation started regarding how soon she would get pregnant.

And I'm not saying that the Duchess's pregnancy and the birth of their child should have been ignored by the media. William is going to be king someday, and the baby after him. This demands that the boy's birth be noted.

But Geez Louise...do the American media really have to devote hours of coverage when there are much more important things going on in the world?

Of course, I'm not a big fan of wall-to-wall coverage of most news events. There are a few instances when it is appropriate, but those are few and far between. The recent crash/hard-landing of the Asiana Airlines plane at San Francisco International Airport, for example. Yes, it was a very bad thing, but after it happened at a bit before noon local time in the morning, did the cable news networks really need to be still going wall-to-wall that night, hours after it was clear that all the passengers were accounted for? I realize that it was a weekend, and weekend days are traditionally slow news days, but still.

I'm ambivalent about the coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. On the one hand, there were and are serious issues surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin - and, yes, I realize that by using that emotionally charged word I am exposing my own biases regarding the case - and there was a certain value in broadcasting the trial as it happened. And, some of the many extra hours of commentary broadcast outside of the trial itself made points that needed to be made. But the trial and its aftermath lasted weeks (and is still going on), and there was a lot of the same people saying the same things over and over and over again. The fact that I agreed with some of the things that were being said repeatedly does not alter my feeling that the coverage reached the point of being way too much in the way of saturation coverage well before the jury reached their verdict.

Well, at least the birth of the new prince is good news. Mother and baby appear to be doing well, and that's nice. But it would be even nicer if the media would report the news when it happens - not for hours, days, weeks, sometimes months before anything really happens - and the move on to the next thing.

Which brings up a point. Have you noticed how much of news reports these days has become reporting on things that are scheduled to happen, or expected to happen, or feared to happen, rather than waiting for something to happen and then reporting it? That was very much what happened today with the coverage of the happy family leaving the hospital in London, to the point of giving updates on the latest the reporters had heard about what time the departure was going to occur, complete with a camera focused on the door the Prince, the Duchess, and the new prince were expected to emerge from. It became news when they did, indeed, come through the door. Until then, it was just a really boring picture of a door with a reporter's voice droning on over the picture.

Really, I'm not trying to be obnoxiously critical. Maybe I'm just sensitive to this because I've been stuck at home this summer and watching much too much television...and way, way too much news. On the other hand, I think there were some things that have gone on this summer that got skipped over all too quickly in favor of "flavor of the week" stories that deserved to be reported but not in the obsessive detail that we were treated to.

Movie Monday: The I Try to Make a "Desert Island Movie Discs" List Edition

Some people count sheep when they can't sleep. Some people take sleeping pills. Or drink warm milk...or something a little stronger.

I make lists. That usually works.

However, one night last week when I couldn't sleep, I started trying to put together a list of which ten movies I would take along if I was going to be stranded somewhere for a considerable length of time and could only take a limited number with me. It's sort of a variation on "Desert Island Discs". I do the same sometimes with songs, albums, books, author's collections, that kind of thing.

That usually works.

However, with the movie list, I started arguing with myself mentally and ended up laying there at least another hour and a half before I could make my mind shut up enough so that I could go to sleep, having come to the conclusion that a list of ten was impossible.

It started out easily enough, with three irreplaceable films: "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), "The Right Stuff" (1983), and "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (the original, from 1951; I haven't seen the new version). And then there is the original, Boris Karloff, version of "The Mummy" (1932), which has, as I'm sure I've said here before, has been a favorite since I first saw it when I was all of five years old.

So far, so good, right?

Well, yes. But things started going downhill from there.

I decided that there had to be a Steve McQueen film on the list. "Bullitt" (1968) came to mind. Wonderful movie, great chase scene. But then I thought about "The Thomas Crown Affair" (also 1968, as it turns out). I love that movie, too. And then there's "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965). Also very good. But then there's "Junior Bonner" (1972), starring McQueen, Robert Preston, and Ida Lupino, and directed by Sam Peckinpah. It's one of the most underrated films of the Seventies, in my opinion, and I've loved it ever since I first saw it in the theater when it was first released.

Okay. I couldn't pick, so I set that aside for awhile and attacked the list from another direction.

Silent movies. I really would want to have one of those along, and there are some silents that I've really enjoyed. I've written here before about "The Unknown" (1927), starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, and directed by Tod Browning. It's an amazing little (it only runs 50 minutes or so) horror film. But then there is "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), and of course "Phantom of the Opera" (1925), also starring Chaney. Carl Theodor Dreyer made "Vampyr" in 1932 and it isn't really a silent film, but it was Dreyer's first and contains little dialogue, and so I always think of it as a silent. And then "Metropolis (1927) comes to mind. Again, how to choose?

Musicals.

I like musicals, which those of you who read here regularly probably already know. There would need to be at least one of those on the list. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) is a favorite. So, God help me, is "Mary Poppins" (1964). But, so is "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" (1970) and "Funny Girl" (1968), both Barbra Streisand films. Another Julie Andrews musical, "Victor Victoria" (1982), is also definitely on the list of possibilities. Less traditionally, among the alternatives for a place on the list would have to be "Tommy" (1975) and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (also 1975).

It went on like this, with different categories of films. Dramas. Comedies. Westerns. Science fiction. Well, there is already one science fiction film on the list, but there are so many more good science fiction films that I could potentially want on the list as well. You can probably see why I gave up. And I won't go on with more examples of my thinking that night, because this is already getting to be a longish post.

But I do have a question for all of you. If you were making a list of the ten (or fifteen, or twenty) films you would want with you if you were going to be stranded somewhere for awhile, which ones would you take? Leave your list in the comments.

Music Sunday: The Boss Radio Edition

I've been waiting until about the time I went on hiatus here to write this Music Sunday blog post.

Unless you grew up in the 1960s and early 1970s, you might not have any idea about what I want to share today and why I'm so happy about it. It could be a matter of "you had to be there" to really appreciate it. Nevertheless, I'm going to share anyway.

A few weeks ago, having nothing better to do with my time (or, at least, being bored with the things I should have been doing), I sat down to see what was on the radio. Except for one FM oldies station and the local NPR outlet, I've sort of given up on radio the past few years because the stations we have around here are pretty drab. I don't like the formats of the FM stations, or they just play music that I'm not particularly enthusiastic about, and all I can find on AM has been right-wing talk radio and sports-talk stations. So I'd just gotten to where I don't even go there anymore.

However, on this particular evening, looking on the AM dial, I discovered that my town has a station that has reinstituted the "Boss Radio" AM Top 40 format that was so popular around the time I was first getting into music in the Sixties. I say "reinstituted" because the station, KYNO, was apparently one of the first stations to adopt the format back in the day. Another of the first stations to adopt the format was KHJ in Los Angeles, the station I grew up listening to before FM radio was a thing. Sadly, the station I discovered is not really true Boss Radio because it isn't really local, but more a syndicated robo-station. But it still plays the old music, tunes you aren't likely to run into on most classic rock stations. Oh, they play the Beatles and the Stones and so forth, but they also play the songs that are, perhaps, a little too much of their time to have remained as popular as the classics.

For example, there is "Love is Blue", from 1968 and a French bandleader named Paul Mauriat. This is an instrumental that is one of my favorite pieces of music from the time. Apparently there were also versions with lyrics, but I like this, as I first heard it, just fine:



And then there's this, from 1964 - The Dave Clark Five and "Glad All Over":



It's kind of funny to me that in the comments section where I found this clip on YouTube, there's an argument over whether this kind of music, and this song in particular is good or "crap", or whether what is crap is what passes for pop music now. While I will admit that I'm more in the corner of 60s pop over some of the music that is more current, I've never really understood why people will argue over this sort of thing. I don't see music, most of the time, as bad or good, but rather in terms of whether or not I like it personally. The same thing was true back in the day, and there were arguments like this then, as well. Probably will be, as long as music exists, and while I generally tend to share the music that I like here, I'm never going to insist that everyone should like it or that people who don't like the same kind of music I like are wrong.

But, I digress.

And, anyway, music in the Sixties wasn't just mindless pop. Some songs were topical, and some were fairly controversial. There was, for example, "Love Child", by Diana Ross (although the song was billed as by Diana Ross and the Supremes, session singers rather than the other members of the group sang the background vocals). In 1968, when this song came out, it was still not considered polite to discuss the subject of children born out of wedlock, no matter which side of the argument was being aired. But, it was and is a great song:



Another song, not especially controversial in itself, although it takes on fairly gritty subject matter, but which became an anthem for US forces fighting in Vietnam, was "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", by Eric Burdon and the Animals. This live performance of the song is from the Richmond Jazz Festival in England in 1965:



But, the truth is that the Sixties were also the time of "bubblegum" pop, and one wonders how songs like this one, "Simple Simon Says", by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, ever reached the charts, much less hit #4 in the US and #2 in the UK and sold five million copies after it was released in 1967:



I guess a catchy tune will get you a long way, and I kind of think of this as the Sixties version of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", which also has a catchy tune and pretty much no substance to it.

But, like I said, for me music comes in two flavors, music I like and music I don't like as much, and I really do like a lot of 60s pop and rock, and it is fun hearing some of these songs again. Even the ones, like "Simple Simon Says" and "Elenor", by the Turtles (who seem to have had a talent for taking just about any song and making it silly - not necessarily a criticism, but just an observation):

It's Moon Day...

While I've been away from blogging, there have been a bunch (that's a technical term) of things I've wanted to blog about. Most of them are not happy topics, but sometimes it is necessary to think and write about them. But before I wade back into all of that, I really feel the need to point out that today is the 44th anniversary of possibly the best thing humans have ever done.

Forty-four years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on and then later in the day walked on the Moon to become the first humans to set foot on a celestial body other than the Earth. Maybe you had to be there to witness the landing to really understand how big a deal it was. And billions of us did witness it, via a television broadcast of the event, which in itself was a very big deal at a time when we weren't used to instant broadcasts from remote locations as a daily occurrence. The pictures from the Moon that day were a bit murky - resolution was kind of low and contrast was high - but, still, we got to see the "giant leap for mankind" in the time it took to relay the pictures from the Moon to a satellite dish in Australia and then around the world.

It was pretty damn cool.

I've written here before about watching the landing and the Moon walk with my father, who was thrilled beyond words about the whole thing, so I won't go over that ground here again right now.

What I want to address is the amount of imagination that it took to put together the program that sent Armstrong, Aldrin and ten other men (and only men) to walk on the Moon - and, lest we forget, a number of others who orbited but did not set foot on the Moon. Yes, it took a lot of money to go to the moon. But it took even more imagination. The first moon landing took place a little short of twelve years before the Russians put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in orbit around the earth on October 4, 1957 and a little over 8 years after Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space (and to orbit the earth) on April 12, 1961. A few weeks later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space in a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. An American didn't orbit the earth until John Glenn did so on February 20, 1962.

From those first manned flights to the first moon landing was an incredibly quick progression. That landing humans on the Moon was accomplished at all, let alone in such a short period of time from the inception of the efforts to put humans in space, took great imagination and great determination. Granted, at least some of that impetus came as a result of the Cold War and American determination that the Soviets wouldn't "get" the Moon. I don't believe, however, that was the whole of the program to go to the Moon. It also had to do with the essential human urge to explore.

I wonder, sometimes, what has happened to that urge, because there doesn't seem to be much of a desire on the part of most people to move on and push the frontier of exploration farther, or even to hold the frontier at the Moon. Whenever it is proposed that we return to the Moon, all sorts of objections are raised. It's too expensive. It's too dangerous. We don't need to go. Plans to go to Mars are met with similar objections. When George H. W. Bush was president, he proposed sending a manned mission to Mars. It was shelved because it was seen as being too expensive. Barack Obama has also called for a mission to Mars by the 2030s, but there is as yet no budget for the effort.

When I was a child and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were progressing, there was a huge excitement about the space program. Now, it seems, very few people care. Very few people seem willing to even look up and see the planets and stars in the universe, much less take any more tentative steps to visit even the closest of those celestial bodies. They seem to want to cling to the planet we were all born and are so far confined to. True, there is a more or less permanent human presence in space, on the International Space Station. But that is a tenuous presence and limited to a few people at a time, with a maximum permanent occupancy of six. It has been continuously occupied for almost thirteen years, but the ISS will not last forever. The United States, since the end of the Space Shuttle program, has no means to send crew members to the ISS and depends on Russian launches to get its astronauts and supplies to the station.

So, I want to take advantage of the anniversary of the first human walk on another planetary body to say that we need to rediscover that ambition, that imagination, that determination to reach beyond this rock we live on and reach out, first to our immediate neighborhood and then, perhaps, to the rest of the universe. Just imagine what we might learn...what me might find.

I'm back...and I read some books while I wasn't here

So, I'm back.

It's been a month, exactly, as it turns out. A month without Internet access. A month of mostly really hot weather here. A month of rarely going anywhere except to go to CVP to do volunteer work or to the grocery store. A very rare early morning or late evening walk over to 7-11, because it's been too hot the rest of the time. That's about it.

So, what have I been doing?

I've been reading. A lot. Fourteen books in the month. 5,638 pages.

I haven't gone on a reading binge like this in ages. As much as I love to read, I'm sort of selective about what I read (although you probably wouldn't think so by the list of things I've been reading), and many times I can't manage to find anything I really want to read in that quick a succession. I think I've only started one book that I didn't finish in the month, and it really must have not made much of an impression because, sitting here, I can't recall what it was.

These are the books I've read while I've been away from here:

1) On the Trail of the Assassin, by Jim Garrison (1988; 406 pages) NF - purportedly
2) Private Eyes, by Jonathan Kellerman (1992; 525 pages) F
3) The Hard Way, by Lee Child (2006; 477 pages) F
4) Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s, by William L. O'Neill (1971; 442 pages) NF
5) Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child (2009: 429 pages) F
6) Bare Bones, by Kathy Reichs (2003; 383 pages) F
7) The Family, by Ed Sanders (1971; 323 pages) NF
8) Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry (1974; 502 pages) NF
9) Kingdom Coming, by Michelle Goldberg (2006; 242 pages) NF
10) A Wanted Man, by Lee Child (2012; 405 pages) F
11) Anarchy Evolution, by Greg Graffin and Steve Olson (2010; 290 pages) NF
12) Deception, by Jonathan Kellerman (2010; 332 pages) F
13) Lies (And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them), by Al Franken (2003; 379 pages) NF
14) Danse Macabre, by Stephen King (1983; 437 pages) NF

I call Garrison's book "purportedly" non-fiction because it presents one particular conspiracy theory about John F. Kennedy's assassination, the one championed by Garrison himself. He presents it as the truth, but it is not widely accepted as fact, not least because by the end of it he manages to throw in just about everything but the kitchen sink. It is an interesting book, however, even if one does not accept the theory he outlines. It was one of the main sources for Oliver Stone's film "JFK", which in itself makes it an interesting book. It is probably so much hokum, but I'm not sorry I read it.

I'm not sorry I read any of these books, and I'm really glad that I discovered a couple of them. Some were re-reads, although at least one of them - Deception - was not a deliberate re-read; I realized about a third of the way through that I had read it before. Another of the re-reads - Helter Skelter - was a re-re-re-re-re-read. It's a book I've read every two or three years since I first read it in 1976. Scariest book I've ever read, honestly, because of my proximity to the Spahn Ranch when Charlie Manson was living there and sending out his killing parties (I was in junior high at the time, and lived 7.8 miles - according to Google Maps - from Spahn).

Probably the most surprising book, and maybe my favorite discovery of the summer, was Anarchy Evolution. Greg Graffin is the founder of a punk band, Bad Religion, as well as a PhD in zoology who has taught at UCLA and Cornell University. It's an interesting combination, and he has some interesting things to say. I have to admit that I'm not familiar with his music, since I haven't ever been much of a punk fan. But if his music is as interesting as his writing is, I'm going to have to do some exploring, I think.

A couple of the books I read have to do with history and politics in the US. Coming Apart looks at the United States in the 1960s, and the thing that makes it interesting is that it was written shortly after the Sixties ended. I found it fascinating to contrast the writer's outlook on the Sixties with the conventional wisdom about that era today. Also interesting for approximately the same reason is Al Franken's book, which was written after 9/11 but before the end of George W. Bush's first term in office as President of the United States. The first thing that is interesting to me is that he was writing the book from outside the political establishment in Washington, but he is now a US senator from Minnesota. He's part of the system now. Also interesting are his takes on some issues and people in light of the events that have occurred since the book was published. The book is also fun simply because before he was a politician, Franken was a comic, and some of his commentary in the book is very, very funny even as it is relevant to the time it was written.

I don't have that much to say about the fiction I've been reading. Kellerman and his Alex Delaware/Milo Sturgis novels are old friends. On the other hand, I've just discovered Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. I wasn't sure I would like his writing when I started reading The Hard Way, but within just a few pages I was hooked. On the other hand Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child (no relation to Lee, as far as I know), was my least favorite of the books I've read in the past month. I'm not saying that it was not a good book, or that it was a bad book. It was a little more predictable than I would have liked. But I finished it, and I'm not accustomed to reading through entire books that don't engage me by, say, page fifty or so.

Danse Macabre was another re-read. This is another book I re-read every few years or so. I think Stephen King is a terrific writer, for all the fact that I don't read all of his fiction and that I think he could do with an assertive editor from time to time (certainly not always, however). I like the way that reading his writing is almost always like sitting and having a conversation, and this comes through most strongly in his non-fiction. This book is a discussion of all things horror in the years 1950 through 1980 (although he takes a few detours further back in the history of the genre). He knows his subject well, and he writes about it a thoroughly engaging way (although he would probably disagree with my use of the word "thoroughly"; he writes in another of his non-fiction books, On Writing, that "ly" words are not the writer's friend). I've learned a lot about writing from reading Danse Macabre, and also from reading On Writing, although I haven't quite absorbed his advice about those "ly" adverbs just yet.

So. As I said, I'm back, and Internet gods willing and the creek don't rise, I'm back on a regular basis. It's been difficult not being able to blog in the past month. So much has been going on in the world. I might still write about some of those going forward; some of those situations are ongoing and even some of those that aren't are probably still worth kicking around a little bit.

Internet silence...but I'll be back...

You're right. It's been awhile since I've posted.

I have no excuse for this, other than it's been busy around here, it's been hot, and I've been lazy.

The lazy, besides just laziness, has had a lot to do with the fact that I've been aware for awhile that I'm going to have to take an internet silence for an indeterminate amount of time, and that silence is scheduled to start later this afternoon.

This isn't a bad thing, necessarily. I think it is probably a good thing to step away from the internets from time to time and live in the real world. It will me that I will get some writing done that I really need to do. It will mean that I won't be sitting here ruining my eyes with the computer monitor for hours a day.

See, the thing is, I've been using my roommate's computer for the past little while, as mine is not currently talking to the wi-fi. It's probably a virus, but it could be any one of a number of other issues as well. I've got no clue, since I haven't had the money to take the computer in and get it checked out. However, she is scheduled to leave later today on vacation, and she is taking her computer with her. Understandable, right?

The good news is, she is also taking my computer along with her, since she is going to go spend time with her son, whose roommate is a computer guy and who is going to see if he can fix my computer. The plan is to ship it back to me when it is fixed, since my roommate's vacation will last until she has to come back and teach in the fall.

So, I won't be here for awhile, as I'll only have sporadic access to the internet, and then for only short periods of time, most likely to short to post here in any meaningful way.

However, when I do get the computer back, I will be back posting here. Music Sunday, Movie Monday, and all the other random stuff that comes through my brain and onto this blog.

So, until I'm back, have a good summer, keep hydrated, stay out of the heat as much as possible, and have fun.

Summer's coming...

It's been busy around here the past few days. I don't feel like I've accomplished much, but I've been going from early morning until time for bed every day the past few days.

Yesterday was typical, yet not. Got up to take my roommate to work and then took the (very unhappy) cat out to the SPCA to get fixed. Went and did the laundry. Came home long enough to eat breakfast/lunch (it was breakfast because it was the first thing I had eaten all day, but it was lunchtime by the time I had the time to eat) and get a few things done around the apartment, then went to pick up my roommate from work and then went out to retrieve the cat, who was now stoned in addition to being very unhappy. Brought the cat home and situated him so he wouldn't be doing any climbing and jumping. I went to the library while my roommate went to the gym, then went to dinner. By that time, I was ready to fall into bed. Right after I got in bed, though, the still-very-stoned cat escaped and came sauntering into my room looking quite puzzled and then went under my bed to hide. He didn't get to stay, but he tried.

So, today, I'm staying home (while my roommate takes some of her students on an end-of-school field trip to Yosemite) keeping an eye on the cat and trying to stay out of the heat. It's a little bit of respite before I have to go to CVP tomorrow to help with a workshop and then go back on Thursday for meetings.

We're also busy around here with the approaching end of school. My roommate has been getting her 8th graders ready for their Constitution test (which happens tomorrow), and she's been giving them a lot of written work to prep for the test, and I've been helping her grade all of that. She is also getting ready to take off in a couple of weeks to spend the summer with her kids on the other side of the country, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get around town while she's gone, since she's driving this year and the car won't be here. That will resolve itself eventually, but I've been spending quite a bit of time stressing over whether or not I'm going to have the money to get a bus pass for the month of July, or whether I'll be stuck at home for two months and relying on rides to get where I need to go. I don't like that option; I'm used to being able to come and go when I need to.

I've been avoiding watching the news lately: I'm sick and tired of hearing about one manufactured "crisis" after another in the government, mostly, and I just can't take all the reports of the tornado disasters in and around Oklahoma. If I have to watch another reporter stick a microphone in the face of another person who has lost their home, or members of their family, I'm going to scream. Why can't the press just leave those poor people alone to try to start recovering? Or, you know, put their microphones and cameras down and help the recovery effort.

Okay. That's where I am, and why I haven't been here. What have you all been up to, as summer approaches and as school is just out or just about to get out? Leave me a comment and let me know.

What did he say?...

Someone at the FBI must not have had much to do in 1964 and 1965, according to this blog post at Daily Dose.

Apparently, in early 1964 a disgruntled parent wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy complaining that the lyrics to the song "Louie Louie", by The Kingsmen, were "filthy." What I want to know is, how could she tell? I've never been able to tell what the singer is saying in that version of the song, which has been covered, some claim, by more singers and bands than The Beatles' "Yesterday", which is a lot of cover versions.

At any rate, the FBI reportedly spent the next two years attempting to decipher the song's lyrics, using such strategies as playing the 45 at 33 1/3. (If you're too young to remember 45s and LPs, you might not get that reference. Look it up.) However, according to the report the feds didn't ever bother to contact the band's lead singer, Jack Ely, or the man who wrote the song back in the 1950s, Richard Berry. Perhaps the agents tasked with the investigation were too embarrassed to ask either of them, "Did you sing/write a dirty song?" We can only hope.

The FBI never did figure out what the lyrics say (maybe the complaining mother has the superpower of being able to understand all song lyrics), and so they never said whether or not the lyrics are obscene.

Of course, there is a larger question here. That is, why are some people so determined to find something dirty or otherwise offensive in everything?

This all reminds me of the rumors that the 1963 song "Puff, The Magic Dragon", by folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, was really all about - gasp - marijuana. That would have come as a great shock to my second grade teacher (during the 1963-1964 school year), who required everyone in my class to memorize the lyrics to that song.

There were also the stories about The Beatles' song, "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds", which was supposedly really all about LSD. Even Paul McCartney is reported to have admitted (in 2004) that the song really was about acid, but John Lennon always maintained that it was not about drugs, but was inspired by a drawing his son Julian made in nursery school. Call me naive (it's okay; people do, all the time), but since Lennon was the primary writer of the song, his testimony is good enough for me.

Sometimes, it takes a little work to find this objectionable content. For awhile, it seemed like the national pastime here in the US was to play songs backward to find messages that bands had supposedly left hidden in their music. These messages went from supposed clues in Beatles songs that Paul McCartney was dead and had been replaced by a look-alike, sound-alike, all the way to accusations that a variety of recording artists had put tributes to and recruiting messages for Satan in their songs that could only be understood when the music was played backward. A few conservative Christian speakers made names for themselves traveling the country and giving presentations about this activity.

Most of the accused, of course, denied putting any kind of reversed messages in their songs, while a few admitted to using a technique called backward masking to hide messages in their music. Most of those who admitted to doing this said they did so only after the accusations, and then to answer their accusers. Or, to make fun of them, which wasn't really that difficult a thing to do.

It isn't just music people search to find objectionable material, however. For awhile, finding the phallic symbols and other obscene messages in Disney animation was somewhat of a cottage industry. And some people managed to find things that they could get outraged about, like the minster with a supposed erection in "The Little Mermaid." The thing was, you generally had to be viewing the films in slow motion or frame by frame to see most of these "obscene" drawings, although some accusers claimed otherwise. An Arkansas woman, who will remain nameless here to protect the guilty, even went so far as to sue Disney and its video distribution company, Buena Vista Home Video, claiming that Disney displayed an "explicit sexual message" on both the package and in the movie "The Little Mermaid", although she later dropped the suit, according to Snopes.

Personally, I think the people who go looking for these things, or read things they object to into music or films or other art, have too much time on their hands and excessively dirty minds. If you have to play a song backward or watch a film frame by frame to find something objectionable, it isn't that much of a threat to the innocent.

Music Sunday (late): The "I've Seen Them Play Live" Edition

NOTE: I started writing this on Sunday. Events intervened. So, I'm finishing it on Monday. If events don't intervene again.

A few weeks ago on Music Sunday I wrote about having seen Elton John in concert at Dodger Stadium back in 1975 and what a fantastic show that was. Well, this morning as I was driving back from getting Sunday morning donuts and listening to the radio, I heard one of the songs he did during that show, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting". Amazing concert experience, especially when all 66,000 people or however many were at the show were shouting "Saturday, Saturday, Saturday" along with him. I'm surprised we didn't cause an earthquake or something...or at least an insurrection from the neighborhoods surrounding the stadium because of all the noise we made.

But, hearing that on the radio this morning, I thought that today I would share some music from some of the acts I've seen live over the years. It isn't a huge selection, but I've been to some good shows. And I thought I'd start by waking you up with another live performance of "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, from nearly ten years after my experience and a continent and an ocean away, as Elton John did the song at Wembley Stadium in 1984:



Personally, I thought that the Wembley crowd was a little lax on the chorus compared to those of us at the show in 1975.

One of the opening acts at that Elton John show in 1975 was Emmylou Harris. She had released her first solo album, "Pieces of the Sky" earlier that year, and one of the songs in that collection was "Boulder to Birmingham", which Harris wrote with Bill Danoff in tribute to Gram Parsons, who she had sung with for a couple of years, making two albums in the process. I can't remember for sure if she sang this song at that show, but it's a lovely song. This is a performance of it on German television in 1978:



The other opening act that day was Joe Walsh, who had recorded this song, "Rocky Mountain Way", with the band Barnstorm, in 1973. The live performance in this clip is from the early 1990s and features some other pretty good guitar players:



Speaking of the Rocky Mountains, I also saw John Denver in concert once. Yeah. Don't laugh. Really. Denver had the reputation of being a slightly, oh, cheesy, performer who wrote slightly cheesy songs. And maybe some of them were. I liked those songs. And I like this song, "Sunshine on My Shoulders". Yeah, I like songs that rock. I also like nice, quiet meditative music, which is what this live version of this song is:



I saw U2 in concert during their Zoo TV tour, on November 7, 1992. The opening acts were The Sugarcubes and Public Enemy. I had a great vantage point, maybe ten rows back from the stage, until I nearly got crushed during Public Enemy's performance, so I retreated back into the stands and watched U2 from there. I was kind of sad that I didn't get to see U2 closer up, but the show was just fine from farther away, too. Lovely. Transcendent. Which was a good thing, because I caught the cold from hell that night (outside, at night, in November, in Oakland - what else could have possibly happened?) and was sick until sometime into January. It was worth every second of being sick.

I'm sharing this clip of "One" not because it is my favorite U2 song, but because it is probably my favorite U2 video. But it is a great song, not so big as many of their songs, but small and intimate, as befits its subject matter:



There are some other bands and performers I've seen live that I could share, but this has grown out of all proportion already, and so I'm going to close with this clip from Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I've seen Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) in different configurations, but never all of them on the same stage at the same time. This started when i was in high school and I saw Neil Young in concert at the Forum in Inglewood. David Crosby and Graham Nash were his special guests for that show (and Linda Ronstadt was the opening act). Then, about a decade later, I saw Crosby, Stills, and Nash at the Fresno Fair. A couple of years later, also at the fair, Crosby and Nash performed. Anyway, this is "Southern Cross":

Movie Monday: The Silent Edition

People don't really pay much attention to silent films these days. To be truthful, there are people now who won't even watch black and white films. It's got to be in color, with lots of loud explosions and chase scenes and casts of thousands (even if most of the thousands are computer-generated these days, rather than being actual human beings).

On the other hand, an argument can be made in favor of black and white, silent films. This is one of those arguments, one of the best:



That is a scene from Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), and it is amazing. I had read about this film for years and didn't believe the hype. Then, a few years ago I got to see the film in a showing on Turner Classic Movies. It was late at night. I didn't think, going in, that I would be able to stay awake for the whole movie. And then it began, and I was entranced. I can't really describe the film. You have to see it.

I'd been interested in silent films even before I saw "The Passion of Joan of Arc", but it was mostly an historical interest. I would have rather read about the silents than watched them. I mean, really. A lot of silent films are odd to watch after seeing films as they are today. But some of that sometimes has to do with technical issues, including films that are shown at different frame-per-second rates than they were filmed in, which can make the movement in them look unnatural. Additionally, the acting can look, well, silly; exaggerated and melodramatic. Part of that is the convention of the time, and part of it is probably the natural exaggeration of stage acting, which was where many film actors came from. This includes Maria (or Renee, depending on the source you consult) Falconetti, who played Joan in Dreyer's film.

Although Dreyer's next film, after "The Passion of Joan of Arc", was a sound film, it was made very much like a silent film, with little dialogue and with dialogue cards as were used in the silents. That film was "Vampyr" (1932), a horror film that is just as amazing in its own way as was "The Passion of Joan of Arc". Vampyr, with it's visual effects and story (taken from a Sheridan Le Fanu story), is a unique visual experience. Notable for the time, it was shot entirely on location rather than in the controlled environment of a studio:



Another of my favorite silent films is one I happened on quite by accident, again late one night on TCM. I started watching, intending to just watch for a little while and then go to bed. I ended up watching the whole film not that it was that long, just over an hour. This was "The Unknown", from 1927, directed by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. (not to be confused with his son, Lon Chaney, Jr., who, among other roles, played the Wolf Man several times in various films).

If you recognize Browning's name, that's probably because he also directed "Dracula" (1931) - yes, that one, with Bela Lugosi - as well as the cult film "Freaks" (1932). And, if you don't recognize Lon Chaney's name, you've been missing out on some of the classics of silent film, with "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923). But those are just the most remembered of some 162 films (according to IMDB), some of them lost and only one of them a sound film, and that a remake of an earlier silent film he had starred in.

The thing about "The Unknown" is that it is incredibly dark. It is the story of Alonzo the Armless, and that's all I'll say about that because I want you to see it, and to experience it the way I did, knowing nothing about the film. Chaney's performance in the film might seem melodramatic to those of us used to seeing acting in today's films, but Burt Lancaster, not a bad actor himself, has called this performance by Chaney "the most emotionally compelling" performance ever put on film. And Joan Crawford, who starred opposite Chaney in "The Unknown", has been quoted as saying that she learned more about acting from watching him work on this film than from any other experience in her career.

Really. Go see a silent film. You can find some of them in their entirety on YouTube, including both "The Unknown" and "The Passion of Joan of Arc".

Music Sunday: The Film Score Edition

Now, this is movie music:



I watched "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) last night for the first time in years. I'd forgotten how much I like the score, which was composed by Elmer Bernstein. It was nominated for an Academy Award but lost out to the score for "Exodus", composed by Ernest Gold. However, Bernstein's score was listed at number 8 on the American Film Institute's list of the 25 best film scores from American films. The score from "Exodus" does not appear on the list, although it was nominated when the AFI list was being compiled.

I'm a big fan of movie music, although it has been said that the best film scores are invisible to the ear because they fit so well that you forget that the music is there. And that is true, to an extent. Still, movie themes, the music that plays over opening or closing credits, should be something that is memorable. So should main themes within the scores.

For example, here is what is known as the "Love Theme from The Godfather" (1972), composed by Nino Rota:



Again, great movie music. I'm not really happy with the sound quality of this clip, but I think it illustrates something: if the music is good enough, it will sound good no matter how bad the sound quality of a recording.

Nino Rota also composed the score for the Zeffirelli version of "Romeo and Juliet" (1968):



Another movie that has a wonderful score is "Gone With the Wind" (1939), composed by Max Steiner. You can argue about the suitability of the film and its themes all you want, I don't think it is possible to argue that the score is not top-notch:



Some of the music from these films is iconic. So is the music from "Star Wars" (1977), composed by John Williams. That might be surprising, coming from a science fiction (or, some might say, science fantasy) film, but I don't think so. I've heard some describe this score as "bombastic", but I like it.



Still, if you're talking science fiction film scores, I prefer this, from 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," composed by Bernard Hermann:



I also like the music from "Planet of the Apes" (1968), composed by Jerry Goldsmith. This bit, called "The Hunt" is not the theme but is from the body of the film and is, I think, just brilliant. It fits the film perfectly:



So, something a little different for Music Sunday today. I like to think of it as me doing my little bit to promote the idea that music doesn't have to be rock or pop, or have lyrics, to be listenable.

And what have you been watching on TV?

Okay. Here goes. I'm going to admit, here and now, that my "guilty pleasure" TV viewing this season has been "Arrow", which airs on Wednesday nights on the CW.

Now, I wasn't convinced at first that I was going to like the show at all. I mainly tuned in because of the presence of John Barrowman in the first-season cast. Those of you who read here on a regular basis know that I'm a Whovian, and since Barrowman has played Captain Jack Harkness in both "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood", I had to tune in to see what he was up to here. Turned out, his character is a villain, very different from his Captain Jack persona.

But, while I came for the Who connection (which has also included guest appearances by Alex Kingston, who plays River Song in Doctor Who), I've stayed for a storyline that is relatively interesting. Certainly, there have been some twists that I haven't expected.

Who knows if I'll stay interested in season two, but season one has been fun.

Also, speaking of fun television viewing, I missed out on "Fringe" when it had its original run on the Fox network, but I've just started discovering it now, via my roommate's Netflix account. Now, I've only watched the pilot and the first couple of episodes, but so far I'm intrigued.

There's mystery. There's conspiracy. There are evil corporations and government agents whose loyalties are not entirely clear. There's some good acting (that's the one drawback with "Arrow"; some of the acting is less than brilliant) and some very good writing. I'm reminded of the best episodes of "The X-Files" when I watch "Fringe", specifically as it seems to be developing an overarching mythology. I like the presence of a mythology in "The X-Files", and I'm liking it in "Fringe".

Now, if we could just convince the powers that be in television production to give us more interesting series and less "reality" television. I realize that supposedly unscripted shows are cheaper to produce than traditional series television. But I'm not interested in seeing reality, or what passes for it in the world of television. There's enough of that out here in the real world. But I love a good story, well told, and more of that on television would be most welcome.

So, what are you watching on TV these days? Leave a comment and let me know.

And the controversy continues...

Since I wrote this on Friday, I've continued to think about the situation with Abercrombie and Fitch and it's CEO, Mike Jeffries. I know, I've been wasting time that could be spent on other, more productive, things. It's just that stuff like this bothers me.

I've been especially thinking about Jeffries's comment that A&F goes after "the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends."

You know who he means, don't you? He's going after the "richies" in "Pretty in Pink" (if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in awhile and don't quite remember who the richies were and what they stood for, go watch it again), the kids who feel entitled to pass through school and life on their good looks alone, who don't believe they actually have to study or work for their grades and their money because, "Dude who has time to study or work when we've, like, got all this partying to do."

Yeah. Starting to remember them, aren't you? Every high school has them, and every college, too. At least every one I've ever been exposed to.

At least, I'm not the only one who is still thinking about this. I ran across an L.A. Times column this morning that addresses this issue. Apparently some people are sending the clothes they bought for themselves or their teenagers back with the message that they won't be shopping at A&F again. Others are calling Jeffries comments about those who don't fit into his definition of beautiful (young, thin) "bullying".

Some people have also started a petition calling on A&F to start stocking larger sizes. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not generally in favor of boycotts, but in this case I think what is needed is for more people to stay to Abercrombie & Fitch, and to Jeffries, something along the lines of "I don't care if you start stocking every size imaginable, I will never, ever spend a dime in your stores again."

You see, the thing is, even if they start making and stocking all sizes, they've already stuck their foot in it and revealed their true feelings about those of us who aren't now and never have been "the cool kids". They might start marketing to a wider demographic, but they'll still be making the comments. They'll still be coming off as the haters they so clearly are. If they start selling larger-sized clothing, they'll be doing it for the money and the positive publicity, not because they've suddenly become more sensitive, caring people.

They would be doing it for the bottom line. And they might have to do it for the bottom line. According to the L.A. Times reporting, A&F has been underperforming for years, with stock prices down 20 percent since 2006 and one investments expert is quoted as saying that "the brand is probably ruined." The bloom is, apparently, off the rose, despite some of the comments I reported Friday from people who have called Jeffries a "brilliant visionary." Others, it seems, are starting to say, "Well, not so much."

Okay. I'm not going to spend any more time thinking about Abercrombie and Fitch or about Mike Jeffries. He's like the richies I was talking about earlier. He wants people to think about him, wants them to want to emulate him. Like them, he doesn't deserve that.

Music Sunday: The 1971 Edition

Last week, because I had been doing some research into the 1970s, I shared some of the music that came out the year I graduated high school. This week, since I'm still stuck in the Seventies in my research, I thought I'd skip back a few years from high school and share some of the music that came out in 1971, the year I graduated from junior high.

This is going to be tricky. I sat down and did a little research and started making a list of all the music that I really liked that came out in '71. Turns out, it's a long, long list. 1971 was a really good year for music, at least as far as I'm concerned. Oh, there were some clunkers and some schmaltz. If you're of that time, as I am, you'll remember "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and "Knock Three Times", both by Tony Orlando and Dawn, for example, which were omnipresent on the radio. But the good (or at least what I liked) far outweighed the bad.

What this means is that I'm going to have a difficult time choosing what to share here today.

A few songs will be eliminated simply because I've shared them here before: "Stairway to Heaven", by Led Zeppelin and "Behind Blue Eyes", by The Who (which I'm really tempted to share again anyway, because it is brilliant, but I won't) are just two of those. But that still leaves me with a long list of good music that I'd really like to share.

I think I need to start with Janis Joplin's version of "Me and Bobby McGee", even though I'm fairly sure I've shared it here before, too. This song, which was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, has been recorded by just about everyone in the music business over the years, but this is the definitive version, I think. It was recorded in 1970, shortly before Joplin died, but it wasn't released until 1971:



Another song from 1971 that I've always loved (and which I also might have shared before) is The Doors' "Riders on the Storm". Legend has it that it entered the Billboard Hot 100 on the day that Jim Morrison Died, July 3, 1971, and that it was the last song the four members of the band recorded together. I don't know how true any of that is. Either way, here it is:



In 1971, Elton John released the album "Madman Across the Water". It's a good album, but my favorite song among all the good songs it includes is "Tiny Dancer" which, incidentally, was part of "Almost Famous", a film I like a lot, too. Here is a live performance of "Tiny Dancer" from the year the song and the album were released:



Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" was a protest song that didn't sound like a protest song, musically speaking. It was reportedly inspired by police brutality witnessed by one of the song's writers, Reynaldo Benson, a member of The Four Tops, at an anti-war rally in Berkeley in 1969. Benson, Al Cleveland, and Gaye were credited with writing the song, which was named the fourth greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2004 and again in 2011. Here is a live performance of the song:



And here is another protest song, from what might be an unexpected source, Paul Revere and the Raiders. "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)", which was first recorded in 1959 by Marvin Rainwater as "The Pale Faced Indian" and was written by John D. Loudermilk, memorializes the "Trail of Tears", the forced relocation of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole peoples from Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama to Oklahoma after the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This song spent a week at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July, 1971:



Here, as a matter of historical interest and to show where the Raiders' song came from, is the Marvin Rainwater version:



This version didn't get much notice, but a 1968 cover by Don Fardon, who is English, managed to reach number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is, as you can see, very much like the later version by the Raiders, although some of the lyrics are different from both the earlier and later versions:



And, yes, that is what is known as a tangent. It's interesting, however, to see the evolution of what is essentially the same song through the years.

To bring it back to 1971, which was where we started, here is Led Zeppelin in a live performance of "Rock and Roll", which was released as a single in 1972 but was released on their fourth album in 1971:

Controversy sells?

You might remember, if you read here very often, that about a month ago, I wrote a post about how I disapprove of exclusivity. Among other things, I wrote that people who strive to belong to the most exclusive clubs, eat at the most exclusive restaurants, go to the most exclusive schools only do that to to "assert that they're better than others, are entitled to special stuff that others don't deserve, and are just more deserving than all but a few others they want to be associated with."

Well, if you do remember that, you aren't going to be surprised to read this post.

It seems that Abercrombie and Fitch and its CEO, Mike Jeffries, are in the news again over the company's marketing strategies. The clothing chain that markets to the presumably young and beautiful is no stranger to controversy after having been accused of (and sued for) being racist, sexist and ableist in hiring policies, and called down for selling things like women's t-shirts that carried messages such as, "Who needs brains when you have these?", is coming under fire again for its exclusionary marketing.

While the chain carries men's clothing in sizes XL and XXL, they do not sell women's clothing over size 10. A profile of Jeffries in the online magazine Salon in 2006 quoted him as saying "...we want to market to good-looking people. We don't market to anyone other than that" and that "A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."

How an almost 70-year-old man (he was 61 when he was interviewed for the Salon article) can be so blithely insulting toward anyone, especially any woman, who does not fit his conception of beautiful (which amounts to very young and very thin) is beyond me, but apparently he's comfortable with that. He reportedly even only wants "beautiful" people in his stores.

Not that his is the only company that uses these sorts of exclusionary tactics. In a report on ABC News, it was said that a number of upscale retailers only carry low-size, high-priced merchandise in order control the clientele they attract.

The thing that bothers me the most, though, I think, is not the fact of the racism and sexism and exclusivity that Abercrombie and Fitch seems so proud of. What bothers me even more are statements like that made by Robin Lewis, author of "The New Rules of Retail" in the ABC News story, where he called Jeffries a "brilliant visionary". This is basically saying that no matter what the company does, or the attitudes that Jeffries espouses, as long as the company keeps growing, keeps making more money, whatever it does is perfectly all right.

Really? You can be racist and sexist and ableist, but if you're rich that's fine?

Mr. Jeffries can do what he wants as long as his stockholders (A&F is a publicly traded company) approve, I suppose. But from where I'm sitting, he really looks like a jerk. Of course, I'm sure he doesn't care about my opinion. I'm old and fat and female, so in his universe I don't count for anything.

This is me, not giving a flying fig what he thinks, either.

When life consists of miscellaneous stuff...

Again, it's been a busy few days. So, I haven't dropped off the earth, I've just been doing stuff out here in the real world. This includes writing, CVP volunteer stuff, looking for work, and...well, so much stuff I can't even quite remember some of it.

I also had an ailing computer for a few hours yesterday, so couldn't get online until that got troubleshot? troubleshooted? Fixed, at any rate.

Yes, I know troubleshooted is not a word. I just thought it was funny and had to include it.

But, mostly I haven't been writing because I'm going through one of those pissed at the universe phases that I encounter occasionally, and I haven't wanted to subject you all to that. It's been a free-floating pissed-offedness for the most part, but there have been some foci to it as well, including the fallout from news out of the recent National Rifle Association meeting...not going to get into that at all because, well, for reasons.

There was also the news out of Cleveland. What the hell was that guy thinking, kidnapping and holding hostage three women, two of them teenagers at the beginning and one of them a friend of his daughter's. I'm not into the "let's all hate men" thing, but there are men in this world who just don't seem to have a freaking clue that they don't have special rights just because they have a...well, you know. I won't comment further on that, either.

On a related note, I read an item in the past week or so about a middle school that banned girls from wearing strapless gowns to graduation, or to the graduation dance, or something. Well, I can see that in principle, as I'm not sure that thirteen-year-old young women really need to be wearing strapless dresses, but that's just me. I'm old. But the reason the school district gave for the ban was something along the lines of "because it would be distracting to the boys." Excuse me, what? Are we still teaching young men that if they can't control their hormones, it's the girl's fault, and that it is the girls' responsibility to cover up so that the boys won't be distracted, or do something about that distraction. Really?

There's more. But I'm on a library computer at the moment and my allotted time to use it is about to run out. So, just let me say that the continuing dearth of jobs is also continuing to frustrate me as well. One thing I can't really complain about this time is my Facebook feed. People have mostly been behaving themselves this week. There have been a couple of exceptions, but those were easily hidden.

Additionally, I can't complain about my writing, which is going fairly well considering the mood I've been in. In fact, I've been finding this week that the only time I'm really happy and content is when I'm writing something.

So, maybe I should have made myself sit down and write posts every day. Maybe I would have been happier.

Oh, one thing I want to mention before I go for the day, considering that I write about movies here from time to time: I finally got to see "Argo" last weekend. Fabulous movie. I can see why it won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. And I do want to jump on the bandwagon of folks who thing that Ben Affleck got robbed by not being nominated as Best Director for his work on the film. The performances were wonderful, with special props to Affleck for starring as well as directing. It was especially interesting to watch the movie with a friend of mine who lived in Tehran for a time, up until just a couple of years before the events depicted in the film. She had a few quibbles with details, but it's Hollywood; they never get anything completely correct. But, even knowing the city and the culture and recognizing the fact that there were some inaccuracies, my friend still liked the film a lot.

If you haven't seen "Argo", please do. I'm pretty sure you won't be sorry you did.

Movie Monday: Sometimes they aren't so good...

Last night I watched a movie that wasn't very good, that didn't do well at the box office in its initial release, and that the critics hated when it came out.

But, it is a curiosity, for at least a couple of reasons, and I was curious about it. So, when I discovered that it was available on OnDemand, I had to watch it. I'm not sure I'm glad I did.

The film was "The Iron Petticoat", from 1956, directed by Ralph Thomas, written by Ben Hecht (who had his name taken off the film, or at least attempted to; he's back in the credits for showings on Turner Classic Movies), and starring Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope. Which was why I was so curious about it. I don't think I can imagine a more unlikely film pairing.

I only found out that the Hepburn and Hope had ever done a film together about a week ago, during a discussion about films with an SCA friend of mine. So, when I discovered it listed for viewing, I decided I had best watch it before it disappeared again.

As it turns out, it disappearing was not such a far-fetched idea. It got lousy reviews, did dismal box-office, and then was unavailable, at least in the United States, for over 50 years until a showing in 2012 on Turner Classic Movies (it was on their OnDemand list when I found it last night).

The film is meant to be a Cold War comedy, with Hepburn playing a Russian military pilot who flies her MiG to West Germany not because she is looking to defect but simply because she's had a bad day. An American Officer (Hope) is assigned to persuade her to defect. He takes her to London with him to accomplish this, but he is also going to the UK to see his very rich fiancee (played by Noelle Middleton; yeah, I've never heard of her before either). Predictably, complications ensue, including Soviet agents who are determined to capture Hepburn and take her back to Moscow to put her on trial for treason.

One of the problems with the film is that Hepburn's Russian accent is nearly unintelligible for the first half hour or so of the film, and merely bad after that. Forgive me. The woman was a great actress, but accents, or at least a Russian accent, was not one of her talents. The other huge problem of the film was the presence of Bob Hope. I'm not a huge fan, especially after what he did to the land on which a major movie ranch stood for years and years (namely, bought it as an investment, subdivided part of it for tract homes and left the rest to rot...but that's another post for another time). The thing is, what apparently started out as a good script got turned into a "typical Hope comedy", to quote a trivia item on IMDB's page for the movie.

Which is why Ben Hecht, the screenwriter, wanted his name off the movie. Hecht was also a journalist and playwright, and had a hand in not only writing for the screen but in fixing, without credit, the screenplays for some pretty famous films, including "Gone With the Wind". One of the films he worked on without credit, by the way, was "The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), which starred Tony Randall and Barbara Eden, and which you really should see because it is a great George Pal-produced and directed fantasy. Anyway, Hecht was not happy with what had been done to his screenplay and because Hepburn's role was reduced by half in the editing room. She reportedly wasn't happy about that either, and has been quoted as calling Hope "the biggest egomaniac" she had ever worked with.

So, I can't really recommend the film. On the other hand, it is a curiosity, and there were a few good lines. Still, by best recommendation would be to go see a good Katharine Hepburn movie. There are plenty to choose from.

Here, by the way, is the trailer for the film. I'm not sure why it is in black and white. The film was in color.

Music Sunday: The 1974 Edition

I've been researching in the 1970s the past few days, and so I thought it might be time for some '70s music. '70s music kind of has a bad reputation in some circles because it was the decade of disco. It almost seems like that should be capitalized. Decade of Disco. With some echoes in there, or something, maybe a little reverb. And I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of disco.

On the other hand, a lot of non-disco music also came out in the '70s. The music of that decade was at least a diverse as that of any other decade. And a lot of music came from the decade. So, I decided to focus on 1974, the year I graduated from high school.

Yes. I know. I'm old. Still...

The first song I want to share was out early in the year, but the album (remember those) it was on, "Grievous Angel", by Gram Parsons, came out several months after Parsons's death. Pity. This song, "Las Vegas" (sometimes billed as "Ooooo, Las Vegas"), was co-written by Parsons and British musician Ric Grech, who played bass with Blind Faith, among other acts. It's a really good song, at least in my opinion. I wish Gram Parsons had stayed around long enough to make more music. I didn't know this song when it came out, but I've loved it ever since the first time I heard it:



Also out in January of 1970 was Gordon Lightfoot's album "Sundown". The album and the title song both reached number one on the charts in the United States, as did the second single from the album, "Carefree Highway". Both songs are good, each different from one another in theme.

Here is a live performance of "Sundown" from 1974:



And here is "Carefree Highway". Completely different vibe:



The Eagles had an album out in 1974, "On the Border", which included such hits as "Already Gone" and "Best of My Love". But there's another song on the album that I like at lot. This live performance of "James Dean" comes from the band's performance at California Jam on April 6, 1974:



"Already Gone", the first release from the album, went to number 32 on the US charts and "Best of My Love" was the band's first number one single. "James Dean", on the other hand, which was the second single released from "On the Border", only made it to number 77.

So far, the songs I've shared today come from similar roots. Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" is farther down the road into a different part of the 70s music scene. From the album "Caribou", this is one of my favorite Elton John songs, not least because of the absolutely amazing live performance I saw of it at Dodger Stadium on October 26, 1975. When the song began, it was still light. But the song was long enough that night that by the time it ended the sun had gone down and it was completely dark. Then, just as the last chord faded out, the stadium lights all came on. It was beautiful. This clip is not from that show, but from a show at Wembley stadium in London in 1984. I tried to find a clip from the show I went to, but if it exists, I couldn't find it.



And now for a little novelty...Ringo Starr had an album come out in 1974, "Goodnight, Vienna". One of the songs from that album was "Only You (And You Alone)", a cover of a song from the 1950s. As a promotional clip, Starr sang the song on top of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, alongside a mock-up of a flying saucer and huge figures looking like Klaatu and the robot Gort from "The Day The Earth Stood Still". This came from the fact that the album cover recreated an iconic scene from that film. Finding this clip, which I didn't realize existed, tickles me because I can remember driving by on the freeway during that period and seeing the saucer and huge figures on the roof of the building, which had been put up as promotion for the album. Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s made for some trippy and unique experiences:



John Lennon also had a new album out in 1974, "Walls and Bridges". The song "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" was included, here in a live performance with Elton John:



For some reason, today's post has taken me most of the afternoon to put together. so I'll leave it at this for now. I might have more to share from the 1970s later on.