Adventures in moving...Nature's Own Alarm Clock

And...once again, it's been awhile since I posted.

I had thought that once I got the move accomplished, I would be back to blogging on a regular basis. I was, as it turns out, wrong.

It isn't that I haven't had things to say. Or time to say them. But, adjusting to being in a new place, getting settled in, and everything that entails is taking more mental and emotional energy than I expected it to.

And, it isn't that I'm not happy to be here. I'm very happy to be here. It's just...oh, I don't know. Different. Even though I've moved back to the general area where I grew up, it's taking some readjusting to my surroundings. To adjust to living with different people. Even though I know them, I haven't lived with them before, and the rhythms of life are different from those I'm used to.

I have made some progress in getting settled. I'm getting quite a bit of work done on my writing projects. I (finally) got to the library to get a library card and checked some books out. So, I'm feeling on pretty strong ground on those accounts.

And...speaking of ground, steady and not, one of the things that has thrown me for a bit of a loop is the fact that last week on Monday I was awakened at 6:25 a.m. by what I have come to think of as Nature's Own Alarm Clock, also known as an earthquake. It isn't the first time that has happened to me, goodness knows. I've been in several large quakes, albeit not always close to the epicenter of them. Growing up in Southern California and then living in Central California, there were plenty of quakes through the years. But quakes in the center of the state are not the same thing as quakes in Southern California.

This one, which you might have seen referred to in the media as the Shamrock Shake, since it happened on St. Patrick's Day, was close enough and big enough (at 4.4 magnitude) to wake me up from a deep sleep and, frankly, frightened the crap out of me. I think that's because it took me so by surprise. At any rate, since then my anxiety level has been a little higher - although that's getting a bit better now. There for a couple of days, though, I was jumping at every little noise. Ridiculous, I know, especially for someone who has always lived in earthquake country.

Although, for some reason, ever since the quake, I feel like I've been welcomed properly back to the area. So, you know, it doesn't have to do that again any time soon as far as I'm concerned.

At any rate, I'm not making any more predictions about when I'll be back to regular blogging. I hope that it will be sooner rather than later, so watch this space. There are some things that have been in the news that I really want to talk about. I also have some things to say about getting reacquainted with the old stomping ground and the things that have changed since I lived here before...and the things that have, amazingly, remained the same.

The cult - and culture - of popularity...

I really need for these "most popular" lists to just go away now. The gist of them always seems to be that just because something is popular, that it is necessarily worth of everyone's attention.

Well, no.

But, you're probably wondering what brought this tirade on. It's this article, from a site called Scribd, which got together with Parade magazine (which is sort of like the Reader's Digest of newspaper inserts) to find out what was the most read e-book in each state in the United States.

Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but I've never heard of most of these books. I've read exactly two of the books on the list - Prayers for the Dead, by Faye Kellerman, which is the most-read e-book in Connecticut; and Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, the most popular e-book in Wisconsin. I've also seen the film made from the most popular e-book in Missouri - that would be The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot. Also, I do recognize a good number of the authors' names on the list. But I have to admit that, just from the titles, I don't think most of those books would be very interesting to me.

The thing is, I don't see the usefulness of lists like this. I'm not interested in reading something just because everyone else is reading it. I want to read books that are of interest to me. Yeah, I might see something on this list, or on another "most popular" list, that I was not aware of, and read it, or see a movie, or listen to a piece of music, depending on the topic of the list. And that's fine. But I don't appreciate having something sold to me on the basis that I should be interested in it just because other people seem to be interested in it.

Maybe that's a flaw in my upbringing. I was raised to believe - and I do believe - that popularity does not equal worth. Take television programs, for example. I understand that a lot of people watch so-called "reality" shows - things like Survivor, The Bachelor, and the various competition shows. I have no interest in most of those. In fact, to be honest, I've never watched most of them.

I used to watch Big Brother. I think the concept is interesting as a sociological experiment, and so I tuned in for a couple of seasons. But, when it became clear that the emphasis of the competition was on seeing who could lie and deceive the most, and that this was seen as just "playing the game" and a good thing, I tuned out. It just got ugly. As far as I've been able to tell, the same is true on shows like Survivor. They make it look like lying, cheating, and being generally a rotten human being are acceptable ways of treating one's fellow human beings. I can't support that by watching.

But, these shows are popular and so are considered a good thing, when they clearly are part of the problem, culturally speaking. I really think US culture has gotten meaner partly due to the popularity of shows like this. And so, as far as I'm concerned, popular does not equal "good" or "valuable".

Now, I'm not saying that the books on the list I linked at the beginning of this post are not good or not valuable. Some of them might well be very good. But I am saying that the implication of such lists - that because something is popular, everyone should be equally interested in them - is a false premise. It's like saying that the music at the top of the Billboard charts is always "good" music simply because people are buying that music. This is also a false premise; people are often buying that music because it has been successfully marketed, and not because it has any intrinsic value.

Personally, I have a difficult time with the idea that I should like - and buy - Justin Timberlake's music, or Lady Gaga's music, or anyone else's music, just because other people do. Or that I should read the books on the linked list just because a lot of other people have read them. Or that I should go out to the theater and see 300: Rise of an Empire just because it topped the box office last week.

Okay. I'll stop kvetching now. But, really, I guess the overarching theme here is that you should go out and find what you like, rather than letting a "most-popular" list, or a best-seller list, or even a blogger like me, tell you what you should read or watch or listen to. In my case, I might make suggestions. I might even say, look, I think you should see this or read that or listen to the other. But you should also feel free to say, "Eh. That doesn't sound like something I'm interested in."

When I go to Boston, I'm going to wear trousers and not a skirt...

This is just insane. Insane, I tell you.

The highest court in Massachusetts has ruled that it is legal for people to take pictures looking up a person's clothes. The reasoning for this decision included that the women had no reasonable expectation of privacy because the individuals in the case were riding public transportation in Boston. Additionally, the court ruled that a crime had not been committed because those photographed were not nude or partially nude at the time the photos were taken.

Apparently the statutes under with the perpetrator was prosecuted were poorly written, and there is also talk that the laws will be changed. As far as I can see, that's too little too late, even if you accept the reasoning, which I don't. What's even worse is that the ruling was written by a woman. I'm left wondering if she would have felt the same way if she had been one of the women who had someone stick a cell phone up her skirt to take a picture of her. I also wonder if the reasoning would also hold if someone had taken their hand and reached up under women's skirts.

I think there is a growing idea among some people that a person has no expectation of privacy at all and in any manner when they are in public. As far as I'm concerned, this is a dangerous trend. This ruling takes that to an extreme in that it essentially says that it's fine if someone walks up to me and surreptitiously takes a photo of my underwear - or of my private parts if I don't happen to be wearing underwear. It also indicates to me that if someone does that to me and I don't like it, I don't have any recourse - if I caught them and kicked them in the teeth for doing it, I'd be the one to get in trouble. I'd get charged for battery, but they wouldn't get charged with assault (which does not require any touching) for doing something to me that I did not consent to. Because, you know, going out in public is not implicit consent for people to take photos of my private parts or the underwear covering them.

I'll be honest. I think this ruling is wrong-headed and disrespectful, and it makes me angry enough that I can't even think of what else to say about it. And so, I'll leave it at that, with this question: "Justice Botsford, how would you like it if someone walked into your courtroom, which is after all a public place, and took a photo of you under your robes? Would that be acceptable? Or would you get mad as hell and have the person arrested and taken away? I suspect you would not like it at all, so how can you read the law to say that it's all right if it happens to other women?"

Move accomplished...

So, okay. It's Monday. So, Movie Monday. And last night the Academy Awards were handed out. I watched the show, and thought it was okay - certainly an improvement over some past shows. And I was going to write about that.

But...I'm still sort of getting settled in after my move. I've still barely started unpacking. I've slept 8 hours last night (long for me), and I slept 11 hours Saturday night, the day of the move. So, I'm still in recovery mode after the past week, which was long and complicated and busy, busy, busy.

Not to mention that the weather on Saturday was awful. Riding in a 26-foot U-Haul truck, towing a car on a car-carrier is not fun when the wind is blowing and it's pouring down rain. Fortunately the driver, my now-ex-roommate's son, did a very good job at the wheel. Then, when we arrived at my new place, while it was not raining at first, it started pouring before we got everything inside. But, we did get everything inside eventually, although I was soaked to the skin by the time that happened. I was not the only one.

The good news is, it's supposed to be much warmer and drier for the rest of the week, so maybe I'll get everything settled and in its place within the next few days.

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to have a little lunch. It's past one and I'm getting hungry.

But, like I said, watch this space. I plan to be back more regularly going forward.

Getting closer to moving day...

The packing is almost done.

This is a minor miracle, considering that it is still six days until the move actually happens.

Oh, I still have things to do. Last-minute packing, doing the change-of-address thing at the post office. A trip to the Laundromat just before packing the last-minute things. Taking the last two books I have out of the library back. Washing down the walls in my bedroom. Taking the cable equipment down to UPS to send it back to the provider. But, for the most part, I've got things ready to go, and many of those last-minute things can't happen until Thursday or Friday.

I can spend some of that time checking out the job situation where I'm going. That's one of the things I most love about the Internet. I can do things like look for a job before the move is accomplished. However, I'm not actually applying for anything until I am physically in the new location. Yes, it is often weeks before you get a reply back when you send out of resume. But it isn't, sometimes, and I'd feel really stupid to get an e-mail or call back the next day, saying, "Can you come for an interview tomorrow?" So, the actual applications/resumes will have to wait.

But, I can say that I'm excited about the possibilities. There are actual jobs in my field where I'm moving. And, if something doesn't turn up right away - and I'm realistic enough to know that it might not - there's always tutoring. I'll be living within a few miles of a 4-year college and a 2-year community college. That means a lot of potential students. So, I will work on getting the word out that I tutor as soon as I arrive and get settled in. Which should take a day or two, considering that I don't have that much to unpack.

The only thing that's really bothering me about the move is that it's going to take a little while for me to get a library card. The library system there requires a piece of business mail as proof of address before issuing a card. But I don't really get that much business mail. I'm going to check to see if they'll accept someone vouching for me instead; I remember that when I was a kid and living with my family away from home for a few weeks due to my father's job, the library let me get a library card with a note from the people we were renting from. We'll see. The good news is, once I get the library card, the local library branch is apparently just a couple of blocks away from where I'll be living.

So - that's the latest update. T-minus six days and counting, with most of the packing already done and only a few last-minute things left to do. Blogging should resume more regularly as soon as I get moved and get the Wi-Fi there figured out. Which might be a bit of a chore, as my laptop is sometimes reluctant to talk to new-to-it systems.

Now, if YouTube would just start talking to my computer again. After a few days of behaving itself, normally, YouTube seems to be going through another round of changes or something. Which is why there is no Music Sunday again. I'm looking forward to getting back to those, and to Movie Monday, and regular blogging in general.

Update and report on progress...

Well, it's now ten days until moving day, nine days until the day the moving truck will be loaded, and eight days until all the packing has to be done.

I've been busy. Which is why I haven't been here. But, the packing is nearly done - I've just got CDs and DVDs left, plus my SCA garb. There's also the last-minute packing which will not be done until the last packing day - clothes, bedding, and kitchen stuff - but there's not really much of that, either, and shouldn't take more than an hour or two.

I've also got a few last minute things other than packing to take care of - change of address at the post office, get the cable equipment back to the cable company, take the last couple of books back to the library, and so forth - but all those things are only time-consuming, not difficult, and those will be taken care of next week.

And, also, there are some more things to throw out, but that can't even be done until Friday after the garbage has come and there is room in the cans again. The neighbors to the north moved recently and no one has moved in to their apartment, and so we can use their cans, too. Miss the neighbors, but having the extra trash capacity is a good thing.

I don't know if I mentioned it in my previous post, but I've also been looking online at the job possibilities where I'm relocating to, and I'm pleased with what I'm seeing - actual jobs in my field. I haven't started actually applying for anything, yet, of course, since I'm not there to go on interviews yet. But I've identified several possibilities and expect more to come up if those are filled by the time I get down there and get settled in and am ready to start looking for work seriously.

Oh, and my computer appears to be talking to YouTube again, so Music Sunday and Movie Monday will both be back soon, I hope.

Now it's time to go get some more packing done, but I wanted to post this update, since it's been a week since I've posted anything.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I know.

I said that I was going to be posting more regularly.

But, no. I didn't lie. Really.

Do you know how much time and energy it takes to get ready to move? Well, here's a hint: It takes a lot of both.

And, it isn't just the packing. It's all the other stuff that has to get done. Wrapping up stuff here, for example. I had a short writing job that I had to finish. And there's people to say good-bye to, and organizational ties to wrap up.

Which explains, I think, why I haven't been spending much time around here. And why I probably won't be for the next little while. I hope to look in from time to time, maybe give an update on how things are progressing.

Having said that, I do want to say that this move in a good thing. A very good thing, in fact. There are more jobs available where I'm moving. I like the weather better where I'm moving. I like the area where I'm going. Which makes sense. It's the area where I grew up. I still know people there. Not a lot, but enough.

Look at it this way. Once I'm moved and settled in (and I don't have that much stuff, so it shouldn't take me that long to get settled), I'll have lots of new things to write about, not least because I'm moving to the second-largest city in the United States. That means there are places to go, things to see, stories to tell.

But, for now, back to the sorting and packing.

Being a storyteller isn't always an easy thing, and here's one reason why...

I just happened onto the most interesting question. At least, from my point of view as a writer, I find it fascinating. Of course, it's controversial. All the best questions are.

The question is this: What country should fictional villains be from?

Perhaps it could also be asked as, What ethnic group should fictional villains be from, because the dilemma comes up in that form from time to time as well.

You know how it goes. Someone writes a book or makes a movie or an episode of a TV series, and someone gets bent out of shape because the bad guy is obviously from a specific nation or appears to be of a particular ethnic background, and someone starts shouting about stereotyping and bigotry. If the villain is specifically referred to as being from Mexico, some people get upset about that. Or the bad guy in a movie appears to be from an Arab background, other people start jumping up and down and accusing everyone involved of being both racist and prejudiced with regard to religion.

And, honestly, it isn't just nationality and ethnic groups. I've heard of cases where a fictional bad guy (person?) is a woman, and some people start complaining about sexism. Or the villain is referred to as or appears to be gay, and there are claims of homophobia.

See? This is a question that can get quite complicated. This is especially true because there is the potential for cries of "foul" no matter how you, as a writer or a filmmaker, identify your villain. Even the white guys can get mad, if you make a white male the bad guy. Talk about a no-win situation.

I wonder if there would be an outcry if the "bad guy" turned out to be a computer.

Oh,, wait. That happened. Remember "2001: A Space Odyssey"? I don't recall that anyone got that upset that HAL turned out to be homicidal, but I might just not be reading the right web sites.

I think the big problem here is that this dilemma is the Kobayashi Maru of writing/storytelling dilemmas. For those of you who are not "Star Trek" fans, Kobayashi Maru is a test of character given to Starfleet cadets. It posits what turns out to be essentially a no-win situation. Similarly, the writer cannot win in assigning a nationality or an ethnic background to their villain.

It isn't as big a dilemma for the writer. The writer can choose, if he or she wishes, to not write anything about the villain's nationality, ethnicity, or religion. Not so the filmmaker - whoever plays the villain will look like somebody, whether a specific background is intended or not.

I suppose that one can cut the knot of this question and say that this wouldn't be a problem if people would quit being so sensitive about things like this. Unfortunately, realistically, that isn't going to happen.

The realistic solution, I suppose, is to either stay away from as much identification of nationality or ethnicity as possible with regard to the villain, or else just make the villain whatever he or she must be to serve the story and just not worry about the inevitable fallout.

I know. I'm avoiding the real question, as originally stated. But that's part of the Kobayashi Maru. You can treat the issue as a no-win situation, or you can redefine the question.

I choose to redefine the question by saying that you don't have to search for a "safe" nationality for the villain. You can skirt the question, or you can just do what you're going to do with the understanding that someone might give you grief for it. Personally, I prefer telling the story without the villain having to be any specific nationality or ethnicity. But if you're writing a story in which that is integral to the plot, you can't do that. And in that case, you have to understand that there very well might be questions raised about why you made the storytelling choices you did, that you had to make your villain from such a specific background.

No, really. Does your villain really have to be black? Or white? Or Asian? Or European? Or male? Or female? Or gay? Or straight? Why?

And, honestly, if you can't take those questions, and if you don't have good answers for them, maybe you shouldn't be a writer.

One less place to buy a smoke...

I wonder if this is the beginning of a trend.

News reports, like this one from MSN, are reporting that the drugstore chain CVS will stop selling tobacco products by October. This is kind of a big thing, considering that it is reported that CVS, which is the second-largest drugstore chain in the United States, will lose around $2 billion dollars in revenue by dropping these products. That's a lot of cash any way you look at it.

CVS isn't the first retailer to stop selling cigars, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco; Target stores do not sell them. However, Walgreen's, the nation's biggest drugstore chain, still sells them, as does Wal-Mart, which also contains pharmacies in its stores.

Spokesmen for CVS have said that the move to drop tobacco products from its offerings is part of a move to work with doctors and hospitals more closely to improve its customers' health. This is in line with the trend in recent years to install clinics right in drugstores that both CVS and Walgreen's have joined. These clinics do things like offer immunizations and help their customers manage chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.

I think this is an interesting move, but I wonder if there is going to be any push-back from the tobacco industry. It isn't as if that $2 billion dollars worth of cigarettes and other tobacco products is going to put much of a dent in the earnings of tobacco companies - according to the article linked above, about $107.7 billion dollars worth of tobacco products are sold in the United States every year. This, even though only about 18 percent of the nation's population are now smokers, down from close to half of all Americans who smoked or chewed in 1970. Still, the tobacco industry has been fairly aggressive in the past about asserting its rights and about denying that there is anything unhealthy about its products. So, it will be interesting to watch how this unfolds.

I have to say, I suppose, as a matter of full disclosure, that I am not a smoker and I never have been, and that I don't really understand the appeal of sucking hot smoke into one's lungs. It isn't something that makes any sense to me at all. Even though I grew up with a father who smoked, I was never even tempted to try it. And I was never tempted when, in junior high and high school, a lot of my friends smoked. Which, of course, means that I also don't understand the militant non-smokers who seem to believe that smoking should never be shown in entertainment because, OMG, if the kiddies see it, they're going to want to try it. This wasn't my experience at all.

So, I don't see the CVS move as any sort of problem. And, you know, it isn't as if the retailer has any sort of obligation to carry a product - tobacco or anything else - if it doesn't want to. It isn't as if anyone who smokes is going to be denied access to their cigarettes because CVS will stop selling them. And, it does seem sort of incongruous for a business that is based around health care to sell something that, when used correctly, is harmful to one's health and to the health of those around them.

More hiccups...

So...I had this whole post mapped out. It was to include some clips from YouTube. Which doesn't seem to be working for me today. Figures, considering how things have been going around here lately.

At any rate...I won't be doing that post. Not tonight, anyway. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

There are days when I hate technology.

A slight change of schedule, and a little social commentary...

I know that today is supposed to be Movie Monday.

However, I think the only proper subject for any post about film today is Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who died yesterday at age 46. I can't do that yet. Hoffman was one of my favorite actors, and while I'm past the denial phase I've pretty much moved on to anger about his death. Pisses me right off that something like that could happen to such a talented individual. His career, which was much, much too short, deserves a thorough retrospective. I don't think I can stand to do that yet. Yes, I'm that much of a fan of his work. And so, I'm putting off Movie Monday for a day or two.

Anyway, there are other things for me to be angry about, things that won't make me sad and miserable on top of my anger, and so instead today, I'm going to write about Super Bowl ads, and specifically about the Coca-Cola ad that has a few very vocal people so up in arms. This ad, in fact:



Apparently, there are people who are angry that Coke had the gall (as they see it) to make an ad in which the song "America the Beautiful" is sung in other languages than English. Something about it being "un-American" to do that, or something. Here's a liberal reaction to the angry reaction, from the politicsusa.com website.

I have a couple of things to point out to those who were disturbed by the ad. First of all, look at a map. "America" does not equal the United States. If you do look at a map, you'll see that there is North America and there is South America. Covers a lot of territory, all of it "America" and a lot of languages spoken. Second, those of us who live in the United States come from a lot of different places and from a diversity of language backgrounds, and people who come here to live don't forget their native tongues just because they learn English when they come to live here, and sometimes they even use those languages even though they live here. This is not a sin. Third, Coca-Cola is trying to sell a product, not "Balkanize" the nation, as Allen West wrote on his blog this morning. He seems to think that because some people used different languages in a commercial, Coca-Cola is advocating that no one who comes to this country to live should ever learn English and that each culture group should keep to itself with some sort of an "us versus them" attitude.

I don't know what ad Allen West watched yesterday, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't the one I saw posted on YouTube (and just about everywhere else) this morning. But, as people like West to do on a fairly regular basis these days, he is reading things into the ad that just aren't there. And, honestly, I'd say that West and his comrades are the ones doing more than anyone to Balkanize the United States, by asserting that they themselves are the only "real" Americans and then going out of their way to marginalize and "other" every group they don't like: the poor, immigrants, gays, non-Christians, and anyone else who doesn't pass their political and social litmus tests.

You know, it kind of reminds me of the reactions to this, in 1968:



And this, in 1969:



There was a fairly huge outcry against both of these performances of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the time by those who seemed to feel that there is only One Correct Way to honor the United States. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a bunch of crap. Whether some people like it or not, we are a huge and diverse nation, and "one size fits all" usually ends up not fitting anyone very well.

Personally, I enjoyed John Scalzi's take on the current controversy, which I hope you will read, and which includes some historical context for "America the Beautiful".

I don't know. I just have a difficult time understanding why some people get so exercised about things that really are trivial. Coca-Cola wasn't trying to be political. They were just trying to sell their product, and almost anyone who knows anything about advertising will tell you that getting political is generally going to upset more people than it is going to pull in to buy whatever it is that is being advertising. That's Coca-Cola's agenda - selling soft drinks - nothing more and nothing less.

I just wish Allen West and the others who seem to feel compelled to read political motives into everything need to lighten up a little bit and understand that not everything is a conspiracy against them and their particular political agenda.

Music Sunday: The "I've been off reading music books" edition

So.

Due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances, I was mostly away from Music Sunday for a couple of weeks. But, I'm back, and in the meantime I've been reading books about music.

No, really. Since the middle of January I've read four music-related books and am now working my way through the fifth. The ones I've finished reading are:

1) 27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, by Howard Sounes (2013, Da Capo Press; 359 pages)
2) Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley (2011, Hyperion; 765 pages)
3) Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1965 Tour that Changed the World, by Larry Kane (2003, Running Press; 272 pages)
4) Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, by Eric Burdon with J. Marshall Craig (2001, Thunder's Mouth Press; 326 pages)

And right now I'm reading Beatles vs. Stones, by John McMillian (2013, Simon and Schuster; 304 pages).

These are all good books, although I suspect that Sounes just wrote 27 so that he could write about Amy Winehouse. Still, he does a good job covering the lives and deaths of the other 27 Club members that he highlights. Riley's book is long, but it is comprehensive, perhaps a little too comprehensive in its detail about recording sessions, but that is a minor quibble. I very much liked the way that Riley seemed to go out of his way to not forgive the times that Lennon acted like an ass, but also gave context as to why he might have been acting that way and also related that Lennon also had times when he was kind and generous and thoughtful. I've read other biographies of Lennon and have found that some writers either try to make him a saint or make him a demon when in fact he seems to have been a very complicated man. Kane's book was more historical in nature and, despite the title, covers both the 1964 and 1965 American tours (he was the only American journalist who traveled with the band the full length of both tours). He also goes out of his way to show that the members of the Beatles were full human beings rather than cutout cardboard figures. He didn't try to whitewash flaws out of existence, but he didn't try to portray any of them, or the support staff who toured with them, as completely flawed. And Burdon's memoir...well, it must have been good, because I more or less read it in one sitting. It seems to jump around in time a lot, but that is a minor quibble. I like that he doesn't approach his life the way some rock stars do, trying to play down the adventures and misadventures of their lives, but plainly says, "these are the things I did, and I might regret some of them now but I'm not going to deny them at this point."

The book I'm reading now, Beatles vs. Stones, is more academic in tone, but that's to be expected since McMillian is an historian and an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. So far (and I'm on page 109 at the moment) it seems to me he's leaning more toward being as Stones fan than a Beatles fan even though he declines in his introduction to say which band he favors although he admits that he does have "a preference for one group over the other" (p. 5).

At any rate, these books highlight the lives of people who have made some classic music, and since it is Music Sunday, of course I'm going to share some if it with you. I will say that I have probably shared some of these songs before, but all these people have made music that stands up (I think) to repeated listenings.

But, I'm going to start out with something I know I haven't share before, because I didn't know it existed until a couple of days ago. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s probably knows the Three Dog Night version of Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not To Come". That 1970 cover went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. But the first recording of the song was by Eric Burdon and the Animals in 1966, although it was never released as a single and ended up on the 1967 album "Eric is Here", and the band playing behind Burdon is not the Animals, but the Horace Ott Orchestra. This original version is edgier than the more commercial-sounding Three Dog Night version:



Here's a live performance of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" from Burdon and the Animals at Wembley Empire Pool at the New Musical Express poll winners' concert on April 11, 1965:



I found a clip of the Beatles singing "All My Loving" at the Hollywood Bowl concert on their 1964 tour of the United States. This show took place on my 8th birthday, I lived in Southern California at the time, and even at the age of 8 I was very bitter that I didn't get to go to the concert:



One of the notable details in this early clip of a live Rolling Stones performance of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is that there look to have been a lot more males in the audience than in audiences for the Beatles' shows. And, if that young gentleman in the audience shown near the end of the song is any indication, some of them were as emotional about their favorite band as the girls were. This was the first single by the Rolling stones to go to number 1 in the United States:



Jim Morrison was not only a singer, but a poet as well. His poetry has gotten mixed reviews over the years, but I quite like some of the things he wrote. A few years after Morrison's death, the rest of the Doors got together and put some of his recorded poetry on record along with music. This cut from the resulting album, "American Prayer" (released 1978, with the spoken word parts recorded in 1969 and 1970), called "Stoned Immaculate", shows a crossover between what the Doors recorded as a band and what Morrison was doing with the written word:



Since I'm running out of room for today's post, I'll just end with this, my favorite Janis Joplin song. Don't get me wrong; I like all of her work. However, this song just seems...perfect. So, here is Janis, and "Mercedes Benz", from the album "Pearl" (1971):

On second thought...

I posted earlier that I didn't have much to say after a busy day.

I've had second thoughts about that, because there's something that is bothering me a lot the past few days.

In the past week, maybe week and a half, I've read not one but two books that I checked out of the library that both had the same problem - someone who checked them out before me felt the need to go through and edit the text of the books.

Now, I can sympathize with this urge. I've noticed in the past, oh, five or ten years that books, including some published by very big mainstream publishing houses, seem not to have the editing and proofreading attention that they should have. Typographical errors abound, weird grammatical constructions that I would have thought would be eliminated in proofreading have become more common, and the books just generally don't seem as professionally presented as they used to be. And as they should be, considering what the publishing houses charge for their product these days.

However, and above and beyond the fact that library books are not the property of the people reading them and the readers should therefore not write in them, whoever did the home "editing" in these two books clearly had no idea what they were doing. Not only that, they had no idea what they were doing in the very same way in both cases. If it weren't for the fact that these two books were in different subject areas - one was about the coming of age of the Baby Boomers, and the other was a memoir by singer Eric Burdon - and that they were from two different libraries in two different counties (I picked up one in a local branch and got the other through interlibrary loan), I would suspect that the same person was responsible for the markings in both books.

Whoever did it, they had issues with punctuation. There were commas crossed out, other commas added, and some commas replaced by semicolons. And none of the alterations made any grammatical sense at all. I'm not talking about the dispute over the Oxford comma here. My roommate kept laughing at me because I kept complaining this free-form editing and threatening to throw the books against the wall. In the case of the Baby Boomer book, I got so frustrated at one point that if I hadn't been close to the end of the book I probably would have just given up and returned it to the library before I finished it. It wasn't really that good a book, anyway.

I guess all of this is a long and roundabout way of saying that I don't care what you do with the books you own. I write in my own books all the time (as I think I've mentioned here before); that's my way of having a dialogue with the book and the writer. But, please, please, please...don't write in library books.

That's what God invented sticky-notes for, isn't it?

Updating...

Not much to say, except that home internet issues have been resolved, and so I should be able to post more regularly again.

I'll especially be glad to be back to Music Sunday and Movie Monday.

Really not much else to say today, except that it's been a really busy day today, and so I have no idea what's going on in the world and so have nothing much to say about any of it.

*Sigh*...

By way of explanation...I've got a lot on my plate right now (and, oh, how I hate that phrase, but it's the best way I can think of to say it right now), and so I've been away for a bit. This may continue for awhile. So, not seeing a daily post here right now is just a sign that I'm doing other things. I hope things calm down soon and I can get back here on a daily basis.

Probably a good thing I can't write very day right now, though. Most of what I would be writing would be me in rant mode.

Movie Monday: Short and sweet...and funny

I'm having a really crappy day today. In fact, I've had a really crappy few days, which is why I haven't been around here.

Since it's Movie Monday, I decided I needed to see something funny. This clip, from "What's Up, Doc?" (1972) is really, really funny:




"What's Up, Doc?", which was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starred Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal and, in her first screen role, Madeline Kahn. It is an old-fashioned screwball comedy about musical rocks, a convention of musicologists, mistaken identities, and all manner of silliness. It was the third highest-grossing film in the US in 1972. The writing is top-notch, which is why it earned the 1973 Writers Guild of America award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen.

The film doesn't seem to be around much any more, but it should be. If you get a chance, you really should see it.

Some thoughts on current reading and current events...

As I mentioned here on Sunday in my Music Sunday post, I am currently reading - plowing my way through, really - a biography of John Lennon (Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley [2011, Hyperion; 765 pages]). It's an interesting and well-written book, but it's long. Very, very long. And, because I'm emotionally invested in it - I've been a Beatles fan for decades and, for all his flaws as a human being, a fan of Lennon and his work, I sometimes have to just stop reading for a while and digest what I've read and prepare myself to go back for the next bit - it is taking me some time to get through the thing.

Earlier this morning, I was reading a portion of the book where the author was writing about the time right after the Beatles broke up, about how the band had become by then a symbol of something larger than just a collection of four very talented musicians, and about how fans at the time were so unwilling to let go of the possibility of a reunion. If you were around during those years, between the break-up and when John Lennon was murdered, you know that there was always some rumor or another that the Beatles were going to get back together, either for the long term or for at least a one-off show. Of course, the reunion never came, despite occasional offers of huge amounts of money to do so. There were a number of collaborations by various configurations of the band's members through the years. The closest any kind of reunion ever came to happening, however, was on Ringo Starr's third solo album, "Ringo" (1973), on which the other three Beatles appear in various places, but never all together on the same song.

Even as a fan of the band, I never was really that enthusiastic about a reunion. It always seemed to me that it just wouldn't be the same as it had been, and it seemed kind of pointless. There had been the Beatles, and then there wasn't any more, and that was okay because all four men were doing other things. That's just the way the world works. It would have been nice if the band had stayed together, but since they didn't, I thought, it was time for everybody, fans included, to move on to the new reality.

Except maybe not so much.

I saw an item online a couple of days ago which said that the two remaining Beatles will be performing on the Grammy awards show, which will be broadcast on January 26. The occasion is the awarding of the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award to The Beatles. None of the items I've seen - and I checked around the Internet to make sure I wasn't imagining that first item and that it wasn't just a rumor - have even said whether Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will be performing together, just that they will both be performing. Still, when I saw the notice, I went from zero to "Oh, my god, I have to watch that" in about a nanosecond. This, even though I hadn't previously given a thought to watching the show at all. The Grammys, to be honest, have not been a viewing priority for me in years.

Apparently, a reunion of the remaining Beatles is something I've wanted to see more than I realized.

Or, maybe, I'm just getting old and nostalgic. I'm not really sure what the deal is. All I know is, I do want to see that. That, and I hope that the people who put on the Grammys show don't screw it up.

A little good ice skating can brighten up your whole day...

I had several things I was going to write about today. And it would have probably turned into a rant, since I'm having that kind of a day today - too much to do, not enough time to do all of it, and some crappy things in the news.

And then I found this on my Facebook feed. And it made me smile, and I don't feel quite so cranky now. So, instead of going negative here today, I choose to go positive and leave this here for you to watch and leave it at that for the day:



That was Jason Brown, on Sunday at the 2014 US Figure Skating Championships. He came second to Jeremy Abbott in the competition, which means that he's going to be going to the Olympics next month. At age 19, that's not a bad outcome.

Movie Monday: The "Gotta See Movies" Edition

I found a really nifty book at the library the other day, "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Jay Schneider. This particular copy is the 5th anniversary edition, which is, according to Wikipedia, actually the 3rd edition (yeah, it was confusing for me, too), published by Quintessence books in 2008. There are updated editions, the most recent being the 5th edition, published in 2012. It would be interesting to get hold of that and see what's been added since the edition my library has. But, you know, when you're dependent on the library for books, as I am, you learn to work with what you've got.

At any rate, it's a fun book, not necessarily the kind you read straight through (although you can), and certainly not the kind you tote around with you in the print edition (this edition is 960 pages and weighs a lot). But, you can dip into it if you're looking for a good movie to watch, and you can use it as a reference to see if the movies you like best made the list. Or, you can do as I did and sit down and count how many of the listed movies you've already seen.

I won't list all the films on the list that I've seen, because it turns out that I've seen precisely 221 of them, starting on the first movie included(they're listed chronologically), Georges Melies 1902 classic "A Trip to the Moon", and ending with Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" (2006). That's not the last movie listed in this edition; that distinction belongs to 2007's "The Atonement", which I have not seen.

This is not necessarily a "best of" list, at least as far as I'm concerned; certainly, there are films that I've seen on the list that are not among my favorites: 1997's "Titanic"; "The Rapture", from 1991; "Drugstore Cowboy", from 1989; "The Princess Bride" and "Moonstruck", both from 1987; 1984's "The Natural"; "The Sting", from 1973. You'll notice that there are Academy Award winners and nominees among those. "Titanic", "Moonstruck", and "The Sting" were all nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards; "Titanic" and "The Sting" both won the Best Picture Oscar, and while "Moonstruck" didn't win Best Picture, it did win several awards, including Best Actress for Cher. Additionally, "The Princess Bride" has become a cult favorite. I thought others on the list that I've seen were very well-made films, but I didn't personally like them for specific reasons. Hayao Miyazaki's anime classic "Spirited Away" (2001) and Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" (1980) are among those. "Spirited Away" bothered me for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on, even today; it was beautiful but I found it very disturbing. I don't like boxing, so "Raging Bull" wasn't really my cup of tea.

But, some of my favorite films are also on the list. Starting with the silents, "The Unknown" (1927) and "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) are both on the list. So is Dreyer's "Vampyr" (1932), which is one of the most spookily atmospheric films I've ever seen. "King Kong" (1933), "Casablanca" (1942), "Double Indemnity" (1944), "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947), and "White Heat" (1949) are all there, too. So are "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), "Goldfinger" (1964), "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), "Harold and Maude" (1971), "The Godfather" (1972), "Chinatown" (1974), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), and a whole lot of other films I love. All three "Star Wars" films made the list, and so did all three installments of "Lord of the Rings".

One of the cool things about the book is that it (or at least the edition I'm looking at) has a checklist of all the films included at the front of the book, so you can keep track as you see films on the list. This is appropriate; just since I checked the book out of the library, I've seen three films on the list that I hadn't seen previously - 1949's "The Third Man", directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles, the Lana Turner/John Garfield noir classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), and Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948), which starred James Stewart, John Dall, and Farley Granger. "Rope" was especially interesting. It is an experimental film that Hitchcock filmed in long takes and then edited to appear as if nearly the whole film was done in one long take. Based partly on the Leopold and Loeb murder case from 1924, the mystery isn't much of a mystery - it's more a case of whether or not the murderers will be found out - and the acting isn't always that great, but it is nonetheless fascinating for the techniques that Hitchcock used to make the film.

Well, since I've seen 221 of the films listed in the book, I guess that means I've got 780 left to go. This is not to say that I plan to plow through the whole book and see every movie listed. I just can't see any reason why I'd be interested in seeing "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965) or "The Evil Dead" (1982). And as many times I've tried to sit through "Blade Runner" (1982), I've fallen asleep that many times, despite the fact that I'm definitely a Harrison Ford fan and I love science fiction. Still, this book is a good place to find suggestions if you're looking for a good movie to watch.

It is also a good place to discover film trivia. I didn't know until I started looking through this book, for example, that the first sound film in Britain was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. I also didn't realize that artist Salvador Dali was involved for a time in writing screenplays in collaboration with Luis Bunuel. And there's a lot more information where that came from.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the first "must see" film listed in "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" is "A Trip to the Moon". As it turns out, the full film is available on You Tube. This print is just under 13 minutes long (and its length can differ depending on projection speed), which doesn't seem like much to the modern viewer, but when you think that this was made at the dawn of filmmaking ("A Trip to the Moon" was made just six years after the first public exhibition of motion pictures) and that even at the time it was made, most films were not more than two or three minutes long, it becomes clearer how ground-breaking this film is:



All I can say is, try to find this book if you love films. And then, go watch a movie.

Music Sunday: The White Album Edition

I've been spending time lately reading a biography of John Lennon ("Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life", by Tim Riley [2011, Hyperion; 765 pages]). One of the interesting things about the book is that Riley goes into considerable detail regarding the recording process for each album The Beatles recorded. Last night, I reached the part of the book where he writes about the recording of "The Beatles", usually called the White Album.

I have interesting memories of the time the White Album came out. It was 1968, and I was in junior high. I had a quite permissive gym teacher, and she allowed us to bring records from home and play them during PE class whenever we had class in the gym (which seemed like it was most of the time), and one of my friends in the class always brought the White Album, and we listened to it a lot. But I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with that album - I love some of the songs, and I really dislike some of the others. The less said about the songs I don't like, the better, but I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the songs I really like from the album for today's Music Sunday.

The White Album was the ninth studio album the band produced, and things were beginning to fray a bit at the edges. The members of the band were not necessarily getting along very well; in fact Ringo Starr left for awhile, there was a certain amount of bickering over what would and would not be included on the album, and many of the songs did not include participation by all the members of the band. Additionally, producer George Martin took a vacation during the middle of recording, leaving a young and inexperienced record company employee with a note to "feel free to attend" the band's recording sessions if he wanted to. That turned out not to be a bad thing, however, and in the end Lennon insisted that the young producer get a credit on the album.

Critical reaction was mixed when the White Album first came out. Some critics were not happy with the band's use of satire and parody in the songs, while others pointed out where Lennon's and McCartney's songwriting had improved and approved of their "back to basics" approach rather than the technical pyrotechnics they used on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The band took it's lumps politically, from both ends of the political spectrum. The right wing accused the band of being "pro-Soviet" because of their inclusion of "Back in the USSR", while the left derided "Revolution 1" as a "betrayal", although by the time the band recorded the single version of the song, Lennon seemed to have altered his position about using violence as a tactic and changed the lyric to say "but when you talk about destruction you can count me out" with an addition of "in" at the end of the line after "out". In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine much later, Lennon explained that while his own personal preference was to not use violence, in some cases he didn't really know what he'd do.

Personally, I like the single version of "Revolution" to "Revolution 1" on the album. The album version is slower, sort of lazy and loopy and not really sounding like anyone wants to get up long enough to revolt against anything:



The single version, however, is faster, more energetic, and sounds like the band might actually be planning to participate in a revolution of some kind, even though they're still not sure if they want it to be a violent revolt:



I believe, but am not absolutely sure, that the clip above is the promotional clip recorded by the band in September 1968 and seen first in the United States on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" on October 13, 1968.

"Blackbird" is an example of how the members of the band were, in some cases doing their own things on the White Album. This song is just McCartney, his guitar, and an overdub of birdsong:



I like this version of "Blackbird", of course, but one of the loveliest things I have ever heard is a live a capella version by Crosby, Stills and Nash when I saw them in concert once.

One of the simplest songs on the White Album is "Mother Nature's Son", another McCartney composition. He has been quoted as saying that it was inspired by the time he spent in India with the other Beatles:



Something that always takes me by surprise is that "Helter Skelter" is also a McCartney composition, and that it is considered to be an early manifestation of heavy metal music. Well, yes, it sounds like it. But, from McCartney? That's surprising to me for some reason:



Personally, I've always been fond of this cover of "Helter Skelter", by U2, which appears at the beginning of their concert film, "Rattle and Hum":



Much quieter is George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". This song is notable in that it isn't any one of the Beatles who plays lead guitar on the song, but by Eric Clapton: