Tomorrow's matinee tonight

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This looks like a job... for Superman!



Kee-reist, Clark---why don't you just announce it to all of Metropolis on the electric radio?

This is the third Superman feature released by Fleischer Studios, and it's some pretty weak sauce compared with most in the series. One thing that's odd is that it's really light on dialog; odd because the Fleischers usually give us a heaping helping of unhinged villains chewing up the scenery with their turgid threats and declamations. Here, after seeing a headline about the "largest single shipment of gold ever attempted" on a flashy, coal-fired streamline deco passenger train (?!), we are on our own for most of the feature. Not that it's very challenging to decode, but these cartoons generally spell things out very explicitly for the juvenile target audience. Why has it become a runaway train, for example, instead of just rolling to a stop or---more plausibly---Lois taking over the controls? She's a skilled pilot, after all, as we learned in episode 1. (She also has no problem handling a Tommy gun here.)

The scenery and action are beautifully rendered, as we would expect from the Fleischers. But the physics are mostly awful, especially where Superman is manhandling the train to keep it off the floor of the gorge. Usually, one of the best things about this series is the way the animators convey a sense of mass and kinetic energy through The Man Of Steel's interaction with objects. So even in this weak episode, they do come through for us in the scenes where Superman struggles to pull the train uphill. The sound effects of the train axles help to sell the illusion.

It's fortunate for this gang of gold rustlers that railroad rights-of-way were so wide and drivable in the early 1940s and were so accessible from any stretch of highway. I love the scene where, although the teargas seems to be getting the best of our hero, one of the bad guys panics and just chucks the whole crate of grenades at once. Something else the kids and I used to laugh at: the scenes where Superman pulls the train toward the camera and gets his crotch all up in the viewer's grille. This is not the only episode in which Fleischer animators used that visual point of reference, either.

One throwaway animation effect that looks quite difficult to have rendered is the guard's shadow moving on the newspaper front page starting at about 1:39. Also, at about 7:55 we get a nice architectural view of the Depression-era "government mint" complex, but I wonder why the monumental inscription on the arch faces the building interior.

Billion Dollar Limited (1942, "Superman" cartoon by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures; Myron Waldman and Frank Endres, animators; Dave Fleischer, director), via YouTube, a work in the public domain embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Purfuit of Happineff

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There's a reason behind the neglect of my personal writing here over the past month or two: I've been absorbed in the "endgame" of editing (and designing and laying out) a book on the topic of construction management for a professional associate. Just between us girls, this work has taken over twice the amount of hours I'd expected based on the author's original proposal, and I'd estimate that the task has probably been three or more times the original anticipated difficulty.

I've stuck with this forlorn task for reasons that I need not go into here except to say that I may see more financial potential in the project than the author actually does.

A few weeks ago I encountered an event horizon, so to speak, marking the beginning of this publishing endgame. Specifically, it was a more or less final definition of the project scope (which is ordinarily the first order of business on a publishing job). So now I'm pushing the issue pretty hard and have declared myself to be in control of the final schedule. At the moment I'm dealing with a few last-minute efforts by the author to "creep the scope" of the editing task too far for my energy to endure. So while there is still some uncertainty remaining with the closeout, I am within no more than a few weeks of being done.

At that time, I will be free to indulge in my own personal Purfoot of Happineff to the full extent I wish. That, of course, includes tending to that garden of earthly delights you know as Fifty50.



Click here for provenance of the audio recording. The clip embedded here also includes a candid recording of the true story of General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, which addresses another seminal event in the colonies' struggle for independence from those British Imperialists!

Stars and stripes

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A few years ago while drifting into sleep on a Sunday night, I had an aesthetic experience with a John Philip Sousa march. Our FM public radio station used to run a show called Pipe Dreams, which featured a fairly wide range of music as performed on genuine pipe organs. (In its effort to make WILL-FM "even better," the program was eliminated 2 years ago and replaced with the same syndicated (i.e., simulated) classical music programming that fills about 18 hours of their 24-hour daily schedule.)

Anyway, that evening on Pipe Dreams was presented a rendition of Sousa's iconic "Stars and Stripes Forever," zestily pounded out on a major league, one-off concert pipe organ. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to retain either the organist's name or any information about his mighty instrument into the next day's waking world. But my mind was in a peculiarly receptive state between waking and sleeping, and the performance enthralled me.

I had enjoyed playing alto and tenor saxophone parts, both first and second, on this ditty in high school because most of the other instruments (especially the piccolo) were doing all the hard work. Yet the arranger---Hal Leonard, no doubt---was generous enough to let all the saxes play soli on one of the several famous melodies penned for the march... the one that goes "Dah Dah Dah-duh-duh duh-Duh-Duh" and so on. As with my K-12 concert band experience (starting in 5th grade, actually), my marching and pep band experience helped to plow a larger field for my musical tastes than I'd have tended otherwise.

But hearing "Stars and Stripes Forever" in my mentally, and I'd even say psychically, receptive state, made a memorable impression on me even on the verge of slumber. First, I was able to hear that the organist was hitting every essential note in the score outside of the percussion parts. That was plenty of a mind-blower to me, physical-coordinationwise, who admittedly is not familiar with the level of virtuosity needed for, say, Bach's baroque organ works. But more important was the clarity with which I grasped Sousa's composition. It was the first time I had ever experienced Stars and Stripes as a masterpiece of form, coherence, and even arithmetic.

I tried earlier today to find the specific performance of my memory on YouTube, but I couldn't (not on the first page, at least). The versions posted there are flawed, soundwise and performance-wise. The main problems are excessive echo or audience noise, which obscures an organist's precision; or, more typically, an organist's actual lack of precision and expressiveness. The version I heard that night was a well-engineered studio recording with all requisite reverb, but not too much. And the performer, whomever he was, sounded like he really got the piece. At the time of its composition, Stars and Stripes was not a mere patriotic chestnut written to be pried out of its shell once a year, but was actually a huge pop music genre of the period. I have no serious knowledge about American music before the emergence of jazz, but I suspect that Sousa marches were about the equivalent of rock and roll at the turn of the 20th century.

Not for nothing do we call him Big Rock Head... with bonus technical report!

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The lad we sometimes call Big Rock Head (BRH), who has now adopted "Rock Head" as his Official Rock & Roll Stage Name, proved that he deserves this monicker late Friday during a nighttime game of Capture The Flag at a park in Urbana. It is reported that some drinking was involved, not that it's unusual for drinking to be involved in anything that grad students might do on a Friday evening. Much more unusual is the fact that the youth of today were out playing like kids of yesteryear on a weekend night, at a baseball diamond in meatspace, exerting themselves physically.

It seems that BRH, in defending his goal, was pursuing his quarry with a singlemindedness of purpose that led him to become unaware of a chain-link fence installed along the third-base line. The slanted fencepost with which BRH posed for this photo spread this morning brought his sprint to an abrupt halt, skullwise (upper right). The placement of the split could not have been executed any more purposefully by a Hollywood makeup artist. So if the 10 stitches shown above leave a scar as a legacy, then the graphical layout makes a fine style statement in addition to its reeking of masculine essence.

After getting his noggin rattled, and the contents probably lightly concussed, the poor baby was surprised in the dark by what a sweat he had worked up---it was even streaming into his eyes! As we now know, this was actually leakage from his circulatory system, which still dotted the dirt on the dugout floor Saturday morning (center right), along with a fat drop on the left Converse sneaker which he had discovered a bit earlier.

The fencepost is not one of the security-grade jobs you find at industrial and government installations, but it is a steel fencepost after all. Because I am not a trained incident-site investigator, my forensic analysis was necessarily informal. I judged the post to be well-anchored, with indications of some ductility when the cap was pushed back and forth. The slant of the post is significantly more pronounced than the corresponding post at the far end of the first-base line (not shown), and the direction of the lean corresponds well to the vector of the BRH sprint. At the base of the subject post I found well-defined buckling (bottom right). The discolorations above the buckling are ambiguous. They could have been made by a previous impact with the post, such as might occur when scuffed by the deck of a riding lawnmower. However, the marks do not make any obvious sense as an effect of the deformation of the post, either Friday night or at a previous time. Therefore, I judged the markings to be a red herring, forensics-wise.

Finally, if you click on the spread and look closely at the enlargement of the lower-right picture, you may see a few crisp cracks in the parched mud in the lower-right quadrant adjacent to the base of the post. These cracks show up better on the high-resolution images, so you may take my word that they are there. These cracks radiate out from the base of the post opposite of the direction from which BRH impacted it. This is a geological artifact I would expect to see as a result of such an impact.

Big Rock Head is somewhat over 6 ft tall and weighs approximately 200 lb. Having some knowledge of his physical capabilities and the joie de vivre with which he plays, I do not think it is farfetched that he might have struck the post at 15 mph---a sprint that could produce a 4 minute mile, but which need be sustained only for a few moments of alcohol-assisted galumphing to produce the documented effect on the pole.

Therefore, it is concluded that solely with the hardness of his cranium, body mass, and autolocomotion, BRH caused a ductile failure in a steel fence post during a nocturnal session of Capture The Flag. The young gentleman whom he was tracking at the time should feel thankful for the good offices provided by said fence post, bodily-harmwise.

What I saw south of town last evening

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Touring on the road bike, trying out a new pair of shoes:

1. A soaring red-tail hawk, landing atop a tall utility pole, then pacing me with slowly flapping wings about 100 ft to the east, heading south. I wasn't sure of my identification and I told it to show me his tail, not expecting to have my request acknowledged. After about 15 seconds he caught a draft and executed a soaring banked hairpin U-turn that gave me visibility of his back, including a fiery red tail that was emphasized by the late-afternoon sun.

2. Upon my approach, a sudden rustling in some short rows of drought-stressed corn at the edge of the field to my immediate west. An awkwardly galloping groundhog, bounding along the row opposite my direction, with a cartoon-like cloud of dust drifting on the wind from where he first bugged out.

3. During a water stop, a frantic group of killdeer trying to pester and lure me away from some nearby ground nests. Three or four flew around me in wide, interleaved circles, producing a din of racket that sounded like angry baritone seagulls (I've never heard these birds say "kill-deer" as the are reputed to do). At the same time, about 50 ft back toward town, one of them put on the famous broken-wing act, which I'd never seen before. Typically, when a cyclist rides through their territory, they will escort the rider about 30 to 50 ft in advance, flying low and alternating with a rapid walk until the bike closes in to about 20 ft. At that point, they resume low flight over the blacktop.

4. The red-tail again, or one of similar proportions, flapping lazily toward the south from where I was returning. Behind it, a small, fast black bird of some kind. This puzzled me as big hawks should be kind of scary to smaller birds, but this one closed on the raptor quickly, looking like it was trying to win a race. Then suddenly, from slightly above, the blackbird divebombed the hawk, pecking once at its back then swinging wide to the right and getting lost fast. I recognized the call as belonging to a redwing blackbird. They are very aggressive about protecting their nests, which they build in ditches using grasses and mud. The males will perch on telephone wires to watch over their territory, and will sometimes get aggressive with passing bicyclists, pecking at their heads or helmets. Evidently they don't take any crap from red-tailed hawks, either.

Voodoo economics

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In a dream last week I was granted an important revelation:

We now have more empirical evidence for the existence of real-world zombies than we do for the validity of supply-side economics.

First came Miami: the case of a naked man eating most of another man's face. Then Texas: a mother accused of killing her newborn, eating part of his brain and biting off three of his toes. Then Maryland, a college student telling police he killed a man, then ate his heart and part of his brain.

It was different in New Jersey, where a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police. They pepper-sprayed him, but he was not easily subdued.

Update: post title changed to the obvious, which I started to do several times during composition but forgot.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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This is neat!



For starters, I never get tired of listening to the radio version of this tune. There's so much to like. First, it's a delicately balanced rock ballad; the tempo is danceable and almost brisk while the chord progression includes lots of nifty chromaticism that carries an emotional tinge.

Second, the lyrics deal with the overworked topic of young heartbreak with precocious maturity and a heartening lack of melodrama. As an expression of support for a friend who has lost the "game," I always perceived that Gerry was singing to a female friend, but that's not actually "hard-coded" into the lyrics. Assuming my interpretation represents the band's intent, there is one big way this type of song can go wrong: the consoling party (that is, the singer) is using sympathy as a pretext to worm his way into a distraught lady's undergarments. There's no room for suspicion of that in these lyrics, though.

Third, the arrangement handles the orchestration perfectly. The small string section provides atmospherics, the brass instruments contribute dignity, and the oboe phrases evoke the moments before sunrise better than any other voicing I can think of. This part of the chart reminds us that some adults took part in the production, too---George Martin, maybe? Whomever: they did themselves and the band great credit through economy and understatement, avoiding both cloying sentimentality and over-formality.

But this performance, as I say, is particularly neat to my earbones. It's from a 1964 edition of The Ed Sullivan Show. The boys are playing live, for real, with a small orchestra stashed away somewhere behind the theatrical flats or on the sidelines. As you can hear, there were some problems keeping the orchestra in sync with the band in a few places, particularly a brass flourish at the end of the bridge (around 1:40). I find these production artifacts to be endearing, and don't hear them as errors. These are the fingerprints of a noteworthy pop music performance by talented musicians who at the same time sound like regular, approachable people.

Along those same lines, they Pacemakers sound like they're playing regular, everyday instruments. The rhythm guitar and piano don't sound cheap, but unprocessed and unaffected. Their tones are the same sounds that talented kids in the neighborhood could produce in Dad's garage if they had the same equipment and experimented with the knobs. And I enjoy hearing all the raw detail in those instrumental parts---especially the guitar---that were not conspicuous on the single.

Although I can't be certain, this sounds like the same performance included on a disc I own that collects Ed Sullivan Show recordings of five British Invasion bands from 1964 - 1966. A few months ago I dug it out after it laid dormant in my "stacks" for almost 20 years, and became enamored of it. As I've implied, the sound will not impress audiophiles, but the audio fidelity is perfectly good for a live recording of the period, and most of the tracks offer fine performances replete with previously unheard details and artifacts like those I've mentioned above. The Billy J. Kramer material is good (two Lennon-McCartney songs). The Searchers track, Needles and Pins, is also very nice and makes me wish a few more had been included. Peter and Gordon are alright, and even the four (!) Herman's Hermits tracks are decent---much better than I expected. Besides the Pacemakers' three tracks, the disc ends with a great "set" by The Animals, who exude a genuine and unprocessed character that you could imagine being played in a bar or college gym. The only stinker of the lot is I'm Telling You Now by Freddie and the Dreamers (sorry, lads, but even as a kid I didn't care for your sucky novelty music). A production note about the disc: each "set" is well engineered to sound like a single performance, but many of them are edited together from different locations in the space-time continuum.

Anyway, back to the libretto: below I'm providing the catalog information from the version I own, which will deviate from the YouTube particulars because mine is audio and theirs is video.

Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying, Gerry and the Pacemakers (performance 10 May 1964, from "The Sullivan Years: The British Invasion" [1990], TVT Records TVT 9428-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Odd: gas prices have fallen

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I almost failed to notice that a gallon of gasoline costs about $0.50 less than it did here at the end of March. I guess this price decline didn't rise to my awareness because I haven't heard Republican congressmen and centrist pundits gabbing nonstop on NPR about how President Obama has done such an extraordinary job in this connection.

Out back

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Still have more days off than I've used so far this hiatus. Here are three snaps of a job I dreamed up 2 years ago. I think slow.

I started the project 2 years ago by buying the wrong kind of cedar for the frame, but only discovered that after assembling the frame last summer. Since worrying about that for a year didn't transform the cedar into below-grade quality, I decided to sink it into the ground just to avoid more delays. I assumed this would would be a crap job that I'd have to redo in a few years anyway.

As it turned out, the quality happens to be pretty high. The photo on the left shows the frame with a compacted bed of soil and brick rubble, with four sacks of patio-base gravel (also called roadpack) tamped down over it manually. (The brick rubble backfill was probably a stupid idea that I will regret later, along with the off-spec wood.) The three sacks pictured just about filled the frame to where it needed to be. Lots more tamping ensued with an 8 x 8 cast iron plate mounted at the end of a heavy garden-tool handle. My big innovation was discovering that the paver stones are the same thickness as a 2 x 4, so I screwed together a float-type device, center picture, to level the roadpack to the correct recess, pulling the device back and forth and merrily tamping it all until I was pretty flurking sick of it. The right-hand photo shows all the stones in place, with roadpack having been carefully poured, swept around, tamped, etc., to fill in all the cracks. I should have wetted the stone for this final photo so it would match the other two. The pavers aren't as pale as they appear in the final shot. If you want a closer look, by the way, clicking on the picture should load a larger version.

Note the clump of Shenandoah switchgrass near upper left. After construction I backfilled around the frame with soil excavated from elsewhere on the estate, then moved the switchgrass to the end of the path to prevent drunken visitors from falling over the ledge. This edifice constitutes the scenic overlook of the estate, which is known to myself and the lads as Moronica International State Park.

To the left of the path is the asparagus garden, which is not doing so hot this year. Now that I have this job in the Done column, I can begin thinking about extending the path 90 degrees to the left. Why? Because some moron laid a mess of these pavers on top of playground sand on the west side of my house about 20 years ago, creating a paradise for ant colonies and invasive weeds. Two years ago I dug them out and stacked them on a palette. So this is a recycling project. Also a weight-control project.

Editor's note: Please forgive rusty, mediocre text. I am on hiatus, and so is my brain.

Sixteen-day weekend

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Starting this evening. I will reacquaint myself with the enterprise soon.

I've gotten one rabid monkey completely off my back now---my ill-fated experiment in volunteerism. Any such future endeavors will be limited to monkey work only.

One more to go---the construction management text I've been working through a long developmental edit for about 18 months. I think the author and I both agree on the form and scope of the book, and the main text has finally been written in a coherent form. Some substantive editing remains (naturally).

After that I think I'll consider taking up opium smoking (medicinal applications only, of course).

Go Cubbies!

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Hey-Hey! Holy Mackerel!

As in: "Holy mackerel, Andy!" No doubt about it!

The Avengers movie: worth not sneaking into

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I think Marvel Entertainment has done a reasonably good job on the more recent releases I've seen, namely Thor, the first Iron Man, and (going back a way), the first Spider-Man. This pleases me, because my first two boyhood favorites---Fantastic Four and Daredevil---were so mishandled that, based on reviews alone, I refused to go near them. Not even worth sneaking in to see.

A contemporaneous reader of 1960s Marvel Comics should enjoy The Avengers. My standard of excellence for movies based on comics I read as a kid is not Art, but a port from pulp paper to cinema that is faithful to the original in tone and atmosphere while using digital effects to make the exercise of superpowers seem feasible and naturalistic. Avengers succeeds at both of these "metrics" through excellent casting of the principal characters (with one exception) and very good battle choreography.

Each of the main heroes captures what an adult reader of '60s superhero literature would expect of the characters. Captain America is not that far on the good-looking side of average, and his personality is pretty wooden. That is good; lesser directors would have made the mistake of infusing him with glamor and wit, the same formula used to cast every male protagonist in a film aimed at a teenage audience. What makes him Captain America is that he's an operational wizard, commander-wise. Tony Stark is, as you would expect, a brilliant, arrogant asshole. Thor is a little bit dumb. And Bruce Banner was both entirely original yet correct in original spirit as a somewhat distracted, slightly disheveled scientist who is terrified of and addicted to his own capacity for rage.

The Hulk, incidentally, is one of the most problematic characters in this genre to portray, and all previous attempts I've seen (both live action and animated cartoon) miss the mark either somewhat or by a very wide margin. This one succeeds. For more on the subject, I'll commend your attention to a recent analysis in The New Yorker by a newfangled reviewer who goes by the monicker of Film Crit Hulk. He (she, or it) nails the topic for the most part, except that I disagree with his assessment of Bill Bixby's Bruce Banner.

Unfortunately, I feel strongly that Sam Jackson was miscast as Nick Fury. This is both a '60s fanboy thing and a matter of comics history. Originally created by Jack Kirby as a WWII commando squad leader, Fury was one of Kirby's two self-ascribed alter-egos within the literal universes of characters he created in his career (which he spent largely as an exploited piecework artist by Marvel). Fury had no superpowers, either as a sergeant or as a secret agent for SHIELD. We kids knew him as the cigar-chompin' tough guy with a Bronx accent who was much smarter than he sounded. A very similar personality, but much more insecure and alienated (not to mention having an epidermis of orange rocks) was Ben Grimm, who mutated into The Thing in 1961. Kirby has identified both of those characters as versions of himself, with Thing reflecting how he felt about himself and Fury reflecting how he would like to have been seen by the world. (Kirby wrote their dialog, and much more, but was never given writer credits by Stan Lee.) So, out of respect both to the original creation and to Kirby, I think that the producers should have passed on Sam Jackson's star power (and anyone else's star power as well) and cast an actor who could portray Fury as being instantly recognizable to geezer fanboys. But since Kirby---co-creator of all the principal Avengers characters plus Fury---was almost passed over in the end credits, thanks in large measure to decades of bad faith by Stan Lee, maybe it's no wonder that Fury's authentic character is nowhere to be found in the movie. It's not that Jackson does a bad job; it's just that he's nothing like Agent Fury or his barking, hard-fisted homunculus.

About the combat choreography: a trouble I always have with CG battles in superhero movies is that they're very hard to parse, visually. Everything happens too close and too fast for my eyebones to sort out. In the Avengers, things happen as loud and fast as you would expect, but somehow it was much easier for me to perceive the action taking place in a fixed landscape. The raw power exchanged between Thor and Iron Man, trying to kick each other's ass due to a misunderstanding in the Mighty Marvel Tradition, feels plausible as they fling each other into heavy, unmovable objects without restraint. However, the one thing I think we're always going to have to suspend our disbelief about is the dynamics of mass, momentum, and inertia: we just can't escape many incidents where the low-power and no-power humans such as Fury, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and even Cap should be liquified, decapitated, amputated, or blunt-force-trauma-ed by a sudden acceleration from zero to, say, 100 g (or the converse). These things occur when being swatted by the Hulk, or thrown by an explosion, or grabbing ahold of an alien flying motorscooter moving at about Mach 1. Deal with it, ya yardbirds!

Big Rock Head criticized the movie's style of humor as being too Scrubs. My reaction was that he may be correct in making the connection, but that the humor used in The Avengers was very much in the spirit of the original Marvel scripts, and even Mad Comics---simultaneously witty and corny---and predates Scrubs by decades if not centuries. We can see similar formulations in The Three Stooges, for example. At the root of BRH's observation (I'm assuming, here, because I've never seen an episode of Scrubs) is that the modern sitcom form has become so dilute that it builds entire teleplays on a series of round-robin quips that try to serve as substance instead of periodic punctuation. So the humor in The Avengers is not high comedy, but that's because it doesn't have to be. It serves the same purpose in the movie that it did on the newsprint pages 45 years ago---to lighten the violent action and humanize the characters.

All things considered, the director and producers deserve lots of credit. The Avengers is a movie worth paying to see. But reflexive cynicism tells me that it's probably not too early to start worrying about how The Corporation will do its best to lower the common denominator for the next installment by 30 IQ points or so.

Apropos of nothing still

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I've decided that I swear too goddam much. It sounds slovenly to my ears, except on the occasion of a well-selected, well-timed interjection that provides or reinforces an aspect of the communication that can be provided in no other way.

So, while I am not promising to swear off the practice (nyuk nyuk nyuk BONK! D'OHHH!), I do commit to reducing this verbal litter in my beautiful walled garden that is Fifty50. Please do make a note of it, and thank you for your attention in this matter.

Apropos of almost nothing

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In reference to the comments thread in this post, here's what a real Cubs manager sounds like:



Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Saturday Night After Hours

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Here's an oddly glorious-sounding ditty from the soundtrack of Frank Zappa's out-of-print movie 200 Motels.



I just happened to listen to my CD version of this tonight whilst making a batch of Utility Research Muffins, Bluberry-Orange, and felt like sharing it with the rest of yez.

They lyrics represent a lament of the late-sixties rock star, who it would seem did not always necessarily have access to the highest-class of groupie after any given show (particularly in a place like "Centerville: A Real Nice Place To Raise Your Kids Up." The falsetto vocals are by Turtles singers Howard Kaylan and Mark Vollman, who formed the core of Zappa's "vaudeville band." (The bass player in this aggregation was Jim Pons, yet another Turtles alumnus.) The subject matter of this band was heavily skewed toward obscene, surreal vignettes from "life on the road," which also was the theme (such as it was) for the movie.

It's hard for me to put my finger on what I like about the timbre of the organ in this one. It's churchy and industrial and atmospheric all at once, with lots of colorful fat-fingered dissonances. The trombone is used in an unusual way in this cut, too, being the only wind instrument in evidence. Even more unusual: it's played by George Duke, known pretty much exclusively for keyboards in subsequent versions of the Mothers and, later, in the jazz world at large. The reverb of pretty much everything is both completely over the top and just right to my earbones.

Another oddity: the mix on this version sounds significantly different from my CD on Ryko. don't know if the poster took this from the vinyl or the VHS movie soundtrack, or if the CD was released more than once with different mixes. Zappa was notorious for doing ridiculous things with the mixes and edits on CD reissues... and not necessarily well loved for it by his fans. In this case, though, the mix on this version is fine by me---it just highlights sounds and nuances that aren't apparent on any version I've heard recently. One day I will pull out the vinyl, wipe it down, and give it a hear.

What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning? Frank Zappa and The Mother Of Invention (1971, from the "original MGM motion picture soundtrack" of "Frank Zappa's 200 Motels," Rykodisc RCD 10513/14), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Go, you White Sox!

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Suck on this, you North Side yuppies, hipsters, and sorry hangers-on!

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Over the past 6 weeks or so I've been bemused by American right-wing Roman Catholic hierarchs and politicians who seem to think that this here is the Papal States of America we all live in. They're dangerous nuts who should stay the hell out of electoral politics and thank the Trinity that their secular activities aren't taxed into destitution, where they belong.



In the 1960s, Tom Lehrer (who Wikipedia tells me is still alive, by gum!) could perform this type of comedy music on a nationally broadcast TV variety show, and I think that most of the audience of the time would have understood the setup he provides here before the song. We had a Catholic president at the time who had pledged sincerely and truthfully that the executive branch under him would be taking no direction from Rome. At the same time, the Vatican II reforms Lehrer refers to were making the Catholic Church less foreign-seeming and scary to everyday Protestant types (not to mention many in the American Catholic congregation).

Can you imagine what the likes of failed presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich would have to say about this performance today were it to be given on, say Saturday Night Live? Demands for boycotts of the network, apologies, congressional hearings!

And I must say, as I listen to these lyrics through adult ears for the first time (I heard this song plenty of times as a kid from the old blond Olympia hi-fi console in the living room), I'm suddenly much less sure that this parody was fully intended in good nature. I really wish Lehrer were inspired out of retirement by the repugnance of RC current events (including the church's indifference toward its own multigeneration pastoral sex-crime rampage and systematic cover-up) to record an update.

The Vatican Rag, Tom Lehrer (11 September 1967, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Gorgeous song; music maybe not what one would expect by the title.



As I've mentioned before, song lyrics have almost always been a secondary consideration to me because I could rarely understand them, articulationwise. I tend to listen to the vocals first as another instrument in the arrangement. Then, if I can understand the words as coherent phrases in English, fine. But I'm a pretty literal-minded guy, so I feel real proud of myself if I can extract the composer's intended meaning from roundabout poetics.

E's lyrics are very personal, always. People who know something about the personal tragedies he endured as a younger man may have a clue about the enigmatic lyrics of this song. I happened to think of playing it for you tonight because as we approach the climax of the Christian Holy Week it comes to mind that (1) some traditions hold that Christ spent the Saturday after his crucifixion in Hell and (2) we never learned about this part of the religion in Sunday School or even confirmation as young teenagers in the Methodist denomination. At this point I will invite The Minister's Daughter to shed any light on this, as available. (Allegory and all.) Also, Beer-D and/or Big Rock Head should feel free to disambiguate the content of the lyrics to this haunting Eels composition.

Your Lucky Day In Hell, Eels (1996, from "Beautiful Freak," Dreamworks DRMD-50001), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's Diana Krall's peckerwood husband.



Just kidding! (Peckerwood-wise.) Elvis Costello has been a favorite of mine for over 30 years, and this cut stands out to me among his long list of masterpieces.

The zippy pop arrangement, as exuberant as bubble gum, provides the happy "vector" for delivering an apocalyptic prophecy for Empire. I assume that Costello's lyrics were understood much more directly by his British audience, being children of an imperial twilight, than by Americans. But his imagery is so vivid that the thrust of the words were readily discerned even by a complacent twenty-something college slacker in 1979 who had little detailed knowledge of colonialism.

This song has not become any less relevant with the decline of the great Western colonial powers, because those empires have been supplanted by extractive transnational corporate enterprises that rival the power of  any in world history. And ultimately, I think the new ones are every bit as doomed as the ill-fated empires of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. This is still a prophetic, snappy little pop ditty that should haunt the brain stem of any plutocrat within hearing distance.

Oliver's Army, Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1979, from "Armed Forces," Columbia JC35709), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Bonus fun stuff: while scavenging my vinyl LP collection for the catalog information I rediscovered the bonus 33 rpm demo EP packaged with the original US release of Armed Forces. It contains "Watching The Detectives," "Accidents Will Happen," and "Allison." Also stashed away in the sleeve: my ticket stub for the 10 March 1979 Elvis & Attractions performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Bruce Pavitt's girlfriend smuggled my camera into that show under her greatcoat after a security goon tried to confiscate it from me. Don't try that today unless you're prepared to get beaten in the skull with a five-cell Maglite or else give some fat turd a blowjob.

DuckDuckGo[ogle]

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In addition to some suggestions I recently offered about making your computer and your privacy (possibly) less vulnerable to invasion when using the web, I stumbled across another goodie that seems positioned for breakout popularity soon. It's a search engine called DuckDuckGo.

First, it reminds me of Google 10-plus years ago: a simple site that searches for stuff you type in real fast and returns results rank-ordered in terms of raw relevance in relation to your keywords. Many of us with broadband access at work developed a reflexive Google habit sometime during the second term of Hillary Clinton's peckerwood husband. And probably just as many of us have retained the habit, uncritically. This has enabled Google to build a colossal technology concern, funded by advertising targeted to your web browser and its search history (and by cross-referencing lots of other stuff in the background). Good for them; I'm happy to see a (somewhat) progressive competitor in the tech business to challenge Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Sony, and whomever.

During the past decade, though, Google dove into an aggressively extractive business model that some people call corporatism. As it has happened everywhere else over the past 30 years, people on the internet have devolved from human beings into customers and then resources; from citizens into capital and then commodities. This isn't Google's fault, of course, but Google is evidently really good at delivering our eyeballs to merchants and marketing snoops who then use them to colonize our attention. (I say "apparently" because Firefox and its privacy plug-ins shield me from most of it, so I don't observe the full extent of the privacy invasion from where I sit.)

Anyway, I've found the Google search engine to be a lot less helpful to me in the past several years. Maybe you have, too. And you, like I, have probably read about why this is the case. For example, Google delivers search results keyed to our ZIP code, our search history, stuff reported back to the company by our browser cookies, and so on. At the DuckDuckGo site, they explain it. The term of art is bubbling, as in keeping you in a bubble of isolation, searchwise, based on what Google and its "partners" determine to be the best way to extract consumer-type attention from you. Check it out. It's the clearest and most concise explanation of bubbling I've seen. Likewise, read their explanation of how tracking works. Top-notch education in a dozen pictures and captions.

My initial results with DuckDuckGo seem to be a world away from the chaff that Google delivers these days. I've set a button on my Firefox bookmark bar and will install the DDG search plug-in as soon as Mozilla gets its act together and fixes the Firefox installation bug. (Dumbness that I won't get sidetracked on here.)

I haven't read anything about the company yet, and I hope their strat plan isn't to become "the next Google." If they were to set up as an open-source nonprofit like the Wikimedia Foundation, I'd donate some green stuff to them.

I don't have any animosity toward Google The Corporation, but extractive capitalism is just not compatible with respect for the individual and his or her privacy. So their having a real search competitor is just fine with me.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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This late-1940s public service announcement broadcast on the DuMont Television Network is, to me, a heartwarming artifact of an era in media history when at least some people may have been in the business for a constructive social purpose. Its target audience was kids, Video Rangers in particular---fans of Captain Video (such as Ed Norton). The PSA is earnest yet sincere, and the lesson is unassailable: fight discrimination by making friends. Prejudice gets in the way of making friends, and everyone wants lots of friends. Plus, prejudice is... un-American, of all things! Imagine someone saying that on TV today.



In fact, I cannot imagine a PSA of this caliber being created or broadcast in the current era. Even in the best case, I can hear in my mind's ear the condescension oozing through the glottis of some "cool" B-list celebrity paying lip service to some shallow feel-good message, as a vehicle for promoting someone's "brand." (Also: visibility and tax write-off!) The very idea of such a PSA would be considered "controversial," I'm sure, and thus focus-grouped to death before the project was orphaned to PBS where the message could be articulated by red, green, and blue Muppets.

Captain Video Anti-Discrimination PSA (late 1940s, DuMont Television Network), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Special bonus for all you Video Rangers:

I, Edward Norton, Ranger Third Class in the Captain Video Ranger Academy, do solemnly pledge to obey my mommy and daddy, to be kind to dumb animals and old ladies in and out of space, not to tease my little brothers and sisters and to brush my teeth twice a day and drink milk after every meal. 

Apropos of nothing

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I think that the most inherently funny word in the English language is "turd."

It is the perfect comic word. A person doesn't need to know what it means to find it funny; it just sounds funny independently of its meaning. And for that matter, I don't even think a person needs to speak English to find laughter in the word. Turd. It pretty much sounds like what it is.

Social science experiment: ask people of diverse linguistic heritage to repeat "turd" out loud five times and then guess what it means... and don't even tell them what language it is. I am confident that a landslide majority of the survey subjects would get it in one or two guesses.

Reluctantly acknowledging that opinions may differ from mine, tell me: what do you think is the funniest word in English? As always, thank you for your attention in this matter.

Don't mind them---they're morons

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Our correspondent in the Grampian Hills sends a riddle:

I saw [a] preview for the 3 stooges movie—I think it opens around mid April. They (whoever they are) seem to have the impersonations down OK but, why?

That is a bit of a noodle-scratcher, true. Beer-D has provided the most salient market-based analysis I've heard. (Yes, Stooge fans have been discussing this pending corporate profiteering atrocity for awhile.)

As Beer-D sees it, it's difficult to fathom what audience the movie producers are targeting. For kids who aren't familiar with the Stooges, none of the references or tributes to the original cast members will register. People of any age who did not like the original Stooges will have no interest in subjecting themselves to a impersonation of them. And, of course, it is hard to believe that any fans of the original Stooges will respond to the release with anything except contempt.

Some few charitable people might at least appreciate any craftsmanship and dedication that the actors may have applied to recreating the original characters and situations. But I don't think that will provide a sufficient basis for either a blockbuster box office or a career boost for the director. However, I may be wrong, and Beer-D may have missed something: maybe the target audiences are the Chinese and the French.

Apropos of nothing

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It's 10:30 p.m. on 20 March 2012, the first day of spring. The outdoor temperature is 70 degrees. There is a fruit fly searching for a grapefruit rind in the kitchen. I'd go hide it in my bedroom, but the possums might find it.

Why I use Firefox [updated]

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I'm a longtime user of the open-source Mozilla Firefox web browser. It has fallen out of favor with some of the high-visibility cool kids these days. Its interface is not as glamorous-looking as Apple Safari or Google Chrome; and it doesn't have the cult appeal of Opera, the Ron Paul of web browsers. But in my experience, nothing beats Firefox in terms of managing browsing privacy and security.

If you use Firefox, I strongly recommend that you look into a new-to-me add-in called Do Not Track Plus by a company called Abine. The add-in displays a simple toolbar button that shows you how many companies are tracking you at any site you visit. If you click the button an alert box appears showing what categories of companies are tracking you---social networks, ad networks, etc---and confirming that the add-in is blocking their view of you. In addition to appreciating the privacy service that the add-in provides, I also find the alert box to be very informative about how many entities are trolling for information on how and where we browse.

The other indispensable add-ins for Firefox, in my view, are NoScript, AdBlock Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere. NoScript allows you to block websites from executing scripts in your browser. In addition to protecting against browser-based malware, NoScript prevents sites from executing all kinds of Java programs that do anything from running pointless animations to harvesting cookie, browsing history, and contact information. You can selectively enable or disable scripts from various sites as you get a feel for which ones are essential for your browser to work fairly normally (such as blogger.com, which I need to enable in order to bring you the finest in web-based social commentary and dokes, delivered fresh to your computer screen every time I feel like it).

AdBlock Plus does just what it sounds like. But, like NoScript, its filters can be selectively enabled if you need to. I basically am intruded upon by zero ads wherever I browse.

Finally, HTTPS Everywhere works with a growing number of sites to encrypt your connection even if they're not running secure (https://) protocols.

This post, incidentally, hints at a bigger issue that I've been wanting to write about for a year or more, namely that the web seems destined to devolve into a corporation-controlled domain dedicated to propagating corporatist values and extracting every available morsel of value from its most valuable resource---human eyeballs.

Update: I've been referring to these little programs as "add-ins," but I am now reminded that Mozilla calls them "add-ons." And more specifically, the items I mention above are "extensions." There are also "plug-ins," which are a slightly different animal, and "skins" that change the look of the browser (most of which suck).

In the shadow of a Magical Kingdom

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It seems that the Orlando, Fla., suburbs now have their own theme parks and "cast members." This one may be called ManslaughterLand, for all I know, but I could not confirm that as of press time. This attraction would appear to be an immersive first-person shooter in which the customer (after spending 40 minutes pacing back and forth in queue) may pick a fight with a kid, shoot him to death, and avoid arrest by telling the Nice Policeman you pulled the trigger in self defense. Since the menace 2 society is deceased and cannot contradict your claim, you get to go home and exult.

From what I read, ManslaughterLand could improve the realism of this attraction by arming the bad guy with a knife or a gun instead of Skittles and iced tea.

Editor's note: I will step out of character for a moment just to make it clear how sickening this news was to me when I heard it this morning on the radio. This morning CNN said:

Incredibly, the man who admitted to killing Trayvon, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, has remained free since the shooting because he told Sanford police that it was in self-defense. After questioning him, police bought his explanation and allowed him to return home. (Police said he has not been charged because there are no grounds to disprove his story of what happened.)

"There are no grounds to disprove his story of what happened"? I suppose an investigation might begin with the shooter's reported confession to the shooting, the corpse of an unarmed child, a bag of Skittles, and an unspecified quantity of iced tea. This evidence is suggestive of certain interpretations that may cast doubt on the decision to release the shooter.

Apropos of nothing

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Recently, after reading a biography of Jolly Jack "King" Kirby, the late comic book penciling legend who co-invented Captain America, the entire genre of romance comic books, and most of the early superhero stable at Marvel Comics, I randomly remembered that Kirby's characters sometimes employed the epithet "liver lips" to insult an adversary. This thought cracked me up, now as it always did in my slap-happy youth, so I wondered what the hell it meant.

Happily, such mysteries are much easier to investigate today than they were 45 years ago. My first stop was Urban Dictionary, which revealed little that I would consider to be valid etymological information except that in some usages the term has a racist undertone. That interpretation made no sense to me since Kirby was known by all to be a dyed-in-the-wool (as his characters would sometimes say) New Deal liberal straight arrow. And the term was typically used by the good guys (mainly The Think, Sergeant Fury, and possibly The Hulk in his more lucid days), but never in reference to an African American. So I kept searching, thinking maybe it was a New York Yiddish bit of slang, since we sometimes hear the question "What am I, chopped liver?" in Jewish humor. My search didn't get too much farther, because I found everything I needed to know about the term on an old, obscure web page.

The post starts with the intrepid ronda54 describing a youthful brush with fame in the form of "Uncle Miltie" himself: Milton Berle. It seems that ronda54's family lived next to Berle's daughter, Vickie, and son in law, and somehow her parents were enlisted to pick Berle up from the airport and bring him to the daughter's house.

The report was that Milton was rather quite and polite…non descript just like his daughter, although he and my dad cracked a few dirty jokes which increased the respect factor in my dad's mind. I'm sure mom was trying to keep her eyes on the road instead of the freak show in his crotch and she must have managed because when she relayed the story to me the focus was on Milton's lips, not his schlong. His lips looked like two slabs of liver glued to his face. I'm afraid, Vickie had the same problem but hers were less pronounced. I thought this was hilarious and forever more he was known as "old liver lips" in our household. Dad would bellow that he had to give old liver lips a ride to the airport.

So Berle came from a Jewish New York family and was only about 10 years older than Kirby, so perhaps this term was simply used in the Jewish community in reference to big-lipped people in the neighborhood, and... wait a minute! "Hold the phone!" as Frazier Thomas used to exclaim. "Freak show in his crotch," she says? Well, I guess so:

[Berle's] moniker was "Mr. Television." I was more into Cheech and Chong so he was still sounding pretty boring until mom told me about his legendary humongous penis. Milton was getting less boring, now. I guess this thing was a killer…we are talking 14 inches long. We got a 12 inch ruler out of the drawer, added 2 inches and stood there aghast. How was this possible and who would ever marry a guy like this? He may have been a famous television personality but everyone knows that the penis -in a train wreck sort of way- was the real draw. Mom and the neighbor gals all agreed that they would pay money to stare at it.

Wikipedia connects a few more dots regarding "old liver lips" and his legendary unit with some celebrity anecdotes:

Phil Silvers once told a story about standing next to Berle at a urinal, glancing down, and quipping, "You'd better feed that thing, or it's liable to turn on you!" In the short story 'A Beautiful Child', Truman Capote wrote Marilyn Monroe as saying: "Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood." Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, who had written many Friars Club jokes about Berle's penis for other comedians, described being treated to a private showing: "He just takes out this— this anaconda. He lays it on the table and I'm looking into this thing, right? I'm looking into the head of Milton Berle's dick. It was enormous. It was like a pepperoni. And he goes, 'What do you think of the boy?' And I'm looking right at it and I go, 'Oh, it's really, really nice.'"

Oh yes, I'll just bet it was. And thanks to King Kirby and ronda54, I've solved the riddle of liver lips with extreme prejudice.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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This is a Chicago furniture store jingle as released on a promotional 7 in. vinyl single in 1970.



My general memory from the late 1950s into the 1970s is that music for broadcast commercials and radio jingles was based either on styles that were mainstream when the ad agency guys were in school---half a generation out of date to a teenager or young adult---or else an agency's smarmy exploitation version of youth-oriented music. The good people at Ember Furniture seem to have farmed out their work to a very smooth soul operator named Sidney Barnes. I have a version of this on CD---an anthology on the Numero Group reissue label. Numero's releases cover a wide spectrum, from interesting, fully listenable minor-league recordings by regional soul (and other styles of) groups to sides that sound like they came from a 1960s and '70s parallel pop music universe. And I guess that's actually the case: there is only so much room on national charts at any one time, and it tends to be allotted according to mystical protocols involving transfers of materiel and sexual favors.

Meanwhile, here in the 21st century, I'd certainly poke into a furniture store that commissioned a commercial jingle like "The Ember Song." As if (as annoying teenage girls used to say).

The Ember Song, Sidney Barnes (1970, available on "Eccentric Soul: The Nickel & Penny Labels" [2011], Numero Group N039), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.  

The fall product rollout [update]

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A few days after I mused here about the new war for which the neocons and corporate media have formed their very own Occupy-style drum circle I had this idea, but I felt it would sound too silly to trouble you with before giving careful consideration to my choice of wording. Welp, as seen on Balloon Juice, it looks like someone has described the prospective conspiracy that corporate media would be expected to denounce as... "a conspiracy theory":

Here’s a prediction. Netanyahu, in league and concert with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes.

See, I think there are certain ideas that may be too dangerous for a nobody like me to fluff up on my crummy blog, but Andrew Sullivan evidently thinks his high profile as a celebrity blogger will protect him from right-wing opprobrium. We'll see about that.

You may remember back in January when the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times had to "step down" for suggesting that maybe "Israel's most inner circles" might "order a hit" on Barack Obama in order to rid themselves of an unfriendly US president. So here's another approach that might amount to a fatal political hit if the "product" were rolled out as an October Surprise.

I don't think this idea is too insane to have been dreamed of, kicked around all hush-hush-like, or even to have arrived at some stage of planning. Because the marketplace of ideas is oversupplied with insanity. I'm sure the very idea quickens the pulse of many. And who knows: maybe certain people with the right connections and levers think they could get away with such a thing. But if that's the case, they are making one of the classic strategic blunders: underestimating the adversary.

As it happens, every President of the United States has his own "most inner circle," not to mention a heavy metal national security apparatus and---thanks to Richard Bruce Cheney and The Boy Who Would Be President---a carload of extra-constitutional surveillance and law-enforcement powers. And this one knows how to play 10-dimensional chess, so watch out.

Update: I forgot to state that any such conspiracy would not involve nobodies like Santorum, Gingrich, or Romney. But I do think it's fully plausible that it could involve Americans. I don't think there is any shortage of latent traitors on the far right.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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I heard someone commenting on NPR earlier this evening that it would be "impossible to overstate" the impact of Billy Strange on American pop.



Well, I don't mean to pick on the late Mr. Strange, who died on Tuesday. But, no, it wouldn't be impossible at all to overstate his influence. In fact, I'll do it right now:

Billy Strange was without doubt the most influential American pop musician of the 20th and 21st centuries!

Hyperbole is the chronic halitosis of our public discussion. Being the rhetorical equivalent of typing with the CAPS LOCK ON, it's tiresome. (Funny---I just noticed that type on the key cap of the CAPS LOCK key on my MacBook Pro is set in all lowercase characters.) Being the distorter of meaning, it undermines our collective ability to communicate. And in this case, reflexive hyperbole can set up the uninformed (including myself) for disappointment upon investigation. Meaning that it does a disservice to the memory of the deceased. It's cheap.

Yes, Mr. Strange penned some hits (including the horrible "Limbo Rock" for Chubby Checker) and had some enjoyable musical input to the Frank and Nancy Sinatra repertoire of the mid-1960s. And he was a member of the fabulous Wrecking Crew, a noteworthy career milestone with an ensemble that did in fact have an outsized impact on 1960s rock and pop. But, c'mon, leave the poor guy rest in peace, stupid mass media "culture" reporters.

Here's a nice, previously-unseen-by-me video of Billy Strange performing acoustically with meteoric bilingual boner mill Nancy Sinatra (and I say that with the utmost sincerity). Mr. Strange was a competent and accomplished musician. I'll listen for his Wrecking Crew work next time I play the $#!+ out of Pet Sounds.

Bang Bang, Billy Strange with Nancy Sinatra (mid-1960s, provenance unknown [but probably not US TV considering Nancy's lingua franca intro), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

He just finds it "a little troubling"

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John Ellis "Used To Be A Conservative" Bush (JEB), the former Florida governor whose Republican machine unethically thwarted a fair and balanced presidential vote recount in 2000, feels

it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are"

according to a HuffingtonPost article with an embedded Fox link. JEB is of course referring to those nattering nabobs of negativism, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates. The HuffPost report indicates that JEB's opinion is shared by his bosom old buddy Karl "Still The Queen Of The Jackbooted Neocon Admen" Rove. I'd interpret their sentiment as an unintentional admission that they are momentarily embarrassed by the monster created by Rove's mentor, the late Lee "Nigger Nigger Nigger" Atwater.

The monsters have come to Maple Street

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As seen on Atrios, here's a dispatch from the front lines of the Bedwetter Wars.

I'm sure we all understand the potential dangers that lurk. They're the same as they were 30 years ago and 50 years ago. What's so different in 2012 that a Philadelphia suburb needs to put schools on lockdown because a stranger was seen waiting for a bus?

My first wild guess is that it has something to do with how deeply immersed most people are in electronic infotainment media. A critical insight published by Jerry Mander over a quarter of a century ago in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television is that TV is a sensory deprivation technology. He asserted, and I agree, that the pictures, motion, and sound conspire to create an illusion of reality, but that the human mind is not fooled by the illusion for long because boredom sets in rapidly (as compared with sensational, tactile reality). And I will throw computers and mobile IT devices into that pot as well.

As people are immersed in the claustrophobic surreality of corporation-mediated "experience," actual, random reality may begin to seem foreign to everyday experience. And threatening. I wonder if a plurality of the population simply doesn't know what to make of life experience that isn't responsive to a remote control or a computer touchscreen.

Back in the good old days, if we saw a stranger standing on a corner doing nothing we'd never think of calling the cops; we'd just kick his ass seven ways for Sunday. (JK---ROFL!)

Sneak preview of the fall product line

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Many of us remember reading about the July 2002 Downing Street Memo, in which we learned the the chief of Britain's MI6 had expressed the view that our very own President of the United States

wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

The US public learned of this interesting fact through a British press leak in 2005, well after the deadly Bush/Cheney hobby horse had galloped out of the corral with the liberal New York Times glued into the saddle like a pair of Judith Miller's panties. When President Obama schlepped the last combat troops out of Iraq (or so "they" say) late last year, it wasn't just because he's a Nice Guy: it was because that corporation-driven war of aggression had no more measurable public support and addressed no critical US security interest.

Everyone who is nostalgic for a post-911 stiffie should be happy to hear that British Foreign Secretary William Hague is blaming Iran for threatening to make the civilized nations of Terra launch a "new cold war." That's mighty thoughty of the Persians, as Bullwinkle used to say, because it seems that this is exactly what all true patriots both happen to want and want to happen. And by all true patriots, I am referring to the usual cast of neocon civilian politicians and their heralds employed by the corporate media. Have you been sensing this lately, too?

Friday Night Fish Fry

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Not in Lent yet, but we're having fish on Friday anyway, so there!



First things first: this is one that needs to be listened with earbuds jammed brainstem-deep and cranked.

One of the reviews on the YouTube page refers to Chicago Transit Authority as one of the best-engineered albums of its times, and I agree. I first borrowed this album from Larry K. as a high school sophomore and listened to it on one of those tube-driven phonographs like the gradeschool AV department had, where the left stereo speaker is built into the lid over the turntable. This cut, the first on the "CTA" album, floored me with its brassy ensemble riff, percolating bass, and swells of Hammond organ. I'd always enjoyed horn-heavy arrangements, like The Buckinghams often used, but this was the first rock band I'd ever heard built around the core voices of big band instrumentation. I listened the shit out of it until I had to give it back, but soon scrounged $4.95 (it was a double album, you know) to get my own copy at Zayre.

Within a few months I'd bartered something (probably some Playboys I had stolen from Doug Pearson's garage) for a Heathcraft phono amp, and by means now forgotten cobbled together a more powerful record player. This was the first album I played on the Heathcraft, and again I was not disappointed in the results---more presence and excellent-quality bass response; a nice improvement over the bare phonograph. CTA also was the first album I played on the old man's Kenwood rig in the family room, pushing out 100 (peak) watts! And so over the years, Chicago Transit Authority---and "Introduction" in particular---became my reference song for every new stereo component upgrade. The other night I discovered that I've had my nifty B&W speakers bi-amped improperly for 3 years or more, with right bass and left treble coming from the left side, and the converse coming from the right. So I fixed it, and tonight I cranked "Introduction" to 60 (because 11 isn't high enough).

To me there's a certain poignancy to this fantastic chart and performance because I think it's the best thing Chicago ever did. One might say I think everything after this track was downhill for Chicago, even though most of the cuts on this album are at least in the same league as "Introduction." (Actually, I think "Questions 67 and 68 is its equal.) The most impressive thing to me has always been how many changes the band walks the listener though so easily. In fact, it's brilliant, and they show off every single thing they can do, except for Terry Kath's Hendrix-type guitar neck-wringing (which comes later on the same album). The tragic flaw of Chicago, though, is that they kept coming back to the same well for years and years thereafter. Horn ensembles based on minor variations of Jim Pankow's signature trombone arpeggio; no more trumpet solos of note from Lee Loughnane as far as I can recall; and no tenor solos ever, to my knowledge, from Walt Parazaider. Maybe the fellows tried to extend themselves later, but if so I lost interest long before then. After hearing Hot Rats in 1969 and upon being disappointed by Chicago 2 in 1970, Frank Zappa soon became my jazz-rock pied piper.

There was some material I liked on Chicago 2 (the "25 or 6 to 4" album), but it didn't compare to CTA. Plus, even to my immature ears, I thought the sound was abominable. The bass had no presence and the horns sounded like they were recorded off a transistor radio somewhere in the next studio. The lyrics were even more contrived than before (lyrics were always their weak point, in my opinion), and the vocals seemed self-conscious and even awkward. By the release of Chicago 3, it sounded to me like the band was just going through the motions. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to see that original lineup at Soldier Field in Chicago, summer 1970, and they opened their set with this song. The sound was abysmal (due to Soldier Field "acoustics," not record producer malpractice this time), but I appreciated the thought and felt the presence.

Introduction, Chicago (1969, from Chicago Transit Authority, Columbia CS-9809), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Lousy blogger

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Hi. How are you? I am fine!

In the past few days I've come to the conclusion that my experiment in civic engagement has failed and that I will abandon it in order to spend more time with my blog.

Two years ago I volunteered to serve on the board of a local organization dedicated to the preservation and conservation of historic buildings. A good cause, I thought then and still think now. But the whole episode began to disagree with me even before Day 1. And, unfortunately, my duties for this organization directly impinge on the mental resources I rely upon for my own creative output.

A week or so ago I started working toward a humane exit strategy in which I'd add a bunch of value for whomever is recruited to fill my sorry place on the board. As fate would have it, a matter of some consequence has arisen for my organization---a matter that must be handled with leadership, excellent communication, teamwork, and intelligence. Several days into handling this issue my hapless group has shown little of the four graces aforementioned in excess of what I have been able to provide... and I am the least-well-informed person among them. This is not to say that the people are bad, because they are not. But the organization is a helpless mess.

The events of this week have inspired me to tighten up my exit strategy. I'd originally planned to leave with a 50-50 blend of consideration and dickishness, but I've leaned-down the consideration blend to about 35-65 now as I waste time in nowhere email conversations. My Chinese penpal, Roflmao Zedong, warned me that my "friends" (as he referred to them) will not see my exit as merely 65% dickish, but will see it as 100% dickish. I explained to him that I was aware of that possibility, which is why I'm prepared to go 100% dickish in reality if they don't watch themselves and even if they do. I am temperamentally unsuited for working as part of a committee.

I'd much rather spend my evenings with you than worrying about how goddam far behind I am on the newsletter schedule. So it's coming. I am hoping for a significant uptick in blog activity within about 3 weeks. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

How to ratfuck your dead sister's memory

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I feel like throwing in my several cents about what the reactionaries at Susan G. Komen For The Cure did to their "brand" this week.

It doesn't surprise me to see that the mastermind behind this Komen policy coup was Ari Fleischer, the Bush administration's filthy little PR homunculus.

We all know that nobody squeals more pathetically than a bully when the intended victim punches back, and nobody becomes so undignified in fear as the bully when he feels outnumbered. So it's as inevitable as the four laws of thermodynamics that the flagship publication of right-wing bullies calls public reaction to the Komen affair "gangsterism."

One of the fun things about today's reactionary mouthpieces is that they project their own motives and tactics onto their critics. This is a psychological malfunction called "telling on yourself." Really: it's gangsterism for the public to be revolted by a raw, uncalled-for assault on Planned Parenthood by a powerful political lobby using a Disney-esque nonprofit juggernaut ("the cure" is their intellectual property if not their mission) and to take their money elsewhere. Many of us, upon learning "that anti-abortion rights activists have been pressuring Komen for years to end their relationship with Planned Parenthood," would be tempted to think of that as gangsterism... except then Ari Fleischer would refer to us as jack-booted thugs.

In addition to the obvious, I think it's worth remembering that the Komen foundation was established in honor of Susan Goodman Komen, who contracted and died of breast cancer as a young woman in the 1970s. The organization was founded by Susan's sister Nancy Goodman Brinker

who believed that Susan's outcome might have been better if patients knew more about cancer and its treatment, promised her sister that she would do everything she could to end breast cancer.

Or, perhaps, almost everything. Every little thing that's possible on the Komen CEO's (2010) salary of $459,406. Way to go, Ms Brinker.

I don't know what she is like in real life, but Ms Brinker certainly resembles a leering, plastic monster in this official State Department photo from 2007. (Oops---gangsterism!)

Multiple choice

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Here is a pop quiz, based on a fact I learned yesterday. Your three choices are:

a. Bill Clinton
b. Ron Paul
c. Gabrielle Giffords

Which one do you think said this:

I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.

Yeah, me neither. I heard it last night on Fresh Air; Terry Gross was interviewing a guy who just published a book about Glock. Here's something else you hit when you google "giffords glock":

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/01/gop-in-giffords-district-holds-raffle-for-glock/

Not being familiar with firearms, neither had I heard of "Glock foot," a condition sometimes contracted by law enforcement officials who switch from a Colt service revolver to a Glock and find out the hard way that the Glock's easy trigger action greatly increases the probability that one will shoot oneself when de-holstering the weapon.

Appropos of what, I do not know.

Cute SOTU comment by Guardian correspondent

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Richard Adams at The Guardian said this near the SOTU:

10.02pm: So it feels like a rather non-partisan speech – although Republicans may disagree, we'll find that out later – and Obama is now moving into his healer-in-chief mode.

Non-partisan my foot! Mr. Adams does not seem to have the immersive cultural context necessary to hear the liberal dog whistles and pure Republican-punching hilarity. And, incidentally, I'm not complaining about that.

For starters, Obama's citing of GOP diety Abe Lincoln is not a healing gesture toward Republicans---it's an eye-gouging thumb cuz, see, modern Republicans hate Lincoln. Also, too, because Obama would not have been on the podium without the good offices of Republican progenitor Honest Abe. Which is why modern Republicans hate Lincoln.

Obama's invocation of Seal Team 6 as a model for partisan teamwork restates in no uncertain terms that he---not Dick Cheney and his inquisitors---bagged OBL. And also that Republicans who try to ratfuck the teamwork are unpatriotic. The President started with this and he ended with it. So, snap, you America-haters!

Then there was Obama's shout-out of the guy laid off from a furniture factory now working for a new-energy company that used to (guess what?) build yachts! And the speech was chock full of goodies like those, which people who voted for him have been waiting 3 years to hear. I'm sure a lotta GOPpers are fuming, hitting the Jack and tranks right about now (the speech just ended).

Jesus God! Someone on NPR just said this was Obama's "most Clintonian speech" so far! The radio is still on, and the NPR commentary has become so vapid, condescending, and ignorant (a winning combination!) that I'm killing it and going for a refill on the booze and pills.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Brother's bought new glasses/Shaped like Leon Trotsky's
They look very nice on the mantlepiece/Next to the royal family



This is the single version of the opening track from one of a small handful of discs from the '80s that I really like (i.e., Confessions Of A Pop Group by Style Council). I'm afraid if I told you how I first became aware of Style Council, other than the radio, I'd have to slit your throat from ear to ear in order to silence you about it.

I'm surprised how cheezy the video is. I would have expected a high-concept, arty treatment. But then my mind is too literal ever to be an artist. (I'm more of a craftsman.)

Inspired by this post by Our Man In London, who seems slightly disoriented by Meryl Streep's touching performance portraying a sociopathic, now-demented former prime minister. Every time I listen to this track I myself am a bit disoriented by how much rage infects the synth-y, breezy pop performance. Excellent way to get one's "message" into the dance clubs. This one deserves to be heard through headphones, cranked high.

Life At A Top People's Health Farm, The Style Council (1988, from "The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council," Polydor 837 896-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Santorum at The Citadel

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I awoke this morning to hear a recording of Rick Santorum campaigning at the famous South Carolina military academy, which was established as a paramilitary force to perpetuate the peculiar institution of slavery. Addressing an audience of cadets, Santorum worked his mad campaign skills with an opening volley in which he compared his "trademark sweater vest" to a flak jacket, then deploying his finely honed stump speech which included this rhetorical fusillade in which:

... he cast himself as a Goldilocks candidate: just right when compared to Gingrich's "too hot" rhetoric and Romney's "too cold" personality.

Because nothing will inspire loyalty in a soldier like comparing yourself to a naive little girl lost in the woods. Unless it's bringing your stuffed animal collection along for show and tell.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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It seems that Johnny Otis departed the scene on Tuesday. Listen to this.



It was only recently that I learned Johnny Otis recorded the hit version of "Willie And The Hand Jive." It's a song I never cared for, so that never registered with me. I know of Johnny Otis mainly through some of his popular recordings on Savoy that were compiled by that label as part of a 1977 double LP called The Roots of Rock 'N Roll. And, unlike many other compilations of that same name, that one is aptly named. Roots includes the cut featured here.

This recording is from an era in American pop music that has interested me for a long time, which began right quick after World War II. For economic reasons, big swing bands were no longer affordable to maintain considering that musicians made their big money from touring; a big band, like an army, travels on its stomach. So different things began happening to jazz, most of which involved pared-down orchestras exploring different sounds. One group brought jazz instrumentation to the blues---the "jump blues," to be more precise---retaining a brass section and featuring the emerging electric guitar more prominently than it had been used in most jazz. Others went in a more vocal-oriented direction, sometimes featuring full-harmony groups that provided roots for doo-wop.

I can't find any quick reference to the personnel comprising the Johnny Otis show, but I recall that it was on the largish side---maybe 7 or 8 guys plus vocalists. This cut features "Little Ester" (barely a teenager at the time) and the Robins. It starts with the characteristic arpeggiated chord played by Otis on vibes, which opened many of his sides during the Savoy era. The structure is a simple 12-bar blues, but listen to how much is going on in the mix. In back of Esther there's classic rock-sounding fills, a hyperactive rolling piano, and a bit later lots more vibes. Then there is Robins close harmony buoying Esther's melodic taunts and accusations all the way, and in the third chorus "Daddy" ripostes with his own denunciations. Finally, they spend the fourth chorus dueling to the bitter end.

So to summarize, in this Johnny Otis production, you can hear jazz vibes, rock guitar, doo-wop backgrounds, plus blues vocalists and piano. More roots than you can stake a shick at.

Incidentally, Otis had an extremely interesting career that you can read a bit about here and here. At the latter link you can hear parts of a 1989 interview Terri Gross did with Otis. Worth a listen if you have 20 minutes.

Double Crossing Blues, The Johnny Otis Show featuring "Little Esther" Phillips (1949, 78 rpm recording Savoy 731-A), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes. 

Happy holidays!

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And by "holidays" I mean Groundhog Day, St. Valentine's Day, and Presidents Day. Which is to say, I will retire Santa to his digital Rubbermaid container sometime soon. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Hillary for VP!!!

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A correspondent has been annoying me for what seems like months about the fantasy some people have that Obama's best chance to be re-elected involves putting Joe Biden out to stud and selecting Hillary Clinton to run in his place. I ran out of patience even faster than I usually do about things, after explaining my view that a political strategy must involve some actual strategy. A presidential political strategy must not only have a grand objective, but it also must have an accurate and concrete idea about handling the obstacles to achieving that objective.

Today my correspondent sent a link to this op-ed column on the topic by former Times executive editor Bill Keller, which proposes that it's time for this dumb idea to ascend from the musty precincts of "the blogs" and be taken seriously... because, for some reason. He says the arguments in favor of it "are as simple as one-two-three":

One: it does more to guarantee Obama’s re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with a mandate and a Congress that may be a little less forbidding. Three: it makes Hillary the party’s heir apparent in 2016.

Simple for simpletons (not counting my correspondent, who is just enthralled with his own wishful thinking). Now, over the years I've gotten a clear impression that many commentators think Bill Keller is quite the simpleton. So I googled "bill keller stupidity," and I found this point-by-point rebuttal by Alex Pareene at Salon:

One: What? Prove it, maybe? Two: Haha what, again? Congress will get ungridlocked if the president switches vice presidents? To a Clinton? Three: OK, but what if Obama/Clinton loses? And if Obama wins again wouldn’t any Democrat be at a disadvantage in 2016 due to historical trends anyway, making it a “safer” bet to not be his running mate, assuming she actually wants to be president still, which is not at all a given?

One-two-three!!! See? Anyone can play!

[I'll interject a thought here about "Two". I don't think most people appreciate why "the Clinton brand" is disliked by many on the left and insanely despised by everyone on the right.]

If you're either interested in or sick of the absurd storyline that Hillary Clinton will ride in, chickenfight-wise, on the shoulders of her peckerwood husband to save Obama's electoral hash this year, I suggest that you read the whole Keller op-ed first, and then Pareene's piece. Pareene's rebuttal goes beyond the easy mockery of Keller to discuss some inconvenient truths that Hillary fans gloss over. Such as the fact that there is no evidence-based argument to support their fantasy.

So Hillary Clinton won the Gallup "beauty contest" of most-admired women in the US: what do you think that is worth to Obama in terms of either electoral or popular votes? Likewise for the concrete advantages conferred to Obama through Hillary's application of campaign warmth and female body parts? Show your work.

Friday Night Fish Fry!

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Because we haven't had one in so long! And because I get to choose which night the Fish Fry happens, versus the Prayer Meeting. So here:



I haven't played anything "horny" for Gurlitzer for a spell, so here's one she will remember fondly from the days of "Boom-Chuck-Chuck." (No, assholes, that's not at all what you might think it means. Thank you for your attention in this matter.)

To my teenage earbones, this studio single version of "The Letter" by Joe Cocker was much more exciting than the later recording captured on the Mad Dogs And Englishmen live album. It's fresher, not yet played to death on the road, and the horn solos are more lively. I was  not originally a fan of this song as recorded in 1967 by the Box Tops. Today I would call that one "overproduced," and Alex Chilton delivers the melody line straight up-and-down, rhythmwise, which doesn't interest me.

But the arrangement heard here---by Leon Russell, I presume---struck me as rhythmically off-kilter in a novel way. It begins with some hammering on the piano, sounding like a hungover warmup exercise, then joined by drums reminiscent of (but not exactly like) the stereotypical "Indian" tom-tom figure BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom, which itself is very straight up-and-down. But I was and still am fascinated how Cocker joins this ape ensemble with his lummox vocals, threading his melody through that piledriving rhythm environment like a drunk driver who thinks he's going to escape the police cruisers by madly weaving through the bollards lining Wall Street. And he does! (This time.) You can somehow tell it's the same song the Box Tops recorded, but not very.

The Letter, Joe Cocker and the Shelter People (1970, monaural 45 rpm single A&M 1174), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: I hadn't heard the studio single for years because my highly unique local corporate oldies channel plays only the live version. But I just received it in the mail yesterday as a bonus track on the "deluxe" CD. Haven't even heard it in hi-fi yet, but will before the night is over.