"Preposterous, but the laughter dies upon the lips."

Days have gone whizzing by again. Around the time I reached my 40's, I came to the realization that the years were going by quickly, but the days seemed to take forever. Now even the days go by quickly. It's a couple of the hours that have become painfully, agonizingly slow.

True story: I have a friend who comes over quite often. We spend a good deal of time not doing much, talking about the world while watching the news as I make dinner. Then we screen a movie. My friend has difficulty sitting through an entire feature without cigarette breaks, which he takes outside at my request. At any rate, about two weeks into the Trump Presidency, we put a film on hold while he took a cigarette break. As I was expecting a communiqué from someone, I used that pause to check my computer to see if the missive had arrived. When my friend returned, he saw me reading something off of the screen, while my left hand was raised to the side of my head. Without missing a beat, my friend asked, "What's he done now?"

Movies at my place look better in the dark, but this shows off the size of the screen.

On screen, Rod Taylor is about to take off in 'The Time Machine' (1960).

That's how it is now, in this age of the Trumpenstein monster. The news is the circus train wreck from which we can not look away, one of those overlong mid century modern Cecil B. DeMille roadshow spectaculars where they sold souvenir books along with the candy at Intermission. God forbid they stop carrying the souvenir books, you'll hear about it. It is probably worth pointing out that for the 1956 version of 'The Ten Commandments', the voice of God was uncredited. One of the rumors was that it was DeMille himself. My memory suddenly conjures up the early 1930's pre-code DeMille favorite, "The Sign of the Cross", a saga of early Christianity in which the faithful are sent to the lions, and Rome burns. One critic commented, "Preposterous, but the laughter dies upon the lips." That comment is easily applicable to the political situation in which my country finds itself. See, I can't even keep this paragraph focused. Indulging in free association has always been a bit of a hobby of mine, but then again I'm not the President of the United States speaking to reporters or supporters, or allegedly running the show.

Charles Laughton as Nero in "The Sign of the Cross" (1932), which is worth an entire post of its own (and will get one).

I was all set to comment upon some of the many movies I've watched since my last post, but at the moment... nope the thoughts are gone. See this is the problem. Mr. Trump is like some kind of 1950's black and white commie witch hunt paranoia sci-fi creature that sucks all the air out of a room. It would be an interesting phenomenon if we weren't all gasping for air while we slowly choke to death. It's all a roll of the dice.

From Ken Russell's 'The Boy Friend' (1971)

Several nights ago, I watched 'The Boyfriend', one of those Ken Russell movies that seems to have something to say, but which careens out of control, and goes both over budget, and on too long. It's somewhat unsatisfactory as a complete whole, but absurdly entertaining in many other respects. Based on what was supposed to have been a charming off Broadway style revue, Russell's movie tells a story that is pastiche backstage movie musical cliché, concerned with a struggling theatre troupe, and equally struggling actors, their temperaments, and their crushes. There is an on-stage story, with various complications arising from the backstage story, and then there are the imaginings of the actors, sometimes as themselves, and sometimes as their characters. Most of the scenes are photographed with such care to their design that they appear, at first, to be beautifully composed paintings, which convert almost immediately into low camp.

Twiggy as Pirouette in 'The Boy Friend'. 

I've always liked Russell's movies. They're fun entertainments, with frequently memorable images. I think my problem with 'The Boy Friend' is that it promises to say something about movies, or musicals, or whatever you please, but never quite gets there. It just skips off to another idea. Maybe the problem is that the viewer ends up identifying with the Glenda Jackson role of the star with the broken ankle; who can't go on and must sit in the audience the night the big Hollywood movie producer is in attendance. We should be in the show, but we're once removed, helpless in our seats. At any rate, my point in mentioning 'The Boy Friend' was that the morning after viewing it, I read the news, which of course centered on the new President, and immediately could not remember what movie I'd watched the night before.

Twiggy dances with her love interest, a chorus boy played by Christopher Gable.

The night after I watched 'The Boy Friend', I watched 'George Washington Slept Here', adapted from a Moss Hart - George S. Kaufman Broadway farce. I've never read the script, even though I was always fond of the Kaufman-Hart shows. While the movie version wasn't really successful, it wasn't painful either. Jack Benny was the city loving apartment dweller whose wife (Ann Sheridan) uses the family money to purchase a run down country place in Bucks County, PA (where several NYC theatre denizens had homes). Of course, complications ensue. It turns out that Washington hadn't stayed in the house - it was Benedict Arnold. There's a wonderfully taciturn handyman, played by Percy Kilbride to laconic perfection. (There is a story that Kilbride, who had performed the same handyman role on Broadway, and who was hired at Benny's insistence, so cracked up his co-stars that the film was going over budget due to re-takes. Benny allegedly resorted to staying up all night so that he'd be too tired to laugh during filming.)

The highlight of 'George Washington Slept Here' (1942) was Percy Kilbride's performance as Mr. Kimber.

Kilbride would later be typecast as Pa Kettle in a series of films with Marjorie Main as Ma Kettle.

Also involved in the storyline is a rich overbearing uncle in the guise of Charles Coburn. There's the cranky neighbor preventing happiness through any number of means, portrayed by Charles Dingle as though he had just wandered off the set of 'The Little Foxes'. Hattie McDaniel is the housekeeper. There's a bratty kid relative who comes to stay for the summer (his parents are divorcing, and neither want to deal with him). There's an ornery dog (who had played Toto in the 'Wizard of Oz' ). There's the actors who arrive for a summer theatre production of 'The Man Who Came to Dinner' (another Kaufman-Hart play). There's even a plague of locusts. If the house itself seems familiar, it was the set which had just been used for 'Arsenic and Old Lace'. There's plenty of topical jokes which only those versed in the news of 1941-42 will get. (The Lend-Lease program gets mentioned a couple of times, etc.) In the Broadway version of the show, the husband bought the house to the wife's dismay. That set up was changed to having the wife make the purpose to better match up with Benny's miserly, complaining character familiar from his radio show. Which gets a few in-jokes as well.

Of course, everything finally works out, and a letter from George Washington, which quotes Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis", is found and read. It may have addressed the situation of a United States that had been drawn into WWII, but there's enough in that letter that perhaps a revival of the show (maybe set in Vermont) is due:

"We are facing a time of peril so grave in our brief National history, that there is now only the choice of serving the country a little longer, or having a country no longer to serve... In the words of Thom Paine, 'These are the times that try men's souls. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness alone that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.'

Paying for the Fiddler

This morning, as I was perusing the New York Times online, I stumbled upon a mention of the current Broadway revival of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof". The mention was in the headline of an article about the lifestyle of one of the show's performers. As I checked to see if I was interested in the article, I noticed a link to the show's review, from which I surmised that the revival started its run a few months ago. That review contained a link to the original production's review from 1964, which I also read.

from the 1964 review
 

I must mention that I subscribe to the New York Times online. Personally, I still I prefer the old fashioned experience of holding a newspaper, folding and turning the pages (and the sound that made), and getting my fingers smudged with rubbed off ink. I liked seeing the ads for products in which I had no interest; graphic concoctions of art and commerce that helped pay the paper's operating expenses. I liked seeing articles that piqued my curiosity, I liked reading opinions that differed from my own. I do not wish to be party to the slow and painful death of newspapers and objective reporting, but the fact of the matter is that the Times is unaffordable for me to purchase on a daily basis. My online fee, acquired during a special promotion, runs $15.00 a month and includes the paper's historical files. I would not be able to afford one month of the paper's Sunday edition for that price. These promotional deals are often set for a number of months, and bear constant watching, as the monthly fee is deducted automatically from my bank account. When the deal expires, one will find one's account charged at a much higher rate without warning. A month isn't really a month - the date on which my subscription fee is deducted from my bank account is a moving target, forever edging forward. At the beginning of this past autumn, the deduction was made during the third week of the month. It is now made within the first few days of the month. This maneuver, of course, is not unique to the Times. My cable/phone/internet bill does the same thing. As that one is a much larger amount, I can't let it be set to automatically deduct lest I be caught short. But the date for that bill still changes, a month is not a month, and the 'due by' date seems to move forward as well. But I digress. 

When I lived in New York City, or within a hour or two of it, I greatly enjoyed going to shows. Reading the original review of 'Fiddler', I started to wonder how much it cost back in 1964 when it debuted. As the review was in a .pdf scan of the paper, I went to the next page to check the theatre listings for the price. In 1964, an orchestra seat for that brand new musical cost $9.40 on a Friday or Saturday night when prices were highest.

As cost is relative, I looked up the minimum wage in 1964. The Federally set minimum in those days was $1.25 an hour. Which means, that forgetting taxes, deductions, and etc. someone earning the minimum wage would have to work for 8 hours to afford one ticket.

The top price for an orchestra seat for the current revival, which is far less than the price of a new show, is $167.00 for a Friday or Saturday night. Someone working at the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would have to work over 23 hours to afford one ticket.

The Broadway Theatre, one of the few theatres whose entrance is actually on Broadway. It was built as a movie palace with a stage. Mickey Mouse made his debut here before it switched to live shows. It returned to movies for the premiere of Disney's 'Fantasia', and once again for the premiere of Cinerama. When I was seeing shows there, the exterior looked quite different. (The first show I saw there was 'Cabaret', back in 1968.) The current façade and marquee are from work done when the neighboring skyscraper was built a few years ago.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I looked to see how much an average orchestra seat for the current hot ticket, the hip-hop infused musical 'Hamilton' would cost. Finding ticket prices is somewhat difficult if one isn't ordering, and for 'Hamilton', tickets are hard to get. I found someone who complained in a letter written last June that the mid-orchestra seats they had just acquired for that November cost $327.00 each. I decided to check the show's website, which claimed that a few seats were indeed available. The cost for next Friday night was well over $1,000.00. I think it was close to $1,200 something, but my eyes and mind boggled. I had to look away.

Once more, Dear Friends, unto the Holiday breech

Yet another attempt at this post (my third)  - Blogger is misbehaving. Word wrap vanished into the sub-electronic ether. Certain words seem to be acting as control codes. Typing after the end of a sentence seems to produce no result. If this continues, Blogger will get a few lumps of coal in its Christmas stocking.

And now (drum roll) the paragraphs it took half an hour to produce, thanks to the magic of cut and paste (cymbals clash):

Well.

It's 55 degrees Fahrenheit outside on the day before Christmas. This is not the usual December weather for Vermont. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera Ellen, and Danny Kaye singing, "snow, it won't be long before....". Fat chance. The lyric, by the way, is from the movie "White Christmas". Not this year.

The egg nog, which takes about five hours to make, is now at the stage where it is 'resting' for about three hours in the refrigidaire. (It's the olde Joie de Cuisiner recipe I favour, and contains a somewhat Bibo Vocatus component.) (I am tempted to add a polite "heh, heh", but considering the season, that appellation should really be a "ho, ho, ho", which won't be quite accurate until I've had a few cups of
ye old recipe.)

Hooray, the blogger problem seems to be over. Perhaps there was a site update underway when I started writing. I just popped in to post last Saturday's radio show:

 

Holiday music is an interesting phenomenon. For the first thousand or so years, all the big songwriters did what anyone trying to make a living would do - they went where the money was. Which means that they wrote for the Church. My interest is in the American Pop Song form, which came along much later. While there were a couple of tunes making the rounds in the 1930's, songs like "Jingle Bells", and "Winter Wonderland", Christmas pop didn't really hit the big time until December of 1941. Oh, Irving Berlin had given the idea a shot in the late 1930's with "Hello Mr. Kringle", which was recorded by Kay Kyser, but there wasn't a lot out there unless you wanted to hear Bing's 1935 'Adeste Fideles', with 'Silent Night' on the flip side. (By the way, the Silent Night used an Irish men's chorus and is really quite lovely. Bing recorded the song several times, starting in 1928 with Paul Whiteman. The 1935 release was held up for awhile, as Bing did not wish to profit from a spiritually aligned piece of music. It was released after the label agreed to donate the proceeds to a charity. )

 

In 1940, Irving Berlin sold an idea to Paramount Pictures. As part of the package, he would write all the music for a story about an Inn (with a floorshow, naturally) which would only be open on holidays. Paramount assigned the leads to Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Early in 1941, Berlin composed what would become the biggest selling single of all time. No one really recognized what they had at first, "Be Careful It's My Heart" was expected to be the big hit.

 

On December 7th, 1941, the United States was brought into the Second World War by the bombing of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor and Guam. That Christmas day, Bing introduced the song on the Kraft Music Hall radio program, which he hosted. 'Holiday Inn' was released in August of 1942. The almost mythical imagery of a New England winter struck a chord in a nation at war. By that October, "White Christmas" had become the most popular song on the charts, and it stayed there through January of 1943. It was so popular, Decca wore out the original masters and called all the parties back into the studio to recreate the recording five years later.

 

'Holiday Inn" would go on to inspire a chain of motels, and a remake released in 1954. That version, "White Christmas", was released in VistaVision and Technicolor. It almost didn't get made - after the death of his wife, Crosby withdrew to spend more time with his troubled sons. Fred Astaire was unhappy at Paramount and withdrew to go to MGM. When the project got back on track, Donald O'Connor was hired to replace Astaire, but illness intervened. Danny Kaye was brought in. When I worked in film distribution, one of the companies I worked for specialized in repertory and art product. They got the theatrical rights to Paramount Pictures (well, at least the ones that hadn't been sold to Universal). The rights to the "White Christmas" movie were another matter. From what I heard, Mr. Berlin, the Crosby  estate, and Mr. Kaye all had percentages, and all wanted One Million Dollars each. Upfront. And that cost would be on top of dealing with VistaVision, an early widescreen process which had a distortion free image by exposing a larger area of 35mm film and running it horizontally through projectors; i.e. equipment that no longer existed. Somehow it all got done. Truth be told, it's not a particularly good movie, but audiences love it. With a limited amount of time for a release window, it was the company's biggest grosser until they put the classic Warner Brothers cartoons back on screen.

 

At any rate, I digress. After 1942, pop Christmas songs began to fill the charts. Until recently it seemed like every performer who ever existed had to release a Christmas album. There are country Christmases, Hip Hop Christmases, Bebop, Jazz, Lounge, Accordion Christmases, drunks performing Christmas songs, and etc. - the variety is quite incredible and possibly worth some work as a study in mores and marketing.

 

My Holiday shows are comprised of (mostly) non-threatening secular pop songs which are gluten free as an added bonus.

 

 

 

As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.

With Bestest Wishes for an extravagantly Merrie Christmas

and a Most Excellent New Year

  

p.s. Dear Santa, if you take requests, please put some coal into the stockings of the folks responsible for spell check programs. They can be quite wonderful, but sometimes.....

The Jeweler

Today, December 6th, is the birthday of Ira Gershwin. Ira was two years older than George. Where George had been something of a delinquent, Ira was quiet, studious, and downright bookish. George quit school when he was a teenager - he was already making an attractive sum as a song plugger for the music publishers of Tin Pan Alley. Ira stayed in a prestigious New York City High School where he formed a life long friendship with fellow student Yip Harburg, the guy who wrote the lyrics for songs like "Buddy Can You Spare a Dime", and "Over the Rainbow". George began writing music for popular songs, and became internationally famous at the age of 21. Ira, who had worked a variety of jobs including one in the Turkish baths his father managed at the time, began writing song lyrics. He refused to cash in on the family name, and worked under the pseudonym 'Arthur Francis', a bit of Ira's humor; those were first names of his youngest brother and sister.

Ira Gershwin

George, who had encouraged Ira's writing, suggested they try creating songs together. After a show done in (I think) Atlantic City, the brothers created their first Broadway show; "Lady, Be Good" which starred Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Aside from the title tune, the score also featured "Fascinating Rhythm'.

(left to right) Fred Astaire, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin

With that show, and the shows which followed, George Gershwin changed American music. Ira always made sure the spotlight shone on his brother. Perhaps it is because he shunned the limelight, perhaps it is because his lyrics so perfectly fit George's music that they seemed effortless, but Ira rarely gets his due. He changed what was possible in a song lyric. Where Irving Berlin's songs were written to be easily understood by immigrants with little knowledge of English, Ira's lyrics reveled in sly puns, "sound alike" rhymes, and slang. "Life can be delish, with a sunny disposish." A lyric might mention Beatrice Fairfax (an advice columnist), have an introduction composed of other song titles, or contain the names of Russian composers. Ira once spent three days fussing over one word. Other Broadway lyric writers called him "The Jeweler".

The Gershwin brothers, George on the left, Ira on the right.

The brothers' songs became the soundtrack to the Roaring Twenties and provided the sass to fight off the Great Depression. It was an era when the songs composed for Broadway and Hollywood were the popular songs of the day. Songs like "Embraceable You", "A Foggy Day", "I Got Rhythm", "Someone to Watch Over Me", "They Can't Take That Away From Me", "But Not For Me", and the last song George wrote before his untimely death at 38, "Love Is Here To Stay". Ira wrote the lyric for it, and left the business. When he was coaxed back to work  three years later, he wrote lyrics for the likes of Jerome Kern ("Long Ago and Far Away"), Kurt Weil, Vernon Duke, and Harold Arlen ("The Man Who Got Away"). After the last named song, Ira retired and spent the remainder of his years gathering together, and preserving, his brother's manuscripts and memory. Thankfully, that project preserved his own works.  It's time Ira got his due.

This week's radio show was devoted to the lyrics of Ira Gershwin. A lot of lesser known songs were included at the expense of some of the most famous numbers in the American songbook. As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.  



p.s. Ira was the business manager for the brother's works. An interviewer once asked him, "Which comes first, the words, or the music?". Ira replied, "The contract."

See, a perfect tree...

It's been another week which got away. Would that I could brag of some great feat, but the height of this week's accomplishments so far was finally getting my hair cut after more months than I care to remember. Well, I did get my food stamp paperwork done for another year. The paper version in booklet form covers 16 pages plus four more of instructions. Plus cover sheets. I do mine online, it's easier, faster, and I can enlarge the type to readable size. Most of the questions are asked twice. I assume the reason for that is an attempt is to see if one's answers are consistent on the assumption that someone trying to get assistance on false grounds would be such a bad liar that they wouldn't be able to remember the answer they gave three pages previously. After filing the forms, one then has a half hour telephone interview which goes over every question again. Along the way I had to get information from my bank 4 or 5 times (thankfully online), as well as dig out the proper name of my health insurance, which goes through the state in which I live and seems to change its name every year or two. Plus there was work with the radio station's lawyer, more nonsense with the station's web site guys (one of whom couldn't use a spreadsheet to update the online show schedule because the changes weren't highlighted in color... etc.), and so on and so forth.

Yesterday one of the two remaining old maples that stood proudly in front of St. Michael's Episcopal across the street was cut down. There used to be two of them, one vanished a couple of years ago, a victim of disease and storms. Both of the missing were in the direct line of sight of my studio's view.

The tree that just went missing is on the left.

 

It is very odd to look out and see a large empty space across the street. I took a long walk up to my garden to avoid watching the rest of the destruction. It's odd that happened when it did. My radio show last Saturday included a little tribute to the birthday (March 22nd) of Stephen Sondheim.

During the Spring of 1970, I was 19 years old and in New York City for the day. I went to see a new show that had gotten rave reviews. One reviewer had taken great pains to describe a revolutionary set design that used elevators and moving platforms to simulate the side of a Manhattan high rise apartment house. As I was interested in such things, I went. From the opening notes I was transfixed by the score - this was not the usual show tune kind of composition. It reminded me of Gershwin in that it captured the sound, rhythm, and pulse beat of the city. There was no story line, it was a study of a group of married friends urging the lone bachelor among them to find someone.  It was called "Company", and I loved every minute of it.

 A year later, I took notice when a full page ad for a new Sondheim show appeared in the New York Times' Arts and Leisure section. It featured what appeared to be a large stone architectural detail of a theatre; the head of a chorus girl. The head was cracked. That page went up on my living room wall. I made it a point to get to the city to see the show as the idea of it seemed to revolve around a theatre which was being town down, and I was already a preservationist type. In the show, a reunion was being held for folks who had performed in the space. Wandering around the stage were memories, in the form of ghosts of their younger selves. The last portion of the show took place in the leading character's minds. I saw that one three times, and count that first viewing as one of the highlights of my years on this planet. I became a Sondheim fan.

This past Sunday, on Sondheim's 85th birthday, I wanted to post something on my personal Facebook page to let my friends and family know how much I appreciated this man's work. Facebook is not a place for writing, one always gets the feeling that anything of more than a paragraph or two will be bypassed. It is mostly reposts of someone else's graphics, expressions of political outrage from every angle imaginable (or just the outrage of your friends), people's photographs of their meals, posts of videos (especially if they contain cute cats), and so on and so forth. For that post, as words failed, I decided I needed a video clip from one of Sondheim's shows. After two hours of searching out what was available, I used the following clip from "Sunday in the Park With George". It was the last Sondheim show produced before I left New York for Boston. It won a Pulitzer Prize. During the first act, painter Georges Seurat sketches moments he observes, and puts those moments into a painting. Just before his work comes together, he has a moment in the park with his mother, who has never really understood him.



During last week's radio show, just before the first break, I was startled out of deep concentration by the ringing of the telephone. My Sondheim tribute was coming up, and I still had no idea what I was going to play. Most of Sondheim's songs are woven tightly into the story, and I wanted to give a couple of examples of his work that wouldn't need explanation. When I listened to the recording, I heard myself, a couple of minutes after the phone call, refer to a piece by Coleman Hawkins, when I should have said Erskine Hawkins. I also slightly messed up the name of an orchestral arrangement of one of Sondheim's songs I talked over. I now refer to such moments as "the Joys of Aging".

Last Saturday's radio show played a few for Spring (as I write - my third time working on this one post - it is a lovely Saturday morning in early Spring; it is snowing), played a few for Sondheim, and visited March of 1944 for a 15 minute broadcast of 'Uncle Sam Presents', culled for overseas use from "I Sustain the Wings", a weekly half hour with the Army Air Force Band of the Training Command, overseen by Captain Glenn Miller. To set the mood of the time, from our local paper:

 

 

 

 

 

 

As always, I hope anyone who listens enjoys the show.

(sigh)

Sometimes, a sigh seems to be the best response to one's environment, one's circumstances, one's personal situation, one's business, one's friends, one's life. A well timed and well expressed sigh can hold a world of meaning to those who are attuned to such nuances. Since I seem to be a somewhat curious sort (take that how you will), I looked up the definition of the word. So far, my favorite has been meaning #2 as ascribed by the online 'Urban Dictionary': "A Silent Scream from deep within."

In order to post that meaning, I tried to simply cut and paste the definition into this blog. I had to give permission to a program to do so. Then there was an error message of some sort, which wanted to know if I approved of the choice automatically made for me. It went by too fast for me to read and respond. I had to authorize the pasting of the line too. When did everything become so complicated and difficult? This cut and paste transaction used to be simple, easy, and quick. That sound you just heard was one of my very long sighs.

By the by, there were two definitions of "sigh" in the Urban Dictionary which denoted rather specific sexual meanings the word seems to have acquired. I'm not sure if I should applaud the creativity involved or inveigh with extreme approbation against the devaluation of our language.

With this post, I'm going to return to the "catch-ya" or whatever that bit of eye strain which prevents autoposted spam is called. The spammers were never really defeated in their postings - as soon as I removed the damn thing they returned. The frequency of the messages did slow down for awhile, but recently there has been a huge upswing in their number. As I write this it is not yet 9am. Since midnight, this blog has received spam messages at the rate of one per hour. I've no idea what they think they are accomplishing. I suspect they get paid on the basis of how many of their miserable little advertisements they manage to "land". Most of them get deleted, but occasionally I find a few which got through and escaped my attention. (Did you know that electronic spam was started by lawyers? I remember that first message in usenet newsgroups in the 1990s. It advertised divorce lawyers in Texas.) It took awhile for me to get around to starting a blog, but it was still fun when I did. Between the spammers, the nonsense from Google, the phony copyright claims, changes to web browsers which require using different browsers for different sites, and one to authorize running such things as the program that allows the little spinning globe I like which shows the origin points of visitors, etc. it's not that much fun anymore. (Sigh.)

While I'm at it, I should note that my email would be useless without spam blockers. I've managed to greatly reduce the amount of email spam I get - yesterday it was under 300 messages for the day. Two days ago I happened to look at my email program's spam folder and discovered a message from a friend who had vanished into a world of self oblivion from which he is now trying to recover. The idea that he might have thought I no longer wished to hear from him weighs rather heavily upon me, especially since I'd encouraged him in the past to return to his sobriety program.

It's been a long February, but a good old fashioned snowy one. Brattleboro looks pretty darn good with snow piled up everywhere. I like it. I like the quiet that it brings. I like the early morning and twilight blue that settles in all too briefly. I like walks in the snow, although I must sadly admit that activity gets a little more difficult each year.



The early morning view from my studio apartment's front balcony.

A few minutes walk up Putney Road, looking out over the meadows of the West River where it joins the Connecticut.
When I first moved here in 1995, the buildings in the distance were part of the last local dairy farm.
The dairy farm is gone now, the cows sold off,  the main barn houses a Grafton Cheese shop. (sigh)

The local library's film series I mentioned in a recent post continued with a picture I'd never encountered; "Born to Kill". It's one of those nifty noirs with nary a redeeming virtue to be found anywhere within it. Everyone has an angle. Bosley Crowther, the film critic of the New York Times, wrote that it was "not only morally disgusting but is an offense to a normal intellect... it is precisely because it is designed to pander to the lower levels of taste that it is reprehensible". I enjoyed it immensely and would gladly recommend it to anyone needing a visit to the seamier sides of life. It's the kind of movie that makes me sigh in what I think is a good, satisfied manner.

Our local movie palace, the Latchis, had a matinee on Sunday of "Broadway Melody of 1940", an old favorite I hadn't seen in quite awhile. I had been excited to go, and managed to talk a friend who had never seen it into going with me. My friend's father was a conservative minister who did not approve of movies. Although he overcame that upbringing years ago, I must admit to a slight degree of satisfaction that I was taking my friend into the devil's lair of musical comedy hell. Speaking of which, exhibitors today have lost all sense of showmanship. The Latchis has never dimmed the houselights - they are simply switched off or on. The curtain was removed a long time ago. Now that digital projection has arrived, we were presented with an onscreen DVD player menu, subtitles for the hearing impaired which were displayed until someone shut them off, and the complete indignity of having the movie projected in the wrong ratio. Movies of that period were meant to be shown at a ratio of 1.33 to 1, close to a square. Movies for the last 50 years have used a variety of oblong formats. The movie was shown in the standard widescreen ratio of 1.85 to 1.

This resulted in a stretched and distorted picture, which kind of looked like this (although not quite this bad):

 

when it should have looked like this:

 





Needless to say, this proved upsetting - at least to me. Everything from the carefully planned design elements to the choreography was adversely affected. Naturally, I told the people in charge about the problem, and what needed to be done to fix it. Of course, they did nothing. Even with the distortion, however, people still enjoyed the movie. And why not? The score was composed by Cole Porter. It stars Fred Astaire and George Murphy as vaudeville partners, both of whom fall for Eleanor Powell.

Ms. Powell's dancing had a slightly gangly athletic girl next door quality where Ginger Rogers had a more graceful sophisticated style of movement. To my mind, Ms. Powell was the (slightly) better dancer - she could keep up with Astaire. She didn't really deserve getting chubby legs due to the projection problem. Although, for those who might notice such things, the distortion also fortuitously affected the draped look of the high waisted fashion of men's pants at the time, giving Mr. Murphy a posterior he didn't normally possess. (Although I am sure there were many who used a more colloquial term to describe him after he became a Republican US Senator. Tom Lehrer composed a song in which he stated, "now that he's a Senator he's really got the chance to give the public a song and dance").

 

The big grand finale production number was "Begin the Beguine", which was divided into several performance sections. The song itself was from a Broadway show, 'Jubilee', a flop. The song might have been forgotten had Artie Show not discovered it and turned it into a swing anthem. The production number's final segment, a jazz tap routine, is one of the best ever put on film. My friend enthusiastically applauded. As did the audience. And so did I. And, as I sat back in my seat, I heaved a sigh.  

 

(sigh)

Tap Your Troubles Away

Thank God(s)(dess)(es) that the heat and humidity finally broke. It was getting to me. Without air conditioning, the sweltering had me melting, melting you wretched brat... things weren't being helped by mega doses of prednisone which I've been taking since last Wednesday. The doctor (specialist) who prescribed them even called a half an hour ago to see how I was coping. Oh, everything's all right - I only quit as President of the non-profit which holds the license for the radio station, and resigned as station manager and program director. You know, the stuff that has been my identity for the last year and a half. Actually, I think I'm grateful. It was necessary, and I might not have done it otherwise.

It's complicated.

The precipitating event occurred when a Board member insisted I should do something his way immediately, instead of by the method the Board had agreed upon by vote two days earlier, or he would quit on the spot. He's in charge of our underwriting campaign and is the only person bringing in badly needed money. Me? I can't get the Board to pay a computer guy $40.00 for a cable that solved an emergency two months ago that made it possible for us to continue running the station. They keep saying they will order a cheaper version online and give the computer repair guy his once new, now used, cable back. (It's a non profit, it's complicated.) This wasn't a paid job, we're all volunteers. The choice was obvious. I quit. And the response from the Board has been peevishness that I did so without an appropriate exit strategy. (As Anna Russell used to sway, "I'm not making this up, you know".)

The weather had everybody on edge. Every look at the online news services, every look at Facebook, there were people in full out nasty. For breaks, you might find a relaxing but inordinate focus upon news bulletins detailing the progress of a woman in England waiting to begin labor. There is a little noted news story which describes how a woman in Texas took her life and the lives of her two children when she couldn't handle the process to get approved for foodstamps. As the above events were merely the seasoning in the shake and bake, I decided I was going to attempt to unplug a bit.

To start, I spent a good bit of time "unsubscribing" from mail lists, political advocacy bulletins, a few legitimate subscriptions, oh you know, the effluvia of the electronic messaging universe of one who has been around awhile. I am still getting email from which I "unsubscribed" last Wednesday. (I'm writing on the following Monday afternoon.) We're only talking about the relatively small 130 or so messages of the day that make it through the spam filters that stop the other 2,000 or so messages I get each day. I don't have the "you've got mail" ding thing going or I'd be as punch drunk as the girl they hire when they can't get Gloria Grahame for a film noir.

It was a year ago last February that economics ended my cable, phone, and internet connections for awhile. It was actually very easy to give up the tv, and I quickly discovered that I often had it on as background and/or diversion while on the computer. There were shows I liked, and I tried to keep up with them online, but I'm not really crazy about tv on my computer screen and I quickly ceased the effort. Call me old fashioned, or at least order one up, please. At any rate, it was the cutting off of internet access that I found difficult. This part of the life and times was played out against a backdrop of getting the radio station back on the air. Not having internet access at home was a problem. I got it back through a different company last August. Which means the special one year commitment introductory offer I had to accept to get close to the blatantly misrepresented price is about to expire.

 Oh, well.

A couple of months ago I got cable back. I couldn't wait to watch network news again, catch up on a few shows, vege out. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in a thrift shop with Jon Campo when he triumphantly discovered a group of BIC pens? They were the old ones, the ones that were first introduced. The price was right, and they were, as he quickly pointed out, better made than the product of the time. Thing is, when they were new those pens were the cheap plastic mass produced intimation of the real thing knock offs at which we turned up our collective noses in amused superiority. And, oh, the difference between tv a year ago and how it has changed? Did I every tell you about Jon Campo and the BIC pens?

I've been preparing for this, and have a digital cable video recording box full of cheesy movies and a few other audio visual hallucinatory indulgences There's a few DVDs I gave myself for Christmas which I've been holding for an appropriate occasion. The DVD player does that home surround sound thing. Oh, how I wish I could plug the cable box into it. Ah well, I shall just have to suffer through 'Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter' without surround sound. At least the image will be half way decent, as about two years ago I was given an old Sony high def widescreen tube style tv. Watching the digital recordings and the DVD's can be most entertaining. I mean heck, putting entertainment aside in a kind of holding bank is one of the things I've been up to since my first preteen purchases of movies on 8mm, then as I grew older I grew into 16mm, Beta, VHS, Laser Discs, DVD's. I'm retired and I have movies.

It's been two days now since I stopped looking at Facebook. I glance at the online news in a fashion which would mark me as a graduate of an Evelyn Wood course if they still had them. I have been watching, sometimes actually watching, tv while working on other things on the computer. Played a few extra games of solitaire. I've browsed some of those websites I bookmarked two years ago. I still feel too heavily plugged in.

Yesterday I found myself lying on a small raft in a large spring fed pond. It was early afternoon several days into a camping trip in the desert mountains south of San Diego sometime in the early 1980's. It was a Tuesday afternoon, the water more than cold enough to cause any male some embarrassment as it refreshed against the heat, the sky was cloudless blue. Something happened to my right shoulder. Tension began to drain away, melting away, first the right shoulder and then the left. I relaxed. I begin to wonder if the move from the cities to Vermont was an attempt to recapture that moment.

A couple of days ago, just as I started the unplugging, I heard from the Taxation folks. After I lost just about everything, again, the last time, the rebuilding started with a minimum wage cashier job. After the car died my inimitable sense of timing was rewarded when anyone at my almost full time part time hours hiring agreement was reduced to 28 to 30 hours a week. Two years ago, I found it necessary to cash in a burial policy I'd had since the mid 1960's. A small loan was taken against it in 1975. I only got about $1,700.00 as my payout. The insurance company filed paperwork showing a value of $7,000.00. The government decided they wanted well over $700.00 of it. I appealed, sending a copy of the check I'd thoughtfully made (thanks for the anal retentive training dear family!). The government has relented and decided it will accept $680.00.

I've been wondering if the tv shouldn't get turned off for awhile too. I can't much listen to the radio at the moment, there are too many pre-recorded underwriting spots and station IDs read by the guy who... I take my daily bath in water infused with bleach, part of treating my skin condition. It's not a full tub tub, but it is womblicious.

I turn on the cable to set up a recording for a movie I want to be sure to see. On the extra e$tra premium old movie channel, the one you have to pay for all the sports channels to get, they're showing the movies they used to show us for the price of watching a few commercials. The one at the moment has the Tommy Dorsey band performing. The unbilled boy singer takes the mic, it's Frank Sinatra. It's one of those black and white World War Two ship board romances with Red Skelton as a mystery writer whose hep cat male secretary is played by Bert Lahr. Virginia O'Brien delivers a very dry jive boogie woogie version of the song just used as a ballad. There's a tap dance filmed so that it can easily be removed from showings in the American South, as it is performed by two "Negro" male performers. They are billed as "Stump" and "Stumpy". Eleanor Powell's specialty tap is performed poolside, with Dorsey and the band, drummer Buddy Rich, trick steps on a chair, a table, and a diving board. The dialogue could use some polish to be considered third rate. It is completely, absurdly entertaining. Eleanor saves the day against Nazi saboteur smugglers by tapping the 11 o'clock in morse code. I haven't even poured the chilled white wine yet, but my right shoulder is beginning to get this almost tingly, sorta melty feeling.



As I finish jotting this down, another movie has been playing. Charlie Barnet just gave way to Ann Miller who, standing by a nightclub version of a navy destroyer's main guns, suddenly breaks out into song, tap and dance..."and when we've lit the torch of liberty, in each blacked out land across the sea, when a man can proudly say 'I'm free', we'll be dancing "The Vict'ry Polka,"... they'll come marching down Fifth Avenue, the United Nations in review, when this lovely dream has all come true, we'll be dancing "The Vict'ry Polka."
We're going to win this one folks.
There's been another twinge in the right shoulder.
Tomorrow is Tuesday.
I'm going to go pour the wine.