The passing of celluloid dreams

Things change.

My first music reproduction device was a 78rpm kid's record player made out of tin.

As a child, I had a record player
exactly like this one.

Before long records changed to 45rpm, then to 33 1/3 long playing lps. Soon there was high fidelity and then there was  stereo. All that in the space of 10 years Flash forward past home tape recorders, cassettes and the birth of mix tapes (sigh), CDs with clean but cold sound, to mp3s which allowed thousands of songs to be stored on a device the size of a slightly thick playing card, to mp3s which must be paid for and which have licensing and copy protections in them so you can't share them with your friends. It's a wonder they haven't come up with a way to make you pay every time you play a particular song.



TV in my lifetime changed from a small (except we didn't know it was small then) black and white flickering picture to large 19 inch sets that were designed as furniture for the living room. Color arrived in the mid to late 1960's (now there's a loaded statement).

Sometime in the early 1980's, I can remember walking the streets of Greenwich Village the night the Public Broadcasting Service presented a Metropolitan Opera performance "simulcast" in stereo on local radio stations and hearing what was it, La Boheme?, wafting through the windows of every single block on my way home. Then ABC began simulcasting music videos late on Friday nights. It wasn't long before tv sets had stereo built in. Along the way, there was BetaMax, VHS, Laser Discs, DVDs, and now we have available very large wall sized flat screen high definition surround sound stereo devices that mimic and rival the quality of movie theaters. And there's the rub.

Over the years, film has come in many sizes and formats. But it was film, celluloid. The images would be projected onto large screens, 20 to 40 feet wide. Those images had a special kind of magic. They captured and inspired our imaginations. And those images have changed over the years. Film stock used to be nitrate, which gave a special glow.

35mm nitrate image from the silent German film "Metropolis"

Nitrate film stock was unstable and flammable. Safety stock came in, but the rich blacks and silver glow of the images were gone. Stunning technicolor images (also with rich blacks) gave way to more economical and less complicated Eastman stock and its imitators, in which the colors were more subdued and quickly faded. There have been any number of other changes, from the size of the film itself to special lenses for widescreen, stereo, multi-channel  stereo Sensurround, various 3D systems, and etc.With each change, the way we perceive the image itself, and the story we are watching, has changed. But the image was still on celluloid.

Image from a 1950s era 35mm IB Technicolor print

Image from the Blu Ray DVD "restoration"
(Thanks to David Bordwell's website on cinema from which I purloined these two images.)

Many movie theaters now project digital images. Celluloid is being phased out. This was all predictable. Indeed, the only surprise to me is that it took so long. When I was put out of a job in film distribution in the mid 1990's, I fully expected celluloid to be completely gone within 10 years. But the time is now. Movie theaters are already having problems getting 35mm prints. There is about a year left. Theaters must either pay about $70,000.00 per screen to covert to digital, or they will find themselves out of business.

I can't begin to estimate how many 35mm prints in
cans like this I've slung around over the years

Most film images wash over you at the rate of 24 frames per second. There is a momentary display of a picture in a concrete all there at once image, interspersed by moments of darkness as a flywheel blocks the light while the next picture is brought before the light source, aperture, and lens. Persistence of vision creates the moving image.  (Ingmar Bergman used to note that people seeing his movies were really paying to sit in 20 minutes of darkness. He wasn't talking about his themes.) Digital images, on the other hand, are based on a scan line. One line is filled in by electrons hitting a display, skipping a line, going on to the next line, skipping a line all the way down an image. The electron beam then goes back and fills in the missing lines. Even though this happens very rapidly, the display never has a complete image on it - it is a mental process which puts this picture together. That process puts the viewer into an alpha state, accepting what is shown in a much more uncritical and relaxed fashion. This was detailed in a mid 1970s book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", which claimed that tv was, therefore, lulling people into passivity ripe for autocratic rule. This effect is not based on content - it is based on the psychological effects of watching tv - the problem here is the medium itself.

Aside from those scary implications, part of the sadness I feel over this change concerns the auditorium experience of going to the movies. Once, there were giant screens fronting a sea of seats in "an acre of dreams". As television took hold, the theaters became smaller, there were less seats, the auditoriums were less grand. When I was a kid, one entered the theater to music playing softly in the background. There were curtains in front of the screen. At the appointed time, the house lights would dim, the music would swell, colored lights would engulf the main curtain which would open as images began to appear on the screen. An inner curtain would close after the coming attractions, newsreels, cartoons and short subjects and reopen for the feature. Movie going was an experience, a shared worship. Today's smaller auditoriums still offer a shared experience, but the ceremony, the ritual of presentation, is gone. Most of the big old houses have been multiplexed, losing their balconies, their size, their prestige and their showmanship in the process.
(Check out my post on one of the great movie palaces, The Roxy.)

I could go on, but I won't. This article started because I looked something up. I stumbled upon a news story that the Strand Theatre in Ocean City, New Jersey might close for good - unable to afford the cost of digital conversion. It currently has five screens and is a shadow of its former self. I saw many a movie there before it was multiplexed. It was one of the homes, nay, the temples, of my celluloid dreams.

The Strand as it is now.

Back in its glory days when the Strand was new.

One entered through those doors, walked down the hallway past illuminated pictures of movie stars (concession stand on the photo left, which would have been on the right as you entered.)

Even the back of the auditorium was a grand and huge space. Well, the Strand did seat 1,200 after all.

As you entered the auditorium, art deco lighting greeted you.

The auditorium

Close up of the design on the main curtain

The Strand Theater has been listed for sale. I want it to survive, but its time has gone and it really ceased to exist years ago. In memory (was it real?) I see myself saunter past on a rainy windswept night, the glow of light reflected on the wet boardwalk, lost forever in my own noir world of blue neon dreams.

Chicken Soup for Breakfast

After taking a lovely few days off from work as I turned 62, I returned to my rewarding and fulfilling career position as a supermarket cashier full of pep and vigor. Less than a week later, I have returned to a life of constant backache, arthritic knee pain which leaves me walking in hobbled fashion, flatulence which would offend a skunk, and as still yet another indignity have now come down with something nasty. I had to call in sick today. I didn't want to, I have little in the way of provisions and had planned on stocking the larder after my four hours of toil in the fields of Mammon. It is also quite within the realm of possibility that I could be fired for "calling in", an odd bit of terminology which should really be "calling out".

Actually, this image is somewhat inaccurate. I refuse to go into further de-tail 

At the very least, at some point upon my return, I will be taken off the sales floor and given a lecture and forced to sign paperwork stating that I understand that my actions inconvenienced others and adversely affected the morale of my co-workers. I suppose I should have gone in sick giving this cold a chance to spread around to those who haven't come down with it yet (many already have it and have already inconvenienced and affected the morale of their co-workers), asked to run to the bathroom every 10 to 20 minutes and so on and so forth. Just as a by the by, there have been times when I have asked to go to the bathroom and been told no - I have had to remind the supervisors that their denial is illegal (this happens to others as well, not just myself). I doubt that the customers would appreciate the results of a lengthy denial of bathroom "privileges" at the moment. The corporate environment in which I work is badly in need of a worker's union. Of course, if that were to be mentioned out loud, or posted where such sentiment could be easily seen or found, the person expressing such a thought would quickly find themselves dismissed. Not for using the word "union", of course, but they would find something. (I immediately recall two bookkeepers in a row who complained about their supervisor, both of whom were dismissed when the cash drawers were found to be exactly one hundred dollars short.) The workers at the local Food Co-op have once again started the struggle to form a union. More power to them. Literally.

On another eqully distressing note, ever since my new internet service was hooked up, my computer has been misbehaving. It no longer "sleeps" - the monitor will turn off but the computer itself  returns to its "awake" state immediately. After a couple of hours, it will turn the monitor back on. I wonder what it is up to. Is it trying to catch up on all the news it missed? Have we caught the same virus? Is it having an affair with a computer half way around the world? I do hope it stops this and returns to its normal behavior soon. I shudder to think what will happen if our bond of trust is broken.

62 and counting

For the last two days, my new internet provider finally displayed my location (on the globe at the top right of this page) as being within the state of Vermont. The only problem is that both of the towns listed (Stowe and Barre) are quite some distance from here. Today I'm showing up as back in New Hampshire. Needless to say, I find this annoying. It really isn't a matter of much consequence, but it is indicative of the state of the world in general that something that should be so simple has become so f***ed up.

Yesterday, I began my 63rd year on life on this planet in this identity and body. Yes, I suppose that's weirdly specific, but ya never know when such clarity will be needed (or useful)... Not that I've ever thought that I was an alien from another world who somehow got trapped here. Well, okay, but that wasn't until I was in my 30s and Reagan was President.

The initial construct of this post - oh, hell, that's tortured phrasing. You see, I have this thing about starting a sentence or paragraph with "I". It's time to get over that one. I originally started this post yesterday, with a note that I was born 62 years ago in a hospital in the southern part of the state of New Jersey. I named names and places. Then I thought that I might be giving away too much information which might lead to identity theft. Not that I have anything much for anyone to steal. I don't want or use credit cards. I have almost no money for anyone to take, although if someone did grab the rent money out of my bank account it would provide me with huge problems which would initiate one of those dominoes falling sequences that would be awesome to behold but no fun to live.  My basic intention was to mention that I was born in a hospital. I may have been the first person in my family to have that experience. My older brother was born at a midwife's house in my hometown.

When I first became obsessed with movies, I was intensely focused on the silent film era. I remember a discussion once with my grandmother about the silent Lon Chaney version of "The Phantom of the Opera". She told me how she had seen it when she was young and how it had frightened her. On reflection, she wasn't all that young - she would have been about 25 when it played my hometown. That memory has popped up from time to time, and at one point in my life started me thinking about the changes my grandmother had seen. She was born on a farm. She once told me that as a young girl on her way to bed each evening, it was one of her chores to trim the wicks of the candles and oil lamps. Her lifetime spanned an era in which electricity arrived in people's homes, to cars, airplanes, world wars, telephones, radio, movies, television, and men walking on the moon. As for my own humble self, I always felt like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern waiting around while nothing much happened - except that they were unaware that they were  minor characters in the story of Hamlet, which was being played out around them.

So, a few years ago, I began to take stock....

Arrrgggghh. I had included Vladimir and Estragon in the text above, but found that it muddied the thought being expressed and deleted them. To make certain that I had the spelling right, I had looked them up and simply cut and pasted the names into this text. They appeared n a different font. I was able to fix that, but every new word typed used the font change and I've now spent at least 15 minutes trying to get things back to where they were with the original settings. None of the choices Blogger has for fonts matches the font being used. Trying the "default" font comes close, but the spacing is different and it is very noticeable - at least in draft mode. When I look at the post in "Preview", the affected text has taken on a different color and can barely be seen. I managed to fix it - the solution was in copying the text, stripping it of control codes, deleting the post, and starting a new post into which I pasted the cleaned text. Something that should be so simple....

And maybe that's my point. I've lived in an era in which great inventions changed the way we live - but each modification since has made things more complex - often to the point that the inventions themselves break and/or become unusable or too frustrating to use.

I think I'd better go do something else for awhile.
Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius - and all that. Ya know?

A gentle reminder

A reminder as I head out to work today....

Laboring Day

Since my return to internet space the other day, the little globe on the top right hand side of my blog page has shown my connection as originating in New Hampshire. Several different towns in New Hampshire, depending on the day. And some of those towns are over an hour away from Brattleboro.

Today is Labor Day. As I am currently on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, I am celebrating the accomplishments of the American Worker by working. Ah yes, the white collars get the day off so they can torture the blue collars who must wait on them or lose their jobs.

Where I work, the wall between the sales floor and the bathrooms and staff break room is covered with framed "diplomas" signifying the completion of various business management courses. One of the 'diplomas' is for "Union Awareness". I well remember that I was personally warned by my department's manager that I might be followed or approached by a union organizer and that I should ignore them and report any such incidents.

Mother Jones talking with the President of the United States from Vermont

May Day (the -real- Labor Day) 1933

Local heroes

Oops - lookit the time - I must go - can't be late - that could get me fired.....

Take me to the Fair...

Jeez-us. It's Labor Day weekend already. We had about three days of summer. There was a lot of horrible, hot, humid nastiness which visited and became the guest who wouldn't leave. Was that supposed to be summer in Vermont?

It's been a few years now since I had to put down the Jimmy. The lack of vehicular transport frustrates me quite a bit at this season - it's Fair Time. I used to love the State Fair in Rutland - aside from having a really crappy side show, suitably tacky decrepit rides, extraordinary maple doughnuts (consumed with coffee sweetened with maple sugar, natch!) and some of the best french fries and deep fried onion rings on the planet, that fair had the superbly entertaining Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig Races. I've no idea where the pictures I took years ago have gotten to. Instead, I'll just have to satisfy myself with a few pics I took with my cheap digital camera a few years back at the Guilford Fair.

Guilford is a small village (or maybe a series of villages) just south of Brattleboro. I'm always amazed when I hear that there are 2,000 people there. It makes me wonder if the count includes all the cows and all the zombies. At any rate, there is an annual Labor Day Fair which is always worth attending as they have a booth with pretty good french fries too.

When you first get to the fair, you get to park in a field alongside this house, which is across the country lane from the fair site (I'd love to explore that house):

As one first enters the site, one sees the area where young riders prepare for their exhibition:

Up the hill at the fair proper is an old barn where the season's crop of veggies are judged:

And of course, the livestock exhibit and competition:

Further up the hill is the midway:

You thought I was kidding about the zombies, didn't you?

Well, you'll have to excuse me now. I'm off to a Labor Day fair where I can have a dance....
(visual distortion at the beginning clears up quickly)

Happiness is....

In his essay on the Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus concludes that Sisyphus' eternal struggle pushing that boulder to the top of the mountain only to have it roll backwards and to have to start all over again, is a hopeless task big enough to fill the heart, and that Sisyphus was therefore happy. If Mr. Camus were alive today, I would punch him in the face.

While living without a home internet connection, a friend told me of Fairmuck Communitcations' (not their real name, and I misspelled my real intention to spare any possible finer sensibilities of some of my readers) special offer of $19.99 per month for dsl.
I made the call.
"I want to get your special offer of dsl at 19.99 per month for 12 months as it says in your ad, please."
"To get that price, you must also take our telephoney service..."
"It doesn't say that in your ad."
"Yes, it does, it's in the fine print."
"I saw a part that said 'Save even more by bundling our telephoney service'..."
"Not that part, it was in the fine print. Look at the ad"
"It's an online ad and don't have internet at home."
"It's in the fine print."
"(Sigh) All right, how much will it be with the telephoney service?"
"$39.95 a month, and your dsl will be $19.99".
"So if I pay you more you will charge me less?"

After I asked, it was confirmed that there would be extra charges for local phone calls beyond a stunningly few minutes allotted per month. After I asked, I got the price for just the dsl - $29.95 a month. "That's less than a dollar a day!". I could hear the phoney smile. It would take exactly one week to hook me up, no money upfront. I would not have to be home when they came to install my service connection. I made the deal.

Oopsie - they don't show my apartment number in their records. They will have to add it manually. This will take an extra day. Or two.

The next day I got a call from Fairmuck.
"Sorry, Steven, but due to all the storms in Southern Vermont, we won't be able to install your dsl for two weeks."
"What storms in Southern Vermont? There haven't been anything but thundershowers."
"Oh no, there have been bad storms and flooding, plus very high winds from a hurricane."
"That was a year ago".
"No, there were more recent storms. You wouldn't believe the damage."

A few days went by and the modem (with wi-fi) showed up via Fed Ex. Why it was sent through a premium shipper when my account wouldn't be in service for a week and a half, I don't know. I wasn't billed for it, so I decided not to ask.

On the appointed Friday, I got home to find I'd had a telephone call from Fairmuck. They'd been unable to decide which telephone connector in my apartment building's basement was mine and would need access to my apartment. They would also need access to the locked room in the basement. That room used to house equipment from a once locally owned internet service provider. As I had the following day off, I started placing calls. The phone number for Fairmuck  played a recorded message which informed me that they were closed for the weekend. I called the phone from which the call to me was placed. An individual answered who told me it wasn't a Fairmuck number. When I noted that it was the number from which I'd been called, he told me no one was there and hung up. I called the office again, and found an 800 (free call) number for problems, emergencies, and tech advice. I called it. They couldn't find my account by using my cell phone number. As it turns out, I was assigned an "account phone number" even though I did not sign up for phone service - a number which appeared nowhere on the paperwork that accompanied the modem. I had the next day off from work, could they come back then? They could - if they could get a hold of their local dispatch - but that office was closed until Monday. "Look, I just went through a series of phone calls to make sure I had access to the locked room. Can a supervisor help?" Of course not, but the supervisor did get me a number I could call the next day. I did not complain about the over-modulated endlessly repeating recording of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" 'Summer' movement to which I had been subjected for 20 minutes of hold time.

Next day, rinse and repeat, except that they couldn't find my account with either phone number.

Monday morning, before heading out to work, I called Fairmuck's main number. They couldn't find my account either, but a supervisor finally did. I explained that I had the next day, Tuesday, off. Would they please come back then? The supervisor called the local dispatch office. They could fit me in. Can you tell me approximately what time you might arrive? "They will give you a call around 8am with that information." "Thank You!"

Around 9am Tuesday, I discovered that the hold music had, thankfully, changed.  After a short musicale interlude I got someone who, while obviously American, seemed to have a few difficulties with both technology and any version of the English language that used b-i-g words. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was his first day on the job and that he was nervous. At first, he couldn't find my account. After getting help, he put me on hold to "read the notes". Ten minutes later I was disconnected. After getting someone else on the line, I made them write down my phone number and promise to call me back if we were disconnected. I then had to recount the whole grizzly story even though all I wanted to know was what time I should expect the service person to arrive? It took getting another supervisor on the phone. She called the local dispatch. "They don't have you down for today, they have you behind a technician for Wednesday."   Behind? What? I tried my best to stay calm. Do you know how many people I have to involve to get that room unlocked? My landlord had a stroke, he can't just run right over to unlock it. I took the day off. Your installation person was here on Friday, did some of the work, came back later and found my landlord's rep who got him into the locked room. How much time do you really need? It can be done in a few minutes. Why do I have to fight you to do business with you? Is this why people warned me against Fairmuck? The supervisor talked to dispatch again. They fit me in for that afternoon - as long as there were no "business emergencies". If a business has a problem, Vermont law, I was told, made them go to the business first. About 2:30pm that afternoon, I got a robot call - my appointment for Tuesday was cancelled and rescheduled for Thursday.

This time they found my account pretty quickly. I asked for a supervisor as soon as they answered the phone. No, they had to know why first. I told them. They got me a supervisor. There was no way I would be able to take Thursday off from work or be home at any point during the day. The supervisor called the local dispatch - who was out of the office for lunch and an appointment and there was no one else! I finally got a call about an hour and a half later. Sorry, something had come up, there was no way. I had to go through the story again. I'd had it. I told the supervisor I was tired of all their lies I'd gotten since I placed the first call. I told them that it hadn't taken me long to realize that they had given me a non-existant afternoon appointment just to get me off the phone. I told the next supervisor that if they couldn't get my service connected by the next afternoon after I got home from work, they could come and get their equipment - and would they please mail my letters to my congressmen on their way back to their depot as walking, even with the cane, can be painful some days. The supervisor called dispatch again. An appointment for the next day was easy - that's what they had me down for!

-----------

Just about the same day that I started my Fairmuck adventure, Google sent me an email that they were yanking my July 4th post as I had violated copyrights. They'd been contacted by Sony who claimed ownership of  "Mama, Look Sharp",  and another file in the same post by Jean Shepherd. There was a link where I could see the communication they received.
The link linked me to - the same email.
There was a link where I could fill out a form to protest the action.

I filled out a ton of information, and noted that Sony owned Columbia Pictures (for whom I used to work) which owned the movie version of "1776". The performance video of the song "Mama , Look Sharp" which I had posted was from the 1969 Tony Awards tv performance from that show, and was material not owned by Sony.  I pointed out that the video in my post was a link to a YouTube video, and that YouTube is owned by Google, who owns Blogspot. As the video was still available on YouTube, I suspected that they could easily ascertain that Sony didn't own that particular copyright, and that linking the video was okay. Furthermore, I explained that the Jean Shepherd file used was a public domain 1960's broadcast from radio station WOR and not the country western singer who might have a Sony album. After much work and research, I clicked the "send" button.  My reply went nowhere. I got an error message that the reply address and site didn't exist.

-----------

Meanwhile back at the non-internet ranch, while printing out documents for the radio station, I ran out of paper and ink. I went off to my local Staples office supply store and purchased both, spending well over $60.00. I reloaded. First, my printer refused to align the new print cartridges. It gave me error messages that the print carriage was jammed - it wasn't. Then I discovered the reason the ink had shown as empty was that the previous color ink cartridge had leaked all over the sponges underneath the area where the cartridges load. I spent two days cleaning it all up. Still had the same problem. This was serious - after spending so much on the ink and paper, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy another printer anytime soon. After a couple more days I was able to get the carriage jam comment to go away. Then the printer decided that the new ink cartridges were empty. I spent another day cleaning contact surfaces. It finally saw the ink supplies. But then the printer decided that there was no paper in the paper tray. After two days of fiddling - which included getting out the original printer manual which was no help whatsoever - I gave up and dropped the whole thing onto to the bed. Forcibly, if you get my meaning. It bounced and got me in the shins.

After several days, the swelling is finally starting to go down.
It's alright, though.
According to Camus, I must be happy.

Absence

If anyone is looking for me or wondering where I am (and there are a few people who know to look here) my absence from the online world is not of my choosing. It's a simple lack of an internet connection. After I was disconnected by Comcast and lost my tv/internet/phone package, I was still able to stay online thanks to two wifi signals in my residential area. The good one vanished well over a month ago, and now the one with only a sporadic connection has gone as well.

Getting to use the internet access at our library is nearly impossible - there is a crowd of regular users who monopolize the main set of computers (one gets two 45 minute periods of use per day with on'es library card's codes). There is a second bank of "express" computers where one can get 20  minutes of internet use. Those are the ones that you can usually get to use. When I log on, I have to go right to my email as I get so much spam that my 10meg inbox fills up in one day. All of the radio station's email is set up to forward from the website to me.

This is the first time I've been able to get to post a note here. So.... just in case anyone is wondering, everything is okay, I've just been suffering from the usual symptoms of poverty, that's all.

I really have no idea when I'll be able to pay off Comcast and get my service back. I'd have to pull the paperwork to be sure, but the bill they send looks to me like they are billing me for the month when I was off service electronically, before they actually disconnected the wiring. In the meantime, they closed their local office and are now billing me another $550.00 (give or take a bit) because I haven't returned their equipment.

Ah, well.
Wish me luck in buying those occasional lottery tickets.
I'll try to post when I can.

Bitch bitch bitch

It has been almost two weeks since I was last able to post. Most of the time I didn't have a wifi internet connection up to the task. The good source has been gone long enough that it has become logical to assume that it is gone, period. I can no longer convince myself that it is simply on vacation, unless it is, perhaps, off on an extended tour of the continent. The bad connection seems to have heard my cries and whimpers in the night and has gotten a bit better over the last few days. Hopefully this portal to the world at large will continue. Although to be honest, I'm not sure it is worth it. The news either produces incredible angst, agitation, or despair. Perhaps it is an effect of the heat. My studio has been in the upper 90 degree Fahrenheit range. One night, back around July the 4th, I passed out from it.

Work hasn't been much better. The air conditioning, under the control of the corporate overlords, is only cool when one first comes into the store from the heat. Those of us working at the registers have been sweating in all the really uncomfortable places that don't show. We've been very busy most of the time, but the reduced staffing levels have meant that we work harder to keep up. Management no longer opens a sufficient number of "lanes". By this method, the "extra" cashiers are assigned to bag groceries so that management no longer has to hire "front end associates" for such tasks - or the rounding up of shopping carts and etcetera.

The customers have been bad in the bad heat. Last week, one woman actually adressed me as "boy". Another, having a bag of free ice from the fish counter, was extraordinarily specific about what she wanted placed in the same bag as the ice. Then she ripped into me for not putting the same items into two bags to make it easier for her to lift. I did not point out that the four items in the bag weighed no more than two pounds. Another woman constantly complains about the weight of her bags, even though I generally end up giving her one item per bag. She exhales grunting noises as she lifts a small cardboard tube of peanuts, but she can easily sling a 24 pack of beer around. One man pushed his cart into my back "to get (my) attention". I was off duty and purchasing my lunch at the time. Another man walked away from his almost two hundred dollar purchase because his driver's license had expired and he was refused the sale of a can of beer.

My hours at work have been reduced again. My work "category", which I don't think exists any longer, is set to provide a minimum of 28 hours and that is all I have been getting for several weeks. I get two days of 8 and a half hours, and three days of 4 hours. And most of my time is now spent on night shifts. After standing for a number of hours, what with the arthritis and all, I can no longer walk properly after my shift. I limp home, leaning heavily upon my cane as I traverse a major highway populated by speeding yahoos, heartless yuppies, other walkers, and a few very nice people who give rides to not quite strangers. If I restrict my hours to those for which bus service exists, I would be moved to the next category down. That group can only get up to 20 hours a week. People in that category, especially those who, like myself, are a bit older, have been getting four hours. A week.

So if my posts are few and far between, please don't worry (well, maybe a little). It's the job, and the heat. I'm cranky and out of sorts. All I'd do is bitch, bitch, and bitch some more.

Mama, Look Sharp

In Congress, July 4th...

The Fourth of July has always been special to me. When I was young, growing up in a small town in the southern part of New Jersey in the 1950's, it meant parades and fireworks. I was in the parade once or twice, marching with the cub scouts back in the days when they still had such parades.

For awhile there, the cub scouts used to go off to the roller rink over in Delmar about once a month. I loved going, even though I was never very good at it; my coordination lacked, well, coordination. Once, our roller rink was going to be closed for a private party. So we all piled into the bus and drove over to Delaware to a rink there. I remember how we waited on the bus. It was hot and uncomfortable. I remember the adults conferring up at the front of the bus. And we waited and waited. We never went in. Instead, the bus took us back home. It was many years before I found out what had happened. One of the cub scouts was a kid named Bruce. We were friends from school. The rink's owners had told the adults that we could go into the rink only if Bruce, who was black, stayed on the bus. The man who argued that we either all went in or none of us went in was my father. The rights of Americans, it seemed, didn't apply to all Americans. That new thing called the TV showed the lie, and the 1960's were born.

In the late 60's as I stepped out into the world on my own, the lie being exposed on TV was the Vietnam War. On October 15th, 1969 there was a worldwide Moratorium to End the War. People either stayed home from work or left their jobs to attend massive protests. I went to the one in New York City. It was a Wednesday, matinee day on Broadway, and the cast of several shows spoke at their curtain calls and invited the audience to attend the next rally with them. The cast of "1776" was there; Howard DiSilva, an actor who had once been blacklisted and who played Benjamin Franklin in that show, and I somehow fell into a great conversation about war, our times, and our country.

"1776" was a very different kind of musical. It concerned the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Philly was the big city near my hometown, an hour away. I had, of course, been to the old State House where the events took place. As a kid in the area, you went to such places. I also remember a trip to the old barracks in Trenton. The show was a huge success. At the 1969 Tony Awards, the number used to represent the show was one involving none of the principal performers. In it, a young messenger tells of seeing his two best friends shot and killed at Lexington green. The story is barely remembered and rarely told, but that morning most of the Minutemen had left town to defend the colonist's cache of arms in nearby Concord. When the British reached Lexington, its defenders were largely old men and teenagers.

(Video from YouTube of "Momma, Look Sharp", a song from the stage musical 1776, as performed on tv during the 1976 Tony Award Broadcast, was ordered removed by Google due to a copyright claim from SONY, whose Columbia Pictures company owns the movie, but not the musical itself, nor the Tony Awards. I tried to write Google about this at the address they gave me, but  that address turned out to not exist. Since I do not have the money to hire a lawyer in case of further actions should I repost this, I have removed it. So much for freedoms in a corporate controlled environment. If you wish to follow the wishes of the author of this post and watch this video at this point as intended, it is still available on YouTube at the following link: http://youtu.be/lYtbKXCaQx4 ) 


Three generations of my family fought in the Revolution as soldiers of the 26th Massachusetts Regiment under Colonel Baldwin. The Regiment was involved in the siege of Boston, and distinguished itself at the battle at Throg's Neck NY where, wildly outnumbered, they managed to hold off the British until General Washington and his troops could escape to White Plains, NY. They were involved in the battle there, and were with Washington when he crossed the Delaware. They would have been billeted at the barracks in Trenton. Of my three family members there, I think it was my great-great-great grandfather Hiram, who was a teenager at the time.

My post on this blog last year told how, during one particular July 4th during my years in New York City, I began to be uncomfortable in crowds. That post has this link, which still works, to the great Jean Shepherd radio broadcast which tells the 4th of July story of Ludlow Kissell and the Dago Bomb That Stuck Back. When you can, take the 42 or so minutes to listen to a master storyteller, please. You'll be glad you did.

The best July 4th celebrations I know are held every year in Boston. I was somewhat skittish about being in large crowds by the time I lived in Boston, but in 1989 I went downtown to the oldest part of town and took a few pictures of the events of the day. It is on July 4th every year that the USS Constitution, anchored in Boston harbor, is taken out into the bay. The yearly trip is required to keep the ships' commission. The ship is better known as "Old Ironsides".

Every year, there is a small parade which winds its way through the old streets, pausing briefly at sites such as the Granary Burial Grounds, which is the final resting place of three signers of the Declaration of Independence (Sam Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and John Hancock), a number of Revolutionary era patriots including Paul Revere, the victims of the Boston Massacre, and Mary "Mother" Goose (yes, really!). The parade stops again at the Old State House. It was there that the Boston Massacre took place, where British troops opened fire on protesting colonists. The pavement there is marked with a circle of granite where the first American to die for the cause of independency, an escaped slave named Crispus Attucks, fell dead.

It was from the balcony of the Old State House that the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of the United states. It is read aloud there every year on the 4th. Being asked to do so used to be one of the greatest of honors in Boston.

The parade ends at Faneuil Hall, now better known as the Boston Market. The hall is upstairs; many a debate and meeting held there laid the groundwork for the Revolution. When I lived in Boston, every year on the 4th of July a topic of current public interest would be presented and debated there.
The old Boston and Quincy markets are now a tourist attraction. It was the first such historical place redeveloped by the Rouse Corporation, a creator of indoor shopping malls.

Back at the Old State House, there was a special ceremony that July 4th of 1989. A reproduction of the Liberty Statue that had been in Tiananmen Square in China that June was brought in. It was in Tiananmen Square that a large scale people's protest demanding freedoms was put down by massacring the protesters. I moved closer to get a better look. There standing on the spot where the Boston Massacre had taken place, was Ray Flynn, the mayor of Boston, and Shen Tong, one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen protests.

Mr. Shen had managed to escape the massacre and evaded the manhunt for his arrest. He simply boarded a plane out of China. No one stopped him. He was a hero. He was in his last days of being a teenager at the time.

Brattleboro used to have wonderful 4th of July parades. A friend and I used to drive out from Boston to attend them. Some years back, a local group whose mission was to shut down the local "Yankee" nuclear plant, was told it could no longer participate in the parade; marchers were no longer to protest anything at all, they were only allowed to celebrate our freedoms, thank you very much. The parade was largely financed by the nuclear power plant. People began to stay away. And although in subsequent years the protests were allowed to resume, the parade never really regained its footing nor did it ever regain the crowds that used to attend.

After the Columbia/TriStar office in which I worked in Boston was closed, I moved here. I was in my later 40's and worked three low wage jobs to pay the basic bills. I eventually ended up working for a co-operative organic food wholesaler. After a number of good years, the company went public and was bought (a behind the scenes deal) and I was out of work again. It was a year later before I found work as a clerk in a video store. By the following year, I was managing the store and ordering all the retail goods for both of the stores belonging to the owner. I eventually took over all of the owners work, ordering all of the rental titles for both stores. I worked about 15 hours a day and averaged about two days off a month. After a full year of such work, the owner took me out to lunch. He proceeded to tell me everything he thought I had been doing wrong for the last year. I asked when I was going to get the raise he had promised me over 6 months before. A few days later, he gave me work to do that meant I had to be in the store on the Fourth of July, which was to be my first day off in over a month. I was exhausted and dispirited. The job had taken over my life, most of my friends had fallen away as I no longer had time for them, and had offended some of them unintentionally and unknowingly. My health had suffered, I injured my knee and exacerbated the arthritis there, my skin condition started, and my weight ballooned. That July the 4th, I quit. That decision probably saved my health and mind. But it ruined me financially and spiritually. I could not find work. It was 2008 and the Great Recession had begun.

Now, a few months shy of 62 and early retirement, I usually end up working my low wage job on July the 4th. With reduced hours, standard now for two and a half years, I can barely afford rent and food. The date no longer gives me much of a thrill. That dream is gone. I work with a number of teenagers. I look at them, and realize that they live in a world that is so different from mine, at least the one in my head. America is no longer a moral force in the world. We no longer work for the common good. They either accept, or don't care, or don't feel there is anything they can do that we are now a country that tortures prisoners and marches off to preventative wars. That corporations own and cheapen everything that isn't reserved for the economic ruling class. That extraordinary amounts of money are spent in attempts to purchase the Presidency to the benefit of competing business interests. That unions are said to have almost destroyed the well being of our economy. They think it is right to give up liberty in order to preserve it. Their popular culture is as manufactured and crass as their music and the news they get from television, much of the internet, and the costly remaining newspapers. Their media and their television doesn't expose the lie, it is the lie. They spend their work breaks texting local friends or playing games on their cell phones. They have been fattened on processed chemicals instead of real whole foods, which are only for the well off now. I think about the social progress of the last few years, anti-bullying, obtaining basic rights for gay people, the first steps to getting healthcare for everyone. And it seems to me that these are battles largely being waged by the last remnants of the generations who came of age in the the tumult of the 1960's and 70's. I search the faces around me, but I see few who might become heroes of liberty. July the Fourth is now a day to work, get drunk, set off illegal fireworks, go shopping, and barbecue ever more expensive foodstuffs. The battles in which three generations of my forefathers fought are longer remembered. The ideals and progress built up in this country for the everyday citizen are being forgotten; they are becoming passe. I wonder if our teens would risk their lives for liberty? I look around me, and the only thought I have is, Momma, look sharp.

My best wishes for the Fourth to all those who remember, and still care.

Long-Haired Hare

On June the 25th, 1949, a new Warner Bros. Looney Tune cartoon, created by those talented folks over at Termite Terrace on the WB lot, made it's debut in movie theaters. It was called Long-Haired Hare, and it became a classic. And it sets off another raid on the memory bank.

When was it, around 1984 or so? It was during my tenure as the Director of Theatrical Distribution of Films, Inc. A deal was made with Warner Brothers to make new theatrical prints of their post 1948 cartoons (rights to the pre 1948 library lay elsewhere). They hadn't been available in uncut form for movie theaters since they were originally released. Many of the film exchanges still had a few prints, but they were worn and full of splices. A parade of some of the best by then classics was put together. It, and rentals of separate cartoons, became extremely popular on the revival and art house circuits, at drive-ins, and etc. As a single line item, they almost immediately became our biggest moneymaker. A couple more compilations were made, and a subsequent deal was negotiated between the different companies involved to make new prints of the B&W product.

I no longer remember which set premiered at the Bleecker Street Cinema. I think it was the original, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't have played the Regency (NYC's premiere revival theater at the time) first. At any rate, I was at the initial showing, waiting and looking for Chuck Jones, who was going to make an appearance and introduce the cartoons - or perhaps I should say  re-introduce the cartoons to theaters.

Chuck Jones! He was a writer, animator, and director. After Warners disbanded the cartoon unit, he'd made How the Grinch Stole Christmas for tv. While at Warners, he'd directed Duck Amuck, Rabbit Seasoning, What's Opera, Doc?, and One Froggy Evening. He'd created Marvin the Martian, the Road Runner, and Wylie E. Coyote. He'd refined and fine tuned Bugs and made a star out of former bit player Daffy Duck. He once said, "Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are." He was the man responsible for much of my behavioral imprinting. Growing up, Bugs Bunny was my hero.

At the Bleecker Steet, I waited. There was no Chuck Jones. The parade started and played to an audience which lost itself in hysterics. As the lights came up, a man stood up a few rows over from my vantage point, and introduced himself. It was Jones! He made a few quick remarks, then melted into the exiting crowd. I was so stunned by his unassuming manner that I can't quite recall what he said. I'm pretty sure that he mentioned that they didn't make the cartoons for kids - they made them for themselves. And he thanked us, of course. To this day, my association with the re-release of these cartoons is one of my proudest and happiest. So I never got a chance to meet the man who was such an influence on my life. It's just as well; I'd probably have become a stammering idiot and embarrassed myself.

Many of the copies of Warner Brothers cartoons which are on You Tube have codes to embed them on blogs like this, but when we do, they turn out to be "blocked" over rights and permissions claims. It's too bad, You Tube had been on its way to becoming such a wonderful depository of our pop cultural heritage. This one seems to work, for now. It's an old favorite, and I wish it a Happy anniversary. Kids today won't get the Stokowski jokes. They might not even catch that the singer is named "Giovanni" (Chuck) Jones. It doesn't matter, it still plays.