Category: movies

Saturday’s Theme Music

In honor of the gopher dream that I had last night, I thought I’d use Kenny Loggins’ song, “I’m Alright” from Caddyshack (1980).

As an outside, I was stationed in Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, the following year. VCRs were becoming big. We bought one. Caddyshack was one of the first movies we rented and played on it. A popular movie, it was played in the MAC Terminal to entertain people while they awaited flights. The command post where I worked was located in that terminal. It seemed like it was on whenever I left the command post. It came to drive me nuts.

I haven’t seen it in years, and I don’t want to see it, thank you. Meanwhile, Kenny did pretty good with movie songs for a while, didn’t he?

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Changing Tastes

Perhaps, if you’re old enough, you remember having thirty-three and forty-five RPM records that you played on your phonograph.

Maybe you had eight-track or cassette tapes. Perhaps you had a VCR later, playing VHS tapes. Maybe you went with Beta.

Then you switched to Laser Discs, Blue Ray, CDs and DVDs before you started streaming.

You may have used a Walkman a couple decades ago, before changing to an iPod Shuffle. Maybe you use your phone now, downloading your songs from the Cloud.

It’s fun living through these changes. Now we’re embracing more changes. Ford and GM have both announced moves to curtail selling cars in the United States this year. The profit margins on manufacturing cars is small, and sales are down. People are buying more SUVs and pick-ups, if they’re buying a motor vehicle at all, because motor vehicles overall have declined. Young people aren’t buying cars as often.

Just curious, but do you remember talking about SUVs in your youth? I didn’t; we had utility vehicles then. The sports came later.

Do you remember the mini-van craze, or are you too young to remember that?

Young people are marrying less these days. The median age for a man in America to marry was twenty-nine point five years old, up from twenty-three in the early 1970s.

Young people are also dating less. They struggle with interpersonal relationships of romantic and sexual natures if they’re engaged face to face. It’s easier for them if there’s a cell phone involved.

Did you know what a Tinderella is?

Fun fact. My friend the professor struggles initiating class discussions in her class of twenty-somethings. Then she started posting texts, and the discourse began.

Ah, cell phones. Remember princess phones and wall phones, cordless phones? Remember pagers? Remember car phones?

Do you remember Instamatic cameras?

Meanwhile, NASCAR paid attendance is declining. Less people are watching the races on television, as well. That’s parallel to a trend of declining NFL paid attendance and television ratings.

Remember playing video games? Are you old enough to recall Pong? Did you ever think about playing a game on your phone? Did you ever believe that you would enjoy playing games on phones so much that you needed data plans to enable your habit?

Beer sales in America are declining. More people are drinking wine.

Over in the Olympics, snowboarding was a big draw in 2018 while the slalom was dropped. Word came out last week that the IOC is not planning to have boxing in the 2020 Olympics.

Went to the movies the other day. When I was young, over fifty years ago, we had a cartoon or short film before the feature. That’s been replaced with ads, trailers, and previews.

The movies cost thirteen dollars for two of us the other day, cheaper than many places, but do you remember paying less than a dollar for the movies? Mom remembers paying a nickel, but she’s over twenty years older than me.

A nickel to get into the movies was a long time ago, wasn’t it?

Shall we talk about the price of gasoline? How ’bout a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, or a cup of coffee?

Say, do you remember when you first thought about buying organic?

These times, they are a’changin’.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

You know, sometimes, no matter what you do, you end up getting stuck somewhere where you don’t want to be. 

I’m happy to report that there’s a song for that, called, “Stuck in the Middle With You”, Stealers’ Wheel, 1973. I often think of Reservoir Dogs when I recall this song. Its bounciness, with Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) dancing around as he cut off another man’s ear and doused him in gasoline, offered an interesting counter-balance to the scene’s gritty intensity and violence. 

I guess I’m fortunate that when this song comes to mind at social gatherings, parties, or standing in lines at stores and airports, that nobody is cutting anything off of me.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes courtesy of an overheard conversation at the coffee shop. One person said, “Call me,” with the classic hang gesture to indicate a phone.

“Okay,” the other said, with a wave and a laugh. A rushed, “Bye,” followed, and then zipped across the cafe.

By then, my brain had started streaming Blondie’s “Call Me” from American Gigolo (1980).  Sometimes soft, gentle, and persuasive, other times assertive, masculine, and urgent to the edge of being frenetic, with a slight sense of desperation, I thought the song was perfect for the movie.

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The Thriller Dream

This dream was like a Hollywood-produced thriller. I thought of the Jason Bourne series of movies, or Taken.

The dream began with a friend being abducted. I was an operative as slick as black ice. Determined to get them back, I abducted an enemy operative’s ex-girlfriend. While she insisted she had nothing to do with the other man or the abduction, I kept her away from weapons and under constant watch.

Meanwhile, with her as my negotiating leverage, after a brief shoot-out, high-speed chase on snowy, slushy roads at night, and hand-to-hand combat, I coerced the enemy operative into an alliance. With him helping me, we started the hunt for the abductors.

Fast-paced, there were setbacks and fights — all taking place on a dark, icy night — it went well overall. Just as my ragged team cornered the abductors, the police showed up. As I argued with the police about what was going on, with me holding a gun on them, and they refusing to back down, with my enemy ally in another room, and the abductors holed up in another room in the building, my hostage turned on me. She’d acquired a gun and now revealed herself as part of the abducting gang.

They’d been five steps ahead of me, orchestrating everything to put me at their mercy, it seems, so they could force me to do what they wanted. She began describing what they wanted from me —

And then a cat awoke me.

Although I tried getting back into the dream when I returned to bed, I failed, instead going into another dream.

Bummer. I wanted to know how it ended.

Funny, but in thinking about the thriller dream, no names were ever used that I can recall. So, if I wrote this, I think my working title would be No Names.

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The Actors As God Dream

I was with my friend, Ron, sitting at a cafe table outside. Another friend of mine, Marge (who doesn’t know Ron, and lives across the country in Ohio), came up. She said, “Can you think of anyone who played God in movies?”

As Ron and I took in the question with a look at one another, Marge said, “I’ve tried, and I can’t think of anyone.”

I said, “Well, off the top of my head, I can think of Morgan Freeman, George Burns, Alanis Morrisette – remember? She was God in Dogma.”

Ron said, “Morgan Freeman played God?”

“Yes,” I said, “in that Jim Carrey thing. I think it was called Bruce Almighty or something. I’ve never seen the whole thing. I think I saw some of it in a hotel.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ron said.

I said, “Didn’t Whoopi play God in something, too?”

None of us were sure. Marge said, “Thank you.” As she did, Ron and I pulled out laptops to Google actors who played God in movies.

That was the dream, short, sharp, and clear. What’s not clear is what it meant and why I dreamed it. My guess is that it was some food generated neuron frenzy.

I never asked Marge why she asked the question.

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Monday’s Theme Music

I’m streaming the “Logical Song” by Supertramp today. This little ditty was released in 1979. It remains a relevant song to me. As I grew, I thought I understood logic, but learned that logic is rooted in different areas for people. Where their logic has its roots defines how their logic will be applied and the results. This bastardized version of logic often twists compassion, reality, and common sense.

I later read an interview with the songwriter, Roger Hogdson. Some of his comments about what we’re taught as children stayed with me. I found the interview today after thinking about the song, and post some of it here.

This song was born from the questions that haunted me about what is the deeper meaning of life. Throughout childhood, we are told and taught so many things, and yet we are rarely told anything about the purpose of life. We are taught how to function outwardly, but are rarely guided to explore and find out who we are inwardly. From the innocence and wonder of childhood to the confusion of adolescence that often ends in the cynicism and disillusionment of adulthood, so many end their lives having no idea of who they truly are and what they came here to learn. In “The Logical Song,” I ask the fundamental question that is so present in the psyche of today’s modern world but rarely spoken out loud—who are we and what is our true purpose of being here? And that is why I believe it continues to strike a chord in people around the world. I’m continually told how the lyric is often used and discussed in schools, which tells you something.

h/t to Mike Ragogna @ Huffpost

I think about what and how we’re taught as children. Many of the words thrown at us by adults are tossed from anger, irritation, and frustration. The adults issuing the words rarely realized their comments’ impact on young minds because they were dealing with their life and world issues, and speaking from their frustrations, resentments, and irritations. (I prefer to think that the adults didn’t realize it, and weren’t being callous or deliberate in what they said, knowing what it would do to a young mind.)

But sometimes, there were adults who understood. They were the ones building us up, giving us confidence, and pressing us to read, learn, and think.

 

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Perhaps I am mired in the past. I ended up thinking of my time at Clark AB in the Philippines as I walked yesterday in 1976, and recalled my buddy, Bopie. He and I worked at the same place. I arrived about two weeks after him. We lived in the same barracks (dorm, in Air Force terminology), on the same floor. He was about seven doors down from me.

The first time I really met him, though, was when we were off-duty at a unit function. He was wearing a red tee-shirt. On the back, in yellow letters, was Bopie. Walking up behind him, I said it. Starting, he turned and looked at me with a short laugh. “You are the first person that ever said my name right the first time.” His name was Ray, but Bopie was the name he liked to use (that was never explained to me).

We were shift workers, and often shared time off, so we would run around together sometimes. He introduced me to a lot of music and comedy that I didn’t know, including the movie, Car Wash, featuring the song, “Car Wash” by Rose Royce.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Warm temperatures keep reminding me of songs about heat and the hot air. The late Glenn Frey performed this one as part of his solo act after the Eagles disbanded, and it was included in Beverly Hills Cop starring Eddie Murphy .

Here is “The Heat Is On” from 1984.

 

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Coffee

Tasting the coffee today, I raised my eyebrows in appreciation and admiration.

It was the second cup of the day. The first had been at home. I was now in the coffee shop.

But this coffee —

“Mmmm,” I said to myself, like I was Wolf the cleaner (Harvey Keitel) in Pulp Fiction, appreciating the coffee Jimmy (Tarentino) had given him.

I enjoyed the coffee sequences through that period at Jimmy’s house in that movie, because it was so damn real, a pause within the gritty to appreciate a flavor.

Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, and Reservoir Dogs all need to be added to my dirty list, along with Serenity. How could I forget them? They’re mos def movies I stop to watch when I come across them.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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