Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Had to hunt this song down.
I was reading the news today (oh, boy), and parts of this song came back to me. After trying and failing to remember more of it as I walked, I finally sat down and googled some remembered lyrics.
Success!
In honor of the POTUS and his administration, here is TMBG with “Doctor Evil,” from “Austin Powers.”
I dreamed last night people were watching one of my novels from the trilogy in progress. I wasn’t certain if it was on television or at the movies. I could see and hear scenes, and see people, including me, watching them.
Conversely, after waking and thinking about it, I wondered if that was how my novel is delivered to my brain: as a movie that exists somewhere else that I’m watching and recording. I suspected that idea because some of what I saw seemed new to me. I was enjoying it and wowed.
Whichever and whatever it was, definitely time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
See you at the movies.
I’ve been reading about the winter storm. Some call it bomb cyclone, but it has a name, you know. It’s been named Grayson. That name brought to mind Kathryn Grayson. She never won an Academy Award, but I thought, wouldn’t it be neat if they started naming storms after Oscar winners? Then we could say things like, “Clint Eastwood is threatening the East Coast of the United States.”
Yeah.
Today’s song is from the movie, “St. Elmo’s Fire.” The song is, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”.
I’ve never seen the entire film. It didn’t grab me. I found it vague, with problems manufactured by unthinking, vapid, self-absorbed characters. Perhaps I should have given it a greater viewing.
I knew the song mostly because of FM Stereo. It came out in nineteen eighty-five. I was doing a lot of traveling, then, putting over forty-thousand miles on my car during the year. So I heard it a lot. I didn’t think much of the song, but it’s stuck in my head, so I present it to you.
Cheers
Remember the television series called “Get Smart”? It was on in the mid-sixties. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks came up with the idea. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon were the primary stars.
A crazy spy-spoof, “Get Smart” featured an organization called CONTROL, shoe phones, the cone of silence, and other unique devices that made fun of the spy gadgets populating more serious spy ventures. Don Adams was a bumbling spy known as Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. Agent 86. Smart always doing things by the book, even though doing so was counter-productive. Feldon was Agent 99. She seemed more competent and intelligent, but 86 often ended up saving 99, mostly by accident, it seemed. The two of them, along with Chief, and other agents of CONTROL, fought the forces of KAOS.
The opening sequence showed Adams as Smart marching through corridors toward walls while the theme music played. As he reached each wall, a door would open, let Smart through, and close behind him. Once he’d gone through a number of doors in this manner, he reached a telephone booth. There, he’d put in a coin and dial a number, and then wait until he was lowered from the booth.
I was reminded of this sequence often during my military career. Working in S.C.I.F.s, underground command posts, vaults, and buildings without windows, that television show’s theme music would stream into my head as we went around corners, up halls, and through doors, often without seeing other people. The biggest differences from the television show were that we all wore badges, security cameras abounded in our halls, signs warning about unauthorized access and the use of deadly force were frequent, and getting past the doors usually required us to punch numbers into a cypher-lock.
There were also red-tiled zones where only one person was authorized to stand or be at a time, to help keep the entrance secure. In later years, we also encountered retinal scans in little booths that weighed you as you looked into a scanner and entered the numbers to pass through. Your weight was on record and accessed via your badge. A five-pound leeway was permitted. This was done under the watchful eyes of security people and cameras.
That was over twenty years ago. I wonder if they still do all those things? They’ve probably moved on to comparing DNA by now.
Today’s song comes from yesterday’s movie.
We watched “Thor: Ragnorok” at the cinema yesterday. The movie features Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” twice. Led Zep III was one of those albums that I listened to repetitively when I was fourteen in nineteen seventy, and I came to know the album by heart. Once I heard “Immigrant Song,” I streamed the subsequent tracks into my head. Eventually, “Celebration Day” dominated more than the rest. Always like that beginning sound, and then the words, “Her face is cracked from smiling, all the fears that she’s been hiding, and it seems that pretty soon, everybody’s gonna know.”
Here, let me play it for you, and get it out of my head.
We saw “Bladerunner 2049” in 3D at the flicks yesterday. Its music reminded me of the old Saturday Night Live sketch about the Blue Oyster Cult song, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” In that skit, Christopher Walken is a legendary producer. Listening to the song, he insists on “More cowbell.” Will Ferrell goes over the top obliging to his request.
Well, during the movie, I would swear that Denis Villeneuve kept yelling, “More loud noises!” while the movie was being made.
Tomorrow was supposed to be Friday the Thirteenth. I’m pleased to hear it won’t be.
I’m not superstitious at all (except for seeing a rainbow; you know good things are going to happen when you see a rainbow). Yet, I felt relief when the current POTUS announced he’d signed an executive order abolishing Friday the Thirteenth.
“Americans have enough to worry about in this great country without dealing with an unlucky day. I mean, did you see that movie? Was that scary or what? Am I right?” he tweeted early this morning.
His second tweet continued, “That movie isn’t good enough to have a day named after it. Just another example of Hollywood liberals dictating to the rest of the country. SHAME!”
His final tweet said, “Hollywood is a horror movie we don’t need! Enough horror! Wasn’t the Obama administration enough? LOSERS!”
According to the White House press corpse, “People should not refer to it as Friday the thirteenth. Not every day needs a date, you know. What good do dates do? If they need a date, they can call it October twelve and a half. That’s what we’re doing on all official correspondence.”
The President later said, “This change will be like plutonium for the economy. Sales have always been down on Friday the thirteenth because people have been afraid to go to work or shop. A lot of them don’t even eat. Don’t even drink. Don’t drink nothing. Not even water. Just stay in bed all day. So this change will mean a lot to businesses. It’ll supercharge sales. It’s gonna be huge. It’ll be a beautiful day, beautiful.”
We watched a movie last night called, “What Happened to Monday?”
It’s a violent, dystopian science-fiction movie that we watched on Netflix. Netflix brought it to their streaming offerings in August of this year. The premise, about septuplets secretly coping and living in world where only one child is authorized per family. This draconian policy was instituted to stretch scarce resources. Resources are scarce due to climate change. The problems are complicated by war and unforeseen consequences of genetically modified organizations.
The seven girls are named for the days of the week. They assume one identity, using their deceased mother’s name. Only one is permitted out each day; they go out on the day of their name. The rest of the time, they live secret lives in their apartment.
Naturally, things go wrong.
Glenn Close, William Dafoe, and Noomi Rapace star, along with Marwan Kenzari and Christian Rubeck. Dafoe plays the father, and Close is the villain. Rapace plays the seven sisters. You get a lot more of her than the other two. There are plots holes, some cringing moments and predictability, but it was sufficiently intense and unique to draw our attention and focus. Several of the sisters are shadows of a full character. Rapace works with that, but she does a powerful job with the more fully developed sisters.
Give it a watch, just to say that you did.
The Ginger Blade wanted out last night. He’s a cat; he’s young; they go out at night.
As I let him out the door, he paused and looked at me over his shoulder. “I’ll be back,” he said. Then, he trotted into the darkness.
From that streamed the music for today. Thinking of Papi’s words, my mind connected with a nineteen sixty-eight Simon and Garfunkel hit. “Mrs Robinson” was on the album “Bookends,” but is probably best known for its inclusion in the movie, “The Graduate.” When Papi told me, “I’ll be back,” I started singing, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.”
I wonder at what age people ask, “What movie? What song? Who is Simon and Garfunkel? Who is Joe DiMaggio? Who is Papi? Is he the Ginger Blade?”
Well, they can all just go google themselves.
Michael Seidel, writer 