Category: pop culture

Today’s Theme Music

This was an intense song. My mind immediately began streaming it during my walks and it stayed lodged in my head for several months. Seeing the video reinforced its effect.

‘Too Close’, by Alex Clare, 2011, captures the essence of a long-term romantic relationship to me. The song sounds like a soliloquy, an emotional epiphany. It feels like you’re going separate ways; it feels like you’re just too close. Matters become combative and intense. Words are said, parry, thrust, circle,  en garde, but sometimes the fencing is done in silent expectation of what could have been said. Then there is always the pondering, what was meant, what was meant, what was meant?

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Today’s Theme Music

This song, from 2011, is quirky. I enjoy the video, especially the female response. It’s a good song for streaming in my head as I’m conducting a catabout.

Here’s Gotye with ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’.

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A Random Stream

‘Hey Ya’ is playing in my head but otherwise, thoughts are normalized streams of randomness.

  • Eva Lesko Natiello posted a blog about not quitting. I was happy to read it and read it again today because her words summarizes my writing process. Here’s one paragraph.
    • “Yesterday my manuscript was torturing me. I couldn’t move forward. Stuck in my puzzle. I was having trouble with the order of disclosure and who’s POV it should be. Should the dialogue contradict what the character was really thinking? Maybe she wasn’t thinking that at all. What was she thinking? Maybe it wasn’t her place to reveal it. Perhaps we should find out some other way.”
    • I like how she captured this process. Later, she mentions that she becomes frustrated and pushes herself to sit it in her chair and squirm it out. I don’t squirm; I close my eyes and bow my head. But’s it’s the same thing.
  • Earlier in February, Barbara Froman published an interview she conducted with Dr. Harrison Solow in 2013. I read it again this week. I recommend it. I like what Harrison said in this paragraph:
    • “And someone has had the great good sense to leave this book alone. Or if altered, respectfully tuned to perfect pitch by an invisible hand, so that each word has the unmistakable ring of authenticity. The reader perceives nothing enharmonic. A true book and a beautiful one. But although there is no false note, neither is the entire composition a universal symphony. There is vision here — intensely personal, internally arranged.”
    • There is the difficulty, finding the notes so no false notes are played in the novel.
  • Gray, cold air cups the buildings and trees this morning. Walking past a row of apartments, I smell…laundry detergents and fabric softeners being vented out. Nostalgia strikes a chime. This is a day like my Pittsburgh childhood. Smells often transport me.
  • Striding past the cemetery, I acknowledge, again, I like cemeteries but I don’ t like them. The history they represent touches me and prompts questions about the lives beneath the headstones. But I think the land where cemeteries reside could be better used for other things. I’ve never had the interest in visiting them to talk to people who passed on; I just speak to them in my head. But it matters much to others. I guess I’m an unsentimental jerk.
  • Watched  ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ on Friday night. Wasn’t impressed. It seems like, as my wife called it, a movie war, dated and hackneyed. Others obviously think differently, as they nominated it for the Best Picture. Again, it must be me. I do admire Desmond Doss, the conscientious objector (cooperator, he calls himself) at the story’s center. I thought Garfield did a good job, but overall, Mel Gibson as a director seemed heavy handed. I found Hollywood vs History’s details about the differences between the movie and the facts very interesting.
  • Many smart houses, with their smart thermostats, are actually connected to apps that allow you to call it from your phone and change the temperature or turn the lights on or off. That’s not a smart house, but a remote control. A smart house, to me, is one that I don’t have to program and set reminders other than to provide it with some basic operating instructions. For instance, my system is programmed for fifty-eight degrees at night. But if the temperature is dropping into the mid twenties Fahrenheit, like this week, I turn it up to sixty-four at night. Part of this is because the house design; the furnace is mounted on its side in the attic space. It’s not insulated, and the drip line runs through it and down inside a garage wall that also isn’t insulated. That sometimes allows the drip line to freeze. It’s a shortcoming that I’m working on to fix, but meanwhile, a smarter house would be helpful.
  • ‘Nocturnal Animals’ was last night’s household viewing feature. Well done and everything, but not my style of movie.
    • During the movie, my wife turned to me and asked, “Have you ever killed me in a novel?” No, I haven’t.
    • Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Tony Hastings, is a writer. During a conversation, he states, “All writers write about themselves.” I kind of agree; I am the baseline from which I begin, but then it changes according to the character and story’s needs and expectations. Often, though, I model a character on another person and use how I would expect them to behave as my guide.
    • My wife also wondered what I thought of Tony’s revenge. While it’s not something that I would have done, I can see how a writer can end up going there.
    • If you don’t know what I’m writing about, sorry. I don’t mean to be obtuse but didn’t want to reveal too much of the plot.
  • Now time to dip myself back in the imaginary world of an imaginary future, technology and people. In other words, I’m going to write like crazy, at least one more time. I’ll probably do a little squirming, too.
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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song comes to me via my wife. I’d forgotten this song but she mentioned it as a great energetic walking song. Here, from 2003, is Outkast with ‘Hey Ya!’.  Whenever it plays on the radio and we’re driving, she orders, “Turn it up!” Which I do. This version, of the Peanuts gang dancing to the music, cracks me up.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Man, I’ll tell you what, the music emerging during the 1960s and 1970s was part of an amazing scene. Listening to those old songs give me a lift. This particular group, song and album were polarizing. When Mom heard me listening to this, she asked, “What is that you’re listening to?”

“Black Sabbath.”

Two words which probably did little to calm her. “Black Sabbath?”

“Yes. This is ‘Paranoid’.”

This woman who enjoyed Barbra Streisand, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, the Ink Spots, Platters, Nat King Cole, and on and on, studied me for seconds with mild distaste. Announcing, “It sounds paranoid,” she returned to her housekeeping routine and then called back, “Turn it down.”

Turn it down was something I’d hear a lot in those days.

Here we have it, a little gem called ‘Paranoid’, with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on lead guitar, Geezer on bass and Bill Ward playing the drums, from 1970.

Get out your air guitar and turn it up.

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Today’s Theme Music

I dreamed I was in 2025. I’ll tell you, I looked good for 2025.

With some friends, we were discussing something that had happened in 1985 involving them. Their news amused and astonished me while it depressed and frustrated them, as a clerical error from the beginning of their military career in 1985 had just been found in 2025 and needed to be fixed.

Meanwhile, we were getting ready to party. Guests were already arriving. I don’t recall hearing any particular music in the dream. Awakening, I remembered this old hit, from 1969, ‘In the Year 2525’. Although I remember all the words and the melody, I realized that I didn’t know who performed the song or anything else about it. For this, I trusted Wikipedia.org.

Zager and Evans are the performers. This was their only hit. Rick Evans wrote the lyrics. His words, about what’s going to happen to Humans, are fascinating to contemplate. At least they were for a thirteen-year-old reading science fiction in 1969. This was the number one song in the U.S. when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

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Today’s Theme Music

I put the mental music cloud on shuffle. ‘Fortunate Son’ by CCR was one of several songs that came up.

I know it from its initial release in 1969, when I was thirteen. CCR is an awesome band that gave us a hellabunch of memorable hits like ‘Suzie Q’, ‘Heard It Through the Grape Vine,’ Who’ll Stop the Rain,’ and ‘Run Through the Jungle’. Many of later generations know this ‘Fortunate Son’ because it’s been part of so many movies and video games about war or that era in America’s history, or from one of the many other performers who have covered the song. ‘Fortunate Son’ reflected the country’s mood as the Vietnam War raged and body bags came back. It also mirrors the trend that the world’s wealthy and powerful start and sustain war, but it’s the poor, minorities and those beguiled by their desire to do their patriotic duty that end up carrying the burden.

I was one of those last, joining in 1974, serving until 1995.

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Today’s Theme Music

“I like to dream….”

Yeah, I like to dream. Sometimes I’m bothered that I experience so many nocturnal dreams, often three to five per night that I remember. But many of the dreams are positive and uplifting.

Likewise, I like to dream and write in my head, spinning stories to myself that are written too fast and fluidly to ever find its place in reality for others to enjoy. I work at writing and publishing fiction but it is work. Besides wanting stories that keep their attention, people want correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. They want consistency and explanation. Many are also interested in ‘facts’.

Facts, bah. I’m a fiction writer.

No matter, they retort.

Bah. They’re such sticklers.

This spin of thoughts spun me back into one of my favorite early albums, Steppenwolf Live’. I wore the vinyl off that mutha. I have several favorite songs from it but went with one that resonates best with me as a dream: Magic Carpet Ride.

Ride with me as the ‘wolf performs it in Santa Monica back in 1970.

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The Last Four Movies

We’ve seen four movies in five days to cap off our annual Oscar whirl. I already posted about the terrific animated film, ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’. Following it was an absurdist black comedy, ‘The Lobster’. 

Colin Ferrell, Rachel Weitz and Jenna Coleman star. These are all actors I enjoy. Their portrayals in this were all low energy, as if people were straining to comprehend what was happening. Emotional responses were muted, like too much emotion had already been expended in their lives.

We follow Colin Ferrell’s character from his arrival at the hotel and orientation. One hand is cuffed so he could appreciate, “Two is better.” The premise, that if you don’t have a mate, you will be turned into an animal, and that this is now the accepted social norm, is never explained. Nor is the hotel’s limitations on clothing so that everyone is dressed in the same manner, or having the women hunt in dresses. It’s absurd, right? None of the concepts underlying the plot are explained. You just go along with it. Strange, but engaging.

Behind ‘The Lobster’ came something one hundred and eight degrees different: an animated film about animals as people, ‘Zootopia’. The movie takes it name from the animal nation’s major urban area, Zootopia. Central to the is Judy Hopper’s dream of being a police officer, and her life as the first bunny copper in Zootopia. A crime spree has sprung up in which animals are disappearing. It’s a good movie for young people to watch. One of the baristas, a twenty year old, has watched it four times while baby-sitting children. Her take is that its message is not to stereotype people, which is demonstrated by individual’s roles as wolves, foxes, weasels, sheep and bunnies. It is more, she acknowledged. The movie takes on bullying, determination and persistence, and pursuing your goals despite obstacles. All of this is done through a clever, humorous lens that’s more slanted toward adults, such as the lemmings, all dressed the same, leaving the Lemmings Brothers building.

My wife asked, which movie, ‘Zootopia’ or ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ would receive my Oscar vote? I loved Kubo’s beautiful, amazing artwork, and the film’s ethereal aura. I also enjoyed and admired the plucky young main character’s good nature and determination. Yet, ‘Zootopia’ edged it out to receive my vote. Kubo is better at art; I thought ‘Zootopia’ was better at entertainment. A fun movie, ‘Zootopia’ kept my interest. I would have given the Oscar to ‘Zootopia’, but the edge was the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Last, last night, we watched the documentary, ‘13th‘.  This film meticulously states facts connecting the end of the civil war and the transition from black people being slaves as owned property to slaves as criminals. The documentary attacks the issues from multiple points of view, laying out a convincing narrative that letting slaves go wasn’t financially acceptable, and all the manners in which blacks, especially men, were portrayed in popular media and entertainment as criminals, thugs and murders.

Blacks naturally reacted. As blacks reacted, whites reacted. We follow the political arc, beginning with the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. There was the out, the loophole. Blacks were locked up in greater and greater numbers as drug use was criminalized by the legal system. ALEC – American Legislative Exchange Council – established its agenda of feeding states the legislative measures and acts that furthered a reactionary social agenda but also helped its members realize increasing profits through state laws. From that, CCA – the Corrections Corporation of America, an ironic name if ever heard – is born, as is the monetized incarceration system that establishes prisons as profit centers. Now America has fallen from leading the world in many areas, but has managed to imprison more people than any other nation. And disproportionately imprisoned are blacks, and more specifically, black men.

It’s demonstrated in the documentary how the system is gained so that many blacks who are arrested, even when they’ve not committed a crime, are never convicted of a crime but end up spending time in jails and prisons through plea bargains, and how the fear of the maximum sentence is leveraged to encourage plea bargaining.

Senator Cory Booker points out that most race riots begin with incidents of police brutality. The hype over the threat from the Black Panthers is portrayed as the greatest danger to America. Footage Angela Davis’ gripping, powerful testimony in her trail is presented.

Politically, Lee Atwater’s notorious recordings are heard about how to manipulate voters. Willie Horton is brought up again, and how it turned the election for Bush. Bill Clinton’s role and his erroneous policies are shown, and their tangible impact, along with the insane, ‘Three Strikes Law’.

Political hype feeds fears; fears led to election victories; election victories lead to increased demonizing of blacks; increased demonizing leads to greater criminalizing, which develops into greater profits. A direct result is Donald Trump’ s election as ‘the law and order president’. His boogeyman are the brown people, refugees and immigrants. Guess which pretty little group of white dominated men is profiting from increased worries about immigrants and refugees?

Yes, ALEC.

As a final straw, prisons are being used as source for cheap labor for American companies to build their products. Meanwhile, poor, unemployed and underemployed people are distracted into believing the problems lie with immigrants, refugees and terrorists. And as each political party tries to regain office, they must outdo the previous administration’s stance as being tough on law and order. President Obama was finally one to begin to point out what was happening; Hillary changed her stance from hard on crime to intelligent on crime.

I recommend you see the film.

So here we have these movies, which teach our children to be strong and unafraid, to be honest and hopeful, along with one mocking our position on marriage as an institution, and finally one demonstrating the truth about how politicians and corporations manipulate and guide people to fear and hate, and vote and profits.

This, by the way, is why I march against Trump’s Agenda.

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Today’s Theme Music

Another from the past, and perhaps a repeat. This one springs from my days in San Antonio, Texas. I was stationed there for various needs three times. This song comes from my third iteration of military life there.

Assigned to Randolph-Brooks AFB and Air Training Command, working in the command post in the building called the Taj Mahal, we lived in base housing. We said it was San Antonio but in actuality, it was Universal City. San Antonio seemed like a much smaller, more relaxed town back then. When you drove the loops around the city, you rarely encountered a business and few other vehicles. Not like now, where all the land is filled in.

It was a pleasant assignment, not taxing at all, and quite boring. We were in base housing in a two bedroom/one bath place on the first floor. My cousins were regular visitors, a cool deal. It was Glen who brought the new Pink Floyd album, ‘The Wall’, to my attention. Besides Pink Floyd, Glen was a large fan of Steve Martin and ‘Star Wars’. He now lives just outside of Philly in PA.

So here it be, as heard in 1980, the year after the album was released, as we drove my brown Pontiac Firebird up to Stinky Falls to ride the cold river on inner tubes on a hot summer day, Pink Floyd and ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.

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