Category: pop culture

Sheru

We saw ‘Lion’, starring Dev Patel and Mara Rooney at the theater today. Now I’m suitably grounded. Stories of refugees are heard and read daily. Less often do we hear of the orphans and poverty in places like India. All whip me for my smugness about my ‘difficulties’. Yes, we all recognize there are different types of struggles along Maslow’s hierarchy, and when we overcome the basic needs of food, shelter and security, we find new intellectual, technological and emotional complaints. My first world complaints about poor television quality available when I’m streaming, our ‘outrageous’ prices for goods and services and the lack of restaurants should be vanquished for a while.

As for the movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it. No flaws were noticed. The story is that of Saroo Brierly, who became separated from his family and lost when he was five years old in India in the late 1980s. Dev Patel plays the adult Saroo Brierly.I’ve always admired Dev Patel’s acting skills and he didn’t let me down. Sunny Pawar, the actor who played young Saroo, gave an excellent performance. It was impressive work for a first role. Nicole Kidman gave a strong performance, as did many others.

The first twenty to thirty minutes, exploring and developing what happened to Saroo and his brother, Guddu, were taut and gripping. My shoes were drenched by the film’s end, from my wife and others crying during so many emotional scenes. I, being a testosterone loaded man, didn’t cry nor sniffle. Yeah, right. Throughout, I admired Saroo and his relationship with his mother and brother and the desire to find them, cheering him on as he struggled through the effort. Adapted from the true story, the film is based on the book, ‘A Long Way Home’.  Besides the title differences, HistoryvsHollywood.com reports few factual differences from the book.

The film has been nominated for six Academy Awards. It’s as worthy a contender as ‘LaLa Land’, ‘Hidden Figures’, ‘Moonlight’, ‘Silence’, ‘Arrival’, ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’, Manchester by the Sea’, ‘Loving’, and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’. We’ve see all of these for this awards season.

We’re going to see the Oscar nominated short documentary films this afternoon. What of you? Have you seen any Oscar nominated flicks?

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Today’s Theme Music

It’s a springly day again. Yes, Winter still wields a razor edge wind. Circling and prowling the valley, his blade sometimes scores your cheeks and hands. The sunshine helps keep him away. Everyone believes there is one Winter but there are several. The more aggressive ones that roam the U.S. have gone East. The one remaining with us makes many threats but he’s mostly benign. Sunshine intimidates him and drives him into the shadows.

Sunday, of course, is quiet. This area, southern Oregon, is a realm of traditional American values that developed in the last century plus as trade unions successfully campaigned for having weekends off. Sunday mornings are not for working unless it’s an essential service. The list of essential services has grown, and fewer people dress and go to Church, but Sunday remains a quieter and more relaxed morning than the week’s other days.

Into that scenario, I introduce a little Led Zeppelin. From ‘Led Zeppelin II’ and 1969, it’s time once again to ‘Ramble On’, a very good walking song.

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Downstreams

Some mental activity racing along my axons today.

  • Love that first slurp of my quad shot mocha at the Boulevard. The baristas know my preferences and do a great job of blending everything and then topping my coffee drink with with a skim of dark chocolate powder. I love the contrasts of flavors in that first tasting. Sensational.
  • It’s National White Shirt Day! This day recognizes the end of a 1937 UAW strike at GM for better working conditions. I have my white tee shirt on, under my natural wool sweater.
  • I don’t recall any dreams from last night. That’s unusual. Wonder why. Sleeping period, six and a half hours, seems about normal.
  • I’ve been reading a series of articles on sleep and whether we’re evolving from being biphasic. The latest article was on Van Winkle and provided a brief summary of the last eight thousand years of sleep.
  • I realized Part I of my  science-fiction novel in progress requires some serious editing and revising. I first realized that about a week ago and tried rejecting it. My writer within was willing to overlook changing it; the resident interior editor was reluctantly accepting of it. However, the reader in residence said, “Oh, no. That needs work.” Trust the reader. After we argued a few days, the writer and editor agreed with the reader’s points. However, the writer came up with some interesting ideas to explore in parallel.
  • The editor, though, urged us all not to make any changes until it’s all done. He pointed out that Part I is the way it is because the stories and concepts were still being explored. True; I write to understand myself, to order and structure and expand my thoughts. He pointed out that since I’m still writing the other parts, I can save myself some potential work by fully completing an entire draft before making major revisions. I accept his contention and put it on hold until the first draft is completed.
  • The novel in progress is ‘Long Summer’. Science-fiction, it’s not quite a sequel but is collateral to ‘Returnee’, as it stars Brett and Castle Corporation, and continues with many of the same themes of technological alienation and isolation, and socializing with yourself via virtual beings you develop to help people cope with life as they live far longer.
  • Talking with the barista today. “Fun plans?” she asked. Because, it’s Saturday; in her working and school world has meaning that has left my writing world. I don’t segregate the days into weeks and weekends any longer. I barely notice the date. “Movies,” I answered her. “We’re going to see ‘Lion’.” She wasn’t familiar with it. I mentioned Dev Patel and a few of his movies. Yes, she remembered ‘Slumdog Millionaires’. It didn’t occur to me until later that she was eight years old when Slumdog was released.
  • That conversation pointed me onto new vectors of changes and the differences in my values, perceptions and experiences as a sexagenarian and the same in her as a young adult. It’s the same conversation I had as a young adult with those forty to fifty years older than me. I was twenty in 1976. Those who were sixty in 1976 had been born just after World War I ended. They fought in World War II and remembered the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Grandparents had been part of the American Civil War. The Soviet Union was founded during their lifetime and the Cold War dominated world politics.
  • It’s interesting to put into perspective. What I think of as ‘normal’ isn’t the same as the previous generation or the next generation. Besides when we were born forming us, so do our education levels. More strongly and interesting, we saw how where we live and our education and economic situations affect national politics during the 2016 presidential election. Now, this article on FiveThirtyEight tells about how where we live affects our deaths. It’s a telling insight to me.

Cheers

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Today’s Theme Music

I am not a Justin Timberlake fan. Nothing against him; he’s not my cuppa.

That doesn’t stop his music from entering my neural stream and getting jammed into my brain. In some net surfing this morning, I discovered a 2014 NPR story on the Harmony Project. I liked this quote:

“I feel like music really connects with education,” she says. “It helps you concentrate more.”

The speaker was tenth grader Monica Miranda, who was in her third year of the Harmony Project. Her statement struck me as an interesting insight. When I walk, I often mentally write or problem solve. I wonder if I’ve developed a habit of remembering music when I walk and think to help me concentrate more? It may have been a subconscious practice I developed that became reinforced with success. It’s something for further research for me.

Anyway, ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’ from 2016 is running on the mental loop today. Maybe if I unleash it on you, it’ll escape my mind (or I’ll escape it). The song, I mean.

Not my mind.

Or maybe that is what I meant.

Now I’m all confused.

On to the music.

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Today’s Theme Music

When I was young, I sought better sound in my stereos.

Whether from imagination or real ability, I often detected hums and distortion that irritated me. Conducting trail and error set-ups in those pre-Internet days of the mid 1970s, I separated power wires and speaker wires and ensured I had solid connections between everything. I bought gold wires to improve the sound and kept searching for better equipment. Vinyl had the best initial sound IMO but it was a fragile state that would begin deteriorating with play. Cassettes and eight track players always introduced warble and distortion as the tapes stretched. Muddiness would creep in.

I ended up buying an open-reel system. I developed a habit of recording my vinyl on an open reel. Although a cumbersome system, open-reel maintained the best sound quality. I would record the album on open-reel for my home use and cassette for my portable use and store the vinyl to protect it. Once the cassette quality began diminishing, I would record it anew.

But while noticing the sound difference on my systems at home, I also discovered that some albums came out sounding better in the beginning. Their colors were sharper, finer and clearer. A few of those albums mesmerized me with the beauty of their sound. Some combined that with wonderful lyrics and melodies, becoming astonishing, special albums.

The first of these that struck me in such a way was Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, a now classic rock album. But it was only one album, not much of a data set. The second album that established itself as having high production values (as I learned it was called) was ‘Songs In the Key of LIfe,’ by Stevie Wonder. I don’t know much about music production, then or now, but I thought that Stevie’s album was beautiful in and of the ways I mentioned. I was stationed in the Philippines, at Clark Air Base with the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, when the album came out. Intent on staying active, reading and saving money, I did a lot of walking.

‘Sir Duke’, from this album, was my favorite walking-around sound for that era’s mental playback system. It’s a good theme song to bring on Friday.

(As an aside, I wince at hearing this digital version; it sounds way too tinny to me. But that’s me.)

 

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The Edge of Tomorrow

My wife had her book club last night. This is important in the sequence of events. With her present, I would not have watched ‘The Edge of Tomorrow’. It stars Tom Cruise.

She does not like Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise is, meh, to me. His acting doesn’t wow me but that means I set my expectations low. When they’re exceeded, I’m pleased. Most of his roles don’t require deep emotions. They’re generally action oriented. He’s required to show bewilderment, determination, and fearless resolve. He handles that fine.

I wanted to see ‘The Edge of Tomorrow’ because it’s a science-fiction film. Besides black humor, British humor, and drama, I enjoy science-fiction the best. It’s great if all of it can be combined in one film. I acknowledge, too, that I’m being redundant, calling out black humor and British humor as though they’re different. Well, they are; some British humor is silly humor.

I never read the original novel the movie was based on (‘All You Need is Kill’). I knew, from exposure, the general premise that Tom, as Major Cage, was trapped into repeating the same day again and again, and it was during a war with alien invaders. I winced when I saw his name was Cage and he was essentially caged by events, but that’s a personal problem for me. I knew, too, that he becomes a better soldier and saves the world through his groundhog day military life. I didn’t know the details.

I won’t share any more, though, so as not to give away further plot. I enjoyed the movie more than anticipated. It had fewer holes that I expected, and I didn’t find myself re-casting it. I particularly enjoyed Tom’s betrayal of Cage in the movie’s opening twenty minutes, as his paradigms are shifted for him.

Anyway, fun film, not too gritty or gory, not really violent as it’s all CGI. It’s worthwhile watching with a glass of wine when your spouse is out.

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Today’s Theme Music

“This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”

I was thirteen in 1969. The Tate-LaBianca murders exploded over the news. I remember newspaper headlines, photographs and television news coverage of the Manson Family actions and the subsequent investigations as clearly as I remember the assassinations of RFK, JFK and MLK, the Watts riots, or the Apollo moon landing. Helter Skelter became the symbol of the murders because the words were written in blood at the scene. The murders became books and movies under the name ‘Helter Skelter’.  It wasn’t an accident. Charles Manson believed and taught the Beatles’ ‘White Album’, including ‘Helter Kelter’, contained coded messages for him and his followers.

If you can escape the murderous connection, the lyrics are good to sing as you’re walking around:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again

The song, written by Paul McCartney, would never be heard the same for many of us. Here is U2, trying to change it back for us in 1988.

 

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I enjoy stream-of-consciousness writing. This song, by Suzanne Vega, came out in 1982 but I didn’t become aware of it until the early 1990s, when I was stationed at Onizuka in Sunnyvale, California. Then, after hearing it, I kept trying to learn the name of it, and failed for a long time. People were vaguely aware of it but nobody was certain of who performed it nor its name. Eventually, the Internet came along. A successful search led me to answers: ‘Tom’s Diner’, by Suzanne Vega, and the rest.

‘Seinfeld’ was my favorite show for a long time, and remains my favorite comedy show. I liked Jerry before he was big. When his pilot was first announced, my wife told me, “That comedian you like is getting a television show.” I saw the pilot air on Armed Forces Radio and Television Services through our local channel in Germany. I enjoyed it but didn’t know what happened to it, as we didn’t get the series for a while. Eventually a few episodes of the first half year were shown. Then I returned to America and discovered it was a weekly series.

The connection between the song and the series is Tom’s Diner. Tom’s Diner was a place Vega frequently as a college student and was the setting, as Monk’s, for many ‘Seinfeld’ scenes. Learning that, I thought, This must be a great diner.

BTW, a famous actor is mentioned dying in the song. People figured out from when the song was written and various other clues that the actor was William Holden, someone she’d never heard of. Anyway, after that laborious intro, here’s the song, ‘Tom’s Dinner’. 

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song came out of a 1975 Art Garfunkel album, ‘Breakaway’. My wife and I loved this album. We owned it on cassette and it was a regular road trip album.

There were a lot of road trips in those days. I had completed basic training and tech school the year before. Now, in 1975, I was assigned to my first duty assignment, HQ AFLC at Wright-Patterson AFB. My wife was still in high school in a neighboring state. I broke Air Force rules to jump into my 1968 Camaro and drive down to see her. She moved in with me, and we married in August of 1975.

‘Breakaway’ is rich with memorable songs for us. ‘The Waters of March’ is the one selected for today’s theme music. Written by Antonio Carlos Jobim about the rainstorms of Rio de Jainero in March, it’s been covered by many. Wonderful versions are out there. But I selected the Garfunkel version for its personal connection.

A mellow, meditative performance, it’s a good song to stream in your head while walking around in the rain.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I rode the surf from yesterday’s catchy and memorable song (what was it again?) to today’s.

What I remember best about this was that it was one of many forty-five RPM records my sister owned. We had the little plastic spindle adapter that allowed this to be played on the thirty-three’s spindle. Otherwise, you put on the larger forty-five plastic adapter, which reminded me of a red and gray toilet paper roll. The record’s label was orange, which I think was Decca. The song was ubiquitous, true for many Beach Boys songs at the time.

Here, from 1965, ‘California Girls’.

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