Category: pop culture

What I’m Watching

I’m not watching much.

Twenty seventeen has not started out great. I’ve seen ads for a television game show, ‘The Wall’, and think, surely this is going to be satirical science fiction. But no; it’s real.

Yes, it’s a lean time in television land, with reruns, award shows and sports dominating. That’s true even though I stream television through Acorn, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, Sling and others. Although I’ve cut the cable, as they now like to claim with marketing zeal, television is mostly an entertainment desert.

I’ve gone through ‘Sneaky Pete.’ I’m waiting for more of ‘The Americans’, ‘Orphan Black’, ‘Stranger than Fiction’, ‘The Expanse’, ‘Dark Matters’, ‘Goliath’ and ‘Travelers’. We worked through my wife’s mild infatuation with ‘Being Human’ and ‘The Librarians’. I’ve gone through all of the ‘WestWorld’, Ballers’ and ‘Cake Wars’. Nothing new and offbeat like ‘Miranda’, Gavin and Stacey’, ‘Pram Face’, or ‘Misfits’ is out there. No new ‘Foyle’s War’ ‘Happy Valley’ or ‘The Killing’. No Frankie and Grace. No Harry Bosch or ‘Justified’.  No Wire.

We’re left, basically, with ‘This Is Us’. It’s a good show, with interesting characters, storylines, and structures, well acted and produced. My one gripe is related to its location in Pittsburgh, PA. I lived in Pittsburgh until I was fifteen and visited there often after that. Mom and my sisters still live their with their families. The people on TIU just don’t have the brashness of voice and the unusual talking style I find in Pittsburgh. Pittsburghers don’t tend to talk in soft voices, awaiting their turns. They talk fast, and start talking all at once, which causes conversations to become louder and louder, and more chaotic. They also tend to end sentences with a rise, as though they’re asking a question instead of making a statement.

Well, maybe that was just at my house, with my friends and family.

On the movie side, I’ve seen just about anything that I want to see.

What about you? Anything out there you’re watching that you recommend to others?

Meanwhile, I’ll probably don my brown shirt and take up with Mal for a few days.

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Today’s Theme Music

I’m still on a walking kick for my music. Today’s song burst upon the music charts and my consciousness in 1993. It was in a movie before that, though, and charted across the world a few years before I really knew it. When we heard it in the movie, we started looking for it.

My wife loves this song so it became one that we turn up loud in the car and sing along. Part of the song’s fun are the expressions used and the singers’ accents. Possessing a raucous, infectious vibe and easy words to know and sing, the song immediately joined my walking jukebox. I guess I should modernize that and say, my walking Walkman. No, that remains dated; guess I should say, my iPod, or my smart phone, or my iPhone. I don’t know; don’t use any of those things. The songs are in my head.

Sing along, walk along, swing those arms! Here are The Proclaimers with ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).

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Today’s Theme Music

I was just nine years old when this song came out. I learned it from my Mom’s albums, but it was an AM pop station mainstay for years and then became a ‘golden oldie’ on FM radio.

This video is fun. It’s a television recording from the mid 1960s. That allows us to experience some modern twin developments defining themselves: pop music and TV. I like the hair, the matching little outfits, and the spartan stage.

Here’s ‘Let’s Hang On!’ by The Four Seasons, 1965. Sing along. The words are easy to learn.

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Today’s Theme Music

One of my most enjoyable experiences while in the military came during my assignment to Okinawa. I was stationed at Kadena Air Base.

I became good friends with Jeff, who arrived almost at the same time. We were in command and control. Both assigned to the Military Airlift Command for the first time, Jeff had come out of the Strategic Air Command, probably the most intense Air Force command regarding command and control, because they were a large part of the nuclear deterrent triad. So Jeff thought MAC was pretty laid back. Compared to SAC, it was.

Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) ran facilities at Okuma Beach for the military to use. Jeff had two young boys. He would go camping. I would tag along. Sometimes others would go with us. It was great, grilling all weekend, tossing around baseballs, swimming, a wonderfully relaxing time. My wife didn’t like camping, so she didn’t go, declaring, “My idea of roughing it is no mints on the pillows.” The one time she did go, a typhoon was moving in, blowing our tent over while we tried to sleep.

Situated where it was on the island in the East China Sea, Okuma suffered little light pollution. It was great to put down a blanket, look up at the clear, bright stars, listen to the surf and think.

Our music of the time was dominated by Toto IV, an usual rock album that did very well. One frequently planned song was ‘Africa’. 

Here it is.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

A co-worker hated this song, hated it. 

The song is ‘Torn’, as covered by the Australian, Natalie Imbruglia. A stanza includes the words, “Lying naked on the floor.” This always send Louise into head-shaking disapproval.

“She’s lying naked on the floor. That’s disgusting.”

“But it’s not — ”

“Disgusting!”

“But it’s — ”

“No. That is so gross.”

Guess Louise is a germaphobe.

Here it is, from 1997, ‘Torn’.

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Today’s Theme Music

Nancy Sinatra was brought up in my memories this week. She was quite popular among the neighborhood girls when I was young and living in Wilkinsburg, PA. Hullabaloo was a big hit then. Mini-skirts and white go-go boots were in. Young girls liked to put Nancy’s song on and dance on chairs as go-go dancers.

From 1966, here is ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

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Today’s Theme Music

This song, and the album it was on, blasted in on us in the summer of 1995.

I was stationed at Onizuka Air Station (a place also once called Sunnyvale Air Station and Onizuka Air Base), working as Director, QAF for the 750th Space Group. A young airman was working at his desk, radio on, as I walked by; this song was playing. I stopped down to listen, and then laughed and said, “Holy shit.” It was one of those songs that shocked me into instant memory. I listened for it on the radio as I was driving arrive the bay, and cranked it up whenever it came on.

The song starts out so gently, confessional and non-confrontational, but then it rises with unmasked, almost uncontrolled rage and contempt, a thematic approach repeated several times in the song. Listening, it feels like an emotional stream of consciousness that zigzags between confrontation, reconciliation and coping, someone trying to release their pain and bitterness even as they search for understanding.

This is Alanis Morissette with ‘You Oughta Know’ from ‘Jagged Little Pill’. 

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Today’s Theme Music

I married in 1975. My wife is a year younger than me.

Enlisted in the Air Force, I was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in Fairborn, Ohio. I drove home to West Virginia when she graduated. I rented a small place off-base for one hundred dollars a month and she moved in with me. Marriage was agreed after a few months because then I would receive BAQ, which was an extra one hundred eighteen dollars a month. We kept a strict budget, saving pennies to buy a treat. We didn’t have a television. Our primary entertainment was playing cards and reading. We went to the library a lot. Mom eventually bought us a small black and white Philco portable television with attached rabbit ears.

We didn’t have a telephone. We’d walk downtown to a phone booth once a month and call our families collect. We wouldn’t talk long because we did’t want to run up their phone bills. Quarters and dimes were saved so we could go to the laundromat to wash our clothes. For a treat, twice a month, we would go out to Dairy Queen and have a Brazier Burger. We didn’t have a credit card because we didn’t qualify.

I had a cheap little all-in-one stereo that I received for a Christmas present a few years before, with two small speakers. The all-in-one meant it had a phonograph that played 45 and 33s, AM/FM radio and eight-track player all in one small unit. We had my old albums and eight-tracks, but didn’t have the money to buy new records or tapes, so we mostly listened to the radio.

Today’s song is from that time. Lionel Ritchie was still with the Commodores, and they were one of the hottest groups around. I used to sing this song to my wife. She loved that.

Here’s ‘Brick House’, from 1977.

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National Book Critics Circle Awards Nominees

I was pleased to see the Vulture headline for the NBCCAs in my inbox:

Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith Are Among the Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards

Great, I enjoy their writing. But then I read the list and was dismayed that they’d not mentioned several favorites in their headline. What, no love to Louise Erdrich for ‘LaRosa’? Or Jane Mayer for ‘Dark Money’? A few headlines mentioned Ann Pratchett but I saw no mention of the excellent Mayer and Erdrich. Then, scanning the list, I saw that Margaret Atwood was winning the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. That’s marvelous, as she remains a lifelong favorite for me, but again, she’s not in the headlines.

It’s an excellent list of nominees. I need to read more books.

 

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