Running Hot and Cold

It hasn't been the busiest week, but I have managed to do some things in K.'s absence. We had some plumbing work done on the bathroom, so that "HOT" now means hot, not scalding, and "COLD" actually means cold, not non-existent. And the shower? It has a new knob that's actually threaded so that when you turn it, it turns on the shower. Nifty, huh? What will they come up with next, in this miraculous 21st Century? It's all done with copper tubing, too! Then we had the shower-head raised a foot and a half so that it's above my head, as opposed to spraying my chest. Well, this is what I suppose, anyway. I've now fixed the hole in the dry-wall, sealed and painted it, and it has yet to dry. All this to say, I haven't had a shower since Friday. But I'm sure it will be marvelous.*

The next step is to replace the sink and faucets, even though the steady drip-drip-drip has done wonders for my problems with rhythm. I'll just have to invest in that metronome, I guess.

What else? Well, the splinters in my hands that make me wince when I type remind me that I've been moving various parts of our fallen tree (Reference here) into our handy-dandy wood-crib that we put together Easter weekend. A work in progress, I've moved a bunch of wood-hunks from the lawn into it, for the purpose of, in the near-future, taking each hunk and hatcheting it into smaller hunks for the burning of in our wood stove. But I've filled it, and there's so much more tree to go. I will have to make another wood-pile, and tarp it for the large hunks that won't fit the crib. It's a process. But it's all wood. It's all good.

I have some free-lance this week. Job applications to send in. Some speculative sound-design to do. Might take in a movie, although there's nothing out there that floats my boat. In the mean-time, I'll be taking long walks with my short peers--they being the dog and cat-units. They've been entertaining in K's absence. Smokey had an extended frisbee session at low-tide yesterday. And he's been modeling his new anti-bark collar, getting used to it. No, it's not one of those shock-collars. It emits a distracting chirp when he barks.

Okay, "chirp" might not be the word.

"Irritating squeal" would be more accurate.

Yeah, that's more like it. "Irritating squeal."

We should see a drop in cardiac arrests in UPS delivery-men in the near-term. Watch for it.
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And there's something else that that I'm happy about--I had dinner with my former wife Alesandra. She's started reading this blog--and, in fact, holds the record for the most amount of time spent on the site at one time (02:05:00). We talked about this. We talked about that. It was really good seeing her again. She looks great. She's doing well, and she's actually planning to take some time off and vacation. It was a nice, long enjoyable meal with delightful company. I see her too seldom. We've promised to do better in the future.
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I wrote earlier this week about my association with Dan "The Man." I also wrote about him here (it has a nifty link to the short film he wrote and directed). Well, I've gotten a couple of nice e-notes from him. One in regards to this ad (http://www.cryocarepca.org/). When we worked on that before-mentioned comedy album one of the bits Dan wrote was for "Cryo-Care"--a cryonic day-care where busy adults could freezer their child to accomodate their schedules and not miss those all-important child development highlights. And now, here's "Cryo-Care," for real.

Well, this week, Dan sent me another link (http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/DESM-ProgramOri.pdf). You'll probably need Acrobat or some other program that can open PDF's, but its worth a look. It inspired me to write these new lyrics for an old song:

They call him Flipper, Flipper

Wired with Lazers

No one, you see

Is Com-bus-tion-free

And we know Flipper

Fights e-ne-mies of our na-tion

With Im-mo-la-tion

'til they're crispeeeey!

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I did rent a couple of really good movies this week:

"United 93" is Paul Greengrass' recreation (with non-actors) of the first counter-attack on the War on Terror (and, need I point out, one of the most successful?) You know the story. You know how it turns out. So its the considerable accomplishment of the director to still keep you on the edge of your seat, and do it in a way that feels real, and decidedly "un-Hollywood." There's no grand-standing. No commentary. No jingo-ism. No speeches. It's the story of desperate people in a desperate circumstance. And doing the right thing. It's an amazing piece of work and can't recommend it highly enough.

"Stranger Than Fiction" is the latest film by Marc Forster, or one of the Marc Forsters as he seems to be a different director with every film. This is the same guy who did "Monsters' Ball," and "Finding Neverland." And this, a sunny little black comedy, is nothing like either of those films. It's very nice to find a comedy that isn't an echo of something you've heard before, and although it carries the whiff of a Charlie Kaufman conceit, it has its own unique voice courtesy of writer Zach Helm. And it's performed to the hilt by Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, an almost unrecognizable Tom Hulce, and a wonderfully muted Will Farrell. Yeah, we all like the extrovert Will Farrell (well, maybe we don't), but there's something extraordinarily comic about this performance, where he's forever looking askance at the world and wondering why. It's very enjoyable. Highly recommended.

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Today's Seen Bumper Sticker: There's a Village in Texas Missing its Idiot

Song in me Head: "You Made Me So Very Happy" Blood, Sweat and Tears

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* And it was. You know something? I've gone a solid year without a decent experience taking a shower in this place. That can take a lot out of a person--not knowing if you were going to have hot water and how long it would last. Well, now the shower is high enough and I can regulate the temperature. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to do that. Life's simple pleasures...

Old Dogs Teaching New Tricks

Tuesday, Walaka hosannahed before the teaching gods for a job well-done. It inspired me to blow the dust off a theme of a similar sort that I wrote back when I was teaching, because I wanted to remember that day and what it felt like.


I’ve been a Sound Designer since 1980 and I love what I do. To me, there is no greater "high" than taking an audio track and by inserting a selected sound, make it appear that the sound had every right being there in the first place. To fool an audience into thinking that that sound belonged there and had, in fact, always been there. It’s a heady trick to play on people’s minds, and it can be used to influence and also manipulate the audience into an emotional response.

God help me, I do love it so.

So, I’ve had a few months of slow work, and I began teaching at Shoreline Community College. I had two “Beginning Sound Design” classes fold out from under me, due to “lack of interest” – in other words, only a few students signed up. Now, in the Spring of 2005, I’m co-teaching a class of Audio Post-Production that had so many students it required two sections. I’m teaching the Tuesday-Thursday section, but also hanging around for the Monday-Wednesday sessions to see how people are progressing.

The class assignment is simple: do all the required audio work to finish a movie in time to show it to the public June 8th. And not just one movie. Two movies. One is “The Great Escape,” the Hollywood-ized version of the audacious POW camp escape during World War II. You probably remember it for Steve McQueen and his leaping motorcycle. There are no women in this film, so to make sure the female students get some voices to impersonate (and to give the class a film to have fun with) the other film is TGE’s claymation progenitor, “Chicken Run.” Two more apt films for a class just about to graduate from an audio post-production sequence could not be found. And the students have thrown themselves at these two films with an enthusiasm that is thrilling.

For the past five weeks, the students have been dealing with ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement). We’ve stripped the audio from the two films, and the students have had to present a fully-typed out script and re-record the lines made famous by Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Garner, Donald Pleasance, et al. It has been exhausting work, and I’ve been watching nerves fray, and tired lines etch into people’s faces. Frankly, it’s made me worried.

The next phase of the project is foley, the peculiar artistry in motion pictures of recreating the sounds of people walking, fiddling with props and generally making the film’s world sound more real than it actually can be by being recorded with a simple microphone. This skill bears the name of a legendary practitioner of the art at Universal Studios (Jack Foley). I’ve had students approach me in the halls and say they’ll not get through all the foley work, but still they’ve plunged in, asking for donations of boots and building small stages of dirt, and wood to faux-walk on.

Friday I went up to campus to donate my brother’s Vietnam-vintage Army boots for the cause.

I’ve recently been reflecting on how teaching can’t possibly provide the thrill that doing my own sound design brings me. Emily Dickinson once wrote that she knew her poetry was good when it felt like her head might explode. I have known what that feels like doing sound design. But I doubted that teaching those skills would make me feel as good. Mind you, there have been joys: the original music the students have composed for “Chicken Run” is both fun and functional…and wholly their own. The Music Team for “The Great Escape” is working with a concurrent MIDI class to recreate Elmer Bernstein’s classic score. The first primitive MIDI sounds were primitive. Now, the team is working with an initially reluctant MIDI class to beef up their charts with better orchestral samples, the results of which have been magical for the music and enervating for the MIDI class, to the thrill of all concerned. And some of the performances improve on the originals, inspiring admiring smiles, a shake of the head in wonder, and barks of appreciative laughter.

I entered Studio “D” in the basement of the Music Building with my brother’s boots. Students John Nold and Tim Sage looked at me with eyes as wide as childrens’ on Christmas morning. “You gotta listen to this!” John said. “We’ve got the first four minutes of footsteps.” “Okay. Who’s in the booth?” “David.” They played the sequence of the prisoners first arriving at their camp, disembarking from the transport trucks and fanning out. And I got to watch David Villablanca, by himself, portray the various German soldiers, and the shuffling of some 250 Allied prisoners recorded over 4 tracks maximum. It worked like gangbusters, sounding as if it was always meant to be there. It was amazing work.

I felt like my brain would explode.

Bon Voyage

K. is rewarding herself and her splendid performance in the Island half-marathon (shaved 30 minutes off the time, with a fraction of the aches from last year) with a trip to Oahu with her friend Pat. By coincidence, her niece, who also did the halfer, will be there, too. She called last night...said the weather is faboo...but the flight (delayed an hour by the pin-balling repercussions of the East Coast weather confusion) was exhausting. She sounds good. She sounds happy.

Clear skies. Hawaii will do that for ya.
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I haven't made any comments about gas prices lately because, hey, what can you say? My check-points for comparison have gas at $3.17 a gallon for "Regular" (87 octane), which is very high. But one knows it will get higher. Crude oil is at $63.13 today, which is high but not as high as the last time we hit and exceeded the $3.00 mark.

Wait. How will we know it's going to go higher? On the radio the other day, an "industry expert" predicted that for the short term prices will remain high, and then start decreasing "around Memorial Day." Heh. Memorial Day. The traditional beginning of the Summer Season, where it's expected for vacationers to drive more...hence, gasoline prices will go up...not down.

Oh, that's so cynical, the "experts" will wag their fingers.

Yeah. Well, consistency will do that to ya.
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Today's Bumper sticker: "Politics -- Poli (Many) tics (Blood-sucking Creatures)"
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Song in me Head: "All Along the Watchtower" The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Grist for the Mill

32 dead. 26 injured.

"Virginia Tech" now means something else. Just as "Columbine" does.

On the radio, it's stated that its the worst "single-shooter" massacre in the nation's history.

And my jaw tightens.

Rewind to the first Bush administration (at the time, we didn't see it as a "golden age," but it looks more and more like it these days--"Bully Pulpit" meant something else then.). I was working on a comedy album with a bunch of local writers and actors. We called ourselves "The Synaptic Anarchy Playhouse" and the album would eventually be titled "Relish the Thought." I'm sure there's a copy of it collecting dust in a bargain bin somewhere in this country. I know of one "comedy DJ" who pretty regularly plays something from it every now and again. For the participants, however, we invested so much time in the thing that its relative worth in our eyes dropped precipitously over the years. But a critical listen not too long ago showed glimmers of merit even with an outlook encrusted with jade. It's not as bad as we think it is. It's not as clever as it should have been, either. It's a compromise.

I was writing with Dan "The Man" on it. Dan would show up with an over-arching theme. And we'd go from there: I'd free-associate in the car and he'd embellish and eventually we'd have a skit that we'd think was really funny and then fall out of love with after a week or so...until it was performed and then we'd marvel at what good actors can do with "stale" material.

One day, Dan walked in and announced this concept: "How the Media Celebrates and Immortalizes Psychosis." Ha! Yeah! Good one! I started free-associating. We'd do a news report of a postal worker shooting up a fast-food restaurant, building it up until its revealed that the shooter didn't kill quite as many people as was initially rumored and the story, in turn, falls off the headlines coverage. That set the situation up and the two of us started embellishing. The restaurant became "Big Boy Chucky's" after a ubiquitous burger chain not found in Washington State, with its cherubic statuary that we used for a bit where the newscasters seemed to be showing more concern for the damage inflicted on it than the victims. The postal worker was portrayed in a stand-off with police threatening to dunk his head in a deep-fat fryer unless his demands were met--one of which was to produce a tv-version of his life-story called "They Make us Wear These Shorts!" There were interviews with a representative of a firearms enthusiast's organization, who opined that the whole thing could have been avoided if all the customers were carrying. And a former teacher of the shooter--a nun, Sister Mary-Louise Evidentia Stigmata--remembered the postal worker being an "over-achiever." Then, as soon as its revealed that it's not "The Most Peace-Time Kills Caused with an Automatic Weapon in a Dining Area" the anchor loses interest and cuts away from the local reporter who is frantically trying to build up the story again...but to no avail. "How the Media Celebrates and Immortalizes Psychosis." Funny bit.

Except every time it happens.

And it happens regularly. Dan and I would mention it to each other the first five times there was an eerie parallel, and there was always an eerie parallel. It would be a postal worker some times. A disgruntled worker, certainly. And, of course, the media would milk it for all it was worth. Their coverage was consistent from incident to incident, we noticed, sometimes using phrasing we mockingly used in the skit. Time and again. We'd mention it bitterly. Then we just stopped talking about it. It was uncomfortable to talk about. There was an element of shame to it. The topic had been done...to death.

And so, today: "The Worst 'Single-Shooter' Massacre in the Nation's History." I get an e-mail about parallels from another member of the group. Yup. I noticed. My stomach, in knots, noticed. I also told him I thought it was easy and we had been a little obvious to mock the news media about their coverage of things like this. I said it was like calling a dog four-legged. Or Imus a boor.

And it'll happen again. But I'm left with the fervent wish that next time that one of these...people...would get their priorities straight and simply cut to the chase. The unfortunate thing about these incidents is they always end up shooting themselves last.

When it's where they should be starting.

It would save everybody a lot of grief.

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K. did the half-marathon this week-end, and she and her niece and her niece's mom were positively blessed by a nice warm day to travel the fourteen island miles with a big fish-and-chips lunch as a reward for making it the whole way. They made great time, too--a full hour less than two years ago. They started training three months ago, and they were all in far-better shape this time around. Some blisters. Some protesting muscles. But everybody's happy and healthy and with nice little medals around their necks. But they're exhausted, and have gone to bed.

Me, I'm blogging.

K. takes off for a couple weeks in Hawaii, while I maintain vigil on my own Island with the pets. The two things I'm concentrating are 1) the on-going work search (I did a couple of mixes on industrials this past week--not much, but something, and one of my regular freelance gigs came in and was done, no hassle.), and 2) our tuner has crapped out, so I'll be shopping for one of those that will fit our little space under the television that's not too expensive and I can still use our speakers on. The technology has evolved so much that I don't think I'll have a problem finding something a) cheap and b) powerful for all the stuff we need it to do. Oh! and 3) I'll be moving wood. Lots of wood. Lots of wood into our brand-new wood crib that will keep said wood out of the elements so we can use for non-smokey fires in the future.

The "Now I've Seen Everything" Dept.- Steven Spielberg, Freshman Year

In which the author, having seen everything there is to see on the subject makes a capsule summary of each,* looking for trends and contributing what he calls an Ouvre-view.**

Subject: The Films of Steven Spielberg , Freshman Year

Duel, 1971 Precocious with movie cameras and making his own features, Spielberg snuck onto the Universal lot and absconded his own office, then with hard work and mentoring got to direct his first television feature--an segment of the "Night Gallery" pilot starring the formidable Joan Crawford. It was the stuff of industry legend. But folks really stood up and took notice with this "ABC Movie of the Week" adaptation of Richard Matheson's bare-bones short story: a man in a car against...something... in an 18-wheeler, out in the desert. In a TV environment where budgets ruled all, Spielberg managed to give his minimalist film a movie feel, with elegant travelling shots, charging effects techniques, and, in moments calling for panic, almost-hallucinatory extreme close-ups. But there's more to it than technique. Spielberg also gives the demon-truck the supernatural quality it deserves, creating a seemingly unstoppable foe. He provides a rousing climax, then ends with a melancholy, existential coda, elevating the car-versus-truck story. He also had the benefit of an all-stops-out performance by the underutilized Dennis Weaver.

The Sugarland Express, 1974 With all that was to come after, folks forget that Spielberg's first film was this Goldie Hawn...er, "vehicle," featuring a long, slow car chase, an unsympathetic lead and a down-beat ending. Critics took notice, but nobody bought tickets. That wouldn't happen again for awhile. Goldie plays a mom who springs her husband out of prison, takes a guard hostage and leads a convoy of patrol cars on a quixotic trip to rescue her child from a foster home. Spielberg wouldn't attempt this level of crowd-no-pleaser 'til later in his career. He also populated his cast with a fair percentage of locals with no previous acting experience for color, a technique he'd also employ in his next little film.

Jaws, 1975 You'll find an early analysis here. There's not much to add, other than, with time and close inspection, the seams show a bit more in this roller-coaster crowd-teaser about an "eating machine" picking off citizens of a Massachusetts beach community during high-tourist season. The movie's bi-polar: On land, it's a Hitchcockian tease, but on open water, it's a bit like "Duel"--frenetically hyper-busy with bits of business and one crisis after another. But what could the kid do? He had a shark movie, but for 95% of filming he had no shark. Water and weather conditions changed from moment to moment, but John Williams' insistent score keeps you focused on the action. And he's helped immeasurably by an odd, brilliantly picked cast. Spielberg's lead was a character actor usually given sinister second-banana roles, and for the other denizens of the good ship Orca, chose two character actors who, in style and personality, were oil and water: the classically trained Welsh boozer/playwright Robert Shaw, and the pinched, hectoring Actor's Studio product Richard Dreyfuss. With a cast like this, the shark's almost superfluous for generating drama. Spielberg changed the book considerably and provided a "wowser" of a finish (in the book, the shark just...dies) that, over the original author's objections,*** pays off mightily. Over-time and over-budget, it became the first wide-opening Hollywood blockbuster, setting the stage for how films were presented, marketed and hyped for the next 30 years.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977 Flush with the success of "Jaws" and his name now a household word, Spielberg parlayed his clout to make a dream project that star Richard Dreyfuss announced on "The Mike Douglas Show" "will turn Columbia Pictures into a parking lot" if it wasn't a success. Based on a bit of one of his childhood 8mm movies, partially on a commissioned script by Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver"), the evolving storyline started out as a film about a pesky alien attack, and turned into one about obsession, dissolution and ecstatic epiphany. "Everyman" contractor Roy Neary is touched by a light from beyond and the scorch-marks it leaves on his face dig deep into his brain leading to a compulsive scavenger hunt-like search for the answers. He's joined by other adrift souls (including a mother searching for her alien-abducted toddler) and, Job-like, is rewarded for his trials...and his faith.**** Released the same year as "Star Wars" and uncompleted to Spielberg's satisfaction at the time, it can now be seen as he intended (and without the unnecessary scenes inside the Mother-ship that bankrolled Spielberg's tinkering). The completed film shows Spielberg's willingness to broach dark material before making his way to the light at the end of the tunnel. It also shows his growing directorial skills with kids (as was briefly displayed in "Jaws") not only in the performance of the pre-verbal Cary Guffey, but also in the heart-breaking performances of the actors who portrayed the Neary children.

1941, 1979 After the "Jaws"/"CE3K" one-two-punch, Spielberg set his view-finder on a screwball/slapstick comedy--ala "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"--the basis of which was a John Milius/Robert Zemeckis/Bob Gale script about California attack hysteria in the days following Pearl Harbor. What was a relatively clever, modest script balooned into an elaborate loud-mouthed farce with a star-studded cast headed by a coke-addled John Belushi and the likes of John Candy, Dan Ackroyd (of course), Slim Pickens, Warren Oates, and even Christopher Lee and Toshiro Mifune (playing it straight). "1941" is barnacle-encrusted with in- and out-house jokes, starting with the same skinny-dipping gal from the beginning of "Jaws" being hoisted into the air on the periscope of a surfacing Japanese submarine. It's all "Jerry Lewis"-subtle and the wanton destruction on several fronts is considerable and wearying and ultimately signifying...not much. But it could have been even more extreme: John Wayne was too miffed at what he considered the anti-Americanism in the script to play General Stilwell (Robert Stack stepped in), and the lookouts on the Ferris Wheel were originally to be "Honeymooners" Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (but became Murray Hamilton and...Eddie Deezen). "1941" bombed at the box-office and all the blame went to Spielberg for running over-budget and overboard. Hollywood dismissed him as an irresponsible flame-out. But he had friends in high places.


Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981 On a post-"Star Wars" vacation in Hawaii, George Lucas and Spielberg made plans for a series of films based on the old movie adventure serials, but amped up with modern story-telling techniques and special effects centered around a globe-trotting archaeologist named Indiana Jones (Tom Selleck was the front-runner to play him, but as he was tied up playing "Magnum, P.I." on tv, Harrison Ford slipped on the ever-present fedora).***** Based on a story by Lucas and Phillip Kaufman, Spielberg protege Larry Kasdan fashioned a taut, wise script winking at the genre and poking fun at the cliches while playing up the mysticism. With the overview of Lucas, Spielberg, for once, kept tight rein on the production and came in on time and under budget, allowing him to retrieve his industry cred--helped, no doubt, by the healthy receipts of a cracker-jack film. Spielberg's career was revitalized, and more importantly, his work with Lucas inspired him to form his own business model for film-making. he would stop being a studio work-for-hire and, within a year, would start directing and developing film projects under his own production masthead...Amblin Entertainment.

* With any luck

** Ouvre: 1.the works of a writer, painter, or the like, taken as a whole.

*** "Jaws" author Peter Benchley hated the movie's end, finding it unbelievable and embarrassingly "cowboy." Showing the film to a group of marine biologists, he was mortified to watch them cheer hysterically when the shark blows up.

**** James Lipton, when he interviewed Spielberg on "Inside the Actor's Studio" asked Spielberg the professions of his divorced parents. He was an inventor specializing in computers. She was a music teacher. Lipton then asked him if it had occurred to him that that was why a computerized synthesizer (that learned the language) was used to communicate with the aliens. "It just occurred to me now.." was Spielberg's flustered reply.

***** How it came up was Spielberg confessed to Lucas that he wanted to direct a James Bond film, to which Lucas replied, "I've got something better than Bond." Naturally, when it came time to cast the father of Indiana Jones, the first person they asked was original movie Bond, Sean Connery.

Long Saturday

It's a slightly dreary Saturday after the Good Friday with much to do: bake cookies, make the cat's food, take the dog for a walk, chop the heads off dandelions, do some creative/commercial writing for job submissions, and a couple of spec sound-scapes that have been germinating in my head for a project down the road--I can think about 'em all the time I want, but once I get the raw materials gathered, there's nothing like the basic construction to gel the concepts. Anyway, there's plenty of stuff to do.

So, I'm blogging.

(K's out at the gym--she has her Big Island Walk next week-end and is in her final power-down in training) The Fulghum recording yesterday was a pleasant end to a pleasant week of fact-gathering: I had two lunches with two of my favorite--and long-lived--people in the community: Birney and Vincenzo. Birney I've known since he was the Promotion Director for a funky rerun-based television station here in town (that has since gone corporate), then he worked for Boeing, then for Microsoft (where we hooked up again), and then went into Technical Writing, which is what I was quizzing him about on Wednesday over a fine latino meal at Mama's. Vincenzo worked with me at the studio and started his own "salon" studio in town that has been thriving in an industry that has seen more changes and gone through more fads than only one--the computer industry, which in no small way affected the former. That's the general gist of things I got--things have changed. Not only can you do more out of your house--more is being done out-of-house. Makes one wonder if the BIG RECORDING STUDIO is just a wired dodo-going the way of the printing shop as the next casualty of technology. You wouldn't think so from the advertising I've been researching in the recording magazines. But then, that's advertising.

What I got from the talks is there's a big future out there, and that the recording technology is going to take another Armstrongian "giant leap" in ease of use in the very near future. A touch easier, I should say. I'd start investing in screen-cleaners.
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And while the world's technology marches forward, the cabin's takes a couple back into the rustic era. We were eagerly watching our latest Red Envelope from Netflix (watch, this all relates) on Tuesday when the screen started flickering. Then, the lights. Then, Bur-Zzztt! the television, DVD player and stereo shut down, as well as all the lights in the living room (or the Big Couch Room as we call it--we fell asleep there last night watching flicks, woke up at dawn and stumbled to bed to un-kink our necks and hips). I looked outside. The folks next door had outdoor lights on, but they were the only house on the block that wasn't completely dark at 9:00pm. Hmm. Power-failure? I called PSE, found that we were the first to report any problems and were assured that the problem would be attended to. We made it an early night with an extended Intermission.

Mr. PSE came out the next morning, and informed us it wasn't a power-failure--just us. The neighbor's madrona had rubbed one of our lines a bit raw this winter and that was causing some problems. He did what he could do outside, made the wires all new and shiney, but we're still having flickering lights, and I've noticed (Mr. Sharp-Ears) that it coincides with a flutter in the circuit box. Oh no. We called the electrician today. We'll see what develops. In the meantime, we've re-routed the things we want to work around the outlets that don't. Life goes on.
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Speaking of problems with wiring, there's one member of the house-hold I rarely mention--the cat. The Ancient Cat (23 years now)--Mrs. Fu (and the story of that name for another time). The Ancient, Ornery Cat. I was puttering around the kitchen, making room for another round of dish-washing, when Foozie attempted a lateral over my feet, and stumbled. She fell right over. Lost her balance, as my feet did not move. I picked her up, she was fine. But I've been noticing a "hitch in her git-along"--a slight dragging of her back feet. Some months back when jumping on the bed was becoming a problem, I got her a little light-weight "kitty staircase" so she could come up at night. Sometimes, she'd been be moving forward with just her hips. Neurological problems, I think. What a drag it is getting on. She's still very healthy. Very healthy. She eats three times a day, and demands more. Never a problem with her pipes. Any of them, as she's quite vocal. She seems content--a warm spot to sleep (even if it is next to the dog) and she's happy. She has a good life, and I'm sure she's lasted this long because she intends to outlast the dog (the little interloper).

And the dog (who is at least five times her weight) is scared of her, which is how she likes it.

You can grow old gracelessly and still have it be a good life, I think.
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At both of my lunches, NetFlix came up--"Boy, that's just the greatest thing" And it is. Since we don't have cable on the Island, K has re-established our NetFlix account, and we eagerly anticipate each next arrival. It's allowed me to see a few things I'd missed, and experiment a bit to be pleasantly surprised. K set it up for her tastes and what she considers mine: she gets foreign films, and I get things she thinks I'll like. Things like "The Day After Tomorrow." Surprising to me, but I didn't see it, so, hey, why not. But here are some things we've seen lately with very, very brief comments.

The Day After Tomorrow: Never intended to see this, but it was interesting to see that Hollywood can be just as over-the-top about global warming as it can be about asteroids and volcanoes. Dennis Quaid plays a climatologist whose alarm-level is always at a pinched 85% (Quaid, a conservative, carries a slight air of disbelief in the performance), and it does contain a "peril" sequence that just made me hoot Jake Gyllenhaal and buddies trying to out-run a deadly ice-freeze taking over the New York Public Library. My favorite part was the discussions of what books they were going to burn to stay warm.

Word Wars: "Spellbound" for Adults. "Wordplay" for Scrabble. This documentary leaves you with the impression that where Crossword Puzzle and Spelling Bee tourneys are attended by the merely obsessed, Scrabble champions are the geeky dregs of society. There's not a person featured in this documentary that you wouldn't wish to taser if they got within ten feet of you. A documentary that just makes you shake your head.

Monsoon Wedding: Mira Nair's multi-tiered middle affluent Indian wedding pic is delightful all the way around, but one is left with the nagging feeling afterwards--would a family patriarch really take the word of a niece over that of his white benefactor in the country of bride-burning? Really? Well, one is left with a hopeful picture, even if one has their doubts. Highly recommended.

Celebrity: A lot of prominent beautiful people have fun with the outlandish behavior of celebrity in Woody Allen's nebbishy black and white film. Kenneth Branagh plays Woody in this one and you just want to slap him. "Stop with the tic's, already!" It feels a lot like "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Hannah and her Sisters," so it's Woody writing "like Chekhov" as one of the characters says. He must have just got done reading "The Grasshopper" on this one. Still its nice to reconnect. The last film I saw was "Manhattan Murder Mystery." Been awhile. Nice to see that not much has changed.

The Lady in the Water: Didn't go see this, and didn't want to after the critics called it a stinkeroo. Too bad. This is M. Night Shyamalan abandoning the "Big Surprise at the End" scenario, and going into full "Narnia" myth mode. But "Narnia" for non-believers...and the marginalized. A great cast (Paul Giamatti...but also Jeffrey Wright...and Mary Beth Hurt...and Bill Irwin!), with Shyamalan veering between loopy comedy and "heart on his sleeve" earnestness, it's his loosest job of directing and feels like he's tapping a bit more deeply into his culture and myth-making. It has the feel of a Native American tale of redemption. It's not for everybody and he made mistakes casting himself in it, and making a less-than-likable character a critic (though I think a valid point is made there). But one can see folks going to see an "M. Night Shyamalan movie" and being surprised and disappointed when confronted with this. Personally, I think its a big advance. It's certainly not the failure that the Conventional Wisdom claims it is.

Information Gathering/Wool Gathering

Well, it hasn't been the best week for advancing my career, but a lot of leg-work, a lot of investigation, a lot of fact-gathering, and a lot of questions have been the order of the week. That...and a couple of cancelled sessions, a cancelled/rescheduled lunch, and a genuine fill-in session at the end of the week. In fact, I'm writing from the studio now (yeah, the session is done)

Funny about that session. It started as a simple one-hour voice session that cancelled and turned into an all-day affair recording a book-on-tape. A book-on-tape with Robert Fulghum. Robert "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" Fulghum. I recorded his second book "It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It" way back in the 6th Avenue studio days. Then three years ago, I recorded his 15th Anniversary edition of "Everything I Need to Know..." We joked about "See ya Next Time." Well, this is the "next time." I left the Island about 5:30 for an 8am start at the Studio. He showed up right on time and visibly started when he saw me. "Deja Vu..." he chuckled. "Well, then, this will be easy, today." And it was. Fulghum is one of the nicest guys around with an intense curiosity and incredible stamina (you have to be...he read his entire book, unabridged, in two days, and for most of it he was standing...and on-mike...and engaged...and engaging). And very easy to talk to...a good speaker and a good listener. Extraordinarily personable. It would be nice for everybody to have a one-on-one with him, and it would dispel the cookie-cutter image of the "Refrigerator-Magnet-Philosopher." Always a pleasure. A pleasure all ways.

Next week: more freelance, more hustling, more resume-dispatching, but the same number of fingers crossed. Have a Good Friday, and don't keep your eggs in one basket.

The "Now I've Seen Everything" Dept.- The Beatles

In which the author, having seen everything there is to see on the subject makes a capsule summary* of each, looking for trends and contributing what he calls an Ouvre-view.**

Subject: Movies, starring The Beatles

A Hard Day's Night, 1964 I went to the premiere of this in Seattle, and it was a wild affair with screams from ardent fans at the craven images of The Beatles projected 40 feet across the screen. Below are the first ecstatic minutes of "A Hard Day's Night" (sans audience accompaniment, but with plenty of screams), one of the initial attempts to expand the group's reach into all media. They couldn't have had a better start. Richard Lester had worked with Beatles faves, the Goons, and brought a fresh anarchic air to the film, which apart from the bit about Paul's larcenous grandfather, sticks pretty close to life as the Beatles knew it--in perpetual transit.*** Life for the Beatles must have seemed absolutely mad, with the hysteria from all sides focussed on them like sunlight through a magnifying glass, while they were being shipped like freight from one performance to the next. On the clip, check out Lennon's clever bit with the Pepsi bottle.

Help!, 1966 Richard Lester again, with color film and a bigger budget, Lennon in his self-described "fat Elvis" period and a daft story full of good bits and gags, but dripping with paranoia. It's not just the fans out to get the boys this time, it's an Eastern cult trying to get a sacred sacrificial ring, sent to Ringo, by any mean necessary. Spoofs of Bond, spoofs of Hammer and adventure movies with the Beatles particularly loose--they were recently introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan and higher than kites during filming. If the whole thing seems to hang together without a care to structure or plot (the resolution of the conflict is thrown away-literally), that's why. After years of restoration work, "Help!" has a fine, cracking presentation on DVD, that's a wonderful companion piece to Miramax's "Hard Days Night" box, only this one's released by Apple. Well done. It's the first time that you can see David Watkins' stellar color cinematography (the first time he'd worked in color!) in all its beauty. The Features are nice, too, with Richard Lester contributing to a documentary.**** His comments are invaluable. Here's my favorite part of the film-the wierdly anarchic and trippy end-credits with improvised Beatles overlay, finished by a hacking cough.

Yellow Submarine, 1968 An experimental cartoon built loosely around several Beatles songs in and around the Sgt. Pepper period. Not much Beatles content (although they appear at the end)--they didn't even provide the voices--but the techniques and the imagination behind it (directed by George Dunning, written by several folks including Erich "Love Story" Segal-egad!) are awe-inspiring. Yes, it's silly ("Frankenstein?!" "I used to date his sister, Phyllis.."), but it's still a wonder to see. Here's a bit.

Magical Mystery Tour, 1967 May you never suffer through this mess of a film, self-indulgently directed by The Beatles themselves. A holiday trip manufactured by the group is the thinnest of excuses to string song-videos. In "The Beatles Anthology," McCartney claims that they study it in film-schools (in a cautionary way, I'm sure) and that Spielberg thinks its brilliant! *Sigh* At least it has a performance of "I am the Walrus," which you can see here without watching the rest of the wretched thing.

Let it Be, 1970 My admiration for the Beatles knows little bounds, but this film nearly destroyed them in my eyes forever. It's a documentary with grandiose intentions: The Beatles rehearse in a studio, then perform a concert in some incredible location, but things don't turn out so well: Paul gets bossy; George turns diffident; Ringo sulks and John's strung out and passive-agressive. You come out of this thing really liking Yoko (she's so damned patient)...and Billy Preston, whom George brings into the fold to keep everyone on their best behavior. Paul plays to the camera, and the rehearsals are dismal. Then, instead of some big foreign extravaganza, they just go up to the roof for an impromptu concert to get the damned thing overwith...and they're brilliant (the filmmakers must have missed the parts where it all came together!), then the police come and say, "What's all this, then, eh?" Here's the famous part where a song breaks down because Paul doesn't like how he and George are playing off each other. Paul turns bossy, surreptitiously gives George the finger, then becomes placating, while George is passive/aggressive/sarcastic. John steps in and tries something completely different while Paul looks like he's trying to ignore the whole thing.

The Beatles Anthology, 1995 The surviving Beatles, with pithy recordings from Lennon, tell the story of the Beatles--to a certain extent. When its best you get a sense of what it was like to be in the eye of the Beatlemania hurricane. At its worst its an opportunity for McCartney to spin-doctor--the project was his idea, after all. George and Ringo's interviews are in studio or their backyards, but Paul talks in the woods in the warm wrinkle-reducing glow of a fire or, most bizarrely, driving a tug-boat! No discussion of relationships--except for Yoko--but there is a lot of talk of how they worked so well against the world in the wild concert days and how they splintered in the studio. But, the best thing--the most brilliant thing--is the visual summing-up of The Beatles phenomenon in the perfect 20-seconds animation that began each episode: you can see it here--a pull back from the Beatles performing "Help!" as they disappear from view and their music is overwhelmed by screams--and the individuals are dwarfed by "The Beatles" as a phenomenon far bigger than they are.

"I'm Down" from the first Shea Stadium concert, 1965 This is my favorite Beatles clip. Its a hot August night in New York and the four are perfroming their first concert in an outside sports stadium. During this song, John, feeling slightly uncomfortable with no guitar and playing organ, realizes that it doesn't matter what he does on stage. No one can hear him. No one cares, they're screaming their lungs out. They're little dots in the middle of the field, and their music is coming through the stadium PA. No one can hear them! And John goes just a little...crazy, then brings George into it, then Paul, and they're carried away by the absurdity of the situation. There's a joy here, a madness, that epitomized the Beatles, that overcame any scary situation. But it was the beginning of the end for the concert tours: they became pointless with all the screams; they couldn't play well with all the noise; their music was getting more complicated and harder to duplicate live. After a particularly scary world tour, The Beatles retreated to the studio and their individual efforts.

* with any luck

**Ouvre: 1.the works of a writer, painter, or the like, taken as a whole.

*** When asked how he liked a particular country on a tour Lennon responded, "It was a limousine, a hotel room, a sandwich and another limousine ride" and on Beatlemania in general "It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?"

**** One nice bit is Elanor Bron revealing a nervous tic while filming--she would blink, a lot (Lester does a nice slow zoom on her during one of her eye-batting moments). And all of the Beatles take turns blinking excessively at her to throw her off. Combined with the already-established winking between her and Paul (and the consternation by George: "I'm getting winked at by ladies a lot these days--used to be you, Paul"), there's a lot of fluttering going on.

Opening Fool's Day

It's a rare thing when Opening Day of baseball season and April Fool's Day are one and the same (unless, of course, you're a Cubs fan!). So there's no more appropriate way to acknowledge this convergence of National Pastime and Prank-time (and celebrate both) than to bring out Lou and Bud, that perfect ying and yang--or id and ego--of comedy teams, to offer up the best written (and performed) comedy routine about baseball (and I'm not so sure its not the best comedy routine ever):