Personal Heroes-Keaton

Buster Keaton

As I negotiate the corridors of the "1s&0s" Ranch, I occassionally have to do a pivot down a hallway or make a lateral move to avoid a wrangler taking a corner too tight. Instinctively, a leg flies up clownishly, unnecessarily. It's a habit, and every once in awhile I notice it, and think about where I got it. It's a Buster Keaton move--one of the simplest things he did. He'd stick out a leg as he was hopping around a corner, or yank it out way too far if he had to change direction fast, sometimes 180°. I started doing this in college after I fell in love with Keaton films. I don't know if I can break myself out of the jag. I don't know if I want to, really.

Buster'd

Man alive, look at 'im run so fast, so far, so wide

cart-wheeling, feet-peeling, stop on a dime and take off

Over the fences, under the legs, climb the ladder and tilt

What must it feel like with the Whole World as a prop?

Sputtering, he'd launch, like his body exploded

His feet and hands going as wide as they could

Exaggerated movement. Exaggerated stops. He'd skid.

And hang--like on the edge of a cliff--he'd wobble

And fall?

The very definition of "SPLAT!"

He'd land flatter'n humanly possible

All crumpled up in an angular ball,

an arm and a leg left dangling.

He wouldn't bounce. He'd jump right up.

To start the whole process again.

Bandy-legged sad-sack, the old stone-face takes a fall

The legs cartwheel in a circle--a carousel in the air.

Never in your wildest dreams would you attempt a stunt like that

but he'd had it all planned out--made it look hard, like it hurt.

He never, ever showed a smile

At the most a look of surprise

A smile would've made it look easy

and he worked for every laugh.

He didn't beg for your sympathy like the Tramp

He wasn't a victim of the chase like Lloyd

More often than not he chose to be where he was

He leaped at the chance, he ran full-speed.

He worked best in the Silents with his Old Man's Voice

And think of the commotion he would have made, crashing, thundering,

As it is, the only sound you hear

is your jaw, dropping

For More About Buster Keaton:

The International Buster Keaton Society (The Damfinos)

Tha Annual Keaton Celebration in Iola Kansas (September 29-30, 2006. Plan now!)

The Buster Overview from PBS' "American Masters"

The Web-site "Generally Buster" including Keaton's tips on throwing a pie

The Oldest Buster Keaton Site on the Web

Jim Emerson's "Buster Keaton" site

Buster on NPR's "Lost and Found Sound"

Buster Keaton page at Film Reference.com

Buster Keaton's IMDB page

Buster Keaton's Wikipedia page

Spike It!

On the ferry-ride, I've been spending too much time writing. Too much Output and not enough Input. I was starting to see the 30 minute break of the ferry-ride as work, too. I had to break the monotony or else the ferry-ride wouldn't be any fun, writing on the ferry wouldn't be any fun...nothing would be fun.

Plus, I'd stopped reading "Undaunted Courage." Funny, it was right at the point where Lewis met up with Clark, they'd enlisted a Corps of Discovery and were about to set off...and I stopped reading. I do this on vacations, too. I put it off and put it off. The actual travel happens later in the day and I'm lucky if I get where I want to go by nightfall. I have to convince myself to go. And now, here I am putting off reading about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. How dumb is that? (Well, not so dumb, really, as L and C were long-delayed getting started as well, it turns out)

So, I grab a book I can read fast. "Casino Royale." Ian Fleming's first James Bond story. Movie's coming out in November.* Easy, I can read that in a week of ferry-rides.

How about two days? I'd forgotten this is a slim book and not much happens. It's not an epic. The whole thing revolves around a night of cards. Boy Meets Girl. Boy Loses a Fortune. Boy Wins a Fortune. Boy Loses Girl. Girl Gets Kidnapped. Boy Follows Girl, Gets Captured and Gets Pee-pee Whacked. Girl Feels Guilty. It All Ends Horribly. That's it. Bond doesn't fire a shot (except in flashback). No world domination. No villains in a volcano. Cards. And chermin de fer, at that.

But there is Fleming's exact detail about everything. Like that martini...

“My name’s Felix Leiter,” said the American. “Glad to meet you.”
“Mine’s Bond---James Bond.”
“Oh yes,” said his companion. “And now, let’s see. What shall we have to celebrate?”
Bond insisted on ordering Leiter’s Haig-and-Haig “on the rocks” and then he looked carefully at the barman.
“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of
Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”
“Certainly, monsieur.” The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
“Gosh, that’s certainly a drink.” Said Leiter.
Bond laughed. “When I’m…er…concentrating,” he explained, “I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be very large and very strong and very cold and very well made.” P. 045 © Glidrose Publications Ltd., 1953

And very repetitious. On an episode of “The West Wing,” President Bartlett confessed that James Bond confused him—“He orders a watered-down drink and gets all SNOOTY about it.”

Bond weighs in.

“You must forgive me,” he said. “I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and
drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking
a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but
then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them
more interesting when one takes trouble.” P.055 © Glidrose Publications Ltd.,
1953

Great. So he names the martini for the woman in the book, so every time he orders his favorite drink...well, I can't tell you. It's fast-paced, extraordinarily un-PC, in a way that makes folks who fancy themselves politically incorrect...uncomfortable (or should), and Bond, freshly double-0'd, spends an entire chapter talking himself into quitting, and then...he's locked in forever. He's still a human being in this one, albeit as misogynistic as all 'git-out--it'll be the third one-- "Moonraker"--before he survives having the White Cliffs of Dover thrown down on him. Not everyone's cup of vodka.

So now, on up the Missouri.

*Update on 09/08/06 - The "teaser" has now been upgraded to a "trailer."
Here it is. The "Carmina Burana" version of "The James Bond Theme" is a hoot.
I hope it's meant to be funny.

"Anytime Movies" Part VIII: American Graffiti

What's George Lucas' best film? For most, it's probably "Star Wars" (I'm sure there's some poor soul out there who likes "Radioland Murders"). There's a lot to like about his charmingly scruffy homage to the Buck Rogers serials. But one wonders what direction his career might have gone if he hadn't felt the need to exploit that first "Star Wars" movie as much as he did. It seems the more he explained about his initial concepts the worse the movies got, and the more rich and famous they made him, the more elephantine and fossilized they became.

For me, Lucas has yet to top "American Graffiti." Made for under a million dollars and filmed mostly at night using a skeleton crew (albeit one headed by Haskell Wexler), it showed just how ingenious Lucas could be when he was strapped for cash. It has the structure and froth of a Shakespeare comedy with the values and budget of an AIP teen flick.

Seemingly aimless, "American Graffiti" follows four storylines of small town kids on the last night of summer before heading to college. Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) has a scholarship to a big university but is reluctant to go, and spends the night bounced around by local toughs, and diverted by his quixotic pursuit of a phantom blonde in a white Thunderbird. Steve and Laurie (Ron "Ronny" Howard and Cindy Williams) are a couple in transition. Class President and Head Cheerleader, they're the Royal Couple of the Sock-Hop. But Steve can't wait to head out of town to conquer new territory, and Laurie-still in high school-knows she'll lose him when he goes. John (Paul LeMat) is a high school drop-out and legendary hot-rodder endlessly cruising the streets of town, looking for the next race. And Terry (Charles Martin Smith) lives a rich fantasy life (that's a kind way of saying he's deluded) where he can imagine himself everything that he's not.

Lives intersect, couples form and break apart, lies are told, misunderstandings abound (to really make it Shakespeare all you'd need is a set of twins), while the majority of kids drive endlessly in circles--not going anywhere, but hoping to, and if not tonight, there's always tomorrow. They're not going anywhere.

In the background are the constant echoes of rock n' roll pouring out of car windows and reverberating down the hallways and back-alleys, broken only by the howls and shrieks of the common thread in their lives, Wolfman Jack. All the kids have their Wolfman myths and he acts as sage, seer, siren and Master of Ceremonies for the evening's adventures. He's also the Fool and "The Man Behind the Curtain." Ultimately the long night's journey leads to his door-step, and in disguise dispenses his wisdom to the seeker.

One thing Lucas always knew was how to make a curtain call and "American Graffiti" is his best. As Curt flies off to college, he is left two signs of passage: the white T-bird reappears one last time to remind him what he's giving up, while locked away in his plane, the sounds of the radio station that have buoyed and sustained all the characters throughout the night fades to static. For the first time in the film there is no music and in the silence that creates, broken only by the drone of the plane we're told the rest of the story. Terry "goes missing" in Viet Nam. Steve is an insurance salesman in town. John is killed by a drunk driver. Curt's a writer in Canada. After that punch in the gut, Lucas unsentimentally hammers it home with one of the cheeriest songs in the Beach Boys catalog--"All Summer Long," dismissed earlier in the film as "surfing shit." Lucas turns the future into a sobering fate--the film is set in 1962. The next year would signal the end of the innocence of the 50's and "American Graffiti" is a sweet farewell to trivial concerns and living in the past.

Lucas has said that he based the boys on different aspects of himself in high school--the intellectual, the nerd, the sosh' and the JD. Lucas' lesson in this, and all of his work seems to be "Advance or Die." It's the lesson of "Graffiti." It is certainly the basis of the story of Anakin Skywalker. So what became of Lucas? Did he follow his own advice? Well, you could say he went to the future with "Star Wars," but he set it in the far-away past. Then he built an Empire of his own...in his hometown.


The Trailer for "American Graffiti"--in the style of Beach Blanket movies

"American Grafitti" touched me two ways. I had already been inspired by Lucas' first film, THX-1138 with its inventive sound-scape, to seek out his work and the work of his sound editor Walter Murch. "Grafitti" was their second collaboration and pretty much sealed my fate for going into sound work. Listening to it now, it's crude and has a lot of holes and bad edits, but the innovations are just as unique 30 years later and just as inspiring. On top of that, the unglamorous portrayal of a radio disc jockey's life (yet romantic in its anonymous/ omnipresent effect on a community) made me think "I could do that!" and I started my sound career spinning discs at a radio station. My last job as such was at a station with a glass window that looked out on the town's "loop." Sort of like watching "American Graffiti" in reverse. That was KEDO-AM in Longview, Washington--long ago bulldozed.

Wolfman Jack explains it all for you, baby

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it's the direction, sometimes it's the writing, sometimes it's the acting, sometimes it's just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 8.


IV: -Only Angels Have Wings
V: The Searchers


VIII: American Graffiti

X: Goldfinger

...And That's the Way It Is.

Saw this on Mark Evanier's blog, and, short of declaring it should be posted on every blog in America, I'll just post it on mine (but I'd like to see it on everyone's blog). This is Keith Olbermann from MSNBC calling a spade a spade.

Must-See TV in the best sense of the phrase.

And as he calls to mind Edward R. Murrow's sign-off, I recall one that Dan Rather used briefly (and that was snickered at by "those who know") and that I would like to hear again: "Courage."

Post Emmy Post

Well, I came out 1 for 4 in voting the Emmy's, and, frankly I couldn't be more surprised that the "1" won. I don't even LIKE that show, but I'm only supposed to judge on the content supplied to me by the Academy (supplied to them by the producers/networks) and of the 5 nominees, that one rocked, having shed itself of some extraneous cast-members that only managed to gum up the storyline by having to include them in more outlandish and unbelievable situations.

So that's another Emmy season over and done with. What did I think of the show?

I didn't watch it.

I don't have television reception here, and have decided not to get cable at all.

Ironic, no?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
One more thing about the critical reaction to the Emmys and then I'll shut up about it.
There's an aspect to it that's really weird and it is this: What the hell do they care? I mean, really, it's just an awards show--one of many, in fact. I mean, look at the tone of the McFarland piece. It's like she takes it as a personal affront that "their" shows--and they have nothing to do with them at all, other than being ersatz cheerleaders (and frankly poor, unenthusiastic ones at that)--don't get nominated or win. And it gets so hysterical that she throws out any journalistic ethic and exaggerates the number of times "West Wing" has won Best Drama Series. A million? Really? Try 999, 996 less. That's not asking too much to hew a little closer to truth, isn't it (And frankly, during the Sorkin years "The West Wing" deserved it, despite "The Sopranos" hitting quite a few episodes out of the park)?

So, what's the deal? There's no personal stake in it, is there? Or is there some perceived hurt feelings that the television industry doesn't agree with their more learned opinion? Maybe it's a case of deadline desperation and this was good enough to fill five columns. Realistically...we are just talking about television here (the little box with lights and wires that has never lived up to its potential), the American equivalent to bread and circuses that's set up to distract us from issues we should be concerned about, like what our elected representatives are doing in our names, with our tax dollars.

Anyway, I've wasted too much of my life thinking, writing and kvetching about it. There's more important things to do.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For instance, improving my verbal skills. It seems like I've had more conversations lately that I acknowledge things with the word "Exactly." It's become a crutch, and worse, I'm noticing other people do it in conversation with me, like I'm infecting them with it. Time to take the speech off "auto-pilot" and engage the brain before replying with a pat answer.

"Precisely." That will be my crutch for awhile.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is anyone else concerned that Our Seattle Mariners seem to have been kidnapped and replaced by a...baseball team?

They come off a road-trip of Schulz-ian proportions, to face some of the best teams in the league. And they take two from the Yankees. Then sweeeep Boston.

Who the hell are these guys?

I'm not a sports fan of any stripe or intensity, but I am concerned. There may be some empty pod-husks in the clubhouse at Safeco Field. If they do well against the AL West teams that have been giving them grief this entire season, it may be time to call out the National Guard to fend off an alien invasion.

Oh, right...they're in Iraq...and Louisiana...and watching those razor-wire laser-walls at the border.

Maybe Dick Cheney can lead a bunch of militia-members. Sorry, no, bad idea.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everybody have a good week. Big weekend's coming up.

The envelope, please...

Sunday's The Primetime Emmy Awards. Every year, I volunteer to vote on them. It's my way of giving back for having been given one oh-so many years ago. So far this year, I'm 0 for 2 as the Sound Editing awards have already been handed out. Of all the categories I voted for, the "Sound Editing for a Series" category was, far and away, the toughest one to decide (it was won by "Smallville" season opener with the "Fortess of Solitude" construction, two Kryptonian villains, and an appearance by the "Phantom Zone"), as every choice had spectacular work done for them. I also voted for Best Comedy Series and Best Drama Series, which were mixed bags.

It's a privilege to do this, even though it's not a lot of fun to critically watch 20 to 30 hours of television when you have to. Then, also, you get to read all the bitching and moaning from experts (where did I put that "eye-rolling" icon?) who have to weigh-in about what a farce the whole thing is because "blah-blah-blah" didn't get nominated and "blah-blah-blah" was, instead (nobody agrees about which "blah-blah-blah" is deserving, of course, hence the whole notion of trying to please everybody or come to a consensus goes out the window) and what idiots all the voters are. It's a staple of awards shows. In fact, I think the same article template is used for the Oscars and Grammys. Sure beats being creative.

Still, this year did raise an eyebrow or two. Every year, there's at least one of the Comedy nominees that doesn't offer up a single laugh. That's expected. But, nominating "Two and a Half Men?" Really? Where was "My Name is Earl," which was genuinely funny and fresh, and was even liked by the critics (and consistently, which takes some doing!). "Everybody Hates Chris" (just the title of that one makes me laugh), another genuinely funny show...where was it?

In the drama category, there was one absence that was keenly felt: "Battlestar Galactica." Just saying the name tells you why it wasn't nominated. It's science fiction. Add to that, the inevitable association with the earlier, crappy version of it (which this show has always had to prevail against) and it's doomed to even be considered.* Which is too bad (and especially when the rest of the shows on television seem to be either "slab" or "reality" shows). I've yet to see an episode that isn't compelling, complicated, extraordinarily well-acted, or pushes envelopes and buttons, in ways that make you think and make you uncomfortable. It consistently considers things that only in the context of science-fiction could you get away with. But it's not just good science fiction. It's good story-telling. And it stays with you for days. It's a television show that haunts. That's rare for tv, but to do so consistently, as it does, that's really something extraordinary, whatever genre it represents.

To not give that recognition goes against the reason for giving awards in the first place.

So say we all.

*Every year, I get "screeners" of shows in elaborate packaging to garner attention from Academy members. This year, one came in an elegant severe black box. It opened up to a booklet that had page after page of glowing reviews and praise, it just seemed to go on and on. And only when you'd read the last page could you open the package and see the DVD's...and it was the entire season of "Battlestar Galactica." The weight, and sheer volume of praise for the show was ample evidence of quality and should have been argument enough to watch what all the fuss was about. But, again, there was no nomination. What will this show have to do?

"Anytime Movies" IV: - Only Angels Have Wings

While in college, I worked as a movie projectionist, and had an opportunity to show many great films for the various film courses being taught. But one film left a distinct impression—over the course of five days I had to show it eight times. I got to know it pretty well. Its name is “-Only Angels Have Wings” and it was directed by one of the great director-producers, Howard Hawks.

Hawks directed all types of movies, many of them classics of their genre: westerns (Rio Bravo, Red River); mystery/noir (The Big Sleep); adventure (To Have and Have Not, Hatari!) and comedy (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday). He even produced one of the first truly classic science fiction films (The Thing! [From Another World]), and an iconic musical (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Despite the genre, and despite the decade in which it was produced each film is unmistakably a Hawks film – a group of men (and women, but usually men) of diverse talents must come together to achieve a singular goal, be it to drive a huge herd of cattle to Missouri, or contain the alien threat, or capture a live rhinoceros, or get the bad guy to the Marshall (alive if possible) or ferry the refugees to safety, or find the dinosaur clavicle, or land a millionaire.

Conflict is achieved by introducing a newcomer to the mix who doesn’t understand the synergy of the group and who must learn “the code” to belong, and to keep the group in cohesion. And so much the better if they do it without talking about it much.

That’s the Hawks formula, and he was able to create enough variations in the design that his films all seem different, even though they’re always telling the same basic story—a story that’s a metaphor for movie-making.*

“Hello, professional”
Why “-Only Angels Have Wings” out of all those classics? It’s the ultimate Hawks movie. Watch any of those others and you’ll hear similar lines and see similar situations, but in “Angels,” everything is distilled to the basic essence of the tale to become the best Hemingway story Hemingway never wrote. Distilled? The majority of the film takes place in one set! For this band of professionals, the goal is to fly the mail from the port city of Barancca through a narrow passage in the Andes utilizing one of a number of prop aircraft in need of repair. All the men realize they’re merely links in a chain getting the mail…or a doctor…or a shipment of nitro-glycerin…to its destination with the threat of death flying right alongside. So hazardous is the job for these civilian-pilots that their base is a revolving door for the new blood who have to prove themselves. It’s "The Right Stuff” twenty years before Tom Wolfe popularized the phrase.

And it’s prime Hawks. For instance, watch the cigarettes. In a Hawks film, they’re visual short-hand for relationships—who’s in need, who can provide, who’s giving, who’s dependable. More than any other Hawks film, except perhaps “Rio Bravo,” the flame that’s there when you need it is a gambit that crams twice the information into the film, and reveals more about the characters than their deliberately circumspect dialog—what Frank Capra called Hawks’ “three-corner dialog”—was allowed. To come right out and say things point-blank, well, not only would it be corny and unbelieveable…it just wasn’t done.

Hawks also liked to use music to convey mood. But it usually isn’t a Hollywood background score but indigenous music—in this case, the bar band at Dutchy’s bar/mercantile and air terminal (this is a couple of years before “Casablanca”). They set the mood, provide a little extra entertainment value, some local color for a set-bound movie and when the time is right and there’s a meeting of minds it’s reflected in a musical number in which everyone participates. Again, no one has to come out and say ”We’re all thinking the same way.” They’re all singing the same song, so it’s understood.

"Boy, things happen fast around here, don't they?"
There’s also the unspoken ethos of the professional—you do your job to the best of your ability and you don’t talk about it. You don’t brag. You don’t cut corners and you don’t dwell on it. You do your job, you move on. You do your job right and people will notice. Do your job wrong and everyone suffers. In this way the group can depend on each other while staying out of their debt. In this movie-atmosphere, bit-players are allowed to shine. Yeah, the movie revolves around Cary Grant (the only role where he’s more stoic than he is here would be playing the icy spy Devlin in Hitchcock’s “Notorious”) and the delightful Jean Arthur--she could turn on a dime from tragedy to comedy and not miss a step, but even the lowliest of character-actors get great moments of screen-time. Also of note are a very young Rita Hayworth at the start of her career and Richard Barthlemess—a former silent screen star who didn’t make the transition to “talkies.” He plays a pilot who must prove himself to the others and that he can “cut” it in their world. Art imitates life.

And then there’s Thomas Mitchell, who might well be the greatest character actor to never achieve name-above-the-title status. A veteran of many a Frank Capra comedy—and whose most prominent role would be as Scarlett O’Hara’s father in “Gone with the Wind”—here he plays a character with the title “The Kid,” even though he’s the oldest of the pilots. So much of the movie centers on him that his one character fulfills every plot device except love interest, although with Hawks one could never be too sure of that, either. **

Ultimately it’s Mitchell’s Kid who provides the means for Grant’s character to express his feelings, which, typically, he does without really having to, and in a way that makes it obvious to everybody involved. And as if anybody missed the point how dependent everyone is on each other, most of the pilots wind up injured, “winged” so that by the end of the movie, two pilots have to perform the job of one to fly each mail-run. Perhaps the better title may have been “-Only Angels Have Two Wings.”

It’s all done so economically, so breezily and with so little in the way of “action” that one may get through the entire movie before realizing that mostly everybody just talked…without really coming out and saying what they mean. Everything is shot at eye-level. There’s nothing fancy in the camera-work. The story is the King, and everyone is working towards making it work…like professionals.



*Hawks was well-known for taking different stories and turning them into the Hawks formula, sometimes rewiting the entire film on a day to day basis to get there. The most extreme example of this is “El Dorado,” which after ten minutes of one story suddenly veers into becoming a remake of the earlier Hawks-Wayne western “Rio Bravo.” When Hawks called John Wayne to ask if he’d star in yet another western, “Rio Lobo,” Wayne knew exactly what he was getting into. “Do I get to play the drunk this time?” he drawled.

** Someday, someone far more intelligent than I is going to go through the Hawks filmography with an eye towards sexual politics—whether it’s the leering banter between Montgomery Clift and John Ireland in “Red River,” or Cray Grant in drag in “Bringing Up Baby” (“I went GAY all of a sudden!!”) and “I Was a Male War Bride,” or some of the more bizarre stagings of musical numbers in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” And then there’s the long line of husky-voiced women in his movies who are one of “the boys,” from Rosalind Russell to Lauren Bacall all the way up to future Paramount Studios exec. Sherry Lansing. For all the macho posturing exhibited in his movies, there are hints that Hawks never completely “bought” into it and is enjoying winking at it. He may well be second only to James Whale in sneaking so much gay subtext into his movies.

Cary Grant needs a match. Jean Arthur carries a torch.

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 4.

IV: -Only Angels Have Wings

V: The Searchers

X: Goldfinger

That Was The Week That Was

When I haven't been writing, I've been listening. When I haven't been listening, I've been driving. When I haven't been driving, I've been doing something with the grrr-animals. And I've been completely ignoring the cleaning, the house, ...sleeping, things like that. Maintenance has fallen off the cliff. In fact, that's the direction I should probably do all my sweeping.

Katheryn's away (seems like she just got back), as no sooner had her business stuff got taken care of, that it was time to go to finally head for Eugene for a long-postponed trip to see her mom. Long-postponed as in the original intention of helping her plant her garden has become irrelevent. Hell, it's almost time for harvest. Smokey almost went with, but cooler heads prevailed, and he's been alternating between being left at home, and visits to Mary Jo, the Island dog-sitter. He likes it there. He has the run of the house. he gets along with all the other dogs and the house-cat. In fact, last week he didn't want to come home with me. I kept walking to the car, and he just walked over to the sitter and sat by her, looking conflicted (but only semi-)

I tell myself it was because I left his leash there that night. He didn't have all the signs that we were, in fact, leaving.

I tell myself that.

Also, my sister-in-law Jane came out from Detroit to spend time with niece Annie up on the Mountain. She was here for a solid week, but it was a whirlwind visit: a couple of days with Annie, a couple days with my sister, a Sunday on the Island, and a couple days with her brother on the Mainland. The two sisters had it in mind that they'd rather walk onto the Island than drive, not wanting to spend too much time sitting in traffic. I scoffed. And I scoffed in that condescending way that's irritating even to me. Ferry traffic! I face that every day!

When we drove out to the coffee shop where they were spending the morning relaxing, we noticed that the line leaving the Island was (by my calculations) about 3 1/2 hours long. Head-rattlingly long. "Let's go find a slow-cook restaurant" long. "Let's go find a room" long. Scales fell from eyes. We spent the day in the charming town of Langley. Charming as in "more galleries per city block than any town has a right to." Had a good meal. Ambled. Sauntered. Stopped by a "chocolate bar," and had an iced chocolate drink--sorta like a mild chocolate slurpee--that could become a habit if I didn't have so many to begin with. I forget the name of the variety of drink, but I'm sure I'll be going there again sometime, so this will probably get updated.

But it was a long, nice relaxing afternoon and early evening. And when we returned the sisters to the boat...the line was still 3 1/2 hours long. Good golly. Labor Day's coming soon. That will signal the end of "High Season" and the Island's population will sink back to its humble low tide. Ferry lines will shrink. Prices will come down. It'll almost compensate for driving everywhere in the dark.

Early morning last week I was getting ready to head for the Mainland when up the drive-way a young two-point buck bandied slowly to the back of our cars. He stood there for a good 45 minutes helping himself to the early blackberries that are ripening on the sticker-bushes separating us from out neighbors. Good eating, there. I've been picking them, myself, but only the high ones. You never know when a guest may drop by to eat.

The Last Blog (wasted)(probably) with Tom Lehrer

And we come to the last of "The Electric Company" video's of Tom Lehrer (at least for this "Writer's Block" Week). This is the handy-dandy application of "L-Y," used adverbially

A generous portion of the Tom Lehrer Songbook can be heard in the stage presentation "Tomfoolery."
Also, another Lehrer tid-bit: Apparently, he created the "Jell-O Shot," which he says he invented trying to get around a ban on alcoholic beverages while stationed at Fort Dix. Surely, this must elevate the man to "Genius" Status.

Another Blog (wasted) with Tom Lehrer

"Writer's Block" Week continues, with another of humorist/satirist/math teacher/fugitive-from-the-limelight Tom Lehrer's work for "The Electric Company." This explains the many transformative powers of "Silent E." As Lehrer says in "The Vatican Rag:" "Time to transubstantiate!"

For those not wanting to stay silent, here's another wonderful karaoke version of a Lehrer song--that ode to the Boy Scouts "Be Prepared."

And another quote-this time about why he stopped writing his satirical songs: "I can just pick up the paper and get ten topics, but how do you write a song about it? It's easier to be funny when you're not bitter and angry; If I were to write a song about Newt Gingrich, I can't imagine [it] being funny." [I'm]often reminded of the old Punch cartoon showing a dying patient forlornly asking the doctor at his bedside, 'Doctor, is there any hope?', to which the doctor replies 'No, why?'" These days, Lehrer says he feels like "a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava." He's also said "Once Henry Kissinger wins the Nobel Prize for Peace, satire becomes obsolete." Thanks to Jeremy Mazner for the quotes taken from his fine essay on Tom Lehrer, which you can persuse at this fine site.