10/8/08
"A Poor Soul on Pompeii ... "
There was that time when I made a complete fool of myself, winning glory.
It began with me, gone in (apparent) disgrace from a well-regarded position in broadcasting to a station so bad I spent more time with a WetVac mopping up flooded floors than with a tape recorder.
Many of my old rivals would drive to this tiny town just to walk by and sneer at me through the display window of the little Main Street broadcast studio. Talk about a bell jar.
Then there was this terrible accident at the local lake. An awful multiple drowning. Again.
And they came: the national news media. Again.
This particular town (and lake) had been the scene of an earlier drowning, this one not accidental, that was followed by a sensational double-murder trial.
The victims of the second drowning were members of two families viewing a lakeside memorial to the first set of victims, when their van lost its brakes and they all rolled in to the water.
Except for two, one a mother and a little girl (not the woman's daughter) who watched lakeside as members of both their families perished under the water.
This story is difficult to write about, even now.
But that was not the end of the story, at least not for me.
What happened is this story went national, and a major cable news organization (then just starting out) called the station where I worked and asked for the news guy. Which happened to be me. The young lady on the other end of the phone was a producer, and wanted me to drop everything (I did all the news for the station solo) and drive 40 miles to a network affiliate's TV station to do a one-on-one (argot for "interview") with the host of the new show on the new network.
I suggested instead that I drive to the funeral home where the relatives of those who perished were gathering at that hour. The cable network was owned by a big mega TV network and the big mega TV network had a crew with a "live" truck out there already. Couldn't I just do it there, with them sending the signal to the cable network? I had suggested what the young lady apparently had wanted all along -- a chance to get the "big network" guys to work with her cable deal, too.
So, off I went. Once there, all my local broadcast rivals who'd been gloating at my failures were there, watching me get hooked up to go nationwide. They were green with jealousy. As for me, my chest was out and my head was high. The camera turned toward me, the sound tech gave me the cue, and the audio of the cable network host started -- oh no, it was barely audible over the roar of the diesel generator (which is what a TV "live truck" carries -- that and a satellite dish)!
I somehow made out a question or two the host asked me and I stammered some kind of replies. The live crew's world-famous on-camera big-network reporter appeared behind the camera to indicate to me that I needed to pull my finger out of my ear. Even though I was just trying to hear better, it looked on camera that I was picking the gunk out of my ear on national television. I looked absurd. The cable TV folks switched to someone else somewhere else about something else within a minute or so.
I had made a total ass of myself on national cable television. Yet, the local TV (and other media) journalists didn't seem to notice. They stayed "green" the rest of the time I was out at the scene, and they never sauntered by my station's window to gloat, ever again.
But when I got back to "normal" a few days later, that event (among other things -- this had been building for some time) made me realize what a ghoul I had become.
It had previously never occurred to me that my presence outside the funeral home there contributed (in however small a way) to the pain those victims' loved ones were going through. In the crush of events over the preceding years, so-called "public service" journalism was gone. Out the window. Never seemed to occur to anyone -- especially me.
And that weekend, as I rested up from one very frenetic week of news gathering, etc., I declared a silent war on journalism. Just me. Against all them. I would undo all the rest with silent opposition, come hell or high water.
No high water. (Except for the WetVac when it rained.) Hell? That I got.
And it went on for ten years, job after job. Now, it's over. No more covert, one-man war on journalism for me anymore.
Victory? No. I didn't win.
Defeat? No. I didn't lose, either.
Truce? No. No quarter asked or given on either side.
No. I just quit.
My personal war, that is.
More later ... .
Afternote: More came. I came to realize that my problems with journalism really were my problems with me. I had somehow taken sole responsibility for everyone else in the Great Deadline Game, and then turned around and took responsibility for making covert war on the entire enterprise. A poor soul on his personal Pompeii. I realized many other things, which I may address someday -- probably in another format. But what turned this one? Some drawings of Hellboy's BPRD allies conducting their pointless War on Frogs. I saw myself doing the same, and I woke up.
10/15/08
An Inappropriate Series
What follows is a series of poems, somewhat confessional. The first one is probably blasphemy.
They deal with a seven-week intellectual, emotional and spiritual breakdown the author experienced this time two years ago.
Maybe even blasphemy is OK under those circumstances.
But I doubt it.
What follows is a series of poems, somewhat confessional. The first one is probably blasphemy.
They deal with a seven-week intellectual, emotional and spiritual breakdown the author experienced this time two years ago.
Maybe even blasphemy is OK under those circumstances.
But I doubt it.
What follows is a series of poems, somewhat confessional. The first one is probably blasphemy.
They deal with a seven-week intellectual, emotional and spiritual breakdown the author experienced this time two years ago.
Maybe even blasphemy is OK under those circumstances.
But I doubt it.
I. ADORATION
Sick me gets
As sick me does
When the crosshairs of the
Hypnotist(s)
Miss their mark.
I don’t get what ails them
It smells like hate
And looks like poison
On their angry brows
To the roar of their machines.
I can’t salute the Virgin
When she looks at me like that!
Those big doe eyes glowering
Into my sad irises
Melt my pompous routine
Like waxen sticks
Lit to adore her.
I love you!
(Or do you prefer Miriam?)
I hail you!
(Or would you rather be kissed?
On the big toe, of course!
Or maybe just above the instep?)
I fear you!
(Like any stupid boy fears a mother’s rebuke!)
O Virgin, I adore you!
(Because you’re really cute
And even if you weren’t
You’d still look good to a simple heart.)
I promise I’ll stop hating myself
And just hate my idiocy,
Though it saves me from Your enemy,
The Evil One!
(Do you look at him the way you look at me,
Those big brown eyes staring
Into my empty heart,
Crying for its lost mother?)
I promise I’ll try harder
To do better
despite my stupid pride,
Stubborn as a sick mule.
Help me,
O Lady of Sorrow!
Grant me a deeper hue of the blues,
If you please!
Make it hurt!
Aid me, O Virgin of the Tender Heart!
Give me a darker shade of red,
I’ll bleed it, good and fast!
Love me a better soul, O sweet Mother of God!
I’m so sick of what I’ve done
With this one.
II: A RARE SIGHT
So be it!
You’re wiser than I am --
That’s as plain as the noon sun --
And that’s why you showed me love
Even when you don’t,
It’s hidden from view!
It’s especially
Hidden from a dimwit like me
Rose beneath broken alcove
Everyone’s forgotten (but me)
I stumble over the cracked sidewalk
To see the red blossom
Just behind the gutter!
An old, rusty
And tired-looking spout sheltering from usual sight
The young plant still blessed with morning dew
I’ve been so busy looking pompous
I forgot what means anything
Like a hippo wallowing in mud
I thought I was doing something important
When I was really just making a mess.
III: DISTURBED
Of course I still love you!
Why do you look surprised?
I know I’m behaving oddly
But what’s new about that?
I get so disturbed
When I see
Mary in her chair
Holding the Son of Man in her lap.
She looks so normal there,
I feel like an utter fool
Just wanting to touch her,
As if a spotted lamb
No good for sacrifice
Could ever touch the Mother of God.
You’re looking normal, love!
I love you so much that way,
Not at all fancy!
(Though that’s nice too.)
Normalcy bothers me,
I’m so far beneath it!
To understand what it is
I imagine people skating on ice
Laughing, playing, swirling
Above me
I’m trapped beneath,
Which is odd!
Water never freezes
It’s so damned hot down here.
So maybe the warm water
Serene as a newborn sleeping,
That’s where I belong!
I’m drowning in something
I just can’t tell you
What it is.
I’ll work it out
Somehow.
IV: BAD NEWS
I live down here in the original sin,
The one that makes you doubt,
Doubt that what you’re told is true,
Doubt that you can’t live without.
I love you, Mary, whether wood or gold,
You’re true to form, and true to me!
The rosy hue that flows from you
Shows me what I’ll never be.
Do you love me, Mary? That, I doubt.
An angel with red hair told me so
She brought news I cannot bear:
I’m not yet down below.
It means what’s in store is worse,
Worse than losing sight of her!
Which is bad but also losing sight
Of you, Mary. That’s hell, I concur.
All my trials and tribs, Mary,
Mean zip without love of you.
You’re a cipher, one I’ll never break.
I’m a sinner! You know it’s true.
Your loving form may save me still,
While I’m in flames, for good or ill.
V: GASLIGHT
I live down here in the original sin,
The one that makes you doubt,
Doubt that what you’re told is true,
Doubt that you can’t live without.
I love you, Mary, whether wood or gold,
You’re true to form, and true to me!
The rosy hue that flows from you
Shows me what I’ll never be.
Do you love me, Mary? That, I doubt.
An angel with red hair told me so
She brought news I cannot bear:
I’m not yet down below.
It means what’s in store is worse,
Worse than losing sight of her!
Which is bad but also losing sight
Of you, Mary. That’s hell, I concur.
All my trials and tribs, Mary,
Mean zip without love of you.
You’re a cipher, one I’ll never break.
I’m a sinner! You know it’s true.
Your loving form may save me still,
While I’m in flames, for good or ill.
VI: RIP
This is a song
In memory of me.
I died a sweet death
At honey’s sweetest tip,
And a fair and a good tip it was!
The best I ever had.
O Mary, why does doing right
Feel so wrong?
Why does
believing in love
Feel like bitter hate?
We do men hate women
And women hate us back?
Why does water eat the shoreline
And drag it down below?
Mary, why do I need what I have
And have what I need?
It only prolongs
Existence,
The shell without the mussel
Breathing water inside?
The hunt with the deer
Already dead,
Its fur like a baby’s downy cheek
Nothing but a sponge
For soaking its blood?
I died a sweet death,
It was over in an instant --
My new friends,
My pallbearers
My new love,
The warm
filthy dirt .
My only regret, Mary?
I can’t ask your prayers
Anymore.
VII: Trans_Fig_You_Ration
I missed
Baby Jesus
Lifting His hand
In excited greeting,
His two tiny fingers
Extending benediction
To all who see.
The hundred times I passed her,
All I saw were her doe eyes,
Her solemn and silent lips,
And her Baby in her lap.
I never once noticed
What He was doing,
Until today.
You smiled at me, girl,
And almost burst my heart
With joy and hope
Like a dove, mild as your tender fingers
Waving at me,
Takes wings and flies
Today!
Copyright (C) 2007 William Mark Gabriel. All Rights Reserved.
10/22/08
Ah Life ...
Another week, another Buffy delay. (*sighs*)
I've been posting on "Buffy Season 8" since the first preview pages appeared on the 'net (that I could find -- ie, TV Guide). And I've been cheering the team on when I could -- til now.
As the outside workload of the creators has increased, the inevitable happened -- Season 8 slipped a deadline. And now, there's word of a second slip.
This is not the first one, though. It happened within the first six issues of the comic, and people may be forgetting about that now. It took me a wade through a couple fits of pique to recall it, anyway.
So, let's not spell e-n-d for the series, just yet. Still, I won't do again what I did for "Love and Rockets." That is, drop the comic (then quarterly) and wait for the trade version of the whole thing to come out.
That took 20 years.
No, I'm not making that up.
10/31/08
The Heart of Dark
After a maddening week and a half, I have nothing much to offer this Hallow's Eve.
However, I do want to express gratitude for the opportunity to do this LJ every once and a while.
Had it not been for this journal (something I had to be "messaged" into doing by a friend), I'm certain I would have been lost to the darkness of chaos.
Even though, from time to time, the heart of chaos gets hold of me, I find myself being won back to the pure, sweet darkness of Love. And this LJ has helped chronicle that victory.
Thank you, everyone.
11/6/08
Catsup
It's pronounced "catch-up" locally. (No lie.) And that's what I'm doing today.
In a post about this time last year (actually about 14 months ago), I claimed Emily Dickinson was no recluse. I now read that my claim was wrong. Sometime in her early- to mid-30s, I now read that she began a gradual withdrawal from just about everybody, so much so that she eventually was known in Amherst as "the Myth."
The fact that her poems were bound into little packets called "fascicles" was apparently no revelation to academe. There evidently are entire academic careers built on the intimate acquaintance with even one of them. They are numbered, and some have been the subjects of strong academic interest for at least the last 15 years, if not many more.
She was intensely interested in botany, but I'm not at all clear if the townsfolk generally knew much about it. I had stated something to the effect that "everybody in Amherst" knew about her garden. Based on what I read now, that may not have been the case.
Emily Dickinson could communicate with her family toward the end of her life, I now understand -- the reverse of what I'd written back then. In fact, she is said to have given clear instructions to her sister Lavinia to "burn her papers."
It's not clear to me just what Lavinia did. She obviously did not torch Sister Emily's 1,700-odd poems, nor many of her letters. Were there other things inside that trunk (or whatever it was) that did hit the fire? I guess we'll never know.
Was her hair actually red? I've never seen a chestnut tree (the North American chestnut was wiped out by a blight some 80 years ago), and Emily reportedly described her hair as "the color of the chestnut burr" in a letter. I'm thinking reddish-brown or brownish-red. But in truth, IDK.
In my earlier post, I may have tried to convey the notion that Emily was denied publication for various reasons. That's also apparently not true. She denied herself publication, I now read. The few poems that were published were done without either her knowledge or her consent, or both. She didn't want them in print, and she made that clear in at least one letter, so I read now.
I could go on, but I'll let any who wants to know more Google away. And that's the point.
I based my earlier post on the dim recollection of a televised play, an introduction to a book of Dickinson's selected poems that I own and things I'd heard or read in snippet form over the years, plus a few Googles. I made my own surmises, and most of them were evidently wrong. That's OK. I'm not here to go around second-guessing. This is an LJ that is for entertainment purposes only, as I've said many times. If some actual stimulating thought goes on, too, then it's a bonus.
Why am I bringing all this up now? Well, that's the real purpose behind the prose today. When I Googled back then, very few usable academic articles popped up. Most that did were publishers' blurbs on books that are not physically viewable or obtainable outside university libraries. Those blurbs are still there, but many research articles and other things apparently have come out from behind the password-protected door.
Legitimate fear of copyright infringement and "intellectual property theft" probably kept those articles in the academic vault, I suspect. Some of that fear has been allayed, apparently. I hope so.
And I'm not talking about Google's "Books" service, either. I recently found much that possibly improved my understanding of Dickinson's life and work on standard Web 1.0. Snazzy, jazzy and eye-candy Web 1.0 pages, but standard web pages, nonetheless.
Not long after I posted about Dickinson, I put another one up called "My Dream Machine." I've seen progress in that area. Cool. Maybe I've got more readers than I think.
But you still can't get a machine that uses hypertext the way I'm using Rich text now. Or when I surf the Web.
Nope. That's still a ways away, probably. But the dream lives on.
In Xanadu (TM).
11/17/08
I also liked the one with Reverse Flash ...
My cousin always had the best comics.
His dad (and grandad) owned the little gas station-cum-corner market in the tiny hamlet that (in its day) came as close to a South-of-Mason-Dixon Norman Rockwell magazine illustration (if you can think of such a thing -- Rockwell stayed close to home) as anyone could want.
And their market had a spinner rack, as most little-gas-station-corner-markets did back then.
And on that spinner rack were DC comics. No Marvels. Just DC and Harvey.
Which was OK. I was only around ten or so when I got to look at ol' Cuz's comics, anyway. FF and Spidey wouldn't have interested me then.
Cuz loved Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock. He had those Doom Patrol comics I posted on a good 16 months ago. And he had a few Batman and a good many Superman (early Brainiac and Bizarro and Mr. Mfsxvplk -- or whatever -- stories).
I could visit Cuz -- who was several years older and had no time for me -- and just let him allow me time to curl up in a corner with a stack of his old comics for the whole afternoon.
There was one I kept coming back to, a story whose cover I did not see until years later (you think Cuz would let his 10 year old Neph read new ones with covers still on?).
What attracted me was the color (wouldn't it be, at that age?) of the hero in his red-and-yellow suit, with another hero in his red-and-blue suit with a little silver helmet.
The story was called "Flash of Two Worlds" and it was about time travel. Flash could run at speeds approaching light, so he could traverse spacetime. And so, he met his Golden Age (1940's era) incarnation.
Read Buffy S8 lately? How about Fear Agent? I guess it's true -- there are no new stories. But I like to think the comics creators nowadays love to do homage to the greats like Kubert and Gardner Fox, as much as I like to recall those old stories.
Kubert is a legend, of course. Fox wrote a good 1,500 stories for DC. He is one of the all-time greats in the genre, as well. Overshadowed perhaps in his day by the creative geniuses at Marvel Comics, he nonetheless left an indelible legacy.
Kubert illustrated his own scripts (AFAIK), but Fox relied on the able pen and brush of Carmine Infantino. It was said Infantino would somtimes draw a cover and let Fox write a story to it! I think they probably challenged each other.
Clearly, modern day writers and fans are in the debt of these Silver Age creators.
The memory of their creations, to this eternal 10-year-old, remains ever fresh.
12/1/08
New Beat
Looking back at my archives, it has recently dawned on me that I deleted many older entries for no reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time (Oct. 2007) {since restored}.
One of them dealt with how someone raised in the Appalachian foothills (me) got interested in the music of a black Brazilian guitarist, and why the music basically wasn't all that different from the bluegrass and country-and-western music that permeated this area then, and still does.
Now I'm sorry I took that one down.
One of the things that's been sort of a household requirement of late is the US version of "Dancing with the Stars." And one of the features of the US version is the wide variety of music played for the competition. Since the samba is one of the dances involved in the reality show, some of the musical classics of that genre get played.
That, my friends, is where ol' m-21 gets going, because darting between timelines is what he's all about.
(Any reader new to this LJ may not know that mercurius_21 is an online persona of the present writer, a persona whose rapid shifts between this writer's past, present and potential future(s) form the hallmark of his journal. Newcomers may also not know that statements like this in italics are from me, without the persona.)
In this old post, I recalled how hard it was to get a copy of Rolling Stone magazine in the early 70s, back in the village I've now returned to after so many years elsewhere. Apparently to placate anxious customers like me, the local newsstand operator at the time stocked copies of a newsprint tabloid (referring to the paper's fold, not its content) called "Changes."
Edited and published by Charles Mingus's wife, it was dedicated to the cutting-edge jazz music of the day. One edition contained a review/essay of the work of Baden-Powell by a New York writer later to become famous, Peter Occhigrosso.
Baden-Powell de Aquino was named in honor of the founder of the Boy Scouts, and he came from a musical family in Brazil. But he took to the guitar -- the "forbidden" instrument of the Rio street scene -- instead of his highbrow father's classical violin.
Baden-Powell (known by that name alone in Brazil) was a gifted composer as well as a singular jazz guitarist who possessed classical technique without any shift (many classically trained guitarists in that era sounded different when they began to play jazz -- not Baden).
That made him a triple threat -- he could write his own stuff or arrange that of others, play either like a classical artist, then improvise directly off his original score or arrangement with compositional power.
I actually never found the set Occhigrosso reviewed (a double album with Baden's interpretations of "Black Orpheus" material titled "Canto on Guitar"). But, one LP I did finally locate (at the lone "good" record store in Tobacco Town) was Baden-Powell's "Solitude on Guitar," -- a beautiful LP from Columbia Records that features many samba classics, as well as Baden's take on standards like "Shadow of your Smile."
My fave from the CD era was "Tristeza on Guitar." Check out the "Personalidade" (sp?) collection, too. Also, "Afro Samba" is considered seminal work by Baden and the diplomat/poet Vinicius de Moraes.
I would make the claim that Baden Powell was the musician of the 20th century -- a huge statement, since some have called the previous century The Musical Century for its enormous variety of musicians and music.
I would love to see dance created for his music -- similar to ballroom, but with real technical flair, like that of the professionals on Dancing With ... -- people obviously schooled in ballet, but who switch to ballroom and jazz dancing professionally.
It was so great to listen to that big band on the show play "Mas Que Nada" and "Girl from Ipanema" and the other bossa nova classics familiar to a US audience.
Still, I can't help but imagine what the pros on the dancefloor could do with "The Dancehall of Vidigal" and "Berimbau" and "E di Lei." A "power samba," indeed.
12/11/08
" ... under the moonlight, the serious blue light!"
I think you should give CDs for the holidays.
Huh?
When I started this LiveJournal, I was shopping around for themes (literary, not visual). I had just lost out on a job to do contract free-lance writing for a music-review website, right after losing out on a part-time gig to review music in print (this was two years ago, guys). So I thought, “I’ll show them! I’ll write about music on my LJ!”
Since I didn’t have any money, I decided to review stuff I recalled fondly, but that maybe had been largely forgotten or ignored. That’s where the first Baden-Powell post came from (and I do plan to re-post some of those old entries, musical and non-musical, with new comments, here. Stay tuned.).
Anyway, I had to listen to these old CDs for the groove to write these posts, but I liked to write them into LJ live. And Windows Media Player kept hanging on the CD playback (Dell Dimension 3000 XP SP 2 WMP 9) while I had LJ running (on dialup).
So I decided to rip the CDs into the media player, but I didn’t like .mp3 playback sound quality. I found out I could select the compression format I wanted, and one of the choices was WMA “lossless.”
Selecting WMA lossless as the compression format reduced the data footprint on my hard drive by about half of what the full CD (.wav) would have been, and it sounded just fine! I could also make another copy to regular “lossy” WMA or the standard .mp3 file. At least I could at the time.
Had I owned a portable media player, the smaller “lossy” file format would have been perfect for that.
Some on-line research led me to reports that “lossless” audio compression is normally used for archival-quality storage, because you can later uncompress the audio back to its original format when needed. Hmmm ... .
So buying a CD would give me the “hard” copy and two “soft” copies -- one rather large “lossless” copy for storing on the desktop and one smaller “lossy” copy for the portable (someday ... ).
Sounded like a plan.
Still don't have money (for CDs). So I do it vicarously. That’s why I’m suggesting CDs for holiday gifts for music-loving computer users this year: thye're inexpensive, durable and “multi-usable” (is that a word?).
BTW, I’ve revised and added stuff to the previous post. And I’ve added some CD recommendations re: Baden-Powell therein. Basically any title that ends with “... on Guitar” is going to be good.
A website named for a prominent rain forest lists plenty.
(Alternate hint: you could also make charitable donations in the name of a loved one as a gift this year, too!)
P.S.: I’m not knocking downloaded music -- I think it’s great. But I also like the idea of owning my own copy that I can store and re-use in ways I choose.
And, my experience is limited pretty much to Windows and PCs. Apple and other OSs and internet services and media players have their own rules for the music they have available, and for use within the limits of their technology. Apple (I think -- you’ll need to check) will allow its lossless codec to be played on QuickTime, but to “import” music from a CD on iTunes. WinAmp? Amarok? OGG? Monkeys? iPodDisk? Senuti?
There’s a lot to choose from, depending. Look around, and adapt for your own needs.
12/18/08
ring ding a ling ring ding a ling ring redux
This was originally posted on Dec. 12, 2006. I've also added comments after. I offer it to you, dear readers, as my holiday card this season ... .
"Mix of clouds and sun, a little warmer. LiveJournal's holiday theme is pretty neatly done, don't you think?
"I wrote in an earlier post that I think Thanksgiving had become a forced holiday, like Christmas, in this, Our Modern World. But I don't think it has to be that way. Society's expectations can put so much pressure on us to 'enjoy the holidays' like Bing Crosby or something (I think the original movie was called 'Holiday Inn' and was rechristened -- pardon the pun -- 'White Christmas' later, after the famous Irving Berlin song featured in the movie. Or maybe it was two separate movies. I'll look it up.). An old TV series called 'Thirtysomething' premiered when I turned -- ulp! -- thirty-two, I think. One of the better episodes (often copied since) had a disastrous Thanksgiving celebration by the Thirtysomething gang, with the women trying to cook a frozen turkey an hour before dinner, and the bird falls out of the oven still frozen solid with a thud. They also broke somebody's mother's china (I think) and the men hurt each other playing 'touch' football so badly one had to go to the emergency room. But come Christmas time, the conflicts generated by tension over expecting more holiday pressure prompted one of the lead characters to research her husband's Judaism, and -- with his sister's help -- surprise him with what looked like (to this Gentile) a traditional Hannukah celebration. I'm not necessarily promoting orthodoxy here (I don't want to promote anything), just suggesting a little creative thinking and relaxing into the season.
"To me, 'expectations' are the real joy killers. They will never be met for any holiday, or any day, unless you set the expectations so low they roll into reverse and you're happy they weren't met. I prefer "anticipation" of what might be good (the better to enjoy a sense of possibility, if nothing else) and what might go wrong (the better to avert it).
So hey, enjoy."
I opened all posts back then with a little weather report. (Why I did that, I'll re-post another time.) Also, LJ had seasonal themes then.
You'll notice some characteristic time-shifting in this early piece, referring to yet another previous post. (That one is still up in my November 2006 archives.) And, in a subsequent post to the one I'm re-posting today (this really gets confusing for me, and I wrote them!), I cleared something up: "Holiday Inn" is a separate movie entirely, with "White Christmas" being a remake featuring largely the same leading cast. I saw a DVD of "Holiday Inn" on sale at a famous -Mart recently. I'm told it contains a scene that would be considered insensitive nowadays, so buyer beware.
12/19/08
Hooray! They just did the kimpossibl...oops!
I'm happy to report that the Buffy comic appears back on track. (*knocks on wood*)
I've kept everyone posted on the progress of the comic since the first preview pages hit TV Guide's online edition in early 2007.
However, recent scheduling conflicts put two long delays in front of an eagerly awaited conclusion to an exciting story "arc" (that's the way comics are done now -- smaller, self-contained stories or a short series form sections of an entire long-form story. We, AFAIK, can thank Dave Sim's "Cerebus the Aardvark" for this -- the longest story in comics history was told in giant "chapters" that had their own titles, supporting characters, mythos and everything. Cool, yes, but also kind of frustrating at times.).
Many were fearing that Buffy would nosedive in quality the way another comic I won't mention did shortly after it exploded onto the market in high creative flourish, only to bear bitter fruit within just a few issues.
I have to give kudos in Buffy's case for high creative standards (*knocks on wood again*) met in unorthodox ways. The current issue is a departure that actually maintains the storyline. Based on an early and unsuccessful attempt at animating the live-action TV series, this comic issue tells a neat little story that actually comes off looking and sounding exactly like a Saturday morning kids' show on TV (with equal measure in the charm and the limitations of that medium). Even the overdone "all (blank)-y" dialog gimmick is overdone exactly as it would have been on kids' television animation!
There are all kinds of hints about things to come from the comic in this deceptively simple masterpiece. I won't bore you with my analysis of them, but suffice it to say they are very tantalizing.
The issue before this one wrapped up the aforementioned arc, and was worth the wait, but only if you had re-read it carefully. Again, I won't try you with details, but the comic required a thoughtful study of the panels to mine the gold therein.
This is The Good Stuff, at least it is to me.
12/31/08
Auld Lang Syne
This was originally posted on Nov. 26, 2006.
I don't know why I took it down, because I kind of like it. The cynicism in the part about album contracts comes from the chit-chat I overheard while working as a record-store clerk in the LP days, mostly coming from people who didn't know what they were talking about. Remember, these are posted straight into the LJ Rich text editor offhand, and mistakes, misapprehensions and misses in general occur.
I do realize U2 had a legendary producer for its seminal third album.
All I've changed is the paragraphing and spacing.
Clear skies again, after the deluge of last week. It was a beautiful day.
Listening to "U218" on AOL now, with first track being ... .
A year or two before I joined the recording retail business, I actually had a cable TV connection. MTV was, maybe, ten dollars extra a month, so I wouldn't pay it. But a regular channel featured videos to grab the school kids whose parents wouldn't let them have the-then controversial vid channel. (Remember "I want my EMMM TEE VEEE!"? Came out the year I started selling records for a living.) I remember what the early 80s music scene was like -- the sync dancing, low-rez synths, mic headsets and hair mousse just started (Remember Flock of Seagulls?) and word was getting around that this was the future of the industry forever.
U2 started out as an Irish Duran Duran with the costumes and hair gel to match. Except instead of the required keyboard synth, they used Edge's digitized guitar effects. That got them two albums of material their label liked. I found out later, when I started in music retail, that most bands usually got a three-album deal. Profits from the first one went largely to the label, money from the second went to promoters and middlemen, and the third's loot went to the band. So naturally, the label hires an ace producer and gets the best material together for the first one, the second gets a "fix-it-in-the-mix" producer and material the band writes from the road while they're touring to promote the first one. Then, if the band still exists by that time, they get to go to, maybe, somebody's barn with some second-hand recording gear to go be "creative" for the third.
U2 recorded good synth-pop (kind-of) for "U2" and "Boy", and then they reportedly were turned loose on their own for number three. Did they churn out some moody-broody mess that nobody bought? Not exactly. "War" was recorded (and it's Let It Be-style rooftop vid's) on a budget -- but they apparently were waiting for the chance to break it open. "War" was topical, rocked the daylights out of American radio, and gave the band a world-class reputation. No hair mousse or synchronized dancing, either.
My U2 fave album is "Joshua Tree". My fave U2 song is "Where the Streets Have No Name."
One record that came out the year I worked the record register was totally different from the rest, yet was commercial. Everything else that year was some kind of imitation of "Thriller" -- minor-key synth motif, image-heavy lyrics (for the vid), thump-ka-thum-thum backbeat and the rest we're all familiar with. Everybody from Springsteen to Knopfler (see above) was doing something to fit that mold. But there was one from some band nobody'd ever heard of, with nobody's picture on the front or back, and songs from the 50's. It was called "The Honeydrippers." Robert Plant and company made a really memorable bit of music fluff that was great listening, if all you had otherwise was Like a Virgin or When Doves Cry (bleah).
"Come with me, my love, to the sea ... the Sea of Love ... ." The sea is, of course, is a rock music metaphor for sex, but it's also a Jungian archetype for the unconscious mind, even the collective unconscious.
Well, I thought it was cool, anyway.