I am writing once again from Pearl's, settling back in for another work cycle. Tonight I did watch a movie, a thriller called "Midnight Lace" (1960) starring Doris Day as a newlywed American living in London with her Veddy Brrittish husband Rex Harrison. You already know how to pronounce the italicised words in the previous sentence, so I shant remind you, but.....
Hey, wait a minute. I want to ask you a question before I forget. Have you ever heard a person pronounce "squash" as "squoarsh"? I debated with myself just now whether to include an "o" in the unusual pronunciation, because I want it to sound like "squarsh", but I thought that if I added the "o", then I would get an "oar" in the middle : a sound like the word "oar". And I thought that the "oar" sound created a more fully defined sound of the pronunciation in question.
So, think of a Squash: you know, the gourd shaped vegetable. Now think of it pronounced as "squarsh".
I had a teacher in Junior High (and I have a friend who can vouch for this), who pronounced "squash" as "squarsh". I am using that spelling for easy reference, because when spelled that way it is easier on the eye. But to be precise, this teacher actually pronounced "squash" as "squoarsh".
Say it a few times and you will get the hang of it. Just think of an "oar" in the middle.
I have no idea why this teacher talked about squash (I mean squoarsh), or why he pronounced it that way - all I know for sure is that he mentioned "squoarsh" often enough for it to stick not only in my brain for over 40 years, but certainly in the brain of my friend as well, who was in the same class.
Hell, I don't even remember what subject the teacher taught! All I remember is "squoarsh".
And I wonder still where the H that pronunciation came from.
It's similar to the JFK "Cuba" = "Cue-ber" deal. But we know that came from Massachusetts.
Doggonnit. Well, back to the movie. Several Amazon commentators have referred to "Midnight Lace" as "Hitchcockian" in it's playout and level of suspense. I won't go quite that far. I think the director was aiming for Hitchcock, and came up with a nice little English whodunit instead. Doris Day is being stalked, first in Hyde Park, where she hears a crazy high pitched voice in the fog, threatening to kill her. She staggers home to the protective arms of husband Rex Harrison, who six years later will Talk To The Animals as "Dr. Doolittle". But right now he is doing a lot; running a business empire that is losing money. He has no time for his new wife, and meanwhile, she is becoming petrified because she is now getting phone calls from the same crazy man whose voice she first heard in the park. With every call, he raises the stakes of fear. Poor Doris starts to plead with hubby Rex, and her Aunt (played by Myrna Loy), both of whom think she is imagining the phone calls and the voices.
"Midnight Lace" doesn't quite reach Hitchcock levels of suspense, but it still keeps you guessing, and more than that it is fun because it takes place in London, and so you get a lot of English people jabbering away about things, and you get great locales as well. And Doris Day, who was even better in the movie I saw a week ago but didn't review : "It's A Great Feeling". Be sure to check her out in that one - it's a sure fire Two Big Thumbs Up - and then give her a chance in "Midnight Lace", to which I will extend a Single Thumb in the upward direction. It's definitely worth a view for fans like me who mainline movies.
Well anyhow, we had good singin' in church this morn. I am running on about three hours sleep but will take it easy tomorrow in order to catch back up.
Have you got any Weird Pronunciations that bug you, or vex you, that you could mention to me?
If so, maybe you could send them to me, for dissection here at the blog.
I think it is an important matter to pursue.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, April 30, 2018
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Two Concerts Today
I had a fantastic day off, thanks for asking. ;) Got to do a Big Time Sleep-In for one thing, til almost Noon, so I felt nice and rested. Had some coffee and listened to "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" by FZ. I had planned on going on a hike somewhere in Santa Clarita (Rice, Towsley or Whitney Canyon), because it's hard for me to get out there on work days anymore. But then at around 2pm, I was looking at Facebook and I saw a promo ad for a free concert at CSUN, at the Valley Performing Arts Center, which is now known as The Saroyan, re-named after a major donor. The concert was being billed as "Great Opera Choruses" and was to be put on by LA Opera, our opera company of note in Los Angeles, whose home base is Disney Hall downtown.
I knew about this show several weeks ago, but had put it out of my mind because I figured I'd be working on that day, which was still to come. I didn't know it would fall on my day off, so seeing the ad on FB this morning was a lucky reminder. Also, the "Great Opera Choruses" concert has been an annual event at the VPAC (Saroyan) since 2015. It has always been free to the public, and is designed as a way to win new fans and drum up support for the LA Opera company. They are one of the great opera troupes of the world, but opera, as with all classical music, is in constant need of promotion because the productions cost money and the music does not have the massive fan base of pop or rock.
So, they put on these free shows once a year, which feature a few "sing-a-longs" to well known opera choruses. That gives the audience a chance to participate, and to discover that opera is not snobby - a total misconception - but is really music for everyone. The sing-a-longs are fun, but the real draw is to hear the 32 member LA Opera Chorus themselves, as conducted by Grant Gershon, and to hear the young soloists who are up and coming in the opera company. I went to the first "Great Choruses" concert in 2015 with my sister Vicky, and we loved it. I wasn't there for the shows in 2016 and 2017, probably because I was working, but this time I had the day off, so........
At the last minute I changed my mind about the hike. "I wanna go see LA Opera instead". Now, the show is free but you've still gotta have a ticket, which you get by calling the box office in the weeks before the concert. I didn't have a ticket but I thought I'd just walk over there. The VPAC is just 15 minutes on foot from my apartment. So I walked across campus, got to the box office at 2:55pm (the concert was to start at 3), and I asked if they had any tickets left.
"We do have some donated tickets. How many do you need"?
Donated tickets were from people who couldn't attend. That meant all the rest of the free tickets had been given away.
"I just need one", I said.
The gal at the box office gave me a ticket, remarking that it was a good seat, and she was right. I was about ten rows back, dead center. Boy did I ever luck out, and I made the right decision to go to the concert instead of going to Santa Clarita, which will still be there for a hike on another day.
We saw and heard some incredible singers, including a young soprano named Liv Redpath, who is certain to become a star in the operatic world. She had such an amazing voice that even the conductor Grant Gershon was shaking his head.
The concert was a lot of fun and lasted 90 minutes. Many pieces of music were featured by various composers, most notably Giuseppe Verde (i.e Joe Green), and other great singers were heard as well.
When it ended, I walked back home and thought, "well, it's not quite 5pm....what now"?
"Hmmm, I guess I do have time for a hike up at Aliso Canyon". So after a quick stop at home for a bite to eat, I drove up to Aliso - just 2.5 miles away - and had a nice walk up the trail and back. I saw a few bunnies hopping from one hiding place to another. I always tell them, "c'mon, bunnies....you know it's just me". I think they are toying with me. So are the frogs at Aliso, who stop going "ribbitt" as soon as I walk up to the edge of the creek to try and see them. The frogs are just playin' me, too. But it's cool. :)
I got back from Aliso at 6:30, which gave me just enough time to get ready for........
The King's X concert tonight at The Canyon Club in Agoura!
Yowza. I went by myself, but when I got there, at 8:45, the place was packed with hundreds of KX fans. This was my second time seeing them since Wednesday, as you know, and I am blown away by these two shows from this week. After this tour I will dub King's X as The Heaviest Band Of All Time, no contest. I got back home at 11:20, and here I am now telling you about it.
This was a great concert week for me, beginning with Judas Priest 2.0 last Sunday, continuing with KX at The Whiskey on Wednesday, and then finishing up with the two shows today, as reported.
It is 2am right now, as I write, and I'd better get some sleep because I've gotta be in church in eight hours, back at work with Pearl, and getting ready to sing.
But I am re-energized, thank You Lord (and Dug, Ty, Jerry, LA Opera, Judas Priest, and lead singer from Hell too....)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :) :)
I knew about this show several weeks ago, but had put it out of my mind because I figured I'd be working on that day, which was still to come. I didn't know it would fall on my day off, so seeing the ad on FB this morning was a lucky reminder. Also, the "Great Opera Choruses" concert has been an annual event at the VPAC (Saroyan) since 2015. It has always been free to the public, and is designed as a way to win new fans and drum up support for the LA Opera company. They are one of the great opera troupes of the world, but opera, as with all classical music, is in constant need of promotion because the productions cost money and the music does not have the massive fan base of pop or rock.
So, they put on these free shows once a year, which feature a few "sing-a-longs" to well known opera choruses. That gives the audience a chance to participate, and to discover that opera is not snobby - a total misconception - but is really music for everyone. The sing-a-longs are fun, but the real draw is to hear the 32 member LA Opera Chorus themselves, as conducted by Grant Gershon, and to hear the young soloists who are up and coming in the opera company. I went to the first "Great Choruses" concert in 2015 with my sister Vicky, and we loved it. I wasn't there for the shows in 2016 and 2017, probably because I was working, but this time I had the day off, so........
At the last minute I changed my mind about the hike. "I wanna go see LA Opera instead". Now, the show is free but you've still gotta have a ticket, which you get by calling the box office in the weeks before the concert. I didn't have a ticket but I thought I'd just walk over there. The VPAC is just 15 minutes on foot from my apartment. So I walked across campus, got to the box office at 2:55pm (the concert was to start at 3), and I asked if they had any tickets left.
"We do have some donated tickets. How many do you need"?
Donated tickets were from people who couldn't attend. That meant all the rest of the free tickets had been given away.
"I just need one", I said.
The gal at the box office gave me a ticket, remarking that it was a good seat, and she was right. I was about ten rows back, dead center. Boy did I ever luck out, and I made the right decision to go to the concert instead of going to Santa Clarita, which will still be there for a hike on another day.
We saw and heard some incredible singers, including a young soprano named Liv Redpath, who is certain to become a star in the operatic world. She had such an amazing voice that even the conductor Grant Gershon was shaking his head.
The concert was a lot of fun and lasted 90 minutes. Many pieces of music were featured by various composers, most notably Giuseppe Verde (i.e Joe Green), and other great singers were heard as well.
When it ended, I walked back home and thought, "well, it's not quite 5pm....what now"?
"Hmmm, I guess I do have time for a hike up at Aliso Canyon". So after a quick stop at home for a bite to eat, I drove up to Aliso - just 2.5 miles away - and had a nice walk up the trail and back. I saw a few bunnies hopping from one hiding place to another. I always tell them, "c'mon, bunnies....you know it's just me". I think they are toying with me. So are the frogs at Aliso, who stop going "ribbitt" as soon as I walk up to the edge of the creek to try and see them. The frogs are just playin' me, too. But it's cool. :)
I got back from Aliso at 6:30, which gave me just enough time to get ready for........
The King's X concert tonight at The Canyon Club in Agoura!
Yowza. I went by myself, but when I got there, at 8:45, the place was packed with hundreds of KX fans. This was my second time seeing them since Wednesday, as you know, and I am blown away by these two shows from this week. After this tour I will dub King's X as The Heaviest Band Of All Time, no contest. I got back home at 11:20, and here I am now telling you about it.
This was a great concert week for me, beginning with Judas Priest 2.0 last Sunday, continuing with KX at The Whiskey on Wednesday, and then finishing up with the two shows today, as reported.
It is 2am right now, as I write, and I'd better get some sleep because I've gotta be in church in eight hours, back at work with Pearl, and getting ready to sing.
But I am re-energized, thank You Lord (and Dug, Ty, Jerry, LA Opera, Judas Priest, and lead singer from Hell too....)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :) :)
Saturday, April 28, 2018
On Late Night Writing + Not One Of The Boys + Hell
A quick note from me on a minor difficulty with late night writing. Before I begin my blog on any given night, I usually go back and re-read the previous night's effort. Very often I see typos that need correcting, and sometimes I see sentences that aren't fully formed, or paragraphs that don't finish an idea, that kind of thing. The reason for this is twofold. The first reason is that nothing ever comes out perfect on the first draft. This is true of any type of writing, and applies to any writer - even the greats. This is why there is editing, and second (third, fourth, fifth) drafts of anything from a newspaper article to a novel. Writers write on the fly, in order to get out what they want to say. But because writing is interpreted differently by an audience than is speaking, the words and ideas must be placed in properly formatted sections. Hence, grammar and syntax, the things I paid no attention to in English class because the technical details of writing bored the living daylights out of me. And I have always learned more efficiently by observing and then doing, rather than by having a teacher explain things to me. I learned about writing by reading, which is one of my great passions and something I do every day of my life.
Later on, of course, I discovered the importance of grammar and syntax when I started to do some writing of my own. Sometimes I would read a paragraph I'd written, and I'd say to myself, "you didn't finish your thought". So I would go back and correct the sentences until everything made sense and the idea was conveyed in an articulate manner. Over time I saw that I had some bad habits as a "first draft" writer, but that I could make up for those habits by polishing up my work later on.
This brings me to Reason #2 for why my current blogs often still include some of my bad "first draft" habits when they reach You The Reader. This is simply because of time limitations. When I begin a blog, it is already very late at night, and I am tired when I begin (yeah, yeah....excuses, excuses, Ad). So I am trying to Haul Ass, to get all of the day's activities out of my head and onto the Blogger template before I fall asleep, and also to include my half-baked opinions and thoughts about the subjects I am writing about, because I wouldn't be worth my salt as an Aries if I didn't Opine on everything.......
So the whole issue is really just a Time Thing. I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope you can fill in the blanks if you come to an incomplete thought or unfinished idea in one of my paragraphs or tangents (which are a whole 'nuther subject). I know I often go off on tangents that change the direction of what I was first trying to say, or even end up ignoring it altogether. Again, sorry when that happens.
I am trying to fix all typos and as many of the half-formed sentences as I can during the time when I re-read each previous blog the next evening. For best results therefore, try reading any blog a day or two later if it didn't make sense the first time. Thanks. :)
I am writing from home right now, off work til Sunday morning. I did not watch a movie tonight. Instead, Grimsley came over with a dvd he wanted to show me, a live performance by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who is actually pretty funny and has a weird take on things. I'm still not a comedy guy, and left to my own devices I'd be reading a geology book at night, or a book about the CIA, and then I'd follow up with a black and white movie if I could find one I haven't seen. I'd go for my walk, too. I like at least some of my time to myself, and I need it because I am a caregiver. Ask any caregiver and they will tell you the same. We need downtime, to rest and to stay centered, because 90% of our time (or more) is focused on the person we are caring for.
So truth be told, I really don't wanna hang out too much at night. I just wanna do my job, read my books and watch my movies and shows in the evenings, listen to Frank Zappa in the afternoons and try to go on a hike every now and then (which used to be every other day, doggonitt).
I have complained about this before, and no doubt I will complain about it again, but I don't want to be One Of The Boys any longer. None of this is a complaint against Grim, because he is a good guy and we always have fun when he comes over. It's just that my job is psychologically demanding, it is 17 hours a day, and I need downtime and quiet in the evening. But more than that - much more - I just absolutely do not want to be a guy, heading toward 60, who just hangs out with my buddies.
I wanna get married or at least have a steady relationship, and because I don't have either of those things at the present time, I just want to do my job and keep my focus toward my goal. I don't want anything to distract me.
I keep telling myself "something really good is gonna happen" for me, and I believe it.
I love my buddies, the few that I have left, but my focus is different from theirs. I don't have time for a lot of small talk anymore, or just "hanging out".
I want to be in a relationship, or better yet married, and - I am going to find out what happened to me in 1989.
Those two things are going to happen for me, because I am going to will them to happen.
Watch me do it. :)
I did watch Episode #12 of "Twin Peaks", which reintroduced the Audrey Horne character into the series. She was one of the most important characters from the original show, and as played by the actress Sherilyn Fenn, she has always been unforgettable.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I did see a post today in which a Sweet Baby was featured. I don't know for certain, but I am guessing that it represented the long established SB motif we both know on sight.
I always love to see an SB post, and I also saw another post, via one of your friends, about "devil" deer, with horns.
That made me wonder if you saw the video I posted, by Hell.
There is no need to explain Hell, other than to say they are Andy Sneap's other band, besides Judas Priest. For one thing, just to have a name like "Andy Sneap" is incredible, because it makes you sound like you are right out of Harry Potter or a Charles Dickens story. But to be Andy Sneap and to be in a band called Hell, in addition to being in Judas Priest, must be an exceptional honor.
I have only been recently exposed to Hell, but I think that if this was 1986, they'd be my favorite band.
And especially the singer.
If I was going to Hell, I wouldn't mind hanging around with him, whether I was married or not.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Later on, of course, I discovered the importance of grammar and syntax when I started to do some writing of my own. Sometimes I would read a paragraph I'd written, and I'd say to myself, "you didn't finish your thought". So I would go back and correct the sentences until everything made sense and the idea was conveyed in an articulate manner. Over time I saw that I had some bad habits as a "first draft" writer, but that I could make up for those habits by polishing up my work later on.
This brings me to Reason #2 for why my current blogs often still include some of my bad "first draft" habits when they reach You The Reader. This is simply because of time limitations. When I begin a blog, it is already very late at night, and I am tired when I begin (yeah, yeah....excuses, excuses, Ad). So I am trying to Haul Ass, to get all of the day's activities out of my head and onto the Blogger template before I fall asleep, and also to include my half-baked opinions and thoughts about the subjects I am writing about, because I wouldn't be worth my salt as an Aries if I didn't Opine on everything.......
So the whole issue is really just a Time Thing. I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope you can fill in the blanks if you come to an incomplete thought or unfinished idea in one of my paragraphs or tangents (which are a whole 'nuther subject). I know I often go off on tangents that change the direction of what I was first trying to say, or even end up ignoring it altogether. Again, sorry when that happens.
I am trying to fix all typos and as many of the half-formed sentences as I can during the time when I re-read each previous blog the next evening. For best results therefore, try reading any blog a day or two later if it didn't make sense the first time. Thanks. :)
I am writing from home right now, off work til Sunday morning. I did not watch a movie tonight. Instead, Grimsley came over with a dvd he wanted to show me, a live performance by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who is actually pretty funny and has a weird take on things. I'm still not a comedy guy, and left to my own devices I'd be reading a geology book at night, or a book about the CIA, and then I'd follow up with a black and white movie if I could find one I haven't seen. I'd go for my walk, too. I like at least some of my time to myself, and I need it because I am a caregiver. Ask any caregiver and they will tell you the same. We need downtime, to rest and to stay centered, because 90% of our time (or more) is focused on the person we are caring for.
So truth be told, I really don't wanna hang out too much at night. I just wanna do my job, read my books and watch my movies and shows in the evenings, listen to Frank Zappa in the afternoons and try to go on a hike every now and then (which used to be every other day, doggonitt).
I have complained about this before, and no doubt I will complain about it again, but I don't want to be One Of The Boys any longer. None of this is a complaint against Grim, because he is a good guy and we always have fun when he comes over. It's just that my job is psychologically demanding, it is 17 hours a day, and I need downtime and quiet in the evening. But more than that - much more - I just absolutely do not want to be a guy, heading toward 60, who just hangs out with my buddies.
I wanna get married or at least have a steady relationship, and because I don't have either of those things at the present time, I just want to do my job and keep my focus toward my goal. I don't want anything to distract me.
I keep telling myself "something really good is gonna happen" for me, and I believe it.
I love my buddies, the few that I have left, but my focus is different from theirs. I don't have time for a lot of small talk anymore, or just "hanging out".
I want to be in a relationship, or better yet married, and - I am going to find out what happened to me in 1989.
Those two things are going to happen for me, because I am going to will them to happen.
Watch me do it. :)
I did watch Episode #12 of "Twin Peaks", which reintroduced the Audrey Horne character into the series. She was one of the most important characters from the original show, and as played by the actress Sherilyn Fenn, she has always been unforgettable.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I did see a post today in which a Sweet Baby was featured. I don't know for certain, but I am guessing that it represented the long established SB motif we both know on sight.
I always love to see an SB post, and I also saw another post, via one of your friends, about "devil" deer, with horns.
That made me wonder if you saw the video I posted, by Hell.
There is no need to explain Hell, other than to say they are Andy Sneap's other band, besides Judas Priest. For one thing, just to have a name like "Andy Sneap" is incredible, because it makes you sound like you are right out of Harry Potter or a Charles Dickens story. But to be Andy Sneap and to be in a band called Hell, in addition to being in Judas Priest, must be an exceptional honor.
I have only been recently exposed to Hell, but I think that if this was 1986, they'd be my favorite band.
And especially the singer.
If I was going to Hell, I wouldn't mind hanging around with him, whether I was married or not.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 27, 2018
"Danton" by Andrzej Wajda at CSUN
Tonight at CSUN we saw "Danton" by Andrzej Wajda, a tremendous film about the power struggle within the leadership of the French Revolution, between Maximilien Robespierre and the lesser known (to the American public) Georges Danton. I remember learning about Robespierre in Junior High, probably in 8th grade. His name became synonymous with a "people's revolutionary" who ultimately becomes a dictator with policies just as severe as the predecessor he overthrew. Robespierre had been formerly held in high regard by people of the extreme Left, who must have ignored the fact that he was a strong advocate of the guillotine, chopping heads off right and left of anyone he felt threatened by.
In the movie, he is at odds with Danton, his co-Revolutionary who has exiled himself from the new people's government because he doesn't like the continuing bloodshed. Robespierre sees a need to continue to execute anyone he deems subversive, but Danton sees, more correctly, that their Revolution has become just as capricious and bloodthirsty as the Monarchy of Marie Antoinette, she of "let them eat cake" fame. Robespierre created something called "The Reign Of Terror" as an official policy. He believed that terrorism was necessary to create an ideal, egalitarian society. The terror was directed initially at the Monarchy, but then - as always happens - Robespierre became power mad and started going after people in his own regime.
As far as most history books are concerned, Robespierre was the face of the French Revolution. So it is interesting that the filmmaker Wajda decided, in 1983, to make a movie about another man who was also a force but who is relatively unknown to history, Georges Danton.
Wajda makes movies in many styles, as I've mentioned, but he is noted for his political epics, and one theme that shines through all of these stories is that power corrupts, or more precisely, the desire for power corrupts.
Wajda is a level headed man of intelligence, and not an ideologue, so he is my kind of guy.
The old saying, "absolute power corrupts, absolutely", assumes that anyone at all who attains a position of high authority is going to "go bad", even if the person had compassionate ideals to begin with. The saying assumes that everyone is not only corruptible, but that anyone in a total power position will for certain be corrupted.
I have always thought that saying was a bunch of B.S., and I am glad to see that Wajda agrees with me.
For it is not power - all by itself - that corrupts, anymore than it is money, all by itself, that is the root of all evil.
No, it is the desire for power that corrupts, the desire to tell everyone else what is right, and to be in a position to enforce one's beliefs over other people.
This is why the politics of the Far Left are just as bad as those of the Far Right, because both have a dictatorial basis, led by a person or a faction who want to tell you how you have to live.
Andrzej Wajda, coming from Poland, got this. That is why it is instructive that he made a movie called "Danton" instead of "Robespierre".
Danton believed that sometimes revolution is necessary (under extreme conditions) but he also believed that after the oppressive regime has been overthrown, that the general public does not want their lives to be dominated by politics and violence any longer. As he says in the movie, "people just want to live in peace".
That attitude, of course, was not to be tolerated. Dictators and terrorists are all the same, and when you scratch a revolutionary, you usually find one of the two - or both - underneath. No matter if they are right wing or left. That's why I am apolitical these days. I have no ideology other than I am Anti A-Hole.
"Danton" stars Gerard Depardieu in a fantastic performance in the lead role. If you have a good memory you might recall that a long time ago I gave you a correct pronunciation of his name, written phonetically. As with my translations of British pronunciations, I offered the Depardieu in my ongoing effort to preserve accuracy in both grammar and diction.
Just in case you missed it at the time, I will re-post it now for your convenience. You may study it at your leisure.
Therefore, Gerard Depardieu = Zshair-arrd Dep-arr-Dyuh.
You'll get the hang of it after a few repeats.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Danton", another Wajda epic and historical drama that in this case involves the inside story of the French Revolution, which took place not long after the American Revolution.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
In the movie, he is at odds with Danton, his co-Revolutionary who has exiled himself from the new people's government because he doesn't like the continuing bloodshed. Robespierre sees a need to continue to execute anyone he deems subversive, but Danton sees, more correctly, that their Revolution has become just as capricious and bloodthirsty as the Monarchy of Marie Antoinette, she of "let them eat cake" fame. Robespierre created something called "The Reign Of Terror" as an official policy. He believed that terrorism was necessary to create an ideal, egalitarian society. The terror was directed initially at the Monarchy, but then - as always happens - Robespierre became power mad and started going after people in his own regime.
As far as most history books are concerned, Robespierre was the face of the French Revolution. So it is interesting that the filmmaker Wajda decided, in 1983, to make a movie about another man who was also a force but who is relatively unknown to history, Georges Danton.
Wajda makes movies in many styles, as I've mentioned, but he is noted for his political epics, and one theme that shines through all of these stories is that power corrupts, or more precisely, the desire for power corrupts.
Wajda is a level headed man of intelligence, and not an ideologue, so he is my kind of guy.
The old saying, "absolute power corrupts, absolutely", assumes that anyone at all who attains a position of high authority is going to "go bad", even if the person had compassionate ideals to begin with. The saying assumes that everyone is not only corruptible, but that anyone in a total power position will for certain be corrupted.
I have always thought that saying was a bunch of B.S., and I am glad to see that Wajda agrees with me.
For it is not power - all by itself - that corrupts, anymore than it is money, all by itself, that is the root of all evil.
No, it is the desire for power that corrupts, the desire to tell everyone else what is right, and to be in a position to enforce one's beliefs over other people.
This is why the politics of the Far Left are just as bad as those of the Far Right, because both have a dictatorial basis, led by a person or a faction who want to tell you how you have to live.
Andrzej Wajda, coming from Poland, got this. That is why it is instructive that he made a movie called "Danton" instead of "Robespierre".
Danton believed that sometimes revolution is necessary (under extreme conditions) but he also believed that after the oppressive regime has been overthrown, that the general public does not want their lives to be dominated by politics and violence any longer. As he says in the movie, "people just want to live in peace".
That attitude, of course, was not to be tolerated. Dictators and terrorists are all the same, and when you scratch a revolutionary, you usually find one of the two - or both - underneath. No matter if they are right wing or left. That's why I am apolitical these days. I have no ideology other than I am Anti A-Hole.
"Danton" stars Gerard Depardieu in a fantastic performance in the lead role. If you have a good memory you might recall that a long time ago I gave you a correct pronunciation of his name, written phonetically. As with my translations of British pronunciations, I offered the Depardieu in my ongoing effort to preserve accuracy in both grammar and diction.
Just in case you missed it at the time, I will re-post it now for your convenience. You may study it at your leisure.
Therefore, Gerard Depardieu = Zshair-arrd Dep-arr-Dyuh.
You'll get the hang of it after a few repeats.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Danton", another Wajda epic and historical drama that in this case involves the inside story of the French Revolution, which took place not long after the American Revolution.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 26, 2018
King's X at The Whisky A Go-Go
I just got pounded into the ground by three guys in Hollywood. No, no, no......don't worry! It's not what you're thinking. I didn't get mugged or beat up. It was a different kind of pounding, and in this case it was a good thing.
It happened inside the Whisky A Go-Go, and the three guys were named dUg, Ty and Jerry, collectively known as King's X. They are experts at pounding people into the ground because they play Sledgehammer Rock. Tonight, I was just one of about 300 victims, and all of us loved every minute of it.
Man, it was brutal. I've seen King's X probably about 12 times by now, going back to 1992, and they just keep getting heavier and more defined as the years go by. It's interesting to note that KX is not a metal band, and yet their sound is heavier than most metal because of the emphasis on the bottom end.
They have been credited as being the first hard rock band to use downtuning as a standard practice, using "drop D" tuning on every song to get a heavier sound. Many bands who might have tried such a tactic would have wound up sounding sloppy or fuzzy, but because King's X are such a tight ensemble, and such proficient musicians, they are able to use their low end background as a kind of Magic Carpet: a thick, plush, rolling layer of sound over which they can paint other colors, which in their case include the two and three part vocal harmonies they are famous for, and lots of blistering lead breaks and arpeggiated guitar chords. It's quite a big sound for three musicians, but Big Sound has often been a trademark for the best three piece bands, because each musician has to cover a lot of ground. Also, in a trio the members aren't competing with other members, like rhythm guitar or keyboards, for wavelengths on a PA system. There's just one guitar, one bass and one drummer. So if the players are really good - like Rush, Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience or King's X, then they can create a huge sound with no interference coming from other players.
Trios only work if all three musicians are top of the line experts.
King's X are, and what they have besides their industrial strength heaviness and colorful overtones, is syncopation. All three pieces interlock like gears in a fine watch.
Grimsley went with me, and he noted that the guys don't even look at each other during the unusual "stop and start" time signatures in a song like "We Were Born To Be Loved".
I suggested that they don't need to look, because the music is bigger than the band at this point. They have been playing together for 38 years, and - here comes that word again - an intuition develops between players that seems uncanny to the audience.
It's a "look Ma, no hands" thing, because the band is so tight, so interlocking and yet separate - each guy creating his part - and it comes across not as effortless because KX aren't a Flash Band. Instead it comes across as full of effort and passion, which is the key word.
That is why you get pounded when you go to a KX show, because they are using the Sledgehammer approach to get their point across.
Well at any rate, I am doubly deaf now, with King's X coming just a few days after the Judas Priest show.
Grim called them the "Zero Body Fat Band", because you can see how skinny all the guys are, and dUg took his shirt off, and he is skinny but completely ripped at 68 years of age.
How the heck does he do that?
I have no idea. I am just happy to keep my weight down, and I could stand to lose six or seven pounds right now.
I will see you in the morning.
(Holy Smokes and Good Lordy Moses).......
It happened inside the Whisky A Go-Go, and the three guys were named dUg, Ty and Jerry, collectively known as King's X. They are experts at pounding people into the ground because they play Sledgehammer Rock. Tonight, I was just one of about 300 victims, and all of us loved every minute of it.
Man, it was brutal. I've seen King's X probably about 12 times by now, going back to 1992, and they just keep getting heavier and more defined as the years go by. It's interesting to note that KX is not a metal band, and yet their sound is heavier than most metal because of the emphasis on the bottom end.
They have been credited as being the first hard rock band to use downtuning as a standard practice, using "drop D" tuning on every song to get a heavier sound. Many bands who might have tried such a tactic would have wound up sounding sloppy or fuzzy, but because King's X are such a tight ensemble, and such proficient musicians, they are able to use their low end background as a kind of Magic Carpet: a thick, plush, rolling layer of sound over which they can paint other colors, which in their case include the two and three part vocal harmonies they are famous for, and lots of blistering lead breaks and arpeggiated guitar chords. It's quite a big sound for three musicians, but Big Sound has often been a trademark for the best three piece bands, because each musician has to cover a lot of ground. Also, in a trio the members aren't competing with other members, like rhythm guitar or keyboards, for wavelengths on a PA system. There's just one guitar, one bass and one drummer. So if the players are really good - like Rush, Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience or King's X, then they can create a huge sound with no interference coming from other players.
Trios only work if all three musicians are top of the line experts.
King's X are, and what they have besides their industrial strength heaviness and colorful overtones, is syncopation. All three pieces interlock like gears in a fine watch.
Grimsley went with me, and he noted that the guys don't even look at each other during the unusual "stop and start" time signatures in a song like "We Were Born To Be Loved".
I suggested that they don't need to look, because the music is bigger than the band at this point. They have been playing together for 38 years, and - here comes that word again - an intuition develops between players that seems uncanny to the audience.
It's a "look Ma, no hands" thing, because the band is so tight, so interlocking and yet separate - each guy creating his part - and it comes across not as effortless because KX aren't a Flash Band. Instead it comes across as full of effort and passion, which is the key word.
That is why you get pounded when you go to a KX show, because they are using the Sledgehammer approach to get their point across.
Well at any rate, I am doubly deaf now, with King's X coming just a few days after the Judas Priest show.
Grim called them the "Zero Body Fat Band", because you can see how skinny all the guys are, and dUg took his shirt off, and he is skinny but completely ripped at 68 years of age.
How the heck does he do that?
I have no idea. I am just happy to keep my weight down, and I could stand to lose six or seven pounds right now.
I will see you in the morning.
(Holy Smokes and Good Lordy Moses).......
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Pretentious + Psychic + Matters #1 & #2 + Hell
No movie tonight. Instead, Grimsley came over. He wanted to play me a cassette tape of a comedy album he had bought. I've told you that Grim is Old School. He loves tape, be it VHS or cassette. I don't know if he bought this particular comedy tape recently (because cassettes are once again available in used record stores), or if he's had it for a long time, but he wanted me to hear it. I've also told you that Grim's thing is comedy. He loves comedy and comedians, whereas I enjoy comedy but it's not usually the first thing I seek out for entertainment. Maybe I am Too Damn Serious, I dunno. I hope I don't come off that way, or even worse, as Pretentious.
I was reading back last night's blog about guitar solos, and I worried that I sounded pretentious.
Then I realised that it's probably even more pretentious to worry if you are sounding pretentious, because then you are doubly focused on Your Own Importance. I'd better quit this line of reasoning right now, before I dig myself a hole I can't get out of. :)
Back to Grimsley, he wouldn't tell me who it was he wanted me to hear. All he said was, "you'll never guess who it is".
What happened then was that I blurted out the first name that came to me. I didn't think about it, just said it.
I said "Bill Cosby".
And Grim looked at me funny and said, "How the hell did you know that"?
I said, "I didn't know it, I just said it".
I'm psychic, and before you call me on the pretentiousness of saying that about myself (it's like saying you've been abducted by Aliens), I declare that everyone has the potential to be psychic because everyone has a Sixth Sense. It's just that it's a dormant sense for most of us who aren't natural psychics, and most folks aren't interested in developing their psychic ability, usually because they have no interest in "outside" phenomena.
I do have an interest, though. Weirdness has been a major focus of my life, and I have put a lot of effort into training my own psychic ability, mostly through meditation, self-hypnosis, and more than anything just paying close attention to my inner voice and to everything from bird sounds to clouds in the sky and the overall presence of God.
So I said "Bill Cosby", and I got it right. I know Bill Cosby is in the news because of his trial, but that's not why I said his name. There was no "why"; it just came out. And there were probably a couple dozen other comedians I could have mentioned, who are either out of fashion or obscure who would have been more to Grimsley's preference and who would have seemed more probable as his mystery comic.
I mention this anecdote because my correct guess, coming spontaneously on the first try, gives me hope that my intuition is intact regarding much more important matters that have been very difficult to penetrate. I am sure you can guess what I am referring to, and you won't even need to develop your intuition to do so. :)
I have two "matters of importance" in my life that supersede everything else, and I don't like to emphasize them because it makes me sound like I am coming from a place of desperation. That is not the correct term in my case, because I am a practicing stoic on these two matters (and Stoics never despair.....yeah right) and also because I have a lot of other interests to keep me busy, and of course my job, which takes up the majority of my day, every day.
But the two Matters Of Importance are always "right there", presenting themselves, because time is going by.
Matter #1 is that I don't want to be single anymore. I haven't ever wanted to, really, but I have been Stoic about it, and that stoicism has sufficed me until now. Now, it is really sucking to be single. I am only two years from 60, and twelve from 70, and years go by pretty quick these days. Also, I've been single for 28 years running, and though I've had an exciting life, here and there in the meantime, I have never been a guy who wants to go it alone. And I don't want to get old alone. Not much frightens me, but that prospect does.
The problem with Matter #1 is that I can't just go to a dating service an "marry someone".
For one thing, I am shy, and more importantly, I am way too psychic and tuned in to my feelings and the feelings of others, and I can't fake a relationship. So no dating service for me. That's Matter #1.
Matter #2 is all about learning the complete truth about what happened in 1989. Again, this matter is becoming more urgent because, though I am not ancient, I don't want to go to my grave never knowing what that life changing event was all about. If that were to happen, it might affect my soul and my passage into the next world. 1989 changed my life, period, and in the most profound way imaginable. Unlike other people involved, I am unable to ignore it or to pretend that it never happened.
I liken my problem to the plight of family members of missing persons, who never in their lifetime find out what happened to their loved ones. I cannot think of a more terrible tragedy, again because to carry such a burden of endless wondering to one's grave must surely affect the passage of the soul.
This is why I always emphasize how profoundly wrong it is to withhold important personal information from someone who is respectfully and honestly seeking it, because even though the person may be stoic, their soul has a need to know. And the soul can perish in desperation if that need is never fulfilled.
I will shut up now.
I've also been watching videos on Youtube by the band "Hell", which was Andy Sneap's group before he recently joined Judas Priest. If the year was 1986, I might have been a big fan of Hell. Watching them now, I am definitely entertained, and I suggest you Youtube them and watch at least one song. You will see why when you do so.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I was reading back last night's blog about guitar solos, and I worried that I sounded pretentious.
Then I realised that it's probably even more pretentious to worry if you are sounding pretentious, because then you are doubly focused on Your Own Importance. I'd better quit this line of reasoning right now, before I dig myself a hole I can't get out of. :)
Back to Grimsley, he wouldn't tell me who it was he wanted me to hear. All he said was, "you'll never guess who it is".
What happened then was that I blurted out the first name that came to me. I didn't think about it, just said it.
I said "Bill Cosby".
And Grim looked at me funny and said, "How the hell did you know that"?
I said, "I didn't know it, I just said it".
I'm psychic, and before you call me on the pretentiousness of saying that about myself (it's like saying you've been abducted by Aliens), I declare that everyone has the potential to be psychic because everyone has a Sixth Sense. It's just that it's a dormant sense for most of us who aren't natural psychics, and most folks aren't interested in developing their psychic ability, usually because they have no interest in "outside" phenomena.
I do have an interest, though. Weirdness has been a major focus of my life, and I have put a lot of effort into training my own psychic ability, mostly through meditation, self-hypnosis, and more than anything just paying close attention to my inner voice and to everything from bird sounds to clouds in the sky and the overall presence of God.
So I said "Bill Cosby", and I got it right. I know Bill Cosby is in the news because of his trial, but that's not why I said his name. There was no "why"; it just came out. And there were probably a couple dozen other comedians I could have mentioned, who are either out of fashion or obscure who would have been more to Grimsley's preference and who would have seemed more probable as his mystery comic.
I mention this anecdote because my correct guess, coming spontaneously on the first try, gives me hope that my intuition is intact regarding much more important matters that have been very difficult to penetrate. I am sure you can guess what I am referring to, and you won't even need to develop your intuition to do so. :)
I have two "matters of importance" in my life that supersede everything else, and I don't like to emphasize them because it makes me sound like I am coming from a place of desperation. That is not the correct term in my case, because I am a practicing stoic on these two matters (and Stoics never despair.....yeah right) and also because I have a lot of other interests to keep me busy, and of course my job, which takes up the majority of my day, every day.
But the two Matters Of Importance are always "right there", presenting themselves, because time is going by.
Matter #1 is that I don't want to be single anymore. I haven't ever wanted to, really, but I have been Stoic about it, and that stoicism has sufficed me until now. Now, it is really sucking to be single. I am only two years from 60, and twelve from 70, and years go by pretty quick these days. Also, I've been single for 28 years running, and though I've had an exciting life, here and there in the meantime, I have never been a guy who wants to go it alone. And I don't want to get old alone. Not much frightens me, but that prospect does.
The problem with Matter #1 is that I can't just go to a dating service an "marry someone".
For one thing, I am shy, and more importantly, I am way too psychic and tuned in to my feelings and the feelings of others, and I can't fake a relationship. So no dating service for me. That's Matter #1.
Matter #2 is all about learning the complete truth about what happened in 1989. Again, this matter is becoming more urgent because, though I am not ancient, I don't want to go to my grave never knowing what that life changing event was all about. If that were to happen, it might affect my soul and my passage into the next world. 1989 changed my life, period, and in the most profound way imaginable. Unlike other people involved, I am unable to ignore it or to pretend that it never happened.
I liken my problem to the plight of family members of missing persons, who never in their lifetime find out what happened to their loved ones. I cannot think of a more terrible tragedy, again because to carry such a burden of endless wondering to one's grave must surely affect the passage of the soul.
This is why I always emphasize how profoundly wrong it is to withhold important personal information from someone who is respectfully and honestly seeking it, because even though the person may be stoic, their soul has a need to know. And the soul can perish in desperation if that need is never fulfilled.
I will shut up now.
I've also been watching videos on Youtube by the band "Hell", which was Andy Sneap's group before he recently joined Judas Priest. If the year was 1986, I might have been a big fan of Hell. Watching them now, I am definitely entertained, and I suggest you Youtube them and watch at least one song. You will see why when you do so.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
The Importance Of The Guitar Solo, Vis-A-Vis Judas Priest
Very briefly, to finish my thoughts about last night's Judas Priest concert, I mentioned a had a couple of minor complaints. Thinking about it today, I don't know why I said "a couple" because I really only have one, and it isn't a complaint but simply an observation. Here it is :
A big part of original Judas Priest music was always the twin guitar soloing of KK Downing and Glenn Tipton. They would trade off on many solos, with one guy starting and the other finishing, like a call and response. Tipton and Downing became so renowned for their shared solos that, on some JP albums in the 1980s, it got to the point where the band listed who played which section of each solo.
i.e. "Glenn, first lead break", "Main solo : KK, first section, Glenn, second section".
That's how great these two lead guitarists were, that their solos were listed by name in the credits, so the fans would know who played which part. I could usually tell without reading the liner notes, because I had seen JP live so many times and I knew each man's style. Glenn was precise and melodic, but with the feel of the great lead guitarists of history. KK was explosive and orgasmic. His biggest influence was Jimi, and when he would take an entire solo for himself, as he did on the JP show stopper "Sinner", you felt as if you were being launched on the Space Shuttle. Such moments were jaw dropping. KK and Glenn are two of the greatest lead guitarists who ever lived. And what made them so great was their solos conveyed a feeling, a sense of being taken somewhere. For one thing, both Glenn and KK were melodic players. They could play very fast, but it was never about that. Judas Priest solos were about building and expanding the emotion in the song, driven by the vocal line, and taking that emotion to a climax that, as I've said, was like a nuclear meltdown in the musical sense. The two guys had the combination of feel and technique that was highly developed in the best guitar players of the 1970s and 80s, and that resulted in many great players who sounded individual.
That is the key to what I will mention next.
The new JP lead guitarist Richie Faulkner is very good, excellent even, for what has become the new style of lead playing in the modern era - flurries of notes, played very fast and with a much more compressed sound than used by 80s players, a technical trick using pre-amplified line gear (pedals, etc.) which is utilised to accommodate the lightning fast alternate picking that all the hard rock and metal guitarists have learned to do, ever since Yngwie Malmsteen came along. I won't get into the technical aspects of using all of that stuff to make it sound like you are shredding, but what I will say is that this style of playing detracts from the Art Of The Guitar Solo, if for no other reason than so many thousands of notes are played that none of them mean very much. As a result, nothing is "being said" in the solo. Nothing is conveyed and you don't get the same feeling of being "taken somewhere".
This trend happened because guitar soloing became akin to an athletic event, and then came Youtube and all of the instructional videos on "how to shred", and the end result was that you had a whole generation of guitar players who sounded more or less the same. They all had the compressed pedalboard sound, they all used sweep picking techniques, they all had shrill high notes without much body to them.
And what happened was that the Art Of Guitar Soloing was lost.
The feeling was lost, because technique took over the driver's seat.
You can't just go "tweedle-dee-dee" on your guitar. You have to say something.
And you will never be able to say anything if all you do is focus on technique.
If you only focus on technique, you will go "tweedle-dee-dee" when you solo. ////
So that's my one minor complaint about last night's Judas Priest concert, which was great in every other way, and which was phenomenal overall as reported last night.
Richie Faulkner is a great metal guitar player, capable of not only nailing the intricacies of JP's riffs and juxtaposed middle sections, but of adding new energy to them. He brings new life to the songs, now that the Two Legends, Glenn and KK, have gone.
But as talented as he is, he comes from a generation of guitarists who grew up on technique, and "group learning" via metal guitar lessons and formats, and unfortunately this generation failed to produce individual sounding players.
Are they proficient? Hell yeah. That's part of the reason why the show was so awesome last night.
But the guitar solos were played so fast that they didn't really register emotionally. And in old JP concerts, the solos were where your head would explode.
Again, just a minor complaint, because the new guys were so Ultra On Top of every other aspect of the music.
But the Guitar Solo is an important thing for rock and roll music.
I can whistle or hum all of the best guitar solos note for note.
I know them all because of the emotional effect they had on me, and they are imprinted in my soul.
I watched a wonderful movie called "It's A Great Feeling" with Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson and Doris Day, but tonight you will have to IMDB it for yourself. I got too carried away talking about Guitar Solos.
That is all I know for tonight. I got a bit carried away in writing about The Solo, and I mean no affront to Mr. Faulkner, who is from a different generation, and of that generation he is one of the finest players I've heard.
But we see, going back to the beginning, what the Solo really meant. The was an art to it.
And now we must emphasize it's importance in our emotional makeup, as it has contributed so much to our lives.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxo :):)
A big part of original Judas Priest music was always the twin guitar soloing of KK Downing and Glenn Tipton. They would trade off on many solos, with one guy starting and the other finishing, like a call and response. Tipton and Downing became so renowned for their shared solos that, on some JP albums in the 1980s, it got to the point where the band listed who played which section of each solo.
i.e. "Glenn, first lead break", "Main solo : KK, first section, Glenn, second section".
That's how great these two lead guitarists were, that their solos were listed by name in the credits, so the fans would know who played which part. I could usually tell without reading the liner notes, because I had seen JP live so many times and I knew each man's style. Glenn was precise and melodic, but with the feel of the great lead guitarists of history. KK was explosive and orgasmic. His biggest influence was Jimi, and when he would take an entire solo for himself, as he did on the JP show stopper "Sinner", you felt as if you were being launched on the Space Shuttle. Such moments were jaw dropping. KK and Glenn are two of the greatest lead guitarists who ever lived. And what made them so great was their solos conveyed a feeling, a sense of being taken somewhere. For one thing, both Glenn and KK were melodic players. They could play very fast, but it was never about that. Judas Priest solos were about building and expanding the emotion in the song, driven by the vocal line, and taking that emotion to a climax that, as I've said, was like a nuclear meltdown in the musical sense. The two guys had the combination of feel and technique that was highly developed in the best guitar players of the 1970s and 80s, and that resulted in many great players who sounded individual.
That is the key to what I will mention next.
The new JP lead guitarist Richie Faulkner is very good, excellent even, for what has become the new style of lead playing in the modern era - flurries of notes, played very fast and with a much more compressed sound than used by 80s players, a technical trick using pre-amplified line gear (pedals, etc.) which is utilised to accommodate the lightning fast alternate picking that all the hard rock and metal guitarists have learned to do, ever since Yngwie Malmsteen came along. I won't get into the technical aspects of using all of that stuff to make it sound like you are shredding, but what I will say is that this style of playing detracts from the Art Of The Guitar Solo, if for no other reason than so many thousands of notes are played that none of them mean very much. As a result, nothing is "being said" in the solo. Nothing is conveyed and you don't get the same feeling of being "taken somewhere".
This trend happened because guitar soloing became akin to an athletic event, and then came Youtube and all of the instructional videos on "how to shred", and the end result was that you had a whole generation of guitar players who sounded more or less the same. They all had the compressed pedalboard sound, they all used sweep picking techniques, they all had shrill high notes without much body to them.
And what happened was that the Art Of Guitar Soloing was lost.
The feeling was lost, because technique took over the driver's seat.
You can't just go "tweedle-dee-dee" on your guitar. You have to say something.
And you will never be able to say anything if all you do is focus on technique.
If you only focus on technique, you will go "tweedle-dee-dee" when you solo. ////
So that's my one minor complaint about last night's Judas Priest concert, which was great in every other way, and which was phenomenal overall as reported last night.
Richie Faulkner is a great metal guitar player, capable of not only nailing the intricacies of JP's riffs and juxtaposed middle sections, but of adding new energy to them. He brings new life to the songs, now that the Two Legends, Glenn and KK, have gone.
But as talented as he is, he comes from a generation of guitarists who grew up on technique, and "group learning" via metal guitar lessons and formats, and unfortunately this generation failed to produce individual sounding players.
Are they proficient? Hell yeah. That's part of the reason why the show was so awesome last night.
But the guitar solos were played so fast that they didn't really register emotionally. And in old JP concerts, the solos were where your head would explode.
Again, just a minor complaint, because the new guys were so Ultra On Top of every other aspect of the music.
But the Guitar Solo is an important thing for rock and roll music.
I can whistle or hum all of the best guitar solos note for note.
I know them all because of the emotional effect they had on me, and they are imprinted in my soul.
I watched a wonderful movie called "It's A Great Feeling" with Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson and Doris Day, but tonight you will have to IMDB it for yourself. I got too carried away talking about Guitar Solos.
That is all I know for tonight. I got a bit carried away in writing about The Solo, and I mean no affront to Mr. Faulkner, who is from a different generation, and of that generation he is one of the finest players I've heard.
But we see, going back to the beginning, what the Solo really meant. The was an art to it.
And now we must emphasize it's importance in our emotional makeup, as it has contributed so much to our lives.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxo :):)
Monday, April 23, 2018
Judas Priest at The Microsoft Theater, Holy Moly
Okay, I will repeat what I just posted on Facebook : I never thought I'd be saying this about the new version of Judas Priest, but "........................"! That means I'm speechless. Holy Smokes and My Goodness and Great Googly Moogly and Good Lordy Moses......they were freakin' great!
I wasn't exactly looking forward to the show because of the absence of Tipton and Downing, as I've mentioned several times, and you know my feelings about bands making major lineup changes and retaining the original band name.
But, having said all of that, I made the effort to go downtown to the Microsoft Theater (at the Staples complex). A motivating factor was the 90 bucks I'd spent on my ticket. I took the Red Line out of North Hollywood as usual, got off at the Metro/7th Street station and walked the few blocks to L.A. Live, or Staples, or whatever you wanna call it. The Microsoft used to be the Nokia Theater, and I've only been there a few times, for Rush about seven years ago, and I think for Priest in 2014.
I went down because I'd spent my money on the ticket, and I promised myself that I would not go in with preconceptions, i.e. "this is gonna suck". I had made the same promise in last night's blog, when I said that I would not go to the concert as a curmudgeon, and in fact, I was curious about the show because I had read so many good reviews from other cities, which I chalked up to Newbie Fans who don't know jack about the history of Judas Priest. I mentioned that too in a recent blog.
So I got there, I went in, I had a good seat : dead center, about 2/3rds of the way back in a medium sized venue (5K). Saxon was just beginning their set, and they were damn good too. I loved the "Wheels Of Steel" album in 1981, and they played the title track. They also played "Denim & Leather", another famous song by them. Me and Mr. D used to blast Saxon on a regular basis back in the NWOBHM days. Google the initials if need be. I also accompanied my friend Jon S. on an interview of Saxon back in 1983 (I was his photographer), and I have a photo of myself sitting with singer Biff Byford from that session. Biff was in powerful voice tonight and he is still bringing it live, 35 years later. Overall, Saxon played almost an hour and the crowd ate 'em up. They got a response usually reserved for headliners.
Okay, so here's the deal with what I will call "Judas Priest 2.0". If you go to the show, and you accept them on their own terms and don't make comparisons to original Judas Priest, then you will be blown off the map. That is what happened to me - no exaggeration - and I was prepared to hate it. The energy of the new band is reminiscent of the way Priest was in the early 80s, when they could blow anyone off the stage (except maybe Van Halen). But yeah, Priest from 81 to 86, fuggettabouddit.
You'd walk out of their shows thinking, "Surely you jest", because you couldn't believe what you had just seen.
That level of energy is back in the band now, incredible as it may seem. It's like the band went to Oxford and hired a couple of PhDs from the Judas Priest College of Metal for their new guitarists. Something has happened to Rob Halford also; he has gotten his voice back to about 92% of what it once was. If you are a JP fan who has seen him live since he rejoined the band in 2005, you know he was good on the first reunion tours, very good in fact, but he appeared overweight and his high range was mostly gone.
Rob must have gone back to the Harry Potter School for 5 Octave Wizardry, because - and I kid you not - he is singing like it is 1982 again.
They played a version of "Free Wheel Burning" from the "Defenders Of The Faith" album that blew the roof off the place. The setlist included many songs from way back into the classic catalogue, and you can Google that too if you are interested.
There was a drawback or two, just minor complaints, that I will mention tomorrow night because the hour is very late and I must sleep so that I can continue to function.
But basically, I got more than my 90 bucks worth.
What I got was one of the best Judas Priest shows I've ever seen, albeit in a whole new version of the band, which I was prepared to reject.
Believe me, if it had even remotely sucked, I would be the first to tell you, because I revere the original Judas Priest. You have no idea how much.
But not only did it not suck, it was phenomenal in it's own way.
And, Glenn Tipton came out for the three song encore.
Thank You, Lord.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I wasn't exactly looking forward to the show because of the absence of Tipton and Downing, as I've mentioned several times, and you know my feelings about bands making major lineup changes and retaining the original band name.
But, having said all of that, I made the effort to go downtown to the Microsoft Theater (at the Staples complex). A motivating factor was the 90 bucks I'd spent on my ticket. I took the Red Line out of North Hollywood as usual, got off at the Metro/7th Street station and walked the few blocks to L.A. Live, or Staples, or whatever you wanna call it. The Microsoft used to be the Nokia Theater, and I've only been there a few times, for Rush about seven years ago, and I think for Priest in 2014.
I went down because I'd spent my money on the ticket, and I promised myself that I would not go in with preconceptions, i.e. "this is gonna suck". I had made the same promise in last night's blog, when I said that I would not go to the concert as a curmudgeon, and in fact, I was curious about the show because I had read so many good reviews from other cities, which I chalked up to Newbie Fans who don't know jack about the history of Judas Priest. I mentioned that too in a recent blog.
So I got there, I went in, I had a good seat : dead center, about 2/3rds of the way back in a medium sized venue (5K). Saxon was just beginning their set, and they were damn good too. I loved the "Wheels Of Steel" album in 1981, and they played the title track. They also played "Denim & Leather", another famous song by them. Me and Mr. D used to blast Saxon on a regular basis back in the NWOBHM days. Google the initials if need be. I also accompanied my friend Jon S. on an interview of Saxon back in 1983 (I was his photographer), and I have a photo of myself sitting with singer Biff Byford from that session. Biff was in powerful voice tonight and he is still bringing it live, 35 years later. Overall, Saxon played almost an hour and the crowd ate 'em up. They got a response usually reserved for headliners.
Okay, so here's the deal with what I will call "Judas Priest 2.0". If you go to the show, and you accept them on their own terms and don't make comparisons to original Judas Priest, then you will be blown off the map. That is what happened to me - no exaggeration - and I was prepared to hate it. The energy of the new band is reminiscent of the way Priest was in the early 80s, when they could blow anyone off the stage (except maybe Van Halen). But yeah, Priest from 81 to 86, fuggettabouddit.
You'd walk out of their shows thinking, "Surely you jest", because you couldn't believe what you had just seen.
That level of energy is back in the band now, incredible as it may seem. It's like the band went to Oxford and hired a couple of PhDs from the Judas Priest College of Metal for their new guitarists. Something has happened to Rob Halford also; he has gotten his voice back to about 92% of what it once was. If you are a JP fan who has seen him live since he rejoined the band in 2005, you know he was good on the first reunion tours, very good in fact, but he appeared overweight and his high range was mostly gone.
Rob must have gone back to the Harry Potter School for 5 Octave Wizardry, because - and I kid you not - he is singing like it is 1982 again.
They played a version of "Free Wheel Burning" from the "Defenders Of The Faith" album that blew the roof off the place. The setlist included many songs from way back into the classic catalogue, and you can Google that too if you are interested.
There was a drawback or two, just minor complaints, that I will mention tomorrow night because the hour is very late and I must sleep so that I can continue to function.
But basically, I got more than my 90 bucks worth.
What I got was one of the best Judas Priest shows I've ever seen, albeit in a whole new version of the band, which I was prepared to reject.
Believe me, if it had even remotely sucked, I would be the first to tell you, because I revere the original Judas Priest. You have no idea how much.
But not only did it not suck, it was phenomenal in it's own way.
And, Glenn Tipton came out for the three song encore.
Thank You, Lord.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Art Bell + Way Outs + Kolchak + Burroughs Footprints
No movie tonight, cause when I got home at 6:45 on my evening break, I listened to a classic re-broadcast of an Art Bell show from 1998. After Art passed away last week, Grimsley made the discovery that a station out in Bakersfield (maybe run by the Persian Vampire Girl?) plays classic Art Bell shows every Saturday night from 6-10pm. The show is called "Somewhere In Time", which was also the title of Art's favorite movie, which starred Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. I am nostalgic for Art right now, and though I haven't the time to listen to the whole show, I did listen until 8pm. Art's guest was Whitley Strieber, of "Communion" fame, and they were getting Wayyy Out There in their discussion.
That reminds me of The Way Outs. Remember when The Way Outs were on "The Flintstones"? They played a song about "going Way Out", and because it was on "The Flintstones" I never forgot it. Anything that was on "Gilligan's Island" or "The Flintstones" is chiseled into my brain, lol, and so from time to time I think about The Way Outs.
Here is the Youtube link to their Flintstones appearance :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wJvwXLEt_E
You will probably have to copy and paste it, cause I don't believe that links show up on the blog. Or you can go to Youtube and put "Way Outs Flintstones" into the search engine, but then you will get several clips, many of which are not as crisp as the one posted above. So use that one. I will put it on FB later tonight as well.
You have got to start watching your Flintstones. If you are already doing so, please disregard this message.
After Art Bell, I watched an episode of "Kolchak : The Night Stalker" which I own on dvd. The episode was called "The Werewolf", and as always when reviewing Kolchak, I love the titles because then I don't have to explain very much. This Werewolf was a passenger on a cruise ship of all places. It was a Swinging Singles cruise, and maybe the producers of "The Love Boat" got the idea for their show from this episode. Stranger things have happened, but anyway, what was cool about the cruise ship was that they used the Queen Mary as their location. I was on board the QM once, way back in 1982, and so I recognised the hallways and the deck, and the ballroom too. I am glad that The Werewolf was not on board when I was there, because in the "Kolchak" episode he was tearing people limb from limb. Kolchak had to stop him with a silver bullet, and first he had to find some silver.
I am still working on "Forbidden Archaeology", and if you have the time and the inclination, I would suggest that you Google the "Burroughs Footprints".
If you've read the blog in the past, you know that I don't believe in the Theory Of Evolution, especially as it concerns humans. I am also not a Creationist, and I don't have any ideology concerning how Homo Sapiens came to be, or at what time Homo Sapiens appeared on Earth. But in reading the book, which has had quite an effect on the academic explanation of evolution, I am seeing that there is a surplus of evidence that shows Homo Sapiens' presence on Earth in Tertiary times, which if true would completely disprove evolution, which - once again - is the idea that every living thing developed from a single celled organism.
People just accept evolution as truth, because it's what we were taught in school.
"This is how Man came to be".
But what we weren't taught was how much fossil evidence for the presence of Tertiary Man was suppressed in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, at a time when Darwinism was taking hold and being forced upon the whole of anthropological science, so much so that dissenting archaeologists were actively and punitively discredited, and their discoveries, of ancient human remains, were ignored.
Darwinism, my friends, is something you believe in because you have been told it is so, and it is something you don't give much thought to because anthropology is not your major subject.
All of that is fine. It's not my major subject either, just something that I recently took an interest in out of my curiosity over the Darwin conundrum.
I am only suggesting you take a look at the Burroughs Footprints, and I could give you other examples, but not tonight. I am certain that evolution, as it concerns human beings, will be debunked in the next fifty to one hundred years. In fact, it has already been debunked, but because scientists hold fast to their discoveries, they are loathe to admit they are wrong.
Science is supposed to be fact based and emotionless, but in reality it is as ego driven as any other human endeavor.
"Darwin says we come from apes". "I believe it". "I don't believe your evidence that shows otherwise, and I will ignore it". "My science grant depends on my sticking to the official story".
That's how it goes in the science world, sad but true.
Well anyway, that's all I know for tonight.
Watch The Way Outs on "The Flintstones" and Google the "Burroughs Footprints".
My Cinematheque movie recommendation for tonight comes from our Ingmar Bergman retrospective in Fall 2010. The title is "Smiles Of A Summer Night". One of his more lighthearted films, it has romantic themes that are worthy of Shakespeare. See it soon.
As for myself, I will see you in the morning and then again after church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
That reminds me of The Way Outs. Remember when The Way Outs were on "The Flintstones"? They played a song about "going Way Out", and because it was on "The Flintstones" I never forgot it. Anything that was on "Gilligan's Island" or "The Flintstones" is chiseled into my brain, lol, and so from time to time I think about The Way Outs.
Here is the Youtube link to their Flintstones appearance :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wJvwXLEt_E
You will probably have to copy and paste it, cause I don't believe that links show up on the blog. Or you can go to Youtube and put "Way Outs Flintstones" into the search engine, but then you will get several clips, many of which are not as crisp as the one posted above. So use that one. I will put it on FB later tonight as well.
You have got to start watching your Flintstones. If you are already doing so, please disregard this message.
After Art Bell, I watched an episode of "Kolchak : The Night Stalker" which I own on dvd. The episode was called "The Werewolf", and as always when reviewing Kolchak, I love the titles because then I don't have to explain very much. This Werewolf was a passenger on a cruise ship of all places. It was a Swinging Singles cruise, and maybe the producers of "The Love Boat" got the idea for their show from this episode. Stranger things have happened, but anyway, what was cool about the cruise ship was that they used the Queen Mary as their location. I was on board the QM once, way back in 1982, and so I recognised the hallways and the deck, and the ballroom too. I am glad that The Werewolf was not on board when I was there, because in the "Kolchak" episode he was tearing people limb from limb. Kolchak had to stop him with a silver bullet, and first he had to find some silver.
I am still working on "Forbidden Archaeology", and if you have the time and the inclination, I would suggest that you Google the "Burroughs Footprints".
If you've read the blog in the past, you know that I don't believe in the Theory Of Evolution, especially as it concerns humans. I am also not a Creationist, and I don't have any ideology concerning how Homo Sapiens came to be, or at what time Homo Sapiens appeared on Earth. But in reading the book, which has had quite an effect on the academic explanation of evolution, I am seeing that there is a surplus of evidence that shows Homo Sapiens' presence on Earth in Tertiary times, which if true would completely disprove evolution, which - once again - is the idea that every living thing developed from a single celled organism.
People just accept evolution as truth, because it's what we were taught in school.
"This is how Man came to be".
But what we weren't taught was how much fossil evidence for the presence of Tertiary Man was suppressed in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, at a time when Darwinism was taking hold and being forced upon the whole of anthropological science, so much so that dissenting archaeologists were actively and punitively discredited, and their discoveries, of ancient human remains, were ignored.
Darwinism, my friends, is something you believe in because you have been told it is so, and it is something you don't give much thought to because anthropology is not your major subject.
All of that is fine. It's not my major subject either, just something that I recently took an interest in out of my curiosity over the Darwin conundrum.
I am only suggesting you take a look at the Burroughs Footprints, and I could give you other examples, but not tonight. I am certain that evolution, as it concerns human beings, will be debunked in the next fifty to one hundred years. In fact, it has already been debunked, but because scientists hold fast to their discoveries, they are loathe to admit they are wrong.
Science is supposed to be fact based and emotionless, but in reality it is as ego driven as any other human endeavor.
"Darwin says we come from apes". "I believe it". "I don't believe your evidence that shows otherwise, and I will ignore it". "My science grant depends on my sticking to the official story".
That's how it goes in the science world, sad but true.
Well anyway, that's all I know for tonight.
Watch The Way Outs on "The Flintstones" and Google the "Burroughs Footprints".
My Cinematheque movie recommendation for tonight comes from our Ingmar Bergman retrospective in Fall 2010. The title is "Smiles Of A Summer Night". One of his more lighthearted films, it has romantic themes that are worthy of Shakespeare. See it soon.
As for myself, I will see you in the morning and then again after church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Part Of "A Girl Walks Home Alone" + "Twin Peaks" (Ep. 11) + Judas Priest & The Real Thing
No movie tonight, though I did try to watch one called "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night"(2015). It was recommended to me in a library search for horror films, and is the story of a young female vampire who happens to be Persian. One immediate draw of the film that hooked me right away was the ultra sharp black and white photography, which gives the film a noirish quality. I guess this is digital b&w, though I didn't know there was such a thing, and it really looks great, with black tones like coal, soft textured whites and silvery grey shades in between. The female director Ana Lily Amanpour really knows what she is doing with the camera and her use of sound. She creates nighttime atmosphere, dark and dangerous. Though this is a Persian film, I got the sense right away that it wasn't shot in Iran. The locations looked like California Boondocks, and sure enough, when I IMDB'ed the movie I saw the location was Bakersfield. So this is not a movie from Iran, but one that is made by second generation Persians from England and California.
The 30 minutes I watched had Atmosphere Galore and a hypnotic pace. There was a lot going for it, including a menacing pimp/drug dealer character that, as an American, you wouldn't think to associate with Iranian culture. Here in America, we are given the impression that the cultures of the Middle East are ascetic, but then if you've seen the animated movie "Persepolis" from a few years ago, the female protagonist wears a hajib by day but blasts Iron Maiden in her headphones by night, at home in her bedroom. So go figure.
In "Girl Walks Home" the female characters do worse than listen to heavy metal. I only watched the first 30 minutes, in which the main characters on screen before the appearance of the vampire are the pimp/drug dealer, his prostitute, and a middle aged heroin addict who owes the dealer a lot of money.
The problem with the movie, for me, wasn't the culture shock, but - the Usual Suspect once again - the lack of story. This is a technically stunning film, with competent acting and style in spades.
Unfortunately, not much seemed to be happening after 30 minutes, and so I bailed out.
I need more than style. I need story, first and foremost. I watch too many classic films that do have story to force myself to sit through one that does not, no matter how good it looks. I may give the film another chance in a few days. I've got it checked out from the Libe til next Wednesday. Don't hold me to any promises, however.
After I pulled the movie, I watched Episode 11 of "Twin Peaks". Man, are things ever getting weird now. At eleven hours in, I think it is safe to say that the 2017 "Twin Peaks" is a horror story, full of violence and very unusual science fiction that has to do - seemingly - with the Dirty and Frightening Homeless Man character type that Lynch created for "Mulholland Drive". The sequences in which these characters (several of them) appear are so strange that only Lynch could explain their meaning, though in "Mulholland Drive" a large part of the function of the Homeless Man character seems to be the anxiety he generates in anyone who would unwittingly discover him behind his dumpster.
But in "Twin Peaks" (2017), the similar Homeless Characters are far less benign.
It is a scary show, full of criminals and dopers and maniacs and people on edge, and all the supernatural stuff I've been mentioning. It is NOT your father's Twin Peaks, which was folksy even in it's weirdness and modified violence.
We live in strange times, and I guess that David Lynch - a great artist and man of intelligence - is making a comment on modern life with his abrupt change in narrative, to focus on the crude, psychotic and brutal.
Strange times indeed, and can't believe that I am going to see "Judas Priest" (quote unquote) in two nights, and I'm not very excited about it. I'm gonna go, and I like the new album, but there comes a time in life when things have to Stand For Something.
I must ask : what is a band? Is it it's members, or is it it's music? Or some crazy in between combination of both?
I know that in classical music, nothing is played in concert by Beethoven, or Bach or Mozart. That's because those guys have been dead for a long time, and also their music was written for ensembles or orchestras to begin with. They weren't "guys in bands".
So then : how many members of any given band are vital to that band being That Band?
I guess it varies, depending on the band and the point of view of the fan who is answering the question.
Judas Priest, from what I am recently seeing online, has a lot of newbie fans who know nothing of Glenn Tipton and KK Downing, two legends of rock music. The newcomers only know The Metal God Rob Halford, and while I love Rob too (who doesn't), he was, and is, not the entirety of what made Judas Priest so great.
A band is A Band because of the chemistry of the members who initially made it great.
Band members can sometimes be changed with no ill effect, but most often they cannot, no matter how competent the musicians doing the replacing.
Otherwise, why not have four shredders form a new version of The Beatles?
"Hell Yeah"! say The Newbies. Fans with no concept of a band's history.
Well, I will go on Sunday night, cause I already paid big bucks for my ticket before the Glenn Tipton announcement was made. I promise I won't be a curmudgeon, even though I won't be seeing the real Judas Priest.
All I ask, and hope for in the future, is that somebody out there will care about authenticity, and if something isn't authentic anymore, just shut it down.
Don't fake stuff.
Don't substitute style for story.
Tell the truth in life, or at least try to.
God Bless Judas Priest. /////
My Cinematheque movie recommendation for tonight comes from our second retrospective in Spring 2010, when we watched the films of Federico Fellini. One of my favorites of his is a film called "Nights Of Cabiria", starring the incredible Giulietta Masina, who was Fellini's wife.
Check it out if you are feeling adventurous. It's a tremendous movie.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The 30 minutes I watched had Atmosphere Galore and a hypnotic pace. There was a lot going for it, including a menacing pimp/drug dealer character that, as an American, you wouldn't think to associate with Iranian culture. Here in America, we are given the impression that the cultures of the Middle East are ascetic, but then if you've seen the animated movie "Persepolis" from a few years ago, the female protagonist wears a hajib by day but blasts Iron Maiden in her headphones by night, at home in her bedroom. So go figure.
In "Girl Walks Home" the female characters do worse than listen to heavy metal. I only watched the first 30 minutes, in which the main characters on screen before the appearance of the vampire are the pimp/drug dealer, his prostitute, and a middle aged heroin addict who owes the dealer a lot of money.
The problem with the movie, for me, wasn't the culture shock, but - the Usual Suspect once again - the lack of story. This is a technically stunning film, with competent acting and style in spades.
Unfortunately, not much seemed to be happening after 30 minutes, and so I bailed out.
I need more than style. I need story, first and foremost. I watch too many classic films that do have story to force myself to sit through one that does not, no matter how good it looks. I may give the film another chance in a few days. I've got it checked out from the Libe til next Wednesday. Don't hold me to any promises, however.
After I pulled the movie, I watched Episode 11 of "Twin Peaks". Man, are things ever getting weird now. At eleven hours in, I think it is safe to say that the 2017 "Twin Peaks" is a horror story, full of violence and very unusual science fiction that has to do - seemingly - with the Dirty and Frightening Homeless Man character type that Lynch created for "Mulholland Drive". The sequences in which these characters (several of them) appear are so strange that only Lynch could explain their meaning, though in "Mulholland Drive" a large part of the function of the Homeless Man character seems to be the anxiety he generates in anyone who would unwittingly discover him behind his dumpster.
But in "Twin Peaks" (2017), the similar Homeless Characters are far less benign.
It is a scary show, full of criminals and dopers and maniacs and people on edge, and all the supernatural stuff I've been mentioning. It is NOT your father's Twin Peaks, which was folksy even in it's weirdness and modified violence.
We live in strange times, and I guess that David Lynch - a great artist and man of intelligence - is making a comment on modern life with his abrupt change in narrative, to focus on the crude, psychotic and brutal.
Strange times indeed, and can't believe that I am going to see "Judas Priest" (quote unquote) in two nights, and I'm not very excited about it. I'm gonna go, and I like the new album, but there comes a time in life when things have to Stand For Something.
I must ask : what is a band? Is it it's members, or is it it's music? Or some crazy in between combination of both?
I know that in classical music, nothing is played in concert by Beethoven, or Bach or Mozart. That's because those guys have been dead for a long time, and also their music was written for ensembles or orchestras to begin with. They weren't "guys in bands".
So then : how many members of any given band are vital to that band being That Band?
I guess it varies, depending on the band and the point of view of the fan who is answering the question.
Judas Priest, from what I am recently seeing online, has a lot of newbie fans who know nothing of Glenn Tipton and KK Downing, two legends of rock music. The newcomers only know The Metal God Rob Halford, and while I love Rob too (who doesn't), he was, and is, not the entirety of what made Judas Priest so great.
A band is A Band because of the chemistry of the members who initially made it great.
Band members can sometimes be changed with no ill effect, but most often they cannot, no matter how competent the musicians doing the replacing.
Otherwise, why not have four shredders form a new version of The Beatles?
"Hell Yeah"! say The Newbies. Fans with no concept of a band's history.
Well, I will go on Sunday night, cause I already paid big bucks for my ticket before the Glenn Tipton announcement was made. I promise I won't be a curmudgeon, even though I won't be seeing the real Judas Priest.
All I ask, and hope for in the future, is that somebody out there will care about authenticity, and if something isn't authentic anymore, just shut it down.
Don't fake stuff.
Don't substitute style for story.
Tell the truth in life, or at least try to.
God Bless Judas Priest. /////
My Cinematheque movie recommendation for tonight comes from our second retrospective in Spring 2010, when we watched the films of Federico Fellini. One of my favorites of his is a film called "Nights Of Cabiria", starring the incredible Giulietta Masina, who was Fellini's wife.
Check it out if you are feeling adventurous. It's a tremendous movie.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 20, 2018
"Man Of Iron" by Andrzej Wajda + Haircut + First Film Recommendation
Tonight at CSUN we saw "Man Of Iron" (1981) by Andrzej Wajda, the story of the struggle for Solidarnosc (The Solidarity Movement) in 1980 in Poland, as led by the workers at the Gdansk Shipyard. I think I have mentioned this before, probably in my review of "Man Of Marble", but I remember when Solidarnosc was in the news every day, and Lech Walesa was a household name. He was an electrician at the shipyard who led the worker's strike against the communist government, and he became a national hero who was ultimately elected President of Poland in the 1990s.
The movie was not about Walesa, per se, though he is seen in sections of the film, from stock news footage and also because director Wajda shot some of the movie at the shipyard, while the strike was happening. The story, however, is a continuation of Wajda's earlier "union" film, "Man Of Marble". "Man Of Iron" picks up where "Marble" left off, as the son of the fictional Worker Hero from "Marble" takes a job at the shipyard and becomes involved in the leadership of the strike.
In the main plot, a television producer is co-opted by local government bigwigs to infiltrate the strike, interview the "Man Of Iron" and make him look bad on TV. Thus the strike will be discredited. But the strikers have locked down the shipyard and won't let the producer in, nor any Polish media because they don't trust their own reporters, who they feel are all government shills.
The TV producer is in a bind, because if he doesn't come up with a derogatory portrayal of the union workers and their leader, he will be in deep trouble with the local party bosses, who are nothing more than gangsters.
That is all the plot I will give you. "Man Of Iron" is another Wajda Political Epic that, in this case, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. That's like winning the Oscar for Best Picture.
For myself, while I give it Two Thumbs Up with no reservations, I will rank it behind it's predecessor "Man Of Marble", simply because that film truly had an epic scope, and while "Iron" aspires to a similar sweeping scale, I feel that it fell just a tad short, simply because so much of the story was just told in dialogue between two characters at a time. It felt like exposition in many scenes; i.e. the characters are "explaining" the story to you through their conversation. "Man Of Iron" was very good, but did not have the location shooting or action that made "Marble" so grand.
Overall, I highly recommend the films of Andrzej Wajda, and I am thinking that this retrospective has been one of my very favorites of the 18 (!) we have seen over the past nine years. I have loved them all, but other favorites have been Yasujiro Ozu, and of course Robert Bresson (my favorite director), and Satyajit Ray. Buster Keaton and Orson Welles, too. And Powell & Pressburger. You should seek out films by these directors, and others, if you want to get a view into the greatness of cinema. I could go on and on, as you know......
I really love movies. ///
I got my hair cut this morn, which always feels good and looks good too. These days I will let it grow for 8 to 10 weeks, but then I've gotta get it cut, just because my hair grows too crazy these days, curlier on one side than the other, and it doesn't have the quality to grow it too long. Plus, I don't wanna do that anyway. I looked pretty good with long hair through my 30s, but now I look best with "longish" hair or shorter. Not a regular haircut, though. Just a little bit more than that.
Well, the heck with it. Enough about me.
Maybe I will give you One Film Recommendation Per Night, from each director we have seen since the beginning of the Cinematheque. I will start with Jean-Luc Godard, who was the subject of our very first retrospective, back in September 2009. Watch "Band Of Outsiders" (1964) by him, for an introduction into Outre Cinema, in which a movie does not have to make sense to make sense.
Give it a shot, if you dare.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The movie was not about Walesa, per se, though he is seen in sections of the film, from stock news footage and also because director Wajda shot some of the movie at the shipyard, while the strike was happening. The story, however, is a continuation of Wajda's earlier "union" film, "Man Of Marble". "Man Of Iron" picks up where "Marble" left off, as the son of the fictional Worker Hero from "Marble" takes a job at the shipyard and becomes involved in the leadership of the strike.
In the main plot, a television producer is co-opted by local government bigwigs to infiltrate the strike, interview the "Man Of Iron" and make him look bad on TV. Thus the strike will be discredited. But the strikers have locked down the shipyard and won't let the producer in, nor any Polish media because they don't trust their own reporters, who they feel are all government shills.
The TV producer is in a bind, because if he doesn't come up with a derogatory portrayal of the union workers and their leader, he will be in deep trouble with the local party bosses, who are nothing more than gangsters.
That is all the plot I will give you. "Man Of Iron" is another Wajda Political Epic that, in this case, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. That's like winning the Oscar for Best Picture.
For myself, while I give it Two Thumbs Up with no reservations, I will rank it behind it's predecessor "Man Of Marble", simply because that film truly had an epic scope, and while "Iron" aspires to a similar sweeping scale, I feel that it fell just a tad short, simply because so much of the story was just told in dialogue between two characters at a time. It felt like exposition in many scenes; i.e. the characters are "explaining" the story to you through their conversation. "Man Of Iron" was very good, but did not have the location shooting or action that made "Marble" so grand.
Overall, I highly recommend the films of Andrzej Wajda, and I am thinking that this retrospective has been one of my very favorites of the 18 (!) we have seen over the past nine years. I have loved them all, but other favorites have been Yasujiro Ozu, and of course Robert Bresson (my favorite director), and Satyajit Ray. Buster Keaton and Orson Welles, too. And Powell & Pressburger. You should seek out films by these directors, and others, if you want to get a view into the greatness of cinema. I could go on and on, as you know......
I really love movies. ///
I got my hair cut this morn, which always feels good and looks good too. These days I will let it grow for 8 to 10 weeks, but then I've gotta get it cut, just because my hair grows too crazy these days, curlier on one side than the other, and it doesn't have the quality to grow it too long. Plus, I don't wanna do that anyway. I looked pretty good with long hair through my 30s, but now I look best with "longish" hair or shorter. Not a regular haircut, though. Just a little bit more than that.
Well, the heck with it. Enough about me.
Maybe I will give you One Film Recommendation Per Night, from each director we have seen since the beginning of the Cinematheque. I will start with Jean-Luc Godard, who was the subject of our very first retrospective, back in September 2009. Watch "Band Of Outsiders" (1964) by him, for an introduction into Outre Cinema, in which a movie does not have to make sense to make sense.
Give it a shot, if you dare.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 19, 2018
"They Made Me A Fugitive" + Veddy Brrittish + Eye Socket + "Notepainting"
Tonight I finally watched a movie, an excellent British noir from 1947 called "They Made Me A Fugitive". Trevor Howard, noted for many classic performances in films like "The Third Man" and "Brief Encounter", stars as an RAF officer who is back home after the war. He is bored with civilian life and looking for excitement, so he joins a gang of smugglers who operate out of a funeral parlor, using coffins as crates to hide their contraband. The smuggling group is run by a slick, debonair sociopath nicknamed Narcy (short for "Narcissus" because he is in love with himself). Narcy is played by an actor named Griffith Jones, whom I had never previously seen, but he was so great in this role - playing a downright awful character - that I had to go straight to IMDB when the movie ended to find out more about him. And, just as I'd suspected, he was from RADA (the premier dramatic training school in England) and he had also been the head of the Royal Shakespeare Society for a while.
What a great actor!
Anyhow, Trevor Howard should not have involved himself with this group of lowlifes, because he gets framed by Griffith Jones on the very first job he helps to pull off. Howard is made to be the Fall Guy for the murder of a police officer, and he winds up sentenced to 15 years in prison. While he is in there, he is visited by the girlfriend of Griffith Jones, played by the stunning Sally Gray. She knows that Trevor Howard is innocent of the policeman's murder, and she also knows that her boyfriend is an evil guy. During the visit, she vows to help Trevor Howard prove his innocence, and in the process, a love interest is developed, which is important if not imperative for Noir films (not to mention many other types of films).
Very soon after Sally Gray's prison visit, Trevor Howard escapes. Prison escapes were relatively common in the movies in those days, and as you can see, that is how a title like "They Made Me A Fugitive" is derived. None of what has happened is Trevor Howard's fault - except that he shouldn't have joined that gang in the first place.
But he didn't kill the cop, he got framed for it, and so he had to escape from prison (which must have been fairly easy to do in the movies) to prove he didn't do it.
Therefore, he didn't make himself a fugitive; they did. Or more properly : They (with a capital T).
So there you have the name of the movie : "They Made Me A Fugitive". It's the character telling you straight from the horse's mouth, "Hey, listen! I'm innocent! I didn't do it, and I had to escape from prison because it said so in the script, and in Noir Theory it was the only way I could Return Home To Prove My Innocence and Win Back The Girl".
So, he is telling you all of that in just the five words of the title. I love it. :)
It's a really tight film, too, with no extraneous scenes. The story just continues to build until it reaches an explosive conclusion, which of course I shant reveal to you, if for no other reason than it gives me an excuse to use "shant", which I take every available opportunity to use. In this case, the movie was British, so I feel my use of "shant" was warranted.
Two Very Big Thumbs Up for "They Made Me A Fugitive" (those bastards!). A noir right up there with the best of the American offerings, and veddy Brrrittish to boot. Gotta roll them "r"s when you say "British", and use "d"s instead of "r"s in words like "very".
Are you getting the hang of it?
"Veddy good, then". :)
Not much else to report. Felt a little fatigued today, just a biorhythm thing I think, and my left eye has been bugging me a bit lately. It feels like my eye socket muscles are all stretched out and sore. I think it has to do with one eye being less focused than the other, and in my case I think the condition has presented itself because of eye strain and because I don't get enough sleep. So on days when nothing is scheduled, I am trying my best to sleep in.
I got three new Frank Zappa cds in the mail today : "Weasels Ripped My Flesh", "Ruben and The Jets" and "Burnt Weeny Sandwich". I owned "Burnt Weeny" on vinyl as a teenager, but I had never heard the other two. This eve I listened to "Weasels" before I watched the movie. It was a good combination.
Lastly, Elizabeth if you are reading I wanted to say congratulations on the one year anniversary of "Notepainting". It is a beautiful, creative album, from the music to the arrangement of songs, and right down to the awesome cover art.
Be aware of what you have created; know what you can do, what you are capable of.
I hope you are considering more music in the future. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxo :):)
What a great actor!
Anyhow, Trevor Howard should not have involved himself with this group of lowlifes, because he gets framed by Griffith Jones on the very first job he helps to pull off. Howard is made to be the Fall Guy for the murder of a police officer, and he winds up sentenced to 15 years in prison. While he is in there, he is visited by the girlfriend of Griffith Jones, played by the stunning Sally Gray. She knows that Trevor Howard is innocent of the policeman's murder, and she also knows that her boyfriend is an evil guy. During the visit, she vows to help Trevor Howard prove his innocence, and in the process, a love interest is developed, which is important if not imperative for Noir films (not to mention many other types of films).
Very soon after Sally Gray's prison visit, Trevor Howard escapes. Prison escapes were relatively common in the movies in those days, and as you can see, that is how a title like "They Made Me A Fugitive" is derived. None of what has happened is Trevor Howard's fault - except that he shouldn't have joined that gang in the first place.
But he didn't kill the cop, he got framed for it, and so he had to escape from prison (which must have been fairly easy to do in the movies) to prove he didn't do it.
Therefore, he didn't make himself a fugitive; they did. Or more properly : They (with a capital T).
So there you have the name of the movie : "They Made Me A Fugitive". It's the character telling you straight from the horse's mouth, "Hey, listen! I'm innocent! I didn't do it, and I had to escape from prison because it said so in the script, and in Noir Theory it was the only way I could Return Home To Prove My Innocence and Win Back The Girl".
So, he is telling you all of that in just the five words of the title. I love it. :)
It's a really tight film, too, with no extraneous scenes. The story just continues to build until it reaches an explosive conclusion, which of course I shant reveal to you, if for no other reason than it gives me an excuse to use "shant", which I take every available opportunity to use. In this case, the movie was British, so I feel my use of "shant" was warranted.
Two Very Big Thumbs Up for "They Made Me A Fugitive" (those bastards!). A noir right up there with the best of the American offerings, and veddy Brrrittish to boot. Gotta roll them "r"s when you say "British", and use "d"s instead of "r"s in words like "very".
Are you getting the hang of it?
"Veddy good, then". :)
Not much else to report. Felt a little fatigued today, just a biorhythm thing I think, and my left eye has been bugging me a bit lately. It feels like my eye socket muscles are all stretched out and sore. I think it has to do with one eye being less focused than the other, and in my case I think the condition has presented itself because of eye strain and because I don't get enough sleep. So on days when nothing is scheduled, I am trying my best to sleep in.
I got three new Frank Zappa cds in the mail today : "Weasels Ripped My Flesh", "Ruben and The Jets" and "Burnt Weeny Sandwich". I owned "Burnt Weeny" on vinyl as a teenager, but I had never heard the other two. This eve I listened to "Weasels" before I watched the movie. It was a good combination.
Lastly, Elizabeth if you are reading I wanted to say congratulations on the one year anniversary of "Notepainting". It is a beautiful, creative album, from the music to the arrangement of songs, and right down to the awesome cover art.
Be aware of what you have created; know what you can do, what you are capable of.
I hope you are considering more music in the future. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxo :):)
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Trying To Save The Cinematheque + Focus Group At CSUN + Let's Talk About 1989
Today I did something quite a bit different, for me anyway. I participated in a focus group at CSUN, a roundtable discussion - made up up several tables of people in a conference room - that was headed up by two facilitators from outside the University. The overall subject was "The Future Of The Mike Curb College of Art", and the participants included CSUN professors, including Professor Tim of the Cinematheque, students, and also members of the community. I fell into the last category as did many of my fellow patrons of the Thursday Night film screenings. Professor Tim had put put the word out that this meeting was to take place, and it was great that so many of the Cinematheque fans showed up.
They sat us at tables in groups of six, and we were given twenty minutes to discuss subtopics of three different categories : "Vision", "Values" and "Mission". Each table would discuss a category and the subtopics involved, and then after twenty minutes the facilitators would stop us and have everyone get up and change tables, like in musical chairs. That way everyone wound up in different discussion groups each of the three times the table seatings were changed.
The meeting was two hours long, and was meant to include every department of the Curb Arts College, meaning music, theater, etc.
What wound up happening was that it more or less turned into a referendum on the future of the Thursday Night Cinematheque. Wow!
We really did good, and I hope we made a difference. We were bolstered by the fact that, just this morning, there was an internet article about the proposed cancellation of the Cinematheque from the Los Angeles Daily News, written by Bob Strauss, one of the major film critics in our city.
Wow, again! A well-known film critic wrote about the demise of the Thursday Night Retrospectives. And many of us long time fans showed up to voice our support.
I was proud of myself (which I know it is not cool to be, because it sounds egotistic), but I was anyway, because I am - as you know - a relatively introverted person, but I spoke out and felt comfortable doing so. To CSUN's credit, they set up a very constructive environment for everyone to have their voices heard. It was really cool. We stated our case in an articulate manner, with passion, and.....just maybe....we got the attention of the Dean who can have some influence over the decision to cancel the Cinematheque series, and maybe that decision can be reversed.
At least there is some hope, and we will see what happens.
But wow! Yeah, discussion groups. Focus groups, with professional facilitators. (Refreshments too).
It was something totally new to me, and I liked it.
Let's have a discussion group about 1989! We can have participants, and CIA agents, and community members who lived on Etiwanda Street, or near the Wilbur Wash, or at Concord Square. And we can have the same facilitator ladies who did the CSUN discussion today, because they were great and they got positive results. They got people talking about solutions to problems.
That's exactly what I have been trying to do for almost twenty years, concerning the topic in question. I've been trying to get people to simply discuss it.
That's all.
Of course, I've had zero success, and I've had to resort to sending FOIA requests to secretive agencies, but after today I believe that one day, a discussion of the subject may be possible.
I am semi-jesting here, because I also know how frightening and confusing the subject has been to everyone besides myself. I am therefore pretty sure there won't be a round table discussion of it any time soon.
But maybe the ice can at least be broken before too much more time elapses.
Time is all we've got, guys.
I believe in the power of words, and discussion, and conversation. I believe in listening as well as speaking my mind. All my life I have tried to be a good listener, and to really listen to what people have to say, because it is only by doing so that I can take another person's opinions and feelings to heart. Then I can respond, and by talk and response, a dialogue is created.
Dialogue is diplomacy. Once a dialogue has been established, anything is possible.
The whole world opens up, for everyone involved.
Dialogue builds trust and eliminates fear.
And that's all I've ever been trying to do. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
They sat us at tables in groups of six, and we were given twenty minutes to discuss subtopics of three different categories : "Vision", "Values" and "Mission". Each table would discuss a category and the subtopics involved, and then after twenty minutes the facilitators would stop us and have everyone get up and change tables, like in musical chairs. That way everyone wound up in different discussion groups each of the three times the table seatings were changed.
The meeting was two hours long, and was meant to include every department of the Curb Arts College, meaning music, theater, etc.
What wound up happening was that it more or less turned into a referendum on the future of the Thursday Night Cinematheque. Wow!
We really did good, and I hope we made a difference. We were bolstered by the fact that, just this morning, there was an internet article about the proposed cancellation of the Cinematheque from the Los Angeles Daily News, written by Bob Strauss, one of the major film critics in our city.
Wow, again! A well-known film critic wrote about the demise of the Thursday Night Retrospectives. And many of us long time fans showed up to voice our support.
I was proud of myself (which I know it is not cool to be, because it sounds egotistic), but I was anyway, because I am - as you know - a relatively introverted person, but I spoke out and felt comfortable doing so. To CSUN's credit, they set up a very constructive environment for everyone to have their voices heard. It was really cool. We stated our case in an articulate manner, with passion, and.....just maybe....we got the attention of the Dean who can have some influence over the decision to cancel the Cinematheque series, and maybe that decision can be reversed.
At least there is some hope, and we will see what happens.
But wow! Yeah, discussion groups. Focus groups, with professional facilitators. (Refreshments too).
It was something totally new to me, and I liked it.
Let's have a discussion group about 1989! We can have participants, and CIA agents, and community members who lived on Etiwanda Street, or near the Wilbur Wash, or at Concord Square. And we can have the same facilitator ladies who did the CSUN discussion today, because they were great and they got positive results. They got people talking about solutions to problems.
That's exactly what I have been trying to do for almost twenty years, concerning the topic in question. I've been trying to get people to simply discuss it.
That's all.
Of course, I've had zero success, and I've had to resort to sending FOIA requests to secretive agencies, but after today I believe that one day, a discussion of the subject may be possible.
I am semi-jesting here, because I also know how frightening and confusing the subject has been to everyone besides myself. I am therefore pretty sure there won't be a round table discussion of it any time soon.
But maybe the ice can at least be broken before too much more time elapses.
Time is all we've got, guys.
I believe in the power of words, and discussion, and conversation. I believe in listening as well as speaking my mind. All my life I have tried to be a good listener, and to really listen to what people have to say, because it is only by doing so that I can take another person's opinions and feelings to heart. Then I can respond, and by talk and response, a dialogue is created.
Dialogue is diplomacy. Once a dialogue has been established, anything is possible.
The whole world opens up, for everyone involved.
Dialogue builds trust and eliminates fear.
And that's all I've ever been trying to do. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Pebbles In The Sandstone + James Comey + More FOIA Requests To Come
I had a nice birthday today, with many nice greetings and wishes from family and friends, including those on FB. It was also a regular workday, but I did manage to get in a hike out at Santa Susana, and the day was gorgeous if a bit windy. The wind knows how much I love it and wanted to help me celebrate : "Happy Birthday, Adam! from The Wind".
This was mostly a geology hike, just because of my "Forbidden Archaeology" book which I am still working on. Though it is dry reading, it is incredibly fascinating, and it has me thinking about the age of things when I go on my hikes. At Aliso, for instance, I wonder about the age of the creek bed.
At Santa Susana, geologists say that the sandstone formations that make up the foundation of the mountains are 80 million years old, and that those giant boulders - made of compressed sand and weighing megatons - were once underwater. So the last few times I have gone there, since I started the book, I've been looking for fossils or fossil outlines in the boulders. Just stuff like the outline of a long-gone shell or plant.
There are places where you are pretty sure you are seeing such an outline, but nothing conclusive. I need an archaeologist to come with me so I will know what I am looking at. I did see some pieces of boulders that were broken open, and on the inside faces of these, you see small pebbles of various colors that are embedded in the sandstone. I touched those pebbles and you cannot budge them. What I wonder is how long they have been embedded? Many if not most of the giant boulders appear to be made up only of sandstone, with no visible embedded pebbles.
Anyhow, I am All Geologied Out because of this book (an observation I believe I've made before), and so when I touch those pebbles in the boulder, I wonder "how long have they been there"?, and the potential amount of time blows my mind. It just blows me off the map, really, to think that something could be sitting there in one place for any great length of time. I mean, at Santa Susana there are old horse troughs that are still in place that have been there for over a hundred years. That alone blows my mind, just because developers have changed so much of the landscape in Los Angeles since 1940 or so, and I am grateful and I guess a bit surprised that they have never gotten their hands on Santa Su. Hopefully the Indian history there will prevent them from ever trying.
But back to the pebbles in the sandstone.
Okay, you geologists. You are telling me that the sandstone boulders at Santa Susana are 80 million years old. I will take your word for it. If that is true, then how long have those pebbles been enmeshed inside the boulders?
What it looks like, is if the sandstone which makes up the boulder was at one point soft in consistency, like bread dough. And the pebbles look like raisins in the dough, spread out at random but more-or-less evenly spaced intervals, just as in a loaf of raisin bread.
If the sandstone was in malleable form at one point, like a dough, before being compressed by massive pressure, were the pebbles then trapped inside some of the formations while they hardened?
If so, have those pebbles been cemented inside those boulders for millions of years?
If that is the case, then I just blew my mind even more. Partly because I can reach out and touch the pebbles that I saw today, but even more because I am amazed by the prospect that something like the pebble boulder can sit wide out in the open in this modern age of history that we live in.
I have read, in some book or another (perhaps one of Dr. Farrell's) that the concept of "history", of the idea of "keeping track of things in chronological order", was only undertaken because, in the overall goings-on of human beings, there was always a structure of "winning" and "losing". Conquest and surrender. Fighting.
And at some point, somebody decided that it would be a good idea to start writing things down.
For a long time before that, nothing was written down. There was no writing. There was no concept of why yesterday was important, or at least why it was important enough to catalog.
The exploration of that idea will have to wait for another day, however.
It is the idea that something has been "sitting there" not just through our lifetimes but for eons.
Grim came over tonight to show me the James Comey interview, which he taped. You have probably seen it, and you know that we have a situation here in America that is untenable. Comey helped to elect Trump with his ill-timed last minute announcement about the Hillary Clinton email probe, but I think he is redeeming himself by writing his book and speaking out on national television against this charlatan.
On the FOIA front, I am gonna start preparing to make Privacy Act requests to the CIA, for deceased persons who were involved in 1989. People like Howard Schaller. One of the provisions of the Privacy Act is that records of deceased people are no longer protected by any of the FOIA regulations. Unfortunately, any classified records would still be protected and would probably generate another Glomar response if a person like Howard was inquired about. But I am gonna try anyway.
I won't start with Howard, though. I am gonna start with my Dad. I figure that, to keep things as secret as they have been for all this time, that somebody would've had to have spoken to my parents at some point. Mom and Dad always denied any knowledge of 1989, and I tend to believe them, but......
I am gonna start Privacy Act requests on deceased people anyway, just to see what comes back.
I've gotta do something. I just turned 58. This thing happened 29 years ago. That's half my life.
So I've gotta do something.
I will keep you posted of course. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
This was mostly a geology hike, just because of my "Forbidden Archaeology" book which I am still working on. Though it is dry reading, it is incredibly fascinating, and it has me thinking about the age of things when I go on my hikes. At Aliso, for instance, I wonder about the age of the creek bed.
At Santa Susana, geologists say that the sandstone formations that make up the foundation of the mountains are 80 million years old, and that those giant boulders - made of compressed sand and weighing megatons - were once underwater. So the last few times I have gone there, since I started the book, I've been looking for fossils or fossil outlines in the boulders. Just stuff like the outline of a long-gone shell or plant.
There are places where you are pretty sure you are seeing such an outline, but nothing conclusive. I need an archaeologist to come with me so I will know what I am looking at. I did see some pieces of boulders that were broken open, and on the inside faces of these, you see small pebbles of various colors that are embedded in the sandstone. I touched those pebbles and you cannot budge them. What I wonder is how long they have been embedded? Many if not most of the giant boulders appear to be made up only of sandstone, with no visible embedded pebbles.
Anyhow, I am All Geologied Out because of this book (an observation I believe I've made before), and so when I touch those pebbles in the boulder, I wonder "how long have they been there"?, and the potential amount of time blows my mind. It just blows me off the map, really, to think that something could be sitting there in one place for any great length of time. I mean, at Santa Susana there are old horse troughs that are still in place that have been there for over a hundred years. That alone blows my mind, just because developers have changed so much of the landscape in Los Angeles since 1940 or so, and I am grateful and I guess a bit surprised that they have never gotten their hands on Santa Su. Hopefully the Indian history there will prevent them from ever trying.
But back to the pebbles in the sandstone.
Okay, you geologists. You are telling me that the sandstone boulders at Santa Susana are 80 million years old. I will take your word for it. If that is true, then how long have those pebbles been enmeshed inside the boulders?
What it looks like, is if the sandstone which makes up the boulder was at one point soft in consistency, like bread dough. And the pebbles look like raisins in the dough, spread out at random but more-or-less evenly spaced intervals, just as in a loaf of raisin bread.
If the sandstone was in malleable form at one point, like a dough, before being compressed by massive pressure, were the pebbles then trapped inside some of the formations while they hardened?
If so, have those pebbles been cemented inside those boulders for millions of years?
If that is the case, then I just blew my mind even more. Partly because I can reach out and touch the pebbles that I saw today, but even more because I am amazed by the prospect that something like the pebble boulder can sit wide out in the open in this modern age of history that we live in.
I have read, in some book or another (perhaps one of Dr. Farrell's) that the concept of "history", of the idea of "keeping track of things in chronological order", was only undertaken because, in the overall goings-on of human beings, there was always a structure of "winning" and "losing". Conquest and surrender. Fighting.
And at some point, somebody decided that it would be a good idea to start writing things down.
For a long time before that, nothing was written down. There was no writing. There was no concept of why yesterday was important, or at least why it was important enough to catalog.
The exploration of that idea will have to wait for another day, however.
It is the idea that something has been "sitting there" not just through our lifetimes but for eons.
Grim came over tonight to show me the James Comey interview, which he taped. You have probably seen it, and you know that we have a situation here in America that is untenable. Comey helped to elect Trump with his ill-timed last minute announcement about the Hillary Clinton email probe, but I think he is redeeming himself by writing his book and speaking out on national television against this charlatan.
On the FOIA front, I am gonna start preparing to make Privacy Act requests to the CIA, for deceased persons who were involved in 1989. People like Howard Schaller. One of the provisions of the Privacy Act is that records of deceased people are no longer protected by any of the FOIA regulations. Unfortunately, any classified records would still be protected and would probably generate another Glomar response if a person like Howard was inquired about. But I am gonna try anyway.
I won't start with Howard, though. I am gonna start with my Dad. I figure that, to keep things as secret as they have been for all this time, that somebody would've had to have spoken to my parents at some point. Mom and Dad always denied any knowledge of 1989, and I tend to believe them, but......
I am gonna start Privacy Act requests on deceased people anyway, just to see what comes back.
I've gotta do something. I just turned 58. This thing happened 29 years ago. That's half my life.
So I've gotta do something.
I will keep you posted of course. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, April 16, 2018
"Greed" By Von Stroheim + You Had To Have A Major League Name Back Then + Glomar
Happy Late Sunday Night. They are showing "Greed" by Erich Von Stroheim on TCM right now, and they are showing the four hour version. I've been watching it off and on. "Greed" is one of the most famous and important Silent Movies ever made, and there's a story behind it. It seems that Von Stroheim's original version of the film was somewhere between 7 and 10 hours long (and you thought four hours was a marathon!). The original version was only shown once, though I don't know why. Perhaps the studio execs went bonkers. At any rate, much of the original negative was later lost in a fire. How horrible is that? No matter the length of the film, it was said to be a masterpiece. For years, a measly two hour version existed that students of the film decried as an abomination. But at some point, a restoration was attempted. Using as much of the original film as could be obtained, the restorers used still photographs to fill out the story in places where footage was missing. This resulted in the four hour version that I had heard about, but had never seen. In fact, I didn't know that it could be seen. I wasn't aware that TCM had a copy.
Watching it intermittently just now, I would venture that it isn't a film that most folks nowdays would be willing to sit through. Even I would have to break it down into two nights of viewing, two hours per night. But for fans and historians of cinema, I'd imagine that "Greed" would be on most of their must watch lists. I have been searching for a copy for about ten years, and was always hoping for a Criterion version. I think that there may have been some litigation involved with the rights to the film, which is why a proper restoration effort has never been undertaken. Just tonight, though, I see that bootleg copies of the four hour version are available from England, and they are All Region playable.
It's probably from one of those semi-legit dvd companies like the one I bought "Song Of The South" from. The quality on that one was not too bad, all things considered, though it was a far cry from the sharpness of an official release. I think I will shell out the nine bucks for one of these DVD-R copies of "Greed", however, just because I Need To See It as part of my continuing cinematic education.
Good singin' in church this morning. I went back to my trusted formula of water, citrus and coffee before choir (no gummy smoothies this time) and everything was back to normal. After church I drove to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping.
Napped when I got back home, then got back to researching Glomar.
You should research Glomar yourself, when you have time in between your searches to differentiate the films of Erich Von Stroheim from those of Josef Von Sternberg.
Back in the early days of film, you had to have an Epic Teutonic Moniker in order to direct.
Well........not really (just ask Buster Keaton).......but it didn't hurt. It made you sound Ultra Artistic.
I mean, can You - just as yourself, as you are today - imagine calling yourself "Josef Von Sternberg"?
Here in Los Angeles, we have a locally famous grocery store chain called "Vons". You could probably put an apostrophe in between the "n" and the "s" and I wouldn't have a fit because even though I am an Apostrophe Nazi, it would be proper. It is said that Los Angeles was where the concept of the Supermarket first appeared. In the early 20th Century, two local grocers began stocking dry goods and other retail items in their stores, and all of a sudden you could buy everything you needed under one roof. Those grocery companies were Ralphs and Vons.
Vons was named after the Von der Ahe family, who might under other circumstances have produced a famous movie director. But for their store, they just kept the all-important "Von"(s) and ditched the rest. They understood martketing.
Image is everything.
The old cliche asks, "what's in a name"?
Hell, I don't know. Go ask a German, or an Austrian. At one point, they were using names to take over the world.
It's that Middle Thing they do, that "Von" or "Van".
Would Edward Van Halen have been as big, if he'd been Edward Halen? How about Vincent Gogh? Would his paintings have sold for fifty million?
Maybe so. But the Von/Van Factor adds something that cannot be denied. Or confirmed or denied.
Try and Glomar that, my CIA friends. :)
Well, finally : "You say it's my birthday"....."It's my birthday, too yeah"....."You say it's your (my) birthday" (dee dee dee dee dee dee, de dum), "we're gonna have a good time".
"Yeah we're goin' to a party, party, yeah we're goin' to a party, party"......(dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dum dum dee dee, dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dum dum dee dee) cue guitar riff and repeat.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Watching it intermittently just now, I would venture that it isn't a film that most folks nowdays would be willing to sit through. Even I would have to break it down into two nights of viewing, two hours per night. But for fans and historians of cinema, I'd imagine that "Greed" would be on most of their must watch lists. I have been searching for a copy for about ten years, and was always hoping for a Criterion version. I think that there may have been some litigation involved with the rights to the film, which is why a proper restoration effort has never been undertaken. Just tonight, though, I see that bootleg copies of the four hour version are available from England, and they are All Region playable.
It's probably from one of those semi-legit dvd companies like the one I bought "Song Of The South" from. The quality on that one was not too bad, all things considered, though it was a far cry from the sharpness of an official release. I think I will shell out the nine bucks for one of these DVD-R copies of "Greed", however, just because I Need To See It as part of my continuing cinematic education.
Good singin' in church this morning. I went back to my trusted formula of water, citrus and coffee before choir (no gummy smoothies this time) and everything was back to normal. After church I drove to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping.
Napped when I got back home, then got back to researching Glomar.
You should research Glomar yourself, when you have time in between your searches to differentiate the films of Erich Von Stroheim from those of Josef Von Sternberg.
Back in the early days of film, you had to have an Epic Teutonic Moniker in order to direct.
Well........not really (just ask Buster Keaton).......but it didn't hurt. It made you sound Ultra Artistic.
I mean, can You - just as yourself, as you are today - imagine calling yourself "Josef Von Sternberg"?
Here in Los Angeles, we have a locally famous grocery store chain called "Vons". You could probably put an apostrophe in between the "n" and the "s" and I wouldn't have a fit because even though I am an Apostrophe Nazi, it would be proper. It is said that Los Angeles was where the concept of the Supermarket first appeared. In the early 20th Century, two local grocers began stocking dry goods and other retail items in their stores, and all of a sudden you could buy everything you needed under one roof. Those grocery companies were Ralphs and Vons.
Vons was named after the Von der Ahe family, who might under other circumstances have produced a famous movie director. But for their store, they just kept the all-important "Von"(s) and ditched the rest. They understood martketing.
Image is everything.
The old cliche asks, "what's in a name"?
Hell, I don't know. Go ask a German, or an Austrian. At one point, they were using names to take over the world.
It's that Middle Thing they do, that "Von" or "Van".
Would Edward Van Halen have been as big, if he'd been Edward Halen? How about Vincent Gogh? Would his paintings have sold for fifty million?
Maybe so. But the Von/Van Factor adds something that cannot be denied. Or confirmed or denied.
Try and Glomar that, my CIA friends. :)
Well, finally : "You say it's my birthday"....."It's my birthday, too yeah"....."You say it's your (my) birthday" (dee dee dee dee dee dee, de dum), "we're gonna have a good time".
"Yeah we're goin' to a party, party, yeah we're goin' to a party, party"......(dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dum dum dee dee, dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dum dum dee dee) cue guitar riff and repeat.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 15, 2018
"Glomar" vs. Truth + 1989 + Happy Ritchie's Birthday + Dog Food Smoothie
I just re-read last night's blog and I see that I may have been a bit vehement near the end. If that was off-putting, I apologize. It was a slightly rough day, and the news of Art Bell's death was like a knockout punch at the end of it. I did mean what I said, though, about Trump. He is a Crumb Bum who has got to go. I also feel there is way too much secrecy in America, secret knowledge that is held back by the "alphabet" agencies, CIA/FBI/NSA, et al, in the name of National Security. A lot of that secrecy may well be warranted, and I understand that we live in a devious age of electronic and technical sophistication. But in my case, I feel like an experiment was done on me, similar to the experiments of the MK-Ultra era. And I feel that I have a right to know what happened to me, and why.
I can understand that there are likely some legitimate National Security issues involved with the events of 1989, and I do not feel as if what happened was planned out in advance (though I could be wrong about that). But it seemed like an emergency. A sequence of events was triggered when I went down to that apartment building on the evening of September 1st.
But there are elements of it that feel pre-planned, like I was singled out as a subject. That much was related to me by the evil Mr. Rappaport, who told me while I was in his house that "It's 'Hate Adam Week' ".
"Everybody's gonna hate Adam".
That's exactly what he said to me, word for word. I have never forgotten it, and it sounds like he had knowledge of something that was planned.
It would be one thing if I was requesting information from the CIA about some clandestine spy operation that I had nothing to do with and was only requesting for research purposes.
But this is something that happened directly TO me, and at least part of it seemed to be On Purpose.
And that is information I have a right to know about, period, because it was done to me.
It's not some outside situation I am asking about. It's something that was done to me in which I almost lost my life.
And the CIA tells me, in corporate language, that they can "neither confirm nor deny" that any records exist about the whole 1989 situation.
In my appeal, I even offered to sign a non-disclosure statement, or security oath, much like the one I was forced to sign on the morning of September 2, 1989 at the Concord Square Apartment Complex.
I stated in my appeal that I understood the need for classification of the overall situation, and then I went on to say that I also felt that, because it was me that it happened to, that I felt I had a right to know what it was that had happened.
But they disagreed. That shows me that I am expendable, just somebody to be thrown under the bus in this country, and truth be damned. So I get to live the rest of my life never knowing what actually happened - in full - and never knowing why it happened.
That can have quite an effect not only on a person's life, but on their soul.
I will leave it at that for now.///
Happy Ritchie Blackmore's Birthday. :) Sir Richard is 73 today and still doing it. He has been such an important person in my life and there is no way I can overstate the effect he has had on me over the last 46 years. After The Beatles, Ritchie was the next musician that became not just someone whose playing I admired, but someone I felt akin to.
That's what is so great about music, is that it brings people - and souls - together. In doing so, it is a much more powerful force than secrecy, which attempts to separate people.
I spent the afternoon Googling different wordings of "The Glomar Response", so that I could hopefully discover if it is an all-purpose denial remedy, to be used on all FOIA requesters, or if it actually means something, in my case that my request was denied because 1989 is indeed a National Security issue.
Ho hum......just tell me what happened already. ////
Tonight I watched a "Twin Peaks", Episode Ten. The use of F-Words escalated yet again, and I think that Lynch may be making a statement with the use of this language. The characters in the new "Twin Peaks" are very coarse and brutal. The plot is definitely developing now, though, and I have been riveted to my seat especially since the otherworldly horror of Episode 8.
They are showing "Husbands" on TCM as I write. You know which movie I mean - "Husbands" by John Cassavetes. I just reviewed it the other night. Now it's on TCM at this moment, and it feels like one of those Facebook deals where you think something - you don't write about it or tell anybody - and then it shows up two seconds later as a Facebook advertisement. How weird is that?
Well anyway, good things are happening as always.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I was happy to see Boots the Dog celebrating his four month birthday. The Kobedog sends his regards, too. I have mentioned recently that we got a new blender at Pearl's, and that we have been making Smoothies, with bananas, blueberries, orange juice, etc.
Well, I was channeling the Dog, and he wants me to make him a Smoothie, too.
But just with dog food. He doesn't want me to put anything else in it.
I will do it of course. He's the Shot Caller.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I can understand that there are likely some legitimate National Security issues involved with the events of 1989, and I do not feel as if what happened was planned out in advance (though I could be wrong about that). But it seemed like an emergency. A sequence of events was triggered when I went down to that apartment building on the evening of September 1st.
But there are elements of it that feel pre-planned, like I was singled out as a subject. That much was related to me by the evil Mr. Rappaport, who told me while I was in his house that "It's 'Hate Adam Week' ".
"Everybody's gonna hate Adam".
That's exactly what he said to me, word for word. I have never forgotten it, and it sounds like he had knowledge of something that was planned.
It would be one thing if I was requesting information from the CIA about some clandestine spy operation that I had nothing to do with and was only requesting for research purposes.
But this is something that happened directly TO me, and at least part of it seemed to be On Purpose.
And that is information I have a right to know about, period, because it was done to me.
It's not some outside situation I am asking about. It's something that was done to me in which I almost lost my life.
And the CIA tells me, in corporate language, that they can "neither confirm nor deny" that any records exist about the whole 1989 situation.
In my appeal, I even offered to sign a non-disclosure statement, or security oath, much like the one I was forced to sign on the morning of September 2, 1989 at the Concord Square Apartment Complex.
I stated in my appeal that I understood the need for classification of the overall situation, and then I went on to say that I also felt that, because it was me that it happened to, that I felt I had a right to know what it was that had happened.
But they disagreed. That shows me that I am expendable, just somebody to be thrown under the bus in this country, and truth be damned. So I get to live the rest of my life never knowing what actually happened - in full - and never knowing why it happened.
That can have quite an effect not only on a person's life, but on their soul.
I will leave it at that for now.///
Happy Ritchie Blackmore's Birthday. :) Sir Richard is 73 today and still doing it. He has been such an important person in my life and there is no way I can overstate the effect he has had on me over the last 46 years. After The Beatles, Ritchie was the next musician that became not just someone whose playing I admired, but someone I felt akin to.
That's what is so great about music, is that it brings people - and souls - together. In doing so, it is a much more powerful force than secrecy, which attempts to separate people.
I spent the afternoon Googling different wordings of "The Glomar Response", so that I could hopefully discover if it is an all-purpose denial remedy, to be used on all FOIA requesters, or if it actually means something, in my case that my request was denied because 1989 is indeed a National Security issue.
Ho hum......just tell me what happened already. ////
Tonight I watched a "Twin Peaks", Episode Ten. The use of F-Words escalated yet again, and I think that Lynch may be making a statement with the use of this language. The characters in the new "Twin Peaks" are very coarse and brutal. The plot is definitely developing now, though, and I have been riveted to my seat especially since the otherworldly horror of Episode 8.
They are showing "Husbands" on TCM as I write. You know which movie I mean - "Husbands" by John Cassavetes. I just reviewed it the other night. Now it's on TCM at this moment, and it feels like one of those Facebook deals where you think something - you don't write about it or tell anybody - and then it shows up two seconds later as a Facebook advertisement. How weird is that?
Well anyway, good things are happening as always.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I was happy to see Boots the Dog celebrating his four month birthday. The Kobedog sends his regards, too. I have mentioned recently that we got a new blender at Pearl's, and that we have been making Smoothies, with bananas, blueberries, orange juice, etc.
Well, I was channeling the Dog, and he wants me to make him a Smoothie, too.
But just with dog food. He doesn't want me to put anything else in it.
I will do it of course. He's the Shot Caller.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Art Bell Was The Best + The CIA Denied My Appeal + Trump Is Toast
Wow. Whenever Friday The 13th rolls around, I usually repeat my standard remark that "it's always a good day for me". Not this time. Just to put you at ease, nothing terrible happened in my life. It's just that the news hasn't been the greatest.
Holy smokes - less than five minutes ago I got the news that Art Bell has died. That came totally out of left field on an already weird day. Art Bell has been a presence in my life since 1995, when I first heard his radio show "Coast To Coast AM". I was living at the Burton Street house at the time, just a half mile up the street from where I am now. 1995 was a wild and crazy year, and I shared the experience with my housemates : the late, great Mr. D, and Ryan (aka The Prime Minister) and later in the year my Dad. We were a Motley Crew for sure, but one thing we liked to do was paint, and one night during the Summer of '95, I went out to the back patio to watch Mr. D work on his latest creation. He had a radio sitting near his easel, and as I watched him paint, I heard this Voice coming out of the speaker.
"Yesss.........and so, did you then imagine that you might have stumbled upon something of".........
"My, my, my"........
That was the first time I ever heard Art's voice, and the first time I heard his show. I could devote a whole blog to Art, and today I need to write one of those All Day Long Blogs that I used to write at the Oviatt at CSUN, before I had my job with Pearl. In those days, ten years ago, I would write umpteen pages worth, every single day. This is one of those days, but unfortunately I don't have as much time as I used to.
For now I will say that Art Bell was a big influence on my life. Actually, I should just use the single word "influence", because I don't know right now the extent of Art's influence on me. It might have been more than "big". It might have been huge. Or it might have been less than that. I don't know right now because I am shocked and sad. His death came on an already crazy day.
We used to listen to Art when he would talk about the Bob Lazar story, which you can Google if you wish. Bob Lazar was the guy who made Area 51 a semi-household name. Art Bell was so far ahead of the alternative radio/conspiracy theory/alien disclosure game, that it took all the wannabe paranoid types like Alex Jones twenty years to attempt to catch up. But neither Jones nor anyone else had the intelligence and curiosity of Art Bell.
Man, those were the days. The mid-90s, when I was right smack in the middle of my own period of discovery, of something that had happened in my life. My memories of 1989 came back during that time period, so I was blowing my mind to begin with, and then I would listen to Art Bell every night while I painted. 1995 & '96 were the years of painting at Burton Street.
Art Bell was in his heyday then, and he was our late night soundtrack.
Art was the guy who came into my life at the exact time I remembered what had happened to me. Listening to him gave me hope that even the weirdest things had a chance of being heard, on national radio no less, and that somebody out there cared about The Truth. Through Art I discovered Whitley Streiber, and Richard Hoagland. I later wrote to Whitley Streiber about What Happened In Northridge, and he called me on the phone at my Mom's place in 1998. Later that year I began writing about What Happened, and here we are today, twenty years later.
Thanks, Art, for caring about the truth and for your boldness. You were original, unforgettable and irreplaceable.
He just posted on FB about three days ago........man, oh man. Life is too weird, I tell ya.///
Well, before I heard the news about Art Bell, the main subject of the blog was going to be the letter I received today from the CIA. Yep - finally, after five months (and on Friday the 13th) I got a determination on my Freedom Of Information Act and Privacy Act appeal. My original FOIA/PA inquiry was denied last October as you know, and I sent the Agency my six page appeal in November.
Just the other day I wondered aloud, right here at the blog, what was taking them so long to send an answer. Maybe they heard me, I dunno, but as I took the letter from my mailbox I was dismayed to see that the envelope was thin. It felt like there was only a single page inside, a cursory denial of my appeal.
I had expected as much, to be honest, but I had hoped that the Agency would at least give me something to work with; some clue in the ultra-legal wording of the denial. All I had hoped for was just a morsel, even just a molecule of a hint.
But they just flat out denied my appeal, after five months of waiting, using the same Glomar Response ("we can neither confirm nor deny") that they used in their negative response to my original inquiry. If I had more time tonight, I'd get into a longer description of the Glomar Response, but as always you can Google it if interested.
I have always been shocked at the lack of interest from people who were directly involved in 1989, in knowing what had happened to them. But then I thought, later on, "they probably already know".
It is just me who doesn't know, and nobody will tell me. Not the CIA, and not the people who I have considered to be my friends.
But anyway - hey! This country called The United States Of America, which - when I was a child was believed in as the Best Hope For Civilisation, a truly Monolithic Force for the Progression of Humanity, has now descended to the depth where we have an Organised Crime Figure as our President, and not only that, but an Organised Crime Figure who doesn't even have the stature of the crime bosses of the Mafia. This is a guy who is being blackmailed by the criminals in Russia who have a videotape of him getting peed on by hookers in that country.
And if you think that isn't true, you should hear James Comey's thoughts on the matter.
He just so happens to have been the Director Of The FBI, who Trump fired.
Have you heard what Comey has said about the Pee Tape?
I am sorry to write about such crudeness, because as you know it is not my usual subject matter.
But today Art Bell died, and the CIA denied me my right to know what happened to me in 1989, an event that involved both Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown, for real, and in which I was the central victim.
I have been telling the same story since 1998, when I first wrote about it on paper, and when I first wrote about it on the Internet.
I've been telling the same story, and I've been writing occasional letters to different agencies. Once, I wrote a very long letter directly to Robert Mueller, when he was the director of the FBI.
Yep, and I mailed it in a 9 X 12 envelope, addressed in black Sharpie to "Robert Mueller, FBI Director" with the rest of the address following. That was in about 2014, before Robert Mueller was famous.
All I have ever wanted was to know what happened to me, and why.
That's all. But I have never been given an answer, nor even an acknowledgement.
Now we have a Straight Up Major Criminal as our President, a guy who doesn't just deserve to be impeached but who should spend the rest of his life in prison.
This is what has happened to America in the time since 1989, or perhaps 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
I am grateful for men like James Comey and Robert Mueller, because they seem to care about the United States Of America. And I would like to admire the CIA, but they seem to hide behind their secrets.
And it is secrets that are taking this country down, and now we have Donald Trump as our President.
Please think about all of this for a moment, and ask yourself if telling the truth is important.
Thanks.
Holy smokes - less than five minutes ago I got the news that Art Bell has died. That came totally out of left field on an already weird day. Art Bell has been a presence in my life since 1995, when I first heard his radio show "Coast To Coast AM". I was living at the Burton Street house at the time, just a half mile up the street from where I am now. 1995 was a wild and crazy year, and I shared the experience with my housemates : the late, great Mr. D, and Ryan (aka The Prime Minister) and later in the year my Dad. We were a Motley Crew for sure, but one thing we liked to do was paint, and one night during the Summer of '95, I went out to the back patio to watch Mr. D work on his latest creation. He had a radio sitting near his easel, and as I watched him paint, I heard this Voice coming out of the speaker.
"Yesss.........and so, did you then imagine that you might have stumbled upon something of".........
"My, my, my"........
That was the first time I ever heard Art's voice, and the first time I heard his show. I could devote a whole blog to Art, and today I need to write one of those All Day Long Blogs that I used to write at the Oviatt at CSUN, before I had my job with Pearl. In those days, ten years ago, I would write umpteen pages worth, every single day. This is one of those days, but unfortunately I don't have as much time as I used to.
For now I will say that Art Bell was a big influence on my life. Actually, I should just use the single word "influence", because I don't know right now the extent of Art's influence on me. It might have been more than "big". It might have been huge. Or it might have been less than that. I don't know right now because I am shocked and sad. His death came on an already crazy day.
We used to listen to Art when he would talk about the Bob Lazar story, which you can Google if you wish. Bob Lazar was the guy who made Area 51 a semi-household name. Art Bell was so far ahead of the alternative radio/conspiracy theory/alien disclosure game, that it took all the wannabe paranoid types like Alex Jones twenty years to attempt to catch up. But neither Jones nor anyone else had the intelligence and curiosity of Art Bell.
Man, those were the days. The mid-90s, when I was right smack in the middle of my own period of discovery, of something that had happened in my life. My memories of 1989 came back during that time period, so I was blowing my mind to begin with, and then I would listen to Art Bell every night while I painted. 1995 & '96 were the years of painting at Burton Street.
Art Bell was in his heyday then, and he was our late night soundtrack.
Art was the guy who came into my life at the exact time I remembered what had happened to me. Listening to him gave me hope that even the weirdest things had a chance of being heard, on national radio no less, and that somebody out there cared about The Truth. Through Art I discovered Whitley Streiber, and Richard Hoagland. I later wrote to Whitley Streiber about What Happened In Northridge, and he called me on the phone at my Mom's place in 1998. Later that year I began writing about What Happened, and here we are today, twenty years later.
Thanks, Art, for caring about the truth and for your boldness. You were original, unforgettable and irreplaceable.
He just posted on FB about three days ago........man, oh man. Life is too weird, I tell ya.///
Well, before I heard the news about Art Bell, the main subject of the blog was going to be the letter I received today from the CIA. Yep - finally, after five months (and on Friday the 13th) I got a determination on my Freedom Of Information Act and Privacy Act appeal. My original FOIA/PA inquiry was denied last October as you know, and I sent the Agency my six page appeal in November.
Just the other day I wondered aloud, right here at the blog, what was taking them so long to send an answer. Maybe they heard me, I dunno, but as I took the letter from my mailbox I was dismayed to see that the envelope was thin. It felt like there was only a single page inside, a cursory denial of my appeal.
I had expected as much, to be honest, but I had hoped that the Agency would at least give me something to work with; some clue in the ultra-legal wording of the denial. All I had hoped for was just a morsel, even just a molecule of a hint.
But they just flat out denied my appeal, after five months of waiting, using the same Glomar Response ("we can neither confirm nor deny") that they used in their negative response to my original inquiry. If I had more time tonight, I'd get into a longer description of the Glomar Response, but as always you can Google it if interested.
I have always been shocked at the lack of interest from people who were directly involved in 1989, in knowing what had happened to them. But then I thought, later on, "they probably already know".
It is just me who doesn't know, and nobody will tell me. Not the CIA, and not the people who I have considered to be my friends.
But anyway - hey! This country called The United States Of America, which - when I was a child was believed in as the Best Hope For Civilisation, a truly Monolithic Force for the Progression of Humanity, has now descended to the depth where we have an Organised Crime Figure as our President, and not only that, but an Organised Crime Figure who doesn't even have the stature of the crime bosses of the Mafia. This is a guy who is being blackmailed by the criminals in Russia who have a videotape of him getting peed on by hookers in that country.
And if you think that isn't true, you should hear James Comey's thoughts on the matter.
He just so happens to have been the Director Of The FBI, who Trump fired.
Have you heard what Comey has said about the Pee Tape?
I am sorry to write about such crudeness, because as you know it is not my usual subject matter.
But today Art Bell died, and the CIA denied me my right to know what happened to me in 1989, an event that involved both Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown, for real, and in which I was the central victim.
I have been telling the same story since 1998, when I first wrote about it on paper, and when I first wrote about it on the Internet.
I've been telling the same story, and I've been writing occasional letters to different agencies. Once, I wrote a very long letter directly to Robert Mueller, when he was the director of the FBI.
Yep, and I mailed it in a 9 X 12 envelope, addressed in black Sharpie to "Robert Mueller, FBI Director" with the rest of the address following. That was in about 2014, before Robert Mueller was famous.
All I have ever wanted was to know what happened to me, and why.
That's all. But I have never been given an answer, nor even an acknowledgement.
Now we have a Straight Up Major Criminal as our President, a guy who doesn't just deserve to be impeached but who should spend the rest of his life in prison.
This is what has happened to America in the time since 1989, or perhaps 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
I am grateful for men like James Comey and Robert Mueller, because they seem to care about the United States Of America. And I would like to admire the CIA, but they seem to hide behind their secrets.
And it is secrets that are taking this country down, and now we have Donald Trump as our President.
Please think about all of this for a moment, and ask yourself if telling the truth is important.
Thanks.
Friday, April 13, 2018
Gale Force All Day + "The Maids Of Wilko" by Andrzej Wajda at CSUN
Hey Elizabeth - your friends in Stitched-Up Heart weren't kidding! Man, was the wind ever blowing today. Gale Force all day long. Still going, too. It's horrible of course, and I am resigned to the probability that it's never gonna stop. It's been blowing since Christmas with only a few days respite in the four months since. When I was in my mid 20s, I deemed Northridge "The Real Windy City" and said that we should claim the title from Chicago. Then things calmed down for a while, excepting the annual Carlos Santana winds that strike us each Fall. But now we are back to re-claim our crown. Maybe if I wasn't such an outdoors person I wouldn't hate wind so much, but I am, and I do. And I think it is never gonna go away. (And Hey Elizabeth, is it true that Chicago is really the Windy City? Does the wind blow nonstop like it does here? Man, oh man...what in the world is going on? Is there anywhere where the wind doesn't blow? I think I may be losing my marbles once again).
That's my New One : Losing My Marbles. It is something to stay tuned for and it may be a Big Hit. I can add it to my arsenal, and now in addition to going on Tirades I can also Lose My Marbles from time to time. Here come the new fans in droves. :)
Tonight at CSUN we saw "The Maids Of Wilko" (1979) by Andrzej Wajda. We have seen during the course of this retrospective that Wajda was capable of working in a wide variety of styles, and with "Maids" he went back to the arty introspection of his earlier film "The Birch Wood", which I reviewed several weeks ago. His art house films are far removed from his complex and confrontational political films or his early War Trilogy movies which play like Hollywood thrillers. Art House was not his specialty, but when he made one, it stood out in his body of work.
We have seen two of these arty Wajda films now, "Birch Wood" and "Maids", and in both the setting is the countryside. In "Birch Wood" the central characters lived in a cabin, but in "Maids" they live in a fair sized manor, with a servant. In old Poland there must have been some money, and I guess this is what Wajda has referred to when he talked about the Nobility in the documentary footage that Professor Tim has shown. The Nobility was a class of people who owned land and had the title of Lord So-And So, and maybe lived in a country mansion, but in reality had little liquid wealth. Usually, according to Wajda, the Polish Nobility of the early 20th Century were people whose grandparents had been wealthy but who themselves were hanging on by a thread to the property and lifestyle.
The setting in "Maids" isn't this bleak, though. The ladies in question are five sisters who live in a large house on a spacious piece of land that includes a lake. They have horses, and they host parties. Their money is intact.
The story begins as a man (the tremendous Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski), now in his 30s, returns to the country town of Wilko to revisit his past. He is a veteran of WW1, the experience of which has scarred him deeply and has shut down his self-expression. His emotions are buried because of the horrors of the war, and he comes home to Wilko, fifteen years later, to visit his aunt and uncle, and more importantly to see once again the five sisters he knew as a teenager, when he was full of life.
The sisters have gone through their own life stories in the intervening years. Some are married, some are still single, but they all still live in the same house. The youngest sister falls in love with Daniel Olbrychski, and as she expresses her feelings, the other sisters confess individually that, when they were all younger, each one of them had feeling for him in her own way.
The sisters lived out in the country; he was the handsome boy who visited his aunt across the meadow; they were the only young people in that realm, one young man and five sisters. They were isolated in their world and he had a huge emotional effect on their lives.
Then he left to fight in the war, and they didn't see him again for fifteen years. But when he came back, he is changed. All the life has been depleted from him. The sisters too, have changed. Marriages, a divorce, a few children. The now grown youngest sister who has fallen in love with him.
He tries to express himself to each sister, and he recounts the memories of their younger years, and secretly shares his lifelong love for one sister above the rest.
"The Maids Of Wilko" is like a Bergman movie, a poetic and philosophical treatise on the way life experience weighs on people over time, and how it can affect relationships between people who have loved one another in the past. Of course, this is all very European, and must be seen through the eyes of a country who had to survive two World Wars. The main character, once a vibrant teen, is too scarred now to relate emotionally to the women he adored when they were all much younger.
But when he returns to the town of Wilko, the love slowly returns to the surface, beginning with the youngest sister who was just a child when Olbrychski left for the war.
Wajda shows that deeply held feelings are played close to the vest. People make life decisions that are not true to what they are really feeling, and that inner conflict is brought to the surface when the object of those feelings returns.
But in this case, he is too damaged by the war.
"The Maids Of Wilko" is a very soft film in which the characters express their feelings gently, with reserve. They want to connect, but they can't. In that respect, it is a sad tale. The sisters have each other, but Daniel Olbrychski has only himself.
It is gorgeously photographed, however, and some of the twilight scenes on the meadow, with the sun going down, look like paintings, or cinematic mirages.
I am loving these Wajda films, and I give "The Maids Of Wilko" Two Thumbs Up, although I wish the relationships had been explored a little more. It's hard to accept that nothing could come of all the feelings involved between the main characters.
Still a very good film. See it for sure, in your pursuit of world cinema.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):) see you in the morn.
That's my New One : Losing My Marbles. It is something to stay tuned for and it may be a Big Hit. I can add it to my arsenal, and now in addition to going on Tirades I can also Lose My Marbles from time to time. Here come the new fans in droves. :)
Tonight at CSUN we saw "The Maids Of Wilko" (1979) by Andrzej Wajda. We have seen during the course of this retrospective that Wajda was capable of working in a wide variety of styles, and with "Maids" he went back to the arty introspection of his earlier film "The Birch Wood", which I reviewed several weeks ago. His art house films are far removed from his complex and confrontational political films or his early War Trilogy movies which play like Hollywood thrillers. Art House was not his specialty, but when he made one, it stood out in his body of work.
We have seen two of these arty Wajda films now, "Birch Wood" and "Maids", and in both the setting is the countryside. In "Birch Wood" the central characters lived in a cabin, but in "Maids" they live in a fair sized manor, with a servant. In old Poland there must have been some money, and I guess this is what Wajda has referred to when he talked about the Nobility in the documentary footage that Professor Tim has shown. The Nobility was a class of people who owned land and had the title of Lord So-And So, and maybe lived in a country mansion, but in reality had little liquid wealth. Usually, according to Wajda, the Polish Nobility of the early 20th Century were people whose grandparents had been wealthy but who themselves were hanging on by a thread to the property and lifestyle.
The setting in "Maids" isn't this bleak, though. The ladies in question are five sisters who live in a large house on a spacious piece of land that includes a lake. They have horses, and they host parties. Their money is intact.
The story begins as a man (the tremendous Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski), now in his 30s, returns to the country town of Wilko to revisit his past. He is a veteran of WW1, the experience of which has scarred him deeply and has shut down his self-expression. His emotions are buried because of the horrors of the war, and he comes home to Wilko, fifteen years later, to visit his aunt and uncle, and more importantly to see once again the five sisters he knew as a teenager, when he was full of life.
The sisters have gone through their own life stories in the intervening years. Some are married, some are still single, but they all still live in the same house. The youngest sister falls in love with Daniel Olbrychski, and as she expresses her feelings, the other sisters confess individually that, when they were all younger, each one of them had feeling for him in her own way.
The sisters lived out in the country; he was the handsome boy who visited his aunt across the meadow; they were the only young people in that realm, one young man and five sisters. They were isolated in their world and he had a huge emotional effect on their lives.
Then he left to fight in the war, and they didn't see him again for fifteen years. But when he came back, he is changed. All the life has been depleted from him. The sisters too, have changed. Marriages, a divorce, a few children. The now grown youngest sister who has fallen in love with him.
He tries to express himself to each sister, and he recounts the memories of their younger years, and secretly shares his lifelong love for one sister above the rest.
"The Maids Of Wilko" is like a Bergman movie, a poetic and philosophical treatise on the way life experience weighs on people over time, and how it can affect relationships between people who have loved one another in the past. Of course, this is all very European, and must be seen through the eyes of a country who had to survive two World Wars. The main character, once a vibrant teen, is too scarred now to relate emotionally to the women he adored when they were all much younger.
But when he returns to the town of Wilko, the love slowly returns to the surface, beginning with the youngest sister who was just a child when Olbrychski left for the war.
Wajda shows that deeply held feelings are played close to the vest. People make life decisions that are not true to what they are really feeling, and that inner conflict is brought to the surface when the object of those feelings returns.
But in this case, he is too damaged by the war.
"The Maids Of Wilko" is a very soft film in which the characters express their feelings gently, with reserve. They want to connect, but they can't. In that respect, it is a sad tale. The sisters have each other, but Daniel Olbrychski has only himself.
It is gorgeously photographed, however, and some of the twilight scenes on the meadow, with the sun going down, look like paintings, or cinematic mirages.
I am loving these Wajda films, and I give "The Maids Of Wilko" Two Thumbs Up, although I wish the relationships had been explored a little more. It's hard to accept that nothing could come of all the feelings involved between the main characters.
Still a very good film. See it for sure, in your pursuit of world cinema.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):) see you in the morn.
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