Grimsley & "The Beach Bum" + Why Was Mary Sean Young at Concord Square On September 1st 1989?

Grimsley came over again tonight and wanted to tell me every last detail about a movie that he saw called "The Beach Bum", regardless of the fact that Grim himself thought the movie was one of the worst he has ever seen. It was pretty excruciating for me to listen to all the details, because I don't want dumb stuff in my life. I would never go see a movie like "The Beach Bum" even if it wasn't as bottom level crude and stupid as Grim described. I generally don't like current movies anyway, but Grim will go see anything. That it was written and directed by Harmony Korine, a trashmeister, should have served as a red flag warning, but at any rate, I am sorry I had to hear about it and would never dream of giving you a second hand review of such garbage.

I was listening to the first act of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" when Grim texted to ask if I wanted to meet him at the Oviatt Library. I thought he wanted to go for a CSUN walk, so I said yes. Instead, I turned off Wagner, went out the door, and heard about "The Beach Bum" for the entirety of our get-together. Oh, delicious irony.

All of which means that I don't have a movie of my own to review for you tonight, but I will definitely have one tomorrow, as I will be locking myself into The Tiny to read, draw and watch an epic film during my evening work break, and I will not be answering any calls or texts (which I should only rarely do in the first place).

I just don't want to be distracted by or have any moronic modern culture in my life, period.

I have too much else to think about. ////

Anyhow, back to 1989 for the moment, besides the fact that Federal agents were on the scene almost immediately - as described last night - which led me to conclude we were being surveilled, there is also the fact that a woman named Mary Sean Young showed up at the Concord Square apartment complex on the night of September 1st, 1989, no more than an hour after the stun gun attack that left me unconscious. In fact, she must have arrived at the building almost at the exact time the paramedics had finished stabilizing me in Terry's apartment, because - and this when I knew something really weird was going on - when they were wheeling me out of the apartment on a gurney, we were nearing the gate at the north end of the complex, and I heard a female voice yelling at some men in suits. Probably two men. I remember exactly what I heard her say, and I won't repeat it tonight because it was crude, but if you ever read my book then you know what she said.

However, it wasn't her words that blew my mind, but the fact that as the paramedics wheeled my gurney past her, I could clearly see who see was. And because I had seen her movies and was a fan of hers, I had to do a double take in my mind, because it didn't make sense what I was seeing.

I said to myself, aloud, "That's Sean Young"......

I said it almost in a whisper, because I had nearly been electrocuted a short time earlier, and I was in a fragile condition, but I certainly said it aloud in order to acknowledge to myself what I was seeing. It was so weird I had to say it rather than just think it.

Before I was stun-gunned, two thugs had come to the door of Terry's apartment, in response to the fact that I had caused a ruckus by going out into the courtyard of the complex and yelling very loudly about what was happening inside the apartment, which I will not get into.

But my outburst resulted in the manager of the building telling me she was going to "call security", and the security who showed up was two lowlife thugs, "wallet chain" types, who called me to the door. Terry pointed me out as the one who had done the yelling, and the head thug - a stocky slob but a hardened criminal - called me over. I was terrified of him. He stuck a switchblade at my stomach, the point of it just touching, and I began to cry I was so scared. I had no idea what was going on at this point, and this is before I was stun-gunned.

But after that happened, and while I was being wheeled out on the gurney, there was Mary Sean Young in the courtyard. I saw her, and all I could think was "that's Sean Young", and I said those words, but what I was thinking was "what's she doing here"?

"What the hell is going on"?

I did not know her as Mary in 1989. Back then, she was still a fairly well-known movie star, known by her middle and last names : Sean Young.

And for some reason, which I have speculated on but have never been able to determine, Sean Young showed up at the Concord Square apartment complex on the night of September 1st, 1989, less than an hour after three people (Lillian, Terry and I) had a run-of-the-mill domestic dispute in one of the hundred plus units in the complex. I had indeed suffered a life threatening injury, but that happens all the time, too, in such situations.

Sean Young's appearance at Concord Square happened even before the terrifying weirdness at Northridge Hospital with Howard Schaller. In fact, she seemed to arrive just around the same time the first Federal agents showed up. They were almost certainly the men she was arguing with when the paramedics wheeled me past them on my gurney.

I do not know why Mary Sean Young was there that night, but it is interesting that her career as a movie star - and she was indeed a rising star in Hollywood prior to 1989 - began to collapse after that year, to the point where she subsequently was seen as being unhireable by major studios. Her behavior became erratic as well, and all of this is documented online.

I "friended" Mary when I first joined Facebook, and very shortly after I discovered her email address, which she herself had posted, and so I wrote her an email describing a basic outline of her appearance that night in 1989 at the Concord Square apartments in Reseda. I also related the story of the drive we took, in her car, with Ann and Lys present (two ladies related to Lillian) and me in the back seat. I described to Mary how we drove to Northridge Hospital and how Lillian arrived there in another car, and how she got into out car at the behest of her sister. I related every detail to Mary that I could remember. Finally, I reminded her of the attack on our car by the "crazy man" Howard Schaller".

I wrote all of this in an email to my new Facebook friend Mary Sean Young, who by 2009 was not the up and coming major movie star she had been. I mean, she was big for a while, had starred in classics like "Blade Runner" and "Ace Ventura".

You would think that she would never respond to such a weird sounding email. The details I wrote, if not true, would sound like just so much deranged gibberish from a nutcase fan, right.

But the thing is that Mary did respond. She wrote me back, and I still have her email.

She said "I don't think it was me" who was there.

Not, "what are you talking about"? or "are you nuts, don't ever bother me again", or "I'm calling the police"?...........just "I don't think it was me", followed by a lot of explanation to disassociate herself.

Her response reminded me of another response by a close friend, who - when I questioned him about his involvement in a 1989 event, responded at first with silence, then uttered these words :

"It seems like a dream".

That was all he would say, though he never denied anything I said to him.

And so, what are we to make of Mary Sean Young's presence at the Concord Square apartment house that night? She was one of the first people on scene, and there is zero doubt it was her.

Four of us were in a car she was driving : Ann, Lys, Lillian and myself.

Why was Mary there? At the time, she was still a fairly big star. Lillian and I had seen her movie "The Boost" in February of that year, 1989.

In retrospect, it feels like she was there as part of a game of some sort. A really weird game of the type that might be played by people who inhabit the world of "Eyes Wide Shut".

But the truth may be even weirder than that.

The bottom line is she was there, and we all saw her and rode in her car to the hospital.

Does anyone know why she was there? Ann, do you know? My CIA friends, do you know?////

That's all for tonight. I will see you in the morning at church. Much love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

1989

No movie tonight because Grimsley came over. I hadn't seen him since January, so we hung out and got caught up on things. He is a big fan of AOC, so we had a few laughs over that, because he knows I am not a fan, haha. And that is all I will say about politics tonight (big sigh of relief from the audience).

However, since I have no movie to write about, I suppose I will wade yet again into the subject of 1989, as it is the overriding concern in my life, the pea (or more likely boulder) beneath my mattress, and unlike The Princess I cannot simply proceed forth in life by placing still another mattress on top of the pea with the hope that it will smooth things over. So I have to talk about it, especially because this year is the 30th anniversary, and tonight I have nothing else to write about anyway.

The details here will have no surrounding context, so if you don't already know the story you may feel lost at sea, though I trust that anyone who has read this blog for a length of time is at least somewhat familiar with the overall subject of 1989 (aka "What Happened In Northridge"), in all it's weirdness.

"Weird" has always been the keyword, and I have spent 25 years trying to make sense of what happened to me that year, in September 1989. I have also very much wanted to close the subject, much like the Democrats want to close the Mueller Report, but Trump's hired hand William Barr won't let them do so. In my case, the secret keepers - both "official" and unofficial - won't let me have closure either, and so I live in a daily state of limbo, of wondering what happened to me nearly 30 years ago. It has been a quiet but unrelenting torture for me to endure, this Silence of Secrecy and it has taken every bit of strength in my soul for me to keep on going in life, but you already knew that if you have read this blog for any length of time.

The rest of this blog will be me just kind of "thinking aloud" and rehashing details that I've gone over countless times in my head, so if you don't know the story it may seem like gibberish, but I think it might help me to type it out, as a way to write down the details and attempt to connect more dots.

I had gone as far as I could go by 2009, when I was nearing the end of writing my book but knew I would not be able to provide a traditional ending, where everything is explained to the reader, for the simple reason that I was not able to connect all the dots. The story of what happened to me in September 1989 was overwhelming in it's detail (and it's significance). I was ultimately only able to remember perhaps 60% of what happened in the general sense, and in total only about 30%, at best, when it came to the details. The secret keepers, who include folks I know and who have known me for years, have never once come forward to help, and indeed have distanced themselves from me and have knowingly left me to twist in the wind. They have gone on with their lives as if September 1989 never happened, and they got away with what they participated in because of the nature of the ordeal, which was a National Security situation, which means it has been classified all this time. But the reality is that these folks are the ones living in a dream world, not me. In the final analysis, they will have to wake up from their dream and face reality, however unpleasant it may eventually be for them.

It may not even come in this life, because of the way America is going down the tubes, but it will still arrive one day. As Martin Luther King said, "the truth smashed into the ground will rise again". And so will the truth about 1989, even if I don't live to see it.

But what I am interested in tonight is how quickly Federal agents came on scene at the Concord Square apartment complex on the night of September 1, 1989. Federal law enforcement agencies are much in the news these days, and if we watch the news in the Trump era, we are seeing how they operate and to at least a political/espionage degree, what kind of crimes they look out for. Which is what makes their appearance at an ordinary apartment building in Reseda in September 1989 all the more inexplicable.

What would the FBI or CIA want with some Regular Joes? Or perhaps one Regular Joe?

The Feds were on site at Concord Square within, I would estimate, 60 to 90 minutes of the end of the action in Terry's apartment.

A domestic dispute would normally be under the purview of the local police department, if police were to be called. So why did Federal agents show up instead?

Why did the situation become so weird, so fast?

I have speculated on a drug deal connection between Lillian and Dave Small and Howard Schaller, which I believe led to the attack by Schaller on our car in the Northridge Hospital parking lot. I have believed he was furious at Lillian because the argument in the apartment brought attention to a hidden drug situation, but again - why would Federal Agents show up within one hour of a domestic dispute? I was shot with a stun gun during the confrontation in the apartment. This could happen a dozen times over in America on any night. In my case, my heart was stopped and I almost died. If it wasn't for the paramedics, I would have.

So, here you have a law enforcement situation, right? And you would think the police department would show up, but that's not what happened here.

Federal agents showed up and they showed up fast, which suggests they had us under surveillance.

But why? Surely it couldn't have been because of a minor league drug deal gone bad.

Does Lillian know why Federal agents showed up at Terry's apartment that night? I believe she does, at least to a certain extent. She foreshadowed her knowledge in a letter she sent to me in June 1989, more than two months prior, in which she mentioned that she was "scared of what's to come", an exact quote. That quote needs to be understood in a larger context, which I will not get into, but you can trust me when I tell you that it leads directly to her foreknowledge that something frightening was heading our way, involving a Federal agency, even if she didn't know exactly what it was all about.

I walked into that situation blindly on September 1, 1989, and I have been paying the price ever since, while criminals like the late Howard Schaller got away scott-free, and even worse, a psychopath like Jared Rappoport was allowed to continue teaching at CSUN for over 30 years. He was the man who kidnapped me on or about September 3rd, 1989, a story I have written about multiple times.

Well, that's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Stalag 17" + Tired

Sorry I missed ya again last night, but I had no movie to review. No one seems to be reading this blog lately anyway, and I am trying not to lose interest in writing it, but lately the hit counter reads zero a lot of the time. I used to always write for Elizabeth, but she has disappeared from social media. Going back to the Myspace days, and even further back to my original blog on Delphi way back in the early 2000s, I always had readers and sometimes a lot of them, even though I never received a single comment or acknowledgement on anything I've ever written. It's kinda weird being me, because the people who know me may have read my blogs over the years, but none of them will admit it because I talk about weird stuff like 1989, and that is a subject that they will read about, but just can't bring themselves to talk about.

I was always willing to write anyway, as long as I saw some hits on the page view counter. Now that Elizabeth is gone, the views have trickled down to nothing. I will try to keep writing anyway, even though I am aware that my reviews of old movies may not be the most exciting things to read. :)

I did watch a movie tonight : "Stalag 17" (1953), the classic prisoner of war story directed by the great Billy Wilder. This is another film that "you would think I'd have seen", but I hadn't until tonight. Those of us who grew up with 1960s television comedies might know that it was the inspiration for the popular series "Hogan's Heroes", a show that I was a middling fan of as a kid. Because it was a sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes" felt incongruous to me, since my Dad had steeped me in theatrical release WW2 films, which might have had the typical Brooklyn Wisecracking Character making jokes between battle scenes, but which in general were long on combat and short on comic relief. In the movies, war was generally not funny. So I watched "Hogan's Heroes" as a six year old, and thought it was okay, but I didn't love it the way I loved a truly funny show like "Gilligan's Island", because I guess I didn't get the mix of humor and war. Or maybe in retrospect the show just wasn't that well done.

"Stalag 17", however, is a classic of the first order. Ironically, for the first hour it features almost non-stop humor and wisecracking, by most of the characters in the prison bunker, all American sergeants who have been grouped together by rank. In addition to directing, Wilder also co-wrote the script. So great was his talent as a screenwriter that it surpassed even his expertise as a director, all of which means that in this case, his comedic take on life in a German prison camp is not going to be the story in total, but only a lead-in to a much more serious and deadly plot.

William Holden won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a big shot in the sergeants dormitory. He has a cache of goods ranging from radios to cigarettes and booze, all of which he has traded for with his captors, including a "Sgt. Schultz" who became a character on "Hogan's Heroes".

But there is a spy in the dorm. Two men try to escape and are killed. It is obvious they were set up and the Germans were tipped off. Holden is suspected of being the spy and has to hold off his accusers, led by fellow prisoner Neville Brand, who is ready to cut his throat.

You can see what a great screenwriter and director Billy Wilder was in the way he gradually bleeds the humor out of the situation while slowly blending in and building the deadly serious aspect of a conspirator : one prisoner who is selling out escape information on his fellow American soldiers in order to receive easy treatment from his German captors.

Suddenly the laughs drain away and the movie becomes as real as any of the WW2 dramas we are familiar with that do not have a comedic element.

I can tell you no more, and I must admit that I am dog tired these past few nights, so I hope that this review and those from the last week or so have made some measure of sense.

To sum up, "Stalag 17", even though it starts out with a light hearted comedic theme (which doubtlessly influenced "MASH" as well), moves through that facade - which is only gallows humor anyway - to the deeper issue of the prisoners' immediate situation, which is life or death.

Will they rise up to find the spy in their midst? Will they continue to blame William Holden for their troubles, and is he indeed the traitor who has gotten his fellow soldiers killed? ////

One of the great endings in War Movie History will tell the tale.

My job takes everything I've got nowdays. I don't get out on hikes very often and concerts are a rare thing, but I am giving it all I've got, and i am maintaining my focus on getting to the truth of 1989, which in the long run will have been the greatest effort I have put forth in my life. Those who have kept the truth hidden have cost me enormously in terms of life energy I have spent, and in the amount of psychological difficulty I have experienced.

But in the long run, I will be successful. The truth will be told one day, and the folks who have kept silent will not be able to hide behind that veneer any longer.

See you in the morning.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Another Time, Another Place" starring Lana Turner and Sean Connery

Tonight's movie was "Another Time, Another Place" (1958), a positively Sirkian melodrama starring Lana Turner and a young Sean Connery as war reporters in England, covering the action on the home front. As the movie opens, Connery - working for the BBC - is broadcasting live from the site of an unexploded V-2 rocket that has landed in London. An army bomb squad is attempting to disarm it, but it could blow up at any moment. Into this tension comes Lana Turner, a New York newspaper columnist with a war correspondent credential. She shows up at the V-2 scene not only to report on it, but because she knows Connery is there. She follows his every broadcast, and after the bomb is successfully disabled, we see that the two are in love.

What follows is a scene of the highest melodramatic order (which is why I referenced Douglas Sirk), replete with gauzy close up photography, in which Turner and Connery meet, embrace, and hold on to one another in the "love me and never let me go" mode of 1950s existential romantic dramas. We find out that the couple have known each other for several months. They are separated much of the time because of their respective professional duties, but when they do meet up, as in the opening sequence, they never want to part. There is an obstacle in the way of their happiness, though : Lana Turner's boss, her newspaper publisher, is in love with her and has asked her to marry him. But he is back in New York, and she tells Sean Connery - only 28 here, and softer than his James Bond image - that she will break off the engagement to her boss because it was never serious to begin with.

Nothing insurmountable so far. Everything looks rosy, except for the war and the pounding England is taking from the rain of Hitler's V-2s. Connery and Turner have to return to their jobs, but the war is coming to an end, and when it does, they can finally be together for good. Bring on the heavy string section to play over the glistening eyes of the actors. This was the way in which the full abandonment of two people to their love for one another was portrayed in these types of dreamy 50s melodramas,with sweeping music, tight clothing and body language, a style from which David Lynch, among others, took a huge influence.

Tragedy must always insert itself into the melodramatic form, however, and it does so here when Sean Connery, just as he is about to leave to begin a new assignment, drops a bombshell of his own on Lana Turner. He tells her that he won't be back, because he is married.

I was debating whether to reveal that to you, and I decided in favor of it because that detail leads to everything that happens in the remainder of the film. It is enough to say Turner is at first devastated by this news, then angry at Connery. Why didn't he tell her! But then all is forgiven, because their love is all consuming. He promises to see her again, very soon, and then he leaves on a plane for his next broadcast in Paris.

Left unresolved is what will be done about Connery's family situation, his marriage and his young son. He leaves Lana Turner hanging on a promise that could be sincere, or not. She is emotionally laid bare and vulnerable as he departs, and that is all I can tell you because.......

A second tragedy is about to strike, and I shouldn't have told you that, either, but I do because it will result in the real basis for the story, which will take place over the second half of the film and will be quite surprising.

"Another Time, Another Place" was directed by Lewis Allen, an Englishman who also worked in Hollywood and was at the helm of a classic cinematic ghost story called "The Uninvited", which I have on dvd. His style ranges into the metaphysical, and attempts to place human beings "half in" and "half out" of the spirit world, in touch with and yet beyond control of the romantic emotional forces that move them forward.

I'll say no more, but I must ask you at this point if you Googled Schopenhauer's picture, the one i mentioned to you last night. Did you see it? I'll bet Schopenhauer would have a lot to say about this movie, haha.

I am super-tired once again, but I will give you a quick musical recommendation for Bela Bartok, whose birthday was yesterday. This is for his piano music, and specifically his short compositions known cumulatively as "Mikrokosmos", of which there are six volumes consisting of well over a hundred pieces all together. They are atonal, which may be off putting, but they also have a stark beauty and a rhythmic simplicity that is easy to connect to if you give the music a chance. I love the "Mikrokosmos" myself, and I suggest just putting it on in the background to start with, as you do the dishes or read the newspaper.

Just go about your day and let it flow over you.

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Wagner and Schopenhauer

I am reading a book about composer Richard Wagner, because I have been hearing his music on KUSC for many years now, and as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when doing the blogs for my "favorite composers" list, I became interested in learning more about him because of his association in the public mind with Hitler and anti-Semitism. I wondered how anyone who could write such a beautiful and transcendent piece as the "Tannhauser Overture" could also be  a hateful, despicable person, as Wagner is often depicted.

So I got this book from the Libe, called "The Tristan Chord" by Bryan Magee, and it turns out that Wagner's life and evolving outlook were quite a bit more complicated than the synopses about him that have become rubber-stamped into the historical record would indicate. If you wish to read more about his life you can do so, and he was indeed anti-Semitic (which cannot be excused but in his case was also a complicated issue).

What I am thinking of tonight, though, was his interest in philosophy. I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but he began his professional musical life as an idealistic young man who followed the writings of a German philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach. Now, most philosophers do not believe in a higher power, but Feuerbach did have a positive philosophy nonetheless. He believed that the use of logic and rationality could lead mankind to solve conflicts, which would result in more understanding between peoples and ultimately to world-wide peace and love. He didn't believe in God, and believed that this Earthly life is all there is, but he did believe that rational thinking, if applied worldwide, would lead to an epiphany for Man and bring about the highest way for him to live in his brief time on Earth.

Richard Wagner did not believe in God or an afterlife either, but he was an optimist at heart and when he was young, Feurerbach the philosopher was his hero. He believed that universal love would be achieved on Earth, perhaps in his lifetime, and his earliest operas were based on this philosophical principle.

But as he got older, his life's circumstances - which were very difficult, he lived in exile in extreme poverty for much of his career - led him to a change of heart. He was no longer optimistic about the basic nature of man or the possibilities of human redemption through logical thinking and the expression of free love. At this point in his life, he discovered another philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauer.

Here I must pause to express a single chuckle, even though to consider Schopenhauer in the context of humor would be the ultimate in irony, or maybe even sarcasm. I mean my chuckle in neither way, but I laugh because just as I was reading this long chapter in the Wagner book about the exceedingly grim philosophy of Schopenhauer, who believed that life was unrelentingly painful and meaningless, and who used points of logic to rationalise his thoughts, I received the news on the Mueller report.

That was yesterday afternoon. I had been reading about Schopenhauer the night before, and I had Googled him and saw his picture, which in retrospect makes me laugh even more. I am not laughing at him, but with him, because if you Google Schopenhauer and go to Images, you will see studio portraits of him as a grim-faced old man with a crazy white hairdo, and he looks exactly as you would imagine, given what you know about his philosophy.

So Arthur Schopenhauer was Pessimism personified, and because of his philosophy - which I most decidedly do not agree with - combined with his photographic portraits which I saw last night, I just had to laugh, because the news about the Mueller report had just come down, and I got so depressed that I thought, "well, I have always been an optimist but now I am switching to Schopenhauer".

The timing was perfect, and in the end he had me laughing because I kept picturing his photo, and it is so cliche that it feels like he is in on the joke himself. 

So all of this was to tell you that Schopenhauer and his ultra-depressing philosophy, and his photograph, actually lifted my spirits on a day when you might have expected any thoughts of him to make my mood even worse.

Maybe it's a "hair of the dog" thing. At any rate, thanks Schopenhauer! And if you guys ever want to go down to the emotional bottom, read a little bit about his philosophy of life. Or better yet, don't! What's amazing, though, is that Richard Wagner could have his life transformed by this guy (he read his books over and over again and based his most famous operas on Schopenhauer) and would go on to write his greatest and most famous music under the near total influence of Schopenhaurian thought.

Listen to the Prelude to "Tristan und Isolde". This is where the title of the book comes from, "The Tristan Chord". Wagner based this piece on dissonant chords and unresolved musical themes, according to Schopenhauer's philosophy of the everpresent longings of human life, which are also perennially unresolved throughout history. The piece is based on atonal chords, and yet.........

I think it is one of the most beautiful and mystical pieces of music ever written, and it was conceived on the belief that life consists of only suffering.

Give it a listen if you are so inclined., and make sure to Google the picture of Schopenhauer.

I did watch a movie tonight, "The Lost Moment" with Susan Hayward, but it will have to wait until tomorrow as it is late.

As for Trump, remember that he is still "Individual One" in the investigations of the Southern District of New York. Keep in mind that O.J. was initially found "not guilty" too, but eventually they got him.

See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Sorry Lucy, But I Will Not Be Kicking The Football Tonight (R.I.P. America)

Well, folks.......how's everybody doing? Me, I'm not doing so good. I mean, don't worry, because I'm not morose, but I'm just real cynical at the moment about the future of this country, and it doesn't feel good. By nature I am an optimist - even with all the stuff I have been through - and I have described myself as being in one respect like Charlie Brown : I always believe that Lucy is gonna let me kick that football, no matter that she has previously pulled it away every single time I've tried.

So, despite the fact that we got the football pulled away when Al Gore was robbed of the election in 2000, and despite the fact that we were lied to about 9/11 (and about all of the assassinations in the 1960s), and despite the fact that Hillary Clinton was robbed of the election in 2016, I still believed.

I still believed in Robert Mueller and his investigation, because I am an eternal optimist (likely to my detriment), and I believed in Mueller because I watched MSNBC every weeknight for the last two years, and their hosts (Rachel, Chris Hayes, Brian Williams) and the nightly panel of experts assured me, and everyone watching, that not only was there a plethora of evidence against Trump for collusion and obstruction, but that he would be lucky if he escaped jail time. They called him treasonous, and I recall writing a blog last year in which I mentioned that treason was at one time a capital offense.

So after all of this evidence, provided nightly by the experts on MSNBC, I could rest assured that Trump, this man I despise like Hitler (because I believe he would like to overthrow our country and become a dictator) was going to be removed from office. Maybe even be put in prison where he belongs.

But as you know, I became increasingly less confident over time, as the investigation dragged on, and sometime around last Christmas, when the crooked William Barr was appointed Attorney General, I began to suspect that the Fix Was In, as they say. Today, William Barr proved me right.

He is a conspirator himself, a stone criminal who has whitewashed all of the evidence against Trump and turned it into an instantaneous exoneration. We know that Mueller hedged on that point, and said "this does not exonerate the president", but we also know, as it sadly has turned out, that Robert Mueller didn't have half the power we thought he had.

It turned out that his investigation was pretty weak.

Because, folks.........you know and I know, and even his stupid-ass supporters know, deep down, that Donald Trump is guilty of every single thing he was accused of.

He is a criminal of the first order, but unfortunately the fix was in.

Just like it was for that frat boy rapist who was recently appointed to the Supreme Court.

So please forgive me tonight if I am for the moment not very optimistic about the future of the United States of America, and please forgive me further when I suggest again that if the Democrats think they can win the 2020 election with the people they have in the contest so far, that they will be in for a surprise. The newly rejuvenated Trump will beat any of those young pups, with their silly socialist leanings (America will never elect a Socialist president, sorry), by a large margin. Trump is now guaranteed to win 2020 by a landslide, because the Dems haven't a candidate who can even put up a contest let alone win.

People on the Left (of which I am not one, I am centrist) simply do not understand how committed Middle America is to Right Wing politics. And this has been why Trump can win, even when he is caught on tape bragging about "grabbing women's.......you know what".

He was caught on tape, and these people voted for him anyway. He cheats on his wife with porno stars, and these folks voted for him anyway. He disparages a War Hero, when he himself got deferments to avoid Vietnam, and they voted for him anyway (and he continues to disparage McCain even after he is dead).

He is, like George W. Bush before him, a man of average to below average IQ, uncurious and un-read,  uncultured, racist, mysoginistic and so cruel that he locks children in cages after taking them away from their parents, in many cases forever. He uses Twitter, a form of social media that was reserved for teens and disposable celebrities, until he made use of it for his means of presidential communication. In short, he is a Lowbrow, a reality tv star who nobody would look twice at if he didn't have big bucks. But he has always had that, and his supporters are folks who live entirely in the material world, culturally speaking. They aspire to bling-bling, a dream worth striving for, and even though it won't come true for them, it is enough that their Hero has achieved it (or was born into it), and that he hates Mexicans.

Introspection and curiosity about the world are entirely foreign to the MAGA crowd. This is the "Duck Dynasty" audience here.

And they will vote for him no matter what he says or does, because they see themselves in him. He is a simpleton, with deep seated resentments, and so are they, for the most part. The difference is that his voters look up to him because he has what they want - lots of shiny stuff - and he also....ahem.....doesn't like people of different colors. Not that any of his supporters will admit to that, but c'mon......let's get real. I know it sounds divisive for me to make such comments, and it may seem judgmental on my part, but then you have to ask yourself, "what kind of person could have voted for Donald Trump after watching his violence-promoting campaign in 2016, when he also made fun of disabled people, among other things"?

If it sounds like I am generalising or name calling Trump voters, just ask yourself "what kind of person could have voted for him", when he made no effort to hide exactly who he is from the American people.

And he gave courage to those with the same views to come out of the woodwork and vote for him. Vote racist. Vote misogynist. Vote gun nut. Vote xenophobe. Vote hate. And they all did just that.

Trump voters have no excuse. They are nothing but a bunch of assholes, every last one.

So yeah, my fellow Democrats, they will vote for him, and they will come out in droves in 2020. And he will win in a landslide, again since the resentment factor will be huge because of the failed Mueller investigation (nothing drives right wingers like hatred of Democrats), and also because the Democrats will be all split up trying to decide which ineffective candidate to back. Bernie Sanders? Puh-leeze...

So yeah, we are stuck with this bum til 2024, and I am feeling pretty cynical about America right about now. If Lucy offered to hold the football for me tonight, this is one time when I'd tell her "sorry, Luce but I don't trust you anymore. You always pull the ball away".

I'll probably feel better in the morning, though, so don't worry. And I did watch a Tim Holt Western this evening, too. And we had good singing in church.

So hang in there and I will try to do the same. Let's go to Disneyland or do something fun, whataya say? See you in the morning, lots of love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Tarnished Angels" directed by Douglas Sirk + 1989 Drawings

Sorry about the politics last night. I don't like to go on tirades like that, but in this case I felt I had to say something. Maybe tomorrow we will know more and the picture will be a little clearer. At any rate, I did watch a movie tonight, "The Tarnished Angels" (1957), directed by Douglas Sirk from a book by William Faulkner. Now there is a recipe for double-barreled drama if ever there was one! Sirk, that most sweeping explorer of romantic tragedy, and Faulkner the psychoanalyst of the Depression-era South. You can practically see the melodrama dripping off the screen before the movie even starts.

But this is a slightly different story than you might imagine from either man, because it has to do with airplanes. The year is 1932, we are in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. An airshow is set to take place at a local field. Popular at the time were air races, where pilots would make laps around a set of tall pylons, spaced at even distances around an oval course, much like an auto tracetrack, but in the air. This was in the era when airplanes were becoming faster and more aerodynamic, just before the major advancements in the 1940s.

Robert Stack is former WW1 hero who is now a racing pilot. His wife (Dorothy Malone) is his sidekick, a parachute jumper. This is the Depression, and they perform for little money, peanuts basically, and are forced to stay in whatever accommodations the local promoter provides, which are often slummy and substandard.

Angst and Existentialism are the keys to the plot. Stack has yearned to fly since he was a boy, born into the new world of the Wright Brothers. He becomes an ace in the war, but his notoriety is gained by killing - shooting down German pilots. Now, fifteen years later he is an emotional shell, living only for the next air race, living in a cheap, carnival atmosphere and ignoring the wife who loves him but who wants out and is already looking elsewhere. The couple also have a nine year old son, who is rumored to be the biological offspring of Stack's expert mechanic, whom he trusts with his life every time he flies. The flight mechanic, played by Jack Carson, is also clearly in love with Dorothy Malone. He makes no bones about it, and he may have fathered the child in a one night stand, but he is not the romantic type, more of a blue collar grease monkey.

You can see that we have an overwrought emotional mess in the making!

Enter Rock Hudson, who would probably overtake H.Bruce Humberstone in the Great Hollywood Names sweepstakes. Hudson is a newspaperman for the New Orleans Picayune. He is also an alcoholic (probably a stand-in for Faulkner), but he is damn good with words and now he is looking for a human interest story. With the air show in town, he chooses to tell the tale of Robert Stack, the former War Hero now reduced to flying barnstorm gigs for pocket money.

The movie is now Hudson's. He takes over with a feigned gallantry masking arrogance as he tries to juggle three balls at once : his desire to engage Stack for a newspaper story, his greater desire for Stack's wife Dorothy Malone (who also has the mechanic lusting after her), and his attempt to back away from the romantic aspect of the situation and simply use his power as a reporter to help this family, which includes a young child. After all his other motivations have been exhausted, his conscience catches up to him. Hudson is remembered in Hollywood mythology as the ultimate handsome Movie Star (and the first to die of AIDs), but in fact he was a very good actor.

He worked indeed in the mold of Movie Star, but watch his performances in a variety of roles, from melodrama to sci-fi, to war movies to comedy. He had a fair amount of the talent of someone like Cary Grant, and he gives a Faulkner-penned speech at the end of "The Tarnished Angels" that is Shakespearean in it's content and delivery.

His speech, made in front of his boss and colleagues at his newspaper, lays bare the reasons why a man would wish to fly, above all else, in the first place. Again, the story was written in the early days of airplanes, but Faulkner uses flight as a device to contemplate the restlessness of the soul of a person who has confronted nothingness. All Robert Stack had ever wanted to do was fly, since he was a child, and when he got his chance to do so, he became a great pilot who killed other pilots. This is his existential dilemma. Now he races planes in decrepit contests, because it is all he has left to do.

And his wife Dorothy Malone is ignored, yet expected to carry his emotional baggage, while also performing dangerous parachute jumps, and she has an illegitimate son.

"Calling Sigmund Freud"! (Hello, Dr. Freud?.....I've got Mr. Faulkner on the line).

Well anyway, you get the picture. Rock Hudson inserts himself into the middle of this mess, just so he can sell a story. He soon makes matters worse by his intrusion, but his sense of morality leads him to try and fix things......even when it may be too late. ////

"The Tarnished Angels" is shot in incredible b&w, in Cinemascope, with the spectacle of Mardi Gras as a backdrop, in all it's uninhibited glory.

Tremendous acting all around (of the Method school), with great performances by Malone and Hudson especially. Two Very Big Thumbs Up, then, for "The Tarnished Angels". Look for it in Douglas Sirk's catalogue, and watch every film you can get your hands on by this most emotive of American directors. I have left out many of the plot points of the film (which involve the air races and the romantic alignments) in order to focus on the psychology, but that's the point with Sirk in the first place. The movie is highly recommended. ////

That's all I know for tonight, more or less. I am reading my books and working on my latest drawing. All of my drawings this year will be representational, of the topic of 1989, and all will be sketched first in pencil and then filled in with Prismacolors. This will be some definitive stuff, no holds barred, gonna show what really happened. I am three drawings in, hoping to complete 12 to 18 by year's end.

See you in church in the morning for good singing. Much love through the night until then.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

It Is Imperative That Donald Trump Be Brought To Justice

Well, so whataya think? Is Trump toast, or isn't he? I love the way that Republican pundits were immediately spinning it that "no new indictments" was the equivalent of Trump being exonerated. A life long friend, who also happens to be a Trump supporter, called me this evening with glee in his voice, repeating the pronouncements of innocence he'd heard on Fox News.

"Aren't you celebrating a little too early"?, I asked him. After all, I pointed out, as of now no one outside of Mueller & William Barr knows what is in the report, and we already knew that the Justice Dept. wasn't going to indict a sitting president (even though this one should indeed have been indicted).

So as of this moment, I told my friend during the phone call, we know absolutely nothing that is new.

We might know something tomorrow morning, and certainly within a few days, but this just shows you the power of spin, and the inexplicable staying power of Trump, who is not only not in prison where he belongs, but is still in office, when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob.

This shows you the difference between Republicans and Democrats. One side is ruthless and totally focused on achieving their objective, using whatever means necessary to defeat their enemies, even the person's sexual indiscretions on which they give their own party members a pass.

The other side is eternally wimpy, and even after two years of being presented with daily evidence of high treason by a lowbrow mob boss who ascended to the presidency with the help of the Russian Mafia Boss (Putin), they say that "he isn't worth impeaching". This, after their own President Bill Clinton, got impeached for something as comparatively non-threatening to national security as fooling around with his intern and lying about it.

So, if you ever wonder why the Republicans always win and the Democrats always lose, wonder no more. It is because the Democrats are namby-pamby, and champion knuckleheads like AOC and think that a guy like Beto O'Rourke, who has the charisma (and political skills) of a college football yell-leader, has a chance at beating the middle American redneck-friendly Trump.

Democrats just can't read the tea leaves, and so they lose every time. And they will certainly lose the 2020 election with the crop they've got........unless Trump is toast.

So, what do you think? Our only hope is the prosecutors, especially those in the Southern District of New York. If anyone knows the crooked deeds of this SOB, it's the lawyers in his own territory. I hope to God they will go after Trump with everything they've got, because if they don't, America itself may well be toast. Trump is the biggest threat we've faced in my lifetime, not because of his own (lack of) power or capacity for pushing his agenda, but because of what he represents. If he is not brought to justice, then the bar has been lowered for the next more competent Bad Guy to really dismantle our democracy. And onwards to oblivion, until you have Hitler in America.

To let Trump get away with what he has obviously done is to allow the progression toward dictatorship to continue. So, the question is still "who is gonna stop him"?

As I wrote a couple months ago, after a night of frustration watching MSNBC, I had given up expecting any strong measures from the Mueller Report. My reaction was nothing against Robert Mueller, who seems to be as straight-arrow an American Patriot as there is. It is just that Trump has seemingly exposed a weakness within the power structure of the executive branch where the president can turn on his own Justice Department, tell lie after lie to paint that department as enemies of America, and more or less get away with it, because he has created a cult of personality around himself where, by his own admission, he could "shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for me".

Those of us with triple digit IQs can therefore easily see why he is so dangerous : because he is a talented con man. He is a mob boss who is also a Reality Star in an America that is so dumbed-down from it's cultural and intellectual prime (mid-20th century) as to be unrecognizable as the same country.

Donald Trump is the president of Idiot America, he has the unwavering commitment of the culturally and intellectually underdeveloped, and as of tonight, it might seem all hope is lost.

But I'm not 100% sure just yet. I'm no longer basing any remaining optimism on what I hear from Rachel and MSNBC, whom I've been watching nightly for the past two years here at Pearl's. The hosts at that station and their guests, including many former Federal agents and prosecutors, had me believing for months on end (until recently) that Trump would surely be removed from office. Night after night I had to have my MSNBC fix, and I'm sure that will continue for the time being.

But my more realistic sensibilities kicked in late last year, when I heard their own pundits begin to waffle on the perceived strength of the Mueller Report as to it's case against Trump. Sure, Mueller had nailed Manafort, et al......but now they were talking about Trump in terms of his re-election instead of his impeachment. That's when I threw in the towel.

Almost.

I haven't quite thrown it in completely, because I believe that there may be one single person in the Justice Department, at least, who has the power and determination to do something about Donald Trump before he succeeds in destroying our country. I had hoped that Robert Mueller might be that person, and he may still be, but I get the feeling that we are gonna still have to wait, to see if this horrible man is ever going to face the music for all that he has done.

Maybe the Southern District will get him, his home territory. We've got one year until election season is in full swing, and if Beto, Bernie, Biden and the others are all we've got, it will be us who are toast, if Trump has not been called to account by then.

And so I ask you.......what do you think about the Mueller report? Is Trump toast?

Or are we? Is America all done? /////

Thanks for reading. I usually try to stay away from politics as you know, but had to say something tonight. I didn't watch a movie but will absolutely watch one tomorrow night. I did watch an episode of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", however, and it was exceptional. I hope your day was awesome.

See you in the morning. Love through the night.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Charlie Chan Particulars + "McCarthy, Monmouth and The Deep State" by Dr. Farrell, and why the truth matters

I am back. Sorry I missed ya last night. I started to write a blog but was so tired that I couldn't keep my train of thought going and I kept falling asleep, so I just canceled it and figured I'd try again tonight. Sometimes my job and all my hours and schedule catches up with me. Anyhow, Happy Bach's Birthday, slightly belated (though in Hawaii it is still March 21st as I write). I hope you listened to some JSB music today, and if not, may I suggest the St. John Passion since we are in Lent and closing in on Easter. We already did the more famous St. Matthew Passion, so check out the St. John this time. The great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky used it to great effect in his film "The Mirror". ///

I did watch a movie tonight, "Charlie Chan In Reno", and I also watched one last night too, "Charlie Chan At The Race Track", which I was trying to review when I nodded off. Since we kind of know the Chan Formula by now, I'll just make a few observations on the CC films in general.

Having seen the original Charlie - Warner Oland - in a few CC flicks of late, I have discovered that I like him as much as his replacement Sidney Toler, who wound up as the more famous Chan. To me, there is little difference between the two, except that the Swedish born Oland, who had Russian blood and high cheekbones, looks more naturally Oriental than does Toler.

Sidney Toler, however, adds just a touch more humor to the character. Charlie Chan is constantly dispensing Chinese Witticisms, and Toler does this with a tad more flair than Oland.

Oland is excellent, though, in all respects, and for me I can't pick a favorite. I was a little bit shocked to discover on IMDB that director H. Bruce Humberstone (who should be among the finalists for Greatest Hollywood Name) kept Warner Oland plied with booze during his Chan shoots, as it was the only way to get the severely alcoholic Oland to complete his scenes. You'd never know it by watching the movies, as he appears to be a consummate professional. But Oland was yet another actor to die young, in his case at 57 of early onset dementia.

There are three different actors who portray Charlie's sons in the various films. Only one son is present in any movie, always as a comic relief sidekick who wants in on the action. Each son wants to prove to Dad that he, too can be a detective, and this always results in a display of ineptness combined with resourcefulness on the part of the sons (Number One, Two and Three). I don't know which actor had the most roles, but Keye Luke was the most renowned and had the longest career, continuing all the way through his starring role in the "Kung Fu" series in the 1970s. In the Charlie Chan films he is very young, with great comedic skills and very acrobatic too. He is Number One Son, and is a riot.

But I actually prefer the other two actors, Victor Sen Yung and Benson Fong, who play Sons #2 & 3, because, while neither has the overall talent of Keye Luke, each one plays his part with an "Americanised Chinese-ness" that is absolutely hilarious in it's earnestness, and even more because of each Son's desire to present himself to Dad as a Jazz Age Hipster who can speak the mile a minute lingo. The faces of actors Sen Young and Fong are so expressive when they speak their lines (almost always in two shots or closeup), that you can't help laughing because you know that they are in on the joke. So yeah, Keye Luke is the major talent as #1 Son, but the other two guys I find to be a laff riot. ///

So there you have some Charlie Chan Particulars (and don't forget H. Bruce Humberstone).......

You are not gonna like the following, and I'll not harp on it or even elaborate, but I am not thrilled by the overabundant crop of Democratic candidates who are running for President in 2020. You may not agree, and that is cool, but to be honest I think it is a pretty bad group, in terms of having any chance of getting elected. Well, forget I mentioned it.  :)

I am reading Dr. Farrell's latest book, "McCarthy, Monmouth and The Deep State", which begins with a re-examination of the career of Joseph McCarthy, who was perhaps not quite the absolute political demon he was made out to be (though neither the hero the Right might paint him as). The book ultimately purports to reveal deeper, hidden revelations behind the real reasons for the Army/McCarthy hearings, that have to do with national security secrets like Roswell. With any other author you might take this with a grain of salt, but this is Dr. Farrell, and it is interesting that so much of the National Security apparatus was formed in 1947, the same year as Roswell, and then all the anti-Communist stuff happened shortly thereafter. What I have written here is even less than a simplification of the situation. People need to study the fine points of history, because those in power have hidden the secrets that have created our modern society, and it's deceptive wall of reinforcement (the mass media) behind those fine points that were argued and documented in the late 1940s, when the immense power structure we live under was created.

We didn't always live this way, folks, with atomic bombs and Russians and political intrigue and neverending National Security protocol. We didn't always live in a Shutdown State, with electronic gadgets dispensed to us for distraction.

But that's where we are now. I myself live it every day because of 1989, the biggest secret of them all.

It ain't easy, but I read my books, and I encourage you to do some reading, too, if you are so inclined. Don't waste your time with surface-level revelations from mainstream books that are pushed as "ground breaking" by the media. You won't learn anything of value from them. Instead, seek out legitimate, knowledgeable, trustworthy authors who write about the secrets of America's past, who write about technological secrets and advances that have been buried.....go for books by researchers and experts who are interested in the truth, the real truth. Don't waste your time on anything else. Thanks.

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

And The Tenth Composer Is....... + Happy Spring!

Okay, the verdict is in, and my choice for a Tenth Composer is gonna be........Beethoven. After listening to all those sonatas yesterday (bits and pieces mostly, but a few in their entirety), I realized that he had to be the guy. With one sonata, #13, known as "Pathetique", another early memory came back of my Dad practicing one of it's famous themes. So that particular melody line, as it turns out, is one of my very first musical memories. Now, I am also a big fan of Alexander Scriabin, who I mentioned last night as being the other finalist for the tenth position on my list. Scriabin's compositions are somewhat off-center; sometimes his notes seem to topple over each other, but I came to appreciate his music when I became aware of the great Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, as mentioned last night. Sofronitsky's recordings of Scriabin capture the metaphysical expression of his piano works, and are as great a spiritual achievement as anything I have heard in music. According to Scriabin's daughter, who married Sofronitsky, he was always "playing to God", his Audience of One, which clearly comes through to the modern listener.

So that's how great Scriabin's music is, when played by Sofronitsky, and I feel like it should be a tie between the two - Beethoven and Scriabin. I mean, lists are dumb because of these kinds of decisions and the exclusions that end up being made, but on the other hand, lists are fun because they give us something to talk about. :) So, barring a tie between the two composers, I am gonna go with Ludwig Van, though you can more or less call it a tie if you want to. :)

For my favorite Beethoven piece, listen to the aforementioned Sonata #13 on Youtube, as played by Valentina Lisitsa, or listen to Sonata #30 as played by Wilhelm Kempff. I got a bit swept up in the sonatas yesterday and ordered an 8 CD set of The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Wilhelm Kempff, for only 17 bucks, and on Deutsche Grammophon to boot.

For one of the best pieces by Scriabin, listen to the Preludes, Op.11, as played by Vladimir Sofronitsky at this link, which you will have to copy and paste because it won't be clickable here on Blogger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8MTTrh-Z8

Also listen to Scriabin's Sonata #5, but again it's gotta be by Vladimir. Accept no substitutes. :)

Okay, so that was fun, eh? We have completed our list of Top Ten Favorite Classical Composers, and they were, in no particular order except for Bach being #1 : J.S Bach, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, Richard Wagner, Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Domenico Scarlatti, Claude Debussy and Ludwig van Beethoven.

I had to leave out Couperin, Rameau, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Sibelius and Poulenc, and many others, but we will list some favorite pieces by these guys too. Let's keep the discussion going, just because we are having fun doing it. One last thing - I know that most of my "favorite pieces" by each composer were piano works, and piano is definitely my favorite instrument for classical music, but I also have a fondness for string quartets (which many folks won't like), and even more so for organ music, which you already know if you have seen my posts on Facebook.

There is so much to talk about with classical music, and if you give it a chance - as I did when I was about 25, and got hooked by about age 40 - it will enrich your life just as much as the rock music we all grew up on and love and know by heart.

A friend of ours from the 1980s, nicknamed "Shecky", who is by now long gone to parts unknown, once said that "music is the second most powerful force in the Universe", and I tend to agree.

He didn't need to add that love was the first most powerful force, because that goes without saying.

But music.......yeah. It's a trip, because no one really knows what music is.

Or where it comes from, or why. We sort of know "how it comes", though The Muse, or inspiration.

But we really don't know What It Is, except that we can tell, by an inner sense, that it is some kind of Monumental Expression of Human Emotional Language.

But we still don't know where it comes from, or maybe we do. ////

That's all I know for tonight. I did watch a movie, "Charlie Chan In Honolulu" (1938), with Sidney Toler in the starring role. It was an early Chan, and a good one, but you already know the formula for the CC films and I wanted to place the focus on the music tonight.

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, which elicits an "Oh Boy"! from Yours Truly. That was one of the most trying Winters in recent SoCal memory, and all of a sudden, just yesterday in fact, we jumped 35 degrees, from the constant 50 of the "endless Winter" to 85 all of a sudden. I had to turn my air conditioner on at The Tiny yesterday afternoon. Today we reverted to overcast again, but the temp was still a pleasant 70.

Happy Spring! I am sure you are as glad to welcome it as I am.

See you in the morning, with love through the night as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"They Live By Night" starring Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell + Beethoven Sonatas

Tonight I watched an excellent film noir called "They Live By Night" (1948), which I found through a Criterion search of the library database. It starred Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as a young couple on the run from the law down South, through Mississippi and on to Texas. This film was the debut of director Nicholas Ray (of "Rebel Without A Cause" fame), so in addition to the noir you also get a large dose of melodrama.

As the movie opens, Granger, a handsome young star in the 1950s who appeared in two Alfred Hitchcock films ("Rope" and "Strangers On A Train"), has just escaped from a Mississippi prison with the help of two older cons, both experienced bank robbers. Farley himself had been locked up for seven years, since he was 16, for a murder he says he didn't commit (more likely he did, but it was justifiable). One of the older escapees has arranged for a safe house for the three to hide out in, while they plan their first bank robbery. The house is owned by his older brother, an alcoholic who lives a destitute life with his young adult daughter (O'Donnell).

When the three convicts arrive at the house, Granger and O'Donnell gravitate toward each other because they are the only two young people enclosed in this claustrophobic situation, and moreover they are the only two who want out. O'Donnell, who begins her role as an emotionally stunted waif, can see in Granger a bruised innocence that is not too different from her own. He killed a man who was picking on his ne'er do well father, which landed him in prison; she would not kill her own Dad to escape his dissolute lifestyle, but she can certainly sympathize with Granger. She encourages him to walk away from the two older convicts, to refuse to take part in their bank robbery scheme, but he won't do it. He tells her that he "owes them" because they helped him escape in the first place.

As they begin to fall in love, they come to an agreement : he will participate in this one robbery, which will net him enough money to live on for a while, and then he will tell the older men that he is done.

He does this, but the older cons don't go for it. They force him to participate in a second bank job, but during the course of it, one of the older men is killed. Now Granger sees a chance to get out, but as he is driving with the last remaining convict, that man kills a policeman during a traffic stop. Now he is implicated in a murder, of a cop no less, and this is a parallel to the original crime which landed him in prison in the first place. He was there, he participated, but it really wasn't his fault. He is young and has been the victim of older criminals since the day he was born.

O'Donnell can see this, and tells him she will go anywhere with him if he will just leave the situation.

They tie the knot in a Vegas type "instant marriage" chapel run by a shady man who can arrange for them to escape to Mexico if they so desire. Granger declines, and he takes his new bride up to a hideaway in the mountains, to a cabin that his fellow hoodlums had planned to use after the failed second bank robbery.

It is here that fate catches up with him, in the form of all the negative forces he has tried to escape. His one remaining ex-partner (Da Sliva) shows up, then his sister-in-law who is also involved in the scheme, and finally the police.

By this time, Granger and O'Donnell have become a doomed Romeo and Juliet. They aren't suicidal like R & J but they are backed into a corner they know they can't get out of. Cathy O'Donnell gives a performance of a poverty stricken, uneducated but intuitively intelligent Southern daughter, raised in a patriarchal culture and feeling powerless until her White Knight arrives in the form of prison escapee Granger, that is so reminiscent of Sissy Spacek's 1973 performance in Terrence Malick's "Badlands", that I would be surprised if Spacek was not influenced by O'Donnell's acting a quarter century earlier.

Director Ray raises the love story to it's apex during the tragic crescendo, in what was to become his signature style. He was like Douglas Sirk, except that his stories were about rebels rather than middle class folks with buried emotions.

The movie is beautifully shot in black and white with some early uses of helicopter photography. Standing in for Mississippi and Texas are pre-suburban locations in the Valley, in Canoga Park before it was developed, and also in a long gone RKO movie ranch in Encino. "They Live By Night" gets two Big Thumbs Up just for these reasons alone, but it is also a great "tragic Nicholas Ray story", his debut film, and not to be missed for it's emotional element. You will definitely need a hanky for the ending. ///

Today at Pearl's I had the complete cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas playing on Youtube, by Claudio Arrau, one of the great pianists of the 20th century. I listened here and there, when I could spare some time from my work, and I was able to hear many great moments and sections from the 32 sonatas. Would you believe that they run over 10 hours, all told? Well anyway, I am renewing my appreciation for this music, and for my tenth pick it's gonna come down to a choice between Beethoven and Alexander Scriabin, who is the "uncoventional" composer I mentioned last night. His piano music sounds as if it comes from an elaborate series of fever dreams, but give it a listen anyway, and if you do, make sure you listen to the interpretations by Vladamir Sofronitsky, the greatest Scriabinist of them all, who also married Scriabin's daughter and besides all of that is one of the Holy Trinity of Piano as you know.

So, listen to some Scriabin by Sofronitsky and some Beethoven sonatas, either by Arrau or Kempff, and then we will be ready to make our pick for the tenth spot on the list.

I am super tired (and staying up too late!) and so I will sign off by sending you much love, and will see you soon in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Composers : Making The Final Pick + Choir + Hour Long Westerns (you are now a fan)

It's really tough trying to make my pick for the final spot on my Top Ten Favorite Classical Composers list (or, being that it is classical, should I call it a Liszt?). Bad pun, sorry. But it really has been difficult. I feel sacrilegious for even considering to exclude Beethoven, but what about someone like Erik Satie? His gymnopedies and gnossiennes are some of the greatest piano compositions ever written, I think. Their style is unique to Satie, nothing else from the classical piano repertoire sounds like those pieces. And yet, I am not familiar with anything else he has done. I don't know how prolific he was. Beethoven was incredibly prolific in so many formats, and yet I would chose Satie's handful of famous pieces as some of my very favorites over any single thing Beethoven has written. With Beethoven, there is a cumulative effect because of the overall weight and power of his work. And there is no doubt he was the greater composer. But we are going for favorites here, as opposed to greatness.

So who is my tenth pick? I am still tempted to choose Beethoven, and I think if I did, my favorite piece would be either the "Moonlight Sonata" or the lesser known piano sonata #30. The thing with "Moonlight" is that I love the slow part. That is music of the highest genius as far as I am concerned.

But then comes the fast explosive part, bubbling up from out of nowhere. And as great as the fast part is, and as technically challenging for even the greatest pianists, I do not love it as much, because it is too supercharged for my taste, and as you know, I don't like what I have termed "piano banging". I know that the piano by it's invention was supposed to be, in part, a percussive instrument. That's why it's full name is the Pianoforte (soft, loud). But for me, I love the silvery tonal qualities of the piano above it's potential for bombast. So as incredible as the second part of "Moonlight" is - and I do enjoy it - I just do not like it as much as the first part which is monumental greatness. As far as other famous Beethoven works are concerned, "Fur Elise", though brief, is also worthy of being called one of the greatest pieces for piano ever written. And the "Emperor Concerto" is legendary, with varying levels of drama throughout, but for me it does not rise to the level of my favorite Beethoven music.

Still, when you include the symphonies and the violin concerto, and the rest of his thirty one piano sonatas, it's pretty hard to leave Beethoven off the list, because of his body of work. Again, many would call him the greatest composer who ever lived. But for me, I am not sure.

I think it's gonna come down to him and one other composer, not as famous a name (and not one that would readily come to mind for most folks' Top Ten), but the other guy I am thinking of wrote a ton of very beautiful piano music, though some might call it unconventional. I will think about it for one more day and name my tenth and final pick tomorrow night. /////

We had good singing in church this morning, with a traditional Irish anthem for St. Patrick's Day called "I Sing As I Arise". It begins way down in the low register, which is hard for me to get volume on, and then builds to the higher tenor notes, which come from the upper chest and throat and are much more "in my wheelhouse" as they say. I also enjoyed singing the weekly hymns, which have come to be my favorite part of being in the choir, because of the great melodies in those songs and the emotional pull they extract from the singer. You can feel it as you go from verse to verse, and especially in the choruses.

You should join the choir. Have I sold you on it yet? :)

Good. See you next Sunday. I'll make sure your robe is hanging in the closet. ////

I did watch a movie tonight, another one of my Tim Holt Westerns called "Cyclone On Horseback". Young Tim runs a horse wranglin' business, where he and his men round up wild stallions for sale to ranchers, cowboys and the like. Horses were the cars of the 19th century. Many folks needed 'em. In this story, Holt has brought along sixty horses for sale to a businessman who is putting up a telephone line across the county in an unspecified state that looks a lot like Corrganville. :)

Of course, this is an Hour Long Western, so we must follow the basic plot rules and interchanges. Right off the bat there is a Bad Guy who wants the telephone contract for himself. He conspires with his "henchmen" (such a great word) to swindle the horses from the initial purchaser, by intercepting Holt and offering him money up front.

It's all a bit confusing because the dialogue flies by very quickly, but Hour Westerns are geared toward your eyes anyway. Talk about piano banging; forget about listening to individual notes, as it were, in these matinee-style flicks. It's all about what's coming at you onscreen. Guns are blazin', horses are running, dust is flyin'. It's not about the script, word for word, as much as it is about the visual cues to tell the story, and the producers trust the audience to get the gist.

That was part of the genius of the B-Movie sector of Hollywood, to be able to crank out so many different types of Saturday Afternoon Serials (hour long movies), and have them draw an audience continuously and also have the plots make sense, despite the lack of a fleshed-out script. This was done through the visuals, the photography depicting the onscreen action. The "B" directors were craftsmen who knew the nuts and bolts of moviemaking, what the studio wanted, etc. It was a machine and they cranked out pictures, but the pictures were always fun and therefore always successful.

This is part of the reason a Tim Holt Western automatically gets Two Thumbs Up, simply because it is fun and never loses your attention. It's got all the Western ingredients, including cowboy music by Ray Whitley, and you just feel good watching it. Times were simpler and you don't even have to be a current fan of Westerns serials to all of a sudden find yourself watching one.

It's similar to how you found yourself just a little while ago joining the choir. Now, you are watching Hour Long Westerns, and it happened almost by magic.

Imagine that. :)

Put in your vote for our tenth and final favorite composer, and I will see you in the morn.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  (love all night) 

"Ghost Story" : An Exceptionally Effective TV Series From 1972

No movie tonight, but I did watch a scary episode of "Ghost Story" that starred James Franciscus  as a man who is having premonitions about the death of his young daughter. This is not to occur for at least 20 years, as his daughter is a small child and in his premonitory dreams he pictures her as an adult. When she calls out to him for help, he wakes up, badly shaken, and his little daughter (only five years old in real life) asks him what is wrong. Pretty creepy, right? Well anyhow, he calls his ex-wife to tell her about it. She is played by Elizabeth Ashley, a very dramatic actress with a distinctive look who was in a lot of TV shows in the 70s and 80s. At first she gives him grief about his "obsessions" as she terms them, meaning his psychic visions. He retorts that he he's had them all his life, including one that occurred just before his father died. Had he heeded the message in this dream, he tells his ex-wife, his Dad would be alive today. And he'll be damned if he is gonna ignore the dreams about his daughter.

So out of the blue, even though he has a career as a corporate lawyer, he takes off on a drive to Wyoming, where in one of his dreams he has seen the name of a small town where the premonition is to take place. Now, his ex (Elizabeth Ashley) thinks he's nuts......until she has a dream of her own.

Before too long she has joined him in the small Wyoming town, where he is now seeking out a man whose name his older "dream daughter" has conveyed to him.

Franciscus finds a man by that name in town, but he is in middle age. His daughter's killer is young, and the dream is two decades in the future.

This means that the killer will be the man's son, with the same name - "so-and-so junior" - but he hasn't even been born yet......  :(

Good Lordy Moses. Now we are totally freaked out, you and me both.

The "Ghost Story" series has had great acting in all four episodes I've seen so far, and producer William Castle does a great job with atmosphere, using the very effective technique in these kinds of stories where the outside world ceases to exist. In each episode there are only a handful of characters who are left to resolve things on their own, and each actor brings a different quality of tension to his or her role, or compassion or deception. In this episode was another very good TV actress from the 70s named Meg Foster. She was very young here, though instantly identifiable because she has these icy pale blue eyes that look like she must be wearing colored contacts. She was talented in histrionics, and in this episode she plays the young woman who will eventually have a baby son who will grow up to be the killer of James Franciscus' daughter.......in his dreams.

One thing to note that is impressive from a story point of view is the ability of the screenwriter to assemble all of these ingredients into a coherent plotline, and to not only have it make sense but to elicit scares and a sense of foreboding throughout the show's fifty minute length. This is not easy to pull off, and there are several characters whose threads I haven't even mentioned, who fill out the periphery.

So there you have the core elements of what makes "Ghost Story" successful. First and foremost, top notch actors in every episode. Secondly, a "closed world" atmosphere, in which only the involved characters exist inside their entwined predicament. There is no "normal" outside world to turn to for help. This creates a claustrophobic effect in horror. Third, only the very best screenwriters must be hired to maintain quality. It is noteworthy that the IMDB for "Ghost Story" lists the legendary Richard Matheson as the creator of the series. I haven't the time to go into Matheson's history or his influence on horror and science fiction writing, but it is enough to say that he was a contemporary of Rod Serling who wrote several episodes of "Twilight Zone" and that he was an acknowledged influence on Stephen King. He also did a lot of stuff besides that, including writing "I Am Legend".

Well, it's a fantastic show all told, and most importantly it has the quality of abject weirdness that to me is just as important as the horror. It's not enough to be scared; you've gotta be weirded out, too. ////

Tomorrow night we will be back at the movies and we'll have more music to discuss as well.

See you in church in the morning and don't forget to wear green........or (pinch pinch)....  :):)

Lots of love til then.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Debussy Is On The List + "Charlie Chan and The Secret Service"

I think we are gonna have to go with Claude Debussy for inclusion on our list of Top Ten Favorite Composers. After debating it back and forth the past few days, I just thought that, because he was the author of so many truly lovely piano compositions - many of which exhibit an impressionistic or even dreamlike quality - that he had to be on there. As I've said, making this list of classical favorites isn't as easy as making a similar list for rock artists, simply because I do not know all of the work by any given composer (whereas with rock I basically know every song ever made, or at least all the good ones, haha).

Debussy specialised in piano music and wrote many famous pieces; "Claire de Lune" being perhaps the most well known. A well known orchestrated piece is "Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun". His music was exceedingly gentle, in contrast to Beethoven - also considered for this list - who wrote for multiple formats in an earlier and more bombastic style. One could argue that Beethoven was the greater composer. Many think he is the greatest who ever lived. I am not excluding Beethoven from my Top Ten, and he was initially on my list as it was first constructed rather extemporaneously. He may still become my tenth and final selection, but because I love the piano most of all and because Debussy wrote so many spiritually indelible pieces for that most expressive of instruments, he gets the ninth selection on the list.

I am sure there are many great purveyors of Debussy pianism, and I am not as familiar with them all as I am, say, with the players of Bach, Chopin or Mozart. But I do know two great ones : Claudio Arrau and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

You can listen to anything either of these guys play by Debussy, but for my favorite pieces (I can't pick one), listen to "Reverie", "Arabesques", "Preludes" or "Images".

Debussy is not going to pull you into the deepest well of your emotions. He is not going to put you through the wringer and hang you out to dry, but what he will do is paint pictures of what you might feel in your daydreams when you don't even realise you are daydreaming. His music is very subtle and contemplative, otherwordly even.

Coming up we will make a pick for our tenth and final spot, and boy will it be a tough choice. So let's take a couple of days to think about it and proceed with care. /////

For tonight's movie, we were back in Charlie Chan territory, having scored three more Chan flicks during a trip to Chatsworth Libe. "Charlie Chan and The Secret Service" was the title, made in 1944 for Monogram Pictures and starring Sidney Toler as the humble Master Detective. According to IMDB, this was the first Chan film for Monogram, which was the prototypical "Poverty Row" studio. The budget is listed on that website as being only 75 Grand for the entire film. The actors, of which there are many, must've been paid peanuts, but all in all this is a decent Charlie Chan film, with the kind of plot where everyone is locked inside a mansion and not allowed to leave. This approach allows the filmmakers to shoot everything on a single set and save a lot of money. The script is pretty good, involving a murdered scientist who had developed a "super torpedo", undetectable, that has the potential to destroy the Japanese navy. There is an enemy agent in the house who has killed the scientist and stolen his schematics for the weapon.

Can Charlie Chan uncover the killer's identity? Can he do this while being distracted by his Number 3 Son and Cute Daughter, both Americanized Hipsters who want to crash the investigation to show Dad their detective skills?

Chan can. He can do it while dishing out proverbial advice to his children and to bug-eyed Mantan Moreland, who is on hand again to provide comic relief. Mantan is not PC nowdays, but I love him. Ditto the Chinese hipster kids, who seem like advance notice Millennials.

This is not one of the best of the Charlie Chan flicks, simply because it feels like Monogram shot it on the cheap, all in basically one or two rooms. The actors do a good job but the whole thing feels constrained. Still, because it has the bottom-line wit and good humor of all the CC movies, and because the mystery plays out to the very end, I will give it Two Thumbs Up on it's own merits, with the caveat that there are better Charlie Chan films out there. /////

That is more or less all I know for tonight. I just finished the Roswell book, and I must commend author Don Schmitt on his dedication to the subject. With this book, he has pulled up all the truth that is currently available on the subject of Roswell. He has put together a probable timeline of events, which will surprise you in it's detail.

See you in the morning. Huge love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Fargo Kid" starring Tim Holt

For tonight's movie, I went with another Tim Holt Western : "The Fargo Kid" (1940), which was fun because it took us back to the Iverson Ranch location in Chatsworth, with many scenes shot at the famous Garden Of The Gods rock formations off of Santa Susana Pass. All of the "Durango Kid" films were shot at Iverson and I had gotten used to seeing it as the backdrop for these hour long Westerns. In the first Tim Holt movie, viewed last night, the location was Kanab, Utah - which is spectacular to be sure - but even so I was missing the familiar landscape at Iverson, so it was a nice surprise to recognize it right away in tonight's first scene.

The Holt Westerns have a formula that is similar to the one used with the Durango Kid. There is a sidekick - de rigueur in B-Westerns (and you can add de rigueur to the French terms I promise never to use again, though I must add that, in my opinion, it's not as bad as milieu).

But where was I? Oh yeah.....there is a sidekick for Tim Holt, which usually means a comic foil, and in Westerns that translates to a guy who is physically the polar opposite of the Cowboy Star. In the Durango Kid movies, you had Smiley Burnette, who was dumpy and uncoordinated, and yet he was the perfect sidekick to the rock solid, hypervigilant Kid because he could hold his own with the Kid in any situation. Smiley had the gift of gab, and also of song, and like many large comedians he was graceful in his pratfalls, so as the sidekick to Charles Starrett he was the perfect comedic foil because he was just as strong a character, though in an opposite way.

I have only seen two of the Tim Holt movies, but it appears that his comic foil may be Emmett Lynn, a scrawny, bewhiskered "old coot" who has the demeanor of a Don Knotts, a wimpy looking guy who will nonetheless "put up his dukes" against anyone. Like Knotts, Emmett Lynn is afraid of no bad guy, no gunslinger or outlaw. Or so he says. :)

When push comes to shove, the results may differ.

Also, as with the Durango movies, there are musical interludes, this time provided by cowboy singer Ray Whitley and his group. Like Emmett Lynn, Whitley has been in both Holt films so far, so I imagine he will be the main musical star throughout the series, and he and his backing group are fantastic in the way of singing harmonies, as have been all the country and western acts we've seen in these "hour Westerns" so far. Boy can these guys sing, and their music adds to the easygoing feel of the plots, with their mix of comedy and action.

The storylines in these B-Westerns have interchangeable parts, so you can mix n' match 'em and you know you are always gonna have two or three elements of a set amount of ingredients. In tonight's "Fargo Kid" you have a man and his family owning a small mine, hoping to strike gold but only unearthing relatively worthless iron ore. So right there you have a Western Movie Ingredient : Gold Mining. The local assayer in town (the guy who weighs gold) is offering to buy the mine from the family. He says he wants the land to build a road to other mines. The man's wife and daughter want him to sell, but the man won't do it. He wants to keep digging in case there is gold in there somewhere.

The assayer knows that there is gold in the mine, because he has an underground map of the area which shows a rich vein within fifteen feet of the tunnel the man has already dug. The man has no idea this vein is there, so if the assayer can just convince him to sell - or kill him - the gold will be his.

But the assayer wasn't counting on the arrival of The Fargo Kid, an honest gunslinger, so there you have the main ingredient in any Western, "B" or otherwise : The Hero.

Many Western Heroes are older, perhaps a little weather beaten, though all are tall and thin and still retain a fair amount of athletic ability. Holt has all the physical attributes, but he is decidedly a kid, good natured and all smiles on the outside, whereas a guy like Starrett wore a mask over his face so you could never see his expression. Holt shows his mettle, though, when it counts, and this end game toughness is what shows through when the chips are down. ///

I am still getting used to him, but the stories are good so far, and all the Western ingredients are in place. And best of all, we are back at Iverson Ranch. As with the Durango Kid movies, we are gonna give the Holt films an automatic Two Thumbs Up. ////

I am tired tonight, and though I want to consider another composer for inclusion on our list, I think I may have to wait until tomorrow. I have been listening to Beethoven piano sonatas, and though I do not rank them as highly as I do the sublime compositions of Debussy, I am torn between including either one of the two on the list. Most folks would go with Beethoven unquestioningly, because of his symphonic genius and overall stature, and I am inclined in this way also. But I love classical piano, and in this regard, I think Debussy may have Beethoven beat. Is that sacrilege?

Well, I haven't decided yet, and there are two spots left anyway in our top ten.

That is all for tonight. I will see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Tim Holt Collection" of Westerns + Choosing My Last Two Classical Picks

You are gonna be thrilled to learn - and I am pleased to inform you - that I have received in the mail a new set of Western movies! Yes siree, it's The Tim Holt Collection, Volume 4, released by Warner Archives, and it came to my attention (as these things often do) via an Amazon recommendation. I saw that there were several volumes in the Holt Collection, and I chose #4 because it had the lowest price, about 22 bucks. The other volumes run about 25 to 30 dollars, much higher than the Durango Kid collection which gave you ten films for twelve bucks, but maybe they can charge more because Tim Holt was a fairly big name in Hollywood in the 1940s. He starred in some A-list movies like Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Treasure Of The Sierra Madre" with Humphrey Bogart.

In reading his IMDB biography, he seems to have opted out of a chance to become a bigger star in favor of making smaller budget Westerns, which fit his personality and lifestyle. Though he was born in Beverly Hills, the son of a Silent film actor, he gravitated toward ranch life and wound up buying property in Oklahoma. He was a cowboy at heart, and in our first Tim Holt Western tonight, "Wagon Train" (1940), he was only 21 years old when he made the picture.

Holt was All American handsome, so he looks the part of a Western idol, though he differs from Charles Starrett (The Durango Kid), in that his youth leads you to suspect a possible lack of cojones, if only due to his lack of experience against outlaws. With Starrett, who was in his early to mid-40s in the Durango movies we saw, and who had the lean, mean look of the black hatted lawman, there was no doubt of his leathality. You have to give Holt a chance, though, and when you do, you will discover that despite his youthful looks he is deadly serious, not as a Sheriff or hired gun in this movie, but as a wagon master who is leading his clients to Pecos, Texas, where they will settle as townsfolk. I don't think Holt will be playing a singular character throughout this collection, ala the Durango Kid, but his roles will likely befit his onscreen persona of a straight shooting good guy. His IMDB also says that he was a real life quick draw, and was actually timed as "the fastest gun in Hollywood", able to draw and shoot in five frames of film. More importantly, Holt - whose acting career was interrupted by World War Two - flew bombing missions in the Pacific theater over Japan and was awarded a Purple Heart after being shot on the last day of the war. So as you can see, he fills the bill as a hero, in the movies and in real life.

The Westerns in the Holt Collection are of the 60 minute variety, which we love because it leaves us a little time on our evening break to read and draw. I am working on my second Prismacolor drawing, of a scenario from the Wilbur Wash. My first, of a UFO over a lonely highway, came out pretty doggone good if I do say so myself. I am now trying to execute representative drawings after several years of abstract. The process is more painstaking because I am not naturally talented in that area, but I persevere. ////

My current books are the previously mentioned "Plot To Kill King" by William Pepper, which should be on the nightly news every night until America becomes clean, and ditto "The Cover-Up At Roswell". This country is toast until we stop keeping secrets about our past. ////

I am meaning to make another classical pick but am having trouble deciding who my last two favorite composers should be. As mentioned, it's not as easy as choosing my Ten Favorite Rock Artists, whose music I know by heart, every note of every song.

So for my last two picks, I have to sort Debussy from Beethoven and Couperin from Rameau, and what about Rachmaninoff and Scriabin? What about Sibelius? So it's tough, because there is so much great music from all of the above, and from so many more composers. With rock bands, we have had the chance to see them play live, and they are playing their own compositions. Imagine if we had lived in Mozart's time, and had been in the room when he played a new sonata to a Royal Court or to some other wealthy benefactor....

With classical music, and with choosing favorites, we have to factor in the interpretations of the instrumentalists (pianists, etc.) who are representing a given piece. One or two hundred years later, a piece can be associated as much with a favorite pianist almost as much as it is with the composer.

So the whole thing is a bit tricky. Maybe I am over analyzing it, and I will narrow my last two choices down, but for tonight, in presenting the case for Francois Couperin, I want you to listen to a single piece, just over three minutes in length. You already know it. I have posted it numerous times on my FB, and it has been used in popular films that you have seen.

It is called "Les Barricades Mysterieuses", or..."The Mysterious Barricades". As with the "Tannhauser Overture" by Wagner, this one piece alone not only qualifies the composer as a musical genius, but as a composition is worthy of consideration as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.

Make sure to listen to the Youtube version by Georges Cziffra. It will come up near the top of the search if you use the terms "mysterious barricades couperin". Cziffra is the only one who gets the tempo exactly right. For a fast version, listen to the one by Alexandre Thaurad. It's a bit shocking in comparison, but because of his liquid playing technique, it works.

So, that's the case for Couperin, for inclusion into our Top Ten. I'm not sure if he will make one of the last two slots, but he wrote a lot of other great music besides "Barricades", so he might.

That's all for this evening. Peace and Love through the night, Sun and Butterflies in the morning.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Beautiful Day Butterflies + "Operation Burma" w/ Errol Flynn + Composers

We finally had a gorgeous, warm day after months and months of cold, overcast and rainy weather. Today felt like it might just have been the first day of Spring here in the Valley, and as if to mark the occasion there were thousands of small monarch butterflies, newly hatched, flying everywhere you looked. Someone said they were migrating, which I had not known. Imagine that - they are no sooner born than they know exactly what they are supposed to do. 

It was a wonderful sight to behold, and I can't tell you how grateful I was for the nice weather. :)

Tonight I watched a third film from the stash I picked up at Mid Valley on Sunday : "Operation Burma" (1945), which - as you can once again tell from the title - is a WW2 movie, lengthy and big budget, starring Errol Flynn, one of my very favorite actors. Burma lies just above Thailand on the map of southeast Asia, and just below Thailand is Vietnam, so it's kind of interesting how the United States wound up in a war in that country just 20 years after World War Two came to an end. I am a WW2 history buff, but I had not known that the US had any forces in that area during the war in the Pacific. I knew we were in China, which was an ally at the time, and that we used some of their bases for strategic reasons, with a minimum of troops, but I never knew we were all the way down in Burma. You learn something new every day.

Errol Flynn is "Captain Nelson", who will be leading a squad of paratroopers into a secluded area of the Burmese jungle, hopefully away from any Japanese troops, who have already invaded Burma to set up radar stations. The mission of Flynn's group is to blow up one of these stations that can identify American planes before they reach Japan.

The first half hour of the film sets up the mission and deals with the varying levels of anxiety among the men, including the ever present fear of jumping from a plane into a potential combat situation. This is the first war film that I have seen take such a detailed look at the prelude to the actual jumping of the paratroopers; even the most experienced among them are nervous and Captain Flynn admits this to a novice newspaperman who has been chosen by Washington brass to tag along. The writer is an older man and a civilian who would seem to be unfit for such a thing, but his character will prove to be tougher than the soldiers expect. He becomes a central part of the story as he jumps out of the plane with the rest of the troops and then chronicles their journey to the radar station in his notebook, for later use in his newspaper columns back home.

The objective to destroy the Japanese radar station is achieved with relative ease, and the troops retreat to a predetermined clearing where an airstrip is located. They are to be picked up and flown out of there by a C-47, and they can see and are in radio contact with the planes which are within a minute or two of landing. But then a scout from the perimeter comes running up with the announcement that Japanese troops have been sighted behind the treeline - hundreds of them - and they are waiting for the planes to land so that they can ambush the American plan of extraction.

All of a sudden the plans must be changed. Captain Nelson (Flynn) radios for the rescue planes not to land and to depart the area immediately. He messages a secondary plan for them to rendezvous with his troops at another location down the trail, in two days.

This plan does not unfold successfully because it is discovered that Japanese troops are lining the Burmese trail all the way to the border. There is no way for planes to land.

Errol Flynn and his men will have to walk the two hundred miles out of the jungle by themselves.

"Operation Burma" is a very realistic war film as WW2 movies go. There are scenes of atrocities (shown off screen from the witness' point of view) that are very grim indeed, and there is also an existential "one for all and all for one" resolve among the men after they feel themselves to be left for dead. The script never says that the Army command has abandoned them, but they still feel the eternal soldiers' bond that they are only fighting to save themselves, and that their predicament is no longer about the greater jingoistic war objective. They keep fighting because they are there, and because it is the only way out against the Japanese soldiers of the same mindset.

This is a very brutal and truthful war film. It has some of the character traits of all WW2 films from the 1940s, meaning that there is a Brooklyn Wise Guy making a lot of jokes in between firefights, and there is the newspaperman documenting the stories and hometown histories of the individual men. But overall, and in the jungle sequences mostly, it looks very accurate. The men are out in the wild, having parachuted in, and now they are stuck there.

The Japanese know the territory, the paratroopers don't, and so they face danger at every turn and every time night falls. This is a story more about endurance in extreme conditions than it is a hard core battle film, though there is plenty of combat action. Director Raoul Walsh focuses on the tension before battle.

He pays attention to the average soldier and how he got there in the first place. A lieutenant has recently been a schoolteacher. Now he is in the fight of his life, in a suddenly incomprehensible set of circumstances.

Errol Flynn shows why he was such a good actor (within his range), and that he was more than just a matinee idol movie star. Here he shows real pathos and grit as the Captain leading his depleted squad through miles of unknown territory, reminding his men to swallow their salt tablets and their dysentery pills so they won't get sick, all while keeping a keen eye out for the enemy.

If you are a fan of WW2 films, then I can give you a high recommendation for "Operation Burma", which again is not a mega-combat film but more a story of survival. But it has incredible location photography by the great James Wong Howe, shot in shadowy black and white somewhere in the wilderness areas around Palm Springs. It looks and feels like you are in Burma, and Walsh directs with a tension that maintains the pace throughout the 142 minute picture. This is a long film but it never lets up for a minute.

One of the best World War Two films I've seen, with a great performance by Flynn and his support actors, and deserving of Two Very Big Thumbs Up. But only if you are a serious fan of war films, because it is also very grueling. ////

Tomorrow I will try to do another music pick. I think we have done eight pieces so far, by as many composers, which means that we have two to go. I can't even remember my exact list now, of my top ten composers. Who have we already done? Bach, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Mozart, Scarlatti, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. So who do we have to go? Beethoven and Rachmaninoff? I am not sure I'd put either of them in my top ten, but then - to be truthful - I don't know the complete oeuvre of any of my composers. I have heard a lot of stuff by most of them, but not all the work by any, and so for some of them I am judging the greatness by their most famous pieces. Actually, if I think about it, I might choose Debussy over Beethoven for my top ten favorites, simply because I love piano music over symphonies (although Beethoven has his share of great piano sonatas, too).

At any rate, I promise not to use "oeuvre" again, just as I recently promised never to use "milieu" a second time. I will keep my word on both counts, so have no fear.  :)

And I will do another music pick, too, though not sure by whom just yet.

So see you in the morning, maybe with some late hatching butterflies still flying northward, bringing up the rear of the migration.

Tons of love and warm temperatures.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)