August 3, 2024

 Howdy folks. I hope your weekend is off to a good start. Me, I have got to get a better workspace. Living in a Tiny Apartment as I do, I spend much of my time writing not at a desk or table (which would be nice), but sitting in an old Ikea rocking chair that I've had for about twenty years. I write with laptop in lap, which isn't so bad, but leaning slightly backward in the chair becomes uncomfortable after a while. I wrote all of "Pearl the Wonder Girl" in this chair (which I am sitting in now), and 80% of my first book (which will be released next Spring). So it's a chair that produces results, you might say, but I'm getting sick of sitting in it. I just plain need more space, not only to write but to have easy access to other materials, like old letters and journals and such that can be used for research purposes.

And boy oh boy did my first book ever get a curveball thrown at it, and just when I thought it was finished, too. Now I've gotta go back and reconfigure it. Holy Smokes, folks. Who saw this development coming? Not me, that's for sure. Well anyhow, what've we got to talk about? (It's gonna take every bit of self-control I can muster not to talk about the election. I didn't think anyone could ever come up with a worse candidate than Donald Trump, but they've done it...)

Well anyhow! (ahem, clearing throat...) Do you guys ever watch Toyah and Robert's Upbeat Moments on FB? I'm talking about Robert and Toyah Fripp of Sunday Lunch fame. Oh yeah, he was in some band called King Crimson, too. But now, besides their wildly popular Sunday Lunch, they post a short clip from their home (on the Thames) in England, dedicated to their Upbeat Moments of the Week. They're doing their part to keep folks jolly in precarious times, and if you haven't yet seen their Upbeat Moments, just enter it into the FB search window. It's a great way to start your Saturday.

I have a Montgomery Clift movie for you: "Suddenly, Last Summer"(1959) in which Monty stars as a brain surgeon specialising in lobotomies. Liz Taylor plays "Catherine", a  young New Orleans woman gaslighted and institutionalised by her wealthy aunt (Katherine Hepburn) for "telling fantasy stories" about Hepburn's recently deceased son, "Sebastian". The movie is very talky and was adapted by Gore Vidal from a play by Tennesee Williams, so it's loaded with poetic dialogue. You kind of have to wade through it in the early going, in a lengthy scene bewteen Hepburn and Monty. It's clear she has some problems, and when she talks about the death of her precious Sebastian, which happened "suddenly last summer" in a Spanish village, Monty starts to wonder what she's hiding. She's called him to her gothic mansion, which has a primeval jungle out back, to ask him to perform a lobotomy on her niece Catherine, who is locked up and diagnosed insane for opening the family's skeleton closet. 

Monty can tell that Hepburn is obsessed with her dead son, and it becomes clear that the family is trying to silence Catherine. Monty's boss (Albert Dekker), the head of the cash-poor state hospital, wants Monty to go ahead with the lobotomy asap, because Hepburn has promised a one million dollar donation if they perform the operation in twenty four hours "to relieve Catherine's pain". Meanwhile, poor Catherine tries to escape and becomes trapped in a room full of nutcases, similar to a scene from "The Snake Pit."

Monty is the level-headed one here, surrounded by people with agendas. I was riveted, because I was gaslighted and called "delusional" and "crazy" in the late-1990s when my memory began to come back and I started "telling stories" that certain people did not want to hear (I don't mean you, Lilly). Thankfully I was never lobotomised, but I had my brain altered and my memory taken away (or blocked) by an unconscionable medical procedure, so I could seriously relate to Catherine's predicament in this movie. People are fucking nuts, but it's the truth teller who pays the price. Go figure.

Toward the end, Monty hypnotizes Catherine, and the truth comes out about Sebastian's death in a highly symbolic, taboo-breaking scene. Tennessee Williams' sister Rose was lobotomised, so he was emotionally invested in this cruel practice. For the record, I just checked, and the last lobotomy in America was performed in 1967, or so they say. Anyhow, this is the third Monty and Liz Taylor film. We've seen them together in "A Place in the Sun" and I hope we can find a copy of "Raintree County". Taylor was a very good actress for what she specialized in, which was nervous breakdown roles. Really, she was even very good as Cleopatra, which, despite its reputation as the biggest box office bomb of all time, is actually one of the greatest films ever made. The image of the latter day Taylor (bloated, drug addicted) does not reflect her ability. Monty is great as usual, even though Liz had to battle with director Joe Mankiewicz and producer Sam Spiegel to keep him on the film, as his drug and alcohol problems were causing delays on the set. But you'd never know it by his performance. We've now seen 11 of his 17 movies. Next up? Hmm, maybe "Wild River" or "From Here to Eternity".

In music, it's turned into The Summer of Big Big Train for me. As previously noted, I was introduced to BBT about 10 or 12 years ago by Pat, who burned me a copy of "The Underfall Yard". I listened to it once or twice and put it away, thinking it was pretty good but nothing that grabbed me. A dozen years went by. I don't think I listened to BBT once during that time. In late 2021, I read about the tragic death of their singer David Longdon and mentioned it to Pat, who was still in the physical world. Then I went back to forgetting about the band, until approximately two weeks ago, when one afternoon, wondering what music to listen to (having explored and exhausted the supply of obscure Prog bands like Kraan), I got a notion: "What about Big Big Train"? I started where I left off, with "The Underfall Yard", which I found most excellent this time around. I then delved into their other mid-period albums like "Folklore" and "Grimspound", which led me to the near-and-far edges: early and latter day BBT, and I've been listening every day since. I'm hooked. Every day I have to hear at least one BBT epic (many are 15 minutes long), and I credit it all to Pat, who must've "tapped me on the shoulder" with that suggestion two weeks ago. I, in turn, suggest them to you, especially if you are a fan of classic Genesis or any great English Progressive Rock band. I predict you will get hooked just as I did.

I've also been listening to "Les Chants de l'Aurore" by Alcest (a masterpiece), various Beach Boys, and at the moment "To Our Children's Children's Children" by The Moody Blues, the greatness of which cannot be adequately described.

In the evenings, I've been watching episodes of "Millennium", Chris Carter's other series, starring Lance Henriksen as "Frank Black", an ex-FBI agent now working for the clandestine Millennium Group, who solve seemingly unsolvable (even supernatural) crimes. "Millennium" was a great show, but ultra-dark in keeping with the sometimes-apocalyptic aura of the late 1990s. I've also been watching eps of "Doc Martin", which I got from the library on DVD. I used to watch it with Pearl and it reminds me of my time with her, a great and funny show that aired on PBS. We loved "Doc Martin", and also "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries", "George Gently" and "Vera". Great shows all. 

Finally, last night, just for the heck of it, I Googled "when was Ritchie Blackmore's first concert?". His bio has always listed the start of his professional career as 1961, and I've wondered if he ever crossed paths with The Beatles. Anyway, a link came back for a poster sold at auction in England, advertising a concert way back on August 3, 1959 (65 years ago today) at the Sports Pavillion in Wembley, London, featuring The Dominators Swing Group (who had, according to the seller, a 14-year-old Ritchie B. on guitar). This poster sold at auction for 300 pounds, so I think it is legit, meaning that Ritchie's career actually began in the 1950s. That led me to do more Googling and I found another website:

    http://forgottenbands.blogspot.com/2010/01/bobbie-dominators.html

This one says that Ritchie's first gig was even earlier, on Christmas Eve 1958, when he was 13. It puts him close to the earliest Beatles territory, in fact when they were still The Quarrymen.  

I should note that one of Ritchie's first drummers (perhaps his first), was Mick Underwood, who died this week. Ritchie eulogized him on FB. Underwood played briefly in The Dominators and also in The Outlaws with Ritchie. The singer of The Dominators, Bob Danks, says that the original name of the band was The Vampires and then The Electric Vampires, but because Ritchie had an amp with Dominator in the name, and Danks had a Dominator motorcycle, they changed the band name to The Dominators. At any rate, Sir Richard goes back to the early days of Rock and Roll. I hope I get to see him one more time...

That's all for today. Have a great weekend, stay cool and stay tuned.