is there anything on, tonight?

 So - Many - Good - Shows - !

I have been wanting to list them here, as they come to my attention -

Smokey And The Bandit

American Hustle

All The President's Men

The Big Easy

I Am Jackie O

The Seven-Year Itch

The Sixties

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Smokey And The Bandit

        Netflix

One thing I really appreciate about this film is, scenery we experience as they drive around the country is real.  No green-screen, blue-screen, or CGI back in the day, when they shot this.

        One little mystery, though:  there's a song playing over the opening credits - I thought it was such a good song, I wanted to know what it was and who's singing it - Googled, and was assured that it's "East Bound And Down."

Typed in the question, re-worded several different ways, and got same answer.

I know the song "East Bound And Down" and that is not it.

So....

American Hustle

        Netflix

Christian Bale gives a tour de force performance as Irving Rosenfeld; but - every actor and actress in this movie is fantastic in their roles.

All the songs providing background / mood are perfect, and exciting.

"She knew how to live with passion and style.

She understood Duke Ellington." ...

All The President's Men

        HBO Max

Dustin Hoffman.

Robert Redford.

Jason Robards as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

        [Woodward and Bernstein enter an elevator, press the button for the floor.  Carl Bernstein is smoking a cigarette.

Bernstein:  You made a mistake in there.

Woodward, after a pause:  What?

Bernstein:  You said to Bradlee we haven't had any luck yet, and - and that's the thing that he jumps on, you can't talk about luck, if you can't give specifics, you shouldn't say anything.

Woodward:  Is there anyplace you don't smoke?]

The Big Easy

        Amazon Prime Video

(There are two shows titled The Big Easy, one says 1987, and one says 1996.

1987 is the one we're recommending.)

New York City is nicknamed "the big apple."

New Orleans is nicknamed "the big easy."

        This movie was shot on location in New Orleans.

        Not blue-screen-green-screen-CGI New Orleans, but actual New Orleans.

I really like that.

        The story is a fun adventure, snappily written.

I Am Jackie O

        Amazon Prime

A very good documentary about Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.  It was made in 2020 - I was surprised this has been out for six years already and I had never heard of it.

        There were items and scenarios in this which I had never seen or read about before. - a jazz concert at the White House, for one...

The Seven Year Itch

        Amazon Prime

As per the usual, at the beginning of this streaming classic movie, there's a warning in the upper left-hand corner of the screen:

smoking, sexual content, violence

        It doesn't have any of those things in it, well maybe the smoking - at least, in one scene, he goes looking for cigarettes - he has to find the pack which he has hidden from himself so that he won't smoke....

(Those warnings are ridiculous - they put them on every movie....)

Marilyn Monroe and a funny script.

Enough said.

The Sixties

(2013, 1 season)

        HBO Max

Excellent documentary.

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Jack Ruby

 
Rick Danko, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson - in The Last Waltz

 Sitting in the movie theater in Boston, watching The Last Waltz, when I heard Robbie Robertson say, "it was Jack Ruby's club" - I was very surprised.  

It was an impactful moment, in some kind of a way.

        I wasn't expecting to hear the name "Jack Ruby" and it struck me and stayed with me.

Jack Ruby - the man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after Oswald allegedly shot and killed President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

I was a little child when that happened - it was the year before I started kindergarten.

(My father jumped up out of his chair and cried out, "My God, they shot him!")

---------------------------------------------------

When I was at that movie, I probably had not thought about the name "Jack Ruby" in eleven or twelve years.

        To me, at that age, it was an ancient memory that came jolting out.

The memory of hearing that name in the movie went back into my Memories and floated there, near the memory of the day when Pres. Kennedy was killed, and the memory of the day when Oswald was on TV, being moved from one jail to another, with a crowd of people, and a sudden chaos on the television screen, & later on, the name "Jack Ruby."

One of those occasions where Time seems to collapse and fold up on itself, as events line up in our minds.

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one night in Fort Worth

 When a movie called The Last Waltz came out, I couldn't wait to go and see it because it had Bob Dylan in it.

        It was summertime in Boston - I got my roommate and another friend of hers - a guy named Larry - to go with me - we took the public transportation and were there, in the theater.

About 10 minutes into the film there's this scene between songs where Robbie Robertson and a couple of other members of The Band - Rick Danko and Richard Manuel - are sitting around talking with film director Martin Scorsese about their days of touring on the road.

..."For some reason it seemed like a good idea.  We got to this place...This joint, in Fort Worth, Texas.  It was burned out, bombed out, the roof wasn't even on the place anymore.

"Secret rooms!"

        "And that's when they decided to call it The Skyline Lounge.  And we got there and set up and...A big place.  Huge.  A bar way at the back, and a big dance floor.

"Real old."

        "So we set up the first night, and go down to the place to play.  And we go in there, and there's about, in this huge place, there's about 3 people in the audience.

A one-armed go-go dancer and a couple of drunk waiters.  A couple over here and a couple over there. ...

        And a fight starts!

[they start laughing]

"There isn't enough people in the place to get - angry!

And we found out, a few years later, that it was Jack Ruby's club.

Jack Ruby

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"the man in motion"

 

Above is a photo of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in conversation - it's from earlier years - late 1950s or early 1960s.

        On You Tube, a video titled:

What Nixon Thought About Lyndon Johnson

uploader / channel:  Richard Nixon Foundation

        It's two minutes and forty-seven seconds - "2:47."

        - Listen to it, and you will get to experience history in a way we couldn't do before the Internet - although we did have documentaries on TV, I guess.  But we couldn't just "dial up" a moment the way we can now....

        It lets us be intimate with history - and almost kind of seems to collapse time onto itself - we're here, in the year 2026, then we're back somewhere in the 1980s when Nixon was giving this interview, and at the same time we're back in 1958 when Nixon, as Vice President, sometimes presided in the Senate when there was a guest from a foreign country and the senators would greet them with polite applause....

        Like folding up time and history as if it were a piece of paper and unfolding it in whatever spot we want to visit.

The first 55 seconds of this is the part we listened to yesterday.  Then it goes on with some more observations.

"...polite hand-clapping..."

"...overwhelming..."

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55 seconds

 On You Tube, type in

what Nixon thought of LBJ

What will come up is a "short," which is a short video.  That one is a little less than a minute.

        Listening to it, I realized how known and familiar Nixon's voice still is, to me, in memory from hearing him talk sometimes on television between third grade and tenth grade.

        "Everything about Johnson was big.  He was a tall man - a big man. ..."

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When I first watched a "short" on You Tube I found it a little confusing because when a "short" ends, it just starts over again with the same thing.  - I suppose if you let it go on, it might play all day long.

        So I will add a "tip" here, when we listen to it, we know it's the end when he says, "Overwhelming, was the way I describe him."  After that sentence, the video starts over at the beginning.

-------------------------------------- "He could drink like nobody else...he had all the moves"...

 left to right:  Richard Nixon (U.S. President 1969 - 1974) and Lyndon Baines Johnson (U.S. President 1963 - 1968)

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May 4, 1970

 

May 4, 1970 - there was a protest against the widening of the Vietnam War, by Nixon, at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, which was about 16 miles from where I lived at the time, in Rootstown, Ohio.  

My mother was a graduate student at Kent State, majoring in Library Science.

She wasn't there on the day of the protest when the governor of Ohio at the time called in the National Guard, and they shot and killed four people.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young made a song about it called "Ohio."

I used to hear the song on WBCN-FM when I was in college at Boston University.  I thought the chorus said, "Forgettin' Ohio" - but it didn't say that, it said, "Four dead in Ohio"...

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"war, children, it's just a shot away..."

 
Lyndon Baines Johnson (President of the United States of America, 1963 - 1968)

In the 1960s, when I was a child, some men started growing their hair long.  It was sort of a style-trend, and was connected to the idea that the person with longer hair opposed the war in Vietnam.  (...Which was never an actual, declared war, it was officially a police action).

        Sometime after President Johnson's administration was over and Richard Nixon's administration had begun, after his election in 1968, I saw a photograph of Johnson with long hair.  It was long at the back, as we can see from the pictures here.  (I'm not sure which picture I saw - it was in a magazine, I think:  the photos I put here are from among those I could find on the Internet in the present-day.)

I was surprised when I saw the picture, back then - probably in 1973 ... most guys who grew long hair were young.  I was struck with the idea that President Johnson might have decided to let his hair grow a little bit long to symbolize solidarity with the anti-war protesters - like he had maybe changed his mind about the war, and was sorry for how long it had gone on, and all the death and destruction.

        In that March 31, 1968, televised speech, Pres. Johnson said we are not going to widen this war.

Then Richard Nixon was elected President in autumn of that year.  And later on he - widened the war - going into Cambodia.  

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on You Tube, video titled:

The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Official Lyric Video)

uploader / channel:  ABKCOVEVO.

Play and enjoy.

To me, this song kind of gives a feeling of the late '60s....

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