Friday, April 3, 2020

recipes in The Guardian are always too hard


Air Force One comin' in through the gate
Johnson sworn in at 2:38

Let me know when you decide to throw in the towel
It is what it is, and it's murder most foul

~ Bob Dylan




painting infamous scene z-film | Painting, Scene, Art

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Untitled) The Freight Train


---------------------------- [excerpt from Apropos of Nothing, by Woody Allen] ----------------- As a young boy my favorite films were what I've dubbed champagne comedies.  I loved stories that took place in penthouses where the elevator opened into the apartment and corks popped, where suave men who spoke witty dialogue romanced beautiful women who lounged around the house in what someone now might wear to a wedding at Buckingham Palace.


the art of production

     These apartments were big, usually duplexes, with much white space.  Upon entering, one or one's guest almost always headed directly to a small, accessible bar to pour decantered drinks.  Everybody drank all the time and nobody vomited.  

And nobody had cancer and the penthouse didn't leak and when the phone rang in the middle of the night, the people high above Park or Fifth Avenue didn't have to, like my folks, drag ass out of bed and bang their knees in the dark groping for the one black instrument and hear maybe a relative just dropped dead.  


No.  

Hepburn or Tracy or Cary Grant or Myrna Loy would just reach for a phone on their night table inches from where they slept, and the phone was usually white and the news did not revolve around the metastasizing of cells or a coronary thrombosis from years of deadly brisket, but more likely solvable conundrums like "What?  What do you mean we're not legally married!?"


Linda J. Sandahl on Twitter: "Ninotchka, Desk Set, The ...


7 Books about the Glamour and Intrigue of Old Hollywood - Electric ...


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Wednesday, April 1, 2020

the hustling, the tap dancing


The Cats of The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum - YouTube


     Last week -- Two Good Things, one a total surprise, the other a reversal of fortune.

A new Bob Dylan song came out.
"Murder Most Foul"
        about the assassination of President Kennedy

And -- Woody Allen's book came out, after all!
I saw a news story on my android tablet that said another publisher had "quietly" released the book on Monday, March 23.

I had been so annoyed (or -- enraged?) over that whole debacle, I wrote an e-mail to Jeff Bezos and asked him to try and get someone to publish it.  (Not that I imagined anyone would read it, but what else could I do??)

     After I read that Apropos of Nothing was out, it took a little while before I remembered sending that e-mail.
     Hahahahaha -- when I write to Mr. Bezos, he swings into action!  LOL

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----------------- [excerpt, Woody Allen memoir] -------------- I first saw a Broadway show when I was seventeen, and I discovered paintings on my own playing hooky and needing a warm place to hang out, and the museums were free or cheap....

     My father owned one book, The Gangs of New York.  It was the only book I browsed growing up, and it imbued in me a fascination with gangsters, criminals, and crime.  I knew gangsters like most boys knew ball players.  

I knew baseball players, too, but not like I knew Gyp the Blood, Greasy Thumb Jake Guzik, and Tick-Tock Tannenbaum.  Oh, I also knew movie stars, thanks to my cousin Rita, who papered her walls with color portraits from Modern Screen....

In addition to Bogart and Betty Grable and how many wins Cy Young had and how many RBIs Hack Wilson hit in one season and who pitched two consecutive no-hitters for Cincinnati, I knew Abe Reles 

25 Interesting And Weird Facts About Abe Reles - Tons Of Facts

could sing but not fly -- plus where Owney Madden wound up and why an icepick was the weapon of choice for Pittsburgh Phil Strauss.

     In addition to The Gangs of New York, my entire library consisted of comic books.  I read only comic books until I was in my later teens.... 

Folks, you are reading the autobiography of a misanthropic gangster-loving illiterate; an uncultivated loner who sat in front of a three-way mirror practicing with a deck of cards so he could palm off an ace of spades, render it invisible from any angle, and hustle some pots.  

Yes, I eventually got blown away by Cezanne's heavy apples and Pissarro's rainy Parisian boulevards, 

Camille Pissarro | The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning ...

but as I said, only because I would cut school and needed succor on those snowy winter mornings.  

There I was at fifteen, on the hook, confronted by Matisse and Chagall, by Nolde, Kirchner, and Schmidt-Rotluff, by Guernica and the frantic wall-sized Jackson Pollock, by the Beckmann triptych and Louise Nevelson's dark black sculpture.  Then lunch in the MOMA cafeteria, followed by a vintage movie downstairs in the screening room.  Carole Lombard, 

Airline crash that took actress Carole Lombard's life happened 70 ...

William Powell, Spencer Tracy.  Doesn't it sound like more fun than Miss Schwab's obnoxious picklepuss demanding the date of the Stamp Act or the capital of Wyoming?  

Then the lies at home, the excuses next day at school, the hustling, the tap dancing, the forged notes, caught again, parental exasperation.  "But you have such a high IQ."  And by the way, reader, it's not so high, but you'd think from my mother's cri de coeur I could explain string theory.  You can tell from my movies; while some are entertaining, no idea I ever had is going to start any new religion.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2020

woke up this morning with the sundown shining in


The Dude abides': 20 years on, how The Big Lebowski became a ...

(Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)

I woke up this mornin' with the sundown -- shinin' in
I found my mind in a brown paper bag within

I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky

I just dropped in -- to see what condition my condition was in


(Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in!)

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin' out -- as I was a-crawlin' in
I got up so tight, I couldn't unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind --
I just dropped in, to see what condition my condition was in


(Yeah,
 yeah, 

oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in)

Psychedelic Art Painting by Pd

Someone painted "April Fool" in big black letters on a "Dead End" sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare,
Eight miles straight up, downtown somewhere
I just dropped in -- to see what condition my condition was in


I said I just dropped in - to see what condition my condition was in
(Yeah - yeah, oh-yeah)
     [instrumental:  "wwaaaaaannnnnn - wongah-wonga" etc., psychedelic sounds, fading out, then back in...]

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

The lyrics of that song are genius, and the music all-encompassingly sublime, i-m-o.


Between Clouds. Abstract Sky Background Digital Art by Elena Sysoeva


{"Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In" - written by Mickey Newbury}

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One night last week, a President Kennedy video appeared when I was on You Tube.  (Hmmm, I think maybe The Algorithm has been researching my views...)


JFK with son John Jr. at the Kennedy family residence in Atoka ...

It was what we used to call a "home movie" -- about 6 minutes, Pres. and Mrs. K and children outdoors at their country place (during the White House years) -- near Atoka, Virginia.  

No sound -- a silent movie.

Grown-ups walking, children capering...

Watched about 40 seconds and was sort of -- "OK, I'm good..."

Scrolled to Comments.  One of them said Bob Dylan has a new song out; it's a contemplation of the 1963 assassination.

"Whoa."


Can bet your bippy I was all over that.

!

Bob Dylan Painting by Naxart Studio

The name of the song is "Murder Most Foul."

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Monday, March 30, 2020

a streaking meteor


Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway (1970 Scribner's 1st ...

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     That Kenny Rogers song I mentioned Friday seemed like such a departure for Kenny Rogers.  "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)".

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Dropped In (Live) - YouTube


     Well, it was not actually a "departure" for him because that song came first, in the 1960s with his band The First Edition -- more than a decade before his popularity grew to star proportions as a country singer in the 1980s.

     But to me it was -- well -- it was confusing.


     FIRST:  I heard "Just Dropped In" someplace, sometime, I don't know where, and it was in my head.  I did not know who recorded it.

     SECOND:  I heard Kenny Rogers sing "Lucille" on TV (1977) and I remembered the song and the name because he was so good.

     THIRD:  I got a job in radio in the 1980s -- it was a country station, so I played a lot of Kenny Rogers for the people.  So to me, as far as I knew, he was strictly a Country and Western singer.

     FOURTH:  Someone at the radio station told me "Just Dropped In" was by Kenny Rogers, and I was like -- "Kenny Rogers sang that?  Really??"  Because Just Dropped In was -- psychedelic rock, which many bands were doing for a brief time in the late '60s -- Beatles, Stones, Eric Clapton and Cream, Kenny Rogers...(Wait.  What??)

     Right?  So then I had a little window into the world, and the past, looking at the idea that a country artist used to do rock.


45s Art | Fine Art America
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The songs we listened to last week cover a huge world, musically, as well as time-line-wise -- 1967 - 2015, 48 years! ...

~  "Lucille" -- straight up, down-right Country, from the 1970s

~  "Children Go Where I Send Thee" with the singing group "Home Free" -- this song is a traditional African-American spiritual, so -- old.  The Rogers-Home Free recording came out in 2015.  Recent.  (Time-jumble.)

~  "Islands In The Stream" -- Written by the Bee Gees, this song was named after a novel by Ernest Hemingway.  Rogers recorded it with Dolly Parton:  became a hit in 1983.  (Ernest Hemingway?

Why the Hell Are We Still Reading Ernest Hemingway?

  The Bee Gees?  

Bee Gees - Wikipedia

Is it any wonder I get confused...??)


     Wikipedia calls this song "soft rock" -- but since I played it on a country station, I think of it as Mellow-country.

~  and "Just Dropped In" -- 1967 -- "Psychedelic rock," baby!

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     When I played "Just Dropped In" from You Tube (a live version, I think, from a TV performance) -- one of the Comments under it, written about a week before Rogers' passing, said:

"This man has been a streaking meteor his whole life."


     That observation got me thinking about --

~ the broad range of time covered by Kenny Rogers recordings, and
~ the range of  musical and lyrical styles reflected in his body of work.

Dolly Parton Says 'My Heart's Broken' in Tribute to Kenny Rogers ...


_________________________

Dolly Parton, LeAnn Rimes and More Remember Kenny Rogers: 'He Had ...


"This man has been a streaking meteor his whole life."


-30-

Friday, March 27, 2020

I tripped on a cloud...


Kenny Rogers song of today -- "Just Dropped In To See what condition my condition was in"

I like the album version:
Uploader, the first edition - Topic
656,000 views

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Thursday, March 26, 2020

ride it together


That Home Free song from yesterday, featuring Kenny Rogers was more my taste than "Lucille" because -- rhythm, syncopation, -- fast... Haha ... Soul, baby..  grit.  Mmh.

But "Lucille" still great, too.

Today's Kenny Rogers song is
"Islands in the Stream".
     Tap up that title on YouTube and pick your live performance by Rogers with Dolly Parton,, and Play.   Holy Toledo, audiences LOVE that song ... they're clapping...

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Wednesday, March 25, 2020

go where I send thee


You tube
Type Kenny Rogers home Free
Play