Comments Return; Used Book Haul
Comments are back. My webhost had apparently ran a script barring spam comments to my site, a script which also barred legitimate comments. Everything should be back to normal (except for the weird white screen which often pops up in browsers after leaving a comment — something else I need to look into (groan)).
Locally, we have a huge yearly used book sale handled by a local charitable organization every February. Me and Christopher always make a point of going, not only since we love books but also because they hold it only steps away from our home. After waiting outside for an hour, we finally got in and immediately dived into the arts/entertainment and biography sections. We spent four hours there, and I never even got to look at the other sections! Here’s what I came away with. All of these books were a dollar each, unless otherwise noted:
From Rags to Bitches: An Autobiography by Mr. Blackwell (1995). An interesting looking impulse buy. When I brought it home, I discovered it was inscribed from the author: “Judy, enjoy the ‘book’. Love, Mr. Blackwell.” Why he used quotes around the word “book”, we’ll never know.
Girl Singer: An Autobiography by Rosemary Clooney (1999) Normally I tend to prefer bios over autobios, but this one got a lot of favorable reviews for Ms. Clooney’s candidness and warm writing style. Though I don’t favor her kind of music much, the lady appears to have lived a turbulent, fascinating life.
My Way of Life by Joan Crawford (1970) We had a copy of this camp classic which we sold on eBay a few years back. It’s a hoot. Miss Crawford writes this “how to” manual as if it were still 1933 and her millions of fans eagerly await her take on ettiquette, fashion, etc. I especially love the part on how to pack a suitcase, illustrated with pics of Crawford’s maid arranging clothing on her bed!
Arlene Francis: A Memoir by Arlene Francis (1978) .Entering the sale, I told C.: “If Arlene Francis wrote a memoir, I want it.” Sure enough, I came across this one near the end of the day, tucked away in a box on the floor. I’m a What’s My Line nut who’s already read the WML chapter in Bennet Cerf’s book. Can’t wait to find out the lovely Ms. Francis’ recollections. In addition to game shows, Francis was a stage and screen actress and a sparkling television personality.
Becoming Mae West by Emily Wortis Leider (1997). I like bios that don’t follow a simple bio formula, so this one looked more intriguing than usual (although the reviews at Amazon have not been kind).
Leonard Maltin’s 2004 Movie & Video Guide (2004). To replace the dog-eared 1996 edition I’ve had for a decade.
Hollywood Sings! An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Academy Award Nominated Songs by Susan Sackett ($2; 1995). I stayed up past midnight reading many of the delicious tidbits in this book. It’s surprising how many long-forgotten duds of a song have received an Oscar nom in the past.
Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco by Peter Shapiro ($2; 2005). Also looks totally fascinating, with a nicely annotated discography in the back.
The Years with Ross by James Thurber ($2; 1959). Christopher bought this for me, another New Yorker saga. Although Harold Ross’ biographer said this book is very slanted, making Ross look like a country bumpkin idiot, I’d like to give it a try. Plus the 1950s gold plated binding is beautiful.
Still No Comments
Still in the midst of trying to get to the bottom of why scrubbles.net suddenly is not accepting comments, so this space is gonna be quiet for the next few days. In the meantime, take a gander at the banner I designed for a new weblog called Circa 45. Circa 45 is the brainchild of Kevin Murphy, one of my old Arizona Republic colleagues. He’ll be using it to post various mp3s culled from his father’s jukebox of old 45s along with other neat stuff. It’ll be great, I’m sure. Kevin’s other weblog, So Much Silence, will periodically be publishing some of my music reviews in the near future. Feel free to non-comment on those, too.
No Comments
Right now we’re going through a problem on this weblog where attempting to comment results in the dreaded “500 Internal Server Error” page. Sit tight; I’m working on it. I know everybody is just dying to leave comments (sarcasm). Sorry if you attempted a comment and it got lost!
It might be a problem with my web host, or it might be a Movable Type problem that can be fixed with a simple upgrade. The last time I upgraded MT, the process wiped out my entire system. So you can understand that I’m a little apprehensive on that.
Another Dr. Demento Momento
For some reason, I was very recently thinking about a series of novelty skits which used to get played eons ago on Dr. Demento’s radio show. They involved a reporter interviewing somebody, with the answers coming in the form of snippets from various hit songs of the day. Who did them? Now I know — Dickie Goodman. Michael Azerrad wrote up a neat little article on the man and his schtick for eMusic. I didn’t know that Goodman’s pop culture parodies went all the way back to the ’50s.
Roses and Roses and Roses
Time for another goofball meme, the kind where you put your iTunes playlist on “shuffle” and list whatever song corresponds with each item. This one I found at Quiddity.
- What does next year have in store for me? Somehow I Feel I Must Be Dreaming — Jumping Jacques
- What does my love life look like? My Town, My Guy and Me — Lesley Gore
- What do I say when life get hard? Treat Me Nice, John Henry — Diana Ross & The Supremes
- What do I think of when I get up in the morning? Midnight at the Oasis — Maria Muldaur
- What song will I dance to at my wedding? Right Start — Talking Heads
- What do I want for my career? Turkey Lurkey Time — Promises, Promises OCR
- Favorite saying? Mesmerized (Freemasons Mix) — Faith Evans
- Favorite place? How About Me — Davy Jones
- What do I think of my parents? Blackbird — Ramsey Lewis
- Where would I go on a first date? Don’t Let The Teardrops Rust Your Shining Heart — Everything But The Girl
- Drug of Choice? Half Breed — Cher
- How do I describe myself? Nothing Can Be Very Wrong — Tony Visconti
- What is the thing I like doing the most? At Last — Laura Lee
- What is my state of mind like at the moment? Medley: Malinconia Serenita — Ennio Morricone
- How will I die? Words Of Love — The Beatles
- Song they’ll play at my funeral? A Million Miles Away — The McKinleys
- What song will I put as the subject? Roses and Roses and Roses — Dorival Caymmi and The Girls from Bahia
Caught on Tape
The weekly cassette mp3s shared at Tape Findings reminds me of the hours of silly tape recordings I made as a child (via WFMU Beware of the Blog). I talked, sang, did skits and even made a fake “Weekend Update”-style news program. I also found that, if you depressed the Pause button slightly while recording, it would produce an eerie, high-pitched voice sounding similar to the squeals of bats. Check the current offering, in which a kid named Davey recounts his family vacation to Disneyland in 1969. Found fun!
The Secret World of Guys
The New York Times on the best and worst Super Bowl ads. We recorded the telecast last night, especially for the ads. With the very first ad break I whined to C., “these commercials are soooo Straight White Male.” I felt like I needed to watch a few touchy-feely Lifetime TV movies to cleanse myself of all that faux testosterone. Anyway, the unanimous favorite in our household was the GM robot spot (seen here at teevee’s recap). It was amazing in how the makers applied human emotions to a robot arm, and Eric Carmen’s weepy “All By Myself” on the soundtrack was a nice touch. I also loved the Japanese kiddie show parody advertising some GPS system. On the other hand the one with Jay-Z and some old guy playing virtual football was completely incomprehensible, and I agree with the Times that most of the spots had an odd violent streak going on.
Babbling About The Shins
Score one for the nerds. The Shins’ latest, Wincing The Night Away, has debuted on the Billboard album charts at #2, becoming by far the highest charting album in Sub Pop Records‘ history. Pitchfork elaborates: “Only pretty-boy rap&b foursome Pretty Ricky bested the Shins last week, selling 132,000 copies of their new album Late Night Special. But we’re fairly sure Natalie Portman doesn’t give two shits about them.”
Natalie Portman endorsement or no, a few listens to Wincing has convinced me that these New Mexicans might be the closest thing we have to a Beatles. Not in terms of uniform brilliance, mind you, but I can’t think of another current band (and a band they are, thankfully lacking in a flashy frontperson) so adept in eclectic and engaging pop music that works on so many levels. This is never more evident than on the chiming and melodic “Australia”. A friend described this irresistible cut as “Smiths-like”, and I’d have to agree. “Pam Berry”, a spacey throwaway, gives way to “Phantom Limb,” the album’s shimmering, gorgeous highlight. If you haven’t downloaded the single at Sub Pop’s Shins page, do so now (go ahead, I’ll wait). With a song that magnificent, the rest of the album can’t help but be something of a letdown. Indeed a stretch of samey, navel-gazing songs characterize the album’s middle — but even then we have a few gems (“Red Rabbits”). By the time the album winds up, you end up feeling as if in the presence of a band that’s maturing and channeling their indie obtusiveness into a more coherent (but no less delightful) vision. Can’t wait to see what they do next.
Oh, in case you’d like to buy Wincing The Night Away at Amazon, here you are.
I Sing the Body Electric
Last night Christopher and myself journeyed over to the Arizona Science Center to view an exhibit called Body Worlds 3. It was wild and interesting. The “Body Worlds” concept was introduced by German scientist Gunther Von Hagens, who developed a method of preserving dead tissue in a process which replaces human body fluids with liquified plastic. On the outset it’s somewhat creepy to think that these bodies on display were once living beings, but those thoughts vanish once you’re actually in the exhibit. Brief glimpses of a Body Worlds exhibit could be seen in the movie Casino Royale. We first discovered it in another flick, the German thriller Anatomy. If you’ve never seen this one, it’s quite an over-the-top hoot — the plot revolves around a group of medical students are terrorized by a mysterious serial killer, one who has the balls to plasticize their bodies in a huge museum display! The cast includes Franka Potente of Run Lola Run, who likely has left this particular opus off her resume.
The Disney Version
Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew shared a prime piece of vintage ephemera with the Disney Studio’s 1943 employee handbook. I enjoyed the perky illustrations, but beyond that is the fascinating text dealing with wartime working conditions. Dem employees were kept on a tight leash (unlike today).
Orphaned Music Reviews #1: February
The following music reviews were originally slated for publication in the February 2007 issue of az magazine. They appear here in unrevised form:
Pernice Brothers‘ beautifully crafted pop has gotten play on TV fare such as Six Feet Under and The Gilmore Girls. The group’s music nicely complements the tone of both shows: sweet on the outside, bitter and ironic on the inside. The sixth and latest Pernice album, Live a Little (Ashmont), augments the creamy melodies of previous efforts with a string section (not heard since 1998′s Overcome by Happiness). They’re not reinventing the wheel here, but on the other hand why mess with brilliance? Worth getting for the caustic lyrics and Joe Pernice’s fascinating voice, as light and ethereal as an extended sigh.
Nanci Griffith has always been a singer-songwriter proudly unbound by categories (Is she Country? Pop? Folk?), which makes whatever she’s currently involved in all the more intriguing. With her all-covers collection Ruby’s Torch (Rounder), Griffith saunters through compositions by Tom Waits and Jimmy Webb, Frank Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and even the ’70s MOR standby “Bluer than Blue”. She creates a consistent mood with her smoky, authoritative voice — making this effort a perfect “nighttime wine sipping on the veranda” disc.
Brooklyn’s The Hold Steady emerged from obscurity and delivered one of 2006′s most critically acclaimed albums with the unapologetically fun Boys and Girls in America (Vagrant). The band strikes just the right combination of tight and rowdy rock ‘n roll and evocative lyrics on barflies, bad girlfriends, and disillusioned youth just aching to have a good time. If that description sounds like the Bruce Springsteen of thirty years ago, you have the right idea. Proving their depth, the group supplements this mostly upbeat set with a couple of first-rate ballads (“First Night” and “Citrus”).
Gone Dotty
The screenshot below illustrates what I’ve been working at all day. Tell me, designers, have you ever had to deal with a bitmap file with an unwanted halftone pattern in the background? The only method to get rid of said pattern is to painstakingly chip away at it with an eraser in extreme close-up. It’s a bitch.
Deja View
Going through the 1973-74 episodes on Sesame Street Old School Vol. 1 gave me some of the weirdest “deja vu” feelings. Cartoons and skits buried in the subconscious for thirty years flashed back as if I just saw them yesterday. Case in point is the following clip of two muppets singing “Me/Yo,” a perky tribute to the ‘Lil Narcissist in all of us. Ayn Rand would approve, I’m sure. I can appreciate the quality and craftsmanship that went into these things much more as an adult — and really, Joe Rapaso must’ve written these tunes in his sleep, they’re so great. The only bad part lies in how once the song enters your head, it has a tough time leaving.
Working in the LAB
I’m proud to be a part of the first issue of LAB magazine, a new online and print publication (you can download a pdf at the site). According to the intro from editor Joseph Robertson, the magazine will focus on various independent creative types — “a new breed who are actively creating what they want to see in the media and in the market, not content to sit still and passively consume the same old slop.” Gnarly, huh? I contributed a comic titled “My Workday” detailing a typical day in this freelance designer’s life. The comic stands as somewhat of an exaggeration, but not really — you’ll have to see it. This inagural issue is jam-packed with interviews and articles on people like Derek Powazek, Ray Fenwick and my bestest friend Julie Jackson of Subversive Cross Stich fame (her piece is illustrated with the S.C.S. mascot I created for her, a lady we informally call “retrohead gal”). Nice work, Joseph!
Music on a Bum Trip
Bad news: my monthly music review column for a local magazine (which I wrote about here) has been cancelled. In laying out the first issue, the editors decided that music reviews (along with book reviews, which were to be written by Christopher) didn’t fit in with the rest of the content of this magazine. I’m saddened, but having worked in the business for a time I know that stories and pieces get shelved all the time for all sorts of reasons, logical and not. The thing to concentrate on now is what to do with what’s already been completed. The two batches of three reviews I’ve written will end up getting posted here in the future — to a smaller but more appreciative audience! I also have new and upcoming releases by The Shins, The Autumn Defense, Sondre Lerche and Dean & Britta in the pike to write about. Those’ll end up getting covered here, too.
On a more positive note, I recently bought a couple of excellent “Free” releases for entirely personal, not professional, reasons. The first was the re-release of The Free Design’s trippy 1970 masterpiece Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love by Light In The Attic Records. My friend Ion tipped me that all of the F.D. reissues were just made available for download on eMusic, so I immediately signed up and snatched this one. For those who don’t know, The Free Design was a brilliant but hitless easy-pop combo who plied original songs (courtesy of founding member Chris Dedrick) and gorgeous harmonies on several 1967-73 albums. Part of their appeal was in how the jewel-perfect, swingin’ ’60s production of Enoch Light often masked the imperfect underbelly of the songs. For example, the magificently dense “Bubbles” seems bouncy and cute enough on the surface, but it also revolves around the lyrics “Bubblegum kinda keeps my heart from gettin’ heavy and crying.” The tears of a clown, indeed!
My second purchase was an expensive impulse buy of the 1996 Japanese compilation Free Soul: Vibes. The Free Soul collections were put together by Toru Hashimoto (who also did the wonderful Cafe Apres Midi discs) with an accent on smooth ‘n funky ’70s obscurities. We’re talking really obscure here, with some songs that have never appeared on CD anywhere else. For instance, this edition leads off with a track by girl group The Fuzz. Logically it would have been their only hit (the dreamy “I Love You For All Seasons”) represented here, but instead we have a cut buried on side 2 of their one album (“Search Your Mind”). And it’s excellent! Note that this disc contains two tracks from one-hit-wonders Blue Swede, and yet it never sounds cheezy. Lots of goodies here and considering its 77-minute length, a bargain. Check this Japanese fansite for the other Free Souls.
