Pizza shop near the beach
Beach house
Ft Myers’s Beach
Karaoke, but we didn’t sing.
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Florida, Oddly enough
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Summer Art Diary: 3, York Art Gallery - Esther
Despite having visited before, I’d forgotten a lot about York Art Gallery. The minute I stood outside it however, it came flooding back. The exterior screams “municipal UK art gallery” right enough but indoors is quite different. The layout is tastefully modern, airy & has lots of glass. It looks good. The foyer is also the shop & the particularly good thing about the shop is it sells art materials as well as books & merchandise. “Come on!” says York Art Gallery. “Get involved!” in a way that most galleries actually don’t. I like it.
One thing I had remembered was the vast amount of POTTERY in there, so I approached with some caution. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not the biggest fan of the Applied Arts, in fact I moan extensively about them. This is unfair, but I’m very picky about pots. So imagine my mild dismay when we arrive to find the only paying exhibition is Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art. If they’d only changed that “ceramics” to “paintings” or even “sketches,” I’d have happily paid the money. I might well have missed the expo of a lifetime, but a small glance online suggests it’s not for me. Besides, there was enough good stuff to keep us going.
At present there are three other interesting sections, so since this is diary-esque territory, here are my impressions of them.
Saint Sebastian, 1650-60 by Juan Carreño de Miranda (1614-1685)
York Art Gallery Collection: Queering the Burton
For this section, the Gallery has worked with the York LGBT Forum to “make the Gallery an inclusive & welcoming place for everyone.” This promise manifests itself through “telling the stories & sharing perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex & asexual people” alongside the art. The gallery has taken its existing displayed work & relevant other pieces & combined them with captions that include stories & interpretations seen through a LGBT+ lens. It insists, “Our use of the word Queer is a positive affirmation,” & at least one of the captions deals with the fact that this was at one time a homophobic slur. As someone outwith this community, the show seemed very positive & celebratory, enabling me to see some of the works from a different point of view. It makes me wonder if other galleries could be doing more to offer new perspectives on well- or lesser-known artists & compositions.
The Lamp by Amy B. Atkinson (1859-1916)
We’re already seeing a positive move in some spaces towards honest captioning & explaining of the past regarding race & colour in respect of their exhibits. How successful York is in its endeavours is obviously not for me to say of course but I hope it accomplishes its mission to welcome more people into the art world that might not have felt as if they were represented before. I think as long as this isn’t a one-off or the end point rather than a work in progress, it’s on the right lines. In any case, I’m always excited to see a Gwen John or a Stanley Spencer & the examples in the Gallery are particularly good. There’s a superb Grayson Perry pot in this room too, so you know, I’m not entirely prejudiced against ceramics.
The Waterfall of Nikko-Zan in Shimotsuke Province, 1853 by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)
Pictures of the Floating World: Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints
As you might expect, this exhibition is housed in a dimly-lit room to protect the fragile works but it also fits the atmosphere of many of the works. It’s difficult to convey the enormous influence Japanese art exerted on European art & various significant art movements. “Ukiyo-e” means “pictures of the floating world” – even in Japan they’re keen to remind us of the transience of life but they also celebrate the beauty of nature. Prints on display also include historical, theatrical & what could be considered genre paintings, depicting everyday life & activities. There are beautiful works by Hiroshige as well as some but I was hoping for some Hokusai & was rewarded with several fine pieces – hooray! But the 18th & 19th Century obsession with Japanese art wasn’t a one-way thing & in this show, we see how Japanese artists were in turn influenced by art from the west in terms of art elements such as variation in tone.
Ingrid Weyland
Aesthetica Art Prize 2022
There was something compelling about being in a darkened section of a room watching silent, out-of-sync clips of three different women screaming their heads off on repeat to a backing track of birdsong & forest breezes & it wasn’t just the fact that there was a place to sit when an unprecedented UK heatwave was occurring. It definitely helped though. I offered a number of predictably arty interpretations for this exhibit, none of which corresponded with the caption, haha. It’s a rule I have: always make up your own mind first. You can’t be disappointed. If you & artist agree, you can be smug. If not, well you’ve learned another perspective & that’s no bad thing, is it? Apart from this exhibit though, the prize is an annual way to celebrate contemporary art by inviting us to examine the world as it is now. It’s an attempt to explore where we are in relation to the environment, communication, identity & “most importantly, it reminds us of our humanity.”
Sarah Choudrey
I’m not always convinced by installations as a means of communicating ideas or even provoking thought (or provoking anything other than annoyance) & sometimes I think it comes across as more off-putting elitism that still pervades the art world. The Aesthetica show however was engaging & I especially liked the pieces that had the whiff of science about them, for instance a “thing” that measured something or other in plants & Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility. These mixed media works had a clear climate change & environmental theme but the use of collage & paper just seemed accessibly clever & easy to relate to. I’m not saying artists shouldn’t challenge the viewer – quite the opposite – but too many contemporary artists seem keen for us to notice in awe & wonder how clever they are.
& let’s face it. Nobody likes a smarty-pants.
York Art Gallery
Friday, July 29, 2022
Past is Prologue, but Still, the Future's Not What You Expected - July 29 - What's To Watch?
Another harried week at least nominally down (I've still got too many things that need attention Friday before I can declare the weekend begun), we've landed on the doorstep of the final weekend of July 2022. Monday, August begins.
Comicbooks (I still struggle with jamming that all together as a single word, but I've come to agree it's likely for the best in order to simultaneously give a nod to its historical roots while leaving it free to refine its definition -- but that's a discussion for another time and place) have become such a standard source of material for screen projects since at least 2002 that it likely barely merits mentioning. Since it's a medium which intrinsically accomplishes one of the things that's a common part of film production - the creation of storyboards to visually lay out the flow of action - comics openly became the new source of spec scripts a solid two decades ago. Would-be, first time screenwriters began to tumble to the reality that using the comics market as a place to pitch something was far more effective than trying to peddle a script around Hollywood. I see it as important for those who are dissmissive of the medium to remember that it is a medium, not a genre, and so focuses on any number of subjects, from romance, to science fiction, crime, war and horror, and not merely the seemingly ubiquitous masks, costumes and super powers crowd.
The 2002 Tom Hanks and Paul Newman blockbuster vehicle, Depression era tale of a hit man, The Road To Perdition was sourced from a graphic novel -- a fancy-packaged comicbook printed in a bound form rather than released in a series of issues. That same year, I saw that before the second issue of a three-issue horror comic about vampires targeting the town of Barrow, Alaska, 30 Days of Night, hit the shops, a deal had already been signed to adapt it into a film. The film wouldn't come out until 2007, because those big, expensive wheels turn much more slowly, but those of us plugged into comics knew what was coming. Pardon the digression, but from time to time I like to point that out to a general public which can sometimes still be narrow and snooty about the medium.
Initially set in 1988, four 12-year old girls from disparate backgrounds, each with a paper route in an Ohio suburb, end up banding together in the pre-dawn of the day after Halloween, referred to as "Hell night." Initially just dealing with local punks who've gotten less in control of their baser selves than normal between beer and costumes, the girls soon find themselves in the thick of a conflict between warring time travelers. Those forces at least initially present as long, white-coated, fascistic authority figures on the hunt, and harried, ragtag rebels who are apparently part of an Underground. Initially we're left to just pull this from context, as we get to see a little more than what the girls do.
Each of our protagonists felt driven in some way to have that paper route, ranging from simple economic survival (supplementing a low family income) to being in service of other plans for bold, bright futures. It's casually noted that what was once the almost exclusive province of boys has in large part fallen to girls because the job now pays about half of what it once did. As the Bush (and in George H. W.) campaign sign spotted on a lawn reminds us, we're in the final months of the second Reagan term, and the deep decay of middle class expectations has long since set in.
Soon, after some surprising and bloody confrontations, the quartet of girls find themselves transported 31 years into the future. Desperately in need of allies and reference points, they're forced to seek out their future selves as they try to sort out their situation and ideally make their way back to 1988. Each of the girls is faced with how their futures compare to their aspirations, along with being confronted with what happens to family members in the course of those skipped-over three decades... all while getting pulled further into the conflict between the warring, time-traveling factions. Technically set to arrive today, Amazon Prime did an early launch, which one of the people in my facebook feed noticed it Thursday night, so I watched for first two (of 8) episodes already.
Consequently, the seeming fates of only two of the girls have really been revealed, with a mix of puzzled disappointment and shock, though we've gotten a leading tip that seems to show some promise for a third girl's life having lived up to and possibly even exceeded her aspirations. An underlying theme will be whether or not each of the girls will be resigned to the fate time appears to have dealt them, or if these can be taken as cautionary tales they might be able to course-correct if they can just make it back to 1988.
The show is definitely intended to tap much the same nostalgia vein as Stranger Things, albeit with its distinct differences, including being centered on four young women, and a focus on how the future of 2019 compares to the expectations of a quartet of eighties kids. Because the majority of people will know these things only from the screen adaptations, I'd like to point out that the source comic for this series began the year before the Duffer Brothers' Stranger Things appeared.
I've finished the show, so while avoiding spoilers I do want to note a few things. One, I enjoyed it and am interested in seeing how the adaptation will play out (see point four.) Two, the distinct emphasis of the show is about who we think we are, who we expect to become, how at-odds with those notions reality may be, and our capacity to change. Three, the reference to the aspiration to appeal to fans of Stranger Things doesn't mean it's offering the same things; they're obviously hopeful it'll be as successful, and it could be, but it's a substantially different story. And four, this eight-part series ends on a cliffhanger. With no formal announcement made of a commitment it's best to presume that Amazon will be closely watching the viewing numbers on this, so the more people who put it off for later the less likely it'll be given that second season. Vaughan's overall film and tv development deal, struck back in 2018, for his properties is with Legendary Entertainment, not with Amazon, so this is a layered thing. I'm far too much on the outside of this to know how any deal between Legendary and Amazon is structured, so I can't make any useful assessment as to how invested in this Amazon is. On a basic level, a streaming service needs to have distinct items people have to come to them to see, but I've no idea how much this show costs them nor how long it would remain exclusive to Amazon Prime.
On Netflix, an anime series adapting a manga series that's been produced since 2018 (now reportedly seven volumes and counting) began appearing in weekly installments. A college-age nephew provides our contact with his uncle, a man who was hit by a truck and went into a 17-year coma. Suddenly awaking, he tells his nephew that while his body's been in the hospital bed, he spent those 17 years in another world. There he was reviled for his appearance, but he also not only learned their language but largely mastered magic there. Back in the human world, he finds that he still commands that magic, only having to adjust to casting the spells in Japanese, rather than the language of that other world. The nerdish man had almost no social life prior to his accident, and was obsessed with the SEGA gaming console. Discovering that the era of console gaming, and particularly of the SEGA system, largely went away during his absence is a terrible blow to him.
It's Uncle From Another World.
The Russo Brothers recently directed a reportedly $200 million CIA assassin spy thriller for Netflix, with a modest theatrical release so as to allow it to be eligible for considerations by the Academy; given both the clout of the directing team and the frankly staggering budget, I can certainly understand them wanting to keep all options open. Primarily a vehicle for Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, it has an international cast. It's The Gray Man (2022 129 m) This is based on a series of novels, and indications are that there's already a commitment for Gosling to return for a sequel, but that there's also to be some sort of spin-off project - though I know they have to be watching the metrics closely. I'm tending to think this is one of a set of moves they made a few years back, before Netflix's fortunes began to slide. It's difficult to believe the long-term bang for a streaming service when it comes to something like this is going to be the best use of a buck.
I haven't made time for this as yet, in part because I'm concerned I'm going to get much action and very little brain. Honest attempts at good performances made while stringing explosions and cliches together. I would be very happy to be wrong in this. Having Chris Evans getting to play strongly against type after a decade of being Captain America, complete with a practically smeared-on mustache, should on its own be worth some time, so there's that.
Also
on Netflix as of nearly two weeks ago (May 2024: It's currently on Hulu.) is a Sam Raimi-produced
supernatural horror thriller involving toxic motherhood reaching from
beyond. It stars Sandra Oh as a single mother, home-schooling her
daughter on a remote farm, primarily producing honey, and where she is
very deliberately living without electronics, explained by her as being an extreme allergy - though the opening segment gives us good reason to believe it's another matter entirely.
Her reaction to her own,
terrible, childhood saw her severing ties with family and her Korean
heritage, and retreating to a life that's creating different problems
for her own daughter. An uncle tracks her down, bringing news of her
mother's death, her ashes and final belongings, an unhealthy, heaping
dose of old world shame, and maybe something more threatening. It's Umma (2022 83m)
It
had a theatrical run here in the states starting back in mid-March. It's best approached with an eye on the
underlying psychological and sociological themes, and the "Don't become
your mother" tagline, as opposed to looking for a straight-on
supernatural horror story. This is a writer-director project for
first-time director Iris K. Shim.
Two weeks ago I managed to finally get out and see Thor: Love & Thunder, the fourth Thor-centered MCU film, co-written and directed by the same guy who directed the previous entry, Thor: Ragnarok: Taika Waititi. I generally enjoy Waititi's sensibilities, and agree that strong infusions of levity and human foibles are vital to making these things work well - trying to be unrelentingly, grimly serious would be a disastrous move. Still, I took a protective posture going in, wary of an excess of finger-pokes to ribs and belly -- and the caution was warranted.
The film folded two dramatic arcs into a single film, either one of which was sincerely capable of carrying a film, and of being worthy of attention. This was also strung together by an understandable existential crisis for the lead, following the events of both his previous movie and the final two Avengers films. He's lost both parents, several friends, and an adoptive brother who despite having mostly been a thorn in his side had shown some signs of sincerely coming around, along with the complete destruction of his homeland -- and those were just the losses among the nominally "immortal". He also had mortal comrades fall, who had become very dear to him. All of that accumulated drama, now woven through learning that the One Who Got Away has cancer, and while Asgardian magic can empower her (allowing her to wield the hammer Mjolnir and command the power of Thor) it undoes such gains as chemo had brought her, ultimately hastening her death -- and the rise of a new, god-slaying threat (Gorr - played with feeling by Christian Bale) who has his own heart-breaking tale to tell. He'd lived his life in piety, praying and leading his daughter in prayer as their world slowly baked and withered around them, ultimately losing everything, only seemingly at the end to meet his own god and find that the prick's a malignant narcissist. Fate supplies Gorr with an alternative to simply perishing ignominiously, supplying him instead with a sword, shadowy, godly powers and a mission to slay the gods. The mantle will ultimately claim his own life, too, but he was ready for that the moment his daughter had died in his arms.
Anyway, yes, more than ample angst and drama for at least two films, pressed into a single one by a director who ultimately wants to pepper everything with jokes, usually at the lead character's expense.
We still managed to get an overall entertaining film out of it, but I can't escape the idea that potential was squandered. The movie will likely arrive on Disney + in late August or early September, and I'll be interested to see how it plays for me during a revisit -- here at home, where I can casually pause it for a bathroom break. In the meantime, here's the trailer. Oh! Btw, Disney+ recently added three more R-rated genre films of note: The joke and violence strewn pair of Deadpool movies, and something of a last X-Men tale -- at least an end for two major mutants, set a little in the future in its own timeline, and likely Hugh Jackman's final starring turn as Logan/Wolverine: Logan (2017).
As noted up top, Monday will be August 1st. Those who have access to Turner Classic Movies (be it via increasingly out-of-fashion cable, or as an add-on to one of the streaming services) know that August is that channel's Summer Under the Stars celebration, where from 6am each day until 6am the following day, the programming features a star du jour.
The full schedule for the month (click that link and it'll pop out as its own screen) lays out the run of stars, and each of the films shown during that star's 24 hour turn. The first week of star spotlights will run as follows:
Monday Aug 1: Elvis Presley
Tuesday Aug 2: Jean Arthur
Wednesday Aug 3: Sidney Poitier
Thursday Aug4: Ruth Roman
Friday Aug 5: Orson Welles
Saturday Aug 6: Audrey Hepburn In the meantime, I'm continuing to enjoy the weekly, new episodes of The Orville: New Horizons (Thursdays on Hulu -- haven't watched this week's yet) and Evil (Sundays, on Paramount+), though each of their mere ten-episode seasons are too soon to end. Even the superb Better Call Saul is now down to its final three episodes, and has been delivering surprises each week. The most recent episode, for instance, which was shot in black and white, with full attention to noirish conventions, turned me around yet again by not only bringing a focus I wasn't expecting until the final episode, but managed to slip in a prime episode role for comedy icon Carol Burnett. Here she appeared in a dramatic role she so magically disappeared into that I watched the full episode, engaged with the characters as the characters, only realizing afterward that that was the turn for Burnett we were told to expect. Meanwhile, for no particular reason I've been letting both What We Do In the Shadows (season 4) and Only Murders In the Building (season 2) build up on Hulu. Will I make time for them this weekend? I've no idea.
I've run out of time once more, and there's little doubt that I've forgotten to get to several things I'd meant to. Too easily distracted, but also trying to be more mindful of getting a good night's sleep, I seem to accomplish less these days.
Next week we start to wade into August's bounty, including at least a couple new series of interest that'll land that same day. I'll be lining up the calendar for the month shortly, and may play a little with how I go about previewing things. - Mike
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn
Happy Thursday, everyone! It's hot as usual here, so let's stay inside and find some of the weird stuff I found recently.
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I'm always interested in miniseries that I either forgot existed or simply never knew about this. Five Days, which aired on the BBC in 2007 and was shown on HBO in the states, covers non-consecutive days in a police investigation of a missing woman and her two children. Starring David Oyelowo, Hugh Bonneville, Penelope Wilton and Sarah Smart, this looks pretty good though of course rather grim, kind of reminding me of that excellent first season of Broadchurch. So I'm tossing this on the shelf of "watch soon."
Five Days is on HBO Max and also on Tubi with ads.
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I was really happy to find this one because besides it being Ray Bradbury, it's a part of the fantastic "F*** Me, Ray Bradbury," the Hugo-nominated paen to Mr. Bradbury from a pre-Crazy-Ex Girlfriend Rachel Bloom. Warning: this is both catchy as hell and also incredibly NSFW.
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Computer issues mean I have to stop here! I’ll add in my final entry later.
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Freedom Island, Episode 14 -- Garbo
"Freedom Island" is an audio suspense story I write and perform as YouTube videos with slideshows. This modern-day tale is set in Indianapolis, and our narrator is Bethany, who's used Narcotic Anonymous meetings to free herself from opioid use, but whose life is no picnic. On top of her day-to-day struggles, she's also very concerned about what her Uncle Boyce, who's about to be paroled from a Michigan prison, is up to.
New episodes of "Freedom Island" appear on the blog every other Wednesday. New to the story? You can hear the episodes in order on my YouTube playlist, which is found HERE.
Here is today's installment.
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
The Return of Francis the Talking Mule! -- Garbo
It's time for my Summer Staycation, and this week I'm doing as the puyblic-radio folk do and go with a best-of. But this best-of post comes with a twist, as I found out the most attonishing thing about the writer who appears in this blog essay, and next week I will tell all!
This post originally appeared in Year Two of the Consortium of Seven blog. It's almost more of a Ted Talk than a blog post, being very -- uh -- complete. But it was 2020 and utter stupidity plus rejection of history was in the air, and I wanted to write something smart about colliding cultural trends. So I did.
Recently I've resumed work on a history-based project. Much of that involves immersing myself in American culture, high and low, of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The film "Francis," about a talking mule, and its sequels, were huge as America moved from the Forties to the Fifties.
There were seven (yes, 7!) movies -- six starring Donald O'Connor, one with Mickey Rooney -- in the Universal franchise.
In addition to the movies, Francis was all over pop culture. Just to begin with, there were two different records by Chill Wills, the actor who voiced the famous animal:
"A Mule Is A Fool" played on a vintage record player:
"Francis the Talking Mule" on the Capitol Records label.
In the late 1940s, old-time radio was fading but still happening, and Francis could be heard over big floor model receivers and table radios too.
In an episode of "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," Francis (well, Chill Wills) was the first guest. After the talking mule is introduced, Francis' hooves are heard clopping into the studio where Hedda Hopper's gossipy showbiz radio show was recorded. Early in the interview, Francis demands one of the gossip columnist's elaborate hats -- once, of course, holes have been cut out for his earsYou can hear all of that here.
Hedda Hopper
Televsion superseded radio by the early 1950s, of course. Francis was a celebrity guest on a popular stump-the-panel TV program:
The mule als appeared in children's television programming. The UPA Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon "How Now Boing Boing" features the public-speaking course which taught the famous mule to talk.
And then there ere all the kinds of print media. For a while was a Francis comic strip in daily newspapers; one of the plotlines involved a bank robbery.
And naturally, just a place in the funnies wasn't enough. There was also a comic book!
With Francis appearing in every media outlet of the late 1940s and into the 1950s, it would be easy to forget that it was ever a book. The Francis franchise began with stories author David Stern, an Army captain, submitted to Esquire magazine. The stories were gathered and published in book form as Francis in 1946. Stern followed up with a sequel, Francis Goes to Washington, published in 1948.
Out of all that, what people really liked were the movies. The first film in the franchise made a lot of money for Universal. Despite competing against 1950 blockbusters like "Cinderella," "Father of the Bride," "All About Eve," and "Broken Arrow," "Francis" ranked among the top 20 box office hits. Over the years, just the first film featuring the famous talking mule has earned Universal Studios nearly three million dollars in purchases and rentals. And of course there were six more movies in the series.
It would be easy to dismiss Francis, in book or movie form, as a silly novelty. And the quality of the movies slipped downhill with every new release. The director, Arther Lubin, who made the first six talking-mule pictures then had a hit on televison with -- wait for it -- a talking horse. And yep, that was just a silly thing.
Earworm Warming: A theme song that will stick in your head
If we're talking goofy, we can go all giant invisible rabbit. The 1944 play "Harvey" was released as a iilm starring Jimmy Stewart, and it arrived in movie theaters the same year "Francis" did. The main character in "Harvey" is cheerful but an alcoholic who talks to everyone he meets about his invisible friend. There's a family plan to lock him up in a sanitarium, where he will be given an injection of Formula 77 which will do brain damage -- I mean, cure him.
What used to be tragic is now, apparently, hilarious.
But in David Stern's book Francis, the narrator, Lt. Stern (in the films Lt. Stirling), is not a heavy drinker nor a huge challenger to social norms. He has no giant invisible rabbit. He's quiet about the talking (and flying!) mule who's a friend, a confidante, and a mentor to a lonely soldier. Stern has his reasons for keeping things on the q.t. After the magical mule instructs the wounded lieutenant on the use of a belt as a tourniquet, and then flies the wounded man to the hospital, the lieutenant corrects his early mistake of telling hospital staff what happened. He goes from the regular ward to the mental ward.
Stern said he wrote the first four pages of dialogue between Francis and an Army soldier stationed in Burma after looking at a blank wall for some time during his time editing an Army newspaper called The Midpacifican, published in Honolulu.
Unlike the harmless, goofy hero Elwood P. Dowd of "Harvey," the wounded soldier in Francis is scared and disoriented and in need of advice. He is hospitalized by Army doctors when he continues to insist that he can see and hear Francis, but in a middle chapter of the book, he leaves the ward and meets the talking mule under a banyan tree. Yes, the same type of tree under which the Buddha found his enlightenment. The mule recommends that his friend should not back off from the mental-illness diagnosis, but should use it to his advantage.
Half an hour later I arriveed at the banyan tree. I'd run most of the way and was out of breath. Francis stood complacently in the shade.
"So you managed to get out of the hospital, lieutenant," the mule said.
"I'll probably be court-martialed for this," I panted.
"Not if you're nuts," reassured Francis. "The Army'll just say you're a little screwier than they thought."
At the same time, Francis recognizes that the lieutenant sometimes needs tough love.
"You need a nursemaid," Francis snorted. "But since the Army hasn't seen fit to provide its junior officers with such supervision, I must do the best I can."
And sometimes the talkative mule is much less like a fairy-tale animal and more like a human pal, the kind of friend a lonely wounded man would like to have. Near the end of the book, Francis somehow hoists himself onto a bar stool (from which he'll have trouble dismounting later), and while Lt. Stern tries to get the drunk mule to go home, Francis says he loves his human buddy as much as if he had four legs. And in slurred speech, he wants reassurance that the lieutenant really likes him and isn't just using him to meet his own needs. For a book about a man who answers when a mule talks to him, Francis really isn't goofy or silly, even if it makes light of some tough situations.
Francis appeared on bookstore and library shelves in 1946, and the film version came out in 1950. The summer of 1950 marked the start of the three-year war in Korea. Lonely lieutenants in Burma were not the only people feeling "screwy." Germany had surrendered in May of 1945, and Japan in August of the same year. But ending four years of American participation in a global battle couldn't just stop with war-is-over headlines and crowds celebrating in the streets. The postwar shift took years. The wounded and injured soldiers had to get medical treatment, everyone overseas had to be de-mobilized, and some people had to decide whether to become civilians or to re-enlist. And then -- before those decisions could be followed up with action -- American soldiers went back to the battlefield, this time in Korea.
Two other 1950 movies, besides the box-office hits mentioned earlier, addressed. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were silly and nostalgic in "At War with the Army," but in "The Men," moviegoers watched an entire ward of wounded vets struggle with physical and psychological problems. Meanwhile, the Francis movie series was getting ready to move on to "Francis Goes to the Races."
America -- a country I love but will never understand.
Jack Webb and Marlon Brando in "The Men"
David Stern, from the Francis book jacket:
When I joined the Army in 1943, I had been publishing a couple of newspapers. I told this to the classification interviewer, who dutifully recorded my civilian background on a large card. They say the Army always finds the job to fit the man. I was assigned as assistant on a garbage truck.
Circumstances led me, via Officer Candidate School, to Hawaii, where I was assigned as Co-Officer-in-Charge of an Army newspaper called Midpacifican. One night I was sitting looking at a blank, unpainted wall. To pass the time I wrote four pages of dialogue between a second lieutenant and an Army mule. I had no intention of writing more. But that little runt of a mule kept bothering me. With memories of OCS fresh in my mind I thought I might rid myself of the creature by shipping him off to become a second lieutenant. Francis outwitted me. He refused to go.
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Extra stuff for this post:
1. It's hard to decide which Francis the Talking Mule movie I like least. The contenders are "Francis Joins the WACs" and "Francis in the Haunted House." Watch both trailers if you want to decide for yourself.
"Francis Joins the WACs"
"Francis in the Haunted House"
2. Leftover Fun Facts:
a. The animal who played Francis was actually a female mule named Molly. You can read about the "Mozark Mule" in this article.
b. The horse who played Mr. Ed had the real-life name Bamboo Harvester.
NOTES;
The Image from "Havey" came from this blog.
I grabbed the film still from "The Men" at this blog address
Next week (you made it down this far? Congrats!): Daniel Stern goes in a whole new direction!
Monday, July 25, 2022
Forever Heading To Winnipeg
by whiteray
It was about this time in 1972, fifty years ago, that my pals Rick and Gary and I crammed some stuff into my 1961 Ford Falcon and headed out on a road trip to Winnipeg, the capital of Canada’s province of Manitoba.
Our plans were minimal: drive the nearly 400 miles to the city of about half a million, settle down in a motel for a couple of nights and wander around the city to see what we could see. I’d been there twice before, so I had some ideas – the impressive provincial capital building, the zoo – but we were mostly going to freeform it.
And we did. We were lucky enough to be there during the annual Winnipeg Folk Festival, so we heard some good music on a couple of outdoor stages downtown. We did hit the zoo and the provincial capital building. We wasted time wandering through a few record shops and a few of those quirky little shops of the time called head shops, checking out posters and other stuff and generally ignoring the accessories offered for the ingestion of illicit pharmaceuticals.
We were young adults – well, Rick and I were; Gary was still seventeen – on a road trip having fun. We drank some Canadian beer as we camped under the northern lights in a provincial park on our first night out; on our last night, we stayed in a commercial campground and spent a portion of the evening talking to some girls from Okemos, Michigan.
All of that is pretty vivid fifty years later. But even more vivid in my memory is the music. We brought along my cassette tape player, and each of us offered some tapes. Either Rick or Gary brought along the newly released Rolling Stones anthology Hot Rocks, and that and the other tapes were played frequently enough during our 1,000 or so miles that nearly every time we stopped for gas, we needed to buy batteries, too.
And there was Top 40 radio. About half the time on our journey, we were able to tune into a decent radio station along the way. When its signal began to fade, it was the job of the front seat passenger to find another AM station that we might want to listen to for an hour or so. The stations varied, but the tunes we heard didn’t differ all that much. Almost all of the top fifteen records listed in Billboard for the last week of July 1972 call back those five days viscerally:
“Alone
Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan
“Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by the Looking Glass
“Too Late To Turn Back Now” by the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose
“(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right” by Luther Ingram
“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” by Wayne Newton
“Where Is The Love” by Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway
“School’s Out” by Alice Cooper
“How Do You Do” by Mouth & McNeal
“Lean On Me” by Bill Withers
“Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)” by the Hollies
“Layla” by Derek & The Dominos
“Take It Easy” by the Eagles
“Day By Day” from Godspell
“Rocket Man” by Elton John
“Coconut” by Nilsson
Some of those stand out more than others. We didn’t hear the Luther Ingram record a lot, and we weren’t crazy about “Alone Again (Naturally)” or the Wayne Newton record. The others, we all liked, and for my part, I’ve continued to like them all as fifty years have somehow gone by. But when they pop up on oldies radio or on my own listening devices, they don’t all immediately whisper “Winnipeg” to me; most of those records bring other connections. “Layla,” for example, either puts me in the lounge of a hostel in Denmark where I lived for a few months in 1974 or else it puts me on stage in a suburban Minneapolis home in 1998, playing keys in a recreational band.
But one of those fifteen has been for fifty years an immediate reminder of that trip. No matter where I am when I hear “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” I am once again in that old Falcon, heading north on Interstate 29 with Gary and Rick.
Sunday, July 24, 2022
Sundries
Teachers have necessary summer breaks and I am very thankful for them. We need to recharge to do our best for a new crop of children and reflect on what we want to change or do more of for the coming year. I can’t say this year’s was very restorative and inspiring, it was also very short, but it was a break and needed. I slept in, sat in chairs daydreaming, and I took photos of travels to the Carolinas and to St. Louis. I am sharing those today. Barely any preparation was done for teaching first grade this August, but that’s how it went this year. Hoping my joie de vivre kicks in soon. 
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