Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Let's jump right in; I've not bought anything new this week so you will have to enjoy what I've been going through what I've been packing for our imminent move.

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So a few years ago, long-time TV writers Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz decided to embark on a weird little project.  Why not try and rank all of US television programs and see what came out on top?  What resulted was this very interesting book that came out in 2016 and has some fascinating and sometimes deeply personal essays about what the various series meant to them and how they influenced TV at the time and moving forward.

In particular...

Sepinwall writes the entry on The Cosby Show.  And it's really one of the most emotional pieces of TV writing I've ever read, about how he was in the middle of introducing his daughter to the show and had to turn it off and have a conversation with his daughter about Bill Cosby and the (at the time new in the news) horrible, monstrous crimes.  It's such a sad essay that confronts the crimes as well as talking about Cosby's importance in the history of TV.  It's still a difficult cultural conversation that we have to have.

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Speaking of things we all would like to change...Stephen King always had a bit of a bugaboo in his head about Kennedy being killed. Which is completely natural for someone born in 1947, who would have just turned 16 when JFK was murdered in Dallas and then lived through the ensuing decade of silly nonsense of conspiracy theories and fiction about the Mafia, the CIA and a hundred other groups who supposedly killed Kennedy instead of the one person who did.

So why not try a novel about someone who has a one-way ticket back to 1958 and decides, "why shouldn't I I try to save Kennedy and improve the timeline?"  But obviously King looked at it and realized, it would never be that simple.  And goodness, it's not.  There's the worries of making sure Oswald worked alone, trying to not infect the timeline too much and most importantly, not making too many personal connections as you work toward the goal.

Yep, that is where the protagonist fails.  And it's really the central core of this novel.  It's not so much about JFK as it is about love and remembrance.  It has a bittersweet ending to beat all, one that is just so King.

The adaptation of 11/22/63 aired on Hulu and I skipped it because of James Franco, who ran out of chances.

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It's a great novel, but forget that. I want to use it to urge everyone to see the film adaptation.  Annihilation was the best movie of 2018 and weirdly dumped in February instead of being promoted as the Oscar-bait it should have been for a whole bevy of categories.  For some reason, unlike Alex Garland's previous excellent movie Ex Machina this just didn't get the attention it deserved.

It's a wonderful, sad movie that has fantastic performances from Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  A movie about aliens and humans and how humans can be aliens to themselves and oh forget it, just go see it.  It's currently on Paramount+ and FX Now and for rent and sale on various platforms.

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My recommendation for this week is X, the new horror movie from Ti West.  It's all about a bunch of student filmmakers who go to a little farmhouse they're renting from an older couple to make their little movie...without telling them they're making an adult film.  And mayhem ensures.  Ti West is having a ton of fun riffing on '70s slashers here, especially the middling Texas Chainsaw Massacre that here he makes much better.  It's gory, it's a little goofy and it has a ton of nice little performances, especially the lead performance by Mia Goth but also by Brittany Snow as the queen bee of this band of wanna-be porn mavens.  

Freedom Island, Episode 5 -- Garbo

 Newest installment of my ongoing suspense story, in which Bethany, from the southeast side of Indianapolis, tries to prevent her dangerous uncle from trying to overthrow the government while dealing with her own day-to-day struggles. Have you missed earlier episodes?  CLICK HERE

: Tuesday Thing: the Campus Bus story -- Garbo

This week's audio tale, in YouTube video form, is rather a long one. It would have been longer but I edited it down. In this story things come out all right at the end, but the story does involve non-violent workplace bullying so if you are not in a good place in your life, this one might be best saved for another time. Otherwise, here you go. 

It Took A Frenchman . . .

 by whiteray

A funny thing happened in the year-end Billboard charts during the years 1965, 1966 and 1967. 

Now, this is the kind of stuff that chart geeks like me notice, and it came to me when I was wandering through Joel Whitburn’s book, A Century of Pop Music. The book lists the top records of each year from 1900 through 1999 (a Top 30 in 1900 and a Top 40 from then on). I was tracking the most popular instrumental from each year, and when I got to 1965 and the two following years, there were none. 

And that was a rarity. During the sixty-five years from 1900 through 1964, there were only six years when the year’s top records had not included at least one instrumental, and none of those years were consecutive. 

But then came those three years in a row: 1965 through 1967. And that stretch without a big instrumental hit actually covered most of 1964, too. In December 1963, a surf rock band from Hollywood called the Marketts got their single “Out of Limits” into the Billboard Hot 100. It moved up the chart and peaked during the first week of February 1964 at No. 3. Its performance made it the No. 37 single for 1964, and it was the last instrumental single to do well enough to make the year-end Top 40 for four years. 

So, what might have happened in February 1964 that altered the character of the music business here in the United States?  Silly question, right? 

Now, I can’t trace a straight line between the success of the Beatles and the two waves of the British Invasion from February 1964 onward to the dearth of instrumentals in the year-end charts, but there was certainly less room in those year-end charts – reflecting less time available on radio stations as well as less attention from retail outlets and record buyers – for American music of all types. What I mean is that I can’t cite causation, but it’s one hell of a correlation. 

For example, the Top 40 for 1964 in A Century of Pop Music lists thirteen records by British groups while the Top 40 for 1963 in the same book lists none (although one artist each from Belgium and Japan is listed: The Singing Nun for “Dominique” and Kyu Sakamoto for “Sukiyaki”). 

And it’s not like the earlier top-selling instrumentals were all middle-of-the-road stuff that would have been crowded out by newer genres. Yes, “Washington Square” by the Village Stompers, the No. 28 record of 1963, had been folksy and decidedly unedgy, but right behind it, at No. 29, had been the Surfaris’ raucous “Wipe Out.” 

Still, I imagine it’s fair to say that most pre-Beatles instrumental hits were decidedly MOR, but some were not. To support the second portion of that sentence, I offer Booker T & the MG’s “Green Onions,” No. 38 for the year of 1962, and the Tornadoes’ “Telstar,” which was the No. 6 single that year. (And I also think of David Rose’s “The Stripper,” which wasn’t rock or R&B, of course, but certainly shook its stuff someplace other than the middle of the road and wound up as the No. 18 record for the year.) 

Whatever the reason, for those three years – 1965, 1966 and 1967 – instrumentals failed to crack the list of the top records of the year. And it took a Frenchman to end the drought, with the first bit of instrumental rain falling during the first week of 1968, when Paul Mauriat’s “Love is Blue” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 99. By the second week of February, the record was at No. 1, and it stayed there for five weeks. By the time 1968 closed its books, “Love is Blue” was the No. 3 record of the year (trailing the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”). 

Four other instrumentals did well enough in the charts in 1968 to make the Billboard Top 40 for the year: “Grazing in the Grass” by Hugh Masekela went to No. 1 and wound up at No. 13 for the year. Three other instrumentals peaked at No. 2 and made the Top 40 for 1968: “The Horse” by Cliff Nobles and Co. was No. 19 for the year; “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams wound up at No. 24 for the year; and “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” by the Hugo Montenegro Orchestra ended up at No. 27 for the year. 

But Mauriat’s “Love is Blue” led the way, and more than fifty years later, it’s still a beautiful record:

Sundries -- March 20 by Dorothy Dolores

Continuing my St. Louis photoblog. And as always I wasn’t here long enough to see everyone I’d love to see. Hopefully this summer I’ll be here for a long stretch. It’s been typical spring in the Midwest weather. Below find photos and some unadulterated pure duck videos from Lafayette Park, including 

 swan nest-making.

 

 

 

nest making. 

Inside a former carriage repair shop

Know Your Stuff - Esther

I have a lot of stuff. It’s everywhere, unapologetically cluttering up all my spaces. All the stuff has to work for its existence. I don’t have time to look after it or keep it all that clean. It can’t be high maintenance. Clean enough is good enough. I’m in no way neat, but I like to have a place for everything. The stuff I own has to be really nice or really useful, preferably a bit of both. 

I’m quite guarded about my own stuff at work. I’ve had to learn that the hard way – I’ve loved & lost stuff too often - so now I never lend books nor DVDs & I only lend other stuff with the passive aggressive & casually delivered, “Just put it back in this drawer when you’re done with it,” with a tight smile & deliberate gesture towards said drawer. Just because the stuff has to earn its keep doesn’t mean I don’t want to decide what happens to it.

Artists get this. They know about clutter & stuff & the comfort it can bring. Sometimes they live it & it’s one of the many ways they can communicate that they relate to us. There are examples of people’s stuff in various art world guises. It represents something about us, how we live, how we see space & the stuff we own; why do we “need” it, value it or keep it? What does it tell us about ourselves & is there anyone who’s NOT aware of this? & people that don’t have much stuff or a place to live will surely need some handy bits & pieces. Even the tidiest of people with a home & the minimum of possessions needs a bathroom cabinet. This week’s blog goes in search of stuff & finds it.

Ephraim Rubenstein (b. 1956), Book Pile XXXIV (?)

I have to say, Rubenstein has painted some much more upsetting, even triggering images of books, ones that are scattered around open & face down, which no matter how messy my space might get, I’d never do. I actively discourage it in others. Books constitute a lot of the stuff we have in our flat. My partner & I love books & until lockdown I never thought I’d ever buy a kindle. So now, I not only have piles of books to read plus the ones in the many bookcases, but I also have a virtual bookpile. Thanks, kindle.

Tim Nobel & Sue Webster, Dirty White Trash (With Gulls) (1998)

This artistic duo have cleverly fashioned the stuff - rubbish – to create a shadow that makes sense when lit in a certain way. With added gulls which is a plus. Of course they are making a valid point about what stuff we use, what we throw away & what happens to it next. They reject the idea of waste & in a way that’s the most pro-stuff I can think of. There is hope & a bid to make us feel accountable in their work. 

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, An Untitled Pile of Symbolic Candy (Also Known As “Ross in L.A.”) (1991) 

This was created at the time when the partner of Gonzalez-Torres was dying of AIDS. People were allowed to take the sweets from this & other similar installations, perhaps not realising the symbolic intent. The idea was that as the pile of sweets diminished, it represented the chipping away of the body & functions of those dying of the virus. Though as one website notes, “While the candy is eaten, while the body begins to disappear, the love remains.” This stuff is the stuff of love itself.

Tracey Emin, My Bed (1998)

It annoyed a lot of people at the time. Infuriated them in fact. Especially as it was nominated for a Turner Prize. People thought Tracey’s stuff was merely rubbish but she too made it into art. It represented a time when she did nothing but stay in bed for four days in a depressed state, not eating & drinking nothing but alcohol. She said more recently that she likes to look back on it as something that doesn’t epitomise her life any more.

Richard Bawden (b. 1936), Clutter (?)

Here is a man & his stuff. At first, I liked this painting very much, but then I saw the man’s expression & now it gives me the creeps. 

Ric Darrell, Craft Drawer Clutter (before 2017)

One of the most relatable images of stuff I could find. It’s become a cliché: “who doesn’t have a drawer like this?” It’s made with digital pen & coloured pencils. & here I was under the misapprehension that digital technology was meant to help us dispense with physical stuff.

Igor Zhuk, Artist at Work (2006)

The stuff of artists & their studios in art is a popular theme. It’s perhaps an attempt to allow the viewer to see what they want us to see. Perhaps the stuff has been tidied up for the picture. Anyway, it amuses me to wonder whether those are bottles of turps or whisky & whether this artist gets the teacups muddled up with the paint pots…

Chris Roberts-Antieu, The Collector (2017)

Though nothing like his style, this makes me think of Gustav Klimt’s portraits, where the person is painted & then besieged by patterns & decoration that perhaps represent them in some way. Here the person surrounds the stuff, however. 

Joe Orton, Bedroom (to 1967)

Technically, this would have been also made by his partner Kenneth Halliwell, but if Joe’s own sister can’t forgive Halliwell for murdering her brother, I don’t see why I should give him credit in a subheading. In any case, this always reminded me of my bedroom at home. Before seeing Joe’s version, I covered mine completely at one point, including the ceiling. It’s stuff alright. You might not consider it art, but it’s a thorough expression of our inner selves & the things we love.  Plus, if you look closely, you can see Rembrandt, da Vinci & Michelangelo represented. So if you want to quibble, the art is there.

David Teniers the Younger, The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Painting Gallery in Brussels (1651)

Hot on the heels of Joe’s wall is this gallery, a room possibly worth more in monetary terms than a small bedroom pasted with newspaper & magazine cuttings, even if said bedroom is situated in Islington. With a title as busy as the picture & weighing in at 104.8cm x 130.4cm, everything about it screams “stuff as status symbol.” Look at my stuff, look at my great taste, look at the stuff I can afford, look at all of it!

Okay, does anyone else now feel like “stuff” is a really weird word?

What's To Watch? - Mar 18 - Our monsters, imagined, and real

 

     Just past the mid-point of March - the Ides, then St. Patrick's Day now just behind us. Much in the news to depress us, the majority of which are matters where our only controls are on how we choose to react to and weather them. Being aware of them is worthwhile, but living with them constantly is needlessly harmful, an act of self-terrorism. Let's see what and who else is out there to spend some time with. As with last week's post, as I get around to watching some of the items I'll aim to come back and add follow-up notes in this deep blue font.

     A couple, quick, updates first:
     This week saw the fourth season finale for Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+, wrapping the latest challenge with a cooperative effort that reminds us of the inspirational ideal behind Roddenberry's Federation, and otherwise establishing a new plateau for us to assemble on when season five comes around.
     A follow-up on the HBO Max semi-historical pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death (which I'd previewed a couple weeks back): While elements of it were fun from the start, I would advise giving it through episode 4 before deciding whether or not its working for you. That's the point when we start to have the series lead we've been following from the start, would-be gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), playing off against seasoned scourge of the seas Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), as the interaction reveals things not only to the audience but the characters themselves, and the blended crew gets more time to interact and react to the relationship forming between their captains. Certainly, if you find yourself hating it, then go find something else, but I wanted to at least point out that it begins to gel with episode four.

     Arriving today on Hulu is a new erotic psychological thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. It's Deep Water (2022 R 2h 33m)

     Over on Netflix, we have a couple new imports.
    From Sweden there's a new, war-torn, post-apocalytic action movie starring Noomi Rapace: Black Crab (2022 TV-MA  1h 50m). Six soldiers sent to transport a mysterious package across a frozen achipelago.

     From Poland, we have an eight-episode first season of a fantasy series about a past-haunted woman joining a professor and his band of gifted students, investigating the paranormal and battling demons. A world of Slavic folklore, ancient monsters and bloodthirsty deities. It's Cracow Monsters.

    For more domestically-produced monsters, also on Netflix, the animated series Big Mouth gets a spin-off this week. Expanding the world of unseen, mostly destabilizing human influences beyond mere hormones, it's Human Resources. As with the core series, there's a fine assortment of voice talent.

    Also among the new Netflix material today is Jason Segel, Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins in a crime thriller about a man who picks a bad time to try to burglarize a tech billionaire's vacation home: Windfall (2022  R language and some violence  1h 32m)

     New to Amazon Prime today is a horror thriller, in which two African American women share disturbing experiences at a predominantly white college in New England. Writer/Director Mariama Diallo's theatrical directorial debut, it stars Regina Hall and Zoe Renee: Master (2022  R language and some drug use 1h 38m)

     Next Thursday, the 24th, Paramount+ will see the arrival of a new series, adapted from yet another hugely popular videogame series I recognize on sight, but have never played, it's Halo.

     The appeal of a new science fiction series is diluted (for me) by also being a military one.
     Anyway, as I understand it, it's set in the 26th century, and pits the Earth against an alien threat called The Covenant. While drawing on the same core concepts - and especially on the visual elements of armor and weaponry - it's set up as separate from the videogame canon, so as to allow each to develop independently. While I haven't seen an explicit statement, unless this is a sudden departure from Paramount+ fare, I expect this 9-episode first season will be playing out in weekly installments. A second season was authorized back on February 14th, so they seem to be committed to it. On the other hand, the first showrunner for the series (Kyle Kinnen) separated from it back in 2018, the one for season one (Steve Kane) will be exiting after this season, with David Wiener (who was showrunner for the now-cancelled Brave New World series over on Peacock) being the showrunner for season two. I'm too completely on the outside of all this to know the details of why there's been so much behind-the-scenes movement.

      This past Wednesday, the 16th, saw big changes here in the U.S. to the Disney+ platform. The addition of parental controls now allows them to include material harsher than PG-13, and with that we have the appearance of what until March 1st were Netflix-exclusive, TV-MA, Marvel shows. Presumably they are now in their forever home.
     They made the set-up quick and easy, though I was happy I'd recently reminded myself of what my Disney+ password was -- having set it up in my devices a couple years back, and letting the rest of the family know at the time, I hadn't had a reason to remember it in the interim. It was a quick set to TV-MA, which is an umbrella that includes the MPAA (movie) ratings of R and NC-17, so in modern view, pretty much everything, since NC-17 replaced the old X rating way back in 1990.

     Originally created to be part of the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, with occasional references to major events from the movies - particularly the devastation that befell New York City during The Avengers (2012) - these series have since shifted into a gray zone, and can't currently be considered to be canon.
     We've so far only had Charlie Cox reprise his role of blind attorney Matt Murdock (but not his alter ego, Daredevil) in last year's Spider-man: No Way Home, and Vincent D'Onofrio appearing as some version of Wilson Fisk/Kingpin during last year's Hawkeye series on Disney+. We'll see as time rolls on whether they and any of the other characters show up in any of the other mainstream movies and streaming shows, though there have recently been unconfirmed reports that a fully in-universe version of Daredevil, in a series called The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, has recently been fast-tracked for development, and that it would include the key, main cast from the Netflix Daredevil show. We're waiting for official word.
     Regardless, there's a great deal of quality work done here, with really only the first season of Iron Fist being (somewhat justly) panned. Most of the other problems had to do with how some seasons laid out their story arc -- pacing issues, and the problems that arose from deciding on 13 episode seasons rather than deciding on a story and fitting the number of episodes to that. Of course, as ever, your mileage may vary. Forgive the overly-posed promotional image from 2017, but I wanted shot with the four main characters together.

   Here are the series, in viewing order, for any who end up being interested:
         Daredevil season 1 (April 10, 2015; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 1 (November 20, 2015; 13 episodes)
         Daredevil season 2 (March 18, 2016; 13 episodes)
         Luke Cage season 1 (September 30, 2016; 13 episodes)
         Iron Fist season 1 (March 17, 2017; 13 episodes)
         The Defenders limited series (July 31, 2017; 8 episodes)
         The Punisher season 1 (November 17, 2017; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 2 (March 8, 2018; 13 episodes)
         Luke Cage season 2 (June 22, 2018; 13 episodes)
         Iron Fist season 2 (September 7, 2018; 10 episodes)
         Daredevil season 3 (October 19, 2018; 13 episodes)
         The Punisher season 2 (January 18, 2019; 13 episodes)
         Jessica Jones season 3 (June 14, 2019; 13 episodes)

    On the general topic of streaming services, it appears the ink's dry on the contract for Amazon Prime to purchase the vast holdings of MGM. All of the specifics, and how soon Prime subscribers will have access to the estimated more than 4000 movies and 17,000 tv episodes in the package, remains unclear.
     In a mildly surprising turn, the European Union has already approved the deal, but the U.S. government has yet to weigh in on the matter as a point of potential anti-Trust. At this point, as a consumer, I'm much more interested in seeing existing streamers aggregate more content, rather than yet another streamer forming.

    As a quick aside before the final offering, I'll again remind TCM viewers that we still have nearly two weeks to go in March's 31 Days of Oscar. That link pops up a page with the complete listings, each title itself a clickable path to more info on that particular film.

     While the way last week's post's inclusion of a 1973 tv movie didn't go at all as I'd originally intended, the exercise was amusing enough to me that I'm going to take a similar step this week: Revisiting a tv movie I remember seeing when it first aired, but which I haven't rewatched in nearly 50 years. The things I mostly remember about it were that it starred Alan Alda, the device used as a murder weapon, and the killer's motivation, revealed in the penultimate scene. On that last point, I remember it leading to some brief thought on how small towns can do a number on people (depending on their reputation) and how for some people a bad, public experience can fester over the years in a way that's almost equal parts comedy and tragedy, because the real damage is ultimately self-inflicted, by giving an incident the weight and power to twist and harm us. The wisdom to simply laugh it off, and/or accept some mild self-effacement and otherwise chalk it up to experience, can elude us if we don't allow ourselves the simple human right of fallibility.

     This one's another ABC Movie of the Week, and so was another Tuesday night - this time it was October 2nd. The opening scene is a murder, and we see pretty much how it was done and the face of the killer, so the remainder of the movie is largely meeting the rest of the cast, and a trail of new victims - all presenting initially as natural cause deaths among the elderly - and watching as the small-town sheriff's (played by Alan Alda) suspicions mount.
     I haven't yet rewatched it, just doing a few quick checks on some details, but already it's interesting to see one, huge perspective shift that's come with the passing of years: The victims - again, all elderly, such that passing away from heart failure in their sleep didn't immediately raise red flags - end up being high school graduates from 1928. So, as this was 1973, that's 45 years in their past. Here in 2022, my own high school graduation is nearly that long ago. So, while I was 12, eternally young and assuredly immortal, when I first saw this, now I'm essentially in the same age pool as the geriatric victims (and the killer) in this movie. There's a cruel twist for ya. Reality slaps you down, but it's the dismissive snicker after it fells you that stings.
     As mentioned, this aired early October of 1973, and so was shot between the first and second seasons of M*A*S*H (over on CBS). While We of The Future know that show went on to wild success and 11 seasons, nearly all of which with it as a top 10 show in the ratings, its first season it was dragging, coming in way down the ratings list at #46, and was very near cancellation.  This tv movie

was intended as a potential series pilot, and aired the Tuesday between the third and fourth episodes of that second season of M*A*S*H, when the fate of that show was still very uncertain despite improved prospects thanks to it being moved from its Sunday night time slot to a Saturday one, where it had a lead-in from All In The Family, which was already in its third year of being tv's #1 show.
     Along with Alan Alda, the movie's main characters are played by Louise Lasser and Edmond O'Brien, but the cast includes Lloyd Nolan, Will Geer, and Ruth Gordon. among others. It was directed by John Badham, who would go on to much success with a fairly diverse slate of films: Saturday Night Fever (1977), Dracula (1979), Blue Thunder (1983), War Games (1983) and Short Circuit (1986).
     Sitting handily on YouTube, it's Isn't It Shocking? (1973)

     ...and that does it for this week.
     We're past the mid-point of March, but still have nearly two weeks to go. Spring begins Sunday, and while it's no set assurance of better weather, I'll be happy to welcome it at least as a concept.
     I've been trying to assemble these pieces for the next few months as I go, as I become aware of premiere dates for various shows and movies, and the process has left me a bit unstuck in time, momentarily forgetting if something is imminent or off in June, and trying not to miss mentioning things in a timely manner, though I know I will.
     Let me know if you get to see any of the things I've mentioned above - for good or ill - and come back next Friday, when among the offerings will be previews of a Julia Child biopic series, and a new MCU series centered on a man who comes to realize he's not his head's sole occupant, and the other boarders are alarmingly violent. Until then, take care. - Mike