Man, am I conflicted about this one:
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It’s an interesting photo and a clever caption, but that egregious apostrophe misuse kind of sours the experience for me. I know it’s folly to expect grammatical correctness from the medium that brought us “I can has cheezburger,” but there are some things I can overlook in the name of humorous representations of hypothetical feline speech and some I cannot…
Sigh. I’m going to go take an ibuprofen now.
Between the earlier entry on soul music and spending much of the afternoon ripping my CD collection into iTunes (have I mentioned that I finally got around to getting an iPod?), I’ve been thinking a great deal about music today, so it seems like a good time to do this musical meme I stole (yet again) from Samurai Frog…
List 10 musical artists (or bands) you like, in no specific order (do this before reading the questions below). Really, don’t read the questions below until you pick your ten artists!!!
As my three Loyal Readers have probably gathered from the handful of entries I’ve written on the subject, my favorite type of music is guitar-based classic rock and the catchy pop-rock of the late 1970s and early ’80s. But this is by no means the only kind of music I enjoy. I was lucky to have a mom who loved a lot of great popular music while I was growing up. She used to begin each morning by placing a stack of LP records on her massive old hi-fi console, a stereo appliance the size of your average sofa (no, really!), which would then play throughout the day, one platter after another. Her main man was Elvis Presley, but she also liked country — the ’70s pop-country crossover stuff in particular — as well as soft rock, what we now call “oldies” from the ’50s and ’60s, and, yes, even disco. (Oh, stop! It was the ’70s, people, and Mom liked to dance.)
As I got older, I naturally started developing my own tastes and I eventually drifted into acts with a much harder edge than she liked — Mom never appreciated the coolness of Boston, for example — as well as genres that she never explored at all. Nevertheless, a lot of her music has stuck with me over the years, including a love of vintage soul. Like every other musical category, “soul” has a somewhat slippery definition, depending on who you talk to; when I use the term, I’m referring to mid-60s Motown, Memphis-based artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and early-70s R&B types like The O’Jays, Al Green, and Marvin Gaye. The soul sound I like didn’t survive beyond the mid-1970s, sadly; it morphed into funk, disco, and a lot of other threads I know little about. What’s called “soul” these days strikes me as a degenerate form comprising whiny vocals, bland (or nonexistent) melodies, and hip hop-derived rhythms that frankly set my nerves on edge. The sound of classic soul, on the other hand, has the exact opposite effect. Even the sad songs somehow just make me feel good.
All of which is a very long introduction for a video I ran across this morning. Allow me to present “100 Days, 100 Nights” by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings:
Isn’t that great? Sounds like something Auntie ‘retha might’ve recorded around ’66, doesn’t it? Guess again, though… that’s modern. It’s the title cut off an album that was released in 2007. (The video looks vintage because it was shot using a pair of old TV cameras reportedly purchased on eBay for 50 bucks each.) And its apparently not a one-off gimmick, either, but rather a whole revival, at least on a niche level, of ’60s- and ’70s-style R&B, soul, and funk. Sharon Jones’ label, Daptone Records, claims that its artists “channel the spirits of bygone powerhouses like Stax and Motown into gilded moments of movement and joy,” and its offerings are even available on vinyl.
Much like the classic soul sound itself, this little tidbit of information has made me effortlessly happy.
Thanks to Graywhale, my local independent music chain, for bringing this to my attention. You guys rock!
I should be taking advantage of my day off to write something meaningful, like a short story or a screenplay outline, or notes for a novel I’d like to write, or even just a recap of my DC trip or a half-dozen other blog entries I’ve been putting off, but I’m feeling pretty lazy, intellectually speaking, so I think I’ll just swipe a Thanksgiving-themed meme from Samurai Frog:
…but this is pretty much how things look around the Bennion Compound right now:
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So I guess you’d call that a successful Mass Consumption Day, right? Hope yours was as well…
I had just turned eight when Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in the fall of 1977, and I remember being completely freaked out by the commercials for the film. Oddly enough, the image that mashed down so hard on my “primal dread” button wasn’t even in the movie: a POV shot in which we’re flying down a highway at night toward a hill, on the other side of which is a brilliant, mysterious light. I’m sure my Loyal Readers would recognize that image. It was used on the movie’s one-sheet and various tie-in products, and it’s been copied and/or parodied so many times since that I’m willing to bet most people don’t even realize where it comes from. Whenever I run across it today, I experience a warm spark of nostalgia; back in ’77, it scared the ever-loving crap out of me.
The movie, of course, turned out to be entirely non-frightening (well, except for the scene where little Barry gets abducted from his house; that’s pretty scary), but think of how terrifying it would’ve been had the aliens come from, shall we say, a more southernly part of the galaxy….
Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.
Via Sullivan, who somehow manages to find a lot of cool stuff in spite of making upwards of 50 or so political posts every single day. I envy him his blogging time…
Traveler’s tales are still forthcoming, but first, I’d like to provide a little educational service for my recent traveling partner, Cranky Robert, whose knowledge of all things pop-cultural is somewhat, shall we say, less expansive than my own. He is especially lacking in the areas of B-movies, comic books, and pulp sci-fi novels. You know, the crap I grew up on. Makes you wonder what they’re teaching those literature PhDs these days, doesn’t it?
In any event, we were sitting in a Washington Starbucks one night discussing — go figure — the sorts of women we find attractive, and somehow my memory banks kicked out an image of the actress Pam Grier. I was surprised to learn that Robert had never heard of in spite of her frequently being credited as the first female action-movie hero. That’s right, kids, there was a butt-kicking woman on the big screen long before Ripley told the Queen Mother Alien to get away from that little blond girl.
Pam may not be a household name, but she’s had a long, more-or-less steady career in film and television, beginning with women-in-prison schlockers made for the drive-in and grindhouse circuit, then finding her first surge of fame in a pair of classic blaxploitation flicks, Foxy Brown and Coffy. In the ’80s, she had a recurring role as Rico Tubbs’ old flame on Miami Vice, then in the ’90s, Quentin Tarentino gave her the lead in his Jackie Brown (no relation to Foxy Brown, as far as I know, but then I’ve never seen it). In between those landmarks, she’s appeared in a slew of movies and television roles. According to Wikipedia, she’s most recently been a regular on a cable TV series called The L Word.
But enough introductory blather… the point here is really to post up a couple pictures of Pam, to show Robert who I was talking about and also to amuse myself with photos of a beautiful woman.
Here she is in her blaxploitation heyday:
And here she is a couple decades later, looking classy in Jackie Brown:
I really need to rent that one, I think…
Hey, there, me droogies.
Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. Well, yes, I do, but I don’t know why I’m making a Clockwork Orange reference at this particular time, other than it seemed really boring to just say “Hi, I’m back from DC, how are y’all?”
Anyhow, I’ll be posting a recap of my Washington trip soon, but in the meantime, I’d like to celebrate tonight’s big New Moon premiere with an image that depicts the movie I’d like to see:
Let’s see if Edward Cullen’s emo dreaminess can protect him from the sword of the Daywalker! Ha!
Seriously, I’m usually right there in the front of the line for all of the latest pop-cultural fads, but the whole Twilight thing mystifies me. The Girlfriend says it’s because I was never a 15-year-old girl, and perhaps there’s something to that. (Although if 15-year-old girls really fantasize about awaking to find a sullen, beady-eyed, greasy-haired guy who says it’s a constant struggle to keep from killing them because they smell so damn good standing at the foot of their bed, and they think that’s romantic rather than alarming, then I obviously never understood teenage girls half as well as I thought I did.) In any event, vampire stories just aren’t what they were when I first discovered Lestat back in college. I’m predicting that once the cycle of movies based on Stephanie Meyer’s novels runs out, these venerable immortal anti-heroes are going to, ahem, go underground for a good long while… at least, it’s my opinion that they ought to. They’ve pretty much run their course for this generation. While they’re resting up for a few years, maybe someone can figure out how to reinvigorate werewolves the way Anne Rice did the bloodsuckers…
(Credit Where It’s Due Department: That nifty photoshop job has been all over the ‘net, but I grabbed it from Michael May; he also posted this little gem, if you’re looking for more Twilight-mocking fun…)
My longtime Loyal Readers will probably recognize the significance of Indy’s Clipper ship up there. It means I’m headed off on another adventure. Once again, my friend Cranky Robert has invited me to tag along on one of his business trips, as he did when we toured Pittsburgh and Gettysburg last year. This time, the destination is Washington, DC. I would’ve mentioned it sooner, but it’s come about at the last minute and of course I’ve had a difficult time lately blogging as much as I would like.
I’ve never been to our nation’s capitol before, so I’m pretty excited. As if there wasn’t enough to see there, I’ve also got plans in the works to visit an old high school and college friend who lives in the area. It ought to be a good trip, if a bit too short. I fly out at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning, and I’m back Sunday night. And, as is my usual pattern, I’ve waited until the last second to pack, so I’d better run along and do other things now.
See you all soon…
This will be short because I’m trying to finish a bunch of mundane chores and miscellaneous loose ends so I can leave tomorrow on a last-minute adventure with a clear conscience, but I couldn’t let this pass without mention. Remember Lisa Nowak, a.k.a. The Jealous Astronaut? The woman who drove nonstop from Florida to Texas while wearing a space diaper so she could confront (and possibly do major damage to) her romantic rival?
When last we encountered Captain Novak roughly 18 months ago, she had entered a “not guilty” plea. Well, I just spotted the news that she’s now pled guilty to lesser charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery as opposed to the original charges of attempted kidnapping, burglary and battery. The prosecutor in the case has complained that Nowak’s attorney has “chipped away” at the case until there’s nothing left, i.e., the defense has fought to have evidence thrown out and managed to get a prohibition on any discussion of the diapers.
Nowak and her paramour, Commander William Oefelein , were both throw out of the astronaut core in 2007. The woman Nowak was apparently after is now living with Oefelein and they’re reportedly engaged. So I guess that’s the end of this strange tale. I have to admit that it feels rather anti-climatic…
