In Memoriam: John Barry

A number of blogs have already commented on yesteday’s passing of film-music composer John Barry, aged 77, and I have little more to contribute except to note that a number of his scores rank among my all-time favorite music of any genre. (Yes, this formerly mullet-wearing rock-and-roll fan does have other musical interests, believe it or not!) Everyone seems to be focusing on Barry’s work for the James Bond films, but personally I love the moody atmosphere he brought to The Black Hole and the languid romanticism of both Out of Africa and Raise the Titanic (a near-universally panned film, but a lovely soundtrack).

Barry’s music was big and sentimental and it often took its time to develop a theme, making it perfectly suited for epic movies that wear their emotions on their sleeves — sadly, a type of film that nobody seems interested in making anymore. It’s therefore fitting that his last truly great work (in my admittedly biased opinion) was the soundtrack for one of the last great sentimental epics, Dances with Wolves. Oh, stop sneering. I know Dances has never been appreciated by the hipster movie-snob crowd, but for me it has always been and still remains deeply moving. It came along at just the right time in my life, I guess, to fully resonate with me on every imaginable level. And Barry’s music for the film — from the brutal staccato that accompanies the Pawnee attacks to the tender innocence of Two Socks’ theme to the blood-thumping grandeur of the buffalo hunt — is nothing short of sublime.

My favorite music from the movie, though — my favorite Barry piece, period — is listed on the Dances soundtrack album as “Journey to Ft. Sedgewick,” comprising Lt. Dunbar’s travels across the Great Plains with the grubby muleskinner Timmons early in the film. This piece evokes so much for me: an undefined yearning, a restless curiosity, wanderlust, the excitement of someplace new, the nobility of open spaces, the physical sensation of gazing upon beauty and feeling very small but in a satisfying way… I find this piece immensely uplifting, and of course it brings back a lot of memories of a long-past time in my life when Dances with Wolves was the big event and it was always the golden hour. If you want to know what I was like at the age of 21 — what I hope I’m still like in my better moments — it’s all right here:

Jan272011

Hey, I’m Sirius Black!

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I can live with that. Sirius was awesome, with his surface-level air of the swashbuckling rogue — I’ve always been drawn to those rogues — but also a grim and regretful side, which is much more like, well, me.

Perfect.

Jan262011

Julie’s Killer Charged

Just to keep you all up to date, the son of a bitch who killed my coworker Julie Jorgenson has been charged with second-degree felony manslaughter, as well as driving under the influence of a controlled substance and assorted misdemeanors related to driving like a f**king idiot. You can read the details here, if you like.

The article I linked above includes a few more specifics on what actually happened that frigid morning: Shane Gillette’s truck was moving at 70 mph, on a road posted for 30 mph, when it struck Julie’s car; there was no evidence he even tried to brake; and his windshield had only about six square inches that were clear of frost. There aren’t enough expletives in my vocabulary to express my feelings about this irresponsible, lunk-headed waste of protein.

Incidentally, I’ve received a couple of emails from people who knew Julie far better than myself, and who’ve run across my blog entries about her. I’m gratified that they seem to feel I captured her pretty accurately. If they’re reading this, I’d like to extend my thanks for their thoughtfulness in contacting me and letting me know.

We’re starting to move on at the office, but there’s still a strange tension in the air, as if we’re all expecting to her to walk in at any moment, flash that huge, endearing grin, and say, “Look, I’m all right after all! It was all just a misunderstanding!” I actually smiled myself as I was typing that, because I can picture it so clearly. It’s really very weird to think that it’s never going to happen, that I will never see her or her smile again. But that is one of the sad truths of life and death, isn’t it? People are here and then they’re not, and we who stay behind are left with unfulfilled expectations… holes in our daily experience.

Jan262011

Good Rick Springfield Interview

My main man Rick has been doing a lot of press lately in support of his memoir, Late, Late at Night, but sadly, many of the TV interviews I’ve seen have been pretty embarrassing, either filled with tittering “I loved you when I was 13!” silliness or focused too much on the salacious revelations in the book (yes, Rick is candid about having sex with pretty much anyone who offered, even after he married) instead of the lifelong struggle with depression and insecurity that the book is really about. Here’s a good one that takes the subject seriously. Looks like it was actually a radio interview that was videotaped, and it’s a little over 18 minutes long. Give it a look:

I’ve recently finished reading Late, Late at Night myself and plan to write down a few thoughts as soon as I get a chance. Stay tuned!

Jan222011

Nevermore

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you probably know that I’ve long been fascinated by the so-called “Poe toaster,” the mysterious figure in the hat and white scarf who for 60 years visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe in the middle of the night on the writer’s birthday (January 19) to leave behind offerings of cognac and roses. Something about this theatrical ritual appeals to my romantic heart, the part of me that thrills to pulp adventure stories involving secret societies and ancient duties passed down generation to generation. I like the idea of continuity.

Sadly, the toaster has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. In 2006, overzealous spectators tried unsuccessfully to detain the toaster. In 2007, a man claimed he was the toaster. In 2010, there was no toaster at all. And now this year he has failed to appear for a second time, leading some to speculate that the tradition is over, either because the heirs of the original toaster aren’t willing to continue, or possibly because the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth was seen as a good place to stop.

I’d like to think the toaster has just grown tired of the efforts to unmask him and is laying low for a few years, until the crowds get tired of waiting around and go home, so he can resume his tribute in solitary peace. Of course, I also like to think that the toaster is actually an immortal being who is fulfilling some obligation owed to Poe himself for reasons we will never know. The odds of either of these ideas being true aren’t very good. I’m afraid the modern world of ubiquitous video surveillance and would-be debunkers everywhere just doesn’t have room for these little mysteries anymore; sooner or later, the mythbusters will uncover the truth of all them. And how much less fun will there be in a time when we know for sure whether Butch and Sundance survived Bolivia, and where Amelia Earhart’s plane went down, and whatever happened to D.B. Cooper, and if Melvin Dummar made up the whole damn thing? These sorts of stories, these little remnants of harmless magic, enrich our culture, in my opinion. Clearing up the ambiguity of them diminishes us, just as Tolkien’s Middle-Earth was lessened by the departure of the elves. How’s that for a geeky comparison?

Meanwhile, in related news, I’ve learned via Boing Boing that one of my favorite actors, John Cusack, will be playing Poe in an upcoming movie titled — what else? — The Raven. Go here to see him in costume. No idea what the story is about, but he certainly looks the part, if nothing else. The Raven is due out sometime this fall…

Jan222011

Almost Lost the Cole Slaw!

I don’t know about you, but after vomiting up that extremely long post on the Persian Gulf War, I could use a little palate cleanser. Here’s something that’s been making the rounds (and which I posted on Facebook a few days ago), so apologies to those who’ve already seen it, but I’m really amused by it:

I’ve been trying to find out where this ad came from, but haven’t been able to track down anything definitive. Some people who’ve reposted it are claiming it was made for the Canadian market a few years ago, circa 2005 or ’06, and I’ve also seen assertions that the voices are actually the original cast members dubbing their look-alikes. Kirk and Uhura definitely sound like Shatner and Nichelle Nichols. I’m not so sure about Chekov and Scotty, though; they sound to my ear like they could be very good impersonations.

Whatever the provenance of this, though, it’s a surprisingly loving homage considering what it is, i.e., a commercial for a fast-food place. It’s so loving, in fact, that I’d rather watch this a dozen or so more times than see the J.J. Abrams reboot movie a third time. But then I’m getting increasingly stubborn about such things in my middle age…

Via.

Jan212011

The Gulf War, 20 Years On

Earlier this week, Josh Marshall reminded us that Monday night was the 20th anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf War, and then he remarked that he’s “not sure which is more surprising: that there’s not a peep about this in the news or that, my god, the Gulf War was 20 years ago.”

I second that on all counts.

Twenty years… is that even possible? That’s roughly the same temporal distance that separated the Vietnam War from the Gulf War, and at the time the Gulf War was taking place, Vietnam seemed like ancient history to this very young man. Very relevant history (or so I thought at the time), but ancient nonetheless. And now I guess that dark January night in 1991 when I listened to the aerial bombardment of Baghdad live on my car radio must seem like ancient history to some other young man. And yet I remember it all so clearly. How could I not? Everything that was happening during that period — both in my personal life and on the worldwide scale — loomed very, very large in my mind. It all seemed so significant.

Jan202011

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

Comments are switched off again, following the arrival of 500 or so new spam messages in the past 12 hours. And that’s with a pretty aggressive filter setting. Just to make things extra challenging, everyone who left comments in the previous entry got filtered into the junk folder, so I had to go looking for the legitimate stuff. Obviously, this isn’t going to work.

Sorry, kids. I guess the only hope now is to wait until my webmaster Jack finds the time to do something about this, since I don’t have the skills myself. As before, if you want to respond to something, please email me or find me on Facebook…

Grrrrr.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, this week’s hot spam-driven commodities are apparently porn (big surprise), Schlage Keypad Deadbolts, and Mini Coopers. Now who’s actually going to buy a car because they saw a spam comment on some guy’s blog? I never will understand this marketing model…

Jan182011

These Will Get Finished, Dammit!, and Comments Back for Now

If you were paying attention over the past 48 hours or so, you probably noticed a whole bunch of new entries appearing in and around ones that were already published days or even weeks ago. I probably ought to explain what’s going on, and highlight the newly published stuff in case you didn’t notice something you might want to read.

Basically, between the bustle of the holiday break, the server outage that kept Simple Tricks offline for several days, and the shock of my coworker Julie’s death, I ended up with several entries that never got finished, or at least didn’t get finished while they were still relevant. Unfinished entries have been a growing problem for me over the past several years; the Simple Tricks archive is filled with them, and each one of them scratches at me like slivers caught in my jeans. Not a big pain, but a maddening itch that I can’t rid myself of. It bothers me that there are all these half-formed pieces of my mind floating around in cyber-limbo, never to see the light of the electronic day. It’s largely my own fault, of course… I have more topics I want to write about than time to write them, and in case you haven’t noticed, I tend to get long-winded when I’m on about something I really care about. Which means that I usually run out of time on longer pieces… their sell-by date passes, or I get diverted by something that I figure I can dash off quickly before returning to the earlier item, only I never get around to returning… you get the picture. One of the worst things about blogging as a medium is this sense that it’s constantly in motion, like you’re rolling down a neverending highway with new sights forever appearing on the horizon in front of you; if you don’t manage to make note of something while it’s still ahead of you — or at least alongside you — it passes behind you and it’s gone.

Well, I’m tired of abandoning topics that I think are interesting or important or well-written or whatever. So I just decided, “Screw it, all these entries from the past couple weeks are going to have their day.” And so I finished them and published them. They may be out of date, but they’re out there.

And just in case anyone but me gives a darn, here they are, all these back-dated but fresh-to-the-world bits of blatheration that I worked on all weekend long:

(As an aside, isn’t this the height of narcissism? “Here, let me show you the stuff you might have missed, because every word that drips from my keyboard is a precious treasure that you must not miss.” I know, I know, totally lame, but there’s not much sense in actually finishing and publishing a bunch of posts if nobody realizes they’re there.)

As long as I have your attention, let me note that I’m going to try turning the comments back on and hope the damn spammers have gone off to pester fatter targets. It’s gotten very lonely around here, so if anyone is still reading, please say hi and let me know…

Jan142011

Rumors Confirmed

Police have officially released the details of what happened the morning my coworker Julie Jorgenson was killed. It sounds like the rumors I posted the other day were all right on target, with one added tidbit: the dipshit driving the pickup not only had iced-over windows and was going way too fast for the road he was on, but he was also straddling two lanes when he collided with her. Not at all surprisingly, investigators believe he was “under the influence of a drug.” Exactly which drug is still unknown, pending the toxicology report, but I’m putting my money on methamphetamine, judging from this photo. Isn’t he a fine-looking specimen of humanity? I know people always look like hell in mugshots, but I can tell just from looking at this creep that he’s a worthless piece of redneck filth.

The filth’s name is Shane Roy Gillette. He has a previous record relating to various drug charges, so I don’t have much doubt he’ll be doing some serious time for this incident. The tragedy is that he’ll get out in 15 to 20, still relatively young, while Julie will have been dead for decades. Bastard.

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