Jaquandor pointed me last night at a nifty tool that helps you visualize the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster by overlaying a satellite image of the oil slick on top of the landscape of your choosing. This is what resulted when I entered Salt Lake City as ground zero:
For my non-local readers who don’t know the geography of this area, the big blue splotch in the upper left is the Great Salt Lake; the smaller blue splotch to the south, the one that’s mostly covered by the oil slick, is Utah Lake. In between those two lakes is the most densely populated area in the state, what we locals refer to as the Wasatch Front. As you can see, the oil would cover most of that area — two valleys, two counties, two major cities and all the ‘burbs in between. It looks like the city of Ogden to the north might be spared, but it’d have oil lapping at its borders. And the slick has intruded into the Tooele Valley to the west, and that long eastward-bound pseudopod has taken out Park City, home of the 2002 Winter Olympics, and crossed the border into Wyoming. In other words, this damn thing is big. Mind-boggingly big.
Keep in mind that the image of the oil spill was taken May 6, four days ago; it has surely grown since then. How can we possibly fix something like that?
I’ll bet you all had a hunch when I started prattling on about Roy Orbison last night who was going to be be appearing in this week’s Friday Evening Videos, didn’t you? Smart little Loyal Readers.
You’re quite correct: I was planning to post what I thought was Roy’s final hit, “You Got It,” from the 1989 album Mystery Girl, which was a favorite cassette of mine during my sophomore year of college and the following summer. But as I started poking around looking for the video clip and any interesting background information I could find, I discovered that this was not, in fact, Roy’s last charting single, and Mystery Girl was not his last album. Remember that he’d been working a lot with producer Jeff Lynne in the year or two prior to his death in 1988; it turns out he recorded more material than what ended up on Mystery Girl, enough to fill out one more album, which Lynne compiled and released four years later. Somehow, I completely missed King of Hearts in 1992, and I also missed the two final, posthumous hits it generated, a duet of Roy’s classic “Crying,” sung with k.d. lang, and this song:
“I Drove All Night” reveals a fairly tangled history when you delve into it. The song was written specifically for Roy, and he recorded it in 1987, a full year before his death, but for some reason it wasn’t selected for Mystery Girl, and of course it wouldn’t appear until King of Hearts came out in ’92. In the meantime, Cyndi Lauper, of all people, scored a top-10 hit with it in 1989, and I’m willing to bet a lot of people probably think the song was hers, and Roy’s version was the cover. It has since been covered again by a band I’ve never heard of, Pinmonkey, and most recently by — shudder — Celine Dion in 2003.
Since I was unfamiliar with the song, I obviously had never seen the video either, until this afternoon. I think it’s absolutely magnificent. The imagery is a perfect match for the audio, it’s very clever how the director covers for the fact that Roy had been dead for four years, and the young stars are simply beautiful to gaze upon. (If you can’t place them, you’re looking at Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Connelly, seen here at the peak of her Rocketeer-era detectability, and Jason Priestley, who was then riding high on the success of Beverly Hills, 90210.) Everything about this evokes a particular time in my life, a time I often miss, to be honest. I was old enough in ’92 to know something, but still young enough to believe in a lot of things. I acted tougher than I really was, and I was in love with the idea of love itself. In other words, I was a lot like the character that Priestley is playing here. Or at least, that’s how I used to imagine myself, and how I like to remember myself.
Hell, I could just reacting to the car, I guess. Priestley is driving a 1964 Galaxie, a little bit different than my older ’63, but close enough for this video to stir up a lot of sense memories.
For our second feature this evening, I wanted to post “End of the Line” by The Traveling Wilburys, another fabulous song that combines a catchy hook with some truly authentic and wise lyrics; unfortunately, the foul Copyright Lords have forbidden anyone from embedding it, so if you’d like to see it, you’ll have to click through. If nothing else, it’s worth a look to see how this one handled Roy’s absence.
Finally, here’s a little something by request, a B-52s song for my friend Keith. To be honest, I really don’t care for The B-52s — I find the majority of their stuff obnoxious, what with the herky-jerky delivery and a sound that generally rubs me the wrong way — but their 1989 hit “Roam” isn’t too bad, and it’s kind of in the same thematic ballpark as “I Drove All Night,” at least in the sense that it’s about traveling and love. Enjoy, Keith!
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Yeah, I know, but it’s Friday, and I’m punchy after a very busy week and several nights of lousy sleep. Hopefully I’ll make it back later with a couple things…
You’d never guess from the songs I’ve been waxing nostalgic over in my Friday Evening Video segments, but sometime around my junior or senior year of high school, I developed a serious affection for the music of the 1950s and ’60s, better known as the oldies. I don’t remember what, precisely, triggered my interest in the stuff my parents used to listen to, but I suppose you could probably blame my car, my ’63 Ford Galaxie, as much as anything. You see, my old Cruising Vessel had only a stock AM radio, and there wasn’t much music on the AM band by the late ’80s. When I was bombing around the valley with the top down, pondering the unfathomable mysteries of growing up — i.e., girls — I had a choice of either the oldies station or the country station, and at that point in my life, there wasn’t any question of which I was going to prefer. I ended up building a lot of my identity as a young adult around that car, and by extension, around that music.
One of my favorites artists from that period was Roy Orbison, a strange-looking man who had an even stranger voice. Everyone knows him for “Oh, Pretty Woman,” of course, but the larger percentage of his work tended to comprise haunting, melancholy tunes about loneliness, heartbreak, insecurity, and longing — in other words, the perfect soundtrack for your teens and early twenties, when nobody understands you and every perceived slight is a tragic thing that hits you like a baseball bat in the gut. I recall many evenings when I was driving along the dark roads on the south end of the valley — there wasn’t much traffic then, and not a lot of street lights either, so it often felt like my big old car was gliding through deep space — with the air temperature turning brisk against my face and arms as I passed irrigated fields then warming again as I left them behind. The dashboard lights bathed the car’s interior in a greenish light, and Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” or “Only the Lonely” was fading in and out of the static-y background noise like messages from another dimension. Eerie… and, as I noted, perfect.
As fate would have it, Roy was experiencing something of a comeback right around then. In 1987, he recorded, along with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra, and Bob Dylan, the astounding Traveling Wilburys, Volume I — there’s not a bad cut on that album — and his older music was starting to turn up in movies. In November of 1988, he releasedrecorded a solo album called Mystery Girl, which spawned his first all-new hit in years, “You Got It.” His star was definitely rising again. And then, right at the end of 1988, when I was a sophomore in college, Roy Orbison died unexpectedly of a heart attack. I remember being really depressed that I’d lost him just as I’d discovered him. It didn’t seem fair, somehow.
I also remember thinking that he was quite old.
Well, I’ve just been reading a retrospective on Roy — NPR has named him one of its 50 Great Voices — and it turns out that his age upon his death was all of 53 years old. Fifty-three. I don’t mind telling you, I’m a little freaked out by this realization, both because 53 no longer seems old to me, and also because I was such a dunce back in ’88 as to think that it was. I’m going to have to ponder this whole thing for a while, I think.
In the meantime, go check out that article. It’s an interesting read, especially if all you know about Roy is that he did the theme song for some Julia Roberts movie…
So what the heck is going on down there in the Gulf of Mexico, anyhow? How can a fire on a big steel platform that’s standing above the water lead to an oil leak of apocalyptic proportions under the water?
If you, too, have been asking these timely questions, check out this handy video that explains such mysteries in only about one minute:
Well, I thought that was pretty interesting. I guess I imagined the oil was leaking directly from the wellhead, and never considered the associated piping, which of course makes for a much bigger problem.
One interesting sidenote: that video came from Al Jazeera, the Middle Eastern news network. It seems they have an English-language division, which I did not know. I’m learning all sorts of things today. My thanks to Sullivan for posting the video and sending me down that particular rabbit hole.
Getting back to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, if you’re interested in some numbers, check out this chart at Information is Beautiful. Among other fascinating — if deeply sobering — factoids: The spill already covers an area roughly the size of Jamaica, and we may have less than 30 years of easily obtainable oil remaining to us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish the idea of adopting a Mad Max-style existence for my 70th birthday.
One final link: For a peek into the bowels of hell itself, here’s a gallery of incredible photos showing the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon’s fight for existence. I have to confess a perverse attraction to disasters like this. I imagine watching that thing heel over and fall into the sea would’ve been an awesome — in the original, non-1980s sense of the word — spectacle…
I think this speaks for itself (click on the image if you can’t read the fine print and need to enlarge it):
My man Rick has actually had a pretty colorful — and sometimes difficult — life: He became a teen idol at the improbably advanced age of 32 (when “Jessie’s Girl” hit number one) after years of struggling to find an American audience, and he’s struggled ever since to find respect as a genuine musician instead of a one-bubblegum-hit wonder; he lived for several years with Linda Blair of Exorcist fame — she was all of 15 when they moved in together, and he was a decade older (I imagine that raised a few eyebrows, even in the anything-goes 1970s); he collapsed into a deep depression in the late ’80s, when it seemed his moment had come and gone in such a brief span of time, and he actually contemplated suicide; and now at the age of 60, he’s rebuilt both his musical and acting career, and consistently puts on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, even if it’s only his hardcore fans who ever actually see it.
Assuming that he can write prose at all (or has found himself a good ghost writer), I expect all this ought to make for a hell of a read…
At least, that’s my hope. I still remember all too well my excitement at the news that Jimmy Buffett was writing a memoir, and the crushing disappointment when I finally got around to reading it. All those wild experiences and people that surely inspired his songs about swashbucklers and vagabonds, the rumors that he’d made ends meet for a while by smuggling weed from Cuba to Key West, the beer-drinking-and-hell-raising early days of his career… that’s what I expected from A Pirate Looks at Fifty. Instead, I got a fairly boring travelogue written by a middle-aged capitalist who thinks he’s more clever with a turn of phrase than he often is. Rick, old buddy, don’t let me down the way Jimmy did…
Before I could fix a nice brunch for The Girlfriend yesterday morning, I had to make a quick run to the store for a couple of items. Grocery shopping early Sunday morning is always an interesting experience. There’s not much life yet — most people are home cooking breakfast for their own loved ones, or else in church, I guess — but the life you do encounter seems to embody so much despair, longing, resignation, and, sometimes, outright agony. It’s a peek into the torments of the suburban damned, I tell you. In just eight short minutes, I saw:
A young single father with a four- or five-year-old child in his cart, probably on a weekend visitation, standing in the cereal aisle as if paralyzed by the vast range of possibilities, torn between visions of being the cool dad who gets the kid the cereal that turns the milk purple and contains a nifty prize, and the responsible dad who makes the child eat something that’s good for him. Or at least something that won’t cause the boy’s mother to throw another hissy fit and emasculate him in front of her parents yet again, as she’s done nearly every week since that disastrous prom night when she promised him everything would be all right because you can’t get pregnant on the first time.
A visibly hungover guy, ashen-skinned behind very large, very dark sunglasses, pondering the selection of refrigerated fruit juices, wondering which would be least likely to make want to vomit again. Or would at least provide the least offensive visual effect when he inevitably went down on his knees before the Porcelain God for the sixth time in the past eight hours.
A Latina woman with a cart completely filled with family-size bags of tortilla chips, on sale this week for the incredible price of $1.29 a bag. She knows she’s surrendering another little piece of her heritage to the behemoth consumerism that defines modern America, and she feels a minor pang of guilt at the way so many of her family’s traditions have already been cast onto the rubbish heap, but damn, that’s such a bargain! And anyway, who wants to spend all day bent over a hot oven, making tortillas and cutting them into quarters for baking?
And finally, the grim-faced woman with the too-orange tan, the too-pale hair that comes from a bottle, the fine lines around her eyes that no amount of Oil of Olay seems to fill in, and last night’s sweat-stained blouse and nylons with a run in them, doing the Walk of Shame after waking up in a dilapidated single-wide with a paunchy guy who’d looked much better the night before. A fresh pack of smokes won’t make her 19 again, but she hopes it’ll at least take the stale tequila taste out of her mouth.
And just so you get the full effect, all this human drama was set to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara,” as wistful and mournful as adult contempo shopping music has to offer.
Of course, my interpretation of things may have had something to do with being hungry and not having had any coffee yet. I tend to see things through a glass darkly in my pre-caffeinated state. But you have to admit that that state tends to produce better stories…
I spotted the following meme on the subject of comic books over at SamuraiFrog‘s last night and thought it’d be fun to do it today, in honor of Free Comic Book Day. If you’re unaware of it, Free Comic Book Day is held annually on the first Saturday in May, and it’s exactly what the name suggests: Participating comic shops nationwide give away free comics to anyone who sets foot through the door. The idea is to try and draw new readers — and customers — into the somewhat insular world of this hobby that, quite honestly and sadly, is in decline.
Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I had to leave the house for the day, and the moment of maximum relevance has now passed. That’s pretty typical for me anymore, I’m afraid. Always a day late and a dollar short. I’m going to do the meme anyhow, though. Hope nobody minds.
For the record, I am really just a dilettante in the world of comics. I’ve been lurking around the fringes of this particular scene off and on for years, and I enjoy reading the form, but I’ve never gotten into full-bore into the hobby. Much of my knowledge of the important characters and stories comes not from the primary source material, the comics themselves, but from the movies and cartoons based upon them, and from occasional research when something comes up in conversation.
Just so y’all know where I’m coming from…
Friday evening, Saturday morning… it’s all the same for some of us, right?
Anyhow, I received some feedback earlier this week about our musical feature here: Loyal Reader Keith expressed some dissatisfaction with the songs I’ve been choosing for Friday Evening Videos. He lamented the fact that, despite our long years of friendship, he’s never been able to drag me over to the dark side — his words, not mine — of post-New Wave/alternative music.
This is an old, old rivalry between us. The battle lines between rockers and Wavers were drawn by forces larger than ourselves way back in high school — maybe even middle school — and I picked my tribe very early. I was a rocker. Not a metal head, mind you — that’s a whole other kettle of guitar picks — but I always identified far more with the earthy, long-haired fellows in the leather and acid-washed jeans than the twee weirdos who played that bloodless synthesizer crap. At least, that’s how I thought of things back in the day.
The irony, of course, is that most of my friends and girlfriends — including Keith and The Girlfriend — were Wavers. The universe can be truly perverse at times.
In any event, I’ve come in recent years to appreciate (or at least tolerate) a lot more alternative music than Keith probably realizes; hell, I took Anne to see Depeche Mode last year, the very epitome of everything I always disliked about New Wave synth bands, and I even had a reasonably good time. My mulleted 17-year-old self would be stunned to hear that, I’m sure. But the fact is, the label “alternative” covers a pretty broad spectrum, and I started realizing at some point that it wasn’t all bad, and that I’d actually liked a fair amount of it all along, even back in my militant teen years. Without realizing it, of course. I mean, they played The Cars on Rock 103, so that made them okay, right?
If I could trace this awakening to any one song or event, I think it would probably be learning a few years ago that Stuart Adamson, the lead singer of the band Big Country, had died in an apparent suicide. Not that I was ever a fan of Big Country back in the day; if I was aware of them at all in the ’80s — and I don’t think I was — I would’ve sneeringly dismissed them simply because the radio stations on which they were played were not my stations, i.e., the rock stations. But a funny thing happened as I was perusing the online tributes to Adamson: They all referenced Big Country’s hit single “In a Big Country,” and when, purely out of curiosity, I tracked down this song, it turned out that I liked it. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t sung in that weirdly passionless style that so many British imports of the ’80s had, and which I’ve always found so off-putting. The orchestration was sweeping and dramatic, the chorus was catchy. And what was that? Was there a guitar in there? I was, quite frankly, surprised by this song:
(Apologies for the crappy video quality; this was the best version I could find.)
“In a Big Country” caused me to re-evaluate a few things about music and what was cool. As I told Keith, I don’t think I’ll ever love alternative music the way I do the more traditional varieties of rock and roll — too much of it simply fails to resonate with me either emotionally or viscerally — but I’m hopefully a little smarter now about what I’m willing to sample, and what I’m willing to let myself enjoy.
Keith, I’m not dismissing your list of suggestions; I’ll see if I can work in some of the things you mentioned in the coming weeks.
Aside from one intensely unhappy week back around 1995 or thereabouts, I have proudly worn a full beard for two decades now. That’s not an easy thing when you live in a community that places a high value on conformity, and where the local ideal of how a respectable male is supposed to look hasn’t changed significantly since the Eisenhower Administration.
I’ve had girls tell me they wouldn’t go out with me because I have a beard.
I once had an interviewer ask me to shave it off in exchange for a minimum-wage job working essentially alone in a warehouse, where nobody would ever see me. I’ve had other interviewers who haven’t said a word, but who’ve visibly lost interest in me as soon as they got a good look at my face. On one memorable occasion, I was told not to even bother filling out an application until I came back “presentable.” (I told that doughy-faced spud-nugget what he could do with his discriminatory and frankly chickenshit application process.)
And I’ve put up with sidelong glances and silent disapproval from countless fellow Utahns, who can’t say why, exactly, but just know that there’s something wrong with men who have beards.
The irony, of course, is that many of this state’s founders were impressively bearded themselves. No less a figure than Brigham Young sported a mustache-less Quaker-style beard in his latter days (forgive me, I couldn’t resist). Presidents of the Mormon Church Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith — not to be confused with his uncle, the Joseph Smith who founded the Church — were both approaching ZZ Top territory with their lengthy neckwarmers. And Brother Brigham’s righthand man, the infamous gunfighter Porter Rockwell, would’ve fit right in with the Allman Brothers Band. But I guess that kind of glorious hirsuteness went out with polygamy and the coming of statehood.
If I sound bitter, well, it’s sometimes hard not to be. After all, I’m a nice guy, and I’ve always kept my facial fuzz neat and clean. My beard is a symbol of my individuality and masculinity, and also kind of a family tradition to boot — my father has worn a beard most of my life, as did my uncle Louie, the one who died from ALS. And damn it, I just like how I look with it better than the way I do without it.
I’ve long comforted myself by rationalizing that the rampant beardism I so often encounter is just a parochial Utah thing, that things are surely different out there beyond the Zion Curtain. And you know what? I was right:
A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards were deemed more credible than those who were clean-shaven. … The researchers say the implications of their findings could extend far beyond advertisements. For instance, male politicians might want to consider not shaving because the “presence of a beard on the face of candidates could boost their charisma, reliability, and above all their expertise as perceived by voters, with positive effects on voting intention.”
More credible? Charisma, reliability, and expertise? Now that’s more like it! But perhaps you’re not yet convinced. In that case, consider this chart:
You’ll have to click on it to blow it up large enough to read; be prepared to scroll, it’s pretty big. And after you’ve clicked and pondered, then tell me you don’t have a new-found respect for my beard. Go on, just tell me. Because charts prove everything, right?
