Something for Thursday
Singer Jay Black of Jay and the Americans died several weeks ago at the age of 82. Jay and the Americans were a 60s rock band who had a number of hits, of which this one is most familiar to me, owing to its prominent use during a comedy-action sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I like this song’s faux-“South of the Border” sound (the little punctuation chords by the brass after each verse are an especially nice touch), though I suppose you really couldn’t get away with this sort of thing these days–appropriation and all–but there is sometimes charm to be found in that sort of thing.
Here is “Come a Little Bit Closer”.
Thank you for the music, Jay Black and bandmates!
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Dispatches from a Lovely Autumn Morning
Here are some photos from Knox Farm State Park several days ago. We’ve been enjoying a warmer and dryer than usual fall so far, but according to the Weather Gurus, we’re about to have a significant shift to the colder weather we’re more accustomed to here in November.
While fall foliage is now well “past peak” in terms of color (and this year was kind of an odd one in terms of colors, as we never really even had that glorious peak of fall color when it looks like all the hills are singing in fiery pigments), but that doesn’t mean beauty isn’t there to be found….
I suspect that photographic dispatches from my nature walks will soon be back to including snow. This doesn’t bother me, really, but I do miss autumn when it gives way to winter, a little.
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Tone Poem Tuesday
I’ve featured the Romanian Rhapsody #1 by Georges Enescu in this space several times, because it’s just such a lovable showpiece or orchestral magic, with its collection of drinking songs and folk dances creating such a brilliant bit of youthful energy. But obviously the existence of a Romanian Rhapsody #1 implies the existence of a Romanian Rhapsody #2, does it not?
The second of Enescu’s two Romanian Rhapsodies is a more lyrical, songlike work. There is not nearly as much dance energy in this work, but it’s still a gorgeous listen that I honestly find hard to believe I’ve never much engaged before. The work even ends on a quiet, peaceful feel, rather than the final burst of energy that closes out the Rhapsody #1.
Enescu himself was apparently less than enthusiastic about the way his two Rhapsodies became as beloved as they did: they were so popular that they drowned out a great deal of his other work. Enescu deserves to be heard more than for just the two Romanian Rhapsodies, that much is clear. But…sometimes we just have to listen to them anyway!
Here is the Romanian Rhapsody #2 by Georges Enescu.
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Behold….
As I continue to struggle to plow the rocky soil in which the plot to The Song of Forgotten Stars V is supposed to grow–and more on that later on, at some point–I still take inspiration in space photos, like these from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This is all just amazing stuff, via Hubble. Remember how everyone laughed when Hubble was launched and deployed in orbit, only for a slight flaw in its main lens to be discovered? Well, we fixed it and thirty-one years later, Hubble still entrances. (And for me, Hubble also remains an outstanding rejoinder to people who claim that governments can’t do anything right.)
You can click through each of these to each photo’s NASA Goddard Flickr page, if you want to embiggen them for better viewing!
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The greatest of all movie closeups…
…is this one.
We watched Casablanca last night, and I remain as entranced by the film as I ever was. This close-up is one of the most affecting parts of the movie. The camera holds Ilsa’s face as she listens to Sam playing “As Time Goes By”, and she’s remembering everything that she knows she’s about to have to confront.
To this day, Casablanca remains that film that would be my favorite of all time, if not for Star Wars.
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Oh wait…the MCU already HAS a talking duck….
Seen on Twitter this morning:
That duck is on a mission, and no wrought-iron fence is gonna keep him from having his revenge!!!
But…revenge against whom, you might ask? Well, because my brain is a steel trap for completely random stuff in the hopes that many years hence it may trigger an association, it occurred to me that the duck’s escape from its prison is possibly the tiniest nugget of backstory for my personal favorite installment of The Far Side ever.
Gary Larson once commented on this particular installment in one of his books that he likes this one because it makes you wonder what kind of weird, sordid past a Professor and a talking duck could share. And we still don’t know, but look out, Professor Jenkins! Your waterfowl* nemesis has escaped! Run! Far away! Yes, book passage on a ship! He’ll never track you down there!!!
* Thank you, Spell Check, for gently reminding me that it’s not spelled “waterfoul”.
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How to Anger the Twitter Gods
I’m in Hour Two of a twelve-hour long suspension from Twitter because I broke one of its rules. The suspension happened very quickly, so obviously I didn’t manage to render my thought in poetic enough fashion to not trigger Twitter’s content bots against violent content or something. I deleted the tweet, but the 12-hours are still imposed. Oh well!
Not that big a deal, and if you’re wondering what got under my skin, it was a series of things Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said about his current COVID status and how mean the NFL is to not consider his essential-oils-and-homeopathic-bullshit regimen as “immunization” equivalent to being fully vaccinated. He started off with saying something like “I’m going to be done in by Woke People and by Cancel Culture.” Now, I’ve recently adopted the personal policy of filing such citations of “Wokeness” and “Cancel Culture” under the same category as when people claim to be “Politically Incorrect”: After that, I stop listening to whatever it is they’re saying.
But one bit of dumbassery Rodgers said did manage to actually tweak me. He was babbling about “his own research” and “his own immunization regimen” and a whole lot of crap, but then he was quoted as saying something about how “liberals hated vaccines when 45 was President but as soon as Biden took over they loved them”. This is so mastadonical in its rhetorical turd status that I couldn’t help myself, so I fired off a tweet expressing my hope that Mr. Rodgers tear his ACL as soon as he steps on the field next.
Yeah, not my best hour. Shouldn’t have said it. I grant that.
But it’s still complete bullshit.
I’m no expert on all the details, but my understanding is that Operation Warp Speed, the program spearheaded by the 45 administration to facilitate vaccine development, was pretty much a success. There’s a reason why all those vaccines were ready to go not long after Joe Biden’s inauguration. No one with half a brain seriously credits the Biden Administration with the entirety of the US vaccine response.
And there was a time when the right (and I assume now that Aaron Rodgers is one of those) believed the same thing. There was a brief time when they were really trying to push giving credit to 45 for the vaccines. Someone, I think it was Geraldo Rivera, said something like “Let’s call it the Trump Treatment!” The idea that the American left would be suddenly vaccine-hesitant if 45 had won re-election and everything else had been the same is a pleasant fiction, but there’s no doubt that if 45 had won a second term and everything else had been the same, FOX News and everyone else would be trumpeting the vaccines as one of the greatest humanitarian triumphs in history, all because of the greatness of President 45. We know this because they actually did start talking like this, before they collectively decided that no, the real victory lay in pulling back on their pro-vaccine talk, instead defending the honor of Ivermectin and amplifying anti-vaccine voices as much as they could (while privately making sure that each and every person working for FOX News is vaccinated).
In short, Aaron Rodgers is a deluded dope who has no idea what he’s talking about. But on Twitter, you can’t wish him a season-ending injury. OK. Message received, Twitter.
But this site right here is my site and I get to say whatever I want on my site, so: Hey, Aaron Rodgers! I hope you blow your knee out!
(Comments closed on this one.)
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Something for Thursday
So I’m trying something new with this post.. I am actually dictating this into my phone’s keyboard app so we’ll see how this works.
I’ve noticed over the years that my favorite sports movies aren’t exactly about sports at all…at least, not in the way we usually think of sports movies. I’m not really into the “chasing the championship” kinds of movies, like Hoosiers; for me the best sports movies always illustrate the world of sports without necessarily pursuing a “quest for the trophy” story. I’m thinking movies like Field of Dreams or Bull Durham.
I missed Moneyball when it came out, but I was highly impressed when I finally watched it. It illustrates one baseball general manager’s work to overcome the unfair nature of Major League Baseball’s economic system, in which small-market teams with little TV revenue are trying, and often failing, to compete with the deep pockets of the New York Yankees. It’s a good movie that packs a lot of data and what should be boring talkiness into a compelling drama. (It’s co-written by Aaron Sorkin and Stephen Zaillian, which is one reason I think it works so well: the presence of another excellent writer helps put Sorkin’s good points on display while hiding his more annoying tendencies.)
Moneyball features a meditative score by Mychael Danna, but what always catches my ear in this movie is the title song, which I have just discovered isn’t even a part of Danna’s work, but a song by an instrumental rock band called This Will Destroy You. The song, called “The Mighty Rio Grande”, is long and dreamlike, meditative and rhythmic and driving. It fits well with the decidedly un-romantic nature of Moneyball‘s approach to baseball: there’s something slow and methodical about baseball, but a look at its use of numbers and statistics reveals a kind of industrial heart to what is generally seen as a pastoral game.
It’s fitting that Moneyball ends with Billy Beane, having turned down a rich offer to be GM of the Red Sox, driving through the drab industrial landscape of outer Oakland.
Here is “The Mighty Rio Grande” by This Will Destroy You.
(Oh, I stopped the dictation thing after the first paragraph. Nifty capability and I do plan to get better at it, but for now I got a bit too “um” and “er” and “uhhh” for my own good. Still, moving forward and all that!)
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Tales of the Yellow Blanket, continued
You may remember that I recently bought a soft yellow blanket in my ongoing effort to shift Carla’s allegiances. It’s a work in progress, naturally, but The Wife used my blanket in her home office yesterday when she was babysitting Carla, and if nothing else, Carla seems to be really taking to the blanket:
Yup, the plan is working. Oh yes….