Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in billking's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
7:28 pm	‘I wouldn’t give his troubles to a monkey on a rock’ Knowing I’m a longtime fan of David Letterman’s show, a couple of folks have asked how his ongoing blackmail/sex scandal makes me feel. While I’m a bit disappointed that Dave would be dumb enough to mix business and pleasure, so to speak, by having sex with women who worked for him, I wasn’t that surprised. A longtime girlfriend before the one he ended up marrying was his head writer. And Regina Lasko, his wife, started out working for him, too. But, really, that has nothing to do with me as a viewer. I know this is prime tabloid fodder, but I really don’t care which women (or how many women) Letterman had sex with. Ultimately, it’s between him and the women involved — and, most importantly, between Letterman and his wife. His philandering ways won’t make me enjoy his show any less, just as Bill Clinton’s didn’t change my feelings about him. I supported Clinton because I liked the way he did his job, not because I approved of how he conducted his personal life. Same goes for Letterman. For the sake of their 5-year-old son, Harry, though, I hope Dave and Regina are able to work things out. As a viewer, it seems to me that the years since Letterman underwent heart surgery in 2000 and then became a father in 2003 have made him more appealing as a TV personality — more relatable than just the clever, wisecracking smartass from the early days on NBC. For many years, Letterman seemed to keep his audience at a distance and his off-camera life behind the curtain, but Dave clearly loves that little boy and doesn’t mind us knowing it. One night back in January, Letterman talked about it being the ninth anniversary of his quintuple bypass surgery, thanking the doctors and nurses who took care of him. And then he noted that he was certain his life was saved just so he would be around to be Harry’s father. I was quite touched, and the quote from Melly about Rhett from “Gone With the Wind” came to mind: "There must be a great deal of good in a man who could love a child so much." As for how he’s handling the scandal, I think Letterman was right to refuse to submit to blackmail and to tell his viewing audience all about it. From a PR standpoint, it allows him to get out in front of the issue rather than having to react to what someone else has revealed. And his mixture of apparently sincere apologies to those involved and self-deprecating humor about his admittedly “creepy” behavior obviously is playing well with his late-night audience, which has grown since Jay Leno departed the 11:30 p.m. time slot. Letterman has been at the top of his game in recent months, and that hasn’t changed since his announcement of the failed blackmail scheme last week. If you haven’t seen that original segment, you can view a clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SriJ3WOZaXU And you can view Letterman’s apology on Monday night’s show to his staff and to his wife here: http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show/video/?pid=t0lI8Ag_4dfZasp4VQ6tuoYPKCZerp7U&vs=Big%20Show%20Highlights&play=true Perhaps because they don’t want to be seen as piling on a troubled colleague or maybe because of their respect for him, Letterman’s TV rivals so far have taken it pretty easy on him. Last Friday, Leno, on his new 10 p.m. show on NBC, began his monologue by saying, "If you came here tonight for sex with a talk show host, you've got the wrong studio." He also said, "The guy that was trying to blackmail Letterman was a producer for the show '48 Hours.' It could have been worse: At least he wasn't producer of 'To Catch a Predator.'" Just what you’d expect of Leno: Predictable, not too edgy. Jimmy Fallon, who now hosts the “Late Night” franchise that Letterman started on NBC, had a typically lame joke, saying, "There's a new book out called 'Why Women Have Sex' that says there are 237 reasons why women have sex. And folks, Letterman knows the top 10." ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and Letterman’s direct competitor, Conan O’Brien at “Tonight,” have so far stayed away from the subject. “Saturday Night Live” was pretty toothless in referring to the extortion attempt by a CBS News producer as "a stupid human trick" and joking that one of the embarrassing details the blackmailer was threatening to reveal about Letterman was that, "After sex, he would always say, 'Stay tuned for Craig Ferguson.'" Actually, Ferguson, whose show follows Letterman’s on CBS and is produced by Dave’s company, devoted his entire opening bit Monday night to the situation, first milking laughs for a couple of minutes just with the expression on his face and his body language, and then noting, “Now you know how I got my job.” Ferguson summed it all up well when he said, "If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm out. I'm gone." He also wisecracked he had been smarter than his boss in handling his own personal foibles: “I put ’em in a book.” The best laughs generated by the scandal have, not surprisingly, come from Letterman himself. On Monday’s show, he worked his troubles into the monologue, noting the fall weather by reporting, "It's chilly outside my house; chilly INSIDE my house." Then he told the audience, "This is only phase one of the scandal. Phase two: Next week I go on 'Oprah' and sob." He also made light of the fact that he’s now in no position to throw stones at some of his past targets, by starting to tell jokes about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer (about whom he’s used his “monkey on a rock” line many times) … and then shaking his head and moving on to something else. Later, guest Steve Martin also got a laugh at Letterman’s expense while at the same time assessing why this scandal probably won’t hurt Dave with the viewing audience. "It proves that you're a human being,” Martin said. “And we weren't really that sure before." If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Diana Krall (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
4:24 pm	Fall of 1969: Some kind of innocence … Well, I’m back. Sort of. Since I last wrote here, about Paul McCartney’s Piedmont Park concert, I’ve been pretty much consumed by college football season and my new life as a fulltime blogger, which hasn’t left a lot of time for experiencing pop culture, much less writing about it. I have, however, managed to catch a few things on TV and listen to some discs (though nothing’s drawn me back into the movie theater since this summer’s “Harry Potter” film). And I’m hoping to dink and dunk my way through some of that later this week. (Twitter-style preview: If you thought Leno sucked on “Tonight,” nothing’s changed. … “Mad Men” rules. … “Fringe” is even better this season. … My daughter prefers The Beatles in mono!) Tuesday is my only real day off during the week — Saturdays are taken up by UGA football and blogging about it; ditto Sunday mornings, followed by visiting my Dad — and I’ve been dealing mostly with Beatlefan and family stuff today. But since the other day marked the 40th anniversary of the release of my second favorite Beatles album, I thought I’d cobble together a little tribute to “Abbey Road” — or, more precisely, the era in which it came out — adapted mostly from a piece I wrote for Beatlefan back in 1994 with a few new tweaks here and there. Hope you enjoy it. … Even for those of us who lived it, 1969 seems like another world … a world where the hot new home entertainment item was the 8-track tape; the hottest new band was Creedence Clearwater Revival; Johnny Cash was pioneering country crossover; adolescent boys were falling in love with Olivia Hussey of "Romeo and Juliet" while Henry Mancini had an unexpected chart-topper with the film's theme song; and Hollywood was courting the burgeoning youth market with "Goodbye Columbus," "The Wild Bunch" and "Midnight Cowboy." A film that satirized the new sexual freedom, "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice," was on its way to cinemas, and "I Am Curious (Yellow)" was testing pornography laws across the country. Network television's tame answer to all this sexual license fell well short of Broadway's nudity-laced "Hair" and "Oh! Caluctta!" but some ABC affiliates nevertheless were nervous about the new comedic anthology "Love, American Style," which was sort of a Neil Simon-lite look at sex with an ever present big brass bed as its central motif. The networks were on their own youth kick, with brooding Michael Parks roaming the country on a Harley Davidson in search of the Meaning of Life in "Then Came Bronson," cool teens and caring teachers addressing relevant concerns in "Room 222" (I admit it, I thought Karen Valentine was hot), and Aaron Spelling trying to follow up on his "Mod Squad" success with "The New People," a Rod Serling-created 45-minute drama about a group of college kids stranded on a Pacific island who must start all over and build their own society. In a shortlived programming gimmick, ABC paired the show in a 90-minute time slot with “The Music Scene,” an updated version of “Your Hit Parade” hosted by hip comedian David Steinberg and featuring an unknown Lily Tomlin as a regular. For our little brothers and sisters, there was a goofy new sitcom about this lovely lady with three daughters who met this man with three sons of his own. … As my last year of high school got under way, we seniors briefly lost and regained our off-campus lunch privilege; we argued the upcoming Vietnam Moratorium Day nationwide anti-war protest in Coach Warlick's Current Affairs class; and my brothers and I still watched the afternoon horrorfest "Dark Shadows" when we got home. (We were in the Columbia Record Club at the time and I believe we got the “Dark Shadows” soundtrack album as one of our selections.) Then, in the latter half of September, tracks from the forthcoming new Beatles album started showing up on WRFC and WDOL, the local Top 40 radio stations — primarily the double A-sided single of “Come Together” and “Something.” And while it would be a few months later before we’d hear them in our town, stations in a few cities elsewhere also began programming the rough-hewn tracks from the abortive "Get Back" album, taken from advance acetates that had leaked out. A taste of the times can be had via the "Posters, Incense, and Strobe Candles" bootleg, taken from a recording of WBCN in Boston airing the "Get Back" album on Sept. 22, 1969. That same night, on my 17th birthday, The Beatles were seen on TV in a disjointed promotional film for the summer hit "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (with a drum beat replacing each mention of "Christ" and a couple of minutes of "Give Peace a Chance" from that May's Montreal Bed-In inserted in the middle). The occasion was the star-loaded premiere — with Tom Jones, James Brown, Janis Joplin, Oliver, Buck Owens, Three Dog Night and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young also on the bill — of the aforementioned "Music Scene.” Leafing through a vintage TV Guide from that week, and listening to that "Get Back" bootleg, I am swept back to a time when outrage still was tempered with hope, a heady mix of anything-goes and lingering innocence made life a thrilling adventure of discovery, there seemed to be no limits to what we could do … and when, not coincidentally, The Beatles were at the apex of their musical and cultural influence, a presence so powerful and pervasive that it crossed almost all socio-economic boundaries. John, Paul, George and Ringo occupied a sort of pop culture Mount Olympus. No mere stars, their every move triggered worldwide interest and trends. Their lyrics and even their album covers were examined for meanings in the uniquely '60s belief that these rock 'n' roll demi-gods must know something we didn't. (This, of course, resulted not only in that ludicrous media uproar in the fall of '69 now known as the Paul-is-dead hoax, which we also debated in Current Affairs class, but also in the revelation at the Manson trial a few months later that Crazy Charlie considered The Beatles to be higher beings who were sending him messages through their music. "Helter Skelter," he believed, foretold an impending race war and was the alert for him to get on the right side by slaughtering some pigs. In reality, it used playground imagery as an analogy for sex.) Back then, The Beatles were so unbelievably hip that we figured anything they did must be hip, even if it didn't appear so on the surface. I remember when I first heard the "Abbey Road" album: A group of us had gathered at a schoolmate's house to work on a Senior English class report (something boring by Joseph Conrad), and it wasn't long before our attention wavered and we adjourned to Mary's basement bedroom to listen to the new Beatles LP — which I hadn't yet scraped together the bucks to buy since the local morning daily had decided it could no longer afford to have me doing high school sports rewrites. Anyway, we listened in awe as Mary guided us track by track through "Abbey Road," a collection that struck me even at the time as the band’s most polished work. (And which sounds absolutely stunning on the newly remastered CD.) My strongest memory of that listening session, though, is Mary’s preface to "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," which today is viewed in the same light in which The Beatles themselves saw it — as the "corny" one — but which Mary, known as one of the school's artsy intellectuals, imbued with some quasi-mystical meaning beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals. "This one is too far out," she said breathlessly as the song began. And, you know, listening to the tale of Maxwell Edison and his deadly silver hammer in the wake of the summer of '69 … well, it did seem that way. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: "Abbey Road" (26 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
9:15 pm	Saturday in the park with Paul Saturday’s Green Concert benefit featuring Paul McCartney at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park had a lot going against it and yet proved an artistic triumph and fantastic entertainment despite the many obstacles. To start with, the meadow at Atlanta’s intown park is a less than ideal venue for a concert. There were rather formidable transportation challenges, with little parking in the area and everyone urged to use MARTA, the city’s easily overwhelmed rail system. (We avoided the MARTA crush by parking for free about 10 minutes away in a middle school parking lot and then walking to the park.) There was lots of confusion, with the sponsor, the Piedmont Park Conservancy, issued conflicting instructions via the newspaper and the official Web site as to what concertgoers would be allowed to carry into the show. There were not enough gates — on reaching the area of the gate we were supposed to enter, we were told by one of the event staffers that there was a “logjam” of people trying to get in. We were directed to head back in the opposite direction on a 15-minute trek to an unpublicized gate on the other side of the park. The merchandising booths were understocked and drastically understaffed (at the one nearest us there were NO small or medium shirts by 6:30 p.m.) The merchandise was, of course, wildly overpriced, but that’s the norm at rock shows these days. Finally, let’s face it, mid-August in Atlanta is not a great time for an outdoor concert of any type, with the hot afternoon giving way to a fairly heavy midconcert thunderstorm during the evening. And yet I have to agree with my 15-year-old daughter Olivia, who couldn’t wait to get on Facebook when we got home and update her status to announce that despite our getting soaked, the show was “awesome!” If you wanted to sit up front, where the crowd was rather densely packed, you had to get there well before the 4 p.m. admittance time for pre-sale and VIP tickets (everyone else was let in starting at 5 p.m.). A friend got there about 3:30 and landed a spot for his family about 150 feet from the stage. We decided “significant eye contact” with Macca wouldn’t be worth a few more hours of discomfort in the sunny meadow, so we didn’t get there until shortly after 6 p.m. By that time, the meadow was about half full but rather than join the back of the pack down there, where it was still quite hot, we decided to set up on a gentle hill at the back of the meadow, near where we’d come in. We figured the giant video screens would suffice for us. Plus, back there the portable toilets featured no lines at all while down on the meadow the wait appeared to be quite lengthy. In the end, the only real downside to our location was the slight delay between what we saw on the video screen and when the sound reached our ears. My 24-year-old son Bill, who’d flown down from D.C. for the show, also found it a bit too “quiet” back there and watched most of the show with a couple of friends from the midfield vicinity of the sound towers. But for the rest of us, it was fine. I noted that the recorded pre-show music included Al Green’s version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and Macca’s duet with the late Michael Jackson on “Say Say Say,” as well as various Twin Freaks-style mashups and remixes of McCartney music. The opening act, the Dublin-based trio the Script, proved a good choice. While many people ignored them, those who paid attention heard a tuneful, melodic, high-energy 45-minute set that wasn’t all that foreign to fans of Macca music. You could see why McCartney picked them. The crowd had quite a mix of age groups, with lots of folks 55-plus but many families with young children and a sizable number of teens and 20-somethings, many of whom sang along to just about all the songs except the latterday solo material. The crowd in the meadow stood for the entire McCartney show while the folks on the hill generally sat or reclined until the latter portion of the show (after the rain), when many took to their feet for the remainder of the concert, dancing or swaying to the music as well as clapping and singing along. I saw a few couples also dancing together down on the track around the field. Paul took the stage at 8:39 p.m. and the set list was the standard one for the U.S. dates on this summer’s not-quite-a-tour, opening with “Drive My Car” and “Jet” before taking the first venture into territory unfamiliar to many of the concertgoers with “Only Mama Knows.” Young Bill, who had already seen McCartney in D.C. (meaning he saw two shows to my one on this tour), said he warned his pal, who hadn’t seen Macca in concert before, that for the first half the show would alternate “songs you know” with “songs you don’t know.” For a casual concertgoer — and they made up the majority of the 40,000 in attendance — that sort of pacing might not have been ideal, but it provided the hardcore fans with some more recent material, including two numbers from “Electric Arguments,” last year’s avant garde Fireman album: “Highway” and “Sing the Changes,” the latter drawing a stronger response from the audience. It’s not only a catchier song, but some might have been familiar with it from Macca’s recent Letterman appearance. At any rate, the inclusion of that stuff might end up selling a few discs, as I heard folks walking out after the concert discussing “that ‘Electric Fireman’ album.” Macca was in quite a chatty, ebullient mood and noted that the show was taking place on the anniversary of Woodstock and also the anniversary of The Beatles’ first Shea Stadium concert. He recycled the bit from his Citi Field shows earlier this summer getting women in the audience to re-create the “screaming girls” from the original Shea show and in fact sparked a second round of screaming later in the evening that visibly amused him. The midshow acoustic segment was mostly a blur to us (quite literally for those of us wearing glasses) as it coincided with the 20-minute rain, which was quite heavy at times. We had decided to chance it without bringing rain gear since the forecast had called for only a 10 percent chance of precip, but my brother Tim had brought a couple of disposable plastic ponchos and he tossed me one, so I was able to keep my pricey poster and program from getting soaked. By the time Paul reached a song I’d been really anticipating, Wings’ “Mrs. Vanderbilt” with its jaunty “ho, hey-ho” chorus, the rain had pretty much let up, though we were still dripping. I still got a kick out of the number, though. As my son had noted after the D.C. show, whatever pacing problems the first half of the concert might have, one of the most notable aspects of this set list is that Macca owns the crowd from “Band on the Run” on, with an unbroken string of classics and broad-based favorites that no other artist could possibly match. Heavy on The Beatles, of course. A particular highlight was “I’m Down” from the Fab Four’s ’65 set list. And for some reason I found this year’s performance of George Harrison’s “Something,” starting out with the Macca solo ukulele version and then moving into the full band version, as at the 2002 Concert for George, especially moving. “I’ve Got a Feeling” really cooked and I noticed Paul seemed to make the most of his opportunities to shed the old Hofner bass and play guitar, as in the jam coda added to the end of “I’ve Got a Feeling” and the new extended arrangement of “Paperback Writer.” Another real treat was “Day Tripper” kicking off the first batch of encores. McCartney was in great voice the entire night, unlike some shows toward the end of the 2005 tour. I think perhaps a schedule of fewer shows more spaced out helps in this regard. But the most amazing thing about McCartney in concert is that the 67-year-old performs pretty much nonstop for two and a half hours! As my daughter observed, when we saw the much younger Coldplay in concert last year, “they only did an hour and a half.” While I know we would have been physically more comfortable in a proper stadium than sitting on a quilt on the ground, I have to admit the sight in front of me of thousands spread out in front of the stage, like a mini-Woodstock, was quite impressive. And while the meadow setting meant that the crowd response never reached the decibel level you’d get in an enclosed venue, the relaxed vibe out in the audience was kind of nice. Like you’d expect from a relaxed summer evening in the park. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: The best concert catalog in all of rock music! (34 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 8th, 2009
11:38 pm	Helter Skelter, two Woodstocks and ‘taking a trip’ … Forty years ago, the week of Aug. 10-16, 1969, my family spent its usual vacation at the lake, “roughing it” in an air-conditioned cabin complete with a color television set on which between trips to the beach, rounds of putt-putt and early morning fishing expeditions we watched reports of some of the biggest headline-making events taking place during one of the most remarkable summers of my life. Already that summer, we’d had Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon and Teddy Kennedy sinking both Mary Jo Kopechne and his presidential aspirations on Chappaquiddick Island. Judy Garland and Rolling Stone Brian Jones had died, and Prince Charles had been invested as Prince of Wales in an internationally televised ceremony that had special meaning to our half-Welsh family. Then, just as we were arriving at the lake, news broke of the Aug. 8 murders that marked the beginning of the Hollywood killing spree by Charles Manson’s hippie “family,” with director Roman Polanski’s pregnant actress wife, Sharon Tate, one of the victims. We didn’t yet know the double irony that the killings were part of Manson’s delusion of a pending race war that he thought The Beatles had predicted in the song “Helter Skelter,” and that the first killings took place on the same day that the Fabs were strolling across London’s Abbey Road in what would prove to be their final album cover shoot. The morning after we arrived at Lake Allatoona, the Monday a.m. news shows detailed yet another grisly killing, this time Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, that ultimately would prove to have been committed by the Manson Family as well. Also that week, rioting and battles between Protestants and Catholics broke out in Londonderry and Belfast, Northern Ireland, and by that Thursday the British government had entered its own Vietnam-like quagmire by sending troops into the province to try and keep peace. Then, that Friday, we started seeing reports of the remarkable gathering in upstate New York of some 400,000 music lovers at the biggest of that summer’s several rock festivals. The name given to the festival, Woodstock, made an immediate impression on me as we were staying near the little North Georgia hamlet of Woodstock. I had brought my portable typewriter along on vacation so I could write a column about that summer’s more notable events for the first-day-of-school edition of the student newspaper at our high school, where I was about to begin my senior year. I couldn’t resist putting a Woodstock dateline on it. Then, just as we were arriving home, Hurricane Camille, one of only three Category 5 storms to ever make landfall in the United States since records have been kept, began its sweep of death and destruction across the lower portion of the country. What a week! I was mentioning some of this to my 15-year-old daughter this morning and when I referred to the “Manson Family,” she drew a blank. And Olivia isn’t your typical teen of today who thinks 1990 is ancient history. But other than the world wars, the civil rights movement, the Summer of Love and Vietnam, little of 20th century history is taught to today’s kids. Olivia said she’d heard of Charles Manson but didn’t really know what the story was. For my daughter and anyone else who would like to either learn about the tumultuous year of 1969 or refresh old memories, a good start would be “1969: Woodstock, the Moon and Manson: The Turbulent End of the ’60s,” a glossy magazine-sized booklet put together by the editors of Time magazine and available now on newsstands. Nixon taking office, the war, Prince Charles, Joe Willie Namath, The Beatles, the jumbo jet, the Stonewall riots giving birth to the gay rights movement, “Easy Rider,” the amazin’ Mets, the Chicago Eight trial, the My Lai massacre, Tiny Tim, Altamont … it was a crazy year and all that and more is served up with lots of pictures in a fascinating time capsule. It’s $12.99 but well worth it. Of course, nothing takes you back to a certain era of the past like the music that you were listening to at that time, and the summer of ’69 was certainly an epochal moment in the history of rock. While Woodstock was the biggest of the summer’s rock festivals, there had been a number of others, including the first Atlanta Pop Festival, which had taken place at a raceway south of Atlanta over the hot July 4th weekend, with 140,000 people gathering to listen to the likes of Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, Johnny Winter, Johnny Rivers, Blood Sweat and Tears, Canned Heat, Spirit, Ten Wheel Drive, Chicago Transit Authority (which had yet to shorten its name), Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grand Funk Railroad (which hadn’t yet signed a record deal), Sweetwater, Al Kooper, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Pacific Gas & Electric and Dave Brubeck. The festival was put on by a young promoter named Alex Cooley, who I’d get to know years later when I covered Atlanta’s music scene. He did another edition of the festival the next summer. I have framed original posters from both of the Atlanta Pop Festivals in my downstairs office as a reminder of the days when the 10th Street Strip in Midtown Atlanta was the South’s answer to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, drawing long-haired kids from all over the region. (One of my friends ran away from home that summer and his parents would cruise the Strip on Sundays looking in vain for him. Turned out he’d headed out to California.) But for most of us, rock festivals were not how we experienced the music of that summer. No, it was still largely through Top 40 radio that we heard the sounds of ’69. Here’s some of what we were listening to: The Beatles’ “Get Back,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and the Shondells, “In the Ghetto” by Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini’s version of the “Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet,” “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans (one of the all-time great one-hit wonders), “Laughing” by the Guess Who, “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash (whose TV variety hour debuted on ABC on June 7), “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond, “Color Him Father” by the Winstons, “Bad Moon Rising” and “Green River” by CCR (the year’s big new band) and John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance” (which got wide Top 40 play in our area, unlike The Beatles’ “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” which our local stations didn’t play because of its use of “Christ” in the lyrics). Also blasting out of my radio that summer: “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)” by Junior Walker and the All Stars, “Good Morning Starshine” and “Jean” by Oliver, “One” and “Easy to Be Hard” by Three Dog Night, “Spinning Wheel” by Blood Sweat and Tears, “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition (a great recording that my Mom always said was ruined by Rogers’ wimpy delivery of the last line; she was right), “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” by Marvin Gaye, “Love Me Tonight” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” by Welshman Tom Jones, “Baby I Love You” by Andy Kim, “My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder (no longer “little Stevie”), “Quentin’s Theme” by the Charles Randolph Grean Sounde from “Dark Shadows” (which was still must viewing on weekday afternoons for us), “Israelites” by Desmond Dekker and the Aces, “Grazing in the Grass” by the Friends of Distinction, “Mother Popcorn” by James Brown, “I Can Sing a Rainbow/Love Is Blue” by the Dells, “Yesterday When I Was Young” by Roy Clark, “It’s Getting Better” by Mama Cass, “Polk Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White, “I’d Wait a Million Years” by the Grass Roots and “On Campus” by Dickie Goodman (one of those “break-in” records where snippets of recent hits were woven into a comedy “news” report). Other hits I listened to that summer as I helped sand and paint the bleachers of our high school football stadium: “I’m Free” by The Who, “Working on a Groovy Thing” by the Fifth Dimension, “Hurt So Bad” by the Lettermen, “Marrakesh Express” by Crosby, Stills and Nash, “My Pledge of Love” by the Joe Jeffrey Group (a great “forgotten” classic), “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon, “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly and the Family Stone, “Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan, “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies (it was, unfortunately, unavoidable), “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, “Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)” by Donovan with the Jeff Beck Group, “I’m Gonna Make You Mine” by Lou Christie, “This Girl Is a Woman Now” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, “What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am” by Bill Deal and the Rhondells, “Get Together” by the Youngbloods, “I Can’t Get Next to You” by the Temptations and, as the summer ended, “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” by Steam, another great one-hit wonder. Another record frequently played on the radio that summer only made it to No. 47 on the national Billboard chart but was probably the biggest hit with our family because it was about my mother’s little hometown in Wales: “Abergavenny” by Shannon (better known in Britain as Marty Wilde). We found it quite amusing that: a) disc jockeys had such trouble pronouncing the name, which is one of the few Welsh words that is said exactly like it’s spelled and b) in a sign of the times, many people took its lyrics about “taking a trip” to mean it was a drug song, rather than an ode to a beautiful place in a green valley surrounded by mountains. After all these years, I still get a big kick out of the song. Give it a try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjBXBxKE9x0 QUICKIES: I don’t know why, but the news of Bob Dylan recording a traditional Christmas album just makes me smile. Billboard says he hopes to release the album this holiday season and at least four songs already have been recorded for the project: "Must Be Santa," "Here Comes Santa Claus," "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Maybe my delight at the idea is because I remember what fun Dylan’s version of the children’s song “This Old Man” was on the 1991 charity album “For Our Children.” Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CqwRijQSU4 My favorite headline of the week: “Michael Jackson’s Brain Returned.” … And the latest bad idea out of Hollywood is a proposed movie remake of the classic TV Western “Gunsmoke.” I’m all for giving the Western another try on the big screen, but can’t scriptwriters come up with anything original these days? Matt, Doc and Miss Kitty were prime-time mainstays for 20 years and the series still airs during the day on TV Land. We don’t need a “reimagined” or “more contemporary” version of it. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: Sounds of 1969 (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
10:19 pm	It’s Quickie time again … Well, it took me a couple of weeks, but I got to see “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” today — the first film I’ve gone to since March! My daughter saw it with friends the first day it opened but she didn’t mind going with me to see it again, always a good sign. “Half-Blood” is an excellent film, the darkest of the series so far and much more focused on the battle between good and evil than on the magical boarding school hijinks that were the foundation of the earlier films (though we do get some comic relief and a bit of romance in scenes dealing with typical adolescent situations). It’s easily one of the top two “Potter” films, though I’ll have to see it again before I can decide whether I like it better than “Prisoner of Azkaban,” which was the lone entry directed by Alfonso Cuaron and has always been my favorite because it gave Emma Watson the most to do as Hermione. David Yates is back as director this time, but “Half-Blood” is much more gripping than his previous one, “Order of the Phoenix.” While Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is still the main focus, Hermione and Ron (Rupert Grint) are more integral parts of the story this time. In fact, the film’s last scene drives home the point that the story remains about the threesome and their enduring friendship. The new addition to the cast, Jim Broadbent as the new/old potions professor at Hogwarts, is simply terrific. Michael Gambon also is particularly strong as Harry’s doomed mentor, Dumbledore. I did wish Robbie Coltrane had more to do as Hagrid the giant in this installment. I found the movie’s ending very satisfying emotionally. My daughter, who’s read all the books (I haven’t read any of them), liked everything except the ending, which omits an exciting battle between the good wizards and bad wizards from the book. Coming to the film with no preconceived expectations, I didn’t miss such a battle at all. Just as we’ve watched Harry, Hermione and Ron grow up, Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have grown as actors, too. I’m very much looking forward to the last two films in this series. COMING ATTRACTIONS: Most of the previews shown before the film were for Disney children’s films, but two would-be blockbusters were included. One didn’t look very good at all: Roland Emmerich’s global cataclysm tale “2012,” which, at least in the trailer, has the fakest looking special effects I’ve seen since “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” A shame, since it has John Cusack, Thandie Newton and Amanda Peet in the cast. The trailer for Guy Ritchie’s action flick reimagining of “Sherlock Holmes,” with Robert Downey Jr. as a scruffier Holmes and Jude Law as a much more assertive Watson (who punches Holmes in the face at one point), looked more promising. ON THE RADIO: I still enjoy listening to Scott Shannon’s True Oldies Channel, especially the way he’ll throw in stuff rarely heard on the radio, like Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons,” but I’m not wild about the infusion of 1980s music into the mix in recent weeks. I’m sorry, but tracks like the Pointer Sisters’ “Jump (For My Love)” and all those Hall & Oates songs Shannon has been playing lately just don’t mesh well with the ’60s and ’70s hits that make up the bulk of the station’s playlist. Back in the ’80s, I once asked the program director of Atlanta’s biggest Top 40 station at the time why he didn’t sprinkle more ’60s stuff in and he explained that it would sound jarring amid the ’80s music. Well, the reverse is true with the TOC. Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl” and Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” aren’t really a good fit with Herman’s Hermits, the Beach Boys and Tommy James. I also wish Shannon would cut way back on (or eliminate) Elton John, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, since you can hear them every 20 minutes on the more tightly programmed “classic hits” format known as The River. There’s a bit too much Chicago, too. Still, where else are you going to hear The Beatles doing “Honey Don’t,” T Rex’s “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” and the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown” all on the same station? Plus, Shannon is a big Badfinger fan. I just wish whoever’s after him to “tweak” his format would shut up. ON THE TUBE: I’ve only caught the BBC America sci-fi series “Torchwood” occasionally in the past and considered it mainly notable for a) being a more adult-themed spin-off from the latest version of “Doctor Who” and b) having a bisexual central character, the alien-battling, immortal Capt. Jack Harkness, played with dash by John Barrowman. But I lucked into catching most of the five-part miniseries “Torchwood: Children of Earth” and was mesmerized. This was so unlike American series TV, from its uncompromisingly jaundiced view of government to its willingness to kill off major characters (including an innocent child) and its downbeat ending with the central character fleeing from what he considered his own failure. The plot was basically about an alien force speaking through the world’s children and demanding that 10 percent of them be sacrificed to its nefarious purposes. The self-serving discussions around the British prime minister’s conference table sounded all too real. I’m sure this will repeat again at some point, and I recommend it highly. And if you’ve enjoyed “Torchwood” in the past but missed this, it’s out on DVD already. Meanwhile, “Mad Men,” one of the two best shows on television, returns with Season 3 at 10 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 16 on AMC. In advance of that on Aug. 10, starting at 7 a.m., AMC will show a Season 2 marathon of the series set in the advertising world of the early 1960s. Season 2 is also out on DVD. You can catch a brief Season 3 preview here: http://blogs.amctv.com/mad-men/2009/05/video-promo-season3.php ALSO ON DVD: If you remember “The Guns of Will Sonnett,” a late ’60s western starring a post-“Real McCoys” Walter Brennan, the complete two-season series is now out as a 6-disc set. … Coming Sept. 15 are the first “official” DVD releases (as opposed to cheap “best of” compilations) of “Bonanza,” with the first season split into two volumes or boxed together as one 8-disc set. … Due Sept. 29 is “The Patty Duke Show: Season One,” a 6-disc set. If you were around in the mid-’60s, don’t tell me you don’t still remember that theme song! One of the most sobering reminders of how we’ve all aged is those Social Security Administration spots that Duke has done in character as “identical cousins” Patty and Cathy Lane. … A must-have due for release Oct. 20 is “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: The Best of Season 2.” No details yet on the contents. … And on Nov. 3, my first favorite TV series, “Zorro,” starring Guy Williams, gets the “Walt Disney Treasures” deluxe tin box treatment with both seasons released (6 discs each). These previously were available only to members of Disney’s video club. Bonus material includes introductions by film historian Leonard Maltin, two hour-long “Zorro” specials per set, plus an exclusive Zorro pin and lithograph. These two collections are individually numbered and available in limited quantities. The “Scarecrow of Romney Marsh” sets went extremely fast, so if you want “Zorro,” better pre-order. You can get both sets from Amazon for under $100. NEXT TIME: A musical trip back to the summer of ’69. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: TOC (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
10:21 pm	Yes, that’s the way it was It was a Sunday afternoon quite unlike any other I’ve ever known. From lunchtime on until the early hours of the morning, we sat in our downstairs family room, transfixed by what we were watching on our TV set. For some strange reason, as I look back 40 years at July 20, 1969, one of my clearest memories is of the way CBS News came out of one of the rare commercial breaks taken during that day’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Apollo 11 mission. “This afternoon,” the announcer’s voice intoned, “a landing on the moon! Brought to you by the International Paper Co.” Talk about the ultimate product placement. A few weeks later, while on a late-summer vacation at the lake, I wrote a column for the first-day-of-school issue of my high school newspaper noting the bizarre way past and present had merged during that eventful summer of 1969. We had watched an ancient royal ritual, the investiture of Britain’s Prince Charles as the Prince of Wales, as it happened earlier that same month, thanks to satellites in outer space. If you don’t remember what that was like, here’s a clip from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS8OXdtSoCs Likewise, an estimated 528 million viewers around the world tuned in as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin guided their landing craft to the surface of a prehistoric orb in the sky. According to the ratings services, 93 percent of U.S. televisions were tuned in to the moon landing that afternoon (God only knows what the other seven percent were watching). And like 45 percent of American TV sets, ours was tuned to CBS, where veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, a longtime space program enthusiast, and Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, were anchoring the coverage. (NBC had 34 percent of the viewing audience that day while ABC had 14 percent. That was it back then; just the three networks. No cable news channels.) Of course, what we were watching was primitive by today’s standards. There was no live telecast from the lunar module carrying the two astronauts to the surface. So we saw a CBS animated simulation of what was happening while we listened to the live audio of the exchanges between Armstrong and Aldrin and the NASA communicator in Houston. But that was still plenty exciting. You could hear the tension in Cronkite and Schirra’s voices as they commented between the terse, dispassionate exchanges between the astronauts and NASA. The last couple of minutes, Walter and Wally didn’t say anything, just listening with the rest of us as Aldrin guided the craft over the moon’s surface, looking for a suitable landing spot. I shudder to think what it would have been like had something gone wrong, with us hanging on every word. The simulation didn’t account for all the hovering time, so it ran ahead of real time, showing the craft down prematurely. Finally, at 4:18 p.m. Eastern Time, we heard Aldrin say, “Contact light …” and Schirra exhaled, “We’re home.” Exulted Cronkite: “Man on the moon!” Then came Armstrong, sounding completely calm: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” The camera cut to Cronkite, as he took off his glasses and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, boy!” Schirra was wiping a tear from one of his eyes. “Wally, say something,” Cronkite grinned, “I’m speechless.” Later that evening, when CBS’ Roger Mudd asked Spiro Agnew what he thought of the moment, the usually loquacious vice president was uncharacteristically forthright: “If Cronkite doesn’t know what to say, don’t expect me to come up with anything too good.” Thanks to YouTube, we can relive those tense moments and Cronkite and Schirra’s elation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_sWmD6NvMY The biggest thrill was still to come, with first Armstrong and then Aldrin scheduled to climb out of the lunar lander and set foot on the moon’s surface that evening. Here, we actually got to see what was happening, sort of, as a live TV camera deployed from the side of the landing craft showed the shadowy, ghostly image of Armstrong moving slowly down the ladder. It was difficult to tell what you were seeing; Cronkite thought Armstrong was actually on the lunar surface when he was still on the final step. Then, at 10:56 p.m., came the crackling first words from the moon’s surface, which Armstrong flubbed slightly by leaving out an article: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was tough to catch — I remember us saying to one another, “What did he say?” — and Cronkite and Schirra couldn’t quite make it out either, and had to get someone else to provide a transcription. Watching the CBS footage now, it’s amusing to see Armstrong ignoring the proper order in which he was supposed to do things on the surface, breaking out his camera and taking pictures like a starstruck tourist while Houston gently kept nagging him to get the “contingency sample” of lunar soil that was supposed to be the first order of business in case the trip outside the lander had to be cut short. Then, for two and a quarter hours, we watched Armstrong and Aldrin bounce in and out of the camera’s view and finally set up an American flag and read the plaque on the base of the lander, which would remain on the moon, noting that “we came in peace for all mankind.” They also took a call from the Oval Office and I remember regretting that Tricky Dick had to be a part of this great occasion. Again, the CBS footage is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2XGFSPIhiM&NR=1 Despite the late hour, 125 million Americans stayed up to watch the moon walk, almost twice the number the networks had projected. Finally, at 1:11 a.m., with the astronauts and their moon rocks safely inside, the hatch to the lander was closed. The next day, they blasted off from the moon to rejoin Michael Collins, who was orbiting above in the Columbia spacecraft. Remarkably, that was something we actually got to see live, thanks to that camera left behind on the surface. The following Thursday, July 24, my brother Jonathan’s 12th birthday, the Columbia splashed down and the most momentous voyage in mankind’s history came to an end. This past Friday evening, in preparation for writing this, I decided to search online for the moon landing footage and was delighted to find the CBS coverage. That was how I watched it then, and that’s how I wanted to relive it now. It was almost as thrilling this time around as it was 40 years ago. Later Friday night, when I got back on the computer to check e-mail, I discovered that at 7:42 p.m., just minutes after I had finished rewatching one of his most memorable broadcasts, 92-year-old Walter Cronkite had breathed his last. Talk about past and present colliding! There’ve been numerous tributes to Cronkite this weekend from all the many TV news outlets that now vie for our attention. We’ve been reminded of how he became the most trusted man in America. We’ve seen the clip of him swallowing hard to try and keep his composure after announcing the death of President Kennedy. We’ve been told again how Cronkite’s clearly labeled 1968 commentary after a trip to Vietnam, concluding that the U.S. had reached a stalemate in the war there, prompted LBJ to say, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." But most importantly we’ve been reminded that the way Cronkite became the man that various polls named the most trusted in America was by reporting the news without spin or slant or gimmicks. When he signed off each weekday evening, saying, “That’s the way it is,” you didn’t have to worry about checking out other sources to see competing and/or clashing versions of the way it was. It’s to the credit of the current crop of network news anchors that they recognize the greatness of Cronkite and that they know they can’t come close to being half the journalist he was. Or to having the sort of relationship with viewers that he had or the impact he had. This is not a great time for journalism. Newspapers, where Cronkite’s generation of broadcasters got their start, are barely hanging on. Network television news is a pale imitation of the days of Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, with more fluff than substance. The audience is splintered between the three traditional networks, who are increasingly less relevant to young viewers, and the cable networks, where the vogue is for shouting pundits rather than solid reporting, and the ratings leader is a thinly veiled propaganda arm of the Republican party. And more and more people get their news on the Internet, where anything goes and little is vetted in the race to get there first and attract the most page views. It’s unfortunate, especially for my children’s generation, but the news business today is a landscape as foreign to the likes of Walter Cronkite as that desolate moonscape was 40 years ago to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: Oldies from the summer of 1969 (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
10:11 pm	A part of my past goes up in smoke What is this love affair we have with old theaters? When one of the old-time movie palaces is threatened with the wrecking ball, fans rally to save it. Nonprofit foundations are founded to restore and re-purpose them as concert halls, cultural centers and playhouses. And when one burns down, as did the legendary Georgia Theatre in my hometown of Athens on Friday, we feel like a piece of our lives has been taken away and we want to share our memories, as many have been doing this weekend on locally based Web sites. Somehow I can’t imagine anyone ever doing that about one of those cookiecutter mall multiplexes. You may not have ever heard of the Georgia Theatre, but chances are you have fond memories of such a theater in your past, especially if you’re over the age of 50 and grew up when it was still called going to “the picture show,” or if during your college days you went to see bands at one of those old theaters that had found new life hosting live music. When I was growing up, the Georgia (originally called the Elite back in the 1930s) was one of the three first-run movie houses in downtown Athens; when my Dad was kid there had been two more (now there are none). I remember in 1957, when I was 5 years old, Mom taking me to see one of Disney’s periodic reissues of “Cinderella” at the Georgia. My Uncle Larry, who was 17, had just gotten his first job, working as an usher at the Georgia, and he had told us he could get us in free. I remember instead of us going to the box office as usual to plunk down the 50 cents for me and 75 cents for Mom, she knocked on one of the art deco theater’s distinctive doors, decorated with a chevron pattern, asking for Larry. He came over in his snazzy usher’s uniform, flashlight in hand, and escorted us in. (Remember when cinemas had ushers to help lost kids find their parents, keep horny teenagers from going too far in the back corner and stop noisy patrons from disturbing other moviegoers? Modern civilization took a decided giant leap backward when movie theaters stopped hiring ushers.) The Georgia was not as large as the nearby Palace, which had a long entryway and a large lobby. The Georgia’s lobby was much smaller and the concession stand was just a few feet inside the entry doors, so as soon as they opened, that wonderful aroma of cooking popcorn greeted you. Years later, when I was about to be a freshman in college and was working in a political campaign, we rented office space a few doors down from the Georgia and folks from the campaign would go down in the afternoon to the theater, which would let them in to just buy some popcorn. I saw many movies at the Georgia over the years, including such Disney films as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (the year after “Cinderella”), “Son of Flubber” and, notably, The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964, amid many screaming girls. We always sat on the main level up to that time because the balcony was reserved for black folks (who also had to use a side entrance in the pre-Civil Rights Act days). Another native Athenian reminisced on the local daily’s Web site after Friday’s fire about when he was a child in the 1950s and his family’s maid (just about every family had a maid when I was growing up) would walk him to the Georgia for the Saturday kiddie matinee. He’d sit down front so that she could keep an eye on him from the balcony. Thankfully, by the late ’60s those days were gone and anyone could sit anywhere. A big deal about movie theaters back in those days, especially in the South, was the air conditioning. Not many homes had AC in my younger days and when the mercury would climb up into the 90s during the summer, there was no better afternoon escape than into the chilly, dark confines of the cinema. Many theaters even had signs sporting icicles or igloos advertising that they had air conditioning. By the time I was in college, the days of the single-screen downtown theater were numbered, as the cinema business moved out to suburban strip shopping centers. The Palace was remodeled in the late ’60s after a fire as a very mod concrete two-screener and the giant, charmless Classic, which opened in the late ’60s behind the Georgia and was owned by the same company, carved its 1,000-plus seat auditorium into three smaller cinemas by the early ’70s. The Georgia remained a single-screen movie house and increasingly relied on kung-fu and blaxploitation flicks, like “Brotherhood of Death,” the final movie shown there before it closed in 1975. The Georgia sat empty for a couple of years until late 1977. By that time I was covering the music beat for The Atlanta Constitution and I got word that a group of four young guys were remodeling the old movie house in order to turn it into a 600-seat concert hall. They’d built a stage and dressing rooms and a bar and had installed a pretty decent sound system. One of them, Sam Smartt, was married to a high school classmate of mine. I did a story for the Constitution about their quest to turn the Georgia into a mini-version of what Atlanta’s fabulous Fox Theatre had become. And I was at the Georgia on Jan. 11, 1978, when the first concert took place, headlined by Sea Level, the band that Chuck Leavell, Lamar Williams and Jaimoe had started after the Allman Brothers Band fell apart. By this time, two Athens musicians that I’d gotten to know, Randall Bramblett and Davis Causey, had joined the band, along with former Wings drummer Joe English. A lot of Sea Level’s labelmates from Macon-based Capricorn Records played the Georgia in those early days and I saw several of those shows, taking my brother Tim when Sea Level played there again. He remembers getting one of Jaimoe’s drumsticks left lying on the stage floor after the show. It turned out the Georgia, which still had its movie theater seating in place, was a superb, intimate place to see a concert. It had the balcony, a grand waterfall curtain, an oak paneled lobby and great acoustics. But Sam and the guys didn’t have much capital, and were only booking bands they thought were worthwhile (maybe a half dozen a month) so within a couple of months they were broke. Sam called the guy who ran the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta and he came over to take a look, fell in love with the Georgia, and got on the phone to a buddy of his, John Prine, who agreed to come do a couple of benefit shows at the Georgia that put the theater back on its feet. Over the next couple of years, a mixture of aging big names and up-and-coming acts played the Georgia, ranging from B.B. King (with Jimmy Buffett in the balcony for the second show after playing at the UGA Coliseum across town earlier that night), Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, Gregg Allman (who showed up to jam with the Night Hawks), Muddy Waters, Doug Kershaw and the Dixie Dregs. When a local New Wave party band offered to pay their own expenses and take the door receipts while Sam and the guys got the revenue from the bar, they were allowed to play the Georgia. A few weeks later, they signed a record deal. They called themselves the B-52’s. Another time a young British band rolled up in a VW bus and played the Georgia for $400, even setting up their own stage gear. It was the Police. The Georgia closed as a concert hall in 1981 but reopened the next spring as the Carafe & Draft Theatre, showing “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” When they weren’t playing movies, they sometimes had local bands onstage and I remember going with Leslie to meet an old friend of hers there after a football game and having drinks while we listed to the wonderfully named Night Blooming Jazzmen. That incarnation of the theater lasted until 1989, when a couple of guys who owned a local nightclub bought the Georgia and turned it back into primarily a music venue (though they showed the occasional sporting event on a big screen), this time operating more like a nightclub than a concert hall. The theater seating had been removed on the main level, where the student-heavy crowds would stand in front of the stage. A few tables were located in the back near the bar, but the balcony seating remained. A mix of local acts, touring club bands and the occasional big name adorned the old-style marquee, including Phish and local heroes R.E.M., who did a surprise benefit show announced at the last minute in 2001. John Mayer played the Georgia and shot his first music video there, and Athens-based Widespread Panic made it like a second home, doing a “Live From the Georgia Theatre” concert film (directed by Billy Bob Thornton) there in 1991 and playing a couple of nights as a special hometown treat as recently as 2007. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. joined the Minus Five onstage at the Georgia in 2006. In recent years, my son says, the Georgia had been known primarily for jam bands while the famed 40 Watt Club, also located downtown, was the main indie rock venue. Young Bill saw a Beatles tribute group, Abbey Road Live, at the Georgia, plus a few other acts like Railroad Earth. The Georgia was also one of the main venues for the annual AthFest music and arts festival. A new owner, Wilmot Greene, bought the theater in 2004 and set about remodeling it, including painting the drab tan outside in eyecatching pastel pink and blue to match the original art deco décor. Then Friday morning about 7, a passerby noticed smoke coming out from under the doors of the theater, and within a few minutes flames were leaping high from the roof. My son and brother Jon both called me early in the morning with the bad news. Jon was trying to go to the bank in downtown Athens but couldn’t because of the power grid being turned off at the request of the firefighters. He said with all the cops trying to direct traffic with the lights out plus the smoke and a couple of Atlanta TV station helicopters hovering up above, it was a wild scene. More than 50 firefighters had to battle several hours to put the blaze out. The roof collapsed and the interior of the theater basically was a total loss. But the outer walls remain intact and the owner says he was insured and hopes that will be enough to rebuild the theater. I really hope he’s able to do it. The Georgia isn’t just about memories for folks like me who grew up in the college town. It’s a big part of the ongoing cultural life of Athens and UGA students. Athens, frequently picked as one of the most livable places in the United States, wouldn’t be the same without it. QUICKIES: Young Bill, who’s moving to Washington, D.C, at the end of the month to go to work for the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is thrilled by the news that Paul McCartney is going to continue his summer not-quite-a-tour string of stadium shows with an Aug. 1 concert at FedEx Field, home of the Redskins, in Landover, MD, near Washington. If the show were a couple of weeks later, I’d probably make the trip up myself, as I’ll be on vacation then. In the meantime, though, I’m holding out for the real tour rumored to be planned for next year. … I’m glad Ringo’s going to finally get his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. I was beginning to think they had something against drummers. … The first installment of Season 2 of HBO’s “True Blood” was bloody, sexy (including shots of a nude Anna Paquin), funny and, in one scene, just plain nasty. But storywise it was a bit tentative. Hopefully they’ll plunge right into the three strands of plot planned for this season with this week’s second episode. … Yes, there is a creepier TV advertising figure than that plastic-headed Burger King. It’s the fake geezer in those Six Flags amusement parks’ “more flags, more fun” commercials. … Critics haven’t been kind to “Year One,” the new Jack Black cavemen-meet-Biblical figures comedy, but my daughter says it’s got some really funny moments amid much silliness. I think I’ll take her word for it and wait for that one to hit satellite. I’d still like to catch the “Star Trek” film and “Angels and Demons” when I get a chance, but the new Harry Potter is the only must-see on my summer movie list. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: depressed Current Music: "Mother and Child Reunion" (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
11:43 pm	‘We are not so exact … we’re Italian’ The toughest aspect of a vacation is what happens when you get home. Yes, if you’re lucky you’re more relaxed and you have lots of wonderful memories (and pictures!). But not only do you have to plunge back into your regular routine, with work and all, but you have to catch up on everything you didn’t do while you were off having fun. Somebody needs to figure out a way around that. Maybe time travel? Anyway, between blogging my brains out about UGA sports for ajc.com (they’ve got me posting FOUR times a day now … the digital audience must be fed continually), working to catch up on the next issue of Beatlefan and taking care of family stuff, it’s been tough finding the time to squeeze in the enjoyable but nonessential things like Quick Cuts. Finally, though, I’m back to share some observations with you. First, our visit to northern Italy’s “magnificent Lake District,” as the tour company quite justifiably calls it. The trip there was arduous, since Atlanta wasn’t one of the tour’s “gateway” cities despite having direct flights to Frankfurt, Germany, the main tour hub. Instead we had to fly to Washington’s very poorly designed Dulles Airport and then, after a couple hours layover, fly to Frankfurt (an even more poorly designed airport), where after a couple more hours, we finally got a flight to Milan (or Milano, as the Italians call it), where we hooked up with the tour group for an hour’s bus ride to the lakeside resort of Baveno. All in all, a 20-hour trip for us that wasn’t helped by the fact that the transatlantic portion on Lufthansa was via one of those antiquated giant 747s where they have to pack passengers in like sardines in order to make it pay. I dubbed it Stalag 747. (On the trip home, we were in a modern Airbus A-330, which not only was roomier but also had individual video screens on which you could watch your choice of movies or TV programs.) Despite the discomfort of the flight over, I must say, however, that the service by the smiling flight attendants (Leslie dubbed them “the Heidis”) was excellent. It kind of freaked us out, though, that one of the passengers in front of us wore a facemask for much of the flight. We weren’t sure if he was sick or scared of getting sick. And on the last leg of the journey, from Frankfurt to Milan, Lufthansa had Leslie and me sitting on opposite sides of the plane despite her winding up with an empty seat next to her. So much for German efficiency! Anyway, once we were in Milan, the group of about 30 alumni from various universities (70 percent Canadians, 30 percent from the U.S.) was taken in hand by our wonderful tour director, a Milano charmer named Valentina, who soon started referring to herself as everyone’s “cousin.” On the bus ride, she told us about the area’s history and Lake Maggiore, on the Swiss-Italian border, where we’d be staying. Maggiore means “greater,” and the lake was named that when they thought it was the biggest lake in the district; it turns out it’s not, but they left the name unchanged because, as Valentina said with a self-deprecating smile and a shrug, “we are not so exact … we’re Italian.” Valentina never got ruffled and was always in good humor (which actually seemed to apply to most of the Italians we encountered). As she liked to say, “In Italia, no problems, only solutions.” Our four-star hotel on a hill overlooking the lake, the Lido Palace, was originally built as a villa in 1865 and has been a hotel since the time of Queen Victoria, who once took tea there. (The Italians apparently love the British, as paintings and statues of Victoria and a later hotel guest, Winston Churchill, were all over the hotel and its grounds.) All of our rooms had a majestic view of the lake and three of the Borromean Islands, named after the noble family that built the palaces and gardens that adorn several of them and which still owns most of the islands. The hotel’s Terrace restaurant where we ate breakfast and dinner each day (and lunch the first day) was overseen by the ever-helpful Roberto, who would address Leslie as “Signora,” Olivia as “Signorina” and me as “Datore,” an Italian term of respect that roughly translates as “Boss.” My son, as the younger male, didn’t get any special honorific. The four-course meals (five if you wanted a salad) served with wine and bottled water (coffee or tea available after the meal) were wonderful and included a different pasta dish every day except the last night, when we had risotto, one of the area’s specialties. Each night you also had the choice of fish (usually from the lake) or meat for your entree. On the Sunday night, a cake topped with a firecracker throwing off sparks was wheeled out to celebrate the birthday of our 24-year-old son and a lady in the tour group. And always, gelato of various flavors was part of the dessert buffet! (Our daughter Olivia soon got us all in the habit of a midafternoon gelato break, no matter where we were. In Italy, you’re never far from a gelato shop.) In general, the food at the hotel and in the various restaurants where we had lunch was wonderful, especially the simply prepared pasta (usually in oil and a light, creamy tomato sauce, not the heavy sauces favored in southern Italy). Zucchini was a frequent ingredient, as was eggplant. One of the best parts of the trip was just drinking in our surroundings, which were breathtakingly surreal. Immediately looming over the lakes were what the Italians call the “pre Alps,” with the main Alps right behind them, protecting the area weatherwise and giving it a mild Mediterranean climate (not so mild a few days when it climbed into the 80s). So we had palm trees on the lakeshore and lemons growing overhead in the gardens while snow-covered mountains could be seen in the distance. Unforgettable. Among the local customs that we had to get used to during our stay in Baveno was the way businesses, including the banks, tended to close for a couple of hours midday for “siesta.” The “supermercado” (supermarket, though really just a small grocery) a 10-minute lakeside walk from the hotel had American soft drinks and British sweets. But a refreshing Italian drink canned in Milan and forthrightly named “Lemon Soda” — a carbonated tart lemonade with pulp — became our favorite. The hotel had a single PC off the lobby for guests’ use and it stayed busy, especially in the afternoon and evening. We’d get on it occasionally to check e-mails and see what was happening back home that CNN International hadn’t told us about — can you believe they didn’t report the results of the SEC college baseball tournament? Our first full day there, we visited a couple of the little villages that line the lake (it was amazing the way our driver, Giacomo, could maneuver the bus through tiny, winding streets that seemed barely wide enough for a Fiat). In each place we went, a “local guide” joined Valentina to lead us. For Baveno and the islands, it was a lovely young mother named Mara, who wasn’t shy about letting you know what she thought, whether it was her opinon of Italy’s leader, Silvio Berlusconi (she was definitely not a fan) or anything else. When she spotted a Gypsy begging in one town with a young boy by his side, she peppered him with a burst of Italian and then told us that she’d said that the child should be in school, not on the streets. Mara also taught German and noted that despite their history, Italians mix well with Germans (who along with Brits and Americans make up most of the business in the heavy tourist area). The Germans, she said, seem to feel “guilty,” so she avoids mentioning the WWII days with German tour groups. (“Don’t mention the war,” as John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty would say.) Speaking of the war, we saw a rather overdone monument to Italian war heroes (I’ll avoid the old joke about that) put up during the Fascist era and I spotted a Benito Mussolini figure amid some hand-painted toy soldiers in a shop window. (I can’t imagine finding a Hitler figure in a German shop.) Valentina eventually told us stories about when her grandfather was in the Resistance fighting against the Germans and how German soldiers threatened to shoot the entire family (including her mother, then a young girl) when searching for the partisans. One day we went out by boat to the islands, where we toured a grand, rather ornately decorated baroque palace with an expansive hanging garden, all intended to impress everyone with the Borromeo family’s wealth. Mara liked my crack that while “humilitas” (humility) might have been the family’s motto, it certainly wasn’t their style. In contrast to the ostentatious Isola Bella (“Beautiful Island”), where the palace was, the nearby Isola dei Pescatori (“Fisherman’s Island,” where the fishermen lived before they figured out tourism paid better) was all winding alleys and souvenir stalls. The largest island, Isola Madre, had an expansive botanical garden and country manor house. As part of the tour, we had speakers talk to us at the hotel about Italian history and contemporary life, gardens and the Renaissance — more specifically, “Leonardo,” as Italians fondly refer to Da Vinci. The latter was in preparation for our Saturday in Milano, where we visited the heavily protected “Last Supper.” (Only 15 people at a time can be admitted and you progress through a series of closed compartments designed to protect the atmosphere surrounding the great wall painting.) The work itself was much larger than we expected and, again, breathtaking. Our local guide that day, Louisa, talked quite knowledgeably about the restoration of the painting (mostly undoing previous restorations) and Leonardo’s groundbreaking use of “perspective” to give it depth. She told us if we panned our eyes across it, we would see “movement.” It’s true. While in Milan, we also visited the impressive La Scala opera house, the extremely ornate Cathedral (featuring more than 2,200 marble saints and a hundred gargoyles) and had an afternoon of free time, during which our family walked through the city to the Castle, where we saw a ceiling painted by Leonardo and Michelangelo’s last, unfinished work, the Rondanini Pieta (a statue of Mary holding the crucified Christ). On the Sunday, we cruised across the lake to the town of Stresa, where we again had free time and lunched at an outdoor pizzeria and shopped for souvenirs and gifts, with Leslie bring home a wine bottle stopper made of the area’s famed Murano glass. Another day took us to beautiful Lake Como, home to a lot of millionaires and celebrities, where the tree-covered mountains come right down to the water’s edge. Very dramatic and beautiful. Leslie was particularly thrilled to be in this area, as her maternal great grandparents came from there. The botanical garden at Villa Carlotta was just plain amazing, with plants from around the world. And on a cruise down the lake in the afternoon, we saw a villa where the closing scene of the Daniel Craig version of “Casino Royale” was filmed and also George Clooney’s villa, which was only mentioned about a dozen times by our starstruck guides. Our last full day in Italy, we visited the island of San Giulio in Lake Orta, where a fourth-century basilica (now part of a convent) is full of spectacular frescoes that they’re still uncovering. The lakeside town of Orta was the most picturesque place we visited. Since its streets and alleys are generally too narrow for traffic, the bus dropped us off on the outskirts of town, from where a tram made up to look like an old-time train shuttled you in and out of the town. With its courtyards and balconies, I half expected to see Olivia Hussey as Juliet leaning out of a window any moment (no such luck). Just about every building of any import we saw on the trip was made of granite and marble quarried in the lake district, formally known as Lombardy. The granite, which came in red, pink, green, black, white and gray varieties, was how Leslie’s family made their living before her great grandfather, a stonecutter, was lured to America to work in the granite centers of Barre, Vermont, and eventually, the Georgia town of Elberton, where Leslie was born. Elberton may call itself the “granite capital of the world,” but I’d say Lombardy probably has a better claim to that honor. Another product of the area is silk, and during free time in the Lake Como town of Bellagio Olivia snagged a beautiful silk scarf for 25 euros that would sell for several times that back home. Most evenings after we’d finished our leisurely dinner (which often approached two hours in length, driving young Bill crazy), we watched TV in our hotel rooms, where the satellite brought in about nine Italian stations, four in English (BBC1, BBC2, CNN International and Sky News) and three in German. Believe me, you haven’t seen “Gone With the Wind” until you’ve seen it dubbed into German! I managed to follow “Tin Man” (the Sci-Fi miniseries starring Zooey Deschanel), and a bit of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western in Italian. (Somehow watching the latter just seemed so right.) But mostly we stuck to the the Beebs (Anne Robinson is still an obnoxious bitch on “The Weakest Link”) and CNNi, where I enjoyed “International Desk” each evening with Hala Gorani, a sassy blonde with a very informal style of delivery. We had to rise extra early for breakfast at 5 a.m. on our eighth and final day in Baveno, so we could get an early start for the airport in Milan, but Leslie and I couldn’t resist taking a few minutes to just stand at the large window in our room, which we’d kept open most of the time, gazing at the mist-covered islands in the predawn light. Bellissimo! QUICKIES: I watched most of the first week of the Conan O’Brien version of the “Tonight Show” and have sampled it since, and while it’s vastly improved over the Jay Leno incarnation, I’m not surprised that its ratings are slipping. Dave Letterman is, frankly, kicking Conan’s ass in terms of guest bookings and overall entertainment value (Julia Roberts and Dave are always a hoot together), and Conan doesn’t yet seem comfortable in his new Hollywood environs. The taped bits that were so brilliant in the past seem toned down and go on way too long. Bring on the masturbating bear, I say! As for Jimmy Fallon, who follows Conan, his show isn’t getting any better, with monologues that are so unfunny that even the studio audience that got in free barely laughs! I don’t stay up to watch more than the first few minutes of the late late talk shows, but Craig Ferguson is definitely the choice at that hour. … A lot of the folks I’ve worked with at the AJC who’ve taken buyouts over the past couple of years have wound up contributing to Like the Dew, an online daily magazine of sorts that takes its name from the longtime slogan of the late lamented Atlanta Journal (“Covers Dixie like the dew”). Inspired by a recent comment by Bob Dylan about enjoying Jimmy Buffett, one of my old cohorts, Tom Baxter, wrote an enjoyable and insightful piece on inexplicable matters of taste. You can check it out here: http://likethedew.com/2009/06/05/on-taste/ And former AJC ad salesman Jeff Cochran, who I first got to know back in the ’70s when he worked for the late, much lamented Peaches record superstore, has written an amusing piece about his days there and how a John Denver album display possibly saved his life. It’s here: http://likethedew.com/2009/06/11/john-denver-to-the-rescue/ One of the pieces I’ve done for my Junkyard Blawg is a nostalgic look at how my college football game day routine with my family has changed over the years. You can check it out here: http://blogs.ajc.com/junkyard-blawg/2009/06/12/saturdays-in-athens-a-game-day-in-the-life/ I’ve been fan of the delectable German-born actress Diane Kruger (of “National Treasure” fame) for several years now and Leslie and I are looking forward to seeing “Anything for Her,” a French thriller she’s starring in that we’ve heard good things about. London’s Telegraph had an interesting profile on her recently and you can read it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/5421380/Diane-Kruger-interview.html Scott Shannon’s True Oldies Channel has been doing one of its periodic Close But No Cigar Weekends, where they play songs that stalled out at No. 2 on the charts. Yesterday while driving home I heard a tune I hadn’t heard on the radio in probably 20 or more years, Jimmy Webb’s magnum opus “MacArthur Park,” a surprise hit for the late Irish actor Richard Harris in the spring and early summer of 1968 because it was over 7 minutes in length (and came out before The Beatles also broke the old 3-minute Top 40 radio barrier with “Hey Jude”). I know a lot of folks find the complex song with the slightly psychedelic lyrics about a cake melting in the rain overdone and even cheesy, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it, in part because I liked Harris but also because my mother loved it. (Minus the lyrics, Maynard Ferguson’s big-band jazz instrumental version is actually quite thrilling.) Anyway, listening to “MacArthur Park” got me kind of misty-eyed. It also made me appreciate again the way Shannon isn’t afraid to play nearly forgotten hits from the past that aren’t oldies radio focus-group favorites. Thanks, Scott. … The second season of “True Blood,” the stylish, sexy, violent, funny Southern vampire series from Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”), based on the Sookie Stackhouse book series and starring Anna Paquin, premieres on HBO on Sunday (June 14) at 9 p.m. EDT. Each episode replays frequently during the week at varying hours and unless you’re easily offended or put off by cinematic blood I highly recommend it. “Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison,” a new single-disc compilation of impressively remastered recordings, will be released by Capitol Records on Tuesday (June 16). The track listing, which doesn’t feature anything previously unreleased, seems designed to drive fans crazy, as it’s neither a complete “greatest hits” nor a comprehensive overview of memorable Harrison album tracks. Some fans also are offended that live recordings of some of George’s Beatle songs (taken from the “Concert for Bangladesh” album) are included, as if George’s solo catalog couldn’t stand on its own. I’m more sanguine about it. While it’s not the track listing I would have chosen, I think it might serve well as a sampler and perhaps an introduction to Harrison’s work for those not as familiar with him as some of us are. I’m still waiting for the long-promised box of outtakes and rarities to get me excited, but I don’t have a problem with releases like this. Still, I understand and sympathize with those who do. Sorry if I went on too long this time, but it's been a while. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: impressed Current Music: "MacArthur Park," "Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison" (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
9:34 pm	Boy, giraffes are selfish … Sorry I haven’t been writing here more often, but it’s been kind of crazy lately. Besides getting an issue of Beatlefan out, I had to deal with the latest reorganization at work (following more staff reductions) in which I unexpectedly ended up as a fulltime blogger — about University of Georgia sports. It’s something I’d been doing in my spare time for the past three and a half years, and the big bosses decided there were enough Bulldog fans out there to make it a full-time gig. So that’s been taking up a lot of my time. You can check out the Junkyard Blawg as it’s called (a reference to both the famed Junkyard Dog defenses in the Vince Dooley era and a play on UGA fans’ penchant for calling their team the Dawgs) at: http://blogs.ajc.com/junkyard-blawg/ Just beware of some of the comments; the AJC likes us to leave it a fairly open forum, and some rival teams’ fans (particularly the more juvenile ones who follow Georgia Tech) are prone to get on there and act out, as kindergarten teachers would say. It’s been an eye-opening experience going over to the digital side after nearly 35 years in print. I’ve learned about SEO (search engine optimization), and about just what a big deal social media are these days in journalistic circles. Everybody in the media is getting on the Twitter bandwagon, even though that fad seems to be fading somewhat already, with statistics showing that about 60 percent of Twitter users quit after a month. Which is no surprise to me. I’m just sayin’. Facebook is also getting a lot of attention, and that seems to not only have more staying power than Twitter but more appeal to folks my age (which probably means the younger generation soon will be pushing off to explore newer social media frontiers). For now, though, it’s kind of cool that my kids and my brothers and some of my friends are “poking” each other and sharing photos and observations. People use their “status” notations to celebrate good times, lament hard ones and to mark milestones. My son’s most recent entry from May 6, for instance, notes “Bill King has just turned in his final assignment as a student at the University of Georgia.” Sigh. We watched with pride last Saturday as he got his master’s degree in public administration, and in July he’ll start work at the GAO in Washington, D.C. Anyway, one of the areas of Facebook profiles that I find most interesting is where people list their favorite quotations. Often, they’re funny. Sometimes touching. Occasionally thought-provoking. And they give you a little peek at what that particular person finds worthy of remembering. So here’s a sampling of some of my own favorite quotations that I’ve gathered over the years, going all the way back to my college days and opening with one of the best pieces of advice my Dad ever gave me: "Whatever you do, don't ever buy a plaid suit." — William D. King "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." — John Lennon "Sunrise doesn't last all morning, a cloudburst doesn't last all day" — George Harrison "You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer." — Paul McCartney "From what?" — Mollie Parry King (my Mom) on being asked for the first time after she’d moved from Britain to the rural South, "Are you saved?" "Oh, goddammit, we forgot the silent prayer." — President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Cabinet meeting "The main thing to remember is never to let go of the vine." — Johnny Weismuller "If you're going to write about a bear, bring on the bear!" — unknown editor, quoted to me by famed editor Byron Dobell when I was interviewing him "Take off your glasses, this could get dangerous." — William Thornton King (at age 5, about to challenge his father to a wrestling match) "I can resist anything but temptation." — Oscar Wilde "Once you get rid of integrity, the rest is a piece of cake" — J.R. Ewing "The ball ain't heavy." — Herschel Walker, on being asked if it was tiring running the ball more than 30 times in a game "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well, I have others." — Groucho Marx "Boy, giraffes are selfish." — Bernard P. Fife, M.D. "Eighty percent of success is showing up." — Woody Allen "Blood will tell; breedin' will out." — Bernard P. Fife, M.D. "It's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy." — George Carlin "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." — Mark Twain "The only good thing about that Cuban prick was his Cuban prick." — Lucille Ball, talking once about ex-husband Desi Arnaz "I hate spunk!" — Lou Grant "I was with the Filipino army at the final advance on Reykjavik." — Doctor Who "So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So, we go. And it's closed. So there's me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shop owner and his son ... that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Ozzy went onstage and did a great show." — Del Preston (the aging roadie in “Wayne’s World 2”) "I knowed you was Russian the minute you got in my cab." — American taxi driver to my Mom, who had just told him she was from Wales "Born without a shirt and wore out a thousand." — George Washington King (my great grandfather; this saying usually followed him wiping his mouth on his sleeve after having taken a swig of something) "I hate hate." — William D. King Feel free to share your own favorite quotes or have your say about anything in this column. Just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: "Boots and Sand" by Cat Stevens, Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton (!) 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Friday, April 10th, 2009
12:58 pm	I read the news today ... You'll no doubt see today's date, April 10, mentioned as the anniversary of the breakup of The Beatles, but that's not exactly accurate. It was on this date in 1970 that Apple Corps in London released a self-interview by Paul McCartney to promote his solo debut, "McCartney." In it, he made it clear he was breaking with The Beatles. And that's become the date etched in history. In reality, Macca had made the announcement, through brother-in-law John Eastman, three days earlier. I have a clipping from that afternoon's Atlanta Journal (which we once ran on the cover of Beatlefan magazine) to prove it. Anyway, whether you go with the popular date or the actual one, it was a time those of us who were around then will never forget. Here's a piece I wrote for Beatlefan back in 1995. ... A FAN'S NOTES April 7, 1970: I Read the News Today It was an I-remember-where-I-was moment. Tuesday morning, April 7, 1970. I'd just come up from my downstairs bedroom for breakfast when my mom, who'd been listening to the the radio, broke the news. "Paul has left The Beatles," she said. That didn't sound right. "Are you sure it was Paul?," I asked. I mean, I wouldn't have been that surprised if she'd said John had left. After all, he'd been venturing away from the group more and more the last couple of years with his peace campaign, his bed-ins with Yoko and his Plastic Ono Band recordings. He even had a hit at the moment in "Instant Karma!" But Paul leave The Beatles? "That's what they said on the radio," Mom confirmed. I couldn't wait to get to school and discuss this with Charles, my homeroom buddy, and Mike, an ROTC classmate with whom we'd spent countless hours the past few months skipping out on study hall to listen to Beatles on the 8-track stereo tape player in Charles' car. True, it had been only six years since that first Ed Sullivan show, but those had been six of the most impressionable years in our lives. No Beatles? We couldn't imagine such a thing. They were such an integral part of our lives. Moreso that school year than any other since 6th grade, in fact. For some reason, I was more fascinated than ever with the Fab Four, probably because I'd found some guys to hang out with who also were into The Beatles. It had started back in the fall when Charles, who sat in front of me in homeroom, asked whether I'd heard "Abbey Road" yet. I'd known Charles for two years in ROTC but not well. So I was surprised to find out he was a major fan of The Beatles. Turned out Mike also was a fan. Being seniors with all our tough courses behind us, we basically were cruising through that year, just marking time at Athens High School until next year, when we'd go across town to the University of Georgia. Frankly, we didn't have that much studying to do. So we'd worked a scam where the teacher in charge of the hour of study hall we had each morning thought we were going down to the ROTC department to "work on records" (we were all less-than-gung-ho officers in the cadet corps who'd signed up basically to avoid P.E.). Instead, we'd head out to Charles' car to play his growing collection of Beatles 8-track tapes. Remember 8-tracks? Was there ever a worse format for listening to music? And yet they were all the rage that '69-'70 school year, with car units the big thing. Stores devoted entirely to them had even sprouted up. In fact, it was at an 8-track place called Tape Town a few weeks before that Charles had found our favorite tape of the moment — a "bootleg" called "Kum Back" consisting of songs from The Beatles' unreleased "Get Back" album. Bootlegs were a new thing and Tape Town had some for other big groups of the time, such as Creedence and CSN&Y. Being a college town of about 50,000, Athens didn't have a progressive rock radio station, so we hadn't heard the "Get Back" tapes when they'd first hit radio the previous September. But the two local Top 40 stations recently had started weekly progressive programs where they aired Hendrix and Joplin and the like late on Saturday nights — "Electric Circles" on WDOL and "96 Dimensions" on WRFC. We started calling them up to request they play some of our unreleased favorites — particularly "Two of Us" and "Let It Be", which a couple of weeks later we got to see The Beatles doing in advance clips from the "Let It Be" movie on Ed Sullivan's "Beatles Songbook" special. (OK, I'll admit it. Seeing the newly hirsute McCartney that night made me decide that some day, when I didn't have ROTC teachers to worry about any more, I'd grow my own beard.) Of course, we didn't have to wait for the weekend progressive shows to get our Beatles radio fix. One Sunday afternoon in February, one of the stations held a Beatles vs. Elvis marathon where you could call in and vote for your favorite. Knowing all the redneck areas the station reached, we figured we were justified in voting about a dozen times apiece for The Beatles — but Elvis still won. There was new stuff, too. Shortly after we returned from Christmas break, Apple had released the song Paul had written for that new group, Badfinger, called "Come and Get It". That, and the co-starring role for Ringo Starr, led Charles and me to go see "The Magic Christian", though most of the sexual and drug references in it went right over our 17-year-old heads. (We loved the gross-out scene at the end, where all those people go plunging into a vat of blood, urine and manure to grab money to the strains of Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air". But more to our liking was Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet". Was there a high school boy anywhere that year who wasn't in love with Olivia Hussey?) There'd also been John's fantastic single, "Instant Karma!", which had pounded its way into my heart as a lifelong favorite during a week I spent in bed with the flu, mostly listening to the radio blast out the likes of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Brook Benton's "Rainy Night in Georgia", Tee Set's "Ma Belle Amie" (which my Dad parodied as "Ralph Bellamy"), the Chairmen of the Board's "Give Me Just a Little More Time" and that ubiquitous Hollies hit that got played at least once an hour, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother". We didn't take "Instant Karma!" as any sort of sign that The Beatles might be in their last days. The British music weeklies had been covering the disintegration of The Beatles, but we didn't see them, nor Rolling Stone, which wouldn't show up on our local newstands until that June, when I bought my first issue — the one focusing on "Let It Be". So we weren't aware of how close the band was to breaking up. After all, John had put out a couple of other singles, plus those avant garde albums. Those were just sidelines, we figured. Besides, there was that surprise Beatles album that had suddenly shown up in stores! Charles called early in the morning on the last Saturday in February to say he'd seen it the previous night at Woolworth's and that it wasn't the "Get Back" album. I ran out and, pooling two weeks' worth of lunch money (my only source of income since my part-time sports rewrite job at the local paper had ended), I'd bought the $5.98 list LP on sale for about $3.98. (Hey, a new Toyota Corolla was only $1,726!) What a strange mix of songs that album was, everything from "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Paperback Writer" to "Hey Jude" and "Ballad of John and Yoko". I called up the DJ on the air to find out what he knew about it. "That's a bootleg," he said, thinking I was talking about "Kum Back". "No, it isn't," I said, reading him the track listing. "Wow, that's far out. We don't even have that yet at the station!" A week later, Ringo, who had guested the previous month on "Laugh In", turned up on "Get It Together", an ABC Saturday lunchtime show co-hosted by Mama Cass Elliot. Shortly after that, the skies went dark in a total eclipse. I thought it was so cool that NBC ended its eclipse coverage that afternoon by playing "Here Comes the Sun". That week brought the "Let It Be" single, which we sneaked off-campus and bought. Thank goodness for study hall. Then came the word about Paul. At school, no one knew any details. When I got home, though, the afternoon paper had the dread headline over its newsmakers column: "McCartney on Own Dooms Beatles?" And Saturday brought news of the interview Paul had issued the previous day, making if "official." His album hit stores the following Friday, April 17, and I was stuck: How to buy "McCartney" and a present for my mom's birthday that Sunday? Mom to the rescue: She suggested I give her Paul's album as her present! Which I did. I must admit, I had a mixed reaction; I liked most of the songs with vocals a lot - particularly "Maybe I'm Amazed", which was featured on Sunday night's Sullivan show - but the instrumentals seemed mostly like filler. Still do. But it grew on me the more I listened, establishing a pattern for most McCartney albums issued since. Looking back now, I realize what an tumultuous spring that was. The same day Paul's album came out was when the crippled Apollo 13 craft was due for splashdown — if it could make it back to Earth safely. I left campus at lunch and went to the Varsity, a giant hotdog joint with TV viewing rooms, where I joined a couple of hundred other folks mostly ignoring their chili dogs as they watched the screen anxiously. I'll never forget when that chute finally appeared in the sky; the place went wild, everyone jumping to their feet, cheering. A few eyes got wiped, too. From there, it got really crazy. Nixon announced U.S. troops were going into Cambodia and the nation's college campuses erupted in protest. Four kids were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State and, even in Athens, the university was closed down for a day. Shortly after that, a race riot at our school — where bomb scares had become almost routine — spread to the town at large, and our own National Guard came in to keep order. What a way to finish your senior year. That wasn't our main concern, however. The weekend we finished classes, "Let It Be" opened. We watched it with a curious mix of elation and sadness, sort of the same way we felt at graduation a few nights later. It was time for us to move on . . . just like our friends John, Paul, George and Ringo. Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: True Oldies Channel (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
10:29 am	Escape at the Bijou When times are tough, people go to the movies. Just as our parents and grandparents did during the Great Depression, Americans are apparently seeking distraction from our economic troubles by escaping for a couple of hours in the cinema. Across the country, box office revenue grew by 16.5 percent from Jan. 1 to March 8 compared with the same period in 2008, according to Media By Numbers, a box-office tracking organization. I’m no exception, having spent this month trying to catch up with films I didn’t have time to see while dealing with family and business stuff in January and February. The best of the bunch, and one of the best films Leslie and I have seen in a long time, was “The Reader,” the tale of postwar German angst for which Kate Winslet won the best actress Oscar. She plays a German woman in her 30s who takes a 15-year-old boy, Michael, as her lover. After a while, she suddenly disappears from his life, only to pop up several years later when he’s a law student attending a war crimes trial and she’s one of the defendants as a former concentration camp guard. He knows something that could help her defense but which she’s too ashamed to admit, even if it means more time in jail. He wants to help her, but perhaps because of collective guilt over what she did, he doesn’t. But then, years later, he becomes her benefactor. Winslet’s role is so complex; like “the kid” (as she calls him), you don’t know whether to feel sympathy for her, revulsion, or both. It’s a brilliant performance. David Kross, as the boy, and Ralph Fiennes, as adult Michael, also are excellent. And, hey, numerous nude scenes by Kate Winslet don’t hurt, either! We’re big fans of Clive Owen and international thrillers, so “The International” was right up our cinematic alley, and Leslie and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Owen plays an Interpol agent trying to bring down a corrupt, all-powerful international bank that’s dealing in money-laundering and arms sales to terrorists (and killing anyone who gets in the way). Naomi Watts is excellent, though a bit underused, as a New York assistant district attorney working with him. They have tremendous chemistry, which is why it’s interesting (and surprising) that while their characters flirt a bit during the film, they never get together. German director Tom Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”) is too busy building the suspense relentlessly to bother with a romantic tangent. The film jumps around Europe and across the Atlantic, with the set piece being a spectacular shootout at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. I also managed to catch “The Uninvited,” a nifty little suspense-horror film based on the highest-grossing Korean film of all time. Directed by Britain’s Guard brothers and starring the lovely Emily Browning (the girl from the “Lemony Snicket” film), it’s about two sisters who think their late mother’s nurse, who’s about to marry Dad, might have been responsible for the fire that killed Mom. Browning’s character recently has been released from a mental hospital after a suicide attempt and she’s seeing all sorts of grisly apparitions warning her of impending doom. The always excellent David Strathairn (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) is the father and Elizabeth Banks (“Scrubs”) is nursey dearest. I knew there was a twist ending going in, but the twist isn’t what you expect it to be. It’s not even your second choice. This film is in the discount theaters now, so if you want a diverting couple of hours on the cheap, give it a try. I wasn’t able to catch Daniel Craig in the WWII Jewish resistance thriller “Defiance” before it moved out of theaters, but my daughter Olivia did and she really liked it a lot. She also has seen the hotly debated superhero drama “Watchmen,” which she gives a qualified thumbs-up to. You can check out her views here: http://ojpking.livejournal.com/ I’m not sure what I’ll see next. I’m kind of interested in “Duplicity,” another Clive Owen film, but Leslie isn’t wild about his co-star, Julia Roberts. My daughter and I are considering “The Edge of Love,” which is about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and features Keira Knightley (Olivia’s favorite), but the reviews are sort of middling, so I’m not sure. We want to see Tom Hanks in “Angels and Demons” in May and I probably will check out the J.J. Abrams take on “Star Trek.” I’ll have to see what the word of mouth is on “Terminator Salvation.” Of course, no question we’ll be there for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The latest trailer for it can be viewed here: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809791044/video/12342139 QUICKIES: I revisited two of my teenage movie crushes over the weekend via DVD. Olivia, who’s studying Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in school, was watching the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version, which was one of her birthday gifts and which stars one of her namesakes, the breathtaking Olivia Hussey. And then I watched the long-overdue U.S. DVD release of “The Family Way,” the little-known U.K. comedy-drama that marked Paul McCartney’s first musical foray away from The Beatles and featured Hayley Mills at her most beautiful and appealing in her first adult role. Double sigh. … I’ve been checking in on Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s new incarnation of “Late Night,” and while it’s gotten a little better, it’s still pretty much a trainwreck. His cue card-reading is atrocious, his stiff monologues are so unfunny that even the folks who got in to see the show for free don’t laugh, and the interviews are dismal, especially when it’s one of his friends and they sit there giggling and patting each other on the back. He tends to run all his words together slacker-style, too. The main problem, though, is that I don’t see any basic charisma there, and even Conan in his early floundering days had that going for him. … Bob Dylan’s latest studio album, “Together Through Life,” is due out April 28. He’ll be hard-pressed to match 2006’s “Modern Times,” but let’s hope. … A recent survey showed that Americans still prefer British acts over all other non-U.S. musical performers. When asked which British musical artists they listened to in the past 12 months, 49 percent said Elton John and 48 percent named The Beatles, with The Rolling Stones also ranking high (41 percent), followed by Coldplay at 36 percent. You might find it surprising that Elton topped the Fabs until you remember that one of the most prevalent radio formats around now is “classic hits,” which features Elton (or Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles) about every 20 minutes. … I’m not really familiar with the work of actress Ginnifer Goodwin (of HBO’s “Big Love”), but the Memphis native was so charming on a recent Letterman appearance that I’m going to have to check her out. … Among the shows on my DVD-release wish list is the American version of “That Was the Week That Was” with David Frost, Buck Henry and Alan Alda. This was the show that set the template for “Weekend Update” on “SNL.” Surely one of the specialist labels like Shout Factory (which has done the “Dick Cavett Show” releases) could cut a deal to issue a complete set of the short-lived topical satire series. … I see VH1 is bringing back “Behind the Music,” the much-parodied “rise and fall” bio series that ran from 1997 to 2004. It did indeed become formulaic, but among the highlights for me were the rare footage of the great Atlanta Pop Festival in the Grand Funk episode and, of course, the show devoted to Badfinger. Unfortunately, the new incarnation is going to focus more on contemporary acts like Lil Wayne. … I enjoyed U2’s week of residency with Letterman, but I must say I find much of the new “No Line on the Horizon” album sounds like generic U2. The only track that stands out is the anthemic “Magnificent.” … After 16 years, cable’s Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name to the ridiculous SyFy, partly to reflect a broadening of its programming to include more fantasy, but mainly because the NBC Universal suits realized they couldn’t trademark Sci-Fi and were missing out on ancillary marketing bucks. … The fifth series of “Hustle,” the BBC’s terrific con man series with Robert Vaughn, aired in January and February in Britain, but still no word on when it will show up over here or if it will still be on AMC. I tried e-mailing the channel’s customer service folks but they didn’t respond. Fans are particularly anxious to see this series as it marks the return of Adrian Lester as the team leader. He was sorely missed in Series 4. … I was fascinated reading the obituaries of Alan W. Livingston recently. My primary interest was the fact that he was the president of Capitol Records who finally decided to issue The Beatles’ records on his label in the U.S., but there was so much more. Not only did he also sign Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys to the label, he created Bozo the Clown for a Capitol kiddie release. And during a foray away from the label at NBC he was responsible for putting “Bonanza” on the air. His brother was Jay Livingston, composer of songs such as “Mona Lisa” and, yes, the “Bonanza” theme. And Alan Livingston was married to actress Nancy Olson of “The Absent Minded Professor,” “Son of Flubber” and “Pollyanna” Disney fame. Talk about your pop culture connections! … Speaking of The Beatles, I didn’t even realize Tiger Beat magazine was still around until I saw a press release a couple of weeks ago touting its publication of a 3-D issue featuring the Jonas Brothers. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have been caught dead buying one of those teen-scream magazines, but I did check them out on the rack at Hodgson’s Pharmacy just to see what tidbits of Beatles news I could glean, since they were just about the only source for such info in those pre-Rolling Stone days. I wonder if they still run charts showing the stars’ likes and dislikes (I remember Ringo didn’t like Donald Duck and always wondered why). If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: hopeful Current Music: Simon and Garfunkel (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
10:26 am	Sixty Minutes of Fun Packed Into Four Hours There’s been a lot of talk the past few years about whether the TV ratings of the annual Oscar telecast have been declining because the film academy keeps nominating arty offerings that appeal more to Hollywood types than to the folks paying to get into the multiplexes. While I’m sure there’s something to that, Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony on ABC was a prime example of what the real problem with the Oscars is: The show started at 8 p.m. and only managed to hand out two of the awards anybody outside the film community cared about over the next three hours, delaying the major categories — best actor and actress, best director and best film — until after 11 p.m. Eastern time. Sorry, but that ain’t show biz. Those sound mixing and art direction and cinematography awards are important to folks in movieland, but they don’t make good viewing. What the Oscars need to do is take a page from the Grammys and hand those things out before airtime and just make mention of them during the broadcast. Of course, it wasn’t just minor awards taking up those first three hours of the Oscarcast. There were the TWO lengthy Broadway-style song-and-dance numbers featuring host Hugh Jackman. Hello, was this the Tonys? Jackman is an ingratiating enough personality, but as an Oscar host he was pretty much a nonpresence. Such a nonpresence, in fact, that for lengthy periods we didn’t even see him, as Will Smith noted during his extended stay as a presenter. Speaking of which, Will would be a great choice to host this thing. The structuring of the early hours into some sort of mini-course in how a film is made was thoughtfully done … and boring. We know film folks are self-absorbed, but do they really think anyone watching cares about that stuff? We’re tuning in to see big stars giving awards to big stars. Period. And while some of the many film montages were nicely done, there not only were too many of them, but the broadcast’s director kept pulling the camera back from the video screens so you could barely make out what you were seeing, particularly during the homage to film folks who died in the past year. Winding up with the beloved Paul Newman was a nice touch, though. Other Oscar thoughts: It certainly wasn’t a great year for best song nominees, so it was just as well that all three of them (two from “Slumdog Millionaire”) were crammed into one big medley (which, of course, followed another medley of the Oscar orchestra playing snippets from the nominated scores). Best song is an area that really has fallen off drastically in recent years. … Heath Ledger’s win as best supporting actor was pretty much a foregone conclusion, but it was nevertheless a satisfying moment. He really deserved the award. … Tina Fey (who looked great) and Steve Martin were an early highlight, particularly when she looked up at him and he stopped to admonish, “Don’t fall in love with me.” And Jennifer Anniston and Jack Black came off pretty funny, too. But Bill Maher grousing about his religion documentary not getting nominated and then giving it another plug was just plain boorish. … The mixing in of clips from past years’ movies in the montage of this year’s best picture nominees was distracting and weird. … Kate Winslet still may not have the coherent acceptance speech thing down (though this was better than her hyperventilating performance at the Golden Globes), but her innate charm made up for it. And as a six-time nominee, it was about damn time she won it. … One thing the Oscar telecast producers got right was having former winners pay tribute to the nominees in the acting categories. While a couple of the bits for lesser nominees like Richard Jenkins may have come off a bit perfunctory, several were very heartwarming and sincere, especially Shirley MacLaine’s comments to the lovely Anne Hathaway. And I think she’s right; we’ll see Hathaway up for that best actress Oscar again. … As was the case five years ago when he won for “Mystic River,” I was struck by what a popular choice Sean Penn seemed to be in the room. Obviously his outspoken nature and mercurial temperament haven’t hurt him within the film community. … Uh, what was that thing on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s head? … Ben Stiller’s take-off on Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman was a hoot. More moments like that would have made those first three hours a bit easier to endure. … A dignified Jerry Lewis. Who’d a thunk it? … I’m not big on Oscar fashion critiques, but that dress Jessica Biel was wearing looked like she’d wrapped herself up in one of those oversized towels from a spa. On the other hand, Angelina Jolie looked REALLY GOOD in that black strapless number. … I loved Will Smith’s jibe at the Hollywood crowd in his comments about action films, listing the things they have that other films don’t, including car chases, explosions … and fans. Which brings us back to where we started. Certainly, when a film as well-made, fully realized and satisfying as “The Dark Knight” can only pick up a major award posthumously, there definitely is a credibility gap between the film academy and its audience. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: bored Current Music: Simon & Garfunkel (22 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
9:44 am	A Quickie Update The past month has been a tough, hectic one. As I noted in a comment posted to the previous entry, I've been pretty much out of the loop since Jan. 13, when my 86-year-old Dad suffered heart failure apparently induced by problems with his blood pressure medicine. I spent all the rest of that week and King Day in my hometown with my brothers, much of our time in the intensive care unit with him. Things got worse before they got better, but after they put a pacemaker in and got him off the ventilator, he bounced back. “Your Dad’s remarkable,” the cardiologist said. After three weeks in the hospital, he was moved to an extended care facility last week for physical therapy to get him back on his feet, literally. Anyway, after Dad got out of the ICU but was still in the hospital I was commuting back and forth on a daily basis, and since then I’ve been scrambling to get back on track with the next issue of Beatlefan. So pardon my absence here. There’ve been quite a few pop culture developments I wanted to comment on but they’ll have to wait just a bit longer. I wanted to take a moment, though, to say thanks for all the kind wishes and prayers directed my Dad’s way by so many of you. It makes a big difference, believe me! As usual, feel free to leave thoughts and comments on anything going on that you'd like to discuss, and I’ll weigh in as time permits. You don’t have to be registered with Live Journal to comment. Current Mood: thankful Current Music: Badfinger (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
8:15 pm	A Quick Look Back Much of 2008 sucked for me as well as many others, but at least there were a few pleasant distractions along the way. Here’s some of what I enjoyed this past year … I saw 17 films during 2008, a couple of them twice, including what was easily my choice as the best of the year: “The Dark Knight.” As my son Bill put it: "It's the Batman film I always hoped would be made." And Heath Ledger's Joker is an unforgettable performance. My other favorite films of the year: the French “Tell No One,” an engrossing Hitchcockian thriller; “Iron Man,” with Robert Downey Jr. owning the screen as millionaire-turned-superhero Tony Stark; and “Cloverfield” (my other two-timer), a stylish reinvention of the monster movie. Also enjoyable: Tom Cruise trying to kill Hitler in “Valkyrie,” Daniel Craig on a mission of vengeance as 007 in the lean, mean “Quantum of Solace,” the extremely well-cast remake of “Brideshead Revisited,” the more character-driven, fan-friendly “The X-Files: I Want to Believe,” the fast, furious, over-the-top “Wanted,” and the French spy farce “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” and its Hollywood cousin “Get Smart” (especially Anne Hathaway). And then there were the films I went to for one reason or another that proved to be decent entertainment, though not all that memorable: “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” and “Vantage Point.” On the tube, the sci-fi mindscrambler “Lost” turned in a consistently engrossing season and remained atop my favorites list, but it had strong competition from the 1960s-set Madison Avenue drama “Man Men,” which is easily the smartest, most impressive series on TV. I also really enjoyed HBO’s sexy, bloody vampire series “True Blood,” and I was glad to see that by midseason the new “X-Files” wannabe “Fringe” was starting to hit its stride. I continued to enjoy the trio of “Law and Order” series, though I don’t think any of them is having as good a current run as they did in the season that wound up last May. I also enjoyed the sporadic episodes of the demon-battling series “Supernatural” that I saw. And I continue to be a regular viewer of “Late Show With David Letterman” and thought Dave was in top form during the fall presidential campaign. Musically, my favorite albums of the year were Paul McCartney (as the Fireman) merging his melodic and experimental sides on the superb, challenging “Electric Arguments”; Coldplay’s relentlessly melodic and thoughtful “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends”; California folk-pop-blues chanteuse Tristan Prettyman’s playful and always tuneful “Hello…x”; James Taylor’s commanding remakes on “Covers”; and Shelby Lynne’s Dusty Springfield tribute album, “Just a Little Lovin’.” Also worth repeat plays: the welcome comeback album “Meet Glen Campbell”; “Rockferry,” the debut album by Welsh retro-soul singer Duffy (the single “Mercy” got on my nerves a bit but the rest of the album is top-notch material and drew a Grammy nominee for best pop vocal album); “19” by Adele, another of the new breed of British blue-eyed soul singers, who has an impressive voice though her tunes aren’t as good as Duffy’s, with the exception of “Chasing Pavements,” which is a Grammy nominee for Record of the Year and Song of the Year (Adele and Duffy are both up for best new artist and best female pop vocal performance); Tom Jones’ “24 Hours,” his first new U.S. studio album in 15 years and an enjoyable showcase for what’s still a terrific voice; the rootsy folk tunes of Atlantan Shawn Mullins on “Honeydew”; and the charmingly retro indie pop/alt country of “She & Him,” the album debut of actress Zooey Deschanel as a singer-songwriter. My son Bill introduced me to that last release. A couple of compilations I’m glad I picked up: Frank Sinatra’s “Nothing But the Best” and “The Dave Clark Five: The Hits.” And also worth getting is the 30th anniversary edition of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger.” My favorite bootleg release: Paul McCartney's Ukraine concert. Single tracks that particularly appealed to me this year include: Sheryl Crow’s “Love Is Free” and “Detours,” R.E.M.’s “Supernatural Superserious,” Jack Johnson’s “Hope,” Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” Gavin Rossdale’s “Love Remains the Same,” the Killers’ “Human,” O.A.R.’s “Shattered (Turn the Car Around),” Guster’s “Satellite” (which actually came out in 2007), Loudon Wainwright III’s “School Days” (the version on his recent “Recovery” album), Shawn Mullins’ “All in My Head,” Linkin Park’s “Shadow of the Day” (also from 2007) and David Gray’s “You’re the World to Me” (off his 2007 “Greatest Hits” … hey, sometimes it takes me a while). The only concert I saw this year: Coldplay, arena rock at its best, artfully presented. Of the many new DVD releases I picked up this year, here are a few highlights I recommend: The “Walt Disney Treasures” edition of “Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh” (with Patrick McGoohan!), “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: The Best of Season 3” (even if it doesn’t entirely live up to the title because it doesn’t include the two Beatles shows), “Classic Albums: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” (with wonderful interviews about the making of the album), “Birds of Prey: The Complete Series” (an underrated short-lived TV version of the Batman comic spinoff), “Serial” (the long-awaited DVD debut of the classic Martin Mull-Tuesday Weld satire of late ’70s Marin County, California … sex, drugs, psychobabble and health food), “War Games: 25th Anniversary Edition (still a terrific film, with a young Matthew Broderick at his best), “Mad Men: Season One” (a great way to see what all the fuss is about), “The Invaders: The First Season” (the ’60s sci-fi classic with Roy Thinnes), “Matlock: The First Season” (for Andy Griffith fans, including the terrific two-hour pilot filmed in Atlanta) and “This Is Tom Jones Volume 2: Legendary Performers” (more from his ’60s variety hour, featuring guests ranging from Sammy Davis Jr. to Janis Joplin). And the best development in radio for me this year: the arrival of Scott Shannon’s True Oldies Channel on the Atlanta airwaves. At last, a station with a playlist that isn't limited to a couple of hundred songs! MOVING ON TO THE NEW YEAR: The first film Leslie and I have seen in 2008 is the French drama “I’ve Loved You So Long,” starring the bilingual Kristin Scott Thomas as a bit of a mystery woman who is released from prison after serving 15 years for murdering her own son. She goes to live with her younger sister, who is anxious to re-establish a relationship while at the same time not wanting to dwell on what happened and why. The sister’s husband is understandably nervous, since they have two adopted daughters. What transpires is an intelligently observant piece, worth seeing just for the performance of Scott Thomas, who is brilliant portraying a woman slowly coming back to life. Elsa Zylberstein is also great as her endearing, if somewhat neurotic, sister. Scott Thomas, by the way, recently signed to play John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi in “Nowhere Boy,” a forthcoming film about the Beatle’s childhood. QUICKIES: I don’t usually watch “Saturday Night Live” past the opening bit, but I stayed tuned last night to catch Nashville sensation Taylor Swift as the musical performer. The 19-year-old is, of course, stunningly beautiful, but she also writes interesting tunes, though what I’ve heard from her latest album doesn’t really have much connection to country music. Swift, who was obviously thrilled to be there, came off pretty well, though she doesn’t have the strongest voice around. However, her band’s antics behind her were unintentionally amusing — like a parody of every rock-star pose you’ve ever seen onstage. … What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to the British buying public, apparently not enough. I read recently that in Britain Cadbury finds it necessary to print a warning saying “CONTAINS MILK” on its Dairy Milk candy bars and a “CONTAINS NUTS” warning on its Dairy Milk Whole Nut bar. It seems they’re simply following in the steps of the U.K. supermarket chain Tesco, which three years ago started putting “CONTAINS MILK” warnings on, you guessed it, cartons of milk. … Parents too often take for granted that their children understand what they’re hearing until their kids amusingly show otherwise. When our daughter Olivia was 4 years old, there was a gubernatorial campaign going on in which the Republican ran nonstop ads labeling his opponent, Roy Barnes, “too liberal” for Georgia. One day at my folks’ house, Barnes came on the TV screen and Olivia exclaimed to my father, “Papa, there’s Roy Barnes, he’s too LITTLE for Georgia!” More recently, my brother’s 4-year-old grandson spotted the president-elect on the tube and identified him as “The Rock” Obama! Mmmm, smell what The Rock is cooking in Washington. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Tom Jones (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
10:15 pm	John Lennon, meet Forrest Gump That TV/Web spot where John Lennon is used as spokesman for a program to donate laptops to the world’s poorest children is just a really bad idea on so many levels. First, if you haven’t seen it, go here: http://www.youtube.com/olpc OK, for starters, a lot of folks just find it “creepy” to see a dead man talking about something that didn’t even exist in his lifetime, even if it is for a charity. That doesn’t bother me as much as the producers deciding that rather than piece together a Lennon message through artful editing of clips of him really talking — even if that meant going without him actually saying the word “laptop” — it was better to write a script and have an imitator speak for Lennon. Bad precedent and really presumptuous. I can’t believe Yoko Ono actually approved it. But the worst thing about the One Laptop Per Child spot is that it’s just really poorly done, and the fact that it’s for a good cause doesn’t excuse the cheapening of Lennon’s image. The simulated Lennon voice sounds more like Nasty from the Rutles or a Julian Lennon imitator. And the brief video bit of Lennon at the end with new lips superimposed to match what he’s supposed to be saying is really cheesy, like something out of “Forrest Gump.” Or worse, those comedy bits Conan O’Brien does with a celebrity picture where the mouth has been cut out and someone’s lips are inserted saying silly things. And that’s my main complaint about the spot: It’s cheap-looking. Amateurish. And not worthy of Lennon. AT THE MOVIES: I’ve mentioned before our family tradition of the past 10 years or so in which we go to see a movie on Dec. 30. Since I didn’t get home from work until quarter to 10 last night, we had to catch the late show at the local AMC multiplex, which by the way badly needs a technical upgrade. The intro to the film cut off for a couple of minutes with the lights coming back up, and once the film started it was the noisiest projector I’ve heard in many years — it took me back to what it was like to sit in the back of the classroom when we watched movies in school. Anyway, the film we chose was worth the trouble. It was “Valkyrie,” the Tom Cruise thriller about the July 20, 1944, attempt by a bunch of German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Despite us knowing going in that the plot failed, director Bryan Singer managed to build and sustain the suspense nicely. Cruise was good as the would-be assassin, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, once you got used to his decision not to even attempt a German accent, and the supporting cast, largely consisting of British actors, including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp, was superb. The film did a good job of showing how these German officers were willing to commit treason, on pain of death if they failed, to try and “save” Germany from Hitler. And why others were willing to look the other way but wouldn’t lift a hand to help the conspirators. My only real complaint about “Valkyrie” is that while we were introduced to Stauffenberg’s loving wife (terrific Dutch actress Carice van Houten of “Black Book” fame) and kids, not enough time was spent on their life together and what Cruise’s character was risking. It would have made us care about his character a bit more. (Not to mention the fact that van Houten is criminally underused in her role.) Still, if WWII flicks are to your liking, I can recommend this one. ON THE TUBE: So often these days the guests on the late-night talk shows focus pretty much on what they’re there to plug and don’t have much else to offer, so it’s a welcome change when someone comes on who’s a great storyteller. That was the case one recent night when Dustin Hoffman was on “Late Show With David Letterman.” Hoffman told some hilarious stories from the days when he was a struggling actor rooming with Bob Duval in New York City. But best of all was a tale CBS had to bleep slightly from when Hoffman was shooting “Tootsie” and was in drag as his character Dorothy and got on an elevator with actor Jose Ferrer, whom he’d admired since boyhood. He decided to do Dorothy and see if he could fool Ferrer, and the older actor bought it. As honey-drawling Dorothy, Hoffman buttered up Ferrer and then cooingly asked to perform an oral sex act on him. That drew a big laugh from the Letterman audience — and a terrific stunned take from bandleader Paul Shaffer — but the punch line was Ferrer’s answer after a long pause … “Not right now.” You can see the clip on Letterman’s Web site at: http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/dave_tv/highlights/index/php/bigshowhighlight.phtml THIRTY YEARS ON: We recently published the 30th anniversary issue of Beatlefan magazine and veteran Beatles fan site Webmaster Steve Marinucci asked to do an interview with me for Examiner.com. You can read it at: http://www.examiner.com/x-2082-Beatles-Examiner~y2008m12d30-Bill-King-talks-about-30-years-of-being-a-Beatlefan-editor-II Next time: My yearly entertainment wrap-up. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: "Running on Empty" (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
12:38 am	A Christmas Eve like no other Thanks to the yearly repetition of family traditions, one Christmas Eve generally blends into another in my memory. Ours usually includes the early evening church service at Holy Trinity Episcopal, the neighborhood lighting of the luminaries in front of the house, a family supper at a nearby Waffle House, the reading by one member of the family of Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and then a couple of hours of playing the board game Carom. A nice family evening. But there’s one Christmas Eve that stands out in my memory above all others, and it took place 40 years ago tonight, when astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders beamed live TV pictures of the moon’s surface back to Earth from their Apollo 8 spacecraft in lunar orbit. Even for a space junkie like I was back in the 1960s heyday of NASA’S manned spaceflight program, Apollo 8 was a special mission — the first time ever that man traveled in outer space beyond Earth’s orbit, the first close-up TV shots of the lunar surface. And thanks to the miracles of modern science, we could sit in our homes and watch it all on our TV sets. That Christmas Eve telecast from the moon when I was 16 years old has a rightful place as one of the most historic and memorable broadcasts of all time, as the three astronauts first described the craters and valleys and mountains that made up the stark black-and-white moonscape below them and then, in a surprise NASA didn’t know about in advance, proceeded to take turns reading the first dozen lines from the King James version of Genesis in the Bible. When Anders read those first words, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” while we were seeing the primeval setting below him … well, it made chills run down my spine. Borman closed out the broadcast “with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” Then came one of those globally shared tense moments that the astronauts of NASA provided more than their share of in those days, as the Apollo 8 moved to the dark side of the moon, and out of radio contact with Earth, on their final orbit around the white orb. While out of touch, they would fire the engine that would propel them out of lunar orbit and on their way back home — if everything went well. If it didn’t, they’d be stuck up there … and die. If we didn’t hear from them by about 12:34 a.m. on Christmas morning, we’d know something had gone amiss with the rocket burn. Everyone else in the family had gone to bed, anticipating the typically early Christmas rising in our household (where my brothers were known to get up as early as 4 in the morning to see what had been left under the tree). But my Dad and I couldn’t tear ourselves away from the TV in the downstairs den. We watched and waited as the TV commentators — I can’t recall for sure which network we were watching, but it might have been Jules Bergman on ABC — filled air time by running down the dire consequences if the burn didn’t go well. The wait seemed interminable. Then it was time, and the capsule communicator in Houston started calling out: “Apollo 8, Houston …” waiting a few seconds and then trying again, “Apollo 8, Houston …. Apollo 8, Houston …” Finally, Lovell’s voice answered: “Houston, Apollo 8. Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus.” One of those moments you never forget. It had been a tough year, 1968, what with the Vietnam War, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, the rioting, the election of Tricky Dick. But as Robert Zimmerman wrote in his book “Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8,” that successful flight to the moon and back “put a positive, life-affirming exclamation point on what had been an ugly, violent year.” Forty years later, I still get chillbumps thinking about it. A very merry Christmas to you all. If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
3:34 pm	Put up the tree before my spirit falls again Boy, the Christmas music starting on the local radio at noon on Thanksgiving Eve couldn’t have come at a better time. This year, of all years, we needed a little Christmas, right this very minute. Of course, on the radio it’s mostly a mix of the standards (Bing, Perry, Brenda Lee) and familiar stuff from recent years by the likes of Faith Hill, Mariah Carey, Harry Connick Jr., etc. But there are a few notable new Christmas albums this year worth checking out, including Sheryl Crow’s “Home for Christmas” (a Hallmark stores exclusive), Melissa Etheridge’s “A New Thought for Christmas,” Sarah Brightman’s “A Winter Symphony,” Kristin Chenoweth’s “A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas” and Aretha Franklin’s Borders/Waldenbooks exclusive, “This Christmas, Aretha.” As for “Elvis Presley Christmas Duets,” on which a variety of country-pop female singers, including Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood, Sara Evans and Olivia Newton John, are grafted in the studio onto new mixes of the King’s holiday numbers, what I’ve heard of it doesn’t do much for me. But then I’ve never really thought the King was well suited for Christmas songs, with the exception of “Blue Christmas.” It seemed on many of those tunes Presley overdid the Elvis mannerisms to the point of self-parody — I’m particularly thinking of “Here Comes Santa Claus” (the new album’s version of which pairs him with LeAnn Rimes). Elsewhere on the Christmas music scene, it caught me a little by surprise when I read recently that “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” the No. 1 novelty hit that introduced Alvin, Simon and Theodore, is 50 years old this holiday season. Wow, that takes me back to first grade! You don’t hear it that much on the radio these days, but you can wallow in some childhood nostalgia at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dnrosVyamY A very different version of the tune, simply titled “Christmas Don’t Be Late,” has been issued by indie singer Rosie Thomas as part of her album “A Very Rosie Christmas.” You can hear her rendition, turning it into an atmospheric ballad, here: http://www.last.fm/music/Rosie+Thomas/_/Christmas+Don't+Be+Late And while on the subject of Christmas songs, a couple of years ago when I came up with my holiday Top 10 here, I mentioned that two of the holiday tunes I was tired of hearing multiple versions of were “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” While I’m still fed up with the former song, there is one version of “Little Drummer Boy” that I’ve grown rather fond of — the one by the country group Lonestar. They give it almost a Celtic/folky reading that I find refreshing. PASSING OF ODETTA: Speaking of folk music, when I read this week that the singer Odetta had died, it conjured up that whole civil rights movement era coffeehouse/listening room scene in the 1960s and early ’70s. Although my hometown of Athens, Ga., later became known around the world as birthplace of several notable acts, there really weren’t any music clubs in the college town until a tiny little place called the Last Resort opened in 1966. Seating less than a hundred, the Resort was on a circuit of folk-jazz-bluegrass clubs that performers like Odetta, Elizabeth, Gamble Rogers, Doc Watson, Towns Van Zandt, the Rev. Pearly Brown, Leon Redbone and a pre-fame Jimmy Buffett worked regularly. Comedians also played there, including a young Steve Martin (who, according to legend, took the audience out for french fries afterward). Even the rising hometown B-52’s played there once in the late ’70s, though that wasn’t really their audience’s kind of scene. The club later expanded into the place next door and presented acts like Guadalcanal Diary before closing down in the mid-’80s. It was reborn, sort of, in 1992 as a restaurant called The Last Resort Grill, but they don’t make music there any more. Which is just as well, since that whole musical era seems to have passed into legend. NOMINATED FOR WHAT? When I first heard this week that Paul McCartney had been nominated for two Grammys, I was struggling to think what he’d released in the past year that would qualify. Then came the word that it was for two tracks from the VERY limited-edition vinyl-only “Amoeba’s Surpise” EP of four songs done live at L.A.’s Amoeba Records on his 2007 mini-tour. You might wonder how the folks at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences who pick the nominees even noticed that release, but I’m told that getting Macca some more Grammy nods was a priority for Concord Records, which distributed his “Memory Almost Full” album for Starbucks and would very much like to entice the Beatle Without a Record Label to sign on for another release. (His new Fireman album, which debuted at No. 67 on the Billboard album chart this week, is on his own MPL label being distributed as an indie release by Dave Mathews’ ATO Records.) Such politicking has gotten Macca a bunch of unlikely Grammy nominations in the past, though they rarely result in him actually winning the prize since that’s up to the vote of the academy membership at large. Ringo Starr, surprisingly, also got a nomination in the very niche surround sound category for his compilation of 5.1 remixes. Ringo actually might stand a better chance than Paul of winning, since he’s up against some esoteric releases most folks have never heard of, while Macca is competing with the likes of Kid Rock, John Mayer, Ne-Yo, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder. SHADES OF “MY SWEET LORD”: American guitarist Joe Satriani filed suit this week against Britain’s Coldplay, accusing the band (which got seven Grammy nominations) of plagiarizing him. Satriani says that Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” incorporates “substantial original portions” of his 2004 instrumental “If I Could Fly.” He’s seeking damages, any and all profits, yada yada yada. You can hear the Satriani track here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcjXo8ZuqE And the Coldplay song (one of my favorites of the year) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE Overall, to my untrained ears the two songs are not substantially the same, but a recurring guitar phrase in the Satriani number is extremely close to the main melody of the Coldplay song. I bet this one gets settled out of court with a nice payment to Satriani and possibly amended credits on future editions of the album. Or maybe, as my friend Dr. Winston O’Boogie suggested, Coldplay could take a page out of George Harrison’s book and simply buy the rights to the song they’re accused of copying, as George did when a court ruled his “My Sweet Lord” infringed on the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine.” BOSS TUNES: I’ve listened a few times to Bruce Springsteen’s “Working on a Dream,” the rather laid-back midtempo first single and title track from his upcoming album, which is due out on Jan. 27. It’s pleasant but not particularly memorable and nowhere near as catchy as the last album’s “Radio Nowhere.” I don’t think “Working on a Dream” is as good as the recent Halloween download “A Night With the Jersey Devil” (which is one of two bonus tracks on the new album, Rolling Stone says). You can see the official video for “Working on a Dream” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlVw4O8fDqs&feature=related Much more to my liking is the secondary advance track issued by Springsteen this week, the upbeat “My Lucky Day,” which has a more immediate musical hook and some nice ringing guitars. You can see the official video for it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUJxgBlvcPc The other bonus track on the forthcoming album, “The Wrestler,” is a song Springsteen wrote for the new Mickey Rourke comeback film of the same name. It’s a sparsely produced, pretty acoustic ballad. Not my favorite type of Springsteen song, but you can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OSvJvSwmd4 Springsteen will, of course, be this year’s superstar headliner in the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 1. QUICKIES: Confirmation has come that Tim Burton is planning on making his next film a big-screen adaptation of the ’60s gothic TV serial “Dark Shadows,” with Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, the first vampire anti-hero way back before we became hip-deep in good-guy bloodsuckers. Depp is perfect for Barnabas, but I’m not sure how I feel about Burton. His last foray into reviving a pop culture staple, “Planet of the Apes,” was pretty well botched. I liked the ape costumes and the way he had his actors mimic simian movement, but letting the previously mute humans talk was a bad move and Mark Walhberg was no Charlton Heston as the central character. Not to mention that totally screwed-up ending Burton came up with. … Ball State University, which finally has gotten some notice for its football team this season, has picked up a seven-figure gift from the school’s most famous alum, David Letterman. (I think he edges out Joyce DeWitt, don’t you?) Letterman’s name already is on the school’s new communications and media building, and now he’s the principal source of support for a lecture series bringing the likes of Ted Koppel to campus. Maybe next they can put Rupert “Hello Deli” Gee’s name on the dining hall. … And in news from Mayberry, Brad Paisley’s “Waitin’ on a Woman” video, which features Andy Griffith, won Music Video of the Year at the recent Country Music Association awards. Griffith also provides the voice of Santa Claus in the new retro-feeling animated film “Christmas Is Here Again,” released last month on DVD. (The voice cast also includes the likes of Jay Leno, Kathy Bates and Shirley Jones.) Meanwhile, director Ron Howard, who donned a wig to play Opie again briefly in a pro-Obama Web short, is being honored at 8 p.m. Dec. 29 with a 90-minute career retrospective on the Turner Classic Movies channel. Howard’s latest, “Frost/Nixon,” is due out Dec. 26 and is drawing rave reviews and lots of Oscar buzz. Having Mrs. Crump as a teacher didn’t hurt him after all! If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: grateful Current Music: "O Holy Night" (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
9:21 am	"Grandma" I thought I'd share a beautiful piece of writing with you. It's the eulogy that my son Bill delivered this past Thursday at the memorial service for my Mom. ... I’d like to thank Rev. Appleton for being with us today and conducting this service. My grandmother thought very highly of you and would be honored by your presence. My family is grateful and we thank you. Last Friday night, I was in Columbus GA with a group of traveling buddies for the Georgia-Auburn game taking place the following afternoon. Now keep in mind, most of the conversations this group of friends have revolve around football, grilling meat, girls and football. But yet, I had the room hushed and captivated by the story of a dashing, young American serviceman from the hills of Georgia, who stormed into the mothercountry of Great Britain and managed to sweep a witty, intelligent and classy Welsh girl off her feet and back to the states. There was the dangerous mission with a suitcase handcuffed to his wrist in order to get back to Wales for the wedding. A marriage license signed by no less than the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe himself, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Then followed 64 years of marriage, in which a successful life was built, producing a great family, and a lasting impact on the community in which they lived. Whenever people hear this story, they marvel at how it sounds like something straight out of Hollywood. And in this script, it’s easy to see my grandfather playing the role of the hero. Indeed, he did. The country boy who won the heart of the sophisticated British girl. I still marvel at the gumption it must have taken my grandfather to approach a girl like Grandma, much less marry her. I mean, Grandma was a catch. Grandma also had high standards for people. So, it is a testament to the kind of man my grandfather is, that he was the love of her life. He is one of the most honorable and noble men I have ever known and someone I admire greatly. But this Hollywood script had a co-star in my grandmother. As amazed as I am at the lengths my grandfather went to, I have always been equally astounded by the incredible strength my grandmother showed, at the age of 19, in leaving all she had ever known, her family, Wales, the land of her fathers, to come to America and start a new life. Imagine the courage an action like that takes. It wasn’t always easy in those first days. Lord knows, there are enough stories about Grandma’s time in Colbert to fill a book. A really funny book. But she persevered, remained strong, and remained at my grandfather’s side. Certainly, this is a testament to the incredible love that bound their relationship. But it also a tribute to the amazing strength of my grandmother. Quite simply, my grandmother is the strongest person I have ever known. Not just the strongest woman. Sometimes, we fall into the trap of thinking our role models, our heros, must look just like us and fit some preconceived stereotype of strength. But, no, my grandmother was a powerhouse of strength and courage. She feared no one and allowed nothing to stand in her way when pursuing what she knew to be right and true. It is a quality I often search for when I am faced with a tough road I know must be traveled. My grandmother was so strong, so fearless, she even had the courage to send her older sister to her room. Mind you, that older sister was about 60 years old at the time. I remember when this story was being told to me over a dinner table by Dad, Uncle Jon and Uncle Tim. They rolled with laughter as they recalled Grandma sending Auntie Helen to her room after she found her walking outside in the oppressive heat of a summer afternoon in Georgia. Sticking to her guns, after all this years, Grandma replied, “Well, she was acting like a fool. Out there in the heat like that.” And Auntie Helen was no shrinking violet either, mind you. Grandma’s strength was on display for years as a columnist for the Athens Observer. A lifelong love affair with the written word gave her the ability to express herself with a clear and commanding voice. A fiercely independent woman, Grandma needed no help in making her views known. A co-worker of my grandfather, taking issue with some of the views expressed by my Grandmother in a column, asked my grandfather if he reviewed and approved her columns before she submitted them. He replied, “when the byline reads Mrs. William D. King then you’ll know I approved them beforehand.” But we know the byline never said that. Instead, it always read Mollie Parry King. One of the most extraordinary things about my grandmother was how she was not only one of the strongest people I have ever known, but she was also one of the kindest and most generous. It was in her blood. Her father, a butcher in Abergavenny, would donate food to poor farmers in the surrounding hills. But did so with care not to offend the dignity of those proud people by accepting whatever small token of payment they offered. Understanding that they did not want charity. Then there was her mother. By all accounts, Grandma was rivaled only by her mother in terms of generosity, ability and dynamic spirit. That kindness was on display in one of Grandma’s favorite stories about the time her mother called on the family doctor on behalf of a certain young American soldier with a bad cough. She asked the doctor if he could provide any of that cough medicine he had used for Grandma in the past. The doctor asked, “is Mollie sick?” My great-grandmother replied, “Well, no, but there is this young American with a dreadful smokers cough.” The doctor looked at her and said, “Mrs. Parry, you know you can’t mother the world.” She replied, “Yes, but I can I have a good try at it.” I think Grandma told that story because it was an example of the kind of life she tried to lead. The task may be daunting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a fight. And a generous act is not simply a nice thing to do, but the right thing to do. One of the true joys of my childhood was coming to Athens every summer for a week long vacation with Grandma and Papa. I knew I was in store for great food, romping through the vegetable garden, watching Braves games with Papa, and fascinating stories from Grandma’s rich world of experiences. She always made sure I got to tag along with Papa on whatever he was doing and even taught me a thing or two about grammar. Each night, before I would go to bed, she would turn out the light and say to me, “Goodnight, God Bless, see you in the morning.” But when I really got to know Grandma was when I moved to Athens over five years ago to attend the university. My dorm freshman year was, at times, pure chaos. And I think that might be a phrase the Red and Black, our student newspaper, used to describe my hall in the article they wrote after a bizarre incident involving a fire extinguisher. I was in a place with people who perhaps would not have always met Grandma’s high standards for conduct. But at her house, I found an oasis of calm in the midst of the storm that was freshman year. Grandma’s generosity was on full display with her near magical ability to always have a meat pie ready for whenever I came, an open offer to use the washer and drying machines anytime I liked or to even stay the night, as I did when my dorm room, during finals no less, flooded, which was thought previously impossible considering the room was on the second floor. Never underestimate a clogged sink’s ability to make a mess. But the real treat of all those visits was listening to Grandma. Her sharp and restless intellect gave her a fount of topics on which she could be conversant. Sometimes it was politics or news. Perhaps, though, the best times were those when she would tell her stories from back in the days when wolves were still in Wales. Grandma had a treasure trove of tales, some amusing, others serious. I learned family history, but in that colorful way in which Grandma could bring to life a scene, even one involving people I had never met. During my final visit with her, last Friday, she told me a story of a family secret involving her great aunts. She learned the secret through honest and open conversations she would have with her father, as he lay in bed with cancer. Years later, talking about those conversations with her older sister, would lead Auntie Helen to remark to Grandma, “I wish I had known our father the way you did.” I am extremely grateful that I and many others knew Grandma the way she knew her father. Our lives are richer for it and the history of our forefathers, her history, carries on because of it. I think one of the things we fear about dying is the question of our legacy. Will anyone remember me when I am gone? Is the world any different from me being there? In the case of Grandma, the answer is a simple one. My uncle and cousins and I like to play trivia every Thursday night and this is the type of question that would have us scribbling down the answer as fast as possible and betting the maximum number of points. A resounding yes. We have her words, preserved in a lifetime of columns, letters and journals. We can see the results of her deeds in not only the community she affected but the proud family she raised. In each of us, I see some part of her live on. I see her strength in the no-nonsense force that is my cousin Jennifer. Not to mention her son Gabe. My Uncle Tim remarked to me the other day. “When Gabe is in the room, you know.” I see Grandma in the quiet determination of my cousin Missy. And I recognize her strength in the fierce competitive spirit that pushed my cousin Caroline to the rarefied air of elite-level gymnastics. And Lord knows, I see Grandma’s influence all over the strong woman I can already see developing in my sister Olivia. Recently, my mother said to me, “Do you know that your sister was the only person in her class that had read “Pride and Prejudice?” I wonder who recommended that book. In addition to her strength living on in all of us Kings, and certainly we could use it right now, that spirit of generosity and kindness lingers on. I see it everytime my Uncles Jon and Tim think nothing of coming out during the hottest possible day in mid-August, throwing my furniture in the back of Uncle Tim’s truck and helping me move for the 419th time in the last five years. I see it every Christmas, when my sister and I inevitably get that amazing gift that we would have never known even existed, except for Dad going that extra mile to find something meaningful and special. I know in my own life, I will carry her with me forever and I will think of her often. Perhaps when I have my daily cup of tea, or make her beef stew, or read a good book, or hear a good story or simply just want to smile. I will carry her always. “There will be times when all the things she said will fill our heads, we won’t forget her.” A fellow Welshman, Dylan Thomas, in perhaps his most famous poem, implored his father, facing impending death, to “rage, rage against the dying light. Do not go gentle into that good night.” Grandma’s life was so rich and full, she could hardly be accused of ever letting up. But that good night is upon us now. For the past few days, we have been devastated and shrouded by its darkness. But after the night always comes the morning and with it a time to celebrate. Celebrate a battle well fought, a job well done, a life well lived. To paraphrase something her father was fond of saying, “There was no one better than you and you were a sight bit better than most.” Goodnight Grandma. God Bless. See you in the morning. Current Mood: touched (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
8:13 am	Mollie Parry King, 1926-2008 http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/obits/stories//2008/11/20/mollie_king_obit.html http://www.legacy.com/OnlineAthens/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=120364719 Current Mood: sad Current Music: "Land of My Fathers" (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
5:38 pm	Some unfinished business If, like critic Roger Ebert, what appealed to you about James Bond films in the past were the silly one-liners, the constant bedding of beautiful women, the elaborate gadgets, the over-the-top villains out for world conquest and the cute little running gags with the likes of Q and Miss Moneypenny, then the latest 007 flick, “Quantum of Solace,” is definitely not for you. If, however, you’re like me and found all that Bond formula stuff a bit tiresome and welcomed the tossing out of much of the series “furniture” in the reinvention of the franchise with Daniel Craig’s hard-edged Bond in “Casino Royale,” then I expect you’ll thoroughly enjoy its sequel, “Quantum of Solace,” which opened this weekend. Unlike “Casino,” “Quantum” is pretty much a lean, mean action machine with not much time taken out of its brisk 1 hour, 45 minutes for side trips and diversions. Bond is gunning for the folks responsible for his love Vesper’s death in “Casino,” and won’t let anything, including the CIA and his own government, get in his way. If he happens to mess up the plans of the shadowy group of bad guys, known as Quantum, while he’s at it, that’s a bonus. As Christopher Nolan has done for another franchise with “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” the Craig 007 films are grittier and more reality-based than their predecessors. If that means Bond is more like the Jason Bourne films now, well, that’s certainly not a bad thing in my book. Besides Craig, who manages to be a ruthless killing machine while also showing Bond’s damaged, vulnerable side, the best thing about the new film is the growing relationship between Judi Dench’s “M” and her bad-boy agent. The action set pieces are pretty spectacular, though Leslie and I agreed that director Marc Forster aped the second and third Bourne films a bit too much with all the disorienting super close-ups during the fights and chases. This was the first action film for Forster (“Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland”) and I think it shows a tad, but not to the point of ruining the sequences. Much to the consternation of some Bond fans, 007 only beds one of the two “Bond girls” in the film — Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton — and then only briefly. That’s not what Bond’s about on this mission of vengeance. But there is a nod to the past when one of them winds up dead on a bed covered in a valuable substance — black gold this time. You still get the exotic locations, too, with Italy, Haiti and Bolivia among those featured this time around. As for humor, there are none of groan-worthy puns or flippant jokes as Bond dispatches the bad guys; Craig’s 007 takes his work too seriously for that. Instead, the humor in the film is more subtle, as when Bond, who’s been eavesdropping on a Bluetooth conference of the villainous Quantum group at an opera performance suddenly breaks in on the conversation with, “Can I offer an opinion? I really think you people should find a better place to meet.” While the story picks up only minutes after the end of “Casino Royale” and many of the characters are holdovers from that film, it is not absolutely necessary for you to have seen “Casino” to enjoy “Quantum.” It will enhance the viewing, however, since this is the only true sequel in the Bond series. In fact, this really should be considered “Casino Royale Part 2.” By the end of the film, Bond has settled his “unfinished business” and when M tells him that she needs him back, he coolly says, “I never left.” And then, at the end, we get what was always the traditional opening of Bond films, with tuxedoed Craig caught in a rifle scope and turning to shoot at the screen, which then turns red. It’s as if to say, “OK, enough with the back story. NOW he’s James Bond.” If there’s one quibble I have with the film, it’s the opening theme song, “Another Way to Die,” featuring Jack White and Alicia Keys. As I’ve said before, it’s got a nice guitar riff, but the hip-hop-influenced vocals seem out of place. That’s a minor complaint, though. Overall, I really liked “Quantum of Solace.” As for those who think it’s an awful title, not only is it taken from one of Ian Fleming’s original Bond short stories, but it makes sense at the end of the film as Bond finally gets at least a portion of consolation. A family note: Leslie also enjoyed “Quantum.” In fact, she liked it even more than “Casino Royale” because she’s not really an Eva Green fan. On the other hand, I am a big fan of Green’s (see my top Bond babes below), so I’d have to go with “Casino,” though “Quantum” comes close. On the other hand, my daughter Olivia didn’t really like this film because she found it too violent and missed the romantic relationship at the heart of “Casino Royale.” You can read her view at http://ojpking.livejournal.com/ One more “Quantum” note: For those who miss the colorful names for Bond girls from the past, check the credits to find the first name of the ill-fated babe known in the film only as “Fields.” Hint: Think Beatles. IN CONCERT: I took Olivia and my son Bill to see Coldplay perform at Atlanta’s Philips Arena this week and we all gave it a thumbs-up, with my son’s only complaint being that the band performed just an hour and a half and left out a couple of tunes he would have liked to hear. Leaving your audience wanting more isn’t really a bad thing, of course. While the bulk of the audience appeared to be folks under 30, there were a few geezers like me who appreciate the British band’s unceasingly melodic bent. They did favorites from the past (including “In My Place,” “Speed of Sound,” “Fix You” and “Yellow”) intermixed with numbers from their most recent album, “Viva La Vida.” They also threw a couple of curves, such as doing “techno” versions of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” and “Talk,” and even added a song for their second show in a week in Atlanta that they had not done previously on the tour, “Green Eyes.” Technically, the show mixed state-of-the-art touches such as colorful orbs hanging around the venue that sometimes doubled as video screens with old standbys like colored confetti falling from the rafters. Like the Rolling Stones, they also ventured out to satellite stages amid the fans for several numbers. All in all, it was arena rock at its best, artfully presented. MORE AT THE MOVIES: Among the coming attractions we saw before the Bond film were previews for a couple of films that look promising. One, due in February, is “The International,” starring Clive Owen in a thriller where the villain is an international bank up to no good. Showing up in theaters before that will be “Valkyrie,” the plot-to-kill-Hitler adventure with Tom Cruise. You can see the Valkyrie preview at: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/valkyrie.html?showVideo=1 At the theater where my daughter saw “Quantum,” they also had a preview for another Daniel Craig picture, the World War II resistance adventure “Defiance,” opening in December. She said it looked like a must-see. I found a trailer for the film online and agree. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8OI0JP50 ON THE TUBE: Longtime readers will know I grew up enjoying Ed Sullivan, Andy Williams, the Smothers Brothers and so on in the golden age of the variety hour on TV and would welcome its return. There are some baby steps being taken in that direction, with TBS doing another Ellen DeGeneres variety special Nov. 29 and Rosie O’Donnell hosting a variety special on NBC on Nov. 26, the night before Thanksgiving, that might lead to a regular series. And, in the tradition of Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Barbara Mandrell and other hitmakers who hosted variety hours in the past, singer-songwriter John Mayer is in talks about a possible weekly variety show to debut on CBS next year. Maybe, with network TV watching its audience share erode, the time is right for variety’s return, as it could offer the cheaper production costs of reality TV only with people actually worth watching. QUICKIES: Originally it had been announced that the new season of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” would start this month on USA, but now it’s been pushed back to early 2009 so that the season’s 16 episodes can air uninterrupted. … Moviefone did a poll on fans’ favorite Bond girls and it was topped by Ursula Andress, who made one of the most memorable movie entrances of all time in that white bikini as Honey Ryder in “Dr. No” in 1962 (and also played Vesper Lynd in the 1967 spoof version of “Casino Royale,” a role later played by Eva Green in the official “Casino”). The rest of the Top 10 in the poll in descending order: Halle Berry, Kim Basinger, Barbara Bach, Denise Richards, Evan Green, Isabella Scorupco, Jane Seymour, Britt Ekland and Jill St. John. What’s with these polls? No Diana Rigg??!! My own favorite Bond girls in ascending order: Carole Bouquet as Melina in “For Your Eyes Only,” Luciana Paluzzi as the deadly Fiona in “Thunderball,” Maryam D’Abo as Kara in “The Living Daylights,” Izabella Scorupco as Natalya in “GoldenEye,” Barbara Bach as Anya in “The Spy Who Loved Me,” Jane Seymour as Solitaire in “Live and Let Die,” Diana Rigg as Tracy (who briefly becomes Bond’s wife) in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and Eva Green as Vesper in “Casino Royale.” The worst? Tanya Roberts in “A View to a Kill.” And creepiest? Teenager Lynn Holly-Johnson trying to bed old-enough-to-be-her-grandfather Roger Moore in “For Your Eyes Only.” If you'd like to add to or have your say about anything in this column, just click on comment below. You don't have to be registered with Live Journal. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: Oldies (21 Comments |Comment on this)