Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

Whenever Nicole and I have been driving with her dad in Illinois he’s had his satellite radio tuned to a station called “Hank’s Place”. Looks like it’s changed its name to “Willie’s Place”. The website describes “Willie’s Place” as featuring "sounds of traditional country from the 50s and 60s.” Hmm, that sounds sort of limiting; “Hank’s Place” played music from the ‘30s through the ‘60s. We’ll find out when we visit for Thanksgiving.

My favorite band I heard on “Hank’s Place” was Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Bob Wills is the King of Western Swing. “Hank’s Place” used to play his music from the ‘30s and ‘40s and I finally got a CD.

Bob Wills music is appealing as old timey, tinkly, quirky swing music. I like western swing fiddle music as it appears here in its original context. I don’t like the resurrected western swing fiddle music which public radio has been cloyed with for the past twenty years. What I like best about Bob Wills are his falsetto cries of “Ah haa!” or simply “Ahhh!” Sometimes he pays semi-intelligible, swing-talk compliments to his musicians or singers. His outburst that I remember best from “Hank’s Place” was an enthusiastic murmur of “Yeah…!” He sounded as though the band was laying down some smokin’ hot beats instead of antique miniature hoedown music.

Cindy Sherman

I haven’t had as much leisure time as I want these days. The new gym is not recreation, nor are L.A. freeways. I have to determine how to use my work time to prepare to make the most of my leisure time.

Something that I have been enjoying in my leisure time is the Cindy Sherman book that I just got. I am a fan of deferred gratification and I have been delaying purchasing this book for too long.

I have been waiting for years for a good collection of Cindy Sherman “Untitled Film Stills” to come out. Sometime in the early 1990s, before I knew what these pictures were, I bought a postcard of the “girl in the library” picture. I thought it really was an “untitled film still” because that’s what it said on the back. For years I’ve looked through Cindy Sherman books searching for “Untitled Film Stills” and I’m always disappointed with the small sizes or with the other photos in the book.

Sometime after the 2003 release of The Complete Untitled Film Stills, I became aware it existed. Last winter on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago I saw the book and almost bought it. However since I hadn’t read five books since the last time I’d bought a book, I wasn’t eligible to buy a new book (yes, even if it’s a book of pictures).

However, this month the time was ripe. This book is perfect; it’s exactly what I wanted. It’s heavy with high quality paper and it has big pictures. This book is as essential to my bookcase as my Patrick Nagel book (yes, I have a Patrick Nagel book and I’m not ashamed; I like it and I look at it all the time). Cindy Sherman writes the text at the beginning. She explains how she made the pictures and what she was up to at the time. The text is very accessible and down to earth; she sounds like an even more normal person than I am.

Why I’m Not E-mailing

Haven’t gotten much e-mail from me lately, huh? “He’s married now,” you say, your lip curling a little, “He’s indulging himself emotionally and forgetting all the people who made him what he is.”

It’s true, I am indulging myself emotionally, but not anymore than before I was married. The problem is that I work in a fish bowl now. I’m pleased and grateful to be at my new job. However, even when I’m not being distracted by actual work somebody is always walking by, scrutinizing my computer screen. They give me their high-tone looks even when I’m not misbehaving.

Soon we’ll be hooked up to the internet at the blue house. Surely soon. I’m sure that I’ll be able to catch up on my e-mail then. Surely.

Palermo

This entry is a week old, but it’s here. I only got one picture from going to eat at Palermo Italian Restaurant with Jeff and Jessica on Sunday, Sept.3 (the picture of the accordion player). I’ve been lazy with the camera or accidentally on purpose forgetting to bring it with me.

I wish I’d brought the camera with me this past Friday. N. and I went to Occidental College for dinner and to wander around. It was fun to be exposed to the young people and to haunt the old places.

Palermo is a fun restaurant to go to and it’s only a couple of blocks from Jeff and Jessica’s place. I hadn’t been there in years. Very lively spot on lively Vermont Avenue not far from Fred 62, the diner where Jeff and Jessica met. Very, very nice to be back amidst such places.

Plan 9 from Outer Space

It would be inaccurate to say that everyone needs to see "Plan 9 from Outer Space" at least once, but I'm glad we went to see it on Friday night. It’s likely that I would never have seen this movie if Nicole hadn’t been interested in showing up for this midnight show.

Once again there was a long line of people queuing up for the movie (around the corner and down the alley) (we were in the alley) long before midnight. Once again, it seemed perfectly normal, but it’s been so long since I’ve lived amongst such practices that I’m worried that within a few weeks the public will lose interest in the Nuart’s midnight movies. Yet the Rialto in South Pasadena also has midnight shows, so there must be a market for it. The Landmark Theater in La Jolla has on again, off again midnight movies, but I never gathered enough enthusiasm to visit.

Apparently there is suddenly enthusiasm (however brief it may be) for colorized movies again. I should have seen this one coming, it’s been about fifteen years since the colorizing craze of the late ‘80s. Brother Jim, veteran movie colorizer, might have more info on the current state of the practice. Before the feature presentation on Friday night there were trailers for several (newly?) colorized movies including “Night of the Living Dead” and “Carnival of Souls”. Yet none of the colorized trailers looked as good as “Plan 9”. Some demented people put a great deal of time and care into making this movie look terrific.

Neither N. nor I won anything in the pre-show ticket stub number raffle this time. After N. won the raffle at “Tron” I hoped that we would win every time. And the prize, besides the Café 50’s gift certificate, was a poster for Sophia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” movie.

Before the film there was a short Mike Nelson-narrated feature called “Plans 1 through 8”. It was just a Powerpoint style animated feature, seemed slapped together at the last minute. Some good news is that the colorized “Plan 9” DVD (like the colorized “Reefer Madness” DVD) features a commentary track by Mike Nelson.

After years of “Mystery Science Theater”, I wasn’t sure if “Plan 9” would work without Joel/Mike and the robots cracking wise. It was awful, but it worked. The colorization definitely helped and the colorizers didn’t take many liberties. At one point one the aliens, Eros, gets punched in the face and his face briefly turns green as he recovers, but that was one of the few such instances.

After the movie, around 3 a.m., we walked across the street to Dolores Restaurant. I’d heard terrible things about it on Chowhound, but none of the local darlings of Chowhound are open at that hour, so we visited. It wasn’t terrible, it was just diner food, nothing harrowing about it. It was a little spooky walking on deserted streets back to the car afterwards, but at 4:30 a.m. we were safely home and ready to go to bed.

The Lost Weekend

Recently Nicole and I watched the alcoholic classic "The Lost Weekend" (1945) with my grandma while we were staying at her house. I'd been anticipating watching this movie since finishing my Russian finals in May.

I thought the dialogue was poor in the first half of the movie. Everyone was speaking in blurbs from contemporary alcoholism pamphlets. However, the movie picks up when uncontrollable wreck Ray Milland goes into a tailspin.

As I suspected in May, cerntainly the best scene in the movie begins when Ray Milland falls into the alcoholic delirium. He hallucinates that a squeaking mouse begins to emerge from a hole in the wall. A bat flies into the room through a window, takes a few menacing turns around the room, and then attacks the mouse. The mouse's tail writhes, blood dribbles down the wall, and Ray Milland screams like a lady.

Were I to fall into a delirium induced by caffeine deprivation, and a bat flew in through the window, I would hope that I would kill it and eat it, rabies be dratted.