There's a Reason Today's Not the 60's: It's no longer LIVE.

Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird...

I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy

I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen.......

                                       --Radiohead, "The Bends"

My first instinct is to get all pissy and condescending about this subject.  The 60s. Its romance, seduction, which I know is somewhat of an illusion. But I am recognizing that this  pov is not in the least bit interesting.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti said:

Don’t wait for the Revolution
or it’ll happen without you...
  

But there was a scariness about actually being in the 60's.  No one was sure what would happen; it all felt so uncertain.  That's what the distance forgets.   Men were landing on the Moon!  You could watch real-live soldiers wading chest deep in rice paddies, looking for real live Asians to shoot. They found  Soviet missiles in Cuba. Glass plate windows were being shattered with baseball bats,  fires were lit in cities, firehoses were aimed at people rather than buildings, tear gas canisters were being set off in crowds, people on streets were being pushed, shoved and arrested in numbers, billy clubs were raised,  college campuses ricocheted with gunshots. 3 major assassinations. Weird cults were rising up and killing people, and the music, the soundtrack to this all was never-before -heard, kind-of strange.   We knew ALL of this was real--as Gil-Scott Heron said, "The Revolution Will Be Live"--!!  Even if he was wrong about it not being Televised.
MTV's Real World had nothing on this.

Let's just put it this way:  if the world had ended by 1970, I think not a few of us then would have opened our eyes wide and said--yeah, I thought so. It was an intense time to go through--at least compared to anything else I've experienced since. (But I'm sure WWII was pretty hot to live through...))

But even now "the 60's" seduces, and seduces me, too.  Even if I was there, I was only a child, not a 20 year old in the midst of all the foaming, freaky color.  My smaller world, sheltered from the wars and culture clashes, then was every bit as bland as  today's strip mall culture, only minus the internet.  Even if Madmen now makes my skort look cool and retro.  We had the TV eyeball conducting us through life instead. Pacifying us--there may be burnt bodies on TV, but, look,  next to me on the couch, my soft, familiar pillow.  And after the news, The Beverly Hillbillies.

 It wasn't that different without internet,  just more directed and focused.  The way it made you avoid real life experiences was pretty much the same as cyberspace: the difference was that everyone was tuning into the same simulacra, and having conversations about THOSE.  Did you see The Kinks on Ed Sullivan--weren't they amazing?  Ha,ha,  Gilligan is so smart-stupid!  Did you really think M*A*S*H would end that way?  (Well, M*A*S*H actually missed the 60's by 25 days, but was an analogy to what was going on out of country).  But, we may have been somewhat numb to napalmed children in Vietnam.  Every night.  Okay-- I admit: I did other things, outdoor things, read books, listened to and played music...[but there was a lot of TV watching happening in those days by some people].  The point is, that's how most of us "experienced" the iconic moments of the 60s, not in the middle of the flame.

Now, with internet access, we have the opportunity to find odd bits at the edges of human experiences, which is better, no?

Never mind that most people still only get absorbed in the same group pools of memes, Facebook pages, celebrity gossip, etc.  

A very nice thing, regardless of what the eggheads might think, is I don't think everyone today believes so much what they see, read, watch.  The Revolution is No Longer Live.  They may SEEM to believe it, give the appearance, seem in some suspended state of disbelief,  because in a second's conversation, one must choose to repeat the mundane meme or not, and if you repeat it you give the appearance of believing.  Am I making sense?  I mean, if you say, like all the others,  Miley Cyrus wore an offensive dress, your audience gets a frozen idea of your opinions, your amusements, the narrowness of your mind. Odd that I said audience rather than friends.   But look closely at everyone's eyes as they speak---do you see the doubt?  The wavering notion that perhaps the image was photoshopped, that the video was set up, not live, the moment was a stunt for publicity or attention,  that the model's waist doesn't really curve in that flawless,  alluring way. Not Live.

One thing --how did Andy Warhol get it so right about the 15 minutes of fame?

Coleridge and Wordsworth coined the phrase: "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" in the 19th Century.  It feels like life in the 21st Century requires this WSOD state of mind perpetually, if one is to make it down even the shortest block of any millennium day.  Sure, I'll listen to that athlete's account of why he wasn't really hitting his wife.  Ok, Putin, you didn't send a tank to Ukraine, how can I know, I wasn't there, or care--maybe the tank was photoshopped.  Yeah, Israel, I didn't actually see that  borderline move.  Somebody thinks 50 Shades of Gray is sexist.  Someone else thinks it's groundbreaking.   I hear yesterday was the hottest day on record?...

So, here's the thing.  I think we all feel this fondness for the 60's because most of us, whether a child like me, or Thom Yorke and his fans, we all experienced it more or less in the same way--in the comfort and safety of our living rooms/bedrooms.  We lay sprawled on our soft shag carpet, elbows up in TV- viewing mode.  We were in absolutely no danger when we saw these images (me  and my parents, grandparents) on TV or in the glossy pages of Life or Look Magazine: you, later, on a digital screen:

• 18 Year Old National Guard soldiers having daisies put in their guns by a doe-eyed, raven haired hippie girl  (check out the above image--which proves how faulty memory can be, how things can be romanticized to the somethingth degree).  Never mind four ordinary college students got shot by their own confused contemporaries.
• Janis Joplin in rose-colored, oversized wire-rims, dripping beads down her au natural breasts
• Psychedelic album art--Cream Disraeli Gears or The Hendrix Experience Axis:Bold As Love , as two cases in  point... Acid Art!  It's in the water!
• Kids in the rain and mud, smiling and chanting at Woodstock
• Firehoses washing rioters down the streets in Watts
• Che on that Black and red poster
• protest posters on a stick--"I AM A MAN"
• The Washington Mall, covered in Youth, Abbie Hoffman wearing the flag wrong, inciting riot
• Vietnam soldier with a peace symbol crudely sketched on his Government Issue helmet, with a pack of Luckies (ironic target logo?) strapped in next to it.
• Morrison is sweaty leather,  маги eyes rolled up in his head, about to be arrested in Miami 

Just to name a few.  Seeing is not being.

None of that was you or me.   I'm speculating.  We were too busy in our living rooms, watching.

If you had lived in the 60's, would you have turned off your computer (?? anachronism, sorry!!)) dropped everything, hitched to San Francisco, hung out at Haight and Ashbury, and for how long?  You might have had great times for maybe a week or two, until your money ran out and you had to start stealing or begging?  Until you realized many of the kids on the streets there had a 1000 mad problems, were runaways, had drug problems, smelled horrid,  knew people like Manson, were not all brilliant musicians and artists...

And that mainstream America actively hated them then, unlike now. They look so pretty, now.

Well, this is where my mind takes me, anyway.  It's just one side. This does not eliminate the seduction.  

If the 60s, in spirit, is going to revive, we all --the ones who sigh for it, have to be willing to stop being comfortable and cozy.  We have to go get in the line of fire of the bullets, think about and produce something that has not made it before.  The people who had real 60s experiences, not vicarious ones, lived dangerous lives..and I sometimes wonder if that is even still possible.  We would have to be willing to be hated.

Here are some things that will not bring the 60's back.  They are all too safe. I say this knowing full well I am guilty of almost all these behaviors myself..

• Listening to, and learning how to play classic 60's songs on guitar, or singing them.  (My latest is The Byrds' "Eight Miles High".)
• Writing songs that sound like sixties songs (guilty..)
• Reading all the counterculture literature (Pynchon, Kesey, Kerouac, Robert Bly, Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, Marx and Mao, et al...)
• Favoring jeans, bellbottoms, hip-huggers, Indian shirts with open necks, long hair, boots...(g)
• saying, "man" "righteous", etc.
• Being in a protest--I know this sounds close to the real thing, but ones I've been involved in seemed remarkably useless and flaccid--why is that?  The world is no longer watching.  At least not in the same concentrated way. Addendum: I suppose being at a Trump rally may be dangerous.
• Knowing ridiculous details about American history post WWII
• Watching the quintessential 60's movies, like Easy Rider, One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, etc.
• Declaring yourself a Marxist, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist whatever
• Getting supremely overeducated
• Contrary to popular belief, taking LSD will not change your life.  Say! "Are You Experienced?"

So, if none of this makes one feel as if he/she has had a true 60's experience, what will?  Although I don't have the answer, I do know it requires danger, noncompliance with the present culture in a bold way, and discomfort.  This is something to think about long and hard.  

Whining about it ala Thom Yorke doesn't work.  But what?

Oh, yeah--never considered this--were Guns 'N' Roses really in tune enough to pick their name as a tribute to this image?  I don't actually think so--I hear it was just a mashing together of the group L.A. Guns and Axl Rose's band/last name.  Too bad they didn't think of that. Nah...Daisies were the hippie flower.

Then, of course, it would be stupid to be dangerous for no particular reason.  That just makes you like a criminal: you need to have some higher purpose.  Does it have to be political?  EHhhhhhhh. I don't like that, somehow.  I'm sort of into the old idea of passive resistance , however, the way old MLK and Gandhi's followers did --just refuse to play.  How?  Well it's important, I think not to be seduced by the mainstream--for commerce, for ideas, for political points of view.  This is so difficult, given the state of media--so many agendas, so much conflicting and reinforcing information.  It's back to the old existential dilemma--angst overload---TILT!!--One needs to have particularly fine radar for truth these days..

And then walk it.  Maybe spread it by action?  Is this really dangerous?  It can be when certain folks catch on.  Your employer, for example.

One big mistaken notion Thom Yorke has-- waiting for something to happen, not making it happen.  AND, associating the 60's with happiness.  (Is he parodying?) C'mon, dudes, you know how the media makes everything look through those retro rose glasses.

  Yes, there were cool clothes then.  Yes, they were better made, better quality (and, ironically, more likely to be made in America by union shops, but that's beside the point.--or is it?)  It is a fact that my jeans back then, lasted probably ten-twelve years--you had to buy them big-- "shrink-to-fit" was the term.  When you bought them, they felt like you could block a Lake Michigan windstorm with them, the weave and seams was so tight and heavy--the dye almost black--very uncool. You put them through the washer/dryer for 4-5 cycles before they were even wearable, but then they lasted!!  My problem with classic Levis--the back stood out from my small waist like 4-5 inches. it looked really ugly.  I had to learn how to sew darts.

 In the mid-70's we had this thing where we bought "painter's pants" at the hardware store--real proletariat working man's clothes.  Again you had to soften them up.  We had a farmer's supply store in Quincy--tractor parts, field implements,  wading boots and Doc Martin workboots (punk), and real farmer's Osh-Gosh overalls and coveralls.  I got a pair there--they were huge, and if I wasn't so short and long-haired, I doubt you coulda told my gender.  (In the 80's we did the same thing with Dickie's work clothes.)

This decade I have bought at least 4-5 pairs of jeans ("built to last") that didn't last two years.  (I bought them at thrift stores, which doesn't help, but it's part of my passive resistance to the prevailing culture--I can't go naked, and I can't afford expensive, hand-made clothes.  It's not true that making your own is cheaper--I've tried--cloth itself is expensive..)

I'm not at all deceiving myself that this is in any way dangerous behavior.  Add it to things that won't bring the 60's back. It's just ingrained in me through  20 year's habit for buying things from alternative and local sources, avoiding corporate profit.    It is very easy for me to do these things and they've become acceptable: even my family has stopped giving me the fish eye about my buying habits.  No one's going to throw me in jail, fire me, or uninvite me to events because of this.

  I think it just explains where the 60's/70's 80's nostalgia comes from, for "retro" things--there once was more sense of pride in craftsmanship, attention to detail and quality, and it shows when you compare the old with new knockoffs.  "Look for, the Union Label..."This is an unspoken form of passive resistance, but not nearly enough.  I probably have 5-6 actual shirts from the 60's and 70's in my wardrobe--they've lasted 40+ years.  I doubt my new Gap shirt will last--it already has little pinholes in it in front.

Maybe one of the things that irritates me about this Radiohead song is how apathetic its point of view is.  Maybe it's intended to be social commentary, ironic, a criticism of self and the others , but it does seem to encapsulate the behavior of the millennial generation.  As the messenger of bad news, I declare that I think I still carry the 60's around with me.  And the 80's--never really gave up those joint mindsets.  Now this is dangerous,  a little, because just having that in my heart makes it come out at odd moments, in my interactions with others.  60s/80s me is still a little angry, and it just makes me more angry that no one else really seems to be.  Snarky, ironic, apathetic, tolerant--but not really angry with this ugly world.  Are you just going to let this happen to you?

School puts me on the front line here.  One of my insightful, less conformist ex-students once told me I have a sort of reputation:  many of them don't like me because of my weird personality. My random confrontations.  I don't let them just go along with the latest fad. I guess  I'm supposed to be bothered by my student's opinions- I was, maybe a little, at first, but not enough to make me cry, or change! In fact, I sort of enjoy having this effect, sorry!!))))

A recent example--all my little girls and their boyfriends are all atwitter about the extremely poorly written 50 Shades of Gray and its recent movie.  Naughty naughty Hollywood for putting this trash out on Valentine's Day!   It seems some of the girls have actually got some of their non-reading boyfriends to read this clap-trap.  There seems something awful about this to me--not because I think this will cause legions of kiddies to become BDSM lovers.  People's sexual preferences are their business, to me--and I doubt if it's nothing more than a fad. It's the twitter-pation of the whole thing, and how poorly done it is to appeal to --non readers...non-thinkers(( I said--if you wanna read that subject, why not go the whole way and read Marquis de Sade, Anne Rice, or Anais Nin--at least it's well-written, why play with this watered down mess?   Well, of course the response is confusion--they have no idea what I'm talking about, they just know instinctively I am criticizing them--they may even think I'm being prudish, but they aren't sure.  Did I mention that in book 3 or 4 (I am told) the dominated girl pulls some sort of Disney princess act, and the guy breaks down and marries her??

Hah!  Sometimes being more well-read keeps you safe.  Misunderstood, but safe.

Ok, I broke down and looked it up--they don't get married (I don't think), but start a family--same difference.  It sounds like there's all sorts of pseudo-psychoanalysis about why Christian, the man, became deviant because of some evil older woman in his younger days.  Damaged goods--love will out!  Of, course--ultimately this behavior is so wrong!  (Even though lottsa people seem to like it...) To mangle a phrase--kinks just keep getting harder to find...

60's revolutionaries would be more open-minded.....

I feel sorry for all the little boys who will get mistaken notions that they will cause a positive effect in the girls they want. By being aggressive, a man. It's your standard low-grade fantasy-porn crap. The man doesn't exist, isn't patterned on  anyone's reality.   By being "strong and assertive"--Hah! If they do it like everything else they do, in their half-assed, half-understanding way-- The birth-rate will go down.  More girls will become lesbians.  And now Donald Trump's revelations, how very sexy. (Not).  That's enough to wreck your libido for life.

I'm sorta wondering--gonna go where I shouldn't, but---writers should do that.  These days I feel more like a writer, my days as a schoolteacher are numbered.  What are they really thinking?  Hey!  Sex has games!!  Wanna play a game! ??  Could be fun...But are you good at it?  Well, seems the 50-Shades writer wasn't.  ***** Enter the ham-handed Donald T.****

Later-Don't even know what to make of this! On the news: 100 underage teenage persons storm an Orlando mall theater to break into a showing of 50 Shades of Gray.  Apparently 911 was called several times over. Some insisted on getting in for free!  Viva la revolucion!

Next week: bring on the sheeep. ??

Now, what happened to my focus on the 60s?  I got distracted by people being distracted.

I was just reminded.  What was the real importance of the 60s. Why we miss the 60s.  It was when America died.  The dream of America.  "Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie..." Yeah, think of it this way.
America Died.  It was the joint combination of the Kennedies' and MLKing's assassinations, plus the icing of the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam and the Civil Rights' Wars. Watergate and all the other gates that followed.   How tiring.  It was when we stopped being good, the shining beacon on the hill--the hope of the world.  It finally became just plain obvious that our experiment failed, and we were as corrupt  a people as any that went before us.  We have this in common with 1990's Russia, I think.  Hmm.  Interesting to think on.

It's been nice reliving the 60's by watching MadMen--I think my all time favorite TV show--which is sadly about to end.

April 19:  I said this elsewhere, and I feel it's fitting to repeat here:  radical thinking essayist/environmentalist/thinker Naomi Klein has made the suggestion that we should all go back to the living standards of the 1970s.  Regardless of anything I've said here that might suggest I disagree, I say, right on.

October 26:  I'm about 3/4 of the way through a book I got for free--It's a non-fiction itemization of all things Doors.  I was kinda hoping it would break me out of my starry dark romance with Jim Morrison--see him from a more reality based perspective.  I think it kinda has helped actually.  But really it sent me off to look up a lot of things I didn't know about, or knew but never got motivated to investigate--odd influences,  under-hyped elements of the 60's/70's like the band Love, or the underground counter-culture movie Zabriskie Point, which didn't excite me all that much except it really put me back in the world of 1969/70--the only slightly long over the ears and bangs hairstyles, the understated version of hippie clothes that still pissed normal people off was clear in the movie (the lead guy mostly wore white jeans/khakis, normal leather shoes and a button up the front shirt, that would be considered  fairly dressy today. The girl had straight hair that went to her bottom, but wore a sort of bland sporty olive green mini-dress that buttoned at the neck, and a somewhat colorful tiny little woven belt--wouldn't win any 60's halloween costume prizes today).

I'm realizing that long bangs were probably what really torked the "Establishment" about hippie boys' hair.  If you look at the conventional hairstyles of the day, they were either military short, or, if a little long on top, they were greased back with Brill cream or whatever was that awful stuff that men wore on their hair then.  And the hippies were accused of being disgusting..  Me, I realize that's actually my favorite hairstyle on men --all those shaggy-long, thick beatles' bangs are pretty sexy.Ahh, my childhood.
The lead singer of Love claims Hendrix stole his style.

But, I'm glad I saw the movie because of the absolutely spectacular ending--it saved the whole thing! Explosions detonated in slo-motion to an obscure Pink Floyd song.  Also the movie message was pretty subversive, so Tom, time to act, not borrow the show.


December 12: Is the revolution done or going underground or experiencing complete ennui?

This is what I mean.  In the last elections, the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, I mean, I made a game of keeping track of bumper stickers on cars as an informal way of  gauging the outcome of the election--whether it was a good method or not, it seemed to bear out:  Obama beat Hillary in the Dem primary, and then Obama  won both elections.  Bumper stickers were everywhere!!  I had one on my bike even!

Cut to this year.....December 2015.  The Dem and Rep primaries are in 3 months, in March, 2016.  The election is less than a year away.  We've already had a bunch of completely absurd,  fallacy filled debates.

But last night I was stuck in a long traffic jam in Tampa--one of those big truck dudes caught his on fire near the Howard Frankenstein (as we call it locally).   Then another jam at Malfunction Junction. I was stuck for close to two  hours with the  top movers of the Tampa Bay area.  So here's something interesting:

No bumperstickers.  Hardly none.  Definitely none for the top Republican Donald Trump.  Maybe he isn't bothering to play that game?  The other Republicans?  Not a one.  And I was heading into deep Republican land--Pasco County.  Dems?   I only saw one sticker for Bernie Sanders.

Isn't that interesting?

I would never vote for a blowhard like Donald Trump, but I sure am glad he is in this race, short-circuiting everything!    In a way , it's exactly what American politics need to throw it all off balance. It's really the first time I just plain feel like NOT voting, since its so meaningless--might vote for old Trump as some sort of protest of the whole debasement of the democratic process.  How bad could it get if he were president?  LATER:  BAD!!
LATER STILL: DIRE.
Dec 21:
One of my theories about America's problems is that it really needs to go to the nadir, the bottom of the bottom, before it can recover.  I think Donald's the one to do that for us--I'm still not convinced he might not just quit in the middle of his term in some sort of strange fit.   So the whole trick is who does he pick for a running mate--he's pissed off most of the Reps.  Or tried to.   I half suspect he wants to pick Hillary, but that's not really possible, is it?

So, a few nights ago I watched this old documentary about the '68 presidential race--probably the first one I ever got emotionally involved in and became at all able to understand what was happening.

 I was nine-ten?  Really?  That's hard to believe that I was that young and understood even some of what was a stake between the two sides. Shows what crazy times it was.  I remember we had a mock debate in Catholic school:  Rich Kinney played Hubert Humphrey, the Dem, or did he play George McGovern?  Rich was extremely liberal--he had wire-rimmed aviator glasses and a big bushy white boy 'fro.  Glenn Smith played Nixon; he still wore Brill creme--the only one that did in our class--like a complete 50's throwback. Whose family was extremely religious and wanted Glenn to be a priest (he wanted to be a doctor, and defied his family by joining the Navy to do so--go Glenn!)    I was sort of a grudging friend of Glenn, just because he was pretty intelligent, a Bible and philosophy expert, but I totally disagreed with his politics.   (Our friendship was partially based on the fact that his friend Mark had a crush on my friend Barb).  

Did someone play the third party guy--the southern governor who got shot: George Wallace?  Maybe Glenn's friend Mark..  see, I really was into it!

Really these school arguments between Glenn and Rich probably  upped my pre-teen IQ quite a bit--we were the class that all the other grades hated at St. Ambrose, because we were so smart the nuns kept making comparisons to us.  I know the class ahead of us (HS grad class of 1976) were always held out as the ultimate losers because they skipped school a lot, got caught drinking and smoking in 8th grade!!  This is yet again one of the ways the stars lined up right for me, to be a part of this interesting class, even if my school was less than intellectual.

Anyway, this I did not know then, although I may have passed my mother watching it on our black and white TV in '68:  the William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal Debates.  Apparently, this was the beginning of our fall from grace in American politics.  (BTW, my mother and father were both pro-union, fully invested Democrats in these days.  My mother told me she voted for Hubert Humphrey, for some reason her favorite politician, after JFK.  I bet my dad voted for Nixon--if not in this race than in 1972-- actually, '72 was more likely, since the war was a Dem problem then. )   I doubt if my mother would have voted for McGovern..maybe.  She was, when my dad wasn't around, against the Vietnam War, even though she was from a family full of veterans--.  She was probably worrying about her favorite cousin Mike who was planning an Army career --but got lucky that Vietnam ended before he had to go "in-country".

So back to Buckley/Vidal.  Very interesting divide.   They were similar in that they were both white, gave the impression of privileged, patrician and snotty voiced, prep-schooled intellectuals--writers  of the type 'Merica usually hates (but less then, in the suave, Madmen days)..Buckley was a married Christian, deemed far right conservative, family man who was pushing what has since been the Republican far right agenda these last 40-50 years:  smaller government, pro military,  business and law and order.   He wrote for The National Review.

Gore Vidal, amazingly, was a self acknowledged homosexual, red leaning, social cause fighting, anti-War man.  It was interesting that he considered himself farther left than Bobby Kennedy--who he fought publicly with  until Bobby's assassination earlier that year.  Gore wrote for lots of intellectual magazines,  The Nation and  Esquire, plus he wrote the scandalous Myra Breckenridge (I've never seen the movie version starring Rachel Welch-it was rated X when I was a kid!  But so was Midnight Cowboy, then--homosexual themes, both).  Myra Breckenridge was a metaphoric feast about power in politics--Myra was a a transgender politician who used her fluid sexuality to gain power over other politicians--I know no details except the clips I've seen--in one scene she takes off all her clothes to disarm and flatten her opponents--shows her junk, whatever state it was in at that point--shown off-camera. After his nonacceptance in politics (he ran for office) Vidal moved to Italy, an ex-pat.

Both of these men had quite distinctive, celebrity voices that were recognizable in the rooms  where you kept your television.  They were on The Tonight Show , Dick Cavett, and other things.  Bill Buckley was even lampooned in cartoons, he was such a prig--in fact, I believe, that was supposed to be him in Aladdin, you know when the genie says, "Ah, ah, we'll need, some uh, quid pro quos, uh, some.."

Wait!  I was right--just found the dialogue online and even the script says it's Buckley:

Genie: So, what'll it be, Master?
Aladdin: You're gonna grant me any three wishes I want, right?
Genie: [as William F. Buckley] Uh, almost. There are a few, uh, provisos, a, a couple of quid pro quos.
Aladdin: Like?


I also speculate that Dean Stockwell is doing a veiled Buckley imitation during his scene with Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. That creepy scene where he sings the Roy Orbison song about the Sandman? And he keeps opening his eyes extremely wide for 2-3 seconds in a way that looks like gay flirting..this was a Buckley trademark.

So, it seems it was standard that the big networks then : NBC and CBS just ran the cameras all day and night at both conventions, cheap, I suppose but very boring and hard to follow.  We  kids hated when this cancelled our favorite programs for days on end--but that happened fairly regularly  in those days for big events:  political races, space coverage, various news events like the many political assassinations that happened in the 60s.  Big war coverage--TV was not so much in the hands of the people then, which perhaps was better in its way--more unified and dare I say patriotic? Intellectual, even in a historic sense.  The networks seemed to feel some sort of responsibility to record history then, unlike now where they actually seem to obfuscate it in a fog of money driven bullshit.

ABC, the third network, was making a poor showing--so it chose to do something different.  Nightly debates with Wm F. Buckley and Gore Vidal commenting on what was happening at the conventions, or on the race, or the state of the US of A.  So if you hate how politics is covered now, blame Buckley, Vidal, and ABC, looking for whorish ratings!

Myra Breckenridge was more often the topic than Vietnam or the race problem.  Because, even though these two were supposed to be incredible debaters--Vidal in particular, full of facts : they both let the thing just degenerate into a name-calling ad hominem attack of the sort Fox News and Keith Obermann became famed for.

Hot.  And stupid.

The bottom came when  Buckley called Gore a "queer" live on camera--something he regretted obviously the rest of his life.  It was in retaliation for Vidal calling him a fascist.  Politics on T.V.  have never been the same again.  Soon after Vidal published a story that more than implied that Buckley's gaff was just a bit of self-loathing, saying he was a closet queer if ever there was one,  and this accusation hit its target squarely, since the rest of America basically said--yeah, I believe he's right--just look at how he talks...

I'm not sure what to make of all this, except it once again shows, the seeds of the "non-60s"were sowed in the 60s themselves.  So stop whining for them, maybe? Or learn from them?

April 21:  Bumper stickers still few and far between, even though the New York primaries were yesterday--everyone's bitching about everything, super-delegates, primary voting rules-Independent Brooklynites, I feel ya: we have the same problems in  gerrymandered FLA.   Maybe the revolution isn't live, but it seems to be ginning up.  Bernie's not going to win, but he's doing it for the right reasons--winning is not enough these days, this is a battle for souls.


America is dying, a slow, painful death.


May 2:   Ha!  I just read this article from Slate, connecting Donald Trump with the 60s generation.  The writer is Stephen Metcalf. It says:

"Donald Trump the baby boomer.

Here is what I am not arguing: I am not arguing that Trump turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, that he stuck it to the man, that he smoked a skunky kush and freely loved. (Or whatever, pick your own cliché.) It is only one lamentable aftereffect of the ’60s that they cast their paisley mythomania on all related topics, not least upon the demographic journey of the baby boomers. One did not have to be at Berkeley, baiting the pigs on the steps of Sproul Hall, or even, really, to touch upon the counterculture at any of its points, to experience the deepest and most formative aspects of being a baby boomer. To understand how, it will help to pause for a moment and meditate on the idea of a generation."

More about this this afternoon.  Here's the link to the article, which is interesting, and dovetails with some of my ideas here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/donald_trump_baby_boomer_how_the_candidate_was_shaped_by_his_generation.html


This is another article with related interesting ideas to think about:


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#

October 16, 2016---------------The 60s--Part Two:

Well, aggravated with myself that I didn't continue my thoughts in May, for posterity, and my own lack of memory for..my own memory..but what's changed?  Nothing, only much, much deeper.

I came back here because I've been binge watching Tom Hanks' The 60s.  Reliving without the danger, but still the emotion.  I teared up again today to see Kennedy #1 shot.  My central thought is that we are today  failing, making some sort of Bizarro World mirror image of the 6os.  So here's the thing if Boomers (et. al.) want to  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>Make America Great Again.

I'm pretty sure what they are after is that cohesive feel of the Sixties, made universal by our joint TV experiences(pre-Kennedy assassination, of course, because the 60s assassinations were at the center of the shattering of the American psyche).   The first episode of The Sixties brought this all back so clearly, the beauty of that time, the Zeitgeist.  The core of that experience, really,  was only 4 years--1960 to November 22, 1963.  At the end, I was 4.

 Then, we immediately were allowed to forget our troubles (multiple assassinations, riots, wars, et. al.)  by nostalgicizing our modern world with reruns, good TV comedy, Ed Sullivan, the Beatles.  I think all the Trump boomers and other followers are really wanting a return to that:  the TVLand of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Beverly Hillbillies, Ed Sullivan and his cast of multiethnic characters, Carol Burnett,I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched,Gilligan's Island, I Spy, Julia,  Green Acres, Leave It To Beaver.  The comaraderie and bonding we felt by all being at the same place, at the same time, tuned into the same frequency.   That alone made us think we were sensible and tolerant (even of witches and genies), non-racist to root for a black nurse or spy, that we could marry country  to city, and believed women were smart enough to carry a comedy show...

But it was TV.   (TV isn't REAL!!   Hello, Boomers!???)
 Holy shit, how weird and cold-war-ish was it that the guy who owned the genie bottle was an astronaut??? Who dreamed that up!!!

The narrator of that first 60s episode made some great points about what was so magic about that time.  After WWII we were booming, on top of the world, in a creative burst.  The shows of the time (like the music) reflected our optimism, our belief in our unlimited capabilities and ideas.  Of course some of the shows were absurd--The Professor on Gilligan's Island was brilliant, could make a radio out of coconuts but couldn't make a boat or raft? We suspended disbelief and enjoyed the ride for what it was.   Genies and good witches who would rather have a husband than use their powers on themselves: there were shoe phones, telephones on top of poles, and Cones of Silence, Star Trek aliens and stupid, sophisticated  dumb-blonde dancing girls who made bad , but politically sharp, puns on Laugh-In.  (God, I can relive  telling my mother that Goldie Hawn was my favorite! on Laugh-In!)  Boy we were sophisticated, and in the know, so much like Don Draper and company.  And, although there were undercurrents, on the surface everyone was polite.  Ladies and Gentlemen.  There was no cursing or name-calling or uncivilized behavior during Prime Time. It was a good place to be.  Unlike outside in the riots and all.

Jeannie and Ginger ( Ginger an intentional parody, of a MM sex-bomb, Jeannie a male platonic fantasy)aside, it's rather amazing how many entertainers in those days were quite ordinary looking, with obvious talent and natural charisma, unlike our  interchangeable photoshopped "stars"  now.  Then they all looked like they were actually having fun making art of various kinds-it showed!!  No wonder it was good!  Now we have Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

But that zeitgeist was short-lived.   November 22, 1963 did it in.  The beginning of our need to Make America Great Again.  Does Trump realize he's only talking about four years?  And does he realize how far removed  his own conduct is from that America of yesteryear?  How he is an alternate,  bozo, Bizarro World  miscopy of Don Draper?  Because with all his flaws, Don Draper still has managed to hang onto his integrity somehow. He is not vulgar.  Don Trump is vulgar, and does not embody the spirit of that time.  Shall I count the ways they are different?

1) Lets' face it, DD get away with it mostly because he's handsome.  DT- is a wart.  Even young DT.

2)  You can call them both womanizers for serially cheating on their wives.  But you can feel DD actually trying to find the right woman who fits.  He's not randomly groping only the models and Ms. USA in elevators.  He is not predatory. His weirdly brotherly relationship with Anna, Peggy and Joan?  Betty he married too young and he subsequently always went for more intellectual, less shallow women afterwards. (Greenwich Village artist, owner of a big Jewish Department store?) He was initially attracted to Megan when she showed off her professional prowess, seemed like she would be his equal, with similar interests. but again he made an impulsive choice.   He started losing interest in her when she started doing TV soaps, and even when they broke up it was mutual and you sensed they would remain respectful, even close.  You always felt Don was actually in love in his affairs, even the raciest ones, even  if it was tearing him up inside.  DT has none of these positive qualities--he appears to choose women for their looks only, and seems to almost ignore the fact they are sentient beings.  He seems to have 0 remorse or regret for his behavior.  So gross.

3)Technique-DD is smooth, and has a way of seducing them--he projects what women want: romance, depth, insight---he makes a woman want to know what he's hiding. He sings that irresistible Siren Song--"You,you, you.  Only you can maybe save me...." He's done some rather unscrupulous acts--mile highing stewardesses, getting so drunk he bangs a waitress, coveting his neighbor's wife in an elevator, etc., but there was always a hint of romance, (and usually love!) there.  Even with Bobby Barrett, who he did grab rather vulgarly, she was every bit as predatory herself , and when he did it I admit to feeling she deserved that.  DT?  No romance, no technique, no foreplay, certainly no love.  Just a spoiled, puffy brat grabbing with his fat hands whatever he wants with no regard for humanity. He musta been an awful baby. Does he have the slightest idea how disgusting he looks from the outside?  He must, because why else does he have to resort to predatory grabs and gropes in the first place?  The women who have turned him down, even for money(like #12) ought to have given him a clue.

4) Relationship with Daughters-- For DD: Sally grew up to be good-looking, smart, but onto her father's failings.  They fight and bond, like normal people. There is absolutely nothing oedipal about them.  DT:  Come on, that's just off the charts bizarre.  It has nothing to do with being modern, cosmopolitan, or a man.

The Hideaway

For Tina:

We have moments when reality hits us like an unexpected squirt in the eye from a pothole puddle--obscene mud pushed up by a too fast car, oblivious to our humanity,  while we mind our business, on the side of the road.

Well, there's those soldiers who walked into Auschwitz and saw walking, naked skeletons.
There's my Vietnam Ranger sniper buddy, who found a dead Viet Cong, with his own genitalia sewed with black thread, into his mouth, laying red,  in the jungle green.

And there's me, age 12, walking into the blue-tiled bathroom I shared with four siblings--seeing my  naked sister, floating, in four inches of clear water,in a blue bathtub, stretched out full,  staring at her belly.  Or lack of belly.  It looked as bony as Jacob's ladder.  She didn't seem to notice I was there.  Her skin,  pink-white and thin, a frozen piece of fish, with blue bones. She was saying, incongruously, "I am so fat."  Were those protruding blue bones invisible to her, in her mental fog?  Then I noticed, with a wave of dizzying warmth, the feral hair.  Covering everything, her body innately trying to keep her from killing her fatless, exposed organs-- this thick brown, soft hair, like you might see on a baby rat, a day-old kitten.  She was only 10 years old, but her torso was covered with the kind of hair you would see on a chick emerging from a just hatched egg.

Her eyes were glazed in that tinny  way that those of the old, with cataracts, are.

It was then that I realized I knew someone who was crazy.  We once shared a room.  She lived in my house.  As young as I was, I felt so dismal, to suddenly see what her life would be.

There were screaming arguments at the dinner table.  Almost every night.  If someone forced her to eat something, beyond her usual self-allotment of lettuce, diet coke,  and home-made popcorn, which for some reason she decided was close to 0 calories---she ran to the bathroom and flagrantly upchucked the whole mess.  It was torture.   I was pretty sure then she was going to die, but she didn't. Then.

Every morning and afternoon, she ran in this weird loop.  We had one of those 70's brand new houses with no hallways.  The doorway of the living room went to the dining room, which had a doorway that went to the kitchen, which went to the TV room, et c...an endless loop that my anorexic sister took for her own personal Nordic Track.  she ran it for hours--her eyes drooped in that glazed way, and when you asked her what she was doing, she mumbled something about 5 pounds.

After that was the sacred re-arranging of the refrigerator.  This mystified me more than anything.  Our refrigerator was always spotless because of my 10, then 11, then 16 year old sister. That's how long this went on. She was endlessly sponging the shelves and rearranging whatever food was in there into particular geometric piles.  If you did not replace things exactly the way she had arranged them, she let out this strange harpie's screech--in retrospect, it was a bit like those  strange underwater mermaids in the lake in Harry Potter.  You did NOT want this to be evoked!!  The thing Harry had to listen to, in Moaning Myrtle's bathtub?   yeeeaaaaah--my ears hurt!!   There are things beyond logic, that you do not mess with.

I knew, instinctively, that this was something beyond repair, beyond reproach, that you could do nothing but feel pity and sorrow.  You could not change it via big-sister peer pressure.

I spent my early years envying other pairs of sisters who were as close in age as my sister and I. They shared clothes and secrets and boy gossiped and listened to music together, had sleepovers. We were only 18 months apart in age.  I have often thought, what if my egg had descended 2nd: would I be her? Or was her egg bad to begin with?  She seemed so normal in the early days, so silly and fun.

This was probably the beginning of my becoming such a loner.  Forced an early plummeting of my own deep little pool of viscosity.   School was not a place to share.  I'm not sure I ever let anyone in my treehouse, not really.  A few got a few steps up the ladder.  This is still true, even with romances.  Feelings have a way of burying themselves in so many layers, no words can really form that have the same shape.

Film and Animation class

Ok..I gotta make a new curriculum.   I'm doing a film class next year, yay!  But a lot of work to put together if it's not going to be sloppy.  I'm thinking I'll need 30-35 movies, minimum.  One per week, for viewing time, and background info, notes, projects, etc to do the rest of the week.  Cos I'm not just going to show films.  I'm not too big on the animation end of this...

Probably I'll do some specific units:

• A Hitchcock Unit:  Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, Rope (!)  Especially like Rope!)
• A Film Noir Unit: Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Asphalt Jungle, Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sunset Boulevard
• Animation:  The Tripletts of Belleville and what was that dark little thing I watched a few months ago??  Still on VK?  A girl and old man become pen pals??  Ah, found it:  Mary and Max, also, Waking Life? (R) Is it ok for school?  Can't remember..
• Musical Unit?  What musicals do I like or at least tolerate?  Jesus Christ Superstar, West Side Story, Stilyagi, Moulin Rouge, Fiddler on the Roof, Some Like It Hot, Grease?  Kids may be able to handle a subtitled Stilyagi because it's fun and colorful.
• Brad And I talked about the Strong Woman Protagonist movies as a unit to offset the Hollywood trash today...hmm.  Old Hollywood:  there's this list :  Adam's Rib: Katherine Hepburn. and Spencer Tracy. Bogie and Bacall: To Have and Have Not , Gone With The Wind, The African Queen  http://movies.amctv.com/movie-guide/50-greatest-female-movie-characters/ Also, Beasts of the Southern Wild?  Haven't seen yet.
• How much can I get away with foreign movies?  Sources that are reliable?  May have to make some purchases. Fanny and Alexander, for example? What about The Red Balloon?  My kids watched it when they were quite small, but then, they're..my kids.
• Gangster /crime films:  White Heat (which I've never seen),  Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather movies, Брат 1 и 2??  Badlands( PG!!) Getting into dangerous R ratings, on others,  then...
• Good science fiction?  Inception, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Jacob's Ladder,  The Black Mirror,  BBC series, Mr. Nobody (!!--NR!) Gravity? (I really don't see getting away with Stalker or even A Clockwork Orange or something like that--maybe for kids to do on their own if they're into it, kids with advanced taste like Luke).   Heheheh-Barbarella...no.
• Silent Film Unit: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, The Bicycle Thief (wait, is it silent or dubbed?)
• Horror Unit:Rosemary's Baby, Eraserhead (NR), Stoker?(R)  Can I get away with Stoker at school?  Have to re-watch.  What about Bram Stoker's Dracula?  (F.F. Copolla-dir--R rated) Dick suggests Nosforatu(sp?)
• Everything Is Illuminated  (Category?)
• Dark Comedy The Seven Year Itch
• Spy Unit?  The Conversation, James Bond, ??  Dr. Strangelove? You'd think I'd know more of these...
• Un Chien Andalou? NR--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 
• Documentaries?  Documentary spoofs?
• Stanley Kubrick films:  2001, A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon,  The Shining.  (I own these now..)  No way on Eyes Wide Shut))

Dang:  That's already more than 24!

Also going to check out these:

http://listverse.com/2012/12/16/10-must-see-animated-short-films/

Jun 15: I watched Double Indemnity last night: it definitely belongs on the noir list rather than the strong woman list---The Phyllis character that Barbara Stanwyck  plays is too evil.  Gonna try to find The Philadelphia Story.  The Bicycle Thief ( Ladri di Biciclette)  is not silent, but is in Italian with English subtitles. 


&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&



Ok time to get organized:  (* denotes movies presently on Netflix Streaming)

I definitely want to start off on an historical note--to reinforce, on one level, that the class is academic--another way to learn, know the world, become intellectually sophisticated..What's oldest here?
Introduction & My Film Philosophy:

Includes a document with quiz for movie terms for a vocabulary to use in the class assignments (approx. every two weeks?)

Tips on Film Viewing from AMC: Part 1--  http://www.filmsite.org/filmview.html

                                                        Part 2--http://www.filmsite.org/filmview2.html

Cinematic Terminology:
                                                  http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms1.html

Incredible Movie Sets Video:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/05/26/the_best_movie_sets_ever_built_cinefix_ranks_sets_ranging_from_waterworld.html


Unit #1: Silent Era--  Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.  Silent Tragicomedy.  Which Movies?
For Buster Keaton: Steamboat Bill, Jr.* which I have seen, and The General* which I have not, but hear is a classic.
For Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp movies--ah, what's the one that mocks Hitler?? A must do.
There's something on Netflix Stream called The Charlie Chaplin Collection*--I will have to watch it to see how it is organized: clips?  an archive of whole movies? It's 45 min of clips, turns out.   But, to get the full effect of the CC pathos, I think you need a full movie-- 

There is also Charlie Chaplin, The Movie not sure if I've seen it--starring Robert Downey, Jr.  Which may be a good way to ease kids into this attention deficit unit in a way they can understand better?

There are the following famous Chaplin short movies to consider, all can be ordered thru Netflix mail:
The Immigrant (20 min), Modern Times(83 min--like the sound of the story!), City Lights(87 min), The Gold Rush, and The Great Dictator(126 min).  I really can't remember which I've seen, but pretty sure I've seen The Gold Rush and The Great Dictator--sorta partial to the idea of showing the immigrant one and  Modern Times (on Vimeo) but I think I remember liking The Gold Rush.  Perhaps the thing to do is make a project where kids compare a 2nd movie they watched from the BK, CC list with one we saw in class--liking that idea!!

Unit #2:  Early Talkies--no. 1 on that list for me is The Bicycle Thief*.  Must do.  What else?  It Happened One Night,  (BTW, found for free on youtube--it's Frank Capra!! 1934.  Love FC movies) which I've never seen but everyone praises.  I really need to watch it.  Then a paper comparing talkies and walkies?

Just started watching the u-tube version of It Happened One Night--I can't believe I never saw this classic movie!!  I always loved Gable in GWTW.  It's definitely on the curriculum.

Here it is:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASIcbo3u6E

Unit #3: Film Noir-- Double Indemnity*, The Asphalt Jungle, The Big Sleep, Memento (R) Definition paper for work

Unit #4: Hitchcock Unit-- The Lady Vanishes*, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window (not if I have a lot of last year's drama kids) Rope.  Paper: Analysis of Hitchcock motifs, themes, techniques  Psycho?  For outside work? Hitchcock, the movie?

Christmas Movies? Fanny and Alexander, It's A Wonderful Life

Unit #5:  Real women--  Gone With the Wind, Adam's Rib, The African Queen*: Comparison paper to atypical modern female character  Oh-yeah, Beast of the Southern Wild Definitely belong-h'yah.  The Indian film : Charulata, or A Streetcar Named Desire?

Unit #6:  Science Fiction--2001: A Space Odyssey(own DVD), Mr. Nobody*, Gravity--(16 minute long shot) 12 Monkeys, Alien

Unit #7:  Horror Movies-- Nosferatu* (or put with silent movies?), Rosemary's Baby*, Eraserhead, Stoker (R rated--minus the shower scene?--still thinking)

Unit #8:  Gangster/Crime Movies--Bonnie & Clyde,  Badlands, Fargo, True Grit, Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?  (Digital Photoshop, work--old trailers are in contrast) Inside Man: Spike Lee


Unit #9:  Spy Movies--Bond -Off!  Which James Bond do you like best and why? From Russia With Love, Live and Let Die, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall---also, The Conversation*, The Bourne Supremacy

Unit #10:  Musicals-- West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, Moulin Rouge, Stilyagi (have DVD)

Unit #11: War Movies--The Bridge On The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now* (Rated R!!), All Quiet On the Western Front, A Soldier's Story (have DVD), Ivan's Childhood (subtitled?) Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line-Terrence Malick 

Unit #12:  Experimental Movies, Anime, Animation?:  Un Chien Andalou, Tripletts of Belleville, Antz,  Animation Shorts on the website above ???   Carnage?  Jody Foster, John C. Reilly::  plot non-sequence--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Ryan Reynolds The Nines or Buried.  Tim Burton--Big Fish.  Slumdog Millionaires!!!  A Scanner Darkly.

Unit 13:: Comedies:  The Odd Couple, Death at a Funeral: British version. Amelie, The Dinner Game--French version.    (Dinner for Shmucks).    Noises Off!!  Carnage?  Black Comedy?


Not sure where to put this one:  Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.   Really want to use that one.

  Also the culmination of the class will be some sort of student based movie making project, driven by the effects, techniques and genres we observed.  If someone has a creative idea to go outside this, I will of course listen and guide.   

Mikey,  a student in my SAT class last year who is into making movies and has taken classes outside of school to supplement his interest, has offered to help me in this class!  He has contacts that I can bring in for guest speakers, and things like that, and maybe he could be a good source/help for the film-making project I want to do at the end of the year.  Wonder what he has 3rd period?

September 26:  Since next week begins October, and Halloween season, I think I'm going to do unit #7 next--Horror movies.  It's the season...xaxa.

October 15:  Did Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, Room 237 to analyze the Kubrick one.  Next:  Eraserhead,  and then possibly Stoker, since these kids are all cool and have their parent permissions in.  Ivan's dad is especially cool, and apparently was a Russian film student/ film buff.

In fact, he told me of an excellent film I really loved:  The Two Faces of Veronique.

October 27: Working on  2001 Space Odyssey --we're in the non-conflicting early space station part so I don't think the kids like it much yet.  We'll see what they think after that.

November 14:  Doing Hitchcock, starting with Psycho, next will be Vertigo.  Had to break it up with Snowpiercer, waiting for the slow mail.  Also Showed Fantastic Mr. Fox for movie night, which features stop motion animation.  It might be worth a look for Film Class for this.  Wes Anderson directed, and you can tell, by the dialogue and nostalgic music choices.

December 4:  In Movie Night last night I watched a big chunk of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close--brought it for Film class today.  I liked the part I saw--well-written and acted, and I didn't remember until this morning when I saw the poster that it's from the much touted wunderkind of literary circles--Jonathan Safran Foer.  I've heard mixed things about his work, and I'm lumping him with the likes of DFWallace, but I really liked his Everything Is Illuminated.  Have considered showing that to Film class.

February 11:
What I Have Actually shown, so far:

Movie Screenings:

MARKING PERIOD ONE Sept 4-5:Silent Films   Steamboat Bill, Jr., with Buster Keaton Sept 8-10:  Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, Shorts Sept 15-18Mixed media animation and film, before CGI:  Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Sept 22-26: Classic Italian Drama:  The Bicycle Thief  ( Ladri di Bicicilette) October  2-7 Horror: Rosemary's Baby (director Roman Polanski) MARKING PERIOD TWO October 8-21: The Shining and Room 237 (director Stanley Kubrick) October 22-27:Horror/Sci-Fi: 2001: A Space Odyssey (director Stanley Kubrick) October 28-Nov 3:Surrealism--Eraserhead,  (director David Lynch) November 4-7:Psychothrillers and Suspense:  Psycho (director Alfred Hitchcock) November 8-10:remake: Psycho (director Gus Van Sant) November 11-14:The Birds (director Alfred Hitchcock) November 17-18:Snowpiercer (director Bong Joon-ho) November 19-Dec 3: Vertigo (director Alfred Hitchcock) December 4-9: Urban Drama: Boyz in the Hood (director John Singleton) December 10-12:Rope (director Alfred Hitchcock) MARKING PERIOD THREE January 5-10 : Biopic: Hitchcock (director Sacha Gervasi) January 12:  Alfred Hitchcock Presents (various directors) January 13-23: Historical Epic: Gone With The Wind (director Victor Fleming) January 26-:Mock-epic: Monty Python and the Holy Grail January 26-29: Southern Suspense: A Soldier's Story (director Norman Jewison) January 30-February 2:Moonrise Kingdom (director Wes Anderson) Feb 2-Feb 9: In The Heat of the Night (director Norman Jewison) February 9-13: Intro to Musical: 10 Famous (youtube) and Moulin Rouge (director Baz Luhrmann) February 17-20: Russian Musical: Stilyagi (СТИЛЯГИ) or Hipsters (director Valery Todorovsky) February  23-26:  Jesus Christ, Superstar (director Norman Jewison) February 26:  Mamma Mia! (director Phyllida Lloyd) March 6:  Whiplash (director Damien Chazelle) MARKING PERIOD FOUR March 13:  Gangster/Crime Movies March 16-19:  White Heat (director Raoul Walsh) March 20-25:  Days of Heaven (director Terrence Malick) March 25-April 11: The Godfather, Parts I and II (director Francis Ford Coppola) April 14-17 : Badlands (director Terrence Malick) April 18-21: Bonnie and Clyde (director Arthur Penn) April 21-27:  Fargo (director The Coen Brothers--Joel and Ethan) Female Directors: May 1-5:  Winter's Bone (director  Debra Granik) May 7-9:  A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night  (director Ana Lily Amirpour) Experimental and Animation: May 15: Un Chien Andalou (directors Luis Bunuel and Salvadore Dali) May 15-18:  The Tripletts of Belleville (director Sylvain Chomet)

I wanna do the Experimentals when we get done with this--gotta have Un Chien Andalou!  We already did Eraserhead in our Horror unit.  Maybe some of the nonlinear stuff, too?

LRC

5 pages written off line.

И Эта:

Маскарад.

На этом бале танцуют со смертью,
на этом пире ведают жизнь.
Один в бокале топит мысли,
другой жадно что то есть.

И совесть не так сильно душит,
когда аромат так красив.
Мы давно продали души,
Маскарад будет длиться всю жизнь.

Громким вихрем несёмся по залам,
при свете свеч оскалив клыки.
Который час мы умолкнем,
а потом снова на бис.

Но совесть не так сильно душит,
когда аромат так красив.
Мы умрём, что с того же?
Маскарад будет длиться всю жизнь.

И совесть не так сильно душит,
когда аромат так красив.
Мы давно продали души,
Маскарад будет длиться всю жизнь.

(I didn't write this).  However, even after time has passed, I still find it rather brilliant.


August 2:  2014.

See, I am well aware that this time is officially  dead.  Gone.  You cannot bring it back.  I was never there, just like I was never in the American Civil War, even though my great-great-great grandfather was.

That does not mean it should not be celebrated.  Remembered.  Turned into Art.  See, like John Keats said,  (in "Ode To a Grecian Urn"):

All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue....

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth...

There are times that are beautiful.  Humanity should remember, and preserve them in amber, like a spider in a honey-gold ring. A scarab.

How?  Art.  A Film.  A Story.  A Song.

Nov 30:

BTW--I'm not into this being straight bio.  I like better the idea of tracing the lasting impact a time has on the ages.  How it saved someone, twenty, thirty years later.  Gave hope and purpose, even when time ended.   How exactly does that happen?  Magic.

No.  I have not given up this idea.  I think it's one of the best I've ever had.

I'm not sure if I have the right knowledge to write enough of this by myself --music, too. I can try, I suppose--maybe this summer's project.

May 24: What I've written may  be the middle, rather than the beginning.

Music to cause the transition?/  Конечно . But not a taxi.  A closet.  Don't ask me why, it just feels right.  Not with green-eyes)).

Bjork's "Hidden Place"  needs to be somewhere. but maybe not here--except only an instrumental part.

First music to come to mind?  That Assa song--Victor Tsoi--"Change.'  But is it the right mood?
Also a number of Aquarium songs.

Opening scene I have in my mind now?  A four-year-old.  Dancing, out of his mind with happiness.  But what song???  The childhood heimlich thing adds depth to this......

Then I have a voice-over of the protagonist: explaining life's dilemmas.

June 1:  So, my daughter coincidentally sent me some PDFs that had to do with something she's working on --an essay with a feminist slant, I think, on body image and other odd things women deal with.  She's using Freud's idea of the "uncanny" somehow, in particular the concept of doubling.  It has a connection to E.T.A. Hoffman's (Tales of Hoffman?  The "other" Grimm's fairy tales?) "Sandman" story--don't ask me how.  Yeah, it's probably the same idea from the Metallica song, but James Hetfield may have gotten it from Neil Gaiman and the Comix.

But, somehow, when I read the source--all these convoluted definitions based on the German root word for home--heim.  In particular, the related  words heimlich and unheimlich.  The first means homely, but more in the sense of familiar, cozy--home-like?  which then somehow flips on itself to also mean hidden and secret--stuff to do with the subconscious, I imagine, with Freud.  So unheimlich somehow ends up being unfamiliar, and familiar simultaneously--leaving, if I am understanding properly--an uncanny feeling. Leaving you to believe in spirits, perhaps or other dimensions of life, the past coming back--(now you see where I am going with this).. Like you feel as a kid in bed at night, that something is out there--the Sandman, the Bogeyman.

In the Hoffman story, the protagonist Nathanael has a beautiful, perfect fiancee-Klara, but he later falls for another perfect one, Olympia, who turns out to be a false clockwork, and  she is destroyed.  There is a scene where he climbs a clock tower with his true girl, supposedly recovered from his obsessions, but at the top of the tower he goes into a fit and seems to think Klara is Olympia-tries to throw her from the tower, saying the same curse he said to Olympia---about her eyes.  The Sandman.

The movie Vertigo???   Unbelievable connection.  Also, I think Gogol's "Viy" has some similar ideas.  I did not know Gogol starved himself to death, that Dead Souls was intended to be part of a trilogy, patterned on the Divine Comedy.

Freud of course wants you to believe this is all relates to some sort of infantile regression--he mentions the womb, as usual, and castration.  He loses me on the castration--something to do with the sandman story of how he steals your eyes.  If you ask me, Freud's the one with the bizarre obsession.

Anyway, I'm rather fascinated by this stuff , and plan to use it as subliminally as I can.

July 18:  Earlier this week I found in a library a really beautiful copy of Gaiman's Sandman II, the comic book/graphic novel-- all bound in thick black leather--must be worth something.  I didn't check it out, but I took a picture.








January 17, 2016:  It's still Bowie week here in the land of mourning.  And here's yet another interesting article that relates to rock in Soviet times:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2016/01/mitki_the_soviet_era_youth_movement_that_loathed_david_bowie.html


Jan 24, 2017:  Yes a year has past, with this idea still gestating.  Means it has staying power.  Every time I read this thread I get kind of excited about it again.  Timing.  Fate has it's ear for timing, like a good musician.  I feel opportunity rising, in silence.  But it needs to be done slowly, Despacito.  That's okay with me.

What else to say, to add?  Reliability.  Adventure and Love.  I need to get really excited for the old music again.  Random ideas:

• An I-phone with the iconic white earbuds becomes an old Sony Walkman--all black.  It's how we tell what decade we're in
• of course filters on the film for the different decades.  Californication used some sort of filter that upped the blacks and dark blues--washed out the colors.  That would work for the past here too.
• References to Time Machines?  Dr. Who's Police Call Box?  The Tardis.  Think about Stephen King's Nov 22, 1963--the less explained the better....
• Visual references to other movies with similar themes, i.e. The Big Chill, ACCA, Стиляги
• What music causes the sendback?  Maybe one song back, one forward.  Maybe different songs go to different decades, places.
• Наутилус Помпилиус


• Of course!  Конечно!    Наутилус Помпилиус--"Это Музыка Будет Вечной Если Я Заменю Батарейки"--what else would it be?  Nautilus Pompilius "This music will be eternal if I change the battery..." for LRC times.   Funny-I've never been too keen on the music in this one, except maybe the chorus.
• Maybe it takes a combination of two songs to make it work? The Nautilus in gen plus one to fine-tune the time.

• Bowie as time/space traveler
• The closet is full of references to musical eras
• The time traveler lives in two worlds, as I've previously explained--somewhere.
• Time traveler gives a song to the past?  Will it disturb time's flow?

Cosmic Dancer (Etceteranuff..)

"When we were gone, we were so turned on: you thought we were fakers....." --Bowie.

(This will look like some other posts, will even perhaps borrow chunks from my other threads--but this one has a public face, since I may have to turn it in for a new gig I've been offered.  Forgive me, but I might become a most useless creature, a rock journalist... this parentheses bracket won't be there..is merely to remind me of what I am doing.  I need that.)  It will begin here--and may come out in installments?


 \/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\//\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\//\/\/\/\//\/\//\/\//\/\/\//\//\\//\/\/\//\/\/\/\//\//\/\/\//\/\/\/

This cosmic dance of Shiva refers to the Dance of Bliss, and symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction. The dance is a pictorial allegory of the five principle manifestations of eternal energy — creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion.... 

The overall temper of the image is paradoxical, uniting the inner tranquility....blah, blah, blah. 

 Okay--I agree with you.  I despise the hippie associations with this image--but I love the image.  In my time (of dying)  I've been called a hippie, and a  punk. I suppose I gotta cop to both...look! Shiva has a mohawk!  Shiva was a punk rocker!

Possible byline/bio thingy:  one in first person, one in third?  (I don't think I'll like this pushed into third)...

• Listen.   I was dancing when I was 12.  Actually, that's a flat out lie.  I was dancing when I was 4, when I was trying to stop crying (with everyone else) about  Kennedy getting the back of his head blown off: that's a pretty horrific first memory to have.  You see, two months later, the Beatles came to make us all feel better, and I started my more serious dancing.  And my lifelong love jones for rock music, rock musicians, guitar, drums, bap-bar-rah.  When I was 10, my conservative Catholic parents would have never let me go to Woodstock, and I was too much of a wimp or too stable to run away for the cause, but that didn't keep me from memorizing everything that happened there, in the privacy of my daisy-papered bedroom. 

Instead, I moved to St. Petersburg, Florida--the big city!  I went looking for all the rock stuff I couldn't have in the Midwest.  Did I find it? Here in Pinellas?  Sorta kinda.... 

Start again:  New Title:  less personal???

•       In The Pines--(Where  Music has Slept and Shivered).

Listen.   Can you hear the music whispering in the pines?  I do-- it's saying, "My girl, my girl, don't lie to me--tell me where did you sleep last night?"  To be truthful, this song was probably not written about Pinellas County, but it might have been, since no one knows who originally wrote it, and it is one of those songs with 1000 permutations, long historical tentacles, and  even  name  changes.   Leadbelly's version was called, "In The Pines" (as was Dylan's), but Nirvana's was called,"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", and  older versions  were called "The Longest Train" and "Black Girl".   If you've seen A Coal Miner's Daughter, you would have heard Sissy Spacek sing it on her Kentucky porch.   What  all these versions have in common is the chorus: "In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines.."  It reminds me of here.  Pines and trains.

When I was 4, I looked up from crying about Kennedy...and saw The Beatles.  Wow, now there's something to live for.  Thus began my cosmic dance, my lifelong jones for music, especially rock, rock musicians, guitars, drums, bap-bar-rah! Destroyers and creators all in one--that's for me!  When I was 10, my conservative Catholic parents would have never let me go to Woodstock, and I was too much of a wimp or too stable to run away for the cause, but that didn't keep me from memorizing everything that happened there, in the privacy of my daisy-papered bedroom. 

So, when I was 20, I dumped the Midwest and came to St. Petersburg, to the pines.  Did I find the music I wanted here?  Sorta kinda...

Round 3:  Shorter still--

•   In The Pines--(Where  Music has Slept and Shivered).

Leadbelly's version was called, "In The Pines" (as was Dylan's), but Nirvana's was called,"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", and  older versions  were called "The Longest Train" and "Black Girl".   If you've seen A Coal Miner's Daughter, you would have heard Sissy Spacek sing it on her Kentucky porch.   What  all these versions have in common is the chorus: "In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines.."  It reminds me of here.  Pines and trains.

Truth told, this song was probably not written about Pinellas County, but it might have been, since no one knows who originally wrote it, and it is one of those songs with 1000 permutations, long historical tentacles, and   name  changes.

 When I was 4, I looked up from crying about Kennedy...and saw The Beatles. 

 When I was 10, my conservative Catholic parents would have never let me go to Woodstock: I was too much of a wimp or too stable to run away, but that didn't keep me from memorizing everything about it , in my daisy-papered room. 

When I was 20, I dumped the Midwest and came to Pinellas, to the pines.  Did I find the music I wanted here?  Sorta kinda...

I have a jaundiced eye for rock journalism.   It has a pungency about  it.  I think this goes back to one word.   "Seminal."  It is the ultimate rock journalist word--- it has been used to describe hundreds of bands that were supposed to shake the foundations of the rock world.  World Changers: The Beatles! Bob Dylan.  The Ramones!  The Sex Pistols.  Joy Division.  Wait, we forgot Syd Barrett! Von De Graff Generator. The New Hendrix! Go back!  The MC5!-protopunk--a band called Death!  We overlooked these seminal bands!   Ok, I give kudos to the first guy who used it--it was, denotatively, a fitting word with layered meanings:  it's intellectually dirty--evoking the constant beginnings rock needs to stay alive, disgusting, antisocial, particularly male and macho.  Sexual, it goes without saying, but focusing on outcomes.  Sorry.  Too much of a good thing, definitely--.  Google 'seminal' and 'rock' and see what I mean.

There is no more pretentious form of writing than rock journalism.  Well, maybe literary criticism.

Rock critics like to give the impression that they are so bad they vetted the article while experiencing Walter White's blue meth firsthand, and wrote it out freehand with the dregs and blood from the needles they shot up with--that they are bored with witnessing the hotel room antics of the most famous of demented people.  That, most importantly, They Were There.  But, really, too cool to hit on the groupies.

My emersion into rock writing (which I view jadedly, remember?) got really intense about 1977, when my campus job was to man the check-out desk at my college library.  This was back in the  days when all the current periodicals were behind the desk for sign-out.   Like all good college students, the ones at my college barely bothered to reference their profs' "suggested additional reading".  So I rarely got bothered.   Usually you'd see me sitting at my station by the turnstiles, reading every square inch of Rolling Stone, back in the days when it was in its big newsprint format on that cheap paper--it was better, dirtier that way--it left ink on your fingers, like a bad girl should.

 I didn't have earbuds, sadly, then, so I could couldn't have the instant gratification of listening to what I was reading about like I can now, and there was something much more romantic about those days when you had to wait.  And search.  Needing to go to some indie record store with limited merchandise.   That was when there were those great ads in the back of Rolling Stone where you could pay $25 to become an ordained minister, and marry your friends.   Then I discovered the back issues in the storage room... they had that John Lennon"How I Won the War" one, no jive.

I read it so much it made me sick.  I knew the styles of its regular writers, Dave Marsh, Ben Fong-Torres, Greil Marcus--knew which bands' styles they favored.  Me and curmudgeon Dave were most aligned. (Among other things, Dave called Queen "the first fascist rock band", and disliked Kiss as much as I did.  Oh, and he is credited with inventing the term "punk".  He called Bob Seger a coward).

  And.. I saw the word "seminal" ad nauseum...to the point where it was an inside joke with myself.   To be fair --it was probably the guys on our school paper, emulating the RSers that were the cause of the nausea. Or later the fan-zines I read--that word just wouldn't die in rock writing.  I still subscribe to Rolling Stone, man, because, like Woody Allen sez: I need the eggs. I rarely read the whole thing these days--usually skip the cover story.
                         
                                  ********************************************

My first memory at age  4 is of Kennedy getting the back of his head blown off, then me and everyone else crying,  and then the Beatles magically appearing.  It was like Perseus waving the Gorgon Medusa in our faces. Hey, over here: this will turn you to stone.  I've been a cosmic dancer for rock music, since then.  It is THE eternal battery charge that gets into the secret mitochondrionial bits of life--the, em, unexplained, what is it --emergent systems that are outside the laws of physics, any science?   This is where I defy the Rock Journalist cool stance.. music makes me believe in our void  and impractical needs: it's why Jimi says, "S'cuse me while I kiss the sky".

But I am easily bored like a good rock chick should be--so I've never been satisfied with what the Billboard charts offered.  I remember at 4 being mad for Duane Eddy's drone--mom and dad had some cool records.   By the time I was 7 I had a stack of 45s so high it grazed my upper thighs. Then, my favorite song was the dark "I Am The Walrus" (John), which was the B-side, I believe, to the cheery "Hello-Goodbye" (Paul).  This is why I spent my life searching the edges of music--wherever they could be found.

A caveat:  For my Pinellas fellow travelers , who may have been there too--there weren't many of us, then.  Please forgive my faulty memory!   No, it's not because of that--I've never been much of a narcotiphile.  Told you, I'll be the uncool music writer.  It has more to do with time passing, and the fact that I have a pretty active imagination--so perhaps I imagined some of this..

Future Sections:
                                  ***************************************

The Sadly Small Entertainment Scene of 1980's St. Petersburg--Colorful but Lonely

I moved to St. Pete from Illinois in 1980, and moved first to Beach Drive.  Before you get envious, you gotta know what this city was like then.  Let's just say it was perfect for breeding punk ennui and boredom.  I lived across from the art museum, in a studio with orange shag carpet and no actual bedroom( I threw a mattress in the closet),  eating hot dogs on my pitiful southern salary and inhaling the gourmet smells from the French restaurant below (Peter's Place--never could afford to eat there). I had the worst car I ever owned--a Rabbit with only two gears, 2nd and 4th.  Later, I had a '71 Brown Nova with one green door.  No air.  I owned a lot of cars with no air.

Then there was no Globe Coffee Shop, No Kool Daddy Records, no Art Pool, No Fubar, no Local 662,  no bars on lower Central Avenue, except for grubby old Mastry's. No tattoo parlors.   No Ultra Lounges.  Besides the Garden ( also too pricey for me then), there were No.  I mean no.  Restaurants of any kind.  None.  Some of the old coffee shops were hanging in  there, mornings only, like Gold Cup Coffee Shop, which has lately gotten chased off by the Scientologists.  We did have Haslam's.  The State Theatre and Tangelo's were just  babies.  Detroit Liquors, of course was thriving, because the Detroit Hotel was an all male flophouse then --just think of that scene in the Blues Brothers--"Where's mah Cheez-Whiz, boy?"  Then when Club Detroit opened, there was this crazy 2-story glass wall upstairs where you could watch the Detroit's lobby for entertainment.  Strange drunken arguments about Mars with spastic Joe Cocker-like hand gestures, baggy men drinking from brown paper, slumped down watching the communal T.V.   One of those old fashioned,  hotel desks with a little  grime-smeared window and pigeonholes for mail and keys. What band was playing?  Who cares--this was more exciting.

My weekends were basically spent wandering the empty streets of downtown, sweating, drinking diet Coke, and doing absolutely nothing but staring in dusty, empty storefronts.  Thinking:  what  a waste ..this place could be beautiful!   There were so many quirky buildings sitting idle.  I came to the conclusion no one appreciated it but me.  I mean, I was the only one walking around down there--except the random wino.  For real thrills I would go ride the empty escalators in the downtown Maas Brothers, a block from my apartment.  I once even snuck on the outdoor elevator of the Rutland building to see if there really were swimming pools rumored to be on the roofs of some of those downtown  high-rises. Someday maybe I'll write about my adventures in the vacant Vinoy. However,  downtown   St. Pete didn't have any great little music stores like other cities did; even my college town in small Quincy, Illinois had the awesomely named Bob's Be-Bop Records.

I could probably go six blocks down the octagon sidewalks of Central Avenue at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, and not meet a soul.  There were an array of (closed at that hour) junk stores: the Elephant's Trunk, This 'n' That, a haberdashery  with the sort of wild hats Atlanta Church-ladies favored, The Lucky Candle Shop that was sort of creepy to go in, full of Santeria voodoo candles; burn them and  they promise: "Capture your Lover",  "Find money!" , "Harm to Enemies".  Definitely the best in punk atmospherics.   The only thing left from that time now that still feels the same funk is Wig Villa.

However, one of the great places I liked to kill time in was a place called Dog Street on Central.  Now this was a true punk store that lasted well over ten years, if memory serves me right, and every bit as gnarly and cool as a place you would see in Grungy Portland or Overcast Seattle, John Waters' Bal'mure,  or even Hipster Brooklyn today.  It was essentially a second hand shop of higher grade, with a little original art thrown in--they may have been the first to show the now locally well-known Vitale Brothers.  It took up  the entire Crislip Arcade ( the 600 block of Central Ave.), but didn't have that classy wrought iron gate that's on there today.  Instead, it had something better:  the sign that hung out front--like one of those old fifties neon things, but this had no actual neon--just electric neon colors, Frankenstein (or MisFits!) green and cobalt white outlined in heavy-cartoon black.   It took up the entire 2nd story and was attached perpendicular to the storefront, so you could see it for several blocks.  (One of the Vitale Bros. told me, online, that someone else made the Dog street sign, a guy called Splashman.  But they did the doors and windows there, he said).  

I wish I could tell you the name of the owners --a young punk couple then, maybe someone will send?  But I googled, and they have gone missing from the internet.  One or the other was often sitting outside the Crislip Arcade, on a beat-up old armchair, where the old store took up both sides of that amazing hallway.  Some rooms were just storage: the back room is where some of the strange cartoon-like paintings were hung. Maybe R. Crumb and Keith Haring were sorta the influence, dunno.  The open-air arcade that ran down the middle of the block was piled with all sorts of interesting 60s furniture, you know the kind, but two decades too soon,  with the scratchy, muddy-brown-purple horsehair upholstery,  black tubular legs, atomic designs, in various states of disrepair.  I would have bought it all if I could afford it (and knew how to fix it).  I recently learned, from a trip through L.A., that the matching architectural style was called "Googlie".

Dog Street's owners had fine, discerning eyes--and their merchandise would probably go for beaucoup bucks in this retro mad world today.  But what they had, then, was to the average St. Petersbourgeois a little strange and maybe ugly.  There were a lot of 50's and 60's castoffs in there, stuff that probably got thrown out of somebody's rec room basement, complete with monkey-fied cocoanuts,  from up North when they retired to Florida. The boomerang, the atom, and the triangular ruled, in shades of black,pink, aqua, and chartreuse.   They had kitchenware, furniture, clothes (male and female).  I think some had been repurposed a la Pretty in Pink, And I remember a lot of crinolines, old funky leather boots, mad cowboy shirts, big old, banana leaf - green  and boomerang shaped ash trays--they weren't cutesy antiques.  No oak rockers or sweet little vanities.  They had the odd vinyl record, and old stereo equipment, maybe the most memorable thing was one of those crazy  bug-eyed, space-agey looking 50's Tvs that was pretty much Cathode ray tubes on a stand.https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSj-NH49FiqapkaM5cY4cVBJQhN_oQxbUhvAUZSFMI5xu9SAsmdlA.  Had a friend back then who we called Cathode Ray--real name, Cathy, so for years I thought it was spelled Cath Oderay--that would have been a classic pseudonym for a rock dude. But I digress.

I got a lot of cool stuff from there, most of my weird furniture, ashtrays--not clothes so much, although I got a vintage 50's sweater or two.  A swingin' curled black lamb's wool 50's car coat with no buttons.  But, usually so poor I windowed, more than shopped.  I bought this weird little atomic looking, two-layered trash can  for a fin that was a black mesh receptacle with a metal removable bin--I decoupaged the inner lining with a bunch of crazy paper and paint and resold it for $40.00!!  A circular mesh-metal shelf  from some 50's bathroom.  I once coughed up an extravagent  $40.00 myself for an original painting I  fell in love with, an abstract Aqua, Pink, and Black stick figure, with a  black metal tube frame--still have that hanging in my living room.  It fits any decor...;

Notice I haven't mentioned much in the way of music...there was some.  Dog Street, of course, played cool music--seems I remember them favoring punk-o-billy,  like The Cramps,  I and some of the "other" Athens, Ga bands, like Pylon, mixed in with obscure dark 50s county and early garage rock.  There was a sort of David Lynch, Blue Velvet, menacing vibe there.  That block was one of the last to go when gentrification hit St. Pete hard a decade back. Blame Leslie Curran.

                                     *******************************************

Early Local Scenes: Deloris Telescope

About three years ago, I had a really good time: I went to  a musical  reunion.  I generally avoid those  sentimental things like the HAPPY TOGETHER tours.   But it was an old band that I actually enjoyed:  Deloris Telescope, at Jannus Live (in the old days it was called Jannus Landing--more on that later).  What was particularly nice was that I saw the guy (James) there, who had first introduced me to them--he was just a high school kid then, now he's rapidly approaching deep middle age. Seems weird to think, ages seem so divided when you are young, but he was probably only 4-5 years younger than me? I have friends with much bigger gaps these days, but I'm pretty immature, I suppose.  Age and time, strange brew.

I should mention, I did not follow Deloris later, during the days when they almost made it to the Show.  They were the closest thing to a local punk band we had, way back.. later there were more.

James had showed up at my house one day, around 1980-82?  and said, "You gotta see this band; I can't explain..."  So we went.  I lived in Crescent Lake then, and  I suppose I missed Exene Cervenka of the early punk band X by a few years--she had already moved west with John Doe.  I have no knowledge that she ever played here in the early days.  Maybe someone else knows.  We apparently hung out at the same crazy banyan tree at Crescent Lake Park, where her graffiti is supposed to be carved.  I went last year to see if I could find it, but--Horrors!  The city has put a hurricane strength green-lacquered fence all around it so no one, not even little kids, can climb it anymore.

So, where James took us all was to this grody old place then called The Cheshire Cat, in 1980s Gulfport, on 22nd Ave So.    So, in this place, Deloris was the opening act for a fairly popular alt-band known as the Headlights.  The Headlights were sorta almost new-wave,(post punk?) with a guitarist-singer, Steve Connelly,  who walked a fine line between Pete Townsend and the more r 'n' r version of Jackson Browne, if that makes sense, heavy on the Townsend windmill guitar, though.  I had seen, and appreciated, them.   They seemed almost mainstream, very likable.    It was rather intriguing, and perplexing, that they added these weird dudes, Deloris Telescope, as a regular opening feature to their gigs.

At first, I disliked them.  A lot.  I could get up there and do better, I thought.   DT's shows were, in those days, hem, less polished. Almost nerdy--definitely not rock cool, but the leader had potential.You can see I got over my initial distaste: I probably saw Deloris, I don't know, 70 times? over the next few years.   Kacy Ross (singer, songwriter, guitarist) was a born showman and it didn't take long for him to get comfortable showing his impromptu weirdness onstage.  It didn't immediately occur to me that what they were doing was punk --the definition was too narrow then.

The tip-off should have been the  nude painting they always put up front onstage, their muse, I assume, this sort of Cubist,  60's Village , elongated girl with a long belly and one verrrry saggy breast.  I miss that painting.  Their influences seemed from everywhere. Funk. British Steel metal. R and B. Prog Rock of the WMNF Step Outside variety.  Hip-hop.  (Kacy could MC with the  best, a regular Wonder Mike), Glen Campbell and old pop country.  Maybe Patti and Iggy.  But they only did strange covers, and not ironically,  or quick, the way a lot of punk bands did.  "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" was one of their best, with some "Rapper's Delight" mixed in, an early, live, mash-up.  It often dragged out for eight, ten -thirteen...minutes, and not a minute boring.  I liked it better than the Temps'; their percussion was very worthy of the funk.  Sometimes it was all they needed.

  Now that I look back, I think Kacy might have been absorbing stuff off of fellow midwesterner , Stiv Bators, of The Dead Boys.  They sort of looked alike--rock lanky and the weird half hippie, half punk clothes combination that were seen on the edgier weirdos in those days.  Like Stiv (real name Steve, no lie! I looked it up!), he had long scraggily dark hair in random layers, not long flowing Greg Allman hippie hair.  Not a strait-edge baldy sour.  Faded bell bottoms with the knees blown out and low-cut Chucks, bizarre t-shirts.  Kacy had some with like a random number, or hand painted dots.   He was also a bit of a chameleon, to the point where, if he put a hat on, grew a little silly mustache, cut his bangs or slicked back his hair and put on a tie, you might not recognize him.  He was a guy who could assume a costume.

 Kacy's  was a somehow weirder, more off kilter than all that usual razor blade, kill-me punk stance.  It was his sense of humor, which was often juvenile, but also spacy.  Ok, their big local hits were, perhaps pandering to the hippie redneck beach crowd, called "6UL-DV8",which for a long time was on the license plate of the band equipment van, and "Pink Mescaline".   It made you want to say, how can anyone ever take these guys seriously?  It's like twelve year old guitar geeks writing songs in the basement about their fantasy girlfriends and lame attempts to get high. But that was also their charm.  Kacy gave the impression he was riffing lines off the top of his head, like he could on guitar.  Memorable lines--                

           "I got the fever/
            I got the blister/
            I never had a sister/
           And I don't need one.....anymore...."

 But they also had their Syd Barrett-we're-on -our-way-to -Mars side.  And odd time signatures--stoopid drum beats.

Locally, they were my favorite band at my favorite clubs: Cheshire, Swamp Club-- later called, smoky ol'" Gulfport on the Rocks"--and now again, "SALTY'S", much more beach- classy---if you google "Swamp Club Gulfport", this great old article from the Evening Independent comes up, about some beat journalist trying, and not succeeding, to find mohawk-wearing  punks at Swamp Club--because of course, the only real punks have mohawks and safety pins in their...), El Gordo's, which was above a laundry mat on Blind Pass Road, and once upon a time had all sorts of DT graffiti in the bathroom, including my JIM LYNCH!!  This was a way-inside joke among my  friends when they had had a few, about old DT bassist Dave Fairman, who looked like one of our cousins.   We were not opposed to incongruously yelling that all night long.  J I-I-I-I-I-I-M-M-M    L-L-L-LYNCH!! Anything goes at El Gordo's, including a tall groupie girl we nicknamed "The Stork".  There are scenes within scenes.    Anyone who came to St. Pete in the early 80's anywhere expecting to see the media's version of what punk looked like would be disappointed.  This room was half beach redneck, anyway.

El Gordo's felt like the most personal place to watch them, where they seemed completely comfortable and goofy.  ACL on the 1700 block of Central (or was it 1st Ave?  it moved once, now I can't remember)  was where they seemed most ready to go big, most professional.  ACL stood for Atlantic Coast Line, as in the Railroad depot once there (this is what makes me think it was on 1st 'cos the line ran that way?  It was just west of downtown proper.)  I loved hanging out at ACL, which had the hangover, 70's hippie feel, (like The Outta-Sight Shop that used to be on Corey Avenue in SP Beach, with the big bulls-eye target sign on the roof, anyone remember ?), but with a slightly biker edge around the pool tables out back, a room you had to go through (cat-call alley) from the parking lot to get to the front where the band was, next to the long bar.  There were no jello shooters, fancy chocolate, or, -gag- "dirty" martinis or anything like that; it was strictly blue-collar drinking.  There was a dance floor, where you got hit a lot, not because it was a mosh pit, but because it was so small, and, everybody danced!  I know I knocked into a few wall-flowers' tables several times there when I got a little wild.  No one cared: it was a fun place.

I did not know that in their later days DT played CBGB's, and famous Greenwich clubs like The Bitter End and Cafe Wha?  They opened for Lords of the New Church (Stiv),Steppenwolf, Warren Zevon, X, Robin Trower, Flock of Seagulls and Cheap Trick.  Never made it to the big time--almost--record company contacts and all that.  I think this is why maybe some people don't fully think of them as punks--punks supposedly disdained the big houses, were intentionally anti-rock star, too sociopathic for even the music world of the 80's.  Underneath DT's jokes you could sense their wistful desire to be famous for more than fifteen minutes.   They had it.  I took a friend who had never seen them, and who doesn't always see eye-to-eye with me on music, to the reunion show at Jannus,  and she fell hard for gray-haired Kacy.  They lived a rock star existence in St. Pete--people who saw them fell madly in love with them: they had groupies, did the excess dance near death.

Not with me.  I kept my distance.  My friends and I used to sit at the tables upstairs at El Gordo's and act like prepubescents, not sure what to do with our excited feelings.  Except dance and shout.  Even the men in our lives couldn't take our crushes seriously.  We  let the the Spandex girls do the groupie thing.

On St. Pete Punk: in 1982-3 you would probably have to talk to most of the people in the St. Pete scene to find out they identified punk.   Most didn't buy into the heavy gear, especially in the early days.  It was too hot for leather--jeans, even, for 4 months, so that sort of kills the look.  Piercings and tattoos?  They were starting to show up: I had 3 piercings, only one I did myself, and not in a very weird place.   Hair was the more likely place to show off, and some guys were starting to shave off or layer their long hippie hair.  It was a mellow take.

 By the later eighties, though, I started to see more of the punk creatures, but more in Ybor, on Nebraska Avenue, and at Jannus Landing when they came out at night for shows for nationally known groups from D.C., Boston, or California.  That didn't happen often.  I think the skinheads were the most stare-at-them-on the-street kinda local punks.  They had a uniform, so in a group, they looked pretty scary.  They wore "braces and boots", that is, Doc Martin steel toed workboots---not the cutesy colored ones they sell now---these were always black.  "Braces"--red suspenders, not sure where that trend started here, but I'm sure it was imported from the working class British "oi" boys.  A few of them had really wicked, starched mohawks, but most were "suede heads", with that military strip down the center of their heads as if they forgot to mow all the grass.  Lots of military, nazist, camouflage--you always wondered if they were carrying weapons.  I gave them W_I_I_I_D_E berth.

  Girl punks, very small in number, by-the-way, were more likely to dress up than boys (most boys stuck to jeans,  board shorts, flannel, odd t-shirts, the random razor cut) in thrift store stuff, vintage 50's, layers of Madonna jewelry, clunky boots, heavy makeup, vampire crosses, dyed hair.  Today's copy-cats mostly get that wrong, though, with the crayola hair colors--most girls went either jet black, platinum or brassy red.  Those crayola colors didn't exist then, and the only way to make your hair, say, blue or green, temporarily,  was to first strip out all the color with peroxide and then use clothes dye, which really didn't last through many washings.  Maybe if you didn't wash your hair--how punk.


                                            **********************************
Jannus Landing, before it was "Live"

                                             *********************************
Grotty old Ybor--Goat's Head Soup.

Yes, Goat's Head Soup is more than a under- appreciated Rolling Stone's album.  (It has Billy Preston!)  I ate the real thing in YBor during a Heatwave.    WMNF gives Ybor a serious rock history.
                                             *********************************

Jim Morrison, Jack Kerouac, Pinellas Park,  and the Beaux Artes--don't forget the movie showings: Devil at 3 O' Clock, Treasure of the Sierra Madre

                                                *******************************

The Blueberry Patch???

Dog Street
The ACL
Old Jannus Landing
The Hideaway
Cafe Bohemia
The Big Apple
Beaux Artes
Jim Morrison in Pinellas
Art Pool
Gulfport Casino--Swing Dancing
The Globe Coffee Shop (If I score an interview with Jo I could make this a multipart series.)

Hmm.  Could use my "{Explosions Are Boring}"  as a historical connect to the hotel that got blowed up--what the hell was its name again?  Think. Think. Think.   Ah!!  The Sereno.  Address? Where that new high-rise is...Beach and 1st.  Took up half the block, was 7 stories high.

Free Stuff (or pert' near) We Did Before Facebook: Read on steps of condemned/public buildings.
Climb trees.  Free buffets at Happy Hour.(Casa Lupita?) MTV(for hours-all hours: 120 Minutes!  Finest show MTv ever produced).  Free Cable/ HBO? Arcades.  Pac-man & Ms. Pac-man.  The following used to be free before the fences: Shakespeare in the Park.  Ribfest.  Bluesfest.  $1 movies. Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight for $5, at the old 5th Avenue Theatre--now gone--still had the old red velvet curtains and red velvet seats then--Very Desperately Seeking Susan.

4/5/2014 Belleview Biltmore Story: Notes

• rehearsal place for Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review Tour--Dylan claims the title did not come from "Operation Rolling Thunder" in Vietnam,  nor a Native American shaman--just from looking at the sky, watching clouds rolling in
• 4th Show of the southern leg of the tour was at the Biltmore, in the Starlight Ballroom. Following shows in Lakeland, St. Petersburg, and Tampa
• People on the tour, possibly therefore guests: Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Scarlet Rivera, Ramblin' Jack Elliot,  T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson,Sara, his wife Sara
• Nick from Record Exchange says the concert was broadcast nation-wide from the Biltmore--claims he has a grainy VHS copy somewhere of it.  Knows Dylan's doctor???
• Some footage of RTR on youtube
• my pics of Vinoy?  Sereno story?
• Movie Renaldo and Clara

Bob Dylan: Just Like A Woman, Clearwater, Florida 22 April 1976 (Video)

September 4, 2013 by Egil | 3 Comments

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Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Ev’rybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

Starlight Ballroom
Belleview Biltmore Hotel
Clearwater, Florida
22 April 1976 – Evening

• Bob Dylan (guitar & vocal)
• Scarlet Rivera (violin)
• T-bone J. Henry Burnette (guitar & piano)
• Steven Soles (guitar)
• Mick Ronson (guitar)
• Bobby Neuwirth (guitar & vocal)
• Roger McGuinn (guitar & vocal)
• David Mansfield (steel guitar, mandolin, violin & dobro)
• Rob Stoner (bass)
• Howie Wyeth (drums)
• Gary Burke (congas)
Pictures of the Belleview Biltmore, including the room where this concert occurred, the Starlight Ballroom


http://www.savethebiltmore.com/BiltmorePhotos_Broad_Band.htm


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My first article for publication:


• Howie Wyeth (drums)
• Gary Burke (congas)

Pictures of the Belleview Biltmore, including the room where this concert occurred, the Starlight Ballroom

http://www.savethebiltmore.com/BiltmorePhotos_Broad_Band.htm

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My first article for publication:
Bob and His Disappearing Biltmore Act :

—“Lying next to her by the ocean/ Reaching out and touching her hand/ Whispering your secret emotion/ Magic in a magical land”—- Bob Dylan, 1976

When I was just a young punk kid in 1980, I lived near a beautiful, dying hotel. It sat empty for more than ten years, abandoned inside its chain-link cage. My friend Mary and I once violated that fence so we could take pictures inside of its moldering 1920’s elegance. I was wrong to think it a hopeless cause: it was called the Vinoy. It did not disappear.

On the steps of another 1920s abandoned St. Pete hotel, the Sereno, I used to do my USF homework—reading Mark Twain and Walt Whitman in fine decay. At the end of the 80’s, I watched it get blown up for a Mel Gibson movie. Abracadabra…poof, it disappeared.

I guess I have a thing for old hotels. There’s music in their old walls.

Literally. Further north, another potential victim of time , the Belleview Biltmore, is today facing destruction, yet it was once host to a alchemic moment in rock history—Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review Tour.

 Dylan’s folk era fellow, Bob Neuwirth, with whom he played the same Gaslight Cafe/Kettle of Fish,Cafe Wha? circuit in Greenwich, , who rode shotgun, said of the group’s burn to play together again: “ This was the first existential tour. It’s a movie, a closed set. It’s rock ’n’ roll heaven, and it’s historical.”   If it was a movie, its cast was noteworthy.

Neuwirth, by the way, was the original Bobby in Janis Joplin's biggest hit “Bobby McGee”, which Kris Kristofferson wrote.  One of Dylan’s most revered albums came out of these hot conspiratorial nights:  Desire.

It turns out Dylan and Company, on the southern leg of this crazy carnival of a tour , were holed up like the Gallo gang in April of 1976 in our Bellaire Biltmore to rehearse, film, and even broadcast nationwide— critically acclaimed and nostalgic moments for Dylan fans. Many feel these were Dylan’s best live performances.

Specific legendary Dylan events converged in this residency:

• The aforementioned April rehearsal of the southern Rolling Thunder Review took place at the Belleview Biltmore . All sorts of iconic musicians were on that stage.  Dylan claims he named it watching Pinellas thunderheads rolling in, not аfter the Vietnam operation, or the native shaman.   
• The Biltmore's Starlight Ballroom was actually used as a venue for at least two live shows: the southern tour started in Lakeland at the Civic Center (where I saw Dylan myself during his Gospel period), then moved from St. Petersburg, to Tampa, and the 4th show, performed in the afternoon of April 22, was back at the Starlight Ballroom. Perhaps there were two shows: one of my sources claims it was in the evening. Oh, to have been at either! 
• On April 17, a Starlight Ballroom show was actually broadcast on NBC nationwide. It was my record store acquaintance, Nick, who first told me this—he remembers watching it in New York, and claims he has a grainy copy of it—somewhere. I found clips of this (with difficulty!) on the nets. Of the 9 or so clips listed, only two are hot, the rest removed by the Web Sheriff. In one Bob alone sings “Times They Are A ’Changin’” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” unplugged and unbored—holding his acoustic at an old fashioned 45 degree angle, wearing a black cowboy shirt, a scarf wrapped around his long curls and topped with a Huck Finn hat. Another clip with the band—a defiant version of “Just Like A Woman” —sounds more mournful than the studio version on Blonde on Blonde. 
• Renaldo and Clara: This was a documentary Dylan made around this time, and long pulled from circulation—it can’t be bought on Amazon, if that tells you anything. Some of it may have been filmed at the Biltmore—particularly one of the concert sequences looks like the Starlight, but..I'm not sure.  Um—so I confess, in my ardor I found large chunks of it hidden on youtube—the name obscured to avoid the Sheriff.  Dylan is notorious for scrubbing all traces of his unauthorized work from public sight for his own private reasons…this is the Sorcerer’s Stone of all Dylan rarities. The carnival disappears. 

Old pictures of the Starlight Ballroom shows why it lit up for an American traditionalist like Dylan—the romantic ceiling painted and pin-pricked to represent the night sky ( much like the Tampa Theatre’s), the arched stage cross-curtained in red like an old western vaudeville hall. If it wasn’t so pretty you’d think a bar fight might break out.

The voices of the singers , the instruments of musicians that would have bounced and echoed off the Starlight walls must have made an elegant soup of the magically talented, desperate to hold off the cheapness of days when rock was bloated with excessive success. Among those reverberators:

• Joan Baez—sharing a mike with Bob and singing so directly into his eyes—people thought they were sparkin’. Dylan coyly asked her to sing “Diamonds and Rust” and she replied that he was mistaken to think it was about him. 
• Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, (remember—they did the more popular version of “Mr. Tambourine Man”). 
• Ronee Blakely and Allen Ginsberg. Allen appears at about the half-way mark of Renaldo and Clara, in voiceover, and later walking through a graveyard with Bob, discussing the graves of famous poets and writers they’d visited. He wouldn’t have been a stranger to Pinellas County, as his buddy Jack Kerouac lived here. 
• T-Bone Burnett, playing guitar and piano—yes, THAT T-Bone Burnett! 
• Mick Ronson (who played guitar on Bowie’s Spiders from Mars Tour—Hey, man, that’s him on the opening riffs of “Suffragette City” and “Ziggy Stardust” —and later with Morrissey, the Rats, and Van Morrison). 
• From the Greenwich Village scene—Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Bob Neuwirth among others. 
• Scarlet Rivera—the violinist showcased on Desire and Hard Rain, and who was claimed to be a real life gypsy girl Dylan found on the streets of the Village. 

Dylan’s Biltmore moments only seemed to have disappeared—a sight trick performed in a mirrored room by Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts. It’s kind of hard to nail down exact details of anything about Dylan, and this time period especially, which seems most vigorously hidden in a secret panel out of sight. In the throes of his break-up with wife Sara, who appears in the footage and who is the subject of much of Bob’s ’75-’76 era music, it can be painful even for a stranger to watch. However, several books, and the odd pirated clips seem to confirm that these events, however ephemeral, did occur here.

I sympathize with Dylan’s desire to do great things while hiding in plain sight. Dylan, playing mystery magician,   said in 1976, “ Definition destroys…there’s nothing definite in this world.” Yup, the Sereno is definitely not in this world anymore. But, here’s to hoping the hangin’ judge gets drunk, and forgets to show up at the Belleview Biltmore’s Trial.


July 23:  Need to write about the Blueberry Patch in Gulfport, and the band I saw there last night, Justino and the Difference: whoo.