Roger O Green

Torturing others with Barry Sadler

1966

I had a grand time after church in late October. And I had S/Sgt. Barry Sadler to thank.

A group of us were talking about music. For some reason, the truly awful song The Men In My Little Girl’s Life came to my mind. Pure treacle. It was sung by Mike Douglas, the TV host. The very title made my companions shriek. I remember it went to #6 in ’66. – sign of the devil. So yeah.

One of my buddies was talking about how they had gone through all of the songs that had reached #1 on the pop charts. The discovery was that some of the ones before the rock and roll era weren’t very good.

I wondered if The Ballad of the Green Berets by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler was an outlier, but they didn’t remember it. This surprised me because it’s so different than most of its contemporary tunes. I confidently said it was the #1 tune of 1966, which was true if being #1 for five weeks is the measure. We Can Work It Out, Soul and Inspiration, Monday Monday, Summer In The City, and Winchester Cathedral all topped the charts for three weeks that year.

But they were young and didn’t understand its impact until I asked someone younger than I, I think, but older than them about the song. She immediately launched into “Fighting soldiers from the sky…” This generated a look of utter disbelief, and I had to laugh. You did not need to be a supporter of the Vietnam war to have that song stuck in your head for decades without having heard it again.

A new verse?

The song was so ubiquitous in the day that I could have, but didn’t, recite the lyrics of the last verse.
Back at home, a young wife waits
Her Green Beret has met his fate
He has died for those oppressed.
Leaving her his last request…

I knew the song was controversial at the time, of course. What I didn’t realize until recently is that there is a new, more inclusive version that has this verse:

Delta Force and CIA
SEALs and SOCOM
They clear the way.
Covert missions are now in play
These special ops
like the Green Beret

Some in the military apparently hate the additional words. I think they’re clunky.

I blame Chuck Miller for getting the original song stuck in my head. On his radio show, he played the B-side of Ballad of the Green Berets, a song called Letter from Vietnam, right before that church discussion.

The movie

Oh, yeah, I also saw the movie The Green Berets (1968), starring John Wayne, and fresh off the TV show The Fugitive, David Janssen. It also starred Jim Hutton of Binghamton, NY as Sgt. Petersen, which may have been a factor in me seeing it at the time.

Janssen’s character, George Beckworth, was a newspaper reporter cynical about the war until seeing Col. Mike Kirby (Wayne) and his troops in action. That’s a little oversimplified, but so was the film, which was pilloried by the critics as a WWII film.

What ordinal number is your favorite band’s best album?

Is the first the best?

Bridge over Troubled Water My buddy Greg, whose various blogs I’ve been following only since about 2005, posed the question above. What ordinal number is your favorite band’s best album? He mandated that I do likewise.

So naturally, I misread this as a CARDINAL number and started musing about Led Zeppelin III, 4- Foreigner, and Chicago so many digits I’ve lost track. No.

“I have a theory that bands release their best albums early in their careers. Bands tend to burn brightly but briefly…, and so they crank out great music early and, if they survive, begin to coast later in their careers. This isn’t a hard and fast rule…”

Maybe there is something to be said for this. I know the band Boston had at least four albums, but I must admit that I have just the first one. This doesn’t mean albums #2 and #3, both of which went to #1 on the album charts, aren’t as good…

It seemed, though, that a lot of my favorite albums of a group were their second outing. The Band’s eponymous album with the brown cover, Disraeli Gears by Cream, and Abraxas by Santana are among my favorite albums in my collection.

I have a good friend who is a big fan of Chicago Transit Authority, the band Chicago’s first album before they became very popular. Likewise, he only likes the first Blood, Sweat, and Tears album, Child Is Father to the Man, with Al Kooper, and hates the ones with David Clayton-Thomas on vocals. But I got the eponymous second albums – what is it with these self-titled sophomore albums? – first, and so favor them.

Motown

Conversely, there isn’t a major Motown artist whose first few albums I would peg as their best, except one.

Supremes: Beyond their hits, they were also putting out albums to show how diversified they were; A Bit of Liverpool; Sing Country, Western, and Pop; Sing Rodgers and Hart. My favorite is either The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland. (about #11 of 24 with Diana Ross as lead vocalist), or maybe Love Child (#17).

Temptations: With A Lot O’ Soul #6 of 40-some, is a transitional one from being produced by Smokey Robinson to Norman Whitfield. Puzzle People (#14) is their second produced entirely by Whitfield after David Ruffin left the group and Dennis Edwards joined. (These numbers are approximate, counting the crossovers with the Supremes and a live album, but not a greatest hits collection.)

Stevie Wonder: He didn’t come into his own until the 1970s. Songs in the Key Of Life (#15 of 27) is considered the masterpiece, but the three albums before that, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness’ First Finale are all excellent.

Marvin Gaye: As great as his singles were, he never had a great album before What’s Going On, #13 of 20-something. (Marvin was repackaged posthumously a lot.)

Jackson Five. Those first two albums, Diana Ross Presents and ABC, are arguably their best.

Other stars

Aretha Franklin: Well, not her early Columbia work, but I’d pick any of her early Atlantic albums. I’m partial to Lady Soul (#7 of about 40), but Amazing Grace (#16) is, well, amazing.

Simon and Garfunkel: I’m partial to their last album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, which is their 5th, or 6th, if you count the soundtrack to The Graduate, which I don’t.

The Beatles: somewhere between Rubber Soul (#6) and the white album (#10), unless you’re counting the American albums

I could do others but won’t, for a few reasons. Some albums are universally acclaimed that they’re on EVERYBODY’S list. or should be, e.g., Peter Gabriel’s third album (Melt). Other artists, I just can’t really pick their best; Neil Young is a real peaks and valleys guy. Still, other artists, I didn’t come to chronologically, but rather scattershot: Weird Al Yankovic is a prime example.

A year in the life of Joe Biden

overturning Trump policies

joebiden A year in the life of Joe Biden. Well, he did ask for the job. I’m just going to touch on the points that most resonated with me. So it won’t cover EVERY SINGLE THING he did in the past 365 days. First, the good.

He named “literally thousands of talented and diverse appointees… the ambassadorial corps, and the leadership of numerous regulatory agencies – most of whom have already effected huge and positive federal policy shifts in everything from student loans to toxic chemicals to human rights.”

Specifically, he’s gotten 40 federal judges approved. “80 percent are women and 53 percent are people of color.” His predecessor got half that many approved in that first year and received huge praise.

Also, there’s the $1.9 trillion Covid relief deal, which kept many American families afloat.

Biden reinstated the pause on the federal death penalty. The previous guy ended a 17-year pause on federal executions and 13 people were put to death between July 2020 and January 2021.

Indeed, much of what he accomplished, particularly early on, involved undoing what had taken place in the previous four years.

But beyond that, I feel that he’s a fundamentally decent person, prone to gaffs as he has been for decades, but not inherently nasty.

The mixed

Sure, the trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed in November, AFTER the election, when it was uncoupled from the Build Back Better bill. All old poli sci folks know that politics is the art of the possible. Personally, I would have preferred passing an infrastructure bill in August and working on the passable components of BBB in separate bills.

The US rejoined the Paris climate accord which Biden’s predecessor had left. I’m not sure what the 2021 event accomplished…

72 percent of American adults were fully vaccinated, a little later than the target. Which means a whole lot of people are not. The US rate still trails much of the world.

The unemployment rate has dropped dramatically, but so has the workforce.

The bad

I think most of his problem has been overpromising, creating extraordinarily high expectations, and underdelivering on them.

In July 2021, he said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan would in no way look like the 1975 pullout from Saigon, South Vietnam. As noted, I supported the action, but the failure to get more people out before the pullout was a blunder.

Biden declared that we would be free of the COVID by the 4th of July. Of course, he didn’t anticipate the delta and omicron variants. But one could see the sluggish growth in the number of vaccinated, despite the mandates, and the ill will they generated. The administration needed to do better making the testing kits available much sooner.

No voting-rights legislation was passed and his recent plan to end the filibuster, despite his fiery rhetoric, was never going to happen.

The ugly

A lot of the economic strains have been baked into the system. An increase in wages has been long overdue; the federal minimum wage is STILL $7.25. Now there is some leverage for higher wages.

The “just in time” supply chain, with so much manufacturing from outside the United States, has long been one pandemic, one large war away from the crisis that took place in 2021. As Reuters notes: “The economy is experiencing high inflation as the COVID-19 pandemic snarls supply chains.” Some like to call it Bidenflation, but I’m not sure what he could have done to prevent it.

He IS the oldest US President, and I believe the stiffness of his “ambulatory gait” over the past year allows some to write him off with a Let’s Go, Brandon meme.

The unfixable?

Here’s a larger question, though. Is the United States governable? The New York Times asked that very question a year ago. It quoted Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi.”When two people playing a game cannot agree on the basic rules and layout of the game, they cannot play. When groups within American society believe in two different sets of rules on how to play the game of democracy, it cannot be played and we become ungovernable.”

So when Biden promised to work “across the aisle” to pass legislation, and some in the GOP deign to actually work with him, they’re dubbed RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). They are threatened with primaries, backed by 45. Nate Silver of 538 posits that Jan. 6 strengthened Trump’s hold on the Republican Party. It’s sad, but I have to agree.

I’m not sure what Biden can do about the fact that most Republicans continue to believe in the Big Lie, that the 46th President was not legally elected. Perhaps America is heading to a place where it can no longer call itself a democracy.

Buttons

Right after the 2020 election, when it was clear that Biden had WON, I ordered a half dozen buttons. Two of them are Biden/Harris. One said, “Unity over division” – not happening yet. “Hope over fear”; fear seems pretty strong. “Trust over lies”; lies are still winning. “Science over fiction”; it would be nice.

If you’re more optimistic, PLEASE let me know.

The Battle at Lake Changjin

The movie market in China

I was falling down a rabbit hole, looking at 2021 box office grosses for movies. I knew Spider-Man: No Way Home had the largest gross sales.
DOMESTIC (45.3%) $627,428,198
INTERNATIONAL (54.7%) $759,000,000
WORLDWIDE $1,386,428,198

It’s interesting how well the film did in so many countries: $44.7M in France, $61.4M in the UK, and almost $41M in South Korea. But not in China.

Whereas for The Battle at Lake Changjin, almost all of the revenue is from China.
DOMESTIC (–) (Released Nov 19, 2021) $342,390
INTERNATIONAL (100%) $902,198,524
United Kingdom (Nov 19, 2021) $63,392
Australia (Dec 2, 2021) $138,739
Hong Kong (Nov 11, 2021) $2,596,393
China (Oct 1, 2021) $899,400,000
WORLDWIDE $902,540,914

And what IS this film? “Set in the Second Phase Offensive of the Korean War, ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ tells an epic historical tale: 71 years ago, the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) entered North Korea for battle. Under extreme freezing conditions, the troops on the Eastern Front pursued with fearless spirit and iron will, as they courageously fought the enemy at Lake Changjin (also known as Chosin Reservoir). The battle was a turning point in the Korean War and demonstrated the courage and resolve of the PVA.”

In fact, 108 of the 200 top-grossing films have 0% sales in the United States. Another five got 0.1% of its box office from the US. Six of the eight critics in Rotten Tomatoes panned it.

Time travel

Number 3 on the list is Hi, Mom: “A woman travels back in time to befriend her own mother in an attempt to make her life better.” Though it had a limited box office in Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, $821M of the $822M in sales were in China, with none from the US. The four critics in RT liked it a lot.

The fourth film was No Time To Die, the most recent James Bond film
DOMESTIC (20.8%) $160,772,007
INTERNATIONAL (79.2%) $613,262,000
WORLDWIDE $774,034,007
The list of countries is lengthy and broad.

F9: The Fast Saga ranks number 5.
DOMESTIC (23.8%) $173,005,945
INTERNATIONAL (76.2%) $553,223,556
WORLDWIDE $726,229,501
Lots of countries are represented as well, though China is quite important with almost $217M in ticket sales.

Movies into musicals

I started thinking about this when I read what Mark Evanier wrote about movie musicals. “There are 27 (!) stage musicals which are ‘in development’ as movies.” Given the lackluster box office of In the Heights and West Side Story, most of these films probably won’t be made.”

West Side Story
DOMESTIC (54.4%) $30,271,174
INTERNATIONAL (45.6%) $25,331,328
WORLDWIDE $55,602,502
Nothing from China

In the Heights
DOMESTIC (68.1%) $29,879,041
INTERNATIONAL (31.9%) $14,000,000
WORLDWIDE $43,879,041
Ditto

China

I read that This Year, Hollywood’s China Relationship Finally Unraveled. It doesn’t matter how accommodating the industry may be — the next phase of the Xi Jinping era may be defined by less space for Western content.

“Despite attempts to make it past China’s censors, Space Jam: A New Legacy never received a release in China this summer and scored just $162.8 million worldwide… — Disney received the same cold shoulder when it came to its Marvel tentpoles Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and The Eternals, films that were built around Chinese talent in order to make a giant showing in the market. But to no avail.

“Neither film was given a release in the country that continues to take heat for reported human rights abuses. Hollywood’s silence on those abuses has become deafening as other industries and entities have begun to confront China. In fact, 2021 — with its diminishing economic returns in the country — might mark the year that finally cooled the Hollywood-China romance.

“The reversal of fortunes in China has begun to accelerate in the past year. In 2021, just 25 U.S. movies were released theatrically in the country, many of which were minor indie titles instead of studio tentpoles. By contrast, some 45 Hollywood movies were shown on Chinese screens in 2019. That is forcing the major studios to pivot on their China ambitions, mostly because there is little to no growth to be attained in the country in the current climate… “

Movie review: West Side Story

There’s a place for us

Of course, my wife my daughter, and I HAD to go see the new movie West Side Story. Not only have we all seen the original film a number of times, but we’ve all attended at least three stage productions of the musical.

First, we loved the physical setup of the opening. The signage suggests the future location of Lincoln Center. It makes sense. “April 21, 1955: The Mayor’s Slum Clearance Committee chaired by Robert Moses is approved by the New York City Board of Estimate to designate Lincoln Square for urban renewal.” Nine years later, buildings began opening. The rubble in the new film was more believable.

Thus, this iteration is in keeping with the timeframe of the original musical (1957) and movie (1961). Of course, the vintage cars would tip one off as well.

This Tony (Ansel Elgort) has a rap sheet, less the dewy-eyed kid from film #1. So his Something’s Coming is less a certainty than a need. But he has the support of Valentina (executive producer Rita Moreno), who is the widow of Doc, who had run the store in the first movie. Valentina is a more substantial character and gets the most affecting song late in the story.

Fancy colors

My daughter noted the color schemes of the Jets (blues, greys) and Sharks (reds, browns). Though I wasn’t consciously aware of this, I must have subliminally picked up on the motif.

This Anita (Ariana DeBose) is at least as feisty as her predecessor, as Bernardo (David Alvarez) finds out. The “eyes lock across the room” between Tony and Maria (Rachel Zegler) isn’t as dramatically corny as in the first film.

What I loved about Tony singing the song Maria afterward is that other people notice, some with admiration, others with disdain, which was occasionally funny.

America was enhanced by dancing in the streets, with passersby occasionally getting a line. Gee, Officer Krupke really works in the new setting, with the ultimate musical payoff. One Hand, One Heart is lovely.

I always found Cool to be the weakest song in the show. In the musical, it’s before The Rumble, but afterward in the original film. It’s before here, but serving a very different purpose, showing a rift between Tony and Riff (Mike Faist).

The Tonight Quintet is the piece that first made me fall in love with West Side Story. The set of The Rumble, with the long shadows, worked well. So did the Gimbels, an old competitor of Macy’s in the day, for I Feel Pretty.

Opera?

My nutritionist said that WSS is an opera. No more so than A Boy Like That/I Have A Love. The scene at Doc’s with Anita and the Jets was stronger this time.

It seems that from where Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera) shoots Tony, he could have also wounded Maria as well. This Chino was better developed. So was Anybodys (Iris Menas). This is a very talented cast.

If not every note feels as it did when I saw the original nearly six decades ago, it’s OK. Some folks complained that there was some dialogue in Spanish that was not translated. Given the fact that people throughout – the cops, and even Bernardo – were insisting people “speak English”, it was no big deal to me. But I will allow there was occasionally a bit too much talking altogether, IMO.

Still, we’re glad we saw the new film. The critics mostly agree. The box office was rather anemic. Did that have anything to do with allegations against Elgort?

A more fundamental question is whether there should be a remake at all. Did we NEED another version of A Star Is Born a couple of years ago? I dunno, but I don’t spend much time thinking about it.

I’m glad that WSS lyricist Stephen Sondheim got to see this film before he died. He said that he loved it. My family saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on December 30.