Category: Uncategorized

From Chris Black, who, astonishingly, is even more lazy than I.

1) Panic in Detroit (from Aladdin Sane)-“looks a lot like Che Guevera”. Great background singing.
2) Under Pressure (with Queen)-with a bass line so good, even Vanilla Ice sounded (relatively) good.
3) Star (from Ziggy Stardust)-I did so much hard dancing to this song in my dorm room, I was grateful to the slowdown at the end.
4) Golden Years (from Station to Station)-I saw Bowie do this on Soul Train. The kids didn’t know what to make of the Thin White Duke, but they liked the song.
5) Fame (from Young Americans)-the original, not the inferior Fame ’90 remix that I have on the Pretty Woman soundtrack. Co-written by John Lennon. LOVE the scales of “fame, fame, fame, fame…”
6) Young Americans (from YA)- also on Soul Train. “Do you remember your President Nixon“, whose birthday, BTW, is tomorrow.
7) TVC15 (from STS)-because I like the beat.
8) Changes (from Hunky Dory)- from the first Bowie album I owned.
9) Fashion (from Scary Monsters)-I was at Fred Hembeck’s house this summer, and Fred, his daughter Julie and I were watching Bowie videos. Boy, is the video of this one of its time.
10) DJ (from Lodger)-Reminds of the day when “I am the DJ, I am what I play” applied to many disc jockeys, not just a relatively few.

I must make special mention of David Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby, “Peace on Earth”/”Little Drummer Boy”, and the strange story behind it: Bowie’s hatred of “Drummer Boy”, the quick rewrite, Crosby’s death before the special aired in 1977. I watched it (and you can, here or here) when it was originally broadcast and saw the bizarre banter about John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, then this duet, which, improbably, really worked. I STILL want to know: did Bing really know who Bowie was?

1. What is your best/happiest New Year’s Eve moment?

It was 1997. My ex-girlfriend (now my wife) Carol, her brother Mark, her ex-roommate Leanne and a couple others came over to my apartment. Mark dropped off a used computer, then we went off to First Night, catching the bus on Lark Street. It was evident that by the time we got to the State Museum five or six blocks away that Mark and Leanne were quite smitten with each other, and they got into “testing” each other to see if the other would stick around or go off to another event. They got engaged about four days later, got married on January 1, 1999. (And are still married with a lovely five-year-old daughter.)

2. Has a movie(or movies) ever made you cry?
Oh, geez, lots of movies make me cry. I got a little misty at the end of Dreamgirls, e.g.

I was half watching It’s A Wonderful Life on the computer in Charlotte (at this site, recommended by this person on Christmas Day, when I caught the early scene where the pharmacist mixes up a prescription and George doesn’t deliver it. “It’s poison, I tell you, poison!” I’d seen that scene a dozen times, but I really got caught up in the pharmacist’s pain at losing his son to the war.
Philadelphia, a very flawed movie, but that damn last scene when they’re showing the home movies, with Neil Young’s title song in the background…
I’m not sure if I cried during the scene when the Kevin Costner plays catch with his father in Field of Dreams when I first saw it, but I have since my father passed six years ago. So does Johnny Bench, I’ve read.
Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins free in Shawshank Redemption.
I’m sure there are scenes in In America, but I’m not remembering the specific moments.
Liam Neeson In Schindler’s List when he does the “I could have saved” speech at the end. Also the second appearance of the little girl in color.
The original Brian’s Song near the end.
At the end of Glory.
After the end of the blackout in Apollo 13. (That must be a good movie, given the fact that I knew the outcome.)
I’m SURE there are others.

3. Do you think that in 20 years George W. Bush will be regarded as one of the worst US Presidents in history?

One never knows, of course. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was blasted at the time, and now is regarded as healing the nation. The audiotapes that Bob Woodward has released after Ford’s death, though, make me wonder if he was just feeling sorry for an old friend. Perhaps it set up a bad precedent that a President is somehow above the law, which the current occupant seems to feel.
Oh, but one mustn’t lie about sex. I’m convinced that if Clinton hadn’t been impeached, W. would be this year, but the Dems don’t want to appear vindictive, or tear thwe country apart, again.
Recently, I read an article in the Baltimore Sun that suggested that Harry Truman was as ill-regarded in 1950 as W. was in 2006, and that Truman is now considered favorably. Moreover Truman had Korea; Bush had 9/11.
So, I don’t know, but I’d think Yes, he’ll be treated poorly by history. He put all of his eggs in the “war President” basket, and they got scrambled. If he had gone into Afghanistan, captured bin Ladin, isolated Saddam, as we had in January 2003, when we occupied the country without a shot being fired, he’d probably have come off as one of the better Presidents. And the primary reason I think he’ll suffer will be in comparison with Poppa Bush, who sent troops to fight in Iraq, but didn’t invade Baghdad. Some thought it was a mistake (I didn’t), and he proved to be right. Oh, BTW, I watched one of the Ford funerals on the DVR yesterday – there were at least four; this is the one in the Episcopal cathedral in DC on Tuesday last – and Bush 41 did a GREAT imitation of Dana Carvey doing Bush 41 (“Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent.”) Bush 43’s speech, by contrast, was an OK text with a bland delivery.

4. It appears that you enjoy your job. But if there was something else you could do for a living, what would it be?

Something in baseball. Official scorer, base coach. Unless I could make money pontificating as I do in this blog.

5. Do you think the Detroit Tigers can repeat as AL champs? (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

They can, but they probably won’t. I don’t pay that much attention to the game until spring training, but it seems that the Red Sox may have made themselves stronger. The Twins and the Yankees are still around. But I figure it’ll be some team I wasn’t expecting, such as the one in Cleveland.

So, I have two different types of questions for you. One is you describing your experiences, the other is me looking for facts.

1. How many US states have you been to? I’ve decided that “been to” means you’ve actually stopped there and ate or slept, which means I’m counting Illinois, even though I’ve only eaten in O’Hare. I’ve been to all of the states east of the Mississippi, except Indiana. I’ve been to Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah and California. That makes 31 out of 50, plus DC. I had a chance to go to Hawaii in 1995, but it didn’t work out. (Sob.)

2. Does anyone know why so many trucks on US highways have plates from Oklahoma, Illinois and Maine? Tennessee seems to be fairly represented as well.

The other is his third and final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, January 6, 1957, fifty years ago tomorrow. Elvis was signed to do these shows for the princely sum of $50,000 after Elvis’ appearance on The Steve Allen Show beat Sullivan in the ratings. Late last month, I received a review copy of the three-disc set of all three appearances.

Disc 1 covers the show of September 9, 1956, which was the last of five consecutive shows the host missed because of a severe auto accident, the results of which are shown on the disc’s extra features. So it was British actor Charles Laughton in New York who introduced the shy young singer who was in Hollywood, as he did his four numbers, including “Ready Teddy”, but they were well done. Fortunately, one could zap past some of the intervening acts, though Laughton’s reading of “The Girl and the Wolf”, based on “Little Red Riding Hood”, was interestingly bizarre. Other extras on the disc includes interviews, all done in early 1992, with Elvis confidants such as Sam Phillips and Wink Martindale, who said he still has a kinescope of an early interview he did with Elvis.

Disc 2, October 28, 1956: Ed is back, and Elvis is in the building, a tad more confident. As Sullivan noted, Presley just moved his shoulders and the girls in the audience would go wild. Apparently, the host had implored the fans not to scream during the songs, which, curiously, included “Hound Dog”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Love Me Tender”, AGAIN, plus “Love Me”. It was on “Hound Dog” that we see Elvis the Pelvis, most tame by current standards. Most of the other performers were unfamiliar, save for Senor Wences, who was doing much the same gig when I started watching Sullivan a few years later. The show also includes a couple songs from a Frank Loesser musical, “The Most Happy Fella”; it doesn’t really age well, but its appearance with the cast of 40 showed the clout Sullivan had in the theater community. The disc extras include promos for Elvis’ first two appearances.

Disc 3 is the infamous program where Elvis was shown only from the waist up, and after each set, the screen would go briefly black. The songs included a medley of “Hound Dog”/”Love Me Tender”/”Heartbreak Hotel” and “Don’t be Cruel” in an early segment; “Too Much” and “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold” a bit later, and at the end, “Peace in the Valley”. Presley is far more confident in this show. The rest of this program was the most interesting of the three, including the comedy dance of Bory and Bor, a Brazilian powerhouse female vocalist named Leny Eversong, and a young comic singing woman named Carol Burnett in her Sullivan debut, who tugged on her ear before she started. Extras include home movies and items from the Graceland archives.

Another interesting thing about these shows are how the commercials are integrated into the show: Sullivan announcing the “good news” about the sales of the 2006 Mercury, or plugging the November 12 release date of the 2007 “Big M”, fascinated me.
But the key value is watching the rapid development of “the King” and his performing style over a four-month period.