tripleindemnity

Top Silents

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:10:01 GMT

I wrote this on a forum site where someone commented on his recent first experience with silent film (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) with live orchestral accompaniment and asked about other silent films to seek out, especially of the horror genre.

---------------------------------

I'm a big fan of silent films, and they're certainly an even more effective experience with live accompaniment.

Orchestral accompaniments are pretty rare, though, as the cost of a written music, arrangements and a full orchestra are just too high for all except special occasions. Mostly one sees them with piano accompaniment, which may, or may not, use music similar to what would have been used in the teens and twenties.

I don't know what the situation is in the UK, in the US there are a few cities where one can garner opportunities to see silent films with live music. Boston, San Francisco Bay area, LA, DC, for example. In the UK I know the British Film Institute used to show silents with live piano, assume they still do.

When it comes to film history, a film as late as 1919 is unlikely to be "the first" of anything, contrary to what promoters may say. There were thousands of films cranked out around the globe in the preceding years, and believe me they were trying every genre they could think of.

Dr. Caligari may be the first to use a deliberately surrealistic art/set design, however, which were a very creative and artistic response to the low budget necessitated by a small film company and the economic devastation of Germany in the wake of WWI (immediately prior to WWI the German film industry was probably the primary challenger to Hollywood's dominance in the world market). IIRC the style of Caligari's acting was taken from a particular avante-garde theater in Berlin, as were some of the actors.

There were plenty of silent horror films in the 1920's, when major filmmaking turned almost entirely to features. Amongst the best (and best known) are Nosferatu, The Phantom Carriage, The Phantom of the Opera, The Unknown, Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Faust (Murnau's version from 1926, although there were about a dozen others over the course of the silent era). Other films from the silent era have fairly strong horror elements even if they're not explicitly called horror films, for example, The Wind and The Man Who Laughs.

For silent films in general, I ran across a good list of the Top 100. Having seen about 80% of these, I would quibble with the ordering, but not with the fact that these are certainly some mighty good silent films. Their top 10 is after the cut:

1. The General
2. Metropolis
3. Sunrise
4. City Lights
5. The Gold Rush
6. Nosferatu
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc
8. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
9. The Battleship Potemkin
10. Greed

http://www.silentera.com/info/top100.html

I'd add that it's worth seeing any silent film, feature or short, by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and most every one by Charlie Chaplin as well.

Note that this is pretty much a list of the top silent feature films that have been easy to see over the last few decades (prior to about 1915 most silent films were 10-20 minutes in length, some quite good). A surprising number of silent films have been refound/rediscovered in the last couple of decades but haven't been widely seen by enough people to make such a list, even though some are very good.

And what you might see varies a lot. Most any film from prior to 1923 (and many silents from after) are in the public domain, hence most anyone can put out some beat up, sliced and diced, muddy and blurry DVD from some many times duped and battered 16mm print. I have, for example, seen more than one truly unwatchable video of Dr. Caligari, one of the most distributed of silent films because, along with Metropolis (with some really bad versions out, too), it's one of the best known. Let the buyer (or renter, or ticket buyer) beware.

NYT on NOLA

Mon, 04 May 2009 15:39:41 GMT

My intention, after the first day's blogging, after waiting for Bill's post-midnight arrival from Rochester, was to blog similarly every day.

The reality was there was too much music (over 40 acts) and too little sleep. It just didn't happen, though if I have the time over the next few days I'll try to catch up with some of it, before it's too late and all the memories blend together. However, those people who are actually paid to write tend to have their attention focused enough to put fingers to keyboard as, for example, Jon Pareles:

On JazzFest itself:

Gospel singers were harmonizing and brass-band horns were pumping out a parade oompah. Between them, Glen David Andrews was dressed like an R&B star in shades and a heavily sequined T-shirt, shouting to the rafters, singing about the Lord. It was Friday afternoon in the gospel tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In typical New Orleans style, traditions were getting all mixed together...

Jazzfest is a one-stop gathering of nearly every ranking local act. This year there were brass bands like the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth, who massed together onstage. There was funk-charged blues from Walter Wolfman Washington. There was brawny, clattering bayou zydeco from Rosie Ledet and C. J. Chenier. There were songwriters like Theresa Andersson, who multiplied her voice through electronics; Anders Osborne, whose bluesy songs hinted at grunge; and Alex McMurray, a droll, raspy singer playing nimble jazz guitar.

There was tumultuous avant-garde jazz from the saxophonist Kidd Jordan and creamy-toned ballad playing from James Rivers, who had performed at the first festival. There was R&B in slow, percolating grooves from Dr. John and there was philosophizing and two-fisted barrelhouse piano from the prolific New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint. Some local musicians were ubiquitous: Troy Andrews, known as Trombone Shorty, turned up onstage (playing trumpet) with Glen David Andrews (his cousin), Bonnie Raitt, the Dirty Dozen and the Midnite Runners, a local brass-band supergroup. His own band, Orleans Avenue, performed on April 24, the festival’s opening day...

[W]hat makes Jazzfest unique takes place on a smaller scale: moments like the parades of Mardi Gras Indians and the Social Aid and Pleasure Club. They used to reveal their feathered outfits and fancy suits on only a few days a year in certain neighborhoods; Jazzfest determinedly introduced them to outsiders. On Saturday afternoon, the Undefeated Divas Social Aid & Pleasure Club was parading in front of the Pin Stripe Brass Band, waving feathers and carrying placards that said “Swagger Like Us.” Jazzfest has let the rest of the world see how.

And on the Ponderosa Stomp:

The Stomp’s long lineup also included the 80-year-old Alabama bluesman and harmonica player Jerry McCain; Lady Bo, who played guitar in Bo Diddley’s band when he made his hits in the late 1950s; Wanda Jackson, a rockabilly singer who had Elvis Presley as a mentor; the gospel-charged soul singers Otis Clay and Howard Tate; the organ-driven garage psychedelia of ? and the Mysterians; the swamp-pop drummer and singer Warren Storm; and the rambunctious rockabilly singer and guitarist Ray Sharpe.

Lazy Lester, the harmonica-playing Louisiana bluesman who released “Pondarosa Stomp” as the B-side of a 1966 Excello Records single, was also on hand, with Presley’s longtime guitarist James Burton and the organist Stanley Dural, a k a Buckwheat Zydeco, among his backup musicians...

Concentrating on lesser-known tunes and performers, the Stomp can stir thoughts about careers, genres, songwriting and luck — not to mention the catalytic effect of ex-girlfriends in the history of rock ’n’ roll. Heartache and smoldering lust filled set after set. Dan Penn sang the hymnlike hits he wrote for others (“I’m Your Puppet,” “Do Right Woman,” “Dark End of the Street”) in a duo with the keyboardist Bobby Emmons, revealing a rich, hickory-cured voice of his own...

There’s something wistful about the Ponderosa Stomp, with so many performers whose early triumphs were fleeting, and some whose voices haven’t been treated well by time. But more often, there’s exhilaration, a chance to prove that for many of the musicians, the spirit in their songs has long outlasted their youth. L. C. Ulmer, a bluesman from Mississippi born in 1928, played eerie, droning, irregular rural-style solo blues, now electrified. At one point he was joined onstage by three women in burlesque costumes, shimmying by his side. He finished the song exultantly: “I feel like I’m 16 again!”

New Orleans JazzFest 2009 Day 1

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:21:30 GMT

Bands seen:

Willis Prudhomme and Zydeco Express--alright but didn't really do it for me
Marc Broussard--a little too jam band-y and pop-y for my taste.
Samolian Warriors Madis Gras Indians--Oh yeah, now we're talking. Some good Indian rhythms going on, some great uptown costumes with representational beadwork, great drumming work, the usual Indian chants, Shoo-Fly, Indians, Let Them Come (?), going on forever till they become almost mantra-like, but with a second-line rhythm.
Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings in the Blues tent. No, not that Roy Rogers nor Ike Turner's backing band. Some really, really good white slide guitar in a power trio, but sadly only ok singing.
Henry Butler --definitely got the N'Awlins music going on, although the sound and mix at the Congo Square stage was just as bad as I remember. Why is it that the sound at Congo Square almost always sucks, when the 10 other stages are always good to great?
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue--Trombone Shorty definitely knows his way around a 'bone, but the band was more jam-bandy then NOLA brass band funky. When it did get funky, I definitely got into it.
Congo Square: Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Yacoub Addy and Odadaa!. Apparently this is a recreation of a new album showing the influences of African music on American jazz and vice versa. Definitely it was just terrific. Almost haunting stuff at the beginning (for once the sound on the Congo Square stage did not suck), some great African sounds, great both small jazz and big band sounds, from mainstream fully charted to serious trad jazz. It was wonderful, although also two-and-a-half hours, way more than any act I've ever seen at JazzFest, so while it was going on we went to see
Joe Cocker--who was really good (and sure got a huge audience). Although a lot of those arrangements sounded just like the 30-40 year old records. They were great then, they're great now, but does recapitulating the records show that Cocker likes to give the people what they want, or a lack of musical imagination and expansion.
Real Untouchables Brass Band--who confusingly had a different name on their matching T-Shirts. Some really good funky N'awlins brass bands just the way I like it. They may not be Rebirth, but they sure know how to funk it up.

And in amongst all that music was some great eating

I kept reading about the Soft Shell Crab Po'Boy in the musicians recommendation on the WWOZ web site. They said they head straight for it the first thing in the fest. They know their crab.
Rosemint Iced Tea--not quite sure what a rosemint is, but it sure knows how to steep.
Cajun Bread--deep fried (I think?) patty with this spicy sausage stuffing that was delicious.
Sno-Balls--Apparently "nectar" tastes like almond and looks bright red. I'd thought sno-balls would be like italian ice, but it was drunk, not spooned or coned. Interesting... but there's other sno-balls on the grounds, might have to try a different one (especially cause I did see people with plates of round icy stuff they were spooning). Shockingly, not ice cold in temp, even though it was literally ice.
Pheasant, quail and andouille sausage gumbo--another one from the WWOZ musicians. My god, was that good. It was transporting... just amazing stuff in a little styrofoam bowl. It may have passed Brennan's turtle soup for me as the best soup I've had in NOLA
Crawfish Streusel--I was going for the Crawfish Monica, but apparently so had everybody else, they were sold out an hour before the day is over. So since I'd noticed the crawfish streusel a couple of stands down. I didn't know how one could streuselize a crawfish. Apparently one puts it in this long cylindrical bread thing and surround it with some sort of cheesy spicy sauce and who knows what else... Mmmm, mmmm good. It may have only been third on today's list, but it would be extraordinary anywhere else, and was pretty amazing even for NOLA

Other observations:

Do not listen to Michael when he tells you you should get a base tan. I've now got arms like a boiled lobster, though the rest of me seems to be more-or-less ok. Lots of Banana Boat upfront tomorrow.
Last year's observation proved correct. Taking a cab to the Fest (at $4 a head) makes sense. But taking the shuttle bus back makes even more sense. We were back in less than half an hour, we probably wouldn't have been halfway through the taxi line in that time!
Even if it's not that hot, it's hot enough. I was drinking water like a fish and still thirsty. In April. New Orleans sure ain't Boston

Walkin' In New Orleans

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:22:52 GMT

J. suggested I give her sis and bro, who are headed for New Orleans, a few tips on where to eat, drink, and catch some music. And, as usual when it comes to the Crescent City, I got kind of carried away. So at J's (as opposed to Jay's) suggestion, I'm posting it for posterity.

New Orleans has a food (and music) culture unlike any other place I've been in the US. It's not just an upper-class thing, it permeates all levels of society. So even the cheapest looking dives and holes-in-the-wall can have fantastic food, it just gets less fancy as it gets cheaper. But you'd be surprised at just how good a dish as seemingly simple as, say, a fried shrimp po'boy or red beans and rice can taste if done just right, by people who really know what they're doing, with quality fresh ingredients.

Those places where Big Easy food can fail are those that are really oriented towards vacuuming up tourist dollars, rather than serving good food to local residents. The tourist places may have menus that often look the same as those that are truly authentic, but the quality of the ingredients and cooking is way below par. Unfortunately, those are the places you'll often hit if you're going to the usual tourist haunts, like in the French Quarter: there can be some wonderful and excellent cheap food in the Quarter. But right next door will be a place with bland food with no taste, not-fresh ingredients, and no pride in the kitchen. But it will often look more appealing cause they make their money enticing tourists who'll never come back again. It's the latter places you want to avoid.

Here's some ideas, in somewhat random order, of good places to go in NOLA, mostly in and near the French Quarter. Well, I thought the were in random order, turns out I thought of them in a sort of geographically wandering mental map, so here's a map for the reader.

Brennan's brought the very fancy brunch to New Orleans. If you go to NO all sorts of people will ask you after if you had brunch at Brennans. It can be really amazing (and very fancy service) but not cheap. Like $50 not cheap for brunch (which they have 7 days a week). If you do go, it's definitely worth paying extra on the prix fixe menu for the turtle soup and the bananas foster (they invented the latter). Probably need reservations. From what I've heard it's not particularly memorable for dinner. Actually, my first trip there two years ago was amazing, my re-visit last year was less so. So your mileage may vary... but I'm willing to bet, with Brennan's long history, my one not great experience was an aberration.

The Commander's Palace has a great brunch, too, but only on weekends. Seven days a week, though, it has amazing food--been called the best restaurant in America more than once. They now have prix fixe dinners that can keep the price in the $30's (minus drinks) and lunches even cheaper. It's in the Garden District (well worth seeing on its own), not the French Quarter.

There are three really old school very fancy French Quarter New Orleans Creole restaurants that date back over a century that everyone's heard of: Antoine's, Arnaud's, and Galatoire's. I've read that Arnaud's is currently the best, Galatoire's is pretty damn good (and is both where Tennessee Williams liked to eat and where some old-line New Orleans family still go on days like Easter Sunday), and that Antoine's just isn't worth the price now, although the old school ambience is still happening. They're all fairly expensive, have similar Creole menus, and probably require both reservations and dressing up.

All three of those are on (or right off) Bourbon Street. You probably don't want to eat anywhere else on Bourbon except, perhaps, Red Fish Grill which is a Brennan restaurant and was pretty good and not terribly expensive when I went pre-Katrina: www.redfishgrill.com A lot of the other Brennan restaurants are also supposed to be good, like Mr. B's Bistro.

Like Arnaud's, etc. above, another place out of the 19th C. is Tujague's on Decatur with very old school decor and a very old school menu. They've had the same prix fixe (now about $35) 6 course meal for decades, so they've learned how to do it really well. Compare, for example, their gumbo to the very different gumbos in other restaurants. I really liked it a lot when I went pre-Katrina.

Tujague's is a block or two from the Cafe du Monde, which everyone has to go to cause it's just terrific. It's an open air cafe that's been there since the Civil War, it's open 24-hours a day, and there's really only two things on the menu: cafe au lait and beignets, both of which are pretty amazing and complement each other perfectly... another example of simple New Orleans food being exquisite. I usually go there more than once on any trip

Down Decatur is the Central Grocery (so old school they don't have a web site) a smallish crowded Italian deli that invented the muffuletta 100 years ago. Basically it's an excellent, very dense, very intense italian sandwich. A half muffuletta will fill you up all day long. It's one of the things everybody remembers about New Oreleans, and although I've had muffulettas in other places in town, none of the others have ever come close to measuring up to the original. There's only a couple of counters to eat at in the back, you can just take it out and eat in Jackson Square or somewhere out in the open nearby. They're only open for lunch (something like 10-5) and think they're closed Sundays and maybe Mondays

Johnny's Po'Boys is a lunch only place a block off Decatur on St. Louis that makes pretty amazing Po'Boys, like 40 different kinds. The fried seafood po'boys are especially good.

Not too far away on Decatur, is Cafe Maspero, which looks like it might be a touristy place but is both cheap and good and has lots of locals eating there. Nothing fancy, but pretty decent New Orleans standard cooking (Mother's is probably better, but not in the middle of the Vieux Carré). Unlike a lot of the cheap places Cafe Maspero has waiter service.

A couple blocks from the French Quarter in the CBD (Central Business District) is Mother's, which has been there for 70 some years. It has heaping helpings of all the New Orleans creole standards (red beans and rice, crawfish etoufee, jambalaya, file gumbo) along with the po'boys they were originally known for in a semi-cafeteria setting. Basic food really well done.

I've heard that both the Acme Oyster House and Felix's, right across the street from each other a block off Bourbon, are great for the raw bar thing, though I haven't tried them myself.

If you're going out to clubs or drinking Bourbon Street is really best avoided. It's basically one giant drunken frat party tourist trap. It's worth walking the street to see what it's like (at night, especially), it's not worth spending your money there. The one exception may be The Funky Pirate when Big Al Carson (very big, by all accounts) is singing some very nasty, raunchy, dirty blues there most nights of the week. I keep missing seeing his show, but hope to finally make it this year when he's on stage.

For real music clubs not on Bourbon two of the best places are The Maple Leaf out near Tulane, which is a great small club and the Rock n'Bowl... yes, it's a music club in a bowling alley and in the past has been called the best music club in the country. They both have interesting music most any night they're open. As a regular feature I'd especially recommend Zydeco Night on Thursdays at the Rock n'Bowl and Papa Grows Funk on Monday nights at the Maple Leaf.

If you're going to the Maple Leaf, one stop probably worth making is the Camellia Grill, which is a few blocks away on S. Carrollton, a diner like place that Jay--who went to high school nearby--raves about. He says the fried pies kick ass. Open early till late.

Both the music clubs above are pretty far from the French Quarter. You might be able to get to the Maple Leaf on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar now, The Rock n'Bowl will require a cab. There's a couple of big clubs I would recommend if they're having someone good, like Tipitana's and the Howlin' Wolf, but if you're not going to see someone in specific, especially at the Maple Leaf or the Rock n' Bowl, I'd totally recommend just going to Frenchmen Street, which is loaded with small music clubs on the 500 and 600 blocks. It's a couple of blocks from the the French Quarter across Esplanade Avenue in the Fauburg Marigny (the other side of the Quarter from the CBD). Just walk the street and pop in whereever something sounds good: the Blue Nile, the Apple Barrel, the Ray's Boom Boom Room, the Spotted Cat, d.b.a. Most clubs in New Orleans have low covers: in the single digits for local acts when there isn't a huge tourist influx. The exception on Frenchmen is Snug Harbor, a small jazz club that has internationally known performers, like Ellis Marsalis. That's probably the only place on Frenchmen you'd ever need to buy tix in advance.

If you're on Frenchmen, the best place to eat is likely The Praline Connection. I went there 'cause a friend said they had amazing fried chicken. She was right (plus the usual other New Orleans specialties on the menu). They're only open till 9 or 10 or so.

Near Frenchmen, right on the edge of the Quarter on Esplanade is the Port of Call, which Jay raved about until I finally went. His ravings were called for. It's tiny, it's divy, it basically just has burgers, a couple of steaks, and baked potatoes. It's pretty great. Especially if you have one of their ridiculous kitschy "polynesian" drinks. You can't tell what's in them from the menu, but they're loaded with alcohol in a good way.

One place definitely known for their drinks is Pat O'Briens. It's gigantic (takes up most of a city block), it's got a flaming fountain in the courtyard and dueling pianos, it's sure go that frat party atmosphere... but it's quite a spectacle, well worth seeing, especially to have a hurricane, which O'Briens invented post-Prohibition. A hurricane is a huge drink and it has huge amounts of rum and fruit juice, one by itself will get you pretty well onto plastered. Note that O'Briens, like many bars, will give you you drink to go (or to gaux)... drinking in public is legal in NO so long as it's in plastic, not glass. Don't waste your money eating there when you can get much better food close by.

One other exception to not going to the bars on Bourbon Street is Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, on the 900 block of Bourbon where the bars start to peter out. You want to go there at night. The building dates to the 18th C. and feels like it when it's only lit by candles in the dark. It's worth experiencing even if the patrons are mostly 21st Century college kids (though apparently on Mardis Gras day all the old line families in N.O. go there for a drink).

Another bar worth experiencing if you'll be near it anyway (but not so great to be worth going out of the way for) is The Columns right on St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District. It's a small hotel inside a 19th C. mansion. The lobby/bar were used for brothel scenes in Pretty Baby, really has that fin de siècle feel.

One place worth avoiding is The Court of Two Sisters in the Quarter. It's gorgeous, old school French Quarter, but it's living off the tourist trade. The food is mediocre at best and the prices are far too high. The atmosphere alone just isn't worth the high price.

Other places that are well known: I've heard Paul Prudhomme's K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen in the French Quarter has seen better days but hasn't yet seen lower prices and is overrun by tourists. Prudhomme's often outside in a motorized wheelchair to draw crowds. On the other hand, I have heard that Emeril's three restaurants (NOLA in the French Quarter and Emeril's New Orleans and Emeril's Delmonico in the CBD) continue to be good, but I don't know I'd spend the tab there over going to one of the places at the beginning of this note (Arnaud's, Commander's Palace, Galatoire's etc.) that are more uniquely New Orleans... but I haven't tried any of Emeril's outlets, so this year my opinion may change.

Readers: please do add your own opinionated comments.

Jon Stewart On A Roll

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:59:12 GMT

This is too good to pass up, Jon Stewart taking on Rick Santelli.

I love how it builds up and up until the final... well, see for yourself:

More On Tenenbaum

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:44:08 GMT

I hadn't heard of David Tenenbaum story until last week, when I happened upon a link to the story while perusing TalkingPointsMemo. The all too real parallels to the Dreyfus Affair of more than a century earlier were striking. Struck me enough to finally write up my sleepy observations on the The Life of Emile Zola.

A couple people asked me about Tenenbaum, so here's a longer piece a few months old from The Washington Post.

I love how one of the items that made his Tenenbaum's Army research colleagues suspicious of him was his carrying a backpack, instead of a briefcase. And that he was hired to work with foreign governments on improving vehicle armor, yet it was that very work that made his co-workers (very) wrongly suspect him of espionage.

The Life of Emile Zola

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:28:27 GMT

Unfortunately I managed to sleep through portions of 1937's Academy Award winning (Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay) biopic The Life of Emile Zola a couple days ago on TCM...

Larger portions than I'd thought, as reading online synopses just now indicate I missed whole sections I wasn't aware I'd lost. Although the actual length of the film itself seems to be somewhat variable in any case--I've seen listings of 114, 116, 123, and 128 minutes--so perhaps I just created my own extremely shortened version... Like a version that's pretty much missing the entire J'accuse trial that's apparently the centerpiece of the less somnambulic versions.

However, I've taken keyboard to LJ not to praise Life nor to bury it, but to highlight a couple of what I suspect were older techniques I noticed when I managed to stay awake.

First was some interesting use of the narrative use of onscreen diagetic text in place of spoken remarks or intertitle information. Although the title may be The Life of Emile Zola it's an awfully compressed life, as the primary focus of the film is Zola's efforts on behalf of the falsely accused Alfred Dreyfus.

The Dreyfus Affair was a major event in the life of modern European Judaism, yet nowhere in the film is Dreyfus's religion ever mentioned... nowhere is it mentioned but, when going through a list of staff officers who were the potential source of the information leak, the French generals stop at a page containing Dreyfus's personnel information and one literally runs his finger beneath the entry for "Jewish" on Dreyfus's dossier.

Similarly, when Zola makes his major decision to take on the cause of Alfred Dreyfus, you learn of his decision by reading over his shoulder the letter of nomination to the "French Academy" (in English, of course, it is a 1930's Hollywood movie) and then you see Zola tearing the nomination into little pieces. Zola knows his decision to publicly support Dreyfus will have a deleterious effect on his reputation and social standing, but it's a decision he feels he has to take anyway. A knowledge that's conveyed solely through the tearing up of the letter the audience has been allowed to read.

I was struck in watching that this seemed unusual even for a contemporary film intended for what is presumed to be a visually and cinematically sophisticated audience. Almost always these extremely important turning points will have some sort of verbal highlighting in the script, yet they weren't present in this movie.

My thought: 1937 was only eight or nine years after the triumph of talkies over silent film, and both these scenes could easily have been done in exactly the same non-verbal fashion in a silent movie. Silents and silent technique were doubtless common currency of all those working on this picture: did they simply assume that these techniques were still equally accessible to their intended audience? Furthermore, did these silent-adept filmmakers assume that conveying these important pieces of information purely visually would cause the audience to focus on, and thus highlight, these important plot points?

Secondly, in the first portions of the film--the compressed potted history of Zola's life--the passage of time isn't indicated so much by the usual visual techniques of using dissolves or fades to black to indicate the ellipses of long passages of time... Rather, it's done via lead actor Paul Muni's facial hair, which changes in style and heightens in grayness as the different eras tumble one upon the other. (The toll of time is also indicated via Muni's expanding waistline, but that's not so obvious in his "younger" years.)

Again, is this the use of a silent technique, assuming the audience will just "get it" without the need for dated title cards or the classical cinematic signifiers?

Note: IMDB claims that the film was shot in reverse chronological order in order to start Muni with a larger beard at his oldest characterization and then cutting the beard and grayness back as he got "younger". IMDB also claims that Muni spent 3.5 hours in makeup before the start of every day of shooting. With that much time in the makeup chair every day, I'm sure Hollywood studio makeup artists would have had no problem giving Muni a very believable face and graying beard... in fact, if that isn't what they were doing, what was taking all those hours every day? Plus, Muni's beard doesn't "end" large and bushy and get shorter earlier in the film, the shape actually changes significantly over "time" (until he begins with only a mustache when the film opens with Zola sharing a garret with Cezanne). I rather suspect that piece of trivia is either an oversimplification of the actual shooting schedule (it's extraordinarily rare for any film to be shot in chronological sequence) or simply made up out of whole cloth by a studio publicist.

All Too Modern Addendum: One would have thought the Dreyfus Affair was a product of 19th Century European anti-semitism... or one would have hoped it was until one read today of a very similar case that's currently in litigation in the contemporary US army, as Orthodox Jewish Army Engineer David Tenenbaum was accused of being a spy solely because of his religion and his job required contact with Israeli engineers:

An Orthodox Jewish Army engineer who was cleared of spying for Israel sued the U.S. Defense and Justice departments Thursday, saying they made false security claims to prevent him from seeking compensation.

David Tenenbaum and his wife, Madeline, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit, calling the secrecy claim "frivolous" and an "abuse of power."...

The Pentagon put Tenenbaum on paid leave in 1997 while it investigated whether he was supplying secrets to Israel. Investigators cleared him, and he still works at the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command in Warren.

Tenenbaum, 51, is the son of a Holocaust survivor and speaks Hebrew. One of his primary duties at the tank command was to design and develop safer combat vehicles, and he was in frequent contact with military engineers from other nations, including Israelis.

Though he kept his job, Tenenbaum lost his security clearance for a time and said the case hurt his career...

In the suit filed Thursday, Tenenbaum's lawyers said those who instigated the 1997 probe "falsely accused Tenenbaum of being an Israeli spy on the sole basis that Tenenbaum is Jewish."

"To avoid losing at trial and facing a substantial judgment," the suit alleged, the defendants claimed their case "required the use of state secret information, which could not be presented in a public trial."...

In March 2006, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the Pentagon inspector general's office for a review.

The inspector general's report, released in July, concluded that Tenenbaum was "subjected to unusual and unwelcome scrutiny because of his faith and ethnic background, a practice that would undoubtedly fit a definition of discrimination."

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/20/america/Spy-Investigation.php

So I guess the Dreyfus Affair really isn't so far behind us after all.

Dead Reckoning

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:58:36 GMT

Saw this reasonably good 1947 Humphrey Bogart film noir last week. I've seen it a couple of times before and liked it well enough, but haven't seen it for years.

And what struck me on repeated viewing was that there are scenes obviously lifted straight from The Maltese Falcon (1941). It first made an impression on me seeing the scene in Captain Murdock's (Bogart's) hotel lobby, where the police detective is hiding behind a newspaper, sitting in an easy chair up against a pillar in the middle of the lobby, just like Wilmer/Elisha Cook, Jr. is seen waiting for Sam Spade in Falcon.

And then there's the earlier scene where the pair of police detectives braces Murdock up in his hotel room, just as the detectives brace Spade in his apartment. And there's the scene where Martinelli in his office feeds Murdock a mickey in a drink a la Gutman and Spade in Gutman's apartment. And the scene towards the end where Murdock tells Dusty Chandler he has to send her up the river even though he likes her.

Of course, Lizabeth Scott seems to be doing her best to mimic the Lauren Bacall of To Have and Have Not (1944) and especially The Big Sleep (1944/46) throughout much of the movie, likely at the director, John Cromwell's, instruction. And, of course, the whole sequence with Coral and Murdock unexpectedly winning all the money at craps and then ending up in Martinelli's office is straight from The Big Sleep as well.

My guess is there's probably other lifts from either those movies or other Bogart detective/noirs from the intervening six years, but my usually dim memory didn't let me in on them.

My guess also is that Cromwell had no compunctions about stealing the essence of those scenes, and others, due to the ephemeral nature of films in the 1940s. There was no TV, there were no DVDs, there were, effectively, no revival houses. Movies played once, and that was it. Now it might take as much as two years or so for a film to work its way down from first run theaters to the fifth run, and even lower, levels. But once a picture was off theater screens it was pretty much gone forever. Plus, of course, new movies went up every week, people just didn't memorize them while seeing them over and over again.

So Cromwell probably felt no plagiaristic compunction at all in screening those earlier films, or just remembering his favorite "good bits" from his own viewings of those earlier films, and putting them in his own picture to hopefully re-entertain the audience again. It was a different era, I doubt a director of a non-sequel and (somewhat) arty picture would ever be so blatant today.

(An interesting example of the inaccessibility to the general audience of earlier films is the half-hour and hour-long condensations that were re-enacted on radio during this same era. Done today one would assume that they were marketing for a current or coming film. In fact, many of the radio versions were performed years after the film being reduced to pure sound was off any commercial screen. My guess is the studios wouldn't let the radio version be put on earlier as they would think of it as free competition for theatrical ticket revenue. Instead the radio versions were essentially souvenirs, the only way anyone in the audience had of re-experiencing an older movie they had previously enjoyed.)

Note 1: Note that the original 1947 New York Times review says that "Mr. Bogart is, of course, beyond criticism in a role such as "Dead Reckoning" affords him." so a little more than six years after Maltese Falcon Bogart's mastery of "slug 'em-love 'em and leave 'em" "whodunits" was firmly established. However, the Time's reviewer either doesn't recognize or chooses not to comment on Dead Reckoning's resemblance to those earlier "whodunits".

Note 2: I don't recall any reference to "dead reckoning"--or any form of navigation--in the movie. Was that phrase purely used to get "dead" in the title as a signifier for the audience of the film's genre, or was there an earlier story/script version where "dead reckoning" was uttered, or it was shown that Murdock was a navigator, or there was some other literal motivation for the title that got cut from the final film, while the (quite evocative, I think) title phrase remained?

Hypnotized

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:56:10 GMT

In which the sheep image (herd-like and not very bright) certainly seems apropos.

Thanks to an excellent column by Thomas Friedman in today's NYTimes I've just read the best piece I've seen so far on Wall Street's current debacle.

Written by Michael Lewis--author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball so it's both well researched and well written--Lewis shows how a few actually saw through the house of cards, but everyone else on Wall Street was running around with two fingers in their ears and the rest in your pockets, selling "products" guaranteed to go bad, but guaranteed to make them millions first:

Then came Meredith Whitney with news. Whitney was an obscure analyst of financial firms for Oppenheimer Securities who, on October 31, 2007, ceased to be obscure. On that day, she predicted that Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust. It’s never entirely clear on any given day what causes what in the stock market, but it was pretty obvious that on October 31, Meredith Whitney caused the market in financial stocks to crash. By the end of the trading day, a woman whom basically no one had ever heard of had shaved $369 billion off the value of financial firms in the market. Four days later, Citigroup’s C.E.O., Chuck Prince, resigned. In January, Citigroup slashed its dividend.

From that moment, Whitney became E.F. Hutton: When she spoke, people listened. Her message was clear. If you want to know what these Wall Street firms are really worth, take a hard look at the crappy assets they bought with huge sums of borrowed money, and imagine what they’d fetch in a fire sale. The vast assemblages of highly paid people inside the firms were essentially worth nothing. For better than a year now, Whitney has responded to the claims by bankers and brokers that they had put their problems behind them with this write-down or that capital raise with a claim of her own: You’re wrong. You’re still not facing up to how badly you have mismanaged your business.

Now, obviously, Meredith Whitney didn’t sink Wall Street. She just expressed most clearly and loudly a view that was, in retrospect, far more seditious to the financial order than, say, Eliot Spitzer’s campaign against Wall Street corruption. If mere scandal could have destroyed the big Wall Street investment banks, they’d have vanished long ago. This woman wasn’t saying that Wall Street bankers were corrupt. She was saying they were stupid. These people whose job it was to allocate capital apparently didn’t even know how to manage their own.

Note that many of the Wall Street brainiacs in the article were making 10's of millions of dollars a year to be Masters of the Universe yet didn't have a clue of what they were selling or the amazingly unstable financial structures they were building that were doomed to almost certain failure.

The funny thing, looking back on it, is how long it took for even someone who predicted the disaster to grasp its root causes. They were learning about this on the fly, shorting the bonds and then trying to figure out what they had done. Eisman knew subprime lenders could be scumbags. What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism. For instance, he knew that the big Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust, carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.

But he couldn’t figure out exactly how the rating agencies justified turning BBB loans into AAA-rated bonds. “I didn’t understand how they were turning all this garbage into gold,” he says. He brought some of the bond people from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and UBS over for a visit. “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number. “They were just assuming home prices would keep going up,” Eisman says.

Geez, I'd have been happy to run Citigroup or Lehman Brothers into the ground for a mere million or two a year. The results couldn't have been any worse. I mean, I actually know that prices sometimes go down, too.

Hypnotizin'

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:21:05 GMT

J thought I should post my 1996 MTV debut here as well as Facebook:

After two long days of shooting my bro told me to put on the gaffer's belt and close out the shoot. The feeling of ennui (or would that be exhaustion?) isn't exactly acting.

This really did get on MTV, though my part was often cut cause there's no music in the last couple seconds. My understanding is that the video got some decent airplay in some European countries where dance music makes the pop charts... perhaps I didn't end up on the cutting room floor in Ibiza?

Note that the version below doesn't suffer from Youtube's compression artifacts, but I couldn't figure out how to embed it in an LJ page:

http://www.clevver.com/music/video/139890/winx-hypnotizin-video.html

Whassssup Obama

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:45:42 GMT

I know I've been remiss in posting for... well, months... but J just sent me this parody of the Whassssup Budweiser ads--apparently done by the same people--and it's too good to pass up:

Wassup 2008 from qg-writer on Vimeo.

Tap That

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:14:58 GMT

I usually don't read The Harvard Crimson's editorials, but I accidentally read this dirty editorial today, and I happen to think it's both clever and funny.

Tap That

Or perhaps I'm just easily amused?

Feline Crack

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:30:24 GMT

My GF's cat despises the very ground I walk on, and goes to sulk in another room everytime I come over...

Until sparkymonster turned me on to Feline Greenies, which JS assured me was the kitty equivalent of feline crack.

No lie, even Sidney's intense hatred of, well, me couldn't overwhelm his desire for "Tempting Tuna".

The fuming feline was literally eating out of my hand (and staring at me with huge eyes as soon as he finished one piece to beg for another as adorably as he could), he was actually licking my hand clean to get every succulent morsel.

And later in the evening I put him on my lap. Not only didn't he immediately jump off, he actually lay there and purred for sometime while I stroked him to docility.

Admittedly, there did seem to be an edge of resentment to that purring, but he couldn't bring himself to express full-on hostility and jump to the floor, not with a tummy full of delicious hand-fed kitty treats

Well, docility last night. This morning he was sulking on the hallway carpet again... but a few more Tempting Tunas seemed to leave him wavering between overwhelming distaste for me and overwhelming desire for more Greenies.

Hopefully this cat crack won't leave Sidney with multiple little kitty personalities, but rather will prove again the adage that a way to a cat's heart is through his stomach.

In other animal news, an impromptu visit today to Lincoln's Drumlin Farm had me in close vicinity with several extremely cute sheep. Just sayin'.

iPhone Love

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:58:01 GMT

Some (well many) have laughed at my obsessive iPhone desire.

Now that I finally managed to lay my hands on an iPhone 3G, I'm the one who'll have the last laugh.

It's the new App Store that really puts the icing on the cake. I mean, there's a free Scrabble word list checker I just installed. And it'll make up legit words from whatever random tiles you might have. Now let's see someone beat me while I just "check my email". Muahahah...

Well, ok, there's also an actual version of Scrabble on the App Store, but you have to actually pay for that one and the money would then go to Hasbro. Since those capitalist corporate pig-fuckers at Hasbro shut down Scrabulous on Facebook in the middle of a game--before I could kick Jay's ass--I'm not giving them any more of my money... At least not until I lose a tile in my non-virtual version or something.

There's another free app (Shazam) that lets you hold your iphone up to any music that's playing and it'll supposedly recognize the song and the track in, like, 12 seconds, then let you download it direct from iTunes.

I can see the money being vacuumed out of my wallet even as I type.

And two movie schedule apps so I don't have to carry around the newspaper anymore to find the times. Might even cancel my subscription to The Globe.

Two different applications that make my $299 iPhone act like a $2.99 flashlight. But one is a also a strobe light in case a dance party suddenly breaks out, or I get physically attacked by an epileptic.

An app that works just like running one of those little steel rolly balls through a wooden maze, except you just tilt the iPhone to roll the ball, thus saving both trees *and* little rolly balls from needless wanton industrial destruction. Let it never be said that Steve Jobs doesn't care about steel balls. It probably helps save some of earth's precious gravity, too.

And, the pièce de résistance... well, pièce de air résistance: there's bubble wrap to pop. Lots of bubble wrap. Lots of pops. But no actual wrap is harmed at any point during the popping.

There's also an app that turns your iPhone into a cowbell, just in case you really need "More cowbell".

But frankly that one just seemed silly, so I didn't download it.

I can also read my email, go on the web, check the weather, read the NYTimes and the AP Wire, and find out where I am when the Boston street signs won't divulge that information (in case I'm actually an invading Redcoat or something).

Oh, and make phone calls.

Yeah... whatever. Booooring.

I don't know how I got through the last several decades without an iPhone.

Hell, I don't know how I got through last week without an iPhone.

My life now feels so much richer and more fulfilled. The wonders of modern technology.

Going Pro

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:33:43 GMT

Thanks to M-A I've discovered I've gone pro.

Or semi-pro...

or amateur...

or maybe I just had my copy-rights violated... but in this case I'm more than happy for the violation, cause bass player Dave Wimbish, or likely one of his many minions, swiped my photo of him for his web page:

Check out his use here.

That is so great, that someone actually thought enough of one of my photos to make use of it (completely unbeknownst to me, so glad that M-A was doing some extra Googling). I probably should put my Flickr photos under one of those Creative Commons with Attribution licenses, so people can legally use them and I'll still get the credit.

In fact I got credit I don't deserve, as the next photo on Wimbish's page is also credited to "tripleindemnity" and it's not mine (even though it was obviously taken from a similar location as this one I did take).

It's not even one of my favorite photos from Jazz Fest, so I'm really glad it struck someone as still worth displaying.

The Terrorists Win...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:41:00 GMT

When you can't pluck any random Muslim off the streets of any foreign country and keep them in prison in eternal legal limbo without any trial to prove their guilt, then the terrorists have won.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/12cnd-gitmo.html

I mean, the could be terrorists, right? They've got those funny Muslim names, and pretty much all terrorists have funny Muslim names. You know, like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and Ted Kaczynski.

Now if they have a trial, some ultra-liberal civilian judge who hasn't been properly indoctrinated by the military into following orders might decide they're not actually terrorists. And then all those sadistic civilian interrogators in Gitmo won't be able to get their yucks off kicking their ass just for run.

The only way to save our freedom is to take away our freedom. That's what this country stands for: depriving everyone of liberty so we can pretend to keep our own. Especially if it helps you win an election.

[/irony]

The Love Ewe

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:03:40 GMT

Hottest (inflatable) sheep on the web.

I just couldn't stop myself! :)

$50 for Those Seats?

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:56:42 GMT

Let me just that state merely being in front of the roof poles does not a "box seat" make.

Especially not from Row WW, which, based on those letters, is 49 rows from the actual baseball field and definitely just one row in front of the right field roof poles themselves.

For the first time at Fenway Park I've actually sat in seats that face the center field bleachers, rather then, you know, home plate (where the main part of the game is actually taking place). Even that wouldn't have been so bad except that meant the only way to see the game was looking across the main up/down aisle--which meant half the time we couldn't really see the game cause people were walking up and down the aisle to get food, etc. thus blocking the game from view. At least if we'd been behind a pole the pole wouldn't have kept moving!

When we could see, it was a good, close, well pitched game. Final score was 2-1 with only 5 hits for each side. And I was glad to actually see a live game at Fenway after too many years of not being able to get close to a non-scalped ticket.

But $50???? I know they have to pay Manny's salary, but c'mon. $50 for infield seats, maybe (and even then that's really too much for a single baseball game) but $50 for those seats was, I think, an expensive joke.

A joke that thousands apparently happily join in 81 times a year.

Right Field "Box", my ass. Well, at least "Right Field" was truth in advertising. Way, waaaaay in right field.

15 Miles

Sun, 18 May 2008 05:23:06 GMT

My first ride of the year, cause up till now it's been too cold, too rainy, or both on any day I had the time to ride.

I turned around earlier than I thought I needed to, because I was afraid of pushing too far and bonking on the way back. Good plan, as my legs were just dead by the time I made it back... and still are tonight. Even walking up the stairs feels hard.

So I'm hopeful the weather stays decent and I can get a lot more riding in and those muscles back in shape. But certainly a good start.

Muffuletta

Wed, 14 May 2008 18:51:56 GMT

The one problem with eating half a muffuletta is that ten hours later you're hungry again...

New Orleans was, as usual, great. One of my favorite places in the US because it often feels like it's not quite part of the US--perhaps because it never had that Puritanical Protestant overlay that so much of the rest of the country tried to assume as an entree into the upper classes (even if their actual origins were quite different). This is a place that celebrates good food, good music, and having a good time, not assuming there's something morally suspect with even contemplating such decadent indulgences.

I've been living a charmed life: my previous two trips to Jazz Fest had no rain at all. Well, I paid the price for all that earlier good weather: two days of torrential rain, just buckets pouring down. And the first day I was completely unprepared (weather forecast was "chance of passing thunderstorms")... Last year I heard George Thorogood do "Bad to the Bone" in the blues tent. This year, on Saturday afternoon, I was "drenched to the bone" outside the blues tent -- I've never felt so wet in my entire life. Luckily I managed to work my way inside, and after a while even found a seat.

Seating seemed appropriate since James Cotton sat through all of his set. He may be unable to sing anymore (he seems barely able to talk) but he sure can play harp like crazy. And while my buds were slowing sinking into a growing pond at the Jazz & Heritage Stage, suffering under a flapping tarp to see the 101 Runners, I saw some great dry R&B and Soul with the Ponderosa Stomp Revue until I started noticing rising water in the front of the blues tent ("High Water Everywhere..." no joke).

And nature's call forced me out into the wrath of nature. Knowing I couldn't get any wetter (well, I could, but I wasn't willing to do that), it was time to head for home and a very long, warm shower. The next day was much better, as a throwaway poncho, an umbrella, and some knock-off Crocs will make even a monsoon bearable if the music is as good as the previous entry relates.

Surprisingly, for the first time in four trips (including one in December) it was not hot and humid in New Orleans. I hope this doesn't mean my next trip will bring a blizzard. ;)

Here are some photos of the city itself.

The French Quarter in monochrome (click for more)

And in color (click here too)

"This Was My First Hit, From 1949"

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:18:30 GMT

When Big Jay McNeely, 81-years-old, says that before hitting "The Deacon's Hop", and he's not creaking out of a wheelchair, but instead wearing white tails and an electric blue shirt, wailing away on a fluorescent red tenor sax while fronting a rocking R&B band, shouting into the microphone, jumping into the audience, playing on his back, and later laying into his late (1959) hit "There is Something on Your Mind", you know you're seeing something special:

But it's only one of many special moments inside and out of the 39th Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Like seeing the Creole Wild West Mardis Gras Indians (the oldest known Mardis Gras Indian tribe, a phenomena unique to New Orleans) strutting their stuff on the Jazz & Heritage Stage, performing chants and rhythms that pre-date jazz but still are at the foundation of much of New Orleans music:

Or going to see The Hot 8 Brass Band (often called the best of the younger brass bands) at the Howlin' Wolf and having it be so rocking and funky you can't stop moving... and can't imagine it possibly getting any better. Only to have the Rebirth Brass Band come out and just blow them off the stage--the very first song 45 minutes of unadulterated funk with just insane tuba holding down the bass line (and Rebirth plays every Tuesday night at The Maple Leaf, a small club for, I believe, a $5 cover--which says something about both the wealth of music in the city and the lack of monetary wealth in the same city).

Other memorable items:

A funky teenage brass band playing for tips on the corner of Frenchman's Street at 10pm Sunday night when a commotion comes from down the other way... and suddenly there's a whole circus marching band coming from the far end, complete with stilt walkers and baton twirlers and a fire eater. They meet at the corner and the bands start playing each other's funkified tunes while a big crowd gathers, the 15-foot-tall stilt walkers start directing traffic, the dancing girls keep dancing, and the fire eater starts shooting arcs of flame far into the night sky.

Jamming into the Apple Barrel, a tiny club not much bigger than my living room, so packed that you can't even get close to the bar to order a drink and people are literally dancing on the tables while the Marc Stone Band is playing some seriously hot electric blues about three feet away... only it's sort of the Marc Stone band, 'cause the terrific drummer played with them once 10 years ago and the guy sitting in on harp may be a monster but he's also a school teacher who can only play out occasionally... but they're trading solos and choruses like they do it ten days a week.

Or further down Frenchman's, when another young pickup jazz band is playing Ray's Boom Boom Room and a guy wanders in with a sax case, takes it out and straps it on, they're all "Dude, what's your name?" and he plays a few solos, packs up his sax, and moves on down the road.

Or watching "Davell Crawford's New Orleans R&B Orchestra" in a pouring deluge on the Sunday of the first weekend while on your way to the buses to punt and just go home. It's raining so hard there's a knee deep river running down the middle of the field... a field that could accommodate 10's of thousands but only has a few hundred due to the tremendous downpour. But this big band, with piano and B3 and a 10 piece horn section may be dressed for the weather, but they're not letting it slow down their playing. Someone in the crowd calls for his grandfather, James "Sugarboy" Crawford's, 1950's New Orleans hit "Oo Wee Baby" and, although they've never done it before, he calls out "somewhere in the key of A" and they're off and running... by the time they hit the first chorus the horn section's got a part worked out, the rhythm section's into it, the B3 player's doing his thing, and you forget the gallons of water pouring down on your head.

Davell Crawford was so good you convince yourself the rain may be letting up, so you stick around with the umbrella and poncho and ankle deep mud to see Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, cause who wouldn't want to see one of the greatest New Orleans musicians/songwriters/producers... and he and Costello put on a great set, alternating each other's songs, putting a New Orleans spin on it all with Toussaint's two-fisted piano and a great New Orleans horn section with Big Sam playing some absolutely monster 'bone solos like you've never heard before.

But after 45-minutes it's time to see if the Reverend Al Green's still got it... and he may be AARP age but he sure does. For some reason that stage had bad sound all weekend long--we left Big Sam's Funky Nation and Leo Nocentelli's Rare Funk Gathering cause they both sounded like an AM radio, you just can't get the funk when you can't get a decent sound. Well, Rev. Al's large band sounds like a karaoke setup, but his voice certainly does not--he's still got it. Mostly alternating between sacred and secular songs, when he goes to the secular ones and two male dancers come out to bust some moves while he hits those falsetto notes... Al may let the audience sing half the lyrics now, but the other half are still just amazing, and he was dancing and tossing of his jacket and almost losing his pants and definitely not just phoning it in (like I've heard he sometimes does with a less enthusiastic--or water logged--crowd).

Or hitting up the Maple Leaf Monday night, Papa Grows Funk's regular night, when they go on only an hour and a half late at 11:30 (partially cause John Gros was playing the WWOZ Keyboard Summit across town--lots of guys do double or triple duty in the clubs during Jazz Fest) and when they finally hit it they're doing the funk thang in that smallish, sweaty club (though I must admit the sax player got a little too easy listening for me at times...). So at 1am it's the end of the first 90-minute set and they say we should all stick around for another!

And one can definitely not forget the Ponderosa Stomp, digging up some of the best of the old and sometimes obscure but definitely not infirm: Little Buck and the Topcats with Buckwheat Zydeco not on accordion, but on Hammond B3. Barbara Lynn doing "Sugar Coated Love" with Little Buck, followed only a little while later by Lazy Lester, who had the original hit in 1958, doing his own version! The Bo-Keys (led by the guitarist who recorded that opening guitar part from Shaft) backup up one of Stax's first solo artists, William Bell who's first hit, "You Don't Miss Your Water" dates to 1961.

And if you think that isn't enough, what about the evening's pièce de résistance: Wardell Quezergue (one of New Orleans other great producers/arrangers) and his Rhythm and Blues Review. Quezergue may now be blind, but he can still arrange and conduct, including playing behind Jean Knight with "Mr. Big Stuff", Tammy Lynn and "Mojo Hannah" and then... Mac Rebbenack.

No, not Dr. John, Mac Rebbenack, cause he's only doing pre-"Dr. John" material, and he'd only do it if Wardell Quezergue did the arrangements. And with him comes Herb Hardesty--who's been playing behind Fats Domino since Fats' first recording of "The Fat Man" in 1949. Hardesty makes Big Jay look like a spring chicken, being born in 1925 but playing all over Jazz Fest as well as the Stomp and obviously just as with it as he was 60 years ago -- maybe playing R&B sax is the key to longevity. And then here comes Zigaboo Modeliste of The Meters on drums... and he's reading those charts. But it sure doesn't seem to interfere with his playing, even though he's doing straight ahead New Orleans second-line R&B rather than the funk, he's sure driving that band hard. And Mr. Rebbenack himself, playing guitar on "Storm Warning" and other instrumentals, pounding the keyboard on "Bad Neighborhood" and "Morgan The Magnificent", just letting loose on songs he likely hasn't played much, if at all, since the 1960s... and obviously enjoying doing something different with a really rocking band...

"Take Me To Your Tiki Bar" indeed.

More Jazz Fest photos here.

Papelblown?

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:42:40 GMT

It appears that Jonathan Papelbon is rapidly becoming the Eric Gagne (5 blown saves, 6.14 ERA w/Milwaukee) of the 2008 season.

I'd say the Sox should trade him as soon as possible while he still has some value --admittedly, right now his value mainly seems to be coughing up leads to opponents, but maybe the other teams won't notice that -- and stick Okajima, he of the 0.53 ERA, in as the closer.

It's true that Oki has allowed 8 of 11 inherited runners to score, but since closers mostly come in at the start of an inning, hopefully that won't be a problem.

In fact, maybe they can package Papelblown and Lugo up together for one shortstop who can reliably catch and throw the ball, cause whatever Lugo does at the plate and on the base paths, he more than gives up at his fielding position (<--previous statement not at all subject to a proper Bill Jamesian-like statistical analysis).

[Yes, I do know it's a long season and it's nuts to bury Papelbon after two bad outings given his great performances the past two years -- I'm just practicing for the part of one of those get-a-lifer radio call-in/Internet blogger dudes. Plus it is possible that a string of lack-of-success could get inside Papelbon's head and he really could start to seriously suck. But I'm sure hoping he just has a couple good outings and he gets right back where he should be.]

New Orleans in New York Times

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:34:16 GMT

Check out these really good pieces in the NYTimes on Jazz Fest and all the surrounding music, including some wonderful descriptions of Jazz Fest itself and the musical melting pot it displays so well:

The festival’s aesthetics reflect ingrained New Orleans habits and tastes: for horn sections, for two-fisted piano, for wry voices, for dancing, for permeable boundaries between sacred and secular...

The city’s music, from jazz to R&B to funk, has transformed American culture but never conformed to it. It has always been a culture apart, sometimes intersecting the mainstream... but never defining it.

New Orleans songs, old and new, draw on rhythms that reach back at least a century, with even older African, European and American Indian roots. Parades representing the city’s traditions of brass bands, Mardi Gras Indians and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs wound through the festival, sometimes ending up at the Heritage Stage, where brass bands and Indians performed full-length sets.

In New Orleans music, traditions mingle and can turn up anywhere. At the gospel tent songs of praise sometimes rode funk grooves. The saxophonist Donald Harrison started his set playing complex jazz tunes and ended it with the band playing fierce funk behind Mardi Gras Indian chants. By then Mr. Harrison was in full feathered regalia. He is the chief of the Congo Nation tribe.

And this article on the first night of the Ponderosa Stomp, which is the night I could make (check out the great photo of Dr. John/Mac Rebennack at the top).

The ArtsBeat Blog: All the entries from May 1 to 5 are Jazz Fest related, including this entry on the second night of the Ponderosa Stomp.

Jazz Fest

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:40:27 GMT

Off to New Orleans tomorrow for the first weekend of Jazz Fest: Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Al Green, Creole Wild West Indians, etc. etc.

http://www.nojazzfest.com/

As well as the first night of the amazing Ponderosa Stomp.

Plus days of amazing food, not only at the Fest but also at places like Brennan's and Arnaud's.

And great people. And lots of carousing. And lots of photos...

Which I really will post after I get back...

Just like I have my Yucatan pics. ;)

The Anti-Pope????

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:27:51 GMT

What does it say about Benedict XVI that this afternoon he's holding a mass at Yankee Stadium???

As we all know, Yankee Stadium is the home field of the Greatest Instantiation of Evil on the earth, where the very Spawn of Satan conspire to crush the hopes and dreams of 10's of millions of right thinking Americans every year.

Someone ought to check this guy's credentials. I bet his election was rigged by the very Devil himself. Kind of like George W. Bush. ;)