It's the week of Thanksgiving, so I suppose it's okay that the decorations are going up. Today. I almost walked into rope thart cordoned off the atrium,becuse of course I was reading something. (That sounds better than "I was looking at my phone." I actually was reading something, a news article. I still say that if people walked around looking at books or magazines we woldn't freak out about it so much. )
Anywy, I saw this, and tweeted out "Novel approach to the atrium tree this year."
When I left the office it was snowing a bit, and I turned on the classical station on my magazine. My book. My paper. MY PHONE OKAY, MY PHONE. It was playing Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Greensleeves" fantasia, and it just unstrung me, on the spot. The snow, the cold, the grey sky, the lights in the gloom, all the memories that surround you like spirits trying to pull you back somewhere; they think it's for your own good. Or perhaps they're selfish.
Or both. You know the feeling, perhaps? You want to give in, but shake it off, because there's only sadness at the end of that tunnel. Even if the memories are happy. Particularly if they're happy.
This is going to be a very different holiday season, and I don't mean "a bit bereft, well, a lot, actually," but different in every possible respect. As we'll see as the weeks go on.
Different can be good. Different can be necessary. Bromides and banalties can have a manufactured urgency if you use italics.
Finally found a show I can binge, because it’s not that interesting. When I find a show I love, I space it out. The modern world: you always want to make sure there’s something you know you’ll want to watch tomorrow. You don’t want that empty boring session scrolling through 103,943 shows, and finding nothing.
It’s “Homecoming,” based on a podcast. That’s novel. It stars Julia Roberts, who has two modes here - dowdy, and flinty. I’ve never not liked here; I’ve always thought oh, Julia Roberts, okay, fine. It does have one of my favorite hard-luck actors, XX, who is always a dumb blustery authority figure. Great in Boardwalk Empire. Here he’s a government bureaucrat who thinks something is fishy.
Not a review, but I will say it’s not bad; it’s just a bit underwhelming. The story, as far as I can tell, is completely predictable, unless there’s a head-snapping twist en route. I started listening to the podcast a long time ago and fell away because it seemed disinclined to move the plot at a speed that suggested they knew the listener was way ahead of them.
No, I bring it up . . . because of this.
I sat straight up. Wha? Huh? That’s not yours. You can't use that.
Eventually I found a story that said they’d lifted the entire “Homecoming” soundtrack from other sources. And they had the usual reasons - callbacks, inferences, audio cues to the in-crowd who’d get the reference. It just me out of it, the same way “The Artist” used the Vertigo music. I thought - either you know I know where this is from, and you’re trying to make me think of that scene and what this means, or you don’t think I know where this came from, and you’re trying to borrow the power of the music. Neither’s good.
Soundtracks belong to the movies for which they were made.
OTOH, in one of the episodes I sat up again, because I knew the music but couldn’t place it. When I did, I laughed. A silly movie, including the shameless Hitchcock steal in the scene where the hero madly osculates with the enigmatic brunette (not a blonde! DePalma had to add his own touch) while the camera does the Vertigo clockwise-counter-clockwise surround.
GIF
But I’d forgotten about this music. It’s so 80s, and I say that as a high compliment. The Andromeda Strain soundtrack was early 70s; this one’s ten years later. Electronic music - which is what this is, more or less - has grown up, shed the atonal musique concrete conceits, and become . . . romantic.
It’s by Pino Donaggio.
Born in Burano (an island of Venice), into a family of musicians, Donaggio began studying violin at the age of ten, first at the Benedetto Marcello conservatory in Venice, followed by the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. At the age of 14, he made his solo debut in a Vivaldi concert for Italian radio, then went on to play for both the I Solisti Veneti and the Solisti di Milano. The discovery of rock and roll during the summer of 1959 ended Donaggio's classical career when he made his singing debut with Paul Anka.
I’ve walked around Burano. I can see where he got that.
It’s 1948.
We're taking our ads from Boys' Life this week. This installation went somewhere I did not expect.
Being a lad was a bit different back then. For one thing, you might be called upon to recite train statistics on a coast-to-coast broadcast:
I only missed #2, because I figured they’d give themselves the most credit for what they did, and poor-mouth what they got.
That you can, fella, that you can:
“Sea-horse” was always the coolest name, and it’s still in use today. I wrote that without checking. It has to be.
Aww, dammit, it isn’t. They don’t make Johnson boat motors anymore. Evinrude bought them.
Okay, this one’s still around.
Tops for night bacon-cooking! But what of the cook, Mr. Robert Page Lincoln? We'll get our facts straight from fishinghistory.com, because of course there's a site on fishing history:
Robert Page Lincoln started writing magazine articles as early as 1909 when he was in his late teens. There is not an outdoor magazine in the twenties, thirties and forties that at one time or another did not feature many of his articles on every aspect of freshwater fishing. He was in fact the Fishing Editor of several of the major magazines at various times. Robert Page Lincoln always seemed to have a bias toward Bass, Pike and Musky fishing when most writers in the days before World War II concentrated on trout.
He played favorites! Now the truth can be told!
The days when Harley had to insist it was A REAL MOTORCYCLE:
It doesn’t look particularly dangerous. Good for puttering around, going on picnics. Open it up! Get a thrill! Hit a pothole! Regret helmets aren’t regarded as essential equipment yet!
Now, a cartoon. Ralph’s fixin’ to stop that low-down sidewinder:
Give the snake the Remington treatment Ralph c’mon give it to him
t’s nice of Ralph to credit his tools. Probably not realistic, as most boys would want to bask in their marksmanship.
One less pest to kill fish, Ralph! That's our job! Kill! And kill again!
Kidding. These ads would be replaced by Daisys, and then no gun ads at all. Because, well, guns, you know.
few pages later, we meet the avuncular, helpful Doc: he stops murders
They pack the power for plastering pests! "Doc" Peters was a regular in these ads, I believe, until he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license.
The idea of teenagers swooning over a picture of Bing is just . . . odd.
The names are still current . . . or are they? No; teenagers today probably don’t know Hope or Crosby. To be honest I didn’t recognize Janice Paige. Well:
The Hollywood Canteen was a studio-sponsored club for members of the military. A Warner Bros. agent saw her potential and signed her to a contract. She began co-starring in low budget musicals, often paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She co-starred in Romance on the High Seas (1948), the film in which Doris Day made her movie debut. Paige later co-starred in adventures and dramas, in which she felt out of place. Following her role in Two Gals and a Guy (1951), she decided to leave Hollywood.
Paige appeared on Broadway and was a huge hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play, Remains to Be Seen, co-starring Jackie Cooper. She also toured successfully as a cabaret singer. In April 1947, she was crowned "Miss Damsite" and participated at the ground-breaking ceremony for the McNary Dam.
Stardom came in 1954 with her role as "Babe" in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. She was given the December 1954 cover of Esquire magazine, where she was featured in a seductive pose taken by American photographer, Maxwell Frederic Coplan. For the screen version, the studio wanted one major movie star to guarantee the film's success, so John Raitt's role of Sid was offered to Frank Sinatra who would have been paired with Paige. When Sinatra turned it down the producers offered Paige's role of Babe to Doris Day, who accepted and so Day was paired with Raitt.
Now, the disconnect:
In 1982, she appeared on St. Elsewhere as a female flasher who stalked the hallways of the hospital to "cheer up" the male patients. Although her character said she was "celebrating her 50th birthday," Ms. Paige was actually 60 at the time of filming.
She was married three times, and #2 was the writer / producer of a 1955 TV show called “It’s Always Jan.” She starred.
The program centers on war widow and single mother Jan Stewart and her two single female roommates, secretary Pat Murphy (Patricia Bright), and model Val Marlowe (Merry Anders).[2] A Desilu Production, It's Always Jan borrowed elements of various programs and films from the period but lacked the ingredients for general popularity and long-lasting success.
Arte Johnson portrayed delicatessen delivery-boy Stanley Schreiber, and rocketed to fame more than a decade later in the NBC comedy Laugh-In.
And:
Speaking of pest pulverizing: let's check in on Frank Reade Jr. and his Electrical Colonialism Paradigm Enforcer, shall we? It's the last installment for the year, but not the end of Frank. He'll be back, and with Barney and Pomp in tow. Some day. This site is never finished.
