Another observation

Another film in the never-will-see-it-in-a-Madison-theater category -- Good Night and Good Luck, about Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman who became a Joe McCarthy-buster of the fifties. Heck, ol' Tailgunner Joe is still a hero around here! We need him back, the right guard here thinks. Now why doesn't somebody make a bio-pic of Joe the Hero? Mel Gibson would be a good one to do it. Oh -- and by the way -- Ed Murrow was not the first newsman to openly and unabashedly debunk McCarthy for the shit-for-brains saboteur blowhard he was. The first newsman was Aurora, Indiana's own Elmer Davis, a real lefty, God bless him. I'd like to see George Clooney make a picture about Mr. Davis.

But more!

I got De-Lovely from the library. It never made it to the Madison theaters. (Cole Porter, a Hoosier, by the way, from Peru, pronounced PEE-roo, was gay. Too revolutionary.) Also recently saw Kinsey on DVD from the library. Which did not show at theaters in Madison. (Kinsey studied human sexual behavior and published his results as if sex were not something hush-hush and nasty. Too radical.) Also saw Fahrenheit 911 on a DVD from the library. Which also did not show at theaters in Madison. (Michael Moore debunked the Bush administration. Blasphemy.) I should keep my mouth shut. Somebody might read my blog (ha!) and decide to spray agent orange on the library because it is a hotbed of subversion.

I'm sure it's me, but...

Watched De-Lovely, on a DVD from the library. Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd portray Cole and Linda Porter well and the music is lovely. With one exception. Whoever does “Begin the Beguine” murders it. It makes me really, really angry. Turns out it’s Sheryl Crow. Her rendition is a crime. There is nothing whatever wrong with the melody of the song or its beguine (a dance from Martinique) rhythm the way I've heard it by many performers. Good performers. Ms Crow's liberties with "Begin the Beguine" in my opinion compare to Ted Turner's colorizing the old black-and-white movies. Hell, I don't even know if she can sing the tune the way it was written. Talent started running pretty low after Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Jo Stafford, Margaret Whiting, and Anita O'Day left the scene. There are no rules anymore, I suppose, but if there ever were, I think they included -- even among jazz musicians, who improvise all over the place -- running through the song the way it was written just once before taking liberties with it.

Toons

Cartoon Alley is a regular feature on Saturday mornings on Turner Classic Movies. I enjoy the cartoons and I enjoy the droll comments by the host of the show, Ben Manckiewicz. Ben also introduces movies during the day on weekends, with wit and style.

When is Brownie going to get his Medal of Freedom?

Correction: Ben's surname is spelled "Mankiewicz" -- no c. Sorry.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Headline in the rag -- "Vatican says sexually active homosexuals not welcome in priesthood."

Whereas sexually active heterosexuals are?

The AP writer reports -- "The Vatican says homosexuals who are sexually active or support "gay culture" are unwelcome in the priesthood unless they have overcome their homosexual tendencies for at least three years."

Excuse me?

Aren’t priest supposed to be abstinent from all sexual relations once they take the vows? The logic of the latest policy would require straights to “renounce sexual activity and support of straight culture" and to "have overcome their heterosexual tendencies for at least three years” too. Wouldn’t it?

On the issue of sex and the clergy, the Roman Catholic Church is about as silly as the Clinton administration was on its policy toward gays in the military. Remember, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”? That was precisely the policy the church had when it was (while it is?) shuffling deviant priests around instead of defrocking and prosecuting them for crimes as well as sin. And that was for pedophilia, not consensual sex among adults.

I think the problem could be, by and large, resolved if “the Vatican” (Pope Benedict XVI the dictator and his hierarchy of men who are presumably holier than the Catholic laity throughout the entire world) could accept monogamous, sexually active men and women as priests, regardless of sexual orientation. Drop the celibacy idiocy, as well as the ban against women and homosexuals in the priesthood.

Why? Because there is no more revelatory, logical, or scriptural support for limiting the priesthood to celibate, heterosexual men than there is for requiring incense, candles, statues, and vestments (let alone an algorithm for donning them). Tradition and superstition are the only impediments to moving on. Jesus (remember Him?), while telling us not to judge, said that we will know the wrong in policies and practices by the results they bring. The pedophilia scandal (did you know that girls were molested too?) was the result of the absurd, pigheaded policy in place now.

Thanksgiving

I keep imagining when I'm writing this stuff that the biker at the steps of the subway in Frankie and Johnny will say to me what he says to Johnny (Al Pacino) as Johnny tells him, "Hey I just got a job!"

Which reminds me, that movie gives me a pretext for playing "Clair de Lune" on one of my film music shows. Work that is play, now there's something to be thankful for. Every time I watch a movie I look to see who's the composer, and then I look on the internet to see if that person has a CD that I might play on the air.

Rosie's Uncle Eddie left a straw hat last time he was here, before last summer, and I started wearing it on my daily walks. He was back today for a Thanksgiving gathering and he gave the hat to me. Thanks for that. I won't need it again until spring, substituting a 97-cent black knit cap for it for now.

I don't have a pimped-out website like folks I admire, so I won't offer a link to it, but I think Wikipedia is wonderful. I've not been frustrated yet in looking for information in it. I wanted to read about the opera composer Richard Wagner (or as he is known in Saluda, Billy Dick Wagner) and there are about twenty pages on him, including a thoughtful discussion of his anti-Semitism. I was amazed to learn that although his public views were by and large odious he did not call for genocide but for assimilation of Jews into German society, he had Jewish friends and colleagues, and he was a pacifist. Although Hitler loved his music, Goebbels actually banned Parsifal in 1939 because of its pacifist sentiments. Did you know that?

Actually, I loathe Wagner because of his monumental egotism but I now have some excuse to offer my Jewish listeners if I play "Ride of the Valkyries" from Apocalypse Now. I like that tune, and I also like "Prelude to Act III" of Lohengrin, which I've liked since I was a little boy listening to it on the glowing vacuum-tube radio. It used to give me cold chills.

Well, as the biker at the subway entrance says, "...

Auf wiedersehen, Siegfried!

Veterans' Day Eve

In answer to an earlier question I posed to myself, Herschel Burke Gilbert was the composer of the Gunsmoke theme. We're watching Rosemary and Thyme, a BBC series about two single ladies who have an idyllic country garden home and solve crimes every week. The music is lovely. I'll have to check the credits again to see the composer but the theme (borrowed from the Paul Simon song from The Graduate)is played by John Williams the guitarist.

Susie, my hapless stepdaughter, had the misfortune this morning to hit a deer on the busy road between I-71 and Carrollton. She wasn't hurt. The deer expired after a brief time and was given to a poor man for food.

I got glasses, bifocals, this morning and discovered to my delight that I can see much better to drive and to see the TV and the digital readout on the radio across the room. I wish I'd got trifocals, actually, because I can see my laptop screen better without the glasses, so I can't see to write and watch the idiot box at the same time. A good solution would be to turn off the TV and leave it off. Moving to Canada is also a thought.

I've been reading the "87th Precinct" police procedural novels of Ed McBain. They are entertaining, pure fluff, a wonderful escape. I enjoyed Blackboard Jungle when I read it in high school, and never read another novel by the same incredibly prolific writer who died this year. (Every young male teacher then was nicknamed "Daddy-o" after the protagonist, who was played by Glenn Ford in the movie, which began with Bill Haley and the Comets screaming "Rock Around the Clock.") I decided to try one of the 87th books, which were highly lauded in McBain's obituary, and am glad I did.

I printed "a prayer for the 2,000th US soldier to die in Iraq" and taped it in the rear window of our car. I saw a young man reading it in the Wal-Mart parking lot the other day, nodding his head. A letter was in the rag tonight exposing a provision in the "No Child Left Behind" foolishness that requires public high schools to allow military recruiters to have access to the names of students. Why, I bet Bush's approval rating here is down a whole two percentage points because of all that has gone on in the past two months.

A tornado recently struck a trailer park in Evansville in the dead of night and took more lives there than all the others taken by tornadoes in the United States thus far this year. We had a little lightning and thunder here and were surprised to hear of the severity and deadliness of the twister down the river from us. Of course a trailer park is the worst possible place for a tornado to touch down, and the darkness hours and the month of November caught the people unawares. The fragility and uncertainty of life were once again demonstrated. There are those who believe that life began of a fluke, so they would not be surprised that it ends for so many with one.

I saw some sign that said "Remember Our Veterans." Does one ever get a chance to forget them in Indiana? As someone wrote decades ago, Indiana is a militaristic state. We have a cannon or a tank or a statue of embattled soldiers on every courthouse lawn in the state. I would have liked the "New Hill Road" named simply as "Jefferson Street," which it is for part of its course, but someone named it "Veterans Memorial Highway." (Probably the same people who decided that we are going to remain on "slow time.") I'm an old soldier too. I toyed with the idea of being an officer and was invited to go to OCS when I was doing my stint in the late fifties. A wisdom born of the collective unconscious of my family must have warned me to decline. I had a brother who wanted to be an ace fighter pilot and ended up being a tail-gunner in a B-17 crippled over Das Vaterland (another militaristic state, at least back then) and he made it back to England with his life but not his emotional stability for the rest of his days. I served honorably as a Willie and Joe dogface grunt in peacetime if not with distinction. I was crazy (and drunk) enough from my days in the Peace Corps in West Africa, let alone being in combat. War sucks and there is nothing glorious about it. There are too many profiteers for it to be a noble thing.

Good night and good luck.