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!