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Monday, August 25, 2003
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What's "What's Love Got To Do With It?" Got to Do With My Morning Shower?
It's been going on for about three weeks now. Each morning, as I get into my shower, I have been hearing Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It?" in my head. For about a week, I paid it no heed-songs go in and out of my head like parental cautions on prom night. (Not that I ever went to prom; my bitch crosstown high school girlfriend Joelle told me we would "do our own thing" as a way of not having to choose which of our proms to go to, but then decided she wanted to go to her prom anyway with some stuffed shirt prepschool jackass at the last minute. No, I'm not bitter.)
Anyway, Tina Turner. In my head. Why? I don't even like that song, though it's not the worst song in the world, and I think we all have to admit that all of our jaws dropped when we saw just how great Tina Turner looked during her great comeback. But even so, she didn't look so good that I would have her song in my head some 20 years later during my morning shower.
No, something else was at play here. After awhile I noticed that this was a recurring phenomenon, and I desperately tried to retrace my musical steps. Where the hell had I heard that song? Usually, that's what starts it. You hear it somewhere, perhaps not even consciously. So many songs are ubiquitous, you hear them and you never knew you heard them and then they are in your brain. Is that why it was there? Yeah, sure, maybe that would explain one day, or even two. But three weeks?
Only two songs have a demonstrated capacity to get in my head and stay there, to the exclusion of all others, and Tina Turner thankfully doesn't sing either of them. Not like the real options are any better. You try going through a whole winter with Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" or the Georgia Sattelites' "Keep Your Hands To Yourself", and see how you like it.
And then this weekend, I noticed that I was in the shower without the song. Shower, but no song. Only on the weekend. Then today, it was back. Weekday. Tina Turner.
I stood under the hot spray of my shower, physically rubbing my temples, trying to rub Tina Turner out of my head, when I suddenly was hit with a thunderbolt of inspiration.
It was my alarm clock. Three weeks or so ago, I changed the clock alarm. No more waking up to the oafish ramblings of Sid Hartman, local sports jackass. I opted instead for the simple, halting beep of my alarm.
A halting beep, it turns out, that matches exactly a little break in "What's Love Got to Do With It?". You know, that part that goes "do do, dododododo"? Well...you'll know it if you hear it. I only discovered it after allowing the song to run through my head, past the chorus. How I had heard that beep from my clock and transformed it into the chorus of the song I'll never know.
I have an appointment with Sid Hartman at 6:20 am tomorrow. Good Riddance, Tina.
2:01:05 PM 
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Dr. Zhivago
Jane and I watched Dr. Zhivago this weekend. We had never seen it. It has long been on my list of films to see, but at 3 hours and 20 minutes, you have to make time for it. Truth is, I had checked it out from the library at least twice before, and just never found the time to watch it. We were only able to do it this time by breaking it up into two nights.
Dr. Zhivago is an epic romance that takes place before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. I think there are two things that give the movie it's real essence, and the timeperiod and backstory are one of them. You just don't see many representations of what that time and place was like.
The other defining feature of Zhivago is that it is a David Lean film. The only other Lean film I have seen is Lawrence of Arabia, which I thought was incredible. Lean's movies are epics that take place in an identifiable area, and that area is typically featured with rich cinematography. Zhivago is no exception. The scenery is beautiful, and not just on a grand scale.
There are numerous scenes that are just really nice for the eye. There are several scenes involving the sun-the sun shining through the trees in the winter, the sun shining on a frost pattern on a window. There are scenes of winter...well, I know that doesn't sound like much, but it's a good film to see in that regard, if you go for that sort of visual thing.
The story is involved, but more or less it involves a man who gets caught up on the wrong side of the revolution and loses both his family and his mistress. But naturally, it's a lot more complicated than that. The Revolution tore up a lot of lives. People just got seperated from each other in a variety of ways. Russia is a very big country, you know. It can be hard to get back in touch with people once you lose track of them.
There is a massive problem with the movie, one that probably couldn't have been helped when the film was made, in 1965. It seems that even though everyone in the film is Russian, they all speak with British accents. I had a real tough time getting over that at first, but ultimately I accepted it and moved on. I mean, it was a British film, and it was '65. Pretty hard to get top-level Russian talent in '65, don't you think?
For a moment, I wondered about how you could remake Zhivago today. You could have real Russians speaking real Russian, but of course that would mean you couldn't cast Uma Thurman as Lara. I ultimately decided that Zhivago was better as David Lean made it. Somebody like Jerry Bruckheimer would just fuck it up with a bunch of explosions anyway.
This was also the first movie I've seen Julie Christie in, other than Heaven Can Wait, which I saw when I was 10 and don't remember. Julie Christie is one of those names you always hear, but you aren't sure what she's been in. Now I know. She's pretty, no doubt about that. She had the whole collagen-filled lips deal going on before people knew you could get fake collagen lips. There's a scene when Rod Steiger makes her shotgun a drink, and a little spills down onto her big puffy lips. Steiger then rubs the liquor onto her lips. It's a tough scene to watch, because on the one hand you've got Icky Rod Steiger, and then you've got this really hot nubile Julie Christie. And then you think "This scene would be a lot better if Rod Steiger were replaced with Uma Thurman or Salma Hayek, or Uma Thurman AND Salma Hayek, and they are all speaking Russian and rubbing this liquor all over Julie Christie's lips, and then maybe Julie Christie slaps Salma Hayek in the face, but instead of getting mad, Salma Hayek just turns to Uma and spanks her, and then..."
But, I digress.
It's a great movie, legitimately great. And yet, I was a bit disappointed. Dr. Zhivago is one of those films that you hear about all the time, a film frequently cited as a favorite. I think some of that is probably generational, but let's face it, if you like romances, Zhivago is right up there with any of the others. And if you like Epic Romances, what are your options? The English Patient? Out of Africa? Class?
I was so enthralled with Lawrence of Arabia, and I had wanted Dr. Zhivago to be just as good. I didn't think it was, but Jane disagreed. She felt Zhivago was a better film. So all that means is I like the movie about the ambiguously gay hero in the desert, and she likes the movie about the Russian romance. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
12:00:35 PM
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Life's Obstacles Can Be Overcome In 45 Seconds
Yesterday was the hottest day of summer in the Cities so far. So naturally, Linus and I spent last night in our backyard, running like maniacs.
He said he wanted to race me. I had a better idea.
I introduced him to the concept of the Obstacle Course. The Obstacle Course is one of the great inventions of the human species, if you ask me. It teaches so many lessons. For one thing, life is nothing but obstacles, right? You have to overcome them, or else you might end up doing something like trade compliance for the rest of your life.
The obstacle course also features flexibility. It's not just a race, it's a test of skills and memory. You have to know what to do when, and how to do it the fastest, and if you don't like a part of what you are assigned to do, you can simply change the course.
So we set it up. Start at the fence. Run up the slide. Go down the ladder on the other side (or, if you're feeling lucky, just jump from the top of the slide). Run up the hill. Touch the big tree that is dying. Run down the hill, onto the deck, into the screened-in porch, around the table twice, step on the launch rocket to send it into the yard, run and pick up the rocket, carry it in your hand while you kick the soccer ball into the fence, which stops the clock.
Christ, I'm tired just writing about it.
He must have run it 10 times, at least. Rather than slow down from fatigue, he sped up from learning the tricks of the course, like Johnny Fever on the sobriety test. By the end he was hauling ass, huffing and puffing his way through the course like he was Dick Van Patten on Battle of the Network Stars. He ended up with a personal best of 45 seconds. I was impressed. And he ran it all while wearing flip flops.
He demanded that I do it, and I obliged, clocking in at a blazing 25 seconds. He congratulated me for the effort.
Then I goaded Jane into running the course by telling her I didn't think she could beat Linus. I saw the doubt in her eyes, and then pride took over. She ran it barefoot, in under 40 seconds. We congratulated her for the effort.
That day will come when he can beat us both. I've always heard that's a big day in the father-son relationship. The dad realizes he's getting older and might feel a little melancholy about it, but he also rejoices in seeing his son get faster and stronger.
My knees and ankles hurt more these days. It takes me longer to get to full speed, which doesn't feel nearly as full to me as it did even five years ago. I even fell out of bed yesterday. I'm slowing down. He's getting faster. I've got a 20 second margin on him right now. I won't let him win-He'll have to beat me straight-up. I don't think that will be any obstacle for him in a few years, but I've got enough little boy left in me that I want to prolong it as much as possible.
10:53:05 AM
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Green Grass
The Great Salon Blogs Blackout of August 2003 was tough on the Pipeline. Things were held back that needed to get out. Important things. But Pipeline handled the crisis with grace and style while others, lacking the virtue of patience and feeling that the grass was greener elsewhere, picked up their toys and went to another service.
I am, of course, speaking with hyperbole about Hyperbole, who has done up and left for the Utopia that is blogger.com. And so, you may now find Hyperbole at:
morehyperbole.blogspot.com
Pipeline is watching developments there closely. I had given Salon a deadline of today to get their collective shit together-not just their shit, not just their individual shit, but their collective shit-and unless this post doesn't go up it seems they have met my stringent requirements. I already have a site all ready to go there, but my hope is that it won't be needed.
In all seriousness, I'm sorry to see Hyperbole move, since we both started out here. But the content will be the same, and Jim seems to feel more comfortable with the interface, so more power to him. For all I know, I might be joining him there within days, weeks or months.
I will say this, though. I read a LOT of nasty RadioUserland customer email to the Yahoo Radio Message Board. Most of it was from Salon bloggers. Man, talk about some bitchy people. You'd think they lost their electric, gas, water and ESPN service all at once. I've never seen such vitriol from Customers Wronged. I guess I've only been here since November 2002, and so I can't speak about prior service outages, but there really has only been this one serious issue. The comments server was down for about three days once, but other than that I don't get what the beef is.
Shit breaks, you know?
The biggest complaint seemed to be that the flunkies from Userland didn't bother to respond to the multiple (bitchy) complaints about service. No question, that's a serious no-no in customer service. But has the actual service been that bad? I don't think so, not at all.
Now, in fairness to Jim, he had a unique problem when he had to reload his software, and he couldn't get much help during that trauma, and with him facing a new computer in the months ahead, he's having to look at that scenario all over again. I don't blame him for switching in light of that. But these other people need to just step back and take a deep breath.
Having said that, if this doesn't post today, I'm going to FedEx a giant flaming turd to RadioUserland right before I switch to blogger.com.
10:31:39 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Doug Hennessee.
Last update: 9/2/2003; 10:37:58 AM.
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