Features
Jack Kerouac: 3/12/22 – 10/21/69
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•”The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
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February 3, 1959: The day the music died
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“American Pie” is a folk rock song by singer-songwriter Don McLean.Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was a number-one U.S. hit for four weeks in 1972. A re-release in 1991 did not chart in the U.S., but reached number 12 in the UK. The song is an abstract story surrounding “The Day the Music Died” — the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.), as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson.
The importance of “American Pie” to America’s musical and cultural heritage was recognized by the Songs of the Century education project which listed the song as the number five song of the twentieth century. Some Top 40 stations initially played only side two of the single, but the song’s popularity eventually forced stations
to play the entire piece.
“American Pie” is Don McLean’s signature song.
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The song is well known for its cryptic lyrics that have long been the subject of curiosity and speculation. Although McLean dedicated the American Pie album to Buddy Holly, none of the musicians in the plane crash are identified by name in the song itself. When asked what “American Pie” meant, McLean replied, “It means I never have to work again.” Later, he more seriously stated,
“You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me… sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.”
McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song lyrics (“They’re beyond analysis. They’re poetry.”)[3] except to acknowledge that he did first learn about Buddy Holly’s death while folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 3, 1959 (the line “February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”). He also stated in an editorial published on the 50th anniversary of the crash in 2009 that writing the first verse of the song exorcised his
long-running grief over Holly’s death.
Despite this, many fans of McLean, amongst others, have attempted an interpretation (see Interpretation Links); at the time of the song’s original release in late 1971, many American AM and FM rock radio stations released printed interpretations and some devoted entire shows discussing and debating the song’s lyrics, resulting in both controversy and intense listener interest in the song. Some examples are the real-world identities of the “Jester”, “King and Queen”, “Satan”,
“Girl Who Sang the Blues” and other characters referenced in the verses.
• From Wikipedia. The
full entry is here.
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•Garrison Keillor’s thoughts on the radio program Writer’s Almanac
on the birthday of Buddy Holly.
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Amazon.com Widgets
Falling in Love Again: Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was born on December 27th, 1901.”The most intriguing woman I’ve ever known.” – John Wayne
The 100 greatest movie threats of all time
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A boy, a dog, and a puddle
I invite you to view this video. I will have some comments later.
The video was sent to me by my old pal Mike Jones, head of the Illinois State Lottery. It’s viral, with more than 5 million hits. It is very short and simple. I view it again.
I believe it was the writer W. G. Sebald who said: “Men and animals regard one another across a gulf of mutual incomprehension.” No animal seems to comprehend us better than the dog. For that matter, I comprehend them more than any other. Like the Nicolas Cage character in Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant,” I have no idea what an iguana is thinking. Does an iguana?
Growing up on the books by Albert Payson Terhune, I developed an early love for dogs. It didn’t bother me that one bit me on the cheek at Mrs. Meadrow’s Play School. It was my fault. I’d tried to ride her like a horse.
Now look again at that video.
The dog perhaps weighs more than the boy. At this point it has more life wisdom. It’s pretending to be led. The boy considers the puddle, stoops, an and carefully puts down the leash. As they first approach the puddle, the dog lists slightly to starboard, suggesting the puddle be avoided. When the boy puts down the leash, the dog takes a small step forward, suggesting they continue down the lane. The boy makes his decision. The dog turns, observes, accepts, and chooses body language that says, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t want him to do that.
glances down at the leash, back at the puddle, perhaps guesses what will happen next, and remains in place as if the leash were fastened to the earth. It is completely accepting, and waits with content.
If a raccoon approached the boy, the dog would snap into attack mode, hairs bristing, fangs bared, saliva dripping. It would growl and bark and run at the raccoon. I believe that the dog would be fully prepared to die for that boy. But the dog is no fool. It doesn’t go wading in the puddle.
The boy gets the good of the puddle. He picks up the leash again, and boy and dog resume their journey.
John McPhee wrote that the early dogs, godless, observed that Man controlled food, shelter and fire, and cast their lot with these hairless animals. Now they had a god. Observing that men liked to pet them, dogs encouraged them to touch. Most dogs are willingly obedient. They even bite someone on command, but if their owner commands a dog to bite himself, they grow anxious and lose their posture, looking away uneasily. Something is wrong in the fundament of the universe. The god has failed.
My entry in the 367th New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
Click here to enter this week’s contest.
A group of my losing entries, plus my one Winner, and the entry the cartoon editor said online that he liked but it didn’t quite clear the bar on New Yorker’s taste standards.
The delightful Mr. Pepys
Realizing I would never read his great book, I got the audiobook and entered the world of the charming Mr. Pepys. Ambitious, lustful, a gossip, well-connected, he witnessed the Great London Fire, the Black Plague and Shakespeare’s plays at court, buried gold in his back yard, became Secretary of the Admiralty, seduced servant girls.
Branagh’s reading is conversational, confiding and funny. The prose can appear daunting on the page, but he makes it conversational. Pepys’ voice comes through, as if he’s confiding the low-down on things.
This is good for listening to in the car, because each daily entry is brief, so you don’t get stranded in the middle of a long chapter when you have to park.
The “home page” of Pepys’ Diary.
Tweets rhymes with Pepys. Samuel Pepys on Twitter.
Drawing by Richard Levine from the New York Review of Books.
Leslie Nielsen, RIP. “And don’t call me Shirley”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Leslie Nielsen, who traded in his dramatic persona for inspired bumbling as a hapless doctor in “Airplane!” and the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in “The Naked Gun” comedies, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.
The Canadian-born actor died from complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home at 5:34 p.m., surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his agent John S. Kelly said in a statement.
“We are saddened by the passing of beloved actor Leslie Nielsen, probably best remembered as Lt. Frank Drebin in ‘The Naked Gun’ series of pictures, but who enjoyed a more than 60-year career in motion pictures and television,” said Kelly.
Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed ideal for a movie leading man.
Nielsen first performed as the king of France in the Paramount operetta “The Vagabond King” with Kathryn Grayson.
The film — he called it “The Vagabond Turkey” — flopped, but MGM signed him to a seven-year contract.
His first film for that studio was auspicious — as the space ship commander in the science fiction classic “Forbidden Planet.” He found his best dramatic role as the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie, “The Poseidon Adventure.”
He became known as a serious actor, although behind the camera he was a prankster. That was an aspect of his personality never exploited, however, until “Airplane!” was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.
As the doctor aboard a plane in which the pilots, and some of the passengers, become violently ill, Nielsen says they must get to a hospital right away.
“A hospital? What is it?” a flight attendant asks, inquiring about the illness.
“It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now,” Nielsen deadpans.
When he asks a passenger if he can fly the plane, the man replies, “Surely you can’t be serious.”
Nielsen responds: “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”
Critics argued he was being cast against type, but Nielsen disagreed.
“I’ve always been cast against type before,” he said, adding comedy was what he’d really always wanted to do.
It was what he would do for most of the rest of his career, appearing in such comedies as “Repossessed” (a takeoff on the demonic possession movies like “The Exorcist”) and “Mr. Magoo,” in which he played the title role of the good-natured bumbler.
Nielsen did play Debbie Reynolds’ sweetheart in the popular “Tammy and the Bachelor,” a loanout to Universal, and he became well known to baby boomers for his role as the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series “The Swamp Fox.”
Unhappy with his roles at MGM, he asked to be released from his contract. As a freelancer, he appeared in a series of undistinguished movies.
“I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent,” he reasoned.
Meanwhile, he remained active in television in guest roles. He also starred in his own series, “The New Breed,” ”The Protectors” and “Bracken’s World,” but all were short-lived.
Then “Airplane!” captivated audiences and changed everything.
Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker had hired Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges and Nielsen to spoof their heroic TV images in a satire of flight-in-jeopardy movies.
After the movie’s success, the filmmaking trio cast their newfound comic star as Detective Drebin in a TV series, “Police Squad,” which trashed the cliches of “Dragnet” and other cop shows. Despite good reviews, NBC canceled it after only four episodes.
“It didn’t belong on TV,” Nielsen later commented. “It had the kind of humor you had to pay attention to.”
The Zuckers and Abraham converted the series into a feature film, “The Naked Gun,” with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen’s co-stars. Its huge success led to sequels “The Naked Gun 2 1/2” and “The Naked Gun 33 1/3.”
His later movies included “All I Want for Christmas,” ”Dracula: Dead and Loving It” and “Spy Hard.”
Between films he often turned serious, touring with his one-man show on the life of the great defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow.
Nielsen was born Feb. 11, 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan.
He grew up 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Fort Norman, where his father was an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The parents had three sons, and Nielsen once recalled, “There were 15 people in the village, including five of us. If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he’d have to wait until the thaw to turn him in.”
The elder Nielsen was a troubled man who beat his wife and sons, and Leslie longed to escape. As soon as he graduated from high school at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally deaf (he wore hearing aids most of his life.)
After the war, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey at a Calgary radio station, then studied at a Toronto radio school operated by Lorne Greene, who would go on to star on the hit TV series “Bonanza.” A scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse brought him to New York, where he immersed himself in live television.
Nielsen also was married to: Monica Boyer, 1950-1955; Sandy Ullman, 1958-74; and Brooks Oliver, 1981-85.
Nielsen and his second wife had two daughters, Thea and Maura.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The Sun-Times is a member of Associated Press.
Saturday night at the movies in my home town
Painting by Kelly Eddington from St. Joseph, IL, north of Urbana on Route 45. Saturday night was a big deal in those days. Here is Kelly’s website.. I own two of her works. She takes commissions,
Marty Moran wrote me:
I discovered your journal a while back as I searched some information about the Rialto Theatre in Champaign and read your piece on the Art Theatre. I have since read many of your entries and I have been struck by the memories you have evoked in me. I too was raised in Champaign – Urbana (having grown up in Champaign I put it first) and attended St Mary’s grade school. I’ve spent my entire life working in the motion picture industry (distribution) and spent a couple of years with Disney that ended somewhat unpleasantly. Your essay on your dad and your memories of him in Nil by Mouth have moved me to comment. My dad also worked at the University of Illinois in the housing division. He had keys to many of the buildings on campus and we would cut through some of the dorms on the way to the July fourth fireworks at Memorial Stadium. He also came home at lunch and made a sandwich… usually salami with mustard.
I figure I am about 12 years younger than you but I grew up in much the same environment. I loved Steak & Shake, preferred Dog N Suds root beer to A&W, frequented Marty K’s instead of Mel Roots and walked past the Huddle House on my way to school. We went to Turkey Run occasionally but spent most of our time at Lake of the Woods. My Dad was a Democrat and also hung coffee cans of water in the registers all winter long. Took my first airplane ride (with Dad) at Illini Field and spent some time at the Joy Land amusement park across the road.
When your brother in law said; “Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.” … He probably didn’t realize that your memories would trigger so many memories in others. So I am simply writing to say thanks for the memories! I will continue to read your journal regularly and I wish you all the best.
“Hell is a Lonely Place,” by Charles Bukowski
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Studs and Algren and Patterson, N.J.
In 1975, Nelson Algren left Chicago, where he wrote “The Man with a Golden Arm” and “Chicago City on the Make,” and to general astonishment moved to Paterson, N.J.
In this rare film from a Chicago house party in 1975, Studs grills him, “Why Paterson?”
The two old masters work together like a comedy team. This was an actual conversation, not any kind of appearance, although they’re keenly aware of their audience. Algren takes wing when he describes the ideal route from Patterson to San Francisco.
I don’t know who made this film. Such a record was rare in the age before video cameras. The conversation doesn’t feel staged, but simply happening in somebody’s living room. The two men logged countless hours together, Studs the eternal optimist, Nelson the congenital curmudgeon. The YouTube discovery came to me from Zac Thompson, by way of Studs’ longtime WFMT pal Andrew Patner. When I viewed it, it had logged only 108 visits.
Studs was 63, and died in 2008. Nelson was 66, and died in 1981.’
[ 11:03p.m. 11/13: fyi, it’s actually shot on video not film. if you want to see some similar quality video, a new technology at the time, check out william eggleston’s black and white party films from the south called “stranded in canton”. his color photography is a big influence on filmmakers like harry savides and sofia coppola.
http://www.egglestontrust.com
peter ]
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Visit my blog, Roger Ebert’s Journal.
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Exclusive footage of the Last Supper
The painting at the top is by Jacopo Bassano (1510-1592).
The secrets of The Pot
You need a couple of square feet, rice, water, and just about anything you feel like cooking.
The Pot Knows.
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Down memory lane: Nic Cage goes batshit
Edited by Harry Hanrahan.
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Amazon.com Widgets
