Monthly Archives: February 2012

RNF LV

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Random Neuron Firings

Some good advice on a Monday morning:

I think “Creative” could easily be replaced with “Sane,” “Balanced,” “Content…” Pick one.

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Impress your friends at the next party.

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Stumbled upon Remember the War last night. Awesome “capsule history” site, putting WWII into a timeline/multimedia perspective. Very well done.

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Somebody, sometime, is going to get this as a birthday cake. It’s my next major project.

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And then after that, there’s this.

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From the Smithsonian. Has it been that long ago that these little demons were introduced to the American public?

Speaking of little demons…time to get ready to go shape young voices. It’s a three-day school week for me. How bad can that be? Hmmm. We shall see, Grasshopper. We shall see.

:P

Review: Kisses on the Bottom

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The Thriller surprised me yesterday by bringing home Paul McCartney’s new album. Wow! He’s the greatest (the Thriller, I mean — well, Paul too, but…)

Silly pun in the title notwithstanding*, this is a serious project. Lots of pop/rock singers do it at some point in their careers: make an album of standards. These are, according to the liner notes, many of the songs McCartney grew up listening to and singing along with at what he calls “family sing-songs” during his youth. And, true to his longstanding reputation as a relentless showman and shrewd artist, he surrounded himself with major league heavy hitters: Eric Clapton, John Pizzarelli, Diana Krall, Stevie Wonder, and some amazing studio players. Light strings here and there for icing purposes, but otherwise it’s just Paul and a rhythm section. Good choice.

Cleveland-born Tommy LiPuma produced, adding to his impressive litany of Grammy-winning home runs from the likes of Miles Davis, Barbra Streisand, Diana Krall, Natalie Cole and George Benson. Sounds like a shoo-in for at least a nomination at the end of the year. So here’s my take, after listening to it twice.

Let’s get this said: Paul is no jazz singer, and he’s a marginal crooner. Therefore, a couple of the songs just didn’t work. As flawlessly produced as the record is, you still can’t escape a poor musical fit, and those do happen. “More I Cannot Wish You” and “Always” are forgettable. “Paper Moon” is also weak, but Paul’s somewhat clumsy vocals are rescued in fine style by the band, featuring amazing violinist/singer Andy Stein (listen to him here on his own album, doing “Fit as a Fiddle”).

One song in particular, however, lets Paul be Paul. Listening to the bluesy track, “Get Yourself Another Fool,” I found myself thinking, “Ah, here’s the voice we all know and love.” The reserve and control employed throughout the other songs dissipates here, and we get more of a Wings feel. Not “Oh, Darlin'” by any means, but he seems to loosen his necktie just a bit.

So, it’s a careful recording (in his defense, he admits to feeling intimidated by all the jazz players and singers in the studio), but a pleasant listen and a fantastic effort, considering the guy will be 70 years old this June and is still touring and going at it like his hair’s on fire.

I hope I’m like that, 18 years from now. :-)

OK, what’s up for you this weekend? I did another Comfort Foodie post last night — wow, delicioso. Tonight, we have the Js, and tomorrow is movie-and-dinner-date time with the Thriller. Monday? The Grease rehearsal schedule officially begins. Here we go…

*While it’s hard to believe McCartney didn’t foresee the snickering it would cause, the punny album title does make sense. The opening track, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” references finishing a love note by drawing “kisses on the bottom.”

*yawn*

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It’s the weekend! At least for me. No school for the Fink today.

So, should I be ashamed to admit that we watched Horrible Bosses last night, and laughed out loud? Probably. But there you have it. It’s an awful story featuring horrifyingly dreadful people doing unspeakably vicious things; I won’t even review it. But I have to admit, there are some gosh dang funny scenes in it. Embarrassingly, brainlessly funny. Ridiculous.

:-)

Looking forward to later this afternoon. Let the weekend begin!

 

Death by Curiosity

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All right, I drank the Kool-Aid.

After hearing about it on the news and giving in to my gnawing sense of nosy, I Nooked (hey, I just made up a new verb) Once Upon a Secret, the new memoir by Mimi Alford, detailing her love affair with President Kennedy. Although I’ve only read a little over half of the 160-some pages, I’m already feeling a bit creepish. There’s just something…I dunno…incongruent about the whole thing.

Mimi was raised in a healthy, wealthy, straight-laced, happy WASP family on a sprawling colonial farm in New Jersey. She went to preppy schools and learned preppy ways and attended preppy debutante balls and had preppy dreams of marrying and having preppy children after getting a preppy education at the all-girl Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. Jackie Kennedy, an alum of the same school, indirectly influenced Mimi’s being invited to Washington to intern for a summer. This is, of course, where she met JFK, and where all her preppy, straight-laced, good-girl training went down the john tubes in a matter of hours. Literally, hours. By her fourth day there, the 19-year-old was doing the deed with the Philanderer-in-Chief.

So far, the prose is littered with “I don’t regret it,”  “I didn’t see myself as a home wrecker, but rather someone for the President to be with while his wife was away,” “I couldn’t say no,” and allusions to her naïveté. Gotta admit, some of it just doesn’t ring true, and honestly, it indicts her character in 2012 more than invokes pity for her lovesick confusion back in ’62.

In her defense, however, she didn’t let the cat out of the bag (save for a small circle of confidants) all these many years, until 2003, when a reporter in New York uncovered some evidence and threatened to go public. Long story short: She decided to tell the tale her way, rather than have people linger on in assumption purgatory.

Still, her insistence on having no feelings of remorse (at least so far) is troubling. She’s a respected businesswoman, working for a large church. She grew up,  married, and had children. It’s bothering me ever so slightly (and I ain’t no prude, mind) that she wants this book to be a legacy of sorts for her grandchildren, when it’s so heavily laced with repeated disregard for Jackie and her kids. I know that Jackie knew about her husband’s proclivities, and turned a blind eye to most of it; in many ways, it was as much Jackie’s fault, and the way of the times, but still. So far, to me, the memoir has some backfire to it.

Oh well. I’ll keep reading to see if it gets better, but right now, it’s kind of uncomfortable. Like peeping. Heh.

Is it Friday yet? BLAAAAAAH

FO

Review: Midnight in Paris

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I’m about halfway through my list of 2012 Oscar nominees for Best Picture. So far, I’ve seen Hugo, Moneyball (which I didn’t have time to review, bummer), The Help, The Tree of Life, and as of last night, Midnight in Paris.

I must say I think I’ve found my favorite of them all thus far. It’s a touching story of painful yet meaningful growth, with the city of Paris as the real star.

The plot: Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) visits Paris with his future in-laws and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams, in a decidedly unlikable role). Easy going and affable, Gil “goes along” with whatever activities Inez chooses for them (including outings with a pretentious American scholar, played brilliantly by the very Welsh Michael Sheen), but he appears preoccupied as he wrestles with what is to be his very first novel. On a solitary walk through the city, the clock chimes midnight and a vintage limo pulls up. Its inhabitants invite him in, and he accepts. Off he goes — to Paris in the 1920s — where he meets some real-life bohemians: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, and a sad, mysterious girl named Adriana. In the morning, he returns to the present day, only to repeat the journey the following night.

The comedy is sincere and affecting, as is most of Woody Allen’s work. But what hooked me was the gradual, visual change Wilson’s character experiences through his contact each night with people who accepted him readily into their circle — when the man himself was seemingly unable to find welcome into his own future family’s world.

Filmed almost entirely on location, the photography was beautiful, capturing the nostalgia and simple allure of the cafes of post-WWI Paris. The soundtrack was out of this world — if it wasn’t handpicked by Allen himself, I’ll eat my hat. A delightful story — perfect for a night on the sofa while the Thriller was at class. The Academy did well to nominate it. I doubt it has a snowball’s chance of winning, but it should.

On the Rat-O-Meter scale of five cheeses, I give Midnight in Paris: