John Wick

 

By now we’re familiar with Keanu Reeves.   Depending on how geezin’ we be, it’s anywhere from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (and “Bogus Journey”), “Point Break”, or “The Matrix”.  Throw “Constantine” and “The Devil’s Advocate” into the mix as well.  Here are 4 more recent films of his, a series.  I’ll try to keep it brief and avoid spoilers.

John Wick 1 (2014).  John Wick (Reeves) is a retired hitman who has a beloved wife dying of cancer.  Shortly after she dies, a delivery arrives: a puppy sent by her in her last days, to keep him company after she’s gone.  I suppose she didn’t think his Boss 429 Mustang would be a sufficient companion. (Something made by Pontiac might have been enough).

Well, he goes out to fill the Mustang with gas, and a local moblord’s son, Iosef Tarasov, played by our beloved Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), takes a shining to the car, and is not happy when Wick politely advises him that it’s not for sale.  The Boy sends Minions (Banana!) to kill the car and steal the dog – or vice versa.  Oops.  Not a wise move, as his father Viggo tells him that Wick is not someone to mess with (“Ohh, is he the bogeymen?” “No, he’s the one you send to KILL the bogeyman”).  And Wick spends the remainder of the film showing how true that is.

A huge body count amidst NYC clubs piles up, with NYPD, FBI, and BATF curiously absent amidst all the shooting with various different potent firearms.  Although Wick is injured, he somehow survives to continue extracting vengeance until it’s down to Iosef and Viggo to be the last victims of Wick’s crusade.

Oh, did I mention there are some heavy hitters amongst the cast members?  Ian McShane plays Winston, the owner of the Continental, a Flatiron type hotel in Manhattan which serves as neutral territory for all these people to conduct their business.  Lance Reddick (RIP) plays Charon, the concierge thereof.   Willem Dafoe is Marcus, a fellow assassin who enters the picture.  Even Adrienne Palicki, aka Kelly Grayson from “The Orville”, is Perkins, another assassin.  Who knew the underworld could support so many assassins? 

The gunfights and martial arts are all implausibly well orchestrated, which can sometimes wear on your patience.  Fortunately Wick remains likable throughout, and you want him to achieve his goals.  Well, at least I did. 

With the existence of three sequels, forgive me if I spoil it for you by pointing out that he survives these films.  Will he survive #4?  Well, watch it and find out.

John Wick 2 (2017).  An Italian mobster arrives in NYC and presents Wick with a medallion, an item which obligates the recipient to do a mission for the presenter.  In this case, the mobster, Santino D’Antonio, tasks Wick with assassinating his sister Gianna so he can take her place on the High Table, the criminal underworld’s secret council.  After Wick initially resists, having his house blown up and Winston’s advice (“you have to do the job, he has a medallion”) induce him to travel to Rome, Italy to complete the mission.  There’s a Continental Hotel in Rome, and its manager is played by Franco Nero, a famous actor most recently having a cameo role in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained”) (yes, I know he was the original Django).  Common (yet another rap guy with a pretentious name) plays Gianna’s bodyguard and moves against Wick to avenge her, as do D’Antonio’s own army of assassins.  It frequently reaches the point where Wick runs out of bullets and has to replenish his supply of weapons and ammo from the vast body count of fresh, heavily armed corpses.  [Guess the local morgue may need to rent out a warehouse or a crematorium. Again, the police are nonexistent herein.]

Here's where it gets annoying.  NOW D’Antonio puts a bounty out on Wick to avenge his sister’s death – the death D’Antonio arranged himself.  It’s a fairly large bounty ($7 million), so every assassin in NYC comes out of the woodwork to earn it, notwithstanding the negligible likelihood of success or survival.  Again, who knew there were that many hitmen around?  Oh, and Wick gets help from Morpheus…er.. the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) in the form of medical attention and firearms.

Wick ultimately “resolves” the matter in a fashion which will incur him the wrath of the High Table, as we’ll see in JW3.

John Wick 3 (2019).   This time around Wick travels to Casablanca, Morocco, and the Desert, in an effort to redeem himself with the High Table by meeting The Elder.  He’s assisted by Sofia Al-Azwar (Halle Berry), a fellow assassin and manager of the Continental in Casablanca, who takes him to see to Berrada, (Jerome “Bronn” Flynn), another lowlife who can tell him how to find the Elder.  Before the Tracker and his dog, Sofia has her own canine companions who assist her in her badassness. 

More shooting.  Of course.  More absent police.  Or maybe they were just smart enough to stay away and chow down on donuts - then simply come by to pick up the bodies.  Chief Wiggums, you know.

Then it’s off to the desert to find The Elder.  The terms for re-admission to the High Table prove to be onerous, leading Wick and Winston to fight back, which induces the High Table to send an Adjudicator, played by Non-Binary Ice Bitch herself, Asia Kate Dillon (from “Orange Is the New black” and “Billions”).   And guess what?  In addition to all those assassins who take the bounties offered by the High Table, it has its own spec ops team of heavily armed and armored assassins, who – guess what - go after John Wick.  And if you know there’s a John Wick 4, you can guess what happens. 

John Wick 4 (2023).   Now Wick goes to Osaka, Japan; Berlin, Germany; and finally Paris, France, to escape the High Table idiocy by regaining membership in his original Romanian mob (led by Natalya Tena, best known as “Osha”, the wilding girl in Game of Thrones) and forcing the High Table to agree to a Trial By Combat at the Sacre Coeur (big church on the highest hill) in Paris.  However, YET AGAIN, the High Table has put out yet another asininely high bounty, and a shadow army of Paris’ muscle-car-driving assassins attempt to make sure he doesn’t make it past the Etoile, or up the steps of Rue Foyatier, to the final location.  Did I mention that Johnnie Yen plays Caine, a BLIND assassin, who seems remarkably effective despite his obvious handicap?  There’s also a black guy with a dog, “The Tracker”, who alternates between protecting Wick and trying to kill him.  By this point the High Table is now represented by the Marquis, played by Bill Skarsgard.  Clancy Brown joins Asia Kate Dillon and Toby Leonard Moore as yet more “Billions” alumni herein. The Kurgan guy from “Highlander”, who played the Attorney General in “Billions” here plays the Harbinger, a quasi-Adjudicator role of the High Table.

As a resident of Paris from 1979-1990, I was happy to see the city get such attention – Osaka and Berlin were mostly represented by buildings indoors which could be anywhere.  The parties hammer out the terms of the duel at Chaillot, opposite the Eiffel Tower.  The Bowery King meets Wick in an abandoned Paris Metro station.   The High Table’s Paris office monitors Wick’s whereabouts on a huge map of Paris with the arrondisements (the 20 different districts of Paris) marked out.  A huge shootout occurs at the Etoile itself – here’s where CGI enters the equation, as they obviously didn’t shut down Paris’ most active traffic circle just to film a movie (actually done on a green screen parking lot near Berlin).  But those steps up to the Sacre Coeur, the aforementioned Rue Foyatier, actually were shut off to film the action sequence wherein Wick and Caine have to fight their way up to the church to attend the duel. 

High Table Bureaucracy.  Oddly, the High Table, Assassin’s Guild, or whoever it is taking care of this whole network of assassins and bounties, has an elaborate bureaucracy with sophisticated networks worldwide.  They have forms, old school file cabinets, and the beloved stamps – all in oldfashioned offices with clerks and secretaries taking care of this – presumably sworn to secrecy somehow with NDAs enforced by assassins and bounties.  All for what is an illegal enterprise, to which the FBI and Interpol seem to be oblivious.  If I were a US Attorney (Federal prosecutor) I’d be amazed they’re keeping a paper trail of all this.  I suppose they expect to burn all of it should the need arise.  Maybe we’ll get a High Table backstory in a later movie, although the next film in the franchise, “The Ballerina” (featuring a character I didn’t see in #3), will take place in between #3 & 4 and is Charon actor Lance Reddick’s last role before he died.  In the meantime, enjoy these four.  

Teen Emo Hitler

 

The Young Hitler I Knew, by August Kubizek.  I’ve already covered Mein Kampf, now it’s time to complement that with the memoirs of his Austrian BFF, August Kubizek.  AK was commissioned to write the memoirs by Martin Bormann during WWII, but only finished them after the war, when he was offered a publishing contract.  Over the course of doing so, he read Mein Kampf and referred to it often, though most often to correct instances where Hitler’s recollections don’t match his own.

AK was AH’s only friend in Linz, from 1904 to 1908, when Hitler was 15-19.  Hitler moved to Vienna, AK moved there as well and lived with him.   In 1908 the Austro-Hungarian army summoned AK back to Linz for him to do his training, and without AK’s contribution to his rent, Hitler ended up virtually homeless, too proud to let AK know of his poverty, and the two lost contact with each other.

AK served in the Austrian army during WWI, was wounded, but survived.  Hitler moved to Munich in 1913 to evade conscription in the Austrian army, and as we know actually served with distinction in the Imperial German Army in WWI.  When he started getting publicity through his Nazi Party activities in the 1920s, AK recognized him in the newspaper, but did not try contacting him until 1933, to congratulate him on becoming Chancellor.  Hitler responded, and the two met up again in 1938 when Germany annexed Austria.  They met a few more times during the war.

Part I: Linz.   Both were big opera fans and met at an opera.  At one concert hall in Linz, there were a pair of pillars in the back which could be leaned upon to ease the stress of standing through the entire thing.  AK liked to scope that out – and one time found the pillar already occupied by someone else.  The two struck up a friendship from then on.  AK says even back then, Hitler combed his hair down in front as is so often shown in later photographs. 

AK was the son of an upholsterer, and expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but his own dream was to be an orchestra conductor.  He finished Realschule (intermediate quality high school) whereas Hitler dropped out, never getting his diploma.  Hitler’s father had died before they met, and his mother died a few years later; AK’s parents only died many years later, and AK enjoyed a stable household this entire time.  Most of their activities together were spent attending operas, hiking in the local wilderness, and generally walking around Linz.  Hitler fancied himself an architect and would regale AK with all his plans to redo the entire city.  At the time Linz was a simple village, and has since become the third largest city in Austria.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler insisted that his anti-semitism developed when he was in Vienna, as there weren’t many Jews in Linz.  However, AK noted that the school teachers in Linz were openly anti-semitic, so very likely Hitler went to Vienna already predisposed to hate Jews.

Part II: Vienna. Hitler moved to Vienna to go to art school, and managed to persuade AK to move there as well, entering music school.  They roomed together, hung out together, and continued to be BFFs there in Vienna. 

Having completed his Realschule, AK was able to enroll at the Conservatory and continue his studies.  He even tutored the daughters of wealthy men from across the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Hitler was not so lucky.  Because he had refused to finish his Realschule in Linz (he was bored with school and arrogantly asserted that he knew everything already) it came back to bite him in the ass when he got to Vienna:  the art school rejected him, advising him that his talents as an artist were slim; his true aptitude (to the extent he had any) was in architecture.  Thus he should go to architecture school, but that required an intermediate degree, which itself required a Realschule diploma.  D’oh!  History might have turned out much differently had Hitler only completed high school in Linz.

So what was Teen Emo Hitler like?  He comes off as highly opinionated and easily offended by literally anything, quick tempered and arrogant.  He was too shy to talk to girls or women, and too proud to sample Vienna’s red light district.  It doesn’t seem as though he was gay – although homosexuals offended him immensely.  Maybe Ernst Roehm wasn’t his “type”. 

His passions were books, German folklore, architecture, and Wagner.   Despite no formal training, Hitler filled their small apartment with tons of sketches of how he planned to redesign Vienna.  The two also caught as many Wagner operas as they could at the main Hof Opera House in Vienna – to the exclusion of Italian operas, or any others.  In fact, Hitler tried to write his own opera, Wieland der Schmied, based on the Wieland legends, an impossible task without any formal music training.  Ironically, AK offered to teach him how to play the piano and music theory, but Hitler was too impatient to learn either, refusing altogether and insisting that his passion and vision were sufficient to the task – which they weren’t.   If the classical composers – including Wagner – needed to know this, how could Hitler get away without knowing this?  Arrogance is not a substitute for talent.

Photos of Hitler.  By now we’re familiar with Hitler’s baby picture, and his school picture showing him as a very young, but very arrogant boy.  AK says that back then, cameras were very expensive, and portable cameras nonexistent.  If you wanted a picture you had to go to a portrait studio, which is why his baby picture and school pictures are the only ones of him in his youth – no pictures exist of him as a teenager or from his Vienna years.  After that, his wartime photos in the Imperial German Army in WWI would be the next photographs of him before the Nazi Party era began.  

Reunion.  As noted, they only managed to meet up again in 1938.  By then Hitler was extremely important and very busy.  But here’s where it gets strange.  By now we know of Hitler as the Fuhrer, the dictator of Germany, who threw Europe into its second world war and orchestrated the massacre of 10 million innocent people, 6 million of them Jews – not counting the millions of civilian casualties in the war itself outside the camps.  But when the two reunited, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him.  In all those years growing up, AK was not only his best friend, but his only friend.  And despite being surrounded and busy, Hitler made time for “Gustl”.   The highlight of their reunion was the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.

According to AK, when they met up during the war, Hitler moaned that the war was stressing him out and that he never meant it to happen.  Who put a gun to his head and made him invade Poland?  Denmark?  Norway?  Holland?  Belgium?  France?  Yugoslavia?  Greece?  Russia?  You get the picture. 

The other bizarre thing is this.  Although AK started the memoirs during the war itself, he finished them after WWII.  By that time the full scope of Nazi horrors had become common knowledge.  AK himself had been locked up briefly and extensively interrogated by Allied intelligence officers, who no doubt filled him in about what was really going on all that time.  Yet he brushes it away summarily by insisting, “Hitler was my friend.” 

Smack Him Around.  When I finished this, I felt a strong compulsion to smack Hitler on the side of the head and try to talk sense into him – notwithstanding my poor German and lack of time travel power.  Depending on what phase in his life my hypothetical attacks occurred (though simply killing him might be more convenient) this is what I’d say…

Linz.  “All these other clowns somehow managed to finish realschule, but you’re ‘special’?  You don’t need it?  Get a clue.  People aren’t going to be impressed that you failed to finish it off, they’ll call you either lazy or stupid.”  [Hitler: “or ‘Chancellor.’”]

Vienna. “You have no training in a musical instrument or in music theory, yet you think you can write an opera?  Please.  All the classical composers played instruments and could write their own compositions in sheet music for everyone else to play.  If you could only learn those basic tools, they would allow you to realize whatever potential you might have.”

WWI.  “If Germany loses this war, it won’t be Jews behind it.  It will be that mammoth juggernaut across the Atlantic which can throw millions of eager soldiers at us, who aren’t bludgeoned by years of trench warfare.  These Americans will crush us.  The Jews have nothing to do with it.”  [At some level I think some of the Nazis knew this; I’m not sure Hitler himself did.  But even during WWII the Germans had no real ability to retaliate against the US.  If they admitted it was America that doomed the Kaiser to failure, that would take one huge chunk out of their platform.  Well, too bad.]

WWII (1942 onward).  “You think the Ami’s are soft, and the Russians are Untermensch.  Well, the Russians can build T34s, PPSh’s, and their more clever generals like Zhukov can learn from Guderian and adopt the same tactics and strategies we use.  And these ‘soft’ Americans are clever enough to put their women – who would otherwise be idle and useless with their husbands off at war, not to mention all the single women in the US – to good use in factories.  Every American woman riveting a B17 at home frees up an American man to pick up a Garand or an M1 Carbine and shoot at Germans or Japanese soldiers.   Here’s a country protected by thousands of miles of ocean, who your best V2 rockets can’t hit, who can fight two opponents at once.  It’s a country with vast industrial capacity and which understands and has mastered logistics. 

“Of course, in your idiotic anti-semitism, you threw away one of Germany’s strongest assets, its Jews.  But that train has gone to Auschwitz – or to the Manhattan Project.

“Your biggest conceit is assuming that because Germany is good at war, that no one else is.  Yes, your generals and officers are excellent, your soldiers brave.  Your MG42 and FW190 are excellent weapons.  Your U-boats are competitive on the oceans.   But you ignore the many assets and skills of our enemies.  Your arrogance and hubris will drive Germany to ruin, and it won’t be Germany’s fault, it will be yours.”

The Moody Blues Revisited

 

It looks like I covered this band – back in 2008.  At that time I’d only digested three of their albums, and none of the solo albums – nor had I seen them live.  As it is, the band has 16 studio albums, starting with The Magnificent Moodies (1965) and finishing up with December (2003), a Christmas album.  Of the individual band members, Justin Hayward (singer/guitarist) has 8 solo albums, John Lodge (singer/bassist) has 3, including the most recent release (2015) of any band member, 10,000 Light Years Ago, and two each by Graeme Edge (drummer), Mike Pinder (keyboardist), and Ray Thomas (flutist).  

The band started out as a mediocre rhythm & blues band, guitar & vocals handled by Denny Laine and bass played by Clint Warwick.  They had one album, The Magnificent Moodies, and one hit single, “Go Now”, which Ozzy Osbourne covered. 

Prog Phase. But this direction wasn’t feeling right.   They dumped Laine & Warwick, replaced them with Hayward and Lodge, and swerved into the prog rock direction with a concept album, Days of Future Passed (1967).  Like In the Court of the Crimson King with King Crimson, the first is arguably the best.  The album covers the hours of the day, from morning to night.  “White satin” refers to a gift of white satin bedsheets Hayward received and found impractical.  The Mellotron is heavily featured in the album along with classical orchestration.  The overall impact is epic.  I tend to combine it with In The Court of the Crimson King (1969) and Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother (1970) for a prog rock trio listening experience. 

The following albums, In Search of the Lost Chord (1968), On The Threshold of a Dream (1969), To Our Children’s Children’s Children (1969) [I don’t think any band members have great-grandchildren yet], A Question of Balance (1970), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971), and Seventh Sojourn (1972), continued the prog rock theme, with varying levels of competence and enthusiasm.  While not really psychedelic, the band did pay homage to Timothy Leary on “Legend of a Mind” on Lost Chord.  Of the original series of prog albums, I would put Days of Future Passed at #1, Seventh Sojourn a strong #2, On The Threshold of a Dream a distant third, and the rest are OK.  They are all on Spotify, but here’s something nice: with the exception of Lost Chord, they are all available as not merely digitally remastered, but the disc is dual layer, with CD players reading the CD audio layer, and a 5.1 Surround mix on the disc as well, which DVD players can read.  Moreover, Days, Lost Chord, and Children have a bonus disc – single mixes, out-takes, demos, and “live in the studio” kind of items.  This is material you’re likely to listen to far less often than the album itself.  Kudos to the band for making the 5.1 mix so easily accessible instead of part of a $100 boxed set. 

Hiatus & Solo Albums.  The band had a rather lengthy hiatus between Seventh Sojourn and Octave, during which time the various members set about doing solo albums.  Hayward and Lodge teamed up together with their first (Blue Jays), and then veered off separately.  After that the members alternated from MB to solo here and there.  I find the later solo albums to be as commercial as the contemporaneous MB albums.  None are absolute stinkers, but most will be interesting to listen to once or twice out of curiosity but not deserve the regular rotation that Days and Seventh Sojourn enjoy – at least for me.

Return and the Rest.  With Octave (1978), the band resumed its career, albeit moving away from a prog flavor and pushing heavily into a pop/commercial direction.  These were Long Distance Voyager (1981), The Present (1983), The Other Side of Life (1986), Sur La Mer (1988), Keys of the Kingdom (1991), Strange Times (1999), and the aforementioned December (2003).  Of these, I found The Present to be the strongest, with the rest being fairly snoozeworthy; not bad, but not particularly memorable.   

Isle of Wight 1970.  When Woodstock rolled around in August 1969, the Moody Blues were off in Europe touring – a decision they later regretted.  When the Isle of Wight Festival came round, they were determined to attend, and did.  I have the DVD of the performance.  Setlist:   Gypsy; Tuesday Afternoon; Never Comes The Day; Tortoise And The Hare; Question; The Sunset; Melancholy Man; Nights in White Satin; Legend of the Mind; Encore: Ride My See Saw.  Obviously I couldn’t make that show (just a baby at the time). 

I managed to see them live, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, on March 26, 2010 (after I wrote my prior blog).  Setlist: The Voice; The Day We Meet Again; Steppin’ in a Slide Zone; Gypsy; Tuesday Afternoon; Lean On Me (Tonight); Never Comes The Day; Peak Hour; I Know You’re Out There Somewhere; The Story In Your Eyes; Your Wildest Dreams; Isn’t Life Strange; The Other Side of Life; Driftwood; Higher and Higher; Are You Sitting Comfortably?; I’m Just A Singer (In A Rock’n’Roll Band); Late Lament; Nights in White Satin; Question; encore: Ride My See-Saw.    That’s 12 songs from Days through Seventh Sojourn (none from Magnificent Moodies), and 9 from Octave and later.  Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder were long gone.  Edge was there on the stage with a drum kit, but a second (younger) drummer was also on stage doing most of the heavy lifting.  Since the Moody Blues aren’t generally known for having two drummers, live or in the studio, I suspect the new guy was there to get the job done and Edge was permitted to pretend to be playing along – maybe his drums weren’t plugged in (!).  Hayward and Lodge were front and center getting most of the work done, confidently so. 

Genesis comparison.  By now we’re familiar with the Phil Collins era of highly commercial music.  Of course, you’ll hear plenty of advice to seek out the prior prog phase with Peter Gabriel.  Well, I listened to all of them – From Genesis To Revelation (1969) through The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) (the last of the Peter Gabriel albums), and even indulged in the next two, A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering, the last with (guitarist) Steve Hackett.   So far as I could tell, “Fifth of Firth” from Selling England By The Pound, was the strongest, heaviest song, on which Hackett can actually be heard playing.  The rest was …(disgusted face by either Dan Levy or Kirsten Wiig).  I recently had the pleasure of reading a heavy volume on Hawkwind, Days of The Underground, by Joe Banks.  In addition to reviewing the band’s albums from the self-titled debut through Levitation, there are interviews with band members, Doug Smith (manager), Stacia (dancer), and Michael Moorcock, the famous sci-fi author.  He’s asked why Hawkwind was the only band he had any substantial collaboration with, since prog bands are well known for having sci-fi/fantasy themes.   His response is that he found prog bands to be unbearably pretentious, and Hawkwind were notable for being not pretentious at all.  When it comes to being pretentious, I would put Genesis at the top of the list.  Moreover, bands like Pink Floyd at least give us some razor sharp guitar work from David Gilmour – or some nice psychedelia like Piper at the Gates of Dawn.  What Genesis gives us is 100% pretention and 0% any backbone. 

Where do the Moody Blues fit into this equation?  Well, I start from a core musical preference of hard rock.  My favorite two bands are AC/DC and Black Sabbath.  So my excursion into prog music is inevitably going to be judged on a standard of that nature, even if the two genres are far apart from each other.  The net result is that a prog band has to have some hint or element of heaviness in there somewhere.  King Crimson certainly does; and Pink Floyd get it done as well - as do Camel, of course.  The Moody Blues, thanks to some excellent guitar work from Justin Hayward – the heaviest songs being on Seventh Sojourn – manage to cross that threshold and keep my attention.  “Ride My See Saw” and “I’m Just A Singer (In A Rock’n’Roll Band)” serve the purpose of up-tempo rock songs.  Also, the band has a fair amount of humor injected into the equation and don’t take themselves nearly as seriously as you would expect from a prog band.  So I can count the Moody Blues as a prog band that I genuinely enjoy, even if I’m not inclined to listen to all of their material over and over again.  Your mileage may vary….

Pint Glasses

 

Sorry, no Friday the Thirteenth angle here.  When it comes to horror, my sole inclination is along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft: cosmic horror of the truly bizarre.  This business of a serial killer bores me (affected yawn).  “If it bleeds, we can kill it” (Pre-dater).  Anyhow.

I’ve noted that I collect various things:  concert t-shirts, guitars, CDs & vinyl, soccer jerseys, and pint glasses.  I suppose you could say I have a collection of collections – a collection collection.  However, I make it a point only to collect things with some intrinsic value.  You can listen to a CD or vinyl, wear a soccer jersey, or drink from a pint glass.  None of these are things you collect for the sake of collecting and maybe selling later.  I see these Funko Pop! dolls with the oversized heads at the comic book stores and wonder, “what practical purpose do these have?  What can you do with them?”  Put them on the shelf, I suppose.  Or keep them in the box they came in and collect them.  If you can’t take it out of the box for fear of destroying their value, that kind of defeats the purpose.  Now you’re simply collecting for the sake of collecting.  That strikes me as extravagant, but hey – it’s your money.  Spend it however you like. 

I like beer & cider.  I’m not an alcoholic, and never have been.  No one in my family is, so genetically I lucked out.  I can have a beer at dinner somewhere, stop there, enjoy my dinner, and by the time it’s time to get behind the wheel (or in the saddle) and go home, I’m fine.  I’ve never had a DUI and don’t intend to start.

Accordingly, my tolerance for alcohol doesn’t seem to have changed since college, which is that 4 year drinking program interrupted by classes and exams.  1-2 beers gets me buzzed, 4-6 will get me drunk.  I’ve never passed out.  It seems I get full before I get that far.

I don’t like drinking from bottles or cans.  I prefer to pour the drink into a pint glass and drink it that way.  If I’m at a restaurant or bar, I request a pint glass if I’m not already drinking a draft.  And that extends to home.

The prior weekend I visited CD Cellar in Falls Church, not with the express intention of buying anything, but just out of boredom and curiosity: to see what was there.  You never know what you might find if you keep your eyes and mind open.  They had a Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here pint glass for $10.  Nice! 

When it came time to wash it, I realized that putting it in the dishwasher might be a bad idea.  I’ve had several pint glasses with printed designs wear off, presumably due to that treatment.   So I’ll wash it by hand and let it dry.  We’ll see.

Lately I’ve noticed a new trend in pint glass designs.  I have a few TOOL glasses, a University of Maryland Terps glass, and a DOWN (Corrosion of Conformity/Pantera/Crowbar crossover group) glass.  What they all have in common is that the design is not painted on, but etched.  Very clever!  No way, no how, is any amount of cleaning going to remove that etching from the glass – it’s permanent.  Yet it’s also very easy to see and recognize.  Granted, that puts colors out of the equation, but I’d say that’s a fair compromise. 

Mind you, you don’t have to drink alcoholic beverages from a pint glass.  Water, soda, green tea etc. all work perfectly well.  Of course, none of those will get you drunk.

Notables:  TOOL (Fear Inoculum, 10,000 Days, Lateralus, AENima), King Crimson (Discipline, Larks Tongues in Aspic, Red), Clutch (x2), Tun Tavern (USMC Museum), Rutgers, NYU, West Point, University of Maryland, Coors (from the brewery itself), Narragansett.  The Filling Station in Chelsea Market in Manhattan sells their mason jar variants when you buy a beer.  Dead & Company sell variants of their Dave’s Pick’s.  As the picture shows, I keep them chilled in my freezer.  My diet of frozen food is mostly chicken and taquitos, taking up a minority of space, leaving the majority free for my collection of beer & cider receptacles. 

If there’s one downside to a pint glass, it’s that you can definitely drink much faster than out of a can or bottle.  A good thing or a bad thing?  I’m not quite sure.   Let me have another drink and think about it…

Twisted & Biblical

 

For Christmas I received several books – which were on my Amazon wishlist.   Two of these I’ve finished:  Twisted Business and Biblical.

Twisted Business:  Lessons From My Live In Rock’n’Roll, by Jay Jay French and Steve Farber.  JJF was the rhythm guitarist for heavy metal band Twisted Sister.   He actually formed it in the early 1970s (March 20, 1973 was their first show), but due to a tragically comic array of circumstances, the band didn’t get its first record,  Under The Blade, out until September 1, 1982.  Then its heyday of albums, tours, and notoriety lasted until its fifth album, Love Is For Suckers, released August 13, 1987.and their last show before breaking up, October 10, 1987, at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Stay Hungry is by far their most popular album, the one which catapulted them to fame, and contains their best known hits, “I Want A Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.   We managed to see them in Paris (4/28/86 at the Casino, the only show we saw at that fairly modest venue), and in Washington, DC at the Warner Theater (9/30/87).  A series of massive miscalculations (more clearly articulated in the book) explain how the band crashed and burned at that time.   JJF had to declare bankruptcy and find some other work to do – which eventually resulted in him producing and managing Sevendust. 

Dee Snider.  From Long Island, New York.  As not only the singer, but also extremely outspoken, Snider served as the de facto “mouth” of the band for much of their peak period, though he was not the original singer; he joined sometime in 1976.  According to JJF, the band members didn’t get along with each other very well, but years after the breakup, somehow managed to patch things up between them.  French himself made certain at an early point in the band’s career to secure the sole rights to the band name.

Drugs.  JJF is quite open about his initial history as not merely a drug user, but dealer.  This contrasts with Twisted Sister, an in-your-face heavy metal band not known for drugs or psychedelia, specifically because JJF abruptly went cold turkey AND insisted on a no drugs or alcohol policy in the band, as his own experiences with drugs, and the impact they had on bands, told him to avoid that.  And of course the band’s demise had nothing to do with drugs.

That being the case, he does have a remarkable array of war stories to tell about his experiences, especially with LSD.  These were interesting in and of themselves.  He found the Grateful Dead to be intolerable as a live band once he quit doing drugs, which is not hard to imagine.  Albums like American Beauty, with short and simple songs, are easy enough to enjoy sober, but a 3+ hour Dead show with extended jams pushes into territory where some form of herbal or chemical enhancement may be necessary to endure, much less enjoy and appreciate. 

Business.  At some point JJF realized that for the band to succeed, someone needed to exercise some form of control and common sense about money.  Although bands have managers for this reason, if all the band members (cough cough, Black Sabbath) are clueless about money, it’s too easy for the manager to either ruin everything or steal their money.  So teaching himself business and taking an active role in managing the band fell into his lap by default and necessity, and he discovered a natural aptitude for it.  In fact, he recognized it as a skill set which applies outside the rock business, and which he reduced to several principles conveniently in the form of T W I S T E D.

Tenacity.   Don’t give up simply because things get tough.

Wisdom.    Don’t be stupid.

Inspiration.  Use your imagination.

Stability.   Keep your act together.

Trust.  You have to be able to trust your business associates (band members).  And above all, you have to earn and keep their trust – it’s a two-way street, which many people don’t seem to realize.

Excellence.   You have to know what you’re doing.  Hone the basic skills which are the substance of your business.  For musicians, this usually means practicing your instrument constantly.

Discipline.  This means keeping yourself and your comrades behaving properly and keeping your eyes on the prize. 

As you can see, these are more philosophical principles than business ideals.  However, they’re pertinent and sensible, a good set for anyone to follow in their daily lives. 

Overall very intriguing, but the gist of it is 25% war stories and behind the scenes backstory on what was going on with Twisted Sister (and why they crashed and burned), and 75% articulation of these principles which he learned the hard way and considers valuable and applicable to people in their daily lives.  Since I only had a vague knowledge about the band outside its peak era, the history part was illuminating in its own right and very much a fun read (especially the acid stories).  Actually I found the music element to be far more interesting than the business element.

***

Biblical: Heavy Metal Scriptures, by Rob Halford.  Halford, of course, is the singer for Judas Priest, one of the more popular and famous heavy metal bands, originally from Birmingham, England (though drummer Scott Travis is from Norfolk, Virginia).  His prior book, Confess, was his autobiography, with lots and lots of details about his homosexuality.  Technically he only “came out” after leaving Judas Priest in 1992, but for many fans he was already “out”, and his official acknowledgement was more confirming what everyone – with any discernable “gaydar” – already knew.  Remaining officially in the closet, however, he had to remain discreet about his lifestyle, so all the tricks of remaining in the closet and “cruising” (this business where repressed homosexuals give each other subtle clues to alert that they’re up for slap and tickle) were likewise articulated at length in Confess.   All that was TMI for me.

Having gotten all that out in the open, now his goal is to wax poetic about literally every aspect of heavy metal:  album covers, songs, setlists, managers, producers, tours, tour buses, groupies, merchandise, etc.  It’s set up in a quasi-biblical fashion but 100% down to earth and non-spiritual.  70% of this is common knowledge which any Judas Priest fan who has been to a few shows is very much aware of; to the extent he had any deep secrets to reveal, they were in Confess.   In fact, so much of this is straightforward, it’s almost like he’s writing this for a 14 year old kid just learning about Judas Priest and music.  For my part, I found the circumstances behind each album’s creation and studio time were the areas of most interest because they were least obvious or well known.   So despite this business of telling me what I already knew, the reading experience was worthwhile all the same, and most likely of value to any Judas Priest fan of any age and experience. 

Oh, one element which is fairly substantial, and which I did not know, is that Rob Halford hates Spotify with a fierce passion.   As we may know, Spotify pays the artists a tiny percentage of a cent - not even a full cent - each time a song is played.   The result is that the artist can effectively discount Spotify as a direct source of income.  Moreover, many fans seem to use streaming sources as their exclusive means of listening to music, forgoing even downloads.  To that extent, Spotify is severely restricting the ability of musicians to make music.   Halford acknowledges that Judas Priest fans are more likely to use Spotify in addition to, not instead of, traditional formats such as vinyl and CD, but newer bands might not have the same fortune.  I'm one of those old school dinosaurs who still buys CDs; I only use Spotify to listen when I'm in a car without a CD player or on the cardio machine at the gym.  I can say I "feel your pain"/"see your point" without fully agreeing with him, as I do use Spotify myself AND still buy the music, AND see the band in concert.  If I listen to a band on Spotify I'm not familiar with already and like it, I'll tend to buy the CD and see the show.  

2001 2010 2061 3001 A Space Odyssey

 

Arthur C. Clarke has several science fiction novels, of which 2001: A Space Odyssey – and the film based on it – are probably the most famous.   What many don’t realize is that there are actually three sequels – 2010, 2061, and 3001 – of which only 2010 was made into a movie.  However, unlike 2001, which makes no sense without having read the book, 2010 actually makes sense on its own.  To my knowledge, neither 2061 nor 3001 were made into movies.   I had done three separate blogs in the past, here I’ll simply combine all three into one.

First, 2001.

 Here’s an interesting fact: the novel was written simultaneously with the production of the movie by Stanley Kubrick.  The movie premiered on April 2, 1968, whereas the book was released in June 1968 (hardback) and July 1968 (paperback).  Anyone attending the premiere would have had no access to the book.  Audiences’ reactions were mixed: Rock Hudson was quoted as complaining, “can someone tell me what this is all about?”, whereas the Doors, forced to see the film from the front row (the only seats left) were knocked out and impressed; Morrison stood up and said, “Well, that’s the best movie I’ve ever seen, we can go now.”  For my part, I shared Hudson’s impression.

 Unfortunately for most of us (including me), the movie surgically extracts the plot and leaves us with barking monkeys, man vs. homicidal computer, and an extravagant light show.  The novel, as you might expect, fills in the gaps and tells us what is really going on, particularly useful and necessary towards the end.

 Let’s start with the movie, sans novel.

Part I.  Apes jump around mysterious monolith, grab bones, and start kicking ass.

Part II.  Humans find monolith on the moon.  “Gee, that’s peculiar” (in Eddie Murphy mocking white people voice).

Part III.  Astronauts go off to Jupiter on a big ship.  The computer, HAL 9000, suddenly goes apes**t and kills off all but one of the astronauts.  The surviving astronaut, Bowman, succeeds at neutralizing the computer and continuing the mission.

Part IV.  Bowman makes it to Jupiter and enters the master monolith, which was just floating out in space.  After an extended, very trippy light show, he winds up inside a fancy hotel room, grows old, and becomes a fetus (mother unknown).

After witnessing this for two hours, most of us (even those partaking of chemicals or herbs to enhance the movie-watching experience) have the same reaction: W T F?

 Here’s the explanation the novel provides but Kubrick did not.

Part I.  Apes can’t do much except hoot and holler, even at each other.  The leopard is at the top of the food chain.  The monolith comes from nowhere (this is 3 million years ago) and scans, probes, and analyzes the apes.  Finally it puts the suggestion in the alpha male (Moon-watcher) head of “try making a tool out of something”.  Moon-watcher crafts a crude club, teaches the others to do the same (and sharpen stones, etc.) and pretty soon they’ve got the idea.  Now they can not only assert dominance over the competing tribe of apes, but also take down the much-feared leopard and jump to the top of the food chain.  This sets the apes on the road to humanity – to become us.  (“And there was much rejoicing.”)

 Part II.  Humans find the monolith on the moon.  It is clearly NOT natural and was deliberately buried on the moon, though with an unmistakable magnetic signature someone was sure to recognize and start digging.  Whoever left it there, left it there to be discovered.  Sure enough, when uncovered and exposed to sunlight, it immediately sends a transmission in the direction of Saturn (movie: Jupiter).  The monolith is 3 millions years old, so it’s clearly alien.  And the aliens are probably not from Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, or anywhere else in the solar system.  Whatever is on Saturn is most likely itself a relay to the stars. 

 Part III.  5 astronauts are on Discovery, two remaining awake and the other three in suspended animation.  Another ship, Discovery II, is being built, but will not be ready for several years.  The plan is that once this crew reaches Saturn, they will go into stasis (cared for by HAL) and the next ship will wake them up when they get there.  That’s the plan, at least.

            HAL 9000 abruptly decides – on its own – that for some reason, the astronauts are inimical to his plan and must be wiped out.  It sets Bowman off on a wild goose chase to fix an antenna that isn’t broken.  It shuts down life support on the sleeping astronauts, killing them.  It also killed Poole, the other conscious astronaut.  Bowman, exercising extreme discretion and care, manages to deactivate HAL.  However, since he knows the next ship won’t be there for years, and he would need HAL to remain in stasis, deactivating HAL means the trip to Saturn will probably result in his death.  Nevertheless, he decides to complete his mission and see what happens.

            He does reach Japetus, the moon of Saturn on which the master monolith exists, and manages to “enter” it.  Light show?  Yes.   Hotel?  Yes.  However, this proves to be a gate to another dimension, and Bowman…well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.  But suffice to say that Clarke actually DOES explain what happens to Bowman, and it differs considerably from the movie ending. 

 Normally book & movie complement each other so that reading the book is not necessary to understand the movie.  Not so here.  My recommendation would be to read the novel, then watch the movie again (no matter how many times you may have seen it before) and enjoy it now that you can FINALLY understand what is really going on.  Voila!  

 2010: Odyssey Two.  Here, Haywood (Roy Scheider) returns to Jupiter (note:  the movie version of 2001 changed Jupiter into Saturn) on a Russian spacecraft, the Leonov, with a Russian crew, except for another American (John Lithgow), and an Indian, Chandra (Bob Balaban – “cleavage!”).   HAL – the supposedly murderous computer of the prior ship, Discovery – is reactivated and this time around he’s OK, mainly because Chandra essentially becomes his best friend, a partnership the prior astronauts lacked.  Speaking of prior astronauts, Dave Bowman, the sole survivor (?) of the prior mission, is actually still around, but in a much different format.   Much strange stuff happens, with a spectacular finish, but neither Clarke nor the film ever take us away from sanity or coherence.   While I’d recommend reading the book in addition to, and not instead of, seeing the film, as Clarke’s writing is enjoyable in its own right, unlike 2001 you don’t have to have read the book to understand this movie.

 2061.  Obviously takes place 50 years after 2010.  Two separate plotlines converge: a celebrity mission onboard the spaceship Universe lands on Halley’s Comet – with Heywood Floyd aboard – and a spaceship Galaxy crashlands on Europa, a former moon of Jupiter, now a planet of Lucifer, the Jupiter-turned-into-a-star.   There’s a spectacular theory about a diamond-shaped object on Europa.  Dave Bowman returns – in spirit.  Lots of fun stuff going on and very much worthwhile reading, especially if you enjoyed the prior two stories.  It was NOT made into a movie.

 3001. Finishing up.   Recall on the Discovery, the original spaceship in 2001, two astronauts were awake when HAL went apes**t and killed the sleeping ones.  Poole was lost into space, while Bowman ventured to the monolith and said “It’s full of stars”.  As noted earlier, Bowman has some pretty weird experiences in the subsequent books and is indeed back again here.  But remarkably, Poole did NOT die.  In fact, he was recovered and revived, although in 3001 – and brought back to Earth.   Everyone he knew is dead, and he has to adjust to a life which is much different.  Due to his intimate familiarity not only with the Discovery mission but also life in the twentieth century, he’s actually sought out as a celebrity and valuable source of knowledge.  Even so, he’s not really happy on future Earth.  

 Finally – out of frustration and boredom – he goes to Ganymede and decides to disobey the aliens and land on Europa.  He has a hunch – correct, as it is – that “Dave Bowman” will protect him.   Unfortunately, there’s some big bad news about the aliens who made those monoliths and turned Jupiter (gas giant planet) into Lucifer (mini-sun).   How do they resolve it?  Stay tuned.

The Problem With Weed

 

My brother and I attended the Iron Maiden concert at Capital One Arena last Sunday night in Washington, DC.  The prior show had singer Bruce Dickinson chastise the fans up front for heavy cannabis (flower) consumption, which upset not only Bruce Bruce himself, but also bassist Steve Harris, who hates marijuana (Robin Leach voice: I don’t know WHYYYY”).  Sure enough, there were stoners at the DC show, blazing up, and sure enough they got a similar lecture from the Singer.  To quote Alex Lifeson, “blah blah blah.”

For some reason, not everyone consuming cannabis at this show felt it appropriate to consume in the form of edibles – which these days usually means gummies.  Nope, vape pens and joints, with lots of smoke, was their preferred way of not only enjoying their bud, but also ensuring that everyone else around them had to put up with it as well, whether they liked it or not.

Dickinson himself urged the stoners to “smoke out back” – outside the venue, presumably in a back alley somewhere.  This strikes me not as a concession but more of a demand.  Had he been inclined to meet the stoners halfway, he might have recommended they use edibles.  But from what I’ve heard from him, earlier and more recently on this tour, Dickinson seems to share the common bemused contempt for stoners that the non-stoners often have, looking down on all MJ users collectively as the functional equivalent of opium addicts.

For my part, I was in that category for a long time.  The stoners I met in college were mostly jerks and assholes, cutting classes to get stoned, or going to class stoned.  With no personal familiarity with the drug itself, what I could perceive was a form of recreational stupidity.  Eventually I found a few stoners who would smoke on the weekend and go back to studying on Sunday night and attending class like everyone else – a minority who could be bothered to exert any restraint on their consumption and integrate it into a productive college education, the same way I was integrating my beer consumption.  So it inevitably dawned on me that that the problem wasn’t weed itself, it was the yahoos smoking weed.  The irony is that, just as it’s too easy for the stoners to simply blaze up every night of the week and avoid doing anything productive, it’s just as easy for nonstoners to fall into the trap of believing all stoners do this, and writing off cannabis itself as the modern equivalent of opium.   

Another irony is that marijuana itself is harmless.  Death toll?  ZERO.  That includes any form of lung cancer, which takes its toll on tobacco smokers every year – although Bill Hicks will remind us that “non smokers are dying…every day.”  Its major benefit is amplifying the awesomeness of any music you’re listening to, which is even better at a concert.  Yeah, we get it:  music and weed go together.  Oh, and it’s a major appetite enhancer, with even the worst, greasiest food elevated in enjoyment to any gourmet food you might imagine.  Whatever you might enjoy, you’ll enjoy it more stoned.  Finally, relevant to the concert context, unlike alcohol, which turns mean jerks into mean, violent jerks who ruin it for everyone else, weed makes people mellow and laid back, less inclined to pick a fight than they otherwise would.  So weed itself is good, m’kay?

So what’s the problem with weed?  Again, the problem is not the drug itself, it’s the stoners.  Evidently, too many stoners, especially the less intelligent ones, seem to have it on firm conviction that getting stoned is SO COOL, that you can be a total dick or asshole and hey!  It’s all cool!  We’re stoned!   Blow smoke up everyone else’s ass?  Yeah, that’s totally cool!   Treat people like shit because they don’t smoke weed?  Also 1000% absolutely positively cool! 

Here's a news flash:  if you were a douchebag before you lit that joint, or packed that bowl and blazed with the bong, you are STILL a douchebag:  now you’re just a douchebag who’s stoned.  The weed hasn’t made you cool, or not a douchebag.  But it has made you somehow believe you aren’t, and that whatever you do is cool. 

Granted, the straight edgers can be assholes too.  “Straight edge” means people who, as a lifestyle choice, don’t smoke weed, don’t drink, don’t do any drugs at all.  But a straight edge asshole is still an asshole.  So no real difference there.  I’ll also argue yet again that alcohol is more apt to cause actual violence.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen stoners actually fight. 

I’ll give my Marijuana Etiquette Rules here, though chances are most of the problem stoners will ignore it and go right on being the major league stoned assholes they are:

1.         Don’t give anyone shit for not smoking weed – even if you honestly believe they would enjoy it.  It’s their choice, so just f**k off.

2.         If you’re at home or a friend’s place among stoners, by all means blaze up on the flower.  Hot box if you want.  But in public, it might be a better idea to take edibles.   You’ve heard of them, right?

3.         Don’t be a dick when you’re stoned.   Less likely to happen than with alcohol, but don’t assume you aren’t being a jerk simply because you’re stoned.

4.         Lots of people do weed.  It’s not just Mexicans or jazz musicians anymore, and hasn’t been for decades.  The fact that you do weed doesn’t make you special, let alone cool.  Somewhat like tattoos:  by now they’re so common among Americans (if not Japanese) that having a tattoo, or multiple tattoos, is no longer special.

5.         Strictly speaking, cannabis consumers are not “brand ambassadors” and have no affirmative duty to behave appropriately among nonstoners solely for the purpose of not discrediting cannabis itself to would-be consumers.  Having said that, as a practical matter, they are.  And as much as concern over legality and health issues, poor behavior by clueless stoners acts as an effective deterrent dissuading otherwise sympathetic nonstoners from either trying it – a harmless act with more positive potential than danger – or giving them a negative impression of stoners themselves, which works to defame other stoners.  In other words, being a dick about it ruins it for everyone else – so don’t be a dick. 

Just to be clear: MJ consumption itself is not the issue, it’s doing so in a way which inconveniences others.  No free pass simply because you’re stoned.

We now return to Master of Reality, track 1.