Paint Your Unsinkable Wagon Brown

Last December, actress Carrie “Princess Leia” Fisher died, followed the following day by her mother, Debbie “Molly Brown” Reynolds.  I decided to put “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” on my Netflix queue, but it seems I wasn’t the only one who did so.  Only after I returned from a recent trip to Colorado (!) did I find the DVD waiting for me, and of course I watched it.  I’d seen it before, eons ago with my parents, but I find that rewatching movies after I’ve experienced life a bit more makes them a different experience. 

The Unsinkable Molly Brown.  The true story of this remarkable woman who grew up and developed in late nineteenth century Colorado, Denver in particular.  It seems she and her husband were both of hillbilly background but struck it rich, much to the annoyance of their snobby neighbors in Denver.  She went off to Paris, learned French and other languages, got “culture”, and eventually came back to impress everyone for good.   She went back to Paris again, this time returning on a so-called unsinkable ocean liner, the Titanic.  She was one of the survivors.

The movie features Debbie Reynolds in the title role, with Harve Presnell as her husband.  It’s a musical, and it’s long.  However, it’s charming enough to be endurable, and I love the Paris scenes.  She picked the right time to go, right before WWI.   If you haven’t seen it, and you have 3 hours to spare, knock yourself out – especially if you like musicals.

Paint Your Wagon.  As it happens, I don’t know why, but I also put “Paint Your Wagon” on my queue as well.  Eventually Netflix decided to send it to me, and for some reason I decided to watch it.   Guess what, it’s another long-ass musical.   The main characters are Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) and a character only known (his name only revealed at the very end) as “Pardner”, played by Clint Eastwood.  There are other actors as well, which I’ll get into.

Rumson and Pardner start off as gold prospectors in northern California in the mid-1800s.  A Mormon man comes to town and is forced to auction off his second wife, Elizabeth (Jean Seberg), and Rumson manages to win the auction for her – by drunkenly offering to double the last bid, which no one can match.  At this point she’s the only woman in a mining town of 300+ men (apparently all of them straight).  When they catch word that a shipment of 6 French ladies can be hijacked, Rumson goes off to head the hijacking party to capture them, leaving Pardner to guard Elizabeth.  In Rumson’s absence, the two fall in love.  When Rumson returns, she decides she loves both and the three wind up in a very unconventional lifestyle.  The town develops into a Sin City, with several brothels, saloons and casinos to cater to every vice imaginable.  Eventually it all comes crashing down – literally.  I found it highly entertaining, despite its length.  Part of the charm is hearing Eastwood sing in his own voice, a talent which didn’t come up in the Dirty Harry films.  “Make…My….Day…!”

A familiar face, Ray Walston, is here too.  But one guy, Rotten Luck Willie [ironically named, it seems], who winds up running one of the main saloons, caught my eye – and my ear, as he had a particularly strong singing voice.  Where had I seen him before?  (Slaps head):  it’s Harve Presnell, better known as Mr. Molly Brown. 

So that makes TWO musicals worth wasting time watching, with a common actor.  ENJOY.

Retour A Paris 2017

As my Facebook posts gave away, I managed to visit Paris again, albeit for a week.   Thanks to our friend Jean, ASP Class of ’86, we had a place to stay, and managed lunch at the US Embassy.  Thank you Jean, thank you Loni, and thank you Matt.

Background.  In January 1979 our family moved to Paris.  Our father was with the US Dept of Commerce and had a post at the Embassy which allowed us to remain there until 1990.  From February 1979 to April 1984 we lived at the US Embassy compound in Neuilly, then in April 1984 we moved into Paris itself, on Blvd. Malesherbes just up the street from St. Augustin.  In August 1990 we moved back to the US.  I had never had a chance to get back since then, so this was also my first visit as a tourist.  As my GF-companion Loni had never been, I also had the opportunity to play tour guide to an extent.  Fortunately the changes from 1990 are less significant than all the things which are pretty much the same.

Mandatory Sightseeing:  Eiffel Tower, for the first time since spring 1979; Versailles (again); the Louvre (first time since summer 1987); Notre Dame; Montmartre.  We did pass through Pigalle, Paris' red light district, without doing much more than observe its nature - the circumstances of our lodging prevented any subsequent appropriate activities in the same spirit.    

Charles De Gaulle Airport.  Terminal 1 still has its tubes.  Awesome.  Plus now it’s connected by the RER, which wasn’t the case back when I lived there.  Jean and I joked that Petain doesn’t have an airport named after him.

Fun stuff.  FNAC.  The Wagram location is gone, but now there’s one on Ternes down the street, on the Champs Elysees itself, and another at Passage du Havre near Gare St. Lazare and Galeries Lafayette.  The store’s music selection pisses all over Best Buy and Barnes & Noble, giving an in-store selection comparable to Amazon.  Brant Bjork?  Kadavar?   Awesome.  If I lived in Paris – again – I’d be there nonstop.

Metro.   I love the Metro.  Flat rate tickets.   Stops mere blocks from each other.   A comprehensive network.  Actually, we didn’t take cabs or Uber at all on our visit. The Metro and RER got the job done, plus our own feet.   Now the #1 line, La Defense (formerly Pont de Neuilly) to Chateau de Vincennes, has doors on the platforms themselves and automatic, driverless trains which presumably do not go on strike.  [To be fair, though, no strikes occurred during our visit.]

Food.   Convenience alone forced us to visit Evil Clown (McD) at least once.   I didn’t see Chipotle around.  The Burger King on the Champs seems to be gone.  KFC in Versailles was good.   No free refills, though, and what passes for “LARGE” in Paris would be “MEDIUM” back in the US.   We did enjoy Hippo and Relais de Venise, though.

Notre Dame.  As my readers know, I’ve been visiting the local cathedrals in the US.  By nature, they are recent additions, almost all built during the twentieth century.   Here was a big thing actually built in the Middle Ages, in fact taking about 200 years to build thanks to constant CGT strikes.  It’s big.  It’s dark.  It’s actually THE cathedral of the archdiocese of Paris and has two statues of St. Denis carrying his own head (which is pretty badass).   Now they have a cute electronic pen thing you can point to items on the map and it will tell you what they are.  Also, the crypt is good, as you see the Roman stuff that was there underneath.   What I didn’t realize was that even in Roman times, there was a substantial Left Bank development of Lutetia, so it wasn’t just on the Island. 

Left Bank vs. Right Bank.  We did not visit the Latin Quarter, so our sole Left Bank fun was the Eiffel Tower.   I also missed out on the Franco-Prussian War exhibit at the Musee de L’Armee – odd, as it was the only Franco-German war the Germans won.  We also missed out on The Bones, as Loni calls the Catacombs.  Well, put them down for next time along with Aquaboulevard and the full Versailles gardens. 

Napoleon III and Haussmann.  Now I know what role they had in redeveloping Paris from 1848-1870, so I saw much of the city with new eyes.  The current 20 arrondissement size, an absorption of the immediate suburbs, dates from their partnership.  Nowadays N3 is better known for his unsuccessful adventure in Mexico, colonizing Vietnam, and losing to Prussia in 1870, but his legacy in Paris itself is far more substantial in real terms today.  I also recognized Louis Phillippe, the last French King (1830-48) in many of the paintings.  

BladeRunner

Recently I caught the long-awaited sequel to 1982’s “Bladerunner”, thankfully including Harrison Ford back as Deckard, though by now long-retired from the replicant-retiring business.  I’ll try to avoid spoilers for those of you who haven’t yet seen the new film and intend to see it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  The original Philip K. Dick story.  Mostly identical in plot to the movie, but the book has several elements missing from the movie: this whole business of robot animals (real animals are so rare as to be priceless, and even synthetic animals are valuable enough that a catalog of values – like the Blue Book – exists with regard to them) and Mercerism.  I should re-read it again, now that I’ve finally finished reading all of PKD’s scifi novels.

Original.  Ford stars as Deckard, an LAPD cop whose job it is to take out rogue replicants.  Apparently the replicants off-world achieved self-awareness and returned to earth, hiding out among humans.  The most deadly are Roy (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Daryl Hannah).  Roy in particular is trying to find out from Tyrell, who originally designed them, if there is a way around their hard-wired life span.   Note: if Deckard could simply keep these two away from everyone else, they would expire on their own.  But how exciting would that be?

Sequel.   It’s thirty years later and a new replicant (Ryan Gosling) is trying to track down rogue older models, none of whom resemble Rutger Hauer or Darryl Hannah.  Clare Underwood is his boss.  He even has a virtual GF who keeps him company in his apartment.  Tyrell Corp is gone, replaced by Wallace (let’s see Neil Fallon wear that on a t-shirt at the next Clutch tour), led by an equally enigmatic CEO (Jared Leto).   In this particular case, what he’s got on his hands is evidence that Rachael, the replicant originally played by Sean Young in the first film, had a child – theoretically impossible for a replicant.  Who would design a female replicant with a uterus, ovaries, etc. and allow it to actually conceive a child?  Then again, Tyrell indicated that Rachael was different.  So it would seem...

Overall I’d say it’s a good sequel.  Gosling’s replicant is sympathetic.  Deckard is back - and just as crusty and badass as you would expect him to be 30 years later.  Lots of action and wastelands.  Pretty much what we’d want from a sequel.  Thank you, Denis Villaneuve (director of “Arrival”), for not messing around.  He did his job properly and didn’t let his ego turn this into something stupid. 

*

Here’s an issue loosely raised by both films.  Some people believe that Deckard is actually a replicant.  That theory should be conclusively shot down as he appears in this film taking place 30 years later.  Mind you, Dick himself addressed this issue during his lifetime and confirmed that Deckard is human after all.  Ford said the same, and only Ridley Scott advocates this – plus useful idiots on Facebook who love to cling to provocative but stupid ideas.

Humans have to eat, sleep, pee, poo, vomit, get sick, age, and die.  Female humans have menstrual cycles and give birth.  A replicant doesn’t have to do any of that and – unless programmed otherwise as the original series was in the first film and PKD’s book – effectively have eternal youth.  So for a replicant to truly emulate a human, it would have to be programmed to do all these things.   A huge pain in the ass for what?   

Moreover, the original series was expressly designed as workers.   You created robots so you couldn’t have to hire unreliable humans.  Why create unreliable replicants?  That makes no sense.  Moreover, K (Gosling) appears to have self-awareness:  he knows he’s a replicant.  Logical, as Roy and Pris (Hauer and Hannah) did too.  If I were a replicant, I’d be happy that I don’t have to eat, drink, pee, poo, get sick, and eventually age and die.  If I ever got tired of living, I could just kill myself.  Well, so long as I wasn't hardwired to die...

Can we combine the two?  Remember “Robocop II” where the bad guy was created by removing his brain & nervous system and implanting them into a robot.  The prior two specimens went nuts and killed themselves, as turning into a full-on robot was too nuts.  But how about implanting them into an expressly humanoid and/or replicant body?  Get working, people. 

Then take opposite scenario:  a replicant who is really human.  Huh?  The replicant wouldn’t need to sleep, eat, pee/poo, etc. any biological functions.  How would a human survive without doing all these things?  Unless some dumbass was creating replicants which did all this stuff, the sole purpose of which would be to pass them off as humans.  WHY? 

Bottom line is that anyone/thing expressly identified as human is 99.999% likely to be human, and anything expressly identified as a replicant is 99.999% likely to be a replicant.  

Scott "Wino" Weinrich

A few months ago I attended a concert at the Ottobar in Baltimore, a small club in the north section of the city.  I was seated in the corner at a small table waiting for The Obsessed to go on.   At the table next to me, his back to me, was an eccentric stranger in long grey hair, arms bare in a vest and covered in strange and fascinating tattoos.  A few moments later I saw him standing up, and facing in my direction:  it was Scott “Wino” Weinrich himself.  Very cool.  I did not, however, end up talking to him, but I did reach a close point to the stage to enjoy his band’s set.

He’s actually from Rockville, Maryland, though almost ten years older than me.  He has a raspy, distinctive voice and an intimidating demeanor, though we’ve seen him joke and smile occasionally.

Wino could be considered the Lemmy of the Stoner rock scene, although Lemmy is only associated with Hawkwind and Motorhead.  Like Lemmy he’s had an impressive history of illicit drug use, much of which ends up in the song lyrics.  The three major bands Wino is most closely associated with are Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, and Spirit Caravan. 

Solo material.  One track on Probot (Dave Grohl), Live at Roadburn, Heavy Kingdom, Labour of Love, Songs of Towne Van Zandt, Punctuated Equilibrium, Adrift, and Freedom Conspiracy

The Obsessed.  Self-titled, The Church Within, Lunar Womb, and Sacred

Saint Vitus.  Born Too Late, Mournful Cries, V, Lillie: F-65 [Saint Vitus is mainly guitarist Dave Chandler, and their other main vocalist is Scott Reagers]

Hidden Hand.  Mother Teacher Destroyer; Divine Propaganda; Resurrection of Whisky Foote

But wait!  There’s more!  He’s also got the following items to talk about:  + Premonition 13, Shrinebuilder, and Place of Skulls With Vision.

As you can see, it’s a major load of work, of which I’m familiar with Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, and Saint Vitus.  All of it sounds pretty much the same:  doomy, raspy, Sabbath oriented with frequent drug references.