Windhand

Last night I saw Windhand – another Sabbath-influenced stoner rock band – play the U Street Music Hall in downtown DC.   This morning I finished off Disc 2 of 2 of Season 3 of 3 of “Rick and Morty”.  Which should I address today?  Well, R&M has Season 4 coming, Rick knows when, whereas last night’s show was the first on the entire tour for Richmond, Virginia based Windhand, so I’d say the concert review is probably more timely.

The U Street Music Hall is fairly new.  It opened in 2010, but this is my first show there.  It’s on U Street, of course, at the corner with Twelfth Street, meaning it’s a block east of the Lincoln Theater, several blocks north of the Black Cat (on Fourteenth Street) and several blocks east of the bottom of Adams Morgan.   I took Uber there and back without a problem.

I got there as the venue opened, and even after purchasing a t-shirt, still got up front to the stage.  Then the opening act, Genocide Pact, started their sad excuse for music – Cookie Monster vocals and tenth rate Metallica riffing – and I immediately sought somewhere else to wait out their set and await Windhand’s arrival.

Note: the stage is about six inches off the ground, so unless you’re front row you’ll see the head and shoulders of the band members and not much more.  This is yet another band who simply get up on stage and play their instruments competently.  I found a stool – one of a mere handful in what was otherwise just a large rectangular room with a stage at one end – conveniently located immediately behind a square pylon, meaning I could hear the band but not see them.  Then again, even had I moved out 3 feet in either direction and stood up facing the stage, again I’d only be seeing a modest portion of the band members on stage, so it was hardly worthwhile – sitting was fine. 

Windhand themselves are not bad.  Four albums:  Windhand, Soma, Grief’s Infernal Flower, and Eternal Return.  They have a live album, Live at Roadburn (2014) which is only on vinyl; I listened to it the night before on headphones to study for the show.  

Setlist:  “Old Evil”, “Diablerie”, “First To Die”, “Forest Clouds”, “Grey Garden”, “Orchard”, “Feather”, “Red Cloud”, and “Cassock”.   Half these songs were from the most recent album.  Maybe I’m getting old and my brain has reached full capacity, but I could only recognize that I’d heard the songs before and no hope of remembering the actual song titles.  They may as well have been Karma To Burn.

Lineup:  Dorthia Cottrell (vocals), Garrett Morris (guitar), Parker Chandler (bass), and Ryan Wolfe (drums).   Yes, the singer is female – she sounds exactly like the singer for Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats (who is male).  No, the guitarist was not on Saturday Night Live and “Two Broke Girls”, even though he shares the exact same name (!) but a substantially lighter complexion.

Nowadays a few stoner rock bands seem to be distancing themselves from slavish Black Sabbath worship and are putting out original material – All Them Witches, Dead Meadow, and Brant Bojrk are the ones who come to mind.  Windhand are not one of them.   If your patience for bands which sound pretty much like Black Sabbath is gone (or never existed in the first place), maybe steer clear of this one.   I did find them enjoyable enough nonetheless.  Your mileage may vary.  

Lethal Weapons

I turned 50 on Wednesday, but couldn’t figure any spectacular thing to say about that, as I’m trying to avoid talking about myself incessantly.   Having recently finished watching #4 of this series, after having seen these films awhile ago, maybe talking about them again, instead of my own “I’m getting too old for this s**t”, would be more fun.

All four take place in Los Angeles, California, featuring a “buddy” team of mismatched police officers with comically different personalities.  There’s a fair amount of humor herein to offset the inevitable violence, or as we testicle-equipped moviegoers prefer to think of it, "action".  “Dirty Harry” (San Francisco PD, Harry Callahan played by Clint Eastwood) and “Die Hard” (various different locales, NYPD officer John McLane, played by Bruce Willis) would be the obvious comparisons, though each of those feature a single detective and few, if any, recurring characters. 

Lethal Weapon (1) (1987).  The original.  Sgt. Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a seasoned police detective with the Los Angeles Police Dept., is assigned a new partner, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson).   Riggs recently lost his wife (no kids yet) in a tragic accident, the full details of which are more explicitly explained in the next film.  As such he is borderline suicidal and subject to the unwanted but professional attention of the LAPD police shrink.   He takes all sorts of bizarre risks, but unfortunately for Murtaugh tends to pull him into this as well.   For his part, Murtaugh has a wife, several children including an inconveniently attractive and provocative teenage daughter Rianne, and is getting close to retirement and as such is ill-inclined to take the exact type of unnecessary risks (e.g. “can’t we just wait for the bomb squad?”) which Riggs seems to enjoy taking. 

The bad guys are Vietnam veterans – spec ops types – running drugs from Southeast Asia.  Conveniently enough, Riggs was also in a similar unit and is likewise overqualified; Murtaugh describes himself has simply having been a rank and file combat soldier in WWI, thus his complaints about retiring.  The top bad guy is played by Gary Busey.  Aside from a good job playing Buddy Holly, Busey generally tends to do a good job playing annoying and unsympathetic villains.   Whether his nemesis is played by Mel Gibson or Steven Seagal, we want to see his damn character die as soon as possible.   

Oh, and the “lethal weapons” in question?  Murtaugh, unimaginatively enough, carries a police revolver, probably .38 and not even the much beloved .44 magnum (“make my day”).  Riggs carries, prominently even to the point of featuring on all the movie posters, a Beretta 92FS, my own gun.  Not only that, he carries that throughout the series, even to the point of  having Li’s character release the slide on it in melee combat (LW4).

As for whether any actual cops carry a .44 magnum, I found this thread rather amusing: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/44-magnum-in-law-enforcement.814097/

In my own neck of the woods, I’m not seeing many cops carrying Berettas.  Glocks and SIGs seem to be far more popular.  It turns out that LAPD was using Berettas: https://www.tactical-life.com/firearms/big-10-protection-duty-guns-americas-largest-police-departments/

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).   As you may have noticed from my Facebook post, I watched this one.  Again, watching it again after a few years I pick up on a few things.

A.         Bad guys: South Africans laundering money.   “Diplomatic immunity” “…has just been revoked”.  I’m sure the State Dept. loved the movie’s assertion that simply shooting the diplomat in question is sufficient to revoke such immunity, which would do wonders to protect our own diplomats abroad.  Actually the movie raises the question of exactly how much diplomats can get away with under that policy.  Do we know?  Speeding tickets and incidental crimes are one thing, but ongoing criminal operations, including murdering local police, might well be another.  If there was a dispute on the issue the respective countries could take it up with Interpol, ICJ, the UN, or whatever.

 

B.         Dean Norris.  Yep, that’s Agent Hank Schrader (Walter White’s DEA brother-in-law in “Breaking Bad” – you have started watching, haven’t you?), though he’s one of Riggs’ and Murtaugh’s buddies who gets blown up.  As if killing cops is a viable strategy for deterring an investigation (“They killed our guys.  Let it slide.”)

C.         Leo Getz.  Joe Pesci’s character introduced in this movie.  Successfully straddling the line between annoying and endearing.  “They F**K you at the drive-thru!” is from this film – oddly edited to “FREAK” when censorship demands a notable catchphrase be edited for profanity if not plausibility. 

D.         Ms. Haagen Dasz (Van den Haas – Patsy Kensit).  They will correct the ongoing lack of a female love interest for Riggs in the next film with Rene Russo.

E.         Dislocated shoulder.  First Riggs uses it to get out of the strait jacket at the station, later uses it to escape from certain drowning.  Tragic – or convenient? – that Ms. Haagen Dasz lacks a similar ability.

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992).  Riggs & Murtaugh start out by blowing up a downtown building instead of letting the bomb squad take care of it, and get demoted to patrolmen.  Eventually they wind up with Lorna Cole (Rene Russo) who is with Internal Affairs (IA), the dept. which investigates corrupt cops.  Leo Getz is here trying to sell Murtaugh’s house, but buyers are put off by his excessive disclosures of all the weird stuff which happened at the house in the last two movies. 

The bad guy is a former cop, Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson) who hires other corrupt cops at his construction company outside town – fairly suave and unlikeable but nonetheless nonremarkable or memorable.  Easily the least interesting of the four villains.  Riggs & Cole hook up, Getz provides humor, and Murtaugh continues to whine about “too old for this” and now “I don’t want to die when I’m due to retire in a week”.  SSDD. 

Russo’s appearance, both as a new character and as a love interest to Riggs, are what essentially distinguish this film from #1 and 2.  The absence of Chris Rock (see below) is what distinguishes this film from the next one.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998).   Here’s why watching movies again helps.   My initial impression was that LW4 was running on fumes, so bereft of anything worth showing that they pulled in Chris Rock to make THREE bonus characters.  The truth is actually more fun.

Some poor Chinese people are smuggled into the US illegally by the Triads (Chinese mafia), some of who are enslaved in making counterfeit Chinese currency.  The bad guy is played by Jet Li, as charming and dangerous as ever.  In addition to Riggs (Gibson), Murtaugh (Glover), Getz – get it? (Pesci), and Cole (Russo – now pregnant with Riggs’ baby) we get Butters (Rock), unbeknownst to Murtaugh, having not merely impregnated his daughter Rianne but also married her without her father’s knowledge, much less permission (though as adults they don't legally need it).  He’s actually a junior member of LAPD and often involved directly in the pair's adventures.  I’d say Rock does a good job of making the new guy fit in and be as entertaining as the rest of the cast. 

Stuff blowing up?  Yep.  High speed chases on L.A. Freeway – much of which is entertainingly implausible? Gotcha.  Riggs fighting somewhat martial arts?  Yep.  Bad guys leave good people to die in dangerous situation (house burning down while victims are tied up and presumably unable to escape) without simply summarily executing them at point blank range with the handguns they’re carrying?  Need you ask?

Oh, now RIGGS is beginning to suspect that he’s getting too old for this.  While in the prior film both he and Murtaugh were summarily demoted to patrolmen in black uniforms, now due to the city’s insurance & union issues coinciding, they are both summarily promoted to captains, presumably junior to perpetually exasperated Captain Murphy himself (so where’s Captain Morgan?).  Yes, he’ll dislocate his shoulder yet again, and have a brief spat with the LAPD shrink, played by the same woman – again (“Mary Ellen, it’s your agent, I’ve got another police shrink role that’s perfect for you!”). 

Here ends the series, about as properly as it should, with Lorna giving birth & marrying Riggs, Rianne giving birth and making Murtaugh a grandfather, and none of the major characters dead.  Incidentally, they have a fifth film (!) ready to go, with Gibson and Glover on board, but no word yet on when it will be done.

Overall, the four movies are equally good, but after a point they melt into one another and I have a hard time keeping track of what happened in which movie.  I can keep track of when Getz (2), Cole (3), and Butters (4) were introduced and who the bad guys were, but even then only because I watched the films again recently, years after originally seeing them. 

New series.  They actually made a TV series of the show, starting in 2016, and actually used the original characters, though obviously using new actors.  Martin Riggs was played by Clayne Crawford, and Roger Murtaugh is played by Damon Wayans.  Seann William Scott, best known as “Stifler” from the “American Pie” films, took over as a character Wesley Cole when Crawford was fired for being a jerk and Riggs’ character killed off.  I haven’t actually seen this, but I’m vaguely aware of its existence.  Maybe I’ll look into it.

RIP Sears and Toys R Us

Recently two major companies, with large stores in my area, finally went out of business, permanently.  These would be Sears and Toys R Us.  At this point both are in CH11, not CH7, but all their stores are closing permanently.  It’s unclear as to whether they will be resurrected in the future.   I have seen the local stores of each company close and go dark, but I have not seen anyone else move into them or the stores demolished for something completely different.  The Sears at Landmark Mall has a large sign indicating it is still open, though this may be because the mall itself closed.  I have not tried to ascertain whether it’s actually still open as of now.  I have been there numerous times in the past and have had automotive work done at various Sears locations in this area over the years.  See below. [As of 1/16/19 the Sears chairman won a bankruptcy auction for the firm, and may keep it in business.  As of now, 400 stores remain open.]

Hostess recently went out of business, only to be resurrected again by new owners with considerably more imagination and ingenuity, the variety of flavors available expanding well beyond the prior line which had continued with few (if any) changes for entire decades.  I’m guessing the original owners had grown fat, lazy and complacent on their own snack foods and showed little inclination to do anything different.  Roy Rogers also enjoyed a remarkable rebirth once new owners with a conscientious commitment to expanding the chain did a fantastic job of opening new locations to satisfy our insatiable hunger for their delicious roast beef sandwiches – and no, Arby’s is NOT an acceptable substitute.  AMEN!

For the time being, though, it appears that Sears and Toys R Us are effectively gone.  Here are my thoughts.

Sears.   Originally established in Chicago in 1893, much of the business being mail order for farmers in the Midwest.  The largest and tallest skyscraper in Chicago, now known as the Willis Tower, was originally called the Sears Tower.  We have one of those hardbound reproductions of a catalog from 1897, complete with practically anything you might expect to buy at that time:  the boys’ clothes are knickers, you can buy guns (hunting rifles and shotguns, though, not Lewis or Browning machine guns), and the most bizarre thing is complete houses, a program which lasted from 1908 to 1940; apparently Montgomery Ward had a similar program, which appears in their (similar) 1922 catalog, which they referred to as Wardway Homes.   The firm would ship you literally all the pieces in a rail car to the vacant lot where your house would be built, and either you or your contractor would build it on the spot (“some assembly required”).  Very useful for farmers, but what’s even more remarkable is that many of the houses in Arlington, Virginia are Sears houses as well.  They’re fairly small by modern standards but have that obvious early twentieth century style to them.   By comparison, the houses built around WWII and the 1950s are brick and very plain and boring – 100% utilitarian with zero style or charm whatsoever.  Finally by the ‘60s and ‘70s we start seeing some actual character again – a home, not just a brick box to live in instead of a cardboard box or a tent.  Anyhow.

As kids, our primary interest in Sears were the officially licensed NFL products, in particular the jerseys and letter jackets.  Oddly, the former would have the actual name of the team on the front over the player number, presumably because the children for whom they were intended might not be sharp enough to recognize the specific team simply by the colors on the jersey.   By now our stuff is way too small and long gone, Minnesota Vikings for me, Pittsburgh Steelers for my brother – both doing particularly well back in the 1970s, with Fran Tarkenton and Terry Bradshaw at the helms of their respective teams; in 1975 the two teams actually played each other in the Super Bowl.  Sadly, unlike the more successful Steelers, the Vikings have 4 Super Bowl appearances all within a ten year period but as yet no victories.  In the late ‘70s Lakeforest Mall opened, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with a Sears there as well.  My recollection is that we ordered the products through the catalog and either picked them up at the local store or they were mailed to our doorstep – along with our Funny Face cups. 

As an adult, my primary interest in Sears was tools.   In early 1994 I lost my job, as my employer could no longer afford to pay me.  With a surplus of free time, I decided to teach myself about cars, something I knew almost nothing about.  I bought a high school auto mechanics text book, read it from cover to cover, and voila – looking under the hood of my 1992 Firebird, I could suddenly identify every item there.  Soon thereafter I started taking classes at NOVA Alexandria, and eventually passed ASE exams.   I changed my own oil, my transmission fluid, my brakes, and was also able to have meaningful conversations with the technicians when I went to get my car serviced for anything I couldn’t handle myself.   That also meant buying tools, and Sears’ Craftsman tools, built to high standards of quality with lifetime warranties, were excellent.  And like their ancient catalogs of the early century, the Craftsman catalog had tons of special tools like micrometers, rare low demand things they didn’t sell in the local stores. 

Driving School.   Before I forget!  In summer 1986 my brother and I learned to drive at the Sears school at Montgomery Mall.  Our classes were in the breakroom over by the auto shop, and our actual driving classes were in downtown Silver Spring.   We can honestly say that Sears (!) taught us how to drive.

Toys R Us.   Of course we can remember this as kids.  Not nearly as old as Sears, this company essentially began in 1957, twelve years before I myself came into business in Maryland as a baby.  The main stores we went to were in Rockville, Maryland, now long gone as well.  There was one on Route 7 at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, within walking distance of where I live now.   As kids the whole place was a wonderland of toys. 

Whenever we wanted to go someplace my father wasn’t thrilled about taking us, he’d joke, “didn’t you hear?  There was a huge fire, it burned down.”   Typically, the burned down place would be a Toys R Us, of course.  My dad had a warmth and humor which Red Forman couldn’t hope to match.  All my cousins remember “Uncle Eddie” warmly and fondly, as do I.   As yet, my father’s humor notwithstanding, I’m not aware of any toy store actually closing due to fire. 

The other thing was “lights on”.   Later at night we’d pass by a Toys R Us, and I’d ask to go there, seeing as the lights were still on, which meant it must still be open.  My dad explained that this was to deter thieves, and not because Toys R Us was open 24/7.  (“It’s 2 a.m., I want a toy…now!”)

As an adult, Toys R Us was to buy presents for my nephew Ian and nieces Zoe, Beatrice, Shelby and Eleanor, or Intellivision games – when they were still available – and more recently XBOX games.  My last Toys R US purchase was a South Park XBOX game, at half price.

Incidentally, a backwards “R”, as in the Toys R Us logo, is in the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet as “YA”, and means “I” (first person singular). 

RIP SEARS and TOYS R US.

Dark & Spicy

Back to more mundane topics.   Enjoy.

Darkness.   Lately I’ve been enjoying this business of keeping lights off if I have to get up in the middle of the night for any special purpose – hitting the toilet (sitting down as my aim isn’t that good when I can barely see the toilet) or quenching my thirst from the fridge.  In between light filtering in from the blinds, a small light on the dishwasher, and a small light on the electric toothbrush charger which I keep on for that purpose even though I’ve been using standard toothbrushes lately, the apartment is never completely dark, and my eyes adjust to the condition fairly well.   I also have a black light and a lava lamp, but those generally only come on during the weekend.  

Which leads me to the realization that in all my almost 50 years of existence, I can recall only ONE instance where my sleeping accommodations resulted in absolute, total darkness:  BRUSSELS.

With the SHAPE PX and base just over the Belgian border near Mons, the Raymond Hotel in that city was our usual lodging.  Complete with AFN TV and mozzarella pizza, that was certainly an enjoyable place to stay.   Eventually our parents decided that a visit to the Belgian capital, Brussels, was in order, and we stayed at a fancy old hotel, dating from the Stonehenge times, the Metropole.   This allowed us to visit the ATOM THING and the Peeing Boy statue, and pick up some toy FN FALs, though those may have been purchased in Mons for all I know.  [Actually, the Metropole Hotel is the sole surviving nineteenth century hotel in Brussels still operating today.  With its styling, it’s a Brussels landmark in and of itself.]

ANYHOW.  The hotel room, once all lights were off and the shutters closed, was 100% absolute darkness.  You literally could not see your hand in front of your face.   Getting up to use the bathroom was a challenge, as you not only could not see where the bathroom was, you couldn’t even see where the nearest light switch was.  Amazing.  But I suppose it’s equally amazing that in all my life, that’s the only time I ever encountered this situation.

Spicy.   When I was younger, pre-college, I hated spicy food.  When I went to college, I developed a taste for it – in particular, salsa and chips, probably brought on by my swift adoption of beer as a recreation in itself.  I started at medium, worked my way up by tolerance to hot, switched from jalapenos to habaneros, and eventually to ghost peppers, where I am today.   As of now, my favorite salsa is Mr. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper Salsa, although this is getting harder and harder to find.   Neither World Market nor Walmart (special order) seem to carry it anymore.  Some 7-11s have chips called Paqui, in Haunted Ghost Pepper flavor, which are seriously hot.  Let’s see how long that lasts.  Ultimately I may be forced to simply cut up habaneros and add them into melted cheese or salsa.   Now there’s an idea worth revisiting….