Happy birthday, Taj Mahal

Born 68 years ago today, May 17, 1942: Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, known to us music lovers as Taj Mahal.

Thanks for the tunes, Taj! Have a great and happy birthday.

When the music played

There's an interesting blog where the author shares his memorabilia of 1970s rock concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He covers bands like Genesis and Manfred Mann, and artists like Alan Price and Peter Frampton. It's teaching me some things about bands I really knew little or nothing about. I'm a few years older than Dave Miller, who does David's Rock Scrapbook and co-authors Brit Rock By The Bay with friends. My musical tastes tended to run toward the 1960s style. I know Dave likes that era, too, but he branched out and I stayed stuck in the earlier era. C'mon, I never got over the Beatles splitting up...I guess I was in mourning for that for a long time.

I don't like to think of myself as stodgy, but I am. Dave and his friends intimidate me with their knowledge of the artists whose concerts they attended, the songs they heard, because I don't think I heard many of them. Around our parts, 750 miles east of San Francisco in little ol' Utah, we had a couple of AOR (album oriented rock) stations, and I did hear a lot of music when I tuned in, but those stations devolved into classic rock stations, which have a limited playlist of songs. I could have listened to one of those stations in 2005, and tune in right now and hear the exact same songs. So I guess maybe there are people who are stodgier than me when it comes to their musical tastes.

I went on YouTube without any real notions of what I was looking for, but I came up with four bands and four tunes I liked during the 1960s. The Easybeats was a band from Swingin' London, and their lead singer had some interesting dance moves I haven't seen before. Music Machine was a one-hit wonder (which is one more hit than I ever had), but the title of the song, "Talk Talk" became the name of an '80s band. Music Machine is also categorized as a garage band, and I've never been sure what that means. Their song sounds pre-punk to me. Except for the keyboardist they each wear one glove (pre-Michael Jackson), and their hairstyles (wigs?) look like how The Ramones patterned themselves a few years later.

Quicksilver Messenger Service and It's A Beautiful Day were both from the San Francisco area, and played the venues made famous during the hippie era. I never saw Quicksilver in person, but It's A Beautiful Day, with David LaFlamme on violin, appeared here in my home town (which is also David's home town and where, as far as I know, he still lives) and affected me deeply. I wore out two copies of the vinyl versions of their first album, and the song "White Bird" I consider classic.

Winky Dink and me

I hadn't thought about the TV show Winky Dink and You for years, until I unearthed this old comic from my basement dungeon. The kids' show, which ran from 1953-57, is claimed to be television's first interactive show. Kid viewers needed a Winky Dink Kit, which included a "magic screen"--like a piece of cling wrap for food--some magic crayons and a mitt to erase the marks. The kids would adhere the magic screen to the TV screen and when prompted, they might draw a bridge for Winky Dink to cross so he could escape the villain. Yawn. I was intrigued enough that I talked my dad into buying me the kit. I saw that a Winky Dink Kit sold on eBay for over $150, so I should have hung onto it instead of an old, beat-up, coverless comic book.


In the story, Winky goes to the jungle. The natives are pictured in a racist fashion. Sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone.

Jack Barry, who was the genial host of Winky Dink and You, was later implicated in the quiz show scandal of the 1950s, and didn't work on network TV for years after he lost his shows in the wake of the investigation. It's a story well told by Robert Redford in the movie, Quiz Show, with John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes.

This clip from YouTube pretty much shows what we tuned into when we watched Winky Dink and You. It's a 9-minute clip, and if you're like me, you'll tune out after about 3 minutes, having gotten the essence without watching any more of the inanities.



With a name like Winky Dink, I think Winky Dink and You should be revived as a porno. I can only imagine what the interactive would be like.

The visibly invisible

My friend, Eddie Hunter, who does the blog Chicken Fat, claims to be invisible. He's obviously not--this is him trying to bribe a terra cotta soldier outside a museum--but I know what he means.


Being invisible is when you walk into a store and try to ask a question of an employee; he doesn't see you, just the 5' 8" big-booby blonde who walks up to him just as you open your mouth. I have found myself to be invisible in that sense many times in my life and it has perturbed me, but invisibility was desirable when I was in the army and they needed "volunteers" for a detail.

Invisibility, like Eddie and I have found out, can be as simple as not standing out in a crowd. In a science fiction sense, invisibility is a plot device which seems to strike a chord with people. I guess at one time or another everyone has wished for invisibility, either not be seen by someone they don't want to talk to, or to spy on someone else. Too bad it doesn't work that way. There is work being done in invisibility--hey, I saw it on National Geographic channel!--but it has more to do with elaborate camouflage. In one example, work is being done on a body suit with millions of tiny reflectors that pick up video, then reflect a real time video of what's going on behind the person in the suit. Someone glancing at him would see some scenery and he'd be "invisible" to the observer.

Or so the theory goes. Most humans have kind of a sixth sense about the presence of others, even if not immediately seen, like getting the feeling someone is looking at you; if you were in a room with someone, even if they were completely invisible, I think you'd know.


In Hollow Man, a science fiction thriller from 2000, the theme of invisibility is explored. Like H. G. Wells' 1898 novel, The Invisible Man, invisibility drives the invisible man insane. Kevin Bacon as Sebastian, the boss of the research team, is already a narcissist and ego maniac, which is just amplified when he becomes invisible.

"I've got you under my skin...I've got you, deep in the hide of me..."

Sebastian is going...

...going...

...gone!

When, completely invisible, he later molests sleeping team member Sarah (played by Kim Dickens, who currently has a recurring role in HBO's Tremé). He would not have done it had he not been invisible.

She wakes up and catches on real fast she's been unbuttoned and fondled. (She should have filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, but it would have been hard to explain: "I was groped by my invisible boss.") Later in the movie Sebastian, who has shed his mask and clothes, commits rape on a neighbor because, as he tells himself, "Who's going to know?"

Special effects in Hollow Man are great. The movie doesn't try to explain how Sebastian can become invisible; we get some hokum about a chemical/radiation mix, injected into the bloodstream. The team can make something invisible, but bringing it back is harder, which is what happens to Sebastian.


Unless we're blind, much of our interaction with others comes from visual clues, like body language, for instance. That would be impossible with an invisible person, like being blind in reverse. You can see, you just can't see that person. It would make conversation pretty hard. But for the invisible person, being in a room full of people, none of them seeing him, would give the feeling of being isolated. That's after he's gone around the room groping all the women, that is.

In the movie, finding the invisible man is simple: they use thermal imaging glasses. They sometimes use the glasses when they know Sebastian is in the room (but, in a dumb plot move, not enough times to avoid danger when he finally goes over the edge into murderous rage). It's how, in this clever scene early in the movie, the audience sees the invisible gorilla, Isabelle.


I don't believe we'll ever have to worry about invisibility in fact. Like time travel, invisibility in the sense that Hollow Man presents it is one of those science fiction concepts that's fun to think about but impossible to achieve. The movie, thanks to some very skilled movie making, makes us suspend our disbelief, at least for the time we're watching.

Mother's Day

Destination Moon

Destination Moon, a movie from 1950, was an earnest, if melodramatic, way to present a vision of what a moon landing would be like. It's clichéd and simplistic, but for its time it was probably the best information about a future voyage to the moon.


George Pal was the producer. He was a moviemaker who started his career making short films, puppet animations. I saw some of these on television in the 1950s and was impressed, but I can't say that I was ever as impressed by his full-length movies. The only one I really liked was War Of the Worlds, and that movie holds up today, almost 60 years after it was made.

Pal's gift was self-promotion and hype. In the grand Hollywood tradition, he could sell a film. This spread in Life from April 25, 1950, is a testament to that. Life was popular and very influential. Pal could not have bought advertising that would have done as much to get patrons into the theaters.




The special effects of Destination Moon are crude, but then, everything before the era of computer generated images seems crude by comparison. This just seems cruder than the usual crude, because the scenery, especially of the moon, is so obviously painted. It was painted by astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell, but it looks painted, and that's death for realism. (The grainy black and white images from Apollo 11 on the moon, while real, don't look very dramatic. But then, they weren't from Hollywood.)


Audiences in 1950 ate up Destination Moon, and it was the basis for many imitations to follow.


Pal died in 1980, age 72. At least he lived long enough to see all the actual lunar voyages.

The murderer who looks like us

The steel-clawed monster, Freddy Krueger, has risen (again) from the dead in a remake of the 1984 hit, A Nightmare On Elm Street. It was number one at the box office this past weekend. I won't see it. I'm supposing it's a jack-in-the-box movie; the viewer is set up by creepy music, then the monster jumps out, levitating the audience out of their seats.

This weekend I watched a movie with genuine suspense and good acting, which manages its scares intelligently and in context. Imagine that! According to the DVD documentary on the making of the movie, they deliberately avoided the slasher movie label. The Stepfather was made in the mid-'80s, had critical acclaim, but was a dud at the box office, probably because it was smarter than a slasher flick. And a lot less killings. Over the years The Stepfather has grown in cult status.

The story's genesis is based on a real life murderer, John List, who was in 1971 living an upper middle-class lifestyle with his family in New Jersey. List, a pious Christian, lost his job, and rather than let his family face an uncertain future, he made sure they had no future by killing them all. He then disappeared, took up a new life and family, and was only brought to justice years later thanks to America's Most Wanted.

Brian Garfield (Death Wish) and Donald Westlake (The Hot Rock), two great mystery writers, collaborated on the script of The Stepfather. Their collaboration automatically made it interesting to me. The filmmakers got lucky with their casting. The title role is played by Terry O'Quinn, now best known as John Locke on Lost, but then a character actor. This breakthrough movie put O'Quinn on the map with critics. Thanks to a low budget, the producers couldn't go for a major movie star, but the movie is better, more believable, for it.

The Stepfather has a disturbing opening sequence. O'Quinn appears in front of us and his bathroom mirror, shaggy and covered in blood. He trims, shaves, showers.

He dresses neatly, smiles at his reflection and new look. The blood-covered killer is transformed into a handsome and well-dressed man. He leaves, and in the hallway picks up a child's toy, which he places in a toybox, and closes the lid. Then he goes downstairs.

O'Quinn steps into the carnage he has caused, while his dead family is sprawled in the living room. The scene is horrifying, but it's dark and it goes by very quick. Details are hard to make out. He uprights a chair, goes out the front door whistling and into a new life.

The bulk of the movie is made up of his new life as Jerry Blake, real estate salesman, his new wife, Susan, played by Shelley Hack, and her daughter Stephanie, played by then teenage Jill Schoelen. Jerry and Susan have been married a year, but while his wife believes and loves him, his daughter is intuitive enough to know that something is off. Smart kid. Everyone should be so intuitive.

Police are stymied by lack of clues, so it falls to the brother of Jerry's murdered wife to track him down. As the story progresses, things deteriorate for Jerry. He wants a perfect family, a perfect life, but he can't be satisfied, and soon he is ready to dispose of this family and go on to another.

Suspense comes from the process that Jerry goes through when those around him disappoint him. He's a narcissist, and murder is his way of removing those he not longer has use for.

The Stepfather, like Nightmare On Elm Street, was remade. I haven't seen the remake and probably won't. I also haven't seen any sequels to the original movie. I don't see the point. With O'Quinn, as Jerry Blake, you have the perfect psychopath. He's much more scary to me than Freddy Krueger, who is supernatural, so could not exist. Unfortunately, the character O'Quinn plays does exist in real life, hiding chameleon-like among us. I'd rather face a boatload of fantasy killers like Freddy than one real Jerry Blake.

Never steal anything small

I watched the notorious Goldman Sachs gang testify to the Congress. I'm always amazed when I see a well groomed, cleancut group like this, knowing they have committed anti-social acts. All they need are pinstripe suits, black shirts, white ties, and tommy guns. A couple of gun molls would complete the picture.

In the past decade or so we've seen some audacious acts committed by business people, Enron, Bernard Madoff, Goldman Sachs. Not of the men who commit these acts would walk into a convenience store and at the point of a gun order the clerk to give them money. Maybe it's the anonymity of their victims that makes it easier. I think if I were a person who stole, I'd find it easier, more soothing to my conscience, to do it long distance rather than up close. That way I wouldn't have to see the terrified looks of my victims.

I'm not letting Congress off the hook. Too many members of this legislative body have used their seats to get money. Has there ever been a congressman or senator who died poor? I don't know, but I don't think so. They bear some responsibility for not passing legislation against the (legal but immoral) acts that allowed the crime to be committed.

I got conflicting messages from my parents about crime. My mom didn't want me to watch crime programs on television, or read books about criminals lest I become one. My dad, who was a businessman, told me, "Never steal anything small." I'm pretty sure he was joking. I hope so, anyway. But even Dad would have been aghast at what modern day criminals can steal. "White collar crime" is a misnomer. Crime is crime. I like the old Woody Guthrie song, "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd." I don't care for him romanticizing a criminal, but there is a verse in the song that's appropriate:

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Here's a version of the song I like, sung by Tracy Clark:

Life of crime: movie censorship in 1946

An article from the October 28, 1946 issue of Life explains movie censorship of the time. The picture on the first page is a joking example of what couldn't be shown in a movie in 1946. We've come a long way in 65 years, and depending on your outlook, maybe not for the better.

On one hand I believe in censorship. I wouldn't want my grandkids looking at sexually explicit or violent material, but on the other hand I don't believe in censoring what I see or what any other adult sees. I think it's up to us to make our own decisions. Movies, which in the 1960s abandoned an overall self-censoring policy, went to a ratings system. It doesn't censor, but doesn't always work in what I think is a logical fashion. It's constantly being tinkered with, and I think it has to do with whomever is sitting on the ratings board and their interpretation.

I find violence much more distasteful than sex, and I always wonder why movies like the Saw franchise, with gory tortures, can get an R-rating. It isn't logical to me. I have always wondered why, as a society, we condone violence, making murder into entertainment, and yet sex, which is a legal activity between consenting people of legal age, is relegated to the forbidden.

The article is interesting because of the inroads that sex and pornography have made in the past five or sex decades. It's now widely and instantly available, with no need to hang out at sleazy adult bookstores or XXX movie theaters to see it. The article also shows that for decades Americans were widely, and rightly, viewed as prudish by Europeans, who have a much more adult view of adult activities.






This sexy shave cream ad followed the article on movie censorship. Life magazine was a popular mainstream publication, going into millions of homes where anyone in the family could look at it. Their standards of what was acceptable to be seen by the general public was different than movie standards.

Happy birthday, Alan Price

It's Alan Price's birthday today; Alan was one of the founders of the Animals, an important group from the British Invasion during the time of Beatlemania in 1964 and '65.

That's Alan whipping out the incomparable electric organ solo on "House Of the Rising Sun," a huge hit of the day. Unfortunately, his solo was edited from the single played on radio, but you can see it here from a color film of the song.

Eric Burdon is singing lead. The big guy is Chas Chandler, who went into producing music and introduced Jimi Hendrix to the world. The Animals was an all-around great band, with three elements I think keep their songs sounding great even today: Burdon's powerful voice, Chandler's great bass lines, and Price's inspired playing.

Vocally, Price could belt it out, too, as shown in his version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You." Price was also one of the first artists to cover the uniquely eccentric American songwriter Randy Newman, here with "Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear."

So, happy 68th birthday Alan!

Step back and look at the future

I like looking at old magazines for a look at the way we Americans were as a culture, especially in the early half of the Twentieth Century.
I found these looks at the future in 1940s issues of Life, made available on Google Books online. An ad asks the reader to, "Imagine Bob Hope on television!" At that time television was right around the corner. Work on bringing television to the public had been going on since the 1920s, but was suspended during the war. The postwar world was ready for television, not just to see Bob Hope.

I believe many people in this country were like my mother, who, bless her, didn't have interest in anything that might be coming down the pike, affecting her future. As she put it, "Television...I didn't know anything about it. Hadn't heard anything about it. Then one day I looked and it was just there."

Television technology of the 1940s is long gone, replaced by digital.

There was a certain optimism to the future in those postwar days. A lot of predictions were fanciful: paper clothes, or personal helicopter/cars zipping us to work (both ideas abandoned, apparently). Rocket ships to the moon were a topic, and that happened. When I was growing up in the 1950s I was impatient for humans to go into space, but didn't think they'd land on the moon for decades to come. Nowadays we have a debate on whether or not to go back to the moon, or what our longterm goals are for space. We use space to do things on earth: communication, weather, spy satellites etc., telescopes to see into the past with light reaching us from millions of years ago, helping our understanding of the universe.

I'd like to see us go back to the moon, or to Mars, but I think it's a way off, and perhaps some private entrepreneurs will find a way to do it cheaper than the government.





Above is a 1946 vision by artist Chesley Bonestell on what a trip to the moon would look like. He was the first artist I remember to draw earth as it would actually appear from space, and not like a classroom globe. His paintings filled me with a sense of wonder.

The 1944 Canadian Whiskey ad for the fax machine/Internet/cable news channel television set seems eerily close to what happened 50 years after the ad saw print. Except for printing off our online newspapers "overnight" the ad is pretty close, close enough to call it prophetic. I never saw any of the Internet or communications technology being as big a part of our lives as it has become. But for every postwar prediction of future life that came true in some form or another, there are a hundred that didn't. That's because the predictions didn't take into account the costs, which have stopped many a project in its tracks.