Overheard at Table 3: Hitler and Netanyahu

Some guy: You know, I heard that Hank Jr was making a stink about Obama playing golf with Boehner and saying that it'd be like Hitler playing tennis with Netanyahu, and you know I think that's just totally wrong. I completely disagree. Boehner is TEN TIMES the fascist that Hitler could ever dream of being!





Note:  this was overheard a few years ago, before we knew what Fascism in the USA really looked like.  In 2020, we found out.

Overheard at the Counter: The Beatles 1970

Ok, so today I was in a mood and decided to check on each of the Beatles' solo albums immediately following their acrimonious divorce, because as I recall, they all had still sounded Beatle-esque at that time, particularly since a lot of the songs on their solo albums were stuff that they had been writing during the Let It Be sessions.... at least Paul's stuff, anyway.

So I have to say that my original assessment still fairly well holds true.  Except for Ringo's albums, which I did not listen to at the time, I must admit.

To rank them: McCartney's solo foray ranks right at the top.  This one is filled with great little rhythms and really nice riffs.  Definitely is a home-studio album, but the fact that he plays every single instrument is still an accomplishment that cannot be swept aside.  You can definitely see how he made the strung-together side B of Abbey Road, and that he really has an ear for melody or hook.   I have to admit, though, that his ideas (at least in the 70s) really worked best when he had a working band, who could take all his ideas and tap them down into actual songs with structure.  Still, though, of all the 1970s Beatles solo albums, this one is the most listenable.

Second is All Things Must Pass by George Harrison. Still his greatest accomplishment, although I have to say I still find the live third album boring and unlistenable.  The two studio albums I like very much, even though it does seem as though it is one song, done over and over again.  I mean, all the production is the same.  It's just that some songs have a faster tempo than others.   Still though, even though it's 14 cuts of one song, it's a nice pleasant song and good to put as background music.

The third goes to John, but really only because Ringo's albums were written by other people.  John at least wrote this material, but that's all I can say about it.  Plastic Ono Band sounds like John just went through six months of primal scream therapy and this is what he wrote of it.  Everyone prides John on being "raw" and "honest" - which is fine - there have been MANY "raw and honest" albums by artists that were also really good albums.  Just because he's baring his soul does not mean that the songs are good or that the music is good, and the songs and music on this album simply are not good.  "Working Class Hero" is really the only listenable cut on here.  "Love" is acceptable and "God" could have been made into a good song if he'd had a good producer (like George Martin) who would have really taken this song to new heights.

And then there's Ringo... Ringo actually had TWO albums, but one was some lounge jazz covers "Sentimental Journey" and one was a Bakersfield country album "Beaucoups of Blues."  I like Bakersfield music, but this album just sounded like he was singing "Act Naturally" over and over again at a karaoke machine. 

I do think that, had they stuck together for another year, of these four albums, all the chaff would be cut away and they would have probably come out with another album just as good as Abbey Road.  But sadly, they didn't and this is what we have ... but it truly shows you that, in music, it's not always the individual singer/songwriter/musician that counts.  Good music is as much the people who help you craft the music as it is your personal idea.  Good music is also production.  Production is like an instrument unto itself, something that can kill a song or make it great.   This is probably why George Martin truly was the fifth Beatle, and without him to give them guidance, they each spent 1970 trying to find their individual ways in the dark.

Overheard at Table 4: Oil Based Paint

So why did you let him use oil based paint?

He said it had to be done for the bathroom, because of the humidity.

But we haven't been able to sleep in the bedroom for three days!  How long is the paint smell gonna last?

I checked online and it said it could take up to a month.

A month!  Babe, what the hell!

I know, I know!  We should have done it ourselves, but YOUR JOB is so much more important!

Look, my job is what is helping us get the whole renovation redone!

See my point!  It's always about your job and never about what you can do around the house.

I still don't think you're getting the point that my job is what GETS stuff done around the house.

Like MY job is not important?  I bring money home too, y'know!

Yes, BOTH our jobs are important ... but that doesn't change the fact that we can't sleep in our own bedroom because the painter guy spilled toxic chemicals all over the doors and walls!

Overheard at Booth 1: See You Yesterday (2019)

I would put this in the list of "must-see" films, and not just because it's topical and not just because it shows African Americans from the Bronx being successful in scientific breakthroughs (time travel built in the garage by two teens!), but mainly because it is a well done script and fairly well acted and really hits home the idea that, just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.

For those who love time travel movies, or series of error movies like The Butterfly Effect, this is definitely a watcher.   Plus, this movie does not shy away from the topic that we are all facing now: the police brutality against people of color. 

So, stop reading this and go watch this movie!

Overheard at Table 4: Children of War

[For American Leaves]

We children of The War
weaned on Forbidden Planet,
raised on Summers of Love
           and moon landings and
           Kent State and
                             My Lai
                     (oh my!) we
look around us now
         and see ourselves in
every reflective surfaces - these
         old eyes




MR
2012-0920
[this is possibly just a fragment, or at least an idea interrupted]

Overread at Booth 3: From a Journal Entry 2012

You were almost there.
Zero visibility.
The flight was cancelled.

Then they started playing
               *that song*
and you looked around at the faces
               in the crowd,
expecting to pick his out.

Who were these strangers?
               Who did they love?
Who were they?  Walking forward
in this airport full of
               buzzers and dust and
heelclicks on marble floor.



MR
2012-0920

Overheard at Booth 1: Just One of the Guys (1985)

OK, so, after Disclosure, my wife wanted to see Just One of the Guys, which was a movie I had missed in the 80s... I think that was in the middle of my second marriage, which might have been the year things started going sideways, but that's another story for another time.

So, I watched it with the eye of watching the viewpoint of how it offended the transactresses on Disclosure, and as I said at the other table, not being part of the LGBTQ community, I only saw it as nothing more than a pretty cute, but badly acted, loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Basic plot: pretty girl wants to be a reporter but her high school teacher thinks only guys can be that, so she goes to another school as a boy to get a good story, ends up falling in love, dumping her asshole college-age boyfriend, and having the best scenes stolen by the kid who played her horny 15 year old brother.

I think what the transactresses had been offended about was the idea that she was only a "real" woman is exposing her breasts.   But for someone who is cis and not trans, I only saw that scene as part of the storyline, to show the straight male love interest that she was not a gay man but in fact a straight woman.   I do admit that my inability to understand how this might offend or make someone non-gender conforming uncomfortable comes from my privileged upbringing.

I WILL, however, say, that I noticed one kicker at the end of the movie.  OK, so our main character, Terry, has gotten rid of the asshole boyfriend who thinks her wanting to be a reporter is merely a "hobby" and she offended her love interest, who is a decent guy, but is hurt because she had pretended to be a man .... the point being is that he was offended not by her transvestitism but because she lied to him ... at the end of the movie, when he comes to apologise for being a jerk, she accepts, and then invites him on a date on Friday.

Then he says, "No, let me be the guy.  I ask you on a date this Friday... and I'll drive the car."

Now THAT is a bomb blast that just totally exploded the movie for me.  She got rid of one overbearing jerk ... for another?

That was essentially saying, "We can be romantically involved but only so long as we continue the established roles that are inherently inequitable."

Basically, "Me Tarzan You Jane"