i thought i'd be done gardening by now

Back when I was first thinking about gardening and what I wanted to do with my flower-beds, I had the brilliant idea of concentrating on perennials.

It made perfect sense. Perennials come back every year. So I'd spend a year (maybe two -- three tops) planting. But then I'd be done. These perennials, by dint of their awesome perennialness, would keep coming back and the garden would soon be taking care of itself.

Well, I've learned a few things since then.

For starters, a garden full of perennials doesn't just take care of itself. I mean, it does, but not in the way that I want. Plants encroach on each other. Weeds work their way in. Boundaries disappear. Even if I don;t have to replant everything each year, there's plenty of work to do. Not that I'm good at doing it. There's plenty of work that my garden needs and isn't getting.

But even if perennials did take care of themselves, there are always new reasons emerging that I can't just kick back and let it do its thing.

Plans change

Blair and I keep coming up with new ideas about what we want to do. "We should keep this area as grass." "No, let's put daylilies there!" "We should put a path here." "Let's reroute the path!" There are always stones being moved as we redraw boundaries between lawn and flowerbed. And unforeseen circumstances change things as well. As an example, a friend stayed here last fall and decided to build a stairway into the front lawn. The part where we're always walking downhill from the front door to the driveway. Well, the stairway needs flowers around it. And so, this spring we've been filling in the area around the stairs with daylilies, hostas, some creeping flox. And we still have to put down a slate walkway from the top of those stairs, along the rerouted border of the flower bed, up to the front walk.

Embrace annuals

Yeah, I know I said that I focus on perennials. But there are some annuals that I like as well. Coleus is tops among those. But calladium and canna are nice too. So, despite my vow to stick to perennials, I find myself working with annuals as well.

All those daylilies

There are over 80,000 varieties of daylilies out there. I don't have all of them. Seriously, though, I keep saying that I'm done buying new daylilies. Then I get to a LIDS meeting and or plant sale, and there are all these great looking varieties. And then, when I buy new ones, I have to find places to put them. And buy markers and labels for them. And, no doubt, some of these markers will get dameged, so some of these daylilies will end up unlabelled, leaving me to replan and replant and...well, you get the picture.

So, yeah...years after I was sure I'd be done gardening, I'm still...gardening.

memorial day weekend part iii: close to home

After two days of Stack-Up events for the Memorial Day weekend, on the actual Memorial Day holiday itself, we went to the Jamaica Estates gatehouse for its annual rememberance event.

The gatehouse -- so called because it was originally a literal gatehouse guarding the entrance to Jamaica Estates, the structure is now (and has been since before my childhood) a memorial to the Jamaica Estates residents who gave their lives in World War II.

Ed Toriello, the President of the Jamaica Estates Association, opened with a touching, poignant speech about the dedication shown by our military personnel -- ready to give their lives for the good of their country. This speech was the best of Ed. After that, a dozen or so students from the Immaculate Conception School read biographis of the soldiers whose names are memorialized in the gatehouse.

It was a good reminder -- especially after yesterday's barbecue -- of what Memorial Day is all about.

memorial day weekend part ii: vfw

Our second engagement of the holiday weekend was Sunday's barbecue and pig roast at the Rocco Moretto VFW Post in Astoria.

As with the American Legion Hall (which we went to on Satutrday), the VFW Hall is a place we've worked with through Stack-Up and the Mission Continues. We were there for a Super Bowl party in February (spoiler alert: The Eagles won), and have since gone back to man a table at one of their Queens Craft Brigade events.

I had to sit out this event, since I was feeling a bit under the weather. But Ethan was there making contacts for Stack-Up.

memorial day weekend part i: american legion

It was a busy Memorial Day weekend.

On Saturday it was the reopening of American Legion Hall 18 in Weehawken, NJ. We'd first gotten involved with the Hall several months ago. Apparently the Hall had fallen into disrepair over years of neglect. They needed volunteers to help get it ready for reopening. The Newark Platoon of The Mission Continues helped round up volunteers to get it cleaned up and painted. We made a Stack Up event out of helping.

Since then, we've stayed in touch. We had planned one event with them for the month of the military child. That fell through because they had other commitments, but we are still working with Lucy Del Gaudio, the Vice Commander of the Hall, to have an event there this summer.

At any rate, the grand reopening was an emotional day for many of the area vets, with speeches by local politicians. To our surprise and delight they honored us, calling us up to receive a certificate of appreciation for the work we did for them.

Getting called up was quite the surprise. When we were invited to this event we were told that they were planning something nice. But we had no idea. It's funny how volunteering with one group brought us to another and then another. It's truly an example of the Hebrew expression:

בדרך שהולך מוליכין אותוץ

And it makes me really proud of Ethan, since all of our involvement -- with Stack-Up, with The Mission Continues, with the American Legion Hall -- is due to him.

cinema history class: autopsy

Session: Giallo Month II, Week 4
Movie: Autopsy (1975)
Directed by Armando Crispino
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Rome seems to be beset by a series of suicides, and a sexually hung-up forensic pathologist is having trouble processing it all. Of course, not everything is as it appears. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Plotwise, this was pretty much your standard giallo. There are some killings. There's some blackmail. And there are many red herrings to keep you on your heels as you try to figure out what's going on and who the killer is. There were no masks on the killer to add mystery and excitement, but there were plenty of odd grotesque touches thrown into make up for it.

Sadly, though, the grotesque touches seemed disjointed from the rest of the movie, making it seem like an odd grafting job. The weird hallucinations at the beginning? They were completely unnecessary. The drinking of the bidet water? Gratuitous. And the suicides that start things off? Unless you're going to say they're needed to put all the fake suicides in context, they serve no real purpose.

Another thing that annoyed me was the way movie kept cutting to a stylishly effects-laden shot of solar flare activity. I guess that kind of makes sense, since the Italian title of the movies translates as "Sunspots." But that doesn't really make any sense.

But, while this movie had some weaknesses, it wasn't a total loss. The plot was kind of interesting, though it lacked a sense of tension. And the score, by Ennio Morricone was really good.

Ratings:
Me: 6.8
Christina: 6.8
Dave: 9.2-9.3
Ethan: 4
Joe: 9.5
Sean: 2 out of 4

those magical moving hyphens (lawrence-hilton jacobs edition)

Anyone remember Welcome Back Kotter? It was a crappy 1970's sitcom that was really popular but hasn't aged well. It's probably best remembered as the vehicle that gave us John Travolta. Here's the theme music:

While you're watching that, please notice the credit for the character Washington. It's Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs. With a hyphenated first name. Like the country singer, Mary-Chapin Carpenter.

Yet now, if you look for Jacobs on the intertubes, he is listed everywhere* as "Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs." With a hyphenated last name. The first time I noticed that -- I was looking him up on Wikipedia -- I thought I must be misremembering. But, no...finding the video of the old WBK credits told me that I remembered correctly.

In fact, the Wikipedia entry lists his parents as Hilton and Clothilda Jacobs. So it makes sense that his last name is Jacobs. Not Hilton-Jacaobs. Further, since his father's first name is Hilton, it's easy to surmise that his parents named him Lawrence-Hilton, partly after his father.

So when did the hyphen move and why? Is the whole intertube community suffering from memory loss? Or did he actually change his name? And if the latter, then why is that not listed on his Wikipedia page?

These are things I need to know. Also, why did the hyphen disappear Mary-Chapin Carpenter's name?

*Well, almost everywhere. In putting together this post I looked him up on IMDB and found that, there, the hyphen is in his first name.

cinema history class: torso

Session: Giallo Month II, Week 3
Movie: Torso (1973)
Directed by Sergio Martino
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A deranged killer (with, apparently, some sexual hangups) is murdering young women with a red and black ascot. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Keith noted that Torso marked the transition between giallos and slasher films. And it's interesting how you can actually see that. This movie clearly had a giallo plot, and yet the gore was of a kind with the early entries in the Halloween and  Friday the 13th franchises. Bay of Blood, which we saw at Keith's last year showed elements of this transition, but it was much more obvious here.

One of the really great things about this movie is the way so many things that seem so off come together by the end like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. Notably, many of the killings look incredibly fake, which seems to detract from the film. But the exposition near the climax actually makes it sensible. Joe, who had seen this film a couple times before without noticing that detail, gave the film a 10 on the strength of that epiphany.

The plot here was suspenseful, and I loved the numerous red herrings that were thrown in. Oh, also, I loved the quote: "Eight legs! Eight titties! And four sets o' ass!"

Ratings:
Me: 8
Ethan: 9
Joe: 10
Sean: 3 out of 4

cinema history class: your vice is a locked room and only i have the key

Session: Giallo Month II, Week 2
Movie: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
Directed by Sergio Martino
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Murders are being committed near the home of degenerate writer, Oliviero Rouvigny. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Bad week for me. I was so exhausted that I just couldn't stay awake for this movie. And I couldn't concentrate during the parts that I was awake for.

I did catch some scenes. The naked table-dancing scene at the beginning was nice. I correctly deduced (based on body language) who would push whom off the cliff at the end. And the whole homage to Poe's The Black Cat was interesting, despite its obviousness.

But I missed it, and it's apparently a shame, since the others really thought it was a good movie. Hell, Ethan gave it one of his rare ten-star ratings. It appears to be viewable on Youtube, so I'll have to give it a watch/.

Ratings:
Me: NR
Dave: 9.5-9.6
Ethan: 10
Joe: 10
Sean: 3 out of 4

speaking of sharon's art...

Today, Sharon's art class will be moving from still lifes to live models. That's the part they warned me about when I signed her up for class -- that she'd be seeing nude models -- women only, they hastened to tell me. It's interesting to contemplate why I would object to my daughter seeing nude women. But, I guess, better safe than sued.

In anticipation, Sharon has been practicing at home doing drawings of people based on photos she finds on the intertubes. Yeah, it's not the same since she's working with photos rather than live, and she's doing it digitally, using a drawing tablet instead of paper and pencils. Still, I'm impressed. I think she shows some real talent.

Here are some samples she was willing to let me share. My favorite is the breakdancer (which still has the reference photo showing).

worry for wiggy

So now, at Midnight on a Sunday night, we're up waiting for the police. The kids founds puddles of blood on the backyard patio. With smaller splatters going up to the back door.

It's most likely that this is animal blood -- the neighborhood raccoons and stray cats get along like, well, like the Sharks and the Jets.

OK. That was in bad taste.

Anyway, the fact that the blood goes up to the back door was kind of creepy, so Blair felt we should call the police, who said they'd send a car. But with no active crime going on, this isn't a high priority.

My fear? I had a cat, Wiglaf, who disappeared a little over a year ago. And when I say "I" had a cat, I don't mean that we, the family, had a cat. Wiggy was my cat.

A few days ago the kids saw a cat in the neighbor's yard who kind of looks a little like Wiggy. They managed to get a picture on a phone. I said it's not him. Most notably, he's not long-haired like Wiggy. Of course, as the kids point out, a year on the streets could leave his fur matted.

Yesterday they saw the cat again. This time he was hanging by the front door. But he got spooked and ran off before they could get close enough to him. This time there was no picture, but they say it was the same cat. And I'm thinking about how Wiglaf would, if he were to return, go to one of our doors.

Now, tonight, this. Blood -- most likely animal -- in the backyard, with spots going up to the back door. What animal, other than Wiglaf, would go to our back door? We know this blood is fresh, since it was raining today.

I hope Wiggy didn't die tonight.

where the mission continues

One of the results of the family's involvement with Stack-Up has been that we've met people from other military-based charities.

  Notable among these is The Mission Continues. As near as I understand it, TMC (I don't know if that's an acceptable initialism, but WTH) is for people who, having left the military still want to serve their communities. As such, they organize members to participate in various volunteer projects. One of the things I really like about the way they do this is that they don't seem to feel the need to reinvent the wheel. By that I mean, they don't organize the volunteer opportunities. Rather, they find volunteer opportunities organized by other groups, and direct their members to those activities. By our experience, they've been great curators. To be sure, TMC also has "fun" get-togethers. In fact, one of them was a gaming time at a Dave & Buster's in New Jersey, and we got Stack-UP to partner with them on that. But I'm nervouse about doing a lot of what I call the perq activities, since I don;t want them to think of my family as a bunch of schnoorers who only show up when there's free food to be had.

At this point we (meaning some nonempty subset of my family -- it hasn't always been the same nonempty subset) have done activities four of the local platoons (what TMC calls its chapters).

Yesterday, for example, we were in Newark planting trees in a project sponsored by the New Jersey Tree Foundation. As with many activities, our participation wasn't an "official" Stack-Up activity. But that didn't stop us from wearing our Stack-Up shirts (we can't wait for the new logo shirts to become available), and talking up that organization. Interestingly, we found that a lot of the residents of the neighborhood have military connections.

The day before yesterday, while I was at work, Ethan was in the Bronx helping to prep a wall of a schoolyard for a mural that was to be painted. A couple weeks ago he spent his Saturday in Brownsville, Brooklyn helping to paint a basketball court. And in the past we've worked cleaning up parks in Manhattan, and renovating a boxing gym for inner city Newark kids, and painting an American Legion post in preparation for its reopening.

I'm actually not sure if we're officially members of TMC or any of its local chapters. But that doesn't really matter. We're enjoying the chance to help the community, and support veterans who literally signed up to die for our freedom if necessary.

proof of reincarnation

Do you remember how, late in the run of The Brady Bunch, they added a young kid played by Robbie Rist? That was cousin Oliver. Keep that in mind as you read the following.

Ethan is a big Vincent Price fan. Somehow it came up in conversation that Vincent Price made a guest appearance on The Brady Bunch as a crazy anthropologist (maybe he was an archaeologist -- who knows?) in Hawaii, who held the Brady boys prisoner when he thought they were trying to steal his discovery. Here's the clip:

Dig Mike's houndstooth plaid shirt.

Anyway, notice that Vincent Price's character had named the tiki mask "Oliver." Just like the cousin!

Nothing could be clearer proof that Robbie Rist is Vincent Price's reincarnation.

QED.

overwatch -- sharon wins

Sharon has been playing videogames for quite a while now. And she's good at it. Not world champion, sit and play for 48 hours straight, good. But good.

I think I first realized that when Sharon started playing MineCraft competitively. In fact, that was the topic of the first post I wrote for this blog. That post is here. Sharon and her friends did pretty well. Of course, she has since lost interest in Minecraft.* Right now her favorite seems to be Overwatch.

I'd be lying if I said I understood Overwatch -- sometimes I watch her and Asher play, and it just seems like a whole lot of flashing blinky lights and stuff. But apparently there is order to the chaos.

Last night, while Ethan and I were at Keith's watching a giallo, Sharon was at the Microsoft store in midtown Manhattan in an Overwatch tournament run by FlashOPs. She had played a week ago, and came in third. In that tournament, she and her friend Yunhee were teamed with a kid they didn't know,** and he was the weak link. But in last night's tournament, they teamed with their friend, Raghu, who's a notch or two better than they are. I keep hearing that he has platinum status -- whatever that means. So this time, they beat the Spicy Boiz who had won the week before.


*Someone hacked her account and changed her user name from KittyCream08 (or something similar) to GasThemJews (or something similar. She tried to change her name back, but Mojang wouldn't let her -- they had some kind of rules about the frequency of name changes. THat kind of soured her on it.

**The tournament requires teams of three. If you show up as a team of three that's fine. But if not, they start grouping people to make teams of three.

cinema history class: blood and black lace

Session: Giallo Month II, Week 1
Movie: Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Directed by Mario Bava
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Models are dying at the hands of a shadowy murderer. The likely suspects have been arrested, but more models die. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
This was a really good murder mystery, with a disturbing murderer (wearing a featureless cloth mask). The murders were creative -- it wasn't the same old same old. Though I admit to finding some of the torture to be a bit much. How this was made in 1964 I'll never know.

As a good mystery, this really kept us (or at least me) guessing, and I found the denouement rewarding. I had no idea.

One of the things I like about this movie is how it illustrates the old Hebrew adage, בדרך שהולך מוליכין אותו. Loosely translated, "He is pushed along the path he travels." In this case, one murder necessitates another. And another. And another. It kind of reminds me of the "Crocodile" episode of Black Mirror, in which case the main character commits murder after murder after murder, constantly trying to cover her tracks - until she gets ratted out.

I really enjoyed this movie, despite having been down on Mario Bava. Keith and Joe insist that Ethan and I did ourselves a disservice by watching a buttload of Bava at a festival instead of savoring them one at a time. If we had had time between Bava films to digest them, we'd appreciate him better. Or so Keith and Joe contend. I'm dubious, but I have to admit this was really good.

Ratings:
Me: 8
Dave: 9.9
Ethan: 8
Joe: 9.99999
Sean: 3 out of 4

well, a certain kind of dream, anyway...

This post is about the song, "Girl of My Dreams," which was a minor hit for Bram Tchaikovsky in 1979.

The band (which bore the same name as its founder and lead singer) was one of those power pop bands that skirted the line between punk and new wave, and I loved them.

Anyway, the song sounds pretty much like your standard issue love song. Pleasant enough if not particularly deep. That's what I thought it was all these years -- admittedly, I never paid particularly close attention to the lyrics. In case you're interested, they're here.

So I was surprised to learn something about it today. Cherry Red Records just issued a box set of the group's three albums (as well as various singles). The liner notes include this from Ronnie Thomas:

I wrote "Girl of My Dreams" on the bass, but the lyrics came first. I was flicking through a 'girlie' magazine -- as you do -- it was in a barber's shop, and there was an advert in there that said "Hi -- I'm new in town, straight from the States, from New York," and there was this inflatable doll with garish red lips and blonde hair, and it said "my name's Judy." I just started thinking "that's not a bad angle for a song.' There's this lonely feller, and this 'girl,' and "she came in the morning in the US mail" -- he can't wait to open the package and pump her up, and that was it -- the rest sort of followed.

So, yeah, this song which sounds like a pretty standard issue love song is really about an inflatable sex toy.

I'm actually quite impressed. The lyrics are subtle enough that, if you read them without knowing what they're about, you'd be none the wiser. But, knowing what they're about, you can kind of get the inside joke. I wish I were skillful enough as a songwriter to pull off something like that.

recycling a songtitle

This morning I was reminded of something I hadn't thought of in years.

Back in high school, during my first wave of songwriting, one of the songs I wrote* was called "Mercy of the Wind." I had started with the title -- probably because I heard it and thought it would make a great title for a song. I still think it's a great title for a song. Problem is that the song I wrote sucked. It was (yet another) pathetic song about teenage angst and lack of confidence in romance. In this case, the specific case was about whether and longing to exit the friendzone.

I don't remember the whole thing anymore, which is just as well. The chorus is illustrative:

You can open your heart and hope for a startYou'd be submitting to her powersBut is that such a sin?To be vulnerable like flowersAt the mercy of the wind.

I also remember the first verse and a couplet or two from later in the song, but I won't inflict them on my reader.

So now my new task is to recycle the title. Fresh start. I think it'll be a much darker song this time. Probably in the same realm as "Never Kill a Man Twice."

*To be completely accurate, only wrote the lyrics -- a friend set it to music. But for the sake of the prose it's easier to simply say I wrote it

cinema history class: inquisition

Session: Paul Naschy: Monster Man of Spain, Week 4
Movie: Inquisition (1976)
Directed by Paul Naschy
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
The witch-finder general has fallen in love. But the object of his affection has a special deal going. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
We had had all kinds of talk about how this was very similar too Witchfinder General, which starred Vincent Price. And the comparison is obvious. But I don't think it does justice to this movie. The Vincent Price film was about people being horrible, with no supernatural element. This interpretation threw the whole Satan angle into the mix. That made it a much creepier movie, as there are the scenes with Satan himself, and the old woman who seemed to know all.

Sadly, I couldn't really give this film a rating, or a full honest reaction. Work has been crazy, and I couldn't pay proper attention.* What I saw was really good. The visuals were stunning right from the get-go, with the decaying body hanging from the tree.

Ratings:
Me: No rating
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8
Joe: 10

*Keith and Joe will be so furious when they read this.