happy zmedsday!! (lxxxiii)

cinema history class: the wild pussycat

Session: Wild, Wild Films From a Wild, Wild World, Week 4
Movie: The Wild Pussycat (1969)
Directed by Dimis Dadiris

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A woman seeks to avenge her sister who committed suicide after her abusive boyfriend kicked her out. So she locks him in a room and forces him to watch her having sex. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Well, isn't this quite the little sexploitation flick...In many ways it's an exercise in nudity (mostly female) masquerading as a morality tale. We see a man explicitly paying for his acts of cruelty, and it's very eye-for-an-eye. Well, not an eye actually, but you get the idea. There are additional elements of the punishment fitting the crime, since Mihalis (the torturee) had devoted a lot of energy to forcing his old girlfriend into sex with other men. Sadly, the end is somewhat perplexing and anticlimactic. There are ways it could have been done better, though I will refrain from going into detail here because I really don't want to spoil it in case you're inspired by this post to run out and see this film.

Of course, the plot is secondary when we're talking about movies of this sort -- everything is an excuse to see some nudity. And it's actually kind of quaint to realize that this was actually pretty shocking when it came out. Of course, if you're into the whole woman takes revenge on a creep -- and make no mistake, it's an understatement to call Mihalis a creep -- then you might get a kick out of this.

The one thing that really annoyed me was the soundtrack. The overbearing loud jazz music was too much ... well, too much. The movie would have been better with less.

Ratings:

Me: 5.5
Christina: 8
Ethan: 6
Sean: 1 out of 4

happy tunesday! "a gringo like me" by peter tevis

"A Gringo Like me," which is from the soundtrack to Gunfight at Red Sands, is among my favorite songs from Spaghetti Westerns. I first heard it years ago when I was at a Spaghetti Western Festival at the Film Forum. They had it playing in the theaters between movies, so I heard it over and over and over again. And I didn't get sick of it. I just love the lines, "There's just one kind of man that you can trust; that's a dead man" and "There's just one kind of man who tells the truth; that's a dead man."

And, as a bonus, I just learned today that Tevis also sang the theme from Underdog.

space: 1999 -- season 2 episode 12 -- the ab chrysalis

Season 2, Episode 12: The AB Chrysalis

This blog comes with the generalized warning that any post may contain spoilers. That is especially true of these Space: 1999 posts. So if you haven't seen this episode, intend to watch it, and therefore don't want spoilers, then don't read.

Plot Synopsis
Alpha is being buffeted by shockwaves from a series of explosions. Investigating the cause, Koenig learns that the explosions are planetary defenses being run by computers that are less than sympathetic to the moon's plight.

My Thoughts
Well, how do you like that -- two episodes in a row that are strong science fiction. I've come to the realization that season two episodes seem to fall into two categories -- silliness (e.g., "The Taybor") and decent sci-fi (e.g., this one). The latter type of episodes are what is saving the series, and many of them have plotlines that could easily have been Star Trek episodes (albeit mediocre ones). While we're on the topic, the talking orbs that communicate with Koenig remind me of Sargon from the ST episode, "Return to Tomorrow." The catch is that I just don't care about the characters the same way I cared about Kirk and company.

One thing that struck me is the way this episode started. We're immediately thrust into the action, as Alpha is preparing for an explosion and shockwave. It was an exciting start, and a good choice. But it may have been the first time in season two that an episode didn't start with  Dr. Russell's voiceover log. Her log, by the way, is very reminiscent of the Captain's Log entries that Kirk narrates in episodes of Star Trek. That's one way that S99 seems to be consciously copying ST. Another is the way the base seems much more like a military operation than it had during season one. I'm not sure whether I like it or not. Talk of a "science officer" and a "medical officer," and military-sounding instructions and orders may make for crisper storytelling, but it seems odd when I remember that, at the outset of the show, this was more of a scientific enterprise.

I have noted before the fact that, in season two, the characters are written with more personality than in season one. I bring this up now because the one real problem with it is the way they deal with Alan Carter. In season one, he and the now-absent Paul were much better conceived than most of the rest, and I really liked them. So it's frustrating to see how Carter's character was malwritten for season two. It's as if he's a new random redshirt each time (without the, you know, yucky death), and therefore a blank slate that can be given whatever personality the writer wants. In this episode, Carter has a sudden panicky tantrum that kills one of the aliens and comes close to destroying Koenig's attempt to save Alpha. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that it's so out of character that it just doesn't make sense. It kind of reminds me of "The Mark of Archanon," in which Carter inexplicably took to the young Etrec.

Koenig's and Dr. Russell's romantic patter still isn't great, but I am coming around to thinking of it as being a product of the time when it was made. As such, I'm finding that it bothers me less and less. And, of coutrse, even flawed attempts and giving the characters personalities is way better than the blocks of wood we had in season one.

On a sad note Yasko's back, and she's as annoying as ever. I should probably read up to understand why the show has gone back and forth between her and Sandra. Probably some kind of contract dispute.

thursday nights in new york: the french connection

As the pandemic continues, I continue my weekly push of a movie set in New York.

Tonight's offering: The French Connection (1971)
A good cop with a mixed past is trying to break a ring of drug importers.

Gene Hackman is great as Popeye Doyle, the cop who insists on following his hunch -- much to the concern of some others on the force. 

New Yorkiness Rating: 4 out of 4
This has a great gritty view of New York, and some of the best use of the New York subway that I've seen in any movie.

happy zmedsday!! (lxxxii)

it's tunesday: "get a haircut" by george thorogood & the destroyers

I was trying to decide what to place as my Tunesday post this week, and then it hit me. There are a whole bunch of synchronicities that make George Thorogood's "Get a Haircut" the right choice:

• I love the song.
• Yesterday, my youngest kid got a haircut.
• A FB friend posted today (or was it yesterday?) about getting a haircut. I commented that it made me want to listen to George Thorogood. The friend didn't know the reference, so I shared this video.
• I first heard this song when I was at the Hamptons, cavorting in a pool with some friends.* This is relevant because tomorrow I will be at the Hamptons touring a friend's daylily garden.
• I have a friend at work who may be leaving the company in a few months (for reasons I will not get into here). For years, he and I were haircut buddies. We would get our haircuts together. For years he kept records of what dates we got our haircuts. He wouldn't say that he needs a haircut. He'd say that we're overdue, based on our average frequency and the time elapsed since our last time. The barbers knew us to come together. So we got our haircuts as a break from our real jobs. Anyway, today (by coincidence) I was reminiscing about those haircuts.
• Great video.

*That night would find me on the roof of the house wearing a lobster bib as a cape, proclaiming myself Cap'n Crustacean -- the savior of the shellfish. I dubbed my friend, Desmond, Mr. Mollusk. But that's a story for another day.

cinema history class: the lion man

Session: Wild, Wild Films From a Wild, Wild World, Week 3
Movie: Lion Man* (1975)
Directed by Natuch Baitan

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A prince, born after the his father is murdered, is abandoned and raised by Lions. As an adult, he returns for revenge. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

This was disconcerting from the start -- we're thrown into the middle of a battle scene with no preamble or exposition. It felt like I was watching a trailer, and I was expecting a narrator's voice to say something like "brave warriors battled over..." But the narration never came and I finally realized that we were watching the actual movie.

The producers kind of threw everything into this story. Tarzan and Robin Hood are obvious influences, and some scenes reminded me of the biblical book of Exodus. And there's thewhole trope of brothers finding themselves on opposite sides of a war.. But with all of those elements, this was largely a garbled mess that was hard to follow.

Even so, there were parts that I found quite enjoyable in a sort of "WTF did I just see?" kind of way. When the king dies early on, it's quite a sight to behold.

The fight scenes were oddly choreographed to feel like ballet. And that feeling was strengthened by the endlessly repeating fight music. I don't know the name of the piece but it was reminiscent of Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance." There was an odd theatrical beauty to a lot of these sequences.

Is this what Turkish movies are like?

Ratings:

Me: 6
Christina: 9.2
Ethan: 4
Sean: 2 out of 4

*AKA The Sword and the Claw

space: 1999 -- season 2 episode 11 -- seed of destruction

Season 2, Episode 11: Seed of Destruction

This blog comes with the generalized warning that any post may contain spoilers. That is especially true of these Space: 1999 posts. So if you haven't seen this episode, intend to watch it, and therefore don't want spoilers, then don't read.

Plot Synopsis
While he is investigating a strange asteroid, Koenig is replaced by an impostor who goes back to Alpha in his place. On Alpha, the impostor gives orders that endanger the base, while his senior staff wonder if it's time for mutiny.

My Thoughts
After several episodes that were exercises in silliness, it was a pleasure to watch this one. It's serious science fiction, and there's tension and suspense. It's definitely one of the better episodes. I hesitate to say "best," but it's up there.

I really enjoyed the conflicts on Alpha, as the crew debate about loyalty and service, trying to figure out at what point mutiny is justified. But in some ways the characterizations seemed hollow. A couple times this season I've noticed some inconsistencies in how the characters are written -- like their personalities haven't been solidified yet. Maybe I'm just imagining it.

The ending is somewhat weak, especially when one considers that Maya is still on the asteroid when the Alphans emerge victorious. I would expect that the asteroid would explode, or the air pocket that was provided for her would dissipate, so it's not at all clear that or how she survived. I would have preferred that the writers had resolved that plot point.

It's easy to laugh at the mistakes and the absurdities that were built in in order to make the plot work. But then I have to recall the licenses that Star Trek took, and realize that trekkies have no basis for criticizing the silliness of S99.

Sandra is back, and that's good news, since Yasko was hardly an adequate replacement.

floral fridays: let's taste some daylilies

Maybe you're looking for ways to jazz up your salads? Here's a handy guide to how various daylilies stack up against each other. Well, 14 cultivars, anyway...

Ice Carnival: 4
Bed Head: 3
War Horse: 3
Fixed Income: 4
Red Revival: 1
Lilly and Petals: 1
Exotic Love: 2
Delight Fisher: 1
Mynelle's Starfish: 3
Bama Bound: 5
Laughing Giraffe: 1
Spider Man: 3
Flash of Javelins: 4
Space Junk: 2

thursday nights in new york -- the kennel murder case

As the pandemic continues, I continue my weekly push of a movie set in New York.

Tonight's offering: The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
Socialite Archer Coe is found dead of an apparent suicide. But detective Philo Vance is unconvinced and insists on investigating further.

Well, that Philo Vance sure is a clever one, isn't he? This is an interesting murder mystery, but the whole plot is convoluted, and at the end I was thinking of Scooby Doo. Admittedly, it would have been hard for anyone involved to have been taking clues from the Scoob, so I can't really hold that against it. 

New Yorkiness Rating: 1 out of 4
Yeah, it's set in New York. At least most of it is. But there's nothing about it that really says New York. It may as well be Philadelphia or Boston or Chicago. Except for the American accents, it could be London.

happy zmedsday!! (lxxxi)

it's tunesday: "you'll never get me up (in one of those)" by mickey jupp

I was thinking about this song, a little ode to the fear of flying. It entered my mind becauise of a FB conversation about Stiff Records and their package tours. Stiff would schedule a concert tour with five artists that they were pushing. The artists would each do a short set, so the audience could get a taste of several performers. The second tour, in 1978, featured Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, Jona Lewie, Rachel Sweet and Mickey Jupp. But the last leg of the tour involved a transatlantic flight to the US -- a trip that Jupp missed. I recently learned that he missed it because he was afraid of flying.

That wouldn't really have made much of an impression on me, except that one of the songs he's known for is "You'll Never get Me Up (in One of Those)," a song which is explicitly about fear of flying. So I'm sharing it here.

froot loop pop tarts? what will they think of next

I can remember a time when Kellogg's at least pretended that  Pop Tarts were an appropriate breakfast food.

mlb's shortened season -- my decision deferred

Maybe I should wait until that first pitch. I don't want to jinx it.

To some extent I wouldn't care if there's no baseball season this year. I stopped following the sport after the 1994 strike. Not that I've been making any kind of big statement or anything; I just kind of lost interest. I guess I kind of cared when it came to the Yankees and the Mets in the post-season. But during the regular season? Eh...whatevs.

But there is one way that I have continued to follow baseball. There are statistics that I like to track, and I look forward to updating them every fall. The first thing I started tracking was teams' wins and losses. This is something that started with a discussion in college -- wouldn't it be interesting to see a graph of every team's cumulative games over .500 by year. For most people the answer is no. But for me, a resounding yes. At the time, with the tools available to me, such a graph wasn't a realistic undertaking. But a few decades later, it's easy. And I've added some other related statistics -- total wins and rankings in terms of wins, for example. And I have variations in which I group teams by their location, or state, or nickname.* After I updated these statistics last year, I blogged about it here. In that post I focused on rankings wins. But the file I linked to includes the cumulative-games-over-500 graphs as well. If MLB cancels the season, then I miss out on the fun of updating the stats.

But more significant is the effect on my statistics regarding home runs.. The most recent post relevant to that is here. I like to keep track of the records (and who holds them) for most home runs in an n-year span (for positive integers n). Like the cumulative wins tracking, no season means no updating at year-end. And with this statistic I was really looking forward to improving my process by using a downloadable database.

But it's bigger than that. Whenever I've talked or written about these statistics, I have used the words "year" and "season" interchangeably. "Most home runs in a 5-year span" meant the same as "most home runs in a 5-season span." If there's no 2020 season, then I have to decide whether I'm tracking n-year or n-season spans. And I don't want to make that decision.

Fingers crossed that I won't have to.

*Yeah...I'm loads of fun at parties.

space: 1999 -- season 2 episode 10 -- the taybor

Season 2, Episode 10: The Taybor

This blog comes with the generalized warning that any post may contain spoilers. That is especially true of these Space: 1999 posts. So if you haven't seen this episode, intend to watch it, and therefore don't want spoilers, then don't read.

Plot Synopsis
Alpha is visited by an intergalactic trader who possesses technology that can get them all back to earth. But the price may be just a little too high.

My Thoughts
This is another one of those silly episodes that makes me think of Lost in Space. It's not really bad; there's some good dramatic timing, and the story is interesting for what it's worth. But it's just so...silly. Still, it's way better than the boring crap that dominated the first season.

One of the things that I found most interesting about this one is that it sheds some actual light on how far the moon has traveled. As Koenig and Taybor discuss the logistics of getting back to earth (come to think of it, that makes this another Gilligan's Island episode), it's clear that they're not in the milky way. In fact, they're far enough away from it that they can't just reference it as a nearby galaxy. Other episodes included stray comments about travelling through anomalies or warps or something, but I hadn't realized they'd gone so far. At any rate, Taybor's dialogue also gives us insight into a whole universe of traders and some kind of governmental (or at least quasi-governmental) organization. I'm not sure how I feel about that, or whether I would have liked the show to explore the concept.

On another note, Koenig and his senior crew have dinner with Taybor and serve some of Tony's homemade beer. So I am glad that that's become a running theme. If only Helena's sculpting would be revisited.

I also liked the way Tabor keeps calling Koenig "Skipper." In an odd way, it gives him a distinctive personality and lends the show some flavor. And, now that I think of it, that ties in with this being a Gilligan's Island episode (as I noted above).

I have grown to be really annoyed by Yasko. Yasuko Nagazumi is really bad at the whole acting thing. I wish they'd kept Zienia Merton, who played Sandra in season one and the beginning of season two.

As an aside, let me note that I have been watching these on Amazon Prime, usually with subtitles on. I find it interesting to see the descriptions of the incidental music -- "ethereal music" "mysterious music" "tense music." One piece can have different descriptions as its used in several episodes. There isn't even consistency with the theme song. In one episode it's "upbeat techno music" in another it's "dramatic energetic music" and in yet another it's "dramatic orchestra music." I should make a pie chart.

my new adventures in pollination

On Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday, but dang these days flow into each other) morning I went outside for my daily walk around the garden, Asher joined me. Blair did too, but she always does. Asher joining me was out of the ordinary. And somehow it ended up being a science lesson hybridizing daylilies.

I keep wanting to do my on hybridizing, but if you want to do it right it's an involved process, and it takes several years. I actually made an effort a couple years ago. I got tags and I spent a bunch of time cross-pollinating. I got some good seeds. I wrapped them in damp paper towel, then in ziploc bags (which were properly labelled), and into the refrigerator. I forgot about them, and somewhere down the road someone threw them out.

Since then, I've been kind of lukewarm on the idea. I'd love to leave my mark on the daylily world. And I already have a few names that I'd like to use:

• Becky Bradshaw
• Heeblewenzinko D'Foogy
• Axiom of Choice
• One Dollar for the Post Stamp Cost

Anyway, back on Wednesday, as I was making my rounds and taking pictures, I started talking to Asher about pollination. I was showing him the stamens and the pistils. And I noticed that the pistils looked...receptive. It's something I had never noticed years ago, but this time I did. So I asked Asher if he wants to try pollinating. To show him, I pulled a stamen off a Flash of Javelins bloom, and brought it over to pollinate Spider Man. And then, with a stamen from Spider Man I returned the favor to Flash of Javelins.

Asher was into it. But his first attempt was to try crossing Flash of Javelins with Space Junk. And that gave me my opening to explain that there are tets and there are dips. You cross tets with tets and dips with dips. Not one with the other.* So I showed him that some of the ID tags have asterisks after the cultivar name to indicate that the plant is a tet. And he was off to the races.

The only problem with all of this is that I didn't have anything to tag the flowers that he had pollinated. So if I get any good-looking seed pods I won't know who the father is. And that means that if this is the fresh start of my hybridizing program, it'll start with incomplete parentage information. But (if the ADS database is any indicator), that's not an insurmountable problem.

I know myself well enough to know there's a really good chance that nothing will come of this. But I'll be checking for seed pods and watching them. And maybe when the time comes I'll be able to get Asher interested in hybridizing with me. This could be the start.

And maybe I'll finally be able to register a flower called "Lo K'darkah."

*For the reader who is not familiar, this has to do with the plant's genetics. Generally speaking, some daylilies are diploid ("dip") and some are tetraploid ("tet"). Tets have twice as many chromosomes as dips, so when you cross daylilies you need to match ploidy. Strictly speaking I think I recall hearing that under some circumstances you can cross a tet with a dip but you end up with problems. I don;t remember the details.

thursday nights in new york -- shaft

As the pandemic continues, I continue my weekly push of a movie set in New York.

Tonight's offering: Shaft (1971)

When John Shaft, private investigator, is recruited to rescue a crime boss' kidnapped daughter, he finds himself in the middle of an incipient war between Italian and Black mobs.

The king of blaxploitation movies, this is something I've heard a lot about over the years. And, yes, it took me until this week to finally see it. Richard Roundtree is impressive as the cool action hero, and the story stands up pretty well after five decades.

Oh, and...happy birthday, Richard Roundtree!

New Yorkiness Rating: 4 out of 4
This is the gritty city of the early 1970's, and it looks and feels like the real thing.

happy zmedsday!! (lxxx)

it's tunesday! "the trio" by ennio morricone

Today's Tunesday is in memory of the late Ennio Morricone, who passed away yesterday.

Morricone is best known as one of the greatest scorers or movie soundtracks, as perhaps his best work was on the 1966 classic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I'm biased, of course, because that is my favorite movie. Nevertheless, I think you'd have a hard time finding a credible voice to argue that the soundtrack to tGtB&tU isn't one of the greats.*

Such is the greatness of that one soundtrack that it is, probably by a very wide margin, the most cited of Morricone's work. And a side effect is that many people may not realize the sheer volume and greatness of his other works. And yet, I will go along and share one of his pieces from that soundtrack. I have chosen "The Trio," which is the music playing as the three protagonists face off near the end of the film. One can make a strong case for other pieces -- "The Ecstasy of Gold" being chief among them. But I had to pick one. And, for better or for worse, I chose.

As I said above, tGtB&tU is my favorite movie. And the music is an absolutely integral part of it.

RIP, Ennio Morricone.

*Of course, I would say that making such an argument would disqualify a person's supposed credibility. So maybe this is just an exercise in question-begging.

cinema history class: for y'ur height only

Session: Wild, Wild Films From a Wild, Wild World, Week 2
Movie: For Y'ur Height Only (1981)
Directed by Eddie Nicart

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
The diminutive secret agent 00 is sent to take down the crime boss, Mr. Giant, who has kidnapped a scientist as part of a plot to take over the world. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

As background, it's important to know about Weng Weng, whose birth name was Ernesto de la Cruz. De la Cruz was a tiny baby and never grew to a normal height, topping out at 2'9". As a child he was fascinated by action films and took up karate. He was able to exploit his height (or, more accurately, others were able to exploit him and his height) to become a star of Filipino cinema. He starred in a variety of exploitation films that parodied other film types. For Y'ur Height Only was a not-so-subtle comedic take on James Bond films.

For what it's worth, this was the first Weng Weng film I saw. There was, in a sense, a huge buildup to this. Sean is a huge Weng Weng fan, and has been pushing for a while for Keith to work Weng Weng into a class. And Keith did. But even then there was an extended discussion -- Keith was going to show us D'Wild Wild Weng, which is a take on Western movies. Sean convinced him to show For Y'ur Height Only, arguing that it's a better Wengtroduction.

That said, I have not become a fan.

FYHO does a reasonably good job of parodying the James Bond movies -- especially the gadgetry and the womanizing. But as it goes on it seems to be more and more of a one-trick pony. There's a whole lot of him sliding on the floor and shooting people as he comes to a stop. Oh, and there's also a whole lot of Weng Weng kicking his adversaries in the balls. After a while it gets tiresome. That said, there was some dialogue that I found amusing and laughed at.

It also would have been  better if the plot had been more comprehensible. At times it felt like one of those modern action movies where each scene kind of makes sense on its own, but the connections between them are loose at best.

In all fairness, I should acknowledge that my reaction to this movie is informed by my lack of interest in James Bond movies and their parodies. Except for Get Smart. That show was genius.

Ratings:

Me: 6
Christina: 9 (on the fun scale)
Ethan: 2
Sean: 4 out of 4

space: 1999 -- season 2 episode 09 -- all that glisters

Season 2, Episode 09: All That Glisters

This blog comes with the generalized warning that any post may contain spoilers. That is especially true of these Space: 1999 posts. So if you haven't seen this episode, intend to watch it, and therefore don't want spoilers, then don't read.

Plot Synopsis
All is going well for a crew from Alpha as they try to get some of a much-needed mineral from a planet. But things start going downhill when they shoot off a piece of a rock, only to find that the rock is alive.

My Thoughts
What I find interesting about this episode is the fact that it was sequenced to come right after "The Rules of Luton." In "Rules, the trouble starts when Maya and Koenig pick flowers and eat berries -- not knowing that the plants are sentient. This takes it a step further; troubles start when a crewmember shoots a big rock with his laser staple gun -- not knowing that the rocks are sentient.

This is really one of the stupidest episodes yet. Not silly, since that would imply some sense of fun. Just stupid. And boring. The only redeeming feature is the first (and, at this point I will assume only) appearance of Dave, a kind of loud-mouthed geologist who steals his scenes. I really hope he turns into a recurring character.

They're getting better at the episode-closing banter, but the background music and tone still don't feel right for a science fiction show.

floral fridays: ahs online auction and bargain plant sale

Since COVID forced the cancellation of the AHS convention, they had an online daylily auction and an online bargain plant sale. Blair and I participated in each. Between the plants we bought from the auction, the ones we bought from the bargain plant sale and the other bonus plants we got, I think we ended up with something like a dozen new (for us) cultivars. And that includes three of of Jan Joiner's 2020 intros.

But rather than type it all out, I'll just share the unboxing video...

Left unanswered is the fundamental question: Did we get the verb "plant" because it's what we do to plants? Or did we get the noun "plant" because they are things that we plant?

thursday nights in new york -- audrey rose

As the pandemic continues*, I continue my weekly recommendation of a movie set in New York.

Tonight's offering: Audrey Rose (1977)

The Templeton family -- Bill, Janice and their daughter, Ivy -- have a happy life on Manhattan's Upper West Side. That is until a strange man visits with a strange story that turns their world upside down.

Audrey Rose seems to fall into The Exorcist genre, though in this case the story centers on reincarnation. There's a good deal of suspense and buildup, though the pace is too slow at times. Also, just because I compared it to The Exorcist, don't assume that it's in any way as good. Because it isn't. Still, a good cast turns in a scary tale. I should note that I read the novel about 40 years ago and loved it. At the time, I kept finding myself thinking that if all this could happen, then reincarnation must be real. Then I'd remind myself that it was only a novel.

Oh, not for nothing, but the trailer seems to be heavily influenced by the trailer for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

New Yorkiness Rating: 3 out of 4
The city isn't in any way a star, but a lot of the movie does scream "New York."

*At least there's no curfew now

sean tyla, my rock and roll ground zero, rip

Update: I corrected some wording that said something other than what I meant it to say. 

It hasn't hit Wikipedia yet*, but the word is that Sean Tyla has died of a heart attack at age 73. Actually, according to what I read he died in May but his family and friends were keeping it quiet. I don't know why, but that's their prerogative. Tyla isn't exactly a household name. But he was a huge influence on my musical taste and interest. Ducks Deluxe, the band he led in the early 1970's, is what I call my rock and roll ground zero.

When I was in high school -- I think it was my sophomore year -- I had a job on Sundays working for Shari's Place, a newstand and candy store near the subway. Every Sunday afternoon, after I was done working and got paid, I would run down the block to The Record Stop. The Record Stop was a small (the term "hole in the wall" could have been invented to describe it) record store with a few racks of new records and a whole lot of crates of used records. I was just getting interested in music, but I was, oddly, not really into listening to music on the radio. Actually, I'm still not into listening to music on the radio -- I have always preferred to hear music from my collection. So my choices reflected what I heard at home -- Peter Paul and Mary and early Beatles, The Monkees, The Partridge Family. And some other groups that I thought I should like since I liked those. Chauncey and Stu, the guys who worked at the store, had somehow convinced me that I had to get every Donovan album I could.

Then, one Sunday, while I was browsing the racks I heard something that would change my life. Bahm! Bahm! Bahmmmmm! "All right kids! are you ready?" I had never heard it before. I had never reacted to any music that way before. To this day I don't know if there really is something special about that recording or if it hit me at just the right moment, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. That little bit of music captivated me and seared itself into my brain. I stopped browsing the crates of old vinyl and listened. And I had to have that record. That record, Don't Mind Rockin' Tonite, was a compilation covering the short career of Ducks Deluxe, a British pub rock band that had broken up in 1975. I brought it home and played it over and over and over. And my whole perception of music had changed.

I became a huge fan. I read anything I could about Ducks Deluxe. I bought used copies of their two studio albums at auction. This was 1981 or so, and if you wanted a specific out-of-print album it was not an easy task. That goes double if the specific out of print album had never been released in the US. In case anyone is interested, I compared the two albums here. When my girlfriend went to England, the souvenir she brought back was a vintage magazine with an article about Ducks Deluxe. During these years one popular fashion was to wear denim jackets with band names or album covers painted on the back. I got a denim jacket and had the back adorned with a painting of a big duck wearing a crown and name, "Ducks Deluxe." It wasn't any kind of official band logo, but it was good enough.

But more importantly, the album served as kind of a trailhead for my musical journey. The liner notes listed the members of the band and named bands they had been in since. So I was able to seek those out. And then I sought music by members of those bands, and then by members of those bands. As an aside, I note that that compilation album had a picture of Dave Edmunds on the back, even though he wasn't in Ducks Deluxe. Presumably the fact that he produced their second album was enough. At any rate, he had a new album, D.E. 7th, out. So I bought it and it quickly became another favorite. And as I started looking for used copies of his other albums, Chauncey said "if you like Dave Edmunds, you might like Nick Lowe" and sold me a used copy of Labour of Lust. Then, the next week, it was "If you like Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe, you might like Rockpile" to get me to buy Seconds of Pleasure.

And so it went, Most of my favorite bands and singers are ones I learned about by just following leads and branching out from that first Ducks Deluxe album. And so, Ducks Deluxe is my rock and roll ground zero. And I always come back. There's something about their classic recordings that will never grow stale for me. I've read that the records never quite captured their live energy. Based on the video above, which is the only live footage I know of from their heyday. I wish I could have seen them. Too bad they had broken up when I was ten years old.

I continued to follow Sean Tyla's career. buying and digging his music. I read his memoir, and loved that as well. I never did see Tyla perform in concert -- whether solo, with the reformed Ducks Deluxe, or with any of the other bands he's been in. One of my favorite tracks of his post-Ducks career is the single, "Breakfast in Marin." I share it here because...well, because I want to.

My condolences go out to Sean's family and friends...those who knew him and loved him. I am felling a sense of loss. I never met the man, and never knew him personally. But he played a huge role in shaping my musical taste. And through his music he provided my hours upon hours of enjoyment.

Sean Tyla, rest in peace.

*At least, not as of this writing

it's zmedsday!! (lxxix)