remembering a band and getting schooled on meat

For a few days now, my earwig has been a passage from "Island Song" by Swamp Thing.

Well, I used to like steak and potatoes,
But potatoes are nasty roots
And steak is ripped from the side of a cow.
So eat bananas. They're a wonderful fruit.

It's been years since I heard the song. It's from Swamp Thing's 1985 album, Learning to Disintegrate, which came across my notice when I was in college, writing record reviews for a college newspaper. There were two songs on the album that I absolutely loved -- "I Love Children" and "Island Song." The quote above comes from the latter song.

Anyway, T2D is one of the records that I wore out over the years. And I've never been able to find it on CD.

Cue to last week. I was thinking about the album, and decided to look up the lead vocalist on FaceBook. He confirmed that the album hasn;t been released on CD, but did send me a link to CDBaby, where I can purchase a digital download. I have to get around to doing that. What holds me back is that, in a sense, I'm old school on that. I much prefer having a physical disc than simply a download. In fact, once I download it, I'll have to burn it onto a physical disc in order to truly consider it part of my music collection. Add to that the fear that I'll screw up the download, and be stuck with nothing. I have got to get with the times.

So, meanwhile, I was in the car today with Ethan and Blair, and started absentmindedly singing "Island Song." We were just leaving the farmer's market where we had looked at some steaks (Ethan is very picky, and none looked quite right to him) and picked up some veal we had ordered from the cheesemongers we like. When I got to the line about steak being ripped from the side of a cow, Ethan corrected me.

"No, it's not."

"Huh?" I answered cleverly.

"Steak isn't ripped from the side of a cow." He then proceeded to go through a dissertation on what cuts of meat come from where.

Life with a foodie.

the curse of the werewolf (cinema history class)

Keith continued his month of Hammer films with 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, which was a creative reimagining of the werewolf legend. I say it was a reimagining because there were several ways in which it distanced itself from the standard werewolf story. Of course, every retelling of some classic legend is going to add new elements or ignore established ones. But this was a radical departure.

This story doesn't involve the usual trope of the werewolf hunting people, who then become werewolves themselves. Instead, we follow Leon, born a werewolf, as he grows into a man, dealing with his curse.. In some ways, the movie centers on how his loved ones deal with it. Love, as we see, keeps the werewolf's curse at bay.

That's because, as explained by a priest, the werewolf's body is inhabited by a human soul and a wolf spirit. Love and goodness nourish the soul and weaken the wolf, while negativity, hatred and sin nourish the wolf. So when he celebrates payday with a coworker by going to a bar and hanging around with prostitutes, the wolf asserts itself. But when he finds true love with a rich girl who is willing to throw everything away to be with him, the wolf subsides.

With that, the film is like a fairytale. And, at times it felt like I was watching a Disney film. The chirping birds, the dancing through a flowered glen, and the narration at the beginning lent that mood. On the other hand, there were times (mostly near the beginning), when this felt like Poe adaptation.

In addition to being an original take on a classic, this was sinply told very well and very enjoyably.

what's a "treetop lover"?

I've been on a "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" jag. It started when my daily Adrian Zmed meme referenced Chicago. If you found this post from my FaceBook page, you may know what I'm referring to. If not, then you may be confused. Too bad. Anyway, I posted the Zmed meme, and a Facebook friend commented with a reference to the South side of Chicago, which put me in full-fledged nostalgia for Jim Croce's classic.

The next two Zmed memes were references to the song. I've had the song as an earwig, and I've been singing it over and over. And on someone else's FB account I responded to a post with a bad joke about the song. But, of course, someone who doesn't know me saw my comment. He didn't know I was making a joke, and concluded (reasonably, I admit) that I was saying that "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" was a song by the band, Chicago. Arrrgghhhh!

But all that's beside the point.

A couple of people have asked me about the line, "All the downtown ladies call him 'Treetop Lover.'" What, exactly, does that mean? And I can't answer because I have no clue. All I could think of is that he's always climbing out of bedroom windows and into the treetops because his lovers' husbands have unexpectedly come home during the day. But that doesn't sound quite right.

I looked on Google, and found some references to the term, but nothing that really makes sense in context. Urban Dictionary has the following for "Treetop"

The guy that everyone either wants to be, wants to be like, or wants to be with. The guy so cool he decides what's going to be cool next.

But I don't think that's what Croce meant. Over at Topix, there was a heated discussion (part of which is reproduced here. Someone with the username "Christmas Hunter" eventually wrote "It's a guy that thinks he is the world's #1 lover. Get with it people." That's probably the best explanation I'll see, but it still leaves me wondering how the term came about.

Anyone?

damn hypocritical movie characters. grrrrr!

Remember the movie You've Got Mail? It was one of those cloying 1990s romcoms about a man and a woman finding love despite seeming to be mismatched. It starred Tom Hanks and someone else. Probably Meg Ryan*. I should probably check that. But, well, if you think I'm cheating you by not checking, then get your money back on the subscription.

Anyhoo...

You know what bugs me about that movie? The source of the mismatch is the Hanks' character runs a chain of mega-bookstores (obviously based on Barnes & Noble), while Ryan's (I'm assuming it was Ryan) character runs an independent bookstore. She sees him as evil, as his mega-chain is crowding out the independents like her store, and effectively homogenizing the industry.

I'm putting aside the economic arguments.

But where does she get her daily cups of coffee? From the independent coffee shops? Or the neighborhood bodegas? Nope. From Starbucks.

The damn hypocrite.

*In looking for the trailer to post with this entry, I learned that it was Meg Ryan. Yay, me! But don't for a second think I'm gonna go back up there and fix up all the text.

because they need a way to make baseball suck

Back in college I wrote a column for a campus newspaper, in which I suggested the following changes to make Major League Baseball more exciting:

• Let the batters self-pitch (and increase the number of fielders)
• Increase the number of outs per inning to four
• Add more teams
• Add another base
• Let the fans in attendance vote on close plays
• Bury land mines in the basepaths

I honestly don't remember what moved me to write the article. I framed it as a reaction to the American League adopting the DH rule, but that rule had already been in place for more than a decade. Maybe it was because my friend was putting together a baseball-themed insert, and need articles. Whatever.

My mind drifted back to this article when I saw this in Sports Illustrated today. MLB is considering a rules change that's pretty much on par with the ones I suggested. They want extra innings to start with a runner on second base. The theory -- and I'm sure they're right -- is that scoring in extra innings would become more likely and games would become shorter.

As an aside, I note that I saw a comment on Facebook from someone arguing that it won;t shorten games. The argument there was that each team gets that extra run, so nothing is accomplished. The argument is flawed because the extra run isn't assured. This rules change introduces an extra source of variance, which would surely lower the average number of innings needed to determine a winner.

This would be the most significant rule change in well over a century, and it would be terrible. They may as well just settle tie games with a home run derby.