Brigham's Blog: April 2009

1 May 2009

I stumbled across this while looking at Burbank railroad websites: What happens to a fifteen year-old who derails a train? (Scroll to bottom.)

Last night I watched an amusing little comedy from 1935: Ruggles of Red Gap. Is there such thing as a bad Charles Laughton film, I wonder? One of the highlights is Laughton's impressive reading of the Gettysburg Address, delivered with gentleness and not portentousness, which is usually the case.

This film also starred a seriously undervalued actress from the old days, ZaSu Pitts. (ZaSu? Her mother's two sisters, Eliza and Susan, both wanted the baby named after them. Her mother didn't want to disappoint either of them, so she formed the name from the last two letters of Eliza and the first two letters of Susan.)

A good page about her is here; it is worth reading. I saw Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed" from 1924 - Pitts was sensational. It totally blew me away that an actress I knew as a comedienne and from character parts could do tragedy so convincingly. In a silent film! But then, Stroheim called her "the greatest tragedienne of the screen." He may have been right...

By the way, even if you've never seen her in anything, you have. Think of Shelly Duvall's mannerisms in "Popeye" (1980). They were patterned after the animated Olive Oyl - who was patterned after ZaSu Pitts fluttery comedy persona. She's the archetype.

I am now reading a book from 1901 entitled "A Day with a Tramp and Other Days" by Walter Augustus Wyckoff. The author was a student in 1893. To satisfy his intellectual curiosity about the hobo class, he bummed rides on freight trains and begged his way across the country. It's a brisk work, if a little stilted and dated in language. No good excerpts for you that I see yet, and no traumatic amputations.

It's one of those Google books... remember when they announced that they planned to start digitizing and making available millions of books whose copyrights have lapsed? By last November they had reached the seven million number!

If I told you that there were language issues with this effort, could you guess how and from what source? From wikipedia: "Some European politicians and intellectuals have criticized Google's effort on "language-imperialism" grounds, arguing that because the vast majority of books proposed to be scanned are in English, it will result in disproportionate representation of natural languages in the digital world... Among these critics is Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the former president of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France."

Ah, yes, the French, striving mightily to assert that French is more important than English. Good luck on that one, guys.

Al Qaeda Sleeper Agent Pleads Guilty to Terror Charges - I say we move him from Peoria to the South, wear men wear similar mullets, for sentencing. Somewhere eager to sentence a terrorist - like Texas. Or Virginia.

Have a great weekend!

30 Apr 2009

I got the comments feature reestablished. Somehow I clicked the wrong radio button when my PC or the Internet connection was slow and in the process of transitioning between screens or something. It took me a while to figure out what happened.

Here's an excerpt from the book I'm currently reading, a memoir about childhood during the Depression. I like the spare, unsentimental prose. And yes, another poor hobo has a foot amputated. If there's one thing I have learned from my readings about hoboes, it's that fooling around near freight trains is dangerous! (But this I knew.) It almost makes one suspect that there must have been a long trail of severed legs and feet along the major railways of America during the Depression.

I see the Zodiac Killer is back in the news. (See my entry of 11 October - when I dabbled with the story.) One guy says, "The Zodiac Killer was my step-father," now a woman says, "My father was the Zodiac Killer." For the record, my Dad was a nice guy and was emphatically NOT the Zodiac Killer.

Last night I watched a Harold Lloyd talkie from 1930, "Feet First." The general opinion among critics is that Lloyd's silent films and shorts are funnier than his talkies, and now that I've seen all his sound films I have to agree. Lloyd's humor is fast-paced, physical and visual, and sound is not only unnecessary, but actually gets in the way.

This film features a fifteen minute sequence of visual gags which takes place - or appears to take place - on building ledges and window washer platforms high above Los Angeles. How he did it is beyond me (it wasn't CGI!); the camera work is very convincing. I was surprised to see that after 79 years and countless refinements of film technique and technology since "Feet First," the sequence still works.

It is claimed that the finale to this film is really a rehash of a similar sequence in his famous 1926 silent "Safety Last," but this is overstated. The sequences differ markedly.

By the way, youtube has an interesting little clip of the building climbing sequence from Safety Last. It is certainly worth watching, and you can see for yourself how impressively athletic the young Harold Lloyd was. (Or seemed to be. Due to his film making craft, one is never entirely sure!)

Some more youtube Harold Lloyd videos:

A compilation of Ling Po quotes

Motorcycle sequence

Then and Now (L.A. locations)

Lloyd was a comedy genius who is just now, thanks to broadcasts on TCM, beginning to receive his proper due.

29 Apr 2009

My daughter leaves for Utah today; it was great having her around! I'll be sorry to see her go...

I am now reading "I Was Looking for a Street - A Memoir" by Charles Willeford. It's about being a kid during the Great Depression, which, in this instance, involves hopping freight trains. I only started reading it so I'm not sure how good it is.

There's a scary word circulating in the news these days: pandemic. "The flu" is something we deal with every year and doesn't cause much alarm, but "influenza outbreak" and "descendant of the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919" are entirely different phrases. I once read a book which described the 1918 pandemic in detail. Photos like this don't describe the horror. With bleeding from every orifice and a high rate of fatality it was positively Medieval.

By the way, the reason why the 1918-1919 outbreak is called "Spanish" has more to do with freedom of the press than origin. The strain is usually thought to have originated in these good old United States - Kansas. The reason why it's called "Spanish" is because the world first learned of it in detail via Spanish newspapers, which did not enforce a state run, war-related clampdown of the news. (President McKinley accused U.S. papers of aiding and assisting the enemy by running morale-damaging stories about American cases.) So for their honesty the Spanish get a pandemic named after them. Nice.

I was in the Marines during the 1976 outbreak of Swine Flu, and was therefore innoculated whether I liked it or not. (Orders.) It was a public relations nightmare for the government, which handled the matter badly. I don't recall getting sick as a result of the vaccine.

I am getting sick of all the pollen, however. It's the price we Virginians pay for having all those trees. Saturday night I was playing with a high powered spotlight and noted that a curtain of pollen could be seen floating in the air in the beam. Yeech.

28 Apr 2009

A female opera fan from Georgia contacted me yesterday via a review I wrote about an opera DVD I own. The opera is Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel" (a.k.a. Le Coq d'Or). I bought the DVD some years ago for about $25 or so - I forget. Anyway, it's now out of print and amazon.com has the nerve to ask $495.00 for it!

It's a funny little work, hardly on the pantheon of great operas like Carmen or anything by Verdi, etc., but I'm attached to it as it introduced me to classical music when I was a teenager.

Opera buffs are very passionate and dedicated. Oftentime, just listening to one version of a work and moving on to others isn't adequate - they listen to alternate recordings and compare. For instance, this lady sent me two youtube links of the big aria from this work, the famous "Hymn to the Sun."

Here's Beverly Sills singing it from 1971, and here's here's an excerpt from the modern DVD, with Olga Trifonova. (This one has subtitles that allow you to understand the rather erotic lyrics.) Sills has power and assurance, and hits - and holds - the very high note in the piece easily. This is why she was such a celebrated soprano. Trifonova is a bit strained on that high note, but otherwise does an excellent job.

This just in: I note that there's a third youtube performance by Adriana Kohutkova - but, listen, she's way flat on that high note - 4:16 mark. And generally immobile.

The winner? Beverly Sills - she owns this piece.

27 Apr 2009

I had a dream about graduation last night; not any specific graduation I've experienced or the graduation exercises themselves, but the finality that a graduation represents. That is, the slight shock one gets when realizing that a chapter in life is definitively over. You know, realizing, "This is the last time I'll ever (fill in the blank)" - that kind of thing.

At first I attributed this dream to today being my 53rd birthday and simply getting older, but upon analysis I think what prompted it was a missionary farewell we attended last night. The young man in question - his family is a friend of our family - leaves for a religious mission in Utah (coincidentally the very same area my son was on) on Wednesday. I recall thinking, "The clock is ticking for him."

He and I had a brief conversation about his being somewhat scared about the prospect of The Unknown that a two year church mission represents. I pointed out the odd fact that we human beings are very adaptable about getting used to situations, and that I recalled being somewhat apprehensive about graduating from Marine Corps boot camp! (I'm pretty sure that everyone else was simply looking forward to getting over with it without any hesitations whatsoever.)

I have always read that you, yourself are the best analyst of your dreams because you have the keys to all the symbols and hidden meanings, so I'm content that this mission farewell must have been the "dream fodder." And, personally, I'm glad that my subconscious put together a dream using this material and not the stuff I was watching on TV before I went to bed - Jack the Ripper.

So, when I awoke I pondered what the dream could have represented (best to mull this over while the dream is still fresh) and reflected that, really, the last such "graduation" I have in my life that I'm aware of is retirement, which is perhaps fifteen years away. There have been many others... whenever a child graduates from high school or goes through some other major life event, you do as well.

I have learned not to use dreams as blog material; perhaps in a day or so I'll reread this and think, "Ugh. What a mistake," which is what I usually think.

Anyway, the whole theme of the paragraphs above is the passage of time - which reminds me of a store display I saw on Saturday while in Georgetown with my wife and daughter.

I am now reading "The Train Jumper" by Don Brown, a Young Adult library book. It describes the unsettled economic conditions that prevailed during the Great Depression, and how this led teens to hop aboard freight trains to seek work. When you're researching hobos there are two main situations that come up: teenagers seeking work in the 1930's ("The Wild Boys of the Road") and the full-time homeless that are what might be called "classical" hobos. This book is okay. It's no great revelation, but then I didn't expect it to be.

And because my visiting daughter has been running around the house singing Olivia Newton-John's 1980 hit "Magic," we recently watched the musical that spawned it, "Xanadu" (1980). It has the odd distinction of being one of the worst musicals ever made despite the fact that the songs in it are, for the most part, quite good. I recall the famous review, "In a word, Xana-don't." As is often the case, Roger Ebert nails the coffin lid down firmly.

(I keep seeing references to "Can't Stop the Music," another 1980 musical that is reputed to be the absolute worst musical ever. It stars the Village People and involves disco, which is, really, all you need to know.)

Anyway, I remember seeing Xanadu with my wife - then fiancee - when it was in theatrical release in late 1980. I also remember my surprise when we left the theater. Sometimes, seeing a bad movie is kind of like getting slapped in the face. With the millions and millions of dollars that films cost to produce, all the (supposed) talent in Hollywood and the fact that audience testing can easily be arranged and performed, you wonder - how is it possible for a film this bad to have been released? What were they thinking? Do they have all that time and money to waste? Or were they perhaps all high? And yet... bad films seem to be as common as summer rain.

Finally, where have all the dead ruggers gone? To paraphrase the old song, Gone to graveyards, every one. But which graveyards? Fellow Western Suburbs Old Boy Jeff Gravatt describes where, here.

24 Apr 2009

I'm still reading Kenneth Allsop's "Hard Travellin' - the Hobo and his History" from 1967, which I am becoming convinced must surely stand as the standard reference work on the subject of the hobo. It is well-written, thorough and seems authoritative.

What came as something of a shock, however, was his account of the famous song "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." I've known this song ever since I was a Kindergartner; we used to sing it all the time. All of my kids became familiar with it as children, too. It enjoyed a resurgence of popularity when the Coen Brothers used it as the theme song to "O Brother Where Art Thou?" (2000).

The old recorded version (the vinyl noise is retained) used in the movie was sung by Harry McClintock, who claimed to be the songwriter. (This is disputed.) But the lyrics he sings aren't the original and complete lyrics; those are different, as this passage from Allsop's book makes clear. And they should be understood in their original context - which is creepy. Who knew what seemed a pleasant song about a fanciful candy land was really about the homosexual seduction of minors by the homeless? Ewww.

Here's the old McClintock recording of the song, by the way. I've heard a version of it that has McClintock's spoken introduction, but this is the song-only version that became the theme music to "O Brother Where Art Thou?"

Since I like musicology and stories about song origins, I was also interested to read about folklorist Alan Lomax' connection of the piece to the Norwegian song Oleanna, and a favorite play, Peer Gynt. (I provide links at the bottom of the Allsop excerpt.)

My friend Bob, e-mailing me about Alec Guinness in yesterday's blog, wrote, "Like a real spy, he just blends in, virtually unnoticed – like a real operative would." Yes... a friend of mine is a CIA operative. Interesting guy. When I first met him he made no impression on me whatsoever. Average height, average weight, totally indistinguishable looks. In fact, when he was away on a foreign posting for a few years, my wife mentioned him - and I had a difficult time recalling his face in my memory! I would think that this is exactly what a real spy looks like.

I also knew some operatives when I worked at the National Security Agency; once again, men of indistinguishable features, some bearded, given to wearing baseball caps and dark glasses and jogging suits. They make no impression at all. BUT - I'm guessing that to another operative they would stand out precisely because they don't stand out.

People have physical clues and give off vibes. I can often spot former Marines, rugby players, Mormons and reenactors in a crowd. (The Mormons are real easy to identify.) Once, in a line at a Wal-Mart, I decided to simply go for the gold and asked a guy in front of me, "Are you a rugby prop?" He was stunned. Likewise, I sometimes enjoy going up to a complete stranger and asking, "What ward (Mormon parish) are you in?"

Reenactors often give themselves away with eccentric facial hair and grooming. I was at a yard sale, once, and noted many historical books for sale by a fellow who waxed the tips of his mustache. "You wouldn't happen to do Great War reenacting, do you?" I asked. Hit the mark.

The other day I was in training on a boring subject, and, as is my wont to stay awake, I bought a little something to eat. I chose a small bag of honey-roasted cashews by Barcelona, a company based in Baltimore.

Note the logo and the art on the bags. I used to play a little game with my kids I called "good design-bad design." We'd be in a grocery store, and I'd take some package that appealed to me (or not), show it to the kids and ask, "Good design or bad design?" They'd look at it, cock their heads and think and render a decision. It was my little way to get them to think about art and design.

You know what the Barcelona bag design says to me? You're in a hell-hole gas station off the Jersey Turnpike, you've just used the filthiest men's room on the East Coast, and all the convenience store has to offer are these crappy bags of nuts - and they have a layer of dust on them. Some Third Worlder glumly rings up your purchase and you're off. Bad design. They need to re-do that logo.

Boy Uses Rugby Skills to Save Family from Fire. All I ever use 'em for is to hurt other players. I feel ashamed.

Annndddd... that's all for this week. Yard sales tomorrow. I'll be dashing about in my convertible bug. Even better, my wife flew my middle daughter home for a few days as a surprise for my birthday, so we'll have her most welcome company!

Have a great weekend!

23 Apr 2009

We'll take a break from the hoboes today. We'll return to them and their sinister (yes, sinister) Big Rock Candy Mountain tomorrow.

I saw another excellent film last night, "Our Man in Havana" (1959) starring a favorite actor, Alec Guinness. Where do I begin? Direction by Carol Reed, script by Graham Greene... What a perfect production.

I have never seen a film with Alec Guinness in it that I didn't think was totally first-class. I think the thing I admire most about his acting is that it's so utilitarian; that is, he seems to blend into each role so well in such a quiet, understated way. There's really no such thing as an Alec Guinness film in the way there is, say, a Jack Nicholson film. He never dominates. He merely plays his part with that featureless face of his - and by the end of the film you realize that you've just seen an amazing performance.

Havana was a great little spy spoof, or black comedy, with wry little twists and plot features. In fact, I think I may now rank it among my all time favorite spy films and productions, which includes:

Thunderball (1965): This was in the theaters when the spy fad was at its height, consequently it had a great deal of influence upon my friends and I. (I was nine.) We all saw it multiple times and I know practically every musical cue by heart. We all hoped to be James Bond when we grew up mostly due to this film. I recognize that in practically every way Casino Royale (2006) is a better Bond film - more action, higher tech, a more plausible plot, more natural performances - but this one is still my favorite.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965): My hands down favorite spy film. I love the bleak Cold War realism of it, and the fabulous black and white photography (which is also a strong point of the Guinness film, by the way). The nearest thing I can think of to a film noir/spy film hybrid. Best of all is Richard Burton's quote: "What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?" Great writing - and it certainly puts that James Bond glamor in its place!

Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983): I was blown away when I saw this on PBS. Not only was it engrossing drama, it was based on fact! And Sam Neill was excellent in it. I also read the two R.H. Bruce Lockhart books, which were fascinating. Just how remarkable was the career of Sidney Reilly? An illustrative quote: "James Bond? Just some rubbish I came up with. He was no Sidney Reilly, you know." - Ian Fleming

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy (1979): Again, Alec Guinness. This is perhaps his greatest role in a storied career. A nuanced performance of an interesting character, George Smiley - a quiet little civil servant who also happens to be a master spy. The sequel, Smiley's People (1982), is almost as good.

The Prisoner (1967): I saw these when they first aired on TV. I liked them and knew they were good, but I didn't fully appreciate how good they were until I became an adult, when I could understand all the themes about servitude and freedom, liberty and confinement. Credit Patrick McGoohan for being way ahead of his time on this one, which frequently seemed like theater of the absurd. Some episodes were cunning drama, some were utterly over the top. All were interesting. I also love the way it's a sequel to the John Drake character he created in the earlier "Danger Man" ("Secret Agent" in the U.S.) TV series, although this was never admitted. Not all spies live happily ever after... odds are they won't live to see tomorrow.

There's a lot more about spies here. Scroll to the bottom for my extensive list of spy gear - no neighborhood kid was safe from my surveillance.

22 Apr 2009

My son sent me this link with the question, "Seriously? Was this what people considered entertaining in the Seventies?" No. We considered ABBA entertaining in the Seventies. :)

In my own defense I stated that I have never heard of this band, Showaddywaddy, before. They're... pretty horrible.

However, I think the benchmark for this sort of thing is the Finnish video "I Wanna Love You Tender" from about the same time. The choreography is what one might call intrusive.

It's kind of hard to describe the Seventies to people who didn't live through them. They were ugly years, hideously ugly. Back then we used to think that the all time nadir of taste was the Fifties; little did we know we were creating it and bottoming out just then. You see, we didn't really see or appreciate the ugliness at the time. We thought that stuff was au courant. As James Lileks writes, "All eras have some bad taste, of course – but it took the 70s to make bad taste triumphant and universal."

In shame, however, I will admit that I have always have a guilty appreciation for that 1970's yard sale-organic-rustic style. The kind of thing where you gather cable reels, power line insulators, big pieces of iron and semi-rotted wood as home decor. (I'm living in a rail yard!) This is a suggestive representation of the style. But I married a woman who has a sense for classic home decorating, and I'm getting over it. I meet bi-weekly with others who share my problem and we talk it out.

But looking back is always therapeutic, if a little gut-wrenching.

Last night, based on a recommendation from my German speaking pal Chris, I saw a funny little German comedy, Schultze Gets the Blues (2003). (That's him, above. Schultze, that is, not Chris.) It's about an East German who lives in the most dreary town in Germany, bar none, whose life is transformed by Zydeco music. He travels to Louisiana to follow his Muse. It's not a ha-ha-isn't-this-funny? comedy. It's slow-paced and deadpan, and the film invites you to find the humor in it. In his review, Roger Ebert drew the same comparison I did while watching it, with the work of the Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. (Longtime readers will know I'm an Aki fan. See 10 October 2008 entry here.)

So... "Schultze Gets the Blues" - recommended.

It wouldn't be a current blog entry without a hobo reference of some kind, would it? Here's a good one, from that book I'm presently reading, describing the various hobo train riding styles - and dangers therein. Sliding boxcar doors can slice off legs? I didn't know that. Yeech... death and dismemberment wherever you look on one of those things.

Finally, the other night, while watching an episode of the Big Joe Polka Show, some ensemble (the Czechaholics?) sang the classic "Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie Polka." I was amused with the lyrics. Why is Frank smiling and going to the bank, and why are people playing hide and seek? It all sounds a bit lascivious to me.

21 Apr 2009

A quote from that hobo book I'm reading: "Part of the American heritage is the spirit that hates cribbed confinement... the American will not tolerate the fate of being boxed in, like a trapped rat." - Max Lerner.

I'm like that. An example: When I pulled into camp Friday night at Sky Meadows, I set up my tent and discovered that I had forgotten to bring some Chap-Stick and a couple of fresh D-cells for my flashlight. Now, another camper lent me a tube of Chap-Stick and the fresh batteries were hardly required. But I still pulled out of camp and drove a quick ten miles to the closest major crossroads to buy some. By doing this I learned what the closest major intersection was (I was wondering) and it gave me the mental assurance that I could leave any time I wanted.

(Chap-Stick? Yes. When I get sunburned my lips get raw and I develop cold sores that take forever to heal.)

Also, when it snows I cannot be content to stay in the house. I have to dig myself out and drive the car to the grocery store, just to demonstrate to myself that I can.

But this may be simple male nature. A friend of mine told me that he read an article once stating that whenever a male walks into a room he always wants to know where the exits are. I'm certainly like that.

Hey, I came across this somewhere, the origin of "to hit the ground running." The article states that a possible origin for this phrase may have been hoboes jumping off boxcars. I saw a sequence in a film where some guys jumped off a moving boxcar running, then slowed down and stopped. It seems plausible. But, if true, it would be ironic to find that a phrase now used to describe a corporate go-getter came from a class of people dedicated to avoiding work!

I just discovered a fascinating web page: BraveDaveEmpire.com, by an adventuresome Englishman named - can you guess? - Dave. This is his account of his nine day freighthopping. Section Seven is as thrilling as anything I've seen out of Hollywood; my palms were getting sweaty watching it. Being that up close and personal with fast-moving industrial iron (which will gleefully dismember you in a heartbeat) is scary.

I also got a kick out of Brave Dave's letters section, where he's taken to task for being foolish and unsafe by a more seasoned freighthopper. His replies reveal his youth. Doing something unsafe and getting away with it - once - is not an endorsement for doing it twice or over and over again.

You know, Englishmen are funny. They seem undersized, polite and even quaint, but they do remarkable things. When I learned about English Civil War (1642-1651) reenacting, I was surprised to learn that it involves large numbers of guys physically shoving and pushing with pointed sticks; to an American reenactor, it's an accident (and litigation) waiting to happen. In Civil War reenacting here in the States, we do what we call "hand to hand" infrequently and carefully. Well, most of the time.

And let's not forget that the English also invented rugby, 'nuff said.

So here's one, yclept Brave Dave, surfing freight trains. Remarkable bunch. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," as the phrase goes...

Hey, we all know slavery in America was ended with the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment, right? Well, not quite. There were still instances of a type of legal involuntary servitude taking place with a class of people known as... well, read this. From that book wot I'm reading.

20 Apr 2009

Laika the Soviet space dog sings about memories of better days. (Don: You will find this sad.) Laika's story is here.

I had an interesting problem with my personal website, wesclark.com, last week. People going to the various sites on it were getting virus notifications from their PCs and were sending me e-mails, telling me. Wha-th'? Never had that happen before. And I do not possess the software or knowhow to fix my web hosting company's servers.

So I got into contact with the good people at simplenet, who figured it out. Somehow somebody electronically obtained my ftp password and were uploading my index.html files with malicious Java scripts. (The index.html files are the default destinations you go to. For instance, if you type "wesclark.com" into your browser you are actually reading http://www.wesclark.com/index.html.) Simplenet cleaned them all off and changed my password - problem solved.

I had something called the "HEUR: exploit.script.generic" virus; I have no idea what it was doing, other than alarming PC anti-virus software.

By the way, I can recommend simplenet as a good company to do web hosting business with. They are very responsive; when you phone them you actually get a human being! I get 30 GB and a monthly bandwidth of 3,000 MB for $215.88/year.

Cool 1922 photo of a railroad bull ("rail guard") on Shorpy. Hobo memoirs are full of references to the bulls, who could be murderous. Don't let that strawboater hat fool you; he looks like he's hiding a truncheon on the other side of that box. And here's a hobo, his mortal enemy, from 1939.

Not hoboes, but neat anyway: Pabst Blue Ribbon neon sign, 1943. A gorgeous Kodachrome exposure.

I attended my first scout camp out in eleven years over the weekend. It was on a hilltop location at Sky Meadows State Park; a lovely spot in Virginia. Saturday was very sunny - in fact so much so that everyone got sun-burned, including yours truly. Towards the end of day everyone, youth and leaders, looked like Phoebus had come by with an air spray gun filled with red paint and swiped our faces. ("Sunshine Vitamin D," we used to call it. Now it's "Basal cell carcinoma.")

I brought my backpack out of retirement and found a Kotex stayfree minishield in it while repairing a zipper, much to the amusement of the other scouters. A little reminder that the last time my pack was used was by a daughter at a girls' camp...

Everyone had fun... even I, I have to admit. I noticed that camp lighting technology has changed in the eleven years since I've done modern camping. Everyone now has LED flashlights; consequently camps now have a blue-white cast at night instead of a yellow-white (from ordinary flashlight bulbs). Propane seems to have mostly gone away. I brought my conventional Mag light, which cast a mighty Jedi beam into the heavens (Scouts: "Ooooh, ahhh"), allowing me to point out the incredible multitude of stars and constellations visible from the country.

One Scoutmaster walked around with a LED flashlight fitted to a strap worn on his head, which, of course, blinded everyone as he looked at them. What a nuisance.

I got about four or five hours of sleep Friday night - yet another indication that a sleeping bag is a contradiction in terms.

I watched the 1992 "Of Mice and Men" last night, an excellent example of how to adapt a literary classic to film. There's a trainhopping sequence. Nowadays I note how people get aboard boxcars without losing limbs...

In my current obsession with the hobo, tramp and bum, I am now reading "Hard Travellin' - The Hobo and his History" by Kenneth Allsop. It was written in 1967, when there appears to have been a low point in the numbers of men hopping freight trains. (This number would increase somewhat when it started to become popular again among bored Yuppies and disaffected youth.) One of the rationales offered is funny: "Modern freight systems are higher speed and more secure, with switches being controlled by powerful IBM 360 computers."

Yep, those powerful IBM 360's... There's more computing power in a cell phone or iPod.

By the way, there is a difference between a hobo, tramp and bum. The terms are often used interchangeably, but a difference was noted way back when:

A hobo: Travels and seeks work
A tramp: Travels but is not seeking work
A bum: Neither travels nor seeks work

And here's another couple of images of hobos "riding the rods," performance art requiring athletic balance, nerve and derring-do - and probably desperation.

Finally, with the help of an intrepid librarian I think I've come up with the solution to the supposed "Burbank Train Robbery." (Executive summary: It was really the Sun Valley Train Robbery). I think I'll edit the wikipedia article that gave rise to this mistake. Librarians are wonderful... people dedicated to looking up things for you. What a noble calling!

I note for posterity and current interest the death of nineteen year-old "train stowaway" (hobo) Harry Daly in the incident.

17 Apr 2009

I am now reading "The Autobiography of a Supertramp" by William H. Davies. It's pretty good. Not as good as the Jack London hobo memoir (which is to be expected), but good. Here's a short excerpt describing the peril of riding a freight train. Would you be terribly surprised to learn that Davies loses a leg in the process of hopping trains?

Davies the Supertramp was an Englishman, which put me in mind of this quote:

Englishman to American on trans-Atlantic liner: "Who was it
who discovered America?"
American: "Christopher Columbus."
Englishman (later, after three days on train): "Who was it, old boy, who discovered America?"
American: "Christopher Columbus."
Englishman: "He could hardly miss the bloody place, could he?"

My friend Bob, a grammar-monger, is troubled over my use of "hobos" for the plural instead of "hoboes." For him I offer this.

Last night I watched a truly embarrassing VHS rental: "Glam Rock," a 1988 collection of rock videos c. 1972-1974 featuring Sweet, T. Rex, Gary Glitter, Wizzard, Alice Cooper and Slade. Ouch. It was painful to watch, it was so thoroughly dorky. What do you get when you take really homely skinny Englishmen and put them in silver lamé, eye makeup and glitter up their hair? Really homely skinny Englishmen in silver lamé, makeup and glittered hair. (With bad teeth.) But, reflecting upon it, I have come up with some conclusions:

1.) If, in retrospect, Glam Rock looks this bad to me - and this was the music that was cool when I was eighteen - how much worse must it have looked to my parents and their generation, who were weaned on Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee and the other far classier acts?

2.) It was probably a good thing the Beatles spilt up in 1969. The possibility of their performing in platform shoes, knit caps, eye makeup and glitter doesn't bear thinking about. And thank heavens there never was a Beatles disco song. Paul's 1976 mullet was as bad as it got.

3.) I never really cared much for Bruce Springsteen, but I see now why tee shirts, blue jeans and blue collar songs about New Jersey were necessary.

4.) And I can now understand why professional rock critics, the people who loved Elvis, the Stones and, say, Ike and Tina Turner, hated glam rock. It all makes sense.

5.) Gary Glitter was too British and too limp-wristed to have ever have made it in the United States. And you could look at him and think, "Now there's a pedophile."

6.) I learned that not everything British is cool. Exhibit A: "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" by Wizzard - a nightmare-inducing Christmas production.

Back when I was a teen my father and I used to have debates about whose music was better. His (Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Julie London) or mine (Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult). You win, Dad.

But in defence of rock and roll, my wife had an interesting comment after watching several polkas on the Big Joe Show: "My father had a lot of nerve telling me that there is only three chords to rock music. These polkas all sound exactly alike!" And they do; they are utterly interchangeable. (With the exception of some numbers one ensemble did that sounded like a Polka-Klezmer fusion featuring a drummer who looked like Frankenstein's monster.)

My daughter, now into astronomy, send me this, the same color optical illusion. The moral of the story is that you can't always trust what your eyes are telling you.

An Evening in Paris: Tonight I'm sleeping on the ground in a tent at Sky Meadows Park - the Scout Camporee. I can't honestly say as I'm exactly stoked for this. I've done a couple of Civil War things at Sky Meadows. Both times huge thunderstorms moved over the mountain and caused buckets of rain to fall. I recall being in a canvas tent and having to hold down the main pole to keep the whole thing from being lifted off into the air. But the forecast for Paris, Virginia tonight and tomorrow is clear.

I recall once doing a show and tell thing for the public there. I had my Federal soldier uniform on and was demonstrating musket fire for families. One older fellow asked if he could handle my musket; I don't normally allow this, but this time I did. (Bear in mind I had just fired a blank out of it.) This yahoo then fitted the end of the barrel into his mouth and started blowing into it.

"What in the hell are you doing?!?" I demanded, snatching the musket away from him. Turns out he was a "Mountain Man" (reenactor who does early 19th C. trapper) and they have a weird practice of doing this with their flintlocks... he explained it to me, but it made absolutely no sense. There is no way I can see how sticking a musket barrel into your mouth - loaded or not - makes the piece any safer. So that's one of my Sky Meadows Park memories.

That and the annual "Pointless Commemorative March" we'd do up the hill behind the old house because we were bored. And the time my friend Neil's German wife got into an argument with the rednecky waitress in the Paris, Virginia coffee shop - an interesting clash of cultures. Oh, and how could I forget a guy in my CW unit brandishing a Nazi flag there and yelling, "Ah like having sex with dead people!" (He now dresses as a woman and clubs in D.C.)

Sigh. Maybe I can feign sickness and stay home.

Well, you have a good weekend, anyway.

16 Apr 2009

I am now reading Jack London's "The Road," far and way the first first-person hobo account I have read so far. But that's no surprise as he was one of the great American writers. As it's in the public domain, you may read or download it here from Gutenberg e-text.

Here's yet another hobo amputation story... something tells me I'm going to encounter a bunch more of these before this interest fades...

And here's Jack London's interesting explanation of "monicas" (a corruption of "moniker," I'm sure), or nicknames. Hobos almost always had them. So do rugby players - I wonder why. In the rugby article, Tom Hamill says that it's just a function of "bringing a group of guys together" - but why? What is it about male behavior that gives rise to an alternate (usually humorous) nomenclature?

I know that I have never really felt a part of the gang - whatever gang I happen to be in - without one. I have several, in fact. In Civil War reenacting I was known variously as "Mongo" and "Jonah." In rugby, at first, "Big Guy," then "Brigham." When I was in the Marines, I was "Vambo." It's a bit like the verbal equivalent of a good-natured pat on the back - even for a nickname like "Big Butt Chuck" (a rugby player), who didn't seem to take offense at it.

As I'm half French-Canadian I come from a long line of people who had "dit names," that is, alternate names. For instance, my grandfather's real last name was "Aucoin," but he was called and went by "Wedge." Therefore, he'd be styled "Isaac Aucoin dit Wedge." Doing genealogical research, I find that coming up with alternate names seemed to be a major pursuit among these people.

But let's get back to that word "monica" or "moniker" for a moment. From wikipedia: "The word 'monicker' or more rarely, 'monikker' is, among clowns, most often intentionally misspelled, with a 'c' in accordance with clown tradition that some words are inherently funny (and hence to be preferred over 'unfunny' words). The 'clown world' has widely embraced 'monicker' as equivalent to a stage name or pseudonym."

So, like hobos, professional clowns have monikers, not names. Is it a coincidence that clowns often make themselves up to look like hobos? What's the connection?

A book about salesmanship I once read may have an answer. In it, the author describes part of his sales technique. A tall, burly man, he usually countered any sense of threat he might have had with a little staged accident or trip when first meeting customers. The idea - according to him - was to psychologically put the customer in a position of superiority and ease. (Contrariwise, however, I also knew a salesman who, when shaking hands, gave a little quarter twist - the idea, according to him, was to establish supremacy over the customer. It didn't work with me as when he first did it I demanded to know, "What was that?" But I digress.)

In the circus world I'd imagine that if you feel threatened by a clown there's no humor. (What you have instead is an evil clown, which really has no place in a circus.) And so what better archetype for a clown than a helpless hobo, Emmett Kelly comes to mind, who is penniless and has to beg for his food? We can laugh at a clown who looks like a hobo because he doesn't threaten us.

Perhaps my analysis is weak and I'm all wet... perhaps there's nothing behind it at all. But I have observed that we often subconsciously play out roles, and roles are often based on archetypes.

By the way, in the process of looking for a suitable image of Jack London to use above, I came across this - surely an odd pose for a great author. But then Mark Twain has one of these, too. Weird.

I am currently at war with air conditioner mold in my minivan. When we first turn the heater or air conditioner on, it smells like wet hay. Following a lead I got on the Internet, a week ago I sprayed a $30 can of BG Frigi-Clean foam into the area around the evaporator to kill the mold. It didn't work. Last night I took a rag soaked with vinegar and water on the end of a coat hanger through all the duct work I could reach. This morning I couldn't smell any mold - but I can't believe it was that easy. I bet the smell comes back...

This Friday night I'm going to a Scout Camporee, my first Scout camp out since August 1998. Am I looking forward to it? Kind of, not really. I'm sure I'll get into it once I'm out there, however.

My son sent me this one: TotallyLooksLike.com. I liked the Burger King and Mel Gibson.

15 Apr 2009

The subject for today is, once again, trains and hobos...

Another train photo from my friend Don who, as you might suspect, is into trains. This one awaits repairs.

Some more photos from that book about hobos I'm reading:

The caption to this one is, "Sometimes a young man was forced to travel with older tramps; other times, he joined them willingly for protection." This image saddens me.

Profeshes.

Flipping a train.

Hobo "Jungle" (encampment)

No mercy for hobos in prison!

"Hitting the Grit" (From the Library of Congress) - This one seems iconic.

An excerpt from The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by Willie Davis. It describes the perils of not hopping onto a moving boxcar properly.

Yesterday I included a photo entitled riding the rods. Here's Jack London's description of this and how a railroadman could dislodge (kill) a hobo doing it.

Last night I watched "Bound for Glory" (1976) about Woody Guthrie who sat atop a train or two. (Perhaps not playing a guitar at the same time in a forty mile an hour wind, as suggested above.) I had to prod the memories of the folks at Video Vault for hobo films and material; the list is surprisingly small. But they came up with this one.

The film was pretty good, if a little too long (140 mins) so it dragged in places. And the folky stuff was starting to get ponderous at the end.

I enjoyed the scene or two that showed the boxcar hopping technique. I wonder if that was Keith Carradine or a double? It's interesting to see things illustrated that you only read about.

And I can see that Bob Dylan lifted his early act directly from Woody Guthrie.

14 Apr 2009

Check your coastal cynicism at the door and let's polka with Big Joe! On Sunday my friend Greg gave me a DVD of three of his shows recorded from the RFD network; I watched one of them. I suppose I should have known, but I wasn't aware that polka was such a big deal in the Midwest. (Among the old.) "Happy music for happy people" - indeed.

With a commendable sense of appropriateness, my friend also included an episode of "Classic Tractor Fever" (which I have somehow avoided catching - being from L.A. I'm probably inoculated).

Another railroad photo from my friend Don... I call it couplers. Not moody at all.

Yesterday I finished "Two Trains Running" by Lucius Shepard. It's about - can you guess? - hobos. The first part is an investigation as to whether or not there's a sort of Mafia among hobos known as the FTRA (Freight Train Riders of America). A Spokane police detective is convinced that they're an organized gang of thousands and a real threat. Shepard, hoboing for a number of months and doing his own research, seems far less impressed. I have a feeling this is something like the "Wilding" phenomena of a number of years ago (remember that?) - more a situation of the Media wanting a story than one actually being real.

For instance, here's a 2003 Maxim article with an arresting title: "Hobos From Hell" that takes the whole FTRA thing and runs with it. "According to a report compiled by Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern railroad police, the Wrecking Crew (a branch of the FTRA) were once observed in Havre, Montana, skinning puppies after they’d run out of food." Wow!

Shepard's description of the modern hobos he encountered is pretty interesting. It should come as no surprise that alcohol and violence is endemic among the younger set, and mental illness among the older ones. The way he describes his interviews with them, they are not exactly what one would call interesting conversationalists, either. A bit like chatting with Confederate reenactors - constant and limited tropes.

Parts two and three of this book are short stories about hobos, based on his research. Part two is a science fiction tale (yes, about hobos!) that is just plain bizarre. Part three is a gritty realistic piece entitled "Jailbait." I shall not dwell on the details, Gentle Reader. It's interesting to see snippets of conversations with hobos he reported in his investigative piece wind up as material in his fiction. We all know authors do that to provide credibility...

I am now reading "Hoboes - Wandering in America, 1870-1940," an excellent book by Richard Wormser. It has some great old photos in it. For instance, here's Jack London demonstrating "decking." But as dangerous as that looks, what looks worse to me is riding the rods - an industrial accident waiting to happen. Drop off the rods at fifty miles an hour and a horrible fate awaits. It's no surprise that among olde-tymey hobos, this riding technique was considered the ne plus ultra of hobodom. There's also the curious hobo "black bottle" urban legend.

I watched those Morris Engel movies that TCM highlighted. Eh. His first one, The Little Fugitive (1953), about a boy at Coney Island, was pretty good. The other two were missable. Lovers and Lollipops (1956) features a rather obnoxious little girl and his last, Weddings and Babies (1958) was just plain boring.

Ever hear of "ephemeral films?" I watched a bunch the other night, from 1947 to 1960. In general, they're short films made for specific social or industrial purposes. For instance, one might be a painfully earnest little social guide for insecure teenage boys on how to talk to girls. ("Speak naturally - don't try to be something you're not.") Another might be Ford's lineup for 1960 cars. One was hilarious and weird - How families should act around the dinner table: "Junior has his hands washed quickly, so that he doesn't delay the meal. Father doesn't raise conversational topics that might cause conflict with other family members. Sister helps mother take the dishes away. Father tells mother how much he enjoyed the meal." And so on. It seems so pat and simplistic, but watching it, I realize how badly the advice is needed nowadays. Do families even sit around the dinner table anymore? We always did whenever possible, but I suspected that it was a quickly dying art...

I mentioned that I sometimes listen to a podcast called "Night Ride." The other night I was listening to one show about numbers and dozed off. There must have been some subroutine running within me, however, that alerted me a few minutes later, "Warning! Wake up! Something weird is coming through your earbuds and making its way into your brain!" For lack of a better name, I call it Swedish Pots and Pans. They do play some odd stuff on Night Ride...

13 Apr 2009

Since it rained hard all Saturday morning, I didn’t even bother to look for yard sales. Instead, I stayed in the house and fiddled around with Audacity, a shareware tool for audio files. You can use it to turn .wavs into .mp3s and vice-versa (my initial need for it), and perform all sorts of interesting manipulations with audio files.

For instance, a while back I mentioned out of phase stereo – OOPS – and how interesting some Beatles songs sound when OOPS-ed. (OOPS: You take the left and right audio, reverse the polarity on one, add them electronically and get a result that is the difference of the files. So whatever is the same on both channels cancel out, leaving only a mono track of the audio that is different.) With Audacity, this is easy to do.

With “Eleanor Rigby,” you get only Paul’s vocal and a dramatically lessened string quartet.

Conversely, with “Taxman,” you get only the instrumental track, and a rather surprising “Uh-uh, Mister Wilson/Uh-uh Mister Heath.” You can also really hear Paul’s groovy bassline – and some cowbell.

Audacity can also reverse audio files, which means that you can hear the original sound of the reversed guitar solos in “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “I’m Only Sleeping.” (I play first the track straight, then reversed. The solos sound much better reversed!)

Being able to easily cut and paste reversed audio means that you can pretend that you’re in the Twin Peaks Black Lodge. (When it first appeared on broadcast television in 1990, callers lit up the ABC boards to ask, “What was that?!?”)

The technique is simple: Pronounce your lines backwards. When they’re reversed it’s still intelligible – but sounds weird. I tried the little man’s line “When you see me again, it won’t be me,” but as often as I tried I couldn’t properly reverse the sound of a “b.” So pronouncing “e’yain e s’mo svay n’gai ga in ee swee en’now” (my phonetic rendering of the reversed sounds of the sentence), mine came out “When you see me again you won’t see me.”

(My wife Cari does a better job of it - she gets the "b" in there.)

More Audacity:

Someday I'll have a cell phone that lets me create the ringtones. When that day comes, this will be one of them.

Eleanor Taxman - A mix of two OOPS-ed tracks. The first thirty seconds or so is in sync, sort of, then it goes downhill fast.

***

One of my heroes is William Tyndale, a translator of the Bible. Read why here.

I once heard some passages from the King James Bible read in a Shakespearian style (from the PBS "The Story of English," perhaps - I forget), that is, as a skilled Shakespearian actor would read them, and with an English dialect. It was riveting, and a revelation - this was some of the most beautiful English I have ever heard. We mostly have William Tyndale to thank for that, as the linked article makes clear.

I have read many books about English history, and whenever I get to the sections about Henry VIII I usually start scanning the text or glossing over it entirely. The man was a pig and a bloody tyrant, and I find accounts of his reign depressing. There is nothing - nothing - great about him. The only Tudor I thought was worth a damn was Elizabeth; I'm more a Plantagenet man than a Tudor one.

Okay - got that off my chest. Some of us get rather emotional about history...

10 Apr 2009

Here's another cell phone photo from a little Alexandria walking tour I did the other day - Shuter's Hill Brewery. (A more descriptive page is here.) This is two blocks from where I work, off Duke Street. Shuter's Hill is where Federals were encamped in Alexandria and where the Masonic Memorial tower is now.

Lately I've been listening to what you might call podcasts, except they're merely radio broadcast recordings. Audio, in other words. This one, Night Ride, originates from Santa Cruz, California. I wound up there doing searches on trainhopping. (I've been spending too much time reading web sites like this one. Bad. Very bad.)

The old-timers who grew up with radio - and later had television - often said that radio was better because it engaged the imagination. That is, your mind had to fill in images for the sounds you were hearing, and that this was often more satisfying than having them supplied for you. I'm beginning to take their point.

When I was a teenager I was very proud of my quadraphonic stereo system, and when I wanted to listen to music - really listen - I'd turn off the lights. Even the glow from the radio dial bugged me, so I kept a towel on the top of the receiver that I could fold down to blank out the light. I'm still like this - when I listen to Night Ride I shut out all the lights in the room and lay on the bed.

I guess I'm only capable of processing so much at one time. For instance, if I'm in the car listening to a CD and I'm about to do something tricky, like navigate into a tight parking lot, I shut off the radio so I can concentrate.

And there is really no such thing as office background music for me. In the mid-Eighties I used to work in an office that piped in muzak. I simply couldn't ignore it; I had to listen. Before long I began to notice that they played the same arrangements of the same songs at the same time of the day. I'd check my watch and make the announcement to all within hearing, "It is now Friday at 11:47. The next song will be a 101 Strings arrangement of Marty Robbins' 1959 hit 'El Paso.'" And sure enough, it was, and laughter would ensue. It was maddening, and we finally decided to get into the ceiling tiles and disconnect the speaker.

Here's another section from that English history book I'm reading, about Medieval toys and the Thames Mud Larks. One toy, a pewter knight, is here.

Just before the trip to London last month I learned from a library DVD on Virginia archeology that 300-400 year-old pipe stems regularly wash up on the Thames banks in London; people used to smoke pipes and them cast them from one of the bridges. So I had it in my mind to walk along the banks when I saw an opportunity. Sadly, whenever we were near the Thames the tide was in and the water high. So there wasn't an opportunity for me to be one of the Mud Larks Robert Lacey describes.

(Why mention London pipe stems in a DVD about Virginia? Because the clay pipes were exported to Virginia, and because an enterprising fellow once did a thorough study of them and determined how to use the radius of a broken pipe stem to date strata in a dig!)

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail containing an image of a creature known as a Blobfish. Ugh, what a repulsive looking fish.

And my daughter (currently interested in astronomy) sent me a link to a page that refers to something called "Planck length" (relates quantum mechanics to gravity) which I had never heard of before. It's related to Planck Time - the smallest unit of time - which I also had never heard of. These quanta of length and time are described here.

...which is cool because the next Night Ride show I'm going to listen to deals with numbers.

Well. That's it for this week. Yard sales tomorrow, telecommuting Monday. Life is grand. Have a great Easter weekend!

9 Apr 2009

Hobos sing hobo songs - and they're not bad, either!

"I'm Certainly Living A Hobo's Life"

"The Old Hobo Spirit"

"It's Hell on a Hobo" (The best, I think. The line about not being able to hop onto boxcars any more is given added poignancy by the fact that a hobo amputee is sitting next to the singer.)

Last night I watched an excellent DVD I checked out from the library: "Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories" (2006). Frankly, I was surprised. I've seen a lot of these small budget Civil War productions, and they're generally awful. This one, however, was well acted, cast and directed - and the production values were just enough for the job. Quite good.

The only other adaptations of Ambrose Bierce's Civil War tales I've seen were some French productions from the early Sixties; they were just awful (with the exception of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which was adapted as an episode of the Twilight Zone and won an Oscar). For instance, in one, there's a scene where a Union officer gives kisses on the cheeks to a private! (Is this the French Army or the United States one?) This caused laughter in the audience. In a war production, inadvertent audience laughter is never a good thing.

This later production featured an adaptation of Occurrence, no doubt Bierce's best-known Civil War tale; it is superior to the old French version.

Ambrose Bierce was something of an odd bird. Nicknamed "Bitter" Bierce for the mordant quality of his writing, his Civil War short stories all have a nasty, ironic twist of some kind at the end. But then, so did Bierce. He disappeared in Mexico, aged 72, in late 1913 or early 1914 without a trace. From wikipedia: "In one of his last letters, Bierce wrote the following to his niece, Lora: 'Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!'"

I am now reading Robert Lacey's "Great Tales from English History 2." (It goes, a book about hobos, a book about England, a book about hobos, a book about England... as I wrote, I go where my ADD takes me.)

Do you know the story of Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, and his celebrated cat? Here it is. At the Guildhall Museum in London I was amused to discover a whimsical little statue of Whittington and his cat (placed near greats such as Newton and Churchill); I am truly surprised I didn't take a photograph of it! But somebody else did.

Speaking of photography, a friend of my son's turned him on to a new technique known as HDR - "High Dynamic Range Imaging." That HDR image of New York City is stunning.

8 Apr 2009

My friend Don, a real railroad buff (unlike me he has a toy train), sent me this moody railroad photo. It's moodier than the one I posted yesterday, certainly, and more olde-tymey.

Yesterday I wrote that the train tracks of my childhood, heading west, stopped at Chatsworth. That's what I get for looking at a satellite photo and not a map. In fact, they go all the way out past Oxnard to the Pacific Ocean, and head up the California coast. That's more like it.

The other night I watched I Am Legend (2007), with Will Smith, the third of the movies made from Richard Matheson's novel of this name. It's not a film I would pay to rent, or even bother to tape when broadcast; it was a library check out. In general, I liked it, but I think my favorite adaptation is still "The Last Man on Earth" (1964), with Vincent Price. It's bleaker, smaller scaled and in black and white, which I think suits the story better.

Frankly, however, I am so tired of typical recent Hollywood product that I have a bias that I have to overcome to even like recent films... when they're not being preachy they're being obnoxiously politically correct. Or heavily laden with pop cultural references, which I find intensely annoying. (For instance, in this film Will Smith recites from memory a long section of dialogue from a Shrek film. How cute.)

I'm almost done with A No. 1's "From Coast to Coast With Jack London"; it is a much better work than "The Trail of the Tramp." I see the hobo movie I watched the other week, "The Emperor of the North Pole," is adapted from it - sort of.

Last night I watched a documentary on the life and music of Hank Williams, which I found interesting. I have never been a country music fan, but a few years ago I found myself listening to Porter Wagoner. (I go where my ADD takes me.) And he's good - I like his music, for the most part - but I can see now that Hank Williams was the real thing. Purer country, or country music in its most characteristic form. I might even be able to develop a taste for it.

Not the newer country music, which I find too heavily influenced by pop and rock and roll - what I dismissively call Soccer Mom music. I mean the original stuff: Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb - that music. Maybe I'll look for some library CDs...

I never thought I'd find myself liking what is known as Western Swing (the stuff Roy Rogers and Gene Autry sang in the 1940's), but I do.

Tonight TCM is doing a retrospective on the films of Morris Engel, called the first real independent filmmaker. I've set the VHS recorder. I've seen his films on display as DVDs in Video Vault but have never checked any of them out. I always like 1950's black and white films showing New York City (the closest thing we have to a time machine) so I should like these.

Part of the thrill noirheads like me get with old films is seeing those great, moody and expressionistic shots of city exteriors, especially at night, or in the half-light of dawn or dusk. After awhile you begin to become visually addicted to low key lighting. (This kind of thing.) There's a kind of visual poetry about it that I really appreciate...

7 Apr 2009

I am now reading a tome yclept "London's Thames - The River That Shaped a City and Its History" by Gavin Weightman. A thin little thing. Hardy worth commenting upon, except that it debunks the urban myth that some fool in Arizona bought the London Bridge thinking instead to get the Tower Bridge, but clever Brits got the last laugh and sold him that crappy old (1831) London Bridge instead. Rest assured that everyone knew what they were buying and selling.

By the way... yesterday I mentioned hanging out at the Bristow Road train intersection on Saturday - where Beard's granddaughter's antique store is. There was a Norfolk and Southern train halted there. According to her, this is where the engineers change crews because they can only legally work twelve hour shifts. She said there's a brown house in the wood, presumably owned by N & S where they go. She also said that this was a hopping off and on point for (invariably young) hobos, and that she gets them in her store all the time, asking for refills of water bottles. "Just wait until the train starts - you'll see 'em sitting in the open boxcars. I always do." I waited but saw none - or any open boxcars, for that matter. But I got this moody photo that awakened some wanderlust.

I mentioned that when I was a kid I used to play by the tracks up my street. One thing I used to do was gaze down them westwards (it was always westwards) and wonder where the train went to in that direction, what the final stop was. Thanks to google maps I think I figured that out: Chatsworth, on the other side of the San Fernando Valley. A disappointment, really - I thought the terminus was at the Pacific Ocean. The distance from Burbank to Chatsworth along the Southern Pacific tracks is only about eighteen miles. Heck, I've run that on more than one occasion...

A much more interesting trip would be east and south into the big, big trainyards in Los Angeles, where more than one film noir was filmed. In fact, Alan Ladd was on the lam there in "This Gun for Hire" (1942). So was Alexander Supertramp in "Into the Wild."

By the way, over the weekend I read A No. 1's "The Trail of the Tramp." It. Was. Awful. A totally Victorian and overly sentimental tale about two brothers succumbing to the hobo life, then swearing off all such activities in order to get back in to their mother's good graces. It concludes with a highly improbable and weepy reunion with a baby sister formerly thought frozen to death. Gak. I will try his "From Coast to Coast With Jack London." Perhaps that's better.

6 Apr 2009

Three yard sales on Saturday morning, including one by a guy who holds them about three times a year. They are always the same: a bunch of car radios and rap and hip-hop CDs in vinyl storage cases. Hmmmm...

A guy I have been keeping in e-mail contact with has completed his "reenactment" of the Mormon Battalion march. (If you're not aware, it's the longest continuous military march in American history.) The full details are here - scroll to the bottom.

A couple of excerpts from that hobo book I read. I like the Hobo How-To sections...

Most of you know that I'm a fan of what is called film noir. But I also have interests in other genres: the British horror anthology, Mormon church-produced short subjects, German expressionist silents, early rock and roll era musicals, juvenile delinquency films, Harold Lloyd comedies, Shakespearian adaptations, postwar British comedies, Our Gang shorts and family films. On Friday night I checked out a family film, "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" (2008); it was pretty good. In fact, my wife and I liked it a lot. I could tell right away that it was a Canadian production - it had a Canadian look and feel to it. (This is a good thing.) If you have little daughters you know that the American Girls represent ten year old girls from various eras in American history. Kit is the Depression Era girl, 1934, so this film was set then. There were hobos in it, so there was additional current interest in it for me.

Okay, that's why I rented it.

By the way, my daughter Julie had the American Girls Samantha doll (1904), my youngest, Meredith, had Kirsten (1854). Both are stored away, patiently awaiting grandchildren.

Every Friday I used to rent a family video and we'd have ice cream or some other treat and watch the film... how I wish I could do it again! These were some of the very happiest hours in my life as a father. Anyway, as is my habit, I put together a huge guide for parents on which ones to watch and which to avoid.

I also watched an interesting National Geographic special about Geroge Washington Friday night, "The Real George Washington." In it were computer simulations of what he looked like at three ages. Interesting! What the simulations do not show, however, are the pock marks from a thirteen week bout of smallpox he contracted as a youth. This never made it into any of the formal portraits of him because they simply didn't show that in an 18th C. formal portrait...

I also watched a DVD about the London Blitz; this one focused on the night of 29 December 1940, when St. Paul's was entirely surrounded by burning buildings but somehow managed to not catch fire itself. At one point an incendiary bomb lodged itself onto a portion of the lead roof and threatened to start a fire in the underpinnings of the Christopher Wren dome, but the bomb dislodged itself somehow and it rolled to a section of the roof that the fire fighters could get to and was put out. Pretty amazing. There's a famous photograph of the dome of St. Paul's amid the smoke of the fires in the following morning.

On Saturday I took the convertible out to a Civil War battlefield that I have not visited - Bristoe (now Bristow) Station. It was pretty underwhelming. Right now the so-called Heritage Park is a trail in a meadow in a housing development. What was more interesting, however, was driving over to the intersection of Bristow Road and the railroad tracks, where I found an antiques and bookstore. It's run by the granddaughter of Daniel Carter Beard (see image above), who more or less founded the Boy Scouts of America!

I then drove to nearby Brentsville, which was once the county seat of Prince William County. There's a small historical village there; here's the Courthouse, built in 1822. I poked around there for awhile, then walked the railroad cut sections of the Second Manassas Battlefield, then had dinner with my wife in Alexandria. All in all, a nice day!

3 Apr 2009

I watched a hobo film (sort of) yesterday: "Into the Wild" (2007), which garnered much critical praise. It was... okay. Frankly, I found the main character, as portrayed in the film, somewhat repugnant. I shall risk your censure, Gentle Reader, when I admit that I wasn't totally heartbroken when he mistook a poisonous plant for an edible one and died at the end. Growing up in the hippie era as I did, I have a limited amount of enthusiasm for New Left free spirits.

This was confirmed later in the evening when I watched a Tom Brokaw documentary about 1968 - a dismal and ugly year in American history. In the parts describing the youth movement, flower power and student riots I responded exactly as I did back then: "Ugh."

I was twelve in 1968. When I think of that year I principally recall my interest in the Mark Twain books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - two free spirits I could garner much more enthusiasm about.

Also, in 1968 I had horrible acne problems (which I am very glad my kids didn't inherit).

One of the books Alexander Supertramp (the main character in "Into the Wild") read was Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods." But let's get a few things straight about Thoreau and his splendid isolation at Walden Pond:

1.) He lived only a mile and a half from his family home.
2.) He visited there on the weekends.
3.) The train passed by his cabin.
4.) He took his laundry home for his mother to do.
5.) Friends brought him food in picnic baskets.

In general, Thoreau was no A No. 1 (the celebrated tramp in "Emperor of the North Pole"). For instance, when he graduated from Harvard at the age of twenty his mother discussed his leaving home; he got weepy and didn't leave. And the longest he ever spent away from home was six months spent in Staten Island. (And then he was homesick.)

And about his famous refusal to pay taxes due to his opposition to the war with Mexico? His aunt paid them for him.

Hmf. Enough about Thoreau, who in some ways encapsulates what annoys me about New Englanders. But, to be be fair, I have also read that Thoreau's writings from Walden Pond aren't meant to be completely serious - that there was an element of satire in them.

It may like when people straight-facedly advise, "Neither a borrow nor a lender be," without understanding that Shakespeare is making Polonius (in "Hamlet") sound like a tiresome and self-important old dotard when he utters these lines. They don't get the joke, in other words.

Speaking of The Bard, I had a head-swelling experience the other day. The question came up (okay, I asked it), "How many Shakespeare plays can you name?" My wife came up with 18 or so. My literate friend came up with 21 (I think). Yours truly listed 29 - and I forgot about "Cymbaline," "Romeo and Juliet" (!) and didn't even use my secret weapon play.

"Love's Labour's Lost" is firmly within the Shakespearean canon. But you can also name "Love's Labour's Won" and have it count - with argument. (That makes you seem all the more intelligent and well-read, of course.)

Back to hobos: here's a funny little excerpt about the mechanics of getting aboard moving trains from that book I'm currently reading.

Hey, a London thing came up earlier this week. Note this photo from the G20 protests. This is in front of the Royal Exchange, across the street from the Bank of England. Meredith and I ate our lunches outdoors just to the left of this monument on 3/12! I'm glad workmen boarded it up. I would hate to see it damaged; it's a beautiful monument. London excels in the quality of its outdoor art.

As to the protests, my sympathy is with the City employee - an older gent I observed - who has the job of keeping the men's room tidy near the Bank Tube Station. I bet that became a horrible mess.

Ah, Friday. Another weekend beckons. Hooray! the weather is expected to be better, which means that perhaps people will haul out their castoff stuff for me to paw through at yard sales. I am a bit like a hobo in that respect - I rather enjoy being a scavenger. Like Napoleon Dynamite, I like going into thrift stores to see what sort of old stuff people are trying to get rid of. (As you recall he finds a sweet three piece suit and a dance instruction VHS at one.)

Have a great weekend!

Brigham's Blog