Musical interlude

Time for tuneage! (Or is it spelled tunage?) Here are my earworms for the past few weeks; I've been delinquent in not sharing! A variety of styles represented, you should be able to find at least ONE you like.

~*~

In this strangely-staged video, Steve Winwood looks like a boy scout. Come to think of it, he still does. Also, I know he is talking about tribesmen, but I always think of Marvel comics Headmen. I blame my spouse for that!

40,000 Headmen - Traffic



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I debated whether I should jeopardize my musical cred by playing a JOURNEY song ((gasp)) -- an 80s-era secret guilty pleasure of mine, along with Duran Duran. I figured if they were good enough for Tony Soprano, they're good enough for me. Just listen to these purty power chords. (my favorite is at 1:07-14---yowee!) And check out that utterly flawless, bang-up finish.

I love this because it brings back the period surrounding my second divorce quite vividly. Ironically, I wasn't having any fun at the time... but your youth is still your youth, even when it sucks... and one day, believe it or not, you will wax nostalgic over even the suckiest times.

The Girl Can't Help It - Journey



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Did I say Duran Duran?

It is notable that (unlike today) all of the women in this video appear to be of a reasonably healthy weight.

Girls on Film - Duran Duran



~*~

You can close your eyes - James Taylor and Carly Simon



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I frequently quote Billy Jack on blogs ("I try, I really do") and only recently discovered the kidz never even heard of him. Admittedly, I forced my daughter, Delusional Precious, to watch Billy Jack when she was 14 or so (the age I was when I saw it), and she rolled her eyes during most of it. So, I will simply show this montage of clips with the theme song, which you may have heard before.

Time out for hippies!

One Tin Soldier (theme from Billy Jack) - Coven



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There are several excellent versions of this on YouTube, including a great live one w/Crazy Horse, but I wanted the one with fiddles, horse-clopping sounds and Nicolette Larson. (R.I.P.) And whaddaya know, I found it, played right off the record. :)

Comes a Time - Neil Young w/Nicolette Larson



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I was planning to save these last two for Instrumental Oldies, Pt 2, but decided to play them now... since it appears I will never get around to fabled Part Two. I was doing pretty good to post the first one!

Time is Tight - Booker T and the MGs



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Not everyone has an iphone to tell them the names of songs! Whenever this gets played in the store where I work, someone asks me who it is. This was the 'official' video; the original song was well over 7 minutes. (Again, the presence of dancing women of healthy weights! Pretty radical stuff!)

Rise - Herb Alpert

Of dogs and men

:: Someone helpfully sent me this link, regarding my last post. The link proclaims that Uncle Cecil was dead wrong: hounds are uniformly regarded as dumb, listed among the dumbest breeds.

My first thought: there is even classism among ranking dogs! Breeds intended for low-class work like hunting are ranked lowest in intelligence. Guarding people, now that's important! Here we see a unique mix of both classism and speciesism at work.

Give me a good basset hound, bulldog (go black and red!), beagle or bloodhound any day of the week! Workers of the world unite! (Not into Afghan hounds, because the shedding is incredible. No offense to them, though, all the Afghan hounds I've met are very friendly and pleasant.)


:: Recommending Ethecofem, a feminist blog which is very fair to the guys. Probably too fair for my liking, but I enjoy the writers there, especially April.

I've been thinking lately, of how men are treated in sexist ways, and I came up with one: men are expected to be Mr Fixit. Whenever something goes wrong in a house or car (which is, sooner or later, bound to happen), men are expected to know how to Fix It, while us girls stand around with our thumbs up our asses, as we say here in the south. In fact, I think this phenomenon may be way WORSE in the south.

In the north, the question was, "Can your husband fix it?" while here in the south, it's more of a declaration: "Get your husband to fix it!"

He is no more of a Mr Fixit than I am a Ms Fixit, which is to say, not at all. He is considered more of a failure for this than I am, though, which goes without saying. Men are supposed to know how to fix cars, light fixtures, stuck windows and the like. They just learn by osmosis!

This is also deeply ableist, which also goes without saying. Whichever man doesn't learn to Fix Things, at least here among the working classes, is regarded as somewhat suspect.

A man who was close to me long ago, once told me he was embarrassed that he didn't particularly like sports, didn't keep up with the teams and scores and bowl games and World Serieses and such. He told me he thought this was a form of language among men that he never learned, that seems to transcend race, class, age and other differences.

Mr Daisy is very much into that language, so I have listened over the years, as he talks to strange men in strange places, How bout them dawgs? (see above reference to black and red) I've listened to delivery guys talk to white-collar supervisors, How bout them dawgs? I've heard doctors and patients, men of radically different classes, How bout them dawgs? Etc. It really is a language that men are expected to participate in, and a man is somewhat suspect (or regarded as standoffish, unfriendly and/or aloof) if he doesn't join in.

I am also reminded of that wonderful movie The Birdcage, wherein Robin Williams (Armand) tries to tutor Nathan Lane (Albert) in how to sound like a proper heterosexual man:

Armand: Al, you old son of a bitch! How ya doin? How do you feel about that call today? I mean the Dolphins! Fourth-and-three play on their 30 yard line with only 34 seconds to go!

Albert: How do you think I feel? Betrayed, bewildered...

Wrong response?

SC dog is smartest in the world!

At left: Chaser the wonder dog, photo by Ken Osburn of The Greenville News.


Mr Daisy's late Uncle Cecil had the ability to train dogs to do all kinds of tricks. He liked to hunt, so he preferred hounds, especially beagles. One beagle had been his favorite, the smartest dog in the world, he said. There was a large painted portrait of the late beagle on his wall. "I loved that dog," he would say wistfully, showing the picture to visitors.

The best trick the dog did (I regret I can't remember the pooch's name) was pick up lettered blocks BY LETTER. Uncle Cecil would keep the blocks in a little bag, and then spread them out on the floor as the dog sat obediently and waited. He would scatter and arrange the lettered wooden blocks, and then, tell the dog to pick up the letter....B!

And the dog did.

Everyone was amazed.

Uncle Cecil would gather up the blocks in the bag and do it over and over, spilling the blocks onto the floor as the dog watched. He would spread the blocks out carefully again, then...F! (He changed the letter each time, which was the really incredible thing.)

And the dog picked up F.

There was never any rhyme or reason to the letters chosen; it was never the same letter every time. People couldn't believe a dog was so smart. They came from miles around to see Uncle Cecil's ultra-smart dog.

Can you guess the trick?

I thought of Uncle Cecil's dog when I heard about Chaser, the smartest dog in upstate South Carolina, maybe the world. He will be profiled on the PBS show NOVA (on February 9th), since he has learned 1000+ words, more than any dog on record. He has over 1000 toys, all with different names, and when he is asked to fetch them by name, he does.

Okay, Uncle Cecil made me skeptical, so I will have to watch NOVA and see if this is for real.

From the GREENVILLE NEWS:

It’s a scientific record.

Chaser is top dog in the current issue of the scientific journal “Behavioural Processes,” as noted in the Christmas Day edition of “The New Scientist,” and will be featured in a Feb. 9 NOVA documentary on PBS television.

Soon after [retired Wofford College psychology professor John] Pilley brought Chaser home as an 8-week-old puppy, he read an article by German researchers about a border collie that could understand 200 words. Pilley took that as a challenge.

“Border collies, because of their history of listening to the master and keeping their eyes simultaneously on the herd, may be especially prepared to learn language,” Pilley said.

Pilley and Alliston Reid, a Wofford psychology professor, with the help of some students, began three years of research to gain new insight into the intellect of border collies.

“These dogs can understand,” Reid said. “If you own a dog, you know the dog has emotions and is an intelligent being.”

In controlled experiments, Chaser demonstrated that she could remember each of her 1,022 toys by name. With that number, the two psychologists — who had to write the name on each toy to remember them all — decided there probably was no upper limit to what Chaser could learn.

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Here is the trick:

Uncle Cecil had no reason to put the blocks in a bag. Also, he would do the trick over and over, but only after putting the blocks in a bag and repeating the whole ritual. He never asked the dog to pick up two lettered blocks IN A ROW. Even so, no one ever guessed his secret.

He would carefully spread the blocks on the floor... and it was always the last block he touched.

Sometimes, Uncle Cecil would touch one just at the last second, almost as an "afterthought" to try and fool him, but the dog always did the trick correctly. He always knew which block he was supposed to pick up, but waited to be "told". Uncle Cecil would tell him to pick up the last one he touched (A! P! M!)--and only then, would he pick up the correct wooden block. The dog greatly enjoyed all the laughter, applause and attention, wagging his tail enthusiastically; he loved doing the blocks trick!

Nobody ever figured it out. Uncle Cecil did not tell the secret until after his beloved canine friend had passed on.

He said he could not bear to teach the trick to another dog.

Old movie musings, part 8723

Mr Daisy is watching Fate Is the Hunter (1964) on Turner Classic Movies, featuring the very beautiful and talented Nancy Kwan. (at left, on the cover of LIFE MAGAZINE)

Kwan first hit the big time co-starring with William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960), a movie I admit I loved as a little girl. (Yes, we all freely consumed racism and sexism with our breakfast cereal, didn't we?)

One of my favorite blogs, Restructure!, once addressed that signature "Chinese" riff that always pops up in old movies like Suzie Wong. Really a great post, and I just thought of it, so decided to link it now (better late than never!). Short version (but read it all): the little tune is a western invention. Who knew? I had always assumed it was from a real song, possibly a Chinese nursery rhyme (or equivalent):

This riff [click on link to hear sound file] appears in orientalist American and British pop songs like “Kung Fu Fighting” (1974) and “Turning Japanese” (1980). However, the “proto-cliché” or rhythmic pattern of “da-da-da-da, da da, da da, daaah!” originated in the 1800s, and has since been ubiquitous in pop culture to signify (and other) Asian culture or Asian people.

As I said in the comments of the post, my grandmother had an old music-box with a "china doll" figure that spun around, as a variation of the tune played. I was surprised to learn it was a westernized fake.

This in turn reminded me of the first record by Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra back in 1978, in which they made various "American sounds" (including a song that sounded like the well-known Marlboro cigarette commercial from the 60s). They imitated raucous American laughter, doing impersonations of white American male haw-haw-hawing. I was jarred by it and wondered if that was how Americans sounded to Asians? (I always wonder about stereotypes of Americans in other places.)

~*~

My blog has been linked again (oh goody!), but the comments are so uniformly hostile and negative, I've decided not to go back and read the rest of them. Sorry kids, grandma is sitting this one out.

Self-preservation in Blogdonia! I am learning, at long last. :)

Deadheading

When the blue meanies in Blogdonia get nasty with me, they make fun of my official Blogdonia name. :(

Airhead, Deadbrain, etc. "Your name is perfect!" they like to sneer at me. *sigh*

And so, my first short post for the new year (getting in shape for my new blog-habits, shorter posts! more often!) will be to EXPLAIN "Deadhead" (noun) and "Deadheading" (verb).

Deadhead (noun): Fan of the Grateful Dead. (whom I hope need no introduction!)

Deadheading (aviation):

term used for a return flight made by a commercial aircraft without any cargo or paying passengers on board.

By extension, a member of an airline's flight staff carried free of charge but not working is known as a deadhead. This most often happens when airline crew are located in the wrong place and need to travel to take up their duties. This is also known as 'positioning.'

Deadheading (gardening):

refers to the removal of dead or spent flowers either to encourage more flowering or to improve the general appearance of the plant. Most annuals and many perennials will continue to bloom throughout the growing season if deadheaded. Rudbeckia and Echinacea are good examples of perennials that benefit from deadheading.

Deadheading (railroads):

when a crew is transported from one terminal to another, or needs to be transported to pick up a train. When deadheading they may travel by train or auto.

It also refers to the empty, non-revenue-generating movement of a passenger train to a station or yard as required by the schedule. These moves are usually performed to position the equipment and crews for an ensuing, scheduled revenue (passenger-carrying) run.

I like all those definitions!

Admittedly, the floral reference is especially appropriate for me right now; we need to prune the tops of flowers to make the overall plant stronger. Indeed, we certainly do! The roots also benefit from generous deadheading. And what a coincidence, that I am in the process of doing this in my own life.

The name is still accurate and always will be.

Happy New Year, everyone!