Spitball Army

Leave it to a Brit to capture the community and humanity of our American holiday.  If you’ve ever spent the Thanksgiving holiday away from family, spent the day travelling, or just plopped yourself down like a slug on the sofa all day, there is something for you to identify with in Ray Davies’ “Thanksgiving Day.”  Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

From the wikipedia entry for Thanksgiving:

Abraham Lincoln’s successors as president followed his example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with this tradition. November had five Thursdays that year, and Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. In 1940, in which November had four Thursdays, he declared the third one as Thanksgiving. Although many popular histories state otherwise, he made clear that his plan was to establish it on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one. With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression. At the time, advertising goods for Christmas before Thanksgiving was considered inappropriate.

However, many localities had made a tradition of celebrating on the last Thursday, and since a presidential declaration of Thanksgiving Day was not legally binding, it was widely disregarded. Twenty-three states went along with Roosevelt’s recommendation, 22 did not, and some, like Texas, could not decide and took both weeks as government holidays. Critics termed Roosevelt’s dating of the holiday as “Franksgiving.”

This explains the confused animated turkey at the beginning of yesterday’s Holiday Inn clip.

Bing doesn’t realize all the good fortune right under his nose.  He’s finding it easier to mope around the inn, crooning and feeling sorry for himself.  “You could melt her heart right down to butter…if you’d only turn on the heat,” says Mamie.  You tell him, sister!  At the very least, we viewers get a great song out of his predicament.

The Smothers Brothers were a blast, a blast back to the past. John Pizzarelli, while a talented musician and quite able entertainer, was apparently not who most of the people in attendance had come to see.

Bet you didn’t know that you can have the daily Los Angeles weather announced to you by David Lynch, on camera and straight onto your computer screen, from his California home.

Go to http://davidlynch.com/ and click on the Daily Weather Report button at the bottom of the button array.

Apparently, Lynch takes the weekends off, as today’s report is from Friday the 21st.  “…Blue skies with high wispy coulds, muted golden sunshine, a strong breeze, 70 degrees Fahrenheit right now, 21 Celsius.”  Spoken in that clear, loud voice that we all love.  “WOULD YOU PLEASE ASK THE LADY WITH THE LOG TO SPEAK UP?!”

Today’s New York Times Magazine has a brief interview with Lynch, in which he discusses his weather reportage.

Deborah Solomon: How do you feel about someone watching your films — Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive — on a laptop?

David Lynch: More and more people are seeing the films on computers — lousy sound, lousy picture — and they think they’ve seen the film, but they really haven’t.

Solomon: Because the small screen emphasizes plot over visuals?

Lynch: It’s a pathetic horror story.

Solomon: On the other hand, you do appear on countless computer screens every day, giving a weather report from your home in Los Angeles, on your Web site.

Lynch: People are kind of interested in weather. It’s not artistic. It’s just me sitting there in my painting studio.

Solomon: Who films you?

Lynch: It’s a camera that comes down out of the ceiling.

This morning, friend Mae Robertson e-mailed me a link to a column authored by Mary Chapin Carpenter in The Washington Times.  In her column, Chapin writes about the Liberty Mutual TV commercial that features Hem’s “Better Days,” and draws parallels between the subtle messages of the commercial and the ideology of the current political season, specifically Barack Obama’s oratory at the Democratic National Convention.

The message of this message, then, is not cynical, crassly commercial, nor is it precious or trivial. It brings me directly to what Barack Obama said at his Democratic Convention acceptance speech in Denver. We are our brother’s keeper, our sister’s keeper. We have a responsibility to watch out for one another, to do the right thing. Our better selves will seek out these opportunities because our present circumstances demand it.

This current commercial that Hem has lent their voice to is the latest in a series that they have worked on with Liberty Mutual over the last couple of years.  Everyone of them is a winner, a mini-film, with a consistent message akin to the “pay it forward” philosophy.  For television viewers, the commercials have been difficult to avoid, yet, at least to me and to Mary Chapin Carpenter, they are not wearying (maybe because we both have an admiration for Hem that is strong enough to be professed).  Below is the “carnival” ad:

By the time I pulled this video from YouTube, it had been viewed over a million times.  And that’s not including the multiple versions of it that have probably been viewed as many times each.  But, in case you haven’t seen it yet, this is an interview that Governor Palin gave yesterday at a turkey farm.  I couldn’t tell you a thing she is talking about – my attention was totally captivated by the man slaughtering turkeys in the background, mugging for the camera, looking like an outtake from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Friday night update: David Shuster, filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown, says – tongue-in-cheek, hopefully – that this is the next step in Sarah Palin’s “war on animals.”  LOL

I was left dangling at the end of a recent post, wanting to illustrate a musical description with an audio clip, but not being able to find it.  Many thanks to the overactive online music community for this one:

[audio:8.5_Souvenirs___Tango_Lunatico.mp3]
“Tango Lunatico” (1997), by 8½ Souvenirs

I had said:

8½ Souvenirs were a specialty band, very much like Squirrel Nut Zippers and Pink Martini, who created music rooted in an older idiom, but with a “modern sensibility.”  Pink Martini’s touchstone is lounge music, the Squirrel Nut Zippers were into gypsy jazz, and 8½ Souvenirs leaned heavily on swing and tango.  “Tango Lunatico” was indeed an insane tango number, complete with a wailing, screaming wordless female vocal.  I’ll find that somewhere and post it, ’cause it must be heard to be believed.

From Jon Pareles’ article in the New York Times:

“All I’ve got is precious time,” W. Axl Rose sings in the title song of Guns N’ Roses’ new album, and he must be well aware of how that line sounds now. Mr. Rose, 46, the only remaining original member of Guns N’ Roses, needed 17 years, more than $13 million (as of 2005) and a battalion of musicians, producers and advisers to deliver “Chinese Democracy,” the first album of new Guns N’ Roses songs since 1991. It’s being released on Sunday, with CDs sold exclusively at Best Buy. (In another 21st-century fillip the album’s best song, “Shackler’s Revenge,” appeared first in a video game, Rock Band 2.)

“Chinese Democracy” (Geffen) is the Titanic of rock albums: the ship, not the movie, although like the film it’s a monumental studio production. It’s outsize, lavish, obsessive, technologically advanced and, all too clearly, the end of an era. It’s also a shipwreck, capsized by pretensions and top-heavy production. In its 14 songs there are glimpses of heartfelt ferocity and despair, along with bursts of remarkable musicianship. But they are overwhelmed by countless layers of studio diddling and a tone of curdled self-pity. The album concludes with five bombastic power ballads in a row.

“Chinese Democracy” sounds like a loud last gasp from the reign of the indulged pop star: the kind of musician whose blockbuster early success could once assure loyal audiences, bountiful royalties, escalating ambitions and dangerously open-ended deadlines. The leaner, leakier 21st-century recording business is far less likely to nurture such erratic perfectionists. (Mr. Rose did manage to outpace Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, which re-emerged on tour this year but hasn’t yet released a successor to its 1991 masterpiece, “Loveless.”) The new rock paradigm, a throwback to the 1950s and early 1960s, is to record faster, more cheaply and more often, then head out on tour before the next YouTube sensation distracts potential fans.

“Chinese Democracy” is such an old-school event that at this point no album could easily live up to the pent-up anticipation and fascination. Over the last two decades Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 debut album, “Appetite for Destruction,” has sold 18 million copies in the United States alone. The original band, particularly the guitar team of Slash on lead and Izzy Stradlin on rhythm, collaborated to forge a scrappy combination of glam, punk and metal behind Mr. Rose’s proudly abrasive voice, which could leap from a baritone growl to a fierce screech. Singing about sex, drugs, booze and stardom, Mr. Rose was a rags-to-MTV success story for the 1980s: a self-described abused child from heartland America who got himself out of Indiana and reinvented himself as a full-fledged Hollywood rock star, charismatic and volatile, never pretending to be controllable.

Read the full article here.

From today’s MSNBC.com:

John McCain may have lost the presidential election to Barack Obama, but his campaign seems absolutely determined not to lose to Jackson Browne.

The singer/songwriter sued McCain in August after the Republican candidate for the highest office in the land used his song, “Running on Empty,” in a campaign commercial that targeted Obama’s energy plan. At the time, many didn’t take the legal threat very seriously, but based on two motions filed this week in U.S. District Court in California, the McCain campaign sure does.

Represented by attorney Lincoln Bandlow at Spillane Shaeffer, McCain has filed two 20-page motions.

Read the full story here.