Spitball Army

(photo: spitballarmy.com)

This photograph was taken at the Boston Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade, during an outdoor shoot for the film Yes, Giorgio, in June of 1981.  The gathered crowd waited all day for a free concert given by the film’s star and the Boston Pops, in exchange for their services as stand-ins for a real live opera-loving audience.

Yes, Giorgio was released to theaters in 1982 and starred Luciano Pavarotti as – what else?! – an opera singer.  The film co-starred Kathryn Harold as the “love interest,” and Eddie Albert.

I welcome any and all ideas you may have for captions.

I will be the first to admit (because no one else can do it for me) that I resisted spending even the smallest amount of time listening to Mason Jennings recordings for several years.  The reason, simply, was that I was under the impression that he was part of the “contemporary Christian” musical movement.  I was avoiding him for the same reasons that I avoided Steven Curtis Chapman, Caedmon’s Call, Third Day, or any of an embarassingly large number of artists whose work seems to put music second to the “message.”

I will admit that, in this case, I made a mistake.

Mason Jennings, as I view him now, is one of a smaller group of artists – Sufjan Stevens, among them – who aim to create an art that fuses music, poetry, and performance technique into a vibrant whole.  That his, and their, religious proclivities flavor the work is quite different than any of them attempting to shove God through the listeners’ ears into their throats.  Jennings’ comfort with his spiritual views, as they appear in his songs, is, in fact, refreshingly human and endearing.

I came slowly to Boneclouds, Jennings’ 2006 album.  His record label proposed using “If You Need A Reason” on that year’s Laser’s Edge CD sampler.  I had an opportunity to say, “No thanks, he’s just too Christian,” and I had an option to display a modicum of professionalism and maturity.  Guess which road I chose to travel…  Then, during our months-long promotional period, I had many chances to listen to Boneclouds in its entirety.  I found it to be a “grower.”  It became one of my go-to discs when I wanted something fresh to listen to.  I eventually started listening to it in my truck.

Last year’s soundtrack to the Todd Haynes film I’m Not There featured two Bob Dylan covers by Jennings (“The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”) that were among the highlights of the two-disc set.  So it was with excitement that I heard the news about a new Mason Jennings album.  I bought In The Ever immediately, no coaxing required.

One of the things about the performances on the new CD that I find engaging is also a characteristic of Jennings’ singing that previously annoyed me: scooping.  Scooping is the style of getting to a musical note not by landing solidly on it, but by sliding up or down the scale toward it.  Jennings does this all of the time, so much so that after a while it begins to sound natural and conversational.  I’ve accepted it and grown to enjoy it, to the point that whenever I hear him singing I feel that he is, well, talking to me.  It’s a vocal twist that Jonathan Richman has used for his entire career and, aside from the fact that Jonathan doesn’t sell out sports arenas, it hasn’t hurt his career one bit.

Mason Jennings and Jonathan Richman: separated at birth?  You decide:
[audio:Mason_Jennings___Your_New_Man.mp3]
“Your New Man,” from In The Ever (2008)
Now I’ve begun wondering if Mason Jennings speaks that way, too.  Jonathan’s singing and speaking voices are nearly identical.  To wit:
[audio:Jonathan_Richman___Monologue_About_Bermuda_(excerpt).mp3]
excerpt from “Monologue About Bermuda” by Jonathan Richman (1991)

Lyrically, Jennings’ songs have an element of childlike wonder to them.
[audio:Mason_Jennings___Moon_Sailing_on_the_Water.mp3]
“Moon Sailing on the Water,” from Boneclouds (2006)

But one of the really intriguing features of Jennings’ writing is how many of his lyrics exist as simultaneous references to both God and people.  This passage from In The Ever‘s “Never Knew Your Name”:

We fell in love in the woods,
In the Hollywood Hills,
In the death of a friend,
In the bottles and pills,
Through war and at peace I’ve felt you the same.
I’ve been loving you forever, but I never knew your name.

That lyric neatly dovetails into “I Love You And Buddha Too,” in which Jennings pleads the case for a universal spirituality, aided by a rollicking piano-driven beat and Jack Johnson’s backing vocals.

Which is not to say that Jennings would be nothing without his God connection.  “Memphis, Tennessee” is a lively evocation of Freewheelin’-era Bob Dylan, with its guitar and harmonica accompaniment framing Dylanesque lines like “Rain outside my window / Rain inside my head / Loneliness inside my heart / Emptiness in my bed, Girl, emptiness in my bed.”  Or the poetic declamations of “In Your City”:

When I got off the bus, it was six in the evening
Snow was blowing across the intersection
For the last six hours I’ve been lost in the book
So it took me a second to remember what I was doing
Standing in the middle of a bustling sidewalk
Under barren branches silhouetted by streetlamps
I reached into my overcoat pocket
And brought out a letter with your address on it.

Lovely and simple, and framed, elegantly, by a single piano.  Did I mention that Jennings plays practically ever instrument on the new record?  Color me impressed.

My mother tells me that at about the time of my birth, the city of Oceanside began construction on the South Oceanside municipal swimming pool, right next door to our house.  She was irritated by the noise, worried that the digging, banging and generally elevated noise level would constantly disturb the sleep of her newborn baby.   You could reach the new construction if you walked the two car lengths from our front door to the street, and then walked across the asphalt cul de sac (we were the last house on the street).  My cousin Margy was born two months before me, and lived right around the corner – her family’s house backed up to the pool dig.  I can’t imagine that it was much quieter over there.

My sister Tricia, Gypsy (our neighbor’s Weimaraner) and me, in our front yard, 1962.
That’s the South Oceanside pool behind the tall chain link fence.
Candyland is on the other side of the wooden fence (and check out that cactus garden!).

Wedged between our house and the pool was the neighborhood playground.  We spent a lot of time there, as it was practically an annex to our yard. At the entrance to the playground was a small slide that had an elephant painted on each side so, as you climbed up the ladder on the back of the slide, you could imagine climbing up the back of the animal and then sliding down its trunk. Someone once painted a peanut at the bottom of the slide, just out of reach of the elephant’s trunk.  The swings were great, and there were a lot of them.  In one corner of the park, there was a castle that was really just a tall slide with a raised platform and a cover, with an enclosed area underneath.  The big kids ruled this area.  There was a banner-shaped sign over the entrance of the playground that said “Candyland” or “Candy Cane Park” and, indeed, it was the neighborhood land of, if not candy, play and sweet memories.

I had a recurring dream when I was a kid that I was crawling up the monkey bars at Candyland.  I’d get to the crest of the arch and find that I could not move forward or backward.  The only direction to go was down, through a square opening in the bars, to a hard landing on the dusty brown dirt.  I would fall, and as in all of my falling dreams – and I remember having a good number of these growing up – I never actually hit the bottom.  I’d just fall, spinning, like Jimmy Stewart being sucked into the spiraling vortex in Vertigo, and wake up with a start or a gasp.

I never had such terrifying subconscious preoccupations with the pool.

I was never aware of a day without both the pool and the playground in my young life. Swimming lessons in the morning were followed by an hour or two on the monkey bars, which were followed by splashing and diving at the pool which, in turn, led to swinging and teeter-tottering into the twilight hours. But for me, ultimately, the emphasis was on the happenings at the swimming pool.  I was a water baby.

All of my basic swimming lessons took place at that South Oceanside pool.  I learned how to swim under water.  I was introduced to lap swimming.  I learned how to swim competitively, and swam my first meets at that pool.  I learned why one doesn’t eat an hour before swimming by getting my first case of stomach cramps there.  I got my first Red Cross life-saving certification there, which was a really big deal at the time.  My sisters swam in the annual synchronized swimming program at that pool, and I got to hand out the programs to the attending crowd.

The deck around the pool, and the concrete floor in the showers and entrance building, were textured to prevent human slippage.  On my young feet, these were some of the most uncomfortable and painful walking surfaces I had ever encountered.  On really hot days, I had the following walking obstacle course to overcome if I wanted to get into the pool: hot, black asphalt cul-de-sac in front of our house, leading to dirt pathway riddled with pea-sized pebbles, followed by another long stretch of asphalt that led to the parking lot at the front of the pool, into the front door of the entrance building to surrender your belongings in exchange for a giant metal safety pin with a number stamped into it, then a rest before…a mad dash across the sharp concrete deck and a splash into the water.  The last step was in strict violation of the “Walk, Don’t Run” deck policy, but what are you going to do when you’re a pain-intolerant kid, dying for a swim?  Of course, I could have easily avoided all of that foot pain by taking the shorter route over grass, between the pool and Candyland, and I’m sure I frequently did, but it’s the other route that is stuck in my head…

There were two lifeguards there named Ray.  They were both blond.  (This was California, after all!)  One of the Rays was my instructor when I took my life-saving course and, for one of the exercises, it was his duty to portray a drowning man as realistically as he possibly could.  If you’ve never tried to safely transport a disoriented, flailing, water-logged swimmer, two or three times your size, from the center of the deep end of the pool to the side, I can tell you that it is no picnic.  And Ray was clearly trying to make it difficult.  I don’t think that being a regular fixture at the pool meant that I got an easy pass on these tests.  Quite to the contrary, Ray was going to make every effort to see that I had a tough go of it, and that I got my passing mark honestly.  After all, he – or the other Ray – had taught these classes to every kid in my family, so his legacy was on the line.  After flipping out of my grip on the first “drowning man” attempt and nearly drowning me, Ray eventually got saved – thank you very much – and I got my passing grade.

These days I swim crawl – the Australian Crawl – exclusively.  When I was a kid, and learning the three main swimming strokes (crawl, backstroke and breaststroke), I had a problem with the breaststroke kick that I never could overcome.  My left leg and foot just would not kick in unison with my right.  It would do a flop-kick, and Ray worked with me endlessly to try to correct it.  I was reminded of this recently, when I attempted to swim the breaststroke at my local pool.  There was the old left foot flop-kick.  All of a sudden, I was a little boy at the South Oceanside swimming pool again, frustrated by my inability to be perfect.  The difference between then and now, however, is that in a 48-year-old man the breaststoke flop-kick looks suspiciously like a symptom of a cerebral hemorrhage.  I stopped flop-kicking and worked on my flip turn…

Oh, the dreaded flip turn.

Sign over the swimsuit water extractor in the men’s locker room,
Downtown Branch of Birmingham YMCA

Step #3:
Hold down FIRMLY on lid for several seconds using the heel and toe of a ladies’ high-heeled shoe (shoe not provided).

Dear Dad,

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and then Father’s Day just popped up and I find myself thinking about you even more.

I’m trying to do renovation work on my house, and my consistent guidepost is: How would Dad tackle this problem?  That fence that you built behind my property here got knocked down in a storm several years back – trees from the neighbor’s yard fell and smashed it to bits – and the boards that I put up as replacements have already rotted through.  It’s as humid here as ever, even with the drought that we had last year.  I’ve started replacing the fence a section or two at a time, and am putting in a retaining wall behind it, so the wood doesn’t rot as quickly the next time.  That seems to be a solution of which you would have approved.

I remember when you were building that fence, we used to watch the woman who lived on the corner walk her dog up the alley and let it take a dump right behind my house.  She’d just stand there watching it, smoking a cigarette.  You eventually got talking with her, and she coincidentally stopped using my backyard as her dog’s potty.  Well, she died last year, after battling on and off again with cancer.  We had become friendly.  She used to ask about you all the time.

You would really like the new garage I had built about three years ago.  It was built on the same plot that the old one was on, but I added an office as a second level.  Mom gave me a red rolling tool cabinet like the one you had, as a Christmas present year before last.  I am slowly filling it with tools as I find a use for them and buy them (from Sears, of course!).  You would find plenty of stuff to keep you occupied out in my garage.  Your toolshed and garage behind our house on Laurel Road and your house in Vista were your favorite places to hang out, think things over, and “fart around,” as we used to say.  I find that I spend at least as much time in my garage here, and its office, as I do in the main house.  Guess I picked that habit up from you.

Closed the store at the end of last year.  People just weren’t buying Buck Owens and Merle Haggard CDs like they used to.  And all of the old Johnny Rodriguez albums have gone out of print.  There are a hell of a lot of records being released every week, but the ratio of really worthwhile ones to really bad ones has essentially inverted since I was a kid, or even since I had gotten into music, as business, nearly 20 years ago.  I find I’m mainly listening to artists from my childhood, high school and college days now.  As I get older I find that I agree with what you used to say, that the old stuff is always the best.  For a multitude of reasons, and in a multitude of situations.

I was digging through my spare bedroom this afternoon, looking for a box to mail a DVD package in.  I came across four boxes containing old photographs, mainly pictures from Massachusetts, when I was using my camera a lot.  In the last box, I found several envelopes of photo negatives, labelled with the year and the family photo album that the pictures were in (like “Book #2”).  I had completely forgotten that I had these – Mom had given them to me years ago with a light box, and I was going to organize them and reprint as many as I could.  In keeping with my usual pattern of action, the project never got off the ground.

Among the envelopes in this box, I found this photograph of you:

What a badass!  You were 17 years old there.  Mom hadn’t even met you yet.  I’m looking at the shadows, but there isn’t one of the person who is taking the picture.  Was it Uncle Ernie?  I am going to see him next month – I’ll make him a copy of this picture and ask him to tell me what he remembers about that cholo who forgot to button his jeans.

While I’m thinking about it, I wanted to ask you about a tiny picture that I found at your house the week after you passed away.  When was it taken?  Looks like you were even younger in this picture than in the one above.  Maybe you were in grade school.  The actual photograph is about the size of my thumbnail.  I keep it in my wallet, so it goes with me everywhere.

Anyway, I was sitting in the spare bedroom looking at all of these negatives.  What a treasure of memories!  I was thinking about how ridiculously expensive it would be to get them all printed.  Then, I remembered…I remembered that my new scanner can scan negatives!  I took an envelope of them up to the garage (2nd floor) and found out that the scanner is only equipped to scan negatives that are in a strip.  These that I just unearthed are square, and about twice as wide.  I discovered that with a little manipulation I could scan a rectangular section of these negatives, so I tried some.

This one was taken in our backyard on Laguna Street.  There are four generations of our family in this picture!  And look at Tricia, what a wonderful smile.  Or maybe that’s just a mischievous grin on her face as she plans her next project, like taunting me with an ice cream cone.

Yes, like that.  I know where she learned that trick.  From you!  The same guy that I learned my smart-aleck moves from.  Like chatting up the waitress or the girl behind the register in the grocery store check-out lane.  Whenever I find myself doing that or terrorizing someone with a friendly taunt, I think of you, my father, who taught me how to be a wise-ass.  And how to do it confidently.

Every time I see an Australian Shepherd.  Every time I see a picture of Martha Stewart or hear her name (MARFA!).  Every time I go out to the garage and see that red tool cabinet on wheels.  Every time I have to re-measure and re-cut a piece of wood (“Measure twice, cut once!”).  Whenever I pick up a razor to shave my face.  Every time I tell someone the story about the last one into the pool not getting the five dollars.  Every time I see a can of Coors beer.  Or a Ford.  Or whenever I eat Mexican food with a scoop ripped from a flour tortilla.  You’re still hanging around at all of these times, and practically every day of the year.

But today gets your name.

Thanks, Dad.  I miss you.

Love, Fofo

6-14-43
Monday  7:30 p.m.

Dearest Honey:

I love you very much, Beloved – so very much – and lots more today – yes, sir, because today I received four swell-elegant letters from my Wonderful One – you, Darling!  The one written on April 30, I couldn’t get a whole lot of because this is the first time any of your letters have been cut out by the censor; otherwise the three others were perfect.  One even had a little insect sealed under the envelope flap – that little bug traveled a long way!  Thanks, Sweetheart, for the check of $135.00 No. 1,026 – 53-393.  I’ll put it right into some bonds.  Darling, I’m so glad and happy that you’re feeling so well and happy too.  Bet that Q______? bird stew was good.  Is there anything that you might like to have sent to you?  I’m right here to send it, and will be more than glad to do what I can.  If you thought cookies might arrive in good condition, I’d love (I mean like) to bake some for you.  Anyway, I still have all the love in the world left for you, Sweet.

Did our washing today.  It was really a good day for it too, as the sun shone and it was very windy.  After we finished that, we dug a flower bed and planted marigolds, petunias, zinnias, more Calif. flowers, and then a mixed package.  We have lots of shrubbery in front of the house, and also did a lot of digging up around that; until the rain finally sent us indoors.  I do enjoy working in the yard, but know how much more I would enjoy it too, if it were only yours and mine – our own home.  Some day, our dreams will come true – and what happiness!  We’ll really appreciate everything too, and how I’ll appreciate you, and never take you just for granted – I never have and don’t ever expect to – for I love you too much.

We have some lovely iris in bloom on the side and in the back of the house.  Our yard is very pretty with very green grass, shrubbery, and flowers.  Did I tell you about the bird nest we have in our garage?  It’s just a sparrow’s nest, but it is fun to go in there and hear the birds chirping and peeping.  Guess there must be a whole family in there.  The birds fly in thru a crack above the door, and believe they must be having a party to-night as noticed several going in.

Say, one really can get a lot on these V mails when typing.  I’m almost running out of material.  I want to tell you though that we do have a very lovely neighbor, Mrs. Johnson.  Brought us a coffee cake the first day we moved in, and to-night brought us some biscuits; so I returned her dish with some chocolate pie I made today; explaining I’d like to return her favor.  A neighbor like that is really a friend indeed.  She has a son in the service.

Well, if it isn’t raining again – must be raining here just about as much as where you are. – just so you change into dry clothes and keep yourself from getting chilly, Honey, I won’t worry, and I know you do and will take good care of yourself.  You’re very alert and intelligent too and know how to protect yourself – but sometimes one can’t be too careful.  I do care so much for you and long for you day in and day out and miss you more than I can ever say.

With all my love,
Bev

This is the last letter in this string of correspondence that is currently in my possession.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about Beverly Anderson and her family’s home-front adventures in World War Two Minnesota.

June 13, 1943

Dear Babe,

My first Sunday home and I’m having a writing spree.  Uncle Pete got your letter yesterday, and were we glad to hear from you.  Haven’t you gotten any of my letters yet?  I have had only one from you written March 9 and Ted received your good wishes.

The big day is getting closer now.  Think it is going to be this week, Thursday.  I got home last Tues. and have been down home every night helping Ted get ready.  I expect he will give you a line up on the remodeling.  It looks swell.  Tore out the old chimney and brought the stairway down into the living room – red dish steps with white risers.  All the woodwork is finished and new linoleum on the kitchen.  Has stove but no ice box.  The furniture is here except for the rugs.  I’m glad for them.

I was shocked when I saw Uncle Pete but he looks better to me already, maybe I’m getting used to him.  He uses his arm pretty well but it is quite stiff yet – that is in reaching his face.  Auntie is just the same as usual.

I came home by way of Fargo.  Les and Dee are fine.  Les is working just as hard as usual.  They haven’t decided to move yet.

I’m glad you are feeling fine and enjoying the countryside that you are in.  Take good care of yourself and write as often as you can.

Love,
Judy

Bob Hope in My Favorite Brunette (1947)

Bob Hope, on the run from bad guy Peter Lorre, and with a flat tire, attempts to gain entry into an apartment building using a new trick.  The key bit is at 1:30 to 2:30.

Absolute Wilson (2006), directed by Katharina Otto-Bernstein:
This was an interesting and workmanlike documentary, entertaining to me as I have seen a handful of Wilson’s productions. For the uninitiated, however, it is primarily a tease, as there is not nearly enough stage footage relative to the amount of interview footage (which, while interesting, is merely incidental to the staged works). The footage from Einstein on the Beach and The Civil Wars was fascinating, but there should have been more – perhaps even separate films on each production. There is no mention at all of Wilson’s collaborations at the American Repertory Theatre.

Paper Clips (2004), directed by Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab:
I was not prepared for the emotional wallop contained in this seemingly simple documentary about Tennessee middle school students studying the Holocaust. Their project begins with the simple collection of 6 million paper clips (a Norwegian symbol of solidarity with victims of Nazi persecution), and ends a couple of years later with those Appalachian students acting as teachers of Holocaust history, and lessons of tolerance, to visitors in their small town. Engaging, beautifully filmed, and unexpectedly affecting.