Day At The Movies

 Today was one of those days where if you liked movies and you were a guy, you were like a pig is shit.  On TCM, it started at 11:30 AM CT with "The Magnificent Seven" followed by "Maverick" then "The Great Escape." That was just in the afternoon.  This evening is "Bullitt" followed by "The French Connection" then "Bonnie and Clyde."  I own the "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape", but it sure was fun to watch them both together.  Late in the evening tomorrow, they are showing the movie "On The Beach."  This is the one that stirred the soul of Bonnie Dobson to pen the immortal "(Walk Me Out In The) Morning Dew."

Sunday is the Super Bowl, and for the those who could careless about the game, they created the super expensive yet funny commercials.  Lest we forget what traspired from just a few years ago.  I offer the ten best commercials from 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Music for today:

Grateful Dead
February 9, 1973
Maples Pavilion
Sanford University
Palo Alto, CA
listen here

Grateful Dead
February 15, 1973
Dane County Coliseum
Madison. WI
listen here

Grateful Dead
February 17, 1973
St. Paul Auditorum
St. Paul, MN
listen here

Give In To Absolute Viewing Pleasure

I went shopping today and stimulated the economy.  I went ahead and got a 26 inch widescreen HDTV that I am using as a monitor.  I also bought a Blue-Ray player as well.  I didn't know movie to get first since I had  gotten most of the new releases already.  I loooked on the rack for new releases, and much to my surprise, there was the movie for me.  It is "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" by Terry Gilliam. The first movie should have a lasting impact, and that one certainly has it.  I read the book years ago.  I remember waiting at a bus stop reading the book.  I forget which part it was that I found incredibly funny, but I burst out in laughter to the point where everyone took a step in the opposite direction from me.  They thought I had lost it or something.  It's sad when something dangerously humorous is taken completely out of context by an unsuspecting public.

Music for today:

Jethro Tull
January 21, 1972
Grugahalle
Essen, Germany

Old & In The Way
March 2, 1973
Record Plant
Sausalito, CA

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
March 7, 1973
Keystone
Berkeley, CA

Recovery From Fun

It is a curse of mine in getting old.  The weight that I bear (no pun intended) has put a strain on my back, knees and feet.  With al the fun that I had last night,  I went to bed a very sore person.  I am glad I didn't have to work today.  It  gives me that time to rest and patch my bones.  It also gives me more reason to lose the weight.  I need to focus more on what it takes to to have the lapband surgery.  I have to change my entire way of eating.  When I lose the weight, my knees and feet won't hurt so bad.  I can then boogie like a young person, or a younger version of this old person.  I have to keep in mind this body image.

On TCM (Turner Classic Movies), the pick for late tonight is "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (11:00 CT/ Midnight ET).  On Friday, The entire prime time lineup is good. "True Grit" (7:00 CT/ 8:00 ET); "The Shootist" (9:15 CT/10:15 ET);  "Lady Sings The Blues" (11:00 CT/ Midnight ET); and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" (1:30 AM CT/2:30 AM ET).  I took a peek ahead to Saturday's schedule, and I feel I will doing a whole day of couch surfing.  Stating at 11:30 Am CT, the lineup is solid gold. Please take a look for yourself.

Music for today:

I am finishing up the Jackie Greene vine.

Jackie Greene
July 22, 2006
Folsom Community Center
Folsom, CA
listen here

Jackie Greene
May 27, 2005
KFOG Free Concert @ Tower Records Parking Lot
San Francisco, CA
listen here

Jackie Greene
August 24, 2006
Ravinia
Highland Park, IL

Jackie Greene
August 25, 2006
DeVry University Grounds
Chicago, IL
listen here

Jackie Greene
September 6, 2007
Palm's Playhouse
Winters, CA

Cosmic Tumblers

A couple of weeks ago, I put together a gift for a friend.  I got paid back in kind tonight.  Let me explain if I can.  The gift which I talked about earlier was both Rocking The Rhein and Hundred Year Hall by the Grateful Dead.  I put the rest of the Europe 72 tour on 5 DVDs as data files.  This would complete the entire tour as a gift.  After I sent it out, I asked to see it if it arrived.  During my conversation with this friend, I was informed that their favorite disc was Europe 72.  I picked correctly.  A week went by and I recieved a phone call from this friend thanking me for these gifts.  They had listened to the Rocking The Rhein (4/24/72) show in their car, and they were blown away.  They thought that the music was far superior to that of the orignal mix on Europe 72.  February 3 is the actual birthdate of this friend, and as a last minute thing, I went to go see Dark Star Orchestra play in Minneapolis.  They played at the Varsity Theater near the University of Minnesota campus.  I brought my recording equipment with me, but I had trouble with it from the start.  I gave it a go, but I had to give it up.  I was recording blind which is impossible to do.  I have to face facts that it is time to get a new recorder.  This recorder has been with me from coast to coast.  When the band started to play, the speculations started.  After three tunes, I knew it was a Europe 72 show.  I told one of my fellow tapers that I thought it was the Rocking The Rhein show.  I was dead on.  The cosmic tumblers lined up and gave back to what I had freely given.  I was so excited by this that I had to tell everyone I could.  I told the soundguy.  When I told him about the gift I gave, he was very impressed.  I am disappointed that my rig gave up the ghost, but I have some connections from some of the other tapers here in town for the recording of the show.

Music for today:

Jackie Greene
August 23, 2006
Weesner Amphitheater
Minnesota Zoo
Apple Valley, MN
listen here

Jackie Greene Band (w/Steve Berlin)
April 22, 2006
Fillmore Auditorum
San Francisco, CA
got from a vine a while ago

Happy Groundhog's Day 2010

It's a cold one out there campers. For now on, I will be on repeat cycle until I get it right. By all accounts (this is of course set to the time line of the movie), I could in repeat mode for 300 years.  This blog could get kind of boring yet rather deep.  I can say or do anything.  I could murder the English lanuage and get away with it.  Tonight, I almost forgot of the big premiere of the final season of Lost.  It will be interesting to see what happens because of how they ended last year's season.  They exploded a hydrogen bomb to defuse a massive pocket of time-space energy that caused the plane crash in the very beginning of the show.  The fact that they were jumping through time and repeating the same day are not really that different.  The only things missing are four toed statues and talking dead people.

The 31 Days of Oscar continues on TCM February 3, 2010 with my picks: "The Public Enemy" (9:45  AM CT/ 10:45 AM ET); "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (11:15 AM CT/ 12:15 PM ET); and "The Jungle Book" (1:30 PM CT/ 2:30 PM ET).


For those interested in such things, the 82nd Academy Awards nominees have been posted.

Music for today: 

I am giving the Grateful Dead a break, because I am going to go do the entire year of 1973 upcoming.

The Hackensaw Boys
March 20, 2008
The Hideout
Chicago, IL
listen here

Jackie Greene
July 28, 2007
Weezner Ampitheater
Minnesota Zoo
Apple Valley, MN
listen here (not the same recording that I have)

Jackie Green
January 18, 2006
The Pageant
St. Louis, MO
listen here

Jackie Green
January 14, 2006
Wesley Center
Alamo, CA
listen here

Just Rewards

I am thinking of improving my computer by adding a larger monitor and Blu-ray player.  I am not going to go the Playstation 3 route, since I am not into gaming at all.  My brain is not wired to accept that kind of imput.  I freak out internally. Besides, I have poor eye and hand coodination.  Gaming is a big waste of time for me. I would like to take advantage of the new technology to see movies better.  I am going to do all this AFTER I do some cleaning.  My place needs a good overhaul.  I think that this would be a just reward for some hard work.  I think that things are better if you work for them.  

The continuing movie festival on Turner Classic Movies on cable for Tuesday February 2. 2010 features these picks as my favorites: "The Thin Man" (7:00 CT/8:00 ET), and "Inherit The Wind" (Midnight CT/ 1:00 A.M. ET on 2/3/10).

FYI: Early in the moring, they are showing the movie, "The Dam Busters."  What makes this movie extra special is that it is featured as the background playing on the TV during Pink Floyd's movie "The Wall."  I would recommend it, but I tried to watch it a few years ago and got rather bored with it.  You've got to be crazy got to have a real need to watch it. 

Music for today:

Grateful Dead
December 12, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here

Grateful Dead
December 15, 1972
Long Beach Arena
Long Beach, CA
listen here

Grateful Dead
December 31, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here

Stage and Screen

Many moons ago, I had the theater bug bad.  I remember this teacher I had in junior high school that put on an improvistional play featuring our school.  She was very excited by it all.  Just recently, she was honored as teacher of excellence.  Her fond memory was of this play. At an all school reunion, I had to ask her if she was a hippie before she ended up teaching at this school years back in the early seventies. She admitted to me that she was.  Her vitality and energy was something that I find very common with other hippie women that I know. I didn't do the play, because I was to self-concious of myself.  After I got out of school for the summer, I did try out for a workshop.  I did lights and was in several short skits.  The one that I shined in the part was of Don the burnout  in "High School Anthology."  It is about a guy going through his yearbook, and the characters would come to life.  I played Don so well that it was I knew him my whole life (I do mean whole. The role was actually me several years in the future from where I was at the time.) I was so into character that I utter the most stupid thing ever,"My brother Buzz the Barmaid."  I did other productions while in High School.  My favorite role was of Ed McKeever in "The Solid Gold Cadillac." The movie version will shown in a festival which I will talk about later.

I wanted to be a theater major when I first started college in the fall of 1980.  I took a class called Oral Intrepreation.  One of the assignments was to read dialogue, so I picked a passage from Michael Herr's book "Dispatches." This is the same book mentioned in yesterday's entry.  I found out that my professor was in Viet nam in a Air Cavalary unit.  In order to stay sane, he memorized everything that Shakespeare wrote. 

My dream of theatre died when I sobered up, and I read the book "Audition." There was an line in the book early on that read,"Asking to go into acting is like asking for admission into an insane asylum."  I happened to meet a producer from Broadway while in treatment. He told me of a guy who played Hitler and had to spend alot of time in therapy to get over the role.  This weighed heavy on me.  He said that He could get me a role in a show.  All I would have to do is get my equity card. The only way to to get a equity card is to do an equity show.  They are very hard to get.  I never did it.  I kind of reget it.  A few years later I fould myself in New York State, so I looked him up with the number he had given me.  It was disconnected. Maybe I made the right call on not going into theater after all.

Get your DVRS or Tivos  ready. Turner Classic Movies has their "31 Days of Oscar" movie marathon starting Monday February 1, 2010.  All these movies have either won or have been nominated for Oscars.  There are some great movies to be had.  I will feature what I feel are the best of the day.  Lawrence of Arabia is my pick of the day (On 2/1/2010 @10:00 CT/11:00ET on TCM)

Music for today:

Grateful Dead
December 10, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here

Grateful Dead
December 11, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here