Saturday Odds & Sods: In The Midnight Hour

Max Schreck as Nosferatu.

It’s been chilly the last few days in New Orleans; not Vermont or Minnesota chilly but it will do. Of course, we were subjected to a helluva storm before things cooled off. Cool air hitting muggy air tends to do that. The light show accompanying the storm would have been spectacular if it wasn’t so scary. I jumped a few time in response, but we didn’t lose power. It had to happen.

This week’s theme song was written by Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper in 1965. It became a monster hit on both the R&B and pop charts shortly thereafter. It remains a classic as well as perfect for this feature, which goes live every Saturday at midnight.

We have three versions of In The Midnight Hour for your listening pleasure: the Pickett original as well as covers by The Jam and Roxy Music.

Now we’ve that waited til the midnight hour, let’s jump to the break. I suspect more music awaits us on the other side. Go ahead and jump.

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Saturday Odds & Sods: Art For Art’s Sake

Ambiguous Figures by Max Ernst.

There are rumors of a cold front later this morning. It’s really a cool front but cold front is the technical term and I’m a stickler for something or other. I’m just looking forward to not running the air-conditioner.

We’ve been talking Carnival in New Orleans. We all want it to happen but it’s unclear when it will be safe to cavort in the streets with strangers. Perhaps we should consult with Laurence Olivier’s character in Marathon Man:

Is It Safe Dustin Hoffman GIF by Top 100 Movie Quotes of All Time - Find & Share on GIPHY

Beats the hell outta me, Larry.

The City is allowing the annual Halloween parade for tourists to roll. It’s called the Krewe of Boo and this year it’s going to serve as an experiment into public gatherings. Contact tracing will be involved. If things go well, the chances of Carnival 2022 happening increase. If not, stay tuned.

This week’s theme song was written by Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart for 10cc’s 1975 album, How Dare You. That’s what Dustin Hoffman should have said to Olivier.

Here’s Art For Art’s Sake, money for God’s sake:

Graham Gouldman trivia time. He also wrote this wildly successful Hollies hit:

Let’s pick up our umbrellas and jump to the break.

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Saturday Odds & Sods: Thru and Thru

Target by Jasper Johns.

It’s fall in most places, but summer is tenacious in New Orleans. We had our annual autumnal tease last weekend. It was a good thing because Dr. A and I masked up and went to an outdoor wedding last Saturday. It was an interesting mixture of cultures: the groom was Egyptian-American, the bride from Monroe in North Louisiana. As a guest the important thing was that the food was good and there was an open bar.

I haven’t mentioned my head injury since the destapling. It’s healing so well that I barely have a scar. Oh well, what the hell.

This week’s theme song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for the Rolling Stones’ 1994 album Voodoo Lounge. It’s pure Keith; one of his best songs. David Chase certainly thinks so: it was featured in the season-2 finale of The Sopranos.

We have 3 versions of Thru and Thru for your listening pleasure: the studio original, the Stones live, and The Sopranos edit.

Sopranos aficionados will recall that that was the hallucinatory episode in which Big Pussy not only met his maker, but appeared to Tony as a talking fish.

Speaking of fishy songs:

Now that we’re through with fish, let’s jump to the break.

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We Don’t Need Another Hero

Marvel's Avengers

 

A couple of weeks ago I changed my cell phone plan which these days means I get access to more of the interconnected corporate hegemony being put out into the cultural zeitgeist these days. In this case I now have access to Disney Plus, or Disney + as the branding bros would have it.

I really couldn’t have cared less about getting Disney + as I am beyond the age of having children who would watch cartoons and not yet to the point of having grandkids who would. But since Disney has been buying up intellectual property as if they couldn’t possibly come up with something themselves (and yes that is a dig at how Disney has treated their creative “partners”) having the network has given me a chance to take a gander at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that I’ve heard so much about.

I have a special fondness for Marvel comic books. Back in the day when a 25 cent weekly allowance was enough for two comics and three pieces of penny candy, I bucked the trends and fanboyed for Marvel over D.C. Comics. Frankly I didn’t understand why my friends didn’t favor The Fantastic Four over Superman or Spiderman over Batman. I mean, we lived in New York, the Marvel characters protected New York, why would you favor some guy from another planet who lived in a made up city called Metropolis over someone protecting YOU in the very real city where you lived? And really, this guy puts on a pair of glasses and nobody recognizes him? At least Iron Man had a metal helmet covering his entire head so of course you couldn’t know it was Tony Stark.

But times passes and my magazine reading advanced from comic books to Mad Magazine to the National Lampoon and then out into adulthood. Yeah, I went to see Christopher Reeve as Superman and Michael Keaton as Batman, but those were one off experiences that were not repeated for the numerous sequels. By the time of the reimagining of Batman by Christopher Nolan, superhero movies were out of my flightpath. In fact I became that guy who went to see Cosmopolis at some Hellplaza 64 screen monstrosity and complained to the management that the walls are so thin I could hear the cheering for The Dark Knight Rises.

Damn kids.

Thus I have not seen in their entirety any of the twenty-five or so movies that have made zillions of dollars and have audiences salivating for more. I don’t know Chris Evans from Chris Pine. I’ve been told they are both captains, but of what I can’t remember. Scrolling through the list of Marvel films available on the network I get lost trying to remember if Loki is a villain, a hero, a god, a spaceman, or just whatever the hell he really is. Apparently there are multiple universes in which there are multiple Spidermen, women, dogs, cats, and taxi cab drivers. And there are guardians of the galaxy and one of them is the shoeshine guy from Parks and Rec?

And to think one of the reasons my childhood friends didn’t like the Marvel comics was that they were too complex.

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