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Another Musical Monday Meme


Yes, the Monday meme’s have been music heavy this month, but bear with me one last Monday and I promise to turn over a new leaf in March.

Favorite songs.

I was a huge Beatle fan in high school. It started with Sgt. Pepper and quickly grew out of control. I even collected UK releases, taking the bus downtown to this indie music store that sold pot paraphenalia in addition to having one of the most extensive LP and ELP collections this small town girl was lucky to be able to have access to.

Anyway, Let It Be is not the best where the Beatles are concerned and certainly Abbey Road would have been a more fitting ending, but I love this song and ran across it quite by accident and felt like sharing.

Have a favorite Beatles tune? Or just a favorite Beatle?

Brad Pitt and Jesse James


We watched Brad Pitt’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Bob Ford this weekend. Rob just wanted to see if he could recognize the settings because some of the movie was filmed here at Fort Edmonton. It’s based on a book about James’ last train robbery and the last months of his life.

Jesse and his older brother Frank were Confederate Civil War veterans. They rode with Quantrill’s Raiders and like many who fought for the southern states, they never got over the idea that they were an oppressed minority. Jesse liked to claim that they targeted banks and rails owned by Republicans and other with pro-Northern sympathies, but the facts don’t really square with this.

The truth is that the James brothers found it easier to make a living by stealing and their military experience made it a preferred profession for them. Jesse in particular was an erratic person who had a hard time fitting into civilized society and these traits were likely not helped much by his war experiences.

Bob Ford was the younger brother of Charley, a fellow who was riding with the James at the end of their career. Bob’s family and many of their friends rode with or were related to the James brothers and he grew up idolizing Jesse and wanting to be an outlaw.

Ford eventually becomes disenchanted enough that he betrays some of the gang members to the authorities in Missouri where Jesse lived under an assumed name. He finally ends up killing Jesse himself, shooting him in the back of the head which was somewhat fitting as James seemed to prefer killing people by shooting them from behind.

Ford collected a large reward and for a time made a living re-enacting his deed on the stage. Eventually, however, public opinion turned against him. He was branded a traitor and Jesse James went on to become a Robin Hood like outlaw.

The film hasn’t much to recommend it. It’s typical of movies anymore that prize character studies* over plot line. The scenery is quite nice, but the glacial pace and the waste of more than a few actors (Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Shepard and Zooey Deschanel to name a few)** prompts to me dub this a library check-out only because no one should waste money in addition to time on it.

I found myself objecting to the “coward” title being hung on Ford’s neck. He, and the others around Jesse, were clearly terrorized by and terrified of him. It’s classic abuser/abusee and not at all a surprise that one of them finally kills James. Jesse is as far from heroic as a person could get. He was a sociopath with paranoid tendencies who has been glamorized far too much in American culture which seems to prize the charmingly violent even a hundred plus years later.

To cap off our study of Civil War veterans, Rob and I watched The Outlaw Josey Wales as well. Was it a better movie? I reckon so.

* And Pitt does a credible job despite being too visibly old for the part.

** Parker plays Jesse’s wife and has probably a handful of lines at best. She is most used like a prop. Shepard is gone within twenty minutes having said little as well. Deschanel shows up in the last ten minutes as another human prop.

another friday/another update


The week draws to a close and I am sore. My legs ache and my tightening bum is just not as pleased with itself as I am with it. I have been doing intervals on the hill setting thanks to my new treadmill that my adorable husband put together for me a few short weeks ago. Normally, I am not a fan of treadmills. Stationary motion gets old fast but it’s not as tiring as trekking into town every day to hit the track at the fitness center.

I lost a bit of sleep this week due to achy legs and a nagging female issue that my kindly old Chinese doctor assured me on Tuesday is not potentially fatal.*

The oldest daughter, ED, is on her way to a third world country for a week’s holiday as you read this. Rob is worried. It’s a third world country, but one that nearly everyone I have contact with in my little world of The Fort has been to and come back from this winter, so there is likely nothing at all to worry about. Just another side-effect of that loss of innocence thing.

I finished the galley of that book in which I am a heavily disguised character. It was very good. It also highlighted for me a nagging career/goal issue that won’t let me alone these days. I am going to need to sit down and do a bit of 10ing soon.

Two pieces up at 50 something Mom’s. Thanks by the way to those who took time to read and comment on Tuesday’s piece. You can find Thursday’s here.

My mind is preoccupied with mutant dogs and how to bridge the gaping holes in my former short story that has morphed alarmingly into a novella. Outlining might have been helpful in this instance I am thinking.

Oh, and my stomach is giving me fits again. I am inches away from putting myself back on the blandest and most boring of diets and then totally eliminating anything that isn’t fresh. Additives and preservatives will turn me into a reluctant anorexic yet. I really hate this whole having to eat thing.

Aside from this, it’s still winter. I wish we had thought about planning a real vacation for Spring Break to somewhere warmer than we are going.** 

My massage therapist loaned me the first season of The Tudors. It’s the porn version of 16th century England, but we will need something to fill the time gap left once we finish off season three of Weeds.

There are three stages of a television series. Season one which is promising but the actors and writers are clearly still finding themselves. Season two, hitting a stride. And season three, what the fuck? This is when a show either rests on its laurels, such as they are, or they  push the envelope and it blows back in their faces like bubblegum. Weeds has followed that pretty well. Season three is not so great. 

Anyway, it’s naked history or Turner Classic Movies. We did the latter the other evening on a whim. Watched Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. As we were laying on the couch, watching the scene where the two burst into dance in the meadow behind a church in the Parisian countryside, Rob turns to me and says,

“If I had been the guy they pitched this movie to, I would have told them to get the fuck out of my office.”

“What? They didn’t have you at the premise? Really beautiful, really young English girl falls for balding middle-aged American photographer?”

“He’s wearing Mr. Roger’s cardigan.”

“He dances divinely,” I countered. “And there are ducks.”

There were ducks galore in that scene. I am thinking that PETA wouldn’t have stood for that at all  – had they existed in 1956.

“Dancing and bursting into bad songs is not manly,” he said. “And I’ve lived a man’s life, so I should know.”

TCM, however, is good for laughs. We’ll see about Henry the 8th as a porn star.

 

*I am the least trusting patient in the universe and run to the doctor with everything, convinced I have been beset by something deadly. I don’t know that I will ever get over this but it would be nice to simply shrug and ignore like a normal person again someday.

**Family thing. Again. Three vacations on slate and only one of them non-family. I love family but dang-it I am tired of  obligations that are low on the relaxing and fun scale.