Speaking of Freddy Koella playing with Dylan, someone over at Expecting Rain recently posted this incredible 9-volume compilation of their time playing together. You can grab it here.
I’m downloading it now and will upload and post it here sometime in the near(ish) future so if you don’t have an Expecting Rain account (and I do highly recommend one) then you can grab it from me.
We spent most of last week just sitting around with family celebrating the life and mourning the death of my brother-in-law Paul. It was a long, difficult week. But we did have a little fun as well. The funeral was on Thursday so on Friday we went bowling and then played Dominoes.
At some point, my wife and I went to McKays, a wonderful little used book/music/movie store and I bought a few things. Honestly, I was pretty much dazed at that point so I didn’t really know what I was looking for so I just grabbed a few things that looked fun.
I am a big fan of boxed sets where you get several movies from an actor, or director, or maybe that cover a theme. These usually don’t include the big named films but will give you some lesser-known films for a cheap price.
The Tough Guys set has three films each from Kirk Douglas, James Cagney, and John Wayne. I’ve not heard of most of them (except The Strange Love of Martha Ivers which I think I already own and is excellent) but I’m looking forward to watching some lesser movies from three actors I really enjoy.
I love me some Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. The disks in this collection come in those cheap snap cases, but I’m hoping the movies are good.
For reasons that are beyond me (besides racism) the 1930s found a lot of white actors playing Asian detectives. A number of actors (most famously Warner Oakland) played Charlie Chan in a series of films, Boris Karloff played Mr. Wong and Peter Lorre starred as Mr. Motto.
I’ve seen several of the Chan and Wong films and quite liked them so I’m interested to see what Lorre does as Motto. It is pretty gross watching these very non-Asian actors play Asian characters (often stereotypically so) but I have definitely learned to overlook any number of varying degrees of offensiveness in older films. You really can’t judge films made nearly 90 years ago by 2020 standards. Here’s hoping the actual mysteries are enjoyable.
Lastly, I grabbed another Maigret book. I always look for that series whenever I go to a book store.
What have you all picked up recently?
When you get married you not only gain a spouse, you gain an entire family. I’ve been incredibly lucky because my wife’s family are all wonderful people. Her folks are still alive; she has two brothers, Paul and Matthew, and they both have wives and children.
We are scattered across the country so we don’t get to see them as much as we like, but we usually get together a couple of times a year – for a week in the summer and a week sometime around Christmas. The thing is when you do this for twenty-plus years you really get to know each other, despite not spending a lot of time together on a day-to-day or even year-to-year basis.
Matthew and I hit it off immediately. Not only do we share a name, but we have similar outlooks in life, enjoy some of the same pop culture, and just generally clicked. Paul was more straight-laced. He was an elder at his church and lead singing every Sunday. We didn’t have as much in common, but we both had a deep love of silliness and games.
Whenever we all get together we sit around the kitchen table playing games. There is a nightly, all-family, game of Road to Mexico Dominos, but in the afternoon a few of us will pull at some board game or another and play. At first, we played the simple classics: Clue, Skip-bo, Sequence, etc. But then we discovered more interesting and challenging games.
I can’t remember who was the first person to bring over Settlers of Catan, but after that we knew those old games just wouldn’t work. We loved that game and it opened up to us an entire world of gaming. It seems like every time we got together we’d start off asking each other if we’d gotten a new game.
Dominion, Ticket to Ride, and Pandemic were a few of our favorites.
Almost always, someone would have a new game to share. Often it came essentially unopened. We’d spend a few minutes reading over the rules and regulations before deciding to just dive in and play. Some games were fairly easy. Others were quite difficult. We’d play a round or two and think we had it figured out, only to play again the next day and realize we had gotten it all wrong. Further reading of the rules indicated we were playing incorrectly. Over the course of the week, we might finally get it right.
Some games were keepers, and we’d bring them back every year. Other games were less interesting and they might just stay home the next time. None of it mattered, we just enjoyed playing.
When I think of Paul, that’s what I think of – sitting around a table playing games. Having so much fun. And laughing.
Paul lost his battle with cancer a week ago Saturday. He was a good man. A loving father, and a kind husband. He was my friend. My brother.
He didn’t deserve this. I miss him already.
Martin Scorsese Found “the Key” to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ By Immersing Himself in the World: Collider
Dave McMurray to Release Grateful Dead Tribute Album Featuring Don Was and Oteil Burbridge: Bass Magazine
Martin Scorsese, David Johansen Talk Making ‘Personality Crisis: One Night Only’ Documentary During Pandemic: Variety
The Grateful Dead to share previously unreleased 1973 concerts in new boxset: NME
Neil Young Pays Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot: ‘His Melodies and Words Were An Inspiration to All Writers’: Billboard
Philomena is based on the true story of a woman who had a baby out of wedlock and was essentially forced to give the child up for adoption. Many years later she goes looking for her son, and a journalist tags along. The movie stars Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. According to my review, it is a good film. Honestly, I remember very little about it, but I still have the Blu-ray so maybe I should revisit.
I’m a sucker for British television. The wife and I usually subscribe to Acorn or Britbox – both streaming services focus on British shows. They make great murder mysteries, crime dramas, and comedies. British comedy is its own genre. It is so very different than American comedic sensibilities.
Mapp & Lucia is a very British comedy. I loved it when I reviewed the series out on DVD back in 2014.
In 1992 Columbia Records put together a massive collection of artists to celebrate Bob Dylan’s recording career. As I say in my review, at the time it must have seemed like a capstone to a long career. One that seemed like it was dying (I rather like some of Dylan’s output in the 1980s, but from a record company standpoint it certainly wasn’t his strongest decade).
The concert is pretty great, even if I haven’t listened to it since writing this review in 2014. You can read all of my thoughts from back then here.
While I am a big reader of mystery novels and detective fiction, I’ve never cared that much for Sherlock Holmes. I don’t dislike him, but from what I’ve read his stories are all too often simple setups for the detective to show how brilliant he is with deduction. I like my detectives more hard-boiled, I want them to stumble, to get stuck in the muck, and to solve cases by hard work, not superhuman brain power.
Admittedly, I haven’t read that many of his stories, and I really did enjoy The Hound of the Baskervilles. So consider my judgment reserved.
I do, however, often enjoy the movies that were adapted from the Sherlock Holmes stories.
This leads to me Sherlock Holmes FAQ, a book I reviewed for Cinema Sentries back in the day. My review is favorable which slightly surprises me as I’ve never enjoyed the FAQ series all that much. Maybe I was being generous, or maybe it really is a good book. I really don’t remember. Anyway, my review can be found here.
I grew up watching Sesame Street. Oddly enough I don’t remember watching it at all, but I do have distinct memories of watching Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood.
When my daughter was born Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was no longer on the air (well, there were reruns but in my town, they came on really early), but Sesame Street was still in full swing. My daughter loved it. I loved it. Still do, though the daughter is too old to watch and thus it doesn’t get much airplay anymore.
Obviously, Sesame Street is designed for little ones. But it also works well for adults. They have some very clever gags, and they love pop culture. They’ve made some great spoofs (one of my favorites is a Middle Earth parody called Lord of the Crumbs), and they often invite celebrity guests to do little skits. I especially love when a singer comes on and sings one of their songs but with slightly altered lyrics. Norah Jones once sang “Don’t Know Y” and I still regularly play Feist turning her song “1,2,3,4” into a counting song.
During those days that my daughter watched Sesame Street every day I requested a few of their DVDs and did some reviewing for Cinema Sentries. You can read my review of Elmos World: All About Animals here. Spoiler Alert: Despite me praising the show in the last several paragraphs I found this DVD to be a bit grating. But that’s because it is just the Elmo’s World section of the show and nothing but the Elmo’s World section of the show. And that gets tiresome fast.
themidnightcafe.org 