Friday Night Videos

I went through a Kim Carnes phase right near the end of her biggest sustained popularity. I really got into her "Barking at Airplanes" album, and from there tracked down a lot of her previous albums. Very interesting songwriting. I also find it interesting that she never changed her image--pretty much her entire career has her sporting the white-shirt-black-suit look. Bette Davis Eyes was her biggest hit, but is also her most stylish and prototypical 80s video. And it's still such an odd piece that I'm baffled as to how it succeeded as it did. In today's slick, programmed era of radio, it'd never get any airplay. Which explains, I suppose, why Karnes hasn't had a hit in more than 15 years.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Police.

Now Playing: John Cougar Mellencamp American Fool

Spring greenery

Boy. What a day I had. An exhausting, time-consuming problem cropped up at work, and petty, paranoid turf-war types conspired to make it more complicated and difficult than it really needed to be. But I got some help from different quarters, and a solution--albeit an imperfect one--was struck. But I'm pretty drained.

So instead of waxing poetic on any SFnal subject right now, I'll be content with reporting that spring has arrived in my yard. The Santa Rosa plum looks like a popcorn tree with all the blossoms bursting on it, and the Methley plum, along with the two pomegranate bushes, are leafing out. One of my incarnata passion vines and the affinis passion vine put up shoots in the past few days, but they were pretty tender and the combination of cool nights and bright daytime sun fried them. But they'll be back. I finally got around to pruning my pear trees and spreading the branches--mainly the Moonglow, but also the Warren to a lesser extent. I'm hoping for some good growth this season, and maybe some fruit next year. My biggest efforts, however, were reserved for my grape vines. I've got a muscadine that's struggled a little in my alkali soil, so last summer I took one vine and ran it through a soil-filled pot to try and get it to root. It did indeed root (layering works, and is easy!) so today I cut the vine free from the parent plant and potted it up. There are several more moderate sized vines I plan to do the same way in the next week or so. My other two vines are both Orlando seedless, a self-fertile variety I chose mainly for its resistance to Pierce's disease. They've done a little better in my soil, and had a lot of wild growth I needed to prune back. I cut the vines back to two leaders which I've trained along the top of the dog run fence, and hope to have some good growth again this year. Last season they set flowers but didn't set fruit. I'm hoping for better luck this year. The remaining pruned vines I cut into 12"-18" lengths, bagged up with moist peat moss and placed in the refrigerator. I've got maybe two dozen of them, and ideally most of them with mature into viable grape cuttings. Next week is spring break at the university, so I should be able to clear them out of the fridge and set them up to begin developing calluses and roots.

Don't I lead an exciting life?

Now Playing: Pink Floyd Meddle

HEROES: Parasite

After my complaints of a rash of filler episodes, Heroes has really turned it up a notch these past two weeks. I missed last week's episode, "Company Man," but fortunately was able to watch the archived version on the NBC website (yay for that!) and have to say that was probably the best episode of the run thus far. I normally criticize the show mercilessly for aping Lost, but "Company Man" used the flachback-interspersed-plot to perfection, filling the viewer in on a great deal of backstory while actually advancing the narrative. A good number of things that seemed half-assed before from previous episodes suddenly started making a lot more sense (not that I believe all of these elements were introduced with such foresight--I suspect the writers of "Company Man" took great pains to integrate all that had come before, and kudos to them for their efforts).

So normally with Heroes, a really good episode is followed up by one which narratively treads water. Except not this time. "Parasite" moves things forward in impressive fashion, and several subplots come to a head. Hiro finally gets his sword, and is reunited with Ando. Hiro does get his powers back when he obtains the sword, and the duo escape from Linderman's goons into the future, and discover New York City remains a devastated wasteland. Cheerleader Claire, fleeing the X-Files conspiracy front paper company, ditches the Haitian and hightails it to Peter Petrelli's, only to be confronted by Petrelli's mother and the Haitian. Petrelli's mother apparently knows far more about the super powered goings-on than previously suspected. Petrelli, for his part, tries to pull off a sting of Linderman in Las Vegas, but psycho Jessica kills his FBI handlers, leaving him high and dry. Nikki, apparently reasserting her control over her body for brief periods, warns Petrelli off, but Petrelli decides to kill Linderman instead. Linderman himself, played smoothly by Malcolm McDowell (brilliant casting) instead tempts Petrelli with knowledge of all the super power manifestations occurring, plus promises him the vice presidency of the United States within a couple of years. The junkie painter falls off the wagon after killing his former girlfriend, shoots up, and paints himself with his skull sliced open, which ties in with Sylar learning his address earlier in the episode. And as for Sylar, man. Mohinder "Boy Genius" Suresh puzzles out his evil identity, and nails the super-killer big time. But in true overconfident Lex Luthor style, underestimates Sylar and believes he can keep him safely captive (where have we seen this before?). Note to self: If you ever capture a super-powered serial killer, off him the first chance you get rather than use him for experiments. The last we saw of him, he had Mohinder stuck to the ceiling and bleeding profusely, and was busily slicing the top of Nathan Petrelli's skull off.

Nathan, of course, will survive. Cheerleader Claire's regeneration powers with patch up his head and he'll be able to fight Sylar off. Bennet (aka HRG for hornrimmed glasses) has a fate less certain. Although he had the Haitian wipe his memory, the company nailed his complicity fairly easily. What's interesting is that now although he's on the side of the "Good Guys," HRG's conversion didn't come about willingly--only after his daughter was threatened by the company did he stop happily trapping and abusing the supers he tracked down. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that doesn't stop him from being an evil sonofabitch, and I hope the writers keep this in mind and don't start giving us Alias-style personality flip-flops. Hiro's sequence was also sloppy. With the sword just inches away, Hiro gave up when a security officer warned him to stop. WTF!? If the sword was his only means of escape, his only means of accessing his powers to save New York, then why would he give up so easily? That made absolutely no logical sense. Ando's convenient arrival as a security guard made little sense as well. Saying "I've been following you" is a sloppy, hand-waving contrivance to get these two back together. Let's face it: having these two friends bicker and get each other into trouble is a lot more fun than watching Hiro feel sorry for himself. I'm somewhat disappointed that Hiro's powers snapped back on the moment he got the sword--we've seen Hiro still has the use of his abilities, and that the sword is more of a placebo than anything else. "Dumbo's feather," if you will. At least, those are the signals I've picked up along the way, and I just wish there's been some additional hint of that when he finally obtained the sword.

Still, excellent episode. I wish all of them packed this much plot into an hour--the fact that there are only five episodes left in the season, and they'd better get on the stick if they're going to have a resolution might have something to do with it. And I think the whole "exploding New York" storyline will conclude by season's end. Even though series creator Tim Kring claims to be unfamiliar with comic books, his writing staff is obviously well-versed, and the series is structured like a serialized graphic novel (in comics, almost all storylines are six issues long, which facilitates their collection into a single volume reprint for bookstores). Following this premise, a climax and resolution are necessary if the show is being honest with the audience--think the season-long storylines of 24. That's not to say that new plot complications and cliffhangers can't arise from the finale, which is, of course, another tradition of the serialized comic book form. Either way, I'm definitely looking forward to the next five episodes.

Now Playing: Joanne Shenandoah and Lawrence Laughing Orenda

What the hell is going on with Galactica?

This show has me utterly baffled. They lost me so completely with last night's Starbuck episode that I can't even tell if I hated it or not. It's just... bizarre. I've never been a big fan of prophecy as a plot motivation, and here the fixation with the mystical is pulling the series farther and farther away from it's grounded base. Ron Moore has said in interviews he abandoned plans to reintroduce the "Ships of Light" from the original series because they were too "woo woo." More or less. My words, not his. But man, what they're coming up with now...

I'm sorry, people. Starbuck going off the rail and blowing herself up isn't a plot. It's barely a character study, no matter how much backstory about her mother you suddenly invent whole cloth and tack on to try to make this seem well-planned. It's not. Drawing circles on the wall a few episodes back does not constitute foreshadowing. I know the whole setup is designed to make the viewer believe Starbuck is a Cylon--maybe she is, or maybe this is a honkin' big red herring--but right now Galactica is getting more and more like Lost because I can't escape the feeling they have no idea where they're going with this thing, and are making it up as they go along.

Now Playing: The Moody Blues Time Traveler

Friday Night Videos

From the instant I heard that the Police were getting back together, I knew I'd have to have a Friday Night Videos feature dedicated to the band. Now when the Police were at their peak with "Synchronicity" I was an underclassman in high school. They came through Houston on tour and I didn't go, and I've been regretting it ever since. So this is a show I'd very much like to see. But rather than just pick a Police video and be done with it, I'm going with an unprecedented triple shot today--highlighting a couple of semi-obscure solo projects along the way.

First up is Andy Summers' 2010. I love the movie immensely, and think it a very good adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's novel (even if that patronizing voice over in the film undermines all the awe and sense of wonder). I bought the soundtrack solely for this techno-infused interpretation of Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra." I mean, check out that ungodly base line! I saw part of this video exactly once, and never again, but it was enough for me. The rest of the album turned out to be fascinating as well, as it is a great example of a synthesized electronica soundtrack, predating Christopher Franke's work on Babylon 5 by a decade. Interestingly enough, Summers' "2010" isn't actually featured in the movie.



Sting's made quite a name for himself as an artiste, but I remember there was a tremendous amount of curiosity about his initial solo album. Would it be more Police-style pop/rock? When it turned out to be a jazz-pop infusion instead, Sting got very rich indeed and earned a whole lot of new fans. While I enjoy the album overall, one track really jumped out at me, simply because it was so different. And when it was actually released as a single, with its brilliant, brooding Orwellian style, I was blown away. Still am. You have to remember that this was in the latter days of the Cold War, when Glastnost hadn't yet taken hold and shake apart the old Soviet Union. To this day, Russians remains my favorite Sting song and video.



And now, the main event. You know, for a superstar band (or one that attained such status in retrospect) their videos weren't all that great until "Synchronicity." I remember when "Every Breath You Take: The Singles" came out and folks were baffled by the rerecording of "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86." I like the original better myself, but thought the revamp an interesting experiment. There was a Police feature in Rolling Stone at the time, and Sting explained that he'd wanted to reinterpret all of the singles, showing that there were many different creative ways to approach the music. Now get this: Sting said that they'd recorded "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" before Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland walked away, saying, essentially, "this is pointless." Apart from that interview, I've never heard mention of this version of the song (the reference is cited in the Wikipedia entry). It's not included in the "Message in a Box" set which claims to have every piece of music the Police ever produced. So I dunno. I still want it, though.

But enough about tangents. Here is, what I consider, the Police's best video. Deceptively simple, but man, the timing and coordination required to make it work. And the huge size of the soundstage isn't obvious until the very end. Wrapped Around Your Finger may not be the Police's most popular song, but it is, simply, and elegant video.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Peter Schilling.

Now Playing: The Vaughan Brothers Family Style

GOP afraid of... Gore?

I've noticed something very curious this past week. Right-wing hatchet men, including the notorious Drudge Report and other so-called news outlets have been dogpiling on Al Gore in the wake of An Inconvenient Truth's Oscar win for best documentary. The attacks are following classic Karl Rove strategy of undermining an individual's strengths--in this case, calling into question the energy bill of Gore's Tennessee estate in order to portray him as a hypocrite in matters of climate change and environmental issues. Even though Gore's estate does use more power than the "average American home" the accusations and implications are seriously skewed. Gore famously buys "carbon credits" on the open market to offset his personal "carbon footprint," and the energy they actually use is green, in that it is from renewable sources and therefore costs considerably more (a fact that the right wing pundits must find terribly inconvenient, as they consistently fail to mention it). Keith Olbermann does a pretty good job of exploding this mishmash of half-truths and innuendo, and rightly exposes it as another neocon attempt at climate change denial.

But there's a lot more at work under the surface, I think, and while Olbermann gets it, I'm surprised that nobody else in the mainstream media--the blogosphere either, for that matter--has focused on this development more. The issue isn't that the GOP's hatchet men (from Limbaugh on down) are taking shots at Gore, but rather why are they taking shots at Gore? Remember, Gore isn't running for any office. He's been happily scooting around the country for the last six years, giving speeches at universities and showing off his mastery of Power Point. He's doing Saturday Night Live and winning Oscars. Heck, even Karl Rove took a shot at Gore on Tuesday with an "I invented the internet" barb. Why are they wasting so much energy on a non-candidate while leaving Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama relatively unscathed?

Because I think the GOP is terrified of Gore entering the race. Clinton carries a lot of baggage that will motivate the GOP base come '08. Obama, rock star though he may be, has a severe experience deficiency that would readily be exploited by John McCain or Rudy Guliani in the general election. The Republicans would love to go up against either of these two. Gore, though, isn't an easy target no matter what some may say, and is far more popular as a person now than he was when he won the popular vote back in 2000. Is it any wonder the GOP is worried about Gore pulling a latter-day Nixon-style comeback?

Now Playing: The Moody Blues

MVP & MVP?

John Lopez from the Houston Chronicle has an interesting take on last night's for the ages game between the Aggies and the 'Sips, focusing on the two best players in the Big 12: Now do you know what I mean about Durant & Law IV?

Law is not nearly the talent that Durant is, of course. He doesn't have the numbers or overwhelming presence on every possession that Durant has. He is not the absolute physical marvel. And until he final moments of a game, no team will build their entire defensive strategy around stopping him. Case in point: The triangle-and-two defense Aggies coach Billy Gillispie used against Durant.

Durant is the best player in America.

But Law is more important. He IS the most valuable player in the league.

Good stuff. Too bad both of these guys will be gone to the pros next season.

Now Playing: The Moody Blues Time Traveller