A Christmas Carol

Patrick Stewart

A Christmas Carol

Genre: Audiobook

Patrick Stewart’s one-man dramatic reading defines “A Christmas Carol” for me. It’s the media adaptation that gets straight to the heart of the original: his version makes it crystal clear that we’re meant to cheer Scrooge on. Yes, indeed, we are. Or we’re meant to, anyway, as the story progresses.

Could we even go so far as to describe Scrooge as the hero of “A Christmas Carol”? Hmm. It depends on whether or not you think it’s heroic to rescue yourself, as opposed to saving Lois Lane, Marion Ravenwood, or Christmas.

I say “yes.” Scrooge examines his own behavior and ultimately he decides to move away from a position of safety and comfort and into something more dangerous and uncertain. That might not be exactly heroic, but at the very least it’s brave. And that’s why, when this story is adapted and performed as well as it’s done by Patrick Stewart, we like Scrooge and want him to succeed.

“Rubbish!” you say. “Scrooge is no different at the end of the story than he was at the beginning! Marley showed Scrooge that he was ultimately going to be damned to wander the earth bound by iron chains! And the Ghost of Christmas Future showed him that he’s going to die next Christmas Day if he doesn’t change! Scrooge is just trying to save his own skin!”

“Hogwash,” I reply.

(Though I credit both of us for not going for the cheap laugh and saying “Humbug.” It shows a lot of restraint and class.)

Marley’s visitation scene makes Dickens’ intentions clear. Marley’s true burden isn’t the hundreds of pounds of chains and steel cashboxes he has to drag around everywhere: it’s his unrelenting remorse. Only after his death has Marley become keenly aware of the depth of the suffering experienced by the city’s disadvantaged. He’s eager to aid…but as a spirit, he’s powerless to interfere. All Marley can do is watch, and remember all the times during his life when he walked straight past the same kinds of people without paying them the slightest notice…and think about how he could have lifted them out of their desperate situations by applying the slightest effort. That’s a tidy vision of hell.

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!”

As if to firmly dot that particular “i”, Dickens ends the scene with the view of the street from Scrooge’s window. The streets are filled with spirits, many of them known to Scrooge during their lives as fellow members of the 1%:

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

We come to learn that Ebenezer Scrooge isn’t a baddie. He just grew more cynical and suspicious of other people as the years passed, and then of Humanity in general. Ultimately, he distanced himself so completely that he withdrew from the whole system. Time and time again, he angrily demands to be left alone. He doesn’t even attempt to interfere with the good works of others, and (to my recollection) doesn’t even act in a meanspirited way. A thoughtless one, yes, but is he ever actively hostile? He wants the men collecting for the poor to go away. He doesn’t want to be roped in to his nephew’s Christmas party. He wishes that the carolers would just leave him the hell alone.

In doing so, he failed to understand that you’re part of the human race whether you want to be or not. Therefore, the only choice any of us have in the matter is whether to play a positive role in human society or a selfish one. By the time Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Future, he’s already realized the mistakes he’s made and the damage he’s done to himself and the people around him. When he sees his name on the tombstone, he doesn’t plead with the Ghost because he’s desperate to save his skin. I think it’s clear that he was eager to finally use his resources (his money and his time on Earth) to become a positive part of society, and thought that the cup was being dashed from his lips. He was like Marley in that moment: wanting to alleviate human suffering, but denied the ability.

So there. I could move on to a long debate about whether or not a desire to help others is, in fact, a selfish desire. But I’ve just checked carefully and it turns out that this here is a blog post and not a page of dialogue for Dr. House.

Patrick Stewart’s reading preserves Dickens’ perspective on Scrooge. Which is why it remains at the very top of the heap of “Christmas Carol” re-interpretations, topping the Alastair Sim version and the Season Three Christmas episode of “WKRP In Cincinnati.”

It also hits a more minor, but still important, point: it doesn’t shortchange us on the Christmas Day scenes. It wouldn’t be very satisfying if Scrooge woke up, undocked his iPhone from the nightstand charger, confirmed the date, PayPalled a bunch of money to some good causes, and then went back to sleep. Patrick Stewart doesn’t hold anything back. There’s a smile on Scrooge’s face and a gleam in his eye that comes through even in audiobook form. And yet, he doesn’t go overboard and destroy the effect of all the hard work that preceded that scene. The word to describe Scrooge’s emotions would be “grateful” rather than “manic.” We should be grateful that we have the time and the means to do something positive.

This is a scene from the 1999 Hallmark made-for-TV movie. It’s a good’n; so good that it…no, no, surely not.

…

What the hell…it’s Christmas: it’s so good that I can even completely forgive Hallmark for bankrolling “Riding The Bus With My Sister.”

No matter how good Stewart’s movie is, though, I can’t prefer it to the audiobook. Stewart has been regularly performing his abridged “Christmas Carol” as a one-man show since 1991. He does every voice. I invite you to wonder, as I do, how he compresses his rich, impressive King Lear-esque baritone into a charming Tiny Tim. I can assure you that he does. And when he plays female parts, it’s about as far away from a Monty Python pepperpot lady as one can get without leaving this planet.

Oh, how I love this audiobook. I can’t possibly exaggerate how I feel about it. I first bought it on cassette at a salvage store. Since then, I’ve bought it on CD and on Audible. There’s no set date during the holiday season when I move it from my iTunes library and onto my iPhone. But it’s early. The Indianapolis 500 starts with a voice on a loudspeaker calling “Gentlemen, start your engines.” For me, the holiday season begins with Patrick Stewart intoning “Jacob Marley was dead…”

And when I hear those words, I feel pinpricks at the back of my neck and I am very, very happy. There have been years when I simply never got around to setting up the tree. Holiday cards? Those only happen when I think of an idea early enough to have the cards made, and get the cards made early enough to address and mail them.

But there is never, ever a year when I don’t listen to Patrick Stewart’s dramatic adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” at least twice. In a career seemingly filled with indispensable work, I would quickly choose “A Christmas Carol” the least-dispensable thing Patrick Stewart’s ever done.

So you should definitely get yourself a copy of this. It’s available for instant download via Audible. If your holiday weekend plans involve driving all over creation making merry, you can choose no better car audio than this.

Me, I bought and ripped the CD. That’s the highest tribute I can pay to any commercial audio. If an album’s good, I’ll buy a track or three. If it’s very good, I’ll buy the whole thing.

If it’s as good as “A Christmas Carol,” though, I want the CD. I want the recording at its highest, uncompressed quality. I want it in an unlocked format that I can rip and then install on any playback device I own now or will ever own in the future.

Buy “A Christmas Carol” from Amazon. As usual, my Amazon Associates ID is embedded in that link and any purchases you make on Amazon after clicking it results in my receiving a small kickback in the form of Amazon store credits…which I will spend on delightful foolishness.

Er…I mean, food for hungry orphans.

Hard To Handle

The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain

The Secret Of Life

Genre: Pop

I have a very low tolerance for precious novelty interpretations of pop hits. I don’t really understand the concept.

Let’s take “Achy-Breaky Heart” as a case study. My problems with this song are as follows: repetitive melody; not particularly catchy melody; uninspired lyrics; Billy Ray Cyrus’ mullet.

None of these shortcomings are in any way corrected by an Alvin And The Chipmunks version of that song. So why, then, would I like that version, either? If anything, the song’s last problem is compounded when the song is being sung by vole-like creatures. At least Cyrus’ hairstyle ended at his neck. The Chipmunks sport full-body mullets…and there are three of them.

So a band doesn’t automatically get a free pass when they do a cover version of a hit song using alternative instruments or an unconventional musical arrangement. Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-On Bach” remains a classic for her thoughtful electronic re-interpretation of classical music. Through her synthesizers, she reveals new truths and beauty in the Brandenburg Concertos. You can’t, you know, duplicate that highly-satisfying result by dragging a MIDI file into a Casio keyboard. Not even if you go all-out and use Tone #062, aka “Space Meow.”

“Hard To Handle” was originally written and recorded by Otis Redding and I swear to God I knew that before I happened to Google for the name of the band that made it into a big hit in the 90′s, which I already knew was The Black Crowes but I thought it’d be good form just to double-check that.

(cough)

I consider The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain to be among the best five all-ukulele orchestras in the European Union and I’m willing to fight any man or woman who challenges me on that point. I happened to be in London while they were performing at the Barbican Centre, and happened to buy the very last seat available just a few hours before the show. I was very pleased to be the specific person responsible for that moment when the group’s manager leaned his head into the dressing room, pulled the cigar out of his mouth, and congratulating the UOoGB on having sold out the venue.

The tune’s a cover magnet. The melody and the lyrics are impeccably high-quality raw ingredients for a band and a singer to work with. It seems like there’s only one possible mistake to be made, and it’s an understandable one: the band and the singer can’t each be working so hard to sell the song that they wind up fighting each other. For sure, you can’t have a scenario in which they’re fighting and one side is clearly winning. I think that’s why the Crowes’ version isn’t my favorite, even though I like it lots.

The Ukulele Orchestra doesn’t make their whole playlist out of ukulele arrangements of hit songs, though they do great things with that line. I first heard about them via their version of “Psycho Killer”:

I love the fact that there’s a distinctly inverse relationship between how seriously they take themselves and how seriously they take their music. Admittedly such an inverse relationship is by no means unique among musicians but the Ukes have chosen put the bigger number on the “how good do they sound?” side of the equation. As demonstrated by this, their version of “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly”:

Their cover of “Hard To Handle” is true to the song’s origins. It manages to inject the right amount of aggression, soul, and glee that belongs in any proper version of this tune. This track’s been a mainstay of my playlists for so long that whenever I think “Hard To Handle” I instinctively hear the Ukes’ version and not one of the more blockbuster-ey ones.

Yup, I’m a fan. The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain isn’t a comedy act and it isn’t a novelty act. It’s a musical act. I hope they make their way to New England some time. Their live show was tops and I’d love to see them again.

Try or buy “Hard To Handle” on the Amazon MP3 Store. As usual, that link is embedded with my Amazon associates code and anything you buy there after clicking the link results in my getting a few store credits…which, I promise you, I shall spend on foolish and wonderful things.

It’s (oh, right) Christmastime, so let’s close this one off with the Ukes’ version of “Blue Christmas.”

A real treasure arrived in Friday’s mail. Observe, Volume 1 of the collected edition Karl Kerschl’s magnificent webcomic, “The Abominable Charles Christopher.

It’s probably a good idea, as a general rule, to try to avoid declaring superlative absolutes, such as “this is the greatest webcomic.” But can I get away with saying “When I think ‘greatest webcomic’ this is the strip that pops into my head before I remind myself about the problem with superlative absolutes?” All right, then. There are three things I want from any ongoing webcomic series: terrific art, terrific storytelling, and a regular, reliable publication schedule. Normally I’m happy to get two out of three. “Abominable Charles Christopher” nails the trifecta.

Karl was lovely enough to include a sketch in my copy:

That’s the level of the artwork in this strip, week in and week out. I’ve never bought a print of any of his strips. Why? Because for God’s sake…which one would I choose?

I’ve been a fan of “Abominable” for a year or two. When I stood in my kitchen and unwrapped the book, it was the very first time I’d seen Karl’s strip in printed form, as opposed to on a laptop or iPad screen. I must say, this book shows off the limitations of electronic publishing. Karl’s artwork leaps up to an even higher level. It’s obvious that Karl has in no way “dumbed down” his art to the limitations of a 128 pixel-per-inch laptop screen or a 1000-pixel-wide image area. Seeing these strips in print reminds me of just how much I’ve been missing.

And mind you: I was already blown away by the art. “Abominable” in print is joy, doubled. I’m glad to have this book and I’m eager to recommend that you snag a copy for yourself.

I’m also grateful for the chance to update the “Kind Of Truthful But Not Really” version of my cv.

You have one of these, don’t you? It’s that second, slightly more-impressive cv that you’d never hand to a potential employer, and for an excellent reason: every item on it is technically true but wouldn’t survive a series of careful followup questions.

For instance, my legit cv lists “Wrote an ebook about artificial habitats that was licensed by NASA as student educational material.” True. That happened. If the interviewer asks for details, I would happily and confidently tell them about the 60-page book I wrote about building aquariums and about the relationship between goldfish, gravel, water, air, and vegetation. I got an inquiry from NASA after I published it. After I signed and returned a bunch of forms, they gave it out (for a time) as part of a kit for schoolkids which explained the problems of building colonies in space.

The Kind Of True But Not Really version of my cv, by comparison, includes “Ren and Stimpy” among my writing credits. “Ren and Stimpy”? Really? Yyyyyesss, that’s….tttttrrrrue, I suppose. But its truthiness falls apart with the right two followup questions:

“You wrote for the ‘Ren and Stimpy’ cartoon?”

“No…but I have a writing credit in the Marvel Comics licensed comic.”

“Oh. So you wrote a story for the comic?”

“Er…no. Here’s what happened: I once went out to dinner with a couple of comics writers and I made some sort of joke and one of the guys asked if he could use it. I said sure, and then I forgot about it. Months later, people started emailing me about how they bought this month’s issue of ‘Ren And Stimpy Comics And Stories’ and one of the stories says ‘Thanks to Andy Ihnatko for letting us steal one of his jokes’ on the title page.”

With that in mind, I point you to the back cover of the “Abominable” anthology. Karl knew that I’m a big fan of the strip and he asked me for a cover blurb.

I was only too happy to provide one:

And so, the freshly-updated Kind Of Truthful But Not Really version of my CV now contains the following item:

“Collaborated, with Jeff Lemire and Neil Gaiman, on written material for a comic book.”

Before there’s any misunderstandings, dear reader, I quickly and emphatically reiterate that the Kind Of Truthful But Not Really cv is only a whimsical mental list and that I would never, ever, ever use it in a live-fire exercise, so to speak.

Still! Although the statement “I collaborated with Jeff Lemire and Neil Gaiman on a book” has only the wispiest, slightest, most insignificant and monomolecular thread of truth to it, there are thousands of practitioners of homeopathic medicine who will be incredibly impressed. Or at least that’s how their belief system compels them to react. They only have two options: either tell people that I collaborated with Jeff Lemire and Neil Gaiman, or admit that the whole idea that the efficacy of something is magnified a thousandfold by diluting it down to near-undetectability is, in fact, all a giant scam. I like my chances.

And if either Mr. Lemire or Mr. Gaiman is reading this, I just want to take the opportunity to say that it was a pleasure working…er…adjacent to you.

Lucky Penny

John Doe

Keeper

Genre: Alternative

This is just a goddamn beautiful song. Why bury the lede?

It’s a pure, simple love song, with an uncluttered melody and uncomplicated arrangement that bespeaks a certain confidence. And the instrumental part has just enough rattle and edge to it.

Last week’s post about Billy Joel’s “Big Man On Mulberry Street” got me thinking about songwriters and how that particular part of a performer’s talent portfolio has taken one step into the background. It’s not as though star musicians aren’t writing their own stuff any more, of course. It’s just that Paul Simon was almost always identified as a “Singer-songwriter,” and songwriting was such an integral part of Elton John’s public identity that everybody knew the name of his lyricist.

Maybe today’s state of affairs has to do with how we now perceive a track. If Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel are reading this, please don’t take the following as any kind of a slight against your wonderful original recording but: when I picture “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” in my head I hear Elvis’ version, not yours. The song and the performers click together like a couple of Lego bricks. It’s easy to unclick them and click another artist to the song.

Maybe today we tend regard the song and the performance as a complete package. The other day I searched for a recording of Jonathan Coulton’s “Want You Gone.” Yes, I see you nodding your head knowingly: Coulton wrote “Still Alive” as the end-credits music for the first “Portal” game and “Want You Gone” is the one he wrote for Portal 2.

I love this tune:

I obtained a…er…paralegal copy of this track, which was copied from the game DVD. It’s been in constant play ever since I got it and I’m was eager to buy “Want You Gone” for real as soon as it’s released. Alas, it’s still unavailable. “Want You Gone” does indeed appear on Coulton’s latest album, “Artificial Heart,” but…no.

Wrong.

Not The One.

My brain rejects this recording utterly. It’s like a dude in a Wonder Woman costume. The song has to be sung by GlaDOS’ synthetically-processed voice and the musical arrangement has to be electronic, as though the song only exists inside a box of electronics.

When it’s performed in the real world, and by a man — even an obviously talented performer like Coulton — no, it’s just not That Song any more. Not to me, anyway. I can’t unlink the song from the performance.

John Doe, (like Warren Zevon or Leonard Cohen or Nick Lowe), writes the kind of songs that seem like new pages in the world songbook. “Lucky Penny” has the sort of melody, and the sort of potent lyrics, that so many other performers can spin into personal interpretations and brand-new magic.

Put me in your pocket
Hold me there for keeps
Squeeze me like I’m your last dime
Hold on to me
Because I’ll be good
For a long, long time

Isn’t that an amazing lyric? And so perfectly-balanced by the tune. It’s the sort of thing you say to the person you love when you’re enjoying a lazy Sunday together on the sofa. You’re a little surprised that you’ve gone and said something so nakedly sentimental, and the person you’re with is a little surprised that the words affected them so deeply. The words would become cloying if they were pressed just a little bit harder. “Lucky Penny” would have been just another dopey love song that people laugh at and then forget about completely.

Whereas, I suspect that a significantly nonzero number of you have made a mental note to include this in a future “I Love You” mix tape, perhaps for a woman or a man to be named later.

Try or buy “Lucky Penny” on the Amazon MP3 Store. The link is embedded with my Amazon Associates code and any purchases you make on Amazon after clicking it results in my getting a small kickback in the form of Amazon store credits.

Handlebars

Flobots

Fight With Tools

Genre: Rap & Hip-Hop

I have an idea for a new feature for a car stereo. It would be a conventional head in almost every respect, but it’d be tied into GPS (or perhaps just a motion sensor) and it would always be aware of your current speed. It could then adjust your playlists and tracks to make sure it’s always taking your current driving situation into account.

The idea of automatically switching from fast, thrashy hyper-beats to something slower and mellower every time you’re entering a school zone on a weekday is the obvious application of this technology. It’s also damned useful for songs like this one.

“Handlebars” was meant to make people look like idiots at stop lights.

As the song progresses and unfolds, you go from a gentle nodding to a full rhythmic head-bob. The bobbing spreads down your neck until it takes up your entire spine. It is only through enormous self-control that you stop it before you succomb completely; it does compel you to slide open the sunroof so you can raise an arm and extend the wave another couple of feet.

Which is all well and good when you’re whooshing along a two-lane state highway at sixty miles an hour. But then you get to the exit for your house. Muscle memory takes over and safely moves you off the highway and then stops you at the first traffic light. And that’s when you discover that for the past twenty seconds, you’ve been doing that in plain view of a carload of smarmy teens.

“Thank God they’re not laughing,” you think. They’re only restraining themselves because two of them are shooting video and they don’t want to wreck the audio.

I would pay money for this feature. Yes, I would.

Alas, we live in a shabby world and there’s a shocking lack of passion for innovation. My only choices are to risk looking foolish at stoplights, or delete “Handlebars” from any device I’m likely to use inside the car.

I’m content with my choice. That said, those girls in Braintree three weeks ago were just needlessly mean. Perhaps I’m not getting at the root of the problem. My magical peril-sensitive car stereo shouldn’t have a sensor for the motion of the car…just the presence of Mean Girls.

Try or buy “Handlebars” on the Amazon MP3 Store. Anything you buy during that session will result in my getting a small kickback in the form of Amazon credits, which I will then spend on fun and foolish things.

Funky Monkey

The Vignola Collective

Gypsy Grass

Genre: Jazz

If I were ever being chased, I wouldn’t want to be in the sort of chase where the music
is scored by the same people who did the Chris Nolan “Batman” movies, or the “Bourne” saga, or God forbid the laptop-twiddlers who scored “Saw.”

No. I’d want it to be the kind where music like this is playing. Clearly, the composer would write this to accompany a sequence in which the likable but slightly uptight co-lead is nicely dressed for a semi-formal occasion and he’s being followed, and then pursued, by a big, muddy dog who just wants to jump up on him and cover him with pawprints and doggie kisses.

Or, a Mr. Bean-style rush across town to be on time for a dental appointment or return a library book before incurring late charges.

What I’m getting at is that getting chased in a movie is never fun when the pursuers have guns and big cars with squealy tires and they mean to kill you at worst or, at best, throw you into a dirty canvas sack, dump you off at a secluded warehouse, torture you for information about an operation or organization you know nothing about and then kill you.

“Funky Monkey” is definitely a track that goes well to lines like “Oh, Sebastian! You naughty, naughty doggie! My jacket is ruined now! Hah-ha-hah…stop licking my face, Sebastian! I’m scolding you, here! Ha ha ha!” You could loop it into the soundtrack under sounds like “bzzzzz-AIEEEEE!!!!-thwack-thwack-crack-RGGHHGGHH!!!!-chunk-chunk” but I dare say that the music would make it into a much different movie.

Try or buy “Funky Monkey” on the Amazon MP3 Store. Yup, that link is embedded with my associates code. If I’ve slighted you at some point in the past and you’ve been looking for a passive-aggressive way to get back at me, then you definitely shouldn’t follow that link because any purchases you make immediately afterward will result in my getting some Amazon credits.

Or maybe you should. I tend to spend those credits on silly things, like Gummy Fried Eggs. Them’s completely made out of corn syrup and will pitch me headfirst into an early grave. I’ll be dead and you’ll have an ice-cold alibi.

The Lady Is A Tramp

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga

Duets II

Genre: Pop

Yesterday’s post covered the subject of “Being surprised that a famous person is good at doing something else besides the thing for which he or she is famous.” Today’s topic is about being surprised that the famous person is good at the thing they’re actually supposed to be good at.

I’m speaking, of course, of Tony Bennett.

I’m joking, of course.

I’m actually speaking, of course, of Lady Gaga. I admit without hesitation or qualification that I was wrong, wrong, wrong when I assumed that she was (at best) a mediocre singer. Why did I make that assumption? I dunno. I mean, she ripped off so much else from Madonna…

Okay, I apologize for that.

The actual explanation: I’ve only heard a few of Gaga’s songs and in each of them, her natural singing voice was tightly shrinkwrapped behind a wall of production trickery. Overprocessing is a big help to the mediocre singers — it putties in all of the lows and cracks in a performance — but when the lady can actually sing, heavy production also sands down the highs.

It might be a point of pride that causes a true vocalist to put one track on the album in which it’s just them and a microphone. I think it’s why many stage magicians wedge a selection of slight-of-hand tricks in between the Swallowing A Gulfstream Jet Trick and the Flaming Elephant Escape Illusion. Showbiz is showbiz, but it’s a point of pride to demonstrate that you have the sort of skills that come from dedication and hard work in addition to the sort of buying power that lets you bring in whatever hardware that a miracle requires.

Tony Bennett kicked it up a notch by singing a capella in his live shows…without even any assistance from a microphone. This here’s a crummy phone video but it was shot during a Radio City Music Hall performance. This is not a small venue:

I believe that this was shot in 2007. When Mr. Bennett was EIGHTY-ONE YEARS OLD.

EIGHTY-ONE!!!

Dammit, if ever there was a time when the HTML "BLINK" tag was 100% called for…

Onward. Yes. Please. More Gaga tracks like this one: the lady has some serious pipes and the track makes me want to seek out more of her music. If she ever released an “American songbook” album, I’d consider that a pretty quick 1-click.

Maybe in a couple of years, after she and her fans get itchy for her Next Thing. I did see her HBO concert special, and (yes) I thought there was too much staging and too much flash. Those things do a remarkable job of obscuring her talent. The show was all meat dress and no steak.

Allow me to make an overly-precious simile. There’s a restaurant up above Boulder, Colorado that serves all kinds of game. I used to eat dinner there once every year. I’d always order the oddest thing on the menu just on principle and the experience taught me something important. One year, I ordered emu. It arrived as a thick, grilled steak with very light seasoning. A little salt and pepper? Maybe.

One year, I ordered alligator. It arrived slathered in cheese and heavy sauces.

The clear lesson: terrific ingredients can stand on their own. If it’s something that Humanity was never meant to consume, the chef covers it in enough gunk that you can’t taste it at all.

So when I see a performer who works so hard at being so outrageous…yes, my prejudices get the better of me. I assume that it’s a crocodile quesadilla.

(Aside: Emu is heavenly. It’s truly a fusion of the best elements of red and white meat.)

Seriously, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. But that’s marketing for you. As a consumer, I’m not obligated to try out every song, movie, or TV show. I’m to be forgiven for applying what I’ve learned from past experience when deciding how to best invest my time and money, right?

Lady Gaga is more like Cyndi Lauper than Madonna. Lauper, too, had — and still has — an incredible voice and an outrageous style that might have caused some people to draw the wrong conclusion and turn away. But she had the advantage of coming on to the popular scene in the early Eighties, when audio production tools were still analog and a fantastic voice could still fight its way through whatever layers of spray-on gold and gloss that a producer attempted to slap on it.

This is Tony Bennett’s second album of duets and like its predecessor it helps expunge my memory of Frank Sinatra’s end-of-career “Duets” albums. Sinatra’s handlers arranged for a nice lineup of talent, but they all essentially performed karaoke to Sinatra’s pre-recorded tracks. Bennett’s duets are real, in-studio collaborations and it shows. “The Lady Is A Tramp” is one of the standouts; Bennett and Gaga really sound like they’re having a great time together.

Try or buy “The Lady Is A Tramp” on the Amazon MP3 Store. Anything you buy on Amazon after clicking the link will result in my receiving a small kickback in the form of Amazon store credits. Which, I assure you, I shall spend on Lovely and Foolish Things.

Lillian Lust

Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore Ensemble

Genre: Jazz

Damn.

Damn, damn, damn.

DAMN.

Folks, I’ve just failed an OCD test.

(God-damn-it.)

As I was writing yesterday’s Advent post, it occurred to me that one of the 50 or so Advent Calendar candidates in my playlist would make an absolutely perfect selection for Day 5: “Lillian Lust.” It links back to the tracks from the previous three days:

1) It’s from a soundtrack, just like “Anything Goes” and “The Devil’s Concerto”;

2) “Lillian Lust” was composed for “Bedazzled,” which was directed by Stanley Donen. Yup, the same man who directed the “Moonlighting” dance sequence that was set to “Big Man On Mulberry Street”;

3) “Bedazzled” is about a deal with the devil, just like “The Devil And Daniel Webster.”

If you want to stretch it out just a little, it even connects back to Day One: I bought this track after seeing “Bedazzled” on cable, which is the same reason why I bought “Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea.”

I saw the pattern, I sensed an opportunity to complete the pattern, and I just couldn’t let it go. It’s like hearing someone tap “Shave…and-a-hair…cut…” and then he stops. You must tap “TWO! BITS!” Otherwise, you’ll be fitful, distracted and irritable for the whole rest of the day.

I can only score this experience as a failure of personal resolve. Sometimes, you sense that there’s a test in front of you and that your next choice is a crucial one. Are you a person of complex and subtle intellect and reason, a mature adult in full control of his behavior? Or are you a damp robot who can process a billion instructions per second but who on a kernel-level exists only to connect stimuli to the proper pre-defined responses?

“Lillian Lust” is a good tune. I wouldn’t have put it in the Candidates playlist if I didn’t like it lots and lots. It’s not my favorite track in the list of Advent Calendar candidates, but I probably would have posted it one way or another. That said, however…

Twoooooo bits!

Oh, well. I guess I should move on to the next step in my self-diagnosis.

(‘Scuze me while I make some adjustments to a bookshelf…)

Okay. So if I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and bite my lower lip for twenty minutes in the dark and then run down to my office to fix fix fix fix fix that, it’ll be the final and most damning proof that I’ve got a serious problem and I should probably address it chemically..

Here’s Dudley Moore performing today’s song on TV:

Three cheers for Moore. When a famous person proves to be talented in a second field (like during that episode of “Big Bang Theory” midway through the first season in which Johnny Galecki’s character plays the cello really, really well) isn’t it just a little bit like seeing Clark Kent turning into Superman? You had no idea that he had these…secret powers.

But when you see exactly how skilled Dudley Moore was as a musician — not just as a piano player, but as a composer and improviser — you realize it’s less like Clark Kent turning into Superman and more like Superman turning into Batman. Moore could easily have inhabited either role exclusively, and with exceptional success.

“Bedazzled” offers another peek at a kind of Satan that I really, really like. George Spiggott (played by Moore’s arch comic partner Peter Cook) has been at this gig for eons and he knows that the subtle approach is the most effective. There isn’t a whole lot of cackling and scheming about his methods. He’s collecting souls, but chiefly just to win a bet with God.

As for his efforts to turn human existence on Earth into a living Hell, he goes about it by filling our lives with relentless petty annoyances and by manipulating us into lowering our dreams and expectations. The Devil simply sees to it that we allow every restaurant to become like an Olive Garden and that most popular phone OS is Android and that “Twilight” book series becomes an international best-seller that spawns a series of moneymaking movies. Why bother summoning the galloping hordes of Hell’s armies? That’s just, you know, showboating.

This scene tells you everything you need to know:

Dudley Moore is Stanley Moon, a fry cook who’s sold his soul in exchange for seven wishes, which he uses to try to win the heart of a waitress he adores. Each wish goes awry, of course, and in between these scenes, as Stanley contemplates his next wish, Moon and the Devil build an odd friendship. Or maybe it can be described more accurately as a pleasant but superfluous owner/pet relationship.

It’s not much of a story, honestly. The real premise of “Bedazzled” is that any story framework that supports a nonstop interplay between Peter Cook and Dudley Moore for an hour and a half couldn’t help but be hugely funny.

The filmmakers were extremely correct in this supposition. “Bedazzled” serves as an almost nonstop showcase for one of the most uncannily well-matched comedy duos that ever existed. Like Laurel and Hardy, Pete and Dud’s comedy doesn’t come from two people being funny in the same space. The comedy is in the clubs that they pass back and forth.

Here’s what I mean. In honor of the holidays, check out Dudley Moore as the apostle Matthew interviewing shepherd Peter Cook, witness to the birth of Christ:

Buy “Lillian Lust” on iTunes. You don’t need to “try” it, do you? The video I linked earlier has the whole thing and it’s a nice, clean recording.

Yes, iTunes. It’s one of those rare tracks that’s available on one of the megamusic stores but not the other. “But Andy…I so look forward to clicking on an Amazon link so that the things I buy during that session lead to your getting a small kickback!”

Oh, you’re such a dear. Here, at least consider buying “Bedazzled” on DVD. Don’t worry: I’ve linked to the proper one, not the wholly-unnecessary 2000 remake with Brendan Fraser.

I’m sure that pointless remakes of successful movies are just another part of Satan’s subtle and cunning plan.

Big Man On Mulberry Street

Billy Joel

The Bridge

Genre: Pop

Oh, why the hell not: I’m going to link today’s song to yesterday’s song, thematically. But don’t expect me to make a habit out of this.

As with Kate Capshaw’s performance of “Anything Goes,” which kicked off “Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom,” “Big Man On Mulberry Street” is a flashy, classic MGM-style musical number that showed up someplace where you wouldn’t have expected it: an episode of “Moonlighting.”

Maybe you were still struggling to transform gills into lungs during this show’s late-80′s run and aren’t familiar with it. Here’s a quick primer:

David Addison and Maddie Hayes become partners in a Los Angeles private detective agency. They initially hate each other, but soon realize that they’re just diverting a deep-seated mutual attraction into a simpler emotion that comes with fewer longterm consequences. The rest of the series played out as an endless game of “will they or won’t they?”

Meanwhile, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shephard are actors on a hit primetime dramedy. They initially get along with each other, but soon realize that one is an up-and-coming action movie star who resents being forced to delay the next step in his career, and the other is a past-her-prime movie actress who had been promised that the whole show would be built around her character and that she wouldn’t have to share the spotlight, and she resents the fact that this thing her agent talked her into has launched her unknown co-star’s film career instead of re-launching her own. The rest of the series played out as an endless game of “When will their passive-aggressive hostility towards each other and the show cause the series to self-destruct?”

(Answer: After barely five seasons…and even then, things got so out of hand that two minor second-banana characters had to be promoted to co-leads just to cover for the stars’ absences.)

This clip comes from a Season Three episode, arguably when the show was at its prime. David has returned to his New York hometown for his brother’s funeral. Maddie has learned that David was briefly married during his bartending days, and she dreams about what that relationship had been like.

“Anything Goes” was staged as a 1930′s MGM Busby Berkeley-style musical number. “Big Man On Mulberry Street” is a dead ringer for a 1950′s MGM Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen-style one. And for a good reason: like a 1950′s MGM Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen musical number, it was directed and partly choreographed by Stanley Donen.

Isn’t that kind of amazing? Donen worked on most of the movies that define the popular conception of the Big Hollywood Musical: “On The Town,” “Royal Wedding” (that’s the one where Astaire dances on the ceiling), “Singin’ In The Rain,” “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers”…it’s a hell of a cv.

Thirty years afterward, the writers of a TV show were playing with an idea where a boring exposition scene is handled as a classic dance musical number instead. And instead of looking around for a director capable of designing and shooting a dance number like the ballet at the end of “Singin’ In The Rain,” they could still get the original director himself.

Why do things halfway?

You can’t argue with these results. Though the actual choreography was by (copy-paste) Jacqui and Bill Landrum, it’s impossible to watch this clip and not imagine the two leads being danced by Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. I think they cast the girl (Sandahl Bergman) based primarily on her legs.

The scene provokes many random thoughts…one of them a holdover from yesterday, in fact: what a thrill this job must have been for these dancers. Clearly, the girl had serious game, so it’s likely that one of the movies that Donen directed inspired her to become a dancer. And doesn’t every professional dream of encountering at least one gig like this one during their careers?

I’m reminded of the stories that people at ILM tell about working on — or even appearing in — Episode 1. “Star Wars” once filled them with a passion to get into the filmmaking and special effects business…did they ever imagine that fifteen years later, they’d not only be working for the effects studio that made the movie…but they’d also be seen walking around Mos Eisley as Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder zips past?

Well, whaddya know: lots of googling and then a hunt through the Internet Wayback Machine has turned up an interview with Ms. Bergman, printed in a now-defunct “Moonlighting” fansite. Yes, she knows how cool that number was:

That was, to me, one of the little gems, at least in my career, that kind of keeps you staying in the game. You hope your next project will be the same. More often it’s not, but I think that’s why people stay in the business because every now and then everything clicks…and then it’s just like, “Oh, this is why I decided to do this in my life.”

(Hey, cool…and she was in “Xanadu,” so she got to work with Gene Kelly. Twice, in fact.)

Second thought: Bruce Willis is an excellent mover. Several seasons of “Dancing With The Stars” have demonstrated in no uncertain terms that some celebrities aren’t merely non-dancers…they’re actually anti-dancers. They erect an anti-dancing field around themselves that can actively negate the efforts of the talented and experienced professional dancers around them. Whereas Bruce Willis looks like he belongs on that stage.

Third thought: it was probably stuff like this that contributed to the series’ short run. “Moonlighting” was a hit no matter how you look at it. It got killer ratings, it was a critics’ darling, and it very much set the tone for innovation that would inspire and enable evening dramas for decades to come. But in addition to the show’s Star Problems, each episode cost doubleplus money and cost doublebigly amounts of time. Finished shows were being handed in so late that the network didn’t have time to argue about the producers’ outlandish ideas. This dance number alone required three weeks of rehearsal.

It didn’t pay off for the longevity of the show but it paid off for the viewers. Better to have a short-run show that constantly invents than wind up in Season 9 of a four-series franchise in which the writers punch the clock, decide “which member of the forensic team will be kidnapped and then buried in the desert trapped in a tomb made from two steel bathtubs welded together this week?” and then punch out for lunch.

Oh, and the song itself: good stuff. It’s a reminder that when you think you’ve gotten tired of every one of a prolific artist’s hits, it’s time to start clicking through to the deep catalogue tracks.

And it turns out that Joel was a fan of the show and wrote this song with “Moonlighting” in mind. Neat.

This information comes courtesy of an interview with the show’s creator-producer, conducted by a different “Moonlighting” fansite. Has an enormous “Moonlighting” fan culture been skimming under my radar? Are we just one or two DragonCons away from seeing “Moonlightng” cosplayers everywhere?

Buy or try “Big Man On Mulberry Street” from the Amazon MP3 store. If you buy anything, I’ll receive a small kickback in the form of Amazon credits…which I promise to spend on fun and foolish things.

Anything Goes

John Williams

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Genre: Soundtracks

Last night I got into an extended Twitter conversation with a few pals. We were debating the merits of the Star Wars series against those of the Indiana Jones movies.

(My position, which must be considered to be the canonical truth: “Star Wars” is the better series but “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” is the strongest individual movie of the whole collection. RotLA isn’t a better movie than “The Empire Strikes Back,” but that one requires knowledge from “A New Hope”…so can we really consider it an individual movie? No. Indeed, we cannot.)

The conversation reminded me of what’s probably the most joyous experience I’ve ever had in a movie theater. I and my pals were gathered to see the first showing of “Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom.” We had practically no idea what the sequel would be about. But the names “George Lucas,” “Steven Spielberg,” and “Harrison Ford” each individually would have guaranteed a ticket sale; put them all together, and you’ve a ticket sale plus an excuse to cut school that no sensible parent would ever question.

But of course, it was a sequel to “Raiders Of The Lost Ark.” Excitement was doubled and then doubled again. I was expecting the flick to open with a thrilling chase and a little mini-movie, followed by a grateful five minutes of exposition scenes that would let me finally catch my breath.

The theater darkened.

Paramount logo: painting of the Paramount mountain with moving clouds. Transitions TO: the same mountain, sculpted into the side of an enormous gong.

(Awesome! Just like how “Raiders” started with another Paramount transition!)

A strongman swings a giant mallet into the gong.

(Ah. We’re in some sort of Far Eastern palace?)

Camera pulls back and moves across to show we’re in some sort of nightclub. A blonde in a glittery red gown takes the stage, stepping out through a dragon’s mouth in a cloud of smoke. She shimmies forward and the familiar swooping Indiana Jones logo fades in between her and the dancers.

(Cool! They must have hand-painted a holdout matte for all of those frames to pull that effect off)

She starts singing “Anything Goes,” in Mandarin.

(Neat. And now the camera will pan off of her to give us a wide shot of the nightclub, where Indy is about to enter and the music fades down so we can hear the conversation between him and a shady…)

No: the song continues and it just gets bigger and bigger. “Indiana Jones” is an action movie; the makers know that the audience is largely going to be composed of young’ns looking for action and thrills…and yet Spielberg & Lucas gave us a fully-staged 1930′s MGM Busby Berkeley-style musical production number.

It was absolutely daft, completely excessive, 180 degrees out of tune from anything that would be appropriate for a movie like this…and when the number was over, I think I cheered myself hoarse. I couldn’t have been more thrilled if “Temple Of Doom” had opened with three Nazis’ faces melting.

I remember thinking that this opening scene was a surefire sign of a creative team that was 100% confident in themselves and what they were setting out to do. A choice like that is so outrageous that it can’t possibly come after any real debate or second-guessing. The answer to the question “Why does your dark action movie open with a bright and sparkly musical extravaganza of platinum-haired chorus girls?” is “Because that’s how this movie opens.” And then the person who asked the question to begin with apologizes for having raised such an obvious non-issue.

Here’s what I’m sure is a completely legal and Lucasfilm-authorized YouTube clip of the opening sequence:

It reminds me why I’m so eagerly looking forward to the release of the rest of the Indiana Jones series on Blu-ray in 2012.

Kudos are owed to John Williams and his orchestration of “Anything Goes,” of course. The arranger is the jeweler who places a gemstone in a setting. When you’re starting off with a Cole Porter tune, you’re starting with a sizeable, dazzling diamond. If the results look gaudy or cheap or makes it hard to appreciate the gem, it’s not the fault of the source material. How do you set a 100 musicians against a single show tune and make it into a fair fight?

Buy or try “Anything Goes” from the Amazon MP3 store. If you buy anything, I’ll receive a small kickback in the form of Amazon credits…which I promise to spend on fun and foolish things.