Taken from Archer, who stole it from Dawn, who was cajoled into it.

1 – What was the scariest movie you have ever seen?

The original version of The Haunting

2- What was your favorite Halloween costume as a child?

Remember the movie poster for Jaws, with the shark coming out of the water with its' mouth open? My costume looked just like that. It was made out of cardboard and packing foam that had been molded in a toothy-looking serrated pattern, and my face looked out of the shark's mouth. It was COOL.

3- Given enough money what would be your fantasy Halloween costume?

I have a great idea for a "Business Suit Satan" outfit I'll put together someday.

4- When was the last time you went trick or treating?

I think I was in 6th grade or so.

5- What is your favorite Halloween candy?

Tootsie Rolls

6- Tell us about a scary nightmare you once had.

Remember Carrie? Remember when she got whacked with all that blood and just stood there looking royally pissed at everyone below her? The night I saw that, I dreamed she was doing that at the foot of my bed. It was....discomforting.

7 – What is your supernatural fear?

Grizzly bears. They're bad luck when they're hungry.

8-What is your 'creepy-crawlie' fear?

Black Widow spiders, and we have them aplenty where I live.

9- Tell us a time you saw a ghost or heard something go bump in the night.

When I lived in Elgin I occasionally heard footsteps upstairs when no one was there.

10- Would you stay overnight in a real Haunted House?

You bet I would!

11-Are you a traditionalist or a creative carver of you Jack-o-Lantern?

I'm not good enough to be creative with it.

12- How much do you decorate the house at Halloween?

I might carve a pumpkin.

13- What do you want on your tombstone?

"You're late. You missed him."

It was 58% to 42% last week, with people who might be dressed any old way - or no way- while blogging, over those that are always fully dressed. I'm of the former group. When you llive alone, you might as well be comfortable, eh? Besides when you're writing, comfort is job #1. At least for me.

In fact, I'm just half dressed right now. Big deal. I'll put a shirt on later.

This week's poll is, once again, a no -clicker. The number of possible answers is way to large, so this is a free-range, essay type poll! Here 'tis:


What one law would you change? How would you change it, and why?

Go nuts.

I've just finished writing my first paper for my Hitchcock/Kubrick Film as Literature class. I'll be revising it throughout tomorrow and handing it in on Monday. I thought I'd troll for feedback here.

It's about Rope, Starring James Stewart, John Dall, and Farley Granger. It's one of my favorite movies by one of my favorite directors. The essay, as instructed by the Professor, is written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the film. If you haven't seen this movie, I strongly recommend it!! If you have, then I welcome your feedback. What do you think of my thesis??

---

The Technical Eloquence of Hitchcock’s Rope

In the making of a film, Alfred Hitchcock took special pleasure in spearheading the use of new techniques. His interviews make it easy to see the pride with which he explains how he achieved some effect or other. No greater example exists than his film Rope (1948), which employed several technical innovations uncommon to filmmaking then and still today. This was not just Hitchcock’s way of playing with toys, however. Rope was made as it was to elicit specific emotional reactions from the viewer.

Rope, like many other films, was based on a stage play. In films, however, directors tend to expand the scenery of the play to more locations than is possible onstage. The dazzling Alpine scenes in The Sound of Music (Wise, 1965), for instance, were not possible on Broadway. Much of the first ten minutes of Harvey (Koster, 1950), where Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) walks down the street to the pub, was not in the stage play at all, which opens in his private library. Hitchcock decries this approach in the book "Hitchcock" by Francois Truffaut, saying that “…. this is where the film makers often go wrong, and what they get is simply some dull footage that’s been added to the play artificially.” (212)

Hitchcock did the opposite with Rope. The credits play to a placid scene where people walk down a quiet city street (including Hitchcock himself). As soon as the credits have finished, we are pulled into an apartment, and there we stay. The apartment itself is arranged much like it would be onstage, with two rooms set next to each other. The viewer never sees the “wall” that is behind the camera in either room. The action is blocked much like a play would be, but the camera is “on stage” with the actors, drawing the audience into the room as well. As soon as we enter the apartment, we witness a murder, with the body then stashed in a trunk. The tension begins. The usual instinct is to run from a murder, especially if you have just committed it, but the guilty parties stay, and we, the witnesses, stay with them. The tension grows every time another person comes into the apartment and stays. No one leaves until near the end, and every new person in the room builds the pressure. Every time someone goes near the trunk or asks about the victim, it grows again. If Hitchcock had thrown in gratuitous scenes of the party guests arriving in their cabs and going up the stairs to the apartment, the pressure would have been vented when the action left the room. The audience would have a chance to relax, to “get away from it” for a bit. He keeps the feeling of unease constant and growing by keeping us in the small space that in real life, we would not hesitate to leave with great haste. He also keeps the pulse slightly elevated by repeatedly placing the camera, and thus the audience, next to the trunk.

A long window runs along the wall behind the action, offering a view of the New York skyline. This skyline also resembles what Broadway might offer. It is a diorama-like construct, with clouds that shift position at a regular rate throughout the film, and meticulous care was taken (to the point of reshooting several scenes) to display a colorful, but not too colorful, sunset fading into a dark night sky. The diorama’s appearance shows the attention to detail demanded by Hitchcock the artist. This progression of spun glass cloud and light gives the audience its’ only sense of time’s movement (and no doubt spares us a dozen or so shots of a clock). More importantly, however, the artificiality of the scenery serves to constantly remind us that everything truly important is in the apartment with us. That is the only place where we can see anything real, and in action. There are no birds, planes, or window washers to distract us from the tense situation, just this clockwork scenery. Hitchcock has managed to put a barrier around the scene, sheltering it from any outside reality until his purpose has been served.

Hitchcock also subtly manipulated the actors’ performances in order to draw the audience further into the drama. In most films, every scene will be composed of many cuts. During the process, actors will be doing the same short bits over and over, tweaking this or that, and correcting errors. They may go in and out of character during this process, and will be shooting the scenes in a different order than they appear in the finished work. The flow and timing are a result of the film’s editing. Plays are just the opposite. Actors, stagehands, orchestra, and audience are all “in the moment”. The performers must stay focused and in character. They are responsible for keeping the pace.

In filming Rope, Hitchcock eschewed editing as much as the physical medium itself allowed. Each cut was an entire reel of film, lasting about 10 minutes each. He avoided any obvious edits by having the camera zoom in on a dark field, like the back of a man’s jacket, at the end of a reel. The next reel would begin in the same spot, and move back. The pace of the “play” is never interrupted. The audience’s feeling of being in the room with the action is never challenged by a swift change of camera angle. By keeping the view to one camera, which of course can move about as a person would, the audience member never feels like a voyeur as much as like another person at the party – one who knows what’s up but cannot speak.
This tactic did more than merely allow a theatrical atmosphere, however. It forced the cast to perform in larger blocks. Instead of going in and out of character for 30-second cuts, they were forced to stay in character, and in the moment, for ten minutes at a time. This provided an emotional continuity that compliments the pacing continuity provided by the very same approach. Having the actors retain the emotions that their characters are feeling in this way helps draw the viewer into the emotional stew slowly boiling in that small space confining both cast and audience. By continuing to treat Rope as a play, Hitchcock loses none of the drama that made it work onstage in the first place.

While it is the norm today, color was fairly fresh technology in 1948. While it had been around for at least a decade, it was still usually reserved for special projects. Rope was, in fact, Hitchcock’s first color film. He didn’t merely allow the color to be its’ own reward, however. As he was already accustomed to using photographic style to make a cinematic point, color became another tool to him. For the most part, the color remained low-key, with soft, cool tones rather than bright, warm ones. Not only was Hitchcock taking caution with an unpredictable new (to him) medium, he was also taking care that the relative novelty of color would not distract the viewer from the story. In fact, part of the film was re-shot in order to tone down the sunset.

He used color pointedly in one instance, though.  When Mrs. Atwater (Constance Collier) enters the party, she sees Kenneth (Douglas Dick) and mistakes him for the murder victim, David (Dick Hogan). She calls out the name “David”, startling Phillip (Farley Granger) and causing him to break his glass and cut himself. When the camera moves to Philip, the first thing the audience notices is the bright red blood on his hand. As it is normal to feel alarmed at the sight of someone bleeding, and since movie audiences had not yet in 1948 been inured to such sights, the audience is given a start. Had the film been black and white, the blood would not give the viewer a start at all. In fact, it is likely that the blood would go unnoticed for what it is until another character says “Philip, you’re bleeding”, which would be far less effective. This approach also allows Hitchcock to draw his metaphor subtly; Philip, indeed, has blood on his hands. Ironically, Hitchcock chose to make Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) in black and white so as to contain the emotional reaction to the blood in the shower scene.

At the climax of the film, Rupert (James Stewart) discovers what his hosts have done, and fires a gun out the window. This is the first time that the outside, or for that matter the windows themselves, have been acknowledged since the opening credits. In direct contrast to the carefully structured fantasy of the skyline, Hitchcock took great care in making the sounds at this point of the film realistic. To capture the sounds of people on the street reacting to the shots, he hung a microphone out of a window several stories up. He then had actors on the street reacting to the gunshots. This approach gave the voices distance; some words were clear, others not quite so. For the approaching police sirens, a microphone was set up outdoors and real car sirens were recorded, starting miles away and coming closer. The audience hears the sirens start far off into the dim distance, and slowly get louder as they grow closer. We hear the other street sounds, and the people now reacting to the approaching sirens.   Every sound from without is exactly like it would be to someone in a real apartment with a real window open in a real city. In this way Hitchcock uses meticulous reality to invite the outside world back into the picture. After being shunned for the length of the movie, reality can now enter the apartment again, just in time for Philip and Brandon (John Dall) to get a good taste of it. At this point, the tension is gone, the pressure vented out of the open window, and the “captive” audience is released to go where they will.

While Hitchcock’s entire career could be considered a love affair with cinema, Rope is a film for the theatregoer. While that makes it differ from much of his other works, it still has one thing in common with them all; Hitchcock’s contention that reality, plausibility, and character had less importance than the emotional involvement of the audience.  Creating that emotional involvement was the primary goal. From there came the joy taken in creating new ways of getting his desired image onscreen. The unique methods used in Rope would not be conducive to day-to-day filmmaking, and were not undertaken lightly. Everything Hitchcock did played a part in manipulating the audience’s emotions and creating a truly engaging experience.

Once you become a Deadhead, becoming a Little Feat fan is almost a given. While the two bands don't really sound alike at all, they do seem to attract the same crowd. At least, that's how I got into them, through my Deadhead friends, at a time when  the band was no more, and I was too late to appreciate them live. I mourned for that, because Waiting for Columbus was, and still is, the best official live album I had ever heard.

Lowell George was a guitarist in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in 1969, and he used to catch a lot of crap from bandmate Jimmy Carl Black about his tiny feet. "If you ever start a band, you should call it Little Feet", and somesuch. One day, Lowell showed Zappa a song he'd written called Willin', and Zappa promptly fired him. He told Lowell that he was too good to be a member of someone else's band, and should form his own. That he did, taking bassist Roy Estrada with him. He called them Little Feat, changing the "e" to an "a" in homage to the Beatles.

The fact that it's really difficult to descibe their sound is one of the main reasons I love them. They're rock, but also country, and that pianist is frequently up to some jazz, and there's some island flavor in that percussion, with a rich gravy of cajun hoodoo slathered all over it. That kind of says it.

Throughout the 70s, Little Feat made a name for themselves not necessarily as a jam band, but as a band that could really jam. Then in 1979 a still-too-young- Lowell George died after a concert of a heart attack. No evidence of drugs was found.



After that, Little Feat was simply a sweet memory. For a while. They staged a triumphant return in 1988 with frontman Craig Fuller. I first saw them opening for Jimmy Buffett (in what was one of the most insane crowds I've ever been in) and saw them several more times during the Fuller years. He's since been replaced by Shawn Murphy, but they're still Little Feat. They're still writing new music and jamming with the same groove (well, maybe a little slower now). But still jamming well nonetheless. Below is a live photo of the current band (btw- Shawn is the woman).



Another thing I love about the current band is their whole-hearted approval of the trading scene. They even have a link to my favorite trading site, Dime-a-Dozen, on their official website.

My intention here, however, is to praise the artistry of Mr. George. Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead NY was host to many fine concerts in a studio setting. There is an audience, but you can tell that it's very small. This was probably a "Playboy After Dark" type of party with more casual dress. Like the Paris Theater shows recorded by the BBC, however, these sessions led to some very fine professional recordings of some very fine performances by some very fine musicians, all made for radio rather than commercial release. I've got Ultrasonic recordings of several bands, and some may appear here.

Little Feat played there at least twice, on April 10, 1973 and September 19, 1974 (there may have been others that I haven't found yet). I have both and they are both fantastic shows. I'm not going to play the 1974 show, because you can listen to it yourself, by downloading the whole thing legally and for free right here. No special software needed, just click and point. You can get the format you want, but I would take the flac files. Download this free program to decode them, and burn to one CD. I suggest this because then you get an accurate digital copy of the original recording, whereas the other file types available all cut sound frequencies out of the song to make the file smaller. What's the sense of that? If I want to hear music, I want to hear ALL of it.

Anyway, jollykay is the only one who gets the 1973 show (well, O'Tim knew it too, so he can have one if he wants). I am fortunate to be able to post three songs in one track that all blend one into another, and show what this band was capable of even in their early days. The songs are called Cold Cold Cold, Dixie Chicken, and Tripe Face Boogie. Let me know what you think.

  

In two weeks: His band has a sousaphone in place of a bass guitar.
(The first to post the answer wins a copy of the show!)

In other news, it seems that my favorite herb can help stave off the mental ravages of Alzheimer's Disease. Not that this knowledge would be anything but further impetus for the government, owned in part as it is by the pharmaceutical industry, to do anything but try harder to clamp down on it. After all, the medical industry is about making Pfizer and Merck rich enough to continue that lucrative lobbying and election financing. If some people are cured along the way, well, that's okay too.

One thing bugs me, though. I've known chronic use of the Chronic to make some people forgetful. Some really heavy users even become absent-minded.

Just how easy is it to tell the difference between a 75 year old with Alzheimer's and a 75 year old that's been stoned for 60 years?????

 

Since Angus is pushing 16 years now, his walks have become shorter and more local. He doesn't have the stamina for the long hikes anymore. In fact, he can't get in and out of the Bronco without a lift. So, when I wanted to go for a hike in the Sandia foothills the other day, I took Hito.

Hito is my neighbor's dog. He's a strapping young man of about two years. He's boisterous, friendly and fun loving. He has a big smile that he greets you with. He scares the crap out of people when they see him coming. In fact, that fear led someone to stab the poor guy once. He is easily misunderstood. You see, Hito is a pit bull.

Pit bulls have a pretty bad rep these days. Every time one attacks someone, it is big headlines. There have been local pushes to make the breed illegal altogether. As it stands, there are laws that make pit bull owners a bit more liable for aggressive acts of dog than owners of other breeds.

It is known that in many of these cases, the dog has been taught to be mean. Many people will get a pit bull specifically for that purpose. Tie it on a short leash to a wall and beat the tar out of the poor thing until it hates everyone, that's the way to do it. Then set it loose in the yard. That'll keep those old junk cars safe.

Most people don't consider that, however. They just know that once again, one of those pits attacked a neighbor kid that he wasn't supposed to attack. It "just went wild". Many people believe that this breed is a powder keg, ready to go off at a moment's notice. "They're nice dogs, until something just switches in their heads and they go for your throat." That's what Dad told me when warning me to be wary of Hito, a dog he's never even seen. People just think that with pit bulls, there's something wrong with the animal itself..

I was thinking about this while Hito and I walked along the trails, Hito stopping to sniff everything in sight. He didn't drag on the leash at all. He didn't try to take off after anything. He didn't growl at anything, with the exception of a biker that he barked at from the back of the Bronco. I think he just likes to freak them out a little. I've seen that twisted sense of humor in other breeds, too. In fact, he was a near perfect little gentleman on our walk, better behaved than Angus usually was on walks until the age of 13 or so. As usual after dealing with Hito, I wondered about the people who think that there's "something wrong with the animal". It seems pretty clear to me that a dog raised by peaceful people grows to be peaceful.

Then I got home and checked out the news. I found this.  I remembered this. In fact, I remember a lot of news items like this from the last few years.

Then I see this.

And this.

It isn't hard to find this stuff. And every time you do, you see people trying to reason it out.

Did he have a mental illness? Was she driven to it by her husband? Was he molested as a child? Treated poorly by schoolmates? Beaten by a mean stepdad? Didn't get the draedel he wanted for Christmas?

Even when they aren't trying to justify the event, people will still be looking for some clue to its' origin. They have to find a reason for a rational being to do irrational things. After all, people don't just drown their own kids, right? Something must have made her do it. There has to be a cause for all this.

And that's when I thought "Maybe there isn't."

What if these folks just snapped? What if the switch just flipped? Perhaps there is no rhyme or reason to it all. Maybe upbringing and personal history have nothing to do with it. Maybe there is something inherently defective in the species we call "human".

Maybe there is something wrong with the animal itself.

It seems that when it comes to pets, just picking one type isn't the issue that music is with a lot of folks. There were some definite preferences stated, with only four classes of critters even making the board. Cats and dogs were split evenly at 44%, with fish and horses each getting 6%. The poll was, of course, which you'd choose if you could only have ONE. I dig my Ball Python, but if I could only have one, it wouldn't be a snake, it would be a cat.

I always had both when I was a kid, but I became a cat person as an adult. Being young and a deadhead, I found cats an easier fit in a "pick up and go on a three-day road trip" lifestyle. Leave plenty of food, a clean box, and a thin drizzle in a sink or tub and they will be fine for a few days. Mind you, I don't regret one second of my 15 years with Angus, but adopting him did create more work in preparing for a trip. And his chewing on the furniture to express his displeasure at the situation didn't oil our relationship any in those early days, either.

As O'Tim said, "cuz there's just no bestester pals" about dogs, and he is right to an extent. One can be just as close to a cat as to a dog, it's just that the relationship with a cat takes time and effort. For cat people, it's the forming of that bond with what is essentially a wild animal that is fulfilling. Dogs give that instant buddyhood that many people prefer. The people who say that their cat "is just like a dog" are simply trying to say "This cat is one of the many that is affectionate like dogs usually are, so you can approach it like you would the dogs you're more used to." A cat can be a great cat without that quality, though. These people aren't saying this to make excuses for their cats. Cats need no one to make excuses for them.

For people who like to share outdoor activities with their pet, dogs are the better choice. You can't go mountain biking with your kitty.

Still, cats are a lot of fun. No, you can't play with one like you can with a dog. However, if you play with one like you can with a CAT, then the cat is a very fun toy, and will think the same of you. "You can't teach a cat to play fetch", the dog people say. So what? The dog has no idea how much fun a three foot length of string can be.

People will use the same arguments to say that dogs are smarter than cats, which is of course palpable nonsense. "You can't teach a cat anything". Bullshit. My cats, for example, were taught all the areas they were NOT welcome in. Fifteen years hasn't gotten Angus out from underfoot. We played games, as well. No, I never taught Sybyl to fetch, but we made up some games together that were a lot of fun. True, you don't see police cats, but I've never seen a dog housebreak itself in one hour, either. They're both smart in different ways, let us say. If they had an industrial society, dogs would be the workers, and cats would be the planners.

I think the most germane difference in the cat/dog argument, however, is in the owners. I know many dog lovers that hate cats. I know few if any cat lovers that hate dogs. Cat lovers seem to be more likely to be all around animal lovers, whereas there are a lot of people who seem to like ONLY dogs. Once again, I think that is because dogs make the relationship stage fast and easy, and some folks just have to have it like that.

Anyway, new poll to the right. Be HONEST, now.

The biweekly Trollling the Underground contest for this week is still unwon, folks. As you may know, the first person to guess the artist I'll feature next gets a full copy of the bootleg recording I'll be featuring a cut from. Last week's clue was:

When one mother made fun of another, a future band got its' name.


Now I'll give you another:

Their music has been covered by the likes of Garth Brooks, Taj Mahal, Van Halen, and Kubota Makoto.

You have until Friday morning. Who says I don't love ya?

I have, for over a year now, been getting mail for one James H. Troll. Despite having the same surname, I have no idea who this person is. I can only tell you two things about him.

First, he evidently has better credit than I, since more credit card companies seem to want him as a valued cardholder. Second, he's advanced in years. This I know because the bulk of his mail concerns medical plans and, failing that, funeral arrangements. I tend to give it just the amount of attention required to throw it out.

He got some mail yesterday, in fact. If he attends a preview of Humana's 2007 Medicare Advantage health plans to learn about the exciting benefits and services, he will be treated to a big-screen viewing of Casablanca.

This one caught my eye. Not that I care about the programs - even if my new job DIDN'T provide bennies, which it does, I would be about 25 years shy of Medicare requirements. I sure would like to see that movie, though.

I mean, Casablanca is the classic of all classics. It was a chick flick that men could enjoy by virtue of the fact that it had Nazis, shooting, and heavy drinking as well as all that kissy stuff. It was well written, well cast, beautifully shot, and provided the largest number of readily recognized catch phrases in movie history. I can think of five right off the top of my head.

I've never had the chance to see this on a big screen. In fact, I've never had the chance to see MOST of my favorites on the big screen. I would love to own a revival theater for just that purpose.

In the mean time, however, if I want to see it, I guess I'll have to walk all hunched over, wear old smelly clothes, and try to cough a lot.

A small sacrifice to make for Ingrid Bergman. Rick gave up a whole lot more.