As I've said to so many people recently, those my age usually know how great we have had it in our country, getting better and better, freer and freer and with more technology to ease living, save lives and educate ourselves than ever before. A lot of what I'm so grateful for is not demonstrable here - and that is great scholarship that has opened up the ancient world, it's sights and texts, that was never available before. But, much is from the world of entertainment that I have recently abstained for (to the extent possible, I will not give an entertainment world which largely supports fascism (even if they don't think so) my support anymore, and that includes sports, movies, tv and so forth. The following things are just stuff that made me happy -
1. Laurel and Hardy. Though comedians, below is a dance scene from their film, Way Out West. This is genius. There is just no comedy like this anymore. It's timeless, neither topical or political, not a commentary on society and not dirty. Just humorous, seemingly spontaneous, joyful and graceful, performed by the greatest couple of clowns whoever made a movie. The song is At the Ball, That's All and I understand there were a lot of rehearsals to make it appear so natural and spontaneous.
2. Speaking of out west, I am so grateful to have spent time out there. I only spent a short day or two at the Grand Canyon but between a month or two out west in total. In the Grand Canyon we stayed right on the rim in the Bucky O'Neil Suite that is the oldest surviving building there. No A/C, but very worth it. In Monument Valley we stayed in the only hotel with a view that blended right in with the background. The trips through Utah, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and Washington have awe inspiring. Only a few pics as I've shown these off before.
3. The Mask of Zorro (TMZ). I first saw this 1940 film in my childhood and was enamored. As primitive as it might seem in today's hyper-technical film world, it was a great story and completely captivating to me. There are many versions of Zorro, a classic tale only written as a book in the early 20th century (I have a paperback reprint of the story, originally serialized in a magazine) by Johnston McCulley a prolific writer - over fifty novels, many more stories and numerous screenplays - who is not remembered today at all by almost anyone, and his characters not at all except for Zorro. The Tyrone Power version was not only my favorite (also played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Guy Williams and Anthony Hopkins. No, Antonio Banderas was not Don Diego, but a pupil of the aged Hopkins' character) because of his portrayal of the masked man, but the performances by Basil Rathbone was as good. Their sword fight to the death is as good as it gets. Also, the gorgeous Linda Darnell (then considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood) - she seems to have had a sad love life (after, like it seemed every Hollywood starlet - dating Howard Hughes) and felt saddled by her good looks. Then, she tragically burned to death at age 41. She was often teamed up as a movie couple with Powers and was the love interest here. Her evil step-aunt, Gale Sondergaard, played a selfish, greedy, faithless older woman so effectively, you have to really look harder to realize how beautiful she was too. Actually, she was the originally chosen Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, conceived of alternatively as a sexy witch, but when they wanted her to play it made up ugly, she thought it would hurt her career and decided against it - Margaret Hamilton got the job and was, as we all know, amazing, but, based on TMZ, I think Sondergaard would have been just as good. Her career was greatly damaged by the House Un-American Committee hearings (her husband was accused of being a communist), but it recovered. J. Edward Bromberg was also brilliant as Sondergaard's husband, the comically pathetic and fearful Alcalde. Eugene Pallete pretty much duplicated his role as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) as the surly and feisty Friar Felipe in TMZ two years later. Others were great too, but I just want you to watch the sword fight below, so I'll stop there.
4. Starry skies. Say what? Yes, starry skies. What could be more beautiful than a sky filled to the brim with stars. When I lived in Appalachia I could go into my backyard any clear night and see the Milky Way. Guests from urban areas sometimes couldn't believe it and thought it was just a cloud. Same cloud every night then, I'd say. But, these were not the best stars I ever saw. I give the title to 4 different nights and really can't differentiate them much. The first, no 4, was when I slept in a canyon in Colorado. I can't narrow it down any further than near the Arkansas River. I was going down the river as part of a raft crew the next day, having snow skied the day before, the last day of the season (7/2). Both experiences were awesome, but so was the night sky. Number 3 was in Sardinia. I was snoring and keeping my travel buddy awake, so I left the house to sleep in a hammock. Not only was the sky incredible, but I was treated to the sight of a satellite passing over the whole arc of the sky. There are two I can't differentiate much at all. One of them was in Montana at my friend Don's house, which is so rural as to make my former home in Buchanan Va (pop. 1300) look crowded. The other was on a beach in Matala, Crete when a strike caused all the lights in the town (perhaps the island) to go out. In the course of a few seconds, we went from one of the most gorgeous sunsets I've ever seen to possibly the most beautiful night sky I've ever seen.
One of the few good reasons to go to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, is to see Van Gogh's The Starry Night, which he painted while looking out the window in the room of the asylum he was in (no idea what website this comes from, as I see at some point I copied it and put it with my pictures).
It doesn't look like any starry night I've ever seen. Why does it seem like a starry night when it doesn't really look like one? I don't know, but that's why he is Van Gogh and my own oil paintings were, ummm, pretty much in line with my efforts on the violin.
Van Gogh's other Starry Night, actually, Starry Night over the Rhone, depicts the night sky in Arles looking over the Rhone River lit up by gas jets.
But, a real starry night is even better. In fact, it is one of the great sights in our world.
5) Speaking of stars - UFOs. I sincerely doubt there are visitors from other planets here. Visitors from other planets would be enough like us they'd interact in some way - kill, conquer, trade with - something. But, even if it is all a sham, I am ever grateful to the legions of believers who have entertained me since I'm a child with tales, stories and movies involving UFOs. I have a number of friends who claim they saw one. Some I believe are accurately describing what they saw, some I believe just "want to believe," as Mulder would put it. Only the past two weeks I have seen what I twice would have to call UFOs. That is, I couldn't identify what I was looking at. The first was a pinprick of light traveling through the sky at my friends' house. It was moving too slow and was too enduring to be a shooting star, but was also too ephemeral to be a plane, and moved in an arc, which no plane does, and then just disappeared. Only a few nights ago in the afternoon my evalovin' gf and I saw what could have been a balloon, but whose shape was unlike any I've ever seen (sort of a circle with a hole in it as if you were looking at the bottom of a tooth's filling), and its trajectory, speed, apparent height and slightly changing shape left me wondering what it was. Like many shots of UFOs, it seems to be shimmering in a way difficult to describe and I couldn't really get a good picture. A balloon is still the best guess, but . . . .
Smithtown, 7/2/20
6) F-Troop. There are many great tv shows from my childhood that I still think about all the time. The Honeymooners (I saw re-runs) may be deserving of being called the greatest ever. Gilligan's Island, That Girl, Get Smart, The Munsters, The Adams Family and so on. But, my favorite was F-Troop, a faux-Civil War comedy. What a great cast, what great writing.What great comic acting. Forrest Tucker, as Sarge, Ken Berry as Captain Parmenter and Larry Storch as the hysterical Corporal Agarn were the stars, but the cast of second bananas was also wonderful. The hapless horn player, Dobbs; the Alamo survivor - Duffy ("There we were, Davey and Me, back to back . . ."), the near-sighted look-out Vanderbilt, the Indians - Chief Wild-Eagle, his scheming assistant Crazy Cat and the elder, Roaring Chicken. Not least, the incredibly sexy, if wholesome, Wrangler Jane played by Melody Patterson, who could outshoot and out cowboy any of the soldiers. And other characters that were silly and fun. I'm sure politically correct writing would now require the Indians to be unfunny and purely noble, but you probably couldn't duplicate this show now anyway. My favorite scene was one they snuck past the censors - Wrangler Jane, Captain Parmenter's love interest, is kissing him, when he says, "Careful, Jane. You'll bend my saber." I can't find a video of that anywhere, but there are plenty of F-Troop videos out there, like this classic where Corporal Agarn teaches the Indians how to do a war dance.
Unfortunately, the video cuts off mid-dance, but you get the flavor of it here. Great show.
Left to right, Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry and Larry Storch.
7) Violins. At some point in my life I became fixated on violin music, at least 20+ years ago. I even took lesson's in my '40s with comedic results you might expect from someone with no musical talent (I posted on my musical life, or lack thereof, on 12/10/16). But, I no longer have to buy CDs as youtube gives me every great performance and great artist, one after another. For some reason I don't understand, great female violin (and piano) players are also frequently gorgeous. Here's one of my favorites, Caroline Campbell, with a relatively new (and short) composition from the 1990s, out of the movie The Red Violin.
But, if you can stand a longer performance, the greatest violin music in the world in my humble opinion is Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor and the link below is for a performance by Itzhak Perlman, probably the best at his craft - maybe ever. Even if you listen to just a few minutes. Try it, Sam-I-Am.
8) Authors. I don't know how many books I've read in my life. Has to be in the 1000s. I have several hundred on my shelves, a few hundred more in the addict, and I'm sure it is a fraction of what I've read in my life. I've been over my favorites in previous posts so many times, I am not going to do any top ten lists about it now. My legions of three or four readers know all too well I love Tolkien, Thoreau (who I've been begged to stop writing about), Matthiessen, George McDonald Fraser, Will Durant, John Le Carré and others. But, this is a Thanksgiving post, so, I'll say thanks here to others I've probably not mentioned enough, anyway. Hermann Hesse, H. Rider Haggard, Alexander Dumas, John Meyers Meyers (not a typo), Abraham Rodriguez (for just one book, but oh, so good), Lawrence Block, Helen MacInnes, Eric Ambler (new for me, but an old adventure writer), Steven Pinker, John McWhorter, R.K. Narayan, Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor), Rex Stout, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Ernest Hemingway (even if I only liked two of his books - they were great), Jim Thompson, James Fenimore Cooper, Walter Mosely, James Lee Burke, John Bellairs, Knut Hamsun (even if he was a f'n Nazi), Mary Renault, Joy Adamson (the first book I ever read, Born Free, was hers and I think colored my whole life), Edith Hamilton (the second book I ever read, Mythology, was hers, and I also think colored my whole life), John Mortimer, Richard Rhodes, Garry Wills, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Lionel Davidson, Henry Adams, Mary Johnston, Bertrand Russell, Kinky Friedman, Damon Runyon, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Erwin Schrödinger, Konrad Lorenz, Richard Dawkins, Winston Churchill, Frederick Forsyth, Dr. Seuss, T. H. White and John Fowles. There are a lot more, but that will do for now. Thanks, guys and gals.
9). Artists. I've written about art before. Mostly, I like the Renaissance or near predecessors. There was a time when I knew a lot about it, could walk into a museum and tell you who painted what and some stuff about each of them. But, memory fades. I'm sure I couldn't do that anymore. But, I still know my favorites and these are them. Don't ask me why. I can't figure it out myself.
Hieronymous Bosch
Peter Brueghel the Elder
Brughel's iconic Hunters in the Snow, which I was fortunate enough to see in Vienna.
El Greco
Caravaggio
Those four are my favorites. Then -
Michelangelo, who, in my unprofessional opinion, and I'm sure a lot of other people's, professional and lay, was the greatest artist of all.
Tintoretto. All of a sudden he's big the last few years, at least in the art world. I discovered him in the 1970s when I read an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, of all people, that made Tintoretto fascinating. I greatly prefer his Last Supper to Leonardo's, although he painted a century later than Leonardo and could benefit from Leonardo and many other newer ideas.
Franz Hals. Why do I like him so much better than Rembrandt (and Vermeer, who was better than either) when no one else does? We just like what we like.
Andrea Mantegna, to me, probably the most underrated painter of this time period.
The whole freaking Bellini family, Jacopo, Giovanni and Gentile.
and from more modern times -
Van Gogh (took me a while, but all of a sudden, literally one day, I just got him)
Norman Rockwell (shoot me, I like Norman Rockwell and think he was a great artist)
Salvatore Dali (and ditto for him)
10) Water. I don't believe in God, or gods, for that matter, but if I did, I would consider that water was among his/her/its best creations, at least on earth. And not counting the many varieties of Chinese food. There's nothing like standing in a warm shower, unless it's listening to a babbling brook, watching a stormy ocean, or a sunset or rise above a sea, floating down a river in a kayak or, if you are a kid, splashing in a puddle. And the colors, come on, who thought of that? The blues and greens (the colors we usually want it to be, anyway). Not talking about waterfalls or rivers here, just amazing water in oceans, seas and lakes -
The Isle of Women, Mexico (see below).
Cozumel, Mexico - the water was choppy on the beach shore, but a little off the coast, OMG! Calm and crystal clear. Just going down the ladder from our condo patio into the sea was such a display of the undersea world, I wish I had an underwater camera.
The Aegean Sea between Kos, Greece and the Turkish coast - incredibly warm and a vivid deep blue.
Pretty much everywhere else in Greece - really, one beach was more beautiful than the next.
Boniface, Corsica. That perfect blue-green water amidst rock formations.
Some cove in Corsica whose name I can't remember. We came around a curve and there it was, glowing violet in the sunlight. As beautiful as anything I've ever seen in my life. I took a picture, but it in no way does justice to what it looked like, so I'm not showing you (as if I could find it).
Lake Pukaki, NZ and neighboring lakes - an almost invisible glacial green-blue, unlike any other I've seen on earth. All of the nearby lakes were spectacular, but even on an overcast day, Pukaki, which they won't even let any bathers or boats in, was special.
The Cook Straight between the North and South Islands of NZ - this spectacular show was so good I crossed twice.
Korčula, Croatia. I was here in the 1980s when Croatia was still part of then-existing Yugoslavia. An island near Dubrovnik, it and neighboring islands (most well-known, Hvar) have remarkable water.
The Smithtown Bluff - though hardly famous, the view from this bluff of the LI sound is so beautiful, when I bring people there, they can scarcely believe it exists on LI. I find it incredibly relaxing and have sat there under the trees for countless hours, looking at the sand bars, the river and the sound, and distant Connecticut.
Nassau Island, Bahamas - I went to a resort that was rarely attended (and soon closed down) because of the proximity of the Paradise Island resort, which you couldn't pay me to go to (too many people). But the water where I was, was paradisical.
Smith Mountain Lake, Va. (see below) Let me put it this way. I've taken two people there separately. As we went over the rise giving the first view of the lake, they both said the same thing - I want to live here.
Magen's Bay (see below), Sapphire Bay and every cove on St. John's Island.
I could go on, but I'm just being thankful so no need to list them exhaustively. Thanks, metaphorical God, for the water. My cameras, really their operator, is not good at getting the best out of colors, either blue/green or red. You'd think it would be better at one, so I mostly use pictures by professionals.
Magen's Bay, St. Thomas. This was my own. You can see the difference between what I can do and the professional shots below, which are more true to life.
Isla Mujeras, Mexico (not my picture, but that's what it was like)
Smith Mountain Lake, Va. (also not my picture)
I did pretty good with this one. A view of the NZ Alps, I believe from Lake Tekapo.
No need to go on. There are so many beautiful places, of which I've seen only a few. I accomplished my goal for today, which is to try not to dwell so much on our coming fascism. We have to be grateful for the amazing things we have in our life. It's hard right now, but it's great to think about all these things.
