CollisionWorks

There is a geography in my mind as real as that around me -- a geography based in film. In locations, real, created, or recreated in film and television - a fictional landscape that also makes sense to me. Maybe more sense than the real world.

In all the noir study I did for World Gone Wrong I mapped out the city of Los Angeles in my head from the dozens and dozens of films I watched that were shot in that city from 1941-1958. There is a very real L.A. in my head that is stuck in a endless 1947-1953, where Edmund O'Brien is forever shooting a man on a high floor of the Bradbury Building, while Lon Chaney Jr. tosses a man to his death from a higher floor, then escapes by going up the funicular railway - Angels Flight - by the Third Street tunnel a couple of blocks away.

At the top of the railway, Chaney exits the car and goes into a cheap hotel (the "Hillside"), where we've also seen Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer go (from the exact same camera angle) to question Fortunio Bonanova as a failed opera singer living under the name Carmen Trivago -- but did he have to take this name after failing as an opera coach, then called Signor Matiste, for a pretty but hopelessly untalented young blonde named Susan Alexander? Did Charlie Kane never forgive him for his inability to remove the quotes from around the word "SINGER," and use the power of all his Inquirer papers to prevent him from getting a good job again?

Does his incessant playing of old opera 78s bother the group of men next door who are planning an intricate heist? Probably not. They work all day and night, with the Angels Flight railway cars going by their window in an endless rear-projected loop.

They don't even notice when Lon Chaney Jr. kills the man below their window. The man who, despite his crutches, chose not to wait for the railway but took the stairs up Bunker Hill on the other side of the tunnel, meeting his doom at the top.

On his way up that hill he walks briefly by a small set of stairs. About a dozen years later, in lousy, low-budget color, a young man named Jerry walks past them the other way, as a man sits on the step, listening to the radio. Jerry stops as a news report comes over the air, a bulletin about a murder. Jerry is the murderer, which he's only beginning to realize, as he was hypnotized by a carnival gypsy into doing her bidding. He will return that night to the amusement park in Long Beach to confront her. It won't go well.

Outside of town, more things are happening in a connected series of caves in the Bronson Canyon section of Griffith Park than I could possibly go into here.

Further out, at Vasquez Rocks, there's a boulder that Jack Black stands on as "Jeepers Creepers, Semi-Star" for a Mr. Show sketch, and I wonder if he ever realized, as I did a few months ago, that it's probably the same boulder Harvey Korman stands on to address his troops near the end of Blazing Saddles. And in the area below Korman, where Slim Pickens and the other Western-parody bad guys listen, Captain James Tiberius Kirk fought a Gorn a few years back. Further back in time and you can see Buster Keaton wandering here. Further ahead, and it's Bruce Campbell.

Sometimes I want to go to L.A. and look for these places, but most of them are gone now. Just part of an L.A. of the mind. And you can see these overlaps elsewhere, too. There is a villa somewhere near Rome where the American movie producer Jeremy Prokosch lives and makes a play for the wife of the French screenwriter he is bringing in to script-doctor Frtiz Lang's film of The Odyssey. In the main room of the villa the screenwriter briefly strokes the strings of an out-of-tune harp. A few years later, the harp is in tune when a serial killer brushes it just before committing the second murder of the night in that house.

I was thinking of these connections tonight as I saw a picture of a house. Not this first picture. This is a screencapture from an early shot in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, a film of no small importance to me this year. This is, in the film, the home of Mrs. Johnson, though we're never specifically told that -- we are shown and told at separate times that this house is across the street from the Amberson mansion and that Mrs. Johnson lives across the street from the Ambersons (and the screenplay indicates that it is Mrs. Johnson calling to a streetcar earlier from a window).

The Amberson Mansion exterior barely existed - just a door piece and portico and a little bit else; most of it was a matte painting. But Mrs. Johnson's house was a real, full-sized piece, built on the RKO Encino ranch lot. I don't know if it was a previously-existing structure redressed for the Welles film or if it was a false front built especially for Orson's folly. For years, because of the way it was photographed, I thought it was also mostly a painting, but the behind-the-scenes photos make it clear this wasn't the case. It was there:

When Ambersons tanked, RKO spent years repurposing all its expensive, detailed sets in the many low-budget films created to make up for the money lost on Welles. The staircase of the Amberson mansion shows up in at least three Val Lewton horror films in the next few years, and sometimes doors and props that once belonged to the Ambersons appear elsewhere in those films, in backlot locales ranging from New York to the West Indies to Victorian London.

But that was in Hollywood, in the soundstages -- the very same stages where, in 20 years, now owned by Lucille Ball (who had once been rejected by RKO as the the female lead in an Orson Welles project for being too lightweight), they'd be shooting Star Trek and Mission: Impossible and Mannix.

On the Encino backlot, Mrs. Johnson's house stood and waited. Waited maybe for George Bailey and his future wife Mary to walk on by:

I saw this house, which George and Mary of course wind up making their own - a major fixer-upper - and, even with the slight redress, recognized it as Mrs. Johnson's old place, and this started me thinking.

In the film of Ambersons, we never learn the name of the small Midland town that grows and spreads into a city. Perhaps it is indeed Bedford Falls, and George and Mary have in fact taken over Mrs. Johnson's decrepit old place in a now unfashionable part of town. If George and Mary looked over their shoulders, there it would be, the Amberson mansion, now owned by the slumlord Mr. Potter, who never liked Major Amberson anyway and was more than happy to use his political juice to get the family thrown out so he could take over not only the houses the Major had built on his property, but the great mansion itself, which he chopped up into small dingy apartments with their "kitchenettes."

Was George Bailey named for that fine citizen George Amberson Minifer? Unlikely, as when George Bailey was born, George Minifer was still hated, or forgotten. Maybe the one person who existed in both films would know, but probably not -- he was a policeman with a couple of brief lines in 1915 and doesn't even rate being credited in 1946.

Did Bailey grow up knowing Minifer? Was the reformed Minifer a friend or mentor to Bailey? Did Mr. Gower take over the drugstore where Lucy Morgan once had a fainting spell?

Or would the real future of that Midland city of the Ambersons be what we see in George Bailey's vision of "Potterville?" That seems more likely . . .

Just another imaginary landscape, and also long gone, as gone as the full cut of Welles' film, as the Encino lot was torn down in 1950. But now I want to see as many RKO films as I can from that period, and see what new landscapes and connections they offer me.

Yup, all snowed/iced in now, and, more than anything else, kinda bored.

So, I did indeed make up my list, as mentioned last post, of 50 Favorite Warner Bros. Cartoons to submit to Jerry Beck for his online poll, and as long as I made up the list, why not post it here as well as on his post calling for lists?

I've also included links to YouTube and Wikipedia/IMDb entries for each cartoon, where available. Some of the YouTube videos are of pretty lousy quality (one has French subtitles; one is cam-corded off a TV screen!), but so it goes (all but three of the following are available in the Warner Bros. Golden Collection DVD box sets).

In any case, if you're also stuck at home tonight, there's several hours of fine viewing here, from directors Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Maurice Noble, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Frank Tashlin, and Alex Lovy (but especially Jones and Clampett - making this list sure showed me exactly where my tastes lie).

My Picks for Top 50 Warner Bros. Cartoons:

1. Duck Amuck (Jones, 1953)
2. Porky in Wackyland (Clampett, 1938)/Dough for the Do-Do (Freleng, color remake, 1949)
3. What’s Opera, Doc? (Jones, 1957)
4. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Clampett, 1946)
5. Rabbit of Seville (Jones, 1949)
6. The Big Snooze (Clampett, 1946)
7. One Froggy Evening (Jones, 1955)
8. Rabbit Seasoning (Jones, 1952)
9. A Tale of Two Kitties (Clampett, 1942)
10. Feed the Kitty (Jones, 1952)
11. The Old Grey Hare (Clampett, 1944)
12. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves (Clampett, 1943)
13. Bully for Bugs (Jones, 1953)
14. Book Revue (Clampett, 1946)
15. Robin Hood Daffy (Jones, 1958)
16. Baby Bottleneck (Clampett, 1946)
17. Rhapsody Rabbit (Freleng, 1946)
18. Scrambled Aches (Jones, 1957)
19. Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (Jones, 1953)
20. Russian Rhapsody (Clampett, 1944)
21. Now Hear This (Jones/Noble, 1963)
22. Back Alley Oproar (Freleng, 1948)
23. Operation: Rabbit (Jones, 1952)
24. Porky’s Preview (Avery, 1941)
25. Rabbit Fire (Jones, 1951)
26. It’s Hummer Time (McKimson, 1950)
27. A Bear for Punishment (Jones, 1951)
28. Drip-Along Daffy (Jones, 1951)
29. The Daffy Doc (Clampett, 1938)
30. The Ducksters (Jones, 1950)
31. Bunny Hugged (Jones, 1951)
32. Scrap Happy Daffy (Tashlin, 1942)
33. Falling Hare (Clampett, 1943)
34. Buccaneer Bunny (Freleng, 1948)
35. Baseball Bugs (Freleng, 1946)
36. Show Biz Bugs (Freleng, 1957)
37. Daffy Duck Slept Here (McKimson, 1948)
38. Long Haired Hare (Jones, 1948)
39. Thugs with Dirty Mugs (Avery, 1939)
40. Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (Jones, 1953)
41. The Grey-Hounded Hare (McKimson, 1949)
42. Ali Baba Bunny (Jones, 1957)
43. Hare Brush (Freleng, 1955)
44. The Scarlet Pumpernickel (Jones, 1950)
45. Rabbit Hood (Jones, 1949)
46. Stop! Look! and Hasten! (Jones, 1953)
47. Little Red Riding Rabbit (Freleng, 1944)
48. Norman Normal (Lovy, 1968)
49. A Ham in a Role (McKimson, 1949)
50. What’s Cookin' Doc? (Clampett, 1944)

Phew! Happy watching.

I've written about some favorite performers before, and there's a new meme going around the film blogs that appeals to the OCD listmaker in me.

Nathaniel R. at Film Experience Blog innocently started a meme nine days ago that, as he notes, evolved out of control - name and post pictures of your 20 All-Time Favorite Actresses (an original part of his meme seems to have also been to just put them in no particular order, and without comment, which has fallen by the wayside for most others doing this). Why? Well, as he says, "Sometimes you need to be reminded."

He tagged a few people, and they tagged a few, and then everyone just started doing it, tagged or not (ah, film geekery! the province of the OCD and/or slight Asperger's sufferers!). Now dozens of lists are up. Maybe over a hundred (Nathaniel had to stop linking to them; there wasn't time or space). I made up a list, but wasn't going to post it until I got a little bored last night and started searching for pictures of the women I'd had down. Once I got the pictures and cleaned them up, well, there was no reason not to post.

Rules in making the list for myself were: The listed actresses were to be "favorites" based on movie performances only, which not only took out all the stage actresses I work with, of course (several of whom, no joke, would be at the top of my list) but also actresses whose work I primarily love from television - so that took out Helen Mirren, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Melissa Leo. Also, to narrow it down and make it workable, they had to have more than one "key performance" which made them a Favorite - which took out most of my favorite individual performances from all of film, from Agnes Moorehead, Naomi Watts, Julia Ormond, Melanie Lynskey, Miriam Hopkins, Janet Gaynor, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, and Greta Garbo.

And I wound up eliminating a number of actresses who I would have thought would be here, whose work is wider and more varied than the ones below, but who haven't had - for me - those two or three moments that jump to another level and really grab me the same way: Jodie Foster, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Cate Blanchett, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Tilda Swinton, and Elizabeth Russell. There, with all the ones I've now named PRIOR to my list, you have a good alternate 21 runners-up. Throw in Anna Faris for 22, just because (yeah, I'm among those who're waiting for her to get a really good part).

So here - for this week at least (and it's changed several times in the week I've had the list sitting around) - are my 20 Favorite Movie Actresses, in alphabetical order:

Jenny Agutter - Walkabout, Logan's Run, Equus, An American Werewolf in London


Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca, Notorious, Under Capricorn, Murder on the Orient Express, Autumn Sonata


Ellen Burstyn - Pit Stop, The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream


Kathleen Byron - A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room


Angie Dickinson - Rio Bravo, The Killers, Point Blank, Dressed to Kill


Miss Pamela Grier - The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba, Baby, Friday Foster, Fort Apache The Bronx, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jackie Brown, Ghosts of Mars


Jessica Harper - Inserts, Phantom of the Paradise, Love and Death, Suspiria, Stardust Memories, Shock Treatment, Pennies from Heaven, My Favorite Year, Minority Report


Holly Hunter - Raising Arizona, Broadcast News, The Piano, The Firm, Crash, A Life Less Ordinary, Timecode, O Brother Where Art Thou?


Kim Hunter - The Seventh Victim, A Matter of Life and Death, A Streetcar Named Desire, Escape from the Planet of the Apes


Anna Karina - Une femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux, Bande à part, Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, Pierrot le fou, Made in U.S.A.


Nicole Kidman - Dead Calm, Billy Bathgate, Malice, To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, The Others, Dogville


Sheryl Lee - Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Backbeat, Mother Night


Brigitte Lin - Police Story, Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman II, The Bride with White Hair, Chungking Express


Julianne Moore - The Fugitive, Safe, Assassins, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Psycho, Magnolia, Not I, The Hours, I'm Not There


Michelle Pfeiffer - Scarface, Into the Night, Sweet Liberty, Dangerous Liaisons, The Russia House, Batman Returns, The Age of Innocence


Vanessa Redgrave - Blowup, The Devils, Murder on the Orient Express, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Prick Up Your Ears, Mission: Impossible


Theresa Russell - Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance, Kafka, Wild Things


Sissy Spacek - Badlands, Carrie, 3 Women, Missing, The Straight Story


Liv Ullmann - Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Scenes from a Marriage


Kate Winslet - Heavenly Creatures, Jude, Holy Smoke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Romance & Cigarettes

Now of course, I want to pick the men . . . let's see . . . Bogie . . . Clooney . . . Dourif . . . Brando . . . Marvin . . . Hoskins . . .

UPDATE

Daniel McKleinfeld correctly notes that I left off someone I should not have. I'll leave the above 20, but really, I should be replacing Jenny Agutter with:

Jennifer Jason Leigh - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Flesh + Blood, The Hitcher, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Rush, Single White Female, Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, Kansas City, eXistenZ

So the Summer Festival next year at The Brick - June 5 to 28, 2009 - will be . . .

The Antidepressant Festival

The home page is HERE - with little info on it as yet, of course, but the Festival announcement video is up there, and worth seeing if you haven't.

The application page, with the guidelines for what we're looking for in shows for the Fest, can be found HERE.

Remember, Sunshine Equals Puppies.

Just finished reading the second volume - Hello Americans - of Simon Callow's ongoing biography of Orson Welles a few days ago. Like the first volume - The Road to Xanadu - it's quite well-written, fair, detailed, and perceptive, with only a few errors of fact that I caught (for all the perception Callow, a working actor, brings to understanding Welles through his acting, he doesn't completely understand the mechanics of filmmaking and makes some blunders in that arena). Welles comes off as both a far greater and lesser person than I had believed him to be (both more honestly generous, loyal, and heroic some of the time, and monstrous, cruel, and selfish at others). Unlike all other bios of Welles I have read, it is neither a hagiography nor an assault, which is refreshing.

Callow apparently originally contracted to do a one-volume bio, which just kept growing. The first volume, covering the years 1915-1941, is 688 pages long. The second - which, again, was intended to cover the rest of Welles' life, winds up taking 440 pages to cover the years 1941-1947! In the afterword, Callow assures us he will cover 1948-1985 in a third and final volume.

This may seem unlikely, given how few years are dealt with in Hello Americans, but these six years are probably the most active and diverse of Welles' life - he completed four movies as director, shot many months on another, unfinished one, produced another two films for other directors, acted in another handful of movies, created two large theatrical productions, did 200 radio shows, wrote a regular newspaper column, and made pro-Roosevelt and anti-racism speeches all over the country. And for every project he completed (or mostly completed before it was taken away from him), he worked extensively on several others.

He was aided by his youth, energy, and immense interest in many subjects, as well as vast quantities of food, liquor, and amphetamines, but as he reached thirty, these didn't seem to be helping him so much anymore, and his success/failure ratio was tipping more and more to the latter.

Callow prints excerpts from a grumpy, yet honest and revealing, interview Welles did with Hedda Hopper in 1945, on the set of The Stranger, then lets loose with an analysis that has bounced around my head the rest of this week - today's "inspirational text," so to speak:

. . . Bringing the interview to an end, he puts his finger precisely on his problem. "The truth is, I'm a sweat guy. I hear that Noël Coward can write a play a week. Not me. If I can write a play at all, or a radio script, or a scenario, a newspaper column or anything, it's only by virtue of sweating it out. I will fight to the last drop of sweat - but believe me, I do everything the hard way." It was true enough. All the early work was achieved by audacity and adrenalin, sheer exuberance and delight in the work of his colleagues. Now, at the age of thirty, adrenalin was harder to command, and audacity not enough. The magic touch that had so sustained Welles in his twenties had disappeared: now it was just hard, hard work, and he was no longer sure that he enjoyed the job. But what to do instead? It is a question that many a performer has asked himself or herself when the honeymoon of their early career is over - can it really only be this, over and over again? Actors and directors are not, generally speaking, well qualified for any other job; most hit on their vocations precisely because they seemed no good for anything else. This is the moment at which character and power of endurance - what the Victorians used to call "bottom" - becomes almost as important as talent, and much more important than luck.

Hmmmn . . .

Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Sorceror   Control is the name of your game. You are a studied tactician and scientist and you seek a kingdom where things make sense, damn the morals, even if you have to create it. You are cold, calm and calculating.
Incubus/Succubus
Ghost
Cthulu Spawn
Vampire
Werewolf
Demon
Which creature of the night are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

(h/t amygrech)

Forry Ackerman died late Thursday night.

I wrote about what this man and his magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland, meant to me when I was growing up a couple of years ago, on the occasion of a Blog-a-Thon celebrating his 90th birthday, HERE.

There are already many tributes online already, and here are some of the better ones I've seen:

L.A. Times obituary.

Science Fiction Writers of American obituary.

Various salutes at Ain't It Cool News.

The farewell thread from the Monster Kid Classic Horror Forum.

I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today, and be who I am, without Forry and FM. He had a hard time the past two decades, and had been preparing to leave after a very long and full life for a couple of months now, and quite publicly, but it still hits hard tonight. I'll miss a world that had 4SJ in it.

Feeling a bit burned-out this evening, so, my work pretty much done, I skipped out on tonight's first public preview performance of The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice to rest at home, fix my photos from Tuesday night's dress/tech in Photoshop, and write a post about more things going on in which I can also dump a bunch of videos and photos I've been looking at. Most of this has been taken care of, more slowly than anticipated as I've also had to spend time paying attention to a demanding and vocal pussycat (see icon photo). Little bastard.

In any case, tomorrow will be the big opening night for the show, with a party at 10.00 pm afterwards which will also act as The Brick's year-end holiday party with the annual December ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SUMMER FESTIVAL THEME. A Summer festival to follow our previous ones: The Hell Festival, The Moral Values Festival, The $ellout Festival, The Pretentious Festival, and this year's The Film Festival.

Yep, we'll party a bit, then we on The Brick's staff will play a little Powerpoint presentation that's been made up to announce next year's theme (it's a good one!), then we'll party some more.

So come on by to The Brick tomorrow for Granduncle at 8.00 pm (info at link above) and the party at 10.00 pm. Can't make the show tomorrow? Come by for the party and see the show later.

photos by me from Tuesday's dress/tech, with unfinished props & costumes - more of my shots HERE -- official production shots by Ken Stein are HERE

New York magazine had a nice mention of us recently in an article about independent theatre, "Big Ideas, Small Stages." We were very glad to be mentioned and put with some pretty august company, but were a hair taken aback to be described as primarily a "Festival Factory." I guess we are getting a bit heavy on the Festivals - we now have three yearly regular ones, the Summer Themed, the Tiny (which is really the Ontological's Fest but we're a co-producer now) and the Clown Theatre. We've also had two biennial Baby Jesus One-Act Festivals and been a venue for the Havel Festival. We have another potential themed festival coming for late next year . . . not to be mentioned as yet. So maybe the "Festival Factory" tag is indeed deserved. As someone at another theatre I once worked at told me, "New York responds to festivals."

We put a lot of thought into our Summer festival - that is, coming up with the theme. Ideas start being tossed around for the next one immediately after one ends (actually, once one opens). Jeff Lewonczyk has posted a list of some of the festival theme possibilities that were put into play among the seven of us on the Brick staff HERE. Are these serious? You'd think not, but maybe you'll change your mind when you hear this year's final theme . . .

(and 11 of the 26 themes listed by Jeff come from Berit and myself - we have lots of ideas, many of them dubious; B&I had nothing to do with the final one chosen -- the others on staff are good at picking a good one from amongst the many losers)

Saturday night, as mentioned, I'm off doing Trav S.D.'s Beach Blanket Bluebeard - come see, it's FREE! - previous entry has info - but I'm hoping to soon get to the new Greg Kotis holiday play at The Kraine, The Truth About Santa, which stars Greg, Ayun Halliday - his wife and an amazing writer/performer as well, and their two kids, India and Milo Kotis, with others, including Bill Coelius, who, with Ayun and Greg, was part of the NY NeoFuturists group I hosted, knew, and loved so much at Nada back in 1996. I miss a lot about those great days of theatre overload on the LES, but especially watching Greg, Ayun, Bill, Rob Neill, and Rachelle Anthes knock so many great short plays out in that little space.

And on top of that, this play is directed by John Clancy. Info is HERE

(courtesy LP Cover Lover)

Lots of good things have shown up on YouTube recently, and here's some of them - a WHOLE BIG BUNCH of them - behind cuts for those of you who tell me videos make your browser go all wonky . . .

( Four videos of Talking Heads as a trio - 1976 - at CBGB and The Kitchen )

( David Byrne interviews Jeff Koons, Vito Acconci, Jeff Turtletaub, and Chris Frantz in his loft at 52 Bond Street, Summer, 1975 )

( Slinky Cat and Tail-Chasing Cat )

( Pete Drake invents the Golden Throat years before Frampton Came Alive )

( The Thanksgiving Day Parade gets Rickrolled )

( An Icelandic Cult is Joined by a Special New Member )

( Who Does the Singer from LCD Soundsystem Vaguely Sound Like? )

There are so many things to be excited about!

(courtesy my favorite photo blog, the great breadcamesliced)

Oh, I was driving most of yesterday and spending the time before and after with family, so no Friday post happened.

I'm trying to get back to the family quickly now, so instead of a new Random 10 now, I'll post the first ten songs that played randomly during our car trip from Portland, ME to Mattapoisett, MA yesterday, from a playlist entitled "Big Blue Plymouth" - named both for the vehicle it's been built for (it's meant to be a good "driving" playlist) and the David Byrne song from The Catherine Wheel.

Berit picked the first song, and let it go on random for there, so I'll extend the "Random 10" by one:

1. "A Slim McShady" - Go Home Productions (Mark Vidler) - GHP Complete . . .

A mashup of Eminem and Macca's "Silly Love Songs."
2. "Oh, Afghanistan" - The Firesign Theatre - Fighting Clowns
3. "Finiancial Responsibility" - American Association of . . . - Drive Like a Pro
4. "New Girl in School" - Alex Chilton - A Man Called Destruction
5. "See Saw" - Aretha Franklin - Respect: the Very Best of Aretha Franklin
6. "The Stooges Live at the American Theatre, St. Louis - radio promo - Psychedelic Promos and Radio Spots volume 4
7. "Alcoa Aluminum Pull-Top-Spot" - The First Edition - Psychedelic Promos and Radio Spots volume 1It's Time for
9. "Shazam!" - Jim Nabors - Shazam!
10. "Payed Vacation: Greece" - Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
11. "Momma's in the Kitchen" - Slim Galliard - Laughing in Rhythm #4: Opera in Vout

Okay, I'm being called for a family shopping thing . . . gotta go!

Doing a late night/early morning post to get the Friday regular things out of the way - I'll be away from the computer all damned day.

I'm driving Berit to the airport bright and early tomorrow for a family trip and then I'm at The Brick handling tech things for Penny Dreadful and Lord Oxford for most of the weekend, handling Berit's jobs as board op for both shows, as well as designing Penny as always.

So I'll deal with the Random Ten and Cat Photos now so I can get 4 hours of sleep or so before schlepping B to LaGuardia airport. Fun fun fun.

No comments on today's Random Ten - nothing about whether I'm dropping them from the iPod or not - I'm doing a whole iTunes overhaul as it is now, and I may just blank the whole iPod and start from scratch. There's 26,034 tracks in there now, and I want to get rid of a couple thousand. Here's the ten that come up randomly today:

1. "Up Side" - ? & The Mysterians - The Best Of ? & The Mysterians: Cameo Parkway 1966-1967
2. "Every Night I Dream A Little Dream" - Eirik Wangberg - The Ikon Records Story
3. "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" - Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde
4. "Back In Judy's Jungle" - Brian Eno - Vocal
5. "Motorbike Beat" - Revillos - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
6. "Mr. Satan" - Thurston Harris - Little Bitty Pretty One
7. "Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin - Remasters
8. "Woodland Rock - T.Rex - History of T.Rex—The Singles Collection
9. "When Love Comes to Town" - B.B. King & U2- King of the Blues
10. "Fedora Satellite" - Pere Ubu - Story Of My Life

And apart from maybe the King/U2 track, these are all keepers anyway, so no reason to make any notes on them today.

Now that the heat's coming back on fairly often, the kitties are enjoying the radiator again - taking turns, and occasionally fighting over it. Here's Moni, taking up as much of it as she can:

And Hooker looking sweet and innocent, for once, having his turn to get really hot:

It was claw-trimming time the other night, so Berit got them and dealt with it. Amazingly, our kitties put up with this ordeal just fine. Usually, and for the most part. Moni got grabbed first . . .

. . . and then Hooker, who usually doesn't mind, but put up a bit of a fight (I think my picture-taking freaked him out):

And then they alternated between their fighting and the way they are the rest of the time:

Okay, off to bed . . .