28 shades

I was walking my dog around the neighbourhood park one early evening, when a little girl at a soccer (futbol) practice there, she must have been eight or nine, noticed us and remarked, "Your dog has a beautiful colour". His fur has more than one colour, the colours and markings of a yellow Labrador Retriever, which he is not being a mutt, that is to say streaks of white, orange, shades of light brown, beige, certainly, not yellow, a couple of dark brown spots on his ears and a pink nose.

The next afternoon, I was walking with a friend from work to the train station, and we were talking. Or rather, I was walking as fast as I could, and he was riding his bicycle as slowly as he could. We were looking at the massive, seven story concrete parking structure that's just opened near the station. Some local politician had called it The Tower of Torture. It was recently painted beige, one of the eight beige colours that had been considered and argued over by committees and people's representatives. The chosen colour is called "Death Valley" and it beat out "Destiny" and, believe it or not "Pearl Harbor". (The Tower of Torture remains an eyesore on the landscape, whether it's beige, or concrete gray.)

My friend, who's red headed, while I'm silver headed, wasn't surprised when I told him I had learned there were eight shades of beige paint. "Oh, yes," he said, "and there are twenty shades of white, I discovered when we were painting our house." He then told me that I wouldn't believe how the brightest white paint was made. "They make it," he said, "by adding a little bit of black to it."

OK, that's something for someone who has studied color theory to figure out. We said goodbye, he headed for his green bus which starts its route at the station, his bicycle to hang on a rack in front, I for the silver train where bicycles, if any, ride inside the passenger cars. The train car I entered was almost empty, this is the end, suburban station, there were three lone women seated, all of them dressed in black (of course), and three bicyclists, sitting near the exit doors with their bikes, all three of them wearing those bright reflective, yellowish green nylon jackets that make them clearly visible on the road. I was, as usual, colour mismatched myself.

The train soon started out for the green hills that about now are starting to turn shades of yellow, beige, brown, the colours, coincidentally, of my dog's fur.

7 doors

To reach my office cubicle from the ground floor gym, I exit through the gym's back door in the weight room, turn right and walk a short corridor behind the daycare center, climb a flight of stairs, step past the round, windowed wall of the corporate data center, then across the second floor bridge between the buildings, past a double row of cubicles into a center hallway, turn right to approach another stairway, and climb one more flight, turn left to walk north then west, passing the printer area, all the way to the outermost corner of the third floor, right next to a small open lounge by the tall windows overlooking the vast company parking lot, a sparsely occupied modern office park beyond it, and a 3,849 foot mountain in the distance. The hike takes no more than a minute or two -- I'll have to clock it with a stopwatch sometime -- probably less time than if I walked across the courtyard to the back entrance of my building and took one of the three elevators up; and the only people I ever and infrequently encounter during this daily walk are an office mailroom worker pushing her cart, or a building maintenance man, or a computer engineer emerging from the data center, which is called a 'lights out center', that is to say, not staffed, and to complete this journey I have to open seven doors, which slam loudly behind me all by themselves, breaking the perfect silence of these colorless, odorless corridors and stairwells straight out of some 1960s Michelangelo Antonioni film.

Communication secrets

"Most guys hate talking and I don’t blame them because talking leads to communication and once you communicate, you’re going to start feeling things, and from there it’s a slippery slope because you’re going to start experiencing life so I try to avoid it."

William H. Macy, actor

Gray scale

I am standing on a suburban train platform waiting for a train to take me to work. There are a few men here, and about a dozen women, most of them waiting for a train going in the direction opposite to mine, toward the great city. I notice that the women are all dressed in black. Head to toe. Black. Some are carrying backpacks or purses. Black. Sunglasses on, it is a bright morning. Black lenses, black frames. I glance at their shoes. Black. Oh, here is a young woman wearing running sneakers. They are gray and white. There is a letter 'W' sown onto the sides of her socks. It probably stands for 'Wilson', a manufacturer of sports equipment, and now apparently apparel as well. Is this 'W' blue? I strain my eyes to see. No, the 'W' is black.

No colors anymore
I want them to turn black

(The Rolling Stones)

Am I becoming colorblind, I think? Is this a black and white film? Am I watching this scene on an old RCA television set. Am I dreaming? I pinch myself. I must be in Sicily, surrounded by grieving widows.

I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Yeah!

The women all wear trousers. Not one is wearing a skirt or dress. Trousers with zippers in front, like in men's pants. (A piece of trivia, in case you didn't know it: the purpose of zippers in the front of men's pants is so that the wearer can easily pull out his (?) member when standing at a modern urinal.)

I recall seeing photographs of the woman led from the raided Eldorado Texas Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church ranch last week, all wearing long dresses in pastel colors, and how someone told me he was shocked and disturbed to see them, that they looked like they had arrived from the early 2oth century.

Finally, lights of an incoming train become visible in the morning mist, an announcement on the loudspeaker, a tall, light skinned young black woman emerges from the up escalator. She is wearing a short dress. Her stockings and high heel shoes are black. The dress is bright pink.

Whiskey and cigarettes

I think it was John Lee Hooker (and every other bluesman) who sang of whiskey and cigarettes (and wild women, whenever possible), at one time not long ago. That was then, this is now. The National Transportation Safety Board investigating the collision of the Chinese freighter ship Cosco Busan with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Nov. 8, 2007, which spilled 53,000 gallons of fuel into the bay, disclosed a list of prescription drugs that the 60 year old local pilot of the ship was taking or had taken in the past (in addition to his past alcohol addiction.) Why such personal medical information is being disclosed to the public poses another question altogether, but in the meantime, let's set the particulars of this case aside for a minute to ponder an example of another overmedicated American. Here is the disclosed list of one man's medications:

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND SUPPLEMENTS:

-Provigil to ward off drowsiness. Known side effects include impaired judgment.

-Valium as a sleep aid. Side effects can include confusion, depression, lightheadedness or fainting spells.

-Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug. Side effects can include confusion, depression, double vision or abnormal eye movements, weakness or tiredness.

-Darvon Compound-65, a narcotic pain reliever. An expert doctor told the NTSB it was inadvisable to take with Lorazepam.

-Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant. Side effects can include confusion and agitation.

-Aciflux for heartburn.

-Lipitor for high cholesterol. Side effects can include tiredness.

-Alphagan, used to treat glaucoma. Side effects can include tiredness or blurred vision.

-Imitrex, a migraine drug. Side effects can include dizziness or faintness, seizures and tiredness.

-Synthroid for thyroid deficiency. Side effects can include difficulty breathing and sleeping.

-Potassium citrate for kidney stones. Side effects can include tiredness.

Whiskey and cigarettes anyone?

Between the buttons

My daughter tells me that she walked out of it. I stayed to the bitter end, playing hooky at a near empty IMAX theater, all the way to the final credits when a bad live performance of the song off the Exile on Main Street album that gave the film its title played, and only in a brief fragment. Here's its refrain, which I have always thought was ironic, the clue (in addition to the vocalist's melodramatic delivery) being "evening sun", because why "evening", and not "morning"?

May the good lord shine a light on you
Make every song your favourite tune
May the good lord shine a light on you
Warm like the evening sun

Martin Scorcese's documentary film of a Rolling Stones concert in a small New York City theater Shine a Light. One newspaper review I read was enthusiastic, another one, so so. I agreed with the latter. Scorcese, in an interview with the local newspaper, admitted that the film contained predominantly close ups. That was the first sign of trouble. There were others. The less than positive review noted that the director had used 18 cameras, and, the reviewer added, 17 of them must have been pointed at Mick Jagger. Indeed, the film consists pretty much of two hours of close ups of Mick Jagger prancing with the agility of a twenty year old.

"How could the Rolling Stones agree to this?" asks my daughter. All four are listed as "Executive Producers", who, one guesses, financed the film and will pocket some if not most of the profits. I admit that after the first half hour of the film I was considering walking out, my senses tired of the constant movement of the cameras, short, MTV editing cuts, and the proximity of the screen, as in an IMAX auditorium, which is taller than deeper, you cannot ever sit far from the screen. But, you can say, I suffered through it, so you don't have to, and in the end prevailed long enough to note Albert Maysles' name in the credits!

Interspersed throughout the film are fragments of old interviews with the current members of the Rolling Stones (ignoring the one who died and the two who quit), like the rest of the film, nothing revelatory. The band is introduced by a former president of the United States, who manages to insinuate himself into everything these days, and, customarily, makes the whole affair seem as if it was all about himself. A former president of Poland is seen briefly in the background, too, and is being introduced to somebody by the other ex-president!

There are guest stars, Jack White, Christina Aguilera, and Buddy Guy, who, despite their best efforts, manage to detract very little from the Rolling Stones, Jack filling the high notes that Mick can no longer hit, Christina, whoever she is, prancing like a Las Vegas go-go girl, and Buddy, whom my daughter liked very much, playing mostly a two note riff on an old Muddy Waters classic Champagne and Reefer and walks away with a Gibson guitar presented to him by Keith Richards.

When Mick puts on a Fender Telecaster and the band launches into a three guitar attack on Some Girls, you can hear why they are so powerful as a band. Later, Keith sings solo You Got the Silver, with Ronnie on slide, another highlight of the show.

But the sidemen, some of who, like saxophonist Bobby Keys have been with the band for decades, or like keyboardist Chuck Lovell are the musical director of the band, are ignored by the cameras, and the band as a whole is ignored by the camera of a director, who, in my opinion doesn't get the idea of what rock and roll is about. Bernard Fowler, the backup vocalist has been with them for at least twenty years, another backup vocalist Blondie Chaplin plays an accoustic guitar in the background, and has previously been a latter day member of the Beach Boys and some other prominent bands.

Last weekend, I was talking with a friend about the first rock and roll films from the 1950s, such as Don't Knock the Rock, with Bill Haley and the Comets, with bad scripts and story lines and lipsynching performers, but cameras focused on entire ensembles, not just on iconic stars. In Shine a Light, Keith launches into Connection, off a 1966 album Between the Buttons, originally sang by Mick, and the clueless director keeps interrupting the song, interspersing it with cuts from some past interviews. Why?

But hey, you have to see the film for the final Orson Wellesian shot, a sort of reverse Citizen Kane opening, helped in large measure by modern computerized effects. Just don't ask what it means!

* * *

New Yorker magazine review.

Ray Davies

Ray Davies, formerly of the Kinks, is on tour in the U.S. promoting his latest solo album. Reading an article about him in a local newspaper, I found this interesting tidbit:

Davies often strolls through his London neighborhood undetected, notebook in hand. “The only formal training I’ve really had is as a painter, and in trying to pick up emotions within pictures,” he explains. “And I guess I’ve learned to do that. … I can look at people, and they say something, then everything goes into slow motion and it registers inside me. I can pick up on that vital element, that significant visual, and paraphrase it. So I’m still in awe of great art, because something inside me still wants to be a painter,” he says. Like his songs, “There’s something about great art, where that moment can only exist as one thing. You can do reproductions, but there is only one original.”