Christopher's space

I listened to the news on the radio in the middle of the night.  Sarah Palin had resigned as governor of Alaska.  I could not imagine this decision as the beginning of a bid for the presidency in 2012.  She hardly inspired confidence in those interviews.  It seemed that she was trying to make some money on speaking appearances and the like.

I awoke early in the morning and listened to Joni Mitchell’s “Mingus” album.  It starts with a happy celebration in 1975, and it’s curious that Mingus doesn’t seem to know his own age.  Maybe he was losing it upstairs.  I also listened to Procol Harum’s “Grand Hotel,” which I enjoyed early in the morning.  Procol Harum always makes me think of the Martin Scorsese segment of “New York Stories.”  I ended the morning with Bob Dylan’s “Love and Theft.”  Dylan’s tour that year came to San Francisco the same night that the Yankees beat the A’s in the playoffs with Jorge Posada hitting a home run off Barry Zito, and Jeremy Giambi failing to slide into home plate.

I checked the blog statistics and wondered if there was a reason behind the distribution of the hits.  Do people use their computers more on the last day of work, waiting for the hours to pass?  I checked my mailbox and found nothing fun, just some papers from the teachers union, which probably arrived late Friday.  Is the union doing anything for me for $28.59 a month during these horrible times?

I saw a group of Japanese girls preparing to take BART into San Francisco to spend the day there and watch a fireworks show.  They all looked to be about 18 or 19 years old, and one of them spoke at a ridiculous length about the problems she had brushing her hair.  I shuddered and wondered if I was that boring when I was her age.

I watched Buster Keaton’s “The General.”  I first saw it back on Thanksgiving Day of 1984.  It’s one of the great silent films, and very funny.  My only complaint about it is that Buster is on the wrong side.  His character is Johnny Gray, an engineer for a Southern railroad.  The two loves of his life are The General, his engine, and Annabelle Lee, his girl.

The Civil War begins, and every man in town rushes to enlist, including Johnny, but he’s rejected because his role with the railroad is deemed more valuable than putting him out on a battlefield.  Annabelle, however, views Johnny as a coward and tells him not to talk to her again until he’s wearing a Confederate uniform.  With the men in gray the heroes of this film, “The General” in a way is like the comedy version of “The Birth of a Nation.”

Union spies planning an attack steal The General and Annabelle, and Johnny, in his reckless abandon, chases them behind enemy lines.  From that point, most of the movie consists of gags involving trains, the uncoupling of cars, the switching of tracks, and the suspense of pursuit.  Some of it looked incredibly dangerous.  Buster looked as if he was going to get run over at a couple of points.  I also wondered how much it cost to run those trains.  One of them actually falls into a river.  Did they fish it out afterwards?

The film is supposed to be historically accurate in its details.  Not being any kind of a Civil War buff, I wasn’t marking a checklist, but it did seem convincing in its sense of time.  I thought it was emotionally thin compared to a good Chaplin film, and Buster’s persona seemed a bit too rough in the way he treated Annabelle, but the movie is about movement and action.  There’s pleasure in watching the ingenuity unfold.  The movie ends the way a comedy should, with The General and Annabelle winding up where they belong, and Johnny removing the shackles of shame and triumphing, although again there’s a slight, unpleasant feeling in seeing the Confederacy have their day.

The DVD had another short film called “The Playhouse.”  It had Buster playing all the members of a stage company and the audience, and a chimpanzee.  It had some funny moments, although I wouldn’t describe it as a great film, and the chimp makeup wasn’t too convincing.  It had one of those sudden endings that wasn’t that satisfying.

The last short film on the disc was “Cops,” which showed Buster running away from countless policemen.  There was one notable bit with a ladder that acted as a seesaw.  You watch something like that and wonder how they made it work.  The sight of Buster running from those masses of humanity was remarkably hilarious.  It’s one of the most amusing of all of Buster Keaton’s short films.  It runs 18 minutes.

I listened to the Phillies-Mets game on the radio.  The Mets bumbled their way to another loss.  The Phillies seem to have more poise and look more like winners.  The surprising sports news I heard was the death of Steve McNair in a condominium in Nashville.  He went from being the National Football League’s Most Valuable Player in 2003 to being murdered by gunshot in 2009.  He was 36 years old.

In the lyrics to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park,” it says, “I think it was the Fourth of July.”  I’d forgotten about that until I heard it on the news yesterday afternoon.  I didn’t know if they were working on the state budget in Sacramento on a holiday, but they should have been.  I couldn’t understand why Schwarzenegger said he wouldn’t budge on his position of no taxes in balancing the budget.  Compromise is supposed to involve two sides.  Is everyone supposed to give in except him?

I went to the used record store to browse through the DVD section.  I caught the bus out to the Marina.  I saw people selling Michael Jackson items, like shirts and candle jars.  There were a lot of people in line at one booth that was selling burgers and garlic fries.  I thought about buying a new change purse, but I didn’t have ten dollars in my wallet.  There was a band called Motordude Zydeco playing.  They were quite agreeable, and their accordion player gave a nice punch to their music.  As the sun was going down, though, I walked in the opposite direction of the crowd streaming in to see the fireworks.  I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of getting out of there.  It was almost 8:45 when I boarded the empty bus leaving the Marina.  When I got home, I watched a dance show on KOFY.  The record they played was “Bad Moon Rising.”  I watched “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as I waited for the midnight horror movie, but I fell asleep and missed it all.

I listened to several CDs yesterday morning.  I liked listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter,” with its sense of adventure and challenge.  It wasn’t the greatest album, but there’s an exciting feel to it.  I also enjoyed hearing the Beach Boys’ “Live in London” again.  It has a nice version of “God Only Knows” towards the end.  Checking my messages, I saw that hardly anyone wanted to communicate with me.  They’re too busy with their holiday plans.  I thought about whether I should buy a ticket for the Alameda County Fair.  It’s probably going to be a million degrees out there in the sun, though, and the music they had lined up didn’t really impress me.  I might be tempted to go see even K.C. and the Sunshine Band or War.

The streets were quiet because so many people had the day off from work.  As they said, it was a Friday that felt like a Saturday.  I saw a girl wearing a “Michael Jackson, 1958-2009” shirt.  I feel as though I will live past 50 because I’m not taking drugs and I seem reasonably fit, except for some soreness in my heels and knees.  Who knows, though?  I could drop dead at any time.  Maybe I should write my will.

After riding around in buses all morning, I returned home to take a needed shower and watch “The Court Jester.”  It was the kind of movie I enjoyed watching on weekend afternoons when I was a kid.  It was in Technicolor and was released in 1956.  Danny Kaye was the star, as this rather clumsy guy named Hubert Hawkins.  The story had to do with restoring a rightful heir to a throne.  Hubert disguises himself as the court jester Giacomo, and he gets to sing songs and be pretty amusing.  There were some bits that showed a strong Charlie Chaplin influence.

Angela Lansbury is the false king’s daughter Gwendolyn.  She’s supposed to be young, but she doesn’t really look that young.  I have the feeling, in fact, that Angela Lansbury has never been young.  That’s why she was cast as the mother in “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Mildred Natwick is the court sorceress Griselda.  Her abilities seem questionable, although she seems deft with the poison and hypnosis.  Mildred Natwick is pretty good in the role.  She’s fun to watch, as she was in “The Trouble with Harry.”

The movie had tried-and-true elements of comedy, like romantic entanglements, misunderstandings, tongue-twisting dialogue, slapstick, and impossible situations, and something else that I always enjoy seeing.  From “The Wizard of Oz” to “In Bruges,” I like watching the midgets.  In fact, I believe that I would like to write a script about a pair of San Francisco private detectives, one of them being a midget.  I don’t think it will be quite as hard-boiled a story as “The Maltese Falcon,” however.

I thought the funniest sequence in the movie involved Griselda’s placing Hubert under hypnosis, transforming him into Gwendolyn’s passionate lover.  However, a snap of the fingers makes him revert back to his normal self.  Of course, immediately afterwards, he hears a great deal of finger snapping.

There’s a bit of discomfort with a few deaths and a bit of violence, but otherwise it’s a decent family film in the same category as “The Princess Bride.”  Some of the villains get slinged into the water below the castle.  We don’t see them drowning and screaming in desperation.  The only thing I kept wondering about was why the baby wasn’t crying at several points, which would have made all the plans collapse.

Danny Kaye wasn’t one of my favorites as I was growing up.  I always remember him seeing that Dodgers song, but I can’t stand the Dodgers.  I did like Bob Hope.  I liked Don Knotts and Jonathan Winters, from what I remember of them, at least.

“The Court Jester” was a pretty good comedy.  I liked how the midgets got involved at the end.  I also like good old Technicolor films where everything looks nice and bright and clear.  It’s a good movie to watch during a quiet afternoon at home.  It was a lot better than “Prince Caspian,” which felt like a junior version of “300.”

I listened to some baseball on the radio.  The Cubs were playing the Brewers at Wrigley Field.  I was rooting against the Cubs because Milton Bradley is on the team.  Unfortunately, Bradley was walked in the tenth inning, and that led to a bases-loaded walk that ended the game, 2-1.  The late game had the Phillies jumping out in front of the Mets.  Whenever I follow a Mets game, they seem to be very unimpressive.

I heard that a lot of people wanted to attend the Michael Jackson memorial service in Los Angeles.  I’d rather watch it on television than deal with that insanity.  I wasn’t too crazy about the way the news media was speculating on the drug that they found in his house.

I listened to a little more Michael Jackson.  I wonder who did those “b-b-b-b-b-u-h” sounds through his lips in “Beat It”?  I hope it wasn’t Michael himself.  I liked it when he gave out that loud “OH!” at one point in “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.”

I also listened to some hits from the 1970s, like “Beach Baby,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Precious and Few,” and “Rose Garden.”  It wasn’t the greatest period for pop music, but there was some fun mixed in with the ridiculousness.  As evening was settling in, I listened to James Taylor’s “Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon” album.

X has a song called “Fourth of July.”  Bruce Springsteen has “4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and “Independence Day.”  The A’s didn’t give away a red, white and blue cap or visor this year, so I’ll take one out of the closet to wear today.

I felt sleepy all day yesterday.  I awoke to hear Murph and Mac talk about Jose Canseco’s birthday.  He was born in 1964, and thus just turned 45.  On 103.7 FM, I heard Heart’s “Barracuda” for the second time in less than 10 hours, which seemed like a bad sign.  I can’t stand radio stations that play the same songs that often.

I went over to the library to borrow DVDs to carry me through the holiday weekend.  I don’t know if I’m that anxious to see the Transformers or the Dillinger movies.  My local library is closed today.

I went out grocery shopping while listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Hejira” album.  The song “Amelia” is exceptional.  I bought pasta, chicken gyoza, tamales, and corn chips.  A couple of people said hello to me as if they’d seen me walking around the neighborhood a lot and recognized me.

When I got home, I heated a beef burrito and watched “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.”  I didn’t like it much.  I didn’t find it magical or wondrous or exhilarating or enjoyable.  It had elements that felt as if they were lifted from the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.  For instance, the children are whisked off to this other world through a train station.  Also, there were trees that came alive and played a role in a battle.  I didn’t like seeing that in the second Lord of the Rings movie, either.  This movie had scenes filmed in New Zealand.

Some of the scenery is quite beautiful, particularly in the opening of the movie.  They must have put a fantastic effort into finding and getting to these locations.

For a movie that’s essentially aimed at children, “Prince Caspian” is remarkably violent, even if we don’t see the blood and the swords stuck into people’s bodies.  It’s really disturbing that the story is about being peace to this place, and yet these children spend the entire movie waving swords around, shooting arrows, getting into fights, and planning massive battles.  The philosophy seems as warped and backwards as George Bush’s presidency.

The photography during a lot of action scenes was so dark that I thought I was watching “Pan’s Labyrinth.”  Actually, I couldn’t stand those sequences because I could barely see anything.  Even if I was able to see anything, I don’t think I would have cared.  This story lurches forward from one fight to the next to the next.  I didn’t care about learning anyone’s name, or what they were doing, or why.  I thought the creatures all looked ridiculous, and I almost laughed at those earnest scenes that were supposed to tug at our emotions.  That scene at the end with the bridge reminded me of “The Lady in the Water,” which is not a good comparison.

I thought the young actors were all bland and forgettable.  The guy who was Prince Caspian was generic.  The girls were a little better, and the little girl who met with the lion made a bit of a good impression.

The movie was so damn long at 149 minutes.  I couldn’t imagine any children sitting still in a theatre seat for that long watching this mess.  It was so grueling, with no relief, no joy, and no sense of feeling between the characters.  You know something’s wrong with the movie when the DVD cover has review quotes from FOX-TV and KPLR-TV.  Who else would be dumb enough to think that this movie was better than the first?  If there’s this kind of a dropoff in quality in the third Narnia movie, it’ll be a disaster.

I listened to the last couple of innings of the Giants game against the Cardinals.  The A’s were traveling to Cleveland.  The game was of interest to me because Barry Zito was pitching.  It was good to hear that he had a bad game, giving up five runs in less than five innings.  The Giants came back a bit, getting a two-run home run and even getting the tying run to home plate, but they got no closer.

I went over to the record store and walked around in circles a lot before deciding on what to buy.  I spent less than twenty dollars on four used CDs: Jimi Hendrix’s “Woodstock,” Steely Dan’s “Aja,” Lyle Lovett’s “Pontiac,” and k.d. lang’s “Drag.”  Some of the CDs I thought about buying but passed on were Robert Johnson, Little Walter, Queen, and Mazzy Star.  I even thought of buying something by The Cars, but then I thought of how their music was used in a lot of commercials lately, and so I passed on it.  I checked the Michael Jackson section, and they had only “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”

The day’s news was all about California’s budget crisis, with the state having to issue IOUs.  They interviewed a guy who had a business delivering frozen potatoes to prisons, and he was displeased about getting an IOU, because he couldn’t wait 90 days to pay his expenses.  I read reports of one community being invaded by rodents.  I heard that the Padres-Astros game was delayed in the ninth inning for 52 minutes when some bees appeared in left field.  The Lakers signed Ron Artest and lost Trevor Ariza.  Artest seems to be the new Dennis Rodman.  Los Angeles seems to be the place for flakes to play, since Artest is joining Manny Ramirez in the city.  On ESPN Radio, they said that “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” was one of the greatest movies of all time.  I did enjoy it.  It came out the same year as “Back to the Future.”

They talked about the renovation of Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus.  Supposedly, to pay for it, season ticket holders for courtside seats are required to shell out $100,000 a year in donations on top of $17,000 a year for the seat.  Who’s got half a million dollars to watch kids fresh out of high school play basketball?  They haven’t won the championship since 1995.

The Canadian Football League is already playing their games.  A Toronto player reportedly paid tribute to Michael Jackson in his own bizarre way, taking off his helmet and shoulder pads, and laying down in the end zone as if he were dead.  That’s a tribute?

The news update of the night was about a teenage girl who called her friends to come to the aid of her screaming mother.  The teenage boys showed up with baseball bats and beat up the man, but they were arrested when it was discovered that he was having sex with the mother.  Oops.

I felt miserable over having to go to work yesterday.  I got over there and avoiding talking to the others until late in the day.  I saw on the Internet that Karl Malden had died.  I also read the Robert Hilburn article in the Los Angeles Times on the death of Michael Jackson.  I always wondered what happened with that book he was supposed to be writing about Michael Jackson.  You couldn’t have a worse last encounter with a superstar than an angry phone call.

I used the computer to look up “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in the library catalog, and I saw that the DVD was still available.  After getting off work, I hopped on the bus downtown so that I could borrow the DVD.  It was in the children’s section, where I guess no one thought of looking for it.

Years ago, they showed “Yellow Submarine” instead of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on TV on the Fourth of July, and I’ve always been interested in both movie since then.  I liked “Yankee Doodle Dandy” when I first saw it.  The black and white photography is very impressive.  James Cagney’s dancing is great to watch.  George M. Cohan’s songs have a timeless spirit.  I liked the patriotism more than the show business aspect.  The first part of the movie reminded me of the opening of “Singin’ in the Rain.”

I thought the most memorable of the other actors was Walter Huston as Jerry Cohan, the father.  There were three key women, the mother, the sister, and the wife.  I didn’t think any of their characters was anything special, though.  George’s preoccupation with showtunes and the theatre made me question his sexuality, although I suppose things were probably different back in the 1920s.

Between all the dance numbers, there are scenes showing moments of the Cohans’ family life.  We’re brought closer to these people in a sometimes hokey way, but it’s hard not to be drawn in.  I thought the young actors who played George as a child weren’t so good, which was not unusual

A couple of coincidences and some alterations to the actual events and people are a bit irritating, but these Hollywood devices aren’t too overwhelming.  Somehow, I couldn’t picture any woman getting all that passionate about George M. Cohan, even after he’d supposedly written a song about her.

I don’t think that shots of a man sitting at a piano working on a song make for great drama, but “Over There” is used effectively at two points in the film.  I suppose some conservative nuts sang the song to troops being shipped out to Iraq, but the confidence and belief don’t seem applicable.  Also, not all the problems are overseas.

You know the movie was made in a different time when there’s a brief scene where actors are in blackface.  That little bit made me wince.  Also, spanking a kid is OK, because Jerry does it when George does something outlandish

George as an old man visits the White House to meet the unnamed President, although he seems to be Roosevelt.  He walks up to the White House gate, which would be highly unusual these days.  The servants are black, and they remember the days of Teddy Roosevelt, and now Obama is president.  I wasn’t too crazy about the flashback structure of the story.  I guess, though, that it allows us to see Cagney right away.  Otherwise, we’d be watching these boy Georges for quite some time at the beginning.  I didn’t think the make-up to make Cagney look like an old man was too convincing.

The key to the appeal of the movie is James Cagney singing and dancing.  He moves across the stage like a marionette.  I didn’t think his singing was that fantastic, but it was fun to listen to.  It reminded me of Frank Gorshin’s impressions of him.  I expected him to say “You dirty rat” at any moment.

Michael Curtiz directed the picture very well.  It’s perhaps slightly too long at 125 minutes, but it’s still one of his best films.  It’s a very good movie to watch on the Fourth of July before you go out to see the fireworks.

Curtiz also directed “Casablanca” and “Mildred Pierce.”  I thought he was really an excellent director.

One of the special features of the DVD was a documentary on the life of James Cagney, hosted by Michael J. Fox.  I didn’t like watching Fox in jeans, and I wasn’t thrilled that he was the host at all.  It seemed that his age was catching up with him in the 50s, and working on “One, Two, Three” convinced him to retire.  We still seemed lively, though looking pretty old, in 1974 when he received his AFI Life Achievement Award.  I remember seeing “Ragtime” in the movie theatre in 1981, but I didn’t realize that he lived for several years afterwards.  He died on Easter Sunday in 1986.

Another feature was John Travolta’s discussion of Cagney.  Travolta said that when he was a child he’d imitated Cagney, especially the songs and dancing in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  His mother would get him to do his chores by telling him that Cagney was on the phone telling him to brush his teeth or clean his room.  He got to meet Cagney, visiting him during the last five or six years of his life, and he saw him the day before he died.  That thought was somewhat chilling to me.  Do I want people visiting me when I’m dying?

I’d say that the three Cagney movies I liked best were “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “White Heat,” and “One, Two, Three.”  He probably dropped out of the movie business at the right time.  Did he really want to make movies in the 60s and 70s?  He was supposed to have liberal political beliefs, but the world seemed to be out of control during those years.

Yesterday morning I awoke and listened to a report on NPR about non-smokers who get lung cancer.  On Murph and Mac on KNBR, they talked about the movie “Tyson,” and Dan said that he walked out on it, getting his money back when he claimed to be suffering from some sort of itching.  I went on to the library, where I borrowed a DVD of “Blazing Saddles.”  I went to the grocery store to buy a few items before I returned home.  I took another look at the billboard advertising a radio station.  It said 103.7 FM instead of the 103.9 FM that I thought it said.  No wonder I couldn’t hear anything.

I enjoyed Mel Brooks’ lunacy in “Blazing Saddles.”  It starts with the burning of the Warner Bros. logo, and Frankie Laine singing the title theme.  It seems that Richard Pryor should have been in the movie, especially since Gene Wilder is right there playing Jim, the Waco Kid.  The cast is very good, with Cleavon Little quite funny as Sheriff Bart, and Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman as a couple of bad guys.  There are also some familiar faces from “What’s Up, Doc?”  One of them is Madeline Kahn, who does an amusing impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.

The story is set in the Old West in 1874, and it has something to do with the railroad going through a small town called Rock Ridge, but none of it really matters.  It’s really about the jokes about racism, sex, corrupt politicians, and other movies.  A Mel Brooks movie wouldn’t be a Mel Brooks movie without some Cole Porter thrown in.  He gets right to it with the black railroad workers singing “I Get a Kick Out of You,” while the white bosses sing “Camptown Races.”  Later on, Bart makes a reference to “You Do Something to Me.”

You also expect some Nazis to appear in a Mel Brooks movie, and amazingly he does throw a couple of them in there, even if this is supposed to me 1874.  Brooks also has a scene with gay male dancers.  A hangman is a lot like Marty Feldman’s Igor, the hunchback.  In “Young Frankenstein,” Peter Boyle was a monster with a formidable penis.  In “Blazing Saddles,” Cleavon Little was a formidable sheriff with a monstrous penis, at least according to Lili von Shtupp.  Madeline Kahn played both women who experienced the sexual ecstasy that changed them, in the manner of a Hot Lips Houlihan.  We also get some Jewish humor.  Lamarr dismisses Taggart’s plan to wipe out the people of Rock Ridge, saying that it’s “too Jewish.”  Mel Brooks also shows up as both an oblivious governor and an Indian chief who speaks like a New York Jew.

One of the funniest scenes shows a gang of men by a campfire eating beans.  I will have to say, though, that this scene does have its flaws, namely with the sound effects.  There’s got to be more variation in volume and duration.  Also, I think the sounds should be more muffled to be accurate.

The real Count Basie and his band play “April in Paris” in the middle of the desert.  The bad guys punch an old woman in the gut.  Lili von Shtupp is known as “The Teutonic Titwillow.”  A woman named Robyn Hilton plays Miss Stein, who looks a little confused in her first scene.  If you look carefully, a billboard for the movie “Scarecrow” is visible for a few moments.  Bart buys some Raisinettes at the end.

One moment I didn’t think was so funny was how Bart got out of that predicament he finds himself in when he first arrives in Rock Ridge.  I thought the writers should have come up with something different, clever and visual.  I didn’t think it was the greatest idea to have everyone in the town named Johnson, either.

Madeline Kahn was arguably the funniest person in the movie.  Her big number was called “I’m Tired.”  I also thought that the part with the two guys stuck in the quicksand, and the rope tossed towards them, was also funny.

I liked watching the movie more than I did when I first saw it years ago.  Some scenes felt different in a time when Obama is president, like when Bart’s friends get excited over seeing him as sheriff, with the star on his chest.  Mel Brooks seemed to make all his best movies early in his directing career: “The Producers,” “The Twelve Chairs,” “Blazing Saddles,” and “Young Frankenstein.”  I rather liked “To Be Or Not To Be,” too.

I listened to the first inning of the A’s-Tigers game on the radio.  Within a few minutes, the A’s were behind 2-0, because Gio Gonzalez gave up a walk and a home run.  In the bottom of the first, the A’s loaded the bases, but Kurt Suzuki grounded into a double play, so the score remained 2-0.  Discouraged, I turned off the radio and went to the record store.  I saw that the only Michael Jackson album on the shelves was a special edition of “Thriller.”  I saw a VHS copy of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for three dollars, and I was set to buy it, but then I read on the cover that it was colorized.  I shuddered at the notion of watching it and put it back.

I think that a little later on today, I would like to do a little research on the screwball comedies that I have to own.  Of course, this means I have to understand what exactly makes a movie a screwball comedy in the first place.  It’s clear to me, though, that two that qualify are “Bringing Up Baby” and “What’s Up, Doc?”

I listened to 103.7 FM and heard Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.”  I can’t hear that song without thinking of “Shaun of the Dead.”  They also played Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Heart during the time that I was listening.  The DJ made such lame, unbearable comments that I felt like turning off the radio.  I was curious, though, about which Elton John song they were going to play.  After Van Halen’s “Jump” and Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4,” it was “Philadelphia Freedom.”

Early this morning, I wrote down the names in the Celebrity Birthday Game: Missy Elliott, Dan Aykroyd, Debbie Harry, Jamie Farr, and Leslie Caron.

I took a shower, wrote out my rent check, and prepared to leave for work while listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Summer Side of Life.”  I didn’t really like the song with the French lyrics.  I hoped the time wouldn’t pass too slowly at work.