James Rising

Tuesday review: Tangled

Tangled (I) (2010) PG 100 min

The long-suffering wife and I were all tucked in, her on the couch with her blankie, me on my recliner nearly nodding on Christmas day afternoon.

We had watched all the holiday classics. Scrooged, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Do we nap or do we find more eye candy for the day? A quick bounce to the lap top and I found two new entertainments for holiday enjoyment for years to come on the NetFlix instant view and with my fancy blu-ray DVD locked in on my Wifi got ’em both up on the big screen. Ain’t technology grand?

1. The X-Files: How the Ghosts Stold Christmas-Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin conspire to make FBI agents Scully (Gillian Anderson), a skeptic, and Mulder (David Duchovny) the believer have a frightfully good holiday. Not for real young kids but charming none-the-less.

2. Tangled-This Disney adaption of the Brothers Grimm Rapunzel fairy tale was released for Thanksgiving 2010.
It’s a charmer and you have to w0nder why it did not make more of a splash.

The story is simple enough, typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl boy dies. Without going into detail the fairy tale is followed loosely. Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is kidnapped at birth by the Mother, Gothel (Donna Murphy) who is kept young by the magical powers of Rapunzel’s golden locks which have grown to a length of 70-feet. Rapunzel is kept in a tower with no doors and (as far as she knows) no staircase.

Rapunzel longs to see the world and breaks out with the dashing Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), has all sorts of misadventures and eventually lives happily ever after.

This is the rare Disney animation that gets a “PG” rating, rather than the usual “G” which leaves me wondering if this is why it wasn’t a bigger hit. There is certainly no real reason for the rating, except possibly the intensity of some scenes. No profanity, no sexual innuendo and unlike Shrek, no farts. It’s perfect family fare for all ages, certainly milder than the “Shrek” franchise which also got a “PG”.

Donna Murphy, Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore all have delightful solo songs, with Murphy and Moore singing several duets. The music is bright and snappy and even a little bit rock tinged.

The animation is CGI and is state of the art for it’s time. The faces (the hardest part for CGI animators) are remarkable and Rapunzel’s hair (which had a team of it’s own) was given a life that seems more than real.

Like “Shrek” the movie borrows heavily from other movies with sight gags and sly visual references. The youngest who watch may not get the similarities when Flynn Ryder and Maximus the horse dash over a cliff à la Road Runner and Coyote but this adult surely did.

And that Horse! Maximus made me laugh out loud every time he was on the screen. The film is worth seeing just for that.

Disney always has a small focal point and Pascal the Chameleon is perfect.

In a great casting triumph, Ron Perlman, voice of the Stabbington Brothers does menacing better in this film than he does on “Sons of Anarachy”.

Jeffrey Tambor plays Big Nose Thug, and Brad Garrett gets a turn as Hook Hand Thug. The scenes inside the Snuggly Duckling bar featuring musical and dancing numbers by the thugs (Including a mime thug in white-face) are Broadway worthy.

Released in 3D, it earned a medium sized gross: $590,721,936 against $260 million of budget which at the time was the heftiest price tag of all animated works by Disney.

Directors: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard lead a cast of literally thousands. It takes a village to make one of these and the end credits list seems to go on forever.

My Blackberry Curve 3G takes the WORST photos ever:

Unless you hold the camera perfectly still and the subject is also motionless that is what you get.

Louis Jacques Mande DAGUERRE (1787-1851) developed the The Daguerreotype Process. His photos are crystal clear compared to what I take with my technology laden “smartphone”, perhaps because he used this:

and perhaps because his subjects had to stand motionless for 30 minutes. Must have made it tough to catch action shots.

Here is what the Blackberry site says about blurry photos –

If there was an award for useless information posing as help, here is your winner:

Some pictures that I take are blurry
In low lighting conditions, the camera might compensate for the lack of exposure by using a slower shutter speed. If you move the camera before the shutter clicks, the picture might be blurry. If the camera is using a slower shutter speed, an exclamation point indicator appears at the bottom of the screen.

The greatest work of fiction ever written:

Depending on your BlackBerry® device model, you might be able to decrease the blurriness in pictures that is caused by slight movements of the camera by turning on image stabilization in the camera options.

Matthew Brady was a civil war photographer. He took many famous photos using the primitive equpiment of his time, including this iconic image:

If he had been forced to use my Blackberry Curve Smart 3G phone he would have given up.

Why I didn’t but the one on the left is a mystery to me:

Sunday Wrap 12/19/11-12/24/11

Monday 12/19/11

Blog Post More about the protests-Trouble coming every day-including the Frank Zappa tune.

Tuesday 12/20/11

Blog Post Don’t touch that dial…Best and worst TV ads of 2011

Wednesday 12/21/11

Blog Post A possible projection of my culinary future.

Blog Post Ralph McDonald R.I.P.

Thursday 12/22/11

Blog Post Radio DaZe: WACKY 102 and the porno bust

Friday 12/13/11

Blog Post Tears in the batter-or how I learned to cook and cry at the same time…

Saturday 12/24/11
Blog Post Saturday Aggregate:I quote St Augustine, bitch about Christmas, love Christmas feast and planned overindulgence.

Blog Post Rising music playlist Christmas 2011

Blog Post Atheist gets coal in stocking

Some of the stuff on my Christmas music playlist: in no particular order:

The Waitresses. As my radio blog “Radio DaZe” unfolds there will be a Waitresses story.

Bob “Humbug” Geldof told Australia’s The Daily Telegraph in a 2010 interview: “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. One is ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, the other one is ‘We Are The World’. Any day soon, I will go to the supermarket, head to the meat counter and it will be playing. Every f—ing Christmas.” Geldof added that he gets irritated when carol singers perform the charity hit in front of his home during the holidays. “They think ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ is as old as ‘Silent Night.’ Sometimes I think that’s wild because I wrote it. Or else I am thinking how much I want them to stop because they are doing it really “badly.”

Don’t care what Bob thinks. And this is my favorite version. Love how they screwed with Paul McCartney.

This is a song that was featured in the movie “A Christmas Story” and I love the Andrew Sisters at :51. Budaruadup!

No shortage of versions of this: The Carol of the Bells – but due to “sartin” ancestral prerogatives this would be my favorite.

Both the song and lights are amazing: Wizards in Winter

I used to play the shorter version of this during Christmas Dinner with the In-Laws here at the Rising Ranch. It was low in volume on the living room system. We ate in the kitchen, and no one ever commented on it. This video version, which I just found, is flat out amazing. Francis Ford Coppola directed. Who knew? Edgar Burroughs is so twisted, gotta love him.

Ignore the images-just enjoy the song – Here Comes Fatty…

Bach, as always, had it going on:

Saturday Aggregate:

SO more than ready for Christmas and this year to be over with. Really. Put a fork in it. It is done.
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Having said that…I am ready for feasting. This will be a stupendous, over the top, too much of everything, stuffed beyond belief, carnivorous, sugar-laden, alcohol-fired bacchanal. I will be very remorseful. But not yet.
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I have quoted St Augustine to a few in the past days: “Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate – but not yet!

Digging deeper-via Wikipedia:

Augustine struggled with lust throughout his life. He had a mistress before he converted, but once he became a Christian, he condemned all forms of extra-marital sex (including his previous relationship with his mistress), considering them unlawful and unbiblical. In the Confessions, Augustine describes his personal struggle in vivid terms: “But I, wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, ‘Grant me chastity and continence, only not yet

Also, for the record:

In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order; his memorial is celebrated 28 August, the day of his death. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses.

I have loads in common with him.
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I’m dreaming of a …Sheetz Caramel Latte. A cup of creamy steamed milk kicked up a notch with a shot of espresso. I have not had a cup of coffee for months now. I should take off like a rocket after one of these.

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We have to wrap up and mop up the Christmas shopping this morning. My list is peanut butter, hummus, rice cakes, Stevia and wine.
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Wine means a trip to the “State store”. I think I may need some airline sized bottles of pure liquid fire. I am thinking, Chambord, Cointreau, Frangelico, Drambuie and possibly something like Crème de menthe. Yee haw. Bring on the heartburn, 2 am sweats and regrets.

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Seems like a good idea now. Check with me Christmas morning.
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Holy supper in the Slovak Christmas Customs tradition. Mushroom soup, fish, pierogi (stuffed with potato, cheese, prune) and of course the first course, Christmas wafers, smeared with honey.

Christmas wafer (Polish: opłatek, plural opłatki; Lithuanian: kalėdaitis) is a Central European Christian Christmas tradition celebrated in Polish, Slovak and Lithuanian families during Wigilia (Christmas Eve Vigil).

The unleavened wafers are baked from pure wheat flour and water, are usually rectangular in shape and very thin; they are identical in composition to a round wafer which become the Host after the Consecration during Mass in the Roman Catholic Church. Being only a reminder of the Body of Christ used in private homes, Opłatki lack sanctification by a priest or bishop. The Opłatki wafers are embossed with Christmas related religious images, varying from the nativity scene, especially Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, to the Star of Bethlehem.

Vesele Vianoce a Stastlivy Novy Rok (“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” in Slovakian)
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Big changes after the first of the year. Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!

This is just wrong. Not because it’s not the right of any American to say what they want, where they want. It’s because if you infringe on the rights of others to say what they want, then it’s wrong.

This asshole and the group of assholes he has collected are preventing any Nativity scenes and other Christmas decorations from being displayed in (you can’t make this stuff up) SANTA Monica.

Again, I have no problem with freedom of expression. I applaud it. But not at the expense of others freedom of expression. He is not not an asshole because he is an atheist. He an asshole because he is intolerant and unbending.

This is just wrong.

Merry Christmas.

Oh, and Damon Vix? You get coal in your stocking this year.

The elaborate Nativity scenes rose in a city park along the oceanfront here every December for nearly six decades. More than a dozen life-size dioramas depicted the Annunciation, Mary and Joseph being turned away at the inn and, of course, the manger.

This always angered Damon Vix, who worked off and on in Santa Monica and considers himself a devout atheist, so to speak. How could it be, he asked himself each year, that the city could condone such an overtly religious message?

So, a few years ago, he petitioned the city and received his own space, using it to put up a sign offering “Reason’s Greetings.” But this year, he wanted more. Mr. Vix gathered a few supporters and applied for dozens of spaces in Palisades Park, a patch of green on a bluff overlooking the sandy beaches that this city is famous for.

Suddenly, city officials realized they had far more requests for space than they could fulfill, they said, and created a lottery. When it was finished, the atheists had received a vast majority of the spaces. The Christian groups were forced to choose three scenes from their typical 14.

Where Crèches Once Stood, Atheists Now Hold Forth

Captain Beefheart was (is) an acquired taste. Working for Frank Zappa must have been a trip in and of itself. Frank “discovered” Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fischer, and Alice Cooper with mixed results.

I have no clue what this new Beefheart music will sound like. But in spite of all the backbiting and recriminations back and forth at the end of his life I am sure Don Van Vliet would be pleased to have this see the light of day.

Those that say it’s Zappa’s heirs looking for a payday just don’t get it. How many copies of this do you think could possibly sell?

More than 36 years after it was recorded, Zappa Records is finally releasing Captain Beefheart’s album “Bat Chain Puller.”

An offical release for Captain Beefheart

Preorder here

Tears in the batter…

My Aunt Mary and Uncle Haven always seemed sort of different to me. At least to me they were when compared to my parents. Uncle Haven loved beer and made no apologies for it, yet never seemed to get drunk. He may have been the happiest person I ever met. Aunt Mary wrote letters to everybody in the family on a typewriter, using carbon paper to copy all the relatives. She called them “carbonated letters.” She was also prone to announcements about diverse topics.

“No TV or books in the bedroom,” she told me once. “Bedrooms are for sleeping or sex.”

Wow, I thought.

They lived in New Hampshire and depending on where in Vermont we were living at the time it was a few hours drive to visit them. Mostly we saw them on the holidays.

Thanksgiving for sure.

Later in life I came to love them a great deal. But as a youngster I loved to see them coming in the door at holiday time because I knew Aunt Mary would bring the apricot squares.

Apricots were not something that would seem to be a part of a delicious baked good to a young man. You really didn’t hear too much about apricots in my circles growing up. Apricots seemed to be prunes with a better public relations consultant.

But boy were those squares good. And they had another exotic ingredient not found in my mother’s kitchen.

Shredded coconut.

I don’t think anything else I have ever eaten has had shredded coconut in it.

Two things about me not readily apparent.

I can be extremely emotional.

And I can cook.

The first causes me no end of embarrassment. I would like to say that I am unabashedly sentimental. I’d like to say that but it would be an understatement. I have been known to cry when watching sad deodorant commercials.

And I learned to cook in self-defense after it became apparent that my first wife was well meaning but clueless in the kitchen. So I have become reasonably adept with the culinary arts. Once I won a trophy for my rib recipe. Second prize. The trophy has a pig on top.

So one Thanksgiving while munching on the apricot squares it occurred to me I might be able to, if not duplicate them, at least come close.

Aunt Mary willingly scribbled the recipe on a 3”x5” file card she had in her purse. How many people do you know who have 3”x5” file cards at the ready?

The next Thanksgiving I made a batch and they were pronounced every bit as good as her own by Aunt Mary. I was so proud I could have burst into tears. Maybe I did.

Many, many Thanksgivings have gone by.

Uncle Haven and Aunt Mary have passed away, along with many of those who attended the feast where I first made the apricot squares.

But as I stand here in my kitchen Aunt Mary is with me. I have the 3”x5” recipe card, now tattered and stained with vanilla extract, shortening and who knows what else. I have the memories of a dozen Thanksgivings where the apricot squares made an appearance.

And I have my hands in the thick gooey mixture with the unlikely ingredients.

Shredded coconut.

Apricot jam.

And tradition.

Radio DaZe: WACKY 102 and the porno bust:

Don Wilkes and Mike Schwartz, the owners of WACKY 102 were salesmen first and foremost. They would sell ice cubes to the Eskimos, talk a dog off a meat wagon and had no morals when it came to selling ads on the station.

Remotes were a BIG source of income and we greedily sucked down those (usually in cash) talent fees. We trundled over to a used car lot or furniture store, set up some speakers and a “Marti” remote transmitter unit to get our voice back to the control room and yakked a few times an hour for an afternoon in 60 second breaks. It was (and is) awful radio but hey, the station made money and we got a talent fee.

Once when Don or Mike had over scheduled us with three remotes at once they had me drag an old broken down WACKY trailer that housed an unused for years broadcast set up. It had been parked in back of the station forever. I got the thing out, got the tires inflated and dragged it to the remote location, dumped it in the parking lot and scrammed. That was our “Remote” for that joint. No one there, just this dilapidated old trailer! Of course by the time I went back to get it the tires were flat.

Back to our story-Don called me into his office and asked me to do this remote. I really wish I could remember the name of the movie but I think it was something directed by Gerard Damiano who was the director of “Deep Throat”, although this was probably not that film.

I said “sure” and never gave it another thought.

The opening of the film was to be on a Sunday afternoon. As I recall it was to be shown in a huge standalone theater that was not usually associated with porn, but the theater had fallen on hard times. I remember talking to the theater owner to get copy for the spot (yeah I was writing copy and programming-won’t be long before that’s radios model again) and I remember asking him what the admission price would be, thinking that would be a good copy point.

“$20”, he said. I was appalled and told him so. That was a LOT of money in 1978!

I’ll never forget his response.

“It’s a demand item, like drugs or prostitutes. People will pay whatever you want to charge.”

OK. So I left the price out of the copy. If I recall there was to be one of the “stars” of the film signing autographs at the premier so that was the ‘hook.’

The Sunday came and I drove the lumbering Purple WACKY 102 bread truck to the curiously empty parking lot. As was my custom I was early, maybe half an hour before showtime but NO ONE was around.

I yanked the speakers out, set up the Marti and went to the front door, extension cord in hand. There was a BIG chain and a BIGGER padlock on it. I thought, odd, I don’t see why that’s there.

Just about then a State Trooper pulled in and dropped his window to talk.

“What are you doing here, son?”

I hate that. I was NOT his son. I wanted to make some smart remark but something told me to keep my mouth and my wit shut.

“Leaving,” was my response.

As it turns out the theater owner, the “star” the projectionist and for all I know the film had been arrested that morning and were all in jail.

I was lucky to get away. But I was pissed off all the same. Screwed out of a talent fee!

Ralph MacDonald, a Grammy Award -winning percussionist and composer whose understated Afro-Caribbean rhythms were known as “the ghost” behind the hit records of a multitude of 1970s and ’80s pop stars and who was a co-writer on the hit songs “Where Is the Love?” and “Just the Two of Us,” died on Sunday in Stamford, Conn. He was 67.

You really have to respect the incredibly talented side-men studio musicians who made remarkable contributions to the sound of some records, and even, as in Mr. MacDoanlds case, co-wrote some huge hits. These talented men and women rarely get any recognition outside of the close knit musical community.

His recording credits number in the hundreds and include Burt Bacharach, George Benson, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, Art Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Quincy Jones, Carole King, Miriam Makeba, David Sanborn, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, James Taylor, Luther Vandross, Amy Winehouse, Bob James, Ashford and Simpson, Nana Mouskouri, The Average White Band, Hall and Oates, The Brothers Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett.

R.I.P. Ralph McDonald