So begins the farewell tour of my 50s. This is what I wrote 9 years ago. It makes me think being in my fifties really hasn't changed me that much, as the psychological tone of it is pretty much where I am today. More gray. More wrinkles. But still healthy and fit and alert. I'm sure I'll have more to say when 60 hits next year.
Trivial related note: I believe I have been blogging for over 20 years now, although the first two or three are lost in the ether.
I have all but finished the edits of the first draft of my next book. There is only one severe plot hole that I need to address. Then on to version 2.0.
[TV] A Little Bit Country
[TV] Hanging at the Lodge
[Books] Book Look: A Maigret Trio
[Tech] Hit Me With Technology
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
[TV] A Little Bit County
Ken Burns released a fine documentary on the history of Country Music. Normally when I hear Ken Burns is behind a documentary I assume I'm going to get a combination of weepy stories and racial browbeating. Fortunately, he held his worst instincts in check. There was minimal, righteousness on race and the stories, while often sad, were not turned into tragedy porn. I got more than a little engrossed in it.
Like many middle-class northerners I sneered at Country Music as a young adult. I had no childhood history of listening to it. Thinking of what music was in my life during my childhood I would have to say The Monkees, assorted 60s bubblegum pop singles, and renditions of the Great American Songbook that peppered the variety shows on TV during the middlebrow era: The Dean Martin Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, etc. Oddly, this was also the time of TV shows for Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and Hee Haw, which didn't seem to really affect my sensibilities. Of course, as I grew into young adulthood I sneered at a lot of music. In 1982 if it wasn't punk or ska you were guilty of a hanging offense.
It's still hard for me to say I like Country music because I never just have it on in the background. Although there is much music of that sort that I like, it is all specific songs as opposed to the familiarity with the type. There is no Country XM radio preset in my car, nor is there a Country artist I would just fire up a random playlist for and listen to, whereas there are several for rock, and even some for jazz. However, to be fair, I don't really follow any genre of music anymore, at least not in the sense of knowing the trends and releases and personalities. Perhaps I should make an effort to change that.
Sidebar: The exception there is Jimmy Buffet, who is country-ish, whom I do have a playlist for and a well-worn one at that. His style is called Gulf & Western, and he, along with the Eagles, are probably the two major outside influences that have shaped popular Country music in the last decade or so. Both are pretty much ignored in the documentary.
The Burns documentary does a great job of humanizing many of the names I have heard before and is very evocative of the difficult and often destitute existence from which many of these folks emerged. It's Country music so there is a healthy measure of sorrow, both in the songs and the singers. Honestly, once you hear the stories of hardships, often self-inflicted, you wonder whether you stumbled into some severely dysfunctional subculture. The thing about dysfunction in Country music is that it is grounded dysfunction. At its core, the Country music culture never loses sight of solid values, even when their stars abandon them. No one in Country music, however degenerate, would ever abandon the institutions of family or sneer at true love or engage in the level of misogyny or self-worship you find in R&B or Rap. While pop music has morphed into narcissism incarnate, Country -- even in the era of mega-stars such as Dolly Parton or Garth Brooks -- never gets too big for its britches. They may be dysfunctional, but they don't pretend it's a smart lifestyle choice.
We also see how diverse Country music has always been, despite its cornpone image. Bob Wills is as different from Hank Williams as Steely Dan is from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Outside influences have run from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, and similar influence flows back to Ray Charles, The Byrds, Jack White, and so on. In the past, oh, ten or twenty years or so the concept of Country music has morphed into a broader idea called Americana, which is a big tent including everything from Bluegrass to Zydeco to good ol' yodeling cowboy music to what is pretty close to straight up rock and roll. One could argue it's the most vibrant and diverse form of music we have.
So yes, give Ken Burns' Country Music a look. Even if you are dead set that you don't like Country music, I bet you'll recognize a lot of the songs, and maybe the human context will make you see things differently.
Like many middle-class northerners I sneered at Country Music as a young adult. I had no childhood history of listening to it. Thinking of what music was in my life during my childhood I would have to say The Monkees, assorted 60s bubblegum pop singles, and renditions of the Great American Songbook that peppered the variety shows on TV during the middlebrow era: The Dean Martin Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, etc. Oddly, this was also the time of TV shows for Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and Hee Haw, which didn't seem to really affect my sensibilities. Of course, as I grew into young adulthood I sneered at a lot of music. In 1982 if it wasn't punk or ska you were guilty of a hanging offense.
It's still hard for me to say I like Country music because I never just have it on in the background. Although there is much music of that sort that I like, it is all specific songs as opposed to the familiarity with the type. There is no Country XM radio preset in my car, nor is there a Country artist I would just fire up a random playlist for and listen to, whereas there are several for rock, and even some for jazz. However, to be fair, I don't really follow any genre of music anymore, at least not in the sense of knowing the trends and releases and personalities. Perhaps I should make an effort to change that.
Sidebar: The exception there is Jimmy Buffet, who is country-ish, whom I do have a playlist for and a well-worn one at that. His style is called Gulf & Western, and he, along with the Eagles, are probably the two major outside influences that have shaped popular Country music in the last decade or so. Both are pretty much ignored in the documentary.
The Burns documentary does a great job of humanizing many of the names I have heard before and is very evocative of the difficult and often destitute existence from which many of these folks emerged. It's Country music so there is a healthy measure of sorrow, both in the songs and the singers. Honestly, once you hear the stories of hardships, often self-inflicted, you wonder whether you stumbled into some severely dysfunctional subculture. The thing about dysfunction in Country music is that it is grounded dysfunction. At its core, the Country music culture never loses sight of solid values, even when their stars abandon them. No one in Country music, however degenerate, would ever abandon the institutions of family or sneer at true love or engage in the level of misogyny or self-worship you find in R&B or Rap. While pop music has morphed into narcissism incarnate, Country -- even in the era of mega-stars such as Dolly Parton or Garth Brooks -- never gets too big for its britches. They may be dysfunctional, but they don't pretend it's a smart lifestyle choice.
We also see how diverse Country music has always been, despite its cornpone image. Bob Wills is as different from Hank Williams as Steely Dan is from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Outside influences have run from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, and similar influence flows back to Ray Charles, The Byrds, Jack White, and so on. In the past, oh, ten or twenty years or so the concept of Country music has morphed into a broader idea called Americana, which is a big tent including everything from Bluegrass to Zydeco to good ol' yodeling cowboy music to what is pretty close to straight up rock and roll. One could argue it's the most vibrant and diverse form of music we have.
So yes, give Ken Burns' Country Music a look. Even if you are dead set that you don't like Country music, I bet you'll recognize a lot of the songs, and maybe the human context will make you see things differently.
[TV] Hanging at the Lodge
Lodge 49 Season 2 is still nice and human, which makes it refreshing in the TV world of snark, fictionalized crime, and general luridity. The core characters centered around the Order of the Lynx are workaday types but they increasingly find themselves interacting with surreal characters and oddballs. The link among them all is that they are unmoored and lost. The timeless angle is the often conflicting searches they are on for both meaning and security weave into their connections with each other. They inevitably let each other down, and just as inevitably pick up the pieces and start over.
In season 1, the focus was on the brother and sister pair (Dud and Liz) and the unrecoverable loss of both meaning and security that came with their father's death. The canvas has broadened in season 2 but so has the sprawl. We've been able to dig deeper into some of the other characters, but new ones (also interesting) have been tossed into the mix and given a short shrift. As a result we feel less of the depth of the characters and the frequent ventures into weirdness begin to feel a bit self-conscious. The stand-out is Ernie (Brent Jennings) who sought to face his future, by which we mean the onset of old age and irrelevance, by finding meaning in his past, and failed most painfully. Jennings did a tremendous job with this.
Still entertaining and interesting (you will see a lot of Coen Bros. influence, although much more lighthearted). Still has a great, pounding, human heart. But its full potential remains unrealized. Perhaps that's good. Something to look forward to.
In season 1, the focus was on the brother and sister pair (Dud and Liz) and the unrecoverable loss of both meaning and security that came with their father's death. The canvas has broadened in season 2 but so has the sprawl. We've been able to dig deeper into some of the other characters, but new ones (also interesting) have been tossed into the mix and given a short shrift. As a result we feel less of the depth of the characters and the frequent ventures into weirdness begin to feel a bit self-conscious. The stand-out is Ernie (Brent Jennings) who sought to face his future, by which we mean the onset of old age and irrelevance, by finding meaning in his past, and failed most painfully. Jennings did a tremendous job with this.
Still entertaining and interesting (you will see a lot of Coen Bros. influence, although much more lighthearted). Still has a great, pounding, human heart. But its full potential remains unrealized. Perhaps that's good. Something to look forward to.
[Books] Book Look: A Maigret Trio, by Georges Simenon
This is my first encounter with Maigret, and do not even think to tell me to go watch some TV series. I have no intention of doing so. The Maigret that Simenon has formed in my head is just fine, thank you.
Police detective novels, eh? What's so special about that? I can think of two things that stand out as special. First, the cases Maigret finds himself with seem to have a personal twist or effect. In the first of three Maigret questions with whether he is really doing his best to find the killer of a reprehensible cretin that he knew from childhood. The second brings Maigret face-to-face with mores of a different era, causing him to wonder how much was lost in the march to decadence. In the third Maigret faces the contrast between a very important case and a case that is only important to him. All this allows Simenon to build Maigret's character as the anchor. The plots are police procedurals, but the stories are about Maigret.
The other virtue is that I have read no one short of the divine P.G. Wodehouse who writes with better economy. Not just in style but in plot. What would be multiple floridly written scenes with all sorts of descriptive trivia in anyone else's hands is a simple and direct exchange of dialogue for Simenon. It's wonderful to read a writer who chooses not to and, more importantly, does not need to waste your time to make his point.
Simenon wrote 76 Maigret novels and 28 short stories and these are my first three. I intend to read more just for the education in omitting needless words.
Should you read the Maigret mysteries? Yes. They are likely a lot better than whatever mystery series you are reading now, full stop. I'm starting another one today.
Late addenda: I started another one as promised (Maigret and the Headless Corpse) and to my shock it is, at first blush, exactly the opposite of the taught, economic prose I just wrote of admiringly. Lots of scene setting and dallying around. We'll see if it's an oddball or not; I hope it sorts itself out. I'm leaving the above evaluation in place for now, as it certainly applies to the specific book I read (A Maigret Trio), but I may have to change my full-on recommendation. They may be hit or miss.
Police detective novels, eh? What's so special about that? I can think of two things that stand out as special. First, the cases Maigret finds himself with seem to have a personal twist or effect. In the first of three Maigret questions with whether he is really doing his best to find the killer of a reprehensible cretin that he knew from childhood. The second brings Maigret face-to-face with mores of a different era, causing him to wonder how much was lost in the march to decadence. In the third Maigret faces the contrast between a very important case and a case that is only important to him. All this allows Simenon to build Maigret's character as the anchor. The plots are police procedurals, but the stories are about Maigret.
The other virtue is that I have read no one short of the divine P.G. Wodehouse who writes with better economy. Not just in style but in plot. What would be multiple floridly written scenes with all sorts of descriptive trivia in anyone else's hands is a simple and direct exchange of dialogue for Simenon. It's wonderful to read a writer who chooses not to and, more importantly, does not need to waste your time to make his point.
Simenon wrote 76 Maigret novels and 28 short stories and these are my first three. I intend to read more just for the education in omitting needless words.
Should you read the Maigret mysteries? Yes. They are likely a lot better than whatever mystery series you are reading now, full stop. I'm starting another one today.
Late addenda: I started another one as promised (Maigret and the Headless Corpse) and to my shock it is, at first blush, exactly the opposite of the taught, economic prose I just wrote of admiringly. Lots of scene setting and dallying around. We'll see if it's an oddball or not; I hope it sorts itself out. I'm leaving the above evaluation in place for now, as it certainly applies to the specific book I read (A Maigret Trio), but I may have to change my full-on recommendation. They may be hit or miss.
[Tech] Hit Me With Technology
My techo-life has actually been rather settled. I have had a Motorola G6 Android phone for about a year now. It is a budget model -- not remotely close to any of the high-enders from Samsung, Google, or Apple, but it's done everything I need it to. I wish it had a better camera, but beyond that it's been fine and it was cheap and I see no need to move.
I use Verizon for my service because it is the most reliable in the area where I live. Even AT&T has inconvenient dead spots around here and back when I had Google Fi, which was supposed to use the strongest signal of with Sprint or T-Mobile, it was still a crapshoot. I could probably save a few bucks by switching to one of the cheaper services that use Verizon network like Total Wireless, but I can never get a straight answer about what I give up by doing that and frankly, the thought of slogging through service reviews and coverage maps and connectivity policies exhausts me.
I rarely use my laptop at home any more. I can do most everything on my iPad although I must note that you often run into really stupid behavior in Apps that you don't get on striaght up websites. Apps make a lot more assumptions about your behavior in the interest of simplifying things for small touch screens. For example: Google Maps app on iOS is a disaster. I can map out a route easily enough, but as far as I can tell it offers no information about the exact distance of the mapped route. It just assumes you are using it for driving or walking directions and that you don't really care about the details, you just want it to start telling you what turns to take. Frustrating as hell. (I often try to map out running or biking routes so knowing the total mileage is quite important to me.)
The only real need I have for a laptop with a legitimately speedy processor is for Photoshop, and since I don't do much photography anymore I could do without it. A full size keyboard and screen are also nice for writing, but I don't like writing at home, I prefer the local library where computers, keyboards, and monitors are freely available. Besides, I could probably hook up a keyboard and external monitor to my iPad. Barring a wholehearted return to travel and photography my next purchase in this area will probably be a Surface tablet of some sort to split the difference.
I still haven't cut the cable cord. I have concerns -- I question the ultimate cost savings since as soon as I cancel my cable, Spectrum will up the price on my internet service through the roof and I have very few alternatives, none are comparable speedwise. Then I will find myself subscribing to who knows how many services to get the shows I want.
While I understand that attraction of not paying for things you don't watch, I am very skeptical of unbundling as it is playing out. Things aren't really being unbundled so much as repackaged into fractured smaller bundles. The frugal dream of paying for only what you watch is lost and instead you'll be paying $10/month for that one series you like on any given network, never mind the luxury dream of paying one price and getting to see anything at any time. Like the Web, we may find "improving" it is its ruin.
Honestly, I would have thought these glaring annoyances -- unreliable, expensive, inconvenient phone and cable services -- would have been sorted out by now. I mean, that's what the entire point of tech is in the 21st century: relieving inconveniences for your market. It kind of makes you wish you could turn it all over the Amazon to run and be done with it. (Joking. Am I?)
I use Verizon for my service because it is the most reliable in the area where I live. Even AT&T has inconvenient dead spots around here and back when I had Google Fi, which was supposed to use the strongest signal of with Sprint or T-Mobile, it was still a crapshoot. I could probably save a few bucks by switching to one of the cheaper services that use Verizon network like Total Wireless, but I can never get a straight answer about what I give up by doing that and frankly, the thought of slogging through service reviews and coverage maps and connectivity policies exhausts me.
I rarely use my laptop at home any more. I can do most everything on my iPad although I must note that you often run into really stupid behavior in Apps that you don't get on striaght up websites. Apps make a lot more assumptions about your behavior in the interest of simplifying things for small touch screens. For example: Google Maps app on iOS is a disaster. I can map out a route easily enough, but as far as I can tell it offers no information about the exact distance of the mapped route. It just assumes you are using it for driving or walking directions and that you don't really care about the details, you just want it to start telling you what turns to take. Frustrating as hell. (I often try to map out running or biking routes so knowing the total mileage is quite important to me.)
The only real need I have for a laptop with a legitimately speedy processor is for Photoshop, and since I don't do much photography anymore I could do without it. A full size keyboard and screen are also nice for writing, but I don't like writing at home, I prefer the local library where computers, keyboards, and monitors are freely available. Besides, I could probably hook up a keyboard and external monitor to my iPad. Barring a wholehearted return to travel and photography my next purchase in this area will probably be a Surface tablet of some sort to split the difference.
I still haven't cut the cable cord. I have concerns -- I question the ultimate cost savings since as soon as I cancel my cable, Spectrum will up the price on my internet service through the roof and I have very few alternatives, none are comparable speedwise. Then I will find myself subscribing to who knows how many services to get the shows I want.
While I understand that attraction of not paying for things you don't watch, I am very skeptical of unbundling as it is playing out. Things aren't really being unbundled so much as repackaged into fractured smaller bundles. The frugal dream of paying for only what you watch is lost and instead you'll be paying $10/month for that one series you like on any given network, never mind the luxury dream of paying one price and getting to see anything at any time. Like the Web, we may find "improving" it is its ruin.
Honestly, I would have thought these glaring annoyances -- unreliable, expensive, inconvenient phone and cable services -- would have been sorted out by now. I mean, that's what the entire point of tech is in the 21st century: relieving inconveniences for your market. It kind of makes you wish you could turn it all over the Amazon to run and be done with it. (Joking. Am I?)
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