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Associated Memories…

April 2, 2013 /

This one works for me. Grusin’s Mountain Dance. I think if I awoke to this song everyday, each morning would be a pleasure. It’s playing just now on the bookshop’s radio.

We all like different things, of course. Otherwise, there’d be just one song and we’d listen to it over and over. And we’d love it. We’d love it so much we wouldn’t need any other song. If we all liked the same things, we’d like the same book and would never have to read another – that’s how much we’d love that favorite one. We’d just read it until the pages fell out (or the Kindle went dead).

Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to have the same feelings about the music of Dave Grusin, but I know you know him – one way or another. If his name is unfamiliar, maybe his music isn’t. He won an Oscar for his musical score for the film The Milagro Beanfield War. He was nominated for his music for The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, On Golden Pond, and others. His original song, “It Might Be You” for the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie was nominated for an Academy Award. There was a TV show called St. Elsewhere that had a really catchy theme song. Dave Grusin was responsible for that one too.

There are nearly a dozen other movies that have his music as the soundtrack.

Mountain Dance – for me – is just a great, uplifting song; it’s one that has memories associated with it. Just hearing it reminds me of morning drive on 92.9 and that era when they let me run down to the music store and pick out songs to play during my shift.

It may be presumptuous to offer it here, but – should you feel curious – you can click HERE to give Mountain Dance a listen.

I was like a kid in a candy store. The Rippingtons. David Benoit (it was his music on those Charlie Brown animated TV specials, another feel-gooder…). Chet Atkins. Yellowjackets. Pat Metheny. Bob James. Some people called it Weather Channel jazz back then. It was never background music for me, though. I can play ol’ Dave front and center.

Those days are long gone, I assure you. Not just my time on that radio station, but the days when deejays could select their own music. It always had to fit in with the format, of course – but at that time Dave Grusin’s Mountain Dance fit – just fine.

You shouldn’t think that I sit around pining for those Good Old Days. Nah. I don’t have a lot of time for things like that. But those things that strike a genuine chord – like White Divinity (that’s another hardwired associated memory, but another story entirely) – there is no way to avoid the brain-splash.

And it’s nice when the sudden reflection evokes good memories.

Don’t have Dave, but there are scores and sheet music – along with some biographies – over in the music section…

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK
918-252-3301

Back when dinosaur tech was Normal…

April 1, 2013 /

The suspect’s car disappeared around a corner, and the police – slowed by a backing dump truck that momentarily jutted into traffic – lost sight just long enough to end the chase.

“Over there,” said the officer riding shotgun. “We’re out of our jurisdiction. Better call it in.”

The car had barely stopped rolling when he threw open the door and trotted over to the phone booth, jerked the handset off the hook, and slammed a quarter into the slot.

Phone booth?

Dr. Who fans will recognize the “callbox” but there are plenty of folks who have grown up as dinosaur technology has gone extinct. I was reading a book by suspense novelist Sue Grafton – the first in her long-running series – and was taken aback by the prehistoric references. The novel was written in the 1980s. Some things have changed a little. Some things have changed a LOT.

I should have gone into it understanding that it was historical fiction at this point. The forensic pathologist (and I think Ms Grafton was a little ahead of her CSI-time back then) and her associates had to share a behemoth computer that squatted on a desk like an elephant. There was a point where, if I remember correctly, the police DID have to pull the patrol car over to make a phone call.

It was before cell phones were in wide enough usage for readers to be familiar with the terms.

John Nance writes fiction set in the airline industry and one of his early works has the pilot comfortably smoking in the open-door cockpit as the passengers are boarding. Airline-related stories are certainly among the most-dated. The rules of flying changed dramatically post-911.

Tom McBride and Ron Nief have put together a collection of generational ‘Normals’ and called it the Mindset Lists of American History. They don’t list every year, but skip five to seven years in documenting what was important to graduating classes in their own diploma-year. For example, the Class of 1983 were mostly born in 1965, and include comedian Chris Rock and actor Robert Downey Jr. For this class, Malcom X, Alan Freed, and Nat King Cole were already historical figures.

There was no armed forces draft, the ecology movement had been around forever. Radio ads for cigarettes were long gone. Separate-but-equal facilities for different races were a thing of the past. Those of the class of 1983 never did and never will see the Beatles in a live performance. They never saw a slide rule in a classroom, and did not have to wait until age 21 to vote.

Plenty of things that I considered ‘normal’ are completely unheard of by younger groups. Rotary-dial telephones. CB radios. 8-Track tapes.

It seemed like it was only yesterday that the corner grocery offered S&H Green Stamps with every purchase, to be pasted in a book and saved until redeemed for some frivolous purchase at the ‘Stamp Store.’ Now, it seems that even US postage stamps are threatened.

The authors make some bold predictions for future classes as well, including an outbreak of ‘carpel thumb syndrome’ brought on by excessive texting.

We’ll have to see how that turns out. Meanwhile, I’ll keep tapping away on the massive laptop that my son-in-law makes fun of, the one with the Cinemascope-sized screen and fonts the size of billboard lettering. You know – something big enough for me to see.

Here now, the weather from BEYOND…

March 30, 2013 /

Clichés. Don’t you love them? Maybe yes, maybe no – but they are painfully difficult to avoid and just plain painful when they get mixed.

Case in point?

Live storm coverage from Dick Faurot. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picking on Mr Faurot, as I appreciate his style and experience. Those guys doing the weather on television get a lot of grief, and it isn’t my intention to pile on here.

The radar was indicating tornadoes Saturday night and I was watching an interesting Sherlock Holmes show that fell victim to the storm coverage. (Sometimes I think we all are victims of the advanced technology that allows the TV weather folks to ramble on about “what’s going on.” Mr. Faurot’s words, not mine.)

Oh, wow. We’re going back to programming now. The show, that gives clues leading up to a conclusion, will have presented the evidence during our storm-break. We’ll see how that turns out when we are returned to regular programming.

Back to those mixed clichés. The phrase “In the Field” has been around for awhile. We have a reporter “in the field” and will have a report from him/her shortly. Maybe this one has gone by the wayside a bit, although I remember it well. Just as I am dismissing it here – Mr. Faurot has just used that phrase to describe one of his weather reporters. In the field. Oh, yeah. That guy is most certainly out “in the field.” Not in a car, truck, or van. He’s in the field. Yeah. Sure.

“On the Ground” is a new cliché that reporters these days try to work in at any opportunity. I’m not exactly certain why clichés are better than simple words. Maybe there is a cachet that is attached to phrases that are thrown around by the network big-boys/girls. Hearing them in a news report may cause other reporters to “jump on the bandwagon” (an old-school cliché) and work them into their stories.

Oh. Severe weather coverage is over. Back to network TV programming. Ooops. I’ve missed the conclusion of the program I was watching, due to the storm coverage. No more Sherlock Holmes. He was quick to present his own suppositions, and I suppose I can make up my own ending, based on the clues presented before the storm interruption.

Back to the case in point: here is the mixed cliché result from Mr. Faurot, part of his description of the weather activity in the Muskogee area. A tornado was indicated by radar, but there was no visual confirmation from spotters, which he wanted to point out.

Dick Faurot: We don’t have confirmation from anyone IN THE GROUND.”

Not “On the ground.” Not “In the field.” He landed on a mix of the two to tell us that nobody confirmed – from their graves, presumably – that a tornado had passed over. That is to say: No one IN THE GROUND confirmed the passage of a twister in the Muskogee area.

Spotters, they are called. Those folks who call in to assist the TV station in their coverage of serious weather events. Wouldn’t those reports be so much better if all those who are currently six-feet-under could add to the reporting?

Mr. Faurot, during a severe weather outbreak: We go now to Mount Carmel Cemetery and the Earthly remains of Miss Joyce Wachthewether, who – during her regular life – loved to watch the weather. Miss Joyce? What are you seeing from your vantage point IN THE GROUND?

Ms. Wachthewether: Well, to be honest, it’s mostly dark here – but I’m guessing that’s due to the bad weather. I’m hearing some whisking winds and it may be a good time to seek shelter underground.

Mr. Faurot: Thank you Ms. Wachthewether. We go now to John Adriver, who is on the Muskogee Turnpike, on the fringe of the storm.

The programming that had been ended tonight on KOTV for storm coverage has not been interrupted for the past fifteen minutes, which tells me that that previous break-in… the one that caused me to miss the end of the show I was watching – was mostly frivolous. Aaaaahh. I take that back. Not frivolous. But certainly, unnecessary.

Better to be safe than sorry – from a meteorologist’s point of view.

But many of us weren’t in the Muskogee area. Maybe most of us. It’s too bad that those TV weather reports, in this age of technology, cannot be targeted to the specific region in potential danger.

It’s also too bad that we can’t get on the scene reports from those correspondents IN THE GROUND. When I’m six-feet-under, I plan on making regular reports on the weather, the expressway traffic, and national politics. Check in with KOTV for reports from those of us – In the ground.

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