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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

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.

Physical fitness vs. physical fatness…

March 23, 2013 /

Maybe you never heard of Joe Weider. It is pronounced like Joe WEE-der. To me, it seems like I’ve known him all my life.

Big Joe started out as Little Joe, one of those 98-pound weaklings – OH, wait a second… there is probably no one reading this that remembers those old comic book ads that promised a body-builder’s-body to anyone who sent in the money for the booklet.

Those ads showed a scrawny guy lounging on the beach with his beautiful girlfriend, perfectly happy until the big beach bully strolls up and kicks sand in the poor guy’s face. It was the basis for a series of ads that became a national joke, of sorts. The 98-pound weakling. It was like saying Loser! Or Whatever! Or LOL ROFL OMG! Everybody knew what it meant.

Little Joe became Bigger Joe. If he was scrawny to start with, he worked out to make up for it. Then, during the Great Depression, he started what became an empire of muscle magazines, equipment designed for bodybuilding and fitness, and diet supplements. He was one of the backers of bodybuilding contests that featured superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In truth, Weider discovered the bodybuilding formula in a magazine. An immediate devotee, he continued his fitness formula for life.

He died yesterday, at the age of 93. He wasn’t infirm or out of shape, but his heart gave out.

Even in his latter years, ages 70s and 80s, he was chiseled and fit. After all the years, he still had a following of readers, people who took up Muscles and Fitness, Flex, Fitness, and Shape, a magazine for women. All together, it amounted to some 25 million readers. In those pages were people like Schwarzenegger, Cher, and Sylvester Stallone.

For my part, I remember thinking about getting in shape. I laid down on the couch until that thought went away. Joe Wieder was a product in my mother’s health food stores and not so much a destination for my lifestyle intentions.

Here’s the weird part: I remember the canisters of the Joe Weider products more than the man himself. I guess that’s proof that his legacy will live on. RIP Mr. W. When I was stocking the shelves for one of the country’s health food pioneers, you were just a name on a product.

Age 93.

In anybody’s book, the man achieved a ripe old age. Probably moving around in his latter years faster than I am now, and I’m many, many years his junior.

For many pioneers of the heath food and body building industry, Joe Weider was the Jackie Robinson, the Charles Lindbergh, the Lewis and Clark, and the Edmund Hillary. (Google them, if you don’t know these pioneers in their own fields…)

RIP Mr Weider. You were ahead of your time, and lived long enough to see the results of your efforts.

I’m thinking about getting in shape and it is in no way an intention of disrespect, if I lay down for a minute or two to think about it first.

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