I rarely miss my days as a newspaper journalist. Occasionally, though, a story will catch my attention and I wish I could jump right in and start interviewing people and reporting on what they say. Such a story happened a couple of weeks ago in my home state, Mississippi, and my home county, Tishomingo. The voters of the county agreed by slim margins to allow the sale of beer, wine, and liquor. I realize that may not be earth-shattering news to the rest of the world where drinking is allowed without much question, but my home county has been completely "dry"--meaning no sales of any alcoholic beverage of any kind--since the end of Prohibition. In case you've forgotten your history lesson, that would mean no legal drinking since 1933, eighty years ago. I guess the residents felt that since Prohibition had gone so well, they would just keep it up for almost another century?
Actually, I know what kept the sale of beer and alcohol out of Tishomingo County all those years. It was the religious background of most of its people. Even though many of them had certainly hoisted a few in their day, they just didn't want to take a moral stand that it was okay for anyone else to drink. If the word "hypocrite" springs to mind, well, there's a reason for that.
The pastors and ministers were out in full force this time around too. They someone managed to keep the two referenda regarding beer and liquor sales off the ballot for three years while people gathered signatures and support. They tried to turn out as many voters as possible to vote against the initiatives, and they have already attempted to challenge the results. Once it was clear that they had lost, they promised to keep careful records of the number of DUIs issued once alcohol sales begin and of the amount of tax revenue the county actually receives. The promise of more tax money for a very poor county was one of the key selling points of the referenda, and why should the residents keep giving their money to Tennessee and Alabama and neighboring counties instead of keeping it at home?
Well, tax money and the reality that many people in the county already drink and shouldn't have to go somewhere else to enjoy a cold one.
None of this is what really fascinated me about the election. It was all to be expected. And what intrigued me most about this story was also not that I would have known some of the players on both sides of the debate. It was the margin of victory and the remarkable turnout for an election where these were the only issues on the ballot.
The first vote was to allow for the sale of beer and light wine. No, I don't really know what "light wine" is although I suspect it might have something to do with the alcohol content. It does make you wonder what "heavy wine" might taste like. In that election, 3,259 people voted in favor of making the county "wet," as the terminology goes, and 3,186 voted against it. That's a margin of just 73 votes out of 6,445 cast in the election.
The second referendum was even closer. That one allows the sale of liquor, the hard stuff, and it passed with 3,267 votes versus 3,225 against, a margin of just 42 votes out of the total of 6,492 cast in that election. That suggests that a lot more people were interested in voting about liquor sales, and apparently a few more of them were against it but still okay with beer. Astonishing results.
By the way, the numbers of voters might seem a bit low to anyone who doesn't live in Tishomingo County or in Mississippi, but that constitutes about 53 percent of the county's registered voters. If you want a basis for comparison, the city of Los Angeles was holding a run-off election on the same day to select the new mayor for one of the largest cities in the United States. The turnout in L.A.? About 19 percent. Obviously, choosing who's going to run a major city is less interesting than whether or not you can have a drink.
I haven't lived in Mississippi since 1990 and not in Tishomingo County since 1985, almost thirty years ago. I do recall growing up knowing that anyone who wanted to drink had to drive a long way to Tennessee, a little town of Counce in particular, to get a beer, sometimes at least twenty-five miles away. Many people made that drive, and too many people died returning from having drunk too much and trying to return home. A lot of people were also stopped and arrested for possession of alcoholic substances. It didn't take the sharpest law enforcement officer to figure out that on Friday and Saturday nights, a lot of people would be making the trek to Counce and back on the one highway that travels the length of our county.
When I went to college--well, university--I saw for the first time beer for sale in a grocery store. I'd never seen that in Mississippi before. Of course, you couldn't buy it on Sunday because of the so-called "blue laws," prohibitions designed to keep people acting morally on the Sabbath. (You might detect a trend here.) You also couldn't buy the beer or wine coolers (hey, maybe that's "light wine") cold. You had to make your purchase and take it home and refrigerate it and wait for it to get cold enough to enjoy. Unsurprisingly, when the weekend approached, you'd see fraternity guys in the stores pushing shopping carts full of beer and bags of ice, which they would dump into coolers in the backs of pickup trucks as soon as they got to the parking lot.
I don't know when you'll actually be able to buy a drink in Tishomingo County. Permits for the sale of liquor have to be cleared through the state bureaucracy, and I'm sure that will take some time. Permits for the sale of beer and light wine will be handled by local governments, but no one has figured out yet how to make that happen. In the meantime, I'd imagine that some people have been stocking up in anticipation of the day when they'll no longer be legally suspect. They will, of course, remain morally suspect in the eyes of almost half of the county, but that seems a small price to pay for a measure of freedom. And it certainly wouldn't be the first time they've felt that way anyhow.
In case you're wondering, Tishomingo is not the last county to go "wet" in the state of Mississippi. There are apparently still thirteen counties remaining in the state (which has a total of eighty-two counties) where you cannot buy yourself a beer or a glass of wine or a cocktail or even the stuff to make a cocktail. I guess it's some small comfort to know that where I grew up isn't the most backward of all places in a state that's often pegged as one of the most backward places in the country. Small comfort, indeed, but if I ever return to visit, I intend to have a beer just to celebrate my home's great leap into the 20th Century.
And, no, that last sentence doesn't have a typo.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Taking Stock: 2012
I guess it's progress that I'm doing this evaluation of last year's experiences a bit earlier than the one I did for 2011. I realize that you probably need some time to consider the value of the books you've read, the quality of the movies you've seen, the entertainment provided by a theatrical experience, and the resonance of an evening of music. However, the really good stuff turns out to be rather readily apparent when you're in the midst of seeing or hearing it. Each of the moments described below made a remarkable impression on me almost immediately.
This past year, I managed to do a lot of reading, 81 books in all. They ranged from books of poetry to short story collections, novels to nonfiction books. I'll readily admit that having a Kindle is allowing me more opportunities to read because I can carry several hundred books at one time in a small device. It's more convenient for me to sit with my Kindle at the car dealership or the doctor's waiting room or even the laundry room, and I can pick and choose from a range of options. If I get bored with something I'm reading, I don't have to wait until I get home to start a different book, and I don't have to carry a huge stack of possible texts. I just go back to the menu and select another one.
Favorite Novel: Something Like Summer by Jay Bell is the story of two teenage boys who fall in love while still in high school and the complications they endure to stay as a couple. This was a free download from Amazon, so I took a chance on it. It turned out to be a very emotionally powerful depiction of the conflicted emotions gay teens feel. I recognized in the characters the kinds of feelings that I myself had when I first realized that I was in love with another guy. It's beautifully written and rather heartbreaking at times. You know, of course, that a novel about someone's first love is not going to allow the main characters to avoid complications and obstacles, and this one is no exception. What sets this narrative apart, though, is the realistic way that it depicts the barriers between the two young men. Anyone who's ever been a teenager in love, gay or straight, would recognize the emotional honesty with which Bell tells his story.
Runners-Up: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender and Take Back Tomorrow by Richard Levesque are two rather different books. Bender's novel is the tale of a girl who develops the ability to tell the emotions people feel through the baked goods that they produce; it's a remarkable conceit that remains consistently powerful throughout the novel. Bender uses a distinct narrative voice to draw the reader into the story; it's a great, interesting novel. Levesque is one of my teaching colleagues, and his novel is a hybrid of science fiction and detective tale. I found it to be very cinematic, no doubt the result of Richard's educational training. I've read quite a few detective novels over the years, and this is a loving and adventurous homage to the pulp novels of the 1940s and 1950s. I've read a couple of stories Richard has written since publishing this first novel, and I'm looking forward to tackling his second novel this summer.
Favorite Book of Poetry: Reliquary by Constance Eggers is the first chapbook published by yet another colleague of mine--well, to be more accurate, a former colleague of mine since she's retired from teaching. Connie writes movingly of her past, her connections and disconnections from her father and mother, her husband and children. Each of her poems is grounded in the personal, but you can't read her work (or listen to hear read her work, as we did just last month) without feeling a powerful connection to the truthfulness of her imagery. I treasure Connie's friendship, and even though she now lives in Oregon, reading her poetry in this chapbook was like having a conversation with her again.
I didn't have as big of a year for movies. We just don't get out to the theater as much as I once did. When you have two people to get ready to go out, sometimes you just decide to stay at home. Including programs of short films, we only went to the theater twenty-six times last year. You can only add another thirteen films that we watched on DVD. That makes it a rather sparse year overall.
Favorite Movie: Argo won the Oscar for Best Picture of last year, and I'll have more to say about it on my other blog if I ever get a chance to get back to that one. What I enjoyed most about Ben Affleck's film is the way it harkens back to the political thrillers of the 1970s, a decade that saw some great films about politics and intrigue. Argo is based on a true story, and even though we all know (or should know) how it ends, that didn't keep it from being suspenseful. Even The Boyfriend, who isn't familiar with U.S. history, found it an interesting movie. You care about each of the embassy people, and making them all clearly distinct personalities when you're juggling a lot of characters is a testament to Affleck's skill as a director.
Runners-Up: Moonrise Kingdom and Magic Mike will sound like a very odd pairing, but each one has its particular charms. Moonrise Kingdom is the most recent Wes Anderson film, and some might find its rather precious nature a bit too much to enjoy. I, however, smiled throughout the film. It's just charming in its depiction of two kids who decide to run off together and cause a great deal of havoc in the lives of their families and communities. It takes place in a time and place that are so artificial in many ways, but the emotional resonance of the movie is as realistic as possible. Magic Mike might seem like an obvious choice for a favorite film of mine given the display of hot male bodies, but I did enjoy it for the points that it made about the economy. Yeah, I know that's not exactly what drew the crowds of women and gay men into the theaters, but I hope some of them noticed that these men are all struggling in some way with how they will make their lives work. I hope the director, Steven Soderbergh, is only joking about retiring. If you can make a movie about male strippers have some deeper meaning beyond looking at mostly naked men, you shouldn't give up your job.
Favorite Actress: Penelope Wilton in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel doesn't get the attention that her costars like Judi Dench or Maggie Smith get, but she gave one of the best performances last year in a role that is hardly sympathetic. She's one of an ensemble of older British actors playing expatriates living in India, a sort of experiment on finding a new life. Her character of Jean is married to Bill Nighy's Douglas, but he's developed an interest in Dench's Evelyn. And why wouldn't he? Evelyn is charming and beautiful and nowhere near as irritating as Jean. What Wilton accomplishes, though, is a remarkable turnaround in our emotions. Jean never quite acclimates to India, and the meltdown she experiences near the end of the film makes you realize just how frustrating her life has been and how much she has tried and tried to make everyone happy. Wilton is also one of the best things about Downton Abbey, and it was refreshing to see her in a movie role that played to her considerable talents as an actress.
Favorite Actor: I'd have a tough time picking my favorite male performance this year. I really enjoyed both Michael Fassbender in Prometheus and Daniel Craig in Skyfall, neither of whom got much "award" attention. Fassbender has been great in every movie in which he's performed; his performance in Shame last year was a revelation, and not just because we got to see the whole of his body. He plays an android in Prometheus, a sort-of sequel to the Alien/Aliens movies, and he manages to imbue his character with an empathy that you wouldn't expect. You actually begin to care what happens to him, and you can't say that about all of the other characters in that movie. Craig has really grown into the role of James Bond; Skyfall was a more personal story that incorporated some lovely moments of the franchise's history into its narrative, and there were some nice touches that relied on the mythology of the character that he brings to the role. He's a bit more muscular and brutish than some of the other Bonds, but I've come to anticipate each new Bond film thanks to him.
If you thought we didn't get out much for movies, we're even worse about going to see plays and musicals, live theater. I love going to the theater, but last year we only had four chances and all of them were musicals. Not a so-called "straight" play in the bunch.
Favorite Theatrical Production: The touring company of Follies came to the Ahmanson Theatre downtown, and almost everyone from the Broadway revival cast except for Bernadette Peters was there. It's a great show, and the production design for the decaying theater in which the action of the show takes place was just remarkable. It's a musical with some great songs by Stephen Sondheim, many of which people know even if they've never seen the show. For example, "I'm Still Here" is a staple of cabaret acts everywhere, and I'm sure has been sung by way too many people at auditions. "Broadway Baby" is a marvel when you see it performed in context rather than sung by someone who is obviously too young to make the meaning of the lyrics resonate for an audience. "Could I Leave You?" and "Losing My Mind" are some of the other great songs, but my personal favorite is "Too Many Mornings," and the production at the Ahmanson made for a particularly memorable duet. I loved the show, and I got to share the evening with a dear friend who is a particularly brilliant connoisseur of Sondheim musicals.
Runners-Up: La Cage Aux Folles and Justin Love are productions on very different scales. La Cage was the touring company production at the Pantages in Hollywood. It's big and splashy and brightly colored and really a joy to watch (and to sing along to). I've seen the French film that was its inspiration, and I've seen The Birdcage, the Americanized version of the French film, but the musical is a different story. It incorporates great music into a story of a long-term couple coming to terms with the ways that their lives have changed. The "star" of the show was supposed to be George Hamilton, a true old-fashioned movie star, but the person who really captured the audience's attention was Christoper Seiber playing the drag queen Zaza. I guess that's to be expected; if you get the flashiest role and you live up to the part, you'll get the affection of those in the theater. Justin Love was a very small scale production at the Celebration Theatre, a tiny theater on the edge of West Hollywood. It's the story of a young man from the Midwest who moves to Los Angeles with the hopes of making it in the movies as a writer. He winds up meeting and falling in love with one of the world's biggest movie stars, a closeted gay movie star at that, and watching the arc of their relationship throughout the show was a thrilling and emotional experience. Hopefully, Justin Love can make it to a bigger venue; it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. It's got a lovely score and several great parts, including a real scene-stealer in the role of the head of a public relations firm.
Even though we didn't get to go to as many movies or theatrical productions as I would have liked, we did see a lot of musical performances. We even managed to drag ourselves all the way to Chula Vista (!) in San Diego County to see Luke Bryan, The Boyfriend's favorite country singer, on tour with Jason Aldean. That's an experience I'd rather not repeat since it took us more than two hours to get out of the parking lot. The show itself was great, particularly Luke's part of the show, but two hours stuck waiting for other cars to get out of your way after midnight makes you forget momentarily just how much you might have enjoyed yourself.
Favorite Event: Barbra Streisand at the Hollywood Bowl has to be my choice for the event of the year. She rarely performs, but I have always tried to see her perform whenever she comes to Los Angeles. Her November concert at the Hollywood Bowl was the fourth time I've seen her perform live. I've joked that I've gone to (almost) every one of her farewell tours, but every few years she manages to develop a new show and wow audiences wherever she goes. She started this particular tour in her native New York and planned to end it in sunny Southern California; what no one expected was a colder-than-expected November night. The Boyfriend and I almost froze while waiting for the show to begin, but once Streisand appeared, we were both warmed by the lovely maturity of her voice. There's a bit of a rasp that has developed in recent years, but it adds a nice husky quality to her singing that is quite welcome. She managed to cover some of her personal history that she's not discussed in concerts before and she shared images from her early career that caught some of us long-time fans off guard. You think we'd have seen every picture of her that had ever been taken, but there are plenty more to be discovered. And she even managed to show that wacky sense of humor in a question-and-answer session and throughout the evening. I'd add that one of the traits I most admire about Streisand (and another of my favorite performers I'm going to discuss soon) is her generosity with others. She managed to find time during her show to allow Chris Botti, Il Volo, her son Jason Gould, and even her sister Rosalyn Kind to shine onstage. It was a full evening of amazing songs, and everyone left the Bowl with a smile.
Runners-Up: Diana Krall and Rufus Wainwright. The Boyfriend really likes Diana Krall, and I've owned quite a few of her albums over the years, so we agreed to see her at the Hollywood Bowl. She has a very low-key sense of humor that complements her style of singing. She does some very witty banter between songs and manages to cover a lot of her most familiar material. I guess she has a reputation for being a rather somber vocalist, but I didn't feel that way after listening to her show.
Readers of this blog know what a fan I am of Rufus Wainwright's music and how many times I've seen him over the years. He performed downtown at the Orpheum Theatre and later in the year at UCLA, and both were magical nights. The downtown show was part of his tour to promote his new CD, Out of the Game, which I had almost memorized by the night of the performance. This was the upbeat, playful Rufus that I remembered from the first few times I saw him live. The second show was in December, and it was the last event The Boyfriend and I attended. I decided to have at least one Christmas-y moment since we weren't putting up a tree or spending a fortune on gifts for people or traveling long distances to see family or friends. Rufus and his sister Martha have continued a tradition started by their mother of doing holiday concerts, and the family now donates a portion of the profits to a foundation looking to find treatments and a cure for the type of cancer from which Kate McGarrigle, their mother, died. As somber as that sounds, the Wainwrights bring a lot of people to these shows, other family members and friends like Emmylou Harris and Carrie Fisher. It was a magical night and a great way to end 2012. Maybe it was the afterglow from that show that kept me from writing this overview of my year for so long.
This past year, I managed to do a lot of reading, 81 books in all. They ranged from books of poetry to short story collections, novels to nonfiction books. I'll readily admit that having a Kindle is allowing me more opportunities to read because I can carry several hundred books at one time in a small device. It's more convenient for me to sit with my Kindle at the car dealership or the doctor's waiting room or even the laundry room, and I can pick and choose from a range of options. If I get bored with something I'm reading, I don't have to wait until I get home to start a different book, and I don't have to carry a huge stack of possible texts. I just go back to the menu and select another one.
Favorite Novel: Something Like Summer by Jay Bell is the story of two teenage boys who fall in love while still in high school and the complications they endure to stay as a couple. This was a free download from Amazon, so I took a chance on it. It turned out to be a very emotionally powerful depiction of the conflicted emotions gay teens feel. I recognized in the characters the kinds of feelings that I myself had when I first realized that I was in love with another guy. It's beautifully written and rather heartbreaking at times. You know, of course, that a novel about someone's first love is not going to allow the main characters to avoid complications and obstacles, and this one is no exception. What sets this narrative apart, though, is the realistic way that it depicts the barriers between the two young men. Anyone who's ever been a teenager in love, gay or straight, would recognize the emotional honesty with which Bell tells his story.
Runners-Up: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender and Take Back Tomorrow by Richard Levesque are two rather different books. Bender's novel is the tale of a girl who develops the ability to tell the emotions people feel through the baked goods that they produce; it's a remarkable conceit that remains consistently powerful throughout the novel. Bender uses a distinct narrative voice to draw the reader into the story; it's a great, interesting novel. Levesque is one of my teaching colleagues, and his novel is a hybrid of science fiction and detective tale. I found it to be very cinematic, no doubt the result of Richard's educational training. I've read quite a few detective novels over the years, and this is a loving and adventurous homage to the pulp novels of the 1940s and 1950s. I've read a couple of stories Richard has written since publishing this first novel, and I'm looking forward to tackling his second novel this summer.
Favorite Book of Poetry: Reliquary by Constance Eggers is the first chapbook published by yet another colleague of mine--well, to be more accurate, a former colleague of mine since she's retired from teaching. Connie writes movingly of her past, her connections and disconnections from her father and mother, her husband and children. Each of her poems is grounded in the personal, but you can't read her work (or listen to hear read her work, as we did just last month) without feeling a powerful connection to the truthfulness of her imagery. I treasure Connie's friendship, and even though she now lives in Oregon, reading her poetry in this chapbook was like having a conversation with her again.
I didn't have as big of a year for movies. We just don't get out to the theater as much as I once did. When you have two people to get ready to go out, sometimes you just decide to stay at home. Including programs of short films, we only went to the theater twenty-six times last year. You can only add another thirteen films that we watched on DVD. That makes it a rather sparse year overall.
Favorite Movie: Argo won the Oscar for Best Picture of last year, and I'll have more to say about it on my other blog if I ever get a chance to get back to that one. What I enjoyed most about Ben Affleck's film is the way it harkens back to the political thrillers of the 1970s, a decade that saw some great films about politics and intrigue. Argo is based on a true story, and even though we all know (or should know) how it ends, that didn't keep it from being suspenseful. Even The Boyfriend, who isn't familiar with U.S. history, found it an interesting movie. You care about each of the embassy people, and making them all clearly distinct personalities when you're juggling a lot of characters is a testament to Affleck's skill as a director.
Runners-Up: Moonrise Kingdom and Magic Mike will sound like a very odd pairing, but each one has its particular charms. Moonrise Kingdom is the most recent Wes Anderson film, and some might find its rather precious nature a bit too much to enjoy. I, however, smiled throughout the film. It's just charming in its depiction of two kids who decide to run off together and cause a great deal of havoc in the lives of their families and communities. It takes place in a time and place that are so artificial in many ways, but the emotional resonance of the movie is as realistic as possible. Magic Mike might seem like an obvious choice for a favorite film of mine given the display of hot male bodies, but I did enjoy it for the points that it made about the economy. Yeah, I know that's not exactly what drew the crowds of women and gay men into the theaters, but I hope some of them noticed that these men are all struggling in some way with how they will make their lives work. I hope the director, Steven Soderbergh, is only joking about retiring. If you can make a movie about male strippers have some deeper meaning beyond looking at mostly naked men, you shouldn't give up your job.
Favorite Actress: Penelope Wilton in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel doesn't get the attention that her costars like Judi Dench or Maggie Smith get, but she gave one of the best performances last year in a role that is hardly sympathetic. She's one of an ensemble of older British actors playing expatriates living in India, a sort of experiment on finding a new life. Her character of Jean is married to Bill Nighy's Douglas, but he's developed an interest in Dench's Evelyn. And why wouldn't he? Evelyn is charming and beautiful and nowhere near as irritating as Jean. What Wilton accomplishes, though, is a remarkable turnaround in our emotions. Jean never quite acclimates to India, and the meltdown she experiences near the end of the film makes you realize just how frustrating her life has been and how much she has tried and tried to make everyone happy. Wilton is also one of the best things about Downton Abbey, and it was refreshing to see her in a movie role that played to her considerable talents as an actress.
Favorite Actor: I'd have a tough time picking my favorite male performance this year. I really enjoyed both Michael Fassbender in Prometheus and Daniel Craig in Skyfall, neither of whom got much "award" attention. Fassbender has been great in every movie in which he's performed; his performance in Shame last year was a revelation, and not just because we got to see the whole of his body. He plays an android in Prometheus, a sort-of sequel to the Alien/Aliens movies, and he manages to imbue his character with an empathy that you wouldn't expect. You actually begin to care what happens to him, and you can't say that about all of the other characters in that movie. Craig has really grown into the role of James Bond; Skyfall was a more personal story that incorporated some lovely moments of the franchise's history into its narrative, and there were some nice touches that relied on the mythology of the character that he brings to the role. He's a bit more muscular and brutish than some of the other Bonds, but I've come to anticipate each new Bond film thanks to him.
If you thought we didn't get out much for movies, we're even worse about going to see plays and musicals, live theater. I love going to the theater, but last year we only had four chances and all of them were musicals. Not a so-called "straight" play in the bunch.
Favorite Theatrical Production: The touring company of Follies came to the Ahmanson Theatre downtown, and almost everyone from the Broadway revival cast except for Bernadette Peters was there. It's a great show, and the production design for the decaying theater in which the action of the show takes place was just remarkable. It's a musical with some great songs by Stephen Sondheim, many of which people know even if they've never seen the show. For example, "I'm Still Here" is a staple of cabaret acts everywhere, and I'm sure has been sung by way too many people at auditions. "Broadway Baby" is a marvel when you see it performed in context rather than sung by someone who is obviously too young to make the meaning of the lyrics resonate for an audience. "Could I Leave You?" and "Losing My Mind" are some of the other great songs, but my personal favorite is "Too Many Mornings," and the production at the Ahmanson made for a particularly memorable duet. I loved the show, and I got to share the evening with a dear friend who is a particularly brilliant connoisseur of Sondheim musicals.
Runners-Up: La Cage Aux Folles and Justin Love are productions on very different scales. La Cage was the touring company production at the Pantages in Hollywood. It's big and splashy and brightly colored and really a joy to watch (and to sing along to). I've seen the French film that was its inspiration, and I've seen The Birdcage, the Americanized version of the French film, but the musical is a different story. It incorporates great music into a story of a long-term couple coming to terms with the ways that their lives have changed. The "star" of the show was supposed to be George Hamilton, a true old-fashioned movie star, but the person who really captured the audience's attention was Christoper Seiber playing the drag queen Zaza. I guess that's to be expected; if you get the flashiest role and you live up to the part, you'll get the affection of those in the theater. Justin Love was a very small scale production at the Celebration Theatre, a tiny theater on the edge of West Hollywood. It's the story of a young man from the Midwest who moves to Los Angeles with the hopes of making it in the movies as a writer. He winds up meeting and falling in love with one of the world's biggest movie stars, a closeted gay movie star at that, and watching the arc of their relationship throughout the show was a thrilling and emotional experience. Hopefully, Justin Love can make it to a bigger venue; it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. It's got a lovely score and several great parts, including a real scene-stealer in the role of the head of a public relations firm.
Even though we didn't get to go to as many movies or theatrical productions as I would have liked, we did see a lot of musical performances. We even managed to drag ourselves all the way to Chula Vista (!) in San Diego County to see Luke Bryan, The Boyfriend's favorite country singer, on tour with Jason Aldean. That's an experience I'd rather not repeat since it took us more than two hours to get out of the parking lot. The show itself was great, particularly Luke's part of the show, but two hours stuck waiting for other cars to get out of your way after midnight makes you forget momentarily just how much you might have enjoyed yourself.
Favorite Event: Barbra Streisand at the Hollywood Bowl has to be my choice for the event of the year. She rarely performs, but I have always tried to see her perform whenever she comes to Los Angeles. Her November concert at the Hollywood Bowl was the fourth time I've seen her perform live. I've joked that I've gone to (almost) every one of her farewell tours, but every few years she manages to develop a new show and wow audiences wherever she goes. She started this particular tour in her native New York and planned to end it in sunny Southern California; what no one expected was a colder-than-expected November night. The Boyfriend and I almost froze while waiting for the show to begin, but once Streisand appeared, we were both warmed by the lovely maturity of her voice. There's a bit of a rasp that has developed in recent years, but it adds a nice husky quality to her singing that is quite welcome. She managed to cover some of her personal history that she's not discussed in concerts before and she shared images from her early career that caught some of us long-time fans off guard. You think we'd have seen every picture of her that had ever been taken, but there are plenty more to be discovered. And she even managed to show that wacky sense of humor in a question-and-answer session and throughout the evening. I'd add that one of the traits I most admire about Streisand (and another of my favorite performers I'm going to discuss soon) is her generosity with others. She managed to find time during her show to allow Chris Botti, Il Volo, her son Jason Gould, and even her sister Rosalyn Kind to shine onstage. It was a full evening of amazing songs, and everyone left the Bowl with a smile.
Runners-Up: Diana Krall and Rufus Wainwright. The Boyfriend really likes Diana Krall, and I've owned quite a few of her albums over the years, so we agreed to see her at the Hollywood Bowl. She has a very low-key sense of humor that complements her style of singing. She does some very witty banter between songs and manages to cover a lot of her most familiar material. I guess she has a reputation for being a rather somber vocalist, but I didn't feel that way after listening to her show.
Readers of this blog know what a fan I am of Rufus Wainwright's music and how many times I've seen him over the years. He performed downtown at the Orpheum Theatre and later in the year at UCLA, and both were magical nights. The downtown show was part of his tour to promote his new CD, Out of the Game, which I had almost memorized by the night of the performance. This was the upbeat, playful Rufus that I remembered from the first few times I saw him live. The second show was in December, and it was the last event The Boyfriend and I attended. I decided to have at least one Christmas-y moment since we weren't putting up a tree or spending a fortune on gifts for people or traveling long distances to see family or friends. Rufus and his sister Martha have continued a tradition started by their mother of doing holiday concerts, and the family now donates a portion of the profits to a foundation looking to find treatments and a cure for the type of cancer from which Kate McGarrigle, their mother, died. As somber as that sounds, the Wainwrights bring a lot of people to these shows, other family members and friends like Emmylou Harris and Carrie Fisher. It was a magical night and a great way to end 2012. Maybe it was the afterglow from that show that kept me from writing this overview of my year for so long.
Monday, May 20, 2013
A Little Regret
What I Actually Said and Did:
I was returning graded quizzes at the end of my first class today when a student got up to leave. She told me that she had to leave early in order to get to her next class on time. I checked my watch: 11:34 a.m., one minute left in class. I told her that she would still have ten minutes to get to her next class since no class on campus would begin before 11:45 a.m. Besides, I was only seconds away from returning her quiz. She told me that she needed to go on anyway and just couldn't wait any longer. I told her that no place on campus was more than ten minutes away; I know this because I've had back-to-back classes in the northernmost building and the southernmost building on campus, and I made it from one to the other in under ten minutes. She said she walked slowly and needed to leave to get to her other class on time. At this point, I simply turned away and kept returning quizzes to the students who remained in class.
What I Wanted to Say and Do:
Had I been more inclined to be unkind, I would have turned to this student, who has had a habit of coming to my class late and leaving early and not being particularly well prepared at any time, and said, "And that's why you're going to wind up with a 'D' for this semester."
I was returning graded quizzes at the end of my first class today when a student got up to leave. She told me that she had to leave early in order to get to her next class on time. I checked my watch: 11:34 a.m., one minute left in class. I told her that she would still have ten minutes to get to her next class since no class on campus would begin before 11:45 a.m. Besides, I was only seconds away from returning her quiz. She told me that she needed to go on anyway and just couldn't wait any longer. I told her that no place on campus was more than ten minutes away; I know this because I've had back-to-back classes in the northernmost building and the southernmost building on campus, and I made it from one to the other in under ten minutes. She said she walked slowly and needed to leave to get to her other class on time. At this point, I simply turned away and kept returning quizzes to the students who remained in class.
What I Wanted to Say and Do:
Had I been more inclined to be unkind, I would have turned to this student, who has had a habit of coming to my class late and leaving early and not being particularly well prepared at any time, and said, "And that's why you're going to wind up with a 'D' for this semester."
Friday, May 10, 2013
Summertime in the Other Venice
The story concerns Jane Hudson, a middle-aged woman from Ohio who has come to Italy to have an adventure for the first time in her life. She's never been married, and you quickly get the sense that her life has always been rather loveless. She's always been an observer, not a participant, in life, and that approach continues even after she arrives in Venice. You can tell this by the numerous moments in the film where she's filming with her little personal camera. She's enchanted by the city, of course, but even in Venice, she's surrounded by people in love and that just makes her feel even lonelier. She is an outsider, a "third wheel," even among the American tourists she encounters.
Jane is played by Hepburn, who gives what I would consider the greatest performance of her career. In fact, it's one of the greatest performances, by a woman or a man, on film I've ever seen. She allows us to see Jane's emotions so very clearly, and we readily empathize with her, perhaps especially if we've ever felt like we were not attractive enough to find someone to love us. And I do think most of us have felt that way at some point in our lives.
Jane's trip changes, of course, when she meets Renato, an antiques dealer, who is played by one of the best looking men in the movies. (Brazzi was perhaps not the most talented actor, but man, was he a looker.) Their first encounter is a lovely moment. They are at separate tables in St. Mark's Plaza, and she notices him looking at her. They eventually strike up a conversation, and he vows to show her Venice. Reluctantly, she agrees, but it takes her a while to allow herself to become open to the possibility of love with this handsome Italian who seems devoted to making her feel special and beautiful. What follows is a series of scenes depicting romantic moments the likes of which Hollywood has never been able to duplicate. What passes for romance nowadays is a pale imitation of what filmmakers in the past could accomplish.
However, this being a romance, you know there must be a complication. Renato is, of course, married. I realize that some readers might think that constitutes a spoiler, but the movie's been out since 1955, and I honestly don't think that knowing that piece of information could possibly ruin the movie for a new viewer. It certainly isn't the ending of the film, which I won't spoil. The conventions of a romantic movie, even one from more than fifty years ago, were already well established.
Jane, naturally, is incensed by Renato's infidelity. She feels betrayed because she has let down her defenses only to have someone misrepresent the nature of their relationship. She accuses him of not being serious about romance the way that Americans are. He accuses her and other Americans of not fully appreciating what love has to offer. He then makes an astonishing statement: "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No," you say. 'I want beefsteak.' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli." I'm sure the metaphor isn't too difficult to comprehend. When I posted that quote on Facebook a few months ago, along with a picture from the film, it generated quite an interesting discussion, most of it from female friends who were talking about the gender implications of that statement. I realize that it's certainly a product of its time period, and it demonstrates quite clearly the distinctions between men's and women's expectations back then. However, I couldn't have imagined that a movie from so long ago could stir up so many emotions.
As you probably have already guessed, she does "eat the ravioli," so to speak. However, other than a rather intense kiss, the movie doesn't show much else of their sexual union. Instead, you get a close-up of one of Jane's shoes. It's quite the symbol, full of Cinderella connotations. I know that if this film were to be made today, the scene that follows would be very graphic, but it would lose that delicacy that we once had in the movies. As much as I enjoy current movies, we did lose something by becoming more "realistic."
What I perhaps most love about the film is how much you yearn for Jane and Renato to become lovers. We want to see them happy, and we start to believe that they truly might be soul mates. That must have been pretty radical for a 1950s audience, to root for infidelity. I've not read all of the reviews from that time period, but I'm certain there was criticism of that theme, criticism of the characters' "irresponsible" behavior. What helps an audience overcome its resistance, though, is the star power of the performers. It's a testament to Hepburn's particular talent that she shows us the change from Jane's intense and confining lifelong sadness at the beginning of the film to the relaxed and beautiful posture of a woman who has perhaps fallen in love for the first time in her life. It's quite a remarkable transformation.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Country Music Memories
One of the legends of country music died yesterday. George Jones had several nicknames over the years, "The Possum" and "No Show Jones" being two of the most famous. He was a hard drinker for many years, and his drug addictions and numerous failed marriages were the stuff of tabloid fodder. You don't see a lot of performers who truly qualify to be called "larger-than-life," but George Jones was definitely one of them.
I loved his music. Any fan of traditional country music loves George Jones. I remember hearing "White Lightning" when I was a kid and being enchanted by the sound effects it included (the sound of a cork being pulled out of a jug, for example), and as I grew older, I came to appreciate just how much drama and emotion Jones's songs conveyed. I teared up today when I listened to one of his greatest songs, "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Everyone loved that song, it was an instant favorite, but everyone also has at least one other George Jones song that they love. Mine is "Choices," a song from 1999 about living your life according to your own rules. There was always a rather thin line between the words of his songs and the events of his life, so when he readily admits in the song that some of his choices were mistakes, you know that's coming from a place of deep, personal understanding.
The list of great George Jones songs goes on and on. A few of my other favorites:
- "Window Up Above," one of his first songs to convey the sadness of love gone wrong
- "She Thinks I Still Care," a great song with a sly sense of humor to it
- "A Good Year for the Roses," which he recorded twice, perhaps most famously with Alan Jackson
- "A Picture of Me (Without You)," a song which Lorrie Morgan covered in the 1990s, but no one sings it like the original
- "The Grand Tour," a remarkably poignant song about a man who has truly lost everything important to him
- "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)," the song that, to me, perhaps best represents the intertwining of lyrics and personal life
And then there were the duets with Tammy Wynette, whose voice still makes me shiver. I loved Tammy Wynette, and her pairings with her then-husband were legendary. I have a story to tell about one of them in particular. "Golden Ring" came out in 1976, just a couple of years after my maternal grandparents divorced. That summer my grandmother and I spent a couple of weeks with my mother in northern Illinois, and "Golden Ring" (which was recorded the year after George and Tammy had themselves divorced) was a staple on country music radio. We were sitting at the kitchen table one day when it came on, and my grandmother remarked how much she liked the song. My mother and I acknowledged this but didn't place much importance on it. My grandmother returned home to Mississippi and I stayed a few weeks longer in Illinois until my grandfather came to pick me up. We were in the kitchen one day when the song came on, and he too said that he really liked the song. At this point, my mother and I made eye contact and silently noted that both of them probably had some regrets about having ending their marriage and that the song had caused those feelings to resurface. We knew they still loved each other, but they just couldn't be married any longer.
"Golden Ring" isn't the true story of what happened between George and Tammy, and it certainly isn't the story of what actually happened between my grandparents, but its message about two people who love each other despite not being able to live with each other certainly resonated with my family.
I think that's what makes George Jones's music so great, so timeless.His music was about love and loss, about pain and regret. His voice conveyed the difficulties of life and put you into the song in a way that few of today's country singers (or singers of any kind of music, for that matter) can ever achieve. I posted the video for his song "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes" on Facebook as a tribute yesterday because I truly think we've seen the last of singers like George Jones.
I had only one chance to see him in my lifetime. He was playing in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the 1980s. Family members were buying tickets and asked me if I wanted to come home from the university on the weekend to go to the concert. Jones's reputation for failing to make appearances at the time was at its height, and I thought it would be a waste of money to buy a ticket for someone who wasn't likely to show up. They went to the concert without me and, of course, it turned out to be one of the greatest shows they ever saw. I have a few regrets about people I had the chance to see perform live but never did (Bea Arthur, for example), and missing that show in Tupelo is certainly one of them.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Dead Poem Society
There are still times when my students write something that catches me completely off guard. I know you would expect that this happens in a freshman composition class or (perhaps especially) in a developmental writing class. However, I'm often willing to give those students the benefit of the doubt when they make mistakes. They are, after all, still learning the intricacies of the language and how to express themselves better.
No, the ones that really stun me are the ones written by students in literature courses. Many of them are, as you might expect, English majors and should appreciate the nuances of words and meanings. Most of them assert that they really like reading and have even expressed a desire to become teachers some day. It gives me a sense of optimism for the future of my profession when young people want to carry on the traditions of literary study.
And then I'll read a sentence that stops me cold.
I assign several poems written about and during World War I when I teach British literature. It's a particularly rich period for British poetry: Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke are all from this era. You can sense that it's dominated by poems by men. However, there were women who served as nurses or who saw loved ones go off to war who wrote some exceptional poetry during that time. One of those is May Wedderburn Cannan, whose poem "Lamplight" is a favorite of mine. (Should I spell that "favourite" in honor of the British I'm discussing?)
"Lamplight" is a poem about regret, about the plans you make with someone, only to see them destroyed by the death of your lover. Its first line, "We planned to shake the world together, you and I," is so optimistic and audacious; it's that emotion so powerful in the young, that sense that you will accomplish great things in life. You will survive and succeed.
However, this being a war poem, it seems inevitable that tragedy will strike. And it does. The last stanza echoes the optimism of the first, but it signals just how much has changed: "We shall never shake the world together, you and I." If you've never read the poem, look it up. It's a wonderful evocation of the raw emotion one feels after having lost someone. Some of the references might send you to Wikipedia or Google, but doing so won't negate any of the poem's powerful final images.
One of my students a couple of semesters ago decided to tackle this poem for her final out-of-class essay. Not a great deal has been written about Cannan and her work, just a few biographical sketches and such, and not a great deal was or is available in our library about her or her poetry. So the student was venturing off into unknown territory. Sometimes, when you're doing that, you try to figure out a way to use whatever information you can find. And she did.
Here's the sentence that still makes me crazy with its lack of attention to the language used: "The poem has similarities to Cannans' [sic] personal life which gives the reader a reason to think it may be based off Cannans [sic] personal life while engaged to Bevil Quiller-Couch, who like the poem, had died after the war."
Yes, I know what the student intended to say there. Well, I think I know. I'll bet her spell check function let that one pass too. I think I just circled it on the page and hoped the student would figure out the error on her own.
What I would have loved to have said is that the poem has not died. It still lives on in our anthology and in our class discussions. In fact, every class that uses the Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2C, to be precise, keeps the poem alive. And each student who reads it, whether it is assigned or just found, makes another small but successful attempt at CPR for Cannan's "Lamplight." I might have even asked if her choice of the poem to be the subject of her essay didn't indicate to her that it still had vibrancy, that there's still a pulse to be found. I would have probably punctuated all of these comments with exclamation marks.
I said none of this.
I just puzzled over it and wrote down the sentence and let it "simmer" for almost a year before writing this post about it. Even now I am trying to doing my part to keep alive this poem my student has seemingly buried along with Cannan's real-life paramour. It seems to be a losing battle (no pun intended) sometimes.
I know it's probably unfashionable in some circles to think of literature as a living, breathing entity, something that still has the capacity to speak to us, something that can still resonate with us both personally and intellectually. (And I realize that, for some people reading this, I'm making far too much of an issue out of what was likely a simple grammatical mistake.) Yet it's that feeling about literature that made me want to study English in the first place, and it's why I still sign up to teach literature courses when many of my colleagues have given up and started to concentrate just on composition classes. As much pleasure as I derive from seeing students become better writers in all of my classes, I need an occasional foray into literary study just to maintain my sense of purpose, and that's why I wasn't ready then and I'm still not ready to accept the "death" of this poem, no matter how many times a student's essay might suggest that the designation of "DNR" has been attached to it.
No, the ones that really stun me are the ones written by students in literature courses. Many of them are, as you might expect, English majors and should appreciate the nuances of words and meanings. Most of them assert that they really like reading and have even expressed a desire to become teachers some day. It gives me a sense of optimism for the future of my profession when young people want to carry on the traditions of literary study.
And then I'll read a sentence that stops me cold.
I assign several poems written about and during World War I when I teach British literature. It's a particularly rich period for British poetry: Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke are all from this era. You can sense that it's dominated by poems by men. However, there were women who served as nurses or who saw loved ones go off to war who wrote some exceptional poetry during that time. One of those is May Wedderburn Cannan, whose poem "Lamplight" is a favorite of mine. (Should I spell that "favourite" in honor of the British I'm discussing?)
"Lamplight" is a poem about regret, about the plans you make with someone, only to see them destroyed by the death of your lover. Its first line, "We planned to shake the world together, you and I," is so optimistic and audacious; it's that emotion so powerful in the young, that sense that you will accomplish great things in life. You will survive and succeed.
However, this being a war poem, it seems inevitable that tragedy will strike. And it does. The last stanza echoes the optimism of the first, but it signals just how much has changed: "We shall never shake the world together, you and I." If you've never read the poem, look it up. It's a wonderful evocation of the raw emotion one feels after having lost someone. Some of the references might send you to Wikipedia or Google, but doing so won't negate any of the poem's powerful final images.
One of my students a couple of semesters ago decided to tackle this poem for her final out-of-class essay. Not a great deal has been written about Cannan and her work, just a few biographical sketches and such, and not a great deal was or is available in our library about her or her poetry. So the student was venturing off into unknown territory. Sometimes, when you're doing that, you try to figure out a way to use whatever information you can find. And she did.
Here's the sentence that still makes me crazy with its lack of attention to the language used: "The poem has similarities to Cannans' [sic] personal life which gives the reader a reason to think it may be based off Cannans [sic] personal life while engaged to Bevil Quiller-Couch, who like the poem, had died after the war."
Yes, I know what the student intended to say there. Well, I think I know. I'll bet her spell check function let that one pass too. I think I just circled it on the page and hoped the student would figure out the error on her own.
What I would have loved to have said is that the poem has not died. It still lives on in our anthology and in our class discussions. In fact, every class that uses the Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2C, to be precise, keeps the poem alive. And each student who reads it, whether it is assigned or just found, makes another small but successful attempt at CPR for Cannan's "Lamplight." I might have even asked if her choice of the poem to be the subject of her essay didn't indicate to her that it still had vibrancy, that there's still a pulse to be found. I would have probably punctuated all of these comments with exclamation marks.
I said none of this.
I just puzzled over it and wrote down the sentence and let it "simmer" for almost a year before writing this post about it. Even now I am trying to doing my part to keep alive this poem my student has seemingly buried along with Cannan's real-life paramour. It seems to be a losing battle (no pun intended) sometimes.
I know it's probably unfashionable in some circles to think of literature as a living, breathing entity, something that still has the capacity to speak to us, something that can still resonate with us both personally and intellectually. (And I realize that, for some people reading this, I'm making far too much of an issue out of what was likely a simple grammatical mistake.) Yet it's that feeling about literature that made me want to study English in the first place, and it's why I still sign up to teach literature courses when many of my colleagues have given up and started to concentrate just on composition classes. As much pleasure as I derive from seeing students become better writers in all of my classes, I need an occasional foray into literary study just to maintain my sense of purpose, and that's why I wasn't ready then and I'm still not ready to accept the "death" of this poem, no matter how many times a student's essay might suggest that the designation of "DNR" has been attached to it.
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