6/13/22
Newsletter10
The blue gels have just arrived at 5:14 AM.
Song lyrics often getting into a rhyme pattern that makes you expect the next rhyme. An example would be: “Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat/Gonna make you groove.” ZZ Top played with that expectation is “Tube Snake Boogie.” They set you up with, “I gotta gal she lives on the hill/She won’t do it but her sister will.” The next verse begins, “I’ve gotta gal she lives on the block . . .” Well, I don’t know about you, but my imagination fills in the next line as, “She’s the one who loves to suck cock,” except that it’s, “She’s the one who winds my clock.” But that’s on purpose. By mistake, Elton John (meaning Bernie Taupin) has: “Laughing like children, living like lovers/Rolling like thunder under the covers,” but my mind always fills it in as, “Living like lovers/Loving like livers.” Stevie Wonder sings, “Golden lady, I’d like to be there/Golden lady, take me right away.” My brain corrects it to, “Golden lady, I’d like to be there/Golden lady, take me by the hair.”
There is no year zero. It goes from 1 BC (or BCE) to 1 AD (CE). Actor Ray Milland directed a movie called, “Panic in the Year Zero,” which wasn’t bad. In an elevator, aside from the superstition of no 13th Floor, once you go below the first floor, they won’t use negative numbers. There is no -1st Floor or -Second Floor; they just keep coming up with new: basement, sub-basement, sub-level, sub-level 2, etc.
The great cinematographer, Joseph Walker, who shot all of Frank Capra’s best films in the 1930s, invented a lens in 1929 he called the Walker Traveling Telephoto. He gave one to the heads of the camera departments at all the studios, and they hated it and wouldn’t use. After WWII when broadcast TV was just starting and TV cameras were the size of a toll booth, Joe Walker thought, “These guys need my [patented] lens.” Every new TV station that was just starting in the whole world each bought several of Walker’s expensive zoom lenses. Already in retirement, Joe Walker made many millions of dollars. In America we say: zoom in or zoom out; in New Zealand they say: zoom in or mooz out. That’s zoom backward.
3000 years ago in Babylon they built the Tower of Babel which was 350 feet tall, or 35 stories, and the tallest building structure in the world. It would not be surpassed until the Chrysler Building opened in 1930 in New York, at 1,046 feet tall.
In the B-52s song, “Mesopotamia,” Fred Schneider sings, “Before I talk I should read a book/But there is one thing I do know/There’s a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.” Unfortunately for Mr. Schneider, the one thing he does know is wrong. The Mesopotamian’s built their buildings out of mud and tar (bitumen) so there are no ruins. A priest traveling in the Middle East in the 1600s came upon a 200 foot tall mound of dirt that he presumed to be the remains of the tower.
In the late 1970s the late great writer, Harlan Ellison, was called by an overly enthusiastic movie studio executive and told (he hated been told to do anything) to get to his office immediately because he had “A great idea for a movie.” Well, studio executives don’t have great ideas for movies. The best idea a studio executive can have is, “Let’s make ‘Rocky II.’” So Harlan Ellison takes a shower, gets dressed, drives to the studio, goes through the horseshit of getting on the lot, parks, and goes to the executive’s office. The guy says, “OK, are you ready? This is great. A white version of ‘The Wiz.’” Ellison said, “We could call it, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”
The sun is just about to make its entrance at 6:32 and it looks to be another beautiful day.