Pop Culture – Yeah, Another Blogger

Bud Powell, Gay Paree, And TV Recommendations

May 3, 2021May 8, 2021Yeah, Another Blogger102 Comments

One evening not long ago, as my wife Sandy and I were polishing off dinner while listening to SiriusXM’s jazz channel, a marvelous piece of music graced our ears. It was Parisian Thoroughfare, a tune written by the late pianist Bud Powell. A key creator during the 1940s of the complex and quick-as-a-cat style of jazz known as bebop, Powell recorded a solo rendition of Parisian Thoroughfare in 1951. And it was this version (he subsequently recorded the composition two more times, once in a trio setting) that caused me to stop shoving food in my mouth for a few seconds so that I could listen closely. The song dazzled me, so jaunty is Powell’s approach to the keyboard, so beautiful are his cascades of notes. The performance delightfully captures Paris’s vibrancy. Before I go any further, let me introduce you to PT, courtesy of YouTube.

Over the next few days I guess it wasn’t too surprising that I couldn’t get Parisian Thoroughfare out of my mind. Not only did it make me think about the great times that I’ve had in Paris, a city I’ve been lucky enough to visit on four occasions, I also came to realize that it relates to a Netflix series that Sandy and I have been watching and enjoying the heck out of recently: Call My Agent! The show is set and was filmed in Paris, for one thing. And the banter and antics of Agent’s main characters sometimes are dizzying, rivalling the giddy speed at which Powell unleashes Parisian Thoroughfare.

I would describe Call My Agent!, whose French title is Dix Pour Cent, as a screwball comedy with depth. It follows the professional and personal affairs of four talent agents, their office staff and clients, and does so with charm, wit and poignancy. Sandy and I can find no flaws in the show, other than an occasional over-the-top moment. The dialogue is strong, the plot lines well-structured. And the acting? Ooh la la!

Now, here’s the thing: We never would have watched Call My Agent! were it not for our close friends Alan and Martine, who live in . . . shit yeah, they live in Paris! No lie. In March we were Facetiming with them, discussing this, that and whatever. Somewhere along the line the conversation turned to television, and Martine told us about Call My Agent!, which, in addition to streaming on Netflix, has aired on a French TV channel. Merci beaucoup, Martine, for the recommendation! We are in your debt.

That’s how a good bit of life unfolds, isn’t it? We often do what we do, go where we go, watch what we watch, based on recommendations. And, as a devoted viewer of television series (most evenings I spend an hour and a half or so in their presence), one of my aims in composing this essay is to learn about the shows that you enjoy. Between network television, premium channels and streaming services, there are more good ones out there than ever before. Your input will help me on my mission to remain highly entertained at night.

OK, so what other programs do I think a lot of? I’d be remiss not to mention The Investigation, a Danish production that dramatizes, soberly, the meticulous police investigation of a real-life murder that took place four years ago in waters separating Denmark from Sweden. The victim was journalist Kim Wall. Her final hours alive were spent aboard, of all things, a homemade submarine.

And then there’s Chernobyl. A retelling of the horrific accident at a Soviet nuclear reactor in 1986, and its aftermath, the show reinforced my belief that the human species, though highly intelligent in many ways, vastly overestimates its abilities to control that which it creates. Chernobyl is a limited series carried by HBO, as is The Investigation. In my opinion, they are well worth your viewership.

Time to move on to Family Guy, an animated series that is in its 19th season. In the USA, which is where I reside, new episodes are carried by Fox. And older episodes are on several networks here, including Fox. If anything is for sure in our little ol’ world, it’s that Family Guy ain’t your usual show. It’s as irreverent as anything I’ve ever seen. Family Guy ridicules religion and pop culture, for instance, and just about everything else. Yes, this program, which follows the whacko adventures and predicaments of the dysfunctional Griffin family, is not for everyone. Judging by its lengthy run, however, there are loads and loads of folks who dig it. And why is that so? Because, more than anything, Family Guy is hilarious.

Well, it’s time for this old f*cker to go and get his beauty rest. Not that I have any beauty left to preserve. Thanks for reading, girls and boys. Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. Goodbye till next time!

An Ode To Orange

April 20, 2021Yeah, Another Blogger162 Comments

I shall begin the proceedings by stating that this story would not have come into existence were my wife Sandy and I not subscribers to The New Yorker magazine. Thus, if you read this opus and decide that it sucks, then sue The New Yorker, not me. As always, I’m blameless!

For it was about six weeks ago that I noticed the colorful back cover of the aforementioned magazine’s March 1 issue. That cover was an ad for Sumo Citrus, a variety of fruit that I’d never heard of before. Grown in California, it’s a large version of a mandarin orange, and boasts what pretty much looks like a top knot on its head. Sumo wrestlers sport top knots. Hence, the fruit’s name.

Anyway, not many days later Sandy and I were filling up our shopping cart at a Whole Foods supermarket when a table piled sky high with bright orange produce caught my eye. Holy shit, it was a Sumo Citrus mountain! Were we enticed? Yo, is the pope Catholic? So, overpriced though the fellas were, we purchased one. And ate it the next day. Yeah, it was seedless and easy to peel, as advertised, points definitely in its favor. But how about the taste? That’s the main thing, right? Well, the flavor was good. Quite good. But hardly a revelation. I mean, it tasted like an orange!

Whether we buy or don’t buy another Sumo Citrus some day, the fruit made a real impression on me because, subconsciously, the color orange remained on my mind. I love colors, just about all of them, and have published many essays on this site that revolve around one color or another: odes to blue, green, red and yellow come to mind. But I haven’t waxed poetic very much about orange. On April 5, a Monday, I decided that the time had arrived to do something about that.

In mid-afternoon of that day, off I went to Willow Grove Park, a three-story indoor shopping mall near my home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. From past experience, I knew that examples of just about every color under the sun can be found there, some on store merchandise and displays, some on signs, and some adorning the bodies of the mall’s employees and customers.

I spent an hour in the commercial wonderland, which, despite the pandemic, was as busy as I’ve ever seen it outside of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. A diligent journalist, I kept my eyes focused on colors, rather than on cute girls, as I scoured the premises. Some hues definitely predominated: shades of white, black, blue, grey and red, I’d say. Orange wasn’t a member of the in crowd. In fact, only purple, by my estimation, was represented less at the mall than was orange. Nonetheless, I found a fair number of examples. They were hard to miss, so flamboyant is orange.

Macy’s department store carried some ladies’ clothes, shoes and accessories in knockout versions of orange, for example, and a small number of men’s shirts in same. A vendor in the mall’s food court had shelves filled with candy bars whose wrappers exploded in orange and in other hues. And a teenager, strolling the avenues with a young lady, shone like a star in his orange shirt. In fact, he was the only person I saw at the mall who wore any orange at all. Wait a minute . . . that ain’t true! Wandering around the mall was a f*cking weirdo whose orange, black and white mask covered half of his wrinkled face. It was good of him to stop and pose for a selfie for this story. If you surmise that the f*cking weirdo was yours truly, you possibly are correct.

Why isn’t orange more popular in the USA than seemingly it is? Good question. It should be a hit. Orange is snazzy, jazzy and full of good spirits, after all. But maybe the American personality leans a bit too much toward the repressed side for orange to get its due. Its day may come, though. You never know. I’m pretty sure of one thing, in any event. To wit, my eyes will stay open for orange. Once you start looking for that color, it’s hard to stop.

I’m going to leave you with two recordings that pay homage to orange — to skies of orange, specifically. The first (Orange Skies) is by Love, a trippy rock band that was popular in the hippie era. They recorded it in 1966. The second (Orange Colored Sky) was put on wax by the one-and-only Nat King Cole in 1950.

Thanks for reading, girls and boys. Please don’t be shy about entering any comments you might have. Till next time!

Shopping, Black Friday, And Yours Truly

December 11, 2019Yeah, Another Blogger114 Comments

If the clothing and footwear industries depended on me for financial sustenance, they would be shit out of luck. I don’t buy their goods very often. I mean, most of my attire is between three and about 45 years old. Yeah, I said 45. That’s the approximate age (I wish I could pinpoint the year in which I bought it) of a sweater that I want to be buried in when my bucket-kicking time arrives. The deep blue garment, which I treasure dearly and wear pretty frequently, still looks damn good to my eyes. Any coffin worth its salt would be proud to encase it.

I definitely haven’t been nice to the aforementioned industries in 2019. The only clothes I’ve purchased so far are underwear, socks and a sweatshirt. And as for shoes, none. That’s because I’m not too interested in regularly updating or freshening my look. Also, I seem to have excellent luck on most of those rare occasions when I do go shopping for apparel or accessories, which makes it unnecessary to shop very often. For example, three or four winters ago, upon entering a Macy’s department store near my home, I immediately found two winter coats that fit me perfectly and looked terrific. I whipped out my credit card and made them mine.

And one day seven or eight years ago, at a Sears department store, I hit the jackpot, leaving with about eight pairs of jeans that I’m wearing to this day. I could cite several more examples of this kind, but you get the picture.

Yes, I’m satisfied with the clothes and shoes that I own. So, when Black Friday (an annual, mega-hyped shopping day in the USA that unofficially kicks off the Christmas buying season) rolled around last month on the day after Thanksgiving, as it always does, I ordinarily would have avoided like the plague the indoor shopping mall near my house. I had no desire to check out the wearables on sale. And the same went for the non-wearables. And yet, mall-ward I directed my car at 11:30 AM.

Why? Hell, basically I didn’t want to enter a coffin some day without ever having experienced Black Friday firsthand. Despite being nearly as old as dirt, there are times when I can prance around the altar of pop culture better than just about anyone from my old f*ckers demographic. And if Black Friday isn’t a major player in pop culture, I don’t know what is.

Yup, the mall was decently crowded. Yup, most stores had Black Friday sales going on. Nope, I didn’t feel even the slightest urge to examine any merchandise. Still, I liked being at the mall. I always do, though my visits are only occasional, because the mall strikes me as a wonderland. I like its three levels of winding avenues, its airiness, its colors and sounds. And the overabundance of merchandise in the stores, though easy to criticize as excesses of the capitalist system, amazes and captivates me. Mankind, though flawed as hell, sure can turn out products like nobody’s business.

One thing for certain is that I was the sole visitor whose purpose was not to spend cash, but to observe. And also to record scenes with his or her smart phone’s camera. After an hour and a half of doing exactly that, I got the hell out of there.

“I ain’t much of a shopper, that’s for sure,” I said to myself as I drove back home. But a few hours later I realized how imprecise that thought was. You see, when it comes to food markets (of which there are none in the mall), I love to shop, and spend two or more hours every week in that pursuit. This pattern began somewhere in the 1990s, when it became apparent to me that the variety and quality of food stuffs available in the USA were a whole lot better than they’d ever been.

Food nerd that I’ve become, I get a charge examining olives, relishes, juices, grains, yogurts, you name it, on store shelves. The numerous types of each blow the mind. Who in the USA ever heard of quinoa, farro or Kalamata olives until fairly recent years, for instance? Nobody that I personally know.

Whole Foods breads. Many loaves had already been sold.

In my area, the store that excites me more than any other is a Whole Foods supermarket. (Whole Foods, by the way, is part of the Amazon/Jeff Bezos empire that is engulfing the world.) I can’t stay away from its coffee, cheese and bakery sections, each of which contains products that make my life better. Farm Loaf bread and other breads, all baked on the premises, are swell. So are any number of the cheeses from around the world that Whole Foods carries. And two varieties of Allegro coffee (Rainforest Blend and Extra Dark French) have found strong favor in my household.

I suppose that you could do far worse than having food shopping as one of your hobbies. It gets me off my ass, for one thing. And it has given me something to write about here. That’s all to the very good, considering that I’m chronically semi-constipated when it comes to coming up with story themes. Maybe prunes would help. Prunes are a staple of many old f*ckers’ diets, right?

(As I frequently mention, please don’t be shy about adding your comments or about sharing this essay on social media. Mucho gracias.)

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