Who’s got a stamp on his Mancini?
Shamelessly ganking the idea from Fraction‘s blog, I present to you the first stamp to be released in April of 2004: Henry Mancini.
And why do I care so much about this? Well, gentle reader, squint your eyes and read the third title from the list of films presented in the background of the stamp. Ah, yes, the classic CHARADE fixation rears its beautiful, coiffed head once again.
Peter asked if I were going to purchase the upcoming Criterion Collection re-release of the disc in anamorphic widescreen even though I already owned the previous non-anamorphic letterbox release. It’s not as if you have a widescreen television that will really take advantage of the difference, he said, and I concurred, adding that the special features were exactly the same. However, when one is a fanatic and dedicated to collecting every possible version of CHARADE available on DVD, then it’s really almost a requirement. After all, I bought the DVD of THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE just because CHARADE was available as a b-side, so I must clearly not have any powers of discernment when it comes to this particular fetish.
And since Criterion is offering a $10 discount to those who purchased the previous edition, there is now no question about my acquisition.
And while we’re talking Mancini and Hepburn, 20th Century Fox revealed in a Home Theatre Forum chat in January, that they are considering releasing TWO FOR THE ROAD on DVD. With Albert Finney’s recent success in BIG FISH, we can only hope that his old films may have a more marketable lustre.
Things I Hate About The 21st Century, No. 7
Things I Hate About The Twenty-First Century, #7:
- Ringtones that get stuck in my head.
Getting a song stuck in my head is annoying, but it is a phenomenon that I have come to accept. Songs are written to be catchy and memorable and they are overplayed in order to force you into commercial submission. This is the backbone of the record industry, and while I don’t respect the practice, I at least acknowledge that it’s been going on for long since before I was born.
Ringtones, however, are things with which I am contemporary. Therefore their increase and evil nature are something that I possibly could have prevented, and this makes them that much more abhorrent. Particularly when a six-second electronic, sub-MIDI snippet of sound gets stuck in my head. It’s not even music! I don’t get my alarm clock buzzer stuck in my head, and that’s an equally annoying and equally repetitious electronic tone. And yet, I don’t find myself walking to my car absently chanting, “BWAAAAP! BWAAAAP! BWAAAAP! BWAAAAP!”
I did, however, find myself murmuring, “Dee di doo de, dee di dooo de, dee di doooo doo deeee…” to myself over and over again while I was working today. My employer’s cel phone rang three times and that was sufficiently repetitive to have the [snark] melody [/snark] stuck in my head.
Ah, crap, just typing it out is going to be enough to have it gain clawlike purchase upon my psyche again, I just know it.
EDIT: Ahhh! It’s based on “actual” music. It’s corporate identification synergy, but still an excerpt from a composed segment of a larger piece of music. I feel somehow vindicated.
Gulf War II: The Vengeance
It’s been slightly more than three years since the factory-install cassette deck in my car stopped working. Well, that’s not strictly true, there was a two month period in there someplace when it magically started working again, risen like Jesus, before ceasing to play tapes any more. I have wrestled with this is many different ways, but the primary two ways have been: playing music in a portable tape player that sat on the floor, and listening to NPR. The first solution wasn’t; it was a terrible, scratchy, mono-audio substitution, and I can’t believe I spent about fifty dollars on D batteries over the past three years. The second solution was a good one, a mature one. It has allowed me to get in touch with the events of the world and start to form opinions based on evidence instead of gut feelings and knee-jerk responses.
So what did I do on the second day of Gulf War II: The Vengeance? Bought a new factory-install cassette deck from a local junkyard. Time to listen to some music for a while.
Dynamics
An article appeared in the New York Times on Thursday, April 25 about Skidmore College’s co-ed a cappella group, the Dynamics. Selected as one of the top six college a cappella groups in the nation, the Dynamics competed for top spot in “the finals of the International Championship of Collegiate a Cappella, … Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall [in Lincoln Center, NYC]. (The other finalists are from Cornell, Boston University and the Universities of Michigan, Maryland and Oregon.)”
As an original member, I proudly attended the competition. It didn’t really matter if the Dynamics won. As Elizabeth Harrison put it, if there was a group that was better than we were, then they should win, and we would shelve our nepotistic pride.
In terms of polish and blend, the Maryland Faux Paz were clear stand-outs, and should have championed the judges criteria of “musicality and performance.” The judges, though, universally displayed terrible taste and singled out the shrill, the flagrant, and the lowest-common-denominators for recognition.
May the names of ROGER PAYNE, RENE RUIZ, and PHYLLIS CLARK be forever reviled.
And as the Dynamics stood onstage in Lincoln Center looking disheveled, casual, and real instead of like the black-clad, cookie-cutter, monkey-suited groups surrounding them, and as they walked offstage with not even a morsel of acclaim, I have never felt prouder of them. I am glad to have been part of a group of individuals and losers.
But that shouldn’t come a big surprise to anyone.
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