The Whole Megillah, Bad Dinosaurs, and the Demoiselles
Well today we rehearse with the whole megillah – real drums bass player accordion – back up singing the works – and I must admit I’m a bit nervous mostly because I don’t want it to suck. Because this could sound like a train wreck – the bass player (who is very very good) has to learn the songs and then play them (granted they are all three cords no waiting but still).
As a side note the whole Megillah is an English version of the Yiddish expression gantse Megillah – (Megillah means scroll) and comes from the reading of the entire book of Esther on Purim. (One source said it’s read twice which has to be a slog no matter how fast you read) – Which has come to mean the whole thing of something large. End Side note.
Anyway we’re going to see how it sounds. It should be good – everybody’s like amazingly talented but again you never know. Still I wonder what an old friend of mine is going to think – he hates drums – and how does one hate drums? Well bad drumming I can dislike but to hate what made have been the first instrument after the human voice strikes me as a bit odd. But well he’s not much for this rock n’ roll stuff either. I remember his complementing me after one gig on not using a drummer. Well this time sorry mate.
Was going to watch stuff last night but sleep and reading about sting theory became the order of the day – I did watch about 10 minutes of Kind Dinosaur – a Bert I Gordon pain fest – the plot of the film is that a new planet (Called Nova – which is after all Latin for new so that makes some sense) not much else does. After a long long stretch of stock footage (including some device that the narrator says is an atomic powered battery that has to be monitored or it will blow up – foreshadowing doesn’t get much worse than that - it’s like “hey why did you buy the gun Steve?” After the crew is named they fly off in stock footage to the planet (Bert was so cheap that we don’t even see them inside of the space ship during the trip) and they land in a forest – the first two down (man and woman – the there is another couple making for a total of 4) wear absurd looking space suits while standing in a clearing full of high grass – it looks more like two people with very very bad allergies decided to take no chances on ragweed pollen. They examine the outside (using giger counters – god what a useful prop that is) and in an utterly absurd scene the lady chemist looks through a microscope wearing her huge bubble helmet.
Once they decide that the air is safe – and thank god cause those were really awful space suits really the ones on Cat women of the Moon looked better – and they take off their suits and the women are wearing skirts – like 1950’s you can’t see higher than mid calf skirts (which never really came back oddly enough, almost everything else did but those 50’s clunkers – never) Now while I assume that since this was the 50’s and proper respect for traditional gender roles and style of dress (as reaction to the chaos of the 40’s) were important I have to say I think skirts, especially when worn under a space suit are a wee bit impractical. But no matter – off they go – they collect rocks – just rocks sitting on the ground and put them in a bag for the lady geologist – who announces that this planet is very young
“How young”
“Prehistoric” she says and the rest of the crew start to worry.
Now if my aged memory serves prehistoric means before history – written history, meaning records, which means the prehistoric era of this planet came to an end when you guys landed a while ago. As an actual measure of chronology – it’s useless.
And they see an island – about which they comment no less than 3 damn times “what a mysterious looking Island” (and ever less subtle variants).
Then it gets late and they get lost going back to the ship – apparently in putting together the crew they didn’t think to send somebody who was good in the woods and could use a compass – and well since it is science fiction how about a radio beacon from the ship? Nah. Well at least they don’t have the idiot comic relief guy from Brooklyn, thank heaven for small favors. So instead they make a lean too of some sort to camp for the night – 100 million miles through space and you don’t pack a tent – well I guess the budget didn’t allow for it.
At this point I decided to stop since my brain was leaking out my ears and I was having trouble keeping awake – not much happens in a Bert I Gordon film anyway. I assume the Dinosaur (Lizard with stuff glued on it) shows up later.
Random Neural firings:
Reading a book about string theory – which a few years ago was going to be the ticket to the theory of everything unifying the strong Force, the weak Force, electromagnetism and gravity – it hasn’t and seems to have other than produced some interesting ideas and elegant mathematics (so I’m told – beyond Algebra and Plane Geometry I’m an idiot) but didn’t or hasn’t produced much in the way of testable predictions which while great for politics or economics is not good in physics. I’m not sure what to make of the book – string theory always made my head hurt and this is not different. It all boils down to scientists unease with the randomness buried in the heart of quantum mechanics (it doesn’t bother me seeing as how a universe that is result of completely random actions matches my experience a lot more closely than the clockwork universe of Isaac Newton.)
I notice per an ad from MOMA that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is 100 years old now. Odd – we forget just how old ‘modern’ is now. Still the painting still challenges viewers – on the left you see a woman looking like an Etruscan statue, two more conventional looking and then one woman done in cubist style and one wearing what looks like an African mask. It’s disturbing and unique and there are many learned commentaries about it – I do like to go look at once a year or so just to see what my reactions to it are now ( an advantage of living in New York.) as opposed to the last time I saw it.
Peace Love Demoiselles
As a side note the whole Megillah is an English version of the Yiddish expression gantse Megillah – (Megillah means scroll) and comes from the reading of the entire book of Esther on Purim. (One source said it’s read twice which has to be a slog no matter how fast you read) – Which has come to mean the whole thing of something large. End Side note.
Anyway we’re going to see how it sounds. It should be good – everybody’s like amazingly talented but again you never know. Still I wonder what an old friend of mine is going to think – he hates drums – and how does one hate drums? Well bad drumming I can dislike but to hate what made have been the first instrument after the human voice strikes me as a bit odd. But well he’s not much for this rock n’ roll stuff either. I remember his complementing me after one gig on not using a drummer. Well this time sorry mate.
Was going to watch stuff last night but sleep and reading about sting theory became the order of the day – I did watch about 10 minutes of Kind Dinosaur – a Bert I Gordon pain fest – the plot of the film is that a new planet (Called Nova – which is after all Latin for new so that makes some sense) not much else does. After a long long stretch of stock footage (including some device that the narrator says is an atomic powered battery that has to be monitored or it will blow up – foreshadowing doesn’t get much worse than that - it’s like “hey why did you buy the gun Steve?” After the crew is named they fly off in stock footage to the planet (Bert was so cheap that we don’t even see them inside of the space ship during the trip) and they land in a forest – the first two down (man and woman – the there is another couple making for a total of 4) wear absurd looking space suits while standing in a clearing full of high grass – it looks more like two people with very very bad allergies decided to take no chances on ragweed pollen. They examine the outside (using giger counters – god what a useful prop that is) and in an utterly absurd scene the lady chemist looks through a microscope wearing her huge bubble helmet.
Once they decide that the air is safe – and thank god cause those were really awful space suits really the ones on Cat women of the Moon looked better – and they take off their suits and the women are wearing skirts – like 1950’s you can’t see higher than mid calf skirts (which never really came back oddly enough, almost everything else did but those 50’s clunkers – never) Now while I assume that since this was the 50’s and proper respect for traditional gender roles and style of dress (as reaction to the chaos of the 40’s) were important I have to say I think skirts, especially when worn under a space suit are a wee bit impractical. But no matter – off they go – they collect rocks – just rocks sitting on the ground and put them in a bag for the lady geologist – who announces that this planet is very young
“How young”
“Prehistoric” she says and the rest of the crew start to worry.
Now if my aged memory serves prehistoric means before history – written history, meaning records, which means the prehistoric era of this planet came to an end when you guys landed a while ago. As an actual measure of chronology – it’s useless.
And they see an island – about which they comment no less than 3 damn times “what a mysterious looking Island” (and ever less subtle variants).
Then it gets late and they get lost going back to the ship – apparently in putting together the crew they didn’t think to send somebody who was good in the woods and could use a compass – and well since it is science fiction how about a radio beacon from the ship? Nah. Well at least they don’t have the idiot comic relief guy from Brooklyn, thank heaven for small favors. So instead they make a lean too of some sort to camp for the night – 100 million miles through space and you don’t pack a tent – well I guess the budget didn’t allow for it.
At this point I decided to stop since my brain was leaking out my ears and I was having trouble keeping awake – not much happens in a Bert I Gordon film anyway. I assume the Dinosaur (Lizard with stuff glued on it) shows up later.
Random Neural firings:
Reading a book about string theory – which a few years ago was going to be the ticket to the theory of everything unifying the strong Force, the weak Force, electromagnetism and gravity – it hasn’t and seems to have other than produced some interesting ideas and elegant mathematics (so I’m told – beyond Algebra and Plane Geometry I’m an idiot) but didn’t or hasn’t produced much in the way of testable predictions which while great for politics or economics is not good in physics. I’m not sure what to make of the book – string theory always made my head hurt and this is not different. It all boils down to scientists unease with the randomness buried in the heart of quantum mechanics (it doesn’t bother me seeing as how a universe that is result of completely random actions matches my experience a lot more closely than the clockwork universe of Isaac Newton.)
I notice per an ad from MOMA that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is 100 years old now. Odd – we forget just how old ‘modern’ is now. Still the painting still challenges viewers – on the left you see a woman looking like an Etruscan statue, two more conventional looking and then one woman done in cubist style and one wearing what looks like an African mask. It’s disturbing and unique and there are many learned commentaries about it – I do like to go look at once a year or so just to see what my reactions to it are now ( an advantage of living in New York.) as opposed to the last time I saw it.
Peace Love Demoiselles
Labels: bad movies -
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