One my favorite film noir flicks ever is this relatively obscure one made in 1950 in San Francisco called Woman on the Run. I discovered it by chance and watched a beautifully restored print many years ago during a noir festival at our historic rep movie house, the Castro Theater. It has never been released proper with a good print, which is a crying shame because the film is so suspenseful with an exciting cat & mouse plot, the dialogue razor sharp and the execution is crazy nontraditional in terms of the standard noir formula for the time. Most women in noirs were strong but morally ambiguous & semi-villainous femme fatales that couldn’t be trusted and you could never feel completely good rooting for them without feeling slightly dirty/criminal. Ann Sheridan’s character is not this at all – she is flawed but 100% good, completely coolheaded & guarded at all times, in control, street smart and never once uses her sexuality to influence others, which is seriously weird for this genre.

//Ann Sheridan outfoxing the fuzz in the name of love

Aside from Douglas Sirk films which had hopelessly romantic plots that were sometimes surprisingly sexy and complex addressing issues like racism & class during a very repressed era in US history, it can be harder for me to be engrossed in movies from the 40s and 50s because I cannot relate to them in modern terms. Woman on the Run has a great plot and is something special though, and I love seeing San Francisco streets and locales during this time.

Her alienated & lonely husband witnesses a murder and is on the run (and he is awesome, unrequitedly affectionate, & creative). Her character is, on the surface, cold and seemingly indifferent as a wife and when watching sometimes I think she’s insane for getting into that complacent lull during marriage you always hear married folks complaining about. But it is understandable because he is an escapist dreamer who goes nowhere and she a realist who keeps the house alive. A weird match-up for sure, but interesting and somehow, as a whole, makes for a strange & cosmic balance (the chemistry is really satisfying to watch when they are on screen together). Because of this murder he witnessed and him fleeing from the cops who want him to testify (and risk his life), she is forced awake out of her emotional slumber on this mission to find him because he has a bad heart and needs to get his medicine to him… the possibility of him dying scares her straight. It is really a great film and I highly recommend it if you are into film noir or films set in San Francisco (or both).

before lego gets all litigious and pulls this (they’ve been doing a lot of that lately), here’s an amusing video that is a few weeks old. a lego rendition of wu-tang’s mystery of chessboxin:

this guy also has two good scenes from star wars done in the same manner on vimeo

my 2nd plate

I went to this mac & cheese competition last Sunday where 2 of my friends were competing and am paying for it in the gym this week. There were 20 competitors and I ate about 18 of them. I am still thinking about the duck one that Jesse from Beer & Nosh put together:

Jesse Friedman of Team Beer & Nosh used confit’d duck legs, duck skin crackling, a duck demi-glace, and Parmesan–duck fat croutons in his mac. So bad for me, yet so so good

oh man, i’m daydreaming again. really not into the way most modern cars look and think the lines on cars from the 60 and early 70s are pretty much untouchable.

Ford Econoline Pickup

AMC Pacer

NSU Prinz TT

Goggomobil Dart

Volkswagen Type 3 Notchback

edit – i just saw this one too and now my sides hurt

Deerhoof are easily one of my favorite local bands and this Daytrotter Session is seriously blowing my mind. They picked some of my favorite songs for this acoustic set.

1. Buck and Judy

   Download Deerhoof playing Buck and Judy
   - original version appears on Offend Maggie

2. Chatterboxes

   Download Deerhoof playing Chatterboxes”
   - original version appears on The Runners Four

3. Fresh Born

   Download Deerhoof playing Fresh Born
   - original version appears on Offend Maggie

Before Birmingham, England natives Roy Wood, Bev Bevan and Jeff Lynn became ELO, they were in The Move, an idiosyncratic & proggy pop band who crafted songs that have surprising moments of intensity and beautifully dramatic orchestration sandwiched between silliness and an anything goes attitude (can i please coin “drive-by beauty” or “retarded garden of eden” for this kind of music?) They tried to emulate the West Coast sound at the time but couldn’t conceal their British humor (I actually believe they were celebrating it) which is, for me, a major part of their appeal. And they are one of those tragic bands that I have a lot of albums from but never think to play until they come up on the randomized player and then find myself easily listening to many albums in one sitting due to the catchyness of the harmonies and content with a consistently high entertainment value.

The allmusic.com bio is much better at the descriptors:

The Move were the best and most important British group of the late ’60s that never made a significant dent in the American market. Through the band’s several phases (which were sometimes dictated more by image than musical direction), their chief asset was guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, who combined a knack for Beatlesque pop with a peculiarly British, and occasionally morbid, sense of humor.

It surprised me when I learned how popular they were in the UK during their run but never achieved commercial success in the States for the reason that Cheap Trick blatantly uses the The Move’s “Brontosaurus” riff on “California Man,” one of my favorite sing-a-long tracks off of the Heaven Tonight LP. But perhaps that just further illustrates how cool Rick Nielsen was despite his cartoonish bow-tie nerd image. I recommend checking out the Looking On, Message from the Country, and Shazam LPs as they are solid from beginning to end. Here are 4 songs that I love off of them, (the absolute minimum, mind you):

Title track off Looking On
[audio:looking.mp3]

about objectionable age-inappropriate love
[audio:beautiful.mp3]

Title track off of Message from the Country
[audio:message.mp3]

the outro is a swaggering & epic finish (starts @ 4:20 mark)
[audio:open.mp3]
and it sends chills down my spine

I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this guy’s site of nicely designed vintage books, but his collection is pretty impressive. This one for Thomas Pynchon’s beast of a novel is so brilliantly sexy and strange:

Doesn’t it make you curious enough to dive right into the 700+ pages and attempt to keep track of all the 400 characters mentioned in it? That’s not an exaggeration.

For years I was indiscriminate about hoarding vintage books in thrift stores and yard sales until I finally ran out of physical space to contain them and sadly ended up re-donating a lot of them. However, I held onto these because I adored the covers:

My dear fat frienemy created a blog where he posts photos of everything he ate right from his phone as it is happening. So blah blah I’m-a-sheep-when-it-comes-to-technology blah and I started a cameraphone one myself. It’s easy since I can just send an MMS from my phone to Tumblr and it publishes it automatically. I’m such a sucker for this kinda stuff.

this hans keller guy kills me. doctor kindly tell your wife that i’m alive.

I need you to forget that Weezer covered this. File under guilty pleasure – I played this (& “Down in the Park”) to pieces while roaming London streets by my lonesome and it was great. Yay minimoog!

[audio:friends.mp3]

In celebrating the 40th anniversary of the First Man on the Moon, the NYT blog recently posted about this Pink Floyd Moon-Landing footage that I had no idea about. This atmospheric instrumental aired on BBC TV during live coverage of the moon landing.

David Gilmour had this to say:

We were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23. The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall.

Pretty amazing, because that would never fly on network tv these days. God bless the 60s. I get goosebumps watching this.

This is a blatant steal from Jesse Pollock, but it’s okay because real friends steal from each other. This group called Steel Harmony played Joy Division’s Transmission during this artist Jeremy Deller’s Procession in Manchester earlier this month and it’s blowing my mind.

I don’t know how to explain my feelings. I’m laughing because it’s such an odd and joyous rendition due to the inherently beachy & carribean nature of the instrument but it also is pretty freaking good and fun to hear it in this context. I would be in heaven if I were walking down a street in Manchester and randomly stumbled upon this performance. According to Jesse, this band also played other Joy Division songs as well as the Buzzcocks. Man oh man.

It was foggy and misty last night which is a favorite time to go on aimless walks and take photos. My friend Mark and I covered huge stretches of Noe Valley to the border where Twin Peaks begins and nobody was out. It felt like a ghost town (and I’m not mad at that). Saw some beautiful houses and amazing views of city lights and it reminded me that I really need to get out of the Mission more and familiarize myself with areas I wouldn’t normally hang out in.

best sign ever

right-wing store front

realtor sign


firehouse


east of Twin Peaks

and back to my neck of the woods

Today is the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 mission. Check out these amazing photos.

the object fetishist in me can’t stop thinking about this limited run 13th floor elevators box set. it’s 10 discs. 10 DISCS! remastered to their full potential (if you know these orig mono recordings, you know how much better they can sound) and a beautiful comprehensive hardbound book too boot. It will be mine!

They were the first to introduce me to the fact there was a creative psych scene in TX during that time and I had a nice WTF moment recently when I heard a Spectrum cover of one of these obscure TX psych bands. Maaaaan, some of these innovative music scenes in townie settings like cleveland and austin make me really proud of american rock music.

I went to LA for 4th of July weekend and it was fun. Before I even set foot in LA though I experienced a rock nerd miracle – Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh were on my flight sitting in the row in front of me! and I freaked out bigtime. Like I gasped and was frozen when I spotted them. Guitar tech saw my reaction and knew right away that I knew who they were, and humored me when I asked him about recent gigs such as when they headlined the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in May and gave me Bob guitar picks when we got off the plane. I wanted a picture so bad and felt lame for not asking considering that I knew that Mark enjoys dorking out for pics with fans. For a little background on why Mark is a personal hero of mine you can read my review of their SXSW showcase here.

Anyway, I was able to enjoy myself in LA and here are the photos to prove it, but at the airport on the flight back, my plane got delayed 2 hours and after de-boarding the plane, I had to wait forever at the bar where they played “Freedom of Choice” over the speakers. WTF? LA, why do you have to be such a motherfucker?

Finally uploaded my camping photos from Sequoia National Park. Some of these came from my friend Brian and also my cell phone. As usual, you can hit the right arrow on your keyboard to advance to the next photo.

And here’s a panoramic snap I took with my cell phone that you can click on to enlarge. Was able to cram 11 out of the 15 people huddled around the campfire into the frame!

Man, I’m really obsessed with this Victorinox edition Airstream trailer. It’s soooo beautiful.