I Refuse to Be Optimistic, But…

We may have found it.  And by “it” I mean the house.  I don’t want to jinx it and I want to mull it over a little more, but maybe, just maybe.

And I know there are two circumstances under which you should never say “It’s so big and wonderful” without careful consideration of the implications of that (am I right, man-fuckers?) and the other is when buying a house, but it’s pretty awesome in a way that makes me happy.

It needs stuff, like a fridge and a dishwasher and I’m not exactly sure how to make a dishwasher fit.

But it also is the kind of place that would reward puttering around.

I think I will practice making put-put-put noises while I mull it over.

Put put put put put put put put put.

Be Kind Rewind

The Redheaded Kid brought us over Be Kind Rewind to watch last night and it’s an odd, sweet movie.  It’s a bit like two movies conjoined at Mos Def.  One is a Jack Black comedy, in which he plays a hyper weirdo who becomes magnetized and then makes goofy movies.  The other is a sweet take on the old “Man trying to make his ‘father’ proud, not knowing that his father doesn’t quite deserve all that adulation, and what happens when he comes to know that” movie. 

And, there are times when you feel like it might break apart at the seams because it feels too real.  Some of the little kids… you don’t feel like they’re so much acting as just being caught on film being themselves.  And when Mos Def’s character starts to smooching in on Melonie Diaz’s character, I–because I was looking away–noticed the Butcher and the Redheaded Kid were also looking away, because, I think, viscerally, it just felt like such a private moment (a very sweet moment, though, for sure) that you kind of did want to give them their space.

So, it’s weird.  It kind of feels like a magical-realist documentary, if there were such a genre, which I now totally want there to be.

And the Butcher and the Redheaded kid were frustrated that there wasn’t any resolution, but I liked it because I thought it had a beautiful, sweet resolution.

So, there you go.  I can see why it didn’t do better at the box office, but I loved it.  I kind of felt like it was a movie made just for people like me, which probably severely limited their audience.

Still, you can watch it with your kids or you can watch it with your sweetie.  I, myself, wish I could watch it with Mark and Danny and my brothers, because many of the movies they spoof are movies we spent–the five of us–watching when we were kids.

Lonnie Johnson on Violin?!

Oh, I know.  Boo hoo hoo.  I don’t even know who Lonnie Johnson is because I’m systematically denied my country’s history and heritage in an effort to keep me stupid and complacent and easily manipulatible.

Well, folks, then, it’s time to learn a little something about Lonnie Johnson.  Consider it a revolutionary act.

Like many Johnsons, okay, a few, okay, Robert and Tommy off the top of my head, Lonnie Johnson was a bluesman from the South.  Even if you’re not into old blues, you should be grateful to Lonnie because he pretty much invented the guitar solo as we know it.  No, seriously.  It was him.

So, yeah, he’s known for his guitar work(though, at the time he was alive, he was known more as a singer).  But today, I point you to Honey, Where You Been So Long? where you can hear Luella Miller singing and Lonnie Johnson playing the violin!

On an ostensibly blues song.

Man.  When was the last time you heard a violin on a blues song?

Though, I think you could argue, actually, that it’s weird that we don’t hear it more often.  First of all, it’s a great instrument for replicating and complimenting the kinds of noises blues singers like to make with their voices.  And second, we know the fiddle was a common instrument Southern black musicians might know how to play (check out what Son Sims is holding here.  At the same time, check out a young Muddy Waters.).  You’d think it’d lend itself to the medium.

Oh well, what do I know?  Maybe there is a large repository of violin-featuring blues songs that I just don’t know about.

——

As a side note, I wonder if there’s some age of my readers who doesn’t know what a “Dago” is, just off the top of their heads.  Is that a slur that’s fading?  It’d be weird and cool to think that I might be the last generation of Americans who’s ever actually heard someone called that.