My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #150-141

The 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s...each decade is represented on this temporally-spaced ten-song segment of my 500 all-time favorites list.  Each one is very distinctive and beautiful in its own way.  Here they are...

150 SONG FOR AMERICA...Kansas
To get the full impact of this wonderful bicennential ode to our country you need to hear the complete ten-minute version.  I heard it a lot on album-rock radio in 1977 and picked it back then as my song of the year.  The lyrics are a bit problematic to me as they imply that no one was in the New World when the Europeans first landed...what about all those Native Americans, Kansas? The best parts are the instrumental segments, which to me stand up well compared to classical works...

149 ACROSS THE UNIVERSE...the Beatles
This John Lennon track from the 1970 Let It Be album was greatly enhanced (and improved) by stand-in producer Phil Spektor's insertion of his lush trademark "wall of sound", including an orchestral and choral background.  It's lyrically a song of contentment with the repeating mantra "Nothing's gonna change my world"...a very sweet, relaxing piece...

148 BALLAD OF SIR FRANKIE CRISP (LET IT ROLL)...George Harrison
I didn't know of this deep track from Harrison's late-1970 double album All Things Must Pass when it first came out...it wasn't until just recently that I heard it and took notice.  I didn't know anything about the title or lyrics until I looked it up: it's about the estate in Oxfordshire that Harrison purchased in 1970, originally built by Frank Crisp, a lawyer. This is more than anything a mood piece, and producer Phil Spektor's arrangement combined with contributions from other musicians and Harrison's sweet melody and singing made it special to me...

147 CANTALOOP (FLIP FANTASIA)...Us3
This is another example of how rap/hip-hop music works best for me in conjunction with standard pieces containing melody...here Us3 uses a classic Herbie Hancock jazz-based tune to overlay their rap, and it works very well: "Feel the beat drop, jazz and hip-hop, drippin' in your dome makes you zone and bop".  My favorite part is at the end when the trumpet player goes off on a lengthy, jazzy solo.  Cantaloop was a top forty singles hit in 1992...I've always thought it was brilliant...

146 BLACKOUT...Linkin Park
From Linkin Park's remarkable 2010 album A Thousand Suns, Blackout is a two-part track, the first of which features their late vocalist Chester Bennington screaming out the lyrics as only he could...halfway through, the song tones down and Bennington showcases his wonderful singing talent: I don't know of anyone so emotionally expressive as he was in his singing...so sad to have lost him.  I always found Blackout to be a great running song on my MP3...especially when I'm near the end of a long run and am ready to give it a final kick at the end.  Careful, while listening to this song you might find yourself unwittingly screaming along with Bennington...

145 FAREWELL ANDROMEDA...John Denver
This 1973 song by Denver apparently was released back then as a single but mysteriously fizzled...never mind, it's on his Greatest Hits album, which my parents bought and played many, many times at home.  Alternately titled Welcome to My Morning (more apropos to me since these words actually appear in it), it is basically a warm love song with positive and uplifting verses...but ultimately it's the "La la la...." chorus part that is memorable, especially in the closing section...

144 RIDE MY SEE-SAW...the Moody Blues
Combined with the introductory spoken track on the Moody Blues' 1968 studio album In Search of the Lost Chord, Ride My See-Saw got some resurgent popularity a few years ago from its use as bumper music on Art Bell's late night talk radio show.  The entire album blew me away, and although it's not my favorite track on it this song serves as a perfect introduction for what's to come, much in the same way that the title track to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album leads in to the rest of that great work.  Although I'd heard Ride My See-Saw previously, it was during my mid-1990s investigation into the Moody Blues' catalog of albums that I really came to like it...

143 LAKE MICHIGAN...Rogue Wave
Back in 2008, just when my local indie/alternative rock station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz" was about to drastically change their format more to hard rock, this intriguing song by the California band Rogue Wave was in their rotation, maybe the last truly indie song they played on that station for years that I liked.  I don't know what Lake Michigan has to do with anything...or what the rest of the lyrics mean for that matter, but the appeal with this song was the instrumental arrangement with an interesting beat and vaguely defiant lyrics.  Last year Melissa, Will and I managed to make it to Lake Michigan on our Chicago trip, both at a little beach on the city's downtown south end and overlooking the end of the Navy Pier...

142 SYNCHRONICITY II...the Police
This track from the Police's final album Synchronicity made a big impact at the height of the music video explosion in late 1983 with a tremendous video highlighting the band members in a tattered, stormy apocalyptic setting...I've seen nothing like it since.  The lyrics greatly impressed me, like "Another working day has ended, only the rush hour hell to face, packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes...contestants in a suicidal race"...I wish they hadn't broken up after only five albums, all of them excellent...

141 E-BOW THE LETTER...R.E.M.
I was generally disappointed in R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi album when it came out in 1996...one of the few tracks I really took to was E-Bow the Letter, another cryptically-titled mood piece (see Song #148 above), this one with frontman and lyricist Michael Stipe slipping between speaking and singing a bitterly-tinged stream-of-consciousness rant about whatever the heck he's trying to discuss...if you know what it is, let me know.  Patti Smith sings a deep-voiced, very moving accompaniment to Stipe...with their harmony and the instrumental arrangement the overall effect is haunting and mesmerizing, especially toward the end...

Next week: #140-131...

Another Long Weekend Training Run

Earlier today I was able to go out on one of my long weekend training runs, covering 11.1 miles.  As has been the case recently, I run up and down residential streets in my subdivision and the adjacent one here in far northern Gainesville as well as a three-mile there-and-back stretch on the rather sloping asphalt walkway along NW 53rd Avenue.  Today I decided to extend my course a little and, turning right at the corner of 53rd and 43rd Street, I ran past the empty Starbucks, finally turning back at Talbot Elementary School.  I had planned on possibly exceeding my 13.3-mile run from earlier in the month but some factors went against it as I found my energy level dropping too much at the end.  One cause was that looking back on it, I simply kept up too fast of a pace.  Another was that compared to the earlier run, it was warmer and more humid...although not by a lot and I've run long distances before when it was much hotter.  I also didn't load up on carbs the day before when anticipating a long run, so my reserves just weren't there.  Still, I did surpass ten miles and am satisfied with the run...let's see what I can do next weekend!  Usually when I'm running past the houses in my neighborhood it all resembles a ghost town...even on the weekends few people are out and about.  But with this stay-at-home situation going on around us because of the pandemic, the people were popping out all over the place in their yards, cars, garages, sitting in front of their houses, walking, running, cycling...I probably ran a longer distance than I gave myself credit for with all the street crossing I did to maintain social distancing with passers-by.  I'm grateful that I have this outlet of running available for me during these times...I seem to be recovering well from today's run, although my leg muscles do seem a bit sore...

Just Finished Reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Strangers on a Train, from 1950, is perhaps novelist and short story writer Patricia Highsmith's most famous work, adapted into a movie screen thriller by Alfred Hitchcock the following year.  Having quoted the author last Friday on this blog, I thought it would be fun reading this story since I never did see the film version.  As it turned out, I enjoyed it and regard it as a psychological crime thriller reminiscent of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in more ways than one and a forerunner to the Columbo TV series starring Peter Falk as the unassuming, wily homicide detective.  The premise is simple enough: while on a train to a meeting with his unfaithful, estranged wife Miriam to plead with her to give him a divorce, architect Guy Haines encounters a psychopathic, vindictive-but-charming young man, Charles Bruno, who is heir to a fortune but despises his hard-driving, stern father.  After Guy spills out his heart about Miriam, Bruno suggests to him that they exchange murders...he would kill Miriam and Guy would do the same with Bruno's father: that would give each an apparently foolproof alibi and the results they wanted.  Although Guy does not agree with this hellish proposal, Bruno later imagines that the two had made a compact and the story turns in a nightmarish direction involving murder.  Highsmith makes a lot out of the thinking of both Charles Bruno and Guy Haines, two men with diametrically opposite personalities, as they try to evade the suspicion of Arthur Gerard, a clever private investigator in the line of Dostoevsky's unforgettable Porfiry Petrovich...and the later Lt. Columbo.  I thought Gerard's character was the highlight of the novel...ironically it seems that Hitchcock's movie adaptation wrote him out of the story as well as drastically changing the plot.  I'd like to see the movie just to note the differences, but I recommend you read the book first as I did.  It's not a whodunnit mystery but rather a story of how guilty parties squirm and plot to evade the consequences of their actions, and how no matter how perfect a strategy may seem on the drawing board, just a little of the chaos of real-time events can completely unravel it...

Quote of the Week...from Nick Saban

Everybody thinks when I say a guy is a good game manager, that's a negative, but I think it's a real positive.  You have the ball in your hand every time when you're a quarterback.  Whether you're handing it off or throwing it to somebody, I think that's extremely important.       ---Nick Saban.

I have never been a sports fan of personal statistics, opting more to root for or against specific teams in the games I follow.  With football on the college and professional levels, I think a lot of people place undue emphasis on quarterback passing statistics like yards/game and touchdown passes...I happen to know from watching the sport over the years that some of the so-called "great" passing performances happened in large part because the team found itself considerably behind in a game and had to desperately resort to a lot of passing in order to catch up.  When the great Miami Dolphins teams of the early 1970s went about winning all those games...including three straight Super Bowl appearances, two championships and one undefeated season...they played a "game management" offense under the quarterbacking direction of Bob Griese and Earl Morrall (who QBed most of the regular season wins when they went undefeated in '72).  The goal was never to rack up stats, but rather lead the team to victory through a mixture of rushing and passing using plays designed to stay one step ahead of the defense...that requires some brains, not just to learn all the schemes but also to be able to make last-second changes in view of what the defense might be presenting on a particular play.  Coach Saban's latest star quarterback at Alabama, Tua Tagovailoa, has just been selected by the Miami Dolphins in the first round to be their quarterback of the future.  Tua suffered a fractured hip during the 2019 season that has completely healed...the main concern with him is how he takes chances extending plays while running with the football, which is how he got his hip injury.  Back in Saban's past when he coached the Dolphins, he had a chance to pick up Drew Brees as his own quarterback of the future...but Brees did not pass the Dolphins' medical exam and went on to a Hall of Fame career at New Orleans as one of the great game-managing quarterbacks of all time.  If Tua wants a similar glory-filled NFL career he needs to study the great game managers in NFL history like Brees and Tom Brady and move away from the "rushing quarterback" model that others like Robert Griffin, Jr. and Cam Newton have followed to temporary stardom and ultimately injury-riddled careers.  If you want your offense to run, then give the ball to your running back...

Annual Medical Checkup Okay, Some COVID-19 Talk

Yesterday I had my annual April medical checkup at my local hospital, to undergo tests on the progress of an ongoing serious medical condition first diagnosed when I was 55 but which has actually preexisted from birth: everything checked out fine...they'll see me again next year, no treatment necessary.  Toward the end of March I was sure that they would contact me for rescheduling in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they kept the appointments and everything went according to plan...other than the temperature check upon entry into the building and everybody wearing masks with lines taped on the floor that people had to stand behind for distancing.   At last report there were in my home Alachua County in northern Florida some 227 reported coronavirus cases, one death and some thirty-odd hospitalizations...the extensive medical network here may find itself, however, dealing with cases from other counties that don't possess the means to accommodate the patient load should that need arise.  But that hasn't happened yet, and just going by the rate of increase of confirmed cases, the infection curve around here seems to be flattening...this area had shutdowns and restrictions in place early on, several days before the state government imposed its own statewide.  I am not yet all that eager to resume "normal" life the way that some of my fellow Americans are itching to do...in all fairness I recognize that many have lost their source of income and are in a desperate economic fix, none of it of their own doing.  I don't think the protests we're seeing across the country are helping, though...especially since they started after talk from officials had already begun about gradually reopening the economy.  So I'll still keep on wearing this awfully annoying-but-necessary face mask when out in public around others, practice social distancing and hygiene, and be thankful that at least up to this point my family and I have been spared this horrendous illness...

Weekly Short Stories: 1957 Science Fiction, Part 2

I think that the book I'm currently going through, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 19 (1957), was the first one I owned from this 25-part series...I've read many of the stories numerous times and eventually realized that it might be worthwhile to pick up some of the other volumes.  When these tales first came out I was a little baby, Dwight Eisenhower was beginning his second term as president and the Soviet Union would be launching their Sputnik satellite, ushering in the Space Age and a new emphasis for science fiction...

HUNTING MACHINE by Carol Emshwiller
This is a pretty powerful piece about a future middle-age city-dwelling couple who rent out a robot hunting dog that does practically all the work for them while they illegally track down a bear.  I'm not against others hunting per se...and I'm no vegan, at least not yet...but as this story suggests, it's no sport when somebody rigs their own technology prohibitively in their own favor just to get a "trophy". For what it's worth, I don't favor sportspeople feeling they have to practically bankrupt themselves to obtain the latest, cutting-edge equipment for competitive advantage within their respective activities, be they bicycle racing, golfing, tennis, and of course hunting, among others...

WORLD OF A THOUSAND COLORS by Rob Silverberg
There is a special planet off in the distant cosmos for which candidates from many worlds take tests to see whether they qualify to take the final examination that takes place there...no one knows what it is or what happens to the winners, but it's all enticing enough for one devious soul to commit murder and substitute himself for the victim as one of the final qualifying contestants.  The title gives a clue: it has to due with blending disparate colors...

LET'S BE FRANK by Brian Aldiss
This is the first of two stories I reviewed in an earlier article...here's a link to it: [link].  It involves a subversive takeover of the human species, caused by a genetic mutation that gives those possessing it a simultaneously shared consciousness.  I think those with paranoid tendencies subliminally believe something like this is going on around them...the vast network of conspiracies supposedly governing our present reality all seem to involve people from diverse backgrounds and different agendas with incredible abilities to communicate among themselves instantaneously over vast distances, coordinating seemingly random events into a seamless, purposeful pattern (at least in the eyes of the conspiracy theorists).  To get a completely different take on this story read my earlier article...

THE CAGE by A. Bertram Chandler
This is the other story I reviewed before, this one nearly three years ago...here's that article: [link]. It's a sterling example of a story...and they're usually pretty short like this one...where the final line is so memorable that you wonder whether the author didn't write the rest of it to build up to that knockout closing statement.  An interstellar exploration party crashes on a remote, uncharted world where their ship explodes and fungi and high humidity eliminate any outward sign of civilization or high intelligence among the survivors.  A visiting alien ship happening upon the group picks up three of them and, thinking them to be low-intelligence native life forms of that planet, puts them on display in their own zoo.  How do the humans convince their rescuers that they're not just dumb animals?  That final line, related to the title, says it all...

THE EDUCATION OF TIGRESS MCCARDLE by Cyril Kornbluth
Kornbluth often wrote his stories to reflect his negative, cynical view of the popular culture he saw around him...in this one he combines the themes of population control through fewer births with the rise of Elvis Presley as an idol: here he has just been crowned King Purvis.  In order to discourage couples from having children, a law has been enacted (with the blessings of Purvis) that they first have to rent out a specially-designed robot infant that does everything it can to frustrate them and convince them how utterly awful it is having to take care of a baby.  This is a very funny story...especially when Purvis speaks...but also sad, as I know that the following year after writing it Kornbluth, already saddled with a weak heart, would die of a heart attack at the way-too-early age of 35 while shoveling snow in front of his home...

Next week I finish my look back at 1957 in the world of science fiction short stories...

Just Finished Reading Pandemic by Robin Cook

In probably not one of my better judgment moments I recently decided to read medical thriller writer Robin Cook's 2018 novel Pandemic...I've never read any of his books before but did see the movie Coma, based on his second published novel.  Pandemic continues his series of the husband/wife medical investigation team of Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery, complete with all the subplots and conflicts involved with their ongoing personal lives...I could have done without a lot of that drama.  Jack is a New York City medical examiner who often flouts the rules and rubs people the wrong way as he bulldozes through his cases.  He's also very touchy as he picks up on and magnifies every slight...real or imagined...he receives from others: not a very sympathetic character I'd want to read more stories about.  But there are some eerie connections between the story's retrovirus causing a mysterious subway death in NYC and the COVID-19 outbreak: a New Jersey-based laboratory owned by a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur is using a special kind of protein to manufacture human tissue that the bodies of transplant patients won't reject...but something goes terribly wrong there.  It sounds to me a lot like what some believe happened in the Wuhan, China laboratory where viruses from bats and other animals were being isolated and studied.  Also, it's revealed that New York had been preparing for pandemics, anticipating a scenario where as many as 500 disease-caused deaths per day would be occurring there during the peak: an underestimate of what really happened two years later with the coronavirus.  Cook is very detailed about describing medical procedures and the science behind genetic engineering, especially...this to me is his strong point as a writer and understandable, he being a physician himself.  But without giving away the book's ending, I am beside myself with perplexity at how the author treated various characters: it seemed he was excusing if not praising the motives and actions of the villains while condemning their targeted victim for whom, although he did bear a certain degree of culpability, I felt a lot of sympathy and respect.  Maybe this wasn't the best Robin Cook novel out there, but I was so bummed out by the protagonist's behavior and the ending that it will probably be a while before I pick up another one...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #160-151

Let's see...it's Monday today, so here's my next ten-song installment in my weekly-unraveling list of my 500 all-time favorites.  These ten are all from the last century and thus give away my advancing age...here are my reactions to them...

160 FALL OF THE PEACEMAKERS...Molly Hatchet
Not generally a fan of this Southern rock band, Molly Hatchet to me was spot-on with this 1983 protest song against the madness of senseless murder...focusing on the tragedy of John Lennon's assassination in December, 1980.  The song's title should have been "Stop the Madness", for this mantra is repeated a number of times throughout its first half...it concludes with a beautiful, lengthy guitar jam reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1974 classic Free Bird.  Fall of the Peacemakers is a bittersweet tribute to an individual...as flawed as he was...whose music I loved as I grew up...

159 OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY...Led Zeppelin
Although I had previously heard this track from Led Zeppelin's 1972 Houses of the Holy album a number of times on album rock radio back when I lived in South Florida, it wasn't until I was working in the late 1980s at the downtown Gainesville post office as a letter sorting machine operator...sitting for long stretches keying mail as my Sony Walkman headset radio was tuned to Rock-104...that I began to take a real liking to it.  This song would eventually spur me to listen to the band's box set that was released and played on the radio in late 1990, resulting in my near-fanatical following of a group that had disbanded ten years earlier...

158 DOCTOR ROBERT...the Beatles
In the USA the 1966 song Doctor Robert was on the Beatles' Yesterday and Today album...for most of the rest of the world it was on Revolver.  No matter, I was nine-going-on-ten at the time and fortunate to have as parents big-time Beatles fans...they snapped up both albums and played them a lot at home.  At the time Doctor Robert wasn't one of my favorites but sometimes when you grow older you can hear more in a song...musically it was a great vocal collaboration between John and Paul while the lyrics covertly speak of a shady "medical" figure always ready and willing to supply drugs to his wealthy clients...

157 WISH YOU WERE HERE...Pink Floyd
Widely considered to be a tribute to Pink Floyd's original lead singer and creative lyricist Syd Barrett, who suffered a debilitating mental breakdown seven years earlier that was aggravated by drug abuse, this title track to their 1975 Wish You Were Here album has David Gilmour playing one of the greatest guitar pieces ever while singing unforgettable lines such as "Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" While song co-writer and bassist Roger Waters had reportedly stated that the lyrics were open for interpretation, I just enjoy sitting back and grooving to the song's mood and virtuosity...

156 SECRET MESSAGES...Electric Light Orchestra
When ELO released their Secret Messages album in 1983 they had every reason to expect another success in a long series of successes, but it didn't chart as well as its predecessors...including the title song, ushering in this great band's decline.  Still, I always liked Secret Messages, and the very campy video accompanying it is unintentionally funny.  Jeff Lynne is there as always, singing to a danceable beat with words like "Those secret messages that spill into the air from far away, so far away...a flowing river of illusion running with confusion, never gone, it goes on and on"...I love mysterious lyrics...

155 WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?...R.E.M
Back in the summer of 1994 I was eagerly anticipating the release of R.E.M's new album Monster, which I expected to be another craftily-produced, polished work along the lines of its predecessors Out of Time and Automatic for the People.  Instead, what came out was more of a hard rock album with raucous, dissonant songs prevailing.  What's the Frequency, Kenneth?,  whose title was based on a madman's rantings when he attacked newscaster Dan Rather one day, was the first release from Monster and is dominated by an intense, constant guitar background...I was shocked at first to hear it but later embraced it and many of the album's other tracks, including another that I have ranked higher on my list...

154 TIME IS ON MY SIDE...the Rolling Stones
One of the Stones' early singles hits...from 1964...this was a slow blues-based song, as were many of theirs at this time, with a really soulful lead guitar by Keith Richards reminding me a little of B.B. King and Mick Jagger providing his colorful, ragged singing.  They recorded two versions of this song...I preferred the earlier one but the later version became the standard one played on oldies radio and their greatest hits albums...

153 LIVE TO TELL...Madonna
For the three years before Live to Tell came out in 1986, Madonna had built her exploding career around catchy dance tunes with suggestive lyrics and her often just-as-suggestive videos.  But this song was entirely different...it's a slow, pensive ballad showcasing her singing range and ability.  Back then I picked it as my "song of the year" and it is still wildly out of place in contrast to her other works during this period...although the following year I did like her La Isla Bonita, I wouldn't again be impressed by her music until more than a decade later...

152 WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE...the Animals
This iconic song from 1965 is my favorite from this Newcastle, England-based blues-rock group, that is before they broke up and frontman Eric Burdon later formed a new "Animals" band around himself.  I've read that it was very popular among soldiers serving in the Vietnam War, for obvious reasons, but it has a universal appeal to anyone who finds themselves stuck in an oppression, negative situation: that's certainly been the case for me.  Like Song #154 above, they made two versions: the original singles release is much grittier and better with Burdon delivering an epic vocal performance.  Unfortunately, unlike the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the Animals weren't adept at writing their own songs and were largely left to cover others' compositions, this one included...

151 TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS...Styx
Within the American progressive rock band Styx during their heydays in the late 70's and early 80's there always seemed to be a sort of creative, directional tension between guitarist Tommy Shaw and their main lead singer Dennis DeYoung...the former more "rock" and the latter more "progressive".  With Too Much Time on My Hands from 1981, we get a great rock song with Shaw belting out the lead vocals.  It's also very applicable to a lot of boredom-prone people in our current COVID-19 era of shutdown and stay-at-home policies...

Next week: #150-141...

First American Manned Space Launch Since 2011 Scheduled for May 27th

At 4:32 pm on Wednesday, May 27th, assuming no delays, a two-astronaut crew will launch from Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as they take their Crew Dragon capsule for a rendezvous with the International Space Station...the first manned launch into space from the USA since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.  SpaceX's head honcho Elon Musk has spearheaded America's return to space exploration...in cooperation with NASA...and has dreams of traveling and even settling Mars in the not-so-distant future.  Whether it's the moon or Mars we get to first in our eventual return to space travel beyond low Earth orbit, I'm okay with either...but first we need to get our butts off the ground and into space again instead of paying Russia $80 million for each American they launch into space for us.  This story was buried deep in the news amid the coronavirus onslaught...thought you might enjoy have something positive to look forward to in the near future.  I think Boeing has also been working on manned space rockets...good, the more the merrier as long as the companies don't trip over each other to the program's detriment.  I think regardless how this upcoming  presidential election comes out we should establish a modest, permanent presence on the moon and keep aspiring to deeper space exploration...guess it's about time I put the NASA Channel on my Roku...

Some Rainy-Day-Off Musings

Another brief entry on this blog...just happy to be at home, off from work for a couple of days and free of wearing a mask.   It's been raining off and on all day, putting off my long weekly run until tomorrow or possibly next Saturday if the rain keeps on falling.  I am watching various news/opinion channels...the whole gamut from MSNBC to CNN to FoxNews to NewsMax.  Unlike probably 99% of my readers, I look for and usually find value in each of these channels' programming, recognizing up front the political posturing and bias inherent in each of them and looking beyond to attain truth...I've been watching NewsMax but will soon switch over to CNN or MSNBC.  I see everything happening in the USA about the coronavirus pandemics being filtered through three different areas: public health, the economy and politics.  I don't automatically tag one political party and its leaders as the "good guys" while personally vilifying those heading the opposite side the way some of my Facebook buddies sadly find themselves doing...instead I discern the bias I'm hearing, look at the issue through those three filters and by doing so arriving at a broader and better informed position.  Politically I am issue-based and sometimes side with  the Republican "take" on one and the Democratic view on another.  I guess with these protests against stay-at-home/shutdown policies springing up across the country... it was inevitable, especially in an election year...that partisan politics would begin to sharply insert itself into the COVID-19 news.  I did notice that when Jacksonville reopened its city beaches today they were flooded with people who didn't seem all that concerned with social distancing...funny, I didn't think that Duval County had been "flattening" its curve the way my home county of Alachua has begun to do...

Well, I guess that's it for today, stay safe...

Quote of the Week...from Patricia Highsmith

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.    ---Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) was a renowned novelist whose most famous work was her 1950 Strangers on a Train, which Alfred Hitchcock made into a hit movie.  I haven't yet read any of her works...although I plan to...but the above quote of hers resonated with me.  It's not only my imagination that suffers in torturous social situations in which I'm expected to play an active role, but my entire thought processes as well...I'm tempted to simply shut myself down and passively sink into the background: not because I feel the slightest bit of inferiority among others but rather simply because this is how I'm wired...and always have been.  I'm not a recluse in that I want to avoid other people...this shutdown of social commerce because of COVID-19 has demonstrated that to me as I miss public places like the library and Starbucks.  I've been told recently that extroverts tend to do their thinking aloud, through talking to others...while introverts prefer solitude for theirs.  Highly interactive social situations energize extroverts...they thoroughly deplete me.  All throughout my school years extroverts were held up as the great achievers while introverts were at best ignored and at worst bullied and put down...I haven't seen much improvement with this picture in subsequent years.  If this all sounds like I have a chip of sorts on my shoulder, you're right...I do.  I tend to associate loud, big-talkers with heavy-handed aggression who stupidly assume that I am somehow weak and need to be submissive because I'm not inclined toward that style of behavior.  I took a mandatory public speaking class in the eleventh grade and was browbeaten to get up repeatedly in front of a classroom that contained many people I disliked and who disliked me and with whom I had absolutely nothing I felt like sharing anything with, although I had many diverse interests of my own.  The school's message was that speech is power...and if you're going to be a "successful" person you'd better get adept at the art of running your mouth off, the more aggressively the better.  But you know, if I have something I want to say to somebody, I'll say it...no problem. But being put in situations where I have to speak things that I don't want to speak to people that I don't want to speak to: forget it...

Just Finished Reading First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

First Lord's Fury, from 2009, is the final volume in Jim Butcher's six-part fantasy series titled Codex Alera.  On this fantasy world the continual war going on there is boiling down to the final confrontation between the Vord...which I maintain is a ripoff from the Borg in Star Trek: the Next Generation...and the alliance of humans, Marat, Canim and Icemen on this conflict-ravaged planet.  The central figures in this saga are Tavi, by now known as Gaius Octavian, his mother Isana and Countess Amara as they struggle to kill the Vord Queen, who controls all of the entities amassed against them.  A subplot is the developing relationship between Tavi and Kitai, a young Marat woman he has been involved with for years, as they plan their future together in the midst of the surrounding uncertainty and carnage.  Humans on this world possess the ability, called furycrafting, to bond with elements from nature like wind, fire and air to give themselves superhuman powers.  No way am I going to tell how it all ends...but here again we have a series where the protagonist, a generally honest, brave and unassuming soul, finds himself not only in the center of everything going on around him, but turns out to be "the one" upon whom the world's fate hinges...yawn, another one of those stories.  I'm glad I finished the series, which seemed to leave an opening for a follow-up in case the author decides to resume it...but it wasn't one of my favorite fantasy series by a long shot.  Still, if you're into near-constant fighting and warfare you'll probably like it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1957 Science Fiction, Part 1

Out of the 25 volumes comprising the anthology series Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories that spanned quality science fiction short stories from 1939 through 1963, the volume #19 about the year 1957 is the one I've possessed the longest, having read it a number of times.

STRIKEBREAKER by Isaac Asimov
I reviewed this story back in '17...here's a link to that article: [link].  A small world building downward underground inside itself, with an extremely dense population, has developed a rigid social system where certain jobs and their performers are stigmatized and isolated.  One of the workers, the man operating the human waste recycling works, declares himself on strike until he and his family are allowed to integrate into society.  A visitor to the planet on a different mission confronts the crisis...which creates an ethical dilemma...

OMNILINGUAL by H. Beam Piper
More a novella than a short story, Omnilingual delves into the problem of decoding the language of a culture without any "Rosetta Stone" or common points of reference.  Such is the problem encountered by a scientific team investigating the ancient Martian ruins of an intelligent race extinct for millennia.  Eventually they hit upon the solution, which in light of what we would put on one of our early space probes in retrospect seems self-evident...

THE MILE-LONG SPACESHIP by Kate Wilhelm
Here's another tale I've discussed before, and here's a link to it in another 2017 article: [link].  It assumes the existence of telepathy as a man on Earth, following an auto accident in which he suffered brain trauma, keeps dreaming in his hospital bed of being in deep space...and inevitably finds himself on board an alien ship.  What he doesn't know is that this ship is real and has its own telepath...fearing other intelligent life in the cosmos, they try to influence his dreaming enough for him to reveal where Earth is.  This is an interesting story with one of the "sides" completely oblivious as to the danger they are in...

CALL ME JOE by Poul Anderson
An embittered man crippled by an earlier accident is stationed around Jupiter, engaged in a project to seed life there adapted to its intensely different environment of methane and extreme pressure and cold...his consciousness is transferred into the body of a manufactured creature who can withstand the harsh Jovian conditions.  The story toggles back in forth between this individual and "Joe"...I read a similar premise in Clifford Simak's 1944 short story Desertion, which he later incorporated as a chapter in his novel City...

YOU KNOW WILLIE  by Theodore Cogswell
One of the rare science fiction stories bluntly dealing with the problem of racial persecution in America...particularly in the South, Willie McCracken, a well-to-do white racist businessman in a small town, shoots to death a black man who he sees as a competitor...at the trial they produce a false alibi and the all-white jury promptly acquits him.  But the victim's Aunt Hattie, with her traditional spiritualism that includes curses, still has something to say in the matter. The ending reminded me of what happened to Hitler in Robert Heinlein's short story Successful Operation...

More about 1957 sci-fi short stories next week...

We Have Ourselves a Rain-Soaked Day (and Week)

The birds around my home sure do like it, but I have mixed feelings about the sometimes-stormy rain we began experiencing here yesterday in north-central Florida and which has been going on strong this morning.  The rain should fall all week long and into the next weekend. although I'm sure we'll get a few breaks when the sun shines through and the clouds temporarily part.  My area surrounding Gainesville has experienced a severe shortfall of precipitation in the last few months and as such the wildfire danger has dramatically increased...hopefully all this new moisture in the ground will alleviate that concern.  My preference would have been for it to have rained intermittently for the past few weeks without this onslaught we're now going to experience.  The weather pattern now going through our area caused much tornado devastation and death in states north of us...I guess I should be grateful that we've been spared that fate so far.  Still, a very mushy, supersaturated ground can present its own problems...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #170-161

The ten songs I'm discussing today from the list of my 500 all-time favorite songs are all buried deep in my past with only a 12-year span separating them: 1964-76.  Yet each and every one of them has only increased its value to me over the years...if anything I didn't properly appreciate what remarkable pieces of music they were during that period.  Still, since during the same time span I was 7-19 years old, this is probably not surprising, and three of them I didn't get around to noticing until much later.  Here they are...

170 FRIENDS...Led Zeppelin
This track from the 1970 Led Zeppelin III album always struck me with how the sage advice singer Robert Plant doles out starkly contrasts with the ominous...almost threatening...melody and musical accompaniment.  Bizarre and beautiful.  I'm not surprised that when Plant and Jimmy Page finally got back together to make a collaboration album they picked out this one to highlight.  I did not know of this song until I heard the band's box set in late 1990...

169 I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE...Yes
At the end of 1971 I was musing on which song I would pick as my "song of the year"...there were some good candidates.  But then this song began to get radio play...it's divided into two parts, the first a more rambling piece with gentle music and Jon Anderson's falsetto-like voice. And then it suddenly breaks into one of the best guitar jam sessions ever, and this is where I really got to love this song...I detected a short tribute to Chuck Berry at one place...

168 DOCTOR JIMMY...the Who
The 1973 double Quadrophenia album, on which this epic track appears, was another rock opera composed by Pete Townshend...this one concerning a young English man caught up in drugs, sex and gang conflict as he eventually learns to see his idols as they truly are.  The songs are very introspective, none less than Doctor Jimmy, in which the singer declares in a rage his own severe shortcomings...very intense, perhaps too much so for some of the language used here.  But I always loved it although the lyrics at times are a bit over the top, to say the least...

167 LOVE AND HAPPINESS...Al Green
In early 1973 I was in the eleventh grade in high school, struggling to fit in with the track team...and thoroughly enjoying this hit back then by Al Green, one of the greatest voices ever in popular music.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.  The power of love is what this soulful song is all about, and nobody could sing it better than Al Green...

166 A DAY IN THE LIFE...the Beatles
No, I don't understand what the words mean in this closing track of the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Before the CD era kicked in, radio stations always played the immediately preceding Sgt. Pepper reprise track together with A Day in the Life...which is how I'm used to hearing it.  My favorite part has always been the break in the middle when Paul "woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head"...a few years ago I heard one recording session for the album back then when he totally flubbed up his lines, cursing and laughing at himself.  Ah, those were the great old days.  George Martin, the "fifth" Beatle, should have received creative credit (and royalties) for all the work he did on this song and the others on the album as its producer...

165 CIRCLE SKY...the Monkees
When the Monkees reunited in 1996 for their Justus album and tour, I first heard Michael Nesmith's Circle Sky...I wasn't impressed until I heard the original version from their 1968 Head album, which also served as the soundtrack to the same-titled movie made soon after their comedy TV series was cancelled.  There's some really heavy-duty, intense guitar strumming here as well as a strong hint of Nesmith's future country music direction.  Although the other Monkees didn't figure into its recording, Circle Sky fit in well with the other songs on Head, in my opinion a quality product for any band and the best from this often undervalued act...

164 SEND IN THE CLOWNS...Judy Collins
I first became aware of the 1976 hit Send in the Clowns when my sister Anita would practice playing it on her piano.  Collins' version also used piano, but her sad, resigned singing stole my heart with such a compelling performance...the lyrics evoke memories of an earlier Bee Gees' song, I Started a Joke: both songs speak of the frustration of relationships where one side always seems to be in a completely opposite state from the other...

163 DEAD MAN'S CURVE...Jan and Dean
One scene from The Godfather stands out to me: when Kate first notices the Don's monstrous bodyguard Luca Brasi at Michael Corleone's sister's wedding, she remarks that he is a very scary guy.  Well, Dead Man's Curve, from 1964, is a very scary song, not the least for the fact that it describes a fatal auto accident just blocks from where Jan would experience a devastating wreck just a couple of years later.  There is (or was back in 1974-75) a scary stretch of I-95 in northern Dade County where the Interstate, Turnpike and US-441 combined that I always dubbed "Dead Man's Curve" in honor of this song.  Very haunting...

162 HAVE I THE RIGHT...the Honeycombs
When I was a seven-year-old kid I had my personal awakening to the world of popular music...the Beatles were doubtless the main reason for this.  But the radio also played a variety of other music...including this thumping tune that sounds like an autoharp in the background.  Some songs seem like a living spring of energy...this one gets you going and I'm happy to see 56 years later that critics look back fondly on it: have you ever heard it?

161 RAIN DANCE...the Guess Who
Rain Dance has the sad distinction (at least for me) of being the final great single released by this remarkable Canadian band before Randy Bachman left the group, eventually to form his own band Bachman-Turner Overdrive.  It has a long chanting part at the beginning and closing that really does evoke a sense of native American culture, correctly or not...why it wasn't a monster hit I can't figure.  Rain Dance was one of those 1971 songs I juggled around in my mind back then for "song of the year" before settling on that aforementioned Yes song (at #169)...hey what do you know, it's passed it on my list!

Next week: #160-151

TV's Music Choice Offers Better Options than Broadcast Radio

I've spent so much time with this blog project of mine listing and reviewing my 500 all-time favorite songs that I just realized that I can't think of any definitively-2020 song that I've heard, much less like.  I've been disappointed that the only broadcast radio station in my area that purports to play alternative rock, WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz", seem to either play hits from years gone by or pick for its current rotation of songs acts that sound more like they should be on Top Forty radio...if I want to listen to that kind of music I'll tune in to WYKS/"Kiss-105", which I don't.  I did notice, though, the other night while surfing around the Music Choice channels, which my cable TV service provides, that the "Indie" and "Alternative" channels were playing some really good, up-to-date music that wasn't getting any radio play.  I'm thinking of devoting a little time each day to listening to my television set for my music...a sad commentary on the sorry-ass state of radio programming nowadays in Gainesville.  Also, I might as well check out some online music channels...eventually I should come up with some future "memories" to add to my all-time favorites list...

My 13.3 Mile "Defiance" Run Today

For the past few weeks I've gotten back into the habit of going out on long runs on Saturday afternoons.  Last week I ran 10 miles while today...with wonderful weather conditions of almost clear skies, near-calm, around 75 degrees and 40% humidity...I covered 13.3 miles using my convoluted designed course going up and down the streets of my neighborhood and the adjacent one, along with the more sloped stretch of asphalt pathway on NW 53rd Avenue between 34th and 43 Streets.  I have long used walking breaks within my training runs...they help to conserve energy and alleviate problems associated with repetitive motion: the slower times reflect this as the time for today's run was 2:51:25...then again, I have a tendency to be a bit competitive around other runners and in a race setting I probably would have pushed myself harder.  During the whole run I listen to a shuffle on my MP3 player of some of my favorite musical acts, including R.E.M., Regina Specktor, Beck, Metric, Gorillaz, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens, Kasabian and Radiohead, to mention a few. With the stay-at-home emphasis going on in these times, I encountered on my journey many people out in their yards, jogging, walking with family or by themselves, walking dogs, riding bicycles and a couple of skateboarders...I crossed streets to ensure distancing although that 3-mile stretch up and down 53rd Avenue presented a challenge with its narrow path.  Everyone seemed friendly and we would wave or say "hi" as we passed each other...

I was a little miffed that due to this pandemic the half-marathon race (13.1 miles) I had intended to run in Ormond Beach on March 21st (along with enjoying a beach weekend with Melissa) understandably was canceled, so today's "half-marathon-plus" run was a happily defiant way for me to thumb my nose up at the disease...we'll see about getting to the beach later on when it all settles down...

Quote of the Week...from Aldous Huxley

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality.  All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.                                   ---Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley was a famous English writer probably best known for his 1932 dystopian novel of a future consumer-based society gone to extremes titled Brave New World.  His above quote about irrationality screams outs its relevance in today's virus-stricken world of mass reaction, much of it without any semblance of reason.  In any crisis, there is a tendency for people...myself included...to react in an irrational way...here are some of those possible ways:

--Panic
--Anxiety
--Scapegoating
--Inventing or subscribing to conspiracy theories
--Revisionism
--Critical hindsight
--Denial

I think that panic and anxiety are self-evident, scapegoating reveals itself whenever people of east Asian ancestry are attacked as if they had something to do with the disease, conspiracy theories are abounding...split between China's nefarious aims, the "fake" news media and the Democratic Party, revisionism is seen with politicians claiming they were on to the virus from the start when they weren't, critical hindsight whenever news reporters practice "gotcha" journalism to put politicians on the spot about previous statements and actions instead of what's currently happening...and denial, probably the most prevalent...and dangerous...of the irrational reactions to this still-spreading pandemic. I've noticed that along with denying that COVID-19 is anything more dangerous than the ordinary flu is often an accompanying social culture of bravado that assumes those who follow the social distancing rules are governed by fear...that is, part of their irrational denial is to accuse others of irrationality...

Once again, we're all irrational beings and are as such predisposed to reacting unreasonably to crises, especially those that seem to mandate drastically changing our social behavior patterns, even if only temporarily.  There are rational components to each of the areas I have listed above: concern instead of panic and anxiety, informed curiosity about the virus outbreak's origins instead of scapegoating, an acknowledgement that coincidences actually do happen and that the simplest answer is the often the true one instead of convoluted conspiracies, "manning up" and explaining one's own inaccurate or misleading statements instead of trying to reinvent the past, placing hindsight in the context that no leader is perfect and all will fail at times...especially in unique circumstances, and optimism that acknowledges...not denies...the urgency of the situation while looking forward to great things ahead for us after this crisis subsides...

Missing Being Able to Haunt Local Coffee Shops

I'm sitting here at my desktop in the living room with the TV on CNN in the background and a view out the front window at a sunny, breezy day.  I miss not being able to go out and sit in an Internet-friendly business like Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, drinking a flavored iced coffee while conjuring up within my mind something to write on this blog...home is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but even good old Bilbo Baggins had to get away from his hobbit hole every now and then.  There's a new Dunkin' Donuts within walking distance of my house...they supposedly opened starting March 24th but haven't yet been able to seat anyone because of the coronavirus outbreak, which we're apparently now supposed to call "novel" coronavirus because it's so novel, you see.  It's funny, but since I stopped frequenting these places for coffee and writing I haven't had a single iced coffee...once I drove up to order one through the drive-through at the new Dunkin' (after voting on March 17th), but when I got to the window they informed me that it hadn't opened yet and that it was training employees...

One of my friends who recently retired and has a condo on the Atlantic shoreline had bemoaned the closing of most of Florida's beaches (although some are still open and the governor won't mandate their closure), which happened primarily because of the pictures of young spring breakers pretty much thumbing their collective noses at social distancing guidelines and congregating there en masse.  The problem with reopening them now is that due to school closures these people are in a sense still on "spring break"...I agree with my friend that beaches could work for people who use them in a proper distancing setting, much like within a neighborhood where people still go out walking their dogs or jogging.  But I'm afraid the same elements that caused their closing would return were they to reopen...yes, the selfish spring breakers ruined beaches for us all...

Eventually the infection curve will flatten and both the beaches and coffee shops...along with libraries, schools and so-called "nonessential" businesses...will reopen and do so doubtlessly amid others' outcries that they are placing dollars over lives.  But as I have mentioned before on this blog, this divisive debate is inevitable.  I'm guessing that when these places finally do reopen, they will be invoking similar distancing guidelines to what we see in groceries, limiting the number of customers and keeping them apart.  I don't know what they're going to do with the schools, though...

Weekly Short Stories: Robert Heinlein, Part 7

Today I conclude my examination of some of the stories by legendary science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (1907-88), who inserted a great deal of social commentary into his works as well as much speculation on the future of our space program...sadly, while in our real world we beat his 1978 first moon landing prediction by nine years, we've done little since other then repeatedly circle Earth in low orbit.  Here are my reactions to the remainder of the fiction stories appearing in his 1980 collection of short stories and essays titled Expanded Universe...

A BATHROOM OF HER OWN (1946)
Not at all science fiction, this is a story about how elections are manipulated by powerful and often corrupt brokers with their own agendas that don't necessarily correspond to what the public's interests are...fine, tell me something I don't already know.  A candidate for a local seat tries to maneuver himself past the forces that oppose him, including a compelling woman candidate surging ahead of him in the race...a behind-the-scenes look at running for political office that became tedious to read...

ON THE SLOPES OF VESUVIUS (1947)
This story's title is allegorical: imagine standing on the slopes of that Italian volcano in ancient times, just before the massive explosive eruption that engulfed and destroyed Pompeii.  Now switch to a New York City bar at the story's writing in '47, two years after the atom bomb was developed and dropped and two years before the announcement that the Soviets had exploded one of their own.  In this scary period was a lot of doomsday speculation on what would happen if some subversive elements were to get the basic materials for the bomb and set it on off in a big city...a scientist at the bar lays out the odds and pretty much freaks out the bartender, who suddenly finds that he needs to make a very quick decision...

NOTHING EVER HAPPENS ON THE MOON (1949)
Boy Scouting on the moon? Evidently Heinlein was a big promoter of the Scouts, for this is the story of a boy from the American Midwest who is determined to collect his scouting badges for the moon and later Venus (we're to assume our "sister" planet actually could support life).  Visiting Luna City, he gets to know other Scouts and has a serious adventure on the unforgiving lunar landscape with life-or-death implications.  In spite of the story's goofy premise I thought it was the best of the four tales I'm reviewing today...

CLIFF AND THE CALORIES (1950)
Evidently somebody complained to Heinlein that he never wrote stories with female protagonists, so he wrote this one about a young woman concerned that her weight will keep the guy she likes from pursuing her, so she comes up with a strategy...turns out, though, that Cliff is totally okay with her as she is: the characters are sympathetic, but why this ever became a published story is beyond me and convinced me that maybe it's time to steer away from more of his stories and return to my year-by-year short story reviews...

So next week I'll be resuming those year-by-year reviews of excellent old science fiction short stories, picking back up at the year 1957...