Run Away Dorothy Worth the Wait

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RUNAWAY DOROTHY

The Wait

Self Produced

* * * *

Runaway Dorothy’s music has been endorsed by Ryan Adams and Roseanne Cash. It has been compared to that of Jakob Dylan, Mumford and Sons, Wilco, and Counting Crows. The alt-country/alt-rock/Americana sounds of Counting Crows is indeed a good comparison–if you toss in the atmospheric arrangements of Snow Patrol and hints of Credence Clearwater for good measure. The Brooklyn-based quartet of Dave Parnell (vocals, harmonica, guitar), brother Brett (electric guitar), Warren Robbing (bass), and Evan Mitchell (drums) tend to walk on the sunnier side of life and the instrumentation could use more diversity, but they have just enough edge to skirt being twee.

The band’s usual fare can be heard on tracks such as “Sing with Me” and “Let the Right One In.” The arrangements line up behind Dave Parnell’s lead vocals. His voice is dry but not gritty, and emotive but devoid of affected stress. Toss in tight harmonies, some jangly guitar, and let it shimmer. In “Let the Right One In,” for instance, drums and lead vocal are in the foreground, whilst everything else pulses behind it–highlights rather than deep color. There are lots of relationship songs, the edgy nervousness of “Hurry” being a highlight, and even a breakup song such as “Background” hints of redemption. Those looking for anything darker will have to content themselves with “Blue Kentucky Rain,” which is a modern-day Dust Bowl song with a sweet chorus; until they get to the final track, “Ballad of a Dead Man,” a vigilante revenge tale.  

In candor, Runaway Dorothy will need to temper its formula if it hopes to break out of a crowded alt-country market. Their song arrangements, though not identical, have a sameness of spirit that leaves a listener feeling as if The Wait is eleven movements of the same song. The album is a thoroughly enjoyable album that will please immensely, though it seldom challenges. I can’t knock that, but I also hear a band in need of a signature rather than more comparisons. Rob Weir

Here's a YouTube of the opening track.

Belly Dance Music (Really!)

JALILAH

Jalilah’s Raks Sharki Stage Cuts

Piranha 2856

* * *

Who can explain passion? The performer known as Jalilah was born Lorraine Zamora Chamas and raised in California. Thirty years ago she fell in love with the raks sharki dance style–that’s belly dancing to those of us whose midsections jiggle more than jig–and began a journey that’s taken her to Egypt, Germany, Lebanon, and Canada. She’s made six albums of belly dance music, usually with highly regarded Middle Eastern orchestra leaders such as we find on this culling from her previous recordings: Mokhtar Al-Said, Hossam Shaker, and Ihsan Al-Mounzer. If the music reminds you of music you’ve encountered in old black and white movies, it’s because Jalilah prefers the vibe and rhythms of 1930s/40s style dances. Her major nod to modernity is the realization that today’s audiences have shorter attention spans. These are indeed stage “cuts,” in that she’s taken music/dance performances that would have originally run up to twenty minutes and knocked then down to five or fewer.

Belly dance music, you say? Isn’t that a bit (as the British say) naff? It can be. Raks Sharki thrives in the seam between don’t-touch eroticism and melodrama. The music is look-at-me diva style that wiggles its way to the line separating dynamism and histrionics and sometimes transgresses it. You can close you eyes and conjure the jingling bells, slapped tambourines, swishing veils, gyrating bodies, and colored backlighting. How long can you hold the fantasy? How many dramatic pauses, sudden restarts, and swelling interludes are your limit? Some may find that sixteen tracks of this are too much, even in truncated form; others may wish for more. I wouldn’t want to listen to this every day, but it’s surprisingly good road music and it certainly serves to demolish any rut in which you may find yourself stuck. My bottom line is that I overcame my abiding dislike for performers with just one name and listened to the whole thing. It’s a small standard, I realize, but how else is one to judge something this far from one’s own journey?  Rob Weir

Here’s a clip of Jalilah doing her thing. And if you mail a check for $20 to my private bank account I promise not to post a YouTube of me attempting the same thing!

Still Life with Bread Crumbs: Snapshots of Life in the Boonies

STILL LIFE WITH BREAD CRUMBS (2014)

Anna Quindlen

Random House, 272 pp. ISBN: 978-1400065752

* * * ½

Anna Quindlen’s Still Life with Bread Crumbs has been called a “feminist post-feminist” novel, and that’s not a bad descriptor, though one should also add that her book is also a take-down of bourgeois life, hipster pretense, urban snobbery, and crass materialism.

Its befuddled heroine is Rebecca Winter, a photographer who made her mark in the 1960s with her “Kitchen Counter” series­–think a mash-up of Annie Liebowitz and Judy Chicago. The photographic centerpiece is the shot whose title this novel shares–a black-and-white composition consisting of a decimated loaf of artisan bread in a sea of dirty plates and wine glasses presented as if it were the aftermath of a Willem Claeszoom Heda banquet (see below). “Still Life” became an icon of Second Wave feminism–endlessly reproduced in textbooks, as a poster, and on mugs, tea towels, and other objects. Theorists, critics, and graduate students rushed to ‘interpret’ Winter’s work and she became the darling of feminists and hipsters everywhere. 

Little did any of them know that Winter’s photos were inspired by fatigue, not deeply held reflections upon the social expectations of women. She was simply too tired to clean up after one of her husband’s many parties–he an outwardly charming Englishman and professor, and inwardly a cad and sexist pig. So sexist, in fact, that he grew enormously jealous of Rebecca’s art world fame. In retrospect, Rebecca realized she was filming a very personal story: the disintegration of her marriage.

Flash from the late Sixties to the 21^st century. Rebecca is 60 and has been divorced for more than a decade; her mother is in a nursing home, where she imagines herself a concert pianist; her father’s health is failing; she’s saddled with an abusive agent who belittles her work; and her son, Ben, is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Ben’s independence is a major problem–nursing home fees plus tepid sales minus support checks equal big-time financial woes. When Rebecca sees a rental advertisement for a rustic Maine cottage, she does some quick calculations and realizes she could improve her cash flow by renting her West Side Manhattan apartment and heading to the boonies. Maybe she’ll even have an Ansel Adams epiphany and rekindle the life of what she half-jokingly calls “the artist formerly known as Rebecca Winter.”

As Rebecca soon learns, those who live in rural places seldom use the word “rustic.” Living in the woods means raccoons in the attic, hunters in the backyard, gravel driveways that are hard to plow, and unreliable utilities. It also means exchanging urban problems for small-town woes that would make residents of Peyton Place blush. Rebecca encounters a new group of folks, some of whom are more impressed by who she used to be than she is, including Sarah, an overweight café-owner, and Tad, who dreams of being a singer. Most couldn’t care less, especially Tad’s mother; Kevin, Sarah’s shifty no-account husband; and Jim Bates, the roofer, handyman, and naturalist who Rebecca depends upon to repair her rural dreams-gone-wrong. And then there are mysterious crosses that she encounters throughout the woods-not graves, but shrines. To what?

Quindlen is a good stylist and is able to tell a story through spare, but evocative prose. She’s also superb at character development. The central hook of an urbanite seeking regeneration in small-town America won’t win any originality awards, though, and some may find that Rebecca’s May-September relationship (more like late June-September, actually) a bit far-fetched. I was more troubled by the too-easy problem resolutions of the last fifth of the book. That said, this is a breezy summer read that delivers many delights. I also give Quindlen kudos for daring to put a 60-year-old single woman at the center of her book, and I applaud her take on feminism as praxis. Rebecca Winter might have been hailed as a feminist poster child in her youth, but we come to learn that it’s only in her 7^th decade that she chooses her associates and breaks all the expectation molds. To my mind, feminism-as-a-life journey is the best kind of all.

Rob Weir

Claeszoom was a 16th century Dutch painter who loved painting food the way today's foodies like photographing it.

Life in Postmodern Times II: Sleazy Men

Ladies: Think beofre you sign up for this crap!

This week’s version of "Life in These Postmodern Times" features five men who deserve dishonorable mention. They range from those making unwise choices to actively vile curs, so let’s take a look at them in that order so you can prepare your stomach for the final lurch.

Ralph Fiennes is a very good actor, but he should stay on the set side of the camera. Not many people saw his 2013 actor/director turn in The Invisible Woman–an accounting of the highly inappropriate 13-year affair between Charles Dickens and ingénue Nelly Ternan. In this case, a tepid box–just $3 million worldwide–is a good thing. Let’s just say that Fiennes makes a much better Lord Voldermort than a Dickens, whom he plays as if he’s an amusing fishmonger. Bad choice, bad direction, bad film.

It’s sad to see David Ortiz morph from Big Papi into Big Prima Donna. First there was the financially lucrative, but artless and crass  ‘selfie’ he took on his Samsung phone with President Obama. Then there are the Ortiz homerun antics, where he poses, watches, and gestures in ways that would get a rookie knocked on his butt his next at-bat, followed by his ravings when he someone throws inside at him. (I’d love to see an umpire with the cojones to call a strike on Dive-in-David when gets plunked on an elbow that’s over the plate.)  Worst of all are the boorish hissy fits he throws each time one of his batted balls is scored an error instead of a hit. (Imagine–a major leaguer expected to field a tough ball! In the old days, if you touched it and didn’t make the play, it was an error.) Recently Ortiz blasted his own park’s official scorer with such vehemence that Joe Torre, baseball’s chief disciplinarian, told him to STFU. Ortiz apologized, but the Boston Globe piously intoned that Ortiz “had earned the right” to be more outspoken. Really? So the rules of sportsmanship don’t apply to Ortiz? Torre got it right. Big Papi should either STFU or change his handle to Big Asshole.

Wisconsin Scab-in-Chief Scott Walker, who poses as governor, survived a recall vote, but the clock is ticking on the indictment meter. Walker stands accused of coordinating with outside-of-the-state conservative groups to fund his own campaign and that of other Wisconsin troglodytes. Lest you think this is simply politics-as-usual in modern America, it’s not. Wisconsin law lacks the loosey-goosey loopholes commonplace elsewhere. Prosecutors are using the phrase “criminal scheme” to describe Walker’s behavior and it’s probably just a matter of time until Walker is arrested. Count me among those who want to see Walker served papers in the State House, cuffed by a union cop, and hauled off to a union-staffed prison.

Another Scott high on the "Putz of the Year" list is Scott “Carpetbagger/Special Interests/Faux Working Man” Brown. Back in 2010 Brown surprised Martha Coakley in a special Senate election to replace Ted Kennedy. He left the Senate in 2012, when Bay State voters discovered that his blue-collar pickup-truck-driving routine was a cardboard con job and Elizabeth Warren thrashed him. No worries–there’s always a place on Fox News for another sleazemeister. Then Brown decided to move across the border to New Hampshire to try to unseat Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Now things are getting hotter for Brown. Surprise! He’s not a blue-collar champion. Not unless you think blue-collar workers make $839,520 per year–his income in 2010. Many people are still trying to figure put how he made that much on a $174,000 U.S. Senate salary, or how regular guy Scott made $357,251 when he was in the Massachusetts Senate back in 2006. Maybe our blue-collar lad had some investments–like the fees he got from Wall Street firms with links to a shady “penny stocks” firm in Florida. Now word is that Brown may have over $3 million in assets that he's taking his good old (boy) time revealing. In other words, he could have bought a pick-up truck dealership if he wanted. Maybe Brown hasn’t done anything illegal and he stands an even chance of getting elected in the Granite State, but he can expect the scrutiny to get tougher. Brown is worse than a crook–he’s a fraud the likes of which wear out their welcome very quickly. Let’s hope it’s before November.

File this one in the reach-for-the-vomit-bucket category. Former Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair sexually harassed at least two women under his command, actions that included coerced sex. The Army agreed that General Sinclair was a naughty boy–so naughty they fined him $20,000 and busted him down to a Lt. Colonel. Outside the US Army we call his behavior “rape.” Sinclair ought to be doing twenty years, not paying out twenty grand. Why any woman would join the U.S. Army is a complete mystery. It’s not that Army doesn’t get it–it doesn’t care. The Sinclair case ranks among the greatest injustices of recent memory. Shame!

The Immigrant: Script Not Worthy of Cast

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THE IMMIGRANT (2013)

Directed and co-written by James Gray

Kingsgate Films, 120 minutes, R (mild nudity, language)

* * ½

The Immigrant was released to critical acclaim, including a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes. Audiences, however, have been less than enthralled. Internet audience scores hover in the C-/D+ range ad, for once, the hoi polloi is right. Despite a strong cast and a compelling subject, The Immigrant is as gray and inhospitable as the February waters of New York harbor.

The year is 1921 and Polish Cybulska sisters Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and Magda (Angela Sarafyan) are in line at Ellis Island, hoping to be admitted to the United States. The year is crucial–World War One is just over, a conflict in which Poland was scorched and Cossacks killed Ewa and Magda’s parents, and it's three years before the harsh National Origins Act would slam the door on most Polish immigrants. Nonetheless, the Cybulskas are bucking long odds–Ewa because she caused an in-transit disturbance and is suspected of low morals, and Magda because of a nasty cough. When their aunt fails to appear to claim them, Magda is spirited away to a TB ward and Ewa marked for deportation as “likely to become a public charge.” At the last moment, though, a benefactor appears in the person of Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix), who bribes an immigration official and takes Ewa across to New York, feeds her, and gives her a room in which to stay.

Bruno is more moved by Ewa’s luminous face and comely features than by Christian charity. As it happens, he’s the impresario of an elderly madam’s seedy burlesque house, a front for a brothel operating through payoffs to local cops and the pretense of being down-market legit in the waning days of vaudeville. Bruno is taken with Ewa, but it’s clear what she must do to raise the cash to bribe Ellis Island officials and secure her sister’s release. That’s the set up and rest is aimed at resolving some rather obvious dilemmas that emerge: Why did Ewa’s relatives fail to show? Which will fill faster, Bruno’s heart or purse? Will Ewa chuck Bruno in favor of his smooth-talking magician/performer cousin Emil (Jeremy Renner)? Is Magda still on Ellis Island? Is she even alive? Will the soiled Ewa regain her Catholic virtue?

Cotillard and Phoenix are both superb (even when the later falls prey to his tendency to channel Brando is his Grand Mumbler period), but they can’t rescue a limp script that meanders from predictable to absurd. In the latter category place Emil. Jeremy Renner is a fine actor, but his role in The Immigrant is more akin to a cartoon than a dramatic foil. Maybe it’s the gloomy tenements, basement clubs, dim oyster houses, and light-deprived winter skies, but the movie both looks dreary and plays that way. Buildups become aimless meanders through the gloaming, and what should be big climaxes induce all the passion of a shoulder shrug. Nor is it possible to care deeply about characters about whom we know (or ever come to know) so little.  The frisson between Cotillard and Phoenix simply isn’t enough to redeem a script that never should have gotten off the island.  Rob Weir

What is this Fourth of July?

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history. Titled “What to the Slave is the Fourthof July,” Douglass slammed the hypocrisy of self-congratulatory freedom nostrums in a nation in which more than 4 million were held on bondage. About halfway through, Douglass hammered home his point with a poignant zinger:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

We have, of course, ended the scourge of slavery addressed by Douglass, but have we really addressed its substance? Slavery, as Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and a host of others reminded us, was but the institutional form of racism, and racism an ideology of self-interest we construct to take one class of individuals and deny them an equal place at the American table.

July Fourth often makes me feel a bit melancholy–especially lately. It reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer satirical song “National Brotherhood Week,” a lampoon of the idea that for one week of the year we’re supposed to pretend we like each other. July the Fourth is like that. We gather beneath the Stars and Stripes, pump our fists to a rousing John Philip Sousa march, ohh and ahh over fireworks, and worship the Founding demigods: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Paine, Madison–all men, by the way, of the Enlightenment who had profound doubts about the whole deity thing.

But never mind that. What unsettles me is the presumption that a few hollow civic rituals serve to mend all the fractures in American society. We can set aside our differences and revel in our common national oneness. Sometimes it feels as if we should figure out a way musically to segue from “The Star Spangled Banner” to “Kumbaya” and give each other a collective national hug.

That would be nice, if July 5 didn’t arrive to set us back upon our path of dividing brother from brother, sister from sister, black from white, wealthy from poor, straight from gay, immigrant from nativist, men from women, the faithful from the free thinkers, and those with power from the powerless. It would be very nice indeed if “USA, USA” meant something more palpable than a chauvinistic chant at an international sports match, or a drooling affirmation of military adventurism abroad.

When I read Douglass’ speech, it saddens me to think upon the timeless words in his speech, especially the references to hollow rituals and hypocrisy. I see the hate-filled faces outside the abortion clinics of Boston, on the border with Mexico, at Tea Party rallies, among the sexist leaders of the military, at Westboro Baptist protests, in suburban malls, and in the halls of Congress. My Kumbaya moment passes and I feel alienated, not a member a United States. I think upon a Scottish acquaintance who once told me that he and I had more in common than I had with most of the Americans he met outside of New England. I, like Douglas, find myself musing upon Scripture: As ye do unto the least of these, so you do unto me. And, frankly, all the freedom talk makes me think about how much of it is just as elusive now as it was 162 years ago. As the songwriter Eric Bogle put it:

            Chains, chains, chains–how many souls have died in freedom’s name?

            To some it is a way of life, to others just a word,

            To some it is a snow-white bird, to others a bloody sword.

            But until the last chain falls,

            Freedom will make slaves of us all.

Life in These Postmodern Times Part One

Those who read this blog know that I sometimes have issues–serious issues–with the way things (fail to) work in what John Prine calls the ‘big old goofy world.’ So here’s what I’m sure will be a semi-regular installment about things that amuse and/or piss me off.

Among the things that are just wrong!

1. Who was the genius that decided that men’s shorts can’t be? I’m tired of looking for actual chill-out pants only to encounter ‘shorts’ so long that they make me look like a land mine victim. To the hip-hop/NBA crowds who think these monstrosities are ‘fashion,’ one small suggestion: check out the mirror, dude!

2. While I’m on a trouser rant, who decided that every man in America has an even-sized waist size? Or that inseams start at 34”?  Don’t tell me I can just hem long pants, because that’s not true. I’m a freakin’ 29” inseam, so even if I find pants for my odd-sized waist, the crotch is roughly half way between my actual goolies and my knees.

3. One more for the fashion file. I can’t think of a single thing that makes me worry about national security more than the sight of some guy clad head to toe in camouflage who has a butt the size of Wyoming and a belly a blue whale was happy to lose. How about a national law that forbids the sale of military garb in sizes that would deem a recruit unfit to serve?

4. We know that oil and water don’t mix. Apparently oil and sanity don’t either. You’ve seen those mall come-ons where they display new cars in the aisles.  Today I saw several that gave me pause. The first was for a Fiat smaller than most people’s ovens that got a whopping 28 mpg.  Its ad copy bragged of a high-performance engine. First of all, there’s not enough room in that pile of tin for a high-performance cigarette lighter, let alone a big engine; second, is there anybody on the planet who thinks ‘Fiat’ and ‘high-performance’ in the same sentence?  Alas, that’s only the second dumbest car pitch I saw at the local mall. Our grand prize loser was a Jeep that seems to have been crossbred with a Brink’s truck and gets 14 mpg. So we’re fighting wars to secure soon-to-be-exhausted oil supplies so some egoist with a pimple for a brain can exercise his ‘freedom’ to poison the Big Blue Marble? Enough already. Time to put away the stupid toys and pass a law mandating every new car and truck must get at least 50 mpg–no exceptions.   

5. I was chatting with a friend about Michael Lewis’ new book about Wall Street. Among other subjects, Lewis looks at the use of fiber optic technology that gives the Big Money Boys a head’s-ups on what stock prizes will be a nanosecond before anyone else. In computing terms, a nanosecond is a long time—plenty, in fact, to allow those with the capacity to make millions. Everyone agrees the practice is unethical but, alas, it’s not illegal. So can someone explain the difference between the computer-assisted programs and old-fashioned insider trading, which is illegal?

6. NFL gridiron or World Cup football? The latter please.  Don’t be deceived by flashy promos and the NFL’s current awash-in-cash status; insiders are worried that American-style is an endangered species. It hasn’t caught on outside of the U.S. and Canada, and kids are gravitating toward soccer for several very good reasons: it’s cheaper, safer, and global. The more we learn about concussion syndromes, the less attractive football becomes. To be sure, football remains king in lots of places, but its future doesn’t look so rosy. If you live in one of those places trying to raise mega-millions to build a gridiron palace, you’d be in your civic right mind to work with groups opposing it.