Auto Rojo (1993) – Vilma Palma e Vampiros

Posted on October 31, 2023 by observationblogger — 5 Comments

We are turning the heat up a good notch with today’s cheeky and raunchy track Auto Rojo (Red Car). It is by Argentine rock band Vilma Palma e Vampiros. This song sounds like it took a serious nosedive into the 80’s rock cesspool, even so, I find its melody, banter and playfulness appealing. In this epoch, Argentina was leading the way in Spanish Rock. Other prominent Argentine rock artists who have already featured here, include Andrés Calamaro, Rata Blanca and Soda Stereo.

I looked for you in my red car at 6
I was wearing a very new tailcoat
Which really didn’t suit me very well.
I took you along the route that goes south
“Baby, aren’t you going fast?” You said looking at me strangely
Uh-oh uh-ooh, uh-oh uh-ooh, uh-oh uh-oooh

I confessed to you that I want
get into my bed
Seeing you smile with pleasure
I promised you that I would only touch your feet
If we fog the windows it’s fine

It’s hot now, the music sounds pretty good
I swore to you on my love that we are going to have a better time behind
It’s hot now, the music sounds pretty good
I swore to you on my love that we are going to have a better time behind

Auto Rojo comes from the group’s second album 3980 which referred to the number of the address where they rehearsed in Rosario (the same city legendary Argentine footballer Lionel Messi grew up). They commenced by performing in nightclubs in the city and took the name from graffiti written by the fired employees of a furniture store (located at 430 España Street) on the metal blinds of the windows against the company manager: “Vilma Palma e Hijos Vampiros de los Obreros.” (Vilma Palma and Vampire Children of the Workers). As the years went by, that Graffiti was erased and replaced with “Vilma Palma e Vampiros“.

Vilma Palma e Vampiros achieved national and international success in other Hispanic countries including Chile, Colombia, Perú, Paraguay and Uruguay.  

References:
1. Vilma Palma e Vampiros – Wikipedia

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Posted in Music

23/10 – 29/10/23 Stay Young, Kicking and Screaming & Ol’ Halloween!

Posted on October 30, 2023 by observationblogger — 23 Comments

Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.

Stay Young Forever: Peter Attia
Video interview by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Ex surgeon and ex marathon swimmer Dr Peter Attia is a physician focused on the applied science of longevity. His knowledge about biochemistry, nutrition and exercise is second to none. Also, his first interview on Joe Rogan´s podcast is stellar viewing if you want to get immersed into his incredible life and intellect.

Imagine yourself in the last decade of your life. What would you like to be able to do? I’m talking about the simple stuff, such as walking up a flight of stairs without losing your breath or picking up your grandchild. How about being able to stand up unaided, after sitting comfortably on the floor? Or simply being able to get yourself on and off the toilet with ease?

It’s so easy to assume these everyday movements will still come easily when we’re old. But my guest on this week’s episode of my Feel Better Live More podcast wants us to get real to the fact they probably won’t – unless we take action now.

Reely Bernie Faves: Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Blog article by Reely Bernie

Kicking and Screaming (1995) is a brainy indie flick from the 90s that places wit above rom-com and Gen X-subject chatter before semblance of plot. Calling it a “talky” François Truffaut-influenced study of yuppy slackerdom is fair, but dismissing the likability of each character isn’t humane.

Grover, Max, Otis, and Skippy are postgraduates who’d rather work at a video store, fill out crosswords, or converse with the philosophizing bartender than find their compass. Their stagnation is a small slice of life that may be relatable to some or comical relief to others. Either way, the results are charming, sobering, and deadpan hilarious.

Is that a pajama top?

No… yes.

Between all the tweed sports jacket solipsism and lazy but insightful procrastination is my favorite screenplay.

Are you wearing mascara?

No… yes.

The sharp, poignant lines come from a rookie filmmaker in twenty-five-year-old Noah Baumbach, who would later make his mainstream mark with Greenberg (2010), Marriage Story (2019), and Barbie (2023). Read the entire article here.

Ol’ Halloween!
Sharon’s prose at Sharon’s Writers Tidbits

Night has fallen swift and silent
snatching the daytime like a thief.
Tiny stars are diamonds,
dotted in the inky sky above, how they glisten!
A chilly mist moves slowly across the darkness.
Out of the mist the tap, tap of footfall resounds
– children are trick or treating
their tread ever so light and playful
as they bundle up garden paths,
a gaggle of woolly hats and scarves.
Doorbells jingle and jangle and echo in the cold, cold night.
Somewhere in the distance a jack-o-lantern appears
eyes ablaze, jeering spookily…
And in the dead of night
whilst all the small children are asleep
shadows slope across the empty streets
roaming this way and that way
calling out and sneering.
A black cat appears from nowhere
and then slinks into the netherworld.
And at sunrise all the lost, lonely souls disappear

– until the next halloween ….

news on the march the end
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Posted in Health, News, Reading, Science

At My Window Sad and Lonely (1998) – Billy Bragg & Wilco (written by Woody Guthrie)

Posted on October 29, 2023 by observationblogger — 53 Comments
Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy

Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy alternated lead vocals on Mermaid Avenue; the iconic album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. Today’s song At My Window Sad and Lonely was sung by Jeff Tweedy and it comes a year after I wrote about my favourite song from Mermaid Avenue – California Stars. More information about the album can be found in my previous articles inc. Birds and Ships (feat. Natalie Merchant). Guthrie’s recording career was more or less over by 1947, but his estate approached Billy Bragg in 1995 to set Woody’s handwritten, unrecorded lyrics to music.

As I write about today’s song At My Window Sad and Lonely, I draw parallels with my current disposition. I let the devil in the room yesterday; only momentarily but I’ve been paying for it since, and it has affected my sleep tonight. It was a nano second temptation, and it crossed my mind to entertain it which I was part way to fulfilling. Thankfully it didn’t come to fruition.
There’s a scantily known ballad by Springsteen called ‘With Every Wish‘ (comes a Curse). The older I get, the more this truism rings true. I’m wallowing in my Sad and Lonely state and wondering how the puppeteer (The Logos) can take charge again and empty me of these harmful desires. 

At my window, sad and lonely
Oft times do I think of thee
Sad and lonely and I wonder
Do you ever think of me?

Every day is sad and lonely
And every night is sad and blue
Do you ever think of me, my darling
As you sail that ocean blue?

Will you find another sweetheart
In some far and distant land?
Sad and lonely, now I wonder
If our boat will ever land

Ships may ply the stormy oceans
And planes may fly the stormy sky
I’m sad and lonely, but remember
Oh I’ll love you till I die

Since the success of Mermaid Avenue (1998), a second and third volume of recordings were released, in 2000 and 2012 respectively. It culminated in Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. A DVD containing the documentary Man in the Sand (1999), that functions as both a biography of Guthrie and a chronicle of the creation of Billy Bragg & Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue is included as a fourth disc. You can view the trailer of it here.
Throughout the film, Nora Lee Guthrie – the daughter of the legendary American folk musician narrates the story of her father’s life, while Bragg is seen traveling to various locations relevant to Woody Guthrie’s life, such as Okemah, Oklahoma (his hometown), Pampa, Texas (where he met his first wife), and New York City (where he made his home after leaving California). 

Reference:
1. Mermaid Avenue – Wikipedia
2. Man in the Sand – Wikipedia

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Posted in Music

Amor de Loca Juventud (1997) – Buena Vista Social Club (written by Rafael Ortiz)

Posted on October 28, 2023 by observationblogger — 14 Comments

Amor de Loca Juventud (The Love of Crazy Youth) is the second song to feature here from the music documentary Buena Vista Social Club. Director Wim Wenders and guitarist Ry Cooder teamed up again (after Paris, Texas) to celebrate Cuba’s “musical golden age” between the 1930s and 1950s.
Today’s track is traditional music of Cuba called ‘Bolero‘ which possesses a romantic cadence and sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. Bolero music was born as a form of romantic folk poetry cultivated by a new breed of troubadour from Santiago de Cuba, the trovadores. Pepe Sánchez is considered the father of this movement and the author of the first bolero, Tristezas (sadnesses), written in 1883.

Below is a crude English translation (first two verses) of Amor de Loca Juventud (The Love of Crazy Youth):

The illusions of yesterday are already dying
That I satisfied with lustful love
And they also die with their cruel promises
The inspiration that one day I gave her

With candor I gave my entire soul
Thinking about our idyll consecrating
Without thinking what she was looking for was in me
It was the love of crazy youth

Amor de Loca Juventud was written by Cuban guitarist and composer Rafael Ortiz Rodríguez (image inset) in 1975. He transcended Cuban music because of his excellent quality as a composer.

Anyone who is even remotely interested in musical heritage should find Buena Vista captivating. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The group Buena Vista Social Club was named after the homonymous members’ club in the Buenavista quarter of Havana, a popular music venue in the 1940s. To showcase the popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero (aforementioned) and danzón; they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for many years.

References:
1. Buena Vista Social Club – Wikipedia
2. Bolero – Wikipedia
3. Rafael Ortiz Rodríguez – Cubanos Famosos

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Posted in Music

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) – Rob Cohen (Friday’s Finest)

Posted on October 27, 2023 by observationblogger — 12 Comments

My first encounter with the phenomenon that is Bruce Lee was when I was in my early-teens visiting my cousins in Sydney back in the mid-eighties. My older cousin Anthony was a Rugby league prospect for the North Sydney Bears and his father Fred was a former Judo champion in his homeland Germany. They both had a penchant for watching Bruce Lee movies. I didn’t share their enthusiasm glimpsing at the grainy-grindhouse footage on their VHS tapes but years later I eventually came ’round. Today’s movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a solid and enjoyable introduction for those unfamiliar with the history of martial arts in Western cinema and Bruce Lee’s impact on it and his legacy towards popularising Martial arts.

IMDB Storyline:

Based on the life and career of Martial Arts superstar, Bruce Lee. Haunted by demons. Bruce was taught Martial arts at childhood. Bruce then was told by his father to flee to the United States. There, he opened up a Martial Arts school, then was chosen to be the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato. Then, his big movie career that included “The Big Boss” and “Enter the Dragon”. Fighting many enemies along the way, including his childhood demon.

The brief but eventful life of actor and martial arts trailblazer Bruce Lee is portrayed in this drama, based on the biography written by his widow Linda Lee Caldwell. The film still causes some consternation with some Bruce Lee fans because in true Hollywood style it tinkers with facts, misses out other notable points and has some timeline issues. Yet if you can accept it as a “painted always in a positive light” homage piece more than a definitive biography then you can find some semblance of the man and his short life. The story follows the principal events in Bruce Lee’s life and shows us the man behind the martial arts, covering his inner turmoils and personal struggles as well as his famous physical ability.

The scene I have presented below is one of my favourites from the film. It entails Bruce Lee’s comeback from a debilitating back injury where during a martial arts tournament run by Ed Parker he challenges anyone in the vicinity to disprove his martial arts method and philosophy (Jeet Kune Do) by lasting more than 1 minute in the ring against him.

The core of Jeet Kune Do is the interception of the opponent, making corresponding responses or counterattacks that strike at incoming attacks. JKD also incorporates a set of principles to help practitioners make instant decisions and improve the physical and mental self, being intended to have practical applications in life without the traditional routines and metaphysics of conventional martial arts.

Tao of Jeet Kune Do – Wikipedia

Interesting Trivia from IMDB:

  • In this film, when Linda tells Bruce that she’s pregnant, a musical band is visible in the background. The lead singer of this band is played by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s real-life daughter.
  • Dedicated to the memory of Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee, who died (March 31, 1993) due to an accidental shooting on the set while filming The Crow (1994). Filming was completed and the Dragon was less than two months away from opening when Brandon Lee died.
  • When Bruce Lee is preparing to fight the martial artist chosen to stop him from teaching the “Guai Lo”, their warmup is obviously derived from Way of the Dragon (1972): Lee is exercising his flexibility, while his opponent, like Chuck Norris, is instead practicing a series of “rehearsed routines.”
  • This film was released during the 20th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death on July 20, 1973.
  • When Jerome Sprout knocks on the door to Bruce’s school, you can see the name of the school is Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. Lee Jun Fan is Bruce’s given name.
  • Rob Cohen learnt that for the first two years of Bruce Lee’s life, his parents had dressed and passed him off as a girl to protect him from a superstitious Chinese belief that demons target first-born sons. When Rob Cohen first met Linda Lee Cadwell after giving her the screenplay, she asked how Cohen had learnt about Bruce’s demon. Cadwell said Bruce told her he felt as though a demon was trying to drag him away when he collapsed ten weeks before his death.
  • None of the custom-made sound effects in the fight scenes were used twice.

References:
1. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story – Wikipedia
2. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

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Posted in Movies and TV

Bright Eyes (1978) – Art Garfunkle (written by Mike Batt)

Posted on October 26, 2023 by observationblogger — 7 Comments

I am still elated by the video-call my kids and I had with my brother last night. Like Dylan sang in Long and Wasted Years: ‘It’s been such a long, long time‘. Any-hows, today’s featured track Bright Eyes couldn’t be more apt and timelier because it embodies the spirit of our childhood bond. Bright Eyes will forever be etched into our memories.

Bright Eyes was written (and performed) by English singer-songwriter Mike Batt. The music from his criminally underrated record Tarot Suite remains as much a part of our upbringing as any other. Bright Eyes was magnificently sung by Art Garfunkel and became a huge hit around the World except in the US where it barely made a ripple.

Is it a kind of a dream?
Floating out on the tide
Following the river of death downstream
Oh, is it a dream?

There’s a fog along the horizon
A strange glow in the sky
And nobody seems to know where it goes
And what does it mean?
Oh, is it a dream?

Bright eyes, burning like fire
Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes

Bright Eyes was rearranged as a pop song from its original form in the 1978 British animated adventure drama film Watership Down. It topped the UK Singles Chart for six weeks (No. 2 in Australia) and became Britain’s biggest-selling single of 1979, selling over a million copies. In the United States, it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100. Richard Adams, author of the original novel, is reported to have hated the song. The original director of Watership John Hubley requested the song be about death. Batt described recording the song as “one of the most difficult sessions” of his career (due to different musical opinions).

Both Art Garfunkel and Mike Batt’s version are presented below. I hope you enjoy them and thanks for reading.

References:
1. Bright Eyes (Art Garfunkel song) – Wikipedia

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Posted in Music

Narrative, Metaphor and Hyper-Novelty (Special Edition)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by observationblogger — 4 Comments

Entropy, Energy & The 4th Frontier: Chris Martenson on DarkHorse

We are a fish out of water perpetually – flopping from boat to boat.

The following is paraphrased from 34:15 in the above discussion:

Chris Martenson:
We (us humans) are narrative machines. We used to sit around the campfire and tell stories. Stories are so immensely powerful to the point that thousands of years later they are still encoded deep into our psyche and provide valuable lessons and moral frameworks. So, narratives are one layer about the story.

I stumbled across a book by George Lakoff and it’s about metaphors (Metaphors We Live By (1980) by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson). It’s that we operate at the level of metaphors and the narratives are a verbal-cognitive layer on top of that. The metaphor is an embodied concept. The concept is vague, but really powerful and drives a lot. So, one of the pieces that they put in there is the metaphor for an argument. In western discourse the metaphor for an argument is ‘War’. We are going to have a battle of the minds. A lot of people are going to shy away from it because they don’t like conflict. An argument is conflict; winners and losers; there’s blood. And he said, what if there are cultures out there where the metaphor for argument is a ‘dance’. And the idea of the dance is that the two parties will try to come up with the best possible choreography given the tempo, the music and the air that night. It’s a whole different metaphor.

The sole sickness we are facing, is that our core metaphors, we have lived by for thousands of years are now broken. ‘Be fruitful and multiply’, ‘have dominion over the earth’ – these are all good things until you reach about 6, 7 billion people…. It’s clear that we have problems. In order to get ourselves cognitively organised and rallied around them we have to have a way of articulating them without it tripping all of our amygdala brain stem land mines – where you can’t do that because it’s too challenging. This is one of the prime tensions we have right now.

Then there’s an overlay on top of all of that. We have people ‘monkeying’ around with our cognitive landscape conducting 5th generation warfare specifically to target our ability to make sense of things. (see Abuse of Language). So, we are already at a sensemaking bottleneck. We have important decisions to make yet we have people trying to hobble us.

Brett Weinstein at 43:00:
The idea of Hyper-novelty is that our speciality as human beings is dealing with novel circumstances and coming up with mechanisms to profit in the midst of them. It’s what we do. Our evolving content is not housed in our genomes, it is housed in our cognitive layer which is passed along as ‘culture’ which is innovated through ‘consciousness’. The creature that adapts really well to new stuff that its ancestors never saw, that’s us – human beings..that’s our specialty. But…our rate of change is so high that we cannot keep up with it. Even our amazing capacity to adapt is outstripped by the rate of technological change and so we are constantly using tools that are inappropriate for the environment we find ourselves in. We are a fish out of water perpetually – flopping from boat to boat.

I love the idea you borrow from Lakoff that ‘war’ (and not dance) is a metaphor that is deeply rooted in our discussions where we have conflicting interests. Dance is not always the right metaphor, but sometimes it’s exactly the right one. Why? Because ‘Dance’ does contain the ability to explore the tension between the cooperative and the competitive. Who are the ultimate dance partners? They are romantic partners and have potentially tremendously overlapping interests, but never perfectly. One of the greater insights of evolutionary biology that we picked up on in the latter half of the 20th century was about these places where we see to creatures that have great alignment, but not perfect alignment and it predicts all kind of things.

I love your point. Are we missing a metaphor that allows us to even think about the puzzle properly? My sense is because of Hyper-novelty we have a language that is hobbling us in our ability to even articulate what it is that we face.

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Posted in News, politics, Reflections

Old Pine (2012) – Ben Howard

Posted on October 24, 2023 by observationblogger — 27 Comments

I am at loss how I came across Old Pine by Ben Howard, but I’m sure glad I did. It’s as though it could have belonged on the movie soundtrack Leave no Trace (2018) or co-joined a Richie Valens acoustic number at Woodstock. It did feature on the Sky1 TV series Starlings.
Old Pine is from British singer-songwriter Ben Howard’s debut studio album Every Kingdom. It feels pure, spiritual and a little bit hidden; like the morning light creeping through the stillness.

[Verse 1]
Hot sand on toes, cold sand in sleeping bags
I’ve come to know that memories
Were the best things you ever had
The summer shone, beat down on bony backs
So far from home, where the ocean stood
Down dust and pine cone tracks
We slept like dogs down by the fire side
Awoke to the fog where all around us
The boom of summertime

[Chorus]
We stood
Steady as the stars in the woods
So happy-hearted and the warmth
Rang true inside these bones
And as the old pine fell we sang
Just to bless the morning

Similar to the ending song of Leave No Trace – Moon Boat which featured here July 6, 2023: Old Pine crafts emotions about life, the choices we’ve made, good and bad. It’s a mixed feeling of nostalgia, sadness and happiness. His debut studio album Every Kingdom which Old Pine appears reached number four on the UK Albums Chart and was certified triple platinum.

Howard began writing songs when he was eleven. In an interview with American Songwriter, he stated that when he was a kid he started playing guitar because he liked to put words together and make stuff up. “I was quite an imaginative little kid I guess. So your standard little love songs turned into your standard adolescent love songs. I think you start getting your own take on things when you’re a late teen. That’s when everything changes’.

Reference:
1. Old Pine (song) – Ben Howard
2. Ben Howard – Wikipedia

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Posted in Music

16/10 – 22/10/23 Dating Advice, Fediverse & ‘Jacked’ Kangaroo

Posted on October 23, 2023 by observationblogger — 6 Comments

Welcome to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world.

Matthew McConaughey gives dating advice to Lex Fridman
Video interview extract at Lex Clips

I love Matthew’s honesty about finding love late in life, accepting yourself, and letting that guide you, instead of forcing a relationship that might not work out in the end.

This was a beautiful convo and amazing palette cleanser for all the horrible men vs women podcasts I see. Nothing about how a woman or a man should act to attract a mate etc….just two people talking about love and what transpired for them in their life.

Hello Fediverse!
Blog article by Mike Smith at Self Aware Patterns

This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it.

As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, choosing a social media platform has historically been more about who was on that platform than its feature set.

But one trend offers the chance of upending that calculation: interoperability. If someone on service A can follow and interact with people on service B or any other service, then, similar to using email or the straight web, everyone can be free to choose the platform of their choice. The biggest new factor in the calculation might be whether a particular service participates in that interoperability.

WordPress.com’s announcement means they’ll be part of that broad federation. 
Read more by Mike Smith at Self Aware Patterns here.

Mildura man fights off ‘jacked’ kangaroo to save his dog from drowning
News article at ABC News Australia

View video at bottom of post.

A Mildura man’s story has gone viral, after he got into a “tussle” with a kangaroo that had his dog trapped in a headlock. 

news on the march the end
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Posted in News, Reflections, Sport and Adventure

A Thousand Stars (1960) – Kathy Young & The Innocents

Posted on October 22, 2023 by observationblogger — 21 Comments

I found A Thousand Stars at Max’s blog – PowerPop. I would encourage you to read his article in the link below:

I don’t know how many people know this song but it took me twenty years to find it. I heard it in 1986 on an oldies station. I just caught the middle to the end and it intrigued me. It was haunting to me at the time the few times I heard it.

Every time they would play it (and it wasn’t much) I wouldn’t catch who it was…it never dawned on me to call the station and ask. It took me till around 2008 to remember enough of the song to track it down…

Kathy Young was only 15 years old in 1960 when this song hit. It (A Thousand Stars) peaked at No. 3 in the Billboard 100. This was their one and only top ten hit. It was written by Eugene Pearson.

Kathy Young made a return to music in the mid-1990s and has since then continued to perform to the present day. 

Max at PowerPop

A Thousand Stars

A thousand stars in the sky like the stars in your eyes
They say to me that there’ll never be
No other love like you-oo for me-e-e
A thousand stars in the sky make me realize
You are the one love that I‘ll adore
Tell me you love me
Tell me you’re mine once more (once more, once mo-o-ore)
Each night I count the stars in the sky
Hoping that you aren’t telling me lies
you’re with me tonight, I’m captured by your charms
Oh, pretty baby, won’t you hold me in your arms?
A thousand stars in the sky make me realize
You are the one love that I‘ll adore
Tell me you love me
Tell me you’re mine once more (once more, once mo-o-ore)
Each night I count the stars in the sky
Hoping that you aren’t telling me lies
you’re with me tonight, I’m captured by your charms
Oh, pretty baby, won’t you hold me in your arms?
A thousand stars in the sky make me realize
You are the one love that I‘ll adore
Tell me you love me
Tell me you’re mine once mo-o-re (I-I-I’m yours)

Kathy Young with The Earth Angels performing Kathy’s hit “A Thousand Stars” during the festival of this genre celebrated at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in May 2010.

References:
1. A Thousand Stars – Wikipedia
2. Kathy Young – Wikipedia

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Posted in Music

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