Spur of the Moment

Still from the original silent version of Brokeback Mountain (1926)

Brokeback Mountain: The story of two shepherds who, instead of tending their flocks by night all seated on the ground, were back at the pup tent doing the beast with one back.

I got an advance look at this highly anticipated---ahem!---buddy flick last night on a video supplied by the film's distributors. But halfway through, I became so bored I was almost tempted to remove the traceable, watermarked DVD from the machine and put it up for sale on ebay and then sit back and watch the fun begin as the street outside my house filled up with video piracy police. THAT'S how bored I was. Like a glorified TASTEFUL version of Song of the Loon as directed by Martha Stewart.

And no wonder my attention strayed! There is only one (supposed) hot male-to-male action scene in the film. And on the copy I watched---on a new TV set---the scene was so dark (intentionally for this particular DVD?) that one could only guess what was going on. If the film is as commercially successful as it is touted to be, and the scene in question really is that tastefully beclouded, one can already hear Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch in mall cinemas all over America turning to one another and asking: "What's he a-doin' to him?" The only giveaway is the sound of a gob of spit qua lubricant hitting someone's hand (presumably Heath Ledger is the top)....KER-SPLATTT. And what my longtime saddle pal David Ehrenstein would like to know is, if these dudes had never before frolicked in the fields of sodom---as is tacitly implied---then how did Ledger know to do that? Sheep anyone?

Which brings up to the matter of the presumed straightness of both male leads---Ledger as "Ennis Del Mar" (!) and Jake Gyllenhaal as the aggressive bottom, "Jack Twist" (and turn). That being the case (and until I have pictures proving otherwise. . .), I half-suspected a disclaimer added to the end credits to the effect that "No heterosexuals were harmed during the making of this motion picture." Instead, all I got was Willie Nelson singing "He Was a Friend of Mine." I'll say!

These guys sneak off from their unsuspecting wives (that is until Jake's wife surreptitiously catches the two of them swapping spit. . .but that's another story) for an epic two-decades-long worth of fishing trips, in which nary a fish is caught and brought back home.

Every motion picture carries with it a freightload of ideological underpinnings. Even Scorchy with Connie Stevens. And while Bareback, er, Brokeback Mountain (sorry...couldn't help myself) in the final analysis will probably only set the cause of gay lib back a few minutes, still when it comes to that. . .every little bit hurts. The net result of Brokeback Mountain is a veritable Triumph of the Will of The Closet.

Joe Gage has nothing to worry about.

Opens wide---so to speak---after Christmas.

Yesterday I attended a delightful Sunday afternoon jazz concert given by two L.A. musical landmarks, the wonderful Howlett (“The Grass is Greener”) Smith, and Carole Simpson, whose lone major label album, on Capitol, All About Carole, has always been in print somewhere in the world during the nearly fifty years since she recorded it in 1957 (my CD copy comes from Czechoslovakia).

Though there have been a couple of other minor releases by Simpson, this is basically it. “All About” (cliquez ici s’il vous plait) has remained in print since its inception in (still) musically literate Japan where her minor-label Tops LP now fetches big bucks on the collectors' market.

The occasion had all the necessary requisites to get me out of my cocoon here at Oblivion Towers! 1. It was nearby 2. Free 3. In the daytime 4. And a priori certain to be a quality affair.

The venue was a Sunday afternoon holiday social held at a local Presbyterian Church here in L.A. (the city where the future comes to die) where Howlett and Carole serve in the capacity of Sunday morning hovering musical gurus. And while a collection plate was passed midway during the affair, still the five bucks I plopped into the plate was a small price to pay for the musical enjoyment proffered by these two musical vets.

Seated on risers behind twin electric pianos (she a Yamaha, he a Kurzweil) , the pair knocked out a dozen or so duo piano renditions of standards, alternating between solo and duet vocals, on such as “Getting to Know You,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “S’Wonderful,” “Jingle Bells” (“Can we make this jazz?,” Howlett mused aloud to Carole. And they did!), and an especially memorable solo by Howlett, WHISTLING, on “Come Sunday.”

Between numbers, Carole and Howlett (longtime musical compatriots) engaged in a kind of post-bop Bickersons badinage that the large assemblage seemed to appreciate almost as much as they did the music qua music.

Lots more transpired, including sweet but less than entirely memorable turns by some of Howlett’s students. Still. . . knowing what I know now, I’d travel far, at night yet, and pay big bucks to do it all over again!

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Time to drag out. . .

. . .the old xmas lps and CDs once more. Each year I pledge that after this yuletide I will consign the lot to a festive post-holiday bonfire. But still they prevail in the closet and even unto the crawlspace above my bedroom.

With the exception of a few titles, almost all of them---even the jazzier ones---are just not all that great. Maybe that's why I don't tend to listen to them the other months of the year? Could be.

One guilty pleasure that I do have a weakness for is the Stan Kenton xmas album. Curious, inasmuch as it is arranged by a decidedly non-jazzy arranger, the stodgy Ralph Carmichael. Maybe Stan had Bill Holman or Shorty Rogers go over the charts after Ralphie handed them in. The end result is a rather stately, yet swinging affair. I always play it while trimming the tree each year. It's---I believe they call it---a tradition around here at Oblivion Towers. In my heart of hearts, I'm guess I'm still such an old cornball.

One of my least favorite seasonal sets is by one of my most favorite singers, June Christy. The main problem with it is all the, errr, special material by a certain husband-and-wife songwriting team, who I keep incorrectly thinking is the same couple who made the Lee Marvin anti-kommie klassic, "Shack Out on Highway 101." But that's another pair.

How Junie manages to keep a straight face whilst intoning the lyric likes of "it's a terrible disgrace all this trash around the place" is a testament to. . .what? Grace under fire? When jazz singer Pinky Winters recreated half the Christymas album---with Pete Rugolo conducting!---a few years ago in a "live" setting," she privately vouchsafed to me of finding the melodies of the songs to be "needlessly complex." But Ms. Winters soldiered on and managed to make a nice festive holiday hash out of the stale fixins at her disposal.

Last year I compiled a CD titled "The Worstest Christmas Ever" to give out to all the friends that I had left. And that gesture pretty much put the Ki-bosh on all those relationships that I had remaining.

The, ahem, artists include: The Singing Dogs, as well as Cats, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, "Marlene" (whom I've always assumed was the terrific jazz vocalist Marlene Ver Planck recording under a nom de demi) singing "I Want to Spend Christmas With Elvis," and the centerpiece of the collection, Jimmy Jules and the Nuclear Soul System singing "Xmas Done Got Funky," which I reluctantly sold last year on ebay to a buyer in Italy for $160.00. And this track, recorded on a vanity label in the 1950s by a famed sister duo of the Twenties. Any guesses? A hint: it was incessantly played over the p.a. system during Mistress Lyndie (she's from West Virginia...I'm so ooo prouddd) England's b and d sessions at Abu Ghraib prison.

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