I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.
In the past decade, I’ve become very interested in films about World War I. Cole Haddon, on his Substack page, declares that “‘The Big Parade’ is one of the first great anti-war films in cinema, but also a perfect demonstration of what he calls ‘narrative mirroring’ in storytelling.”
The movie was directed by King Vidor in 1925. It’s, of course, a silent film and is black and white. It starts in many ways, like other WWI films I’ve watched, such as the 2018 Peter Jackson documentary They Shall Not Grow Old and the 2022 remake of All Quiet On The Western Front, showing a certain glorification of war. This is the Good Fight. Isn’t it going to be wonderful? Once you get down to the brass tacks—not until the last 60 minutes of this 2.5-hour film—does the fighting become the brutalizing event that war is.
Some of the earlier scenes with Jim (John Gilbert), his army buddies Bull (Tom O’Brien), and the expert spitter Slim (Karl Dane) are on the verge of slapstick. There’s a bit of romance involving Jim’s fiancee, Justyn (Claire Adams), and a young French woman Melisande (Renée Adorée).
Big hit
Haddon writes that The Big Parade, a title with multiple meanings, was “MGM’s biggest moneymaker until Gone with the Wind was released in 1939. The reason I think it’s worth your time to consider what I have to say about it is twofold: 1) the film has been beautifully restored and is available to watch for free on YouTube (link) and, more importantly, 2) the structure Vidor and his team of writers used.”
He notes: “Narrative mirroring involves repeating a story beat in a different context, an act of juxtaposition with the first that produces a new, deeper meaning…This repeated beat also tends to imbue similarly new, deeper meaning in the original story beat if/when the viewer returns to it. This happens consistently throughout The Big Parade.”
My fascination with WWI films is because, like most people, I understand World War I far less than the American Civil War or World War II.
Today is 11/11, the anniversary of the “war to end all wars,” which it didn’t.
By kind permiission of SMBC Comics. “Fixing Social Media”
The Sunday Stealing meme continues to steal from 200 questions.
Hobbies I’ve learned from a friend
Do I have hobbies? I suppose genealogy is a hobby, but I don’t know who I learned it from. My cousin Lisa’s much more into it than I am, and I probably picked up a few things from her, but my quest started separately. Back in the olden days, when I used to read comic books, I would blame that on my OLD friend Uthaclena. When I was a kid, I used to collect coins and stamps, but I don’t know who I learned those things from
My physical activity preferences
Earlier this week, I was walking down the street. This woman, who I did not know, said, “I haven’t seen you on your bicycle for a while,” which is true. I used to ride it all over the city limits. Somehow, I didn’t pull it out of the shed in 2023. In 2024, I told myself I should take it to the bike shop and get it fixed up, but the one closest to me, the Down Tube, closed recently, and I haven’t gotten around to schlepping it to another place to get it tuned up. Maybe I will do that before the end of the season, which is coming to a rapid close. Meanwhile, I walk.
MUSIC
Music I think is essential for everyone to hear.
I don’t think there’s any music that is essential for everyone to hear. I can tell you what I’ve been listening to recently. The Rascals had an album called Freedom Suite, and the first song was America The Beautiful. I also just listened to Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album, which has the unexpected hit Take Five. Randy Newman’s Political Science is something I’ve loved for years. Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way always seems to have an effect on me, as does the Beach Boys’ Until I Die.
Something I have to relearn every time I do it
Most things of an even minor mechanical basis baffle me. For instance, there’s a step ladder in my office as we speak, which I can put up, but I have the darndest time closing up. My wife could do so in seconds. I was at church last week, and we were moving tables from one room to another for an event. Neither the guy I was helping nor I could figure out how to collapse the legs. So we ended up rolling the table with the legs extended because it was just easier.
When I start thinking about holiday season planning
I have no holiday season plans. It’s all random. My wife talks to her mother or brother, and something develops, but an extended plan doesn’t exist.
Quirks & preferences I have about writing letters
I used to love writing letters. I still have a whole bunch of letters that I’ve received from when I went to college in the early 1970s until the end of the ’80s. In the later period, I have even the letters that I wrote back; I used carbon paper to keep the copy.
READING
If I had to limit my reading to only three genres, I’d pick…
History, historical fiction, and nerdy nonfiction books mostly about music
When joining teams, would I rather lead or follow
It depends on what the team is and how good the leadership is. I like to find my niche in most communities. I only want to lead it if it’s being run so badly that I feel compelled to take over.
What’s my dream concert, and who would be performing
I’m sure I don’t have a dream concert. Every concert I get to see always has something to recommend it.
The funniest, weirdest, silliest animal/pet I’ve ever met
I used to have a not-very-smart cat named Doris when I was in college. I used to say, “Doris, your mind is so porous.”
How has love changed for me over the years
We don’t have room for all that. Every relationship, romantic and otherwise, alters the trajectory.
A book, movie, or song that brings me a sense of peace
Every time I see a movie again, I see it differently. When I listen to music, I often hear it anew. I’m not sure “a sense of peace” applies. When I was involved in my Bible study, we read a lot of the Old Testament stuff, the war/ history section, which gave me no peace whatsoever.
NOMENCLATURE
Names I like but wouldn’t suit me.
I spent so much time establishing my name that picking another one doesn’t appeal to me. I spent time correcting the spelling of my first and last name; people put a D in Roger or an E at the end of Green. Several people would call me George because I think the letters in Roger and George are not dissimilar.
What’s a part of myself I’m still working to understand
Finding the balance between doing good for society and caring for myself remains challenging.
Something I love about myself today
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s my power of observation of some mundane things. For instance, a few weeks ago, I was walking home. There’s a police station about a block and a half from my house, and a cop car was pulling out of the parking space and driving down the road. It was dusk, and I could barely see the vehicle, so I flagged the car down and told the driver to turn on his lights.
Here’s another edition of The Titles Are The Same, But The Songs Are Different. The sentence Call Me can be taken at several levels of suggestiveness, as these tracks suggest.
Blondie, #1 pop in 1980. Interestingly, Blondie made other charts with different songs. The Tide Is High went to #3 on the adult contemporary charts, while Rapture went to #33 in the R&B charts in 1981.
Aretha Franklin, #13 pop, #1 RB for two weeks in 1970. Aretha wrote this.
Johnny Mathis, #21 pop in 1958. Mitch Miller produced the song. And if you know who Mitch Miller is, you’re likely of a certain vintage.
Chris Montez, #22 pop, #2 AC in 1966. Weird: I know this song, but not by this artist. The fact that it was written by Tony Hatch was a big hint. Petula Clark recorded it on an EP in 1965, but it failed to chart anywhere except Argentina.
Skyy, #26 pop, #1 RB for two weeks in 1982. Very dancable.
Tweet, #31 pop, #9 RB in 2002. Co-written by Missy Elliott, and produced by Timbaland.
Click, #35 pop in 1997. To my surprise, I had heard this before.
Dennis DeYoung, #54 pop, #5 AC in 1986. Written and produced by the singer. This is ALSO so eighties.
Too Short and Lil’ Kim, #90 pop, #30 RB in 1997. This is the NON-explicit version? Er, ah…This is from the 1997 movie Booty Call starring Jamie Foxx.
Variations
There’s also Call Me (Come Back Home) by Al Green, #10 pop, #2 RB for two weeks, which my Top Pop Singles book lists separately. No, he’s NOT my cousin, though I have made jokes to that effect.
Over a dozen other songs start with the words Call Me in the title. At least two reached the Top 10 in the rock and roll era, Call Me When You’re Sober by Evanescence, #10 in 2006, and the ubiquitous Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, #1 in 2012.
In 1910, Ada Jones and the American Quartet hit #1 with Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon, written by Irving Berlin. Ben Selvin hit #9 with Call Me Darling (Call Me Sweetheart, Call Me Dear) in 1931; the billing notes The Cavaliers, and the vocalist is Orlando Roberson.
The movie
There is a 1988 movie titled Call Me, directed by Sollace Mitchell, and starring Patricia Charbonneau, Stephen McHattie, and Boyd Gaines. Since there are over 900 movies and TV shows with the words Call Me in the title, I had to search for it by plugging in Boyd Gaines, who I vaguely remember from “a three-year (1981-84) stint as Mark Royer, the dental student who married Barbara Cooper (Valerie Bertinelli) on the long-running CBS sitcom ‘One Day at a Time.'”
As for the film, “A journalist agrees to meet an obscene caller at a bar, and ends up witnessing a murder.” The tagline: “He knows everything she never knew about herself. He could be everything she ever wanted . . . or feared!”
The IMDb is 5.3 On Rotten Tomatoes, there are two negative critics’ reviews, and the audience response was only 20% favorable. Still, some people sort of liked it. One viewer, giving it 2.5 stars out of five, acknowledged, “I am not entirely sure it completely makes sense, but it did keep me watching. ” One could rent or buy Call Me on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or Apple TV, not that you should.
All summer, I had been anticipating seeing the display What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine at the Norman Rockwell Museum in western Massachusetts. It opened on June 8 and ended on October 27. My wife and I finally got there on October 26th. It was worth the trip.
In many ways, it was even better that I went with my wife because she knew far less about the history of Mad Magazine than I did. She was unfamiliar with the history of the comic book, which became a magazine to skirt the Comics Code. Moreover, she didn’t read the magazine much, though her late brother John, only 14 months older, devoured it.
So, for me, the visit was more of a pilgrimage to see the “more than 250 original illustrations and cartoons gathered from artists and collectors” created by the “Usual Gang of Idiots” and other contributors.
I suspect that some may wonder why that museum, beyond the homage MAD did of Rockwell. But it has done lots of possibly unexpected shows, including Snow White, Roz Chast, and Andy Warhol.
Irreverent
From the museum website: “‘MAD was a groundbreaking magazine that influenced generations of readers and set the bar, and the tone, for contemporary humor and satire. We are delighted to present original selections from the magazine’s brilliant, irreverent artwork that captured and lampooned nearly all aspects of American life, and we are grateful to the collectors and artists who have made originals available for this exciting installation,’ said Norman Rockwell Museum Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett.”
“Subversive, silly, serious, and shocking—often all at once—MAD was controversial from the start. Ostensibly geared to kids, the publication touched on the big social, political, and cultural issues of the day: from McCarthyism and the Cold War to political corruption, consumerism, and celebrity culture to the defining social and liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s that continue to reverberate today. Adored by some, criticized and attacked by others, the publication enlightened and offended in equal measure. In MAD’s pages, sharp satire fused with a penchant for silly gags and a love of the double entendre, giving the magazine its unique and often, yes, ‘MADdening’ appeal.”
Surprising
But there were a couple of surprises for me. The MAD folks wanted Norman Rockwell to create the definitive Alfred E. Neuman drawing in 1963. He considered it, but ultimately, he wrote a letter back to MAD, which is on display. He had just left the Saturday Evening Post and was now doing more serious work for the covers of Look magazine, and he just couldn’t fit it in. One can tell, though, that he was clearly flattered.
The other big surprise for me was watching the What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine video at about 5:10. Teresa Burns Pankhurst from Albany, NY (!) met John Caldwell (d. 2016), a local artist and MAD contributor, who encouraged her to submit to MAD, which she successfully did. I knew John from when FantaCo, where I worked, published his Mug Shots. John was a sweet guy, and the story totally tracks.
“‘MAD was much more than a magazine to my generation. It represented a portal to adulthood,’ reflected exhibition co-curator Steve Brodner, widely considered among today’s foremost satirical illustrators and caricaturists. ‘MAD was a heat-seeking missile designed to blow open the hypocritical core of most things. In so doing, it engendered in readers an ability to come closer to what might today be called critical thinking.”
On June 21, 2021, it was announced that the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate New York (BTTUNY) will be a Resident Community Company at Capital Repertory Theatre (theREP) (251 N. Pearl Street).
“For eleven years of programming, [BTTUNY] (formerly named Soul Rebel Performance Troupe) has had no permanent performance space, which necessitated an ongoing search for venue availability for every show the company produced. With dedicated headquarters in Capital Repertory Theatre for their upcoming productions, Founding Artistic Director Jean-Remy Monnay states, ‘…it is very exciting to know that BTTUNY has a secure home base for all of our shows this season and into the future. To know that we can plan a full season of work because we don’t have to worry about ‘where’ the next production will take place, is just so wonderful. With this residency, BTTUNY can grow. Our programming can grow, and so can our audience base.'”
This is way cool. My wife and I have spent a fair amount of time in the “new” CapRep building. For the past few Octobers, it has hosted the Readers Theatre fundraiser for Wizard’s Wardrobe, an afterschool tutoring service in Albany’s South End .
Support
“In addition to providing space on both of their new stages (the Lauren and Harold Iselin Studio and the theatre’s Main Stage) – Capital Repertory Theatre (and the Proctors Collaborative) will provide some support to BTTUNY such as ticketing, marketing, and development support, and some production support as outlined in the agreement between BTTUNY and the Proctors Collaborative. However, BTTUNY remains its own company. All programming and decisions for BTTUNY remain in the hands of Monnay and his board of directors.”
Part of that ticketing support this year included offering season ticket holders of Cap Rep and Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady – this year, we took both! – complementary Try Me tickets. The Proctors Collaborative, including the Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, uses this method to promote programs that might not have as much visibility. BTW, I’ve never been to UPH and need to rectify that.
On the list of Try Me tickets was a BTTUNY production of Berta, Berta. What’s that? From playwright Angelina’ Cheri’s website: “After committing an unforgivable crime, Leroy is granted one final wish: a chance to make amends with his long-lost lover Berta. Their reunion swells from a quarrelsome conjuring of the past to an impassioned plot to escape their impending fate.
Song
“The play is inspired by the prison chain gang song ‘Berta, Berta’, which originated on Parchman Farm, Mississippi State Penitentiary. It is a fictional origin story.”
The CapRep /BTTUNY description is slightly different. To my mind, it’s more accurate: “Set in 1920s Mississippi, ‘Berta, Berta’ tells the story of Leroy, a Black man sent to jail for following a White woman down the street to help her–a supposed crime that never existed. Prison changes him, and upon getting out, he finds himself to be a true criminal. Before giving himself back up to the police, however, he is determined to make amends with his long-lost girlfriend, Berta. The play highlights themes of doomed love, tragic misunderstandings, a flawed and biased prison system and magical realism.”
Review
The review in the Berkshire Eagle by J. Peter Bergman is spot on. “On director Michael A. Lake’s three-room set, Sadrina Renee and Alvin Kershaw play their story with grace and passion and their very professional abilities. You can’t help falling in love with these troubled people as they live through their traumas and their needs…
“This is a play like no other I have seen, and I have seen a lot of plays in my lifetime. There is rarely a moment when the two players are still, and those are all utterly romantic. Lake has kept Berta as active as a person could be at two in the morning. Leroy, on the other hand, facing disgrace and arrest, is as calm a human being as possible, an amazing feat of control. The way in which he responds to her would make him as fidgety as Berta, but instead, his calm is sometimes chilling.”
The play’s short run ended in October, but BTTUNY will be performing more programs this season. Valley Song by Athol Fugard will be at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY, about an hour from Albany, on November 15-17 and 22-24.
They will perform Once On This Island on CapRep’s main stage from February 6 to 16, 2025. I saw this show at Proctors in 2020, just before the pandemic.
The final BTTUNY performance of the 2024-25 season will be Eclipsed by Danai Gurira from May 29 to June 8 in TheRep’s Iselin Studio. Based on the quality of Berta, Berta, I imagine these will be fine performances.
In the past decade, I’ve become very interested in films about World War I. Cole Haddon, on his Substack page, declares that “‘The Big Parade’ is one of the first great anti-war films in cinema, but also a perfect demonstration of what he calls ‘narrative mirroring’ in storytelling.”
Here’s another edition of The Titles Are The Same, But The Songs Are Different. The sentence Call Me can be taken at several levels of suggestiveness, as these tracks suggest.
On June 21, 2021, it was