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At the furniture company where I work, the only way to get up and downstairs has been named, by me, The Stairs of Doom. The stairs of doom are a rickety ladder on a slight angle, with a railing. The stairs of doom are so well used that a deep depression has been worn into the center of each step. Or maybe they're just made of cheap wood.

The stairs of doom are also covered in a thick layer of dust. I don't know why the dust isn't knocked off by people walking on the stairs of doom. Actually the guys don't really walk on the stairs of doom, at least not down. They slide down the rails like kids on a banister. Actually more like Batman entering the Bat Cave. I descend slowly, very slowly and carefully and fearfully. It's not so bad when I'm wearing good shoes, like my vogs with thick chunky soles. If I'm wearing my Rocketdogs, little more than slippers, I feel like I'm going to slip in the dust and fall off with every step.

In the normal course of events I work in the office, downstairs, and rarely have to use the stairs of doom. Once every couple of weeks at most. However, my boss is out for a few weeks and asked me to come in every day to handle phone calls and email. Since my boss isn't there, if anything comes up that I don't have the answer to, I have to find the guy who makes that part of the furniture and ask him. Most of the production area is upstairs, so ... the stairs of doom. Over and over. At least a dozen times today. It's not my favorite part of the job.

Actually it's not true that the stairs of doom are the only access to the upstairs. There's also a freight elevator, to which I do not have a key. Today one of the guys showed me that the key is only necessary to go up. Anyone can use the freight elevator to go down to the first floor. However, I would feel like an idiot riding the elevator all day long just because I'm scared of the stairs of doom. And besides it's wasteful of electricity. Still, I think I will ride the elevator when I'm carrying something. That makes it harder to hang onto the rail, which makes the stairs of doom feel even more treacherous.

I think tomorrow I'm going to wear my vogs again. And find a broom and sweep the dust off the stairs of doom.

December 2 movie: Dangerous When Wet. Esther Williams and Fernando Lamas costar in this movie about a family of health nuts from Arkansas who try to swim the English Channel. The family (including Williams Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood) are quite funny, as is Jack Carson as a snake oil salesman who sponsors the trip.

My main problem with the movie is Fernando Lamas' character. In short, he's a dick. Why Williams' character would have fallen for him is beyond me. It's hard to believe he and Williams eventually married after meeting on this set. For her sake I hope the actor wasn't like the character.

I was so annoyed by Lamas' character that I almost turned the movie off. Which would have been a shame because the sequence where Williams crosses the Channel is genuinely dramatic. There's also a fun dream sequence where Williams swims with Tom and Jerry and other cartoon characters.

November 30 movie: The Great Lie. Another movie I never miss an opportunity to watch. Wonderful melodrama about Bette Davis and Mary Astor fighting over George Brent, and Davis raising Astor's baby. In the intro Robert Osborne said that Mary Astor played the piano for herself, which I do not believe. Astor was carefully filmed from angles that avoided showing her hands.

November 29 movie: That's Entertainment. We ate take-out from the Q Shack and watched this after we drove back from Thanksgiving in Delaware. What a nice way to relax after a long drive. It starts with clips from Hollywood Revue of 1929 which we just saw a couple of months ago.

November 25 movie: Support Your Local Sheriff! Funny western parody starring James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, the wonderful Harry Morgan, and Bruce Dern hiding behind a big bushy beard. At first I thought this was going to be too wacky for my taste. But I got into the spirit of it pretty quick. The role -- easy-going cowboy with a wry sense of humor who gets away with it because he kicks ass -- was perfect for Garner, and he played it many times. The first time I ever saw him in a comedy western was the Maverick remake with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster.

November 25 movie: The African Queen. I didn't plan on watching this but I came across it and I couldn't resist.

November 25 movie: Whipsaw. Drama starring Myrna Loy as a reluctant crook, and Spencer Tracy as an undercover cop. It had some nice moments but was overall fairly predictable.

Thanksgiving was great, though too short. We left for Delaware Thursday morning and got back to Durham last night. I tried a new biscuit recipe while I was up there, using half-and-half instead of buttermilk, and cut really small, about 1" diameter. Turned out pretty good if I do say so! My mother actually has biscuit cutters in multiple sizes, so cutting them was a snap. She also had a tub of whipped honey which turned out to be the perfect thing for biscuits. They had some extra smokey bacon too, which made it a meal.

Today Georg and I are doing a four-hour Divaville Lounge. We took advantage of the holiday, when a bunch of DJs aren't around, to commandeer the show after mine for the week. No theme per se although we will be playing a bunch of songs about food. We'll be on from 2 to 6 pm. 88.7 if you're local, wxdu.org if you're not.

November 24 movie: Lady Be Good. Musical/romantic comedy starring Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern and Robert Young. Sothern and Young are a songwriting team who keep getting divorced. Costars Red Skelton, Lionel Barrymore and John Carroll. The movie is so-so, but worth watching for a couple of dance numbers by the fabulous Berry Brothers. Also, Eleanor Powell dances with a trained dog, which is adorable.

Here's the Berry Brothers' biggest number in the movie:

Check out Phil Silvers as the emcee who introduces them.

November 23 movie: It Happened in Hollywood. This was a silly comedy starring Richard Dix and Fay Wray as silent movie stars who can't make the transition to talkies. The best part of the movie is a party scene featuring dozens of major Hollywood stars, all played by their actual regular stand-ins. It was so much fun to see the stand-ins for Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and others. And the stand-ins all looked like they were having a blast. They imitate the stars: "Dietrich" wears black tie, "Garbo" dresses like Queen Christina and talks about wanting to be alone, "Chaplin" does the Little Tramp, and "Crosby" even lip-synches a song.

Another movie I never miss an opportunity to watch. Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell's only movie together. They have no romantic chemistry at all; their rapport is more collegial, two people who are the best at what they do, sharing their mutual love of their art.

The "Begin the Beguine" number at the end gets rave reviews, but I find the staging a bit overblown which makes it hard for me to enjoy the dancing. My favorite numbers are Fred's solo "I've Got My Eyes On You," and the one where Eleanor and Fred tap dance together in a cafe. They just look like they're having so much fun together.

Here's a Youtube clip of the latter. Check out the moment about 2 minutes in where she spins him.

November 20 movie: The Young In Heart. This movie had no connection to the Doris Day movie Young At Heart. This was an earlier movie, a charming comedy about a family of con artists and the old lady they move in on, who eventually reforms them. It lacked the edge of The Lady Eve but I enjoyed it immensely. Starred Janet Gaynor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Paulette Goddard, and Roland Young and Billie Burke the year after Topper.

The weirdest thing about the movie was the appearance of "The Flying Wombat," a car company with whom Roland Young takes a job as a salesman. An old friend of mine is mysteriously associated with the wombat. When they first mention the Flying Wombat (I think the line was "Be at the Wombat offices at 9 am tomorrow") I was like, "did he just say wombat?" And when they showed the Wombat business card I literally jumped out of my seat to hit the record button. Images of the Wombat logo/storefront only show up a couple of times, but there is a lot of hilarious dialogue like "As soon as we get around this bend, I'll show you what a Wombat can really do!" and "He'll never give up his beloved Wombat." Hilarious, that is, if you know a wombat.

November 20 movie: Dark Victory. They showed a run of movies with "Dark" in the title that day on TCM. Or maybe it was movies about blindness. Anyway, I can't resist an opportunity to see this movie. "I think I’ll have a large order of prognosis negative!"

November 20 movie: The Dark Angel. The plot of this movie was pretty annoying. Fredric March loves Merle Oberon, then he's blinded in WWI, and he pretends to be dead because of the shame! And he wants her to be happy and have a full life! And clearly the best way to make her happy is to make her think the love of her life is dead.

I guess I should have hated this movie, but I love March and Oberon and also Herbert Marshall (the other point of the love triangle). Worth watching for the performances.

I think the interview show went well! It's kind of weird how dull the actual show is, compared to the frenetic activity of trying to get it ready. All I had to do was stand there, read off the flowsheet, and pop in the CDs. Since the whole thing is planned out in advance I didn't even bring all my CDs, just the ones I needed. Everything went smoothly, no flubs, and the interviewee's daughter-in-law called during the show to say how much she was enjoying it.

One thing I will do differently next time: say "uh-huh" much much less during the interview. I tried not to say it at the time, but when I listened to the raw audio it seemed like all I could hear was UH-HUH every five seconds. Fortunately I was able to edit almost all of them out. The trick will be to get the interview without saying "uh-huh" and without making the interviewee nervous. Because that verbal throat-clearing is so normal in ordinary conversation. Omit it and the interview sounds really weird while it's happening. A few months ago the Graedons interviewed me for their headache show, and I have to say the lack of verbal acknowledgement was disconcerting. They just sat there staring at me while I was talking, and I kept wondering if I was saying something wrong or what. It wasn't until I heard the raw audio from this show that I realized why. I'm going to have to think about how to put an interviewee at ease without any "uh-huhs."

Next Sunday Georg and I are doing a 4-hour program, from 2 to 6. We took advantage of the holiday break to grab the show after mine. And then the week after (Dec 7) is Sammy Davis Jr.'s birthday! I can't wait. I've been thinking about this show for months. I'm rereading the biography Black and White, and I'm going to try and finish Yes I Can! the "autobiography" my brother-in-law gave me. That way I'll have plenty to say during the show besides just "wow I love Sammy."

It's going to be hard to narrow the music down to just two hours. I like to plan these tribute shows out in advance so the playlist can follow a progression, rather than just being, you know, a bunch of songs I like.

Tomorrow is another big interview on Divaville Lounge: Rod Hungerford, who served in the US Navy during World War II, was kind enough to talk to me about his experiences. The interview was recorded in September and was intended for Veteran's Day. But life got in the way: I had to postpone it a week because of the election, and then another week because I was sick.

I hope everyone who's interested in WWII or wartime music will tune in! Tomorrow from 2-4 pm eastern time. 88.7 if you're local, or the webcast at wxdu.org.

So the show is tomorrow, and I've spent all day preparing the audio. Rod was great to interview, articulate with lots of vivid memories to share. I hope that comes across in the show. Georg has been wonderful, helping me with music selection while I've been working on the interview. We have to pick out songs to go in between the talksets, and also instrumentals to play underneath each interview segment. The songs have to relate to the interview content, and the instrumentals have to be the right length and also the right tone. For instance you wouldn't want a swingy upbeat number under the part where Rod talks about his brother being a prisoner of war in the Philippines for three years. And the entire program has to time out to exactly 2 hours. Well actually, I've noticed that most songs end a few seconds before the track ends. In other words there's about 5 seconds of dead air at the end of each track. On my flowsheet I like to pad these shows out to about 2:01, to make up for those few seconds I'm losing at the end of each track. Otherwise the actual show would run short. So there's more to the music selection than you might think. It can get complicated.

I just finished editing the last interview segment, and I'm tired. In the morning I'm going to put the music and the talksets together, make sure it all still times out, and burn it onto CD. And then I'll be ready to go! Because half the show is pre-recorded, I won't have to talk hardly at all. I'm glad because my voice is still bothering me.

November 19 movie: Comanche Station. Enjoyable Western in which Randolph Scott rescues a woman from the Comanches and takes her back to her husband, who has offered a hefty ransom for her return. To get through hostile territory they have to travel with a group of crooks who want the ransom for themselves.

November 19 movie: The Naked Prey. Gripping adventure movie starring Cornel Wilde as a Boer alone in the wilderness, trying to escape a group of Africans determined to hunt him down and kill him. A word of warning: there's an incredibly violent scene early on where Wilde's party (I think they're ivory hunters) are captured by the Africans and tortured to death, with only Wilde escaping. I think it's the most grotesque thing I've ever seen on TCM. I'm not going to describe it because frankly, I haven't been able to get it out of my head and I see no reason to inflict that on you. But just to give you an idea, the commenters on IMDB were all in agreement that this movie must have been a major inspiration for Apocalypto.

Anyway, once we got past the horrifying torture scene, the movie was exciting. If a bit silly, that Cornel Wilde could successfully evade a half-dozen African hunters on their own territory. Apparently the movie is largely based on the true story of an American pioneer who escaped from Native Americans, but Wilde couldn't afford to make that movie, and then he got the opportunity to work in South Africa so he retooled the script for the new location. Also, there's a lot of animal death in the movie (everything from elephants being shot to a python killing an iguana to a big toad eating a little toad) but it was all stock footage. So yes, those animals did all die, but none of them were killed for the movie.

November 18 movie: The Locked Door. Barbara Stanwyck's first talkie! The movie starts with a bang, as Stanwyck visits a "rum boat" (apparently this was a small cruise ship loaded with alcohol with went out into international waters for the evening, thus evading Prohibition) with a nefarious character who tries to rape her. Fast forward a year, Stanwyck is married and respectable and her sweet young sister in law is dating ... dun dun! The evil guy! The evil guy tries to ruin the sister, he gets killed, everyone takes the rap to try and protect everyone else, and it's all very exciting up to the ridiculous ending that ties everything up in a neat little package.

I can't recommend this unless you're really into Barbara Stanwyck or Zasu Pitts who has a small, funny role. The acting is terrible; if this had been the first Stanwyck movie I ever saw, I don't think I would have bothered with another. If you're mildly curious about Stanwyck's early, sleazy pre-code movies, watch Baby Face or Night Nurse.

November 18 movie: Western Union. Randolph Scott and Robert Young star in a Western about a crew laying telegraph lines on the frontier. I was enjoying the movie until the horrible racist portrayal of Native Americans showed up. It was bad enough that we turned off the movie. I used to think all Westerns from that long ago were racist, but John Ford made movies around that time that treated Native Americans like human beings. Why couldn't this movie?