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January 30 movie: Road to Utopia. This was everything I hoped for. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in a silly comedy with great songs and lots of breaking the fourth wall. They didn't actually go to Utopia; instead the movie is set in the Yukon. My only disappointment: I was hoping for a song about Alaska for my Independence Day show, and there wasn't one. Alas!

Well okay, no, I'm not really in Wikipedia. I mean, there's no entry about me. The pages on derivative works and Dover Publications link to my copyright pages. It's at the bottom of the entry under "External Links." Just for fun I looked at my site in Google Analytics today -- I don't usually bother, I'm not trying to build traffic so I save my Google Analytics time for client sites -- and discovered a small yet steady flow of traffic coming from Wikipedia.

The derivative works page mentions my name; the Dover page does not. So, my name appears exactly once in Wikipedia.

Look at me, I'm a footnote in Wikipedia! Woo!

January 29 movie: The Getaway. My birthday dinner was cancelled on account of snow, and to make up for it I got to pick the movie that night and Georg watched it with me. So we watched the original The Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Directed by Sam Peckinpah, and I have to say it's not Peckinpah's best effort, nor McQueen's. It drags at times, and there are some serious logical flaws. On the other hand, there are good moments throughout. And the big set piece at the end, in the hotel, is classic Peckinpah.

The original was vastly superior to the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger version. Which almost goes without saying. You know, I just realized something -- both versions of this movie featured costars who were a couple in real life. Interesting coincidence. Also, I thought of two things about the remake which were better. First, the heavy in the beginning, the money man who sets up the robbery that goes bad, is played by James Woods in the remake. He's way too good at playing a sleazy, smug rich asshole.

Second, there's a part in the middle where they're on their way to El Paso, they're identified, they get away, go on to another town, are IDed again, have to abandon their car, flee on foot and end up in a garbage truck. In the remake this is condensed down to one action sequence in one town, which tightened up that part of the movie considerably.

As for the two bits in the remake I mentioned, with identifiable Joss dialogue. On the train, McQueen silently grabs the woman's bag and shoves it into the compartment. No dialogue. In the gun shop, the clerk never drops behind the counter and never says anything funny.

On the other hand, the part at the end with the old redneck is way, way funnier in the original. Because the old guy is played by Slim Pickins.

I finally got sick of being at home and drove to work today. We live on a busy road which connects to the interstate, and as expected I had no trouble, the roads were completely clear. Hillsborough was another story. Eno Mountain, the road my office is on, was a winding, hilly sheet of packed snow and ice. With a guardrail and a steep drop-off on one side. Fun!

I heard that yesterday a tractor trailer got stuck on Eno Mountain, blocking both lanes, and everyone had to turn back and go the long way around. You'd think they would have plowed after that happened. Then again, I don't know how many plows Hillsborough has. Today I went out to get lunch and on the way back, some idiot was riding up my tailpipe as we headed into the bad part of the road. I knew what was coming so I pulled halfway off the road and waved her past. She roared past me, went about 100 feet, hit the ice, slammed on her brakes and started fishtailing. Fool. I'm just glad she was ahead of me, not behind.

Now it's raining. Weather websites disagree as to how cold it will get tonight. So the rain will either melt off the rest of the snow, or turn into ice overnight. Can't wait to find out.

January 29 movie: I Was a Communist for the FBI. This was more what I had in mind. So over the top it was hilarious. The title says it all: Frank Lovejoy stars as an FBI agent working undercover as a member of the Communist party.

In this movie there are communists lurking under every rock. They twirl their handlebar moustaches, steeple their hands and murmur "Excellent" while plotting the overthrow of the US government. The Communist Party in the US is presented as being about the same as the Stalinist regime. Party members spy on each other constantly. When one party member objects to a violent tactic, another (an older woman) shrieks at her for being disloyal. And the party assassinates anyone who tries to quit.

According to the movie, the civil rights movement was a front for communists. In fact, the party leader explains that it's a fundraising tactic: they incite race riots, hopefully the rioting blacks kill somebody white, then when they get arrested the communists raise money for the "defense fund," except the communists keep the money. (Warning, this scene includes offensive terms for blacks.) Labor unions are also a front for communists, and in one scene, the communists start a riot at a strike, using lead pipes wrapped in Yiddish newspapers to beat the factory representatives, so the Jewish community will be blamed. Also, the communists have an army of schoolteachers infiltrating public schools. The teachers identify idealistic children and target them for indoctrination.

Everyone knows Lovejoy is a communist and he is universally reviled. His son disowns him, his brother beats him up at their mother's funeral, his neighbor tells him to stay away from the neighbor's son. Robert Osborne said that this movie was intended to placate HUAC, and the climactic scene, where Lovejoy finally gets to denounce the communists and vindicate himself, takes place at a HUAC hearing. After the hearing his son begs forgiveness for not trusting him, and he says he was proud of his son's intolerance. "Even when you hated me, I loved you for it." Just as with My Son John, there's no room in this world for differing points of view. You're either with us or against us, and anyone who's the tiniest bit liberal is either the dupe of communists, or being indoctrinated to become one.

The weird thing is that the movie accuses communists of cynically exploiting workers and minorities. But that's what the movie is doing. When the movie suggests that the civil rights and labor union movements were entirely driven by communist plots, it reduces the people in those movements to simpleminded puppets, unable to act on their own behalf.

I'm not an expert on this period of history, but I understand that the "red menace" wasn't invented out of whole cloth; there was a communist presence in the US, and some part of it had ties to the Soviet Union. And this movie is so far-fetched, so ludicrous, it makes that history seem less plausible.

January 28 movie: My Son John. I had heard about this movie and had never been able to see it before. It's an extreme example of early 50s anti-communist hysteria, a cautionary tale about a simple, salt-of-the-earth older couple (Helen Hayes and Dean Jagger) who realize that their son (Robert Walker) is a communist. Walker eventually confesses to being a traitor, although he's never accused of any actual wrongdoing. According to the movie, his crimes include:

• moving to the big city,
• not going to church anymore,
• using "two dollar words,"
• not playing football in high school,
• saying things like "our only hope is to learn to live with our fellow man. The globe is getting smaller. We must tear down our spite fences and love our neighbors," and "I love humanity. I love the downtrodden, the helpless minorities."
• wanting a "lasting peace,"
• having the apartment key of a woman who is arrested for being a communist.

The movie presents a world where all virtue resides in small towns, where people who don't fit in are suspect, where college is a recruitment ground for communism, where intellect and education are anti-American values which true patriots avoid. Early on the father tells Walker, "They tell us to be alert, and you talk like the people we're supposed to be alert against." And in the world of My Son John, the father is right. Walker is a bookish man with a dry sense of humor who doesn't like sports. Obviously he's a communist.

This movie made me sad. Not just because there are too many people who still think this way. Even worse, Robert Walker died during production of this movie. They had to piece his final scenes together with footage from other movies, mainly Strangers on a Train. Walker had real talent, and it's a damn shame that this is how his career ended.

My Son John is worth watching to understand the political climate of the early 50s -- a politician who said "Americans need to watch what they say and watch what they do" wouldn't have been condemned -- though I didn't enjoy the experience. And I strongly advise against reading the comments on IMDB, unless you're interested in lengthy discussions of whether disliking this movie makes you a pinko.

Georg drove me over to the station this afternoon. The roads were starting to clear, though still icy in spots especially in shade. Still, we made it over without incident. Super early too, as we had left enough time to push the car out of a ditch if necessary.

I played a little over an hour of songs about snow, which was a lot of fun. Here's the playlist. Several of the songs I played are associated with Christmas, although they never mention the holiday. Like "Let It Snow" or "Marshmallow World." The songs are about cold weather, and it's kind of a shame that no one ever plays them after Christmas. I did play one song that explicitly says Christmas: "Snowy White Snow and Jingle Bells." I couldn't resist, I love that song so much.

I had all the snow songs on one CD, which totally felt like cheating -- just sitting there letting the CD play out, and hitting "advance" if there was a gap between tracks -- but it was a good thing because one of the CD players was broken and the computing guy came in during my show to fix it. Doing my show with only 2 CD players is hard enough, add someone working on the CD player at the same time and it would have been ridiculous.

On the way home we had to take the long way around -- head up Hillsborough Rd away from town, go to Sparger and double back -- because during the afternoon some idiot had lost control and driven into a telephone pole. The wires were down and Cole Mill was completely blocked. The road wasn't that bad; they must have been driving really fast to hit the pole that hard. Thanks a lot, idiot.

The sun's out today, and there's a steady flow of cars on the road, about one every 5 minutes. That's a far cry from our normal traffic level, but enough for me to feel comfortable venturing out this afternoon for my show.

Also, the DJ after me has a live band scheduled to perform on his show, and I just found out that he's not canceling. If Ross can manage all his equipment plus an entire band and all their equipment, then I can certainly get myself and my CDs over there. I think I'll try to leave really early so I can go to the store beforehand. That way I won't have to worry about it afterwards & can come straight home.

We got about 7 inches of snow total. Heaviest snowfall in I can't remember how many years. It was sleeting most of the day today which kept the total accumulation down.

We had a quiet day here. We watched movies -- Road to Utopia, It Should Happen to You and The Mummy 3 -- I worked on the Pat Robertson voodoo doll and we cooked -- buttermilk biscuits for a late breakfast, and corned beef hash for dinner. We made our own corned beef, which I had never done before. It was really easy and turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. I only stepped outside the house twice, to scatter bird seed on the snow. The birds loved it. We had crowds of juncos and wrens hopping around.

I am planning to go in to the station for my show tomorrow. We live on a busy road and I'm hoping the plows will come through before I have to leave. If not, I have driven on snow before, though it's been a long time. I think I can remember the basics: drive slowly, turn slowly, brake slowly. The only part of the drive I'm worried about is entrance to the station parking lot. It's a steep incline that I'd rather not have to deal with. I was thinking about driving to Whole Foods, parking in their lot and walking the rest of the way. Then I remembered, duh, I have three giant cases of CDs to take with me. I usually carry them in two trips. No way could I get all of them across campus in heavy snow when it's 20° out. I guess I could leave the heaviest case behind and just take the other two. That would make the show kind of suck but it would be easier to get there. Dang. Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

We woke up to 5 inches of snow.* I know because I went far enough out to stick a ruler in the snow on top of an outdoor trash can. It's sleeting now, and it supposed to keep doing that until about 1 and then snow until early evening.

It's been so long since we've had real snow here. Georg has a rule of thumb that he takes the lowest snow estimate, divides it in half, and that's how much snow he expects. I guess I was thinking the same way because I was amazed to see more than a couple of inches, regardless of the predictions.

Besides measuring the snow, I also went out long enough to toss some bird seed on the ground. I splurged yesterday and bought a bag of premium "nut and fruit" birdseed. I probably wouldn't have bought it if the price had been marked, but what the heck, it was my birthday! I can buy one bag of super expensive birdseed if I want to. This morning the birds looked so sad, trying to find seed on the snow, so I tossed several handfuls of the seed on the ground under the feeder. It has a strong dried fruit smell. I hope the birdies like it.

*I almost titled this post a dirty joke about the relative merits of 5 inches, but decided against it.

We left for dinner, drove about a block, got a look at the road conditions, turned around and came home. Even the road we live on, which is busy and gets a lot of sun, was starting to accumulate. What is it going to be like in 2 hours when we'd be coming home?

Ah well. We have lots of nice leftovers, and we can go to Panciuto another night.

So, we've been expecting snow tonight and tomorrow. Real snow, actual accumulation, not just a few flakes that melt before they hit the ground. Possibly significant accumulation.

I love a snow storm, and I love watching the pre-snow storm panic almost as much. Everyone, get to the store and buy eggs, milk and bread! Now! The french toast gods must be appeased! This time is great because it's happening on a weekend. All the fun of a storm, and minimal disruption.

The only problem today is that we have reservations at Panciuto, a really nice restaurant in Hillsborough. It's an occasion so we'd really rather not cancel. On the other hand, we don't want to be driving home on an icy interstate.

It wasn't supposed to start snowing until about 9, and our reservation is at 7:30, so we thought we'd be fine. Then a few minutes ago, I checked weather.com and their map showed that it was snowing here already. I chuckled at that -- even the weather map is panicking needlessly! Then I went and looked out the window. What do you know, it's snowing. Looks like it has been for a while.

I think we're still going to go to Panciuto. Because it's not supposed to get below freezing until around 11pm. So the roads shouldn't be icy tonight. Still, we'll probably leave early. I'm assuming they'll have no-shows, which will allow them to seat us early.

January 27 movie: Duchess of Idaho. Esther Williams and Van Johnson starred in several movies together. This is one of their lesser efforts. It does have a few things going for it:

• specialty numbers by Lena Horne, Connie Haines and Eleanor Powell;
• a dance contest where Johnson and Williams have to hold a potato between their foreheads. They win and Williams is crowned the titular Duchess of Idaho;
• a song called "Choo Choo Choo to Idaho." This was a real thrill because I'm working on a 4th of July show with a song for every state. There are a few states I didn't have songs for, and Idaho was one. Well, there's an instrumental called "Idaho." If I can, I really want to find a song with lyrics for each state. That leaves me with only a few states I still need songs for: New Hampshire, Nebraska, Arizona, Alaska, and possibly Maryland.

The really weird thing about the movie is that Mel Torme is in it, and he doesn't sing. Whaa?

January 27 movie: The Bride Goes Wild. Van Johnson is a famous children's author, also a drunken lecher. June Allyson is a prim and proper schoolteacher doing the illustrations for his latest book. A monster child was introduced, and I think he was supposed to be cute in an "ain't I a stinker?" way, but in fact he was unwatchable. He made me glad I don't have children. I shouldn't include this on the movie list because I didn't watch the whole thing. I didn't even get to the half-way point. I'm only writing it up so I remember not to watch it again.

January 25 movie: The Guns of Navarone. They showed this on The Essentials this past weekend. I have to say, I'm enjoying Alec Baldwin's stint on The Essentials much more than I expected to. I wonder how much he contributes to his dialogue. I assume there's a script of some kind; they're too articulate for it to be purely off the cuff. Still, Baldwin sounds like he's talking about the movies from an actor's perspective, and it's interesting to hear.

I'm terrible at self-promotion. So bad that when the station asked specialty DJs to contact them about promotional flyers -- in full color, which they are going to hang, no effort required on our part -- I didn't respond. Because they're going to hang the flyers on campus, and I thought they should focus on shows that would appeal more to students.

Well programming contacted me & asked me to do a flyer, so I did. I think it turned out pretty good!

I almost bought a new font, but good sense prevailed and I realized the retro fonts I already have are still perfectly good. I still kind of wish I had bought it. Mmm, new font.

It's Johnny's Seed time! I just placed my seed order. This is an annual ritual that I love. It's pure optimism, unblemished by reality. I imagine my garden spread out in front of me, and I see not the overgrown, wild and wooly, rocky, solid clay, constant battle with weeds that I am slowly losing. In my mind I see perfectly cultivated, weed free garden beds full of rich loamy soil, just waiting for me to fill them with flowers and vegetables. I could grow everything in the catalog! And I will!

Okay, so I give myself an evening to flip through the catalog and indulge in that fantasy. Then I start thinking realistically about our garden space and what it can support. Johnny's is geared towards small commercial growers, and it has all kinds of unusual varieties. It's more cost effective for large quantities of seed. Packets are cheaper at the big box store, if it's something the big box sells.

I got lots of sunflowers and zinnias to fill all that new space in the back, that the goats cleared. Also snapdragons and calendulas for the front. Some vegetables: watermelon radish, poblano, a special zucchini called Costata Romanesco that we really like, and a new variety of cilantro that's supposed to bolt more slowly. Also some more asparagus to fill out the bed, we lost some in the drought two years ago.

And I also ordered a gallon of liquid seaweed/fish emulsion. It's great fertilizer and hard to find locally. I think I got it before from that 5th Season place in Carrboro, for way more expensive than Johnny's.

All in all, a good shop! There are a few seeds I'll get from the big box -- chard, beets, basil, sugar snaps -- where I don't need some unusual variety. And a few other vegetables -- tomatoes, eggplant, onions -- which we'll get plants from the farmer's market. I used to grow tomatoes from seed until the farmer's market started to have vendors with a great selection of heirloom tomato plants. We always grow one each of 5-6 tomato varieties. It doesn't make sense to buy six different seed packets when we only want six plants.

January 23 movie: The Getaway. Not the original with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw; this was the remake, with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. What's that, you say? Why on earth would I watch a crappy remake instead of the classic original? That sounds so unlike me!

Well, I watched it because of an interview with Joss Whedon. It turns out that Joss' first job in Hollywood was writing looplines. Which means coming into a movie that's already been filmed and writing new dialogue to be added to over-the-shoulder shots where you can't see the actor's face. It's much cheaper than filming entire new scenes (which wouldn't even be possible in many cases). Apparently they do it all the time in the editing phase, if they're having trouble getting the movie to work. Sometimes they just need to add a few good lines, to make a movie funnier or give it snappier dialogue; sometimes they do more extensive work. Joss said that when they're trying to make the movie make sense, it's almost like adding narration.

So Joss' first Hollywood job was writing looplines, and one of his first projects was The Getaway. And the way he described it: "if you look carefully at The Getaway, you'll see that when people's backs are turned, or their heads are slightly out of frame, the whole movie has a certain edge to it," made it sound like almost another movie within the movie. A secret Joss Whedon film hidden inside a dumb 90s action flick? This I had to see.

Well, either Whedon oversold his impact on The Getaway, or I'm not as good at interpreting movies as I thought. Because I really didn't see it. It was still the same crappy movie when the actors' backs were turned as when you could see their faces. There were a couple of moments where I thought, okay, that's Joss. For instance, there's a scene where Baldwin is chasing a man on a train. The camera is behind Baldwin, and a woman jumps in front of him and asks him to help her put her bag away. He grabs the bag, shoves it into the overhead compartment, and then says "No problem" as he blows past her. The timing and the casual way he says the line, that was very Joss.

The most obvious example was a scene where Baldwin and Basinger are holding up a gun shop owner. Baldwin tells the guy to get down on the floor, and as soon as he disappears behind the counter he starts talking, "Right, I know the drill! Count to 100, okay, 1, 2, I need a new job! 3, 4..." That was the only example I noticed where the "face out of frame" dialogue is unconnected to the rest of the scene and also changes the tone of the scene. Before that line it's not a funny scene. Once the shop owner starts talking, well, it wasn't classic wit for the ages, but it clearly gets the point across that the viewer can relax, nothing bad is going to happen (at least, not to that guy).

I guess the fact that I only noticed it a couple of times, maybe is a sign of Whedon's skill. Because he managed to integrate the new looplines so well into the dialogue that was already there, it comes off as one whole.

January 22 movie: How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life. The sleaziest of sleazy sex comedies, this starred Dean Martin, Eli Wallach, Stella Stevens and Anne Jackson. It was kind of like Pillow Talk, except much more ... well I was going to say misogynist, but the movie seems to hate men as much as it hates women. At first it was appalling and then it became hilarious because it was so awful. The fact that people thought this was funny, that's what's funny.

I'm being a little unfair -- the acting is good, the comedic timing is good, there are some genuinely funny moments. It's just that the humor is so, deeply fucked up. It makes you wonder how men and women ever managed to fall in love, if they disliked each other that much. If you thought How to Murder Your Wife, Boy's Night Out and A Guide for the Married Man were funny, well, first of all, I don't want to know you. Secondly, you should try to catch How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life. You'll love it.

January 19 movie: Cast a Dark Shadow. This was really, really good. Dirk Bogarde stars as a sleazy opportunist who marries a rich older woman, kills her for her money but botches it up. It sounds like I've just given away a major spoiler, but no, that was the first 15 minutes of the movie. The performances are terrific, especially Bogarde -- he has this way of sounding all sympathy and caring, while throwing a look of pure contempt, which is just chilling -- and Margaret Lockwood as Bogarde's second wife, a hard woman who is more than his match. My only criticism is that in the second half of the movie, the plot was a touch obvious. More than a touch actually. There's a major plot "twist" which you can see coming a mile away. Still well worth seeing for the acting.