Deconstructing A Day In The Life (Isolated Tracks)

This song is primal, and without a doubt the Beatles' masterpiece. Every single element of it rings true, and every single element of it is necessary to the whole. As Salieri said in Amadeus, "Pull out the tiniest detail, and the whole thing would fall down." But it doesn't, and evokes the '60s more vividly than anything else I can think of. What leaps out at me instantly are the drums - and if anyone still underestimates Ringo's brilliance here, they will have to answer to ME!

Ringo was my first Beatle-love, back when drums were just a lot of pounding rather than the glue holding the entire thing together. The big nose, the floppy hair, the sad blue eyes and somewhat rueful smile - it KILLED me when I was only ten years old and supposedly far too young for those sorts of feelings. The Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 - memorable because it happened to be my tenth birthday, for which we had actually gone to a restaurant (named Rossini's - and for some reason I remember seeing a mouse running along the sidewalk outside). This was rare, as most birthdays were home affairs - but my mother still made the cake. Restaurant desserts were deemed almost wicked back then, a near-shameful extravagance.

So we get home from my birthday dinner, turn on the TV as always, and whether or not I was prepared for what happened next has been lost to me. After the fact, it seemed that the sizzle and buzz around the Beatles must have been going on for weeks. But I was too young to play those 45 rpm pop records, and may or may not have heard them on the radio. Then the gangly, stiff-limbed Ed came on and announced something "for all you youngsters" - and then - BAM!

Everything changed.

The next day, all I was hearing about at school was Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. We had all been watching Ed Sullivan forever, and I had never seen any references to any of the other acts (not even Topo Gigio, the Little Italian Mouse). I remember the teacher could not keep order that day, and at one point made a remark about wigs, thinking that's what "Beatles" were. But suddenly it was Beatles everywhere, including bubble gum cards with four different  poses per ten-cent package (I had a nearly-complete set before THROWING THEM OUT when I turned 13 - how childish to collect such things!), shirts, lunch boxes, thermos flasks, and - most magical of all - Beatles dolls. I promptly got me a Ringo doll, and kept him in my desk.

The more you listen to this, the more impossible it all seems. These guys were just bloody geniuses. Paul and Ringo are now in their 80s, and like Bob Dylan, still performing, still going strong. Ringo has turned out to be the coolest Beatle, as I always suspected. Peace and love! His son Zak was drummer for The Who, which is not too shabby and proof that talent can be inherited, so long as you put in the hard work and dedication along with it.  I don't know a lot about drums, except that Ringo's accuracy was crystalline - combined with a slight shuffly effect which was deliberate. He has even talked about it, a way of slightly smearing the decay so that the beat was both diamond-hard and spookily underwater-ish.  I have always felt A Day in the Life would be nothing without Ringo. 

This is the Ringo doll I DIDN'T have. Magnificent! The little ones are worth a fortune now, so I can only imagine what this work of art would fetch on eBay nowadays.

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Dick Cavett Recounts the Time a Guest Died on His Show

I was happily surprised to see Dick Cavett, whom an alarming number of people seem to think is dead, on Seth Meyers. He must be in his 80s by now, and looks wonderful, with those movie star cheekbones and the canny, knowing eyes. Refreshingly, he does not seem to have messed with his face to look younger, which never works anyway. His deep flat resonant Nebraska voice, so full of irony and skepticism, is just the same.

I always loved his show as a teenager, and some stick out in my mind: one with Crosby, Stills and Nash, along with Joni Mitchell, and Mitchell did a song called "For Free" (about a man on the corner with a clarinet, who was "playing real good for free"). I remember David Crosby looked like a dimpled angel, and somebody (Grace Slick? It couldn't be,  that was another show) said, "You look like a Leo."

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And here it is, for the love of God, the episode I was just talking about - it WAS on YouTube after all, and it looks like I was right about everything, even Grace Slick. What an incredible guest lineup for one show. I watched it after school while I was still living in Chatham. I was fifteen.

I didn't see the show where the guy died, because NOBODY did - it was on tape and never aired. But I did see an alarming show he did on PBS  in the early '80s, in which several people came on and talked about the pure pleasure and utter lack of danger of snorting cocaine. There was  a user with pinwheel eyes who insisted her life was better in every way (and how would  SHE know, after all?), and a doctor who swore it was all to the good and did no bodily or psychological harm whatsoever. Coke was king back then, but Cavett sat there barely hiding his consternation, trying not to tell them all they were full of crap, as he famously did sometimes in the old days. I also remember - there used to be a video of this, but I can't find it now - the cast of Husbands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes, all down on the floor wrestling with each other, while Cavett literally walked off his own show

Or was it Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal?

Anyway, these Late Night snippets seem to be recent, and I hope so, because I think it's good he's in the world. I love his moonwalk, too - he's  still full of surprises and the unlikely. 

And how I love the unlikely! Such as actually finding the clip (below). The good part starts around 7:30.

And here are a couple of gifs I made, at great expense and time!

Trolls a-go-go

The house I grew up in

 

 

Hometown dreams: 1964

Images of Chatham, which I often feel nostalgic about, as if it's a dreamscape instead of the mixed bag of nightmares it was. My best year was when I was ten. After that it went downhill.

I was a Cold War baby

                               This is only a test.

Rattle your jewelry

"Who's that girl?" Mystery Mug Shot

HEY! Meet the Swinger

This near-perfect advertising gem from the mid-'60s stars a shockingly young and fresh-faced Ali Macgraw, who would soon rocket to fame in Love Story only to plummet into total oblivion. Being married to Steve McQueen will do that to you.

But before all that, there was this delectable ad for the Polaroid Swinger: "it's more than a camera, it's almost alive/It's only 19 dollars and 95!" A yet-to-be-famous utility singer named Barry Manilow sang the irresistibly catchy jingle. And such a product! It was new, it was affordable, it was"right now". Instead of a red light going on when you were ready to shoot, the camera flashed a large black-and-white YES. In fact, it used only black and white film, which didn't seem to matter to the young and hip.

I remember Polaroid cameras, the very early ones where you "zipped it off" (ripped off a plastic cover after allowing the thing to "stew" for so many minutes). I remember my Dad taking pictures of me on my horse, and him getting this - stuff - on his hands, this caustic goo from the margins of the picture, chemicals for developing it or something. After the picture dried - and it had to dry, just like those old-fashioned photos you developed in a tray, then hung up with clothespins - you had to stick on an adhesive-backed piece of cardboard to keep it from curling. But once that backing was on there, you'd never get it off.

I still have some photos - OK, a lot of them - with thick plastic backings on them, tiny things about 2 by 3 inches. For a few years, this was all we took. They had the instant payoff factor, but unfortunately over the years they have become almost indecipherable. I scanned a few of them and blew them up, but the results were mixed. Some of the best shots of my kids growing up were taken with this low-tech method, meaning that most of them were lost. 

But that aside, this is one of the most perfect ads I've ever seen, second only to that first Maxwell House work of genius with the bongo-drum percolator ("tastes as good as it smells"). The Swinger embodies the '60s, beach life, freedom from responsibility, being young and attractive and with your whole life ahead of you. You could smoke then, and stay out late, and eat and drink whatever you wanted to, and still look great with no effort. Ali Macgraw had that earth angel innocence, the no-makeup face, the wash 'n wear hair. 

I made a ton of gifs last night from this, my all-time-second-favorite ad, but they somehow turned out to be unsatisfying. It's hard to extract a few seconds out of such a seamlessly tight work of art. The shots cascade and tumble into each other, creating a dizzy sense of freedom. And - click - click - every move, every pose, every activity is captured on film, in crisp black and white that develops right before your eyes.

So what was I going to focus on? Hair. Ali's hair, which is used in a particular way in this one-minute saga of '60s youth. It's very very fast, so you have to watch for it. Her hair whips around, tosses, flings, and is casually pushed back. I did gifs of Ali's hair, plus a few of her walking in delightfully washed-out light, so that she becomes virtually animated.

Since I can't leave anything alone these days, I mucked around with the speed/direction/order of the frames and made them do things. I don't know if this improved them or not. I had mixed feelings about it, but thought, damn, I made all these things. Might as well put them up, as is. Wash 'n wear.

A thousand baby turtles

I can say nothing about this gorgeous work of art  (so I'll say something): it symbolizes every summer I ever spent at the cottage, sand on my feet, still wrapped in the innocence of pre-puberty, the Jimmy Olsen Annual clutched in my hand, and all my life (such as it was) still ahead of me. Beach sand and lake water and very short, very short holidays, and long periods of wondering what these marvels would look like if we really had them. No one I knew ever sent away for them, perhaps because the addresses were always in the States somewhere. It was just too intimidating.

Were my comic book ads ever this lovely? I doubt it, and I think they left out some of the most important ones:

The "100 Little Dolls". They were little all right, an inch and a half tall, kind of like those plastic soldiers that stood up on a base, but much more slender. I've seen pictures of them, and they remind me of those plastic cocktail skewers that look like things or people. 

These are now a valued collectible on eBay, for much more than $1. These dolls were made "not of paper or rags but of STYRENE plastic and hard synthetic rubber," a wonder-substance in those days. The dolls were described as having a strange quality known as "Lilliputian cuteness", a bizarre expression if ever there was one, and one that no child (and few adults) would understand unless they had read Jonathan Swift.

I think you had to sell something here - photos, this time, which might have been a somewhat easier sell than going door-to-door with salve. I wonder if anyone ever did "win" the chihuahua in a teacup. I feel sorry for a tiny dog, likely sent through the mail, traumatized. They don't even call it a chihuahua, but a "miniature dog".

Here is the text, or as much of it as I can read:

"I'll be happy to send you without you paying a penny, this lovable, young miniature DOG that is so tiny you can carry it in your pocket or hold it in one hand, yet it barks and is a reliable watch dog as well as a pet. You can keep it in a shoe box and enjoy many amusing hours teaching it tricks. . . active, healthy, intelligent and clean. Simply hand out only 20 get-acquainted coupons to friends and relatives to help us get that many new customers as per our premium letter. I enjoy my own lively, tiny dog so much. It is such wonderful company that I'm sure you'll simply love one yourself."

I can't find any accounts from people who actually did get the dog, but there are a couple of horrendous stories about the fabled squirrel monkey, and they are so horrible - the worst animal abuse I can think of - that I won't recount them here. People were actually surprised that their monkey bit them, acted terrified, and pooped on the floor. One of the stories was supposed to be "humorous" and appeared on national public radio. Shame on them - it was a story of abject animal suffering and terror, which - surprise! - is NOT FUNNY.

Another mystery, Grog. I wondered how this would work. Would it be sort of like those Hawaiian ti plants that used to be so popular then? They "grew like mad" too, except I could never get one to grow.

"GROG GROWS OWN TAIL. PLANT TAIL OUTSIDE AND IT GROWS LIKE MAD INTO A  BEAUTIFUL SHADE TREE! Grog, amazing prehistoric monster, comes with half-a-tail. In a few days the tail starts growing. It grows, grows, g-r-o-w-s. Remove the tail from Grog's body and plant it outside and it springs quickly into a flowering, fragrant shade tree. Then Grog grows another tail. Remove the tail again and he grows another, and another. . . endlessly. Only $1 plus 25 cents postage. Satisfaction or money back."

And then there were the baby turtles. I never even hoped for these. They just seemed too good to even dream about:

At first, of course, I thought you'd send away for 1000 baby turtles, which made me wonder where I'd keep them all, how I could hide them from my mother. You could get live baby turtles at the Metropolitan (what used to be called a "dime store", an expression you still hear once in a while), along with a plastic tank with a ramp in it, and a plastic palm tree. I was astonished to find out that you can still get these - they're called turtle lagoons - and that people still keep actual turtles in them. In Canada they're banned, for some reason - perhaps they smuggle contraband under their shells.

 

"Here's one of the most exciting toys you've ever owned. Just think - a baby turtle all your own. What's more, a real growing garden to keep him in, a garden you plant and grow all by yourselef. You can teach him to recognize you when you feed him. Watch him swim - see how he pulls his head and feet into his shell when he's frightened. You can have turtle races - you can make a" (oh, fuck the rest). I don't like the idea of calling a living creature a "toy", but I guess that was the attitude back then. The turtle likely wouldn't survive shipment anyway.

And how cool is this? You could actually grow, harvest and eat the peanuts. Maybe sell them! Except that it would never work in Southwestern Ontario, with our three feet of snow in the winter, and the ground like iron. The text is a little too small/boring to transcribe. 

I confess I didn't see these ads until I found them on Google. Just as well. Why didn't we see how creepy these things were? It's kind of like the way we didn't see the creepiness of clowns. Back then, "rubber wonderskin" was a GOOD thing.  A cowboy ventriloquist's dummy smoking a cigarette was something every boy ought to have.

And these need no explanation.