Monthly Archives: November 2020

Music

Friday New Releases…

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Finally, a chance to move away from politics!

Today is a pretty big day, at least for me, with two “new” musical releases I’ve been anticipating:

David Bowie’s Metrobolist and Albert Bouchard’s Re Imaginos. (You can read my original post regarding these then upcoming releases here)

David Bowie’s Metrobolist is, in actuality, a Tony Visconti (longtime Bowie producer) remastered version of what I consider David Bowie’s first “real” David Bowie album, The Man Who Sold The World.

David Bowie - Metrobolist (aka The Man Who Sold The World) - Amazon.com Music

I was very interested in hearing this new version of the album because, of Bowie’s major works, this one didn’t have the greatest mastering, I felt.

However, in 2015 the album was remastered and, I felt, it sounded pretty good. Still, I was curious to hear what Tony Visconti would do with the album. He’s a damn good producer, in my humble opinion, and I loved his last year remastering of Bowie’s first big hit, the song Space Oddity, and felt his remastering of the album Lodger was also quite good.

So I just listened to the album for the first time and…

I think there are some improvements here, but I’ve got to give the full album a couple of more listens to see if it’s as good as the 2015 version. In one place, though, I think Mr. Visconti came short: His remastering of the song The Man Who Sold The World is ok, but I like the original version without the reverb more.

The rest of the album passed ok upon the first listen. I didn’t detect much of a difference in the 2015 versus 2020 Visconti version of Width of a Circle though there was plenty of interesting new stuff in Running Gun Blues, from the sound of the gunfire/bombs to Bowie singing some additional stuff (hope my memory of this is right, only one listen!) at the tail end of the song.

Interesting stuff, for sure, but at least after one listen I can’t say this version has wowed me to the point where I feel this is now THE definitive version of the album.

It’s nice, but its not that different and/or incredibly superior to the 2015 version.

The second release is ex-Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard’s release of Re Imaginos. Again, you can get the full story of what transpired with this album in my original post linked to above (and here!) but, basically, ex-Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard created a concept album using several Blue Oyster Cult songs from their earlier albums in the early 1980’s when it seemed the band was for all intents and purposes broken up and produced an intriguing demo he called Imaginos.

The album was shopped around but the studios didn’t take it. By the mid-80’s they got the other members of the band together -without Albert Bouchard- and reworked the album and released that version of Imaginos in 1988.

imaginos LP - Amazon.com Music

My understanding is that this didn’t sit terribly well with Mr. Bouchard but the album was nonetheless, IMHO, a very strong one.

Still, it seemed Mr. Bouchard wanted to do his version of the album and, after all these years, perhaps he and the remaining members of Blue Oyster Cult settled their differences and Albert Bouchard today released Re Imaginos, his version of that album…

Albert Bouchard - Re Imaginos CD – Merchbucket.com

I’m currently listening to it and generally enjoying what I’m hearing but I have to say one thing… Mr. Bouchard’s singing voice is simply not as strong as that of BOC regular vocalists Eric Bloom and Donald Brian Roeser aka Buck Dharma.

Still, its pretty interesting/good so far. I’m liking it.

More to come when I listen to both more thoroughly.

General

It Would Appear The Proverbial Fat Lady Is Stepping Onto The Stage…

As I type this at a little past 9:00 am on the morning of Friday the 6th of November, a full three days following Tuesday’s election, there have been two major developments in the counting of the various outstanding mail in ballots throughout the country:

First, Joe Biden has taken the lead over Donald Trump in -shockingly!- Georgia. Second, and just happening a few minutes ago, Joe Biden has taken the lead over Donald Trump in -more expected- Pennsylvania.

Both margins are, at the moment, rather small, amounting to a little over 1000 votes in Georgia and over 5000 votes in Pennsylvania. The Georgia figure will likely wind up remaining in and around that area as 99% of the votes have been counted. Biden may gain a little more but GA will likely wind up being a state with a very narrow margin of victory, likely for Biden.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, still has some 5% of the votes -mail in votes- to come in, estimated to be over 100,000 to go, and they have been trending strongly toward Biden by a margin between 70-80%.

Already comments made on the news networks indicate that if this trend continues -and there is so far no evidence at all to expect it won’t- Biden will have won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral college votes.

So, with a win in PA, if we are to take Biden’s current EC total (even removing Arizona which, though declared for Biden by NPR and Fox has mail in/outstanding votes which may be trending more toward Trump than originally anticipated, though maybe not enough to get him in the lead), Biden will have his 253 electoral college votes given a 20 EC boost which will put him at… 273.

The magic number to win, of course, is 270.

If, as it seems to be, Biden wins Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, he will acquire an additional 11, 6, and 16 EC votes which may make his final total 306.

Again, though, if things go completely sideways for Biden and he loses the above three states, if he wins Pennsylvania that’s the ball game…

…and it would appear the ballgame is done.

If indeed the networks declare Biden the victor today at some point (I’m guessing around noon, but we’ll see), the next question will be what will Trump do.

There are reports he will not concede and, perhaps its wishful thinking on my part, even his biggest fans might begin to realize its time for him to face reality and his loss.

Maybe if he prolongs this with pointless lawsuits, they may even come to see the childishness within him.

Who knows.

I’m probably being too optimistic, but I’ve always tried to look on the bright side of life…

General

About those electoral predictions…

Looks like the people who work with statistics/prognostication really blew it this time around.

I mean, they were off in 2016 too, mostly predicting a Hillary Clinton win, but they could hold that off by stating, like fivethirtyeight.com did, that they had her win within a statistical margin of error and, voila!, she fell into that and Trump won.

But this time around…

The fact is that all the major statistical organizations had this looking like not only a Biden win -which increasingly (I hope!) will prove true- but a rather overwhelming victory.

I remember on election day one pundit -I believe he was involved in the Lincoln project- stated that this election wasn’t going to be like the 1980 election where Ronald Reagan overwhelmed Jimmy Carter, but like the 1964 election, where Lyndon Johnson cremated Arizona Governor Barry Goldwater.

Yeah, didn’t quite turn out that way, did it?

Anyway, over at Slate.com Matthew Dessem offers this amusing article:

Once Again, the American People Have Misunderstood My Election Entrail-Reading Methodology

Read it and laugh.

Or cry.

Either way…

😉

General

The Day After The Day After…

It’s been two days since Tuesday’s election and, at the moment, we still have no declared winner in the 2020 election though compared to when I wrote yesterday morning, it appears more likely now that Joe Biden has won the election… but that Democratic candidates generally underperformed.

The main change between earlier yesterday morning and today is that Michigan and Wisconsin went to Biden, which pushed his electoral college totals tantalizingly close to the 270 needed to win the election.

The Senate, thought a possible flip based on statistics, appears likely to remain in Republican hands, though perhaps with a somewhat smaller majority than the one they originally had.

As was expected, Trump and his minions are going around shouting there was cheating going on and suing some states to stop their counts and not suing others to do the same (guess which ones he’s leading in and which ones he’s not?).

Despite the legal threats, I’m hoping that by later today we’ll have a declared winner… and it all boils down to one state in particular: Pennsylvania.

Currently, Trump leads the vote count there but the mail in ballots -and there are apparently quite a number of them, all properly received by the election commission and without a doubt legal- are expected to heavily favor Biden and push him over the top and into winning this state.

Should he do so, he will make it past the magical 270 electoral ballots and be declared the winner of the election.

Meanwhile, there is also the possibility Biden formally takes Arizona (while some news agencies have already given the state to Biden, there are mail in ballots here still to be counted which may give Trump enough to tie/beat Biden, who is currently leading). Finally, there’s Nevada which looks like it will go for Biden. If those two states are formally declared Biden victories, he’s got exactly 270 electoral points, which is what is needed to win.

If he gets those two and Pennsylvania, he’ll have 290 electoral votes.

Yeah, I really hope that by end of today we do get the Pennsylvania votes and they prove, like most people believe, that Biden has won the presidency.

It’s time to put the 2020 election, and Donald Trump, into our collective rear-view mirror.

Movies

Underwater (2020) a (Mildly) Belated Review

Released early this year in the usual movie release graveyard period of January and, if memory serves, after considerable delay -another usually not terribly good sign- the movie Underwater, starring Kristen Stewart, was released to middling reviews (over at Rottentomatoes.com it earned an almost dead average 48% positive rating among critics yet a more favorable 60% positive among audiences) before disappearing.

While it seemed few noticed it coming and going, the film found a bit of life afterwards and once it was released to home video. It was at that time I found people online giving the movie good reviews and noting it should have done better and really wasn’t all that bad at all.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

I picked up the digital copy of the film when it was on sale and yesterday, before all the electoral madness really began, watched it and…

…I have to admit, it isn’t all that bad.

Having said that, neither do I feel the film is particularly strong… the fact of the matter is that there are other and better films that feature very similar elements.

Perhaps #1 on that list is the 1979 classic film Alien.

The fact of the matter is that Underwater is a deep sea combo version of both Alien and Aliens with a creature menace that’s rather bland, unfortunately, compared to that presented there.

Interestingly, I thought the film was at its very best in the earlier going, before we are introduced to the monster, when our cast experiences the destruction of their habitat, a deep sea structure they work in.

The first roughly 15-20 minutes of the film moved along really well and were quite exciting if, again, not necessarily original.

There was, though, some really good tension as the few survivors get together and form a desperate plan to “walk” along the sea floor and to another structure and its rescue pods.

But, as the trailer makes clear, just because they make it out of the falling apart rig doesn’t mean they’re safe… and soon enough they come face to face with an eerie deep sea menace, creatures which seem almost Lovecraftian in design, and from there, alas, things kinda fall into place like you expect, with several of the cast being picked off until the final climax/showdown with the creatures… and a desperate chance at escape.

While it may sound like I’m down (pun intended?) on Underwater, I didn’t think the film was a total bust by any means. Thanks to that wonderful opening act, the movie itself moved along well as a decent popcorn flick which, again, obviously echoed other -better- films.

Still, I can’t say I was totally turned off by what I saw. If I were to give the movie a rating based on 4 stars being superb and 1 star being terrible, I’d give Underwater 2 and 1/2 stars.

A decent popcorn time killer and nothing more.

General

The Day After…

Oh my…

Horribly Hungover Animals - CamTrader

Much as I may personally despise Donald Trump and all he stands for, I have to give him credit: He’s a resilient creature and he got his people to come out to vote for him.

However, at this point in time and despite his attempts to proclaim victory, the 2020 Presidential election isn’t in the books. In fact, also despite Trump’s attempts to proclaim otherwise, things might in fact be looking good for Joe Biden to win… that is, if I’m reading all the information about the election right (I’m no expert, nor pretend to be one!).

Why?

Because there are a vast number of mail in votes still to be counted, and those have at least to this point shown themselves to favor Joe Biden.

If we are to take the current electoral college numbers, Joe Biden has -give or take depending on your news source- 238 EC votes to Trump’s 213 with the following states still to declare winners: Nevada (6 electoral votes, leaning Biden), Alaska (3, leaning Trump), Wisconsin (10, leaning Biden), Michigan (16, leaning Trump), Pennsylvania (20, leaning Trump), North Carolina (15, leaning Trump), and Georgia (16, leaning Trump).

One needs 270 electoral college votes to win and, If the “leaning” figures stay as they are, Trump wins 70 electoral votes and therefore the Presidency with a total of 283 electoral votes to Biden’s 254 (we are also assuming Nevada and Wisconsin stay with Biden, of course).

Here’s the thing though: Michigan and Pennsylvania, with a total of 36 electoral votes, have Trump ahead by a very small margin of 24,248 votes in Michigan with 91% of the precincts reporting and a larger margin of 675,012 votes in Pennsylvania BUT with only 64% of those precincts counted at this particular moment in time. Similar stats are to be found with both North Carolina and Georgia.

The votes still to be counted are the mail in votes which the states will count between today and… I dunno, perhaps later this week.

Those votes, many believe, are far stronger for Biden than Trump, perhaps much, much stronger, and they could well boost Biden into winning both Michigan and Pennsylvania -and maybe even Georgia as well!- in the end… assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t interfere in the count.

If -and its a big one- Biden carries the 238 electoral votes I noted above and winds up winning the two states he’s already trending positive in, Nevada (6) and Wisconsin (10), and the mail in votes counted for Michigan (16) go his way -we’ll leave out the larger hurdle he has so far for Pennsylvania- he will have added 32 electoral college votes to his total.

Using grade school math, Biden’s current 238 plus 32 give us… 270 and the election. At that point its irrelevant what ultimately happens in Pennsylvania, Alaska (which its somewhat fair to assume will go Republican), North Carolina, and Georgia..

So the big question becomes: Does the Supreme Court interfere in this election and stop the voting?

Clearly Donald Trump wants this. If things were to freeze as they are at this moment in time, he’s won the re-election.

However, I can’t help but wonder what possible justification the Supreme Court would produce (a majority, no less) to stop the count. These are legitimate mail in ballots we’re talking about, votes which have always been counted in previous elections and not some oddball votes that were “conveniently” found just today, the day after the election.

They were properly sent in and received by election day yesterday and, by all rights, should be counted.

Let’s see if they are.

General

This is the day…

Obligatory:

Election Day, to be exact!

I already voted and, as I’ve stated, I checked to make sure my vote was counted and it was.

I’m incredibly happy to see so many people have already made their voices heard and hope today we get a voluminous amount of voters as well.

The more people vote, the better. At least that way you know you brought your opinion to the proverbial table and, hopefully, you will be heard.

Democracy is imperfect, for sure, but if enough people make their opinions heard, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll move toward a better society.

One can dream!

General

The Day Before…

November 2nd, the day before the election, and things are… interesting.

If you go by all the polls, it appears Joe Biden will win, though Donald Trump does have at least a statistical chance of pulling it off.

I know what you’re saying: Didn’t the pollsters predict Hillary Clinton would win in 2016?

They did, for the most part, but the reality is that 2016 was a far different election than the one about to formally occur tomorrow.

To begin, Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. To some extent, she was a victim of many years of Republican smears. She was also a victim of Comey’s idiotic decision to, a week from the election, make a formal announcement about… jeeze, I’m not even sure what he was saying back then. Emails? Hard drives? Seems silly considering what’s occurred since then. Finally, Mrs. Clinton didn’t help herself by ignoring certain states toward the end of the election.

Like most people, she seemed to assume the election was in the bag and perhaps let off the proverbial gas toward the end while those who voted for Trump were either a) completely won over by him and excited to vote for him or b) were people who shrugged and decided “Hey, why not? He’s better than Hillary.”

Maybe.

Thing is, we’ve now had nearly four years of Trump’s presidency and if what I wrote above is true, I think there are many people who decided to give Trump a try who are today no longer interested in continuing this particular experiment. Though there’s no way to quantify them, I think there are a pretty large number of usually reliable Republicans and those who thought “Hey, why not?” who are now thinking: “No way.”

The early voting, as of this particular moment and according to Barbara Sprunt for NPR, stands at an eye-popping 93 million early votes. The article linked to, by the way, is from yesterday at 5 pm.

Again according to the article, that represents some 68% of the total votes cast in the 2016 election, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual election date!

Florida, my state, ended early voting yesterday, allowing preparations today for the formal votes tomorrow.

Our state, as usual, is something of a toss up. Current polling indicates a dead heat, with Biden and Trump both getting about 47/48 percent of the votes.

The fact is, if Biden takes Florida, Trump is done. If Biden loses Florida, however, he has plenty of other chances to still win the election.

That, in a nutshell, is Trump’s problem: He has a very narrow path to getting the 270 electoral college votes needed to win while Biden has so many openings/availabilities. Trump needs to win certain states or else. Biden can hope for many combinations to get to the goal.

The state I have to admit I’m most curious about is Texas. Current polling puts Biden and Trump, like in Florida, in a statistical dead heat at 47/48 percent. However, given the astonishing amount of early voting, I’m thinking the edge has to be with Biden… at least at this point.

Why?

Because I suspect those who are early voting, in general, are doing so to kick out the incumbent. The fact is that those most excited to vote are usually in two camps: 1) Those who love their candidate and want him/her to remain in office and 2) Those who hate the current person(s) in power and want them out.

I tend to think we’re seeing more of #2 because Trump has never been a very popular figure. In fact, he never once broke the 50% positive barrier during his presidency, usually falling somewhere in the low 40% range in terms of approval.

He’s a deeply unpopular president, in that respect, and this is the people’s chance to get rid of him and, from what I can see, many are taking advantage to do just that.

Going over to fivethirtyeight.com, we find that as of today, Biden has moved from “favored” to win the election to “clearly favored” to win. This is because Biden now has a 90% chance of winning while Trump’s odds have dropped to 9%. There is a 1% chance of an electoral college “tie”…

While Trump still isn’t mathematically eliminated from re-election, this is the sort of stuff that makes me hopeful.

I’ve said it before and I won’t make any bones about it: I feel Trump has been the very worst president I’ve certainly ever seen in office. His lies, bloviating, incompetence, and general hateful attitude is a big turn off and, should he lose, I’ll certainly shed no tears for his departure.

One more day to go.

Let’s see what happens.

Movies

Sean Connery (1930-2020)

Yesterday, on Halloween, came the very sad news that Sean Connery passed away at the age of 90.

While Barry Nelson was the first actor play James Bond -as an American secret agent with Felix Leiter being a British secret agent!- in the TV series Climax’s 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale with Peter Lorre starring as villain Le Chiffre…

… the fact is that most people feel Sean Connery was the “first” -and to many the very best- James Bond. Mr. Connery would play James Bond in a total of seven films, Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds are Forever (1971), and the “unofficial” (for a while anyway!) James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983).

Of course, Mr. Connery’s career, though given a HUGE boost by the role of James Bond, was not limited to this character.

Early in his career and before James Bond he would appear in the delightful Walt Disney musical Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)…

…and go up against Tarzan as one of the villains in 1959’s Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (the trailer pretty much gives away Connery’s fate!)…

In 1964 Mr. Connery would appear in an Alfred Hitchcock directed film, Marnie…

Sadly, in my humble opinion Marnie would mark the start of Alfred Hitchcock’s decline as a director after he reached a peak with both Psycho and The Birds, which came just before this film.

While the role of James Bond certainly propelled Sean Connery into the stratosphere of actors, by the time he embarked on You Only Live Twice, his fifth Bond film, the actor had grown very tired of the role and yearned to move on. He did just that, leaving the role afterwards but subsequently returning for one more film, Diamonds Are Forever -supposedly for quite a good sum of money, which he donated to charity- after the George Lazenby starring On Her Majesty’s Secret Service didn’t do as well as hoped and the producers lost their patience with Lazenby.

The 1970’s presented an interesting time for Mr. Connery, who would appear in an assortment of interesting and at times even odd films. None of which was odder than the John Boorman directed 1974 film Zardoz…

In 1975 Sean Connery, good friend Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer would star in The Man Who Would Be King, a film that director John Huston had been trying for many years to make, originally with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart (!!!) in the titular roles…

That’s not to say all the films he made during this time were good. There were a few clunkers here and there, none more so than the 1979 late era disaster film Meteor…

The 1980’s proved good for Mr. Connery, who would again star in many interesting films. For me, one of his best acting showcases was in the 1981 science fiction film Outland. While I feel the film itself isn’t much more than a decent “B” film which took the “look” of Alien (one could even view Outland as an unofficial film set in the Alien universe before humanity ventured past the Solar System!) and the plot of High Noon, nonetheless Mr. Connery acted his (pardon my French) ass off in the film, giving his Marshall character incredible depth…

Settling into more “elderly” roles, In 1986 Mr. Connery would co-star with Christopher Lambert in the cult classic Highlander…

His role in 1987’s The Untouchables would earn Mr. Connery a well deserved Oscar…

Toward the tail end of the 1980’s Sean Connery would appear as Indiana Jones’ father Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…

Another decade gone, Mr. Connery’s first film of the 1990’s was the terrific Hunt For Red October…

Mr. Connery would appear in several other films during that decade, some good and some not so good. Perhaps one of the more interesting roles he had during that decade was in 1996’s action/adventure film The Rock opposite Nicholas Cage…

Sean Connery’s character, John Patrick Mason, was in reality a thinly disguised James Bond!

Once the 1990’s were done and we entered the new century, Mr. Connery would appear in only a couple of more films, ending his starring role career with the 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…

Based on an Alan Moore (The Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta) comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was not well received by either critics or audiences, though I felt it was a decent little adventure film that harkened back to the pulp era of action films.

Mr. Connery would lend his voice to a few other projects but he would not return to the screen.

Following his passing, his wife, Micheline Roquebrune, opened up about Mr. Connery’s final days. Sadly, it appears he was suffering from dementia…

Sean Connery’s widow reveals actor struggled with dementia before his death. “It was no life for him.”

Ms. Roquebrune, who is 91 years old, married Mr. Connery in 1975.

Though it is a sad thing to see someone whose work you admire so much pass away, it must be said Sean Connery had one hell of a run and he leaves behind many works that can still be enjoyed today.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Connery. The joy you’ve given me -and countless others!- over the years has been nothing short of wonderful.