Got Milk?
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
rated PG-13
“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): Like last week, I’m going with only one review this time, not because I’m dreading what I'll encounter with BlogSpot’s new software (after struggling last week I think I’ve got it under control—or not; see footnote in So What? section) but because there was only one streamer that intrigued me—so First Cow got the call, riding the wave of a fantastic set of reviews (many of them because it got a short theatrical release last March before the Great COVID-19 Shutdown so it’s been around long enough to be seen by those with prior-to-rerelease-access)—plus my cinematically-interested-wife, Nina, suggested we should actually take advantage of some of those Turner Classic Movies I promote on a regular basis so we spent a couple of nights watching 2 of the very best ever adapted from their literary origins, The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) and The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)—although neither film carries quite the poetry/bitterness (the former) or cynicism (the latter) active in their foundational books, but both were made during the strong years of the industry-self-censoring-filter, the Hays Code, so they couldn’t push much further than they already did (another TCM masterpiece I note far below in this posting—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [1966] pushed those boundaries to the breaking point, joining others of that time to aid in finally abolishing the Code, replacing it with the content/age-based-ratings-system that’s opened movies up to more adult content since 1968). Yet another welcome distraction from watching something I’ve felt compelled to write about is the return of professional baseball with exhibition games (in empty stadiums, cardboard-cutout-photos in the seats of fans who paid [money to charities] to maintain their presence at the games) this week locally between the San Francisco Giants and my beloved Oakland Athletics (now, if the A’s can actually win some games when this weird season begins this weekend, the experience could be even better).
So, onward to First Cow which ultimately didn’t enthuse me nearly as much as anticipated, but, as I explore below, I don’t seem to be as in tune with this director’s approach as I’m being told I should. It takes place in early-19th century-Oregon Territory, where a cook traveling with some fur trappers shifts his focus when he comes upon an enterprising Chinese man, well-traveled, erudite, but not of the financial means to pursue his dreams either until they hit upon a scheme of stealing milk from the only cow in the region. It’s an intriguing character study, which maybe I’m too much of a character to fully appreciate, but I do think it’s quite watchable. Also, in the Short Takes section I’ll offer more suggestions on the TCM channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, tedious software!) along with that standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: We begin in the present day with a woman (Alia Shawkat) walking her dog in the woods; she goes to see what the dog’s digging at, finds a partial human skull, then starts digging herself until she’s uncovered 2 human skeletons lying side-by-side. A cut to closeups of a hand plucking mushrooms from the ground initially might seem to be part of her scene, but as the camera gives wider shots we see a man whose clothing indicates a much earlier period (Reichardt in the interview in the Related Links section far below says we’re now in 1820 [I don’t recall anything from the film’s context to help us know that]; she also notes how the visuals were somewhat inspired by Frederick Remington's paintings of the Old West [what I know of his work was more of deserts and plains than forests so I’m not sure of that specific connection either, but the shots in the forests are quite beautiful as are others which are intriguing as we look into those woods through an open door or window of a shack]); we learn he’s Otis “Cookle” Figowitz (John Magaro), the cook with a small band of fur trappers, collecting beaver pelts in the Oregon Territory, although these gruff guys aren’t impressed with either the quantity nor diversity of his meals so he’s sent back out again to find more whereupon he encounters a nude Chinese man, King Lu (Orion Lee), who’s on the run from some Russians after he killed one of them in retaliation following the unnecessary death of his friend (he stashed his clothes in hollow trees, threw the gun into a creek to help avoid detection). Cookie brings him a blanket and some food, later sees him swimming away across a river. The trappers are headed for Ft. Tilikum to get money for their pelts, then the story shifts to Cookie staying behind after his group’s departed (at times chunks of the plot are dropped away as in French New Wave jump cutting) seemingly (to me) at the fort, but in the Ann Hornaday review I cite in the next section she says he’s now at the Royal West Pacific Trading Post; wherever he is he finds Lu at the local bar (an odd scene where locals taunt big guy/dim-witted [?] Brilliant William [Don MacEllis] until he fights back as they all jostle outside, leaving a baby in a basket behind), they agree to share Lu’s shack in the nearby woods (the Russians have now left the area), Lu explains he left China at age 9 then has traveled much of the world while dreaming about owning a nut tree farm while Cookie would like to run a hotel with an attached bakery (he’s been moving around the country from Maryland since both parents died when he was young), yet neither has the needed cash-on-hand to pursue such dreams.
Hope for a financial windfall comes when they decide to steal milk at night from the region’s only cow, brought in by Chief Factor (Toby Jones), a rich Englishman (even if this name might indicate otherwise relative to Natives in this environment) with a large home nearby (some reviews say he’s the territorial governor; maybe so), then use the precious liquid to bake some tasty cakes which they sell for so much profit they have to hide their cash stash in a nearby cottonwood tree. Factor buys one, loves it, invites them to bake a blueberry clafoutis tart for tea time with a local military officer (Scott Shepherd), also attended by Indian Chief Totillicum (Gary Farmer)—maybe his name has something to do with what I understood the fort’s name to be—and his wife (Sabrina Morrison) who seem to live with Chief Factor, but when they all go to see the cow the Captain notices how friendly she is with Cookie, suspects there’s a reason why Factor’s not getting much milk from her. ⇒That night Cookie says they should lay off the clandestine theft for awhile but Lu wants to continue, build up a bit more capital, then head south to California to start new lives. However, Factor’s cat’s outside when they sneak over, Cookie on his milk stool, Lu up in a tree keeping watch. Totillicum’s wife goes outside to look for the cat, Lu’s startled by her presence, falls from the tree which alerts her so she wakes up the rest of the household with the men in quick pursuit of the thieves which are now obviously known to be Cookie and Lu. King Lu once again escapes by swimming down the river, Cookie hides in the woods but injures his head. He wakes up in a shack, cared for an elderly Native couple, then makes his way back to Lu’s shack. But Lu’s already there, having retrieved the moneybag then hides as he watches Factor’s small posse ransack the place; soon after, Cookie and Lu meet up again, head for the nearest boat headed south, though Cookie’s still hurt, can’t travel all that well so they lay down to rest. While we don’t see anything further, we know from an earlier shot that one of Factor’s men, a guy with a rifle, is tracking them so we have to assume he killed them, took the money, and their bodies just rotted there, covered up with dirt over time, to be discovered by the woman from the opening scene decades later. As with the seeming-connection between the first and last scenes there’s a lot about this film you have to deduce (or assume) for yourself as it moves along through a measured pace (except when our milk bandits are running away) which can either be a source of investment or frustration depending on how just much of a detective you care to be.⇐
So What? This film runs for right at 2 hours; by halfway into it I wasn’t engaged much at all except wondering if maybe that opening scene would somehow be revisited to offer more connection to what goes on the distant past in this story (nope). By the time it was over I’d gotten a bit more involved, yet never at the level I’d come to expect after noting so many choruses of praise for Reichardt’s work, here and in her previous films. What did come to mind, though—many may not agree with me on this—was something about the mood, pace, and left-to-the-viewers’ interpretations in First Cow reminding me a bit of Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1996),* where a Cleveland accountant, William Blake (Johnny Depp)—no relation to the famous poet, although allusions to his writings are used throughout—goes to the western frontier in the 19th century as misery and death await him at every turn until, mortally wounded, he joins up with a Native American named Nobody (Gary Farmer)—an outcast from his culture as well as the Whites he was forcibly-raised by—leading to a vision quest, more deaths, finally Blake’s demise in a canoe headed out to sea. As with First Cow’s throwback to the long-used-classic format ratio of 4x3 (as shown in the photo above), Dead Man also pays homage to the cinematic past, shot in B&W, although its soundtrack is contemporary, acoustic guitar melodies by Neil Young, a good many of which were spontaneous-inspirations as he watched footage of the film. While I’d pick Dead Man if making a choice between these options (for me, overall, First Cow’s just too slow, elusive, unresolved), I wanted to get better insight on what I might be missing; Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post is typical of those in support: “[…] ‘First Cow’ is adamantly horizontal. Reichardt sets her sights low, the better to capture her hard-scrabbling protagonists and their humble struggles against the spiny backdrop of the pine trees that threaten to engulf them (not to mention the equally imposing men trying to make their own more violent way). For Cookie and King Lu, dreams are tender things to be nurtured; for their cohorts, they can only be realized by seizing them by force.” She’s obviously sensing how such poetry here (?) is eluding me.
*Free to stream if you subscribe to a few platforms, cheap to rent otherwise; see JustWatch for more specifics. The CCAL’s not as impressed as me, though, with Rotten Tomatoes at only 71%, Metacritic with a 62% average score. (By the way, for those keeping tabs on my attempts to conquer the new BlogSpot software I concede on trying to put captions under these photos as it screws up the layout big time; I'll have to work caption content into those paragraphs instead. Thanks, Blogger!)
In regard to my responses, though, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune seems to be writing directly to me: “I’ve said this before about Reichardt’s films, and for whatever reason I feel the need to say it again. ‘First Cow’ will strike some viewers as too little in terms of dramatic machinery. Whatever. The movie isn’t an oily cake, meant for a quick gulp and repeat business. It is, however, perfectly seasoned [Cookie and Lu use honey and cinnamon to enhance their cakes] and finally very moving. Like Debra Granik’s recent ‘Leave No Trace,’ [2018; review in our August 9, 2018 posting] also shot in Oregon, ‘First Cow’ responds to the forests and streams traveled by these eccentric, memorable characters as if they, too, deserved a storytelling advocate.” I also give Leave No Trace 3½ stars (despite effusive CCAL praise [RT an extremely rare 100%, MC a very high for them 88%]) so I guess I’m just not solidly on Reichardt’s wavelength. You might find First Cow infinitely more enthralling; if so, tell me. (If you're curious, the photo above is Chief Factor [on left] and the Captain.)
Bottom Line Final Comments: There’s certainly little hesitancy within the CCAL to praise First Cow, with Rotten Tomatoes offering a hearty 95% collection of positive reviews (based on 121 surveyed, so this is no fluke) while those at Metacritic come surprisingly close with an 89% average score (once again, even though I just said this last week about their 84% score for Palm Springs [Max Barbacow; review in our July 16, 2020 posting] this 89% for First Cow‘s now the second-highest-MC score for 2020 releases attended to by both them and me [with Never Rarely Sometimes Maybe {Eliza Hittman; review in our April 9, 2020 posting}] still their top of the year so far with a 92% average score from a cluster of reviewers whose numbers rarely push into the 80s). This praise works sadly for me, however, because my expectations of this Indie feature were so high I just didn’t get as involved with the actual slow-paced-experience as I’d hoped to be (although 3½ stars is a still a high mark from me, given how seldom I go above 4 stars in my 5 stars range, preserving those rare higher numbers for something I find to be truly-filmically-significant [see our Summary of Reviews for a look at my extremely short list of 4½/5 stars-ratings]), ultimately agreeing with this clear opinion from Film Inquiry’s Wilson Kwong: “By writing in Native American characters and having one of the fugitive travellers be of Chinese descent (Lee), it’s clear that Reichardt sets the stage for examining the tortuous injustices of colonization and the cultural uprooting of indigenous people. Themes like racial and class disparities are also put under the microscope, and similar to her previous films, percolate in the background like a slowly drifting cloud. The only problem here is that when the cloud eventually nears a distance, it creates more fog, rather than clarity, for its audience. I sat through the film waiting for that moment of clarity to present itself, but it unfortunately never came.” It didn’t really manifest all that much for me, either, even as it seemed like something more significant should materialize (I’ll bet Reichardt would quickly disagree).
So, the question for you is how much do you want to pay (if anything) to see it for yourself. When I wanted to watch it last Friday my only choice was to ante up $14.99 to buy it in HD from Amazon Prime (same price on several other platforms—see JustWatch for details—but we’re already connected to Prime through Nina’s subscription [a little cheaper in SD—but yuck!) so I did; however, now a few days later the options have shifted so you can rent it in HD from several platforms for $4.99-$5.99 which makes more sense to me in retrospect unless the concept inherently appeals to you enough to keep it in your treasure chest. I’ll end by saying again I found it intriguing, probably useful from an historical context given all the research that went into getting the time period, a specific Native American language, and other details to be accurate, but as a whole experience it just wasn’t (for me, at least) the cinematic revelation I’d been led to expect. Therefore, I’ll just wrap up with my usual Musical Metaphor tactic of using a song to bring some finality to the review, yet even there I had difficulty finding something appropriate so I ended up with (what some might consider flippant if they truly love this film) “Catch Us If You Can” from The Dave Clark Five” (from their 1965 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJYgNqOFBLk in regard to Cookie and Lu’s baking scam, even though these lyrics admittedly provide scant insight into anything: “Here they come again Catch us if you can Time to get a move on.” They finally did move on when caught in their milk theft, off to what became a final resting place. Now that I own their sad tale I guess I can always watch it again to see if it involves me more—but official MLB season starts this weekend so I have a compelling sense of where my viewing loyalties will lie. Play ball! Go A’s!
SHORT TAKES
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are U.S. Eastern Daylight so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you could like better; feel free to peruse their entire schedule here.
Thursday July 23, 2020 (lots of good ones during this coming week; watch what you can)
8:00 PM Camelot (Joshua Logan, 1967) Well-known version of the Knights of the Round Table legend, adapted from a Broadway play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe; King Arthur (Richard Harris), Queen Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave), and Sir Lancelot (Franco Nero) try to maintain dignity, high ideals amidst infidelity, insurrection. Decent box-office, mixed critical responses; Oscars for Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Song Score or Adaptation Score.
Friday July 24, 2020
8:00 PM Mr. Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy [uncredited Joshua Logan], 1955) Drama with some great comic scenes as well, set on a Navy cargo ship toward the end of WW II with conflicts between the hard-nosed Captain (James Cagney) and one of his junior officers hoping for battle action (Henry Fonda), with Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon) avoiding the Captain at all costs for most of the movie. Ford was fired after conflicts with Cagney and Fonda, but the end result’s a smooth-flowing winner.
Saturday July 25, 2020
12:00 PM Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992) Docudrama of inspirational/dangerous (depending on your viewpoint) 1960s civil rights crusader who shifted from small crime to devout Muslim determined for Blacks to resist further White oppression but ultimately breaks from Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, to promote tolerance rather than segregation, resulting in Malcolm's assassination. Long film (201 min.) but well worth it. Denzel Washington deserved Best Actor Oscar but denied.
3:30 PM Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) Likely seems hopelessly idealistic now yet still inspirational about lost causes being the only ones worth fighting for in a government rife with corruption; James Stewart's an idealistic but naïve Senator, faces defeat from a political machine, gets inspiration from Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell. Won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story (Lewis R. Foster); Stewart deserved to win for Best Actor, got it for The Philadelphia Story (1940).
8:00 PM 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Sci-fi spectacular and on my All-Time Top 10, with a lot of mysterious, difficult interpretations at its time of release (since clarified with a novel and a sequel) about a powerful object that enhances human evolution, then sends astronauts to Jupiter, aided/thwarted by super-computer, HAL 9000. “Star Gate” scene at the end was truly groundbreaking for its time, still impressive (contributed to the Oscar for Special Visual Effects).
Sunday July 26, 2020
2:30 AM Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968) The original, which launched many sequels, remakes as a U.S. space team off-course crash lands on a planet where higher apes are the ruling classes, humans are jungle creatures; astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) is captured, shocks the apes with intelligence and speech, works desperately to understand how this planet’s come to evolve. Maybe not a great film but worth seeing for what’s it’s led to over the years.
12:00 PM A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) I prefer the later musical-version-remakes of this story (especially the 1954 iteration with James Mason and Judy Garland [pops up frequently on TCM]), yet this is a substantial, straight dramatic-version with Frederic March as an aging movie star, Janet Gaynor his protégé/much-younger-wife whose career soon eclipses his, troubling him. Oscar for Best Original Story & an Honorary one to cinematographer W. Howard Greene for his color work.
2:00 PM Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944) Silly but loveable comedy (adapted from Joseph Kesselring’s Broadway-play [1941]) about the Brewster sisters (descended from Mayflower settlers) whose nephew, Mortimer (Cary Grant), discovers they “help” lonely old bachelors by poisoning them, buried in the basement by Mort’s brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt; other main characters are played by Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff. (Also runs on 7/30/2020, 2:15 AM.)
6:15 PM Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953) Maybe not of the same cinematic caliber as others on this list but well-respected as a musical-comedy especially for the performances of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell as showgirls interested in men who can provide riches or muscular attraction (respectively). If nothing else you should at least watch the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number performed by Monroe (and she and Russell are quite a pleasure to look at as well).
Monday July 27, 2020
10:00 AM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming, 1941) This is the most overtly-Freudian version of the well-known story of a scientist (sort of representing the Superego), Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy), who develops a serum releasing his buried, horrible Id aspects as Mr. Hyde who rapes, then kills Ivy Pearson (Ingrid Bergman) even as Beatrix Emery (Lana Turner) continues to love him as Jekyll, who soon finds himself turning into Hyde even without the serum as his life quickly descends into chaos.
Tuesday July 28, 2020
6:00 AM The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) Noted more for historical value (curiosity?) than significance but a pleasure to watch (also spawns 5 sequels) as socialites Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell, Myrna Loy) enjoy being detectives (in Sherlock Holmes “sleuth” tradition, not The Maltese Falcon-hardboiled tradition, although Nick, Nora, and Sam all come from Dashiell Hammett novels) while downing numerous cocktails in the process. (Also runs on Wed. 7/29/2020, 8:00 PM.)
9:45 AM Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) Adapted from Edward Albee’s controversial play (1962), keeps story and most of the (profane) dialogue intact as a professor (Richard Burton) and his wife (Elizabeth Taylor), daughter of this small college’s president, verbally battle in front of house guests (George Segal, Sandy Dennis) as dysfunctionality reigns. Multiple-Oscar-winner: Best Actress (Taylor), Supporting Actress (Dennis), Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography (all 3 for B&W films), another 8 noms; bitter to watch but truly a grim masterpiece.
2:00 PM Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965) Epic adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s novel (1957)—less emphasis on history (Russian Revolution, Civil War), more on affair of Zhivago (Omar Sharif), Lara Anipova (Julie Christie); also stars Geraldine Chaplin, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Rod Steiger. 10 Oscar noms (The Sound of Music also had 10, beat Doctor … in 4 of those categories), won 5: Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, Original Score.
5:30 PM The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) Romantic comedy & satire of corporate immorality as execs at a huge insurance company force a lower-echelon-guy, Bud Baxter (Jack Lemon), to use his place for affairs, including Personnel Director (Fred MacMurray) with Bud’s secret attraction (Shirley MacLaine), then complications arise. Won 5 Oscars—Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay (Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond), Art Direction-Black & White, Film Editing—plus nominated for 5 more.
Thursday July 30, 2020
4:15 AM Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) Marvelous; big hit then now ranked as one of the best, if not the actual top comedy of all time, with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis disguised as women in a nightclub band in Florida trying to escape gangsters after they witness the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago; also stars Marilyn Monroe, George Raft, and Pat O’Brien (won an Oscar for Best B&W Costume Design). Joe E. Brown’s final line was terrific for its time, now it’s immortal.
If you’d like your own PDF of the rating/summary of this week's review, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: Here are items you might be interested in: (1) Korea's Peninsula has big opening across Asia; (2) Slow start for reopened Chinese theaters; (3) Christopher Nolan's Tenet delayed indefinitely; (4) Theater owners' response to delays in premieres; (5) Streaming pushing some cable TV networks into financial trouble; (6) Huge growth in U.K. drive-ins. As usual, I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder you can search extensive streaming/rental/purchase options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
Here’s more information about First Cow:
https://a24films.com/films/first-cow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1SukKUVCYE (33:56 interview with director/co-screenwriter [with Jonathan Raymond] Kelly Reichardt and actors John Magaro, Orion Lee)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/first_cow
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/first-cow
Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect
with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.
OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.
Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 39,717 (as always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week (with big shoutouts to Turkmenistan & all those "Others"):
No comments:
Post a Comment