Adjustments: To Giant Beasts, To One’s Self
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.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
Jurassic World Dominion (Colin Trevorrow)
rated PG-13 146 min.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Once again I’m using the wait-a-week-strategy for the big-opening-movie to calm down a bit, allowing me to attend an early-afternoon-matinee later with considerably-fewer-fellow-patrons to allow for better indoor social distancing while the latest COVID-19 variants continue surging here in my San Francisco area (thus, Pixar/Disney’s debuting Lightyear [Angus MacLane] will next get the week-delayed-review-treatment [although the bean-counters aren’t happy with its opening-week-take of “only” $50.6 million {globally $84.2 million}], so maybe my local theaters weren’t all that full for it anyway) while I catch up on Jurassic World Dominion, which should have no complaints after the huge stash of cash it took in over the previous few days (more on that below). As you likely already know, this is officially the end of the Jurassic World trilogy, actually a continuation of the previous Jurassic Park trilogy beginning late last century (more on that below as well), although the 6 movies in this series are a bit hard to tell apart in that they mostly consist of terrified humans running for their lives from rampaging dinosaurs who refuse to remain in whatever enclosures where we attempt to confine them. As usual with these stories there’s a lot of sound and fury, but whether it signifies nothing will be up to your investment in the latest version of these “creature features” about huge beasts making life miserable for us puny humans (a tradition that includes many variations on King Kong, Godzilla, and less-involving-creatures that at times have included gigantic ants, rabbits, or various residents of the deep bringing huge chaos to the surface).
In Short Takes you’ll find a review of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an intimate, well-acted story about an older woman (Emma Thompson) nervously trying to upgrade her so-far-dismal-sex-life by hiring a charming, easy-to-look-at young stud to help her work through her mildly-erotic-bucket-list. For your further cinematic explorations, here are links for the schedule of the cable network, Turner Classic Movies, which gives you a wide selection of older films with no commercial interruptions and the JustWatch site, offering a wide selection of options for streaming rental or purchase. If you want to see what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, you can go here.
Before we get down to cinematic business, though, I’ll briefly follow up my basketball-based-comments from my previous posting, leading into the review of the National Basketball Association-based-Hustle (Jeremiah Zagar; review in our June 16, 2022 posting) with notations about my local Golden State Warriors battling the Boston Celtics for this year’s NBA title. Last Thursday the Warriors prevailed, taking their 4th championship in 8 years (2 of those not really counting too much given injuries to their star players so that they didn’t reach the Finals in 2019-’20, 2020-’21 [even as they dropped the 2018-’19 Finals, likely due to losing the skills of Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson in Games 5 and 6 also to injuries]) and fabulous superstar Stephen Curry (holding the trophy in the photo just above) finally winning the honor of NBA Finals Most Valuable Player. Very satisfying (except to all of my New England in-laws, I’m sure, but they shouldn’t forget the Celtics have 17 previous NBA titles whereas Golden State has just 7, so we’ve still got a long way to go to catch up).
Here’s the trailer for Jurassic World Dominion:
(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 $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: As a brief opening TV news story explains, Earth's become overrun with a huge variety of cloned-dinosaurs that escaped from the Lockwood Estate (animals first developed decades ago by International Genetics Technologies, Inc.—InGen) which are slowly being captured by the Biosyn Corporation—Biosyn—run by Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), then sent to Biosyn’s sanctuary in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains where, supposedly, they’re being studied to find cures for human diseases, yet paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is concerned huge prehistoric locusts are decimating crops except those grown with Biosyn seed setting up a situation where this corp. could control Earth’s food supply so she tracks down former colleague (more than that if their connection in Jurassic Park [Steven Spielberg, 1993] was any indication, although she’s now divorced) paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill)—who never married, apparently hasn’t seen Ellie for years—for help in getting locust DNA from Biosyn to prove her theory, with access to this secure company offered by another former-colleague, now working at Biosyn, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), likewise suspicious about what’s happening at Biosyn. Meanwhile, at a remote location in the Sierra Nevada mountains former Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and former Jurassic World Velociraptor trainer/now-stray dinosaur-captor Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are trying as hard as they can to be surrogate parents for rebellious teenager Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), an invaluable-scientific-entity because she seems to have been cloned from her mother, Charlotte, with bounty-hunters for Biosyn looking to capture both Maisie and Beta, a little Raptor child of Blue, also in this area, who's still responsive to Owen’s previous training.
One day the bounty hunters are successful, capturing Maisie and Beta, with Owen and Claire in desperate pursuit, which, through a clandestine tip, takes them to Malta where they infiltrate a dinosaur black market, learn the captives are being taken to the Italian Biosyn compound, then convince dubious pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), ultimately-receptive to Maisie's plight, to fly them there too. Ellie and Alan are welcomed at the Italian Biosyn HQ where, with Malcolm’s help, they sneak into the locust lab, get the needed DNA sample, hurriedly leave where they encounter also-escaping Maisie and Beta. They all get out of the compound’s main building as Dodgson sets the locust lab on fire to destroy evidence, but as the fiery bugs swarm out of the enclosure they set the neighboring forest on fire even as they die. Parallel to all of this (keeping up with this plot while watching it isn’t the easiest task you’d ever have; I’ve left out a good bit) Kayla’s plane’s attacked by flying Quetzalcoatluses, forcing her to crash after ejecting Claire whose goal is to find Maisie, but first Claire has to dodge a huge, feathered Therizinosaurus in the jungle even as Kayla and Owen escape both a lake’s thin ice and an equally-feathered, dangerous Pyroraptor. Alan, Ellie, and Maisie have to produce their own escape from Dimetrodons in a tunnel, then meet up with escaping Malcolm and secret-helper-Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie)—both fired by a furious Dodgson—as well as Owen, Claire, and Kayla (plus a now-subdued Beta). ⇒As chaos overtakes the complex, Dodgson tries to escape until a power-shutdown allows him to be killed by some Dilophosaurus, even as our protagonist-group confronts a huge Giganotosaurus, eventually killed by the teamwork of the Therizinosaurus and ever-present-champion-dino of these movies, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, allowing our humans to fly away by helicopter. Ellie and Alan reconnect, testify against Biosyn along with Malcolm and Cole; Owen, Claire, and Maisie return home, reunite Blue with Beta; Wu develops a pathogen to eradicate the locusts; the United Nations declares the Biosyn property as a dinosaur sanctuary; overall, in final scenes roaming dinos in the wild learn to coexist with modern animals.⇐
So What? While the short news report at the beginning of … Dominion gives an audience enough information about what’s going on here (dinosaurs have escaped from the Lockwood estate in northern CA, spread all over the globe where they generally avoid human habitations but still disrupt our lives anyway) so that you can get what you need from just watching this movie without knowing any of its heritage, you might want to be better versed (or reminded) of what’s come before; therefore, I’ll offer a collection of suggestions for those who desire to dig in a bit deeper. If so, you can start with this detailed video (24:44 [ads interrupt at about 6:25, 11:20, 16:35]) which addresses the entire franchise, then maybe follow that up with another video (15:09 [ads interrupt at about 5:10, 10:55]) noting 25 things viewers probably missed upon an initial screening (this one has Spoilers about … Dominion, though). Now, if you want even more detail one option would be this link which explores the entire franchise (including novels and other aspects beyond just the 6 movies) in extensive detail overall but for fuller details on the movies themselves you’ll need to visit sites for Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)—these 2 were based on popular novels by Michael Crichton (1990, 1995)—Jurassic Park III (Joe Johnston, 2001), Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015), and (join me for) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, 2018).*
*While I offered a 3½ stars review to Jurassic World I skipped … Fallen Kingdom, probably because I’d had enough of big-screen-dinosaurs at that time and was put off by the OCCU’s dismissals (Rotten Tomatoes 47% positive reviews, Metacritic 51% average score, although those numbers look good now given the notably-lower-current-ones given to … Dominion [more on that abyssmally-dismissive-situation in this review’s next section, just below]) so I needed the various info sources cited above to fully understand how the dinosaurs got from islands off Costa Rica to North America (then onward globally) and what was the full background of Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon then as well, who simply grew into her teenager-role in this nonstop-action-franchise-finale).
Admittedly, once you have all of this information you may feel as data-overwhelmed as I do about all of these recreated-dinosaurs and their constant fatal encounters with each other as well as humans who don’t move as fast as the stars of these movies (appropriate term in these cases) along with using those first couple of links above to see how intentionally-repetitious this latest-franchise-entry is, especially in connection with the original Jurassic Park, mirroring a complaint I explored in my review of Top Gun: Maverick about a current movie connecting itself too consciously, too frequently to aspects of its original. That problem (for me) held back my rating of … Maverick, has the same result here but even more so as this stuff’s been rambling on for 5 repetitions now, which look great on screen as action scenes, given their visual-virtuosity, but get tiresome as one primary human after another has to outsmart/outrun yet another (or more) of these dominating-ancient-animals (yet, I do appreciate the director's comments [3:21] about Howard’s close call with the Therizinosaurus, one of the quieter-encounters any human has with any of these beasts throughout the lengthy-franchise).
To cap off this section of comments, for the benefits of those who, like me, didn’t see … Fallen Kingdom, in that it flows directly into the events of … Dominion (with a 4-year-gap mirroring the release years of the 2 movies), Maisie is truly the granddaughter of Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell, in that previous episode)—original partner of the island-based-Jurassic Park, owned by John Hammon (Richard Attenborough)—because her mother, Charlotte Lockwood (Elva Trill), somehow brought her about as an “immaculate conception,” not as a clone of Charlotte as had been previously understood. While that reality was fascinating for Dr. Wu, his true interest in Maisie is to somehow understand how Charlotte had managed gene-manipulation in the girl to save her from the inherited-disease that killed Charlotte, all leading to his hopes of genetically-modifying those ancient-locusts to save the world from crop annihilation. Yet, there’s also a fierce interest in understanding how the female Velociraptor, Blue, could have asexually produced little Beta. Nevertheless, that sort of thing’s been going on since Jurassic Park due to how these manufactured-dinosaurs have been completed with frog or lizard DNA so I don’t quite follow why Beta was of such interest to Dr. Wu, given he was around in Jurassic Park where he’s the one responsible for creating the original generation of cloned-dinosaurs (further, there would seem to be a lot more dinos now inhabiting Earth than those escaped from the Lockwood compound so these female-only-births would seem to have been more of a norm than … Dominion cares to admit). Finally, if you’ve seen only Jurassic Park you might wonder why Dr. Dodgson has the false can of shaving cream, intended to hold dino embryos, that Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) lost in the mud back in the franchise’s original movie when he was on his way to deliver his stolen goods to Dodgson (played back then by Cameron Thor); from what I’ve read, Dodgson was able to find that can later, giving him further opportunities to work with Dr. Wu to keep producing new variations of these ancient beasts, as the years moved on.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Despite my rather blasé response to Jurassic World Dominion with its constant scenes of main characters having to somehow escape from dinosaurs (although I did appreciate seeing all of these stars from the 2 parts of this interconnected-trilogy finding opportunities to eventually work together to once again bring about some inter-species-harmony [or at least the option of ceasing the slaughter of homo sapiens-interlopers into the domains of the resurrected-“thunder lizards”]), I’m considerably more accepting of this Jurassic … finale than the OCCU where those at Rotten Tomatoes are only able to provide 30% positive reviews while their compatriots at Metacritic are surprisingly-more-supportive for a change (but not by much) with their 38% average score (more details in the links to these critics’-accumulation-sites, as I provide with anything I review, in Related Links much farther below), giving no one who reads their reviews much reason to even bother considering paying good money for tickets to this overblown mess as the OCCU sees it; for example, noted film explorer Leonard Maltin says: “This is not a story that begged to be told or a saga that demanded a finale. It’s another dispiriting example of how Hollywood never leaves money on the table. As long as moviegoers will pay to see people in peril from scary prehistoric creatures there are people who will provide them with what they want: more of the same. It’s just a shame that so much talent is wasted in the process.” So, my 3 of 5 stars (60%—or even higher with the understanding that I rarely go above 4 stars) is actually more supportive than the critical-norm, even though beyond the visceral experience of seeing these huge beasts in motion once again along with clever-human-strategies—or just dumb luck—in avoiding being eaten is just a satisfactory thrill ride, especially if you’re paying cheap-bargain-matinee-prices.
I don’t know how many of the worldwide audiences who forked over cash for this Jurassic World … got a good deal on their ticket-purchases, but plenty of them have found their way to the huge onslaught of 4,676 domestic theaters on debut weekend, yielding $249.8 million in revenue from that base, with the global tally up to $623.3 million, likely already showing a profit despite the costly $185 million in production costs plus probably about that much again in huge marketing/distribution bucks.
(A nice trick of objects-placement: dino's closer to the camera, not really about to eat Chris Pratt.)
Well, that’s more than enough chatter about something that at best will please the Jurassic Park/ World fanboys (and girls) but add little to cinematic history except for its continuance of impressive computer-generated-imagery, so let’s wrap up with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor which stumped me for awhile in coming up with something that truly relates to this movie. Obviously, the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” title says what all of the human characters (and a few animal sacrifices) are desperate to achieve in all of these movies but the lyrics have no other connection (unless you want to argue that “The New York Times’ effect on man” relates to dinosaurs because newspapers are an example of “dinosaur media”) so I kept trying to come up with something else, finally settled on The Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” (a hit single in the U.K., on the U.S. 1966 Yesterday and Today album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M due to Dr. Malcolm’s beliefs that we humans don’t have dominion over other creatures on our planet (despite some religions’ texts saying otherwise), that nature has dominion over us so we need to live in harmony with our fellow beings (“Life is very short and there’s no time / For fussing and fighting, my friend / I have always thought that it’s a crime / So, I will ask you once again / Try to see it my way / Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong / While you see it your way / There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long / We can work it out”) as shown in the movie’s final shots of various dinosaurs co-existing with our time’s sea and land creatures. (Oops, Spoiler! Sorry.) It’s an optimistic hope—especially given we don’t see any harmonious situations with the flesh-eaters—so at least this (successfully) monetarily-directed-story offers something useful about the needed sense of universal cooperation in just our own existence to keep human life functional without the need for introducing dinosaurs into the mix.
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde)
rated R 1:38 min.
An aging widow who’s had an almost-nonexistent-sex-life hires a hot young male sex worker to try to help her loosen up; however, she’s so nervous and hesitant they almost never begin even as he’s supportive, encouraging which helps her finally ease into what she’s paid for, although she almost ruins it by talking too much about herself plus trying to pry into his past, a move he angrily opposes.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) is a widow in her early 60s who’s never had an orgasm (sex life with her former husband was of the boring rote variety; for his benefit, she faked) who’s hired a young, studly male sex worker, Leo Grande (Daryl McCormick), to help her get over her self-imposed body-shaming/reluctance to experience passion so they meet in an upscale-hotel-room where she’s nervous, second-guessing her plan while he’s calm, encouraging, determined to help her fulfill her fantasies (which she’s listed carefully, showing her former occupation as a secondary-level-schoolteacher—about religious education!). She admits she’s disappointed with her adult children whom she finds to be boring (they see her as cold) while he admits he lies to his mother about his profession, instead telling her he’s an oilrig worker. Nancy’s only true prior sensual experience was when she was a teenager on vacation with her parents in Greece, seduced for a bit in private by an older hotel worker who quickly scooted off when he heard someone talking nearby.
After a successful-enough-encounter with Leo on their first meeting, she books another session, same place, a week later, but now she’s interrupted by phone calls from her needy daughter until she becomes aroused by Leo’s sincere admission he gets comfort from giving pleasure to his clients, finally gives him a blowjob. When he’s back again a week later she gets pushy, wants to continue seeing him as a friend, reveals she looked him up on the Internet (real name: Connor), wants him to be honest with Mom; he’s offended by the privacy-invasion, tells her never to contact him again, storms out, but comes back to get his forgotten cell phone, admits his mother disowned him at age 15, tells people he’s dead. Another week goes by, Nancy books Leo again, but they meet at the hotel restaurant so she can apologize, say a quieter goodbye, admits her real name is Susan Robinson (any assumption this is intended as an allusion to The Graduate [Mike Nichols, 1967] is yours to make if you wish), has recommended him to several of her friends whom she believes could benefit from his services; he admits his disownment was because his mother caught him having group sex with friends, although he’s now starting to make some contact with his estranged brother. Their waitress, Becky (Isabella Laughland), turns out to be one of Nancy/Susan’s former students, chastised as a “slut,” so the older woman offers further apologies, even recommends Leo to Becky. ⇒Soon “Nancy” and “Leo” are upstairs again for the rest of her list, although still no orgasm until she watches his nude presence, masturbates, then she finally comes. He leaves the next morning, their relationship pleasantly ended; she looks, not so disapprovingly, at her nude body in the mirror.⇐
Good Luck … is about as straightforward a story as you can imagine with no enhancements from flashbacks, subplots, or brief scenes away from the hotel to “open up” the narrative (as is often the case when plays are adapted to the big screen, although that’s not the situation here as Katy Brand’s screenplay is simply appropriate to COVID-imposed-production-restrictions where setting and cast needed to be as restrictive as possible). So, it all comes down to the exquisite acting ability of a 63-year-old-pro (long successful career including a Best Actress Oscar for Howard’s End [James Ivory, 1992] and a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Sense and Sensibility [Ang Lee, 1995]) and a emerging 29-year-old who’s been in a few films and TV productions, nothing I’ve seen (but I hope he’ll be cast again and again in the future), with both leads giving us reason to stay attuned to their dialogue, whether of comic or serious nature. The CCAL’s in solid agreement on the fine merits of this intimate experience, with RT reviews at 95% positive, the MC average score at 78% (one of their highest for 2022 releases both they and I have attended to). To see Good Luck to You, Leo Grande you’ll have to stream it on Hulu ($6.99 monthly, no extra charge for this film). As for a Musical Metaphor, I’m immediately reminded of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” (on their 1982 So Excited! Album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iwBM_YB1sE (their official music video for the song which begins with seeming-preparations for sex but actually’s about a wild night at a club [sexiness at least implied there, though]) with the song’s lyrics more blatant than what I suppose they wouldn’t show in that video: “Tonight’s the night we’re gonna make it happen / Tonight we’ll put all other things aside / Give in this time and show me some affection / We’re going for those pleasures in the night.” Nancy finally got her full dose of pleasures in the night, apparently now ready to fend for herself as she moves on, either with a future partner or, quite capably, by herself.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: (1): What held Lightyear back from a bigger opening?
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Here’s more information about Jurassic World Dominion:
https://www.jurassicworld.com (click the 3 little bars in the upper-left-corner for options)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJXrCtQAYDs (19:08 paleontologist Mark Loewen of the U. of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah reviews dinosaur movie scenes from the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World series and others, noting numerous problems in most of the depictions
[ad interrupts at about 11:28])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jurassic_world_dominion
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/jurassic-world-dominion
Here’s more information about Good Luck to You, Leo Grande:
https://www.hulu.com/movie/good-luck-to-you-leo-grande-b0243a6c-8add-4d53-a234-05a255c8989f?utm_source=Searchlight&utm_medium=Search&utm_campaign=LeoGrande&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1Yz_sNu6-AIVvMLCBB1WyATXEAAYASAAEgK5YfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds (despite this “grande” URL this isn’t much of an official website, more of a sign-in to watch on Hulu, so you might try https://www.leograndefilm.co.uk even if you’re not in the U.K. or Ireland because those 3 little upper-left-corner-bars seem to get you more info from wherever you might be viewing this blog)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DpG8CGkSrY (6:52 interview with actors Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_luck_to_you_leo_grande
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/good-luck-to-you-leo-grande
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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, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). 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 (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
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/wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can be raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna" However, if the day does come when Nina has to present these above thoughts (beginning with “If we did talk”) and this music after my demise I might as well make this into a somewhat-Top 10 of songs that mattered to me by adding The Beatles’ "A Day in the Life," because that chaotic-orchestral-finale sounds like what the death experience may be like, and the Beach Boys’ "Fun Fun Fun," because this gathering may have gotten morbid so I’d like to sign off with something upbeat to remember me (the Galveston non-surfer) by.
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