I'm back from my in-laws. They're a pretty easygoing bunch, so there was no drama, or even worse, stabbing with carving knives. All of my favorite nieces were there, along with their extremely cute and well-spoken children. As is traditional for a Wisconsin Thanksgiving, all of the menfolk were hanging out in their hunting shack, gutting out Bambi's mom, and keeping an eye peeled for gun-toting lunatics. The recent killings are a big topic of conversation, as you might suspect. Although the facts are still unclear at this point, the general consensus is that you never escalate a trespassing situation when guns are involved.

Their guest cabin had a great view of the nearby lake, which had just frozen over and had a light dusting of snow. It was dead quiet at night, despite the fact that my in-laws kennel 20 sled dogs. The woods surrounding the cabin abound with wildlife. I spotted a fisher cat near the shore while drinking my morning coffee. I wouldn't want to tangle with that critter in the dark.

On the way home, we passed the usual parade of trucks loaded down with bleeding deer carcasses strapped to the pickup bed, but I actually counted more dead bucks on the side of the highway. Even though I largely consider deer to be pests, I'll be glad when slaughtering hunting season is over.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, we're off to spend the holidays with my in-laws who live in the tiny town of Spirit Lake, WI; they've graciously invited us to share their Thanksgiving Day meal with them, and stay in their very nice rental cabin. Their old farm sits on a couple-hundred acres of some of the prettiest countryside in Wisconsin, but since hunting season is in full swing this week, I won't be venturing outdoors without a Kevlar vest and a bright-orange ensemble, and I certainly won't be taking any strolls through the woods.

I'll leave you with a couple of links I posted here last year that I think are fantastic, and deserve another look:

Gene Deitch's 1948 cartoon satire of jazz-record collectors, The Cat.

Had enough of The Man? Check out blaxploitation.com, the definitive web resource for aficionados of the genre.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm getting ready to leave for Saint Paul in a couple of hours with MrsBaliHai to see Madame Butterfly. Hopefully, it'll be as fine as the last two performances we've seen at the Ordway, Rigoletto and Die Fliegende Holländer. After the show, we'll stop at Moscow on the Hill, for a bowl of borscht, some black bread, and a shot of vodka or two.

On the printed-word front, a friend loaned me the Cintra Wilson book, Colors Insulting to Nature. The book's premise deals with how bad inspirational films like Ice Castles and Fame create ruinous false expectations of success in the life of a young girl and her pushy stage mother. It's a fun read, like one of Wilson's columns in Salon extended out a couple hundred pages. She employs some strange literary devices, such as stopping the narrative dead in its tracks to address the reader directly...sort of like breaking the 4th wall in film, but it hasn't been too disconcerting, yet.

Finally, I picked up the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus on DVD. I've seen bits and pieces of this concert film pop up in other movies, like The Kids Are Alright, so I was expecting performances on a par with The Who's take-no-prisoners rendition of "A Quick One", but I was mostly disappointed. Sure, it was great to see Marianne Faithfull as a young, beautiful ingenue again, but that didn't make up for the pain of listening to Yoko Ono screech atonally into a microphone for 10 minutes, or the lackadaisical performance of the Stones themselves.

This was Brian Jones' last recorded performance, and his puffy eyes, stumbling gait, and slurred speech, give an air of impending doom to the proceedings. A not-yet mummified Keith Richards and the rest of the band look bored and uninterested. It's clearly Jagger's show, and he spends most of his time preening and thrusting his crotch into the cameras rather than injecting any real urgency into songs like Jumpin' Jack Flash and Sympathy For the Devil. To his credit, Jagger apparently realized that his performance was crap, and withheld this film from general release until now. Guess he got hard-up for cash.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 9:58 AM | Permalink