deck; dreck; retrospeck

[fflo]

Nearly done powerwashing. Gaddzz. Big job.

Had a few drop-by visitors today. A family and a single. One of the children in the family was certain I was home, even though my car wasn't here (I'd parked it at Bert's) and I wasn't answering my phone. The single was on a fall foliage digital photography walk, on this almost-hot day in late October.

I love the drop-by or join-in when I'm in back. To be found out back makes it feel as if I hang there some, and truth is I'm not out back so much---not near as much as would qualify as taking advantage of the space. Not this year, anyway. It was a non-yard year, though. The odd numbers, remember? Maybe I didn't say that here. This year I'm floating the theory that maybe I'll be a yard tender in the even-numbered years.

Been thinking about Holly some here and there these past few days, for some reason. Holly the person, not the thermonuclear explosion. It mighta been having my bartender say he knew me from somewhere else, and having it turn out to be he'd worked with her---right at the very end there, and presumably afterwards, which was a little weird. When he figured it out, he asked me whether I used to date her.

But it's not late-model Holly I've been thinking about. Recently I was telling this chick the story of H & I breaking out of the cruise-from-hell's "exclusive port" (tourist gift shop and tawdry faux-exotic consumerism, surrounded by an 8-foot wooden fence, painted turquoise, with only one gap in it that we could find) and walking to that hotel and renting that scooter---escaping the cruise, escaping the passengers, escaping the whole freaked-out mother thing---and tooling around a deserted Freeport on Easter Sunday, trying to remember to stay on the wrong side of the road.

I think I'm going to blame that story, and not, say, somebody's recent mention of a personality disorder, cuz it's a Holly like that Holly on the scooter with me that I've been thinking of.

Even O agreed the other day that that crazy woman could be fun. All that performance stuff. It had its moments.

This one, with all the glorious record noise, is a hokey classic that still makes me smile:

  .mp3 --> "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" -- Vikki Carr
 

Comments

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i like this song too! also like the later version--no clue who sings it--but i also always feel that it's been hijacked by the movie (can hardly think about it without thinking about the movie).

i also like dropping by on people, for reasons that 1. it makes me feel like people actually live in their houses and 2. they don't mind people coming by (friends in general). especially when it happens in this country, it makes me feel like i'm walking less than a foot off the ground, which is what it usually is.

and yes, there was much attraction in that mirage we knew. wonder what the kaleidoscope is showing now. :)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

the movie i had in mind was "the deer hunter." apparently there's a newer one too, with julia roberts and someone else.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ah, just saw this. didn't see the deer hunter. don't particularly intend to.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i saw it a million years ago in the land of one's people. except for the war and psychological stuff that was interesting to me when i was 13 or so, can't remember much else. i think there was something polish and perhaps jewish about it, but it's all mixed up by now.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

the movie--- is that, like, Four Friends and a Wedding and a Funeral? Or one of those type movies?

i caught a bit of some bad (you could just tell) movie on Bert's TV the other night. turned to it as uma thurman, in a small town bar, is buying shots for matt dillon and his buddies, and the one buddy sits down to the tinny piano and, while i strain my brain to remember his name (timothy hutton), he starts playing and they all sing "sweet caroline."

the scene is not well done. i suspect it of piggybacking on that crowd-sings-an-old-pop-song shtick that was going around for a while. like in almost famous, with the "tiny dancer" on the bus (though that one wasn't so bad).

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

yeah, this sounds like the type of scene that has potential, but then turns flat. apparently, in this movie with julia roberts, someone is trailing her, and she's listening to this song, or at least you can see her lip-syncing, and the person trailing her is sitting in the car listening to the same music and singing. potentially nice. sort of like mrs. dalloway. :)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Ah, the crackling fire that is vinyl record noise. Makes you feel warm on a cold October night in a house without a fireplace.

I remember the heat coming off the vacuum tubes in my dad's home-made audio amplifier...

Composing music has given me a great appreciation for hokey music. Music demands to be what it demands to be, and if a tune wants to be hokey, you just have to embrace its hokeyness and not hold back.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i like that philosophy.

btw, i wanted to say: a minor key for my deck-doin' lyric would be perfect, i think. would balance/undercut any disneyesque "it's all right" feel, cuz, of course, it's never all right.

you know, if you do set it to music for me.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I haven't been on much lately, so I haven't mentioned how much I like "DaDa guy."

that crazy woman could be fun.

Yep. She did have her moments.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I like him too. Maybe I should post the picture he comes from for you, and any other admirers.

As far as H-not-the-bomb, yet the-bomb, what can one say. shmizla calls her a mirage, and that's surely apt. But such a mirage she was. At least to these eyes, in this life.