In Which He Grew Larger Over Time As Do Us All

Partner

by ALEX CARNEVALE

He didn't like school that year. It was more difficult than it should have been, and his new clothes chafed at him. When he came home his parents had an expectant look on their faces. He went to his room, closed the door. It was the ending of a John Updike story, but it was still going on.

He was not the first boy of this sort, whose imagination grew too large for the confines of his little life. His father had played with him as a child, but work grew more time-consuming, and he never saw joy in his father's cheekbones. His mother cut her hair.

Snow came heavy and sogging, getting in his clothes and things. The warmth of fall evaporated. The trees lost their leaves. In the back of his closet, digging for a textbook he'd misplaced the year before, he saw an old-stuffed animal, dirty with the smell of sand and a vacation he found he didn't remember with any clarity. He took it out, never put it back.

A creek a quarter mile from his backyard had frozen over. Despite explicit instructions from his parents and classmate neighbor, he trod on the ice, feeling a growing excitement at the thought of being something larger than himself. After an hour, he went back to his room to look for the stuffed tiger. Not finding it, he searched every room, each nook, each spot worriedly. There, finally, sitting by the curb, was Hobbes.

While he danced on the ice, waiting to fall through and possibly die, Hobbes spun on his vibration, watching him. A dance wasn't silly if someone watched you, a joke was funnier, more perceptive.

Later: he and Hobbes spinning like a galaxy.

He became more and more distracted at school, less interested in what was going on around him. He spent his life in a near constant daydream, imagining the vagaries of entertainment where none could readily be found. Snow was a continuous reminder of the distance between him and everything, in his shoes and bartered clothes, his mother's hand on his neck, writing something at a hard desk, walking with his head down.

The world was tight with a fervor he could not explain, a method that was madness.

He was convinced, finally, that he would remain a little boy forever. When he looked in the mirror, nothing changed, at least nothing he could track. He grew no stronger; he ate, but did not get fat like some adults did. When he and Hobbes went into nature, even their visions were enigmatic, sinister.

Slowly, he learned to ride on the little joys: a burst of fleeting violin, a strike of lightning, a salty manner, a playful and clever trick. He found pleasure in mayhem caused to his neighbor, his parents. Tearing events apart with your fingertips was fulfilling, watching it burn from the inside begat a twisted sense of joy. He could make the world -- others could make the world -- but he could also make the world.

The mind is a bitter friend, he learned, but it was the only one he had. If he could ring in the day this way, if he could craft himself in his own image, drift off in the tiger? Who knows what gleeful horror might unfold.

The world is a cynical, needless place. We have nothing to do to pass the days here but mere amusement. There is no future; there is only the present, hanging by a thread. To see ourselves in others is a great joy, but it is a simple one. Nothing complex survives very long in space.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"I'll Take The Long Road" - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens (mp3)

"Trouble In My Way" - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens (mp3) highly recommended

"He Knows My Heart" - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens (mp3)

In Which You Can't Let The Gloom Get You

With Friends Like These

by JACOB SUGARMAN

If Tony Soprano was a fan of Gary Cooper he must have loved Robert Mitchum. Cat sliced off his own finger in Sydney Pollock’s The Yakuza and didn’t make a peep. Just sweated a little and wrapped that bitch up in a napkin. 

When he wasn’t sucking on cigarettes in fedoras and trench coats, he even found the time to cut a calypso record and the sensationally titled country album, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings.

Really, who knew? With the May release of The Friends of Eddie Coyle on Criterion DVD, Gen-Y audiences have their first crack at Eddie “Knuckles” in this classic, 70’s crime saga and quintessential Mitchum vehicle.

The movie centers on Eddie “Knuckles” Coyle, a low-grade hoodlum and gunrunner famous for the extra set of knuckles he acquired from the wrong side of a dresser drawer. Such is the price for selling traceable arms to the Mafia. When he’s pinched for hijacking a truck, Coyle turns snitch for Detective David Foley in the hopes that he’ll have his sentence reduced. Because what would his charming, Irish hobbit of a wife do without him?

Meanwhile Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco, best known as Moe Green from The Godfather) and his crew are traipsing about the greater Boston area with guns and elaborate masks, robbing banks and taking names. Why? Because he’s Alex Rocco! He made his bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!

When Scalise’s crew is captured by the police, the mob fingers Coyle for setting them up. I won’t spoil the ending but a baby-faced Peter Boyle and a Boston Garden-era Bruins game are involved.

Made in 1973, The Friends of Eddie Coyle enjoys the same funk-infused score and gritty, urban texture as The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3. But while Joseph Sargeant’s caper caught the nostalgic eye of Tony Scott (who’s-gulp-slated to remake The Warriors in 2010), Coyle is the infinitely more stylish of the two films.

Scalise’s crew robs its first bank in translucent masks that look like a cross between John Waters and Ricardo Montalban. Take my word that this hybrid is as chilling as it is hideous. In their follow-up heist, they’re sporting rubber disguises that bear an awful resemblance to the president masks from the 1991 idiot-genius film, Point Break. I see you, Kathryn Bigelow! Your sexy DILF act is fooling no one.

With all the double-crossing, snitching and hammy Boston accents, it’s also hard to think that Martin Scorsese didn’t at least take a peak at Coyle before he started shooting The Depahted.

Yet for all of director Peter Yates’ artistry, this movie really belongs to Mitchum. Watching him stagger about like a man marked for death in the Frankenstein-like company of Peter Boyle, you can’t help but recall his appearance twenty years earlier in the classic film noir, Out of the Past.

Fatalism just agrees with him. But what makes Mitchum so compelling is that he never lets the doom and gloom of his characters drag him too far down. When asked about his approach to acting, he once famously responded: “I have two acting styles: with and without a horse.”

You can see from the still photographs of the movie shoot included on the DVD that Mitchum never took himself too seriously. And really, that’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle—a throwback, crime story long on verve and short on pretension. Arm your netflix queues accordingly.

Jacob Sugarman is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Last Nite (demo)" - The Strokes (mp3)

"Meet Me In The Bathroom (home recording)" - The Strokes (mp3)

"New York City Cops (live in Iceland)" - The Strokes (mp3)

In Which This Is The Secret of Dolly Parton's Success

An American, Tennessee-Born

by ANNA DEVER-SCANLON

Dolly Parton is a product of Appalachia, USA. From Locust Ridge, Tennessee, she grew up in a one-room shack with 11 brothers and sisters, the daughter of sharecroppers.

I recently visited Dollywood, Parton’s amusement park located in her hometown. At the “Chasing Rainbows” museum dedicated to her life, she has a room set up to resemble an attic. In it are bits of Dolly memorabilia, movie posters, costumes, and old furniture. You enter the room and a film is projected on the wall in front of you. In it Dolly flits about the screen, yammering on about her memories of “growin up poor,” making suggestive comments about her breasts, and generally being delightful. She really does resemble a ray of giggling sunshine, every part of her persona seeming to want to ease pain and bring joy.

Her childhood was burdened by hardship. Her song, “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)” gives you the general idea:

I’ve seen Daddy’s hands Break open and bleed

And I’ve seen him work till he’s stiff as a board

And I’ve seen Momma layin In suffer and sickness

In need of a doctor we couldn’t afford

A person who grew up in this kind of environment would want to get as far away from it as possible.

Though Dolly is a huge international star, she’s been married to the same man, Carl Dean, owner of a road paving business in Nashville, since she was 19. Building Dollywood has also allowed her to retain a huge influence on her hometown, revitalizing its once non-existent economy.

One area in which she has strayed from reality is her looks. She has created an exaggerated version of herself – with the platinum wigs, balloon-like breasts, facelifts and over-the-top costumes. She looks like an actual doll. Another line from “In the Good Old Days” provides a clue as to why she’s gone this route:

And I couldn’t enjoy then Havin a boyfriend

I had nothing decent to wear at all

Deprivation made Dolly feel unattractive, so it’s as though she’s done everything in her power to prevent that feeling from returning. The title of Dolly’s latest album, Backwoods Barbie, acknowledges both her hillbilly upbringing and this subsequent adoption of a doll-like persona. Another of Dolly’s trademarks that has developed over time is her giggle, a seemingly air-headed tic that peppers her speech as well as her singing.

While it might seem annoying coming from someone else, with Dolly you know she is in on her own joke, playing on the stereotype of he Dumb Blonde – fully aware that it’s a caricature. As she’s said, “I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.” Basically, “I enjoy the way I look, but it’s a joke.” By making fun, she prevents herself from being hurt. But beyond that, she is a source of sheer positivity – the giggle seems to stem from a deep desire to make everything all right, spread happiness and forget adversity - that you have no choice but to giggle with her.

Her song “Joshua” is a primer on positive thinking. Her first number one hit, it’s a tale about traipsing onto the land of a mean old recluse, refusing to believe that anyone could “be that mean” and subsequently marrying him.

Even the somewhat dark “Jolene” manages to praise the other woman’s looks and instead of expressing anger over this woman trying to take her man, she simply pleads for her not to, “even though she can.” This simple approach is the key to Dolly’s popularity, and it's made her the richest country star ever, worth about $600 million. (Much of her financial success is due to her decision not to sell the rights to her song “I Will Always Love You” to Elvis and the song’s explosive success years later when Whitney Houston covered it for The Bodyguard soundtrack.)

Her songwriting reveals another kind of genius, the ability to capture profound truth in charming golly-gee-whiz colloquialisms. This is probably the best thing about Dolly and about country music in general. In under three minutes, Parton's hit "9 to 5" accomplishes the lofty task of illustrating the frustration and emptiness of contemporary American life but somehow making you feel okay about it, all while rhyming “kitchen” with “ambition.” How can you not love this woman?

Anna Dever-Scanlon is the senior contributor to This Recording. She blogs here.

"Release Me" - Dolly Parton (mp3)

"I Will Always Love You" - Dolly Parton (mp3)

"Letter to Heaven" - Dolly Parton (mp3)