Mad Men's Trippy Episode Last Week

We just watched last Sunday's episode of Mad Men. Certainly a little different. Roger and Don are having trouble maintaining their younger wives although the end result of the episodes dramas for the couples turns out to be quite different.

In this episode Peggy also struggles with a presentation for Heinz. What they are doing with Peggy's looks is to make her look harder. She smokes, drinks and is developing wrinkles. In this episode she tries a Don method of being forceful with the client, It does not work.

Roger goes to a party with his young wife and st her request takes LSD. It becomes quite comical, Roger is convinced he feels no effects, he does however feel plenty of effects.

This episode takes us down a detour. What would have been called a change of pace episode years ago. This show continues to be one of the best. Even when they take a detour.

New Multitudes by Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker and Yim Yames

This album is a collaborative effort to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie. A band led my musicians that musicians all know but for the average lay person the names that ring the loudest are Jay Farrar who has been in two bands loved by critics, Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo, bands that have included members of The Jayhawks and Wilco at one time or another. So the pedigree is there and then when you add Yim Yamss, A K A Jim James of My Morning Jacket and you know this group is strong.

Norah, Woody's Granddaughter who instigated this project must have been happy. Taking old unpublished lyrics of Guthrie's the band members wrote new songs. Recorded for the most part live with one mike, old style, there is much to like.

I have not listened to the whole set as of yet, it is a double album and includes many different types of music. The first single which has received significant radio airplay is My Revolutionary Mind and features Yames on vocals. A slow mantra in which James tells us that he needs a Liberally Minded Woman to ease his Revolutionary Mind the song could fit anywhere from the sixties to Woody's era himself.

Contributions by Farrar have that almost patented sound he is well known for, sort of Byrds meets the Midwest. I am a huge fan of James and plan to listen to the whole album. Woody Guthrie in so many ways is the forefather of much of the music we venerate on a daily basis.

Barack Obama on Jimmy Fallon

Barack Obama appeared on Jimmy Fallon the other night at a special show broadcast from the University of North Carolina. From an entertainment point of view the show was a huge success. Fallon at his best, played a solid monologue, then did one of his songs he is known for, one of his creation called Walk of Shame, a song well placed at a college campus.

Dave Matthews joined in and then of course played later in the show. The heart of the show however was the appearance of The President. Fallon in his normal role of cheerleader was visibly excited. Obama took part in the regular feature " Slow Jamming the News." It was funny and The President used the opportunity to skewer Republicans over their stance on his student loan bill.

Playing to the choir at a college campus Obama was clearly trying to raise interest and excitement in the youth vote. It works. Still some would wonder, myself included, if it is correct for a President to appear in a comedy skit so irrelevant and then to use it for political purposes. This was a far cry from Richard Nixon saying " Sock it to Me" and Bill Clinton was not The President when he appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show.

Funny Yes. Worth Watching Yes. Questionable as to if this is something a sitting President should be doing? Yes.

Ray

I had watched this movie a few years ago and enjoyed it. Seeing it on AMC a week or so ago I watched it again. It is a very good movie, and to some extent might have been the fuse that lit the fire of the recent spate of biopics that have been released. It and Walk the Line, another very strong movie.

And just as Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for Best Actress Jamie Foxx showed great range and won the Oscar himself for Best Actor. Foxx in this role was great. He sang, had the mannerisms, and look of Charles down very well.

Ray Charles was an incredibly gifted man. From the movie and from Charles own autobiography it seems clear that the most scarring event of his life was seeing his little brother drown in a bucket of water when he was seven years old. He soon thereafter became blind and it would not be inconsistent to think that the two events together scarred him in a way that he never fully recovered from.

In the movie we see Charles from his beginning up through his second heroin arrest in 1965. Charles had a long running affair with a singer in his band, fathered a child with her, and yet loved his own family a great deal. His wife Della Bee Robinson played wonderfully by Kerry Washington is shown as a woman devoted to family who deals with Ray's infidelities and frailties. Eventually however she cannot put up with the drug use, and the drug arrest. She gives Ray an ultimatum.

We see Charles going through detox, the hard way, not accepting any drugs to mitigate the withdrawal effects. It is brutal to see and for those who have never gone through anything like that hard to understand how brutal it is. Charles did come out the other side. As the credits roll we are advised that Charles went on to great further success and never touched heroin again.

One scene in the movie left me feeling like it was unresolved. Charles hires a new announcer who soon slithers his way into his confidence. The movie wants you to think he was a user, who manipulates Ray from his large office right next to Ray. Clearly putting himself at the arm of power. In the end we see Charles fire his longtime assistant Jeff who he is told has been stealing from him. My sense of the scene was that Jeff had been set up and that perhaps later we would see a reversal of these decisions. In the movie at least it is left unresolved.

Still the movie is very good, the music is wonderful and Foxx deserved every accolade he got for this performance.

Florence + the Machine Unplugged

If you are not one of those folks who have discovered the band Florence + the Machine this is time to do so. This lady can sing. Not just sing, but sing, wail, any adjective of your choice for a big voice.

After having two successful albums they have been given the Unplugged treatment on MTV. The performance is the perfect vehicle for a singer like Florence. Hit songs like What the Water Gave Me, Shake it Out, and Dog Days Are Over lose nothing and gain intensity in this setting.

The songs that you have to hear however are the two covers she digs out for this performance. First we hear the Otis Redding classic Try a Little Tenderness. With one of those voices that the proverbial phone book would sound melodious this might be the best version of the song that I have heard, other than the original of course.

As strong as this entry is, once joined by the lead singer of a band I had never heard of called Queens of the Stone Age, a man named Josh Homme, a version of the Johnny and June Carter Cash classic Jackson is rolled out. It too is a song that gets in your head. I have added it to my prime playlist and think it will be there for quite some time. A classic song sung by current artists and sung well gives one hope in this day of predominantly awful music.

Listen to these songs, then listen to the rest. Florence Welch is a singer we will be hearing for many years to come.

Politico Books: The Right Fights Back and Inside The Circus

I am a big fan of the Politico website. Each morning I read the Politico Playbook and consider a must read site daily. Between that and the Daily Notes entries on The New Yorker website, as well as the previously discussed Real Clear Politics I get my morning fixes early in the day.

Politico has launched a projected series of four instant books. Rather than wait until the year after an election to publish a book with the inside details on an election they plan to issue every couple of months a book outlining the election and the players involved.

The Right Fights Back told of the beginning stages of the campaign while Inside the Circus took us right up through the Wisconsin primary. So these books are current.

For me, however, they were not worth a great deal. Now I realize that most people do not follow politics that closely and certainly do not read the sites I read daily. That said these books are for political junkies. The target audience for these books would be people who do keep up with news, and therefore most of the information in these books is repetitious.

Now they only cost $2.99 each so if any information is gleamed at all it is worthwhile. The formatting however is poor, there are no chapters. It is really just a series of notes and paragraphs.

Politico has really done nothing with these books to expand their audience.

Love the site, but i will have no plans to read the next two books in the series.

Lillehammer Concludes

We watched the finale of Lillehammer last weekend. As discussed earlier this is an original series released by Netflix. Starring Little Steven as a mobster put in Witness Protection and chooses to move to Norway. Why, he was a huge fan of the Olympics.

Just eight episodes long the series covers lots of ground. With any show such as this before you invest you want to make sure that the show is going to make it. In today's world you can after the fact watch a season or two and get caught up.

Netflix has said that they would like to make another season of the show. Of course Little Steven is a pretty busy fellow, as his commitments with Bruce Springsteen and the current tour are significant.

Still the show and these eight episodes are stand alone strong. I highly reccomend you to watch it. It is worth your time and second season or not there is resolution enough the story arcs to satisfy.

I do not want to give away too much of the show, but the series is strong and very enjoyable. Van Zandt is underrated, he can pull off a line in a wry way that makes you not appreciate him enough.

The only thing I would change. The subtitles, for the Norwegian speak, often appear over the current scene and if the colors blend are hard to read. It could do with a black background for the subtitles.

Still a very good show. Watch it.