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The timeline of the Tom Dooley cha cha

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There is something that haunts me every time I hear Sam Cooke’s Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha. In the song, the narrator is waiting for a dance that his partner can do. She cannot cha cha. But every song they play is the cha cha cha. Including Tom Dooley cha cha. Being extremely familiar with the folk ballad Tom Dooley, I am immediately set to ruminating what a Tom Dooley cha cha would sound like. The rhythms, the melody, everything seems as though it would not fit. And I wonder aloud that someone needs to make a Tom Dooley cha cha.

Well, someone did make a Tom Dooley cha cha! Apparently the Kingston Trio hit, Tom Dooley, inspired a number of response songs from various artists in various styles. The 1959 Thomas Dooley cha cha by the George Garabedian Troubadours was just one novelty song among many novelty and non-novelty songs. But then I had to know, was the Thomas Dooley cha cha playing at the party that inspired Sam Cooke to write his song? Or was George Garabedian, like me, inspired by the song to comment: what would a Tom Dooley cha cha be like? Before answering his own question.

Well, I couldn’t find a firm date for the George Garabedian 1959 release, but Sam Cooke’s “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha” was released in January 1959 after being recorded on January 7, 1959. So, it seems a fair bet that George’s cha cha came after. Mystery solved!

The original song that the Kingston Trio remade, and made famous, was written not long after Tom Dula was tried for a murder committed in 1866. Ages ago I went looking into the background on the song Tom Dooley. I found the story very well documented on Wikipedia and “A bit of justice for Anne” Wilkes Journal Patriot, so I ended up inspired to write some short fiction instead.

Holidays in the Movies: Spring Break

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We embrace the academic calendar milestones as defining moments in our year, so why haven’t we celebrated spring break with Holidays in the Movies? During our most recent celebration of the start of the school year we noticed that two movies on that list were set during spring; spring breakish even. So we have grabbed them from schools-in and will be doing a spring break watching:

  • PCU (1994) – “We’re not gonna protest!” But maybe we should protest this being a school starts movie. This is spring time, near end of term.
  • Girl Happy (1965) – seriously, how have we not included an Elvis movie in our watching yet. I may not have talked about our Elvis collection too much here, but it is fully featured in Doomed Moviethon.
  • Crocodile (2000) – Tobe Hooper’s direct to video spring break adventure.
  • Nightmare beach (1989) – what’s scarier and surer to ruin spring break than a crocodile? A motorcyclist, obviously.
  • Where the Boys Are (1960) – despite the tonal shift, which was actually buffered by the sequence of events so as to not be too jarring, this is a lovely film. It is both a girl’s fantasy of spring break and a depressing warning that the danger of spring break is that girls get assaulted. Sex is the only thing boys want.
  • Palm Springs Weekend (1963) – with the same initial feeling as Girl Happy and Where the Boys Are, this also echoes the warnings to girls that sex is the only thing boys want.
  • Spring Break (1983) – on to a boy’s dream of spring break, 80’s style, where girls are over-sexed objects on giggle juice and don’t even become near to characters until the end, but fun none the less.

We’ve gone on the hunt for more to fill the week, at least until St. Patrick’s Day. If we are lucky, we might get our hands on a few more:

  • The Beach Girls (1982)
  • Spring Breakdown (2009)
  • Malibu Bikini Shop (1986)

Hecate

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Holidays in the Movies: President’s Day

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For Holidays in the Movies, no holiday is too little acknowledged for us to celebrate with a movie. The only real challenge is finding the movies that definitely place themselves on a holiday of some kind, especially those that don’t have large cultural celebrations attached. Well, lucky for you I noticed when Coraline’s mother, in the 2009 movie Coraline, said that it was President’s day. So, for President’s day, until I find more, I will watch Coraline.

Of course there are plenty of thematic lists to rely on as well if you want to go that route as we have for Earth Day and the like. If you are feeling the theme you will not be spoiled for choices of movies about presidents.

Holiday’s in the movies: Lunar New Year

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Lunar New Year, based on the lunisolar calendar, is fabulously visible in the multi-cultural city we live in. To mark its passing, the way we do with every holiday, we have identified a couple of movies to help us celebrate:

  • Way of the Dragon (1972): Bruce Lee’s only complete directorial film, and Chuck Norris’ debut role will surely put us in the right spirit.
  • Fight Back to School III (1993): As Richard says, no excuse is needed to re-watch any Fight Back to School movie.

Time as a shadow

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I recently grabbed a deal on a vintage zodiac clock (that in the end isn’t functioning) and I realized something I hadn’t paid clear attention to before. The zodiac on the clock, on a vintage pellon print, on a vintage chalkware wall hanging owned by my best friend, and on the examples that initially inspired me to create my own zodiac clock are all arranged counter clockwise.

Where on the clock face the zodiac begins seems to vary in these vintage clocks. When making my zodiac clock, I arranged the signs clockwise and attempted a sort of alignment of the hour and sign. This made sense to me at the time, but noticing the difference I started wondering why what made sense to me was at odds with all the examples I had found.

Though it wasn’t my immediate common knowledge, I am sure it is common knowledge for some that the sun’s position in front of certain constellations – the path of the zodiac – is counter clockwise. And that the earth’s revolution around the sun is counter clockwise. Indeed the earth and moon move counter clockwise (in the Northern hemisphere). Ancient time keeping methods utilized the movement of the sun and the stars to tell time. Sites like Stonehenge tracked time using the sun. So, it’s the modern clock that moves in the opposite direction of all the objects that underpin our concept of time keeping.

One explanation for this is the impact of early time pieces like sundials that tracked time by the shadow the sun cast on the face of the time piece. Newer time keeping devices copied this layout so that all of our timekeeping implements, from wall clocks to wristwatches, track time clockwise even though clockwise is essentially the shadow of time passing counter clockwise.

Jamais Vu

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I’m pretty sure everyone on earth has had the feeling of déjà vu, and attributed various meanings to it. Akira O’Connor and Christopher Moulin’s “Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu” on The Conversation explains the mechanism of déjà vu as a sort of memory fact checking. Even more interesting to me is the description of déjà vu’s opposite: jamais vu. Jamais vu is when suddenly that which is known, familiar, and even common to you is somehow strange. The article sets up that jamais vu is even rarer than déjà vu, but then goes on to explain how it can be induced.

Funnily enough, I have noticed and remember several instances where I have experienced jamais vu. Is this because I have recently learned about it and, like with anything, having noticed a new thing I now see it everywhere I hadn’t noticed it before?

The described method of inducing jamais vu by writing out a word over and over again is especially memory inducing for me as I have a lot of experience with writing lines over and over again.

To Cast a Deadly Spell & Witch Hunt

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There are a few movies that I included in my Ultimate Witch Movies List that deserve some special rumination. Of course, I already mentioned Cast a Deadly Spell, and Witch Hunt when I announced the list, but I didn’t really say enough.

Both movies are HBO originals from what I remember as the heyday of HBO, when Home Box Office meant movies all the time. The main character in these films, Private Detective Phil Lovecraft isn’t the only reference to science fiction storytellers.

Detective Morris Bradbury plays the essential role of police officer foil to Lovecraft, referencing their long relationship including from when Lovecraft worked for the police as well. This relationship is cliche to so many murder mystery sleuths and yet I find its predictability completely amusing in these movies. Also on police payroll is Detective Otto Grimaldi. Could this be a reference to Hugo Grimaldi, producer of sci-fi moves in the early 60s?

There is obvious Lovecraft influence in the movies (though don’t expect Detective Lovecraft to be anything like the real man). These influences are explored in a thorough play by play of the movie on tor.com along with commentary that draws connections between thematic elements, Lovecraft reality, and the true history of the time the movies are set within.

I wonder if the naming of the three detective characters is indicating primary influences, in which case, I will be checking into the movies produced by Grimaldi and revisiting Bradbury to look for the other connections.

Happy New Year

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woman sitting on crescent moon with martini glass

My favorite Christmas Carol

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Much like our Halloween watching, our Christmas watching is such that it is getting its own zine at some point in the near (I hope) future. In lieu of a Holidays in the Movies post for Christmas, I just want to spotlight An American Christmas Carol.

Henry Winkler plays the stingiest man in town in this version of a Christmas Carol. His name is different; but the beats of his story are the same. Though, perhaps he modernizes the cruelty of Scrooge in a way that makes him seem an even worse person. Which makes his redemption even more effective. The acting in this TV movie is comfortable with a few shining moments. Unique is that, instead of being a specter of death, Dorian Harwood’s ghost of Christmas future walks into the scene with costume, music, and demeanor of someone decades ahead of the story line. This too, makes this interpretation very incisive.

Baking vegan with old recipes

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One of my favorite recipes for the holiday season is Hot Water Ginger Bread, which I have dubbed: ‘no ingredients left in the house ginger bread.’ I found it in a reprint of Fanny Farmer, and I have now amassed a large collection of cooking pamphlets from the turn of the last century through the depression and war years. The recipes that offer innovative ways to compensate or just plane ignore the lack of an ingredient are especially interesting to me.

So it was that I was looking through some of my cooking pamphlet collection for a cake recipe that either was or could easily be made vegan with very little change. I found Depression Cake. The only non-vegan ingredient included in the original recipe was butter and I figured I could easily substitute vegetable shortening. The batter was not thin as the recipe warned so I added ½ cup of applesauce. The denser cake took one full hour in the oven when divided into two loaf pans.

The result was decidedly good, though not very sweet. It would be easy to make this into a mock fruit cake by increasing the sugar, soaking the fruits in rum, and then drizzling the cake afterward. I will have to try this next.

Holidays in the Movies: Hanukkah

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Weird that we haven’t already covered Hanukkah in our movie watching. This year we will be taking some first steps toward addressing this.

  • Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah (1995) : I may have been born just a little too late for lamb chop, but it has the comforting television special feel that I grew up with.
  • Hanukkah (2019) : a horror movie unseen by us so far, we shall see.

And now, something different

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Happy Halloween!

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Halloween doodles

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