Author: Seb Palmer

Upon finishing N. A. M. Rodgers’ astonishing maritime trilogy, I wanted to keep up the naval reading theme. This was the book I chose.

Funnily enough I saw Hastings give a Topping Books author’s talk on this very book/subject, in Ely, about a year or more prior to my actually reading it. 

It’s a gripping account. And I’d highly recommend it. I won’t synopsise the events. Suffice to say Hastings sets the scene, and handles every level, from the whys to the hows, and addressing both strategic and tactical aspects, balancing an unsurprisingly Brit’-centric perspective with due attention to both Allied (American, French, etc) and Axis (German and Italian) combatants. 

It’s also fascinating how much of the book and the real world events give consideration to the whys and wherefores, which extend beyond the events, to continued shades of opinion as to whether Pedestal was an Allied or Axis victory; and/or worth the effort/sacrifice. Was it justified, or necessary?

All told, a fascinating narrative, liberally peppered with engaging firsthand testimonies, of an exciting moment, oft’ overlooked, in WWII.

NB – This book has several useful maps, quite a few black and white photos, and – crucially – a glossary (esp’ useful for explaining the many abbreviations!).

After the trip, we watched a couple of Hockney documentaries, on the BBC iPlayer. And I started reading about things that were mentioned at the same time.

One such was Richard Silver, a fellow Bradfordian, and the man who bought and developed Salt’s Mill. There was a piece by Hockney in The Telegraph, about Silver. It’s a fascinating read.

It was at about this point that I realised something… This was clearly not the sofa I had ordered.

It was the arms (which, to compound matter, didn’t work), that really nailed the realisation. The sofa pictured on the Amazon listing could be totally flattened: both back and sides fold down.

Whereas, with the sofa we received the back didn’t adjust at all – the two panels were just solid – and the arm mechanisms are very clearly totally different!

After much wrangling – during which the manufacturer, Yaheetech, maintained that it was the correct sofa-bed; whilst their middleman supplier, Monumart, agreed it wasn’t – a resolution was eventually reached.

But the biggest annoyance of all this is the waste of time and energy. And we still don’t have a replacement for the ‘old and busted’ sofabed.

Bummer!

On a happier note, my restored footstool looks ace. And is now doing sterling service.

We got one of our numerous easels down from the attic a few days ago. Teresa felt she couldn’t use it, as a couple of bits are missing.

So I agreed I’d fix it, if poss’. After some measuring, I ordered some parts from Amazon, yesterday. They arrived this afternoon.

Pic

I couldn’t find anything quite like what the easel is fitted with (the feet appear to be resin, or something like that). So I just got something that’d do the job.

After adding a replacement foot-pad, it’s time to try and do the same for the missing lobed turn knob. I measured it very carefully, and the ‘male’ thread:

So… I think the ‘pitch’ is 0.8 mm, as pictured above. And I thought the male thread was 4mm…

Sadly the M4 threaded turn knobs I ordered turned out to be too small. So I guess I should’ve ordered M5? I hope they don’t turn out to be some weird imperial thread that’s a bugger to match?

Anyhoo, I’ve ordered M5 knobs, and they should arrive tomorrow. Hope they’ll fit!

Ridiculously implausible dumb fun…

I’ve avoided this movie for ages.

Sure, the first and original Under Siege is great fun. But have you seen some of Seagal’s more recent stuff!? Also, in my view, most Hollywood blockbuster movie franchises rapidly deteriorate. Another reason I’ve avoided this for years.

But Teresa suggested we try it. So we did. And I have to confess, it was great – if utterly ridiculous – fun.

The train setting could’ve been humdrum. But the ‘Grand Continental’ is quite a train. With upper and lower decks, and large viewing windows, it passes through some terrific landscapes and locations – e.g. The Rocky Mountains, inc. a ghost town – which add to the charm of this otherwise potentially formulaicly gonzo follow-up to the formulaicly gonzo (but equally effective) original.

As in Under Siege, Ryback just happens to cross paths with malevolent über-villains, to their inevitable detriment. In this instance the plot-driving McGuffin involves a crazily powerful satellite weapon, launched at the movies start (allowing the movie to shoehorn in some suitably impressive Space shuttle launch footage).

I don’t always or often go in for plot synopses. Particularly so on cornball mainstream fodder. So you can look elsewhere for that.

Amongst the villains we have: the motor-mouth über nerd (Bogosian), and two noteworthy evil mofos (Everett McGill and Peter Greene*), plus a load of less notable cannon-fodder hoodlums. Charismatic villains are a necessary counterweight to movie ‘goodies’. And Under Siege 2 does well in this department.

*Zed, in Pulp Fiction!

The flat-footed govt and military folk – inc. such stalwarts as Nick Mancuso, Andy Romano and Dale Dye (reprising their characters from Under Siege) – are suitably remote and ineffectual functionaries. Leaving all the ‘meaningful’ on-the-spot problem-solving to ex-Navy SEAL Casey Ryback, the deadliest chef on the planet.

This sort of lone-male fantasy, in which an imperturbable and gruff-voiced bloke single-handedly defeats hordes of evil ne’erdowells, to the oohs and aahs of all – from grateful hostages to bodacious babes – is such a core trope of modern American cinema.

The frankly pornographic brutality and violence movies like this revel in is made permissible because it’s being doled out to hyper-evil villains. It’s a cartoon world. Simple, brutal, and… shamefully thrilling.

Very firmly part of that core of modern US culture that Zappa refers to as ‘dumb fun’.

Starz

After watching Warfare a second time, and still enjoying it. Another film was requested, by Teresa (she hadn’t watched Warfare).

After much confusion we wound up trying MI3. Teresa promptly fell asleep. I wasn’t even watching it. And our guest, Patrick, regaled me with how much he dislikes J. J. Abrams, the director.

Since I wasn’t watching it, and had already had my fill of televisual thrills n’ entertainment, I very happily switched off.

In fairness to the film, this is hardly a review, really. It’s just a space-filling opportunity to say I’m totally uninterested. I could see and hear much gunfire, glass-breaking and explosions. But I simply wasn’t drawn in.

I couldn’t have cared less. So it’s off to bed, to continue reading The Price of Victory. Spend my precious time on something worthy of attention.

Capricorn, the jazz, funk n’ soul band I ran for some years, used to play Jimmy McGriff’s wonderfully funkified ‘The Worm’.

I’ve been collecting chunks of recordings by cats like Groove Holmes and Jimmy Smith, and have been feeling the urge to splurge on organ-meister McGriff.

I absolutely love the early Solid State album covers, particularly A Bag Full of Soul. That’s got to be made into a funky tee-shirt for my collection.

Well, I splurged. On the excellently useful cdsvinyljapan website, my go-to source for anything that can’t be had cheaper at Amazon or Discogs.

Trying to get this lot via Amazon UK would’ve cost me circa £75 – see above – and that’s for just three – only half! – of the albums in this order. The others being currently unavailable…

Every which way you spin this, the cdsvinyljapan order comes out top trumps. Even with a hefty £17 shipping charge.

This still leaves huge chunks of Mr McGriff’s recorded catalogue to be explored. I’m most interested in the Solid State and Groove Merchant stuff, plus a few odds and ends on labels like Blue Note and United Artists.

Oh, sheeit… also bought these:

All this buying CDs from Japan means I need to book more work. Dang it!

Ok, so I’m reading about Jimmy McGriff’s albums, on Wikipedia, album by album. And I hit one that says:

… having now contributed a few edits to Wiki posts, I figured, ‘Hell, yeah, I’ll create a page… why not?’

Well, I quickly learned that it’s very easy to edit stuff that’s already there. Creating a new article, however? Sheesh…

So, what I’m going to do, is mock one up here, by assembling all the pertinent info. And then, if I can face it, I’ll try and learn how to code for Wiki, or use the ‘visual’ interface.

I started out trying to do all this on my iPhone. It might be that I need to be doing it on a desktop? We shall see.

Anyhoo, here’s a non-standard (wiki-wise) attempt at collating the required info…

Jimmy McGriff, Junior Parker (Jimmy McGriff/Junior Parker album)

1. “Don’t Throw Your Love On Me So Strong” (A. King)
2. “Pretty Baby” (H. J. Parker)
3. “I Need Love So Bad” (P. Mayfield)
4. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (M. Morganfield)
5. “Five Long Years” (E. Boyd)
6. “No One Knows What Goes On When The Door Is Closed)” (H. J. Parker)
7. “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’” (J. Greene)

• Jimmy McGriff – organ
• Junior Parker – vocals, harmonica
• Horace Ott – electric piano
• Arthur ‘Fats’ Theus – tenor sax
• O’Donel Levy – guitar
• Saint Jenkins – drums
• William Thorpe – baritone sax
• Joseph Morris – alto sax
• Ronald White – trumpet

Hmmm… pretty lame. I like to watch as many WWII movies as I can. This was a bit of a stretch.

An Italian ‘macaroni combat’ movie – the military or WWII equivalent of a ‘spaghetti western’ – it’s directed by ‘Frank Kramer’ (real name Gianfranco Parolini), with a mostly Italian cast and crew.

All these Italians pretending to be Americans, dubbed – horrendously woodenly (as was the norm it seems, in this era) – into English, makes for a disembodied and weird feel. The biggest name familiar to me here is Klaus Kinski, cast as a stereotypically loathsome SS officer.

Mixed in with the mostly Italian meatballs, is the really rather gorgeous English actress, Margaret Lee, who made her career working mostly (perhaps entirely?) in Italy.  

There’s no point synopsising the plot. It’s a complete muddle. And if ever there were a less interesting McGuffin… I’ve not encountered it.

The whole tenor of the movie is – to contemporary eyes (or mine, at any rate) – quite strange. The music, and even a good deal of the action, are more than a little tongue in cheek. 

It’s probably somewhat ‘grindhouse’. I can imagine QT quite liking it. But for me it’s just off on too many notes. The music particularly so. Possibly making for a whole that’s some kind of celluloid analogue of Sven Hassel meets Benny Hill?

I left off after 50 minutes, with 40 minutes to go (had to pick up my wife). I’ll poss’ watch the whole thing, I s’pose? So’s I can tick it off my ‘list’. But it’s an hour and a half I won’t be getting back. Can’t say I’d recommend this one…

PS – Some days later… Haven’t gone back to finish this turkey. Doubt I ever will.

Having just watched Warfare, I wanted to watch some more (reasonably) contemporary stuff on similar lines. I wound up choosing Zero Dark Thirty, primarily for the Operation Neptune Spear part. Hence also my choice of banner image above.

Other demographics might choose other images to illustrate the film. For example, British Vogue magazine prefers the above. This is Jessica Chastain, as ‘Maya’, a fictional composite character, based in part on Alfreda Frances Bikowsky.

Bikowsky also figures large in the much better Looming Tower miniseries. Whilst working at Alec Station, for the CIA, she met the then head of said station, Michael Scheuer, and they eventually married.

Intriguingly, whilst it’s easy to find images of the married couple as dramatic characters, I couldn’t find any of them as a real life couple.

Zero Dark Thirty distorts history massively, and – in the way in which the Maya character is used – does so in a manner calculated to make those who froth at the mouth at the term ‘woke’ drool rabidly.

Both Zero Dark Thirty and The Looming Tower do real history a great disservice – as so many countless films do – by having overly good looking folk glamourise the tawdry doings of much frumpier more ordinary looking folk.

This creates a confusion, especially when films make claims – as Zero Dark Thirty does – to be based on real events. Ok, yes, it is based on real events. But it puts a very particular gloss on them. And many watching will very probably assume this is just how things really happened, when it isn’t.

Bikowsky, as she was then, wasn’t a lone ‘empowered female’ crusader, responsible for finding and killing Bin Laden. Not only was she not involved in much of the events as depicted here, but also many hold that she and Scheuer are culpable for 9/11 because they withheld vital intel from the FBI. This is a theme The Looming Tower addresses.

Presenting the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden as the work of one determined woman, in the face and teeth of many bumbling men, is pure fantasy.

For me, the best part of the film, by far, is the final Canaries segment, in which Navy SEAL Team Six (to use just one of this units many names!) attack the compound and kill Bin Laden. It’s very well done, and really rather horrible.

Speaking of horrible. This movie starts with quite a lot of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – or in plain English torture – being used on hapless ‘terror suspects’, at ‘dark sites’. Both the real US administration, and the makers of this film, have been widely criticised for suggesting such methods yield useful intel.

All in all, a rather muddled movie, that condenses and distorts an awful lot of history, and then presents it in a rather oddly skewed way. Certainly not brilliant. But still worth seeing.