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Uncle Orson Reviews Everything
August 15, 2004
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.
k.d. lang, Sock Olympics, Sheet Music, Swimwear, Sequence Dice
Country singer k.d. lang has long since broken down the confining walls
of genre. Her country cds are still as brilliant as ever -- I never tire of listening
to her warm, relaxed, sultry voice.
With her new album, though, she is definitely outside the boundaries of
country, and it's one of her best albums.
Hymns of the 49th Parallel is, as the name would suggest, an album of
songs by Canadian songwriters. That means the songwriters are amazingly
varied -- but all excellent.
When Lang sings Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" and "Helpless," they
do make you think of the original version -- but these slowed-down, dreamy
versions are a marvelous new interpretation. Likewise, when she visits the
Joni Mitchell songbook and sings "A Case of You" and "Jericho," she brings
something new to songs that were already great.
What makes this album especially bold is that these singer-songwriters
have powerful, distinctive styles. Joni Mitchell's songs are very hard to sing
without simply imitating Mitchell's rendition, because her interpretation was so
powerful and unforgettable. Neil Young's songs are a bit more translatable, in
part because his own whining voice is not quite so rapturously right for the
songs he writes.
It's no surprise that Leonard Cohen's entries on this album ("Hallelujah,"
"Bird on a Wire") work well -- Cohen is best known as a writer of songs for
other people. Bruce Cockburn's "One Day I Walk" is illuminated here, and
Jane Siberry, whose low-key delivery often understates the power of her own
music, is shown at her songwriting best, with "The Valley" and "Love Is
Everything." (Though my favorite Siberry song remains "Everything Reminds
Me of My Dog.")
Why is k.d. lang so brilliant, when she never does the full-out from-the-belt style that works so well for most of the great country singers?
I think it's the fact that she is always singing the words -- she finds a
way to mean the songs, not just vocalize them. She sings from the heart, yet
with an intimacy that makes it so you wish you were in the same room with
her -- not a concert hall, a living room, listening to a friend break your heart
with her music.
*
My wife and I, along with our ten-year-old, had an exercise program this
summer -- almost every day we took a good long walk together, usually about
three miles.
Most often, we walked to Harris-Teeter, where they'd get a bottle of water
each, and I'd buy the Naked brand mango drink. Then, as we walked home, I'd
fill the plastic grocery bag with litter we found along the way. And the ten-year-old, who couldn't actually drink the whole bottle of water, would get much
of the leftover water poured over her head. Outdoor air conditioning.
We had a great time, we all got in better shape, and we talked about
everything under the sun.
There was only one fly in the ointment -- my wife discovered that the
socks she was wearing just weren't up to the job. She ended up with blisters.
It was time to find better socks.
Thus began the Sock Olympics. We went to Belk, Lady Foot Locker,
and Omega Sports and bought every kind of sock that looked promising. (We
don't go to The Athlete's Foot for anything, because of the way they treated our
handicapped son when we took him there a few years ago.)
We did have a few minimum requirements -- for instance, they had to be
almost all cotton and have no polyester at all. That sharply limited the
possibilities -- we ended up with seven different kinds of socks to try.
We have a winner, folks. It's the Lady Foot Locker cushioned low
socks, style #50250-1. My wife preferred the ones with a little bit of ribbing
right at the ankle -- they stayed up better and didn't creep down under the
heel.
What makes them great, says my wife, is that the cushioning comes from
the bottom of the foot and goes right up the back of the heel. No blisters!
But I wasn't surprised by the outcome. I've been buying Foot Locker
brand socks for years. The simple low athletic sock, the one that comes in big
packages of many pairs, is better than any of the name-brand socks I tried,
including Nike. And Foot Locker doesn't stick their logo on the socks, forcing
you to be a jogging billboard.
*
Once upon a time, the big money in songwriting came from sheet music
sales.
In those days, everybody with an ounce of talent learned to play piano,
because the main entertainment at a lot of parties was to stand around the
piano and sing the latest popular songs together.
Needless to say, the guy or girl at the piano got a lot of attention.
Those days are over -- radio put an end to it.
Still, there were enough pianists and singers when I was a kid that there
were lots of stores with sheet music. Plus, the guitar had replaced the piano as
the be-the-center-of-the-party instrument, and sheet music now came with the
guitar chord names and, often, the fingering diagrams.
Those days, too, have passed. Sheet music is hard to find. Moore Music
in Greensboro does a heroic job of trying to keep an excellent selection --
especially of choir and instrumental sheet music, but also of popular songs.
They'll also order any book you want, and we have often availed ourselves of
their service.
As a supplement, though -- or to deal with sheet music emergencies
(yes, there are such things) -- take a look at Music Notes online:
www.musicnotes.com. This site allows you to pay for and download a copy of
an astonishingly wide selection of sheet music. It will print out easily --
including a notation that this copy was authorized for you (and you alone).
Does this website replace the music store?
No more than Amazon.com replaces bookstores. The website is at its
best when you already know what you want and need it quickly; the music
store will always be better when you don't know what you want, and are
browsing to see what's available.
*
For years now, women's swimsuits have been designed so they look good
only on toy women -- you know, the ones that have been shaped by plastic
surgeons and anorexia until any resemblance to real flesh-and-blood women is
entirely coincidental.
And if you've had a couple of kids and your body got used to carrying a
few extra pounds and stretch marks, you were out of luck. Your swimsuit
designer was Omar the Tentmaker or the Man from Glad.
Well, here's some excellent news: Shore-fit Sunwear -- Women's
Swimwear Boutique. If you're in the Outer Banks, it's on the main highway
north of Kill Devil Hills. But you can easily shop online at
www.OBXsunwear.com.
They have plus-sizes, maternity suits, mastectomy suits, and "missy bra-sized swimwear," whatever that means. The styles look great, the
workmanship is terrific.
This store has a mission -- to help all women feel comfortable at the
beach and the pool, without visiting the plastic surgeon or throwing up after
every meal.
*
Sequence Dice may look, from the packaging, like Yahtzee, but it's far
more complicated and nowhere near as dependent on chance.
Yes, you roll dice -- but for each roll you lay down a marker on a small
(6x6) gameboard, trying to get five markers in a row. There are four squares on
the board for each number you might, roll, except 11 (which is "wild") and 10
(which allows you to remove almost any marker belonging to an opponent).
As with backgammon, the balance between strategy and chance is
almost perfect. In our house, a ten-year-old played it with adults with equal
success. And we played it over and over again, as you can with great games.
If you enjoy the Mad-Libs series of pencil games, you probably won't be
disappointed with the card game of the same name. Your hand contains ten
cards, which are divided among nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The
goal is similar to that of gin: To assemble sentences in your hand until your
entire hand can be laid down at once.
Of course, we have to use a special definition of the word "sentence" that
includes no aspect of making sense! Except, of course, that each sentence
must be grammatically sensible.
In fact, that's one of the best things about Mad-Libs, both books and
games: You can't play them without having some idea of the parts of speech
and what they do in an English-language sentence. So, silly as the game can
be, it does have an educational function.
Just remember that sentences include imperatives and intransitives --
not every verb needs an object, and some don't even need a subject to make
sense.
*
Sometimes I think that all Janet Evanovich aspires to in her Stephanie
Plum mysteries is to have readers close the book and say, "What a hoot!"
How else to explain the long-since tedious family members, each of them
one-joke caricatures only one step up from the inhabitants of Maggody in Joan
Hess's aren't-country-folks-funny series?
And yet, behind the superficial humor, I think Evanovich's purposes are
serious. Because the character of Stephanie Plum herself is presented whole
and real, torn with indecision about her own life and the men she loves.
The premise of the series is that Plum is a bounty hunter, not by any
wish of hers but because it's the only job she was able to get that allowed her
to live an independent life.
In the newest book, Ten Big Ones, Plum manages to get herself on a
gangland hit list, with an assassin after her who likes to entertain himself with
his victims before they die. The menace in this book is powerful and fairly
plausible, making up for Plum's overdone family.
But I have to recommend reading this one in print. The audio is once
again read by Lorelei King, who does a marvelous job with all the characters
except Stephanie Plum herself, whom she reads in a stilted, overly sweet, and
definitely non-New Jersey telephone-receptionist voice that continues to be
irritating through the entire book. Better to read it yourself and let Evanovich's
prose evoke what Plum should really sound like.
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