Thursday, March 31, 2016

The Toy Drum (Summer 1953)

Few people remember that I began my musical career as a percussionist.  In fact, even I had forgotten this fact until just recently.

I was reminded of this when I had a pile of old family home movies converted to video.  These date from the late 40s, when my father must have purchased a 16mm camera, to the early 60s, when - given my absence in the action - I must have been old enough to be entrusted with the role of cameraman.

If these videos prove anything, it's that I am descended from a long line of cinematographically challenged ancestors.  Exposure is random and framing is laughable.  There are countless shots of people without heads.  Also occasionally heads without bodies.  No sound of course.  Lots of classic home-movie embarrassed movement.

Here's a photo of one of thsee film reels and the box it came in - this one is labeled only "Summer 1953".    It says Kodachrome Daylight Type Double 8mm Magazine - which held a whopping 25 feet of film.

The transferred video has 3 minutes and 48 seconds of nostalgic action.  I appear the most often - making me the nearly 2-year old star.  Well, I was cute, wasn't I?  There are also shots of my parents, my Grandmother and Great Aunt Kate, my uncles Ben and Carl and Carl's wife, my Aunt Esther.  (I had two Aunt Esthers.  How many did you have?)

Fear not, brave Mixed Meters reader.  I am not posting the entire video for you to endure.  I have excerpted a few scenes.  The first is an unusually high quality shot of  me with my parents outside their apartment in Sioux City Iowa.   Here's a still.

(The brick apartment building and the wooden one behind it are still visible in Google maps.  Pan the street view shot to the left and you can see my eventual high school - complete with stone turrets - up the slight hill.)

The other shots in this following video show me with what was apparently my first musical instrument - a cute little toy drum and cymbal combo supported by a neck strap.  And I appear to be having a great time banging away at it.  Yes, I was the center of attention when I was hitting that drum.  Ah, lost youth.  Cute and talented!

In the last scene you'll notice a huge drop in video quality.  It was very underexposed, almost solid black.  I adjusted it as best I could because I wanted to include the final frame of the film - my father, looking plaintively at the camera and covering his ear with his hand, as if to say "Take the drum away from the boy, please."   Or maybe he was unhappy being pigeonholed in conversation by my Uncle Carl, whose suit-coated wrist can just barely be seen.

Oh.  I also added some music and titles to the video in a futile attempt to enhance the home movie experience.  You should prepare yourself in coming blog posts for more blasts like this one from my early history and even pre-history.

Here's an early MM post about my Mother and Ronald Reagan - and her last pack of cigarettes.
Here's an MM post called My Mother, My Worm.
Music in Sioux City, Iowa?  Here's a post called Me and Mahler, Me and Iowa (there's a picture of me and my Dad)
You could also read Forty Years in California - there's another pic of me with my Father.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Most Iconic Image of California

Quick! Pick an image you think best portrays "Southern California."  We're looking for a single shot that says it all.

You might have chosen the Hollywood sign.  Or maybe an inviting, curvaceous, nearly-nude young woman sitting on a pristine sandy beach while hunky guys surf near their Woody, which is parked in the distance.  Or a self-involved conspicuously aging big shot lawyer (or businessman or actor) with Donald Trump colored hair obliviously driving an expensive car, ignoring stop lights and pedestrians, and talking on a cell phone.

If you're a Republican (yes, we still have a few of those in California) maybe you think a picture of Ronald Reagan orating in front of the Stars and Stripes still says everything which needs to be said, all in a single picture.

Okay, not many Republicans read Mixed Meters, so that last one was a just a joke.  And the other images are only imaginary; they don't really exist except in the movies.  And movies, I'm sad to report, are not even close to being real.  Even Ronald Reagan knew that.

I've known for many years exactly which image I would pick to epitomize life in SoCal.  Just recently I had my first chance to actually take a decent photo of the object in question.  The locale was a new light-rail station in Azusa.

While I admit that this object may not be unique to this area, it reeks of cheap theme parks or cheesy B-movie special effects.  Both of those say 'Southern California' quite well.

This thing imitates nature.  It does that very badly.  It might be better to say that it defies nature.  It employs all the architectural panache of a sleazy strip mall, another Southern Cal speciality.

Its purpose is to whitewash essential infrastructure, hiding it from our consciousness behind a facade which is always in plain sight.

We find this thing acceptable, I guess, because it facilitates our modern lifestyle.  It's high-tech.  It brings people together.  It gives a strong signal to all the idiots with bad hair color who text while driving.

Have you guessed it yet?

Yes, it's a cell phone tower disguised as a palm tree.   Welcome to the silly side of SoCal.

I wonder what, exactly, they were thinking in Azusa when they approved this.  Maybe: "We need to put up a tall cell tower so people can Instagram and Twitter.  Let's disguise it to look like a cheap plastic palm tree and, after a while, maybe no one will notice that's it's not real."

Cell phone towers apparently go hand in hand with palm trees around here.  I've found two cell phone tower and palm tree combos close to my home in Pasadena, about 20 miles from Azusa.

The first shows a cell phone tower disguised as a . . . cell phone tower.  It's not really a disguise but it is ugly.  It's near a palm.  It's also right behind a super sleazy strip mall.

In the second one the horribly thick flag pole is the cell tower.  It's nestled amid palms in front of a church.  The little hut in the foreground holds electronic equipment.  I guess Ronald Reagan was giving a speech elsewhere when I snapped that picture.

Personally, I think neither of these offer that much improvement over the fake palm tree.  Looking at these things is the aesthetic price we all pay to keep your smart phone connected anyplace you go.

Just imagine what beautiful or curious or bizarre sculptures which could be built to beautify cell phone towers.   Modern sculpture might be too controversial.  How about a giraffe?  Maybe a 50-foot tyrannosaurus rex?  (Note the proximity of palm trees.)

We could make our cell phone towers into huge sculptures of our famous citizens and civic leaders.   Such huge human forms have a tradition already.  They're called Muffler Men.  Cities could honor their leading citizens by turning them into cell phone towers.

Maybe a sculpture of Will Rogers holding a lariat looking back at us while we text?  Gracie Allen?  Tom Bradley?  Cezar Chavez?  Sally Ride came from Southern California.  Dr. Dre?  Cal Worthington?

And, in reality, all of them would be hiding cell phone antennae for our personal convenience.

God forbid, Ronald Reagan could become a huge plastic immovable object, gracing our skyline somewhere, his guts filled with electronics, spewing an endless stream of tweets and Facebook posts, saying things that others people wrote but doing it with great feeling and empathy.  Republicans could make pilgrimages.

Now, that is a single picture which would speak volumes about Southern California.

Maybe it would even be too much information.

They have cell phone towers disguised as palm trees in other states too, apparently.  Here's 25 pictures of cell phone towers disguised as all sorts of things.

Most palm trees are not native to California.  Neither are most of the people.  Here's a California palm history. (palmistry?)

Friday, March 11, 2016

On Flowers

On Flowers is my new video.  It's less than 90 seconds long.  I'm trying not to tax your attention span with long pieces. I'm saving those for the future.

The music is quiet, lots of noodling piano, perfect for that spare moment in your day when you want to escape your otherwise harried life.  Please don't watch or listen while operating heavy machinery.

The video imagery features our six-legged winged friends feasting on nectar from purple flowers at the Huntington Gardens, here in Pasadena.  The people going to and fro in the background were more interested, no doubt, in seeing Pinky.

On Flowers by David Ocker - © 2016 by David Ocker - 87 seconds

This is the 31st music video I've ever posted to YouTube.  All of them are in one place if you're curious.  Here's an oldie you might like, called Lilypad.  The subject of Lilypad is goldfish.