Murder most feathery

As I first set out today on a grocery shopping expedition afternoon was turning into evening. Dusk, then. And in the lot behind a house a couple down from my apartment building, the crows were gathering together.

There's a little bit of explanation for these great corvid jamborees here. 

Wave after wave of crows will swarm together in tree tops, on the roofs of buildings, or on the ground until there are thousands of crows all gathered in one place, before finally moving into their nightly roost location to sleep.

One primary reason is apparently protection from predators. You don't see serious birds of prey around here all that often, but I know they're about.

In any case, I'm not complaining. The sight of all these crows gathered together is awesome to behold, and their caws have a comforting beauty if you're willing to hear it.

And incurably ill

One thing that kind of knocks me out is that there are still college radio DJs. I know because I sometimes listen to college radio on the web. Some are better than others, but a bunch of school-level stations have them.

The reason this seems crazy to me is that disc jockeys barely exist in American radio as a whole now. The 1996 Communications Act led to a round of consolidation, at the end of which you saw formats and playlists become nationalized, where once they'd at least nominally been decided on a local level. It's only gotten worse since then. The idea of a flesh-and-blood human being sharing music that's just made an impression on them and expecting to be paid for doing so must strike executives as madness.

But hey, if that situation ever changes at least there's a reserve army of record spinners.

...and to all a jazzy night

 

San Francisco pianist had a full career during his too-short life. As well as―for much of his adult life―an even fuller mustache. So how would he have felt about everyone remembering him for Peanuts Christmas music?

Well, I can't speak for him. But his compositions and interpretations for A Charlie Brown Christmas show an inventiveness and love that you don't achieve without putting some of your soul into the work. This riff on a 19th century German carol very much included. So yeah, I think he'd be cool with this being his legacy.

Merry Christmas, friends.

So let us not talk falsely now

This brought a smile to my lips and it might yours as well. A couple of guys have done a series of pulp covers inspired by Bob Dylan songs. They look pretty authentic, too.

I never thought of "Just Like a Woman" being about a dishy android girl from out of Philip K. Dick. Major oversight on my part.

In darkest Florida

There seem to have been a few movies called The Chase. The one from 1946 is quite memorable. 

Bob Cummings, whom I've seen in a couple of things before, is a down-on-his-luck veteran. He finds a wallet full of cash in the street with an address in it. He returns it to its owner, who lives in a gaudy mansion outside Miami. The owner is played by Steve Cochran, who I didn't know at all. Said owner likes Bob Cummings and hires him as a chauffeur. Which is kind of bad news because Steve Cochran is a full-on psychopath who will kill you just for breathing his air. See the limo he's tricked out with a secret accelerator in the back seat. Or his browbeaten wife (Michèle Morgan) yearning for escape.

The Chase is adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich, who would also provide the basis of Hitchcock's Rear Window a few years later. Unlike some noir it's got very little patter or overt humor. The only actor who gets to be funny is Peter Lorre, who's also the second most evil character. But it's got an unnerving intensity. There's also a headspinning twist that happens not quite at the end.

🔴

Being a social animal isn't a bad thing, but there's an underside to it. If you can be shamed out of doing something that isn't bad, you can probably be shamed into doing something that is. Disturbing knowledge, but there it is. You may well be able to think of some examples from the recent past.

In any case it's better to be aware of the phenomenon, to be prepared in the future.

Claws out

Whenever I go to a video on YouTube now there are, as always, thumbnails of other videos running down the right side of the screen. And there's a particular class of video that's been cropping up lately. They'll be about musicians, with the format "X finally comes clean about Y." "Keith Richards finally tells the whole truth about Jeff Beck" or the like. The implication being that these rock stars have salacious gossip and harsh personal judgments about each other but have been holding them in for decades out of sheer politeness. Sure, buddy.

I'd ask what it is about me that they think I'd be interested, but it's all obviously just a mixture of AI and desperation.