IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

H.o.p. is furious.

It has become a major source of contention for H.o.p. that so many children’s PBS shows and computer learning programs refer to algae as a plant.

“Algae is not a plant, it’s a protist!” he says.

“It’s a Big Big World” called algae a plant.

H.o.p. yelled, “Algae is not a plant, it’s a protist!”

“Barney” called algae a plant.

H.o.p. yelled, “Algae is not a plant, it’s a protist!”

And he yells anyway when Barney comes on. “Aaagh! Barney! I hate Barney!”

“Time 4 Learning” called algae a plant.

“Algae is not a plant, it’s a protist!” said H.o.p.

But not Brainpop. Brainpop correctly gets it right that algae is a protist.

Anyway, H.o.p. is writing Time 4 Learning to let them know that they are all wrong about algae.

Let me know if this works…if you get audio and video. My Sony digital still camera muxes video so that audio and video are separate. I used a trial conversion software to deal with this.

Click on the image for the video.

Anyway, if it works out for you then you get to hear me and H.o.p. say nothing kind of things while I record the fish for a few moments. And you get to see the whale goldfish, Dylan, moving about. When we got him three years ago (about) he was not quite as long as a thumb. We never anticipated he’d get as big as he has. Optimum would be a long rectangular tank, for which we don’t have room. Have this tall hexagonal 40 gallon thing for which we have extra oxygen pumped through it as goldfiish need oxygen, which is why a rectangular tank is good for the bigger ones, more surface area. Usually we have plants for them in there but they eat them up in no time and we haven’t replaced the last batch yet. There is one last plant in there that they don’t like to eat for some reason. The joke on a goldfish site is “What do you call plants in a goldfish tank? An all you can eat salad bar.”

Dylan is the big comet. Dorothy 2 is the fancy gold goldfish and Kerry is the currently albino comet (had touches of gold when we got him). All are male. Dorothy and Kerry are about two years old now.

Anyway, hope you enjoy watching the fish loitering and me saying nothing things and H.o.p. wildly babbling (he briefly slows to explain that this is his function during recording).

Out of nowhere, H.o.p. said, “There are no small roles, only small actors, right?”

I don’t know what he had been thinking about that led up to this question/announcement this afternnon. But he was checking with me to make sure this philosophy was right, which one could tell from his voice he was certain was right but he was wanting to hear what I’d to say anyway.

It’s like wading through mud around here these days. Has been for a while. Speaking only for myself.

This is a kind of disgruntled posting.

One thing I’ve been doing is slowly adding to Gallery 4 in the art section of Idyllopuspress. That Gallery (now here at Flicker) is exclusively some old black and white and hand-tinted (some digital now) photos I did back in the late 70s of some of the older sections of Augusta, such as the Bon Air hotel which had been a resort and then was a retirement home in a state of ill repair. I have only a few photos that I took hanging about. And I’ve put them up on the web because I’ve looked around and I don’t think there’s any photography of the Bon Air and some of these places from that time period. Have yet a few more pics of some of the old Broad St. junk shops to add and a few of the houses and Old Medical College. If digital didn’t exist there’d be no saving most of them as they were stored in cardboard boxes and time didn’t work so well with these unprotected hand-colored photos. A lot of dust collected in them. Colors changed. Cleaning fluids that were used on them turned them yellow in the ensuing years. So I’ve had to do a bit of restoration work on each one of them.

And am slowly adding to Gallery 5 some of the very very few inks and acrylics I saved over the years, and most that I didn’t save, that I only have photos of. A lot of art is spread around god knows where, I don’t recollect, that I don’t have images of, and a lot of it too met the roadside, either because I was going through one of my purges, was moving and didn’t have room, or was damaged by the elements in places we’d lived in where there was a lot of mildew, or maybe a tree falling through the roof after a storm, things like that. It’s not a big loss because most of it was not very good art, everything I did in my teens and up to my late twenties was on its way to nowhere, but there are a few canvases that I regret having purged. Have some from later periods that I did keep and are down at the studio but I don’t have pics of and then a couple of the larger ones are in storage and don’t have pics of them either.

I realize that I somehow have deleted a post up last week in which I mentioned Operation Photo Rescue, which has a considerable, worldwide number of volunteers upon which they draw to restore photos damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The success of the project is really quite something with the organizing of the volunteers and the trips made to scan and catalogue photos for restoration work.

Since last week I’ve worked on two wedding photos from the same family, two studio photos that were perhaps for high school yearbooks, a photo of a person standing beside a chopper in probably Vietnam, and most recently an older studio photo of a woman. I think that’s it so far.

Photo restoration can be frustrating, especially with such heavily damaged photos. You don’t want to make up something which isn’t there and in a sense there is no “right” way to restore a photo, in that even when one is trying to be true as possible there’s a lot of personal aesthetics still at play that determine what you’re going to get as far as tones and contrasts and preservation of grain or artificial restoration of grain etc. Hand someone a screw and there’s a right way to screw it in and you know when it’s right. Photo restoration, there’s no “right” way. Plenty of wrong ways but no absolutely right way.

And of course when there’s heavy heavy damage, as with flood, there’s only so much one can do and then you simply have to let it go.

A lot of people choose to work clean and use filters to clear away grain but I tend to work “dirty” and don’t use filters, don’t blur, selectively go through and get rid of dust and scratches with tool tips trying to preserve and duplicate grain etc.

The one of the chopper in Vietnam, I looked all over for a photo of a similar chopper to help with the restoration since the part where the body of the chopper met the prop was almost entirely gone and I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. I wrote a couple of veteran’s websites, which might know about such things, asking where I might find a photo of a similar chopper but got no response…

Which is how it is.

Makes me crankier with the historical projects I work on when I contact libraries that I know have critical materials, and get no response even after several inquiries. One that particularly irked was when I contacted a library that had made available on the internet a treasure trove of photos and I informed them they had incorrect IDs, had misspelled the Indian Agency (not a matter of there being many ways to spell it, they had simply reversed syllables and spelled it quite wrong), and they never responded or altered the ID. Namely the Tryiptych digital initiative of the Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swathmore College Libraries. They even have a pic right there, in their collection, that states “Great Nemaha Indian Agency”. Seriously, it is the Great Nemaha. It is not Nehama. But they have catalogued all the images as Nehama. And I wrote them several times over the past six months–wrote several different people concerning this. And I never received a response. And they never changed it. And they never responded to me on my inquiry on their collection of Nemaha photos.

Which is how it is.

Though I was quite amiable.

You’d hope a library/academic institution would care a bit more. Especially about getting something right. I’m supposing if I was writing them with an academic title from an academic institution then I might get some response.

And now I need to go dig up a few emails that were sent me several weeks ago when my computer was down and write them back.

My mother recently sent me a watercolor she did with twigs that I thought was quite nice. Click on the below to go to the larger version. (And sorry about the artifact at top. Didn’t notice until I’d uploaded it.)

Another pledge drive by PBS and tonight it’s the program, “Andrea Bocelli, Amore, Under the Desert Sky”.

I suffered through listening to their presentation of “Great Performances: South Pacific” the other night because because we don’t have cable so I don’t know what’s on other television but if we have the television on and a DVD isn’t playing then it’s PBS that’s running because when the television is cut off H.o.p. makes sure it’s on PBS and thus when it’s cut on by H.o.p. it’s turned to PBS, which is something he’s grown up doing not so much because he thus far accepts my disdain of television but because commercial television is kind of scary to him, and since a little child he’s avoided it. If Marty has a show he wants to watch, he retires to the bedroom and H.o.p. closes the door and avoids the room.

Maybe you liked “Great Performances: South Pacific”. Did I like the movie as a kid? Would I now? I didn’t like it as a kid not so much because of the music but because I didn’t like the leads, I didn’t believe Mitzi Gaynor as some plucky mid-American, didn’t get the French guy, didn’t believe any of it really, and I’ve not tried it out as an adult. Still, I don’t get “South Pacific” without the staging, and here was PBS telling me that this was our “classical” music and how important it was our children got to hear it performed at Carnegie Hall blah blah. It was running in the other room while I was working and I was thinking, “Boy, that’s certainly some flat, uninviting performance, doesn’t convince me at all, I don’t believe a word of it” but I left it on, despite the fact no one was watching, because because I was too lazy to cut it off.

And at some point this week I passed the television, which was again being watched by no one despite our apartment being small enough that the television on in the front room means it’s unavoidable as an old Drive-Inn movie screen staring down at the cows in the next field (somehow we still manage to avoid) and there was Andrea Bocelli singing, without sound, because at least the sound was off, and I admit I’m clueless enough that I was fooled, I caught a brief glimpse of the background set which looked kind of real and I thought it was some performance somewhere in Europe and thought to myself well the Europeans sure like it American don’t they or vice versa.

Well I discover tonight that the show was filmed at Lake Las Vegas, a resort with a fake Italian setting. This time the sound is turned up and I don’t turn it down because I’m trying to absorb why millions of people love this, I don’t get it, simply don’t get it, and I’m torturing myself with not getting it (and the fact that the on/off button on the one year old television stopped working last week and tonight I can’t find the remote control). The overdone orchestration, no feeling to it at all. And if Bocelli has any feeling for a song, I can’t tell it either, someone whose singing I don’t care for and am ever amazed whenever I hear about how huge, how popular he is, which I very rarely hear about because I’m not tuned into the media that sells him. To me it’s all bad dinner music that isn’t easy on my ear. But I leave it on for some reason, though not because I’m entranced, and not because I haven’t thought to pull the plug, I guess because I’m waiting to hear if it ever possibly gets good, if there is anything I might like at all. I look up on the internet to see if there’s anyone else who dislikes his music and if they do they’re buried by the fans. Lots of static about Bocelli performing on “American Idol”. Believe it or not but I’ve never watched “American Idol”, not one episode. I’m just not turned in, so not tuned in I hardly realize it’s going on out there.

These arrangements! Agh! How to describe it? I can’t. The only thing that comes to mind is Fellini’s “Juliette of the Spirits” and the scene where the boat of the barbarians is being drug along by the guy on the beach, Juliette looking on, but instead in my head there’s appeared Juliette looking on in stunned amazement as PBS drags “Amore” past in that boat, chandeliers clanging. That is the only thing that grabs me and it only exists in my head. And I’m seriously surprised that when I’m trying to dream up a way to describe this music and PBS’ presentation of it, that Juliette of the Spirits appears, not to compare Amore with the boat of the barbarians and Suzy and her entourage, but to contrast the sense of humor of Suzy’s barbarians–that are somehow equal parts exotic and K-Mart–and the oh too flatulence inducing seriousness of Amore’s production values. Reminds me of a nice but very prim young woman with whom we once ate dinner, whose intestines were surprised by the beans.

God I suddenly miss Nino Rota’s music. Am going to have to dig up “Juliette of the Spirits” or “8 and 1/2″.

Back to PBS selling me how much we all adore Amore and Andrea Bocelli.

“Listening to him play Neil Diamond, on the piano…” the host gushes.

Oh. Ok. I think I’m getting what’s going on here.

And they’re talking about how amazing it is that Bocelli can sing without the added dimension of sight-reading helping him.

Yeah, now I get it.

(What in the world is going on in their brains, that it’s amazing Bocelli can sing without being able to sight-read?)

Oddly enough, and I’m not sure if this is something I like or don’t like about myself, but if I was in someone else’s environment, someone I liked, and this music was naturally a part of their environment, something they liked, then I wouldn’t like it any better but I’d get it as far as their envionment goes and would accept it and wouldn’t quibble about it and might even enjoy it as far as being part of the overall environment of the person, part of their setting. Well, I wouldn’t quibble so much, perhaps. If it was Neil Diamond then I would be in misery, as weasels ripped my ears tearing my smile to pieces.

This from probably the only person you’ll ever virtually meet who actually does enjoy Schoenberg.

Now PBS is telling me that the 50s music is no longer being heard on commercial radio and how we can’t let our history die, we can’t let it be erased. Songs like, “How much is that doggie in the window?” I have no argument with Nat King Cole singing “Mona Lisa”, but how they can talk about that and “Oh my pappa” in the same breath, I don’t know.

This from a person who actually likes Dean Martin singing, “When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…”

And I’m wondering why in the world PBS, for their pledge drive, isn’t instead featuring, as works which must not be forgotten, Schoenberg and John Cage and, well, Gavin Bryers.

I go to Amazon because I’m looking for something by another composer whose name I can’t remember. I check out too Bryers’ “Sinking of the Titanic” to see what versions they have of it. I look at “Customers who bought this item also bought”, thinking the other composer, whose name I can’t remember, might show up there, and the results shown are:

* Bryars: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet ~ Gavin Bryars
* Aria: A Passion for Opera ~ Tito Gobbi
* Trout Mask Replica ~ Captain Beefheart
* Prison Songs (Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48), Vol. 1: Murderous Home ~ Various Artists
* I Have Heard It Said That a Spirit Enters ~ Bryars
* In the Wee Small Hours ~ Frank Sinatra
* Solo Monk ~ Thelonious Monk
* Texas-Czech Bands, 1929-1959 ~ Various Artists

And yes, that’s a snapshot of part of our music collection.

Ah, blessed silence. I found the remote buried under H.o.p.’s drawings and cut off the television. For now. Marty called, is on his way home from the studio, and is saying he’s thinking of stopping and getting a cheap DVD player since ours is going bad. I tell him to pick up a copy of “Juliette of the Spirits” as our videotape of it is worn out.

Lake Las Vegas? Somewhere around here is our copy of Sugar’s “Copper Blue”. Time to pull it out and listen to “Hoover Dam”, which can only be appreciated at appropriate volume.

One reason I’m slogging through mud around here is because I’ve been doing Benadryl round the clock for allergies the past couple of weeks, which I hate as sometimes it makes me feel quite doped. Had just taken some last night when I sat down to watch “Juliette of the Spirits”, which I’ve not seen in several years as our copy was bad. But now have a new DVD. Was unable to watch it all the way through though as I kept falling asleep, despite the fact I was riveted, as ever, by the photography and Giulietta Masina’s amazing face.

I’m reminded that I’ve not seen “La Strada” since the 80s and must view it some time soon. I recollect nothing about it.

Had forgotten just how frightening to Juliette was the visionary appearance of the barge of the barbarians. She is at the beach and witnesses Suzy and her entourage float up in their pretty much incomparable way. And then the vision of the barge of the barbarians, the first scene of which is the dead horses.

I may blog the film. Haven’t seen it in so long and it is so remarkable. Marty and I were discussing it and I believe he saw it before I did, at some college film festival,. My first viewing was at George Ellis’ Film Forum in the late 70s. Marty was on the road and we lived about a mile from the Film Forum here in Atlanta and when I was in town and not on the road I would walk over there during the week for one of the day time screenings, the two memorable ones for me being “Juiliette of the Spirits” and Maria Callas in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Medea”. Which floored me. A staggering performance.

The Film Forum was a small theater (not by today’s standards) and showed some of the best films. A gray bearded George Ellis was always present to take your money and give you a ticket, at least when I was there. I remember I had come back to watch “Juliette of the Spirits” a second time that week and he granted me one of the best smiles I’ve ever received as he handed me my ticket. I’m a rather shy person and so never did talk with him. That week I was feeling particularly alone and lonely, had tromped around Atlanta a good bit that week in the rain, doing a lot of thinking and working the brain hard for whatever it was I was writing then. But whenever I went to the Film Forum it always felt a bit like going home, here were some kindred spirits, and Ellis would smile just the sort of smile that communicated, “Ah, you too, you also see the beauty in these films, well, welcome to you.” At least so it seemed. That day his smile was extra broad, extra long, extra friendly, as he handed me my ticket. I’ve no idea what type of a person he was really but his smile that day in particular was one of those that not only makes you feel quite rich for the afternoon but which you remember for a life time.

If you go read the link I’ve supplied on Ellis, it will give you some sense of his battle to bring good film to Atlanta and keep bringing it here as long as he could. His theater felt like a brave little fort in a multiplex war zone. I had no money at all and it wasn’t rare for me to live on literally nothing but biscuits. I’d have a bag of flour and some shortening and make up a batch of biscuits and live on those biscuits alone for an entire week, allotting myself several a day to make them last. It was the kind of thing where I’d not have enough money for a film and bus fare both, for which would reason I would walk everywhere. Out of the few dollars I had I’d reserve a few for a film at the Film Forum as some of those films were as essential to me as food, and would try to squeak out a couple of dollars for a bag of popcorn and a Coke, figuring that the popcorn and Coke purchases did their little part in helping to keep the struggling theater afloat. At other theaters I never bought the popcorn and Coke, only there because I thought it may help.

I’ve not felt that way about cinema in a long while. And quit, years ago, going to see film in theaters.

Some of that love for film remains. I would say that perhaps I’ve passed some of it along to H.o.p., except that he likes what he likes and if he didn’t like film then no matter how much I liked it, it would make no difference. But he enjoys good film and I suppose some of my love for it has passed along to him. Not things like “Juliette of the Spirits”. It’s not something he would enjoy yet. What I keep thinking he must next see is some Jacques Tati. I know that most doi’t like Jerry Lewis, but I do and I had the feeling he’d love some of the old Jerry Lewis comedy, which he did, introduced him to that a couple of weeks ago because we couldn’t locate easily the couple of Jacques Tati films we have on tape. So we went with the Jerry Lewis and he laughed himself silly watching select scenes over and over again. I suspected he’d go for it because the comedy he comes up with to entertain himself and us is the same kind of whacked out, over-the-top silliness.

So years ago I reserved those couple of dollars for a viewing at the Film Forum and a bag of popcorn and coke, those films as essential to my spirit as any food was for the body. And in a way that still carries on today except that the essentials these days are what H.o.p. is dreaming up and giving him the ability to do it. Those reserved dolllars these days go for clay for stop motion (a new batch, new colors, is open on the table), and this weekend he saw a little jointed artist’s model figure that he had to have and we got that for him and he came home and got out the camera and we sat down together and tried doing an experimental stop motion film of it, to see how the model worked. Seemed like it would do well but it turned out to be too loose jointed and would lose poses, but then again we are working without a tripod and it scarcely mattered.

A friend has a table tripod they are going to lend us for the cause.

Those days, several decades ago, I would go see something like “Juliette of the Spirits” and take it out of the theater with me as best I could, spend hours meditating on it. These days the table is filled with H.o.p.’s clay creations for his stop motion and quickly sketched backgrounds that he has taped together now fill all the chairs. We sit on the futon and discuss “Tom and Jerry” and its animation and the backgrounds. “They look so real,” he says of the backgrounds. “How did they do that?” Fortunately I recently found a blog, Animation ID, that discusses the animators of some of these classic ‘toons. Too much info for H.o.p., but I read and point out a few things to him that I learn.

I’m curmudgeon enough (never used that word before) that when he spends stretches of time looking up videos of robots on Google, has me checking out the films first to make sure they are something suitable for a child (never know what you’ll get), that I’ll start complaining, “This is trash, H.o.p. It’s trash animation and film. If you spend your time watching trash animation and film you’re going to learn the ins and outs of making trash. You learn good film by watching good film. You’ve got to at least spend equal time watching good film.” I imagine many would think this is too controlling of me. But it doesn’t take much to draw him away and plug him in to something better. I will look up an animation site and turn him loose on it. A thing I sometimes regret as it may mean my seeing that site for the next two months, a few select films played over and over.

The Benadryl hit hard enough last night, plus a lack of really good sleep, that this AM I took a while waking up. And while I was waking up H.o.p. went to the park with his dad. Which netted them a flat tire. Marty thought he’d picked up a nail but instead it’s something the homeless pull. They let the air out of a tire and when you come back they offer to help you and net a few dollars for their effort.

Not yet knowing the tire was fine, believing it needed patching, they dropped off the van at the gas station and walked home. H.o.p. was hot and tired. His dad left to pick up the van and go to the studio and H.o.p. suddenly jumped up thinking his dad had taken the camera with him. “Oh, no, he took the camera!” Then he realized that no it was here on the table.

He pulled the camera out of its case and showed me the short films he’d done at the park, when not playing with some other kids with whom he’d made friends and who also are fans of Godzilla. The short films he made? Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla of course, he having taken along a Godzilla toy and a Mechagodzilla toy. He filmed them battling it out on the park’s grass. Now he’s in filming PBS. Kind of like his own remixes. He thinks up stories and then films parts of cartoons and cuts them in with other things to make up something else. I was particularly amused by his one day seeing a Flash cartoon backdrop of power lines and grabbing up his Godzilla and doing a short film of his toy Godzilla stomping about in front of someone else’s cartoon power lines.

I love Youtube.

Here’s a big reason why.

See the cute little “click me” button in the video above? See the black triangle on the cute little “click me” button?

How many people do you imagine look at the triangle and see it as pointing to the lower left or upper left rather than pointing to the right?

On that particular captured still the button is more fun when viewed as pointing to the lower left.

Back in March I started trying to open the Duracell double A battery recharger package. It’s been rough. Am I gratified that today I finally succeeded? No. I was determined that nails and teeth should do the job but having worn through them, today I broke out the scissors and eventually the circular saw.

That is the toughest packaging ever. DVD movie packagers could take notes. For that matter, nuclear waste packagers should take notes.

Oh, wait. Now I see the kryptonite hidden under the barcode. No wonder!

H.o.p. (batting at an old earring I’d pulled out and worn today): What’s that?

Me: It’s a building.

H.o.p.: No, it’s not.

Me: We were driving along, I saw it on the horizon, thought what a great building, plucked it and put it on my ear.

H.o.p.: I’ts not a building.

Me: Sure it is.

H.o.p.: It’s not a building. Where’d you get it?

Me: Ok, it’s a Balinese earring I got in Seattle.

H.o.p.: See, I knew it wasn’t a building. Buildings have windows.

Me: Not all buildings have windows.

The story thus far is, “Godzilla has been terrorizing the inhabitants of Fisher Price Land!”

We are very near the end when this poignant moment occurs.

At least I see it as poignant.

H.o.p. is well on his way to getting down pat the art of the Youtube Wasteland Flick.

We are on the tag end of a family reunion. A cast of thousands.

We can no longer stand driving around this big smog-entrenched, heat island of a city in an old rambling falling apart van with no air conditioning. Falling apart is one thing. No air is another. The lungs suffer. Of course, not knowing if your vehicle is going to start up when you cut it off is kind of troubling. The van’s relability on the road has so deteriorated that Marty’s scared to drive it to out-of-town gigs. It’s in the shop every other week for something or other to be looked at. We’ve blown a lot of money on repairs over the years and it’s not worth it to us to dump more money into it. The engine is fine. It’s the peripherals that keep going out on us, like the transmission which we’ve had to replace three times The shape it’s now in, Blue Book says we can get $700 for it. Big whoop. The question is do we get the driver’s side window fixed so it rolls down and try to sell it ourselves for a little more money. (Yes, that’s right, no AC and only the passenger’s window rolls down. Makes for a nasty hot experience. Means we are never without bottles of water when we go out.)

So I’ve been sitting here this evening going through pro and customer reviews of vehicles that may suit (carry us and just Marty’s keyboards, no more carting everyone else’s gear, those days are over) which don’t go at absolutely mind-blowing prices and cut us some significant slack in the gas department. And you know how I wrote the other day, “But he (H.o.p.) enjoys good film and I suppose some of my love for it has passed along to him. Not things like “Juliette of the Spirits”. It’s not something he would enjoy yet.” Well, while I’m plodding through reviews, I hear music from “Juliette of the Spirits” and I go in and find H.o.p. lying there on the futon beside Marty, beaming, watching, “Juliette of the Spirits”, asking questions about this, that and the other.

“What? You like ‘Juliette of the Spirits’?” I say.

He looks up, grins big, says, “I don’t just like it! I love it!”

Oh my.

Anyway, he asks questions about what’s going on and we explain to him.

So that’s what was going on this evening. H.o.p. has discovered Fellini. I’ve been reading vehicle reviews. I’m planning on stopping that pretty soon and settling down to watch “8 and 1/2″. I think.

Mainly, I’m looking forward to a vehicle with air conditioning. I can count on my fingers and toes the number of months we’ve ever had a vehicle with working air conditioning over the course of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 presidents? Yeah, I think that’s right. And it is time, time, time, to have one. Hopefully by the end of next week.

Have been writing blogs of movies but not posting them. Wrote a blog of “Blow Up” a while back, an intensive one, and didn’t post it. Wrote one of “La Strada” last week and didn’t post it.” I started to do one last night of “La Dolce Vita” and even though I knew what was coming, by the time it hit the party scene at the end I was long since not writing a thing. Been many years since I watched Fellini. With some films those years don’t make a difference. With Fellini it does. I suppose Fellini has fallen somewhat out of fashion. As for me, I’m returning to the films after quite a long absence and seems to me now that the riotous joy of his imagery has distracted from some important themes…and then there was too the public’s coming to view his films as so autobiographical and self-involved that the images deteriorated into buzz points for our believing we were learning about Fellini and his private universe rather than a world relevant to any one of us. I felt this way too after a while, and for a very long time ignored most of his films, so it’s been interesting returning to them and seeing some for the first time that I let slip by because of my overall frustrations with Fellini during those years.

Heaven Davis’ “Regrets” (Marty produced), the last single to be released off her Steamy CD, is currently #8 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-hop single sales chart. It debuted at #18 a couple of weeks ago, dropped to #22 last week, popped up to #8 this week. The thing that’s amazing about this is it’s an independent release with no major promotion machine behind it.

Congratulations, Heaven!