Keys to Success

[caroljane]

This is known to be fatal to all but Canadians, George, instantly, unless by chance you have the rare sport of genetics that can spare you a grim expiration.

This is the 4XL lady singing with the coal miners. It does not get any more psychotic Canucki Maritimer schmaltz than this. If Phil can take this, he can take anything, he would be invincible.

I adore Rita. Who can forget the classic Trailer Park episode in which the boys hijacked her tour bus and forced her and her band to get out and harvest their weed plants. I think this was posted somewhere on Cdn Boring last year.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Indeed. But that doesn’t guard against dirty deeds arising from bad intentions.

Dennis,

No, it doesn't. But neither does the time stamp if you know how to jig it. (And it's not that hard.)

Basically, there's an issue of trust involved. This is not just limited to OL, either. Essentially people choose which online community they like to post at based on where they feel comfortable. Trust is a big issue for many.

I have policed myself on this score and I always say when I have tampered with the post of someon else. Or why I will not tamper with it. And there has to be a damn good reason.

(With one exception. Once in a while, if I see something glaring and it's a quick fix, I'll correct a bad typo or clean up a formatting mistake with quotes and not mention it. But it has to not affect the message for me to do that.)

Splitting topice and moving threads are not included here. But that's just forum organization, not messing with someone's actual content.

I sense that OL members are pretty certain that I do what I say and feel secure in the way their posts are respected.

This is a reputation you gain from the way you act over time, not by any software constraints.

I believe the regulars who have corners on OL and have moderating powers have the same level of integrity I do.

Michael

[caroljane]

Pants and a tractor!?

How else are we supposed to harvest the potatoes, b'y?

-Bud the Spud

Now that is gay!

Adam, you want gay Maritimer, it is Ashley MacIsaac, kilted, roaring with talent, sometimes brawling, drunken and irate (and still yet a beautiful, inspiring musician). See also this item from the Cape Breton Post -- they got to talk to his mom!

Gay as a boot and all man, baby, here givin' 'er at the Olympic opener in Vancouver in 2010.

Carol's reference to Bud the Spud is to Stompin' Tom Connor, another Maritimer who is definitely macho A-one straight, but no less odd than dear Ashley, and certainly not gay.

We love these kinds of people, nevertheless, Adam, our KDs and our Not-A-Lesbian Anne, and Ashley and Tom and on and on. We even love Ginette Reno.

Stompin' Tom may not be gay, indeed he may be the only person in North America who has never heard of gay what with spending his whole life pounding down the 401 to deliver the taters, stranded in the Tillsonurg tobacco fields, and destroying the national lumber reserves one 2X4 at a time. But he has gay fans, you bet. The Maritime music scene is not all Cousin Ashley upping his gorgeous Shetland kilt you know.

[George H. Smith]

Of her biggest hits I like Snowbird the least. It is just not bearable after the first million listenings. I like my schmaltz a little less whimsical, so my fave is "May I have this Dance"I and "You Needed Me" is OK too.

Your comment reminds me of a line from a stand-up comedian c. 1977, after Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" had been playing on the radio incessantly: "I liked that song the first one-thousand times I heard it."

Ghs

[caroljane]

George, incessant involuntary listening is the curse of our times. Being on hold with "soothing" music while you wait to negotiate your hydro payments deserves a place in Dante's limbo. (or was there one?)

I used to pick up my groceries weekly at a supermarket with a wine store at the exit. In selecting my choice of PinotCheapo each week I exchanged friendly chat with the wine clerk, as one does.

One Christmas the novelty point-of-sale item (located directly behind the flimsy partition separating Wine Rack from grocery area) was one of those singing Santas. This one was dressed in a Leafs Jersey and sang the Connors classic "The Good Old Hockey Game" (not admittedly his best effort as folk poet). It was irresistible (I bought two myself) and I mentioned to the wine guy how cute it was. He blenched and pointed feebly behind him, where two of the Stompin' Santas were performing, not in sync. The good old hockey game rang in his ears from morn till eve, all day every day, in spite of his pleas to the staff not to change their batteries.

After New Year's the wine guy was gone, and he did not reappear for over a month, when he seemed very changed. I think he had had some sort of breakdown.

[Selene]

<<<<here is Conner's/Corners live

[George H. Smith]

One schmaltzy singer I really like is the French songwriter and club singer Charles Trenet.

This tune, Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (What Remains of Our Love?), is best known to English-speaking audiences (with different lyrics) as I Wish You Love. Another well-known tune by Trenet is La Mer, which became a hit for Bobby Darin in 1959 as Beyond the Sea (again, with different lyrics).

Ghs

[william.scherk]

So, that is all settled now? There are lots of Keys to Success and one of them is an appreciation for knife-edge Schmaltz?

Is this the cummerbund of Objective-ish unity, a one size for all life-vest? Are we all squaddies on the Schmaltzers, in our own odd way?

In unity, grave and pressing responsibilities, as Elder Smith points out. Let us have another Festival of Schmaltz the next time communications break down and we need a whiff of ammonia to snap out of our whinging, wrist-to-forehead distress and assorted dramatic fainting spells.

Merry Holiday Birth, Everyone. May he Live, the New baby. May we feed him schmaltz when he ever so dramatically faints away on all of us. I know exactly which twenty seconds of which video I will instantly post as bracing smelling salts (Fais-Moi La Tendresse`s mutual howling in face Italian finale) when next the wrist flies to the forehead, the lisle-stockinged legs wobble, and the whole awful pretension threatens to crash through the floor killing everyone.

We have basically discovered the kind of smelling salts Phil requires to snap him out of it. Let us use it wisely, judiciously in future, but for now rejoice.

The dancing, the awful dancing. The lights, the awful lights. The pants, the awful pants. The hynotic throb, the awful throb. Here is my own astringent and awful-enough-to-wake-the-dead smelling salts ...

Edited January 21, 2012 by william.scherk

[Xray]

One schmaltzy singer I really like is the French songwriter and club singer Charles Trenet.

This tune, Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (What Remains of Our Love?), is best known to English-speaking audiences (with different lyrics) as I Wish You Love. Another well-known tune by Trenet is La Mer, which became a hit for Bobby Darin in 1959 as Beyond the Sea (again, with different lyrics).

Ghs

I must admit that I my eyes water each time I listen to Trenet's La Mer, and this is by no means the only song acting as 'tear-jerker' in my soul. Auld Lang Syne is another one. To this day, I have never been able to either listen to it or sing it without my eyes watering.

Despite all my striving for rationality, there also seems to be a sentimental, nostalgic streak at work here. Is this a contradiction? I prefer to call it an 'addition'.

[George H. Smith]

Can't see the video (yet). We've got a new PC and the Adobe Flash Player plug-in is not installed. As I clicked to get it installed, a chart showed up where I was sternly asked: "Do you permit that the following program makes alterations on this computer?"

My family members are currently not at home, and computer analphabet that I am, I don't dare to 'permit' anything here. I don't want to be the one who might foul something up.

I wouldn't worry about installing the Adobe Flash Player. It is a standard plug-in and won't cause any problems with your computer. The prompt you are getting is oddly worded, but it is merely asking permission to install the device.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

One schmaltzy singer I really like is the French songwriter and club singer Charles Trenet. This tune, Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (What Remains of Our Love?), is best known to English-speaking audiences (with different lyrics) as I Wish You Love. Another well-known tune by Trenet is La Mer, which became a hit for Bobby Darin in 1959 as Beyond the Sea (again, with different lyrics). Ghs

I must admit that I my eyes water each time I listen to Trenet's La Mer, and this is by no means the only song acting as 'tear-jerker' in my soul. Auld Lang Syne is another one. To this day, I have never ben able to either listen to it or sing it without my eyes watering. Despite all my striving for rationality, there also seems to be a sentimental, nostalgic streak at work here. Is this a contradiction? I prefer to call it an 'addition'.

Here is Trenet's La Mer, for those who may be unfamiliar with it.

Ghs

[Xray]

So, that is all settled now? There are lots of Keys to Success and one of them is an appreciation for knife-edge Schmaltz?

I think the 'Schmaltz' thing has more the functinon of a 'respite', giving the 'cyber-salon' members the time to recharge their intellectual batteries ...

[william.scherk]

I actually like this. But then I've always been a sucker for sing-alongs with coal miners. [ ... ] I listen to my share of schmaltzy tunes on occasions, depending on my mood. In fact, I will sometime use music to elicit certain emotions. I will also use music to gauge what kind of mood I am in.

Too right, this reporting, this elicitation of certain emotions.

Curious, George, to gauge or to discover your mood? I love the metaphor but can't figure out the machinery of testing.

Of her biggest hits I like Snowbird the least. It is just not bearable after the first million listenings. I like my schmaltz a little less whimsical, so my fave is "May I have this Dance"I and "You Needed Me" is OK too.

Your comment reminds me of a line from a stand-up comedian c. 1977, after Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" had been playing on the radio incessantly: "I liked that song the first one-thousand times I heard it."

Some Schmaltz (like Boone's nightmarish drone) has so many strings and plods along so slowly that emotion is leached out. The horror of Boone was that she was not lit up at all. She was propped up by production, like a singing carcass hanging in a meat locker. As for LOVE lighting up her life, no, that would be like an orgasm in a coma patient, no point, no apparent movement, no corresponding ping of pleasure in the brain. What kind of erotic love could the young Debbie testify to, anyway? All such longings were expunged in production.

Another exemplar of this poisonous schmaltz is Rita Coolidge's Higher and Higher song. I called this Music To Iron By, and imagined the video would show the singer reclining like an invalid, looking sadly out windows, coughing into a basin and sighing, yawning, resting.

This was a song about Your Love Is Lifting Me Higher, with horns, sass, sex and loins a moving. Rita Coolidge's version was suitable for Funerals, if you know what I mean. Children can nap through it. No sweat is raised, The iron irons, the singer yawns. Oh, I am so Bitter.

One schmaltzy singer I really like is the French songwriter and club singer Charles Trenet.

This tune, Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (What Remains of Our Love?), is best known to English-speaking audiences (with different lyrics) as I Wish You Love. Another well-known tune by Trenet is La Mer, which became a hit for Bobby Darin in 1959 as Beyond the Sea (again, with different lyrics).

Ghs

I must admit that I my eyes water each time I listen to Trenet's La Mer, and this is by no means the only song acting as 'tear-jerker' in my soul.

This is lovely to know. Yes, the operation of emotion is so felt in our appreciation of these (amost-awful, sentiment-inducing) things. George says he uses music to gauge, to elicit, emotion.

I call this sub-genre of French schmaltz Hello Papa It`s Time To Die (from Terry Jacks bad remake of Brel). They are all about the kind of love words that never get said enough, same with the Howl-In-Your-Face tag-team, even Debbie fixed in goo. The good stuff is just pulling the same string on the monkey as the bad stuff, with differing results.

[Ed. -- there is no real poisonous schmaltz, more accurate is probably Ersatz Schmaltz, but what a mouthful. If I am sold a a gigantic sweet confection, don't give me fudge made of styrofoam and guar gum, FFS . Oh what made me so Bitter ]

Edited January 21, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

So, that is all settled now? There are lots of Keys to Success and one of them is an appreciation for knife-edge Schmaltz?

I think the 'Schmaltz' thing has more the functinon of a 'respite', giving the 'cyber-salon' members the time to recharge their intellectual batteries ...

So, that is all settled now? There are lots of Keys to Success and one of them is an appreciation for knife-edge Schmaltz?

I think the 'Schmaltz' thing has more the functinon of a 'respite', giving the 'cyber-salon' members the time to recharge their intellectual batteries ...

Speaking of knife edge X, those of us of a certain age, even those who have never been to Las Vegas, have been subjected over the years to endless song stylings of one Wayne Newton. "Danke schoen", he croons and re-croons, "darling, danke schoen". As a member of the German nation I hold you accountable expect a little astringent Goethe in compensation. Merci!

[Brant Gaede]

You begin to see... And no, George's superpowers do not come with the 24 hour limit. It's his corner and he rules supreme.

As Iago would say, I like not that! There ought to at least be an edit stamp.

I believe there is for the editor, but it's optional. --Brant

I can't find any edit stamp option. When I added my own comment to Ninth's post, I was prompted to give a reason for the edit, and I said "humor." I assumed this would show up somewhere in the edited post, but it didn't. I then thought that Ninth might receive a notification of my edit, along with the reason, but that doesn't seem to have occurred either.

Ghs

Well, for your own posts there is the option. I thought it would travel. But you, of all people, don't need any of these tools; you take on all comers.

--Brant

ask Michael--maybe he know

Edited January 21, 2012 by Brant Gaede

[caroljane]

I actually like this. But then I've always been a sucker for sing-alongs with coal miners. [ ... ] I listen to my share of schmaltzy tunes on occasions, depending on my mood. In fact, I will sometime use music to elicit certain emotions. I will also use music to gauge what kind of mood I am in.

Too right, this reporting, this elicitation of certain emotions.

Curious, George, to gauge or to discover your mood? I love the metaphor but can't figure out the machinery of testing.

Of her biggest hits I like Snowbird the least. It is just not bearable after the first million listenings. I like my schmaltz a little less whimsical, so my fave is "May I have this Dance"I and "You Needed Me" is OK too.

Your comment reminds me of a line from a stand-up comedian c. 1977, after Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" had been playing on the radio incessantly: "I liked that song the first one-thousand times I heard it."

Some Schmaltz (like Boone's nightmarish drone) has so many strings and plods along so slowly that emotion is leached out. The horror of Boone was that she was not lit up at all. She was propped up by production, like a singing carcass hanging in a meat locker. As for LOVE lighting up her life, no, that would be like an orgasm in a coma patient, no point, no apparent movement, no corresponding ping of pleasure in the brain. What kind of erotic love could the young Debbie testify to, anyway? All such longings were expunged in production.

Another exemplar of this poisonous schmaltz is Rita Coolidge's Higher and Higher song. I called this Music To Iron By, and imagined the video would show the singer reclining like an invalid, looking sadly out windows, coughing into a basin and sighing, yawning, resting.

This was a song about Your Love Is Lifting Me Higher, with horns, sass, sex and loins a moving. Rita Coolidge's version was suitable for Funerals, if you know what I mean. Children can nap through it. No sweat is raised, The iron irons, the singer yawns. Oh, I am so Bitter.

One schmaltzy singer I really like is the French songwriter and club singer Charles Trenet.

This tune, Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (What Remains of Our Love?), is best known to English-speaking audiences (with different lyrics) as I Wish You Love. Another well-known tune by Trenet is La Mer, which became a hit for Bobby Darin in 1959 as Beyond the Sea (again, with different lyrics).

Ghs

I must admit that I my eyes water each time I listen to Trenet's La Mer, and this is by no means the only song acting as 'tear-jerker' in my soul.

This is lovely to know. Yes, the operation of emotion is so felt in our appreciation of these (amost-awful, sentiment-inducing) things. George says he uses music to gauge, to elicit, emotion.

I call this sub-genre of French schmaltz Hello Papa It`s Time To Die (from Terry Jacks bad remake of Brel). They are all about the kind of love words that never get said enough, same with the Howl-In-Your-Face tag-team, even Debbie fixed in goo. The good stuff is just pulling the same string on the monkey as the bad stuff, with differing results.

[Ed. -- there is no real poisonous schmaltz, more accurate is probably Ersatz Schmaltz, but what a mouthful. If I am sold a a gigantic sweet confection, don't give me fudge made of styrofoam and guar gum, FFS . Oh what made me so Bitter ]

What Italian director said, "I hate music, I never listen to it unless I have to, because it makes me feel" (or approx) .. his score writer was Morricone.

"Curious how potent cheap music is", said Noel Coward who was in no way a cynic and knew there is no cheap music, anymore than there is cheap emotion. Or any less.

[George H. Smith]

I actually like this. But then I've always been a sucker for sing-alongs with coal miners. [ ... ] I listen to my share of schmaltzy tunes on occasions, depending on my mood. In fact, I will sometime use music to elicit certain emotions. I will also use music to gauge what kind of mood I am in.

Too right, this reporting, this elicitation of certain emotions.

Curious, George, to gauge or to discover your mood? I love the metaphor but can't figure out the machinery of testing.

This is a bit difficult to explain, so I will begin with a different "gauge" that I have used for many years, one that is more clear-cut. Every writer -- indeed, every creative person -- will understand this.

Sometimes while I am writing, or after I read something I wrote earlier, I get the feeling it is largely crap, especially in terms of style. Well, maybe it is crap and maybe it isn't, but how am I to determine whether I am looking at objective crap or whether I am in a crappy frame of mind -- a perspective that can make things appear to be crap that are not, in fact.

Many years ago I thought of a way to deal with this problem. There are certain specimens of my writing that I know, from years of experience and evaluation, are objectively good, so I use these samples as a gauge. I may read a page from a book that contains some of my best writing ever and see how I react. If I say to myself, "This, too, is crap," then I know that my judgment is off-kilter at that time and therefore not to be trusted. If, on the other hand, I judge the writing before me to be as good as I always knew it was, then my judgment is probably sound, and what I am writing at the time probably is crap.

This method has proven to be very, very useful in judging how much my rational assessments of my own writing have been warped by a temporary mood, or frame of mind.

I sometimes use music in a similar, if more amorphous, fashion, but this is more difficult to explain. There are certain tunes that have been favorites of mine since I was a kid, and I associate specific tunes with certain moods. Thus, if I am pacing around wondering why I am unable to sit down at the computer to get some writing done, I will sometimes listen to some of these "gauge" tunes. If none of them connects, then I know that my frame of mind is chaotic, and that I need to sit down, relax, and sort things out. If, on the other hand, one of those tunes connects, then that will sometimes give me an indication that something specific is troubling me -- something that may not even be related to my writing at all.

Here is another way I use music. In 1984, while I was on a grueling writing schedule for Knowledge Products, Huey Lewis came out with his hit, The Heart of Rock and Roll. I would often play that tune after I got up, and for some reason I would quickly find myself at the computer, working. I then decided to play the tune only when I wanted to get myself to write, and it worked like a charm for several years. It is not as effective now; even so, when I hear the opening "thump-thump, thump-thump," followed by that terrific riff and beat, I sometimes find myself working without even thinking about it.

I believe it was George Orwell who once observed that we lack an adequate vocabulary to describe the subtle shades of our emotions. I suppose you could say that my "gauges" are an effort to compensate for this inadequacy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIJNoeDyrV8

Ghs

[william.scherk]

This is a bit difficult to explain [ ... ] I believe it was George Orwell who once observed that we lack an adequate vocabulary to describe the subtle shades of our emotions. I suppose you could say that my "gauges" are an effort to compensate for this inadequacy.

Thanks, George. Your's is a fresh example of why I love reading OL. We really do get questions answered. We really do see good writers and thinkers in play, grappling with the almost inexpressible. We grimace at the massive disarray and stupidity of the lands of man.

And then we get another generous slice of good and useful writing from the likes of you. It seems effortless. It is not. Bonus being sometimes Masters explain why and why not, and here you clearly do.

[George H. Smith]

This is a bit difficult to explain [ ... ] I believe it was George Orwell who once observed that we lack an adequate vocabulary to describe the subtle shades of our emotions. I suppose you could say that my "gauges" are an effort to compensate for this inadequacy.

Thanks, George. Your's is a fresh example of why I love reading OL. We really do get questions answered. We really do see good writers and thinkers in play, grappling with the almost inexpressible. We grimace at the massive disarray and stupidity of the lands of man. And then we get another generous slice of good and useful writing from the likes of you. It seems effortless. It is not. Bonus being sometimes Masters explain why and why not, and here you clearly do.

Thanks, Bill.

I don't recall the title, but I once saw a movie in which Walter Matthau played a Supreme Court Justice. When someone commented on what a mess his desk was, Matthau replied, "I prefer to think of it as a wilderness of free association."

This is how I view OL, more or less.

I should add, with gratitude, that the nearly invisible hand of Michael is what makes all this possible.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

What Italian director said, "I hate music, I never listen to it unless I have to, because it makes me feel" (or approx) .. his score writer was Morricone.

"Curious how potent cheap music is", said Noel Coward who was in no way a cynic and knew there is no cheap music, anymore than there is cheap emotion. Or any less.

Are you thinking of Sergio Leone? Ennio Morricone (one of my favorites) wrote the music for a number of Leone's films, including the early Clint Eastwood westerns. My favorite overall is probably Morricone's beautiful score for Once Upon a Time in America.

Deborah's Theme in particular, which is played in the embedded video, is as beautiful a love theme as you are ever likely to hear. Someone mentioned tunes that almost always get the tears flowing. This one does it for me.

Ghs

[william.scherk]

Great catch with Morricone and the greatest of the great Spaghetti Westerns. Those soundtracks were very well crafted.

True confession: instrumental movie sound-track that raises neck bristles, eye ducts, or other weird physical effects: Theme to Exodus ... I read the book, never saw the Paul Newman movie, was unsurprised to hear this being replayed on top 40 stations during its hit week. It was beyond the valley of uncool, but I understood why this one gutted a few people.

But, my heaviest use of music as an emotional lever or other tool, as I posted before here, is the bizarre Celtic Heavy Makeup Disco Afghanistan song by Mozhdah. The language is still a blur to me. I use a play of this song to get in a festive, positive mood -- as I contemplate de-icing or salting or snow-blowing or driveway scraping or slipping my way to the corner store. It works. Now you know me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZupe-EBAmU

[Philip Coates]

> "Curious how potent cheap music is", said Noel Coward who was in no way a cynic and knew there is no cheap music, anymore than there is cheap emotion. Or any less. [Daunce]

The first word was not 'curious' but 'extraordinary'. It's from "Private Lives", a wonderful play and movie (with Robert Montgomery). It was a testament to being still in the grip of an emotion both Elyot and Amanda want to deny, IIRC when they are thrown together honeymooning separately with their separate husbands. And the love-hate is still as fierce as ever.

On another thread, someone was asking today for sources of good humorous writing and Wodehouse was mentioned. Noel Coward is one of my favorites. I haven't read all of Oscar Wilde, but his most famous work, "The Importance of Being Earnest" ranks up there as situation farce.

[caroljane]

> "Curious how potent cheap music is", said Noel Coward who was in no way a cynic and knew there is no cheap music, anymore than there is cheap emotion. Or any less. [Daunce]

The first word was not 'curious' but 'extraordinary'. It was said in "Private Lives", a wonderful play and movie (with Robert Montgomery). IIRC, it was a testament to being still in the grip of an emotion both Elyot and Amanda want to deny, when they are thrown together honeymooning separately with their separate husbands.

On another thread, someone was asking for sources of good humorous writing and Wodehouse was mentioned. Noel Coward is one of my favorites.

Thanks Phil extraordinary fits better. Where did I get potent from?

Likely the Wine Rack as usual.

[Philip Coates]

> there is no cheap music, anymore than there is cheap emotion [Daunce]

If it's authentic, it's certainly not cheap to the person who experiences it.

[Philip Coates]

> Where did I get potent from?

The rest of the quote is correct. Coward was great at just the exact right choice of words and at short, punchy little lines that hit you in the solar plexus. There is another great British comedy...and if I keep writing whether or not it was Coward will come to me...the story situation was about this henpecked husband whose social climbing motormouth wife is always prattling on and on about the cuteness and charm and accomplishments and social register status of her precious nephew "little Basil". Finally toward the end [WARNING: Spoiler Alert] the silent husband gets his revenge by very calmly revealing the information right in the middle of a crowd of prominent people: "Well, my dear, it seems our little Basil is a little bastard." I almost fell out of my chair. It was all in the delivery and timing. Does anyone recall what play this was from? (Extra credit if you don't have to google it.)