The last few days AMC has been running the old movie White Christmas back to back to back. I hadn't watched the entire thing before, but I was lying in bed with a case of too much time difference between East and West coasts, so I thought, why not? It stars Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. On Danny Kaye alone I was sold.
Well, despite the fact that most of the second half of the movie hinges on the passive aggressive nature of Rosemary Clooney's character, it's not bad. The songs are so catchy, they've been in my head for days. Irving Berlin composed all the tunes. I was once in a play in high school and this girl acting opposite me had the line, "Could Irving Berlin have done better?" She was a bit over-the-top, so now whenever I hear his name I think of her saying "Irrrrrrving Berrrrrlin." Anyway, Berlin was amazing. I never realized how many hits he really wrote: "White Christmas," "Happy Holiday," "God Bless America," and you know how I feel about "There's No Business Like Show Business." Come on.
According to Wikipedia, he wrote over 1,500 songs in his entire career. The man was such a genius of a songwriter, he's been compared more to the likes of poets Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. I thought I would go ahead and post some of his lyrics from White Christmas here as poems. They really just seem effortless. Enjoy.
When I was mustered out
I thought without a doubt
That I was through with all my care and strife
I thought that I was then
The happiest of men
But after months of tough civilian life
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army wasn't really bad at all
Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay
Uniforms for winter, spring, and fall
There's a lot to be said for the Army
The life without responsibility
A soldier out of luck
Was really never stuck
There's always someone higher up where you can pass the buck
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
[2nd chorus for female:]
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army was the place to find romance
Soldiers and WACS
The WACS who dressed in slacks
Dancing cheek to cheek and pants to pants
There's a lot to be said for the Army
A gal was never lost for company
A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
And all you had to do was pick the age, the weight, the size
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The shows we got civilians couldn't see
How we would yell for Dietrich and Cornell
Jolson, Hope and Benny all for free
There's a lot to be said for the Army
The best of doctors watched you carefully
A dentist and a clerk
For weeks and weeks they'd work
They'd make a thousand dollar job and give it to a jerk
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army
Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay
A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
I thought that I was through with all my care and strife
But after months and months of tough civilian life
Oh, gee
I wish I was back in the Army now
Sisters, sisters
There were never such devoted sisters,
Never had to have a chaperone, No sir.
I'm there to keep my eye on her
Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress, and I stayed home
All kinds of weather, we stick together
The same in the rain and sun
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one
Those who've seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man
Funny side note: Can you totally tell how Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen are the real dancers? Look how angry Rosemary Clooney looks when she first comes out on stage in the Army song. She seems to be concentrating on getting the dance moves down and forgetting to smile! And poor Bing sure is trying, but he's got nothing on Danny's energy.
Showing posts with label Walt Whitman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walt Whitman. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Why I love grocery shopping
Ever heard of the idea of eternal return? It has been referenced in countless works in pop culture. It's in The Matrix, Groundhog Day, and The Never Ending Story. It's in the first line of Peter Pan and a major theme of the excellent TV show Battlestar Galactica. It is the idea of cyclical patterns in the universe. "All of this has happened before and all this will happen again." Sounds very dramatic. And poetic.
In a similar way, it's like saying that history repeats itself. And in yet another way, it's like reading something from a long time ago and being surprised to learn that we can identify with it. I remember being shocked in reading The Canterbury Tales. Some of those characters could have made themselves at home at any trailer park. Because the way human beings behave now is not so different from the way they behaved hundreds or thousands of years ago. We are still innately selfish, we still make war, and we still do stupid things in the name of love.
So when I was reading this poem by Allen Ginsberg, his feelings about the world he was living in are not so different from the way people view the world today.
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?
--Berkeley, 1955
To understand this poem, you have to understand that Ginsberg liked to invoke Whitman when he was writing. Whitman was almost like his muse, and Whitman's poems were usually of an observational nature. He connected to things, people, nature, which is what he's doing in the supermarket in this poem. He's interacting with the products, with the grocery clerks, while Ginsberg watches from a distance. Ginsberg feels disconnected from all these things going on around him and all the people. He can only connect with poets who have long since died (García Lorca was a Spanish poet who was murdered in the Spanish Civil War). At the end of this poem, Ginsberg longs for the past and these poets' idealized versions of it that they wrote about. In the supermarket, where he is "shopping for images" (Oh, Allen, I've been there), he is bombarded by the busyness, all the choices of "neon fruit," and "brilliant stacks of cans," but he can't find what he wants. He feels lonely and separate from the modern world.
Upon reading this, it made me think about how accurately that still portrays America today. We are often listening to our iPods or on our cell phones when we are shopping. We do this when we drive or ride the subway. We avoid connecting with the people around us, whether it's out of fear or selfishness. Sometimes if we're caught sitting at a table with a group of people all on their blackberries, we stop and reflect on this and someone will say that they yearn for a simpler time. What simpler time was that?
In a similar way, it's like saying that history repeats itself. And in yet another way, it's like reading something from a long time ago and being surprised to learn that we can identify with it. I remember being shocked in reading The Canterbury Tales. Some of those characters could have made themselves at home at any trailer park. Because the way human beings behave now is not so different from the way they behaved hundreds or thousands of years ago. We are still innately selfish, we still make war, and we still do stupid things in the name of love.
So when I was reading this poem by Allen Ginsberg, his feelings about the world he was living in are not so different from the way people view the world today.
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?
--Berkeley, 1955
To understand this poem, you have to understand that Ginsberg liked to invoke Whitman when he was writing. Whitman was almost like his muse, and Whitman's poems were usually of an observational nature. He connected to things, people, nature, which is what he's doing in the supermarket in this poem. He's interacting with the products, with the grocery clerks, while Ginsberg watches from a distance. Ginsberg feels disconnected from all these things going on around him and all the people. He can only connect with poets who have long since died (García Lorca was a Spanish poet who was murdered in the Spanish Civil War). At the end of this poem, Ginsberg longs for the past and these poets' idealized versions of it that they wrote about. In the supermarket, where he is "shopping for images" (Oh, Allen, I've been there), he is bombarded by the busyness, all the choices of "neon fruit," and "brilliant stacks of cans," but he can't find what he wants. He feels lonely and separate from the modern world.
Upon reading this, it made me think about how accurately that still portrays America today. We are often listening to our iPods or on our cell phones when we are shopping. We do this when we drive or ride the subway. We avoid connecting with the people around us, whether it's out of fear or selfishness. Sometimes if we're caught sitting at a table with a group of people all on their blackberries, we stop and reflect on this and someone will say that they yearn for a simpler time. What simpler time was that?
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