GRABBINGSAND

That’s right, Ben. Even when things are at their very worst, remember that you are truly a beautiful snowflake. Somewhere under that shifting mass of living orange concrete beats the heart of a man, and that man is more than the sum of his parts, even when those parts might be better measured in tons rather than pounds. So keep the faith, Mr. Grimm.

And for those that don’t see you for the lovely creature you really are, for those that don’t appreciate that you’ve got just as many feelings as the next lumbering hulk of stone, I say this:

“Throck ‘Em.”

In other news …

I’ve been busy. We held auditions for the next NFDC show last week. Turn out for both initial nights was quite good, particularly since the male-to-female ratio went entirely against expectations. As a result, our cast for Much Ado is exceptional even by potential alone and that can only mean good things as rehearsals progress until May.

And yes, I do plan to fill more slots in my Presidential Fantasy Cabinet roster. But selection takes time and as I was going in alphabetical order, the pickings for Defense are slimmer than I imagined. I’ve a perfect candidate in mind, but rules state that the office can only be held by citizens ten years out of military service. Maybe in 2020? So I think I’ll skip Defense for now and head on to Education. Expect a new one next week.

Final Fantasy III has been filling much of my time. I’ve been trying to explain to folks that somehow I managed to miss the initial uprising of Nintendo, having caught the wave late with the arrival of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64. I was an Atari kid. And even with the N-64, the system wasn’t mine. So my fascination with the lore and story of Square Enix’s remake of FF3 on the diminutive DS Lite is almost kid-like. But really, how can I find fault at all with a game that has revealed to me less than half of its secrets after a good 13 hours of total play?

Speaking of games, Turbine Entertainment cast out invitations last Thursday for a weekend stress test of it’s upcoming Hobbit-laden Massive Multiplayer Online game, Lord Of The Rings Online: The Shadow Of Angmar. Being the beta-hound that I am, I had to try it. Nikki gave it a brief shot as well.

My initial impressions range far and wide. While the look is quite good, benefiting greatly from what must be a kind of cooperative design license from the movie geniuses at New Line Cinema, the feel is rather remote. Actions that should be graceful, aren’t. Animations that ought to have some kind of visual weight, like running, don’t. For the test, I made three characters: a dwarf, an elf and a (hu)man. I spent most of the time online with the human, a thief burglar named Hops.

Why Hops? The character generator recommends Middle Earth appropriate names based on the character’s origins. Folks from Bree have plant-like names, apparently. Unfortunately, the random way in which new armor is rewarded in the game has left Hops with blaring red pants and a decidedly odd feathered cap, thus making Hops the most conspicuous burglar ever.

(Panels from Fantastic Four #60. Art by Jack Kirby.)

(Today’s lesson has been respectfully borrowed from Bahlactus.)

You might climb walls. You might have the exponential strength of an arachnid. You might even swing from rooftop-to-rooftop via ropes of webbing that issue forth from your wrists … but no amount of Spidey Sense is going to save you from being absolutely pwned by the delicious, home-wrecking taste of chocolatey Hostess Cupcakes.

Sorry, Pete.

Chet Baker was 22-years old when he recorded the song that would make his career and establish him as the prince of West Coast cool. The take was spare, almost tentative in approach, as Chet was a trumpet-player by trade and not a crooner.

At the hard-won age of 58, Chet played “My Funny Valentine” for maybe the ten-thousandth time before an appreciative audience in Hannover, West Germany. Bent, hollow-eyed and looking much older than he should, he was supported by lush strings, almost heavenly so.

Two weeks later, he was gone.

Songwriter David Wilcox describes his appreciation of Chet simply enough. “Chet Baker was a great trumpeter who had a habit of putting heroin into his body, but he was a real optimistic man, and you could tell in his lyric, kind of romantic passages on the trumpet, in his way of singing.”

Being optimistic couldn’t have been easy for Chet. Other musicians have lived hard lives. Many have died young for it. Still others have managed to overcome so much and survive so well that fate or their own willpower has rewarded them with an uncanny longevity. Chet wasn’t so lucky. His life was filled with constant struggle. He fought addictions to heroin and cocaine, losing more often than winning. Sometimes he lost so badly that the need would leave him sitting in jail. One whole year was spent in an Italian prison. Off and on, he’d still play, though for one session in 1966, he had to borrow a fluglehorn to replace his own trumpet. He claimed it was stolen, but it could’ve just as well been put up for hock.

So as we close this week of romance considered through the interpretation of this one particular song, remember this one romantic-tragic fallen idol as the one who took a chance on an average standard , turned it into one of the most sincere expressions of admiration ever recorded, then, in his passing, instilled it with an almost haunted longing.

Chet Baker – “My Funny Valentine (1952)”

Chet Baker – “My Funny Valentine (1988)”

The original version of “My Funny Valentine” is available on the album of the same name, as well as countless other compilations. The live version from 1988 is from the first volume of two, both recorded on the same night in Germany and released as The Last Great Concert.

I don’t know what your Valentine got you for Valentine’s Day. I just know that mine got me Final Fantasy III for the DS. Because she’s awesome like that, you see. Me? I got her a neat-looking bag that she’s been wanting for a little while Maybe she’ll post about it later and show it off.

About today’s rendition, I’ve little to say. I’d rather you spend more time just listening to it. Because this is Miles Davis, doing the song that he employed to open most of his shows through the mid-50s. An adopted signature, I guess. So you know it is going to be good.

Miles Davis Quintet – “My Funny Valentine (Live)”

The first (and possibly best) Miles Davis 5-piece recorded “My Funny Valentine” in 1956 for Cookin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet, part of a four-album all-day session. Why so many albums? Before he could head on over to Columbia Records, Miles needed out of his Prestige contract. With any other artist, the result would sound hurried and careless. But Miles Davis is not just any other artist.

Alternately, you can get the just-released Rudy Van Gelder remastered edition of Cookin’ instead. Of the two CDs, the newer one is cheaper. Go figure.

East Ridge is not my hometown. However, East Ridge is located just over the Tennessee/Georgia state line from my hometown. I’ve never considered it worthy of an anthem, but it has one all the same. And a video to go with it.

Much thanks to Dorie Turner for finding this incredibly accurate portrayal — right down to the town’s long-standing tradition of Draconian speeding tickets — of sub-suburban Chattanooga.

Thanks, Lynn. Thanks so much for stepping out and doing your part to set national perceptions of our fair state back another fifteen or twenty years.

Oh, you didn’t hear? This is what Mr. Westmoreland, R-GA (8th District), said this morning during his alloted five minutes of resolution commentary:

This is a global war on terror. Some people from the other side seem to believe that if we pull out of Iraq, that the Iraqi people are going to go back to tending sheep and herding goats. That’s not what’s going to happen.

You can read more about it and see video of Westmoreland’s unfortunate ovine invocation at ThinkProgress.

The holiday is here.

It’s cool to dismiss Valentine’s Day as just another Hallmark high-mark on the calendar. Some hate the 14th of February outright. But why? Leave the date alone. It did nothing to hurt you. You say you’ve got no date? You say you’ve no bouquet of flowers? Then go out and find somebody. Fix it. Or better yet, send some flowers of your own. No boyfriend? No girlfriend? Send something lovely to your mom. Call your dad.

Worse comes to worse, forget the proper name of the holiday and just partake of the candy that will inevitably swing within your reach before the end of the day. Call it “Gimme Candy Day.”

Anyway … moving on. Let’s listen to another take on our musical theme of the week.

“I’m still a real musical theater person,” (Rickie Lee) Jones says. “I never separated the song from the text. It was natural to me that you would turn and sing the song. I never felt odd about that.”*

Rickie Lee Jones – “My Funny Valentine (Live)”

Jones recorded “My Funny Valentine” for 1983’s Girl At Her Volcano, but this is a live take from later on in her career. This track can be found on last year’s aptly-named retrospective compilation, The Duchess Of Coolsville.

… with another NFDC podcast. This is our 8th, the first one of the 2007 season. I think we’re getting the hang of it.

We talk about what we expect out of auditions, how we select the plays we do and why we make some of the character choices we make. Then we round it all out with some weather predictions. All in all, a relaxed and groovy discussion.

For some reason, I sound a bit more bass-y than usual. Not sure how that happened.

Regardless, if you’re a local and you’ve an inclination toward acting, head on over to the NFDC blog and check out the audition details for Much Ado About Nothing.

Or maybe I was wrong …

Even though “My Funny Valentine” was written by Rodgers & Hart for the stage production of Babes In Arms … and even though the character on stage later played by Judy Garland in the movie sings the song on stage to the character on stage later played by Mickey Rooney in the movie … it would appear from yesterday’s comments that Garland never sang the song in the film.

Huh.

Regardless, we will carry on.

Yesterday, I told you that the first stanza of “My Funny Valentine” has been mostly ignored or forgotten. Of course, mostly would imply that the occasional completist does exist. The most famous is probably the amazing Ella Fitzgerald, who included the first stanza onher 1956 songbook album. And yes, Barbra Streisand did the same about 10 years later.

But still, that whole gender-specification thing has kept many a male artist from being entirely thorough in their renditions. Many, but not all …

Because Rufus Wainwright fears no song.

Rufus Wainwright – “My Funny Valentine”

From a compilation released in-store by Starbucks in 2005. Amazon doesn’t have it, but you might have luck on eBay. As he does with most things, Wainwright pulls the shades way down on this song. He could be singing to a lover, but it is just as likely that the lover is long gone and all that’s left is a tear-stained “Dear Rufus” letter.

What’s the first line of “My Funny Valentine?” It starts with the title, right? My … funny valentine … sweet, comic valentine …

Wrong.

The song was written for Babes In Arms by the songwriting team of Rodgers & Hart. In the 1939 Busby Berkeley film of the same name, 17-year old Judy Garland sings the song to her co-star, Mickey Rooney, starting with this first stanza:

Behold the way our fine feathered friend,
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made
Thy vacant brow, and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent
Thou noble upright truthful sincere,
And slightly dopey gent

Slightly dopey gent. Yeah, that seems right for young Master Rooney. But more importantly, even with all of those unwieldy thys and thous, the first stanza gives the song a little more context. As sweet as the melody can be, the lyrics have a backhanded quality. Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak?

But ever since Chet Baker tackled the song in 1954 (and owned it, frankly), the first stanza has been tossed aside. Why? Well, without the last line of the first stanza, the song could be directed at any object of affection, regardless of gender.

Elvis Costello – “My Funny Valentine”

A B-side recorded in 1979, around the same time as Armed Forces. This might be one of the shortest, sparest renditions I’ve ever heard. In less than a minute and a half, Elvis sings his peace and leaves it at that.