The Man in Black in the Land of Green

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There's a telling moment near the end of Johnny Cash in Ireland that sums up the man more succinctly than any scholarly dissertation ever could. The concert is winding down, and Cash has just introduced Sandy Kelly to help him perform "Forty Shades of Green," a song he wrote that the Irish took to their collective heart. "There's argument about who wrote this song," he says in that deep, rolling voice.as he cues the performance. "I wrote it--in 1959." You hear an audience member shout, "No you didn't!" Cash doesn't break stride as the intro strains begin. "Yes I did," he replies with a wry smile that segues effortlessly into the song.

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Okay, I'll admit you probably need to see the moment to appreciate it fully. Words don't really convey that flash of fire from those dark eyes, that spark of a knowing grin, that presence that commanded his surroundings and needed no confirmation. If Johnny Cash said it, or, even better, if he sang it, something in you knew it rang with truth.

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Since in his death in 2003, there has been no dearth of posthumous Johnny Cash releases, ranging from the extraordinary to the banal, with a few jewels packed into the mix. Johnny Cash in Ireland falls into that last bunch. Filmed in 1993 as an installment of an Irish television series, this is hardly one of Cash's landmark performances. That's not to say, however, that it's a show to be ignored. Johnny Cash shows never were.

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Johnny Cash and June Carter may have been past their prime when they did this show (indeed, Cash would quit touring about three years later), but the energy of this show still eclipses any number of contemporary performers. Sure, the format is reminiscent of the American TV series that ran 1969-71, but that only sparks vagrant memories of headier times. Cash was a gentleman outlaw then-- a brilliant musical subversive who charmed his way into prime time through the universality of his music, and introduced us to a whole new generation of music troublemakers in the process.

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Johnny Cash in Ireland shows that over twenty years later, he had lost none of that spunk. It may be an episode of the Dublin series Country from the Olympia, but there's no mistaking it for anything less than the Johnny Cash show. Featuring what was left of the legendary Carter Family, Kris Kristofferson, Sandy Kelly and his only son, John Carter Cash, Live in Ireland is a revue showcasing some of Cash's greatest hits, as well as some of his older nuggets. "Folsom Prison Blues" is there, of course, but so is the rockabilly classic "Get Rhythm."

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Cash doesn't showboat, though--he gives his band plenty of room, as well he should, since the Tennessee Three were instrumental to his unique sound. He never forgot his roots, or his love, and the Carter Family, with June figuring predominantly, take center stage on a few tunes, particularly "Wabash Cannonball."

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Still it's the imposing presence of Johnny Cash that makes this an arresting performance. He manages to make "A Boy Named Sue" still sound fresh, and "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" eerily haunting. When Kristofferson joins him on "Long Black Veil," the awe he has for Cash is obvious. And well it should be--Cash paved the way for him, and an entire generation of musicians seeking to expand the parameters of country music.

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Johnny Cash was undoubtedly one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century. He took his music out of the country ghetto, and made it something to which everybody from punks to rappers could relate. Johnny Cash in Ireland may be a minor chapter in his performing career, but it still offers a glimpse into his brilliance as a showman and a performer. And for anyone who grew up on the music of Johnny Cash, it will bring a nostalgic tear to the eye. It's unlikely we'll see his kind again.

Factotum Labors at Many Trades, And Masters the Optimism of Despair

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The writings of Charles Bukowski are an acquired taste. Praised by some critics as intuitive literary genius and derided by others as the ramblings of a serious alcoholic with delusions of literary grandeur, one simple fact remains. He hit on a collective nerve that had little to do with alcoholism, womanizing or gambling--it had to do with pursuing a life well lived. He never apologized for his shortcomings--he reveled in them.

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Factotum, the movie, doesn't stray far from that premise. Where it differs is in its Scandinavian approach to the source material. The American directorial debut of acclaimed Norwegian director Bent Haner, Factotum springboards Bukowski's early days into an allegorical everyman's tale in which the protagonist never fully realizes redemption.

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Matt Dillon portrays Hank Chinaski (ostensibly Bukowski's alter ego) as a man disconnected from the realities of the world. His only passion in life is writing, and he's not all that passionate about that. He jots down his thoughts occasionally, but women, menial jobs, horse tracks and seedy bars distract him from his efforts. He's a factotum, a person who wanders aimlessly from job to job. "I just want to get my paycheck and get drunk," he tells an employer after being fired from one of several jobs.

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It would be far too easy to discount Factotum as plotless rambling. To do so, however, would be nothing less than a surrender to the banalaties of big budget movies. This is not a film driven by plot so much as it is by character, and in that regard, it shines. In what may be his finest performance to date, Dillon imbues the Chinaski character (read that Bukowski) with a stoic resignation towards the obstacles that confront him. Most of those obstacles, of course, are roadblocks of his own making--his refusal to compromise to anyone or anything besides his vices-- but he never lets them overcome his singular ambition of becoming a published writer. When he's not boozing or playing the horses, he's scribbling random thoughts on a yellow legal pad, and dropping his manuscripts in the mail, with fruitless results.

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Accompanying Chinaski through much of the film is the equally besotted Jan, (Lili Taylor, Six Feet Under). Their relationship, based mostly on their mutual alcoholism is, is, as one would expect, rocky at best. But at its core, it's based more on a disregard for society's expectations than chemical dependency. The bond the pair share supercedes the haze in how their days and nights are spent. In one particularly amusing scene, they're awakened in the middle of the night by the commotion of a fire in their apartment block. They merely shrug it off, and go back to sleep.

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It's all set in a surreal version of Los Angeles, bereft of sun and palm trees, or even much of a populace. It's a desolate, gray place (with seamier sections of Minneapolis filling in for El Lay), seen through the eyes of the isolated. In Bukowski/Chanefski's world, "political correctness" is a term that doesn't exist--people smoke openly in offices, people drunkedly wander deserted streets and random fisticuffs go largely unnoticed. Even the time frame is uncertain-- working class sixties mores juxtapose with PT Cruisers and computers in an assembly line world where automation has yet to replace the working grunt.

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Of course, we're seeing all this through Chanefski's version of the world, and in that convoluted logic, it all makes sense. He sees the absurdities of day to day existence, and gives no pause to consider life beyond its underbelly. His resultant world view is both egocentric and distanced. Since he sees the world only in terms of how it affects his personal aspirations, it's not surprising that his version of Los Angeles is cold and desolate.

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Factotum works best when viewed in the context of allegory. It's ultimately a story of sacrifice in the name of art. As Dillon interprets the character, Chanefski never veers from his personal Holy Grail. The menial jobs, the bouts of homelessness, the drunken binges, the meaningless dalliances with various women--all are ingredients to feed his dream. And even though the film's ending is ambiguous, it leaves the viewer with a sense that it might, just maybe have been worth it after all. He's sleeping on a park bench as the credits begin to roll, but that doesn't preclude him from soliloquy.

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"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start," he advises us. "This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

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Despite its measured pacing and often misanthropic viewpoint, Factotum should be required viewing for anyone who ever harbored a dream. It's bleak, often funny, sometimes almost boring and moves at an unsteady rhythm. In short, it's a lot like life.

Scooby Doo's Saddest Day

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Iwao Takamoto, the man who created Scooby Doo for Hanna-Barbera Productions, has died at the age of 81. His passing, less than a month after the death of Joe Barbera, marks yet another sad milestone in the annals of pop culture.

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The son of Japanese immigrants, Takamoto was born 1925 in Los Angeles. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he, like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, spent WW2 in an internment camp in the California desert. It was there that he learned illustration from fellow internees. Despite the lack of formal training, he was able to land a job as an assistant at Walt Disney Studios in 1947. He worked as an animator on several Disney features, including Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians before joining the Hanna-Barbera team in 1961.

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While he was responsible for the design of several characters, including the Jetsons' Astro and Penelope Pitstop, he'll be most remembered as the creator of Scooby Doo. It was he who brought the cowardly but adventurous Great Dane, and the rest of the Mystery, Inc. gang to life in 1969, and was largely responsible for Scoob's continuing status as a contemporary cultural icon.

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Takamoto designed the character of Scooby Doo after talking with a Great Dane breeder about the finer physical attributes of the breed--straight back, straight legs, angular jaw and the like. In classic cartoon mindset, he went the opposite direction in his design, giving Scooby a goofy humped back, huge chin and large loopy legs. The origins of his name come from a scatline in Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night." It was one of those incongruous cartoon designs that was an instant hit, and made Scooby Doo, in his various incarnations, the longest running Saturday morning cartoon character in history.

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Takamoto's Scooby Doo is, depending on who you talk to, one of the most loveable, or one of the most ingratiating cartoon characters to come out of the Hanna-Barbera studios. Even though the stories were thin and formulaic, the comic relief that Scooby and his allegedly stoner cohort Shaggy lent to the series resonated in the public consciousness. Besides the cartoons that remain popular even with the youngest generations, Takamoto's creation inspired two regrettable live-action feature films. The CGI incarnation of Scooby Doo in those films was a pale imitation of the character Takamoto created.

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Iwao Takamoto created an immortal character in Scooby Doo. And now he enters the pantheon of departed but immortal animation legends.

In Praise of Ramen Noodles. . . And the Man Who Created Them.

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It's the little things that matter. . .

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The 20th century introduced us to a multitude of inventions that transformed us culturally, socially and even politically. It's difficult to pinpoint the most fabulous creation that lifted us from the social mire in which we'd been immersed for centuries. Some say it was the computer. Others will point to the airplane. The slackers among us will say it was movies.

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All of these assumptions are wrong.

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Discounting superglue, nothing affected us more than three things: duct tape, velcro and ramen noodles. Here's why. The inventions that really impact our daily lives go unsung, mainly because they were so perfect, we never noticed their how cool they really were.

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Consider this. Duct tape is the musician's best friend--it splices multiple wires, it essentially holds the stage together, and without it, there would be a helluva lot more rock and roll suicides. With duct tape, you know nothing's going anywhere. I'll forego the implications of that.

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Velcro's a different matter. It's the ultimate easy answer to every conundrum. It solved every would-be home designer's problems regarding placement of flea market art. With Velcro, you could make everything instataneous, even the way your trouser cuffs hanged (Remember parachute pants?) You could fasten anything to Velcro, and feel relatively secure it would hold. For a while, it even seemed a likely replacement for shoestrings, though aesthetics doomed that idea.

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But nothing has had a more profound, if indirect, impact on our culture than ramen noodles. I shudder to even contemplate where our society would be technologically, medically, culturally or even politically, had Momofuku Ando not perfected the formula for ramen noodles in 1958. He died yesterday, 6 January, of heart failure at the age of 96.

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Ando said his inspiration for instant noodles came after seeing lines of refugees waiting for traditional ramen soup. He wanted to feed people cheaply and quickly. and after much trial and error, the finally perfected his flash frying method of cooking noodles, enabling them to be ready to serve by boiling for three minutes. The original version, chikin ramen, was not an instant hit, since it cost six times as much as traditional noodles. As production costs went down, however, ramen noodles soared in popularity. Today, an estimated 70 billion servings are sold annually worldwide.

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While that's a staggering figure, it's not surprising, considering that the packets sell for between 10-20 cents in the United States. And with the multidudinous varieties of flavor packets available for that little bag of dried noodles, it's astoundingly simple for a starving college student to convince his or her self that they are eating a varied diet. If you added crackers, and chopped-up wafer meat, they actually made for quite a satisfying meal, as I remember.

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There is little doubt in my mind that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates owe at least some of their success to Momofuku Ando and his invention of instant noodles. In fact, I'd hazard to guess that your accountant, your doctor, your lawyer, your congressman--in short, every professional on whom you depend-- would not be where they are now without ramen noodles at some point in their lives.

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So I salute you, Momofuku Ando, sir. You left this world a little wiser by feeding us when we had little money, and giving us the energy to explore our ideas, rather than wonder if we were going to starve. You will not be forgotten.

Two Wild Nights As Sweet As Tupelo Honey

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Some musicians are so ingrained in our collective consciousness that we sometimes take them for granted. It's not that we don't appreciate them-- we do-- but they're like that eccentric uncle who'd pull out a nickel out of your ear and impart a word of wisdom to you as a bonus. You'd only see those guys every once and a while, but every time you did, it was a magical moment.

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Van Morrison Live at Montreux 1980/1974 captures two very magical moments in the career of a musician whose importance in pop music's evolution cannot be overstated. If he had done nothing beyond penning the perrenial "Gloria", his place in rock and roll would have been ensured. But Morrison is posessed of a wandering spirit, and has never been content to stake a claim to one particular idiom. Rather, he traverses a fine line between blues, celtic folk, soul, country and jazz, imbuing them with a synergy that's

been described more than once as "Celtic Soul."

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A reticent performer at best, Morrison has, by and large, let his music speak for itself. But when he does perform live, it's an experience that trandscends all the trappings of pop stardom. He's hardly a snappy dresser, he doesn't engage the audience in snappy reparte, he doesn't even make eye contact with them. And why would he?--the music, the poetry is his language, and through it, he communicates something that strikes a universal chord.

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The two discs comprising Live at Montreux represent Morrison at two different heights of his career as a live performer. Chosen by Morrison himself, these performances also comprise his first DVD release. Think of the 1980 disc as the headliner, and the 1974 performance as the opening act, and the tracking makes sense. In the 1980 Montreux show, Morrison works as a jazz bandleader, with an auspicious band, including Pee Wee Ellis and Mark Isham on sax and trumpet, and John Platiana on guitar.

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By this time Morrison had some bonafide hits under his belt--"Wavelength," Moondance" and "Tupelo Honey" probably the most recognizable. And the performances of those songs by far eclipse the studio versions. But it's in the performance as a whole that the genius of Morrison becomes evident. He doesn't only give the individual bandmembers room to stretch(in the best tradition of jazz), he immerses himself so deeply into the groove, his voice literally becomes one of the instruments, alternating between second sax and percussion in some of the songs. Through it all, he maintains the uniquely Irish sense of irony, as in "Summertime in England", where he references the likes of Mahalia Jackson, TS Eliot and James Joyce, among others, as seminal influences.

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The 1974 performance, packaged as the second disc, is a stripped down show by contrast, but no less compelling. The band was put together on the spur of the moment-- with only keyboards, bass and drums backing Morrison, who, played guitar, sax and harmonica, in addition to furnishing vocals. It comes across almost as a polished jam, and has a decidedly soul-blues feel to it. With the exceptions of "Naked in the Jungle" and "Foggy Mountain Top," these are largely obscure songs. Still, they do showcase Morrison's talents as a multi-instrumentalist,and foretell his coming emergence as one of the great songwriters of the last fifty years.

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Van Morrison Live at Montreux 1980/1974 offers an intimate, yet very public glimpse into the soul of the artist. It's digitally enhanced visually, and the 5.1 sound is rich. The stereo separation enhances the ambience to an extent that you almost feel as if you were there. There's nothing particularly flashy in the direction of either performance-- angles and transitions serve only to enhance the music. Neither concert ever sags, either visually or musically.

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All in all, Van Morrison Live at Montreux 1980/1974 is an outstanding package that bears repeated viewings and listenings. Much like the man himself, these shows defy classification, but leave you utterly satisfied through the sheer power of the music.

The First Comic Strip Superhero

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Before Star Trek, before Star Wars, and certainly before Battlestar Galactica, there was Flash Gordon. Years before Kal-El rocketed down from Krypton to save Earth as Superman, Flash Gordon rocketed to Mongo to save Earth from afar. Before any of the incarnations of Green Lantern served the omnipotent Guardians, Flash Gordon was working freelance to topple Ming the Merciless. Before-- well, you get the idea.

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Technically, Flash Gordon wasn't the first interplanetary superhero--he was created in 1934 to compete with Buck Rogers, who had come along two years earlier. Thanks largely to the lush, illustrative style of Alex Raymond, Flash Gordon quickly dominated the Sunday comic strips. Considering its theme was nothing less than saving rescuing both Earth and Mongo from a merciless dictator whose plans involved total domination of the universe, it's small wonder that Flash Gordon still strikes a chord in us.

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There have been several renditions of Flash Gordon through the decades, from serials to comic books to campy movies, but few captured the essence of the original comic strip the way the 1979 animated series by Filmation did. The first season, at least, more or less faithfully followed the original's storyline. For its time, it was an outstanding piece of animation. Flash Gordon: The Complete Series is a four-disc collection that bridges the gap between the limited animation that had come to dominate television animation at the time, and the computer-generation effects that would later rejuvenate the medium.

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By making extensive use of rotoscoping (essentially tracing live model movments to cels), the guys at Filmation were able to imbue the characters with a sense of fluid, if redundant movement. It was a technique that had been pioneered in the early thirties, and employed in the classic Popeye cartoons, but had fallen out of favor in the sphere of televison animation. That, coupled with the lavish background art--heavily inspired by the Raymond drawings--lent a sense of excitement to the series. The dialogue was lurid at best, but that only gave it more of a 1930's movie serial.

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Admittedly, the second season was "juvied" down, with the attention of a cutesy baby dragon sidekick, proving once again that network beancounters are the most effective way to destroy a series, animated or otherwise. Watch the second season (also included here) to see what I mean. Those eight episodes effectively destroyed the series. The network didn't see it that way, though, and proceeded with an updated, pre-teen hip pilot in the mid-eighties called "Defenders of the Universe" (also included here.) Thankfully, it went nowhere.

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Flash Gordon: The Complete Series offers a wealth of bonus material, geared towards fans and historians alike, including:

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Commentary by: Executive producer Lou Scheimer, assistant animator Darrel McNeil, story editor & writer Tom Ruegger and writer Michael Reeves Dolby Digital 2.0
"Blasting Off with Flash Gordon" - Documentary featuring interviews with creators and historians
Audio commentary on 3 episodes
Character profiles
Trivia and fun facts
DVD-ROM accessible scripts, storyboards, and series Bible
2 collectible art cards
Fold-out episode guide
Interactive storyboard-to-clip comparison of various stock action sequences
Gallery of original model sheets for the main heroes and villains
Bonus episode: Defenders of the Earth Episode 1: "Escape From Mongo"

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It's not a perfect package. There's been little attempt to digitally enhance the original series, and the only soundtrack is 2.0. On the other hand, by leaving it pretty much the way it was, we see it the way it was seen in 1979. There's something to be said for that. The naivete of those days shows in every scene, particularly in season one's sixteen episodes. Consider those the last Saturday matinee movie serial, transferred to the small screen and animated for a generation still clinging to Saturday morning cartoons.

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Did Saddam Get the Last Laugh?

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Saddam Hussein is dead, thus ending a thirty year reign of brutality and murder. He was executed, along with his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim, head of intelligence during his reign, and Awad Hamed, former head of the Revolutionary Court. The three were hanged about one minute before 9 PM EST, or 6 AM, Iraq time.

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If anybody deserved to hang, it was Saddam Hussein. The atrocities he committed against his neighbors, and worse, his own people are well documented. In a perfect world, his death would herald a new sense of closure on the dark times of his heinous rule. It might even signal a step forward for a fledgling democracy.

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But the current situation in Iraq is anything but a perfect world.

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Despite the Bush Administration's reassurances that victory in Iraq is attainable, the reality is we're in a quagmire from which we'll be hard-pressed to extricate ourselves. The Iraqi people are factionalized, and every group is scrambling for power in the image of their own particular version of "democracy." Meanwhile, we've lost over 3000 American lives in a vain attempt to convert them to our version of democracy.

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Hussein's execution is not going to change any of that. He was another thug in a long history of thugs who stopped at nothing to secure a place in history. He'll be remembered as a footnote among the the likes of Mussolini, at best. His days as political capital to justify a war bankrupted years ago.

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This is not a time for chest-beating. This is a moment for us to look long and hard at where Iraq is heading. We no longer have the luxury to look at this through rose-colored glasses. Hussein was a relic of barbarism, to be sure. He won't be missed.

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He was a bit player in the scheme of things. It's time to look forward now, and realize that the new alternatives in Iraq are all scrambling for their moment. Rather than attempt to further bulldoze our way through the Middle East, we might want to consider a more covert, more vigilant form of intelligence.

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Iraq itself is now a weapon of mass destruction just waiting to explode. And we may have inadvertently lit the fuse.

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Army of Anyone, Anybody?

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The term "supergroup" tends to make me cringe. Invariably, so-called supergroups are either made up of former members of existing bands well past their prime, or of survivors of rock and roll suicides. They're damaged goods either way, and all the hype labels bestow on them can't change the fact that the supergroup is just going through the jaded motions.

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Fortunately, the members of Army of Anyone are just obscure enough to skirt through the corporate hooplah and create a solid rock album. Don't get me wrong--Army of Anyone are seasoned musicians. Vocalist Robert Patrick cut his musical teeth as a member of the original Nine Inch Nails touring band, and went on to form Filter. The DeLeo brothers--Dean on guitar, and Robert on bass--were largely responsible for Stone Temple Pilots' sound. And drummer Ray Luzier is a session musician who worked with David Lee Roth, among others. If there's a commonality among them, it's that none of them are strangers to arena rock.

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On their eponymously titled debut, Army of Anyone offer no apologies regarding that fact-- rather, they wallow in it, and come out slugging. This is a paean to the hard rock of the early seventies, replete with overwrought vocals, meandering guitar runs and straight to the gut percussion. It could easily have been a disaster, but somehow, the band manages to pull it out of the hat. What makes it work is the underlying tone of cynicism that permeates the album. They're not playing it for the burnt-out rock star premise that bands like Velvet Revolver make their stock in trade, and they're not playing it by the numbers, either.

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Army of Anyone succeeds because of the sense of passion that runs throughout the entire affair. This is an album that celebrates the tradition of hard rock, with elements of the Who ("Ain't Enough"), Pearl Jam ("Father Figure") and even Stone Temple Pilots and Filter peeking out of the past to give it credibility. It's hardly a work of lasting significance, but it does rock--and quite well.

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Is it derivative? Hell, yes. It's an album that's going to remind you of every little rock and roll bar you ever hung out in, tipping those waitresses and bartenders, "because they're workin' real hard just for you."? Obviously. Does it really showcase the bandmembers' individual strengths? Of course not. As I said from the beginning, "supergroups" never do that. But Army of Anyone unabashedly lays down eleven tunes that evoke the spirit of arena rock--loud, pseudo-sensitive, pseudo-meaningful, punctuated with power chords and pounding drum runs.

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When you put it in those terms, Army of Anyone are, for want of a better term, one kick-ass band.

James Brown's Final Bow

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This wasn't the Christmas morning surprise we had in mind. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, died about 1:45 EST this morning. He'd been hospitalized on Christmas Eve, suffering from pneumonia. According to reports, he was in good spirits at the time, determined to be well in time for a planned New Year's Eve concert in New York.

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It was not to be. Brown's heart gave out this morning in an Atlanta hospital. The hardest working man in show business will do no more encores--at least, physically. The musical legacy he leaves us, however, ensures his spirit will never surrender to that trademark cloak.

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"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," Brown told The AP in 2003. And indeed, it is. I don't know if he was really "the Godfather of Soul"--guys like Otis Redding and Ray Charles were technically more influential in that genre-- but it's an indisputable fact that James Brown gave the world funk.

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Without Brown, there would have been no Parliament or Funkadelic, at least, not as we know them--he gave Catfish and Bootsy Collins their start. They honed their guitar and bass crafts playing for James Brown before hooking up with George Clinton. Had they not united with Clinton, One Nation Under a Groove probably would not have happened. And had that not happened, Talking Heads most likely would not have discovered polyrhythms, and their greatest album, Remain In Light, would have never existed.

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If anybody brought dance to the forefront of pop music, it was James Brown. His moves weren't contrived or choreographed-- they sprang full-blown from his soul to his feet, and everywhere in between. Michael Jackson have reigned as King of Pop in the eighties, but James Brown had laid down the gauntlet two decades earlier. The shuffles, stamps and twirls that accentuated his performances inspired artists like Prince and others to incorporate the physically funky into their brand of musical funk--which Brown more or less invented.

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Brown's influence on hip-hop is undeniable, too. He's porobably been sampled on more rap tracks than any other artist, largely because he was an early advocate of Black pride. He didn't wear it on his sleeve-- he waked the walk when he talked the talk. He was handing out toys to underprivleged kids Friday this week. I'll leave it to other people to talk in length about his run-ins with law and his drug and alcohol abuse. Those are tabloid tags that signify nothing.

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It gets down to this: James Brown is one of those rare figures who epitomize rock and roll. When he sang "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", he heralded a new direction for soul, and rock in general. What James Brown did was open up an entirely new entity that would serve to define rock as we know it . Rappers would sample his work above all others, and rockers paid homage to his polyrhythmic structures throughout the nineties. Without James Brown, there woulsd have been no funk, no punk, no--well, nothing.

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It get down to this-- James Brown brought the party to us for forty years. Screw it. James Brown lives forever. " Getta up offya your ass and dance" is all you need to say, really. James Brown may have departed the mortal coil, but his influence will will entwine music forever.

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The Polar Express: An Unapolgetic Endorsement of Christmas

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I was barely six when I got the goods on Santa. It was all quite accidental, although my suspicions had already been aroused at least the Christmas season before, when it dawned on me that everywhere I turned, Santa was there. And he always looked a little different, always had a slightly different mannerism, seemed hearty at one turn, and slurred his speech at the next. But mostly, he never rememembered that we had chatted just an hour ago.

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Never.

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My parents' contrived reassurances that those "Santas" were actually elves the Big Man employed to get wishlists back to him did little to qualm my doubts. Little kids are not stupid. Even then, I knew elves were not six feet tall. And I really didn't want to believe Santa lived in a shadowy North Pole underworld populated by double agents and operatives constantly surveilling my every move.

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I wanted to believe--I really did. But that one evening when I was six sealed the deal. This Santa was good--jolly and empathic--and almost had me fooled. I though he had to be the real deal. So when he told me he had to go check on his elves, I just had to trail him. I furtively followed him through the Lasater Grocery aisles and watched him disappear into the backroom warehouse. I clambered onto the idle conveyor that moved produce onto the sales floor to get a better look.

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What I saw would shape all my perceptions for the better part of the next forty or so years. "Santa" was sitting on boxes cajoling with the workers in the warehouse, drinking beer, smoking a stogie and talking about honkey tonkin'. His padded red coat was off, and so was his "beard". Santa was just another redneck picking up beer change. He did have a cool, greased-back head of black hair, though.

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Even though I knew the truth, there was still a miniscule grain of doubt. That grain translated into it would be in my best interest to play along with the Santa thing. After all, if my parents knew I knew, I reasoned, I might not get presents. I was six, remember--and six year old logic is hardly developed.

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It took over forty years for a Christmas film to touch me, How the Grinch Stole Christmas notwithstanding. 2004's The Polar Express is a movie guaranteed to touch anybody whose heart isn't "two sizes too small." It's a simple story told with a childlike sense of wonder that's magical. Forget about the motion-capture technique Bob Zemeckis employed to turn Tom Hanks into at least three different characters. Never mind the extensive use of CGI to make you believe the Polar Express could careen crazily on ice before getting back on track. All you need to enjoy this film is suspend your disbelief for a little less than two hours..

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If you can do that, you'll be utterly immersed in a world enhanced by the vivid, but surreal colors of childhood memory. It's a dreamscape that doesn't merely challenge you to believe in magic-- it demands it. The Polar Express is a story in which every point is gently presented like an oil painting, with dibs and dabs of doubt and cynicism counterbalanced with the belief that what we can't see is the larger picture.

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It's a road trip the likes of which has never been chronicled, and it all takes place on Christmas Eve. At its core is the fundamental knowledge that faith is the one thing that holds us all together. And that's a message that extends well beyound Christmas.

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If only the Polar Express had come around that night when I was six. . .

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