Soul Revival, Neo Soul, Acid Jazz, etc.

Music is extremely personal. Even people that like the same sounds like them for different reasons. "It means this!" "It means that!" And so on. So indulge me a mention from the soul of my earhole.

A BIG shout out to my new favorite free internet radio station, Yahoo's Soul Revival station, which is powered by the editors at soultracks.com.

Their mix is strong enough to hang with my favorite DJ (K-Nee), here in the Denver area, who runs the "So What" radio show late Friday nights at midnight on another classic outlet, KUVO. Sometimes, Denver feels pretty hip!

A couple of other recommendations:

Lisa McClendon

Frank McComb

Raul Midon

See the previous column of music tips at The Old School from Feb. 14

Movies - the right way

El Paso Sheriff: What’s it mean? What’s it leading to? I mean if you told me 20 years ago that I’d see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair, bones in their noses, I just flat out wouldn’t have believed you.
Ed Tom Bell: Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearin’ “sir” and “ma’am” the rest is soon to foller.
El Paso Sheriff: Oh, it’s the tide. It’s the dismal tide. It is not the one thing.
Ed Tom Bell: Not the one thing.

Here in the People’s Republic of Boulder, in April there is an annual “idea camp,” a intellectual festival called the Conference on World Affairs. Participants are mostly left-of-center, with an occasional retired general, cold war diplomat, or unconventional (non-liberal) thinker sprinkled in.

Among the most popular annual sessions is called “Cinema Interruptus.” They watch the whole movie (sorry, film) on Monday, and then watch it again Tuesday through Friday, pausing the playback often for questions or comments from the audience, thus stretching a two-hour event into an ten-hour intensive seminar. Insights from the novel. Yeats' poetry. Other influences.

This year’s film, “No Country for Old Men.” This year’s host while Roger Ebert continues to recuperate, is Jim Emerson.

It’s a Coen brothers production, so I’m all in. Tommy Lee Jones in a major role. Money. It won “Best Picture” from the Academy (a very artsy choice). But most of all it’s just loads of fun to be in a big hall with other people who watch movies properly:
1) Sitting all the way through, and reading, the credits,
2) When watching DVDs at home, turning off the phone (and often the lights),
3) On subsequent views, turn on the commentary track, and laugh along with the directors and actors.

(I'll post an old column on watching credits one of these days.)

Charlton Heston: a salute to square-jawed intensity

A ramrod salute to an icon of the silver screen, Charlton Heston. As I reflect on Mr. Heston’s big roles, I’m digging the way this guy rolled.

He played it straight and he played it well. We get to see his Moses role every Easter-time. Ben-Hur, Heston’s Oscar-winning role is a well-worn videotape in my collection (yes, I said videotape).

The obituaries recount that Heston marched with Dr. King in the early 60s, well before civil rights were Hollywood hip.

Eventually, changed from his early liberal leanings. He switched parties. Once he campaigned for Adlai Stevenson and JFK, later in his life he campaigned for GOP candidates from Nixon ’72 through Bush ’00.

His union affiliation (president of the Screen Actors Guild), which I also liked, switched too. His Wikipedia entry notes that he left Actor’s Equity because they would not let a white actor play a Eurasian role in the stage version of “Miss Saigon.” “Obscenely racist,” said Heston. I once interviewed late actor John Hancock on the notion of Cross-ethnic casting. The large African-American man said, “I’d love to play a Nazi.”

Heston’s sci-fi era (“Soylent Green,” “Planet of the Apes”) was always cool in my eyes, which is a warning to all those who think highly of their own sophistication.

His leadership of the National Rifle Association was cool too, climaxed by his legendary photo op, holding a vintage long gun over head. You’ll have to take my second amendment rights when you pry them from “my cold, dead hands” (in his inimitable, million-dollar baritone).

(Why does my defense of the Second Amendment feel so “radical?” Is it only because of my defense of the Black Panthers’ exercise of Second Amendment rights?)

I’m still studying his thoughts on the Culture War, delivered at Harvard on Feb. 16, 1999. (Love the speeches at AmericanRhetoric.com.)

I dig his 64 year marriage to Lydia, very un-Hollywood.

I hope they give him a 21-gun salute, one shot at a time.

Most importantly, I hope the Savior he met in Ben-Hur was his in real life too.

Stay Married - so help you God

(photo by Mike Groll/Yahoo News/AP)

The New York Governor is keeping the mainstream media (and the tabloids) busy these days. The new Guv, David Paterson, who took office after Eliot Spitzer's quick disgrace and resignation, has himself announced adultery... a few times, with different women. His wife has also revealed her adultery.

It all happened during a rough spot in their marriage a few years ago. They announced it, wisely, at the beginning of his tenure in the Big Chair. "I didn't want to be compromised. My conscience is clear. I feel a lot better," the Guv said on day two of his administration. They are in counseling and have vowed not to do it again.

Now his staff and reporters are making sure he didn't use state money for his trysts. "We the people" seem to care much more about how our tax dollars are at work, than about how our politicians are workin' it.

(A couple of scalawags not mentioned or pictured in the previous post, no less than the 1990s posterboys for dalliance, President William Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The President holding his marriage together, Mr. Speaker divorcing his second wife and marrying the girlfriend with whom he affaired.)

America seems to be settling for a bit less personal perfection in the character of her leaders, and the press is ready to make sure we know from where all the dirt under those fingernails came.

Marriage ain't easy, and it ain't supposed to be. But it is worth fighting for. Couples are supposed to fight together, against the things that try to tear them apart. Too often we just settle for the easy opponent - our spouse. Thanks to Family Life Ministries of Little Rock Arkansas (http://www.familylife.com/), who taught my wife and I that "your spouse is not your enemy."

I'm praying for the Patersons. It's easier for most of us. We don't have to do a news conference to confess all our junk. Do you think the pressure of the public spotlight would keep us on the straight and narrow way?

Spitzer joins league of extraordinary scalawags

He fell like lightning. But New York’s shamed Gov. Eliot Spitzer is not the devil incarnate. He’s merely a man, beset by the guilt he bore privately until Monday. His guilt was safely shielded behind his bravado, or so he thought.

Spitzer crashed hard and fast, behind implications that he hired an escort to travel from New York to Washington for a couple of hours of sexual favors. The feds were alerted because of unusual transactions, a shell company, and a phony name, all allegedly used by the Guv to pay for his partying ways. He resigned because he has no time to run the State of New York. His job yesterday was to wrangle some kind of legal deal to keep him out of federal court. His job today is to wrestle his demons and try, try to restore some semblance of a relationship with his wife and daughters. That job will take him longer than he thinks.

Spitzer joins the legion of wealthy, powerful, successful men who were compelled to cross the line both personally and professionally. We build ‘em up – politicians, athletes, preachers – and we watch ‘em slide down the steps they built, bruising their rumps and heads all they way. Painful. To some, it’s morbidly delightful.

The details of this case are so juicy. If it were a Hollywood script, it would be dismissed as unbelievable. Golly, politics is fun!

ON PROSTITUTION
If the Guv got his freak on way out there in Nevada, where such things are legal and regulated, (and if he paid for it in cash from his own money) would he be in trouble? Not so much.

Unfortunately, the sexually liberated and libertarian-wanna be American public doesn’t care nearly as much about marriage vows as it does about public money. Should we care?

People say they don’t care what a man does in his private life. But deep down, we know if a man lies to his wife and kids, he will lie to us. And trust don’t come cheap. It takes years to prove oneself faithful. And in a moment, that tree can be cut down.

OFFICER OF THE COURT
If proven guilty, extra demerits for an attorney who crosses the line. Triple demerits for the prosecuting attorney caught working loopholes in the system. For a zealot like Spitzer who defended the letter of the law with such glee, no mercy. He should expect the prosecutor to give no quarter. But those guys don’t play by the same rules as you and me.

THE NEW GOVERNOR
David Paterson will become New York’s governor next Monday. The Honorable Mr. Paterson represented Harlem in the N.Y. state legislature for 20 years before becoming Lieutenant Governor in 2006. He also spoke (not during prime time) at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, where Barack Obama stormed onto the national stage. I’ve already heard newscasters report that Paterson would be NY’s first African-American governor. It’s a bigger story that he will be the first blind governor in the nation’s history.

WHY THEY DO IT
Lust? Power? "Because they can?" An old preacher once said, "every man who knocks on the door of a prostitute is actually looking for God." Like most substitutes, whatever a guy is looking for, it's rarely - if ever - found at the door of a harlot. True intimacy, deep and true fulfillment, great sex, real interest and deep caring is more likely found at home than "on the road."

If not, well, there's nothing sadder than a "lonely husband."