The number of your days
The third weekly-ish Tropical Depression digest post
Here’s your third periodic digest post reviewing the last week’s entries and tossing in some recommendations, tidbits, etc.
Apologies for lighter posting of late. Two weeks ago we had a stomach bug ravage through the whole family; last week we all got COVID. At one point my wife was throwing up in the night and my daughter came in to the bathroom crying. My wife just moved over to the tub and continued puking there while my daughter puked in the toilet. We’re all better now and the kids finally returned to school yesterday, so should get back to normal scheduling at Tropical Depression. For those interested, I’ll have the promised followup post on the Pointer Sisters in the relatively near future, probably next week.
Last (two) weeks’ posts
Sunday, Jan. 15
Honkey-Tonk Weekly #3: The Pointer Sisters, “Fairytale”
Third edition of a weekly column here at Tropical Depression. Every week, I listen to and share a country song and write whatever comes to mind. This week, I went deep on the one-off country smash by the Pointer Sisters—and wound up finding some stray evidence that it wasn’t a one-off after all. (To be continued!)
Friday, Jan 20
The Teething Review: Amos & Boris by William Steig
Essay on parenthood, friendship, and the best children’s book ever.
Sunday, Jan. 22
Morning mixtape, volume two. Songs to lounge with by the pool or to walk along briskly to on a cold day. Good vibrations only.
Cutting room floor
I glancingly mentioned a certain energy life force in my post on William Steig, but this tangent was too far afield for that piece, even for me. For those who didn’t follow the link or look it up, here’s the scoop:
In his 2003 obituary on Steig, Roger Angell mentions almost in passing that Steig “famously” kept a Wilhelm Reichian Orgone Box at home. This was a contraption designed by the controversial psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who broke with Sigmund Freud over what Freud derided as Reich’s “hobbyhorse”—the possibilities of sexual healing and the importance of fantastic orgasms to physical health. When Freud got cancer, Reich surmised that the old man was sexually frustrated.
Reich later moved to the U.S. and developed a theory about a life force or cosmic energy called “orgone,” which he believed was the explanation for all sorts of phenomena in our strange world, including the Northern Lights and certain male frogs turning blue during mating season. He also believed orgone could cure cancer—or even be used as a weapon against the Fascists. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer were also among Reich’s devotees. Reich tried to convince Albert Einstein, but failed. He complained to Einstein that people thought he was crazy.
Reich developed a special wooden box about the size of a telephone booth that would act as an “orgone accumulator.” People could sit inside naked and soak up orgone. The box had wire wool and sheep’s wool involved in absorbing the energy. Steig kept his in his work room. He told Angell, for a long 1995 feature on Steig in the The New Yorker that the Orgone Accumulator helped him live a long life, and had previously helped his mother survive cancer. “I’ve been an ardent Reichean,” he told Angell. “Just the other day, I read somewhere that guys who think about the universe say that seventy-five percent of it is still beyond their ken. Well, I think that seventy-five percent is orgone, which, for some reason, we refuse to get in touch with.”
In his obituary, Angell informs us that Steig “visited [the box] daily in search of energy.” And adds, “It worked, plainly—something worked.”
FYI (1)
When William Steig’s Shrek! was made into a Dreamworks movie, Chris Farley was originally cast as the voice of Shrek. He recorded the voiceover for most of the movie—reportedly around 85 percent—but died before it was completed. So they started over with Mike Myers. For some reason Myers added a Scottish accent. Here’s a sample of Farley’s work on the film.
FYI (2)
“I remember one wild party where the music was pumping (he had a killer sound system in his house), there was barbecue chicken cooking on huge grills, and elegantly-dressed waiters with white gloves endlessly circulated among the guests offering trays of hors d’oeuvres, booze, and heaping helpings of the finest cocaine I ever snorted.”
—Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters describing a party at Richard Pryor’s house in the 1970s
FYI (3)
Sixteen years ago, Yellow Magic Orchestra made a beer commercial for Kirin Lager in Japan. It’s kind of amazing.
FYI (4)
Chimpanzees will use elaborate greetings (high fives, kisses, etc.) to communicate hello to each other, but they do not have a corresponding ritual for goodbye.
Vibrations from behind the Iron Curtain
Experimental ensemble folk-jazz group that included students from the the Tallinn Conservatory and the Tallinn School of Music and Pedagogical Institute. Their eponymous first record was released in 1970. Jazzy and cinematic. Imagine this as a soundtrack for a 1970 Robert Altman film—let’s say a kaleidoscopic, rambling picture with an ensemble cast about a jazz musician touring Eastern Europe who gets mistaken for an American spy. To my ears this album registers as groovy psych-pop, but in addition to original works by Estonian composers, they also weave in traditional Estonian folk songs (runo songs), apparently one of the first groups to incorporate runo songs into popular music. Recommended.
It factor
Here’s Linda Martell absolutely slaying it on “Hee-Haw” in 1970.