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Thursday, June 07, 2012

Improving Your Sense of "Spell"


I imagine that most kids in school dreaded spelling dictations. When I was in school, every Friday was dedicated to taking a spelling test where we would be quizzed on the words that we studied all week long. If we ended up with a perfect score, we would get rewarded with a sticker. I imagine for some, a coloured sticker wasn't worth the stress of a spelling test, but I loved it.

I always took pride in having a perfect spelling paper. It wasn't until I wanted to make writing as a career goal before I understood why, but let's just get it out of the way. Knowing how to spell is crucial if one wants to have a writing career.

As a result, I admit that I may take spelling more seriously than the average person. I mean, if someone makes a spelling error in a letter or an e-mail, they chuckle, they shrug their shoulders, or they post it on Failbook or Damn You, AutoCorrect.

I, on the other hand, cringe, and it leads to my confession for today.

THURSDAY CONFESSION #23 – I am unapologetic in calling out spelling errors, especially in places where it should be unforgivable to find them.

I suppose a more derogatory term for that confession is assuming the role of a so-called “Spelling Nazi”, but I think in some cases, you almost have to be.

Don't get me wrong. There are allowances that can be made when it comes to spelling errors. If someone is texting someone in a hurry on a mobile phone (hopefully in a sitting postion that does not involve driving any sort of vehicle at the same time), then mistakes happen. If someone is jotting down a grocery list in a hurry, mistakes can happen. I'll even readily admit to making typographical errors in this very blog that I don't even know I've done until someone else points it out to me! But to my credit, I'll go back and edit my posts to fix it.

When it comes down to it, especially in this age where we have spellcheck on almost all word processing programs, and dictionaries (both online and print versions), there's really no excuse to misspell a word. None whatsoever.

I've searched the depths of the Internet to find examples of misspellings in popular culture, and let's put it this way. I wasn't disappointed. I know I said earlier that there are some instances in which spelling a word or two incorrectly is okay. But when it involves billboards, magazines, mobile phone applications, video games, and even news station graphics, one has to wonder if knowing how to spell has lost its importance in society.

Let's have a look at some of these misspellings in action, and this first example is a very recent story.

As you may know by now (unless you've been living in your underground bomb shelter preparing for the “2012 Apocalypse”), there's a Presidential election going on, and it looks like Americans have to choose between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Naturally, both candidates have been campaigning for votes in preparation for the November election, and both have used different techniques to get the word out about what their policies and promises are.

For Mitt Romney, he felt that it would be a good idea to use a mobile phone app to promote his run for Presidency. With an app known as “With Mitt” for the iPhone, people could upload photos of themselves, and attach one of Mitt's slogans to the picture to express support for him.

So imagine people's surprise when they discovered that this was one of the slogans.



Wow. It's pretty bad when a Presidential candidate doesn't even know how to even spell the name of the country he wants to run, isn't it? I suppose it might have been forgivable if he was running for President of Kazakhstan or Djibouti, but come on...how does an American over the age of five misspell the word America?

Of course, Romney's campaign staff did some damage control as the spelling was corrected, saying things such as “it was a typo”, or “mistakes happen”. Yeah, that might be true if you were doing a fourth grade essay on the history of Amercia America. But if you're running for PRESIDENT, you make sure you know how to spell America! It's just that simple.  Granted, the mistake was probably not made by Romney himself, but he still should have looked into checking the spelling before approving it.

Of course, Romney is hardly the first American politician to be associated with a spelling boo-boo. If we go back almost 20 years to June 15, 1992, we can take a look at then Vice-President Dan Quayle's attempt at spelling the word “potato”.



It was at a spelling bee at a New Jersey elementary school, and 12-year-old student William Figueroa had just wrote the word “potato” on the blackboard. Of course, Figueroa had spelled the word correctly. Quayle, on the other hand, felt otherwise, and actually added an “E” onto the word, making it “potatoe”, which unless you add an s to the end of that word is INCORRECT.



Quayle would later claim that “Potatogate” happened because he relied too much on the written cards that the school had provided him, which he claimed also had the misspelling. Sounds like a rather weak excuse to me, but then again, I was eleven in 1992, and I already knew how to spell the word potato. And tomato, for that matter.

You know, all this talk about food is making me hungry. I think I'll go out for a walk and check and see what's available to eat.



Good grief, where do we begin with THIS one? First things first, does adding an extra “N” to donut make them taste better? Secondly, I'm pretty sure that is not the correct way to spell coffee...or, is it supposed to be cough? Either way, I don't like either with my meal, thank you. And, I'd be mighty interested in seeing how one makes a beacon, egg, and cheese on a roll. Wouldn't a beacon be mighty tough to digest? It'd probably blind you as the light spun around and around while you attempted to bite into it.

You know, forget eating right now. I think I'd rather watch a video. Oh, hold on, I forgot that I recorded programming from FOX News the night of May 1, 2011. If I remember correctly, wasn't that the day that Osama Bin Laden was killed by American troops? I believe it was. Let's have a look at a screen capture.



Wow...that's pretty bad. Even for a FOX affiliate. OBAMA Bin Laden? Now, granted, I understand that Osama and Obama are similar in spelling, with only one letter difference between the two...but when you consider that on a standard QWERTY keyboard, the B key isn't anywhere near the S key, it makes one go hmmmmm. Sure enough, some people cried BS about the mistake, and some wondered whether the mistake was intentional or not. After all, FOX News is very much pro-Republican...of which Obama is not.  I'll readily admit to not being a huge fan of FOX News myself, but to their credit, they weren't the only ones to mix up the spelling of Osama and Obama. It's still a mighty embarrassing error to make though.

I'm bored. I think I'm going to pull out a book from my comic book collection, because surely spelling mistakes NEVER happen in comic books, right?

Wrong.

You know the character Betty Cooper from Archie comics right? Blond, beautiful, and goes a little bit loco every time she spots a man with a checkerboard pattern embedded in his red hair. Did you know that she keeps a diary of all of her thoughts and feelings? In older comics, her diary entries only lasted a page, but the feature was so successful that she ended up getting her own comic book series called “Betty's Diary”, which ran from 1986-1991. Let's have a look at one of these stories.



Now, I don't know how much you know about Archie comics, but Betty Cooper's family ranged in economic stability between middle class, and just above the poverty line, depending on the story. If Betty was making her own clothes in the tale, chances were that the Cooper family didn't have a whole lot of money.  Therefore, I ask the question, when the heck did they buy their daughter an entire DAIRY FARM?!? I can see it now.

Dear Dairy, today I milked all the cows and fetched all the eggs from the chicken coops, wondering why my family couldn't just buy me a DIARY instead.”

Poor Betty. I'm so sad for her that I just want to put down the comic book and play some video games. Ah, Final Fantasy VII. A fantastic choice. It's filled with action, puzzles, and a lot of text reading. Surely, every word will be spelled correctly and USED properly, right?



Okay, I'll give FFVII some credit. The words are spelled correctly. They just aren't used properly. Aerith should have said “This guy IS sick”, or “THESE GUYS are sick”. Not “This guy are sick.” It kind of makes her sound like she's been hitting the sauce one too many times. Though, when you consider that when you first meet her, she's selling flowers in a slum after a gigantic explosion occurs and half the neighbourhood is ON FIRE BEHIND HER, clearly Aerith isn't in her right frame of mind anyway. And, this is just one of the many spelling and grammatical errors that I found within the game. Granted, when games get translated from Japanese to English, some things get lost in translation. But once you have the basic translation done, how hard is it to rewrite it for the American audience? And, don't even get me started on the fourth edition of Final “YOU SPOONY BARD” Fantasy. I would need an entire blog entry on that game alone.

The truth is that spelling errors can be found just about everywhere these days. They can be found on or near sidewalks...



...on billboards...



...and even on protest signs.



For the record, I really have no clue how to pronounce the word "ENOUNGH".


So, I guess my next question is...why do we allow it?

I can only speak for myself when I give this opinion out, but I take a sense of pride in knowing that whatever I create is spelled correctly. I just wish that more would have that attitude.

Granted, I know that people make mistakes, and the odd spelling error is fine, depending on the circumstances behind it.  I wouldn't recommend peppering a job application or a book report with spelling errors, but there's some instances where it doesn't really matter (like on a shopping list, for example).  On the other hand, I honestly feel that it is inexcusable to have incorrect spelling in huge letters on a giant billboard in the middle of Times Square. It's inexcusable to have a text-based game that is impossible to understand because of atrocious spelling. It's inexcusable to misspell the word “America” when you're a candidate to be elected the President of the whole country!

When you're typing up something for a business presentation, a job application, or anything, really, it doesn't take more than a few minutes to read and re-read the entire document and fix up any errors that you might not know you made. After I finish typing this entry out, I plan on doing exactly that. After all, we all owe it to ourselves to present the best possible impression to other people that we can. And for me, that includes correct spelling.



I'm including a link to this post HERE. It's a list of some of the more common spelling mistakes that all of us have made at some point. I only included this one because of the snark and hilarity associated with it. Take a look at it though, it is a great resource.

After all, spelling is important. And if you don't make sure that it is correct, it could impact your life in a big way.



On that note, good day all, and write it right!

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Who Licked The Play-Doh?


Some of my favourite toys in the whole world involved ones where I could maximize my potential for creativity.

I know I’ve talked about how in my childhood, I would more often than not ignore the toys in my toy box to scribble in a colouring book or notepad with Crayola crayons, but the truth is that there were dozens of other toys that would allow me to get creative as well.  Certainly, with dozens of alphabet blocks and Legos, I could design a minuaturized version of New York City.  With a Spirograph, I could make as many hypnotic designs as I wanted.  In fact, I think I remember wanting desks for my Fisher-Price school house play set, and I made them out of pieces from my Jenga game. 

Yes, I was definitely one resourceful child.

One thing I will say about the toys of this century is that children have dozens more options for creativity than I had as a child.  They have coloured bubble blowing liquids, sidewalk chalk in every colour, and lots of other knick-knacks.  But there is one thing that I see children playing with that I used to love as a kid.  And this one thing was such that it almost became a sort of rite of passage to lick this substance at least once as a child.

Mind you, the stuff tasted extremely salty and disgusting, but when it came in every colour under the sun, you couldn’t help it sometimes.


Admit it.  You licked Play-Doh as a child, didn’t you?  I’ll come clean.  I did.  I even remember the colour I sampled too.  If memory served me, I was under the impression that the red Play-Doh tasted like Hawaiian Punch. 

Long story short, it didn’t.

However, I remember loving Play-Doh, and Play-Doh related products.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many Play-Doh play sets I owned in my youth.  A little bit later in this blog, I’ll be talking about what some of my favourite Play-Doh sets were.  Maybe it will help jog your memory a bit.


For now though, did you ever wonder how Play-Doh came to be invented?  It’s an interesting story. 

The substance known as Play-Doh was invented by a man named Noah McVicker.  At the time, McVicker worked for the Cincinnati based Kutol Products, a factory which specialized in the manufacturing of soap.  One of the company’s clients was Kroger Grocery, which asked the company to make a substance that could clean coal residue from wallpaper.  But, after World War II, many homes transitioned from coal-based heating to natural gas heating, and vinyl based washable wallpaper soon became available in the marketplace.  As a result, the need for cleaning solutions for wallpaper decreased, and Kutol Products faced bankruptcy.  It seemed as though the company would go bust.

That is until a relative of McVicker saw another use for the wallpaper paste, and used this to market the product a different way.

Noah McVicker’s nephew, Joseph McVicker, joined Kutol with the goal of attempting to save the company from filing for bankruptcy.  While he was working there, he soon discovered that the wallpaper paste that his uncle had developed was being used by nursery school children. 

No, the nursery school children weren’t learning how to wallpaper a room in between their ABC’s and 123’s.  But they were using the paste to create Christmas ornaments for their loved ones.  And this gave Joseph McVicker a rather clever idea.  He took a sample of the paste to a convention for school supply manufacturers, and while he was there, a Washington DC department store, Woodward & Lothrop, decided to start selling the product in their store as a craft item.

In 1956, seeing how successful the product was doing at the store, the McVicker family decided to start their own company, a venture known as the Rainbow Crafts Company.  It was here that they would start manufacturing and making the product that they would later give the name “Play-Doh”.

The company started off small.  Initially, their only products were a 3-pack of the standard 7-ounce cardboard canisters in the standard colours of blue, red, and yellow, as well as individual cans of the original off-white colour.  But within the year, Play-Doh would garner such buzz that Macy’s and Marshall Field’s would open up retail accounts with the company as well.  One year after Play-Doh began to be sold in stores, a chemist by the name of Dr. Tien Liu improved on the formula of the original compound.  By reducing the salt content inside the dough, he made the dough retain its bright colour as it dried.

As the company continued to grow, more colours were added to the Play-Doh collection, and the history of the company can best be explained with this timeline, courtesy of the history section of the official Play-Doh website.

1957 – Play-Doh begins manufacturing the blue/red/yellow 3-pack, and early advertising campaigns included Captain Kangaroo, and characters from Romper Room.

1958 – The 4-pack Play-Doh set, which added white Play-Doh to the blue/red/yellow 3-pack is debuted at American Toy Fairs.


1960 – Play-Doh Pete debuts as the official Play-Doh mascot; New 2-ounce mini-cans begin appearing on store shelves, as well as the first edition of the Play-Doh Fun Factory.

1964 – The year that Play-Doh expands outside of the United States, with the cans being sold in England, France, and Italy.

1971 – Rainbow Crafts Company merges with Kenner Toys.

1972 – The 500 MILLIONTH can of Play-Doh is manufactured.


1983 – After nearly thirty years, four brand new colours (orange, black, green, and purple) are invented and sold with the four pre-existing colours as an 8-can Rainbow Pack.  (FUN FACT:  The Rainbow Pack was my first introduction to Play-Doh!).  In later years, it would expand into a 10-pack with the addition of brown and pink.

1986 – The cardboard canisters are replaced with plastic cans to prevent the product from drying out prematurely.

1987 – Tonka Corporation purchases Kenner Toys and Rainbow Crafts Company, acquiring rights to Play-Doh manufacturing.

1991 – Hasbro purchases Play-Doh after acquiring Tonka Corporation.

1996 – To celebrate Play-Doh’s 40th anniversary, Play-Doh releases an educational CD-Rom game for schoolchildren called Play-Doh Creations.  As well, gold and silver Play-Doh is manufactured.

Today, Play-Doh can be found in dozens of colours and playsets.  In 2006, for the company’s 50th anniversary, they released a huge bucket of Play-Doh filled with 50 different colours of it!  And of course, there are lots of ways to play with Play-Doh.  If you were like me, you were incredibly creative with it.  You would build sculptures, you’d blend colours together, and the possibilities would be endless.

And that was without the play-sets.  Could you imagine how much fun the Play-Doh was when you used a play-set?  As I said before, there were dozens of play-sets that I played with as a child, both at home, and in my various elementary school classrooms.  But which sets were my favourites?  I’ll list them below.


THE FUZZY PUMPER BARBER AND BEAUTY SHOP

When I think of one play-set that best describes all the fun that I had with Play-Doh, it has to be this one.  Anyone who is my age or older knows how this one worked.  You would pump the Play-Doh through the little holes on each of the plastic figures and watch as they all grew hair.  Then, you’d take the tools that came with the kit (safety scissors), and shave and cut their hair.  It was such basic mechanisms, and yet you could use the Fuzzy Pumper Barber and Beauty Shop to create thousands of different looks.  I wonder how many hairstylists and barbers out there played with one of these.


THE PLAY-DOH FUN FACTORY

It was the very first playset to be offered, as well as the most basic.  And, yet, it was also the playset that millions of children loved to play with.  I know that I owned one in my childhood, and I loved it.  I don’t know what I liked making more...the spaghetti or the shooting stars.  It didn’t really matter.  I enjoyed it regardless of what I was making.


THE PLAY-DOH BURGER KING WHOPPER MAKER

I received this play-set for my 8th birthday, and I immediately fell in love with it.  The playset allowed one to make Whoppers, milkshakes, and onion rings.  And the best part was that you couldn’t eat your creations because they were too disgusting!  Mind you, every time I played with it, I craved Burger King.  The Whopper maker was fun though.  The only thing I didn’t care for was the fact that the set only came with three colours.  Yellow, Red, and Green.  You had to blend the colours together to get the right shade of brown for the burger patties and buns.  I wasn’t very good at mixing colours, so as a result, my burger patties always looked as if they could kill someone with a lethal dose of E.coli bacteria.  Oh, well.


PLAY-DOH TREAT WITHOUT THE SWEET VALENTINE’S BAG

Okay, I never played with this as a kid, but I LOVE the idea!  As someone who admittedly has mixed feelings about Valentine’s Day because of the commercialism, I have to admit that if I were still in grade school, I would give these out in a heartbeat!  Each bag contains twenty miniature cans of Play-Doh in red, white, and pink, as well as individual labels to write the name of your Valentine on each can.  I for one would have loved to have gotten a can of red or pink Play-Doh at a Valentine’s Day classroom party.  To me, that would mean that the girl who gave it to me wanted to go steady or something!  The coolest idea I’ve ever seen, and I really wish that something like this had existed when I was younger.

Those are some of my favourite memories and products of Play-Doh.  Tell me yours.

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

June 5, 1964


It is time for another trip back through time with the Tuesday Timeline, the first edition for June 2012.  This week, we’re going to be going back to the 1960s, when the career of a well known singer first began.

Of course, before we do that, we always take a look back at some of the other events that took place on this date.

So, on June 5, the following events happened.

70 A.D. – Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem

1817 – The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, is launched

1837 – The Republic of Texas incorporates the city of Houston

1849 – Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” begins a ten-month run in abolitionist newspaper “National Era”

1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris, France

1888 – Rio de la Plata earthquake occurs

1915 – Denmark amends constitution to allow women’s suffrage

1942 – United States declares war on Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary during World War II

1946 – La Salle Hotel fire in Chicago kills 61 people

1956 – Elvis Presley debuts “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show, mesmerizing the audience with his controversial hip movements

1963 – British Secretary of State John Profumo resigns following a sex scandal

1968 – Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, dies one day later

1976 – Teton Dam collapses

1981 – The first cases of AIDS are reported in Los Angeles, California

1993 – Country singer Conway Twitty passes away at the age of 59

1998 – General Motors strike begins in Flint, Michigan, lasting seven weeks

2001 – Tropical Storm Allison hits Texas and causes $5.5 billion in damage, the costliest tropical storm in American history

2004 – Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan succumbs to complications from Alzheimer’s Disease, at the age of 93

That’s quite a lot of history on this particular date, wouldn’t you say?

Now let’s take a look at some celebrity birthdays for June 5th.  Matthew Lesko, Colm Wilkinson, Freddie Stone (Sly & The Family Stone), J.J. Bittenbinder, Suze Orman, Jill Biden, Richard Butler (Psychadelic Furs), Kenny G, Jeff Garlin, Rick Riordan, Brian McKnight, Mark Wahlberg, Chad Allen, Pete Wentz (Fallout Boy), and Sebastien Lefebvre (Simple Plan).

So, what date are we flashing back in time to this week?


June 5, 1964, that’s what.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this week’s subject got his start in the music industry on this date.  This was the date that his first single was released in the United Kingdom.  Of course, he didn’t achieve this accomplishment alone.  He had help from the band that he was a part of, The King Bees.  And back in those days, he went under his given birth name.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet today’s blog subject.  Davie Jones!


Um...no, not that Davy Jones.  I already did an entry on him a few months ago, just after his February 29 passing.  I mean this guy.


Yes, today we’re going to do a spotlight on how this Davie Jones launched his way into stardom, though you probably know him better under the name of David Bowie.  And, yes, we’ll discuss how he ended up changing his name as we go ahead with this entry.

David Robert Jones was born on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London, England.  He was the son of a movie usherette mother and a promotions officer father, and the family lived in a house near the border of Brixton and Stockwell.  It was said by a neighbour of the Jones family at the time that growing up in London during the 1940s was the worst possible time for a child to experience, which made sense, since London was still rebuilding from the damage it sustained during World War II bombings at the time that David was born.

Although David was widely considered by his teachers to be a gifted child, he gained the reputation of being a brawler in school.  And this reputation would end up leading to David sustaining an injury which would permanently alter his face forever.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself here.  It was right around this time that young David Jones discovered his musical talents.  He sang in his school choir, and he played the recorder so well that he was judged as having above-average musical ability.  When David began taking classes in music and movement when he was nine, his teachers became astounded by his vividly artistic moves.  Around this time, his father had gotten interested in music by American artists, and young David was often listening to music by Frankie Lymon, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard.  By the end of the next year, David learned how to play the ukulele and tea-chest bass, began to play the piano, and even performed his own interpretations of Elvis Presley’s songs, complete with the same hip gyrations that Presley was known for.  When the crowd watched David perform, they described the experience as “mesmerizing”.

After flunking his eleven plus exam, David Jones started attending school at Bromley Technical High School, where he studied art, design, and of course, music.  His half-brother turned David onto jazz music around this time, and his mother bought David a plastic saxophone in 1961, eventually trading up for a real saxophone just one year later.

Now here’s where the story gets quite interesting.


In 1962, when David was fifteen, he found himself on the wrong end of someone’s fist.  It turned out that David and his friend, George Underwood had fallen for the same girl, and they decided to fight each other as a result.  During that fight, Underwood punched David square in the left eye.  Because Underwood was wearing a ring on his hand when he punched David, David’s eye was messed up as a result, and doctors feared that he would never recover from the injury.  David spent the next four months in and out of hospital, and underwent several surgeries to repair the damage that was caused to his left eye.  But the end result left David with a permanently dilated pupil, and faulty depth perception, and gave off the impression that he had two completely different coloured eyes.

Despite David’s serious injury, he must have forgiven Underwood, as they remained friends.

And his eye injury didn’t stop him from continuing on with his dream of becoming a musician.  At the age of fifteen, David formed his first band, The Konrads, and they ended up playing gigs at youth halls and wedding receptions.  But David would learn that while his parents were supportive of him taking up music as a hobby, they felt differently about their son pursuing it as a career.  So when David informed his mother that he had chosen to pursue a career in pop music full-time, she immediately got him a job as an electrician’s mate.  But, even that wasn’t enough to stop David from achieving his dream.

Though David soon realized that if he was going to be a star in the music world, he couldn’t do it with The Konrads.  He got frustrated with the band’s limited aspirations, and he decided to leave the band to join another group, The King Bees.  Seeing the success that John Epstein had with the Beatles, David actually wrote a letter to washing machine entrepreneur John Bloom, asking him to help them become a success.  Bloom did not respond to the letter, but somehow, it was passed on to Leslie Conn, who became David’s first management contract.

With Conn’s help, David and his band were heavily promoted, but their singles failed to make an impression on the charts at all.  As a result of this, David left the group, and eventually would join two more bands before branching out on what would become his successful solo career.

One more thing that David would do was change his stage name.  Initially, he had gone by the name of Davie Jones.  Problem was that the Monkees were making a huge name for themselves at the time, and people were confusing him with the lead singer of the Monkees, Davy Jones.  So in 1967, Davie Jones became David Bowie, a name that David picked out himself.  The name came from the nineteenth century American frontiersman Jim Bowie.  The name was good enough to be used to name a knife, so for David Bowie, it was good enough for him to use for a stage name.

And the rest as we say, is history.  We know that David Bowie ended up making a huge name for himself, and the following words could be used to describe some of his successes.  “Fame”.  “Changes”.  “Ziggy Stardust”.  “Let’s Dance”.  “China Girl”.  And, that’s only scratching the surface.

So, what does this have to do with today’s trip back through time?  Well, I thought that I would end this blog off by posting David Bowie’s very first single release that came out on June 5, 1964.  It didn’t chart particularly high (in fact, I don’t think it charted at all here in North America.  But who would have guessed that it would have been the beginning of a remarkable career path?

So, with that, here’s a song to close off June 5, 1964.


ARTIST:  Davie Jones with The King Bees
SONG:  Liza Jane
DATE RELEASED:  June 5, 1964

Monday, June 04, 2012

Carrie


June is typically a month where old chapters close and new chapters open, and many celebrations are held during this month to commemorate this.  Whether you’re watching a couple exchanging wedding vows (June is reportedly one of the most popular months to get married), or getting a high school diploma, June can be a very busy month.

One activity that a lot of people are preparing for in June (or have already had) is the celebration known as the prom.  The event where teenage boys and girls rent their tuxedos and buy the perfect dress to dance the night away to mark the last few days of their high school career.  Whether the prom was held at a fancy hotel, a country club, or even the school gymnasium, it was an event that most people looked forward to.

Well, most people except me, that is.

I’m proud to say that I never went to my prom.  I skipped the event and chose to spend that night doing something else that I wanted to do instead.  The truth is that prom preparations can be overwhelming and stressful when they really needn’t be.  I’m not even talking about the stress that comes out of finding the perfect escort to bring either.  By the time you spend all that money on your clothes, your accessories, your make-up (well, for the ladies anyway), and not to mention the prom dinner if one is available, the prom can make your credit card go into severe traction.  When it came down to my prom, the cost just wasn’t worth me going.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since I would have gone to the prom without a date anyway.

Here’s the thing.  I don’t regret skipping my prom at all.  I find it funny the way that some people take the prom way too seriously, as if they are going to be the social pariah of the whole school if they can’t find someone to take with them.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s just a dance.  There’s really not a whole lot of difference between the prom and the MuchMusic Video Dance Parties that you went to in the ninth grade.  The only difference is that the prom is more formal.  I mean, it’s not like you’re actually going to drop dead at the prom itself just because it doesn’t go the way you wanted it to.

Well, unless you were unfortunate enough to be in the same graduating class as Carietta White.


Today, we’re going to be taking a look at “Carrie”, a film that was released on November 3, 1976.  The movie was made with a modest budget of just under two million dollars, and ended up making thirty-three million at the box office.  I would call that a great success, wouldn’t you say?

The cast of the movie was also mighty impressive.  Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, William Katt, Amy Irving, P.J. Soles, and Priscilla Pointer all starred in the film, which was directed by Brian De Palma.  Both Spacek and Laurie earned Academy Award nominations for their roles in the film.


A lot of you probably know this information already, but for those of you who don’t, the movie “Carrie” was inspired by the book of the same name by Stephen King.  Although not exactly an exact representation of the book (some character names were changed, as well as some plot details), the film “Carrie” is widely considered to be one of the best movie adaptations of any of Stephen King’s works. 

The book was Stephen King’s fourth novel written, but it was the first one of his works to be published.  He was living in a trailer in Hermon, Maine with his wife Tabitha at the time.  “Carrie” initially began as a short story, and King wrote the story on a portable typewriter (the same one he used to write “Misery”).  But after writing the iconic opening scene in which Carrie experiences her first period in the showers of the girls locker room, he was incredibly dissatisfied with the draft, and threw it out.

However, Tabitha was not happy with this move, and fished the crumpled up pages out of the bin.  She encouraged him to finish the story, and with her support, the story became the novel “Carrie”.  Long story short, Carrie ended up being a huge hit for King, and put his name out there in the literary world.

The movie was fantastic as well, and it certainly had lots of moments that kept you on the edge of your seat.

Carietta White (Spacek) is the poster child for a depressed high school student.  It was bad enough that the kids at her high school made fun of her and abused her for being the weird kid.  Carrie’s home life was just as horrific as the one she had at school.  Her mother Margaret (Laurie) is a Christian fundamentalist who believes that Carrie is damaged, and that she has committed sins, and frequently abuses her at home as well.


We certainly see this in action right at the very beginning of the film.  Remember that locker room scene that I was describing earlier?  The one that King thought was so terrible, he threw it away?  We get to see the scene unfold within the first few minutes of the movie.  Carrie ends up getting her first period inside the shower, and having a mother who is completely off her rocker, she never really learned about the menstruation cycle from anyone.  So, when a frantic Carrie runs out of the shower screaming that she is dying, the other girls are less than sympathetic, screaming insults at her while throwing tampons at her, Chris Hargensen (Allen) being the most viscious of the group.  It isn’t until the gym teacher, Miss Collins (in the book, she is known as Miss Desjardins) steps in to help that the rest of the girls back off.  During Miss Collins’ (Buckley) attempts to diffuse the situation, Carrie’s reaction to being bullied causes an overhead light to explode above them, the first evidence of Carrie’s telekinetic powers.

Miss Collins called Margaret White at home to inform her of the bullying incident inside the locker room, believing that she was doing a good deed, thinking that Carrie’s mother would be able to help her more than she could.  Of course, Miss Collins couldn’t possibly know just how insane Carrie’s mother really was, and when Carrie came home, her mother locked her inside a closet, forcing her to pray away the sins she committed.  Later that night, Carrie manages to shatter a bedroom mirror simply by staring at it, definitely proving to the viewer that Carrie has some serious powers that not even she understands.


The following day, Carrie is mocked yet again when she praises the poem of Tommy Ross (Katt), calling it beautiful.  This time, though, Carrie is stunned when Tommy defends Carrie to the rest of the class, slightly aggravated that the class thought so little of his poem.  Tommy’s girlfriend, Sue Snell (Irving) watches the scene unfold, and begins to feel incredible remorse over her part in the locker room incident.  Sue talks to Tommy, and convinces him to take Carrie to the prom.  Of course, when Tommy does offer up the invitation to Carrie, Carrie is naturally skeptical, thinking that it was yet another cruel joke.  But after a pep talk from Miss Collins, Carrie realizes that his intentions were genuine, and accepts his offer. 


Miss Collins actually does Carrie one better.  She gives the girls who took part in the locker room incident a week long detention, and threatens to suspend them from school if they don’t attend the detention.  To the girls credit, all of them serve their detention, and some even feel remorseful for their actions against Carrie.

Well, all except Chris Hargensen, who openly opposes being punished, and throws a fit, leading to Miss Collins striking Chris across the face (something that would likely put Miss Collins in jail had this been 2012), and Chris being banned from attending the prom.  A vengeful Chris soon has one thing on her mind...get revenge on both Carrie and Miss Collins.  She enlists the help of her boyfriend, Billy Nolan (Travolta) and a couple of friends to ruin the prom for Carrie.  Knowing that Tommy has asked Carrie to the prom, they scheme to stuff the ballot box to elect Tommy and Carrie prom king and queen.  Then, once the two of them are on stage, a bucket of pig’s blood would tip over, and drench poor Carrie.  To Chris, it was the ultimate act of revenge against the one girl she hated more than anybody else in the world.


On the flipside, Carrie is more than ecstatic to go to the prom with Tommy, even wearing a brand new white dress to the occasion.  But, Carrie’s mother believes that the prom is a celebration of sin, and she opposes Carrie attending the prom, even cruelly telling Carrie that the kids at the prom will all laugh at her.  But Carrie stands up to her mother, telling her that she is going to the prom whether she likes it or not.  As Carrie gets angrier, the windows in the house slam shut, and Margaret White soon realizes that her daughter has telekinesis, which frightens her to death.  But before Carrie’s mother can stop her, Carrie is already on her way to the prom.

At first, the prom is fantastic for Carrie.  Tommy treats Carrie the way that a man should treat his date, and Carrie seems to have a genuinely good time.  Although Sue manages to sneak into the prom to keep an eye on Tommy and Carrie, she is relieved to see that Carrie is enjoying herself.  Most of Carrie’s classmates are quite civil to her as well, and for the first time in her whole life, Carrie finally felt like she fit in.

Which makes the nasty trick that Chris and Billy pulled seem even more disgusting and cruel. 

Just as Chris and Billy planned, Carrie and Tommy won the vote for prom king and queen (thanks to their colleagues stuffing the ballot box), and Carrie proudly wore her crown and sash with a huge smile on her face.  But then this happened, and all hell broke loose.


In a devastating turn of events, Carrie’s anger over being made a fool in front of the entire school went into overdrive, and her telekinesis turned the Bates High School Gymnasium into a furnace, incinerating everyone who was unlucky enough to still be inside the gym, of which there was a lot, as Carrie mentally locked every way out of the school to trap everyone inside.

So, you’d think that was the end of the movie, wouldn’t you?  Think again.  The fire that eventually destroyed the school and the graduating class of Bates High was just the beginning.  By the end of the film, the prom disaster would have at least one survivor, who would be the only original cast member to appear in the 1999 sequel “The Rage: Carrie 2”.  Chris and Billy were watching the disaster unfold from outside, so clearly they were out of harm’s way.  But when Chris makes one last ditch effort to rid the world of Carrie, will all go to plan?  And then there’s Carrie’s mother.  How do you think she’ll feel about what Carrie ended up doing at the prom?  It’s a confrontation that you cannot miss.

You know, by all accounts, Carrie White was what everyone believed her to be.  She was quite the unusual girl.  And it’s easy to dismiss her as being evil...after all, she charbroiled her classmates at the prom.  But was she truly bad to the bone?  I don’t think so.  I think that had her classmates, teachers, and her own family treated her with respect and friendliness from the very beginning, then perhaps this whole situation could have been avoided.  All Carrie wanted was to have someone in her corner, who believed in her, and who wanted genuine friendship with her.  And, although she only had it for a few moments, she did have that with Tommy (and Sue to a lesser extent), and I’m sure that before everything went to hell in a handbasket, those moments meant the world to her.


I’m certainly not saying that if you treat someone with cruelty that they’re going to burn down your house with you inside of it.  But, when it comes to the choice of treating someone with respect, and treating someone like dirt, doesn’t the first choice just seem more appealing?

Just something to ponder this Monday.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

How Huey Lewis Made Me A "Sports" Fan


I'm going to offer a bit of a warning to all of you at this time. I'm not really in the greatest of moods today. As I type out this entry tonight (well, I guess by the time you read this, it'll technically be LAST night), I am trying my best not to launch into a rant filled with language that would make a sailor blush. I won't be going into too much detail about why I'm not in the best of moods, because I would need a whole week of blog entries to try and get all of my feelings out.

Instead, I'm going take the opportunity to use this Sunday Jukebox entry to work the bad mood out of my system by talking about one of my favourite groups of the 1980s.

In fact, I'm going to do something for the Sunday Jukebox entry that I haven't done since December 25, 2011. In most cases, I use the Sunday Jukebox to talk about a specific song that a band or an artist. But this week, I'm going to focus on a whole album that the band did.

And, I'm doing this for two reasons.

First, I love this band so much that I found it incredibly difficult to narrow my choice down to just one song. Three of my favourite songs by this band actually appear on the same album, so I thought it just made sense to talk about the album in general rather than do three separate entries.

And secondly, one of the best ways for me to improve my mood is to just listen to an album that I absolutely love listening to, cranking it up as loud as it can go (without causing the neighbours to complain), and losing myself to the music. I owned the cassette tape of this album, and played it so many times, the tape wore out! Let's just say that my teen years was filled with a lot of angst, and a lot of tape rewinding (I didn't own a CD Player until I was 17).

So, my goal for today is to do an entry on one of my favourite albums in hopes that my mood will improve.

So, let's take a look at our featured album for today.



ARTIST: Huey Lewis And The News
ALBUM: Sports
DATE RELEASED: September 15, 1983
NUMBER OF SINGLES RELEASED: 5
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD 200: #1 for 1 week

I know what you're thinking. It seems a bit crazy that one of my favourite albums was released when my musical tastes included that of Raffi and Sharon, Lois, & Bram. The truth is that I was always surrounded by Huey Lewis & The News growing up. They also happened to be one of my sister's favourite bands in high school, and whenever I was in her car back in those days, I always heard this tape blaring out of the car radio. I know it's been almost thirty years since this album was first released, but some of my earliest memories always had this album for a soundtrack.

I eventually became a fan of this band myself. I think at some point, I listened to every single one of their albums. “Fore!” was a decent album that I also wore out. “Picture This” was another album that I particularly liked. Even their 1980 debut album was a great album, even though none of the singles from the album did particularly well on the charts.

TRIVIA: Would you believe that when Huey Lewis & The News formed in San Francisco in 1979, they went under the name of “Huey Lewis & The American Express”? The name was changed in January 1980 after Lewis worried that they could be sued by the American Express credit card company for using their name. Funny what you learn from the Internet, isn't it?

Certainly, Huey Lewis & The News had tons of success throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. With a total of nineteen Top 10 hits on three different music charts (Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Rock), the band made their mark on the music industry. And as of 2012, the band is still together, performing concerts all over North America, and releasing hits for movie soundtracks.



TRIVIA: In addition to contributing two songs for the 1985 feature film, “Back To The Future”, they also performed the theme song for the 2008 film “Pineapple Express”.



But, I think if I had to name the album that best defined this group, it would be “Sports”. The album spawned five Top 20 singles, one of which hit #1 on the Top Rock Charts, between 1983 and 1984, and the album hit the #1 position during the first week of July 1984.

At the time of the album's release, the band was made up of Huey Lewis (main vocals, harmonica), Sean Hopper (keyboards), Bill Gibson (percussion), Johnny Colla (guitar, saxophone), Mario Cipollina (bass), and Chris Hayes (guitar). And here's some trivia about the album cover. It was taken at the 2 A.M. Club, in Mill Valley, California (not to be confused with Hill Valley, of “Back to the Future” fame).

Let's take a look at each of the singles that charted from this album (five of the nine original tracks hit the charts which was very good for an album), because there's a lot of trivia that can be found with each release.

This was the first song released from “Sports”, which also happens to be my favourite song of the whole album as well.



HEART AND SOUL
Released August 30, 1983
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #8
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks: #1

The first release from “Sports” was a strong one from the very beginning. Former band member Chris Hayes once stated that he didn't know why “Heart and Soul” sounded so good from the beginning. According to Hayes, the band often had to record and re-record the guitar parts of each song, but for that particular song, the band was lucky enough to get the riff on the very first try. Listen to the song up above, and you'll see what I mean. It's a great song! Here's a bit of trivia about this song's music video as well. You see the woman that Huey is dancing with in the club? If you're a fan of soap operas, you might recognize the woman as actress Signy Coleman, who had roles on both “Guiding Light” and “The Young and the Restless”. And this isn't the first Huey Lewis & The News video that she makes an appearance in either...



I WANT A NEW DRUG
Released January 3, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6
Peak Position on Top Rock Charts: #7

I Want a New Drug” was the second release from “Sports”, and just like the first video that was released, Signy Coleman makes a cameo in this video as well (actually, several cameos). It also happens to be the highest charting single from “Sports”, just missing the Top 5 on the Billboard Charts. But despite its success, it was also the subject of some controversy. A few months after “I Want a New Drug” was released, artist Ray Parker Jr. released the song that he had done for the 1984 film “Ghostbusters”, and there was something about it that made Huey Lewis see red. Have a listen to Ray Parker Jr. song HERE, and then compare it to “I Want a New Drug”. There's a bit of a similarity, don't you think? Well, as it turns out, there's a lot more to the story than just that. At first glance, it might seem like just a bit of a wacky coincidence. Lots of songs sound the same. Just listen to Madonna's “Express Yourself” and Lady Gaga's “Born This Way” for another example. But what if I told you that Huey Lewis & The News had been approached to do the theme song for “Ghostbusters” first? Unfortunately, the band had already made a commitment to “Back To The Future”, and had to turn the offer down. Because of this, as well as the similar sounding song that Ray Parker Jr. recorded, Lewis sued Parker in 1984. The case was eventually settled out of court, but it certainly left a sour note on an otherwise fantastic tune.



THE HEART OF ROCK & ROLL
Released April 10, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6

The song was written by Lewis and Colla, and was the third release off of “Sports”. What was unique about this song was that several versions of the song were recorded specifically for various radio stations. You know the part of the song where Huey Lewis was shouting the city names of Cleveland and Detroit towards the end of it? He recorded several versions of the song with different place names that fit with the geographic area of the radio station. It was a neat idea. The song lyrics themselves had changed a bit from the original version when the song was being recorded. Initially, the song chorus was going to go “The Heart of Rock & Roll is in Cleveland”, after the band performed a successful and enjoyable concert in the town (though considering that Cleveland is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the original lyrics were a double entendre of sorts). Somehow, the lyrics were changed to “The Heart of Rock & Roll is still beating.” The music video was also problematic to shoot, in particular with the New York City shooting locations. The video was filmed during the winter of 1984, where temperatures were well below zero degrees, and the band was dressed lightly. Huey Lewis' wife was also pregnant at the time, which also made the shoot dicey, as Lewis was constantly checking to see if she was doing all right. To add salt to the wound, although the song was a decent hit, it admittedly isn't one of my favourites. Apparently, Blender magazine agreed with me. In 2009, they listed the song at #6 on their list of 50 Worst Songs Ever! Ouch.



IF THIS IS IT
Released July 10, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6
Peak Position on the Adult Contemporary Charts: #5
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks: #19

This is also a song that I absolutely love of Huey Lewis & The News...even if the music video seems to be composed of gouda, bleu cheese, and limburger by 2012 standards. I suppose that back in '84, it worked enough for the band to score yet another #6 hit (this seems to be a recurring number for this particular album). This song is also notable in the United Kingdom, as it was the band's first Top 40 single in that nation. Mind you, the song only peaked at #39 on the charts there, but hey, a Top 40 hit is a Top 40 hit. Not much else can be said about this video except that in the part where five of the six band members had their heads sticking out of the sand, the members claimed that they really were buried! If that was the case, it must have taken a lot of work to get that particular shot!



WALKING ON A THIN LINE
Released October 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #18
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks #16

By now, you've seen that the songs of Huey Lewis & The News are light-hearted, and the music videos are whimsical, fun, and happy. But this song was quite serious in nature. The song itself was written by Andre Pessis and Ken Wells, and was about the Vietnam War, and what soldiers and veterans were thinking while they were serving in the war. When the band performs the song live, Lewis often dedicates the song in memory of the casualties of the Vietnam War, and in some cases, the band would be joined onstage by ESPN personality Chris Berman, who has appeared as a surprise guest. The song was written with a strong message, but it was also the lowest charting song to be released from “Sports”, and also the song that got the most mixed reaction from critics. But it is a decent song, and it was a great final release for “Sports”.

That's our look back on the most successful album that Huey Lewis & The News released, and would you believe it? My bad mood has improved greatly since. Funny how music tends to make even the saddest people feel better, huh?

BONUS QUESTION: How do you deal with the after-effects of a stress-filled day?