Month: October 2022

Apple Music Fade-In Bug

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Every time I play a track from my Apple music library, the music does a fast fade-in. No more cold starts. This is a relatively new problem. Millions of Apple users prefer this feature apparently. They like the songs in their playlists to blend or cross-fade into each other.

For decades I could thrill to the immediate kickstarting of Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony, but Apple is now insisting that listen to an automatic cruise-control version. If, that is, your Apple music app is afflicted with the same default option bug that mine is.

Whatever Keith Richards or Duane Eddy or George Gershwin might’ve had in mind as far as the first 1.5 seconds of their compositions were concerned, it no longer prevails. Customer preferences come first. That ballsy power chord that “A Hard Day’s Night” starts with? The iPhone version of that 1964 song now eases its way into that — no more sudden braaannnggg!

I tried to solve the problem last night. There must be some way to turn this idiotic feature off. Last night I did the usual searches and tried to figure a remedy…no dice. Last night I spent about 20 or 25 minutes discussing the ins and outs with an amiable Apple technician — no help, no fix. She said she’d kick it up to senior tech, but that I shouldn’t expect a reply for two or three days.

I’ve got a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 pm.

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Charging Steed

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[Posted on 5.25.20] “For the first time in 17 or 18 years, I got rip-roaring stoned last night. By way of a single cannabis gummy bear, manufactured by CAMINO. It was a steady. bump-free high, but my God, the strength of it! It was like I was suddenly atop a galloping racehorse, but the horse knew the realm and was fairly cool about it.

“And it was like I’d been shot…shot with a diamond bullet, right through my forehead. (Kidding.) Seriously, I was scared that it might be too much for my psyche to handle, and I think this may have been why I decided to drop a Tapentadol to mellow things down.

“All I know is that my senses and my free-associating mind and especially my imagination became more and more alive and attuned, and yet I was concurrently sensing how frail and delicate everyone is, myself included. I was doing everything I could to speak as softly and gently as possible. Music, colors, aromas, our Siamese cat…everything suddenly had an extra quality. If you’ve ever galloped on a horse, you know that it’s all about becoming one with the charging steed and not fretting about falling off…you have to be fearless and go with it.

“Last night I was half-fearless and half ‘uh-oh’, at least until the Tapentadol kicked in.

“I’m basically saying that the THC in my system felt, from my vantage point at least, very, VERY strong for a while. I was half amazed that I’d allowed myself to get this ripped (which was actually Tatiana’s fault — she popped one of the candies into my mouth and I meekly went along with it), and half intrigued that this kind of cannabis high was a lot smoother and stronger than the pot I used to suck down in the ‘70s. It was quite the ride — lemme tell ya.”

She Done Me Right

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[Originally posted on 2.17.15.]

There was a period between my 20th and 21st birthday when I had no job or goals or academic engagement…nothing. I was in my Bhagavad Gita mystical phase, no fooling, except the constant urge to party and frolic and basically pursue the spiritual pretty much dominated everything. Partying and then recovering the next day so I could party again the next night…well, there was actually more to it than just that.

It’s not that I didn’t try to have a kind of “life.” I would land a job I hated and then lose that job. I read the New York Times every day but I ingested a lot of substances and did a lot of sleeping and day-dreaming. I dabbled as a dealer of pot and hallucinogens. Occasional tripping, hitchhiking, chasing girls, wherever the day took me…bars, parties, music and especially (this was huge) lying totally ripped on a floor with two smallish Marantz speakers on either side of my head.

At some point my parents decided to strongly communicate their disfavor. They wanted me to understand that this lifestyle had nowhere to go but down so they kicked me out of their comfortable Cape Cod-style home in Wilton, Connecticut. I would crash here and there but occasionally I’d have nowhere to go.

So I’d show up at the Cape Cod around midnight or 1 am and throw pebbles at my sister Laura’s window. To keep me out every night my father would lock the garage basement door plus the dining-room door that led to the basement stairs, so I needed Laura to let me in. After a couple of taps she’d come to the window and then meet me downstairs. I remember I had to raise the sliding garage doors one inch at a time so as to not make any noise.

Laura and I would tiptoe upstairs in pitch black and I’d sleep inside the closet in my room. My parents both worked during the day and were gone by 9 am, so I’d come down around 10 am or so and get some breakfast, etc.

I forget how many times this happened but I’d say at least 15 or 20. Laura was there for me every time. I’m not saying she acted in some extraordinary fashion but she did the good, kind thing.

Laura’s schizophrenia became pretty aggravated around then, and the truth is that we didn’t have very much to say to each other through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. She had a much higher IQ than I (or so I was told) but she was pretty much off the rails. Laura had a hard life. I took her to Italy (San Donato, Rome) with me in ’03 — that was pretty much the summit of our adult bonding.

Laura died of cancer in April of 2008, and it just hit me this morning that I never told her how extra double thankful I was for all those times she gave me the gift of a warm, snug sleep on the floor of my bedroom closet. If she could read this or perhaps hear me on some level…


Chance Browne painting of Seir Hill Road (where I spent my high school years) in Wilton, CT. — my parents’ Cape Cod home (45 Seir Hill) was just down the road.

Panzano, Italy — May 2017.

Rome, last May.

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Best Horror Film Endings

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There are three kinds of excellent horror film endings, but they all put the chill in and stay there after the closing credits.

One, those that add something totally unexpected at the very end, a la Carrie White‘s bloody hand poking through the burnt embers and grabbing Amy Irving in Carrie.

Two, those that double down by adding a dash of surreal, rule-breaking creepitude a la Anthony Perkins‘ demonic grin blending with his mother’s rotted skull in Psycho.

And three, those that allude to real-world concerns or social tremors, as in The Thing From Another World when a news reporter warns the world to “watch the skies…keep looking, keep watching the skies“, the notion being that James Arness‘s Mr. Clean is actually out there in some form.

What late 20th Century or 21st Century horror films deliver one of these variations?

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Deal!

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What is actually being said here? Ask yourselves that.

The message seems to be “unless you’re a person of color and even if you’re Robin D’Angelo, stay away from Wakanda Forever on its opening weekend. Seriously. If you know what’s good for you. Because any whiteys who show up regardless…well, you’ll be branding yourself as anti-black, in a sense.”

I’m not saying this would happen, but imagine if some deranged cracker were to tweet that Black people need to avoid opening-weekend screenings of some all-white movie…The Fablemans, say, or next summer’s Oppenheimer. Imagine if the corresponding slogan was “Black people need to stay away from The Fablemans so white people can enjoy that movie in peace.”

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I Wouldn’t Want To Be This Heavy

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And this is not an allusion to Brendan Fraser‘s sure-to-be-nominated performance in Darren Aronfosky‘s film, which screened yesterday in Los Angeles but not so far in New York (or not to my knowledge).

“A prestigious team of medical scientists has projected that by 2030, nearly one in two adults will be obese, and nearly one in four will be severely obese. Likewise, the team projected, in 25 states the prevalence of severe obesity will be higher than one adult in four, and severe obesity will become the most common weight category among women, non-Hispanic black adults and low-income adults nationally.” — from “Half of Us Face Obesity, Dire Projections Show,” a 2.10.21 N.Y Times report by Jane E. Brody.

Jailbait Confidential

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If you’re talking inappropriate violations of way-too-young girls in the 1950s, is there really a substantial difference between 23-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis marrying a 13-year-old cousin (obviously not cool but then Lewis and Myra Gale Brown stayed together for 12 years) and 24 year-old Elvis Presley doing the nasty with Priscilla Beaulieu in 1959, when she was 14?

The difference is that Presley and manager Tom Parker kept the particulars under wraps while Lewis stupidly admitted everything.

From “Jerry Lee Lewis’s Life of Rock and Roll and Disrepute,” a 10.29.22 New Yorker piece by Tom Zito:

Son of Lancaster’s Long Haul

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Posted on 3.1.19: Earlier this month I posted two thumbnail assessments of the careers of Tony Curtis and William Holden. They both enjoyed relatively brief hot-streak periods. Holden’s lasted six or seven years, or between Stalag ’17 (’53) and The Horse Soldiers (’59). Curtis’s fortunate-son period ran 11 or 12 years, or between Sweet Smell of Success (’57) and The Boston Strangler (’68).

As noted, Holden kept plugging until his death in ’81, but from The Horse Soldiers on (or over the next 22 years) Holden only made six genuinely good films — The Wild Bunch, Wild Rovers, Breezy, Network, Fedora and S.O.B. Curtis had no luck at all after The Boston Strangler.

Burt Lancaster‘s career was different in that he was always a long player. His commercial hot streak of the late ’40s to mid ’50s (westerns or action-swashbuckler films mixed with two or three dramas) happened between his late 30s and mid 40s, but except for his 1950s peak achievement of From Here To Eternity (i.e., Sgt. Milt Warden) along with The Rose Tattoo and The Rainmaker, he was more into commercial bounties.

Then came a prestige-drama-mixed-with-action period — 12 or so years, 1957 to 1969, between his mid 40s and mid 50s — that turned into Lancaster’s greatest run. Oh, the glories of Sweet Smell of Success, Run Silent, Run Deep, Separate Tables, The Devil’s Disciple, The Unforgiven, Elmer Gantry, The Young Savages, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman of Alcatraz, A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Train, The Hallelujah Trail, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Castle Keep and The Gypsy Moths.

In the ’70s Lancaster, entering his 60s, downshifted into mostly genre-level, mezzo-mezzo films — seemingly a getting-older, wind-down cycle. The highlights were Robert Aldrich‘s Ulzana’s Raid, Luchino Visconti‘s Conversation Piece and Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900.

Then came the ’80s and a resurgence with three great performances in three commendable films — aging wise guy and Lothario Lou Pascal in Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City (‘80), oil tycoon Felix Happer in Local Hero (’82) and the kindly Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (’89).

Lancaster was not a great actor, but he was a graceful and commanding alpha-male presence, and he had a great sense of style, and he knew how to sell it. What was his greatest performance? I’m torn between From Here To Eternity, Elmer Gantry, The Swimmer and Atlantic City (“Boy, that was some ocean”).

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