dual personalities

Tag: Mary Chapin Carpenter

August 29, 2014

When the light is changing

by chuckofish

I deserved a treat, so I ordered Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 2010 CD The Age of Miracles.

Mary_Chapin_Carpenter-The_Age_of_Miracles

I am one of her oldest fans (and I mean that both ways)–although we are contemporaries after all, so never mind. Anyway, she never disappoints. It is a very good album and there is one song which really spoke to me. Listen, fellow introverts, and enjoy!

 

And, oh boy, the weekend is upon us once again! The painting in my bathroom is finished (thank you, Gary!) and so my project is to put the room back together.

I will also be readying the house for daughter # 1 who arrives home in a week for a birthday visit. Lots to do–but all fun stuff.

Hope your weekend is full of fun stuff too!

P.S. Today is Joseph Cotton day on TCM–so nothing thrilling to report there. He was in some classic movies, including Citizen Kane and The Third Man, but I am not a big fan of his. With a few notable exceptions like Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), he made a career of playing the second lead, the good guy who is kind of boring and makes the lead look sexy and dangerous in comparison. In that genre, TCM will be showing Duel in the Sun (1947) which, even though it stars a hot young Gregory Peck playing Cotton’s bad younger brother, is a pretty terrible movie. I liked it as a child though, mostly because of the ethereal Lillian Gish who plays  the aging southern belle who had a thing a long time ago for her reckless creole cousin and so takes in his half-breed daughter, played by the terrible actress Jennifer Jones.  Whenever Gish is in a scene,  “Beautiful Dreamer” plays in the background and follows her around eerily. I’m sure I had no idea what was actually going on, i.e. rape, wreckage and ruin. King Vidor directed it all with a heavy hand, but it does have a rousing musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin.

OSCARS 1946

So watch it if you’re in the mood for a bad melodramatic western–and I’ll admit, sometimes I am. But I really don’t like Gregory Peck as a bad guy.

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February 21, 2013

Hot dog, I feel lucky today

by chuckofish

Mary Chapin Carpenter (born February 21, 1958), an American folk and country music singer, songwriter and musician, turns 55 today.

mcc1

Born in Princeton, NJ, she went to Princeton Day School and The Taft School and Brown, so she grew up in a world similar to the one I did, but she also has that bad-ass cowgirl alter ego with which I readily identify. Who else could have written:

Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner, trying to catch my eye
Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh.

And her monogram is the same as my mother’s.

Anyway, I have been a fan of hers for many years. One of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter memories is of the time I (once again) was having a Girl Scout earning-a-patch event at our house. The plan was for Daughter #1 and her small troop to learn to line dance. Not that I was an expert. Uh huh. Priceless.

We moved the dining room table against the wall so we could practice in a large space, which coincidentally had one wall that was a giant mirror, sort of like in a dance studio. The girls lined up and we played “Shut Up and Kiss Me” over and over and (yes) over again, carefully counting one, two, three, four before trying again. And remember, this was in the days of cassette tapes! So there was a lot of rewinding involved. Good lord, how I wish I had a videotape of this coolness.

Here she is singing this great song. In the original, Leroy Parnell was in her band, but oh well.

So happy birthday, Mary Chapin Carpenter! Salut!

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