Louie, Louie

The man who sang one of the greatest rock ‘n roll songs in history has died.  Jack Ely, the lead singer for The Kingsmen who delivered the definitive vocal rendition of Louie, Louie, died recently at age 71.  His song is an acknowledged classic that is instantly familiar to every rock music fan and was memorably sung by the frat boys in Animal House.

What makes a song great?  The Kingsmen’s version of Louie, Louie is only 2 minutes, 46 seconds long.  It features a cheesy organ intro, a simple beat, crashing drums, and an off-kilter guitar solo, but what makes it unforgettable are vocals that sound like they were recorded at 3 a.m. in a bus station bathroom by a drunken guy who is singing in a rare Martian dialect.  The unique sound occurred because Ely, who was wearing braces at the time, was placed in the middle of the band by the recording engineer to achieve a “live feel” in the recording and had to scream out the lyrics into a microphone located several feet overhead.

The deliciously slurred, garbled result was an immediate hit, in part because you could dance to it and in part because teenage boys across America had heard that the “real” lyrics were “dirty” and bought the record in droves trying to decipher them.  In fact, Louie, Louie, which was written by Richard Berry, is a simple, sweet song about a man thinking about the girl he is going to see when he returns to Jamaica — but good luck figuring that out from Ely’s howling, boozy-sounding vocals.

The rumors of a dirty meaning to the song were so persistent and widespread that the FBI and other law enforcement entities actually looked into the issue to determine whether Louie, Louie violated then-existing obscenity laws. They ultimately concluded that The Kingsmen’s version was “unintelligible at any speed.”  And that’s what made it great.

No Good Summer Movies

Jaws was released on June 1, 1975.  Taut, believable, and  brilliantly acted, telling the story of a gigantic great white shark that terrorized a resort town and then coldly set out to kill the men who were hunting it, Jaws was perfect fare for the summer.  Anyone who saw it in a theater with a big screen, with the iconic “dun-dun, dun-dun” music playing and letting you know to prepare yourself for the awful carnage that was going to begin at any moment, will never forget it and always feel a thrill when they think of it.

Summer used to be the big season for movies.  You could relax in air-conditioned comfort, enjoy the movie, and practice the hinge move on your girlfriend in a darkened room.  And Hollywood always seemed to deliver at least one great movie that ran throughout the summer.  Whether it was Jaws, the original Star Wars movies, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, or Animal House, every year there was at least one can’t miss movie that everyone was talking about.  Watch any of those films, or the other summer blockbusters that you remember, and you’ll see well-made films that stand the test of time.

Last weekend Kish and I decided a trip to the movies was a good idea, so we checked the roster at the nearby multiplex.  Another Transformers movie.  Another X-Men movie.  A silly comedy, Tammy.  A remake of a TV series, 22 Jump Street, that we never watched in the first place.  Edge of Tomorrow.  Think Like A Man Too.  And others, equally forgettable.  And this weekend, the big premiere is of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes — another remake, one that the previews indicate is full of computer-generated scenes of rampaging apes.  We yawned and decided to pass — and we’re not alone.  With these lame offerings, is anyone really surprised that Hollywood receipts are way down this summer?

In the past, Hollywood at least seemed to make an effort to deliver summer movies that were new and exciting, well-written, well-acted, and well-made.  Now, it offers a steady diet of remakes and movies that rely heavily on formulas and special effects, explosions, and groin shot humor.  If Jaws were released this summer, it would stand out among this tired and uninspired fare like LeBron James at a junior high school game.

C’mon, Hollywood.  At least try!

Egon Sadly Gone

I was very saddened today to read of the death of Harold Ramis.

Ramis was a titanic yet nevertheless underappreciated cultural figure who played a large role in many hugely popular, clever, often brilliant movies — like Animal House, Groundhog Day, Stripes, and Caddyshack — and who dazzled in some small roles that helped to make good films, like As Good as It Gets and Knocked Up, even better. Anyone who could write Animal House, direct Groundhog Day, and bring a poignancy and warmth to the role of Ben’s Dad in Knocked Up has more talent that most people could even fathom.

I’d like to focus specifically, though, on Ramis’ depiction of Egon Spengler, the genius who created the hard-scientific core of the spirit-catching team in Ghostbusters. Egon Spengler is arguably the greatest depiction of a true scientific nerd ever to grace the silver screen. Ramis captured every element of the character, from the Eraserhead-like hairdo to the lack of awareness of normal social behavior to the immediate knowledge of every page of obscure spirit guides and ghostly treatises to the willingness to create catastrophically dangerous ghost-catching devices without a second thought. We knew the Bill Murray was the clown and Dan Aykroyd was the rumpled everyman, but Egon Spengler and his protonic inventions is the one who allowed the Ghostbusters to match up with Gozer and could explain the extraordinary danger in it all by using a Twinkie as a illustration.

Ghostbusters is a great movie — one of the first “high-concept” blockbusters, where the gist of the plot could be captured in a single sentence — and Egon Spengler is what really made the movie work. The Spengler character made the Ghostbusters concept plausible, and Ramis had to sell that brainy, socially oblivious character as someone who could design ghost-catching traps and understand cross-dimensional portals. He did it brilliantly and hilariously . . . and, equally important for the nerds among us, in the process he somehow made being the nerdy scientific geek kind of cool.

You’d be hard-pressed to find many other modern figures who had the impact on popular culture of Harold Ramis. He was only 69, and these days you can fairly say that people who die at 69 die much too young. He will be missed.

Those Soul-Deadening Travel Delays

The flight from Columbus to Dulles left on time and arrived early.  It left me plenty of time to take the train over to C Concourse to catch my connecting flight.  I wanted to get an early start on my holiday, and specifically picked early flights so as to avoid any travel snags, so all was working according to plan.

The screen at the gate showed an on-time departure.  Sitting in C Concourse, I heard the United Airlines rep explain that we would be boarding in groups.  And, then, with no warning or explanation, disaster struck.  The flight, which was supposed to leave at 8 a.m., was delayed until 1 p.m. for “aircraft servicing.”  Huh?  How did the need for servicing come up so suddenly, and on an early morning flight?  Wasn’t the need for “servicing” apparent more than 30 minutes before departure?

So now I’m stuck in the Dulles C Concourse, experiencing all of the soul-deadening elements of an aging American airport — lame food selections, cheap naugahyde seats, bad music on the intercom, a couple changing their baby’s diaper two seats over, and an unreconstructed hippie woman strumming a guitar in the waiting area.  I guess I’m just lucky she didn’t say we should all join in for a “singalong thing,” or a number of us would have had to give in to the urging of our inner Bluto from Animal House.

How has Edward Snowden managed to do this for weeks now?  The only good thing about this delay is that it will make the vacation all the sweeter — if I ever get there.

Hangover Part II

I thought Hangover was a classic movie — creative, funny, and filled with the kind of memorable characters and sophomoric humor I relish.  In my book, Hangover will go down as one of the classic Hollywood comedies of all time, in the same league as Animal House and Some Like It Hot.

I therefore am sorry to report that, as good as Hangover was, Hangover Part II is terrible.  It is awesomely, stunningly, epically bad.  Where Hangover was creative, Hangover Part II is derivative.  Where Hangover was deft, Hangover Part II is hit over the head.  Where Hangover was filled with very funny moments that left the theater rocking with laughter, Hangover Part II is filled with weird, gross, unfunny stuff that was greeted with lots of dead air in the theater.

Sequels usually suck, because most really good movies are about stories that are fully, completely told in one film.  Sequels usually have bigger budgets and are produced under enormous pressure to crank something out, while the audience still yearns for more of the characters they enjoyed in the first film.  Hangover Part II has that feel about it.  The Wolf Pack moves to Thailand, with lots of expensive on-location shooting, and the plot reeks of desperation.  It is as if the writers realized they were producing dreck and were looking for something — anything — that could produce a shock or a laugh.  That’s why there is a smoking monkey, and a transvestite, and a speedboat onto the beach, and lots of screaming and obscenity — none of which are particularly funny.

Sometimes, you’ve got to know when to say when.

52 And Grouchy

Social scientists seem to conduct more provocative (yet still ultimately useless) studies in Great Britain than in the United States.  The latest example is research that concludes that people pretty much lose their sense of humor at age 52, become grumpy, and laugh less and less.  By the time they are in their 60s, most Brits apparently can barely manage a mild chortle once in a while, even when viewing the subtle comedic offerings of Benny Hill.  And with the grey, rainy weather that is characteristic of that Sceptred Isle, who can blame them?

As a 53-year-old American, I like to think I still have a pretty good sense of humor and ability to laugh.  In fact, I don’t think certain baseline characteristics of my sense of humor have changed much since I was a kid.  I’ll always laugh at  physical comedy and sophomoric stuff like the Three Stooges.  I’ve just built on that solid foundation of pie-in-the-face, shot-to-the-groin yucks to incorporate an appreciation of irony, sarcasm, and more highbrow comedic stylings.

I don’t have any doubt that laughter makes you feel better and more youthful in outlook.  My grandmother loved to laugh — at herself and others — and she was a delight to be around.  Mom will still laugh hard at, say, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  The key, I think, is to reserve some time to do those things that make you chuckle.  Maybe it’s time to make a date with a DVD of Animal House?

(Sorority) Girls Gone Wild

There has been an odd series of stories recently about sorority women at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio behaving in very inappropriate ways.  In two separate incidents, sororities were suspended for underage drinking, vomiting, littering, and damaging an Ohio lodge and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.  The gross behavior included a partygoer taking a dump outside the lodge during a “formal” for one of the sororities.  The most recent story involves sorority sisters traveling to and from a “formal” at the Cincinnati Zoo who left a bus strewn with trash and coated with vomit and who so berated the bus driver with obscenities that the bus driver called it quits and left the unruly coeds at a gas station.

These stories raise certain at least two obvious questions.  First, why is it called a “formal”?  Any event where people are barfing and crapping in public sounds pretty darned informal to me.  If this kind of behavior is considered appropriate for “formal” occasions, what godforsaken depraved behavior can be expected at informal events?

Second, how much of the attention given to these stories is based on the fact that sororities, and not fraternities, were involved?  More than 30 years ago, Animal House got huge laughs for its depiction of a degenerate fraternity.  Talk to any parent of a fraternity kid and you will see that the movie isn’t that much of an exaggeration.  Fraternity kids drink heavily, do stupid stunts, and trash their fraternity houses, and people shrug and say “boys will be boys.”  Stories of unruly fraternity activities are “dog bites man” stories.  We tend to expect better conduct from sensible sorority women, however — which is part of the reason why the escapades of the boozy sorority sisters at Miami University are getting national attention.