Popcorn

There were few greater things in childhood than popcorn.

Popcorn was a foodstuff that you ate at the movies or a basketball game.

Pretzels, potato chips and their ilk might be in the pantry at home, but popcorn was not such a common nosh.

Popcorn was an event.

I was likely munching on popcorn as King Kong ascended to the top of the Twin Towers and, later that same winter, when Rocky almost upset Apollo Creed for the heavyweight title.

Popcorn meant spectacle.

Of course, there was the occasional tin of Jiffy Pop on the stovetop. If it lacked the scale of the cinema, popcorn at home in the household den still made an impression. In the more intimate setting, popcorn was the spectacle.

The exploding corn under the ever-expanding foil of the Jiffy Pop container was a bit like playing with fireworks in the house.

And, as any kid exposed to a billion hours of Brady Bunch reruns in the ’70s will tell you, it was a trail of popcorn that played a pivitol role in Mike and Carol rescuing the boys from the clutches of Vincent Prince.

Yeah, popcorn is all right.

It would have been early 1972 when I would have seen the first movie I recall seeing in the theater, the cinematic classic Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster, the trippiest of all the Godzilla flicks and an experience I’ve recounted before.

As I was four, music wasn’t really on my radar, but here are four songs that I might have heard at the time that were on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 during this week in 1972…

Don McLean – American Pie
from American Pie (1971)

Few songs have been as dissected and parsed as thoroughly in the history of mankind as Don McLean’s magnum opus, so, really, what more is there to add.

Climax – Precious And Few
from Have A Nice Decade: The ’70s Pop Culture Box (1998)

I remember Precious And Few from some television commercial in the ’70s – Kodak, maybe? I don’t know and I’m too lazy to care, but I will consider it a middle finger to the marketing world that I still know the song if I can’t recall what was being shilled.

The Stylistics – You Are Everything
from The Stylistics (1971)

I know that Philly is famous for soul music, but there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the genre. The Stylistics are one of those acts who I love the handful of songs I know and keep intending to check out their music beyond the hits.

They’re still on that list – thanks to a combination of apathy and forgetfulness – because I never tire of songs like Betcha By Golly Wow, I’m Stone in Love With You, Break Up To Make Up, and the silky smooth You Are Everything.

Elton John – Levon
from Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume II (1977)

One of the few times I remember taking note of a song as a kid was hearing Elton John’s Benny And The Jets blaring from a jukebox in a Pizza Inn in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I don’t remember hearing Levon from a couple years earlier.

I do love Levon, though. The lyric has always intrigued me and the song is more striking to me the older I grow.

Poi

The mashed foodstuff of Polynesian people is what this particularly stressful stretch of work has reduced my brain matter to.

(and one of these days I do intend to seek clarification as to when, if ever, it is acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition…I thought it was verboten…or maybe not in certain situations…)

Today about the only thing that I was able to hold in my head after the commute was TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) by MFSB.

(better known as the theme for the music show Soul Train)

I happened to hear it on the Sirius ’70s hits channel on the morning commute when my brain existed in its usual, relatively unpulpified state and, since then, my headspace keeps defaulting to the song and voices singing “People all over the world!”

I recall seeing commercials for Soul Train as a kid and seem to recall that, at least when I was pre-school age, that the show aired mid-day on Saturdays, following the conclusion of the morning’s cartoons.

The show’s animated intro, that colorful train boogieing down the tracks, duped me more than once into thinking that there might be a half hour more of cartoon hijinks.

Instead, I probably switched the channel to Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

As March ended in 1974, I was finishing first grade and having no way of knowing that, thirty-seven years later I’d still be spending my days sitting at an assigned desk performing mindless tasks ad nauseum as someone – someone who the universe has seemingly placed in charge most arbitrairily – drones on and on and has everyone compete for gold stars.

If I had known, I could have had my brains removed and head filled with poi three decades ago.

As April arrived in 1974, MFSB’s TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) was a Top Ten hit. Here are four other songs that were on the charts at that time…

Elton John – Bennie And The Jets
from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

I vividly recall hearing Bennie And The Jets playing from the jukebox in a pizza place our parents would take us as kids. I was six at the time, had little interest in music, and had no idea who Elton John was – even though he was having a run of hits rivaled pehaps only by The Beatles

But I loved the spacey, hypnotic Bennie And The Jets.

(though I was certain I was hearing him sing something about “electric boobs”)

The song is still near any list I would make of favorites by Sir Elton.

Billy Joel – Piano Man
from The Complete Hits Collection: 1973-1997

I’ve noted before that I’m strangely ambivalent about Billy Joel. If you asked me if I liked Billy Joel, I’d probably shrug and say something like, “He’s OK.”

But when I do hear one of his songs, I’m surprised at how often I pause, mentally list his songs in my head, and realize that the guy does have some truly fantastic tracks in his catalog.

I’ve always loved Piano Man even if it has been played into the ground, but I don’t remember hearing it in ’74.

Terry Jacks – Seasons In The Sun
from Super Hits Of The ’70s: Have A Nice Day, Volume 12

Apparently Canadian Terry Jacks decided to record Seasons In The Sun when the Beach Boys abandoned recording a version of the song. In the same Wikipedia entry it is noted that the song is one of less than thirty to ever sell over ten million copies worldwide.

Oddly enough, I heard Seasons In The Sun the other morning for the first time in years on the Sirius ’70s station. But I certainly remember it from its time as a hit.

I like the song. It is maudlin, but the bouncy melody hooks me. The song’s got a bit of a split personality.

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells
from Rock On: 1970 to 1979

Though I didn’t see the movie until I was much older, I remember the buzz surrounding The Exorcist when it was in theaters. I seem to recall my parents (or at least my mom) walking out on it.

(whatever possessed them to go see a horror film about Satanic possession in the first place is baffling)

It is an evocative piece of music that no doubt is made more so by its association with the movie. The only other thing I’ve ever heard by Mike Oldfield is his very cool original version of Family Man, later a hit for Hall & Oates. I do know that he seems to be held in high regard, though, so I have add him to the list of acts I need to check out.

Jaws 3 (in 2D)

Though I didn’t see the original Jaws in the theater, I did catch the sequel when it came out during the summer of 1978.

Five years later, though, I opted out of Jaws 3 – no Roy Scheider, no dice – and I somehow avoided seeing it until 1989. I watched it sitting at a small bar, poolside, on an island off the coast of Thailand.

I sat there and watched it as I wrote a letter.

It wasn’t dreadful, rather, it was just there, taking up space on the television.

Taking up space here is what we started here – the third and final installment of our running diary of a recent viewing of the original Jaws.

Brody, Hooper and Quint have hit the high seas and they’ve come across the shark for the first time.

Brody had just made his famous take on their situation…

1:28:05 Quint and Hooper drink to each other’s seafaring (and non-seafaring) injuries. All Brody has to hang his hat on is an appendectomy scar, so he doesn’t get to drink. Of course, as he has been drinking for the entire movie, his blood-alcohol level is still higher than that of John Bonham at the drummer’s death.

1:29:12 Quint tells his tale of the USS Indianapolis. Though Robert Shaw was an acclaimed actor and accomplished writer, I don’t necessarily recall seeing him in any other role than Quint. At this point, having seen Jaws so many times, he is Quint to me.

Although I am capable of reciting it almost at will, Quint’s tale of the USS Indianapolis’ sinking hooks me the moment he recounts how a “Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side” and I remain riveted until he concludes – “Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”

Shaw’s performance in this scene is simply riveting and the man supposedly knocked it out in one take.

1:38:26 Quint has officially gone Ahab, battering the radio to bits as Brody tries to call for help.

1:43:32 Quint is giddy as a schoolgirl at the idea of having the shark stuffed and mounted for his den.

1:52:16 Hooper descends in the shark cage – something I would have been unwilling to do for all the lithium in Afghanistan.

1:55:06 Hooper magically transforms himself into a “little person” as the shark destroys the cage.

(an actual little person was used to make the shark appear bigger)

And speaking of little people, why does The Learning Channel have so many reality shows featuring little people? Little People, Big World…The Little Couple…Our Little Life…

The unemployment rate in the US is better than nine percent, but thanks to the efforts of the imaginative minds at TLC, it’s less than two percent for little people and falling.

1:57:16 And Quint is going…going…gone. For years, the scene of Quint’s demise was brief, but, eventually, on one of the anniversary versions of the DVD, there was additional footage. I remember the first time I saw it and how surprised I was at the carnage – a good thirty seconds of Quint thrashing about in the mouth of the shark.

1:58:05 And now there’s just Brody, fending off the shark as the Orca goes down. I imagine that the crime in New York City – which he lamented upon meeting Hooper – probably looks good about now.

2:00:14 Boom!

2:01:12 Hooper resurfaces, normal-sized and he and Brody share a laugh before beginning the swim back to shore.

One thing that has always made me wonder…you’ve just blown up a massive shark, spewing thousands of pounds of shark meat, blood, and other miscellaneous viscera into the ocean. Isn’t this going to attract every predator within several nautical miles?

Well, that’s a wrap and I now can move on to examining the unexamined minutea that has piled up in my head over the past week.

I wasn’t listening to much music at the time, but had I been listening thirty-five years ago – when Jaws had just arrived in theaters – here are four songs that were on the charts during this week in 1975…

Elton John – Someone Saved My Life Tonight
from Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

There were two acts that I can think of who, in 1975, were such radio juggernauts that even a seven-year old such as myself was well acquainted. One was The Carpenters; the other was Elton John.

If I were to rank my favorite Elton John singles, I suspect that the lovely Someone Saved My Life Tonight would be in the top ten – everything about the song works for me (even if it does remind of a half-witted co-worker I once had who insisted that the name of the song was Sugar Bear).

Glen Campbell – Rhinestone Cowboy
from Have A Nice Decade: The ’70s Pop Culture Box

I do remember Glen Campbell as a kid, not so much for his music but because he always seemed to be a guest on whatever afternoon talk show – Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas – that my mom would be watching.

And, I do remember Rhinestone Cowboy during its time on the charts as my brother had the 45 and played it constantly.

Maybe ten years ago, I was sitting in a bar, having a few drinks with friends when a melody caught my ear over the din of the crowd. It was a dance mix of Rhinestone Cowboy and – and I’m not usually a fan of such mixes – but it worked spectacularly.

Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion
from Armageddon soundtrack

I’ve never been an Aerosmith devotee. Possibly because their ’70s heydey was over by the time I was getting into music and their late ’80s comeback came as I had discovered college rock.

That said, there is a clutch of their songs which I do think are rather stellar, Sweet Emotion being one of them.

Janis Ian – At Seventeen
from Between The Lines

I had no frame of reference for the plight of the protagonist in At Seventeen in 1975.

(again, I was seven)

But, I did understand that things weren’t going well for her.

As for Janis Ian, I used to see her on occasion at a coffee shop where I’d stop and, though I never spoke to her, it appeared that things were much better for her than they had been at seventeen.