Hispanic Heritage Month Songs

After having benefitted from some ACLU playlists, I started wondering what other playlists there were.

It turns out that a lot of Spanish teachers have playlists for this month.

It is not the same depth that I would get when reviewing different bands, but for this phase of my life it works well.

I like to think that the high school and maybe even junior high teachers keep it clean. I do not spend enough time on it to know that for sure, but "Despacito" has not come up yet, so maybe.

There are a few new artists, and a lot of the songs are new to me, though not all.

For "La Cumparsita" and “El Día Que Me Quieras”, these versions are new, but those songs are old tango favorites, so I know them from one collection I have and also from a stage show.

In addition, I feel like "La Cumparsita" had a big influence on the song "Bye-Yum Pum Pum" from The Happiest Millionaire, a 1967 Disney film with Fred MacMurray. However, it appears to be a little too obscure for anyone to have bothered confirming it.

If it was not completely clear from looking, we left for Cincinnati on September 30th and returned from Indiana on October 4th. We covered a lot of ground but I have not written up much of it yet because of local things.

It will all work out.  

Daily Songs

9/15 “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” by Celia Cruz
9/16 “Oye Mi Canto” by Gloria Estefan
9/17 “Una Noche Más” by Jennifer Lopez
9/18 “Dos Gardenias” by Buena Vista Social Club
9/19 “Dímelo” by Marc Anthony
9/20 “Oye Cóme Va” by Tito Puente
9/21 “América, América” by Luis Miguel
9/22 “La Bikina” by Diego Boneta
9/23 “Por Ella” by Victor Manuelle
9/24 “Que Boníto Es Lo Boníto Silvana” by Carlos Ponce
9/25 “Serena” by Gíanpíero feat. Landa Freak
9/26 “Ven Conmígo (Solamente Tú)” by Cristina Aguilera
9/27 “Cien años” by Pedro Infante
9/28 “Torero” by Chayanne
9/29 “La Flor de la Canela“ by Gian Marco

-          Vacation -

10/5 “Baila Esta Cumbia” by Selena
10/6 “La Bilirrubina” by Juan Luis Guerra 4.40
10/7 “Llamado de Emergencía” by Daddy Yankee
10/8 “La Cumparsita”by Juan D’Arienzo
10/9 “Agua” by Bomba Estéreo
10/10 “Yo Me Llamo Cumbia” by Totó La Momposina
10/11 “Caballo Viejo” by Roberto Torres, Charanga Vallenata
10/12 “Sí Díos Me Quíta la Vída” by Alejandro Fernández
10/13 “El Día Que Me Quieras” by Carlos Gardel
10/14 “De Música Ligera” by Soda Stereo
10/15 “Amapola” by Gaby Moreno
10/16 “Sopa de Caracol” by Banda Blanca
10/17 “Lejos de Ti” by Pelo D’Ambrosio
10/18 “Hasta La Raíz” by Natalia Lafourcade
10/19 “Te Avíso, Te Anuncio (Tango)” by Shakira
10/20 “Rie, Llora” by La Sonora Santanera, LA INDIA

Music in between months

I am on vacation again and I have a lot of media going on.

Also, that other vacation threw off the schedule a bit. For my Hispanic Heritage Month songs and quotes, there were a few days in between September 15th and October 15th where I couldn't post, moving completion of a full month to October 20th. 

That left only eleven days until Native American Heritage Month would start. 

I decided to use those days to reflect on my life a little, past and future. I am taking this week to catch up on those posts.

Honestly, when I start going over my Native American Heritage reading, I may have to go way past just posting on Fridays. I don't know how that is going to work out yet, but I believe things will work out.

Once again, I will try posting things from the road, and it may or may not work, but I will adapt.

    Interim Songs:  

10/21 “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D Major, Op. 39 No. 1”composed by Edward Elgar, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with George Solti

This is because I just graduated. I earned this! 

10/22 “WKRP in Cincinnati Theme Song” sung by Steve Carlisle

That first trip was to Cincinnati, and we thought about this song constantly. It's a good song. 

10/23 “Yahoos and Triangles (King of the Hill Theme Song)” by The Refreshments

10/24 “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round” by The Monkees

This current trip is basically two days in San Antonio. Speaking of songs I really like, the King of the Hill theme is one. For songs triggered by a place name, The Monkees song references San Antonio repeatedly. (Well, San Anton, but I know what they meant.) 

10/25 “Holiday Road” by Lindsey Buckingham

While it could work with any trip, going to a Holiday World -- in Santa Claus, Indiana -- on the first trip made me think of it more. I didn't realize it so much until I was writing up Holiday World, but then I realized I needed to include that song. 

10/26 “The Last Song” by Elton John

10/27 “Supermodel (You Better Work)” by RuPaul

These are both for Pride month. I have not written about the AIDS reading yet, but RuPaul is in To Wong Foo. If "Supermodel" was not featured in any of those films, it has certainly been featured in others.

10/28 “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” by the cast of Agatha All Along

I knew I was going to finish with the last three, but before I got there we went to the Dead Media Haunted House. This played while we were in line and it's pretty cool. 

I have not watched Agatha All Along, but I did watch WandaVision and I really liked what they did with the theme songs. They did a good job with this one as well.   

10/29 “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett

10/30 “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon

10/31 “Sweet Vampires” by Alkaline Trio

 Finally, I still really want to try Halloween caroling. It obviously didn't happen this year -- there's things to work out -- but I think these three would be a pretty good set.

They are not completely family-friendly, which is a concern. That is a frequent problem with Alkaline Trio. Sure, "Werewolves of London" has hints of violence, but for Warren Zevon it's pretty tame. 

Those were my songs for the last third of October; there were no quotes.

Sometimes those work better than others. 

Go see Wildwood!

I finally saw Wildwood yesterday.

I was not sure I was going to.While I did read a lot of fantasy and adventure as an adolescent, I moved away from that, more toward non-fiction. Colin Meloy's book is after my time.

The clear love for Portland drew me in. The Unipiper is in it? Look at those cherry trees!

Plus, I am strongly in favor of Laika's anti-AI stance.

In addition, I liked the other Laika films I've seen pretty well:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/10/halloween-viewing-laika-edition.html 

(I still have not seen Missing Link.) 

At least, I liked their hearts; visually I often thought they were kind of ugly.

Wildwood looked like it was going to be really beautiful.

It was.

The ride through Portland doesn't take very long, though it is packed and impressive.

The beauty doesn't stop there, nor the love for the Pacific Northwest. 

If parts of it are less specific, those woods are very familiar, and that gorge and that coastline. 

One of the most memorable bits for me was fish leaping in a river and then a waterfall. Gorgeous.

Also, so much effort! 

I have made two animated short films: one in fourth grade and one in sixth. 

This is not to brag; they were not great. However, I do still remember how hard it was to get the vision to match what you could actually make, and the errors that happened even when you were being so careful. That's not just from my efforts but also seeing what my classmates ran into. 

Yes, we were kids with a small budget and not much experience; it's different. We also watched several animated films (that is where I was first introduced to Will Vinton). There is some background knowledge that no matter how swept up (really tense, sometimes) I was during the movie, I can look back at the swarming birds in flight or the facial expressions or the scale of the battle, have an idea of the difficulty of that, and be amazed.

Then there is the heart.

Grief comes through in the picture; it is something that has been on my mind a lot for various reasons.

There are different ways of dealing with loss. It can warp us, or it can soften us in a way that becomes a strength.  

So I say go see Wildwood.

Go because it loves Portland, and some of the worst people keep slandering Portland. Portland deserves the love.

Go because it is not only beautiful and technically accomplished, but because it does that valuing the contribution of humans.

And go for the belief in the connection and love. 

Still about trick-or-treating, the complaints

One thing I wasn't expecting from the complaints was how often Trunk-or-Treat came up.

Many people blame this phenomenon for the lack of trick-or-treaters and the end of people decorating their houses. 

I swear most of the Trunk-or-Treat events I see are not on Halloween, but happen in conjunction with harvest festivals or something. There may be regional differences, but there is certainly no reason why children could not get treats out of both trunks and houses. 

For that specific train of thought, I still think building community is key. That can include communication where children know that they can come to this street and safely get treats, which may include improving walkways and lighting. Someone complained about parents driving the kids, but maybe that's for safety.

However, there was another complaint about the driving, and that brought up Trunk-or-Treat in a way I had not expected. 

Unpopular opinion- you should trick or treat in your own community. If your neighborhood sucks go to a trunk or Treat but the whole horde of people who drive from neighborhood to neighborhood kinda suck

I am not linking to the post, because this would get some hate. I mean, it's deserved, but I'm not going to contribute to the negative atmosphere.

It also is not a complete shock. There is a bit of a seasonal trend for people in nice neighborhoods to get mad seeing kids they believe are poor.

Of course, that tends to mean that the kids are not white. Point that out and they say the kids are stealing candy and there are videos that show 49 brown people stealing candy.

That may be true, but I remember a while back there had been a series of assaults on police. These were not apparently related incidents, but out of eight assailants -- seven of whom were white guys with Nazi tattoos -- the mugshot that kept popping up was the Black guy.

In addition, I remember this picture from a football game that got a lot of people mad because of all the brown students at a University of Texas game:

https://apnews.com/article/texas-french-football-racist-16519b7da3e617a33c60ee7f5a5ec712 

They were trying to say that Asian students were stealing all the college slots from Texas natives, but there are two problems with that:

1. There was pretty solid data on admissions where the percentage of international students was limited and state residents had many slots.
2. While there certainly were students of Indian (from India) descent in the picture, Texas was once part of Mexico with a native population. You could easily have brown students whose ancestors were there before the Mayflower.   

This should also serve as a reminder that in your nice neighborhoods you could have have rich brown neighbors from India or other countries. 

While I had no idea that Trunk-or-Treat was for poor kids (and I still think it can serve a purpose while coexisting with trick-or-treating), I did have some idea that racism is often connected with the opposite of caring and reaching out.

That's kind of familiar, but I think there is some extra anti-poor sentiment that is worth noting. 

Apparently "Mom Twitter", where you see a lot of the nice-neighborhoods-being-invaded discourse, leans pretty conservative. Maybe that should be surprising, but it isn't.

Leading up to the election, some conservatives were feeling threatened that they were facing backlash, which honestly was pretty smart of them. 

You will see more backlash from them as they start fearing losing power.

Not related at all (sarcasm): 

https://abcnews.com/GMA/Culture/martha-stewart-apologizes-homeless-person-halloween-costume/story?id=137770962 

FYI, now that the first apology and the lie that she was trying to raise awareness failed, Martha has switched to blaming it on a Black man, Craig Melvin:

https://people.com/martha-stewart-blames-today-co-host-craig-melvin-for-controversial-halloween-costume-12236296 

Sounds about white. 

Organizing fun

There were some people who posted about having lots of trick-or-treaters.

That went in two different directions.

The people who posted positively about that were often people who had done things to make that happen. Some of them mentioned having hot chocolate or treats for the parents (sometimes alcoholic -- a lot of houses doing that could be dangerous). Someone else had a haunted house set up, and one person was grilling hot dogs.

I don't know that we would go that far, but if we had several neighbors we were working with, maybe.

For negative responses to lots of kids, there is one specific vein that I am saving for tomorrow. 

Otherwise, I want to get back to the people who did not have many trick-or-treaters come and who were unhappy about that. 

There were some complaints that seemed to be a bitter nostalgia or resentment that you can't have both parents trick-or-treating with the kids and have someone home for trick-or-treaters.

Mind you, one of those guys -- when getting pushback -- said their children wanted to trick-or-treat for two hours.

Again, in my childhood it was very rare to go off the block. Trick-or-treating took a few minutes. Also, having older siblings, I don't think my parents ever took me. I went with other kids or went alone when I got older. That would be more questionable today. 

I did see one solution in the "Halloween Candy" episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. While the parents took out their children, Grandma watched the grandparents' house while Grandpa gave out candy at the other house. 

That worked because there were four adults covering two houses, and they were right across the street from each other. Viewers of the show will probably not feel that being across from your parents is ideal. As it was, Grandpa ate so much of the candy he went looking for more and ended up distributing condoms. It probably still could have worked with better planning.

If you want to both be out there for two hours with your children, this might be where having other neighbors who are manning the doors can help. I mean, you can't be in multiple places at once. I get that, but maybe you can have other people in those places. We know people whose neighborhoods don't get trick-or-treaters and want them, so that could be one option. Or if 11 houses have candy and 4 don't, that's not terrible coverage.

Realistically, I believe there is a limited number of years where your children will be thrilled to have both parents tagging along.

And yes, we will always give candy to teenagers (parents if they want it, but they almost never do), we are not gatekeeping costumes, and we have given kids new trick-or-treat bags when they didn't have them. 

Back to the complainers who missed all of those great things that no one does anymore... okay, obviously the guy grilling hot dogs and the couple making the hot chocolate and various other people are doing those things. Couldn't you?

One of the great things about being an adult is that you can do things. There may still be times when asking for permission is appropriate, but you have a lot of options. 

The one guy also missed trading candy afterwards.

Look, nostalgia is the pain of not truly being able to return to a familiar place, for various reasons including that it has changed or that you have changed.

As a child, I worried about this an unreasonable amount; will I someday have to give up watching Saturday morning cartoons? Little did I know I would grow to prefer sleeping in anyway. I could have still watched the cartoons, and now if I miss them there is Youtube and classic television channels (and DVRs) and DVD collections.

(I also worried that I would no longer want to look at the Sears and Montgomery Ward wishbooks. Their disappearance does hurt a bit.) 

Still, there are Halloween nostalgia solutions. Maybe you have a trading party the next day with the leftovers from the Halloween candy you were giving out. I could imagine people getting into that.

When you get candy at about 11 houses, trading doesn't really come up. That was still fun and excitement enough for me then, and I do different things for fun now.

Last year we planned a Halloween-themed activity that involved a Snoopy craft, decorating sugar cookies, and had goodie bags for people to take on their way out. It invoked some of the childhood fun, but was its own thing. 

People enjoyed it, but repeating it would not have been the same. This year we played Bunco instead. 

There are lots of ways to have fun. 

It can take some work. If you are really into it, it can be a lot of work, but it doesn't have to be.

You can probably find something better to do than complain. 

Post-Halloween analysis

We had 26 trick-or-treaters. 

That is a little below average for us, but could have been much worse.

It might have been less if we were not set up the way we were. We had a table in front of the house where we sat with the candy bowl so we could see people coming. We do this more to not have to keep opening and closing the door, risking escaped pets, but it works out.

As it is, we still really needed better lighting; our street is pretty dark.

Besides this, there were really only four houses lit up. When another neighbor came home, they said to tell trick-or-treaters to go to them, too (which we did), but they had missed the first part of the evening and their house was not obviously decorated. 

This is a cul-de-sac of fifteen houses. There is an apartment complex and a subdivision with some townhomes nearby, but there are not sidewalks or really any road shoulders to speak of. Since the apartments and the townhomes went in, there is a lot of street parking, and there is not much street lighting.

This means that there can be some difficulty in getting to our street for children on foot. If only a third of the street is giving candy, why would we be a destination?

We were lucky that it was not rainy, though it was pretty chilly.

I started playing my Halloween playlist on my phone. I think this made our stop a little cooler, in a good way.

I was probably going to write about this anyway, but of the different conversations I have been seeing, one of them has been disappointment from a lot of people that they did not get more kids.

(It's not the only conversation, but hey, we have all week.)

Here's the thing: we love Halloween. We are excited to get trick-or-treaters. We want that to happen.

If we want that to happen next year -- and we could easily get rained out, it's too soon to predict that -- we would have to lay some groundwork.

We could get more lighting to help make us more visible.

We could get more outdoor decorations. We have some, but it doesn't compare to the inside of the house. That is not visible enough to draw trick-or-treaters.

Even more important, we should probably talk to neighbors. The others who give out candy, yes, but the especially the ones who don't.

Would they be interested in doing it? What reservations do they have? Can we help?

If there are people who aren't going to be home, that's okay, that happens. Could someone maybe take up position in their driveway?

I think I remember it usually being about 11 of the 15 houses giving candy when I was a kid, which we were fine with.

One thing that may be in our favor now is that there are more potential doors near our block with the new construction. It messes up the parking but there can be other benefits. There was a lot more empty space along the main road when I was a kid.

We might also want to look at more word of mouth. Tell your friends we are going to be handing out candy! 

It would be a lot of work and it would involve talking to people. Are we up for that? 

At least I have about a year to figure it out. 

Late Pride Month: In the movies

One of the movies that I was all set to watch was The Celluloid Closet, from 1995.

In retrospect, I am almost positive that I either read about the book version in Alternate Channels in my reading three years ago or that it was mentioned when I was watching Disclosure two years ago.  

Somehow in planning ahead I had only remembered the movie, but in watching the movie and reading about it there were clear references to the book. 

The Celluloid Closet (Revised Edition): Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo  

Also, when I was looking up the DVD to borrow it from the library, this other movie kept coming up, Vito from 2011.  

Here's how it all went down:

Vito Russo was a film buff and critic who put on festivals, wrote, and gave lectures on film history. Through his connections he got some great archival access that eventually led to his writing of The Celluloid Closet book. (This is simplified, but there are resources to learn more.)

That came out in 1981 and he died in 1990.

Russo had wanted the book to be turned into a documentary. He was helping Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman with that from about 1986, but his health was declining and they didn't get any real traction until 1990 when a British television channel expressed interest. Then, about 21 years after that, Jeffrey Schwarz made a documentary about Vito's life, Vito.

For a little background information, Rob Epstein will be coming up with some other films. I was not previously familiar with Jeffrey Schwarz but he seems to focus on films that profile an individual, so one focusing on the person made sense.

For The Celluloid Closet, I saw the movie before I read the book. If I was amazed at how thorough the movie was, with that book as its inspiration it makes sense. Russo's knowledge of film was broad and deep.

As I was thinking about what films might come up, with one notable exception they were all covered. 

Also, there were movies in there that I had never heard of or that I knew but had things that went completely over my head.

I had been thinking about the Hayes Code on and off since our Warner Brothers Studio Tour, but I learned a lot from the book and movie. Perhaps most interesting was that Hitchcock liked pushing it and that Preminger was actively trying to break it. While the book's focus was the portrayal of homosexuality on film, of necessity it also deals with the perceived morals and purposes of film.

Possibly one reason it was hard getting interest in the documentary was that the book was seen as somewhat negative and maybe a little bitter. The documentary ended up being more positive.

There are two things with that. One is that Vito did want the documentary to be entertaining; he was not just a scold. He loved film even when it frustrated him. If he was at times negative, there was good reason for it. 

Another part of that, though, was that the filmmakers were feeling more optimistic. Part of that was the reception of Philadelphia (1993). (The Birdcage did not come out until after The Celluloid Closet, though I believe I remember references to La Cage aux Folles.) 

Here's the thing: one of the big themes of the book was the tendency to kill gay characters, even if they were very sympathetic. 

I kind of remember this as a phase that movies go through with multiple marginalized groups. When they are moving up from only being villains (and maybe some extras) but still not getting to be lead characters; they become the one you really like who dies.

Also, I can't help thinking that while there may be sensitive portrayals in Philadelphia, the guy dies. It's about an AIDS case, so that's expected, but still, death.

But what I was really thinking of was "Clexa."

Full disclosure, I have not seen a lot of these movies, and I never watched The 100, a series that ran from 2014 to 2020. 

I am, nonetheless, on the internet. There were people who 'shipped Lexa with Clarke (both girls), and as soon as they consummated the relationship, Lexa was shot and killed when Clarke was the target. (Then, later, Clarke marries a dude.)

Twenty years after The Celluloid Closet film came out, this led to much discussion about "bury your gays."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/bury-your-gays-why-100-877176/

From the article there were three other prominent deaths at the time. Maybe those characters weren't part of ships.  

There are other shows and movies. Hallmark has some holiday romances and Heated Rivalry is really big now, but Elio and Strange World didn't really get promoted. I am not saying there hasn't been any progress, but I am not sure how optimistic Vito himself would have been. 

Therefore, when his final screed (I think this was from 1987 edition) was largely telling gay people not to look to Hollywood, but pursue independent films, I think he had a point. To be fair, there are other reasons to make that point as well. 

Anyway, this is a good read and watch list for anyone interested in film, and Vito will come up in one of the other films.

Now I would like to get to that exception.

In 1941's Suspicion, there is a subtle but pretty clear lesbian couple, Isobel and Phyllis. I read it as kind of a Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas vibe, but it's there, and accepted without being a big deal. Neither Celluloid Closet mentions it.

One other film step for marginalized groups is to become background characters who don't do a lot but exist unmolested, which is still something. Maybe Hitch was trying to fast forward to that.

I did do some searches to see if anyone else cared. I do have the internet.

I found two posts: 

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2013/6/30/great-moments-in-gayness-suspicion.html 

https://grandillusions.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/a-moment-of-delicate-queerness-in-hitchcocks-suspicion/ 

So it's not just me.