Music Moment: The Beatles, “Rain”

The Beatles — Rain

Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life, some rain must fall. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Longfellow also said, “The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” I’m trying very hard to internalize that message.

I took this. About a year ago. With my Diana F+. It was the first roll I shot with it, and almost all the rest turned out wretched.

This track by the Beatles was the B-side to “Paperback Writer.” It is noteworthy for being one of the first songs to use backward vocals. The final lines feature the first verse sung backward, with “Raiiiin” as a chorus over the top.

“I fell in love with an alien” by vampire_zombie on deviantart.

If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.
If the rain comes,
if the rain comes.

When the sun shines they slip into the shade
(When the sun shines down.)
And sip their lemonade.
(When the sun shines down.)
When the sun shines,
when the sun shines.

Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.

I can show you that when it starts to rain,
(When the Rain comes down.)
Everything's the same.
(When the Rain comes down.)
I can show you, I can show you.

Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.

Can you hear me, that when it rain and shines,
(When it rains and shines.)
It's just a state of mind?
(When it rains and shines.)

Can you hear me, can you hear me?
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.

One of the other, like, three pictures that turned out.

sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht fI.
(Rain)

niaR.
(Rain)
enihsnuS.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. (Gilbert K. Chesterton)

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.
(Saint Basil the Great)

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? (Douglas Adams)

It ain’t no use to grumble and complain;
It’s jest as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
Why, rain’s my choice.
(James Whitcomb Riley)

Photographed by Nirrimi Hakanson on facebook, via ffffound.

I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies. (Eden Ahbez)

He covers the sky with clouds, he supplies the earth with rain,
and maketh the grass grow on the hills. (Psalms 147:8)

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain. (Langston Hughes)

Looking for upsides. How about this? Shit week, yes, but hey, free car wash.

Post-Holiday Pick-Up Day! : Miss December 1992, Barbara Moore

Thought I’d help you beat the weird post-holiday slump today (unless you are in Canadialand in which case you’re opening all your Boxing Day gifts and hoarking down the moose jerky and Molson’s today in front of a hockey game anyway, so you hosers wait and check it out tomorrow!) with some lovely and talented Miss Decembers of yore.

Unlike the NSFW November fiasco, I got no intention of doing every single Miss December ever: I have instead culled the herd to a manageable flock of interesting favorites. Enjoy!

Photographed by Stephen Wayda.

Besides having managed to keep quite a tenacious hold on the D-list spotlight of sorts (really it’s more like a kid shining a flashlight under their face at summer camp) over her career, the lovely and talented Barbara Moore, Miss December 1992, had quite the “electric” magnetism — she was struck by lightning three years before her Playboy appearance.

It was a rainy night in Nashville when the lights went out. Barbara Moore was walking down Acklen Avenue when it happened. Zap! A bolt of lightning whams down about 12 inches from her pretty ankles. Streetlights are blinking and so is she, tiptoeing down the avenue, thinking, “I almost didn’t live to turn twenty-two.”

Miss Moore was born in Spokane, Washington, which is where a lot of my cousins live. Those who abandoned Priest River, the small town we’re all from in the top of Idaho, and were drawn to the siren call of the sinful Big City — for shame! Spokane is the Sodom to Boise’s Gomorrah! (This probably means nothing to you, but trust me, it’s really funny. Would it help to add that neither Spokane nor Boise has over 210,000 people?)

Who else do you know who has worked a slime line? Barbara did, at a salmon cannery in Ketchikan, Alaska, where she gutted fish as they passed on a conveyer belt. She has been a flight attendant, a tournament polo player, a model and an actress who has made videos with Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., and Reba McEntire that have aired nationally on TNN and CMT. Now she is Miss December — a woman you’re sure to love if you desire a little excitement. (“The Moore, the Merrier,” Playboy, December 1992.)

More excitement than working at a cannery in Ketchikan? The hell you say! God, sometimes I miss the Pacific Northwest. Then I go to the grocery, in the sun, in regular shoes with no galoshes, and there are no crazy people with carts of cans raving front-door-side that AIDS is the lord’s punishment for homosexshualls, and no relatives with missing teeth working the register and reminding me of the time I fell in the crick and my bra came undone (worst. hike. ever.). There is just sterile, spray-tanned, PTA propriety, with small smiles and simple “Merry Christmases.” Mmm. I like you, Cali. I will keep you.

Barbara Moore’s celebrity rose in 2004 when she began dating actor Lorenzo Lamas. Ironically, she had met Lamas through her friend and fellow Playmate Shauna Sand, who was married to Lamas at the time. They were scheduled to marry in July 2005, however the wedding was called off at the last moment, reportedly after Lamas discovered Moore in the company of a male stripper at her bachelorette party. (the wiki)

No way! Lorenzo Lamas, you are a man whose sound and sober judgment I would normally implicitly trust, but I must ask: are you sure?? Because Barbie just doesn’t seem like the type to promote nor enjoy nudity!

Well, that’s it for your first Post-Holiday Pick-Up entry. I’ll schedule a few more of these for later in the day, so stay tuned!

NSFW November: Miss November 1988

The lovely and talented Miss November 1988, was reported in her interview to be the first Filipino model to appear in Playboy.

“I am an ethnic jumble,” says [name]. … “My parents had their Filipino friends — my Mom was always cooking this smelly fish — but I grew up like a white suburban kid. I played lacrosse, basketball and tennis. (“Thrilla from Manila,” Playboy, November 1988)

They called her article, “Thrilla From Manila,” but actually she grew up in Havertown, Pennsylvania. In case you don’t get the title (which makes you absolutely no son of mine), it is a reference to the third and final fight between heavyweight boxers Cassius “Muhammad Ali” Clay and Joe Frazier for the title of Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, which took place in the Philippines on October 2, 1975.

The fight finally brought to a conclusion a bitter rivalry that had been going since 1971, that for my money is one of the best stories in the history of sports (where is its movie, Hollywood???). This one’s got it all, guys: draft-dodging, personal jealousies, the backdrop of major historical events, the freaking President getting involved, even. And through it all, two very different but very contentious personalities, Frazier and Ali, duking it out verbally and physically, in the press and in pre-fights. In the Thrilla in Manila, they went fourteen grueling, brutal rounds, both fighting to the point of almost total physical exhaustion before boxing official Eddie Futch declared Ali the victor (he said at the time it was to spare Frazier’s life, although really either could have gone).

Frazier protested stopping the fight, shouting “I want him boss,” and trying to get Futch to change his mind.

Futch simply replied, “It’s all over. No one will forget what you did here today”, and signaled to the referee to end the bout. Ali was therefore declared the victor.

He would later claim that this was the closest to dying he had ever been, and also stated, “Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.”

In a brief post-fight interview with one of the commentators, Ali announced, “He is the greatest fighter of all times, next to me.” (the wiki)

Do you even understand how major all of that is? Boxing is not as violent as you think, and it’s not always just big fat guys hugging (I always say, “Get a room or start punching”), not when you have two men in the ring as skilled as Frazier and the Greatest. Though you seldom see it at the heavyweight level, you see it more often with middle and welter (not bantam as much cause they’re so quick it’s like the cockfight from which their category’s name comes), it’s a graceful and carefully plotted series of moves, like a bloody ballet, it’s like … like art. It’s a dance. And you have these two combatants who are so equally matched that they are like hell-soul-mates, made to fight each other. That’s just, it’s just — like… god… oh, man, I honestly get misty just thinking about that event. That is some great motherfucking sports right there. I wish I had been born to see it firsthand, but I’ve watched clips of it on ESPN classic. (Boy, I miss having that) Le sigh.

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As an epilogue, this story gets even better, in my opinion, because dig this: In June of 2001, guess who met for a grudge match on the Thrilla in Manila fight? Their freaking daughters. The fight was re-enacted, sort of, in New York by Laila “She Bee Stingin'” Ali and Jackie “Sister Smoke” Frazier-Lyde in what the press called Ali/Frazier IV. Laila, sixteen years younger than Jackie and with a little more training under her belt, took it in eight. But I love that both of them went for it! What a great story.

Finally, dig the Jessica Rabbit cover! God bless ya, Roger Rabbit and all of 1988. And to Miss November 1988, about whom this entry is not even at all remotely concerned, sorry. It’s not your fault that I think boxing is more interesting than whatever your little turn-ons and ambitions were. I feel kind of badly now. How about this? I will try to make it up to you another day, I swar to gar. You will get more attention from me later. Unless I forget.

Advice: Ellen Von Unwerth extremely NSFW edition

I am off to once again attempt to set off soosh bombasticos with the Gentleman, but soon I will have the time to go in-depth on one of my favorite photographers and a former lovely and talented model herself, the awesome Ellen Von Unwerth. Here are pictures from her book Revenge, along with quotes from an interview with author David Bowman.

Ellen Von Unwerth: “It’s good to shock. It’s not good to always be careful. It’s good to disturb a little.”

David Bowman: Have you yourself ever been handcuffed naked to a radiator?

EVU: [Laughs.] No. In every picture there is something personal. Even in the casting — there’s something about a girl. There is always something personal. Do you mean, “Do I get tied up every day?” No. [Laughs.] That’s not the case. When I was a child we would be playing, you know, “You are the slave.” “You are the queen.” “You are mean.” You know, it’s like fairytale.

David Bowman: How did “Revenge” come about?

EVU: I wanted to tell a story almost like a movie. I wanted to do something erotic with girls I knew would have fun doing it. So I wrote this little story and then I photographed it. I booked the girls like a movie cast. Everyone had a character. The guy also. I showed them a script, little drawings. And had them play out little scenes.

David Bowman: Was it fun being so wicked?

EVU: It was very much fun, for the girls and for me.