I liked The Artist! A lot! Really! Lori and I saw it at the end of the long weekend we began by seeing a real, old-time silent film. The new-time near-silent film was surely one of the best movies of '12. No question.

But I struggled with the idea of it being Best Picture — winning at the Golden Globes, currently nominated as such for the Oscars. Compared to the other Oscar two nominees I'd seen, the movie was better than Midnight in Paris (terrific and lovable at many points, uneven at others) and incomparable to Tree of Life (with which I was one of the few folks in my theater to walk out happy). Of the nominees I hadn't seen, all of them, just on a review basis, appeared to fall shorter, except for Hugo and The Descendants. I was (and am) still hoping to see them soonish. Anyway, back to the point, I liked The Artist a lot but couldn't crown it.

Why? I couldn't quite explain. I thought, in any movie, Hollywood being in love with Hollywood had its limits. But even if the movie relied on old tricks, I did have to admit the old tricks had new twists or found strong use. The story was well done and the acting quality. I missed people's voices, but that was no reason to dock a movie serious points, was it?

Then I got to this line in a capsule review:

The ideal viewer of Michel Hazanavicius's film would be one who turned up knowing nothing of what was to come; or, at least, who thought that the opening minutes, in silent black-and-white, would soon be set aside, and that a noisy, colorful movie would ensue.

I wondered if I knew too much walking into the movie. I knew no great plot spoilers, and critics' reviews had never knocked a top movie down any pegs for me. But this time around I wondered about expectations, not just for this film but for movies broadly. If a film had no talking, did I miss having a conversation with it? Or, walking in, knowing I would?

I know it's only about 9:30 on the East Coast. But whether you are a Yankees fan or a Yankees hater, whether you think "annunciatory" is a word, whether you've enjoyed Ian Frazier's Radiolab find about Tic Tac Toe or his amazing New Yorker history of trans-Siberian van trips or a million other things, you may love this sentence of his, a recent lede:

"On a dark winter evening when Yankee Stadium is all lit up, it radiates an annunciatory glow, as if an amazing idea had just occurred to it."

I'm glad the new all-news radio station is starting in Washington. I'm happy not because the station is going to be great or WTOP needs the competition — but because the arrival of the station means the last of placeholder broadcasts on 99.1. Following HFS and El Zol to that spot on the dial, the placeholder there has been The History of Rock and Roll.

We ran across the radio documentary on the drive back from Staunton, and the moment nearly drove us to madness. Madness, I tell you! We were scanning stations and stopped in our scanning when we thought we heard oldies. Oldies, I tell you! The format hadn't been on a major D.C. signal in years. The format had jumped to a satellite or "evolved" into overplayed classic rock. To hear a true Motown classic, early rock number or non-Beatles Invasion hit was a rarity. But there one was.

For five seconds.

After five seconds, the song switched to another terrific oldie. Then it jumped five seconds later. More songs followed, more jumping into the next, over and over, dozens of jumps between the best parts of songs where we were ready to sing every word, climb through the radio in a white-rabbit style, even pay money to a free medium to hear the rest.

We finally had to change the station. Ten minutes later, we ran across the station again, this time in an ad break. Maybe on the other side of the break, we told ourselves, the quick-clip feature would be done. But how wrong we were. The seconds of clips began rattling off again, and we had to change stations. We felt broken. The radio was torturing us.

Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 1 by mjs538

Only yesterday, through the station article and a Wikipedia listing, did I learn the mistreatment was purposeful and once even popular. Wiki:

One of the lengthiest documentaries of any medium (48 hours in the 1969 version, 52 hours each for the 1978 and 1981 versions), The History of Rock & Roll is a definitive history of the Rock and Roll genre, stretching from the early 1950s to its day. … Notable features of this documentary include the "chart sweep," featuring a montage of #1 songs and notable hits from a given year or artist, a "time sweep" for each one-hour segment providing a montage of the major hits for each year or individual artist, and closing with a special climactic time sweep featuring a montage of every #1 hit from 1955 to the year of the latest version.

Yes, mind-destroying now when oldies are scarce, the "chart sweep" was the Girl Talk, the mash-up, the year-end DJ Earworm of its day.

It's cool to imagine all the work that went into this initial production. This link, where the above audio comes from, explains the work well. But in 2012, radio stations should know the conflicts of modern ears.

From an alarm clock failure to work issues to extended Metro delays to travel-planning frustrations, it's safe to say today was an all-out loser.

There's a feeling in the pit of my stomach like the rest of the week isn't going to get any better. I don't have that feeling often; and when I do, it's usually right. I've searched for a song tonight to try and fix the day, and that task hasn't gone well either. So, time to shut the thing down.

On to tomorrow.

Lori and her family was nice enough to take me along to see Hairspray at the Signature Theatre last week, and it was my first time seeing the show in any form, stage or screen. The production was good, as quick and upbeat as all the reviews said to expect. Carolyn Cole did a strong Tracy, and the Von Tussles had a quality level of villainous-ness. To get local PBS personality Robert Aubry Davis as Edna was also a kick. Early reviews hit him pretty hard. He was no Harvey Fierstein, but it seemed like he had improved. Scene-stealing, though, were Lauren Williams as best friend Amber and Nova Y. Payton as Motormouth Maybelle. Forget that character's rhymes. Payton's I Know Where I've Been won biggest.

But what really worked for me — and I'm not sure how intentional this effect was — were the questions the show left. Can there be negative space around a bright, happy-ending musical about social progress? I think with John Waters, yes. Even after jumping to Broadway and now into productions around the country, more complicated issues survive in what you take away. Why are the black characters less developed and more sexualized than the white ones? Is the special ed section a send-up of those students or the system that segregates them? While the cast is integrated to near split, why is the audience almost entirely white? What does the casting of Edna mean now? To cast Divine as a sympathetic mom in a family movie in 1988 means something different than putting a large local male celebrity in a huge dress in 2012. How well do the choices of the late-'80s and early '00s work years later?

Lori says she and her mom walked away with similar questions. I like that in a show — takes you effectively in one direction (perhaps in a brightly colored, sing-a-long way), but leaves other directions open.

I'm not as deep into collecting Springsteen bootlegs as I used to be.

I started midway through college and collected a couple hundred until easing off a few years ago. All of this was through downloading (which subverts bootleg profiteers, which the Bruce camp has tacitly backed), not buying (which helps the profiteers, earning the camp's annoyance and occasional legal chase). But the hobby got to a point where it was taking too much of my time. I quit vanity plates for the same reason.

The great sportswriter Giles Smith has a quote, which I posted on this blog once before, amid writer's block, caputured the Freudian nature:

What is it about small boys and completion? [Collecting cricket programs, if I recall Smith's story correctly] I could say I was displaying a precocious interest in the aesthetic of wholeness, but the truth is I was just being reposterously anal. Small boys are pushed that way by the makers of bubblegum cards, by the designers of petrol station promotions, by Stanley Gibbons [apparently it's a British stamp thing] and countless others who encourage us to "collect the set" and are never made to answer for the psychological implications of what they do.

All of this personal background is to explain to why I missed the news in December that Wolfgang's Vault, the great concert-archive site, has acquired the original tapes of one of Springsteen's killer 1978 Passaic shows and plans to restore, digitize and release the video in 2012. I hear the show isn't my favorite all-time bootleg (September 19, night one of the stand, booted as Passaic Night and as Piece de Resistance), but you have to imagine the subsequent night was damn good too.

But wait! You can do more than imagine. A beat-up, not-yet-restored copy of this video is online. It's damn good. Can't wait for Wolfgang.

In Frederick, the Weinberg Center for the Arts has a grand old movie theater with a Wurlitzer organ. Arriving there in 1926, the instrument is the only theater organ in all Maryland still in its original installation.

And it could not be more installed. The organ sits beneath the center of the stage, rising and lowering at will, with pipes running under the stage and behind side walls, all venting sound into the open through grates. For theater work, the organ is significantly more complex than your standard church organ. Weinberg organists mock church players. I'm not kidding. It's great. Along with the usual keys and pipes, there are buttons and back-end mechanisms to make the sounds of dozens of different instruments, like bells, drum hits and even horse-clopping.

Why would an organ need horse-clopping? Silent movies. An organist in old times would accompany the movies all day long. The advent of talkies nearly killed off this machine. But for some reason, the theater kept it. Various restorations and acts of love followed. Read details.

All of this history leads to the present day, where throughout the year the theater screens silent movies and an organist plays nonstop for an hour and a half, or however long is necessary, often writing their own scores in the weeks before a screening, to bring the film to your ears.

Lori and I saw the legendary Douglas Fairbanks swash-buckle his way through 1926's The Black Pirate, one of the first Technicolor pictures. It was the Pirates of the Caribbean of its time. Critics hated it. Audiences loved it. The plot was thin, but stunts and effects were great. In that film-making era, how Fairbanks cut his way through the ship's sail and rode his way down as he sliced without visible wires, I have no idea.

The same goes for a scene of dozens of rescue troops swimming under water at once. Did they use a giant tank? The scene, as old as it is, still throws you off-kilter. I wish there were a YouTube clip of it. Other parts I wish were on YouTube? A converted pirate keeping himself awake to protect the pirate by leaning on multiple knives. A compilation of every instance men in bathing suits tackled each other. The ship explosions.

All of the scenes were innovative and inspirational, in their own ways. How might the storytelling get him down from the topsail? How might you do an underwater scene when you didn't even have sound? How might the pirate keep himself awake? How might he improvise? Even with the constant, amusing bathing-suit tackling, how might you give everyone in a shot something to do, lacking good coordination tools?

Also, it's 1926. You're experimenting with color. What do you do?

The organist's stamina was amazing, never letting up during the film. He also gave a good introductory talk and stuck around for questions after. You couldn't ask for much more for $7 on a Saturday afternoon.

For food after, Bryan Voltaggio's new Volt Lunchbox was nearby. As casual as original Volt was pricey, the spot was open until 6:30. Five-dollar sandwiches (get The Pilgrim, PDF menu), chocolate milk, soups, salads, and cookies were fresh, tasty and capped a Frederick win.

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Last great sensory experience of last night: waking up in the middle of the night, looking out the window and seeing this relative stillness. I had joked the other day to a friend that it felt like one of the times of year when a snowstorm sneaked up on you. Then one did. Beautiful.

First great sensory experience of the early morning: hearing a snippet of Coltrane's Love Supreme in a BBC story on saving the house where he wrote the album. Had to play the full thing immediately. Beautiful.

I posted the other day that early "wild" word of Springsteen's new album either boded very well or very poorly. With the release of the album's first single last night, put up a point in the positive column.

We Take Care of Our Own has a strong beat, tight (Magic-style) vocals and all kinds of anger. Backstreets says the chorus makes the song "not only be Springsteen's most misinterpreted song since Born in the U.S.A., but misinterpreted in precisely the same way." Sounds exactly right to me. But as the review goes on to state, the ambiguity runs in various directions. While clearly fired up about the American condition, underneath there's a "So-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it" layer.

As much as I like initial first track, what matters most to a Springsteen album's quality in the last decade are the next several tracks we hear. With this tight sound (I'm not quite willing to say Arcade Fire – again, far too reminiscent of Bruce's own '07 Magic, even keeping the strings), how the music diversifies over the rest of the album will be critical. Can the message hit enough different, right notes to sustain itself?

Part of the fun of reading Shakespeare is his exposure of language uses since lost and forgotten or uses so modern-seeming that they're unexpected in Elizabethan times. When Lori gave me a copy of Much Ado About Nothing to read before our Staunton trip, I enjoyed coming across "carpet-monger," "hobby-horses," "tennis-balls," and others.

Good: The book that held the play came with a glossary. Better: This book came from the Cambridge University Press in 1923. Not only were the editors looking nearly as far back in history as today's reader (me!) was, but today's reader also got a long look back at them. Best: Their glossary provided a mixture of both effects. Below were my favorites.

Everything below is directly quoted. Any quote marks are from Cambridge eds. I haven't added my own quote marks just to save you the tedium.

ADVERTISEMENT: advice, admonition.

BLOCK: (a) mould for a hat, i.e. fashion style, (b) blockhead, simpleton.

CARPET-MONGER: a carpet-knight, a contemptuous term for one who prowess belong rather to the boudoir than to the battlefield.

HAGGARD: hawk which has moulted at least once before being caught, and therefore much more difficult to train than one caught younger.

HOBBY-HORSES: buffoons.

LIVER: formerly considered the seat of the passions.

MARCH-CHICK: precocious youngster.

NIGHT-GOWN: 'It is generally supposed that the night-gown proper, or night-rail, was not worn in England until the middle of the 16th century, and then only by royalty or the nobility.'

PIKE: 'Put in the pikes with a vice.' The pike was a detachable spike, for trusting at the enemy, in the centre of the buckler…. Benedick's indelicate reference needs no comment. [I love this.]

SUN-BURNT: [had just never thought about Elizabethans saying this.]

TENNIS-BALLS: In Shakespeare's day these were made of white leather and stuffed with hair, generally dog's hair.

TOOTH-PICKER: toothpick ("Tooth-picks, introduced from abroad, were much in request at this period….").