The Peoples' Chef
Mistakes on paper, reviews in print
U2 Fans,
We need to talk about God and love and how the “beloved” can be “God,” or it can be your life-long romantic partner.
Or do we not need to talk about this? Can it just be both? And sometimes meaning is open to interpretation?
I just remember U2 fans in the 90s who were kinda Christian telling me that they liked U2 the band because the songs could be about God and the songs could be about loving another person. They appreciated the mystery and the intersections.
Once, years ago in the car, while listening to some playlist I made up, my son said out loud, “Why are all the songs about breaking up and love and stuff?”
Before phones and five-hundred forms of distraction and The Big Fish to Fry, my kids used to listen to song lyrics on rides in cars. They frequently asked me questions about the lyrics. For instance, in Vance Joy’s “Riptide,” he says “All my friends are turning green.”
My kids asked me, “What does he mean that his friends are turning green?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s some poetic license he has.”
Some of us get a poetic license and it’s not anything we have to earn in a school; you just decide one day you’ll get one and you use it. My hunch for “my friends are turning green” coming before “you’re the magician’s assistant in their dream” is that Vance Joy’s speaker is suggesting, his friends are becoming more concerned with money and how to get it.
But I really don’t know because I don’t have any bigger insight into Vance Joy. Some people sing and I feel I know the layers of meaning in their words and lyrics; and others just sing and I bop along or I don’t. Isn’t Vance Joy Australian? I probably don’t get those lads.
But let’s talk briefly about the layers of meaning in the word “green.” There are so many layers! Oy-me Jesus! Like, wow. This is why I love language and words and meaning and poetry.
Green can be a money thing—someone’s got “a lot of mula.” Green can be that someone is envious—“green with envy.” Green can be Gatsby’s green light which he uses to call out to Daisy across East/WestEgg (in Longuyland!) in The Great Gatsby. Or green can be someone who is environmentally conscious and caring about the planet. Or green can be that you vote for the U.S. Green Party, Bernie Sanders and that tribe.
OR! If you live in Philadelphia, green is about the football team The Eagles.
Which means, if Vance Joy lived in Philadelphia, and he was a football fan, and religiously watched The Eagles, then his song would simply mean, all his friends are Eagles fans.
Kids! Question answered. Finally. It only took me a few years.
Now.
I say all of this simply to admit the mistake I made yesterday in the Saturday Vinyl Playlist.
I wrote that Stevie Nicks’ song from Belladonna was “White Winged Dove” but it is really called “Edge of Seventeen.”
Sigh. I just make mistakes sometimes—so human I am. So frustratingly human!
Anyway, I fixed it on paper and I gave you email aficionados (voyeurs?) a Sunday Bonus Song from my Vinyl Collection of Music.
Don’t we all love clarity?
Lastly, I present to you my review of Chef (2014) written and directed by Jon Favreau, which printed this week in The Shuttle from my co-op Weavers Way. I always pick a movie that deals with food in some way. Any suggestions for next month? (I take requests but I don’t always play them.)
In Chef, this overweight guy has a lot of people helping him succeed.
I question how Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey Jr. got in this film to play these itty bitty parts, except that Jon Favreau has some good connections and friendships and stuff in Hollywood-land-ia. I also recognize that Dustin Hoffman looks like a car salesman I would have seen at the Philadelphia Auto Mall as a kid.
Since this is Ms. Wonderful World we’re in here, I have proposed through this Shuttle article, that Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey, Jr. play bit parts in a movie that I write set in the Philadelphia Auto Mall. And I have also suggested Scarlett Johansson play a girl at the desk with some leopard boots because I want to see her perform with a Delco accent answering calls at a desk. Wouldn’t Scarlet be perfect for a Delco accent and some tattoos? Women get called “the girls” in the Philadelphia Auto Mall and in care dealerships, usually. They also get called “girls” in Delco-Accent-Land, but elsewhere we are sometimes referred to as women.
I guess we could also be called People with Uteruses? PWUs?
I see the shape of this auto-mall film but not all the corners and edges, yet. And of course, it takes money to make most movies.
I do have a cameo for Marty Scorcese as a bodyguard in my London-based screenplay called “The Change.” And I’ve just recently decided Hugh Grant could be the cab driver in that film. I just don’t know who is playing the two lead roles or the best friend…yet.
Read my review of Chef here on page 5.
It’s a Ms. Wonderful World and I’m creating it.
Cheekily Yours,
Ms. Wonderful
A song from U2 for your Sunday consideration
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