Nicholas Thurkettle

Thanks to the influence of pirate radio stations that embraced it, Concrete and Clay, a British pop song with some atypical vocal harmonies and a Latin beat, was the #1 song in the UK for exactly one week in 1965. The band, Unit 4 + 2, never had another hit, and after attempts at shuffled lineups, harder rock, and even psychedelia, broke up in 1970 and never re-formed for a nostalgia tour. When the song was released in the US, it was forced to compete with a cover version by singer songwriter Eddie Rambeau, and as a result, neither made it to the top 10. Ironically, it was also the biggest hit of Rambeau’s career.

Here’s the original – six lads singing a good little tune about young love:

You might recognize it from the soundtrack to Rushmore. I heard it on the radio the other night and realized I had never known its right title. I also realized that I wanted to sing it at karaoke some night. So I went hunting for it on YouTube to study it, and was surprised to see the strange life this song has led since it came into being 45 years ago.

I think about that moment in That Thing You Do! when Tom Hanks tries to explain what he likes about the song, and just snaps his fingers and says: “’That Thing You Do’, you know, it’s catchy.” This is a catchy song, and sweet, and you can see why many artists along the way have thought it could do them some good.

Here’s now-prolific film composer Randy Edelman giving it some ballad-y touches and good 70’s over-instrumentation, scoring a hit in the era when singers could be fugly:

And here’s Australian rocker Martin Plaza, complete with mullet and “I’m Dead Sexy!” facial confidence, who adds some perfectly-deployed horrible synthesizers in a video with so many bits of cutting-edge 80’s low budget trickery that you’ll be wondering where the star wipe is:

Once again, a hit for him. And it was also a hit for late 80’s German pop trio Hong Kong Syndikat, whose video teaches us that with a bit of good music coming out of the boom box, hobos, baby-snatchers, rockabilly rejects, naughty nuns, and overweight people can all smile and share pastries together on the sidewalk:

But you want to know someone for whom this song wasn’t a hit? This guy:

Believe it or not, that’s Kevin Rowland, former lead singer of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, another One-Hit Wonder Hall of Famer with 1982’s unforgettable Come on Eileen. Seeing this video, I remember that this was how I first heard a snippet of this song, on a VH1 Where Are They Now? special, where Kevin announced that with this new album of his, he was going to be unveiling his line of men’s dresses; and how it wasn’t at all a gay thing, he just thought it should be okay for men to wear dresses. And stockings. And combination phallus-hammocks/thongs. And schoolgirl shoes.

I cannot decide what is my favorite part of this video – is it the conga drummer who is barely playing the drums, but is just there for Kevin to rub up against in an extremely non-gay manner? The widely-varying but still-very-generally-low enthusiasm of the backup singer/angels? The way this was obviously shot in a couple of hours on a tiny soundstage for next to no money? Or is it just the whole conceit that this middle-aged pansexual really wants everyone to pay more attention to his shaved ass?

According to the never-ever-wrong Wikipedia, the album – which was supposed to have something to do with his recovery from drug addiction – sold less than 500 copies, and when he tried to perform live in the dress, he was driven off the stage by a hail of bottles.

Understand, I do not mean by this light mockery to discourage. I think more weird people need to do more weird things, because it enriches life for the squares. I think all the people in these videos felt the same impulse I felt when I heard that song. Snap snap, you know, it’s catchy.

On my first day of my first acting class in my first year as a theatre major, the teacher arranged us in a circle on the floor; and, one-by-one, we had to leap to our feet, brandish an imaginary spear, and shout: “I will dare to fail gloriously!” The point is that in the theatre, there is no going back and there is no room for apologies. If you are going to screw up, screw up big.

I have always loved this philosophy because it incorporates the idea that mistakes will happen no matter how much you prepare. The imperfections are as much a part of the music as Jackson Pollock’s cigarette ashes are part of his paintings. Every night, the audience gets a version of the show that will never be done again, because of the hundred little accidents, deviations, and discoveries.

This spontaneity is part of the reason I moved away from acting – I have a hard time with trust and letting go in the moment, and my best idea usually only comes after rumination and calculation. It’s why I’m better as a writer than a performer – I get a chance to think rather than just react.

But even though since college I have rarely sought out opportunities to perform on stage, I have developed this strange pattern over the years of ending up on a stage anyway. It started in high school. A community children’s theatre group I had performed with in the past needed someone to fill in on tech – and on our budget, by “tech” I mean flipping a light switch and operating a CD changer in the back of a cafeteria. So I showed up for one rehearsal, watched the show, and noted all my tasks.

On opening day, at one o’clock, the director called and said: “Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea. Want to act in the play?” One of the cast (and strangely enough, he might be reading this post right now) had twisted his ankle after the last rehearsal and couldn’t perform. The director needed someone who could memorize the part in six hours.

Now this part I do well. I’ve done Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard and I adore words, so I have the skill for recording language in my brain on short-notice. I will freely say I am not all that good an actor, and I’m tricky to cast – I can’t dance, my singing is so-so, I’m too odd-looking for the leading man roles, too tall and soft for the energetic character roles, too cerebral for the boisterous roles, too rubber-faced for serious roles, too unthreatening for the macho roles, and too young for the old crafty roles. But I understand stagecraft and discipline enough that people I work with can trust that they don’t have to start from square one. I can be plugged in on an emergency basis and they won’t have to worry I’m going to crash the show.

It happened again when my sister was helping produce her fiancée’s musical. They needed an extra set of backstage hands and someone who could walk on to do two lines at the end. And with one rehearsal, that’s exactly what I did. Auntie Mame happened a few years later because of my brother. He had kept doing community theatre as an occasional hobby, and when a production needed to fill a supporting role eleven days from opening, a friend of his in the cast dropped his name. He wasn’t available for the whole run, so I got brought along as part of the family package for half of the performances.

After that, when I was directing my 10-minute play for Sacred Fools in LA, and my lead dropped out three days before the show, my good friend Mishka the Hairy Russian, who I had also cast and have known since college, was the one who convinced me that searching for a new actor on such short notice was foolish when we already had a perfectly capable one who knew the script available – by which he meant me.

I auditioned for one play a year or so ago, but didn’t prepare, mumbled my way through it and didn’t have a serious chance at a part. I have never been that good at auditioning and it wasn’t a show for which I was actually appropriate, in hindsight.

But Norma Jean, one of my castmates from Auntie Mame, remembered my ability to swing in at the last minute (and actually has a far higher opinion of my abilities than I do), and on Saturday night she dropped me a Facebook message which is the reason why I haven’t been able to post, or really even think much, since then.
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It started when Roxie e-mailed me a list of discount tickets she could purchase through her job – markdowns on distractions all over Southern California. Is “Ambitious Cheapskate” an oxymoron? I’m sure striving to make it not so.

They had a sub-half-price offer for Six Flags Magic Mountain – the West Coast’s rollercoaster Mecca – and I had not paid my respects in far too long. So we started to plan a trip, and as we compared schedules it became obvious that the best time to do this was going to be Valentine’s Day Weekend. It’s the ideal time of year for a local to hit Six Flags – the summer weather up there is obscene, and the crowds even worse. A nice, temperate February weekend, without even Spring Break threatening the ride lines, drastically increased the likelihood of getting our money’s worth and avoiding heat stroke in one bang.

My plan was already to drive up to Santa Clarita on Saturday and get a hotel room, so as not to have to endure 90 miles of driving in the morning before we even reached the parking lot. And so – totally conveniently and naturally – a fabulous weekend getaway snapped into place on the calendar.

Before we checked into the hotel we detoured up the 14 Freeway to Vasquez Rocks – a place you’ve probably seen even though you didn’t know it. The jagged shapes formed by our San Andreas Fault have loomed in the background of countless films and TV shows. Perhaps most famously, it was the setting for Captain James T. Kirk’s mano-a-mano with the Gorn:

We spent about ninety minutes clambering up and down the rocks – tourists, dog-walkers, and horseback riders were going every which way. The whole park is only about three-square kilometers, and we tempered our exploration by remembering that we were going to need some strength left in our legs the next day. I’d love to come back closer to sunset, and see what the place looks like in the golden hours. Pictures are below the cut.

We checked into the Holiday Inn Express just at the foot of Magic Mountain, cleaned up and dressed for dinner. We went to a restaurant/pub called Mulligans, which was already decorated for Valentine’s Day but didn’t have the crowds or the menu markup that comes along with the day. She had the Shepherd’s Pie, and I had Filet Mignon, and we both got to appreciate that good Filet Mignon experience of having meat melt in your mouth. Dessert was fried ice cream, and we all but staggered back to the car, blissful.

We settled in for an early bedtime, and watched an absolutely amazingly effed-up sci-fi movie from the 70’s – A Boy and His Dog. Based on a novella by professional misanthrope Harlan Ellison, it stars a teenaged Don Johnson, wandering the post-apocalyptic desert with his telepathic dog, looking for canned food and rapeable women. Things proceed to get seriously strange from there, building up to an ending that is both evil and perfect. Whatever cult follows this movie, consider Roxie and I the two newest members.

Sunday started with the bounteous Holiday Inn Express breakfast, and then proceeded up the hill. What followed you will see in a separate entry.
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I see I have been quoted with smiley-props on a Ray Stevenson fan forum for my old King Arthur review, and that someone else found this blog by using the search words “jason schwartzman smarmy”.

I highly approve of both these developments.

When it comes to music, it is the pattern of my life that I never quite embrace things right when everyone else likes them, if everyone else has even heard of them. The album I’ve been listening to most lately is a two-year-old effort by The Apples in Stereo to create the best ELO power pop album never recorded; while I just popped over to the iTunes store to buy a half-century old Skeeter Davis crossover single I heard on satellite radio this morning, just because I found the lyrics to be so amazingly sad.

And to top it off, my biggest geek-out of this weekend came when I discovered that there’s now a video for Night by Night, Chromeo’s scholarly effort to create an authentically dancetastic top 10 single for that time around 1982 that disco and New Wave had their regretted-ever-since fling. You can’t fight the synthesizers!:

I wanted to write tonight – stayed in and drank light at dinner for that very purpose. But I am either fighting off or succumbing to a cold, and my brain is mush. Since as usual there are about eighteen different things I want to write, being unable to even attack one of them makes me grumpy.

Oh hell; other people watch TV in the evening and don’t look down on themselves for it.

I am home from Chicago, after a long day and a delayed flight. The trip gave me everything I hoped it would – except for a visit to Steak ‘n Shake, unfortunately – but my return had a bittersweet element to it. It’s news of a nature I won’t be sharing on the public blog, but I have much to post in spite of that.

So it’s back to the grind.

I have a borrowed computer, and a few minutes of warmth and quiet before I set out for the trains and the suburbs and the final days of my visit. I started this trip with a lot of unconfirmed plans (including where I would be sleeping some nights!), wobbly health, and the sense that maybe it was time to end this New Year’s tradition. After all, my first Chicago New Year was the Millenium, the great ‘99 cosmic odomoter rollover. So much was freshly behind me then – college, the break-up of (to that point) the only romantic relationship of my life, my first attempt to live away from the family homestead. Only weeks before I had begun the script-reading internship which eventually became my Hollywood development job. I had finished exactly one screenplay and one full-length stage play. I didn’t know what was ahead and I feared all that I had lost. But I got to see a city I loved, and take comfort from dear friends who wanted the best for me.

There has been so much living in the decade since. Technically there have been eleven New Years’ celebrations in that time. I have spent eight of them in Chicago, and every time I have been able to draw strength and joy from those simple things – the place and the people. I have come here happy, come broke, come broken. But I always leave better.

I don’t know that the numerical roundness of it, or the gray hairs creeping through my beard, are enough to end this tradition. I know it’s colder than it has ever been on one of these trips. I know that my father’s old overcoat doesn’t fit me anymore. I know that my group of friends here has evolved – some of the ones most important to me now I never even knew at school. And I know that something about these trips puts me in touch with the best part of myself, and re-fuels it for another year of life on the sunny coast of Fantasia.

After so many years of faithful service, my laptop screen just flickered and died. After putting it to sleep and waking it up again, the screen was working intermittently, and it might be that I could force some more service from it; but with this added to the machine’s already-substantial list of eccentricities, it appears that it has finally reached the end of its service. Fortunately, the friends I am staying with have a desktop they never use in the guest room where I’m already sleeping; and once Lenovo gets over its bizarre troubles with processing my order, my new laptop will be headed for the Thurkettle homestead. It held out for as long as it needed to.

The typical response to your modern computer problem is on the spectrum between simple annoyance and pure berzerker rage, but I feel nothing like that. I’ve known this day was coming for a long time, and feel a strange fondness as I think on everything that laptop and I have shared. It knows as many of my secrets as my most intimate friends.

I’ve been trolling this website to prepare for my annual post-Thanksgiving shopping expedition. Having a steady income puts some enthusiasm into a task like that. Traditionally I plan one significant present to myself – like last year’s Blu-Ray player, or the cheapo Kodak from which I’ve derived so much pleasure. This year my ambition has been to finally replace my ancient but heroic laptop – I figured months ago that netbooks would be a significant Black Friday battlefield and, judging by the circulars coming out, I wasn’t wrong.

I have enough money to probably sneak away with one of these $250-$400 jobbers, but I found myself seriously examining just what other obligations I could check off my list with that money. What would I really be buying with a new laptop? As is, my laptop is heavy as a mudderfugger, can’t get on-line, can’t play movies, and can’t survive long without an outlet. But I only use it when traveling or leaving the house to write at a coffeeshop or library – so that makes its limitations inconvenient, but not a legitimate obstruction to anything I do.

And if I am honest with myself, I know that the price in the ad will never be what I actually end up paying, once you throw in even basic software, security, and accessories. And if I’m going to do that, I should just customize the thing through the vendor rather than hope whatever configuration Wal-Mart decided to shove in a box and slap a discount on is going to suit me. I’m going to use this thing for a long-ass time.

After tinkering around on HP’s website I had assembled a laptop I liked pretty well; not too fancy, but it came with Microsoft Office and three years of Norton, and cost around $615. Feels like it would be a good machine. But I can’t afford it now. January or February; probably. It means lugging the old beast around Chicago at New Years’ again, but I’m a strapping young man and can handle it.

Deciding against the laptop has been liberating. I stopped at the Aaron Bros. on the way home from work tonight, and bought a couple of picture frames so I can use those color ink ribbons I bought for my photo printer last month. And I looked up the number of the Writers Guild’s Dues Department; because I owe them some money, and I want my awards season screeners, damn it. Getting current with them will feel good.

I don’t know what the replacement “big purchase” will be on Black Friday. As of this moment I don’t seem to mind if there isn’t one. A couple toys for me, a couple of presents for the fam and friends, and the rest – well, I always have a list of things to do with that.