I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PATTI SMITH: “You Light Up My Life” (Live on Kids Are People Too) (1979).

While browsing YouTube, I found a bunch of fun videos from the kids’ programs Wonderama and Kids Are People Too.  And that’s where I found this video of Patti Smith, of all people, singing this dainty pop confection.

Her introduction to the kids is weirdly wonderful (she says she wanted to be a missionary).  And the kids ask some pretty good questions (I would think she was too scary to be on this show back then, but no one says anything remotely risqué).  And she seems to genuinely want to inspire the kids.  It’s really quite cool.

I listened to the original just now for the first time since the 70s, I’m sure.   Although the first verse doesn’t sound drastically different from Patti’s version, once the chorus kicks in, Patti transforms this song into an angst-filled song of loss.  And man, can Patti sing.

Check it out here.

[READ: November 7, 2010] “Boys Town”

When I first saw this author’s name I thought it was Jean Shepherd author of In God We Trust…All Others Pay Cash (otherwise known as A Christmas Story).  And  I thought that maybe it was going to be a quaint look at growing up.

It isn’t.

I haven’t disliked a story as much as I disliked this story in a long long time.  There was nothing redeemable about this piece and I wouldn’t have finished it if I’d had anything else to read (I was reading while the kids were bathing).

Since I don’t feel the story deserves a lot in the way of analysis, I’ll just say that an incredibly unlikable loser is perpetually angry, stays perpetually angry and then acts on his anger.

The (sort of) redemptive factor is that he is a war veteran, and yet we are led to understand that he has been a loser/psychopath since before the war (his commanding officers called him brain damaged), so even that’s not an excuse.  I hated the character, I hated his mother, I hated his friend.  And I have to say even tough I held out the slightest hope that something–not even just good– but just something interesting would happen in the story even though from pretty much the first words, I knew that that was futile hope.  Bug surprise…he’s going to shoot at people.

Even though I haven’t seen Boys Town, I feel bad for the movie that it was dragged into the gutter with this story.