First off, let me apologize for not seeing Circle Mirror Transformation, the new play by Annie Baker, sooner — the show closes November 15 at Playwrights Horizons. It’s the kind of show that’s most deserving of a positive review on a website visited by a wide variety of cool people. I want you to see this show.

If you’ve ever been in an acting class (or hell) or been forced to do “team building” exercises, you’ll find relatable fodder here. And at its core it’s a sincere and engaging story of five normal people trying to find their way.

Circle Mirror Transformation takes place in a beginning acting class in a small town in Vermont. It’s a community class, open to everyone, and four unique individuals have signed up for the five-week program instructed by Marty (Deirdre O’Connell): Marty’s husband, James (Peter Friedman), recently divorced Schultz (Reed Birney), shy sixteen-year-old Lauren (Tracee Chimo), and ex-New York actress Theresa (Heidi Schreck). Through the five weeks, the characters play those ridiculous games to get comfortable with one another (e.g. everyone lies on the floor, and the group tries to count to ten without two people saying the same number). They also play trust games that lead to soul-bearing openness (everyone writes a secret on a piece of paper and then someone else anonymously reads it). Through these situations the audience learns who these characters are. This leads to an incredible connection between the characters and the audience because as the play goes on and their back stories become clear, their interactions and conversations all become colored; the audience is given the insight to really get it. This is a testament to Baker’s incredible writing and also to the actors’ abilities to bring these characters to life, with all of their quirks and nuances.

It’s hard to find standouts in the cast because they are truly an ensemble. Playwrights Horizons has a tendency to hire the best actors in town, whether they are under the radar or well-known. Circle Mirror Transformation is no exception. All have amazing credits, whether Broadway or not, and all have every right embodying these characters. The casting is really extraordinary and if I saw these actors on the street I’m sure I would first recognize them as their character and not as the actor who played that character (an important distinction, in my mind). And with a really great production value (the stage, though not overly-designed, shows a community center studio complete with gymnastics mats in the corner and a mirrored wall on one side) the production boasts a high quality overall.

Director Sam Gold does a great job bringing this story to life, without making it overly silly or flimsy. The comedy is consistent through the show but it takes various forms, further engaging the audience. Sometimes the humor is strictly physical comedy, sometimes its based on an awkward conversation the audience knows will only get worse, sometimes the audience laughs because they’re uncomfortable. To be sure, Circle Mirror Transformation is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a while.

Circle Mirror Transformation is a touching tale. As the characters unravel themselves to each other, they also let the audience in on who they really are. And as a result, the audience takes the journey with them. A cleverly told story with fabulous performances in a small and intimate off-Broadway theatre isn’t always the easiest find in the New York theatre world, so when it occurs it’s worth checking out. Hopefully Circle Mirror Transformation will get another run off-Broadway, but if you can make it to Playwrights Horizons this weekend or next, I’d highly recommend seeing this show.

Circle Mirror Transformation plays at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42nd St., through Sun 11/15. Showtimes are Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, and Sun 2 and 7 PM. The play runs 1 hr. 50 min., with no intermission. Tickets are $50 and are available at ticketcentral.com or by calling 212-279-4200; for $35 tickets visit broadwaybox.com and use discount code CMBB. For more information, visit playwrightshorizons.org.

I love movies about dysfunctional families, though I’m not entirely sure why — while my family has its moments, we’re really not all that dysfunctional. At least I don’t think we are. But what better time of year than the holidays to indulge in films about families who need magazine racks for their issues? (I totally stole that line from Janeane Garofalo.)

I think every family gets a little crazy during the holiday season. The (mostly) forced family interaction and all the pressure to have fun can make even the most fun-loving, well-adjusted person a sniveling mess of frustration and unmet expectations.

I first saw The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) not long after it was released on video. I sought it out because a) I was a big ER fan and loved Noah Wyle, b) I was a big Julianne Moore fan (still am), and c) a good friend of mine who knew about my penchant for dysfunctional-family films told me I needed to watch it after he saw it in the theater.

I anxiously awaited its video release and rented it the weekend after it came out. I was blown away.

Named after “All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints,” a track on Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland, writer-directer Bart Freundlich’s feature-film debut tells the tale of an estranged, dysfunctional family reuniting for an uncomfortable and somewhat heartbreaking Thanksgiving.

Warren (Wyle), the family’s oldest son, returns to his parents’ (Roy Scheider and Blythe Danner) rural New England home for the first time in three years. In addition to seeing his family again, he’s reunited with his ex-girlfriend Daphne (Arija Bareikis), who, it seems, is the love of his life. At first we don’t know why Warren hasn’t been home in so long, but we soon learn about an incident with Daphne and his father that turned his world upside down and forced him to leave town.

The family’s oldest daughter, Mia (played by Moore, who met Freundlich on this film in ‘96 — they got married in 2003 after having two children together), works at an art gallery in the city and is the most uptight of the bunch. She brings home her laid-back psychotherapist boyfriend, Elliot (Brian Kerwin), who seems to have more in common with the younger, more gregarious sister, Leigh (Laurel Holloman), than the cold, hostile Mia. It’s only after she reconnects with a childhood classmate (James LeGros) that Mia finally loosens up.

Jake (Michael Vartan), the younger son, seems to be the most “normal” and grounded person in the family, but he has his own issues, having spent most of his life competing with his siblings for attention. This could be part of the reason why he brings his girlfriend, the uninhibited Margaret (Hope Davis), home for Thanksgiving. He thinks he loves her, but he’s not sure, and he wonders if it’s necessary to have a normal family life in order to have a healthy relationship.

The siblings spend the entire holiday weekend trying to relate to each other and their parents, deal with their own personal issues, and come to terms with the fact that their father is slowly losing his grip on reality.

In the realm of films about dysfunctional families, The Myth of Fingerprints is quiet and understated, with exceptional performances. While I think some of the characters, like Leigh and Jake, could’ve been fleshed out a little more, Freundlich does a fine job with his first film, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and earned Scheider an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Male.

Fingerprints was also Noah Wyle’s first major film after he became a breakout star on NBC’s ER. (Not only does he star in it, he’s credited as an associate producer.) I remember reading a review when Fingerprints came out that questioned why he would choose to do a small indie film as his first movie after becoming a star on TV. If you ask me, I think he made the right decision, because he turns in a really great performance (though it can be said that Warren isn’t much different from Wyle’s ER character, John Carter, during his gloom-and-doom years).

The Fingerprints soundtrack fits perfectly with the film’s somber mood. The original score, composed by Australian musicians David Bridie and John Phillips, is absolutely gorgeous and a little depressing at the same time. The soundtrack album, which is out of print, also contains vocal tracks from Bridie and Phillips, including one from Bridie’s band, My Friend the Chocolate Cake.

Some of the soundtrack’s other standouts include two beautiful arrangements of a piece from the French opera Le Roi d’Ys (”The King of Ys”), one by Italian opera singer Beniamino Gigli and the other by singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. The latter also teams up with Jon Brion and Ethan Johns to give us a lovely rendition of “On the Banks of the Wabash,” a song that Scheider’s character hums throughout the movie and eventually sings. We also get sprightly versions of two jazz standards by the Rozz Nash Sextet (one of which doesn’t appear on the soundtrack album and which I couldn’t find) and a couple of classic tracks from Bing Crosby (one of which isn’t on the album, but I’ve provided it below).

The Myth of Fingerprints soundtrack is one of those albums I always listen to around this time of year because it just feels so, well, fall to me. I hope you enjoy it, and if you’ve never seen the movie, I hope you’ll seek it out — even if you aren’t a dysfunctional-family movie junkie like myself.

David Bridie and John Phillips – I Like It Like This
Luna – Lost in Space
Beniamino Gigli – Vainement, Ma Bien-Aimée (from the opera Le Roi d’Ys)
Bing Crosby – Don’t Be That Way
My Friend the Chocolate Cake – Low
Bing Crosby – Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful)
Rufus Wainwright – Vainement, Ma Bien-Aimée
Rozz Nash Sextet – Tenderly
Rufus Wainwright, Jon Brion, and Ethan Johns – On the Banks of the Wabash
Roy Scheider and Hope Davis – Hal Sings

Original score by David Bridie and John Phillips:

Myth
Verandah
Mia Cries
Bad Person
Underneath
Super 8
Fingerprints

My victory even got some coverage from Associated Press national political writer Liz Sidoti, who wrote, “A slew of cities selected mayors …”

A win-win all around!

No question it was an exciting campaign right up to the very end, what with David Byrne dropping out of the race just one day before the election. He said it was a show of solidarity with Afghanistan’s Abdullah Abdullah, another big fat quitter, but I think he just couldn’t take the heat.

Green Party candidate Bob Marley, on the other hand, was a cool customer, never raising his voice at any of the debates or even bothering to give a concession speech Tuesday night. Then again, he’s been dead since 1981. (In case you were wondering, the “green” his party represents isn’t exactly the kind Ralph Nader supports.)

And then there’s Matt Wardlaw. Poor, poor Matthew. He didn’t take his defeat very well. He must have still been drunk when he shot me this e-mail Wednesday morning: “You must not have seen the final poll results, and apparently the steel-toed boot that I hired to kick your sorry ass out of Bootleg City went AWOL.”

Sorry, Mr. Wardlaw, but the guys I hired from Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission say I received 99.9 percent of the votes that were cast, compared to Mr. Marley’s 33.5 percent and your -32.5 percent, so don’t get your hopes up about a recount — numbers don’t lie. People do, but not the guys from the IEC. (They told me they used the metric system.)

Mr. Wardlaw went on (and on and on) in his e-mail to say, “Nevertheless, I will be saving Mr. Marley a spot in my cabinet, and we’ll be working together, along with Mr. Byrne, to deliver a newly improved Bootleg City that all of the citizens will be able to be proud of, at long last.”

You mean your kitchen cabinet, Matthew? Because that’s the only place you’ll be stuffing Jamaica’s most famous human export, though it’s obviously not a proper resting place for the country’s ambassador of reggae.

This week’s featured bootleg is James Brown & the Soul Generals with Maceo Parker, performing at Klein Auditorium in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on November 27, 1987. It was a charity concert to benefit disabled and handicapped children, and the Godfather of Soul donated his entire paycheck for the night to the cause.

That’s how we Georgia boys roll, you see. Not that I’ve ever donated any paycheck of mine to a worthy cause, unless you count Bootleg City’s Anti-Prostitution League. It’s run by former prostitutes, but I was under the impression that it was a “fight fire with fire” sort of deal. It turns out I was wrong. (The less said, the better.)

The J.B. bootleg comes from Matt Boles, who wrote me from somewhere in the Ozark Mountains on Wednesday to say, “Well, man, I checked out the CNN. They kept talking about some bullshit election in Virginia and another in South Canada or someplace like that. But I finally saw it along the scroll, dominating exit polling data that gave the experts the ability to call you the projected winner with 10 percent of the precincts reporting.” Wow, even more national coverage!

Matt B. added, “I realized I actually did some work with that that very charity back when I was in high school. I was a freshman in college by the time this concert came around. I would like to think I could have been there. Small freakin’ world, huh?”

Yes, it is, Matt. And life is too short, which is why I’ve decided to take my vacation now. Election campaigns can really take it out of a mayor. Besides, the honeymoon always ends so quickly, which is right when the criticism begins. Who needs that kind of pressure? That’s why I’ve decided to spend my first 100 days in office out of the office this term. In my place you’ll be hearing from some other citizens of Bootleg City, like Mr. Wardlaw, as well as government-distrusting mountain man Matt Boles, the “self-proclaimed Minister of Entertainment and Fast Food” for our fair city. See you in January!

[opening jam]
[intro]
Give It Up or Turnit a Loose
Living in America
Doing It to Death
Georgia on My Mind
Get on the Good Foot
What My Mama Said
Make It Funky
There’s No Business Like Show Business
[civic announcement]
How Do You Stop
I Got the Feelin’
It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Super Bad
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
What My Mama Said [Pt. 2]
What My Mama Said [Pt. 3]
Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag
Please, Please, Please
I Got You (I Feel Good)
I Got You (I Feel Good) [Pt. 2]
Out of Sight
[outro]
[closing jam]

Before I leave the office without actually leaving office, I’ll leave you with a campaign contribution from the King of Grief. I was hoping he’d contribute cash, seeing as how he’s royalty and all, but instead he gave me a remix of Yes’s “Leave It,” as heard in the end credits of the band’s 9012Live concert:

Leave It [Hello, Goodbye Mix]

John Cale – The Streets of Laredo from Honi Soit … (1981, out of print)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Hoedown from Trilogy (1972)
Robbie Robertson with Leah Hicks-Manning – The Sound Is Fading from Contact From the Underworld of Redboy (1998)
Adam & the Ants – Five Guns West from Prince Charming (1981)
Babe Ruth – The Mexican from First Base (1972)
Wall of Voodoo – Morricone Themes from The Index Masters (2005)
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – Rider Song from The Proposition [soundtrack] (2005)
Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas – Horseback from Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas (2005)
Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band – Apache from Bongo Rock (1972)
Deborah Harry – Ghost Riders in the Sky from Three Businessmen [soundtrack] (1999, out of print)
Daniel Lanois – Indian Red from For the Beauty of Wynona (1993)
Sparks – This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us from Kimono My House (1974)
You Am I – Gunslingers from Convicts (2006)
Medicine Dream – P’jilasi (World) from Mawio’mi (2000)
Grant Lee Buffalo – Lone Star Song from Mighty Joe Moon (1994)
Roxy Music – Prairie Rose from Country Life (1974)
Chris Whitley – Medicine Wheel from Soft Dangerous Shores (2005)
Hoodoo Gurus – Spaghetti Western from Magnum Cum Louder (1993)
Big and Rich – Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) from Horse of a Different Color (2004)
Ulali – Mahk Jchi (Heartbeat Drum Song) from Music for The Native Americans [soundtrack] (1994)
The Tornados – Ridin’ the Wind from Joe Meek: The Alchemist of Pop (1963)
Penelope Houston – Buffalo Ballet from The Pale Green Girl (2004)

A Note on This Week’s Column: I’ve been sidelined by the Dreaded Deadline Doom this week, so there’s no new column, strictly speaking. But as a special treat — all right, to fill the gap in the schedule — I’m presenting here, for the first time, the very first How Bad Can It Be? ever written.

Jeff Giles first approached me about doing a column about a year ago — November 2008. We kicked around some concepts, knocking the premise into shape. To help me get a grip on it, I wrote a bunch of sample columns, including this one, about the then-current season of NBC’s The Biggest Loser. The start date for the column was eventually pushed back to January 2009, leaving this piece basically unpublishable — hopelessly past its sell-by date. And so it has sat on my hard drive until now. Hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtain — the Secret Origin of HBCIB?, if you will.

As this was to have been the inaugural column, it begins with a statement of purpose — one I find worth revisiting now and then…

I will not cop to charges of snobbery; I find my pop-culture thrills wherever I can. I freely admit, though, that I’m selective. Any consumer of media has to be, I think. There are only so many hours in a day, and so much to fill them with. It’s not so much that I’m actively avoiding anything; it’s just that there’s so much good stuff out there that I’ve not yet experienced — Infinite Jest, “Trout Mask Replica,” Kurosawa’s Rashomon — that I’ve got to be choosy with the little time I have above ground. And because I write about media from the perspective of an enthusiast, rather than a critic, I’m not obliged to watch or read and listen to anything in which I would otherwise have no interest.

In practice, that means gravitating towards a comfort zone. It’s a big zone, as these things go — I’m a pretty well-rounded guy — but in the great spectrum of mass media, it’s a relatively narrow bandwidth. Now, I can and do often enjoy myself when I venture out of that zone; but I always do so with mingled feelings of hope and dread. Part of me wonders, “Am I going to hate myself for watching this? Will I wish I could have this hour back?” And another part of me thinks, “Hey, you never know. This could be a keeper. And really, after all — how bad can it be?”

This column aims to answer that question.

So you can see why it was with some fear and trembling that I tuned in the new season of The Biggest Loser (Tuesdays, NBC). The show is basically a Survivor-style competition; each season, a group of morbidly obese contestants is whisked off to a ludicrously lavish “ranch,” where they are divided into two teams. Each team is assigned a personal trainer, and through a regime of diet and exercise they work to trim down. Each week, there’s a weigh-in, and one contestant is eliminated. The eventual winner — the “biggest loser” — is the contestant who loses the highest percentage of body weight over the course of the program, and he or she is rewarded, as is usual, with a cash prize and an assortment of consumer goods. So far, so Mark Burnett.

What makes The Biggest Loser so car-crash fascinating is the simmering brew of emotional issues and class politics bubbling under the surface. These people aren’t just fame-whores, or even contestants playing a game — they are sick people who are clutching for a chance to get well. Received wisdom holds that you can never be too rich or too thin, and The Biggest Loser promises to deliver on both aspirations — but thinness itself is rapidly becoming a class aspiration. As Greg Critser points out in his book Fat Land (a critical text for understanding the obesity crisis), government subsidies and agribusiness consolidations have overturned historical precedent; in 21st Century America, a diet of pre-prepared, calorie-dense foods is actually cheaper and more readily-available than one of traditional staples. And so obesity becomes a socio-economic issue, with the poor gorging on sweetmeats that would astonish Henry VIII, while the rich pay big money to eat like peasants.

The emotional aspects are even gnarlier. This season, The Biggest Loser has rejiggered its formula; instead of individual contestants, we get overweight family units. The two starting teams consist of four husband-wife couples versus four parent-child pairs. I’m having a hard time imagining this is going to end well for any of them. One fat person on his own is a medical issue; two fat people in a family relationship are a stew of guilt, recrimination, and enablement. Put ‘em in a high-pressure environment, under the ever-watchful eye of the camera — that’s a recipe for entertaining television! (Or possibly manslaughter.)

Struggling with all this, I sit down to watch, and we meet the trainers and the families, most of whom have been supplied, through the magic of editing, with some sort of relatable backstory. Trainer Bob is working with the couples; he looks a little like the guy from The Soup, but with a three-day beard. Of the two younger couples, the Orange team are relative newlyweds who want to get their weight under control before they start having kids, while the Brown team seem mostly just to want to win the game; they’re clearly being set up as the villains. The Red team is a middle-aged couple who’ve left their three kids — including an autistic eight-year old — in the care of relatives, while they ship off to the fat farm. Somehow, I’m not as sympathetic towards them as I think I’m supposed to be. Trainer Bob seems an amiable doofus, like Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading, until he starts snarling at his charges and calling them “bitch” while demanding push-ups in psychotic-gym-teacher fashion.

The parent-child teams are in the care of trainer Jillian. She’s got father-son cab drivers who come on like bit players from Gone Baby Gone; two sets of miserable twentysomething doormat daughters stuck living with their miserable overbearing moms; and a weepy girl who idolizes her father, a cop, who is so debilitatingly huge that he requires an oxygen tank about five minutes into the episode. Jillian is sexy ugly in a way vaguely reminiscent of Sandra Bernhard, and shows her deep emotional attachment to her team by screaming insults at them and smacking them upside the head.

The workout segments are the cheap thrill of the show; we get the sadistic spectacle of a toned, sharp-tongued quasi-dominatrix tormenting a pack of fatsos — for their own good! The rest of it, though, seems constructed primarily as a cross-marketing platform. We get a few perfunctory cooking tips, this week featuring chef Rocco DiSpirito, who of course has a TV show of his own; he briefly addresses the idea that healthy food must perforce be expensive, a throwaway moment that is as close as the show ever comes to addressing the class issues of obesity. And there’s relentless shilling for sponsor products, done with a blatancy not seen since the early days of TV, when Jack Benny would interrupt his own show to light up a Lucky.

The thing is, the damn show is two hours long, and even with the slack pacing, there’s a lot of time to fill and a lot of fake tension to build. And so the contestants are roped into idiotically contrived side bets and games. These segments are hosted by soap opera actress Alison Sweeney, smirking as she puts the teams through activities of dubious therapeutic value and questionable reward.

This week there’s a degrading debacle involving huge, color-coded Slip ‘n’ Slides, with the prize being a phone call home; for people struggling with a health issue related to their family dynamics, you can see where that may be counterproductive. The winner is the wife on the Orange team — that’s the couple getting ready to start a family, remember — and when she breaks down in tears while talking to her father, it’s hard not to imagine an unwholesome backstory. (But then, I have a vivid imagination.)

Then it’s back to more workouts, more yelling, more close-ups of sweaty fat people. My queasiness about The Biggest Loser, I think, reflects my ambivalence about the morbidly obese in general — an ambivalence heightened by the fact that I’m a big fat slob myself. But while I could surely stand to drop fifty pounds or so, I can still manage a five-mile hike without breathing hard, to say nothing of getting around the grocery store unaided. When I see folks at the market, too fat for the basic function of walking, tooling around in their electric carts, the thought occurs unbidden: You’ve crippled yourself, and it didn’t have to be like this. No one did this to you — you did it to yourself. In much the same way, you’re rooting for the contestants on The Biggest Loser, but watching them moan and perspire and weep, you can’t help thinking that, y’know, they brought this all on themselves.

But enough uncomfortable reflection: It’s off to the weigh-in, padded out over three (!) commercial breaks with fish-faced reaction shots and booming tympani. I’m unprepared for how much math is involved in this show. Immunity and the possibility of elimination are calculated on the total weight lost per team versus total starting weight; there’s also an over-under on the side wager, which automatically puts that team up for elimination. I wish I had a slide rule at this point. In the end, a bunch of people don’t do so good. Weepy Girl and Officer Porky have made a foolish wager early on, and lose badly; when all is said and done, though, the survivors vote to send the Car Talk guys home. Their reaction (paraphrased): “Meh, fuckit.” My reaction: roughly the same.

So how bad is it? Pretty bad. The ugly emotional explosions never arrive, which is a pity; they would have been a distraction from the deep and uncomfortable contradictions at the heart of the show. On the one hand, it The Biggest Loser Families wants to be empowering and heartwarming; on the other, it wants to serve up the red meat of entertainment — a suspenseful game, colorful challenges, and an endlessly-replayed clip of an old fat man falling off a treadmill.

And so the show constantly undercuts itself. Moments of naked calculation and strategizing — like the Brown team throwing a game on purpose because they “don’t want to be seen as a threat” — bounce up against tears and hugs played out against soaring strings; but the pathos ultimately feels unearned. When the Red team calls home and their autistic son — who seldom expresses emotion — tells them he loves and misses them, it actually makes them seem less sympathetic; after all, the reason they’re separated from him in the first place is because they’re off chasing cash prizes and a new RV.

Again and again, the games aspect is at odds with the goal of actually getting well — beginning with the fact that the players who are losing weight most slowly, who obviously would benefit most from staying in the program, are the very ones who get booted out. Jillian gets a lot of great reaction shots, looking convincingly disgusted at the way the producers contrive to set the contestants at each other’s throats; I think I know how she feels. There’s an ugly cynicism at the heart of The Biggest Loser franchise, in how it tries to have it both ways — purporting to help its contestants while simultaneously inviting the viewers at home to laugh at the fatties.

Bottom line: Watch at your own risk. It’s enjoyable enough, in a train-wreck kind of way, but if you’ve got a single spark of decency in your soul, you’ll hate yourself in the morning.

If you haven’t got a single spark of decency in your soul, of course, you can probably get your own development deal with NBC, if you hurry.

Folks, I’ll be the first to tell you that our last CHART ATTACK! was just a little depressing. Marky Mark? Ugh! Color Me Badd? Ugggggh! Bryan Adams? Uggggggghhhh!  Good news, though: I’m pleased to report that this week’s Top 10 is much, much better — sure, there are some mild clunkers, but the majority of these songs are absolutely fantastic. See if you agree as we attack November 3, 1973!

10. All I Know — Garfunkel  
9. Space Race — Billy Preston
8. Let’s Get It On — Marvin Gaye
7. Ramblin’ Man — The Allman Brothers Band
6. Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat — The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco
5. Paper Roses — Marie Osmond
4. Half-Breed — Cher
3. Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1) — Eddie Kendricks
2. Angie — The Rolling Stones
1. Midnight Train to Georgia — Gladys Knight & the Pips

10. All I Know — Garfunkel (download)

Following the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel in 1970, Art Garfunkel removed his focus from the music business; for three years, he focused on his acting career, appearing in Mike Nichols movies such as Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, taught mathematics at a private school in Connecticut, and studied classical music in Europe. Finally, in 1973, he assembled a group of songwriters (what, you thought he was going to write songs himself?) and recorded songs for a new album, entitled Angel Clare. The first single, “All I Know,” was written by Jimmy Webb (the first of many Garfunkel/Webb collaborations) and was his first solo entry on the Top 10 — and by “first,” I mean “only,” though he did have three #1 hits on the Adult Contemporary charts. The song is exactly what you’d expect: musically, it’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” minus the bridge or troubled water, and lyrically, it’s deep into Mellow Gold territory. Art’s voice sounds a touch creepy here on the original, especially any time he gets near a low note. Still, it’s quite pretty, and you really can’t go wrong with songs like these, especially ones that feature Webb’s beautiful piano. The only thing I don’t understand is why, for his first few albums, Art was only billed as “Garfunkel.” Was he concerned that if he added the “Art,” people wouldn’t know who he was? How many Garfunkels are out there, really? If he wanted to capitalize on familiarity, perhaps he should have billed himself as “& Garfunkel.”

I found a nice video of Art Garfunkel performing “All I Know” on Saturday Night Live, but it’s on a Chinese website and I can’t figure out how to embed it. Still, it’s worth a watch; the song is much more effective in this stripped-down incarnation.

9. Space Race — Billy Preston

I personally had never heard “Space Race” before this week, but if you watched American Bandstand regularly, chances are you’ll recognize it as the music played during the mid-show commercial break, from 1974 until the show’s end. It worked great for that purpose, too — a sequel of sorts to 1972’s “Outa-Space,” “Space Race” is a thick slab of instrumental funk with a fantastic groove. But here’s the thing: on American Bandstand, you never got to hear more than a few seconds of the song. At around a minute and a half, it becomes pretty clear that a better title would have been “Holy Crap You Guys, I Just Got a New Keyboard and Look at All the Cool Sounds I Can Make, Wah Wah Wah Wah!” I can’t help but wonder if this song is what inspired Daryl Dragon to buy a Casio, and that just breaks my heart. Still, I can’t give Billy Preston too much grief. Apart from having the world’s greatest afro, the man was an unbelievable talent. And who doesn’t love the hell out of “Nothing From Nothing”?

8. Let’s Get It On — Marvin Gaye

Man, what a week! “Let’s Get It On,” though not Gaye’s biggest selling single, was certainly one of his most popular, and became his first chart-topper in five years. It began as a religious song, written by Ed Townsend (who became a success with a song called “For Your Love” solely due to a 1958 appearance on American Bandstand), and was then re-written by Motown songwriter Kenneth Stover as a political anthem. Gaye recorded the demo of “Let’s Get It On” in this form:

Marvin Gaye — Let’s Get It On (Demo) (download)

Townsend protested, and insisted that the song should have a love/sexual theme (what happened to religion?), and of course, that produced the version we all adore today. It’s a shame that those opening four notes have become such a cliché in recent years, no doubt due to its appearance in commercials and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (among a million other movies, most likely), but when you hear Marvin belting out those lyrics with every ounce of passion in the world, it’s hard not to fall in love with it all over again. Here he is at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1980.

I mentioned this in a previous Popdose article, but one of my favorite songs (and the first one I ever purchased on iTunes) is Shannon Lawson’s bluegrassy, fun cover of “Let’s Get It On.” We played it during the ceremony at our wedding, as we danced back up the aisle, and I think maybe only one person figured out what song it was. Gotcha, Grandma! We danced up the aisle to a song about sex and you didn’t catch it! Ha ha ha ha!

Shannon Lawson — Let’s Get It On (download)

7. Ramblin’ Man — The Allman Brothers Band

I’ve never been much of an Allman Brothers fan — I’m not much for extended noodling — so it may not surprise you that I like this song, since it doesn’t feature any of it. Instead, it’s a fine Southern rock song featuring great instrumental work by lead guitarist Dickey Betts and pianist Chuck Leavell. Included on Brothers and Sisters, the first Allman Brothers album fully recorded after the death of Duane Allman, it reached #2 on the charts, while the accompanying album hit #1. It remains the band’s only real hit, though they did reach the Top 40 on a few other occasions.

6. Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat — The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco

By 1973, we’d seen massive successes from the Jackson Five, the Osmonds, and though not related, the Partridge Family. So it was only a matter of time before execs sat down and tried to figure out how else they could capitalize on the family craze. Black group? Check. Mormons? Check. What’s left? Canadian Italians, duh! See, the DeFrancos were performing in their native Ontario when someone in the business (undoubtedly seeing dollar signs) sent a photograph of the group to Chuck Laufer from Tiger Beat. Laufer flew ‘em out to Hollywood, had them cut a few demos, and before they knew it, they were the next big family sensation. No, seriously, before they knew it: the group had a fan club before they had even released a single. “Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat” reached #3, and the DeFrancos were shuttled all over the country to mime their hit, complete with racy, incestuous, half-naked dancing.

Just kidding. You couldn’t get any cleaner, whiter and lamer if you tried.

So after watching that video, you’ve probably surmised that this is indeed the weaker part of the Top 10 this week — although to be honest, “Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat” is way better than it has any right to be. I’m speaking mainly about the music behind the song; it’s somewhat dark and psychedelic, and actually sounds credible up until the chorus, when everything suddenly turns happy and hunky dory (I’d bet Laufer forced the writers to add some major chords here). Part of the musical success is due to the appearance of members of the famous “Wrecking Crew” on the recording (Hal Blaine, Larry Carlton and Max Bennett). The lyrics aren’t that terrible either, but lil’ Tony just doesn’t sound old enough to be saying them. Not that anybody cared back then, but the difference between the Jackson Five and all other kid/family groups was that Michael Jackson was one of the precious few youngsters who could credibly sing words meant for an adult.

After “Heartbeat – It’s a Lovebeat,” the DeFrancos had a couple of other Top 40 hits, but interest quickly waned and the group disbanded in 1978 — partially due to a change in producers. Their original producer, Walt Meskell, was fired after one of their songs stalled outside the Hot 100. Their record label hired producer Mike Curb to take over, who was intent on turning the DeFrancos into a cover band. The family resisted and that was essentially the end of their career. You can hear all about what it was like to be a young DeFranco in this interview with Tony — it’s actually more interesting than I thought it would be. You can also see more at the DeFranco website, and if you’re looking to buy a house in California, Tony’s your guy.

5. Paper Roses — Marie Osmond

You may be wondering why I went into all that backstory about the downfall of the DeFrancos. Part of it is because I get a kick out of filling your brain with useless (and I mean really, really useless) information. But I also thought it’s worth noting that while Mike Curb’s cover idea failed by the DeFrancos, it worked for both Donny and Marie Osmond. Curb had been directly responsible for the Osmonds’ chart success in the early ’70s, and he oversaw Donnie’s covers of songs like “Hey Girl,” “Puppy Love” and “Go Away Little Girl,” which all reached the Top 10. He used the same approach with Marie and chose “Paper Roses” — originally recorded by Anita Bryant in 1960 — as her first solo single. It peaked here at #5 (and remains her only Top 20 solo hit), but reached #1 on the Country chart.

Was that paragraph as boring for you to read as it was for me to write? I’m only trying to match the song, which makes me want to take a nice, long nap. Here’s the video, and let’s at least give credit to Marie for being absolutely adorable. Note: Popdose.com is not responsible for any seizures that might result from staring at the background of this clip.

4. Half-Breed — Cher

This song was written especially for Cher and is certainly appropriate, seeing as she is half woman, half horse. I keed, I keed! Cher is part Cherokee, and the lyrics revolved around a woman whose mother is Cherokee and father is white. Lyricist Mary Dean brought the song to the attention of Sonny and Cher’s former producer, Snuff Garrett. Garrett had been responsible for numerous hits for both the duo and Cher as a solo artist, including “All I Ever Need is You” and “A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done,” and Cher’s #1 hit “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” However, Snuff quit as their producer after Bono turned down his suggestion that Cher sing “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” (which wound up becoming a #1 hit for Vicki Lawrence earlier in April of ‘73). Snuff held on to “Half-Breed” for a number of months, until Cher fired her next producer (uh, Sonny Bono) and returned to work with him once again. By the time “Half-Breed” hit #1 the recording duo of Sonny & Cher had disbanded.. She did promote the song on their show, however; here’s Cher in a bikini and full Native American regalia, looking kinda hot, sitting on a horse for no real reason.

3. Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1) — Eddie Kendricks (download)

Oh God, yes. On a chart already chock-full of great songs, “Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1)” gets my vote for Song of the Week. (It’s a category I made up just now.) With enough funk to make “Space Race” look like “Paper Roses,” this song allowed Kendricks to essentially give the finger to his former group, the Temptations. He had quit the group in 1971, dissatisfied with the “psychedelic soul” direction in which producer Norman Whitfield was leading the band; additionally, he wanted to record his own solo album while remaining in the group, but Berry Gordy opposed the idea. (A more clever writer could now link Eddie Kendricks to Peter Cetera, which makes my head explode a little.)

Kendricks’ solo career got off to a slow start, and the fact that the Temptations released “Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are)” as a direct insult to both Kendricks and David Ruffin didn’t help matters much. However, a number of his songs began attracting attention in dance and burgeoning disco clubs, and by giving them exactly what they were looking for, Kendricks scored his first (and only) #1 solo hit, followed by his #2 hit “Boogie Down” in January of 1974.

There wasn’t actually a “Part 2″ to this song; it received the “Part 1″ addition when it was edited down for single release, from eight minutes to just under three-and-a-half minutes. But the unedited version is absolutely wonderful and worth checking out above.

2. Angie — The Rolling Stones

I was in rehearsal the other day for my Acoustic ’80s gig tonight (shameless self-plug!) and I mentioned to my partner Mike that “Angie” was on this week’s chart.

Mike: I LOVE “Angie.”
Jason: Not me.
Mike: How can you not love “Angie”? It’s a beautiful song.
Jason: Mick Jagger.

There is something incredibly, incredibly annoying but Mick Jagger pronouncing the word “Angie” as “Ayyynjeh” for two or three lines and then choosing, like, three other pronunciations throughout the song. Actually, there’s something incredibly annoying about Mick Jagger in general. I guess you can see that I’ve never been a Stones fan. It seems like a lot of people are either Stones fans or Who fans, and I’m the latter. My singer may not be able to hit all the high notes anymore, but at least he doesn’t look like a caved-in ashtray with his shirt off.

Anyway, “Angie.” I did go back and listen to the song again (and again, and again), and Mike is right: it’s really quite beautiful, especially the string section and Nicky Hopkins’ wonderful piano work. I can almost — almost — ignore stupid Mick Jagger. “Angie” was the band’s first #1 since ’69’s “Brown Sugar,” a feat they’d repeat once more in their career with “Miss You,” a song I despise (primarily because of the obnoxious video, and no, Mike, you’re not changing my mind on this one, even with considering the line you love about the Puerto Rican girls).

Here’s a video of “Angie.” Am I seriously the only one who wants to punch Mick in the face every time he looks into the camera?

1. Midnight Train to Georgia — Gladys Knight & the Pips

I’m going to take a deep breath for a sec and reflect on how happy I am to end the chart with this song.

You know, with a name like “Gladys Knight & the Pips,” it’s only natural to assume the group would take a backseat to the lead singer — but in this version of the song, I’d say the Pips are every bit as important as Ms. Knight. Where would this song be without their backing vocals? They’re the support to Knight, just as she’s the support to her man, heading home with him after his dreams have fallen apart. Lyrically, I’m just torn apart by the simplicity in “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.” Absolutely beautiful. It’s hard to believe that this song might have never been written were it not for one woman.

I swear it’s true: writer Jim Weatherly had been on the phone with Farrah and she mentioned she was flying home to Georgia to see her folks. Weatherly dreamed up the story of the song, using Fawcett and her then-boyfriend Lee Majors as characters, and titled it “Midnight Plane to Houston.” The song made its way to Cissy Houston; her producers asked if they could change the title to something a little more “R&B,” and so Houston (the city, not the singer) became Georgia and the plane became a train. Knight recorded the song afterward and within two months of its first Billboard appearance, it reached the #1 spot — both here and on the R&B charts. It also won the group a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus, and remains their most popular song. As well it should be!

You can hear Weatherly’s “Midnight Plane to Houston” demo over at Songfacts, and the Goldmine article “Hop Aboard the Midnight Train to Georgia With Gladys Knight & the Pips” is pretty much required reading. Did you know that, save for one line, Knight’s lead vocals were recorded in one take? It’s all in the Goldmine article. Check it out! I don’t know about you, but I wish that every week of CHART ATTACK! could end like this.

And that does it for this week! Will we have similar good luck next time we meet? Only one way to find out — stop by again in two weeks! Thanks for reading!

Exactly how do you build a big fancy box set out of a single disc live album from 40 years ago? Well you start by remastering the original tracks. Then you dig up five previously unreleased tracks from the Madison Square Garden shows that didn’t make the original cut, and make them your second audio disc. The sets by the show’s stellar opening acts, B.B. King, and Ike and Tina Turner, have never been released before, so you make those Disc Three.

You’ll need a DVD, so grab that footage from the Maysles brothers (who also made the tour documentary Gimme Shelter), which includes full-length versions of the five newly released Stones tracks, and some behind the scenes stuff. The songs are great, but the opportunity to see Mr. Watts interact with the donkey with whom he’d eventually share the album’s cover is priceless, and the footage of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin backstage at the Garden is touching. Less than a year later they would both be gone. Watching the Stones and the Dead in a parking lot in San Francisco waiting for the helicopters that would take them to Altamont is simply chilling. Finally, you’ll need a book, and ABKCO have filled their 56-pager with an essay from tour photographer Ethan Russell, and the original Rolling Stone album review by the great Lester Bangs. In between all the words, publish some interesting photos, including one of the album’s original cover.

All of the pretty pictures and pithy writing in the world aren’t going to save your box set if the music isn’t there. So what about it? Does this set deliver the goods musically? Let’s see, you’ve got what was then the world’s greatest rock and roll band at the very peak of its pre-Altamont powers, and not one, but two legendary blues/r&b acts who were perhaps best known for bringing it in a live setting. Unless someone has an off night, you can’t miss. No one did.

The Stones are to be commended for always being sure to give the artists who inspired and influenced them the opportunity to be seen by a larger audience. The problem was that these opening slots were often thankless jobs. The crowd wasn’t there to see the “warm up” acts, no matter how accomplished they were, and they were often jammed onto the front of the stage in front of the Stones gear, and didn’t get the really good sound and lights, which were reserved for the headliners. I’ve personally witnessed artists like the Foo Fighters, Counting Crows, Living Colour, and Alanis Morrisette getting short shrift as Stones opening acts. Fortunately, it’s not necessary to sit next to some impatient, unappreciative dolt while listening to this collection (unless you want to), and you can really appreciate the greatness of B.B. King, and Ike and Tina Turner. With all due respect to the Stones, their sets, although too short, are a major reason to own this.

The Stones of course acquit themselves admirably. Brian Jones had been asked to leave the band, and subsequently died earlier that year, and his replacement, Mick Taylor, returned the band to their blues roots. The stakes were high. This was the Stones first U.S. tour since 1966, and the first where the crowd would actually listen to them. There’s a reason why Lester Bangs thought that Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out was the “best rock concert ever put on record.” In those days there was a palpable sense of danger in the air (along with a lot of pot smoke) when you went to a Stones show, and that’s here in all its satanic majesty. Hopefully you’ve heard this album several hundred times and you don’t need me to explain it to you. It’s beyond explanation anyway. When you look up rock and roll in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Keith Richards at this show. I honestly can’t tell you if the remastering of the original album tracks has made a difference. This music was grungy, is grungy, and should be grungy. How’s this; it sounds good to me. Any track will do as an illustration, but “Live With Me” has that Stones swagger that we all love. Enjoy.

The first two of the previously unreleased tracks that populate Disc Two feature Mick and Keith playing the acoustic blues songs “Prodigal Son”, and “You Gotta Move.” From there the band moves quickly to the misogynist anthem “Under My Thumb,” followed by “I’m Free,” and their massive hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Each is a strong performance that does nothing to detract from the glory of the original album. In fact, I find it kind of surprising that it took this long for these tracks to surface. There is nothing second-rate about them.

1969 was a strange, beautiful, and terrible year. As I said earlier, Brian Jones died that year. Man walked on the moon. The Beatles gave their last performance on that rooftop in London. The Woodstock Nation was born in August, and a little more than a week after these shows were recorded in New York City, died in the cold night air of Altamont, California. But Get Yer Ya-Ya’s out is not some dry historical document. It is living, breathing companion piece to one of rock and roll’s greatest tours, as undertaken by the form’s greatest practitioners.

This is the feature directing debut of Grant Heslov, who, with George Clooney, co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay of Good Night, and Good Luck. Clooney co-stars as Lyn Cassady, whose eyebrow-raising tales of being the army’s prized goat whisperer attract flailing reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor). Wilton, whose life and career are in tatters after his wife dumped him for an editor, wants to be embedded in Iraq, but instead winds up entwined with Cassady, who claims to be a member of the “New Earth Army” that is training “warrior monks” to literally brainstorm America’s enemies. But the program’s founder, uber-hippie Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) has gone missing, and the whole agenda is floundering due to petty grievances between the New Earth Army and a rival camp run by rebel psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who is training his own elite squad. Hooper is wildly envious of Cassady, who is bent on finding his mentor, as Wilton ultimately finds himself.

Clooney, McGregor, Bridges, Spacey, with assists by Stephen Root, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick, and a goat or two—it held promise. But the movie stares into its navel, then back at you, vacantly. Other than the amusing recreations of the experiments, there’s little to chew on. The updating to our present state of warfare is only tepidly satirical. It’s no Three Kings II for Clooney. He’s an expert doofus for the Coen brothers, whose current film, A Serious Man, is similarly mystifying—but open to interpretation. It gives you something to puzzle over and try to define. These Men, though, are yoked to a screenplay that’s nothing more than a ragtag collection of throwaway gags and arch mannerisms. Clooney is poker-faced and enigmatic, Bridges is a flower power Duke who’s thrown in with the army, Spacey is snide (which is better than his sentimental side, but not asking much of his abilities), and McGregor merely dull.

The movie is more frivolous than the Ocean’s pictures, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t so strenuously empty. Without having to concentrate too hard I predict it will leave you as it left me, at a loss for words. Why was The Men Who Stare at Goats made into this movie? The climax suggests it’s a male empowerment fable, like the film pulled from Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings, which indicated that all those people had to go in and out of comas for the socially inept Sacks character to work up enough nerve to ask a woman out on a date. Some smart people have conspired to dumb down a potentially fascinating tale. Read my mind: The Man Who Stare at Goats is a waste of time.

I am constantly amazed by what I choose to remember and choose to forget. The small, vital factoids that push me through a conversation drift like breath in 20-degree temperatures. The key word on the very tippity-tip of my tongue never gets out without the serious throwing of shapes and much anguish, yet I can still recall a Datsun commercial from sometime around the 1980s, featuring two Asian men calling themselves The Wong Bros. and announcing a year-end sell-a-thon. In Steve Martin-esque fashion, they shouted at the camera, shaking various degrees of late ’70s bling, “We’re the Wong Brothers! We are two party guys!” I’m dead serious about this.

Clearly this ad wouldn’t have a chance in hell if it was aired today. Even Six Flags came under fire last year for commercials with a barking Asian man rating “fun” situations – One Flag! Six Flags, more fun! This year, he was replaced by their creepy old (meaning younger person in old man prosthetics) dancing man character. If Nissan Motors resurrected those wacky Wongs, it would trigger a thermonuclear public relations implosion. This isn’t about political correctness or incorrectness, though. After several decades, the Wongs are still with me. As a piece of advertising, that means it was highly effective. As anything more than a jumping off point for this piece, though? Not so much.

I know it’s now November and Thanksgiving is just around the bend. That means a few things for a lot of people. The football season, although already plenty serious, now becomes a fight to the finish for some teams, a fight for dear life for others. That cramp in your side pocket is the pain your wallet is feeling due to impending holidays. Economists have already predicted a total outer-thigh-attack this year, but that remains to be seen. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will strut down New York City once again, although the last time I was really into it, they were walking the giant Underdog balloon down with them.  (If you’re now asking what the heck an “under-dog balloon” is, the next few paragraphs will mean the cubed sum of zero to you.)

My father was a television repairman once, before people just routinely threw out their broken TVs, but before that he was a short order chef, and Thanksgiving was his day to lord over the kitchen. Not that I or my siblings minded, as his recipe for stuffing is totally killer — in every respect, actually. Aside from the bread and the basic mirepoix, in goes raisins, bacon, bacon fat, apples, black olives — and while the details might not sound appetizing, the taste is something else. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Dad’s stuffing. It wouldn’t be Dad’s stuffing if we didn’t pack three extra pounds on our respective asses for having eaten it.

Almost as ingrained is the Danny Kaye movie Hans Christian Andersen, always played on this holiday, usually after the airing of Laurel & Hardy’s March of the Wooden Soldiers. We’d be eating the holiday meal, smelling Mom’s homemade pumpkin and apple pies as they started to warm up and hearing Kaye sing, “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen.” Then, during the station breaks, a cartoon commercial would pop up, an animated globe with a smile on its hemispheric face bouncing across these lyrics, the jingle sung by a chorus of young-sounding voices:

“Playworld! A world of toys, great for girls and great for boys! Playworld, where prices go…”

Then an imposing baritone, possibly Thurl “Tony The Tiger” Ravenscroft, would take over, “So low, low, low, low, LOOOOOWWW…” And the kids would pop back with a last cheer of “PLAYWORLD!”

Now you tell me. Why would this ad have any reason for hanging around my brain? Is it associative — due to the fond recollections surrounding the day, even the commercials get pulled into the nostalgia? Was the commercial really that effective? I wonder about this from time to time and tend to go back to the former, primarily because Playworld folded 25 years ago. The company’s main competition, Child World, collapsed shortly thereafter, both victims of a certain giraffe named Geoffrey and another piece of marketing – the allure of becoming a Toys R Us kid.

Oh, I have that jingle in my brain too, but it appears without pies, stuffing, Underdog or wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. The funny thing is that if I utter “Playworld, a world of toys” to my older sister she, too, will repeat the commercial’s song verbatim, and the look in her eyes indicates she’s suddenly smelling pie and stuffing. Memory is an incredibly powerful thing.

Cut back to 2009. My Sundays are tied up, not with church even though I feel I ought to attend, but with seeing my grandmother at the nursing home. The reasons why she’s there are complicated, and somewhat shocking considering we were going out to lunch every Sunday last year, me picking her up from her house, she being fairly mobile on her own. Now she’s in a wheelchair, but I still take her out to lunch. The facility she’s in is not bad at all, and I’ve mentioned that in comparison to others I’ve seen it’s some kind of role model, but in order to feel alive, you need to get out. Even if it’s only a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon, those hours can be spent beyond familiar confines, beyond routines that become grooves in the brain, grooves that shove out small insignificant things like names, dates and memories.

I don’t care that she calls me every other person’s name but my own. I just go with it, as I do when she asks me how this person or that person is doing. It’s not my place to tell her that this or that person has been dead for years and she was just picking up on the crosstalk of her dreams. I do care that she at least knows that on Sunday, even if the Jersey Shore beachcombers glut the Garden State Parkway, I will be down there to see her. And if it’s raining like Noah’s worst construction day, I’ll still be down there. I also care about my own brain and sometimes wonder, when it’s my turn to be in the chair, what will I be left with? What will I get to keep? Will I only remember “Playworld, a world of toys”?

We may not have John Edwards to kick around anymore – though that hasn’t stopped us from putting the occasional boot into his backside, has it? – but he did leave us with a paradigm that remains useful in surveying the political landscape circa November 2009. Forget, for the moment, Edwards’ rhetoric about the rich and the poor, and focus instead on the two wildly disparate narratives about the nation’s politics that have emerged over the past 12 months. On one side are those are still living in Bamalot, who see slow but steady progress toward fixing enormous problems in the economy, health care and foreign policy; on the other are those who see nothing but dollar bills flying out the windows of the Capitol. On one side are those who remain quietly, but fiercely proud of what America accomplished last autumn; on the other are those who loudly trumpet their conviction (or who put up with people who remain convinced) that the president himself is not an American.

On Tuesday, in a couple of states, one side sat contentedly on their asses and did nothing; the other harnessed themselves into an angry, energized mini-electorate that drove to the polls and turned their governors’ mansions from blue to red.

There was something deeply ironic about HBO’s decision to debut its new documentary, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday evening. At the same hour on every news channel, a debate was raging as to whether Obama’s “movement for change” had hit a roadblock with the Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. But over on pay cable, it was Decision ’08 all over again as the Edward Norton-produced doc replayed the goings-on behind the scenes of Obama’s primary and general-election victories – and portrayed his opponents as little more than flies to be swatted along the path to the inevitable.

So, yes, the dichotomy was ironic – but it was also a nice metaphor for Tuesday’s outcome. Obama’s voters, feeling like they did their job last year and remaining pretty happy with the way things have gone since then, stayed home and watched TV, while the unhappy folks dragged their butts to the polls and changed the status quo. Such is democracy in America – particularly in these off-off-year elections, when the voters of New Jersey and (particularly) Virginia love to send Bronx cheers to the party in power.

Whether or not Tuesday’s results were a referendum on Obama’s first year depends on who’s punditizing. Maybe Republicans are rebounding strongly from their annus horribilis … and maybe they just benefited from minuscule turnout, weak opponents and/or Democratic complacency. Take your pick. The truth, though, is that none of this year’s “big” elections meant much of anything to the direction of the country at large – except in Maine, where Americans proved once again that they’re not morally or intellectually worthy of being trusted with mob-rule decisions on minority rights. (It’s long past time that the Supreme Court took such decisions out of their hands for good; the whole enterprise of public voting to deny civil rights is patently unconstitutional.)

Even if Tuesday’s results were largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, I couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition of mentalities on display during Chris Christie’s victory rally and Obama’s equivalent celebrations last year. Remember all the respectful diversity and joyful weeping that attended Obama’s Grant Park speech last November? In contrast, Christie’s audience was the usual crowd of jackals – the kind we’ve seen regularly since the 1992 GOP convention, but especially since last year’s frightening election season. Note to Republican activists: When your own candidate shushes you because you’re embarrassing him on national television, as Christie did this week (and McCain did repeatedly last Nov. 4), you might want to modify your behavior.

Of course, conservative rally-goers have maintained that feral posture throughout this year, through tea parties and town halls that persistently echoed the worst expressions of racism, paranoia and xenophobia at last year’s Sarah Palin rallies. (HBO really ought to be airing its new Obama doc back-to-back with Alexandra Pelosi’s far more riveting film about those McCain/Palin crowds, Right America Feeling Wronged, which retains its raw-nerve immediacy the same way that footage of, say, Bull Connor still terrifies 50 years later.) Indeed, the positivity of the Obama campaign already seems like ancient history compared with the open, seeping wound of White Man’s Victimization that’s still being picked at on a weekly basis by right-wing pundits and teabaggers.

But then, that’s precisely the point of those efforts – to use lies and scare tactics to cover the fact that conservatives have no ideas of their own for fixing the nation’s problems. While Obama and the Democrats have turned from the generalities of campaigning to the specifics of governing, conservative activists have been left with little legislative influence and no standing whatsoever as purveyors of wise policy, considering the last eight years. So they’ve filled the vacuum by doubling down on the rabid, irrational arguments of fall ’08, hoping to whittle away at public support for Obama’s agenda via amped-up name-calling (Foreign-born! Socialist! Fascist! Socialist-Fascist!) and thinly disguised threats of violence.

Does anybody really think the results in Virginia and New Jersey this week were a validation of that strategy? In fact, both Christie and Bob McDonnell won by sublimating their conservative impulses – or flat-out denying them, in the case of McDonnell’s wingnut thesis – and embracing Obama’s themes, if not his policies, in an effort to win Independent votes. And they succeeded, even as exit polls showed that majorities of the substantially reduced electorates in both states still support Obama, and even favor the public option. Not that these lessons will be learned by the teabaggers, who are far more excited about what they accomplished in upstate New York – using an “independent” conservative carpetbagger to force aside a moderate Republican – than they are about winning the governor’s mansions in Richmond and Trenton. In the process they lost a congressional seat that had been in GOP hands since the Civil War, but never mind that … ideological purity was enforced!

If Republicans are smart, they’ll encourage their faithful to start emulating McDonnell and stop cheerleading for Michelle Bachmann and Orly Taitz. Perhaps a guy like McDonnell, despite his repugnant “past” beliefs, can grab the reins of the GOP and keep it from galloping over the cliff toward which Palin and Limbaugh and Bachmann and Beck have been steering it. Don’t bet on it, though; the teabaggers, empowered by their overthrow of Dede Scozzafava up in Watertown, are now sniffing under rocks nationwide to find primary challengers for districts represented by other insufficiently crazy Republicans. They’ll probably force McDonnell himself to rediscover his old-time religion soon enough.

Meanwhile, as health care reform lurches toward its denouement and Republicans pick their next battle – how dare Obama launch a jobs program! – the gulf between the Two Americas will no doubt widen in the coming year. Democrats need to re-energize their base and remind Independents that their agenda is about more than just spending a mint-ful of money; no matter how successful they are, they face an uphill battle to ensure that next November’s turnout looks more like last year’s than this year’s. Republicans, on the other hand, need to figure out whether they’re the party of Christie and McDonnell or the party of Doug Hoffman.

What’s that? You’ve forgotten who Doug Hoffman is? That’s because he lost on Tuesday – the same way that most every candidate who forsakes the center in pursuit of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck’s endorsements will lose next autumn. If that happens, we’ll still have Two Americas – but one will be even smaller than it is now.