Traffic – "Feelin' Alright" (1968)

Don’t get too lost in all I say

Though at the time I really felt that way

But that was then, now it’s today

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I promised to tell you why I recently watched an obscure French movie titled The Murderer Lives at Number 21 – in French, it’s called L’assassin habite au 21 – which was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and released in 1942.

Let’s begin at the beginning.  Better yet, let’s begin before the beginning.

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In 2024, Andrea Skinner – the youngest daughter of the late Nobel Prize-winning short-story writer Alice Munro – told the Toronto Star that her stepfather had begun to sexually abuse her in 1976, when she was nine years old.   

Skinner had told Munro about the abuse – which lasted for several years – in 1992.  Munro separated from  her husband for a few months but then went back to him, telling her daughter that she had been told about the abuse too late and that she loved her husband too much to leave him.  Skinner cut off contact with Munro after her mother objected to Skinner not wanting her stepfather to have any contact with her children.  

I read about the abuse and Munro’s response to it – or, more accurately, her nonresponse to it – in a lengthy article in the New Yorker, which had published over 60 of Munro’s short stories.  (I subscribed to the New Yorker for many years, and read most of those stories.  But they hadn’t made much of an impression on me – perhaps they appeared one at a time over a four-decade time period.)

The New Yorker piece about Munro and her daughter cited several of her stories that seemed in retrospect to have been colored by Munro’s relationship with her second husband and her knowledge of her daughter’s abuse at his hands.  Some of them featured mothers who felt guilty about something bad that had happened  to their children.  Others were about timid wives who seemed to be in thrall to overbearing husbands.

I made a note of the titles of those stories and decided to read them so I could judge for myself what their contents had to say about Munro’s state of mind when she wrote them.

But after I had read the stories cited in the New Yorker article, I was moved to read all of Munro’s 150-odd short stories – in order of their publication, of course.  So I went on my public library website and reserved copies of all fourteen of her short story collections.  Once I had amassed copies of all fourteen volumes, I began to read them.  

I read the first collection – Dance of the Happy Shades, which came out in 1968 – in April of last year.  I finished the final one – Dear Life, which was published in 2012 – almost exactly one year later.  

My first thought upon closing Dear Life was to go back to Dance of the Happy Shades and start the process over again.  That’s because Munro may be the greatest writer to have ever lived – or at least the greatest writer I’ve ever read.  

On their surface, her characters – most of whom are women – aren’t particularly interesting.  Like her, many of them grew up in rural Ontario almost a century ago and lived unremarkable lives.  After they graduated from high school, they either got married, or got the kind of jobs that single women usually took in those days – or they continued living at home to take care of a sick parent.  (Many of the ones who married and had children eventually got divorced and moved away from Ontario – as did Munro.)  

I can’t really explain why I cares much for Munro’s character.  All I know is that I find them utterly real.

I am very glad that I discovered Munro and read every one of her stories.  But it’s depressing to me to think about how many other great books out there that I don’t know about and will never read.  

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While my therapist finally convinced me that I don’t have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder – or “OCPD” – I often exhibit several of the symptoms of OCPD.

Those symptoms include:

1.  A preoccupation with details, rules, schedules, organization, and lists;  

2.  A striving to do things perfectly;

3.  Excessive devotion to being productive;

4.  Rigidity and stubbornness.

I’ll let you decide for yourself whether my decision to read each and every one of Munro’s stories – in chronological order – makes me sound like someone with any or all of the above characteristics.

I think the answer is pretty obvious.

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What does all of that have to do with The Murderer Lives at Number 21, the obscure French movie I wrote about in the previous 2 or 3 lines?

When I said in the previous 2 or 3 lines that I would tell you the story behind my decision to watch that movie in this 2 or 3 lines, I fully intended to do just that.  But to quote the lyrics to today’s featured song – which were written by the late Dave Mason – “That was then, now it’s today.”

The next 2 or 3 lines will absotively, posilutely contain the rest of the story.  I promise!

In the meantime, click here to enjoy the original recording of “Feelin’ Alright,” which was released in 1968 on Traffic’s eponymous debut album.  (Joe Cocker’s cover of that song sold more records, but I prefer Traffic’s version.)

Click here to buy “Feelin’ Alright” from Amazon.  

Noga Erez – "Nails" (2022)

Bump a b*tch

Flesh pieces in my nails

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 – the original title is L’assassin habite au 21 – is a 1942 French movie directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.  (Clouzot’s best movie was The Wages of Fear, a 1953 thriller that I saw in college.  It was one of the first foreign films I ever watched, and I’ve never forgotten it – I challenge you to name a more tense and harrowing movie.)

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 has been described as a “crime comedy.”  The breezy tone of the movie is somewhat reminiscent of that of The Thin Man, the famous 1934 Hollywood movie that featured a nonchalant husband-wife team who spent most of their waking hours mixing martinis and flirting with one another, but still found time to help the police solve the odd murder.

The plot of The Murderer Lives at Number 21, which involves a serial killer who seems to have the ability to kill in two – or even three – places at once, is quite clever.  It culminates in a very satisfying surprise ending that I didn’t see coming at all.  

But while the movie is ostensibly about an investigation into multiple murders, it’s first and foremost a comedy.  There’s lots of banter between the police detective who’s charged with solving the crimes and his ditzy girlfriend.  (Suzy Delair, who was director Clouzot’s petite amie at the time the movie was made, was terrific as the girlfriend.)

The following scene between the detective and girlfriend really threw me:

Can you think of another movie – much less a sophisticated French classic – that features an extended blackhead-squeezing sequence?

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From the Cleveland Clinic’s website:

It can be very tempting — and satisfying — to squeeze out or pop blackheads. However, squeezing out blackheads can create several problems:

– You may not remove the entire blackhead.  You may even push the blackhead further into your skin, which can cause painful irritation.

– You may introduce bacteria or more oil into the blackhead opening.  Your blackheads could get bigger or even spread.

– Your skin is sensitive, and your nails are much stronger than your skin. When you use your nails to apply a lot of pressure to your skin to remove a blackhead, you can irritate or seriously damage your skin.

But if you absolutely must have a go at a blackhead – either yours, or a friend’s – click here before you start squeezing. 

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You might be wondering what inspired me to watch an obscure old foreign movie like The Murderer Lives at Number 21 in the first place.

That’s a very good question, and I’ll endeavor to answer it in the very next 2 or 3 lines.

In the meantime, enjoy “Nails,” which was released in 2022 by the Israeli recording artist Noga Erez.  An excerpt from that record was featured on the soundtrack the Netflix series, Big Mistakes, which is one of the more interesting TV series I’ve seen recently.  Had it not been for the fact that I watched Big Mistakes, I almost certainly would have never heard “Nails,” and my life would have been much poorer as a result.

Click here to listen to “Nails.” 

  

Click here to buy “Nails” from Amazon.

Joe Jackson – "It's Different for Girls" (1979)

Don’t you know

That it’s different for girls?

Yes, I did know that.

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My original plan was to end this post there.  I’d add the customary links to YouTube (so you could listen to today’s featured recording) and to Amazon (so you could buy that recording, earning a few pennies for me), and leave it at that.  It would have been the shortest 2 or 3 lines ever.

In other words, I was planning to phone one in.  

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In case you’re not familiar with that idiom, “phone it in” means “to perform a task, job, or performance with minimal effort, low enthusiasm, or lack of care, often just ‘going through the motions’ rather than engaging fully.”

(To the wiseacre in the back row who just whispered “Doesn’t that describe most 2 or 3 lines posts?” to his neighbor, I would reply – respectfully, of course – “F*ck you and the horse you rode in on.”)

I admit that I do phone in a post from time to time.  I mean, why not?  After all, I am the master of the 2 or 3 lines domain – I don’t have to answer to anyone when I choose to do that.

But I try to avoid picking up too many bad habits.  I’ve fallen prey to booze and young women already, and I don’t think it would be healthy for me to overindulge in phoning it in as well.  

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Joe Jackson is one of the very best songwriters of the late seventies and early eighties.  (My personal Mount Rushmore for that era would be Elvis Costello, Chrissie Hynde, David Byrne, and Jackson.)

In “It’s Different for Girls,” Jackson flips the script on the assumption that men are more likely to be satisfied with no-strings-attached sex than women: 

It was something that I heard somewhere that struck me as a cliché. . . . I thought, What could that be about?  And that maybe the idea was to turn it on its head and have a conversation between a man and a woman and what you'd expect to be the typical roles are reversed.

That’s all well and good, but I don’t think that concept is particularly inspired.  It just goes to show you – a record can be very good – and I think “It’s Different for Girls” is a very good record – despite having somewhat lackluster lyrics.

Click here to listen to “It’s Different for Girls,” which was released in 1979 on Joe Jackson’s second album, I’m the Man, and went on to become his biggest UK chart single.  (It didn’t do as well in the U.S., failing to crack the Billboard “Hot 100.”)

Click here to buy “It’s Different for Girls” from Amazon.

Herman's Hermits – "I'm into Something Good" (1964)

I asked to see her next week

And she told me I could

Something tells me I’m into something good

At the recent Pourhouse Trivia playoff finals, the host played snippets of three pop songs, and asked us to identify the women who wrote each of them.

The first clip that was played was an excerpt from the 1964 Herman’s Hermits recording of “I’m into Something Good.”

One of my teammates threw out Carole King’s name as a possible answer.  That made sense – King and her then-husband Gerry Goffin wrote a number of hit songs in the sixties, and “I’m into Something Good” sounded like it could have been one of theirs.

But King and Goffin were a team, and I understood the question to be looking for a solo female songwriter – not a male-female songwriting duo.  

Carole King and Gerry Goffin in 1959

After she divorced Goffin in 1968, Carole King moved from New York City to Los Angeles and eventually recorded her legendary Tapestry album, which included a number of songs she wrote by herself.  But I knew the Herman’s Hermits song dated from the time when King and Goffin were still married and writing songs together.

As it turned out, Carole King was the answer they were looking for.

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Later that day, I fired up Wikipedia and learned that Carole King and Gerry Goffin had, in fact, co-written “I’m into Something Good.”  

I wrote to Pourhouse Trivia to point that out, and got this response:

We were aware of this fact when creating the audio question, which is why we used the phrase “credited as a songwriter” in the question.  All three songs from that question were co-written by teams comprising men and women.  I don't understand why your team assumed that the answer needed to be a solo songwriter.

The questions at the Pourhouse Trivia playoff finals were read by the host.  But they were  also printed on slides that were projected on a large screen so all of the fifty teams that were competing could see them.  

Here’s the slide with the Carole King question:

The question does ask for “the woman credited as a songwriter” – not “the woman credited as the songwriter.” 

On the other hand, the question’s headline – which was printed in a larger font than the rest of the question, and was also in all caps – was “SHE WROTE THAT,” which implied that a woman wrote each song by herself.  

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I spent the first third of my legal career working on consumer protection matters at the Federal Trade Commission, and the rest at a law firm with the biggest advertising law practice in the country.

My bread-and-butter work at my law firm was reviewing advertising copy and telling my clients whether it was at risk of being challenged as being false or deceptive.  If I thought it was problematic, I would suggest appropriate revisions to reduce the legal risk. 

If the Carole King question had been an advertisement that a client had sent me for review, I would have suggested that he revise its language to make its meaning clearer.  

Here’s one possible revision:

QUESTION 1: SHE CO-WROTE THAT

For each of the following songs, identify the woman credited as a co-writer of the song.  Please note that none of the correct answers is heard in the clip.

Here’s another possible revision that would have taken care of the problem:

QUESTION 1: THEY WROTE THAT

For each of the following songs, which were written by male-female songwriting teams, identify the female co-writer.  Please note that none of the correct answers is heard in the clip.

*     *     *     *     *

Most of my clients pushed back when I advised them to make changes in their ad copy.  They might defend their original language, or propose minor edits that didn’t go as far as my suggested revisions.

Let’s imagine how the discussion with the client might have gone if I had proposed the changes noted above:

Client:  I don’t understand why you think the question needs to be changed.  We ask people to identify the woman “credited as a writer” of the song.  Carole King was “a” writer of the song – we didn’t say she was the only writer of the song. 

Me:  I agree that the “credited as a writer” statement is literally true.  But I think the government would view your language as deceptive.

Client:  But you just said the “credited as a writer” line is true.  So how can it be deceptive?

Me:  The government focuses on the overall net impression of what you say rather than just its literal truthfulness.  They would evaluate your question based on what claims they believe the average person would take away from it.  The government would view the question as deceptive if its total impact was misleading – even if every individual statement in it was technically true.

Client:  It’s not our fault if people don’t read the question carefully and end up misunderstanding it.

Me:  The government would say that if people misunderstand your question, it is your fault – not theirs.  You need to write the question so it’s the meaning is clear and unambiguous.  

Client:  How do they know how people interpret our language?  Wouldn’t they need evidence that people are actually being deceived?

Me:  Not really.  They view themselves as experts on how the average person would interpret the question – so they don’t need actual proof of deception.  You could try to gather data that proves them wrong, but that’s not easy to do.  And one more thing: keep in mind that you might still lose even if your evidence showed that the majority of people understood the question correctly.  If a substantial minority of people are confused, that’s enough for the government to win its case.

Client:  So why did you suggest the changes you did? 

Me:  The big problem with your question is its heading: “SHE WROTE THAT.”  I think that the typical person who read that would assume that the song was written by a single female – not by a team, and especially not by a team that included a male.  That’s why I suggested changing that language to either “THEY WROTE THAT” or “SHE CO-WROTE THAT.”

Client:  But we really like “SHE WROTE THAT” for the heading.  Can’t we throw in a disclaimer of some kind in a footnote?

Me:  As I said, the government looks at the net impression of the question as a whole.  So it might be possible to add a disclaimer that cures the possible deception caused by the “SHE WROTE THAT” heading.  But that disclaimer would have to be clear and conspicuous.  In other words, the qualifying language must be clear and unambiguous in meaning.  You can’t use confusing “legalese” – and you can’t bury the disclaimer in the fine print at the bottom of the question where it might go unnoticed.

Client: What about if we stuck with the “SHE WROTE THAT” heading and changed the rest of the language as you suggested – “For each of the following songs, identify the woman credited as a co-writer of the song,” or  

“For each of the following songs, which were written by a male-female songwriting team, identify the female co-writer.”

Me:  That would be a step in the right direction.  But the government could still argue that the meaning of the heading wasn’t consistent with the meaning of the rest of the question, and that the overall net impression of the question as a whole was confusing.  If the heading is misleading, that’s hard to overcome.

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Pourhouse Trivia runs trivia contests seven days a week, with a different set of questions each day.  That means they have to generate thousands of new questions each year.

Generally speaking, their questions are very good.  But no one’s perfect, and occasionally a question that’s worded in a somewhat confusing way slips through their screening process.

I think that the wording of the Carole King question was a bit ambiguous.  But at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter.  

We only lost one point by not answering that question correctly.  So it wouldn’t have made any real difference if we had gotten it right – we were still destined to finish out of the money.

*     *     *     *     *

“I’m into Something Good” was first recorded by Earl-Jean McCrea, who had previously been a member of the Cookies – a New York City-based R&B girl group who had their biggest hit with “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad (About My Baby),” another Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition.  

It seems that Goffin and Earl-Jean had had an affair while he was still married to King that resulted in her becoming pregnant and giving birth to a daughter.  (King stayed with Goffin for several years after the affair came to light, eventually divorcing him in 1968.)

Earl-Jean’s version of “I’m into Something Good” made it to #38 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in early 1964.  Herman’s Hermits covered the song that summer.  Their version was #1 hit in the UK, but peaked at #13 in the U.S.

Click here to listen to Earl-Jean’s “I’m into Something Good.”

Click here to buy the Herman’s Hermits cover of “I’m into Something Good” from Amazon.