Sentimentality
We Dressners traditionally spend Saturdays doing nothing.
My father still watches black-and-white cowboy movies on Channels 5, 9 or 11. Channel 9 has the best selection, featured on The Million Dollar Movie. Channel 9 show the The Million Dollar Movie three times a day, so if my father dozes off during one of the outlaw chases, gunfights or as the Indians attack the wagon train, he can still catch the rest of the action later in the day.
My father hasn't heard about cable television and still believes that Bob Teague is the weekend anchorman on the NBC 11 pm news. Usually, he dozes off by 10:45 pm, so he's been spared the hard truth that Bob Teague isn't even being recycled on the WPN with the rest of NBC's anchormen castoffs. My mother doesn't have the heart to tell her husband of nearly 61 years.
I spend my Saturdays far away from the wine world. Periodically, some deadbeat retailer somewhere makes me do a wine tasting in their horrible store. Being a businessman, I'm obligated to ruin my pointless Saturdays and pretend I'm passionate about wine on a Saturday to largely indifferent consumers who mostly think I'm a clerk at the retail store and that they know more about wine than I do. Sometimes they get arrogant and treat me like the service, reasoning that if I was a figure to reckon with, I wouldn't be a clerk at a liquor store pouring wine on my Saturdays. Predictably, they act respectfully as soon as I tell them that I'm the importer. Can you imagine that these fools keep me from doing my ritural Saturday inactivity, disrupting a centuries-long tradition of Dressner Saturday idleness!
Actually, my family was not named Dressner when they arrived in 1903 at Ellis Island. My Grandfather's name was Yosaf de Villaine but the immigration authorities could not pronouce de Villaine and Americanized our name to Dressner. Now that there are three generations of Dressners born in America, I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I had been Joe de Villaine and my children had kept our ancestral name.
I do know that the de Villaine family used to practice Saturday idleness in the old country. They would often hide in basements on Saturdays, since there was strong anti-de Villaine feeling in the old country and often the threat of violence and persecution. While we no longer need to hide from our enemies, we continue to do nothing on Saturdays to show respect to our de Villaine roots and heritage.
Usually, I go for a ride on my bicycle at some point on Saturday. Although sometimes I feel too idle to even do that. Today, I may not cycle as I have to attend a performance of The Long Christmas Dinner by Thorton Wilder at Mayor Bloomberg's home on 79th Street and I don't want to arrive sweaty or exhausted from a long ride. My daughter is appearing in this performance, which I already saw on Thursday night, and she's smashing. It is great to know that someone in the de Villaine family tree is up to something exciting, even if it is against all odds.
The rest of the de Villaines are boring predictable second generation de Villaine's with homes in the suburbs, professional degrees, and children they're cloning for success. I'm in the liquor business and might be the worst of the lot! Perhaps that's why most of the de Villaine family, now named Dressner, do not talk with me. Then again, it could be because I insulted one of them several years ago on this blog. I forget why I insulted him, but I'm certain that I wrote the insult during one of my Saturday idle moments. No doubt, he read the insult during one of his idle Saturday moments. Writing the insult was a mistake on my part and I try to keep my personal life off this blog. For instance, I'm tempted to use this blog to write an essay on the degeneration of Steiner Education as it is practiced in America today, but that might also get me into trouble. Even worse trouble than insulting my relative several years ago.
For today's idle activity, I've decided to illegally download music files from the internet. Now that Channel 9 has taken The Million Dollar Movie off the air, I find the equivalent amusement by downloading 32 versions of the same song performed by different groups and singers. I could call these groups and singers "artists" like they do on MTV but I still have trouble thinking of Madonna and Britney Spears as "artists." Regardless of who is the "artist," I always look to find 32 versions of the song.
My project today was Chuck Berry's Little Queenie. I'm not big on popular music and mostly listen to Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations. One advantage of only listenting to the Goldberg Variations is that I don't need to buy an IPOD as I don't need 20 or 40 or 60 megabytes of Goldberg Variations storage.. The variations are not long and I can comfortably fit 10 to 20 different versions on a low memory, low cost MP3 player or PDA. Right now, for instance, I have all my Goldberg Versions loaded on my HP IPAQ (not IPOD) Pocket PC and listen to them through bluetooth stereo headphones while cycling around Manhattan/Brooklyn and Queens. Yes, the de Villaine descendants might be boring but we have embraced modern technology with a vengence!
Unfortunately, I enjoy the Glen Gould piano versions, although it would be more in my purist profile to insist that you can't listen to the Goldberg Variations unless it is recorded on a reconstructed period instrument of Bach's times. Frankly, my love for Gould tortures me and makes me realize that despite my purist postures, I'm intellectually weak and shallow. Probably a closet hedonist.
I downloaded 32 different versions of Little Queenie and was able to find Chuck Berry's original recording. The guitar break is short and primitive, but it is a work of beauty, seething with energy. Little did I know that Jerry Lee Lewis also has multiple recordings of Little Queenie, although it does not seem surprising, and one of them is truly sublime. Somehow, the piano works better here than the twangy guitars and this is yet another example of a modern piano working better than a harpsichord.
Of course, there is also a Rolling Stones live cover in 1969, which is recorded at a concert I actually attended. At that time, I was known as a Marxist-Jaggerist. My father used to have trouble napping while watchingThe Million Dollar Movie during my Marxist-Jaggerist period. My kids have arrived at Marxist-Jaggerist age and although they are not Marxist-Jaggerists they are also disrupting my napping patterns. Young people these days are not Marxist-Jaggerists, instead they call each other "bitches" and "hang" and "chill" as if "chilling" was a professional calling.
There is also a superb Little Queenie collaborative effort between Berry and Rolling Stones Guitarist Keith Richards. Richards made a movie some years back about Berry which I have read degenerated into fist fights between the two guitarists. I once saw an interview with Richards about how difficult Berry was as a personality, but how much he loved him and how Richards had built an entire career and made 100s of millions of dollars by stealing a guitar riff from Berry.
I sometimes feel the same way about Robert Kacher, who was recently awarded the Ordre du Mérite Agricole from the French Government. Other wine industry luminaries who have received this honor include Bill Deutsch the Yellowtail Importer, Michael Skurnik, Michael Aaron from Sherry-Lehman's and myself. We de Villaine's have come a long way!
I recently bought a set of earplugs and an eye mask to help me sleep on the long flights I take all over this great nation of ours to promote my wines at horrible Saturday afternoon tastings at horrible liquor stores. Not that I've downloaded my 32 versions of Little Queenie, I'm going to put them on and go to sleep.
My father, Sam Dressner, was in the hospital several weeks ago for heart problems. He's fine now and I hope he has found a good western to watch this afternoon on Channel 9.
Hey Joe
The Berry/Richards version of Little Queenie is my favorite. Could you send me the file?
Joe,
Just think, you, Aubert and the rest of the clan could be spending saturdays lolling about the Romanee Conti vineyard between showings of the Million Dollar Movie!
Sorry to hear about your dad. Mine has been in and out of the hospital for a year now with heart stuff. When you're in your mid-50's, like me, your folks are either going or gone.
Mark
Joe, it is very dangerous to bicycle or operate any vehicle while wearing stereo headphones. Here in Washington state it is a class three misdemeanor. Please refrain from this activity that you may spend many more a sabbat pouring your delicious wares for the masses...
I believe Keith Richards once said, "Good artists borrow; great artists steal." Keith also apparently had some sage, experiential advice for Babyface immediately after Babyface agreed to produce Jagger's next solo outing...
It's like reading one of those new-fangled stream of conciousness essays. Very entertaining. The 1981 Glen Gould recording of the Goldberg Variations kicks butt. Sometimes I like to hang with my bitches and chill while listening to it.
Is this a re-run?
it was a valiant attempt to elude the mad spammer of post 1751, this one in it's original form. too bad that once a url is captured, it's nearly impossible to take down a spammer.
Glenn Gould 1981 over 1955 every time, for me. Mr Dressner is not alone in the wine/JS Bach crossover club. May we ask which other pianists he favours? In return, a recommendation: Leos Janacek's Oeuvres pour Piano, played by Alain Planes, 1994. Thanks for the site, David