Stranger in a Strange Land
Happy July. This is the seventh issue of Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit — it’s just like all those other email newsletters, except older, shorter, and slightly more Chinese.
Just got back from a holiday in Ireland and Scotland — and look like I brought a little fella called COVID–19 back with me. So instead of coughing all over my laptop screen, I’m keeping this sucker short.
Comin’ to get ya
The plan was simple: catch Iron Maiden on their Future Past Tour during the first European leg — instead of waiting a year or so for them come around to the States. Because they are old. Fans already had a scare way back in 2015 when the singer Bruce Dickinson had to be treated for a tumor at the base of his tongue. The oldest member of the band, the drummer, just turned 71. If the last three years have taught us anything, it’s don’t take anything for granted. Turns out, I was half right. Time wasn’t on my side, but it was me it was coming to get, not the band.
In the weeks leading up to the trip, I learned I had a high cholesterol and would probably need to start taking regular meds for it. Also, the pain in my neck and right shoulder that I developed from too much computer-ing had expanded to numbness and tingling in my right arm and hand, and would require weeks of physical therapy. (By the time I got to the first show, I could not raise my arm to make devil horns. Not so metal.) All the sightseeing had my flat feet barking, which led me to get some new insoles, which led me to have some pain in my lower back and shins. And one side effect of the COVID I caught (which I thought was a mild cold at the time) was that my right arm hurt even more every time I coughed. Meanwhile, the geezers in the band are doing this every other night.
So anyway, that’s why after hobbling and wheezing my way back to Brooklyn, all I’m up for posting this month are links to some holiday snaps on Instagram and a couple of YouTube videos.
Gallops and the floating thumb
One of these days I’ll get around to writing a post about what makes Iron Maiden the greatest band in the world, but for now, enjoy a video: “7 Iconic Steve Harris Bass Lines,” which features two bass players (one a longtime fan, one new to Maiden) geeking out on Steve Harris’ bass riffs.
See also: “7 Reasons Steve Harris is a Metal. Bass. Legend.”
Other rabbit holes
The Red Sox remain maddening. The team continues to bounce back and forth between decent and terrible. (The only consistent thing is their defense, which is reliably ugly.) But then they’ll win in some completely stupid way, and I’m interested again, despite them hanging out at exactly .500, which puts them in the basement in the division.
The owners of Max continue to suck. After crapify-ing the (HBO) Max app, the Discovery dingbats fired key staff at Turner Classic Movies, and then after blowback from the film community, they put together some half-assed plan to preserve TCM’s mission in partnership with Scorsese, Spielberg, and PT Anderson. Those three directors are a solid choice for this kind of thing — just seems like a PR ploy at worst and a shoddy patch job at best. I wouldn’t climb onboard yet. (I’d totally hop into a deep-sea sub built by Jim Cameron, tho.)
Movie theaters don’t know how to show movies anymore. In other depressing movie news, the state of the theater-going experience continues to decline as projectionists are replaced with…nobody? (Asteroid City was pretty great, tho.)
And that’s it for this month’s edition. (Sorry for being such a downer — it might be the SARS-CoV–2.) Have a good one.
jf