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A Laurel and Hardy Party #4: “Perfect Day”

(1929; director: James Parrott)

To my knowledge, the famous Lou Reed song is NOT based on this 1929 comedy two-reeler in which Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy completely fuck up a picnic. They don’t even get to the picnic, actually. Just packing up the sandwiches and getting their Model T out of the driveway brings disaster. The slapstick between Stan and Ollie as they get in each others’ way dealing with flat tires, an uncooperative engine and a neighbor whose window they accidentally break is good stuff, but the funniest parts are how everyone pretends that the great day that their wives planned is still possible after all of this (see the cheerful, and repetitious, goodbyes to the neighbors). Also, comedy stalwart Edgar Kennedy as the cranky old brother forced to tag along even with a gout-riddled foot in a cast (do you think it’s going to get stepped on and knocked around throughout the film?) is reliably despairing.

It’s a good one. Also, as a man who feels like he pretty much bumbles his way through most days, Laurel and Hardy continue to resonate. If you see me at the ice cream shop, ask me about my several Oliver Hardy moments last week when my cat got stuck in a tree for a few hours.

This is the fourth film on the massive Laurel and Hardy: The Essential Collection DVD box set and the first one to have a bonus feature, which is simply an alternate soundtrack. Like most films in 1929, the original release of “Perfect Day” has no music beyond the opening titles. When Hal Roach put it back into circulation in 1937, it came with a score of jaunty studio library music newly added for your pleasure. The DVD offers both versions. Party like it’s 1929. Or 1937. Your choice. They’re both good.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #5: SAME PLACE THE FLY GOT SMASHED

Guided by Voices
Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
1990, Rocket #9
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

Robert Pollard’s music is optimistic. He’s not going to tell you that life is all merry-go-rounds and back rubs, but if you put in some work that’s worth doing and aren’t an idiot, you might enjoy being a living, breathing person on our ruined planet of shit and misery.

There are sad songs and melancholy moments and horror stories in his music, but little that I would call depressing. Or angry. Pollard is so great at anthems because he likes to write about human triumph over things big and small. His way with melody belies an artist who wants to make the world a prettier place. The volume of his work reveals an artist who’s not tired of life and gonna fight the grave for as long as he can.

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Things I Will Keep #1: Introduction and THE SWEET

Portrait of the Record Collector as a Young Man (Photo circa 2010)

One of the worst things about collecting records is that there are rarely any great stories to go along with it these days. It’s not like those accounts that you read from the 1960s and 70s when record collectors would knock on doors and ask befogged senior citizens if they had any old 78s laying around and then go inside and maybe meet a schizophrenic or a former Nazi in hiding or a woman who once gave Robert Johnson a handjob.

That’s not how it works anymore. If you did that today, it would be creepy. Now we have Ebay and Discogs and you can sit at home at 2 AM and hunt for records with one hand on a computer keyboard and one hand playing with your balls like a normal person. Leave the elderly ALONE. They don’t have obscure rockabilly 45s anymore. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy already found ‘em all by 1972.

Besides, I personally started collecting records because I DIDN’T want to talk to people. It was a hideaway, a great retreat from life. A lot of my collection came from thrift stores where there are few signs of life anyway beyond the decades of microbes on everything.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #4: SELF-INFLICTED AERIAL NOSTALGIA

Guided by Voices
Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
1989, Halo Records
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

This is the first Guided by Voices record that sounds like Guided by Voices. It took ’em four tries, but they did it. This psych-pop treat from 1989 walks and talks exactly like the band that I’ve been stuck on for twenty-three years now.

Hey, it takes time to find yourself. Sometimes in life you think you’ve found yourself, but nope, it’s only some jerk-off who happens to look like you and has worse taste in clothes. There’s still more work to do.  More trial and error in your future. More tearing down and rebuilding. It helps if there’s no one around telling you that you’re hot stuff all of the time. We all get big ideas about ourselves. Some of those ideas could stand to be kicked into the dirt. Being humbled makes you a better person and obscurity is the most fertile soil there is for creating something new.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #3: SANDBOX

Guided by Voices
Sandbox
1987, Halo
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

A review of Sandbox strikes me as a perfect place to tell you about the absolute, numero uno, most misunderstood thing about Guided by Voices.

I’m real sick of seeing this. I’m ready to rumble over it tonight in the alley behind the closed Burger King. It’s time we start busting heads. Let’s put an end to it here and now.

It’s simple: There are some GBV fans out there, walking among decent people like you and me, who think that they’re a power pop band.

They think that Guided by Voices are The Beatle Boots Band Explosion Revival and that Robert Pollard is a pop melody maker who just keeps forgetting to wear his skinny tie. These are the same people who think that Robert Pollard “needs an editor”. These are the people who might love sweet melodies like “I Am a Scientist” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife” and then not understand why that same guy is involved with Circus Devils or writes stuff like “A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House”.  These are the people who say that life would be so much better if Robert Pollard would stop releasing five albums a year and prune everything down to a neat and tidy twelve songs that might sound good piped into Whole Foods while you browse the organic kumquats.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #2: DEVIL BETWEEN MY TOES

Guided by Voices
Devil Between My Toes
1987, Schwa Records
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

Box set reissue copy, ladies and germs. No, I don’t have an original. This is good enough for me.

When no one’s paying attention to me, I sit at home in pajama pants, drink Trader Joe’s wine and watch Youtube videos for nine hours.

When no one was paying attention to Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices, they wrote songs and made terrific, underrated records just for themselves pretty much.

Clearly, I have a lot to learn from Guided by Voices.

The one thing I do have in common with Guided by Voices circa 1987 is that neither of us get out much. At the time of this album’s release, they weren’t playing live. They weren’t seeking out a label or management. They weren’t auditioning for anyone or anything. They were working guys in Dayton, Ohio making music in basements and garages because that was how they got through the day. Pressing it onto vinyl, on their own dime, made it “real” and inducted them into the rock brotherhood, whether anyone heard it or not.  The songs are the message, the album is the bottle, the outside world is the ocean.

Splash.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #3: “Men O’ War”

(1929; director: Lewis R. Foster)

Beautiful weather in a peaceful park in the Jazz Age. A glittering pond on which happy couples float lazily in rented canoes. Flowers everywhere. Pretty girls strolling in the sun. Lively chatter around a gazebo. Not one hint of a whisper in the air about any coming Great Depression. What a nice day.

Until Laurel and Hardy show up to ruin everything, God bless ’em. This is funny stuff, though the best joke is that Stan and Ollie are sailors on furlough. Can you imagine them being on a boat that they don’t manage to sink? Or going in for their military physical and not somehow setting the office on fire?

So in this one, our heroes meet a couple of man-crazy young women due to a mildly racy misunderstanding that involves ladies undergarments that accidentally fell off a passing pile of laundry.  Next thing you know, they’ve scored a double date in an old-fashioned soda shop (the guy behind the counter is past and future frequent L&H foil James Finlayson in his first sound film ) and then in a rowboat for what should be a romantic paddle across the water, but that goes completely wrong. It’s no spoiler to say that boat’s going underwater, somebody’s getting smacked silly with an oar and everyone’s going to start fighting.

The gags here are expert with the most valuable player award going to Oliver Hardy. He’s still a riot almost ninety years later, whether in awkward flirtation with comely flappers, dealing with man-child Stan or trying to maintain something that resembles dignity but losing it so easily.