Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

 Here’s a list of holiday tunes I assembled, if you want 17 hours of seasonal songs.  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/06KnXuDl8EXx5gCwP2iyPS?si=mtfuWzqaQsGZkSrY5Ko13g

  Count me among those who admired The Queen's Gambit and the lead performance by Anya Taylor-Joy, with some reservations about the tidy ending. Based on the novel by Walter Tevis, and written and directed by Scott Frank (screenwriter of Logan, Out of Sight and The Lookout), the seven-part Netflix tale is about Beth Harmon, troubled orphan whose only joy in life in the '60s comes from being phenomenal at chess. And even that joy, it turns out, has its limits. It is beautifully shot, with a dazzling fashion sense and a fine period soundtrack. Its use of Classical Gas has brought new attention to that Mason Williams gem, for example, and a recent peek at Georgie Fame's Yeh Yeh on YouTube saw at least one comment relating to its use in Queen's Gambit.  Fashion, meanwhile, has had my Facebook friends envying Beth's super-fashionable wardrobe; clothes in the show are at once defining and defiant. For Beth, the expensive outfits break her free from the plain clothes of he...

Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! since 1984, has passed away after a long bout with cancer. With his passing the show loses its best host, someone who embodied both the show's celebration of knowledge and its demand for cool dignity in presentation and performers. Art Fleming, who preceded Trebek from 1965 to 1975 and again in a late '70s revival, was amiable in the low-key fashion of contemporaries such as Bill Cullen. He was pleasantly memorable -- when my family played the home version of Jeopardy! someone would say, "I'll be Art" -- but not much more than that.  Ken Jennings, long rumored to be Trebek's successor, has a peevish quality -- at least, off the air -- that contrasts with Trebek's coolness even when Trebek was his most sardonic.  In addition, since his cancer diagnosis, Trebek has seemed warmer, touched by the public response to his illness. The Trebek I met many years ago during his promotional visit to Cleveland was a touch chilly and di...

Today's election result, with Joe Biden projected the winner, has me feeling a combination of joy, relief and energy. I think that last quality will finally get me back to the blog. I have thought about writing here many times in the past six months but I never made the move. The best I could muster was my mailbag column, the occasional Facebook post, a few tweets, and Instagram pictures, many of my socks, and places we hiked, and most recently our new kittens. (See Linus and Lucy, above.) The kittens, too, are a source of energy -- and exhaustion -- with the liveliness they bring to the house. The above photo is an interval of rest during massive motion. They climb across furniture, go behind cabinets, race each other up and down the stairs. We have moved many items out of their reach. I cannot keep my chair right beside my desk because they will use it as an interim step up onto the desk. The other day, I discovered one of the TV sets turned on and did not remember doing so; a co...