Bird Brain

Hello World, Happy Chinese New Year! It's time to get your red on, and party like it's 4715, 4713, or 4654! (Apparently, years in the Chinese calendar are not sequential, like they are in the West, so there's no real consensus on what would be considered the numerical value of the current year at this point.) We're entering into the Year of the Rooster, which is known for the attributes of high achievement, attention to detail, and good instincts. So for all of you Roosters out there born in 1909, 1921, 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, or 2005, get out there and enjoy the year ahead with all the cock-a-doodle-doo that you can muster. Like your barnyard namesake, you should get up with the chickens, and greet the day with a roar, so you can really show them who's boss around the old henhouse. Or in the immortal words of the legendary Ray Charles, "Bend over, let me see you shake a tail-feather!" Speaking of songs, it reminds me that over the course of the oh-by-gosh-by-golly-mistletoe-and-holly season, I listen to literally hundreds of Christmas songs at home, in the car, or on the radio when I'm out, and not to mention, at church as well. I have a motley assortment of over 60 music CDs with holiday classics, novelties, or downright oddities, by everyone and anyone from The Chipmunks all the way to the mighty Enrico Caruso, and everything in between. (And yes, "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" besides.) It made me realize that we are all exposed to so much of this over our lifetimes that we're not even aware of how much we have unconsciously absorbed it, and if we actually gave it some thought, we would be genuinely amazed. There are dozens upon dozens of Christmas tunes that we know, both popular and spiritual, not just that we've heard of their names, but can actually sing them by heart, basically at the drop of a (Santa) hat. If a camera crew from Entertainment Tonight ran up to you on the street and said, "Here's $100, sing 'Jingle Bells'," you wouldn't say, "I have to go get my sheet music first." No, like everybody else, you would just launch right into those bells on bob-tails dashing through the snow, without a second thought. Try that right now - go ahead, I'll wait. (Dum-dee-dum-dum ... making spirits bright, what fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight!) You can easily do the same thing with "Let it Snow," "Joy to the World," "White Christmas," and countless others - which is a remarkable achievement when you consider all the important stuff that you want to remember, but can't. When we were visiting our friends upstate over the MLK weekend, and still in a holly-jolly frame of mind, I thought it might be interesting to take a shot at quantifying this vast untapped pool of knowledge, and see how many titles we could actually come up with on the spot, that we could honestly sing and knew the words to, without resorting to online helps or other smart phone trickery. It didn't take long for us to come up with a list of almost 70 carols, hymns, and ditties of the North Pole or Bethlehem variety, that we could recall with reasonable accuracy, without any sort of practice or planning ahead of time. Heck, by now probably even the godless Communists and KGB agents monitoring my email can sing "Frosty the Snowman" in spite of themselves, just by virtue of hearing it so often, without even noticing it. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, anyone? Something else we can expect this time of year, at least around here, is weather and plenty of it - although it should be plain to anyone of even the meanest intelligence that they've got the temporary seasonal help in charge of the Kremlin's infernal weather machine lately, because you just don't know what to expect from one day to the next, or sometimes even the very same day. Some mornings you wake up to single-digit temperatures, sullen gray clouds, and biting winds, and 2 days later, it looks like June and people are out in shorts and flip-flops. This can make forecasting a dicey business (and which it must be said, is already a hit-or-miss proposition under the best of circumstances) and I don't envy the meteorologists trying to make sense of it all. Definitely not making sense was a news segment I saw recently with the intrepid reporter in the studio very carefully explaining and pointing to the interactive weather map behind her. She was attempting to show how the atmosphere goes from warmer to colder underneath, and the rain turns into little pellets, and then she claimed - at least according to the ostensibly helpful captions provided by our TiVo service - "that's how you get sleep." Somehow I don't think so! In other local news, we finally took the plunge and went to see "Rogue One" in glorious IMAX 3-D, and you can believe me when I say, "The Force is strong with this one." Perhaps without even realizing it, everyone understands where this story comes from, because in the very first original "Star Wars" movie from 1977, we remember that it begins with the runaway droid R2-D2 being chased by Imperial Storm Troopers, only to be scooped up and protected by Luke Skywalker in the appliance repair shop, who pretended that it was broken and he was working on it. Later he noticed it had a cartridge stuck in it, and when he tried to pry it loose with a screwdriver, instead it played the famous hologram of Princess Leia desperately seeking help from Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi - and which launched the whole outer space adventure of 9 films after that, and no let-up in sight. So "Rogue One" is actually the tale of how the critical information from the rebel alliance got to the princess and plucky droid in the first place, making it intrinsically interesting, since we all know what happens after that. It has all the eye-popping spectacle that anyone could ever want, plus an engaging cast of fresh-faced youngsters, with a few old regulars (like Darth Vader) tossed in for good measure. In order to bridge the gap between the original story and this one, some of the actors (such as the late Peter Cushing) have been very carefully remastered from the original 1977 movie, and digitally inserted into the new one, which is a fascinating idea that they managed to pull off without a hitch. It's lively and entertaining throughout and never lags, and somehow manages to seem familiar and also refreshingly exotic at the same time. [SPOILER ALERT - for anyone who still has plans to see it] One caveat that I might suggest is that you don't get too attached to anyone or everyone you might see somewhere through the long and winding narrative, because they really cleaned house in this one - and great or small, a pivotal character or seemingly inconsequential, you can't count on them making it all the way to the end in one piece. It may be a wild ride, but it's great fun, and I was glad that we were able to catch up with it while it was still available in IMAX, which is the only way to see special effects blockbusters like this. And after all, if that's not something to crow about, well then, I don't know what is. Elle