Saturday Night Stake-Out

Just a few years ago, if you lost something small and valuable like an electronic device or a watch, it was gone forever. Now, with GPS, a lot of things are trackable and stand a chance at being recovered - like a 16 year old's iPhone.

My daughter set her phone down in the shoe department of a local store last night. Absent minded (like we've all been at times) she walked away without it and left the store.

These days, it doesn't take long for a young woman to realize that her phone is missing. Within 15 minutes she was back in the store asking if a pink iPhone 5c had been turned in. The answer was no.

"Find iPhone" is now our favorite free application ever. Once my daughter was back at home, we downloaded it to my iPad. By simply putting in her Apple ID, a map showed exactly where the phone was located. Fortunately the phone was left powered on by whoever had it. This is required for the app to work. We watched the image of a smartphone moving along a map from a local grocery store to a neighborhood in Tempe about 5 miles away.

I suppose filing a police report and waiting at home for them to take care of things would have been the best choice. Maybe  I did not want to see that phone move somewhere else or disappear from the screen. Maybe I really really don't like someone taking something of mine and getting away with it. Maybe I just needed a little improvised stake-out to liven up my weekend night.

We hopped in her car and headed toward Tempe.

For about 90 minutes we waited outside the house displayed on the iPad map. Meantime, I was able to report the phone stolen and request the police. It was a Saturday night and I knew real emergency calls would get priority. But eventually two young, polite Tempe police officers showed up. I showed them my iPad screen and the latest update of where the phone was.

The very happy ending to all this is that we got the phone back. It was in the house displayed on the iPad. The police had a long conversation in front of the house with the occupants and finally a pink phone turned up in the hands of two 13 year old girls inside. The girls had found it in the store where my daughter lost it. Not turning it in to a manager was their mistake. So was leaving it powered on.

I didn't ask for too much further information after the police gave their simple explanation for how they got it out of the house. "Just good police work" was the answer, with a smile. We had the option to press charges, but chose not too.

It's really hard to find better free entertainment for a Saturday night than getting back something valuable you thought was lost. The improvised stake-out was a bonus. And I think my daughter sort of enjoyed having a couple of young policemen save her day.

Inside Llewyn Davis

The second or third record player I ever owned was pretty fancy. It had a continous play feature. By selecting a switch, no matter where you set the needle down, music would play non-stop.  After the last song on one side was over, the needle arm would automatically raise and return to the first track on the vinyl. Sure seemed cool for a 13 year old's stereo system in the mid-70's.

The movie "Inside Llewyn Davis" is presented by the Coen Brothers in a style that reminded me of a record on that turntable. The end is the beginning and vice versa. You can "drop the needle" anywhere in the middle and start enjoying. Like most record albums, there doesn't seem to be much conclusion. Just tracks / stories that either affect you or don't. If you've seen enough Coen Brothers' films, no conclusion is no real surprise, but there is a lot for the eyes and ears along the way to make viewing it worthwhile.

In the film, the Coens present a contrast of a man who makes astoundingly beautiful music and yet is really one of the biggest jerks you could imagine. "Everything you touch turns to shit," a female friend whom he has thoughtlessly impregnated hisses at him "You're like King Midas' idiot brother."

Not so much an idiot, really, but more of just a handsome, mellow, selfish folk singer who is obsessed with achieving his own vague ideal for success in music: becoming famous but not too commercial and never "selling out." Even worse, failing and then simply "existing" as he sees his sister - a New York City housewife, then rotting away like his once famous merchant-marine father in an old-sailor's home.

With "Inside Llewyn Davis," life is about choices we make, doors that don't close quickly enough, off-ramps taken or not, incredible journeys that aren't really or don't seem like it until looking back when they are over, and the fallacy of "legitimacy" in music. Does a musician really have to live the blues if he wants to sing them, too? After all, if you write or perform a folk song lamenting your death hanging by a noose, doesn't the fact that you're not dead make you a phony? Could it be simply enough to just imagine it? Or sing your own version of an old song? For the people living around Greenwich Village in the late 50's / early 60's this was important and forms a nice background for this, sort of, anti-musical.

One other movie this reminded me of was "Almost Famous." In that really good film, a young reporter (so young he has to lie about his age) follows around a rock band in the 1970's to do a story about them for Rolling Stone magazine. Some of the same ideals about art and music are explored. Is it ok to tell a big lie to get to the "real truth?" Can image be more important than reality? Why are artists sometimes obsessed with "real people" when there probably just isn't such a thing. What is it that we really love about music?

The highlights of Inside Llewyn Davis are cinematography, dialogue and great melodies. Hearing them performed well is good enough for most of us. Getting "inside" the musician is a bonus. But one that really never leads to a brighter truth. Just more stories of life - and another track on the album.

***

This is the press release given to critics before the film debuted at the Cannes film festival. It is very enlightening as to the subject matter because it was written by the co-author of the book on which the film is based. This release could be read before of after seeing the movie, and really provides great background. 

http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/049141.pdf