Prine time, all the time

Do you know what blood looks like in a black and white video? If you've heard John Prine's "Lake Marie" you know the answer.

Shadows! Shadows, that's exactly what it looks like!

Good morning, it's John Prine Appreciation Day. No particular reason, other than it provides a great launching pad for the weekend. I'm thinking we'd all do better if we kept a steady diet of Prine songs streaming through our speakers and earbuds.

Anyway, "Lake Marie" has been on my mind recently. In the process of rigging up the TV and video equipment in my new apartment I somehow got some wires crossed and must have put a plug in the wrong port. I went back several times to check the DVD-to-TV connection to no avail. So for about three months I was only able to view movies in black & white. (Television, no problem with the color). I never got this issue resolved because:

a) I've become technology challenged
b) I'm too cheap to hire out help
c) I haven't met a neighbor geek who'll do it for a few beers
d) I've come to appreciate everything being cast in film noir.

Really, you should try viewing "Sideways" in black and white. The California wine country has never looked so luscious.

"Road to Perdition," another recently viewed DVD, could have been filmed in black and white. Lots of "shadows." It's spectacular in that format, and gets back to my point, which is: There's a John Prine song for just about everything you encounter in life.

"Lake Marie," always a favorite, became a personal theme song for that one silly passage:

Shadows! Shadows, that's what it looks like!"

And now that my daughter Jessi has solved the video issue I'll be looking for a new theme song. In the meantime "Lake Marie" will continue to receive play. After all, there's a lake not far from here along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, and this summer we're going to put some Italian sausages on the grill, and before long you know what they'll be doing?

Ssssssizzlin...