Hup! Bob and Phil's Nightclub Act

Oh, I LOVE watching Bing! One of my favorite movies is King of Jazz from 1930, Bing's first movie appearance with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Already, his personality shone through. Pity a drunk driving arrest kept him out of his big number, which was then given to John Boles.

Bing is great in the "Road" pictures, High Society, and when playing a singing priest. I listen to his radio shows on tape, and grew up with his Christmas specials. Not to mention his role in bringing magnetic recording technology into American entertainment. He was the first to use magnetic tape to transcribe those radio shows, and even gave his friend Les Paul his first AMPEX reel to reel tape recorder, which Paul made incredibly good use of.

Yes, Der Bingle's legacy is widespread (and I'm not even going into his production company's output like "Hogan's Heroes.").

But there is just such an endearing goofiness to most of White Christmas that it's fun to ponder what might have been behind it. I love that movie for all of it, and some of the fun my husband and I have is noodling through the characters and attempting to divine some backstories not mentioned in the movie.

Danny Kaye's character is the more enigmatic of the two, as has been discussed on these boards to a great and often disturbing degree. He was very talented. Another of my favorites is Kaye's The Court Jester, written by the same team behind White Christmas.

But I don't get bent out of shape when someone finds something in this movie odd. IMO, it adds to the fun. It's a genial and earnest confection, made at a time when civility was treasured more than cynicism. And it invites good-natured scrutiny, making it far more interesting to me than many of its more serious contemporaries.

I don't know if I agree with you on that, not any more at least.

No one I know is lamenting the loss of the great music of the 90s and early 2000s.

Think about it in this context. In the 1970s, we got the first wave of nostalgia. Not because the music of the 70s was bad (although it was pretty lousy in say 75 and 76) but because the 50s stuff had been "out of rotation" for a while and people were discovering it or re-discovering it. And that was stuff that was only 20 years old at the time. It was worth giving a listen to because so much of it was good quality.

There are STILL radio stations that specialize in 50s through 70s music. But not many that are doing 90s music, which is going back in time the same amount as we did listening to the 50s music in the 70s and 80s.

There are restaurants, movies and radio channels still pumping out music from the 50s. There is a big revival of swing dancing as well.

Sure, people complained about Elvis and the hip thrusts and the Beatles' guitars, but the difference was, those people could sing. Rock groups often had full orchestras on tracks. The Beach Boys were real musicians, used real craftsmanship. There was a major shift in the 90s towards rap (while I may be offend some in believing it really stinks), auto tune, and celebrity over talent. Even the detestable Madonna could 1/2 way sing and she could dance.

50 years from now? People will be rediscovering the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s music, and the 90s through today will be regarded as cultural low points when it comes to music and movies. No one will know who LMFAO or Kanye West was, and no one will care.