Word: stardusted
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...some music he could tolerate-and some he could not. Loud, fast songs-college marches, the 1812 Overture, New Orleans jazz, rock 'n' roll-went, in effect, in one ear and out the other. They left him unmoved. On the other hand, the soft, sweet rhythms of Stardust, Deep Purple or Abide With Me gave Morton frightening seizures. He would stare vacantly, twitch, turn his head to the left, make smacking sounds with his lips, utter growling noises and sometimes slump to the floor. The Whiffenpoof Song and Indian Love Call were bad, but not quite so disturbing...
...what instruments, just what rhythms caused Morton to have an epileptic seizure. Hooked up to an electroencephalograph, their patient listened to music with one ear, with the other, and then with both. He listened to a random noise generator with one ear while music was piped to the other. Stardust played on the organ produced no abnormalities; Glenn Miller's orchestrated version touched off fits. Hymns and Christmas carols played by an orchestra, or by a piano with a vocalist chiming in, caused equal trouble. Eventually the doctors were ready to start "extinction therapy"-a sort of reverse Pavlovian...
Endless Tapes. In their effort to condition Morton to tolerate "noxious" music, the doctors decided to concentrate on Stardust because it was available in so many versions, so many combinations of instruments and artists. They taped "innocuous" (organ) renditions of the song and played those for Morton. Then they dubbed in larger and larger segments of a noxious Glenn Miller version and played the altered tape. They played it endlessly. Morton listened to dozens of variations and combinations of Stardust-6,000 times. Eventually it was "extinguished" as a cause of seizure...
...Trains. Visionary Stardust glittered from many of the President's other proposals. He wants a modest $20 million to study the possibility of a highspeed (200 m.p.h.) train between Washington and New York, and he will seek federal authority to control industrial air and water pollution. Both measures will probably pass easily. But he will find it harder to get funds to set up his suggested National Foundation for the Arts-if he really tries it. Congress' traditional distaste for spending tax money on culture cuts across liberal-conservative or even party lines...
Viva Las Vegas has the wholesome, mindless spontaneity it takes to create a successful Elvis Presley movie. This one gambles on hips, not chips. Chorus girls scamper through such neon fleshpots as the Stardust, Flamingo, Tropicana and Sahara, and Elvis himself, as wrinkleproof an example of modern packaging as anyone has yet produced, sings, dances, swims, water-skis, flies a helicopter and finally enters his baby-blue racing car in a big, exciting race referred to as the Las Vegas Grand Free...