Who hasn’t wished he or she could talk to a carnival worker and find out what their lives are like? Everybody, perhaps, but the carnival workers.

Here’s a poem by Mark Kraushaar of Wisconsin that captures one of those lives.

The Ring Toss Lady Breaks a Five

It’s all of it rigged, she says,
Bust-one-wins, Hi-striker, even the Dozer.
It’s like you think you’ll score that giant panda
for the wife except you can’t, or not
without you drop another twenty
and then—what?—then you win
a thumb-sized monkey or a little comb.
She hands me five ones and then stands.
She’s worked the whole of the midway,
she says, funnel cake to corn-dogs.
She’s worked every game
plus half the rides, Krazy Koaster,
Avalanche, Wing-Ding, Tilt-a-Whirl
and if there’s somebody sick she’ll do
a kiddy ride too, Li’l Choo-choo, maybe
the Tea Cup.
There’s a collapsing soft sigh
and she sits, opens the paper, turns a page
and as if she were the one assigned to face forwards,
as if it were her job to intuit the world
and interpret the news,
Anymore, she says, it’s out of our hands,
it’s all we can do—it’s not up to you.
You see that bald bronco tearing
tickets at the carousel?
We worked the Bottle-drop
and now he’s mine: he’s no genius
but he loves me and he’s mine.
Things happen, she says, you
can’t take them back.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by the Alaska Quarterly Review. Mark Kraushaar’s most recent book of poems is The Uncertainty Principle, Waywiser Press, 2012. Poem reprinted from the Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 & 2, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE (Rated PG)

Disney Studios comes to the rescue for families with kids in a summer movie season filled mostly with adult fare and a fair share of lousy action pictures (think the latest “Transformers”).  

Anyone would be hard-pressed to find something objectionable about “Planes: Fire & Rescue” as family entertainment, most especially for impressionable young children under the age of ten.

In true Disney fashion, “Planes” cleverly imagines a fantasy world inhabited only by talking inanimate objects, namely anything motorized, from SUVs and campers, fire trucks and mechanical equipment on wheels, to various types of aircraft.

At the film’s opening, the ostensible star of this adventure comedy is world-famous air racer Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Dane Cook), a spirited single-engine airplane who’s preparing to put on an aerial display of speed and daring stunts during the upcoming Corn Festival.

During a test run, Dusty comes perilously close to his last ride when it is learned that his gearbox is irreparably damaged, thus not allowing him to push his speed to the ultimate racing limit.

Dusty’s not about to return to the crop dusting business, so he looks for a second chance to join a dynamic crew of elite firefighting aircraft devoted to protecting historic Piston Peak National Park from raging wildfire.

But first, Dusty needs to be certified for his new career, and this requires training exercises conducted by hardened veteran fire-and-rescue helicopter Blade Ranger (Ed Harris), who’s not that impressed with his trainee’s celebrity status as a well-known air racer.

Dusty gets a better reception from flirty female air tanker Lil’ Dipper (Julie Bowen), the inscrutable heavy-lift helicopter Windlifter (Wes Studi), ex-military transport Cabbie (Dale Dye), and a lively bunch of brave all-terrain vehicles known as the Smokejumpers.

To be sure, Dusty may be demoralized that his glory days are something of the past, but it is no surprise to any adult that the little airplane that could will have its chance to prove to be heroic.

To push into familiar territory that would allow for acts of valor, the story sets up a bad guy in Cad Spinner (John Michael Higgins), a luxury SUV, who happens to be the Superintendent of Piston Peak fixated on showing off the park’s refurbished old lodge as a great tourist attraction.
 
Interestingly, Cad Spinner wants to impress his boss, the Secretary of the Interior (Fred Willard), the overseer of the National Parks. Represented by a 1968 Ford Bronco, this rugged outdoorsman does not flaunt his authority, unlike the smarmy park superintendent.

Blade Ranger and his crew are not enamored with the self-centered Park Superintendent, who has been diverting a big chunk for the firefighters’ budget to his lodge restoration project.

Things go wrong on the night of grand opening of Cad Spinner’s beloved old lodge, where the guests include an old married couple, Harvey and Winnie (Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), two vintage campers wanting to celebrate their 50th anniversary of their honeymoon at Piston Peak.

The beauty of Piston Peak is lovingly advanced by loyal and trustworthy tour bus Ol’ Jammer (Barry Corbin), a gentle old soul who shares his love of the park’s history with a multitude of admiring daily visitors. Ol’ Jammer’s devotion is soon rewarded.

Predictably, a huge wildfire breaks out that threatens the major infrastructure of Piston Peak, putting a lodge full of automotive guests in peril. Naturally, Dusty, the neophyte firefighter, rises to the occasion, putting his own life in danger by exceeding the speed capacity of his gearbox to drop water on the forest flames.

There’s plenty of smoke, fire and water to go with the fast-moving action of “Planes: Fire & Rescue,” resulting in spectacular firefighting scenes that pay appropriate homage to dedicated wildlife firefighters everywhere.

Not surprisingly, this Disney film is lavishly illustrated to achieve a visual fluidity that is enhanced by the 3-D experience. The fire effects are especially dazzling and brightly realized.

A nice touch, mostly for the adults in tow, is the gentle spoof of vintage television. Erik Estrada provides the voice of America’s favorite helicopter cop Nick “Loopin” Lopez, star of CHoPs, a show about two California Helicopter Patrol choppers.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

COBB, Calif. – Hot on the heels of its Aug. 16 45th anniversary Heroes of of Woodstock event featuring Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Canned Heat, Imperial Messenger Service, and Country Joe McDonald, Hoberg’s Resort and Spa is excited to announce an Aug. 17 Summer of Love concert featuring Elvin Bishop, Lydia Pense and Cold Blood and It’s a Beautiful Day.

Doors will open at noon.  

The three bands could have played together at Fillmore West – and they haven’t lost a step since then. These are fiercely good musicians still at the top of their game.

Elvin Bishop came to notice in 1965 as a member of the legendary Butterfield Blues Band, the new generation of Chicago blues, yet he may be getting his best reviews now for his soon-to-be-released Alligator Records release Can’t Even Do Wrong Right.

Sizzlingly brilliant slide guitar chops mix with a good-timey feel that makes you laugh and dance.

Elvin’s had hits – “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” – and is a part of legend, but the fact is, he’s never faded as a great player committed to the blues.

When Entertainment Weekly sees that a CD – his 1998 The Skin I’m In – is nothing but “sheer, unpretentious joy,” you know he’s doing something right.

There were great women vocalists in the San Francisco scene – Janis Joplin and Grace Slick come to mind – but no one out-sang Lydia Pense, and Cold Blood was one of the truly great bands.

Mixing R & B with powerhouse rock and roll, Lydia and Cold Blood joined with Tower of Power and created what was known as East Bay Grease – funky, soulful, and truly delicious.

It’s A Beautiful Day is undoubtedly among the most distinctive of all the Summer of Love San Francisco bands, not least because it was created by violinist David LaFlamme, a veteran of the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

With his wife Linda on keyboards, they developed a truly unique sound fusing jazz, rock, folk, world beat and classical styles into a true thing of beauty, best remembered for the sad, lyrical masterpiece “White Bird.”

Unfortunately, the song came out of their experience of being caged by a most peculiar manager named Matthew Katz, one of the primary reasons they did not experience the success they deserved. Nonetheless, their musical quality endures – they are not to be missed.

Tickets cost $27 in advance and are available at www.Ticketfly.com . The cost for tickets at the door is    $35 per person.

For more information visit www.hobergsresort.com or call the Cobb Mountain Concert Series hotline 866-622-7709.

COBB, Calif. – Forty-five years ago on Max Yasgur’s hillside field in Bethel, New York, a generation found its dream – a vision of peace, music, and joy that has resonated through the years.

The dream endures, and it is called Woodstock.

This August the official Heroes of Woodstock – a fair sampling of the iconic musicians from the original event, featuring Jefferson Starship, Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald, Tom Constanten (Grateful Dead) and the Imperial Messenger Service (David Freiberg of Quicksilver) – will celebrate the anniversary on Saturday, August 16, at Hoberg’s Resort and Spa on Cobb Mountain.

The show will rock you out of your shoes in one of the oldest, most charming, and most environmentally green resorts in California.

Hoberg’s Resort and Spa is 55 acres of beauty. It began with a small lodge and a few cabins in the 1880s and by the 1940s and 1950s became one of California’s largest private resorts, hosting 1,000 guests nightly to enjoy the outdoors and also hear the biggest bands of the era.

From 1970 to 2010 it was a private meditation facility, but recently it was acquired by new hoteliers anxious to make it a world-class resort offering the highest level of entertainment and a wine-tasting room with the finest assortment of Lake County wines anywhere. All of this is undergirded by an extraordinary commitment to green environmental practices.

The Jefferson Starship is the long-time evolution of the original Jefferson Airplane founded by Paul Kantner in 1965.

The most successful by far of the bands that emerged from San Francisco at that time, the Airplane gave the world classic albums like Surrealistic Pillow and songs like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.”

When it foundered, Kantner moved on in 1974 with the Jefferson Starship, the name created for his classic solo album Blows Against the Empire, and the band shows no signs of slowing. Kantner and the Airplane were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

In addition to Paul Kantner, the Jefferson Starship will present co-founder David Freiberg, who also helped create Quicksilver Messenger Service, was a member of the Airplane, and as a member of the Jefferson Starship went on to write one of its all-time biggest hits, “Jane.” Ace drummer Donny Baldwin boasts a career that goes back to the mid-1970s Elvin Bishop Band (he was part of the No. 1 hit single “Fooled Around and Fell In Love”).

Later he was part of the Jefferson Starship and then the Jerry Garcia Band, and he has toured and recorded with just about everybody, including Gregg Allman, Heart, and Van Morrison.

Chris Smith holds down both the keyboard and (synth) bass slots à la Ray Manzarek, and worked with the Supremes. Cathy Richardson, who sings the vocals once made legendary by Grace Slick, was nominated for a Grammy for her own release, The Road to Bliss, and earned considerable acclaim for her portrayal of Janis Joplin in the original cast of the hit show Love, Janis. Jude Gold is the brilliant lead guitarist who stepped in to substitute for the then-ailing (and now much better, thank you) Slick Aguilar.

Canned Heat, whose “Going Up the Country” became the unofficial theme song for the original Woodstock Festival, is a band whose mojo has survived the tragic loss of many of its original members.

Co-founders Larry “The Mole” Taylor, a veteran of work with Jerry Lee Lewis and The Monkees, and drummer Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra soldier on, joined by an outstanding group of musicians including New Orleans legend Dale Spalding on harmonica, guitar, and lead vocals, and John “J.P.” Paulus, who has stepped in for regular guitarist Harvey “The Snake” Mandel, currently on injured reserve.  

Big Brother and the Holding Company came to fame as the “house band” of the Avalon Ballroom led by the scintillating guitar work of James Gurley. A woman vocalist by the name of Janis Joplin passed through the band, but they’ve made a long career from their own talents, and are justly regarded as among the strongest and most enduring bands around.

All three surviving founders will be at Hoberg’s Resort and Spa, including Peter Albin (bass, vocals), Sam Andrew (guitar, vocals) and Dave Getz (drums).

The Imperial Messenger Service celebrates the musical canon of the legendary Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Though history will remember their hit, “Fresh Air,” those who know will tell you about epic psychedelic performances by one of the San Francisco scene’s finest bands.

Featuring David Freiberg (guitar, vocals) and vocalist Linda Imperial, it shares many members with the Jefferson Starship, which will make for interesting interplay among the musicians and the music being played.

The band includes Jefferson Starshippers Chris Smith, Jude Gold and Donny Baldwin, and also keyboardist David Kaffinetti (“Vic Savage” in Spinal Tap), guitarist Peter Harris, Steve Valverde (bass, vocals), and Doug Freedman (drums, vocals). In Freiberg’s words, “We have a LOT of fun.” So will you.

Hosting and performing will be Woodstock Hero Country Joe McDonald. In recent years, he has made a particular study of folk icon Woody Guthrie, and the effect is haunting even as he delivers the songs with a seemingly casual grace.

Taking bits from Woody’s autobiography, his newspaper columns, and his correspondence with his friend and fellow singer Malvina Reynolds (“Tiny Boxes”), he truly does, as Billy Bragg has remarked, “carry on the mission of Woody Guthrie.”

Tom Constanten was the keyboard genius behind the Grateful Dead’s most experimental and adventurous era, contributing jewels like the harpsichord in “Mountains of the Moon” and the classic keyboard part of “St. Stephen.” In recent years he has played solo as well as in the company of Dead sound wizard Bob Bralove in a group they call Dose Hermanos.

Further Information: www.hobergsresort.com or Cobb Mountain Concert Series hotline at 866-622-7709.

No ideas but in things, said one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams, and here’s a fine poem by Maryann Corbett of St. Paul, Minnesota, about turning up one small object loaded with meaning.

Finding the Lego

You find it when you’re tearing up your life,
trying to make some sense of the old messes,
moving dressers, peering under beds.
Almost lost in cat hair and in cobwebs,
in dust you vaguely know was once your skin,
it shows up, isolated, fragmentary.
A tidy little solid. Tractable.
Knobbed to be fitted in a lock-step pattern
with others. Plastic: red or blue or yellow.
Out of the dark, undamaged, there it is,
as bright and primary colored and foursquare
as the family with two parents and two children
who moved in twenty years ago in a dream.
It makes no allowances, concedes no failures,
admits no knowledge of a little girl
who glared through tears, rubbing her slapped cheek.
Rigidity is its essential trait.
Likely as not, you leave it where it was.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Maryann Corbett, from her most recent book of poems, Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter, Able Muse Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Maryann Corbett and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

TAMMY (Rated R)

As far as can be recalled, the last time Susan Sarandon had a starring role in a road-trip movie it was definitely not a comedy.

“Thelma & Louise” involved travels in a vintage Ford Thunderbird that ended very badly for its titular characters.

This time around, Sarandon is oddly teamed up with comedic sensation Melissa McCarthy for a road trip full of misadventures, but one that is supposed to be a comedy.

Sad to say, even with the considerable presence of McCarthy, “Tammy” does not hit on all comedic cylinders.

Before even the unspooling of the first frame, “Tammy” offers hope and promise of funny things to come.

That’s because Melissa McCarthy, following hit comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “Identity Thief” and “The Heat,” knows how to deliver the laughs.

Expectations rise even higher, knowing that McCarthy, in collaboration with her real-life husband Ben Falcone (also the film’s director), wrote the screenplay for “Tammy.” At this point, it seems like almost a sure thing as California Chrome to win the Triple Crown.

As the titular character, McCarthy’s Tammy is a walking disaster. On her way to work at a crummy fast food joint, Tammy has the misfortune of hitting a deer, causing her rusted Corolla to be totaled and eventually consumed by engine fire.

Naturally, arriving late to work, Tammy is summarily fired from her job. She throws a tantrum, tossing packets of ketchup at the obnoxious manager and manhandling food items so as to make then inedible, all the while making snide remarks about Topper Jack’s.

The trifecta of bad news comes when she arrives home early to find her spouse (Nat Faxon) entertaining the next-door neighbor (Toni Collette) with a romantic dinner. She complains that her louse of a husband never cooked nice meals for her.

Deciding to pack and leave her Illinois hometown, Tammy first visits her mother Deb (Allison Janney), who lives only two doors away.

A practitioner of tough-love, Deb refuses to loan a vehicle to Tammy, even her absent father’s old pickup truck.

With no money or wheels, Tammy’s only way out of her miserable small town experience is to hook up with her alcoholic and diabetic grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon), who just happens to have a roll of cash and a Buick sedan perfect for road travel.

The catch, of course, is that Tammy is now stuck with Grandma Pearl, a randy character who hasn’t quite left behind a past of indulging in sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll adventures.

Pearl claims to have slept with the wrong member of the Allman Brothers and to have once made a pass at Tammy’s father (Dan Aykroyd).

Seeing McCarthy and Sarandon together as members of a family two generations apart, it’s hard to see past an age difference not that wide, even though Sarandon’s Pearl wears a frizzy wig and has ankles inflamed to the size of tree trunks.

Thoughts of Johnny Knoxville’s “Bad Grandpa” sweep into the mind, as Grandma Pearl does her best to be outrageous, though she doesn’t have any body parts stuck in a vending machine.

However, she lets herself get seduced in the back of the sedan by an equally randy and drunk Earl (Gary Cole) that she meets at honky-tonk bar.

Meanwhile, as if it to bring a tender, softer touch to the proceedings, Tammy is introduced to Earl’s responsible, mature son Bobby (Mark Duplass), who appears shy and reserved, quite the opposite of his freewheeling, boozy father.

Plenty of wacky things happen in this movie. Tammy wrecks an expensive rented jet ski by slamming into to a dock. Grandma Pearl ends up in jail on a drug charge, and Tammy unwisely holds up a Topper Jack’s to get bail money.

Later on, the duo attempts to destroy all incriminating evidence with the help of Pearl’s savvy cousin Lenore (Kathy Bates), who happens to be very wealthy and lives in a lakeside mansion with her partner Susanne (Sandra Oh).

Then there’s Lenore’s lesbian Fourth of July barbecue bash to which the only non-females to show up are Bobby and Earl.

The movie’s full of detours, and there’s a stint where Tammy ends up in prison for the hold-up and other assorted crimes.

With the help of friends, Tammy and Pearl finally make it to Niagara Falls, where the film’s saving grace is that, contrary to some idle chatter, nobody decides to make a jump to the bottom.

“Tammy” is the kind of film that requires a leap of faith in its creative and acting team to have come up with something truly hilarious.

Regrettably, it doesn’t happen, though there are humorous scenes, which are practically inevitable when you have Melissa McCarthy involved.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.