Number Nine Scheme

I'm always in favor of anything that gets the Beatles on the front cover of Entertainment Weekly, the Collectors' Choice Music catalog and undoubtedly other publications. But today's a mixed bag for me.

Since I'm not a gamer, the Beatles on Rock Band is an interesting sidelight. But what of the remastered box sets? As I've undoubtedly mentioned before, it's tough to pull the trigger on buying the same songs for at least the fourth time (US LP, UK LP, CD). Some of those early US LP as I had to buy twice because they were stolen in 1972. And some songs show up on more than one album (Vee Jay's Introducing the Beatles/Capitol's The Early Beatles; UA's A Hard Day's Night/Capitol's Something New) or on compilations (Rock 'N' Roll).

Yet, I had come to the conclusion that while I don't NEED one (or both) of these box sets, I would WANT to have them, particularly the mono box. Checking out the description of the mono set, it does NOT include the Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be albums, "as they were originally recorded in stereo", according to Amazon. But, if I understand correctly, the "double-CD set of mono singles, EPs and rare tracks... exactly mirrors the stereo 'Past Masters' collection, except it includes 'Only a Northern Song; All Together Now; Hey Bulldog', and 'It's All Too Much' [the four 'new' songs from Yellow Submarine] and excludes 'The Ballad of John and Yoko; Old Brown Shoe', and 'Let It Be'."

Which means if I DID get the mono set, I'd need to keep (or replace) those three albums (YS for the instrumentals) plus Past Masters 2. The calculations are hurting my head.

Ultimately, the reason I MIGHT take the plunge - when it's back in stock, as it's sold out until October - is this lost recollection. I got the first four Beatles CDs for free in 1987. My friend Broome bought them for me shortly after they came out. At the time I was resisting getting caught up in this new-fangled technology called the compact disc player until I was sure it would stick. Hey, I NEVER bought an 8-track!

Having four discs with NOTHING on which to play them he knew would drive me crazy, and it did. Ultimately, I got a CD player, and bought a half dozen other CDs (one couldn't have a CD player with just four CDs, could one?) including greatest hits of Elton John and Billy Joel plus Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms.

So those early discs in particular I can ALMOST justify replacing. Wait a minute...honey, Christmas is coming and the ONLY thing I want is...
***

Being a Beatles fan is a curse as much as a blessing. Someone at work came up to me just last week to ask me on which US and UK albums Doctor Robert appears. It's one of those things someone could easily Google, but it's apparently more fun to Just Ask Roger. Oh, it was Yesterday...and Today, and Revolver, respectively. I remember it so well because I thought it strange when it came out that the US version of Revolver had only two songs sung by Lennon, She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows; Harrison had THREE songs. Doctor Robert, I'm Only Sleeping and And Your Bird Can Sing were stripped from the US Revolver and put on the US-only release, Y&T.

Then I was on Amazon, drooling over the mono box when I came across someone confused by early Beatles chronology. Some helpful bloke replied, "Meet the Beatles was the first Capitol Album in the US. It took some cuts from the Please Please Me album and their single I Want To Hold Your Hand." Unfortunately, that wasn't entirely correct and as a librarian, I just had to reply:
"Meet the Beatles was comprised of 9 songs from With the Beatles, plus the single, US B-side I Saw Her Standing There (from Please Please Me) and the UK B-side, This Boy. With the Beatles and Meet the Beatles both have the classic black and white photo.
"There WAS an album on Vee-Jay Records called Introducing the Beatles, which came out BEFORE the Beatles were big in the US, and the Please Please Me album was the source of THOSE songs, as well as a Capitol album called The Early Beatles, which came out as their fourth or fifth Capitol album."

It's a curse, I tell you.

ROG

H is for Hate

I started writing this before, but I think I have now found an angle; thanks to Anthony North's piece about greed and this response to it.

SamuraiFrog is a blogger I visit regularly. (For those of you who do not, he currently has a lovely young woman, nude, seen from the rear, prominently featured on his masthead, in case such things bother or entice you.) Anyway, he won some blogging award, and as part of the acceptance of same, he was supposed to tell something about himself.
I hate people who say things like "Well, I don't actually hate anything/anyone/whatever you just mentioned hating, because [pick one or more: a. it takes too much energy to hate something, b. hate is too strong an emotion, c. hate is a relationship that places too much importance on something I dislike, d. it takes up too much mental space to hate something, or e. I try not to give in to baser emotional states]." What I really hear is "I'm better than you" and what I really think is "Go f*** yourself."

Now, as it turns out, I don't feel that I HATE anyone, and I was just going to say that in his comments and let it go at that. But as I thought more on it, I realized that I needed to examine just WHY.


Life magazine, 1960

As I reach back, I recognize that I DID used to hate. And the primary focus was Richard Milhous Nixon. I hated him for the lies he spread in his very first house campaign, before I was born. I hated him for surviving staying on Eisenhower's ticket by the use of the 1952 Checkers speech, also before I was born; you should watch the speech, if you can, as it's brilliant political theater. But mostly, I hated him because he said, after he had lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore", but he lied. He ran for President in 1968 with a "secret" plan to end the Viet Nam war and won a close election over Hubert Humphrey.

Actually most of my bile towards Nixon was over Viet Nam. Though not his war - LBJ had expanded it and JFK (or arguably, Eisenhower) had started it, I wasn't seeing his positives, as I did with LBJ's civil rights legislation and Great Society programs. So, when Nixon left as a result of Watergate in August of 1974, my schadenfreude was exceedingly high.

At the same time I was able to hate him, I was able to be easily enraged by others. Think of those people showing up at those American town hall meetings shouting down those who disagree with them. On Election Night in 1972, when Nixon won re-election in a landslide, there was one Nixon supporter named George and I wanted to throttle him over his glee.

I didn't always DISPLAY the rage, and in fact seldom did; I was brought up too well. But the FEELING of the rage was there. And it was not working for me.

I was like Stanley, the black guy in the American version of the television show The Office. On the Super Bowl episode, he nearly had a heart attack, so deeply was his festering rage. He had to find another way to go.

So when another politician came along who I thought/think was even more contemptible than Nixon came along, while I found him politically anathema to me, it didn't eat at me the same way Nixon did.


Life magazine, 1990

And a funny thing happened: I stopped hating Nixon. I saw the movie Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins, and found the guy more tragic than contemptible.

Moreover, I found that in retrospect, despite the war and the dirty tricks, there were some positives there. He formed the Environmental Protection Agency. He went to China; as a staunch anti-Communist, only he, not a liberal Democrat, could have pulled it off.

Moreover, and I did not remember this until after the death of Senator Edward Kennedy last month, one of Teddy's great regrets was not accepting Nixon's plan for HEALTH CARE, a fight that continues to this day in the United States.

I've deliberately have left out any discussion of how religion or spiritually has affected my feelings about hate, not because it's not a factor, but because it was something that was already in process when all the faith stuff got infused into it.

So, Mr. Frog, sir, I leave it to you to decide if my reasons for not hating fall into one or more of your "hated" categories.

Note: Nixon pictures © Time Inc. For personal non-commercial use only


ROG

Laboring to Put Together A Coherent Blogpost

This blog post started innocently enough, just noticing how different the United States is than most other places. Many countries have Labor Day in May, but we have it in September because of an event in our history; fair enough.

But what's with our resistance to the metric system? And don't use medicine or track as examples; they were more or less required for international competition. You COULD mention the ubiquitous two-liter bottle, but what else has cut through?

I asked Nik, an expat from the US living in New Zealand the difference between the two countries. On the plus side for the US: "friendliness (I find Americans, while they can be loud, are more open-hearted sometimes)."

I found this troubling, because I'm finding Americans a pretty unfriendly lot sometimes, biting off a finger, shouting down a lady in a wheelchair, pulling their kids out of school because the President's going to "indoctrinate" them, etc., etc. One guy heckling the wheelchair-bound woman said he did so because he didn't want to hear her opinion on health care. I can only wonder what he thought his own position was; the "facts"?

Letters of comments have gone from expressing differences of opinion to becoming bile-infused rants. Jon Stewart joked recently that we used to feel apologetic to the rest of the world for our President. And now it's our President who must apologize for us.

Oh, sure, the crude behavior doesn't represent everyone. But I can't help but wonder how we went from being a country that would watch Jerry Springer on TV to one that has brought Springer-Show tactics to the public debate. Perhaps race is part of it, and that GQ got it right.

WAIT a minute...GQ?

Well, specifically Jim Nelson's editor page comment: Remember a long, long time ago - it almost seems like a recession and a half ago - when Barack Obama first came (via Kenya, of course) to power? Remember how certain hope-doped commentators predicted that his election would finally allow Americans to have a frank discussion about race?

Something different and less hope-inducing has happened. His presidency has allowed us to talk around race, to talk about it constantly and subliminal, without ever truly discussing it. And by doing so, we’re proving how much distance we have to grow up.

And my favorite:

"Everywhere you look, people keep making bats***-crazy comments about race and ethnicity, stream-of-consciousness-style, as if the election had unleashed some Freudian anxiety in the cultural air."

And how did #uknowurblackwhen become the leading trend on Twitter yesterday? For every interesting note, there were five dreadful ones. Well, as far as I know; I'd read 20 and 75 more would be waiting.

Again, I know it isn't everyone - I'd vote for the Roberto Clemente award for MLB community-minded players if it didn't take so long to load - but I get the feeling that the fall will be as disheartening as August was.

ROG

Mistakes Were Made

I was at our choir party Thursday night with my wife and daughter. We had a lovely time. Our organist showed Lydia how the organ worked. But somehow one of our co-pastors asked me about a television show called "My Mother, the Car." Seems that one of them claimed that the show existed, while the other co-pastors said that it couldn't possibly be so. Even when I noted that it starred Jerry Van Dyke and the voice of Ann Sothern (why was THAT sticking in my brain?), I was not believed. It was not until three others acknowledged that they too saw remembered the program that the first co-pastor and I were vindicated.

But I had forgotten until afterwards that not only did friend Fred Hembeck write about the show a few months ago, he found a link to five episodes, including the first one.

Fred wrote: Look, "Bewitched", "I Dream Of Jeanie", "My Favorite Martian", and "Mr. Ed" were all of the same era as "My Mother The Car", and all shared a central conceit with it--one character, and one character only, is aware of a magical totem right smack dab in the middle of things. A witch. A genie.A martian. A talking horse. All were big hits. All were just as fanciful as having your dead mother come back, reincarnated, as a talking car, maybe, but far more manageable, storywise. Viewers found the notion of a pair of attractive young women performing magical tricks, a faux uncle who's really a man from outer space, and even a horse that talks, far easier to believe. For one thing, each of them could casually interact with those in the cast unaware of their special abilities, even the horse. But David Crabtree's (Jerry Van Dyke) mother? There wasn't much she (the voice of early sitcom icon Ann Sothern) could do but squawk at her son via the radio when he--and he alone--was sitting in the car. Sorta limited the plot possibilities...

Well maybe that was the problem but I think it was something more Oedipal: Dave Crabtree was riding INSIDE of his mother. Freud would have had a field day.And check out the lyrics:
Everybody knows in a second life, we all come back sooner or later.
As anything from a pussycat to a man eating alligator.
Well you all may think my story, is more fiction than it's fact.
But believe it or not my mother dear decided she'd come back.

As a car...
She's my very own guiding star.
A 1928 Porter.
That's my mother dear.
'Cause she helps me through everything I do
And I'm so glad she's near.

My Mother the Car.
My Mother the Car.

Hadn't really thought about it until the other day, but it has a real ick factor. Maybe that's why TV Guide in 2002 named the 1965-66 program the second-worst TV show ever, behind only Jerry Springer Show.
***
So I'm reading my 2009 World Almanac - yeah, I've been known to do that from time to time - and I came across a listing of Cabinet officers. Cabinet secretaries are interesting in that sometimes they either go onto higher office (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, JQ Adams, Hoover to the Presidency; John Marshall and Roger B. Taney as chief justice of the Supreme Court) or at least become well-known to this day (Daniel Webster, Alexander Hamilton).

I get to page 443 and the list of Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development (created in September 1965); they are listed:
LBJ- Robert Weaver, WA, 1966
LBJ- Robert C. Wood, MA 1969
Nixon- George W. Romney, MI, 1969
Nixon- James T. Lynn, OH, 1973
Ford- James T. Lynn, OH, 1974
Ford-Carla Anderson Hills, DC, 1975
and so forth

Then I look at the Secretaries of Transportation
LBJ- Robert Weaver, FL, 1966
Nixon- Robert C. Wood, MA 1969
Nixon- George W. Romney, CA, 1973
Ford- James T. Lynn, CA, 1974
Ford- James T. Lynn, PA, 1975
Carter-Carla Anderson Hills, WA, 1975
and so forth

The same held true for the Secretaries of Energy; Health, Education, and Welfare; Health and Human Services; Education; Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security. The first person listed was always Robert Weaver, followed by Robert Wood. Now the President appointing always changed as was the year sworn in and home state. Weaver was appointed from VA for Energy in 1977 by Carter, for HEW from TX in 1953 by Eisenhower, from HHS from DC in 1979 by Carer, and so forth. And Wood and the other up to a dozen names followed. So it was ONLY the names that are wrong; the years, the appointing Presidents, the home states were all correct.

I found it quite bizarre.
ROG

The Bob Dylan Christmas Album QUESTION

As you may have heard, Bob Dylan is going to be releasing a Christmas album in October, a benefit album. (The YouTube video on this page has Tennessee Ernie Ford singing and Jon Provost, who played Timmy on Lassie, trying to pretend to be attentive; very odd.)

Our library director Darrin and his brother-in-law Fred, both rather expert in Dylanology, started exchanging possible song titles for the collection, including:

Santa, Could You Please Crawl in My Window
Knockin' on Santa's Door
Santa, I Believe in You
Sleigh Bells Blowin' in the Wind
I Dreamed I Saw St. Nicholas
Santa, Lay Down Your Weary Sack
You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Santa
Stay, Santa, Stay
Every Flake of Snow
Buckets of Coal (In My Stocking)
North Pole Homesick Blues
It’s All Over Now, Baby Red-Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus Lane Revisited
Man in the 2-XL Red Coat
Positively 34th Street
Can You Please Crawl Up Your Chimney?
Dear Santa
You’re a Big Girl Now (…to Believe in Santa Claus)
It Ain’t Me, Kid (Now, Go Back to Bed!)
Ballad of a Not-so Thin Man
Annual Gift-Giver from the North Country
A Hard Snow’s A-Gonna Fall
Twelve Days
Motorsled Nitemare
Ring Them Silver Bells
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Needing)
Boots of Arctic Leather
Chimneys of Freedom
Please, Mrs. Claus
One More Glass of Milk

I tried but only came up with these few:
Absolutely Sweet Mary
All the Tired Reindeer
Can You Please Crawl Down My Chimney?
When I Trim My Mantelpiece
With Nick On Our Side


Any suggestions?

ROG

Politics. Unusual.

There are three political lawn signs in our front yard presently. This is two more than have ever been in our lawn, and three more than I generally have in front of our house.

I guess I have a certain resistance to yard signs. It's this public statement at my own address. Of course, it's better than bumper stickers on the car. I STILL see this car in my block with a Kerry-Edwards sticker and even though they were probably jobbed in Ohio, it seems sad and slightly pathetic to look at. Lawn signs you can just pull up. My next door neighbor still has a half dozen signs from last year on the front porch, some winners (Obama-Biden), some losers (a Congressional candidate).

The first sign in my lawn is for a guy running for a new position known as city auditor. The job's so new that the city has not yet established a salary for it. My candidate I have known for a number of years through the State Data Affiliates. More recently, his family belongs to my church.

I even appear in one of his campaign mailers, which I agreed to. The odd thing about that is that there are two pictures of me. The one where I'm facing the camera I see myself. The one where I'm in profile I literally don't even recognize myself because of the vitiligo; very strange.

His opponent, BTW, is a parent of a child in the the day care my daughter attended until recently. For you folks from out of town, that's why they call it Smallbany. He's running using his first name, as he did last year in his unsuccessful bid for Congress, figuring that his last name, which is comprised of a 4-, a 2- and a 3-letter word is somehow too difficult for the populace to remember.

The second sign is for a woman running for a seat on the common council; that's what they call the city's legislative branch in Albany. I initially met her through an old FantaCo friend but now know her quite independently of him. She's a bus advocate, among other positive traits. Unfortunately, I won't be able to vote for her because the lines for her district end a block away.

So two of the candidates I actually know personally before they ever considered running for office. I suppose that happens when you're in a place long enough. The last candidate I had a sign for, who ran for school board, and is now up for re-election this year, I had known since college.

The third sign in my yard is someone I don't know personally. He is running for mayor against the incumbent, who has about ten times as much money; that is no exaggeration, as these things do have to be reported periodically. Thing is, he wasn't my first choice for the job; my initial choice dropped out of the race because she - probably correctly - thought that two challengers to the current guy would leave us with the current guy again.

The guy I'm now supporting is, in the words of the song, "young, gifted, and black." He also has the endorsement of a minor party, the Working Families Party, so that if he should lose in the September 15 Democratic primary, there may be a rematch in November. Is there a Republican candidate? This is Albany; does it really matter?

There are all sorts of reasons not to support the incumbent. One issue is garbage. I mean literally; the mayor, without the knowledge of hardly anyone allowed other municipalities to dump garbage in the Albany landfill for a too-low price, so it filled up very fast, and now where Albany's trash will go in a couple years - not to mention how it'll balance its budget, when that out-of-town dumping money dries up - is an open question.

A recent issue is the resignation of the police chief, an ally of the mayor, in part over a racially insensitive comment he made. (No, I don't think it was the use of the epithet he used, but rather him suggesting relative value of black and white murder victims.)

There's a primary Tuesday, September 15. These races will be decided by a relatively few people, if history holds. Frankly, I don't know why so many more people voter in statewide elections than local elections; it's the local races that have the greater day-to-day impact in our lives.

It IS more difficult to keep track of the issues in local races. Frankly, I've often decided that when people whose opinions I value had lawn signs in their yards was at least a leading indicator of who I might support. So, maybe I'M a leading indicator this time.
ROG

Unabashed Plug: Conversations with ADD

Alan David Doane (pictured at left) is a mensch. Now, for those of you not down with your Yiddish, mensch means a person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose.

Or you could say, ADD is a PITA, which means pain in the tookus. I mean that in a good way. As Christopher Allen describes him, Alan is an agent provocateur.

ADD was one of those young people who were customers of FantaCo, the comic book store/publishing empire where I used to work in the 1980s. Subsequently, ADD became a noted blogger in the comic book realm. This week - September 1st, 2009 - marks the ninth anniversary of his Comic Book Galaxy's original launch, and "approximately the tenth anniversary of my beginning to write about comics online," he noted.

To mark the occasion, he has released his third eBook, Conversations with ADD. It is nearly 300 pages long, and "contains nearly four dozen interviews, including cartoonists, writers, artists, publishers, editors, comics retailers and bloggers."

I had the chance to look at a preview copy, and I got to read interviews with some of my favorite creative people, including Peter Bagge, Howard Chaykin, Tony Isabella, Denny O'Neil, Harvey Pekar, and Walt Simonson, along with the ever-enigmatic Dave Sim. There's a piece on Earthworld Comics owner J.C. Glindmeyer, who really DOES do Free Comic Book Day right, as I can attest from personal experience.

There is even a brief interview in there with a historic relic, yours truly. I should note that it's largely ADD's persistence that got me to blog about old FantaCo stuff such as the counterfeit Cerebus or the Fantastic Four Chronicles, so you can partially credit (or blame) him.

ADD's POV comes through in his questions without overwhelming the interviewee, a delicate balancing act. Of course, many of the subjects have their own strong personalities, so the resulting interaction can make for a lively piece.

These interviews span the entire last decade, which in part gives a snapshot into the comic book market over the period.

As Mark Evanier likes to say, Go See It!
***
Since I'm plugging things:
The Vermont Monster Guide by Joseph A. Citro, illustrated by Stephen R. Bissette
Harvey Pekar: Conversations, edited by Michael G. Rhode
From the Wall Street Journal: Spider Mouse? Marvel/Disney Mash-Ups for True Believers. Analysts applauded Disney’s offer to buy Marvel, announced Monday, saying that the move would help the company make inroads with boys.
But were they expecting Gooflactus?
We do know that Hitler is ticked. And the fandamentalist internerds are all whiny.

Photo stolen from Fred Hembeck. Probably taken by Lynn Moss.

ROG

G is for Gardens

Some weeks ago, one of my sisters sent me a bunch of beautiful pictures such as this one:


I wanted to use them for this blog post, so I wrote to the person who had forwarded the pictures to her, a friend of my sister, who I had met at my niece's wedding in March 2005. Well, HE didn't take them either.

The posting was listed as Montreal Gardens. But they did not look like they were from the Montreal Botanical Gardens, which has items that look more like this:


As it turned out, others had the very same question:
Recently saw a short video (via email) of a fabulous topiary garden in Montreal with all kinds of animal/bird topiaries. It just says "Montreal gardens" but no location or any other information. I have searched Montreal attractions but no clue. Even the Botanical Garden page doesn't mention it. - thought it might be there. Anyone know where in Montreal area it is? Thank you.

Someone answered: that it was from Mosaicultures Internationales de Montreal (www.mosaiculture.ca). It's in the Vieux-Port, not the BG.
Unfortunately, it's only a temporary exhibition, not presented every year. I don't know when the next one is expected.



You can find a slideshow of a couple dozen International Mosaiculture of Montreal pictures here.
***
Meanwhile, the concept of the garden also reminded me of a couple other things. One was Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden.

Albrecht Dürer. The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve). Engraving, 1504


A comparison between Rembrandt's etched Adam and Eve and Dürer's engraved version of the same subject can be seen here.

In that vein, there is a great song, The Garden. It was written and performed by Bobby McFerrin on the 1990 Medicine Music album, and can be heard here. Interestingly, after I watched him perform a couple cuts from the album on NBC-TV's Today show, McFerrin declared to host Bryant Gumbel that he would never again perform his biggest hit from a couple years before, Don't Worry, Be Happy. Here's a cover version of The Garden by Vocal Line.

Finally, lyrics to the song Woodstock by Joni Mitchell:
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Joni's version; ironically, she never performed at Woodstock 40 years ago; she was booked to appear on late-night, ABC-TV program The Dick Cavett Show, and her manager feared that she won't make it back from Bethel, NY (where the concert was held) to New York City (where Cavett's show originated) in time; a legitimate concern, as it turned out.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's cover of Woodstock from the 1970 Album Deja Vu. They DID perform at Woodstock, BTW.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: District 9

An odd thing: Carol and I had secured a babysitter. OK, scratch that; Lydia does not like the term "babysitter"; she IS five, after all. We'll go with "child sitter."

Anyway, Carol and I could not agree on a movie. She wanted to see The Time Traveler's Wife, which reviewed poorly (36%) on Rotten Tomatoes and got a thumbs down from our babychild sitter. We considered that Carol would see TTW while I would go to watch Food, Inc., which she had already seen. But Alison, the child sitter, who's going to be a junior in high school in the fall, and an avid movie goer, pushed HARD for District 9. "It's really good. It'll make you think."

As it turned out, District 9 was playing at the Madison Theatre, our local movie emporium, well within walking distance, at 1:30, which meant that we had time not only to see a movie, but to go to the Curry House beforehand for Indian food - extended date!

As it turned out, we were the ONLY people in the theater for that showing. I must say the previews were making me nervous. They were all approved for a general audience, but all were pretty intense. Sorority Row, a prank gone wrong/revenge from the grave flick; Final Destination 3-D; Law Abiding Citizen with Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx which at least seemed to be about something, and Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, which looked to be goofy, albeit bloody, fun.

Finally, District 9. It was cleverly developed as quasi-documentary about these aliens whose ship hovered...wait, here's reviewer Amy Biancolli's description:
"The aliens are bipedal, exoskeletal and vaguely crustacean, with lobster claws that snap from their midriffs and tentacular, writhing mouths. South Africans call them 'prawns.' They speak in gurgling clicks — subtitled for our convenience, but understood perfectly well by the humans who've been oppressing them for the past two decades. We meet one such oppressor early on, a smiling drone named Wikus Van De Merwe (...Sharlto Copley...) who's responsible for moving all 1.8 million aliens into a new encampment hundreds of kilometers outside Johannesburg."

Ms. Biancolli is loathe to reveal too much, as am I. But a few points:
*It addresses South African ghettoization of the "prawns" - it's hard to miss the comparisons with apartheid - without being a screed
*The wuss Wikus is a great example of the Peter Principle in action
*The important introduction of the Nigerians makes it a lot more than a "good guys vs. bad guys" dynamic
*It touches on how easily the media can be manipulated

One other not so small point: The movie becomes, in an almost cartoonish way, terribly violent by the end, like Robocop on steroids, by which point one is already so invested in the story that one has to stay until the surprisingly satisfying end.

The clever structure of this movie, ultimately a science-fiction drama/shoot-em-up, may not be for all viewers. I can imagine some being moved by the set up but disappointed by the last half hour of blowing stuff up. I for one bought the transition.

So the child sitter was right; I'm STILL thinking about issues brought forth in District 9.
ROG

A Meme of Firsts

Via SamuraiFrog:

1. Who was your FIRST date?
Difficult to say. I don't recall dating Martha as much as hanging out with her with my friends, then with her more than my other friends. Eventually we kissed a lot.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
Yeah, but not often. I went to her wedding. I'm reasonably sure that her husband doesn't know we dated. I used to think that was weird. Then there was this other woman I dated considerably later on; I was going to mention her in this blog actually, but she preferred that I didn't. She's comfortable with the fiction that her husband is the "only one", despite the fact that she was married before. HER husband knows we dated, and in fact recognized me from a drawing of me as a duck that the late Raoul Vezina drew. So maintaining a fiction about the past I've learned to recognize as important to some people. I suppose that includes me.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
I don't remember what, but I remember where: it was in a bar on Clinton Street in Binghamton. I was 18, the legal age. My sister was singing there, if I recall correctly and I don't think I had to pay for the drink. It was almost certainly a mixed drink; I want to say Tom Collins.

4. What was your FIRST job?
I've answered this before (newspaper deliverer or library page). The first job I had where I was making any real money was working at IBM in Endicott, near Binghamton. I had graduated from high school in January 1971, and I worked there from March through August. My job was to do these three processes. First was to put this coating over these circuit boards. The second (and the most difficult) was to bake them in these ovens, making sure not to bend the pins or have the coating get on the pins. The third task was to bake this plastic holder onto the circuit boards.

Irritatingly, the first shift did a lot of the first task, leaving the second task to me. And I really had to do it, because the coating would start riding up the pins if they weren't baked within 10 or 12 hours. They didn't like me because I would do the first task so fast that the company raised the rate for that job, something like from 60 to 80 boards per hour. That WAS a tactical error on my part.

I was on the second shift, which ostensibly was 5:12 p.m. to 2 a.m ., with a 48-minute lunch. But I hardly ever worked that shift. It was usually 5:12 p.m. to 4 a.m., and then from 12 noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday. Not only did I save lots of money for college because of the 16 hours of overtime per week - and because I was generally too tired to go out - I managed to lose 30 pounds because I was too tired to eat.

In the summer, there was a guy - I wish I remembered his name - who was a son of an IBM bigwig; he was quite intelligent and as bored as I was. So we would get into his Aston Martin and drive as far away as we could for 20 minutes, then reluctantly drive back.

First time I ever gave blood was while I worked there because I could get paid at work while taking of the hour to donate.

5. What was your FIRST car?
No idea. It was the S.O.'s and it was red and had push button transmission. I once knocked over a Dumpster while driving it; I wanted to go forward but went into reverse.

6. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
I had gotten chosen for this Governor's Conference on Children and Youth when I was in high school, and there were seven of us from the Binghamton area who flew to Albany in a plane with perhaps a dozen seats. It was during a lightning and thunderstorm on the way up. Met Nelson Rockefeller for the first time.

7. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
My first best friend was probably Ray Lia from second grade. We were in Cub Scouts together; his mom was our den mother. I didn't see him much in high school; he went to North High instead of Central, because it offered some technical courses he wanted. I pretty much lost track of him until 1976, five years after high school, when he invited me to be in his wedding. I escorted his mom to her seat, which as nice. I caught the garter, which wasn't. We exchange Christmas cards, though most of the writing is by his wife Pam. He is, as of about a month ago, one of my Facebook friends.

8. Whose wedding did you attend the FIRST time?
I have no idea. When I grew up in the church, most of the weddings were open to all the parishoners. So I went to a lot of weddings as a kid. I even sang at a few, notably I Love You Truly, a truly horrific piece of claptrap. I know I attended my sister's godfather Elmer's wedding to Barbara in that period.

As for which of my friends married first whose wedding I actually attended, I'm not at all sure. My sister got married on Halloween 1975; a definite contender.

9. Tell us about your FIRST roommate.
That would be Ron Fields. At New Paltz in 1971-72, there were only two black males in Scudder Hall, a grad student in biology (Ron) and a freshman poli sci major (me), and somehow we ended up as roommates. I'm pretty sure it was no accident. Ron was fine. He did have one great idiosyncrasy that amused me and others; he recorded every cent he spent in a notebook. "Soda, 50 cents," etc. One day, he bought a used car. "Car, $1000." It cracked both of us up.

One day in March 1972, the phone rang fairly early in the morning. It was my father, but Ron didn't let on. He did prompt us to clean the room, then conspired with a friend of mine to get me out of my room so that my family and friends could surprise me that weekend for my 19th birthday. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as I recall.

10. If you had one wish, what would it be (other than more wishes)?
Either the ability to fly or to transport.

11. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
If I had time, I'd become more computer savvy; I just muddle through.

12. Did you marry the FIRST person you were in love with?
No, and we tried to make it work more than once.

13. What were the first lessons you ever took and why?
Piano lessons when I was eight with Mrs. Hamlin. I was not at all good, but I still remember a lot of those intro lessons by heart. It was also useful in singing, so it wasn't a total waste.

14. What is the first thing you do when you get home?
Take off my shoes. Keep the carpet clean.

ROG

Problems, problems

What a pain in the neck. I mean this literally. Somehow during sleeping Friday night, I pulled something in my neck. It's OK when I sit, but it hurts to lie down. I can sit in brief spurts. Heat and pain relievers are not helping.
**
My printer has a paper jam. It's a Brother MFC-240C. I bought it at Staples last fall. The problem is that, apparently, whatever is jammed is too small to see, let alone reach. Staples told me to call Brother. After the Brother technician went through all the steps that I had already tried, she had me get the error code. #51 - ah, area 51 - no wonder it's a problem. Then she referred me to a local repair shop, which DOESN'T ANSWER ITS PHONE. Meh.
***
I've been having trouble with Firefox. About once every other day, it freezes up and I have to CTRL/ALT/DEL my way out. Then I get this sheepish message:

Well, this is embarrassing.
Firefox is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs. This is usually caused by a recently opened web page.
You can try:
* Removing one or more tabs that you think may be causing the problem
* Starting an entirely new browsing session

Well, I think I will start a new browsing session. whether it will be in Firefox is another issue entirely.
***
Somehow, our household has two different CVS codes so the coupons earned on one card are not transferable to the other, I discovered yestersday. I swear I had addressed this question months ago.
***
Our intern-turned-temp-librarian Amy left my office's employ Friday. She really helped keep our turnarounf=-d time down. And I like her personally as well.
***
The good thing about feeling lousy is that it gave me an opportunity to see some TV. Watched some of the EMK funeral.I was re-reading his 1972 book In Critical Condition. On pp. 74-75: "guarantee comprehensive health insurance to all Americans and to assure that health care is available at a cost any American can afford." pp. 220-221: "We can no longer afford the health insurance industry in America...the insurance industry still could not bring about change in the health care system to control costs, improve quality, and offer health care services in a way most acceptable to y=the people. The industry would remain a moneychanger taking a percentage of our dollars for a dubious service."
***
I also finally watched the last prime episode of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire that aired last Sunday. If you get a chance to watch it on abc.com, I recommend it. JEOPARDY! champion Pam Mueller was in the audience as her significant other, also a JEOPARDY! winner, played - don't want to reveal name in case you watch. Whether or not you view it, find her S.O.'s J bio off her page, then read the blog post that explains the motivation.
***
I may have to work on this: ever since I learned that Amazing Grace can be sung to The House of the Rising Sun, I've been singing it around the house. (AG can also be sung to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, but it lacks the proper pathos.


ROG

Not So Fast QUESTION

There is an article in the Wall Street Journal online - it was in the paper last weekend - by John Freeman, adapted from his book "The Tyranny of E-Mail," that really spoke to me. It was titled: "Not So Fast: Sending and receiving at breakneck speed can make life queasy; a manifesto for slow communication".

Cogent points:
1. Speed matters...
The speed at which we do something—anything—changes our experience of it. Words and communication are not immune to this fundamental truth. The faster we talk and chat and type over tools such as email and text messages, the more our com­munication will resemble traveling at great speed. Bumped and jostled, queasy from the constant ocular and muscular adjust­ments our body must make to keep up, we will live in a constant state of digital jet lag.

This is a disastrous development on many levels...

2. The Physical World matters.
A large part of electronic commu­nication leads us away from the physical world. Our cafes, post offices, parks, cinemas, town centers, main streets and commu­nity meeting halls have suffered as a result of this development. They are beginning to resemble the tidy and lonely bedroom commuter towns created by the expansion of the American interstate system. Sitting in the modern coffee shop, you don't hear the murmur or rise and fall of conversation but the con­tinuous, insect-like patter of typing. The disuse of real-world commons drives people back into the virtual world, causing a feedback cycle that leads to an ever-deepening isolation and neglect of the tangible commons.

This is a terrible loss...

3. Context matters

We need context in order to live, and if the environment of electronic communication has stopped providing it, we shouldn't search online for a solution but turn back to the real world and slow down. To do this, we need to uncouple our idea of progress from speed, separate the idea of speed from effi­ciency, pause and step back enough to realize that efficiency may be good for business and governments but does not always lead to mindfulness and sustainable, rewarding relationships. We are here for a short time on this planet, and reacting to demands on our time by simply speeding up has canceled out many of the benefits of the Internet, which is one of the most fabulous technological inventions ever conceived...


This is no Luddite screed but a cautionary observation: "This is not a sustainable way to live. This lifestyle of being constantly on causes emotional and physical burnout, work­place meltdowns, and unhappiness."

But what do YOU think? I think that *I* need to turn off the computer for a while and go for a walk.

ROG

Black or White

In high school and early in my college days, I made attempts to write songs. In retrospect, they probably were not that good, though I do have some affection for a couple of them. Among other things, I realized that I had, on more than one occasion, unintentionally swiped the tune from an existing song. Still, I wish I could find the notebook where I was keeping the lyrics over a number of years.

One of the songs was called "Black or White". It started:
"My father was a singer of folk songs,
My mama used to hum along."
I remember that part, because it was true.
In the chorus, there was this couplet:
"It doesn't matter if it's black or white.
Music is music if the feeling's right."

I do recall the specific inspiration for this song. My father had moved to Charlotte, NC. Whether it was true or his perception, he felt that the gumbo of folk music that he had performed in hometown Binghamton would not fare as well in the South of the 1970s, and for a number of years, he just stopped playing. I found this quite disheartening.

In the same vein, it was a song for Dionne Warwick, Charlie Pride and Jimi Hendrix, who were often put down, including by black people, because they weren't singing the music they were "supposed" to be playing, jazz, soul or blues, but certainly NOT pop, country or rock. (I have an irrational affection for the song Then Came You by Dionne and the Spinners - "see, she can do soulful; now, SHUT UP, already!")

When Michael Jackson's song Black or White came out in 1991, complete with the lyrics "It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White," it made me feel...wistful. If I ever DID find this book and recorded the song, people who think that I had ripped it off from MJ, when i had written it at least a decade and a half earlier. (And no, I don't believe he ripped it off from me, either.)
***
So, I'm waiting and waiting for Fred Hembeck to post something about his daughter Julie's birthday this week, but nothing. So I write to him, and he tells me I should have been checking out Facebook! I'm mediocre re Facebook at best, and not much better with Twitter. There's something rather ephemeral about those social network platforms; it's different with the blog, which is a web LOG. Anyway, belated happy birthday, Julie! Really, I didn't forget.


ROG

Teddy/Ellie

I have had on my bookshelf for the longest time a book called "In Critical Condition: the Crisis in America's Health Care" by Edward M. Kennedy.
Chapter I: Sickness and Bankruptcy - A Double Disaster
Chapter II: What Price Good Health?
Chapter III: No Money, No Medical Care
Chapter IV: Where Have All the Doctors Gone?
Chapter V: The Medical Maze
Chapter VI: Good Care, Poor Care.
Chapter VII: Businessmen or Healers?
Chapter VIII: The Health Insurance Trap
Chapter IX- Better Health Care at Lower Cost in Other Countries
Chapter X: Good Health Care: A Right for All Americans
The book was published in 1972. Does any of the discussion sound at all familiar?

There is little doubt in my mind that Ted Kennedy was one of the greatest United States Senators ever. Just this past weekend on ABC News, John McCain (R-AZ) reiterated that the current health care debate has been stymied in part because his friend, the "Lion of the Senate", wasn't able to participate in the debate fully. Kennedy was an "old-time" senator who really DID work "across the aisle".

I believe his greatness in the Senate was fueled in no small part by the fact that he never became President. like his brother Jack did and his brother Bobby likely would have, had he not been assassinated in 1968. And I think it's because of a tragedy of his own making, Chappaquiddick, in 1969.

I supported Ted Kennedy when he challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980. Yet, at the same time, I was scared to death for him. Every President who was elected, or re-elected in a year ending in zero, going back to 1840, had died in office. Moreover, all of Ted's brothers had died violent deaths, including his brother Joe in World War II.

(I always thought the 1980 primary season felt like a conversation among Carter, Kennedy and Jerry Brown to a Lovin' Spoonful song, It's Not Time Now.)

So Ted Kennedy's sad but unsurprising death would, in the movies, stir both sides to open their hearts, work together for comprehensive health care reform, and we'd have a nice warm, fuzzy feeling in our bellies as the end credits rolled.

I'm not counting on that.

I do think it would be a fine legacy if the Congress could get together and pass some meaningful reform, and if EMK'd death becomes the prompt, then so be it.
***
The Brill Building composers and producers held sway over popular music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Among them were Goffin and King, Mann and Weil, Greenfield and Sedaka, Pomus and Shuman, Leiber and Stoller, Barry and Greenwich. The latter were Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, partners both musically and otherwise (they were married for a time).
Here are some songs written or co-written by Ellie Greenwich, who died this week:
AND THEN HE KISSED ME
BE MY BABY
CHAPEL OF LOVE
CHRISTMAS BABY (PLEASE COME HOME)
DA DOO RON RON
DO WAH DIDDY DIDDY
HANKY PANKY
LEADER OF THE PACK
RIVER DEEP. MOUNTAIN HIGH
and a whole bunch more.

She also produced a number of artists, notably early Neil Diamond. Somewhere in my vinyl I have the soundtrack for the Broadway musical Leader of the Pack, in which she starred in the 1980s.
ROG

The Lydster, Part 65: Stretching It Out

As I have mentioned, there were a couple weeks this summer when Carol was away at college and I got to play what is quaintly referred to Mr. Mom. (Did I see that film? I have vague recollections of it.)

It was not too bad during the week. I would drop her off at daycare in the morning. On Monday/Wednesday/Friday, my friend who has a daughter slightly older and a son slightly younger than Lydia would pick up the daughter and take her to their house and I would pi her up from there. On Tuesday/Thursday, I'd leave work early and pick up Lydia from daycare myself.

This meant truncated workdays. I don't know about your work habits, but mine has a certain rhythm which involves getting through the e-mails, and doing some of the tasks therein before working on reference questions. It was not an optimal situation but it was doable.

The weekends were trickier. It was daddy being "on" for 15 or 16 hours. Not only did I need to do her hair in the morning (and preferably at night), and give her all her allergy medicines at night, I needed to entertain - read more than the evening books, play various games inside and out. On a weekday evening, by the time I made supper, cleaned up after supper, did her evening routine (which involved her 30 minutes of television per day), then got ready for bed, there wasn't all that much time. On weekends, it was a LONG period.

Fortunately, there were birthday parties for Lydia's classmates each of the two Saturdays. The first party was in a suburb of Albany called Clifton Park. The father of the birthday girl picked us up. It was one of those combo bouncy bounce/video places; it seemed very LOUD. Of course, we had to wait to get a ride home until after the clean up, but this was not at all a bad thing as it ate up the time. If I were using a baseball analogy, it would be like a workmanlike pitcher eating up innings.

The second weekend, the party was in another suburb, Latham. This time, I was determined to find a way to get us there without help. Plan #1, taking the #29 Cohoes bus was out; it doesn't run on Saturdays. What I discovered, though, is if I got to the uptown SUNY campus (via the #12 bus), there is a #90 bus that goes to all the malls in the area, including Latham Farms, near where we were heading. It meant leaving the house at 10:15 to get to the party at 11:30 (a half hour early) and staying a little longer to catch the right buses back. But since we were at Chuck E. Cheese, this was not a problem.

The biggest hassle, actually, was getting from the Latham Farms bus stop to the Chuck. To say it was not designed for pedestrians would be a gross understatement. There were trees by the side of the road that jutted out in a way that it was impossible to even walk on the lawn; of course, there was NO sidewalk to speak of.

Did I mention that I HATE the name Latham Farms? There are few to no agrarian features.

I hadn't been to CEC since 1995 in an Atlanta suburb. It's more tech oriented now, with our electronic hosts Justin and Kelly (really - but not the folks from American Idol) hosting the gig on a half dozen TV screens until the rat, er mouse, came out.

On the ride back to SUNY, there was a woman with her eight-year-old coming from Troy to SUNY. Her daughter was getting antsy, so it was mutually beneficial when she got to read to Lydia. We got home at about 3:15.

If we had gotten a car ride there and back, we would have been gone from 11:30 to 2, 2.5 hours. Since we took two buses each way, we were out a total of FIVE hours. This is a GOOD thing. It was an adventure. Lydia is good riding buses, and this was new to her.

I'll admit that maybe she watched a little more television than is generally allowed on the two Sundays, but she survived. As important, *I* survived.

Photo by Ray Hendrickson
ROG

F is for Falling

Kilgore Falls, MD

My 81-year-old mother fell coming into her house last week. My sister who lives with her says she's fine, and that's good news, of course.

Even before hearing that news, I was thinking about the topic. On one hand, the fall is the lifeblood of physical comedy. Watch out for that banana peeeel! The role of the comedian, going back generations, perhaps millennia, was to take a tumble.

One of my all-time favorite TV shows was The Dick van Dyke Show. As you can see here, Dick would either trip over the ottoman, stumble over it, or neatly evade it.

And YouTube is chock full of people taking a tumble.


Conversely, One in three adults 65 and older falls each year in the United States. In 2005, 15,800 people 65 and older died from injuries related to unintentional falls; about 1.8 million people 65 and older were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries from falls, and more than 433,000 of these patients were hospitalized, again in the U.S. And that doesn't even touch on falls from elevation.

This brings me to LifeCall. From the Wikipedia: The motivation behind the systems is that subscribers, mostly senior citizens, would receive a pendant which, when activated, would put them in immediate contact with a dispatch service, without the need to use a phone or other household device...

So far so good.

In 1989, LifeCall began running commercials which contained a scene wherein an elderly woman, identified by a dispatcher as "Mrs. Fletcher" uses the medical alert pendant after having fallen in the bathroom. After falling Mrs Fletcher speaks the phrase "I've fallen and I can't get up" after which the dispatcher informs her that he is sending help.


Taken at its face value, the commercial portrays a dangerous situation for a senior, with perhaps dire consequences...

The "I've fallen and I can't get up" ad had the double misfortune of being unintentionally campy and appearing often on cable and daytime television. The fact that the commercial was a dramatization (as clearly stated in the beginning of the commercial) using rather mediocre acting also contributed to the humor. The combination made "I've fallen... and I can't get up!" a recognized, universal punchline that applied to many comedic situations. All of these factors made the ad memorable, ensuring the line's place in pop culture history.

The commercial's punchline has also been appropriated by members of faith communities.


My final falling reference (briefly) will be falling in love. One could discuss ad nauseum what that really means. But I've had stuck in my head a song by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers called "Falling in Love with Love."

"Falling in Love with Love is falling for make-believe!
Falling in Love with Love is playing the fool!" Here's Julie Andrews singing Falling In Love With Love.
Falling Creek, GA

Note: I had a bunch of photos put aside for the post which I CANNOT FIND. Photos taken from government websites.
ROG

The Now Vs. Then Meme

One of those Sunday Stealing memes that would have been far more onerous had I compared now with 20 years ago, rather than 10

Then: August 1999

1. Age: 46

2. Romantic Status: newly married 3 months

3. Occupation: librarian, working downtown

4. Fun night out: usually go out to eat

5. My BFFs: Karen, Mark, Norman

6. I spent way too much time: watching sports on TV

7. I spent not enough time: reading books

8. I wanted to be when I grew up: a minister or a lawyer

9. Biggest concern: money

10. What my biggest concern should have been: time

11. Where did I live: in the house that Carol purchased in 1992

12. Dumbest thing I did that year: pretend that I was really cool with Carol going off to Scotland with her friend Jeanne a couple months after we were married. I missed her terribly AND I was still getting used to the house. She still might have gone, but my nonchalance gave her false info.

13. If I could go back now and talk to myself I would say: you'll do OK.

Now: August 2009

1. Age: 56

2. Romantic Status: married

3. Occupation: librarian, working in soulless Corporate Woods

4. Fun night out: say what?

5. My BFFs: Karen, Mark, Norman

6. I spend way too much time: on the computer

7. I spend not enough time: reading books

8. I want to be when I grow up: I don't want to grow up

9. Biggest concern: time for myself

10. What my biggest concern should be: how easily I sunburn now and taking more precautions re: that.

11. Where do I live: in a house Carol and I bought in 2000

12. Dumbest thing I have done this year: knocking down a small beehive in Lydia's playhouse. Even though she was about 20 feet away, she ended up getting stung in the back of the neck by the bee/wasp/hornet. Then I got to listen to her ask, repeatedly, why it attacked her rather than me; the answer, of course, is that it would hurt me more if it stung her.

13. What I think I would say to myself in 10 years: you made it, more or less.

Summary:

1. What do I miss most from 1999: time

2. What do I miss least from 1999: uncertainty

3. What have I accomplished in 10 years that I am most proud of: staying married

4. What have I NOT accomplished in 10 years that I wish I had: that damn world peace; SO elusive.
***
One of the truly awful world events in my lifetime was the plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Over a dozen of the victims had ties with the Albany, NY area where I live. But as Demeur lays out, the one convicted participant might very well have got out on appeal. The release of Megrahi by Scotland may have been more pragmatic than compassionate.
***
From Steve Bissette:
If you are or ever have been a fan of the work of writer Steve Perry of Time Spirits, Thundercats and Silverhawks – not to be confused with either the prolific and popular sf writer or the rock star — and you can afford to help a man on his last legs, please, do so.

Despite the best efforts of myself and others, Steve is in dire straits at this very moment, suffering terminal cancer and lack of any support, and sorely in need of any help that can be sent his way.
***
Two journalists died this past week. Don Hewitt ran the Kennedy-Nixon debate, dubbed Walter Cronkite and created 60 Minutes. He wussed out over a tobacco story, but no one's perfect.

My mom said if you have nothing good to say about someone, say nothing. Robert Novak: NOTHING.
***
Go here August 28 at 9:00AM ET and every Friday through September for a chance to get a Free Real Chocolate coupon for your favorite Mars product.


ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: 500 Days of Summer

I took off from work on Thursday, in part so I could complete the split movie date thing my wife and I do. She saw 500 Days of Summer a couple weeks back and thoroughly enjoyed it. I...well, three days in, I'm still running it through my head.

The movie has been described as a romantic comedy; this would be a stretch. Certainly the guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is interested in romance. But the woman of his dreams (Zooey Deschanel) just doesn't believe in that stuff.

500 Days (Variety and Roger Ebert aren't using the parentheses around 500, so I'll opt out too) evokes a lot of other movies. Evokes them pretty well too, though perhaps too much "on the nose."

There"s a scene that uses a Hall and Oates song that is clearly inspired by a scene in a John Hughes movie. The song title from the Hughes film even appear in the lyrics of the H&O tune. On the other hand, I enjoyed it - a lot, actually - for what it was.

Likewise, there seems to be an homage to the movies of Woody Allen from the 1970s. But not only did the split screen work, it was quite reminiscent of my real life.

Finally, it is stated that the female in the movie totally misreads the ending of The Graduate, and it is actually that final scene on the bus, complete with the Bookends Theme by Simon & Garfunkel, that, in retrospect, 500 Days pivots on.

It just feels that all of these elements plus the cute-at-first-but-eventually-annoying time shift dynamic didn't always feel like the same film, as though it were being made by a guy stitching a bunch of music videos together. Yet through it all, it did speak truthfully, it played fair, the characters were believable, even though the female lead was (intentionally) less than accessible. There was no deus ex machina.

Read Roger Ebert's four-star review:
Some say they’re annoyed by the way it begins on Day 488 or whatever and then jumps around, providing utterly unhelpful data labels: "Day 1," "Day 249." Movies are supposed to reassure us that events unfold in an orderly procession. But Tom remembers his love, Summer, as a series of joys and bafflements. What kind of woman likes you perfectly sincerely and has no one else in her life but is not interested in ever getting married?

Then look at the less than favorable one from Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal:
Marc Webb’s bright bauble of a boy-meets-girl comedy is a rueful tribute to the wisdom of hindsight (if you want to be philosophical); an elaborate exercise in deconstruction (if you want to be trendy), a postmodern mishmash (if you want to be uncharitable), a cautionary tale about the perils of projection (if you want to be psychological) or, if you want to be as clinical as the film finally decides to be, an exhaustive and exhausting dissection of a relationship that was never all that promising in the first place.

Thing is, I totally agree. With BOTH of them. A blogger who seemed to like it called it "treacherously twee." So go see the movie. If you're like 88% of the critics, you'll enjoy the film. But if you don't, I'd understand that too.

ROG

Boycott QUESTIONS

Need someone to swipe from. Jaquandor posed a similar, and more expanded query. Mine is more reductivist:
Do you boycott an artist (musician, actor, writer) because you find that person's politics abhorrent - racist, a birther, Holocaust denier? This assumes that the work itself is not abhorrent. Actually remember going to see The Green Berets, starring John Wayne and David Janssen in the day, even though I wasn't a big Wayne fan. Additionally, I knew I'd hate the politics of the film, and I did, but I found it instructive to have seen it. But, no, I see movies by Gary Sinese. I listen to Wagner. I don't buy Ted Nugent music, but then I NEVER bought Ted Nugent music.

Do you support an artist who is the subject of a boycott or other negative action? Heck, yeah. When Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks spoke the truth about George W. Bush in March 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, and took a lot of heat, immediately, I ran out to the local Rite Aid and bought the Dixie Chicks' then-current album. Likewise, when Linda Ronstadt said something complimentary about Michael Moore and subsequently had some difficulties, I ended up buying her box set from Amazon. This is not that I might not have purchased them eventually anyway, but certainly the events specifically prompted the purchases.

ROG

Autumn of 1988

After eight and a half years, I left my job at FantaCo in mid-November 1988. Leafing through some old journals, I was surprised - actually shocked - to see that I had actually planned to leave a full year earlier. I made a point making sure that people were trained to take on the the tasks I did, with the mail order especially, before I left so that owner Tom Skulan wouldn't be left in a lurch.

It was odd. I was making more money at the end than i had ever made up to that time, plus paid health insurance, something Tom was providing only to himself and me, though others could get coverage on their own dime; I don't recall anyone taking advantage of that offer, since they were all pretty young and weren't making that much.

The problem is that I was making money from all the horror stuff we were selling, and more importantly producing. My old buddy Steve Bissette is currently delineating the Gore Shriek history (and selling some artwork of the period. In some way, it was almost passing the torch to Steve. I was involved in the Chronicles and the like, while Steve was present for the very first Gore Shriek in June of 1988. It was the comic books, not the horror stuff, that drew me to FantaCo, but I balanced the checkbook, and it was the horror stuff that kept FantaCo going month after month.

So I quit. I wasn't angry, just burned out. Tom felt angry and betrayed, I suspected, and this was confirmed by a couple people. I felt badly that he felt that way but I couldn't see any real options.

As it turned out, on Thanksgiving Day, I got a call from a guy I knew telling me that our mutual good friend Nancy Sharlet was dying of cancer. I met her when we both worked together at the Schenectady Arts Council in 1978. I started on March 1. March 7 was my birthday; not knowing me well, but wanting to acknowledge the day, she got me this little S.W.A.T. truck, which I have to this day.

The GREAT thing about being unemployed was that I could spend lots of time in the hospital with her, nearly every day for about a month, before her mother came up from Tennessee to tend to her in her last days. She died on January 1, 1989.

After the funeral, I never saw her kids Jocelyn and Jeffrey again. I assume they went to live with their father, Robert, who I did not know well.

I was watching Jon Stewart a couple weeks ago. His guest was a guy named Jeff Sharlet, who is the author of The Family: Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Could this be the Jeffrey Sharlet, the six-year-old I played SORRY with when he was six? I found this 2004 interview, and the answer is clearly yes.

"I grew up in what seemed like a mostly Catholic town in upstate New York." Check. "My father is Jewish." Check. "My mother, with whom I lived, had been raised in a very unusual Pentecostal home." Jeffrey and his sister Jocelyn lived with their mother; her religion was a bit unclear. "Her mother, a very poor Tennessean". Check. "She [his grandmother] raised my mother to be interested in everything." Double check. "Going to other people's churches and temples, gathering stories -- in my family, that was just how you did religion." Check, and the reason I was unclear of Nancy's religion."

I wrote to Jeff; he didn't write back; that's OK. I do wonder how his sister is, though.
ROG