Ramblin' with Roger

Review: The Devil Wears Prada 2

didn’t see Michael

My wife, daughter, and I went to see the film The Devil Wears Prada 2 at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on a Saturday afternoon in mid-May. It’s been a while since the three of us did that; I have no idea when, or what we saw.

It was fine. The initial “reunion” between Miranda (Meryl Streep) and Andy (Anne Hathaway) was on point. Andy and her frenemy Emily (Emily Blunt) were mostly entertaining. And we finally see Nigel (Stanley Tucci) come into his own.

What we see in the consolidation of media and how powerful manipulates the marketplace is definitely there. It was fun to see all of the cameos at one party. The fashion was interesting to see.

And yet, I found that the movie wasn’t always maintaining my attention, or my daughter’s; she rested her head on her mother’s shoulder for a time. I wouldn’t say the movie, at two hours, was too long.

David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews wrote that the “picture eventually segues into an almost impossibly sluggish midsection rife with needless subplots and digressions.” The Milan scenes, in particular, meandered, although it was Nigel’s shining moment.

Also, per IMDb, “Miranda hosts a large dinner directly beneath Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In reality, access to the room is strictly limited, and food, candles, and any form of smoke are prohibited to preserve the fragile artwork.” I didn’t need to be an art historian to know that was true.

Yet I did like the payoff. Rotten Tomatoes critics were 78% positive, while the fans were 84% positive.

DNS

The next day, my wife and daughter saw the biopic Michael at the same venue, with Jermaine’s son Jaafar playing his late uncle. I had seen the jukebox musical MJ at Proctors Theatre in December 2024 and didn’t feel the need to see the film, but my family liked it.

The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes scores were 39% among critics but 97% among fans. One critic wrote: “A banal, airbrushed portrait that plays like a jukebox musical and, except for a few snide winks, ignores the controversies that have long swirled around the singer.”

Feeling pain for blogger Kelly

ForgottenStars.net

I’ve been feeling severe emotional pain on behalf of my fellow upstate New Yorker, blogger Kelly Sedinger, the overalls guy. And I’ll admit that it’s not just empathy, but a profound understanding of what he’s been going through.

He’s been posting as Forgotten Stars for about five years, and at Byzantium Shores for nearly two decades before that.

Then, inexplicably, all of his posts after April 21, 2026 disappeared. Apparently, during an earlier outage, something else went wonky. As of Sunday evening, he can post, BUT the pieces he wrote in the past month and a half are still MIA. And the formatting has been stripped.

At least the individual post links now load. And the comments now work; I LOVE comments, making them and receiving them.

Kelly wrote: “I’m not going to lie, folks, all of this has really sucked out a lot of my enthusiasm for this notion of doing content creation…and it also has me questioning my whole strategy on that score, anyway.” It’s almost impossible for me to focus on writing when my site is down. I could technically write on a backup site, but it’s not the same.

Joy

There are those of us, like Kelly, who write for the joy of the sharing. And we spend some moolah keeping our junkie habit, I mean, our love of the written word alive. Friend Chuck Miller recently wrote, “I can tell you that, from personal experience, blog hosting does not operate for free. At least not GOOD blog hosting.”

I’ve been spending more than a few dinero on this enterprise, changing providers along the way.

Kelly has been spending his money too. “I still have some back-end functionality stuff that is still not right, and I will be contacting my hosting service in the next couple of days to politely request that they give me a refund or discount since a malfunction on their end resulted in loss of functionality and a loss of actual data, which is not acceptable to me. “

I have some alleged redundancy/backup to this blog, if I understand what the heck all of those plugins are supposed to do. (Nope, I really don’t fully comprehend, and people explaining in tech-speak does NOT help.) My last problem was one plugin that was screwing up another plugin with a very similar name!

My blog was down for 23 minutes on both Saturday and Sunday nights, my Jetpack informed me. But it came back up on its own, or by magic.

So keep a good thought for Kelly Sedinger, who, if he’s anything like me, is emotionally exhausted by all of this.

Sunday Stealing: Questions You Aren’t Used To

Dinosaurs, clearly

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

We stumbled upon a post on Blogography that promises to ask “questions you aren’t used to.” Well, after all the memes we’ve done, that’s a tall order! Of the 65 questions asked, we’ve stolen 10 of the most unique.

10 Questions You Aren’t Used To

1. What celebrity would you never want to meet?

He hosted a reality show called The Apprentice a number of years ago. His catchphrase was “You’re fired!” He was a real blowhard. His name escapes me.

2. What do you label yourself as?

A lot of things, usually depending on the situation. Most recently, it’s been progressive Christian, to distinguish me from the Christian nationalists. Coincidentally, I came across “Hymns that resist Christian nationalism. Two Presbyterian pastors and hymnwriters, the Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing and the Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, offer up a meaty workshop.”

But also a straight, cisgender, black, English-speaking male. Oh, and an American (a privileged lot, generally speaking)

Because of the sand, which is there

3. You can only have one sandwich for the rest of your life. You have every sandwich-making ingredient known to man at your disposal. What sandwich do you make?

Well, it’s a sub/hoagie/grinder/hero. Black Forest ham, pepperoni, Genoa salami, turkey, roast beef, spinach, tomato, onion, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing. The idea is that I could forgo some of the ingredients, making a different combo every day.

4. An angel provides you with a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. What’s it gonna be?

Kahlua. It’s strange, though: I believe I’ve only had two white Russians in the last year and a half.

5. Have you ever built a snowman?

Often as a child.

6. If you could ask your future self a question, what would it be?

Are you really there, or did we screw up the world? Some idiot recently used his alleged wartime powers to dole out $700m to ‘clean, beautiful’ coal.

7. Have you ever baked your own birthday cake?

I want to say yes, probably in my twenties or thirties, but I have no specific recollection.

8. Which are cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

Dinosaurs, clearly. They were real; what we know about them has changed over time, et al. By contrast, the Dungeons and Dragons folks at college were… insular; Game of Thrones didn’t interest me…

Bambinos

9. What do you like about babies?

I find babies, generally, fun to try to entertain. I’ve been on buses with crying babies and their overwrought parent. I’ve made faces that will calm the child more than 80% of the time.

10. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. What’s the first rule you put in place?

Limited cellphone use, including no walking and texting/talking. In fact, what the heck, no cellphones at all. But landlines, including payphones, are allowed!

INSTEAD OF STEALING, LET’S BUILD OUR OWN MEME. Think of a question you’d like to ask and insert it here. If we get at least four good ones, we’ll do our own DIY meme in a week or two.

What information do you know that you are proud of/happy about, but others say, “WHO CARES?” (This comes from a very specific place.) BTW, the symbol above was referenced in the June 1 episode of JEOPARDY!

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

#1 R&B Hits for 1956

These are the #1 R&B Hits for 1956. There are a total of 79 weeks represented, as there were charts for Juke Boxes, Best Sellers, and those played by Disc Jockeys.

Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2) – Bill Doggett (King), 13 weeks at #1; #2 pop for three weeks

The Great Pretender – The Platters, 11 weeks at #1 (also #1 pop)

Blueberry Hill – Fats Domino (Imperial), 11 weeks at #1; #2 pop for three weeks

I’m In Love Again – Fats Domino (Imperial) , 9 weeks at #1; #3 pop for two weeks. Written by Domino and Dave Bartholomew

Long Tall Sally – Little Richard and His Band (Specialty), 8 weeks at #1; #6 pop

Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel – Elvis Presley, 6 weeks at #1 )also #1 pop)

Why Do Fools Fall In Love – The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon (Gee), 5 weeks at #1; #6 pop. Lymon co-wrote the song and was 13 when he recorded it.

Fever – Little Willie John with Orchestra (King), 5 weeks at #1; #24 pop

Let The Good Times Roll – Shirley & Lee (Aladdin), 3 weeks at #1; #20 pop. Written by Leonard Lee.

Drown In My Own Tears – Ray Charles and his Band (Atlantic), 2 weeks at #1; did not chart pop

Rip It Up – Little Richard and his Band (Specialty), 2 weeks at #1; #17 pop. Co-written by Otis Blackwell.

My Prayer – The Platters, 2 weeks at #1 (also #1 pop)

At My Front Door – The El Dorados (Vee-Jay), 1 week at #1; #17 pop

Treasure Of Love – Clyde McPhatter (Atlantic), 1 week at #1; #16 pop. Founded the Drifters in 1953.

Down Memory Lane – the Zionites

Trinity A.M.E. Zion church, 1956

A good friend of mine from my hometown of Binghamton, NY, Cee, wrote that on Friday, May 22, they “attended a wonderful presentation by Brenda Cave James on local Black churches, Susquehanna Street prior to urban renewal, and more.

“One of her display boards caught my eye…” A display showed two different musical revues by the folks at Trinity A.M.E. Zion church in 1948 and 1956. The latter event, with the performers dubbed the Zionites, is of particular interest to me.

Before that, a little history from WBMG-TV (2024). According to Broome County Historian Roger Luther, “AME Bethel closed its doors around 1930, and the congregation merged with AME Zion Church, formerly located where Columbus Park now stands.” I was baptized in the AME Zion church at that previous location. “In 1957, AME Zion was moved to its present-day location at the corner of Oak and Lydia streets.”

Musical triptych

There were three segments of the 1956 program, Down Memory Lane, which was directed by two women I knew from church: Beccye Fawcett, who was my boss when I worked at the Binghamton Public Library for several months in the late 1960s, and Dorothy Owens, a stalwart in the choir.

Part 1 represented the Gay Nineties. For one song, the Floradora Girls danced. Among the women: Geneivive Taylor, another librarian, and Gertrude Green, my mother! A couple of songs were performed by Luvenia McElroy, my sister Leslie’s godmother. Mack Green, presumably my grandfather McKinley Green, performed a Buck and Wing Dance.

The Roaring Twenties included Leslie Green (misspelled as Lesli) performing “Sonny Boy” with his son. Wait, what? I would have been three at the time. For the Rocking Fifties segment, my dad performed folk songs.

The December 3, 1948, performance at Binghamton Central High School also featured my mother, who was then Gertrude Williams, and my father. It was directed by Beccye Fawcett. The repertoire was limited to the Gay Nineties.

I believe Brenda Cave James is the daughter of the late Allen Cave, who was the vice-principal of Binghamton Central High School.