Ramblin' with Roger

February was long

beg button

One of my blogger buddies commented on how quickly February 2026 whizzed by. This was not my experience. I thought February was long. Very long.

A good part of it was the cold, especially the first weekend of the month. There were only two days in the first half when it reached freezing. But the real issue for me was that the snow from January 26 never really went away.

The City of Albany had a couple snow emergency days during which alternate-side parking was in effect in order to plow the streets. But the snow removal in many of the places I saw never got to the curbs. Some entities – the city, private contractors? – did some work on the sidewalks, but it was often almost impossible to cross the street.

There’s a bus stop in front of the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library. But on February 3, I couldn’t get to the bus without mountain goating. So I walked to the Armory next door and carefully/nervously walked in the street towards the bus stop.

At some intersections, pedestrian push buttons or “beg buttons” are installed. Every article I read stated that they SHOULD be unnecessary because autos OUGHT to yield to pedestrians in most circumstances, and I agree in theory. Nevertheless, there are places in Albany that they are necessary, such as crossing Henry Johnson Boulevard as it it enters Washington Park. But I’ve seen, there and elsewhere in photos on Facebook, too much snow and ice to allow a person to reach the button.

My salvation

That is, unless one has a cane. I used my cane every day I left the house in February, to push beg buttons, steady myself through ice patches, etc. In front of our house, as I’ve complained for about a decade, our sidewalk puddles greatly because of an error in construction. So there was a small pond. Then it got very cold overnight and the puddle became an ice rink. Unfortunately, early in the morning of March 1, one of our new neighbors slipped and fell before we had a chance to treat the walkway. We felt terrible.

We have a composting area in the back of our backyard. Usually, we collect a containerful and then schlep it to the back 40. But the snow didn’t really melt. Finally, on February 28, I got irritated enough to pour TWO containers of the biodegradable product into a large plastic bag. Then I walked the product to the location, using the cane, of course.

The snow nearest our back fdoor was up to my knees. But when I got to where the in-ground pool used to be – there before we moved in – the snow was about half that height.

February was a busy month: church Gershwin concert, New Edition concert in Boston, two museum visits, being on a panel discussing the movie The Librarians, and talking to the media about my problem mail delivery. I hated having to cajole the government to do its job.

Ah, February 2025 also sucked in ALB.

But now it’s March! Even though it started with some snow, it’s supposed to be 50F/10C by the weekend! Of course, the WORST snowstorms in recorded Albany history were in mid-March, in 1888 (no, I don’t remember it!) and 1993 (I recall it well.)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2026

starting with Luther

Nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2026 are out. One can vote for up to seven artists each day. Yes, it doesn’t much matter, but it entertains me. No, I don’t care if artist A or band B is “rock and roll.”

There are two guys, now deceased, neither of whom had been nominated before. Jeff Buckley drowned at the age of 30 in 1997. His father Tim died at 28 of a drug overdose. But Jeff singing the definitive version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah isn’t enough for me. I’m afraid NO.

By comparison, Luther Vandross, who died in 2005 at the age of 54, was a prolific arranger and producer, as well as singer and songwriter. He worked with David Bowie, Dionne Warwick, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and most of the New Edition, among many others, starting in the 1970s. A definite YES (1).

YES to Joy Division/New Order (2) and Black Crowes (3), who have been nominated before. I have some JD; I understand the JD/NO pairing but it’s weird. There are two or three Black Crowes albums in my collection.

NO to Phil Collins, who is in with Genesis; I have never been fond of folks being inducted two or three times. especially when it blocks a spot for someone else. However, I like him well enough to have three of his solo albums. Last I checked, he had a huge (50,000) lead in the fan vote.

Is Forever

By the same logic YES to Wu-Tang Clan (4), not just for their collective work but their various spinoffs. They are worthy of a fictionalized bio series. The lawn sign Wu-Tang Is Forever has been a thing for over a half a decade. And they are touring in 2026. Sad news: the Wu-Tang Clan‘s Oliver “Power” Grant, 55, passed away from pancreatic cancer on Feb. 24, 2026.

Is one album worthy of induction? The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a critically acclaimed album, which I own. Yet I’m going with NO this time.

But I have one Sade album, yet she is a YES (5), in part because she’s the earlier act. Yes, I have an elder bias.

The fact that I have three of their albums makes INXS a YES (6).

I’ve admitted this before: I hate that Mariah Carey overuses her five-octave range. And also, she’s the queen of Christmas; feh. I have her greatest hits album, but NO.

I could not name an Iron Maiden song, and the group never stuck in my mind. They never made the pop charts, which is not a requirement to vote for them. Still, NO.

So, this leaves me with, in roughly chronological order, by when they first charted: Billy Idol, who has been nominated before, and who I voted for in past years; New Edition, who I recently saw; Melissa Etheridge – I have two of her albums; Oasis – I have the one album most people have; P!NK – someone burned me one of her CDs, and I liked it well enough; and Shakira, who I know mostly from the ending of Zootopia movies.

The 7th YES goes to New Edition, over Idol and Etheridge, based on not their group success but the solo and BBD spinoff impact. Call it recency bias.

The 2026 Oscars

I saw no more tthan 3 out of 5; 5 out of 10 films

My viewing of the 2026 Oscar-nominated movies has been rather pathetic. On Washington’s Birthday weekend in 1998, I saw five films, four of which were nominated for Academy Awards (Afterglow, The Apostle, LA Confidential, Mrs. Brown). But in all of February 2026, other than some shorts, I’ve seen exactly one, and it was at home on the 27th.

Part of it was the busyness, but also, many of the films I really wanted to view in the cinema were gone by the time my wife and I had time to see them. A couple are currently on Netflix, which I don’t have, and a few others are on other platforms. I may join Netflix for a month if I can figure out how to expand time.

Moreover, we haven’t watched much television of late. We STILL have Ken Burns’ American Revolution, a half-dozen Great Performances, and about a dozen Henry Louis Gates programs on the DVR.

The * means I saw it.

Best picture

Bugonia – I stalled at the chance to see this collaboration of director Yorgos Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone after the mediocre reviews of the 2024 film, Kinds of Kindness
F1 – this one I saw, and I liked it better than I expected to
Frankenstein – missed it
Hamnet – I saw it and wished I could understand the dialogue better; For Your Consideration
Marty Supreme – I saw it, admired what it was trying to do, but didn’t particularly like it
One Battle After Another – I missed it. My baby sister saw it and liked it a lot.
The Secret Agent – missed it
Sentimental Value – ditto
Sinners – my favorite movie of the year; a record 16 nominations
Train Dreams – I was looking forward to seeing this

A brief word about the movie Blue Moon

I’m mildly obsessed with the composers Rodgers and Hart. I know (and I bet you do too) many of their songs, although not necessarily the shows they came from. The Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart is still in my record collection. And the Mamas and the Papas had three of the duo’s songs on their albums.

So I needed to see the movie Blue Moon and the relatively tall Ethan Hawke’s transformation into the diminutive Lorenz Hart. Hawke was excellent as the talented, wordy, and alcoholically deludedlyricist on the night of the opening of Oklahoma! after Richard Rodgers had partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II.

In some ways, it was very much a play, with one set, the bar. Hart interacts with the bartender (Bobby Carnavale), writer E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), the pianist, and eventually Rodgers (Andrew Scott), as well as the young woman of his dreams, the 20-year-old college student (Margaret Qualley).

ACTING

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon (+)
*Michael B. Jordan, Sinners – playing TWO characters must be challenging
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
*Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue – the last full-length movie I saw in a cinema was on January 19
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons
*Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best animated feature film

Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
* Zootopia 2 – here’s the script

The rest of the categories

Achievement in visual effects

Avatar: Fire and Ash
F1 – I felt as though I was in the races
Jurassic World Rebirth
The Lost Bus – we saw this at home in the fall, which may have been to the film’s disadvantage. Still, we felt as though we were in the fire, especially in that antepenultimate scene.
*Sinners – impressive throughout

Achievement in casting (a new and long-overdue category)

Hamnet, Nina Gold
Marty Supreme, Jennifer Venditti – the use of the non-actors was quite creative
One Battle after Another, Cassandra Kulukundis
The Secret Agent, Gabriel Domingues
*Sinners, Francine Maisler – my favorite, especially picking newcomer Miles Caton as Sammie Moore

I’m inclined to root for Sinners for most categories, including cinematography, costume design, directing (Ryan Coogler), original song (I Lied To You), and original screenplay. Its film editing was great, though F1 worked very well. I think the F1 sound effects were grand.

I’m hoping to get a post out about the shorts I saw on February 28 before the Oscars on March 15. If I see One Battle After Another and/or Bugonia soon – they are both streaming – I’ll mention them as well.

New Edition Way tour: Boston

Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton

When my wife and I went to Chautauqua in 2023, we saw a lot of performances. The one my daughter was sad not to see was Boyz II Men.

So when she saw that New Edition was going on tour in 2026 with Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton, she wanted to go to the show, either in Boston on February 15 or in New York City on March 14th. We opted for the earlier performance.

The logistics: I would take a Peter Pan bus from Albany to Springfield. Apparently, I hadn’t taken the bus in a very long time. The Greyhound station was all but empty; I had to go to the Trailways “station,” which consisted of a couple of trailers not too far away. But it was only five bucks.

The route involved passing by the frozen Hudson River to I-90, then taking an exit that would eventually get us to Route 20, one of the great routes in America, which runs by the New Lebanon Speedway and the Hancock Shaker Village before we got to Pittsfield. Then to the Lee Premium Outlets, where no one got off or on, then back to I-90, eventually to Springfield.

The Daughter picked me up, and she drove to Woburn, where we stayed at a hotel. In due course, she drove us to the MBTA Orange line, and we traveled to North Station and walked five minutes to the TD Garden (formerly the Boston Garden).

Stand around and wait

It was 6:30 for a 7 pm show, yet no one was allowed in. Eventually, we all got in. My daughter and I didn’t get to our seats until 7:15, but a DJ was playing music to distract us. The seats in the balcony were very narrow, with insufficient legroom. I got to check out the banners on the ceiling from the great days of the Celtics and other teams.

Finally, the show starts at 7:50 with the three acts performing a new song We Going Out Tonight. Then each artist in turn, including various iterations of New Edition. The group was particularly thrilled to be performing in the city because, in August 2025, the city honored their native sons by renaming Dearborn Street in Roxbury “New Edition Way.”

I must admit that I wasn’t very versed in New Edition, which formed as teenagers in 1978. When I heard their early hits, which they sang late in the show, and I recognized them, I had written them off as Jackson Five wannabes. Certainly, I couldn’t keep track of their various combinations, such as Bell Biv DeVoe and their solo careers, with one exception.

Roni

I own Bobby Brown’s Don’t Be Cruel album; he sang the three hits at various times. New Edition, the Boston Globe noted, “had the sort of camaraderie that comes from years spent together and apart, with Brown’s bandmates backing up on his solo smashes like ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ and everyone providing vocal and choreographic assists on other cuts.” This was the real magic of the evening.

Toni Braxton put out two albums, and I liked a couple of her songs, notably Un-Break My Heart and Breathe Again, but a lot of the other ones seem pretty generic to my ears, and maybe that’s just me. I enjoyed Boyz II Men’s pieces best, but I knew them best, and New Edition shared the stage with their proteges quite a bit.

All told, it was a satisfactory experience. The Boston Globe’s review concluded this way: “The show ended with a rafter-shaking take on ‘Poison,’ the acid-tongued debut single from Bell Biv DeVoe that’s become a new jack swing cornerstone since its release in 1990. The tune was punctuated by green and white confetti — a celebration of New Edition’s place in Boston, and the way they changed American pop music for the better.”

After the three-hour show, we got back to our hotel around midnight, having had a nice experience with the daughter.

Sunday Stealing Loves Surveys

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!

This week’s astonishingly random questions were stolen from Love Me Some Surveys, who loves surveys.

Survey Asks …

1. Did you/will you have coffee or some other form of caffeine today?

I had hot tea with lemon when we went out for breakfast, which is fairly unusual. It was cold outside!

Tell Me Something Good

2. Who did you last have a text conversation with, and what was it about?

I almost never have text conversations; reading on my phone tends to make me cranky. BTW, do we REALLY need advice on how to send a sarcastic text?

Yet on February 25, I texted one of my oldest friends, who had been in the music biz for a long time, that it was the birthday of John Doe from the band X. They had spoken favorably of him in the past. What I didn’t know is that John is a fellow Piscean, born the same year as we were.

3. Are there regular trains in and out of your town/city?

Technically, no, but functionally, yes. The Albany/Rensselaer station is across the Hudson River in Rensselaer County.

4. Have you ever been hospitalized due to dehydration?

No. But I avoid walking in deserts.

I Go To Sleep

5. Someone texts/IMs you just as you’re about to go to sleep. Do you reply?

Not unless it is urgent. Then again, I’ve likely plugged in my phone downstairs before I go to bed upstairs, so I’d be unlikely to know about it until morning anyway. My daughter knows that if she messages me and I don’t reply in an hour, I’m likely nowhere near my cellphone, the usual state of affairs if I’m at home. That’s why God created the landline.

6. Do you grind your teeth?

Not to my knowledge.

7. When you listen to music with headphones, do you keep the volume low enough to hear surrounding noise, or do you blast it?

Definitely loud enough to drown out surrounding noise, though I wouldn’t say I BLAST it.

8. Are you wearing nail polish?

Not since Halloween 1978.

9. Do you have an ice maker in your refrigerator door?

Not in the door but in the freezer section, which I used this week.

10. Do you have a friend named James?

Definitely good acquaintances – a regular and occasional speaker at the FFAPL book reviews on Tuesdays, a guy I’ve known since grade school, a local author, a couple of guys at church, a guy from Alaska who took me to lunch when he was visiting his daughter in my area, and probably others. My great-great-grandfather, James Archer, fought in the American Civil War.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.