Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Movie review: The Post (Spielberg)

Jason Robards is a better Ben Bradlee than Hanks

After the family got to see The Post at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in January 2018, the Daughter asked, “What’s Watergate?” That’s because the end of the movie teases about yet another journalistic crusade for the Washington Post, running into federal governmental interference.

Except, the leads of the film realize, perhaps, more complicated. Editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) notes wistfully at one point that his close relationship with John F. Kennedy might have had him pulling a few punches.

Publisher Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) is even more socially involved with the powerful. Her father, Eugene Meyer, had passed the paper down to her husband Philip Graham. When Philip committed suicide in August 1963, sordid matter only peripherally addressed in the film, Kay became titular head of the paper.

Quite telling is one scene in which the men start talking politics, and the women, including Kay, go off to chat about other things. She was good friends with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), who supported her emotionally after Philip’s death.

The rival New York Times reported a blockbuster story about an extensive, confidential report written by Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) about the United States’ failed policy in the war in Vietnam. Moreover, officials such as McNamara KNEW it was likely an unwinnable conflict. The federal government got a judge to enjoin the Times from publishing more stories.

When the Washington paper, thanks to some sleuthing by Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk), gets access to the reports dubbed the Pentagon Papers, is the DC paper bound by the Times’ legal constraints? And how will this affect the financial negotiations that Kay Graham is involved with?

The Post is a good solid film, directed by Steven Spielberg. It is unfair, though inevitable, to compare it with the Watergate-era film All the President’s Men, but one does. Jason Robards is a better Ben Bradlee than Hanks, which I have read Tom acknowledged. And it wasn’t as taut as Spotlight, the movie about the Catholic priest scandal in Boston.

Ultimately, the biggest arc takes place with Kay Graham, and a lot of that is Streep. I also loved Odenkirk.

Still, I got a little misty-eyed with joy when Meg Greenfield (Carrie Coon) reads Supreme Justice Hugo Black’s opinion in the case. The movie has seemed very current, hitting on both the attack on the media and the role of women in the workplace. A must-see for a political junkie like me.

Musical review: She Loves Me

I’m really surprised that I was totally unaware of She Loves Me, the musical that my wife, my daughter and I saw at Capital Rep in Albany on Christmas Eve. I recognized only one song, the title tune.

It was first performed on Broadway in 1963, with the late, legendary Barbara Cook in the lead role of Amalia and a guy named Daniel Massey, son of Raymond Massey of Dr. Kildare fame, as Georg. The lecherous Steven was played by Jack Cassidy, father of David and Shaun. There have been three revivals, most recently in 2016.

Moreover, the music was by Jerry Bock and the lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, the composers of my second-favorite musical ever, Fiddler on the Roof. She Loves Me is based on a 1937 play called Parfumerie by Hungarian writer Miklos Laszlo.

Before She Loves Me, there was the 1940 movie The Shop Around the Corner with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. Then was the movie In the Good Old Summertime (1949) with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, music by George Stoll and Robert Van Eps. The 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, mines the same basic plot.

And that is: guy meets gal, who pretty much dislike each other from the get-go, as she is hired to work in the perfume shop where he’s been working for a decade and a half. Yet they’ve been corresponding fervently through a lonely-hearts club.

The Cap Rep production featured a nifty set, terrific costumes, and great, often stylish songs that generally advance the plot.

Amalia is played by actress Julia Barrows. Independently, my wife and I decided that she reminded us a little of Cate Blanchett physically. In the story from the local paper, Barrows said she first saw She Loves Me at a performing arts high school that her older sister attended.

“I have always wanted to do this show,” she said. “It’s the musical that made me fall in love with theaterand say, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.'” And it showed.

Death Cafe: Albany – Tuesday, January 23, 2018

No agenda or specific therapy, but most people find it helpful to be able to speak about a range of death-related things that many around us find upsetting or otherwise taboo.


Death Cafe: Albany (NY), taking place on Tuesday, January 23 from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Pine Hills branch of the Albany Public Library, 517 Western Avenue, is based on the Death Cafe tradition started by Jon Underwood in England in 2011. It will be facilitated by Melissa White, a hospice volunteer and an experienced educator and researcher.

There’s no need for any particular background, just having a interest in talking about death. No agenda or specific therapy, but most people find it helpful to be able to speak about a range of death-related things that many around us find upsetting or otherwise taboo.

Strangers meet in a safe place to eat baked goods, drink hot beverages, and talk freely about the taboo that we all experience. Read more about it here.

As my friend Amy, who’s been a hospice worker for 10 years, wrote: “Don’t let the title scare you. I see the value and importance of being able to talk about, plan, and discuss your thoughts about the final chapter of your life. Just like birth, it is a natural process, and while it comes with sadness, it can be a peaceful, beautiful and reverent time.”

Music throwback: Kenny Loggins

“NBC used the song as theme music for its coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 1980 and 1981.”

I missed the fact that Kenny Loggins turned 70 on January 6. I liked some of his songs, and others, not so much.

But I LOVE the House on Pooh Corners story, how the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band wanted to record it, but the Disney lawyers put the kibosh on it. Loggins told then-girlfriend Marnie Walker how bummed he was. She talked to her daddy, who happened to be president of Disney.

Thanks to Marnie and her dad Card Walker, Disney “allowed the Dirt Band to put the song on their Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy album… Then Loggins put it on Loggins & Messina’s debut album the following year. And now, more than 40 years later, he still manages to make a song about Winnie the Pooh sound cool.”

And the Loggins & Messina partnership is another interesting narrative. “Jim Messina, formerly of Poco and Buffalo Springfield, was working as an independent record producer… in 1970 when he was introduced to Kenny Loggins, then a little-known singer-songwriter… When Columbia signed Loggins (with the assistance of Messina) to a six-album contract, recording began in earnest for Loggins’ debut album, with Messina as producer. [Messina] also assembled The Kenny Loggins Band by summoning old friends…

“Messina originally intended to lend his name to the Loggins project only to help introduce the unknown Loggins to Messina’s well-established audiences. But by the time the album was completed, Messina had contributed so much to the album – in terms of songwriting, arrangement, instrumentation, and vocals – that an ‘accidental’ duo was born. Thus, the full name of their first album was Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin’ In. Although the album went unnoticed by radio upon release, it eventually found success by autumn 1972, particularly on college campuses where the pair toured heavily…

I remember singing the chorus of “This Is It” with my sister Leslie when we both visited my parents and sister Marcia in Charlotte, but what I did not know was that it was “for Loggins’ ailing father who had to choose between life and death. The song earned Loggins the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. NBC used the song as theme music for its coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 1980 and 1981.” Yeah, I do remember the constant play during March Madness.

Listen to

Loggins & Messina
House at Pooh Corner
Your Mama Don’t Dance

Kenny Loggins
This Is It
Footloose (I own the soundtrack but never saw the movie)
Vox Humana
Danger Zone
Nobody’s Fool

It’s only been a year of the regime?

He takes credit for things that he has no responsibility for.

Here’s the thing some people just do not believe: I don’t get any goodies about bashing the regime. People STILL tell me I’m mad that Hillary didn’t win. Or it’s because he’s a Republican. Nah, that ain’t it.

It’s because when a book comes out about him, I don’t spend much time wondering if it’s true. He says wants to sue over it, but really can’t (and based on his track record, won’t).

You see, it merely shows what I’d already noticed, that he is venal human being –he thinks having sex with his friends’ wives makes ‘life worth living’ – and an incompetent one as well – look at his broken press operations.

Here are 11 explosive claims from new book. I mean “You Can’t Make This S— Up”.

Part of the reason has been clear: he didn’t want to Be President, didn’t expect to be. And rightly so, since he lacks the temperament. When he says his ‘nuclear button’ is ‘much bigger’ Than North Korea’s, taunting like a seven-year-old that needs to be sent to his room, he shows either lack of judgment or a lack of capacity. And based on several reports, he LIKES being sent to his room as long as he has enough televisions to watch, and Big Macs to eat.

I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect better. In interviews, he is incoherent, authoritarian, and uninformed as he airs his many grievances and declares his singular grandeur. He takes credit for things that he has no responsibility for. Mark Kelly suggests: If he gets credit for zero airline deaths, he should also get credit for gun deaths.

I remain cautiously hopeful that the Mueller investigation continue to uncover activities that will shorten this nightmare. Or that he’ll get bored and quit.

Three more years of the regime? God help us, every one.

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