Roger O Green

Yer basic book meme

“I don’t feel guilty about pleasure.”

I’m not doing this because SamuraiFrog did it. I’m not even attempting it because Jaquandor completed it. I’m doing it because I haven’t written a blog post in five days, and MAYBE it’ll jump-start the process. And what I have determined is that sometimes, my answers change, so I find that interesting.

1. Your favorite book:

I used to say the World Almanac, and it was probably even true. I used to devour it, at least the year in review section. But now… Haven’t reread it in over a decade, but my longtime favorite book to read was Growing Up by Russell Baker, the New York Times columnist I used to read avidly. I even have a signed copy when I saw him speak somewhere in Albany in the 1980s. (The book was published in 1982.)

2. Your least favorite book:

I used to say none because I gave up on a lot of books if I didn’t like them. But Jaquandor reminded me of one I actually DID read, all the way through – I think I was in California visiting one of my sisters, and someone lent it to me, and I didn’t have much else to do – was The Celestine Prophecy. Not sure it was my LEAST favorite book; that would be almost anything that was REQUIRED READING in junior high school such as Johnny Tremaine or Ivanhoe. (Always thought I should give Ivanhoe another chance, but never did.)

3. A book that completely surprised you (bad or good):

I read The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell, which was about avoiding nuclear annihilation, a real policy wonk piece. And somewhere in the book, and I’d have to look through it again to find it, was some hopeful narrative that was almost poetic in its verbiage, and it made me smile. I even used it at a ceremony once.

4. A book that reminds you of home:

Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss, the first of his books that really spoke to me beyond what his previous books had.

5. A non-fiction book that you actually enjoyed:

This is a problematic question in that MOST of the books I’ve read ARE non-fiction. I’ll pick one that’s closest to where I’m sitting: Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim.

6. A book that makes you cry:

I’m sure there are some, but none come to mind.

7. A book that’s hard to read:

I haven’t even tried to read a half dozen books in this category, but it’d include some Shakespeare histories.

8. An unpopular book you believe should be a bestseller:

The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus.

9. A book you’ve read more than once:

I used to do so a lot, and now I feel like there are so many books that I need to go to the next one. I read the Bible at least thrice all the way through. There are any number of Beatles bios, notably Shout!, I’ve read more than once.

10. The first novel you remember reading:

Some novelization of an I Spy TV episode. A real novel, without being assigned? A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

11. The book that made you fall in love with reading:

Green Eggs and Ham. (It’s the Green thing.)

12. A book so emotionally draining you couldn’t complete it or had to set it aside for a bit:

There have been one or two, lost in the mists of my memory.

13. Favorite childhood book:

This is probably a cheat, but besides the ones mentioned, The Methodist Hymnal that came out in the 1920s. I used to read all the liturgical stuff in the front and the back. I can tell you without looking that the first hymn is Holy, Holy, Holy.

14. Book that should be on a high school or college required reading list:

I have no clue. Someone once suggested I run for the school board, and I declined because people might ask me questions like that.

15. Favorite book dealing with foreign culture:

The World Is My Home by James Michener, which may be the only one of his books I ever read all the way through, though I’ve read sections of his novels.

16. Favorite book turned movie:

The Bridges of Madison County, which really is one of those movies that is WAY better than the book.

17. Book turned movie and completely desecrated:

I have no clue. I went to look at the Oscar-nominated adapted screenplay, and of the ones taken from a book (as opposed to a play, or something else), the only ones I’ve both seen the movie and read the book were The Godfather, The Color Purple, and To Kill A Mockingbird. The only other book-to-movie that comes to mind is Catch-22, and I saw the film first.

18. A book you can’t find on shelves anymore that you love:

That first book by Jaquandor. Can’t find it anywhere. (Oh, he hasn’t finished it yet…)

19. A book that changed your mind about a particular subject (non-fiction):

I’ve mentioned it before, but Jesus for President has changed my understanding of a lot of the Jesus parables, that this was a guy speaking to the power elite in a language they understood. And I think a lot of the message has been watered down over the centuries to please the power structure and especially the church elite.

20. A book you would recommend to an ignorant/racist/close-minded person:

The Sweeter The Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip.

21. A guilty pleasure book:

Jaquandor: “I don’t feel guilty about pleasure.”

22. Favorite series:

The Marvel Masterworks of the Amazing Spider-Man.

23. Favorite romance novel:

Love Is Hell by Matt Groening. OK, not that. No idea. (But talk about something I read more than once…)

24. A book you later found out the author lied about:

Isn’t that why writers write, to tell truth? So if the facts are not 100% accurate, does that negate the greater truth? Oh, I don’t know.

25. Favorite autobiographical/biographical book:

Growing Up.

26. A book you wish would be written:

And I’m not going to write it…

27. A book you would write if you had all the resources:

And I’m not going to write it…

28. A book you wish you never read:

Not applicable.

29. An author that you completely avoid/hate/won’t read:

Also not applicable. I wasn’t going to read Orson Scott Card anyway.

30. An author that you will read whatever they put out:

No one. I’m very catholic within my genres. Although there was a time when it was Russell Baker and Garrison Keillor.

MOVIE REVIEW: Million Dollar Arm

My wife thought Bill Paxton was so convincing as pitching coach Tom House, she thought he was the actual guy.

I suppose I should not have been surprised that the Daughter expressed tremendous interest in seeing the film Million Dollar Arm. She watches these annoying Disney shows on TV, and I imagine they have promoted the movie incessantly. A Memorial Day matinee trek to the Spectrum Theatre was in order.

There is an inherent problem with most movies based on real life. Additional issues come from sports movies, which generally slip into cliche. Still, the premise was interesting: a struggling sports agent, JB (Jon Hamm) comes up with a wild idea. What if he could find a baseball pitcher or two from India, perhaps kids who grew up playing cricket? This would attract a brand new market of a billion people to start watching American baseball.

Of course, the process does not go smoothly, but eventually, two young men make the trip to the US to learn the game and experience the fish-out-of-water hijinks one might expect. Finally, the big tryout is scheduled.

Here’s the thing: I rather liked much of the movie anyway. The parts in India were especially interesting. And a scene where one of the players was leaving home for the first time and had to say goodbye to his mother I found touching.

Much of the cast I enjoyed, including Suraj Sharma (star of Life of Pi) and Madhur Mittal (Slumdog Millionaire) as the young pitchers, Pitobash as the coach wannabe, and Aasif Mandvi (The Daily Show) as JB’s partner. Lake Bell (In a World…) was fine as Brenda, JB’s tenant, even though their eventual relationship is telegraphed. My wife thought Bill Paxton was so convincing as pitching coach Tom House, she thought he was the actual guy. Alan Arkin is always good; he plays a scout.

Possibly the weakest link was Jon Hamm. I have liked him on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, but here he was more mechanical, or maybe it was the writing. Ken Levine wrote: “The one thing I took from seeing MILLION DOLLAR ARM is that Jon Hamm needs Matthew Weiner’s words. Don Draper’s really a boring guy without great writing.”

The Daughter loved the music, and danced to the Bollywood hip hop at the end of the film; the other dozen patrons had already left. Despite its 2:04 running time, I was seldom bored, and it was a decent pic to see with the kids.

In the end, we see the real people in the story. The fact that Million Dollar Arm used the hidden fact trick did not diminish the story.
***
Saw Monsters University, the Pixar film, at my daughter’s school on a recent Friday night. I’d never seen Monsters Inc., so barely knew the characters. I enjoyed it, though I missed some dialogue; sometimes the audience was louder than the film.

D-Day; Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was just this FORCE, her speaking voice like music, her wisdom and compassion evident in every sentence.

As D-Day approaches, all I can think about are 90-year-old men who saw awful things but sucked it up to get through the events, and then stoically never talked about them. That is until 50 or 60 or 70 years later – goaded by family members or in recognition of their own mortality, as at least 600 WWII vets die EVERY DAY in the US – they start telling their stories. And while unique, they are the same story, of friends, of an officer who died that day, of bodies they tripped over while trying to maintain their position.

And, almost inevitably, they cry. They weep for those comrades they still know by name 70 years after they perished, tears that they weren’t allowed to shed at the time because it wouldn’t have been “manly.”

In some ways, it reminds me of the Holocaust survivors who blocked out the horror they saw until much later. They say “war is hell” for a reason. And that was a conflict generally supported by the American public, something I must say I’ve never really experienced in my lifetime; either initially or subsequently, Americans have grown weary of the wars we fought.

So World War II becomes “the good war.” As though there is any such thing.

All these people have written these great Maya Angelou stories and cited her quotes. And while I’ve read a lot of great tributes to her, I don’t have one and haven’t seen one, that exactly captures my feelings, though “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy” showrunner Shonda Rhimes tweeting simply, “Maya” is pretty close.

I mean, I remember seeing the 1979 TV adaptation of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and only reading the book later. Or I could note seeing her in everything from Roots to Sesame Street to Touched by an Angel. Sometime recently, I even linked to her calypso singing. Unfortunately, I never met her, though I’m likely to have been as tongue-tied as Keef was.

But for me, she was just this FORCE, her speaking voice like music, her wisdom and compassion evident in every sentence. For decades she was like a grandmother talking, trying to relay important knowledge.

I bought for The Wife, probably for some occasion in early 2002 – Valentine’s Day or our anniversary – Hallmark tan/green pottery bowl with these Maya Angelou words inside: “Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet.”

The morning Maya died, I was reading someone’s Facebook post, someone who was hoping that she would get better after she’d declined to attend some event in her honor. Then the Albany NBC-TV affiliate, WNYT, citing a station in Winston-Salem, NC reported her death. But still, I waited until other sources confirmed it – and her Wikipedia post quickly noted her in the past tense – before I could really believe it.

What is the most influential song of all time?

What would YOU pick as the most influential song of all time, and why?

The June 2014 Atlantic asked the above as its Big Question. Naturally, it’s a patently absurd task to even try to answer. Of course, people did, as Oklahoma blogger Dustbury noted. Quite a few responses for We Shall Overcome, which is an understandable choice.

My off-the-cuff choice, without overthinking it, was among Ode To Joy, appropriated for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; This Land Is Your Land, Woody Guthrie’s American anthem; or She Loves You, the song with the “Yeah, yeah, yeah” that epitomized Beatlemania, and all it wrought.

What would YOU pick, and why?

Well, maybe not ALL people, but…

How is it that rape and sexual assault is so common on college campuses and in the nation’s military?

Ken Screven was, according to the Times Union newspaper’s Chris Churchill, “the most recognizable black person here in one of the nation’s whitest metropolitan areas,” i.e., Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY, for most of his 34 years as a now-retired television reporter. Having lived here for most of this period, I daresay Churchill was right. Screven even covered a couple of stories I was involved with, notably the January 1985 Rock for Raoul benefit, honoring the late Albany cartoonist/FantaCo employee/my friend Raoul Vezina.

I had this, literally, a nodding acquaintance with Screven when I’d see him in Albany’s Center Square, sort of the curse someone who has met a LOT of people (Ken) go through. We’ve more recently become Facebook friends, sometime after he became a blogger for the Times Union website, as I am.

Churchill reported: “Cellphone footage of the [Arbor Hill street brawl among black teens]… has circulated widely by now. Screven saw it shortly after it happened — on Facebook — and decided it would be provocative material for [his] blog… So he posted it, along with his reaction.”

Part of the narrative was that Screven found “the fight troubling — and, as an African-American, embarrassing.” And I totally GOT that, because I tend to feel that way. My late father most assuredly did.

Churchill noted that he doesn’t feel embarrassed by the stupid things white people do – such as the Kegs and Eggs riot of 2011 in Albany – and I’m sure that is true. Screven noted, “It just takes one black person to do one bad thing and the whole culture is demonized… The white culture is going to say, ‘There they go again.'”

Churchill is technically correct when he suggests that “not the entire white culture” reacts that way. It happens often enough, though, that this cartoon by Keith Knight feels very true, particularly the comparison between a misguided youth and a thug.

I remember reading a black columnist back in December 1993 – William Raspberry, perhaps? – talking about how much he, and black people he knew, hoped that the Long Island Railroad massacre shooter was not black. Of course, he was.

In an interesting variation, I’m now seeing this narrative, after the recent shootings near Santa Barbara, California, about some men feeling a sense of entitlement when it comes to access to women’s bodies. #NotAllMen, the Twitter hashtag reads; some guys are decent, sensitive souls who fight sexism with every fiber of their being, and surely that is true. We should not castigate an entire gender, because isn’t that prejudiced?

Yet #YesAllWomen resonates as true. I know a strong, independent, accomplished, married woman who has recently noted: “an innate instinct of self-protection around, yes, most men learned very early.” Women give out wrong phone numbers, tell guys they have a boyfriend (this piece notwithstanding), avoid eye contact with men lest they think you’re “interested.” You don’t even have to be in conversation with a guy; the drive-by schmucks are alive and well.

How is it that rape and sexual assault are so common on college campuses and in the nation’s military? Why are women demanding the same access to contraceptives as men do to Viagra met with slut-shaming? How is it that “gun extremists” target women with spitting, stalking, and threats of rape?

What has prompted someone to initiate a petition to stop sexual harassment at the San Diego Comic-Con and to create a formal anti-harassment policy, a document I signed, BTW? Maybe it’s Yes, All Men? Or as Louis CK put it, “There is no greater threat to women than men.”

No, most men are not rapists, or deadbeat dads, or mass murders. But almost all mass murders are men, and, in the United States, white men at that. Maybe that’s a good thing, because, perhaps, the situation will spark enough concern and outrage to aid in dealing with mental health issues, and controlling the sale of guns to people who are deranged. Nah, I’m just messing with you; we’ll have the same damn conversation after the next massacre.