Roger O Green

Sunday Stealing: authentically myself

Hard-to-Find Motown Classics

The Sunday Stealing for this week is from the League of Extraordinary Penpals.

When do I feel most authentically myself?

I read the newspaper – remember newspapers? – while listening to music.

What I’m thankful for today

I’m working on a project that I’m keeping mostly secret for now. Yesterday, somebody gave me some specific insight that led me to believe I’m on the right path.

A memory I hope I never forget.

The day our daughter was born, not just her actual birth but that whole, very strange, day which involved my wife going to work for the last day before she intended to take a few days off. Ha! She came home after work, calling me up to tell me that she wasn’t going to go to the the new OBGYN because she felt too tired. I didn’t even recognize her voice! We ended up going to the OBGYN and were told to go to the hospital – go directly to the hospital, do not pass go.

Old Friends

Other ways I connect with long distant friends

I connect on the blog and on Facebook. This week, I discovered that one friend of mine knew another friend of mine who had just recently died; the one friend didn’t know I knew the other. I email a lot and text occasionally. Rarely do I call because many of them are not phone people anymore.

How I reconnect with myself when I feel lost

I find familiar music and play it as loud as I can without the neighbors complaining.

What would be my signature drink if I owned a café

I never know about these things. Possibly 1/3 orange juice, 1/3 cranberry juice, and the last third ginger ale.

Something I’ve let go of, as I’ve grown older

This assumes facts not in evidence

The things I’m most likely to lie about

The next four years will be pretty normal. After that, we’ll be returning to the tenets of democracy as we previously experienced them. This may be more self-delusional than anything.

What’s something I wish I had more time to learn

Genealogy. I see free classes online that I don’t have time to take advantage of.

Social media trends that puzzle me

Social media influencers. I catch brief videos that are really obnoxious. I think they are supposed to be funny.

Ixnay on the albany-smay

Local phrases and terms I use often

Actually, I try NOT to use the term Smalbany. For you non-Albanians, it’s the way people who live in Albany seem to connect in multiple ways. You might know someone from one circle of friends, but they are also associated with another circle of your friends and acquaintances because it’s a small city.

If I could only wear only three colors, I’d pick these...

Blue-green and black, and in fact, that’s probably what I wear mostly.

Favorite books, music, TV, movies, and media this month

I haven’t started the new book yet, but I know what it will be.

Music: listening to Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, and the Beach Boys. As I write this, I’m playing 20 Hard-to-Find Motown Classics, Volume One, a various artists album of those performers who mostly weren’t the dominating chart toppers such as the Supremes, Temptations, Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, et al. On this particular collection, Baby, I’m For Real by the Originals; What’s Become Of The Brokenhearted by Jimmy Ruffin; My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) by David Ruffin; (I Know) I’m Losing You by Rare Earth; Twenty-Five Miles by Edwin Starr; You’ve Made Me So Very Happy by Brenda Holloway; and Love’s Gone Bad by Chris Clark.

TV—As always, CBS Sunday Morning and 60 minutes. I watched the recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy, in which one of the interns was in a car crash, and it was quite affecting.

Movies: Conclave; The Big Parade

Media: I just signed up for BlueSky.

TV Theme Songs: Mike Post

Dun Dun

Watching the Emmy Awards recently, well after they aired, I noticed that they introduced the presenters with a variety of television theme songs. This got me thinking about how much I loved TV theme songs, at least from the 20th century, when I could easily identify them.

In fact, I have seven CDs called Television’s Greatest Hits. Each disc has 65 TV themes, starting with kids’ shows and then sitcoms, dramas, and the like.

My favorite TV theme songwriter is Mike Post, who turned 80 in September 2024. I instantly recognized several he wrote or co-wrote when I played the themes. A few hit the pop charts. The shows I watched are in italics.

The Rockford Files (pop #10, AC #16 in 1975); a version of the TV intro

Theme from The Greatest American Hero (Believe It Or Not) – Joey Scarbury (#2 pop, #3 AC in 1981); intro

The Hill Street Blues (#10 pop, #4 AC in 1981); intro – I listened to a few of these, and there are slight variations by season

Magnum, P.I. (#25 pop, AC #40 in 1982); intro

Theme From L.A. Law (AC number 13, 1988); intro

More intros

“At the peak of his career, Post was the go-to composer for all of the series created by Donald P. Bellisario, Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, and Dick Wolf.” You can tell because you see some of the same actors appearing in different shows. Some of the music is slightly repetitive, but overall, it’s still enjoyable. Even the themes of shows I never watched, I nevertheless recognize.

The A-Team

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Blossom (My Opinionation by the great Dr. John)

The Commish

Doogie Howser, M.D.

Hardcastle and McCormick

Hooperman – John Ritter in the first show I ever heard described as a dramedy

Hunter

NewsRadio

NYPD Blue

Quantum Leap

Renegade

Riptide

Silk Stalkings

Tales Of The Gold Monkey

Tenspeed and Brownshoe – Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum

Wiseguy

The White Shadow

Probably the most famous

Law and Order

Law and Order: SVU

Mike Post explains the creation of the Dun Dun sound effect

2024

From Billboard, 7 June:

“A desire to ‘try something hard’ is what led legendary television composer Mike Post to make the first all-originals albums of his 60-year career.

“Message From the Mountains & Echoes of the Delta, which came out in April, was just that for the composer. Post was part of the Wrecking Crew as a teenager, won the first of his five Grammy Awards at age 24.”

More about Mike Post, including his roots in the Wreckling Crew, plus the Music History Project interview.

November rambling: Hatred is Not the Norm

Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game

Love thy neighbor “Hatred is Not the Norm”: For a 1964 Multi-Faith Civil Rights Rally, Rod Serling Pens “A MostNon-Political Speech” – delivered by Dick Van Dyke

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas ERs

Lee Greenwood: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada’s immigration targets

Sorry, world. The toxic Rep. Elise Stefanik, the next UN ambassador

Landmines

What Now? with Trevor Noah: Have We Missed The Message? Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss his new book about how the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, shape our realities. They also unpack the jaw-dropping CBS interview that followed the book’s release, and our elusive search as a people to see the humanity in others.

CSICON: Island of Reason in a Sea of Madness

Magic Johnson’s new achievement

Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Dancer of ‘Power and Radiance,’ Dies at 81

The Capital Region of New York State will become home to a national semiconductor research center, a major part of the federal government’s effort to boost the semiconductor industry in the United States.

I see your pawn and raise you a queen.

NAICS Changes Will Begin to Be Reflected in the Census Bureau’s Economic Surveys and Programs. Impact of Changes to the North American Industry Classification System. You may be amazed at how interested I am in this particular geeky subject.

Intimacy Coordinators Unanimously Vote to Join SAG-AFTRA

The Copyright Office frees the McFlurry machine.

Tobacco To School and Nightmare on Sesame Street and The Batman of Baltimore

I GOT NOTHING

I have written very little about the topic of the election because I have nothing fresh to say. I’ve read seemingly every single analysis of who’s to blame and what the what is the turning point, blah blah blah. It’s kind of overwhelming and, frankly, a little exhausting.

It’s also true that I’m having difficulty writing anything else, even putting together a links post. Most of the items I’ve posted of late were previously created. I have five blog posts in some form of draft, which is terrible for me because I can’t finish anything. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to write; I just can’t find the energy. I am dumfungled.

I’m sad about the passing of Nancy Frank, our church’s organist emeritus. A group of us will be honored to sing at her funeral on Saturday at 2 p.m. I’ll certainly write about her afterward; writing obit-like pieces should be limited to once a week.

Still, I will recommend Jon Stewart on djt’s win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show, specifically: 18:14 – Comparison to Steve Bannon’s takeover of Breitbart 21:20 – Groups of voters, motives, and strategies; and 40:40 – Reactionary Movements 41:53 – Propaganda vs. Reality. “Hero is somebody who keeps trying to do the right thing, even when they know the walls are closing in… we can all do that.” Oh, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver for 11/10/2024.

BILL KENNEDY

Probably the highlight of the month thus far was participating in the 2nd Annual William Kennedy Marathon Reading on November 7, starting at 11 a.m. at the Albany Distilling Co. The reading was of the 1978 novel Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, “an odyssey through the speakeasies and pool halls of Albany’s grimy and glittering underworld.”

I got to see Mike Huber and Paul Grondahl from the New York State Writers Institute. Bill Kennedy came during the fourth speaker and sat up front. He seemed to appreciate the readings by the 5th (me) and 6th (Frank S. Robinson) readers.

MUSIC

The entirety of Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium I, featuring the hits plus four then-new songs

Subways Of Your Mind – FEX. A mystery solved.

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists: The Specials

Le Rappel des Oiseaux by Jean-Philippe Rameau

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Tears For Fears. HQ. Ultimate 12-inch extended mix

Coverville 1508: The Yes Cover Story II and 1509: Covers of Daryl Hall, Low, and Ween and 1510: The Quincy Jones Tribute

Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) by Billy Ocean

Spooky music

When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis

Movie review: Conclave

the opposite of faith

The pope is dead. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), as Dean of the College of Cardinals, is tasked with organizing the conclave to select a new pontiff. That’s the premise of the movie.

The candidates emerge. Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is a liberal favorite, while Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito) is a conservative alternative. Could Cardinal Trembley (John Lithgow) emerge as a compromise? And there’s never been an African pope—how about Cardinal Adeyemi ( Lucian Msamati)? And there are others.

A potential scandal or two colors the proceedings. On the face of it, this should be a boring, stuffy process based on issues that people not steeped in Catholicism would not care about. Nope, it is not. The wardrobe and set look realistic, and the cinematography is lovely. “Costume Designer Lisy Christl on Why the Cardinals’ Crosses Were an Important Character Detail.”

The acting—including by Isabella Rosellini as Sister Agnes—is wonderful. The nuns may be invisible, but they do see. Even cardinals struggle with the notion of their calling. One of the resonating quotes is that “the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.” What are the perils of ambition?

A review I saw notes that Conclave is “among other things, an actual thriller, of character rather than jeopardy.” Well, maybe a little bit of jeopardy. It was surprisingly riveting.

Smoky back rooms

It reminded me somewhat of political conventions, not the ones we have more recently where the outcomes are preordained, but the old-fashioned smoky back rooms, where there was horse trading for votes amongst the delegates. The favorite sons from a given state held their delegates in abeyance for some trade-off.

I saw Conclave at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on a Thursday afternoon. The room was about 1/3 full, which is not bad for that time of day. The reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were 91% positive with the critics and 85% positive with the audiences.

One of the negative reviews was from Hosea Rupprecht from Pauline Media Studies, who wrote: “From the perspective of the Catholic Church, Conclave offends by taking this sacred ritual which is supposed to inspire faith, humility, and trust in the providence of God, and turns it into a disturbing commentary on human weakness and ambition.”

I’m not feeling it. As a Protestant kid who’s had an utter fascination with the papacy from childhood, I think it reflects what people of faith have told me over the many decades about internal struggle. Others complain about the “final twist that is, arguably, one twist too far.”It’s a fictional story, but the conclusion seems internally consistent.

I highly recommend it.

Barry Haydasz (1953-2024)

‘What would Barry do?’

Barry Haydasz was a very sweet guy who I’ve known for decades. He and I were besties with Uthaclena. Barry passed away on October 10 at 71, a mere 18 days younger than me.

Uthaclena and his cousin created an annual MidWinter event each first Saturday in February, compleat with strange incantations. While it started elsewhere, most of these events were held on Barry’s expansive property. Dozens of folks would show up, many invited by others; it didn’t matter. It was a true open invitation, and Barry was a generous host. The bonfire, where one can throw pieces of paper representing things to get rid of from the previous year, was the source of wax magick.

Barry’s instruments often accompanied elements of both MidWinter and complementary MidSummer events.

Barry was a computer geek who initially worked as a technician and later as a web designer. His career concluded at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, where he served as an educator and trail guide.

His cancer diagnosis was prolonged. Two years earlier, Uthaclena wrote: “Barry will not be having surgery because ‘there’s no point in it;’ he will not receive radiation because the bone cancer has spread, so it’s not concentrated in one place. As soon as it’s arranged, he’ll start receiving chemo locally. Yet there would be times when he seemed to rally for a time.

Goodbyes

Ultimately, I was compelled to take a train to his funeral, though I could stay very long. It was great to connect with some of his friends, some of whom I had not seen in several years.

Uthaclena spoke at the October 17 service at a Rhinebeck funeral home. He said, in part: “He inspired and entertained us, and he traveled beside us. He cared for our Earth, for that which grew on it, and those that flew above it. With diligence and skill, he repaired that which was broken; how many of us have pondered a problem wondering, ‘What would Barry do?’”