Roger O Green

Rock ‘n’ Roll Fridays: Talking Heads

I mean there are so many types of love.

“Welcome to Rock ‘n Roll Fridays. We are like other memes in that we will ask you thirteen questions each and every Friday. But our little ‘twist’ is that each week we will pick a singer, band, era or category and pick thirteen of their songs. Each of our questions will be based on the lyrics… Today we picked Talking Heads.”

1. Psycho Killer “I can’t seem to face up to the facts, I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax. I can’t sleep cuz my bed’s on fire. Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire…”
What has kept you from a restful night’s sleep recently?

Actually, the Daughter has had a few nightmares recently. The first time, she and I were awake from 3 a.m. trough the school/work day. Another time, she woke me from an especially sound sleep.

2. Life During Wartime “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco…this ain’t no foolin around. No time for dancing or lovey dovey. I ain’t got time for that now…”
Where was the last nightclub or disco you went to?

It’s been years. I think it was in Schenectady in the early 1980s. I remember with whom I went.

3. Take Me To The River “Take me to the river. Dip me in the ocean. Take me to the river washing me down…”
When was the last time you took a dip in the water?

Probably Fred Hembeck’s pool three years ago.

4. Found A Job “Their show gets high ratings, they think they have a hit. There might be a spin-off, but they’re not sure ‘bout that”
What is your favorite TV spin-off show of all time?

It might be Lou Grant, a very EARNEST spinoff of the Mary Tyler Moore show. And my favorite theme song has to be the Jeffersons, a spinoff of All in the Family. I also have great affection for the first season of Mork & Mindy, a spinoff of Happy Days.

5. Once In A Lifetime “And you may ask yourself How do I work this? And you may ask yourself Where is that large automobile? And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful house! And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful wife!”
Are you happy with your choices of car, house, and spouse/no spouse?

Our car is non-descript silver/gray; I can only find it in a parking lot by the license number. Strange, but I never had that trouble with our white Ford Taurus.
Being a homeowner is a pain.
My wife is pretty swell.

6. This Must Be The Place “Out of all those kinds of people, you got a face with a view. I’m just an animal looking for a home, share the same space for a minute or two…”
Who has a face with a view?

George Clooney. And I have no idea what the question is asking.

7. Girlfriend Is Better “I got a girlfriend that’s better than this, and you don’t remember at all. As we get older and stop making sense, You won’t find her waiting long…”
What is the shortest date or relationship you have ever had?

Actually, there was this friend of my now-wife’s, who I went out with, solely for the purpose of making Carol jealous; we were broken up at the time. And it worked, or at least it helped. But the date itself was over by 7:30 p.m.; we had nothing to say to each other.

8. Swamp “Everyone wants to explode. And when your hands get dirty, nobody knows you at all. Don’t have a window to slip out of . Lights on, nobody home”
Where was the last homeless person you saw and what was he/she doing?

Corner of Lark Street and Washington Avenue, asking for money for bus fare. I gave him 75 cents, and he did in fact get on the bus.

9. Road To Nowhere “We’re on the road to paradise. Here we go. We’re on a road to nowhere, come on inside. Takin that ride to nowhere, we’ll take that ride”
When was the last time you took a day trip or a road trip?

Probably to Vermont last year.

10. And She Was “The word was movin and she was right there with it and she was”
Are you keeping up with the world? What piece of modern technology do you still need to own/use?

I don’t NEED any piece of technology. I have no iPad or Kindle or Nook, and someday I’ll get one. Or not.

11. Wild Wild Life Sleepin on the interstate oh oh oh…getting wild wild life. Checkin in and checkin out oh oh oh, I got a wild wild life”

When was the last time you stayed at a motel/hotel and what town were you in?

In Charlotte, NC in February. Before that, a work conference in Syracuse last May.

12. Nothing But Flowers “Once there were parking lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis, you got it you got it. Once it was a pizza Hut, now it’s all covered with daisies. I miss the honky tonks, Dairy Queens, and 7-11 s…”
What would you miss if nature grew back over malls and concrete?

Goodness, I wouldn’t miss a thing.

13. Building On Fire “When my love stands next to your love, I can’t define love, when it’s not love…”
Define love.

Oh, that’s…not easy. I mean there are so many types of love. I do like the definition of love of St. Thomas Aquinas, who defined love as “to will the good of another,” or to desire for another to succeed. So as Lyle Lovett sang it: “I love everybody, especially you.”

Roger Answers Your Questions, Rosey and Lisa

Rosey at Dung Hoe Gardening asked:
Do you feel like we as a country have to fight every war for everybody? It’s [a] sticky question.

Well, yes, it is. But the answer to the question is clearly no. I mean, the United States hasn’t gotten involved in the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) yet, has it?

As a matter of policy, at least since Viet Nam, the position has generally been that the US engage in winnable wars, and only when they meet the nation’s strategic interests, whatever they may be at the moment. This has been boiled down to something called The Powell Doctrine, which “states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States”:

1.Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2.Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3.Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4.Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5.Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6.Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7.Is the action supported by the American people?
8.Do we have genuine broad international support?

One could argue that our incursion into Libya doesn’t meet #2; Afghanistan hasn’t met #5, and #8 re Iraq is dubious. Other standards may not have been met also.

More cynically, The Daily Show described our foreign policy decisions this way.

To this day, Bill Clinton regrets his “personal failure” to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people. But would the American people have supported a war in a country where no visible bogeyman had been inbedded in their collective consciousness, merely to save the lives of people in a country no one could find on a map, or spell?

I suppose, Rosey, your question was prompted by the Libyan situation. The Republican position has been all over the place, with some who were pushing for a “no-fly zone” weeks ago – by ourselves? really? – still kvetching about Obama’s “inaction”. I tend to be in that fairly bipartisan camp who’s concerned that we’re fighting a war (again) without a Congressional declaration of war.

Also, I worry about “mission creep”. Initially, it was about protecting the rebels (whoever the heck they are) against the excesses of ~~Khadafi~~ ~~Gadaffy~~ ~~Qadaffi~~ the Libyan leader, however you spell his name. But, if it’s going well, hey, why don’t we try to take him out, like we tried 25 years ago?

So, why the US goes to war tends not to be very tidy anymore, if it ever was.
**
Lisa at peripheral perceptions ~~wants~~ needs to know:
My burning question is: Did you take that photo yourself or did you *pose that way for someone? 🙂

When I went down to Charlotte, NC last month to see my mother, I was tooling around on the household computer. There I came across a bunch of photos I’d never seen from Lydia and my trip there in the spring of 2009; we were there then for my niece’s high school graduation. One of them was this one:

I didn’t remember it, but, for sure, the niece took it, not me, and I’m guessing that I was doing it for some effect, but I’m just not positive.

The Lydster, Part 84: Cousins

It’s Lydia’s 7th birthday today.

On her mother’s side, Lydia has three first cousins, 10-year-old twin girls, and a nine-and-half-year-old girl. But on my side, we gave my parents three granddaughters about a dozen years apart.

Rebecca, Leslie’s daughter, is 32 and lives in southern California with her husband Rico; she’s the one wearing the coat in the two pictures below. I can tell you that she has been a great, supportive cousin to Alexandria, Marcia’s daughter, who is 20 and lives with Marcia (and lived with my mother) in southern North Carolina. Likewise, Alex has been a wonderful cousin to Lydia.

But until recently, Rebecca and Lydia had never met, though Lydia had seen Rebecca and Rico on the TV show Wipeout back in September. So when Rebecca arrived in NC for my mother’s funeral, we made sure that the two of them had some quality time together.

Unsurprisingly, Rebecca was also a terrific cousin to Lydia, who was a bit in awe of her big cousin after her impressive, albeit second-place finish, on a very rigorous game show.

In fact, when we drove, in two cars, to Salisbury National Cemetery, some 40 miles each way to bury my mother, Rebecca rode with Carol and me, in the back seat with Lydia; they seemed to be entertaining each other thoroughly. I’m glad they got a chance to meet. I’m only sorry that it took so long, and the circumstances which finally brought them together.
***
Oh, yeah, it’s Lydia’s 7th birthday today. I had a meeting with her teacher earlier this month, and she said that Lydia is a bit of an old soul. The teacher might make what she called an ironic aside, and Lydia, as often as not, would “get” it and laugh when no one in the class did. She’s still rather shy around adults, but she does pay attention to what they say and do.

Lydia is also getting more clever. A couple of days before my birthday, my wife arranged for my OLD friend Uthaclena, his wife and his 16-year-old daughter to come up from the Mid-Hudson Valley as a surprise. Lydia knew about it and was very good about keeping it a secret. On that day, she also assisted me in moving furniture and got me a tweezer and a flashlight so I could remove a couple of slivers from my finger. So she’s also become quite helpful.

I love you, daughter o’ mine.

(First picture C 2011 Uthaclena; other pictures C 2011 Leslie Ellen Green – taken with her cellphone!)

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

“Unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.”

On March 25, 1911, 146 young immigrant workers, mostly female, died in a tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. Within 18 minutes, the fire spread to consume the building’s upper three stories. Firefighters who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those workers trapped inside because the doors were locked and their ladders could not reach the factory floor. This tragedy galvanized a city and state to fight for labor reform and safety in the workplace.

And now a century later, it’s clear that organized labor is under attack. You may have seen the cookie joke. “You know: a CEO, a tea party member, and a union worker are all sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the CEO reaches out to rake in eleven of the cookies. When the other two look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the tea party member. ‘You better watch him,’ the executive says with a nod toward the union worker. ‘He wants a piece of your cookie.'”

Just because I haven’t spoken much here about the attacks on labor, in the US and elsewhere, doesn’t mean that I’m not disturbed by the lies that have been thrown around in the debate.

In particular, I’ve been irritated over the trampling of school teachers, which, of course, hits home. Especially compared with the Wall Street folk who apparently are barely scraping by.

Check out the latest Productivity and Costs news release from the U.S. Department of Labor: productivity rose 2.6 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the fourth quarter of 2010; unit labor costs declined 0.6 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). Annual average productivity increased 3.9 percent from 2009 to 2010. Squeezing more with less, which may be good for the business bottom line, but not necessarily for the workers who buy the goods and services that are being produced.

Jaquandor quotes Kevin Drum: “Of course unions have pathologies. Every big human institution does. And anyone who thinks they’re on the wrong side of an issue should fight it out with them. But unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.”

Another labor story is running through my mind: the “feel-good” story of 2010, the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. But the 60 Minutes story about them in February 2011 shows that the men are still suffering from a sense of despair. There was supposed to have been emergency food made available, but it was a “pittance”; the men seriously considered suicide or cannibalism over starving to death. The disaster, like so many other mining crises, in the United States and elsewhere, was a function of management ineptitude or callous indifference.

Almost all labor unions evolved from greed or stupidity on the part of those in control. I recall that there was a massive snowstorm on a Saturday in March of 1993 in Albany, and the librarians tried in vain to get ahold of the director. Since the city had called a state of emergency – 26 inches would ultimately fall, making it the 2nd worst snowstorm in city history, after March 1888 – the folks made the decision to close the library. The autocratic director was furious, took some disciplinary actions against those who departed early. The unionization of the librarians stemmed from that event.

So, let not my lack of ranting confuse you; in most cases, I tend to side with the labor unions, even though, I should point out, I do not belong to one. Not every labor dispute is a matter of life and death; sometimes, it’s only a matter of worker dignity.

Beatles Island Songs, 33-24

Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.

JEOPARDY! answers (questions at the end)
MUSIC OF THE ’60s $100: In 1969 “Something” became the only No. 1 hit he composed for the Beatles
HILLS $400: The Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon was raised in them
SWEET 16 $400: Billboard numbers it as the Beatles’ 16th chart album; you can’t tell anything by its cover
MOVIE SONGS $100: In this 1968 Beatles title tune, “Every one of us has all we need, sky of blue and sea of green”
FINISH THE LINE $100: The Beatles: “Yesterday all my troubles seemed…”
FINISH THE LINE $600: The Beatles: “I think I’m gonna be sad…”
CHORUS LINES $800: The Beatles sang, “Hold me, love me, ain’t got nothin’ but love babe” this often

Video: Steve Martin talks in collaboration with Paul McCartney on ABC-TV’s The View: “I’ve got to tell you, having Paul McCartney sing a song that I wrote has to be one of the greatest thrills of his life,” Martin quipped.

Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon will do a Japan benefit concert in New York on March 27.
***
The rules of engagement

33 I’m Down, B-side of Help! single. My friend Fred Hembeck says that this is just McCartney’s remake of Long Tall Sally, and he may very well be right. What hooked me on this song is seeing the ABC-TV broadcast of the live performance of it at Shea Stadium in 1965. So much so that when the compilation album Rock and Roll came out in the early 1970s, I bought the album largely for this one song, which I had never owned. I didn’t buy Beatles 1962-1966 for From Me To You, e.g.
32 You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away from Help! Lennon does Dylan; I love this song. And it would be disingenuous to suggest that I didn’t relate to the sentiments in the lyrics more than once.
31 Don’t Let Me Down, B-side of Get Back (UK), Hey Jude album (US). Lennon does one of the finest B-sides ever. Jaquandor describes it well.
30 Get Back, A-side of a single. Sweet Loretta! The driving beat of this song, along with the jaunty solo on the bridge, made me feel almost as though they were the happy-go-lucky moptops of a few years earlier.
29 I Am the Walrus from Magical Mystery Tour. My daughter claims this is Lennon song is her favorite Beatles recording. Really. I had this friend Ray in junior high who wondered whether “standing in the English rain” was a pun on “English reign”, i.e., a reference to the monarchy.
28 Getting Better from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I LOVE the STRUCTURE of this mostly McCartney song. It’s verse and chorus, but the chorus gets increasingly longer each time out. I thought it was incredibly clever writing, and still do. It’s also a song of redemption – “Man, I was mean, but I’m changing my scene.”
27 And I Love Her from A Hard Day’s Night (UK, US), Something New (US). McCartney apparently thought the “And” was important, and I agree. Lovely romanticism.
26 A Day in the Life from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. What I love about this song, which often shows up near the top on the list of the greatest Beatles songs – and it may be – is it’s a real Lennon-McCartney song, even if it’s the different parts. The not-so-good thing is that it, and the album in general, spawned some wretched imitators. (Exhibit A: The totally out-of-context middle section of Susan by the Buckinghams).
25 Back in the U.S.S.R. from the white album. The first song on the album with fun lyrics and Beach Boys harmonies, written by McCartney. In high school, someone (it might have been me, now that I think on it) wrote:
Back in BCHS, Ain’t you a mess,
Back in BCH, back in BCH, back in BCHS.
Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.
[Binghamton North was our archrival, and the Bulldog was the school mascot/emblem.]
24 She Loves You, A-side of a single (UK), Beatles’ Second Album (US). No song epitomized Beatlemania like this one. Critics specifically mocked the “Yeah, yeah, yeah” from this Lennon-McCartney song, but of course, it was THE hook. Also, the third-person perspective was very clever.

JEOPARDY! questions
George Harrison
Black Hills – specifically, “somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota”> BTW this lyric is often misheard as “black mountain hills of Dakota”
“The White Album”
“Yellow Submarine”
so far away
I think it’s today
“Eight Days A Week”