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.

Summertime Blues

I seriously thought Paul Giamatti was going to be nominated for an Oscar for American Splendor.

It’s very warm on the second floor of my house. It was hot for several days last week, then it cooled off somewhat, only to have the heat return. The only place it isn’t hot is in the daughter’s room; she has a room air conditioner. The bedrooms have ceiling fans, which circulate but do not cool, the warm air.

The attic is comparable to doing the Bataan death march, after about 10 a.m.

The very good news, so far, is that we have not seen a bat in the living quarters. They seem to usually come in on the second or third day of a run of hot weather. Given the fact that we’ve had bats in 2002-2007 and 2009, I’m guessing that the insulation of the attic had an added effect.

Mowed the lawn Friday night with the reel mower, because weeds that look like miniature pine trees – what ARE those, anyway? – grow faster than the grass. BIG mistake. Even at 7:30 p.m., it was extremely humid. I did not have to worry too much about getting sunburn, but it was still so muggy, I needed to take a shower afterward.

A relative sent me one of those forwarded Very Important!!!! notices:
My car book says to roll down the windows to let out all the hot air before turning on A/C. WHY ???????????
Please do NOT turn on A/C as soon as you enter the car.
Open the windows after you enter your car and then turn ON the AC after a couple of minutes. It goes on to talk about cancer-causing benzene, in great detail. The Snopes report does not entirely negate the e-mail, though it does challenge some of the specific cause-and-effect mentioned in the e-mail. We’ve been rolling down our windows for years before turning on the a/c, mostly to try to dissipate that OMG hot air.

Speaking of air conditioners, Parade magazine’s Ask Marilyn says running the ceiling fans 24 hours a day will NOT help the air conditioning so that the electric bills will not go down.

I was watching the Yankees’ tribute to Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner Friday night and was moved. Sheppard, the voice of the Yankees, who Reggie Jackson dubbed “The voice of God” has been so distinctive in the period he announced for the Yankees (1951-2007), plus the New York Giants for a couple of decades, that Yankee captain Derek Jeter had requested Sheppard’s voice be used to introduce him when he comes to bat. Lots of nice articles on ESPN, including this one. The Friday night game had no announcer in his honor.

George Steinbrenner, the man who purchased the Yankees in 1973, in the midst of a fallow period for the team – hadn’t won the World Series since 1962, hadn’t even gotten to the Series since 1964 – was a polarizing character who, I thought, contributed to the zooiness of the Bronx Zoo. Without looking it up, I recall him hiring and firing Billy Martin five different times, and firing Bob Lemon, not for the first time after his team had won 103 regular-season games. He was suspended by baseball twice. I was no fan of George’s, yet felt badly at the passing of such a distinctive character. The Yankees’ 5-4 comeback win over Tampa Bay Friday night seemed somehow appropriate.

Harvey Pekar’s death at the age of 70 did make me sad. The comic book writer who wrote a lot about Harvey Pekar could be self-involved and acerbic, but from the first time I read his material back in the 1980s, I related to his honesty and his struggle to try to figure it all out. I loved the movie American Splendor, and I seriously thought Paul Giamatti – son of the late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, BTW – was going to be nominated for an Oscar for playing Harvey. I did NOT enjoy seeing Harvey the one time I saw him on Letterman; seems that Dave treated him like a caricature for its entertainment value. Here’s an appreciation from the LA Times.

The only Jay Leno joke I’ve ever remembered: “It’s so hot [how hot is it?] that even in Cleveland, they can feel the Miami Heat.” I watched The Decision (11.2 million viewers, more than some NBC shows, and came to pretty much agree with what Jaquandor said on the LeBron James issue, though I’d argue that the Cavaliers weren’t going to win an NBA championship any time soon, even if James had stayed. The problem with The Decision – an issue even my wife, who cares nothing about basketball or most sports, tired of the spectacle – is that LJ apparently grossly misunderstood his own press clippings. The only way he could have gotten away with that staged event is if he had stayed in Cleveland.

Wow, this blogpost has a Cleveland feel: LeBron, Pekar, city native Steinbrenner. Makes me want to listen to music from The Band.

Finally, Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers, a cover of the Seals & Crofts hit.

Top 25 albums of last 20 years QUESTION

Also: some recent albums that might be on the list in the future, had I had time enough to listen more often.

Inspired by Johnny Bacardi, here are my favorite albums of the last two decades. Not necessarily the best.

Rules: Create a non-objective list of your favorite albums of the last 20 years (anything released between 1990 and now), remember, this is your FAVORITES so, if Maroon 5’s Songs about Jane was your favorite album, that should be number 1, even if you feel Nevermind was a more influential album.

As JB says: “I have no doubt that I will forget several. Also, for no good reason, I’m naming one album per artist.” Actually, I do have a good reason: it would be heavily influenced by John R. Cash.

The quiz did not pick a number of albums, but JB picked 25, so I did as well. The first ten are pretty solid, not necessarily in that order; the next 15 are as I thought of them, and I may be missing something. I actively avoided the compilations of music I already have such as Psychedelic Soul by the Temptations or even LOVE by the Beatles.

Oh Brother, Where Are Thou soundtrack
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams
Love and Theft – Bob Dylan
The Road to Ensenada – Lyle Lovett
Ingenue – k.d. lang
Unchained (American II) – Johnny Cash
The Seeger Sessions – Bruce Springsteen
Red, Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter
Come On Come On – Mary Chapin Carpenter
Harvest Moon – Neil Young
Achtung Baby – U2
Winter Light – Linda Ronstadt
Concert for George (Harrison)
Home – Dixie Chicks
Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues, 1945-1970
Van Lear Rose – Loretta Lynn
Black Cadillac – Rosanne Cash
Other People’s Lives – Ray Davies
We’ll Never Turn Back – Mavis Staples
American Idiot – Green Day
Nevermind – Nirvana
Dirt Farmer – Levon Helm
The Rhythm of the Saints – Paul Simon
Out of Time – R.E.M.
Wildflowers – Tom Petty

Some recent albums that might be on the list in the future had I had time enough to listen more often:
Good Evening, New York City – Paul McCartney
INTERPRETATIONS: The British Rock Songbook – Bettye LaVette
The Sea – Corinne Bailey Rae

Now I’m picking YOU to select your five or fifty FAVORITE albums in the last 20 years, NOT necessarily the BEST.
***
Also, tell me if this ever happens to you: I was listening to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album this week, one of my two favorite Stones’ collections. I had the headphones on at work and wasn’t specifically paying attention when I Got the Blues came on. At about 2:30 in, suddenly I got very sad, listening to the organ of the late Billy Preston. I’m sure I’ve listened to the album at least a few times since Billy died (on 06/06/2006), yet it really got to me this time. Did you ever hear a song that you’ve heard many times before, then, for some reason, you hear it with new ears?

MOVIE REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Who WERE those three heartless Rotten Tomatoes heartless critics who didn’t like Toy Story 3?


OK, let’s get my singular complaint out of the way. My wife and I both felt that the 3-D did not particularly enhance Toy Story 3, at least when we saw it at the Madison Theatre in Albany last week. I had not read Roger Ebert’s otherwise positive review of the film, which ends, “Just don’t get me started about the 3-D.”

That said, this may be my favorite of the three Toy Story movies, and we own the first two on something called VHS. It starts with a flashback scene of Andy (voice of John Morris) playing with his toys, followed by present-day Andy getting ready for college. What should he do with his frankly neglected buddies? His mother (Laurie Metcalf) has an idea that he doesn’t much care for. Andy decides to take Woody (Tom Hanks) along with him to college and put the others in the attic, but miscommunication ensues, with nearly unfortunate results.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal back on February 19 that describes the plot this way: “In Pixar’s coming movie ‘Toy Story 3,’ Woody the cowboy and his toy-box friends are dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, leaves for college.” Well, not quite; I think there was intentional misdirection on Pixar’s part, rather like the wallpaper image shown above.

The toys do find themselves at the day-care center; quoting Ebert: “they think they’ll like [it], because there will be plenty of kids to play with them all day long. There seems to be relatively little grieving about the loss of Andy’s affections; he did, after all, sentence them to a toy box for years, and toys by nature are self-centered and want to be played with.”

There is a pecking order in the daycare, with the bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) the seemingly Burl Ives-like, avuncular leader of the toys. Ultimately, the best scene in this segment may be between the clotheshorse Ken (Michael Keaton) and smarter-than-she-seems Barbie (Jodi Benson). Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) en Espanol is also entertaining.

Ultimately, the ending made my wife a little verklempt. As for me, I wasn’t nearly (sob) as (sob) affec(sob)ted (sob). Apparently, we were not alone.

No, we did not bring the daughter. There was enough “toys in peril” stuff going on in this G-rated film that we agreed that she would not enjoy it.

Oh, here’s a different kind of complaint I have: surely this movie will be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and deservedly so. It got 99% positive reviews in Rotten Tomatoes; who WERE those three heartless critics who didn’t like it? But because there is now an animated feature category, its chances of winning the big award are virtually nil. I predict a best original screenplay nomination for Michael Arndt, probably best known for Little Miss Sunshine; not brave enough to pick it to win…yet.

In the “Who moved my cheese?” department

What did we do on Monday from 3:52 p.m. to 5:48 p.m.? We, that is to say I, stood in line so that my wife and I could renew our passports…

It’s my wife’s birthday today – happy birthday, Carol! – and we have been chuckling lately over something that started off as annoying.

She’s a deacon in our church. A few weeks ago, she substituted for another deacon in preparing a snack for after the service. She had bought, with her own money, a block of cheese, had cut it up, put it on a plastic plate, covered it up with a plastic wrap, and brought it to church at 9:30 a.m., at which point she went to Bible study.

At 10:30, she went to transfer said cheese onto a nicer plate, but she could not find the cheese. She looked around for a time, finally finding the plate of cheese in the garbage. There were other snacks, but she was understandably annoyed, actually, less about the waste of money and more about the waste of time preparing said cheese, then looking for it.

There is a policy – these are Presbyterians, so naturally, there’s a policy – that food in the refrigerator need be labeled and dated, but Carol never thought that the food she brought could be dumped in an hour. (By contrast, when they cleaned out the refrigerators at my workplace on July 9, we got a week’s e-mail notice, with large notices also on the fridges.)

Carol tells the deacon for whom she substituted about the situation, so she could be alerted when next that deacon served snacks the following week. Then the fun began, with that deacon forwarding Carol’s note, to Carol’s chagrin, to all the other deacons and the pastors. Suddenly, there was a flurry of e-mails going back and forth, some citing policy, others complaining about the waste of food, still others suggesting it be discussed at a committee meeting, and/or that better signs be made. A huge cause celebre.

The custodian had noted that someone else had been eating the cheese that morning, and was possibly the one who rewrapped it poorly. The member of the committee who tossed the cheese had thrown out the cheese because she was afraid it had been there too long; it wasn’t wrapped well, probably by the snacker, but then, to Carol’s embarrassment, she gave her money, to compensate for her loss.

I, on the other hand, thought it was all terribly funny, and labeled it The “Who moved my cheese?” incident. Then it felt more like absurdist theater, and we laughed about it regularly.

Quite coincidentally, there is a unit in my building at work that was downsizing, and they were getting rid of some books. I picked up a few business books for our work library, including the Spencer Johnson book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” I mean, I just HAD to.
***
So what did we do on Monday from 3:52 p.m. to 5:48 p.m.? We, that is to say, I, stood in line so that my wife and I could renew our passports and so that our daughter could get her first one. There were two families ahead of ours. And we hit the line just minutes before the 4 p.m. deadline. The rush was based on a TV story we heard that the rates were going up on Tuesday.

The downside of waiting is that I did not bring any reading material. The upside is that, by the time we actually got to the front, I could cite, almost verbatim, the policies put forth by our fine postal employee. “The passports will take four to six weeks. It has been taking four weeks, but because of the recent influx, it might take a little longer.”

We hadn’t planned on waiting until almost literally the last minute. We were near the post office earlier in the day, but the daughter was having a stomachache. Later, we got an unexpected 71-minute phone call from an old friend, then I went bike riding with the daughter while the wife napped. (We’d gotten up very early to take a relative from Oneonta to the Albany airport that morning.)

In the end, we saved nearly $100, and I got a lesson in passport policy.
***
It’s also Linda Ronstadt’s birthday, so maybe she should sing with Muppets.

 

30-Day Challenge: Day 12- Where Your Family Is From

Greater Binghamton, ironically, has been getting smaller.


My sisters and I were born in Binghamton, NY. My parents were apparently born in Binghamton, NY; my father, I’m not positive about, but certainly by the 1930 Census, when he was 3.5, he was in Binghamton, NY. My maternal grandmother and her mother and HER mother grew up in Binghamton, NY.

The vast majority of the relatives I can find were born in New York State. Some were from Pennsylvania, probably in an area not that far from Binghamton, NY.

I wrote about Binghamton, NY extensively HERE.

I was in Binghamton proper this past weekend, though only in passing, for the aforementioned family reunion. A lot of my wife’s family are from the Binghamton area, though I was unfamiliar with them when I was growing up.

Strange change to the nomenclature about the Binghamton metro. It is now called Greater Binghamton. The airport is called the Greater Binghamton Airport. When I was growing up, it was called the Triple Cities, which included the villages, not cities, of Johnson City and Endicott. Greater Binghamton, ironically, has been getting smaller. There used to be two public high schools, and now there is only one, pictured above; that’s the building, now augmented, that my mother, my sister Leslie and I used to go to, once Binghamton Central HS (the blue and white of the Bulldogs), now Binghamton High (the red, white and blue Patriots).

Several interstates run through the city. I-81, which runs north/south (fastest way to get from Syracuse, NY to Scranton, PA is through Binghamton); I-88, which the late state Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson got built from Binghamton to Schenectady, near Albany, even though it pretty much parallels NY Route 7. A new Route 17, which will eventually become I-86, was started when I was in high school, which involved tearing down some perfectly decent housing just a block north of my late grandmother’s old house. I used to ride my bicycle on the completed, but not yet opened highway. I’ve successfully had to relearn how to get from one part of the area to another via highway, rather than the local roads.

Ramblin' with Roger
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