Roger O Green

Getting To Know You

Three people played my little quiz last week. One, Scott, answered in his blog. One, M., answered by e-mail, and the third, Uthaclena, answered in the comments.

So, now, beware: it’s my time to turn the tables and see if I can answer the same questions about them.

Where did we meet (can be electronically – if so, how did you come to this blog, and if applicable, how did I come to yours)?
S: Actually, I think he linked to my blog, or at least cited my blog, I noticed in Technorati. So I went to his blog, liked what I saw, and voila.
M: At church, mid-to-late 1980s.
U: September 12, 1971 in the basement of Bliss Hall, State University College at New Paltz, probably in a food line.

Take a stab at my middle name.
S: No idea. Bet it starts with a consonant.
M: Starts with L. Louise? No idea.
U: Starts with A.
Yes, my middle name is Owen.

Do I smoke?
S: The rare cigar.
M: No.
U: Nothing legal.
No, I don’t.

Color of my eyes.
S: Look bluish in photos.
M: Brown
U: Brown.
Mine are brown.

Do I have any siblings? If so, where am I in the birth order?
S: Fortunately, you answered that here. You’re the eldest, as am I.
M: Seems as though I’ve met a brother who I think is older.
U: You have two younger brothers.
I have two younger sisters, Leslie and and Marcia.

What’s one of my favorite things to do?
S: Listen to music.
M: Listen to music.
U: Listen to music.
Whereas I NEVER listen to music, he lied.

What’s my favorite type of music?
S: Prog rock.
M: At your wedding, you had someone play Ripple, so I’m going with the Dead, though you certainly like your Beatles.
U: While you like your 1960s music, you also appreciate progressive jazz.
My tastes are fairly eclectic, though 1960s Motown and Beatles are important.

Am I shy or outgoing?
S: Comfortable in your own skin.
M: Shyly outgoing.
U: Depends on the situation.
I’m probably more shy than people think.

Am I a rebel or do I follow the rules?
S: Tries to keep to the rules, except when they don’t make sense.
M: Definitely knows the rules, will follow them if necessary.
U: Hates many of the rules, avoids them when he can, suffers them when he can’t.
ME? I subvert the stupid ones whenever possible.

Any special talents?
S: You know more about hockey than I will ever know.
M: You’re extremely talented at putting people at ease.
U: Your time as a bartender has served you well.
U identified my kazoo skills.

How many children do I have?
S: You are always making plans for Nigel.
M: One under 18, plus.
U: A daughter named after your middle name, but spelled differently.
I have Lydia.

If you and I were stranded on a desert island, what is one thing that I would
bring?
S: Some tome.
M: A first aid kit.
U: Sufficient firewood.
Me? A World Almanac

AND for a bonus question, you can share any other factoid you deign to share, as long as it’s about me, and it’s truthful. Preferably not mean.
S: He has a very spiritual side, quite possibly more than he realizes.
M: She used to be a party animal!
U: About the only person who could actually blackmail me.

ROG

Are the banks open?

On the January 11, 2008 episode of JEOPARDY!, the $600 clue in the category Math Rocks was this:
Kate Bush sang over 100 digits about this symbol, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The question makes me hungry already.

Happy π Day!

I must admit a certain fascination with other people’s fascination with what I learned in high school as 22/7, but which is a lot more precise than that, such as
this one:

or especially this one, which lets me know that “the string 19530307 occurs at position 20,376,164 counting from the first digit after the decimal point.” Of course, it does.

Personally, I’ve never bothered to learn pi past the fifth digit after the decimal (3.14159), because then I’d have to worry about rounding errors. I didn’t know that definition of π was implied in the Bible, though with all that calculating of the cubits, I should have guessed.

No, I’ve never seen the movie.

“In celebration of the day, feel free to take a moment to contemplate and enjoy the mathematics in nature (or just draw a circle).” (Stolen from my friend Annie, as was the title of the piece.)

ROG

Q is 75

To an audience who may know Quincy Jones best as the father of actress Rashida Jones, formerly of the television show The Office, I wanted to write about the massive impact that Q has had on popular music. I went to the Wikipedia post, which was a good start, but the discography was sorely lacking. This Rolling Stone discography isn’t bad, but is missing vital elements. The CBS Sunday Morning story from this past weekend, which currently isn’t even online, just touches on his importance.

Personally, I own a wide range of Q’s output, from some of those Frank Sinatra sides he arranged such as “Fly Me to the Moon”, to those Lesley Gore hits such as “It’s My Party” that he produced, the Q-production for the Brothers Johnson album that contains “Strawberry Letter #23, composer for the “Sanford and Son” theme, cat-wrangler for the “We Are the World” session, the composer/arranger for soundtrack for the television event “Roots”, and possibly my favorite, the production of Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” album. Oh, yeah, and its obscure follow-up, the album known as “Thriller”.

I also own a couple albums with Quincy listed as artist, Q’s Jook Joint (2004), and Back on the Block (1989), both star-studded extravaganzas. If not totally successful, they show the range of the the man, from rap lite with Melle Mel and Ice-T intertwined with Tevin Campbell’s Zulu chant, snatching a piece of the Ironside theme, which Q wrote; to a funky tune featuring Chaka Khan and Q’s very old friend Ray Charles; to an introduction to Birdland by rappers and jazz artists; to the most successful take, an “a cappella groove” with Ella, Sarah and Bobby McFerrin, among others. Undoubtedly, there are other jazz sides and soundtracks that I’m not even aware of.

I even own some oversized photo-bio of the man. So Happy birthday, Q, and thanks for the wide range of great music.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Elizabeth: the Golden Age

One night a couple weeks ago, I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and watched a DVD of the follow-up to Cate Blanchett’s Oscar-nominated role playing Queen Elizabeth I from nine seasons prior. I had really liked the earlier film, which I had seen in a place around here that serves food before the film. I was interested in the intrigue, and Blanchett was marvelous.

She’s still very good in this film, but the intrigue this time was so byzantine or so boring – I’m not sure which – that I didn’t much care. Geoffrey Rush’s Sir Francis Walsingham is skulking around on who knows what side of the issue.

I did rather enjoy Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh and Abbie Cornish as Beth. In fact, it was when Raleigh first appears that I came out of my stupor.

If I remember correctly, the the number 1585 come up on the screen even before the title of the film. “I’ll bet that an event takes place three years hence will be in this movie,” I thought, and so it was, but it had a “I’ve seen it all before” quality.

I’m convinced that if you come into the movie with low expectations – the critics were generally unkind – then you might enjoy it for what it is, but it’s definitely a lesser epic.
***
I’ve now managed to see all five Best Actress performances for 2007. Historically, this is not all that unusual, but lately, it’s extraordinary. And if I were voting, I would have picked Julie Christie for Away From Her. Marion Cotillard lost points because she was lip-synching, quite well, to Edith Piaf and to Piaf sound-alike Jil Aigrot. My second favorite performance actually was Ellen Page in Juno.

ROG

Dead Man Walking

As the Sheriff of Wall Street slinks into the sunset, New Yorkers are left with Disbelief. Disappointment. Disgust.

When I first heard the story, I thought, somehow, that Governor Spitzer was involved in the indictment of a prostitution ring. He was, but not at all in the way I could possibly have imagined.

If it were a case of a guy falling off the fidelity wagon, the average politician might very well survive that. But when it’s Eliot Spitzer, the self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, busily fighting corruption as NYS Attorney General; when it’s “it’ll be different” when he’s governor from “Day One”; when he’s well-known for chastising the moral compass of subordinates, it becomes difficult to shake a prostitution charge, and at the Mayflower Hotel in DC, of all places. Especially when it appears that there was an ongoing relationship with this prostitution ring going back to last July, not just a one-time fling on the day before Valentine’s Day (how sweet) with money being laundered to hide his identity.

If the hypocrite isn’t already gone this morning, he will be soon, if only because he no longer has the moral authority to govern. Yesterday, at his press conference, so short that it was shown in its entirety on the local news stations, he said in his apology that it was a private matter, and while he does have much explaining to do to his wife (one of his chief legal advisers!) and his three daughters, aged 13 to 17, he has much to explain to the rest of us.

I got this from a conservative website: “This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multi-tiered management structure… It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.” — Governor [then Attorney General] Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), on the 2004 break-up of a Staten Island prostitution ring

Is it strange to think that a man with daughters would be less likely to be involved with a prostitute five or six older than his oldest daughter? Perhaps. Undoubtedly, it’s sexist to be surprised that a man would cheat on his quite attractive, as well as extremely intelligent, wife.

The fallout of this is that the next governor of New York, David Patterson, will be black and legally blind. Son of the NYC-based politician Basil Patterson, who ran for Lieutenant Governor back in 1970 (Arthur Goldberg and Basil lost to Nelson Rockefeller/and Malcolm Wilson), David will be a more conciliatory figure than Eliot Spitzer, who described himself a a “f***ing steamroller”. Whether we’ll have an on-time budget – it’s due by April 1 – is up in the air.

I voted for Eliot Spitzer for governor in 2006 to try to change the dysfunctionality of Albany. That he wasn’t able to do that in Year One, with distractions such as Troopergate and licenses for illegal aliens, was merely disappointing. With this revelation, I feel betrayed. And much to my surprise, angry.

ROG