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.

Turn On the Mind

You Are 72% Open Minded

You are a very open minded person, but you’re also well grounded.
Tolerant and flexible, you appreciate most lifestyles and viewpoints.
But you also know where you stand firm, and you can draw that line.
You’re open to considering every possibility – but in the end, you stand true to yourself.

Don’t recall where I found this.

1. Do you remember learning to read? How old were you?
No, but it seemed like I’ve always read – of course not true, is it?

2. What do you find most challenging to read?
Novels with flowery multiple adjectives. Certain fonts.

3. What are your library habits?
I go a lot for Lydia, maybe once a week. We usually get two books and one video.

4. Have your library habits changed since you were younger?
Well, yeah. Mostly, I access it remotely, accessing databases.

5. How has blogging changed your reading life?
I might pick up something that someone has recommended.

6. What percentage of your books do you get from: New book stores, second hand book stores, the library, online exchange sites, online retailers, other?
About 10% each from the library, new book stores, and second-hand stores. About 70% from Amazon or the like.

7. How often do you read a book and NOT review it in your blog?
Maybe once. Excluding children’s books, which I often read and seldom review.

8. What are your pet peeves about ways people abuse books? Dog-earing pages? Reading in the bath?
Marking in books that aren’t theirs, even highlighting them.

9. Do you ever read for pleasure at work?
Most of my reading at lunchtime are periodicals (newspapers, mostly.)

10. When you give people books as gifts, how do you decide what to give them?
Hope they give clues. That said, people have given me books, and if I like it, I might imagine other people who might as well.

ROG

ROG

Top 10 5 Albums of 2007

I only got 13 albums that came out in 2007, all CDs, as opposed to downloads or vinyl. Unlike the movies I didn’t see, this fact does not particularly distress me as much as it might, since I did download some individual cuts as well as older albums I had on vinyl.

So coming up with a Top 10 seemed silly. I will discuss all of them, but then give you my Top 5, which is pretty soft.

Across the Universe SOUNDTRACK – It’s OK. Too much of it sounds the same. Didn’t see the movie, though, and that might have helped. I love EDDIE IZZARD doing Mr. Kite, though.

Like A Hurricane-Neil Young Tribute, Uncut Magazine. Pretty good actually, though invariably uneven.

It’s Not Big, It’s Large- Lyle Lovett. As I wrote here, I like it, but haven’t played it in over a month. Might rank higher when I hear it again.

Memory Almost Full-Paul McCartney. I liked it, especially some of the latter songs. The cut that explains the meanings of the songs really enhanced the album for me.

Magic-Bruce Springsteen. I enjoyed it quite a bit actually, but with a couple of exceptions, it sounds as though it could have come out a decade or more ago.

Live In Dublin-Bruce Springsteen. This lives heavily on the songs from the Seeger Session of 2006 that I loved so much. Works well here, too, plus some great reframing of the Springsteen oeuvre, and a surprise or two.

We’ll Never Turn Back-Mavis Staples. Lefty Brown turned me onto this album, and it was in constant rotation in the summer, one track in particular.

Photograph: the Very Best of Ringo Starr. Quite possibly all the Richard Starkey I’ll ever need. A mostly known commodity going in, and some good songs. Beatlefan magazine posed the question a couple months ago whether Ringo, as a solo artist, deserved to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; I’d say no, as commercial success, and is largely not a criterion.

And now, my Top 5:

5) West- Lucinda Williams. This might be is a hard album to love for me. Sometimes the lyrics are weak, sometimes the music, though usually at least one element is outstanding. Some of the lyrics are as nonsensical as Dylan’s most obtuse. There’s a 9-minute quasi-rap song that somebody on Amazon called the WORST SONG EVER. But when it clicks, it really works for me. It’s no “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”, but it is a worthwhile effort about loss.

4) Dirt Farmer – Levon Helm. – Maybe I’m a sucker for a feel-good story. Helm, the voice of the legendary group The Band, survived throat cancer, but he was unable to talk, let alone sing. But with treatment, he was able to do both. And this album, which sounds like The Band mixed with the music of the group’s roots, is outstanding. His daughter Amy, who sings with the group Olabelle, is also present here.

3) Chrome Dreams II-Neil Young. What Nik said about the eclectic nature of the project. BTW, Tosy once had a post about the longest and shortest album cuts. He and I had the same Dylan cut as the longest, but Ordinary People on this album at 18 minutes surpasses that. (I have since discovered that I have a 20-minute live version of Frank Zappa’s Don’t eat the Yellow Snow.) Here’s a review from the United Methodist Church website!

2) Raising Sand- Alison Krauss/Robert Plant. Actually, I bought this for my wife for Christmas. I always buy Alison Krauss for my wife for Christmas or her birthday when she has a new album out. While there were some duets that sounded more like her fare, there’s at least one cut that’s louder than anything on any Krauss album I’ve heard. In any case, it works because of genre-bending song selection and a great production by T-Bone Burnett. The more I hear it, the more I like it.

1)I’m Not There SOUNDTRACK- (Nik: this is how I write every day – I just quote other people.) As Nik says, compilations are tough, but this one works exceedingly well, even though I didn’t see this movie yet, either.

The album I’m most likely to get, sound unheard, based on everyone else’s reviews: LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver.

ROG

ROG

Online Comics QUESTIONS

I get e-mails:

Lacking for material to write about? No, of course not. But I’d be interested in your take on this subject. Do you think Cory Doctorow is right?

The main point of the story, titled “Boom! comics’ new series available as downloads on the same day as in stores” is that “comics publishers should — at a minimum — put up downloadable comics after they disappear from the stands, so that people who are coming to the serial after it starts can catch up. The trade paperbacks help here, but usually there’s a 2-3 issue gap between the collection and the singles.”

Well, I have no idea. In my days of retailing comics (1980-88 and again in the early 1990s), the business model was very different. I do know that a customer coming in in the middle of a story was/is maddening. I do know that dealing with back issue comics was often a pain. But does the online page of back issues solve the problem?

There seems to be an overriding premise in the piece that almost everything that comes out as singles (his term) or floppies will turn up in book form eventually, which I don’t believe to be true, any more than every TV show eventually coming out on DVD.

I also don’t buy the premise that the “publisher could spend approximately $0.00 and post downloadable singles 30 days or even 60 days after they hit the stands.” To do a quality job online does not cost nothing, assuming you have to pay someone to do it. And what of the creative team? How are they getting paid for this, beyond the flat page rate? Or should it just be considered “promotional? (Shades of the AMPTP!)

I would really like to know, from comics collectors and especially retailers: does the online model stimulate new readers, and more importantly, new spenders, or are folks just reading product online for free? What is the general quality of the existing products – easy to use or not? Of readable quality or full of eyestrain? What’s the best of the current crop, and what’s a must to avoid?
***
Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal gave a plug for HowToons, an interesting site. It does have a link to a book for sale on Amazon, but I don’t know how else it makes money, if in fact it does.

ROG

ROG

January Ramblin’

I was on the bus yesterday, and this young man sitting across the aisle, 13 to 15 years old, I gather, was telling his friend about his school’s basketball team. “They’re 4 and 2. I think that’s .500”. I waited a couple seconds, hoping his friend would correct him, but since that was not forthcoming, I said “.667”. He looked at me, confused. “Your team won 4 out of 6 games. 4 over 6 is the same as 2 over 3. 2/3s, .667.” Nothing – wish I had the time and the paper to show him long division. “If the team has the same number of wins and losses, THAT’S .500”. Maybe I should have gotten into percentages and moving decimal points, but he got off before then. [Sigh]
***
From friend Don: “In short, it was all about money, cultural arrogance, and ignorance, in no particular order. (Or, alternatively, perhaps it’s all about GE Schenectady steam-turbine manufacturing; see the bottom.) Surprisingly intelligent reflections by former NBC Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry, culled from an unlikely source — MIT Technology Review.

Full story. There’s stuff about dreadful coverage of the early days of the Iraq war, inane non-use of a videotape and other nonsense. If you decide to wade into it, check the last page, where JH discusses his aborted story about the shadowy figures behind the Nigerian e-mail scams, how he filmed them fleecing a mark in their Montreal hotel room, “To Catch a Predator”-style. A passing reference to this story came up on The Media Project, a local radio program, last week, and one of the panelists opined that perhaps Hockenberry had an “axe to grind”, as he was let go by NBC. That person clearly hadn’t read the piece.

“You Don’t Understand Our Audience”: What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC.
***
ADD rants about Spider-Man. I haven’t read the character regularly in nearly a decade and a half, but I’m inclined to accept this analysis, based on the source.
***
The personal rantings against ethanol by a friend of mine.
***
101 Dumbest Moments in Business from Fortune magazine.
***
I don’t even live in Buffalo, but I can get behind this one, suggested by Jaquandor, which is to let people know that Joe Cecconi Chrysler sucks, apparently. My favorite part of the narrative was after a frustrated Buffalo Geek sought help from a higher power:
I decide to call Chrysler Customer Service to see if they could help influence the process in some way. After calmly and rationally detailing the situation to the agent, I was put on hold as she attempted to contact the dealership and broker a truce. I sat immediately outside the dealership in my vehicle, from which I had a direct view of Clyde and Mike yukking it up in the office. Moments later, the agent came back on the phone to inform me that the dealership receptionist said that both of them had left for the day and they would call back next week. To wit, I informed the phone agent that I was staring right at them and they were sitting in their office. I instructed her to call back and let them know the customer is sitting outside, has visual lock on them, and that she would like to speak with them. They refused again. Classy. But Joe is hardly alone.

My goodness, this should be called January Rantin’. Won’t even talk about the last Republican “debate”; let a child do it instead. But it’s not as though somebody named Rush Limbaugh Person of the Year or something. Oh wait: someone did.
***
On a more pleasant note – not that I’m going myself:
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will be revived in a STRICTLY LIMITED ENGAGEMENT from FEBRUARY 12 to MARCH 13, with…what the press release say?

This explosive new production of TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ Pulitzer Prize-winning classic features a dynamite cast led by Academy Award® nominee TERRENCE HOWARD, Tony Award® winners PHYLICIA RASHAD and ANIKA NONI ROSE, and Academy Award nominee and two-time Tony winner JAMES EARL JONES. Directing is Emmy Award® winner and Tony nominee DEBBIE ALLEN.

Performance Schedule: Tues at 7, Wed-Sat at 8, Wed & Sat at 2, Sun at 3

FOR MORE INFO, visit Cat2008OnBroadway.com.

I have an e-mail with a code that’ll get you 30% off on the show, so e-mail me if you’re interested.

ROG

ROG

Hillary and the New York Post

Let me be very clear about my biases here. I HATE the New York Post. My disdain for it goes back to the Summer of Sam in 1977, when the paper indicated, in screaming red letters that the killer had been caught. More egregious, though, was when some photographer slipped into the NYC morgue in December 1980 and took a picture of the deceased John Lennon, a photo that the Post, in its infinite taste, published on the front cover.

So when NewsCorp, a/k/a Rupert Murdoch, bought it a few years back, it only solidified my disdain for the rag. Though to be fair, its sports coverage is decent. Understand that I don’t actually READ the paper; those headlines are generally enough. And on those rare occasions when I HAVE read it – usually an abandoned copy on a bus – my suspicions about the newspaper’s character, or lack thereof, are confirmed.

I’m not a great fan of Hillary Clinton. Sure, she was wrong on the Iraq war, but my disdain actually predates that. I didn’t vote for her in 2000 or in 2006. I think part of it is that she’s one in a line of carpetbaggers who came into New York State merely as a matter of convenience, so that they could run for the U.S. Senate. Remarkably, the last three were actually elected: Robert Kennedy in 1964, James Buckley (brother of William F., who had denounced RFK six years earlier for the same reason), and HRC in 2000.

Still, the vitriol that she engenders is astonishing to me. They hate her because she’s too tough. They hate her for using Rodham in her name. They hate her because she didn’t leave Bill over Monicagate. They hate her for reasons I’ve heard explained and STILL don’t understand. It almost seems that she has personally insulted them, the way many right-wing magazines and books have keyed on her. I mean, she’s not my pick for President, but yeesh!


And among her nastiest, and most persistent, critics is the slimeball tabloid New York Post, which seems practically obsessed with her, based on these newspaper covers from successive days (January 3-8, 2007). Other New York State papers cover the Presidential campaigns; the Post covers it largely in relationship with the fortunes (or misfortunes, so they hope) of “Hill” (rhymes with Bill). I read a story some months ago about her in the Post. The details now escape me, but it was clearly opinion, and negative opinion at that, posing as a “news” story.
So, when she cries, or almost does, one can practically hear the Post editors smacking their lips. “Hill cracked! We got to her! She’s going down!” But a funny thing happened: Hillary won in New Hampshire. And according to this piece, and others, it was BECAUSE she cried, or almost did. She allowed herself to be “real” and the voters, especially the women voters, responded.

And, peculiarly, I was glad she won in New Hampshire. Anyone denying that there is this sexist double standard isn’t looking very hard. The man can cry and be sensitive yet manly and Presidential, but the woman who cries is probably “in a tizzy” and can’t be trusted with heading the government. This is the balancing act Hillary Clinton has been trying to maintain for a long time, but letting her emotions show seems to have helped her, at least for one day.

ROG

ROG
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