Roger O Green

Lost items in the house

shoes

I find the fact that we have lost several items in the house, and despite serious effort, annoyingly weird.

Back in March during her college spring break, our daughter slept in my wife’s office for reasons described on May 26.

I took out the landline phone, including the base, from the office so that it would not disturb my daughter’s sleep. As I realized later, I didn’t really need to move the base; the receiver would do the trick. Still, I figure I’d keep them together in a pile at the top of the stairs. Later when I wanted to put the phone back, I found the receiver but not the base until late July; it was in my wife’s office, on the floor, under a table.

Incidentally, one of the reasons we still have a landline is so that I can find my phone in the house about twice a month, not counting when it falls between the sofa sections, which is always the first place to look.

We have a coffee tin, filled with brown sugar because we don’t drink coffee. The lid has been MIA for months, and the canister is and is now covered by a piece of aluminum foil.

Most mysterious, though, is a box of shoes that we can’t find. In anticipation of my annual hearts party in early March, I gathered all of the extra shoes and put them in box -or a bag? – and stored them… somewhere.

Stop looking

Not that it’s been a fruitless search. My high school yearbook, which my sister wanted to borrow before her October 2022 high school reunion, was on a shelf in my office that I hadn’t looked at before.

Also, I came across some things I wasn’t even looking for. A couple of rarely used credit cards that had fallen down below the computer reemerged.

The reason I’m writing this, though, is strategic. I’ve discovered that when I have stopped looking for things is the very time they inexplicably show up. My working theory is that if I write about it, I can let them go. Somehow, they’ll just show up. We’ll see if the plan works.

Movie review: Asteroid City

Wes Anderson

I liked the premise of the movie Asteroid City. The narrator (Bryan Cranston) tells the story, in black-and-white, of the world-famous fictional play. It’s partly about a grieving father (Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck) taking his tech-obsessed teenage son (Jake Ryan as Woodrow) to a science competition in the middle of nowhere. Woodrow’s three curious (in every sense of the word) younger sisters are also there.

Then Something Happens to upend everyone’s worldview.

The look of Asteroid City’s bland pastel color desert setting was very effective. But the film left me confounded. I understand that it evokes Area 51 paranoia, Sputnik fear, and the meta-stress of actors forgetting their lines.

Yet I didn’t care enough. Rex Reed wrote: “Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is enigmatic, artificial, infuriatingly self-indulgent, and irrevocably pointless.” Rex Reed is wrong.

I’ve been a big fan of the works of the writer/director. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and Isle of Dogs (2018), even 2/3s of The French Dispatch (2021) I enjoyed.

Adam Graham of the Detroit News suggested: “It’s all very cute but not much else, as the story remains locked inside Anderson’s dollhouse and is inaccessible to all but his most ardent fans.” That’s possibly true.

Too much

The review that nailed it for me was by Prabhjot Bains of the Hollywood Handle. He wrote: “It feels like two different movies forcefully amalgamated into one incongruous whole, rendering its existential meditation on grief emotionally inert and hollow… It’s very much Anderson’s weakest entry to date.” That’s probably it.

There are a lot of concepts stuffed into the film, with scads of performers, many of whom have been in previous Anderson films, plus Tom Hanks, as the cranky grandfather, who I’d not seen in an Anderson film before.

Even the positive review by Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle notes: “Anderson’s lone indulgence is to cast famous faces in extremely minor roles… Jeff Goldblum has one line… Matt Dillon has a single small scene and spends the rest of the movie standing around. This is distracting, and Anderson certainly does it as another distancing device, reminding audiences that this is all artifice, that it’s only a movie. But… it’s hard not to see their casting as the director’s ego trip, his showing off how many big-name actors are willing to take any role in one of his movies.”

I so wanted to like this film, but alas, alas, it was more effort than enlightenment.

Day in the life: July 30, 2023

complicated

Sunday, July 30, 2023, didn’t track the way either my wife or I expected. She had awakened with a chill. More problematic: a red spot on the back of her leg near her ankle had expanded around her leg. Moreover, it was warm to the touch.

It sounded like the return of the cellulitis she experienced in October 2022, which became so problematic that she was hospitalized for four days as complications ensued.

She asked me to contact the local urgent care place. Alas, there were NO slots open in Albany or Troy. So she decided to drive to the Emergency Department at St. Peter’s Hospital, which seemed sage.

I noted that she was scheduled to count the offering at church. The task involves training, and only about a dozen people were equipped to do so; I’m not one of them.

I sent an email at 7:55 a.m., but the only people who replied were those who could not take on the task; I thought recent knee surgery was a perfect excuse for staying home.

Breaking bread

Meanwhile, I needed to get to church early to help set up for communion before the 9:30 service. This meant catching the 8:48 bus, which only runs every 30 minutes. It takes me three or four minutes to get to the stop. Sometimes it’s running early, so I want to leave about ten minutes early.

The phone rings at 8:39. I’m going out the door. My wife needs the name of the antibiotic she’d been taking for another ailment. I needed to find and spell the container name twice because it had 14 letters.

I walked very fast to the corner. Fortunately, the bus was one minute late, and I just caught it, getting to church by 9:03.

Besides communion prep, I needed to find someone to sub for my wife, which fortunately worked out. A couple of other snags were addressed.

Seems like old times

After communion cleanup, some folks were putting the library back together. The shelves had been removed from the walls and painted. Though there were dropcloths, flakes of dried paint still got onto the carpet.

I vacuumed once I was told where the recessed cord was hiding. It reminded me twice when I was a custodian, in 1974 at a department store in a New Paltz, NY strip mall, and in 1975, at Binghamton (NY) City Hall.

I stopped at the local pizzeria to bring home slices for my daughter and me and took the bus home.

There’s a particular bond among bus patrons. A patron pulled the cord to get out at the downtown SUNY campus. As the driver blew past the stop, the guy told the driver he wanted to debark. The driver said one had to pull the cord, but I saw that he had; I heard the sound and could see the red STOP REQUESTED sign. The driver insisted he hadn’t heard the signal, possibly over the air conditioning. From my seat near the front, I insisted the rider was correct.

The driver then looks at his console and sees that the signal had been initiated. The driver tells the patron, “You were right, and I was wrong.” Twice. The customer said, “It’s cool,” as the driver again restated his mantra. The patron says, “It’s OK. It’s OK. I didn’t want to walk two extra blocks.”

To the hospital

After my weekly ZOOM talk with my sisters, I took a bus to St. Peter’s. My wife had said she was still in the ER area, but by the time I arrived, she had been taken to a room.

It occurred to me that I’ve mastered how to get to several hospital areas because of my wife’s time there last fall. I brought her a change of clothes, toiletries, and reading material.

Having missed the last bus home, I walked, first to Junior’s for takeout, then home. I very seldom have takeout twice in one day. But it was a weird day.

My wife spent two nights at the hospital, getting IV antibiotics, and she’s much better.

Sunday Stealing: FB PCs

necessary for our Nation to function

Sunday Stealing this week is FB PCs, which stands for, much to my surprise, Facebook Postcards USA.

1. What do you have hanging on your walls?

Not nearly enough stuff. My wife said we could put artwork and photos on our living room walls once they were painted. That was over a decade ago! And if you ask why I don’t put them up myself, I’m seeking her better sense of design.

2. Have you used an outrageous excuse to get out of jury duty?

NEVER! I wouldn’t ever do so. ‘

A good friend wrote this recently: “I’ve received a summons for Federal Grand Jury duty, and I find it disheartening how many people IMMEDIATELY start giving me advice on how to get OUT of serving. I am being given an opportunity to help determine whether a criminal should be charged, or an innocent exonerated. It may be inconvenient, but it’s a service that is necessary for our Nation to function, and all too few seem willing to participate. I think that’s sad.”

I’ve written about my two experiences with jury duty here and here A friend I ran into leaving a grand jury session this spring reminded me that I’m overdue for another opportunity.

Not THAT!

3. Where do you like to go shopping (not for groceries)

I hate shopping. When I go, I finish as quickly as possible. I used to run the mail order department when I worked at FantaCo in the 1980s, which may explain why I embrace it so readily.

That said, if I shop, it’s mostly at Lodge’s in downtown Albany, founded in 1867.

4. What was the last movie you saw in a movie theater?

Barbenheimer, NOT on the same day.

5. If you wrote a note and put it in a bottle to throw out to sea, what would the note say?

Be of good cheer.

6. What decision have you made in your life that you regret?

Too many and too personal. Okay, here’s one: wearing hard-soled shoes when I was on JEOPARDY in 1998.

7. What is in your junk drawer?

It’s next to my dresser, with coins, pens, cough drops, and goodness knows what else.

8. Have you ever gone to a high school reunion?

My 10th, 35th, and 50th. Also, my sister’s 45th and 50th.

9. Would you rather receive the GOOD news or the BAD news first?

BAD, for sure.

10. What are your top 3 pet peeves?

Self-important folks who block crosswalks, sidewalks, et al. with their cars. Cruel bullies. People who don’t take responsibility for their actions; from here: ” I frankly don’t understand the argument that Trump can’t be found guilty of trying to overturn the election if he really and truly thought he’d won it. Does that mean that you couldn’t convict that North Carolina man who fired an AR-15 rifle inside a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. because he really and truly believed it was the home of a Satanic child sex abuse ring involving top Democrats?”

Famous!

11. Are there famous people from where you live?

William Kennedy, Gregory Maguire, Rachael Ray. Mike Tyson trained and fought in the area; I saw him once with Jack Nicholson backstage after an Anita Baker concert at the Palace Theatre in ALB. Here’s a Wikipedia page.

12. What kitchen gadgets do you use most?

Stove, can opener, microwave.

13. Who was your elementary school best friend?

Probably Ray, whose mom was the den mother of our Cub Scout troop.

14. Choose an animal and tell us four things about that animal.

Cat: mysterious, unpredictable, furry, hungry.

15. What is your favorite pizza topping? What do you never want on a pizza?

I’ve grown partial to white broccoli but I’ll try anything if it doesn’t have anchovies.

1973: 27 songs hit #1

Jim Croce and Stevie Wonder

In 1973, 27 songs hit #1. Almost all of them were certified gold; Crocodile Rock was certified platinum.

Five of the exceptions were Motown songs, two by Stevie Wonder. From most reports, Motown didn’t allow the RIAA, the industry association, to look at the books to certify the recordings until the late 1970s.

The late Jim Croce is the other artist on the list with two #1 songs.

This #1s roster includes songs by all ex-Beatles except John Lennon, plus a Beatles colleague. The other non-gold record was by George Harrison.

I have links to all the songs and a dozen posts I wrote when the artist turned a number divisible by five or would have.

Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack, #1 for five weeks. Before the Fugees.

Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree – Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando, #1 for four weeks

My Love – Paul McCartney & Wings, #1 for four weeks. Wings went to #2 with Live and Let Die.

You’re So Vain – Carly Simon, #1 for three weeks. The song was NOT about me.

Crocodile Rock– Elton John, #1 for three weeks. He also had two #2 songs, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Daniel.

#1 for TWO weeks

Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye. I wasn’t hearing the ripoff that Ed Sheeran allegedly committed.

Keep On Truckin’ -Eddie Kendricks

Bad, Bad Leroy Brown – Jim Croce

Top Of The World – Carpenters. Yesterday Once More Went To #2.

Midnight Train To Georgia – Gladys Knight and the Pips. By this time, they were at Buddah Records. Neither One Of Us went to #2.

Brother Louie – Stories

Will It Go Round In Circles – Billy Preston

Half-Breed – Cher

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia – Vicki Lawrence. Carol Burnette surprised her with a gold record for the song on the last show of the sixth season of The Carol Burnette Show.

Time In A Bottle – Jim Croce

The Most Beautiful Girl – Charlie Rich

The Morning After – Maureen McGovern

A single week at #1

Touch Me In The Morning – Diana Ross

Delta Dawn – Helen Reddy. Two songs about morning, followed by a dawn song?

Frankenstein – The Edgar Winter Group, an instrumental. Two instrumentals reached #2: Dueling Banjos by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell; and Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001) by Deodato.

You Are The Sunshine Of My Life – Stevie Wonder

Angie – The Rolling Stones

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) – George Harrison

We’re An American Band – Grand Funk

Superstition – Stevie Wonder

Love Train – O’Jays

Photograph – Ringo Starr