Roger O Green

Neil Simon, Marie Severin, Russ Heath, Kofi Annan

Marie Severin was one of the most delightful, funny and talented people who ever worked in comics

Marie-Severin Neil Simon was a writer whose work I appreciated in several media: He penned the screenplays of movies such as The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl, and California Suite I saw in the 1970s. His plays such as Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues in the 1980s I watched on local stages.

But it was the TV adaptation of the play Odd Couple (1970-1975), starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, that was my introduction to Simon. I only caught the 1968 movie considerably later. I even watched the short-lived 1982 TV remake with Ron Glass as Felix Unger and Demond Wilson as Oscar Madison.

Of course, the career of Neil Simon goes back to the early days of television. Simon’s hits on stage and screen made him the most commercially successfully playwright of the 20th century — and perhaps of all time.
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Marie Severin was a name I first knew as the main colorist at Marvel Comics in the 1960s while also doing the occasional penciling job. But she started as a colorist back in the late 1940s “when her older brother, comic book artist John Severin (1922-2012), asked her to color one of his stories for EC Comics.”

As a penciler, she also worked on Marvel’s parody comic book series, Not Brand Echh. And she co-created Spider-Woman in 1976, designing her iconic costume. Plus, everyone agreed that Marie Severin was one of the most delightful, funny and talented people who ever worked in comics.
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Russ Heath was one of the great comic book illustrators of the field. “Because he veered away from super-heroes and more ‘commercial’ genres, he often did not get the respect he deserved.”

Most people – my wife, for instance – know who Roy Lichtenstein was. Most folks who aren’t comic book fans don’t know Russ Heath. This This piece explains part of my loathing for Lichtenstein:

“One day in 1962, Lichtenstein walked down to the corner newsstand near his studio and bought a copy of DC Comics’ All-American Men at War #89, took it back to the studio, threw it on the overhead projector, and cranked out about a half-dozen paintings based on (swiped from) panels in that comic book, which he then sold for millions of dollars each.” Heath got nada.
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Gary Friedrich, best known as the co-creator of the motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider character for Marvel, died at the age of 75. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. He had a legal tussle with Marvel that was only partially satisfactory.
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Kofi Annan is dead at 80. He came to embody the United Nations’ deepest aspirations and most ingrained flaws.

For some reason, keeping track of UN Secretaries-General – there aren’t that many – has long fascinated me. And I wanted the first one from sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana) to do well, a subject of much debate, despite his Nobel Peace Prize.
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Every time I see that an older person of note dies, I read comments such as “Was he still alive?” They always seem astonished. For me, it’s totally the opposite. If I discover that a noteworthy person, in the realm of my interests, passed away in 2010, and I somehow missed it, THAT would surprise me.

I is for information, please? (ABCW)

Where are you trying to go?

information Waiting for a bus recently, I had what is possibly an obvious epiphany. Sometimes the technically correct answer isn’t the answer you need.

For instance, if you were to ask me, “Where is the nearest bus stop?” I could easily point someone to it. But using what we librarians call the reference interview, maybe I should ask a few clarifying questions to make sure it’s the answer that would actually be helpful.

For instance, “Where are you trying to go?” The nearest bus stop might not be heading in the correct direction. Or that bus doesn’t operate on weekends. Or it might not be running in the middle of the day.

Recently, I happened across a guy who was waiting in downtown Albany for a specific bus in the late morning. Because I know these arcane things, I was sure that route would not be operating for another four hours! But I aware that another bus that ran every 20 or 30 minutes would get him fairly close to his destination.

I’ve mentioned before that I have to be vigilant against false information. In the cases of the former First Lady Barbara Bush, and the legendary singer Aretha Franklin, reports of their deaths came out two or three days before their passing. Why? In order to be first with incorrect reporting?

Conversely, I was sitting in a deli hearing guys talking about a woman dying from dog saliva, a story I had not heard. It turned out to be true. But one fellow said to another, “They shouldn’t report that. It’s doesn’t happen often and it’ll get people all worked up.” I disagree; the story correctly noted how RARE the phenomenon was. Intentionally not reporting it is untenable.

Check out analytics evangelist Ann Jackson on being the voice of data, overcoming imposter syndrome, and setting aside intuition. It’s something I strive for, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

For ABC Wednesday

Ronald Reagan in Labor’s Hall of Honor

America once had at least an implicit norm guiding wages

About a year ago, the induction of the late President Ronald Reagan into the US Department of Labor’s Hall of Honor frankly shocked many working people.

As the New York Times wrote in 2011: “More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.”

Ironically, PATCO had refused to endorse the Democratic Party because of “poor labor relations with the FAA (the employer of PATCO members) under the Carter administration and Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of the union and its struggle for better conditions during the 1980 election campaign.”

But when the union declared a strike in August 1981, “seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek, …Reagan declared the PATCO strike a “peril to national safety” and ordered them back to work under the terms of the Taft–Hartley Act.

“On August 5, following the PATCO workers’ refusal to return to work, Reagan fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life…” [Bill Clinton ended the lifetime ban.]

“The FAA had initially claimed that staffing levels would be restored within two years; however, it would take closer to ten years before the overall staffing levels returned to normal.

“In 2003, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking on the legacy of Ronald Reagan, noted: ‘far more importantly his action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.'”

“On March 1, 2018, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta inducted President Ronald Reagan ” – the “only president to lead a major union”, the Screen Actors Guild – “into the… Hall of Honor, which was established in 1988 to honor Americans whose distinctive contributions have elevated working conditions, wages, and overall quality of life for American families.

“As a worker, an advocate, and a public official, President Ronald Reagan worked to unleash opportunity and prosperity for all Americans… As President of the United States, he returned a sense of economic optimism to our nation that resulted in the creation of millions of jobs for the American people.”

This Brookings article suggests that the Reagan economic policy was at best a mixed bag. Fortune’s Labor Day 2015 story was more explicit:

“America once had at least an implicit norm guiding wages… From roughly the end of World War II through much of the 1970s, real (cost of living-adjusted) wages increased in tandem with gains in productivity.

“More recently, analysts have begun to recognize that the long-term decline in unions and worker bargaining power accounts for a sizable portion of the problem [of stagnant wages].

“It is no coincidence that the gap between wages and productivity began to expand dramatically around 1980, a turning point for collective bargaining.” Clearly, there were other factors, but the decline of unions, championed by the Labor Department’s honoree, Ronald Reagan, certainly contributed to that.

Movie review: BlacKkKlansman, a Spike Lee joint

The funniest thing surrounding BlacKkKlansman is the real Ron Stallworth telling Lester Holt of NBC News that the real David Duke called him recently.

After BlacKkKlansman, which the three of us saw at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, my daughter wanted to be held by her parents. I’m still not sure it was as a result of seeing the main story or it in combination with the coda. You may have already read about it, but I’m not sharing that.

The film starts off with a George Rockwell-like character (Alec Baldwin) setting the stage for the main, true story.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, Denzel’s son) becomes the first black police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Initially, he’s stuck in the records room, where he’s harassed by his colleagues. He’s then assigned to check out a speech by Kwame Ture, ne Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins). He seemingly befriends the head of the black student union, Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), who doesn’t know Ron’s real profession.

Ron then discovers the phone number of a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, er, The Organization. For the face-to-face meetings, Stallworth recruits his Jewish coworker, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who meets Walter (Ryan Eggold) and the somewhat unhinged Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Pääkkönen). Stallworth calls Klan headquarters in Louisiana to expedite his membership and speaks with David Duke (Topher Grace), the Grand Wizard, with whom he begins regular conversations on the phone.

The story tracks along at a pace, but I start feeling nervous when the story bounces back and forth between a Klan initiation rite and Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) telling painful stories of American history.

Director Spike Lee responded to criticism of BlacKkKlansman by Sorry to Bother You director Boots Riley. Riley took issue with Lee’s film, co-written by Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtel, for making a cop a hero against racism. Lee noted, correctly, “Black people are not a monolithic group.” I also noted in the movie Ron’s ambivalence when he was undercover investigating the black student union’s activities.

The funniest thing surrounding BlacKkKlansman is real Ron Stallworth telling Lester Holt of NBC News that the real David Duke called him to find out if Spike Lee’s Cannes-winning film was going to be fair to Duke. Highly recommended.

Aretha, QoS has died. Condolences to the world

“Through her compositions and unmatched musicianship, Aretha helped define the American experience.”

Aretha Initially, I wasn’t going to write anything about Aretha Franklin, who defined an era as the Queen of Soul, dying of pancreatic cancer at the age 76 on August 16. But there were SO many tributes, some of them very interesting.

This piece recommends a specific playlist. But it also shared biography I didn’t see over and over: “Aretha was quirky. She was afraid to fly. She wouldn’t stay in a building over eight stories high. On stage, she was the epitome of power and confidence, but she wrestled with personal struggles that could have felled a lesser oak.

“Her mother died when she was 10. She had her first child at the age of 12 —and we can only imagine what sadness hides behind that story. She ate and starved and fought with body issues and insecurities for decades, and suffered through emotionally and physically abusive relationships and marriages. Yet, like all great artists, somehow she channeled all that pain and passion into something the world has never heard before and will never experience again.”

If you didn’t know before her death, you probably now know Aretha she was born to a musical family. She had more than 100 singles on the Billboard charts. She’s one of the most decorated Grammy winners of all time, nominated 44 times, winning 18. She was an underrated pianist. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And she was a civil rights activist.

Barack Obama said on his Facebook Page:
“America has no royalty. But we do have a chance to earn something more enduring. Born in Memphis and raised in Detroit, Aretha Franklin grew up performing gospel songs in her father’s congregation. For more than six decades since, every time she sang, we were all graced with a glimpse of the divine.

“Through her compositions and unmatched musicianship, Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. She helped us feel more connected to each other, more hopeful, more human. And sometimes she helped us just forget about everything else and dance.

“Aretha may have passed on to a better place, but the gift of her music remains to inspire us all. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace. Michelle and I send our prayers and warmest sympathies to her family and all those moved by her song.”

The New York Times notes:
“Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ is the most empowering popular song ever. Could we have shown her more? Just a little bit, our critic writes.” I felt a little sorry for Otis Redding who wrote and recorded the song. But like no one, except maybe Johnny Cash, she would take an existing song and transform it to her own, making it anthemic.

Listen to:

Daydreaming

Let It Be

Aretha Franklin & Hugh Jackman – Somewhere – 59th Tony Awards – 2005

Obama’s Inauguration (2009)

Legendary Live Performances

Sweet Bitter Love, which was the first thing I played after hearing of her passing

Coverville 1230

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman – “Murphy Brown” and Aretha Franklin

What’s My Line? (taped 9/9/1974) Mystery Guest Aretha Franklin (at 12:30)

Dustbury wrote: “We are honored to have been alive when Aretha was in her prime, and centuries from now, people will envy us for having been so fortunate.”