Roger O Green

Mike Huber: Times Union herder of cats

I’ve seen a bunch of community bloggers come and go, and Mike’s always out there, shaking the trees for new folk, trying to create a diverse platform.

times union press credential Mike Huber — TU cat herder Mike Huber

Long before the Times Union came up with blogs for community members and staffers, it housed these websites for community organizations. I did a couple of them, including for my church at the time, and since that was in the last century, that should give you a timeframe. And the guy in charge was Mike Huber.

I started my own blog in 2005. When the TU was looking for community bloggers in 2006, he saw my track record of blogging every day for a year and tried to get me to participate with the TU, but I demurred.

He asked again the next year, and I pretty much ignored him. But it’s hard to ignore Mike, because, in his own quiet way, he can be a bulldog.

Finally, in 2008, I capitulated. Mike helped me figure out blogging on the WordPress platform – my personal blog at the time was on Blogspot – such as the time I had a picture of Dudley Do-Right, who I swear looks like Eliot Spitzer, which took up about six times the dimensions of the whole page. Mike got that right-sized for me.

I’ve seen a bunch of community bloggers come and go, and Mike’s always out there, shaking the trees for new folk, trying to create a diverse platform. I’ve witnessed some tension between some community bloggers and a couple of staff writers, or among community bloggers, or the community folks resenting that they provide free content while getting less and less from the TU, which must have been exhausting at times. with poor Huber, stuck in the middle, trying to make everyone happy. Occasionally, I probably gave him a harder time than he deserved once or twice.

I saw Mike by chance this past Friday in the building where I work. I almost didn’t bother him – he was sitting at a table, talking with someone – but Mike and I go WAY back. We’ve talked a LOT, especially in the early days, not just about the project at hand, but more philosophical musings, most recently when he gave me a ride to some blogging event.

O the other hand, I knew that Mike was my link to get more than a few things fixed on the Times Union website, which I’d come across more than occasionally.

Mike Huber, thanks for being your wise self. I wish you well in whatever you’re doing. Shannon Fromma, good luck; I understand a water gun is good at controlling unruly felines.

Murder in the virtual, or actual, degree

One can see the moment when the bullets strike his body, his face writhing in pain.

Arthur retaliates for me asking HIM the question by querying:
Should VR murder be banned? VR being virtual reality

I’ve been conflicted about, not just this most recent iteration of faux violence, but even decades ago, going back to the Vietnam war. It was believed by some, including me, that the weapons of war that look like video games were making killing too easy. Now it’s the common, “clean” way we kill our military targets.

So I wondered if the reverse were true, whether video games that simulated murder, was, in some way, honing an instinct for violence, at least for some people. My gamer friends, to a person, all said no, that the venting of faux aggression on a screen was merely a way to release tension and that there was no crossover to real life. Their certitude never made sense to me.

In 2015, an American Psychological Association task force report stated that “violent video gameplay is linked to increased aggression in players but insufficient evidence exists about whether the link extends to criminal violence or delinquency.”

The liberal in me has a live-and-let-live attitude towards these things. But the moralistic side of me is uncomfortable with this.

The truth is, though, is that I’ve been more disturbed by videos of real people dying on my TV screen. Watching Eric Garner being choked to death by a NYC policeman is so disturbing, it’s difficult to believe that it’s real.

Seeing Walter Scott running away, and, depending on who was editing it, seeing him get shot in the back by a South Carolina policeman, bullets clearly penetrating his body, was horrifying. That the shooter was not convicted was even worse.

Witnessing the dying body of Laquan McDonald as it is struck several times by bullets from Chicago cops was awful. If it were lighter outside, it would remind me of the dance of death of Sonny Corleone in the 1972 movie The Godfather.

Most recently, it was the death of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, who was murdered by a Turkish security person, that was horrifying to watch. One can see the moment when the bullets strike his body, his face writhing in pain.

All of these are available to be seen repeatedly on the Internet. I can’t help but wonder if it informs the public, or merely numbs it from these acts of death.

Music Throwback Saturday: For Sentimental Reasons

The Nat Cole version started up the charts earliest and charted highest

I was looking at the Billboard Top Ten bestsellers charts for January 18, 1947, 70 years ago, and there were not one or two, but FOUR different versions of (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons, the song written in 1945 by Ivory “Deek” Watson, former founding member of The Ink Spots, and William “Pat” Best, a founding member of The Four Tunes. “Best later stated that Watson had nothing to do with the creation of the song, but Watson maintained in his late 1960s autobiography that he and Best wrote the song together, lyrics and music respectively.”

The King Cole Trio Cole first hit the Top 10 on November 30, 1946, with Charlie Spivak (vocals by Jimmy Saunders), Eddy Howard, and Dinah Shore all joining him on the charts nearly two months later. Cole debuted at #8, fell off the charts for a week, and then was #5 for two weeks before dipping to #8 on December 28, right behind his own The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You).

In 1947: Jan 4: #6 Cole. Jan 11: #5 Cole. Jan 18: #4 Cole, #7 Spivak, #8 Howard, #10 Shore. Jan 25: #4 Cole, #6 Howard, #9 Spivak

Feb 1: #3 Cole, #6 Howard, #7 Spivak, #9 Shore. Feb 8: #4 Cole, #6 Shore, #8 Howard, #9 Spivak. Feb 15: #1 Cole, #8 Howard, #9 Shore. Feb 22: #4 Cole.

So the Cole version started up the charts earliest, charted highest (#1), and lasted longest (12 weeks)

But there was an alternate chart during this time that took into account not just sales but radio play and jukeboxes. On THAT chart, Cole was #1 for SIX weeks, Shore was #2 for two weeks, Howard got to #2, and Spivak to #5. Also, Ella Fitzgerald got to #8 and Art Kassel, with vocalist Jimmy Featherstone, to #15, all in the same time frame.

Listen to (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons

Nat King Cole (different recordings) HERE or HERE

Ella Fitzgerald and the Delta Rhythm Boys HERE or HERE

Eddy Howard HERE or HERE

Art Kassel HERE

Dinah Shore HERE or HERE

Charlie Spivak/Jimmy Saunders HERE or HERE

A time of great distress

Are we in a time of great distress? I was, right after the election for about a month. Then I hit a plateau. But now I see the previous guy doing his farewell tour, and I’m feeling the tension all over again.

Let the record show that I did not consent to this. Yet we are about to have a President:

*whose Cabinet picks are “a lethal combination of corporate bigwigs and military men with plenty of know-nothing about political affairs and diplomacy,” a group the National Council of Churches condemned as “morally inconsistent with Christian principles.”

*whose plan to avoid conflicts of interest is toothless

*who orders ambassadors to yank their kids out of school and come home ASAP in disregard of precedent even as taxpayers are subsiding two households for the Trumps so that their child doesn’t have to move from NYC to DC mid-school year

*who threatens the press for doing its job

*who petulantly taunts Schwarzenegger over Celebrity Apprentice ratings, a program for which he is an executive producer

*who is for sale

*whose DC Hotel has been tagged With $5 Million in Unpaid Worker Liens

*who now asks Congress, not Mexico, to pay for a border wall, but tweets that MX will pay for it eventually – good luck with that

*who has necessitated Internet Archive’s special archive

*who is Like King Henry VIII Revived — Without The Charm

*who is turning America into a Stan

*who prompted California to hire former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for legal counsel

and yet
* who complains that he is being mocked

I guess As We Enter 2017, Keep The Big Picture In Mind, and Here’s how we prepare to be ungovernable in 2017.

FLATUS is the regular target of Lawrence White, especially on the Russia thing.

I choose to think we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this…

But I won’t use the Make Your Face Great Again makeup tutorial. Instead of going to the inauguration, I could look at editorial cartoons.

Hey, TCM is airing A Face in the Crowd today at 5:45 p.m. ET- great film! – in honor of Patricia Neal’s birthday. It’s one of the films to get us through his Presidency, according to Chaz Ebert.

But what I REALLY need…

Music!

Seriously. Sara Bareilles imagines what President Obama must have been thinking about this past election and Donald Trump before November 8, but couldn’t say publicly. Leslie Odom, Jr. performs the song.

Rebecca Ferguson said she would have played the inauguration if she could have sung Strange Fruit; other suggestions for inauguration day, made by a coterie of folks:

Who Will Survive America? – Amiri Baraka
Mississippi Goddam – Nina Simone
Go Up Moses – Roberta Flack
You can’t bring me down – Suicidal Tendencies;
Alright -Kendrick Lamar
People Have the Power – Patti Smith
Fortunate Son – CCR
Cult of Personality – Living Color
(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang – Heaven 17
There Goes the Neighborhood – the Busboys

I won’t be boycotting L.L. Bean, but maybe I’ll drink some New Zealand wine for Arthur’s birthday.

Movie musical review: La La Land

The La La Land cast watched the MGM film Singin’ in the Rain every day for inspiration.

I really liked the movie La La Land, which the Wife, the Daughter and I saw in late December 2016 at the Spectrum in ALB. The opening credits promised CinemaScope! – I didn’t adequately explain to the Daughter why that made me laugh.

The opening number during a Los Angeles freeway traffic jam I enjoyed – I thought it was a hoot – and it was the most standard musical piece in the bunch. A smattering of the audience applauded. The choreographer was Mandy Moore, not the singer.

In the traffic snarl, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), nightclub keyboardist who aspires to play good jazz, and Mia (Emma Stone), a barista/would-be actress, meet not so cute, but they keep showing up in each other’s orbit. They eventually get together, but they both have dreams that might tear them apart.

One of the complaints – Ken Levine makes it, e.g., – is that Gosling and Stone can’t sing. I’ll grant you they don’t have traditionally big musical theater voices, but they are, at worst, serviceable, and are absolutely correct for this story. Gosling, who has a singing background, learned to play piano for the role, and he and Stone both learned dancing.

The tension in the third act is required to avoid a pat conclusion. There’s a song near the end – I think it’s called Audition – and I was surprised to discover a tear running from my eye. The ending is a satisfying payoff.

La La Land looked fabulous. The art direction and the cinematography were spectacular. The film was written and directed by Damien Chazelle, who did the same on 2014’s Whiplash; that movie’s Oscar winner, J.K. Simmons, plays a bit part here.

John Legend also stars as a musician from Sebastian’s past is in the film, and HE learned how to play guitar for the role. There is some fine jazz in this film as it veers away from the traditional musical. It would be easy to predict a number of Oscar nominations for this wonderful picture.

One of the snarkier reviews suggested that it was “a well-intended tribute to the fabulous MGM musicals of the great Vincente Minnelli, made by people who have never seen one. I don’t know about the Minnelli pics, but Gosling claimed the cast watched the MGM film Singin’ in the Rain every day for inspiration, and he spoke fondly of the late Debbie Reynolds.

One last thing – I swear La La Land received a PG-13 rating, rather than PG, for the use of a single f-bomb.