Roger O Green

Susan Sarandon turns 70

Bull Durham is one of my two favorite baseball movies,

Susan Sarandon remains interesting in her 70th year, from her footwear choices to becoming a magnet for ageist comments when she dressed sexily at the SAG awards.

Then there her political comments. As a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter, she suggested that voting for Donald Trump would bring about the revolution, for which she’s been labeled a privileged fool, with some noting that the rest of us would be screwed if that should happen. Hey, maybe she’s right. And she made it clear that she wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton just because she’s a woman.

Here’s the list of films I saw featuring Susan Sarandon. But for everyone listed, there’s another I intended to see: Atlantic City, The Witches of Eastwick, Lorenzo’s Oil, The Great Waldo Pepper, to name a few.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – I saw this in a theater, but it was at least a half dozen years later. Many folks in the theater had the appropriate gear, which I did not know about until I got there. Sarandon, of course, played Janet. I admit my affection for this movie is tied in part to my love for the song Time Warp; the bass line harmony is right in my range.

Pretty Baby (1978) – Brooke’ Shields’ youthful nudity was so much the issue that I forgot Sarandon was in this.

Bull Durham (1988) – one of my two favorite baseball movies, along with Field of Dreams. She plays Annie Savoy, who knows what she wants in life. I was truly sad that, at the time of the movie’s 15th anniversary in 2003, Sarandon and costar/beau Tim Robbins were invited, then uninvited, to The Baseball Hall of Fame’s celebration of the film, citing Robbins’ opposition to the Iraq war. This despite promises by both Robbins and Sarandon not to politicize the event.

Thelma & Louise (1991) – she was Louise Sawyer, another take-charge character. BTW, I have the soundtrack to this film.

Bob Roberts (1992) – starring Tim Robbins; don’t specifically remember Sarandon

The Client (1994) – saw this on TV; it almost NEVER sticks as much in my mind

Little Women (1944) – a very different role as Mrs. March, but always a strong persona

Dead Man Walking (1995) – my absolutely favorite Sarandon role. Especially Sister Helen Prejean face-to-face with the doomed Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), which was oddly sensual. I was against the death penalty before, but this enforced it. I have THIS soundtrack too.

James and the Giant Peach (1996) – she was the voice of Spider

Stepmom (1998) – “A terminally ill woman (Sarandon) has to settle on her former husband (Ed Harris)’s new lover, who will be their children’s stepmother (Julia Roberts).” This was treacle, saved by its performances, and I totally ate it up. (Oddly enough, see Relatable Breakup Song)

Cradle Will Rock (1999) – a bit preachy, about proletariat artists dealing with capitalists Nelson Rockefeller and William Randolph Hearst

Enchanted (2007) – even in animated form, I knew who was playing the wicked Queen Narissa

Robot & Frank (2012) – I liked this movie with Frank Langella, with Sarandon as a librarian with a job in the near future

Plus I saw her on TV shows such as Friends and 30 Rock.

WAY back in 2009, I put together a list of my 20 favorite actresses, and naturally, she was one. I suspect she was, and is, one of my top five picks.

M is for music that moves me

But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

I experience this all of the time, ALL of the time. I find music that moves me in a most profound way: What Happens in the Brain When Music Causes Chills?

Once, I would have been surprised that EVERYONE did not experience this until I saw this article from a couple of years ago: The Actual Neuroscience Behind Why Some People Don’t Like Music, something called musical anhedonia.

But the subtitle of the story about that first story is “The brains of people who get chills when the right song comes on are wired differently than others.” So it could be all of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys or the guitar solo at the end of Let’s Go Crazy by Prince, that will take me to another plane.

I saw the movie West Side Story when I was 10 or 11, and it was the music bit at the very end – go to the 4-minute mark here – that absolutely devastates me EVERY TIME I hear it. EVERY TIME. Of course, this comes from what takes place before.

I’ve described in detail how the Adagio in G Minor, attributed to Albinoni leaves me weeping, EVERY TIME.

I was really taken by 10,000 singing Beethoven – Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy). What it lacks in polish, it more than makes up for in pure love.

Sometimes, it’s a lyric that will combine with the music. Listen to Finlandia, for instance:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

In what we call classical music, particularly in organ music, it’s often the chords that resolve the piece that feel like the power chords at the end of a rock song. Listen to Digital Fox, organ music of the late Virgil Fox on a CD I own. Note the endings of most of the pieces, but especially J.S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (0:00:00), J. Alain: Litanies (0:38:05), and C.M. Widor: Toccata from the Fifth Symphony (0:42:25), which I first heard at my graduation from library school.

This list of music that moves me doesn’t even scratch the surface.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Baptized again

I knew saying “yes” would have been the easier tactic.

Continuing on my theological journey:

After I left NYC, and my sister’s sofa, I spent a few months in the fall of 1977 back in New Paltz on yet another davenport. I was making far too little money tutoring political science students, most of whom were having difficulty because 1) they hadn’t read the books, and 2) because they lacked the fundamental understanding of civics.

Around Christmas, I went to visit and ended up crashing with, my friend Mark and his then-wife Peggy in Schenectady, a city in the Albany metro. Starting in February 1978, I got a job as a teller in the Albany Savings Bank in downtown Albany, where Peggy worked. It was in the very building I work in presently, which now has a Citizens Bank and a Starbucks.

I worked there only a month, before quitting, partly because I really hated the job, and mostly because I got a job at the Schenectady Arts Council as a bookkeeper that I not only enjoyed more but made more money ($8200 v. $6000/year). At the bank, I had more cash in my drawer than I made annually, before taxes.

As I was leaving ASB, I had asked out a coworker, one of the most gorgeous women I had ever seen in person, a mixture of Brazilian, and something else. I hadn’t gone out with ANYONE from mid-1975 through the end of 1977. But being reasonably employed had emboldened me. She never replied in the brief time I was there.

After I got my new job, though, she contacted me and asked me if I wanted to go to church with her. Hmm. Well, she WAS a nice woman, and did I mention she was beautiful?

One early Sunday afternoon in March, I was picked up by some church folks in some vehicle – sardines have more room – and we traveled to a church in Troy, another city in the Albany metro.

Martin Luther King Jr. had talked about Sunday morning being the most segregated time of the week in America. That critique did not apply to this non-denominational (I think) church. It was a LONG service with much talking and LOTS of music, some of it spontaneous, very much in the black church tradition.

At some point, the pastor went around to every person in the congregation and asked if he or she had been saved; he said it more eloquently than that, but that was the gist. And the answer was either “Yes, praise Jesus!” or “Thank you.” Now I had my born-again experience about 15 years earlier, and I had come from a tradition that said, “Once saved, always saved.” Also, I knew saying “yes” would have been the easier tactic.

I said, “thank you.”

After he’d spoken to well over 200 people in the congregation, he called upon the three or four of us to come forward. A bunch of people, including the beautiful woman, lay hands on me, and the others, and said, “GEE-zus.” Actually it more like:

GEEEE-zus!

One of us heathens started blathering something or other, and they whisked him away. Likewise with another one.

Then my lips started moving, saying things I did not initiate, in a language (or gibberish) that I did not understand. “HALLELUJAH!” the congregants all shouted. And they took me downstairs from the sanctuary, gave me essentially a large sheet to change into, I took off my outerwear, put on the sheet, and experienced a full-immersion baptism in a large tub.

I got a ride back to Mark and Peggy’s house, and they said I’d hear from them. But I never did. The next day, a large block of ice smashed the roof of Peggy’s VW bug. Life went on, as though this….thing…hadn’t happened. Whatever it was that happened.

Some years later, I gave a sermonette at the Methodist church I belonged to, and I told this story, probably with less emphasis on the pretty young woman. The message was about follow-through, and calling back or reaching out somehow when folks express interest.

Was I speaking in tongues? Maybe. Possibly. I have no idea. But It’s interesting how little lasting impact it had on my theological development.

And just a few weeks ago, without looking for it, I came across the baptismal certificate.

Music Throwback Saturday: The Horse

In the heyday of AM radio as music powerhouses in the 1960s, the DJ would talk through the instrumental.

My search for Soulful Strut and Grazing in the Grass led me to another horn-driven instrumental, The Horse by Cliff Nobles & Co. I remember this title and recognize the song, but I would not have been able to put them together.

Like Soulful Strut, it is derived from another song, Love Is All Right, with the vocals of Cliff Nobles stripped. In fact, the instrumental was originally the B-side, but, improbably, went to #2 on both the pop and soul charts in 1968. The “& Co.” became MFSB.

The Horse reportedly still is played in today’s school marching bands.

It occurred to me that I had trouble remembering instrumentals’ titles because, in the heyday of AM radio as music powerhouses in the 1960s, the DJ would talk through the instrumental. He’d say, “Coming up at the top of the hour, the new hit by the Beatles! Plus the Stones, Aretha, the Rascals, and much more.” But he’d not announce the wordless tracks.

Whereas the instrumental Classical Gas, written and performed by Mason Williams, I remember extremely well, because I saw this exactly three-minute song accompany a video on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which he was a comedy writer. It went to #2 on the pop charts for two weeks, #3 on the Adult Contemporary Charts, in 1968, and won a Grammy for best pop instrumental.

Listen to

Love Is All Right – Cliff Nobles HERE or HERE

The Horse – Cliff Nobles & Co. HERE or HERE

Classical Gas – Mason Williams HERE or HERE

September rambling #2: R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Why Marvel movie music is so forgettable

Climate change illo is so perfect, it’s undeniable

Dying to be me! Anita Moorjani at TEDx BayArea

It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility

Self Care For People of Color After Psychological Trauma

No touching. No human contact. The hidden toll on jail inmates who spend months or years alone in a 7×9 foot cell

The Smithsonian’s African American museum – a monument to respectability politics; hmm, I am a charter member

Forehead Tittaes / Marion Cotillard and Pinksourcing With Kristen Bell

Homeless, Looking for Work

Childhood lost: Schooling a workforce and Naviance not so transparent- and cooking up data starting in kindergarten?

Now I Know: Charles Bernard’s Unexpected Vacation and Avast, Ye Groceries! and The Secret, Broken Language of Fire Hydrants and The Dangerous-Sounding Threat of DHMO and A Fishy Story

Is Inbreeding Really That Bad?

It occurs to me that I ALWAYS knew who Arnold Palmer was. From watching him and his army of fans on TV in my grandfather’s apartment, just upstairs from mine, to the epic golf battles between him and Jack Nicklaus, to an iced tea with lemonade drink named for him, to ads for prescription drugs. Arnold Palmer was 87. Here’s Olin and Palmer Team Remembered in Silver; Spencer Olin is a distant cousin of my wife’s

R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis, the “Godfather of Gore”, Has Passed Away at 87; Our business library had a business book of his, called Big Profits from Small Budget Advertising, from 1992, and when we deaccessioned the tome, I scooped it up. So it’s now in the same office at home as my copy of FantaCo Enterprises’ The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and His World of Exploitation Films, autographed by HGL “to my friend Roger,” also signed by coauthors Daniel Krogh and John McCarty at FantaCon 1983

The Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, one of Major League Baseball’s top pitchers, was killed in a boating accident; he was 24 and had a great backstory

Bill Nunn, Who Played Radio Raheem in ‘Do the Right Thing,’ Dies at 63, which is my age; Love – Hate: Do the Right Thing

Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer-winning playwright and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ author, dies at 88

The three “tireds”

‘Rock star’ Baltimore librarian makes history at Library of Congress

See Amazing Images of American Sikhs

5 Rules for Hosting a Crappy Dinner Party (and Seeing Your Friends More Often)

There’s a movement afoot to name an intersection in Los Angeles for the late Forrest J Ackerman

Tom Hanks Has Made a Fortune Bringing Your Travel Nightmares to Life

Vin Scully is a voice for the ages and The national pastime continues to endure and Ken Levine’s tribute; we’re talkin’ baseball.

History of the Volkswagen and especially its groundbreaking advertising

48 Hour Film Project 2016 – SUPr, featuring Rebecca Jade (niece #1)

THE TRUST BOOK ONE: SILENT SCREAM Kickstarter. Goal met, stretch goal sought. Dennis Webster, Bill Anderson, Gabriel Rearte and Laurie E. Smith bring you the Roaring Twenties like you’ve never seen them before

Essay on lettering in comic books

Dominoes, and I don’t mean the bad pizza