Roger O Green

V is for Voting

I will have a plethora of opportunities to cast my ballot, at two different venues.

It’s a bit too much.

I am a huge supporter of the right to vote. But, in the city of Albany, I’ll have WAY too many opportunities in 2016. And except for the first item, this would also apply to the rest of the state.

*High school referendum revote: February 9. Polls Open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Vote at the elementary school.

*Presidential Primary: April 19. Polls Open 12 noon-9 p.m. Vote at the library.

The polling hours, not incidentally, are a source of irritation among some of us in upstate New York. Nine hours represent the shortest number of hours of any state in the country. Meanwhile, the polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., the GREATEST number of hours in the country, if you live in New York City or the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, and Erie; all are downstate, except for Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo.

Also, for already registered voters, any change to party enrollment was to have been requested by October 9th, 2015 in order for it to have gone into effect and be applicable for ANY primary election occurring in 2016. The deadline for new voter registrations was March 25th. This meant that you were a registered voter in 2015, but not enrolled as either a Democrat or Republican, then decided in November 2015, that you wanted to vote in five months for Bernie or Hillary or Ted or the Donald or John Kasich, you were out of luck.

New York has, by a period of at least three months, the most restrictive access to the primary ballot.

*City School District of Albany’s budget vote: May 17. Polls open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Vote at the elementary school.

Also includes the library trustees and the library budget, but NOT the school board, which is elected in November.

*Federal Primary Election: June 28. Polls Open 12 noon-9 p.m. Vote at the library.

Member, United States Senate (1)
Member, U.S. House of Representatives, 20th Congressional District

There has been a push to combine at least the Presidential primary with that for other federal candidates, or the non-Presidential federal primary with the state and local contests. OBVIOUSLY, that hasn’t worked out yet.

(As it turns out, I have nothing to vote for here, but others in the state will.)

*Primary Election: September 13. Polls Open 12 noon- 9 p.m. Vote at the library.

These may not all be contested, but these are the offices that could be up:

New York State Senate
Justice of the Supreme Court, 3rd JD (2)
Member, New York State Assembly
District Attorney (County) – 4-year term
County Court Judge (1) – 10-year term
Albany City Court Judge (1) – 10-year term

*General Election: November 8. Polls Open 6 a.m.- 9 p.m. Vote at the library.

As you can see, I will have a plethora of opportunities to cast my ballot, at two different venues. If there were contests at each of these levels, that’d be SIX times I’d vote; alas, it’s only five, merely tying my personal record from 1976, two of which were school budget votes.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Sylvester Stallone is 70

When The Wife and The Daughter went to Philadelphia in in late April 2016, they made the pilgrimage to the site.

I remember seeing this commercial for The Lord of Flatbush, and even remember a 15-second version of the ad; I could sing that iteration of the theme song, and even the fact that the movie was rated PG.

Flatbush was a 1974 movie starring Henry Winkler (3rd from the left), released on 1 May, which, oddly, I never saw. He was looking very much like Arthur Fonzarelli, a minor character turned into a breakout star on a TV show called Happy Days later that year.

Another actor in that film was Sylvester Stallone (2nd from the left). I must have seen him in Bananas as Subway Thug #1 or in Klute as a Discotheque Patron. He was uncredited in both of those 1971 films.

The first movie I saw Sly Stallone where I knew his name was Rocky in 1977. Not only did he play the boxer Rocky Balboa, who gets a chance to fight the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed, but he also wrote the story. I watched the film at a movie theater in Charlotte, NC with my mother. She liked it too.

Stallone was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Rocky was eventually “inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum.”

The only other films of Stallone’s I’ve ever seen involve him playing Balboa. Rocky II (1979) I liked, Rocky III (1982), with Mr. T was OK, but IV (1985), with Dolph Lundgren and Brigitte Nielsen, soon to be the second of Stallone’s three wives, I thought was schlock.

“Stallone’s use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum.” When The Wife and The Daughter went to Philadelphia in late April 2016, they made the pilgrimage to the site, though The Daughter probably didn’t get the significance.

“It was announced on December 7, 2010, that Stallone was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the non-participant category.”

Except for his voicework in Antz (1998), I never saw another Stallone film until Creed (2015), which was surprisingly good. Nope, no Rambo or Expenditures franchises in my viewing queue, most of which he also wrote.

My admiration for Stallone comes in part from this: “Complications his mother suffered during labor forced her obstetricians to use two pairs of forceps during his birth; misuse of these accidentally severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of Stallone’s face. As a result, the lower left side of his face is paralyzed – including parts of his lip, tongue, and chin – an accident which has given Stallone his snarling look and slightly slurred speech.” He’s a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for.

Happy birthday to Sylvester Stallone.

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome in 1984.

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942. When I was growing up, my grandfather McKinley told me that being the heavyweight champ in boxing was a most notable achievement.

This brash young man out of Louisville, KY, named Cassius Clay, who had won the Light Heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, and tossed his medal into the river, because being an Olympic champion, did not inure one from racism. (Or he just lost it.) He was an underdog against reigning champ Sonny Liston.

Most thought his pre-fight chatter that he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” was just talk. But he beat Liston on February 25, 1964, in Miami, becoming the youngest boxer to take the title from a reigning heavyweight champion. His new name was announced shortly after that fight.

Ali was stripped of his title in 1967 for his refusal to be drafted into the Army service. He was denied a boxing license, first in the state of New York, and eventually by every state. He was convicted on June 20 of that year of draft evasion. He was not allowed to “fight from March 1967 to October 1970—from ages 25 to almost 29—as his case worked its way through the appeal process. In 1971, the US Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a unanimous 8-0 ruling (Thurgood Marshall abstained from the case).”

After Losing three and a half years in boxing, Ali had his first fight against champ Joe Frazier, held at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Ali suffered his first professional defeat.

When he defeated Frazier in a rematch a couple of years later, after Frazier had lost the crown to George Foreman, Ali regained the title against Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30, 1974. In February 1978, he lost to young Leon Spinks in Las Vegas, but won a rematch a little over a year later, making him the first heavyweight champion to win the belt three times.

It was Ali’s name change, fighting to have it accepted against the conventions of the day, and his successful opposition to the Vietnam war, more than his boxing, that most interested me about the man.

Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome in 1984. Yet he remains one of the best-known, and beloved, persons in the world, as he engaged in philanthropy, “involved in raising funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona; supported the Special Olympics and the Make a Wish Foundation among other organizations, and has traveled to numerous countries… to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing countries. In 2005, Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush.”

I was saddened, but not surprised that he died this weekend at the age of 74.

LINKS

The late Ed Bradley’s interview with Ali on 60 Minutes in 1996

Michael Rivest: The greatest is Gone

Ali on the wall.

Music Throwback Saturday: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile

The Smile, Darn You, Smile cartoon was redone, and colorized, in 1995.

For this one, blame fillyjonk. She had a post featuring, among other things, Billy Cotton singing Smile, Darn Ya, Smile from 1931, a song written by Charles O’Flynn, Jack Meskill, and Max Rich.

Also in that post, from that year, a character named Foxy – looking not dissimilar to Mickey Mouse – in an animated feature with the same name as the song. It was a Merrie Melodies cartoon, a producer I recognize as later featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and others.

From Toonzone: This cartoon is very similar to Walt Disney’s Oswald the Rabbit cartoon Trolley Troubles (1927) [where “Oswald is the conductor on a runaway trolley] which [supervising director Rudolf] Ising likely worked on. Disney Swipe: In both Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! and in Disney’s The Opry House (1929), a fat hippo is deflated with a pin.”

The Smile, Darn Ya, Smile cartoon was redone, and colorized, in 1995. “The re-drawn version is never animated at 24 fps (as many scenes in the original are), but only with 12 drawings/second.”

As fillyjonk noted, the song “was used (at least the chorus was) at the very end of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (when the Toons get their happy ending, after all).” It was also recorded by several others.

LINKS

Read the fillyjonk post

Read IMBD of the 1931 cartoon

Watch the side-by-side comparison of the 1931 and 1995 cartoons

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile by Ben Selvin, which hit #14 on the Billboard charts in 1931 HERE or HERE or HERE

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Percival Mackay & His Kit-Kat Band (1931)

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Joe Morgan and his Palais D’or Orchestra (1931)

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Sammy Davis, Jr., featuring tap dancing

Watch the end of the Roger Rabbit movie

Listen to soundtrack recording of Smile, Darn Ya, Smile from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The lyrics

Smile, darn ya, smile
You know this great world is a good world after all
Smile, darn ya, smile
And right away watch lady luck pay you a call
Things are never black as they are painted
Time for you and joy to get acquainted
So make life worthwhile
Come on and smile, darn ya, smile

Mark Lane

Dick Gregory ran for President in 1968, with Mark Lane as his VP running mate.

I don’t know when it was, at all, though it was in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I was in an airport, probably on my way to Charlotte, NC, or San Diego, CA, but it was neither of those cities’ airports or in Albany.

I was reading the New York Times, maybe the Sunday paper. The cover story was about a guy named Mark Lane about to be indicted for something or other. Then who should I see but Mark Lane?

I knew who he was, mostly from his contrarian views on the John F. Kennedy assassination.mHe believed the CIA was involved in the murder, producing a thesis casting doubt on the lone-assassin theory – “and even whether Oswald had actually been involved in the crime.” When the Warren Report summaries came out in the local newspaper, I cut them out and pasted them in a three-ring binder – I may STILL Have this – so I was a JFK assassination junkie.

Mark Lane was also involved in civil rights activism. I recognized him right away, and I’m not sure I needed the picture in the paper. Somehow we got to talking.

One of the things we discussed was how I tried to talk to my parents, especially my father, NOT to vote for Dick Gregory for President, who had Lane as his VP running mate, in 1968. My father was keen on voting for a black man, the comedian-activist Gregory. I insisted that Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate, was too dangerous and that they should vote for Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat, instead of throwing away his vote. For sure, I STILL have the button pictured.

(How my folks actually voted, I’ll never know, of course. I’ve “thrown away” my vote once or twice subsequent to that year when I was not yet eligible to cast a ballot. That topic is extremely hot in 2016.)

Mark Lane was very generous in hearing about my politicking against him. I’m sure we at least mentioned JFK, but not his then-current legal troubles. Nor did we talk about his peripheral involvement in the Jonestown massacre, since I was unaware of it until much later.

Mark Lane died on May 11 at the age of 89. I was going to write about him, then it slipped my mind, but Shooting Parrots reminded me.