Roger O Green

Mike Nichols

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed.

I don’t what surprised me more: that our college undergraduate intern knew who Mike Nichols was (he’s a film buff and LOVES The Graduate) or a guy I know in this thirties who knows a lot of stuff but didn’t recognize the name.

When I was growing up, it seemed that Mike Nichols and Elaine May were on the TV talk shows and variety shows all the time. This followed 306 performances on Broadway of An Evening with… for nine months in 1960 and 1961. “The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.” Here’s Nichols and May on the Jack Paar Show.

Nichols then got into directing plays on Broadway, winning several Tony Awards for Best Director of the original productions of Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, among others. He also won Tonys for producing Annie, and later, for directing Spamalot and a revival of Death of a Salesman.

He got into directing movies, and his first attempt was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Watch the dance scene. His second directing attempt was The Graduate, for which he won his only Oscar. I’ve seen that movie, plus Catch-22, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Charlie Wilson’s War, plus Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge, the latter three which he also produced. Here’s the hit song from Working Girl, Let the River Run by Carly Simon. Read Mike Nichols’ five rules for filmmaking.

Nichols’ two Emmys came from fairly serious fare: the TV movie Wit (2001) starring Emma Thompson, and the TV miniseries Angels in America from 2003. This means he is one of a dozen people to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003.

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed on Thursday morning. Usually, I watch two minutes of the CBS Morning News at 7 a.m., but the DVR was stuck on the ABC affiliate. The lead was about the death, a story that didn’t show up on my New York Times and LA Times news feed until a half-hour later. The news was released, after the story on the air, by the ABC News president. Diane Sawyer, former GMA and World News anchor, and Nichols’ wife of 26 years, apparently arranged an exclusive for her network, noted not as criticism but just an observation.

The GMA folks – heck, EVERYONE who knew him, such as Meryl Streep – said he was always “the smartest and most brilliant person in the room,” rather like his Nichols’ third cousin twice removed on his mother’s side, scientist Albert Einstein. But he also a wonderful raconteur, and I feel as though I would have enjoyed being in his presence.

Mike Nichols died of a heart attack a couple of weeks after his 83rd birthday.

How will I do on World Hello Day?

Because people have these new devices, it’s become impossible even to ask them what time it is.

Friday, November 21 is World Hello Day. “Anyone can participate… simply by greeting ten people. This demonstrates the importance of personal communication for preserving peace.”

This, historically, would be an action that was right up my alley. Unfortunately, I find it increasingly difficult to say hello to people.

Most of the folks I see each day are on the bus. Invariably, they have devices stuck in their ears and/or in front of their faces. Even people I know in passing don’t know I’m speaking with them.

The change is fairly recent. I’ve been riding the bus to Corporate (frickin’) Woods for nine years, and this simply was not a problem then. I was involved with any number of conversations with people who were not particularly known to me, though you start developing “bus relationships.”

These days, the bus is full, yet I feel alone. I use my own devices, not just because I really need to use them, but almost in self-defense.

Because people have these new devices, it’s become impossible even to ask them what time it is. Not so long ago, the universal symbol for requesting the time is to point to your wrist, where your watch might have been. But because the watch is passe, the symbolism it represented is likewise diminished.

Still, I’ll make the effort to say hello, if only because the need is greater than ever.

Some time ago, I put together a CD of Hello songs. LISTEN to a few:
Judy Collins – Hello, Hooray
Todd Rundgren – Hello It’s Me
Sopwith Camel – Hello, Hello
Oasis – Hello
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Only peripherally related sidebar: one can’t use an LED bulb to visually represent an idea. It has to be an incandescent bulb, which is largely banned in the United States.

The Great American Smokeout 2014

I was thrilled that the drug store CVS stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 retail stores as of October 1, a decision announced back in January.

On a regular basis, the US Surgeon General offers reports on smoking and tobacco use. 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of that first report in January 1964 that linked smoking with lung cancer.

This year’s report links smoking to:
Coronary heart disease and stroke
Lung diseases such as COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis
Cancer of the –
•Bladder
•Bone marrow and blood
•Cervix
•Esophagus
•Kidneys and ureters
•Larynx (voice box)
•Lungs
•Mouth, nose, and throat
•Pancreas
•Stomach
•Trachea
Infertility for both men and women
For babies:
◦Preterm (early) delivery
◦Stillbirth (death of the baby before birth)
◦Low birth weight
◦Sudden infant death syndrome (known as SIDS or crib death)
Lower bone density (weaker bones) than women who never smoked and are at greater risk for broken bones.
Health of teeth and gums and can cause tooth loss.1
Cataracts (clouding of the eye’s lens that makes it hard for you to see).1
*Diabetes is harder to control.

I was thrilled that the drug store CVS stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its more than 7,600 retail stores as of October 1, a decision, the LA Times noted when it reported this back in January:

that would make it the first national pharmacy company to cease tobacco sales. The move… comes after years of pressure from public health advocates and medical providers, who have urged retailers to make tobacco products and advertising less available, particularly to children and teenagers.

It also marks a major turn for one of the country’s biggest healthcare companies. CVS Caremark is the second-largest drugstore chain behind Walgreen Co. and has been steadily increasing its business, providing medical care through its pharmacists and through a growing number of urgent care clinics at its retail locations.

There is help for quitting. An ex-smoker friend of mine suggested Quitnet, but whatever works will make your life longer. And better.

Today is the Great American Smokeout.
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Read Mark Evanier’s Tales of My Mother #19.

Why I didn’t text

I’m still a digital immigrant – heck, just off the boat – when it comes to texting.

My old cellphone died recently, a flip phone that totally broke in half, and would no longer charge. I’d had it only about five years, or maybe seven. I KNEW there was texting capacity on it but even though I READ THE MANUAL, I couldn’t figure out how to type words on a telephone keypad. I played with the # and * keys and got different, inconsistent results.

Anyway, I read RTM for the new phone; same thing: no information, assuming I’m SUPPOSED to know. But I don’t. But I Facebook IMed my old friend (and by old, I’ve known her since kindergarten) Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol, who wasn’t born when I went to kindergarten.) I let her know that I could RECEIVE a text, but that I didn’t know how to SEND one.

She sent me this link http://phonekeyboard.com/alphabetmode.htm:

The Phone Keyboard uses the phone in the same standard way. Pressing the desired number keys [1] through [9] and a [0] still produces the numbers 1 – 9 and 0. Pressing the left asterisk [*] key once exits the standard number mode and enters a 2 key Alphabet Mode. Letters are produced in the Alphabet Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9], followed by one of three position keys: the “left” asterisk [*] key for the left letter, the “middle” zero [0] key for the middle letter or the “right” pound [#] key for the right letter…

Pressing the left asterisk [*] key 2 times exits the standard number mode and enters a Shiftable Alphabet Mode. Letters are produced in the Shiftable Alphabet Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9], followed by one of three position keys: the “left” asterisk [*] key for the left letter, the “middle” zero [0] key for the middle letter or the “right” pound [#] key for the right letter…

Pressing the left asterisk [*] key 3 times exits the standard number mode and enters a Multi-Tap Mode. Letters are produced in the Multi-Tap Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9] once, twice or three times….

This explains everything, including how I kept shifting from mode to mode without intending to do so. Now I text. Not a lot, mind you, to friend Carol and my sisters. And I showed The Wife how to do so on her phone that’s about the same vintage as my old one.

BTW, I have a plan that costs $20 per three months, but I get charged more if I exceed the allotted number of minutes/units/whatever. I have been SO not reaching the threshold that, after I got the new phone ($12 off the balance), I still had $170 left. Texting will probably eat into that, but not sure how much.

And I’m still a digital immigrant – heck, just off the boat – when it comes to texting. Now that I know HOW to do it, can’t imagine spending hours on it. Then again, a decade ago, I couldn’t have imagined blogging every day. So what do I know?

Also, I DON’T have a smartphone yet. It’s not the cost of the phone that bugs me, it’s the cost of the monthly service. I considered doing so when I got this new phone, but then they started talking about “picking a plan,” and I bailed.

I must be cheap; I see this TV ad for a smartphone for ONLY $150 per month for four people, and that’s supposedly a good deal; not on OUR budget, it’s not! Well, maybe when the Daughter’s a little older… (Sound of blogger kicking and screaming.)

http://wronghands1.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/important-texts/ used under CC license: by-nc-nd/

By virtue of our highly superior brains

We’re just too darn smart.

Here’s a link that I was going to use for my July Rambling except I forgot. OK, I didn’t forget, but it got buried in my e-mails: I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Seniors’ moments vindicated.

Ever walk into a room, stop halfway in, and wonder why you were there..in that room?

Sure you have.

Or forgotten a word for a few minutes? Even a whole phrase?!

These times are laughingly called “seniors moments” or “brain farts” and they happen to most older people. They are, however, damned annoying and embarrassing when they happen…

You begin to worry about dementia.. how long do you have left before one of your loving relatives calls your doctor and tries to have you committed to a “old folks home” or the funny farm? How long before you can’t remember what your name is?

Well, worry no more.

The story is based on a post in the New Old Age Blog in the New York Times, citing an article in Topics in Cognitive Science, titled… I just read it and I still don’t remember it. Oh, yeah: The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning.

The bottom line is that we of a “certain age” know so much, generally, more than younger people, “simply by virtue of having been around longer,” an older brain has to go through more stuff – suddenly, Black is Black by Los Bravos pops into my head from a K-Tel Records ad! – to retrieve information. Factor that in and “the aging ‘deficits’ largely disappeared.”

In other words, we’re just too darn smart!

Next time you get some snark from some (relative) youngster, let him or her know, “Hey, it’s just a curse of my superior wisdom!” Or whatever sentence you can memorize easily without blocking other data.
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Emoticons are changing how our brains function. (But maybe in good ways.)

LISTEN to The Police – Too Much Information