Roger O Green

Proximate disaster

A blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people

When I read about wildfires in San Diego County, California, or flooding in Mecklenberg County (Charlotte), North Carolina, I contact the appropriate sister to check out if she’s being affected. Usually, the answer is no, though one year, a fire was uncomfortably close.

They do the same for me. Flash floods five miles from Albany made the national news, but the actual storm missed me.

I was thinking about this because my friend Karen, who I’ve only known since 1958, has been in Bhutan and Nepal. Cyclone HudHud created some landslides in Nepal. So when we heard that a blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people, her friends, including me, were concerned.

She explained on Facebook(!), where I purloined her picture, that, according to the local paper The Himalayan, “rescue missions are underway on Huinchili,” one of the mountains visible to her on the trek. Fortunately, she went no higher than 7000 feet; she did have to endure hiking uphill for six hours in “incessant raw rain.” But the snow was at much higher elevations, causing the avalanches.

Some guy in Albany riding a bike got shot, apparently in the head, at 9:40 a.m. on Thursday. I found this more than a little unsettling. When I started riding my bike to the choir that evening, I realized that I just didn’t want to be out; totally irrational, I know, but nevertheless true.

Mistakes were made in treating Ebola in the United States. The second nurse who got infected should not have been allowed to fly. I’d bet money, and I seldom do, that at least one of the two US nurses who got infected were exposed when they took off the protective suits.

But all the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, that he, e.g., wanted the disease to come to the US to get back at white people shred both common sense and common decency.

Time passages

I’ve read old journals/diaries of mine from the 1970s and 1980s, and much of it is cringeworthy.

I read this book last year, Thinking in Numbers, by Daniel Tammet, and discovered that I had something in common with American philosopher William James, who noted that “the same space of time seems shorter as we grow older.” He cites a mathematical explanation by contemporary French mathematician Paul Janet, who noted:

our experience of time is proportional to our age. For a ten-year-old child, one year represents one-tenth of his existence, whereas for a man of fifty, the same year equates only to one-fiftieth (2 percent). The older man’s year will thus seem to elapse five times faster than the child’s…

I came to that same conclusion at least thirty years ago; it’s all math.

Someone on Facebook noted that the TV series The Twilight Zone – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Where Is Everybody?” was presented 55 years ago this month, October 2, 1959. Another commented, “I can hardly believe it.” This response seemed strange. Things that happened 50 years ago (Beatles, ML King, Vietnam) feel like a long time ago to me.

Whereas, when the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the TV show Friends made Jaquandor feel old, that seems more understandable to me. (Not that he’s old, but that he feels so.) Because looking back 20 years doesn’t feel like twenty years when you’re over 40; it’s all math.

Friends isn’t that chronological linchpin for me, as I watched it only about half the time. But the band Nirvana is; the band, with Dave Grohl as its final drummer, just before stardom, got together 24 years ago. Now THAT makes ME feel old.

Looking back can be kind of uncomfortably yucky. Ken Levine listened to tapes of radio programs he DJed in the 1970s and cringes a bit. The Coverville is celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall, but host Brian Ibbott said on that program, “Don’t listen to the first year,” when he was figuring out the format. I know that feeling.

For some obscure reason, I’ve read old journals/diaries of mine from the 1970s and 1980s, and much of it is cringeworthy. The only reasons I keep them are these: 1) I could use some of it to cull out family and FantaCo history; 2) all the terrible stuff I could throw together as a roman a clef.

The Cosby Show, Black-ish, and how 30 years has seemingly vanished

It deeply bothers me that we’ve basically erased all of the cultural gains made by The Cosby Show and a well-off suburban black family is suddenly a big mystery again.

Why write a blog post when you can steal from others?

Every week, or usually more often, writer Ken Levine, whose television credits include MASH, and importantly for this context, CHEERS, answers question from his readers. From Charles H. Bryan:

“I was thinking today, a little, about THE COSBY SHOW of the 80s. I think if you mention the show to someone who was watching TV then, they’ll say they liked it and think well of it, but it won’t pop up on a list without the prompt. I think people more likely remember SEINFELD, or FRIENDS, or CHEERS as being part of NBC Thursday. I think more people would recall the Keatons than the Huxtables. Do you think THE COSBY SHOW gets the discussion that it should?”

THE COSBY SHOW was one of the most influential television programs in the history of the medium.
At the time it premiered in 1984 there was a lot of talk that sitcoms were an endangered species. That one show changed everything. The ratings were spectacular and no show in today’s landscape will ever have the impact THE COSBY SHOW had. CHEERS and FAMILY TIES only became smash hits because they followed THE COSBY SHOW.

Creatively, however, I don’t think THE COSBY SHOW aged well. And it’s not just because of those sweaters. In fairness, the first year was wonderful. Funny, fresh, and with attitudes that were real. And it had one of the best pilots ever. I show it to my USC Comedy class every semester.

But as the series progressed and Bill assumed more creative control the show became way more preachy. Scripts were routinely just thrown out by Bill so the poor writing staff was churning out material night and day. Not surprisingly, he would burn them out. And the end result reflected that. Some terrific writers were reduced to galley slaves. So you never got the advantage of seeing them at their best.

Today the show feels dated and somewhat overbearing. But again, give it its due. THE COSBY SHOW must go down as one of the greatest shows in the history of TV.

Jaquandor was “never a big fan of The Cosby Show, to be honest. I didn’t hate it, by any means; it just didn’t light my fire.” I wonder if he were watching those latter, preachier seasons.

Next up, SamuraiFrog, the Midwest blogger who has been helping me (thank goodness) with ABC Wednesday, is rather knowledgeable about the nuances of race vis a vis television. His review of the new ABC sitcom Black-ish is so on target:

I especially get annoyed at the AV Club’s criticism of black shows and movies…

…this morning I happened to catch the first paragraph of their review of the second episode of Black-ish, and I think the reviewer missed the point.

“The biggest concern after Black-ish’s very good and unique premiere was whether the show would maintain its dedication to intelligently remarking on cultural diversity while putting race at the foreground or would it instead fall into the trap of becoming nothing more than a simplistic family sitcom (albeit one that makes the stray reference to a prominent aspect of black culture)…”

I found that comment a bit disappointing, because I think it comes from this sort of thinking that it’s revolutionary in 2014 to have African-Americans on network TV. The sad thing is that that might be true. At the very least, it’s become disappointingly unusual. Network TV has backslid a long, long way since the days of Good Times or The Cosby Show or even The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That show was a generation ago. When was the last time ABC actually had a black sitcom on the air?…

I saw some reviewers who were breathlessly surprised at how “normal” and “relatable” the show was, as though it was a revelation for some that a black guy knew his own father and didn’t speak exclusively through gangsta slang. And it’s depressing to realize that those attitudes are what this show is up against.

The AV Club reviewer seems disappointed that every episode isn’t going to be The White Person’s Guide to Modern African-American Culture. But that dehumanizes the characters and turns them simply into avatars of modern blackness and sets “black” as their defining characteristic. That’s not the point. The show can and should deal with race, but not exclusively. There is and should be more going on on this show than the Black Problem of the Week. It’s also about a family. About people. About people who have more going on in their lives than contextualizing blackness for a white audience.

It deeply bothers me that we’ve basically erased all of the cultural gains made by The Cosby Show and a well-off suburban black family is suddenly a big mystery again, and too many white critics can’t relate to it if Dre isn’t trying to get the family to out-black themselves every week. (By and large, the black critics I’ve seen are relieved that the show seems to be going in the direction it’s going in, rather than shouldering the burden of symbolically translating Unsolved Black Mysteries every week.) I think there’s a real social concern in every black form of entertainment being a litmus test on whether white people are “ready” to relate to black people. Apparently we’re never ready!

I appreciated what SamuraiFrog wrote, though I found it quite depressing that we’re having “the conversation” about race and television in 2014 that I thought was largely resolved three decades ago.

While I’m at it, here are two other Cosby Show-related links from Mr. Frog:

*The last 11 minutes of an episode of The Cosby Show, “Cliff’s Nightmare.” “In the episode, Cliff eats a sausage sandwich late at night and, trying to sleep with an upset stomach, finds himself in a Muppet-filled nightmare hospital.”

* His obit for Geoffrey Holder 1930-2014 notes, among other things, that Holder, best known to most Americans as the 7Up pitchman, choreographed the season 5 opening of The Cosby Show, which was SF’s favorite title sequence.

Season 5 is my second favorite opening after the season 4 Bobby McFerrin/wedding iteration, but the one Malcolm Jamal Warner least like doing. Check out Celebrating 30 Years of ‘The Cosby Show’ by Debating Four Key ‘Cosby’ Questions. Better yet, check out all of the Cosby Show intros.

#BlogAction 2014: #inequality. Suppressing the vote? UnAmerican.

“It does seem a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it that we still have to fight against laws that seek to suppress the vote, laws that will have a disproportionate impact on those Americans who—had they been of voting age before 1965—would likely have been barred because of their race?”

When 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner speaks, for better or for worse, lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court Justices listen. “Posner authored the Opinion in the decision of Crawford v Marion County, the 7th Circuit decision in 2008 that upheld Indiana’s “Voter ID” law.”

So it is significant that he now wants to revisit the issue:

“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” [Posner] writes, “and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.” More specifically, he observes, photo ID laws are “highly correlated with a state’s having a Republican governor and Republican control of the legislature and appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.”

The non-too-liberal Supreme Court, whose first decision this fall made it harder to vote in Ohio, has blocked new voter ID law in Wisconsin.

As the Daily Kos put it:

It does seem a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? That we still have to fight for voting rights, fight against laws that seek to suppress the vote, laws that will have a disproportionate impact on those Americans who—had they been of voting age before 1965—would likely have been barred because of their race? Ridiculous is one word for it. Infuriating is another. These tactics violate everything for which our country is supposed to stand. As President Obama put it, “The idea that you’d purposely try to prevent people from voting? un-American.”

I’m reminded that many of the post-Bill of Rights amendments to the US Constitution were designed to EXPAND the franchise, not limit it.

In a Beach Boys state of mind

So who the heck was KGB, if not a Soviet spy agency?

Of COURSE, I was going to link to God Only Knows – BBC Music with a whole bunch of folks, including Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell, Lorde, Dave Grohl, Kylie Minogue, Florence Welch, Chrissie Hynde, Queen’s Brian May, One Direction, Jools Holland, and many others; here’s a list of the participants. Also of interest is some background about the recording.

A lot of debate online about who “should have” been on the recording, starting with Paul McCartney, a huge fan of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album (perhaps he was sick or on tour), and who “should not have”, starting with One Direction. Frankly, I think the speculation is a bit silly/useless.

I did NOT know about Perfect Day- BBC Music with Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Emmylou Harris, David Bowie, Bono, Tom Jones, Joan Armatrading, Robert Cray, Dr. John, and others from 1997. Elton John is the only person I recognized from both recordings.

My blogging buddy Chuck Miller posted songs about sailing. He selected the Beach Boys’ Sloop John B but did NOT pick their Sail On Sailor, because he opted for a cover version by a group called KGB.

So who the heck was KGB, if not a Soviet spy agency? From HERE:

The K was for:

Singer Ray Kennedy, the least known member of the group, had an impressive resume of his own. He’d played sax for Gerry Mulligan, Otis Redding, Brenda Lee and Fats Domino, among others. Kennedy also co-wrote the Beach Boys’ “Sail On Sailor.”

On the KGB album, the song is billed as written by Brian Wilson and Kennedy, while the Beach Boys version had other writers listed.

The G was for:

Keyboard player Barry Goldberg had partnered with [Mike] Bloomfield in Dylan’s back up band, then in The Electric Flag and Supersession. He’d also worked with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Mitch Ryder.

The B, of course, was for:

Guitarist Mike Bloomfield had played with Bob Dylan and served as Paul Butterfield’s main axe man. He formed the Electric Flag in 1967 with Buddy Miles, Barry Goldberg and Nick Gravenites, but struck out on his own a year later.

The group also featured:

[Bassist] Rick Grech career had begun with British rockers Family. He was swiped from their U.S. tour in 1969 by Blind Faith. When Blind Faith crashed, Grech enlisted in Ginger Baker’s Airforce, another supergroup that included former Traffic members Steve Winwood and Chris Wood. When the reformed Traffic needed a bassist, Winwood contacted Grech… Grech went on to record with Rod Stewart, Gram Parsons and Ronnie Lane, among others.

and:

Carmine Appice was one of hard rock’s prominent percussionists. He’d started in the legendary Long Island jam band the Vanilla Fudge, then formed Cactus with ex-Fudge bassist Tim Bogert. The duo hooked up with legendary guitarist Jeff Beck in 1972.

Though buddy Chuck prefers the KGB version of Sail On, Sailor, I am on record that this is one of my favorite Beach Boys songs, as sung by Blondie Chaplin. In fact, one of the very few BB songs I love better is God Only Knows.

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