Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

I blame Joe Biden

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Joe Biden was even coming to town.

joebidenThe Wife was driving me to work last Tuesday afternoon when we were rear-ended by a car. We all were a little sore, and I, more than a little irritable about it.

My spouse blamed the other driver, very rational since that person, in fact, did drive into us, fortunately, not going very fast.

My daughter blames the superintendent of the Albany school district, for she had canceled school on a day no other district in the area had done so, though there had been delays elsewhere. If the Albany district were open, The Wife wouldn’t have been driving me at that hour.

However, I blame Vice-President Joe Biden, in Albany that day to meet with Governor Andrew Cuomo about disaster preparedness in the wake of climate change.

Just before we turned northbound on Everett Road, we see a low-flying helicopter, a tipoff that the VP was on the move. One could not actually travel across the Everett Road I-90 overpass, so the eastbound cars exiting I-90 at Everett could only turn right towards Albany, or go straight, right back onto I-90. We were stuck waiting for cars to reenter I-90 when we felt that familiar sound, and moreover, feeling of the vehicle you’re in being hit from behind.

This was The Daughter’s first car accident, and while a relatively minor event, I know *I* felt achy in my head and lower back for hours. The Wife was likewise affected, and the Daughter was mostly complaining about pain in her shoulders.

Ironically, by the time phone numbers had been exchanged, the Biden contingent had passed and Everett Road was clear again.

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Biden was even coming to town. I was reminded by Megan Cruz of Channel 9 YNN Time Warner Cable News that morning, who was out doing a stand-up in the bitter cold, for no newsworthy reason, and one could tell she was freezing; it was about zero Fahrenheit, or below. She needed a hat.

The buses were rerouted several times that morning, apparently. The police had blocked I-787 for a time, by plows and when my colleague tried to come back to work after lunch, ended up taking city streets instead.

There’s lots of speculation that Biden and Cuomo are vying for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President, but its WAY too early for me to care.

A is for Andrews Sisters

Patty left the group in 1954, which also caused a personal schism; her sisters learned about it by reading it in the newspapers.

Prelude: for this round of ABC Wednesday, I decided to do musical groups that featured family members. I actually found 24 groups, for all the letters except Q and U, though I did have to stretch some definitions. No Doobie Brothers, though.

Undoubtedly, I was inspired by writing about the Green Family Singers, and further when I watched The Sound of Music.
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It may have been Bette Midler who introduced me to the music of the Andrews Sisters with her cover of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B in the early 1970s – LISTEN to a version by the Andrews. But in fact, I already owned some Andrews Sisters through Bing Crosby’s classic Christmas album, which featured Jingle Bells and Mele Kalikimaka [LISTEN], though I didn’t know the singers at the time, and I don’t recall if they were credited.

Fortunately, I have a friend named Fred Hembeck who is a fairly rabid Andrews Sisters fan, so now I actually have two albums of the classic tunes by Patty (the youngest, blonde), Maxene (middle sister, a brunette), and LaVerne (the eldest, the redhead). They were quite popular from the late 1930s on. “In the 1940s the sisters found themselves in high demand, and became the most profitable stage attraction in the entire nation, earning $20,000 a week. Aside from singing, the sisters were established radio personalities and made appearances in 17 Hollywood movies. During the mid 1940s the sisters released eight new singles, six of which became bestsellers. Some of the hits include Rum and Coca Cola [LISTEN] and ‘I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time.'”

Patty left the group in 1954, which also caused a personal schism; her sisters learned about it by reading it in the newspapers. They got back together, “professionally and personally,” in 1956 with a newer sound that “did not gain popularity with the public, who preferred hearing old hits.”

Laverne died in 1968 from cancer at the age of 55. Patty and Maxene continued to perform, together, but usually apart, into the 1990s. “In 1995, while on vacation in Cape Cod, Maxene had a heart attack and died. She was 79.” Patty died in January 2013, a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday.

I find that I really enjoy listening to them, more now than in my callow youth.

LISTEN to:
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, the song for which I probably know them best
I Can Dream, Can’t I, which went #1 in late 1949 or early 1950
Don’t Fence Me In, with Bing Crosby, which went to #1 in 1944

WATCH
A segment of the TV show What’s My Life (1959).
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ABC Wednesday – Round 14

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MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen

I predict there will be a Broadway version of Frozen by 2018.

It was a very rainy Sunday afternoon. The Wife, The Daughter and I were supposed to travel from Albany to near Binghamton for a family dinner, but the forecast for locations in between were dodgy, with snow and ice likely. Instead, we went out to lunch, and then to Colonie Center Mall to see the newish Disney animated film Frozen.

frozen1
Some bullet points:
*THIS FILM IS GORGEOUS. Continue reading “MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen”

Unexpected “vacation” day

The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife DOES go to work because her districts weren’t even delayed, *I* DON’T go to work.

windyGoing to bed the night before a major weather pattern, I figure on one of these three scenarios, given that The Wife is a teacher at BOCES, an educational consortium, working several suburban or rural districts, and The Daughter is a student in the Albany school district.

1. The Daughter goes to school, whether The Wife goes to work or not doesn’t matter, I go to work.

2. The Daughter’s school is delayed, the Wife’s schools are delayed, I go to work.

3. The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife doesn’t work, I go to work.
What I DON’T figure on:

4. The Daughter doesn’t go to school, the Wife DOES go to work because her districts weren’t even delayed, I DON’T go to work.

Now, I HAVE said to The Wife that, as a matter of practicality, if the fourth setting ever came to pass, I’d stay home. But I didn’t think it would REALLY happen.

Although I should have gotten an inkling a few days ago, before a wind advisory, when I was on a bus with some young man from one of our charter schools, who seemed to believe there would be no school for him today.

This leads me to believe that the Albany school superintendent is in touch with the heads of the charter schools regarding the weather, but perhaps NOT with the other district fellow wizards. There have been another time or two when Albany closed and other schools didn’t, around the time one of the hurricanes last year was not a real weather event in the city.

It’s a peculiar way to burn a vacation day. Then again, I didn’t REALLY want to be out there waiting for two buses each way, when it was below zero Fahrenheit, did I?

The Android and me

I know I’m not maximizing the device’s utility, possibly because, since it actually doesn’t belong to me, I don’t want to become dependent on it.

“Do you want the use of an Android device?” our techie supervisor asked me a few months ago Sure, yeah, I guess so. There it was – an ASUS Android 7. First thing: plug it in, which I do. I can’t get it started, but that is a function of not squeezing these two prongs long enough. So it’s working. What should I DO with it?

I know; I’ll download – what do you call them? – applications? They say apps, I understand. But there are about a billion of them, many of them free; which ones should I get? I go to Google Play, which is already on the device, and type in various obvious ones: CNN, the local weather, the local mass transit, FEMA (hey, ya never know), a dictionary, and Free Cell card game. What’s cool is that I can search for apps on my computer and they magically would appear on the device; no plugs necessary.

Hey, it’s locked! How do I unlock it? I keep pressing the lock, when I should have been making a sweeping motion to the left and down, or right and down.

Here’s what it’s useful for: checking my e-mail while working with my daughter on her homework. It doesn’t require 100% attention. I watched a little bit of football, and checking e-mail with that is a good thing. But not so much watching a dramatic series, or JEOPARDY! or any program which I have to view actively.

I discovered where the Internet hot spots are in the area: certain businesses, the 905 bus from Albany to Schenectady. AlbanyNet works some places downtown.

I know I’m not maximizing the device’s utility, possibly because, since it actually doesn’t belong to me, I don’t want to become dependent on it. But I AM glad for the chance to figure out, if only a little, why people’s faces are always buried in some device.

It won’t be me always on the machine, because writing on it is too much work; I obviously just don’t have the thumbs for it, and I type with one finger, which is exhausting. I commented on a dozen blogs, and my neck hurt.

But there is one thing I do like, and that’s the ability to speak to the device and search for websites. Usually it’s one I’ve already been to, but still useful. And making pages bigger – now THAT’S quite user-friendly. I went to the Zillow app and found all the houses in my neighborhood for sale; not that I was in the market, but it was nice to check out, and expanding the page made the listings MUCH easier to see.

One last thing: it’s so big I’m not likely to use it.

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