Certainly, I started listening to Prince anew after he died in April 2016. But he launched into my favorite songs from my favorite band territory because of Sheila E. and the niece Rebecca Jade. Surely, I don’t have to worry about J. Eric Smith’s band requirement. Prince led, for a time, the Revolution, and other times he’s playing 27 instruments.
Sheila sang at a club in New York City in August 2017. Rebecca was one of the background singers. They performed a half dozen Prince songs, including an RJ solo on Raspberry Beret. Then I saw them at the New York State Fair in Syracuse in early September 2019. More Prince tunes.
Let’s Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince was filmed at the Los Angeles Convention Center on January 28, 2020, two days after The 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards. The all-star lineup of artists performed songs from the catalog of “the 38-time GRAMMY® nominee and seven-time GRAMMY winner.” Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Sheila E. were pegged to be the musical directors. Rebecca Jade was a last-minute replacement for another back-up singer.
The tribute concert, originally aired Tuesday, April 21, the four-year anniversary of the superstar’s passing, and was rebroadcast on Saturday, April 25 on CBS. Rebecca Jade was singing with about half of the artists, including Earth, Wind, and Fire; Foo Fighters; Gary Clark Jr.; St. Vincent; Miguel; Juanes; and of course, Sheila E.
Songs
I own all of the Prince albums from the 1980s on vinyl or CD. 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O’ the Times are my favorites. Making YouTube links prior to 2016 was… a challenge. Song list is vaguely leading to my favorite.
Saturday afternoon, after the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of the race, I came to a realization. When I voted eight days before Election Day, I never even looked at who the other choices were.
In New York, it was the two major party guys, but each was also on a second line. The Democrat received 51%, but on the Working Families line got an additional 4.41%. The Republican netted 38.71% on that line but an additional 3.35% under the Conservative banner.
51
Jo Jorgensen was the Libertarian candidate, the only other person to appear on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In New York, she got only 0.72% of the vote but reached 1.2% nationally. Part of her plan “is to turn America into one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral.” She ran with Spike Cohen.
“On Day One of a Jorgensen administration, I will pardon all 80,000 non-violent people imprisoned on federal drug charges. The War on Drugs has been a disaster and has been used to target the poor and people of color, and to ruin lives that could have been salvaged… I will also use my pardon power to free whistleblowers who risked their liberty to expose corruption and abuse by government agencies.” Actually, I’m good with that part.
At this writing, Jo Jorgenson’s vote count percentage is greater than the Dem/GOP difference in AZ (11 Electoral Votes, 1.5 v 0.7), GA (16 EV, 1.2 v 0.2), PA (20 EV 1.1 v 0.6), and WI (10 EV, 1.2 v 0.7), all in Biden’s favor.
Georgia hasn’t been called, but assuming 290 Biden votes, the loss of those three other states would have brought him down to 249. His chief opponent would go up to 255, with NC’s 15 EV likely to go to the GOP. That’s 270 and re-election.
So is Jo Jorgensen a “spoiler”?
Being Green
Howie Hawkins was on the ballot as the Green Party candidate. He received 0.35% of the vote in New York and about 2% of the vote nationally, running in 30 states. I have actually voted for Howie in the past. In 2010, 2014, and 2018, he ran for governor of my state. The latter two times I supported him against Andrew Cuomo and a Republican who frankly was sure to lose. His running mate in 2020 was Angela Nicole Walker.
Incidentally, the Green Party candidate in Alaska was former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, running with Cynthia McKinney. They got 0.8% of the votes in that state.
Roque De La Fuente got on the ballot for The Alliance Party in 16 states – not NY – but did not get more than 0.3% of the vote in any state, and that in California. In 2018, he was a 2018 Republican candidate who sought election to the U.S. Senate from nine different states! He had multiple running mates.
Gloria La Riva also had different running mates in her quest running on the Party for Socialism and Liberation. You thought Joe Biden was a socialist? Like De La Fuente, her highest percentage on the 15 ballots she appeared on was in California, with 0.3% of the vote. Not on the NY ballot.
Oh, yeah, THOSE guys
Brock Pierce
Independent Kanye West was running in a dozen states, but not mine. He got as much as 0.4% of the vote in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah. The theory was that he might take votes away from Biden, but that did not materialize. He ran with Wyoming preacher Michelle Tidball.
Don Blankenship of the Constitution Party is one of my least favorite people. He “was the chief executive of Massey Energy Co., the leading producer of coal in Appalachia, from 2000 to 2010. He resigned following the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 miners.” Blankenship “was convicted of conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and served one year in prison for the misdemeanor,” and should have served longer.
He made it onto 20 state ballots, not NY, and got 0.4% of the vote in Alaska and Utah. His running mate was William Mohr. All the people listed so far got at least 50,000 votes nationally.
The last name on the New York State ballot was Brock Pierce. The Blockchain technology and digital currency guy got over 40,000 votes. He appeared on 15 state ballots and got 0.3% of the vote in Idaho and New York, 0.4% in Alaska, and a staggering 0.8% of the vote in Wyoming.
From his campaign website: “Sustainability is essential at every level, starting with each of us as individuals and growing to encompass the whole that is our collective social organism, whether in the form of our country, our species, or our planet.” His running mate was Karla Ballard.
Literally, the also-rans
Brian T. Carroll/Amar Patel (American Solidarity Party) received over 20,000 in eight states, 0.2% in Illinois and Wisconsin. Then there’s a huge dropoff. Alyson Kennedy/Malcolm Jarrett (Socialist Workers Party) at over 6,000 in six states, never exceeding 0.1%. Now we’re talking about the minor parties.
Fun names. Dawn Neptune Adams for VP on the Progressive Party line. Phil Collins for prez on the Prohibition Party; no, not THAT guy. The Grumpy Old Patriots party got over 1000 votes.
Genealogy Know Your Family History Party received over 550. The independent ticket of Princess Khadijah M. Pres Jacob-Fambro and Khadijah Maryam Jacob Sr.snagged 450 ballots. The Boiling Frog party won 135 supporters.
See the data dump on the topic I posted here and the chart (it slides on the bottom) I created here.
My daughter keeps track of GOP tropes. This design is available on sweatshirts.
You know, this political season has made me exhausted. I hoped the election would settle things, though I had my doubts.
Sure enough, Attorney General Barr is acting like IMPOTUS’ personal attorney. The future ex-President removes the scientist from overseeing a key climate assessment report. The grift continues. He seems to be engaged in a scorched earth policy. If he doesn’t concede, the GSA head won’t release the mechanism for Joe Biden to be a part of an orderly transition.
But it’s more than that. The vitriol is still strong. And, as people saw on my Facebook feed that Saturday, some guy came around to attack me personally for being pleased that Biden had won. It wasn’t some random guy either, but a fellow who had been my next-door neighbor when I was growing up in Binghamton, NY. Let’s call him Greg because that’s his name.
Greg had been around trolling me in the past. But I had found him useful. It’s important, I think, to understand how others think. This time, he was hyper-critical and fairly nasty at that. He said that I didn’t vote for the man because IMPOTUS had hurt my feelings?
Well, no, I objected to him trying to wreck the very fabric of the country: the postal service, the Census, the CDC, the Justice Department (see above), the EPA, etc, etc, etc.
Greg also seemed to be offended because I was a fool not to recognize that I’m financially better off under the regime. He never used the term directly. But I sensed that he was suggesting that since black people’s unemployment was down, pre-pandemic, I was oblivious to the regime’s “greatness.”
cf RBG’s death
Here’s the thing. I don’t agree with the premise. The tax cut helped the rich far more than regular folks. But even if I had concurred, I still thought his policies, toward COVID, immigration, the environment, and so much more, plus his constant lying, were disqualifying attributes. But why pick on me? There were plenty of people who are happy that the reign of error was over.
Then I saw Remembering RBG: A Nation Ugly Cries with Desi Lydic. It was a special program from The Daily Show folks. Desi was going through the five stages of grief as described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Although, instead of acceptance, the fifth stage is action. Not incidentally, Elizabeth Warren, as usual, offered wise counsel.
So Greg, I recognize, was grieving. He dumped on me because he sort of knew me, though I haven’t seen him in a half-century. I get it.
In my recollection, when Hillary lost in 2016, the reaction was mostly utter shock and depression, not rage. As my teenage daughter noted, in 2016, we were saying, “That can’t be true!” even as we grudgingly knew, unfortunately, it was. The losing side in 2020 has been fed the notion “It IS NOT TRUE!” (See John Oliver.) That’s a harder bridge to cross.
BTW, I remain infuriated by the continued voter suppression, particularly in Florida. The GOP won the state by about 340,000. More than twice as many released felons were disenfranchised. Maybe the Sunshine State COULD have gone the other way…
From a Zoom discussion meeting of the choir folk on a recent Thursday night, I discovered that quite a bit of classical music was written to commemorate the Great World War.
I knew about a number of pop tunes for “the war to end all wars.” It’s A Long, Long Way to Tipperary; I Didn’t Raise My Son to Be A Soldier; Keep the Home Fires Burning; and of course, Over There, were all #1 charters in the United States. The latter was a #1 hit by three different artists in a row, American Quartet, Peerless Quartet, and Nora Bayes in the fourth quarter of 1917.
Here are nine classical compositions, with music links. I was familiar with Britten’s War Requiem. I have a recording of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, but I did not know of its WWI connection. Perhaps I should have. “In the opening section of the suite, ‘Mars, The Bringer of War,’ there’s a truly visceral sense of horror; what must have seemed like the end of the world to those who experienced The Great War.”
Ralph, pronounced Raif
This article from the British Library notes the number of young composers killed in the conflict. One noted composer who physically survived the conflict was Ralph Vaughn Williams (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958).
“He enlisted as a Private in the Royal Army Medical Corps… on New Year’s Eve 1914. At 42 he was old enough to have been excused service, but the medical corps were often chosen by older… men who wanted to serve.
“Maurice Ravel, who had tutored Vaughan Williams in orchestration in 1907-8 also became an ambulance driver. Becoming a medical orderly was not an easy posting, however.
Many of Vaughan Williams’ friends died. “Ralph wrote to Holst in 1916 about the loss of his contemporaries and his fear of returning to civilian life. ‘I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps…out of those 7 who joined up together in August 1914 only 3 are left.'”
Listen:
Symphony No. 3, “A Pastoral Symphony” (June 1921) Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Dona Nobis Pacem cantata (1936) London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Conductor: Richard Hickox – Soloists: Bryn Terfel (baritone), Yvonne Kenny (soprano), Philip Langridge (tenor)
I thought I had all of the movies secured between DVD and what was available on cable. By the time I got up to Spider-Man: Far from Home, that film was no longer showing. I ended requesting four different Spidey films, which I’ll write about when they show up from the library.
In the meanwhilst, as they say in Life of Brian:
Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Lots of stuff – I love the word “stuff” – happens all over the freaking universe. Keeping track of all of the characters wasn’t too bad, though the simultaneous plotlines made it a bit of a jumble. I read about more errors and alleged goofs on IMDB – I disagree with a few – than I’ve seen on that site.
The movies did allow for some humor to peak through before the amazingly overlong final battles. Still, I want to see how they get out of this predicament. So it’s a really long tease for the finale. It was oddly reminiscent of how I felt after watching Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part 1.
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) – if I had seen this right after Infinity War, rather than back in 2018, would it have changed my view? Probably not. In fact, Infinity War was so Big, So Significant, that I appreciated a story that was much smaller in scope. I like these people and care about them. And that’s enough.
Back to 1990?
Captain Marvel (2019). OK, this film takes place after the first Captain America, but before the first Iron Man. Well, except for the coda, which clearly happened AFTER Infinity War.
I really wanted to like this movie more than I did. The Kree-Skrull narrative was murky, both in terms of story and visuals. I didn’t really enjoy this until Nick Fury (the ever-young Samuel L. Jackson) shows up. I did like the camaraderie with her and her former pilot colleague. But damn, she was SO powerful, but didn’t know it until the movie’s practically over? My favorite part of the film was the nod to Stan Lee in the opening.
Avengers: Endgame (2019). This movie actually benefitted from far fewer people in the cast throughout most of the film. The good guys have lost. They want a do-over. Can they pull it off?
The question, I suppose, is the journey over nearly two dozen movies worth the payoff? Despite a few seeming inconsistencies, I say yes. I always knew where I was, though sometimes I was less clear when I was. My patience with the overly long final battle scene began to fray. Yet my single favorite moment was during the fracas, when Thor declared, “I KNEW it!”
And a small thing, I suppose. After the greatest number of named cast appearances that I’ve ever remember seeing, they gave proper credit to the big six: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. I was happy with Cap’s last act. Smart Hulk was a hoot. One hopes Thor finds his physique again.
This was, in the end, a Hollywood spectacle. Cecil B. DeMille might be proud. And I got the emotional payoff that one needs after 50 hours or so of narrative by over a dozen directors and more than two dozen screenwriters. That it is as coherent as it turned out to be is a cinematic miracle.
Certainly, I started listening to Prince anew after he died in April 2016. But he launched into my favorite songs from my favorite band territory because of Sheila E. and the niece Rebecca Jade. Surely, I don’t have to worry about J. Eric Smith’s band requirement. Prince led, for a time, the Revolution, and other times he’s playing 27 instruments.
I thought I had all of the movies secured between DVD and what was available on cable. By the time I got up to Spider-Man: Far from Home, that film was no longer showing. I ended requesting four different Spidey films, which I’ll write about when they show up from the library.