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Songs from the year I was born

Tony Bennett is STILL performing

orioles
Orioles, 1948
The next prompt is “A song from the year you were born.” Now, THAT is a nicely specific framework. I know at least two people born in 1966 who know WAY more about the music of the year they were born than I do about 1953. I suppose it’s because I was born in the “pre-rock era.”

There are tons of titles I recognize that were performed by others. Ebb Tide, an instrumental by Frank Chacksfield (#2); Your Cheatin’ Heart – Joni James (#2); P.S. I Love You – the Hilltoppers (#4). Cryin’ in the Chapel – June Valli (#4) and several others.

Most of the ones I know, I own on a compilation disc someone gave me for my birthday about a decade ago.

(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window? – Patti Page, #1 in March. My mother would reference this song when I was a child.
You, You, You – Ames Brothers, #1 in September. One may remember Ed Ames from the Daniel Boone TV show in the mid-1960.
Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes – Perry Como, #1 in January. Como had a variety show that started before I was born and lasted until 1963. I saw it occasionally.
Eh, Cumpari! – Julius La Rosa, #2 in November. LaRosa was famously fired by Arthur Godfrey that year.
Rags to Riches – Tony Bennett, #1 in November. Bennett had a “comeback” in 1993 and is still performing.

Istanbul Not Constantinople – the Four Lads, #10 in December. I heard the They Might Be Giants version from 1990 first. I have this on a Cadence Records compilation; that was the label of the Everly Brothers, among others.

Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt, #4 in December. I answered a Quora question about this: Who originally recorded and sang “Santa Baby”? Eartha Kitt, one of the women who played Catwoman on the TV show Batman in the 1960s. I have the track on an album called Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935–1954, which came out in 1989… But the first version I heard was by Madonna on the original A Very Special Christmas from 1987.

Crying in the Chapel – the Orioles, #11 in September, #1 for five weeks on the Rhythm and Blues charts. The disparity between the pop and RB chart action partly explains why various charts exist.

Jim Bouton, Karen Hitchcock, Rip Torn, RIP

“certain flaws in my make-up”

Jim Bouton

Jim BoutonJim Bouton’s birthday was the day after mine. I used to religiously read the backs of baseball cards.

He pitched for my beloved New York Yankees beginning in 1962. He pitched well in successive World Series. Against the 1963 Dodgers, he lost despite giving up only 1 run in 7 innings. Then he won 2 games over the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals. The Yankees lost both series.

Jim Bouton continued to pitch for those mediocre/bad Yankees teams the rest of the decade until he was picked up by the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969. Writing the book Ball Four, a diary of that season, plus recollections of his time with the Yankees, Pilots, and Astros that has made him memorable.

“The book was a frank, insider’s look at professional sports teams, covering the off-the-field side of baseball life, including petty jealousies, obscene jokes, drunken tomcatting of the players, and routine drug use, including by Bouton himself.

“Upon its publication, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Ball Four ‘detrimental to baseball’, and tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book was completely fictional. Bouton, however, refused to deny any of Ball Four’s revelations.”

Ball Four was updated several times, including the chronicling of his brief return to Major League Baseball in 1978. I’ve only read the original, and it was both revealing and entertaining. It changed the sports biography/autobiography forever.

Rip Torn

Rip Torn was one of those great names like Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter that you figured was made up. But the surname was real -he was born Elmore Rual Torn Jr.

I noticed him in episodes of TV dramas when I was growing up. He was on seven episodes of 30 Rock. But he was best known for playing Artie on the Larry Sanders Show. I also saw him in movies such as The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Men in Black. Whatever I saw him in, he was always good.

An interesting item: “Appearing as an interview subject in Studs Terkel’s 1974 oral-history book Working, Torn confessed, ‘I have certain flaws in my make-up. Something called irascibility. I get angry easily. I get saddened by things easily.'” I definitely relate to that!

Kren Hitchcock

When I noted the death of Karen Hitchcock, the former head of the University at Albany, I checked out her Wikipedia page. While it correctly points out some difficulties, it seemed rather one-sided. It failed to note her concerns that provided to be spot-on.

The piece discussed tensions between Hitchcock and the SUNY Chancellor Robert King, the latter whom I distrusted over unrelated concerns. Their fight was over the eventual separation of the College of Nanoscale Sciences and Engineering from the University at Albany. She had opposed spinning it off for reasons I found academically credible. I thought the division gave CNSE head Dr. Alain Kaloyeros way too much autonomy.

All three died in the past few days.

Arthur says: “You should write a book!”

The readings MAY involve the consumption of alcohol

write a bookArthur, who is experiencing that brutal Kiwi winter right now, was the first person to both Tell AND Ask Roger Anything.

TELL: You should write a book!

ASK: What obstacles would you have to overcome, and/or what would you need in place to write a book?

Back around my birthday in March 2019, I thought what I might do in my retirement. Writing a book was not even a consideration. What would I write it about? Me? I wasn’t feeling it.

Then in May, I came around to maybe writing about the house in which my mother grew up. I’d actually floated this to one of my cousins a couple of years ago. She was doing some genealogy about our common ancestors. It was beyond the scope of what she was working on, but I spent a lot of time there myself.

Moreover, my sister Marcia has a LOT of photos that she’s scanned. the pictures are mostly of the exteriors, but also a lot of people over a roughly 60-year span.

There’s another book that I thought about, involving the year I turned 19. A momentous year in my life. The problem is that I’d have to reveal my own shortcomings publicly.

The good news, however, is that I had kept diaries as far back as March 1972, so I have detailed accounts of at least some of what I did. And I mean OVERLY precise. What I ate, and where, et al.

I think I got the idea from my college roommate in my freshman year, a grad student named Ron, who wrote down EVERYTHING he spent, a candy bar or going out to dinner. One day, he spent $1,000 on a car, which really skewed his daily averages.

My diaries, and there are about a dozen of them, continued to about 1986. It’s not the entire period, because several of the journals were destroyed in the flooded basement of the apartment building I was living in c 1997. I genuinely don’t know what I have and what was lost.

At the time, I was quite upset, but now I am somewhat relieved that at least part of my ever-present past has been obliterated. It means, though, that EVENTUALLY, I’m going to read those remaining chicken scratching. Thus, the advantage and the obstacle are the same.

Some of it will be great. Is THAT when I saw that concert! I’ll get to relieve some of the history of FantaCo, the comic book store where I worked in the 1980s.

Some of it will be awful. My, was I petulant? Or unkind! Or oblivious! I’ll probably get to relieve heartbreak that I caused, or received! Oh, boy.

And, ha! now I’ll probably have time to read the damn things. The readings MAY involve the consumption of alcohol.

From that mess of a life, I’ll have to figure out what the STORIES are. 1972, which I remember surprisingly well even without the prompts, has a certain dramatic arc. Other than that year, I’m not at all sure about a narrative. And how do I write about other people I’ve mentioned, many of whom are still around?

Once I DO start writing, if I start writing, I realize that I need to do it when I’m mostly alone, when my wife and daughter are asleep, or downstairs watching some dance show on TV, or off to work/school. I work best in the presence of semi-loud, generally familiar music.

Movie review: Toy Story 4 (Pixar)

a fine coda

Toy Story 4I saw Toy Story 4 in a movie theater, the Spectrum 8 in Albany. Every Toy Story I’ve seen at a cinema. Since the first two movies came out in 1995 and 1999, respectively, pre-parenthood, it was my own volition in seeing them.

The third film I saw with my wife but without my daughter in 2010. Since my wife and daughter saw #4 without me, I saw it by myself.

Woody (Tom Hanks) and the rest of the toys are on a road trip with Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw) and her parents (Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan), just before Bonnie enters kindergarten. The toys’ primary task is keeping track of the new character named Forky (Tony Hale), who has issues.

Woody unexpectedly runs into his long-lost friend Bo Peep (Annie Potts), now a “lost” toy. They have philosophical differences when it comes to what the role of a toy should be. Bo, despite her porcelain construction, is impressive.

Ultimately, Woody, Bo, and some new friends such as Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele), have a mission. They have to sneak into the antique store run by Margaret (June Squibb), a place Bo knows too well. It’s not just the old-school doll Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), but her friends, all of whom are creepy identical ventriloquist dummies named Benson.

There is a lot of insecurities revealed in Toy Story 4, including from daredevil Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves). It can be difficult to find your place in the world, even if you’re a doll.

This is a fine coda to the franchise. Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and Jessie (Joan Cusack) had smaller but vital roles in the narrative. I LOLed at a scene involving dependence on GPS.

Toy Story 4 received a 98% positive rating in Rotten Tomatoes. Matthew Norman of the London Evening Standard wrote: “The legislation it flouts is the law of diminishing returns which governs movies with numbers after their names.”

Disney Removes ‘Toy Story 2’ Scene That Recalled Hollywood Casting Couch Abuse.

AS as in American Samoa (USPS)

Most American Samoans are bilingual

American Samoa.Pago PagoThe United States Postal service, the oft-maligned entity, is in fact quite systematic. One of its great innovations was the two-letter state codes back in 1963. This allowed for easier mail delivery.

At some point, the Canadian postal service also created a two-letter system for its provinces and territories, using something called the ISO 3166-2:CA. Exciting!

For some reason involving the international scope of the ABCW folks, I’m going to go through the list alphabetically each week. For those weeks that have NO state/province/territories with that letter, I’ll figure out something else.

AA Armed Forces Americas (except Canada)
AB Alberta, Canadian province. The use of the first letter in the second syllable avoids the clash with Alabama. The traditional English abbreviation was Alta., the traditional French Alb. Capital: Edmonton; largest city: Calgary.
AE Armed Forces Europe, the Middle East, and Canada

AK Alaska – first letter, 1st letter of the third syllable. Apparently, the tradition abbreviation was Alas. Capital: Juneau; largest city: Anchorage.
AL Alabama – in general, in case of a tie, the states that are oldest get those first two letters. When I was a kid, I mostly saw it as Ala. Capital: Montgomery; largest city: Birmingham.
AP Armed Forces Pacific
AR Arkansas – its traditional abbreviation was Ark. Capital and largest city: Little Rock

AS American Samoa – “Samoa was not reached by European explorers until the 18th century. International rivalries in the latter half of the 19th century were settled by an 1899 treaty in which Germany and the US divided the Samoan archipelago. The US formally occupied its portion – a smaller group of eastern islands with the excellent harbor of Pago Pago [the capital and largest city]- the following year.”

“As of April 2019, the population of American Samoa is approximately 55,689 people. Most of them are ‘nationals but not citizens of the United States at birth’. Most American Samoans are bilingual and can speak English and Samoan fluently. The total land area is 199 square kilometers (76.8 sq mi), slightly more than Washington, D.C.”

AZ Arizona – often previously listed as Ariz. Capital and largest city: Phoenix

“Jointly developed by the Postal Service and mailing industry, standardized address information enhances the processing and delivery of mail, reduces undeliverable–as–addressed mail, and provides mutual cost reduction opportunities through improved efficiency.”

For ABC Wednesday

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