Uncategorized Archives - Page 523 of 1326

1st movie that I… (SamuraiFrog flashback)

Depends what you consider screwball, I suppose.

This is weird. I was trying to figure out what I had in draft for my blog, nearly 300 posts. I discovered this one from 2011 (!), and I can’t see that I ever published it. From SamuraiFrog, and only one answer has changed:

1st Dracula Movie: Not sure – it would have been on TV one Saturday afternoon, but I believe it was the Bela Lugosi version.

1st Disney Movie: 101 Dalmatians, which features a character named Roger.

1st movie I saw without my parents: The first movie I ever saw alone, without my parents or friends or anyone, was a double feature of a Francis the Talking Mule picture and something called The Leech Woman, a movie that absolutely terrified me, as I’ve noted.

1st movie I had to stand in a long line for: Quite possibly the original Star Wars movie. But even a longer line for Pretty Woman.

1st movie I saw with a girl: I really can’t remember. I know I saw The Great White Hope with my high school girlfriend, but her father came along. It might have been Catch-22.

1st James Bond movie: Certainly on TV, probably Goldfinger.

1st adult date movie: I’ll say Rosemary’s Baby, my freshman year in college.

1st X-Rated film: It was either Midnight Cowboy or A Clockwork Orange, depending on whether the former had been edited down to R.

1st Marx Brothers film: Duck Soup.

1st movie on videotape: Annie Hall or Being There.

1st animated feature film: Again, 101 spotty dogs.

1st favorite film star: Sophia Loren, before I ever saw her in anything.

1st film star I got an autograph from: If I ever have, I don’t recall.

1st film star I saw in person: Jack Nicholson, hanging out backstage with Mike Tyson after an Anita Baker concert at the Palace Theatre in Albany c 1989.

1st WC Fields film: I saw several in my youth, but they tended to run into each other in my memory.

1st M-rated film: The Night They Raided Minsky’s. M, BTW, became PG.

1st R-rated film: Catch-22. It traumatized me for a while.

1st movie on DVD: I had so few movies on DVD in 2011. TV shows, yes. My wife bought me West Side Story. I bought her Whale Rider and Dreamgirls. The only one I bought for me was a 2-pack of the first two Spider-Man movies, which I got from a library sale in 2010.

1st blaxpoitation film: Have I ever seen one?

1st martial arts film: I’ve seen a couple on local TV but I never knew the name of any of them.

1st screwball comedy: Depends what you consider screwball, I suppose. Is Adam’s Rib a screwball comedy? I guess I’ll say The Philadelphia Story.

1st Cary Grant film: The Philadelphia Story.

1st Clint Eastwood film: probably Every Which Way But Loose.

1st favorite actress: Barbara (Seagull) Hershey.

1st favorite movie song: “Cruella de Ville” from 101 canines.

1st favorite movie cowboy: Roy Rogers, though I knew him more from TV.

Sister Marcia: Alzheimer’s fundraising

A potential cure for Alzheimer’s has been found by a new study.

Marcia.Roger.Christmas As I surely have mentioned, my sister Marcia was in a too-familiar position in America.

She was raising her daughter and making sure our mother was all right.

For much of the time, Mom was pretty OK. Then in the months before she died in February 2011, not so much. The reason they had a post office box was that mom would take the mail and hide it. She could be belligerent, though seldom to people outside the family.

On her Facebook page for her birthday, which is today, Marcia is raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association. Her timing is quite fortuitous. There is a “special opportunity to double your impact in the fight to end Alzheimer’s disease — our $500,000 Matching Gift Challenge, thanks to longtime supporters, Mary Joy, Jerre and the Stead family.

“The Mary Joy and Jerre Stead became involved with the Alzheimer’s Association when Jerre’s mother developed Alzheimer’s. Since then, Mary Joy, Jerre and their family have been dedicated supporters of the Association, and they’ve pledged to match every gift received by June 15, up to an incredibly generous total of $500,000.”

Incidentally, I read that a potential cure for Alzheimer’s has been found by a new study that appears to have uncovered what causes the disease. “The new treatment would use drugs that are currently prescribe to fight HIV.”

“‘For the first time, we can see what may cause the disease,’ lead researcher Jerold Chun told The New York Post. ‘We also uncovered a potential near-term treatment.”

“The Post added: ‘Chun and his colleagues at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, Calif., compared brain samples of seven people who had Alzheimer’s with six who didn’t.”

Donating through the Alzheimer’s Association NOW, whether through the efforts of sister Marcia or not, would be a great birthday present for her, and would honor our mother to boot.

A song you’d love played at your wedding

I will catch your fall

At_Last_-_Etta_James The next music prompt is “A song you’d love be played at your wedding.” I assume they’re really talking about the reception – among other things, we had Bach during the ceremony – so I’m operating on that premise.

We had a keyboard player that played a number of songs. I believe my father, sister and niece Rebecca likely sang; I might have as well, but it’s a bit a blur. I specifically recall, because there’s a photo, my niece Alex singing Yellow Submarine with one of her young cousins.

My wife and I first-danced to At Last by Etta James. I’m sure the first time I owned it was from the Rain Man soundtrack. I know the choice is now cliched. But we went out for 18 months (1994-1996), broke up, then got together at the end of 1998 and married in May 1999.

When I was wooing her again, I made her a mixed tape. Such a quaint device. I no longer have any idea what put on that collection. Knowing me, it probably had God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.

She only remembers one song, I believe, and that is Have A Little Faith in Me by John Hiatt, my favorite song by him.
And when your back’s against the wall
Just turn around and you will see
I will catch, I will catch your fall baby
Just have a little faith in me

What else might I have put on? I Only Have Eyes for You by the Flamingoes is highly probable.

The rest is speculation. How about Betcha By Golly Wow, maybe by Aaron Neville rather than the Stylistics, because I didn’t have the latter on CD.

Finally, a song I doubt I put on, but would now: Let’s Make More Love by Nat King Cole, from the Billy May Sessions, released in 1993. Oddly, the composer is listed as Unknown.

May rambling: lost in the crowd

Hating what you don’t understand

sharing_options — Sharing Options From xkcd -This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

UN report details humans have pushed one million species to the brink of extinction

China takes the lead on global climate policy and the U.S. steps back

Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd

Physicians Get Addicted Too

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Lethal Injections

Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?”

Hating what you don’t understand

Riley Howell’s Parents Say He Was Shot 3 Times While Tackling the UNC Charlotte Gunman – eight minutes from my sister’s house

A California teacher on medical leave for breast cancer has to pay for her substitute

What should “electable” mean?

10 U.S. Towns Stuck in Time – I’ve been to 4 of them

The fact that I’m in front of you means that I was here first

Where the US’s Foreign-Born Live Has Changed Over Time

Kid’s ‘Wow’ reaction to hearing Mozart

How I Read and Why

Doris Day dead at age 97

Tim Conway, RIP

May Chris Farley’s memory be a blessing

“Behind the scenes” visit to Sesame Street done by 60 Minutes Australia

Roosevelt Franklin – Muppet of Sesame Street

The Tony awards are June 9 on CBS

Inside the World’s Only Museum Dedicated to Ventriloquism

Tennis star Hans Redl

Albany Patroons basketball game day

Binghamton Rumble Ponies get first no-hitter in 13 years

Afterlife in New Zealand

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and Why You Shouldn’t Take Advice From a Board Game and Why These Windows Don’t Have Windows and When a Truck Driver Had a Very Delicious Meltdown and The Cars that Karaoke and Why Do I Keep Getting Calls from Slovenia?!

Hyper-Casual Games Gone Viral

Australian $50 note typo: spelling mistake printed 46 million times

She was the ‘queen of the mommy bloggers,’ then her life fell apart

Will this WordPress theme allow me to make money?

Funny goats: screaming like humans; an inside joke from staff training in Ithaca

MUSIC

Que Sera Sera – Doris Day

Mama – Clean Bandit

Believer – Bigfoot & Puddles

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Mackenzie Johnson

Ottorino Resphigi’s The Pines of Rome

Grow – Sabrina Lentini

Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still

StillSane – Carolyne Mas

Alassio (In the South) – Sir Edward Elgar

I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger’s Gone) – Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Coverville 1261: Cover Stories for Billy Joel and Echo and the Bunnymen

The Story Behind The Twilight Zone Theme Song

The Simpsons’ “Upstate New York” song

When TWO bloggers, one who started in 1996 and the other in 2005 post this separately, who am I to argue?

The Beatles off-white album

Married one score: the first year was the hardest

Carol and I got married 20 years ago. Maybe a decade ago, I told her I thought the first year was the hardest, and I’ll stand by that.

After we got married, we moved into the first floor of the two-apartment house she owned. One of the very few things our then-pastor said that turned out to be sage is that we should move into another place that was ours.

Carol didn’t understand. She was making room for my stuff. But that was just it; she was making room in HER place for MY stuff. And not all of it; a love seat I had purchased only a couple years before, one of the first pieces of real, new furniture I ever bought I gave away.

Squeezing my stuff in was tedious. I had a dresser on top of a dresser, after some cable station guy – maybe on HGTV – said that to fit everything in, you must build “up, up, UP!”

In July 1999, she went on a trip to Scotland with her college friend, an excursion she had planned before we were engaged. I encouraged her to go. But being alone in that space, with its specific creaks and noises was rather unsettling.

We had gotten married at our United Methodist Church. But by February, after “the troubles” had taken hold, we spent two weeks at Emmaus Methodist with the Hispanic gathering that had booted out of Trinity, against the specific wishes of the congregation.

Then, since the Trinity choir was still banned from singing, I started sitting in at the choir at First Pres. But Carol went back to attending Trinity, keeping up with the gossip.

Meanwhile, we were house shopping. We found a house we REALLY liked in the fall, but the hidden water damage in a wall caught in the inspection made that a no go. Finally, the house we now live in went down in price and we bought it.

i went to the closing, without Carol, but with a cashier’s check. Our lawyer had miscalculated the amount due and I was $1800 short; talk about angina. I borrowed money from somewhere, maybe a credit card, to close on May 8, 2000, a week shy of our first anniversary.

After surviving that first anxiety-prone year, I figure we can get through anything. Happy anniversary, my dear.