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The college wedding

Five years ago today, a couple of these people got married. The bride is named Lucy, a friend of my wife’s from college who I had not met until the day before the ceremony. The groom even my wife didn’t know (and – geez – I can’t remember his name).

Coincidentally, a football player named Ian Johnson got married to his college sweetheart, Chrissy Popadics, on that very same day, after famously proposing to her after his team, Boise State, won the Fiesta Bowl.

Last I knew (February 2012), Ian and Chrissy were still together. But I have no idea about Lucy and her beau.

But what I really wanted to talk about are colleges. Lucy’s wedding was at Brown University in Providence, RI. When you travel down the street, one crosses an archway and suddenly one is on the university grounds. I LIKE that, a lot.

It’s my considered opinion that campuses that are close to the city have a greater mutual connection. The College in St.Rose is like that in Albany. UAlbany is a split decision, with the downtown campus integrated, but the much larger uptown campus somewhat harder to get to. Binghamton U, in my hometown, is worse, isolated on the highway, and in Vestal, not even in Binghamton proper.

Video Roundup – July 2012

Garry Marshall noted that on his birthday, he was serenaded by Julie Andrews and Whitney Houston.

First off, a preview:
Here is a link to the trailer for “5 Hour Friends”, a new movie with Tom Sizemore, Musetta Vander, and Kimberlin Brown. “A lifelong womanizer gets a taste of his own medicine.” My niece Rebecca Jade writes: “This is the film I’m in, playing a singer [typecasting!], keep an eye out for it… Final edits should be done in late August and then working to get major distribution and inclusion at Sundance.”
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Here are some movies I’ve seen on video recently.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

I was surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed this picture. It told a credible re-imagining of his origin as a scrawny Steve Rogers (Chris Pine) who wants to serve his country, even if it means being a guinea pig for a machine that, theoretically, at least, would make him stronger. Those critics who did not find this exciting enough confuse me. It had the pacing not out of place with the dramas I’d seen from the 1940s. When Cap became nothing more than a costume, I found that particularly compelling.

All of this said, there was one glaring thing that I found less than believable. One was selecting a particular baseball game; one would have thought that mistake would not be made by…whomever.

And can someone please explain the Marvel Movie Universe to me? Presumably, the Fantastic Four, featuring the same Chris Pine, is NOT in the universe, and neither are the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films? But what of the new Spidey flick? I suppose I could look it up, but I expect a comic geek out there can explain it to me better.

Sidebar: Thom Wade on Understanding the Value of Power?
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Thor (2011)

I found this a bit confusing and muddled. I listened to director Kenneth Branaugh’s discussion of the deleted scenes, and I’ve become convinced that the insertion of one or two, including one featuring the Warrior Three and Sif, would have clarified things somewhat for me, though it might have been at the expense of the pacing.

Still, I found I liked the film more as it went on. Chris Hemsworth was a quite decent Thor, though I think Tom Hiddleston as Loki and even Idris Elba in the relatively small role of Heimdall stole the show. Natalie Portman was fine as Jane Foster, though I kept thinking that the role didn’t need someone of her acting pedigree.
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The Princess Diaries (2001)

I saw this originally in the theater and liked it well enough. Anne Hathaway, in her first starring role, was credible as the nerd who would be royalty, and Julie Andrews was perfect as her grandmother, and, not incidentally, the queen of an obscure land. Watching it again with an eight-year-old who believes she’s practically a royal herself – she IS distantly related to the late Princess Diana – I realized what FUN it must be for the target audience.

I spent most of my time watching the extras, which included director Garry Marshall’s recollections of the film, trying to create a fun movie set, celebrating birthdays. He noted that on his birthday, he was serenaded by Julie Andrews and one of the producers, Whitney Houston. Houston and one of her colleagues practically gushed at snagging Andrews for her role. Seeing a happy and confident Whitney was actually a bit sad, given what happened subsequently.
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On HBO, watching in a hotel room:

The Big Year (2011)

As the intro says: The characters played by “Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson are at a crossroads — one is experiencing a mid-life crisis, another a late-life crisis, and the third, a far from ordinary no-life crisis…. three friendly rivals who, tired of being ruled by obligations and responsibilities, dedicate a year of their lives to following their dreams.” And the “cross-country journey of wild and life-changing adventures” is…birding.

This is a pleasant enough diversion. Not a lot of big yuks, even though it was billed as a comedy. It isn’t great cinema, but, having dealt with comic book obsessives, I found the players totally in keeping with behavior I’ve seen.
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Harrison Ford turned 70 on July 13, and I realize I’ve only seen him in American Graffiti (1973), The Conversation (1974) – fairly recently, Witness (1985) – probably my favorite of his roles, Working Girl (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990), Regarding Henry (1991) – my least favorite, The Fugitive (1993), Sabrina (1995), and Six Days Seven Nights (1998). Nothing since, though he’ll be playing Branch Rickey in 42, a story about Jackie Robinson, so I may watch that. I’ve seen no Jack Ryan roles or Air Force One. I did probably see him in various TV shows early in his career.

OK, I did see him in three Star Wars and two Indiana Jones (1, 3) movies, but that’s pretty much a given.

Ernest Borgnine died on July 8. I’m not sure I really enjoyed watching the early 1960s TV show McHale’s Navy. But there was a character played by Joe Flynn named Captain Binghamton, and since I was FROM Binghamton, NY, I was compelled to watch. I saw him as a guest in LOTS of TV series. The first movie I saw him in was The Dirty Dozen (1967), which I viewed at a drive-in theater (remember those?) The only other theatrical movie of his I saw was The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Need to see Marty and From Here To Eternity, at the bare minimum.

Celeste Holm died on July 15. I know her better for TV shows (Archie Bunker’s Place, especially) than her movies. For instance, she played two different characters on the program Medical Center, a show I watched regularly, which starred Chad Everett, who died on July 17.

Steve Bissette reviews the apparently terrible, new Oliver Stone movie SAVAGES, so I know I don’t have to go. (Language NSFW.)

The Lydster, Part 100: The Library Cataloger

One of those days after her birthday, when I stayed home with her because she was too sick to go to school, by their rules, but not THAT sick, I suggested that Lydia organize her books in the guest room. They were stacked so that one couldn’t even see what they were. So she decided to put them into categories: Learn, Bible, Scary, Adventure, Funny, Fun, and Mariah.

Learn are educational books. Magic School Bus shows up here, as well as encyclopedic items.
Bible includes Christmas books, Bible songbooks.
Scary can be anything from Dora’s trip to the dentist (she has a cavity!) to Scooby-Doo’s Halloween adventure to various mysteries.
Adventure seems to encompass the reading books with a narrative that’s not too scary.
Funny is books that make her laugh.
Fun are books that she can have fun doing something.
Mariah involves the books she has outgrown, but she keeps them to read to her favorite doll, and to the others, I suppose.

With a system, it’s MUCH easier to get her to put her books away. I’d do it myself except I wouldn’t want to misfile something.

Her books may now be better organized than mine. I think catalogers are wonderful people, though I would never want to BE one.

It’s all about the music: Ride, Zombies, Thunder…

One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist.

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died a couple days ago at the too-young age of 61, after battling pancreatic cancer. According to the timeline on her website, she wasn’t even able to attempt to go into space until 1977 “when NASA conducts a national search for new astronauts and, for the first time, allows women to apply.” The next year, she was “selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate — one of six women among 35 trainees chosen,” the same year she received a “Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford University.” On June 18, 1983, she “becomes the first American woman to fly in space, when she “serves as mission specialist… aboard space shuttle Challenger.” She had a second mission aboard Challenger in 1984, and was scheduled for a third flight when the Challenger exploded in 1986, after which she was “appointed to the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger disaster.”

Arthur gives his POV, specifically about her posthumous coming out.

The song that’s stuck in my brain is the great Wilson Pickett’s live version of Mustang Sally. As the chorus goes, “Ride, Sally, Ride.” A true American hero.
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While I had read about this sentiment since the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, I actually heard someone in a physician’s office Tuesday morning, complaining to one of her colleagues, that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney have said Word One about gun control. By contrast:
“Colin Ferguson snuck a handgun and 160 rounds of ammunition onto a commuter train in New York and shot more than two dozen people, killing six of them. His rampage dominated the news and stirred a national outpouring of shock and grief not unlike what we’re now seeing.

“It also prompted an immediate call from a Democratic president for a legislative response. Declaring that the epidemic of gun violence in America had ‘gotten so serious we should consider a lot of things that we haven’t done in the past,’ Bill Clinton made an explicit call for gun control on the day after the December 1993 massacre…

“Clinton’s subsequent push netted results, with the Democratic-controlled Congress passing an assault weapons ban in 1994. And just before the Long Island shootings, he’d signed the Brady Law, which mandated a five-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun.” Unfortunately, the assault ban ran out in 2004, and the idea of bringing it back does not seem to be in the political wind.

The song that popped into my head is Lawyers, Guns, and Money by Warren Zevon; here’s the less-radio friendly version.
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From yesterday’s Los Angeles Times: “Sherman Hemsley, best known for playing George Jefferson on… “All in the Family” and its spinoff “The Jeffersons,” has died. Hemsley was 74…”The Jeffersons,” which ran on CBS from 1975 to 1985, was the first series about an upscale African American couple in prime time… Hemsley earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his role as the irascible business owner.”

Wasn’t always a fan of the show, but always LOVED the Jeffersons theme, which told the narrative of the series in an entertaining way.

We had a very busy weekend. So I was quite tired Monday night, and went to bed at the amazingly early hour (for me) of 10 p.m. Then at about 11 p.m., the Wife and I heard incredible thunder, and saw lightning so bright, it lit up the room, even with the shades down and my back to the window; it went on for 15 or 20 minutes, yet the Daughter slept right through it. Lightning Strikes by Lou Christie popped into my head, though if I could have found a version by the Albany band Blotto beyond this snippet, I would have gone that route.

A very talented young cellist at my church belongs to some cello consortium. They will be playing, I learned from one of my fellow parishioners, the song Kashmir. I got the distinct impression that most of them had no idea what tune that was. It’s a song by Led Zeppelin, originally on the Physical Graffiti album, and sounds like THIS.

Speaking of Zeppelin, here’s a cover of the song The Ocean (track #8) by Kurt Hoffman’s Band of Weeds, which I own on a 4-song EP from Hello Records, which I happened upon in my collection.
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Also from yesterday’s LA Times: “Apple reported disappointing third-quarter results today that caused its stock price to plunge in after-hours trading. The technology giant said profit rose 21% to $8.8 billion on revenue of $35 billion, up 22% year over year. The results were less than what analysts had expected. Shares plummeted in after-hours trading, falling $34, or nearly 6%, to $566.78.” A 21% profit means falling stock prices.

The song: Oscillations by Silver Apples, from 1968, which I own on vinyl.
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One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half-century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist. It is She’s Not There, the first single by the British group The Zombies, which went to #12 in the UK and #2 on the US Billboard charts and in Canada. “Rolling Stone magazine ranked “She’s Not There” No. 297 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” I love it because the harmony vocals in the chorus keep changing the song from the major to the minor mode. It was famously covered by Vanilla Fudge, which doesn’t sound like the Glee version at all.

After the Zombies broke up, Rod Argent formed a group called Argent, which had a big hit in 1972 with Hold Your Head Up, which I’m TRYING to do, because I’m still a bit fatigued.

B is for Backgammon

Backgammon is a simple game, at least in concept, where one rolls a pair of dice to move the checker pieces around the board.

When I was a kid, there was this weird board on the backside of my checkerboard; I had NO idea what it was there for. As it turned out, it was almost perfect for a game called backgammon. I never learned it, though, until I was in the latter stages of college in the mid-1970s. I went to a bar in New Paltz, NY, appropriately named Bacchus, and saw a bunch of people playing this game. I eventually befriended one of the players, a townie named Anne, and ended up playing a lot of the game.

I discovered that backgammon is an ancient game, certainly invented in some form in southwest Asia, perhaps Persia, before A.D. 800. A version of the game spread from India to China and Japan. It was introduced to Europe by the Arabs. From BOARD and TABLE Games from Many Civilizations by R.C. Bell: “Early in the seventeenth century, a new variant appeared…the old game enjoyed a tremendous revival and swept through Europe, being played in England as backgammon, in France as tric-trac…in Germany as puff, in Spain as tablas reales…”

It is a simple game, at least in concept, where one rolls a pair of dice to move the checker pieces around the board. In the board above, the white pieces move around the board to get all its pieces into its inner board (the lower right quadrant) while the black pieces move around the board to get all its pieces into ITS inner board (the upper right quadrant) before bearing off. The clash occurs when an opposing piece wants to land on your space. A space with two or more checkers is safe, but one with only one checker is vulnerable to be hit and have that piece to start all over again.

All of this is laid out quite well in this rule book.

A lot of the calculation in backgammon involves probability. The odds of getting hit, specifically. Above are all the combinations of two dice. Say you have a piece that’s six unrestricted squares away; it’s quite vulnerable to a throw of 1/5, 2/4, 3/3, 4/2, 5/1, but also 6/1, 6/2, 6/3, 6/4, 6/5, or 6/6, or even 2/2, since throwing doubles means you get four of the number. In other words, there’s a 12 out of 36 chance of getting hit. Whereas being 11 away, there is only a 2 in 36 chance (5/6, 6/5) of being hit.

There is a doubling cube, whereby one raises the stakes of the game, but it can be played without using it; probably sacrilege, I know. I play at least once a month, and I enjoy it greatly.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11