U is for the United Nations

Would an American presence have help the world avoid WWII?


The United Nations turned 65 years old on 24 October 2010. Representatives of 92 nations met in San Francisco, CA USA just after the conclusion of the European theater portion of World War II, even before the end of the war in the Pacific theater to come up with a document.

I must admit to being a bit of a UN addict. I know all of the former Secretaries-General and their nations, as well as the current one; I’ve been to the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza more than once – usually at a protest of some sort – and the Swede’s death in 1961 was one of the first things I remember external to my life. When the UN is a topic on a game show, as it was recently on JEOPARDY!, I generally do well.

UNICEF

For as long as I can remember, there has been a coterie of Americans that have wanted the nation to get out of the United Nations. Ostensibly, it was because the UN is limited in what it can do in achieving peace. Even if that is partially true, it is hardly the totality of the organization’s mission, which includes addressing issues of health, climate change, human rights, the role of women, and much more.

Probably the UN organ best known in the US is UNICEF, which addresses, among many other things, AIDS, cholera in Haiti, and malnutrition in flooded sections of Pakistan.

When I was younger, I couldn’t help but recall that the US, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts, balked at joining the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations; would an American presence have help the world avoid WWII? Perhaps, I thought, perhaps naively, if the US were to have called for a less punitive attitude toward the failed German state.

I suspect that some of the UN naysayers are convinced that the United Nations is the vehicle by which the Apocalypse, presumably described in the Biblical book of Revelation, will take place. While the previous link provided doesn’t specifically mention the UN, this one does. Frankly, I find it unlikely, if only because the organization just doesn’t work in concert as well as the New Testament reading would require.

DC Comics PSA: Gifts to the United Nations! (December 1956).

In honor of the upcoming summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, three versions of a song that mentions the United Nations, Summertime Blues:
Eddie Cochran
Blue Cheer
The Who

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

All about Orange

Keep the pulp!

A bit of Monday Mayhem:

1. What is your favorite orange-colored thing on the planet?

John Boehner. No, I jest. Sunrise or sunset.

2. Ever see an orange person?

Albany mayor Jerry Jennings, who sometimes put Boehner to shame.

3. Name something that you hate that is orange.

Cantaloupe. Indeed, I’m just not a melon guy at all.

4. What is your favorite sports team that uses the color orange?

Easy – the Syracuse University Orangemen. If I were to pick a pro team, it’d be the blue-and-orange New York Mets.

5. Name an orange food.

A clementine, a type of orange fruit.

6. Tell us something funny that entails an orange (like a joke or image).

Eminem was on 60 Minutes in October, interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

He writes all of his own songs and delights in rhyming words others can’t.

We talked to him about how he does it in his private recording studio.

Eminem has said he bends the words.

“It’s just in the enunciation of it,” he explained. “Like, people say that the word ‘orange’ doesn’t rhyme with anything and that kind ‘a pisses me off because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange.”

“What rhymes with orange? I can’t think of anything,” Cooper remarked.

“If you’re taking the word at face value and you just say orange, nothing is going to rhyme with it exactly. If you enunciate it and you make it like more than one syllable? Orange, you could say like, ‘I put my orange four-inch door hinge in storage and ate porridge with George.’ So, you just have to figure out the science to breakin’ down words,” he replied.

7. When is the last time you ate an orange?

This summer.

8. What’s your opinion about pulp- does it belong in juice or should it be removed?

Keep the pulp!

9. Name an orange piece of your wardrobe.

T-shirt with my church’s logo on it.

10. Orange you glad we didn’t say banana?

And my daughter cannot yet tell that joke correctly. In time, I’m sure she will.

The horror movie mystery is solved

That movie absolutely terrified me for weeks! Thought someone was going to kill ME, and I hadn’t even kissed a girl yet!

In one of those memes I do sometimes, there was a question about the movie that I found most scary. The problem was that I saw it when I was nine, give or take a year, couldn’t remember the title, and I didn’t even know how well I remembered the details.

Finally, I wised up and asked my friend, comic book artist, and more importantly in this context, horror film buff Steve Bissette:

What is the movie I’m trying to describe? I saw it c 1962, but it was likely the second run – it was paired with a 1956 Frances the Talking Mule film. The lead woman was very beautiful, very much so, and men wanted to kiss her, but if they did, she became very homely. In order to regain her beauty, she had to take this ring and stab them in the neck, killing them, then blow some powder afterward. Do you have ANY idea what I saw that freaked me out when I was nine?

The Leech Woman

Steve’s reply:

You saw THE LEECH WOMAN (1960), a black-and-white Universal-International film — and yep, they made the FRANCIS movies, too.

Here’s the Wiki synopsis, which is accurate:

A mysterious old woman approaches Dr. Paul Talbot (Phillip Terry) and promises to reveal to him the secret of eternal youth. Following her to Africa, he and his wife June Talbot (Coleen Gray) witness the secret ceremony that utilizes orchid pollen and a victim’s pineal gland secretions. June returns to the United States alone and proceeds to keep herself young by killing people for their pineal secretions. She becomes enamored with a man half her actual age and kills his fiance to maintain her youthful appearance. Eventually, the cops come to investigate the murders and June kills herself by leaping from a window.

The preview trailer.

I wrote back:

THANKS, Steve! I’ve been puzzling about this for YEARS until it finally occurred to me to ask my favorite expert! That movie absolutely terrified me for weeks! Thought someone was going to kill ME, and I hadn’t even kissed a girl yet!

***
Steve also went ape in tackling Prime-Apes!!! My Fave Planet of the Apes Knockoffs, such as Kamandi.

My Favorite Years QUESTION

Note that we DIDN’T pick 2004, the year Lydia was born.


Possibly around the time I was writing about nostalgia, the Wife and I were talking about the favorite years in our lives.

I picked 1969, the year I turned 16, and my parents let me have a huge party. I had a girlfriend, I got elected president of the student government, which made me an irritant to the new principal, and I was figuring out who I was politically, especially compared to the transitional 1968. Music was great that year, too.

Then there was 1978, the year I worked at the Schenectady Arts Council, got a girlfriend, and finally stopped my nomadic existence.

1984 was the year after Mitch Cohn was fired from FantaCo and Raoul Vezina died. This made Tom Skulan more dependent on me to deal with the day-to-day stuff, while he worked on publications and the “big picture” stuff. Yes, affairs of the heart played here too.

Carol and I both picked 1998, the year before we got married, for different reasons. Her reasons are her own (she can start her own blog – unlikely). For me, it was going to Detroit (visit friend, Motown museum, Ford museums, Tigers game), Cleveland (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), Washington, DC (visit friend, take JEOPARDY! test), and Boston (appear on JEOPARDY!) Interesting that neither of us picked 1999, the year we actually GOT married because that first year in that half a house she owned was tricky; buying OUR house in 2000 was definitely a vast improvement.

And we both picked 2003, which was the year Lydia was finally conceived. Carol and I went to Poland Spring, Maine after that. Note that we DIDN’T pick 2004, the year Lydia was born; that took some getting used to.

So what are some of your favorite years, and why?
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My Favorite Year with Peter O’Toole – Final scenes

Beatles Island Songs, 183-174

Listen to the Coverville Thanksgiving podcast; nothing but Beatles covers!


The rules of engagement

183 Honey Pie from the white album. More dance hall McCartney. This was apparently the music he learned from his father.
182 Polythene Pam from Abbey Road. Another 48-second song, which would have fared better in the medley. In fact, the link is to the medley.
181 Blue Jay Way from Magical Mystery Tour. An interesting Harrison song about Los Angeles.
180 Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles VI (US). Not one of their strongest covers. And it annoyed me that the Little Richard latter part wasn’t credited at the time.
179 Revolution 9 from the white album. This is too interesting, too weird to go out in the bottom 10. But ultimately too weird to keep.
178 Misery from Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles (US). As with There’s A Place, never on a US Capitol album until something called Rarities, long after the group’s demise. So it was largely out of my consciousness.
177 Flying from Magical Mystery Tour. Only instrumental in the canon, attributed to the 4 Beatles. Disposable filler.
176 Happiness Is a Warm Gun from the white album. I have no real idea what this Lennon song is about, though it apparently has something to do with sex and Yoko.
175 Savoy Truffle from the white album. A Harrison trifle. A truffle is a trifle.
174 Rock and Roll Music from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). A relatively perfunctory version of the Chuck Berry song, compared with some of the other songs Lennon covered.

The most popular Beatles album downloaded in the first week on iTunes was Abbey Road, coincidentally the most popular vinyl Beatles album. Here Comes The Sun was the most popular individual song.

Listen to the Coverville Thanksgiving podcast; nothing but Beatles covers!

Ramblin' with Roger
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