Ramblin' with Roger

Remember the Date QUESTION

There are dates throughout the year that, without prompting from calendars or news stories, remind me of something that happened in the past, external to myself or my family. April 4, for instance, I always remember as the day in 1968 that Martin Luther King, Jr. got shot. Other days that seem to stick in my mind:

January 28, 1986 – the Challenger disaster. Oddly, the Columbia disaster of February 1, 2003 doesn’t though I do remember that it was around Groundhog’s Day as I was heading for a MidWinter’s party at the time.
May 4, 1970 – the Kent State disaster. It’s codified by that song. No, not Ohio by CSNY, but that annoying Mike Love rewrite of Leiber & Stoller’s Riot on Cell Block #9 called Student Demonstration Time, which appears on the otherwise excellent Beach Boys album Surf’s Up.
America was stunned on May 4, 1970
When rally turned to riot up at Kent State University
They said the students scared the Guard
Though the troops were battle dressed
Four martyrs earned a new degree
The Bachelor of Bullets
It also features the classic line: “The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun.”
May 8, 1972 – the mining of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam, which many people feared represented an escalation of the war. Much student activism around the country followed, including at my campus.
June 5, 1968 -RFK’s assassination, which I’ve wrote about before.
July 7, 1940 – R8ingo Starr’s birthday. George’s birthday moved from February 25 to February 24, and Paul’s birthday I confuse with Brian Wilson’s in mid-June, but Ringo’s I remember. Maybe it’s because it seems lucky – 7/7- and I recall aan LP called The Beatles’ Story which indicated that Ringo was the final ingredient necessary to create the magic of Beatlemania. He’s also the question to this answer: JEOPARDY! Show #5647 – Tuesday, March 10, 2009 HE SAID, SHE SAID for $1200: “Sorry Beatles fans, he said he has “too much to do, so no more fan mail…& no objects to be signed”
I also am reminded of the 2005 London bombings on that date.
August 28, 1963 – march on Washington, “I Have a Dream” speech
September 11, 2001 – Moby’s 35th birthday; I remember this because I often play the music of a particular musician on his or her birthday, especially those birthdays divisible by five. I’ve since wondered how it would be to have a birthday so associated with tragedy such as 9/11. (The Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery took place on my 12th birthday, and I remember it quite well, but it didn’t have anywhere near the same scope.)
October 4, 1987 – a freak Albany snowstorm that knocked out power to some people for a couple weeks. I was out only four days.
October 9, 1940 – I do remember John Lennon’s birthday, and that of his son Sean 35 years later. But I was reminded by my one-time office mate that it’s also Jackson Browne’s birthday, but I couldn’t tell you what year without looking it up. (It’s 1948.)
November 22, 1963 – the JFK assassination. I had a girlfriend who, for every Thanksgiving blessing, would invoke the memory of JFK.
December 8, 1980 – John Lennon’s death.
December 24, 1990 – the death of Sandy Cohen, the tenor soloist of my church choir at the time. He had had two or three heart attacks before that, one of them during a church service, which he wouldn’t leave until he finished “the gig”, so it shouldn’t have surprised us, yet it did.

Given my personal history, it’s quite possible that I will add April 3, 2009 to the list.

How about you? What events always stick in your mind when the date rolls around? I’m looking for the births, deaths, anniversaries, but not of family members – which I’m SURE you all remember. I’m also ignoring holidays and quasi-holidays (January 1, February 2 & 14, March 17, April 1, June 14, July 4, November 11, December 25) as well, unless something else is triggered by it.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: The Class

A couple weekends ago, the wife and her husband went on a date to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see Entre les murs (The Class) , a film nominated as best foreign film at the recent Oscars ceremony. It is in French, with subtitles.

Here’s the description from Rotten Tomatoes: “Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet’s THE CLASS is an absorbing journey into a multicultural high school in Paris over the course of a school year. François Begaudeau–an actual teacher and the author upon whose work the film was based–is utterly convincing as François, an openminded teacher in charge of a classroom of youngsters from a wide variety of backgrounds.”

The movie IS utterly convincing, so much so that the style of the film makes one think it’s a documentary. Evidently, the Parisian inner-city school system experiences the same difficulties as a multicultural school in the United States. There’s the well-intended, optimistic and creative teacher; there’s a fairly large classroom of kids with sometime competing needs; there are the teaching colleagues who try to be supportive if they’re not burned out themselves; and there’s the administration, looking for a balance between being firm and fair.

It doesn’t have a big plot or much histrionics, rather like life itself. That it is a well-done film really is not the issue; 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8 of 10 starts on IMDB. The question: is it enjoyable? The movie is SO realistic that it felt a bit claustrophobic. Particularly for my wife, who is a teacher in an urban setting, it felt much too much like the truth. But we’re still thinking about the film.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone else who has seen this film, especially if you’re a teacher or have taught in the past: Kelly, Greg, SamauraiFrog, this means you.

ROG

#1- the Beatles. #2 – the Beatles…

On the Billboard charts of April 4, 1964, 45 years ago this week, a phenomenal thing took place. Not only was the #1 single by the Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love, which would stay on the top of the charts for five weeks – but the whole top five was dominated by the Fab Four. The week before, the Beatles had 10 singles on the Top 100 charts, 12 the following week and 14 the week after, crushing Elvis Presley’s record of nine on December 19, 1956. and it was facilitated by this one fact: the Beatles were a bust when they were first released in the United States.

For instance, She Loves You was a reissue of a failed September 1963 release on Swan Records. From Me To You managed to get all the way up to #116 in 1963 on VeeJay. My Bonnie, a 1962 Decca release, originally failed to chart at all.

But when the Beatles, now on Capitol Records, hit #1 with I Want To Hold Your Hand the week of February 1, 1964, followed by their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, those records on those other labels began to chart as well. No label would have put out more than a couple songs by an artist at once – Can’t Buy Me Love ascended to the top as I Want To Hold Your Hand descended for Capitol, but the other companies wanted to take full advantage of Beatlemania.

I was always a little bothered by the Beatles’ #1 as a collection, for it fails to register the quality and quantity of Beatles hits in that first period. Please Please Me (likely) and Twist and Shout (almost definitely) were blocked from getting to #1 only by another Beatles song.
***
MIT DEN BEATLES Whole Category on JEOPARDY!, Show #5644 – Thursday, March 5, 2009

$200 The Beatles honed their chops playing clubs in the Reeperbahn, a red-light district in this German port city
$400 One of 2 official Beatles German-language releases, “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” was the lads’ take on this 1964 smash
$600 Astrid Kirchherr & Klaus Voormann are characters in this movie dramatization of the Beatles’ time in Germany
$800 To please their rabid German fans, the boys re-recorded this hit as “Sie Liebt Dich” in 1964
$1000 While making “Let It Be”, the Beatles recorded “Geh Raus”, a German-language spoof of this No. 1 hit
***
The Beatles Complete on Ukulele.

Math Professor Figures Formula for Beatles Success
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JEOPARDY! Questions
Hamburg
I Want To Hold Your Hand [on Past Masters #1]
BackBeat [which no one on the show got; I saw the movie and own the soundtrack]
She Loves You [on Past Masters #1]
Get Back [which I’ve never heard! Anyone out there own this? Anyone even HEARD this?]

ROG

Comedy Today

As I’ve long admitted, I can’t tell a joke to save my life, though I can be funny when the situation generates it. April Fools’ Day just does not play to my strength. I do enjoy bad jokes, though. And none are worse than the daily meditations I get from David Pogue, the techie guy from the New York Times. I think I follow him on Twitter just so I can groan. Recent examples from his Twitter feed (Pogue):
The algebra teacher confiscated a kid’s rubber band, believing it to be a weapon of math disruption.
and this one
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
and this:
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.

From other sources, more terrible humor:

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune.

One evening at an investment meeting he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.

I may look like just an ordinary man, he said to her, but in just a few years, my father will die, and I’ll inherit $65 million.

Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.
***
Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church’s morals, kept sticking her nose in to other people’s business. Several members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon. She emphatically told George (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing.

George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn’t explain, defend, or deny.. He said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house, walked home…and left it there all night.
***
A woman had just returned to her home from an evening of church services, when she was startled by an intruder. She caught the man in the act of robbing her home of its valuables and yelled: ‘Stop! Acts 2:38!’ (Repent and be Baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.)

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done.

As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar: ‘Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture to you.’
‘Scripture?’ replied the burglar. ‘She said she had an Ax and Two 38s!’

Ncevy Sbbyf Qnl
***
***
And speaking of fool, I go into the NCAA men’s basketball pool generally having seen no more than two games prior to March Madness – this year it was 4 of the 6 overtime periods Syracuse played vs. Connecticut; that’s it.
Yet I always have a chance going into the final weekend. As it turns out, NO ONE in my pool picked the ultimate champion. They all went for Louisville or Pitt or Syracuse or, like I did, Memphis.
My other Final Four picks (Syracuse, Louisville, Memphis) dried up, but Villanova, who essentially played at home the first two rounds, then beat Duke and Pitt to be my one pick in the Final Four; Final Two, actually.
So the Saturday games will tell the tale. I have a one-point lead. If ‘Nova wins, then I win. If UNC beats ‘Nova, then I end up in the middle of the pack, but if UNC and Connecticut both win, I’ll be hanging out in the lower regions of the pool. Go Wildcats!
ROG

K is for Keys

I tend to lose my keys. I’m convinced that it is some sort of deep psychological antipathy regarding the need for them. Surely, one would not even need keys if one did not require locks and we would not have locks but for the dishonesty of some. At least I know it’s not just me; just last week, someone giving me a ride to work couldn’t find HIS keys; they got thrown in his gym bag but, wrapped around some clothes, failed to make any noise.

When I was younger, I used to be impressed with the number of keys on the key chain of certain people, such as my elementary school custodian. Only later did I find out that the keys were not only a physical burden – a bunch of keys gets heavy over time – but an annoyance as well, having to rifle a couple dozen pieces of metal usually of similar shape, size and color to find the correct one.

My curiosity as a child required me to take off the lock from the front door of my house, as I needed to see how the key worked. Unfortunately, I was unable to put the lock together. Well, technically that’s not true; I did put it back together, but there were parts left over, and it no longer worked properly. Interestingly, I don’t recall getting in trouble for this act. Apparently, my father was more impressed with my curiosity than annoyed the the inconvenience and expense of getting a new lock.

The early automobiles did not even have keys. It wasn’t until 1932, I recently discovered, that Henry G. Key invented the first automobile key. Even then, locking the cars was a sporadic exercise at best in many locales.

I grew up in the upstate New York city of Binghamton, near the Pennsylvania border. It rained quite a bit more than the average city in those days, and cars would often leave their lights on. One particularly dreary day walking home from high school in the late 1960s, I recall going into 22 different cars, opening the door without benefit of a key and turning out the lights. Of course cars are now more sophisticated, and the issue of lights staying on is largely moot. But I couldn’t open these cars without a key, even if the need were there.

Of course, like so many other words, key takes on different meanings. Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone State since shortly after 1800. From state historic website: The word “keystone” comes from architecture and refers to the central, wedge-shaped stone in an arch, which holds all the other stones in place. The application of the term “Keystone State” to Pennsylvania cannot be traced to any single source…At a Jefferson Republican victory rally in October 1802, Pennsylvania was toasted as “the keystone in the federal union,” and in the newspaper Aurora the following year the state was referred to as “the keystone in the democratic arch.” The modern persistence of this designation is justified in view of the key position of Pennsylvania in the economic, social, and political development of the United States. Note the different meaning of the word key in the previous sentence.

Conversely, the Florida Keys are comprised of an archipelago of about 1700 islands in the southeast United States. I would never want to live there in hurricane season (June through October), because, from what is pictured on television, there appears to be but one egress from the islands.

The singer Alicia Keys took her last name from the keys on a piano, which she learned to play when she was seven.

As is often the case, I’ll end this with some music, not Alicia Keys, or “Brand New Key” by Melanie, or that song by Francis Scott Key, or even the blues standard Key to the Highway. Instead, based entirely on a Twitter post from someone who claims he isn’t religious but that Stevie Wonder’s Have A Talk With God is just about a perfect song. From the 1976 award-winning album Songs in the Key of Life:

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Friend Leah, Albany bus activist, writes:
I popped into KeyBank today to take care of some personal finances when the teller I know gave me the 411. Here it is:

Through [Tuesday, 3/31], you can still purchase a 10-trip pass for $9.50 — they are definitely available at the KeyBank on State Street between Broadway and S. Pearl Street [in Albany].

Starting April 1, KeyBank will have to sell the exact same passes for $13.00!! Buy [today] and save. Pass it on.

Leah’s also cited in All Over Albany.

ROG