S is for San Francisco

Long before I ever went there, I loved San Francisco. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the cable cars, I adored the place.

It may have started in 1962, when I was nine. The San Francisco Giants, my favorite team in the National League was playing the New York Yankees, my favorite team in the American League; we’re talking Major League Baseball here, BTW. While my support for the Yankees was regional (I’d been to Yankee Stadium, e.g.), my love for the Giants was more emotional. I loved Orlando Cepeda at 1B – I love the way Danny Kaye sang “Or-lan-do Ce-pe-da” in a baseball song. I loved the Alou brothers, Matty and Felipe, who would one day be joined by brother Jesus; at least once, a few years later, all three patrolled the outfield at the same time. I loved Willie “Stretch” McCovey, who would eventually become the Hall of Fame 1B. P Juan Marchical! But most of all I loved CF Willie Mays, one of the three or four best players EVER, whose statue I had purchased at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY around that time, only to have a foot chomped off by our dog.

Then there was JEOPARDY!, the daytime quiz show hosted by Art Fleming, which I used to watch with my aunt at lunchtime almost every day. One sponsor was Rice-A-Roni, “the San Francisco treat”. I LIKED Rice-A-Roni when I was 11.

I listened to Bill Cosby a lot in those days, and this riff made me want to go there and see Lombard Street:
or here.

A few years later, it was Haight-Asbury. The Summer of Love may have ultimately been a failed social experiment, but to a 14-year old, it was just cool. From it came the music of the Jefferson Airplane, Rolling Stone magazine and other wondrous inventions.

So, I felt as though SF was my second hometown, even though I had never been west of the Mississippi until considerably later.

Therefore, the events of November 1978 felt terrible to me, as though it had happened in my own hometown of Binghamton, NY. First I saw the raw footage of Congressman Leo Ryan and his associates being attacked in Guyana. I remember an ashen Mayor George Moscone announce Rep. Ryan’s death. A couple days later, we learned of the Jonestown Massacre with Jim Jones leading the drinking of the Kool-Aid; most of the folks were from the Bay Area. Not two weeks later, I watched acting mayor Diane Feinstein weep as she announced the murders of Moscone and city council member Harvey Milk, almost certainly the most prominent gay politician of that time. Subsequently, I followed the trial of Dan White and his infamous “Twinkie defense”. Some feel the two events – Jonestown and the Moscone/Milk murders – were connected. In any case, it’s all created ambivalence about whether I want to go see the upcoming movie Milk with Sean Penn.

I finally got to actually go to San Francisco in 1987. I flew to San Diego, and then my sister, who lives there, and I flew to the Bay area. We went to the fish market, rode the cable cars, saw the Bridge, and yes, we found Lombard Street, which is as beautiful and curvy as Cosby described. Unfortunately, the San Francisco Giants were out of town, but we did see the Oakland A’s play.

San Francisco was everything I knew it would be.

ABC Wednesday.

ROG

What kind of blog is this?

For the several blogs in which I participate, I’m the primary contributor for all but one, that one being my work blog. Yet the Typealyzer scores for most of them differ.

The NYS Small Business development Center blog shows this.
The NYS Data Center Affiliates blog shows this.
The Friends of the Albany Public Library blog shows this.

But for this blog (and also my Times Union blog), the answer is this:

ESTP – The Doers
The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
Analysis
This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

What’s really scary is how dead on at least the last two sentences are. Whereas the other ones, not so much. Perhaps it’s a function of me writing for myself rather than for a different audience.

ROG

November Ramblin’

After careful consideration, listening to all sides of the issue ad naseum, I’ve decided that I support the bailout of the US automobile industry. There are just too many jobs down the line that depend on those companies. So, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, et al: pony up. If those auto companies fail, you’ll have only those more fuel efficient foreign cars to fill, and your prices will keep dropping like a stone. Oh, you didn’t think I was coming out in favor of the GOVERNMENT bailout, did you? BTW, the idea’s not original with me – read it somewhere – but it does seem to operate on a win-win basis. Maybe the car makers will actually come up with a PLAN for what they’ll do with the money; at the rate they’re losing cash now, $25 billion will be gone by April Fools’ Day, appropriately.
***
The axe has fallen on three shows on ABC-TV prime time schedule, and wouldn’t you know it: two of them are shows I like to watch. I loved both Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money. Daisies was whimsical with an undercurrent of melancholy. DSM was soap opera trash, and I mean that in a good way; Nick George (Peter Krause), the main protagonist, is being sucked more palpably into the dark side. I never saw Eli Stone, mostly as a matter of time, but based on the previews, I think I might have liked it. What is unwatchable is the one show that apparently survived on ABC Wednesday, the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice.

But to be fair, all three of the shows would likely have been canceled last season if not for the writer’s strike, based on ratings.

The only thing I have to look forward to on ABC now are Life on Mars, which IS interesting, even if it’s a Brit retread, Grey’s Anatomy, Brothers & Sisters, and, eventually, the last season of Scrubs.
***
Reasons to hate the interregnum. Interregnum: great word, that.
***
A scary video that a female friend sent me called Instructional Film for Women:
or here.
***
A young woman I “met” through ABC Wednesday named earthlingorgeous, who is 30 but looks 20, is having a blog anniversary giveaway at her site, Earthly Explorations. I’ve never gotten swag from the Philippines before, so by mentioning her contest (and having previously registered), I get “points” towards chances of winning prizes. Or something like that.
ROG

Questions about Death

This is, as most Americans of a certain age – what a quaint phrase – the 45th anniversary of the assassination of the 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I remember it well, I think. Or, as I have surmised in the past, I may have shared the story with acquaintances so often that now I recall the retelling rather than the actual event. No matter.

The facts were these: I was in my fifth grade class at Daniel S. Dickinson school in Binghamton, NY when our teacher, Miss (Marie) Oberlik was called into the hall by someone. She came back into the class to announce that the President had been killed. then she left. Immediately our 10-year old minds were reeling. What happened? And what does this mean for the country. I’m fairly sure that we were not versed in the rulkes of Presidential succession and I doubt that I even knew who Lyndon Johnson was. Suddenly, Miss Oberlik returns to the class screaming, “Everyone else in the school is being quiet in respect fior the President!” Well, yeah, but I bet their teachers didn’t drop a bombshell on them and then LEAVE.

BTW, I also saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on live TV that weekend.

My questions, which I request that you answer:
1. Who was the first tragedy (death or other traumatic event) you know that was NOT personally involving your sphere of family and friends. For me it was JFK’s death; for my wife, who is younger than I am, it was Richard Nixon’s resignation, probabl;y for the reason I felt about JFK – what now? (Wheras I was rather pleased by Nixon’s departure.)

2. Who was the first person you knew personally to die?
For me, it was all in one short stretch of my great-grandfather (my paternal grandmother’s father), my paternal grandmother, and my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister). They may have been a year or two apart, but they all feel now as though it were the same gloomy stretch.
ROG

Abecedarian movies

I saw this at SamuraiFrog. You name one movie for every letter of the alphabet.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter “A” and the word “The” do not count as the beginning of a film’s title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don’t know of any films with those titles.

3. [Lengthy rules about Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, LOTR, Chronicles of Narnia series…]

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number’s word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under “T.”

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post.

6. If you’re selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

The original Blog Cabins rules suggest that one picks their FAVORITE film under that letter, which not explicit in the various iterations I’ve seen such as the one by Tom the Dog, who had a lovely twist on the concept. Johnny B. also did it.

My blog, my (additional) rules. These are films I have seen and that I like. Maybe not THE favorite (A would be Annie Hall, e.g.), but one of my favorites. Some were tough to find anything (X), while some had a plethora of possibilities (T). I’ve tended to lean towards those I first saw in an actual movie theater rather than on video. In fact, I think I saw all my main choices that way except E, H and X

Amadeus – a rockingly good time with Mozart. He died making perhaps my favorite music ever, his Requiem.

Being There – I spent a lot of time defending this film from people who thought it was “boring”, that “nothing happens”.

Cabaret- picked over the obvious Casablanca only because I saw the latter on TV first.

Dumbo – I decided that I needed some animation, and while The Incredibles and Toy Story 2, to name two, would rank higher, this story of the outsider always resonated with me, despite the crows.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – my wife and I saw this on video, were too tired to finish, watch the rest in the morning. I still LOVED it. As someone said, “A very, very sweet movie masquerading as something else.” But I’ve recently discovered that my wife likes it much less than I thought she did. TThis was one of the two Charlie Kaufman films I considered, but since I had a perfectly good B choice, Being John Malkovich, alas, was cast to the side.

Field of Dreams = STILL makes me cry.

Groundhog Day – own this on VHS to see annually.

Hairspray – somehow missed this John waters film in the theater. But saw it recently enough to review in this blog. I’m talking the original here, not the remake.

In the Name of the Father – my Daniel Day-Lewis pick. Not even my favorite of his films, but still solid.

Jules et Jim – saw this at a museum in Binghamton when I was in high school. If you insist on something in English, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Kissing Jessica Stein – had trouble picking ANY K movie.

Lonestar – my John Sayles pick. Sayles is from Schenectady, near Albany, and I’ve seen a LOT of his films, but this is my favorite.

Malcolm X – this covers Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. Actually, my favorite Spike joint would be Do The Right Thing, but I like this one as well.

The Night They Raided Minsky’s – I do believe I’m obsessed with this film, based on the number of times that I’ve mentioned it in this blog. I actually was talking to someone this week who thought it’d be a fine Broadway musical.

On the Waterfront – I actually saw this in television inonly in the past five years. Quite powerful.

Planet of the Apes – a great story co-written by Rod Serling.

The Queen – a recent view; a thin group of choices.

Rear Window – saw this Hitchcock film in a theater when it was re-released in mid-1980s. Indeed, I think I’ve only seen two Hitch films in an actual movie theater, this and the Birds, though I’ve watched a number on TV.

sex, lies and videotape – just edging out The Sound of Music and the Shawshank Redemption.

The Truman Show – tough category with Toy Story 2, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird. But this is a GOOD Jim Carrey film.

Unforgiven – one of Tom’s selection, the directing of Clint Eastwood needed a spot. So did the western, now that I think of it.

Volver – a relatively recent movie that came to mind with Penelope Cruz.

West Side Story – though Wizard of Oz is the better movie, I do so LOVE the music of WSS. AND I saw it in the movies as a kid.

X2 – this may be the ONLY X movie I’ve seen and remember. I saw this with my wife in a hotel in Maryland or West Virginia on New Year’s Eve a few years ago, before Lydia, stopping midway in our return trip from North Carolina to NYS

Young Frankenstein – oh, yes, another Tom pick. Literally fell out of my chair laughing when I saw it in the theater; good thing I had an aisle seat.

Z – haven’t seen this since it first came out, but I remember being riveted by it.

ROG

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