Ramblin' with Roger

Politics. Unusual.

There are three political lawn signs in our front yard presently. This is two more than have ever been in our lawn, and three more than I generally have in front of our house.

I guess I have a certain resistance to yard signs. It’s this public statement at my own address. Of course, it’s better than bumper stickers on the car. I STILL see this car in my block with a Kerry-Edwards sticker and even though they were probably jobbed in Ohio, it seems sad and slightly pathetic to look at. Lawn signs you can just pull up. My next door neighbor still has a half dozen signs from last year on the front porch, some winners (Obama-Biden), some losers (a Congressional candidate).

The first sign in my lawn is for a guy running for a new position known as city auditor. The job’s so new that the city has not yet established a salary for it. My candidate I have known for a number of years through the State Data Affiliates. More recently, his family belongs to my church.

I even appear in one of his campaign mailers, which I agreed to. The odd thing about that is that there are two pictures of me. The one where I’m facing the camera I see myself. The one where I’m in profile I literally don’t even recognize myself because of the vitiligo; very strange.

His opponent, BTW, is a parent of a child in the the day care my daughter attended until recently. For you folks from out of town, that’s why they call it Smallbany. He’s running using his first name, as he did last year in his unsuccessful bid for Congress, figuring that his last name, which is comprised of a 4-, a 2- and a 3-letter word is somehow too difficult for the populace to remember.

The second sign is for a woman running for a seat on the common council; that’s what they call the city’s legislative branch in Albany. I initially met her through an old FantaCo friend but now know her quite independently of him. She’s a bus advocate, among other positive traits. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to vote for her because the lines for her district end a block away.

So two of the candidates I actually know personally before they ever considered running for office. I suppose that happens when you’re in a place long enough. The last candidate I had a sign for, who ran for school board, and is now up for re-election this year, I had known since college.

The third sign in my yard is someone I don’t know personally. He is running for mayor against the incumbent, who has about ten times as much money; that is no exaggeration, as these things do have to be reported periodically. Thing is, he wasn’t my first choice for the job; my initial choice dropped out of the race because she – probably correctly – thought that two challengers to the current guy would leave us with the current guy again.

The guy I’m now supporting is, in the words of the song, “young, gifted, and black.” He also has the endorsement of a minor party, the Working Families Party, so that if he should lose in the September 15 Democratic primary, there may be a rematch in November. Is there a Republican candidate? This is Albany; does it really matter?

There are all sorts of reasons not to support the incumbent. One issue is garbage. I mean literally; the mayor, without the knowledge of hardly anyone allowed other municipalities to dump garbage in the Albany landfill for a too-low price, so it filled up very fast, and now where Albany’s trash will go in a couple years – not to mention how it’ll balance its budget, when that out-of-town dumping money dries up – is an open question.

A recent issue is the resignation of the police chief, an ally of the mayor, in part over a racially insensitive comment he made. (No, I don’t think it was the use of the epithet he used, but rather him suggesting relative value of black and white murder victims.)

There’s a primary Tuesday, September 15. These races will be decided by a relatively few people, if history holds. Frankly, I don’t know why so many more people voter in statewide elections than local elections; it’s the local races that have the greater day-to-day impact in our lives.

It IS more difficult to keep track of the issues in local races. Frankly, I’ve often decided that when people whose opinions I value had lawn signs in their yards was at least a leading indicator of who I might support. So, maybe I’M a leading indicator this time.
ROG

Unabashed Plug: Conversations with ADD

Alan David Doane (pictured at left) is a mensch. Now, for those of you not down with your Yiddish, mensch means a person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose.

Or you could say, ADD is a PITA, which means pain in the tookus. I mean that in a good way. As Christopher Allen describes him, Alan is an agent provocateur.

ADD was one of those young people who were customers of FantaCo, the comic book store/publishing empire where I used to work in the 1980s. Subsequently, ADD became a noted blogger in the comic book realm. This week – September 1st, 2009 – marks the ninth anniversary of his Comic Book Galaxy’s original launch, and “approximately the tenth anniversary of my beginning to write about comics online,” he noted.

To mark the occasion, he has released his third eBook, Conversations with ADD. It is nearly 300 pages long, and “contains nearly four dozen interviews, including cartoonists, writers, artists, publishers, editors, comics retailers and bloggers.”

I had the chance to look at a preview copy, and I got to read interviews with some of my favorite creative people, including Peter Bagge, Howard Chaykin, Tony Isabella, Denny O’Neil, Harvey Pekar, and Walt Simonson, along with the ever-enigmatic Dave Sim. There’s a piece on Earthworld Comics owner J.C. Glindmeyer, who really DOES do Free Comic Book Day right, as I can attest from personal experience.

There is even a brief interview in there with a historic relic, yours truly. I should note that it’s largely ADD’s persistence that got me to blog about old FantaCo stuff such as the counterfeit Cerebus or the Fantastic Four Chronicles, so you can partially credit (or blame) him.

ADD’s POV comes through in his questions without overwhelming the interviewee, a delicate balancing act. Of course, many of the subjects have their own strong personalities, so the resulting interaction can make for a lively piece.

These interviews span the entire last decade, which in part gives a snapshot into the comic book market over the period.

As Mark Evanier likes to say, Go See It!
***
Since I’m plugging things:
The Vermont Monster Guide by Joseph A. Citro, illustrated by Stephen R. Bissette
Harvey Pekar: Conversations, edited by Michael G. Rhode
From the Wall Street Journal: Spider Mouse? Marvel/Disney Mash-Ups for True Believers. Analysts applauded Disney’s offer to buy Marvel, announced Monday, saying that the move would help the company make inroads with boys.
But were they expecting Gooflactus?
We do know that Hitler is ticked. And the fandamentalist internerds are all whiny.

Photo stolen from Fred Hembeck. Probably taken by Lynn Moss.

ROG

G is for Gardens

Some weeks ago, one of my sisters sent me a bunch of beautiful pictures such as this one:

I wanted to use them for this blog post, so I wrote to the person who had forwarded the pictures to her, a friend of my sister, who I had met at my niece’s wedding in March 2005. Well, HE didn’t take them either.

The posting was listed as Montreal Gardens. But they did not look like they were from the Montreal Botanical Gardens, which has items that look more like this:

As it turned out, others had the very same question:
Recently saw a short video (via email) of a fabulous topiary garden in Montreal with all kinds of animal/bird topiaries. It just says “Montreal gardens” but no location or any other information. I have searched Montreal attractions but no clue. Even the Botanical Garden page doesn’t mention it. – thought it might be there. Anyone know where in Montreal area it is? Thank you.

Someone answered: that it was from Mosaicultures Internationales de Montreal (www.mosaiculture.ca). It’s in the Vieux-Port, not the BG.
Unfortunately, it’s only a temporary exhibition, not presented every year. I don’t know when the next one is expected.

You can find a slideshow of a couple dozen International Mosaiculture of Montreal pictures here.
***
Meanwhile, the concept of the garden also reminded me of a couple other things. One was Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden.

Albrecht Dürer. The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve). Engraving, 1504

A comparison between Rembrandt’s etched Adam and Eve and Dürer’s engraved version of the same subject can be seen here.

In that vein, there is a great song, The Garden. It was written and performed by Bobby McFerrin on the 1990 Medicine Music album, and can be heard here. Interestingly, after I watched him perform a couple cuts from the album on NBC-TV’s Today show, McFerrin declared to host Bryant Gumbel that he would never again perform his biggest hit from a couple years before, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Here’s a cover version of The Garden by Vocal Line.

Finally, lyrics to the song Woodstock by Joni Mitchell:
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Joni’s version; ironically, she never performed at Woodstock 40 years ago; she was booked to appear on late-night, ABC-TV program The Dick Cavett Show, and her manager feared that she won’t make it back from Bethel, NY (where the concert was held) to New York City (where Cavett’s show originated) in time; a legitimate concern, as it turned out.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s cover of Woodstock from the 1970 Album Deja Vu. They DID perform at Woodstock, BTW.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: District 9

An odd thing: Carol and I had secured a babysitter. OK, scratch that; Lydia does not like the term “babysitter”; she IS five, after all. We’ll go with “child sitter.”

Anyway, Carol and I could not agree on a movie. She wanted to see The Time Traveler’s Wife, which reviewed poorly (36%) on Rotten Tomatoes and got a thumbs down from our ~~baby~~child sitter. We considered that Carol would see TTW while I would go to watch Food, Inc., which she had already seen. But Alison, the child sitter, who’s going to be a junior in high school in the fall, and an avid movie goer, pushed HARD for District 9. “It’s really good. It’ll make you think.”

As it turned out, District 9 was playing at the Madison Theatre, our local movie emporium, well within walking distance, at 1:30, which meant that we had time not only to see a movie, but to go to the Curry House beforehand for Indian food – extended date!

As it turned out, we were the ONLY people in the theater for that showing. I must say the previews were making me nervous. They were all approved for a general audience, but all were pretty intense. Sorority Row, a prank gone wrong/revenge from the grave flick; Final Destination 3-D; Law Abiding Citizen with Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx which at least seemed to be about something, and Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, which looked to be goofy, albeit bloody, fun.

Finally, District 9. It was cleverly developed as quasi-documentary about these aliens whose ship hovered…wait, here’s reviewer Amy Biancolli’s description:
“The aliens are bipedal, exoskeletal and vaguely crustacean, with lobster claws that snap from their midriffs and tentacular, writhing mouths. South Africans call them ‘prawns.’ They speak in gurgling clicks — subtitled for our convenience, but understood perfectly well by the humans who’ve been oppressing them for the past two decades. We meet one such oppressor early on, a smiling drone named Wikus Van De Merwe (…Sharlto Copley…) who’s responsible for moving all 1.8 million aliens into a new encampment hundreds of kilometers outside Johannesburg.”

Ms. Biancolli is loathe to reveal too much, as am I. But a few points:
*It addresses South African ghettoization of the “prawns” – it’s hard to miss the comparisons with apartheid – without being a screed
*The wuss Wikus is a great example of the Peter Principle in action
*The important introduction of the Nigerians makes it a lot more than a “good guys vs. bad guys” dynamic
*It touches on how easily the media can be manipulated

One other not so small point: The movie becomes, in an almost cartoonish way, terribly violent by the end, like Robocop on steroids, by which point one is already so invested in the story that one has to stay until the surprisingly satisfying end.

The clever structure of this movie, ultimately a science-fiction drama/shoot-em-up, may not be for all viewers. I can imagine some being moved by the set up but disappointed by the last half hour of blowing stuff up. I for one bought the transition.

So the child sitter was right; I’m STILL thinking about issues brought forth in District 9.
ROG

A Meme of Firsts

Via SamuraiFrog:

1. Who was your FIRST date?
Difficult to say. I don’t recall dating Martha as much as hanging out with her with my friends, then with her more than my other friends. Eventually we kissed a lot.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
Yeah, but not often. I went to her wedding. I’m reasonably sure that her husband doesn’t know we dated. I used to think that was weird. Then there was this other woman I dated considerably later on; I was going to mention her in this blog actually, but she preferred that I didn’t. She’s comfortable with the fiction that her husband is the “only one”, despite the fact that she was married before. HER husband knows we dated, and in fact recognized me from a drawing of me as a duck that the late Raoul Vezina drew. So maintaining a fiction about the past I’ve learned to recognize as important to some people. I suppose that includes me.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
I don’t remember what, but I remember where: it was in a bar on Clinton Street in Binghamton. I was 18, the legal age. My sister was singing there, if I recall correctly and I don’t think I had to pay for the drink. It was almost certainly a mixed drink; I want to say Tom Collins.

4. What was your FIRST job?
I’ve answered this before (newspaper deliverer or library page). The first job I had where I was making any real money was working at IBM in Endicott, near Binghamton. I had graduated from high school in January 1971, and I worked there from March through August. My job was to do these three processes. First was to put this coating over these circuit boards. The second (and the most difficult) was to bake them in these ovens, making sure not to bend the pins or have the coating get on the pins. The third task was to bake this plastic holder onto the circuit boards.

Irritatingly, the first shift did a lot of the first task, leaving the second task to me. And I really had to do it, because the coating would start riding up the pins if they weren’t baked within 10 or 12 hours. They didn’t like me because I would do the first task so fast that the company raised the rate for that job, something like from 60 to 80 boards per hour. That WAS a tactical error on my part.

I was on the second shift, which ostensibly was 5:12 p.m. to 2 a.m ., with a 48-minute lunch. But I hardly ever worked that shift. It was usually 5:12 p.m. to 4 a.m., and then from 12 noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday. Not only did I save lots of money for college because of the 16 hours of overtime per week – and because I was generally too tired to go out – I managed to lose 30 pounds because I was too tired to eat.

In the summer, there was a guy – I wish I remembered his name – who was a son of an IBM bigwig; he was quite intelligent and as bored as I was. So we would get into his Aston Martin and drive as far away as we could for 20 minutes, then reluctantly drive back.

First time I ever gave blood was while I worked there because I could get paid at work while taking of the hour to donate.

5. What was your FIRST car?
No idea. It was the S.O.’s and it was red and had push button transmission. I once knocked over a Dumpster while driving it; I wanted to go forward but went into reverse.

6. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
I had gotten chosen for this Governor’s Conference on Children and Youth when I was in high school, and there were seven of us from the Binghamton area who flew to Albany in a plane with perhaps a dozen seats. It was during a lightning and thunderstorm on the way up. Met Nelson Rockefeller for the first time.

7. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
My first best friend was probably Ray Lia from second grade. We were in Cub Scouts together; his mom was our den mother. I didn’t see him much in high school; he went to North High instead of Central, because it offered some technical courses he wanted. I pretty much lost track of him until 1976, five years after high school, when he invited me to be in his wedding. I escorted his mom to her seat, which as nice. I caught the garter, which wasn’t. We exchange Christmas cards, though most of the writing is by his wife Pam. He is, as of about a month ago, one of my Facebook friends.

8. Whose wedding did you attend the FIRST time?
I have no idea. When I grew up in the church, most of the weddings were open to all the parishoners. So I went to a lot of weddings as a kid. I even sang at a few, notably I Love You Truly, a truly horrific piece of claptrap. I know I attended my sister’s godfather Elmer’s wedding to Barbara in that period.

As for which of my friends married first whose wedding I actually attended, I’m not at all sure. My sister got married on Halloween 1975; a definite contender.

9. Tell us about your FIRST roommate.
That would be Ron Fields. At New Paltz in 1971-72, there were only two black males in Scudder Hall, a grad student in biology (Ron) and a freshman poli sci major (me), and somehow we ended up as roommates. I’m pretty sure it was no accident. Ron was fine. He did have one great idiosyncrasy that amused me and others; he recorded every cent he spent in a notebook. “Soda, 50 cents,” etc. One day, he bought a used car. “Car, $1000.” It cracked both of us up.

One day in March 1972, the phone rang fairly early in the morning. It was my father, but Ron didn’t let on. He did prompt us to clean the room, then conspired with a friend of mine to get me out of my room so that my family and friends could surprise me that weekend for my 19th birthday. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as I recall.

10. If you had one wish, what would it be (other than more wishes)?
Either the ability to fly or to transport.

11. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
If I had time, I’d become more computer savvy; I just muddle through.

12. Did you marry the FIRST person you were in love with?
No, and we tried to make it work more than once.

13. What were the first lessons you ever took and why?
Piano lessons when I was eight with Mrs. Hamlin. I was not at all good, but I still remember a lot of those intro lessons by heart. It was also useful in singing, so it wasn’t a total waste.

14. What is the first thing you do when you get home?
Take off my shoes. Keep the carpet clean.

ROG