Ramblin' with Roger

Rock Hall QUESTIONS

A couple weeks ago, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominated these folks to be voted on:
Madonna
Afrika Bambaataa
The Beastie Boys
Leonard Cohen
Donna Summer
The Ventures
Chic (third year)
The Dave Clark Five (third year)
John Mellencamp (second year)
The results will be announced early next January, with the awards ceremony in March.

1. Who will be selected this year? I’m guessing Madonna, Afrika and the Beastie Boys – I don’t think you can pick the Beastie Boys (or indeed most hip hop/rap artists) without picking Afrika; but as to the other two, I really don’t know. Maybe DC5 and Chic because they’re repeaters. Leonard Cohen should be in the Hall as a songwriter, not a singer.

2. Who would you like to be selected this year? For me, Madonna, Afrika, and DC5.

3. There are a number of people, some of whom are listed here (lower half of the page) who’ve been bypassed for the Hall. Who would you like to see? My picks: Peter Gabriel and/or Genesis, Graham Parker. I also would love to see some consideration to some more commercial bands such as – OK, I’ll admit it – the Doobie Brothers.

Oh, and on another topic:

4. What do you think of the FCC plan to ease limits on media owners?

ROG

(W)rap-Up

Did you miss me? I was gone a couple days at a conference of the New York State Data Center Affiliates, and I didn’t have any Internet connection (though I was able to purloin someone’s computer to post yesterday.) Did anything happen? World War III didn’t happen yet, apparently.

The Boston Red Sox are still alive. They’ve decided they need one more game then one game after that, rather than thinking, before yesterday’s match that they needed three wins. Reminds me, actually, of a racquetball match my partner Ty and I were in earlier in the week. We were down 2-8, game to 11, but instead of thinking we needed 9 points, we decided to try to win a point at a time, and it worked.

I’m sorry that Joe Torre’s gone from the Yankees, but $5 million plus incentives ain’t bad for an MLB manager.

I’ve figured out my daughter’s hip hop name. There’s a sign near our day care that says EMERGENCY, and Tuesday, I was showing her our last name, GREEN, which are the middle five letters, scrambled. So, she can be EM CY GREEN, or maybe just EMERGENCY.

More content tomorrow, I’m hoping.
ROG

Three word answers

I snagged this from Jaquandor, again. “You answer each question with three words, and only three words. Three. ‘Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.'”

At least three answers I just stole outright.

1. Where is your cell phone?:

Missing in action.

2. Your boyfriend?:

I need definition.

3. Your hair?:

Less than most.

4. Where is your father?:

Buried in Carolina.

5. Cheesecake?:

I’d love some!

6. Your favorite thing to do?:

Listen to music.

7. Your dream last night?:

Out of focus.

8. Your favorite drink?:

White, white wine.

9. Your dream car?:

Do not care.

10. The room you’re in?:

Warm and messy.

11. George Bush?:

Well, which one?

12. Your fears?

Nothing jumps out.

13. Nipple rings?

No, thank you.

14. Who did you hang out with last night?

My work colleagues.

15. What you’re not good at?

Most mechanical things.

16. Your best friend?

Pick just one?

17. One of your wish list items?

American Beatles discs.

18. Where did you grow up?

Binghamton, New York.

19. The last thing you did before survey?

Attendede a workshop.

20. What are you wearing?

The usual fare.

21. Tattoo on the small of a back?

No tattoos, thanks.

22. Ketchup?

On French fries.

23. Your computer?

A necessary evil.

24. Your life?

Usually in flux.

25. Your mood?

Usually in flux.

26. Missing?

Raoul, Nancy, Donna.

27. What are you thinking about right now?

Three-word answers.

28. Your car?

Don’t drive it.

29. Your work?

Stimulates my brain.

30. Your summer?

It’s all right.

31. Your relationship status?

Off the market.

32. Your favorite color(s)

Green, blue, purple.

33. When is the last time you laughed?

Just this morning.

34. Last time you cried?

Not that hard.

35. High school?

Was all right.

ROG

Pulling an Eddie Mitchell

The title comes from this post by Lefty Brown, where he defines it as not blog posting as much as you should. In this post, Lefty also wrote: “I want Roger Green to dress up as Cornel West for Halloween…and post a pic on his blog.” Ain’t gonna happen; not only do I not have the hair, but if I walk around looking like Cornel West, NO ONE WILL GET IT.

And in honor of that: Cornel West on what does it mean to be a leftist; it’s only eighty seconds long, unlike some of the other 160-odd pieces about the author on YouTube:

I wrote something nice about the Lefty Side of the Dial podcast – it’s somewhere in iTunes – and Lefty hasn’t podcast since. I’m feeling almost guilty that I may have somehow embarrassed him. Come back, Lefty!

Oh, and speaking of Eddie Mitchell, he did a video-infested post. I want to discuss two:
The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun- Julie Brown: Some people seem to think that in a post-Columbine world, it should be banned. I guess I just don’t, though I have no good argument why, except for my general disdain for censorship. Also, the line about throwing down “your gun and your tiara” always cracks me up.
Johnny Get Angry-k.d. lang: I saw this at the time it originally aired. It led indirectly to a shared obsession with lang that I had with my ex. Actually, she was even more k.d.-centric than I. Nice memory.

I’m now watching about an hour of TV a day and taping about two; recipe for deleting programs on the DVR, unwatched.

Please vote for Binghamton, NY, my hometown, as pierogy capital. You can vote every day, once a day, through October 23. Yes, Buffalo, the defending champion, is on the list again, and even enlisted some high-powered female politician who’s running for President to help in the cause, but, believe me, Binghamton needs it more. What IS a pierogy? For one thing, it’s spelled several different ways. For another, it’s a “pocket food” that I first had when I was five or six, growing up in a Slavic neighborhood, as I did.

I love adjectives. Here’s list of eponymous adjectives and one of animal adjectives.

ROG

Keys to My Past

I saw another one of those 5 things you don’t know about me memes. Seems I’m disinclined to come up with five, though.

As I may have mentioned, when I was 17, I worked at a summer camp in northern Pennsylvania, mowing lawns, emptying mouse traps and the like. Lots of lawn mowing, so much so that I dreamed about it, and had a bizarre deja vu experience. It was a dreadful place that promised us X amount of money and ended up shortchanging everyone. My girlfriend at the time had worked there in a previous year and practically begged me not to go; a week after I got there, she too went to work there again in the dining room. Ah, young love.

One of my jobs was to fill up the soda machine with Pepsi products. After I left, I realized that I still had the special key to open the machine. I didn’t take it intentionally, but I was disinclined to send it back – and they never asked.

Several months later, I had the key in my pocket, and I was at an ARCO or Mobil gasoline station near my house that was closed for the night; there was a time when gas stations actually closed. The station had a Pepsi machine in front. I tried the key; it worked! I never stole any soda from station, but at least one other time, I used the key to see that it still worked, and it did.

Eventually, I went away to college, and my life. I came across a key chain last week that contained keys to padlocks long gone, an office key from where I worked in 1978 and a bunch of identifiable keys. Oh, yes, and that Pepsi machine key. I finally threw them all away. It was, after all this time, surprisingly easy now, when it hadn’t been the last time I came across that key chain, for some reason.

Yet I still wonder if that key would have still worked.
ROG