Ramblin' with Roger

Seven or eight things about me

I believe it was Gordon who noted seven things about him that you may not have known. Then Scott tagged me, with these instructions:
“Players start with 8 random facts about themselves. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them that they have been tagged.”

1. When I first picked up the album Magical Mystery Tour in the store back in 1967 or early 1968, I simply could not read the words “Beatles” in the yellow stars. I knew it WAS a Beatles album from the song list, but it was a full five minutes before I sussed out the group name. (Confidential to Fred Hembeck: November 27, 1967.)

2. My favorite mixed drink is 45% orange juice, 45% cranberry juice, 10% ginger ale. The cranberry cuts the OJ’s acidity, the OJ cuts the cranberry’s tartness, and the ginger ale is just to give it that faux alcohol sensation. I’ve ordered the mixed juices sans ginger ale in restaurants, and while some places seem to take it in stride, others act as though I want them to cross a desert barefoot to get liquids from a cactus or something.

3. My favorite cereal combination is spoon-size shredded wheat and Cheerios. But I won’t buy either of them unless they’re on sale. So when they ARE on sale, I might buy four or six boxes. I might even use coupons, which I seldom use otherwise.

4. In the spring or summer of 1976, I was in a production of Godspell in my college town of New Paltz. My solo was, initially, “We Beseech Thee”, a song I could sing and I liked, but got changed to “All Good Gifts”, which I was never fond of.

5. When I lived in New York City in the summer of 1977, I lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, but I worked in Manhattan. I took the #7 train, then the E or the F train. I was a telephone solicitor five nights a week from 6 pm until midnight. Who was I calling at 11:30 at night? People on the West Coast, of course. The folks I called were people who had once expressed interest in the product – people with lapsed subscription to TV Guide, people who owned the Encyclopedia Americana who might want the Annual. As a result, I’m very polite to phone solicitors; I say “no, thank you,” right before I hang up on them.

6. During that summer of 1977 (which, not so incidentally was the Summer of Sam), I met this young woman from the Unification church (yes, that’s the Moonies) and would have dinner with her group once a week for a couple months at their place in the Bronx. I was invited to go to their complex upstate; I always declined.

7. Once that summer, for no particular reason, I walked from the Bronx to the New York Public Library, some 160 blocks. Another time, I walked from the library to Wall Street; don’t know how many blocks that is.

8. I once successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on a 70-plus-year-old woman in May 1995. This was at my church of the time. I had been in a pretty sour mood, actually, because of resolving some old affairs of the heart stuff. This woman, who I did not know, was off to the side, looking as though she was turning blue. Then someone opined that perhaps she might have eaten something. I recalled my training from high school, never utilized. Some piece of meat flew at least 15 feet. The pastor, always one to come up with a smart-aleck remark, said to me, “If you see ME choking, just let me die.” (Confidential to MRR – yes, he’s the one.)

I’ve always been loath to tag – though I don’t mind being tagged – so, only if you want to:
The Scribe at Peace X Peace
Uthaclena at the Hydrogen Jukebox
and the Weird Monday person, Kelly Brown.
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Oh, here’s another thing about me: I recorded two programs last night – and neither was the last episode of the sopranos. One was The Tonys on CBS, which we like to watch because we’re generally unfamiliar with the productions, ironically, the reason nobody ELSE watches them. The other is Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions band live in Dublin on PBS. We’ve actually watched neither, but hope to before the fall.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Waitress

Last weekend, the wife and I got to go to the movies for the first time in ever so long. There’s usually some negotiation involved, but we honed in on our choice straight off.

I had intended to review this movie right away before I was influenced by other assessments, but of course that didn’t happened. What I’ve discovered in a number of reviews of this film is the overuse of the q word. Rotten Tomatoes, which gave it a 90% positive rating, notes the consensus is that it’s “sweet, smart and quirky”.
Waitress is the story of a woman named Jenna (played by Keri Russell), who’s pregnant – that’s established very early in the film, so that’s hardly a spoiler – and in a bad marriage. Her day-to-day salvation is making pies, delicious-looking pies, with names that describe her feelings at the moment, such as Baby Screaming Its Head Off in the Middle of the Night and Ruining My Life Pie. Jenna has two co-workers, Dawn (Adrienne Shelly) and Becky (Cheryl Hines), who are friends, even when each make choices that the others aren’t crazy about.
Jenna finds solace, for a time, in meeting with the new ob/gyn in town, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). But ultimately, it’s about Jenna trying to figure it all out for herself.

I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, but I will make these observations:
Andy Griffith as the crusty diner owner Joe is wonderful.
It’s unfortunate that Jenna’s chauvinist husband is named Earl (Jeremy Sisto), because it reminded me of that Dixie Chicks song and video, Goodbye Earl. This Earl turns out to be more nuanced than the one played by Dennis Franz.
This is a foodie movie in the tradition of Chocolat or Big Night. There is a one pie-making scene that is VERY sensuous.
The music, mostly alt-country, I guess, and at least one tune co-written by director Adrienne Shelly, was great. One song choice I thought was a little odd, though I gave it a pass when I realized it was performed by the group Cake, another food group.
Some of the reviews claim that there is an “inconsistency of tone” in this movie. I didn’t feel it. I thought it was just how life is.
I really liked the waitresses and their bonds, but Cheryl Hines as Becky reminded me just a little of Polly Holliday as Flo in the TV show Alice, also about three waitresses.

All in all, I really liked this movie. But I had a sense of sadness during the credits, not by what was on the screen, but over the fact that the director Shelly would not be making another warm and touching film, as she was murdered last year.

I should mention, finally, that Keri Russell as Jenna is wonderful in this film. I’d never seen her in Felicity, before or after the infamous haircut, but there are few (if any) scenes she’s not in, and she’s always credible and interesting.
ROG

Should They Stay or Should They Go QUESTIONS

As distressed as I’ve sometimes been over things in these United States, I’ve never given any real thought about, say, moving to Canada. But people with whom I’m acquainted have considered it, with some degree of seriousness. Even in the midst of the VietNam War, when I had a very low draft number, it had not occurred to me to think about departing, though many did. So, I find it rather entertaining to note that at least some Vermonters want to secede from the Union.

Meanwhile, to the dismay of some, Democrats in Washington want to keep impeachment off the table. I guess I’m in that group that say 1) and make DICK CHENEY President? Are you kidding?, and 2) any impeachment procedure, no matter how justified – and I think it may be, over the domestic spying and signing documents alone – WILL be seen as partisan politics, retaliation for the (idiotic) Clinton impeachment. But I could be persuaded. Should the President be impeached? Will he be impeached? Are things seeming so bleak that you’d leave the United States, if you live here? (And if you don’t, how are you feeling about your country’s government?) And will you be moving to Vermont any time soon?

On another topic, any of you with AOL accounts find the “moustache” version more difficult to open? It seems better now, but initially it didn’t work at all. Once, it didn’t open in German:
Fehler beim Herunterladen des erwünschten Inhalts.
Beim Herunterladen des erwünschten Inhalts ist ein Fehler aufgetreten. Bitte versuchen Sie es später erneut.
Sollte dieser Hinweis weiter bestehen, sehen Sie bitte in den Hilfeseiten nach. Um mehr über den eMail-Service zu erfahren, besuchen Sie bitte unsere Homepage.
It’s good to know the German words for eMail and Homepage.

Finally, is there even one person out there who feels sorry for that person who actually may have to serve a 45-day sentence, the one who cried out, “Mommy! Don’t they know I’m rich, and above the law?” Well, I don’t, and I have found not a soul, not a soul, who, in the words of Mr. T, pities the fool, though leave it to Gordon to take the high road. (I am operating on yesterday’s info that she’s still in jail.)

ROG

I Used To Sell Funny Books?

I don’t know why, but I’m almost always surprised when my old life dealing with comic books crosses over to my new (OK, decade and a half) life as a librarian. Case in point, someone on a library listserv I monitor wrote [personal reference deleted]:

“I have a question about graphic novels. I bought my son (2nd grade) a graphic novel – Pokemon – and it says that it reads from back to front. That we understand. But how do we read on the page? Is it from right to left, starting on the right hand side of the page at the top right? Or top left? We do not understand. Thank you.”

I was going to write back and say, “It depends.” That’s true in American comic books with irregular panels. But a couple folks wrote back with better responses:

This is a pretty good example of how it reads (thanks to Tokyopop).

Some volumes are more difficult than others (when bubbles extend from one panel DOWN to another panel, for instance). But I’d think Pokemon is probably pretty standard and easy to follow as far as manga goes. This one is thanks to Viz.
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As one commentator asked, will we see Spider-Ham and Mickey Mouse together again?
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I haven’t been to a comic book show in YEARS, but I was thinking about going to this one in July.
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A belated happy anniversary to Lefty and Kelly Brown out in Ca-li-for-ni-a. From About.com: “10th Anniversary Traditional Gift: Tin or aluminum. The pliability of tin and aluminum is a symbol of how a successful marriage needs to be flexible and durable and how it can be bent without being broken.”
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Sorry for the terse post. My wife has been getting up at 4 a.m. almost all week, doing this end of the year student evaluation stuff, thus cutting into the blogging time. And they say teachers have it easy.

I thought I’d have one more chance this morning, but the daughter needed cuddling at 4 a.m. And that’s just fine.
ROG

Sporting News

I went to the local CVS drugstore this week. The clerk asked me if I wanted to contribute a dollar for fighting ALS. I said OK.
The clerk said, “It’s called Lou Garry’s disease.”
I said, “It’s Lou GEHRIG’s disease.” He looked puzzled.
“You know, Lou Gehrig. Played in the greatest number of major league (baseball) games in a row until Cal Ripkin, Jr. broke his record.”
“Who did he play for?”
“The Yankees. Played with Babe Ruth.”
“The Yankees? I HATE the Yankees!”
“But Gehrig was a good guy. Gary Cooper in ‘Pride of the Yankees’: ‘I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'”
“Yeah, I think I heard of that. But I HATE the Yankees! I think I’ll stop asking (for ALS donations). Hope my manager doesn’t notice.”

Detroit Tigers outfielder Gary Sheffield apparently believes there are more Latin players, and fewer black players, in MLB, because Latinos are more “manageable” than blacks. Some sports writer suggested ed that it was a Don Imus moment. I disagree; I think it was an Al Campanis moment. Campanis was the Los Angeles Dodgers executive who infamously said on Nightline in 1987 that blacks did not have the “necessities” for managing a baseball team. I actually watched that episode of Nightline, in real time – those were the days – and Ted Koppel was gently trying to get Campanis to change his statement. It was a peculiar moment: Koppel, who admittedly knew little about baseball, breaks this big story on a show ostensibly honoring Jackie Robinson. Campanis was soon fired by the Dodgers, and MLB has made an effort to get teams to at least interview minority candidates. The strange thing about the Sheffield incident is that I hadn’t heard about it at all until I read it in the column.

That minor league manager’s meltdown, a big hit on You Tube, is part of a larger story on ABC News Monday night about hot-headed managers. The piece suggests that you not try these tactics at your own job, as tempting as it might be.

ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark notes that “racial issues are front and center for many Americans as (San Francisco Giants outfielder) Barry Bonds chases the all-time home run record.” A recent survey found that 52 percent of fans hope Bonds doesn’t break the record, while 37 percent of fans want him to surpass Hank Aaron’s mark, set in 1974. “However, race plays a unique role. Black fans in the survey are more than twice as likely to want Bonds to break Aaron’s record (74 percent to 28 percent), and 37 percent of black fans think Bonds used steroids, compared to 76 percent of white fans.
“Blacks are nearly twice as likely to think Bonds has been treated unfairly (46 percent to 25 percent). Why? The survey found that 41 percent of black fans think this is due to the steroids issue, 25 percent think it’s because of his race, and 21 percent blame Bonds’ personality. For whites who think Bonds has been treated unfairly, 66 percent blame steroids. Virtually none blame race.”
The Sports Illustrated Box Seat survey yesterday asked: “Are you rooting for Barry Bonds to break Hank Aaron’s Home Run record?” It was an ongoing online tally:
Yes 11.9% 53
No 68.2% 304
Don’t care 20% 89
It’s generally agreed that Barry Bonds is selfish, moody and uncommunicative. I posit that that may be why he’s more popular with some blacks; that he’s selfish, moody and uncommunicative, and doesn’t care what The Man says. In any case, I don’t recall such a disparity over a sports figure since the O.J. murder trial.
All this talk about whether the commissioner of baseball should/will show up at when Barry Bonds hits home run #756, then Bonds goes on a homer drought, and he’s stuck at 746, with one dinger in 51 at-bats. Will he actually break the record, or not?

I don’t really follow NHL hockey, but I was rooting for the Buffalo Sabres; that didn’t take. So now, I’m rooting for their old opponent, the Ottawa Senators. I’ll always pick a cold-weather team over a team named for a Disney movie, the Anaheim Ducks. Naturally, the Stanley Cup goes to California.

I’m also not that hot on NBA basketball, but I’m pulling for Cleveland, even though Lebron James is the only player I can name on the squad. While the San Antonio Spurs have won championships in 1999, 2003, and 2005, the city of Cleveland hasn’t won a title of any kind since 1964, when the Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship (pre-Super Bowl era). The Cleveland Indians last won the World Series in 1948 and the Cleveland Cavaliers have never won the NBA Finals, or played in them until 2007.