Ramblin' with Roger

I have long thought that Linda Ronstadt never got the credit for being the eclectic that her male counterparts, such as Neil Young or David Bowie, received. Sure, she isn’t primarily a songwriter, but she expresses her talents in so many varied ways.

After the Las Vegas incident of July 2004, I was peeved enough to go out to buy her 4-disc box set. Don’t make me angry; I spend money.

The collection is put together in a most interesting way. The first disc and the first half of the second disc generally follows her career, with album cuts from throughout, but from then current (1998), back to the beginning, skipping over the a couple phases. (It is light on what is probably my favorite album, Hasten Down the Wind.) The rest of the second disc is comprised of songs from the three albums she did with Nelson Riddle and the two discs of Mexican songs.

The third disc is a collaborative disc where she performs with everyone from Kermit the Frog to Frank Sinatra, plus of course, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Aaron Neville. It also runs from most recent back, but doesn’t include her background singing with Neil Young (Heart of Gold, et al.) or Under African Skies (Paul Simon).

Disc four is her rarities, including her contributions to Randy Newman’s Faust, a contribution to Carla Bley’s jazz opera Escalator Over the Hill, a collaboration with Philip Glass and much more. Again, latest to earliest.

I believe that in order for a box set to be successful, it must have both enough familiar stuff to reel you in, plus enough GOOD unfamiliar stuff to make it worthwhile. This set succeeds on both counts.

Last month, I heard her and Ann Savoy sang a couple songs on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. One song was a Cajun tune, the other a ballad.

Then I came across the June 29 episode of Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Mahar. (The full episode also features Teri Hatcher: memoir, Burnt Toast; Annabelle Gurwitch: book and documentary, both titled Fired!; “dog whisper” Cesar Millan.) “11-time Grammy Award winner Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy harmonize beautifully on “Walk Away, Renee” and “Too Old to Die Young.” Between numbers they spar with Bill on the American South and Las Vegas.”

I’ve added their collaboration “Adieu, False Heart” to my shopping list; the album comes out on July 25.

Linda turns 60 manana. Happy birthday, Ms. Ronstadt.
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At the free Turtles concert downtown last night, I watched that “I didn’t know they did that!” look on many faces when they performed “She’d Rather Be with Me”. But you know how a song will get stuck in your head. That happened to me with the funny lyrics of Elenore. I sang the choir and the end tag all the way home. Aloud. Repeatedly. And, of course, not the melody line, but the harmony line. “You’re my pride and joy, et cetera”, indeed.

Last year, for Father’s Day, my wife and my daughter promised me ten dates during the summer with my wife but without our daughter, which I believe was accomplished. It included movie matinees when Lydia would be in day care anyway, and I would take the afternoon off from work. Sometimes, it was a movie or dinner at night and we would hire a babysitter.

This year, though the explicit promise wasn’t made, we are attempting to have some dates again this season. So far, we’ve been on two.

The first was to see the movie I’ve been wanting to see for months, Thank You for Smoking, which I wanted to see even before Gordon recommended it a couple months ago. I found that I smiled through the first half, but actually laughed out loud a few times during the second half, but am embarrassed to admit that I missed the Pieta reference until my wife mentioned it to me afterwards. (If you saw the movie and don’t know what I’m talking about), think 16th President of the US.)

The second was to go on a boat ride provided by our realtor David on the Dutch Apple Cruise, a two-hour tour on the Hudson River from Albany, past the port to the fancy houses in Glenmont to and back. We met very interesting people, such as this Brazilian couple; her name was Maine, and she has five siblings also named after U.S. states, such as Tennessee and Maryland. Really. We talked about the English language, comic books, and a variety of other topics. There was also someone who turned out to be a neighbor of ours whose mother is a member of our church. It was a great time of great adult conversation.

One couldn’t help but notice, however, how high the Hudson River was getting. And it, along with other rivers in the Northeast, would only be getting higher…
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“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” 40th Anniversary Essay Contest – deadline is July 21.
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The World e-Book Fair, sponsored by Project Gutenberg and World eBook Library, will be offering up to 300,000 books online now until August 4, 2006. Fiction, nonfiction and reference books plus classical music scores and recordings will be available for free downloading.
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Signs I blog too much:

*CBS News Sunday Morning has a piece on blogging. This is the emotional equivalent of how the death of disco was signaled when Marvel Comics came out with the Disco Dazzler (changed to Dazzler).

*I have my first blogging dream, one I can remember anyway, which goes like this:
My mother, my Grandma Williams [my mother’s mother, who died in 1983], Lydia and I were in this apartment when Grandma Green [my father’s mother, who died in the mid-1960s], comes to the screen door, sees me lying on the sofa, with Lydia sitting on my stomach. I’m trying to figure out whether I should blog about the fact that my mother and father have separated. [My father died in 2000, and they never separated.]

A serendipitous occurrence: on the day that TCM first broadcast a special called “Edge of Outside” last week, our librarian intern was working on a reference question about independent film. We agreed that the definition of “independent” was fairly tenuous and fuzzy, given the fact that a number of major studios have allegedly independent branches.

The documentary came to much the same conclusion, but noted that one can have an independent voice even within the studio system. (Indeed, United Artists was but an early example of the anti-studio movement.) It was a very entertaining look at a group of directors both familiar and unknown to me. In the latter category, Sam Fuller, pictured, who like Charlie Chaplin and early Frank Capra operated as outsider. Orson Welles, who Spike Lee described as a “cautionary tale”, was a director who designed movie as autobiography.

The special spends much time with John Cassavetes, who was inspired by the Italian neorealism and French “new wave” following World War II, and was the epitome of the director who, like later directors who would max out their credit cards to work, just HAD to work. Stanley Kubrick was also given considerable air time. Sam Peckinpah, who has put out a number of graphically violent films, was described as a filmmaker showing the clash between man and his environment.

One of the interesting comments came from John Sayles, who indicated that the limitations and challenges of independent film are also liberating. One is “forced to create an artistic solution” without the big budget.

You may quibble with the definition of “independent film” or complain that a given director or another was given short shrift. Woody Allen has final say in everything from casting to the final cut, and that’s about all we hear about him, for instance.

But I liked it, and if you like film, I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Every Wednesday night this month, TCM is showing “filmmakers who have worked on the edges of Hollywood”. The “Edge of Outside” special will be rebroadcast on Wednesday, July 19 at 11 p.m. The final evening of the series, July 26, features Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Robert Altman’s Nashville, and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull.

Not so incidentally, the library reference request I mentioned was for a particular document that discussed the market share of independent film within the broader market, something we did not have access to. However, our intrepid intern found the Focus 2006: World Film Market Trends document from the European Audiovisual Observatory, which contains some comparison of independent and major studio films (p. 36 of that report) as well as a breakdown of North American market shares by distributor (p. 38). He also cited American Film Market (IFTA trade association conference); the National Alliance of Media Art and Culture, “Future of Independent Media”; Nielsen Media – write “movies” in the search field; and The MPAA Research Statistics – register to use, but it’s free, and it discusses other forms of popular entertainment as well as movies.

Another weekend out of town, this time at the Olin Family reunion, which I described last year. Been so busy with family stuff that I totally forgot the 65th birthday of one Ringo Starr back on 7/7 until I read it in Johnny B’s column a couple days ago.

We’ve also been dealing in our household with ants, not to be confused with aunts, which we’ve also had, but that be another discussion. We were told that if one puts skins of cucumber near the entryway (in our case, the wall next to the back door), the ants will die. Don’t know how this works, but it does.

Oh, anybody want to tell me (because someone asked me, and I haven’t had a Comic Book Price Guide in years): what is the value of a Fawcett Publication, Jackie Robinson, No. 5 comic, which somebody found while cleaning out her parent’s attic? Yeah, I know about condition and all that.

Meanwhile, I was having this small debate with a friend about the term meme. On this site FULL of memes called I Am Pariah.com, I get this definition:
meme n (mëm): A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. From the Greek mimëma, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate.
also
“A dispensary of… topics for bloggers.” –The New York Times

But this one I actually got from here:

Act your age? I think having a two year old at 53 probably makes one younger and older, pretty much simultaneously. Before that, probably younger.
Born on what day of the week? Saturday, I believe, at 3:15 p.m., EST.
Chore you hate? Cleaning the toilet. I actually did it for a living for six months, among other tasks.
Dad’s name? Leslie Harold Green. One of my sisters is Leslie Ellen Green. It caused some confusion.
Essential makeup item? Sunblock.
Favorite actor? Denzel Washington, Albert Brooks, Robert Redford, Nicholson when he isn’t phoning it in, Bill Murray, John Malkovich, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman. Just one? Robert Duvall.
Gold or silver? Gold, I suppose.
Hometown? Flood-weary Binghamton, NY, where I’ve been in successive weekends.
Instruments you play? Kazoo, comb.
Job title? Information Specialist. I’m special.
Kids? One daughter, age 2 years, 3 months and a couple weeks. I keep forgetting to mention her on these pages. Maybe someday, I will post her picture.
Living arrangements? Old 2.5 bedroom house in the heart of the city.
Mom’s name? Gertrude Elizabeth Williams, named after her mother. She hates Gertrude, goes by Trudy.
Need? The memer who wrote this said: “Intellectual stimulation. Without it, I’m dead.” Probably true for me as well.
Overnight hospital stays? Uncontrollable nosebleed when I was five and a half, car accident when I was 19.
Phobias? There is this Civil War gum card set (rather like baseball cards) that depicted one soldier impaling another with a bayonet. The pained look on the dying soldier’s face has always stayed with me. So people playing with knives, swords.
Quote you like? Too many. Here’s just one: “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.” – Charles Mingus
Religious affiliation? Christian. Currently a Presbyterian, though I was a Methodist for far longer.
Siblings? 2 sisters, Leslie from San Diego and Marcia from Charlotte, both of whom I’ve seen in the past couple weeks.
Time you wake up? Way too early. The alarm goes off at 5:30; I’m usually awake before that.
Unique talent? The ability to make a kazoo/comb sound WITHOUT a kazoo or comb.
Worst habit? Leaving dishes in the living room.
X-rays you’ve had? Left knee, 1994. Teeth, of course.
Yummy food you make? I have made spinach lasagna, but not recently. I used to make deviled eggs for every pot luck occasion, but I’ve stopped.
Zodiac Sign? Pisces; nothing fishy about THAT.

A couple weeks ago, when I was home with Lydia, I was walking her home from the grocery store. Someone on the corner asked when the next #30 bus was – it turned out that it would be a while.

There was a garbage truck right in front of my house, picking up my trash (thank you, city Department of General Services). Heading in the opposite way was a tractor trailer from Eckerd’s Drug Store. The courteous truck driver moves somewhat to his right to give the garbage truck (and himself) more room. And the cliche proved to be correct – his good deed did not go unpunished.

A low-hanging branch gets caught, actually wedged, between the cab and the trailer, and the strength of the truck actually dislodges the tree from its roots! The moving tree pulled out the cable TV line from the nearby house.

So when I get home – I was only a block away when this occurred – there’s a garbage truck stopped in one direction and the drug store truck stuck in the other, right in front of my house. The garbage truck guy calls DGS and they show up with about 12 guys, assessing the situation. They bring chainsaws, a couple wood chippers and other paraphenalia.

The truck driver had a camera, for which he wanted to take pictures to show to the powers that be at Eckerd’s but it wasn’t working, so I, accompanied by my photo assistant Lydia, took pictures, which I subsequently mailed to the company.

Eventually, the police arrive, take the truck driver’s statement. What they WEREN’T doing, though, was noting that traffic coming down my street heading north couldn’t get through even to the side street, mostly because a CDTA bus was stopped. The bus wasn’t allowed to back up and couldn’t make a right turn because one of the wood chippers was in the way. So, I took Lydia ad directed traffic, which is to say, I got a bunch of people to turn around and go back the other way, lest they be parked there for what would have been up to 40 minutes.

Finally, some CDTA supervisor arrives on the scene, gets the DGS to move the chipper, and allow for traffic, including the stopped bus, to turn off the street.

All that’s left.
Carol and I had complained that those branches were too low. Guess we were right.
Oh, and Eckerd sent me a $40 Eckerd card to pay for my expenses, which seemed fair.