ABC Wednesday: M is for Montalban and Music


Sure I remember Ricardo Montalban from Star Trek and Fantasy Island and the “soft Corinthian leather” car commercials.

Some time ago, I came across the picture above, but I don’t recall where anymore.

Ricardo was a founding member of Nosotros, designed to “strategically change the stereotypical image portrayed by Latino actors.” There is a theater named after him and affiliated with the organization at 1615 Vine Street in Hollywood.

But perhaps his greatest legacy I learned about from my friend Deborah, who found this:
or here.

Ricardo Montalban sings for Esther Williams the song that has become a classic, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in the 1949 movie “Neptune’s Daughter”; the film co-starred Red Skelton. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” won an Oscar that year for Best Original Song. Unless the Oscar rules have changed, this is likely the first performance of the perennial tune.

Ricardo is still around at the age of 88, doing occasional voice work.

ROG

ROG

An autumnal meme

Happy Columbus Day! Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian colleagues!

Via Mr. Frog:

Have you ever been apple picking?
Why yes, though not recently.

Is there a dish you make/eat only during this time of the year?
Pumpkin pie. It’s not nearly my favorite pie, but if tradition demands, tradition demands.

Will you attend a tail gate party this season?
Have I EVER gone to a tailgate party? Maybe inadvertently – someone was tailgating and invited me to join, but I’d say no.

When do you turn on the heat?
The heat comes on automatically when my fingers turn blue while I’m inside the house. Actually, the heat turns on automatically when the house temp goes below some threshold; it’s been on at least one night already.

How many sweaters do you own?
Probably four, but I’m never sure. My wife put them away last spring and I have no idea where they are.

Are you fond of Nouveau Beaujolais wine?
Je ne comprends pas.

Do you get excited about Halloween?
I did even into my twenties, then not so much. I do now because my daughter is trick-or-treating, and since she’s allergic to peanuts, my wife and I can swipe her Sanheim swag.

How about Thanksgiving?
I feel real ambivalence about Thanksgiving. On the one hand I am thankful for what I have. On the other hand, it often feels like a real hassle, either going to the in-laws or, on a couple occasions, hosting my in-laws. No offense to my in-laws, many of whom live less than an hour and a quarter away, but it’s one of those times when my tiny birth family’s distance really bugs me. Also, I’ve had some really crummy Thanksgivings in the past, probably none worse than being invited to someone’s house, then having the invitation withdrawn – for reasons that were unclear – the day before; I sulked on takeout Chinese that year.

Is there an activity you do only in the autumn?
Well, rake leaves, which I add to the compost pile. I usually wait until Veterans Day.

Have you ever burned leaves?
Years ago.

Do you own any ‘scarecrow’ decorations?
I don’t believe so.

Do you plant bulbs?
A few years ago, we planted tulips on an extremely mild December 1. I think Carol still does, but I’ve lost my gardening mojo.

Your fondest autumn memory?
It was a party in 1987…well, that’s all you get.

When does fall begin for you?
When I need a warmer jacket. Sometimes it’s September 15, other years it’s more like November. It’s definitely fall now; I need gloves to ride my bike.

What is your favorite aspect of fall?
I love playoff baseball, football starting around Thanksgiving.

What do you like to drink in the fall?
Hot chocolate.

What is fall weather like where you live?
It seems so variable. It usually gets gradually, or occasionally suddenly cooler. Often, there is a temperature recovery for a few days, before it gets colder and windy I associate November with a dance of the dead leaves.

What color is fall?
Orange-red-yellow-brown.

Do you have a favorite fall chore?
I believe “favorite” and “chore” don’t belong in the same sentence.

What is your least favorite thing about fall?
That impending feeling of death. One fall about four years ago, a friend of mine, the husband of another friend of mine, and the mother of still another friend of mine all died, and I ended up at all of those funerals. And there were others for which I did not attend the service because of distance.

What is your favorite fall holiday?
It used to be Columbus Day because Lydia’s day care was open, Carol and I had it off from work, and we could go on a date (lunch and/or movie), but her day care’s closed this year. So, I pick Veterans Day: the notion of a war to end all wars is so appealing, if ultimately unreachable.

What’s your favorite kind of pie?
Almost any fruit pie: strawberry-rhubarb, apple, blueberry, cherry.

Do you have a favorite fall book?
No. Winter, yes, spring, yes.
***
What I’m recording tonight:
Koppel: The Last Lynching
TV-14 (LV)
Ted Koppel speaks with three Democratic delegates whose journeys to nominate Barack Obama took them through thornier moments in American racial history.
Discovery Channel, 10 pm, EDT (also early tomorrow morning at 2 am EDT).

ROG

ROG

A scary thought

I’m loath to bring this up, but others have done so before: should he win the election, I’m very worried about an assassination attempt on Barack Obama.

What prompted, or more correctly, re-prompted this thinking, was a piece Evanier linked to by “Frank Schaeffer, a longtime supporter of John McCain and vice-versa, [who] thinks McCain-Palin rallies are starting to resemble lynch mobs.” Schaeffer writes:
John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, “Kill him!” At one of your rallies, someone called out, “Terrorist!” Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered….

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter…

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us…

…stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people – forever.

We will hold you responsible.

I’m going to assume the fact that Rensselaer County, NY printed 300 of its 4000 absentee ballots with the name of the Democrat listed as ‘Barack Osama’ as a mistake, rather than deliberate sabotage, but I’m guessing that the constant barrage of smears may have an subconscious effect on whoever made the error.

Add to this, Sarah Palin’s relationship to the Alaskan Independence Party , a group with a distinct neo-Confederacy stance. As former AIP head Mark Chryson put it, “Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States — however you want to refer to it — was not about slavery, it was about states’ rights.” He added that the South should have been able to secede.

Now to be fair, I also worried about Ted Kennedy in 1980, but that was based more on actuarial tables (all three of his brothers dying violent deaths – Joe in WWII; the 20-year Presidential curse that ran from 1840 to 1960) than any perceived threat.

I don’t think we live in a post-racial America yet – whatever that means – and Obama’s recent rise in the polls makes me both hopeful and fearful.

ROG

ROG

Follow the lead QUESTIONS

One of the things I learned as a librarian and as a citizen is that, much as it pains me, I can’t know everything. So it’s good to know people who you know and trust to vet things for you.

For instance, if I were suddenly to develop an interest in Doctor Who and wanted to know what book to read first, I wouldn’t bother researching it,; I’d just ask Gordon.

So it is with local politics. There’s coterie of people whose opinion I trust who I can usually count on for selecting candidates to support. In the last Democratic primary, most of them were supporting one particular candidate. But then another person, who is also a guidepost, not only backed another candidate, but noted some rather uncomplimentary things about the candidate my other friends backed.

Well, I’ve come to the same conundrum regarding some federal legislation concerning the copyright of “orphan works”. On one side of the issue is Paul Rapp, an intellectual property lawyer around here, who supports the idea of the bill. In fact, I wrote about it, and Paul, a/k/a F. Lee Harvey Blotto, drummer of the legendary band Blotto, here. I’ve known Paul since the early 1980s and trust his judgment. Also on this side is the Special Libraries association, of which I am a member, which supported these modifications to the original legislation.

But on the other side is Steve Bissette, artist extraordinaire, who has a much more negative view, to say the least, as noted here and here. I knew Steve from the mid-1980s, when he produced work that was published by my publisher, FantaCo. We have re-bonded recently in our attempt to get the FantaCo Wikipedia spost corrected. He fears the artists being ripped off.

The topic came up at work when one client of the SBDC had a piece of artwork produced by a street artist and wanted to use the art as part of a logo for her new store. Whole the art belonged to the entrepreneur, the image was copyrighted by the creator. But who is he? Where is he? Is he still alive? Based on precedent established in the library community, our librarian recommended that the business make a “good faith effort” to find the copyright holder, through paid ads in the newspaper and art newsweekly in the city where the artist had been working, describing in detail the situation.

I looked at the material Steve provided, and while I understand that the creative community fears that the legislation will create a license to steal and that people will just pretend to look for an owner before using the image, it seems to me is that this is how it’s currently working without legislation.

The bill appears to be dead this year – apparently some economic bailout seems to have been more important – but the issue will come up again.

So, my questions:

1. What topics, if any, do you tend to look to others to help inform you? Who are these information leaders?

2. What is your understanding of orphan works copyright legislation?

I’m so confused…

ROG

ROG

Of Condoms and Cough Drops

There’s a CVS drugstore just three blocks from our house, where we do much of our non-food shopping, such as for detergent, greeting cards and of course, drugs. By “drugs”, I mean that in the pharmaceutical way. You can get one of those little plastic cards that will mean savings coupons are generated at the register when you hit certain thresholds on certain products.

Yhen recently, we got in the mail another CVS card, this one co-branded by our health insurance company. The thing is that one can’t use the coupons generated by the old card for purchases made using the new card. But one does get a discount on items eligible for flex spending on the new card. So at least on one occasion, I had to split the purchase, buying some items using a coupon with the old card and others with the new card.

So what IS eligible for flex spending, besides medical payments? Obviously, over the counter medicines. Also my wife’s contact lens solution. Among other things, I discovered that condoms and cough drops are also included. Here’s the complete list.
***
The English Will Purge Their Language unless… well, read the piece. the words are:
Abstergent: Cleansing
Agrestic: Rural
Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity: Perishableness
Caliginosity: Dimness
Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle: To confuse
Exuviate: To shed
Fatidical: Prophetic
Fubsy: Squat
Griseous: Somewhat grey
Malison: A curse
Mansuetude: Gentleness
Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman
Niddering: Cowardly
Nitid: Bright
Olid: Foul-smelling
Oppugnant: Combative
Periapt: An amulet
Recrement: Refuse
Roborant: Tending to fortify
Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Vaticinate: Prophesy
Vilipend: To treat with contempt

Lessee, I vilpend the niddering, olid and oppugnant malison to exuviate the CED.

ROG

ROG
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