Summertime QUESTIONS

I NEED sunglasses, preferably those that will fit over my prescription glasses. When I left my office – with its tinted glass – a couple weeks ago, right before our vacation, I was frustrated that I had left my sunglasses on my desk at work, and since the bus was coming, I didn’t have time to retrieve them; I cannot get into my building over the weekend.
So, that Sunday, right after we left the 50th anniversary party for our friends Vaughn and Hugh Nevin, I bought another pair, right before our trip. The next day, I misplaced THOSE and suffered greatly, so I bought another pair. My wife said, “Did you know those are women’s sunglasses?” “Yes,” I grumbled, “and if I didn’t, the tag on the glasses with a picture of a woman wearing them would have tipped me off.”
In any case, the following day, we went to another store and I bought TWO pair of (men’s) sunglasses, then on the last day of the trip, Carol found the pair I misplaced.
So, with the pair I left at work, I now have FOUR pair. This is a good thing; my eyes really suffer, especially in the summer, but also off the glare of the sun on the snow in the winter. And Carol now has a spare pair.

(BTW, I read a bit ago that U2’s Bono’s penchant for sunglasses comes partially to eyes very sensitive to light.)

This leads us to the question of the week, a real audience participation gig, I hope: What is your best piece of advice for getting through the summer? Mine would be to protect not only your skin but also your eyes from harmful UV rays. I learned from JEOPARDY! last month (June 21) that “the American Academy of Ophthalmology declares July safety month for these [UV] rays.”

Also, any summertime recipes, summertime fun suggestions, cures for the summertime blues. One specific thing my wife wants to know is: What’s the best way to boil an egg so that the shell peels off most easily? Does it have to do with the boiling method, the cooling method, the cracking technique? So, stuff like that.
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The Summer Olympics start one year, one month and one day from now in Beijing. Today seems to have numeric import as well, I hear.
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One more reason I oppose the death penalty.
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In case you missed it, Keith Olbermann quotes John Wayne.
ROG

ROG

Sorta Like When Gilbert Met Sullivan

One of the very first albums I owned, from the Capitol Records Club, was something called Big Hits of from ENGLAND AND USA: one side contained two songs each from BEATLES, BEACH BOYS, and PETER & GORDON for “the kids”, the other side, two songs by NAT KING COLE and CILLA BLACK, plus one by AL MARTINO for “the grownups.” The intriguing thing I discovered is that Lennon-McCartney were listed as composers not only of the Beatles’ songs, Can’t Buy Me Love and You Can’t Do That, but also of the songs of Peter & Gordon, A World Without Love and Nobody I Know. I wasn’t then up on the Beatles’ trivia that Peter was the brother of Paul’s girlfriend Jane Asher.

So, I have a LOT of music written by John and Paul. Some of it the Beatles didn’t even release, or appeared for the first time on the Anthology series, including the album pictured, the Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away. I read somewhere, though I’ve never confirmed it, that there were over 100 non-Beatles L&M songs.

What’s the cause of this nostalgic look? Why, today is the 50th anniversary of the meeting of John Winston Lennon and James Paul McCartney at the Woolton Garden fête held at St. Peter’s Church. Liverpool. John’s Quarrymen were playing, and after the gig, Ivan Vaughan, a mutual friend, did the intros. Paul showed John what he could do on the guitar, soon joined The Quarrymen, and the rest, as they say…

The bulk of the non-Beatles Beatles songs I own range from classic (Joe Cocker on a few tunes) to banal (The Brady Bunch on Love Me Do) to awful (Elvis doing Hey Jude). I’ve listened to a LOT of versions of their songs recently, from classical to Latin to soul. There are remakes of entire albums, including my most recent acquisition, Meet the Smithereens, a very competent, but hardly essential, redo of Meet the Beatles, which, annoyingly, attributes ALL of the songs to Lennon & McCartney; George Harrison wrote Don’t Bother Me and Meredith Wilson wrote ‘Til There Was You. Thanks to Fred Hembeck for turning me on to several of these.

The funniest, and by that, I mean the funniest L&M song that wasn’t intended to be funny, has to be Mitch Miller and the Gang doing Give Peace a Chance; that straight-laced, but well-sung, choir doing the chorus, while the lead vocalist doing the verses, and lines such as “Stick it to the man.” This is as goofy as some of those old Dragnet shows, where Joe Friday confronts “the hippies”. (And yes, I know Give Peace a Chance was Plastic Ono Band, but the songwriting credits were still citing John and Paul.)

So, happy anniversary to a partnership that, thanks to technology, has managed to recreate their music into this century.

Folks, I’d love you share your lists of favorite and least favorite songs written by Lennon-McCartney, and who performed them.
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Johnny B. directed us to a series of articles about Paul and the Beatles; the part 3 best encapsulates the magic which was the Beatles.
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Yes, I watched Larry King last week, when Paul, Ringo, Yoko, and Olivia were on. I don’t think he’s a great interviewer, but the occasion, the first anniversary of the Cirque du Soleil show LOVE, was…nice.
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Ringo, the eldest of the four Beatles who made it big, turns 67 tomorrow.
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ROG

Larry Doby Day

On some baseball-related CD I own, I have a song that goes:
“Hooray, hooray, the time has really come.
Hooray, hooray, the time has really come.
Cleveland’s got Larry Doby, Brooklyn’s got Jackie Robinson.”

Jackie Robinson’s contribution to baseball, and to society, has been well documented, especially with this being the 60th anniversary of him breaking the game’s color barrier back in April. But I was watching Sunday Night Baseball this week, and there was a discussion suggesting that perhaps Larry Doby being the first black in the American League, at least in the modern era, was as tough as or tougher than what JR went through. An interesting theory, that. Jackie DID go through the Dodgers’ minor league system, whereas Doby, who died four years ago, came straight from the Negro Leagues, without a Branch Rickey to advise him along the way. And while Jackie integrated the one league, I suspect there were those who were holding out hope that the AL would remain lily-white. So when he showed up, well, there goes the neighborhood. (Which, strangely, reminds me of some song I haven’t heard in years by the Bus Boys, NOT the Molly Hatchet or Sheryl Crow or Body Count song with the same title.)
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Oh, speaking of Sunday Night Baseball, I know about “the book”, but really, why does a manager pull a starting pitcher who’s thrown less than 85 pitches, who’s given up zero runs on six hits, stranded a runner on third with no outs, in favor of a “closer” with an ERA of over 6.00?
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From my in-laws’ local paper: Baseball can be a microcosm of American society, State University College at Oneonta history professor William Simons said.
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I bought a book this week: The SABR Baseball List & Record Book: Baseball’s Most Fascinating Records and Unusual Statistics. It’s a fun book.
Who threw the first no-hitter at Shea Stadium? Jim Bunning, now a member of Congress.
Who hit the first grand slam at the LA Coliseum? Willie Mays.
Most years together for 9 teammates? 10 years, by Detroit Tigers of 1964-1973. The team also has the record for 8 teammates together (11 years), 7 teammates (11 years), 6 teammates (12 years) five teammates (12 years), and tied for 4 teammates (13 years).
Plus all sorts of base-stealing, pitching, and batting records. Recommended for baseball stats junkies.
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The June 29 Wall Street Journal (p. W9C) is hot on something called BOP (bases over plate appearances), which is the total number of bases + hit by pitches + walks divided by plate appearances. I was curious how many of the top 10 guys are on the All-Star roster:
Alex Rodriguez (NYY) .732 starter
Barry Bonds (SF) .701 starter
Jack Cust (Oak) .680 not on roster
Magglio Ordonez (Det) .677 starter
Carlos Pena (TB) .667 not on roster
Prince Fielder (Milw) .664 starter
Chipper Jones (Atl) .649 not on roster
David Ortiz (Bos) .643 starter
Jim Thome (CWS) .634 not on roster
Ryan Howard (Phil) .633 not on roster
I wonder how it would have turned out if they were playing in an American League city, where the designated hitter is in the lineup, rather than in San Francisco. Cust and Thome are both DHs. Pena and Howard are at the crowded first base position. Third baseman Jones has been injured a lot this season.
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Off topic, ADD recommends something called The Simple Dollar. I was particularly intrigued by the July 1 post, extensively reviewing a book entitled The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back. Looks interesting.
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ROG

One Nation Under God

On vacation, I was reading an old Newsweek from early May. The cover story was about military chaplains, and how they balance serving God in a time of war. I thought the Editor’s Desk piece by Jon Meacham, who has a background covering religious issues, was particularly interesting:

Historically, the most fervent of believers have often been the most bloodthirsty of warriors. [The Newsweek writers] note that religion can be a dangerous element in the lives of nations. From Saint Augustine to Shakespeare to Lincoln, some of history’s most searching thinkers and politicians have wrestled with the question of God and war, of how we can know for certain that the blood we are spilling is being shed in a just cause.

Which brings me to our national anthem. One of the verses of the Star-Spangled Banner that has long brought me pause is the fourth and final verse. (I know by heart the first and the last; the second and third in part.) It goes:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our Trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Again from Newsweek’s Meacham:

How can we tell when religion is playing too great a role in our politics, or in the decisions made by our leaders? Lincoln offers a useful test… He prayed…that he might see “the right as God gives to see the right”…He resisted seeing any political course of action as divinely ordained…Are [current and future leaders] curious and probing, believing, as Lincoln did, that “probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did?”

Perhaps it is that discomfort, that questioning, that Abraham Lincoln felt in the midst of war that we ought to embrace. It is that thoughtfulness, that wariness, I believe, that best serves God and country.
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Roger Ebert remembers his friend, and fellow movie critic, the late Joel Siegel

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ROG

Jealous of Dick Cheney

When I was away, I found myself watching the news a lot. And a lot went on last week: airports in the UK threatened, the end of the immigration bill, significant Supreme Court rulings, more fires and floods, the surviving Beatles on Larry King (hey, it was important to me), Elizabeth Edwards in a dustup with someone. Watched CNN, MSNBC, even five minutes of FOX News before the gag reflex kicked in.

But my favorite story was about the Vice President, and I’ll tell you why. My wife works for a school consortium, but works at two other schools. She is bound by the rules, not only of the consortium, but of the individual schools as well. My company, the NYS Small Business Development Center, has reporting obligations to the State University of New York, the U.S. Small Business Administration, AND the Association of Small Business Development Centers. Dick Cheney, however, has found a way for us all to put that red tape behind him. When someone asks him who has been meeting in his office on his energy policy, he can claim executive privilege. When he’s asked to abide by an executive order to declare what secrets he’s holding, he becomes, as President of the U.S. Senate, a member of the legislative body.

This is BRILLIANT! I’m sure that my organization, and entities in the same situation, will now be able to say, “Oh, X, we don’t have to tell you that, because we also report to Y.” All of those calls for his impeachment or resignation will certainly now immediately cease.

Oh, and just yesterday, a prisoner in Cheneyland, Scooter Libby, got his jail time eliminated. “And justice for all” indeed.
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