Ramblin' with Roger

The Honest Playlist, part 1

inverse pedal point

It’s J. Eric Smith’s fault that I’m doing the Honest Playlist. He is an old blogger buddy of mine—well, he is not that old—who used to live in the Albany area but now resides in Arizona.

He explained the setup, which you can read here. It involves, in part, Flight of the Conchords, which I have never seen, but that is not required for this exercise.

“The premise of the recurring feature is that artists are given a set of song-based questions which they must answer, honestly.” And I have to do this because Eric namechecked me, curse him.

The first song I remember hearing: I don’t really know, but it is likely one of my father’s 45s. It may also be Be Kind To Your Parents. I’ve written about this before, but the previous link is the correct version. It was on a red 45 that my sister Leslie and I played on our record player all the time.

The first song I fell in love with: From my father’s singles, 45 Men a Telephone Booth by The Four Tophatters.

The first album I bought: Beatles VI from the Capitol Record Club, which I paid for with proceeds of my newspaper route delivering the Evening and Sunday Press in Binghamton, NY circa 1966.

The song I do at karaoke: I seldom do karaoke, but it’d be Talking Heads’ version of Take Me To The River.

Party!

The best song to play at a party: I initially thought of songs my daughter and I know and like. The first thing that came up: Motown Philly by Boyz II Men; she was jealous when her mother and I saw the group at Chautauqua in 2024. Then I thought, maybe some Motown, such as the obvious Dancing In The Street by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas or the obscure, though it went to #2 on the pop charts, I Heard Through the Grapevine by Gladys Knight and the Pips. How about Twist and Shout by that Liverpool group? Ultimately, I landed on Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, which is slower than the video suggests.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to: The Ballad of the Green Berets by SSgt. Barry Sadler. It WAS the song that spent the longest at #1 pop in 1966, at five weeks, when I turned 13 and was listening heavily to the radio. (The Monkees’ I’m A Believer started their run in ’66 but most of it was in ’67.)

The third and final verse and chorus:

Back at home, a young wife waitsHer Green Beret has met his fateHe has died for those oppressedLeaving her his last request

Put silver wings on my son’s chestMake him one of America’s bestHe’ll be a man they’ll test one dayHave him win the Green Beret

Even then, I wondered about rhyming oppressed with request – I’m pretty sure Stephen Sondheim would not have approved – but after hearing Defying Gravity from Wicked pronounced “gravidy,” I’ve surrendered on the point.

Ick

The song I can no longer listen to: Oddly, I don’t think there is one. After making lists of songs that hit #1 from the first third of the 20th century and listening to songs that are boldly racist, I have tough skin on this.

Now, I do hear songs that have changed for the worse. I’m thinking of The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun by Julie Brown, which appears on a Dr. Demento CD I play every April for his birthday. It makes me reflect that it was supposed to be funny in 1990—it really wasn’t—but in the last quarter century of school shootings, it’s even less comfortable.

Back in 2019, Arthur asked: About your Rolf Harris song [Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport] – it raises a question: Are we under any obligation to erase performers or songs we once liked because it later turns out that they were either allegedly or actually terrible humans or allegedly or actually did terrible things, like Rolf?

I was disinclined broadly, though Eric was eloquent in dismissing several artists, notably Michael Jackson. He is incidentally correct that Off The Wall is better than Thriller. I think of all those Phil Spector-produced songs I wouldn’t want to give up. Generally, music is a multifaceted endeavor.

Non-musical sidebar: I STILL remember chunks of Bill Cosby routines verbatim from repeated listening.

But it’s weird because if I were watching films, I might experience a greater ick factor. I’m thinking Woody Allen’s Manhattan or American Beauty with Kevin Spacey.

Guilty Pleasures?

The song I secretly like: I have a soft spot for Seals and Crofts. I saw them with my then-girlfriend on November 12, 1971 in New York City. (Why do I remember that date? Because it was the birthday of Baháʼu’lláh’, who founded the Baháʼí Faith. Anyway, I was listening to them recently, and i think Yellow Dirt is a hoot.

The best song to have sex with: Eric wrote, “I’m a gentleman, yo. That’s none of your business. Sheesh.” Sure. That said, I can’t think of an answer anyway.

The song I’ve always hated: You Light Up My Life – Debby Boone, You’re Having My Baby -Paul Anka, several others. But I can easily avoid them.

The song that changed my life: Quintet/Tonight from West Side Story. Can you do multiple melodies like that? This is why this musical was my favorite.

The song that gets me up in the morning: Never a single album or artist fits the category. Generally, it’s something my wife wouldn’t mind, so John Hiatt/Ella/the Duke/world music (I’ve been listening to Playing For Change a lot)/my wife’s K girls (her designation) Alison Krauss and Diana Krall rather than Led Zeppelin/the Who/the Kinks.

That’s enough because the last question in particular took up a lot of space. I’ll finish it next week.

Did I jinx my mother-in-law?

a certain familiarity

Did I jinx my mother-in-law?

On Wednesday, October 1st, I went for my annual physical with my primary physician. They call it a wellness check, covered by Medicare for old people like me. Can I remember these three words? Apple, table, penny. Draw the clock face for ten minutes past 11.

Then I talked to my primary care physician, who asked whether I’d had any falls. I said no, though my wife had three weeks to the day earlier. “I haven’t fallen since…” “DON’T SAY THAT!” The implication was that I would jinx myself if I had stated it. In fact, I do remember that it was before I retired in June 2019, but I shan’t say when.

I had taken buses to see my doctor in the past, to three locations in suburban Delmar and one just outside Albany. The location in Rensselaer would take two buses and 90 minutes, but it would also require a walk along a busy highway. So my wife had dropped me off before she went to work.

I called an Uber to get to the train station because I didn’t want to pay the full price for a ride home. The bus costs 65 cents from the train station to a block from my house. I saw a couple of people I know, and they thought my plan sounded complicated; I didn’t think so—it’s just logistics.

Making plans!

After a stop at the grocery store, I said, “OK, I’m going to work on all these projects”—a call for church, library stuff, and finishing a blog post I started the day before. I can do that because my wife has a meeting tonight. Sometimes, getting your stuff done when you’re alone is easier.

But less than an hour later, my wife calls me and tells me that my mother-in-law, who’s at an elder care facility, had fallen and was taken by ambulance to the hospital, specifically St. Peter’s Hospital, where my wife had gone when she fell. She picked me up, and we went to the ER.

Only one person is allowed in the space with the patient, so I stayed in the waiting room and read the newspaper. Eventually, my wife wanted something to eat. Nothing was available at the hospital, so I got a couple of slices of pizza at a nearby restaurant and chargers for our phones from CVS because they were running out.

A couple of hours later, my mother-in-law was discharged with no significant damage done. I waited with her while my wife got the car, and we chatted. Then we took her back to her facility because it was locked up after 11 p.m. We got home around 11:30, which was not my wife’s best time of day.

So talking to my primary physician that day about falling led to my MIL falling. Sorry, Joyce.

The New York Times games

Spelling Bee

Wordle 1300 I will note the New York Times games my wife and I play daily at our house. As I’ve mentioned, I play Wordle and have a decent streak; my wife does, too, although not as long as mine. It’s the game we play first; sometimes, I play right after midnight.

In the last report, I thought I could get 100 2s before I could get 100 6s. That didn’t work out. Still, in the previous 100 games, I got zero 1s (and it may always be thus because I start with the same word), eight 2s, 49 3s, 31 4s, 10 5s, and two 6s fairly early on.

The Connections game involves grouping “words that share a common thread.” We play it together after she comes home from work. Our strategy is to figure out all four groups – yellow, green, blue, and purple in increasing difficulty before entering any of them. We’re seeking the reverse rainbow, with the purple first. Sometimes we only know what three of them are. So we try the fourth one blindly; more often than not, it’s purple.

Trying to get them all minimizes the misleading clues—Harp, Chic, Grouch, Marx—which suggested the Marx Brothers but were not.

Spelling Bee

But the thing that takes us the most amount of time is the Spelling Bee. There are seven letters, one of which you must use, and you’re supposed to make words of four letters or longer.

There is always at least one pangram, which is a word that uses all seven letters. A perfect pangram uses only the seven letters. My wife is very good at finding pangrams. The only pangram I remember getting was genealogy, which I saw right away, only because I’ve been doing genealogy recently.

She is generally better at word games than I am, so it’s her game; I’m just the helper. There’s no way I would ever finish it, but she has finished it on her own. We spend way more time on Spelling Bee than Wordle and Connections combined.

I suppose it is a team-building project, and we learned many more words. One of the things about Spelling Bee is that you need to remember the words that popped up a few days ago because they’re likely to reappear. They like Greek letters.

Working on prefixes and suffixes and building them onto existing words is essential. But it’s also helpful to look at possible three-letter words that you can extend, or words that end in E, when it’s not a chosen letter, but the expanded word works. For instance, CHANGE isn’t an option, but CHANGING could be.

No Kings Day 2.0 – October 18

particularly concerning

Here’s a comment about a Boston Globe opinion piece, Will Americans let [FOTUS] slide the country into dictatorship? “Where are all the protests we saw earlier in the year? No Kings Day, Hands Off, and others. I went to several of these and would go every weekend if there were more of them.”

Good news! “On Saturday, October 18, millions of us are rising again to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.” The map shows the hundreds of events scheduled in the US and Europe.

“A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events.”

That said, activities have been taking place regularly. I receive regular emails from my local Indivisible.org organization, letting me know about letter-writing campaigns and local protests taking place at various sites every week.

I understand that people have different points of view, even the Globe’s readers. One opined that FOTUS and “dictatorship are a figment of the media’s imagination. The media has lost its credibility so thoroughly that it has to create an artificial boogeyman to justify its existence.” Another suggests that opposition to Metamucilini is “unhinged, over-the-top rhetoric.”

Historical comparisons

On CBS Morning on September 26, 2025, historian Douglas Brinkley, a sober rather than reactive person, broke down the legal charges against former FBI head James Comey.

He compared FOTUS with Andrew Jackson, who, because of his controversial loss in the 1824election due to the “corrupt bargain.” After his election in 1828, Jackson took vengeance against his opponents, such as Henry Clay, and the Second Bank of the United States.

Richard Nixon had his enemies list, but generally sought retribution against his political foes by surreptitious means, such as IRS audits.

However, according to Brinkley, the current White House occupant has openly recommended indictments against his enemies, essentially directing them to take place, which he considers particularly concerning.

For those worried about democracy versus dictatorship, go out and choose democracy, not just on October 18 but whenever you can..

Sunday Stealing Looks Back on September

booze, cookies and hair dye

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

We’re stealing this meme about last month – it looks back on September – from Life of a Fool. This blogger maintains this meme has “been seen everywhere.” The questions only require a yes or no, but if you’d like to elaborate, we’d like to hear what you have to say. (That’s good because this would be very short otherwise.)

In the Past Month Meme

During September, did you …

1. Drink alcohol? I don’t believe so. I had suggested to my wife that we could have a glass of wine from the bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, probably for the last few months, but it’s never gotten beyond that. It’s interesting how alcohol which was such a wonderful thing to discover in my 20s, has largely fallen by the wayside.

2. Try a new recipe? No I don’t really look at recipes and I only make the same six items anyway.

Shop Around

3. Go shopping with friends? I avoid going shopping at all. The only thing I bought that wasn’t groceries in September was at Lodge’s, the oldest department store in Albany, and I purchased a couple of pairs of slippers to walk around in the house.

I really don’t like shopping with other people. I have stories. One time this past decade, my wife was going to buy me a winter coat for Christmas, so we went into JCPenney’s. I looked at two coats and liked the second one. I tried it on; it fit, and I said, “Okay, we’re done.” She said, “Don’t you want to look at some others?” “NO!”

I like buying books and music because I generally know what I want. Grocery shopping is okay.

4. Eat an entire box of cookies by yourself? No, and don’t think I ever did. I ate a whole package of oatmeal raisin cookies in September, but there were only two cookies.

5. Dye your hair? If I’ve ever dyed my hair, I have no recollection. I might have done so for Halloween many years ago. When I was in high school stage crew, a young woman named Mary, the lead in a production, sprayed my hair blond.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.