1961 looks the same flipped (I96I)

two instrumentals

bobby lewisOne of the more arcane things I remember growing up is that 1961 looked the same flipped over or right-side-up if you used the correct font. Roger Maris hit 61 home runs for the Yankees in ’61.

I was watching that Hemingway series on PBS by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The disastrous Bay of Pigs incursion meant that the author would never be able to return to his beloved home in Cuba. He died that very year.

By 1961, we’re up to the #1 songs I mostly can recall.

Tossin’ and Turnin’ – Bobby Lewis, seven weeks at #1. It’s one of those songs on every other compilation of songs of the late Fifties and early Sixties.

Big Bad John – Jimmy Dean, five weeks at #1, gold record. I loved this song as a kid, more a spoken word recording. But is anyone weirded out by him still plugging his sausages on television commercials when he died in 2010?

Runaway – Del Shannon, four weeks at #1, gold record. Bonnie Raitt did a great cover version.

Wonderland by Night – Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra, three weeks at #1, gold record. Instrumental.
Pony Time – Chubby Checker, three weeks at #1. His previous #1 was The Twist in 1960. His subsequent #1 was The Twist in 1962.
The Lion Sleeps Tonight – The Tokens, three weeks at #1, gold record. A song with a complicated history.
Blue Moon – the Marcels, three weeks at #1. Probably my favorite song from that year, written in the 1930s by Rodgers and Hart.
Take Good Care Of My Baby – Bobby Vee, three weeks at #1. I KNOW this song, but not from this version, or Bobby Vinton’s. (For a while I thought Bobby Vee and Bobby Vinton were the same person.) Or the Beatles’. Hmm.

Two Weeks at #1

Calcutta – Lawrence Welk and his orchestra, gold record. Instrumental. I watched Welk a LOT growing up.
Runaround Sue – Dion, gold record. Dion seemed somehow cooler than the other ’59-’62 artists.
Michael – the Highwaymen, gold record. This a song – “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” – that my father used to sing, then my sister Leslie and I would sing with him in concert. BTW, the singers were the 1960s “collegiate folk” group, not the ’80s supergroup of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

Travelin’ Man – Ricky Nelson. I wonder if he performed this on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966)?
Quarter To Three – Gary U.S. Bonds, gold record. I love this song.
Hit the Road, Jack – Ray Charles. One of the great call-and-response songs ever.
Surrender– Elvis Presley, platinum record. I hear the intro and think of some spy movie.
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – the Shirelles. My favorite song, as performed by Carole King.

A single week at #1

Mother-in-Law – Ernie K-Doe. I first heard this song on a Herman’s Hermits album; this is much better. I should note I love my MIL.
Please Mr. Postman – The Marvelettes, gold record. I heard this first by The Beatles. I’m fond of both.
Wooden Heart – Joe Dowell. I remember this song, but I couldn’t have named the artist. In fact, ask me in six months, and I probably still couldn’t.
Moody River – Pat Boone. No recollection of this song, thank goodness.
Running Scared – Roy Orbison. I appreciated him more in retrospect.

Wait: did I write that?

Learn-as-much-by-writingInstead of writing blog posts as a good blogger should, I have spent an inordinate amount of time recently skimming my blog posts from May 2010 through February 2017. Why would that be? Primarily for posterity. And I discovered a lot of “did I write that?” moments.

I was getting rid of these “Continue Reading” tags in my blog. And I discovered some interesting things.
1) I used the words “couple of” WAY too often.
2) The majority of the typos I found were me typing the same word twice: “the the”, e.g.
3) I had some yeasty discussions going on with Uthaclena and Sharp Little Pencil and New York Erratic and of course Jaquandor and Arthur and others. It was fun!

Polly ticks

In fact, I found a comment Arthur made in early 2017 about a post I wrote about the Electoral College. “About the possibility of many states having recounts—SO?!! Apart from the cost to taxpayers, it seems like a necessary price to pay for democracy. And the result would have to be pretty close to get many states recounting.”

The problem is, of course, that Arthur, as a rational being, was thinking about a logical process, one without people ginned up by conspiracy theories, crackpot lawyers, and, of course, a pathological liar-in-chief.

My, I ended up writing about Agent Orange, my preferred moniker for him at the time, a LOT, especially by January 27, 2016, when I was willing to state: “I’m now convinced that Donald J. Trump could be elected President this year.”

My wife recently asked me why I thought that way back then. In part, it was probably because of the prognosticators during the 2015 Republican nomination season who insisted that he had a 20-30% “ceiling” among Republican voters. But that was when there were 17 candidates.

Once Jeb Bush, the presumptive nominee, failed to catch on, the race was up for grabs. And after Marco Rubio lost the Florida primary in his own state on March 15, 2016, the race for the nomination was essentially over.

Huh?

But what I found really fascinating is that there were blogposts concerning ME, that I wrote, that had totally slipped my mind. And they weren’t all that long ago. For instance, getting a ride from a total stranger because she thought I looked like Santa Claus. Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Or my Thanksgiving 2016 piece about buying someone some pizza. I had TOTALLY forgotten about this story. Heck, I read it and said, “Hey, this Roger fellow isn’t a bad guy.”

Here is one of my greater failings. I am MUCH more likely to remember things that I should or should not have said, should, or should not have done than the good stuff, from FOREVER ago. They are always there, just below the surface.

Anyway, now that I’m back from a brief vacation with my family, and I have completed my obsessive/compulsive task, I have about seven more posts clogging my brain until I dislodge them onto you.

 

Brak prawa jazdy

slow route home

More about never having a driver’s license. Brak prawa jazdy means no driver’s license in Polish, according to the translator. There are a lot of Slavic folks where I grew up.

In 1975/76, I was in the car of my friend LaMBS. We were going straight. The car was stopped at the top of the hill facing us. Suddenly, he makes a left turn in front of us. I was unharmed, other than some aches and pains. LaMBS, though, was in a neck brace for six weeks. The other driver said he didn’t see us, but he was stopped for over five seconds before he turned. Oh, and his insurance had lapsed; it was a legal pain for a time.

In early 1977, I ended up living at my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC for about four months. I hated being in Charlotte for a lot of reasons, such as being afraid to use three-syllable words, lest I appear snooty. (And I certainly wouldn’t use words such as “lest.”)

But it was also the case that, at the time, their mass transit service was Terrible. Almost all of the buses ran through the main intersection of Trade and Tryon. It’d be like going from Paris to Rome via London. (It’s much better now.)

My father intimated that he’d teach me to drive, so I got a driver’s permit. If we went out at all, it was just once. So I felt really trapped and actually hitchhiked from Charlotte to Binghamton just to get out of there.

In NYC, NBD

My next living situation was at my sister’s apartment in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. It was a block from the #7 line. Very quickly, I became quite adept at navigating the subway. I’d even ride to the end of various lines just to see different parts of the city.

After a few months back in New Paltz, I crashed with Uthaclena and his then-spouse. Sometimes, I’d take the bus to Albany and buy comic books at FantaCo. Usually, I actually liked the bus, though people were often “losing” the zone pass, which cost more. Route 155 was the dividing line. Thank goodness they’ve long abandoned that system.

My girlfriend Shazrak had a car, so if I needed to go somewhere off the bus lines, she’d usually take me. But I was resistant to being dependent on a car.

I remember that we were housesitting on this little farmhouse in Quaker Street. Irrationally, I really hated it, because I didn’t feel in control of getting back to a place I knew.

Route 5

The farthest I ever drove was from Schenectady to Albany c 1981. I was with a friend who had taken us to her friends’ house. At the end of the night, she handed me the keys, as she knew she was too drunk to drive.

Since I didn’t drive often, I ran through the checklist that experienced motorists probably don’t think about. Things like remembering which pedal is the brake and which is the accelerator.

I took State Street in Schenectady, which turns into Central Avenue when it hits the Albany County line. It’s the slow route home because I didn’t want to go through the Thruway toll booth. Or maybe accidentally HIT the toll booth to the Interstate. Did I have an active driver’s permit at that moment? I’m not sure, but I think not.

Since it was well after midnight, there wasn’t much traffic, thank Allah. I think I did OK except taking a right turn from Central Avenue onto Lark Street very widely.

My girlfriend in the mid-1980s did not drive, but this just wasn’t particularly problematic. We lived on the bus lines, so we were fine in that regard. If we needed a ride, we asked friends, but we weren’t dependent on them.

More in a week or so.

Juneteenth and other rambling; Smilin’ Ed

When Languages Go Extinct.

deer
Pic was taken by a friend’s SIL in June 2021 and used with permission

‘Epic Failure of Humanity’: Global Displaced Population Hits All-Time High

The Delta variant is serious. Here’s why it’s on the rise. and The Perils Of Covid Complacency. 

Former WH adviser Fiona Hill considered pulling a fire alarm during Helsinki Summit—to shut Trump up.

The Political, Legal, and Moral Minefield That Trump Left for Merrick Garland and Cleaning Up After Him.

In 2020, 881 active Secret Service employees were diagnosed with COVID-19.

Why Has Local News Collapsed? Blame Readers. Despite all the impassioned pleas to salvage local news coverage, the reality is there’s a demand-side problem.

How Some Americans Are Breaking Out of Political Echo Chambers. 

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Prison Heat and PACE, a program meant to pay for environmentally-friendly home renovations.

When Undoing Is Not Enough — Repairing Harms Inflicted on Immigrant Children.

How the world ran out of everything.

Juneteenth/Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is the New Boogeyeman.

Why do people hate Cathode Ray Tubes so much?

Cartoon: Attack of the critical race theory and Cartoon: History for white people.

How New York’s capital city splintered along racial lines and Black elders in the Capital Region sit down with a young journalist of color to share their stories, experiences, and reflections on being Black in America.

The sad story of southern slave owners, as told in 8th-grade history books

Tulsa isn’t the only race massacre you were never taught in school. Here are others.

Juneteenth is symbolic. Don’t confuse it with racial justice.

GOPUSA Eagle: A Federal Holiday Isn’t Enough; Mayors Commit To Reparations.

Per Newsmax – Sen. Cotton: Juneteenth ‘Fitting Addition to Our National Holidays’ So Let’s Celebrate Momentum of a Growing Racial Justice Movement.

The rat

Staying up too late? Welcome to revenge bedtime procrastination. People are so desperate for time to call their own — even if it comes at 2 a.m. — they’re exhausting themselves. (I’ve done this in 2021. Not recommended.)

What is the only cardinal number whose letters are in alphabetical order in English?

Smilin' Ed complete

I was at my local comic book store recently and I saw copies of the Smilin’ Ed collection pictured, by Raoul Vezina and Tom Skulan. Diamond Distribution is now carrying the book, so you can buy it from a source other than Amazon. Guess which duck has the last word in the book?

A piece about Don Rittner, who, among other things, worked on an environmental cartoon with Raoul.

Fire tore through historian John Wolcott’s documents, maps. I’ve known John and Linda Becker for years.

Slipping of the Mother Tongue: When Languages Go Extinct.

Jeopardy!’s Apology for an ‘Outdated, Offensive and Inaccurate’ Clue.

The Beatles: Get Back — An Exclusive Deep Dive Into Peter Jackson’s Revelatory New Movie.

I absolutely adored Spock. Loving Dad was much more complicated.

Theater needs comedy, Ken Levine says. But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.

On Ned Beatty and HEAR MY SONG

Frank Bonner, WKRP in Cincinnati’s Herb Tarlek Dies at 79.

Danish Road Safety Council:  Helmet has always been a good idea.

Now I Know: Who is Q (James Bond Version)? and Why You Probably Prefer  European Chocolate and The Man Who Jetted to Millions and When The Faucets Ran Red and When I Learned A Lot About Doughnuts and When Multiple Streams Can Be Taxing.

MUSIC

The New Classics  – virtual Broadway and Broadway’s back. 

Coverville 1361: Cover Stories for Cole Porter and Tony Levin.

Club 27 – MonaLisa Twins.

An American Symphony by Michael Kamen, from the score to the film Mr. Holland’s Opus.

See You in September by several different artists.

The Way We Were – Aubrey Logan.

Answer: 40

Happy when I figure it out

download

InformationTechnologyConsidering my general lack of technological expertise, I’m always happy when I figure it out. And by “technological”, I don’t just mean Internet stuff.

I’m the kid who took the front door lock apart in our apartment then couldn’t figure out how to put it back together. Or blew up pottery in the junior high school kiln, and created furniture with first one leg, then three legs, uneven.

Interestingly, I was actually good at taking metal shop in 9th grade because the tools were more precise.

My first cellphone was like the early computers. Start also meant stop. The red button meant to start. Because I was/am a late adapter, the instructions are “Do this just like you did it on your earlier phone.” But I didn’t have an earlier phone.

I have a FitBit-like device. It’s never been used. In fact, where IS that thing?

Workaround

When I first started my blog in 2005, it had no photos. Blogspot/Blogger wanted us to use a product called Picasa to add photos. I could NEVER suss it out. But somehow I stumbled upon a workaround. Whatever I can do technologically is usually by trial and a lot of error. So I’m really impressed with folks such as Arthur who can fix actually his blog.

My little victories cause me oversized pleasure. Back when I was working and had interns, I showed at least two of them how to search for text using Ctrl-F. Those savvy young folks didn’t know that?

My daughter was trying to print a label, but it was coming out with gaps in the text. I downloaded the file, and printed it; it was fine. Of course, she then found a file my wife wanted to be printed but I got the same error, even after downloading. She changed the text color and it worked.

When I was helping to plan my FIL’s funeral, the videos came to me in Dropbox, which I could view but the guy putting the service together could not. The download, then send, worked that time.

I muddle through.

 

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