Ramblin' with Roger

Dec. rambling: Lean on Me

I Love Trash

UN: Climate Change Will Create “New Great Divergence” Between Rich and Poor.

Were Other Human Species the First Victims of the Sixth Mass Extinction?

three years running Suicides and overdoses among factors fueling drop in U.S. life expectancy.

The Illusions Underlying our Foreign Policy Discussions.

ALEC Is an Incubator for Efforts to Protect White Supremacy.

“Calvin and the Colonel” – a kids’ cartoon with a shady past.

James Ussher, polyglot, prolific scholar, a man of the church and the man responsible for what we know today as ‘creationism’.

How gender-neutral pronouns can change a culture.

When America Starts to Feel a Little More Soviet.

Articles of Impeachment: Broad or Narrow? – they went narrow.

What Does Trump’s Inner Party Believe?

Letter to the editor: Pattern of misbehavior – Roger Green, Scottsbluff, NE.

Plan to Strip Food Aid From 750,000 Low-Income People by 2020.

He wanted to ban feeding homeless people. Now he’s about to lead a federal homeless agency.

Even if a Democrat wins in 2020, the next president isn’t likely to resurrect a Pax Americana.

The US-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal Is Not as Good as Nafta.

Devin Nunes may regret SLAPPing his critics.

Vicki Van Meter is the youngest female pilot to have made a transatlantic flight when she was aged twelve.

Gender-neutral pronouns can nudge people to see the world a little differently.

Rejection: A Wilderness Guide for Writers, Part 25.

Memories of a map.

How Costco gained a cult following — by breaking every rule of retail.

The Easiest Way to Bike Up a Hill and The One Thing You Can’t Take Home from The Price is Right and The State of Indiana versus Robin Hood and There’s Snow Better Way to Measure and Picasso with the Sharp Elbows and The Federal Bacon Law That Protects Truth in Advertising and The Best Way to Have Your House Cleaned Out By an Intruder.

Obits

Caroll Spinney, Big Bird Muppeteer for Nearly 50 Years, Dies at 85. Check out the 2014 documentary I Am Big Bird.

René Auberjonois, ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Benson’ Actor, Dies at 79. He was also in Boston Legal and a tons of other roles.

D.C. Fontana wrote many great stories and not all of them were for Star Trek, “which is the impression you’ll probably get from some of the obits.”

Ron Leibman, Tony Winner for ‘Angels,’ Is Dead at 82. His IMDB page.

Pete Frates, A Driving Force Behind The Viral Ice Bucket Challenge, Dies At 34.

Wrecked locomotive discovered after 106 years under Lake Superior.

Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, who was 92 when he died in New York City blasted ‘nihilistic’ Trumpism in final testament.

Daily syndication of Unshelved is available for free to any noncommercial web site.

MUSIC

I Love Trash – Oscar the Grouch.

ABC-DEF-GHI Song – Big Bird.

Going Home, per Dvorak – BYU choir.

Othello Overture – Dvorak.

Coverville 1287: The 15th Annual Beatles Thanksgiving Cover Story and 1288: The 40th Anniversary Tribute to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Baby’s in Black – MonaLisa Twins.

21st Century Schizoid Man [Radio Edit] – King Crimson at 1:55.

Lean on Me – Bill Withers.

Why you should learn about the Teskey Brothers.

These men just released their first music album — at age 102 and 88.

Advent / Christmas music 2019

I LOVE Thurl’s voice

OK, NOW I’m getting into the Advent season. Music is the linchpin for almost everything. Jaquandor has his Daily Dose of Christmas. Someone else posted The Top 100 Christmas Songs, some of which may be replicated below. I’m OK with that.

Since I finally saw Hamilton this year, I should post Hamildolph!, which is really good at what it does.

I believe these are new tunes:
Snow Falls Softly At Night -MonaLisa Twins
Merry Xmas Everybody – Robbie Williams, featuring Jamie Cullum

The Usual Suspects

Most of these I’ve posted in some prior year.

Getting Ready for Christmas Day – Paul Simon. Interesting that the sermon sampled was delivered in 1941, the same year Paul was born.

2000 Miles – Pretenders

White Christmas – the Drifters. One of my favorite bits of animation, ever.

Jingle Bells – The Fab 4. NOT the Beatles.

Linus And Lucy– Vince Guaraldi Trio. I read a bio about Vince some years back

Christmas All Over Again – Tom Petty. I still miss Petty.

What Christmas Means To Me – Stevie Wonder

The Bells of Christmas – Julie Andrews. There are at least three different versions of this on those old Firestone tire LPs my parents used to buy. One has an unnecessary one-minute instrumental in the middle, and the other has too cheery background singers. This is the best one.

The Coventry Carol – Alison Moyet. From that first A Very Special Christmas album in 1987.
Gabriel’s Message – Sting. Ditto. I had a girlfriend who HATED Sting’s voice.

The Christmas Song – Nat King Cole. My late mom LOVED Nat Cole.
Mary’s Boy Child – Harry Belafonte. My late father incorporated elements of Belafonte in his folk-singing career.
–
Every valley– Handel’s Messiah, A Soulful Celebration

Santa’s Too Fat For the Hula Hoop – The Pixies Featuring Thurl Ravenscroft. I LOVE Thurl’s voice.

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. A truly terrible song. Not as bad as Dominic the Donkey, but still.

More holiday stuff

The 60 Best Christmas Movies To Watch This Holiday Season

The Book of Dreams (Extended Version) – Argos Christmas advert 2019

Movie’s E.T. And Elliott Reunite 40 Years Later In A Commercial Sequel. I feel I should hate this, yet I don’t

fillyjonk’s tree

Mary and Joseph’s Battle Against the State

Derek Jeter tops Hall of Fame ballot

Larry Walker’s 10th and final year on the ballot

pettite posada jeter rivera — SP Andy Pettite, C Jorge Posada, SS Derek Jeter, RP Mariano Rivera

The article “Derek Jeter headlines 2020 Hall of Fame ballot” asks a question. Will the legendary Yankee shortstop and captain get in unanimously in his first year of eligibility? His former teammate, reliever Mariano Rivera did so the year before.

Jeter should. His stats are better than almost anyone else’s on the list. To boot, he and Rivera both played in Albany County before landing in the big leagues.

Barry Bonds (59.1% of the ballots last year) and Roger Clemens (59.5%) are both on the ballot for the eighth time. If I could vote, I’d pick them too, for reasons explained last year. Receiving 75% of the sportswriters’ votes is required for induction.

Curt Schilling (60.9%) is also on the ballot for time #8. It’s not the taint of steroids but his quite terrible politics, specifically “his xenophobic, transphobic and conspiratorial memes.” I’d bump him if there were lots of other candidates of a similar caliber, but there aren’t.

A pair of Rockies

Larry Walker (54.9%) is on the ballot for the 10th and final time. He suffered because he played in Colorado, where people believe his stats were inflated by the thin air. Put him in, and stop yanking him around!

Todd Helton (16.9%, 2nd year) Five-time All-Star. I think he also suffers from having played with the Colorado Rockies.

Andy Petitte (9.9%, 2nd year) holds all-time postseason records for wins, innings pitched and games started. He too was a member of the Albany-Colonie Yankees in the early 1990s.

Jeff Kent (18.1%, 7th year) – why does he get overlooked? He “snuck up on the baseball world as a Hall of Fame-caliber player… Kent was an average player at best for five seasons in the major leagues before blossoming into a star in San Francisco.”

Omar Vizquel (42.8%, 3rd year) was a defensive wiz who occasionally also hit well.

I suspect that Jeter, Walker, and maybe Schilling will get in.

Actor Bill Nighy turns 70

Love Actually

Although I’ve seen relatively few films featuring the British character actor Bill Nighy. I’ve enjoyed most of them, or at least him, quite a bit. The Bookshop (2017) my wife liked more than I, but we both loved him.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2010) was delightful. The sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) was a lesser effort.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) was overstuffed with storyline. After seeing Notes on a Scandal (2006), my wife said she felt as though she needed a shower afterward, and I understood what she meant.

Love Actually

But my favorite Bill Nighy film is the first one of his I saw, Love Actually (2003). I could come up with descriptions, but why do that when Jaquandor has done it for me.

“I wouldn’t be so enchanted with Love Actually if the movie wasn’t so wickedly funny. There isn’t a scene with Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), the aging rocker, that doesn’t leave me grinning at the very least… I’d love to see a biopic of aged, battered old rocker Billy Mack, who late in the movie admits that his life, though lonely, has been a wonderful life.”

Jaquandor also speaks to the other attributes of the film. “Few movies seem as full of real people, to me, as Love Actually. That’s a testament, really, not just to the writing, but the entire production, because the movie by its nature has to rely on its actors and editors to make the whole thing really come to life.

“Since each story in the movie is basically told in miniature, each cast member is put in the position of having to knock each scene out of the park. Luckily for the movie, they accomplish this.”

He quotes the late Roger Ebert: “I once had ballpoints printed up with the message, No good movie is too long. No bad movie is short enough. ‘Love Actually’ is too long. But don’t let that stop you.” [Emphasis added.]

In fact, I haven’t seen the film in quite a while. I should remedy that.

The term “OK Boomer” is okay by me

generational conflict

When my daughter said to me recently, “You’re pretty cool for a boomer,” I didn’t really know what to do with that. Little did I know that I would subsequently be inundated with articles about the term “OK Boomer.” Ken Levine wrote about, as did Amy Biancolli and several others.

But I needed to understand the genesis of it all. Fortunately, I came across a warm and fuzzy piece in VOX entitled, “‘OK boomer’ isn’t just about the past. It’s about our apocalyptic future.” There you go. The subtitle: “It’s not really about age — and it’s more complicated than just memes.”

Of course, there have long been generational conflicts. In the intro to the song I Got Life, from the musical Hair:

[Claude, spoken] This is 1968 dearies, not 1948
[Parents individually, spoken] What the hell you got 1968 that makes you so damn superior?
And gives me such a headache?

But this feels different. As the story notes, “Because of the cultural and political moment we’re in, the stakes feel much more fraught and high-risk than other generational clashes…” Generation Z, I should note, is comprised roughly of those born between 1996 and 2015, though this is fluid. Baby boomers are those born between 1946 and 1964, usually.

TikTok

“A song by Peter Kuli & Jedwill entitled ‘OK BOOMER!’… became a popular song choice for TikTok sing-along videos this fall… The verses define boomers as racist, fascist Trump supporters with bad hair… Teens on the platform used the song’s intro and chorus as a rebuttal to annoying run-ins they’d had with seniors policing or judging their behavior…

“OK boomer is meant to be cutting and dismissive. It suggests that the conversation around the anxieties and concerns of younger generations has become so exhausting and unproductive that the younger generations are collectively over it.” As a boomer with a Gen Z daughter – the gift of being an old parent – I very much worry about their future. And I’m afraid we flower children were much less successful in creating the change we desired than we would have liked.

As the New York Times noted this fall, “Gen Z has finally snapped over climate change and financial inequality.” Sidebar: I’ve never used the term “participation trophy” pejoratively. But I do like to eat cereal.

“In the end, the debate around OK boomer might be another iteration of the endless parade of internet-fueled ideological debates in which neither side is listening to the other. For frustrated millennials and teens, OK boomer is an emotionally valid response to boomer condescension, but to frustrated baby boomers, it sounds insolent and disrespectful.”

Now that I understand the genesis, it clarifies things. It never bothered me; I just didn’t “get” it before. Heck, I might use it unironically on some of my fellow sexagenarians when they get all “Kids these days.”