What’s Your Name “is considered one of the signature classics of the doo-wop vocal style.”
Looking up something about Donovan in my Top Pop Singles book, I came across the listing for Don & Juan, a rhythm and blues duo from Brooklyn, NYC.
I well remember the great hit What’s Your Name, which reached #7 on the Billboard pop charts in 1962. The pair also had a minor hit, Magic Wand (#91 in 1962.)
In the minibio, it reads: “Ronald ‘Don’ Trone and Claude ‘Juan’ Johnson of The Genies. Don died in May 1982 (age 45). Juan died on 10/31/2002 (age 67).”
Two things jump out at me: 1) they were really young when they passed away. 2) Who were The Genies? Unsurprisingly, an R&B vocal group from Brooklyn, with Roy Hammond as lead vocalist. The quintet’s sole hit was Who’s that Knocking, #71 in 1959, which I didn’t recognize by title, but knew instantly when I heard it.
Interesting that neither Don and Juan nor the Genies ever charted in the R&B/soul charts. What’s Your Name “is considered one of the signature classics of the doo-wop vocal style.”
LISTEN TO:
Who’s that Knocking – The Genies HERE or HERE or HERE.
What’s Your Name – Don & Juan HERE or HERE or HERE.
The problem for me is that Googling it may lead to a discredited, or at least controversial, source.
So an old, terrestrial friend of mine asked on Facebook:
Am I wrong when I ask someone to explain their post when it is confusing to me?
I don’t understand when people tell me to ‘Google it’.
In my strange little world, if I make a post that doesn’t make sense without additional information, I feel it is my responsibility to provide a link.
Am I wrong?
Well, I think this is obviously a correct interpretation; you are NOT wrong.
But apparently, there’s this OTHER meaning of the phrase, one I’m not quite picking up on. “It just means ‘I don’t know either’ or ‘I don’t have time to explain all of this,” I’m told. Rather like in this article.
I think “Google it” is a bit lazy UNLESS they are the argumentative sort who deny facts. “New York is larger than California” – no, it’s not. THAT they can Google.
Then Chris asked for Ask Roger Anything:
Sometimes you’re in a group of people debating a pretty simple fact (e.g. are nectarines just fuzzless peaches or are they totally different?) and no one whips out the $500 hunk of technology in their pocket and Googles it. Why not? It’s a basic fact thing.
It’s funny because people around me are ALWAYS pulling out their devices. I do it myself when a bit of information that I know suddenly escapes me.
The problem for me is that Googling it may lead to a discredited, or at least controversial, source. I could Google “climate change hoax”. That wouldn’t prove that climate change is a hoax. But I could imagine someone say it is, as “proof” of their theory.
I Googled the original name of AIDS, and I found at the Encyclopedia Dramatica that “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome is the original term for the now politically-correct expression AIDS.” Politically correct?
Another person I know personally wanted to access a useful website to find good quotations. Someone jumped in to say to use Google; that was obviously an inadequate response. What he wanted was a link such as BrainyQuotes.com.
I guess, as a librarian, I find the belief that Google is the end-all disconcerting. And telling someone to use it is essentially blowing someone off. A better answer might be, “I don’t know.”
Shooting Parrots makes this point: “Whatever it is you need to know is just a click away on your computer… and yet does the fact that it is there, 24/7, mean that we value it less? Do we no longer need to bother with the tedious business of learning things, because there is an app out there that does all the learning for you?”
What bugs me even more, though, are the people who, when someone takes a position different from theirs, snarl, “Do your homework!” I saw this a LOT in debates between Bernie Sanders supporters and the backers of Hillary Clinton, especially leading up to the April 19, 2016 primary in New York.
“You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.”
I am terrified, to be honest with you… Sad, and angry.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed unless you are a black man sitting in a car with a busted taillight.”
“You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.” Those words were spoken over the dead body of Philando Castile by his girlfriend. He was a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school in St. Paul, Minnesota. In a video circulating widely after being posted to Facebook, the girlfriend documents Castile’s last moments after being shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.
[From Bernie Sanders]: The violence that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile has become an all too common occurrence for people of color and IT. MUST. STOP. Today African-Americans are almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. We need real criminal justice reform so that people can walk down the street without worrying about whether they’ll get harassed or shot. As South Carolina Rep. Wendell Gilliard proclaimed: “Enough is enough of our police officers targeting people of color.”
“…trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”
Saturday, I was watching the previous Monday’s game show JEOPARDY! while checking my email on my tablet – and they say I can’t multitask! – when I read that Elie Wiesel had died. I believed his powerful witness to our inhumanity to each other was a necessary reminder of our need for addressing persecution, wherever it may take place.
I mentioned aloud the news of his passing, and someone asked who he was. I was about to try to assemble my thoughts when this JEOPARDY! showed up on the TV screen: “‘Night’ is this author’s autobiographical work about a 12-year-old enduring Nazi camps.” I paused the DVR recording to say, “THAT’S who Elia Wiesel was.”
One of my favorite quotes of his was this: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Also this: “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
It was a bit startling how that TV clue about Elie Wiesel popped up nearly simultaneously with that news item.
As you may know, Jesse Williams, who has been on the long-running ABC-TV nighttime medical soap opera Grey’s Anatomy since 2009, gave an impassioned speech at the BET awards last month. Williams has been involved in Black Lives Matter, as well as other activism, a fact I wasn’t aware of until recently and was receiving BET’s Humanitarian Award.
The latter part of the address:
“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil – black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”
Lots of comments on social media, pro, and con. From the latter, someone started an online petition “to fire Jesse Williams from Grey’s Anatomy for racist rant,” which early on, had about 10,000 signatures, In response, another person devised a counter-petition, “Don’t let the racists win! ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, don’t fire Jesse Williams,” which had over 20,000 signatures, including mine. In fact, there were at least 10 other petitions in support of Jesse, with anywhere from a dozen to about 1,000 signatures.
Interestingly (to me), there was a question, with a photo, on the TV game show JEOPARDY! on May 5, 2016: “Seen here, former Philly high school teacher Jesse Williams as Dr. Jackson Avery on this TV drama.” NO one got the question correct, or even rang in. I suspect that would be different now.
I suspect that, if I ever meet George W. Bush, I will find him personally engaging.
Address to the Nation on Immigration. Oval.
Last year, a publisher was deaccesioning some books in anticipation of a move. I got for free about twenty books, among them, the 2004 anthology George W. Bush: Evaluating the President at Midterm. The first chapter, by Bill Kirtley, was called The Arbiter of Fate and had a brief but useful bio.
The death of his little sister Robin in 1953 colored his worldview, especially when he learned his parents had hidden her advancing leukemia from him. “His cousin Elsie Walker observed: ‘You…see your parents suffering so deeply and try to be cheerful and funny, and you end up becoming a bit of a clown.'”
She explained that “there was a lot of pressure to develop himself. He was a bit of a disappointment and hid it “by adopting a nonchalant attitude.” But it also meant some anger issues, “when he drank or suspected people of treating his family unfairly.”
The first time I paid any attention to George W. Bush was when he was running for governor of Texas against Ann Richards in 1994. The Democratic firebrand had spoken at the 1988 Democratic convention about W’s dad as having been “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Of course, GHWB won the Presidency.
She referred to W as Shrub, and other diminutives, but that failed to work as well. As governor, she had vetoed a bill allowing Texans to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons, which he promised to sign, and eventually did. There was a rumor that she was a lesbian, which The Atlantic magazine and others connected to Bush advisor Karl Rove, though Rove denied being involved.
He ran for President in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative.” In Texas, he had cut taxes, supported the education of the dangers of alcohol and drug use and abuse – in part because of his own experience – and helped to reduce domestic violence. He had a mixed environmental record.
But George W. Bush won the nomination. I need not rehash Bush V. Gore, where the Supreme Court determined that Bush beat Vice-President Al Gore in Florida and thereby won the election, though he had lost the popular vote.
Oddly, when the US had an incident with China in April 2001, I said to myself, “I wonder what [Bill] Clinton’s going to do about… wait a minute, he’s not president anymore!” Seriously, the post-election fight had gone on so long that I forgot, briefly, the outcome.
Of course, there was 9/11. I always thought those calls for him to return immediately from Florida to DC were, given the lack of information in those early hours, terribly irresponsible. I was pleased that he blunted anti-Muslim sentiment, something missing in subsequent Republican leaders.
I understood, at least, the beginning of the Afghan war. But, it was weird that it quickly fell off the radar, as the drumbeat for a SECOND front, this time against Iraq, was being sounded. Iraq NEVER made any sense to me, and I protested the build-up for the six months before the invasion, and the subsequent, and incorrect, “Mission Accomplished.” Moreover, the fact that we were fighting these wars without paying for them was the height of fiscal irresponsibility.
When he ran for reelection in 2004, there was a debate question about religion. W talked about his “born-again” religious conversion. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, indicated his Catholic “feed the hungry, clothe the naked” doctrine. I thought Kerry did fine, but the pundits found his theology not compelling.
Domestically, there was Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, which was a disaster made worse by government non-response. And the economic collapse on Wall Street defined his last year in office. His administration also had its own email scandal.
Ultimately, it was eight years of living dangerously. I don’t think George W. Bush was like Harry Truman, vilified at the time, but treated more kindly by history. I agree with his father, 41, that 43 was ill-served by W.’s Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Looking up something about Donovan in my Top Pop Singles book, I came across the listing for Don & Juan, a rhythm and blues duo from Brooklyn, NYC. 
