October rambling #1: Thoughts and Prayers App

Ronald McDonald Is Laying Low

trumpish-indianExplaining Progressive Christianity (Otherwise Known as “Christianity”)

He was tortured by the U.S. and held without charge. Suleiman Abdullah Salim is still haunted by the prison he calls “The Darkness”

Misogyny defied: Michelle Obama’s New Hampshire speech (start at 25:00) and Dear Men from Amy Biancolli

Time to Own the Legacies of Others

Five myths about Russia

John Oliver: Police Accountability

Racist Social Media Users Have A New Code To Avoid Censorship

Yes, Preschool Teachers Really Do Treat Black And White Children Totally Differently

Confessions of a former neo-Confederate – Who believes slavery wasn’t really that bad? I did

6 million citizens blocked from voting because of felonies

The ‘Green Book’ Was a Travel Guide Just for Black Motorists, which I wrote about here, plus a PDF of the 1949 iteration

How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Presidency – It’s unlikely, but far from impossible

Robin Williams’ Widow Writes A Devastating Account Of His Final Year

The Ross Perot myth

Thoughts and Prayers App

Elena Ferrante published her books anonymously, but recently, the NY Review of Books published a piece that exposed her true identity. As friend Dan notes: “None of it was relevant; I would go so far as to say it was unnecessary.” One of many critics of the unmasking

950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings

Bill Warren, R.I.P.

NOT a parody: Ronald McDonald Is Laying Low Until the Clown Craze Is Over

Racer disqualified for using ChapStick?

Professor and student interaction

All Of America’s Science Nobel Prizes This Year Were Won By Immigrants

PBS’ American Experience: Tesla premieres October 18

THE FANTASTIC URSULA K. LE GUIN – The literary mainstream once relegated her work to the margins. Then she transformed the mainstream.

How to memorize scripts, part 1 and part 2

Learning YouTube tricks

Now I Know: Baby, Not Bored

Audrey Munson, the first supermodel

Tank top

Why I Stopped Wanting to Make Serious Art Films and Came to Believe Movies Should Be Fun

Extra Gum ad: The Story of Sarah & Juan

Would you pull a Coke can off the head of a skunk?

Arthur, about me asking about his blogging, or somesuch

Music

Sir Neville Marriner obit and music

Sviatoslav Richter plays Handel keyboard suite in G minor, no.9

1812 Overture

Coverville 1142: 20 fantastic Sting and Police covers

No Man’s Land -Glass Hammer

Sara Rose Wheeler: Soundtrack of my life

K-Chuck Radio: More forgotten 60’s pop music

It’s Too Late To Apologize – New Republic with lyrics

Coverville 1144: 20 Simon & Garfunkel and Paul Simon solo covers for Rhymin’ Simon’s 75th

Duke Ellington – East St. Louis Toodle-Oo

Let’s Have A Party Albany (1986)

Robert Morse sings “I Believe In You”

“Fan” Star Trek Original Series Clip to “Common People” by William Shatner

The World Map of Nobel Prize in Literature, including Bob Dylan

Reggie Harris music

September rambling #2: R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Why Marvel movie music is so forgettable

libraries-because

Climate change illo is so perfect, it’s undeniable

Dying to be me! Anita Moorjani at TEDx BayArea

It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility

Self Care For People of Color After Psychological Trauma

No touching. No human contact. The hidden toll on jail inmates who spend months or years alone in a 7×9 foot cell

The Smithsonian’s African American museum – a monument to respectability politics; hmm, I am a charter member

Forehead Tittaes / Marion Cotillard and Pinksourcing With Kristen Bell

Homeless, Looking for Work

Childhood lost: Schooling a workforce and Naviance not so transparent- and cooking up data starting in kindergarten?

Now I Know: Charles Bernard’s Unexpected Vacation and Avast, Ye Groceries! and The Secret, Broken Language of Fire Hydrants and The Dangerous-Sounding Threat of DHMO and A Fishy Story

Is Inbreeding Really That Bad?

It occurs to me that I ALWAYS knew who Arnold Palmer was. From watching him and his army of fans on TV in my grandfather’s apartment, just upstairs from mine, to the epic golf battles between him and Jack Nicklaus, to an iced tea with lemonade drink named for him, to ads for prescription drugs. Arnold Palmer was 87. Here’s Olin and Palmer Team Remembered in Silver; Spencer Olin is a distant cousin of my wife’s

R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis, the “Godfather of Gore”, Has Passed Away at 87; Our business library had a business book of his, called Big Profits from Small Budget Advertising, from 1992, and when we deaccessioned the tome, I scooped it up. So it’s now in the same office at home as my copy of FantaCo Enterprises’ The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and His World of Exploitation Films, autographed by HGL “to my friend Roger,” also signed by coauthors Daniel Krogh and John McCarty at FantaCon 1983

The Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, one of Major League Baseball’s top pitchers, was killed in a boating accident; he was 24 and had a great backstory

Bill Nunn, Who Played Radio Raheem in ‘Do the Right Thing,’ Dies at 63, which is my age; Love – Hate: Do the Right Thing

Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer-winning playwright and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ author, dies at 88

The three “tireds”
Friday

‘Rock star’ Baltimore librarian makes history at Library of Congress

See Amazing Images of American Sikhs

5 Rules for Hosting a Crappy Dinner Party (and Seeing Your Friends More Often)

There’s a movement afoot to name an intersection in Los Angeles for the late Forrest J Ackerman

Tom Hanks Has Made a Fortune Bringing Your Travel Nightmares to Life

Vin Scully is a voice for the ages and The national pastime continues to endure and Ken Levine’s tribute; we’re talkin’ baseball.

History of the Volkswagen and especially its groundbreaking advertising

48 Hour Film Project 2016 – SUPr, featuring Rebecca Jade (niece #1)

THE TRUST BOOK ONE: SILENT SCREAM Kickstarter. Goal met, stretch goal sought. Dennis Webster, Bill Anderson, Gabriel Rearte and Laurie E. Smith bring you the Roaring Twenties like you’ve never seen them before

Essay on lettering in comic books

Dominoes, and I don’t mean the bad pizza

Music!

Jolene by Dolly Parton and PTX

Gilbert, Sullivan, Spinners

The surprising reason music for Marvel movies is so forgettable; the tyranny of the temp track

Memorable tracks that never got above #58 on the Billboard charts

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Test Pattern Parody Talking Heads On Seth Meyers

Stanley Dural a/k/a Buckwheat Zydeco died at the age of 68. Here’s Beast of Burden.

Alan Vega, artist and punk musician – obituary (HT to Shooting Parrots)

Random notes from Facebook

obama-cryWhen another person and I, separately, posted on Facebook from The New Yorker, The News Reshuffled what was clearly a piece of satire, Emotional Obama Tearfully Thanks Trump for Granting Him Citizenship, a few people thought it was unfunny. One, on my feed, said it was a “lie” that I was sharing FOX News garbage, and that the New Yorker is a terrible magazine.

Trying to explain that it was meant as humor did not help. However, when I posted, from the same source, that Obama had paid Mexico $5 million to keep Trump, now THAT was considered funny.
***
I believe:

One should NEVER say, “See what I did there?” As The Daughter rightly notes, it lessens the joke. Let others notice.

A: After releasing his health records to Dr. Oz, Donald Trump is now said to be considering allowing only Tex Baxter and Lois Lane to cover him. Peter Parker, Jimmy Olsen, and “Animal” will form the press photo pool.
B: What about Clark Kent?
A: Too much of a liberal do-gooder. “Truth and justice.” So corrupt!
Me: And Clark would see right through him.
C: I see what you did there! 😀
***
I posted this video on Facebook, Are Cracker, White Trash, & Redneck Racist? from Decoded on MTV News, which led to a very long conversation about white privilege, which Francesca Ramsey mentioned only in passing. Conversations about white privilege are ALWAYS lengthy.

I appreciated input from Michael Rivest and others on this, but I shan’t relitigate it here.

It’s a good thing I didn’t post the White Fragility Workplace Training.
***
Keith Olbermann took on DJT in GQ, which Arthur linked to. In a Facebook discussion, someone wrote of Olbermann: “He is a paid character assassin. He’s rehashing the same accusations made against Trump. since the beginning of his campaign.”

To which someone else noted: “I will refrain from insulting you personally. But as Roger [me] said, you only have to listen to what comes out of Trump’s mouth. And because he is featured on almost every news and talk show 24/7, I have heard him actually say most of the things Olbermann attributed to him. In other cases, I have read the accounts of people that have had to deal with him. I even know a couple of people personally who have had to try and get paid for the work they did for him. So this is not a ‘choice’ I have to make about believing Olbermann or not. It is the sad reality of Donald Trump. It’s hard to imagine that one guy running for President can be such an ass clown, but then Mr. Trump is no ordinary guy.”
***
areacode-new-yorkmapA local reporter posted on Facebook: “the #518 is getting a new area code. Like or dislike…”

Wow, the dislike was STRONG. “I dislike this change. Life is more complicated when there are more numbers to use.” Which is true; one will have to dial 518, even within the 518, which I have to do at work presently. But people won’t have to get new phone numbers; the new area code, which has not yet been determined, will be for new calls. Expect it in October.

Someone asked if we’d get 666. I wrote: Here’s the current list. 666 IS available, but don’t count on it!

One person would have preferred they divided 518 geographically, as they did with 914, leaving only Westchester County, just north of Albany, as 914 and creating a new area code 845 in the rest of the area. “An overlay means if I get a new neighbor, I may need to dial 10 numbers to call her. An overlay is easier for them, not us. Another example of not putting people first.”

Not necessarily. The change was a pain for all those counties in the Mid Hudson section of New York who had to change ads, make new business cards, repaint signs. Not to mention all the folks interacting with those people, businesses, colleges, governments, et al.

“This area could have kept 518 in the Capital District.”

Probably not. The plan that was rejected “would have meant giving residents of both Albany and Troy, as well as towns south of them, a brand new area code and phone numbers to learn.”

But my favorite comment was “Don’t they have anything better to do?” Actually, making sure we have enough phone exchanges IS what THEY do.

September rambling #1: unfinished art

Busker lends a helping hand to people with cancer

Blessed are the poor
Instead of Dumbing Down

Meet the People Who Believe the Earth Is Flat

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun; Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the US coastline are no longer theoretical

How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet

The Falling Man

The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism; He Couldn’t Tie His Shoes

The Aurora shooting survivors’ $700,000 legal bill shows the difficult reality of one Colorado law

Risky alone, deadly together Overdosing on prescription drug combinations plays a part in the growing rates of premature death among white women

White people think racism is getting worse, against white people

White privilege has enormous implications for policy — but whites don’t think it exists

‘He paid a dear price for it’: The 19th-century ordeal of one of America’s first transgender men

JEWEL OF THE NILE and why Ken Levine will be forever haunted by it

Who is Funding the Backlash against John Oliver’s Charter School Critique?

‘Playing Joan Crawford ruined my career’: Faye Dunaway says Mommie Dearest changed the way Hollywood thought of her

Now I Know: The Pool Party That Wasn’t a Gas and A Token Effort

One in Four Americans Didn’t Read a Book Last Year, But don’t mourn the death of the printed word just yet

Introvert Hangovers Can Be Really Rough

Hugh O’Brian, Star of TV’s Wyatt Earp, Dies at 91

Actor Jon Polito, known for roles in Coen brother films ‘The Big Lebowski’ and ‘Miller’s Crossing,’ dead at 65

Trouble with Comics contributor Tim Durkee passed away

Woman in iconic WWII Times Square kiss photograph dies at 92

A little good news

Dozens of higher education institutions in New York state will stop asking applicants whether they have past criminal convictions

Jerry Lewis returns, at 90

Star Trek: The Making of The Next Generation’s Greatest Episode, ‘The Inner Light’ and When ST was banned in Albany and ST and Jaquandor

Gene Wilder on Willy Wonka Remake, Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, and more (2013)

Actress Bea Arthur leaves LGBT youth a generous gift in her will

Ken Levine’s favorite celebrity sighting

Dan Van Riper: We Walked The Entire Rail Trail From the South End of Albany all the way to Voorheesville

An exhibition celebrates unfinished art

Early comics reading and A Number 1 By Any Other Name, both featuring moi

Busker lends a helping hand to people with cancer (Roger Green, not me)

Alicia Abdul: My favorite part of the trip– the Library of Congress!

Library Gothic

The fifty-year odyssey of a born-again baseball fan

High school was hard, and no one showed it better than My So-Called Life

How Lace Is Made

Finding Dory As Told By Emoji

When He Turned Out the Light, He Was in Bed Before the Room Was Dark

Berlioz

Star Trek suites

Fred Hellerman, Last Living Member of Folk Group the Weavers, Dead at 89 – Folk icon also produced Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’

Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies No. 5 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor

Cover of Michael Jackson’s Bad by Jordan’s Project (Big Band; Soloist – Artur Katz)

K-Chuck Radio: The Vanda and Young Songbook

Four chords, no waiting

An Oral History of “We Built This City,” the Worst Song of All Time; or at least a real contender.

Beatles appropriation and ‘Eight Days a Week’ — The Beatles’ story in Ron Howard’s documentary

Rolling Stone: 100 Greatest Rolling Stones Songs

All 314 Bruce Springsteen Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best

Beach Boys: Mike Love’s Endless Summer of Love

Playbill Asked Over 70 Actors to Name Their Favorite Show Tune of All Time

The Price is Right losing horn

August rambling #2: how ridiculous xenophobia is

Will Your Prescription Meds Be Covered Next Year? Better Check!

Syrian children

It’s not just Freddie Gray. The Justice Department’s new report shows how wide and deep Baltimore’s police problems are

My four months as a private prison guard, which has led to the US phasing out private prison use

US: The Real Way the 2016 Election Is Rigged

Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’ – she said, Nothing!

Germany finally apologizes for its other genocide—more than a century later

Does Henry Kissinger have a conscience?

At what point is it impossible to separate art from the artist? (Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation)

Tote bag proves how ridiculous xenophobia is

“Christian” groups are handing out these creepy ‘gay cure’ comics to children

If your pastor says “RACISM ISN’T A SKIN PROBLEM, IT’S A SIN PROBLEM” you need to find another church

Pew Research: Choosing a New Church or House of Worship; Americans look for good sermons, warm welcome

In today’s troubling times, where are our faith leaders? But Even Reinhold Niebuhr could not be Reinhold Niebuhr in 2016

YOU THROW, GIRL: AN OLYMPIC SHOT-PUTTER’S FEMINIST MISSION

Michael Rivest: The Wall That Heals

Cartoon: The future of climate denial

174 Heroin Overdoses in Six Days in Cincinnati

NPR is closing its comments section – can’t blame them

Flat earth Theories

When New Parents Refuse Vitamin K Shots And Their Babies Get Brain Bleeds

Race and poverty

America’s wealth gap is split along racial lines — and it’s getting dangerously wider

Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped by Segregation

The Original Underclass; Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has

‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Recalls A Childhood Where Poverty Was ‘The Family Tradition’

Michele Bachmann: “White People Have Suffered More In The Last 8 Years Than Blacks Did During Couple Years Of Slavery”

Why Poor People Stay Poor -Saving money costs money. Period.

Auto Lending: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Will Your Prescription Meds Be Covered Next Year? Better Check!

The culture of the smug white liberal

What I said when my white friend asked for my black opinion of white privilege

A C-SPAN caller asked a black guest how to stop being prejudiced; Here’s how she responded

The infamous Stop White Genocide video

Lottery of Indencency

Arthur’s Internet wading

When Elite Parents Dominate Volunteers, Children Lose

Thurgood Marshall’s interracial love: ‘I don’t care what people think. I’m marrying you.’

Dashcam Video Captures Highway Pileup, Woman Rescued from Burning Car in Binghamton, NY

Larry Wilmore on the End of The Nightly Show and the Show’s Greatest Legacy

Arthur@NZ is getting better and his hospital bill; damn Kiwis!

Dustbury goes grocery shopping 2.0

At my alma mater at SUNY New Paltz, College mourns death of emeritus biology professor Heinz Meng, known for recovery of peregrine falcon – he was very cool

The only movies I’ve seen with Gene Wilder are The Producers, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, and one of my favorite movies ever, Young Frankenstein, which he co-wrote. They were all released between 1967 and 1980. But he was always excellent then and in a couple of episodes of Will and Grace early this century. Gene Wilder on The Truth | Blank on Blank | PBS Digital Studios, plus Evanier and Tom Straw remember.

Steven Hill, D.A. Adam Schiff on ‘Law & Order,’ Dies at 94

A Marvin Kaplan story

Jack Riley, RIP

‘I’ve had a good life’: Donna Wold, the ex-flame who inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl in ‘Peanuts,’ dies

Your Guide to the Fall Broadway Season

50 things about comics, featuring ME

The 10 most Influential Poets in History

Art is about surrender – Stop asking for it to be custom-tailored

Chuck Miller at the State Fair and Don Rittner at the county fair, and Jaquandor at the county fair

Now I Know: David’s Garden and Horse, Off-Course

Ken Levine HATES Robert Hall

The Casual Sex Project

Music

Harmonica legend Toots Thielemans, Known for ‘Sesame Street’ Theme, Dies at 94 and The Getaway – End credits – Quincy Jones – Toots; more Quincy and Toots; John Barry, Toots – Theme from “Midnight Cowboy” (mostly stolen from Steve Bissette’s Facebook)

U2 Live Albany New York – 13 November 1981

John Denver, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash & Roger Miller – Rocky Top

Herb Alpert Foundation to donate $10.1 million to Los Angeles City College — making studies for music majors tuition-free

It’s only rock ‘n’ roll – and sometimes it’s better in mono

35 Years Ago: Violent Femmes Discovered by the Pretenders While Busking in Milwaukee

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