CBS Sunday Morning Archives - Page 2 of 3

July rambling #2: Northwest disasters and Taxman v. Batman

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Stadiums, a ripoff for taxpayers; bail; and poisonous mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Laci Green (no relation): Systemic Racism for Dummies.

Muslim Groups Step In To Help Black Churches Burned In Wave Of Arson.

Why it’s never ‘the right time’ to discuss gun control.

Wil Wheaton: living with depression and anxiety.

Jeff Sharlet: I went to Skid Row to report on Charly “Africa” Keunang, “an unarmed homeless man held down and shot six times by Los Angeles police. I had to get to know the people of whom I was asking these questions.”

Conquering 100 fears, one at a time.

‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen.

Of all people, Jimmy Kimmel on Cecil the lion I was also hoping it wasn’t an ugly American.

Jaquandor: Keeping Ahead of the Smiths: Random Thoughts on the Minimum Wage.

Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It. “Losing another hour of evening daylight isn’t just annoying. It’s an economically harmful policy with minimal energy savings.”

12 Lost American Slangisms From The 1800s. Slangisms?

An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when. Obviously, in response, a dildo epidemic hits Portland (OR) power lines.

Cousin Lisa discovers Finding Friends Through a Shared Vision.

Patti LuPone Offers Five Rules of Theatre Etiquette, Starting with “Respect”. 1, 2, and 5 also apply to the movies.

Ringo Starr turned 75 this month. Other drummers talk about him, from Ringo’s 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame presentation on HBO, plus Ringo Reveals The Secret Of His Distinctive Rhythm from CONAN on TBS, 2012.

“For half a century, Beach Boys songs have promised unending summers of fun in the sun — not at all like the life founding Beach Boy Brian Wilson actually led for many years.”

Woodstock 69: The Lost Performances. The Band, Canned Heat, Joan Baez, Crosby Stills Nash, Janis Joplin, Melanie.

Amy has resharpened her poetry pencil: Bossa (Getz, Gilberto, Jobim).

SamuraiFrog’s Weird Al countdown: 30-21.

The Beatles’ Taxman Vs. the Batman theme song (Mashup). Yes, The music of the Harrison piece was inspired by the theme song for the popular 1960s TV series.

God Bless America, sung by John Wayne, the cast of Bonanza, Rowan & Martin, and many others, some of them actual singers.

Evanier didn’t like the movie version of Driving Miss Daisy but linked to the new Angela Lansbury-James Earl Jones version on PBS.

“Loosen the Ties and Put Some Sweat on Them”: 12 Angry Men (1957).

Ken Levine writes a spec Dick van Dyke Show script, found in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Levine’s snarky response to the reader feedback, DVDS writer Bill Persky’s comments, and Levine’s final thoughts.

Happy 75th Birthday, Alex Trebek! His 6 Funniest Moments on Jeopardy!

Speaking of natal days, the claim that “Happy Birthday to You,” a song written in 1893, is somehow under copyright until 2030, is very likely hooey.

Chuck Miller on Reading the movie Ant-Man. It seems that ADD enjoyed the film.

The Unknown Assistant of Carl Barks.

Just Another Day at Hanna-Barbera.

Now I Know: Why Do Coupons Have a Cash Value of a Fraction of a Cent? and The Big Bang Theory, in Theory and Pop Goes the Kernel and Control-Alt-Delete.

When did I become “that” neighbor?

Muppets: Rain fall and Federal Housing Administration ads and The Muppet Show opening, in German, and, most importantly, the 10-minute pitch reel for the ABC TV show coming this fall.

This is troubling: I remember the lyrics to theme of The Real McCoys, a TV show I haven’t seen in well over 40 years.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

Arthur@AmeriNZ answers my questions about closeted gay performers, in a different era, and flags and national discussions and candidates for US President, with a specific Hillary scenario.

The Renaissance Geek was complaining about what he thought was a boring post, so I asked him a question. This turned into THE FIRST EVER ASK EDDIE ANYTHING!

SamuraiFrog likes But It’s Alright, too.

Jaquandor on Neil Simon on how to finish a day’s work. He also tells bad jokes.

June Rambling: Hal Holbrook; Marimba Queens

I see signs that say ClOSED, and it makes me a little bonkers.

pinned on Pinterest by Roger Green (not me)

My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) voted for marriage equality at its General Assembly this month. “Ministers will be allowed to marry same-sex couples in states where it is legal.”

On the other hand, Freedom and Faith Coalition’s Road to Majority conference had an Obama figurine in the urinal.

CBS News Sunday Morning did a piece, Born this way: Stories of young transgender children. The ever-interesting Dustbury on Gender Confirmation Surgery.

Writer Jay Lake worked closely with Lynne Thomas, an Illinois-based librarian… to ensure that all his blog posts and essays would be saved for posterity. “Though this is a relatively uncomplicated task for his blog content, which he unambiguously owned, it gets problematic when you wade into the legal rights of preserving your social media presence. ‘You can’t just download Facebook content into an archive.’”

A cartoon from 2008, and still apt: A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The United States.

Mark Evanier on O.J. Simpson trial nostalgia.

Evanier saw Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. I remember watching the Holbrook special on CBS in 1967. Hadn’t seen it since, but it had a profound effect on me in terms of the wonders of storytelling. Also made me a big Hal Holbrook fan; I watched the Senator segment of The Bold Ones a few years later, which lasted one season, but won five Emmys.

Evanier introduces Julie Newmar to Wendy Pini. The former was one of the portrayers of Batman’s Catwoman; the latter, the artist who draws Elfquest, and who used to show up at FantaCo in Albany frequently.

Alex Trebek Sets A Guinness World Record For Hosting ‘Jeopardy!’ And Who is our new favorite ‘Jeopardy’ loser? His imitation of Putin WAS fun.

Eye Macs.

There’s a new blog, Verizon Wireless Hell. Meanwhile, Time Warner’s Roadrunner e-mail was out for several days, and not for the first time, but only the residential customers. As one unhappy customer I know wrote: ” TW is too big, and its equipment is too small, to provide reliable service, despite their eternal advertising.”

William Rivers Pitt: The Astonishing Privilege of Fatherhood

Distribution of letters in parts of words and auditory illusion.

The Seven Lady Godivas: Dr. Seuss’s Little-Known “Adult” Book of Nudes.

Jaquandor: please add this to my pet peeve list: the use of I as a lower case L. I see signs that say ClOSED, and it makes me a little bonkers.

Pantheon Songs on the importance of Blind Willie Johnson.

Jim Keays passed away. “He was the lead singer of The Masters Apprentices, one of the seminal Australian psychedelic rock and pop bands of the 1970s.” Eclectic stuff.

Tosy: U2, ranked 60-51 and 50-41.

Watch the bass player. Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens (ca. early 1940s). “This film seems to be a mirror image of how things are supposed to be. This is because original Soundie films were printed backward so that they could appear correct when played in the Panoram machine (an early film jukebox).” Someone flipped the tape, and it’s supposed to look like this. It’s also at 7:50 here, which has nicer resolution.

Was the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California inspired by an older Jethro Tull track?

Beatles’ lyrics and the words they used most. They used LOVE 613 times, more than any word that wasn’t a pronoun (you, I, me); an article (the, a); or a preposition (to).

The Groovy Imitation Bands of 1960s Japanese Rock.

Bobby Womack, the revered “poet” of soul music for his prowess as a songwriter as well as singer and guitarist, died at 70.

Maya Angelou reading her poem Phenomenal Women. And a graphic representation. Plus, Melissa Harris-Perry shares her exclusive interview with Dr. Angelou.

The Racialicious Tony Awards recap. The In Memorium segment, not in the show, only on YouTube(!)

A Tom Waits/Cookie Monster mashup.

A World Cup-themed Mickey Mouse short.

FROZEN support group. NSFW.

The 13 Most Ghastly Horror Comic Artists, Part 1 and Part 2.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

Jaquandor thanked me for pointing him to a couple articles. One was about Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson returning to the comics pages in the Stephan Pastis’ Pearls before Swine strip.

Interesting that Julio cites me for providing a graphic about technology ethics when I clearly noted the source, but I appreciated the shoutout.

Is UNO the card game that destroys relationships? The Daughter and I like it, and she’s more cutthroat than I. Jaquandor loves Chuck Miller’s description of the game.

Arthur links to me linking to him, but also has interesting linkage about the Bible.

SamuraiFrog answers my question about politics and about Dustbury and Playboy Playmates.

GOOGLE ALERT (not me)

Alcoholics fight ‘rampant epidemic’: Roger Green played for the Junior All Blacks. He screen-tested to play James Bond in Diamonds are Forever and acted on the big screen with Orson Welles. He married into British high society. Drove a white Mustang across the US. Made a fortune importing meat into Saudi Arabia. But he also had fights, criminal convictions, and three failed marriages. And he looks back on it all with disdain.

HOME angler Roger Green reeled in top prize in the Trowbridge Seniors match at Farleigh Wood on Tuesday with 29 lb 12 oz of carp and skimmers.

The play’s the thing

The eleven brothers of Joseph often sat so that the letters on their shirts spelled out words, such as SIN.

As part of a busy summer, The Wife and I managed to see all three plays in Albany’s Washington Park, the latter with the Daughter and a couple of friends.

Late in July, we saw Cabaret. The reviewer in the local newspaper called it the best show Park Playhouse has ever done, and that’s over a span. I’ve gone to the vast majority of them, and I would tend to agree. What was frustrating, though, was this ongoing commentary from some guy who “seemed” to know what he was talking about who was picking apart. “The woman playing Sally Bowles is too old” was the only one I specifically remember. No, it’s not the Cabaret that I saw at the movies in 1972 with a young Liza Minelli and a fascinating Joel Grey, but it still delivered a wallop.

A couple of weeks later, we saw Hairspray, which, of course, was a 1988 movie that was turned into a Broadway musical that was turned into a movie musical. I’ve only seen the original 1988 movie, the John Waters flick with Divine, which I’ve recently borrowed from the library. The show was fine, but what was really lacking was a live band. The singers were obviously performing to a soundtrack. At least on one song, the track skipped like a defective CD. To her credit, the person placing Tracy’s mom, when the music as shut off, finished the song a capella. The sound was also mixed too low; I think Tracy’s dad, who was otherwise great, missed a sound cue, I suspect because he couldn’t hear it.

The following week, it was Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, performed by teenagers and a few tweens. I know this only from an LP that came out over 40 years ago. The actual musical has far more distinct songs, but, in the main, not better ones. The performances were uneven but fun; the five muses who essentially narrate the story had two girls who sang quite well, two that were uneven, and one not so good. Joseph and the Pharaoh as Elvis were quite good. The eleven brothers of Joseph often sat so that the letters on their shirts spelled out words, such as SIN, when they lied about Joseph’s “death” and GRIN, when they are all finally reunited.
***
From the movie Cabaret- Money.
The trailer for the original movie Hairspray.
The Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat movie, starring Donny Osmond.

From CBS Sunday Morning:
“Shakespeare in the Park” turns 50
“Star Trek” in the Park

Mavis Staples is 72

“I loved Bobby enough to marry him, but I just was not ready to get married.”

One of the great voices in music is Mavis Staples. First as the lead singer of the Staples Singers, with hits such as Respect Yourself and I’ll Take You There, and currently, with her blues/gospel fusion, she’s still performing.

This segment from CBS Sunday Morning in April 2011 noted that she STILL doesn’t know what keys she sings in, even after 60 years of performing. The story also revealed this:

Mavis Staples has a lot of stories to tell, but here’s one you probably didn’t see coming: Bob Dylan asked to marry her.
“That’s true. It’s true. I may as well tell it now,” she said.
Yes, love was apparently in the air for the teenage singers. They “courted” (as Mavis puts it) for 3 years or so. But finally, Mavis says, she called it off.
“I didn’t think I wanted to get married right then,” she said, “And then another thing, you know, I would wonder about what would Dr. King think about me marrying a white guy?
“And so I told Pops about that, and Pops said, ‘Mavis, didn’t you see all them white people marching with us?’ All white people weren’t bad back then. I loved Bobby enough to marry him, but I just was not ready to get married.”

Some songs by Mavis Staples:
99 and 1/2
Eyes on the Prize
You Are Not Alone, acoustic version with Jeff Tweedy

N is for Nostalgia

Strange, but I found even then that people have a greater recollection of things that I allegedly said and did than I do.

At some level, I’m not a very nostalgic guy. As Billy Joel put it in Keeping the Faith, and I quote, The good old days weren’t always good. It seems as though, in the US, there are dreams of the 1950s being the “good old days”, represented by TV shows such as Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best, with dad out working all day, with mom home raising the kids and wearing pearls when her husband came home for dinner. It was never MY experience.

The 1950s were a period of the cold war paranoia of “duck and cover”, and an unsettling racial climate; I’ve written before how the death of Emmett Till affected me deeply.

And it’s not just the 1950s. I went to my 10th high school reunion back in 1981 and I found it quite disturbing, so annoying, still fighting the same fights that should have been over a decade before. Or lots of conversations about “remember when so-and-so did such-and-such”; well, either the answer is yes, and so what, or no, and so what. It’s like the Springsteen song from Born in the USA, Glory Days:
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days.

Strange, but I found even then that people have a greater recollection of things that I allegedly said and did than I do.

Therefore I was quite interested in this story I saw on CBS Sunday Morning last year, Nostalgia: Power of the “Good Old Days”

But you might be surprised to learn that nostalgia – which is all about the past – has a notorious past of its own. For centuries it was considered a disease and a form of depression. Soldiers even feared it as homesickness and thought it could kill them.
I could almost believe that.

But it is not so, apparently. In fact:
Reliving good times can be a critical tool for surviving these bad times.

“If right now everything is terrible and bleak if you’re out of work and you can’t pay your mortgage and you’ve been evicted and you think, ‘there’s nowhere for me to turn,’ it is actually healthy to look to the past and to say, ‘What else have I survived before?'”
(l-r, Carol, Lois, Karen, Roger, Bill)

Now I DID agree to go to my 35th high school reunion a few years ago, but there was only one reason. There were a group of my oldest friends that were going to be there. When I say “oldest”, I mean that we all went to kindergarten together at Daniel Dickinson school in Binghamton, NY, and all graduated together from 12th grade at Binghamton Central High School. The thing about THESE friends is that we had known each other for SO long that we didn’t NEED to rehash old stuff, just needed to catch up on things.

We didn’t say, “Oh remember in second grade when we danced to the Minuet in G?” (I danced with Carol, Bill with Karen, Bernie with Lois.) Well, they do or they don’t and it doesn’t matter. “Do you remember going to Carol’s parents’ summer place in northern Pennsylvania?” Of course they do; no need to ask. There’s a certain shorthand you develop when you’ve known people a long time, even when you haven’t seen them in many years.

Still, I try to be a proponent of Carly Simon’s Anticipation, specifically the last line: “THESE are the good old days.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 7