Ken Screven Archives - Page 3 of 4

The Ghetto Chopper T-shirt thing

Was the altered Price Chopper logo protected speech, as a trademark parody?

There’s a grocery chain headquartered in Schenectady, NY, near Albany, called Price Chopper, which serves upstate New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. It was founded in 1932 as Central Market, and will soon be segueing to a new name, Market 32, which I think is boring as heck.

At least one of the Price Chopper stores, the one on Delaware Avenue in Albany, has been dubbed the Ghetto Chopper for years.

While it serves parts of a black neighborhood, it also sells food to the more Greenwich Villagey Center Square section of town. Regardless, the term always irritated me; it bugged a lot of people, but others embraced it.

When a couple of artists, Dana Owens and Chip Fascian, designed a T-shirt emblazoned with the term “Ghetto Chopper”, with an image of a handgun – perhaps as a Photoshop spoof – it created a firestorm of controversy. Writer Amy Biancolli expressed her discomfort, for instance.

The strongest critic, though, was Ken Screven, retired reporter after over thirty years at WRGB-TV, Channel 6, who is now a Times Union blogger. He wrote of the shame of the Ghetto Chopper project and applauded when the Golub Corporation, owners of Price Chopper, filed a cease and desist order against the T-shirt maker. The comment sections on both these posts are lengthy and volatile, addressing issues of what art is, free speech, and hipster racism, among other things.

The arts and newsweekly Metroland wrote a summary of the events, some of which I thought was way off base.

What was most interesting to me in the debate, though, was whether the altered logo was protected speech, as a trademark parody. Intellectual property lawyer/rock drummer Paul Rapp notes:

Trademark infringement occurs only when there is a likelihood of confusion as to the source of a product. No confusion, no infringement. Did any of you think for a second that the Ghetto Chopper t-shirt was produced by Price Chopper? No? Well, OK then.

He goes on with more details, but his bottom line is that he thinks the shirt, had it been made, would have been legal. And I totally agree. If the T-shirt makers had had the resources to take on The Golub Corporation, they might well have won. I feel conflicted between what I find is the cringeworthy nature of the Ghetto Chopper moniker and my librarian leanings towards the open expression of ideas.

October Rambling: Enough with Dystopia; the Conservative-to-English Lexicon

My favorite website these days is The Weekly Sift. Sam Harris and the Orientalization of Islam and 7 Liberal Lessons of Ebola.

Sexual Assault in the Bakken Shale “Man Camps”.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture. “Oliver references a September report from The Washington Post, which states that, since 9/11, police have seized $2.5 billion in 61,998 cash seizures from people ‘who were not charged with a crime.’ ‘Under civil forfeiture laws, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.'” Read more. And here’s another example

Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’.

The Forgotten Coup – How the US and Britain Crushed the Government of Their “Ally” Australia.

A Conservativeve-to-English Lexicon, 2nd edition.

Author Wants Southern States To Secede Over Gay Rights, Name New Country ‘Reagan’.

Whites riot over pumpkins in NH and Twitter turns it into epic lesson about Ferguson.

The Problem With That Catcalling Video.

A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned.

Condolences to my buddy Steve Bissette, whose dad passed peacefully on October 28.

The late Marcia Strassman was NOT happy on Welcome Back, Kotter.

Unfortunately, the cancer has returned for Eddie Mitchell, the Renaissance Geek. Send him a good thought.

How (Not) to Talk About Vaccines.

Atheist At A Funeral: A Contemplation In Four Hymns.

Want to see the Dole/Kemp 1996 campaign Web site? Dustbury notes that you still can see it and a lot more at the 4president.org site.

In an excerpt of The Republicans: A History of the Grand Old Party by American history professor Lewis L. Gould, he recounts the mid-’90s Republicans’ desperation to preserve their image — and how that desperation led them to impeach President Bill Clinton.

Chorus Nylander – Rebecca Jade Interview. Also, Brianna Cara, Angie Sagastume and Rebecca Jade sing the national anthem. Plus Help Rebecca Jade make a new album!

Cover versions you may not have known were covers.

Quincy Jones on Sinatra, Mentorship and His New Clark Terry Documentary.

2014 may be the first year ever with ZERO platinum-certified albums since they started the designation. But never underestimate Taylor Swift.

The Technical Constraints That Made Abbey Road So Good.

Chuck Miller: They’re tearing down 309 South Broad Street in Philadelphia.

Jeff Sharlet: The Writer Who’s Using Longform to Take Instagram to the Next Level. BTW, he recently sent me a pic of his late mom, his sister, himself and myself from c. 1979.

Ken Screven on being the only black kid in the class. I can relate; that was me for most of K-9.

Enough With Dystopias: It’s Time For Sci-Fi Writers To Start Imagining Better Futures. To that end, both SamuraiFrog and Jason Bennion recommend the new book by Jaquandor called ~~Princesses in Space!~~ Stardancer. Read all about it at his new site, ForgottenStars.net. Especially you, Uthaclena.

Speaking of Jaquandor, he reviews a book about minor league baseball that makes me want to read the tome. Or better still, go to a game. Cartoon: Why Baseball Is Better. Short audio: Take Me Out to the Ball Game – The Skeletons. Commercial: Throwing like a girl.

These Are the Grammar Rules You Don’t Need to Follow. Also, 10 Grammar Mistakes People Love To Correct (That Aren’t Actually Wrong). OK, but I just can’t say “data is…”

TV Legend Norman Lear: ‘Even This I Get To Experience’. He was the creative force behind All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons and many more programs.

The Nine Lives of ‘Saturday Night Live’.

Film Reviews by Cotton Mather.

Dull Men’s Club.

Playtex Living Spacesuits. Don’t think the movie has come out yet.

My computer screen went sideways this month, for some reason. I found how I turn it back: Try pressing Ctrl + Alt + UP Arrow Key, or try Ctrl + Alt + and a different Arrow Key.

SamuraiFrog’s alphabetical Muppet gallery includes Lenny the Lizard and Mr. Johnson (one of my FAVES) and Nutty Bird and Ohreally and the wonderful Prairie Dawn; the school plays on the latter are great. Plus Bill Cosby and the Muppets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLeUvZvuvAs&feature=share
Sesame Street: Janelle Monae- Power of Yet

John Cale & Brian Eno / Spinning Away

A mildly interesting story about Mark Evanier, Henry Kloss and home electronics. But this coda is even better.

The Strange History of Corn Flakes, which, being a cereal aficionado, I actually knew.

Every time you make a typo, the errorists win.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

Arthur writes about that Raven no racial/sexuality labels thing. (BTW, Cosmo responds to Raven.) He also muses about mayonnaise.

Dustbury notes the Tchotchke Index.

Jaquandor cites me watching MASH reruns.I also made his sentential links HERE.

Both Jaquandor and Dustbury are sad about the apparent cancellation of the Fantastic Four comic book.

What is patriotism?

Hyperpartisanship, which is rampant in America, often paints people like me as unpatriotic; this, perhaps unsurprisingly, really ticks me off.

Right before Independence Day, PARADE magazine ran this poll of the “most patriotic cities” in the United States, which was actually based on Amazon.com’s “comparison of America-themed flag sales between Jan. 1. and June 24 on a per capita basis among cities with more than 400,000 residents.” I don’t find literal flag-waving to necessarily equate with patriotism.

Indeed, I was taken by this piece by Daniel Nester in the Albany Times Union, A flag stirs feelings of uncertainty, which is also about human relationships.

Flag-waving, depending on whom you talk to, is either something one overthinks or doesn’t think about at all…

I’ve never owned any flag, unless Phillies pennants or rainbow Gay Pride banners count.I’m not what you would call a flag-waver. Now that I had one, I felt more puzzled than partisan. What if I spilled something on it? Burnt it in the fireplace by accident?

This debate turned into an allegory for my relationship with my country. Right wingers like my father revere flags and distrust government; lefties like me find flag-waving an empty gesture and place more importance on public trusts. I was of the same mind as Samuel Johnson, who wrote that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

I’m rather of the same mind as Nester, who I have met in real life, though, in fact, I do have some little US flags in our house, almost all of them secured by The Daughter

Rex Smith, the editor of that same publication, what my friend Dan Van Riper calls the local Hearst rag, wrote on July 4:

Real patriotism demands accommodation of our vast differences. American democracy is fueled by disagreement: Losers and winners are equally entitled to express and hold their conflicting beliefs. You’ve got to love a country that really delivers on that promise.

So it’s hard not to view the rise of hyperpartisanship as an unpatriotic development. It’s not enough nowadays to argue passionately over issues. Now the path to victory usually includes character assassination and vows not to have anything to do with the other side. Instead of viewing issues pragmatically, and resolving conflicts with a solution that works best for the most people, politicians and thought leaders now pitch arguments as moral conflicts and demand dogmatic allegiance.

Hyperpartisanship, which I noted a few days ago is rampant in America, often paints people like me as unpatriotic; this, perhaps unsurprisingly, really ticks me off. I mean What IS American culture? I may spend the rest of my life figuring that out.

I’d probably be categorized as a liberal – though I wouldn’t necessarily write that in my Times Union blog, like Ken Screven did – I find it useful to read other points of view. That doesn’t mean that I need to read/listen to Rush Limbaugh, because I’ve deemed him an unreliable reporter, let’s say. Still, I find no need to sign online petitions to have his show canceled.

Wish I had written this: glorifying war is a sin.

I see myself as a patriot. I vote, ALWAYS. I do really well on those online citizenship tests, such as this one (50/50, thank you very much) and this one and even this one, as an old political science major should.

Blind allegiance, though, is not my thing. Which reminds me, I know the fourth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, from memory, and more songs deemed patriotic than most – did you know Hail, Columbia [LISTEN] was essentially the national anthem before 1931? – a function of learning them in fourth and fifth grade.

Speaking of music, here’s Only in America, performed by Jay & the Americans from 1963, which was controversial in its creation. It was banned by some stations for the shocking suggestion that Only in America can a kid without a cent get a break and maybe grow up to be President, though it was embraced by the nascent Cuban refugee community.
***
“Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.” – William E. Simon (63rd U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Philanthropist)

A is for Albany, again

Ken Screven remembers Michael the Archangel

This is less an essay, and more a series of links to bits about Albany, New York’s past and present.

I just realized, though, that I’ve now lived in Albany, capital of the Empire State, for 35 years now. At least thirteen addresses, staying at the current one for the past 14 years.

The area’s airport has a great set of letters, ALB. Do you know how newspeople identify a state or country by its capital? “Moscow is thinking… Washington reacts…” People say that about our historically inept – though a little more ept in recent years – state government. “What’s wrong with Albany?” They MEAN the state; guess that’s the curse of living in the capital city.

Not that Albany itself doesn’t have its quirks. The current mayor is Kathy Sheehan, the city’s first woman mayor in its over 325-year history. The guy before her served 20 years; two guys before him, 41.
***
Here’s a 17-minute video about the creation of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a controversial project which meant dozens of houses and other buildings being razed. Then-governor Nelson Rockefeller, as the joke goes, developed an edifice complex.

This story puts the locally-familiar anecdote about the ESP in a somewhat different light:

It concerns a diplomatic visit to Albany from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, during Rockefeller’s first year in office, and the new Governor’s embarrassment and chagrin when she rode in his limo through the “Pastures”, and witnessed the seediness of the neighborhood around the Mansion– this was the moment, it is alleged, that Rockefeller resolved to build something monumental, fitting the grandeur of his administration, so that foreign dignitaries could pay calls without having to see the slime and grime of a typical Northeastern city. The story may contain a grain of truth–and the visit was certainly real–but it also seems clear that Rockefeller even before his swearing-in, had begun… to think about fixing up the deteriorating neighborhood where he’d be spending the next few years

Andy Arthur ponders what would have happened to downtown If Not For the Empire Plaza.
***
Former news reporter Ken Screven remembers Michael the Archangel, a legendary Albany street person of about four decades until he died in 2002. Someone made an eight-minute film about him.

I’d see Michael, dubbed the Archangel by a local judge, on Lark Street often, especially in Trinity United Methodist Church in the 1990s. My girlfriend at the time (now The Wife) was a tad afraid of him, and understandably so, but I usually got along with him. When I saw him with a legitimate job at the flower shop in the aforementioned Empire State Plaza, I was floored. But the gig, to no one’s surprise, didn’t last long.

There will likely be a casino in the area – for me personally, a big yuck – but Albany’s Exit 23 is now out of the running. Dan thinks that’s a good thing.

Crossing the street in Albany is difficult. Fundamentally true.

Albany, in an alternate future. A comprehensive plan for redeveloping the city of Albany — as proposed in 1963. As Albany Archives commented: “A convention center on Elk St, housing at Jennings Landing, ‘The Washington Park Arterial’… it’s so scary! Here’s the takeaway quote: ‘By 1980, the central area of Albany, like cities all over the United States, will be almost completely rebuilt.'”

Amy Biancolli feels a lullaby.
***
When Sir Mix-a-Lot rapped “Baby Got Back” with the Seattle Symphony, David Alan Miller, conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, was in the house.

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

Well, maybe not ALL people, but…

How is it that rape and sexual assault is so common on college campuses and in the nation’s military?

Ken Screven was, according to the Times Union newspaper’s Chris Churchill, “the most recognizable black person here in one of the nation’s whitest metropolitan areas,” i.e., Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY, for most of his 34 years as a now-retired television reporter. Having lived here for most of this period, I daresay Churchill was right. Screven even covered a couple of stories I was involved with, notably the January 1985 Rock for Raoul benefit, honoring the late Albany cartoonist/FantaCo employee/my friend Raoul Vezina.

I had this, literally, a nodding acquaintance with Screven when I’d see him in Albany’s Center Square, sort of the curse someone who has met a LOT of people (Ken) go through. We’ve more recently become Facebook friends, sometime after he became a blogger for the Times Union website, as I am.

Churchill reported: “Cellphone footage of the [Arbor Hill street brawl among black teens]… has circulated widely by now. Screven saw it shortly after it happened — on Facebook — and decided it would be provocative material for [his] blog… So he posted it, along with his reaction.”

Part of the narrative was that Screven found “the fight troubling — and, as an African-American, embarrassing.” And I totally GOT that, because I tend to feel that way. My late father most assuredly did.

Churchill noted that he doesn’t feel embarrassed by the stupid things white people do – such as the Kegs and Eggs riot of 2011 in Albany – and I’m sure that is true. Screven noted, “It just takes one black person to do one bad thing and the whole culture is demonized… The white culture is going to say, ‘There they go again.'”

Churchill is technically correct when he suggests that “not the entire white culture” reacts that way. It happens often enough, though, that this cartoon by Keith Knight feels very true, particularly the comparison between a misguided youth and a thug.

I remember reading a black columnist back in December 1993 – William Raspberry, perhaps? – talking about how much he, and black people he knew, hoped that the Long Island Railroad massacre shooter was not black. Of course, he was.

In an interesting variation, I’m now seeing this narrative, after the recent shootings near Santa Barbara, California, about some men feeling a sense of entitlement when it comes to access to women’s bodies. #NotAllMen, the Twitter hashtag reads; some guys are decent, sensitive souls who fight sexism with every fiber of their being, and surely that is true. We should not castigate an entire gender, because isn’t that prejudiced?

Yet #YesAllWomen resonates as true. I know a strong, independent, accomplished, married woman who has recently noted: “an innate instinct of self-protection around, yes, most men learned very early.” Women give out wrong phone numbers, tell guys they have a boyfriend (this piece notwithstanding), avoid eye contact with men lest they think you’re “interested.” You don’t even have to be in conversation with a guy; the drive-by schmucks are alive and well.

How is it that rape and sexual assault are so common on college campuses and in the nation’s military? Why are women demanding the same access to contraceptives as men do to Viagra met with slut-shaming? How is it that “gun extremists” target women with spitting, stalking, and threats of rape?

What has prompted someone to initiate a petition to stop sexual harassment at the San Diego Comic-Con and to create a formal anti-harassment policy, a document I signed, BTW? Maybe it’s Yes, All Men? Or as Louis CK put it, “There is no greater threat to women than men.”

No, most men are not rapists, or deadbeat dads, or mass murders. But almost all mass murders are men, and, in the United States, white men at that. Maybe that’s a good thing, because, perhaps, the situation will spark enough concern and outrage to aid in dealing with mental health issues, and controlling the sale of guns to people who are deranged. Nah, I’m just messing with you; we’ll have the same damn conversation after the next massacre.