love Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

July Rambling: Weird Al, and the moon walk

I REALLY want to see the movie Life Itself, about Roger Ebert.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – George Orwell. To that end, Bible Stories for Newly Formed and Young Corporations and Congratulations: It’s a corporation.

An answer to the child immigrant problem at the US-Mexican border? I note that the Biblical Jesus was a refugee, his parents fleeing Herod’s wrath. Yet so many people who profess to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ “are so uncaring and hateful about hungry children trying to get to a better, safer place to live.”

In the non-surprise category: Stand Your Ground Laws Lead To More Homicides, Don’t Deter Crime.

Misleading on Marriage: how gay marriage opponents twist history to suit their agenda.

Yiddish Professor Miriam Isaacs has dug in a previously unknown treasure of over a thousand unknowns Yiddish songs recorded of Holocaust survivors; the text is in Swedish but can be translated. Miriam was my old racquetball buddy decades ago.

The Creation Myth of 20th Century Fundamentalism by Jeff Sharlet, who I also knew long ago.

Australian swimming great Ian Thorpe came out as gay. Arthur explains why it STILL matters. Also: I Can Be Christian, and Gay, and Live in Alabama.

Portraits of people in 7 days’ worth of their own garbage.

These next several feel of a piece, about understanding life and each other:
Amy B says This is not a bucket list.
It’s Not as Simple as it Seems: Neal Hagberg at TEDx Gustavus Adolphus College.
Technology has taken much away much.
I Dare You To Watch This Entire Video.
*She Sent All Her Text Messages in Calligraphy for a Week.

Our church, First Presbyterian Albany, hosted a work camp in the city the week leading to the 4th of July. Homes were repaired/painted throughout the city; 400+ youth and adults, from several states, including Hawaii, plus folks from Ontario, Canada, were hosted at Myers Middle School; 75+ First Pres folks volunteered to make it all happen. We received some media coverage, including one of the radio stations, WFLY present on opening day. Here’s the web link to the Times Union article. Plus nice coverage from a local public radio station.

The Importance of Eating Together.

Sinful, Scandalous C.S. Lewis, Joy, and the Incarnation.

Interview with Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker biographer.

Jaquandor, via George RR Martin, on writing. While he writes just one word at a time, I write five or six, accidentally leaving one out.

Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With.

Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless.

Melanie plays with toys. So does Chuck Miller.

GayProf’s life continues at 40.

Is Dustbury, “prolific” as the inevitable consequence of a desire to maximize his output before the time comes when he cannot put out anything? And, I wondered, am I?

I realize that the 45th anniversary of the moon landing depressed me. Here’s part of the reason. Another part is that, despite disliking violence, I understand why Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel after being harassed by him suggesting that the July 1969 moonwalk was faked.

Cat Islands.

Louis Zamperini Was More Than A Hero.

Paul Mazursky wrote and directed Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), An Unmarried Woman (1978). But I saw (or heard) him in a number of TV shows and movies.

James Garner’s legacy: A commitment to civil rights and political activism.

Why I want to see the movie Life Itself, about Roger Ebert.

Check out this interview Rebecca Jade, my first niece, did recently through Voices of La Jolla. Click on the microphone/link on the upper right-hand corner to listen to the podcast.

Watching the new Weird Al Yankovic videos, especially Word Crimes. Weird Al is a marketing machine.

Did I mention that Paul McCartney came to Albany, NY? And Omaha, Nebraska? Who performed the mysterious ‘train song’ from the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’? The George Harrison Memorial Tree killed … by beetles.

Some of SamuraiFrog’s favorite Marvel stories; nice reveal in Fantastic Four #21. Also, for round 15 of ABC Wednesday – YOU can still join! – Mr. Frog will “highlight a different Muppet for each letter, hopefully, some of the lesser-known Muppets and milestones in Muppet history.” So far, A is for Arnold, who you WILL recognize; B is for Bobo the bear.

Superman and the Bible.

For the rest of the summer, absolutely everything new that’s published in the New Yorker will be unlocked. “Then, in the fall… an easier-to-use, logical, metered paywall.”

Renting Liechtenstein.

Could “The Big Bang Theory” get canceled? I’ve watched the show maybe thrice, but I find TV machinations interesting.

Mark Evanier wrote about The Battle of the Network Stars, some cheesy TV competition c. 1977. What struck me is that I knew every actor and the associated show from CBS, all but one from ABC, but had serious trouble with the NBC stars. Even I knew of the actor, say, Jane Seymour, I had no idea what show she was representing.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

Arthur responds to my TWO posts on Hobby Lobby.

Dustbury cites my Instant Runoff Voting post and my TMI post.

Mr. Frog tackles #1 Songs on My Birthday, which some of the rest of you regular bloggers – you know who you are – might consider.

(not me)
Alison Green, M.D. will join Green Family Practice Clinic on August 1st as the newest family practice doctor in Newport. “Alison joins the practice established by her father, Dr. Roger Green, continuing a rich family heritage of healthcare providers.”

(image from http://teachr.co/1oik2Qr )

Love, Actually

When I deigned to come up with Songs That Move Me a few years back, God Only Knows was #1.

Yeah, yeah, we should always tell people we love them, and we shouldn’t need to a day to do so. Blah, blah, blah. Just like Thanksgiving should be the only day we should give thanks. Except we DON’T always give thanks or show love. We get too busy or take each other for granted.

I have a very small family. My parents are deceased. My wife and each of my two sisters have but one daughter each. I feel as though it is necessary to tell them all, as well as my friends, how much I care for them.

I don’t know if I mentioned how much I like the website Pantheon Songs, which is attempting to create “a fictional Pantheon in which only the best songs will be included.” And only one song per band! Sometimes I agree, sometimes not.

His choice for the Beach Boys was spot on: God Only Knows. When I deigned to come up with Songs That Move Me a few years back, God Only Knows was #1. Of course, it’s my favorite Beach Boys song.

Those of you who have seen the movie Love Actually – here’s the trailer – will recall that God Only Knows plays at a pivotal late scene. The quality of this video is not great, but I still find it quite moving, still.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Parade magazine had a list of Americans’ All-Time Favorite Love Songs:
1. “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston
2. “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers
3. “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge
4. “You Are So Beautiful” by Joe Cocker
5. “How Deep Is Your Love” by The Bee Gees
6. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith
7. “Crazy” by Patsy Cline
8. “I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner
9. “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams
10. “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye
For the most part, meh.

Some local column asked about the Valentine’s Day proposal – romantic or cliche? I voted “nay – diminishes every subsequent v-day and if it doesn’t work out, sucks the joy out of the day altogether.” What dost thou think?
***
Bought Valentine’s Day cards a couple of days ago for my daughter’s class. It’s been a while since I shopped for these, but I was surprised that SO many of the items were licensed products, representing, e.g., the Disney princesses, Pixar’s Cars, and the animated Madagascar movies; disappointing.

Is God that much of an S.O.B.?

On the bus the other day, I wrote a poem in my head. It’s a tad vulgar, but so is the behavior of certain religious leaders.

For at least the last dozen years, there have been a handful of religious “leaders” who, after some tragic and horrific event, will proclaim that it happened for some reason related to that place somehow offended God. We heard it after 9/11, and Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, among others, and now after the murders of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee blamed the school shooting on failure to have compulsory prayer at school; damned that inconvenient separation of church and state! Others have blamed disasters on the acceptance of abortion and gay marriage. A Tennessee pastor specifically said the mass shootings take place because schools teach evolution and “how to be a homo;” I shan’t link to it.

For sake of the argument, let’s assume that God is the spiteful, vindictive entity that some religious leaders say God is. Still, how do they KNOW it’s THESE particular activities that’s ticking off the Deity? How do they have such an accurate Pipeline to the sky?

Might not God be annoyed by our lack of compassion for those who are impoverished? Or our greed that allows people to work at sweatshops so that we can have our modern conveniences? Jesus talked a LOT about the poor, not so much about people’s sex lives. As Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw write in Jesus for President: “If we applied Sabbath law today, the bank owner would be as much of a criminal as the bank robber. And a lot of credit card companies…would be in really big trouble.”

Maybe THEIR God cares more about who is loving who; MY God cares more that we love one another. Their God is a bit of a jerk; my God is a God of love.

On the bus the other day, I spontaneously wrote a poem in my head. It’s a tad vulgar, but so is the behavior it addresses:

When there is a disaster
And you are a pastor,
There is one of two things you can do.
You should show great compassion.
But, if that’s not your fashion,
I’m pleading, please STFU.

The high school girlfriend is 60

Are you still in contact with your first great love?

Ah, my first great love, and all that entails. I really liked her dad, her mom not quite so much. She probably felt the same way.

We had our ups and downs over the years, most of which is not going to make it here. Maybe in some roman à clef that I will compose only in my head. I will say that she had thrown some of the greatest parties ever.

In any case, we’re good now. She’s happily married, I’m happily married. We went to her wedding; she was at least invited to ours. It’s all copacetic. My family even saw her family a few months ago.

Are you still in contact with your first great love?
***
Arthur wrote this interesting bit about privacy, and while I’m not sure I would take it to the level he does, the privacy of other people does tend to factor into whatever I write. And it’s not just privacy, precisely; it’s based on comfort level or my perception of other people’s comfort level. I have discovered that there are facts about my life with other people that are well known by a certain coterie of folks, but perhaps not by the general public. I tend to err towards saying less, which can seem somewhat cryptic, I suppose. There are plenty of things I would say on this blog that I won’t because someone else might possibly, remotely, be affected.

This reminds me of the thing I think is the funniest request I have been given. I wrote about a family member. Actually, I was quoting directly a family member. Well, a direct relative of that person asked me to redact what I wrote, because that relative was up for a Very Important Position. Oddly, the original source of the quote was/is still on the Internet somewhere, but mine popped up on the search engine. So, I did.

Conversely, I’ve taken a lot more open position about those who are deceased. So, if I know your deep dark secrets, and you pass away…

Of Anger, Polyester and other things

There was a movie in the 1980s by John Waters called Polyester which a bunch of us went to.

This is a combination of two Sunday Stealing posts from here and here, but I decided to answer only the questions I felt like answering. Besides, I don’t HAVE a favorite mall store.

1. What has been your longest love relationship?

Actually, my current one. We started going out -again – in late 1998. And I’m not even counting the 1.5 years we went out earlier in the 1990s.

4. If you could live anywhere would you live?

I seem to be fine where I am. I fantasize that Madison, WI or Portland, OR might be a mecca for me, and I did like Madison the one time I was there in 1987 or 1988, but I’m unmotivated to change at this time.

7. What’s the longest job that you’ve had?

That would be the current one, where I started October 19, 1992, three work addresses ago. The second-longest was FantaCo (8.5 years). The third place was 13 months.

8. If you won the lottery, who’d you call first?

My wife.

9. If you won, how would you spend your money after investments?

An ever-expanding list of social and cultural programs. Surely the Red Cross would be one.

10. When was the last time you went to church (or a religious house)?

That would be yesterday.

14. What food do you hate?

Canned beets.

16. What’s the longest shift that you worked at a job?

11.2 hours in a factory job after high school, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. But I regularly worked 10 hours, 5:12 p.m-4 a.m., then worked Saturday from noon to 6 p.m.

17. What was the last concert that you attended?

This one. Well, unless you mean classical concert, which was in the spring of 2011.

21. Do you ever sleep in the nude?

Seldom. I want to be able to leave quickly in case of a fire or whatever.

22. Have you ever had a long-distance relationship?

Yes, and it was not good.

24. What’s you’re favorite lyric quote from a song?

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” Which I don’t do nearly enough.

25. Tell us something random about yourself.

I used to have some anger issues, I suppose. Occasionally, it still flares up. It was after church a few weeks ago, and a few of us were in the kitchen. I noted that one of the songs we had sung that morning had a different arrangement from I had sung it previously several times, specifically, a harmony line in the original that was unison in the newer version; inferior, from my point of view, BTW. Apparently, someone else in the choir had made the same observation. So another singer declared that our observation was “stupid,” that we read music and should sing what was there, rather than assuming what was on the page.

I yelled at her that I didn’t appreciate her crap, I didn’t need her crap (and I didn’t; my tooth was still hurting at the time.) I realized later that I got so enraged because I dislike the fact that she, who has also been a school teacher, didn’t understand the fact that we all learn differently.

When I was in the high school choir, we couldn’t even use the score for our twice-yearly concerts. I’ve long tried to get out of the music, keeping in front of me mostly for lyrics and pauses.

And, though I’ve been in choirs for decades, I only read music in relative terms. If note A is this, then a third up must sound like that; I don’t think, “Oh, that’s a C.”

But I suppose the yelling was unnecessary. Though I disliked being called “stupid.”

26. Have ever attended a theme party? If yes, do tell.

There was a movie in the 1980s by John Waters called Polyester which a bunch of us went to. Afterward, we all went to someone’s house, and we had to bring polyester (unreal) food, however we defined it. Marshmallow Fluff, Cheez Whiz, TANG beverage…I don’t remember what else.

27. What is your favorite thing about winter?

Its demise.

28. What was the name of your first pet?

Peter. He was a cat we had for about six years.

30. Has your humor ever been called “sick”?

No. Corny. Obtuse. Situational. Unfunny. But not sick.