Mark Evanier Archives - Page 7 of 30

August rambling: look to the Founders

148 Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle, NY

Underdog villain Simon Bar Sinister, and a former NYC mayor

When Even the IEA Sounds an Alarm on Climate, the World Must Listen. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans, and land,” – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Burnt parts of Pacific forests are landing on the Atlantic.

Lying about vaccination status. Some people are going to intense lengths to get unauthorized COVID booster shots and When it comes to COVID vaccines, look to the Founders for answers

The Once and Future Coup

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Housing Discrimination and Emergency Medical Services

After The Fall. Ben Rhodes raises a hard question: How did America get from the pinnacle of our Cold War victory to this sorry place?

Persepolis “Banned” in Commack, NY

Nearly 14M Individual Tax Returns Still Need Processing

The lie of “expired” food and the disastrous truth of America’s food waste problem

Re: Simone Biles: Olympians Are People First and Sports Culture’s Toxic Masculinity and ask yourself the questions on this decision tree

Gender inequality in esports

The Cleveland Indians/Guardians a teachable moment?

Are journalism programs properly training students to navigate harassment?

How Rudy Guiliani Went From 9/11’s Hallowed Mayor to 2021’s Haunted Ghoul

Sure, we got a billion bucks lyin’ around someplace (new Buffalo Bills stadium on the public dole?)

The worst money we’ve ever spent

7 Questions About America (from My Danish Husband) I Just Can’t Answer

Explaining the Different Post-Colonial Trajectories of Ireland and Haiti

Childhood of Some (In)Famous Americans

The culture

There’s a reason for the “k” in “knife”

The floorplan of 148 Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle, NY — home of Rob and Laura Petrie and their son Ritchie.

Mark Evanier: Flying the 747 (1970)

Dream of the Green Turtle, in mid-1944, arguably the first East Asian superhero

Poetry on Vinyl: An Interview with Jeff Alessandrelli of Fonograf Editions

The Oatmeal: Why it breaks your brain to take a compliment and You should love yourself and Leaving your pets at home

Colour trends of the year

Now I Know: The Village That Went Dark and Was Proud of It and The Staircase With the Traffic Light and Happy Belated Birthday, Australian Horses! and The Hidden Danger in the Walls of Your Old House and Why Congress Gets Free Men’s Magazines and Where’d the R in Mrs. Come From? and The Bugs That Make Danger Glow and There was once a Mickey Mouse gas mask. Here’s why and The Great Cookie– er, Biscuit– er, Cake Debate of 1991

FFAPL

2021 Literary Legends Tickets on sale NOW. The program is on Saturday, October 16, 2021, at the Pine Hills branch of the APL. Support the Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library and join us as we celebrate this year’s honorees, Lydia Davis and Eugene Mirabelli. General tickets

The Friends and Foundation were very sad to learn that former Friends president Paul Hacker passed away in July. This follows the news about David Colchamiro, who passed away in June.

MUSIC

Sharp Little Pencil: Loving You Today

Find My Way – Paul McCartney and Beck

Drive My Car – MonaLisa Twins

Mr. Popeil – “Weird Al” Yankovic. (RIP, Ron Popeil.)

Overture to La Cenerentola by Giachino Rossini

Rough Boy – ZZ Top

Coverville 1366: The Depeche Mode Cover Story III and 1367: Tribute to ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill, and Cover Stories for Tony Bennett and Martha and The Vandellas and 1368: Track by Track Album Cover – Who’s Next

Footsteps in the Snow by Claude Debussy – Des pas sur la neige (Préludes – Book I)

A Musical

Love and Mercy – Libera

Contrafactum – noun: A composition that makes use of an existing piece of music with different lyrics

Stories Behind 12 of Aretha Franklin’s Greatest Hits

10 Beatles Hits That ‘Rip Off’ Other Songs

Inside the Making of Prince’s Posthumous Album, Welcome 2 America

July rambling: “Tell Us How We Did”

time to use the F-word

Misinformation — Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The U.S. could lose its top-level bond rating because of the Big Lie

Yes, this is fascism: The Atlantic’s conservative David Frum says it’s time to use the F-word; a dark warning

Military Chiefs Planned Joint Resignation To Thwart Trump’s ‘Gospel Of The Fuhrer’

Deadly Flooding Turns ‘Small’ German River Into a ‘Raging Monster’. Video by Roger Green (not me)

NBC News: Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That’s not an accident

Flight attendant harasses Muslim woman

DACA: One More Example of Broken Democracy

I lived in an airport for seven months

According to the EPA, clothes, and shoes account for more municipal solid waste than .plastic items

Now I Know: Literally Nuts for Candy and The Problem with Lots of People Drinking Lots of Tea and The Pink Hat of Fidelity and The Biggest of Macs and When It’s Better to Be in Fourth Place and The Problem With Stealing High-End Electronics and The Bugs That Make Danger Glow

Media

Inside Big Tech’s angry, geeky, often petty war for your privacy

Hank Green: Should You Abandon Social Media?

I’m Breaking Up with ZOOM

“Tell Us How We Did”. Irrefutably TRUE

An Exploration of James Baldwin’s Life and Works Through the Powerful Lens of His House Chez Baldwin in St. Paul de Vence, France

Voice actors

Emmy’s Big Problem

Ken Levine interviews author Mark Harris who wrote the book MIKE NICHOLS: A LIFE here and here.

The Marvel Sacred Timeline

At The Washington Post, Harry Rosenfeld found himself handling the most important political scandal of the 20th century – Watergate – before joining the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. “HIRSCH MORITZ ROSENFELD and his Polish immigrant parents fled the violence engulfing Nazi Germany in 1939, and found refuge in the Bronx. He never forgot the price his family paid for freedom, never took American citizenship for granted. He developed a keen eye for unaccountable power and nascent oppression and embraced his responsibility to fight for the freedoms that made America a beacon of hope.” The last time I saw him in person was in 2017.

Jackie Mason, R.I.P.

Summary: No Exit – Jean-Paul Sartre

Central Warehouse

Cartoons: Human time and 10 ways to befriend a misanthropic cat and explaining confusing things

MUSIC

Harlem – Duke Ellington. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

Run Run Run – Kurt Vile, from the album I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground and Nico; long version

Mighty River by Errollyn Wallen.

Dragon live album concert during two weeks in an Auckland hotel for quarantine clearance

Coverville 1365: The AC/DC Cover Story III

Just A Friend– Biz Markie, RIP

The Glamourous Life – Audra McDonald from A Little Night Music

Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue – Postmodern Jukebox

He’d Have to Get Under, Get out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile) – The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra

A medley of ten Hanna-Barbera theme songs performed by Alex Duquette in two minutes

Jim Croce

The Music of the Night/Monster Mash – Big Daddy

I remember watching television

In the spring of 1962, I had only two TV choices

Mark Evanier posted the openings to the 42 different television shows that comprised the spring 1962 prime-time TV schedule for CBS. Of the shows, listed at 23:45 of the video, the only shows I never heard of were Ichabod and Me, Window on Main Street, Oh! Those Bells, Frontier Circus, and Father of the Bride.

I’m not sure I ever watched Hennessey, Checkmate, or all of the anthology dramas. But I surely viewed the others, especially the Saturday night lineup of Perry Mason, The Defenders, Have Gun Will Travel, and Gunsmoke.

He also posted the lineups for NBC for Fall 1962 and ABC for Fall 1961 (both at 24:50). I recognize many, though not most of the NBC shows. Maybe it was that WNBF, the CBS affiliate was on VHF, Channel 12, while WINR was on the UHF range, Channel 40.

But I recognized a LOT of ABC shows, even though Binghamton didn’t have an ABC affiliate until November 1962, when WBJA, Channel 34 came on line. That’s likely because WNBF carried a lot of ABC shows.

Unsurprising, I ran the category Old TV Theme Songs on a recent JEOPARDY!

Meanwhile, Ken Levine, who has written for prime time network television, recently noted that some recent network shows, one that had been on for four seasons, had been canceled and he had never heard of them. I’m very much in the same boat.

It’s a different time. Netflix and a bunch of platforms followed by a plus sign, from Disney to Paramount. And even shows that others recommend to me I can’t find the time/inclination to watch. As a result, I’ve seen NONE of the programs nominated for this year’s Emmys that weren’t on broadcast TV.

Just a few

So what I DO watch is heavily influenced by what my daughter views. She got into Station 19, which is a spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy. These stories are so intertwined that if you were to see one without the other, it might not make as much sense.

It reminds me of when I was collecting comic books, and you didn’t understand what was going on in the Fantastic Four or the Amazing Spider-Man if you didn’t also check out a particular issue of X-Men or The Avengers.

The other thing odd about the 19/Grey’s series is that the storylines were almost a year behind “real-time” this past season. So the narratives in the spring of 2021 took place in the height of COVID and demonstrations right after the murder of George Floyd. Then in the last episode of Grey’s, but not 19, the story fast-forwarded almost a year.

I have a friend who writes, every time I mention television, that I should not watch it. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. It’s bad for your sleep, your health, your brain, your self-esteem, maybe your eyes.

I take my blood pressure daily in the morning, before breakfast. If my wife’s had the TV on, even if it’s off the ten minutes before the reading, my BP is about 15 points higher systolic and about 10 points higher diastolic.

I’m sure watching far less, and the pandemic did not increase my consumption by one iota.

July rambling: Sp Bad at Typign

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

no_the_other_one — NO, the OTHER one From https://xkcd.com/2480/

Inside Exxon’s playbook: How America’s biggest oil company continues to oppose action on climate change and climate change is here and This is
Why We Should Stop Calling it Climate Change

#Film4Climate 1st Prize Short Film Winner – Three Seconds

A New American Manifesto

Erik Prince, the failson face of privatized war

“Good Guy with a Gun” killed by the cops he was trying to save

Lincoln was the best. Buchanan was the worst. What about the others?
C-SPAN rounds up historians to rank the Presidents. Trump is 41st

How Woodrow Wilson betrayed China and helped give rise to the Chinese Communist Party

Oops: The Trump Organization Kept Literal Spreadsheets of Its Crimes

Inside William Barr’s Breakup With Trump

“I’d rather die living”

COVID Data Tracker

Boston Globe: The United States has yet to fully abolish slavery

The IRS is holding millions of tax returns, delaying refunds, including, it appears, ours

Over 42,000 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents in 2020, up 8% from 2019.

Upstate New York faces a plague of caterpillars

Words and things

From Wordsmith: The shorter the word, the more meanings it has. The Oxford English Dictionary lists more than 500 senses of the 3-letter word set. The 45-letter long pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, on the other hand, has one meaning and will forever have that one meaning.

Zaila Avant-garde breezes to National Spelling Bee win

A horse race

Mapping global happiness levels.

I just found out the guy who invented auto-correct died. His funnel is tomato…

The Internet Is Rotting. Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.

Geography: Seasons of a Finger Lakes Winery

‘They said I don’t exist. But I am here’ – one woman’s battle to prove she
isn’t dead

Richard Donner, 1930-2021

This Year’s Bill Finger Awards for comic book writing, posthumous

Midnight on Olin chair — Midnight, sitting in the antique Olin chair almost as soon as it entered the premises

Pine Hills Review: F*ck 2020

Why Am I Sp Bad At Typign?

‘Give Black people credit’: Black TikTok stars strike, demand credit for their work

2021 fireworks

Now I Know: The Balloon Shields and The Problem With Jam and The Secret of the Swiss Cheese and Getting the Horse’s Goat and Pigging Out on Video Games and The Pink Gun Surprise

This Wedding RSVP Card Is Going Viral

My Life as a Meme: ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ Revisited

A tortoise eating a strawberry

MUSIC

Kaintuck by William Grant Still

Min Kwon: America/Beautiful

Central Park in the Dark by Charles Ives

Coverville 1362: The Killers Cover Story and
1363: Summer Covers and 1364: Mini-Album Covers for Escape, Heavy Metal and 4

VOCES8

Home from The Wiz, vocalist is Landi Oshinowo

Beautiful Girl Montage from Singin’ in the Rain.

The Most COMPLEX Pop Song of All Time

April rambling: agathokakological

Don’t laminate your vaccine card.

Tax day moved to May 17. Procrastinators, rejoice!

All That We’ve Lost.

Here are a couple of articles from Slate and Afar about vaccination cards – don’t laminate them because you may need to record a booster shot. But if you already did, don’t sweat it. And the vaccine passport in the United States is a definite maybe kind of thing.

COVID vaccine in New Zealand.

Calling Chauvin a “Bad Apple” Denies Systemic Nature of Racist Police Violence.

Cartoon: God-Man trumpets his response to mass shootings!

‘Is This Patriot Enough?’: Asian American Official Shows Military Scars, Condemns Racist Violence.

Matt Gaetz, Now Under DOJ Investigation, Was Lone Vote Against Human Trafficking Bill in 2017

Doctor Fentanyl.

Tucker Carlson and national debt: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The Science of Loneliness.

Exhausted Workers Want More Flexibility.

French police are investigating an international Lego crime ring.

Countdown to the 1950 Census release.

Administrative Records and the 2020 Census.

NYC surgeons successfully performed the first windpipe transplant in the world.

7% of Americans don’t use the Internet. Who are they?

Dear WordPress: Really? REALLY?

John Burnside · Poem: ‘The Night Ferry’

Joye Murcison Kelly, R.I.P. Early, uncredited Wonder Woman scribe.

Triple stumper question on JEOPARDY!

Agatha

My paternal grandmother was named Agatha. The definition of agathokakological is “Made up of both good and evil.” I thought she was pretty good, myself. The word is from the Greek agathos (good) + kakos (bad), which proves my point.

How breakfast cereal was invented.

A stone and wood Dutch colonial is said to be the oldest house in New York.

Can Frasier afford his apartment?

Now I Know: The Loophole With Two Wheels and Supercalifragilisticexpialilawsuit and The Wild Deuce and Alaska’s Super Hero Dogs and Save Your Bread When Going on Vacation.

The Beatles: Get Back – A Sneak Peek from Peter Jackson.

Conversation between Adam Guettel and Stephen Sondheim.

MUSIC

Music for the Soul: An Evening with Rebecca Jade, February 23, 2021.

Ted and Lindsey – Randy Rainbow.

The Observatory – Caroline Shaw.

Piano Quintet in G minor – Bruch. Novacek/Yoo/Haas/Banaszek/deMaine | Festival Mozaic 2018.

Flintstone themes: first one and the second one.

The Cider House Rules – Rachel Portman.

Road Runner Show theme.

Six Japanese Gardens, for mixed percussion and electronics, written by Finnish composer Kaija Saarioho.

Sunshine Superman – MonaLisa Twins.

Overture 1812 – Tchaikovsky.

Coverville 1352: Lady Gaga Cover Story and 1353: The Ronnie Lane Cover Story II and 1354: The Al Green Cover Story II – Also, Thumbs!

Creation du Monde – Vangelis.

The Rubberband Man (album version) -The Spinners.

Ain’t No Sunshine – Canen.

Prejudice – Tim Minchin.