Tag: music

O is for Oklahoma

Oklahoma USA is a little gem about a lonely spinster who avoids the harsh realities of post-war Britain by losing herself in Hollywood movies like “Oklahoma.”

JEOPARDY! category EVERYTHING’S OK
*This nickname for Oklahomans stems from those who jumped the homesteading starting gun in 1889
*It’s Oklahoma’s leading crop & is especially big in the north, near the Kansas border
*Tahlequah, Oklahoma is the tribal capital of this Native American nation
*This humorist & native son lends his name to Oklahoma City’s main airport
*The National Weather Service’s storm prediction center is in this city, also home to the University of Oklahoma
And here’s a Daily Double I got right when I was on the show:
PUT ‘EM IN ORDER: Oklahoma statehood, California statehood, Nebraska statehood
(Answers at the end)

I’ve long had an almost irrational affection for Oklahoma. Maybe it’s because, when I put together my states of the Union jigsaw puzzle when I was a kid, the piece for the state looked like a deformed saucepan. Or maybe it’s that odd history of being Indian Territory for a long period that fascinated me.

I have referred to my first wife, who I married in college, as the Okie because she was born in Durant. I had a difficult time connecting with her father until he realized that I was on the OK side when the University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State played teams from Texas, and ESPECIALLY the Longhorns of Texas.

I’ve been to Oklahoma only once, in 1995, to speak with the state Small Business Development Center program and explain the reference services NYS SBDC was then providing for other SBDCs.

There was a woman I knew who worked for an SBDC in Oklahoma City. Her building was right across the street from the Murrah Building, which was blown up on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. She suffered severe injuries from flying glass and other items that acted as shrapnel. She wrote a very moving story about her recovery the following year, which I published in a newsletter; I need to find that again.

The tornadoes in Oklahoma, especially those in 1999 and 2013, saddened me greatly.

Here’s a song about Oklahoma from a British band, the Kinks, Oklahoma U.S.A. [LISTEN] from the Muswell Hillbillies album. Oklahoma USA is a little gem about a lonely spinster who avoids the harsh realities of post-war Britain by losing herself in Hollywood movies like “Oklahoma.” “It namechecks Rita Hayworth or Doris Day, Errol Flynn (‘But in her dreams, she is far away/ In Oklahoma U.S.A./ With Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae’).”

And speaking of Jones and MacRae, here’s the title song to certain Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II musical [LISTEN].

Finally, here’s Oklahoma Hills by Jack Guthrie [LISTEN], written by his famous cousin, Woody Guthrie, both Guthries coming from the state.

ANSWERS to JEOPARDY!
Sooners
wheat
the Cherokee
Will Rogers (more on him soon)
Norman
California statehood, Nebraska statehood, Oklahoma statehood (not until 1907, which I actually knew because of the musical)


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

I want the NEW Paul McCartney

Hint to Wife: NEW by MACCA is #1 on my Christmas list,

My friend Karen, who I’ve only known since we were in kindergarten, wrote this article for our sixth-grade newsletter in which she was the winner of a contest to fly to England and see the Beatles in person. Back in 1980, her record company put out John & Yoko’s Double Fantasy album, but that was an arm’s-length situation.

Now, her current record company is putting out the new album by Paul McCartney, NEW, and while he’s in the New York City area, she’s spending time with him. This means she was THERE when Macca surprised a Queens high school with an auditorium rock show, plus Q&A on John Lennon’s birthday; she described it as a most satisfying experience. The day before, when she was with him doing interviews for nearly five hours, was another highlight.

I’m guessing she was present when Sir Paul surprised the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon audience by sticking around to perform seven more songs in a mini-concert.

I’m so very happy for my good friend, who has turned me onto new music for decades. I have only a soupçon of jealousy.

I haven’t gotten the new album, NEW, yet. (Richie has already ordered it.) I’m very pleased it’s gotten a good review in Entertainment Weekly and an even more interesting one in The New Yorker, plus others.

Hint to Wife: this is #1 on my Christmas list, even ahead of Beatles at the BBC, Volume 2. Get the deluxe edition, please!

Paul’s YouTube channel

Ranking the 21 Best Paul McCartney Deep Tracks. Some of these I had never heard.
***
Misheard lyrics of ‘Let ‘Em In’.

Malala, the government shutdown, and other things

I worked with Jeff Sharlet’s late mother Nancy, so I knew Jeff from when he’d beat me, legitimately, in SORRY when he was six.

I was quite moved to watch Malala Yousafzai on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this past week. Malala is the teenager shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan, but survived, and has since set up a fund to support girls’ education. Here’s Part 1, the section that aired, but see Part 2 and Part 3 as well. If those links don’t work, try this one.

When you listen, you’ll note that what she’s advocating for is essentially a liberal arts education, wanting girls to think for themselves, radical in the environment from which she came. The group that shot her was pleased she didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize this week Jon Stewart may want to adopt her but she is reviled in her own hometown as not being Muslim enough or being a CIA plant.
***
My job is funded by state and federal monies. Which is to say I’m still working, but if this partial government shutdown continues for a while, that could be a problem. Yes, the House GOP’s little rule change guaranteed a shutdown. And Speaker of the House John Boehner, last weekend, acknowledged there was a clean continuing resolution – there are no budgets anymore, just a series of CRs – last July.

I suppose it’s ironic that the “reason” for the shutdown, Obamacare, was instituted anyway on October 1, with all its technical glitches. Perhaps a better strategy for the Republicans would have been to ENCOURAGE participation of the Affordable Care Act, hoping to crash the computers.

And yet, if you give in to cynicism about our democracy, our democracy steadily erodes. If it’s their plan to get so sick of it all that we throw up both our hands and let them do what they do, I must say it’s a brilliant strategy.
***
The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. I had never heard of this.

Sometimes you get a second chance to make a lasting impression.

Melanie has resigned herself “to needing help in private, but there is something that happens to me emotionally when I have to be helped to walk, or even be carried, in public. I do not handle it well.” Also: “Have you ever tried to pray for people who seriously want you dead?“

The War on Q, W, and X.

It’s been a year since Mark Evanier’s mom died.

Voice and Hammer: Harry Belafonte’s unfinished fight by Jeff Sharlet. Jeff is prominently mentioned in the article College Writers Exit ‘Bubble’. I worked with Jeff’s late mother Nancy, so I knew Jeff from when he’d beat me, legitimately, in SORRY when he was six.

Roger Ebert’s scalding review of a Rob Schneider film, and what came next.

Disney’s first African-American animator, Floyd Norman.

This Scottish ad for breast cancer awareness may be NSFW, and may save someone’s life.

The reason I like this article is not because of the specific issue, which the homophobia of the Barilla pasta guy, but because Mark Evanier explains the First Amendment so well.

I too was surprised by the lawsuit after the Smiths/Peanuts comic strip mashup. Well, not by the suit itself, but by the fact it came from the Smiths’ music publisher. The Peanuts people have long been very litigious; I DO remember the barn in question.

The back roads of western New York State. Also, Albany’s lost boardwalk.

Entitled vacationers, plus Betty White plugs Air New Zealand.

Nedroid’s Party Cat series.

Jaquandor answers my questions about politics, film casting, and end-of-writing poetry, among other topics.

Favorite albums of 1951-1960

I do have several albums from the decade, some of them quite well respected.

Ella Fitzgerald

Sometimes you try something, for instance in this blog, and it fails. If SamuraiFrog, who was born in the late 1970s, could write so knowledgeably about the music of the 1960s, might not I, who was born in the early 1950s, be able to speak to the music of the period in which I was born? Any number of my friends who were born in the 1960s know the music of that decade.

The answer is: apparently not. I never owned that many albums of 1950s pop artists. I have them mostly on compilations, notably Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Nat Cole. I do have several albums from the decade, some of them quite well respected, such as:

The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall/The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (1953)
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis (1956), and its follow-up; at some level, they blur in my mind
Count Basie: April in Paris (1956), though I DO love this particular version of the title song a LOT.: “One more ONCE.”
Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers (1957)
The Original Broadway Cast: West Side Story (1957)

I do enjoy them. But truth is, there are only five I found that I respond to like some of the albums on my sixties list, where they’ve almost imprinted on my DNA:

5. Duke Ellington: The Nutcracker Suite (1960)
Described at length HERE.

4. Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook (1959)
Actually, Ella doing ANY of the songbooks might rate, if I owned them. One of my college friends played them constantly, but this was always my favorite.

3. Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out (1959)
‘Take Five’ is the classic, but ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’ is even better, to me. I wrote about Brubeck HERE.

2. Harry Belafonte: My Lord What a Mornin’ (1960)
I mentioned HERE that I just bought this album for both my sister Leslie and me just last year; it was so important to my father.

1. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (1959)
Which I linked to HERE. Always associate this album with my late friend Donna George.

It’s interesting, to me anyway, that much of my musical enjoyment comes from the experience of hearing something together. It’s not that I can’t appreciate something as a solitary experience, but music, it seems to me, ought to be shared.

Autumnal start, drinking, poetry, Internety stuff

It’s usually white wine, or occasionally something with Jack Daniels, Kahuala, vodka, or rum.

Elizabeth asked, in response to Ask Roger Anything (and YOU still can):

Why do they call the Autumnal Equinox the beginning of Fall when it is already Fall? Likewise, the Winter Solstice isn’t the beginning of winter but well along into winter?

Why do “they” say anything? Why do they still use foot/pound? From Wikipedia: “Some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as mid-autumn, others with a longer lag treat it as the start of autumn. Meteorologists (and most of the temperate countries in the southern hemisphere) use a definition based on months, with autumn being September, October, and November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April, and May in the southern hemisphere.

“In North America, autumn is usually considered to start with the September equinox. In traditional East Asian solar term, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on about 7 November.”

The answer, therefore, is American exceptionalism. That said, I never liked the fact that holidays commemorating dead soldiers and workers essentially frame summer.

New York Erratic must actually be from New Jersey because there are a lot of questions:

When you drink, is it beer, cider, wine, or mixed drinks?

When I first started drinking, which was when I was 18 – it was legal then – I did a lot of trial and error. I started with mixed drinks, mostly the sweet ones like a Tom Collins, eventually discovering rum and Coke, and 7 (7-Up) and 7 (Seagram’s Seven). Also white wine, but red gave me raging headaches.

But I could never drink beer. I would go out with folks and they’d share a pitcher or two, while I was drinking something else, which was both isolating and more expensive.

Now, it’s usually white wine, or occasionally something with Jack Daniels, Kaluha, vodka, or rum. NOT beer, not vermouth, and not gin.

What are your favorite flavor and favorite smell?

Strawberry (my favorite ice cream, yogurt), and bread baking, respectively.

Do you remember something better when you hear it out loud or when you read it?

Definitely NOT hearing it, unless it’s learning music. Preferably both, such as hearing someone’s name while reading the nametag. People giving me instructions for a computer orally is almost useless; I may not get it visually, but at least I can read it again.

So what do you think is up with the whole “dual personality” of the Internet age? How many people do you think have alternate personas – or multiple personas – online? And what do you think that is doing for the culture?

I found out only recently that someone who has a pseudonym on the Times Union site, and comments on several blogs, is someone who apparently has known me for a long time. He’s much more a jerk than he was in real life; this COULD mean he’s turned into a jerk, OR it could mean that being behind the shield of anonymity has allowed him to become a jerk.

I essentially reposted an article about a Tulsa, OK website disallowing anonymous comments, and it generated a lot of comments, mostly negative. Fear of harassing and threatening e-mail, for instance. Conversely, one guy “decided some time ago to post comments on the TU as me. I’ll admit that it keeps any snark I might be tempted to exhibit under control. It keeps one more civil than one might be posting anonymously…a good thing IMO.”

How many people post anonymously? I have no idea. But, I’ve discovered it’s a long-standing virtue; see this article from 1995. There are about 2.7 billion people on the Internet. Some don’t care who knows what about them, and another group has concluded that the NSA already knows.

Is it why people seem ruder? Possible, but there are so many variables, it’s difficult to isolate. Maybe it’s the fault of twerking.

Is there an optimum level of technology?

No. That’s because whatever technology is created, someone can build upon it. That’s why, not incidentally, I oppose these expanded copyright laws that protect the copyright holder for life plus 75 years. The reason the Constitution says “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. (Article 1, Section Eight) was to allow for innovation, not to reward copyright holders for long periods.

Do you ever (or have you ever) written fiction or poetry?

Never fiction, although I did have, in my mind some years ago, a roman a clef about my previous church choir experience.

My girlfriend in the late 1970s/early 1980s was a poet. She went to poetry workshops, and I went with her sometimes, so eventually, I tried writing. I never found “my voice,” or whatever; I never “got” it.

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