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

February Rambling: niece Rebecca Jade in a movie

My niece, Rebecca Jade, appears as a singer (typecasting, that) in a film called 5 Hour Friends, starring Tom Sizemore,

From Jeff Sharlet, who I knew long ago: Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia. In 2010, Jeff wrote about the American roots of Uganda’s anti-gay persecutions. He notes: “Centrist media sources dismissed my reporting as alarmist; The Economist assured us it would never pass. [This week], Ugandan President Museveni is signing the bill into law.”

There was no Jesse Owens at Sochi.

Arthur’s letter to straight people: why coming out matters; read the linked articles therein, too. (Watch that Dallas sportscaster on Ellen.)

So Dangerous He Needs a Soo-da-nim. Racist homophobes who comment on Sharp Little Pencil’s blog.

With conversations about shipping potentially dangerous liquids through my area, here’s a recollection of a train wreck 40 years ago.

If you knew you were going blind, what would be the last thing you would want to see before everything went dark?

The mess of an answered prayer and talking about mental illness.

A Hero’s Welcome after World War II. On a lighter note, The Margarine Wars.

This school is not a pipe, or pipeline.

An alto’s-eye view of choral music.

Who the heck was Ed Sullivan. Plus, Meet the Beatles and what it replaced, and What the critics wrote about the Beatles in 1964, and Introducing the Beatles to America.

Evanier’s experiences with Sid Caesar. Evanier wrote a brace of followup stories here (which also talks about Howie Morris) and here. Also, Dick Cavett reviewed one of Caesar’s two autobiographies, plus an article about the ever-foldable Al Jaffee of MAD.

Leonard Maltin on meeting Shirley Temple.

There are several Harold Ramis films I haven’t seen yet, but the ones I DID view – Animal House, Ghostbusters, Analyze This – I really enjoyed. Groundhog Day was among the first movies I ever purchased on VHS. And his SCTV stuff was fine, too.

A reminder that this is why we are so touched by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, from Anthony Lane. As someone put it, “It’s not his celebrity but his art.”

An audio link to a 46-minute lecture by Charles Schulz.

My niece, Rebecca Jade appears as a singer (typecasting, that) in a film called 5 Hour Friends, starring Tom Sizemore, a 97 minute comedy/drama/romance. “A lifelong womanizer gets a taste of his own medicine.” It was made in 2013, but not widely released, if at all. It will be in theatrical release in San Diego March 28-April 4th. Here’s the trailer, in which Rebecca can briefly be both seen and heard singing.

After only an 18-month hiatus, Tosy and Cosh are back ranking every U2 song.

Why Tom Dooley was hanging his head. Plus hangman John Ellis.

That is NOT the way Dustbury remembers that song, and I don’t either. Plus the history of Unchained Melody.

Mark Evanier’s teacher from hell.

Lefty Brown’s Valentine’s Day post to Kelly. “The Married Gamers – Play Together. Stay Together.”

Maypo Cereal Commercial (1956) Yes, I DO remember it, so there.

The five-second rule, expanded. Very true.

One can count on SamuraiFrog for all things Muppet: Getting to the Big Game and Miss Piggy’s response, plus a meta ad for the upcoming movie and Rowlf getting ice cream and saying good night to Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night; I hear Fallon’s gotten another job. Fallon, BTW, went to school at the College of Saint Rose, about five blocks from my house.

Yet another version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Frog still torturing himself with 50 Shades of Smartass: Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 and Chapter 16. When I typed the title, I accidentally wrote “50 Years…”; read into that what you will.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

And now for the AmeriNZ section: Arthur’s linkage, in which he calls my Everly Brothers post “diabolical.” Arthur’s Law restated, tied to my Facebook unfriending. The law is a ass.

YouTube and AIDS deniers.

To boycott or not to boycott; that is the question

The traditional idea that international sports events should be a place to create cooperation through competition is damaged by boycotts, as are the athletes that have trained for years for the opportunity to participate.

There is a movement to have the United States and other nations boycott the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014, and I’m a bit conflicted about it.

One group wants to boycott because of the country’s highly repressive new law banning any speech that equates the social status of same-sex relationships with heterosexual ones. I agree with the intent of the boycott in this case. But we’ve had Olympics in repressive regimes before; the dissidents in Beijing were just locked away for the Summer Olympics in 2008, and let’s not even talk about Tibet.

Another group wants to boycott because Russia has given sanctuary to Edward Snowden, the leaker of all that NSA classified information that showed the United States has all this “metadata” on its own citizens. I heard Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) float that one while Snowden was still living in the Moscow airport, which was reason enough for me to be inclined to oppose it.

I’m also reminded that there was a boycott by African nations at the Summer Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, having to do with New Zealand competing athletically with South Africa, which had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of its apartheid policies.

Then the United States and some of its allies boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow because of the USSR invasion of Afghanistan; the irony still resonates. In response, many of the Soviet bloc nations stayed away from the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

On the fourth hand, I think we’re at here, the traditional idea that international sports events should be a place to create cooperation through competition is damaged by boycotts, as are the athletes that have trained for years for the opportunity to participate. All the Games were diminished, even if the boycott rationales were worthy.

Right now, I’m leaning against the boycott. Circumstances could change that. And perhaps I can be persuaded. Lessee, Arthur’s ambivalent, too…

O is for Olympic Observations

I’m still crushed by Jim McKay’s “they’re all gone.”

I’ve watched a lot of Olympic Games over the years. Somehow, though, they are starting to run together in my mind. What year was it that Sarah Hughes won the women’s figure skating finals, after being in fourth place after the short program? It was 2002, but I couldn’t have told you this without looking it up.

So here are my now fading recollections, without checking sources except to verify that my memory was in fact correct.

1896 Summer: Athens, Greece – obviously, I don’t remember the specific event – how old do you think I am? – but I do recall that this was the beginning of the modern Games
1904 Summer: St. Louis, MO, United States – the debacle that Shooting Parrots mentioned
1936 Summer: Berlin, Germany – this will always be the Jesse Owens (pictured) Olympics for me, with Hitler’s assertion of a master race being shattered
1948 Summer: London, United Kingdom – I must admit that I learned much about the still bombed-out city holding the first summer Games since the end of World War II from NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Games

1960 Winter: Squaw Valley, CA, United States – I don’t specifically remember these games, but I do recall the disastrous plane crash in Belgium the following February that wiped out the entire 1961 U.S. World Figure Skating Team
1960 Summer: Rome, Italy – I remember Cassius Clay losing or throwing away his heavyweight championship gold medal after these Games when returning to a still segregated US
1968 Winter: Grenoble, France – ski racer Jean-Claude Killy
1968 Summer: Mexico City, Mexico – the black power salute of Carlos and Smith; also, Bob Beamon’s record long jump
1972 Summer: Munich, West Germany – of course, the killing of Israeli athletes; to this day, I’m still crushed by Jim McKay’s “they’re all gone.” Plus, Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals in swimming
1976 Summer: Montreal, Canada – Bruce Jenner won the decathalon. Beyond that, a number of African countries boycotted the Games because of the participation of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.

1980 Winter: Lake Placid, NY, United States – the US beat the USSR in the men’s hockey semifinals, then Finland in the finals.
1980 Summer: Moscow, Soviet Union – 65 nations boycotted because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
1984 Summer: Los Angeles, CA, United States – The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners boycotted in response to actions four years earlier
1988 Winter: Calgary, AB, Canada – (pictured) Katerina Witt’s second straight Olympic title in figure skating “matching the same feat performed by Norway’s Sonja Henie”
1992 Summer: Barcelona, Spain – the US basketball “Dream Team” of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and other NBA stars
1994 Winter: Lillehammer, Norway – that soap opera involving Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly hiring a goon to kneecap female figure skater Nancy Kerrigan; Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul beat Kerrigan, with Harding finishing eighth.
1996 Summer: Atlanta, GA, United States – I less remember the Games than the bomb detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, which killed two and injured over 100 others. Some poor security guard named Richard Jewell came under suspicion. The bomb was actually set by Eric Rudolph, who is currently serving a life sentence for the bombing. One of the local (Albany, NY area) reporters covering the Olympics, Chris Kapostasy (later Jansing, when she moved to NBC/MSNBC in 1998), won a New York Emmy Award in 1997 for her coverage of the bombing.
1998 Winter: Nagano, Japan – Michelle Kwan had been winning World Championships in women’s figure skating, yet lost to [I had to look it up] Tara Lipinski in the Olympic finals

2008 Summer: Beijing, China – this was Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals in the swimming events. The great concern beforehand was the air quality, which, thanks to good weather, wasn’t as bad as feared.

I’m sure there are other bits that you will remind me of…

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

Image of Witt was originally posted to Flickr by zipckr at http://flickr.com/photos/7363465@N08/3439530032. It was reviewed on 03:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC) by FlickreviewR, who found it to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0, which is compatible with the Commons. It is, however, not the same license as given above, and it is unknown whether that license ever was valid.

Joe Kubert, and the Olympics (again!)

Fortunately, America, some of the Olympics items you missed can be seen here.

Joe Kubert, a comic legend best known for his DC war comics, died Sunday morning at the age of 85. Read this piece by Christopher Allen with links to other articles. Here’s a piece by Mark Evanier, plus ADD’s controversial take.

Steve Bissette, who was a student at the Kubert School, writes To Joe, With Love: A Sad Farewell to the Man Who Opened All the Doors. He also wrote on Facebook:
“If you want to do something to express your feelings or help, donations can be made to the Multiple Myeloma Foundation in Joe Kubert’s name; sympathy cards or notices can be sent to the Kubert family c/o the Kubert School, 37 Myrtle Avenue, Dover, NJ 07801. In all ways, be kind.”

This story depressed me thoroughly: Father performs “Let it Be” to raise funds for his 11-month-old’s cancer bills.
“No parent should have to bare their grief to the world, no matter how beautifully, to beg for money to cover the life-saving medical treatment their baby needs. As you see the beauty, be mindful of the injustice in our health care system this represents.”

Fact-checking the Romney-Ryan “60 Minutes” interview. On the other hand, someone (I forget who, fortunately) noted that they have really nice hair, best hair since the Johns Kerry and Edwards in 2004.

Helen Gurley Brown, longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of Sex and the Single Girl died at the age of 90. She had as much to do with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, however you think about that, as anyone aside from the makers of The Pill.

I’m not a Boston Red Sox fan, but I always liked Johnny Pesky, who was a great team ambassador for the baseball team for a lot of years.
***
I thought I was through mentioning the Olympics, I really did, though you might want to read the pieces by Shooting Parrots, the last of which is HERE. Now, Jay Smooth did provide a sarcastic tribute to NBC’s coverage, and that was BEFORE the Closing Ceremonies, which NBC royally screwed up:
“In addition to editing out selected portions and allowing the insipid Ryan Seacrest to host, they broke away before the big finale and the Who to show the pilot of a new sitcom where the big joke was a monkey in a lab coat. There’s a reason NBC is the last network. Even in those rare (once every four years) instances when they get viewers, they manage to royally piss them off. Don’t they realize that interrupting the Closing Ceremonies with a sitcom is the same as flashing a half-hour pop-up ad?”
Fortunately, in America, some of the Olympics items you missed can be seen HERE.

A non-NBC piece about a recent piece criticizing American Olympic silver medalist Leo Manzano for waving his native Mexican flag alongside the U.S. flag following his performance in the men’s 1500-meter finals.
***
PSY – GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) for your own aerobic exercise.

Black girls’ hair

In Whoopi Goldberg’s Broadway Show from the mid-1980s, she wore a yellow shirt or sweater over her head, and talked about her being a kid pretending to have long, luxurious blonde hair.

That first week of the London Olympics 2012, when I wasn’t watching, the primary storyline apparently was about Gabby Douglas’ great accomplishments in the Olympics. And her hair. Yawn.

As long as I’ve been alive, how black girls and women wear their hair has been “an issue” with someone. Processed or natural – “proves” how “black” someone really was, at least when I was growing up. Dyed or not – hey, do they “want to be white”?

In large part, I’m less upset by it than just sick of it. When the Daughter was about three, we were figuring out the best way to deal with her hair. At some point, we were experimenting with letting her hair go natural. Several black people I saw – who I didn’t even know, BTW – acted as though we were committing child abuse. “Hey, what are you DOING to that child?” Or “You get her to a stylist – NOW!” And these were some of the more reportable responses.

Back in 2009, Chris Rock made a movie called Good Hair which addressed his own daughter’s frustration with her “bad” hair.

Do you recall that poor white teacher in NYC who lost her job for READING the acclaimed children’s book called ‘Nappy Hair’ to mostly black and Hispanic third-graders “after parents complained and threatened her”? Sheer silliness.

I have, on LP, Whoopi Goldberg’s Broadway Show from the mid-1980s. She wore a yellow shirt or sweater over her head, and talked about her being a kid pretending to have long, luxurious blonde hair, just like she was “supposed” to have.

Seriously, I wish there was a moratorium on hearing about black females’ hair, especially by other people, but I’m not counting on it.