Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
This was inspired by this posting by Steve Gerber.
Please tell me:
1. What music do you play when you feel good, happy, or want to feel that way?
2. What music do you play when you’re down, melancholy, or want to feel that way?
3. What music do you play when you want to irritate your neighbor, your housemate or anyone within earshot?
In case you haven’t a clue what a Lefty Brown is.
NAME: Chris “Lefty” Brown
BLOG NAME: LeftyBrown’s Corner
NAME OF CD: Under Cover, Disc One
NUMBER OF CUTS: 19
RUNNING TIME: 76:05
COVER ART: Nicely typed
SONG LIST: His post of June 17
SUBSEQUENTLY REVIEWED BY: Gordon on October 6
GENERAL THOUGHTS: I love this album. I love the fact that the cover versions were intriguing. I love the fact that Chris does the linkages: cover of U2 to cover BY U2 to cover of U2, for example.
THINGS I PARTICULARLY LOVED: The fact that he listed the original artist. “One” by Warren Haynes (I was expecting JR Cash, who shows up later). The Duhks. FRED (yee-haw barbershop). The Stanford Marching Band!
ON THE OTHER HAND: What the heck is FRED? ‘splain, Lefty.
OFFICE FRIENDLY: Except for Rage Against the Machine
ONLY VAGUELY RELATED: When Otis Redding heard Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect”, he reportedly said, “That girl stole that song from me.” Trent Reznor said the same thing about Johnny Cash re: Hurt. Well, not EXACTLY that, but: “…that song in particular came from a pretty private, personal place. So it seemed, well, like that’s my song… It was a big juxtaposition for me to hear it as someone else’s song now. It instantly became his song after that.”
I’ve been having this three-year dialogue with a newspaper writer of radio and television issues. Back in June 2002, he noted that the word “dramedy” first came into use in describing “Ally McBeal” in 1997 in the media. This set off an alarm in my brain, which happens every time I read something in the newspaper or see something on TV or hear something on the radio that I know to be incorrect. (So you can just imagine what happens when I hear deliberate lies, which is why I don’t often listen to talk radio, or Presidential press conferences.)
I went into the archives of HIS newspaper and found this headline:
NEW HALF-HOUR ‘DRAMEDIES’ SPELL PROMISE
09/18/1987
It cited Hooperman, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and Slap Maxwell as dramedies.
He wrote back:
“You are the man.
The man with a lot of free time, but the man nonetheless.
I will remember this down the road. Thanks.”
(Actually, it didn’t take that long. I wouldn’t have looked it up had I not already pretty well known the outcome.)
So, I was actually mildly distressed when he made the SAME ERROR a couple weeks ago.
Naturally, as a librarian, an information specialist, I could not sit by idly.
“I bring this up YET AGAIN because you made mention in your column of ‘dramedy’ starting in 1997 with Ally Mac, which JUST AIN’T the case.”
Being the thorough sort, I even gave him a link to check out.
After he acknowledged his error, I wrote: “I won’t bug you again until the next time you mess up.” To which he said, “OK, I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”
Once something sees print, information is often taken as fact by somebody else. “The sun revolves around the earth.” “Cooperstown is the birthplace of baseball.” “There were WMDs in Iraq.” Read it, or hear it often enough, and people will actually start to believe it.
So all of you whose websites or blogs I’ve offered friendly corrections from time to time, please don’t take it the wrong way. It’s a librarian disease, and there is no cure, except accuracy.
Conversely, if I make an error in fact, I’d l’d like to know about it so I can fix it. Really. (If I make what you feel is an error in opinion, you can tell me about that too, but it may not, OK, probably won’t change anything.)
Carol, Lydia, and I sojourned down to the Mid-Hudson valley a couple hours south of Albany for the weekend.
FRIDAY- If you’ve read the column at Frez Sez for August 9 – complete with (shudder), photographs (or should that be (shutter)?), you will already know what the first stop was: visiting Fred Hembeck and Lynn Moss! Given the fact that I have mentioned Fred in this blog any number of times, I may have failed to say that I probably haven’t SEEN him in the flesh since…well, I don’t know. I MAY have run into him at Midnight Comics in 1992, but even that would have been 13 years ago. And it was probably much longer.
Lynn, I’m almost certain that I haven’t seen since my FantaCo days, and that was 1988. If she wasn’t at the FantaCon that year, it might have even been 1983, the previous FantaCon and the year after they moved from Troy to the Mid-Hudson.
Of course, they haven’t met Carol or Lydia.
We arrived in the mid-afternoon (our goal was earlier, but ever since we had a child, we are, inexplicably, ALWAYS LATE.) We got to meet the famous Julie, one of the stars of Fred’s column Fred Sez. She’s bright and pleasant and a talented artist; the source of these skills is a puzzlement. (Kidding, Fred!) Unfortunately, MY child, Lydia, proceeded to move some things around, such as some models for some still life; I hope Julie forgives.
Lydia was infinitely interested in the bunny Romeo. She’s never seen such a creature, so she thoroughly enjoyed petting the rabbit.
I should note that a couple days before, I get this lengthy e-mail from Fred describing the disarray of his abode. It was not as bad as he made it sound, and was a lot neater than places I lived pre-Carol. It was, as someone I knew called it, “lived in,” particularly the area where Fred creates his artistic magic. I recognized some of the comics pulled out for his recent writings (Dr. Graves, Little Dot).
Early on, Carol and Lynn discover that Lynn knows Carol’s brother Dan from work!
As Fred wrote, one of the peculiar aspects of parts of the conversation was that I would say something, and often Fred and/or Lynn would say, “Oh, yeah, you mentioned that in your blog.” Fred would make a comment and I’d cite Fred’s even longer body of electronic musings. Fortunately, we DID have things to talk about that we hadn’t written about, and since Carol doesn’t often read my blog and I doubt EVER reads Fred’s (sorry, guy), it was all new to her.
Since Fred and Lynn have a nearly 15-year old (birthday the same month as Michael Jackson, her former musical hero – now she’s into Pink Floyd), the house isn’t what you called babyproof, so Carol & I took turns chasing around Lydia lest she tumble down the couple steps into the living room or den. Lydia seemed to love going around and around and around…
Fred dropped off Julie at a friend’s house. Later we had a lovely lasagna dinner prepared by Lynn. Afterwards, the storm that had come through passed and we went into the pool.
My favorite conversation with Fred took place then. It was a lot of pop culture references for which we could use verbal shorthand. In fact, the BEST part was when we discussed…oh, wait, I can’t talk about THAT. Fred is going to use it for his blog! It has to do with entertainment, but not comic books.
Then I got to go to THE BASEMENT, where rows of comics and comic-related material resided, some stacked quite neatly. But the man needs more shelves!
We had a wonderful time but needed to leave to go to our hotel room near Poughkeepsie and put the child to bed.
SATURDAY: We went to a swimming party at Darla’s in Pleasant Valley. This was a group of old friends, some of which I’d known since college, and the rest were connected to my college buds. Lydia was fascinated by the cat, also named Romeo, but the feline just ran away. Lots of good food. A mellow time.
SUNDAY: We left the hotel and drove over to my college town of New Paltz. Well, the place has a NP mailing address, but is actually closer to Rifton. In any case, I visited my friends Mark and Paula. They were at the party yesterday but arrived late, and we didn’t have much of a chance to talk with them then. Mark is one of the few people I can tell you the date I met him: September 12, 1971, the first day of college. We’ve been friends ever since. He’s the one who got me into comic books. Paula is his high school sweetheart. They went their separate ways after high school, but got back together in the early 1990s and got married. They have a 10-year old daughter Adrienne.
We had lunch, and the talk old friends have. I nagged Mark into seriously thinking about a blog (he’s a lot more opinionated than I), and suggested possible topics for it.
We drove home, happy to have experienced the trip, and happy to be home (except that, apparently, the power had gone out AGAIN…)
ATAS Reverses Restrictions on Emmy Speeches
James Hibberd, TV Week
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences board of governors voted Monday night to not restrict the speeches of writers and directors winning awards during the Sept. 18 Primetime Emmy Awards telecast.
The decision reverses an April announcement that nominees in the six prime-time writing and directing categories would have to prepare pre-taped remarks, which would be played as the winner walked to the stage. Sources said writers and directors upset about the decision had made threats, including not preparing tapes, preparing tapes that mocked the Emmys and boycotting the telecast.
“Some of the initial assumptions were not accurate in light of the way the show was being constructed,” the academy said in a statement. “In effect, the amount of time being saved was not as much as originally thought, and the costs incurred would be in excess of original projections.”
The reversed plan was the result of viewer focus-group research seeking ways to make the awards more exciting.
The 2004 broadcast was seen by 14 million total viewers, the second-lowest-rated Emmy awards in history. Last month, Grammy Awards producer Ken Ehrlich was tapped to executive produce the ceremony, taking the reins from veteran Emmys producer Don Mischer.
***
Peter Jennings: Reporter, 8-10 p.m. (EDT), Wednesday, August 10 on ABC-TV.
***
David Brickman will be doing his fifth art criticism spot on WAMC (90.3 fm) Thursday, August 11 at 11:07 a.m. The topic will be the local art scene as represented by several summer art shows in Albany. By the way, for the out-of-towners it is possible to listen online at wamc.org (live only – not archived)