Month: September 2005

MUSIC

In case you missed it, Brian Wilson, a musician of some note, will CALL you if you make a $100 contribution through his website on behalf of Katrina victims by October 1. You will need a PayPal account. The instructions e-mail I received will be in the comments section of this post at 11 a.m. EDT.

In addition to the Mixed CDs that I’ve been reviewing for my CONTEST, I’ve been listening to Emmylou Harris’ greatest “hits” (she’s a great artist, but a “hitmaker”, not so much), two versions of the Who Sell Out- one by Petra Hagen and the other by the original artists, American Idiot by Green Day (they’re green- they just have to be good), and a compilation of Beck songs put together for me by an arithmetic function. It’s all good.

COMICS/CARTOONS

FREE COMICS! Just go here. OK, they are comics called Kaptain Kelmoore, and they are about financial investment. You can also order by calling toll-free (877) 535-6667.

Mark Evanier became the self-appointed Blondie crossover guru for the strip’s 75th anniversary. But he’s relinquished the throne. I’m not taking it, but need to note Pearls Before Swine last Tuesday through Saturday. (Yahoo! link will disappear in about a week.)

The Fantastic Four video game by Activision, for Xbox, PS 2, GCube and PC got 1 star from the local newspaper reviewer: “Dull. Looks poor. Moderately challenging.” But the Sue Storm is very Jessica Albaesque, FWIW.

In the comics section of our local newspaper, they’ve started posting a puzzle called sudoku, a grid of 81 boxes, 9 by 9, with some numbers already filled in, into which a player insert a number. The goal is to fill every empty box so that each vertical row, each horizontal row, and each 3 by 3 box contain all of the digits 1 to 9, with no repeats. I’ve tried it, haven’t mastered it, but you may enjoy it.

TELEVISION

How to fund the Katrina clean up? How about eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? It appears that the plan of some Republicans in Congress.

Mark Evanier notes the passing yesterday of Don Adams, a/k/a Agent 86 of Get Smart fame. The show ran from 1965-1970. It was one of the first shows that I remembered that changed networks during its run, 4 years on Saturday nights on NBC, and the last season on Fridays on CBS. (I don’t count the seven episodes that appeared on FOX in 1995.) Of course, Don Adams was more than Maxwell Smart; he was also the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo, one of my favorite cartoons on one of my favorite cartoon shows, Underdog. I watched both shows fairly religiously, even when Get Smart went from silly to not so good (Max and 99’s wedding, the twins). I BELIEVE that I should thank him for the entertainment.

There are days when I have nothing to watch. Then there are days when I have a logjam. Tonight at 9 p.m., I have a real logistical issue. I am going to record both The Office/My Name is Earl on NBC, and the second half of the Scorcese thing on Dylan on PBS. Meanwhile, I have this 7-inch TV that I bought as part of the YMCA’s Reach Out for Youth campaign lasat year, and I’ll watch the premiere of Commander in Chief on ABC on that. Oh, and re: The Office, Steve Carrell is the first host of SNL next month.

O.K., it was probably a terible show, but how can they cancel Head Cases, starring Chris (boy wonder) O’Donnell after only two episodes? I never got a chance to hate it.

60 Minutes changed their opening. It now starts with Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl and ends with Mike Wallace introducing Andy Rooney. Apparently, the other positions will rotate among Morley Safer and Dan Rather (who were on this week), Bob Simon, Scott Pelley and others. And speaking of Rooney, at least three paragraphs of his weekly newspaper column was cribbed on Sunday night’s piece about Peter Jennings’ memorial service, which he attended last week, including the one that suggested that broadcast news would have been obliterated if a terror attack had hit Carnegie Hall that day. The print story indicated that his daughter was fired by Jennings, but the TV story did not. Another Jennings story.

I had planned to write an extensive piece on the Emmys, but that was complicated by the fact that I didn’t get around to actually WATCHING the Emmys until a couple days ago. And others have opined sufficiently. So my only comments:

Aware: that would describe her. Carol changes something in the house, such as the location of a picture or a floor fan, and she’ll point at it, as though it were out of place. In fact, to be honest, she’s more likely to notice than I.

Orderly: she was making a Play-Dough-like product. The teachers expected that she’d pour in the ingredients from the edge of the bowl, but she insisted on pouring the substance into the middle of the bowl, to avoid spilling.

Of course, this does not apply to her eating, when we wish we had hired a dog for after-meal clean-up.

Now that I take Lydia to day care, that’s become “our” time. I walk her to the bus stop, which is only a couple houses away. We ride on the bus, with me usually feeding her a banana. She manages to devour it in a 10-minute ride. Then we walk to the center. He even lets me hold her hand, something she used to actively avoid (and something, I’m told, she’ll actively avoid in the future.)

This is creepy for a couple of reasons:
1) Hidden cameras in bathrooms (I wonder what ELSE they discovered, inadvertently?)
2) All of those dirty hands shaking other hands, touching doors
Eeew!

The Centers for Disease Control actually has recommendations for HOW TO WASH YOUR HANDS. Among them: wash your hands for 20 seconds. 20 seconds is probably longer than you think. 20 seconds is singing the Alphabet
Song through, or singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat twice through without rushing it.

After he passed away five years ago, the Charlotte (NC) Observer wrote one of those appreciation pieces, not strictly an obit, written by staff writer Gerry Hostetler, from which I will quote liberally.

(Have you EVER been in a news story and NOT find an error, in fact or tone or emphasis? This story said I was the YOUNGER brother of my sister Leslie when I’m the oldest of the kids.)
***
“Life is not worth much unless you can share,” he once said. That’s what life’s about…and sharing is beautiful!” Leslie H.”Les” Green, also known as the folk singer Lonesome and Lonely Traveler, died Aug. 10…

Sharng is what Les did best. He shared his singing, painting, floral designing, poetry, and ministries in church and in prisons. And he shared his love.

[Paragraph about breakfast ministry, which he did for four years.]

When he visited prisons, he took along a bag of marbles. “The marbles were a symbol of ‘be smooth in your pursuits’,” said daughter Leslie, who shares her father’s name. “Prisoners wrote him, ‘I kept the marble; I’d be back in prison if not for you. You really helped get my life on track’,” his daughter said.

As vice-president of J.A. Jones[actually A VP of the construction firm], he visited schools about job interviews. Wearing a disheveled wig, he admonished students, “Don’t go in there like this – look the part to get the job.” Singing was one of his favorite things, and one shared with the family. He taught daughter Leslie to play guitar when she was 12, and joined by brother Roger, the trio appeared as the Green Family Singers at churches and functions in their native Binghamton, N.Y. “He did it for love, not the money, “Leslie said. “Fifty dollars a month was a big night.” The Greens came to Charlotte in 1974. “It was the best move we ever made, said his wife, Trudy. Trudy and youngest daughter Marcia were the cheering section of their audience.

They sang again when Les went into the hospitalized in July and August. His big, beautiful baritone voice, accompanied by Leslie’s and Roger’s, overflowed his sixth-floor room at Carolina’ Medical Center. When he was transferred to the third floor, the nurses from the sixth came down to check on him and, just maybe, to listen to his powerful voice as it wrapped around the words of joyous hyms or cushioned a soulful folk song.
***
Well, OK. A little saccharine, and a few other facts were wrong. I never sang with my father in the hospital. He had already had a stroke. I probably sang with my sister, and with others.