January 2007 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Go Where You Wanna Go?

So who’s in charge of those instant, unscientific polls AOL does? After Denny Doherty of the Mamas & the Papas died a couple days ago at the age of 66, AOL asked for the group’s favorite song among these choices:
* California Dreamin‘ – their first big hit, going to #4, and showing up in so many ’60s compilation albums that I’d grown tired of it, but an obvious choice
* Monday, Monday – #1 for three weeks, features Denny’s lead vocal
* Creeque Alley – this is the song that features “Zal, Denny and Sebastian sat, and after every number they passed the hat”, referring to Doherty and a couple of future members of the Lovin‘ Spoonful. “And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass.” Top 5 song. I wonder whether voters associated the title with the song?
* Go Where You Wanna Go. Huh?

I mean I know the song. I have five or six M&P LPs. But this was never a hit for them, although it WAS a hit, the first hit, actually, for the 5th Dimension. There were better choice for the Mamas & Papas poll: Words of Love (#5), a cover of the Shirelles‘ Dedicated to the One I Love (#2 for three weeks), or the one I would have chosen, I Saw Her Again, another Top Five song.

Not surprisingly, Dreamin‘ was winnin‘, last I checked, followed by Monday, with Go and Creeque trailing badly.

It’s not, however, that I have anything against Go Where You Wanna Go. In fact, when my father, sister Leslie and I used to sing in public in the late 1960s/early 1970s, the song was part of our repetoire. When Leslie showed up at my 50th birthday party, we sang it again that night.

Coincidentally, for Christmas, Leslie gave me a 2001 album by John Phillips called Phillips 66, so named because John would have been 66 had he lived to see the album released. It features a recast version of California Dreamin‘. My favorite song on the disc, though is Me and My Uncle, quite possibly because of the story behind it. When Judy Collins recorded the song, John started getting royalties. John thought a mistake had been made, since he didn’t write the song. Turns out that, in a tequila-fueled frenzy, he DID write the song, Collins tape-recorded it and got it published. John didn’t remember it at all.

Anyway, with Cass Elliot dead over three decades, that leaves Michelle Phillips, probably better known to some from Knots Landing and Beverly Hills, 90210 – but not by me – as the remaining member of group whose sound I enjoyed immensely.
***
Get to watch football today, I hope. My rooting interests from here out are, in order, the Saints, the Colts, the Bears. This means I root for New Orleans in the Super Bowl, if they beat Chicago. I know it’s become cliche, but the Saints ARE America’s Team – take THAT, Cowboys! Conversely, if the Patriots are in the Super Bowl, I’m pulling for whichever NFC team wins.
***
Cap Rep is showing Take Me Out, the baseball play about a mixed race player who comes out of the closet. The writer of the story in the local paper makes sure you know that some of the players will be au natural. And they say nothing ever happens in Albany.

Oscar QUESTIONS

The number of 2006 movies I’ve seen this year its pitiful. So, I’m curious to find out:

1. What movies and performers are going to get nominated? I don’t mean the obvious ones, the Dame Dench, Leo DeCaprio (who I will guess right now will win for Best Actor (in “The Departed” over Forest Whitaker, based on the old “body of work” tradition), and the Golden Globe winners. I mean, Abigail Breslin for “Little Miss Sunshine”? (She was as much a supporting role in that film as Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls”, which is to say, Not really. What “omigod” nomination will make it on the ballot?

2. Who would you like to see nominated who won’t make it? My pick, Will Ferrell in “Stranger Than Fiction” which maybe was too cerebral for traditional Will Ferrell fans. I didn’t see “Sherrybaby”, but since I liked Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Stranger”, I’ll root for her to get nominated. That IS how the Academy works, isn’t it? Have siblings been nominated in successive years, such as Warren Beatty and Shirley
MacLaine?

On another topic:
January 18, 2007 (FinancialWire) Despite rampant speculation that satellite radio companies Sirius (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM (NASDAQ: XM) may be contemplating a merger, comments by Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin may indicate that the move would violate antitrust regulations. Martin said that a merger between the two, who are the only major satellite radio companies, would be against restrictions built into both Sirius and XM licenses.
3. Do you listen to satellite radio? I never have. If so, what do you listen to? How do you think a merger would affect the companies, and the listeners?
***
I watched 1 Vs. 100 last night. Tom the Dog missed an easy question and was eliminated, but won $6,100. I know this because he told me, NOT because I watched the show. I have NO idea (until he undoubtedly recaps today) what question he missed, or even THAT he was eliminated, until the end of the show, when the camera finally panned to square #81. This is why I think it’s a flawed game show:
The contestant can get big money, but the surviving mob members get bupkis. Seems that one should get SOMETHING for getting a right answer, even if it’s $10 per question.
I don’t know who in the mob is left. Maybe they need to make the numbers larger or something, or have a tote board on the side or superimposed or this: when each mob member is eliminasted, gave him/her their .15 second of fame and put their face and number on the screen. SOMETHING.
Tom SHOULD try out for JEOPARDY!
I really want to know what he missed. I got all the questions right, but the QWERTY keyboard question was a guess (all the letters of gas ARE on the same line).

My Periodic Need for a Non-Thematic Post, January 2007 Edition

DEAD PEOPLE

I’ve seen saxophonist Michael Brecker playing somewhere. Maybe it was backing Joni Mitchell in Philadelphia in 1981, or maybe on one of his solo jazz excursions. He appears in that “Hot Tub” segment of Saturday Night Live I linked to when James Brown died last month. In any case, you’ve almost certainly have HEARD Michael Brecker, who played with Paul Simon (Still Crazy, among others), Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run), Frank Zappa, and zillions more, including the aforementioned James Brown, and who died of leukemia this week at the age of 57.
***
Art Buchwald, whose wonderfully acerbic column I used to read, was probably best known for not dying when everyone, including himself, thought he would. That and the lawsuit over the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America.
***
I would have said something about the passing of film producer Carlo Ponti, except that I might have accidentally revealed my grand crush in high school (and later) of his wife, and it seemed unseemly, so I won’t.

MYTHS
…DEBUNKED

HIV/AIDS attacks

AND NOT A MYTH: (A LITTLE) TAX BREAK

A SPECIAL ONE TIME TAX CREDIT ON YOUR 2006 TAX RETURN

When it comes time to prepare and file your 2006 tax return, make sure you don’t overlook the “federal excise tax refund credit.” You claim the credit on line 71 of your form 1040. A similar line will be available if you file the short form 1040A.

This is about the federal excise tax that’s been charged for long-distance calls on phone bill for years, based on the distance and length of the calls. When phone companies began to offer flat fee phone service, challenges to the excise tax ended up in federal courts. The IRS has now conceded this argument. Phone companies were given notice to stop assessing the federal excise tax as of August 30, 2006.
But the challengers of the old law also demanded restitution. So the IRS has announced that a one-time credit will be available when you file 2006 tax returns. However, the IRS also established limits on how BIG a credit you can get.
If you file your return as a single person with just you as a dependent, you get to claim a $30 credit on line 71 of your 1040.
If you file with a child or a parent as your dependent, you claim $40.
If you file your return as a married couple with no children, you claim $40.
If you file as married with children, you claim $50 if one child, $60 if two or more children.
In all cases, the most you get to claim is $60 – UNLESS you have all your phone bills starting AFTER Feb 28, 2003 through July 31, 2006 – which I certainly don’t – then you can add up the ACTUAL TAX AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR BILLS AND CLAIM THAT FOR A CREDIT. If you do that, you’ll have to file a special form number 8913 and attach it to your tax return. Individuals using the form 1040EZ will have to attach this form 8913 also.

One final point – this credit is a refundable credit. That means you get this money, no matter how your tax return works out. If you would end up owing the IRS a balance, the refund will reduce that balance you owe. If you end up getting a refund, the credit will be added and you get a bigger refund by that $30 to $60, depending on how many dependents are on your return.

WAR AND PEACE

January 27-29 gathering in Washington, DC, “to remind the new Congress that we elected them to end the war in Iraq and to bring the troops home now.”

LIBRARIAN HUMOR, NOT AN OXYMORON

Conan the Librarian
A REAL library’s take on Madonna’s Ray of Light
***
A Biblical Understanding of Marriage
***
Finally, watch Tom the Dog on 1 Vs. 100 (square 81) AGAIN tonight on NBC, at 8 EST. Carlo Ponti,

I’m Cold

It was 71 degrees less than two weeks ago; yesterday morning it was 3. By mid-January, I’ve usually gotten used to the cold, but I think my blood’s too thin with all of this mild weather.

Sunday past, we had black ice. I started out for church, almost wiped out four times before I got to the third house, and I returned home. I fared better than my good friend Janna, who stepped onto a curb and somehow broke her foot. Monday at 8 a.m., it was fine, but by 9:30, when I’m coming back from the Y, and Carol’s taking Lydia to day care, freezing rain made sidewalks feel as though they’d been Zambonied.

This weather always reminds me of a song I wrote when I was in college. Yeah, I know the rhyme’s a little imprecise. There’s a third verse, but it’s filthy; it ends with the same couplet as verse two. Let your imaginations go wild.

Inspired by Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland. Or was it Billy Joel?

I’M COLD

CHORUS
I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold (X2).

VERSE 1
I was ridin’ down the Owen Trail.
My horse had an accident; lost its tail.
A dangerous criminal I’m s’posed to find.
It was 30 below; I changed my mind.

CHORUS

VERSE 2
Next day, sheriff caught the fella.
He said, “What’s wrong? You turnin’ yella?”
I said, “It’s not that I lack gumption,
But when it’s cold, I just can’t function.”

CHORUS 2
I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold (X2).
If there is a hell below,
It won’t be too hot, it’ll be too cold.
I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold (X2).

"The Greatest" is 65

When I was growing up, it seemed that everyone knew who Miss America and the heavyweight champion were; I couldn’t tell you either/any of the current ones at this moment. As a kid, I became mildly obsessed with memorizing the heavyweights, starting with John L. Sullivan. In my lifetime, Rocky Marciano was the first (and retired undefeated) heavyweight champ, but I don’t remember him directly, followed by Floyd Patterson. I vaguely recall Patterson losing to Ingemar Johansson in 1959, but recall with clarity Patterson defeating Johansson in the 1960 rematch. A couple years later, it was a bear of a man named Sonny Liston who had the crown.

In late 1963/early 1964, I kept seeing this guy, nicknamed by the press The Mouth or the Louisville Lip, named Cassius Clay, who would be taking on Liston for the title. I don’t think that anyone took him too seriously as a contender, even though he’d won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics in Rome as a light heavyweight. But he beat Liston and became the heavyweight champion.

Then he changed his name to Muhammad Ali. This seemed peculiar, foreign to most Americans, black and white. Indeed, many fighters, including Liston and Patterson, as I recall, kept referring to him as Clay, as much as a taunt as anything. (I always gave props to the late ABC Sports commentator Howard Cosell, for during their sometimes contentious relationship, he always referred to the boxer by the new name he had chosen.)

I was intrigued by this new champion, who hung out with the Beatles:

although John Lennon indicated that he preferred Liston.

What REALLY caught my attention, though, was when, after being reclassified 1-A, Ali, for religious and personal reasons, refused military induction. As a result, he was unable to box in the United States, and was stripped of his title for three years, starting in 1967. This seemed to me at the time hugely unfair of the boxing commission. But it was him daring to challenge the US government (and ultimately winning), thus challenging the conventional wisdom of naturally going to fight in an American war, that radically changed my whole mindset about war, and led to my pacifist leanings. I was also affected by Martin Luther King’s eloquent opposition to the Vietnam war in 1967, that famous “betrayal” of Lyndon Johnson.

Ali would regain the title against George Foreman in 1974, but by 1978, boxing had become an alphabet soup of competing boxing commissions, and I stopped paying that much attention. Still, I was thrilled, and startled, to see Ali light the flame at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and I truly enjoyed the piece the late Ed Bradley did on him for “60 Minutes”, when Ali feigned narcolepsy, during which he jabbed at the reporter. When the joke was revealed, Bradley laughed heartedly, and Ali had an infectious grin.

Happy birthday, Muhammad Ali.