Month: January 2007

The person I was rooting for was a guy named John O’Hara. He was convicted in 1997 of felony voter fraud for voting using his girlfriend’s address, which he claimed (unsuccessfully) was his primary address. He was running against the Democratic machine candidates, most recently against Assemblyman James Brennan in a 1996 primary.

Those of you from New York State are likely aware of the selective persecution, I mean prosecution, that was going on. O’Hara lost his law license, was fined $20,000, and served 1500 hours of community service.

Recently, I was reading an article about how fuzzy the concept of “primary residence” is, with what was the “summer home” or “winter home” now as equipped as the traditional primary residence.

I relate to this situation because I’ve been there. I went to college in New Paltz, NY in 1971, but continued to vote from my hometown of Binghamton, NY. However, when my family moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974, I decided that I’d register in New Paltz. There were two county registrars, a Democrat and a Republican. The latter, fearing a horde of students taking over the town, wanted me to register where my parents lived. (The state law at that time had a clause that one could “neither gain nor lose residency by being a student”, but I didn’t HAVE another residence. I argued that I hadn’t, at that point, even BEEN to Charlotte, and that I would be ill-equipped to be conversant with the issues. The Rep ultimately relented.

So, did John O’Hara move his residence 14 blocks fraudulently? I don’t know, but the arcane registration laws in this state, which technically require one to re-register if one moves from one apartment to another in the same building, makes me sympathetic to his cause. I know folks who’ve moved and voted from their old address because they had not had a chance to re-register. (Note: I did not turn them in.)

In fact, let me admit my own culpability. I moved from Jackson Heights, Queens, NY to sleeping on my friend’s sofa in New Paltz, NY in September 1977. I remember this clearly because NYC was having a Democratic mayoral primary between Ed Koch (who won) and Mario Cuomo on the second Tuesday of that month. Where was my residence? Well, technically, I didn’t have one, but I was registered in Queens. My options were to be disenfranchised – I didn’t have anything that would show I lived in New Paltz – or vote in Queens; I voted in Queens. (Incidentally, Koch and Cuomo had a rematch in the 1982 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Who won? Ever heard of Governor Koch? I didn’t think so.)

Recently, I received Still the Same…Great Rock Classics Of Our Time. Here’s the songlist.
1. Have You Ever Seen The Rain
2. Fooled Around And Fell In Love
3. I’ll Stand By You
4. Still The Same
5. It’s A Heartache
6. Day After Day
7. Missing You
8. Father & Son
9. The Best Of My Love
10. If Not For You
11. Love Hurts
12. Everything I Own
13. Crazy Love

These songs are 20, 30, 40 years newer than the tunes of his popular The Great American Songbook series, none of which I own, of course. The tunes came out primarily in the 1970s at a point when Rod Stewart’s greatest music was produced.

For the most part, I like the SONGS on the album, and on most of them, he did (just) OK, but it would have been just as well – or better – if someone put together a compilation album of those songs by the original artists – I’m sure someone has, somewhere.

As a friend put it: “It was almost like he was doing karaoke – all fine and good, but adding little to the originals. And this was the guy who, early on, did dynamite versions, reworking Street Fighting Man, Country Comforts, Reason To Believe, I’m Losing You, Twisting the Night Away, and Pinball Wizard, making them his own. This just sounded like he came in, they gave him some lyric sheets, and he sang what was there–no real passion to put his stamp on it.”

From Chris Black, who, astonishingly, is even more lazy than I.

1) Panic in Detroit (from Aladdin Sane)-“looks a lot like Che Guevera”. Great background singing.
2) Under Pressure (with Queen)-with a bass line so good, even Vanilla Ice sounded (relatively) good.
3) Star (from Ziggy Stardust)-I did so much hard dancing to this song in my dorm room, I was grateful to the slowdown at the end.
4) Golden Years (from Station to Station)-I saw Bowie do this on Soul Train. The kids didn’t know what to make of the Thin White Duke, but they liked the song.
5) Fame (from Young Americans)-the original, not the inferior Fame ’90 remix that I have on the Pretty Woman soundtrack. Co-written by John Lennon. LOVE the scales of “fame, fame, fame, fame…”
6) Young Americans (from YA)- also on Soul Train. “Do you remember your President Nixon“, whose birthday, BTW, is tomorrow.
7) TVC15 (from STS)-because I like the beat.
8) Changes (from Hunky Dory)- from the first Bowie album I owned.
9) Fashion (from Scary Monsters)-I was at Fred Hembeck’s house this summer, and Fred, his daughter Julie and I were watching Bowie videos. Boy, is the video of this one of its time.
10) DJ (from Lodger)-Reminds of the day when “I am the DJ, I am what I play” applied to many disc jockeys, not just a relatively few.

I must make special mention of David Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby, “Peace on Earth”/”Little Drummer Boy”, and the strange story behind it: Bowie’s hatred of “Drummer Boy”, the quick rewrite, Crosby’s death before the special aired in 1977. I watched it (and you can, here or here) when it was originally broadcast and saw the bizarre banter about John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, then this duet, which, improbably, really worked. I STILL want to know: did Bing really know who Bowie was?

1. What is your best/happiest New Year’s Eve moment?

It was 1997. My ex-girlfriend (now my wife) Carol, her brother Mark, her ex-roommate Leanne and a couple others came over to my apartment. Mark dropped off a used computer, then we went off to First Night, catching the bus on Lark Street. It was evident that by the time we got to the State Museum five or six blocks away that Mark and Leanne were quite smitten with each other, and they got into “testing” each other to see if the other would stick around or go off to another event. They got engaged about four days later, got married on January 1, 1999. (And are still married with a lovely five-year-old daughter.)

2. Has a movie(or movies) ever made you cry?
Oh, geez, lots of movies make me cry. I got a little misty at the end of Dreamgirls, e.g.

I was half watching It’s A Wonderful Life on the computer in Charlotte (at this site, recommended by this person on Christmas Day, when I caught the early scene where the pharmacist mixes up a prescription and George doesn’t deliver it. “It’s poison, I tell you, poison!” I’d seen that scene a dozen times, but I really got caught up in the pharmacist’s pain at losing his son to the war.
Philadelphia, a very flawed movie, but that damn last scene when they’re showing the home movies, with Neil Young’s title song in the background…
I’m not sure if I cried during the scene when the Kevin Costner plays catch with his father in Field of Dreams when I first saw it, but I have since my father passed six years ago. So does Johnny Bench, I’ve read.
Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins free in Shawshank Redemption.
I’m sure there are scenes in In America, but I’m not remembering the specific moments.
Liam Neeson In Schindler’s List when he does the “I could have saved” speech at the end. Also the second appearance of the little girl in color.
The original Brian’s Song near the end.
At the end of Glory.
After the end of the blackout in Apollo 13. (That must be a good movie, given the fact that I knew the outcome.)
I’m SURE there are others.

3. Do you think that in 20 years George W. Bush will be regarded as one of the worst US Presidents in history?

One never knows, of course. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was blasted at the time, and now is regarded as healing the nation. The audiotapes that Bob Woodward has released after Ford’s death, though, make me wonder if he was just feeling sorry for an old friend. Perhaps it set up a bad precedent that a President is somehow above the law, which the current occupant seems to feel.
Oh, but one mustn’t lie about sex. I’m convinced that if Clinton hadn’t been impeached, W. would be this year, but the Dems don’t want to appear vindictive, or tear thwe country apart, again.
Recently, I read an article in the Baltimore Sun that suggested that Harry Truman was as ill-regarded in 1950 as W. was in 2006, and that Truman is now considered favorably. Moreover Truman had Korea; Bush had 9/11.
So, I don’t know, but I’d think Yes, he’ll be treated poorly by history. He put all of his eggs in the “war President” basket, and they got scrambled. If he had gone into Afghanistan, captured bin Ladin, isolated Saddam, as we had in January 2003, when we occupied the country without a shot being fired, he’d probably have come off as one of the better Presidents. And the primary reason I think he’ll suffer will be in comparison with Poppa Bush, who sent troops to fight in Iraq, but didn’t invade Baghdad. Some thought it was a mistake (I didn’t), and he proved to be right. Oh, BTW, I watched one of the Ford funerals on the DVR yesterday – there were at least four; this is the one in the Episcopal cathedral in DC on Tuesday last – and Bush 41 did a GREAT imitation of Dana Carvey doing Bush 41 (“Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent.”) Bush 43’s speech, by contrast, was an OK text with a bland delivery.

4. It appears that you enjoy your job. But if there was something else you could do for a living, what would it be?

Something in baseball. Official scorer, base coach. Unless I could make money pontificating as I do in this blog.

5. Do you think the Detroit Tigers can repeat as AL champs? (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

They can, but they probably won’t. I don’t pay that much attention to the game until spring training, but it seems that the Red Sox may have made themselves stronger. The Twins and the Yankees are still around. But I figure it’ll be some team I wasn’t expecting, such as the one in Cleveland.