January 2007 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

States of the Union QUESTIONS

When I travel through many states, as I did recently, I’m compelled to play license plate tag. I saw plates from every state from Maine to Florida, plus DC, Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The big finds, though were Alaska (in Virginia, southbound), and Oregon (in Virginia, northbound). No California, although I saw one in Albany just yesterday; and strangely, since I usually see several, no Ohio. It used to be much easier before some states got specialty plates. Pennsylvania has a standard plate, white with blue and yellow stripes, but it also has one with wildlife on it. Maryland has a mostly white plate, but I saw one with orange that I would have though would have been from the southwest. New York has some variations, but the color scheme is largely the same. Wikipedia has an article on vehicle registration plates. (Of course, it does.)

So, I have two different types of questions for you. One is you describing your experiences, the other is me looking for facts.

1. How many US states have you been to? I’ve decided that “been to” means you’ve actually stopped there and ate or slept, which means I’m counting Illinois, even though I’ve only eaten in O’Hare. I’ve been to all of the states east of the Mississippi, except Indiana. I’ve been to Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah and California. That makes 31 out of 50, plus DC. I had a chance to go to Hawaii in 1995, but it didn’t work out. (Sob.)

2. Does anyone know why so many trucks on US highways have plates from Oklahoma, Illinois and Maine? Tennessee seems to be fairly represented as well.

3. Those of you from beyond the United States and Canada: do your cities or states and/or provinces have plates that designate that geography? Are they notable by color and design or merely alphanumeric?
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2007 changes in Daylight Saving Time in the USA.

DVD REVIEW: Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show

Early January represents at least two important events to the fans of Elvis Presley. One is his birthday on January 8; he would have been 72. (I’m assuming here that those reports of his living are greatly exaggerated.)

The other is his third and final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, January 6, 1957, fifty years ago tomorrow. Elvis was signed to do these shows for the princely sum of $50,000 after Elvis’ appearance on The Steve Allen Show beat Sullivan in the ratings. Late last month, I received a review copy of the three-disc set of all three appearances.

Disc 1 covers the show of September 9, 1956, which was the last of five consecutive shows the host missed because of a severe auto accident, the results of which are shown on the disc’s extra features. So it was British actor Charles Laughton in New York who introduced the shy young singer who was in Hollywood, as he did his four numbers, including “Ready Teddy”, but they were well done. Fortunately, one could zap past some of the intervening acts, though Laughton’s reading of “The Girl and the Wolf”, based on “Little Red Riding Hood”, was interestingly bizarre. Other extras on the disc includes interviews, all done in early 1992, with Elvis confidants such as Sam Phillips and Wink Martindale, who said he still has a kinescope of an early interview he did with Elvis.

Disc 2, October 28, 1956: Ed is back, and Elvis is in the building, a tad more confident. As Sullivan noted, Presley just moved his shoulders and the girls in the audience would go wild. Apparently, the host had implored the fans not to scream during the songs, which, curiously, included “Hound Dog”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Love Me Tender”, AGAIN, plus “Love Me”. It was on “Hound Dog” that we see Elvis the Pelvis, most tame by current standards. Most of the other performers were unfamiliar, save for Senor Wences, who was doing much the same gig when I started watching Sullivan a few years later. The show also includes a couple songs from a Frank Loesser musical, “The Most Happy Fella”; it doesn’t really age well, but its appearance with the cast of 40 showed the clout Sullivan had in the theater community. The disc extras include promos for Elvis’ first two appearances.

Disc 3 is the infamous program where Elvis was shown only from the waist up, and after each set, the screen would go briefly black. The songs included a medley of “Hound Dog”/”Love Me Tender”/”Heartbreak Hotel” and “Don’t be Cruel” in an early segment; “Too Much” and “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold” a bit later, and at the end, “Peace in the Valley”. Presley is far more confident in this show. The rest of this program was the most interesting of the three, including the comedy dance of Bory and Bor, a Brazilian powerhouse female vocalist named Leny Eversong, and a young comic singing woman named Carol Burnett in her Sullivan debut, who tugged on her ear before she started. Extras include home movies and items from the Graceland archives.

Another interesting thing about these shows are how the commercials are integrated into the show: Sullivan announcing the “good news” about the sales of the 2006 Mercury, or plugging the November 12 release date of the 2007 “Big M”, fascinated me.
But the key value is watching the rapid development of “the King” and his performing style over a four-month period.

$29.99 list ($20.99 at Amazon) from Image Entertainment, Inc., released November 21, 2006.
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1 Vs. 100 — starring Tom the Dog and Adam West airs tonight on NBC!

Roger Answers Your Question, RK and Gordon

Roger,

Hi! RK here! I’ve noticed that you have quite a few blog entries dealing with music. (Well, one has to feed the monkey, somehow!– whatever that means!) And I suppose there certainly is a lot to be said about the political scene at present. But I do have a musical inquiry for you. Perhaps you’ve dealt with it in the past already (in which case I humbly apologize in advance).

Well, here’s the thing. I recently picked up a book on the making of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and afterwards, naturally, I went back for a listen. Now, I never was much of a Floyd fan, myself.
In fact, before reading the book, I knew virtually nothing about the group. Still, I must confess, it IS quite an album. So here are my questions:

a) What are your favorite “headphone” albums?

Pretty much anything I like to listen to at some volume: Who’s Next (The Who); In the Court of the Crimson King (King Crimson); anything with a good bass line. Music that gives me a physical, as well as intellectual, reaction. There are jazz and classical albums that work well. But the #1 album has to be Abbey Road (the Beatles), because it was in a period (spring of 1975) that I didn’t have a stereo or much in the way of anything, so I would go to the Binghamton Public Library and listen to albums to keep my sanity.

b) Which albums stand out for you in terms of production??

Never have been that much of an audiophile in that way, except when something sounds off – one example of that is “I Saw Her Again” (Mamas & the Papas) on “Farewell to the First Golden Era” on LP, where the lead vocal is mixed down and the background voices are more upfront, very different from the album on which it originally appeared. I’ve bought some cheap classical LPs that sounded like mud.

That said, I think albums can be OVERproduced to a point that the very lifeblood is sucked out of them. Couldn’t give you a specific example.

And not that you asked: maybe it’s because I’ve been making mixed cassettes and now mixed CDs, but it’s a lot more noticeable to me NOW, the sheer drop-off in volume from one album to the next.
***
Gordon asks “What’s the best part of being a librarian? Worst part?”

The best part is learning cool new stuff almost every day. It’s also the case that, by and large, librarians are very collegial folks who help each other find answers to life’s persistent problems.
I suppose the worst part is trying to answer questions, usually multiple-part queries 1) for which I’m pretty sure there is no answer and 2) for which if there WERE such an answer, I don’t know how it would help them, the “How many left-handed, black, homosexual Hispanics with children drive a manual transmission on the Upper West Side of Manhattan?” questions. These folks are trying to define their market – a reasonable goal – but sometimes they parse it so finely that no one, even a paid resource, is going to have what they want. The librarian wants to please, so the librarian hates the dumb@#$% question that the librarian couldn’t possibly give a good answer to.

(Scott, I’ll answer your questions on Sunday. Gordon, I’ll answer your other question when I review the book some West Coast blogger sent me.)

MOVIE REVIEW: Dreamgirls

Last Thursday down in Charlotte, I asked my family to watch Lydia so that Carol and I could go to the movies. Some folks wanted to invite themselves to come along, but I needed to uninvite them, as this was Carol’s and my monthly date.

I know quite a lot about (Diana Ross and the) Supremes and about Motown generally. But, aside from the hit song from Jennifer Holliday from a quarter century ago, “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going”, I knew relatively little about “Dreamgirls”, the popular musical, beyond what was widely known.

In the cover story in JET magazine about the new movie, the writer announces, “Most people think [it] is about …the Supremes. It is not.” Someone should have told director Bill Condon, for there were loads of stylistic touches that echoed Diana, Mary, Florence (and Cindy), starting with hairdos, costumes (The Dreams in Liverpool was spot-on) and the album covers. The homage to the Supremes album cover to the left is very prominent in a couple shots.

Still, this is ostensibly the story of Effie White (played here by seventh-place American Idol candidate Jennifer Hudson) was pushed aside as lead singer in favor of Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) by record label owner Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx). The early scenes rang true, from the ersatz Motown Review to the music being co-opted by Pat Boone types. Where the movie lost me for a time was during a scene where several characters were singing to Effie, trying to keep her in the group in a lesser capacity. It felt like people singing in a musical, and I mean that in a bad way. Another scene, not much later, when Effie is thrown out of the group, I felt pretty much the same. I didn’t notice consciously, but my wife detected poor lip-synching, and maybe THAT was the problem.

However, right after that, Effie sings “And I’m Telling You”, which got thunderous applause in the theater I was in. It brought me back into the picture. Much of the next portion of the picture involved Deena and Curtis, the Berry Gordyesque character, blending late Supremes with early solo Diana Ross (movie career).

I should mention Eddie Murphy’s James “Thunder” Early was partially James Brown, but at least partially Marvin Gaye at the point he wanted to release “What’s Going On”, right down to the cap he wore, similar to the one Marvin has on the Let’s Get It On cover. His performance was very good, not the sometimes over the top schtick he sometimes engages in. The other performances were fine, although Foxx seemed to have a constant sneer.

The early awards suggest that Jennifer Hudson will be nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I’m not sure that would be appropriate, since it is her character that is the emotional core of the picture. But the first time actress is excellent.

It was an enjoyable experience.
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Tosy’s review. His assessment of applause I agree with totally.

Did You Miss Me While I Was Gone?

To which you say, “How are we supposed to miss you when you never leave?” Good point.

Actually, I’ve been away from December 23-31, but thanks to a savvy co-conspirator, I was able to post every day. (Thanks, co-conspirator.) I had written something for every day before I left, some of it short, and would have used it them all save for the fact that James Brown and Gerald Ford passed away.

Carol, Lydia and I trekked to Charlotte, NC to visit my mother, sister Marcia, and niece Alexandria. My sister Leslie and her boyfriend Bobby came from San Diego in midweek. I hadn’t realized it until we thought about it, but I don’t think I’d been in Charlotte since January 2002, and now I remember why: it’s tricky.

Even before we left, my wife announced that we wouldn’t be going NEXT year, because arranging all the things one needs to do before one goes away by car with two adults and one child seemed to be endless. [That may change, though.] It didn’t help that she got one last-minute project that took three hours, and another that took two. Initially, we were going to leave on Friday night, December 22, but that was causing too much stress.

New York drivers must have been feeling the Christmas stress, for I saw one woman just laying on the horn behind a car that was trying to turn left, but couldn’t because of traffic. One driver roared into the gas station in Oneonta, not seeing that our car was at the pump, saw that I was just starting to fill up the car, then stormed out, leaping the curb in the process.

Our “early morning” departure on Saturday the 23rd turned out to be 9:30, and with a lengthy stop the Powell grandparents, we didn’t hit the Pennsylvania border until 1 p.m. We ended up, exhausted, in Harrisonburg, VA at 8:30 p.m., 475 miles later. The next day, we went the rest of the 305 miles. Fortunately, Lydia is a MUCH better traveler than she was a couple years ago, when she’d fall asleep for an hour, then wake up screaming for the duration of the trip. Now she’s satisfied with her dolls, food, and occasional conversation from the parents.

Based on our limited examination, I’ve discovered that fast food places in NY and PA have changing tables in the men’s bathroom, but the ones in VA do not, only the women’s room. But one in a rest area south of Wilkes-Barre, PA had the changing table blocking one of the two urinals in the men’s room, and (I’m told) one of the two bathroom stalls in the women’s room.

I have a very irrational attraction for West Virginia based on remembering listening to WWVA in Wheeling, a powerful country station, during my childhood; it’s also the last state to enter the Union east of the Mississippi, in 1863, when it broke away from Virginia during the Civil War. But I need to remember that when I order tea in the South, and that apparently includes WV, they’ll serve you iced tea. (If you want tea, you have to ask for “hot tea”.)

Invariably, I get lost in Charlotte. Even though we were on WT Harris Blvd, a major road which wasn’t far from our final destination, I found myself pulling out the city map, to no avail, while standing in a mall. Fortunately, some former New Yorker took pity and gave us directions; we STILL got lost again, even though we were clearly in the neighborhood.

Found the house, finally, and eventually ate dinner. Watched some videos, and went to bed. Lydia was supposed to sleep on an air mattress, but THAT didn’t work, so she slept comfortably with her mother on an Eva Bed Base, while I slept on the air mattress. Lydia, though, had a coughing jag, so I got her cough medicine, which she didn’t want to take, and she started to cry. Carol gave her the liquid anyway and she REALLY started to cry, which woke up my sister. It also woke the dog, who started barking, which woke up my mother and my niece. It’s 1 a.m., and the whole house is awake. Merry Christmas.

More on this trip later, alternating with whatever strikes my fancy.