Month: October 2008

Follow the lead QUESTIONS

One of the things I learned as a librarian and as a citizen is that, much as it pains me, I can’t know everything. So it’s good to know people who you know and trust to vet things for you.

For instance, if I were suddenly to develop an interest in Doctor Who and wanted to know what book to read first, I wouldn’t bother researching it,; I’d just ask Gordon.

So it is with local politics. There’s coterie of people whose opinion I trust who I can usually count on for selecting candidates to support. In the last Democratic primary, most of them were supporting one particular candidate. But then another person, who is also a guidepost, not only backed another candidate, but noted some rather uncomplimentary things about the candidate my other friends backed.

Well, I’ve come to the same conundrum regarding some federal legislation concerning the copyright of “orphan works”. On one side of the issue is Paul Rapp, an intellectual property lawyer around here, who supports the idea of the bill. In fact, I wrote about it, and Paul, a/k/a F. Lee Harvey Blotto, drummer of the legendary band Blotto, here. I’ve known Paul since the early 1980s and trust his judgment. Also on this side is the Special Libraries association, of which I am a member, which supported these modifications to the original legislation.

But on the other side is Steve Bissette, artist extraordinaire, who has a much more negative view, to say the least, as noted here and here. I knew Steve from the mid-1980s, when he produced work that was published by my publisher, FantaCo. We have re-bonded recently in our attempt to get the FantaCo Wikipedia spost corrected. He fears the artists being ripped off.

The topic came up at work when one client of the SBDC had a piece of artwork produced by a street artist and wanted to use the art as part of a logo for her new store. Whole the art belonged to the entrepreneur, the image was copyrighted by the creator. But who is he? Where is he? Is he still alive? Based on precedent established in the library community, our librarian recommended that the business make a “good faith effort” to find the copyright holder, through paid ads in the newspaper and art newsweekly in the city where the artist had been working, describing in detail the situation.

I looked at the material Steve provided, and while I understand that the creative community fears that the legislation will create a license to steal and that people will just pretend to look for an owner before using the image, it seems to me is that this is how it’s currently working without legislation.

The bill appears to be dead this year – apparently some economic bailout seems to have been more important – but the issue will come up again.

So, my questions:

1. What topics, if any, do you tend to look to others to help inform you? Who are these information leaders?

2. What is your understanding of orphan works copyright legislation?

I’m so confused…

ROG

ROG

Of Condoms and Cough Drops

There’s a CVS drugstore just three blocks from our house, where we do much of our non-food shopping, such as for detergent, greeting cards and of course, drugs. By “drugs”, I mean that in the pharmaceutical way. You can get one of those little plastic cards that will mean savings coupons are generated at the register when you hit certain thresholds on certain products.

Yhen recently, we got in the mail another CVS card, this one co-branded by our health insurance company. The thing is that one can’t use the coupons generated by the old card for purchases made using the new card. But one does get a discount on items eligible for flex spending on the new card. So at least on one occasion, I had to split the purchase, buying some items using a coupon with the old card and others with the new card.

So what IS eligible for flex spending, besides medical payments? Obviously, over the counter medicines. Also my wife’s contact lens solution. Among other things, I discovered that condoms and cough drops are also included. Here’s the complete list.
***
The English Will Purge Their Language unless… well, read the piece. the words are:
Abstergent: Cleansing
Agrestic: Rural
Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity: Perishableness
Caliginosity: Dimness
Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle: To confuse
Exuviate: To shed
Fatidical: Prophetic
Fubsy: Squat
Griseous: Somewhat grey
Malison: A curse
Mansuetude: Gentleness
Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman
Niddering: Cowardly
Nitid: Bright
Olid: Foul-smelling
Oppugnant: Combative
Periapt: An amulet
Recrement: Refuse
Roborant: Tending to fortify
Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Vaticinate: Prophesy
Vilipend: To treat with contempt

Lessee, I vilpend the niddering, olid and oppugnant malison to exuviate the CED.

ROG

ROG

Oscar-Worthy Movies I’ve Seen: 1939


Finally to 1939. THE first great year in cinema, it is widely agreed.
Picture:
“GONE WITH THE WIND”, “Dark Victory”, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, “Love Affair”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Ninotchka”, “Of Mice and Men”, “Stagecoach”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Wuthering Heights”
At least three different times I said, “I really MUST watch “Gone with the Wind”, the first time when it was on broadcast TV and was in the top dozen shows ever broadcast on prime time TV. But I got bored the then, and have yet to sit through the whole thing. (Yet I found the Carol Burnett parody inspiring.) It was the longest feature film released up to that point, and I’m not holding my breath to see if I’ll finally carve out nearly four hours to watch it, even though it won 8 awards out of 13 nominations, including Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing, plus two special citations.
I definitely saw Mr. Smith, Stagecoach. I probably saw Mr. Chips, Of Mice and Men and Wuthering Heights. I almost certainly did not see Dark Victory, Love Affair (though I did see the remake, An Affair to Remember) or Ninotchka.
Then there’s The Wizard of Oz. When I was growing up in the 1960s, I watched it every year. I must have seen it seven or eight times on our BLACK AND WHITE TV. Scariest part? The damn trees. THEN we got a color TV for Christmas 1969 or 1970, and when I saw it again, it was like seeing it for the first time! What a treat! And I finally got the “horse of as different color” joke; in b&w, the horse is just different shades of gray. It got six nominations but only two wins – Best Song (Over the Rainbow – almost cut from the film!) and Best Original Score (including my favorite, music for Miss Gulch on her bicycle, which, as a bicyclist I’ve been tortured with. None of the actors got a standard Oscar, though Judy Garland received a special juvenile Oscar.
Actor:
ROBERT DONAT in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, Clark Gable in “Gone With The Wind”, Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights”, Mickey Rooney in “Babes in Arms”, James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
A category where GWTW did NOT win. Donat probably won as much for earlier roles, such as in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps, as for this one. I don’t recall seeing Babes in Arms.
Actress:
VIVIEN LEIGH in “Gone With The Wind”, Bette Davis in “Dark Victory”, Irene Dunne in “Love Affair”, Greta Garbo in “Ninotchka”, Greer Garson in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”
For the first time, both lead acting awards went to British performers.
Supporting Actor:
THOMAS MITCHELL in “Stagecoach”, Brian Aherne in “Juarez”, Harry Carey in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, Brian Donlevy in “Beau Geste”, Claude Rains in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
Mitchell’s sole Oscar came in a year he also played Scarlett O’Hara’s father Gerald in Gone With The Wind, a grounded flyer Kid Dabb in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings and newspaperman Diz Moore in Mr. Smith, among other roles.
Supporting Actress:
HATTIE MCDANIEL in “Gone With The Wind”, Olivia de Havilland in “Gone With The Wind”, Geraldine Fitzgerald in “Wuthering Heights”, Edna May Oliver in “Drums Along the Mohawk”, Maria Ouspenskaya in “Love Affair”
I suppose I should see the first African-American performer to be nominated and win. Shouldn’t I?
Director:
VICTOR FLEMING for “Gone With The Wind”, Frank Capra for “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, John Ford for “Stagecoach”, Sam Wood for “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, William Wyler for “Wuthering Heights”
A change Academy rules meant that directors could be nominated for only one film in a single year. Fleming also directed The Wizard of Oz, thus solidifying his already huge chances.

That year, the first Oscar for Visual Effects was given, not to Gone With the Wind and its burning of Atlanta sequence, or to the Wizard of Oz with the cyclone sequence or the flying monkeys, but to something called The Rains Came, which I’d never heard of. Disney won eighth consecutive Short Subject: Cartoon Oscar for The Ugly Duckling

Other 1939 films
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – believe I saw years ago
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex – no
Golden Boy – no
Intermezzo: A Love Story – no
Young Mr. Lincoln – yes
Midnight – no
Only Angels Have Wings – no
Destry Rides Again – don’t think so
The Women (being remade in 2008) – no
The Hound of the Baskervilles – I might have
Gunga Din – almost certainly I did

ROG

ROG

ABC Wednesday: L is for Little Roger and the Goosebumps & Led Zeppelin


As is my wont, I was listening to the Coverville podcast a couple weeks ago. Brian Ibbott decided to play several covers of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, some straightforward, some silly. I was disappointed, though, that he didn’t play my favorite cover by Little Roger and the Goosebumps, Stairway to Gilligan’s Island. As it turns out, Brian had played it on this April 2007 episode.

I discovered that the song, recorded in March 1978, and released it as a single in May 1978, inspired Led Zeppelin’s lawyers to threaten to sue for copyright infringement and demanded that remaining copies of the recording be destroyed. This is highly ironic, given the fact that Stairway seems to be heavily copped from the 1968 song Taurus by the group Spirit, the first song on that recent Coverville episode, a snippet of which can also be found here. In fact, this website addresses many of Led Zeppelin’s “influences”.

At least I own a collector’s item.

HERE.
***
October 9 birthdays in the category: Lennon, Sean, who I saw perform last year, and his late father John, who is represeented here:
or here.

.

ROG

ROG

American Stupidity

I’ve indicated that I’ll be voting for Barack Obama for President. No, I don’t think he’s the best thing since sliced bread or anything, but his views are more in line with mine than John McCain’s are.

But then, stuff happens that tend to solidify my support for Obama, in this case two e-mails from the same person who works in my building Friday afternoon. One was titled “American Stupidity?” and starts off:

A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.
Pause a moment, reflect back.
These events are actual events from history.
They really happened!!!
Do you remember?
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male extremist.

It continues on noting events from the Munich Olympics killings to the death of Daniel Pearl, all done by…you guessed it, “Muslim male extremists.”
Then there’s a pro-profiling rant, followed by:

According to The Book of Revelations (sic):
The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40’s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal….the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything.

As Snopes notes, such a description is false on at least two levels. The Book of Revelation (singular) has no such description, and it could not be describing a Muslim man since The Book was written more than 400 YEARS BEFORE ISLAM!

And Now:
For the award winning Act of Stupidity Of all times the People of America want to elect, to the most Powerful position on the face of the Planet — The Presidency of the United states of America .. A Male of Muslim descent who is the most extremely liberal Senator in Congress (in other words an extremist) and in his 40’s.

Have the American People completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason ???
I’m sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the ‘unknown’ candidate Obama…
As the writer of the award winning story ‘Forest Gump’ so aptly put it,’Stupid Is As Stupid Does’

This combination of xenophobic fear-mongering, mixed with a bastardization of my Christian faith, really infuriated me. I became desperately desirous to provide a list of a dozen non-Muslims (James Earl Ray, Ted Bundy, the Columbine kids, Timothy McVeigh, et al) who either killed a major figure or committed multiple slayings in the last four decades, but I resisted. Instead, I wrote back: “Obama is not a Muslim”. Then I quickly get a SECOND e-mail:

This one had the usual blather “proving” Obama was a Muslim (disputed by Snopes here, and “ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran. (Snopes addresses that here.)

I suppose the worse thing about this is the fact that the e-mailer considers herself a Christian. Her reason for voting for W. and for now supporting Sarah Palin has to do with their “Christian values”. Well, in my lectionary for this past week, one reading was from Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments. Verse 16: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” In an electronic age, one’s neighbor is just about everyone.

Now, add to the mix the shocking revelation (chortle) that race actually matters to the American voter, and it’s all mads me a little bit cranky, but also even more likely to vote for Obama than I was before.

So thanks, LJ. Your e-mails have brought me much clarity, but possibly not the conclusion you sought. Oh, and please stop spreading lies.
ROG

ROG
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