August 2009 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Autumn of 1988

After eight and a half years, I left my job at FantaCo in mid-November 1988. Leafing through some old journals, I was surprised – actually shocked – to see that I had actually planned to leave a full year earlier. I made a point making sure that people were trained to take on the the tasks I did, with the mail order especially, before I left so that owner Tom Skulan wouldn’t be left in a lurch.

It was odd. I was making more money at the end than i had ever made up to that time, plus paid health insurance, something Tom was providing only to himself and me, though others could get coverage on their own dime; I don’t recall anyone taking advantage of that offer, since they were all pretty young and weren’t making that much.

The problem is that I was making money from all the horror stuff we were selling, and more importantly producing. My old buddy Steve Bissette is currently delineating the Gore Shriek history (and selling some artwork of the period. In some way, it was almost passing the torch to Steve. I was involved in the Chronicles and the like, while Steve was present for the very first Gore Shriek in June of 1988. It was the comic books, not the horror stuff, that drew me to FantaCo, but I balanced the checkbook, and it was the horror stuff that kept FantaCo going month after month.

So I quit. I wasn’t angry, just burned out. Tom felt angry and betrayed, I suspected, and this was confirmed by a couple people. I felt badly that he felt that way but I couldn’t see any real options.

As it turned out, on Thanksgiving Day, I got a call from a guy I knew telling me that our mutual good friend Nancy Sharlet was dying of cancer. I met her when we both worked together at the Schenectady Arts Council in 1978. I started on March 1. March 7 was my birthday; not knowing me well, but wanting to acknowledge the day, she got me this little S.W.A.T. truck, which I have to this day.

The GREAT thing about being unemployed was that I could spend lots of time in the hospital with her, nearly every day for about a month, before her mother came up from Tennessee to tend to her in her last days. She died on January 1, 1989.

After the funeral, I never saw her kids Jocelyn and Jeffrey again. I assume they went to live with their father, Robert, who I did not know well.

I was watching Jon Stewart a couple weeks ago. His guest was a guy named Jeff Sharlet, who is the author of The Family: Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Could this be the Jeffrey Sharlet, the six-year-old I played SORRY with when he was six? I found this 2004 interview, and the answer is clearly yes.

“I grew up in what seemed like a mostly Catholic town in upstate New York.” Check. “My father is Jewish.” Check. “My mother, with whom I lived, had been raised in a very unusual Pentecostal home.” Jeffrey and his sister Jocelyn lived with their mother; her religion was a bit unclear. “Her mother, a very poor Tennessean”. Check. “She [his grandmother] raised my mother to be interested in everything.” Double check. “Going to other people’s churches and temples, gathering stories — in my family, that was just how you did religion.” Check, and the reason I was unclear of Nancy’s religion.”

I wrote to Jeff; he didn’t write back; that’s OK. I do wonder how his sister is, though.
ROG

August Ramblin’

Tuesday night, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to use the computer. I was startled by my wife entering the room – the fan drowned out any noise she made – and we decided to go downstairs to watch the NBC show The Office. We got through the March 19 episode where [SPOILER WARNING] Michael Scott quits Dunder Mifflin [end of warning]. This got me thinking about spoilers. There was a review of some sci-fi TV show, now on DVD, and the reviewer mentioned a significant character development. A commenter complained that he hadn’t seen the season yet, as he was waiting to watch it all on the DVD; the reviewer apologized. So what IS the rule for spoilers these days for a TV show or movie? Is it three months after the DVD comes out? What if the DVD NEVER comes out?

We’re now down to the last series we watch together. First we saw Scrubs, because we had all the episodes recorded. Then we got through 30 Rock; saw the season finale just last week, then a couple December shows in rerun that we’d missed when the DVR got fried in a late autumn lightning storm. I know what happens on The Office – chances are I read it in someone’s blog – but I have no expectation that the plot points remain a secret, though, in fact, my wife does not know, so DON’T TELL HER.

Since JEOPARDY! is in reruns, I’d decided to tape the Regis Who Wants to Be a Millionaire primetime episodes. A much better game with the 15-, 30- and 45-second clock. Of course, I saw the Patricia Heaton math meltdown; she really psyched herself out that she couldn’t get the answer to this question: “If a Euro is worth $1.50, five Euros is worth what?” Her choices are A.) 30 quarters, B.) 50 dimes, C.) 70 nickels, and D.) 90 pennies.
***
I’m reading the New Yorker for August 7 online this week, when I come across this: It’s big news in France and Germany that Willy DeVille, a founder of the band Mink DeVille, died yesterday in New York. The death of the director, producer, and screenwriter John Hughes is unmentioned in the major newspapers there. Nothing travels worse than the local rites of adolescence.
I totally missed that story. I wasn’t a huge fan of the band, but I do own some Mink DeVille on vinyl.
***
Yesterday, someone in my office was talking about the “famous” Doobie Brothers episodes of the show What’s Happening; I had no idea what he was talking about. But it was easy to find clips here and here and even each of the whole episodes on Hulu here and here. I DID see the series from time to time, but it was not appointment television for me.

Someone commented on why the show didn’t pick a black artist instead. I was instantly reminded of a 1977 Warner Brothers Loss Leader called Cook Book, “focusing on Warner’s black acts.” The only predominantly white act on the record was the Doobie Brothers. The song on the album was the same as the song on the What’s Happening episode of the same time frame, “Takin’ It to the Streets.” The Michael McDonald version of the group must have had some cred.
***
From the July 7, 2009 Fortune magazine comes this review of the book Cooperstown Confidential, by Zev Chafets. It addreses the inconsistencies in the process of getting into the Hall of Fame. Reviewer Daniel Okrent writes:
Sure, numbers count — RBIs, ERAs, etc. — but Chafets demonstrates that cronyism, prejudice, and financial self-interest play a huge part as well.

He addresses a variety of factors that have influenced the people who make (and unmake and remake and unremake) the rules. In 2009, in the looming shadows cast by Clemens and Bonds, the rule that matters most is No. 5, the one about character. It’s been used to keep out witnesses to gambling (Joe Jackson) and gamblers themselves (Pete Rose) but has somehow not been applied to cheaters (Gaylord Perry), racists (Cap Anson), sociopaths (Lefty Grove), and cheating racist sociopaths (Ty Cobb). Nor to a quantity of drunks, drug users, and other lowlifes that could fill the reservation book at Hazelden.

About those druggies: Most people who follow baseball closely suspect that a large share of Hall members from the ’70s and ’80s got their games up with the help of amphetamines. But Chafets has turned up evidence that steroids go back as far as the 1950s.

I guess it solidified my sense that the hysteria over the latest revelation from the (supposedly secret) list of 2003 users of substances that would become banned in 2004 just doesn’t disturb me as much as it does others.
***
And now, a message from movie maker Tyler Perry:
I’m back from Vegas and had a great time at the Hoodies, but I gotta give a quick WARNING to all my Facebookers, Twitters and TylerPerry board members: I’m so pissed right now!

I’m sitting in my den writing, minding my own business, when I get an email from my staff saying that someone put an ad up on Craigslist saying that I was casting a movie in L.A., and in order to be considered for this (FAKE) Tyler Perry movie, you have to join their club for $29.95. THAT IS A LIE, don’t fall for it. These folks are trying to rip you off. I hate for people to prey on people’s dreams and hopes. Why don’t people get a job and stop trying to steal folks’ hard-earned money….Ugh, that makes me mad; let me breathe.

Okay listen my dear folks, if anyone asks you to pay in order to do an audition or pay a fee to join a club to put you in a movie, please don’t fall for it. That’s not how it works in this business. It’s free to audition for any film. I’m calling my lawyers about these THIEVES! You’re my best help here, so please do me a favor and send this out to all your followers and friends.

Thanks,
TP

***

ROG

E is for Esther

There was a woman in my church named Esther who recently moved from the United States to Japan to be closer to her husband. So it got me thinking about women named Esther.

The first one that came to mind was Esther Williams. The swimmer and actress turned 88 this month. According to the Wikipedia, “She was National AAU champion in the 100 meter freestyle. She planned to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics but they were canceled to the outbreak of World War II.” Her movies became just an excuse for elaborately choreographed swim scenes, as explained in a clip from the 1994 movie That’s Entertainment. Here’s her appearance on an American game show of the 1950s,What’s My Line. As I’ve noted before, she and Ricardo Montalban were the first to popularize the classic tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

Esther Rolle was an American actress best known for playing the character Florida Evans on two programs produced by Norman Lear of All in the Family and Sanford and Son fame, Maude and Good Times. On Maude, she played a maid. Her playing the stereotypical black role made some people nervous and/or upset, but Maude was not your standard fare. In this clip, white liberal Maude hires a new housekeeper…” and from the moment she walks through the front door, Maude is determined to make her feel like an equal. However, her attempts lead Florida to decide to quit.”

In 1974, Ms. Rolle starred in her own show, Good Times; it was a spinoff of a spinoff, since the Maude character had first shown up in All in the Family. Florida and her husband James (John Amos) raised their three children in an inner-city high rise apartment building. Here are clips from Good Times: Season One. In this clip, youngest son Michael gets suspended after insisting George Washington was a racist.

Esther Rolle died in 1998.

Above is a fresco of “Queen Esther” from 1450 by Italian artist Andrea Del Castagno. You can read about the Biblical character here, and commentary here. Her actions brought about the Jewish holiday of Purim. The interesting thing about the Book of Esther is that God is never specifically mentioned.

There was a play at my former church a couple decades ago, and I got to play the evil Haman.

I always thought of Esther as an old-fashioned name, but as this list from Social Security Administration, the appellation, which means star, among other things, has never ranked below #350 in the list of most popular baby girl names in the United States since records started being kept back in in 1880.

Popularity of the female name Esther: Year of birth/ Rank
2008 274 (1,235 babies)
2007 275
2006 290
2005 281
2004 297
2003 289
2002 300
2001 300
2000 330
1999 319
1998 323
1997 319
1996 320
1995 308
1994 289
1993 301
1992 300
1991 301
1990 285
1989 290
1988 277
1987 288
1986 288
1985 289
1984 272
1983 274
1982 267
1981 273
1980 297
1979 315
1978 321
1977 311
1976 336
1975 320
1974 315
1973 312
1972 333
1971 332
1970 348 (724 babies)
1969 337
1968 322
1967 314
1966 290
1965 280
1964 286
1963 263
1962 252
1961 238
1960 234
1959 232
1958 227
1957 217
1956 209
1955 201
1954 193
1953 192
1952 180
1951 169
1950 162
1949 162
1948 155
1947 162
1946 151
1945 160
1944 152
1943 152
1942 143
1941 138
1940 131
1939 117
1938 120
1937 116
1936 107 (2,252 babies)
1935 94
1934 91
1933 88
1932 82
1931 79
1930 77
1929 71
1928 66
1927 64
1926 62
1925 56
1924 51
1923 47
1922 44
1921 42
1920 39
1919 38
1918 38
1917 38
1916 34
1915 33
1914 35
1913 32 (4,088 babies)
1912 33
1911 34
1910 38
1909 37
1908 36
1907 37
1906 33
1905 34
1904 32
1903 34
1902 35
1901 33
1900 39
1899 29
1898 31
1897 28
1896 27
1895 31
1894 36
1893 39
1892 67
1891 66
1890 75
1889 75
1888 77
1887 79
1886 85
1885 92
1884 99
1883 99
1882 97
1881 105
1880 104 (198 babies)

ROG

"Original" Log Cabin Syrup

When I was a kid, our household used to use Log Cabin syrup on our pancakes and waffles. Since I’ve been married to Carol, we’ve leaned more on using actual maple syrup. But it;’s expensive, and a few months ago decided to get some Log Cabin, partly out of nostalgia and partly out of the fact that I remembered liking it.

It wasn’t until I had actually opened the bottle when I read the ingredients: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup…Wait a minute. The bottle says Log Cabin Original Syrup, “a family tradition since 1887.” I have a strong sense that this product did NOT have HFCS when I was growing up. This is ORIGINAL? And my fear of HFCS predated this report about possible Mercury Poisoning. (Didn’t Graham Parker have a song named that?)

My wife bought a new bottle of Log Cabin last week. “Now! NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP” is displayed boldly. It just has corn syrup, liquid sugar (water, sugar), water, salt plus a bunch of other stuff that show up in processed foods these days and are in both versions -natural and artificial flavors, cellulose gum, preservatives, sodium hexametaphosphate (say what?), and caramel color.

Silly me. I finally figured out the word “original” is used by Pinnacle Foods to distinguish it from the “Lite” and “Sugar-Free” versions. I’m really glad Log Cabin has dropped HFCS – will they return to HFCS if there’s a sugar shortage? – but maybe we’ll see if we can find money in the budget for REAL maple syrup again.

ROG

Facebook quizzes

Because it’s too damn hot for anything else. So hot, in fact, that we got our nearly annual bat last night. I was up, wife was in bed, not asleep, when this small creature flew into the living room. Ultimately, the wife batted it down with a broom in mid-air, stunning it long enough to catch and release.

Myers-Briggs Personality Test

INFP (Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perception)
You are idealistic, loyal to your values and to people who are important to you. You want an external life that is congruent with your values. You are curious, quick to see possibilities, and can be a catalyst for implementing ideas. You seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. You are adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened. Famous people with your same INFP personality include: Mary the Blessed Virgin, Helen Keller, William Shakespeare, John F. Kennedy Jr., Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Roberts and Johnny Bacardi.

This is likely true.
***
Top five most famous people I’ve met
1. Former Chief Justice Earl Warren
2. Rod Serling
3. Nelson Rockefeller
4. Anita Baker
5. Alex Trebek
***
What color are you?
Red: You are both bold and romantic, just like the color Red! You aren’t afraid to take chances and live life to the fullest. Sometimes you go too far to get what you want, but you’re always up for love.

Obviously, I was hoping for a different color. Like green.
***
How Normal Are You?

Extremely Normal

You walked “downtown” growing up, know what a “Gondola” is and remember when Veterans’ Parkway was on the edge of town, and not the middle!

I am, of course, extremely insulted.
***
Full Personality Evaluation

You are a type 1C person
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

This is not entirely untrue. Certainly the change stuff is true. The introvert/extrovert thing is most DEFINITELY true.
***
And on another matter: Arthur at AmeriNZ writes about blogging. And, oh yeah, about me. BTW, as of today, I have 1829 posts started. 1749 have been published, and 2 are scheduled to be published (one tomorrow, one in September). 78 are in draft form. Some will eventually see the light of day, some won’t; it’s probably about 50/50.

ROG