Month: August 2014

Slacktivism against ALS

What’s the difference between the ice bucket challenge and going on a walk to alleviate hunger (which I’ve done)?

the_als_challenge_540There’s this guy in North Carolina named Chris Rosati with ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, who handed out donuts to folks at schools, children’s hospitals, and cancer wards. He wanted to inspire kids to come up with BIGG ideas of generosity. And he has succeeded in spreading an epidemic of kindness. As Steve Hartmann of CBS news put it: “A lot of people take on a cause when diagnosed with a terminal illness, but it’s usually to cure their own disease. Rosati, on the other hand, isn’t as interested in fighting ALS as he is in healing all of us.”

This has colored my reaction to that ice bucket challenge for ALS. On one hand, it’s silly; on the other, it obviously works. From Forbes: “Have you ever “been to a big-ticket charity gala? Seen the big shots competing for auction items? Visited a local hospital or museum and noticed the wing named for well-known local philanthropist I.M. Arichguy? Watched the main stage at the Clinton Global Initiative? Heard of corporate philanthropy? And so on.

“Narcissism is part of public philanthropy, though it may be too harsh a word. Enlightened self-interest is better – because it’s not just showing off.”

I think the cries of slacktivism from those who consider the ice bucket challenge no more than a waste of good water – there’s a drought in California! – rather miss the point.

I mean, what’s the difference between the ice bucket challenge and going on a walk to alleviate hunger (which I’ve done), or running to fight for breast cancer, or bicycling to take on some other cause? The ice bucket challenge is faster!

Some of the videos are even clever, such as THIS ONE. I AM sympathetic to the observations by local news anchor John Gray that some of the videos could have been better; his mother died from ALS. But even he ultimately applauds the effort.

This is true: the amount of money contributed to charities to fight diseases is not necessarily proportional to how many people have the disease, or how much they suffer. It is a matter of visibility; right now, ALS has got it.

I knew a guy named Robin for a number of years who developed ALS and has since died. He was a gutsy guy, using the latest technology to communicate, involving looking at letters attached to some voice-recognition software. But it’s a bastard of a disease, and if it can be eliminated, I’m all for it.
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Ironically, the co-founder of “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” drown at age 27.

Closing TV themes that are DIFFERENT than the opening theme

The show Tayo The Little Bus has a different opening and closing theme.

Frasier_LogoMy daughter wanted breakfast one morning recently. I thought to give her the tossed salad I had made the night before, which she merely nibbled at. Instead, I went with her request of scrambled eggs; the egg carton was under the salad bowl.

That made me think, naturally, of Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs, the end theme for the TV show Frasier [LISTEN to the extended version] . But what was the opening theme of that show? Seems that it varies a bit; LISTEN to this compilation.

What other shows have distinctive different opening and closing themes? By “distinctive”, I mean a totally different song. This eliminates tunes that are continuations of the opening (The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island), or slower versions (The Jeffersons) or weirder versions (Addams Family).

I’ve been told that some cable shows, such as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, and Girls end with different songs for each episode; not what I’m looking for.

The first show I thought of was All in the Family, which opens with Those Were The Days, sung by “Archie and “Edith”, [LISTEN to an extended version] and ends with the instrumental Remembering You [LISTEN].

The other that came to mind was WKRP in Cincinnati, with a sad, mellow song as the intro [LISTEN to an extended version] and that intentionally incomprehensible rocker at the end [LISTEN].

A colleague reminded me of The Monkees program, which, of course, starts with The Monkees Theme. It ends with some song I must say I didn’t know – I remember the “I wanna be free” part – but is For Pete’s Sake [LISTEN] from the Headquarters album. But Headquarters was their third album. In the first season of the show, did it start and end with the same song, as this clip [LISTEN] suggests? And did the ending get changed for syndication?

Another colleague mentioned Tayo The Little Bus, a program I had never heard of. But yes, here’s the opening theme [LISTEN] and the closer [LISTEN].

I found online a reference to Land of the Lost [LISTEN to opening and closing]. Wasn’t a show I watched.

Nor was I familiar with one found by fellow blogger Chuck Miller:

The original broadcast of the Vietnam drama Tour of Duty (CBS, 1988-91) had a generic drum and flute music at the end, but the opening credits were the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black.” That music was removed from the syndicated and DVD episodes, but there’s still a reference to the opening credits as written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

I took advantage of Ken Levine’s Friday Questions, one of which was about TV themes, to ask the question. Here are some of the responses:
Bosom Buddies (it’s “one show where the theme song (Billy Joel) had to be replaced because of Rights Issues”)
Happy Days’ first season
Gidget (“Ken’s favorite theme”)
The Monkees’ second season
Remington Steele after the first season
The Judy Garland Show
Captain and Tennille (“I’m pretty sure it was ‘Love will Keep Us Together’ at the opening and ‘A Song of Joy’ at the end.”)

What else, people? I’m probably talking about older shows, since, as Chuck correctly notes:

Unfortunately, today we don’t know a lot of the closing theme songs in that the last minutes of episodes are either showing previews for next week’s episode or promoting a different program; the closing credits zip by at lightning speed; about the only time we DO get a closing theme of any sort is if we watch the program via On Demand or in its DVD format.

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Begin Again

Keira Knightley told Jon Stewart that in her last 10 movies, her character dies seven or eight times.

Begin-Again-2I had heard that Begin Again was an Americanized version of the movie Once, which was not a particularly inviting prospect. I mean, I liked the 2006 movie about an Irish busker quite a bit, but didn’t need to see a variation. But Begin Again is largely a different thing, though it does share the fact that music is being performed outdoors, and has the same writer/director, John Carney.

Dan, a music-business executive (Mark Ruffalo) who drinks too much, sees the performance of Gretta, a shy young singer-songwriter (Keira Knightley), and visualizes what her music could sound like in the right hands. Unfortunately, he’s burned a few bridges with his former label partner Saul (Mos Def, billed as Yasiin Bey). So they have to be a bit more creative to realize their vision.

As the story develops, you might think you know why Dan is separated from his wife Miriam (Catherine Keener, who my wife knows I have a crush on) and is only a part-time dad to Violet (Hailee Steinfeld, star of the True Grit remake), but it’s more complicated. Even more so, Gretta’s back story before she ends up crashing on the sofa of her friend Steve (James Corden) is much richer, involving her partnership with Dave (Adam Levine), and is not what one might have expected. The movie also features Cee Lo Green as Dan’s old music colleague Troublegum.

I saw Knightley on The Daily Show a few weeks ago, and she told Jon Stewart that in her last 10 movies, her character dies seven or eight times. This is a nice change of pace. She sings more than adequately, though no particular song, save for the first one, I remember that well.

There are contrivances here and there, and the movie does develop a certain let’s-put-on-a-show vibe, as though it were a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney film, so I suppose it’s not as fresh as Once. Still, you feel as though Dan and Gretta earned their chance to…(see title).

This new gee-whiz techno-wizard world

I EXPECT technology to screw up on me.

puzzle_cook_bigWhile I’m technologically challenged, I’m impressed with people who have skills in this area. For me, these instructions are TOTALLY true.

It gives me some small comfort when Dustbury, a formerly gadget-crazy guy, explains why that old compact disc of mine is suddenly not working correctly. Or when Mark Evanier suddenly has trouble with software that seemed to be working.

Jaquandor recently asked: “How frustrating is it when stuff that’s supposed to work wonderfully in this new gee-whiz techno-wizard world just doesn’t?” This was in reaction to the trouble he’s had with Blogger’s mobile app and Windows Movie Maker.

I wrote in response: “I got REALLY annoyed when some of my auto-posts didn’t post. But it’s also why I’m technophobic; I EXPECT it to screw up.”

This brings me to:

1) The Android I got to use no longer works. Once I had the techie help me reset it, and it worked briefly. But NOW I turn it on, click on one program and it goes to another. Totally useless. While I enjoyed using it while I could, I never got so dependent upon it that its loss is catastrophic for me, because I expected it to fail me. And it did. I’m inconvenienced, and a little disappointed, but not surprised.

2) The hassle with the work computer. On a recent Sunday night, I noted that my work password was going to run out in five days, so I changed it. Monday morning, the new password didn’t work, so I used my old password. But I’m supposed to have a shared drive and my personal drive, yet I had neither. I rebooted, had some synch error (don’t ask, I don’t know), and couldn’t get on at all.

I call the help desk. The guy tells me the techie from our building needs to fix it. The techie from our building, though, is no longer contracted to work on our program’s computers. After two phone calls, he does come over, but he can’t fix it, because he no longer had administrative rights. Eventually, this gets resolved after a three-way conversation that fortunately did not involve me.

Technology’s great when it works.

F is for Floccinaucinihilipilification

I love the notion of the long word having a small meaning.

nothingFrom Uncommon parlance:
“Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act of estimating something as worthless or without value. It has the distinction of being the longest non-technical word in the English language.”

So why do we have such a long word to designate so little?

“Apparently the term was coined by pupils at Eton from a line in the Eton Latin Grammar that listed verbs that govern a genitive noun: Flocci, from floccus, a wisp or piece of wool + nauci, from naucum, (a trifle) + nihili, from the Latin pronoun, nihil (nothing) + pili, from pilus, (a hair, or something insignificant) + fication.”

In case you’re having any difficulty with the pronunciation, go HERE. It just trips off the tongue, does it not?

I’m quite fond of the notion of the long word having a small meaning. It’s somewhat like the musical term hemidemisemiquaver, which means a 64th note, which is mighty short. And while I grew up with the American notation, I LOVE the word hemidemisemiquaver.

And speaking of notes, LISTEN TO:

Worthless from The Brave Little Toaster
Nothing From Nothing – Billy Preston. It went to #1 in 1974.

And yes, floccinaucinihilipilification is another one of those words that you ALMOST never see in blogs.

abc15

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

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