October 2014 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

#1 songs on my birthday, 2004-2014

My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday. You can go to the website and hear the other contenders. If I’ve heard it before, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea?

2/21/04 Twista feat. Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – Slow Jamz
2/28/04 Usher feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris – Yeah!
5/22/04 Usher -Burn

Slow Jamz has lyric content I hate. Didn’t know either Usher song, but wasn’t thrilled with Yeah, so I’ll pick Burn, unheard.

1/1/05 Mario – Let Me Love You
3/5/05 50 Cent feat. Olivia – Candy Shop
5/7/05 Gwen Stefani Hollaback Girl

I like the Mario song, but I really like the Stefani song. The 50 Cent song, which I didn’t know, I pretty much hate.

1/21/06 Nelly feat. Paul Wall, Ali & Gipp – Grillz
2/4/06 Beyonce feat. Slim Thug – Check On It
3/11/06 James Blunt – You’re Beautiful

Don’t know Grillz, though I probably heard it at some point. Didn’t know the Beyonce either, though it should be noted that she mentioned twerking much earlier than the general public was aware of it; it did not do much for me on first listen. Blunt, by default.

2/24/07 Nelly Furtado – Say It Right
3/3/07 Justin Timberlake – What Goes Around…Comes Around
3/10/07 Mims – This Is Why I’m Hot

That I really never heard ANY of these I must attribute to raising a toddler. Rather like the Timberlake song, now that I’ve listened to it. If there are songs you think I REALLY need to hear on this list, please let me know.

11/31/07 Alicia Keys – No One
1/5/08 Flo Rida feat. T-Pain – Low
3/15/08 Usher feat. Young Jeezy – Love In This Club

Another trio of songs I don’t know. I realize that I must be a real prude, because all these songs specifically about sex make me uncomfortable. So I’ll select Alicia Keys, unheard.

2/21/09 Eminem, Dr. Dre & 50 Cent – Crack A Bottle
2/28/09 Flo Rida – Right Round
4/11/09 Lady Gaga – Poker Face

Two Flo Rida songs in a row! I like this one a lot more than the other; it sounds familiar after I played it. Still, I’ll pick Gaga.

1/2/10 Ke$ha – TiK ToK
3/6/10 The Black Eyed Peas – Imma Be Rocking That Body
3/20/10 Taio Cruz feat. Ludacris – Break Your Heart

I like the idea of the Peas’ song more than its execution. Don’t know the Cruz song. I vaguely remember the Ke$ha song which has too much Autotune for my taste, but I’ll pick it anyway.

2/19/11 Wiz Khalifa – Black And Yellow
2/26/11 Lady Gaga – Born This Way
4/9/11 Katy Perry feat. Kanye West – E.T.

I’ve been reading this book about the Beatles, and note that they were struggling to figure out their own philosophy/theology. Gaga seems to have known right off; I pick that one. It STILL sounds like a Madonna tune, though. Don’t know the Khalifa song, and only barely remember the Perry song.

2/18/12 Kelly Clarkson – Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)
3/3/12 Katy Perry – Part Of Me
3/17/12 Fun. feat. Janelle Monae – We Are Young

For the first time in years, I actually had heard all three songs before! I’ve always had affection for Kelly Clarkson from that first season of American Idol. The changing rhythms of the Fun. song intrigue me. I like the empowerment angle in the Perry song, so I’ll keep that.

2/2/13 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz – Thrift Shop
3/2/13 Baauer – Harlem Shake
4/20/13 Bruno Mars – When I Was Your Man

I think Thrift Shop must be a good song, because it conveys the ick factor of used merchandise. I remember when I got the video for Harlem Shuffle before it was popular, and I noted that I didn’t “get” it; it WAS a different video. That leaves the straight-ahead Bruno Mars tune that I’ll choose.

1/18/14 Pitbull feat. Ke$ha – Timber
2/8/14 Katy Perry feat. Juicy J – Dark Horse
3/29/14 Pharrell Williams – Happy

There are parts of Timber I like, mostly the sections without Pitbull. I didn’t know the Perry song, and it didn’t grab me. I read later it’s some sort of “reheated trip hop”; you know you’re getting old when the description of the music is meaningless to you.

So I’ll pick Happy. There was one of those online polls of the worst pop song, the kind of thing I usually pick the Men in My Little Girl’s Life by Mike Douglas (#6 in ’66 – sign of the devil) or We Built This City. Happy showed up several times. I think they are conflating bad songs with songs people get tired of hearing (Freebird, Stairway to Heaven, Yesterday, Piano Man); doesn’t mean the song is bad, but that it’s been heard too often.

Antics of comic books and film

Marvel can (and probably will) bring back the Fantastic Four, because, as someone who read the four-color items for three decades, almost nothing is permanent in the comic books.

I was, as noted, very happy that Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Marvel Universe (at worst) won his legal action with Marvel Comics. But it points out how much money must be involved, a rumored $30 million to the Kirby heirs.

It appears that Marvel Comics is canceling the Fantastic Four comic book, one of its flagship titles, and it’s likely it’s because of too little money, not from the comic book, but from the movies.

Before the superhero-movie renaissance, a struggling Marvel sold the FF’s film rights (along with those of the X-Men) to 20th Century Fox at terms very favorable to Fox. Fast-forward to now: Fox is rebooting the Fantastic Four film franchise and Marvel gets hardly any money out of the movie, unlike the insane cash it makes on flicks made by its own studio (Avengers, Captain America, and the other titles in that universe) and the Spider-Man franchise (owned by Sony, who cut a good bargain with Marvel a while back)…

So, it would seem, if Marvel cancels the comic book, the movies won’t do as well. If Fox stops making movies, the rights to the movie portrayals revert to Marvel. THEN Marvel can (and probably will) bring back the FF, because, as someone who read the four-color items for three decades, almost nothing is permanent in the comic books.

Now Marvel can’t very well dump the X-Men, their most successful comic book for decades. But they could, as noted X-Men scribe Chris Claremont wrote, forbid writers from creating new characters lest they become the property of Fox. This does not serve the comic book well, I believe.

My only horse in this race is that once upon a time, I edited magazines about the X-Men and the Fantastic Four (and Spider-Man), so I have a historical affection for the characters, though I haven’t read much of them in two decades.

As this infographic suggests, the movies of both Marvel and DC are very important.

John Green tells why he hates Batman. But if you’re in the Albany area, check out Batman’s 75th Anniversary Celebration at Albany Public Library branches this week.

Proximate disaster

A blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people

When I read about wildfires in San Diego County, California, or flooding in Mecklenberg County (Charlotte), North Carolina, I contact the appropriate sister to check out if she’s being affected. Usually, the answer is no, though one year, a fire was uncomfortably close.

They do the same for me. Flash floods five miles from Albany made the national news, but the actual storm missed me.

I was thinking about this because my friend Karen, who I’ve only known since 1958, has been in Bhutan and Nepal. Cyclone HudHud created some landslides in Nepal. So when we heard that a blizzard and several avalanches in the Himalayas in central Nepal are reported to have killed more than two dozen people, her friends, including me, were concerned.

She explained on Facebook(!), where I purloined her picture, that, according to the local paper The Himalayan, “rescue missions are underway on Huinchili,” one of the mountains visible to her on the trek. Fortunately, she went no higher than 7000 feet; she did have to endure hiking uphill for six hours in “incessant raw rain.” But the snow was at much higher elevations, causing the avalanches.

Some guy in Albany riding a bike got shot, apparently in the head, at 9:40 a.m. on Thursday. I found this more than a little unsettling. When I started riding my bike to the choir that evening, I realized that I just didn’t want to be out; totally irrational, I know, but nevertheless true.

Mistakes were made in treating Ebola in the United States. The second nurse who got infected should not have been allowed to fly. I’d bet money, and I seldom do, that at least one of the two US nurses who got infected were exposed when they took off the protective suits.

But all the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, that he, e.g., wanted the disease to come to the US to get back at white people shred both common sense and common decency.

Time passages

I’ve read old journals/diaries of mine from the 1970s and 1980s, and much of it is cringeworthy.

I read this book last year, Thinking in Numbers, by Daniel Tammet, and discovered that I had something in common with American philosopher William James, who noted that “the same space of time seems shorter as we grow older.” He cites a mathematical explanation by contemporary French mathematician Paul Janet, who noted:

our experience of time is proportional to our age. For a ten-year-old child, one year represents one-tenth of his existence, whereas for a man of fifty, the same year equates only to one-fiftieth (2 percent). The older man’s year will thus seem to elapse five times faster than the child’s…

I came to that same conclusion at least thirty years ago; it’s all math.

Someone on Facebook noted that the TV series The Twilight Zone – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Where Is Everybody?” was presented 55 years ago this month, October 2, 1959. Another commented, “I can hardly believe it.” This response seemed strange. Things that happened 50 years ago (Beatles, ML King, Vietnam) feel like a long time ago to me.

Whereas, when the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the TV show Friends made Jaquandor feel old, that seems more understandable to me. (Not that he’s old, but that he feels so.) Because looking back 20 years doesn’t feel like twenty years when you’re over 40; it’s all math.

Friends isn’t that chronological linchpin for me, as I watched it only about half the time. But the band Nirvana is; the band, with Dave Grohl as its final drummer, just before stardom, got together 24 years ago. Now THAT makes ME feel old.

Looking back can be kind of uncomfortably yucky. Ken Levine listened to tapes of radio programs he DJed in the 1970s and cringes a bit. The Coverville is celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall, but host Brian Ibbott said on that program, “Don’t listen to the first year,” when he was figuring out the format. I know that feeling.

For some obscure reason, I’ve read old journals/diaries of mine from the 1970s and 1980s, and much of it is cringeworthy. The only reasons I keep them are these: 1) I could use some of it to cull out family and FantaCo history; 2) all the terrible stuff I could throw together as a roman a clef.

The Cosby Show, Black-ish, and how 30 years has seemingly vanished

It deeply bothers me that we’ve basically erased all of the cultural gains made by The Cosby Show and a well-off suburban black family is suddenly a big mystery again.

Why write a blog post when you can steal from others?

Every week, or usually more often, writer Ken Levine, whose television credits include MASH, and importantly for this context, CHEERS, answers question from his readers. From Charles H. Bryan:

“I was thinking today, a little, about THE COSBY SHOW of the 80s. I think if you mention the show to someone who was watching TV then, they’ll say they liked it and think well of it, but it won’t pop up on a list without the prompt. I think people more likely remember SEINFELD, or FRIENDS, or CHEERS as being part of NBC Thursday. I think more people would recall the Keatons than the Huxtables. Do you think THE COSBY SHOW gets the discussion that it should?”

THE COSBY SHOW was one of the most influential television programs in the history of the medium.
At the time it premiered in 1984 there was a lot of talk that sitcoms were an endangered species. That one show changed everything. The ratings were spectacular and no show in today’s landscape will ever have the impact THE COSBY SHOW had. CHEERS and FAMILY TIES only became smash hits because they followed THE COSBY SHOW.

Creatively, however, I don’t think THE COSBY SHOW aged well. And it’s not just because of those sweaters. In fairness, the first year was wonderful. Funny, fresh, and with attitudes that were real. And it had one of the best pilots ever. I show it to my USC Comedy class every semester.

But as the series progressed and Bill assumed more creative control the show became way more preachy. Scripts were routinely just thrown out by Bill so the poor writing staff was churning out material night and day. Not surprisingly, he would burn them out. And the end result reflected that. Some terrific writers were reduced to galley slaves. So you never got the advantage of seeing them at their best.

Today the show feels dated and somewhat overbearing. But again, give it its due. THE COSBY SHOW must go down as one of the greatest shows in the history of TV.

Jaquandor was “never a big fan of The Cosby Show, to be honest. I didn’t hate it, by any means; it just didn’t light my fire.” I wonder if he were watching those latter, preachier seasons.

Next up, SamuraiFrog, the Midwest blogger who has been helping me (thank goodness) with ABC Wednesday, is rather knowledgeable about the nuances of race vis a vis television. His review of the new ABC sitcom Black-ish is so on target:

I especially get annoyed at the AV Club’s criticism of black shows and movies…

…this morning I happened to catch the first paragraph of their review of the second episode of Black-ish, and I think the reviewer missed the point.

“The biggest concern after Black-ish’s very good and unique premiere was whether the show would maintain its dedication to intelligently remarking on cultural diversity while putting race at the foreground or would it instead fall into the trap of becoming nothing more than a simplistic family sitcom (albeit one that makes the stray reference to a prominent aspect of black culture)…”

I found that comment a bit disappointing, because I think it comes from this sort of thinking that it’s revolutionary in 2014 to have African-Americans on network TV. The sad thing is that that might be true. At the very least, it’s become disappointingly unusual. Network TV has backslid a long, long way since the days of Good Times or The Cosby Show or even The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That show was a generation ago. When was the last time ABC actually had a black sitcom on the air?…

I saw some reviewers who were breathlessly surprised at how “normal” and “relatable” the show was, as though it was a revelation for some that a black guy knew his own father and didn’t speak exclusively through gangsta slang. And it’s depressing to realize that those attitudes are what this show is up against.

The AV Club reviewer seems disappointed that every episode isn’t going to be The White Person’s Guide to Modern African-American Culture. But that dehumanizes the characters and turns them simply into avatars of modern blackness and sets “black” as their defining characteristic. That’s not the point. The show can and should deal with race, but not exclusively. There is and should be more going on on this show than the Black Problem of the Week. It’s also about a family. About people. About people who have more going on in their lives than contextualizing blackness for a white audience.

It deeply bothers me that we’ve basically erased all of the cultural gains made by The Cosby Show and a well-off suburban black family is suddenly a big mystery again, and too many white critics can’t relate to it if Dre isn’t trying to get the family to out-black themselves every week. (By and large, the black critics I’ve seen are relieved that the show seems to be going in the direction it’s going in, rather than shouldering the burden of symbolically translating Unsolved Black Mysteries every week.) I think there’s a real social concern in every black form of entertainment being a litmus test on whether white people are “ready” to relate to black people. Apparently we’re never ready!

I appreciated what SamuraiFrog wrote, though I found it quite depressing that we’re having “the conversation” about race and television in 2014 that I thought was largely resolved three decades ago.

While I’m at it, here are two other Cosby Show-related links from Mr. Frog:

*The last 11 minutes of an episode of The Cosby Show, “Cliff’s Nightmare.” “In the episode, Cliff eats a sausage sandwich late at night and, trying to sleep with an upset stomach, finds himself in a Muppet-filled nightmare hospital.”

* His obit for Geoffrey Holder 1930-2014 notes, among other things, that Holder, best known to most Americans as the 7Up pitchman, choreographed the season 5 opening of The Cosby Show, which was SF’s favorite title sequence.

Season 5 is my second favorite opening after the season 4 Bobby McFerrin/wedding iteration, but the one Malcolm Jamal Warner least like doing. Check out Celebrating 30 Years of ‘The Cosby Show’ by Debating Four Key ‘Cosby’ Questions. Better yet, check out all of the Cosby Show intros.