November 2014 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 128: Weird Al

The Daughter asked if I’ve done an ABC Wednesday Y is for Yankovic; why, yes, I have.

The Daughter was introduced to Weird Al Yankovic on the release of his July 2014 album, Mandatory Fun, which opened at #1 on the Billboard charts, the first comedy album since 1963 to top the charts. She went away for about a week to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in mid-August, spending time with her 13 y.o. twin cousins and she comes home a Weird Al maven.

This is not a bad thing, mind you. I’ve been following the musician’s career for about three and a half decades, back when it was primarily him playing the accordion on songs such as My Bologna (parody of The Knack’s My Sharona) and Another One Rides the Bus (take on Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust)- versions you can hear HERE – before his sound got more sophisticated and full with I Love Rocky Road (Joan Jett’s I Love Rock and Roll), Eat It (Michael Jackson’s Beat It) and Ricky (an I Love Lucy pastiche based on Mickey by Toni Basil).

The Daughter asked if I’ve done an ABC Wednesday Y is for Yankovic; why, yes, I have.

She came up with her Top 10 videos. All of the songs can be found HERE except the newest ones, indicated with an *, which can be found on the Weird Al main page.

10. Handy* (home repair, based on Fancy by Iggy Azalea)
9. Like a Surgeon (based on Like a Virgin by Madonna)
8. Fat (based on Michael Jackson’s Bad)
7. Eat It
6. I Lost on JEOPARDY! (about the TV game show, based on the Greg Kihn Band’s Jeopardy)
5. White and Nerdy (parody of “Ridin'” by Chamillionaire)
4. Foil* (about the aluminum wrap, based on Royals by Lorde)
3. Word Crimes* (about linguistic sins, based on Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke)
2. Amish Paradise (based on Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio)
1. First World Problems* (style parody of Pixies)

She challenged me to come up with my own list, but it’s so changeable. Here’s a snapshot in time:

10. Trapped In The Drive-Thru (based on Trapped in the Closet by R. Kelly)
9. Dare To Be Stupid (style parody of Devo)
8. Stop Forwarding This Crap To Me (style parody of Jim Steinman, who wrote a lot for Meat Loaf)
7. Tacky* (based on Happy by Pharrell Williams)
6. Gump (about the movie character Forrest Gump, based on Lump by The Presidents of the United States of America)
5. Mission Statement* (every business cliche you hate, a style parody of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
4. Amish Paradise
3. I Lost on JEOPARDY! – since I have, this HAD to be on the list
2. Word Crimes*
1. Smells Like Nirvana (parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana)

But her affection for Foil, Handy, and especially First World Problem may alter my list.

She also insisted that The Wife, less seeped in Yankovicmania, make her list:

5. Like A Surgeon
4. Fat
3. Eat It
2. Tacky
1. Word Crimes

T is for Tarantism

There are at least a dozen SEPARATE songs with the title Dance with Me, or a variation (Dance Wit’ Me. e.g.) that charted on the US charts.

Tarantism (n.) is an illness characterized by the sudden urge to dance. More specifically, according to Merriam Webster, it is “a dancing mania or malady of late medieval Europe popularly regarded as being caused by the bite of the European tarantula (Lycosa tarentula).”

Here’s an interesting article about the topic. As I suspected, the dance of the tarantella is tied to this narrative; see an example of that dance HERE.

I’m convinced that just about any kind of dancing will heal the spider’s bite.

25 Amazing Dances From Around The World, and a really cool site, Discover Folk Dances from Around The World, unfortunately with some dead links. And THIS (don’t know if it works if you’re not on Facebook).

Top 10 Dance Movies according to Mojo.com; I’m sure you’ll disagree with some of the picks, as I do.

There are at least a dozen SEPARATE songs with the title Dance with Me, or a variation (Dance Wit’ Me. e.g.) that charted on the US charts! I’m not talking covers, I’m talking totally different words and music.

Some of MANY dance songs to LISTEN to. (Ranks on US Billboard pop charts.)
The Jackson 5 – Dancing Machine (#2 in 1974)
David Bowie – Let’s Dance (#1 in 1983)
Billy Idol – Dancing With Myself (#102 in 1983)
Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark (#2 in 1984)
Martha and the Vandellas -Dancing in the Street (#2 in 1964)

Finally, LISTEN to the only song to be #1 on the US pop charts in two non-consecutive years. Did you know what it was? The years, BTW, were 1960 and 1962.

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

The Bill Cosby disintegration

The Cosby Show helped to redefine, for a while, what black people on TV were like.

Kennedy Center Honors winner Bill Cosby (1998)

Mark Evanier was right when he wrote: “You can kind of tell Bill Cosby is in serious trouble because the photos of him have all gone from looking like” the Cosby of thirty or forty years ago “to looking like” the 77-year-old man that he is. “Much the same change has occurred in a lot of minds.”

Bill Cosby was someone I looked to, not just because I found him funny. Though I did find his stories hilarious, especially on his comedy albums of the mid-1960s.

He was, at least as a public figure, a decent person, supportive of education in particular, for which he received a Ph.D. It’d be difficult to overstate the importance of his role on the TV show I Spy. I suggest that he was as significant an entertainer, and specifically a black performer, as Harry Belafonte or Sidney Poitier.

I enjoyed the Bill Cosby Show, where he played a teacher. His role as a doctor, husband, and father with an upwardly mobile family on the Cosby Show helped to redefine, for a while, what black people on TV were like.

While I barely care what the Duggar family, or that Duck Dynasty guy, or someone from Honey Boo Boo, or Kirk Cameron say or do, Bill Cosby engendered a lot of goodwill. Heck, he could sell us Jello pudding.

So these accusations of rape are increasingly credible, with story after story of similar detail.

One can ask why there were hints and allegations going back years, yet no charges were filed, and the statute of limitations has passed. It’s reasonable to assume it was from the horrible embarrassment the women would likely have gone through. As proof, note the verbal abuse the accusers are currently experiencing.

As The Atlantic put it: “Lacking physical evidence, adjudicating rape accusations is a murky business for journalists. But believing Bill Cosby does not require you to take one person’s word over another—it requires you take one person’s word over 15 others.”

Or as Cynthia Tucker put it: “Cliff Huxtable And Bill Cosby Are No Longer The Same Man.” And quite possibly, never were.
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Dirty little open secrets: How the Jian Ghomeshi scandal helped turn the tide against Bill Cosby.

The Library Gala

This picture of me with Scott Jarzombek is NOT indicative of my mood that night.

I went to this Literary Legends event Saturday night, sponsored by The Albany Public Library Foundation, organized by former APL board member, and current Foundation head, Holly McKenna.

I had met the three honorees before. Interestingly, two of them work for the local newspaper, the Times Union, and one did for about a decade.

William Kennedy has written eight books of fiction, based on the colorful real characters in Albany’s past. He also wrote a non-fiction book, O Albany! which might be another starting point for the history of the city.

The last time I met Bill Kennedy, he had arranged for Douglas Blackmon to speak at a Friends of the APL event. Blackmon wrote the book Slavery by Another Name. There was a luncheon before that, and I got to sit next to Blackmon, a Wall Street Journal writer. Finally, at some point, he asked to switch with me so that he could talk to Blackmon. I got to sit with Bill’s charming wife, Dana.

Dana, BTW, was outbidding me for several items at the silent auction at the gala. I got to meet two of their children.

Paul Grondahl, who is the best pure writer on the TU staff, I saw read from his book on the long-time mayor of Albany, Erastus Corning a few years ago, and run into him periodically. I’m pretty sure I was the first person to tell him of the death of his buddy Donna George, a year or two after the fact.

When Amy Biancolli was a movie critic, I used to comment regularly. The first time I ever met her in person was at my church when her late husband Chris Ringwald was talking about his book A Day Apart, about the importance of the Sabbath in different religious traditions. Her current book, Figuring Sh*t Out, is about dealing with life after her husband’s very public suicide. I see her at concerts and plays occasionally. I talked with two of her children at the end of the evening.

Anyway, I had a really good time, talking with Mayor Kathy Sheehan, Theresa and John Portelli (I went to college at New Paltz with John), lots of the library staff, and several others. So this picture of me with Scott Jarzombek, the relatively new Executive Director of the Albany Public Library, is NOT indicative of my mood that night. For one thing, even though I was wearing a suit and dreaded tie, I was also wearing my new blue Chuck Taylor sneakers.
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The obituary for Lenny Tucker, who was, among many other things, the long-time president of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, a title I now hold.

Mike Nichols

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed.

I don’t what surprised me more: that our college undergraduate intern knew who Mike Nichols was (he’s a film buff and LOVES The Graduate) or a guy I know in this thirties who knows a lot of stuff but didn’t recognize the name.

When I was growing up, it seemed that Mike Nichols and Elaine May were on the TV talk shows and variety shows all the time. This followed 306 performances on Broadway of An Evening with… for nine months in 1960 and 1961. “The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.” Here’s Nichols and May on the Jack Paar Show.

Nichols then got into directing plays on Broadway, winning several Tony Awards for Best Director of the original productions of Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, among others. He also won Tonys for producing Annie, and later, for directing Spamalot and a revival of Death of a Salesman.

He got into directing movies, and his first attempt was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Watch the dance scene. His second directing attempt was The Graduate, for which he won his only Oscar. I’ve seen that movie, plus Catch-22, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Charlie Wilson’s War, plus Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge, the latter three which he also produced. Here’s the hit song from Working Girl, Let the River Run by Carly Simon. Read Mike Nichols’ five rules for filmmaking.

Nichols’ two Emmys came from fairly serious fare: the TV movie Wit (2001) starring Emma Thompson, and the TV miniseries Angels in America from 2003. This means he is one of a dozen people to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003.

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed on Thursday morning. Usually, I watch two minutes of the CBS Morning News at 7 a.m., but the DVR was stuck on the ABC affiliate. The lead was about the death, a story that didn’t show up on my New York Times and LA Times news feed until a half-hour later. The news was released, after the story on the air, by the ABC News president. Diane Sawyer, former GMA and World News anchor, and Nichols’ wife of 26 years, apparently arranged an exclusive for her network, noted not as criticism but just an observation.

The GMA folks – heck, EVERYONE who knew him, such as Meryl Streep – said he was always “the smartest and most brilliant person in the room,” rather like his Nichols’ third cousin twice removed on his mother’s side, scientist Albert Einstein. But he also a wonderful raconteur, and I feel as though I would have enjoyed being in his presence.

Mike Nichols died of a heart attack a couple of weeks after his 83rd birthday.