November 2014 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

World War I doesn’t get its props

Those partitions after World war I have geopolitical implications to this day.

I was reading about World War I trench poetry remembered in comics anthology, and it hit me how relatively little most Americans know about the first World War (1914-1918), the “War to end all wars,” as someone put it, terribly incorrectly.

And it’s not its remoteness in time (1914-1918). We’re in the midst of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War (1861-1865), with a pretty fair breakdown of every important battle.

As the article noted: “Of the two, World War II may be the one explored more often in pop culture…” Indeed, Tom Brokaw’s book title, The Greatest Generation, has been adopted as truth about those post-Depression young soldiers from the US going off to war after Pearl Harbor.

…but World War I… was important as well… More than 16 million people were killed, the war began an era of industrialized warfare, and it caused the redrawing of the map of Europe and the Near East.

Those partitions have geopolitical implications to this day.

Read about the Christmas 1914 truce HERE and HERE.

Shooting Parrots wrote about tunnel master John Norton-Griffiths and Alf Price, who punched a 19-year-old Prince Wilhelm in the nose. Also, Charles à Court Repington may have named the war, back in 1920.

Back in June, Jaquandor noted A Century since the Conflagration.

Of course, what’s now known as Veterans Day commemorates the end of World War I. It’s Remembrance Day in other countries and used to be called Armistice Day. Armistice is such a quaint word.

There’s some melancholy song on the first Paul Simon solo album called Armistice Day.

Who’s your favorite?

Writer Ken Levine did this, picking his favorite performer for a variety of roles. I can do that. Who is your favorite:

Felix & Oscar? I saw the television show, with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman first. The movie, with Lemmon and Matthau was great. But the room for the characters to develop through over 100 episodes on TV makes Tony & Jack my favorites. I did enjoy the short-lived version with Ron Glass as Felix and Demond Wilson as Oscar. Always wondered what the Sally Struthers/Rita Moreno version was like. Just read that ” Matthew Perry will be starring, co-writing, and executive-producing a remake…[which] will start airing in midseason 2015 on CBS. Perry will play Oscar Madison, a known slob; the role of his clean freak roomie Felix Unger will be portrayed by Thomas Lennon.”

James Bond? I STILL have not seen in a theater a James Bond movie. I’ll pick Sean Connery, because I did see some of his films on TV.

Superman? I suppose it’s Christopher Reeve, the guy from the movies c. 1978. Though George Reeves on the TV, and even the Fleisher cartoons voiced by Bud Collyer were under consideration.

Batman? (Michael Keaton? Really?) Sure, why not Michael Keaton, if only because he was better than I expected. And he was in the only movies I saw, except for the one with Adam West.

Lois Lane? Terri Hatcher from Lois and Clark, though Noel Neill from the early TV show also gets consideration.

Sherlock Holmes? The current TV show with Jonny Lee Miller

Dr. Who? I only watched the Tom Baker period with anything approaching regularity.

Darrin Stephens? Dick York, the original husband on Bewitched.

Hawkeye? Again, years of playing a character, in this case for over a decade, gives Alan Alda a real advantage over Donald Sutherland.

Host of THE PRICE IS RIGHT? While I had admiration for both Bill Cullen and Dennis James, and I’ve only seen Drew Carey a few times, I’ll go with Bob Barker, the long-time host.
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Who else could we compare?

Alex Trebek has been doing it for the last 30 years, and I’ve gotten used to him. But I liked the jovial Art Fleming as host of JEOPARDY!, and he appears in the Weird Al video.

Clearly, I’ve spent WAY more time with the original Star Trek cast than the newcomers (seen only the first film of the reboot), so that’d be no contest, thus far. BTW, those are the Captains Kirk above.

Best presidential pair with a common surname: Roosevelt over Adams, I reckon. Don’t think Harrison, Johnson or Bush are really in the running.

One could take on music groups:
Which Van Halen lead singer? David Lee Roth
Genesis with or without Peter Gabriel? Each has its qualities
Which iteration of Fleetwood Mac? Ditto, though a lesser bands sans Christine McVie
Which group of Temptations? I actually preferred them after David Ruffin left and was replaced by Dennis Edwards before Eddie Kendrick left, the beginning of the psychedelic soul period.
Which Beatles drummer, Pete Best or Ringo Starr? OK, I was kidding with the last one.

Give me more!

You want to talk about REAL religious persecution…

Open Door USA has a map where Christians are being threatened in this world today. Please note that the United States is NOT listed.

Watching part 5 of the Ken Burns masterpiece on The Roosevelts last month, I saw a brief mention of those terrible events of November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” “the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms… throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.”

Not an hour later, I was watching the CBS Evening News, and there was a report about anti-Semitism being on the rise in Europe again: “The memories of Jewish persecution — of the November 1938 Kristallnacht when Jewish institutions were destroyed — are burned into German memory. Frankfurt’s main synagogue, badly damaged that night, is one of those now under armed guard.”

The ethnic minority in Iraq called the Yazidi who was faced with elimination by ISIL, or ISIS this past summer.

Open Door USA has a map where Christians are being threatened today, including much of Asia and northern Africa. Please note that the United States is NOT listed.

I mention this preemptively to say: Americans, there may be a war on Christians in this world, but it ain’t happening here. Let me make it crystal clear: people wishing you “happy holidays” on December 24 does NOT qualify as religious persecution.

If I Had a Ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Last year, three of my picks, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, and Hall and Oates actually got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,, so I’ll put the other two on this year’s ballot.

I realize more and more each year how meaningless the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is. When I look at the list of artists NOT in it (Chicago, Moody Blues, Todd Rundgren, Yes, to name a few), I sigh.

Still, I play the game, because it’s fun for me.

Cleveland (October 9, 2014) — The nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 are:

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Chic
Green Day
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Kraftwerk
The Marvelettes
N.W.A.
Nine Inch Nails
Lou Reed
The Smiths
The Spinners
Sting
Stevie Ray Vaughan
War
Bill Withers

To be eligible for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released its first single or album at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. The 2015 nominees had to release their first recording no later than 1989.

Ballots will be sent to an international voting body of more than 700 artists, historians and members of the music industry.

Last year, three of my picks, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, and Hall and Oates actually got in, so I’ll put the other two on this year’s ballot:

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, whose three Bs (Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop) were also individually important in rock. East-West, from 1966, is one of my favorite albums. Here are the two instrumentals, Work Song and the title cut.
Chic, its sound is still relevant, though if Nile Rodgers got in as a non-performer (songwriter/producer), I could accept that.

Plus:
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – because I have a bias for women rockers.
The Marvelettes – …and “girl groups”.
*The Spinners – because I LOVE the Spinners.

I dismissed, at least for the time being, both Lou Reed and Sting, because their groups Velvet Underground and The Police, respectively, are in the hall.

This is Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first year of eligibility, and I DO love his music; I hope he does get in, and he may this year.
Green Day has a couple of albums I like. And I love their NAME. Maybe down the road.
I know I SHOULD put Kraftwerk on the list; very important group.
My ignorance of the music of Nine Inch Nails is inexplicable, but there it is.
As I wrote last year, “I know N.W.A. is massively influential, despite its limited output, but not feeling it yet.”
If I had a sixth vote, or if the Chic folk get in as non-performers and I had another selection, it might well be for The Smiths.
Pretty sure I supported War’s induction before. With a seventh vote, would pick them.
Bill Withers had some great songs, but not enough for me to pick.

Which five artists would YOU vote for?

Cheaper pizza

The Daughter is doing order of operations at school.

I went to the local pizzeria on a recent Saturday night. The cost was $10.50; I gave the cashier a $20 bill and a $1 bill. But he gave me back the dollar bill, and then gave me change for the $20, which was $9.50.

As it turned out, they were out of five-dollar bills, so he was going to give me nine one-dollar bills and 50 cents. Seeing this, the owner yelled, “Just charge him [me] ten bucks.” The clerk says, “But I’ve already closed the register.” The owner overrides the register to reopen it, puts back the $9.50 and gives me a $10 bill.

Of course, I gave the clerk $21 in the first place so he would not have to give me a bunch of ones. If you’ve ever been in retail, you know that you don’t want to give away ones if you can help it, and certainly not nine of them. I knew that, the owner knew that, the clerk, not so much.
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For some reason, I’m reminded by a story from long ago, where a guy I knew wanted to buy milk and a newspaper. At the time the milk was 99 cents and the newspaper, 35 cents. But the register wasn’t working properly, and couldn’t give the total, though it could give change. The problem is that the clerk couldn’t figure out the change from $2, because he didn’t know the total of the purchase.

The guy tried to explain: “99 cents is a penny less than a dollar, so it’s $1.34. These are non-taxable, so it’s $2 minus $1.34 is 66 cents.” This was too complicated.

I worry that when the computers all go down, no one will know how to add and subtract, never mind do multiplication and division.
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I was watching the NBC Nightly News and saw this story: Gas Prices Drop to Lowest Level in Nearly Four Years, using the picture. I had to write to them.

“The average price drop is NOT 30% [as Brian Williams said], it’s 30 CENTS, as the graphic showed, from $3.34 to $3.04,” I noted. If it had been 30%, the drop would be about $1.
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The Daughter is doing the order of operations at school. At a website quaintly called Math is Fun, it reminded me that the order in which one does math problems is:
P
Parentheses first
E
Exponents (i.e. Powers and Square Roots, etc.)
MD
Multiplication and Division (left-to-right)
AS
Addition and Subtraction (left-to-right)

I’ll admit to forgetting where the exponents fit, exactly.

So what is the answer to the item posted above?