May 2016 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Stops being a “thing”

There are dozens of shows that were or are a “thing” I have never seen more than I five minutes of.

I was intrigued by Ken Levine’s post, When a thing stops being a “thing”. Surely much of it applies to me.

He talked about missing the reality show Survivor. It’s still on the air, in what seems to be its 200th season. “At the time it was innovative, original, and best of all – a ‘thing.’ People talked about it the next day.” And now I too see it on the schedule and remember the great season one, the mediocre season 2, and well, that was about it. Once they started recycling contestants, e.g., Boston Rob, who appeared on some OTHER reality show, I stopped even paying attention.

This is American Idol’s final season. I started watching near the end of the first season, some 15 years ago. I couldn’t even tell you the last nine winners. As Levine noted, “Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood became legitimate stars. Jennifer Hudson (who lost) later won an Academy Award… I suspect the next American Idol will get a gig at Six Flags Magic Mountain.”

Whereas I don’t even think I ever saw The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn, or with Jon Stewart until well after 9/11. But I watched it religiously – “THE DAILY SHOW was THE way to follow the news” – until Stewart left in August 2015. He departed at the point where the man with the orange hair was still perceived as an ersatz candidate for President. I wonder if Stewart were still doing the show, the point at which he would have realized that The Donald was no longer a joke.

While Trevor Noah’s still finding his way as Stewart’s successor, Stewart’s other disciples are closer to the function what Jon Stewart was serving. Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show noted that Drumpf was not funny anymore about three months ago. John Oliver on HBO’s This Week is taking great long-form looks at seemingly boring topics such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and net neutrality, topics that should be snore fests. Samantha Bee’s new show I haven’t watched, but the clips I see online appear sharp.

Truth is, though, that there are dozens of shows that were or are a “thing” I have never seen more than five minutes of: The Wire, The Sopranos, Orange Is The New Black, Mad Men, Lost, oh, far too many to mention here. And now that there is more programming of new, scripted television than one can watch viewing 24/7, I don’t fret. (Not that I was fretting before.)

I’m just not a “thing” watcher. The Good Wife, which is going off after this season, I guess, was still a thing in some circles, but I was watching before it was so anointed.

But maybe you can tell me what “thing” I should be watching; trust me, I’m not watching it presently.

“Bye, Felicia” and why it bugs me

“Felicia” makes an appearance at a raunchy post-performance party with the rappers at their hotel suite, which suddenly gets interrupted by two armed men knocking on the door.

Someone I know personally used the phrase “Bye, Felicia” in his blog. I’d seen the phrase before, and while I had no idea about its derivation – the cutting edge of recent pop culture phrases I’m not – I’d glommed on to the fact that it was a dismissive response.

One use might be to say it after US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) lost the Florida GOP Presidential primary and was forced to give up his Oval Office aspirations. Or about any of other more than a dozen candidates who’ve dropped out of the race.

“Bye, Felicia” bugged me to an irrational degree, and I was curious to find out why.

Part of it, I suppose, was that it had become one of those cute “in the know” phrases that might have been clever, once upon a time, but had become irritating from groupspeak overuse. The NOT phenomenon from Saturday Night Live – “You’re very intelligent – NOT!” – for instance.

More than this, though, is The Daughter’s reporting that she hears it “every day” at school, usually as a taunt to shut down someone else’s conversation. Not exactly bullying, I guess, but definitely snark. I’m not big on snark, as I feel that it lowers the bar on an intelligent conversation, especially online. (“Intelligent online conversation”, I’m told, is an oxymoron.)

What IS the origin of “Bye, Felicia” anyway? From Know Your Meme:

“Bye, Felicia” is a memorable quote from the 1995 comedy film Friday [which I’ve never seen] which is often used online as a dismissive farewell.

Origin

On April 26th, 1995, the comedy film Friday was released, starring the characters Craig Jones (played by Ice Cube) and Smokey (played by Chris Tucker) as a pair of unemployed stoners who must find a way to pay a drug dealer $200 within 24 hours. In the film, a character named Felicia attempts to borrow a car and a marijuana cigarette from Smokey and Jones, causing Jones to say “Bye, Felicia.” On March 11th, 2007, YouTuber HyFlyer988 uploaded a clip of the scene, gathering over 870,000 views and 290 comments in the first eight years.

And it spread:

On December 7th, 2008, Urban Dictionary user pimpin’817 submitted an entry for “Bye, Felicia,” describing the phrase as a way to bid farewell to someone who is deemed unimportant. On October 27th, 2011, YouTuber Mamclol uploaded a video titled “Bye Felicia,” featuring the clip from Friday with an accompanying hip hop track about the character.

I asked The Wife if she had seen/heard the term. She had guessed that perhaps it was a sexual reference. Well, no. And yes.

In August 2015, online discussions about “Bye, Felicia” saw another notable resurgence after its inclusion in a scene from Straight Outta Compton, an American biopic film about the ’90s hip hop group N.W.A directed by F. Gary Gray, the same filmmaker behind the 1995 urban comedy movie and origin of the quote, Friday.

In the film, a minor female character named “Felicia” makes an appearance at a raunchy post-performance party with the rappers at their hotel suite, which suddenly gets interrupted by two armed men knocking on the door and looking for their friend by the same name. After a brief moment of confrontation, members of the group find Felicia giving oral sex to Eazy-E, who eventually proceeds to push her out of the hotel room by the head. As the door slams behind, Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) drops the line “Bye Felicia” in a direct nod to the now-famous quote from Friday.

While the film was generally met with critical acclaims upon its release, both the scene and the line were brought up by several film critics and hip hop bloggers for its abashedly misogynistic, slut-shaming undertone.

Is the character sexist, or is the movie? A conversation for another day.

You won’t see me using “Bye, Felicia”. Since my antipathy predated my knowledge of the origin, it must be the flippant, offhand disdain of its use. Its derivation has merely solidified my irritation.

Friends of APL annual meeting; Chuck Miller talk to follow

You are invited to attend the annual meeting of the Friends of the Albany Public Library on Wednesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. It will be held at the Pine Hills branch at 517 Western Ave, between West Lawrence and North Allen Street.

Whether or not you are a member, you are welcome to attend. Of course, we invite you to become contributor, at only $15 per year. The Friends provide programming for the library nearly every week, a book review, an author talk, or special event. The organization also contributes money to the library for events such as the Summer Youth Program. At the meeting, there will be some some brief reports, the election of new officers, and an award.

At about 7:15, there will be a presentation by photographer Chuck Miller, a vociferous blogger for the Albany Times Union, who has written about ghost buildings, Albany Patroons, music, trivia, and much more. The topic: how to write a blog for 7 years and keep it fresh.

The Berrigans: Those Troublesome Priests

The Berrigans continued to be troublemakers, including in the anti-nukes movement.

When I first went to college in 1971, I was pulling away from my “traditional” Christian roots. At the same time, I was fascinated by two Catholic priests, the Berrigans, who were fighting against the Vietnam War in provocative ways.

Separately and together, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, with a coterie other, mostly Catholic, protesters, were involved in several antiwar activities. The Berrigans and seven others:

…used homemade napalm to destroy 378 draft files in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board on May 17, 1968. This group, which came to be known as the Catonsville Nine, issued a statement after the incident:

“We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.”

In retrospect, the trial of the Catonsville Nine was significant because it “altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards.”

And that surely included me, as I was one of 12 people who was arrested at an antiwar demonstration at IBM Poughkeepsie. What I failed to mention in that account, or in its follow-up were a few details.

Earlier that week in 1972 was a demonstration near the Kingston draft board, which I wrote about. What I FAILED to mention was that I slipped my draft card under the door. I realize that burning it would have been safer (smarter), but it was a Kilroy was here moment, which probably helped get me jammed up with my draft board later that year.

The other thing I just didn’t remember is that one of the books I lent friend Alice while she was in jail for eight days was The Berrigans, “the famous special issue of HOLY CROSS QUARTERLY with original articles…Now with additional essays.” It excluded only a piece by Father Andrew Greeley, who was critical of the Berrigan brothers and would not allow his piece to be reprinted.

I know that this was one of the books because I still have my copy. “Alice” is written in pencil on the front cover, and her full name printed in pen on the inside front cover.

Clearly, the Berrigans were huge influences in my life. Philip Berrigan and his wife, former nun Elizabeth McAlister, came to my college in the mid-1970s; they married in 1970, although the marriage was not revealed until 1973, as he was still a priest.

The Berrigans continued to be troublemakers, including in the anti-nukes movement. Philip died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 79. Daniel died on April 30, 2016 at the age of 94.

LINKS

Daniel Berrigan’s mea culpa

“His World Was Always Filled with Such Beauty”: Frida Berrigan on Her Uncle, Priest Daniel Berrigan

Frida Berrigan: Give Your Children a Conscience Instead of Material Possessions

The New Yorker: Postscript: Daniel Berrigan, 1921-2016

Huffington Post: The Life and Death of Daniel Berrigan

Common Dreams: How Friends and Family Remember Daniel Berrigan

The Intercept: Daniel Berrigan, a Leader of Peaceful Opposition to Vietnam War, Inspired a Generation of Activists

New York Times obituary:

The Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, and poet whose defiant protests helped shape the tactics of opposition to the Vietnam War and landed him in prison, died Saturday [April 30] in New York City. He was 94.

The United States was tearing itself apart over civil rights and the war in Southeast Asia when Father Berrigan emerged in the 1960s as an intellectual star of the Roman Catholic “new left,” articulating a view that racism and poverty, militarism and capitalist greed were interconnected pieces of the same big problem: an unjust society.

Father Berrigan; his brother Philip, a Josephite priest; and their allies took their case to the streets with rising disregard for the law or their personal fortunes. A defining point was the burning of Selective Service draft records in Catonsville, Md.

Paul Simon – Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Lyrics

In a couple of days they come and
Take me away
But the press let the story leak
And when the radical priest
Come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

R is for Red

Modern surveys show red is the color most commonly associated with heat, activity, passion, sexuality, anger, love and joy.

Red, as Wikipedia notes, is “the color at the end of the spectrum of visible light next to orange and opposite violet.”

It’s also both one of the “additive primary colors of visible light, along with green and blue”… AND “one of the subtractive primary colors, along with yellow and blue, of the.. traditional color wheel used by painters and artists.

“Since red is the color of blood, it has historically been associated with sacrifice, danger, and courage.

“Modern surveys in the United States and Europe show red is also the color most commonly associated with heat, activity, passion, sexuality, anger, love, and joy.

“In China and many other Asian countries, it is the color of happiness.”

Of course, most STOP lights and stop signs are red. This means that RED is a contradiction. Action and stopping. Anger and joy.

I thought I’d list some RED songs. The links to the titles are descriptions of the songs; the links to the artists are the recordings. The chart action refers to the Billboard (US) pop charts.

Red and Blue
Dave Clark Five (#89 in 1967)

Red Red Wine
Neil Diamond (#62 in 1968)
UB40 (#34 in 1984, #1 in 1988)

Red Roses for a Blue Lady
Vic Dana (#10 in 1965)
Dean Martin

Red Rubber Ball
Cyrkle (#2 in 1966)
Seekers

Red Sails in the Sunset
Bing Crosby (1935)
Nat King Cole (#24 in 1951)
Tab Hunter (#57 in 1957)
Platters (#36 in 1960)
Fats Domino (#35 – and #24 soul – in 1963)

ABC Wednesday – Round 18