November 2016 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Actress Sally Field turns 70

She played the matriarch on the TV series Brothers & Sisters.

I’ve watched Sally Field in more projects than almost anyone. I could quote her famous line – no, just imagine that I did.

Gidget, (TV, 1965-66) – I’m sure I watched her as a surfing teen in at least some episodes. Yikes, 50 years ago.

Hey, Landlord (1967) – in the latter stages, she played the visiting sister of a guy who inherits his uncle’s apartment building.

The Flying Nun (TV, 1967-1970) – I watched, fairly religiously, the antics of the nun wearing an improbably aerodynamic habit. Sister Bertrille was an innocent but always wanted to do the right thing. She had to keep her special abilities hidden from her Mother Superior. The ability to fly, which I dreamed about even before watching this, may be a core fantasy.

The Girl with Something Extra (1973-1974)- you know you’ve made it on when the character has your real first name. I only vaguely recall watching this one about newlyweds (the groom was John Davidson), but she had ESP. Shades, sort of, of Bewitched.

Sybil (1976) – no one, certainly not I was ready for her in this two-part miniseries playing a woman with multiple personalities. Our Gidget? I haven’t seen it since it first aired, and I’d be curious how it holds up. She won her first Emmy for this.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977), The End (1978), Hooper (1978), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) – I had a girlfriend at the time, Susan, who was smart and sophisticated, and LOVED Burt Reynolds. Sally Field was dating Burt and showed up in his films. I recall particularly enjoying The End, which was a comedy about someone trying to commit suicide after a bad diagnosis.

Norma Rae (1979) – she won her first Oscar for playing “a textile worker who agrees to help unionize her mill despite the problems and dangers involved”

Absence of Malice (1981) – she was nominated for a Golden Globe for this movie starring Paul Newman.

Places in the Heart (1984) – Sally wins her second Oscar, for playing a woman trying to hold on to a cotton field in the 1930s South, and gives her immortal quote at the ceremonies.

Murphy’s Romance (1985) – a May/October romance, with James Garner; pleasant, as I recall

Punchline (1988) – Sally and Tom Hanks are allies, then rivals, in the cutthroat world of stand-up comedy. I remember this as a bitter film with an uneven tone.

Steel Magnolias (1989) – the bond of women working in a hair salon. Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, and the colorful Shirley MacLaine.

Soapdish (1991) – the cutthroat world of TV soap operas. I recall liking it.

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) – I bought the contrivance that the ex-wife (Sally) doesn’t recognize her ex-husband (Robin Williams), and really liked this film

Forrest Gump (1994) – this movie made me cranky for a number of reasons, only one of which is Sally playing Tom Hanks’ mother when she’s only 10 years older than he is

The Court (TV, 2002) – it lasted a handful of episodes

ER (TV)- she won an Emmy in 2001 and was nominated in 2003 for guest appearances on the medical show. I didn’t always watch the series but I did when she was on.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003) – The first one was OK, but this is NOT a good movie. Sally plays a Congresswoman

Brothers & Sisters (TV, 2006–2011) – she played the matriarch. Her adult children (Dave Annable, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths, Matthew Rhys, Balthazar Getty) all have complicated lives. I was a sucker for this show and watched almost every episode.

I wrote in this blog that it was the family-owned business, and the dysfunction that it brings, that intrigued me. It’s about a guy who owns a produce business; he dies in the first episode, and the succession plan doesn’t always go as he planned, with his elder daughter in charge, much to the resentment of at least one of his sons. And it’s the sibling dynamic that fueled the show.

Sally Field won an Emmy in 2007 and was nominated in 2008 and 2009. By the last season, she was executive director of the show.

Lincoln (2012) – she was rightly nominated for an Oscar for playing Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe’s wife

Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015) – I enjoyed this

And she’s made countless guest appearances, many I’ve seen.

In February 2017, she will be appearing in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway.

One of those bits in her IMBD page– Quote: My agent said, “You aren’t good enough for movies”. I said, “You’re fired.”

Evidently, I’m very fond of Sally Field.

Music Throwback Saturday: The Snake

“Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR–sorry, but I must. It’s my nature.”

From, interestingly, The New Republic:

Is Donald Trump the fabled Snake?

In his speeches, Trump often recites the lyrics of the 1968 Al Wilson song “The Snake,” written by Oscar Brown, Jr. [in 1963]. A variation of the fable “The Scorpion and the Frog,” the song tells the story of a naive woman who takes in a wounded snake, only to be betrayed by the predator who bites her and says, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

From the point of view of Trump and his supporters, the meaning of the song is this: The United States can’t let in Muslim refugees because they are irrevocably hostile and will turn on those who help them.

But [recently], an old Trump tweet was recirculated that offers a new layer of meaning to his use of the story.

Donald J. Trump

✔

@realDonaldTrump

Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR–sorry, but I must. It’s my nature.

11:27 AM – 19 Nov 2012

Obviously, I need to listen to the Donald’s stump speeches more often. Right.

This was Wilson’s biggest hit. The song got to #27 pop, and #32 rhythm & blues, in the summer of 1968 in the US, and a mild hit in the UK some seven years later. If I had heard this song before, I’m not remembering.

Singer/drummer Al Wilson was born in Meridan, MS in 1939, and was a member of a group called The Rollers in the early 1960s. He died of kidney failure in 2008 at the age of 68.

Here are the lyrics to The Snake.

Listen to Al Wilson’s version of The Snake here or here.
***
Trump’s Offer to Christians Is Same Offer Devil Made Christ

Cubs, Cronkite, and Halloween

Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain.

I swear I read a number of people who treated the baseball World Series win by the Chicago Cubs as, “Oh, that’s nice,” rather than the astonishing event that it was. Heck, even Arthur wrote about it, not once, but twice. He noted that “Some things transcend all of that, and sport can, for some, be one of those things.”

And the stories I read about fans remembering parents, or grandparents, who loved the Cubs, but never had the joy of seeing them win the National League pennant (last time, 1945), let alone the whole enchilada (1908, 108 years ago; 108, like the number of stitches on a baseball). This was touching, for example.

I was rooting for them, once the New York Mets were quickly eliminated. General Theo Epstein, who got the long-suffering Boston Red Sox fans a pennant in 2004 and 2007, may be a miracle worker.

Apparently, there were a number of people who predicted the Chicago Cubs would win the Series this year.
***
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Walter Cronkite of CBS News. I’ve remembered his natal day since about 1980 when I realized it coincided with the date the hostages in Iran were taken a year before.

So much in the news has changed since his heyday, the 24-hour news cycle, and competing with the TMZs of the world, not to mention Facebook and Twitter as news sources.

I read his autobiography and reviewed it here.
***
Monday, I decided to ride my bike to work. But the front tire was light and failed to inflate, so I stuck it back into the shed, locked the door, turned around, and, as I wrote in Facebook about 45 minutes later:
Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain. I’m hobbling to work now…

Managed to hit my head to the right of my left ear, and my left shoulder, and my back (wearing the backpack), and turned my left ankle. It happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to put out my hand to try to save myself, which, I suppose was a good thing. No lasting damage, but I was sore for a couple of days, especially my back.

Got a very angry IM on Facebook that evening about something I wrote which a person believed was a mischaracterization of their feelings, and was quite possibly friendship ending, which made me both sad and exhausted, as I tried to explain my POV. I had a nice IM exchange from an old friend about something else I had written.

The highlight of the day had to be, when I was handing out Halloween candy, a half dozen College of Saint Rose students Halloween caroling of this Thomas Tallis piece. I even sang along on the repeated section.

That’s when I could still sing because subsequently, I’ve lost my voice; hope I can shake whatever bug is irritating my vocal chords, or my vocal cords.

MOVIE REVIEW: Queen of Katwe

Quuen of Katwe was directed by Mira Nair, who piloted Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala.

Way back in early October, the family went to see the movie Queen of Katwe.

There are poor people in Uganda, but some are worse off than others. The family of Phiona Mutesi (newcomer Madina Nalwanga) is particularly destitute since her father died, with her mother Nakku Harriet (Lupita Nyong’o) trying to hold the family together. School is out of the question, as everyone tries to work on the streets, selling produce or washing car windows.

By chance, Phiona comes across a group of children learning this odd board game called chess from a teacher, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo). The other kids were not happy to be around the poor, smelly girl, but she came back and showed promise in the game.

This film is based on a real person. At its heart, it is a sports movie, so it has a lot of that drama/disappointment/triumph that you’ve come to expect. Still, it works, and maintains the viewers’ interest, in part because it showed the stratification of life in the country.

There was also drama between the mother and both of her daughters. One does not have to care about chess to cheer for Fiona and her family surviving their disenfranchisement, and becoming empowered, and not just on the chessboard.

The film was directed by Mira Nair, who piloted Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala, and filmed in Uganda. The acting is solid. The authentic local color added to the enjoyment. It was really wonderful to see the real people come out at the end with actors, with Oyelowo and Katende practically twins. And there is a fun coda one ought not to miss.

Unfortunately, despite being a Disney/ESPN movie, despite very positive reviews (93% with critics, 88% with audiences at this writing), Queen of Katwe had a very disappointing box office, not even making back its $15 million costs. Perhaps it will do better on the home market.

Political polarization exhausts me

In deciding to vote for Hillary Clinton, I find myself defending myself from not only the Trump supporters, but the Jill Stein folks.

Arthur, optimistic being that he is, has set out to fix America’s broken politics. And his first recommendation is: “Stop using social media to get political information!”

But I think it’s worse than that. In reading I’m with stupid: The entire 2016 election has been an insult to our intelligence, I realized yet again that we can’t have a real conversation, real consensus about much of anything because we cannot agree on the facts.

Or as the New York Times puts it, Your facts or mine? The political polarization is more acute than ever. And, of course, there are the fake news sites and their ‘B.S. stories’ that are as reliable as a Ouiji board.

Here’s Today’s Electoral Map.

Is Benghazi as noteworthy as portrayed, given that other Presidents have lost diplomats, or was it a smear to derail Hillary’s campaign?

Is it voter fraud or voter suppression we need to worry about? Or both?

The Washington Times says Hillary Clinton laughs as woman removes ‘under God’ from Pledge of Allegiance, yet Snopes explains the actual context of the situation.

The 1975 rape case Hillary was assigned to, which Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway alluded to AGAIN on ABC This Week, has generated many non-truths about Hillary.

Is Hillary in trouble over the last email “scandal,” or is FBI Director Comey trying to sabotage her campaign? Or did he find it necessary to report to Congress based on a previous agreement? And what do they have on Trump? (This Is Not the First Time the FBI Has Interfered with a Presidential Election.)

Were Oregon militia members found not guilty as a result of racial bias or did the government fail to make its case?

Given time, I could come up with dozens more: climate change as a hoax for scientists to get government money, or videos of all the Muslims cheering on 9/11 in New Jersey.

Yet, another optimist, Doug Muder of the Weekly Sift, wonders Why so frustrated, America? He believes that there is common ground among us:
No one wants millions of people to keep living in the United States without legal status
No one wants to keep anticipating the next government shutdown (well, maybe Ted Cruz does…)

I realize why I’m so tired and grumpy this political season. Four years ago, I hardly mentioned Mitt Romney at all, except for how he was doing in the polls. The worst thing I wrote was that he was wishy-washy; in the same post, I named Donald Trump as the person who most needs to give away all his money.

The last time I posted a bunch of links about Trump, someone told me they disagreed with most of them, even the factual ones, such as Trump’s companies destroying or hiding documents in defiance of court orders. That’s fine, since I find virtually all his pro-Trump and anti-Clinton posts spurious, especially when Trump accuses Hillary of the very things he does himself.

I’m afraid I’ve pretty much given up trying to understand Trump supporters. I am in agreement with the New South Wales, Australia upper house, which officially condemned Donald J. Trump as “a revolting slug unfit for office.”

This Quora question intrigued me: “The more left-wingers double down on ‘Trump is dangerous’ and other arguments, the less I believe them. Am I desensitized or just skeptical?” There were about 30 answers, a few of whom identified themselves as conservatives and/or Republicans, and they laid out the case – a case I thought was self-evident, but apparently not – why DJT is singularly unprepared for the office he is seeking. I have about 30 more articles explaining that, but I know that, at this point, they won’t convince anyone.

At the same time, in deciding to vote for Hillary Clinton, I find myself defending myself from not only the Trump supporters, but the Jill Stein folks. A couple of months ago, Mother Jones made the progressive case for Hillary, and I think it’s mostly right.

I do admit there’s a part of me who is voting for her because of a lot of the BS that’s been lodged against her. A friend’s rant addresses this. Also, the fact that she’s a woman plays into the calculation. (Then why not vote for Stein? Because she hasn’t had to deal with anywhere near the level of crap Hillary has.)

When I read women are not to have authority over men, that’ll tweak me in HRC’s favor. She is now a 69-year-old woman, and there’s inherent sexism/ageism from people dealing with her over that fact, even though her primary opponent is older.

There appears to be a phenomenon called Hillary Hatred Derangement Syndrome, and oddly, it makes me MORE inclined to support her. If, for instance, she curses in private, but not in public, that’s not proving she’s not “genuine”, merely publicly polite. But if Trump says the words of a disgusting thug in public, well, he’s more “real,” rather than the vulgarian I find him to be.

I believe that Bernie Sanders, who I voted for in the primary, has pushed the Democratic party platform to the left of what it would have been otherwise, on issues from college tuition to the TPP. A Hillary presidency would be easier to push for a progressive agenda, at least domestically, than a scattershot Trump administration.

But I do think Donald Trump WAS correct about Hillary Clinton, once upon a time.

I’m voting for her because I’d like to see Trump buried in a landslide. I don’t see it happening anymore. But, for this old poli sci major, I’ve nothing more to say before election day, except that one should vote, and not just for President.

Oh, here’s an offer for FREE Progressive Christian Voter’s Guide.