February 2017 - Ramblin' with Roger

February rambling #2: Which Side Are You On?

City Fines Interracial Couple Who Found Racist Graffiti On Home

WHY FACTS DON’T CHANGE OUR MINDS

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Obamacare and Putin

The Peril of Potemkin Democracy

The Shallow State celebrates its ignorance

Steve Bannon to media: We’re going to make it worse for you every day, then WH bars news outlets from briefing

Bannon Admits Cabinet Nominees Were Selected To Destroy Their Agencies

Private prison company hires former Jeff Sessions aides to lobby in D.C. (Oct 2016); Attorney General Jeff Sessions: U.S. to continue use of private prisons, reversing Obama directive (Feb 2017)

FCC Is Already Canceling Internet Services for Low-Income Customers

Eliminating arts funding programs will save just 0.0625% of budget

Have your papers ready’: Customs agents checking IDs on DOMESTIC flights

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s mom

While Orange scandals mount, Chaffetz decides to investigate … a cartoon character

Gabby Giffords to Louie Gohmert: ‘Have some courage. Face your constituents’

He could make things a little easier for preachers

Dear Evangelicals, I Don’t Think You Realize How You Sound To Everybody Else

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau affirms $50M for physics think-tank in Waterloo, Ont.

Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis

Human Rights Watch fights to end child marriage in New York

Meet the Math Professor Who’s Fighting Gerrymandering With Geometry

The Only Thing, Historically, That’s Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe

How to Spot Manipulation

What a Silicon Valley liberal learned from supporters of 45

I Was a Muslim in This White House

The Atlantic: Michael K. Williams Asks: Am I Typecast?

The Color of Love: Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.

City Fines Interracial Couple Who Found Racist Graffiti On Home

Breaking the silence: Jason Gough talks about being sexually abused as a child

When Things Go Missing

Understanding Alzheimers in three minutes

Why you should really start talking to old people more

The only library in the world that operates in two countries at once

The Darkest Town In America

Is Verizon’s new unlimited plan worth it?

TED Talk with Norman Lear

Arthur: Not blogging is exhausting

Oscars 2017: What It Was Like Onstage During the Best Picture Mistake; most misspelled nominee: Naomie Harris

Noted actor Bill Paxton dies at 61 – saw him in Apollo 13, Titanic, Spy Kids 2, Million Dollar Arm, and Twister, among other films, plus the video Fish Heads by Barnes & Barnes

Richard Schickel, Movie Critic, Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 84

Coverville’s Brian Ibbott: What happened to manners at movie theaters?

Bertram Forer, American psychologist who described the technique for self-deception familiar to psychics, astrologers and even popular business personality tests

Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs

Dictionary’s latest additions include ‘side-eye,’ ‘humblebrag,’ and ‘ghost’

VHS memories

Major League Baseball: Intentional walks will now be granted to hitters with a signal from the opposing dugout, rather than by having the pitcher throw four obvious balls; BOO! HISS!

On Why Serena Williams Is His Favorite

The NBA G-League? No. No no no no no no no…

Philosophy Jeopardy

Unputdownable: 17 books I read in 24 hours or less (because they were just that good)

Vanna White turns sixty

Twisted, sister

Now I Know: Georgia’s Version of Stonehenge and The Pink Light That Wipes Out Teenagers and How Cows Mooved Through Manhattan and Why Knowing is Half the Battle

Music

The K-Flow Show Episode 1, featuring Rebecca Jade (the niece!)

Pac-Man – Weird Al (to the tune of the Beatles’ Taxman)

Total Praise – Richard Smallwood and Vision

Sam Cooke with “Touch the Hem of His Garment”

Down to the River to Pray – Alison Krauss [Live]

Which Side Are You On? – Ani DiFranco

Simon & Garfunkel take to the stage to perform their iconic hit Sound Of Silence

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

David Bowie’s son shares emotional tribute after his five posthumous Grammy wins

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr Reunite to Record Together in Studio

Where Should Axl and Slash Go Now?

H is for Doctor Henry Heimlich

In 2016, Heimlich himself performed the maneuver on an 87-year-old woman.

Henry Heimlich, the doctor who invented a lifesaving anti-choking procedure, died at the age of 96 in December 2016. He had some controversial medical theories, especially during his later years. But the Heimlich maneuver saved countless lives.

“Performing abdominal thrusts involves a rescuer standing behind a patient and using his or her hands to exert pressure on the bottom of the diaphragm. This compresses the lungs and exerts pressure on any object lodged in the trachea, hopefully expelling it.”

The trick about the Heimlich maneuver is that one cannot really practice it on a real person, only a dummy. I learned it at a Red Cross training that I took in high school back in the late 1960s.

On a Sunday in May of 1995, I was in a real funk and had been in a pretty sour mood. I had to go to my ex’s place and get the last of my stuff. Then I had to go visit a choir member in the hospital who was dying. I didn’t bother to go to church for worship and only went to the meal afterward because I promised I would.

This woman, who was over 80 and who I did not know, was off to the side from the dining area, looking as though she were turning blue. Then someone opined that perhaps she might have eaten something. I recalled my training from high school but was worried about perhaps breaking a rib, which I knew could happen.

Still, I utilized it for the first time. After one thrust, some piece of meat came from her mouth and flew at least 15 feet. The pastor at the time – this was in my old church – was always one to come up with a smart-aleck remark. He said to me, “If you see ME choking, just let me die.”

Three years later, when I got the JEOPARDY! Information Sheet that asked for five items that they would use for their “chat cards”. I wrote, among other things about Earl Warren, Rod Serling, mountain climbing, and LPs, “The Heimlich maneuver works!”

Earlier in 2016, Heimlich himself performed the maneuver on an 87-year-old woman seated next to him at the senior community where he lived. The Heimlich maneuver is one of the most used medical procedures used by non-medical personnel.

ABC Wednesday – Round 20

The Lydster: Middle school transition

Her father dropped off her gym clothes, once.

We’ve been very lucky in getting the Daughter to school. In kindergarten, she went where the Wife worked. And for grades 1-6. the Daughter attended a school that was built only a couple of years before she entered, located less than a block from our home.

Inevitably, though, we had to deal with what I called junior high but what is now generally referred to as middle school. Among other things, this means taking the bus at a specific time.

By the schedule, that means at 7:32 a.m. a block away. However, the vehicle is occasionally early, she learned to her frustration. Or late.

Still, the dedicated service, provided by the local transit entity CDTA is a whole lot more reliable than the contracted yellow bus company that still provides rides to kids going home late after extracurricular activities such as sports and theater. In fact, the Daughter has found the yellow buses SO undependable that she has mastered taking the CDTA home, even though it involves two buses.

The trick about middle school is having eleven different classes in the eight periods and keeping track of which days are gym days, for instance. Her father dropped off her gym clothes, once.

She also has to deal with homework. Her mother is always suggesting that she put it away the night before, but The Daughter finds this suboptimal. She ends up checking her bag in the morning again to see if the homework is in there.

The result of this is not unlike this Luann comic strip from September 4, 2016. Substitute house key for car key and her ID for her charger and it’s about right. Frankly, this whirling dervish was exhausting. And her father dropped off her homework that she couldn’t find, but he did, once.

But an interesting thing: by Thanksgiving, she started hanging her ID on the front door, putting her homework in her folder, usually, and in general, taking more responsibility.

The Wife was wowed by my patience during the process, but it was my opinion that you can’t tell her what to do, but that she has to, like Dorothy in OZ, learn it herself.

Music, February 1971: Tapestry

Producer Lou Adler wanted the listeners to visualize Carole King sitting at the piano just for them.

More random music recollections based on the book Never A Dull Moment.

Carole King was in the music business for a lot of years. As a kid who used to read the liner notes, I discovered she was the King in (Gerry) Goffin-King songwriting duo. But in 1971, she invented the album business. Tapestry was recorded in January of that year. A&M house photographer Jim McCrary had tried various pictures around the house before adding the cat Telemachus into the shot.

Tapestry was released on February 10, 1971, the day after her 29th birthday. This is the first ad, from Billboard Magazine. I know that I didn’t purchase it until the summer; I bought the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers the same day. Some years later, I got it again, because I had worn out the grooves. Finally, I acquired it on CD.

Producer Lou Adler wanted to make an album with that demo quality. “He wanted the listeners to visualize Carole King sitting at the piano just for them.” It spent an astonishing 15 weeks at #1 on the US album charts, long after the singles had faded. “By the end of the year, it was still selling 150,000 copies a week in the United States alone.” It was the first “evergreen” album that wasn’t a movie soundtrack or the like.

Two other albums recorded in the same studio the same month were Joni Mitchell’s Blue, one of my favorite albums of all time, and the only Carpenters album I owned, their third. Liking Carpenters’ music was REALLY uncool in the day.

Jesus Christ Superstar was #1 for three weeks during this time. It was a hugely significant source of my understanding/debate about theology and religion, particularly with my friend Pat. It seemed she and I would debate its merits for hours. I knew this album like my daughter knows Hamilton. I always wanted to play Peter.

Pearl, the posthumous album by Janis Joplin, spent nine weeks at #1. I recall working at a factory in 1972 and singing Mercedes Benz, one of the few songs written by Janis. Someone asked me if it were a song by the Temptations; I found that extraordinarily amusing at the time.

Listen to:
Coverville 1159: The Carole King Cover Story II
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – Carole King with the Mitchell-Taylor Boy-and-Girl Choir
You’ve Got a Friend – James Taylor
Little Green – Joni Mitchell
Rainy Days and Mondays – Carpenters
Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin
Just My Imagination – the Temptations
What’s the Buzz/Strange Thing Mystifying – Jesus Christ Superstar

Oscar-nominated animated shorts 2017

Tthe pic pairs gravelly voiceover with luridly colored frames recalling some indie comic books.

Every year I try to see both the Oscar-nominated animated shorts and their live-action counterparts. The documentaries, alas, don’t seem to make it into this neck of the woods.

This year’s roster:

Borrowed Time -a weathered Sheriff in the Old West returns to the remains of a terrible accident. It was done by a couple Pixar folks, so it is of high quality. I had seen this before online, and while it’s evocative of a mood, it didn’t quite satisfy.

Pearl – a father/daughter relationship from the point of view of the family car, and especially the music played therein. It is my wife’s favorite piece, and we saw it in a conventional theater. Watch it here or here or here.

Blind Vaysha – based, i think, on an old folk tale about a girl with cursed eyesight. One eye sees visions of the past, while the other peers into the future. It’s done in the style of German expressionist woodcuts. This was possibly my favorite. If you’re in Canada, you can see it here.

Piper – this is the Pixar piece, which I saw before Finding Dory. It had a photorealistic look of a newborn bird trying to find food on his own. I actually liked it more in the rewatching. See it here.

Then there was the warning about the final piece that contains sex and violence and language and that you might want to get the kiddies out of the room. I saw a movie a couple years back like that; it was quite terrible.

But before that, a few of the also-rans:

Asteria – wo astronauts make an unexpected discovery on a barren planet. A silly, yet quite pointed observation about the human condition.

The Head Vanishes – a woman is determined to make her annual train trip to the seaside when she quite literally loses her head. this about dementia, of course, which my late mother experienced in her later years. This too you may be able to see in Canada.

Once Upon a Line – a dialogue-free film using a clever pen-and-ink style continual illustrations in which a humdrum guy’s life gets upended by romance. It should have been in the final five in lieu of Borrowed Time.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes – “the aforementioned naughty film, which at 35 minutes is also four times the length of any other nominee. Apparently drawn directly from writer/director Robert Valley’s life, it tells of his friendship with a hard-living character named Techno, who winds up stuck in a Chinese hospital awaiting a liver transplant. Covering decades of up-and-down friendship in a hard-boiled but persuasive style, the pic pairs gravelly voiceover with luridly colored frames recalling some indie comic books. Though very tied to the specifics of Valley’s larger-than-life subject, the bittersweet featurette depicts a sort of character many older viewers will recognize: the kid who could be in charge and out of control simultaneously, who did what others feared until life caught up with him.” My wife and I really related to thie Techno character; we’ve both known that guy with a lot of potential who frittered it away.

It occurred to me that most of these films are about memory, in one form or another. All the nominated films, plus, of course, The Head Vanishes, fit into the category. A worthwhile visit to the Spectrum Theatre.