March 2017 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Roger is 64

“Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you.”

A picture from the 1980s, when I was working at a certain comic book company in Albany.

Anyway, it’s my birthday, when I don’t blog. But I rather liked this quote a friend of mine posted on her Facebook page several months ago, from a book I read and movie I saw (1.5 times – long story.) You can muse how much of it is actually applicable to me.

“You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate.”

“Consciously, sir, consciously,” Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. “I hate them consciously.”

“You’re antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a manic-depressive!”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps I am.”

“Don’t try to deny it.”

“I’m not denying it, sir,” said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. “I agree with all you’ve said.”

― Joseph Heller, Catch 22

I is for the idiosyncrasy of inches

Mary is every inch the schoolteacher.

While the metric system is very logical there’s something wonderfully daft about the United States customary systems of measurement:

1 inch = 254 millimeters, exactly
12 inches = 1 foot
36 inches = 3 feet = 1 yard
63,360 inches = 5,280 feet = 1,760 yards = 1 mile

Except for inches in a mile, I KNEW all of those by heart.

I love the etymology. “The English word inch comes from Latin uncia meaning “one-twelfth part” (in this case, one twelfth of a foot); the word ounce (one twelfth of a troy pound) has the same origin.”

Of course, I know it’s now 16 ounces = 1 pound = approximately 453.59237 grams.
And, confusingly, 16 fluid ounces = 2 cups = 1 pint = 0.5 quart = 0.125 gallon = approximately 0.473176 liter

“The vowel change from u to i is umlaut; the consonant change from c (pronounced as k) to ch is palatalisation.” But you knew that.

“In many other European languages, the word for ‘inch’ is the same as or derived from the word for ‘thumb’, as a man’s thumb is about an inch wide (and this was even sometimes used to define the inch); for example, Catalan: polzada inch, polze thumb; French: pouce inch/thumb; Italian: pollice inch/thumb; Spanish: pulgada inch, pulgar thumb; Portuguese: polegada inch, polegar thumb; Dutch: duim inch/thumb; Afrikaans: duim inch/thumb; Swedish: tum inch, tumme thumb, Danish and Norwegian: tomme / tommer inch/inches and tommel thumb; Czech: palec inch/thumb; Slovak: palec inch/thumb; Hungarian: hüvelyk inch/thumb.”

There are lots of sayings based on the US system. On one’s birthday, a child gets a “pinch for an inch,” to grow. A noted saying is “give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile”, which means that if you agree to part of what someone wants they will get, or take, ALL of what they want.

Then “every inch a” something means completely; in every way. “Mary is every inch the schoolteacher. Her father is every inch a gentleman.”

The great thing about the metric system is that you can always deduce the relationships – 1000 milliliters is a liter, 1000 grams is a kilogram, and the same is true for meters. But there’s something quaint about the measurement scale that was initially not only defined, but named, for people’s feet and fingers.

Oscar-nominated live action short films 2017

“Enemies Within,” feels like it’s based on current events, though it was set in the 1990s.

Sometimes, you just need to leave work early to see the Oscar-nominated live action short films

“Mindenki,” Hungary (25 minutes)

This was the Oscar winner, and certainly worthy. The title translates to “Sing,” but it oughtn’t to be confused with another, full-length, animated recent film of the same name.

Reportedly based on a true story, young Zsofi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi) enrolls in a new school best known for its lauded children’s choir, which is great, because Zsofi loves singing. Her mother, the principal and her new friend Liza (Dorka Hais) encourage her to join the troupe. But Zsofi runs into a snag.

I love the music, and the world of competitive choir, and it has a nifty ending. But the most engaging part of the film is the friendship between the shy Zsofi and the cool Liza.

“Silent Nights,” Denmark (30 minutes)

Aske Bang’s third short starts off strong. Malene Beltoft (Inger) is a kindhearted worker for the Salvation Army homeless shelter worker. One of her clients is a Ghanaian immigrant named Kwame (Prince Yaw Appiah). They strike up a romance.

The film’s first half addresses the difficulty many immigrants, including Kwame, have in wanting a better life. But there may be way too much story at the back end to be credible. Still, I found the couple intriguing.

“Timecode” (Spain, 15 minutes)

Juanjo Giménez Peña won the Palme d’Or for this. Luna (Lali Ayguadé) and Diego (Nicolas Ricchini) work in a parking garage in 12-hour shifts. Pretty boring, with polite but minimal interaction between the two only at the shift change.

Then Luna discovers that Diego has a hobby. Eventually, the two soon start using the expansive video surveillance system to swap videos. It was a minor piece but with some charm, especially if you appreciate the moves.

“Ennemis Interieurs,” France (28 minutes)

Sélim Azzazi’s film, translated “Enemies Within,” feels like it’s based on current events, though it was set in the 1990s. It takes almost entirely inside a dim immigration office. Hassam Ghancy is an unnamed Algerian-born Frenchman hoping to procure official citizenship. Najib Oudghiri is the likewise unnamed official who essentially plays the good cop AND the bad cop at different points.

For a movie mostly confined to one location, it was quite affecting. Ghancy’s character showed fear and indignation from the interrogator’s questions. Probably the best of the five.

“La Femme et la TGV,” Switzerland (30 minutes)

Timo von Guten’s film is the most quirky of the features. Jane Birkin, who’s been in quite a few movies you may have seen, is the femme, a melancholy baker in a tiny French town. Her only joy is to wave at the TGV train when it goes by twice a day at 185 mph.

A train conductor sends her a note, tossed off the speeding train and landing in her yard, thanking her for her daily greetings. A correspondence is struck up between the pair, but not on “the Internets,” which she actively avoids.

There is a relationship based on more tossed packages, stuffed with cheese, and carefully written letters which eventually forces her to take action unusual from her predictable life. The solution was there but she couldn’t see it before. I liked it, though it may be a tad long. It’s based on a true story.

Here are trailers for Oscar-nominated live action short films. Most of the movies are in subtitles. I did not find them out there for free, only for a fee.

Music, March 1971: Humble Pie

He saw himself as a budding black militant, but he thought of me as a hippy-dippy, flower-power type.

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

It was Woodstock, the March 1970 movie, that was the greater watershed than the August 1969 concert, the author posits, and I tend to agree. If a third of a million people actually went to Max Yasgar’s farm in Bethel, NY, after seeing the Academy Award-winning documentary, millions would say they were there.

I recall going to the film with a bunch of my anti-war, socially activist friends – Holiday Unlimited: “a splendid time is guaranteed for all”- shortly after the film was released. We sat through it TWICE, back in the days when you could actually do that sort of thing, and it was LONG, about three hours.

My most specific recollection was looking back at the light stream that was projected image that was showing during Sly and the Family Stone’s performance and noticing how purple it was. And, seriously, I had never taken any drugs at the time.

The Woodstock soundtrack propelled my listening for at least the next half-decade, really introducing me, and much of the country, to Joe Cocker and Santana, and solidified my listening to Arlo Guthrie, CSN(&Y) and The Who, among others.

Unlike earlier live albums, such as The Who’s Live at Leeds, which captured the performance and nothing more, producers in 1971 realized the “sound of the crowd was a key element” in transferring the excitement to the listener who had not been present. I always had mixed feelings about live albums for that reason.

Bill Graham closed both Fillmore East in New York City and Fillmore West in San Francisco in 1971. Agents such as Frank Basalona realized that some bands, such as Led Zeppelin, would sell out the venues based on their names, and weren’t willing for the flat rate someone such as Graham would offer.

Basalona signed groups such as Humble Pie from London and J. Geils from Boston. I listened quite a bit to cuts from the live Humble Pie album Rocking the Fillmore on the radio, featuring Peter Frampton, who would go on to have even greater live album success.

The groups’ common manager was Dee Anthony, who, in addition to worrying about the money, instilled in the band a sense of showmanship. Producer Tom Dowd got the Allman Brothers to dump their out-of-tune horn section and made them a much better band.

The other live music album I recall from this period was the one by Grand Funk Railroad, which came out in November 1970. I received it for my birthday in March 1971 from my sister’s boyfriend George. He saw himself as a budding black militant, but he thought of me as a hippy-dippy, flower-power type, and thought, incorrectly, that this would have been “my” type of music. But I did listen to it a few times, and it’s probably still in the attic.

Listen to:
Black Dog – Led Zeppelin. It was first played live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971.
I Don’t Need No Doctor – Humble Pie
Aqualung – Jethro Tull
Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo – Johnny Winter
Mean Mistreater – Grand Funk Railroad

Good day: asylee, bamboozled, storyline

“Persecution or the fear thereof must be based on the alien’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

This is what makes a good day: learning something new. Often it’s at work, but not always.

I was doing some research on demographics. I could NOT find what I wanted at the Census, so I looked on the page for the Department of Homeland Security. I discovered a word that was new to me: asylee. My spellcheck does NOT like it.

USCIS’ somewhat skewed definition: “An alien in the United States or at a port of entry who is found to be unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of nationality, or to seek the protection of that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution. Persecution or the fear thereof must be based on the alien’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. For persons with no nationality, the country of nationality is considered to be the country in which the alien last habitually resided. Asylees are eligible to adjust to lawful permanent resident status after one year of continuous presence in the United States. These immigrants are limited to 10,000 adjustments per fiscal year.”

The difference between a person seeking refugee status and asylum status you can check out here; the distinction is narrow. The dictionary definition of asylee is merely “a person who is seeking or has been granted political asylum.”

That day, Facebook decided that I might want to repost something from five years ago, and I, unusually, actually did. The item received more likes this time around than it did in 2012, maybe because it’s even more true:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

On my way home on the bus that night, I hear the guy behind me talking, ending with “I try not to f@#& too many of the shanks in the apartment building.” I figure he’s some sort of lowlife scum.

But then I hear, in an odd mechanical male voice, “I try not to f@#& too many of the shanks in the apartment building,” which is oddly amusing. And then he sends the audio file to someone, I believe to himself. Is he some sort of writer? If you find that line in a book published in the next couple years, or hear it in a movie theater near you, know it was created and dictated on the CDTA 905 bus.