January 2019 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Hospital prices online, ice cream, 70

Generally speaking, I like the fruit flavors

change.puzzle In response to Ask Roger Anything, which you can still do, Alexis wrote:

Hospitals required to post all prices online beginning January 1 – Roger – blog post? This is incredible!

As a librarian, I almost always take the position that more information is usually better. I’m not at all sure how this change will work in the real world and private insurance.

I was surprised/disappointed that I managed to miss this news until the multiple stories that came out right after Christmas from the Associated Press. In fact, there was a story on the PBS Newshour on April 24, 2018, which details the policy.

“Hospitals are required to disclose prices publicly, but the latest change would put that information online in a machine-readable format that can be easily processed by computers. It may still prove to be confusing to consumers since standard rates are like list prices and don’t reflect what insurers and government programs pay.

“Patients concerned about their potential out-of-pocket costs from a hospitalization would still be advised to consult with their insurer. Most insurance plans nowadays have an annual limit on how much patients must pay in copays and deductibles — although traditional Medicare does not.”

Friend Anne wants to know:

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?

That would be strawberry, which is NOT available in half gallons from Stewart’s, the local ice cream emporium with the most locations. You CAN get Neapolitan (vanilla/chocolate/strawberry) or vanilla and strawberry. So it’s my favorite flavor to get on a cone.

Generally speaking, I like the fruit-flavors: black raspberry, cherry vanilla, e.g.

Finally, Uthaclena asked quite a while ago:

What’s with 70? What’s wrong with 58?

This is in relation to the birthdays I note in this blog. Here’s the thing: people have only one 70th birthday. If I do someone’s 58th birthday, and another’s 63rd, I won’t necessarily remember if I wrote about them when I’m thinking of blog topics.

But the big 7-0 is easily retrievable because it’s consistent. I could have picked 80, but more of them would be dead. At 30, it’s way too soon; some folks aren’t noteworthy until later in life.

David Bowie Space Oddity: birth, death

Some of it belonged in ’67 and some of it in ’72,

Space Oddity.David Bowie Here’s a space oddity: David Bowie was only 69 years and two days old when he left us on January 10, 2016. That is not old at all, especially if you are a sexagenarian.

Hmm: Bing Crosby was but 74 when HE died shortly after they recorded The Little Drummer Boy (Peace On Earth) back in 1977. Apparently, Bowie only agreed to do the show because his mum was a big fan of Bing, who had passed away by the time the program aired. I find myself missing these folks who go too early.

It occurs to me that I don’t know much about Bowie’s 1960s output. His first eponymous album, released the same day as Sgt. Pepper in 1967, was the work of a young man “with mountains of charisma and ambition, and no idea what to do with his obvious gifts.”

His second album, also called David Bowie in the UK, and as Man of Words/Man of Music in the US, was released on 14 November 1969. “It was reissued in 1972 by RCA Records as Space Oddity (the title of the opening track, which had reached No. 5 in the UK Singles Chart)… but it reverted to the original, eponymous title for 2009 and 2015 reissues.”

“Regarding its mix of folk, balladry and prog rock, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said, “Some of it belonged in ’67 and some of it in ’72, but in 1969 it all seemed vastly incongruous. Basically, [it] can be viewed in retrospect as all that Bowie had been and a little of what he would become, all jumbled up and fighting for control.”

I’m oddly pleased by these “missteps”, because he persevered and became, well, Bowie.

Here’s an interview from 1983 taking MTV to task for failing to play music videos by black artists. It was back when MTV played music videos.

Someone recently posted a photo on Facebook and described it as serious moonlight. This prompted me to find a video of Let’s Dance from the Serious Moonlight Tour, which made me smile.

Listen to:
The Bowie channel
Under Pressure – Bowie and Queen, because I still miss Freddie, too

Read what I wrote about Bowie in:
2017
2016

Movie review: Mary Poppins Returns

Nothing stuck out on first listen such as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

It’s likely that one’s feelings about Mary Poppins Returns (2018) depend on how one thinks about the 1964 original. I didn’t see the earlier film until the end of 2011, so I don’t have any childhood memories. I did like it, quite a lot.

So how does one make a reboot? It has to have elements of the original – the now-adult Banks children, Michael (Ben Whishaw) and (Emily Mortimer) plus the widowed Michael’s three kids, Pixie Davies as Anabel, Nathanael Saleh as John, and Joel Dawson as little Georgie who was often getting into trouble.

Of course, we need the title character (Emily Blunt), who’s a bit blunter than Julie Andrews’ take. I liked that, though some reviewers assuredly did not. She’s not quite in Andrews’ league in the genre, but she’s a quite decent singer and engaging actor.

Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Jack, the lamplighter—or “leerie”, the functional equivalent of Dick Van Dyke’s Bert the chimney sweep. Both men are charming, talented singers, but neither was great with the accent.

The dance of the leeries was too reminiscent of the chimney sweeps’ hoofing for my taste.

Is the music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman, such as (Underneath the) Lovely London Sky and A Conversation less memorable than the work done by the Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert?

Nothing stuck out on first listen such as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but I’ve been hearing that soundtrack for over half a century. Interestingly, it was the use of incidental Sherman music that helped hold the new film together.

There’s a point, maybe about halfway through, where a song so grabbed me, in context, that I just surrendered to the film. I felt the wistfulness, fear, and hope of the characters.

Here’s a piece of trivia: “At the age of 93 at the time of the movie’s release, Angela Lansbury is the oldest female actor ever to appear in a Disney film. She is just two months older than the oldest male actor in a Disney film, Dick Van Dyke.” They both added to the film in their small roles, as did Meryl Streep in a more prominent bit.

All in all, Mary Poppins Returns is inessential, I suppose. It may rub up against your memories of the original, or it might add to them, as it did for me. My wife and my daughter also enjoyed it when we saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on Christmas Day.

A couple related links:
The secret dark side to the classic ‘Mary Poppins’, which weren’t all that secret to me

My review of Saving Mr. Banks (2013), about the making of the 1964 film, with Emma Thompson as author P. L. Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney

Libraries: spaces transform into what you need

After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas.’

library One of my blog followers suggested this: The Room of Requirement from This American Life. The title reference is to Harry Potter.

Act 1 is In Praise of Limbo by Zoe Chace. “There is a library that’s on the border of Canada and the United States — literally on the border, with part of the library in each country.”

Act 2 is Book Fishing In America by Sean Cole. Imagine “a library where regular people can come and drop off their own unpublished books. Nothing is turned away. The books live there forever. It’s the kind of place that would never work in real life. But someone decided to try it.”

“Libraries aren’t just for books. They’re often spaces that transform into what you need them to be: a classroom, a cyber café, a place to find answers, a quiet spot to be alone. It’s actually kind of magical. This week, we have stories of people who roam the stacks and find unexpected things that just happen to be exactly what they required.”

Are you a librarian, or do you work in a library? Do you now or have you ever owned a “Secret Librarians of Fandom” button?
You NEED to listen to this week’s This American Life, “Room of Requirement,” or AT LEAST Act Three, “Growing Shelf Awareness” by Stephanie Foo. “Lydia Sigwarth spent a lot of time in her public library growing up – all day, almost every day, for six months straight.”

Seriously, if you work in a library and have 15 minutes spare right now, just click through and listen to Act Three.

For the 1st Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter Public Domain

“That deluge of works includes not just ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ by Robert Frost, which appeared first in the New Republic in 1923, but hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs, and films.

After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas,’ any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt’s stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations. Any artist can create and sell a feminist response to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Dadaist piece, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) and any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments and post it on YouTube.

Duke Law has a full list of works released in the public domain this year.

Random 2018: Poisson Voronoi

It is the Poisson Voronoi, and I have no idea what that means.

At the beginning of each year, I select a post for each month of the previous year, using a random number generator, which may actually be random, or not, but is adequate for this exercise. I like to see how well it reflected that year just passed, or did not.

Statistically, I do one ABC Wednesday a week, at least one music piece each week, link summaries twice a month, maybe a couple dozen folks turning 70, pieces about my daughter once a month. So the frequency should be related to that, theoretically.

I’m fairly sure I got this meme from Gordon, who lives in Chicago and still remains the only non-local blogger I’ve ever met.

I love it because it’s quasi-mathematical, like doing the first level of these Brilliant quizzes that I get in my email and occasionally get right. “You have a one-day streak going.”

The graphic came from typing into Google the phrase random site:.gov and picking the first image containing the color green. It is the Poisson Voronoi, and I have no idea what that means. It came from meshing.lanl.gov, the Los Alamos National Lab.

January: “[Messina] also assembled The Kenny Loggins Band by summoning old friends..” -belated 70th birthday for Kenny Loggins
February: “This means your visitors may see errors or be unable to access your website at all for brief periods of time.” – Technical difficulties with blogging.
March: By 9th grade, I started carrying around my Bible to school. – Obit for evangelist Billy Graham

April: It is “a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis… to describe how a ‘state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'” – ABC Wednesday about the marijuana laws in the US
May: “This two-record set was issued in 1971 by United Artists Records and features music which Winwood performed with The Spencer Davis Group, Powerhouse, Traffic and Blind Faith.” – Steve Winwood hit the big 7-0 on a Saturday
June: It’s getting warmer and you may find yourself gazing out windows that you will once again have to fill with ugly old a/c units instead of the beautiful Kapsul you hoped for. – Another delayed Kickstarter I’ve supported

July: They must have determined I’m no longer a likely terrorist. – The infrequent airline passenger.
August: PORN STARS, PLAYMATES, AND PRAYER CIRCLES – linkage, and the title, no less, of the post
September: After BlacKkKlansman, which the three of us saw at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, my daughter wanted to be held by her parents. – Movie review

October: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Tyranny or Revolution – linkage
November: Neither victim was a publicly known person; they weren’t activists in their respective civil rights struggles. – I connected Matthew Shepard with Emmett Till
December: Those of you too young to remember the days of disco may not understand how truly reviled it was. – Another double play, with Donna Summer: music and she would have been 70

Interestingly no political ranks except in the links.