Month: April 2022

My first YouTube video, because COVID

In the beginning…

YouTubeA couple of summers ago, I was supposed to read the Scripture for our online church service. My daughter recorded me on her phone, but we were having a difficult time. The reading was only about a minute long. My daughter could only record about 30 seconds at a time. I wouldn’t even try it on my irritating device at that time. Fortunately, Dwight, the tech magician for the church, could piece the snippets together.

Then in the fall, one of my pastors asked me to read Genesis 1:1-2:4 for the Sunday school class that was starting online. It wasn’t a traditional reading, but rather a piece from something called Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible. The book was edited by Elizabeth F. Caldwell and Carol A. Wehrheim.

Clearly, I needed a different way to record the new video. The reading is nearly three minutes long. Hey, wait! My free ZOOM account allows for recording, doesn’t it? The button along the bottom suggests it does.

I tried a couple of test runs. First, I needed to actually FIND where the video resided. Here’s a YouTube video for that. Ah, the file is an MP4.

Nuts. The sun from behind the blinds kept changing in intensity. On the finished product, my head looks shiny on the top, as it often does. My eye contact with the camera was only so-so. The video, though, was more than adequate for the purpose, I was told.

Channel THAT

Hmm. I think I have a YouTube channel, somehow tied to my Google account. Indeed I do. It has links to other people’s videos I would watch if there were 48 hours in a day. I download the file. Voila, I have my first YouTube video.

I suppose you thought I was going to link to it. Nah. I just wanted to share the fact that because of the pandemic, I did a new thing.

Sigh. OK. Here it is. My favorite is the test video because I REALLY didn’t know what I was doing.  

The Phrontistery word website, found

X-cellent

The PhrontisteryAs loath as I am to acknowledge it, sometimes I find a really cool resource, such as a useful website. I’ll access it for a period of time then forget about it. Then someone else will find it, I’ll check it out, and say, “Hey, I’ve been here before!”

This is the case for The Phrontistery. It contains “English obscure words and etymology resources; an online dictionary of weird and unusual words; word lists; technical vocabulary aids; lipograms; and word-related essays. Someone on the A Way With Words Facebook page posted about it. They proclaimed, “Stumbled across this… and immediately thought: ‘Uh-oh, there goes all of my free time for the next few months.'”

Steve Chrisomalis notes, “Since 1996, I have compiled word lists and language resources to spread the joy of the English language in all its variety through time and space. A phrontistery (from the Greek phrontistes – ‘thinker’) is meant to be a thinking-place for reflection and intellectual stimulation.”

Check out:
International House of Logorrhea -A 17,000-word dictionary of rare, cool, and unusual words
Compendium of Lost Words – 400 of the rarest words on the internet
Short Scrabble Words – From AA to ZUZ
A Loquacious Location of Lipograms – You’ll want to click on this link – do it and find out why!
Glossographia – A blog about linguistics, anthropology, and writing systems
Numerals and Numeration – Quirky facts and features about number systems
Glossaries – Over 30 topic-specific word lists
Contact – Email, Twitter, carrier pigeon

And in fact…

I never wrote about The Phrontistery per se, as far as I can tell, unless I misspelled the word. However, twice I linked to it, both for posts for ABC Wednesday, and each time involving the same difficult letter of the alphabet. In 2010, I found three-letter words that use the letter X. Then in 2014, I shared a list of unusual words beginning with X.

I’ve found several references to it, from ESL clubs to empowerment sites. And finding the right word certainly can be empowering.

Movie review: Being The Ricardos

Aaron Sorkin

Being the RicardosWhen she co-hosted the Oscars recently, Amy Schumer “took a swing at Aaron Sorkin’s Being The Ricardos, the Nicole Kidman-Javier Bardem film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. ‘Aaron Sorkin: a genius! Truly, right? I mean, the innovation to make a movie about Lucille Ball without even a moment that’s funny? Not your fault, Nicole.'”

But Sorkin was not making a comedy. “This is no more a comedy than the ‘King of Comedy’ or ‘Joker’ is a comedy.”

I read all of this after I saw the movie, which I watched just before the Oscars. The harsh criticism I’d read about how Nicole’s face was stiff whereas Lucy’s was rubbery had made me wary about even viewing it.

I should note that I’m a big fan of Ball and Arnaz. It’s less about the I Love Lucy series, which of course I had seen many times. It was more about WHY I was able to watch it over and over. Desilu essentially invented the rerun at a time when the general perception was “We already saw that episode. Why would we watch it AGAIN?”

I’m enough of a devotee that our family stopped at the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY in 2016, which was very much worth visiting. We bought the I Love Lucy DVD box set there, which my daughter has watched in its entirety. Also, in 2019, I read her autobiography, Love, Lucy. It was written in 1964, but not published until 1996, after both Desi and Lucy had died.

The vision thing

So I think that Sorkin achieved what he was going for, although he consolidated certain elements that took place over a few weeks into one week of shooting an episode of I Love Lucy. We see the Red Scare stuff, discussed in her book; this has to do with her grandfather, who helped raise her. The couple wanted to include Lucille’s pregnancy in I Love Lucy, but the network and sponsors thought it was a terrible idea; we now know how it turned into comedy gold.

Was Desi unfaithful to Lucille? The bitter relationship between Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and the much older William Frawley (J. K. Simmons), who played the neighbors Ethel and Fred Mertz, was on full display. We see the plan to fatten up Ethel/Vivian.

Ultimately, I mostly enjoyed it. There’s latitude in the biopic genre that I allow for. I do agree with the assessment by Ken Levine that the writers on the show were perhaps treated more shabbily than necessary.

The film received The Women Film Critics Circle Awards’ Hall of Shame “For taking a beloved female icon and turning her intelligence, talent, and work ethic against her as a harping shrew, and the deeply flawed men around her as downtrodden male saviors.” I think this is a bit harsh. Lucille Ball was one tough woman.

Bardem, Kidman, and Simmons were all nominated for Oscars, though they did not win. Kidman did get the Golden Globe, though no one cares anymore. I was actually most intrigued by the performance of Nina Arianda’s Viv. About 2/3s of the critics liked Being The Ricardos.

If you are looking for great recreations of I Love Lucy bits, this is not the film for you. If not, you might like it.

Watching the Oscars and the Grammys

movies and music

oscars and the grammysBecause of scheduling dictated in part by COVID, the Oscars and the Grammys were on successive weekends. I watched them both in 30-minute chunks while riding the stationary bicycle. So not in real time; I’m too busy for that.

There was a point in the mid-nineties when I would listen to the radio at 8:37 a.m./5:37 a.m. Pacific Time, to hear the announcement of the Oscar nominations in the major categories. I’d then scribble them down frantically and quite illegibly. Of course, in a few years, I discovered I could find them on the Internet by 9 a.m. But it was exhilarating at the time.

Last century, I usually DID watch the Oscars live to the very end, or until I got too tired. I would record the program on my DVD or DVR, get up in the morning, and view it, making sure not to see/hear the news. If I don’t know the outcome, it’s new to me!

After I got to The Slap, about which everyone has an opinion, the show rolled on until Will Smith’s acceptance speech for Best Actor. And it took me two days to actually watch it. To my surprise, I was REALLY angry about this rambling half-apology – no playing-off music there.

Yay, CODA,  3 for 3!

Music

I’ve decided to watch the Grammys the last two years, in part as an archeological dig. Hey, I’ve at least I’ve HEARD OF the nominees for Record, Album, and Song of the Year. OK, I don’t know Daniel Caesar or Giveon, who were featured on Justin Bieber’s track Peaches, the live performance of which was the most bleeped of the show.

I know who Anderson Paak is because he appeared as a performer on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in December 2018; yes, I looked it up. He’s now part of Silk Sonic with Bruno Mars. Mars’ song with Mick Ronson, Uptown Funk, was so ubiquitous in 2015 that even I had heard it quite often.

H.E.R. I know because she was on that Grammy tribute to Prince in 2020, and she’s a fine guitarist.

I actually own THREE of the Album of the Year nominees. The winner, We Are, is the second album by Jon Batiste that I own. The TV special of Tony Bennett’s 95th birthday concert with lady Gaga I found touching, so I got it . The other – don’t laugh – is Sour by Olivia Rodrigo, which I pretty much blame on my daughter playing it incessantly.

For Best New Artist, Olivia Rodrigo was the winner. I didn’t know Arooj Aftab, Jimmie Allen, Baby Keem, Arlo Parks, or Saweetie. FINNEAS is Billie Eilish’s brother and sometimes collaborator. Hasn’t Glass Animals been around for half a decade or more?

As for Japanese Breakfast, I actually heard of the book Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner on The Daily Show and CBS Sunday Morning. Oh, she has a band too?

Every year, Arthur links to these end-of-year video compilations. I asked him, which one is The Kid LAROI? So he wrote a post about him.

There are other artists I did recognize in some categories, such as The Black Pumas (saw on Sam Bee’s show). But most of the nominees I knew were relative dinosaurs like Foo Fighters and Paul McCartney. 

Etc.

My, I HATED both of In Memorium segments because I couldn’t always read the names, as the cameras panned out to show the performers. It was particularly egregious at the Oscars. I liked the Sondheim medley at the Grammys, though.

WRGB, Channel 6 in Schenectady, the CBS affiliate, inserted a package of local commercials during the Grammy broadcast. Carrie Underwood was already singing. This is not the first time WRGB has muffed things like this.

I find myself more drawn to music than the movies these days. In no small part, it’s because movies, when I see them on TV or a computer, don’t seem… theatrical.

By contrast, what Batiste said in his acceptance speech is true. “It’s like a song or an album is made and it’s almost like it has a radar to find the person when they need it the most.”

I got that vibe as the Brothers Osborne closed out the Grammys with Dead Man’s Curve, as members of the audience, regardless of their musical genre were clearly grooving to the tune.

Freedom  – Jon Batiste
Leave The Door Open – Silk Sonic
I Get A Kick Out Of You – Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga

I may try this again next year.

Changing up the morning ritual

Quordle

Daily Quordle #51
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I’ve been changing up the morning ritual in the past, lessee, two years. Formerly, I would get up, check the email, and perhaps work on the blog, But at 7 a.m., my wife and I would go downstairs and watch CBS This Morning, now CBS Mornings, to watch “your world in ninety seconds.”

When the headlines were unrelentingly about COVID – the spread of COVID, the death toll of COVID – I sometimes passed on the opportunity to start my day with misery. Presently, I’ve been feeling similarly about Ukraine. I guess I’m more equipped to deal with distress in the evening. Besides, I tend to get enough news from various news outlets during the day.

Instead, I do the daily Wordle. I should note that my wife is MUCH better at this than I am, just as she’s better at Boggle. My daughter is better, too. Wordle has become an odd family bonding experience.

I’ve repeatedly told my wife she’d rule on Wheel of Fortune. We actually have the home game, a consolation prize from when on JEOPARDY! and our comparative scores prove my point. But at least we all still have our Wordle streaks going, unlike some people.

FOUR words

Then I attempt Quordle. The first several times I never got the four words in the nine tries. My mistake was to work it like I played Wordle. I know now to try to expose as many letters by finding three or even four words that hit most of the consonants. I’ve been much more successful.

After wishing my wife goodbye, I go back into the office. The cats want to be fed. I HAD been giving them nourishment at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. But with the stupid time change, if I attend them at 7 and 7, when we “fall back”, they’d be caterwauling to get food at 6 and 6.

This is just one reason that I’m OK with the idea of changing to permanent Daylight Saving Time, even though it’ll be dark on December mornings. I’ve made my feelings about changing the clocks quite clear here. (I’m essentially agreeing with  Marco Rubio; this pains me.)

After finally feeding the felines, I take my blood pressure and my pulse to make sure I’m not dead. THEN I eat. The rest is the usual alternating of email/blogging to music, riding the stationary bike while watching TV (JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, Finding Your Roots, Trevor Noah, et al), washing the dishes/reading the newspaper to music. This may be altered by a medical appointment, Bible study, grocery shopping, or the eternal “something else,” that unexpected task that sucks up hours in the day.

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