Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
Edith’s cousin Maude Findlay going toe to toe with Archie Bunker.
(I suspect the changed intro music is there for some copyright reasons.)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Of course, Bea Arthur was also a star of Golden Girls, as well, as well as a song and dance person, as this Mark Evanier find showed.
ROG
Happy U.S. Income Tax Day!
Every year in the United States, the Social Security Administration sends out Your Social Security Statement to help me plan for my “financial future”. It provides estimates of your Social Security benefits under current law.” But for me, it’s a personal history lesson.
The first year I worked, 1969, I made $529 at the Binghamton (NY) Public Library. I worked six months at IBM in 1971 and made the most I would make until 1978. $50 in 1976 – really? I can always tell when I went to college, or when I was unemployed or underemployed.
I also received my 401(k) statement this week. I started putting money in this account because we were all warned that Social Security wouldn’t be there. My employer and I each contributed about $1000 each this past quarter. I managed to lose that plus an additional $5800. So much for retiring.
Let’s talk about music instead. There are two great songs called Money that I own and that come to mind. The first was written Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, when challenged by someone who complained that all he wrote about was romance. “What else do you care about, Berry?” Well, there was money.
The original version of Money was recorded by future Songwriters’ Hall of Famer Barrett Strong, who later teamed with the late Norman Whitfield to write I Heard It Through the Grapevine (a hit for both Gladys Knight & the Pips and Marvin Gaye), War (Edwin Star’s hit), and a bunch of late 1960s/early 1970s classics for the Temptations, such as Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, Papa Was a Rolling Stone, Just My Imagination and Ball of Confusion.
Barrett Strong’s version of Money went to #2 on the Billboard R&B charts for six weeks, and to #23 on the pop charts early in 1960. It’s #288 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of greatest songs, and was covered by a Liverpudlian band of some note, the Beatles.
The other Money song is by the British band Pink Floyd, by that point consisting of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason. It appeared on the 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon, and though it spent but one week at #1 in the U.S., it spent a total of 741 weeks on the U.S. album charts, selling more than 15 million copies.
For those unfamiliar, it has one potentially ‘naughty’ word.
I’m still collecting the state quarters. Right now, all I need is a Missouri quarter from the Denver mint; I even have both District of Columbia coins. But I haven’t seen the Puerto Rico quarter yet from either the Philadelphia or Denver mints and other territories will be released this year. (And yes, I know DC and Puerto Rico are not states, but their coins are a continuation of the same series.) Meanwhile, I’m still looking for Denver mint coins for two of my co-workers.
Certainly it was the juxtaposition of Marilyn Chambers as wholesome Ivory Snow mom with Marilyn Chambers as, er, an actress that helped fuel whatever commercial success she had. No, though my name is Green, I’ve never seen Behind the Green Door or any of her other work. She died this week.
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And speaking of advertising, does Burger King REALLY think it’ll make money mixing SpongeBob Squarepants, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and “the TRUE (non-pirate) meaning of the word ‘booty'”, as my friend Fred put it in his April 13 post? And if the BK King is creepy in 30-second increments, he’s REALLY bizarre in the 2:30 segment Fred found.
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OK, so what other song about money am I thinking of? The clues are in this post.
ROG
I was saddened to here about the sudden passing of the legendary Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas. Harry, whose career spanned 43 years, the last 38 with the Phils, was inducted into the announcers’ wing of the Baseball of Fame in 2002. He was 73
Condolences to his family, including his brother Jim, who I know as he’s a member of my former church and was my boss’s boss’s boss for a time; he has the same resonating voice.
And even if you’re not a sports fan, the voiceover in the commercial and others in the series is Harry’s.
ROG
But first, may I express my disdain for this white-collar criminal who stole over $110,000 and got no jail time. Meanwhile, someone who recently stole $600 of returnable bottles and cans got six months in jail. As it turns out, I was unfortunate enough to know Felix; he made my life and the lives of some of my colleagues quite difficult, and there are any number of us who wanted to see him behind bars. Feh.
Did you ever want to get a particular piece of information one time, but because you have to sign up, you end up getting mailing/e-mails, etc. ad naseum? That happens to me a lot at work. I used to get stuff from some pizza manufacturing association. I still receive material from associations dealing with everything from raising alpacas to designing car washes.
I DID sign up for New York’s complete state government payroll, which was posted for 2008 recently on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the government transparency website sponsored by the Empire Center for New York State Policy.
But sometimes, I keep getting stuff with no effort on my part. I made reference to an independent film in this blog and now I keep getting their literature. I wrote about the black bicycle champion Major Taylor in this blog, and I keep getting their mailings. It doesn’t bother me; I just find it interesting.
AARP sent me information on joining six years ago, and I did, but then failed tpo renew because of their position on some issue or other; they keep trying to get me back, though.
So what vestiges of information that you may have wanted in the past but no longer desire pops up in your mailbox, electronic or snail?
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Just yesterday, we received a call from 1-954-636-1087. We didn’t answer and the caller ID did not identify the company. I was curious, though, who it might be; I had faxed something to Florida earlier that day, and I did not want to blow off a legit call. I discovered 800 notes, where people can leave messages about unknown calls. For the number in question, there were a number of recent notices. One contributor discovered the number belongs to something called My Major. “I asked what kind of business it was and they said they are a college locator that provides information about people to college advisors so that they can be called back. I told him that I had already graduated and that I didn’t want them to call again. He said he was sorry and that I was not in their demographic group, then put my number on a do not call list. I would suggest telling them that you have also graduated (even if you have never gone to college) so that they are not interested in you anymore. I will post again if they call back.”
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Irving R. Levine died. I wonder how many people reading this blog know who he was; I most certainly did. And Dan Seals, member of a popular singing duo and brother of a member of an even more popular duo, died at 61, which always brings me pause. I picked this obit for the local boy makes good headline.
ROG
I find myself thinking a lot about Natasha Richardson, which is strange because, unprompted by IMBD, I couldn’t tell you one thing I’d seen her in; Nell and the remake of The Parent Trap, as it turns out. Whereas I know about lots of films in which I saw her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, or her husband, Liam Neeson.
Besides the strange way she died, there’s that weird argument that always seems to happen when a famous person passes away. In the comments to this nice article in Salon, one person essentially hijacks the issue with “Aren’t there more important things in the world to worry about?” Lots of back-and-forth that you can read yourselves. Or not.
My feeling is that if someone is uninterested in a “celebrity death”, then he/she oughtn’t to pay attention. But it’s one thing to say, “I don’t care.” It’s quite another to say, “And you shouldn’t either.” People should be allowed to grieve even those they’ve never met, yet because of their artistry or personality or for whatever reason, has moved them in some way. Their loss is real.
And invariably, the death of a celebrity shines a light on the cause of said death, if it’s unusual. (“Wear a helmet when skiing!” “No, it’s too restricting to see and hear properly.”)
I felt the same way when Jennifer Hudson lost three family members to murder. There were those who offered, “People are murdered all the time in Chicago. Why should I care about THIS?” I say: by all means, please don’t. But offer not your analysis about “the celebrity culture”, as though others might not be moved by the American Idol/Dreamgirls performer’s situation. Besides, even in the Windy City, a triple homicide is not an everyday occurrence.
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Looks as though I’ll still have Dora the Explorer to deal with: 
The daughter would normally “age out” of Dora in a year or two. But now that the daughter has dubbed the tween explorer as “beautiful”, I guess I’ll be stuck with her for a little while longer. Why they just didn’t come up with an older cousin so that the original Dora could entertain the younger crowd, I just don’t know.
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I found this background for a seminar interesting.
In June 2008, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-61, new copyright legislation that closely followed the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The public response to the bill was both immediate and angry – tens of thousands of Canadians wrote to the Minister and their local Members of Parliament, leading to town hall meetings, negative press coverage, and the growing realization that copyright was fast becoming a mainstream political and policy issue.
The “Canadian copy-fight”, which includes many new advocacy groups and the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that has over 90,000 members, has attracted considerable attention from the mainstream media, with many wondering how copyright had emerged as a contentious policy issue.
So the Canadians are having as much trouble with expanding the copyright law as some Americans did a decade ago, including (need I say) me.
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There’s an online petition to save Proctor’s Theater in Troy, NY from demolition. Apparently, the current plan is to “save the facade” and tack on behind it some ugly badly-built auditorium. The rest of the beautiful building is to end up in the already overloaded landfill in Albany County.
Frankly, I’m not big on online petitions. Frankly, I doubt their efficacy, especially when the signatories include people who are not constituents of the officials taking an action. But the real audience is not so much the folks who run Troy City Hall as it is Governor Paterson. “The city of Troy is applying for a grant from New York State to demolish the theater. The petition to Governor Paterson is asking him to grant money for the renovation of the theater, not its destruction.
“The theater was built in 1914 and remains the last existing grand movie palace in Troy. While the building is in disrepair, it does not need to be torn down. In 1979 Proctor’s was placed on National Register of Historic Places – but this distinction may not save it from the wrecking ball.”
Anyway, I add my name here because, in some minuscule way, I helped with the renovation of Proctor’s in Schenectady in the late 1970s by selling ads and performing in the arcade for an April 1978 fundraiser. It’s also the building I worked in for nearly 11 months. Here’s a picture of Proctor’s Schenectady – Troy’s is similar though now in disrepair – but, as the petitioner noted, “with vision and leadership it can look like this again!”