Category: Uncategorized

But that left me grappling – what can I do for peace? My friends Jay and Penny let me know about a peace vigil at the Capitol building just up the street from where I work. I didn’t go the next week, but on September 25, I started participating in a weekly vigil for peace, organized by some Quakers, though the participants were not all from the faith.

I knew then that we needed to stop the war from starting. I attended other rallies, in addition to the Wednesday noon events. I went to NYC on February 15, 2003. I boldly predicted that if the war were to start, in five years, there would be at least two countries where one was now, believing the Kurds, who had been all but autonomous in the 11+ years since the Gulf War, due to the northern “no-fly” zone enforced by the US and the UK, would opt out of a country so torn by sectarian tension.

But, of course, the war started anyway. I still protested, but now it was seen as even more treasonous than before, and some of the passersby let us know it. Finally, after the fall of the Saddam regime, one of the more regular complainers came over to gloat. “See, it’s over!” he crowed.

Of course, it wasn’t over. “Mission” was not “accomplished.” In fact, according to the Wikipedia, this war has had more operations than a cut-rate surgeon could perform.

Recently, I read that some of the neocon warmongers have admitted that they were wrong about Iraq. Somehow, this is small comfort, after “three years, tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, and $200 billion – all to achieve a chaos verging on open civil war.”

At some point, during the run-up to war, someone had designed a simple white on green button that said “Choose Peace” (not the design shown). I wore it on my coat regularly. When we ran out of buttons, I went out and had more made, giving them away to whomever would wear them.

Initially, I thought it was “Cars” by Gary Numan, but later realized it was probably a local band such as Blotto or the AD’s, or maybe Little Roger and the Goosebumps (no relation).

My last LP, 33 1/3 album was a Ray Charles greatest hits package.

I used to get classical music on cassette, but I couldn’t tell you what was the last selection.

A couple old ladies were neighbors of mine when, in 1982, the landlord through all of us out of the building in order to renovate it, and presumably charge more rent. They gave me a bunch of 78s, which I’ve never played but still own.

Now that I have a DVD, I know the last my last videotape I got was “Spider-Man”.

So, I have a question of you, if you would be so kind:

What was the last entertainment item you bought/received in each of the formats you used to purchase but no longer do so?

It could be 78s, 45s, LPs, 8-track, cassette music, even CDs if you’re only downloading tunes.

It could be those 12-inch laser discs or VCR tape if you’re getting DVDs now.

AND SPEAKING OF MUSIC…

I’m a lurker on a religious listserv since they’re all a whole lot more theologically erudite than I.

One guy wrote a sermon, and it ended:
“Your cheatin’ heart will make you weep. You’ll cry and cry and try to sleep. But sleep won’t come the whole night through. Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you. (“Your Cheatin’ Heart” (c) by LeAnn Rimes)

A reply: Powerful sermon, but I’m gonna have to give you a whuppin if you don’t give Hank Williams credit for “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

First guy: Hank may have sung it, but according to the Music Lyrics data base, it was LeAnn Rimes that wrote it!

This really hurt my head. So I wrote:

Hank Williams died in 1953. LeAnn Rimes was born in 1982. Hank wrote the song.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams

First guy: I’ll have to take this up with the Music Lyrics data base.

Yeah, you do that.
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Right wing folk songs. One image did make me cringe.
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I’m trying to figure out what my contribution will be to Lefty’s CD mix blogger exchange. Inspired by what Lefty last sent me, I think I know. It may be a bit of a cheat, I suppose.

TELEVISION

Weekly audio briefings by the executive producers of “24” and, OK, “American Idol” on TV Week’s website.
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There’s a website that keeps track of plane crashes. There’s a special section of famous people who died in crashes, the most recent of which was Peter Tomarken, 63, former game show host, of Press Your Luck fame. A sad story, as reported by Mark Evanier, because he seemed like such a nice guy, but I must admit that I REALLY hated that show with the annoying Whammies.
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And speaking of Mark Evanier, his page has a lot of video links to television shows, most recently, Batman.

And speaking of Batman, the 2006 TV Land Awards are on this Wednesday at 9 pm (ET and PT), featuring the casts of Cheers, Good Times, and Messrs. West and Ward.
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That two-hour program is followed by – will Gordon be watching?- the premiere of Living in TV Land, featuring William Shatner. Shatner’s on the following week, too, and Adam West shows up a couple weeks after that.
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Lefty’s watching Black. White. on FX, as are we. I can’t help thinking that, so far, I’m not really liking ANY of the characters except one. Wait, they’re not characters, they’re people. Anyway, the point stands.

CONFUSION

From Dan: “This guy who is living in China likes to post on his blog examples of mangled English that he finds. This gem is particularly fascinating. It is an actual restaurant menu with helpful English translations. Some of the items are downright terrifying. And no, it is not fake. The comments make that clear.

Of course, these folks know more English than we know Chinese. But still…”
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The difference between Euros and Eros. From The At Large Blog.
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Life with Archie redux
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I can’t believe I’ve missed this all of these years: Web Pages That Suck.com, since 1996.
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Do you use the word Dumpster as the name for any of those large trash bins? You may be committing genericide.

AND OTHER THINGS

In 1999, I was engaged to Carol. As an engaged guy, I was willing to do just about anything to please my wife-to-be. Yet, when she said to me seven years ago today, “Can you come over and watch my corned beef for about five hours?” I balked briefly. I had things I wanted to get done. It wasn’t a constant task, though, and, and I could read or watch TV, so naturally, in the end, I said yes.

Carol was going shopping with two of her three bridesmaids for dresses for them. Carol had already gotten her gown. I get to her place at 1:30 pm; both Alison from Connecticut (who had already announced she had a bad reaction to corned beef) and DeeDee from Binghamton had already arrived and introduced themselves to each other. (The third, Darlene, lived in Georgia.)

For some reason, they were looking at bridal gowns in magazines, and asked me what I thought of the various dresses. Frankly, I wasn’t all that interested, but I noted that I liked this one, but didn’t like that one, something called an Empire Waist. Suddenly, the air was sucked out of the room. CLEARLY, Carol’s dress had an Empire Waist. Why were these people talking to me about this anyway?!

They said they’d be back in five hours. So, I figured it’d be six.

At 7:30, they called; they’re STILL shopping. Finally, at 9:30, they arrive back at Carol’s house, with no dresses, but with food from Burger King!

You need to know that Carol is probably ready for bed by this point, yet the four of us stay up talking, and eventually play a game that’s not unlike Tarot cards. When it came to Carol’s message, something in it made her mention that she would prefer that the bridesmaids all wear navy blue. Suddenly, Alison, DeeDee and I all instinctively heaved a sigh of relief. The dress buying had gone so poorly because Carol, not wanting to be a Bridezilla, and not wanting them to be stuck with dresses they could never wear again, had given her bridesmaids carte blanche. Somehow, that made the shopping too difficult.

So, now it’s almost 1:30. I was going to go home, but crashed in bed with Carol. This left one pull-out bed for the two women. Alison is really into spiritual things, vocalizations and whatnot. So, she was toning the bed. Toning is something like a musical chant. I couldn’t help but laugh, probably partially from exhaustion, and partly from the look on DeeDee’s face that clearly said, “Who IS this person I’m sleeping with?”

The next morning, Alison tried on a navy blue dress that DeeDee brought from a previous wedding, but that did not fit DeeDee any more. It fit Alison perfectly! Alison and DeeDee split the cost of the dress DeeDee would wear, and Darlene now knew what she would be looking for. Interestingly, the style of the three bridesmaids were all very different, but unified by color, few noticed, no one cared, and they all looked good in their dresses.

And Carol? I guess I DO like Empire Waists, at least on that particular bride.

It’s really something about the Cubs and their fans. I don’t know if it has to do with WGN, the super station that carries their games all over the country, or whether it’s just because they’re one of baseball’s oldest teams with a tradition that goes all the way back to Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. I only know I’m forever running into Cubs fans. One of the biggest Cubs fans I ever knew was Jerry Lewis. I’m not sure why he was, but we became pals when I was the manager there. I’d actually met him years earlier in Los Angeles when I was playing with the Dodgers. Lewis had always wanted to be a ballplayer, and he’d gotten to know a few guys on the team.
One year, Gil Hodges brought him to the ballpark and gave him a first baseman’s mitt and let him take infield [practice] with us. From there, he started playing in our pepper games and that’s where he took a liking to me. When I got traded over to the Cubs, Lewis showed up in their spring training camp in Mesa, Arizona, for a couple of days, and after working out with us, he’d go to the dog track with me. Everybody, of course, recognized him at the track and he’d go into his act where he’d take one hundred or so losing tickets and throw them up in the air and slap me across the cheek. One time, he just threw all the tickets in my face and everybody laughed.
Then, a few years later, a couple of friends of mine from St. Pete went to Vegas with me. We were staying at the Desert Inn, one of the few hotels that had a golf course nearby. As we were walking off the eighteenth hole, here comes Jerry, just beginning to play his round. He saw me and threw his arms around me and said: “Where are you going?” I told him we were going to hail a cab to go back to our hotel. “No way you are,” he said. “I’m driving you back.” And that’s what he did, putting off his round of golf.

Now, moving ahead another twenty years, I was managing the Cubs, and Jerry would come through Mesa every spring on his way to or from L.A. He’d spend a couple days with me at camp and, again, we’d go to the track together. One year, I gave him a Cubs jacket, which absolutely thrilled him, and all through my term as manager there, he’d write me letters, faithfully predicting the pennant every year for us. At the beginning of the 1988 season, he wrote me a letter with my picture attached in the upper right-hand corner. “I want you to know,” he wrote, I have blown this picture up to sixty by ninety and it’s hanging in my living room so when I feel depressed, I see it, and feel better!”
Soot [Zimmer’s wife] saved all the letters I got from Jerry, as well as the hundred or so others I’ve gotten through the years from celebrities.

What I haven’t been able to accept, however, is the government being an obstructionist to the access of information by requiring Freedom of Information Law requests to stall their response. The law that was designed to open government has been used to obfuscate.

And what incredibly sensitive material have I been looking for? Things like the number of a particular brand of automobile registered in a certain county.

Here’s my working theory, at least at the state level: as more and more information has been placed online by government agencies, which may have led to a reduction of staff that used to be necessary to retrieve such information, the agencies have decided that any questions that are not on their public websites can fall under the FOIL law; they’ll give it to you, but it’ll cost you. Indeed, the FOIL allows for cost-recovery, so ANYTHING asked that’s out of the ordinary becomes FOILable.

I have filed one FOIL request, to the NYS Department of State. While DBAs (certificates of people “Doing Business As”), are processed on the county level, the numbers are supposed to be collected at the state level. I was told that I had to file a FOIL request. So I went down and did so. I’m still waiting. Almost two years. For the number of businesses registered by county? Ah, FOILed again.