Uncategorized Archives - Page 64 of 1211

Things that bug me a little

very LOUD

After going to NYC, I started pondering a few things that bug me a little. Maybe a bit more than a little. I’m listing from most to least annoying.

Motorized bicycles are a hassle to avoid in Albany, especially the lunkheads, who insist on riding on the sidewalk. But in Manhattan, they ride in the designated lanes, yet often don’t yield to pedestrians, ignoring traffic signals.

As someone who has been going to the City since 1971, I have found that car drivers have been, in the main, more aware of pedestrians. I had to scowl at only one car, and naturally, it was a taxi driver turning left and heading toward me as I was in the middle of the walkway.

Snow removal is something I excel at. Before I went to church on January 7, I shoveled the walk. The WHOLE walk. Then, just before dark, I shoveled again. There was a dusting the next morning, which I planned to get to, but the sun took care of it.

On the 9th, the absentee landlord for the property next door, Tick, and his long-suffering wife were trying to clear that sidewalk, which had mainly turned to ice by then. Not that he asked my opinion, but he might be better served to engage one of the tenants to shovel for a monetary consideration. Heck, I’d do it myself if he paid me enough.

Bathroom etiquette

I put the toilet seats down. There’s a sign in the all-access bathroom at my church asking people to lower the seat, yet twice in 2024, the seat was up. When I grew up, I was in a household with three females and one other male. I live with two females currently.

A few years ago, I mentioned this topic to a guy who was quite perturbed. He gave me a diatribe about how women are liberated. “Why should men have to touch the filthy toilet seat?” I had no pithy response, so I just walked away. And I still put the seat down, but don’t tell him.

Hands-free cell phones bug me because the person walking down the street yakking is often very LOUD. That said, sometimes, it’s entertaining. One guy seemed to be pumping himself up when he said, “I’m ready to take on whatever they think I can do.” Another guy muttered, “I don’t know what the f*** they’re talking about.” A woman was delighted to share, “I was kind of lying telling people that Disney is involved.”

The photo, BTW, is one in a series of failed attempts to take a decent picture of the moon with my phone. I sort of like it because it looks like the moon lit the porch.

Pigskin conversation

On the other hand, I enjoyed this conversation immensely. On January 14, my wife and I ate dinner at a local Italian restaurant for our lunaversary. A television showed the Green Bay Packers playing at the Dallas Cowboys. The Pack was leading 27-0 until the ‘boys scored a touchdown just before the half.

I told my wife, ” I hate the Cowboys.” The woman at the next table, dining with her husband, said, “I can’t help but overhear what you said. I hate the Cowboys, too.”

While eating and watching the game during the second half at our respective tables, we discovered that our fathers and we were all New York Giants fans. She had one sister, and growing up, they both watched the games on Sundays with their dad. Since her family lived in Delaware County, NY, adjacent to Broome County, where my hometown of Binghamton is, we all watched the games on WNBF-TV, Channel 12, the CBS affiliate that carried the games locally.

I know a great deal about this person, including the fact that she is two years younger than me, except for her name. It was fun for us to do a running commentary of the game. At one point, I noted that Dallas, then down by 24 with about 20 minutes left, could tie the game if they scored three touchdowns AND two-point conversations. Fortunately, GB beat DAL 48-32. Our spouses were very patient.

Movie review: American Fiction

Jeffrey Wright in a rare lead performance

As a bribe to get her to update her passport, I took my daughter to lunch, and then we bused to the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany to see the new film American Fiction on a snowy Tuesday afternoon (January 16) in a near-empty room.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Theolonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is a prickly black novelist frustrated that his writing is not “Black enough” to sell many books. At a book conference, he sees how the new book by Sintara (Issa Rae) receives thunderous applause for its portrayal of the Black experience.

Under a pseudonym, Monk writes what he considers an outlandish “Black” book of his own and has to deal with the consequences of the book’s release.

But that’s not all the film was. It touches on family dynamics, specifically Monk and his siblings Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), including how to take care of their aging mother (Leslie Uggams). Who was the favorite child? How do those characteristics get passed down, particularly as one relates to others, such as Monk’s potential girlfriend, Coraline (Erika Alexander)? That throughline alone was worth the price of admission.

I laughed aloud several times and often nodded my head in an “oh, yeah” agreement.

They’re missing the point.

As is my wont, I like to look at negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Sometimes, it speaks to how I was feeling. Occasionally, it points out something I might have missed. In this case, I think most of the 7% who didn’t recommend the film missed the point.

“A buzzy film adaptation of Percival Everett’s Erasure, a novel about publishing’s racial politics, misreads what is truly ailing the book industry.” I don’t think it was explicitly supposed to be specifically about the book industry, but rather about how even well-meaning white people can get the issue of race so wrong. My daughter said that one character in particular reminded her of of someone we both knew, and I totally see it.

“By softening the blow with its cuddly human side, American Fiction feels too self-satisfied by half.” The film needed the human side, especially Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor), the Ellisons’ long-time housekeeper, to help contextualize the portrayals.

“American Fiction is an intriguing conundrum. It starts as a sizzling, hilarious satire that manages to sling pointed arrows at most of its targets. However, by trying to become too many things, it ends up sanding the edges off its sharpness.” I LIKED the “too many things” because these people are complex. One critic suggested Monk was “flat,” but he seemed pretty authentic to me.

The ending is a bit murky, but I don’t much care. American Fiction may be my favorite 2023 film, but I must ruminate on it more.

Jan. rambling: power and the glory

Until The End Of The World

The Corruption of the Evangelical Movement, the Weekly Sift review of Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory.

The effect of abortion bans on women’s health, a preview of a program running on Hulu.

See How 2023 Shattered Records to Become the Hottest Year. Month after month, global temperatures didn’t just break records; they surpassed them by far. This year could be even warmer.

History is not a feel-good story.

Renaissance fairs and the Red Scare

Stealing Jokes Is Taboo, So Why Do Comedians Keep Doing It?

Julie Newmar documentary

A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names

The Jay Thomas story about the Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore

Steamboat Willie (1928)

Now I Know: The Problem with Free Pizza and The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders and These Pigs Don’t Fly, But They Are Flags

Passings

Hail and Farewell (CBS Sunday Morning 12/31/2023)

My wife’s uncle on her mother’s side, Glenn Olin, and her aunt on her father’s side, Portia Bush, both died in January 2024.

Tom Shales, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Critic, Dies at 79

Glynis Johns, Who Played Mrs. Banks in ‘Mary Poppins,’ Dies at 100. I watched a show called Glynis, which ran for 13 episodes in 1963.

David Soul: Starsky & Hutch actor dies aged 80

The 1890 US census was destroyed 103 years ago. Here’s what survived.

Sports

NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’ At Stake As Court Clears Way For Major Antitrust Trial. A jury trial, which could significantly impact the market for NFL games, is set to start on Feb. 22. Damages are estimated at $6.1 billion.

NFL: Saturday, Jan. 20 – I’m rooting for the visitors

AFC — No. 4 Houston at No. 1 Baltimore 4:30 p.m. (ESPN, ABC)

NFC — No. 7 Green Bay at No. 1 San Francisco, 8 p.m. (FOX)

NFL: Sunday, Jan. 21 – I’m rooting for the home teams

Game 9: NFC — No. 4 Tampa Bay at No. 3 Detroit, 3 p.m. (NBC)

Game 10: AFC — No. 3 Kansas City at No. 2 Buffalo, 6:30 p.m. (CBS)

Bhutan: In the mountains of the world’s most remote country, baseball takes hold

MUSIC

Until The End Of The World – U2

Samba Em Comun – Peter Sprague, featuring Sinne Eeg

On The Beautiful Blue Danube, followed by the Radetzy March. Vienna Philharmonic.

It’s Been A Long Long Day – Radka Toneff, a Paul Simon cover

Coverville 1472: The Jimmy Page Cover Story

Nothing Really Matters – Madonna

Carmen Suite – Rodion Shchedrin

Red Flags – Brittany Howard

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Bob Dylan

Rainbow Connection dubbed into Japanese

Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles

The Covered Man – David Soul

Midnight Special– CCR

Don’t Give Up On Us – David Soul

Brighter Than The Sun, et al.

The Museum of Broadway

The Off-Broadway play Brighter Than The Sun was why my daughter and I took the 10:05 a.m. Amtrak train down to New York City on Wednesday, January 10.

The 10:05 to NYC was delayed. So was the 8:25. Though no one told us why, I had a sneaking suspicion about it, confirmed by some folks on Facebook. The tracks run very close to the Hudson River, and the torrent of rain south of Albany made running the trains in either direction impossible. This meant the trains running to Montreal and Toronto, probably from NYC via Albany, were likewise suspended.

Then, just before 11 a.m., they called the 8:25 folks to board. A lot of them had left the terminal, with some deciding to take the bus or to drive, though I heard there were some difficulties with the driving in the Mid-Hudson as well. (Flying was no better.)

Then the 10:05 people got to board (yay!) but we didn’t take off for nearly an hour (oh, well). But we finally left only two hours late. There were park benches near the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie that were half covered by the river.

We walked to our timeshare, Club Wyndham on 45th Street near 3rd Avenue, where my sister Leslie and I stayed in June 2022. Soon, we headed to a casual restaurant where we met Alexa, the general manager/assistant director/co-producer/chief bottle washer of Brighter Than The Sun, and not incidentally, one of my daughter’s cousins. She was there with her twin sister, her mother and father (one my wife’s brothers), who also came from out of town.

Off-Broadway

After dinner, we headed to the Chain Theatre / 36th Street Theatre, 312 West 36th Street, a 99-seat theater which is a requirement of an Off-Broadway production. The show is “an autobiographical, anecdotal musical that analyzes the relationship between a young man and his grandmother, as it takes a collective glance at both of their upbringings in South Georgia. The narrative is a simple, yet incredibly evocative tale of broken dreams, familial ties and the concurrent cycles of birth and death that compose everyone’s story.”

The performers were amazing. A standout was Amber Mawande-Spytek, a great singer. It turns out that I had seen her before, in Godspell at the Mac-Haydn Theatre in August 2023. There are some good songs, and while the dialogue could be trimmed, the playwright shows promise. It’s playing through January 21.

The next morning, we went to the Amish Market. From the website, it would seem it was sold prepared foods. In fact, it was fairly well stocked with fresh fruits, vegetables, and the usual grocery fare.

The Museum of Broadway

After we made breakfast, my daughter and I went to the Museum Of Broadway, which is, to use the technical term, really cool. After one watches a four-minute video of NYC theater – it moved uptown from the Wall Street area because the land was cheaper – we went up to the third floor.

The top two floors contained items from various shows, plus videos. They included Showboat, Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma, Hair, Company, West Side Story (you are in the corner store), Rent (pick up the pay phone receiver and hear about Jonathan Larson from those who knew him), Phantom of the Opera (that’s the Red Death costume below), Hamilton, Wicked, and the special exhibit for Six.

It was great, but someone wanting to go into theater should spend ample time on the first floor. “Go behind the curtain into the making of Broadway show with a special exhibit honoring the community of brilliantly talented professionals – both onstage and off – who bring Broadway plays and musicals to life every night.” Everything from costumes to choreography, makeup to marketing, is addressed in the videos by people who have done so.

I spent a lot of time watching the video about the swings, the unsung heroes of theater. Later that day, my daughter and I would see Alexa and her family again, and I recommended that Alexa go to the Museum if she had time.

On our way back to the Wyndham, we walked through Bryant Park, which had several vendors and many ice skaters. And we saw the trees near Grand Central Station, as pictured above.

The last day

Our checkout was 10 a.m., so I ran the dishwasher and we packed. We could leave our luggage at the Wyndham while we ate breakfast across the street.

We went a couple of blocks to the United Nations and attempted to identify the members’ flags, which, fortunately, were arranged alphabetically. It wasn’t very windy, so it was difficult to see them fully. It’s good that it’s Cote d´Ivoire and not Ivory Coast because that flag and Ireland’s are a LOT alike. I had forgotten that some countries had changed their names: Swaziland to Eswatini, e.g.

We returned to the hotel, retrieved our luggage, then ordered an Uber that arrived in less than a minute. The 1:20 train left on time. We took the 114 CDTA bus home.

MLK is not your wingman

Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically brings about some great discounts!

My wife sent me an article from Leah Donnella at NPR called “MLK is not your wingman.” It’s the introduction to the Code Switch podcast episode for January 10, 2024, Everyone Wants a Piece of Martin Luther King’s Legacy. You should listen to it.

But the Donnella intro hit me right between the eyes because it’s SO true.

“For decades, everyone and their mother has tried to get a piece of that sweet, sweet MLK Pie, from car companies… to politicians (no matter what their actual politics are). And don’t forget about the deals! A recent article in Forbes probably put it best: ‘MLK Day is unequivocally about celebrating the life and legacy of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,’ they wrote (emphasis mine). But also, the article went on, ‘Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and even Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically bring about some great discounts.’ (Cue the swelling applause.)”

Yes, and this makes me… exasperated and weary and sad. One of the things I’ve hated about the MLK Jr. legacy after his assassination is that his image became embedded in amber, as I railed against last year.

The Struggle for the People’s King

“Hajar Yazdiha, the author of a new book about the struggle over King’s memory, argues that it’s worse than that — that Dr. King’s legacy has been used quite intentionally as a ‘Trojan horse for anti-civil rights causes.’ For instance, at a news conference in 2021, numerous Republican lawmakers invoked King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech while arguing for bans on teaching Critical Race Theory in schools.”

You’d think he gave just one speech, heck, one part of one speech. When I excerpted that address last year, I intentionally omitted the most familiar section because it has been weaponized as a declaration that WE HAVE Overcome, which I’ve primarily heard since Obama was elected President in 2008.

“Those moves are from a very old playbook, Yazdiha told us… Take Ronald Reagan. As president, he publicly helped instate Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday. But Yazdiha says that in private letters, Reagan assured his friends that he was ‘really going to drive home throughout his presidency the story that Dr. King’s dream of this colorblind nation has been realized, and so now racism is…over and we can move on.’ That play – of invoking a radical figure only to manipulate or defang their teachings – has proved incredibly enduring and incredibly effective.”

These conversations ignore continuing inequality in wealth, health, and many other aspects of life in America.

Disliked

“It’s worth remembering that despite his contemporaneous supporters, Dr. King was considered a huge threat during his lifetime and was incredibly unpopular among the mainstream. And that’s no coincidence. Part of the civil rights movement’s success was due to its disruptive nature: massive boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience that put powerful peoples’ time, money, and good names in jeopardy.”

I noted this back in 2015. “According to the Gallup poll: ‘In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966 — the last Gallup measure of King using this scalometer procedure — it was 32% positive and 63% negative.'”

Donnella continues: “So while it’s all well and good to celebrate a hero from a bygone era now that he’s no longer able to disagree with any particular interpretation of his legacy, maybe it’s more important to be looking at the present. Because the real inheritors of King’s legacy today — and of the civil rights movement more broadly — are likely acting in ways that make a lot of people pretty uncomfortable.”