3 Voting ?s


One year, in 1976, I voted five times, in the Presidential primary, the regular primary, the general election, and two school-related votes. Do I think it makes a difference? I’m not sure. But I keep doing it, just in case. Also, I’ve had ancestors who fought for the right to vote, so I’m just not willing to just give it away.

This year, one race where voting won’t make a lick of difference is in the Albany mayoral contest. I know the challengers HATE that kind of talk, but I believe it, as do most observers. This is a one-party town, Democratic, and the incumbent, Jerry “How-Many-Events-Can-I-Make-In-One-Day?” Jennings, will get his fourth four-year term.
Naturally, I will vote for someone else. In this case, that would be Alice Green, coincidentally the Green Party candidate, and unrelated to me. (But she lives less than two blocks from my house.) Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary came to her house for a fundraiser. When Ralph Nader endorsed her, he practically challenged Jennings’ manhood for failing to debate her; there was also someone in a chicken costume outside City Hall.
There is a Republican candidate, Joe Sullivan, but he is practically Harold Stassen.

The mayor used to be a school vice-principal, so he tries to run the school board as well, though it is not in his purview. We received a very well-crafted flier for three of the six candidates. As it turns out, those three are the ones supported by the mayor.

I don’t know one of the other three candidates; the second is a decent incumbent. But I am familiar with Judy Doesschate. In fact, I’ve known Judy for 30 years. We were in student government together at the State University College at New Paltz in 1974 and 1975. She was the editor of the student newsletter I worked on. Good luck, Judy!

In New York State, there are two Propositions. Prop 2 is easy for me. It’s a $2.9 billion bond issue for transportation. I’m in favor of the things that the bond issue would pay for, but not via that payment methodology.
Prop 1 is harder. It would “reform” the state budget process, which Allah knows we need, since 20 of the last 21 budgets have been late. It pushes back the budget due date from April 1 to May 1 (that’s OK), and if there is no budget, would provide for provisional amounts to go to school districts, instead of them having to borrow, which is great news. Yet it seems that it allows the state legislature, which will be stronger vis a vis the governor in this new paradigm, not to bother working to meet the new deadline for the budget at all. People whose opinions I value come down on both sides of the issue.

So, my three questions for you are of an electoral nature; my tresponses will be in the answer section as well:

How often do you vote? Every election? Just the general elections in November? Every two years? Every four years? Never?

Why do so few Americans vote? Is the registration process in your state too onerous? (Registration is very different from state to state.)

Will you ever run for elected office? For what office? And why? (And if not, why not?)

BONUS QUESTION FOR NEW YORKERS: What’s YOUR take on Prop 1, or for that matter, Prop 2, the Albany mayor’s race, the NYC’s mayor’s race, or anything else electoral?

ROG

Rock Meme-Arthur Garfunkel


After the success of Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park in 1981, there was work on a new S&G album. But Paul ended up wiping Artie’s vocals off the tracks that turned out to be the basis for Paul’s solo album Hearts & Bones. People were so infuriated with Paul – I found myself defending him – that it was his least commercially successful effort up to that point. It took Graceland to turn things around. I always wanted to know what “Allergies” or “Think Too Much” would have sounded like a a duet.

Songs may be Simon & Garfunkel or Art solo.

Artist/Band: Art Garfunkel (b. 11/5/1941)
Are you male or female: Most Peculiar Man
Describe yourself: I Am a Rock
How do some people feel about you: Old Friends
How do you feel about yourself: Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Describe what you want to be: Keep the Customer Satisfied
Describe how you live: Somewhere They Can’t Find Me
Describe how you love: I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever; I Only Have Eyes for You
Share a few words of wisdom: Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall

ROG

My Summer Vacation

Here’s one of those posts that just got away from me.

I was going to talk about how, during the last week in August, on the only vacation trip we took all summer, how the gas went from $2.579 to $2.699 to $2.999 to $3.209 in four days.

I was going to say how well Lydia got along with the daughters of a friend of Carol;’ who she hadn’t seen in about seven years; the daughters look like:

this, and

this, and

this.

But what has still struck me, over two months after the visit, is the bizarre juxtaposition of agrarian and suburban life in another leg of the trip. One of my brothers-in-law lives in Chester County, PA, which is right next to Lancaster County. Lots of new suburban developments for people commuting, necessarily by car (unless they telecommute), to Philadelphia, close to an hour away. Not at all condusive to mass transit, with all the attendant ecological considerations.

I was most fascinated by bikers in gear that Lance Armstrong would covet on the same roads that the young Amish kids on their black one-speeds rode on.

The very week we came back, there was an article in Metroland on the agriculture wars, which says, briefly, that the people who move into the country want it to sound like the suburbs (no tractors at 5 a.m.) and smell like the suburbs (no manure!), but that if they want to move out there, they need to recognize that it IS working farm territory.

In the brief time I was in Chester County, I did not see the clash of cultures that was portrayed in the Metroland article, but I wonder if it’s just a matter of time.

ROG

Fave rave tunes

I stole this from Tosy, who stole it from someone named Jaquandor. I got into a holiday mode, so subsequently at least three others have done it. Ah, well.

“My favorite songs by these artists (I’ve left blanks for artists I know pretty much nothing of).”

Favorite Beatles song: “Drive My Car” – An extraordinary chord progression.

Favorite solo song by a former Beatle: “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Macca, from that very first solo album.

Favorite Bob Dylan song: You mean today? “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Favorite Pixies song: I’ll have to pull out my Doolittle album sometime.

Favorite Prince song: “I Would Die for You/Baby I’m a Star” – they’re segued, so I cheated. If I can’t cheat, “Delirious”.

Favorite Michael Jackson song: “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” – like the groove.

Favorite Metallica song: “One” – Tosy’s choice.

Favorite Public Enemy song: “Welcome to the Terrordome” – I’ve used it on a mixed CD.

Favorite Depeche Mode song: “Route 66/Behind the Wheel” – I have a remix of this on one of those Just Say Yes compilations that Sire Records put out a dozen years ago or so

Favorite Cure song: “Hot! Hot Hot!” – the remix

Favorite song that most of your friends haven’t heard: “Cellar Door” by Laura Cantrell on Hello Records, countryish tune.

Favorite Beastie Boys song: ? (I mean, I could say “Fight for Your Right”, but that would be too easy)

Favorite Police song: “Roxanne”, a song of redemption.
Tosy likes “Synchronicity II”, which does have one of my favorite lyrics ever, about the evil boss I used to have, and who I mentioned yesterday: “Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch.”

Favorite Sex Pistols song: ? Don’t really know except “Anarchy in the U.K.” and a live “U.S.A.” variation

Favorite song from a movie: “Ma ‘Til Fille” by Buckwheat Zydeco. A six-minute groove. (But I agree with Tosy that “Philadelphia” is “Neil Young’s so-superior-to-the-Springsteen-Oscar-winner contribution.” I think Bruce might even agree, if I discerned the subtext of his acceptance speech correctly.)

Favorite Blondie song: “Tide is High”, for the fun of the vocals in the last verse

Favorite Genesis song: “The Lamb Dies Down on Broadway”- Tosy’s choice. A Q-104 song.

Favorite Led Zeppelin song: “How Many More Times” from the first album. The album said this song was 3:30, when it was more like 8:30. The day I heard the first LZ deserves its own post. Maybe in 2009, for the fortieth anniversary (or sooner).

Favorite INXS song: “Never Tear Us Apart” – again, Tosy’s choice.

Favorite Weird Al song: “I Lost on JEOPARDY!” -it’s the Don Pardo middle section.

Favorite Pink Floyd song: “Another Brick in the Wall” – when I worked at FantaCo, Mark McGovern came up with new lyrics: “We don’t need sex education, we don’t need no birth control.” It gets worse.

Favorite cover song: Way too tough a question. The answer is NOT anything done by Pat Boone. I could give you an album’s worth of Beatle covers alone. “Hurt” – John R. Cash’s cover of NIN. When I saw the video again after Johnny died, I wept.

Favorite dance song: Without looking something up, “Dancing Machine” by the Jackson 5.

Favorite U2 song: “When Love Comes to Town”, with B.B. King.

Favorite disco song: “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor.

Favorite The Who song: “My Generation” – even though some of them got old before they died.

Favorite Elton John song: It varies so. “Burn Down the Mission” today.

Favorite Clash song: “Police on My Back”- screaming siren guitar line.

Favorite David Bowie song: “Panic in Detroit” -“sounds a lot like Che Guevara” song.

Favorite Nirvana song: “In Bloom”.

Favorite Snoop Dogg song: ?

Favorite Ice Cube song: ?

Favorite Johnny Cash song: “The Mercy Seat”, from the third American album. The piano by Benmont Tench, I believe. (And if it’s not, I’m sure SOMEONE will tell me.)

Favorite R.E.M. song: “Drive”, don’t know why.

Favorite Elvis song: “Little Sister”, the first one I heard, I believe.

Favorite cheesy-ass country song: ?

Favorite Billy Joel song: “Lullabye”, for his daughter

Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: “Darkness on the Edge of Town”

Favorite Big Audio Dynamite song: ? I have the BAD II album The Globe; I’ll have listen again

Favorite New Order song: ? I have some early vinyl I’ll need to pull out.

Favorite Neil Diamond song: “Thank the Lord for the Nightime”

Favorite Squeeze song: “Tempted”

Favorite Smiths song: ?

Favorite Tragically Hip Song: ? One album I play every July 1, Canada Day

Tosy added:

Favorite Beach Boys song: “God Only Knows”, Tosy’s choice

Favorite Dave Matthews Band song” ?

Favorite Dire Straits song: “Industrial Disease” – “two men say they’re Jesus”

Favorite Elvis Costello song: “What’s So Funny? (About Peace, Love, and Understanding)” -Tosy’s choice. I also hear this song as an a cappella doo wop. Yes, really.

Favorite Guns ‘N Roses song: “Civil War”, if only for the Cool Hand Luke dialogue.

Favorite Jimi Hendrix song: “Voodoo Chile Blues”- anyone chastising Hendrix for doing that rock and/or roll didn’t hear this or “Red House”

Favorite John Mellencamp song: “Jack and Diane” – my wife’s cousin’s named Diane and she married a guy named Jack.

Favorite Living Colour song: “Information Overload” – the bane of a librarian’s life.

Favorite Neil Young song: “Harvest Moon” or “When You Dance”, both about lost loves.

Favorite Paul Simon song: Oh, so many. “Boy in the Bubble” – there is a 12″ version that’s never appeared on a CD, as far as I can tell.

Favorite Simon & Garfunkel song: “The Boxer”. I know this song by heart, except for the verse Paul added later on a live show, which doesn’t enhance the song, so I never learned it.

Favorite Queen song: “Another One Bites the Dust”

Favorite Radiohead song: ?

Favorite Sting song: “I Hung My Head”, though John R. Cash’s version is better.

Favorite Tracy Chapman song: “Fast Car”

Favorite Van Morrison song: “Wild Night”

Favorite XTC song: “Generals and Majors” -loopy

ADDED BY Lefty

Favorite Allman Brothers song: “Elizabeth Reed”

Favorite Grateful Dead song: “Friend of the Devil”

Favorite Green Day song: “American Idiot” (Lefty’s choice); thanks, ADD

Favorite The Band song: “Jemima Surrender”

Favorite White Stripes song: ?

Favorite Willie Nelson song: “Graceland”

Favorite Indigo Girls song: “Closer to Fine”

Favorite They Might Be Giants Song: “They Might Be Giants” (from Flood)

And now my THREE additions:

Favorite Frank Sinatra song: “That’s Life”

Favorite Supremes song: “Love Is Like an Itchin’ in My Heart”

Favorite Temptations song: “I Can’t Get Next to You”

Any other masochists out there?

ROG

Brown Departing CNN; Cooper to Become Evening Block Anchor

I don’t know WHY this story from TV Week by Michele Greppi bothers me so. I didn’t watch Brown all that much. I was pretty much forced to see Gloria Vanderbilt’s son in his waders every time I turned on the TV during the worst of Katrina.

Anderson Cooper, one of the breakout stars of Hurricane Katrina coverage,
“Breakout star” of a national disaster! Ain’t life grand!
will become the sole anchor of the 10 p.m.-midnight (ET) weekday block on CNN, effective Monday, and Aaron Brown will leave the news network he joined in 2001.
“Leave the network”…does that mean fired or allowed to resign?

Mr. Cooper, like Mr. Brown an alumnus of ABC News, joined CNN as a weekend anchor in December 2001 and became anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360” from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays in March 2003.
“Does ABC News have any vacancies?” Aaron wonders. “If Vargas does anchor World News Tonight, maybe I can do 20/20!”

Taking the place of “360” at 7 p.m. will be an hour of “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer, who now will anchor “Situation” from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Goody! More Wolf to parody!

David Doss, the executive producer of “360” who recently was moved to “NewsNight” when CNN paired Mr. Brown and Mr. Cooper from 10 p.m. to midnight in a move designed to inject some of Mr. Cooper’s pizzazz into Mr. Brown’s more sober tone, will remain Mr. Cooper’s executive producer.
Pizazz! That’s what I live for in my news coverage.

CNN sources said Mr. Brown is expected to take time with his family before deciding on his next career move.
Which means he doesn’t know WHAT the heck he’s going to do now.

ROG
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