Ramblin' with Roger

Flip Flop Flap

There were two fairly minor stories in the news last week that caught my fancy. Both involved decorum and both reminded me of my father, one obtusely.

The first was the “flip flop flap”, the story of some young women on the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team who were invited to the White House to meet W and were chastised for wearing flip flops as opposed to shoes, preferably closed-toe shoes. Five of the nine in the first row were wearing this apparently awful apparel.

For some reason, this “lack of propriety” reminded me of a trip my family took from Charlotte to Raleigh, NC some 10 or 20 years ago. My father was complaining that the late Gregory Hines had worn an earring to some black-tie event honoring black Americans, probably an NAACP awards thing, that was televised. Dad complained that Hines was showing disrespect to the organization. My sister Leslie and I argued that he ALWAYS wore an earring, that this was not something he did to dis the event, and for a male actor to wear an earring was no big deal. This conversation went back and forth for about 90 miles, with neither side backing down.

The other story was about Why Knot, a robot that can tie a tie, but only certain types of knots. The link to my father was more obvious. We were having our family portrait taken in 1975, at a time when my relationship with him was in one of those shaky periods. He stood about four feet from my mother and me, and he asked my MOTHER, “Wouldn’t Roger want to wear a tie?” Well, Roger never WANTS to wear a tie, as he finds them noose-like and unnecessary. But if Roger’s father had asked ROGER if Roger WOULD wear a tie, it is likely that Roger would have complied. But since Roger’s dad asked Roger’s mom instead, the answer was: “No way.” And I think of that story every time I see that picture. (Talk about “Every picture tells a story.”)

I wouldn’t wear flip-flops to see the President, but I never expect that I’ll ever be asked to visit the White House. Also, I don’t own any flip-flops, and I don’t think I’d buy some if the occasion did arise. As for Why Knot, do we REALLY need a machine that will help us cut off blood and oxygen to the brain?

RM3

More Random Meanderings (or Random Mutterings or Ruminating Madness or Roger’s Minutae):

This is my blogger code: B1 d- t- k+ s– u– f+ i o x- e- l c–
For a translation, go here.
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Someone showed me what you can do with a Windows keyboard. (Besides throw it out the window.) When you press the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt) and M, it minimizes all the windows you may have opened! Maybe you knew that already, but it’s come in handy for me when I have eight windows open and I can’t see what I’m doing anymore.
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I set up another blog to put articles I think are interesting, but that aren’t mine. Here’s the first post about oil running out, with commentary by my acerbic bud, Daniel W. Van Riper. When the U.S. first went into Iraq, there was a widespread fear that oil may have been a motive. Reading this reminded me of that discussion.
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When I take Lydia for a walk in her carriage, and dog walkers approach, they almost always say that the dog “is friendly” or “doesn’t bite”. Please allow me the privilege of being a little bit wary anyway.
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My friend Claudia writes: “Guess no more what the film of the summer is. LADIES IN LAVENDER with Dame Judith Dench and Maggie Smith was a visual feast of beautiful England, enchanting story, complete with the mastery of Joshua Bell. We just adored every moment of English country side, the crashing ocean, melding personal stories. In other words it is delicious and enjoy every moment of it.” I haven’t seen it, but she generally has very good taste.
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John Rodat has a Myth America columm about Buddhist monks and moving that I related to heavily, and you collector types may as well. If it ain’t there anymore, it’s here.
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I was on the bus home a couple weeks ago when I see a guy get on. He was very striking young man, very fair skin, head shaved, oddly shaped glasses. He was wearing a black T-shirt that read in white letters, “Day of Silence.” I might have thought nothing more about this, except that he had pulled out a cell phone almost immediately after he had gotten on the bus. So, my eyes HAD to follow him to the back of the bus, where he sat, silently, playing some sort of electronic game.
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This is one of those a/v pieces that is funny and scary in equal measure. It appears that the Opus Sunday strip a couple weeks ago was inspired by this concept.
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I shaved my beard on July 4. People seeing me the next couple days often commented, “Oh, you look so much younger!” as though that would prompt me to shave more often. Not a chance. Razor is brutal tool to use on face. I did it once because I was hot. However, even when I’m done shaving, I have a 5 o’clock shadow of Nixonian proportions, and impenetrable stubble on the jaw line. Besides, I’m contrarian enough to wonder why it’s so hot to look “younger”. There’s a mindset, epitomized by those inane Clyde Frazier/Keith Hernandez Just for Men hair coloring ads, that gray is bad. Gray is good; “gray matter” represents the brain, after all.

3R?-2

Part 2 of Three Ramblin’ Questions

Alex Trebek, Canadian-born host of a popular American game show, turned 65 yesterday.

So, please tell me:

1. If your life were a game show, what would it be called and what would be the rules?

2. As you’ve gotten older yourself, how has that changed your attitude towards aging and the aged?

3. Can you sing the first verse of O Canada and/or name the current Canadian Prime minister and/or name the Canadian provinces (10) and territories (3)? If you said yes to any of these questions, what is your nationality?

BONUS QUESTION: Alex Trebek, better with the mustache, or without?

JEOPARDY! Part 9

Continued from Saturday, July 16.

During the commercials between Double JEOPARDY! and the Final, you have to make your bet. They give you a pad to figure it out, then they check the bet to see that it’s legible. They don’t want a $100.00 bet to be confused with a $10,000 bet, so they require the decimals for the cents. They also tell you the first word of the answer, which, in this case, is What. (This is why you’ll sometimes see bad grammar or a lack of a verb such as “What the White House?”)

The Final JEOPARDY! clue in World Capitals was this: “This city was known as Dong Kihn, and to the Europeans as Tonquin.”

Yikes!

For five seconds, I have no idea even what was being asked. Then I think, Hong Kong? No, that’s not a world capital. Then I look at the two primary words in the clue Tonquin and Donkin. If you blend them together, you get Tonkin. Tonkin Gulf. Where’s that? Viet Nam. And what’s the capital of Viet Nam? And all that processing took about 10 seconds.

Tom writes, What is Hanoi? Correct. He bet $1000 and now has $6100, a curious bet, I thought, though if we had ALL gotten it WRONG, he would have won. Amy wrote, “What is Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City?” Wrong, no longer a world capital. Then my response is revealed: “What is Hanoi?” At that moment, it didn’t matter what I bet. I stand, poker-faced. $8000, added to my $9600, for a total of $17,600! When my bet was uncovered, there was an audible gasp in the audience; I just exhaled.

Why the heck did I bet eight grand? For one thing, I felt reasonably comfortable with the topic (although if it has been a capital of one of the former Soviet republics, I’d be in trouble) She had $8400. If she bet it all (and got it right), she’d have $16,800. For me to win, I then needed to bet $16,800 (her score doubled) minus $9600 (my score) +$1 or $7601 (oh, and get the question right.). So, I figure, if I’m going to bet $7601, I might as well make it an even $8000.

I got tremendous applause, more than I could have imagined. There were reasons: 1) I was told by an audience member that WTEN brought a busload of people with them to see the show (how would they do that without announcing it on the air?), 2) both of my friends, Judy and Karen, were telling people sitting around them, “Hey, we know him, go root for Roger.” And they DID.

But there was little time to savor the victory. I had to go downstairs, change my clothes, come up and do it again in 20 minutes. Maggie accompanies me to the bathroom AGAIN. At the very last minute, I got my stuffed monkey Ersie and switched him from podium #2 to podium #1.

My competitors in the second game were Robin Shepherd, a contracts administrator from Pennsylvania, and Jim Zanotti, a law student from Massachusetts.

The categories were Yankee Ingenuity, People and Places, She’s My First Lady, Musical Instruments, and Rhymes with Cod. I liked the idea of all of them. Jim hits the Daily Double on the second clue in Celebrity Relatives and missed it (I knew that answer -Carol Burnett’s grandmother!). I never get a chance in the category, or much else, and at the first break, I have $400 (from one answer), Jim has $100, and Robin has $1500.

At the interview segment, I figure Alex will ask about Rod Serling or mountains, but says instead: “You must read a lot of books,” which threw me a little.

I’m ringing in a lot, but I’m not GETTING in a lot, and on the last clue, which is an audio one, I swear it sounded like a harpsichord, which is how I incorrectly identified it, but on TV, it sounded like a lute, which is what it was, and which Jim correctly identified. I lose $500. The score after the JEOPARDY! round is Roger $600, Jim $2700, Robin $2900.

Again, I start Double Jeopardy. The categories Nathaniel Hawthorne, Animal Name Origins, Films of the 40s, April, Showers, and the Mayflower.

Early on, there was a visual cue of some guy. Somehow, he reminded me of Al Jolson. I hated Al Jolson, and his blackface minstrel show. This guy was not in blackface, but it was indeed Larry Parks playing Jolson. I also get a clue on Gaslight, then the first clue in Hawthorne, which gets me to $2200. I never answer another clue; I simply can’t get in.

At one Daily Double in the Mayflower, Robin loses $1500 (on another question I knew!), so it’s me at $2200, Jim at $3500, and Robin at $5000, so if I COULD have gotten in, I’d have been all right.

Jim got the second Daily Double correctly, and I started having a new strategy: root for Jim to keep it close. Alas, on the last clue answered, he lost $1000, so at the end of Double JEOPARDY!, it was me STILL at $2200, Jim at $5500, and Robin at $9200

The Final JEOPARDY! answer was in part a visual one. The category was famous “New Englanders”: “Native New Englander, seen here modeling for his company’s catalog sometime before WWI.”

Almost no chance for me to win, Alex notes, which irritates me; it was true, but I didn’t need the reminder. I said Bean, as in L.L. Bean, judged to be correct. I bet $1800 for no reason other than it had an 8 in it, like my first bet, and ended at $4000.

At this point I really didn’t care what happened, though I knew I didn’t win.

Both Jim and Robin said Sears, but I knew she had enough (with $6700) to win.

I walk off stage after the fade out. (I have NO idea what the contestants talked with Alex about after EITHER of the shows I was on.) Susanne Thurber tried to make me feel better. “You did well. You won a lot of money. You were the only one to get the Final, and that put you in second place.” It did? I had no clue. Jim had finished at $3500.

So, what is worse than being able to say I lost on JEOPARDY?

Continued on Saturday, July 30.

Friday pm, 7-22-05

The most funkadelic man on the planet, George Clinton, turns 65 today. “Free your mind and your a** will follow.”
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There has been a bit of a comic book blogger’s war going on with a few folks. Can’t really explain it, but it’s too bad. I don’t know any of these people personally, but I’ve gotten to “know” them through their words. Somehow, the lyrics to a song from the Lovin’ Spoonful Daydream album came to mind.
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The “random searches” in the New York City subway system may not actually stop terrorism, but it may work as a “feel good” remedy, and does help redefine the limits of just far people are willing to allow governmental intrusion.