Ramblin' with Roger

Don’t Cry! It’s Only Sunday Stealing.

Frosty

moon 3/14/2025 Don’t Cry. It’s only Sunday Stealing. This week, we’re stealing from Steph, aka Cry Baby. She loves Taco Bell and asks questions like these.

1) Think about the last person you forgave. How long did it take you to forgive them?

I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time I was in a situation to forgive somebody. The last time I had a lengthy disagreement, they were upset with me much more than I was upset with them. Let’s say we had a political difference of opinion for about four years. Eventually, they decided that they wanted to see me after all.

2) Steph’s favorite fast food is Taco Bell. What’s yours?

It’s been a few years since I’ve been there, but it is probably Wendy’s. I like the burgers, and they have an ice cream-related thing called the Frosty. I saw in a segment on CBS News that they are mixing Frosties with Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. It sounds weird; I wouldn’t mind having one to test it out.

3) Who was the last friend you hung out with? What did you do?

Over half a dozen people played hearts at my house yesterday to honor my birth month. I wrote about the tradition of the hearts game here. I wanted to have a hearts game at my house at least once a year, and, for the most part, since I turned 60, it’s happened.

Lunar eclipse

4) Did you do anything this past week that will still seem important a year from now?

“Important” might be a strong word, but significant, I would say yes. Going to see the solar eclipse in April 2024 was fun, but visually disappointing. Others, even in my area, have seen the Northern Lights in 2024, but I could never find them.

I stayed up until 3 a.m. on March 14th to look at the moon, which was primarily orange during the lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very good camera—in fact, I don’t have a real camera at all. I took a picture with my phone, which is unimpressive, to say the least, but I blew it up, and it appears in this post. It doesn’t look like the moon, but it’s cool or at least interesting.

5) Will this coming week be better than last week? How so?

I keep making a list of things I need to do next week, and the items remain on the list as I go through the week. Will next week be better? I thought last week would be better, so next week COULD be better, but there are no guarantees. Other things pop up and take me off in another direction.

The writer who reviewed every album

Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’ list

Every album? On January 28, Medium writer Harris Sockel noted: “Last weekend, I spent several hours digging into a majestic 138-minute read by Tom Morton-Collings (it’s more of a book, to be honest). He began the project last year, inspired by Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time…

“He decided to listen to all 6,800 songs on all 500 albums. It took him over six months. He writes:

“’I grew up as a music fan believing in the medium of the album as sacred. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost sight of that. I ditched all my physical media a long time ago. I only used streaming services and, more and more, was only listening to playlists curated… based on my listening habits. […] I wasn’t expanding my musical horizons at all. If anything, they were narrowing.’”

As you likely know, I’m enough of a dinosaur to play CDs still. And I received a record player for Christmas!

“What follows is the most detailed, exhaustive journey through the last 70 years of music that I’ve ever seen… While reading, I kept pausing to revisit albums I hadn’t heard in decades… I made a few new discoveries, like Laura Nyro’s Eli and the 13th Confession (1968) [LISTEN!]. And I learned that Rolling Stone really needs to listen to its own list, because Morton-Collings points out a few (what he perceives as) lazy choices — like including a five-hour Merle Haggard compilation as one of its ‘top albums of all time.’ A more discerning curator would’ve picked just one of the artist’s 66 studio albums.”

Suffice it to say, I LOVED reading these reviews. Albums he thought he should like but didn’t. Artists he’d heard of but had never listened to: Carole King’s Tapestry! [LISTEN] (He Loved/Liked it.)

How to

Morton-Colling’s process: “I made the decision to listen to every single one of these 500 albums, in full — in reverse order, from number 500 down to number 1 — to provide a short summation on each (5 words at first, but this was changed to 10 for the top 100) along with an arbitrary rating of my own (Loved/Liked/Maybe/Nah, or a combination of those). Also to give more elaborate feedback on selected highlights. Generally, I just wanted to open myself up to it all.”

And he owns his biases. Regarding Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits [LISTEN]. “Now then. At some point, I was always going to have to ditch my attempt to not include albums I was already familiar with as highlights. But this is with good reason. This isn’t just an album I’m familiar with, at this point it almost makes up some of the sequence of my DNA. It was released when I was 1 yr old and I feel like it has been part of my life ever since. It seeped through my skin due to constant exposure. I wouldn’t choose to be without it any more than I’d choose to be without my thumbs. It’s the sound of childhood, of endless car journeys, sat in the back seat in the middle, sandwiched between my 2 big brothers.”

More Island Records

So what albums besides these would be in my Top 25? Here are some, with links to all of them.

Not on the RS list: East/West– Butterfield Blues Band

343. Greatest Hits — Sly and the Family Stone (1970): “Funky-soul singles from improbable family. (Liked/Maybe).” This is the only greatest hits album I’d put on my list.

334. Abraxas — Santana (1970): “Relaxing, Latin-rock, guitar hero vibes. (Liked)”

I especially liked the longer piece about 3. Blue (1971) Joni Mitchell

“Overall, it made me think about how we interact with albums. How, with further listens, certain music can open up for you, but how many times those further listens won’t happen? I think sometimes, you just need that one moment to hang onto and go back. I mentioned that with this, for me, it was ‘River.. With that one moment as an anchor you can go back and find more moments that you like, and again until it all falls into place…

“With one listen, I might have dismissed this album. With repeated listens, it might become one of my all-time favourites. (Loved/Liked)”

This is why I have listened to every new album I’ve received three times before putting away.

Writer/artist Steve Bissette is 70

more than Swamp Thing

I first met writer/artist Steve Bissette in the backroom at FantaCo Enterprises, 21 Central Ave., in Albany, NY, probably in 1987. Steve had come from Vermont to talk with Tom about contributing to the comic book Gore Shriek. I worked primarily on shipping the publications and mail orders.

I tried to be cool because I didn’t want to appear like a fanboy. “Oh, I love your Swamp Thing!” even though I did love his Swamp Thing. He also does some great dinosaurs.

We developed an easy rapport, partly because of his genial nature and because I was impressed by his intellect. He has a historian’s and librarian’s mind.

Steve showed up at FantaCo maybe a half dozen times before I left the company in November 1988. He also worked on a horror magazine called Deep Red, founded by the late Chas Balun (d. 2009), who was as wonderful as Steve said.

I lost track of Steve for a bit, but I started regularly commenting on his blog around 2008. Then, I would link to posts Steve wrote in my blog. I found over 100 references to Bissette, some of which were comments on his Facebook pages.

“If you work in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment, and if you tell me when I ask if you have something that I can only get it online, then you have lost me forever as a customer at said brick-and-mortar retail establishment.” I quoted that verbatim because I agreed with the sentiment.

“I always thought Bob Marley HAD to have seen or heard the BANANA SPLITS theme. Compare Bob’s ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ riff; —c’mon, don’tcha think so, mon?” I had never given any thought before, but he may be right.

IP

His thoughts on intellectual property tended to align with mine.: digital music; Disney/Marvel, SONY, and copyright overreach; can you defend public libraries and oppose file sharing?

Likewise, “As my buddy, Steve Bissette ranted – I think it regarded a policy by Adobe or Microsoft: ‘We can afford them once, and that’s what we can afford. We want to own almost all the things we buy. With few exceptions, we don’t wish to buy or support those things that do not wish to be purchased outright. We do not need more monthly bills. We do not wish to interact with you regularly for permission to be permitted to use what we purchase to use.”

His comments on boycotting Marvel/Disney movies, such as The Avengers, because of the treatment of Jack Kirby, HERE and HERE, informed my thoughts, which is why I didn’t see the Marvel movies from 2012 to 2019.

Stephen Bissette‘s open letter to DC on Facebook about NBC’s Constantine.
“My friend Steve’s dissection of DC is so deliciously understated and addresses the issue of common courtesy.”

He solved a movie mystery for me!

FantaCo

Our overlap with FantaCo is important. Even though Steve stopped working with Tom in the early 1990s, Steve and I need to ensure the record is straight. We spent some time trying to fix the FantaCo Wikipedia page, which contained much egregious misinformation, some of which has been rectified.

When I wrote about FantaCo, Steve would link to me, and vice versa, such as here.

Steve drew the cover of a book called Xerox Ferox, which debuted at the FantaCon 2013 in Albany. I got him, Tom, and several others to sign the book. Maybe I am a fanboy.

Bio

You can read his frankly meager Wikipedia page, but he worked on much more than is noted, some of which I own.

Steve attended the Kubert School and wrote the lovely To Joe, With Love: A Sad Farewell to the Man Who Opened All the Doors. He taught at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, for about a decade and a half.

There are several Steve Bissette interviews I linked to:

You can NOW hear him blather [his word] with Robin at Inkstuds: PART 1 and PART 2.

Stephen R. Bissette: comics pioneer & evangelist from Radio New Zealand

Deconstructing Comics Podcast: #500 – Stephen Bissette: Comics, Movies, and Creator Credits.

The Stephen Bissette Shoot Interview! A Career-Spanning Chronicle!

Interview with Swamp Thing Comic Artist Stephen Bissette.

Stephen R Bissette – CCS instructor, monster-maker for Next Up Vermont.

Steve is one of 21 individuals selected to be inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2025.

He’s written a LOT of pieces, particularly in the past several years, some of which are catalogued here. However, this Facebook page is a better source of his recent work.

On his Facebook page, he’s mentioned life difficulties, such as the devastation caused by the Vermont flooding in 2011, HERE, HERE, and HERE, and other stuff, which I won’t go into.

For some birthday of mine, I swiped this from Steve’s Facebook page at least a decade ago – he’s a fellow March Piscean, of course – and I thought it both appropriate and true, though I’ve never seen the film:

“You think grown-ups have it all figured out? That’s just a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along, just like you. You remember that, and you’ll do fine.”
– Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), MATINEE (1993)

Peace and joy and love to my friend Steve Bissette.

Five years of COVID

Am I sick?

I always mark March 13 as the anniversary of COVID-19 because that date in 2020 was when it started to feel real to me—five years of COVID-19. Of course, the disease started in the fall of 2019, but it seemed remote. Oh, it’s in other countries; it’s in Washington state, on the other side of the country.

In 2023, I noted its third anniversary at some detail, which included getting the first two vaccines in March 2021, and my family’s bout with the disease in August 2022. But I didn’t mention some of the other issues, such as Real Countries fight COVID.

I’m reminded how every visit outside at the time was a negotiation, often with myself. The Spectrum theater in Albany opened in 2021, though people were distanced and masked. I’m pretty sure I went by myself initially. I decided it was still worth going to the movies because -damn! – I’d seen so many plays and movies and meetings online on little screens in 2020. It was making me terribly melancholy. The small screens made my life feel small.

Booster

I received my most recent COVID and influenza shots in August and September 2024. According to the CDC website, which is being “modified to comply with… Executive Orders,” “Everyone ages 6 months and older should get the 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccine. This includes people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine, people who have had COVID-19, and people with long COVID.” These are some factors for folks to “more likely to get very sick with COVID-19.”

Additionally, in the Weekly US Influenza Surveillance Report: “Seasonal influenza activity remains elevated and continues to increase across the country.”

Every time I get a sore throat, I wonder, “Am I sick? Do I have COVID?” I still have enough unexpired tests, especially with the extended expiration dates, to test periodically.

Am I worried about the CDC, FDA and other medical entities being compromised by… certain parties? Yes, yes, I am.

NYT: How COVID remade America, starting with it turned us into hyperindividualists.

NYT: Covid’s Deadliest Effect Took Five Years to Appear

Gallup: How COVID Changed the Workplace

Truthout: Don’t Forget the History of COVID in Prison—An Interview With Victoria Law. The pandemic exposed the cruelty of prison in new ways. It was a lost opportunity to move away from mass incarceration.

This picture is 75 years old

March 12, 1950

This picture is 75 years old.

I looked through all of the pictures of my parents, Les and Gertrude (Trudy), on their wedding anniversary, March 12th, that I have posted on this blog. Interestingly, from 2005, when I started the blog, to 2011, the year my mom died, I didn’t post any. Since my dad had died in 2000, I didn’t even think to mention their anniversary.

After she died, though, I felt liberated to write whatever about them. And it also recontextualized how I saw them as a couple. My sisters and I often have ZOOM conversations on Sunday afternoons, which started during COVID, and early on, a lot of conversations were about their dynamics individually and as a couple.

Still, I often used a group photo, as I did here on March 12. It’s probably because I think it’s a hoot; it looks like a bunch of wary relatives.

Changing it up

But to my knowledge, I’ve never used this photo. My sister Marcia, the keeper of the pictures, posted it on Facebook eight years ago, and then sister Leslie reposted it recently. I have no idea who took it. If I were a betting man, it would probably be one of my maternal grandmother Williams’ brothers, Ed or Ernie Yates.

This picture is in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, near 13 Maple Street, on March 12, 1950. I was always grateful that they decided to get married in a year ending with a zero; it made the math much more straightforward. So I can remember the family drama on March 12, 1995, for instance, a story for another time.

My father looks happy in this photo. But my mother is more contemplative, wondering what she’s gotten herself into, which is a reasonable concern. Or maybe she’s just looking at someone, maybe a younger cousin. I use the terms “mother” and “father” loosely because I wasn’t born until five days shy of three years later.

My parents were married 50 years and two days shy of five months.