Outside the comfort zone: Ask Roger Anything

Arthur, the Kiwi-American, wrote about blogging recently, prodded in part by an article I sent him. One of the takeaways is that bloggers spend more time on a typical blog post (up 39% from 2014 to 2017) and as a result, posts are published less frequently.

I shared the survey with this local blogging collective, maybe a dozen and a half folks who either presently or formerly blogged at a certain metropolitan newspaper, plus selected others. As I wrote, cheekily: “I love being in a collective! It’s so early Xian, or Soviet.”

It’s designed to be a safe place to kick around ideas, maybe gripe about the inevitable blog trolls we inevitably get. (Although I almost never get them here, I’m pleased to note.)

We answer questions about our writing process. “What inspires you to write about in autumn?” I asked if any of the others write ahead like I do. Well, no. unless a vacation is planned or one is crafting a fictional piece as part of a larger whole.

Someone posed this question: “What was the first time you wrote about something OUTSIDE of your comfort zone? I.e., something in which being a blogger inspired you to try something different?”

I can’t say for sure, but it was almost certainly something that one of you posed during what I call Ask Roger Anything, probably concerning race.

This is the time when youse folk get to inquire anything of me, and I must respond, generally within the month, to the best of my ability, obfuscating only when really necessary, which has not been as frequent as I would have thought, truth to tell.

As always, you can leave your questions below or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you need to SAY so; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

December rambling #1: Sheila E. turns big 6-0

Rebecca Jade [the niece], Ashling Cole, Sheila E., Lynn Mabry before taking the stage at the Paramount Theatre of the Arts in Oakland, CA during 60th birthday month of Sheila E., Dec 2017
How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You’ve Ever Met

“Apocalyptic” Melting Transpires in Antarctica as Earth Wraps Up a Scorching Year

The Environmental Protection Agency wipes climate change from its website

Huge Bubble of Hot Rock May Be Rising Under New England

Atheists are nicer to Christians compared to the other way around

The Jerusalem Issue, Explained

Joe Biden to Anita Hill: “I Owe Her an Apology”

Arthur voted for John Anderson

Inspirational news stories that are anything but

With 2020 Census Looming, Worries About Fairness and Accuracy

American prisons end face-to-face visits – and families suffer

Why Verizon’s insurance plan covers… nothing

Congratulations, Australia!

Racism, Fundamentalism, Fear and Propaganda

Americans receive ‘threatening’ automated calls telling them to stop criticising Trump

SATIRE! Palestinians recognize Texas as part of Mexico and World to recognize Moscow as capital of the United States

A president… unfit to clean toilets in Obama’s presidential library or to shine George W. Bush’s shoes

Former ‘Son of Sam’ at Albany Med for heart ailment

On SNL, Santa’s Tricky Moment With Savvy Kids

Derivative Sport: The Journalistic Legacy of David Foster Wallace

Colonoscopy…..is such a lonely word – as I heard a comedian say recently, life is like a colonoscopy prep

Once in a while the pessimist is wrong

Why we need art

in praise of second fiddle

Levidrome – a series of letters that yields up a word in one direction and a wholly different word in the other

Mark Evanier’s blog post #25,000

The Complicated Legacy Of A Panda Who Was Really Good At Sex

Now I Know: The Largest Man-Made Accidental Explosion and What Do You Do With 10,000 Pounds of Spoiled Mayo? and How NASA (Almost) Got Its Rock Bag Back and The Problem With Five-Cent Hot Dogs and The Surprising Way to Get Rejected

Talking about Kevin

MUSIC

Que je t’aime – Johnny Hallyday; and A million take to Paris streets for his funeral

Pat DiNizio, lead singer and songwriter of The Smithereens died at age 62

Happy Harry Chapin Day and Coverville 1196: Cover Stories for Billy Bragg and Harry Chapin

Trump vs Talking Heads – Swedemason

Coverville 1195: The Jimi Hendrix Cover Story IV

The Alan Parsons Project: If you believe in the power of magic…

More of the Whitney Avalon Show!

BBC: Perfect Day and God Only Knows

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2018 inductees. Performer Category: Bon Jovi (inevitable), The Cars (voted for), Dire Straits (would have voted for if there weren’t 19 candidates for five slots), The Moody Blues (my pick), Nina Simone (worthy but hardly rock – see Baez, Joan). Award for Early Influence: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (should never have been on the competitive ballot; just put her in!)

Musicians: Cassidy, Hendricks, Reese, Tillis…

I knew Delloreese Patricia Early primarily as an actress

A lot of noteworthy musicians died in November 2017.

As the New York Times obit notes, Jon Hendricks brought a new dimension to jazz singing. I knew him best as part of the vocalise trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. “They recorded a version of Ross’s 1952 song ‘Twisted‘, featuring her lyrics set to a Wardell Gray melody”; it was later recorded by Joni Mitchell.

After Lambert died in 1966, Hendricks continued to be a genre pushing vocalist.
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I’m pretty sure that my sister Leslie had a Partridge Family album. It may have been Sound Magazine with the hit I Woke Up in Love This Morning.

While I didn’t care much about the music, I was vaguely interested in David Cassidy, mostly because he was the son of actor Jack Cassidy, who was constantly on TV in the 1960s and early 1970s. Jack’s second wife, actress Shirley Jones, became David’s stepmom, and she played his mother on the Partridge Family.

I learned later that only David and Shirley actually sang on those records. The backing vocals were by The Ron Hicklin Singers.

When David was arrested in Columbia County, near Albany, this decade, and then had to make a subsequent appearance in court, it was cause for a lot of local buzz.

My favorite performance of his was on the theme song for the John Larroquette Show in the late 1990s. Dustbury pegged Bandala.

Check out Arthur’s recollections and Mark Evanier ghostwriting for David.

Like a lot of people, I knew Delloreese Patricia Early, a/k/a Della Reese, primarily as an actress, most notably on the TV show Touched by an Angel. But she had a stellar singing career before that. Her big hit was Don’t You Know.

Mel Tillis died, and I thought I’d read more about him. He was a Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry member. When I considered country music, he was among the first who came to mind.

He wrote, among many other songs, Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love To Town) that was a big hit for Kenny Rogers. I’d see him on Hollywood Squares. Here’s Coca Cola Cowboy, a #1 country hit in 1979, from the movie Every Which Way But Loose.

Pete Moore was the bass singer for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and co-wrote some of the hits, such as Ooo Baby Baby and The Tracks of My Tears, and also Ain’t That Peculiar and I’ll Be Doggone, with Marvin Gaye.

Sha-ZAM! Jim Nabors died. He played Gomer Pyle on two TV series that I watched regularly. The Impossible Dream
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I wasn’t a big AC/DC fan. but I appreciated their impact. In fact, the only related album I ever owned was an album of bluegrass covers of their hits. I’m sorry Malcolm Young passed away at 64. When you’re 64, you tend to hate almost ANYONE dying at that age.

November rambling #2: Narco-a-Lago

“The fish rots from the head”: a historian on unique corruption

What’s killing America’s new mothers?

American hyper-capitalism breeds the lonely, alienated men who become mass killers and Samantha Bee on why “abused women are the canary in the coal mine for mass shootings”

Before Sutherland Springs, the Pulse nightclub and San Bernardino. Before Mother Emanuel church, Sandy Hook, and Aurora. Before Gabby Giffords and Fort Hood, there was Binghamton

A Statistical Companion to “The Vietnam War”

Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit

Walking While Black

Can my child be friends with white people?

“We’re not über-ICE” – Albany, NY mayor Kathy Sheehan, interviewed by Tucker Carlson, discussing Albany’s status as sanctuary city (11/16/2017)

I Forgot My PIN: An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin


Apparently, the new Firefox download, Quantum, is a pain. One user wrote: “I had the extensions I needed, the page design I was comfortable with, and working more efficiently and effortlessly than ever. This makeover is terrible.” Also, Finding and fixing a Disqus problem

Economic Development: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

In which John Green is stunned by Kiwi kindness

A five-minute animation about the Dunning-Kruger Effect

10 “Spiritual” Things People Do That Are Total BS

Short film: The journey from underdog to basketball star

Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future

Sitcoms could be better

Now I Know: Pizza It Forward and When the Government Outlawed Love

The Akond of Swat – Edward Lear

Not me: Eighth-grade teacher Roger Green was heading to the press box back in March to announce the varsity baseball game, but he began to feel achy.

THE KAKISTOCRACY

We are reaching Hrench Revolution levels of inequality and injustice

Why billionaires destroy jobs

The Final Victory of JR Ewing

Narco-a-Lago: Making Millions from Panama Development Used to Launder Drug Money

Every scandal plaguing him

“The fish rots from the head”: a historian on unique corruption

Trophies from elephant hunts in Zimbabwe WERE banned in the US

He may be related to 16th-century serial killer ‘Werewolf of Bedburg’

Johnstown Never Believed He Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway

Tweeting Condolences About The Wrong Mass Shooting

John Oliver Delivers Scathing Review Of Year One

Plus, an oldie (October 2016), but goodie: The growing list of women who have stepped forward to accuse Trump of touching them inappropriately

MUSIC

Thunderstruck – AC/DC

On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Disney medley – Voctave

-ly – Tom Lehrer (Electric Company)

Coverville 1193: Cover Stories for Blue Oyster Cult, Petula Clark and Miley Cyrus (!)

K-Chuck Radio: The Monster Soulful Groove

Stringman – Neil Young

#ROCKHALL2018:THE CARS INTERVIEW

November rambling #1: until we get power again

Controversial Newsweek cover
Amy Biancolli: Slave castles, and the weight of history

The lost children of Tuam: Ireland wanted to forget

After I Adopted Two Black Babies, I Realized My Church Was Full Of Racists

Chaz Ebert: My daughter loves country music

I Want ‘Allahu Akbar’ Back

The Billie Jean Republicans

Every scandal plaguing him

A LOT of smoke

‘I want the government…to bring kindness back’ – Alas, not here. Jacinda Ardern sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand

When he was a kid, he said, they didn’t use the word autism, they just said ‘shy’

Floods: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Saudi Arabia issues first non-human citizenship to humanoid AI robot Sophia and Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?

Why This Cardiologist Is Betting That His Lab-Grown Meat Startup Can Solve the Global Food Crisis

The ‘good guy with a gun’ theory didn’t work out well in Colorado

Philip Schuyler’s Last Project: Before the Erie Canal

Effective November 30, 2017, AOL will no longer offer the ability to add new usernames or restore deleted usernames to an account

How Betsy DeVos Became The Most Hated Cabinet Secretary

Why you hate contemporary architecture

The Hotel at the Center of the World – I’ve been there

Judi England: Life is change (redux)

Born this month (1954)
Goodbye Katie Lee

Robert Guillaume RIP; Benson theme; SOAP- Stop in the Name of Love

Farewell, 747

David Letterman reflects on Harvey Pekar

Creating Saturday Night Live

Back To The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Binghamton

Frank Oz news

Woody Woodpecker cartoon called The Bird Who Came to Dinner redux

Now I Know: How a Minnesota Town Body Slammed Its Neighbor and Stolen Smile and The Problem with Seven Eights and When Ice Was a Hot Gift

How Pringles Potato Crisps are made and how do they make crayons?

MUSIC

(Earth is) Not OK – Ingrid Michaelson -October 25, 2017 Full Frontal on TBS (language)

The Story Behind Devo’s Iconic Cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”

Good For Me – Aimee Mann from season 3 of Supergirl

K-Chuck Radio: Edison Diamond Discs and Until we get power again…

Coverville 1192: The Cover Me Interview

Lorena -John Hartford, written in 1856

It’s Not Your Nationality (It’s Simply You) -Billy Murray (1916)

The Oz medley

All Through The Night – the Mystics, with Jerry Landis aka Paul Simon

Rumble – Link Wray

Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin

Neuroscientists Discover A Song That Reduces Anxiety By 65 Percent (Listen)

NOLA The Cat Performs John Cage’s 4’33”

Ringo Starr Talks New Album, Reuniting With Paul McCartney

The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens

Sex, spies, and classical music: The BSO scandal

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