From https://www.alpsroads.net/roads/ny/ny_69/ Idea stolen from Arthur http://amerinz.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-annual-increasing-number-63.html
Rumor has it that I’m turning 69 today. This means I’m exactly a year younger than Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers and Lynn Swann of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Every year, I wonder if I can recall how old I am during the year. How could I remember when I turned 59? Je ne sais pas. Whereas I recall the mechanism for 52 (deck of cards), 57 (Heinz), 61 (Roger Maris), 64 (Beatles), 67 (chaos).
I’ve loved the number 69 at least since 1969 when I turned 16. It’s just the look. I also have been told that 69, or more specifically soixante-neuf, has a rather sordid meaning. But since I’m so young and innocent, I have no idea what that is.
On the other hand, turning 69 makes me recall a song on the first Steppenwolf album called The Ostrich. The depressing lyrics:
Then you’re free And forty years you waste to chase the dollar sign So you may die in Florida At the pleasant age of sixty-nine
In turn, this reminds me of the one thing I miss since I retired. I would take off work on my birthday. If my birthday were on Saturday, I’d take off Friday; if Sunday, then Monday. It’s difficult to blow a vacation day when I only worked two days in 2021, Election Day and the training beforehand.
Anyway, I don’t blog on my birthday, so see you manana.
I have been following the blog of Mark Evanier since 2004 or 2005. But he’s been producing News From ME since December 18, 2000. He was a kid who cared – OK, obsessed – about comic books, and has written comics or about comics and related business for most of his life.
Mark had the very good fortune to become an assistant to Jack Kirby, from whom he learned a tremendous amount, not just the creative aspect but the visionary nature of “the King.” Mark attended every San Diego Comic-Con from the beginning until COVID, and none since, except online. He has directed animated TV shows. As a result, he knows a large number of imaginative folks in the comic book industry and show business.
Evanier is a historian of the industry. He has worked on the reprinting of his all-time favorite comic strip, Pogo by Walt Kelly, and he was a Pogo fan even before he met and went out with Walt’s late daughter, Carolyn.
Mark has been a gambler in Las Vegas and a magician, pretty good at them apparently, though he’s soured on the former. He is also an expert on his favorite movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. His 30+ year practice of feeding stray cats ended in 2021.
In memory of
Mark always notes the deaths of creative people who you and I may have never heard of or had forgotten, obscure comic book artists, unsung animators, working actors, comedians of the past. He’s been involved with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. “The award goes to someone whose body of work has not been properly rewarded in terms of credit and/or compensation.”
He posts a link almost daily of a notable segment of an old Ed Sullivan segment, an obscure music video, a comedy routine, film clips of Los Angeles or Las Vegas back in the day, or occasionally interviews he’s involved with. Guesting on Sid Krofft’s weekly Sunday afternoon video podcast on Instagram. Talking with film critic Leonard Maltin. Chatting with his best male friend, Sergio Aragonés, with whom he works on Groo the Wanderer.
Mark’s blog has regular segments. Dispatches From the Fortress of Semi-Solitude addresses how he’s been coping with the pandemic; fortunately, as a writer, he’s used to working alone. He’s a fan of Costco, where he can buy in bulk.
Personal history
Tales of My Childhood, Tales of My Father, and Tales of My Mother are obviously biographical. Mark notes: “I am of Jewish heritage but only on my father’s side. Because my mother was Catholic and both families frowned on two such people getting married, they basically raised me to be nothing in particular. This has worked out a lot better than folks who are devout to one faith or another would probably admit.”
He likes to post Hannukka videos during the season and find several ways to spell the holiday. His caring father hated his job but stayed to provide for the family. Most of the stories about his mother that I recall involved the last decade of her life when she could barely walk or see, as he helped provide for her care.
He writes occasionally that there are “Things I Don’t Have An Opinion About,” especially when people think he should. Conversely, he can be fascinated by the fluctuating price of, say, a certain package of Planters Salted Cashews on Amazon.
Cartoon Voices II – Room 6A, Sunday 11:30-12:45 Comic Con 2011
Laraine Newman is best known for being one of the original members of the cast of Saturday Night Live (1975-1980), creating characters such as Connie Conehead and the Valley Girl Sherry. But long before that, in Los Angeles at the age of 19, she and “her older sister Tracy were founding members of the comedy troupe The Groundlings — which has become a launchpad for numerous SNL cast members.”
In her audio memoir, May You Live in Interesting Times – here’s one story – she says her career has been, “modest but steady and extremely fulfilling.” Much of her current employment has involved doing voice work, including Garfield segments voice-directed by her friend Mark Evanier, twenty minutes her senior. He reviewed her memoir quite favorably; he wanted MORE than the nine hours she provided. Check out a photo of the two of them together.
In fact, you couldn’t do much better keeping up with Laraine Newman than to search News from ME for her name. She shows up quite frequently. Also, check out these videos.
What I remember most about the writer Walter Mosley is the time I did NOT see him in person. In 1995, the NYS Writers Institute scheduled Mosley to appear at Page Hall at the downtown UAlbany campus. This was to be either before or after the premiere of the movie Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley wrote the book from which Carl Franklin crafted the screenplay, and he was also an associate producer.
But for reasons, I no longer remember, Mosley was unable to appear. The audience still got to see the film, which was pretty good, as I recall. Denzel Washington played detective Easy Rawlins. The film also starred Jennifer Beals and Tom Sizemore. I mostly remember Don Cheadle as the violent cohort of Rawlins, Mouse Alexander. This was before Don Cheadle was DON CHEADLE.
The Easy Rawlins series is the series most identified with the author, Devil, published in 1990, being the first of at least 15 books, the most recent being Blood Grove (2021).
Mosley also appeared as an actor in another film featuring Denzel, the remake of The Manchurian Candidate (2004). He played Congressman Rawlins, an obvious nod to the hardboiled detective series.
Trusted voice
From OrderOfBooks.com: “Walter Mosley is an American novelist of crime fiction and historical mystery novels… Mosley’s father was an African-American clerk in the U.S. Army and his mother was a personnel clerk of Russian-Jewish descent.
“As an only child, he used his imagination to fill the void that he would later be able to hone into his fiction career… [He] became a published author at the ripe age of 34, but hasn’t stopped writing since.”
Mostly, I know Walter Mosley as a trusted voice in various documentaries. O.J.: Made in America; Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am; and the recent PBS series about Muhammad Ali all featured his insights.
Maybe I’ll actually read some of his books one of these days.
One of my sisters suggested I write about my mother and bowling. I was resistant because I don’t particularly remember the details. Where did she bowl? How good was she? Who, besides her good friend Pat, was on her team?
But I capitulated in large part because of one true thing. She and I were the only ones in our nuclear family to join a bowling league. My sisters bowled occasionally. Did my father bowl at all?
As a result, mom and I had a shared lingua decem paxillos. We could keep score by pencil; this was before those sometimes flawed automatic scoring machines. It’s not particularly difficult, but my mom and I liked the math exercise.
And when I was a tween, I was rather good at the game. I once scored a 186 when I was ten, which was pretty impressive, actually. The terrible thing, though, is that I gave it up after only a year or two, and I don’t recall why. But my mom, it seems, continued for quite a while when she still lived in Binghamton.
BTW, I don’t remember where I bowled either. The lanes on Laurel Avenue, where I sometimes went in high school? I have no idea.
Peaking in fifth grade
Oh, I never did get much better than my grade school pinnacle. At college, I would play occasionally with friends, but I broke 200 only three or four times. My all-time high score was 222 when I was 22. Seriously. It was the day after Candid Yam, her brother, her sister and I went up Turkey Mountain – how appropriate! – in 10F weather, consuming brandy.
Then I’d play irregularly until my left knee became so sore that I couldn’t release the ball correctly. My mother, I’ve only recently learned, had to give up bowling when her hip began to hurt her.
Today would have been mom’s 94th birthday. I picked this picture from c. 1971 because my sister says her favorite of my mother and me together.
Paul Simon turns 80, and I needed to find an angle. Ten years ago, on this date, I wrote about my favorite Paul Simon solo cuts. And ten years ago on November 5, on Art Garfunkel’s birthday, I noted my preferred Simon and Garfunkel tracks.
There are some artists whose music I tend to continue to buy because I’ve enjoyed their body of work. Not necessarily every album but most: Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen come to mind.
I continue to buy Paul Simon-related albums. Paul Simon Songbook is the 1965 album of solo Paul, most of which ended up on early S+G albums. It didn’t come out on CD until 2006.
Two Teenagers – The Singles 1957-1961. This includes many of the recordings of the duo BEFORE they were Simon and Garfunkel, both as a duo (Tom and Jerry, e.g.) and solo artists, (Jerry Landis, Artie Garr, et al.) Worthwhile.
In 2012 (I think), I sent my copy of Graceland (1986) to a friend of mine Who Had Never Heard It. Then I bought another copy with a few remixes of songs, though NOT the 12″ inch version of Boy In The Bubble, alas.
I got Stranger to Stranger in 2016, when it came out. It took a few plays for it to “take” in my ear, but I like it.
Do it again
The most interesting concept is 2018’s In The Blue Light , a “fresh perspectives on 10 of the artist’s favorite (though perhaps less-familiar) compositions drawn from the five-decade span of his illustrious solo career.” Four songs are from You’re The One (2000), but none are from Graceland.
“Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club gave the album a B- and wrote, ‘It would be easy to get bogged down in treating Blue Light as a compare/contrast exercise, but what’s most impressive about is the way that it sounds more or less of a piece as its own record.'”
What I remember most about the writer Walter Mosley is the time I did NOT see him in person. In 1995, the NYS Writers Institute scheduled Mosley to appear at Page Hall at the downtown UAlbany campus. This was to be either before or after the premiere of the movie Devil in a Blue Dress. Mosley wrote the book from which Carl Franklin crafted the screenplay, and he was also an associate producer.
One of my sisters suggested I write about my mother and bowling. I was resistant because I don’t particularly remember the details. Where did she bowl? How good was she? Who, besides her good friend Pat, was on her team?
Paul Simon turns 80, and I needed to find an angle. Ten years ago, on this date, I wrote about my favorite Paul Simon