Kelly Sedinger Archives - Page 9 of 17

November rambling: Ham Sandwich

Vote for Rebecca Jade!

Can conservatives be allies against climate change?

Electronic waste is a growing problem globally.

Trump Proposes Imprisoning Journalists Who Don’t Name Sources

Political Attack Ads: Bad for You, Bad for America

Borowitz satire: Republicans Blindsided That People Who Vote Believe in Democracy

Cherokee delegate could be seated in the House of Representatives

John Aniston, ‘Days of Our Lives’ Star and Father of Jennifer Aniston, Dies at 89. I started watching DOOL, and the evil Victor, in 1990 for about three years.

KFC apologizes after its German Kristallnacht promotion

Our Kids Can’t Do the Math

The first anti-racists

The Rise of DISCMASTER

Russel Kwong, a student worker at Cornell Program on Applied Demographics, has updated New York State reference maps with names and locations of incorporated villages, cities, towns, and American Indian reservations. They are now based on 2020 Census geographies.

She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed.

How Do You Cope with Being Ghosted?

John Green: Instantly Debatable

The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Star of the Year: Quinta Brunson

Andy Borowitz satire: Elon Musk Accidentally Includes Himself in Latest Round of Mass Layoffs

The Oatmeal comic: Taking selfies from various angles, and I have firsthand experience with the undead

Jaquandor linkage

Now I Know: The Tale of Monkey Island and The Tiny Lie in Your Pantry and Why You Shouldn’t Piss Off The Architect and The Sugar Cereal Edition of Where’s Waldo and The Ultimate Fortune Teller? and The Original Chicken Dance? and Trick-or-Treating… But on Thanksgiving?

Abolitionists

Descendants and sponsors traveled from a dozen states to participate in the abolition symposia and inductions of three abolitionists to the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro, NY. Mary Liz Stewart and Paul Stewart nominated and presented Stephen Myers on behalf of the Underground Railroad Education Center (UREC) in Albany, NY. The UREC is located in the 19th C home of Stephen and Harriet Myers. Two descendants of the Myers joined the Stewarts on stage for the unveiling of the banner which will be installed in the Hall of Fame.

Also inducted were Rev. Robert Everett and Calvin Fairbank.

Incidentally, UREC is deactivating its Twitter account “in response to irresponsible decisions at its highest level. Tweets supporting unsubstantiated reports, allowing hate speech, and allowing accounts to be held by dangerous individuals are not acceptable.”

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade has just been nominated for Smooth Jazz Network’s 2022 “Breakout Artist of the Year”! You can vote DAILY from now until December 2nd! Vote HERE. Also, she will be joining Dave Koz and Friends for a very special 25th Anniversary Christmas tour from November 25 to December 23. Tickets HERE.

Drive My Car – Peter Sprague featuring Rebecca Jade

Music from The Story of an Unknown Actor by Alfred Schnittke

Coverville 1419: The Herman’s Hermits Cover Story II

A Big Black Lady Stops the Show – Capathia Jenkins from Fame Becomes Me, with Martin Short

This Must Be The Place – Ham Sandwich

Here’s That Rainy Day – Aubrey Logan

Man Of La Mancha – Richard Kiley and Irving Jacobson

Poet and Peasant Overture by Franz von Suppe on solo piano

Oct. rambling: How I See Humanity

Autumnal music and about Brian Wilson

John Fugelsang on Christianity

Hank Green: This Math Test Changed How I See Humanity

A History of Nuclear War with Peter Kuznick

American democracy has been in trouble before

Trump’s letter to the House Jan. 6 Select Committee

Inside the S–tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition

Understanding History in the Age of the Big Lie

The Odd Pathology of the Politician’s Mind

‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’: A Conversation With Co-Directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick On Authoritarian Parallels

Weekly Sift Closing Arguments on abortion, democracy, and Biden’s accomplishments

What the failure of Liz Truss’s economic agenda in the UK can teach the U.S.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Transgender Rights II and Museums and Crime Reporting; Frank S. Robinson: Crime and Policing

Plan to Save New York City from Rising Sea Level

It’s Time to Retire BMI as a Clinical Metric

Never Enough? Why ADHD Brains Crave Stimulation

This past week in healthcare investigations: Fentanyl Hidden in Cocaine; Missed Breast Cancer Diagnoses; Calling Out Racism

Upstate NY Habitat plans 25-unit condo; thought to be a world first

The Rev. Calvin Butts left behind a legacy of prayer and political activism

How Audley Moore Created a Blueprint for Black Reparations

Jules Bass, Producer Behind the ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ TV Specials, Dies at 87; Remembering the Rankin-Bass Catalogue

Marvel, DC Among Last Bastion for Supersized Movie Paydays

Even Superheroes Have Moments Of Mediocracy As This Funny Comic Strip Shows

Now I Know: The Marketing Stunt That Vacuumed Up a Whole Company and The Lady Who Made a Living By Smashing Booze and The Unheard Words of the Star Trek Theme Song and The Odd History (Perhaps?) of the Malaysian National Anthem and The 21-Year-Old Irish Woman That Saved D-Day and The First Curfews and Why Is This Panda Rowing a Giant Pumpkin?

WORDS

NYT: In praise of y’all, the most inclusive pronoun, which I supported 11 years ago

EA Poe, Nature Writer

We have to get rid of “ums” and “uhs” when speaking, right? Not necessarily.

The Birth of the Semicolon

A.Word.A.Day– Overton window – noun: The range of beliefs, attitudes, etc., considered acceptable at any given time.

Twenty Years of Sheila O’Malley

Researchers “Translate” Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot

Happy Birthday, Jeff Goldblum!

MUSIC

Jerry Lee Lewis, Piano-Bashing Pioneer of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Dies at 87; NYT obit. Rock hall

November Steps by Toru Takemitsu

Coverville: 1417 – Red Hot Chili Peppers Cover Story II and 1418 – Cover Stories for The Waterboys and World Party

In Autumn by Edvard Grieg

Toward the Unknown Region – Ralph Vaughan Williams

Alan Menken performed a ten-minute medley of songs to which he contributed the music.

The Isle of the Dead by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Lucy Simon, Tony-Nominated Composer, and Sister of Carly Simon, Dies at 82; Winkin’ Blinkin’ and Nod – the Simon Sisters

Top 15 annoying pianists

T he Greatest Adventure from the animated The Hobbit

Ken Levine with author/filmmaker David Leaf, talking about musical genius Brian Wilson: Part 1 and Part 2

Baseball’s Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling

The 2013 voting

Kelly commented on my post about baseball, specifically concerning Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling. It was so long that it required its own post.

Sosa was a smiling, happy player. He even had his own version of the High Five. He conveyed a sense of joy during those home-run years, so I think the ire isn’t as great toward him because of another annoying vestige of racism (that Black people are to be tolerated and even honored as long as they don’t convey the least bit of unhappiness).

I think you are correct up to a point. His post-career decision to use bleaching cream to lighten his skin is undoubtedly due to his dealing with colorism over many years. The issue of race is complicated.

He had over 600 career home runs, which I think should be HOF-worthy, PEDs or no.

The rap on him was that he was a one-dimensional player. Let’s look at the statistics. He was a career .273 hitter, which is not too shabby, especially for a power hitter. No, he was not Dave Kingman.

Comparable hitters

Sammy Sosa struck out a lot. For a guy with 609 home runs, he only had 1667 runs batted in. But he was playing for the Chicago Cubs. He was a below-average right fielder, but he wasn’t in the lineup for his defense. Here are more impressive numbers.

Baseball-Reference considers his batting career comparable to:
Jim Thome (862.9) *
Mike Schmidt (858.1) *
Reggie Jackson (841.1) *
Ken Griffey Jr. (830.6) *
Harmon Killebrew (822.5) *
Eddie Mathews (822.2) *
Mickey Mantle (821.4) *
Willie Stargell (820.5) *
Gary Sheffield (814.5)
Willie McCovey (807.8) *
Except for Sheffield, they are all in the Hall of Fame.

Yet in his ten years on the BBWAA ballot, he never got more than the 18.5% he got in his last year of eligibility. And he only had 6.6% in 2015; if he had dipped below 5%, he would have fallen off the ballot.

I still remember the excitement he and Mark McGwire generated during the 1998 season chasing Roger Maris’ home run record. This was a counterweight to the disastrous 1994 MLB strike, which soured many fans on the game.

Yet I never voted for him on my faux ballot because I always found ten candidates more worthy. This was exacerbated by the 2013 voting when NO ONE was selected. This meant there were more candidates to consider in subsequent years.

Performance-enhancing drugs

It’s worth remembering that PED use was really widespread and that PEDs mostly help with recovery from day-to-day injuries; while they do increase your strength a bit, they don’t suddenly make you good at the act of hitting a baseball thrown by a major-league pitcher.

Agreed.

I’m not a PED apologist by any means, but I find the moral outrage (especially among HOF voters) really overblown and even disingenuous since MLB didn’t even take the issue seriously enough to have a testing policy in place at the time, despite PED use having been a major issue in sports for over a decade prior to all that HR hitting.

I’ve been saying that for years. For anyone taking performance-enhancing drugs before 2004, I’ve largely given a pass. I would always select Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on my would-be ballot.

The PED era is far from the first time MLB has run its business in such a way as to artificially influence the competitive product on the field (collusion in the 70s, raising and lowering the mound, and the decades-long collusion that kept some of the very best baseball talent relegated to under-reported Negro Leagues).

Too true.

The guy with the bloody sock

BTW, on the topic of guys from that general timeline who aren’t in the HOF, what’s your take on Curt Schilling? In terms of baseball accomplishments, he should be there, but he’s proven himself to be at least double the heel that Bonds ever was.

Yup.

If you made a list of the biggest jerks in MLB history, Schilling might make the cut, just behind Ty Cobb–to the point that he just outright said that he didn’t want to be in the HOF at all. That guy, I struggle with. He certainly displayed the kind of sustained excellence that the HOF is partly intended to honor, but he has displayed none of the character qualities thereof.)

How did I “vote” for him over the years? In 2014 and 2016, I made no selections. (Years generally indicate the time I wrote about the following year.)

2012: Yes. “Pivotal in World Series wins for two different teams (2001 Arizona, 2004 Boston)”

2013: No. I dropped him in favor of Tim Raines

2015: A stellar pitcher in a couple of World Series. I don’t like him much, but I’d support him.

2017 and 2018. No.

2019: Yes. It’s not the taint of steroids but his quite terrible politics, specifically “his xenophobic, transphobic and conspiratorial memes.” I’d bump him if there were many other candidates of a similar caliber, but there aren’t.

Time #9 was his best chance

2020: Yes. (70.0% of the vote last year, with 75% needed for induction). His Twitter feed is full of Trumpian drivel about the notion that Biden didn’t win the election… I find him to be a loathsome individual. But he deserves to be in the Hall… He has the highest strikeout-to-walk rate of any pitcher with 3,000 innings (4.38). This is the year he likely gets in. [which tells you what I know]

2021: No. “In a flip from last year, I WOULDN’T vote for Curt Schilling (10th year, 71.1%). And it has something to do with his public request not to be on the ballot. After last year’s vote, he touted “presidential election-related conspiracy theories, calling for a declaration of martial law; and comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, to a Nazi.

“After the December 31 voting deadline, Schilling doubled down by tweeting his support of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, a move that was a bridge too far for some voters who had otherwise continued to support him.”

Obviously, I’m very conflicted about Schilling. I would not have been upset had he made it, but his exclusion does not break me up. I think, down the road, Schilling, Bonds, Clemens, and maybe even Sosa and McGwire will get in via the veterans’ committee.

Electric Light Orchestra and the Beatles

a reasonable choice

For my next answer to Ask Roger Anything, our contestant once again is Kelly Sedinger, the fine Buffalo-area blogger at ForgottenStars.net.

I read somewhere that ELO did the kind of music that The Beatles WOULD have done had they remained together into the 70s. Agree? Disagree? (I’m not really equipped to assess the claim, but it kind of feels right to me, at least in part.)

First, I have to note that you wouldn’t have gotten this question from Kelly two decades ago because he wasn’t a fan of the Beatles at all and likely was unfamiliar with the Electric Light Orchestra. For some reason, I remember what I believe was his first Beatles song of the week, Don’t Let Me Down, a B-side.

In 2010, I asked him: “OK. How the heck could you dislike the entire oeuvre of The Beatles for so long? I can see if one doesn’t like the more avant-garde stuff or thought the early material wasn’t as good as the later tunes. But to reject the whole eclectic eight years? And how did you finally become enlightened?”

His reply: “The flip answer is, ‘Tastes change.’ The more serious answer is… ‘Tastes change.'”

Me? Obsessing?

Anyway, I started obsessing with this. I found a list of bands with three or more songwriters. Eh. The Band, the Eagles. Nah, not the right vibe.

Reddit has a list of Beatlesque bands, but of a later period. The only one I even considered was the Christine McVie/Buckingham/Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac, which is unrecognizable from the Peter Green Days. Heck, they even have their own white album, Tusk.

I thought the snake-bitten band Badfinger could have been it. The group was on Apple Records; their first hit, Come and Get It, was written by Paul McCartney. Day After Day has a lovely guitar line by George Harrison. And No Matter What is definitely of the Beatles genre.

I began fixating on When The Beatles Hit America by John Wesley Harding, the very strange song in which “John, Paul, George and Ringo are going to be reforming as The Beatles in 1993.” Which was, of course, impossible.

But it has this section, “And for anyone who didn’t realize or know, it sounded a lot like ELO, or ELP, or XTC, ABC, YMO, BTO. But it didn’t sound much like P.S., I Love You.”

The candidates

Well, not much like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, though the Billy Preston organ, especially on I Want You (She’s So Heavy), is very nice. Bachman- Turner Overdrive? Not really.

ABC is an interesting consideration. Wikipedia notes, “Their early-1980s success in the US saw them associated with the Second British Invasion.”

Yellow Magic Orchestra, I’ll admit I don’t know musically. It’s a “Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978… The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music… and effectively anticipated the “electropop boom” of the 1980s. They are credited with playing a key role in the development of several electronic genres, including synthpop, J-pop, electro, and techno while exploring subversive sociopolitical themes throughout their career.”

XTC was actually the band I first considered. “The band gained popularity during the rise of punk and new wave in the 1970s, later playing in a variety of styles that ranged from angular guitar riffs to elaborately arranged pop.” Eclectic, like the Beatles.

And, in the end

But Electric Light Orchestra is a reasonable choice. The group formed in 1970, the year the Beatles officially broke up. They were more commercially successful than many of the other candidates, selling “over 50 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling music groups of all time.” They made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

John Lennon remarked that ELO were the “Sons of the Beatles.” George and Ringo played with ELO. Jeff Lynne played with Paul McCartney. And of course, Jeff shows up in the Traveling Wilburys with George and produced an album of his and the 1995 Beatles songs. This is a bit ironic because “In an article from the 1970s, when the writer described an ELO song coming on the radio, [George] said, almost dismissively, ‘Sounds like the Beatles.'”

Check out the 2008 article in The Guardian. ELO: The band the Beatles could have been. “Critics called them ‘dull’ and laughed at the spaceships. Did they not realise Jeff Lynne was a songwriter to rival Lennon and McCartney?” And Lynne visited the Abbey Road studios while the Beatles worked on the white album.

So, sure, ELO can claim the title. How are Jeff Lynne, ELO, and The Beatles connected?

Break-up, baseball, and JEOPARDY

Lake George

Here are some Ask Roger Anything questions about break-up, baseball, and JEOPARDY. They were asked by Kelly Sedinger, the fine Buffalo-area blogger at ForgottenStars.net.

When the break-up finally comes, does New York form a country with, say, NJ and New England and maybe PA, MD, and DE? Or do we all just join Canada?

First, I do accept the premise of the question. Major Garrett, formerly of FOX and now CBS, wrote a book suggesting that America is close to Civil War. But I remain puzzled by the mechanism.

As someone in upstate New York, you KNOW there are pockets of conservatives in New York, such as the Southern Tier south of you, or much of the territory north of me, which are quite conservative. Conversely, there are liberal enclaves in Iowa.

The Greater Idaho movement, with much of eastern Oregon joining the spud state, will be difficult to achieve. Redistributing assets nationally would be a nightmare.

Still, rhetorically speaking, your larger model works. And the Canadians, if they are smart, will want to have nothing to do with a land annexation. They don’t want those gun-toting folks in their jurisdiction.

Here comes the Judge

Am I crazy in detecting a rather unsavory note in all the cheering of Aaron Judge this season as he chases home run records? Because it really does occasionally take on a tone of “Thank God a white guy is posing a threat to the record held by the black guy nobody likes.”

I can say that Barry Bonds was very supportive of Judge’s pursuit of the American League record of 61 (Roger Maris, 1961) and understood the stress of getting that 61st one. Days before the regular season ended, it was pretty clear that Judge wouldn’t surpass Bonds’ 73 HRs.

But I think your question hit on the real issue. Barry Bonds is just not warm and fuzzy. And people feel that he cheated with the Performance-Enhancing Drugs. So I don’t think it’s specifically racism, although I don’t listen to sports talk on radio or TV because I find much of it repetitive and banal.

Now some people didn’t want Henry Aaron to topple Babe Ruth’s career record of 714, even sending death threats. (When I saw a guy on the field running with Hammerin’ Hank, I was genuinely worried about the slugger’s safety.) But many people think Bonds’ career record of 762 is tainted and that it should belong to Aaron, with 755.

Favorite place within 50 miles of Albany?

I’m fond of Lake George, north of here. The lake itself is quite beautiful, and it has several amenities without being TOO touristy.

Unchange

A change you would make to JEOPARDY!? (Resurrecting Trebek is not an option.)

Actually, my wish can never happen because it seems to be too popular with the fans. I’d prefer that they stayed with five-day champions, and then they’re gone until the annual Tournament of Champions. The interview segment is fine for someone staying for a week, but most of them start to wear on me.

I don’t want to see the same people in yet another tournament. They had that awful team event a few years ago. Besides seeing Ken and Brad yet AGAIN in competition, it took away time when we might see your average champion. They seem to be keying on the “super champions,” which just doesn’t feel right. At least Ken Jennings and Buzzy Cohen, as hosts of the show, can no longer compete on the show because they’ve hosted.

Oh, and I’m against giving a bonus to people who run a category. Former JEOPARDY champ Austin Rogers makes a case for it, but I remain unconvinced.

Oh, and here’s something that Trebek used to say that I never liked, and I recently heard Jennings repeat. When all three contestants missed the same question, Alex would say, “No harm, no foul.” It’s not correct. If Player A has $12,000, Player B has $6,000, and Player C has $3,000, and they all miss a $2,000 question, who is most disadvantaged? The person with the least amount of money.