Mark Evanier Archives - Page 2 of 29

April rambling: No irony

Clarence Thomas

The Party of “Family Values” Sees No Irony in Axing Child Labor Protections

In an extraordinary act of political retaliation, Tennessee Republicans expelled two Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Pearson and Jones, from the state Legislature for “breaching decorum” in their role in a protest that called for more gun control after a school shooting in Nashville. This move has occurred twice in the state since the aftermath of the Civil War. Rep. Johnson maintained her seat. Outrageous, even though they were both reinstated,

Related: Education Week’s 2023 School Shooting Tracker. One Nation, under gun violence: America tops 100 mass shootings in 2023. Also, radicalizing against guns

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reportedly spent decades accepting exorbitant gifts, luxury vacations, and yacht rides from a major GOP power player—none disclosed to the American public. It may be legal, though unethical, bribery. Ought he be impeached?

The djt indictment, annotated

Candace Owens—Friend of Kanye, Power Troll, Parler “Trad Wife” – Owens was the source of a bizarre family debate.

Debunking the myths and dangers of qualified immunity

From 1440: The Maryland attorney general has accused officials of covering up and failing to act in the sexual abuse of at least 600 children in the Archdiocese of Baltimore since the 1940s. The 463-page report named 156 former clergy, deacons, teachers, and other employees and revealed some children were subject to abuse by multiple abusers. Church officials were also accused of silencing victims and dismissing or ignoring abuse claims.

‘Poverty, By America’ shows how the rest of us benefit by keeping others poor

High Unemployment Continues for Young Minority Men

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Solitary Confinement and TANF and Timeshares

A Government Witch Hunt — Masood Haque’s Film Witness. This was a terrible miscarriage of justice in Albany, NY.

‘Hopeless’: Parole denial for 71-year-old Alabama woman with terminal illness highlights ‘tremendous injustice’

MUSIC

Grumpy Trumpy Felon from Jamaica in Queens!- Randy Rainbow

Gordon Lustig‘s Randy Rainbow (You’re Annoying to Me) A PARODY PARODY! and Help Me, Randy (Rainbow)

Prelude in C-sharp minor and The Crag by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place) – The Choir & The Chorus

The Place Where Dreams Come True/End Titles from Field of Dreams by James Horner

A World Without Love – Peter Asher ft. Lyle Lovett, 3-14-23 City Winery, NYC

Put on a Happy Face – Dick Van Dyke, from the then-running Broadway show, Bye Bye Birdie

Bits from You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and Guys and Dolls and Jersey Boys and Grease, and Little Shop Of Horrors, all in Japanese

Find Your People – Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors

Overture to The Mandarin’s Son by Cesar Cui

Coverville 1436: Cover Stories for Poison and Sugar Ray and 1437: The 60th Anniversary of Please Please Me, and 1438: Cover Stories for Pharrell Williams, The Eels, and Vangelis

Tell Me Why -MonaLisa Twins

Oh, Noah– The Jubalaires

Hi Lilli, Hi Lo – Jimmy Durante

March rambling: something dumb

1099-K

“Good morning, friends. That awful feeling of shame and panic when you remember saying something dumb years ago is your nervous system trying to protect you from perceived danger. Try telling your body, ‘Thank you for wanting to protect me. We’re safe now. It’s okay to let it go.'” from Good Morning, Friends: Gentle Suggestions for the Start of Your Day. I have been there!

US Secretary of State Denounces Uganda’s New ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill

‘Legal Lynching’: ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws reflect legacy of white supremacist vigilantism in Deep South

“A right-wing judge takes aim at medication abortions“

Book ban attempts hit a record high in 2022, the American Library Association says

Teaching on Eggshells

Devin Stone, the “Legal Eagle,” explains the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege and how it applies to djt’s lawyers

Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery

Can the anti-woke mob define ‘woke’?

4-year-old girl shot dead by 3-year-old sister with semi-automatic pistol

CULCHA

Can Movie Theaters Survive? It’s the Most Enduring Question In Hollywood

Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical to Premiere Off-Broadway This Fall

Aaron Sorkin Reveals He Had a Stroke Last November: “A Loud Wake-Up Call”

How Toy Companies Bribe YouTube Channels

Artificial Intelligence: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

These Are the World’s Happiest Countries in 2023. Finland is #1, and the US is #15.

An 85-year Harvard study on happiness found the No. 1 retirement challenge

Connection Between Alcohol and Sleep

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain

What Does Blue Light Do to Your Eyes?

Why green might be the most important color for humans. But of course!

Understanding Your Form 1099-K. “The law is not intended to track personal transactions such as sharing the cost of a car ride or meal, birthday or holiday gifts, or paying a family member for a household bill.”

Mark Evanier’s Tales From The DMV

Parroting

Former Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s rights, dies at 82

The indomitable spirit of Willis Reed. I watched that Game 7 NBA Finals game in 1970 on TV. It was remarkable. He died at the age of 80.

‘Fosbury Flop’ high jumper Dick Fosbury dies at 76

John Jakes, Author of the Miniseries-Spawning ‘North and South’ Trilogy, Dies at 90

The attempts to make a modern Little Nemoin Slumberland film

Now I Know: The Slave Who Shipped Himself to Freedom and A Cute Way to Prevent Traffic Deaths and Why Movie Theaters Have Red Seats and The Problem With Living in the Center of America and I Guess You Could Say They… Excel and The Little Bit of P-Word in the Coke and This Cupcake Recipe Isn’t The Bomb

MUSIC

Please keep voting for the niece Rebecca Jade at the San Diego Music Awards in categories 20, 21, 25, 26, and 27. Also for Peter Sprague in category 4 for an album that features Rebecca.

Dry Bones – Delta Rhythm Boys. A recent Old Testament scripture was Ezekiel 37:1-14. By coincidence, I was playing that week the soundtrack of the movie Rain Man, which included a version of Dry Bones by the Delta Rhythm Boys, though not precisely that take.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture

Let It Burn from Paradise Square the Musical, featuring Tony Award Winner Joaquina Kalukango

Tchaikovsky’s Symphonic Fantasia, The Tempest

Life’s a F***ing Fantasy for Santos – Randy Rainbow

Coverville 1436: Cover Stories for Poison and Sugar Ray

Woody Woodpecker theme

Music from the Emerald Isle

What’s The Name of That Song from Sesame Street

Franz Von Suppe’s Light Calvary

March rambling: 2008 again?

amateur sleuths

Is it 2008 again, or not? (bank failures)

US Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) makes his DC entrance

New Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) Signs Law Gutting Child Labor Protections for Minors Under 16 Years Old

Defiant Woman at the Center of New York’s First Abortion Battle – in the 1840s

How to Make the Hybrid Model Work for Women

The HistoryMakers: Documenting Black history through first-person accounts | 60 Minutes

My City by James Weldon Johnson

The Destruction of Negro Communities and the Birth of the African American

Mapped: Which Countries Get the Most Paid Vacation Days?

Indonesia unveils the construction site of a new capital city, Nusantara. Jakarta is experiencing overpopulation, infrastructure problems, and chronic flooding. The current capital is quickly sinking into the Java Sea, and parts of the city could be entirely submerged by 2050. But the new “project may lead to substantial rainforest deforestation, threaten endangered species’ habitats, put Indigenous peoples’ homes at risk, and more.”

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. The Colon Club calls attention to the disease.

Why are nurses quitting? Ask the nurse no hospital will hire.

Idaho Murders: As a Small Town Grapples With Sinister Rumors, Media’s True-Crime Obsession Grows and The Case the Internet got wrong: A new investigation sheds light on Lindsay Buziak’s unsolved murder, revealing a vast web of misinformation. These are as much about the rush to judgment by amateur sleuths as the crimes themselves.

Worst Civil Engineering Failure in US History – March 12, 1928: St. Francis Dam Disaster

And more

John Cleese was confronted with three men who kinda looked and/or kinda sounded like his character, Basil Fawlty. He had to guess which one did the impersonation professionally.

Chaim Topol, Tevye the Milkman in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ Dies at 87

Robert Blake, the Combustible Star of ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘Baretta,’ Dies at 89

‘M*A*S*H’ Stars Hold Table Read for New Scene Written By AI

Marvel Working to Find ‘Quantumania’ Leaker. It’ll probably be more successful than SCOTUS was.

My friend Fred Hembeck asks Mark Evanier about Tiny Tim

Is the Beyond Burger Healthy?

Hey, Stewart’s, $5 / 2 = what??

Now I Know: The Dark History of Groomsmen and Baseball’s Strangest Trade and When Space and Physics Don’t Mix and Why Beer Comes in Brown (or Green) Bottles

I’m happy about the results of the Academy Awards, although I did not watch the program. It’s been my experience that people who saw EEAAO in the cinema, as I did, enjoyed it FAR more than those who watched it at home.

The Big Lie, redux

To me, it’s all one big, continual story. The Big Lie about the 2020 election, including the allegations about rigged voting machines.The January 6, 2021 insurrection. Dominion voting machine’s defamation case against Fox News and the information that came out during the trial’s discovery phase.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy gave Fox News exclusive access to raw footage of Jan 6. Tucker Carlson, one of the verified liars in the Dominion discovery, had footage of Jan 6 edited to suggest that the insurrection was just a sightseeing event, a claim so absurd that the White House and Senate Republicans from Mitch McConnell to Thom Tillis rebuked Carlson.

Check out pieces by Jake Tapper, Bill Maher, Seth Meyers, Drezner’s World, and possibly most comprehensively, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Music

In honor of ME: Adagio and Allegro for Piano and Horn by Robert Schumann, Opus 70!

And this: Sir Roger Norrington Eroica/Happy Birthday surprise from the SWR Symphonieorchester

Afro-American Symphony by William Grant Still

Casablanca suite by Max Steiner

Coverville 1433: The Rihanna Cover Story and 1434: Cover Stories for Nik Kershaw and Nina Simone, and 1435: Album Cover: Dark Side of the Moon’s 50th Anniversary

Wayne Shorter, 1923-2023

Guitarist David Lindley: 1944—2023

K-Chuck Radio: The joy and sadness of Yvonne Barrett

Classical Composer Reaction – Analysis of This is America (Childish Gambino) | The Daily Doug Ep. 542. (Doug Helvering)

Make Way For Tomorrow dance number- Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, and Phil Silvers (!)

Carpenters with Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

Don’t Worry, Be Happy – Julien Neel

It’s not Lou Reed … and it’s not Jefferson Airplane, either.

Mr. Ma answers all the cello questions you never knew you had!

Burt Bacharach’s Clever Key Changes – David Bennett Piano

Ten classical music songs you know, but you may not know their names

“We’re willing to sacrifice our egos for the good of the band” – interview with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran.

Please keep voting for the niece Rebecca Jade for the San Diego Music Awards daily in categories 20, 21, 25, 26, and 27. Also, vote for Peter Sprague in category 4, which RJ sang on.

Myths retconned to advance diversity

multiverse

Uthaclena poses a question for Ask Roger Anything.

Should icons, legends, and myths be retconned to advance diversity and inclusiveness? Is creating new stories and characters stifled or advanced by doing so?

Maybe. And maybe. A post by Mark Evanier this year addresses this.

“Among the pro-social requirements at that moment was that every [cartoon] show that particular year [1980] had to have minority representation. Someone in it had to not be a white guy.

“As it was explained to me, Standards and Practices at ABC had made up a list of racial and ethnic minorities, and it was kind of like ‘Pick one.’ Joe Ruby, one of the producers of the show, looked it over and picked ‘Hawaiian.’ He and Norman had previously invented a sidekick for Plas, who had perpetual bad luck and whose voice would be based somewhat on Lou Costello’s.”

So I asked him, “I was wondering if you thought that was a good thing, a bad thing?” He replied, “In this world — or in my world, at least — one often finds situations that fall under the category of ‘Doing the right thing for the wrong reason’ or maybe ‘Achieving the proper goal in an improper way.'”

I agree with him that ABC was hamfisted about this. Thus, the inclusiveness checkmark was achieved but at a creative cost.

A better solution would be to create situations that reflect the characters portrayed. To achieve that, one needs to have more writers who are black, Hispanic, gay, women, fat et al. You know, people who have some experience with being what the stories are trying to portray rather than having a white character in blackface.

MCU

To the specifics of the question, when I was growing up reading comics, DC came up with different “earths” to explain the difference between the Golden Age and Silver Age heroes.

Someone recently wrote that there were too many characters named Superman. I can’t speak to this because I’m not following the comic books. The marketplace, I reckon, will decide.

I’ll point to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As you know, Sgt. Fury, fighting in WWII, was a white guy in the comics. But movie fans now can’t think of anyone but Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Here’s the problem with comic books that are more than a quarter-century old. You always have to retcon the storyline, or it doesn’t make any sense. The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man is in his 70s. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four fought in World War II, so the Lee/Kirby characters are centenarians.

I’m cool with the changes because we’re dealing with the multiverse, which was used to tremendous effect in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and especially Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Heck, anyone who has ever watched soap operas for any length of time knows that babies suddenly age for storyline reasons.

If you’re going to alter something, having media that reflects our evolving understanding of the world makes sense to me.

And if someone is pearl-clutching over people of color in the Tolkien universe, for instance, they can write off the finished projects as bad fan fiction.

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

Tag: Mark Evanier

April rambling: No irony

More links

MUSIC

March rambling: something dumb

CULCHA

MUSIC

March rambling: 2008 again?

And more

The Big Lie, redux

Music

Myths retconned to advance diversity

MCU

November rambling: Ham Sandwich

Abolitionists

MUSIC