Saturday, November 30, 2013

Express Yourself--Looking Up

This week's Express Yourself Weekly Meme asks: Who do you look up to?

I have written in the past about persons who I consider to be heroes, and why they are heroes. I find the people I most admire fall into 3 groups:
creators, overcomers, and achievers.  

Creators are the artistic people: the writers, the teachers, the composers.  They give me the ideas to live my lives by.  Some of these people are public figures, and some are not.  I have often said that my muse for life is Joseph Campbell, but I also never would have found him if Bill Moyers hadn't believed there was a place on television for intelligent conversation about serious topics (at least on PBS.) When it comes to musicians, both my husband and my best friend are very talented composers and musicians and my daughter is working at it (and "work" is definitely the word for it) so I have it in my own  backyard.

Overcomers (yes I know, I created a new word there) are the people who have had life throw stuff at them and kept on keeping on.  They surmount obstacles and difficulties of life and just keep moving on.  I can name a lot of public figures I admire for this, but this is also where the people in private life become heroes as well, as I wrote last Mother's Day. 

Achievers are the people we often think of first as heroes.  But as I have said before, I admire such people not only for their achievements, but for what they do with their success. Do they leverage their fame or success for the benefit of others?  Edmund Hillary became famous for climbing Mt Everest, but I think of him as a hero because he spent the rest of his live advocating for enviormental  causes and for the people of Nepal. When I think of this category in my own life, I think about my son, who recently became an Eagle Scout. Its a great achievement, but its also a preparation for life.  So many well known persons from Neil Armstrong to Mike Rowe to Steven Spielberg to Gerald Ford  have been Eagle Scouts. They all learned to take their achievements and make the world a better place.  And that's the kind of person I look up to.

This post is part of Express Yourself Weekly Meme.  To see whom other bloggers are looking up to visit the link up here.


Thursday, November 28, 2013

Thankful

So it is Thanksgiving, and we made it to our destination safely, after my husband safely made the Boy fetching from college round trip.  We are glad to be with family this year and to be celebrating more or less as planned, which is much better than the chaos which descended last year over the November holidays.

Like most people I have all sorts of personal things for which I am grateful, family, health, employment a (somewhat leaky at times) roof over our heads. 

I am grateful have this holiday off, and ask that folks have a grateful thought for all the people who do work this and other holidays, dispatchers, police officers, firemen, nurses and doctors, and the unfortunate people manning the doors at Walmart tonight.


I want to thank everyone who has read the blog and posted comments and tweeted entries this year.  I really have experienced nothing but kindness on the blogging adventure and I am so grateful for that.

I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and a Happy Hanukah to those who will be celebrating that festival as well.

Before the Christmas music starts, here's a song to say thank you.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Songs That Could Get You Jail Time

This week's Twisted Mix Tape is Songs That Could Get You Arrested. Certainly there are plenty of songs with illegal behavior, not to mention behavior that would be illegal now, even if it wasn't at the time the song was written.

Consider for example Rod Stewart's Maggie May. Its the classic story of an older woman and a (much) younger man, but just how much younger? According to Rod, the encounter that inspired the song took place when he was 16, which could get that adult party arrested these days.

 
Of course its an old folk tradition to make heroes of outlaws, like Pretty Boy Floyd and Jesse James. Here's a little classic I remember from my very early youth.
 
The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde--Georgie Fame
and the Blue Flames
 
A friend suggested this song, which was a big hit when I was in high school. There is certainly a lot of lawbreaking going on:
 
The Night Chicago Died--Paper Lace
 
Then there are the guys who are already doing jail time, of which there are a lot. I had a hard time deciding between this and Jail House Rock, but couldn't resist the fact that this one was recorded on site?
Johnny Cash--Folsom Prison Blues
 
And of course some guys never get back from jail.  When I was a kid I just loved this song.
Green Green Grass of Home--Johnny Cash
 
 
 
So that's it for this week. To check out other songs in the Mix Tape click here.
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, November 25, 2013

Watching the Wizard of Oz (again)




This has been a week of relieving traumatic moments of American History. Plus I have Monday to deal with. So when I was channel flipping and discovered that TBS was about to run The Wizard of Oz I decided a little escapism was in order. (Oz was preceded by another joy, this year's first sighting of the Grinch.)

As I have commented before, this movie is so much a part of my childhood that I can't remember the first time I saw it. It was shown on TV once a year, and we all sat down and watched it each year. I also had a soundtrack album, so I knew the whole movie by heart.

When I was about seven, my grandmother got a color TV set. We all used to get together and watch really impressive shows in color. I will never forget being taken to her house to watch Oz. The moment when Dorothy first opens the door into Oz and the film turns to color was pure magic. I think it was probably the beginning of my love affair with movies.

A couple days before my 9th birthday, Judy Garland died. Her funeral was held on my birthday.(the Stonewall riots happened early the next morning. Its my understanding the two events were not unrelated.) But the next time the movie was on, it was the same movie it had always been. It was my first real understanding of the immortality of film.


Although i have always been a Judy Garland fan,my favorite performer in the film was Ray Bolger. As a child I believed he was a scarecrow. As an adult i marvel at the quality of his dancing. He was the only cast member (other than Margaret Hamilton) that I remember seeing working professionally, and I was always impressed with how he embraced the film he would be remembered for. "No residuals, just immortality." He would say.

So many performers who would be unknown to the average movie goer if not for this film: Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, all did great work in other films. But who would remember them  if not for Oz?

A few other things I think about while watching this movie:

When they released the movie it was too long. They had to chose between cutting a song called "the jitterbug" and another number. In the end the bug got the axe which is good, not only because the Jitterbug would have dated the film, but also because the other number was "Somewhere over the Rainbow."

When I was in college I babysat a little girl who's mom was also in college.  Every day we watched The Wizard of Oz. It was several years before I could look at the film again, but it was great prep for later viewings of Barbie Nutcracker and Bambi.

This was actually the first movie I owned on video, several years before I had a VCR.  My dad's best friend  taped one of the annual airings of the show and gave it to me, in a case he had decorated with the ad and listing from the TV Guide.  I'm sure it will surprise no one who knows me that I still have the tape.

Although I have it on DVD now, this is one movie I actually enjoy watching on television, with commercials, just as I did when I was a kid. It amused the kids that I knew where all the commercials belonged.



The first time we went to the Smithsonian, my daughter's favorite part was the ruby slippers.

There is something chilling about the way Margaret Hamilton says "poppies" Not to mention "These things must be done delicately."

My son used to have a t-shirt that said "winged monkeys stole my sister."

I always thought the scariest moment in the movie is when Dorothy sees Aunt Em in the crystal ball and it turns into the with.

L Frank Baum's mother in law was am early feminist who wrote about witchcraft persecutions of the Middle Ages so they both probably would have loved Glinda's "only bad witches are ugly" line. I suspect Baum would not have liked the ending though. Just a dream indeed.

I think I was in my teens before I realized how many parts Frank Morgan has, over prof Marvell and Oz. Secretly I thought Oz was the only one in the castle and he and ran around doing all the jobs so no one would catch on. 

Well we're just about at the end. Dorothy is going to miss the scarecrow most of all, click her heels 3 times and tell Auntie Em there's no place like home. And no other film is so bound up with my whole life as this one.

This post is part of the I Don't Like Monday's Blog Hop at elleroy was here.
Click on the link to read more great stories.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Don't Let It Be Forgot....




It's a barely retained memory--hard to feel certain of in the face of so many replays. I am standing in front of the TV set in our living room with my toys watching horses on TV.  The three year old me is seeing the funeral of John F Kennedy, which took place 50 years ago this week. 

"You were bored by all the talking" my mother told me years later, "But you were fascinated by the horses, and ran to the TV whenever they were on."  It makes sense, I did like horses (and singing cowboys) as a child, and  it sounds like something a child would do. (Some 35 years later, I watched Princess Diana's funeral with my then three year old son, and he was only interested in the soldiers and the horses. Must be a family trait.)

The problem with remembering an event from early childhood like JFK's assassination (Or 9/11 for my children) is that its hard to separate what one saw at the time from all the news clippings and documentaries that one has seen since.  Its impossible to determine for myself what I saw then and what I have seen since. But there is no doubt that the events of November 1963 affected my childhood profoundly, just as the events of September 2001 affected the lives of my children. Both events opened doors that never really closed.

One of the things that felt most real to me when I watched Forrest Gump was the way the many assassinations and other public tragedies played out like background music in the film. That really was the way it felt to me as a child of the Sixties.  The deaths of the two Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Kent State, Viet Nam informed my entire youth. The first lines of Shakespeare I ever learned were on a memorial photo of JFK that my grandmother had hanging in her house ("And when he shall die/Take him out and cut him into little stars/and he will make the face of heaven so bright/that all the world will be in love with night/and pay no worship to the garish sun." )

My dad's favorite writer was Jim Bishop, and some of the first grown up books I read were his accounts of  Lincoln and Kennedy's deaths.
I became a bit of an assassination buff (though not a conspiracy theorist). When I was in college I read William Manchester's Death of a President and understood for the first time that classical  tragedy could and did play out in real life. 

When a public figure dies, especially when they die young or unexpectedly we mourn their passing.  But only some of the grief is for the person who died.  The rest is for ourselves.  We feel cheated.  We feel robbed of whatever the lost one still had to offer us. As a child I barely perceived the lost promise in the tragic deaths of the three men who promised so much: John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. As an adult I have felt many times, especially twice--in December of 1980, with John Lennon, and May of 1990 when Jim Henson died. It feels like something has gone out of the world and will never come back.

But the only thing I remember of that time is the assassination itself.  I regret that I wasn't a little older, to remember much of the optimism of the time, the commitment to public service. I would have liked to have witnessed  more than the last scene of Camelot. (By the way, I saw Richard Harris do Camelot once. Last scene--chills.) I grew up in an age of cynicism born of tragedy, and would like to have known what went before as well.

Future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed in November of 1963:
"It isn't any  good being Irish if you don't know the world is going to break your heart eventually."  One day 50 years ago, a whole generation learned just how cruelly hearts could be broken, not once, but again and again.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Express Yourself: What's in your Wallet or Purse?

The challenge for this week was simple yet daunting:

"What do you carry around in your purse or wallet? (Pics would be fun to see!)"

Lately I have been noticing a lot of shoulder pain on the right, or bag carrying side of my body.  So I have be contemplating switching back to a backpack for awhile, to even the weight load a bit.

So readers, I did it. I dumped out the purse, and then the wallet. And I took pictures.  Advance warning to the more organized among us, you may find these photos distressing or disturbing. 

 
Not seen in this picture are 3 items that are almost always in my purse when I go out...My cell phone, camera, and Nook.

As I picked through the pile thus produced I noticed a few things of interest:

Two writing journals.  The bigger one is almost full.  The little leather bound one intimidates me; I tend to think what I'm writing isn't important enough for such a lovely little book.

 
Pocket calendar, without which I would never survive.
This is also where I put store coupons.

 My daughter gave me this little bag for Christmas one year. I keep all my pocket change and must haves in it, then when I go out without the purse I only need the little bag.



My nephew made me this card  holder out of duct tape. cool huh?


Some random photos my mom had found of the kittens I had in my first apartment. My mom gave them to me two months ago. The reason they are still in my purse is because I haven't found the photo album yet from that time. If I take them out of my purse before I find the album they will go missing.



One of my daughter's earrings. I have no clue how it wound up in my purse.
 
8 school photos, 10 store affinity cards and 1 house key.








This is my wallet, front and back. Actually it would be outside and inside if the wallet could be closed. It does not close.
 
 
 
A small sample of the business cards, photos, obituaries, ticket stubs and other mementos that keep the wallet from closing. I found two Borders gift cards. Yes I know Borders is closed, (and there's no money on them anyway) but they were gifts from my godmother. In several cases the items are, you guessed, waiting to go in an album.
 
Witness one extreme case:
In 2002 the Olympic torch relay passed through our town, and I took the kids, who were 6 and 2 at the time. I have two of these in my wallet, one for each child. I have never figured out what to do with them, but I know if I take them out of the wallet I will never be able to find them when I am ready.





So that's what's in my wallet, and my purse. What's in yours? And if you'd like to know what other bloggers keep in their purses click here.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Twisted Mix Tape--Lying Eyes at Sundown

This week the Mix Tape theme is "Cheating Songs". It is certainly a subject that allows a wide range of selection and interpretation.  There is out and out cheating, there is wishful unfulfilled cheating, and there are even a few cheating songs with happy endings.


Sundown--Gordon Lightfoot
As soon as I saw this topic, I knew this song would be on my list.  I think the opening lines are among the most perfect ever written: I can see her lying back in her satin dress In a room where you do what you don't confess. In two lines you know everything you need to know about the situation.

Lying Eyes--The Eagles
One of the most well worn albums of my youth was The Eagles Greatest Hits. This is another well written song, but more from the point of view of the cheater than the cheated upon.


House of the Rising Sun--The Animals
 
 
My husband suggested this one when he heard the topic. It is actually about a house of ill repute, but going to that sort of place usually involves cheating of one kind or another.  Just about everyone has recorded a version of this song, but this one is the best, I think.

Norweigan Wood--The Beatles
 
Not perhaps the song that springs immediately to mind when one talks about cheating songs, but John Lennon readily admitted this was about a fling he had while married to Cynthia, so it qualifies.

I Want To Learn a Love Song--Harry Chapin
 
 
Remember what I said about cheating songs with happy endings? This song is Harry Chapin's more or less autobiographical account of how he met his wife Sandy, while she was still married to another man, after he was hired to give her guitar lessons. So that's my list.  What songs would you chose for a mix list of cheating songs? To see how some other bloggers twisted their mix tapes click here.
My Skewed View

Sevenscore and Ten years ago...

This week is one of melancholy anniversaries, starting with this: 150 years ago today Abraham Lincoln stood in the newly dedicated military cemetery in Gettysburg and made what many people think is the best speech in American History.

Not that everyone knew then that it was a great speech. The great orator, Edward Everett, had just spoken for 2 hours and many people barely noticed Mr. Lincoln's brief remarks. The Harrisburg newspaper notoriously shredded the speech (last week they printed a retraction just a bit late).

Time has been much kinder to the speech of course.


If you ever get the chance to visit Gettysburg National Park, be sure to go to the cemetery. Find the spot where Lincoln stood and look in the direction he looked and contemplate all  those small white stones. And then remember that the President looked not at gravestones, but at newly dug graves.







To me Lincoln did 2 things with his speech. He defined what equality meant in American society. and he defined the meaning of a soldier's sacrifice in war better perhaps than anyone else ever.

He quoted the Declaration of Independence and its statement that "All Men are created equal." He knew that the phrase didn't mean the same thing to the Founders that it meant 100 years later, let alone what it means to us now, but that didn't matter. The premise of the nation was that all are equal. And it was clear, to Lincoln at least, that the definition of whom was covered by "all men" had changed. "Ever since Gettysburg, other persons have sought their rights under the same criteria as Lincoln gave at that day, maintaining the immigrants, religious minorities, women, gays and others have appealed to the decency of their fellow citizens on the grounds that they too were created equal.



Then he turns to the purpose of the gathering. . "We are met on a battlefield of this war." And he tells why they are there, to dedicate a cemetery as a burial place and memorial for those who died on the hills and fields around the burial ground.





Veterans Day was last week. (A melancholy legacy of a different war) How many times did you hear Lincoln's phrase "The last full measure of devotion" used? Has any other single phrase so perfectly captured those who go to war for us? 


In conclusion he reminded those present that they had a duty as well, to continue to keep our country and democracy strong so that the dead we
owe so much to "did not die in vain."



It's an urban myth that because this speech was short, it was a toss off by Mr Lincoln.  He never tossed off a speech. He wrote them all himself, carefully, with an eye to the audience beyond the one he was directly addressing. 

In this case he had his eye on us as well.


Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Express Yourself--Now Watching on TV

I remember in my youth, when most folks still had black and white TV, that the fall preview issue off TV Guide was a  big event.  We flipped through the pages, checking to see what was coming each night. Sometimes there were agonizing choices to be made, because shows aired once. There was no way to save them for future viewing. You waited months for reruns. Once the show quit airing it was gone forever, unless it would make it to syndication.

Oh and there were 3 (later 4) networks to chose from, plus whatever was on PBS.

I mention all this to show how easy it used to be to pick programs. There really wasn't much to pick from, in terms of variety.
Now thanks to cable and my DVR and my DVD player, its a whole different world.

For the last two years my guilty pleasure show was smash. I watched it weekly, as it aired, so I could text a friend who also loved the show. As long time theatre fans, we just couldn't resist the blend of melodrama and catchy show tunes. But NBC cancelled it and now I find I don't want any series programs on the traditional networks. (Baseball, football and the Oscars are another story)

So what do I find myself watching on TV. Well first of all, a lot of reruns.

Me TV, Antenna TV and Nick at Nite are all my friends. Currently my DVR records reruns of MASH, WKRP, and Hogan's Heroes. I watch them and delete them again.  I also have worked my way through all the episodes of The Twilight Zone and Hawaii Five-O in recent times.  Meanwhile the Girl is working her way through all the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, not for the first time.

Then there are my guilty pleasure shows, particularly Project Runway. There is something about flamboyant males and psychotic females producing works of textile art that just fascinates me. That and I love Tim Gunn. The man is just impeccable in every way.  Runway All Stars is ok, its nice to revisit our old friends, but without Tim its just not the same.
Dance Moms used to be on the guilty pleasure list but I have gotten bored with the moms and their bitch slapping. Currently the daughter is interested in Chasing Nashville, but so far I'm not intrigued by stage mamas with Elvis obsessions and their untalented daughters.

There are also the knowledge based reality shows, where you learn a little, or at least congratulate yourself on knowing as much as the stars.  Shows like Mythbusters and Pawn Stars fall into this category.

Finally there are my sanity shows, the ones that keep me rooted in some sort of reality.  I start my morning coffee every Tuesday through Friday with the previous nights Daily Show and Colbert.  I know they have to go home to see their families and all but those guys should be on every night, and no vacations.  No matter how messed up the world is, those guys will find a way to make us laugh about it.  Keith Olberman is back on the air again, as a sportscaster, which is where he started from.  I like his take on sports just as much as I like his take on politics so I'm happy. Unfortunately over running ball games play havoc with the schedule, plus I'm usually in bed by 11pm (and if I'm not I try to catch Jon Stewart first hand) so once again the DVR comes to my rescue.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my very favorite TV station has nothing to do with series television. Turner Classic Movies is my favorite sanctuary from stupid television. A lot of the best movies ever made, without commercials or cuts, shown in their proper screen ratios, in black and white or gorgeous color, depending on the directors choice. A bad movie on TCM is still better than almost anything else on the airwaves.





This Post is part of Express Yourself Weekly Meme Click on the link if you would like to see what other writers on liking on TV these days.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Twisted Mix Tape--Storysongtellers


Twisted mix tape this week highlights a subject I looked forward to--story songs.  As a young woman trying to write poetry I found myself incapable writing a narrative poem.  (I still am not good at it,) Meanwhile the radio waves of the 70's were filled with songwriters who were producing marvelous narrative ballads. These are some of my very favorite songs.

Flowers Are Red by Harry Chapin
The whole list could be Harry Chapin of course, no one was so prolific in the writing of story songs.  I thought about Cats in the Cradle, and Taxi, but then I decided on this less well known cautionary tale.  Harry once said it was inspired by a employee whose son brought a note home from school saying "Your son marches to the beat of a different drum, but we'll have him in step with everyone else in no time." 





City of New Orleans--Arlo Guthrie
When my kids were little we travelled by train a lot. (Then Amtrak rerouted the trains, just like in the song, and they didn't come through our town anymore, and we started taking the Greyhound instead). When they were still small and didn't know I couldn't sing and were just happy I knew the words, I used to sing this song to them. I love how the rhythm perfectly matches the feel of a moving train. I chose this version for two reasons, because Arlo tells a great story about meeting the author, Steve Goodman in a bar and hearing the song for the first time, and because the guy over in the corner on banjo is my hero, Pete Seeger.

 

Leader of the Band--Dan Fogelberg
When I was in college and first started seriously acquiring recorded music, one of my favorite albums was Dan Fogelberg's The Innocent Age. It was loaded with great songs including the title tune, In The Passage, Run For The Roses, Same Old Lang Syne and this lovely song, which Fogelberg wrote for his musician father. Dan's gone now too, which makes the song both sadder and lovelier.


Operator--Jim Croce
Last week I was lucky enough to get to write about the late Jim Croce for Raised on the Radio and spent a lot of time listening to his music. He was another person who wrote great story songs, both funny and sad. I actually considered lightening the mood around the blog with Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown or You Don't Mess Around With Jim, but in the end I had to go with this  perfect little story is about a man's conversation with a phone operator who is trying to put him through to his ex girl, who has left him for his best friend.  The last lines give me chills every time I hear the song, even after 40 years.


The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald--Gordon Lightfoot
Once upon a time, ballads were how everyone got the news.  Minstrels wrote songs about what was going on and then went from village to village and sang them to people. I was a sophomore in high school in Northeast Ohio in the fall of 1975, and Cleveland was the winter destination the ship Edmund Fitzgerald never arrived at.  The story of the ship was big news for weeks. When the recording was released in the summer of 1976, I was fascinated to hear an event that I had watched on the news and read about in the paper become a song, and an epic ballad at that. I bought the 45 and played it over and over. 
One of the things I love about this song is how Mr Lightfoot has embraced its success, performing it at many times at memorial services and other events and changing the lyrics in performance in deference to families' feelings and new information about the shipwreck.   I also love the way he captures the Great Lakes. 



 This post is part of Twisted Mix Tape, hosted by Jen Kehl at My Skewed View To see what other bloggers picked for their favorite story songs click here.



Sunday, November 10, 2013

Voting Rights




The most interesting incident Tuesday morning was my walking to a building to enter a booth and push levers on a voting machine. I have never understood why anyone passes up that bargain. It doesn't cost a cent, and for that couple of minutes you're the star of the show, with top billing. It's the only way that really counts for you to say I'm it, I'm the one that decides what's going to happen and who's going to make it happen. It's the only time I feel really important and know I have a right to.
  Rex Stout  A Family Affair

So Tuesday was Election Day.  I know that for some of you folks out there, particularly in the states of New Jersey and Virginia and the City of New York, it was a huge event, but where I live in Ohio there was nothing much on the ballot. Sure, city council races, but all those results were decided in the primary, when the Democratic Party candidates were chosen.  School board races and court judges were about as contentious as things got.  But there were bond renewals on the ballot for the Parks service, and also for out local Zoo, which along with the libraries and public transit, rank high among the ways I like to see my tax dollars spent.

These days of course there's all sorts of options for voting, absentee ballots, early voting. But I like to go to the polls on election day. As the above quote from Mr. Stout points out, Election Day is the one chance the average citizen has of feeling involved in the running of the country. So I like to vote in person, on Election Day.

When my husband arrived at the school gym it was nearly deserted.  I remember standing in line, outdoors, as hundreds of people waited to vote in November of 2008. We had our children with us that night, wanting them to see democracy taking place. This afternoon one was at school and the other away at college, and there was no waiting. We produced our ID's and were handed our ballots.

It only took a minute or two to fill in the dots and turn in our ballots. They handed us stickers, proclaiming that we had in fact voted and we were done and back home in 10 minutes.

 Yet in some ways this was a greater event than a presidential election--not a moment of historical importance perhaps, but a moment of real participation in what goes on in the community.  One of our neighboring communities had a levy pass by one vote.  Just imagine, one person decides not to bother coming and everything changes.

Oh and in case you were wondering, the Zoo and the Parks made out just fine. 




I am linking up to the I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop at elleroy was here.
It's the perfect way to start the week.


Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Twisted Mix Tape--Muppet Magic

I've alluded before to my love of the Muppets and actually featured Kermit the Frog  and the Rainbow Connection in one Mix Tape and Rowlf the Dog on another. 

My love affair with the Muppets goes all the way back to my childhood, when I used to watch Rowlf on the Jimmy Dean show, and although I was a little old for the Sesame St generation, I was well aware of Big Bird and his friends. 

But it was the Muppet Show  that really cemented the relationship for me.  There was something about using a bunch of puppets to put on a old style variety show that I just couldn't resist.  For 5 brilliant season the Muppet folks put on an amazing show that could be watched by all ages and temperaments.

I could do several playlists of favorite moments with the Muppets, so I decided to narrow it down to only ones that were on the actual Muppet show.

How can you go wrong with Robin the Frog and Bernadette Peters? You can't.
The Elton John Episode featured 2 classic numbers, and I couldn't give either one up. So first we have Elton and some Muppet reptiles performing Crocodile Rock.
And secondly we have Don't Go Breaking My Heart, as Elton duets with Miss Piggy. Frank Oz, Piggy's original Muppeteer has an amazing falsetto.
This is one of the great comedic moments of the Muppets, when Peter Sellers attempts several impersonations while explaining to Kermit why it is impossible for him to relax and be himself.
Unfortunately on that same episode, Kermit's day continues to go not so well. Finally after losing an act to duck hunting season, Kermit winds up alone on a empty stage to sing his signature song.  It's my favorite performance of "Being Green"/
 
To sing us out here is one of the best of all Muppet productions, of Harry Belafonte's song, "Turn the World Around" If you can take your eyes off Harry for a moment, check out the amazing African style Muppets that were specially created for the show. No one else was doing anything remotely like this in the late 70's and early 80's.
 
This post is part of Twisted Mix Tape link up. This week our hostess daringly allowed us to post anything we wanted.  To see what resulted from that, click on the link.
My Skewed View

Monday, November 4, 2013

Today I Am Being Raised on the Radio

Guess what folks! Today I have my  very first guest post appearing at Raised on the Radio, which is the amazing site hosted by Jen Kehl from  My Skewed View.

 Raised on the Radio is the place to go  if you have fond memories of growing up in the era of AM/FM live radio as your primary music source. So if you sat by the radio with your cassette player on pause waiting for your new favorite song to come on, or if you never missed a minute of American Top 40, this is the site for you.

Today Raised on the Radio is featuring a piece I wrote marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Jim Croce, one of the great songwriters of the early 70's and a personal favorite.   Check it out here and tell me what you think.  And check out the rest of the site a well.



On Hold to Oblivion

I imagine all of us must deal with either a utility or creditor or some other entity with lousy customer service. No exception here. In fact we are "blessed" with a notoriously bad cable/Internet/phone provider, that consistently ranks rock bottom when public is surveyed about customer service quality. Over priced and quirky, yet they have us over a barrel, because unbundling to separate companies is even more expensive.

The other night I had called the media giant to double check my due date and exact billing amount. To my pleasant surprise the nice English-as-primary-language speaker actually offered a few account tweaks that would knock a chunk of my bill. This was especially sweet because one of my complaints about the provider is that they have all sorts of deals for new subscribers and nothing for the loyal and long suffering. I was thinking kind thoughts about the cable company for a whole 15 minutes, till the Internet went out.

Naturally I tried all the usual remedies, rebooting modem and router and running computer diagnostics. Finally I picked up the phone to call the provider and discover the phone is also out. Since the phone and modem are linked, this is a clue. It also means I must call on the cell phone, which unlike the cell phone has a limited number of minutes per month.

The first words I hear after I call the 800 number is "Due to unusually high call volume..." I select the option for tech issues. The excessively friendly robovoice says it will reset my modem, then to call back if it still doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

One of the problems with the customer service is that there is no way to shortcut the process. One must run the gamut of punch in your number, select the problem, and wait on hold until one can get to a human being, regardless of the number of times one has called in the last 24 hours.  This is especially annoying when I call on the house phone and receive instructions that will of course disconnect the phone in the course of the reboot. But at least today I am on my cell phone.


I call back. Robovoice acknowledges my previous call and asks if the reset worked. I want to answer "of course it worked, I just wanted to burn some more phone minutes" but my only options are yes or no so I select no.

I settle in at my functional but non communicative computer for the long haul, thinking calming thoughts that at least its the end of the phone month and I'm not so resentful of the burned minutes.

I spend the next half hour or so on hold editing the pictures and catching up on the blog. I even write this.. Finally a human comes on the line.

Now why do tech people always assume we are idiots? They don't ask "have you reset?" They say "I want you to reset the modem then reboot your computer and call back if it doesn't work." I reply that I have already done this a number of times, most recently at the prompting of the Robovoice, without success. She then starts asking me questions about the various lights on the modem. Finally we establish that the modem is fried.  The good news is that the modem is rented from the cable company and will be replaced by them.  The bad news  is that we can either schedule a repair call  for some vaguely defined future date or take it in ourselves.  We opt for the later. 

So we take the modem to the center, exchange it, hook the replacement up. (the cable company, by the way, appears to be  using exactly the same model as the last one that we acquired 12 years ago when we moved into this house). We soon discover that the internet is now working, but not the phone.  Back to the cell phone I go. At least this time they are not having unusually high call volume.  The first tech I speak to immediately tells me that something must be wrong with the phone wiring and that she will have to schedule a service call. I decide to try checking all the connections and cords before doing that.  After making sure it all looked  right and still getting a dial tone I call back to schedule the dreaded service visit. 

I get a different tech. I explain the problem yet again. Immediately he responds, "Let me check something, I think I know what is wrong."  He places me, still on the cell phone, on hold. A minute or two later my house phone springs to life. "Your phone was still looking for the old modem. It just had to be told to look for the new one.  I'm surprised the other tech didn't try that." I of course am not in the least surprised, but thank him and hang up, and some 24 hours after the saga began, full service is restored to our household.

I have 12 minutes left on the cell phone.

My only consolation through all this is that occasionally the utility calls with surveys reference their service.  One time they got my son, who told them "You don't want to know what my mom thinks of your service." And they probably don't. But I'll be ready for the next poll.


If there's one thing I like even less than dealing with customer service it's dealing with Mondays. But at least there's a cure for Mondays. Walk don't run over to the I don't like Mondays blog hop hosted by the amazing Linda Roy of  elleroy was here.  Read what some great bloggers think about Mondays. Coffee is optional but highly recommended.



I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Friday, November 1, 2013

Day 18--Bad poetry

Today's challenge discussed how writing badly can be used to get through writers block, and challenged us to write something badly.  I mulled over this for about 2 weeks because I just could get into the idea of consciously writing badly. So I wrote about writing badly...

Writing bad poetry
requires security
or stupidity

Stupidity that doesn't know
just how bad the poem is

Or security to put the worse
of what you have written out there.

I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough
To know when I have written badly.
But I'm not secure enough
To put it out to all the world.



This post is part of OctPoWriMo. To see what other poets had to say about bad writing  click here.