Category Awards

Sunshine Superman

Michael 12 Comments

Okay 1960s music fans, tell me all you can about Donovan’s musical valentine that made it to #1 on the Billboard’s pop chart in 1966. Other than the phrase “Sunshine Superman” is never uttered among the rambling lyrics. Time’s up. I don’t know that much about it either. He wrote it for his then girlfriend/future wife although they may have already had one of their kids by then. It was a confusing time.  I only bring it up because I personally am a Sunshine Superman. Or. Sunshine Blogger Superman, now having been twice singled out (once doubled out?) for the honor. This time you can blame it on Vicki at Victoria Ponders. If you were around in April 2018, you could blame Sue. I’d include a link to her blog also because why not, but she is no longer blogging.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago does it. Um, 2018, not 1966. Seven years. Your basic Statute of Limitations interval. In 2018 I was tagged with tagging 8 others for the Sunshine Blogger Award. A few weeks before that, in January 2018, I was tapped for the Blogger Recognition Award which included a requirement to nominate 10 others. My nominator for that award is also no longer blogging. In fact, of the 18 blogs that I singled out between the two awards, four bloggers are still plying these pixels, one of them quite sporadically.

 Enough Memory Laning, let’s get down to business with this year’s festivities. Fair warning, this a lot to this post. Pull up a chair and get comfy.

According to dear Vicki, the rules are:

  • Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
    • Thank the person who nominated you.
    • Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
    • Answer your nominators’ questions.

Easy enough. Except it isn’t. More on that later. Let’s get started with the easy stuff, with a hearty Thank you [Yay!] to Vicki, and her remarkable writings on this platform at Victoria Ponders. The logo is here somewhere, look around. Now on to the semi-easy stuff. Miss Victoria’s Eleven Queries.

What is your morning routine?
Mornings and I have a complicated relationship. Even though most days I don’t have to be up at any time in particular I still crawl out of bed early, often just as the sun is rising (except in winter when it’s pert near noon(!) before the sun crests the horizon). Take whenever the exact time I get out of bed and go back about 10 minutes. That’s when I thank God for another day and take a few minutes of silent meditation.  We are then out of bed, heading for formal prayers, morning ablutions, a couple good morning messages, then juice and coffee while I make breakfast.

What is your favorite season? Why?
I just walked a similar path in comments to a blog by Ally at The Spectacled Bean regarding most and least favorite months. My favorite month is October so by extension my favorite season is Fall. I’m not a good cold-weather person. I want warmth and sun and one of my favorite spots in the world is Puerto Rico. Still, I could not go through a year without the crisp Autum air, the first hint of wood burning in fireplaces while taking a walk, picking apples and making fresh apple soup (delicious), and marveling over the colors, oh the colors. Yep. Fall.

What is your favorite childhood memory?
Childhood was so long ago. I’m not sure if the memories are memories of what happened or memories of what I thought happened. A lot of the memories aren’t necessarily the happiest things a kid can go through, like being lowered through the basement window to unlock the doors after a vacation because the keys were undiscoverable and I was the only one small enough to get through the little vent like window. I think the fondest of the memories all centered around vacations, which for us were road trips to visit relatives. I don’t recall many parks, or rides, or games, but I remember the trips to wherever from the back seat of the family car. I wrote about that back seat here.

Who or what has been your most unlikely teacher?
Now the questions are getting harder. I will give you a who. The artist, Andy Warhol. And it isn’t because I’m still looking for those 15 minutes. He once said “Don’t think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” What I took from that is don’t spend so much time thinking about doing something that you never get around to doing it, or waiting for THE perfect moment that never comes around. I wrote about that too. That one is over at ROAMcare, Think less, do more, then do more again.

Who or what are you most proud of?
Without a question, that’s a who and that’s the daughter, who let me think I was teaching her how to be a good person when all the while, she was teaching me.

What is something that surprises people about you?
Without a doubt, that I have a creative side. My entire professional life has been analytic, whether in practice, or when teaching, or even in volunteer positions where I’d usually head some committee or be stuck doing the finances. There are few who realize I can paint, play piano, and write. Am I an artist, a pianist, an author? No, but I could play one of each on TV.

What motivated you to start blogging?
I dunno. I’ll get back to you on that.

What forms of entertainment do you enjoy the most?
This varies depending on mood but I’m always in the mood for an old movie, a 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s movie, preferably something with at least one murder and one that’s been adapted from a book so I can read it and argue with myself about which is better.

If you are a book reader, do you prefer a paper copy or a digital copy?
I’ll read anything, book, digital, magazine article or serial (do they do that anymore?), but I prefer a book. I really do geek over the feel and the smell and the heft of a book and the physical turning of the pages and seeing the story progress as much as feeling it.

What’s your favorite music genre, and who is your favorite singer?
That’s a little of a toss-up. For straight up listening or playing, it would be jazz, modern, smooth, traditional, any sort of jazz and by far my favorite artist/composer is pianist David Benoit. But… you can’t sing jazz in the shower. For that, it’s 1960’s ballads.

What societal causes do you care about the most?
Healthcare. Fair, equitable, reasonable, affordable healthcare. Between battling a rare disease, bladder cancer, and a failed kidney transplant all in short order, I nearly bankrupted myself. I’d love to see some equitable distribution of services so we at least can provide basic primary care to everyone. We never will because “they” have discovered most people will pay anything to stay alive so more providers will charge anything. I honestly do believe if I were to hit a lottery for $8 billion or so, I’d open as many free clinics as I could and treat as many people as possible until the well ran dry. Maybe it would encourage others to do the same.

So that’s the easy and the not so easy part of this assignment. Now according to the rules, which haven’t changed in 7 years. I must craft a set of questions to be answers by a group of unsuspecting bloggers. I hesitate to name “up to 11” fellow bloggers because you see what happened the last time. Most of them are gone, poof, disappeared. I’d hate that to happen to any of you.

But first, the questions. These will be easy, at least as far as I can tell.

  1. What is your worst bad habit or secret vice?
  2. Would you rather read or write?
  3. How do you describe yourself physically and does your go to ID picture look like that?
  4. How do you describe yourself emotionally?
  5. Are you an Oscar or a Felix? And do you understand the reference or did you have to research it?
  6. What celebrity, living or dead, would you like to have dinner with.
  7. What is the longest drive or ride (including bus or train rides) you have ever taken?
  8. Cat, dog, both, other, neither?
  9. What’s the most embarrassing thing in your refrigerator?
  10. Do you have a superstition or what do you do to avoid bad luck or encourage good luck?
  11. If you couldn’t live where you live now, what different country would you pick based on beauty, culture, what you know, what you hear or read about, and price is no object?
  12. If you couldn’t live when you live now, what different time or historical era would you pick based on however you pick such a thing?

Now for the hardest part of this nonsense, errr honor. Picking others to follow in my footsteps. First, a review of the rules:

  • Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
    • Thank the person who nominated you.
    • Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
    • Answer your nominators’ questions
    • Nominate up to 11 bloggers.
    • Ask your nominees 11 questions.

I honestly hesitate to do this, but here we go.

First, Vicki at Victoria Ponders, I really would like to hear your answers so to you I extend my questions but you can skip all the other rigmarole, errr details.

I should stop right there. Some people I would forward this to have received the same from either Vicki or one or two levels up. There are a few people I’d love to hear from although I’d understand if these don’t fit your blog’s concept.

Kris at Around the Corner

Belle at Between the Lyme

For Rachel (Rachel Mankowitz) and Dayle (Tip of the Iceberg), I know this isn’t the sort of thing you would write about but you do bring me sunshine and I certainly won’t exclude you.

Wynne (Surprised by Joy) and Ally (The Spectacled Bean), I’d love to include you but it’s terribly unfair of me to asks you to do all this again. But then I am sort of telling Vicki I want her to do it again so what do I know.

And of course, anybody else who wants to have at it, have at it. Years ago, I was much more active writing, reading, and commenting. Today, I read a select but cherished few and comment even less, but I do read and I do enjoy. I think I’ll stop now.

The best times, etc etc

Michael 10 Comments

It’s that time again, one of the best times of the year. It’s Oscar time! Specifically, the month before the actual awards are awarded. I don’t care much who wins this year’s Academy Awards. If anything, I may pay attention to the the cinematography or writing awards, but in general, this year’s winners have a long time to ferment before I’ll open them for a taste.

If you are a regular reader, or even a slightly irregular one, you know my golden age for movie watching coincides nicely with the golden age of movie making. I have made that same assertion at this same time of year several times. If you pop over to the “Search My Blog” page and type “Academy” in the search window, you will be rewarded with several posts to read about my preference for the older movies, particularly at this time of year.  Naturally, that won’t stop me from asserting that same assertion here.

In addition to what you”ll read in any of those past posts, I also think part of what makes the older movies the better choices, is the same reason why so many other older things, are just generally better. I’ll use some of my own experiences.

For well over 40 years I worked in hospital pharmacies, both non-profit and for-profit. When I started, healthcare was a terrific career choice, specifically for me, but for many others. And a well-respected field of endeavor. Today, not so much. The people working it are questionable in their dedication for excellence in providing care, and the people running it are not at all questionable in their disdain for providing care.

Here is what I believe happened.  When I began practicing hospitals were run by doctors, pharmacies by pharmacists, and drug companies by chemists and biologists. We made people well and made a respectable living. Sometime in the 1990s, hospital and pharmacies and drug companies decided to swap out the professionals from their corporate offices and replace them with “business people.” Dedication went down because they had no stake in the history of the professions. Quality went down because quality is expensive and that didn’t fit with the “increase the bottom line at all costs” narrative. Care went down because nobody needed to care anymore.

Without getting further into that diatribe, that’s what happened to movies. In the 20s to the early 60s, actors acted, writers wrote, directors directed, and producers produced. They were good at what they did. They had stables of people to draw upon, and they enjoyed what they did. And they did what they knew how to do. There are some exceptions, but it became prevalent in the 60s that people  wanted all the control so they started writing and directing and producing their own parts that they acted. Movies became pet projects rather than works of art.

If you want something good, have the professionals who want to do it, who have experience doing it, who know the good and bad of doing it just do it. It works with healthcare. It works with cars, it works with running a country. (I had to addd that – come on now. DEI caused a plane crash? Sheesh)

Back to the movies. From now until awards night, my favorite TV network, TCM will play nothing but Oscar nominated and winning movies. All day. Every day. Some even written, directed, produced, and performed by other than old white men.

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You know when else is the best of times? February! It’s not only Groundhog Day month, it is also when love is in the air. Do the right thing and spread your love to everyone, even strangers. We talk about that very thing in this week’s Uplift post, All We Need is Love, Part 2. It’s all natural, requires little effort, and makes big differences. Check it out.

While you’re there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and subscribe to have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly our Monday Moment of Motivation and the email exclusive Flashback Friday repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

The most wonderful time of the year

Michael 8 Comments

It’s almost here. The day we’ve been waiting for. (Don’t you just love ads, articles, blogs even that start that way. Like all of the world is “we.” It’s like the YouTube videos that begin, “You’re doing [something incredibly common and impossible to do wrong] wrong.”) (But I digress.) The day we’ve (cough cough) been waiting for is almost here.  Yes…[dramatic overture type music]…it’s Oscar time. (You know I’m really not allowed to say that. It’s copyrighted and a couple years ago they were going after those using it without permission hard. Yeah, well, tough on them! I said it!) Now where was I. Oh yes, it’s Oscar time!

For movie buffs, it really is a big time. Those awards still hold a mystique among awards, and people who live and die for movies have no real life. 

I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that.

Take 2! People who live and die for movies look forward to this time of year like normal people look forward to Groundhog Day. And I can say that because I too look forward to Oscar season. Oh not for the awards. I mean I guess they’re okay even though they really have gotten away from awarding the best performances and replaced that with awarded the performances that have the most to say but then sometimes that happens to be the same picture like last year. That was a good movie and I can’t wait to se it again when it’s like 40 years old. Umm…

Oh darn,I lost my place again. Don’t go anywhere. Hmm, people live and die. Look forward to too. I’m one of them. Oh yeah, I found it.

And I can say that because I too am one of them. One of the them who look forward to Oscar season but not for the awards. I look forward to this time of year because my favorite television station, TCM, plays an entire month of Oscar nominated and winning films from when they really were really good. I’ve said many times, my passion is old movies, preferably pre-1950s, certainly pre-1960s, and a rare one after that.

There was a difference in the movies from 70 and 80 years ago. There will never be a movie couple so well matched as William Powell and Myrna Loy. There will never be an actress so perfect in every role she played as Audrey Hepburn. Nor a musical as free spirited as Singing in the Rain, or a drama as soul searching as The Red Shoes. And there will never be another Casablanca. What made so many of the great movies of the golden age of movies such great movies is something we will never see again in movie land. The studio system. So completely controlling of all that went in the it should be The Studio System.

Take Casablanca as an example. Every part was perfectly cast. Not just the leading roles which none of the leads were who the producer Hal Wallis wanted but who the studio gave him. Even the director Michael Curtiz was not the first choice. All off the minor characters filled their roles like they had been doing those jobs for ever. And they had. Actors then were on contract to the studios and they all filled a niche. You want a bartender? They got an actor who played a bar tender so often he’d be a better bartender than a bartender. Do you need a street vendor? Central casting has a dozen to pick from, what do you want to sell? The system worked. Casablanca was nominated for 8 academy Awards and came away with 3, best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

So next Sunday while most movie maniacs will be glued to their sets to see who gets slapped this year, I’ll be halfway through a smorgasbord of the best movies, some that even won for being the best movie when being the best mean being the best and the only message was “let us entertain you.”

Every moment of every day has the potential to be one that will be never forgotten. Those memorable moments can be anything and happen anytime. Last week in Uplift! we asked, will some moment today be your most memorable?

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The envelope please…

Michael Leave a comment

And the envelope please…

Ah, Major Movie Award time. The Academy is cracking down in unauthorized used of the gold statuettes’ nickname but you know what Major Movie Award I mean. The Major Movie Award ceremony was last night and I missed it – again. Intentionally. I love movies and this year I actually saw most of the nominees for the Major Movie Award best picture award. But I love old movies a whole lot better and I dislike awards shows even more. Awards shows, awards banquets, recognition ceremonies, even graduations, but especially awards show when anybody who ever got lucky enough to be cast in a good movie demonstrates how valuable screenwriters are. Anyway, I didn’t watch the ceremonies but instead, as is my custom, I watched a couple Major Movie Award winners from 60 years ago.

In general, forty years is my cut off.  If a movie is still entertaining (and relevant, if possible), 40 years after it first hit the theaters, then that’s a good movie. I would say I’ll be re-watching this year’s winner in 40 years but in 40 years I’ll be well ensconced in the centenarian camp, so…that’s a maybe.

So with all this experience of watching long-lasting, significant award winning movies from 40, 50, 60, 100 years ago, you’d  think I could pick out this years winner effortlessly. Yeah, no. A hundred, 90, 60, 50 years ago, significant was defined differently. Right around 40 years ago, it started to be more important to have the right message than to have the right stuff. But that’s okay. That only holds true for the “big” awards.  The true magic in movies, the costumes, sets, music, and cinematography are still awarded on merit so there will always be good old movies to watch. Even forty years from now.

moviefilm

It so happens that I am writing this before the Major Movie Awards ceremony and the announcement of best picture. So, given that I’ve seen them, what movie would I vote for if I were a member of the Major Movie Award voting bloc?  I will say I don’t think the one I would vote for will win, but it should.  I think several of the best picture nominees are definite possibilities for cinematography and costume and would be worthy of those honors. But those same movies have no story, no coherence, or are just not good enough to be “best.” And there are so many this year (10 nominees for best picture), the field is clearly watered down.  But I digress.

What movie would I vote for if I were a member of the Major Movie Award voting bloc? West Side Story. It will have a hard time getting to the podium.  Although remakes dominate moviedom, rarely do remakes get nominated for the best picture award. To win the award, the odds are greater than finder teeth in a hen, but just barely. Only twice has a best picture been a remake. (Ben-Hur in 1959 and The Departed in 2006). To make it an even higher mountain to climb, West Side Story is the first time a remake of a previous best picture winner (1961) has even been nominated for best picture.

So … if I don’t think the. Ivies I would vote for will win for best picture, where would I put my money? Although almost all of the rest of the world thinks, The Power of the Dog will be so honored, I think last night’s winner was CODA. But wouldn’t it be a hoot if Licorice Pizza walk away with it?

We could do this for the other 23 categories too but I have to get dinner on the table.

How did I do?

RRSB Persons of the Year

Michael 7 Comments

Nearing the end of the year most everybody will be writing about the year in review (ugh) or resolutions (still ugh but perhaps not disgustingly so). I, because I am me, will embark on my own end of year tangent and instead, celebrate the RRSB First (and Likely Only) Persons of the Year Award.  Yes, you read that correctly – plural “Persons,” singular “Award.” My choice for outstanding individual of 2021 is two individuals.

After careless considerat…  err, careful consideration, I’ve concluded there are two people worthy enough to be the Person of the Year, umm Persons of the Year and they is, I mean are: (drum roll, fanfare, etc, etc), Washington’s newest power couple, Liz Chaney and Joe Manchin.

Yes, that is a match made in Purgatory but they, and as far as I can tell, they alone are the epitome of Representative of the People. There are 535 elected voting representatives in Washington, 100 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives. Of those 535 people, 533 are more comfortable voting however their party tells them rather than those who hired them for the job. Only Chaney and Manchin have to the point of loss of standing and threats of censure, voted as they felt best benefited their constituents rather than their party leaders.

Seriously, as we enter 2022 maybe our Congress needs to resolve to improve themselves and the first step is for all 535 of them to write 100 times “I represent the people who voted for me” on any handy blackboard. Then they can rip out the aisles running down the middle of each chamber in that big white building on the hill and rather than assigning seats by party, get all the representatives of each state to sit together like they did when Congress was a new idea back in 1700s. Committee assignments will be made by members’ ability and background and leadership positions will limited to those identified in the Constitution. Yeah, that’s a bunch of pipedreams but they make just as realistic set of resolutions as wanting to lose weight and exercise more, but a guy can dream.

Now, getting back to Joe and Liz, my Persons of the Year. I agree it’s a sad state of affairs when politicians are singled out for bucking the system but face it, if your reps are always voting however their party leader tells them, why are they there. Let’s eliminate 531 positions and leave just one Democrat and one Republican in each house and they can vote on everything by rock, paper, scissors. Makes as much sense as what they’ve gotten done this year their way.

Manchin-Chaney

We Will Survive

Michael 4 Comments

Did you watch the Grammy Awards?  That’s okay, I didn’t either. It’s been a while since I watched them. Possibly getting on to 40 years. The 1980 Grammy Awards are of particular note. That was the year Gloria Gaynor, Freddie Perron, and Dino Fekaris won for Disco Record of the Year* with “I Will Survive.” It was the first year an award category for disco was considered. It was also the last year for disco music to have it’s own category for consideration. Thanks to recently separated singers at karaoke bars “Survive” survives, but the respect for disco didn’t. (Actually, Rodney Dangerfield ‘s “No Respect” won Best Comedy Album that year.) ( Just sayin’)

Disco was born in 1970 when The Loft opened in Manhattan. It took almost the whole of the 70s to reach its peak, slowly building, earning its own hit chart, Billboard Magazine’s Dance Club Songs, in 1974 (its first #1 song was another Gloria Gaynor record, “Never Can Say Goodbye”), and topping out in popularity in 1978 following the release of “Saturday Night Fever.” After years of sharing the Grammy spotlight with the R&B categories, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (more commonly The Recording Academy) gave disco its own spotlight just in time for it to wither and die.

That seems fitting for America. We take forever to recognize something, throw together a quick acknowledgement, and then when it loses favor, drop it like a hot potato. We have little tolerance for what doesn’t give us an immediate benefit, ideally with no work on our part. And yet, like that classic from time gone by, we still survive.

We’ve spent the last year tempting fate with questionably adequate hand washing and poorly worn masks, packing thousands of people into small squares of urban real estate protesting a little bit of everything from everything side then aiming the blame for the subsequent week’s spike in CoViD cases, and making many wonder what year we just lived through when over 60% of Americans polled claom they will refuse to get vaccinated or will get the shot only if required (Kaiser Family Foundation poll, January 27, 2021).

Another thing fitting for America – with so many showing as much respect for our current situations as they had for Rodney 40 years ago, the rest of us will do our best Gloria Gaynor impersonations and still will survive. So there!

* Gloria Gaynor, Freddie Perron, and Dino Fekaris won for Disco Record of the Year with “I Will Survive” with the 12-inch club version. The same song in its commercial release version was nominated for Song of the Year.

IWillSurvive

No Taboo On Tenderness

Michael 4 Comments

Once again I had a hard time deciding what thoughts to put out to the interworld. I had what I thought an absolutely timely and terrific piece and then all sorts of things came up from politically correcting toys that have no business being the subject of political correctness to speeches espousing incorrectness by people who have no business in politics. Wedged in between were musings on the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, and long wait for this year’s Oscars. Then if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been without a phone for the entire weekend which demonstrated how little difference it made in my life but also gave me a brief respite from the onslaught of what has become the extended car warranty spam/scam/abomination.

In the end I decided to go with my first thought even though I had to think so many times before I got there. That first thought was to join the world in celebrating March as Women in History month. There are so many women in history we can make note of, your location, profession, career, passion, and cultural background undoubtedly coloring your idea of the most significant women in history. Marie Curie, Marie Antoinette, Clara Barton, Clara Bow, Cleopatra, Cleo Wade, Sandra Day O’Connor, Doris Day, Sandra Oh; Eve, Sarah, Esther, and Mary. From Lucy to Siri women are history.

gonzales_duffyThe women in our own histories will always be the most important women in our lives. Our mothers and grandmothers, aunts and honorary aunts, teachers, coaches, students, and teammates. And for almost everybody, there is that one person you did not even realize would become a part of your history yet found a way to be part of much of your life without actually being there. For me that woman is Mary Gonzales Duffy, RSM.

Sister Gonzales was a Religious Sister of Mercy. She was already a force in hospital pharmacist when I opened the mail and dug out my pharmacy intern certificate in 1975. If you have ever been a patient in a hospital and received a drug while you were there you benefited from some contribution of Sister. Sister Gonzales was one of those women who did not contribute to the history of pharmacy, she is the history of pharmacy, particularly hospital pharmacy. In 1962 working with the Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University School of Pharmacy she established the first postgraduate, academic residency in Hospital Pharmacy. She formalized drug information services, unit dose distribution methods, and pharmacy consultation services. In 1978 she was elected the first woman president of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (now American Society of Health System Pharmacists). That same year she was honored by Duquesne University at their centennial celebration as one of the top 100 alumni.

More than just a collection of her accomplishments in hospital pharmacy, Sister’s legacy reflects her gentleness and respect for those she served, as a pharmacist, as a nun, as a complete person. Sister was still working during my undergraduate years at Duquesne. Even when she received the Harvey A. K. Whitney Award, what is considered hospital pharmacy’s most prestigious award, in 1971, she was just Sister in the pharmacy moving it from a “service of things to a service of people.” Important women in hospital pharmacy are not uncommon, nor is acknowledging them. By the time Sister received her honor in 1971 she was in a long list of women so recognized going to 1953 in an award established just 3 years earlier. Still, she is the one I remember, the one who taught at the school where I learned, who lead the first hospital pharmacy I saw from inside its walls, the one who encouraged me and other young white coated future pharmacists to serve from the outside those walls.

Sister Gonzales closed her Whitney lecture with, “There are some in our modern society who claim we live in an age of insensitivity. Perhaps we do, but I hope not. There should be no taboo on tenderness. … May we be mindful of the fact that our Creator, who has placed us here on earth to do a work, touches the world mainly through the ministration of human services. We labor in an atmosphere where frequently good must battle evil, where some must suffer and die. May it be our happy task to ease the ways of all those for whom we care. May we be brought to the realization that true happiness is found in the knowledge that a job assigned to us here and at this point in time has been a job well done.”

Hers was a job done well, her job as a pharmacist, as a teacher, as a religious, as a part of history.

SrGonzales

I’ll Have What He’s Having

Michael 3 Comments
The Academy Awards are behind us and the Oscar hoopla has pretty much faded away. I have a few more old Oscar nominees to watch. I’m still used to the awards being presented in March and February being the time to relish in the performances. Is it just me or do actors tend to speak better when reading somebody else’s lines as scripted than when they try to go their own way on the award stage? Anyway, I prefer the movie actor to the award show actor and often the movie world to real realty. Ironic, no?
 
Something that hit me this year watching my usual overdose level of film history is how much out there in movie land we can really use in real people land. Television land also has some pretty nifty gadgetry that we mere mortals could benefit from. Take for instance in 1966 just asking “Yo computer, how much longer till we get to the Romulan border?” and sure enough some snarky female voice speaks back “the. border. is. one. hundred. forty. light. years. away. and. will. be. reached. in. twenty. eight. and. one. half. minutes. if. you. don’t. stop. for. take. out. on. the. way.” Did Gene Roddenberry know Siri and Alexa were coming? If we’ve been able to harness computer power to become our personal assistants, why not some other seemingly outlandish inventions.
 
For example:
Movie people must have dishes that dry and put themselves away. I’ve seen dozens of movies this month with people eating and drinking and even in some instances washing dishes. But nobody ever dries them or puts them away. The only Oscar nominated movie I recall seeing somebody with towel in hand, drying dishes was Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. She didn’t do a really great job of drying and didn’t put them away but she was a millionaire socialite so I guess just the attempt at drying part was something special. They all have self-cleaning carpets also.
 
TelephoneThis one we sort of had but then technology took it away and we need it back – a phone you can pick up the reciever and just say who you want and somebody gets them for you. You need to go back to the 1930s for this invention. Everybody from cops to robbers to femme fatales to innocent bystanders could go to any phone and say “Get me John Smith” and sure enough, an operator would find John Smith, and the right John Smith. Progress took this away quickly (The Front Page). By the 1940s people were dailing their own numbers (Going My Way), by the 50s were getting wrong numbers (Anatomy of a Murder), by the 60s they were tearing pages out of phone books (In the Heat of the Night), and eventually we’ve worked our way to a time when there are no phone books and if you ask your computer assistant for John Snith’s number, unless John Smith is among you personal contacts, the answer will be, “I’m sorry I don’t have enough information.”
 
Cars run on no gas. Imagine not just driving for days, week, even months without filling up, but driving hard, fast, and often in multiple countries and never visiting a fuel station. Racing movies aside, nobody ever stops to fill up. The French Connection wouldn’t have stood a chance for Best movie if Popeye Doyle ran out of gas on 86th Street. The only movies I recall seeing somebody at a gas pump are High Sierra and National Lampoon’s Vacation and neither were Oscar nominees in any category. (I should note that in Vacation, Chevy Chase is seen wiping and putting away dishes but I believe they hadn’t been washed yet, so…)
 
Since I brought up non-nominees there are some things in almost every movie I’d like to see happen. 
 
Airplanes with aisles wide enough to walk down two abreast (with a refreshment cart even) and seats with more legroom than in my living room. Sticking with the travel theme, cruise ships with cabins bigger than my living room. Entire blocks unoccupied in front of the building I want to enter so I can just pull up and park – and never having to parallel park (nobody parallel parks in the movies), and airport parking lots that never charge for parking. Formal wear for casinos. Subways never overcrowded and always on time unless being hijacked. And those telephones that when they are set to vibrate you still know a call is incoming even if you are 3 rooms away. 
 
And – a hot tub time machine. Hey Alexa, let’s kick some past!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lights, Camera, Action!

Michael Leave a comment
Yes, it’s February and that’s my favorite month of the year, or at least one of my 12 favorites and not just because of Groundhog Day. It’s Oscar Month!
 
Okay, okay, I’m not all that choked up about this year’s Academy Awards any more than any other year. Once again I have not seen any of the nominees for Best Picture although for a change I have at least heard of most of them. Some time over the next 3 or 4 years I might even get around to seeing most of them.
 
To me, the better awards go to the performers anyway. Of course they need talented writers working with good material and it has to be well produced and adequately funded, but you could say the same thing about a municipal mass transit system. The actors bring the movie to life and in the four performance categories I can honestly say I have heard of everybody.
 
Once again the movies displaying those nominated performances are important, shall we say dramatic stories that certainly will be told well by this group of talented actors but will they really entertain? Where is the laughter? Why is comedy always getting left behind? (Oh if you read the description of Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit you will see that are classified as “drama, comedy/drama” but isn’t that like “politically correct?” It’s pretty hard to be both. And I’m sorry Jojo, The Producers might have made Hitler funny but that lightning isn’t going to strike again.)
 
So where was I? Oh yes, comedy. Where are the great comedic performances?  There was once a time comedies dominated the Oscar nominations. The first movies to ever feature nominated performances in all four performance categories (actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress) was the comedy My Man Godfrey in 1936, the year awards for performances in supporting roles were introduced.  
 
In the 91 times the Academy has recognized excellence in the performing arts, less than 100 performers have been recognized for excellence in comedic performances. That’s using their definition of comedy which is everything not dramatic. For examples, James Garner was nominated for Murphy’s Romance, a cute movie but not laugh until you fall out of your chair funny, and Tatum O’Neal’s win was well deserved but Paper Moon will never be confused with Blazing Saddles. So to say 100 comedy performance have been represented by the four acting award nominees is already a stretch and many of those movies sported multiple nominations. It would be difficult to find more than fifty true comedies among the performance nominations. Narrow the field down to the winners and you are looking at barely two dozen films. But of the winners featuring comedic performances that excelled, excellence might be an understatement. 
 
It just so happened one recent evening I found myself bored more than usual and took a tentative step into the wonderland we call the Internet. And there I found a list of all the comedy performances that had ever been nominated for any of the four performing awards. I was surprised to see how many of them I had seen – nearly 80 of the 90 some movies listed. So I decided to compile my own awards and then and there selected the top ten comedy roles of all moviedom or at least those once upon a time nominated. Here, for the first time ever, are The Realies!
 
unnamed10. Peter O’Toole, My Favorite Year (1983). Mention Peter O’Toole and your first thought has to be Lawrence of Arabia. From there you may recall Beckett and Lion in Winter, big, broad, epic roles where he fills the screen. Even his earlier side trip to comedy, How to Steal a Million will be on more people’s minds than My Favorite Year. It was pretty much a nothing movie. But his performance was big, brash, over the top, fill the screen in his best Errol Flynnesque style. A drunken hasbeen agrees to appear on a prototypical 1950s variety show to work off his debt to the IRS and takes Manhattan by storm, until he realizes he must performed in front of a live audience. “I’m not an actor! I’m a movie star!” His performance is worth the price of a ticket (or movie rental). Unfortunately for O’toole he was up against another great comedic performance by Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and the winner Ben Kingsley in Gandhi for Best Actor. 
 
9. Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot (1960). What’s funnier than a couple of musicians joining a band to escape the mob looking to rub them out? Did I mention it’s a all women band? Um, did I mention the musicians are men? Lemmon’s character and his fellow musician played by Tony Curtis accidentally witness a mob murder and have to get out of town fast. Their “only” choice is to dress as women and join up with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators leaving town that day. At their destination Lemmon is pursued by a much married millionaire while Curtis pursues a member of the band (played by Marilyn Monroe) while both are pursued by guys with guns. If you haven’t seen it, you have to see it and stay all the way to the end to see Joe E. Brown’s deadpan reaction to Lemmon’s line about why he can’t marry Brown, “I’m a man!” Brown’s answer? You’ll have to watch the movie.  Lemmon’s performance almost wasn’t as he was the third choice to play the character. He lost the award for Best Actor to Charlton Heston in Ben Hur.
 
8. Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinnie (1993). Marisa Tomei’s Best Supporting Actress winning role as Mona Lisa Vito the brash fiancee to Joe Pesci’s brasher Vinnie Gambini shocked the movie going public and most critics of the time. It was the height of “The Important Movies Era.” There was no place for an old fashioned farce. But it was a triumphant return to the old fashioned farce and Tomei’s performance was reminiscent of Myrna Loy as Nora Charles or Katharine Hepburn’s Susan Vance, as the ditzy dame who is neither ditzy nor a dame and the movie wouldn’t be worth remembering without her. Tomei may have had unexpected encouragement to give an award winning performance. During filming Pesci brought the Oscar he won in 1990 for his role in Goodfellas.
 
7. Walter Matthau, The Fortune Cookie (1967). Walter Matthau’s first pairing with Jack Lemmon earned him a Best Supporting Actor award for his role as William “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich, Lemmon’s brother-in-law and lawyer. Matthau convinces Lemmon to feign paralysis after being run over by a pro football player while he was working as a television cameraman. Matthau suffered a heart attack during filming which was suspended while he recovered. He lost 30 pounds during his convalesence. He got 8-1/2 pounds back when he carried away his Oscar.
 
6. William Powell, The Thin Man (1935). The first of six “Thin Man” movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, The Thin Man is a fun adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel. Roger Ebert said of Powell, “William Powell is to dialog as Fred Astaire is to dance.” The film was shot in just two weeks owing partly to director W. S. VanDyke’s propensity for speedy single takes but also to Powell and Loy not acting but being “two people in perfect harmony” according to Powell. The plot is impossible to follow and clues seem to elude everybody except Powell’s Nick Charles who has a drink in hand whenever Loy’s Nora isn’t. And sometimes when. The acting is so smooth, the dialogue so sharp, and the chemistry so obvious you often lose track of the fact that a murder is being solved before your eyes. Sort of. Powell lost this his first nomination for Best Actor to Clark Gable in the comedy It Happened One Night.
 
5. Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie (1983). Dustin Hoffman solidifies his position as one of the greatest actors of his generation by playing the screwball comedienne and her/his own foil in the same role. Um, sort of. Hoffman’s character Michael Dorsey is a difficult to work with, unemployed actor who successfully passes himself off as Dorothy Michaels to secure a role in a daytime television soap opera. As the story unfolds Dorothy takes on a role within the role, a liberated, self-assured, ground zero “bad ass woman” before women thought they could be bad ass. The movie is a little bit farce, a lot of satire, some social commentary, and tons of fun. Hoffman lost out as Best Actor to Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi. The movie also contributed two nominees for Best Supporting Actress, Teri Garr and winner Jessica Lange.
 
4. Jack Lemmon, The Apartment (1961). I place Jack Lemmon’s role as C. C. Baxter, the overworked office underling who lends his apartment to his bosses for their affairs as one of his best. Lemmon’s trading eventually earned him a promotion as assistant to Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) but has second thoughts when he discovers they both have designs on the same woman (played by Shirley MacLaine). Admittedly this falls into that comedy/drama description but Lemmon’s performance has some pure comedy gold such as when he drains the spaghetti through his tennis his racket (yeah, you really have to see that to experience the full impact) and juggles his desk-size Rolodex to solve a “scheduling” problem. The movie won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and received nominations in three of the four performers categories, Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Actress (MacLaine), and Best Supporting Actor (Jack Kruschen). Lemmon lost his bid to Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. (Although MacLaine’s acting was Oscar worthy,  she won’t appear in The Realies Top Ten for The Apartment as I consider her performance more dramatic than comedic but it was a great role in one of my favorite movies. And don’t worry about her, she’ll be back.)
 
3. Shirley MacLaine, Irma La Douce (1964). (She’s back!) Shirley MacLaine is reunited with Jack Lemmon in this adaptation of Marguerite Monnot’s and Alexandre Breffort’s musical for the French stage. Lemmon is a policeman fired from the force who falls in love with a prostitute, MacLaine’s Irma. In order to keep her from working he attempts to monopolize her time as the mysterious Lord X. All through the convoluted plot, amid bribery, lies, and a murder that didn’t happen, MacLaine provides the anchor for an otherwise exceptionally outrageous, and long (nearly 2-1/2 hours long!) farce. MacLaine agreed to the part without reading the script because of Lemmon’s and Director Billy Wilder’s involvement in the movie. Afterward, she did not like the final product and contrary to reviews at the time felt the movie was not among her best work. She was surprised to have been nominated for Best Actress but based on her own assessment probably wasn’t surprised that she lost to Patricia Neal in Hud.
 
1 (tie). William Powell and Carole Lombard, My Man Godfrey (1937). No I wasn’t getting tired when I got to this point. I really believe without the other,  neither would be this good and together they are the best. William Powell plays Godfrey, one of the depression’s “forgotten men,” a target of a society scavenger hunt. Carole Lombard as Irene Bullock convinces Godfrey to allow her to bring him in to mark her scavenger list complete. In gratitude, but without the knowledge of her family, Irene offers Godfrey a job as their butler. Godfrey accepts and smoothly makes the position his own. But he has a secret background and a secret mission. Carole Lombard perfected the role of screwball comedienne and is particularly screwy here. Powell brings an enjoyable sense of a diamond from the rough among the family more resembling the discarded shards from the diamond cuttting. The movie is a shining example of “they don’t make them like that anymore” in large part to there not being actors like that any more. Powell and Lombard were nominated for Best Actor and Actress and Mischa Auer and Alice Brady were nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress. It was a shame that none of the four won nor did it win in the other categories it was nominated, Best Director (Gregory La Cava) and Best Screenplay (Eric Hatch and Morris Ryskind). It remains a mystery that it was not even nominated for Best Picture. Powell lost to Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur and Lombard to Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld.
 
There are my pick for the top nominated comedic performances. Obviously I have a preference for the older entries and I admit I have some favorites. The years represent the year the Oscar was awarded, not the movie’s release date.
 
If you are still reading, I congratulate you. This is a long post, but I bet it takes less time to read than some acceptance speeches will this year! Thank you for reading! Now go have a laugh or two.
 
 
 

Sunshine Blogger Award

Michael 13 Comments

I am honored. Or I have been honored. (You know, one of those sounds slightly boastful while the other sounds very appreciative. Shouldn’t they be the same?) I found out last week that Peg from The Tempest and the Teapot picked this little blog as worthy of the Sunshine Blogger Award! 《Applause, applause.》 Thank you Peg! 《More applause.》

SunshineBlogger

“Holy crap!”  you say, exclaim even, “a whole week it takes acknowledge this?” Or maybe you don’t. No but if you do, I have an excuse. There are rules to follow and they actually involved work,. And a slide rule but we’ll get to that later. A while again, Ask a Gimp nominated me for the Blogger Recognition Award. Now that was easy. Say thank you, recognize some other bloggers. This one…well, just look.

Here are the rules for being nominated…

  • Thank the blogger that nominated you in the post and link back to their blog (Easy and done.)
  • Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you (Equally easy although I was specifically directed not to use a slide rule which made #4 almost unanswerable.)
  • Nominate 8-11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions (Eleven questions! I taught Masters level courses at a pretty big Eastern university and I almost never asked eleven questions at one time. Even finals were mostly a bunch of questions I previously asked so I don’t know I had to think up 11 questions at one time then. Anyway, that took forever (and then a little longer).)
  • List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award Logo on your post and/or in your blog (Also easy but I’ll have to retype the rules since I now have defaced them.)

So, to make a short story unnecessarily long here are Peg’s questions of her nominees and my answers. Stayed tuned for my nominees and my (more reasonable) questions of them.

  1. Make me the yummiest sammich to ever grace a plate.
    Concentrate and follow this closely. Two pieces of thick sliced Italian bread, preferably homemade but a good bakery bought loaf will do. A quarter pound thinly sliced capicola just warmed in a dry skillet with two slices sharp provolone allowed to melt on top. Move this onto one sliced of bread and top with a good amount (maybe a quarter cup) of vinegar based, fairly dry cole slaw and heaping handful of hot freshly made french fries (which are actually a Belgian creation but you knew that) and a couple slices of tomato. Slice in half, eat greedily with a kitchen towel tucked in your collar and another on your lap. It doesn’t matter what you drink with it because you won’t have a free hand because you’d be putting it down, but I like a frosty bottle of Peroni.
    20160601_165010
  2. Do you like your handwriting?
    Absolutely. It demonstrates a flair not seen since cursive was outlawed in the US.
  3. After that glorious morning pee, what’s the first thing you do?
    Pray, meditate, and take my blood pressure.
  4. If you have 20 apples and some bully comes along and bruises half of them in New York, how long does it take the train travelling to Albuquerque to make a savory picnic pie from the remains?
    This would be easier if I was allowed to use my slide rule but just figuring it out in my head I say “not long.”
  5. Tell me what’s in your iPod/MP3 player playlist, or the CD in your car stereo right now?
    Jazz on all of them. David Benoit on most although I think one of the CD players has Keb’ Mo’ right now and yes, I know he’s not really jazz but it’s my playlist and I’ll make him whatever it takes to fit.
  6. Keeping with the music theme…shuffle or straight through albums?
    Shuffle? That’s just anarchy!
  7. How soon after the advance ticket sales did you buy your seats for the opening night of Avengers: Infinity Wars?
    By Avengers of course you mean the TV show starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. I didn’t realize those two had a new movie out. Now the last time I purchased any movie ticket via advance sales, it was a week before the cinematic re-release of Singing in the Rain. Those guys were real superheroes!
  8. Have you watched all the other Marvel Universe movies in preparation for this event?
    The only marvelous movies from this universe that I have watched are the complete collections of Bond, James Bond and Men in Black, and everything staring Audrey Hepburn.
    Audrey
  9. Why won’t WordPress let me skip a number in this numbered list?
    It’s been illegal since 1999.
  10. Boxers or briefs (or other, I totally won’t judge!)?
    The great American compromise, boxer-briefs.
  11. What’s the first thing you notice about people?
    Their eyes, even in pictures. And yes, I have a personally difficult time if I meet somebody for the first time and they are wearing sunglasses.
  12. What makes you unique?
    Because I’m me!

So, you now know almost no more about me than before you started reading this tome in disguise. Now we come to my nominees and the (more reasonable) eleven questions waiting their answers. Coming up with 8 to 11 blogs is kind of challenging. I like many more than 8 to 11 blogs but I can’t say they all bring sunshine to my day when I read them. Doesn’t mean I don’t like them. Some blogs just aren’t the sunshine-y type. Thought provoking. Informative. Eye opening. Educational. Witty. Humorous. A blog can be any of these and not bring me a healthy dose of artificial sunshine. To me, sunshine is a warm feeling all the way through and a big smile reflecting my new-felt warmth. These are the ones that make me feel happy that I took the time to read them. And if you don’t think that answering eleven (wow!) questions is your idea of fun, fits with your blog, or brings you unimaginable, deep down warmth, I’m ok with that. I still like you and you still bring me sunshine.

With that, my nominees are:

Now, to remind you of the rules:

  • Thank the blogger that nominated you in the post and link back to their blog.
  • Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
  • Nominate 8-11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
  • List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award Logo on your post and/or in your blog.

And my questions are:

  1. What is your worst bad habit or secret vice (either)?
  2. Do you have a fire extinguisher in your home?
  3. Does your go to ID picture really look like how you describe yourself?
  4. What color is your favorite underwear?
  5. Are you an Oscar or a Felix?
  6. Did you understand the above reference or did you have to do research?
  7. Does 11 questions seem excessive to anybody else?
  8. What’s the most embarrassing thing in your refrigerator?
  9. Quilted, two ply, or should I bring my own? (Yes, I will judge.)
  10. When did you last mail a handwritten personal card or letter?
  11. If you couldn’t live where you live now, what different country would you pick based on beauty, culture, what you know, what you hear from other people, or read in books, and price is no object to getting there but you can’t consider travel blogs or magazines, Instagram posts, or current political climate?

Whew! Ok, I’ve written enough. Blame Peg for that.