October 24, 2021
Another quick update:
- I am on page 410 of Dune. An accelerated reader, I am not. Gettin' close to the end though. There are so many more books I want to read after I'm done though.
- I washed my car last weekend and vacuumed and cut grass this past weekend. In no way do I chip away at my list of cleaning chores any faster than new items get added. Is there some way to make housework not feel Sisyphean? Listening to podcasts only helps a little bit.
- I had an electromyography test (EMG - I had to google what it stood for because no one bothered to explain it to me) the other day to try and see why my wrist has been hurting. I don't like medical tests/procedures and ten minutes into a test that I was in no way informed about going in I had to lie die down and finish that way to keep myself from passing out from a vasovagal reaction. Strangely, I feel like sometimes doctors get a little angry at me when this happens, but the doctor performing the test didn't seem too put out by me.
- I expected the EMG to be the least pleasant thing to happen to me this week, but later that day I got a covid booster shot. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe because no one has really talked about the side effects too much, but tonight, I'm feel pretty much like I've been hit by the same truck that ran over me after the initial immunization. "Oh, yeah," I though to myself, "I should have expected that." Hoping tomorrow feels better.
- I've just been reminded that the World Series is starting. I actually was interested in watching the baseball playoffs, but not enough to actually pay money for a month of cable. And also, the most interesting series was Dodgers/Giants and I would have failed to stay up and watch any of those games despite my interest. I'll probably bang out the rest of this recap while watching Game 1. #TeamDusty
Enough chit chat, because I really do go on too long most of the time. One day (maybe today) I'll learn how to remedy that character flaw.
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
Full disclosure, on Tuesday, I got distracted by baseball and also while feeling much better than in the afternoon, was still feeling generally crummy from the COVID booster. The committee had already submitted the rankings, but I decided to bag the effort for the evening and try again a couple days later.
First off, Michelle Miller does not make herself part of the story, but you it's not hard to figure out why she had to be the one to do this segment about "passing", wherein Black person with a light complexion passes as White.
I kick a few bucks to my local PBS station every month for a few reasons. One, I like to have access to some of their shows online, but I haven't picked up new one since that one with Hugh Laurie - Roadkill which coincidentally has a family racial makeup as a main plot point. Two, PBS Newshour is basically the only news broadcast I can tolerate. (Shout out to Lisa Desjardin's cat!) Third is the occasional Ken Burns documentary. Last, and certainly not least, is Finding Your Roots. I love that show. So when the segment starts talking to first time director Rebecca Hall and I start wondering, "Hmm. Why is Rebecca Hall directing this movie?" I can't believe I didn't see the twist coming! To be fair, Michelle slow plays the big reveal pretty masterfully. Towards the end of the segment, when the truth bomb is finally dropped, I'm sure there was a collective "Ohhhhhh!" from everyone watching.
Rebecca Hall's grandmother is Black.
As someone who is 95% sure that I descend 100% from Germans, who am I to wade into race? I'm someone that has watch a lot of Finding Your Roots, that's who. The crazy stuff they find on that show... Most black people in the US are between 30%-60% European thanks to slavery. (Ugh.) It's a bit rarer to find White people with African ancestry - Rebecca Hall, Ty Burrell, Rosanne Cash - but it happens. I think it's awfully interesting to find out these things, but the more you learn about it, the more that words like biracial and even race seem to lose all meaning. And maybe that's for best. Going too far down that path can lead to some thorny issues of cultural appropriation. Everyone should just be given the benefit of the doubt. And everyone should have the right to celebrate their culture and heritage. Unless it involves fascism or something.
Being from Cincinnati, I try to keep the following in mind: If no one bats an eye when a bunch of fake Germans put on lederhosens for Oktoberfest, who am I to freak out if a Black person wears a dashiki? And yet...
Circling back to Rebecca Hall, her IMDB page is pretty remarkable. Her first "big" movie is The Prestige in 2006 and for that initial part of her career, there's only great movies Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon, and The Town. That's quite an Act I. I know the director of Vicky Cristina Barcelona is problematic, but God help me, I love (most) of his movies and she steals the movie from Scarlett Johansson. I know Frost/Nixon was a play first, but it's such a good movie. And The Town is a good movie with a killer cast. It also leads one down a Ben Affleck rabbit hole, but I'll resist because, "Objection your honor, relevance."
2) Tracy Smith
Tracy Smith returns to her ancestral homeland of Ohio to once again cover giant murals sprucing up various and sundry edifices. Anybody covering art is taking their shot at the #1 position and in an ironic twist of fate, Tracy was beat out by someone interviewing celebrities promoting an upcoming film release.
C'est la vie. Can't win for tryin'.
I am much more a fan of the mural from this segment compared to the giant murals she covered in a previous segment. If you haven't seen it, watch and check it out for yourself. I will say that the price tag of the project made me wonder if it was worth it and also if there is any chance that the massive amount of paint used to cover the old concrete silos could be environmentally detrimental in any way. I'm going to assume the answers to those questions are yes and no respectively, because sometimes the world needs some beautiful artistic whimsy.
Did anyone else think of this bit from The Simpsons when they saw what the background color of the mural would be?
Also, shout to occasional White Stripes lyric Toledo, Ohio. It actually has a very good art museum if you ever get the chance to stop by on a drive up to say, I don't know, Canada, perhaps? Or just stop in Toledo and and stay there!
3) David Pogue
Pogue has a new podcast about sciency stuff. I like podcasts, but I die a little on the inside every time I utter the phrase, "Ya know, I heard on a podcast..." (Insert Sideshow Bob shudder.) I'm sure David's podcast is going to be good. Maybe not Mobituaries good, but still worth listening too. And there's a lot of crappy podcasts out there. (Please stop listening to Joe Rogan. Let everything after Newsradio be stricken from the record.)
Anyway the segment this week is ostensibly episode one of his podcast. And you know, it's good enough to get to the #3 nod by the committee. Will there be fewer Pogue Sunday Morning segments going forward as he focuses on the podcast? Heaven forbid! The committee would be devastated.
So, I think I liked the segment because as a increasingly dissatisfied software developer/ex-physicist, it gives me hope that my 2nd (or maybe 3rd depending on how you count) act can still be something meaningful. But let's be clear on one thing: even though they say the process of sterilizing the male mosquitoes is 100% natural, it still feels like they're doing some Jurassic Park type stuff here. (Disclaimer: I am not a entomologist or biologist for that matter)
4) Seth Doane
Once, and I may still have it, I had a CD-ROM that I think had every National Geographic on it up to the mid to late 1990's. This was back when CD-ROM Encyclopedia's were a thing and I kind of thought they were cool because, well, for a time, they were for a certain section of the population (i.e. nerds).
Conservationist/Anthropologist Jane Goodall is something of the living patron saint of National Geographic. For whatever reason, I though she was much older than 87 and therefor dead. I'm happy to be wrong. I found it fascinating that Louis Leakey recruited her to study chimpanzee's precisely because she had no formal training. It's kind of brilliant, but lets not give too much credit to the man with the idea instead of the woman who did all the work. Watching some of the old clips of Jane Goodall, it's hard not to notice how pretty she is. Maybe I've never seen that many of the old clips before or it's just that Jane transcended that angle by just being so good at what she did, but her bemused, nonplussed reaction to it is endearing. Paraphrasing her very British words, she's fine if her gams got a few more people to take an interest in conservation.
5) Bears, Colin Powell (tie)
The nature segment should have been longer and they should have aired it to coincide with Fat Bear Week. But I do love Alaska enough to have read both of Eowyn Ivey's novels. I know The Snow Child was a Pulitzer finalist, but To the Bright Edge of the World is just as good I say. What can I say that I just enjoy enjoy Alaska - "The Canada of the United States". Also Bears catch fish is always cool. They just never let the nature segment run long enough on broadcast.
I really thought Colin Powell should have gotten the full obit treatment and not just Sunday Passage slide. Not sure who makes those calls.
Mountains in Utah + gorgeous scenery = Conor Knighton segment.
It's a fun segment that had me giggle a little bit every time there was footage of fish dropping from a plane. And there was copious footage of fish being dropped from a plane. When you find a winning formula, stick with it. I'm just going to assume it's worth all the time, effort, money, and fossil fuels that it takes to these remote ponds stocked with trout.
I haven't been fishing in at least 25 years. I kind of always wanted to eat the fish we caught, but I only ever remember that happening once. I don't think my mom was too keen on dealing with the bones. I suppose most of the fish we caught were too small anyway. The rule was always hope for bass, but end up with bluegill.
7) Lee Cowan
I can't say that I dislike hockey. In fact, every time I watch it on TV, I'm always surprised by how exciting it seems. I have experienced live hockey twice in my life. Once was college club hockey between Louisville (my alma mater) and Kentucky (rivalry!). It was dreadful. Goalies got ejected for fighting. The other time was a Cincinnati Cyclones game at the old Cincy Gardens. The team set a record for penalty minutes because of... fighting.
Because I love the Olympics whenever they stumble into our lives, for some reason I can still remember Ray LeBlanc as the goalie for the 1992 USA team in Albertville. If I recall, the American team exceeded expectations by winning their group until they didn't when they lost to the Russians in the semis. LeBlanc played well. I think I recall something about being double jointed so he could bend in weird ways to make saves. He never really did anything to be noticed nationally after '92, which is why the Olympics are great.
But the story was about Wayne Gretzky. The great one. Great player. And like all great players, not so much a great coach or team executive. And just to let you know how little I follow hockey of pulling Ray LeBlanc out of nowhere, I had no idea that Gretzky played for the Blues and Rangers after the Kings.
There were maple leaf flags and water slides though and I like both of those. Here's one of the two from the last time crossed our northern border.
8) Jane Pauley
Our ever competent host introduces the stories and always reminds of the seasons with her wardrobe. This week it was a brown jacket with a sort of funky collar. It seemed appropriately warm for the finally cooling temperatures. I just wish Jane Pauley played a bigger part in the show every once in a while. I feel like it's been some time since she presented her own story or even did an obit for Sunday Passage or a voice over for some random trivia of the dearly departed Sunday Almanac - the sort of ephemera that keeps me from skipping past pharmaceutical advertisements too quickly lest I miss something delightfully unimportant from the show flash past without taking due notice.
Martha Stewart makes an apple tart. I like apples, but I have none of the culinary items that Martha uses to put her delectable together. I take that back. I think she boiled something in a pot at one point. I could do that. I've never picked and ate fresh apples, but I do like apples and I like to make apple pie once or twice a year. Peeling the requisite amount of apples can be a pain though.
For those not paying attention, I got through recapping the apple segment without the obligatory Good Will Hunting reference. It's a crutch.
10) Martha Teichner
I've seriously debated in this space whether to keep the Teichner bit going. It can seem mean to whomever gets bumped from the list. Usually the space is reserved for shorter segments, medical segments that make me lightheaded (a second shoutout to vasovagal syncope!), or commentary that for whatever reason, I just can't get behind. In this case, I like Anthony Mason, I like Bruce Springsteen (if it's possible to just like Bruce Springsteen), and I like Barack Obama. But put 'em all together and the vibe is very... well, it's very... (do I dare?)... (Yes! Dare! Dare!)... it's very:
(Shots fired!) I'm sorry. I love you all. It doesn't help that idea of Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama doing a podcast sounds like the result of sketch comedy writer's room's collective fever dream. But man does Clearance Clemons sound great on the sax:
It's easy to make fun of the saxophone, but it's a real kick in the pants when it works. (If you follow the link, you gotta stick around until the end of the song.)
Not Ranked: Omar Villafranca
News updates are generally not considered rankable and there's nothing really to say about the tragic shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a movie set. I'll just acknowledge that the show acknowledged it because it involved famous people and the movie industry. It's an all around terrible thing. My heart goes out to all involved.
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