open mic nights

For a while now, I've wanted to try performing at open mic nights. I may not be a prolific songwriter, but I've written a few good ones.* The problem is that I'm not a good guitarist. My singing? As a singer I'm a wonderful guitarist. Still I've been having the itch.

But the inertia is strong in me, and I haven't been up for trying to figure out where there are open mics that are convenient to me.

But a friend, not knowing that the whole thing was on my mind, mentioned that she goes to an open mic near where she lives in West Hempstead, at a place called "Creative Corner" and maybe I'd want to come? It seemed practically like  bashert. That's me below, performing "Never Kill a Man Twice" at this week's showcase. As billed, my guitaristry is nothing to write home about. And I'm struggling to sing anywhere near in tune. But I'm having a great time.

I have been there twice. The first time I didn't bring a guitar -- I was planning to just watch. Get the lay of the land and all that hooey. I don't need to be the best performer there, but I don't want to be so egregiously worse than everyone else that I get remembered as the guy who sucked. At any rate, it was a really cold evening, and the crowd was a bit sparse. They ran out of performers, so Blair and my friend (and her other friend) started encouraging me to sign up. I had been put at ease that I wasn't copmpletely outclassed by the other talent, so WTH. I borrowed a guitar and did three songs -- "Music No One Else Can Hear," "Never Kill a Man Twice," and "Five Missing One." I didn't do well. Either I was too far from the mic, or I didn't sing loudly enough, or the mic level wasn't high enough. Whatever it was, no one could hear my vocals.

But I had fun anyway.

So I was back this week, prepared to improve my performance. I will be heard, I had decided. The crowd was a bit bigger, but still pretty sparse and nonthreatening. So, two songs -- "Five Missing One" and "Never Kill a Man Twice." And I could be heard. Flaws and all. But it was great. Next week, I think I'll do "Jackpot" and some other song to be decided on at the last minute. Maybe "Bionic Joe Theme" or "Funny in My Head" if I can finish writing it. I'm also tempted to ask if anyone cares to join me -- "the chord structure is simple -- watch me for the changes."

The thing about these open mics at Creative Corner is that people seem to be there to have a good time. They're not there to judge. They just want to enjoy some music even if it's not expertly played. And I'm cool with that.

*By "a few," I mean five. But I have a bunch of good songs in various states of progress. And I've written a shit-ton of bad songs, so I have that going for me, which is nice.

it's zmedsday!! (xiv)

super bowl thoughts

A few thoughts about the Stupor Bowl.

• Some shmigeggy is suing the NFL over the pass-interference non-call that probably changed the outcome of the NFC championship game. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's stupid. I understand the frustration of Saints fans. And of any football (or other sports for that matter) fans who don't like to see bad officiating have such an obvious and immediate effect on the outcome of a championship game. But that's the way the ball bounces. There's a system for officiating, and it's not perfect. Too frickin' bad. Unless there's evidence that there was purposeful chicanery, there's no chance of this lawsuit having any effect beyond being a nuisance.
  
• A ten-year old in Kentucky devoted his school science project to the question of whether Tom Brady cheated in 2015 (Hint: remember deflategate?). It's kind of a cool human interest story. The kid hates Tom Brady (who doesn't, these days?) and wants him to get caught. The problem is that, despite the reporting, the science project doesn't actually prove that Tom Brady cheated. At most he proved that under-inflated footballs can be thrown farther. From what I recall about deflategate, that was never in question. But he didn't prove that Tom Brady was throwing underinflated balls (I don't recall what the outcome of the investigation was, and I'm too lazy to look it up). And he certainly didn't prove that Tom Brady knew that any balls were underinflated. Did Brady cheat? I dunno. But the kid didn't prove it. In all fairness, he's ten years old, so it's not like you can expect his science project to be up to Technion standards. Still, enough with adults saying that he proved what he didn't. Oh, hell, I'm being a poopyhead. The kid's right. Burn Tom Brady!
  
• When the Pats were playing against Atlanta two years ago, and Philadelphia last year, I was rooting for them. They lost in the Superbowl to the Giants. Twice. I kind of liked the idea of Brady having lots of wins, and having his only losses be against the Giants. I cherished the image of a geriatric Brady in an old age home, cursing at his inability to beat Eli Manning in the big game. Now that the Eagles beat Brady last year, the magic is gone. Still, I'm rooting for Brady in father-in-law's memory.
  
• A guy I know at work roots for Brady. He says there's something beautiful about someone who's the best at his job being the best. I can't really argue with that.

it's tunesday! "the twomp" by halibuts

cinema history class: black jack

Session: Spaghetti Nightmares, Week 2
Movie: Black Jack (1968)
Directed by Gianfranco Baldanello

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Jack Murphy's gang pull off a daring bank robbery, but can't agree about how to divide the proceeds. The gang rapes and kills Jack's sister* and leaves him for dead. So he comes for revenge. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Compared to the prior week's show (Cut-Throats Nine), this was much more of a traditional Spaghetti Western. But what made it stand out is the level of barbarity -- high even by Spaghetti Western standards. In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, when Tuco wants to hang Blondie, he puts him on a stool and plans to shoot the legs of the stool. In this, Jack is left standing with the noose around his neck, and one of (formerly) his gang shoots him in the legs so that he can't support his weight.

At its heart, this is a revenge film -- admittedly, many Spaghetti Westerns are. And in a way it reminded me of I Spit on Your Grave. The whole thing about hunting his gang down one at a time. And if we're willing to extend the comparison to the remake of Spit, there's the added similarity of bringing one of the victims' daughters into the mix.

The ending kind of surprised me. I correctly guessed that Jack's remaining friend, Peter, would end up stabbing Jack to death, thus ending matters. But I expected that it would be some kind of redemptive moment for Peter -- remembering what happened to his girlfriend (who was Jack's sister) who wasn't going to let another innocent woman die the same way. Instead, it was explained as Peter hallucinating. So, having stabbed Jack, he begs for Jack's forgiveness. I think I would have preferred the twist I was expecting. But, I guess, Spaghetti Westerns aren't about redemption.

Ratings:

Me: 8.8

Dave: 9.3 - 9.4

Ethan: 8

Joe: 9.8

Sean: 2 out of 4

*Seriously, WTF? She had nothing to do with anything.

finally saw casablanca

For quite a while it has been a running gag in my cinema history class that I never saw the c;lassic, Casablance. Maybe that's too strong, but it has been noted and brought up occasionally. To be clear, I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the film -- I'd seen clips, and I'd been familiar with some of the better-known quotes (and misquotes). And I saw some other lines that I had been familiar with without knowing that they were from Casablanca. But, of course, that's not the same as seeing the film. At any rate, I finally borrowed the DVD from Joe and watched it.

Arguably, catching up on this particular bit of culture isn't really worthy of a blogpost, but I promised Joe that I'd write about it after I watch it. So, here we are. I should note that, I doubt that anything I have to say about the movie hasn't been said already (and probably more eloquently). So I'm not watching or reading any reviews before I write about it. I want my reaction here to be my reaction, uninfluenced (or influenced as little as possible) by what others have to say.

The dialogue is incredibly tight and clever. Three of my favorite examples:

Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought I probably would. 

Renault: Rick, there are many exit visas sold in this cafe, but we know that you never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to stay open.
Rick: Oh, I thought it was because I let you win at roulette.
Renault: That is another reason. 

Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

The ending -- Rick selflessly sacrificing his chance to get away in order to help Ilsa and Victor reminds me of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. It's not exactly the same, since there's a for-the-greater-good element, as opposed to it being purely for the good of the object of his affection. But the similarity is there, and I would be surprised if no one ever made the observation.

I was disappointed to see Ugarte disappear so quickly. It was a great role for Peter Lorre, even if his eyes hardly look bugged out at all.

Yes. It's a very good movie. Arguably a great movie. Is it among the best ever? That's hard to say -- for a couple reasons. First, I didn't watch it on a big screen in a darkened theater -- the way movies are supposed to be watched. I saw it on  my laptop, in a lighted room, with distractions all around me. Second, it was made in 1942, and was probably more original than it seems to me to be. I'm thinking in terms of Shakespeare, who's plays included all sorts of things that seem cliche specifically because they were copied so many times since.

But maybe I shouldn't be trying to figure out if it's one of the best. Perhaps the more important consideration is that it's a very important cultural touchstone. The number of pop culture references that track back to Casablanca is large, and (important for me), Bugs Bunny cartoons had a whole lot of homages to the movie.

mariano is 100% in

Well, they went and did it. They unanimously elected someone to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's about frickin' time.

As a kid, I had a hard time understanding why great players -- players who's HoF credentials were beyond question -- weren't getting voted in unanimously. How could anyone vote against Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams? You can make a good argument that Willie Mays was the best player ever, and yet he was only named on 95% of the ballots. The only explanation I ever heard was that some writers felt that, if Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson weren't unanimous then no one should be.

Of course that just raises the question of why those early greats, elected on the first ballot, weren't unanimous? The best I've heard came from Joe in my film class. He suspects that, in the days before communications were as advanced as they are now, some of the voters never got to see Babe Ruth play and therefore wouldn't vote for him. I can't say whether that's really what happened, but it sounds plausible.

If I were a voting member of the BBWA, I would vote for a player (or not) depending on whether I thought he should be in the hall of fame. If he should be in, he gets my vote; if he shouldn't, he doesn't. There are some players who were so good that there's no reasonable argument against their induction. Tom Seaver, Carl Yastrzemski and Hank Aaron are all in that category, but they were left off the ballots of, respectively, 5, 24 and 9 voters.

Should Mariano Rivera be the first unanimous entry? I guess he's as good as anyone -- he was the best ever at his position*. But that's the wrong question. Given that no one before him got in unanimously, it's good that he did. But anyone who all the voters felt should be in should have gotten in unanimously.

*or so I'm told -- I haven't really followed baseball in 25 years.

it's zmedsday!! (xiii)

it's tunesday! "peace and love" by ramsey kearney

toward my judgeship

It was late on a Friday night, and I was scrambling to make sure that I had what I needed in order to take the ADS' online garden judging workshop in the morning. This would be Workshop I -- one of two workshops that are required in order to be certified as a judge.

I had registered that morning before going about my day, figuring that I would -- later -- quickly check what I needed and make sure I was set. ANd when I went to make sure I was set? That's when I learned that I'd need a copy of Judging Daylilies in the Garden. OK. No problem. It's a free download from the ADS website. But to download it I have to have my ID and PIN -- and I never registered on the ADS website because (until now) I've only used it for things that are available to anyone.

So, frantic emails and texts to friends follow, as I try to find someone who has the electronic version of the book and can send it to me. I hereby apologize to those club members whom I woke up. Eventually, someone sent me a copy, so I was set.

Now, having said all that, I should acknowledge that the fault was my own. We had had plenty of notice about the workshop. It was weeks before that LIDS members got the first email notice. But I procrastinated. And every day I said I'd deal with it "tomorrow." Until I ran out of tomorrows. So the first lesson I learned from the workshop is that I should register for things like this as soon as possible because there will be some unexpected complication.

The workshop itself was an interesting educational experience. There were about 20 of us, spread out across the country, joined by Webex. For about two hours, Michael Bouman educated us about daylily history, the relationship among the ADS awards, daylily terminology, and much more. What I found most illuminating was realizing how much basic information I was unaware of. A good example is the question of what makes a spider form. Of course, I know what one looks like, but I was unaware that there's a very specific definition -- petals must have a length-to-width ratio of at least 4:1. Bouman's presentation was copiously illustrated, and he made the two hours fly by.

Shortly after the workshop ended, I received, by email, a link to the online test. Taking the test was a simple process. Follow the link, answer the multiple-choice questions, and submit -- we had 90 minutes to complete it, but that was a generous allotment. Shortly after submitting my answers, I received notice of a passing grade. The test itself wasn't terribly difficult; while the ADS wants to test that we absorbed the major points, it doesn't seem to be trying to trip people up. At any rate, the next step is Workshop II. I'll make sure to deal with the registration and preparation well in advance.

Now, in all fairness, I don;t even know if I will actually apply to become a judge after I've taken workshop II. The list of responsibilities looks kind of daunting, and I'm not sure if I'm really up for it all. But that's a bridge I'll cross when I get to it.

lids meeting -- january, 2019

The highlight of today's LIDS meeting was a presentation by Planting Fields' Assistant Director, Michael Runkel. Runkel gave an interesting presentation on holly's and conifers. Concentrating on plants that do well on Long Island, he spoke at length about how to care for these plants.

Before Runkel spoke, I had a little bit of microphone time. First I talked about the LIDS newsletter -- I am the new editor, but there are a whole lot of questions -- how often it will come out, in what format, etc. I made my plea for writers. My biggest fear is that it will be the Marc Whinston Daylily Newsletter, and I don't have the time, energy or expertise to be the sole creator of the newsletter. I also made a picth to get us an IO group which (I hope) will make it easier for the club to commiunicate and for me to distribute the newsletter.

In other daylily club related items, I was also asked to write something for the Region 4 newsletter about my experience with the online judging workshop. I have been meaning to write a blogpost about that, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I can kind of piggyback the two things into one.

The next meeting will be the annual luncheon in March. I think that will warrant a day off from my diet.

cinema history class: cut-throats nine

Session: Spaghetti Nightmares, Week 1
Movie: Cut-Throats Nine (1972)
Directed by Joaquin Romero Marchent

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Sgt. Brown is marching a gang of hardened criminals across snowy mountains, knowing that one of them (but he doesn't know which one) murdered his wife. Oh, and he has his beautiful young daughter with him Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
For this (the third?) installment of Spaghetti Western Month, Keith decided to go with spaghetti westerns that play like horror movies. And, boy-o-boy, did he deliver. CT9 is tense and miserable, cold and clautrophobic. And great.

In some ways, the film isn't much of a western. A lot of the tropes of Spaghetti Westerns are absent. For example, I only counted two gunshots, and though it seems to be building toward some kind of climactic battle, that battle never comes. It does, however, have the obligatory torture scene. In place of the familiar Spaghetti Western cliches, there are all sorts of horror movie cliches -- bloody stabbings, and even (courtesy of a hallucination) a zombie.

CT9 is much slower and more deliberate than most other movies I've seen in the genre -- and certainly slower than the good ones. But it keeps the tension alive. Even to the point where the moments that seem to be -- relatively speaking -- elicit muted uncomfortable chuckles rather than real laughs.

One of the most interesting things about the movie is the way it feels claustrophobic despite being set mostly in the great outdoors. Marchent kept placing his characters in enclosed outdoor spaces -- the entrance to a railroad tunnel, narrow paths on cliffs, forest trails. That claustrophobi feel combined with the unrelenting cold -- it reninded a couple of us of The Great Silence, which we saw a  couple years ago -- to make for an unremittingly tense experience.

Without giving away the ending, I will say that the conclusion was very well done. It did catch most of us by surprise.

Ratings:
Me: 9.4
Dave: 9.5
Ethan: 10
Joe: 9.8
Sean: 3 out of 4

it's zmedsday!! (xii)

it's tunesday! "i got the will" by etta james

cinema history class: night of the ghouls

Session: Ed Wood Month, Week 4
Movie: Night of the Ghouls (1959 -- first released in 1984)
Directed by Ed Wood

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A fake psychic bilks rubes out of money by claiming to make contact with their dead relatives. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
It seems perfectly symbolic of Ed Wood's career that this film wasn't released until 25 years after it was made, and that the reason was that Wood didn't have the money to pay the processing lab.

As with the other Ed Wood movies we saw in this session, there was a whole lot to not like about this. There were continuity errors, wooden acting and oddly-used stock footage that was out of place and felt like filler. Oh, and Wood overused narration -- both a general narrator and a policeman's inner voice describing his thoughts. It seems that Wood had no business directing movies, yet he did. Again and again and again.

And yet, as bad as the movie was, there were some things that were just so odd they were amusing. The floating ghosts and trumpets during the seance scenes were a nice touch, and the makeup on Tor Johnson to show that his character, Lobo, had been horribly burned was excellent. And occasionally Wood used shadow really well -- making me wonder if maybe he could be a director of decent movies.

But the best part of the film was the ending. And I don;t mean that in a sarcastic way. For most of the movie, the story seemed uninspired. But the end was worthy of Twilight Zone, and literally saved the movie in my eyes. Until that point I was figuring on rating it a 7 -- which is a pretty bad rating in the context of this class. But the ending raised it to an 8.5.

Ratings:
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.5
Ethan: 8
Joe: 9.5
Sean: 3 out of 4

felix was a bad lawyer

I came across this clip from The Odd Couple.

Not purely by chance, mind you -- I was looking for a Youtube clip of the moment the Felix says "Sew Buttons." I wanted to use it as a rejoinder in a Facebook conversation about Michael Crichton. Actually, it was a conversation about Charles Dickens, but I kinda sorta hijacked it to talk about Michael Crichton. I didn't mean to hijack it, but I did. Bad me.

Anyway, there's something bugging me about this. The backstory is that, at one of the guys' regular poker games, someone (Oscar, I think?) teases Murray the cop that he's too soft and nice. To prove he's not, he arrests the whole group for illegal gambling. Hilarity ensues.

So, in this courtroom scene, Oscar turns the tables and points out that Murray was playing poker too. His evidence: Murray's cigar, Murray's fondue fork and a picture of Murray collecting a large pot. Now, I can't comment on that pot, since we don't see the photo. But the cigar and the fondue fork hardly prove that Murray was playing poker with the guys. Even if they can be linked to him by his fingerprints or saliva, they just prove he smoked a cigar and used a fondue fork.

But Felix' defense of Murray is actually what damns him. He points out that the fondue fork wasn't Murray's because it had a red tip. "My tip was purple! Speed's tip was...yellow! Vinnie's tip was light blue. And Officer Greshler's tip was white!" The red-tipped fork was not used during the game. This is a fraudulent fondue fork!" So he's argued that Oscar had bad evidence, but admitted that Murray was at the poker game.

I don't know why, but that really annoys me.

Oh, and, by the way, at about 3:41 you can see the exchange in which Felix responds to "So?" with "Sew buttons!"

there really is a bathroom on the right

One of the most often cited mondegreens is from the song "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The line, "there's a bad moon on the rise" is misheard as "there's a bathroom on the right."

So, I was in the car Sunday night -- coming home from a wedding if you must know. I was playing music, and on comes John Fogerty's live version of the song, from his Premonition album.

And, dammit, Fogerty actually sang the bathroom lyric. If you pay attention to the clip above, at about 1:50 you can hear it.

it's zmedsday!! (xi)

happy tunesday! "little does she know" by the kursaal flyers

the value of being locked in the bathroom

A guy gets locked in a bathroom and gets compensated with free Whoppers for life. Or until Burger King's regional office decides to stop honoring their agreement.

Well, that's the gist of it, anyway. I won't repeat all the details in this blogpost, but you can read about it here.

The upshot? The guy, Curtis Brooner, is suing BK for $9,026.16, which is his estimate of the cost of Whopper meals*($7.89 a pop) for life. He's basing that on the assumption that he lives to age 72. He's 50 now. I saw that and wondered how the figure lines up to reality.

My first thought is that $9,000 seems like a bargain and BK should probably pay him off. Actually, they should simply honor the deal they made with him. But maybe they don't want to set a precedent and run the risk of people purposely jamming themselves into restrooms in order to get free Whoppers. But that's neither here nor there. I'm thinking in terms of his calculation.

Some quick analysis shows what he did. One meal a week, 52 weeks a year, for 22 years comes out to 1,144 meals. At $7.89 each, that's exactly 9,026.16. That's naive.

Now, I don't have much experience with this kind of thing, so I'm not sure of how to handle all the assumptions involved. For example, there's discount. $7.89 in 22 years is worth less than $7.89 today. On the other hand there's inflation. Whopper prices are likely to go up, so a Whopper that costs $7.89 today is likely to cost more than that in the future. I don't know what are appropriate assumptions for the discount rate and the rate of Whopper inflation. Since the two rates have opposite effects on the value of the Whopper stream, they serve to mitigate each other. I doubt they're the same, but maybe the net effect of the two can be ignored.

But a bigger issue is life expectancy. I'm not sure exactly where Brooner came up with 72 as his expected date of death, but I assume he heard somewhere that life expectancy is 72. Problem is, that's life expectancy at birth. And it's outdated, but let's pretend it isn't. As a fifty-year-old, his expected age at death is higher (assuming he is in reasonable health. According to the Social Security Administration (or at least according to their 2015 period life table), a 50-year-old male has a future life expectancy of 29.6 years. Making that change alone raises the amount he should be going after. Now it's $12,144.29. And, while we're at it, there are actually more than 52 weeks in a year. Adding another 4 weeks or so (over the course of the nearly 30 years brings the total up to $12,175.85. Here's where it really helps to assume the discount rate is the same as the rate of Whopperflation -- assuming they exactly offset each other, we can simply look at expected number of Whoppers and multiply by the present cost of each.

And, speaking of the number of Whoppers, I think Brooner is being quite reasonable in only assuming he'd have one Whopper a week. According to the article, he had been getting at least one free Whopper a day. So if he claims a Whopper a day instead of one a week, the value goes up to $85,230.94. But it should be higher. Here's the relevant passage from the article:

For the next two weeks, Brooner capitalized on the offer. He tells WW he ate at the Burger King location at least once a day—until Dec. 26, when the restaurant's district office allegedly told employees to stop giving him free meals.

So, in two weeks, he had a free Whopper at least once a day. That doesn't say exactly how many Whoppers he got, but I figure it has to be at least 15 in 14 days -- if it were just one a day, then he wouldn't have said "at least once a day." So multiplying my last figure by 15/14, we get to $91,318.86.

On the other hand, the foregoing has been written with the assumption that the Burger King in question will be around as long as Brooner. His deal was with that particular BK -- not with the chain as a whole. If that BK fails, his stream of Whoppers ends. And fast food franchises fail all the time. The BK near my subway station just shut down a few months ago. Which really sucks because now Blair can't pick me up there. I couldn't find any really good data on the failure rate of fast food restaurants. The best I found in the three minutes I spent looking was this online article which says that, 0ver a five year period, 5% of franchises fail. I'll take that to assume a 0% failure rate, since Brooner would be better-served by ignoring the possibility of his BK closing. And BK itself would be better off not arguing that they should pay very little because their franchise is likely to fail.

I wonder what Burger King has to say about all this? Once this is posted, I'll email them and ask for comment. I'll be sure to share anything they have to say on the matter.

Anyway, Brooner should ask for $91,318.86. And when he gets it, he should pay me a consulting fee of $27,430.90. Yeah...I'm not holding my breath...

Disclaimer: While I am an actuary, this is intended to be whimsical. It is not a complete analysis of the value of being locked in a Burger King bathroom, and should not be used as such.

*According to the article, we're talking Whopper meals which, I believe, come with fries or onion rings and a drink. For the sake of brevity, I'll just talk about it as if he was getting Whoppers. That doesn't really change the analysis.

**I should trademark that

it's zmedsday!! (x)

it's tunesday! "אגדת 21" by שלמה ארצי