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captainsblogMidway through the first full workweek of the year. I've been moping a bit because it's rather sucked in terms of revenues and time-wasters, but as I look back, most Januarys start off that way, with the hangover of the holidays taking time to shake out. I have a blessedly free day tomorrow to catch up on lots of things before heading out of town for court and udda thingza Friday; depending on the weather, I may stay late for my first musical event of the year, based on an idea that a radio friend of mine inadvertently helped come up with a few years ago along with Rochester musician Jeff Riales:
About a decade ago, local singer-songwriter Scott Regan, the host of the weekday morning show “Open Tunings” on WRUR-FM (88.5), was snooping around Riales’s basement. Relax, Regan had been invited; it was a party. And he couldn’t have picked a better basement. Regan found a notebook Riales keeps of song lyrics and ideas, and in particular, the line “Don’t Go Drinkin’ on an Empty Heart.” It was nothing — just a title for a song yet to be written, Riales said. Regan asked if he could give it a try. Regan wrote the song. Other local songwriters picked up the title and wrote their own. “The next thing I know, there’s three people who’ve got the song written, and I haven’t finished mine yet,” Riales says.
It became the genesis of Rochester's riff on a long-seen community reading program, there and elsewhere, in their case titled “If All Rochester Wrote the Same Song.” This year's title is "No One Will Ever Know," and scheduled performers include at least two Facebook friends of mine (Scott himself and a local author-critic), and many others from the community including Record Archive owner Richard Storms; his version is described as
the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” of tangos, a sprawling narrative of anarchist Emma Goldman, complete with dancers.
No Stanford White architecture in Rachacha, so we should be safe.
----
Don't blink or you might have missed it, but the first five days of 2020 brought Doctor Who back to the airwaves. The traditional Christmas episode has now been moved to New Year's, ending New Who Series 11 with last January's, aptly named "Resolution." We waited a full 365 days for Series 12 to arrive, this time tipping off on 1/1. It was the first of a two-parter, the new showrunner's first, with riffs on the Bond series, the Doctor's long and recent past, and fun new ways to fly an airplane.
If you don't want moderate spoilers,
My biggest more-observation-than-complaint about the episodes themselves centered round them trying to do too much, even over a two-parter. The spy parodying was obvious from the title and the previews, and once the cast list came out, we had a pretty good idea who we would C in the cameo role of MI6's head. They plainly had fun early in the first half with the gadgetry, the Bond tropes (from tuxes to gambling) and the C-ya-later moment that contained a soon-to-be-obvious clue- his last gasp was not "Oh" (or even "blue whale"), but "O."
Ah, O. Most of the overall screen time went into sorting out who HE was, or wasn't, or is in the historical timeline of the overall series. Eleven and Twelve spent a lot of time chasing round after this strange woman in hobnail boots named Missy, who turned out to be the latest incarnation of the original Frenemy known as The Master. Thirteen outed him in under a week in his current incarnati-O-n. Sacha Dhawan does a Master-ful job of both concealing and revealing his true Gallifreyan self, with the potential of more encounters to follow and more explanations of how Missy went bad after it all.
Problem is, either of these storylines could've filled two full episodic slots. But we also got a social commentary on the Googlization of our current universe; not one but two more Girl Power flashbacks to important women who would help Herself save the days; and not nearly enough of the Companions-plural interactions that have always been at the hearts of this show. Again, that's more to observe than complain, and we now roll right into the remainder of the series unlike a year ago to see how Chibnall works this all out. I hope we get a sequence of standalone and arc that will give specific stories, characters and especially Companions their chances to shine.
----
My other major time-waster of 2020 to date has been revising an insurance plan I first entered into the week after Emily was born. Age 60 seemed a long time away back then, but now it's here, and I've had to push significant paper, and shovel funds round, to preserve the plan I set out on back then while beginning to grow some investment value for us whether I'm dead or alive. It's taken numerous office visits, multiple document reviews, and a need to park some much-needed funds temporarily until they sort out old and new premium debits, but in the long run I'll be set well past my previous expiry date of age 70.
Just maybe not until age 900 or 1 billion.
About a decade ago, local singer-songwriter Scott Regan, the host of the weekday morning show “Open Tunings” on WRUR-FM (88.5), was snooping around Riales’s basement. Relax, Regan had been invited; it was a party. And he couldn’t have picked a better basement. Regan found a notebook Riales keeps of song lyrics and ideas, and in particular, the line “Don’t Go Drinkin’ on an Empty Heart.” It was nothing — just a title for a song yet to be written, Riales said. Regan asked if he could give it a try. Regan wrote the song. Other local songwriters picked up the title and wrote their own. “The next thing I know, there’s three people who’ve got the song written, and I haven’t finished mine yet,” Riales says.
It became the genesis of Rochester's riff on a long-seen community reading program, there and elsewhere, in their case titled “If All Rochester Wrote the Same Song.” This year's title is "No One Will Ever Know," and scheduled performers include at least two Facebook friends of mine (Scott himself and a local author-critic), and many others from the community including Record Archive owner Richard Storms; his version is described as
the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” of tangos, a sprawling narrative of anarchist Emma Goldman, complete with dancers.
No Stanford White architecture in Rachacha, so we should be safe.
----
Don't blink or you might have missed it, but the first five days of 2020 brought Doctor Who back to the airwaves. The traditional Christmas episode has now been moved to New Year's, ending New Who Series 11 with last January's, aptly named "Resolution." We waited a full 365 days for Series 12 to arrive, this time tipping off on 1/1. It was the first of a two-parter, the new showrunner's first, with riffs on the Bond series, the Doctor's long and recent past, and fun new ways to fly an airplane.
If you don't want moderate spoilers,
My biggest more-observation-than-complaint about the episodes themselves centered round them trying to do too much, even over a two-parter. The spy parodying was obvious from the title and the previews, and once the cast list came out, we had a pretty good idea who we would C in the cameo role of MI6's head. They plainly had fun early in the first half with the gadgetry, the Bond tropes (from tuxes to gambling) and the C-ya-later moment that contained a soon-to-be-obvious clue- his last gasp was not "Oh" (or even "blue whale"), but "O."
Ah, O. Most of the overall screen time went into sorting out who HE was, or wasn't, or is in the historical timeline of the overall series. Eleven and Twelve spent a lot of time chasing round after this strange woman in hobnail boots named Missy, who turned out to be the latest incarnation of the original Frenemy known as The Master. Thirteen outed him in under a week in his current incarnati-O-n. Sacha Dhawan does a Master-ful job of both concealing and revealing his true Gallifreyan self, with the potential of more encounters to follow and more explanations of how Missy went bad after it all.
Problem is, either of these storylines could've filled two full episodic slots. But we also got a social commentary on the Googlization of our current universe; not one but two more Girl Power flashbacks to important women who would help Herself save the days; and not nearly enough of the Companions-plural interactions that have always been at the hearts of this show. Again, that's more to observe than complain, and we now roll right into the remainder of the series unlike a year ago to see how Chibnall works this all out. I hope we get a sequence of standalone and arc that will give specific stories, characters and especially Companions their chances to shine.
----
My other major time-waster of 2020 to date has been revising an insurance plan I first entered into the week after Emily was born. Age 60 seemed a long time away back then, but now it's here, and I've had to push significant paper, and shovel funds round, to preserve the plan I set out on back then while beginning to grow some investment value for us whether I'm dead or alive. It's taken numerous office visits, multiple document reviews, and a need to park some much-needed funds temporarily until they sort out old and new premium debits, but in the long run I'll be set well past my previous expiry date of age 70.
Just maybe not until age 900 or 1 billion.