My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #160-151

Let's see...it's Monday today, so here's my next ten-song installment in my weekly-unraveling list of my 500 all-time favorites.  These ten are all from the last century and thus give away my advancing age...here are my reactions to them...

160 FALL OF THE PEACEMAKERS...Molly Hatchet
Not generally a fan of this Southern rock band, Molly Hatchet to me was spot-on with this 1983 protest song against the madness of senseless murder...focusing on the tragedy of John Lennon's assassination in December, 1980.  The song's title should have been "Stop the Madness", for this mantra is repeated a number of times throughout its first half...it concludes with a beautiful, lengthy guitar jam reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1974 classic Free Bird.  Fall of the Peacemakers is a bittersweet tribute to an individual...as flawed as he was...whose music I loved as I grew up...

159 OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY...Led Zeppelin
Although I had previously heard this track from Led Zeppelin's 1972 Houses of the Holy album a number of times on album rock radio back when I lived in South Florida, it wasn't until I was working in the late 1980s at the downtown Gainesville post office as a letter sorting machine operator...sitting for long stretches keying mail as my Sony Walkman headset radio was tuned to Rock-104...that I began to take a real liking to it.  This song would eventually spur me to listen to the band's box set that was released and played on the radio in late 1990, resulting in my near-fanatical following of a group that had disbanded ten years earlier...

158 DOCTOR ROBERT...the Beatles
In the USA the 1966 song Doctor Robert was on the Beatles' Yesterday and Today album...for most of the rest of the world it was on Revolver.  No matter, I was nine-going-on-ten at the time and fortunate to have as parents big-time Beatles fans...they snapped up both albums and played them a lot at home.  At the time Doctor Robert wasn't one of my favorites but sometimes when you grow older you can hear more in a song...musically it was a great vocal collaboration between John and Paul while the lyrics covertly speak of a shady "medical" figure always ready and willing to supply drugs to his wealthy clients...

157 WISH YOU WERE HERE...Pink Floyd
Widely considered to be a tribute to Pink Floyd's original lead singer and creative lyricist Syd Barrett, who suffered a debilitating mental breakdown seven years earlier that was aggravated by drug abuse, this title track to their 1975 Wish You Were Here album has David Gilmour playing one of the greatest guitar pieces ever while singing unforgettable lines such as "Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" While song co-writer and bassist Roger Waters had reportedly stated that the lyrics were open for interpretation, I just enjoy sitting back and grooving to the song's mood and virtuosity...

156 SECRET MESSAGES...Electric Light Orchestra
When ELO released their Secret Messages album in 1983 they had every reason to expect another success in a long series of successes, but it didn't chart as well as its predecessors...including the title song, ushering in this great band's decline.  Still, I always liked Secret Messages, and the very campy video accompanying it is unintentionally funny.  Jeff Lynne is there as always, singing to a danceable beat with words like "Those secret messages that spill into the air from far away, so far away...a flowing river of illusion running with confusion, never gone, it goes on and on"...I love mysterious lyrics...

155 WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?...R.E.M
Back in the summer of 1994 I was eagerly anticipating the release of R.E.M's new album Monster, which I expected to be another craftily-produced, polished work along the lines of its predecessors Out of Time and Automatic for the People.  Instead, what came out was more of a hard rock album with raucous, dissonant songs prevailing.  What's the Frequency, Kenneth?,  whose title was based on a madman's rantings when he attacked newscaster Dan Rather one day, was the first release from Monster and is dominated by an intense, constant guitar background...I was shocked at first to hear it but later embraced it and many of the album's other tracks, including another that I have ranked higher on my list...

154 TIME IS ON MY SIDE...the Rolling Stones
One of the Stones' early singles hits...from 1964...this was a slow blues-based song, as were many of theirs at this time, with a really soulful lead guitar by Keith Richards reminding me a little of B.B. King and Mick Jagger providing his colorful, ragged singing.  They recorded two versions of this song...I preferred the earlier one but the later version became the standard one played on oldies radio and their greatest hits albums...

153 LIVE TO TELL...Madonna
For the three years before Live to Tell came out in 1986, Madonna had built her exploding career around catchy dance tunes with suggestive lyrics and her often just-as-suggestive videos.  But this song was entirely different...it's a slow, pensive ballad showcasing her singing range and ability.  Back then I picked it as my "song of the year" and it is still wildly out of place in contrast to her other works during this period...although the following year I did like her La Isla Bonita, I wouldn't again be impressed by her music until more than a decade later...

152 WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE...the Animals
This iconic song from 1965 is my favorite from this Newcastle, England-based blues-rock group, that is before they broke up and frontman Eric Burdon later formed a new "Animals" band around himself.  I've read that it was very popular among soldiers serving in the Vietnam War, for obvious reasons, but it has a universal appeal to anyone who finds themselves stuck in an oppression, negative situation: that's certainly been the case for me.  Like Song #154 above, they made two versions: the original singles release is much grittier and better with Burdon delivering an epic vocal performance.  Unfortunately, unlike the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the Animals weren't adept at writing their own songs and were largely left to cover others' compositions, this one included...

151 TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS...Styx
Within the American progressive rock band Styx during their heydays in the late 70's and early 80's there always seemed to be a sort of creative, directional tension between guitarist Tommy Shaw and their main lead singer Dennis DeYoung...the former more "rock" and the latter more "progressive".  With Too Much Time on My Hands from 1981, we get a great rock song with Shaw belting out the lead vocals.  It's also very applicable to a lot of boredom-prone people in our current COVID-19 era of shutdown and stay-at-home policies...

Next week: #150-141...

First American Manned Space Launch Since 2011 Scheduled for May 27th

At 4:32 pm on Wednesday, May 27th, assuming no delays, a two-astronaut crew will launch from Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as they take their Crew Dragon capsule for a rendezvous with the International Space Station...the first manned launch into space from the USA since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.  SpaceX's head honcho Elon Musk has spearheaded America's return to space exploration...in cooperation with NASA...and has dreams of traveling and even settling Mars in the not-so-distant future.  Whether it's the moon or Mars we get to first in our eventual return to space travel beyond low Earth orbit, I'm okay with either...but first we need to get our butts off the ground and into space again instead of paying Russia $80 million for each American they launch into space for us.  This story was buried deep in the news amid the coronavirus onslaught...thought you might enjoy have something positive to look forward to in the near future.  I think Boeing has also been working on manned space rockets...good, the more the merrier as long as the companies don't trip over each other to the program's detriment.  I think regardless how this upcoming  presidential election comes out we should establish a modest, permanent presence on the moon and keep aspiring to deeper space exploration...guess it's about time I put the NASA Channel on my Roku...

Some Rainy-Day-Off Musings

Another brief entry on this blog...just happy to be at home, off from work for a couple of days and free of wearing a mask.   It's been raining off and on all day, putting off my long weekly run until tomorrow or possibly next Saturday if the rain keeps on falling.  I am watching various news/opinion channels...the whole gamut from MSNBC to CNN to FoxNews to NewsMax.  Unlike probably 99% of my readers, I look for and usually find value in each of these channels' programming, recognizing up front the political posturing and bias inherent in each of them and looking beyond to attain truth...I've been watching NewsMax but will soon switch over to CNN or MSNBC.  I see everything happening in the USA about the coronavirus pandemics being filtered through three different areas: public health, the economy and politics.  I don't automatically tag one political party and its leaders as the "good guys" while personally vilifying those heading the opposite side the way some of my Facebook buddies sadly find themselves doing...instead I discern the bias I'm hearing, look at the issue through those three filters and by doing so arriving at a broader and better informed position.  Politically I am issue-based and sometimes side with  the Republican "take" on one and the Democratic view on another.  I guess with these protests against stay-at-home/shutdown policies springing up across the country... it was inevitable, especially in an election year...that partisan politics would begin to sharply insert itself into the COVID-19 news.  I did notice that when Jacksonville reopened its city beaches today they were flooded with people who didn't seem all that concerned with social distancing...funny, I didn't think that Duval County had been "flattening" its curve the way my home county of Alachua has begun to do...

Well, I guess that's it for today, stay safe...

Quote of the Week...from Patricia Highsmith

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.    ---Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) was a renowned novelist whose most famous work was her 1950 Strangers on a Train, which Alfred Hitchcock made into a hit movie.  I haven't yet read any of her works...although I plan to...but the above quote of hers resonated with me.  It's not only my imagination that suffers in torturous social situations in which I'm expected to play an active role, but my entire thought processes as well...I'm tempted to simply shut myself down and passively sink into the background: not because I feel the slightest bit of inferiority among others but rather simply because this is how I'm wired...and always have been.  I'm not a recluse in that I want to avoid other people...this shutdown of social commerce because of COVID-19 has demonstrated that to me as I miss public places like the library and Starbucks.  I've been told recently that extroverts tend to do their thinking aloud, through talking to others...while introverts prefer solitude for theirs.  Highly interactive social situations energize extroverts...they thoroughly deplete me.  All throughout my school years extroverts were held up as the great achievers while introverts were at best ignored and at worst bullied and put down...I haven't seen much improvement with this picture in subsequent years.  If this all sounds like I have a chip of sorts on my shoulder, you're right...I do.  I tend to associate loud, big-talkers with heavy-handed aggression who stupidly assume that I am somehow weak and need to be submissive because I'm not inclined toward that style of behavior.  I took a mandatory public speaking class in the eleventh grade and was browbeaten to get up repeatedly in front of a classroom that contained many people I disliked and who disliked me and with whom I had absolutely nothing I felt like sharing anything with, although I had many diverse interests of my own.  The school's message was that speech is power...and if you're going to be a "successful" person you'd better get adept at the art of running your mouth off, the more aggressively the better.  But you know, if I have something I want to say to somebody, I'll say it...no problem. But being put in situations where I have to speak things that I don't want to speak to people that I don't want to speak to: forget it...

Just Finished Reading First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

First Lord's Fury, from 2009, is the final volume in Jim Butcher's six-part fantasy series titled Codex Alera.  On this fantasy world the continual war going on there is boiling down to the final confrontation between the Vord...which I maintain is a ripoff from the Borg in Star Trek: the Next Generation...and the alliance of humans, Marat, Canim and Icemen on this conflict-ravaged planet.  The central figures in this saga are Tavi, by now known as Gaius Octavian, his mother Isana and Countess Amara as they struggle to kill the Vord Queen, who controls all of the entities amassed against them.  A subplot is the developing relationship between Tavi and Kitai, a young Marat woman he has been involved with for years, as they plan their future together in the midst of the surrounding uncertainty and carnage.  Humans on this world possess the ability, called furycrafting, to bond with elements from nature like wind, fire and air to give themselves superhuman powers.  No way am I going to tell how it all ends...but here again we have a series where the protagonist, a generally honest, brave and unassuming soul, finds himself not only in the center of everything going on around him, but turns out to be "the one" upon whom the world's fate hinges...yawn, another one of those stories.  I'm glad I finished the series, which seemed to leave an opening for a follow-up in case the author decides to resume it...but it wasn't one of my favorite fantasy series by a long shot.  Still, if you're into near-constant fighting and warfare you'll probably like it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1957 Science Fiction, Part 1

Out of the 25 volumes comprising the anthology series Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories that spanned quality science fiction short stories from 1939 through 1963, the volume #19 about the year 1957 is the one I've possessed the longest, having read it a number of times.

STRIKEBREAKER by Isaac Asimov
I reviewed this story back in '17...here's a link to that article: [link].  A small world building downward underground inside itself, with an extremely dense population, has developed a rigid social system where certain jobs and their performers are stigmatized and isolated.  One of the workers, the man operating the human waste recycling works, declares himself on strike until he and his family are allowed to integrate into society.  A visitor to the planet on a different mission confronts the crisis...which creates an ethical dilemma...

OMNILINGUAL by H. Beam Piper
More a novella than a short story, Omnilingual delves into the problem of decoding the language of a culture without any "Rosetta Stone" or common points of reference.  Such is the problem encountered by a scientific team investigating the ancient Martian ruins of an intelligent race extinct for millennia.  Eventually they hit upon the solution, which in light of what we would put on one of our early space probes in retrospect seems self-evident...

THE MILE-LONG SPACESHIP by Kate Wilhelm
Here's another tale I've discussed before, and here's a link to it in another 2017 article: [link].  It assumes the existence of telepathy as a man on Earth, following an auto accident in which he suffered brain trauma, keeps dreaming in his hospital bed of being in deep space...and inevitably finds himself on board an alien ship.  What he doesn't know is that this ship is real and has its own telepath...fearing other intelligent life in the cosmos, they try to influence his dreaming enough for him to reveal where Earth is.  This is an interesting story with one of the "sides" completely oblivious as to the danger they are in...

CALL ME JOE by Poul Anderson
An embittered man crippled by an earlier accident is stationed around Jupiter, engaged in a project to seed life there adapted to its intensely different environment of methane and extreme pressure and cold...his consciousness is transferred into the body of a manufactured creature who can withstand the harsh Jovian conditions.  The story toggles back in forth between this individual and "Joe"...I read a similar premise in Clifford Simak's 1944 short story Desertion, which he later incorporated as a chapter in his novel City...

YOU KNOW WILLIE  by Theodore Cogswell
One of the rare science fiction stories bluntly dealing with the problem of racial persecution in America...particularly in the South, Willie McCracken, a well-to-do white racist businessman in a small town, shoots to death a black man who he sees as a competitor...at the trial they produce a false alibi and the all-white jury promptly acquits him.  But the victim's Aunt Hattie, with her traditional spiritualism that includes curses, still has something to say in the matter. The ending reminded me of what happened to Hitler in Robert Heinlein's short story Successful Operation...

More about 1957 sci-fi short stories next week...

We Have Ourselves a Rain-Soaked Day (and Week)

The birds around my home sure do like it, but I have mixed feelings about the sometimes-stormy rain we began experiencing here yesterday in north-central Florida and which has been going on strong this morning.  The rain should fall all week long and into the next weekend. although I'm sure we'll get a few breaks when the sun shines through and the clouds temporarily part.  My area surrounding Gainesville has experienced a severe shortfall of precipitation in the last few months and as such the wildfire danger has dramatically increased...hopefully all this new moisture in the ground will alleviate that concern.  My preference would have been for it to have rained intermittently for the past few weeks without this onslaught we're now going to experience.  The weather pattern now going through our area caused much tornado devastation and death in states north of us...I guess I should be grateful that we've been spared that fate so far.  Still, a very mushy, supersaturated ground can present its own problems...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #170-161

The ten songs I'm discussing today from the list of my 500 all-time favorite songs are all buried deep in my past with only a 12-year span separating them: 1964-76.  Yet each and every one of them has only increased its value to me over the years...if anything I didn't properly appreciate what remarkable pieces of music they were during that period.  Still, since during the same time span I was 7-19 years old, this is probably not surprising, and three of them I didn't get around to noticing until much later.  Here they are...

170 FRIENDS...Led Zeppelin
This track from the 1970 Led Zeppelin III album always struck me with how the sage advice singer Robert Plant doles out starkly contrasts with the ominous...almost threatening...melody and musical accompaniment.  Bizarre and beautiful.  I'm not surprised that when Plant and Jimmy Page finally got back together to make a collaboration album they picked out this one to highlight.  I did not know of this song until I heard the band's box set in late 1990...

169 I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE...Yes
At the end of 1971 I was musing on which song I would pick as my "song of the year"...there were some good candidates.  But then this song began to get radio play...it's divided into two parts, the first a more rambling piece with gentle music and Jon Anderson's falsetto-like voice. And then it suddenly breaks into one of the best guitar jam sessions ever, and this is where I really got to love this song...I detected a short tribute to Chuck Berry at one place...

168 DOCTOR JIMMY...the Who
The 1973 double Quadrophenia album, on which this epic track appears, was another rock opera composed by Pete Townshend...this one concerning a young English man caught up in drugs, sex and gang conflict as he eventually learns to see his idols as they truly are.  The songs are very introspective, none less than Doctor Jimmy, in which the singer declares in a rage his own severe shortcomings...very intense, perhaps too much so for some of the language used here.  But I always loved it although the lyrics at times are a bit over the top, to say the least...

167 LOVE AND HAPPINESS...Al Green
In early 1973 I was in the eleventh grade in high school, struggling to fit in with the track team...and thoroughly enjoying this hit back then by Al Green, one of the greatest voices ever in popular music.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.  The power of love is what this soulful song is all about, and nobody could sing it better than Al Green...

166 A DAY IN THE LIFE...the Beatles
No, I don't understand what the words mean in this closing track of the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Before the CD era kicked in, radio stations always played the immediately preceding Sgt. Pepper reprise track together with A Day in the Life...which is how I'm used to hearing it.  My favorite part has always been the break in the middle when Paul "woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head"...a few years ago I heard one recording session for the album back then when he totally flubbed up his lines, cursing and laughing at himself.  Ah, those were the great old days.  George Martin, the "fifth" Beatle, should have received creative credit (and royalties) for all the work he did on this song and the others on the album as its producer...

165 CIRCLE SKY...the Monkees
When the Monkees reunited in 1996 for their Justus album and tour, I first heard Michael Nesmith's Circle Sky...I wasn't impressed until I heard the original version from their 1968 Head album, which also served as the soundtrack to the same-titled movie made soon after their comedy TV series was cancelled.  There's some really heavy-duty, intense guitar strumming here as well as a strong hint of Nesmith's future country music direction.  Although the other Monkees didn't figure into its recording, Circle Sky fit in well with the other songs on Head, in my opinion a quality product for any band and the best from this often undervalued act...

164 SEND IN THE CLOWNS...Judy Collins
I first became aware of the 1976 hit Send in the Clowns when my sister Anita would practice playing it on her piano.  Collins' version also used piano, but her sad, resigned singing stole my heart with such a compelling performance...the lyrics evoke memories of an earlier Bee Gees' song, I Started a Joke: both songs speak of the frustration of relationships where one side always seems to be in a completely opposite state from the other...

163 DEAD MAN'S CURVE...Jan and Dean
One scene from The Godfather stands out to me: when Kate first notices the Don's monstrous bodyguard Luca Brasi at Michael Corleone's sister's wedding, she remarks that he is a very scary guy.  Well, Dead Man's Curve, from 1964, is a very scary song, not the least for the fact that it describes a fatal auto accident just blocks from where Jan would experience a devastating wreck just a couple of years later.  There is (or was back in 1974-75) a scary stretch of I-95 in northern Dade County where the Interstate, Turnpike and US-441 combined that I always dubbed "Dead Man's Curve" in honor of this song.  Very haunting...

162 HAVE I THE RIGHT...the Honeycombs
When I was a seven-year-old kid I had my personal awakening to the world of popular music...the Beatles were doubtless the main reason for this.  But the radio also played a variety of other music...including this thumping tune that sounds like an autoharp in the background.  Some songs seem like a living spring of energy...this one gets you going and I'm happy to see 56 years later that critics look back fondly on it: have you ever heard it?

161 RAIN DANCE...the Guess Who
Rain Dance has the sad distinction (at least for me) of being the final great single released by this remarkable Canadian band before Randy Bachman left the group, eventually to form his own band Bachman-Turner Overdrive.  It has a long chanting part at the beginning and closing that really does evoke a sense of native American culture, correctly or not...why it wasn't a monster hit I can't figure.  Rain Dance was one of those 1971 songs I juggled around in my mind back then for "song of the year" before settling on that aforementioned Yes song (at #169)...hey what do you know, it's passed it on my list!

Next week: #160-151

TV's Music Choice Offers Better Options than Broadcast Radio

I've spent so much time with this blog project of mine listing and reviewing my 500 all-time favorite songs that I just realized that I can't think of any definitively-2020 song that I've heard, much less like.  I've been disappointed that the only broadcast radio station in my area that purports to play alternative rock, WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz", seem to either play hits from years gone by or pick for its current rotation of songs acts that sound more like they should be on Top Forty radio...if I want to listen to that kind of music I'll tune in to WYKS/"Kiss-105", which I don't.  I did notice, though, the other night while surfing around the Music Choice channels, which my cable TV service provides, that the "Indie" and "Alternative" channels were playing some really good, up-to-date music that wasn't getting any radio play.  I'm thinking of devoting a little time each day to listening to my television set for my music...a sad commentary on the sorry-ass state of radio programming nowadays in Gainesville.  Also, I might as well check out some online music channels...eventually I should come up with some future "memories" to add to my all-time favorites list...

My 13.3 Mile "Defiance" Run Today

For the past few weeks I've gotten back into the habit of going out on long runs on Saturday afternoons.  Last week I ran 10 miles while today...with wonderful weather conditions of almost clear skies, near-calm, around 75 degrees and 40% humidity...I covered 13.3 miles using my convoluted designed course going up and down the streets of my neighborhood and the adjacent one, along with the more sloped stretch of asphalt pathway on NW 53rd Avenue between 34th and 43 Streets.  I have long used walking breaks within my training runs...they help to conserve energy and alleviate problems associated with repetitive motion: the slower times reflect this as the time for today's run was 2:51:25...then again, I have a tendency to be a bit competitive around other runners and in a race setting I probably would have pushed myself harder.  During the whole run I listen to a shuffle on my MP3 player of some of my favorite musical acts, including R.E.M., Regina Specktor, Beck, Metric, Gorillaz, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens, Kasabian and Radiohead, to mention a few. With the stay-at-home emphasis going on in these times, I encountered on my journey many people out in their yards, jogging, walking with family or by themselves, walking dogs, riding bicycles and a couple of skateboarders...I crossed streets to ensure distancing although that 3-mile stretch up and down 53rd Avenue presented a challenge with its narrow path.  Everyone seemed friendly and we would wave or say "hi" as we passed each other...

I was a little miffed that due to this pandemic the half-marathon race (13.1 miles) I had intended to run in Ormond Beach on March 21st (along with enjoying a beach weekend with Melissa) understandably was canceled, so today's "half-marathon-plus" run was a happily defiant way for me to thumb my nose up at the disease...we'll see about getting to the beach later on when it all settles down...

Quote of the Week...from Aldous Huxley

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality.  All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.                                   ---Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley was a famous English writer probably best known for his 1932 dystopian novel of a future consumer-based society gone to extremes titled Brave New World.  His above quote about irrationality screams outs its relevance in today's virus-stricken world of mass reaction, much of it without any semblance of reason.  In any crisis, there is a tendency for people...myself included...to react in an irrational way...here are some of those possible ways:

--Panic
--Anxiety
--Scapegoating
--Inventing or subscribing to conspiracy theories
--Revisionism
--Critical hindsight
--Denial

I think that panic and anxiety are self-evident, scapegoating reveals itself whenever people of east Asian ancestry are attacked as if they had something to do with the disease, conspiracy theories are abounding...split between China's nefarious aims, the "fake" news media and the Democratic Party, revisionism is seen with politicians claiming they were on to the virus from the start when they weren't, critical hindsight whenever news reporters practice "gotcha" journalism to put politicians on the spot about previous statements and actions instead of what's currently happening...and denial, probably the most prevalent...and dangerous...of the irrational reactions to this still-spreading pandemic. I've noticed that along with denying that COVID-19 is anything more dangerous than the ordinary flu is often an accompanying social culture of bravado that assumes those who follow the social distancing rules are governed by fear...that is, part of their irrational denial is to accuse others of irrationality...

Once again, we're all irrational beings and are as such predisposed to reacting unreasonably to crises, especially those that seem to mandate drastically changing our social behavior patterns, even if only temporarily.  There are rational components to each of the areas I have listed above: concern instead of panic and anxiety, informed curiosity about the virus outbreak's origins instead of scapegoating, an acknowledgement that coincidences actually do happen and that the simplest answer is the often the true one instead of convoluted conspiracies, "manning up" and explaining one's own inaccurate or misleading statements instead of trying to reinvent the past, placing hindsight in the context that no leader is perfect and all will fail at times...especially in unique circumstances, and optimism that acknowledges...not denies...the urgency of the situation while looking forward to great things ahead for us after this crisis subsides...

Missing Being Able to Haunt Local Coffee Shops

I'm sitting here at my desktop in the living room with the TV on CNN in the background and a view out the front window at a sunny, breezy day.  I miss not being able to go out and sit in an Internet-friendly business like Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, drinking a flavored iced coffee while conjuring up within my mind something to write on this blog...home is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but even good old Bilbo Baggins had to get away from his hobbit hole every now and then.  There's a new Dunkin' Donuts within walking distance of my house...they supposedly opened starting March 24th but haven't yet been able to seat anyone because of the coronavirus outbreak, which we're apparently now supposed to call "novel" coronavirus because it's so novel, you see.  It's funny, but since I stopped frequenting these places for coffee and writing I haven't had a single iced coffee...once I drove up to order one through the drive-through at the new Dunkin' (after voting on March 17th), but when I got to the window they informed me that it hadn't opened yet and that it was training employees...

One of my friends who recently retired and has a condo on the Atlantic shoreline had bemoaned the closing of most of Florida's beaches (although some are still open and the governor won't mandate their closure), which happened primarily because of the pictures of young spring breakers pretty much thumbing their collective noses at social distancing guidelines and congregating there en masse.  The problem with reopening them now is that due to school closures these people are in a sense still on "spring break"...I agree with my friend that beaches could work for people who use them in a proper distancing setting, much like within a neighborhood where people still go out walking their dogs or jogging.  But I'm afraid the same elements that caused their closing would return were they to reopen...yes, the selfish spring breakers ruined beaches for us all...

Eventually the infection curve will flatten and both the beaches and coffee shops...along with libraries, schools and so-called "nonessential" businesses...will reopen and do so doubtlessly amid others' outcries that they are placing dollars over lives.  But as I have mentioned before on this blog, this divisive debate is inevitable.  I'm guessing that when these places finally do reopen, they will be invoking similar distancing guidelines to what we see in groceries, limiting the number of customers and keeping them apart.  I don't know what they're going to do with the schools, though...

Weekly Short Stories: Robert Heinlein, Part 7

Today I conclude my examination of some of the stories by legendary science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (1907-88), who inserted a great deal of social commentary into his works as well as much speculation on the future of our space program...sadly, while in our real world we beat his 1978 first moon landing prediction by nine years, we've done little since other then repeatedly circle Earth in low orbit.  Here are my reactions to the remainder of the fiction stories appearing in his 1980 collection of short stories and essays titled Expanded Universe...

A BATHROOM OF HER OWN (1946)
Not at all science fiction, this is a story about how elections are manipulated by powerful and often corrupt brokers with their own agendas that don't necessarily correspond to what the public's interests are...fine, tell me something I don't already know.  A candidate for a local seat tries to maneuver himself past the forces that oppose him, including a compelling woman candidate surging ahead of him in the race...a behind-the-scenes look at running for political office that became tedious to read...

ON THE SLOPES OF VESUVIUS (1947)
This story's title is allegorical: imagine standing on the slopes of that Italian volcano in ancient times, just before the massive explosive eruption that engulfed and destroyed Pompeii.  Now switch to a New York City bar at the story's writing in '47, two years after the atom bomb was developed and dropped and two years before the announcement that the Soviets had exploded one of their own.  In this scary period was a lot of doomsday speculation on what would happen if some subversive elements were to get the basic materials for the bomb and set it on off in a big city...a scientist at the bar lays out the odds and pretty much freaks out the bartender, who suddenly finds that he needs to make a very quick decision...

NOTHING EVER HAPPENS ON THE MOON (1949)
Boy Scouting on the moon? Evidently Heinlein was a big promoter of the Scouts, for this is the story of a boy from the American Midwest who is determined to collect his scouting badges for the moon and later Venus (we're to assume our "sister" planet actually could support life).  Visiting Luna City, he gets to know other Scouts and has a serious adventure on the unforgiving lunar landscape with life-or-death implications.  In spite of the story's goofy premise I thought it was the best of the four tales I'm reviewing today...

CLIFF AND THE CALORIES (1950)
Evidently somebody complained to Heinlein that he never wrote stories with female protagonists, so he wrote this one about a young woman concerned that her weight will keep the guy she likes from pursuing her, so she comes up with a strategy...turns out, though, that Cliff is totally okay with her as she is: the characters are sympathetic, but why this ever became a published story is beyond me and convinced me that maybe it's time to steer away from more of his stories and return to my year-by-year short story reviews...

So next week I'll be resuming those year-by-year reviews of excellent old science fiction short stories, picking back up at the year 1957...

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Two Important Points

Two important facts about the COVID-19 pandemic that everyone should know and base their behavior on in the next few days and weeks:

1) As New York governor Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly stressed during his press briefings the last few days, all of this social distancing and shutdown is being done for one overriding purpose: to ensure that anyone who enters a hospital in need of a ventilator to keep them alive will have that ventilator available for them.  Period.  For this to happen and supplies of ventilators to meet the demand, the infection rate curve must flatten enough so that a spike of infections does not result in desperately ill patients finding themselves without the means for survival...

2) I've heard that as many as half of those infected with this coronavirus at any given time are asymptotic, that is they feel and display no symptoms of the disease, either because it will run its course through their bodies over the span of two or three weeks without causing any noticeable effects or because it is incubating within them, the symptoms of fever, dry cough and shortness of breath beginning to appear a few days later.  I don't know if "half" is an accurate estimate, but I'm confident that a large segment of the infected population feels fine.  The potentially tragic mistake is to equate having no symptoms of COVID-19 with not being infected with it...unfortunately, I see people who seem to buy into this notion and who not only won't practice safe social distancing but who also shoot off at the mouth against those who take the pandemic seriously.  Please don't be like these fools. By the way, wearing a mask is an effective way to prevent droplets containing the virus from being breathed in by others if you happen to be one of those without symptoms, but infected...breathing in these droplets is the most common means of coronavirus transmission.  When I'm at my "essential" workplace I presume, rightly or not, that none of my colleagues are feeling or displaying symptoms...if they are, they shouldn't be there in the first place.  Again, just because you feel fine and normal that doesn't mean that you aren't a dangerous carrier of this very contagious disease that has killed, and will continue to kill, those susceptible to its effects...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #180-171

Well, it's Monday again and you know what that means: ten more songs on my ascending list of my 500 all-time favorite songs.  Here they are...

180 MESSAGE OF LOVE...the Pretenders
I came to like this 1983 song via its video.  If memory serves me correctly, it was one shown in regular rotation during WTBS's short-lived weekend all-night video TV show that year.  Singer Chrissie Hynde delivers a compelling performance in this, a very positive-spirited, great old love song...

179 SABOTAGE...the Beastie Boys
I wonder how many people first heard Sabotage, from 1994, from the desert scene at the beginning of the 2009 movie Star Trek where James T. Kirk is a rebellious boy driving a car (not his own) over a cliff...with the Beastie Boys tune playing full blast.  My own encounter with it is closely tied to the amazingly funny video the Boys made with them parodying TV cop shows as they enforce the law...with the customary doughnut break thrown in.  It's screaming hard rock...I wish they'd produced more songs like this...

178 12:51...the Strokes
In 2004 I immersed myself in the current alternative rock hits being played on my local station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz"...they kept playing this song without identifying it or its artist.  Later on I discovered that the Strokes did it...they quickly became one of my favorite bands of that era: a very professional, skilled guitar band with a charismatic singer in Julian Casablancas.  Not the last from them on this list...

177 FOLLOW ME...John Denver
In the 1970s during his peak popularity everyone in my family was a John Denver fan, with his albums played a lot at my house.  Follow Me was a track from his 1973 Greatest Hits album and I've always felt a special affection for it...if you listen to it in a certain way there is an added spiritual dimension in the lyrics...

176 IT'S MY LIFE...the Animals
I was a big Animals fan during 1964-65...I'd listen to their ongoing hits on the radio, and every few weeks they'd appear on the Sunday evening Ed Sullivan Show.  Ed Burdon, to me, had the best voice in blues-based rock n' roll and the organ accompaniment added an extra dimension to their sound.  It's My Life is Burdon at his best, singing his defiance at life's challenges...

175 I MIGHT BE WRONG...Radiohead
During the fall of 2010 I collected the then-seven studio albums of this British alternative band and shuffled them on my MP3 player for my long distance training runs.  Consequently I associate various songs with different sections on my course.  Whenever I hear I Might be Wrong, from their 2001 Amnesiac album, I'm transported to the trail heading north along NW 43rd Street past 53rd Avenue, past the electric substation and Talbot Elementary and toward the Cox Communications and WCJB offices.  This song is slow-moving with a wall of electronic sounds, a thumping beat and Thom Yorke's typically wailing style of singing...

174 RAY OF LIGHT...Madonna
In 1998 Madonna surprised me, along with probably a lot of others, with this more esoteric, mystical song...I thought then that yes, the serious artist within her I always knew existed was finally coming out.  Unfortunately, it seemed to be just a phase and her music largely went back to churning out suggestive singles hits and videos.  But that summer at least I had Ray of Light to brighten things up...

173 OLD BROWN SHOE...the Beatles
When Old Brown Shoe came out as the flip side to the Beatles' Ballad of John and Yoko single in 1969, I didn't know of it until a couple of years later after the band had broken up and I had bought their Hey Jude compilation album, with George Harrison's song as one of its tracks.  Both piano and guitar figure heavily in it with an unusual beat and Harrison's cryptic lyrics full of riddles...like this opening line: "I want a love that's right, but right is only half of what's wrong".  This should have been the A-Side of the single...

172 SOUR GIRL...Stone Temple Pilots
From the Pilots' 1999 No. 4 Album, Sour Girl was a moderate hit on rock radio...it's one of those songs that I was okay with from the start but kept growing on me until it became one of my favorites.  It's a different STP song in that they didn't go into the heavy guitar sound on it, nor did they try to create a psychedelic kind of song...instead, it's simple and beautiful.  And when I finally got around to seeing the bizarre accompanying video, a semi-nightmarish vista of monstrous Teletubby-like mutants while Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Geller performs a graceful, passionate dance with front man Scott Weiland, that made it even better...

171 JUMPIN' JACK FLASH...the Rolling Stones
Not one of my favorites when it came out in 1968, Jumpin' Jack Flash was the direction-changing signal to the world of the type of music the Rolling Stones would be focusing on for the rest of their years.  The beat and riffs are mesmerizing and Mick Jagger is up to his trademark cynical, rough-edged and hyperbole-riddled singing: perfect, I never get tired of hearing it these days...

Next week: #170-161...

Starting to Enjoy Sports Reruns on TV

Seeing how I'm something of a weekend TV sports junkie, this canceling/postponement of just about all regular sports events during the COVID-19 pandemic has irked me to no end.  I had staunchly resisted watching the many replays of games in years in gone by, but yesterday ESPN was showing some National Basketball Association championship final games from the past and I found myself immensely enjoying watching the old stars.  I caught two games: the 2003 finale between the San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets and that of 2010 between the Los Angeles Lakes and Boston Celtics.  Over the years I've come to root for the Spurs, but back in '03 they were a team I'd always pull against...it was interesting to see a game from that time in which my allegiances had completely flipped: there they were, perennially blunt head coach Gregg Popovich along with the stars David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili...all looking very young (except Robinson, who was finishing his playing career).  Although Parker would eventually become my favorite NBA player, in this game his play was off and he was benched after the Nets had racked up an early lead.  But Speedy Claxton came in and had a great effort, helping along with others...especially Duncan...to spearhead the Spurs' comeback.  It was also interesting to see a younger Steve Kerr...currently the coach of the Golden State Warriors...as an enthusiastic benchwarmer for the Spurs.  This game also showed Nets guard Jason Kidd at his best. In the later game, Kobe Bryant, Pao Gasol, Derek Fisher, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest pulled off a great team effort to come from behind against the Celtics, who were led by Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and  Rajon Rondo.  I noticed that in both games...and especially this one...the defense they played was much more aggressive than what we've seen in recent years, with resulting very low scores.  It's tough watching a game, the result of which you already know will go against you...still, I enjoyed it while knowing that "my" Celtics would bow at the end...

I looked at the TV schedule for today and saw that ESPN will show several hours of WWE "wrestling"...hardly a legitimate sport.  Guess I'll have to look for something else...yesterday I ran 10 miles, but right now it's raining: maybe I'll read a book instead...

Thinking of Cross-Referencing Earlier Blog Articles by Subject

With today's entry I have published 4,265 blog articles over the past 13 years.  They cover a wide gamut of topics, but I think it might be interesting to be able to reference some of the earlier ones in a more efficient manner.  At the bottom of each article I have indicated general topic headings...which you can see on the web version but not on the phone app...but I'd like to organize my writings in a more precise series of indices that the reader can simply click on to obtain.  I don't know exactly how feasible this undertaking will be, but in a few weeks I should have something to present...

Quote of the Week...from Thornton Wilder

When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.                          ---Thorton Wilder

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an American playwright whose play Our Town was a common English class assignment in high school...we got saddled with it, too.  Maybe some day as a "free" adult I'll voluntarily reread it or watch it performed on YouTube.  For now, though, I've found the above quote of his and thought it pertained very well to the "stay at home" mantra sweeping the country...and much of the rest of the world, for that matter...

When I had free time in elementary school I'd often visit the library and read old stories and fables...I was especially entranced with the adventures of Sinbad, a wealthy citizen of Baghdad during the Caliphate era who would become restless at home in spite of his prosperity and set sail for adventure.  Inevitably he would find himself in dire peril and bemoan his decision to travel, longing to be back home and safe...but he always managed to escape and return home.  And there he'd be happy for a while and then, bored, continue the cycle with another adventure.  I think many of us are like Sinbad, but with a much more limited attention span largely caused by our modern-day expectations of instant gratification.  The introverts among us can find inner peace in solitude and companionship with loved ones: extroverts seem to be in a constant itch to go out and hobnob with others, though...I see a big problem with these open house parties and spontaneous street basketball games I see springing up within my neighborhood during this time of supposed social distancing...

I would have preferred to be one of those employees who could work from home instead of being someone "essential" who had to work in a crowded facility with others while the infection rate here from the COVID-19 virus is climbing exponentially.  Unfortunately, some of my colleagues either do not understand what "exponentially" means or because they can't actually see the virus they deny its existence or that their decisions to forgo physical distancing in the workplace are their own business and nobody else's...but it all comes out looking like foolish bravado.  I think bravery is commendable, but only if it serves a worthwhile purpose...

This pandemic will eventually run its course and we'll all be able then to have our adventures and social life as we see fit...in the meantime can we please just show a little forbearance and maturity in order to save lives, save our economy and give the health care sector the time it needs to staff and equip itself to deal with this crisis?

Confusing Signals from Authorities About Testing for COVID-19 and Masks

The American people need better and clearer instruction from authorities as we try to navigate ourselves, our loved ones and colleagues through this coronavirus pandemic.  Two particularly frustrating and confusing areas are testing for the disease and wearing protective face masks.  South Korea, which seems to have totally "flattened" their curve and sent the illness into decline there, keeps getting praise for mass-testing the population in order to (1) accurately assess the COVID-19 presence among the population and (2) enable those actually infected to be isolated from the others to prevent the spread.  In the USA the authorities first rejected the WHO test and then hit snags during their own development of it, losing precious time in the process.  Still, the rules are the same now as they were in South Korea...yet Fed disease expert Dr. Fauci has discouraged people-at-large getting themselves tested, stating that they were "consuming" scarce protective resources on the part of the medical professionals performing them. And with protective masks, the Surgeon General has taken a similar stance, claiming at the same time that they are ineffective in preventing users from getting coronavirus while stressing that health care workers desperately need them...to protect themselves from the virus!  Personally, I don't know how well they protect us from this scourge, but it is widely acknowledged that masks do protect the wearers from transmitting this very contagious disease through the air to others if they're already infected with it.  Since it's already been firmly established that many carrying COVID-19 show no symptoms, and with many others the symptoms don't begin to appear until several days after they've caught it, it seems to me that universal testing and masks should have been high priorities from the start...assuming that they are serious about bringing the exponentially-increasing infection rate down and avoiding an "Italy" situation where the demand for care far outstrips our capacity to provide it.  Now that both the tests and masks are finally...after weeks...beginning to become more commonplace (but nowhere near the necessary level), more authorities are starting to promote their use among the populace. But where I work there is an even bigger problem: I see some operations and situations where there is NO physical distancing whatsoever...

Weekly Short Stories: Robert Heinlein, Part 6

The Robert Heinlein stories I'll be reviewing today and next week come from his 1980 collection Expanded Universe, which besides these tales contain many non-fiction essays about society, politics, international relations...and the future.  I'm just focusing here on the fiction: here are my reactions to the first five stories in the book that I've haven't discussed in previous articles, their original years of publication indicated after the titles...

SUCCESSFUL OPERATION (1940)
A Hitler-like, racist dictator must resort to Dr. Lans, the only one who can perform the pituitary gland transplant operation he so desperately needs for survival.  And Dr. Lans, who is of the "race" the tyrant despises (presumably Jewish) has his own conditions for the operation...from the story's title you already know that it goes forward and is "successful".  This would have been a great Twilight Zone episode...

SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY (1940)
Heinlein wrote this prophetic story about the nuclear arms race, with a twist: not knowing whether an atomic bomb could be successfully built and detonated when he wrote it back in 1940, he surmised instead the development of super-toxic radioactive dust that could destroy life on whole continents...sounds a lot like nuclear fallout, doesn't it?  In any event, his "solution" to the stalemate is indeed unsatisfactory...incidentally, in our "real" world the Cold War may have ended in 1991 but the threat of nuclear holocaust is still with us...

THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS (1947)
This is Heinlein's foray into pulp detective fiction, as an exotic dancer is stabbed in the middle of her act...and it looks as if no one could have perpetrated the deed.  The dialogue here is pretty chauvinistic, but was probably typical of this genre back then.  I didn't care for it...Heinlein should have stuck with his science fiction...

FREE MEN (1946)
It is the former United States of the not-too-distant future and it has turned into a martial law type of autocracy, with rebel bands dispersed throughout the land struggling to sabotage the oppressive State and instigate widespread uprising.  The message Heinlein was conveying here is plain: the people will rise up to resist tyranny...the problem as I see it is that the far-right militia groups that later formed in the 1980s and 1990s claimed the same rationale for themselves: it all boils down to what you call tyranny...

NO BANDS PLAYING, NO FLAGS FLYING (1973?)
In one of the shortest tales in the book, a seasoned veteran tells a story about true courage when he relates how he and some of his colleagues had suffered lung infections while working in the Canal Zone that required periodic injections into the chest...usually safe but occasionally fatal.  After he finishes the story, each listener has his own idea of who displayed true courage, but the storyteller teaches them at the end that courage and fear are two sides of the same coin...

Next I'll look at four more Heinlein stories appearing in Expanded Universe...