The 89th Scripps National Spelling Bee is airing on ESPN-2 right now, until 2 PM EST. The finals will be broadcast tonight (Thursday) at 8 PM EST.
One thing I've noticed is how "frisky" the judges have gotten when a contestant asks, "Could you use it in a sentence, please?" One of the words was "tibourbou" and the sentence the judge used was, "When a tibourbou falls in the forest, no one hears it, unless the NSA is listening -- and the NSA is always listening." (For those curious, tibourbou is a tree native to Brazil and Costa Rica, and is an alternative fiber crop to make paper.) Another word was "salele," (sah-lay-lee) and when asked for a sentence, the contestant got back, "Jake told Caroline all about the salele he caught on his fishing trip to Oahu -- and Caroline told Jake that he needed to get more interesting stories." (It's a small dusky silver or silvery bronze percoid fish from tropical Indo-Pacific area, when you next bring it up.) Then there was "tyee." Another fish, as it turns out -- a large kind of salmon. The sentence given was, "There were times when the tyee thought this whole 'swimming upstream' thing didn't make much sense." By the way, as I was typing this, one of the words presented was "colporteur." My eyes were focused on the computer, so I only heard it spoken, and didn't see the word spelled on the screen. My immediate thought was..."Cole Porter??? Cool, I got one. But...really??" Obviously, no. Oddly, the definition is sort of literary, as well. It's a peddler of books, newspapers, and similar literature. (The secondary description is "someone employed by a religious society to distribute Bibles and other religious tracts."). Yes, Cole Porter would have been an unlikely word. But this is the National Spelling Bee, so Anything Goes...
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I saw that the actress Beth Howland died yesterday at the age of 75. I didn't remotely know her well, and only briefly, but did know her a slight bit several decades ago. Sometime around 1980 I had done an internship on the TV series, Alice, on which she played the ditzy character Vera. However, I knew of her before that from her role in Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical, Company. She had one big solo number in that, the tongue-twisting, "(Not) Getting Married Today." She was quite nice and we got along well. In fact, I once invited her over for dinner -- nothing romantic, we just got along -- and she said sure. We set weekend plans, and I went about doing my best to get my apartment presentable and prepare a tasty meal. (A challenge for a young guy living on his own...) At this point, I don't remember all the specifics, but basically when things got past the time we had set for dinner, I called and got someone at her home saying that she had some visitors, and took a message. I waited longer -- and longer. Eventually it got late enough that I called again -- not so much for dinner at that point, but mostly curiosity. "Oh, she's gone to bed," I was told., My recollection is that one of the first thoughts I had was to write an episode for Alice where things turn out really badly for Vera. Given that I wasn't in the WGA at the point, I was a lowly intern, and no one was asking me to write a script for the show, it didn't get any farther than that. I don't really recall the resolution of things, but I think all that happened is that I offhandedly brought up "So, what happened?" when we crossed paths on the show the next Monday, and she gave a cursory, "Oh, sorry," and that was it. I still liked her -- she was a very nice person -- and we continued to get along, but after that I had no particular interest in making any effort to remain friends. She was an actress, I got it, and there are aspects of the cliche that do ring true for some. But she was personable, talented and I'm sorry to hear of her loss. Rather than include a clip here of Beth Howland as Vera, I figure that most places remembering her will be doing that. Instead I wanted to play her singing "(Not) Getting Married Today" from Company-- lesser-known to most people, but in some ways far more notable and I think longer-lasting. I was going to just embed the audio of her singing the number from the Broadway Cast Album. But instead, I found something much better. This is from a great 1970 TV documentary on PBS by filmmaker DA Pennebaker on the making of that cast album of Company -- and it's the sequence when Beth Howland rehearses and then records this very difficult song. I came across a couple of videos from what looks like a major production last year of Fiddler on the Roof in Australia. It stars a fellow who is apparently very popular there, Anthony Warlow. From his performance – which is quite good, though a bit more “aggressive” that most Tevye’s I’ve seen – I’d bet cash money that he’s a trained opera singer. These videos look like they were done without an audience, probably to help promote the show. To start with, here he is with “If I Were a Rich Man” Well, this whole "wrapping up a parent's life" is quite a hectic thing. I can't say that I recommend it to anyone. It's not that it's emotionally draining -- though there's certainly emotion rushing through things, and for some people I'm sure it's incredibly draining -- but just that there's SO much to do, and it's unrelenting. And my dad had things in pretty good order. So things are going reasonably smoothly (not "smoothly," I think that that's an impossible concept after any death), but there's just a tsunami of things to do.
I did get a good estate attorney recommended to me, and that's helped a lot. I don't understand all of what she's doing, but what's important is that she does. But so much to sign, and so many accounts to track down and cancel, and insurance policies, and bank accounts and brokerage accounts, and tax accountants, and none of that even touches on clearing out the apartment -- getting rid of all the "stuff," but also giving things away to relatives, and trying to sell off things, as well as ship items back to California. And it's all impacted, as well, by the reality that I don't live here in Chicago, but 2,000 miles away. It's not a complaint, just maniacally hectic. I can't even imagine what it's like for people whose loss comes much too early and is traumatic, rather than a 95-year-old who had a long, wonderful, full life., Some of the morass is understandable. But some of the red tape isn't. Today, for example, I had to cancel my dad's auto insurance and home insurance. For reasons inexplicable to me, the company wouldn't let me, saying that the executor had to do it. (To cancel auto insurance??) I have Power-of-Attorney, though since my father's passed away they said that that doesn't matter -- though I'm not sure if they're right, since his bank is fine with it. And I'm the trustee...but not the executor. The thing is, making it all the more loopy, is that I said, "So, if I called tomorrow, and didn't say my dad was dead, and I wanted to cancel his auto insurance and had power of attorney, I could do that, right?" Yes, Well, okay another thought -- "So, if I didn't do anything at all, and when the next bills came for his auto insurance and home insurance they didn't get paid, his accounts would just be cancelled automatically for lack of payment, right?" Yes. But because I was diligent enough to call and say that my father had passed away, I can't cancel these accounts -- auto insurance! -- myself and need to get the executor involved. Swell. Nothing like making things as convoluted as possible. Still, I'm making headway. I have three meetings scheduled over the next week, but the end is in sight. Sort of. For at least the first part, but it's the main part. And the Cubs won last night, so that was good. And I watched an inning of it in the apartment of a lovely lady I often have dinner with here who lives down the hall -- she's 99. She'll be 100 in just five weeks. When I left her place to come back here, she left the ball game on. So, amid all the swirl, all's right with the world.,.. And the elves back at the homestead watching over things are having the time of their lives, with free run of the place. Here's a fun video from Conan O'Brien, where he discovered some unfairness on his staff where some people get informed when free food comes in, but others get left out. He decides to get involved and, as the boss, address this...
This is a wonderful, short featurette (about 11 minutes or so) that ESPN aired as part of their "SC Featured" segment on SportsCenter. It's a total pleasure, most likely even if you aren't a sports fan.
It concerns the football team at Benton Harbor High School, a very rough town in Michigan which had gone through troubles. And the team had had its own hard times, going 0-9 the year before and not winning much more during the previous decade. They hadn't even had a winning season since 1989, a quarter of a century. The team had never even made the state playoffs. Elliot Uzelac was a 74-year-old, retired football coach, who'd had a solid, if not well-known career. He's been an assistant coach in the pros, and had been a head coach on a few middle-tier college teams. After five years of retirement, he got bored and applied to take over the challenge of Benton Harbor. The thing is, he didn't want any money. He told the school to keep it, he just wanted to coach football, and said the money should go back to the school to help the kids. He got hired. It's not giving anything away, because the coach's wife is seen giving an interview throughout the piece while wearing a sweatshirt that says Benton Harbor Tigers Playoff Football 2015. So...yes, Elliot Uzelac took this dismal, winless team in a very trouble town and, for the first time in the school's history, made the state playoffs. There's a more to the story, but that's the heart of it. And heart is the right word. SC Featured: Benton Harbor from ESPNFrontRow on Vimeo. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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