OK, let's look at the facts, Rockies fans. Worst record in team history: 119 losses. the worst run differential in BASEBALL HISTORY (-424), and the highest ERA since 1901 -- 6.64! Tied for most losses by a rotation: 93.
[Note to readers: I have been informed to my chagrin by a smart person that the Rockies don't have the worst run differential of all time, merely since 1899. It was the Cleveland Spiders who dun that, posting a stupendous -723.] Per Colorado Rockies on SI, "As for the lineup, the Rockies' .237 batting average was the worst in team history, as was their .681 OPS. Their collective fWAR was minus-3.3 as a lineup, and they scored a franchise low 3.72 runs per game. This resulted in them being shutout a franchise record 17 times."
This is undeniably as bad as it can possibly get. It is historically awful. This obverse distinction is resonant; it will live forever in our minds.
To those of us who listened in, and went to games, this year, it was obvious that we had reached the nadir of our expectations. We came to the field not with the hope of victory, but with the weary resignation of the faithful.
I have been a stalwart Rockies fan since the beginning, and the Zephyrs before them, and the Bears before them. I remember the Sky Sox, ferchrissake.
And yet I still love them. In all of their Charlie Browniest, they played earnestly and poorly, stoically marching through sweep after sweep, sacrificing themselves to the vagaries of the game.
What is going on with this team? It has gone on for years now. It has not spurred a dearth of paying fans. We love the game, and we will come out and watch ourselves lose in a friendly and amicable Denver manner. There's not an abandonment there as there is in other cities.
Evolution is possible. You stick with your guys. But there is something seriously wrong, and we all need to address it. I appreciate the effort, and I am sorry you sucked so bad. We'll work on it in spring, I guess.
Eddra Gale as Frau Fassbender in What's New, Pussycat?
OK, freaks – I mean, folks. To be an opera lover means
having an excellent sense of humor about the whole thing. For every sincere
aficionado of music drama, there is a horde of unbelievers who flinch at the
sound of an aria, and which equates opera with a refined and expensive form of
torture.
That’s not to say that opera doesn’t deserve a little elbow
to the diaphragm at times. As a high-risk, complex, expensive synthesis of several
arts forms, it’s tough to produce well . . . and like the girl with the curl,
when it’s bad, it’s horrid. It’s also been typed as an affectation of the rich
– which makes disdaining its challenges a populist nose-thumbing delight.
And why not? The proposition of a sung story enacted is on
its face absurd – it takes time to get used to the conventions and suspend your
disbelief as never before. Opera neither requires nor desires internal logic,
verisimilitude, or even believability. We need the plot to hurry up and get the
hell out of the way so we can go completely, decadently emotional. Don’t you
feel a little silly sometimes? Honestly?
When you do, put a few of these on. Get it out of your
system.
The list of audio-only operatic prankings is long, beginning
as early as vaudeville, judging by Cal Stewart's Uncle Josh character in the "Opera at Punkin Center" recording of 1909, and Willie and Eugene Howard’s “After the Opera”
sketch, first recorded in 1925. It’s also worth mentioning and diving into the
long and hilarious discographies of Anna Russell, Spike Jones and His City
Slickers, Tom Lehrer, Victor Borge, and Peter Schickele for a start.
For Wagnerians, Charles Ludlam’s 1977 stage sendup Der Ring Gott Fablonjet is a priceless
read, but a staging much less a recording is not on the horizon (though I’d
love to). The cliche of the helmeted diva has been around almost since the Ring
cycle was first performed, certainly because it’s easy and fun to mock. It can
be found scattered across modern culture and media, morphing to fit the needs
of ‘60s absurdism in Clive Donner’s 1965 What’s
New, Pussycat? as well as the avant-garde sci-fi conceits of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element in 1997, when he hands
‘Il dolce suono mi colpi di sua voce’ from Lucia
di Lammermoor to the giant blue Diva Plavalaguna.
So, here’s a nice selection of comic cadenzas from film and
TV, ranging from the innocent and playful to the dark and NSFW.
A Night at the Opera/Dir:
Sam Wood, Edmund Goulding/1935
Of course. The sendup of all things pompous in the opera
world, culminating with Il Trovatore here,
is merciless, a template for all future comic-disaster sequences in film.
Our Gang Follies of
1938/Dir: Gordon Douglas/1937
Alfalfa is “King of Crooners,” but he wants to be an opera
star! “I’m the Barber of Seville, Figaro, Figaro!” he sings. Everyone hates
him, and he ends up singing in the gutter as the snow cascades arund him. He
relents. “I wanna croon!” he admits, before waking from his cautionary dream.
Opera is clearly a ticket to the bottom.
Wonder Man/Dir: H.
Bruce Humberstone/1945
Danny Kaye plays twins, one a shy scholar and the other a
wacky nightclub entertainer. The comic witnesses a murder, gets killed himself,
then inhabits his twin’s body as needed to solve said crime . . . and provide
typical Danny Kaye bits. With me so far? At the climax, he must interweave
testimony with an operatic duet.
Micro-Phonies/ Dir:
Edward Bernds/1945
Squareheads of the
Round Table/ Dir: Edward Bernds/1948
There are only two kinds of people in this world, so if you
don’t like the Three Stooges, let your gaze lightly vault over this obnoxious
entry. There now, for the rest of us what could be more fun than Curly
impersonating the not-so-ravishing Senorita Cucaracha? The butchering of the
Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor would
be repeated with variation three years later in Squareheads.
Willie as Pagliacci.
The Whale Who Wanted
to Sing at the Met AKA Willie the Operatic Whale/Dir: Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton
Luske/from Make Mine Music, 1946
This is the 10th and final sequence from the 1946
Disney anthology film Make Mine Music,
one of a string of six short-subject collections the studio put out during the
1940s. This was in response to the loss of animators, and markets, to the war
effort. This sequence is a wonderful little fantasy, with narration and
voicings by Nelson Eddy (Disney uses multitrack recording here for one of the
first times). It ends tragically, in line with operatic tradition – and I
personally mark it as another soul-crushing moment in a long life of
Disney-inspired trauma.
Show Business/Dir:
Edward L. Marin/1945
If You Knew
Susie/Dir: Gordon Douglas/1948
This takeoff on the Sextet from Lucia was first used in Show
Business and repeated in Susie;
Cantor and Davis had a comic affinity as well as an offscreen romance. Susie was Cantor’s last starring movie
role.
Long-Haired Hare/Dir:
Chuck Jones/1949
The Rabbit of
Seville/Dir: Chuck Jones/1950
What’s Opera,
Doc?/Dir. Chuck Jones/1957
Chuck Jones’ mastery of animated comedy was such that these
are not only the funniest and most familiar opera parodies in our culture, but
three of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons, period.
The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother/Dir: Gene Wilder/1975
I have no idea why Gene Wilder inserted a long parody of Un ballo in maschera here (it does
forward the plot, much as in Wonder Man),
but I’m awfully glad he did. Few actors could pull it off better than Dom
DeLuise and Madeline Kahn. “Stop that, you’re such as tickle-tease/You know I’m
super passionate . . .” Classic.
All the Great Operas
in 10 Minutes/Dir: Kim Thompson/1992
It can be read either as a condemnation of opera’s bloody
absurdities, or . . . no, actually, that’s the only way it can be read.
However, the true aficionado will laugh wisely as the body count mounts.
The Abduction of
Figaro/Dir: Peter Schickele/1998
Schickele’s comic alter ego P.D.Q. Bach has enjoyed
recordings of his The Stoned Guest and
A Little Nightmare Music previously,
but The Abduction of Figaro is his “simply
grand” masterpiece. Any opera that opens in “a town on the seacoast of Spain or
Italy or somewhere” and includes the Dance of the Seven Pails is all right by
me.
Television has played a lot with opera as well. The
fastidious Felix Unger from The Odd Couple
series was a notorious opera maven. Regular viewers of TV’s The Simpsons have been exposed to plenty
of operatic put-downs. Sesame Street
helped the operatic cause immensely by incorporating operatic visitors into its
broadcasts, and performers such as Marilyn Horne and Samuel Ramey were happy to
be silly for the sake of educating kids (not to mention the fabulous Placido
Flamingo, the show’s muppet who sang for the Nestropolitan Opera!).
Here are some other highlights:
“Gallipacci”/”Caesar’s
Hour”/Oct. 10, 1955, NBC
A worthy successor to the original Show of Shows, Caesar’s Hour
had a great writing team and top-notch performers.
“The
Producer”/”Gilligan’s Island”/Dir: George Cahan, Ida Lupino/Oct. 3, 1966
The most popular episode of the series guest-starred Phil
Silvers as the scheming producer Harold Hecuba. The castaways perform a musical
version of Hamlet, using tunes from Carmen and The Tales of Hoffmann (thank goodness someone brought records and a
gramophone on that three-hour tour!).
“The O-U
Song”/Written by Tom Lehrer, arranged by Joe Raposo/”The Electric Company”
(1971-1977, PBS)
Tom
Lehrer was a comedy sensation from 1953 through 1960. He left entertainment to
pursue a distinguished career as a mathematics professor. Aside from a few
pointed songs for the political satire show This
Was the Week That Was and some nifty tunes, like this one, for educational
TV.
“The Muppet
Show”/Guest Beverly Sills/Nov. 8, 1979
Of course, Bubbles goes up against Miss Piggy in a mash-up
of Traviata, Aida, and Wagner in something called, of course, Pigoletto.
“Kombat Opera
Presents”/Created and composed by Richard Thomas/BBC, 2007
The most innovative and interesting use of opera in a
non-opera context I’ve found. These five episodes, composed by Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer: The Opera) mock popular
British TV shows of the time, contain very strong language and are NOT
family-friendly or safe for work! However, they really leap forward in terms of
marrying cinematic techniques to operatic structure . . . and are funny as
hell.
The Funai Electric Company of Japan makes its last Video
Cassette Recorder, and the last one for the foreseeable future, in August. It’s
over.
The first videocassette recording of a film was released in
1967. Starting in 1977, the Video Home System consumer-level analog recording
tape was the film-industry standard. In 1997, the DVD began encroaching on the
VHS tape’s territory. The last major-market film (and future trivia answer), “Eragon,”
was released on VHS in 2007, and a year later, tape manufacture ceased
entirely.
Now whatever is left out there on magnetic video tape that
is playable will be stuck in a world that’s rejected its playback technology.
Like the V-disc, the 8-track tape, the player piano roll, the filmstrip, and
the LaserDisc, it has dead-ended, become a sport in the genetic sense of the
word. It’s a now-pointless mutation.
VHS tapes were essential to a very particular kind of
understanding of film. Not since the advent of art houses and repertory cinemas
on the American coasts in the late 1950s had such a stretch on unseen films
been found, easily accessible in the open market.
We viewers were previously subject to the imperatives of the
market. In childhood, there were a few enthusiasts who wrangled 16-millimeter
films, but these were few and far between, and well-off. We could find some of
the output of the famous Blackhawk Films on 8-millimeter and Super 8 (Super 8!)
at the local libraries, and we owned an old 8-millimeter job that played our
family home movies, and Blackhawks of Chaplin, Abbott and Costello, and Tarzan.
Otherwise, first-run films came and went, and if they were
good but not popular, you might never see them again. Broadcast television, the
first great secondary market, was a yawning abyss of hours to be filled, and
old movies filled them. “The Wizard of Oz” played every Easter, Christmas
movies at Christmas, etc. We used to go through the pre-cable TV guides every
Sunday and underline and/or circle (no highlighters yet) upcoming obscure gems,
making late-night appointments to stare bloody-eyed at the boob tube, getting
through a rare Douglas Sirk or Roy William Neill film, or “Alligator People,”
or even some freakish stretches of quality such as Bondarchuk’s “War andPeace,” through the incessant
interruptions of commercial blocks.
The bulky boxes of tapespool littered our weekend floors for
decades, as we chucked them into the maw of the machine, which ground and
gnawed at the boxes, straining to turn its gears and play that precious tape.
(We had, and still have, a TOP-LOADER! Good times!) The revolution was us.
The VCR released us from time and space, and gave us
ownership. We eagerly caught up with films we WANTED to see, WHEN we wanted to
see them. We could now set timers and tape TV shows too, free our viewing
schedule from the intentions and ends of the programmers. The power of the
movie theaters faced its second serious challenge at this time, after the
introduction of broadcast television and anti-monopoly action brought down the
big studios after World War II.
All the films we’d read about that we’d never seen rained
into our lives. It was now possible for the average person to self-educate
about the length and breadth of cinema.
The primary downsides of the VCR were the laughably
difficult programming problems the recording system always seemed to have, the
clanky, cranky laboring of the devices, and the grainy, stretched, and
stuttering quality of the image itself. (Anyone on the production side from the
period will tell you about the hellish nightmare that was editing videotape.)
As a legacy medium, the VHS tape still has cachet. Yale
picked up 2,700 of them last year, mostly horror films. Stephanie Rogers’ story
for the Yale News points out that the VHS and VCR spurred the rise of
low-budget cinema, particularly in the cost-effective horror genre, and
direct-to-rental market helps to undermine cinema-going. (Pornography was, as
always, on the cutting edge of whatever technological development came along,
and thrived as well.)
The DVD murdered the VHS tape. Its infinitely better image,
searchability, and capacity made it the winner over the tape. DVDs gave every
film freak far more than even they could digest in one sitting. The advent of
multiple data channels on each disc gave birth to the commentary track, scads
of now-expected “extras,” alternative edits, contextualizing content, gag and
blooper reels, and films within films. (The damn things do scratch easily.)
Now what’s next? A few years ago, Oliver Stone held up a DVD
and said, “You may be the last generation to own a movie.” The video (now DVD)
rental stores are almost extinct themselves. Even the Redbox movie-dispensing
kiosk service, which killed the Blockbuster video-rental chain, finds itself
becoming a less profitable anachronism. Its DVD rentals were down a whopping 17
percent in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Now that we are streaming film, we are purchasing temporary
access to a product that’s not material. Pay for play. Downloads are possible,
but we’ve come to find that digital files are just as prone to disruption,
damage, overwriting, and loss as all those playlists you made on GrooveShark.
And that’s disturbing. I have about 2,000 films on DVD, very
consciously chosen to provide me with an index of great films (OK, and “The
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” and “Pootie Tang”) for reference and repeated
viewings. I am hoping the kids get into them and are accidentally infected with
the rewards of quality viewing. How long until I have to jury-rig some kind of
playback system for this collection I have no desire to rebuild again, from
scratch? We all seem to end up living primarily in the last medium we are
comfortable with, the one we commit to financially and emotionally.
That being said, I am still hoarding the following, as hope
springs eternal – 78 rpm records, 45s, and standard vinyl; first-generation
audiotape, cassettes, V-discs, CDs, DVDs, and . . . somewhere on this dusty
shelf I’m probing . . . my last VHS tapes.
There are 15 tapes here I deemed indispensable a decade ago.
I wonder what’s on them? Can I see the content on them some other way?
Here’s a head cleaner. “A Rugrats Chanukah,” “A Rugrats
Passover,” both available via Hulu. My friends Kathy and Robin Beck’s hilarious
documentary, “Grandpa’s Still in the TUFF Shed.” Keeper. Three vintage Daffy
Duck cartoon compilations, one of Bugs Bunny, one merely labeled “classic.”
(You can see where my priorities lie.) Keep.
Of course, I have to hang on to the Mary Martin “Peter Pan”
TV production. Priceless!
Homemade mixes: here’s a John Ford triple feature, “The Lost
Patrol,” “The Informer,” and “Wagon Master.” All easily found via streaming.
Here are two I can’t find anywhere else: Jack Gold’s
brilliant and underrated retelling of “Robin Crusoe,” 1975’s “Man Friday,” with
Peter O’Toole and Richard Roundtree. And the PBS mini-series version of Joseph
Conrad’s “Nostromo” from 1996. “Nostromo” was the last, great, unrealized
project of David Lean’s, and this production lacks something vital but points
the way toward a truly definitive adaptation of the novel.
The first and last “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
episodes. Of course. Keep.
Another compilation: the documentary on Russell Scott,
Denver’s TV clown Blinky (can stream it); “The Adventures of Robin Hood”
(likewise) and “The Maltese Falcon” (I have the DVD). Goodbye!
A documentary on my hero, Steinbeck; a miscellany of Laurel
and Hardy shorts, some vintage Dana Gould (a criminally under-regarded standup
comedian and writer), and some of those delectable vintage Fleischer Brothers
Superman cartoons. Keeper.
And the family home videos. Our father’s side of the family
was ravenously to new technology, and the earliest home-movie footage we have
dates back to the mid-1930s. Our dauntless cousin Elaine picked up dozens of
these Super 8 and 8mm home-movie shorts and had them transferred to videotape.
(A dissection of moving family images from before my father’s birth to my
youngest sister’s babyhood deserves another essay, and some therapy.) There are
hours there to be pored over by curious descendants, discussed, laughed at, explained,
and used as a springboard of associations. “That’s Aunt Emma,” I say, and her
clean, damp, kitchen-y smell, her scrollwork piano, a laundry chute, the cuckoo
clock, the steeply raked back yard, all manifest themselves, instantly.
The VHS tape in this last case will serve as a link to a new
technology, duped to DVD and then undoubtedly to whatever new forms of
recording and transmission evolve. But it’s a fact of physics that there is
loss of signal, a weakening of the resolution of the image, each time a
duplication to another medium is made. Will these irreplaceable ghosts of me,
my parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, and friends fade away down the
years like pen strokes on a palimpsest, until finally forgotten and lost? When a
medium dies, that erosion, that slippage occurs, and I worry.
Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes in 'A Face in the Crowd' (Kazan, 1957) - a chilling foreshdowing of Donald Trump's rise.
Let's face it -- Trump is not going to make it to November. He is nuts, not that this ever stopped a candidate before; but his relentless egocentrism dooms him as a "team player" who could unite the party and coordinate its efforts in a time when the Grand Old Party desperately needs it.It's like watching "All the King's Men" on fast-forward.
Despite my rabid liberalism, I come from a long line of political Neanderthals. One grandfather was evidently the only person in his Nebraska county who voted for Goldwater. So, in some kind of echo of a way, I am sad about the party.
So, here's what will happen. Either Trump will go nutso on-air like Andy Griffith in "A Face in the Crowd" --
or the powers that be will have him incapacitated, as it does with anyone who threatens the power structure.
So, who can the party draft at this late date? Surely none of the whores who endorsed Trump. All other prospective candidates have demonstrated their unelectability. So who can they get? Here are some ideas:
1. Abraham Lincoln. Upside: First Republican president, freed the slaves, won the Civil War. Great approval ratings. Big box-office draw. Downside: Dead, but then so was Reagan from 1984 on.
2. Bernie Sanders. I know this is counter-intuitive -- stay with me. Upside: Good Hilary competitor, good name recognition right now. Downside: a Socialist. Hey, if you can work with Trump, surely you can make a deal with Bernie. Just get high and make a deal with Bernie.
3. Styrofoam peanuts. Upside: Protects fragile objects, fun to play with, not racist. Downside: Inert material; collects static and clings to you, much like Trump.
I am open to more suggestions; obviously all inhabitants of Linnean classification system are eligible.
I
was on my way to a party last night (OK, it’s tonight, because I’m a genius)
and I stopped at the store to get something to bring. I’m tired, my feet hurt,
I grabbed the first thing I saw – a box of a dozen assorted doughnuts (NOT
DONUTS; don’t get me started, or I will have a conniption fit). They were discounted
twice. I was so lazy that I not only grabbed something off the closest display
to me as I entered, I picked the one on the top because I’m too lazy to even
expend the energy to BEND.
As I
shuffle with the box to the checkout, a voice comes over the loudspeaker
announcing that doughnuts are discounted A THIRD TIME. The checker makes sure I
get the discount, and I am generally applauded by the staff for making the
purchase. “Buying doughnuts!” they exclaim, nodding their heads and almost
pumping their fists.
Now,
one of two things has happened here – either they made waaaaaay too many
doughnuts yesterday, or I entered a state of mystical grace imposed by the
Doughnut Dimension, turning a reluctant errand into a triumphal progress out of
“Excalibur.”
One
set of grandparents were farmers, the other champion rose growers. I spent my
childhood digging, planting, pruning, weeding, watering, and picking. Don’t get
me wrong, I loved it – it was a perfect way to commune with nature, to instill
a work ethic, and to partake of the satisfaction and frustrations of growing
things.
By
the time I’d reached 15, though, I was thoroughly tired of being used for free
labor. (Part of the family legacy. That’s why my ancestors’ families were so
large until the 20th century – it was a need for many hands to work
the farm, combined with the relatively high child mortality rate. We bred
promiscuously in order to survive.) I wanted to spend the rest of my life in
the allergy-free confines of the local library, and any theater that would hire
me.
So,
the calling was not passed down. Two generations ago, we were titans of the
yard; now, it looks like hoboes live at our address. Grandma would be pissed.
On
top of my natural indolence is the crippling arthritis that’s crept up on me.
Add to this children who are equally loathe to push the mower, and we end up
with a backyard that resembles a nature preserve. Waist-high grasses, weeds of
every variety, yuck it up and party on, heedless of my sporadic attempts to
control them.
Enter
my beloved. Extremely intelligent and armed with the best intentions, she has
nearly destroyed our yard several times.
This
can be directly attributed to Craigslist. The digital marketplace has unleashed
an onslaught of marginally viable humans who think they can perform just about
any project, task, or service trained and reputable professionals can, for far
less cost.
This
is not true.
However,
our glorious entrepreneurial system has created this thriving nether region, a
prime mechanism for the destruction of transactional value. It enables anyone
to assert anything about themselves professionally without verification, part
of the American carnival of self-reinvention . . . just like when a murderer
starting a new life in another town with a fake I.D. Whether you think you are
a carpenter, an accountant, or a shaman, whether you know what you’re doing or
have killed anyone doing so, there is a place to post your shingle online.
Of
course, I am that stolid person who doesn’t trust bargains. I use established
businesses. I pay too much. I am guilty of using substandard professionals for
far too long, because of my stubborn sense of customer loyalty. I’m no better.
But I am less annoyed.
The
first time the yard got out of hand, the sight-unseen shoemakers’ elves who
were to work their magic on our lawn were, literally, crackheads. Unwashed,
unused to the light of day. They pulled up in an old pickup truck, towing a
dilapidated landscaping trailer that looked like Huck and Jim’s raft on wheels.
Fever-eyed and hyperactive, the lead worker, a sinewy little man with a bushy
‘fro like Marc Bolan, picked up a chainsaw and went at it.
The
first and only thing he went at was the decorative flowering bush at the end of
the driveway, at that time seven feet high. The little man slashed away,
hacking out about 75 percent of it, as his wife or wives and children proceeded
to tear out all of my Cerastium tomentosum,
leaving the weeds beside them alone. Between this debris and the leavings of
the one unfortunate bush, which Marc Bolan piled onto his trailer and slashed
at again and again with his chainsaw, like some Spirit of Arboreal Vengeance
brought to life.
After
two hours, they had attacked only about 50 square feet of my third of an acre. Finally
I dashed out into the yard, stopped them, gave them money, and sent them away.
The
next year, it was another cut-rate (as it were) disaster. This time, it was
someone “recommended,” by whom I will never know, which is fortunate as now
they will never find a flaming paper bag full of dog poop in their porch.
The
phrase “now don’t get me wrong” often prefaces outbursts of racism, and so it
does here. Now, don’t get me wrong. (Here come the bona fides that seemingly
excuse my hard feelings. I took Spanish all through high school.) I have
Hispanic grandchildren. I love them. But, I do not “love” any race
indiscriminately; as a paranoid, I am deeply suspicious of everyone on an
equal-opportunity basis.
The
pair of workers that made it to the house this time didn’t speak English, for
quite some time. They didn’t seem to understand what was needed, interpreting a
request to “trim things back” as an opportunity to recreate the defoliation of
Cambodia. Grass, trees, bushes, flowers, all fell before their gasoline-powered
scythes.
I
stumbled on the scene when they were about halfway through. Rapidly chaining
myself to the maple tree like an Alaskan protester, I vehemently refused to let
them continue, in both English and my Primer Libro-level Spanish. No dice.
However, the magic words, “Well, then, tell your boss I’m not going to pay you”
revealed an acute comprehension of English, with clipped, articulate responses
worthy of Jeremy Irons. Assholes come in all colors, faiths, and sexes.
They
left, taking their equipment but not their debris.
This
year, the fun resumed. Heavy rains and an impending graduation conspired to
make the yard worse than ever. A digital shout-out resulted this time in the
sudden, unexpected appearance of a little old man with a backpack and an
absolutely new riding mower just as we were leaving for our son’s high-school
graduation.
“I
got lost,” the old man said. Evidently he had seen the electronic appeal and
ridden his mower unannounced from his home elsewhere in town, just like Richard
Farnsworth in “The Straight Story.” We thanked him and gestured frantically
towards the back yard, all while eating, dressing, and wrapping gifts.
He
putted back there, and returned shortly. “You’re going to have to move some
stuff,” he said. We laughed.
“It’s
pretty bad back there,” he said. We laughed.
I
think he did the best he could. He accosted us as we ran out the front door and
into the car. “You’re going to have to do some trimming back there,” he said.
We
thanked him. He drove his mower carefully around the car, cutting down three of
my roses and another large swathe of Cerastium
tomentosum in the process, took a left, and putted up the road, a demented
Lone Ranger of horticulture, piloting a chrome-yellow Yardman. We took off.
Did
he ever find his way home? I hope not. I like to think he is somewhere near the
Wyoming border by now, periodically refilling his tank and stopping for a sweet
roll and coffee every now and then.
Can
we control these people? We cannot. We can do what I do – go with reputable
professionals who charge too much. In the long run it’s cheaper.
Because I am in the bathroom, I am of course reading “The
Pocket Daring Book for Girls.” Opening it randomly, I come across the
instructions for “Making a Peg Board Game,” and I break out into a cold sweat.
I have never been handy. I have recaulked the bathtub 12
times in the last eight years; a professional is coming Tuesday. My skills are
inversely proportional to the complexity of the task involved.
My grandfather was a masterful craftsman and gardener. His
workroom was well-stocked and organized. He built his own Ping-Pong table, for
chrissake, and it’s still standing. Unfortunately, I take after his son, my
dad. I am a complete mechanical idiot. (It’s an anomaly – my offspring and
other relatives can function pretty well in reality.)
Oh, I tried to reform. We had Boy Scout handbooks, and books
on craftsmanship and woodcraft for boys. I don’t really know what girls did back
in those days – hemstitching, playing the spinet, and waiting for inevitable
impregnation? I used up a lot of wood, and nails, and saw blades, creating a
lot of Cubist-looking sailing vessels that were promptly lost down Ralston
Creek. But following instructions?
With apologies to authors Buchanan and Peskowitz, whose book
is actually a godsend for young women who, quite rightly, know that DIY fun and
adventure is no longer the province of boys only –
“Perfect for car trips and rainy days, this ancient logic
game is surprisingly easy to make, but difficult to master.”
If you have seen this triangular brain teaser before, you
know the gist of it. 15 holes, 14 golf tees. Jump the tees over each other
until only one is left. Or you’re dumb. Twenty minutes with one of these and I am ready for a conniption fit. These litter the tables at Cracker
Barrels nationwide. I have found golf tees in my food there.
In fact, I didn’t realize the playing pieces were golf tees
until I played golf for the first and last time. “Hey,” I said, “why are you
putting your golf ball on that triangular game board piece?”
In the car, the pieces keep getting lost and resurface stuck
to, or into, your heinie. Now that we have roaming data plans, the only way
this game is going to be used in the car is if you’re in a dead wifi spot, or
to batter a hitchhiker to death with. Rainy days, same thing – I prefer to kill
hitchhikers on rainy days, anyway. It’s more romantic.
“Needed: one flat board 6” x 6” (at least one inch thick is
a good size). Any shape is fine; it doesn’t have to be triangular.”
Oh, lord, I see a glimmer of light! I had the saw out and
was just thinking about how, when I cut in any direction save the grain, the
saw shudders, rocks, bolts, and the blade silently and swiftly takes off extra
pounds in seconds. Whew.
I now have a random chunk of wood. Next:
“14 fluted dowel pins, 5/16” x 1 1/2”. Available at any
hardware store.”
Oh, really, smartass? Have you been to my local hardware
store lately? It’s not the place where everyone has matching aprons. It’s run
by Bob, a non-recovering alcoholic with memory problems. There are no “departments,”
or “signs,” or “aisles.” This makes every quest for a specific part a kind of
stream-of-consciousness spelunking expedition. Fluted dowel pins? Fluted dowel
pins. They sound expensive.
“Ruler” Wow. Now . . . you’d think, since my children have
to buy a new ruler each every September, as they can’t of course hang on to
them (are they helicoptered with glee out the bus windows on the way back from
the last day of school?), that we – would – have – a – RULER in this house! All
right. All right. Breathe. I have a 3” x 5” card, I’ll fake it.
“Power drill, with a 5/16” bit.” You really don’t know
anything about me, do you? Sigh.
“Make a dot at the top of the board for your starting point.”
What is the top? Are there guidelines on what constitutes the top of a chunk of
wood? Is it my call? These profound metaphysical questions can often crowd out
the task at hand, leaving me contemplating silently until it gets dark outside
and I am brought in.
“Lightly draw one diagonal line and then another, marking your
triangle on the wood.” AHA! So they want you to make a triangle anyway! I get
it. Clever. They totally styled me by not making me use a power saw.
“In addition to the top dot, mark
four dots down one side of the triangle, four along the other side, and three
dots along the bottom.”
Yeah, yap, I’m doing it. This
might work!
“Draw dots for the middle holes,
too. Use your ruler so everything lines up.” Meh.
“Drill a ½” hole right where you
have drawn each dot.”
Oh, the hell with it. Say, would
you call 911, please? I need to go lie down.
Tune in next time, when I go to the Burn Ward after making fudge.
The great cartoonist and key first editor of Mad Magazine
introduced one simple little word into the magazine in May 1954, one that made absolutely
no sense. It resonated, and Kurtzman’s brilliant successor as Mad editor, Al
Feldstein, kept the gag running.
When we were kids we made a daily pilgrimage after school to
the Duckwall’s five-and-dime store a third of a mile from our house, hoping to
find a new Captain America comic book, or another gruesome, Joe Orlando-edited House of Mystery, or the new issue of
Mad Magazine. Somewhere down the line, in one gloriously silly, juvenile number
or other, my reading eyes skidded to a halt at the word “potrzebie.”
Here’s the buildup: there are many faultlines in my
thinking. All early childhood memories are intense and fragmented, but mine
seem particularly adrift, though, contextless and overwhelmingly associated
with a sheer, staggering, fearful thrill of perceiving color, taste, smell,
sound, and all, extending even to synesthesia. I couldn’t distance myself, everything
was too loud, far too real. I could barely stand the sheer vividnesss of other
people.
We all need context, a structure of perception that
underlies judgement and choice. Fortunately, I had a world of books to comfort
me. Here were super-real experiences that could be controlled, set at arms’
length, put down and pondered.
Another ready-made reality filter was the dull, Caucasian
Christianity I inherited unquestioningly. Edged with shadows of Scandinavian
gloom, girded with the magical power of repression, my Midwest Lutheranism
contained a unified conception of the cosmos on every level, neatly anchored by
profoundly powerful and somewhat grumpy allfather. Even after I lost faith,
that context slotted me into reality, gave me a standpoint to work from. I
found a way to contain my terror of being randomly buffeted about by my senses
and the thoughts and feelings they stirred.
By the mid-‘70s, though, we had all given up on church. I
was still working my way through the local library, quite literally. (I nailed
the children’s’ library in about a year and a half. My mother had to sign off
on me checking out insane armloads from the adult side after that.) By now I
was thoroughly aware of the nature of the universe and my place in it. It just
wasn’t especially thrilling. I could function, and did, grayly, senses turned
down.
Then I hit “potrzebie.” It wasn’t even being used as a punchline!
Like many a mental hotfoot, it was slipped in casually. No matter how anxious I
was to make sense of it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure of much, but I did know my
vocabulary words. This was not among them. Our house dictionaries, and those of
the local library, provided not a clue. I am sure I had read “Jabberwocky” by
that time, but somehow the concept of the non-sequitir still escaped me. Now it
hit me between the eyes like a ballpeen hammer, a one-word, Borscht Belt Zen
koan that exploded my mind.
I short-circuited. I laughed hysterically. Here was a
gratuitous, fabricated formation of letters, could mean anything, could mean
nothing, thrown onto the page without let or hinder, heedless of the laws of
usage. It not only ignored the needs of the reader, it mocked them.
[Backstory: “Potrzebie” is a Polish word meaning “a need.”
Harvey Kurtzman ran across it in a list of instructions in multiple languages
that came with a bottle of aspirin. He cut it out, copied it, and started pasting
it into the backgrounds of random Mad stories. It caught on, along with other
classic Mad neologisms as furshlugginer, veeblefetzer, ecch, blecch, hoohah, fladdap,
and shtoink. A satiric Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures persists in
those pages to this day.]
And it invited you to mock along. It denied meaning. My tiny
little mind didn’t know this yet, but Kurtzman was dipping into the same well
of absurdity as the Surrealists. The waves of Eurosilliness ran through Lear,
Carroll, Jarry, Joyce, and Ionesco, and quickly migrated into lower-brow
artists such as Benchley, Perelman, Spike Milligan, Ernie Kovacs, Bob and Ray, and
of course Mad.
“Potrzebie” gave me the power to step outside the dull,
orderly system of consensual reality. Meanings were arbitrary, and, at base,
silly and funny. And all my mental constructs went from stone to Jell-O. I was
connected to unmediated experience again, without the terror of being
overwhelmed by it. Life was laughable, was enjoyable. And I started creating. I
didn’t know it, but I was doomed to a life of comedy.
This newly provisional reality could be tested for validity
with the Sword of Potrzebie. Any given person, organization, creed, plan,
system, was permeable, subject to the erosion of humorous query, skepticism,
mockery, lampoon, and parody. The simple addition of the tiny word “potrzebie”
into any magnificent but false landscape would explode it, set it aflame, bring
it crashing down.
Not that this approach doesn’t have its dangers. Humor
strips away superfluities. Like many young comics, I couldn’t tell the
difference between myself and my act. I single-mindedly tore everything apart, including
people, looking for material. To deny the meaning of everything is an untenable
place from which to live – I tried it and it didn’t work.
I stopped staying up ‘til 3 in the morning at smoky bars
telling dick jokes. I found a God I could live with, and writing. I have a
family that puts up with me. My friends are the best in the world – they are
funny, and don’t take too much seriously, but are absolutely solid, reliable,
and honest, unencumbered by the phoney-baloney bullshit that passes for workaday
relationships in this dodgy world, among the normatives, the control group.
I have very little money and a wheelbarrow-full of peace of
mind. I owe it all to potrzebie.
American
Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny
Christopher
Miller
2013
HarperCollins
New
York
By BRAD WEISMANN
Did
you ever wonder why being stuck on a desert island is supposed to be so damn
funny? Or for that matter, why falling safes, rolling pins, snoring, pie
fights, hoboes, alley cats, and big butts are an enduring part of America’s
comedy DNA? And -- do you want to know what those enormous sweat drops that fly
from nervous cartoon characters are called?
Christopher
Miller’s mother lode of old-school memes, tropes, symbols, routines and topics
is here to help. American Cornball
combs through the 20th Century’s postcards, ephemera, vaudeville
sketches, radio shows, comics, cartoons, and books to assemble a definitive
roster of stuff that used to crack us up.
A
joke’s half-life is usually dramatically short. Topical humor is by definition fleeting.
Any comedian will tell you that comic style changes over decades. Even a
successful one whose work is grounded in general human observation such as
Jerry Seinfeld finds he’s not connecting with a younger generation these days.
The comics our parents loved we saw as hacks, and our children will feel the
same. (If Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison had lived, would they have wound up
playing the South Florida condo circuit?) American
Cornball reminds us ars longa,
comoedia brevis.
Miller’s
voracious, if not masochistic, research, grounds an A-to-Z survey that
concentrates on American culture from the birth of the comic strip in 1895 to
the 1960s, when the idea of a large, homogenous common culture that shared a
toolkit of common laughter-generating topics sputtered and died. These primeval
gags lurked everywhere in the old days. Miller bravely tracks down their origins
and then offers interpretation and analysis, throwing in citation, context, and
a timeline as well. (For instance, he carefully breaks down the variegated
comic possibilities posed by the three classic home-invasion figures: the
plumber, the iceman, and the door-to-door salesman. Who knew?)
Miller’s
peculiar genius here is to pare down these examinations to brisk, entertaining
passages. His crisp wit sustains us throughout, and he constantly stuffs his
entries with tangents of information that make the reader not want to miss any
stray nugget of information. The casual reader can enjoy dipping in here and
there; the diligent (OK obsessive) reader will absorb many insights Miller
deduces from the no-longer-quite-so-hilarious evidence in front of him.
He
doesn’t shy away from the plethora of racist, violent and misogynist humor that
played so large a role in the comedy of the time and that we now longer
officially find acceptable. Long-gone ethnic caricatures of blacks, Jews,
“Polacks,” Italians, and “Irishmen” have already been joined by women-driver
jokes and may soon also see jokes about homosexuals join them in retirement.
Miller neither despises political correctness nor endorses old-school
tastelessness; like the best scholars he puts it all out there, tells us what
he thinks, and leaves the rest up to us.
And
dammit, it’s just funny. By the way, those huge cartoon sweat drops are termed
plewds. There’s a lot more where that came from, but you have to conquer this
entertaining tome of nerdy brilliance to find out.
Two groupies admiring that consumate vocalist, Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer.
By BRAD WEISMANN
"Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit . . . They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud." Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
"It's better to have done something bad than to have done nothing." --Preston Sturges
Hey, how’s it going? Mind if I ask you something? What if
you’re a hack? An artistic fraud? A waste of time and money?
Guess what – it doesn’t matter.
For years, I strove (strived? stroved?) to make it. Too arrogant
and idiosyncratic to follow any normal course of employment, I went from acting
to comedy to radio to journalism to social media to, hopefully finally, writing
and editing. I wasted a lot of time trying to achieve that supposed moment when
popular acceptance would be mine and I would be another cultural icon, embedded
in beneficence and solvency in the firmament of collective consciousness.
It didn’t really work out. And now, it doesn’t have to.
It’s important that every person of artistic bent collide
with the real world, at least initially. The first thing you learn is that
everyone is talented, and that talent doesn’t have much to do with success. Starting
out at the bottom, working crap jobs to stay alive, learning how to be a
functioning part of a larger whole, all important skills. Learning that truisms
such as showing up on time and ready, with an open mind, put you miles ahead of
others, or that you have to know how to take orders before you can give them,
or that the worth of your commodifiable skills are not identical with your
inherent worth as a person.
It’s instructional to see business deals blow up, projects
collapse under you, bosses make choices that doom you and others to
unemployment – to see how many ways thing scan go south. Your work can be scorned,
ignored, or simply not show up on society’s radar. However, at some point, if
you are still capable of producing creative content, you can stop standing in
your own way, cease worrying and just get the work done. Your standards are too
high.
Have you ever tried to write something popular? Has it ever
worked? (I’m not talking to you, Nicholas Sparks.) No one knows what will be a
hit – either now or in the scope of human history . . . hey, might as well aim
high. Critic Anthony Lane memorably read and reviewed the literary top 10 of 1945
in 1995; the results were ghastly and involved books no one now remembers. OK –
my grandpa had a copy of “Forever Amber” stashed on a high bookshelf – I heard
there was sex in it and dashed eagerly through its pages, unsatisfied.)
You can never tell. It is a truth in standup comedy that
generally, the jokes you’ve written that you really love don’t get a great
response but that the ones you aren’t so crazy often click with the crowd. If
you have a bone of self-preservation in your body, you keep the jokes that work
and toss or rework the ones that won’t. But how many of your darlings do you
have to kill to make it? I try to balance my desire to write about whatever the
hell I want with the need to craft something interesting and readable to
humanity at large. I am still often wrong. Oddly enough, when I stopped
worrying, I started selling more stories. My voice got stronger. I could hear
myself instead of my anxieties. You need to express yourself, whether there’s a
check at the end of the trail or not. It’s a crap shoot.
And even when you get to that point, there is still the
concern about if the work will speak to the masses, if it will “endure.” Come
on. Really? When I was younger, I and the rest of my fellow struggling, resentful,
well-drink-slurping comics in the back of the club hated the comedy hacks that
always got time in the clubs, even though they did the same banal crap over and
over. I used to scorn TV shows and TV writers, the whole shoddy
lowest-common-denominator bunch.
Now, I find that many of my friends write for and produce these
TV shows. They do it well. They have houses, spouses, kids to put though
school, and they earn every penny of their salaries. They are highly
intelligent, talented, and tough people -- who sometimes have created forgettable
entertainment. So what? Once I learned about these people’s work weeks, my
respect for them went stratospheric.
If you have been alive for any length of time in this world,
you need a little mindless distraction. Crap in our entertainment diet is good
for you, roughage for your aesthetic digestive tract. For all that I grew up on
high-falutin’ films like “Children of Paradise,” I needed “Abbott and Costello
Meet the Mummy,” too. I needed Miro and Matisse, AND Famous Monsters of
Filmland and Tales from the Crypt. As Patton Oswalt put it in “Silver Screen
Fiend,” “If people need bread and circuses, better it be bread from the finest
flour and springwater, and circuses under the cleanest canvas with the
healthiest animals.”
And besides, what harm does bad art cause? Someone I can’t
call to mind at present insisted that artists’ errors are unimportant as,
unlike doctors, chefs, or politicians, when an artist screws up, no one dies.
In fact, horrible artistic efforts have spurred even greater ones – think of
Mark Twain being inspired to write merely by reading James Fennimore Cooper
until he couldn’t take it anymore? And in fact, Cooper began writing in
reaction to the even worse popular literature of HIS day.
And is it every really definitively crap? The 12-cent superhero
comic books we treasured bloomed into a mythos that has sold billions of
dollars in movie tickets. Jerry Springer became the subject of an avant-garde
opera. John Kennedy Toole wrote “A Confederacy of Dunces,” killed himself in
1969, won the Pulitzer for it in 1981. Stick with it – you never know.
You have very little, if any, control over how your work
will be taken, or utilized. Sometimes, like a favorite character actor, you may
find yourself as that familiar ace in the corner of a movie screen whose name
can never be summoned. Even Boris Karloff, typed if ever an actor was, said
this:
“One always hears of actors complaining
of being typed – if he’s young, he’s typed as a juvenile; if he’s handsome, he’s
typed as a leading man. I was lucky. Whereas bootmakers have to spend millions
to establish a trademark, I was handed a trademark free of charge. When an
actor gets into a position to select his own roles, he’s in big trouble, for he
never knows what he can do best. I’m sure I would be damn good as Little Lord Fauntleroy,
who would pay ten cents to see it?”
Within the confines of what we are capable of and what
people can absorb from our work, we can make magical things happen. It just
never goes quite the way they told you.
And hey, what about having a life? That’s all the stuff that
happens every day while you are waiting for the universe to tell you that you
are loved. That is important. When I get published, I get a spectacular rush –
for about 10 minutes. Then I got back to whatever else it is that’s on my desk
to be done. But my wife and kids and family and friends and pets and nature and
God and music and baseball and good Mexican food and IBC root beer . . . these
things stay with you far longer. Pay attention to them.
If things go as they have been, I need never worry about the
pitfalls of popularity. Here’s how it works: I write first, I sell it after. (The
few major-media gatekeepers left standing aren’t guarding much of anything; and
their choices are as always dictated by budgets, not an altruistic desire to
exhibit your genius to all and sundry.) Nothing gets wasted; I can always
rework something that doesn’t move commercially and post it myself. Maybe I’m
an arteeste, but the only thing that gets me through a work day is craftsmanship,
discipline, and a good will to forge ahead. Writing a story can be as complex,
tedious, and ultimately rewarding as building a cabinet.
You never know where your obsessions will take you. After
years of just keeping my head down and writing no matter what, I found that a
lot of work that I thought was random coalesced into themed groups – and that I
had pretty much written the sample chapters for four books, which I am now
peddling. Will they sell? I don’t know. But they are there, and they weren’t
before.
And what are awards and pans but ways of categorizing and
controlling creatives? You have no control over that, either. What if your work
doesn’t get read? What if someone, just one person, finds it hundreds of years
later and gets something out of it? In my researched pieces, I find this all
the time – as if someone long dead was thinking of me and left some
information, some guidance I needed. Love is as strong as death, but writing is
stronger.
And what if your masterpieces aren’t just scorned or ignored
but lost? Destroyed? Your laptop’s hit by lightning, the studio burns down, the
recordings get thrown out. Once during a period of volunteering at the local
Goodwill store I had the extremely sad experience of seeing a cache of 19th-centry
family photos, and 78-rpm records, smashed and thrown into the trash because no
one could conceive that they might have some value, or were worth preserving.
Who knows what works of genius, of irreplaceable memories, have gone out with
the trash?
I believe that the effort to create, even if unrewarded, works
on some spiritual level as a counteractive to the more selfish and hateful
impulses that drive this world. To glean meaning from a seemingly random and
unfair world is an assertion of worth and significance.
In the end, you’ll be dead. It won’t matter if you will end
up rivaling Shakespeare or you wind up the poet laureate of East Jesus, Nebraska,
if even that. Do not waste your time wondering where all this is getting you,
and don’t listen to those who wonder it out loud for your supposed benefit. It works
for me.
So get up on your mountaintop of genius, or your molehill of
mediocrity, and trumpet, strut, and bellow. We each have one song to sing in
life, so get up there and sing it, dammit. Only God or fate determines what of
us persists, of what we did that is deemed worthy. Sing, bird, sing.
So, I’m standing
in the megastore waiting for my wife.
That is not a
complaint, for the record.
A man about my age is walking towards me, pushing his
half-full cart. His eyes are on me, jaw slightly slackened. He seems intent on
making personal contact. With me.
Immediately, I begin to panic. You see, I’m a crazy-person
magnet. In life, in love, in oh-so-many ways I am insanely attractive – to the
insane. I am a lodestone of lunacy. If a psychologically damaged person walks
into any space I am occupying, they fly across the room and stick to me. That’s
how bad it is.
I have cleverly designed various stratagems over the years
for dealing with this phenomenon. None of them work.
The guy stepped closer. I prepared for the onslaught. The
opening conversational feint that turns into an unstoppable flow of information
about how the cracks in the surface of the highway emit radio waves that
control our thoughts, or how they were sexually assaulted by a Weimaraner and a
dwarf simultaneously while they were performing with Up with People, or why I
should vote Republican.
“Nice T-shirt,” the guy grinned. I looked down.
I was wearing my fabulous Ween “Bludgeon Yer Eye” T-shirt my
wife bought me! Immediately I began to babble to him about how I loved them,
had seen them many times, how I loved it when Gene, I mean Aaron, went off on
this long, pseudoIslamic adhan that spun into gibberish at the Ogden that one
time, until he and we were all laughing our balls off; how Dean, I mean Mickey,
was one of the most gifted guitarists I had ever heard, how "Spinal Meningitis" and "Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?" always bothered me immensely, how I was convinced for years that they indeed did huff Scotchgard during the making of "The Pod" . . .
The guy started to move away from me, warily. “Good times,”
he murmured, obviously wishing to get the hell away from me as fast as
possible.
“Yeah,” I summarized, weakly. “Yeah.”
My wife walked
up as he rolled away. “Who was that?” she asked.
*with special bonus irrelevant anecdote at end of story!
"Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread."
-- Anne Lamott
Well, I thought this would be a lot easier. How many songs about
bananas could there be?
A lot.
This all started due to my chipper early-morning nature,
which my delusions still tell me is a darn good way to awaken and motivate
little slug-a-beds. I tend to thump around the house at dawn, belting out
forgotten hits such as “Stout-hearted Men,” “They All Laughed,” and the like. It
is a trait despised by all.
This particular cockcrow I was massaging my tonsils with a
rendition of “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” My youngest, with a sweet precociousness
derived from viewings of the Disney Channel, called out, “Dad, SHUT UP!”
Later, though, she wanted to hear it again. (Yes! Another
generation warped!) I played the original version for her, and then started
poking around online. Did you realize there was an answer-song to “Yes, We Have
No Bananas”? Did you realize how many songs there were about bananas, and how
many of them were dirty? Why are bananas so damn funny, anyway? Do you care?
Hello?
First of all, what is the big deal about the banana? Is it,
along with the pickle, God’s designated punch-line foodstuff? I can make a few
surmises – it’s relatively new to Western consciousness (introduced in the U.S.
only in 1870); it’s colorful; it’s funny-LOOKING; it’s delicious (see bonus irrelevant
anecdote at the end of the story!) and damn near impossible to eat incorrectly.
(The old joke is, the farmer was given a bunch of bananas for the first time.
The giver returns days later and asks if the farmer liked them. “They sure did
taste good,” the farmer replies. “Purty big cobs, though.”)
And it resembles the male generative organ (“Only larger,”
yes, I hear you in the back of the room). We have banana-phrases locked into
our collective consciousness. Where would comedy be without slipping on a
banana peel, getting hit in the face with a banana-cream pie? There are the
bountiful joys of the banana split, and the more sinister connotations of the
banana republic.
Anyway, given that I have a desk full of really important
projects to work on, I digressed enthusiastically into this matter as only I can.
I’ve dug up more than 100 banana-flavored songs, arranged them in six
somewhat-neat categories, and filtered out the ones that did nothing for me –
although I love the titles of songs such as “Banana in Your Fruit Basket,”
“Bipolar Banana Cake,” “Smokin’ Banana Peels,” and I liked more serious musical
essays on the topic by the likes of Radiohead and the Boomtown Rats.
First and foremost, in a category by itself, is “Day-O (The
Banana Boat Song),” a Jamaican “mento” work song sold as a calypso-style song
and made famous by Harry Belafonte via his 1955 performance on TV’s “Colgate
Comedy Hour.”
Its explosive international popularity led to an American mini-craze for
calypso music, and a raft of covers by all manner of performers, parodies, and
tributes -- most of them astonishingly Caucasian in their un-funky rendition. It’s become a mini-meme.
INSTRUMENTAL
Many instrumentals appropriate banana in the title, usually
to give the listener a cue that it will be “tropical” in tone and rhythm. Just
throwing the word “banana” in the title seems to give the composer the internal
license to be upbeat, more vibrant. There are no dirges with “banana” in them.
Here reside both superlative and corny stabs at pure tropical
delight – our fondness in them in large part a legacy of the resurgence in U.S.
interest in South American culture once World War II was finished. Of course,
this being the United States, this interest didn’t manifest itself as an
upsurge in discussion of the works of Borges and Paz. No – it was an upsurge in
people taking mambo, cha-cha, and rumba lessons!
Chiclete com Banana – Gilberto Gil
Jodel Banana – Monika Kaelin
Mi Banana – Los Tupamaros
Vendedor de Bananas – Jorge Ben
Guabi Guabi -- George Sibendi
WEIRDNESS
These are just so odd, they deserve deep browsing by aficionados
--
The Fantastic Story of the Steam-Driven Banana – Legay
Rotten Banana Legs – Skankin’ Pickle
The Road of Love is Paved with Banana Skins – BMX Bandits
Banana Nation – Lazlo Jones
Lady Banana – Tony Ronald
Bananenhaus – Die Roten Punkte
Banana Song – Anton Barbeau
Banana Bacana – Andrea Marquee
Banana Town – Coast is Clear
Banana Mae – Why?
Banana Juice – Vallanzaska
KID STUFF
This category consists of tunes written specifically for
children; however, parents who want to make playlists are encouraged to browse
through the “Silly” roster as well --
Banana Slug – Bungee Jumpin’ Cows
Banana Splits Theme Song -- from the Hanna/Barbera '60s kid show
Mama Will You Buy Me a Banana -- Ross Sutter
Banana Song – Minions
Banana Phone – Raffi
Banana Song – Willie Walker
Banana Pants (Dangerous and Stinky)
SILLY
From music-hall songs to contemporary works, this gallery of
goofiness is irresistible!
Yes, We Have No Bananas – Bailey’s Lucky Seven
I’ve Got the Yes We Have No Bananas Blues – Eddie Cantor
30,000 Pounds of Bananas -- Harry Chapin
I’m Going Bananas – Madonna
I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones – Hoosier Hot Shots
I’m a Chiquita Banana -- the Chiquita Bananas
Loving You Has Made Me Bananas – Guy Marx
Japanese Banana – Alvin and the Chipmunks
Banana Split for My Baby – Louis Prima
Put a Banana in Your Ear – Jason Steele
I Am a Banana – Parry Gripp
Top Banana – Phil Silvers
I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana – Fred Waring’s
Pennsylvanians, Tiny Tim
When Banana Skins Are Falling – Slim Galliard
Banana Split – The McGuire Sisters
Banana Boy – Suvi
My Banana Canon – Ian Ross Williams
Two Ladies in the Shade of the Banana Tree – Caterina
Valente or Ethel Azama or Pearl Bailey
Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
Anna Banana – The Knuckleheads
Anna Banana – Paul James
Banana Oil – Vaughn de Leath
Juanita banana – JJ Defer et s’n orchess’ or Luis Aguile
SUGGESTIVE/ADULTS ONLY
Hey, this all started with the curiosity of my 10-year-old.
No, dear, you can’t listen to these. I have tried to err on the side of caution
– none of these are SFW or family-friendly . . . unless you have a very
interesting family.
Please Don’t Squeeze the Banana – Louis Prima
Banana Man – Tally Hall
Bananas and Blow – Ween
My Wife Left Town with a Banana – Carlos Borzenie
Banana Pants – Mr. Smith
I Want a Banana – Arthur Ashley
Banana – Mr.Baller Baller
Banana Anna – Nicky Hopkins
Cheap Banana – The Bloggers, DJ Grey
Banana for the Monkey – Ray Gibson
Banana – The Wigglers
SPECIAL BONUS IRRELEVANT ANECDOTE!
My sister traveled in Europe, and once brought back a
boyfriend from the former East Germany. Klaus, or Klausie-poo, as we sometimes
called him, was a nice guy, despite his unfamiliarity with English, which could
get him into trouble. (For a short time, in accordance with a prankster’s
directions, he greeted people warmly, “Hello, buttmunch!”) Klaus was trying to describe
the privations and shortages he grew up with in the communist state’s planned
economy. One thing no one in East Berlin had ever had were bananas. Once the
Wall came down, they became a hot commodity. Klaus described it thus: “Everyone
was running around with bananas in their eyes!” A wonderful visual to summon up
the lure and thrill of materialism.
(There. I’ve waited 20 years to relate that anecdote,
however tangentially, to something I was writing. Gaaaaah!)
Banalieder addendum: Discovered recently, Kurt Elling's setting of Wendy Cope's "The Uncertainty of a Poet"
