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I once flew in a private plane to Smith College for dinner. The next morning we cured our hangovers with Midol, because Smith girls know their chemistry.
The whole point of this post was that lede. The rest of this is, well, lost.
I mean, why did I ever go to Mount Holyoke for a weekend? The letter that invited me did my name like this:
Yeah. They do it. All of them. All of the time. Write on a ruler.
But waddya do? You get in da car and you go to fooking Holyoke.
Got the witchy thing yet?
Now?
Hey. It’s okay.
You write on a ruler. You get tired of that. Why some of us know how to act.
Yeah. Do it.
Thing is, you don’t get to be Fitzgerald by wanting it. You have to earn it.
You have to write something beautiful, not just act like you could have. At some point.
Go big or go home.
Okay. So I left some out. Aretha has a big voice and a bigger body. I was going for earthy sexuality here. Sorry. I just wanted — what did I want? — something other than the constant parade of femme victims we’ve been getting. These are WOMEN, dammit. Can any of you guys get behind that?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6WojOl70wgQ
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HDO-a8Ze3GY
He knows the chess player moves, but he can’t and won’t play a game of chess, because he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t want to be the Most Interesting Man in the World, because he knows he isn’t.
He used to be able to recite a lot of poetry by heart. He can’t anymore.
He’s driven every kind of land vehicle and civilian boat you can imagine. His car has a dead battery in the driveway.
He didn’t used to like cats. Turns out they love him. Go figure.
He wears shades and lives in the dark because he can’t stand the light. Except his own.
He has a dull jackknife stained with cheddar cheese. His macho thing.
He waited 30-some years then published ten books in one year. He refuses to explain.
He has ten pairs of beautiful cowboy boots. He is always barefoot now.
He has ten gorgeous overcoats. He never leaves the house.
He is kind. He is mean. No one likes him on both accounts.
He’s a hypochondriac. He’s immortal. Look at him. He’s 63.
He’s given up. He will never give up. He’s a Scot.
He can barely walk.
He weighs 135 lbs. He’s a wraith. Nothing to be done with him.
He will die soon.
No he won’t.
Yeah. Invariably. I catch it.
Defies explanation. Things fall off the table or the counter. I catch them. Doesn’t matter if there’s any warning. My hand is just there. Catching it.
Thinking the new post-apocalyptic world won’t have much use for glass and teacup catchers.
Unless what we’re talking about is reflexes. But I also don’t think the world is going to need another Road Warrior.
All right. Drove everywhere at 100+ mph without an accident or off-road event. But nobody’s going to need that in the end of world scenario we’re looking at now, right?
Can’t do anything useful. No maintenance skills. Can’t change a hinge or a lock. Can’t rewire a lamp, let alone a house. I can shoot. But I never do.
Can’t do an ounce of carpentry. Things fall apart when I touch them.
Driving I can do. Even now. But who needs it. Unless you’re afraid for your teacups.
Except some of us never forget.
Genius cuts two ways. There’s the good, which tends to be great stuff somewhat ahead of its time. There’s the bad, which is usually forgettable and therefore forgotten. But there’s also the ugly, which like the good persists in memory and insists on being remembered. And isn’t that finally the definition of genius? What insists on being remembered. Even after all the stupid uneducated people have forgotten it. Just so. Even if the brightling beam lasts only for a moment.
THE GOOD
The Pooh Perplex
Before there was post-modernism and Political Correctness, there was the Pooh Perplex, leaping ahead to envision the nonsense literary academia would devolve to. It’s still available at Amazon, and, yes, the subject of all the essays is Winnie the Pooh.
“In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the “casebooks” often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek “questions and study projects,” and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.”
1066 and All That
Long before Brexit, Britain went away from us, away from civilization. But there was a time when they had wit and humor. This is a touching and quite hilarious reminder of that time.
Tom Lehrer
Before there was Tom Lehrer, there was Stephen Leacock, mathematician and humorist extraordinaire. But Lehrer was also a distinguished academic mathematician with a wicked sense of humor. He is, regrettably, the last American academic of any discipline who knew how to laugh. Enjoy what we still have of him.
PDQ Bach
Amazing anachronism. Yes, there was a time when the intelligentsia also knew how to laugh at their own overly refined and, well, snobby tastes. Peter Schickele tapped into that for a brief moment. Imagine John Kerry or Barack Obama getting THIS joke.
Spike Jones
Long long before there was Weird Al, there was Spike Jones, who did actually have a first class big band behind him. He also had a low down and (only fairly) dirty sense of “Let’s mess things up and see what happens.” Waaay ahead of his time.
Allan Sherman
Every Jewish mother’s favorite son. The unlikeliest comedy superstar ever. However brief his reign. I like to think of him and Steve Kinison hoisting a few in heaven.
Vaughn Meader
Talk about your unlucky career accidents. This guy had a monopoly on Kennedy impressions and parodies. Now no one’s ever heard of him.
THE UGLY
Julia A. Moore
The worst poet ever in the world. Yes. There was such a person. Here’s an example of her verse, memorialized by no less a notable than Mark Twain, who could not believe his astonishing find.
“I was happy then as a girl could ever be,
And live on this earth here below—
I was happy as a lark and as busy as a bee,
For in fashion or in style I did not go.
My parents were poor and they could not dress me so,
For they had not got the money to spare,
And it may be better so, for I do not think fine clothes
Make a person any better than they are.
Some people are getting so they think a poor girl,
Though she be bright and intelligent and gay,
She must have nice clothes, or she is nothing in this world,
If she is not dressed in style every day.
Remember never to judge people by their clothes,
For our brave, noble Washington said,
“Honorable are rags, if a true heart they enclose,”
And I found it was the truth when I married.”
Well, look her up. She’s so bad there’s a long article about her in the Paris Review.
Rod McKuen
Talk about your bad poetry. It didn’t end in the 19th century. Try this on for size.
“You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says, “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel to be such a freak?”
And you…”
Oops. My mistake. That wasn’t McKuen. It was our new Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. My bad.
Here’s McKuen:
The Need
[shudder] any questions?
Swept Away by Lena Wertmuller
There are bad movies and then there are movies so bad they start out funny then turn irredeemably ugly. Such is Swept Away. They won’t let me show you the laughably horrifying and disgusting sodomy scene because YouTube knows Americans aren’t up to Italian standards of communist sodomy. All I can tell you is that Giancarlo Giannini is delightedly banging away while reciting the whole of Das Kapital. This teaser scene will have to do as a substitute.
Carly Simon Standards
Saddest thing in the world. Old rockers start feeling like time has passed them by, so they think they should record “As Time Goes By.” You know. To show the world they really aren’t the 60 year old 20 year olds they really are. Usually, the result is forgettable. Sometimes it’s really really ugly. Like with Carly (I can’t get over wishing I’d been born Mick Jagger, or at least with a tenth of his talent) Simon. This is just… Ugly.
Okay. For you tone deaf ones, or those who do Karaoki and think you’re pretty good at it, here’s the song sung right.
I tend to live by serendipity. I’d been planning this post for a week. Guess what I Found last night on Netflix.
Give yourselves up to serendipity. It makes life something like heaven.
So Sammy has his dinner downstairs at 6 pm, and Raebert has his delivered upstairs at 6:15 pm. But Raebert doesn’t eat his right away. Being somewhat eccentric, he has a preliminary step called “flipping the bowl.”
His own version of distributing the wealth.
Sammy and Rikki used to steal food from each other’s bowls, and Rikki was known to get testy about it, snarling a time or two. Now that he’s upstairs with Raebert, Sammy has been showing an interest in hoovering up Rae’s spilled food. But my wife is stern about this because it wouldn’t be funny if Rae actually objected, being close to twice greyhound size and all. So Sammy’s been creeping close and getting a lot of Mommy “NO’s!”
Which brings us to the night before last. Rae had upended his bowl on schedule, and Sammy was lying peacefully on Raebert’s bed.
You know. Relaxed and content.
All was right with the world. Then my wife decided to see to the cat boxes in the bathroom next door. No sooner had she turned on the bathroom light than Sammy rose to his feet and approached the floor sprinkle of kibble.
She’s in there, right? Doesn’t know I’m here, right?
Cat box scrapings begin.
You can hear him eating. It’s a low, constant crunching sound.
Then a pause in the cat box activity.
What’s that? Is she coming back!
New litter being scooped into boxes. False alarm.
Crunch. Crunch.
An ominous new silence.
She’s coming back.
And so she is.
“There’s my Sammy. He’s a good boy.”
Raebert was cool throughout.
I’ll never tell. What I will do,is steal your whole breakfast bowl tomorrow and carry it to MY bed, which you should maybe get off of now.
And that’s exactly what he did. The whole bowl in his teeth. And dumped and upended to boot. He always wins in the end.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SEllHMWkXEU
Yesterday was such a disaster for our nation, all falling down and flying apart, that I longed for something familiar and predictable and grumpy like me. So I turned to Inspector Morse on Netflix. An episode I hadn’t seen before, The Remorseful Day.
Should have known better. It wasn’t the usual grousing around Oxford in his Old Jag. He was ill. Very. Barely able to manage his quota of two pints and ten fingers of scotch a day. At home he desultorily tries birdwatching. The only bird he successfully watches is a drab house sparrow.
Two months from mandatory retirement, he knows that both his boss and his sergeant want him to quit immediately. But he persists in pursuing the murder case of one of the many women he’s been infatuated with. He gasps a lot and leans against lampposts. In between gasps he makes out his will. He wants no service, religious or otherwise, to mark his passing.
In the course of his investigation he waits in church to interview a suspect who just happens to be singing Faure’s Requiem. It’s quite moving.
Shortly afterwards he suffers a massive heart attack and keels over on the grass of one of Oxford’s college quads.
They get him to the hospital, where he has his last epiphany to solve the murder, and dies. Remorseful Day indeed.
RIP Inspector Morse.
As I said, the perfect end to a perfectly awful day. The only redeeming feature of the entire episode was the requiem. Which seemed to resonate beyond a simple TV show.
And so to bed.
Hey, everybody. Wake up. The two-leggeds have finally gone to bed.
Shut your piehole, Iris. Some of us are fond of something called sleep.
Elliott, I’m going to claw your eyes out, you orange old man. Monday is Sammy’s birthday. We should have a party to celebrate. He’ll be 13.
Cool. Midnight plus one. Around here we call that half past dead.
Sammy. Sammy! Are you going to take that from him?
What?
What’s going on? Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything? What’s going on? I can help.
What?
Hey! Keep it down! You’ll wake the two-leggeds.
Let me explain, Raebert. I–
What gave you the idea you could call me Raebert?
Sorry, chief. Won’t happen again. I was just trying to organize a party tonight for Sammy’s birthday.
I can help. We’ll invite everyone we know and–
We don’t know anyone.
I do. But we’re not exactly on speaking terms right now.
What?
What’s going on? Is it breakfast time?
I know! I know!Let’s take turns singing songs. I’ll start! I’ll start! I’ll start!
All right. Let’s get it over with. Sammy, you want to nose that door shut? Go ahead Eloise.
What?
That was good, Eloise. But watch those high notes. I don’t like them.
Can you open the door? I have to use the cat box.
Then why don’t you go next, Raven. Then we’ll open the door.
Sammy you want to nose that door for Raven? Your turn Elliott.
What?
Let’s move this along. Iris?
That was bit flamboyant of you, young lady. Oh well. It’s getting late. I’ll go and then Sammy can finish up.
What what. This is dedicated to my friend Rikki. Rikki Tikki Tikki Tikki Tavi.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAMMY!!!
Bullseye!
Uh oh.
Hillary! What do we do? Hillary? Hillary?!!
Page Dr. Feelgood, somebody. Quick, dammit!
She’s out of it again. Get that hypo NOW!
What we’re used to, the incomparable grace and beauty of the greyhound in full gallop. It is a glorious thing to behold in person. The rescue organizations, as they should, speak about the idyllic beauty more than the sordid banes of life on the track.
The truth is that each and every rescue greyhound is more beautiful than the ideal you see in the show ring at Westminster. If they’ve come from the track, veteran racers or not, they are survivors. All of them have tattoos in both ears, identifying date of birth and their registration number, like denizens of the camps.
You can look them all up. There’s a list. Online. Names, dates, ancestry, racing record. Greyhound NSA.
Most of them also have scars. Usually not bad. Think of them as dings on a hard raced SCCA sports car. Many track dogs race in muzzles so they can’t snap at one another during the race.
Sometimes it’s a flat-out footrace.
Sometimes it’s a war. And racers can always crash.
And some still race without muzzles.
Teeth can and do come into play. They’re not grass eaters after all but a pack of predators chasing the same prey.
Off the track they don’t have rooms of their own. They live in tight quarters and aren’t fed individually. Disagreements occur.
In any case there are scars. Our own unsinkable Molly had only half of her right ear.
Our boy Sammy has a picturesque scar on the left side of his muzzle.
It gives him a rakish piratical look. He likes to steal food from everyone else’s bowl. When he does, I say, “Get out of there, Scarface. Now!”
You see what I mean? They’re not alabaster statues. They’re retired warhorses, and their nicks and furrows are badges of honor.
Tats and scars. The sign of prisoners throughout history. No wonder one of the great rescue foster institutions is, well, prisoners.
A way to love your greyhound more. PTSD not so much. Need for love, couches, toys, and a ready smile in response to that worried pop-eyed look, probably endless. They are so beautiful. More than we can know.
Ah. The sudden unexpected kiss. Just don’t do it on a college campus these days.
An hour or so ago I came across this gem from Clarice Feldman.
“From an email I received: ”
“Our side has done a good job of pointing out what real sexual assault looks like, so just for fun, I think I’ll take up what the PC crowd wants to fight. Fighting rape and real sexual assault in the inner cities and by predatory older males against middle and high school students is difficult and the statistics tend to stigmatize African-American males. So the P.C. crowd goes after the kind of ‘sexual assault” that if often quite benign and part of semi-modern/traditional courtship rituals.
“First person story: After what the PC police would call a “sexual assault” – but I considered a surprise but not unwelcome kiss, my husband to be, [snip] introduced me to that delightful little farce, P.G. Wodehouse’s Money in the Bank in which a shy guy named Jeff is encouraged to just grab and kiss the girl of his dreams before she makes a terrible mistake by marrying the wrong man. To this day, we call it “The Wodehouse method.” I mention this, not to excuse bad language, or to imply Trump had good intentions, but only to put the term “sexual assault” in proper perspective. (BTW, Money in the Bank also has a character named Mr. Trumper – whose role I cannot now recall, but he is neither the shy young Jeffrey, nor his older, wiser advisor.)
“Political Correctness has invaded every aspect of our lives; but the area where it is now being felt most intensely is in the sexual realm. While pushing Planned Parenthood’s “Kiddie Porn” to K-4 students as “health education,” and making statements in the press like this one: “girls have to get used to seeing male genitalia” as a defense for transgendered locker rooms” (paraphrased, but not inaccurately), the PC education crowd insists that college women are constantly at risk of “sexual assault.” If you properly define “sexual assault” as rape or intent to rape, college campuses are actually among the safest places for women of college age. If that were not true, no one would pay $50,000 or more to let their precious daughters attend college. And those of us who teach on these campuses, and are close to our students, would be aware that our women students were being constantly “assaulted.”
Here’s the book that was referenced.
Thing is, this is a breakthrough kind of comparison. I’ve probably read the majority of Wodehouse’s 90+ novels, and nowhere in any of them is there a single off color word or phrase or scene. He is probably as close to sexless as it’s possible to be. For him, romance was essentially the ultimate maguffin that drove his hilarious plots. The thought that spoiled college girls could be “triggered” by a Wodehouse kiss is about the most ridiculous thing I could ever imagine.
I know what I’m talking about. I’ve written quite a bit about this astoundingly innocent genius over the years.
“P. G. Wodehouse. …One I’ve written about before. I read the first definitive biography of him a few years back, and what’s clear about him — as for so many other humorists — is that his life was in many ways sad, even though he lived to great old age, produced about a hundred novels, and umpty-gazillion short stories. He was a man of baffling contradictions and therefore a more useful source of insight about the U.K. than most of the “serious” writers in his country who were contemporaries or came later. He seems to us locked permanently in the England between the two world wars, a fantasy realm of country estates, two-seat roadsters, gentlemen’s clubs, and aristocratic aunts with lorgnettes and no knowledge whatever of everyday English life. Yet he is the source cited by Evelyn Waugh, the deadliest satirist of his age, as the master of dialogue from whom Waugh learned how to eviscerate pretension and hypocrisy in the most maliciously brilliant novels of the twentieth century. In person, Waugh was witty and mean; Wodehouse was everywhere described as dull. Wodehouse was afraid of assertive women, indifferent to sex, not because he was gay, it seems, but because his personality was formed by distant, even cold, family relations, and then frozen for good in adolescence by his happier experience in boarding schools when he finally escaped from home. Then he managed to get himself exiled forever from Britain by being a “good sport” on the radio when he was interned by Germans in the early days of World War II. He never went home again. He never complained. Because that’s the way Brits are. No matter what they do to you, you have to petend to have the emotional range of a cricket bat.”
I was such a fan by my early twenties that I named my cat for one of his feline characters.
And I remain delighted at every opportunity to enjoy a soufflé that never ever goes flat.
If you’ve never discovered P.G. Wodehouse, I encourage you to do so now. I suspect we’re all going to be needing some first rate escapism very very soon.
Raebert gets bored. I never do. Well, if I do, I just kill something until patience returns.
It only took an hour or two before she was back and ensconced on my lap, purring like mad.
If I were a vain man, I’d think she really really loves me. But I think the truth is more along these lines.
And couture-wise, Gaga’s got nothing on Iris.
Put your paws up.
I’m having coffee on the couch and perusing the day’s bad news on my iPad with Iris sleeping peacefully right next to me.
Everything was peaceful and still.
But then there is a hulking looming shape.
Hi, kid. Did I wake you?
Pardon the brightness variations and occasional blur in these pics. This is live action, don’t you know. In fact, I missed the opening gambit in which Raebert laid his gigantic head across Iris’s body, guaranteeing that she would wake up. Then he just stood there, staring intently at her and glancing from time to time at me.
Having a nice snooze beside Daddy, are you?
No raised voices, mind you, not even the hint of a growl. But somehow the silence was gone and I could swear I heard this faintly in the background:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=68I3j2luW64
Raebert just stood there and I thought, he will not stop, ever.
Iris is stubborn, and Rae’s nudge was gentle.
Then he fixed his eyes on hers.
Time for you to go, sweetcakes.
So she went.
And somewhere down the hall, in a quiet cat voice, I heard the promise, “I’ll be back.”
And another voice…
Unless I get there first.
Actually, this is what we do every morning these days.
FADE TO BLACK. CREDITS ROLL.
THAT TRUMP IS OUT OF CONTROL!
Had the nerve to say he really enjoys hooters. Cad.
Also said bunnies are sexy. Pervert.
Ew. He just up and kissed the pageant queen. On the cheek! Disgusting.
Does that give the MSM Wolves some prey to go in ravening pursuit of? Sure it does.
ON THE OTHER HAND…
Rahm & Nancy. Did they carve their initials on a DC cherry tree?
That’s just old Uncle Joe explaining to a fan what a lecherous creep Trump is. Move along, move along.
The Big O has an ironclad rule: Look but NEVER touch.
ALMOST never.
Well, let’s just say infrequently. Okay?
AND THEN, OF COURSE, THEM GUYS.
Good to see he hasn’t lost HIS touch. Wink wink.
The rumors about Hill’s real orientation are simply not true. She was having one of her bobbing head attacks.
Where’s Huma?! I feel a midnight conference coming on.
Being up working hard till 3 am can make anyone get a little squiggle eyed in the morning, okay?
There you have it. Trump a predatory bum. Democrats just fine friendly normal people. Now go write your stories.
Spin doctors say the wound is very very serious.
It happened on the campaign trail. A young Trump fan smuggled a cat into a Pennsylvania rally and held it out to the candidate as he passed. “Sweet pussy,” he remarked, whereupon the cat scratched him viciously.
According to reports by NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, FNC, MSNBC, and TMZ, Trump was immediately rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery.
Anonymous sources within the RNC have disclosed the surgery did not go well, and Trump is now clinging to life by a thread.
“The wound was just too massive to repair,” chortled CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
NBC’s Chuck Todd confirmed the report in exactly the same words, adding with a chuckle, “What many would call poetic justice.”
Stay tuned for updates as this story develops.
In related news, a team of DNC physicians has announced with great relief that Hillary Clinton is “AOK” after a momentarily disturbing event at a campaign appearance before twelve supporters at the Astrodome in Houston.
Nothing to see here. It was just a mote in the corner of her eyes, probably a fly or something.
Mrs. Clinton is expected to be fine after a 48 hour nap at her home in Chappaqua.
It’s another huge basket filled with ALL the NeverTrumpers and Hillary voters. They are actively promoting a corrupt and malign dictatorship that will make slaves of us all so that the ruling elites can continue to prosper.
Not too happy with the faddish new term “Indigenous Peoples Day.” I mean if we want to celebrate the noble primitives Columbus interfered with by arriving in the New World, I’m pretty sure can do better than memorialize the killer human tribes who waged constant war on each other, scalped and sacrificed thousands, and all died toothless under the age of 30. What a load of crap that is. Their so called cultures exist today only in museums, drunk tanks, and federally funded casinos.
So my suggestion is “Bonobos Day.” Why? It at least rhymes with Columbus Day (sort of) and reflects the true ideals of the people who think the most noble state of being is living peacefully, sans technology of any kind, with no apparent purpose but to have as much sex as they can, whenever they can, wherever they can. The bonobos are the perfect exemplar of this ideal. They have sex and eat. That’s it.
Having sex, if you still remember anything about that.
Eating stuff like the superior people want all of us to eat. Organic smoothies.
See? It’s great!
An older gray-haired bonobo with his good friend who moderated last night’s debate.
Now let us close with the great Rolling Stones hymn to the perfect primate being.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNY8eYmzdH4
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