Richard --

Last night, I heard that more than 30,000 people responded to my message from the other day.

To me, that number signals we're ready for what's next in this campaign. That's what I'm talking about when I say Barack needs you this week. That's the kind of momentum that's going to win this election.

In two days, we face the biggest fundraising deadline of this campaign so far.

We've got this.

Donate $3 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/By-Tomorrow

Thanks,

Michelle



Michelle,

Congratulations! I couldn’t be happier about this good news since it proves that genuine substance and truth can still prevail over seductive style and flattery. And I offer you my sincerest apologies for any disparagement you might have read into my comments from a few posts back. I now see that it really doesn’t matter if your copywriters indulge in silly sentimentality and false intimacy as long as they remember to attach your name to the bottom of their misguided missives. For it is your name (and your husband’s) that carry the weight of credibility and respect—without which these fundraising letters of yours would be no more compelling or effective than your run of the mill spam.

I was considering sending a check along with this note, but then I saw that you said “We’ve got this.”
And actually, even if you hadn't said that, I probably wouldn't have sent the check. After all, what's my $3 compared to
what you must have collected from those 30,000.

Keep up the good work. And hope we can chat again soon. Always love hearing from you.

The Drifter.



Once you try a Triolet, it's hard to stop.

Krugman Collins Dowd and Brooks
Week after week, column by column
Bout movers and shakers, cronies and crooks
Krugman, Collins, Dowd and Brooks
Trailing the scent, baiting their hooks
Two do it funny, the other two solemn
Krugman Collins Dowd and Brooks
Week after week, column by column


Make believe people who live in these books
What do they matter? Why do we care?
On Kindles or smartphones or iPads or Nooks
Make believe people who live in these books
Aren’t Firemen, Teachers, Truckers or Cooks
Nor handymen, doctors, or rabbis in prayer
Make believe people who live in these books
What do they matter? Why do we care?


Corned Beef and Cabbage Pastrami on Rye
Is it HDL good and LDL bad?
Can never remember and now I know why
Corned Beef and Cabbage Pastrami on Rye
Life is for living - you live till you die
Hey Doc, thanks a lot, but you’re not my dad
Corned Beef and Cabbage Pastrami on Rye
Is it HDL good and LDL bad?


With throwing and catching and swinging and hitting
With running and stealing in a rush to get home
A drama Homeric unfolds in one sitting
With throwing and catching and swinging and hitting
Don’t bother to ask, cause I’m happy admitting
I turned down your invite to stay here alone
With throwing and catching and swinging and hitting
With running and stealing in a rush to get home






Happy Weekend

BTW: Just noticed that G.K.'s Jellyfish poem strays from the Triolet rules...instead of ABaAabAB he did it ABaAbaAB...and I wonder if was deliberate (committed contrarian that he was) or if he wasn't paying attention. I suspect it was the former.

The Man Who Knew Too Much.






No, it’s not just the two (Hitchcock) movies, though Hitchcock used the title because he had bought the rights to the stories that were published under that title by…as if you hadn’t already guessed…




...G.K. Chesterton.

I know, enough about Chesterton already, and you’re right, it’s time to move on…but first:

What a terrific premise for a series of detective stories!

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a man named Horne Fisher, and his “Watson” is a journalist named Harold March. And in a series of 8 stories, our hero unravels the mystery behind a variety of crimes and misdemeanors in much the same deductive reasoning fashion as Sherlock Holmes. But here’s the twist. The criminals can never be brought to justice because they’re either too rich, too powerful, too well connected or protected by the privileges of the ruling class, political ties or wealth. He truly is The Man who knows too much! And it’s a hoot. The stories are almost formulaic and often predictable, but the fun is in discovering how and why the criminals are able to get away with it. Chesterton is constantly saying that logic is never enough. The world is a goofy, illogical, unfair place, but it's still fun trying to figure it out as long as you're willing to concede that you'll never really make sense of it. If G.K. were writing now, I’m sure he’d have just as much fun with Wall St. scammers and covert operations in the war on terror and drugs. And Horne is such an eccentric and unique character—sharp, observant, and a philosophical loner completely resigned to the fact that he can never (and will never) be able to prove anything in a court of law or popular opinion. To my knowledge, there’s no one else like him in the genre…though you could say that Hammett and Chandler gave Spade and Marlowe similar burdens to bear from time to time.


Okay, now for what I hope is a smooth and clever transition… bear with me.


The poverty of looking at things solely from the “logical side of things” was a central plank of the Chestertonian gospel.

“The madman,” he observed in Orthodoxy, “is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

In The Defendant (1901), Chesterton’s first collection of prose he says:

“The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality as it is the basis of nonsense.”


In short: Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth.


And G.K. put his pen where his mouth was when he wrote …

I wish I were a jellyfish
That cannot fall downstairs;
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jellyfish
That hasn't any cares
And doesn't even have to wish
'I wish I were a jellyfish
That cannot fall downstairs.'

What is that? So simple, and yet not at all. Appears almost random but clearly follows a structure. And I suspected it was a formal form of some kind and I was right…it’s a Triolet!

A Triolet is a three stanza poem of eight lines.
The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB --(where the A's and B's are identical lines)
and often with all lines in iambic tetrameter:
a la:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da (FLY)
da DUM da DUM da DUM da (CRY) etc.

The first, fourth and seventh lines are identical,
so are the second and eighth
So that means the first and last couplets are identical as well.

Once you get the format, you think the poem would almost write itself since so much is repeated, only two sounds have to rhyme and the first and last couplet are the same…so what’s left to do? Easy, right?...


…that is once the triple-repeating line, from which the form is named, is taken care of. This line is your opener, the primary inspiration for the middle section, and the set-up for the conclusive final line. Simply pulling a punch line out of thin air doesn’t work though…unless you’re willing to settle for true nonsense and what's the sense in that? But it’s nice to know once you’ve reached line six, all that’s left is repeating lines one and two.

So armed with the thought that Limericks are for sissies, and Triolets are the true calling for drifters with drifting brains, I'm jumping in.

Writing triolets should be fun
For I’ve no better thing to do
I may write lots before I’m done
Writing triolets should be fun
But here I am still stuck on one
Till I can find a rhyme for do
Writing triolets should be fun
For I’ve no better thing to do

Oy so tricky, and oy such rules?
foolish things these silly verses
A big time waste for us poor fools
Oy so tricky, and oy such rules
is there a secret set of tools?
whoops too late, it now reverses
Oy so tricky, and oy such rules?
foolish things these silly verses.


Will they won’t they bomb Iran?
In boldface asks the New York Times
Ehud Barak sure thinks he can
Will they won’t they bomb Iran?
Some say that that’s why Bibi ran
Serious shit for making rhymes
Will they won’t they bomb Iran?
In boldface asks the New York Times

Michelle, ma belle…
she’s at it again...and I quote:

Richard --

Every night in the White House, I see Barack up late poring over briefings, reading your letters, and writing notes to people he's met.

He's doing that for you -- working hard every day to make sure we can finish what we all started together.

This week, I need you to have his back.

Will you donate $3 or more to support Barack before Saturday's critical fundraising deadline?

https://donate.barackobama.com/Support-Barack

Thank you.

Michelle


I know she's a busy woman and has more important things to attend to, but they're putting her name on this stuff so she could at least consider for a moment if this is the best way to communicate. Especially since this administration goes out of its way to promote itself as plain-speaking, straight talking types. Would it be less effective if it just said "we need your support." and pretty much left it at that. And if they must dress it up with false intimacy, least they could do is avoid the silly guilt tripping stuff about Barack staying up late burning the midnight oil...all because he cares about...me?


Okay, I know. G.K. Chesterton was an anti-semite.
Or was he?
Adam Gopnik (in the course of praising him and celebrating his accomplishments) says he was, but qualifies that with a lot of wonderings and wanderings into G.K’s life and times and assorted other avenues and back alleys in order to come to grips with his own dilemma regards his high regard for the man’s work and less than high regard for some of the things he said. I came across a few things in the little I’ve read that sent mild chills down my neck (or is that up my spine?) –but I let it go because he generally seemed to use the word “jew” as a descriptive in reference to the behavior of specifically identified characters who were money manipulators and usurers.





"Look at them with their hooked beaks," Becky said, getting into the buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee. "They're like vultures after a battle. Vanity Fair—W.M.Thackeray



Thackeray, Dickens, Even Shaw had much to answer for when it comes to stooping to ignorant stereotype. Not exactly a new story there.



And the fact that G.K.'s younger brother (who subsequently died during WWI) was a whistle blowing journalist who exposed insider trading schemes of top government officials and was then sued by the corrupt (and jewish) stock manipulator (see: The Marconi Scandal) for slander did little to soften Chesterton's views.








In turn of the century England, the issue wasn't just ethnicity, it was the immigration of foreigners of all kinds. Ethnic diversity was not an appetizing addition to the Prix Fixe menu of Victorian England.
But reading Chesterton when he’s talking about The Jew, or the The Jewish Problem or the Jewish Issue is like listening to a pastoral passage from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and suddenly hearing a blast of Wagner horns blaring out a militaristic march.




What is most disturbing is realizing that if a man of Chesterton’s depth of understanding and generosity of spirit could be so infected with such a prejudice, then what does that say about how deep and poisonous that plague of prejudice was throughout the rest of the world. I remember having the same thought when I read Jack London’s virulent attacks against Jack Johnson and all African Americans. And nothing Chesterton said came even close to London's race baiting that verged on incitements to riot.

But history is always seen through the distorted prism of hindsight and there’s never a dearth of those seeking to find loose strands of scandal, even among the graves of those who in their own lifetime did more to heal humanity than hurt it. Chesterton died in 1936, but not too soon to see what was on the horizon. And he spoke out often and early, and was among the few who didn’t pull any punches, saying he was “ appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities…” and “…that I am quite ready to believe that (Hilaire) Belloc and I will die defending the last Jew in Europe.”

Now, let's talk about Ezra Pound...not.

Many years ago my cousin Bob (Brazilian and World Music Maven, Rocket Scientist and Master musician) introduced me to Elis Regina, and I was smitten. It also led me to listening (and learning to play what I could) to a host of other singers and musicians from Brazil and South America...all assisted by Bob's generous gift to me of dozens of CD's with his copious historical and musical notes and analyses. Thanks again Bob!


The album above is the one of a kind classic recording and I just came across a video online and can’t wipe the smile off my face. The song Aguas de Marco is famous (in Brazil, it was voted-in a public poll--the greatest song 'of all time') and though I've heard it all my life, I've grown to appreciate it more and more over the years.

I think it’s one of the best definitions of the expression: “…Greater than the sum of it’s parts.” The music alone is pretty and pleasing, but clearly repetitive-- the lyrics alone are clever and poetic but can seem (in reading) somewhat random and obscure --but put them together and the blending of the two creates something else entirely.

And I discovered an amazing thing just now...Jobim wrote the English translation!

That's stunning! Write a great melody, write a great lyric, then write the lyric in a second language (a poet in two languages?!) that not only captures all the beauty of the original, but fits perfectly and seamlessly into the rhythm and flow of the music. I'm in awe. English Lyrics are posted below.

It's a unique song structure with no distinct verse or chorus separation but rather two subtly different progressions that alternate back and forth and not always symmetrically. Whenever I play it I always get confused about when to make the change--even though I've played it a hundred times. And that's part of the beauty of it--it's like a river with two currents flowing side by side, and as you drift downstream you're never quite sure which current is carrying you...but it also doesn't really matter. And I can only assume that that is pretty much what Jobim was after considering the title and the lyrical content.

Call me Mr. Softee, but the sight of Tom himself singing along with an almost girlishly giddy and joyful Elis is both heartwarming and heartbreakingly beautiful to me. And knowing her body of work and the story of her life and sad early death…well that all factors into it too.

Jonathan Schwartz once introduced it on his radio show by saying: “Here’s a song that’s about….everything.”

First version is the charmer with Tom and Elis, DAMN...they won't let me embed it. This has happened before, and I can only hope it's those deserving (like Tom or Elis' family and relations--and not just a record company) who are the beneficiaries of this protective tactic. Okay, all is not lost, you can use the link and see it on YouTube....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qle1OrunKnE&feature=related

But I want to post something here, so here's a poignant Elis singing it alone with english subtitles...(which are not Jobim's and as a result are not nearly as good or musically apt) and there's nothing wrong with your computer (or other device) it's a choppy video but the audio is pretty clean. Hope you enjoy.






Aguas de Marco
The Waters of March
Antonio Carlos Jobim (Tom, to his friends)

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush
The knot in the wood, the song of a thrush

The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain, It's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone

A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light
A shot of a gun in the dead of the night

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps
.
The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail, oh, the promise of spring

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart (repeat)

A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain
A snail, a riddle, a wasp, a stain

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow

The bed of the well, the end of the line
The dismay on the face, it's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike, a point, a nail
A drip, drip, drip, drop, the end of the day

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart (repeat)

,the end of the road,a little alone

A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

The waters of March,

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

I think Mitt's biggest challenge will be finding a running mate who's willing to go on the road with him while strapped to the roof of the campaign bus.

If Gail Collins keeps up her "dog on the roof" gag throughout the entire campaign, it could actually become a factor...couldn't it? Nah, what am I thinking? Hope I'm not turning into one of those internet bloggers who thinks a question like that is for real.


Marbury v. Medicine

Interesting article in Slate citing Madison v. Marbury as a precedent for current constitutionality debate on Health legislation.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/03/supreme_court_hears_affordable_care_
act_arguments_john_roberts_could_convince_his_fellow_justices_to_avoid_making_a_decision_.html

If one of the biggest objections to the new Health Care legislation is the mandatory factor and the penalty for non-compliance, how come no one's making a stink about auto insurance?

Chesterton has me under his spell. Whodda thunk a treatise (Orthodoxy) in defense of Christian Theology could be so seductive? But, it’s all in the approach. G.K. doesn’t play the partisan advocate so much as the eager explorer—and given his background and the time he lived in, I can easily overlook a certain level of myopia in his vision. And what a vision it is—almost childlike in its open-minded sense of wonder and curiosity, while nourished by a lifelong cultivation of disciplined thought and broad experience.

And just about done with The Man Who Was Thursday. It’s his Orthodoxy philosophy in a detective/suspense/thriller/Fairy Tale/ wrapper and a bit like reading a Conan Doyle tale soaked in a pungent brine of Swiftian satire. I assume he’s not more highly regarded by virtue of the fact that he’s so modest and devoid of the self serving habits that might have established his name more securely among the “Greats”. The very fact that he is so transparently uninterested in making himself the center of his philosophical perspective is the thing that makes him most persuasive and appealing.






I concede at the outset that it’s sophomoric, so proceed with caution and as Will once said before one of his stand-up routines…”lower your expectations.”

What is the perfect room temperature?
Warm enough to say no to hot chocolate, cold enough to say yes to whiskey.

What was the primary cause of the Civil War?
White people.

What are the first three things you do at work?
Pee. Get coffee. Pee.

What would you do if you had a time machine?
Give it to The Mets so they could get Jose Reyes back

If you were God what would you do first?
Deny my existence

Which super power would you most like to possess?
Flight

Second choice?
China

How do you deal with change?
I get rid of all the pennies except two, put the quarters in the car for tolls and put the rest in my pocket

Best way to cook chicken?
Stewed slow with lots of garlic, onions, celery, carrots and spuds

What’s the difference Louis CK and Greta Van Susteren?
One’s a shining wit while the other’s a whining shit.

Of the five senses, which would you least want to lose?
Hearing

Body part you wash first in the shower?
Pubes...to get a good lather going

Body part you wash last?
Feet

Breakfast, lunch or dinner?
Breakfast food for dinner.

Job you never had but always thought you’d like.
Bicycle repair

Best thing about living with a dog
The absence of need for conversation

You never speak to your dog?
Only when I need help with a crossword puzzle clue about the name of a breed

Which two fruits should be crossbred?
Raspberry and banana

Sock, shoe, sock, shoe or sock, sock, shoe, shoe?
Sock, sock, shoe, shoe.

Fill in the blank. _________makes me angry.
Network Television News.

____________makes me happy.
Bach

I’m sick of___________
Anything having to do with Vampires

When the Pope dies, is he being promoted or fired?
Forgiven

Best argument against Right to Lifers would be____________
If life begins at conception, then why can't pregnant women use the carpool lane?

Biggest mystery in the world is__________
What you plant to get a seedless watermelon? *

Could you be persuaded to kill?
No. But I could be provoked.

If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth?
Only if their name is Texaco, Sunoco, Exxon...

What did you once believe that you no longer believe?
That I have all the time in the world.

What did you once think was a fact that turned out to be false?
That south of the equator, water goes down the drain in the opposite direction.

Why is it wise to give children middle names?
So they'll know when they're in trouble.

Can you give us an example of what you would consider a mixed emotion?
Watching Roger Ailes crash his private jet into my house.

Most ironic thing that ever happened to you?
Getting a paper cut from a get-well card

In what State is Lake Erie?
Liquid.

First thing you’d do if you had a week to live?
Get that time machine back from the Mets.

If you could be anyone from History, who would it be?
George Washington, then I wouldn’t need photo ID, I’d just use a quarter or a dollar bill.

How do you feel about generalizations?
Specifically?

Are you running out of things to post on your blog?
Isn't it obvious?

Are you going to post this Q & A session?
Probably

*Simply stated, the number of chromosomes (the threadlike bodies within cells that contain the inheritance units called genes) in a normal watermelon plant is doubled by the use of the chemical colchicine. Doubling a normal (diploid) watermelon results in a tetraploid plant (one having four sets of chromosomes). When the tetraploid plant is bred back, or pollinated, by a diploid or normal plant, the resulting seed produces a triploid plant that is basically a "mule" of the plant kingdom, and it produces seedless watermelons.

And what is the chemical Colchicine? That's interesting too.

Don't like posting nothing, so here's something.



With insomniac LA production execs nipping at my heels, paranoid marketing gophers digging holes in my creative garden, a nose so stuffed I can hardly breathe, a sore throat that won't be soothed, three days to complete a campaign for the Parent Company and a two pound stack of tax related papers to sort through so I can make life easier for the accountant I pay to do it for me-- I’m too wiped to write, so feel free to scroll down and see if anything strikes your fancy from this box of saved up odds and ends (mostly cartoons) ... and my apologies for the sloppy lay-out, I just don't have the time.














“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.”
― G.K. Chesterton












































































"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
















































My son Eli once remarked, “ the three most beautiful words in English are: I love you—and the four most beautiful are: Mets win Yankees lose.”




























At the end of Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth, Gulley Jimson suffers a paralyzing stroke, and can no longer paint. As he is being taken to hospital, a nun who is nursing him remarks that he should be praying instead of laughing, "Same thing, Mother." replies Jimson, his last words.























"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." 
-Anonymous


We had fed the heart on fantasy,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare
-William Butler Yeats

Recipe for PopSocioCultural Non-Fiction Best Seller:

Flatter Liberals by telling them that their altruistic and ethics based inclinations are by-products of their superior intelligence—but at the same time (Counter-Intuitively--By Golly!) are also the most potent assets for acquiring wealth.

Flatter Conservatives by telling them that their self interested and acquisitive inclinations are byproducts of their superior intelligence—but at the same time (Counter-Intuitively-- By Golly!) are also the most potent assets for cultivating an altruistic and ethics based life.

Flatter yourself for having amassed the requisite data and more importantly the anecdotal evidence in order to provide the basis for never before revealed insights and wisdom that have the power to change your life and provide genuine “Eureka” solutions to life’s most puzzling riddles.

In short—if you are mentally stuck between a rock and a hard place, put Malcolm in the middle.




I can't resist. I've tried to 'accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative' on this blog and steer clear of shooting fish in a barrel or skewering rotten meat on my grill, but this guy has pushed me too far. On the train, in the office, in the media, he's staring out at me and daring me to dive in and learn the special secrets that only he with his x-ray zeitgeist vision can detect and decode...and well, I just can't take it anymore..


...so I reached out to an old buddy in the hope that he could come to my aid and use his protean powers of pretense-free persuasion to clear the drain of dogmatic doodoo and stem the tide of vacuous voodoo emanating from the omnipresent frizzy headed oracle of obviousness. Take it away boys...and may the best man win....(go Homer!)



MALCOLM: “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

HOMER Weaseling out of things is important. It’s what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.

MG: “Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”

HS: If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing

MG: “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

HS: Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, 14% of people know that.

MG: “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”

HS: I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life.
Number 1: Cover for me.
Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss!
Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

MG: “Achievement is talent plus preparation”

HS: All my life I've had one dream, to achieve my many goals.

MG: We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

HS: Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.

MG: “Emotion is contagious.”

HS: Homer no function beer well without.

MG: To achieve your goals, you don’t need to be brilliant, talented, or rich. You just need to persevere, hope for the right timing, and focus on taking one small step at a time in the direction of your dreams.

HS: That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!

MG: “We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.”

HS: You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel

MG::“Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.”

HS: If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it --Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers!

MG: We all want to believe we make completely rational decisions …But even the smartest shopper is constantly manipulated in subtle psychological ways.

HS: You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.

MG: …S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.


HS: And I'm in no condition to drive...wait! I shouldn't listen to myself, I'm drunk! 


THANK YOU GENTLEMEN. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED IN THE LOBBY.



"> A vague recollection confirmed -- Father Brown in the Father Brown Detective Mystery series by G.K. Chesterton and Gulley Jimson from The Trilogy (Herself Surprised, To Be A Pilgrim, The Horse’s Mouth,) by Joyce Cary –were both played by Alec Guinness in the movies. And a perfect choice for both despite the fact that Brown is gentle, sweet, level-headed, even-tempered humble, quiet…and Gulley is in almost every way the polar opposite in temperament. A testament to Sir Alec.


Must to Avoid:
In a review about a book concerning The “Freud” wars among those in the psychoanalytic community who apparently have been at each other’s throats since Sigmund smoked his first cigar , there was this excerpt regards a comment the authors make on some gaps they detect in an edition of Freud's letters: 'The result of this omission', they tell us, 'obscured the connections between these scatological hypotheses on the ontogenic recapitulation by the individual of the erotogenic zones abandoned in the course of phylogenesis and the theory of infantile sexuality put forward in the Three Essays in 1905.'

Uncle. Uncle!

Can't recall if I've posted this before, and too lazy to check so here it is...again?
A classic live performance that became legend...and it seems to get fresher every year. If you don't know it, stick with it cause the instrumental intro goes on for a bit, but the vocal and solos are worth waiting for.

1969 Montreux Jazz Festival.
On Atlantic Recording: Swiss Movement
Composed by: Eugene McDaniels

Les McCann: piano, vocals
Eddie Harris: tenor saxophone
Benny Bailey: trumpet
Leroy Vinnegar: bass
Donald Dean: drums

Obama became president, then I got laid off, therefore Obama cost me my job.

D’Antoni resigned, then Knicks won. Therefore, D’Antoni was the problem.

The Rooster crows, then the sun rises. Therefore, roosters cause sunrises.


Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this," : a logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety…


...and you’ll find it all over the place. At work I sit in meetings listening to similar illogic to explain why certain shows aren’t doing well. We showed it at 10:30, then ratings were low, therefore 10:30 is a bad time slot. Rarely however, do you hear this line of reasoning: The show sucks, therefore no one watches it.


Fictional characters I’ve enjoyed spending time with over the years…with select examples as to why:



Philip Marlowe- Multiple Novels by Raymond Chandler

"You're Marlowe?"
I nodded.
"I'm a little disappointed," he said, "I rather expected something with dirty finger nails."
"Come inside," I said, "and you can be witty sitting down."






Bugs Bunny—by Tex Avery, Ben Hardaway, Chuck Jones , Mel Blanc and many others.

"Eh, you'll be fine if you remember t'ree things. One, your adversaries have tapioca for brains. Two, always eat your carrots. And three, villains always fall for cheesy disguises."






Gulley Jimson- From The Horses Mouth by Joyce Cary

“Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins.”




BTW: Was reading about Joyce Cary and discovered that in addition to the William Blake influence, there was also his contemporary Stanley Spencer as a model for Gulley Jimson. Some Spencer info and works posted below.




Sully Sullivan- From Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo

“I'm about to fuck up, he thought clearly, and his next thought was, but I don't have to. This was followed closely by a third thought, the last of this familiar sequence, which was, but I'm going to anyway.”




Raylan Givens- Elmore Leonard character in numerous books.

"Stop. Glen, I don't want you to speak anymore. 'Cause once you start lyin' to me, there's going to be a river between us with no bridge to cross. Do you understand what I'm sayin'? Nod if you do."






Huck Finn- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…by Mark Twain

"When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it."


Ishmael- Moby Dick , by Herman Melville

"In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans…. I do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression upon Queequeg…. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety."


Cuddy Mangum-- From the Justin and Cuddy novels by James Malone (Uncivil Seasons, Time’s Witness, First Lady)

“At the time, some kind folks thought we had us a moral revolution going that couldn’t slip back; it was racing along the road to glory, chucking war, racism and sexism out the widnows like roadside trash. These sweet Americans could no more imagine a backward slide than Romans could imagine their Forum was going to end up a cow pasture or much less a big litter box for stray cats tiptoeing through the condoms and cigarette butts.”





How the imaginative, playful, contrarian, and desperately overmatched mind deals with mathematics:





Stanley Spencer (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959)
Stanley Spencer with his old pram chassis walking down a Cookham lane with his easel and canvas.
Upon reading that he was Joyce Cary's model for Gulley Jimson in The Horse's Mouth, I was intrigued to know more. Spent some time online looking at his work and it knocked me out. Prolific and all over the map in style and substance. For more: http://www.stanleyspencer.org.uk/

CLICK TO ENLARGE















More G.K Chesterton:

“A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting; a child always stands for the good militarism as against the bad. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. The child's hero is never the man or boy who attempts by his mere personal force to extend his mere personal influence. That combination of the hero and bully in one, which people now call the Strong Man or the Superman, would be simply unintelligible to any schoolboy....No; I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it.”