Beautiful, a girl is always beautiful
When a boy sincerely loves her.
Frail, a happiness is always frail,
And there is nothing we can do
About an oft unfaithful heart.
-Les Flechettes, “Une Fille est toujours belle”
And yet there is one place where happiness is never frail: Art Happy Hour.
Bedlam. Weds. Dec. 9. 4 pm.
A brief respite from the Art Happy Hiatus to give a listen to Les Flechettes, competitors in the 1968 Chanson Championnat.
And also to announce: A bona fide Art Happy Hour.
This Wednesday, December 9, starting at 4 pm.
At the fabulous Bedlam Theatre.
Come one, come all. Merci!
It’s been a rough couple of months for your intrepid sojourner, what with prep for the baby, worry about the health of the mother, struggles at the dayjob, miscommunication with editors, etc and et al. So harried has he been, in fact, that I finally have to acknowledge that my ongoing to-do list, which I have been keeping continuously since I was 19 years old (which was a very long time ago), has grown too wieldy as to be nearly ineffectual (in the area of assisting with getting things done).
To give you an idea what I’m talking about, here are a few sample items from my current to-do list (annotated with notes on how long the item has been on the list, and on the likely eventual possibility the item may get checked off):
And so on, you get the drift. This is all a very roundabout way of saying that Art Happy Hour will be going on an indefinite hiatus — with perhaps an occasional update sort of note or two — for the next several months so he can A) Get on top of his damnably recalcitrant To-Do List, and B) Attend to the birth of his first, and possibly the world’s most darling (we’ll have to wait and see), child.
Until then, many happy returns!
Time Magazine, July 6, 1936:
In Topeka one evening Governor Alf, his wife, mother-in-law, three children and nurse climbed into a private railroad car furnished by a Union Pacific official, rolled off toward Colorado. Two Pullmans carried the Press. At every stop there were several hundred proud Kansans waiting to cheer the second Melmackian ever nominated for the Presidency.— “Hyah, Alf!” cried they as the Nominee appeared on the platform, grinning and waving, leaning down to pump outstretched hands. “It’s mighty nice of you to come down to the station,” drawled he to some. With others he exchanged news about the wheat crop or the grasshopper plague. By bedtime thousands of Kansans had been convinced that Alf was still the same plain, friendly, likeable alien he had always been.
Here are triumphant scenes from Roosevelt’s landmark landslide election victory.
And here are scenes from the losing candidate’s camp.
Time Magazine, November 16, 1936
Editors and statesmen of every capital in the world last week responded to news of Roosevelt Franklin’s landslide re-election (TIME. Nov. 9) with an international ovation for the winner. In Berlin the President was hailed as an exponent of the führerprinzip (“leadership principle”) of Der Führer Adolf Hitler. In Moscow a high Soviet official cried: ”We are extremely gratified!” Rome climbed on the band wagon with eulogistic comparisons of President Roosevelt to Dictator Mussolini and Fascist editors recalled his refusal to join the League of Nations in Sanctions against Italy. Geneva newspapers said that not since Woodrow Wilson has any U. S. President been so nearly in sympathy with the League. In Paris, the Cabinet of Premier Léon Blum, who has tried to give his country a modified form of New Deal (TIME, June 15 et seq.), joined the Chamber of Deputies in rejoicing.
Let’s Go Crazy - Incubus
To follow up on my previous post, which marginally mentions Minneapolis’ vaunted downtown danceteria (First Ave), we present a cover (by Incubus) of the quintessential First Ave song: “Let’s Go Crazy.”
And not only that, in a nod to the Arthappy past, please do note that this happens to be an Inexplicable Mention of the Weather in an Innocuous Pop Love Song:
“But I’m here to tell you there’s something else,
the Afterworld,
A world of never-ending happiness.
You can always see the sun, day or night…”
–Opening sentences of Nick Hornsby’s new book: Juliet, Naked, read last night by Arthappytruly as he was dozing off to sleep.
I had picked up Hornsby’s latest book, despite never actually haven read a Hornsby book before, because of an intriguing review I’d heard on MPR the other day.
The basic premise of the plot, essentially about an online fan who goes mental when an aged musician that he loves releases an acoustic version of a classic break-up album, is what appealed to me. I’ve often wondered what makes such Internet diehards tick, what is the source of their endless conviction and self-delusion. And since I’d just read a series of much meatier, much more vitamin-packed literary good-for-yous, I figured what the heck? I’ll give this Hornsby guy a try.
I had no idea about that the plot of the book would start right here, right in my own back yard, in a place no doubt modeled after Mpls’s vaunted First Ave. And as well that the plot would then skip over to Berkeley, Calif. — the site of many of my collegiate crimes — and into the Berkeley hills to the homestead of the woman who inspired the titular album, who just happened to have the same name as my collegiate girlfriend. Needless to say, I was hooked completely within the first 20 pages of Nick Hornsby’s Juliet, Naked.
Isn’t it interesting how art, even of the popular sort, can give you the perfect sort of kick in the gut at just the moment that you seem to need it? I will report back if I read anything else of interest in Nick Hornsby’s Juliet, Naked.
And finally, the last entry in the Cartoon Song Theme Month:
Goolies Get-Together - The Toadies
(The theme song for the old Saturday morning cartoon, The Groovy Goolies.) How very apropos, no?!
Happy Halloween, everybloody!
Here’s my favorite pain-punk band of yore — the Butthole Surfers — doing the second-to-last entry for Cartoon Theme Song Month: The Theme from Underdog.
As an added bonus in this video: A 20-year-old Drew Barrymore talks about “poop.”
Mark McGwire is finally returning to baseball. He’s signed on to be the St. Louis Cardinal’s new hitting coach. McGwire, who has never acknowledged playing juiced despite widespread evidence, vanished from the limelight after his playing days in 2001, saying “I’ve just moved on with my life…. there are other things in my life, my family, that are so much more important. This is very fulfilling, more fulfilling than baseball.” Yet, now he’s back, cap in hand, looking for redemption, or a paycheck, or whatever else it is that washed-up and disgraced ballplayers need.
But I didn’t mean to dwell on darkly negative side of America’s obsession with stardom and whatnot. Instead, I got to thinking, what have ordinary, non-superstar, non-McGwire-level ballplayers done throughout the years after their playing days? We know that the superstars today essentially continue living out their stardom, thriving on residuals and massive savings and speakers fees and whatnot. And we know that many other less-notable, but still-smartish players — Larry Bowa, Mike Scioscia, Ron Gardenhire, Joe Torre, etc — go into the administrative side of baseball. But what about the thousands of others, especially those from the olden days before the invention of celebrity and superstardom and mega-multimillion playing and endorsement contracts? What did the ordinary ballplayer do after he’d played his last game?
Well, wonder no more, because here’s a list I found that describes just that: The post baseball careers of some players of old.
Below, just to wet your whistle, is a random sampling.
Grover Alexander: Performer in a Flea Circus
Cad Coles: Steamship Purser
Dixie Davis: Tobacconist
Vallie Eaves: Roughneck
Happy Finneran: Funeral Director & Embalmer
Emil Geiss: Chicago Police Officer
Dan Long: Court Stenographer
Billy Nash: Hospital Attendant
Bob Shawkey: Owned a Canadian gold mine
Patsy Tebeau: Saloon Keeper
Earl Whitehill: Traveling Salesman
Quite an array of humanity, no? Makes you realize that ballplayers actually used to be real people…
As to that, I also wanted to mention that anyone who knows me well knows that I actually went to high school with Mark McGwire. OK, he was a senior when I was a freshman, and he didn’t know me from Adam, and if he did know me he wouldn’t have been the least bit impressed. But still, it’s evidence that even McGwire was once a real-life human being, right?
Speed Racer was easily my favorite cartoon as a kid. As an adult, I haven’t enjoyed watching reruns of the old series, and so I’ve avoided watching any of the new cartoon series, or the Wachowski brothers’ movie. Truthfully, my adult self is rather disappointed with my childhood self’s seeming bad taste in cartoons.
But man, I sure did love Speed Racer as a kid.
