Spitball Army

(photo: spitballarmy.com)

Oh, for crissakes, Mary, it’s nearly a hundred degrees out here.  Can’t we sit down somewhere?

Mother, look, there’s Mrs. Martucci from Bingo.

Why, hello Louise.  That’s a lovely bag.  Is it new?

The handles are too long.  I have to hold it up to keep it from dragging on the sidewalk, and it makes my shoulder sore.  Mary, are we there yet?

Oh, Mother, listen, it’s the brass band from Anthony’s.  Let’s dance!

You go dance.  My feet are killing me in these heels.  I shouldn’t have worn black, I feel like I’m dressed for a funeral.  Why can’t we celebrate the Feast of St. Anthony in October?

Mother, that man there wants to take your picture.  Let’s dance!!

Kid, you snap that camera and I’ll put you on your back.  I’ve got a brick in this handbag!

Ave Maria African Hair Braiding, Birmingham, Alabama
(photo: spitballarmy.com)

Brought to you this evening by the Madonna of the Braids:

Frieze of the Virgin Mary located in the Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), Halberstadt, Germany

Someone’s been watching The Three Amigos again.

This is what happens when several Birmingham musicians get together over the holidays, before the spiked egg nog really kicks in!

The New York Times Magazine‘s Idea Issue yesterday featured a list of some interesting patents registered during 2007, with the best guesses (by Jason Munn and Alexandra Horowitz) as to what inspired them.  Some of these nearly had me on the floor with laughter…and disbelief (situation first > patented idea second):

• Damaged butter knives > Butter-stick slicer
• Hula Hoop too light > Hula Hoop with weights
• Hat has only one advertising message > Hat with interchangeable advertising media
• Must spit manually > Saliva ejector
• Coffee maker does not fit into pants pocket > Folding coffee maker
• Miss TV show while grabbing a snack > Refrigerator with television
• Unsure how far pets have walked > Pedometer for pets
• Immovable eyeglass case > Portable eyeglass case
• Diaper bag not a fun place > Baby-seat-cover diaper bag/activity center
• Breakfast is not much of a gamble > Slot-machine-shaped toaster
• Painful jump-roping > Skipping ropes with more comfortable & effective skipping position
• Odorless cellphones > Communication device having a scent release feature & method thereof

Again, here is the link to the entire article from the Times’ website – it is in pdf format, and just about as hard to read online as it was on paper, but the effort will most certainly be rewarded.

Generator: iTunes < CD

Song title: “Mad Dog”
Artist: America

Album source: Holiday
Year of release: 1974
[audio:America___Mad_Dog.mp3]

First impressions: Pleasant, jaunty, piano-driven song.  Vocal and piano line wrap around each other playfully.  Rich harmonies on first chorus.  Brassy entrance after first chorus sounds like Beatles influence.  Second chorus introduces woodwinds.  Lyrics sound apologetic (“I’ve had way too much, clearly too much tonight…”), in contrast with the chest-puffing in the musical arrangement.

On second thought: The Beatles influence, after another listen, is not merely an influence: this song sounds like a Beatles homage!  The trumpet fanfare from “Penny Lane,” a “When I’m Sixty Four” clarinet, even a barely disguised George Harrison guitar line.  Being a Beatlemaniac, my claws were out when I first realized what America seemed to be doing with this song, but it is so well done – and such a trifle at 2:42 – that I will give it the “all clear.”  Furthermore, I’m now hearing the music as portraying the buffoonery of the title character, who apparently has bared his soul after getting overly-soused.  It’s a tidy little character vignette.

Why do I own this?:  Until recently, the only America recording I owned was History: America’s Greatest Hits, and it served nicely for many years – first on vinyl, then on CD.  I do remember seeing a vinyl copy of the debut album at a friend’s house when I was a kid (it belonged to his parents, of course).  Over the last four or five years, I’ve been like one possessed, immersing myself in the music of my youth – with an especially strong focus on the early 1970’s soft rock stuff (was it a “movement?”) – and have been collecting some of the full-length albums that contained songs that I knew from the radio of the time.  America’s Holiday contains “Tin Man” and “Lonely People” from History, and also has “Baby It’s Up To You,” one of my absolute favorite America songs, on it.  When the Collectables label re-issued it on CD in 2005, I snapped it up.

from The Frequencies, a poem by Noah Eli Gordon:

“I’m hitting a brick wall here,” the producer said, handing me the playlist.  “On the one hand, we’ve got to make it new,” he went on, “on the other, we don’t want to alienate our audience – they expect certain things from radio, you know.”  The way everything he said seemed to be an allegory was a bit unnerving, not to mention the fact that he continued to call me Kenneth no matter how often I corrected him.  “A little autonomy might be nice,” I said, forcing a half-smile.  “Look, this isn’t an art gallery,” he answered.  “It doesn’t matter what you like; there’s big money driving the music.”  I couldn’t help thinking this is where the strings come in, where the plot starts to swell, but the only applause sign I’d respond to would be one that goes off at random, without rhythm – the blinking light burning up any expectation of an irreducible outcome, the American idiom like a new penny wrapper, meaningless & empty & somehow more than itself.

Noah Eli Gordon blogs at humanverb.blogspot.com.

His writings, including The Frequencies, are available online at amazon.com, and on land at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square (where I found my copies).

B is for backward Birmingham Benz –
Barricaded by barbed wire,
Yet captured by lenz.

Birmingham Benz, Birmingham, Alabama.
(photo: spitballarmy.com)

Don Pio Pico himself, late in life.

One day in the late 1970s, while browsing the history sections of the Widener stacks, I came upon this book: Narracion Historica – Don Pio Pico’s Historical Narrative, as dictated to Thomas Savage, Los Angeles, October 24, 1877. I contacted the publisher, who very kindly scrambled together and bound the elements of the then out-of-print book and provided me with a full text. It was then given to my father as a Christmas gift in 1978, and kept safely (though I don’t think he ever read it completely). I inherited it back from my father upon his death in 2000, and it is one of the most cherished volumes in my library. Why? Well, Pio Pico is my family’s most notorious ancestor, having been the last person to hold the position of governor of California prior to its becoming an American state. In his nearly 93-year life span, he led an adventurous life as a revolutionary, land baron and, most unfortunately for his descendants, a prolific gambler. The following passage – from Pico’s own mouth, though translated by one Arthur P. Botello – describes what may have been the genesis of Pico’s gambling bug [the comments in square brackets were added by me]:

After the death of my father [in September of 1819] all the family moved to San Diego. Nothing was left us – not even an inch of ground. My older brother, Jose Antonio, was already in service but the rest of my family, except for two sisters already married, stayed at my mother’s side and I had to solicit help for her. My sisters and my mother worked at fine needlework. My sister, Tomasa, always finished before the rest because of her expertness.

I put up a small store where I sold liquors, provisions, chairs, and shoes. I always had a clerk in the store because I frequently went to Los Angeles and the missions and as far as the border of Baja California to sell goods and to bring back cattle and other goods in exchange.

One time I left San Diego with a load of sugar for the border of Baja California. Arriving at San Vicente, I lodged in the house of Lieutenant Commander Don Manuel Ruiz, brother of Francisco Maria. While there, I visited the Padre Ministre of the San Vicente Mission, Fr. Antonio Menendez, and the padre invited me to play a game of cards. I accepted. We played and he won all the sugar. I did not know the game and I had no idea that the priest would win, but he did and I returned home with nothing. When I turned over the sugar to him, Father Menendez said to me: “See here, Pico, it has happened to you as it did to Christ when he came into the world.” I asked, “What happened to Christ?” and he responded: “Christ came into the world to redeem sinners. He came for wool and left shorn. You came to sell your sugar and now leave penniless.”

This same Father Menendez some years later was chaplain of the San Diego Company and parson of the town. Still later he was transferred to Los Angeles and thence to Monterey.

During the stay of the padre in San Diego, we again played and I won from him twelve mules which he had brought from Baja California. I then told him: “Father, I do not want to behave like a tyrant. I will return your saddled black mule” and that is what I did.

My mother never knew of my adventure in San Vicente with Father Menendez but my sister Tomasa did. She was my confidante and took care of my money.

Tomasa once loaned $30.00 to a soldier from Baja California. I came home and my sister asked me if I had seen the soldier. I answered that I knew the soldier had left for Baja. She told me that the soldier owed her $30.00 and I offered to go and catch up with him. I went immediately. I caught up with him at Rancho de la Nacion [near present-day National City and Chula Vista], about eight leagues from San Diego, and he paid me the $30.00. After paying me he invited me to play. On the ranch was a corporal and four soldiers whose duty it was to watch after the interest of La Nacion. The corporal liked me very much and urged me to play with the soldier. He carried quite a bit of intereses [meaning, literally, interest, or money used for the sole purpose of generating money] from Monterey to Los Angeles. I won all that he carried. The soldier had on a pair of corduroy pants trimmed with gold thread. I asked him if he had anything more with which to play and he answered that he had only his pants and, if I wished, he would wager them. I did not want to play for his pants but my friend, the corporal, persuaded me to do so. With the pants, he not only won back all my money but my sister’s $30.00.

Afterwards, he continued playing with the corporal and the four soldiers and left them all bare. He did not even leave them the buttons on their uniforms. He won even their leather pants.

* Marjorie Reynolds to Danny, Fred Astaire’s manager

My affection for Holiday Inn knows no bounds, especially during the Christmas holiday season.  In my viewings lately, I’ve been focusing on the superb dancing of Fred Astaire – especially the two numbers featuring “You’re Easy to Dance With” – but I find that there are many rich veins to mine within this production.

So much of the context of this film seems dated today, from the blackface Lincoln’s Birthday number (political incorrectness on steroids!) to the cars, hairdos, telephones, mink stoles, and those short, wide ties!  Yowzah!  And, while most of the humor sounds cornball by today’s standards, it is also sometimes biting and sophisticated.  Combined with some colloquialisms that sound like they are from another century (oh, wait, they are!), the resultant dialogue in this film features dozens of zingers just waiting for re-discovery and use.  Here are some good ones:

• Bing Crosby, handing Fred Astaire a cup of coffee:
  “Here, have a slug out of the mug.”
• Fred, trying to remember the drunken night before: “Then I think I had a drink.”
  Bing: “A drink?  Boy, you were fractured!”
• Fred: “Jim, you’d better dream up a number for us.”
  Bing: “Well, just what did you visualize, Ziggy?!” [a reference to stage impresario, Flo Ziegfeld]
• Fred, to Marjorie Reynolds, after being given the cold shoulder by Bing, who rightly assumes that Fred is out to steal her away from him: “The world doesn’t change – a gentle smile often breeds a kick in the pants. But for your sake, Linda, I’ll be big.”
• Fred, regarding his former fiancee: “Poor girl, always straying to greener pastures and finding spinach.”
• Hatching a plot to get Bing’s girl under contract as Fred’s dancing partner.
  Danny, Fred’s manager: “This is no time to be honest!”
  Fred: “Well, what should I do?”
  Danny: “All we have to do is to convince Jim that he’d be a heel if he stood in the way of a chance like this.”
  Fred: “Oh, that’ll be easy.  Like peeling a turtle.”
• After purposely giving Virginia Dale wrong directions, forcing her car into the middle of a stream.
  Marjorie: “There’s a farmhouse near here, and I’ll have us towed out in a couple of minutes.”
  Virginia: “Oh, for the love of mud, hurry!”
• A lonely Thanksgiving dinner, Bing alone at the Inn.
  Mamie (housekeeper/cook): “Why you ain’t et a bite!”
  Bing: “I’m poutin’, Mamie.  Who is this [pointing to the turkey]?”
  Mamie: “That’s Mr. Jones.”
  Bing: “Jonesy?  I’m sorry, I knew him too well.”
  Mamie: “But you’ve got to eat.  The trouble ain’t with that turkey, Mr. Jim, it’s you!”
  Bing: “I feel alright.  I’m ridin’ high, Mamie.”
  Mamie: “Well, why you close the Inn, and sit around like a jellyfish with the misery?  ‘Cuz a slicker stole your gal, and you ain’t got fight enough to get her back!  Oh, excuse me, Mr. Jim, but…”
  Bing: “Well, I tried to keep her here!”
  Mamie: “What kind of keepin’ is that?  Nothin’ but tricks! If you went to Hollywood and told Miss Linda how much you loves her, and misses her, and told her that the way a lady likes to hear it told, hmph, I bet you she’d be the quickest ex-movie star that ever ex’d!”
  Bing: “You’re crazy, Mamie.”
  Mamie: “I’m crazy?! I knows Miss Linda, I knows her like I knows my own kids.  Why, she ain’t the fancy type no more’n you are.  What she wants is what you’ve got right here, but women has to have them things told to ’em the right way.  You could melt her heart right down to butter…if you’d only turn on the heat!”
• Bing, to waiter at swanky nightclub: “I’ll have a bowl of coffee.”

Alabama Industries for the Blind, Birmingham, Alabama
(photo: spitballarmy.com)