April rambling: Unbreaking America

Why Did the U.S. Government Pay for a Painting of Strawberries? Two-thirds of the paintings, in total, are by women. This wasn’t because women of the era liked to paint fruit.

No Room!
“Looking Backward,” drawn by the brilliant Austrian-born Joseph Ferdinand Keppler (February 1, 1838 – February 19, 1894) for Puck magazine, January 11, 1893

First image of a black hole revealed.

Slave Owners’ Names Are on Dorms at a SUNY School. That’s Changing. New Paltz is my undergraduate alma mater.

Why There’s So Little Left of the Early Internet.

Anderson Cooper speaks the “language of loss”.

Amy Biancolli: talking to the darkness.

“I Had Nothing”: How Parole Perpetuates a Cycle of Incarceration and Instability.

You Are Probably a Victim of the Largest Theft of All Time.

TEDx: we all should be feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Weekly Sift: Mueller by Gaslight.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: the sinister sides of World Wrestling Entertainment and the Mobile Home Industry.

Behind Bars, Co-Pays Are a Barrier to Basic Health Care.

The Death of an Adjunct Professor.

An aging population and a declining birthrate among the native-born population mean a shrinking workforce in many areas.

The Stephen Miller Presidency.

What an Empire Built on Nazi Collaboration Says About Our Economy.

Political Notebook: Politics last week and this week.

FTC Data Spotlight Shows Steep Rise in Complaints about Social Security Scams.

Unbreaking America: A NEW Short Film about Solving the Corruption Crisis.

New Zealand Parliament bans assault weapons.

“Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history. “
– Aldous Huxley

The Persistence of Attachment.

What can an ice mummy teach us about heart disease?

Watch The World Turn.

The reason we bake at 350F.

5 Things to Do When You Have Too Many Ideas and Never Finish Anything.

Bless Your Heart doesn’t mean what you probably think it means.

Inside Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s Unconventional Marriage and ten minutes with Fosse.

Remembering William Goldman.

Re: Dwayne Wade: Now this is a proper sendoff

Minor League Baseball announces pace-of-play rules for 2019 and this is what Major League Baseball fandom looks like across the country.

Now I Know video: This Guy Tastes Ice Cream For a Living.

Now I Know: Who is Dr. Fill and why are these people afraid of him? and This idea to augment the postal service was a catastrophe and Why You Shouldn’t Carpool with Winnie the Pooh and especially Why Did the U.S. Government Pay for a Painting of Strawberries?

MUSIC

Religion – PJ Morton feat. Lecrae.

Faith – Business Casual.

Dead Boys -Sam Fender.

Live from New York, it’s Aubrey Logan.

Heaven Is a Place on Earth – KT Tunstall.

Video Killed The Radio Star – Walk off the Earth feat. Sarah Silverman

My Heart Will Go On – Big Daddy

Les chansons des roses – Morten Lauridsen.

You Get What You Give – Scary Pockets.

Africa – Robyn Adele Anderson.

Pencil Neck Geek – Don Blassie.

Coverville: 1257: A Cover Chain with Birthday Covers for Stan Ridgway, Katrina Leskanich, Norah Jones, Mandy Moore, and Brian Setzer

FUV ESSENTIALS: Richard Thompson.

January rambling: quotidian stupidity

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually

The Impact of Climate Change on Language Loss

NBC’s Meet the Press devotes the entire show to climate change with no time for deniers

Saving American Democracy

Are powerful women likable?

A double diagnosis — cancer while poor

NOW I AM

Chronic lying and self-contempt

Why He Reigns as King Cyrus

He Is the Damn Emergency; Post-Speech

The wall speech v. the prediction; it is not about the wall

He Was Never Vetted

Celibacy isn’t the cause of the church sex-abuse crisis; the priesthood is

Comic book artist Batton Lash, October 29, 1953 – January 12, 2019

Former Yankees Starter, Pitching Coach Mel Stottlemyre Dies at 77 – I was there at the Stadium when they retired his number

Broadway legend Carol Channing dies at 97

Bob Einstein, R.I.P.

Arthur answers my questions about blogging stuff and gay conversion therapy and current gay issues and his parents

The Crimson Permanent Assurance (Monty Python’s)

Everyday smartness is definitely no match for quotidian stupidity

On books, and joy, and hoarding, and having too many books…

I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon

After 30 years, Elisa Streeter has retired from WTEN-TV 10 in Albany

Every The Dick Van Dyke Show Episode, Ranked

Review time! with ‘Planet of the Apes Visionaries’

Lady Cop: A 70s Comic that Tried (and Failed)

Disgusting Food Museum opens

What is Glitter?

Cookie Monster in the UK, interview by Melissa Nathoo and Cookie Monster visits the Ellen show

Now I Know: The Dog With Strings Attached and Meet Kelly, The Really Smart Dolphin and The Avengers Burial Ground and Why You Can’t Make a Phone Call with a Calculator and How to Beat Traffic in Moscow

11 foot 8 bridge

When teens discover jazz
Archie Comics

2018/2019

In review

The Story that Really Mattered

Bringing out the dead

fillyjonk’s year

The Worst Political Predictions

35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked to predict the world of 2019

Dave Barry: What made 2018 so awful? A month-by-month look at the most outrageous highlights

MUSIC

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It – Lana Del Rey, and other songs

K-Chuck Radio: Sail on, Captain… (Daryl Dragon)

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man (complete)

Winter Melody – Donna Summer

Getting Better – MonaLisa Twins

All Along The Watchtower – Playing For Change

Loving You Today – Amy Barlow

Downtown – Saw Doctors with Petula Clark

Lawyers, Guns and Money – Warren Zevon

Don’t Turn Away – Hollie Sue

Some People, from the Broadway show Gypsy, performed by several big stars

Safety Dance – Men Without Hats

Overture to Johann Strauss’s operetta The Gypsy Baron – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

22 Musicals In 12 Minutes w/ Lin Manuel Miranda, Emily Blunt, and James Corden

Year Of The Cat – Al Stewart

Nature Boy: Eden Ahbez and Annie Haslam and Sun Ra

Coverville: 1246: Cover Stories for Marilyn Manson and Foo Fighters and 1247: Cover Stories for Susanna Hoffs and Sade

Dawn over the Land – Night Breeze

I Just Want to Be a Star – Nunsense

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – Sonny Vande Putte

Meow Mix – cats at a rave

Baby Shark went viral and hit the Billboard Hot 100

How one designer created the “look” of jazz

The End of Owning Music: How CDs and Downloads Died

Review time! with ‘Crossroad Blues’

September rambling #2: Land of Confusion

Ex-Beatle Lands No. 1 Album for First Time in 36 Years

Your shadowThe republic for which it stands

The NRA’s Catch-22 for Black Men Shot by Police

US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Demands Taxpayer Money For Religious Schools

The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck

10 Years After: The Post-Recovery Economy

Stephen Colbert Made DJT’s Hurricane Response Into A Children’s Book

Sexual assault survivors tell ‘why I didn’t report’

Stop Making Victims of Sexual Assault into Martyrs for Virginity

We Need to Rethink Our Ideas About Aging

The Plot to Subvert an Election – Unraveling the Russia Story So Far

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, ‘social credit’ will bring privileges — for others, punishment

John Oliver: Facebook’s global expansion has been linked to political turmoil overseas, so maybe their ads should focus less on how they “connect the world” and more on why connecting people isn’t always the best idea.

Doug Ford Cancelled Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot Experiment Because It Was Working

How Golf Digest helped free a golf-course artist imprisoned 27 years for a murder he didn’t commit

Arizona’s Gosar family asks voters NOT to re-elect their brother to Congress

Noor Inayat Khan, one of the bravest women of World War II

RIP Thad Mumford, MASH writer and former Yankees batboy

R.I.P. Norm Breyfogle, 1960-2018, Batman artist

Chevy Chase can’t change

The 2018 Winners of the Ig(R) Nobel Prize

You Can’t See ‘Round Corners: The Vietnam War as a rare TV miniseries

Two People with Paralysis Walk Again Using an Implanted Device

In Saratoga Springs, NY! This Enormous Warehouse Of Used Books In New York Will Be Your New Favorite Destination

Interview with Dick Van Dyke at 2017 Salt Lake City Comic-Con (30 min)

What’s coming to Broadway in the coming months

Premiere night of The Minor League Mecca, the Albany Patroons documentary

The million-dollar brownstone that no one owned​

Bruef slide show on the history of the Horn & Hardart Automats

Now I Know: Why the Big Bad Wolf Wouldn’t be a Good Baseball Player and Why You Shouldn’t Pass Gas Near a West Virginia Police Office and When Flying First Class Isn’t Good Enough and How Long It Takes to Find a Needle in a Haystack

The history of cookies as explained by the world’s foremost authority on the subject

Would-be robber loses trousers

MUSIC

Fugue on “Donald Trump is a wanker” based on Seven-Man Army – White Stripes. Plus So You Want to Write a Fugue? – Glenn Gould

René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War – Paul Simon (Live from Copenhagen); Feeling Lost with Paul Simon One Last Time

Land of Confusion – Hidden Citizens

Africa -Weezer (starring Weird Al Yankovic)

Estancia, by a composer named Alberto Ginastera

Good Times – Pheobe Snow

Ravel Left Hand Piano Concerto played by Yuja Wang

Overture to The Jolly Robbers -von Suppé

Bonehemian Rhapsody – 28-Trombone Collaboration! (from ITF 2018!)

Gangsta’s Paradise – Jain

Marry An Ugly Woman – Rafael de Leon (Roaring Lion)

Weekend Diversion: Coldplay

How big was Helen Shapiro? The Beatles opened for her in 1963

Paul McCartney: Lands No. 1 Album for First Time in 36 Years and Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions and Talks to Howard Stern and at the Kennedy Center Honors (2012)

Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder Marty Balin Dead at 76

September rambling #2: R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Why Marvel movie music is so forgettable

libraries-because

Climate change illo is so perfect, it’s undeniable

Dying to be me! Anita Moorjani at TEDx BayArea

It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility

Self Care For People of Color After Psychological Trauma

No touching. No human contact. The hidden toll on jail inmates who spend months or years alone in a 7×9 foot cell

The Smithsonian’s African American museum – a monument to respectability politics; hmm, I am a charter member

Forehead Tittaes / Marion Cotillard and Pinksourcing With Kristen Bell

Homeless, Looking for Work

Childhood lost: Schooling a workforce and Naviance not so transparent- and cooking up data starting in kindergarten?

Now I Know: Charles Bernard’s Unexpected Vacation and Avast, Ye Groceries! and The Secret, Broken Language of Fire Hydrants and The Dangerous-Sounding Threat of DHMO and A Fishy Story

Is Inbreeding Really That Bad?

It occurs to me that I ALWAYS knew who Arnold Palmer was. From watching him and his army of fans on TV in my grandfather’s apartment, just upstairs from mine, to the epic golf battles between him and Jack Nicklaus, to an iced tea with lemonade drink named for him, to ads for prescription drugs. Arnold Palmer was 87. Here’s Olin and Palmer Team Remembered in Silver; Spencer Olin is a distant cousin of my wife’s

R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis, the “Godfather of Gore”, Has Passed Away at 87; Our business library had a business book of his, called Big Profits from Small Budget Advertising, from 1992, and when we deaccessioned the tome, I scooped it up. So it’s now in the same office at home as my copy of FantaCo Enterprises’ The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and His World of Exploitation Films, autographed by HGL “to my friend Roger,” also signed by coauthors Daniel Krogh and John McCarty at FantaCon 1983

The Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, one of Major League Baseball’s top pitchers, was killed in a boating accident; he was 24 and had a great backstory

Bill Nunn, Who Played Radio Raheem in ‘Do the Right Thing,’ Dies at 63, which is my age; Love – Hate: Do the Right Thing

Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer-winning playwright and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ author, dies at 88

The three “tireds”
Friday

‘Rock star’ Baltimore librarian makes history at Library of Congress

See Amazing Images of American Sikhs

5 Rules for Hosting a Crappy Dinner Party (and Seeing Your Friends More Often)

There’s a movement afoot to name an intersection in Los Angeles for the late Forrest J Ackerman

Tom Hanks Has Made a Fortune Bringing Your Travel Nightmares to Life

Vin Scully is a voice for the ages and The national pastime continues to endure and Ken Levine’s tribute; we’re talkin’ baseball.

History of the Volkswagen and especially its groundbreaking advertising

48 Hour Film Project 2016 – SUPr, featuring Rebecca Jade (niece #1)

THE TRUST BOOK ONE: SILENT SCREAM Kickstarter. Goal met, stretch goal sought. Dennis Webster, Bill Anderson, Gabriel Rearte and Laurie E. Smith bring you the Roaring Twenties like you’ve never seen them before

Essay on lettering in comic books

Dominoes, and I don’t mean the bad pizza

Music!

Jolene by Dolly Parton and PTX

Gilbert, Sullivan, Spinners

The surprising reason music for Marvel movies is so forgettable; the tyranny of the temp track

Memorable tracks that never got above #58 on the Billboard charts

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Test Pattern Parody Talking Heads On Seth Meyers

Stanley Dural a/k/a Buckwheat Zydeco died at the age of 68. Here’s Beast of Burden.

Alan Vega, artist and punk musician – obituary (HT to Shooting Parrots)

Music Throwback Saturday: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile

The Smile, Darn You, Smile cartoon was redone, and colorized, in 1995.

Smile,_Darn_Ya,_Smile!For this one, blame fillyjonk. She had a post featuring, among other things, Billy Cotton singing Smile, Darn Ya, Smile from 1931, a song written by Charles O’Flynn, Jack Meskill, and Max Rich.

Also in that post, from that year, a character named Foxy – looking not dissimilar to Mickey Mouse – in an animated feature with the same name as the song. It was a Merrie Melodies cartoon, a producer I recognize as later featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and others.

From Toonzone: This cartoon is very similar to Walt Disney’s Oswald the Rabbit cartoon Trolley Troubles (1927) [where “Oswald is the conductor on a runaway trolley] which [supervising director Rudolf] Ising likely worked on. Disney Swipe: In both Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! and in Disney’s The Opry House (1929), a fat hippo is deflated with a pin.”

The Smile, Darn Ya, Smile cartoon was redone, and colorized, in 1995. “The re-drawn version is never animated at 24 fps (as many scenes in the original are), but only with 12 drawings/second.”

As fillyjonk noted, the song “was used (at least the chorus was) at the very end of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (when the Toons get their happy ending, after all).” It was also recorded by several others.

LINKS

Read the fillyjonk post

Read IMBD of the 1931 cartoon

Watch the side-by-side comparison of the 1931 and 1995 cartoons

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile by Ben Selvin, which hit #14 on the Billboard charts in 1931 HERE or HERE or HERE

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Percival Mackay & His Kit-Kat Band (1931)

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Joe Morgan and his Palais D’or Orchestra (1931)

Listen to Smile, Darn Ya, Smile – Sammy Davis, Jr., featuring tap dancing

Watch the end of the Roger Rabbit movie

Listen to soundtrack recording of Smile, Darn Ya, Smile from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The lyrics

Smile, darn ya, smile
You know this great world is a good world after all
Smile, darn ya, smile
And right away watch lady luck pay you a call
Things are never black as they are painted
Time for you and joy to get acquainted
So make life worthwhile
Come on and smile, darn ya, smile

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