In any case, the presidents from a few centuries ago did a lot better.
George Washington had a dog named Sweet Lips. And one called Scentwell. And Drunkard.
John Adam's dog was named Satan.
According to legend, Andrew Jackson's parrot Poll had to be removed from the room during his funeral, because he just started swearing. In English and Spanish.
Here's my pup Cosmos. There's something rather imperial about him. I always wanted to have his portrait painted, wearing a Napoleon hat with the tricoleur waving behind him.
WTF?: The God-damndest Things Ever Seen, my series of bizarre cinema at Doc Films, continues tonight with the crown jewel of the series: Corn's-a-Poppin'. It's an utterly mysterious backstage musical. Nobody seems to have any real information about it - we can't even confirm the year of its release, though 1951 is probably right. In fact, for all we know, its screenings at Doc have been the only theatrical exhibitions of the movie ever. All we know is that one of its screenwriters was none other than a starving Kansas City television worker named Robert Altman.
I won't attempt to describe the film anymore, as my friend Kyle Westphal wrote the definitive piece about the film on his blog - and this is not just because it is likely to be the only piece ever to be written about Corn's-a-Poppin', but because it is a truly insightful look at the kind of unaccountable cinema that a certain contingent of Doc people/alums are particularly entranced by:
The emotional heart of a picture filled with obtusely intimate moments is the penultimate number, “On Our Way to Mars.” It has the greatest build-up of all the numbers, with little Susie begging her brother to be allowed to sing with him on the air. The result is a piece of minimalist s-f: Susie and Johnny float in a cardboard rocket while crooning about finding a grilled cheese sandwich on the moon. They set up rhyme schemes and then abandon them, finishing couplets with ‘Zoom! Zoom!’ It’s a creepy number, filled with romantic and sexual overtones—already present from the first reel of Corn’s-A-Poppin’ during which we’re not quite sure whether Susie is Johnny’s sister or his midget bride. (Susie speaks with all the bluster and toughness of a boozed-out Hollywood sideshow, cooks all of Johnny’s meals in an apron, and possesses a disposition very unbecoming of a child star.) But “On Our Way to Mars” becomes unexpectedly moving when Johnny sings about ‘dreams in Cinemascope,’ a timidly self-conscious expression about the kind of ragged, desperate movie that Corn’s-A-Poppin’ must be. Its actors will never see their names on a marquee or headline a Hollywood production; the reference to unattainable aesthetic luxuries has the effect of reminding us that Corn’s-A-Poppin’ constitutes a wooly alternative to them. The enterprise is so small-time that most of the performances come across better and stronger as documentary records of deer in the proverbial limelight. Intentionally or not, local acts of guerilla cinema like Corn’s-A-Poppin’ unleash a torrent of poetic feeling and reveal a new territory in film aesthetics.
For many years at Doc, the people running the organization were obsessed with Stanley Donen's Bedazzled starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, which you may remember was remade by Harold Ramis in 2000 with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. Doc for some reason would screen the original Bedazzled every single year. That tradition ended some time ago, but perhaps it is time to start it up again...only with Corn's-a-Poppin' instead.
The film screens Thursday, April 9 at 9:00 p.m at Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St, Chicago. There will be some delightful shorts beforehand as well.
For the past ten minutes, the emergency lights in my office have been silently flashing. Finally, a voice recording began playing on all the speakers in the building, each slightly delayed from the previous, creating a powerful booming effect.
"Attention. The emergency condition has been cleared. Resume to normal condition."
It's difficult to describe the quality of this voice, except that it would not have sounded out of the ordinary if its address began, "People of Earth..." It's also exactly the kind of Engrish that you'd expect an alien would use to pacify an anxious population of Earthling office administrators in order to make the invasion go that much more smoothly.
David Byrne played a show in Liverpool last week and reported on an amazing, mysterious network of tunnels dug under the city in the beginning of the 19th century.
An eccentric millionaire named Joseph Williamson began digging the tunnels in 1805. There is no discernible logic or purpose to their layout - they go in all directions, often are just dead ends, are at times double-decker and even triple-decker tunnels, and apparently some have tunnels within the tunnels. When he died in 1840, his housekeeper sold all his personal documents, so there is no record of why he was digging them in the first place, though there are theories:
Some claim that he was being altruistic, as the soldiers returning from the Napoleonic Wars needed work; others claim he had apocalyptic religious leanings, and the tunnels were to be a refuge come the end of the world. Williamson and his followers would seek refuge in the tunnels while God destroyed the evildoers above, then they’d emerge and build a new city — a kind of contemporary Noah...
There’s an anecdote from the 1830’s about some railway workers who were digging nearby the tunnels. A hole suddenly opened up beneath them; they looked down, and saw Williamson’s workers looking up at them. The railway guys fled in terror, thinking they had opened up a hole in hell.
I remember when I was in second grade, my mother ordered a book for me called How To Build A Fort. As I was waiting for it to arrive, I would sit on the school bus, stare out the window and daydream about the book providing instructions on how to build a similarly elaborate series of tunnels (which I realize now does not technically count as a fort). I don't think I had any purpose in mind for them, and I had no idea where I wanted them to lead. Now here I am, many years later, labyrinth-less, and even fort-less. I have wasted my life.
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Van Dyke Parks - "Number Nine" - from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Chorale" [mp3]
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The Free Design - "Kije's Ouija" - from Prokofiev's "Suite From Lieutenant Kijé," Op. 60 [mp3]
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The Toys - "A Lover's Concerto" - from Bach's "Minuet in G Major," BWV Anh. 114 [mp3]
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Allan Sherman - "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" - from Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda, Op. 9 [mp3]
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The Mindbenders - "A Groovy Kind of Love" - from Clementi's "Sonatina in G Major," Op. 36 No. 5 [mp3]
A thuggish Latino man walking west from Belmont & Broadway, angrily yelling into his cellphone: What I want to know is why would you test positive and I test negative... honey!
Every once in a while, I will see posted on several blogs and Facebook profiles something along the lines of: "SNL mostly sucked last night, but this sketch was pretty funny!" And I am suckered into watching it. And then I think, "If this is the funny sketch, how bad must the other hour-and-twenty-five minutes have been?"
It happened again this week, with the "funny" sketch being this one about the Muppets:
I hate when people think that all you need to do with referential humor is just make the reference...and that's it. There's no twist, nothing clever added. Essentially, it just amounts to a list. In this case, it is a list of Muppets. We go through all of them, hear approximations of their voices, and we're done. Ha.
Not that list humor can never be funny. But it requires some work. Monty Python's famous "Cheese Shop" sketch is very much an example of list humor, yet they make it work:
I think a big key is that it's not the only thing going on. We've got the surreal dancing men in bowlers in the corner, the inexplicable split-second cutaway, the meta- reaction of the shopkeeper to that cutaway, the silly transformation of John Cleese into a cowboy at the end, etc. Not to mention that the list itself is funny, because it is so extensive and obscure.
Cole Porter was perhaps the master of list humor. Not only did he manage to cram tons of references into a few minutes of music, he even made it rhyme. If I could write one song as good as "You're The Top" from Anything Goes, I would die happy, whistling a tune:
At words poetic, I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best,
Instead of getting 'em off my chest,
To let 'em rest unexpressed.
I hate parading my serenading
As I'll probably miss a bar,
But if this ditty is not so pretty
At least it'll tell you
How great you are.
You're the top!
You're the Coliseum,
You're the top!
You're the Louvre Museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare's sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse.
You're the Nile,
You're the Tower of Pisa,
You're the smile on the Mona Lisa
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!
Your words poetic are not pathetic.
On the other hand, babe, you shine,
And I can feel after every line
A thrill divine
Down my spine.
Now gifted humans like Vincent Youmans
Might think that your song is bad,
But I got a notion
I'll second the motion
And this is what I'm going to add;
You're the top!
You're Mahatma Gandhi.
You're the top!
You're Napoleon Brandy.
You're the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
You're the National Gallery
You're Garbo's salary,
You're cellophane.
You're sublime,
You're a turkey dinner,
You're the time of the Derby winner.
I'm a toy balloon that is fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
You're the top!
You're a Ritz hot toddy.
You're the top!
You're a Brewster body.
You're the boats that glide
On the sleepy Zuider Zee,
You're a Nathan panning,
You're Bishop Manning,
You're broccoli!
You're a prize,
You're a night at Coney,
You're the eyes of Irene Bordoni.
I'm a broken doll,
A fol-de-rol, a blop,
But if, Baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
You're the top!
You're a dance in Bali.
You're the top!
You're a hot tamale.
You're an angel, you,
Simply too, too, too diveen,
You're a Boticcelli,
You're Keats,
You're Shelley,
You're Ovaltine.
You're a boon,
You're the dam at Boulder.
You're the moon,
Over Mae West's shoulder.
I'm the nominee of the G.O.P.
Or GOP!
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
You're the top!
You're an Arrow collar.
You're the top!
You're a Coolidge dollar.
You're the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire,
You're an O'Neill drama,
You're Whistler's mama,
You're Camembert.
You're a rose,
You're Inferno's Dante.
You're the nose
On the great Durante.
I'm just in the way,
As the French would say, "de trop."
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
You're the top!
You're the Towel of Babel,
You're the top
You're the Whitney stable
By the river Rhine you're a sturdy stein of beer.
You're a dress from Saks's,
You're next year's taxes,
You're stratosphere!
You're my fuyst,
You're a drumstick lipstick.
You're da foist
In da Irish svipstick.
I'm a frightened frog that can find no log to hop
But if baby I'm the bottom
You're the top!
You're the top!
You're a Waldorf salad.
You're the top!
You're a Berlin ballad.
You're a baby grand
Of a lady and a gent.
You're an old Dutch master,
You're Mrs. Astor,
You're Pepsodent!
You're romance,
You're the steppes of Russia,
You're the pants
On a Roxy usher.
I'm a lazy lout that's just about to stop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
Check out Slate for an annotated version of the lyrics. When I get a chance, I'll upload an mp3 of the song, but for now, be content with the best I could find on YouTube:
a-t: i have never seen a man rock the mock turtleneck the way that one does
The always excellent If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There'd Be A Whole Lot of Dead Copycats features this lovely portrait of Van Dyke Parks in the studio circa 1968. Parks seems to be in vogue again these days, following his lyrical contributions to Brian Wilson's finally released Smile, his incredible orchestration of Joanna Newsom's Ys, as well as the Paul Thomas Anderson-fueled rediscovery of Harry Nilsson's Popeye soundtrack, which he did arrangements for. I got into him early on in high school, before I even started obsessing about The Beach Boys. The ingredients in his music added up to a perfect Evan recipe: whimsical, surreal lyrics; Stephen Foster-inspired Americana; Tin Pan Alley wit and melody; delicate, shifting chamber orchestrations; concept albums based on Uncle Remus stories, etc. He also served as my introduction to my absolute fave, Randy Newman, as Parks's masterpiece debut album Song Cycle from 1968 opens with a stunning arrangement of Newman's "Vine Street" (which Nilsson would also use as the leadoff track of his best album).
Here is "Come To The Sunshine," a single Van Dyke Parks released in 1967. The same year, Harpers Bizarre would also feature a cover of it on their first album.
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My roommate is the accompanist for a musical written and performed by members of pH Productions called Rubbed: The Musical! It opened the other week, which led to maybe the greatest review I've ever seen in the Reader:
At its paltry best, this 50-minute mini-musical is as dead-end as the fast-food job of its loser hero. But then it lurches into a half-baked plot about a bong-trapped genie who grants the slacker slob--and would-be pot dealer--three wishes that presumably teach him to forge his own happiness. Whatever measly truths the folks at pH Productions hoped to share succumb to clumsy blocking, amateurish acting, uninspired tunes, lame lyrics, and subpar singing. Seriously, there are enough notes missed here for a second musical.
Rubbed: The Musical!, um, plays Wednesdays at 8 at Stage Left and Saturdays at 7:30 at Donny's Skybox.
Wonderflu brings me the sad news today that the Booth Booth is no longer.
When David Booth gave an absurd and unprecedented $300 million to the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, the entire school was rebranded as the Booth School. The best thing to come out of this was that the booth outside the school's parking garage was also stuck with a new Booth label. But alas, it seems someone caught wind of how funny this was, and as GSBBSB Chicago Booth people don't like humor, the sign is now gone.
