...but not too much tomfoolery

Tom Lehrer finally slipped this mortal coil this past weekend, aged 97. It was a fairly lowkey news item, in part because this was at the end of the week when we also lost Ozzy, the Hulkster, and Theo Huxtable. 

But there's another reason, implicit in Harry Briggs's memorial piece. Which, as a side note, mentions Lehrer having "no interest" in Stephen Sondheim, which is a little strange since Sondheim introduced him in what may have been his last live performance. But never mind. No, as Briggs notes, Lehrer "effectively vanished from the public eye half a century ago."

The idea that satire became obsolete the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize makes a good cover for Lehrer's retirement from songwriting. But it's more that satire is a limited resource. Mark Russell spent decades doing concerts, crafting parody songs for every political occasion. On one level you have to admire his persistence, but how much of this stuff lasted?

Lehrer recorded four albums, with his first live album being basically just the second studio album plus an audience. Then two more songs in the 70s for The Electric Company. But the best of these songs struck at the heart of basic situations to reveal what was appalling and funny about them. He had no need to keep up with the political Joneses. 

Outrival of the fittest

I have a vague but persistent memory from about forty years ago. It was a commercial with a song―too pompous to accept the designation "jingle"―whose lyrics went something like "You're the first to come in in the morning/The last to leave at night." I think it might have been a beer commercial, in which case it could have been a tribute to those hearty executives who clock in at 7:30, already buzzed.

But I feel like that marked a turning point in the culture. Advertising up until that point had mostly focused on the question of "What can we do for you?" The "you" was conceptualized as a general man in the street, or woman, depending on the product.

But then the "you" started becoming more specified, and more grandiose. If you were watching a commercial for a running shoe, you had to be an elite athlete. If it was a car ad, you had to have the most important places to go. How much of this was actually true? Well, the business was never about truth. But it's weird, the extent to which one of the products you were now expected to buy was yourself.

 

Schoolhouse Rock generally had little to do with rock music, but it had its charm. At this point it's kind of a window into a bygone media world. That kind of loose animation would only be seen at a film festival now, or at least would be unable to make it to TV.

Bob Dorough and Blossom Dearie, two hip jazz icons from the midcentury period, both got exposure to very young listeners this way. Above are a Dearie song from Schoolhouse Rock and one from an early album of hers. I don't know how many of us 70s kids became fans of hers, but she was still recording and touring into the 2000s. Must have been doing something right.

Roll with it

The blogroll at the bottom of this blog is a little on the antiquated side. A lot of the other blogs have either been taken offline entirely or have been static with no updates since, like, 2011. When I click on one it tells me that the blog is invitation only and I'm not invited, which seems rude at first but it's also apparent the author abandoned Blogspot for Substack. Also, if we're being honest, my interests have changed since I started.

But changing it over isn't much of a priority. If I prune a few, what do I replace them with? Who are the new faces in the game? Blogging has become a minority interest, and I'm one of the last standing.

Sparky & Co.

Of comic strips still running new (or at least "new") installments, a huge number are now legacy affairs. That is to say, carried on by someone other than their creator. Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Blondie, Shoe, and Gasoline Alley all continue while their original cartoonists are no longer with us. And that's a very partial list. It's not inherently wrong, and some successors do better than others, but ultimately it's a business thing.

However long we make this list, Peanuts would not be on it. Charles M. Schulz continued to work on it until he died in 2000. While you could argue that in later years he spent too much time on Snoopy and off-Snoopy characters like Spike, he never phoned it in. All along, he wrote and drew with care, introducing new characters here and there even in the late nineties. By the point where he would have had to be replaced, he had become irreplaceable. 

Speaking of...

 

It feels like a bit of a cheat to do another video post right away, but I couldn't resist. This is a brief excerpt from an interview between Jorge Luis Borges and William F. Buckley. Borges talks about why English is his favorite language to read. Was he biased by being part English himself? Well that was on his father's side, and in his papa's case that was mixed in with a lot of Spanish and Portuguese. So I don't think it's necessarily the deciding factor. Of course he wrote in Spanish, which is the most logical way to go about things when you kick off your career in Argentina. But he had a feel for English, and in this clip he's got a beautiful accent.

of note

Perhaps because I'm from the first half of Gen X, two TV theme songs are a part of my conscious or unconscious mind. One is Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson's music for Barney Miller. 

The other is Bob James's theme for Taxi.

Both are at least jazz adjacent. James was in fact a well known jazz musician and composer from the early 60s onward. Taxi's theme was really an excerpt from a song called "Angela" from one of his own albums.

It's also noticeably the softer of the pieces, compared to the brash, bass-driven Barney Miller. Could be that it was a sign that the national mood or at least aesthetics was changing. Or it could have just been an in-studio choice.

Am I blue?

What is the color indigo? On the spectrum as we see it, the area made up of colors that look more or less blue is quite broad. Shades known as "indigo" are darker and in some cases verge on purple. But there's no hard boundary.

There's an interesting backstory. Isaac Newton codified the spectrum as it's known to modern people. He wanted seven colors because he had a surprising yen for numerology, and indigo dye was a well-known reference point for his contemporaries. And there are various reasons to maintain the concept of indigo. Not least because otherwise Roy G. Biv loses a needed vowel.

S'now lie

The Scotia Arc is basically the connecting tissue between South America and Antarctica. A long underwater system, it has a number of islands appearing on the surface. South of Tierra del Fuego, most of them have never had native populations. This is the frosty part of the Southern Hemisphere, and what happens there is mostly out of our sight.

The Snowy Sheathbill lives there. It's the kind of cold weather bird you don't see much in these parts. The white fluffy feathers could almost pass for packed snow. Did kids build it? But you have to admit it also looks quite determined.

D'oh?

It has to be weird being one of the main voice actors on The Simpsons. Since the characters started in a mini-feature on The Tracey Ullman Show they've been at this for 38 years. The actresses who play the kids weren't really kids, of course, but they were young adults. 

These people have all gotten ridiculously wealthy from doing the show, so it's not like they're going to grouse in public. But it probably hasn't escaped their attention that it's gone from a vital show to a pleasant show in extra innings to background noise. I'm sure they thought they'd all be on to other things by now.

How it grows

 

Expressionist art has a reputation for being angsty. While this impression is helped along by the term's later association with cinema, certainly expressionism can go to some dark emotional places. Still, that's just one aspect of it.

August Macke's "Gartenbild" of "Garden Picture" shows a different side. On a sunny day, a mother works in the garden while her small daughter plays nearby. The town, represented by the houses in the background, is bright and colorful. Nature, represented by the green plants, is powerful, yes. But it's benign and cooperative as well. 

Macke's work often showed affection for his Westphalian home and excitement for the world at large. The outbreak of war darkened his mood noticeably. Sad to say, he was almost immediately killed in that war. One can only wonder what he might have painted otherwise.

Preview of coming attractions

It was the strangest thing. This afternoon I heard thunder. Not faint thunder, either. It sounded huge and explosive. But when I looked outside, not only wasn't it raining, but the bright sun was shining on all and sundry.

Now around midnight, the thunder returned. And this time there was a heavy rainstorm. Lightning too. So this afternoon was kind of like an actor showing up for a matinee performance when there was only an evening show scheduled.

Away from probing eyes

There are a number of programs on the market for creating art. And in fact digital is the favored medium of a number of artists now. But there's a catch.

Tech companies have their AI's "train" on existing materials, which basically means plagiarism. Digital artists might have trouble defending their works from outright theft. Those who work in oils, watercolor, charcoal etc. may also be vulnerable to plagiarism if they post their work online to sell it or just show it off, but they still have the originals, which exist in physical space.

Can we extrapolate from this? Should writers be using 1945 Smith-Coronas? Will musicians start recording on wax cylinders again? It's hard to say what lies in the future. The government seems disinclined to put more than fig leaf restrictions on Big Tech, and the tycoons object even to that. At some point it might be worthwhile to give up the instant gratification of going viral in order to have something of your own.

Warning: spoilers ahead for 53-year-old cop show episode

After playing Perry Mason for nine years, Raymond Burr starred in Ironside as a police chief deprived of the use of his legs by a would-be assassin's bullet. Ironside itself ran for eight years, serving as a guide to the transition from mod 60s aesthetics to wide tie/greasy sideburns 70s aesthetics.

In the episode "Down Two Roads", Ironside's assistant Mark graduates from law school. Making his rounds of places to start his law career, he observes at the DA's office. They happen to be prosecuting the janitor at the school Mark just graduated from for burglary. Mark doesn't think the janitor is guilty and he manages to prove it, at the cost of learning that the real guilty party was a friend from his graduating class.

What's notable from the perspective of the present is that both Mark and his friend who turns out to be the thief are both black, while the accused janitor is white. That should be mundane. Law and justice are rooted in truth, and guilt or innocence are independent of race. But in the post-George Floyd moment that hasn't entirely passed, race and other identity markers are always top concerns. Colorblindness is itself deemed regressive.

That's not a good change, and I hope it also passes. The idea that some races are inherently more virtuous than others is never helpful, and will always reappear in ways you didn't expect or want.

Somewhat related: the idea I've seen promoted on some recent TV shows that black people need to constantly record everything on their phones. Come on, kids, Big Brother is your friend!

Dry spell

I got word over the weekend that water would be shut off on Tuesday. Reason being, Providence Water has been working on this street for a couple of weeks now, replacing the pipes underground Tuesday was our day.

The heat of the summer isn't the best time to not have running water, but it's doable with some planning. Besides my water filter pitcher, I filled a couple of extra vessels with water on Monday night. Coffee jar and lemonade bottle, if you're wondering. That left me enough for the essentials on Tuesday morning, like coffee, brushing teeth, even washing dishes by heating up water on the stovetop. There was no way to take a shower, of course, but again by warming up water on the stovetop I came up with a better-than-nothing substitute.

By 2:30 in the PM the H2O was running again, which was a relief. The city workers left us all Brita pitchers as well, which was a nice gesture.