.. and no, I’m not talking about Fox News in particular, though I think they often fall into the faux news category, along with many other large news organizations. I’m talking about those grocery store mags that used to sport such imginative headlines as “Baby born talking! Gives winning Lotto numbers!,’” and “Midget flushed down toilet by mistake!” These former superpower cesspools of silliness have now dropped to the level of Jerry Springer and Inside Edition. For example, as I write, Inside Edition sports a headline — “Elizabeth Edwards spotted without wedding ring.” Booooring. But we expect that from IE. But National Enquirer online is no more exiting with “007 CONNERY ARAB ACT-IVST,” with a misspelling of the “ivist” part. Other than the bad spelling, we have nothing of the old NE in that kind of news. Where’s the alien abduction, 400-year-old baby, Bermuda Triangle nightclub, Elvis sighting stuff?
Leave it to The Onion (profanity and nudity aside) to come up with the best faux news headlines today. I love today’s “Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?,” and the video is downright hilarious.
Yo-Yo Ma is amazing, and so is his name. Imagine the odds of being able to play the cello like that AND having the name Yo-Yo. It’s gotta be something like five or six billion to one. I am listening, as I type, to a beautiful Yo-Yo CD of music by film composer Ennio Morricone. It’s lovely — even the number from Sergio Leone’s 1967 film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I remember seeing the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns when I was a kid at the drive-in movies. Dad had a need to see everything Eastwood did, however inappropriate for kids. The spaghetti westerns seemed so intense back then. Lee van Cleef had the look. Gian Maria Volonte had the look. Everyone in those films had the look. Leone’s Eastwood films were all about the look, baritone guitars, guns that sounded like a Kirby vacuum on speed. They scared me back then. Now they are hilarious. I saw For a Few Dollars More a couple of years ago at the cool theatre in Austin, Texas called the Alamo Draft House. It was Spaghetti Western night with all-you-can-eat spaghetti. The place was packed with a hip crowd that woofed spaghetti and howled at “the look” and Leone’s stylistic editing. I laughed so hard I hurt. I also ate more spaghetti and salad than one adult should be permitted. I was begging Clint to shoot me at the one hour mark. There is something special about seeing an extremely dated, highlighy stylized movie with an audience that milks it for laughs. I remember a couple of really bad films, The Slugger’s Wife and the ’80’s remake of The Blob. I thought both were terrible (I knew going in The Blob would be) and both times I was fortunate to watch the films with New York City audiences that treated the screen like a failing comic. The laughter was intoxicating and non-stop. One guy in the back row at The Slugger’s Wife howled every time there was an overly melodramatic scene (often in that movie). It would always cause waves of laughter to flow over the audience. I saw The Blob remake in Times Square at a theatre that held maybe 50 people. The room funneled down to a front row three seats wide with a screen about the size of a projection television. The guy in front of me provided expressive commentary through the entire film — stuff like, “Run you idiots! It’s coming!!” or “It’s right behind you, moron!!” At the time, it made the movie for me. I don’t think I ever enjoyed going to the movies more. Maybe there is a business model in there somewhere. Bad Movies Buffet with Cacophonous Commentary! All you can eat and giggles galore!
I’m enjoying watching my young ones bang on a set of rented drums today. There’s something about a drum set that brings out the experimentor in all of us. Our four-year-old is the funniest today, up on the stool with legs dangling, reaching out for a tom or cymbal, always the one furthest away from him. He’ll make contact with a few and then slip off the stool and drop out of sight. I had a similar experience a few times as an adult, at least the falling off the throne part. Falling off the back of a stage was the worst one. I was so worried about how stupid I looked that I found no time to worry about getting hurt, and didn’t. And it must have been a doozy from the audience. I went off the back of the drum riser and stage and half the drum set went off the front. You could not script better live music comedy.
It may be hard to believe, but all three of the stills above come from the same video short. I know what you”re thinking — this kind of depth in ensemble acting is almost non-existent today. Even though 15-years-old, the Inline Ontime Commuter video on roller blading safety is still one of our most enduring examples of progressive cinema.
Where is OSHA when you need them? Most likely, off citing some poor hotdog stand vendor with a 15k fine for not carrying around a portapotty for his customers. They need to be at weddings, enforcing a soon to be passed federal ban on those lethal objects called men’s dress shoes with real leather bottoms. They are a travesty and should be banned now. Rubber farmers’ boots or swimming flippers should be mandatory at all weddings, for groomsmen AND bridesmaids.
I have a theory that what we wear influences how we perform music. If we dress more formal, we might play “proper” and controlled, while if we go more casual we may play more loosely, venturing outside of traditional boundaries. And there are nuances to this in the cracks and crevices between style headings. Combine that with the maturity continuum and things get more complex. Without a doubt, the leisure suit was one of the more dangerous style trends in musical history. On the body of an adult jazz musician, it often caused the wearer to be over-impressed with his own solo work and to dance in an unnattractive manner. But worn by a teenager in a highschool jazz band, the leisure suit was even more frightening, becoming something like the black Spiderman suit giving the wearer inflated, uncontrollable power and a drive to lay waste to everything in his way. The Vegas tux with over-sized bowtie and ruffled shirt really belongs in the leisure suit category as well. Combined with hairstyles of the 1970s (as in the photo below), these milestones of jive in Jazz history offer a glimpse into one of the most destructive forces ever forced upon subservient sidemen.
Sometimes I wonder, if you met someone at a bar and grill (I added the grill part for non-drinkers like me) on another planet, what you would scribble on a napkin for directions to your house? Certainly it might include handing them something like the above. They might say,
Well, which planet is it?
and you might say,
Wait, I have a picture in my wallet right here. You can have it.
then you ask the bartender for a red magic marker, non-erasable, and you put this arrow on the photo.
then the other person says,
Got it! Blue and green planet, next to the dead one. I should land in the field next to the U Tote Em.
This video clip should be mandatory viewing for all students in journalism school. They need to know the kind of sacrifices they will be required to make, and the kind of focus they will have to maintain, in the line of fire. This reporter illustrates it gracefully, and still delivers his close without so much as a stutter. Outstanding!
Monkey Motel has been the second most popular tune from the Laningham writing splurge of the late 1980s/early 1990s. A friend sent me this photo of Monkey coming up on her XM Satellite Radio receiver while on a drive somewhere. She said everyone in her car promptly broke into ho-oo-ho-oo-ha-aa-ha-aas as the song reached the chorus, resulting in a 14-car pileup where, fortunately, no one was injured.
I wrote the song in 1990 with a great deal of editing assistance from my wife, Elizabeth. I would bring draft after draft to her with an enthusiastic, “How about this?” She would listen with a straight face, unmoved by my latest, hurried effort, and point me back to the lyric writing desk. Introspective passages such as following would have never seen the light of day without Elizabeth’s uncompromising editorial stand.
I climbed up to 20, the room was pretty funny
there were monkey pictures on the wall.
Pile of hay for a bed, on the telephone it said
three bananas for a local call
Again, as with Moose in My House, the first idea that came to me was the little hook, who-a-ha-a-who-a-ha-aBUMP BUMP ERRRRRR — the who-a-ha-a being sung, the BUMPs coming from the bass drum and the ERRRRRR being a guitar power chord.
Man, this is getting too deep.
When I recorded it, I could tell it was still missing something in the vocal. My voice was not cartoonish enough. So I slowed the tape down (I was using analog tape them) to record my vocals and then sped the finished product back up to normal, full monkey speed. That gave it the edge I was looking for. It was also easier to say, When you’re dreamin’ and you’re drivin’ you should start realizin’ that you’ve driven just a little too far, at the slower speed. The fabulous Bud Guinn from Dallas, Texas provided the smokin’ guitar work on the final version.
Monkey Motel remains popular on satellite radio and I’ve heard it is often used as a first dance at weddings in Turkey, Texas. That may not be true, but I did hear it somewhere.
I was living in Manhattan in the Fall of 1984, playing drums, working a temp job, taking in the amazing sights and sounds, and being selective about the smells. Walking down Broadway near 79th street, the sound of Mitch Miller and the Gang’s male tenor chorus came rushing into my head as some old song blarred out of some speakers in front of a trinkets store. Then, as often happens to me, the sound morphed into a sample that my mind used to play the monotone chorus of “There’s a Moose in My House.” Where did that idea come from and why did it pop into my head? It had been hanging around for a while. But now I new I was on a mission. All I had to hear was that chorus and I was convinced there was a song to be written.
A few weeks later I sat down and the tune poured out in about two hours. Never had a song come to me that easily before or since. After it won the novelty song contest in Houston in 1989, it found its way to Dr Demento, Rick Dees, Scott Shannon on Pirate Radio, and plenty of other “morning zoos.”
I performed it live one time in Austin, Texas on Halloween in 1985. It was impromptu, unrehearsed, and quite lame. But the delirious Austin Sixth Street audience seemed to enjoy it just the same. I was wearing a very large tutu, so that may have had something to do with it.
