While digging around on YouTube looking for the Tiny Tim stuff, I happened to view one of the Beatles' performances on the Ed Sullivan show. In light of today's cultural sensibilities they looked very clean cut, with stylish coifs and smartly tailored suits. The biggest anachronism I saw was that after they sang they bowed in acknowledgement of the audiences' applause. Quite proper.
Steve Allen was one of my early television favorites, along with Ernie Kovacs. Between the two of them they established the style and substance of what was then a new medium, breaking away from the entertainment traditions of radio and vaudeville. You could tell when Allen was having a good time when he broke into his spontaneous cackling laughter when the program went off the rails and didn't go according to plan. But besides being a top notch entertainer he was a real smart guy, being both a writer and musician and not afraid to tackle some tough topics. I was happy to see a lot of the Meeting of the Minds episodes on YouTube; I'll have to watch them since I missed most of the original broadcasts.
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In retrospect, we may be the last generation of the one television (or no television) households. They were very expensive at the time and an investment that was not taken lightly. Maybe that was why the were in nicely made wooden cabinets, to mimic fine furniture. You would buy a TV based on your home decor, like Early American or Danish Modern. Now everything is squeezed into the bare minimum and is simply a thin, flat screen, just like another picture to hang on the wall. The days are long gone when you needed two burly guys to move a 17" TV.
The one TV family also meant that a lot of the programming was viewed by the whole family, except for the Saturday morning cartoons and other kid's programs. I recall it was quite scandalous and possibly decadent when TVs started to appear in children's bedrooms. Tongues were wagging in anticipation of the breakdown of the family unit. Maybe they were right. Now many folks, both children and adults, watch TV on their little handheld personal devices and viewing television is no longer the social activity it once was. Hell, it's not even television anymore; it's visual content, available anywhere at any time.
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Speaking of those devices, it's been a while since Uncle Ken took the plunge into the world of superduper smart phones. Is it too early to render a verdict?
Thursday, July 6, 2017
these are the days
It would be hard for somebody five or ten years younger than us to realize it, bur Ed Sullivan was a big deal, a rilly rilly (foreshadowing the valley girls) big deal, bigger than the Beagles back in his day, the days when there were basically only three channels, and almost the whole nation tuned in on Sunday night (I think it was Sunday night) to watch Ed Sullivan.
And it was still that way when the blokes crossed the pond. It was big exposure for the Beatles and big ratings for Ed. But it was kind of an uneasy thing. The older generation made fun of the Beatles because they were odd, and well, shaggy, and the Beatles looked at him the way they looked at that grandfather character in Help. When the Rolling Stones, a grittier group, went on they were told to change the lyrics from Let's spend the night together to Let's spend some time together. My memory is that they double-crossed him and sang the original lyrics, but internet research reveals that it was the Doors who agreed to substitute Girl we couldn't get much better for Girl we couldn't get much higher and it was Mad Jim Morrison who double-crossed by singing the original lyrics. Well those were the days my friend.
That party I go to every fourth has been going on for close to forty years now. It used to be huge and wild. At first we used to go through two kegs with the first one blowing after about fifteen minutes, and then it was one, and then we didn't even empty that one, and now a guy brings a half keg of his craft beer and we never empty it. The crowd is much smaller, nobody gets dead drunk and makes a spectacle of himself. There was a walker, several canes, a lot of limping, a bunch old guys and girls flapping their jaws about the good old days, most everybody leaves before sunset. These are the days my friend.
And it was still that way when the blokes crossed the pond. It was big exposure for the Beatles and big ratings for Ed. But it was kind of an uneasy thing. The older generation made fun of the Beatles because they were odd, and well, shaggy, and the Beatles looked at him the way they looked at that grandfather character in Help. When the Rolling Stones, a grittier group, went on they were told to change the lyrics from Let's spend the night together to Let's spend some time together. My memory is that they double-crossed him and sang the original lyrics, but internet research reveals that it was the Doors who agreed to substitute Girl we couldn't get much better for Girl we couldn't get much higher and it was Mad Jim Morrison who double-crossed by singing the original lyrics. Well those were the days my friend.
That party I go to every fourth has been going on for close to forty years now. It used to be huge and wild. At first we used to go through two kegs with the first one blowing after about fifteen minutes, and then it was one, and then we didn't even empty that one, and now a guy brings a half keg of his craft beer and we never empty it. The crowd is much smaller, nobody gets dead drunk and makes a spectacle of himself. There was a walker, several canes, a lot of limping, a bunch old guys and girls flapping their jaws about the good old days, most everybody leaves before sunset. These are the days my friend.
Monday, July 3, 2017
Elvis Above the Waist
I didn't watch a lot of TV as a kid, or listen to a lot of radio either. I don't remember why, I must have had other interests. I do remember the Ed Sullivan Show, and another one, the Steve Allen Show. As I remember it, Allen had more personality than Sullivan, but Sullivan had more celebrities on his show. I had heard Tiny Tim do "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on the radio once or twice, but I had never seen him perform until that time on Sullivan, and I neither heard nor saw him after that, until now.
It was the same thing with Elvis Presley. The kids at school talked about him frequently, but I never paid much attention because I was no fan of that modern rock and roll music. I had seen several comedians do parodies of Elvis, but I never saw Elvis himself until he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show one evening. I remember thinking that he was okay, for a rock and roll singer, but I couldn't understand why people made such a big fuss over him. I don't know how many years later it was that I read or heard something about that performance. It seems that they had the camera aimed so that we only saw Elvis above the waist because the stuff he used to do below the waist was deemed unsuitable for prime time TV when children might be watching. Ah, those were the days!
I saw Steve Allen again shortly after we got our first TV around 1975. It wasn't his original show, it was a miniseries kind of thing on the PBS channel called "Meeting of Minds". Allen was the moderator for a panel of four or five actors who played various famous people from history. They never had met each other in real life, but now they had been resurrected and briefed on current events before debating each other on the show. The same actors appeared in each episode, but they were made up to look like their characters had looked and I watched several episodes before I realized that it was the same people each time. I remember one time they had Emily Dickinson interacting with Attila the Hun, which was cool. Another one I remember was when Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Thomas Paine were discussing religion. That was the first time I had ever heard of Deism, and I was so impressed by it that I subsequently read Paine's book on the subject, and I have considered myself to be a Deist ever since. Too bad we don't have people like that with us at the Institute.
It was the same thing with Elvis Presley. The kids at school talked about him frequently, but I never paid much attention because I was no fan of that modern rock and roll music. I had seen several comedians do parodies of Elvis, but I never saw Elvis himself until he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show one evening. I remember thinking that he was okay, for a rock and roll singer, but I couldn't understand why people made such a big fuss over him. I don't know how many years later it was that I read or heard something about that performance. It seems that they had the camera aimed so that we only saw Elvis above the waist because the stuff he used to do below the waist was deemed unsuitable for prime time TV when children might be watching. Ah, those were the days!
I saw Steve Allen again shortly after we got our first TV around 1975. It wasn't his original show, it was a miniseries kind of thing on the PBS channel called "Meeting of Minds". Allen was the moderator for a panel of four or five actors who played various famous people from history. They never had met each other in real life, but now they had been resurrected and briefed on current events before debating each other on the show. The same actors appeared in each episode, but they were made up to look like their characters had looked and I watched several episodes before I realized that it was the same people each time. I remember one time they had Emily Dickinson interacting with Attila the Hun, which was cool. Another one I remember was when Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Thomas Paine were discussing religion. That was the first time I had ever heard of Deism, and I was so impressed by it that I subsequently read Paine's book on the subject, and I have considered myself to be a Deist ever since. Too bad we don't have people like that with us at the Institute.
Seems like yesterday
It was one year ago to the day that this humble scribe made his first posting to this hallowed chronicle. My, how time flies.
It seems to be more difficult these days to engage in a hearty three-way discussion; a lot of the chatter is two-sided, with one of us sitting it out. In my case it is not lack of interest but an unwillingness to be drawn into protracted discussions which I feel are either pointless or unanswerable. I usually don't care what "they" say...
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I found another Tiny Tim video clip from the Ed Sullivan show, a longer one featuring 3 or 4 songs, and was about seven minutes long. He liked very old songs from the early 20th century and he displayed some actual talent. There was one song, the old familiar "school days, school days, good old golden rule days..." that had an interesting first verse that I wasn't familiar with, and he sang it in the voice of an old man. Another song was written for two voices, one male and one female, and he sang both. The crowd went wild. And I don't think I've seen anything quite like Tiny Tim's version of the Jerry Lee Lewis classic "Great Balls of Fire." You won't find that kind of entertainment on broadcast TV these days, that's for sure.
I enjoy watching those old Ed Sullivan clip on YouTube; they're a curious time capsule of our past culture but Sullivan himself strikes me as a really strange dude. I wonder if it's time for variety shows to make a comeback, having a little something for everybody. Can modern attention spans tolerate such a thing?
It seems to be more difficult these days to engage in a hearty three-way discussion; a lot of the chatter is two-sided, with one of us sitting it out. In my case it is not lack of interest but an unwillingness to be drawn into protracted discussions which I feel are either pointless or unanswerable. I usually don't care what "they" say...
-----
I found another Tiny Tim video clip from the Ed Sullivan show, a longer one featuring 3 or 4 songs, and was about seven minutes long. He liked very old songs from the early 20th century and he displayed some actual talent. There was one song, the old familiar "school days, school days, good old golden rule days..." that had an interesting first verse that I wasn't familiar with, and he sang it in the voice of an old man. Another song was written for two voices, one male and one female, and he sang both. The crowd went wild. And I don't think I've seen anything quite like Tiny Tim's version of the Jerry Lee Lewis classic "Great Balls of Fire." You won't find that kind of entertainment on broadcast TV these days, that's for sure.
I enjoy watching those old Ed Sullivan clip on YouTube; they're a curious time capsule of our past culture but Sullivan himself strikes me as a really strange dude. I wonder if it's time for variety shows to make a comeback, having a little something for everybody. Can modern attention spans tolerate such a thing?
the fourth of july
Well my bags are packed. I'm ready to go. The grey dog is huffing a far piece down the road. Oh gennelmens of The Institute I hate to go.
Not really, I am glad to go. It means a couple days of brats and beers and friends of my youth. Ah, friends of one's youth.
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And think of all the great things we would do
Kind of a silly song I thought at the time, but I thought it had charm and and it had a rousing chorus, just the right beat to swing a beer glass to and look at the faces of friends, also waving their glasses up and down the bar. It was kind of an old people's song. Old people were always living in the past, thinking of this and that in the past, stuff that really didn't matter anymore, but oh how they would go on and on.
There is a brief sad little interlude, something about being older but no wiser, before the final rousing chorus, time for a bit of introspection, maybe the song was really about us, maybe sometime in the dim future we would be remembering that song, but then the chorus was back and the glasses were taken from the table and waved one more time in the air.
I'm going down to Champaign this morning. I'll come back on Wednesday and Thursday I will be posting again. So wave a glass my friends on the fourth on the northside and on the north edge of Michigan.
Not really, I am glad to go. It means a couple days of brats and beers and friends of my youth. Ah, friends of one's youth.
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And think of all the great things we would do
Kind of a silly song I thought at the time, but I thought it had charm and and it had a rousing chorus, just the right beat to swing a beer glass to and look at the faces of friends, also waving their glasses up and down the bar. It was kind of an old people's song. Old people were always living in the past, thinking of this and that in the past, stuff that really didn't matter anymore, but oh how they would go on and on.
There is a brief sad little interlude, something about being older but no wiser, before the final rousing chorus, time for a bit of introspection, maybe the song was really about us, maybe sometime in the dim future we would be remembering that song, but then the chorus was back and the glasses were taken from the table and waved one more time in the air.
I'm going down to Champaign this morning. I'll come back on Wednesday and Thursday I will be posting again. So wave a glass my friends on the fourth on the northside and on the north edge of Michigan.
Sunday, July 2, 2017
God Bless Tiny Tim
Thank you, Old Dog, for finding those two links for me. Your internet search skills greatly exceed mine. It seems that I had some of the lyrics wrong, but I remembered the general gist of the song after all these years. The Sullivan clip was from 1970, and we didn't have a TV then, so I must have seen it at somebody else's house. The other one with the little girls was better without the distortion. Far from being frightened, it looked like they were enjoying it, even joining in to sing the chorus.
I always wondered what Tiny Tim's attraction was in those days, but then I wondered that about a lot of entertainers, and still do. I suppose it's something like the old Red Green Show, people admire anybody who has the guts to get up on a stage and deliberately make a complete fool of himself. Anybody can make a fool of themselves by accident, but to do it on purpose, and get paid for it, takes real talent.
I always wondered what Tiny Tim's attraction was in those days, but then I wondered that about a lot of entertainers, and still do. I suppose it's something like the old Red Green Show, people admire anybody who has the guts to get up on a stage and deliberately make a complete fool of himself. Anybody can make a fool of themselves by accident, but to do it on purpose, and get paid for it, takes real talent.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Tiptoe through the YouTube
There was an Aldi food store about a half mile up the road from me, but I never shopped there; something about the generic nature of their products rubbed me the wrong way. It was torn down last summer, a few adjacent parcels of property were bought, and a new, bigger store was built with a larger parking lot. This morning I decided to check it out and was pleasantly surprised; a fine example of Teutonic efficiency. Wide aisles, good selection, great prices, no agonizing over multiple choices of the same product, and you bag your own groceries, dammit.
Check out lines move very quickly because of a trick they use. You know those bar codes that are on every package? Their packaging has multiple bar codes so it doesn't matter how the checkout guy runs the package over the scanner; it always reads correctly and there's no fiddling around looking for that damn code. Slick.
As a control to compare quality (and in a moment of weakness) I bought some of their "premium" chocolate ice cream. It easily passed the taste/texture test, very similar to my own albeit with a less intense chocolate flavor, but I tend to overdo it. Anyhow, I was gobsmacked when I read the ingredients: cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, and cocoa. That's it. No preservatives, no emulsifiers, no stabilizers, no nothing. It wouldn't have killed them to add a touch of vanilla, maybe a pinch of salt, though, but I was nevertheless impressed.
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I actually didn't know the title, so one of them might have been it, but I doubt it.
O ye of little faith! I searched for that video, but I added "sullivan" to the search window, and bingo!, there it was, but the song is titled "The Other Side." The Ed Sullivan clip had an annoying text overlay but the sound was good. I also found the original and undistorted version with the little girls. I must admit, that chorus of The ice caps are melting, ho ho, ho ho, ho ho is quite catchy and would make a swell ringtone for a cell phone.
These links are provided for your convenience, Mr. Beagles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efJxBYQWxc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DEoOdcYKbc
Check out lines move very quickly because of a trick they use. You know those bar codes that are on every package? Their packaging has multiple bar codes so it doesn't matter how the checkout guy runs the package over the scanner; it always reads correctly and there's no fiddling around looking for that damn code. Slick.
As a control to compare quality (and in a moment of weakness) I bought some of their "premium" chocolate ice cream. It easily passed the taste/texture test, very similar to my own albeit with a less intense chocolate flavor, but I tend to overdo it. Anyhow, I was gobsmacked when I read the ingredients: cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, and cocoa. That's it. No preservatives, no emulsifiers, no stabilizers, no nothing. It wouldn't have killed them to add a touch of vanilla, maybe a pinch of salt, though, but I was nevertheless impressed.
-----
I actually didn't know the title, so one of them might have been it, but I doubt it.
O ye of little faith! I searched for that video, but I added "sullivan" to the search window, and bingo!, there it was, but the song is titled "The Other Side." The Ed Sullivan clip had an annoying text overlay but the sound was good. I also found the original and undistorted version with the little girls. I must admit, that chorus of The ice caps are melting, ho ho, ho ho, ho ho is quite catchy and would make a swell ringtone for a cell phone.
These links are provided for your convenience, Mr. Beagles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efJxBYQWxc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DEoOdcYKbc
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