😮 So this was the beginning of the ‘unite/heal’ the country pablum. Good to know.
If only they had dismantled the political structures of the south, changed state boundaries, renamed everything, memory-holed antebellum history the country may have become truly united.
Thank you, Straits, for giving me the perfect opportunity to extol the merits of one of my comedy heroes, Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle, real name F. Chase Taylor and, yes, he was a remote member of the Salmon P. Chase family. He was also a first cousin of H. P. Lovecraft.
I won't go into all the details but he and Wilber Budd Hulick became popular radio and movie comedians in the '30's, almost by accident, and paved the way for Bob and Ray.
As a single act, Stoopnagle went even further.
Although it was an immensely popular bit at the time, I find his spoonerism routine tiring. (Andy Griffith more or less stole it, early in his career and I didn't like it then.)
But that was only a small part of his genius and he was apparently inexhaustible. He just opened his mouth and the ad lib comedy flowed out. He also wrote several books. I greatly recommend My Back to the Soil; or, Farewell to Farms (1947.) If you can find it.
He was a big, beefy guy with a heart problem and there wasn't much you could do about it in those days. He died ridiculously young at 52. Given a normal lifespan, he could have gone on well into the seventies.
To give you an idea of how immediately he was forgotten, I had never even heard of him until about 20 years ago. Now he is right up there with Buster Keaton and Ernie Kovacs in my personal Hall of Champions.
"19th century football" was quite violent - several college players were killed (reminds me of the W.C. Fields' line about beanbag). There was, for obvious reasons, a move to ban the "sport." Then Teddy Roosevelt stepped in with the usual blather about how manly the game was - of course, TR thought "war" was manly and necessary to keep us from becoming wimps and such complete garbage.
Anyway the rules were changed a bit and the game survived. I'm old enough to think that's a shame.
Remember the right wingnutz' nonsense about President Obama's Executive Orders? They use to whine about one that was signed by President Kennedy (based on the number). Some Presidents just don't die...
Speaking of reading and the Obamas. Michelle Obama's book is still in hardcover, two years after it was published. It's selling too well for the publisher to come out with a paperback edition.
Mr. Obama's new book sold 890,000 copies in 24 hours. I picked up a copy of that doorstop in the airport and the cover price is $45. I guess it was priced by the pound. Frankly, that's pretty steep. I know he didn't decide on the cover price, but he did take the big advance.
I would like to think that, in Wonkville, 1963 will live on as the year that President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving, and he and Kennedy and Obama and MLK and Ghandi and Mother Theresa and the rest of them all sat down together and had pumpkin pie. It was a wonderful thing, even if it didn't happen.
I am perfectly willing to wash the dishes for anyone who will cook for me. Does their father have a talent for cooking? Mine did. I inherited mom's lack of talent in the culinary arts.
You've put your finger on it. I never thought I was bad at it! For some reason their father became so fussy and demanding I said, 'fine, you do it.' And that was it. So it was one of those things where the husband gets better at what he's good at, and the wife gets worse at what he's good at and v.v. I can't get used to those qualities in men-- I think it's weird when a man has strict feelings about how to clean his coffee maker. Or could I possibly be wrong and sexist?
Her homeschooling education obviously included a lot of english and writing, but was woefully short on racism. Her parents were enlightened enough to see that she was schooled, but not enlightened enough to see that slavery is an abomination.
😮 So this was the beginning of the ‘unite/heal’ the country pablum. Good to know.
If only they had dismantled the political structures of the south, changed state boundaries, renamed everything, memory-holed antebellum history the country may have become truly united.
Learn to read? Read? Those people? That kind of nonsense got us Barak and Michelle Obama.
Egregious time travel crimes? Makes sense.
Thank you, Straits, for giving me the perfect opportunity to extol the merits of one of my comedy heroes, Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle, real name F. Chase Taylor and, yes, he was a remote member of the Salmon P. Chase family. He was also a first cousin of H. P. Lovecraft.
I won't go into all the details but he and Wilber Budd Hulick became popular radio and movie comedians in the '30's, almost by accident, and paved the way for Bob and Ray.
As a single act, Stoopnagle went even further.
Although it was an immensely popular bit at the time, I find his spoonerism routine tiring. (Andy Griffith more or less stole it, early in his career and I didn't like it then.)
But that was only a small part of his genius and he was apparently inexhaustible. He just opened his mouth and the ad lib comedy flowed out. He also wrote several books. I greatly recommend My Back to the Soil; or, Farewell to Farms (1947.) If you can find it.
He was a big, beefy guy with a heart problem and there wasn't much you could do about it in those days. He died ridiculously young at 52. Given a normal lifespan, he could have gone on well into the seventies.
To give you an idea of how immediately he was forgotten, I had never even heard of him until about 20 years ago. Now he is right up there with Buster Keaton and Ernie Kovacs in my personal Hall of Champions.
Learn more here:
http://stoopnagle.tripod.com/
"19th century football" was quite violent - several college players were killed (reminds me of the W.C. Fields' line about beanbag). There was, for obvious reasons, a move to ban the "sport." Then Teddy Roosevelt stepped in with the usual blather about how manly the game was - of course, TR thought "war" was manly and necessary to keep us from becoming wimps and such complete garbage.
Anyway the rules were changed a bit and the game survived. I'm old enough to think that's a shame.
Remember the right wingnutz' nonsense about President Obama's Executive Orders? They use to whine about one that was signed by President Kennedy (based on the number). Some Presidents just don't die...
Speaking of reading and the Obamas. Michelle Obama's book is still in hardcover, two years after it was published. It's selling too well for the publisher to come out with a paperback edition.
Mr. Obama's new book sold 890,000 copies in 24 hours. I picked up a copy of that doorstop in the airport and the cover price is $45. I guess it was priced by the pound. Frankly, that's pretty steep. I know he didn't decide on the cover price, but he did take the big advance.
Totally.
I would like to think that, in Wonkville, 1963 will live on as the year that President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving, and he and Kennedy and Obama and MLK and Ghandi and Mother Theresa and the rest of them all sat down together and had pumpkin pie. It was a wonderful thing, even if it didn't happen.
I am perfectly willing to wash the dishes for anyone who will cook for me. Does their father have a talent for cooking? Mine did. I inherited mom's lack of talent in the culinary arts.
There's a long list of wonderful things that didn't happen. That's a good one to add to the roster.
You've put your finger on it. I never thought I was bad at it! For some reason their father became so fussy and demanding I said, 'fine, you do it.' And that was it. So it was one of those things where the husband gets better at what he's good at, and the wife gets worse at what he's good at and v.v. I can't get used to those qualities in men-- I think it's weird when a man has strict feelings about how to clean his coffee maker. Or could I possibly be wrong and sexist?
You come from a nice family where it's considered just a question of talent not of somebody being mean.
We didn't HAVE much of a Thanksgiving in 1963, IIRC, what with the president (not Lincoln, coincidentally) having just been murdered.
Oh, that sounds so good.😋What a great idea!
Her homeschooling education obviously included a lot of english and writing, but was woefully short on racism. Her parents were enlightened enough to see that she was schooled, but not enlightened enough to see that slavery is an abomination.