This weekend’s song is ‘Little Old Lady’ written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stanley Adams back in 1936. This is a dear, gentle sweet song, and this version, sung by the inimitable Gracie Fields, (born Grace Stansfield in 1898 a bus ride from where I come from) was recorded in 1941 and always makes me crack up and weep shamelessly yet I can’t get enough of it.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and
A good week whether for you life today is much too fast or not.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘LITTLE OLD LADY’
IDEA!
Suppose there was an alternative universe where people were mix-species?
That’s right. Not mixed race. Not like black and white people creating babies, but different species, not mating with one another like lions and tigers or doves and pigeons, but other species intermingling with human beings. For example, you could get those who are cat and human hybrids, or dog and human hybrids. Or even eagle or lizard and human hybrids. And you could get cretins like in our world hating people who are of a different nationality claiming that the mixers were impure because their blood wasn’t totally human. And those who defend the rights of the mixers or half-people.
But why would these mixers have been formed in the first place, given that it’s impossible for two totally different species to reproduce? Well, they could have been gene spliced in labs, made for workers or for full-bloods who want servants and to try experiments on. But they managed to (mostly) gain the same legal rights as full-humans. (Remember, this isn’t this world where it would never happen due to all the ethical concerns, but an alternate universe).
To add a bit of spice to the stew, how about there being some parts of this alternate earth where the mixers or half-people are persecuted and the governments are trying to destroy them and their way of life, and they have to fight back, with weapons, forming freedom groups? Like in Nazi Germany where the Jews who managed to escape being murdered formed partisan groups to kill their oppressors. Or in South Africa during Apartheid. Or the ethnic cleansing period of the 1990’s in Eastern Europe.
It would make a champion story.
OLIVER CAT NIELD : JUNE 1998-24th JUNE 2009
Oliver, my little boy, my diabetic sweet, has died.
He was poorly and has been for days and had to go into hospital on Monday. Because his insulin level was too high and because he has shown no sign of recovery, of getting any better in two days, he has had to be put out of his misery. It was the kindest thing to do but I’m still stunned and teary. I never thought I’d lose him, not yet, not with him being so loved and cared for. It’s only three months since he’d been diagnosed. But age-onset insulin dependant diabetes is a killer. Still, I thought I’d have a bit more time with him.
There is a special place, a garden, not that far (couple of bus rides) where all the cats and other creatures who die are cremated and their ashes scattered. I’m going to go and pay a visit and see where my Oliver has joined Hayley and Jessica in their eternal rest.
SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘LEADER OF THE LAUNDROMAT’
This weekend’s song is ‘Leader of the Laundromat’ from 1964, written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss of the The Detergents, who specialised in novelty and parody songs, and it’s a spoof version of ‘Leader of the Pack’.
It’s funny and serves up some very clever lines. (‘Who’s that bangin’ on the piano? I dunno.’ ‘My folks were always putting her down (down, down) because her laundry came back brown (brown, brown)’ ‘Dang it!’) And as regular perusers of the song to end the weekend on will know, I love novelty songs that have something intelligent to say.
Interestingly enough, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and George ‘Shadow’ Morton, the writers of ‘Leader Of The Pack’ were so offended they filed a suit against the Detergents, but it was settled out of court. The whole upset was obviously forgiven and forgotten quickly as just three years later Jeff Barry and leader of the Detergents Ron Dante ending up working together to produce and sing in the cartoon band ‘The Archies’.
So, as always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week, whether your clothes are finally dry or not.
STRANGE BUSINESS. . .
After twenty-three years and five months of being a Christian I finally gave in and gave my faith up around about four years ago. I blasphemed the holy spirit around about six months back. And yet, although none of it has any hold over me any more, I still haven’t managed to get up the courage to pick up a copy of the Bible and read it, just like I would with any book.
I obviously still have a while to go yet before I can fully close the book on the whole believer business.
STUPID PHILOSOPHY ITSELF
I’ve been thinking about racism and racists and, well, it’s not evil, it’s stupid.
That’s right. Stupid. How in the name of all that is right and reasonable can a body dislike someone because they have a different amount of melanin in their skin, or speak a different language or happen to be born on a different part of the same planet? It’s just not logical.
That’s it.
‘THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON’ – A CRITIQUE
Take one light-hearted, happy-souled, dreamer who wanted to give peace a chance and introduce him to an angry, confused disturbed young man man fifteen years his junior. Add an obsession to the death and a .38 gun. You get ‘The Killing of John Lennon’, told in Mark David Chapman’s own words, from when he first flies to New York ‘because I want to travel’ to his reading from ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ in a court where he stands guilty of murder.
Forget the blockbuster idea. If you want to label it, it’s indie, art house fayre. It took three years for the money to be raised to make it. Very few special effects, filmed on location. Lots of close ups of hands and feet and faces, along with shots shown over and over again.
It is not an easy film to watch, it was as if the happenings on screen had reached out and wrapped me up so much so a day after seeing it it am still stunned and my brain is full of it. The killing itself, along with other notable scenes, of close ups of Chapman behaving in a disturbed, disturbing way, leafing through a magazine full of pictures of Lennon, flipping through ‘The Catcher In The Rye’, holding it to his face, sitting rocking violently on his bed, dancing around to the Beatles music while his mostly unaffected wife Gloria stands in an adjoining room with her hands flat to her ears, writing ‘John Lennon’ in the signing book at work, holding a heavy gun and pretending to shoot people outside the window of the Hawaii gun shop, fantasising about shooting two gay men in the next room at the YMCA in New York, his obsessive behaviour after getting his copy of ‘Double Fantasy’ what turned out to by John and Yoko’s last album signed by John, and all to a calmly spoken track of Chapman’s own thoughts.
The killing of John Lennon itself; the DVD itself has a fifteen certificate because it ‘contains strong violence and language’. I have watched many scenes in films that contain violence and language, but the killing was truly horrendous; so bad I found myself speaking out loud, over the roars from the gun and Lennon’s body being bloodily torn apart, ‘good god, that’s enough now!’
After being arrested, he had a bullet proof vest wrapped around him to be hustled through the waiting press; as the police captain in charge said, ‘This man just killed John Lennon. There ain’t gonna to be an Oswald on my watch’. A moment of peace in a toilet, and the captain asked Chapman why he did it. He answered that he liked John Lennon. Helplessly, the captain added, ’so did I’. In fact, whenever he was asked why he did it he almost literally always gives a different answer. I believe he did it for the fame, he was sick of having a wife and a job and living in one of the most beautiful places on earth,living an ordinary life; he needed to be noticed.
Today, Chapman is in Attica state prison, in solitary confinement for his own safety, in a room six yards by ten yards. He has been turned down for parole four times so far. But don’t pity him. He has never once expressed an apology for what he has done. He’s only fifty-four now. If released, it’s just possible he might get an obsession with another great person to notch up his fame level again. Chapman might be locked away, he probably would never be released, but he’s alive. John would have been sixty-nine, a venerable, well respected old gentleman of rock, rich in memories, like Paul McCartney perhaps even still making music.
All that wiped out because a sad, pathetic little oddball nonentity wanted to be noticed.
AN INTERESTING CONSIDERATION
If you translate all the best into Latin you get totus optimus.
I have no life. It is official.
