Ramblin' with Roger

C is for Cosby

Bill Cosby saved the American situation comedy.

Bill Cosby is an iconic individual in my life. It started out with three albums that I listened to so often that I could cite dialogue as well as I could Beatles lyrics, which is to say, quite well.

The problem with describing comedy, though, is it involves context, character development and timing. As the cover of I Started Out as a Child (November 1964) notes, “Cut left at the black Chevy” (from Street Football) is not inherently funny, except as described by the Cos. The album also featured Oops!, a brief bit about the fallacy of the perfection about doctors; and The Lone Ranger, about the masked man and Tonto getting drunk, with the Ranger’s horse Silver telling him, “Get off my back!” But the album also deals with serious topics. Medic is about him being one; “zonked means dead”. And Rigor Mortis, about American funerals, along with my preternatural reading of The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, helped formulate my preference for cremation over the casket at an early age.

On Why Is There Air? (January 1965), in Driving in San Francisco, he discusses Lombard Street so accurately that it shows up in the Wikipedia description:
“They built a street up there called Lombard Street that goes straight down, and they’re not satisfied with you killing yourself that way—they put grooves and curves and everything in it, and they put flowers there where they’ve buried the people that have killed themselves. Lombard Street, wonderful street.” (audience reacts with knowing cheers and applause). So the one time I went to San Francisco, in 1988, you KNOW I had to go there.

That album, in $75 Car, has one of the few actual jokes. After Bill has hit a tree, he realizes he has a bunch of tickets in the glove compartment, “Which are like Savings Bonds; the longer you keep them, the greater they mature.”

But arguably the best, and in any case, my favorite album, is Wonderfulness (May 1966), with Tonsils (lies about “all the ice cream in the world”), The Playground (conspiracy by the adults to knock off all the kids), Go Karts (900 cop cars!), and the radio drama The Chicken Heart. This album is so good that when we were driving down to Charlotte, NC in April 2010 and I saw this on CD at a convenience store in Virginia for $5.99, I had to buy it and give it to my 19-year-old niece.

Other albums had great bits. 8:15 12:15 (1969) has a routine about not using the Lord’s name in vain; “I have a friend Rudy; he ain’t doin’ nothin’. Call on him,” which is why I say “Rudy dammit”. To the degree I am funny at all, it is with the situational humor, rather than jokes, a la Cosby.

At the same time as those early albums came out, indeed because of those albums, producer Sheldon Leonard teamed Cosby with Robert Culp in a show called I Spy (1965-1968). Not only was it the predecessor of the “buddy” cop shows and movies, I Spy was the first television show to feature a Black actor in a lead role. Bill Cosby won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1966, 1967 and 1968. Robert Culp was also nominated in the same category for all three seasons of I Spy. One can find old episodes of I Spy on Hulu, at least in the United States.

I watched Cos on The Bill Cosby Show, about a school teacher, then the kids’ show, Electric Company – an example here – even though I was in college.

Bill Cosby did films, worked on a cartoon series, and did Jell-O commercials – which he’ll be doing again in 2010. Cosby earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts. “For his doctoral research, he wrote a dissertation entitled, “An Integration of the Visual Media Via ‘Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids’ Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning”.

Then he saved the American situation comedy with The Cosby Show. Don’t believe me? Check out Ken Levine, writer for the TV shows MAS*H and Cheers, among many others. The 1984-1992 show revived a moribund format in the U.S.

The program portrayed black American life as normal if, by “normal”, you mean having a doctor and a lawyer as the parents. It regularly displayed African-American art, music (especially jazz, a Cosby love), and culture as a normal part of everyday life. Here’s a piece of Night Time Is The Right Time.

I always loved the changing theme songs myself:

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Seasons 6 and 7
Season 8

He’s best known recently for his controversial call for black Americans to take more individual responsibility, for which some have castigated him for blaming the poor. His book Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors is a New York Times bestseller.

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Many Odd Questions

I wish the government spent more on rail travel.

I decided to combine Part 1 and half of Part 2 of Sunday Stealing’s “Many Odd Questions,” which frankly I don’t find all that peculiar.

1. First thing you wash in the shower?
My hair, what’s left of it.

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
Do I have a hoodie? If I do, gray.

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
Absolutely.

4. Do you plan outfits?
No, I just look in the closet. Exception: I’m going to a business meeting for which a suit is required.

5. How are you feeling RIGHT now?
Reasonably awake. Reasonably happy; but what IS happiness?

6. What’s the closest thing to you that’s red?
The box of Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat.

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?
I had one featuring Hank Jansen, who used to work at FantaCo, but for the life of me, I have no idea what it was about. It felt positive, but that is it.

8. Did you meet anybody new today?
Well, there has been a whole bunch of new people on our floor in the past couple of weeks. I wouldn’t say I MET them as much as nod hello.

9. What are you craving right now?
A strawberry milkshake.

10. Do you floss?
Yes, but I didn’t until I was an adult. Totally missed that inservice on it as a kid.

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Corned beef. Or money.

12. Are you emotional?
On the inside.

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
No. I’m too ADHD for that.

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
Yes. Depending on the temperature. Soft ice cream I lick unless it’s going to fall off the cone.

15. Do you like your hair?
What hair?

16. Do you like yourself?
Well, I AM swell.

17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush?

Yes. Unfortunately, I would be disinclined to be my warm, polite self. And he still has Secret Service protection.

18. What are you listening to right now?
The Broadway cast album to West Side Story.

19. Are your parents strict?
My father was. My mother was a pushover.

20. Would you go sky diving?
No.

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
Well, no and yes. It’s rather bland, but it gioes so well with so many things, such as fruit.

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
Yes. as mentioned here somewhere, Nelson Rockefeller, Rod Serling, Anita Baker, Randy Newman.

23. Do you rent movies often?
I have a Netflix account. Sometimes I can go months without actually watching one film, then I’ll do two per month. STILL have Hurt Locker.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you’re in?
This strange wizard hat I bought at a Medieval Faire last year.

25. How many countries have you visited?
Canada, Mexico (once), Barbados (once).

26. Have you made a prank phone call?
Not in decades.

27. Ever been on a train?
I LOVE the train. I wish the government spent more on rail travel. In the long run, it’d be financially and ecologically worthwhile.

28. Brown or white eggs?
Doesn’t matter. Whatever’s cheaper.

29. Do you have a cell phone?
Yes. Oh, there it is; I misplace it regularly.

30. Do you use ChapStick?
Rarely.

31. Do you own a gun?
No. If I did, I’d probably blow out the tires of the car of some schmuck who almost ran me over, they’d have an accident and die, and then I’d be in jail for manslaughter.

32. Can you use chopsticks?
Not very well.

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
The wife and daughter.

Two Letters

I’m thinking to myself, “You talk about me at work?”

When I was 22 or 23, I wrote my father a really nasty letter. I no longer recall what prompted this, though I’m sure he ticked me off in some way. Nor do I recall what was in it, except I’m sure there was something pointed about his spanking policy. I suppose my goal was to engage him, even angrily.

The results: he didn’t talk to me for six months. Any communication that took place went through my mother. But I should not have been surprised. My father’s modus operandi when angry was often to become like this black cloud, and he’d just shut down. One didn’t always know WHY he was upset, but you usually knew THAT he was upset. I was pained by this, and I hated having my mother in the middle of this triangulation.

So I wrote him another letter. I described how great he was, how much I appreciated him coming to school every semester to sing to my classmates. How much I liked singing with my sister Leslie and with him. How much I enjoyed going to minor league baseball games and exhibition pro football games with him. How much I really enjoyed playing cards – pinochle and bid whist in particular – with him. How much I enjoyed him cooking waffles on Saturday mornings, and spaghetti Saturday nights, especially during those six years he worked nights at IBM and we didn’t see him that much during the week. My father made a great spaghetti sauce; the secret is that he cooked it for hours.

Then my father started talking with me as though nothing had happened. For 50 years, we never spoke about the letters.

Now, I’m not recommending this. But I do think that it allowed me to vent my frustration with him and my love for him in a way my sisters did not have the opportunity to do. I talked with sister Leslie at length around her birthday, and she agrees with the theory. There were things she and our sister Marcia never said to him.

Not that there aren’t issues I still wish I could ask him about, such as his genealogy or his time in Europe after World War II. But I don’t think I had unstated FEELINGS left unsaid.

The bottom line is, ultimately, I think it helped our relationship. I remember one day when I needed to catch a plane back to Albany from Charlotte, NC. For some reason, peat – the stuff you burn – came up in discussion, and I, as was (is) my wont, went to the dictionary or encyclopedia to look it up. He said that he tells people at work that I’m prone to do that, in a way that made it seemed like a good thing. And I’m thinking to myself, “You talk about me at work?” I was floored. Pleased, but very surprised. He’d often given me the impression in the past that me, buried in some reference book, was somehow, for lack of a better word, nerdy.

Sidebar: if you wanted to get a ride from him to take you to the airport or train station, you needed to lie to him about the departure time. In fact, that particular day in question, if the rules of flight now were in place then, I’d have missed my plane altogether, rather than running through the airport and just catching the flight.

Last dance music QUESTION

The intricacies of singing in chicken may require a substitute.

I have this Facebook friend, who not only is an actual terrestrial friend but who I see regularly. Anyway, she sent around this list of disco songs from which she would like the music for her funeral.

Whereas I would like a nice dignified affair. But the last song ought to be done in chicken. Almost any tune can be done in chicken. Exhibit A: unfortunately, just a snippet of In The Mood by Henhouse Five Plus Too, which is the nom de cluck of singer Ray Stevens. I don’t know if I can overstate the significance this song has had on my life, ever since I heard it on some Warner Brothers Lost Leader over 30 years ago.

Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily want In The Mood. Bach can be done well in chicken, even in four-part harmony. And if one cannot master the intricacies of chicken, I suppose kazoo will do. I played a lot of kazoo, occasionally even professionally.

So what special music would you want at YOUR funeral?

July Ramblin’

A dedicated to Sir Mick

I was moved by this:
Why didn’t I scream when I was raped?
I was 15 when it happened. Now, after a career as a terrorism expert, I want to find out what took place, and why, By Jessica Stern

I was encouraged by this:

There are now about 250 million people worldwide living in jurisdictions that provide for marriage equity, as this colorful chart will help to demonstrate.
The big spike you see in 2008 is California recognizing gay marriage through the courts, and then un-recognizing it through the passage of Proposition 8. Right now, it’s possible to marry your same-sex partner in Buenos Aires, in Mexico City, in Ames, Iowa, and in Pretoria, South Africa, but not in San Francisco. With countries like Argentina and Portugal now recognizing same-sex marriages, however, the global trajectory has returned to its slow but steady upward pace.

I had forgotten about this:

Evanier noted correctly that the last name of the Dennis the Menace creator is Ketcham, not Ketchum, as the copyright notice on the stamps suggests. While verifying the spelling, I came across arguably, the most awkward moment in Dennis the Menace history.

I was frustrated by this:
Stop the Madness: Education’s foremost historian on where NCLB went wrong, ending the testing regime, and why we need neighborhood schools.
Adapted from The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, by Diane Ravitch (Basic Books, 2010).

When I was having insomnia, just watching this help relax me enough to go to sleep:
water therapy

These made me laugh:
Star Wars on the bagpipes while riding a unicycle (well, of course)
Ken Levine and Hells Angels
Life lessons from a Disney mermaid!
I felt uncomfortable laughing at this:
Suicide Jumper
And this, while well crafted, just didn’t make me laugh at all:
Seinfeld drama

In honor of Mick Jagger’s birthday this month, I listened to this cover:
Ollabelle – I Am Waiting
For a reason listed above, listening to this song by the Box Tops: Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March, which I only vaguely recall. It got to #28 in early 1969.

I hope to be listening to this soon:

Music Legend Brian Wilson Completes Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, A New Disney Pearl CD of George and Ira Gershwin Classics Set For Release August 17. Highlights include two new songs Wilson crafted from previously unpublished George Gershwin music