Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen-"Mr and Mrs Hoofer at Home"

Ahh-the Hollywood/Broadway musical. Something of a joke now, and for good reason-few good ones have been produced since the mid-60's-but there was a time when they represented the peak of American movie entertainment..

That peak may have been reached in the 50's-just when Hollywood musicals were on their way out, presumably due to their expense in a time when people were becoming accustomed to watching television for free. As much as I love the Astaire/Rogers musicals of the thirties, the technical possibilities available two decades later made lavish productions like Gene Kelly's "An American in Paris" a possibility.

This cut is from what is actually not a great movie-1950's "Three Little Words", starring Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen, and Red Skelton. The plot's pretty light, and the comedy only so-so, but this dance routine is certainly one of the best ever filmed. Sheer joie de vivre.

Not that you asked for it, but here is an informal ranking of the best 50's musicals. I'm the ultimate Fred Astaire fan, as noted, but Gene comes first.

1. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)-Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds. Easily the funniest of the era's musicals. O'Connor's dance scenes make you think he lacks bones.
2. "The Band Wagon" (1953)-Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant. Director Vincente Minnelli at his best. Plot: Should we turn a light musical into an updated version of "Faust"? Nah.
3. "An American in Paris" (1951)-Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant. Kelly's climatic ballet might've been enough by itself to make this the best, but the Kelly/Caron romance is a little silly-he's a grown man (pushing 40 in real life) and Caron looks to be about 15 (she was in fact still a teenager).
4. "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)- Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse. Co-directed by Kelly with Stanley Donen, this somewhat cynical story (war buddies meet ten years after the war and soon realize they don't like each other) was a box office flop, but it's a delight. It's a musical comedy with a real plot.
5. "Funny Face" (1957)-Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn, Kay Thompson. Young intellectual (Hepburn) agrees to become a model because it means a free trip to Paris. Again, you have to overlook a big age gap between the romantic leads-Astaire is thirty years older but looks a lot more. And yes, Audrey can dance-I would've included her great solo dance but it's now gone from Youtube.
6. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953)-Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn. Marilyn plays dumb but cagey here-she wants a rich guy and makes no bones about it. Russell, who gets a lot of great lines and knows how to deliver them, is her somewhat cynical friend. Again, I would've included my favorite scene from this one (Russell's sexy, funny "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love"), but that's also disappeared from Youtube, though other scenes from the movie are still there.

Glen Campbell - "Try A Little Kindness" - [live]

What's Glen Campbell doing on a jazz site? Well, he was a hell of a guitar player. Listen to him rip through this one. Plus, I like the song and Glen's singing, as well. RIP.

There's a funny story, somewhat politically incorrect, about Campbell, who did a lot of session work early in his career, on a Sinatra session. Glen seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, staring at Sinatra in awe. So Frank, ever tactful, asked the producer: "Who's the queer guy on guitar?"

This cut is circa 2000.

Count Basie - "Good Time Blues"

This is jazz. 'Nuff said. Fun and funny. I got to see some of my heroes-Basie, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, and more before they left this mortal coil. So grateful.

Chesterton on not taking yourself too seriously

SERIOUSNESS is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.


From "Orthodoxy".


As an aside I used to read Punch, the great British humor magazine which expired a few years ago, when I was in high school. I already loved British sports cars, and was coming to love British writing. Later I got into GK Chesterton, Agatha Christie, CS Lewis, and PG Wodehouse. Thus an Irish Catholic became an Anglophile.

Trump steals black baby as trophy of TX trip, plans to make her White House mascot

As often as Trump says or does something beyond ridiculous, our "dispassionate" media will always out-Trump him. The two sides-the media, and Trump the media manipulator-truly deserve each other. They're basically Mo and Larry of the Three Stooges, poking each other in the eye on a daily basis. Enjoy the next three and a half years!

In any case, the above headline is a fake-I think. The difference between the National Enquirer and the New York Times is now more what schools the reporters went to than content.


We got Trump for a lot of nasty reasons, all of which are too unpleasant to detail, and he is no real antidote to any of that, but yes, Hillary would've been worse. That's what we're reduced to.

I didn't vote for him. I voted for Evan McMullin. The Mormon Roundhead.

Embarrassing.

On this date in Phillies' history

They lost.

Pictured: Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy.

A noble putdown

"[thou] shalt stand in fire up to the navel and in ice up to th' heart, and there the offending part burns and the deceiving part freezes."

The Two Noble Kinsmen. Shakespeare knew how to insult people.

A few good links

Some worthwhile reads:

Lynn on enjoying the eclipse, and also enjoying things that we see every day. Which makes me think of this: click it! (TY Dustbury.)

Ann Althouse on the outrageous Trump. 


Terry Teachout names his favorite big band tracks. Well, there are no tracks by Maynard Ferguson, Don Ellis, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Buddy Rich, or Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, but it's still a nice grouping.

Edward Feser and Joe Bessette present the Catholic case for capital punishment. It's impossible to argue, from a Catholic perspective, that CP is intrinsically wrong, like abortion or euthanasia.


Megan McArdle-"As a woman in tech, I realized these are not my people". Reflections on the Google memo.

Cartoons can be useful. 

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another"-Hamlet. The Bard might wonder at some current lunacies, like presto-chango sexes.


Father Mitch Pacwa, no longer SJ, is tossed out of the Jesuits after being caught with a Catechism.



538 has the Dodgers getting to 114 wins, two shy of the record.

Anti-social media

I haven't posted on twitter in months. Most of what I post on facebook is just youtube music clips, though I do occasionally annoy people there with my right wing views. I also vex people with comments on the Phillies, in various places, such as here. 

I have at times had semi-popular blogs that people with discriminating taste read ignored. I have no real desire to chase that dragon once again, but I would like to keep this blog updated once in a while. There might be someone out there who would like to read it and say, "Damn, this dude's more f-ed up than I am." That's the kind of service to mankind I'd like to provide.


Really, I can never can decide what to with my writing. I've written poetry, stories, lyrics to songs (including the only really funny song ever written about Prozac), blogs, and once had a fairly substantial number of jokes written for a comedy act I was working on. The character was to be a total loser-i.e., strictly autobiographical. You see, I'm the kind of guy who can calculate the most arcane baseball statistics in his head, but can't figure out a restaurant tip, because I can't get a girl to go to a restaurant with me. The main idea was, Here is a comedian you can't heckle, because I'm up here HECKLING MYSELF. "Is this thing off? Good."

The total loser part turned out to be all too accurate, when I lost the ability to access the tablet the jokes were in due to a dead battery that proved impossible to recharge. WTF? Who does that happen to? I guess I could've gotten a new battery, but only about half of the jokes were good.


So I guess I'll write some more self-deprecating material. Which raises an interesting question....is that an indication of really lousy self-esteem, or really good self-esteem? If Bob Uecker says, for example, "You know, people had divided opinions on my career in baseball-half thought I was awful, the other half thought I was a disgrace to the uniform"-is he saner than the rest of us? Or closer to the edge?

We slouch, exhausted but unified

Yes, Americans are in agreement about something, amazingly enough in these ultra-polarized times. Everybody but everybody agrees that 2016 was a cosmically awful year, the sort of year that must be punishment for something. Scandals, terrorism, ugly elections, foreign intrigues....God really piled it on in 2016, didn't He? We get it, Lord, we get it.

Or do we? I won't even speculate what the ill-treatment might be a result of. We all have our favorite pop culture or political targets, and most of them deserve all the scorn that can be thrown at them. But a loving God doesn't allow the unworthy success of a talent-free rapper or blowhard politician to be cause for an unrelieved twelve months of misery.


No, it must've been big this time. God really doesn't want to get into the backseat where the kids are, like a Cosmic Father pushed too far, but He will do it when it's called for. But we weren't just spilling soda back there or playing that damned awful music too loud.

I don't really have any answers, other than that our slide into post-Christian anything goes continued at its usual hurried pace this past year. But, nostalgia aside, that's nothing new. People have been bitching about the secularization of Christmas, say, since the first one, when I understand the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce hit on the idea of having guided tours of the stable where Christ was born for a mere five shekels a pop.

Nope, it's nothing new. But maybe we've reached a tipping point. I don't know how you'd know such a point has been reached, and I'm more than aware that talk like this always spawns the "everything's cyclical, everything can't go downhill at once" response. Maybe.


The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. 

We must not question

To foster social harmony, the results of elections must be accepted unquestioningly by all parties, each and every time the Democrats win.

Some new reality shows on The Faith Network

I've been looking at the TV listings, and I see The Faith Network has some new reality shows running. Samples:

"Jim-Bob at Large"- Rev Jim-Bob Tucker of the Flountsville Baptist Church plans to perform a miracle with a couple chickens and some goats. (Animals not available at press time).

"Hello, Dalai!"-The Dalai Lama will cast demons out of some high-ranking Chinese leaders and reclaim his beleaguered nation. (Demons unfortunately will be available).

"The Shirley Show"- We see Episcopal Bishop the Reverend Shirley Williamson as she presides over a gay wedding and is then hit by lightning on the way to her car.

"You Can Call Me Al"- Rev. Al Sharpton gets a manicure and a pedicure, and maybe a perm too, as he pretties up before meeting with some corporate chieftains to raise a few million for his "foundation".

"Don't Call Me Darryl"- Richard Dawkins regretfully informs God that He probably doesn't exist.

"Jewish Jokers"- Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner re-create some of the best bits from their 2000 Year Old Man routine, including the time Ben-Hur got pulled over for speeding in his chariot.

"I Love My Mama!"- Here we see a tearful Al Gore hug a great big globe long enough to make viewers really uncomfortable.

"Objectively Speaking"- Pilgrims clutching copies of Ayn Rand's works such as The Fountainhead visit Rand's tomb and await her resurrection.

"The Lutheran Channel" -Students from The Evangelical Lutheran Church and The Lutheran Church (MIssouri Synod) face off on College Jeopardy.

"All Roads Lead to Mecca"- Abdul and Habib teach their kids about all the fun things you can do with plastic explosives.

"Father Brown's Adventures"- We watch as Father Brown, of St. Mark's Catholic Church in Steubenville, spills coffee on himself at breakfast, says morning Mass, visits old folks in the hospital, teaches RCIA class, and goes to bed by himself. Truly useful people usually are boring. First and last episode due to likely low ratings.

Foot in mouth department

So...I saw a woman on the bus, whom I know slightly, and said out loud the thought that had often popped into my head when seeing her: "You look just like my Grandmother".

This was not well-received, despite the fact that the woman does in fact resemble my Mother's mother. Definitely one of those faces with the map of a particular corner of Ireland on it. Out West, I'd say. But in any case she said to me, "Well, I didn't want to hear that". This was perhaps the first time in my life I'd said something that offended someone, so I didn't know what to say (right).

I later pondered how I might have phrased my ill-advised comment. "My Grandmother looks just like you". Uhh, no.

"For a woman who quite obviously is far too young to be my Grandmother, you resemble her". Better, but sounds smarmy.

"You have the look of the West Country of Ireland, which my Grandmother also had". Huh?

"As Grandmothers go, you look just like my Irish one." Even more, huh? Also, face slap.

I really should have just gone with, "Nice day, isn't it?".

A few links

The Father Brown in the URL is Chesterton's fictional detective. Sort of a proto-Columbo.

Really hoping this is true: Trump "is nowhere near the presumptive nominee".


Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way: "Neil deGrasse Tyson is a black hole sucking the fun out of the universe".

This science story includes the heading, "Cats are difficult to tame".

Abuse of power: The IRS scandal, Day 1085.