My good friend Mister Muleboy on his blog The Mouth O' The Mule has been somewhat critical of my lack of productivity recently:I'll be moving on to the films of 1928 within the next day or two.
Hang tight.
Ooooops; wrong blog.
Hell -- wrong blogger!
Things are a little. . . tough right now.
Actually, I've been working on an essay about "Special Achievements in Sound: 1927-1931" which has topped 1500 words so far and shows no signs of ending any time soon, as well as taking a couple of days to work on my next (unpublished) novel and spend some vacation time with Katie-Bar-The-Door.
But promises are not content and so to supply the demand I'll channel my inner Mule for a moment, knock off a quick post and catch you up with what's going on in the world of 1931 (we're well past 1928, my friend):
Herbert Hoover is a fat, insensitive Nero who fiddles while the American Rome burns and yet as a doctrinaire Libertarian I find this strangely comforting. The only thing that would make me happier is if a foreign army were to land on our shores so I could exercise my Second Amendment rights to accidentally shoot my neighbor. Rumor has it that that New York commie, Governor Franklin Roosevelt, is going to run for president next year. If as a result of his leftist meddling, he not only saves democracy but also creates an agency that keeps me employed for years to come, I am going to be so steamed, you have no idea!
It was another dis- appoint- ing year for Wash- ington baseball—first in war, first in peace, last in the American League. Okay, actually we were third but Griffith Stadium is a dump, Walter Johnson is no better a manager than he was a pitcher and Ben Ali is still thirty years away from inventing the best chili dog on the planet, so I hate these guys.
On a positive note, local jazz composer Duke Ellington seems to be making headway with New York audiences. His nightly performances at the Cotton Club are not to be missed and as a Washingtonian (by choice rather than birth), I take great pleasure in his success. Of course, local pride doesn't keep me from digging the work of another Washingtonian (Tacoma, Washington, that is), Bing Crosby, who had ten of the top fifty hits on the pop charts this year and promises to be a force for decades to come, that is unless he does something crazy like hawking orange juice and making Christmas specials on this new-fangled invention, television (it'll never catch on—why sit at home when you can go out?).Haven't been to any movies lately but here's a random picture of a good-looking broad, Anita Page, and because we always enjoy a drive-by comment from the distaff side, Clark Gable.
Hubba hubba.
By the way, when the woman you've known for twenty-seven years and been married to for twenty asks whether you're blogging as the Mule or as yourself, you know maybe you haven't made yourself clear.
ReplyDeleteAs The Mule, Katie, as the Mule ...
So just to reiterate, I am not a gun-toting libertarian who hates Washington baseball and Franklin Roosevelt. Although I do love the music of Duke Ellington and the young Bing Crosby. And Ben's Chili Bowl.
ReplyDeleteSo there.
As The Mule, Katie, as the Mule ...
ReplyDelete* * *
So just to reiterate, I am not a gun-toting libertarian who hates Washington baseball and Franklin Roosevelt.
Methinks he protesteth overmuchly.
The MythMonkey is indeed a gun-toting libertarian who hates Washington baseball and FDR.
He just used me as a pretext for spouting his
deeply-held, but carefully-concealed, philosophies.
I also find it telling that he interpreted my quick post
-- which was intended to lightly touch on my sporadic, and utterly meaningless/short, blog posting (in the face of some personal turmoil) --
as a criticism of him.
Freud would have a field day with us, I tell ya!
Anyway, as he correctly notes in his "spoofing" "parody" of my "blog style" -- I am a gun-toting libertarian who hates FDR.
Of course, I've never shot my neighbour - rather, I've occasionally gotten out of my car, armed, in a crime-infested area where I needed to be (like, my apartment complex where armed muggings occurred). I knew that as "foolish and dangerous" as it was for me to carry a gun (I endangered the neighbours!), I was afforded the same protection that so many people blithely turn over to their policemen - an equalizing means of protecting oneself in an unanticipated, undesired, life-threatening situation. Of course, turning a gun over to the people with the technology and desire to listen to your every thought, follow your every movement, and chronicle your every utterance is *much* safer and smarter than letting a neighbour-shooting fellow like me have one!
;-)
As for FDR -- of course I hate him. He was handicapped, and he kept a fully-enabled man out of the White House. And the lend-lease program and court-packing were illegal and manipulatively autocratic! Why, he may have been the third-most despotic president in our nation's history -- after Lincoln and W. Bush.
Hoover, of course, was one of our most benevolent, charitable, and civic-minded presidents ever -- he was just overmatched by Unfounded Exuberance and rigid adherance to philosophy in the face of a more concrete threat.
Oh, yeah -- while FDR declared a bank holiday and averted a worse disaster, he nevertheless fucked things up by not pumping all the money that he could into the economy in '33-'34 His quick efforts thereafter to begin balancing the budget may have extended that damned depression unnecessarily. Of course, we can never know.
Um, I have no desire to see a foreign country invade this one, so I don't have anything there.
And i do like the photos of the broads from the movies!
Methinks you protest too much my protesting too much at your methinking. Actually, I knew you were whimsically explaining away your lack of blogging during very troubled times by stepping into the idiom of my explaining away my troubling lack of blogging during whimsical times.
ReplyDeleteBut sometimes it feels good to be the Mule.
Actually, I like FDR and Lincoln and Truman and Reagan and Washington and Jefferson and presidents of their political stripe. I don't own a gun but I will likely die one day while some woman on the street exercises her Second Amendment right to take a shot at you and hit me after you make one of your patented Muleboy comments. I love Washington baseball on 75 degree days when we win. I think Ben's Chili Bowl is the pinnacle of American cuisine. I think Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby, the Beatles, Liz Phair and other musical acts of that same genre are terrific.
I think you're a swell guy despite and because of your libertarian gun-toting pacifism which are at odds with my pragmatic centrist unarmed internationalism.
How's your mom?
Oh, and I dig Angie Dickinson. Even own a dog named Angie. She is not to be missed in Rio Bravo, The Killers (1964) and Point Blank.
ReplyDeleteDickinson, that is, not the dog.
Methinks you protest too much my protesting too much at your methinking. Actually, I knew you were whimsically explaining away your lack of blogging during very troubled times by stepping into the idiom of my explaining away my troubling lack of blogging during whimsical times.
ReplyDeletefunny, I was "protesting too much" because I started to seriously respond, and instead went into a Thomas-Paine-meets-Douglas-Fairbanks kinda thing.
Blogging straight is okay, but Extreme Blogging aa characters is much better.
Guns are best left in the hands o' me and Nate Hale (and hearty-well-met?). . . .
Blogging straight is okay, but Extreme Blogging aa characters is much better.
ReplyDeleteThere are those who would say you are an extreme character. Not me, of course.
God help us if I start blogging as characters. Although I can imagine what Louise Brooks might have said in her Katie Award acceptance speech.
"FCC Slaps Record Fine On ABC, Louise Brooks For Profanity-Laced Speech" ...
Speak of the devil, Mz. Louise Brooks dropped by and recounted her speech for us. Not quite publishable in its present form but here is the expurgated edition:
ReplyDelete"I remember the night well:
"You know, my [bleep] began [bleeping] when I heard my name in the same company as Marlene Dietrich and Jeanette MacDonald. But to actually win? Why, I feel like I should [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] the Mythical Monkey and Katie-Bar-the-Door, on camera, just to thank them. My; Hollywood will have to think twice about me NOW!
"And thanks to the Katies for shutting out that [BLEEP] Norma Shearer . . . .
"Thank you again to everyone. And thanks to the Mule for helping me reach Shangri-La!"
As written, the FCC's fine would make the Wardrobe Malfunction at the Super Bowl look like an episode of Kukla, Fran and Ollie. And if I had published it here, Katie-Bar-The-Door would have me out sleeping in the garage.
But I think you get the gist of it ...
As an experienced sleep-in-the-garage-kinda guy, I laud you on your decision to bowdlerize the comments of Miss Brooks [Our Miss Brooks ???!!?!?!]
ReplyDeleteI don't like that broad Brooks. . . .
I don't like that broad Brooks. . . .
ReplyDeleteReally? Because she speaks highly of you. Shangri-La indeed.
Actually, when you leave Shangri-La, you crumble into dust. Not to mention Netflix doesn't deliver there and despite its proximity to China, you can't get takeout. So maybe L.B.'s statement "And thanks to the Mule for helping me reach Shangri-La!" was meant ironically.
Who knows.
Ooh. Woulda posted sooner but have been computerless since my trusty refurbished Mac died a death last Thursday, 104 days after warranty expired. So sad, so very sad. Hadda get a newer, nicer Mac . . . which altho not in optimal financial picture, was at least cheaper than the one I purchased 3.3 years ago --
ReplyDeleteThat said, my response to the C. Gable photo is pretty much the same as Anita's is to having her head on his lovely strong shoulder. Heavy sigh.