I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
Nothing is ever really new, you understand ... it's just the old coming back-to-life in a new uniform ...
By Request SEPARATED at BIRTH from madame defarge - two GOP stars: former Florida representative Katherine Harris .....
... as well as current Minnesota Michele Bachmann - whaddya think?.
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
ART NOTES - works by more than 20 artists in an exhibit entitled The Spectacular of Vernacular are at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota through May 8th.
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow goes positively Rumsfeld! with the intriguing concept ..... "Knowing and not knowing".
HISTORY NOTES - Canadian sailors who braved dangerous Arctic waters and prowling German U-boats to deliver vital supplies to Soviet allies during the Second World War may finally receive a medal, thanks to the Canadian ...... British government.
From the BiPM FLATULENCE FILE - the African country of Malawi is planning to make 'breaking wind' a crime - with repeat offenders subject to a new 'local court system' (where the crime will be enforceable).
TUESDAY's CHILD is Billy the Cat - a Liverpool, England kitteh back with his family after going missing for seven years.
BUSINESS NOTES - the Spanish town of Olmeda de la Cuesta - with only 15 elderly residents - is offering 150 square-meter plots (for 2,000 Euros) to try and attract new residents, in attempt to keep the town from disappearing.
CRIME NOTES - the new Toronto South Detention Centre in Mimico, Canada is being built almost entirely from prefabricated pieces - including hundreds of fully outfitted jail cells shipped by rail from Atlanta. Georgia.
By Request SEPARATED at BIRTH from BlackSheep1 ... "OK, Ed Tracey, now I gotta ask: can you find a SaB for Edward Petherbridge (Lord Peter Wimsey from the Dorothy L. Sayers detective series, photo left)?
That was easy: David McCallum from the "Man from UNCLE" (in my youth) and "NCIS" (in middle age).
BALLET NOTES - London's Royal Opera House is currently staging the Royal Ballet's latest revival of Black Swan -and has received inquiries asking "When will Natalie Portman be performing?" But they're not too unhappy: the film has boosted ticket sales and reduced their advertising budget needs.
MUSIC NOTES - for the first time in over forty years: there are plans for both Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart to make an album together.
ART NOTES - the sixth Hammer Invitational entitled All of This and Nothing is at the Hammer Museum on the UCLA campus through April 24th.
SEEMED LIKE a GOOD IDEA at the time from conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy - encourage the 'lazy' French to 'work more to earn more' by exempting taxes on overtime pay back in 2007. Well, the number of overtime hours claimed jumped 10% but (a) without a commensurate jump in the number of actual hours worked, (b) little increase among lower income workers who could use the money and (c) with executive bonuses now repackaged as overtime.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Kovu the Cat - a Texas kitteh who found his way home after going missing 26 days.
JUST POSSIBLY the WEIRDEST ENDING to a championship match in North American team sports happened last summer when the Chicago Black Hawks won hockey's Stanley Cup on a sudden-death Patrick Kane 'mystery goal' - that almost nobody saw enter the other team's net. Well, just to add to the mystery: that puck is missing - and FBI agents (on their own time) have offered to help a Chicago businessman try to find it.
IF NOT HAVE NOT YET read this lengthy profile (by the intrepid Matt Taibbi) about John Boehner - please do so. As I have a last name that is easily lampooned, I will refrain doing that to him - but Taibbi says that even fellow Republicans (and most notably George W.) don't hesitate to indulge.
ART NOTES - works by Robin Holder in an exhibit entitled An American Consciousness are at the Mobile, Alabama Museum of Art through April 17th.
IN a REVERSAL of the jets and stretch-limousine days of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant and his Band of Joy are touring North America primarily ... by bus, saying "It's a great way to see America and a great way to meet interesting people".
IF NOT HAVE NOT YET read this interview of the disgraced fundamentalist preacher Ted Haggard entitled "The Last Temptation of Ted", please do so. No real overarching message or lesson to be learned, just a good read.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Bandit the Cat - an English hero kitteh who awoke a sleeping couple, alerting them to a smoldering kitchen fire.
MUSIC NOTES - researchers now believe that the Polish pianist/composer Frederic Chopin may have suffered from epilepsy before his death in 1849 at the age of 39.
THOUGH IT'S a FEW DAYS OLD in this past Thursday night's Top Comments diary I highlighted two of my favorite subjects, Antarctic exploration and pooties - with the tale of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated yet heroic 1914 mission aboard the wooden ship Endurance - and the expedition's cat Mrs. Chippy who (although a male grey tiger) was like a wife to Shackleton's testy yet invaluable carpenter, Henry "Chippy" McNish.
SCIENCE NOTES - while best known as the Russian emigré author of "Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov also had a second passion: the study of butterflies, with a job as a Harvard science museum curator. And one theory he postulated regarding butterfly migration sixty-five years ago (and mostly ignored at the time) has now been vindicated by researchers - more than thirty years after his death.
MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - TV stars Marg Helgenberger ("China Beach", "CSI") ...
........................ and Chelsea Handler ("Chelsea Lately").
FILM NOTES - Entertainment Weekly looks at "10 Movies That Have Changed Hollywood" in the past twenty years.
TRAVEL NOTES - when booking a flight, the airlines' overseas websites frequently offer better deals.
FILM NOTES - the film star Julianne Moore sends her kids to a Quaker school, saying that she and her husband "believe in community, social responsibility, making sure you give to people less fortunate than you".
FRIDAY's CHILD is Ikea the Cat - a Chicagoland kitteh up for adoption.
.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... it took a natural disaster five years ago to bring him back into the stream of American consciousness - and at the very least, it caused a re-assessment of the career of Antoine Fats Domino in many (including myself). I have always thought of the three founding fathers of rock music to be Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley - and still do. But along with Ike Turner, Fats Domino was also present-at-the-creation of this music and sold more 50's-era rock records than anyone except Elvis Presley. And so if anyone includes him in the top echelon of performers I mentioned before, fine with me.
Born into a large musical New Orleans family in 1926, he worked in local honky-tonks for tip money while working odd jobs. As an eighteen year-old, he became the pianist in the band of Billy Diamond - who gave the 200-lb, 5'5" Domino the moniker "Fats". His abilities in the boogie-woogie style soon made him a favorite at the Hideaway Club - and it was there that he was discovered by Imperial Records owner Lew Chudd as well as Chudd's legendary A&R man Dave Bartholomew - who served as Domino's producer and bandleader (and is still alive at age 90).
In 1949, Fats Domino released his first single, with the B-side tune The Fat Man reaching #2 on the R&B charts and - along with the Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston Rocket 88 - this is one of the songs historians include in their elusive "first rock-n-roll record" lists. Fats Domino always said he was playing the music he had grown up with, not trying to be a pioneer at anything. He had the good fortune to be playing in a musical hotbed (New Orleans) with Imperial Records and Dave Bartholomew providing him with excellent musicians such as the nonpareil drummer Earl Palmer - all taking place in the tiny J&M Studios run by Cosimo Matassa (who turns age 85 this year) that also recorded Little Richard, Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Ray Charles and numerous others.
And it paid off: as he went on to record several more R&B charted hits until 1955, when he co-wrote (with Bartholomew) and recorded Ain't It a Shame that reached #10 on the pop charts. Later that year, Pat Boone's version made it to #1 on the charts, re-named "Ain't That a Shame" (although the Columbia University graduate initially wanted to re-name it "Isn't That a Shame"). The next year, he had his biggest hit that reached #2, Blueberry Hill - which had already been recorded by Gene Autry and Louis Armstrong. In all, Fats Domino (on just the pop charts) had thirty-five(!) Top Ten singles from 1955 to 1963 - more than Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Little Richard combined - and having (to a great-or-lesser degree) an easy-going style yet with a driving rhythm underneath that propelled his music. And all of that success came while recording for a relatively minor label, without the clout that a major label might have brought him ... but he always stayed true to his hometown Imperial Records label.
His music was not the most daring, nor was he the most flamboyant performer around (which made him slightly less threatening to parents of that era) but he knew how to craft a song and win followers - all over the world, in time. Even if you're not of a certain age, you may have heard some of his other hits: "I'm in Love Again", I'm Walking plus "(I Gotta) Whole Lotta Loving", "Blue Monday", "I Want to Walk You Home", "Be My Guest" and My Blue Heaven - also having success in the early 1960's with cover versions of "I Hear You Knocking", "You Win Again" and the New Orleans favorite "Jambalaya". Fats Domino performed on many rock-n-roll tours, as well as appearing in some of the era's movies including "Shake, Rattle and Roll".
But two events in 1963 and 1964 ended his reign on top of the music world. The first was when Imperial Records was sold to Liberty Records, with Fats moving onto ABC-Paramount saying, "I stuck with them until they sold out". His new label required him to record in Nashville - and increasingly he was out of his element. The other problem was one that afflicted many other performers as well: the British Invasion changed the music landscape, and performers who came-of-age with his music were now supplanting the previous decade's stars. But many of them were quite vocal in recognizing him: Paul McCartney wrote 1968's Lady Madonna partially as a nod to Fats, who returned the favor later that year with a cover version: his last to reach #100 in the charts.
After sporadic recording in the 1960-70's, Fats Domino remained a popular touring act until the early 1980's. He then stated that since (a) he had a comfortable stream of royalties, (b) had grown weary of touring, and (c) couldn't find food he liked anywhere else: not only would he stop touring, he claimed he would never leave the New Orleans area again. And since he passed on appearances at his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at its inception, as well as the White House: people took his word for it that he would stay in the city's Lower Ninth Ward at his home.
That is, until 2005's Katrina - when he would not leave (right in the flood's wake) due to his wife's poor health - and many news accounts feared he was dead. But both were rescued and he has lived south of the city until his home was to be rebuilt. He has not stopped performing altogether but appearances are few these days; confined to a show at Tipitina's, the New Orleans Heritage & Jazz Festival or at a benefit concert the past few years.
But as Fats Domino turns age 83 later this month: his legacy is quite secure. A biography was published just a few years ago, and one can hear his music in extremis via a boxed set or a smaller Best Of collection. In 2007, musicians such as Elton John, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Paul McCartney, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson and others recorded a tribute album to Fats, in order to benefit the Tipitina Foundation - with a portion of the proceeds to help rebuild Domino's recording studio.
He has been inducted into various Halls of Fame: for Rock & Roll as mentioned, as well as the Hit Parade and the Louisiana Music Hall.
In the Rolling Stone magazine honors, he has two entries in the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: at #81 is Blueberry Hill with Ain't It a Shame at #431. Under its 100 Greatest Artists of All-Time: Fats Domino comes in at #25 (with his intro penned by his fellow Big Easy musician Dr. John).
Finally, just to show his local importance: when the New Orleans Saints lost an NFL playoff game to the Seattle Seahawks last month, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu had to pay-off a bet he had made (and thus lost) with his counterpart in Seattle. Landrieu had to send seafood gumbo, king cake and albums from Irma Thomas, The Neville Brothers ......and Fats Domino.
Of all of Fats Domino's songs, it is one from 1960 that is my favorite (and which expresses his love of his birthplace best). But he didn't write it - instead, it came from Cajun musician Bobby Charles Guidry who was a fan of Fats Domino. When Fats told Charles to stop by his home, Charles (the composer of "See You Later, Alligator") said that he didn't then have a car and "If I go, I'd have to walk" - which he said just stuck in his mind. Bobby Charles, who died last year said he used that as a theme for writing Walking to New Orleans in just 15 minutes. And below you can hear Fats Domino sing it.
I've got my suitcase in my hand
Now ain't that a shame?
I'm leaving here today
I'm going back home to stay
Yes, I'm walking to New Orleans
You used to be my honey
'Till you spent all my money
No use for you to cry
I'll see you by-and-by
Because I'm walking to New Orleans
I've got no time for talking
I've got to keep on walking
New Orleans is my home
That's the reason why I'm going
Yes, I'm walking to New Orleans