Quips and Quotations (Flamingo Road Edition)

 

Trump did ruin bad taste. It's no fun anymore.

--John Waters

Orange hair back in the day.

 

This Day in History

 

Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when on April 15 of that year he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. All well and good, but professional baseball has a farm system. Before one can break the color barrier in the majors, someone first has to break it in the...

...minors.

Robinson did just that when he made his (non-exhibition game) debut with the Class AAA Montreal Royals on April 18, 1946, in an away game at Roosevelt Stadium against the Jersey City Giants. Robinson's first hit was a three-run home run in the game's third inning. He went on to score four more runs, drive in three, and steal two bases in a Royals 14-1 victory. And that was just the beginning. Robinson went on to lead the International League with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage and was named the league's Most Valuable Player by season's end. By the next season's beginning, he was playing for the Dodgers.

Now, I don't want any of this to sound too rosy. As Pro Baseball's first African American player, Robinson had to put up with a lot of shit, to which, per Dodgers owner Branch Rickey's instructions, he turned the other cheek. There were hotels that his teammates stayed at that he couldn't. An exhibition game in racially segregated Jacksonville, Florida had to be canceled when the stadium was ordered padlocked by the city's Park and Public Property director on the day of the game. Other games were mysteriously canceled as well. 

OK, that was the Jim Crow South, but Jackie Robinson's home team in the minors was above the Mason-Dixon line. For that matter, it was above the United States' northern border. What did Canadians think of Robinson?

They seemed to like him. 

Graphic Grandeur (Lip Service Edition)

 

If Penguin sez it's a classic I guess it must be, though I confess I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I did see this Nick Anderson cartoon:

 That should tide me over until I can find time for Niccolo.

Quips and Quotations (Price of Admission Edition)

 

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
--Oscar Wilde
The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.
--Marsha Norman
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
--Arthur Miller
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
--Thornton Wilder

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

--Tennessee Williams

 

Vital Viewing (Falling Debris Edition)

 

500 meteors a year make their way past the Earth's atmosphere. This is a story of one of them:

I happen to live in the area where that meteor fell, but didn't see it because I was inside, and didn't hear the BOOM because I was in a noisy environment at the time, noisy enough that it even drowned out a meteorite. I didn't know anything about it until much later when I was scrolling through the news on my phone. I feel deprived. I didn't get to hear the BOOM. Where is my BOOM? I want to hear a BOOM!

So, by way of compensation:

Call out the National Guard!

Quips and Quotations (Frames of Reverence Edition)

 

They cheer me because they understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.

--Charlie Chaplin, upon meeting Albert Einstein.

Graphic Grandeur (Asymmetrical Warfare Edition)

 

The question must be asked:

Cartoon by Clay Jones.

Vital Viewing (Lost Causes Edition)

 

There's nothing worse than the end of a romance.

Except for maybe war, debilitating illnesses, natural disasters, famine, molestation, homelessness, political corruption, environmental destruction, genocide, etc.

But I digress:

Oh, so sad! Is there any way a positive spin can be put on this?

Tomorrow is another day.

1939-2026

Senate Minority Pride

 

You may have heard the Trump administration removed a rainbow flag from the Stonewall Inn, the site of the famous LGBTQ uprising ("the hairpin drop heard around the world" as journalist Dick Leitsch put it) and nowadays, per President Barack Obama, a national monument, a good thing until you realize that Obama is no longer president, and the man who is can do, or thinks he can do, whatever the hell he wants with a historic landmark. Still, his lackeys put in charge of running the National Park Service felt they at least should give a reason--thank you for that! --and the reason given is that "only the US flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags," can be flown on "NPS-designated flagpoles." Well, then, the solution to that is to somehow make the rainbow flag authorized.

That's where Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) comes in. Like a lot of old guard Democrats, Schumer has been criticized for blinking when confronted with the threat of imminent dictatorship. Well, it looks like he might have been administered some eye drops recently. Schumer and U.S. Representative Dan Goldman (also D-NY) have introduced legislation making the rainbow flag a congrssionally-approved flag that can be flown at national monuments, including, and especially, Stonewall. Way to go, Chuck! Still, there's a rub. As the title of this post indicates, Schumer is Senate Minority Leader. The GOP control both houses of Congress. So you need bipartisan support, and let's face it, Schumer may occasionally blink, but those Republican eyes are epoxied shut. Thus, passage seems unlikely, but not impossible. Life is full of surprises. Just ask any NYPD cop who happened to be at the Stonewall on June 28, 1969. 

 

Vital Viewing (The Living Daylights Edition)

Rise and shine! It's the beginning of a brand new day!

OK, that's fine for the homefront, but what about our boys overseas? How should they greet the day?

As different as these two morning scenes are, they're both very well-choreographed.

1931-2026

Somebody

 

 

 

It's said Martin Luther King Jr was a bit leery of the man and hesitated some before finally bringing him into the fold. Jesse was a bit of a showboat, a bit of an attention hog. And so he was. I mean, he was everywhere, and in the thick of everything for a while, one of the most public of public figures of his time. And like anybody, no matter how smart or how serious or how well-meaning, who spends too much time in the public eye, he could seem buffoonish at times. For all of that, I'm glad he was around for all these years. As the country turned to the right...and more to the right,,,and more to the right still, Jackson reminded us that there was still such a thing as a Left. And not just the African American Left either. By the end of the 1988 Democratic primaries, Jackson had won 11 primaries or caucuses and had received 6.9 million votes. At least some of those 6.9 million voters must have been white! Michael Dukakis eventually prevailed, but that eventuality took a lot longer than any pundit expected. It would be another 20 years before a black man running for president made that strong of a showing again (in fact, that later black man did even better.) Jackson never ran for president again, and seemed satisfied in role as a gadfly, a political provocateur. Well, I'll take Jackson's brand of political provoking over God-knows-what we got now. 

And wouldn't you know it? Jackson was a bit of a poet! I leave you with some of his more memorable rhymes

Hope for the brains instead of dope in the veins.

It doesn't matter if you're black or white, only if you're wrong or right.

If my mind can conceive it, my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.

1941-2026

 

Origin of Speciousness

 

OK, OK, let's all try to keep an open mind about this.

Hmm...They don't look like apes to me. Do they look like apes to you?

Not that there aren't apes in our future. After all, this remains a distinct possibility:

The Obamas just won't be the ones who bring it about.

Under the Radar: Thurl Ravenscroft

 

Actor and singer Thurl Ravenscroft was born on this day in 1914 (he died in 2005.) What, you never heard of him?

How 'bout this guy?

Yes, that's Ravenscroft's voice coming out of Tony's mouth. As for his vocals being "augmented", well, watch, and especially listen to, him in 1980s interview:

I sense not all that augmentation was needed.

One notable credit was oddly missing in that interview (perhaps because for years it went, again oddly, uncredited), so I'll include it here. First, some background: 

You see, when Chuck Jones (right) set out to turn a book by Dr. Suess (left) into a TV Christmas special, he wasn't content merely to have top-notch animation. He wanted it to be musically top-notch too, and so to that end hired Thurl to sing this now iconic song:

Sounds like he's describing an ICE agent.

Graphic Grandeur (Inalienable Wrongs Edition)

 

There's a new sheriff in town, so to speak. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino having been sent into exile, it's now Tom Homan's job to rid Minnesota of undesirables. But where to find them?

Cartoonist Mike Luckovich suggests he start here:

Lost in Frost

 

Almost looks like fog, doesn't it?  

Graphic Grandeur (Star Force One Edition)

 

 

You can fret about what went on at Davos all you want. As for myself, I worry more that...

...Earth may soon be paid an unwelcome visit by otherworldly beings!

Cartoon by Matt Reuter

Vital Viewing (Another Nice Mise-en-scène You've Gotten Me Into Edition)

 

Comedian Oliver Hardy was born on this day in 1892 (he died in 1957.) Here's a 1950 TV interview he did right as he was about to set sail for France: 

The interviewer makes mention of Hardy being part of a famous comedy team, so without further ado, let's see that comedy team in action:

Uh...That's not the comedy team I had in mind.

That's more like it, pilgrim!

In 1956, two of the funniest men who ever lived got together one last time to have their picture taken, though you'd be forgiven if you didn't immediately recognize the one on the right. So what accounts for Oliver Hardy's gaunt appearance? It seems the comedian, spooked by a mild heart attack he had suffered in 1954, went on a crash diet, shedding a whole 150 pounds. However, in a letter to an acquaintance, Stan Laurel speculated his longtime comedy partner had cancer. We do know that a series of strokes felled Hardy about a year after this photo was taken. At least the master of the comic reaction was able to give us one final feat of foolery for the camera.

Quips and Quotations (Naturalized American Film Auteur Edition)

 (Originally posted on 12/8/2014. I've made a slight adjustment to the title--Kirk)

I’m not against the police, I'm just afraid of them.

--Alfred Hitchcock.