Long Ago and Far Away

For some reason, HBO’s series Rome did not feature the music of Jerome Kern.  (Showtime would have; as Rome burned, imagine Nero singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.)  But The Roaring Twenties epoch Boardwalk Empire does feature Kern’s melodies.  And so did the World War II saga The Pacific.  His career spanned thirty years; how many of today’s composers will last that long?  Will Green Day make it to Gray?

Kern’s work even was considered suitable by the Third Reich.  His surname was Irish and so passed the German racial requirements.  Of course, the composer would have gleefully told Josef Goebbels that Kern was a recent acquisition; the family’s original name was considerably less Celtic and Aryan back in Austria-Hungary.  Nor did Kern feel very appreciative of his German fans.  Hearing the news of France’s fall to the Nazis, Kern and his friend Oscar Hammerstein wrote in one afternoon “The Last Time I Saw Paris”.  “No matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.”

By 1944, we could anticipate victory and the homecoming of our veterans.  This was how Kern–and Ira Gershwin–expressed the public’s hopes and expectations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1bwhGNeUuc

And I think that it still expresses our pride and gratitude to all our veterans.

And from the archives: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/11/11/veterans-day-at-the-movies/

George Bush Forgives Kanye West

Meanwhile on another metaphysical plane, Louis XV admitted the greatest disappointment of his disastrous 59-year reign:  that he would be portrayed by Rip Torn.  When not flirting with Meredith Viera, the 300 year-old retired monarch offered the sum of his retrospective. 

“I couldn’t believe Coppola’s casting of ‘Marie Antoinette’.  Jason Schwartzman was too good-looking to be my grandson, and Rip Torn is not good-looking enough to be me.  And Torn lacks my dignity.  There is a difference between a rummy and a roue.  I just can’t get over that miscasting.”

When Meredith asked his reactions to entrusting the government to the corrupt and incompetent, to bankrupting France, to his needless wars and the loss of France’s stature as a world power, Louis replied, “Huh?”

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/10/abu-ghraib-is-arabic-for-andersonville/

Aside from the likelihood of nude scenes with Mary Pickford and Oliver Wendell Holmes, what I especially enjoy about “Boardwalk Empire” is the authentic music of the early 1920s.  If Miss Pickford and Justice Holmes needed something to set the mood, the songs of the young Jerome Kern would do admirably.  Last week’s episode was particularly melodious.  In fact, I have become literally monotonous, continually singing “They Didn’t Believe Me.”  If you don’t care to hear me in the shower, go to YouTube which offers dozens of versions of the Kern classic.

The earliest rendition is by Warren Harding (of course, the libido-in-chief does make an appearance on Boardwalk Empire).  In his case, “They Didn’t Believe Me” was about his congressional testimony on the Teapot Dome Scandal.

For the series’ Lesbian interlewd the musical accompaniment was the aria “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls”.  The hit single from the British opera The Bohemian Girl, “Marble Halls” was one of the first songs my mother remembered playing on that sensational new invention, the radio.  (Being underage in the 1920s, my mother’s character will not be doing nude scenes on Boardwalk Empire.  She might have been available for The Pacific but no one asked her.)  Yes, YouTube offers a number of versions of the aria. 

Enya makes it sound like a Druid incantation.  Of course, she does that to every song.  Sometimes, however, her monotony might seem appropriate.  The YouTube listings also offered her song “Boadicea”.   Well, the only Boadicea I know was a first century British queen who led an unsuccessful rebellion against the Romans.  I certainly had to hear Enya’s ballad of that.  You might say that I am still waiting.  The song had no words; it was just Enya humming.  And I can’t say that her dum-de-dums were remotely evocative of ancient Rome or Britain.  She just as easily could have entitled the song “Wendell Wilkie.”  Dum-de-dum.

Allow me to offer this musical tribute to Boadicea.  I may have borrowed the tune from Richard Rodgers.  (If Boardwalk Empire lasts another three years, we’ll be hearing his music too.)  In any case, here is as much of the song as I dared to compose.

Go Home Roma!                                                                                                                                                                                                         We’ll wage war to rid you from our shore.                                                                                                                                                       Then for extra fun, we’ll sack London.                                                                                                                                                       Scourge and purge all trace of Latin race….

I trust you’re applauding.

Topic I

Boardwalk Empire is a very instructive series on how a career in bootlegging and gambling can be both civic-minded and quite endearing.  Of course, being on HBO, the show has to offer more than drama, intelligence and wit.  So I am going to predict who we will see nude on tonight’s episode:

Eleanor Roosevelt 

The Ziegfeld’s Follies, including Will Rogers and Fanny Brice.

Topic II

I seem to be a bad influence on kitchen appliances.  Now, our oven is an underachiever, too.  Last night, it refused to cook above 250 degrees.  While that may be an adequate heat for torturing Anne Askew, it really is insufficient for baking salmon and potatoes.  So what would you call a dinner of raw fish and potatoes:  Irish sushi? 

Of course, as proof that there is a God–and He is not as lovable as an Atlantic City Bootlegger, the oven’s tepid tantrum occurred during a dinner party.   Why settle for malnutrition when you can have public humiliation, too!  I was ready to order out for pizza (I am an American male) but Karen improvised minor miracles with a toaster oven.  Dinner was served, and no one got food poisoning from the fish or broke a tooth on the potatoes.  Martha Stewart would be satisfied.

Of course, we welcome your pity but the appliance repairman will be here before your care packages arrive.

p.s.  Did anything of historical significance happen today?  I think Lenin gave up his career in law:    https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/07/fool-russians-where-engels-feared-to-tread/

Since it is Guy Fawkes Day, I’ll talk about Anne Askew.  Racked and then burned at the stake, she was at the other end of the theological extreme:  too Protestant.  Ms. Askew was also a martyr to bad timing.  Had she been a belligerent Protestant some five years earlier, Henry VIII might have been more tolerant of her dogma.  He definitely would have been more interested in an attractive young woman.  But by 1546, a death bed was all Henry could manage.  His councilors were plotting against each in anticipation of the Regency, and a loudmouth lady evangelist found herself caught between the factions. 

Henry’s Reformation had been a political divorce from Rome, not a theological one.  He simply presumed that he would make as good a Pope as a Medici would, which unfortunately was true.  So the Church of England was supposed to be the English Catholicism.  With that official policy, an enthusiasm for Luther was just as treasonable as a nostalgia for Rome.  But maintaining that middle ground–half of a Reformation–was impossible.  Even the Crown would periodically oscillate, straying one moment closer to Rome and other times toward Wittenburg.  It was difficult to keep pace and your head.  Thomas Cromwell couldn’t.  If a wily bastard like him couldn’t survive, what chance did the devout and impractical Anne Askew have.

Obviously, she was of a good family.  A preaching fishmonger would have been completely ignored or promptly quashed.  But the noble Miss Askew had connections; and connections can be incriminating.  That certainly was the hope of the Pro-Catholic faction that had Askew arrested.  Threatened with prison, torture or death, she was expected to volunteer names and agree to every suggestion from her interrogators.  “Have you ever seen Lord Somerset reading the Bible in English?”  “Has Katherine Parr ever denied her lust for John Knox?”  These were all treasonable offenses, and Askew’s corroborating confession would have made one faction very happy and  the other very dead.

Of course, Anne Askew really wasn’t your typical upper-class debutante.  Would she talk?  Well, she wasn’t shy about her dogma and the errors and damnation of any other doctrine.  But she wasn’t betraying anyone.  Imprisoned in the Tower of London, she was given a guided tour of the torture chambers.  The imminent threat had no effect on her.  Her captors must have realized that they had an insistent martyr on their hands.  She might scream but she wasn’t going to talk.  But even if torture was pointless, they had to maintain their professional standards.  It was better that Anne Askew lose her limbs than they lose their face.  Ms. Askew earned the distinction of being the only woman tortured at the Tower. 

Burned alive in 1546, at the age of 25, Anne Askew earned a certain artistic distinction.  The idea of a lovely, young woman being racked apparently seemed a suitable tableau in a number of wax museums’ Chamber of Horrors.

p.s.  Oh, yeah, him:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/05/once-upon-a-time-when-fundamentalist-protestants-were-the-liberals/

It is Thursday, two days after the election, and I am still receiving political flyers in the mail.  Of course, it is from the Republicans; they can afford the postage.  Today’s sales pitch features a beautiful woman and next to her the headline proclaiming that my Tory/Rotary Club Republican congressman really is pro-choice.  That certainly would be true if she were the Congressman’s mistress.  Even the most pro-life politician favors abortion when it might save his reputation.  But I am not questioning the sincerity of the congressman, just his ad agency.  I saw the same beautiful model on a brochure for a dental practice.  There, she was assuring me of “comfortable, trustworthy dentistry.”  Do you think she had a teeth-cleaning and an abortion simultaneously?  Anatomically it is possible, and I imagine that it will happen all the time under Obamacare. 

Now, for the election results.  In an exciting race between a fool and a fiend, the fool won.  Yes, our completely incompetent governor–a man who could be compared jello, a flounder or both–won reelection.  So you can just imagine his opponent.  No, don’t bother; I’ll give you the details.  The losing candidate advocated unrestrained possession of automatic weapons and the immediate extermination of unwanted pets.  See that hungry kitten in the alley; feel free to machine gun her!  Needless to say, the Rambo of puppies was the pro-life candidate.  Worse, even with all his self-canonizing ads, he looked like a used-car salesman–with a sneer rather than a smile.  So, here was my choice:  one candidate can’t do anything right, and the other will do everything wrong.     

I and a majority of Illinois voters chose a calamity over a catastrophe. 

Speaking of catastrophes, let’s not forget the historic significance of this day: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/04/dulce-et-decorum-est/

(From the archives but worth repeating….)

The candidate has always been conscious of his image. In the days of the Roman Republic (509 B.C.-27 B.C.), long before there were press releases, the aspiring politician announced his campaign for public office by putting on his very best-whitest-toga and proclaiming his virtues in the Forum. There was a term for this spectacle, “candidatus” meaning clothed in white. Unfortunately, Roman politics were so tumultuous that “candidates” increasingly found it safer to wear armor than togas. Indeed, by 100 B.C. and for the remaining five centuries of Rome’s dominion, civil war was the most common method of election. By the Middle Ages, the idea of a “candidate” had lapsed into Latin obscurity.

Seventeenth century England revived the idea.  The growing power of Parliament attracted ambitious men. Many were tantalized by the prospects for social-climbing and the opportunities for graft. The Puritans wanted to impose their principles on everyone else. All of these aspiring megalomaniacs were vying for seats in Parliament. Whether this new occupation was a career or an affliction, it still required a name.

Fortunately, the Renaissance had revived literacy, and some English scholars remembered the term “candidatus.” Of course, the term was not meant literally. At the time, the only white clothing would have been shirts, which also served men as their pajamas and underwear. (The Roman practice of hygiene had yet to be revived.) The idea of publicly parading in only a shirt would have disqualified the Puritan politicians. Candidate now was a generic term.

The scholars had also revived the Roman word for white: candidus. People like John Milton always flaunted their erudition, and so they would speak of a candid cloud. Ironically, “candid” soon began its evolution, first mixing with other synonyms for white and then acquiring its distinct definition. To phrase it as etymological formula: Candid=white=shining=clear=open=frank. This evolution proved surprisingly quick. By the end of the 17th century, candid had assumed its current meaning. So, the similarity between the words “candid” and “candidate” is not an accident: it just is an oxymoron.

The voter was not always treated like an idiot.  On the contrary, in Ancient Greece the epithet was applied to those who didn’t vote. Idiot is derived from the Greek word, idiotes, meaning private citizen. In its broadest and snobbiest definition, it applied to any citizen not in the ruling class. Of course, in a democracy-like Athens– every citizen was in the ruling class. (However, not everyone was a citizen: the women and slaves learned that.) From the Athenian perspective, an idiot was that myopic, apathetic soul who did not participate in the city’s democracy.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone who could witness the birth of Democracy and yet be oblivious to it. There was as much drama in Greek politics as in any amphitheater. Combining politics and theater, the Greeks had created the art of rhetoric. Pericles and Demosthenes treated the public like an audience, flattering, moving and dazzling the citizens. And the citizens were expected to argue back and debate the issues. Think of the topics that those Athenians decided: building a fleet, the construction of the Parthenon, war with Sparta. (The latter was not Athen’s most brilliant decision: imagine Meryl Streep starting a fist fight with Vin Diesel.) Yes, the Athenian citizens probably discussed zoning ordinances for chariots, too. Even classical Athens had its mundane matters.

Anyone so indifferent to this vital and dramatic process deserved contempt. The apathetic citizens were neglecting their rights and self-interest, abandoning their role in the democratic state. The word idiot became their stigma. Twenty-five centuries have broaden the word’s application but not improved its meaning. Of course, democracy and idiots are the not our only political legacy from Greece. We also have inherited a term for anyone whose politics differed from yours. The Greek word for fool is moron.

Hello.  Are you an emotional void or you haven’t master the basic tenets of courtesy?  Here is a company offering a substitute for your deficiencies. 

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What the Hell, I’ll write you a free speech.  (Don’t tell Karen; she’d want me to charge you.  The woman insists on a middle-class standard of living.  You’d think my good looks, wit and obvious sensuality would suffice.)  But chivalry takes precedence over money; I have to protect you from any writer that says high-tone. 

Here is the speech–with your choice of options.

First, let me thank (name the clergy).  Your invocation was (your choice): poignantly poignant/almost plausible/surprising considering the sordid rumors about you.

Now, I don’t know most of you, but it doesn’t matter:  I am not paying  for this (your choice):  celebration of love and hope/bourgeois self-parody/confirmation of the bride’s pregnancy.  What does matter is that I know my son and I am sure that you can sense (your choice) my unspeakable pride/my moderate interest/my complete bewilderment with his heterosexual taste.

Let me just assure our newlyweds that before you is (your choice) everything promised in a Hallmark commercial/the ever-growing appreciation of separate bathrooms/the probability that your second marriages won’t be any better.

Thank you/God help you/Waiter, another scotch.

First, I assure you:  I do not greet the trick-or-treating children with offers to tell them about the Byzantine Empire.  Well, at least, not anymore.  My neighbors were upset when their children destroyed all the family photos.  I had intended my discussion on iconoclasm to be anecdotal, not a manual.  Seven-year olds may have missed that distinction.  And we no longer are on speaking terms with the Kalmans.  Little Beaumont was correctly practicing the Byzantine method of disinheriting a relative, but he really shouldn’t have tried cutting off his sister’s nose.  (And perhaps I shouldn’t have quipped that she would have needed the nose job anyway.)

Yet, we are not the worst house in the neighborhood!  Who is our competion?

There is the lady who has been trying to give out the same bag of Windmill cookies since 1973.

Then, there is the 50 year-old yenta who comes to the door dressed like a parody of a teenager.  That is the way she normally looks.  But what is especially terrifying is her perfume:  I believe that it called “Gardenia in a Drum”.  The scent comes off on you.  After a visit to her house, the children have to be bathed in tomato juice.

Finally, we know someone who gives as treats her son’s business cards.  All the more horrifying is that the name of his business is misspelled.  So much for his Stanford education.  However, since he is in finance, there is no reason for his grammar to be better than his ethics.

Of course, you think that I am joking.  Cue the Bernard Herrmann music played by a Theremin!   Two of these anecdotes are appallingly true, and one is just slightly exaggerated; only my Byzantine tales are apocryphal (although the little Kalman girl will need the nose job).

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/31/queer-eye-for-the-straight-cathedral-2/