Just Plain Stupid Year (3) in Review

I know, it’s February, not December. Putting together a year in review post seems out of place.

But not in a Just Plain Stupid world.

My first post for JPS was February 28^th 2013. There are now over 300 posts on this blog, and I, for one, am surprised. I never thought I had so much to say, even if most of it was useless dribble.

This Year’s Failures

The dribble has flowed slower this year, and so I began the immensely unpopular serialization of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother. S.B. and someone I don’t know from Russia faithfully read each post of Dirk, so it hobbles along. If you’re off your meds and wish to start reading this Donald Trump-less political satire set in a world inundated by sheep, here’s a link to the firstinstallment, and better yet, here’s a link to the firstinstallment that has anything to do with the story.

Several posts other than Dirk Destroyer have failed to attract attention this year; many because they didn’t deserve any, but a few I thought were worth reading. Tricycle Baskets Full of Evil falls in that latter category, along with Apply Yourself, and the not-yet-immortal story of Mortimer the Drop of Goo.

This Year’s Successes???

Picture posts – those stolen from FB, or taken from tee shirts or catalogs have always been among my more popular subjects, along with guest posts from other Go Figure Reads writers.

So I should just shut up and plagiarize?

Particularly surprising was the popularity of Will Wright’s rant about his bad cruise on Royal Caribbean, but less surprising was Walter Bego’s lionization of the art of Terry Gilliam.

Unfortunately for my more faithful readers, I remain incapable to taking a hint. I continue to write a few posts with a minimum of plagiarism, and some of them have done well (if sickening large numbers of people can be defined as doing well.)

Gloves vs. Mittens preyed on the public’s fascination with celebrity, and I exploited my brother’s secrets in the post, Horatio.

Clearly, many of my readers would prefer Horatio to be the Hauser that writes this blog.

The top post of this third year, Body Part Insults (written with assistance by Kim Webb,) was based on an ill-advised Facebook post of a Grammy award nominated FB friend who probably wishes now that A) she hadn’t posted her desire to not insult our noble excretory system when addressing jerks, and (especially) B) that she hadn’t clicked ‘accept’ to my friend request.

But even Body Parts can’t hold a candle to the most popular post of the life of this blog, Basketball, BWG, but no Little Debbie Twinkie, which I wrote very early on in the first year.

So much for showing progress.

I’d like to thank you each personally for reading my blog, but I don’t want to risk the ensuing storm of rotten vegetation (or worse.) As we limp into year Four there’s always the hope that somewhere along the line I’ll learn to write good stuff.

Or at least learn to shut up and plagiarize.

So for the video I looked up Best of 2015 on youtube and got this.  These are toys, right?

Art of Terry Gilliam by Walter Bego

Walter Bego has asked to use this blog to play tribute to his favorite artist.

He was the only American-born member of Monty Python, and perhaps the most accomplished director of the cast as well, but Terry Gilliam has always been the artist - the man who took us away from the familiar faces of the players and gave us something completely different.

The era leading into Python was a time of Pop, influenced by the Beatles, and by LSD.

It seemed like all the rules were broken already.  How is an artist supposed to deal with that?  Gilliam found ways of breaking rules we didn't know we had - like art was supposed to either be animated or still.  Gilliam refused to follow.

The largely stationary head with one moving part - frequently the jaw, eye or teeth, became something we identify with him to this day.

Gilliam brought the absurd to the spiritual - a favorite theme of Monty Python.

He also held a mirror to the absurdity of modesty.

It was well that he was taken in by Monty Python - American broadcast television in the 60s and early 70s never would have tolerated him.

A little girl harvesting hands from a grave-site would not have meshed well with Mayberry RFD.
But Gilliam didn't shock for the sake of shock.  In Holy Grail, Arthur and his knights run in fear of a great monster.  Gilliam might have created something truly fearsome.

Instead he gave us something so absurd, that the chase scene had no element of terror.

It wasn't because he lacked the talent to do otherwise.
Gilliam gave us great landscapes.

And streetscapes.

And interior scenes where the characters are dwarfed by their surroundings.

And, of course, he gave us countless images of the human foot.

And the reconstituted human body.

Why is he relegated to the title of comedian, while Warhol and others are called artist?  I don't know.  But I think he understands.

I am grateful to share in this suffering.

Now in his words.

Monty Python and the Limitation of Print

“You’re funny, Headley,” said an unidentified person to me recently, “but you can’t hold a candle to Monty Python.”

Like most people raised in the 60s and 70s, I didn’t take offence; I only nodded my head in agreement. There isn’t/wasn’t/ever will be any human or collection of humans as funny as Monty Python. It has become an article of faith in my generation, much as Elvis’ supremacy had been to the generation preceding mine.

So I thinks to myself – how can I do what they did? What can I write that is as brilliant as Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and the Flying Circus shows?

When you love something, never try to figure out why. To have one’s faith shaken is a disturbing sensation.

Observing the scripts of Monty Python without the stork-like posturings of John Cleese,

 the quirky art of Terry Gilliam,

 the smarmy naïveté of Eric Idle,

 the bulging bombast of Graham Chapman,

 or the shrill transvestitism of Terry Jones

 is to look at a bag of Doritos after the last chip has been masticated.

As Chapman, in army uniform informed us

 it’s just silly.

(oh, and Michael Palin showed up too – but he was just a tosser.)

(What is a tosser, anyway?)

Consider this:

A man and a woman are lowered into a diner where they find that Spam is considered an essential (or several essential,) part to every menu choice. A group of Vikings interrupt the dialog with a song about Spam.

It looks like a pathetic idea there in black and white – until you add the talent…

Or, a man walks into a pet shop to complain about a parrot he’s just bought there that is dead.

Sounds like a loser, but…

How about, a man pays to have a five minute argument. Almost the entire dialog consists of the service provider denying everything his customer says until the police break the thing up for being a pathetic sketch.

Pathetic sketch or not, add the Monty Python cast and it’s…

So until I can get the surviving (and perhaps the dead,) members of Monty Python to play out Trouble in Taos, link or Volition Man, link I’ll never really know if my stories are funny or not.

And getting the Coen brothers to direct wouldn’t hurt either.

There is one sketch that I think was brilliant even read from the page.

Music Deep Inside

John Phillip Sousa: A man who felt that unwieldy instruments designed to be played in carefully constructed concert halls would be better implemented causing scoliosis among adolescents in parades across rutted and muddy football fields.

Patriotic March: A style of music revolutionized by John Phillip Sousa because he believed that chauvin-style patriotism and war were too short in supply.

The Sousaphone: Created by John Phillip Sousa because no instrument of the orchestra was sufficiently annoying.

The Steel Guitar: Not invented by John Phillip Sousa, only because he never thought of it.

It’s been my privilege, over the years, to watch the parents of many budding musicians. I particularly enjoy seeing how parents respond when their young angel starts a band called “Death on a Cracker.” I make it a point to visit on band night. It’s not that I particularly enjoy hearing musical wannabes, ten years from instrumental competence strain their yard sale equipment in an effort to make sure “the hottie down the street can hear us.” What I really enjoy is sitting at the kitchen table with the Mom and Dad.

The bass amp, downstairs, turns the spoon in my teacup into an unwilling percussion instrument. After several unrecognizable cover tunes they break into their future hit, “You’ve got my cupcake in your spleen.”

The kids are pretty excited, thinking that they’re breaking new ground. The parents are struggling with mixed feeling of pride, dread, nostalgia, and the epiphany that they finally understand their parents. I’m feeling pretty smug, having no kids of my own and knowing I can leave before the Advil runs out.

I’ve lived just long enough to wise up to the fact that life presents certain consistencies. I’m not talking just about death, taxes and the French being rude; I’m talking about more significant patterns. Wise King Solomon wrote that there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m willing to wager that thought occurred to him while Rehoboam and the Diaspora were rehearsing in the basement.

It makes me wonder about Mr. and Mrs. Sousa, John Phillips parents.

When you name a kid “John Phillip,” you must be hoping the kid will turn out to be some kind of weenie. John Phillip took a lot of ribbing as he waited with the other kids at the school carriage stop each morning. Smart-ass violinists kept poking him with their bows and although Mom and Dad had bought him a harpsichord for his birthday, he couldn’t take it on the carriage with him or use it to defend himself. It was at this time that John Phillip began imagining a world in which all non-aggressive children had a sixty-pound metal instrument with leather case that they could use to whomp the heck out of violin players.

It was when he started getting together with a hundred of his friends in their basement when Mr. and Mrs. Sousa’s headaches began.

“Really son, patriotism is a fine thing but I’ve had to recaulk the window twice since you and your friends started meeting here. Maybe you should consider a new arrangement of Yankee Doodle for small instruments only.”

Like most people, I grew up going to July 4^th picnics and high school football games. I enjoy a charred hamburger as much as the next guy and who could find fault with boys in their late formative years lining up over an ovoid air filled leather bladder and on cue do their level best to injure the fellow on the other side. The fun would end (or at least be suspended) when it came time for the after barbecue concert or halftime entertainment. Pubescent and post-pubescent players of protrudinous platnumised pot-metal promenade precariously while a pudgy pompous impresario with a pompadour pushes, pouts and points in a practically pornographic paroxysm of pointless pedagogy (please excuse, my doctor said I had to do alliteration exercises every day to prevent tongue cancer). All this is done in an attempt to create obscenely loud elevator music.

John Phillip did write the theme for Monty Python so at least he showed the good taste to be a Terry Gilliam fan but why continue with his music? Even Sousa’s original vision is no longer valid as incidents of children being attacked by rowdy violinists are way down. A wise guy in the back suggests it’s a conspiracy of the NEA and bedlam-loving music storeowners. I don’t buy it.

Maybe people have trouble envisioning an eighty five-piece rock band in stiff, polyester uniforms, with portable amps walking in file and spelling out “bobcats” in perspiration darkened primary colors. Maybe if more talked to my red-eyed friends across from my rattling teacup, they might catch the vision.

“And now for half-time, the Abbeyville marching rock bad will be playing, ‘You’ve got my cupcake in your spleen.’”

I kinda like this band - the dorky host?  Not so much.