Chuck Berry's Ramona, edgar.
Ramona, Ramona, Ramona, where'd you get that dress ?
The neckline's down south, the hemline's way out west
All in favour of Ramona's style, say yes
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Oh, Ramona, dancing in her brand new dress
Ramona, you know, Ramona, you can do the monkey best
All in favour of Ramona's monkey, say yes
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Ramona started shaking in her brand new short tight dress
The band keep blasting, but Ramona, she never rest
All in favour of Ramona, keep hollering yes
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Ramona looking good in her brand new short tight dress
Wow, Ramona, Ramona, how'd you learn that mess ?
All in favour of Ramona, just say yes
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
and, folks, my goodnight song inspired by Walter's Christian Icon thread.
It is Sunday after all.
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
For the Apostles' glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o'er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Should you like to listen
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/a/fallthes.htm
Goodnight, my friends
From Letty with love
Good morning, WA2K radio audience.
What a surprise to find that Jack Scott was a Canadian, edgar, so I did a quick search and found this song by him:
Jack Scott - With Your Love
Kissing you is not what I had planned
And now I'm not so sure just where I stand
I wasn't looking for true love
But now you're looking at me
You're the only one I can think of
You're the only one I see
CHORUS:
All I need
Is just a little more time
To be sure what I feel
Is it all in my mind
Cause it seems so hard to believe
That you're all I need
Yes it's true we've all been hurt before
But it doesn't seem to matter anymore
It may be a chance we're taking
But it always comes to this
If this isn't love we're making
Then I don't know what it is
All I need
Is just a little more time
To be sure what I feel
Is it all in my mind
Cause it seems so hard to believe
CHORUS
No stars are out tonight
But we're shining our own light
And it's never felt so bright
Cause girl the way I'm feeling
It's easy to believe
That you're all I need
Ahhhh
You're all I need
Oooooh ahhhh
F. Scott Fitzgerald
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born: September 24, 1896(1896-09-24)
St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Died: December 21, 1940 (aged 44)
Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation: Novelist, screenwriter
Nationality: American
Writing period: 1920-1940
Genres: Literary fiction
Literary movement: Modernism
Debut works: This Side of Paradise (1920)
Influenced: Michael Chabon, John Cheever, J. D. Salinger
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940) was an American Jazz Age author of novels and short stories. He is regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century writers. Fitzgerald was of the self-styled "Lost Generation," Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age.
Early Years
Born on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle class Irish Catholic household, Fitzgerald was named after his famous relative Francis Scott Key, but was referred to as 'Scott'. He spent 1898-1901 and 1903-1908 in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked for Procter & Gamble. When Fitzgerald, Sr. was fired, the family moved back to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908-1911. His first piece of literature was published in his school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911-1912, and then entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 1916) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 1917), and wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club.
A mediocre student throughout his three-years at Princeton, Fitzgerald dropped out in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army when the US entered World War I. Fitzgerald wrote a novel titled The Romantic Egotist, portions of which later largely were reincarnated as the first half of This Side of Paradise, while at Princeton, and edited the work at Camp Zachary Taylor and Camp Sheridan. When he submitted the novel to Charles Scribner's Sons, the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. The war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's enlistment.
Marriage to Zelda Sayre
While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900-1948), the "top girl," in Fitzgerald's words, of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. She was the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. The two were engaged in 1919, and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 1395 Lexington Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.
Fitzgerald returned to his parents' house on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul to revise The Romantic Egotist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, about the flapper generation of the Roaring 20s, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year. Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.
"The Jazz Age"
The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, published in 1922, demonstrates an evolution beyond the comparatively immature This Side of Paradise. The Great Gatsby, Scott's masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway.
Hemingway looked up to Fitzgerald as an experienced professional writer. Hemingway greatly admired The Great Gatsby and wrote in his A Moveable Feast "If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one" (153). Hemingway expressed his deep admiration for Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's flawed, doomed character, when he prefaced his chapters concerning Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast with:
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless. (129)
Much of what Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast helped to create the myth of Fitzgerald's eventual demise and Zelda's hand in that demise. Though much of Hemingway's text is factually correct, it is always tinged with his disappointment with Fitzgerald. That disappointment was most evident when in "The Green Hills of Africa" he specifically mentions Fitzgerald as a ruined writer.
Fitzgerald's friendship with Hemingway was a tumultuous one, as it seems most of Fitzgerald's relationships were. Hemingway did not get along well with Zelda, either. He claimed that she "encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract Scott from his ?'real' work on his novel,"1 the other work being his short stories he sold to magazines. The "whoring" as Fitzgerald, and subsequently Hemingway, called these sales, was a sore point in the authors' friendship. Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write his stories in an authentic manner but then put in "twists that made them into saleable magazine stories."²
Fitzgerald drew largely upon his wife's intense and flamboyant personality in his writings, at times quoting direct segments of her personal diaries in his work. Zelda made mention of this in a 1922 mock review in the New York Tribune, saying that "t seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald?-I believe that is how he spells his name?-seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home" (Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, 388). But the impact Zelda's personality might have had on his life may be overstated, as much of his earliest writings reflect the personality of his first love, Ginevra King. In fact, the character of Daisy as much represents his inability to cultivate his relationship with King as it does Zelda's personality.
Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. As did most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire magazine, and sold movie rights of his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. Many of these stories act as testing grounds for his novels. For example, "Absolution" was intended to become an earlier chapter in The Great Gatsby. Because of his opulent lifestyle as well as the bills from Zelda's medical care, he was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's, Maxwell Perkins. When Ober decided not to continue advancing Fitzgerald, the author severed ties with his longtime friend and agent.
Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophrenia that struck Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland. Scott rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to work on his latest book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who falls in love with and marries Nicole Warren, one of his patients. The book went through many versions, the first of which was to be a story of matricide. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel recounting Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own egoism and self-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism. Indeed, Fitzgerald was extremely protective of his material (their life together). When Zelda published her own version of their lives in Europe, Save Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald was angry and succeeded in getting her doctors to keep her from writing any more. His book was finally published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. Critics who had waited nine years for the followup to The Great Gatsby had mixed opinions about the novel. Most were thrown off by its three part structure and many felt that Fitzgerald had not lived up to their expectations. The novel did not sell well upon publication, but the book's reputation has since risen significantly.
Hollywood years
Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits, and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, it was based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg. Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the east coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a movie columnist, in Hollywood. From 1939 until his death, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as "The Pat Hobby Stories"
Illness and death
Fitzgerald had clearly been an alcoholic since his college days, and he became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking. This left him in poor health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but she states that this was usually a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring tuberculosis, and Nancy Milford reports that Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that Scott suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage". It may be pure coincidence but two of Fitzgerald's least likeable characters have the initials "TB" (an acronym for tuberculosis) - Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Tommy Barban in Tender Is the Night. Given the extent of Scott's alcoholism, however, it is possible that the hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices?-enlarged veins in the esophagus that result from advanced liver disease. Fitzgerald's lifelong smoking habit undoubtedly also damaged his health and brought on the heart problems that eventually killed him.
Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion and to obtain a first floor apartment, which he did by moving in with Sheilah Graham. On the night of December 20, 1940, he had his second heart attack, and the next day, December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed in Graham's apartment and died. He was 44.
Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home in Hollywood was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son of a bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.[1][2] In another strange coincidence, the author Nathanael West, who was a friend and admirer of Fitzgerald, was killed along with his wife on the way to Fitzgerald's services. Fitzgerald's remains were then shipped to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by very few people. The Catholic church would not allow him to be buried in his family's plot in Rockville and he was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda died tragically in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1948. With the permission and assistance of their only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, the Women's Club of Rockville had their bodies moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland.
Fitzgerald never completed The Love of the Last Tycoon. His notes for the novel were edited by his friend Edmund Wilson and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. However, there is now critical agreement that Fitzgerald intended the title of the book to be The Love of the Last Tycoon, as is reflected in a new 1994 edition of the book, edited by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli of the University of South Carolina.
Anthony Newley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name George Anthony Newley
Born September 24, 1931
Florida
Died April 14, 1999
Years active 1947 - 1985
Spouse(s) Ann Lynn (1956-1963)
Joan Collins (1963-1970)
Dareth Rich (1971-1989)
Anthony George Newley (born on September 24, 1931 in the London Borough of Hackney; died on April 14, 1999) was an English actor, singer and songwriter.
Career
Anthony Newley was one of entertainment's genuine triple treats: an actor, singer, and composer with an international following, equally adept and prodigious in all three fields. Moreover, he enjoyed success as a performer in such seemingly mutually exclusive fields as rock & roll and the legitimate stage. And even more improbably, he did it with a working-class Cockney persona that should never have found much currency outside of England. Indeed, for 30 years he was seen by many as a tone-deaf holler caller but by others as one of the most imposing talents to come out of England this side of the Beatles.
Born to a single mother in the London working-class neighborhood of Hackney, Newley was evacuated during the bombing of London and was thereby exposed to the performing arts when he was tutored during this time by George Pescud, a former music-hall entertainer. Though recognized as very bright by his teachers back in London, he was uninterested in school, and by the age of fourteen was working as an office boy when he read an ad for "boy actors." After an audition, he was offered a job including free tuition at the prestigious Italia Conti Stage School. He accepted and his career was launched. His first major film role was as Dick Bultitude in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa (1948) followed by the Artful Dodger in David Lean's 1948 rendition of Oliver Twist, the classic Charles Dickens tome. He made a successful transition from child star to contract player in British movies of the 1950s (broken up by a short and disastrous stint in the military), to a top-of-the-pops crooner in the 1960s.
During this decade he also added his greatest accomplishments on the London and Broadway stage, in Hollywood films, and British and United States television. In the 1970s he remained active, particularly as a Las Vegas and Catskills resort performer, but his career had begun to flounder. He had taken risks that eventually led to his downfall in Hollywood. Throughout the 1980s and 90s he worked valiantly to achieve a comeback but always one obstacle or another hindered him. Finally it was his health, when cancer began to plague him in the 1980s and returned to claim his life at the age of 67, soon after his becoming a grandfather.
Music
Newley had a successful pop music career as a vocalist, with two number one hits in 1960: "Why?" and "Do You Mind?" As a songwriter, he won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I", but he was also well-known for "Gonna Build a Mountain" and comic novelty songs such as "That Noise" and his version of "Strawberry Fair". He wrote songs that others made hits including "Goldfinger" (the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger, music by John Barry), and "Feeling Good", which became a hit for Nina Simone and the rock band Muse (band). With Leslie Bricusse, he wrote the musical Stop the World - I Want to Get Off in which he also performed, earning a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. The play was made into a (poorly-received) film version in 1971 (see[1]), but Newley was unable to star in it due to a schedule conflict. The other musicals for which he co-wrote music and lyrics with Bricusse included The Roar of the Greasepaint?-the Smell of the Crowd (1965) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), based on the children's book by Roald Dahl.
Newley's many albums combine his talent as a vocal stylist with his abilities as a songwriter. The consensus of critics and fans rates "Pure Imagination", "Ain't It Funny", "Love Is a Now and Then Thing", and "In My Solitude" at the top of the list. Amongst the many compilations now available, the better ones are Anthony Newley: The Decca Years (1959-1964), Once in a Lifetime: The Anthony Newley Collection (1960-1971), and Anthony Newley's Greatest Hits (Deram). When he collaborated with Bricusse, they referred to themselves as the team of Brickman and Newburg, with Newburg concentrating mainly on the music and Brickman on the lyrics. Ian Frasier often did their arrangements and it has been suggested that his contributions were more extensive than has been acknowledged. For the songs from Hieronymous Merkin, Newley collaborated with Herman Raucher.
In 1963 Newley even had a hit comedy album called Fool Britannia!, the result of improvisational satires of the British Profumo scandal of the time by a team of Newley, his then-wife Joan Collins, and Peter Sellers. Newley's contributions to Christmas music are highlighted by his heartfelt rendition of "The Coventry Carol" which appears on many anthologies. He also wrote and sang a hilarious novelty Christmas song called "Santa Claus is Elvis". There is also a notorious album of spoken poetry which has Newley appearing in the nude on the sleeve with a similarly-attired young model.
In his later years as a mature singer Newley recorded songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Scrooge. He enjoyed his final popular success onstage when he starred in the latter musical in London and Birmingham in the 1990s. At the time of his death he had been working on a musical of Shakespeare's Richard III.
Newley's vocal style has been recognised as a major influence on that of the early David Bowie. In recognition of his creative skills and body of work, Newley was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989 (see[2]).
Acting
The shortlived 1960 ATV series The Strange World of Gurney Slade in which Newley starred, continues to have a cult following due to its postmodern premise that the Newley character is trapped inside a television programme. Apart from a repeat of one episode on Channel 4 in 1992, it has not been seen in the UK in recent years. The show's theme tune by Max Harris (composer) may be better-known today than the series itself. The piano figure prominent in the recording was lifted (unacknowledged) from Mose Allison's song "Parchman Farm".
Newley had memorable turns as Matthew Mugg in the original Doctor Dolittle and the repressed English businessman opposite Sandy Dennis in the original Sweet November. He also hosted Lucille Ball on a whirlwind tour of mod London in the Lucy TV special "Lucy in London." And none who have seen it will soon forget his performance in the autobiographical, Fellini-esque and X-rated Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which he also wrote and directed.
His last feature role in the cast of the long-running British TV drama EastEnders was to have been a regular role, but Newley had to withdraw after a few months when his health began to fail.
Personal life
He was married to Ann Lynn from 1956 to 1963, but the marriage ended in divorce. He then was married to the actress Joan Collins from 1963 to 1971. The couple had two children, Tara Newley and Sacha Newley. His third wife was former air hostess Dareth Rich, and they also had two children, Christopher and Shelby.
Newley had been raised by his mother Grace and, from the age of eight onward, by his stepfather, whose name was Ronald Gardner. The latter wound up in Beverly Hills working as a chauffeur for London Towne Livery Service LTD, owned and operated by actor Gerald Peters. Gardner soon ran off with a household employee of Newley's collaborator Leslie Bricusse, leaving Grace single again. Newley searched with the help of a detective and found his biological father George Kirby and effected a bittersweet reunion with the man who was a complete stranger to him, but who had secretly followed his son's career with fatherly pride all along. Newley bought his father a house in Beverly Hills, in the hopes that he would reunite with Grace--but it was not to be.
Newley died on 14 April 1999, in Jensen Beach, Florida from renal cancer at the age of 67. He was said to have expired in the arms of his companion, the designer Gina Fratini. He was survived by his four children, a grand-daughter Miel, and his mother Grace, then in her mid-90s.
Newley's life is the subject of a biography by Garth Bardsley called Stop the World (London: Oberon, 2003). Also, tinged with bitterness but relevant to the subject of Newley's life are Joan Collins's interesting autobiographies Past Imperfect and Second Act.
Jim Henson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born September 24, 1936(1936-09-24)
Greenville, Mississippi
Died May 16, 1990 (aged 53)
New York City, New York
Occupation American puppeteer, film director and television producer
Jim Henson, born James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 - May 16, 1990), was the most widely known American puppeteer in modern American television history. He was the creator of The Muppets and the leading force behind their long creative run in the television series Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and films such as The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Dark Crystal (1982). He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Henson is widely acknowledged for the ongoing vision of faith, friendship, magic, and love which was infused in nearly all of his work.[1]
Henson died on May 16, 1990 of organ failure due to infection by Streptococcus pyogenes; his sudden death resulted in an outpouring of public and professional affection, culminating in a memorial service. There have since been numerous tributes and dedications in his memory. Henson's companies, which are now run by his children, continue to produce films and television shows.
Early life
Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi to Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Elizabeth Marcella Henson.[2] After spending his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s. Henson was raised a Christian Scientist;[citation needed] he later remembered the arrival of the family's first television as the biggest event of his adolescence, being heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.[3]
In 1954, while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at University of Maryland, College Park as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist.[4] A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated with a B.S. in home economics in 1960. As a freshman, he was asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were already recognizable Muppets, and the show included a primitive version of what would become Henson's most famous character, Kermit the Frog.[5]
An early incarnation of Henson's most famous character, Kermit the Frog, in a scene from the fifties television show Sam and Friends.In the show, he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry was used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Henson believed that television puppets needed to have life and sensitivity, and so, at a time when many puppets were made out of carved wood, Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions.[2] In contrast to a marionette, whose arms are manipulated by strings, Henson used rods to move his muppets' arms, allowing for greater control of expression.
When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman, Jane Nebel, to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He wandered off to Europe for several months, where he was inspired by European puppeteers who looked on their work as a form of art.[6] Henson returned to the United States and he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children: Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1962), Brian (b. 1963), John (b. 1965) and Heather (b. 1970).
Struggles and projects in the sixties
Despite the success of Sam and Friends, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as entertainment for everybody. The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show. The greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters through the sixties.
Among the most popular of Henson's commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, D.C., in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick than might otherwise have been acceptable with human actors. In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, "What do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" to which Wontkins responds gruffly, "Never tasted it!" Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, "Now, what do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and reshot by Henson for many other local coffee companies across the United States. Henson ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads.[7][8]
In 1963, Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. would reside for some time. When Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children, Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her;[9] Henson later credited both with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets.[10] Henson and Oz, particularly, developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork in portraying the characters of, respectively, Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.[11]
Henson's sixties talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show. From 1964 to 1968, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. Jim Henson also produced another experimental film, The NBC-TV movie The Cube, in 1969.
Sesame Street
In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children's Television Workshop asked Henson to work on Sesame Street, a visionary children's program for public television. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on the titular street. These included Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter. It was around this time that a frill was added around Kermit's neck to make him more frog-like. The collar was also used to cover the joint where the neck met the body of the Muppet.
At first, Henson's Muppets appeared separately from the realistic segments on the street, but after a poor test screening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the show was revamped to integrate the two and place much greater emphasis on Henson's work. Though Henson would often downplay his role in Sesame Street's success (it is one of the longest-running U.S. television shows in history and has received 109 Emmy Awards to date, more than any other TV show)[12] Cooney frequently praised his work. In 1990, the Public Broadcasting Service expressed appreciation for Henson's promotion of their network. The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials, which he disliked.
Concurrently with the first years of Sesame Street, Henson directed Tales From Muppetland, a short series of TV movie specials aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included Hey, Cinderella!, The Frog Prince, and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen. These specials were comedic tellings of classic fairy-tale stories.
Finding a wider audience
Henson, Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven sketches, set mostly in the Land of Gorch, aired between October 1975 and January 1976, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September.[7] The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters.[13]
Around the time of his characters' final appearances on SNL, Henson began developing two projects featuring the Muppets: a Broadway show and a weekly television series.[7] The series was initially rejected by the American networks, who believed that Muppets would only appeal to children; in 1976, Henson was finally able to convince British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show, which would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated across the globe.[6] He abandoned work on the Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where The Muppet Show began filming. The show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters including Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear.
A vaudeville-style variety show aimed at a family audience, but with a frequently satirical, mature sense of humor, The Muppet Show became a sensation in the United Kingdom and soon elsewhere in the world. By 1978, it was being watched by 235 million people in 106 countries every week.[14][14] On The Muppet Show, Henson performed Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, The Swedish Chef, Mahna Mahna, Link Hogthrob, Waldorf and Dr. Teeth.
Henson's role in Muppet productions was often compared by his co-workers to Kermit's role on The Muppet Show: a shy, gentle and whimsical boss. Carroll Spinney, the puppeteer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, remembered that Henson would never say he didn't like something: he would either say lovely if he was pleased, otherwise, just hmm.[15] Henson himself recognized Kermit as an alter-ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than he was.[16]
Transition to the big screen
Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film, 1979's The Muppet Movie. The film was both a critical and financial success;[17] it made US$65.2 million domestically and (at the time) was the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.[18] A song from the film, "The Rainbow Connection," sung by Henson as Kermit, hit #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, a Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films.[2] From time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.
In addition to his own puppetry projects, Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in Empire and each of the four subsequent Star Wars films, and the naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars films.[19]
In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he also began creating new line of darker and more realistic fantasy films based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud. Henson co-directed with Frank Oz and also co-wrote 1982's The Dark Crystal. [7] It was a financial and critical success.
A year later, the Muppet-starring The Muppets Take Manhattan (directed by Frank Oz) did fair box-office business, grossing $25.5 million domestically and ranking as one of the top 40 films of 1984.[20] However, 1986's Labyrinth, a Crystal-like fantasy that Henson directed by himself, was a commercial disappointment.[21] Henson and his wife also separated the same year, although they remained close for the rest of his life. Jane later said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children.[15] All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age.
Later work
Henson's 1989 television series The Jim Henson Hour mixed familiar Muppets such as Kermit with darker, more realistic creatures and stories.Though he was still engaged in creating children's programming, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology oriented show The Storyteller (1988). The Storyteller won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program but was cancelled after nine episodes. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well-received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was cancelled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.[22]
In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things.".[22] By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (Later Disney's California Adventure as well) attraction, Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.[15]
Death
While busy with these later projects, on May 13, 1990, Henson began to experience flu-like symptoms.[15] He consulted a physician in North Carolina, who could find no evidence of pneumonia by physical examination and prescribed no treatment except aspirin.[23]
By the next Monday, May 14, he was coughing up blood.[15] At 4:58 a.m. on Tuesday, May 15, Henson could no longer breathe on his own and was admitted to New York Hospital with abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly into septic shock despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics. Only twenty hours later, on May 16, 1990, Henson died from organ failure at the age of 53.
The cause of death was first reported as streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterial infection.[3] Bacterial pneumonia is usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, an alpha-hemolytic species of Streptococcus. Henson, however, died of organ failure due to infection by Streptococcus pyogenes, a severe Group A streptococcal infection, that engulfed his body.[24] S. pyogenes is the bacteria that causes scarlet fever, rheumatic fever and, in Henson's case, can cause toxic shock syndrome. Henson's life could possibly have been saved had he gone to the hospital a few hours earlier.[24]
Two separate memorial services were held for Henson, one in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and in London, England at St. Paul's Cathedral. As per Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and a Dixieland jazz band finished the service by performing "When The Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the audience waved, with a puppeteer's rod, an individual, brightly-colored foam butterfly.[25] Later, in what was one of the most touching moments of the service, Big Bird (performed by Carroll Spinney) walked out onto the stage and sang a quavering rendition of Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green".[26]
In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half hour service, six of the core Muppet performers sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, culminating in a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter. As each verse progressed, each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their characters.[26] This tribute was recreated for the 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and inspired screenwriter Richard Curtis, who attended the London service, to write the growing-orchestra wedding scene of his 2003 film Love Actually. [27][28]
Business legacy
The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued on after his death, producing new series and specials. Jim Henson's Creature Shop, founded by Henson, also continues to build creatures for a large number of other films and series (most recently the science fiction production Farscape and the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and is considered one of the most advanced and well respected creators of film creatures. His son Brian and daughter Lisa are currently the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the Company; his daughter Cheryl is the president of the Foundation. Steve Whitmire, a veteran member of the Muppet puppeteering crew, has assumed the roles of Kermit the Frog and Ernie, the most famous characters formerly played by Jim Henson.[29]
On February 17, 2004, it was announced that the Muppets (excluding the Sesame Street characters, which are separately owned by Sesame Workshop) and the Bear in the Big Blue House properties had been sold by Henson's heirs to The Walt Disney Company. The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop, as well as the rest of its film and television library including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.[30]
Tributes
Henson is tributed both as himself and as Kermit the Frog on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only other person to receive this honor is Mel Blanc, the voice actor of Bugs Bunny.
The classes of 1994, 1998, and 1999 at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) commissioned a life-size statue of Henson and Kermit the Frog, which was dedicated on September 24, 2003, Henson's 67th birthday. The statue cost $217,000, and is displayed outside the UMCP student union.[31] In 2006, UMCP introduced 50 statues of their school mascot, Testudo the Terrapin, with various designs chosen by different sponsoring groups. Among them was Kertle, a statue by Elizabeth Baldwin, designed to look like Kermit the Frog.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze was dedicated to him.
The television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson allowed the Muppets themselves to pay tribute to Henson. The special featured interviews with Steven Spielberg and others.
A museum was built in memory of Henson in Leland, Mississippi. Official certificates from the Mississippi Legislature honoring Jim Henson and Muppets paraphernalia are on display.
Tom Smith's Henson tribute song, "A Boy and His Frog," won the Pegasus Award for Best Filk Song in 1991.
Stephen Lynch produced a song titled "Jim Henson's Dead," in which he pays homage to many of the characters from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.
J. G. Thirlwell (under the alias Foetus In Excelsis Corruptus) performed a reworked version of Elton John's "Rocket Man" titled "Puppet Dude," with the lyrics altered to refer to Jim Henson. This can be found on the Male live album.
Apple Computer's "Think Different" advertising campaign featured Henson.
Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferri wrote, directed, and animated a 3d tribute to Henson entitled "Overtime" which was shown as part of the 2005 Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH.
Was featured in the Boyz II Men video, "It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday"[32]
After deep thought I've decided this is too good to not be included. Bob
RAILROADS
Does the statement, "We've always done it like that"
ring any bells? Read this email to the end; this is a new one for me
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates built
the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools
that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England )
for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they
were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the
original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may
be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army
chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
!
Now, the twist to the story
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.
The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track,
as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.
Ah, it's always good to see you, BioBob, and I am certain that we know most of your celebs.
Your railroad story is fantastic, Boston, and supports the idea that "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Love it!
Well, I'm afraid that our Raggedy can no longer access A2K, so I'll will try one photo at a time accompanied by a song.
I had always thought that Jim Henson died of AIDS.
From Kermit
It's not that easy being green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold...
or something much more colorful like that.
It's not easy being green.
It seems you blend in with so many other ord'nary things.
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
or stars in the sky.
But green's the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain,
or tall like a tree.
When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!
And I think it's what I want to be.
Back later with another photo and and an observation about F. Scott Fitzgerald.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was the grandson of Francis Scott Key. Found that out some time back. He, along with others, were what is referred to as "The Lost Generation."
Odd the timing on this one, folks, because I think Shirley Bassey did Goldfinger from the James Bond movie and just learned from Bob that Anthony Newley wrote the song.
Here she is with another song about the post WWI years.
The ballad of the sad young men
Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye
All the sad young men, sitting in the bars
Knowing neon nights, and missing all the stars
All the sad young men, drifting through the town
Drinking up the night, trying not to drown
All the sad young men, singing in the cold
Trying to forget, that they're growing old
All the sad young men, choking on their youth
Trying to be brave, running from the truth
Autumn turns the leaves to gold, slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old, that's the cruelest part
[ Lyrics provided by
www.mp3lyrics.org ]
All the sad young men, seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold, for just a little while
Tired little girl, does the best she can
Trying to be gay, for a sad young men
While a grimy moon, watches from above
All the sad young men, who play at making love
Misbegotten moon shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light guide them home again
All the sad, sad, sad, young men
Stop the whirl, I want to get on, Raggedy.
Anthony shows up just fine, PA.
Here's one from that broadway show.
Just once in a lifetime
There's one special moment
One wonderful moment
When faith takes your hand
And this is the moment
My once in a lifetime
When I can explore
A new and exciting land
For once in my lifetime
I feel like a giant
I soar like an eagle
As tho' I had wings
For this is my moment
My destiny calls me
And tho' it may be just once in my lifetime
I'm gonna do great things
Just once in my lifetime
I feel like a giant
I soar like an eagle
As though I had wings
For this is my moment
My destiny calls me
And tho' it may be just once in my lifetime
I'm gonna do great things
We'll dedicate that to Seed and little seedlet who is back with us.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
People tell me love`s for fools.
So, here I go, breaking all the rules.
It seems so easy,
oh so doggone easy,
it seems so easy.
Where you`re concerned, my heart has learned.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
Look into your heart and see,
what your love book has set apart for me.
It seems so easy,
oh so doggone easy,
it seems so easy.
Where you`re concerned, my heart has learned.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
It`s so easy to fall in love.
Buddy Holly
edgar, You have taught us to respect Buddy Holly as has Don McLean. Thanks, Texas.
Although I don't much care for Andy Williams,(he is still with us, I see) I do like this song, folks.
Falling In Love With Love
Andy Williams
Words by Lorenz Hart and Music by Richard Rodgers
Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe
Falling in love with love is playing the fool
Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy
Learning to trust is just for children in school
I fell in love with love one night when the moon was full
I was unwise with eyes unable to see
I fell in love with love, with love everlasting
But love fell out with me
Oh, I fell in love with love one night when the moon was full
I was unwise with eyes unable to see
I fell in love with love, with love everlasting
But love fell out with me
yesterday afternoon we enjoyed a special musical treat .
BEN HEPPNER - recognized as the finest dramatic tenor worlwide - was at queen's university "to sing for his supper" .
he had been given an honorary doctorate by the university and it is customary for the artist "to sing for his supper" in return (that is , charge for his expenses only ; tickets were $10 for students , $25 general admission - a real bargain ) .
heppner entertained us for two hours with some wonderful songs - folk songs (the foggy , foggy dew) , songs of scandinavia and russia (grieg's "lauf der welt") , opera arias (wagner , massenet , giordano) and finished with "parlour songs" , such as : the house on the hill , romberg's serenade and ending with : BE MY LOVE !
he is a bear of a man with a great sense of humor . he not only sang but entertained as with little stories about the songs and told some jokes - he certainly had the audience in his rather large hands !
i took some photos but since we were at the back of the hall and i didn't have a tele-lens it didn't turn out very well - but i'll post it anyhow :wink:
i now have 19 (!) songs i can present for your entertainment !
hbg
here is one of his folk songs :
FOOGY , FOGGY DEW
Quote:When I was a bachelor, I liv'd all alone
I worked at the weaver's trade
And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong
Was to woo a fair young maid.
I wooed her in the wintertime
Part of the summer, too
And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong
Was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.
One night she knelt close by my side
When I was fast asleep.
She threw her arms around my neck
And she began to weep.
She wept, she cried, she tore her hair
Ah, me! What could I do?
So all night long I held her in my arms
Just to keep her from the foggy foggy dew.
Again I am a bachelor, I live with my son
We work at the weaver's trade.
And every single time I look into his eyes
He reminds me of that fair young maid.
He reminds me of the wintertime
Part of the summer, too,
And the many, many times that I held her in my arms
Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy, dew.
thumbnail , pls click for enlargement (somebody forgot to remove the bedsheet :wink: ). heppner's accompanist was john hess who regularly works with him but is also a producer for the canadian opera company .
and a more professional picture of ben heppner
Are You Sincere
Andy Williams
Are you sincere when you say "I love you?"
Are you sincere when you say "I'll be true?"
Do you mean every word that my ears have heard?
I'd like to know which way to go, will our love grow?
Are you sincere? (Are you sincere?)
Are you sincere when you say you miss me? (You miss me)
Are you sincere every time you kiss me? (You kiss me)
And are really mine every day, all the time?
I'd like to know which way to go, will our love grow?
Are you sincere? (Are you sincere?)
Are really mine every day, all the time?
I'd like to know (I'd like to know)
Which way to go (Which way to go)
Will our love grow ? (Will our love grow?)
Are you sincere?
Shopping Cart of Love: The Play
Christine Lavin
ACT ONE
The note said "Darling...
I hate to tell you this way,
But I've run off with your Roommate,
Signed - Your Fiancée".
I sat down and cried.
What else could I do?
That's when I noticed that my CarKeys were missing to,
And so was my favorite sweater,
And my TV
And My Stereo!
My whole life crumbled before my eyes.
Where was I to go?
I ran to the Supermarket
In a blinding rage
Craving foods I have not touched since I was
Twelve years of age.
'Cuz not only did my man run out today
My boss let me go
I have been depressed before
But never quite this low
Yes I guess I've been depressed
But ever this low? NO!
And I ran up and down the aisles of the supermarket
crying and shaking and pulling things off the shelves
based solely on their carbohydrate, calorie and cholesterol count.
I didn't go overboard.
Just enough to get me through the night.
So I threw my purchases down on the conveyer belt
They rolled up to the checkout girl
She looked at them
She looked at me
and she said...
Hey Lady can't you read?
The sign here says express.
I'll check you out if you have got
Ten items or less.
But you've got
2 4 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 things right here
If you want me to check you through
Put three things back my dear.
Well NO! I said defiantly
Trying not to shake
Then she said "Sweetheart, you don't need those
Hostess Twinkies, You don't need that Coffee Cake
And why those Famous Amos cookies
Let me tell you they're grossly overpriced
Put three things back
Those are the rules
I'm asking you real nice".
But I just couldn't so she said
"Ok well then, put back those Frozen Pizza's
or that box of Pudding on a Stick
Why just looking at all these calories
Makes my stomach want to flip".
But I refused to back down
She refused to check me through
The line behind me was growing longer
And angrier too.
The line behind me was growing longer
There was pushing and shoving and cursing and swearing too.
Look I'm not trying to make trouble I said to her
But I'm having the worse kind of day
See today I lost my job, my car, my TV, my Stereo,
My favorite sweater, my roommate, not to mention my Fiancée.
But she shook her head and shouted
"Three things have GOT TO GO - Those are the Rules"
oh please please please I begged
She bellowed "NO"
please please please please please please please I begged
But she said "NO"
And she was enjoying the power trip of it all
Because then all the Cashiers
In Solidarity shut down
The sudden empty silence
Was an eerie spooky sound
And all the customers started screaming
Especially those with Frozen Foods
The manager came running
He was in an ugly mood.
Yes the manager came running
He was ugly
So was his mood.
Well now I tried explaining to him my situation about my Job
my Fiancée, My Car but he didn't give me half a chance he just said...
Who the Hell do you Think you are?
My whole store is paralyzed all on account of you
Now Manhattan is going hungry
Because you won't follow rules
Yes Manhattan is gonna starve tonight
Because of stupid, selfish, solipsistic you.
I didn't know what that meant either. I didn't know
why he was using such a big word on me but it was because he
really hated his job as Store Manager. He would just sit in the
back room every day, reading the dictionary and then taking the
"It pays to increase your word power" test in Readers Digest
Magazine. This has nothing to do with the song but since it's
a play I did a little character development.
Well I know by now I must have looked pitiful
Tears were streaming down my face
He was not moved
He did not think mine was a special case.
So he grabbed me
And he dragged me
As as I was sobbing toward the door
When a soft voice whispered
"I've got seven items, I'll take three of yours"
gasp
Well I turned
And I looked at
The handsomest man I've ever seen
Golden Hair, Tweed Suit, a bow tie
Eyes the bluest green.
Well the checkout girl was furious
But what else could she do?
She checked both our items
And he said "Let me carry them for you"
Ya She checked all of our items
He even paid for mine too.
He did. And he carried them up to my apartment.
And he put them down on my table (well he put them
down on the ironing board that I use as my table)
and he looked around my apartment and he said
"You look like the kind of woman who shouldn't be having
Dinner by herself tonight" which I think was his way of saying
"You look like you can't cook!" But I let that go by.
And he said "Please, allow me to take you out for dinner tonight.
I would like to take you out to the Quilted Giraffe.
And I thought to myself "Quilted Giraffe! That's the most expensive
restaurant in New York City! Why would he want to take me there?"
So I said to him "Why are you being so nice to me? I don't even
know you. I'm having such a terrible day!" and he said "Well
I've got to do something to cheer myself up. You say today, I lost
my job and when I came home from work, I found a note stuck to
my refrigerator from my Fiancée and she had run off with somebody
else". And I said "Are you kidding? The same thing happened
to me!" and he said "Yes - I'm kidding!" I am so gullible it
makes me so mad sometimes...
But he did make me laugh. So I thought "Okay - I'll go out and have
dinner with him. I'll eat that food I can't pronounce. I'll drink
that expensive wine. It was an incredible meal. It was the kind
of meal you read about in Cosmopolitan Magazine. And it totally
totally changed my life. Though, some things are still the same...
I still do my grocery shopping
In that same grocery store
But you won't find me standing in the
Express Line anymore.
Because I no longer shop for one
I shop for two you see
And today my doctor tells me
I'm shopping for three
Yes today I get the good word
I'm shopping for three.
Now... technically the song could be over here, but there's a couple
of loose ends and since this is a play, I've written another act!
ACT TWO
Well my roommate and my fiancée
Remember them? They stole my car?
Well my car broke down that night
And in a blinding thunderstorm they hitchhiked back
And they had a terrible fight.
They did not see that '68 Chevy
Come speeding around the curve
And who was that behind the wheel?
That nasty checkout girl.
I know you're thinking "What an unbelievable coincidence"!
But guess who was sitting next to her? Her fiancée! The store
manager. And what were they doing? They were having a
terrible fight. It was like an epidemic that night.
See, he was furious with her because she wouldn't check
through the woman with the thirteen items and paralyzed the
store. And she was so mad at him, because he let the guy with
the bow tie pay for the thirteen items and they both got out of
the store and escaped. She thought they should have been arrested
and then executed in front of a firing squad. And when he didn't
agree. She knew that they were incompatible and she was just
inconsolable. And she was gonna drive her car right into those
two strangers, which happen to be my roommate and my fiancée,
standing in the blinding thunderstorm. All four of them were
gonna die in a fiery wreck. She was gonna drive the Chevy off
the levy but the levy was wet.
In truth, that's how I would have ended this song in my younger
more unsophisticated days but it's time for a kinder, a gentler
ending.
Well the checkout girl slammed on the brakes
Stopped in time
She offered them a ride
My fiancée fell in love with her
The store manager made my roommate his bride
And now she works stocking kitty litter
In the cat food aisle
When I see her on my shopping sprees
I flash my sweetest smile.
"Hi... Ya the Quilted Giraffe AGAIN last night...
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...."
Well the moral of this story
Is one can never tell
What could be in store for you
On your local grocery shelf
And sometimes you've got to break the rules
If someone breaks your heart
And if you're lucky
Love might fall into your shopping cart!
