HEAVENS TO MERGATROYD! This blog is twenty years old!

Yes the name of this blog was inspired by
one of Snagglepuss's favorite exclamations.

My first blog post was not very inspiring: 

I'm still working out the kinks, come back later, it will be better. Thanks.

Back in those days we thought that George W. Bush was, and ever would be, the worst president of the United States. 

All these years I've been hogging the domain name mcclernan.com for myself, in spite of having many relatives, close and distant, who share the name. But so far nobody has complained.

I recapped the first ten years, back in 2015. Obama was president then, so things were looking up from the Bush years. 

So what's happened since November 2015?

I was blogging pretty heavily from 2015 through 2018, averaging about 300 blog posts per year, more or less. But blogging fell way off in 2019, when I only managed 59 posts and after that only managed 42, 28, 23, 29 and 34 posts each year after that. This year I have 43 posts, counting this one, so far. 

The reason blogging dropped off so much on Heavens to Mergatroyd is at least partly because I started my blog Pinkerite and instead of writing about politics and especially race pseudoscience on this blog, I started writing about those things over on Pinkerite instead.

I see that in 2015 I expressed my admiration for the feminist writer Sady Doyle who since then became Jude Doyle. I mentioned him in January of that year in a blog post on Pinkerite. 

2016 started out on a high note when I moved from Astoria back to Manhattan, to the Upper West Side in a quaint hundred-year-old walkup. Then I moved out thanks to unpleasant neighbors in 2021. 

Trump was elected. I immediately became interested in Canada and in the French language. I had been in Canada once, in 2005, before I started this blog. Since Trump was elected I visited Canada in 2017, 2018,  twice, then not again until January of this year. 

Part of the reason for the gap, I think, was because Biden defeated Trump in 2020, and I didn't feel as much of an urge to get out of the United States during that time. But when Trump was elected again in 2024, I went to Montreal during the inauguration, just to be out of a country full of morons who voted for a rapist fascist disgusting felon psychopath, clearly in the early-mid stages of dementia. 

And of course there was Covid.

In the past ten years I traveled to France and Slovenia.

I've written about learning French quite a few times. Thanks to my French studies I ended up learning more about Peppa Pig and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic than someone my age would ever expect to know. Dear god I know so much about My Little Pony now.

I  also created my own animations in French, but they are pig and pony-free.

I discovered Murderbot, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron. I knew J. D. Vance was a creep in 2016.

I've continued to expressed my appreciation for the Beatles and in particular for Paul McCartney in the past ten years. 

I've memorialized Earl Rich, a friend of mine who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1997, several times on this blog.

Quite a few people I have known have died in the past ten years. My childhood arch-enemy John Sayers, my young adulthood arch-enemy Laura Garth, my actor friend Tony White, another actor friend Doug Rossi, my college friend Geri Tuckett. And of course my cats, poor Miss Willow and poor Mr. Fuzz. But at least my cats lived about as long as cats normally live, the other people I mentioned here died before their time. Since my cats died, I've switched to caring for plants instead.

Theater-wise, things have been slow. I only managed to eke out one production, Norma Jeanne at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic about Marilyn Monroe in the past ten years, but I've written three solid full-length plays since 2020 and am working on a fourth.

Pete Duel, Judy Carne, Ben Murphy
-----------------------------------------

Here's a funny coincidence - I've written about Pete Duel on this blog - first in 2005, then again in 2015.

And the Pete Duel Memorial Site is still going strong in 2025. The entire series "Alias Smith and Jones" is now available on the Internet Archive.

One of my favorite episodes, "The Root of it All," was quite feminist for 1971. In the episode, Smith and Jones meet a feisty woman played by Judy Carne and another woman played by Victoria Thompson. 

Well Thompson showed up in a playwrights group I was part of for a couple of years in 2022-23. I knew I had seen her name before and after Googling around I discovered she had been in AS&J - but I never got a chance to ask her about the experience. But still, it was a funny coincidence.

In addition to this blog, I've had my blog NYCPlaywrights going since 2010, and Pinkerite since 2018.

TOP TEN POSTS IN THE PAST 10 YEARS

1. Did Brigitte Macron and her first husband appear in an episode of "French in Action" - mystere et boule de gomme! - over 16,000 visits.

2. Move over Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp! - 15.6K visits.

3. Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right & hereditarian connections (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite and also updated the diagram.) - 4.2K visits.

4. No, Erik Satie did not only eat white foods(!!!) - 2.98K visits.

5. What do the evo-psycho bros think "race" is? (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite). - 2.74K visits.

6. Qui était Jeanne de Bret? - 2.68K visits.

7. #Free Melania - yes I know Melania has only herself to blame for marrying Trump, but my god, you can see what a grotesque psychopath he is in this video. No wonder, according to Trump's biographer Michael Wolff, she hates him. -  2. 22K. visits.

8. RIP MTM - I discussed the death of Mary Tyler Moore. 2.15K visits.

9. Watching Justin Trudeau talk about feminism is the most erotic experience of my life - still undefeated - 1.94 K visits.

10. Manhattan statuary - surprisingly popular at 1.94K visits.

Will I manage another to blog another ten years? On va voir!

James Burke can play the guitar!

While searching YouTube to find the segment (maybe in Connections) where Jame Burke talks about plate tectonics and Wegner (long story) I found this video. Amazing!

GODOT IS HERE

Or: no more waiting for GODOT, I saw the show today. 

It was quite good. They did a lot with the funky inside-a-barrel set design and Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter were both great.  And the second act was even funny, I laughed out loud. 

Good job everybody.

The House of Blue Rape

oh, those wacky hijinks

I'm a big fan of Tony Kushner, as can been seen over the past almost 20 years of this blog. Although to be completely honest, I'm more a big fan of Angels in America and his screenplay for the movie Lincoln. I'm much less impressed by other Kushner work, but still, he's my favorite living playwright and I almost always enjoy his interviews like this one with the goddess Rachel Maddow.

 

Clearly there's something wrong with me and my taste in theater, because I hate almost every play I see, and over the course of this blog I've trashed the works of Mac Wellman, David Mamet, Edward Albee, Adam Rapp, Tom Stoppard, Chekov, Strindberg and especially Landford Wilson.

It hasn't been all negative, I've said some positive things about the work of Annie Baker, and I loved FUN HOME (the musical based on the comix of Allison Bechdel) and I love Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. 

I am a fan of WAITING FOR GODOT in spite of Beckett having been a misogynnist - his everymen protagonists must never be women, since after all, this is a play about the human condition. I have tickets for tomorrow's performance of the production with Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves.

But I'd say that at best I enjoy only one out of every thirty plays or musicals that I see or read. I like a handful of contemporary plays, plus OUR TOWN and a half-dozen of Shakespeare's best plays: HAMLET, ROMEO & JULIET, KING LEAR, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, AS YOU LIKE IT and HENRY V. And that's pretty much it. It's depressing.

And here we go again. 

I follow Tony Kushner's husband on Bluesky - I almost always like his posts because I agree with his political views - so I reflexively clicked the likey for his post about the Kushner-edited collection of the plays of John Guare: "He's one of our most important, funny, and original playwrights."

And then I made the mistake of reading THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES. You can read it for free on Archive.org.

The play is over fifty years old but here is a SPOILER ALERT anyway.

I like Britannica's summary of the play: "In 1971 Guare earned critical acclaim for The House of Blue Leaves (filmed for television, 1987), a farce about a zookeeper who murders his insane wife after he fails as a songwriter." 

In the Archive.org version of the play the blurbs include one from the leftist magazine The Nation: "full of waggish merriment..."; the Village Voice: "Guare knows there is nothing funnier than the clash between American dreams and the American way of death..."; USA Today: "a woozy, fragile, hilarious little heart-breaker..." 

Although I guess you could defend the humor on the basis of it's funny 'cause it's true - men do murder their wives, insane or not, all the time. And when THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES premiered in 1971, domestic violence wasn't considered an important issue.

Of the six women in the play, four are dead by the end: the crazy wife, two nuns and a deaf "aging film starlet." All defective or unavailable for sex, and so not much value for the men. The starlet's boyfriend mourns her for ten minutes before convincing the hero's mistress to fly away with him. The surviving nun rejects celibacy, and so avoids being offed by Guare. The hero's mistress, while an obvious bitch because she refuses to cook on demand, is at least worth raping.

Of course I knew that rape was considered a hoot back in those days, since Bill Cosby was killing it in 1969, with his hi-larious bit about drugging and raping women. But still, I was amazed to read the hero's monologue:

It's kind of funny, a chimpanzee knocked me in the back and kinked my back out of whack and I went to this health club to work it out and in the steam section with all the steam I got lost and I went into this steam room and there was Bunny—yeah, just towels-I mean you could make a movie out of this, it was so romantic— She couldn't see me and she started talking about the weight she had to take off and the food she had to give up and she started talking about duckling with orange sauce and oysters baked with spinach and shrimps baked in the juice of melted sturgeon eyes which caviar comes from—well, you know me and food and I got so excited and the steam's getting thicker and thicker and I ripped off my towel and kind of raped her... and she was quiet for a long time and then she finally said one of the greatest lines of all time.... She said, "There's a man in here."

There's no "kind of" rape - she doesn't even see him until he's raping her. You see, that's why it's so hysterically funny - she realizes "there's a man in here" because she was just raped by one. 

The Clive Barnes New York Times review of the premier of THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES in 1971 does not mention the rape. Artie is everyman and we are meant to sympathize with him, because straight white men had it the worst in the middle of the twentieth century:

Artie's troubles are manifold: His mistress won't cook for him, his songs are rejected, his wife is as nutty as a Thurber cartoon, his best friend is as crazy as a Feiffer cartoon, and he is invaded by nuns, two of whom are blown up by his son, who clearly has an unfortunate genetic disposition. 

 

Yet Artie keeps on smiling. He believes that one day he will wake up over the rainbow in Los Angeles and find himself as famous as Bob Hope. He keeps on smilingly right until just before the end. 

 

Mr. Guare has a telling way with the karate chop. His black inversions have a Joe Orton air to them, but his tone is all‐American emanating from a mind riotously littered with the detritus of a civilization, its comic books, its radio serials, its movies, indeed all of its advertisements—to steal and adapt Norman Mailer's phrase for itself.

In his review of the 1986 production, Frank Rich says:

By evening's end, Bananas has actually become one of her husband's animals. Bananas likes animals, she has explained, because they're not famous and because they represent to her the buried feelings that her fit-regulating pills usually restrain. Miss Kurtz's metamorphosis brings the theater to a shocked hush. Her slender hands become paws dancing in the air, her voice trails off into a maimed puppy's whimper. As Bananas nuzzles helplessly against her husband, Mr. Guare's inspired image of the all-American loser acquires a metaphorical force as timeless as West's locusts. Where once there was a woman with stars in her eyes, we see a battered mutt, the forgotten underdog that the bright lights of our national fairy tales always pass by...

Then the all-American everyman puts the mad dog down, like Old Yeller. But the play is no longer quite as funny as it was fifteen years before:

Yet a funny thing has happened to ''Blue Leaves'' ...The play no longer seems all that funny, and it's none the worse for the shift in tone. While some of Mr. Guare's jokes are indeed dated remnants of the 60's, his characters and themes have gained the weight and gravity so lacking in his more pretentious recent plays. Time hasn't healed the wounds described in ''Blue Leaves'' - it's deepened them. One still leaves the theater howling at Mr. Guare's vision of losers at sea in a materialistic culture, but the howls are less of laughter than of pain.

He doesn't mention the rape. 

In a recording of that 1986 production by the American Playhouse, now on YouTube  the line "kind of raped her" gets a solid laugh as the character played by Christine Baranski covers her face with her hands. It's extra creepy that it's Frasier's dad confessing to raping Christine Baranski.

A September 2008 review of an Orange County California production entitled ‘House of Blue Leaves’ will leave you blue Paul Hodgins writes:

Almost four decades after it turned its author, John Guare, into a name playwright, “The House of Blue Leaves” seems like both an ossified artifact of the ’60s and creepily relevant to our own troubled times.

I certainly get the "ossified artifact" part, but I'm not sure about the relevance to our own troubled times. Later he says:

In the end, it’s too much – but that, of course, is Guare’s point. The promises, priorities and threats of the modern world have unhinged us, and nobody’s acting sensibly anymore. It’s a warning that’s more urgent now than it was when the play was written.

Why is it "more urgent now?" From what I remember of September 2008, the big issues were the financial crisis and Barack Obama was recently nominated to be the Democratic candidate for president. Neither of those things would seem to have any connection to the issues of this play - but maybe for Hodgins, Obama's nomination was a sign that the whole world had gone insane. 

Looking back, it was a blessed time in comparison to the state of our country now.

Hodgins refers to the protagonist of the play as an "everyman" in spite of the protagonist being a rapist, but then again, why not? If Guare wrote a zany farce based on the rape of Gisele Pelicot by a parade of everymen, would it be much different?

Sheila O'Mally, writing about the 2011 production in Politico also fails to mention the rape and is annoyed that the audience does not react the way she feels they should, because in her opinion, if you don't anticipate this humorous farce ending in murder, you are insane:

I felt the audience resisting Ben Stiller (as the hero) in the part. They laughed at everything he said, whether it was funny or not, seeming to need him to be the clown at their birthday party that they expected. Their laughs were insistent, rather than reactive, almost trying to push him where they wanted him to go. In the final harrowing moment, when it becomes clear what Artie is doing, a couple of people around me gasped. This is a good response, obviously, and appropriate, but based on all that had come before, I felt the audience turn on the play in that moment. They had been expecting a Ben Stiller laugh-riot, and instead they were given this? The play is so hilarious that the ending, which any sane person could see coming from a mile away, hurts. Good. It should hurt. But I felt the resentment in that well-dressed crowd. I felt them withhold their approval.

The 2011 review in Vulture by Scott Brown is the only one I have found so far that mentions the rape monologue, but only in passing:

Hovering in the wings is Artie’s ten-clawed climber of a mistress, the fierce Bunny Lingus (Leigh). (Guare, whatever your overall opinion of him, is one of the great moniker-makers of the postmodern stage.) The pair met when Artie “kind of raped her” in a health-club steam room, and since then, she’s been convinced of his indomitable drive, even as his lingering attachment to his invalid wife has her wondering...

To be fair this was still the early days of the #MeToo movement, before Harvey Weinstein made Hollywood and the theater world realize that maybe it's not a good idea to be casual about rape. Damn I am so mad I missed the reading of A PLAY ABOUT DAVID MAMET WRITING ABOUT HARVEY WEINSTEIN back in June. I hope it comes around again soon.

Brown has an epiphany at the end:

This is a furious play, a vicious and ungenerous play, and we should be made to feel that. I got it in gentle waves, but never in hurricane-force slaps. Perhaps it’s just the passage of time: House was written back when the grand promises of the Great Society and Vatican II were decaying even faster than the Star System of Old Hollywood, and no purposeful revolution could cohere or find secure footing. “When famous people go to sleep at night, it’s us they dream of, Artie,” chants Bunny, without rue or irony, in a kind of lullaby. “The famous ones, they’re the real people. We’re the creatures of their dreams.” A line like that ought to galvanize us, the passive patsies out in the gallery. Instead, I felt a gentle perplexity. Sometimes, sitting out there in the dark, watching these famous people mount a case for the violent, oppressive absurdity of fame, I felt like a creature of their dreams. And I wondered, Inception-like: Who needs to wake up? Me or them? 

 

The flip side of all the famous people who have performed the play are all those community theater actors who have performed the play. It's certain that at least some of them dreamed of greater fame than treading the boards at the Playcrafters Barn Theater. 

Assuming that, like most who've experience the play, apparently, they don't think the protagonist being a rapist makes him any less of an all-American everyman - do they feel targeted by the play as it mocks this old old man - 45! - because he still has dreams of something beyond his day job? 

In the 2024 review of the Playcrafters Barn Theater production Madeline Dudziak writes:

Maybe Guare’s writing just isn’t particularly funny to me. Perhaps the script, like Banana’s moniker, hasn’t aged well, or the other patrons on Saturday were as confused as I was … but it just wasn’t humorous. Sure, a few good one-liners elicited laughs, but in truth, the show was completely depressing. Honestly, when Landuyt (playing "Billy Einhorn") finally arrives and sobs uncontrollably for a few minutes, it makes perfect sense, because it is all simply sad. Even the asides were woeful. Nearly every character had a moment to chat with the audience to let us in on what was going through their heads – a moment of connection, if you will. These flashes of personal insight into the characters could have shifted the dark tone to one slightly funnier, but they simply reiterated how broken all of these people were.

I don’t know what genre I’d lump The House of Blue Leaves into. This production may defy genre altogether, but it’s far from a miss; the entire talented cast performs beautifully, salvaging the sorrowful script, and the set is lovely. The unsettled ending certainly doesn’t clear anything up. But maybe you’re the kind of theatre-goer who doesn’t need closure to your questions.

It's astounding that even in 2024 the rape goes unremarked, as if it is a very minor detail of the story, just an odd little quirk in the protagonist's meet-cute story.

I will be on the lookout for reviews of any future productions of "The House of Blue Leaves." I wonder if they'll leave the rape line in, and if they do, what the critics will say about it - if anything.

And your bird can sing-a-ding-ding

John & Paul sit in with Jacky and the Strangers 
in Obertauern, Austria, March 18, 1965

Speaking as we just were of interpretations of the songs of John Lennon, I was  thinking of the fan theory about the Beatles' greatest non-hit "And Your Bird Can Sing." 

The theory has been around for a while but it was new to me: the song is about Frank Sinatra.

This YouTube video made by the channel James Hargreaves Guitar explains the theory in detail. 

I already loved the song, but thinking it is not just great music but a dig at Frank Sinatra makes it even better. 

Another aspect of this song that I only learned of recently is the guitar-doubling by Paul and George.

Other notable versions of the song, available on Youtube, are take 5, and this fan version that isolates the instruments.

And of course the version, also available on the Anthology, featuring Lennon and McCartney laughing and goofing around. This is the greatest version. The only thing like it in the Beatles oeuvre is the outro of "Hey Bulldog" and of course the immortal "You Know My Name, Look Up the Number."

#9 Dream - happy birthday John Lennon

       Ah! Bowakawa, pousse pousse

John Lennon would have been 85 today.

I was recently listening to #9 Dream from his album "Walls and Bridges" which was my first introduction to Lennon's solo work, when it was released in 1974. He recorded "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" with Elton John, and it was a big hit, Elton John being the it boy of the time.

From what I've read online, Lennon said he was depressed during that time. And as we know, this was during his separation from Yoko. He claims he got the song entirely from a dream he had.

It has always struck me, from the first time I heard it, as an expression of his longing to go back to Yoko.

So long ago. Was it just a dream?

From the perspective of his "lost weekend" in Los Angeles, his early days with Yoko, while he was still part of the Beatles phenomenon must have seemed so long ago. Back when they were doing performance art and creating Revolution #9 - the infamously weird "musique concrète" cut from the White Album.

Yoko's voice is heard on that recording.

As for the chant:

Music touching my soul

Something warm, sudden cold

The spirit dance was unfolding

Ah! Bowakawa, pousse pousse

Ah! Bowakawa, pousse pousse

I think Lennon's subconscious turned a longing to return to the Dakota, where he and Yoko had lived together, into a quasi-Native American chant and "spirit dance." The Dakota has a Native American relief sculpture showing the date the apartment was completed. The Dakota got its name because when it was built it was considered so far away from the center of Manhattan life that it was said to be like "out in Indian territory." I'm sure that Lennon, like everybody else who has ever lived in the building, had heard that story.

Posted on Facebook today:

Black Woman Genius ~ a call for monologues

I don't think I've ever had a post that was suitable for all three of my websites: this one; the one that critiques race pseudoscience; and the theater one. But today is the day for this first ever cross-over post.

I was especially happy to have another chance to promote Murderbot. 

Any playwrights out there, consider submitting your monologue, the winner gets $100 and anybody from anywhere in the world can submit their work.

NYCPlaywrights seeks monologues on the theme "Black Woman Genius"

NYCPlaywrights seeks monologues.

THE DEADLINE IS SUNDAY NOVEMBER 30, 2025 at 11:59 PM.

The theme is "Black Woman Genius."

In November 2024, NYCPlaywrights began the "Resisting Fascism" project. The winning piece was a monologue, THE 92% by Bryan-Keyth Wilson that highlighted the fact that 92% of Black American women voters did not vote for Trump - and their intelligence and wisdom are increasingly clear.

The murder of Charlie Kirk was horrific, but that does not erase the fact that  he said hateful things like this:

“If we would have said three weeks ago [...] that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they're comin' out and they're saying it for us! They're comin' out and they're saying, "I'm only here because of affirmative action.

Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

Kirk dropped out of community college to become a full-time political pundit, while the Black women he attacked graduated from Harvard and  Princeton and Yale.

And so this call for submissions seeks monologues on the theme of Black Woman Genius. 

SEMI-FINALIST SCRIPTS

NYCPlaywrights will select as semi-finalists as many of the scripts that we like and which meet the submission guidelines.

The semi-finalists will be listed on this blog and an excerpt from each monologue (if permission is granted by the playwright) will be displayed in a blog post, one per day, along with any website links or other contact information the author wishes to share. 

The semi-finalist script selections will be announced Sunday, January 4, 2026. 

THE WINNING MONOLOGUE

The winning monologue will be selected from the semi-finalist monologues. The winning monologue will be recorded with an actor and an excerpt of the recording will be posted on NYCPlaywrights.org and on the NYCPlaywrights YouTube channel (if permission is granted by the playwright) along with author and actor contact information, biographies, etc.

The author of the winning monologue will receive an award of $100. 

The award-winner will be announced Sunday, January 18, 2026. Excerpts from the semi-finalist scripts will begin posting that day one monologue per day, and the winning monologue will be posted after all the semi-finalist monologues have been posted.

💡 THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 💡

Failure to follow guidelines will result in your script being rejected.

As always, there is no fee for submissions. 

• The deadline is November 30, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST.

• All rights will remain with the playwright.

• Monologues must be no more than two pages long, using standard 12-point text size and line-spacing.

• Send only one monologue script per author to genius@nycplaywrights.org.

• The monologue script must be submitted by the author of the script, no agents or others may submit. 

• The monologue script submission should be sent by email, with the script itself as a file attached to the email.

• The file format of the monologue script should be .pdf because it will retain your original script formatting.

• Make sure you have your name and your email address on the script.

• Plays can be submitted by anybody, from anywhere in the world but must be primarily in English (a few non-English phrases are acceptable, but the phrases must include English translations in production notes or stage directions.)

• A play that has had a production is acceptable.

• A play that has been published is not acceptable.

• There will be no money awarded for selected scripts except for the winning monologue.

• NYCPlaywrights' decisions are final.

• Any questions email info@nycplaywrights.org

PLEASE NOTE: when you submit your play, you should get an automatic response that says:

***

Thank you for sending your monologue to the NYCPlaywrights “BLACK WOMAN GENIUS” project.

The semi-finalist script selections will be announced Sunday, January 4, 2026.

The award-winner will be announced Sunday, January 18, 2026.

Nancy at NYCPlaywrights

***

If you don't receive the automatic response, email us at info@nycplaywrights.org to check if we received your script.

Please note:

• The monologues must be dramatic - we love facts, but the monologue must not simply be a lecture on some aspect of history or current events. A dramatic monologue should have an emotional impact and often will tell a story. We'd like to see creativity and invention.

• The call for submissions is open to any person, anywhere in the world. 

• Although the theme is Black Woman Genius, the character speaking in the monologue does not necessarily have to be a Black woman.

• Although this is a serious subject, you do not have to be grim. We welcome humor and playfulness, and we are just as interested in hopeful monologues, and anticipating a brighter future as much as we are in the injustices of the past and present.

DATE RECAP

• November 30, 2025 - submission deadline
• January 4, 2026 - semi-finalists announced
• January 18, 2026 - the winning monologue will be announced and then each day an excerpt from one of the semi-finalist monologues will be posted. 

Some genius prompts:

• Ida B. Wells, investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.
• Aretha Franklin, voted Rolling Stone's greatest singer of all time - "a work of genius" (#2 is Whitney Houston)
• Valerie Brown, the first Black woman animated character on American television, resident genius of  the 1970s cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats"
• Alena Analeigh Wicker, in 2021, became the youngest person to intern for NASA
• Simone Biles, athletic genius
• Wanda Sykes, stand-up comedian, actor and writer
• Angela Davis, philosopher and political activist
• Dr. Ayda Mensah, character performed by Noma Dumezweni, the brilliant team leader and "favorite human" of Murderbot, from the sci-fi books and AppleTV+ series.
• Lorraine Hansberry, the young, gifted and Black playwright
• Kamala Harris, America’s first woman, Black and South Asian vice president, became the Democratic presidential candidate half-way through the 2024 campaign when Biden bowed out. She drew record-breaking crowds during her campaign and accurately predicted that Trump would use the US military against US citizens.

Yes, it is that time again

Autumn

The school of Earl

Earl Rich was a great beauty, although you can't tell so much from his photographs, he was not photogenic. You had to see him in motion to truly appreciate him.

He was robbed of all his future years of glory at age 31 in a motorcycle accident.

Earl and I had a primarily epistolary relationship, if you count emails as letters. I've shared some on this blog:

Reality sandwich - I had the minister at Earl's memorial service read this out loud.  

 

Between you and me - the saga of our manager, Lisa who was sexually harassing him. 

And then there was his interest in quantum mechanics. 

This is from January 9, 1995

I must say, I was a little nervous about having you as an office mate at first - some women have that affect on me - but it has proven to be a very enlightening (and enjoyable) experience, without impeding my productivity! I bet I could a lot from you.

What about this guy (girl person, god) BRAHMA - is he really the creator of the universe, or just another lame excuse for a religious idol?

On a more serious note, have you ever heard of a guy named Neils Bohr? Apparently, he and Einstein had this big argument about Quantum Mechanics. Bohr said to Al: "You are not thinking, you are merely being logical." Pretty smooth, eh? I wonder which process our job requires...

...I will leave you with this thought from the chapter on Zen Banditos and the UnderLying Nature of Reality: The division between the microcosmic and macrocosmic is probably an illuisiory one, the result of the human mind to CATEGORIZE phenomena.

They say ignorance is bliss. Oh the joys of a public school education.

Until tomorrow,

Your slave 'till the end,

Earl - the Particle Man - Rich

From January 12, 1995

...your reference to sub-atomic particles is relevant, or should I say "charged." This dude says (or said) that the worldview of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. I find that this theory applies directly to the status of my checking account. 

Anyway, it was, as usual, very nice to hear from you. (how's that for polite?)

Later Daze,

Earl (soon to be a wall away)

P. S. 

As you read this E-Mail, sub-atomic particles are moving through you at the rate of several per minute.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

He was soon to be a wall away because our manager, Lisa, the one who was sexually harassing him, didn't like us getting along so well, so moved him into an office with herself. Oof, such craziness. Of course this did not stop the emails, and in fact only caused them to increase since we could no longer simply chat.

The last line of the PS refers to the Almond Joy campaign slogan, already 18 years old in 1995. I thought it was a pretty funny PS though.

From January 17, 1995:

Of course my book on bandits exists! I've even discovered a chapter called "Schrodinger's Bandito". In fact, there's a quote from Erwin himself, but I won't reference it here as it's not relevant.

This quote, however, may be extremely relevant: "The mutual attraction of two celestial bodies is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." Yes, another one from Al's bullpen. He felt that sublimation was an art best left to the democrats. 

The REAL Program Manager,

Mr. Quark

PS 

It's incredible how much you remind me of this intensely-cool character (Mirna Minx) from "A Confederacy of Dunces." If you get a chance, you've gotta read it, maybe I'll pick up another copy...

PPS 

Thanks to your radical nature, my pacifistic outlook is rapidly diminishing.

He was such an expert tease. No wonder he drove our manager Lisa bonkers.

Today - yes today - thirty years later - I finally looked up this "book on bandits" and it turns out to be a novel from 1986 called "Cosmic Banditos: a contrabandista's quest for the meaning of life" by Allan Weisbecker. From his Wikipedia page I see Weisbecker was a surfer, and wrote about surfing, which is probably how Earl came to know of him, since Earl loved surfing.

So now I know why he referred to himself as "Mr. Quark." 

From the publisher of Cosmic Banditos:

Mr.Quark is a down-on-his-luck pot smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Columbia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible José. Only months before, these three and their fearless associates were rolling millions in cash and high grade marijuana, eluding prosecution on "ridiculously false" drug and terrorism charges. But times have quickly grown lean, and to liven up their exile, José decides to mug a family of American tourists. Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a sidesplitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories on relativity, the nature of the universe and looking for the meaning of life in all the wrong places.

In my defense, at the time I first read the email, you couldn't just Google around until you found something. In 1995 most people's experience of the Internet was gated communities - at work, Earl and I sent emails via Lotus Notes, and at home, we emailed via America Online. How did we get by in those ancient times?

On the other hand I did immediately read "A Confederacy of Dunces" to learn more about this "Mirna Minx" character. Her name is actually "Myrna Minkoff" but I believe the protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, refers to her as a "minx" at one point. 

I was not exactly sure how to feel about the comparison. Earl clarified in an email on January 18

Attention! PARALLEL is an important concept (even with sublimation). Parallel thoughts. Parallel events. Parallel realities. Parallel UNIVERSES?

According to the Chapter entitled "Zen Banditos", parallel universes do exist. And to quote the infamous Zhukov: "...the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says that different editions of us live in many different worlds simultaneously. An unaccountable number of them, and all of them, are real".

Kind of puts it all in perspective, does it not? What time is that Dallas rerun on, anyway?

Oh Mirna is quite the cool one. If you enjoyed Holden's romp through the rye field, you'll love what Ignatious does with Levi Pants. His correspondence with Mirna (Myrna?) is terrific. You are her, in many ways. Aside from being quite the philosopher, sexual expert, and the voice of the underprivileged/abused, she is also a frustrated film director. It is a must read even for a woman. How do you recognize a genius? The dunces are in a confederacy against him (her). The story behind the book, and the death of the author (I believe his name is J. Kennedy Tool) is, unfortunately, a real tragedy. This book is a prerequisite to "...Banditos" in the school of Earl.

By the way, I've never seen Lisa so angry as she was today! I feared for the upright nature of my partition (Office politics are so boring!)

See ya at the factory.

EARL

"The concept of entropy dictates that when anything happens, it makes the universe a more disorderly place." Michael Talbot.

Earl knew me as a "sexual expert" strictly based on PG-rated conversations, not through physical experience.

Well now of course I am going to have to read Cosmic Banditos. I don't know what took me so long.

I find it fascinating that Michael Talbot, who died in 1992, espoused "a theoretical model of reality that suggests the physical universe is akin to a hologram based on the research and conclusions of David Bohm and Karl H. Pribram.[2] According to Talbot ESP, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena are a product of this holographic model of reality."

One of the two incidents in my life that made me consider the possibility of extra-sensory perception happened the day Earl died, when I had an auditory hallucination that someone was calling my name and saying "Good-bye." I had never experienced anything like it before and never since. It was real enough that I got up and looked out the window to see if someone was calling me from outside. That night I had a dream someone was trying to tell me something. It wasn't until the afternoon of the next day that one of our former coworkers called to tell me that Earl was gone.

I added the links to this selection from January 19, 1995:

Dearest Nancy,

You are the swizzle-stick of my eight-hour cocktail. I hope I didn’t upset you today with that email stuff. No more from me, I promise. You have your hands full. It seems that everyone wants a piece of Nancy! 

 

I hope you re-read Confederacy. I doubt very much that you can enjoy or appreciate it fully in a one-sitting reading. But who knows? You never cease to amaze me.

So you want Banditos? I will eventually give it to you. I don't know why, but I have this reluctance to lend it to you. Actually, I have an idea from where that insecurity stems -- maybe we can delve into those dark recesses of my mind during our next drawing session. In the meantime, I've shelved Banditos, and am blowing the dust off some other classics -- "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" and "Synchronicity" -- two books I'm sure you're familiar with. I won't re-read them, however, until I've made some headway with the materials you've so graciously lent to yours truly.

Hey, I've gotta keep this letter short and boring, as I've already fallen behind in my work. But I also wanted to mention that the newspaper article you lent me makes mention of P. Caputo. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote a book called "A Rumor of War" -- it's a terrific novel about his real-life experiences in Vietnam. A real enlightening book. I can't imagine Ted going through all of that. He seems like such a sweet-natured guy. The thought of him toting an AK-47 seems sort of ludicrous.

I'll leave you with this quote from the Journal of Religious Thought: "Chance is a statistical concept which 'explains' deviations within certain patterns of probability." Hey - it beats the hell out of confession.

Hoping to see you shortly,

Your Friend and Fellow Co-Worker

E. B. Weatherington, IV

I love that metaphor so much: "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail." It's so good, I just now suddenly wondered if it was a well-known expression that Earl had borrowed from somewhere. But when I Googled it I found nothing.

But Google's AI had plenty to say:

The phrase "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail" is not a common or famous quote. Instead, it appears to be a unique, poetic expression celebrating the effect someone has on another person. The phrase combines the literal function of a swizzle stick with the extended, metaphoric duration of an "eight-hour cocktail".

Interpretation of the metaphor

• The swizzle stick: This object is used to mix and blend the ingredients in a cocktail. In the metaphor, the person is the swizzle stick—the active, stirring agent who brings all the "ingredients" of the other person's life together. They have a vital, enlivening effect. 

• The cocktail: A cocktail is a complex, flavorful, and enjoyable mixture. In this case, it represents the speaker's life or experience. 

• Eight hours: The "eight-hour" modifier signifies an entire workday, a significant portion of waking life. A cocktail that lasts this long is a potent and enduring one. The effect isn't a brief or fleeting one; it's a long, sustained experience.

The full meaning 

 

Putting it all together, the phrase likely means:

• "You are the person who brings energy and joy to my life."
• "You mix up all the different parts of my day to make my life vibrant and meaningful."
• "You are the essential element that makes my extended, 'all-day' experience so much better."

It is a playful and deeply appreciative compliment, stating that the person is the key ingredient that makes the ordinary routine of life into something special and delicious.

I know Earl would have gotten a kick out of that. I hate AI but I admit, I like it too.

The only book I can find called "Synchronicity" is the one by Carl Jung. Another coincidence - the Wikipedia article on the topic says:

Contemporary physicist T. Filk writes that quantum entanglement, being "a particular type of acausal quantum correlations", was plausibly taken by Pauli as "a model for the relationship between mind and matter in the framework [...] he proposed together with Jung".[31] Specifically, quantum entanglement may be the physical phenomenon which most closely represents the concept of synchronicity.[31]

Quantum entanglement, called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein is, according to Quanta Magazine:

The “spooky action” that bothered Einstein involves a quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, in which two particles that we would normally think of as distinct entities lose their independence. Famously, in quantum mechanics a particle’s location, polarization and other properties can be indefinite until the moment they are measured. Yet measuring the properties of entangled particles yields results that are strongly correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously. The unpredictable outcome of one measurement appears to instantly affect the outcome of the other, regardless of the distance between them — a gross violation of locality.

I've been wondering if there was some kind of mental radio-waves/quantum entanglement thing going on between me and Earl on that September morning in 1997. I feel like it was too weird to be a coincidence, but on the other hand I don't want to believe in woo. So why not quantum entanglement?

The drawing session Earl mentions was one of two sittings we had in which I drew Earl in profile. One was in pencil, the other was pencil and then finished in Magic Marker, which is my favorite of the two. I've posted it on this blog before, but I like it, so here it is again. I have to frame this one of these days.

I hung it on the wall of my office cubicle and Lisa reported me to HR, claiming that I was sexually harassing Earl. Oh Lisa, you shameless hypocrite. Earl spoke up on my behalf, denying any harassment.

One of the reasons I'm glad I made the minister read Earl's email at the memorial service is because the last person to get up and give a testimonial about how special Earl was during the service was Lisa. I almost did not get up myself, but once I realized she would have the last word during the service, I knew I had to let Earl have the last word. I know Earl would be happy that I did that, quantum entanglement or not.

September orchid

The orchid just keeps on trucking.

George & Geoff & Yoko

Look at this great photo of John and Paul.
It's only tangentially related to this
blog post, but I stumbled on it last night
and I just really like it and wanted to use it.
--------------------------------------------

Geoff Emerick had a lot to say about working with the Beatles in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. Emerick was responsible for many of the cool sounds the Beatles used in their most celebrated albums, and also worked with Paul McCartney, who he adored, after the Beatles broke up.

But in the book he is unsparing about people who were rude or cold to him, especially George Harrison.

Emerick:

George Harrison was always kind of a mystery to me. Although he was kind and generous with many of my EMI colleagues throughout the years, he and I just didn't have good chemistry together. He struck me as a dour, humorless man who complained a lot, and he always seemed suspicious of everyone outside of the Beatles' inner circle. He didn't interact or converse with me very much, even when we were working on one of his songs. He didn't know anything about technicalities, either—he'd just focus on the musical aspects, and discuss them with the others, or with George Martin. He might say to me, "Can you change the guitar sound a bit, Geoff?" but it wouldn't go much further than that.

I've noted what a buzzkill Harrison was. 

So George and Geoff did not have a good rapport, but on top of that, Emerick was supremely unimpressed by Harrison's musicianship, writing:

Paul sometimes actually seemed a bit embarrassed by Harrison's musical limitations; certainly there were many instances of eye-rolling when poor George was wrestling unsuccessfully with a solo or lead part. I imagine in those circumstances that Paul was frustrated, probably thinking that he could have mastered the part faster and played it better. 

 

To be fair, Harrison faced an uphill battle against the massive talents of Lennon and McCartney. For one thing, he was the youngest band member and was therefore frequently treated like a kid brother, not to be taken seriously. For another, he didn't have a songwriting partner to bounce ideas off of. I always felt that at a relatively early point, Harrison simply realized that he was never going to be a Lennon or a McCartney, which might explain why he turned to Indian music—it was his own outlet, something completely separate from the others. On occasion, Lennon would lend him a hand with a lyric or chord change, but then John would quickly become distracted or bored. I never saw Paul extend himself to George that way. His attitude toward his younger bandmate seemed to be, "You shouldn't be asking me for help; you should be doing it yourself." Perhaps it was the creative and personal tension between the two that led Harrison to keep me at arm's length, because it was obvious that I had a close relationship with Paul.

And according to Emerick, it wasn't only himself and Paul who were unimpressed:

I noticed a definite maturing in George Harrison during the course of the Revolver sessions. Up until that point, he had played a largely subordinate role in the band—after all, it was Lennon and McCartney's songs that had been the hits. But he ended up recording three original songs on this album—Im not sure why he was given so much space, but it's possible that he had put pressure on Brian Epstein to put pressure on George Martin.

All those discussions would have been held privately, outside of the studio, but there were definite economic considerations involved, because royalty income was directly tied to how many songs a writer got on each album. Paul and John weren't especially derisive of George's abilities as a songwriter or his explorations into Eastern music—at least, not in my presence—but George Martin always seemed a bit concerned about both the quality of Harrison's compositions and the amount of time being spent on them, which tended to make Harrison a bit self-conscious. With the benefit of hindsight, George Martin has expressed regret in some of his interviews about the short shrift that Harrison sometimes received, though it is somewhat understandable in light of Lennon and McCartney's phenomenal songwriting abilities. It's little wonder that George was often overshadowed. I thought that George's strongest song on Revolver was "Taxman," and George Martin must have agreed, since he decided to put it first on the album-the all-important spot generally reserved for the best song, since the idea is to try to capture the listener immediately. Harrison didn't like paying tax, and the Inland Revenue had been after him once or twice, so he wrote a song about it, with a really clever lyric ("My advice to those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes"). There was a bit of tension on that session, though, because George had a great deal of trouble playing the solo—in fact, he couldn't even do a proper job of it when we slowed the tape down to half speed. 

I was recently listening to Revolver and was wondering myself why there were three Harrison songs on it, none of which are any good, in my opinion, including "Taxman." The only good song Harrison wrote before the magnificent "It's All To Much" was "I Need You" from the Help album. You can hear during the end credits of Help, Harrison's yelling out "I Need You by George Harrison" when his credit comes up on screen, and he was right to be proud about that song. Although to be fair, part of what I love about it is the reverb on the guitar especially towards the end, and the backing vocals. I wrote about the Help album and my love of "I Need You" way back in 2012. I almost forgot I wrote about Help, but I guess that's what happens when you have a blog for almost twenty years.

"Taxman" is considered great by many, but I can't stand it. First because the lyrics sound like they were written by a libertarian. I mean, boo-hoo, obscenely rich musician has to pay high taxes. And second, because the melody is no good. The guitar solos are very good but guess what - George, the band's lead guitarist, doesn't even play them! 

Emerick again:

After a couple of hours of watching him struggle, both Paul and George Martin started becoming quite frustrated—this was, after all, a Harrison song and therefore not something anyone was prepared to spend a whole lot of time on. So George Martin went into the studio and, as diplomatically as possible, announced that he wanted Paul to have a go at the solo instead. I could see from the look on Harrison's face that he didn't like the idea one bit, but he reluctantly agreed and then proceeded to disappear for a couple of hours. He sometimes did that-had a bit of a sulk on his own, then eventually came back. Whatever private conversations he would have with John or Paul upon his return occurred in the corridor, where none of us could hear. 

Sometimes Ringo would be part of the conference, but more often he would stay in the studio with Neil and Mal until the storm had blown over. Paul's solo was stunning in its ferocity-his guitar playing had a fire and energy that his younger bandmate's rarely matched —and was accomplished in just a take or two. It was so good, in fact, that George Martin had me fly it in again during the song's fadeout.

Emerick also confirmed what I came to think of Yoko Ono while watching Get Back a few years ago - she basically approached the world as if she was royalty. I wrote:

Amanda Hess compares Ono's behavior to a performance piece, but there's a more likely, if prosaic explanation: Ono was from a family of wealthy Japanese aristocrats. The Beatles were working-class musicians. In the world that Yoko came from, you didn't worry about the feelings of the people you outranked. Why should she care if she was irritating the fuck out of everybody?

And the next year I mentioned I had read what a classmate had to say about her:

A classmate offered a different perspective: “She never felt happy unless she was treated like a queen.”

And in Emerick's description, she's even wearing a tiara. Lennon and Ono had been in a car crash and while Ono was recuperating, Lennon had a bed brought into the recording studio during the making of Abbey Road. If only this had been caught on video and seen by all those Ono partisans like Amanda Hess.

Also, Lennon's habit of referring to Ono as "Mother" is extremely creepy.

"I'm afraid that Mother is still not too well, though," he said, suitably chastened. Even during the White Album sessions John had started referring to Yoko that way, which I always found a bit creepy.

Yoko started to say something, but before she could get a word out, the door burst open again and four men in brown coats began wheeling in a large, heavy object. For a moment, I thought it was a piano coming in from one of the other studios, but it soon dawned on me that these were proper deliverymen: the brown coats they were wearing had the word "Harrods" inscribed on the back. The object being delivered was, in fact, a bed.

Jaws dropping, we all watched as it was brought into the studio and carefully positioned by the stairs, across from the tea-and-toast setup. More brown coats appeared with sheets and pillows and somberly made the bed up. Then, without saying a word, Yoko climbed in, carefully arranging the covers around her.

I'd spent nearly seven years of my life in recording studios, and I thought l'd seen it all...but this took the cake. George Martin, John Kurlander, Phil, and I exchanged wary looks; out of the corner of my eye I could see that Paul, Ringo, and George Harrison were as gobsmacked as we were. Lennon walked over to the bed.

"Are you okay?" he asked solicitously.

Yoko mumbled an affirmative. Lennon turned to us.

"Can you put a microphone up over here so we can hear her on the headphones?" he asked. Dumbfounded, I nodded to John Kurlander and he began setting up a boom stand, suspending the microphone above the supine Mrs. Lennon's face.

For the next several weeks, Yoko lived in that bed. Her wardrobe consisted of a series of flimsy nightgowns, accessorized with a regal tiara, carefully positioned to hide the scar on her forehead from the accident. As she gained her strength, so too did she gain her confidence, slowly but surely starting to annoy the other Beatles and George Martin with her comments. She spoke in a really tiny voice, and she always referred to the Beatles in a peculiar, impersonal third-party way: "Beatles will do this, Beatles will do that," never failing to leave off the "The." That used to really irritate Paul. On occasion, he'd even try correcting her: "Actually, it's the Beatles, luv," but she persistently ignored him.

I stand by what I said in response to Get Back - Yoko Ono didn't break up the Beatles, but Lennon used her as one of his methods to break up the Beatles.

Emerick again:

We were working on the backing track to "The End"-the song designed to conclude the album's long medley-when the four Beatles trooped upstairs to listen to some playbacks. Yoko stayed behind, stretched out languorously in the bed, wearing the usual flimsy nightgown and tiara.

As we were listening, I noticed that something down in the studio had caught George Harrison's attention. After a moment or two he began staring bug-eyed out the control room window. Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison's Leslie cabinet, which had a packet of McVitie's Digestive Biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer.

"THAT BITCH!!!"

Everyone looked aghast, but we all knew exactly who he was talking about.

"She's just taken one of my biscuits!" Harrison explained. He wasn't the least bit sheepish, either. As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near them. Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio), because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.

Actually, I think the argument was not so much about the biscuits, but about the bed, which they had all come to deeply resent. What Harrison was really saying was "if Yoko is well enough to get out of bed and steal one of my biscuits, she doesn't need to be in the bloody bed in the first place." It almost didn't matter what the argument was about. By this stage, whenever the four of them were together it was like a tinderbox, and anything could set them off...even something as dumb as a digestive biscuit.