Thursday, June 1, 2017

Ivanka Trump's Shoes




Such tensions are fueling the drive of Huajian’s founder, Mr. Zhang, to move work to Ethiopia. A former drill sergeant in the Chinese military who sometimes leads his workers on parade-ground drills, Mr. Zhang says work like making shoes will never return to the United States and is increasingly difficult in China as well.
“Do Americans really like to work, to do these simple and repetitive tasks?” said Mr. Zhang, in the December interview. “Young Chinese also don’t want to do this after they graduate from college.”
from the NYTimes 

Ivanka makes shoes for the loaded,
From factories that are outmoded.
The Chinese who toil
For her in turmoil
To Addis Ababa are goaded.

What Lou Jacobs Said About Laughter



What do you think of when you hear Chopin's haunting Etude Op. 10, #3?
Leaves falling on a dreary Autumn day? Past loves and regrets? The impossibility of breaking through the solitude of existence?
When I hear that refrain I think of the Keystone Kops. Of spills out of windows or into ponds of water. Of pastry tossed about with a wild disregard for the laws of physics. Of hats thrown and crushed and battered by disgruntled spouses, rivals, or bosses. Of the tremendous silence that comes after a lifetime of tremendous laughter.
For that lovely bit of Chopin was appropriated in 1957 for the film "The Golden Age of Comedy".  A compilation of film clips from the silent movie masters of comedy like Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chase, and the unhinged Keystone Kops.
I saw that movie at a revival in 1961 at the old Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, next to the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. As it played, I heard for the first time in my life the true belly laugh -- a gasping, wheezing near-death experience where a man or woman drools and snorts in a paroxysm of mirth. There were moments during that screening when the audience's laughter seemed to lift me into a strange new dimension -- one I wanted very much to understand and conquer.  
It was a career epiphany for me. I wanted to obtain the same kind of comic influence those herky jerky figures on the screen possessed, that could make a crowd dissolve into helpless delight.
As an eight-year old I had no idea how to achieve such distinction, but I was determined to find out. So I was in every school play; the part didn't matter, for I would wind up tripping over my own shoes and taking spectacular pratfalls that had my teachers terrified I would break my neck. I read the wonderful and abundant clown biographies of the day -- Mr. Laurel & Mr. Hardy, by John McCabe; W.C. Fields; His Follies and Fortunes, by Robert Lewis Taylor; Keaton, by Rudi Blesch; Father Goose, by Gene Fowler; and Notes on a Cowardly Lion, by John Lahr.  I haunted the local Film Societies, sitting in the dark and learning from the nimble Old Masters of slapstick.
I even wrote an entire Marx Brothers play, in longhand. And had the effrontery to mail it to Douglas Campbell, the Artistic Director of the renowned Guthrie Theater. He actually responded several weeks later, with a brief note thanking me for my submission and suggesting I have someone type it up so he could actually read it.
To me all this was a deadly serious pursuit. As the years slid past my adolescent passion to make people laugh turned into an obsession.
Walking home from school in the middle of a deep Minnesota winter, I would pry up sheets of ice from sidewalk puddles, then smash them over my head and stagger about like Curly Howard or Chaplin after being hit with a mallet. I carried banana peels with me, the better to impress the girls with my balletic slides and tumbles. (It didn't work.)
The world would never hold any satisfaction for me, unless I could stick my tongue out at it as a paid professional.
What kept my parents from sending me off to a laughing academy was the fortuitous opening of the Ringling Brothers Clown College. The school actively sought amateur clowns of every stripe. As soon as I was out of high school I was on my way to Venice, Florida, to enter the school's unhallowed halls. That’s where I heard the matchless Lou Jacobs say “It’s no good trying to hold onto a laugh -- it just goes rotten quick, like a ripe peach.”

And all because I had once seen Charlie Murray hit Louise Fazenda with a two-by-four on the screen of the Varsity Theater.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Thank you, Barbara Crum!




To the multitudinous readers who liked “The Cruelty of Clown Alley,” I want to say a big “ankThay youyay!” Your support sweetens my days and brightens my nights.

Joe Giordano; Gabriel Romero Sr.; Mike Weakley; Stymie Beard; Sandy Weber; Chris Twiford; Leo Acton; Mike Johnson; Keith Holt; Patty Malo; James D. Howard; David Orr; Michael Thomas; Connie Pritchard Reinhardt; Kel Parry; Tonica Johnson; Barbara Crum; Kenneth L Stallings; Fay Janzen Schmitt; Tony Spalding; Marion Seidel; Vic Brisbin; Kevin Smykal; Kim Ruest; Brian Koch; Dave Letterfly; Laura Sutton; Chris Moss; Bill Rothe; and the prodigious Erik Bartlett.

“Live your story first -- then write it down.”  Amy Tan


Kathy Griffin



Kathy Griffin continues to drown in backlash over a gruesome photo shoot that enraged President Trump, drew widespread bipartisan criticism, and has now cost the comedian her long-time New Year’s Eve co-host job with CNN.  The comedian and reality TV star apologized Tuesday night for a shocking picture in which she was seen holding a prop of Trump’s bloody, severed head.



Beheading your own chief-of-state
On most people is sure to grate.
Katherine Griffin
No longer has tiffin
With anyone but a blind date.

Ruling by tweet is absurd




Ruling by tweet is absurd.
Just why should we cherish a word
From some texting fool
Who thinks he is cool --

His musings should all be interred.

A Candy Bar Wrapped in Seaweed



A growing number of entrepreneurs and researchers are working to turn foods like mushrooms, kelp, milk and tomato peels into edible — if not always palatable — replacements for plastics, coatings and other packaging materials.


A candy bar wrapped in seaweed
Dampens my caramel greed.
I don’t want my meat
Bound up in a sheet
Of pulverized parakeet seed!


No Summer Peaches?



For almost all Southerners, a summer without a seemingly endless supply of peaches is unthinkable. But growers say the unthinkable is about to happen in America’s cobbler belt. A double punch of unseasonably warm winter weather and an ill-timed freeze has devastated the peach crop.



The people who live in Savannah
Consider the peach to be manna --
A nectarous dream,
Served up with some cream --

But now all they’ve got is banana!

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Ben Carson



The mindset of paupers is weak,
And that’s why their outlook is bleak.
Ben Carson proposes
That no bed of roses

Be offered to poverty’s clique.

Restaurant Review: The Purple Turtle, in Pleasant Grove.



The Purple Turtle at 85 East State Road in Pleasant Grove serves your basic burgers and fries fare in a competent and plentiful manner. Their specialty is fish and chips. So naturally I had to try that.



I was accompanied by my daughter Sarah and her three kids. It was just he place for them. Everything is either tile, Formica, stainless steel, or linoleum, so it didn't matter how much they spilled, or where they spilled it. Family friendly to the max.



Of course I had to play the Last of the Big Time Spenders.
"Get whatever you want -- don't worry about the price!" I boomed loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear. And they did.
We had two orders of fish and chips; one chicken nugget kiddie meal; one grilled cheese sandwich kiddie meal; two kiddie shakes; and one fountain drink. (Sarah always just has water.) The total for this feast was $37.64. I paid an additional two dollars for special 'British" chips for my meal -- which proved to be the only disappointment in the whole shebang. They were rather mushy, more like mashed potatoes than the real crisp deal that Britons cherish so highly.



The fact of the matter is that I ate only three of my special chips, and then scarfed down Sarah's sweet potato fries -- which were very good indeed. I'm giving this place 3.5 burps out of a possible 4. The service is quick and friendly, the food is good and filling, and there's plenty of parking. Oh, and it would be nice if they had some bottles of malt vinegar handy for the fish . . .

In Iowa Immigrants Slash



In Iowa immigrants slash
At carcasses for ready cash.
The locals refuse
Such labor to choose --

They’re happy to stay just white trash.