but here are some of the ones that get me. no, you won't learn anything about my health in this entry. except, perhaps, mental.
a few from Tom Lehrer, Harvard math professor and genius satirist who released three albums in the 50's and early 60's and has not released an album since.
he was asked why.
"Political Satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize."
he was asked why he doesn't play concerts anymore.
"I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record."
In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them all...but you can't say 'girl.'
Many people today spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if you can't communicate, the very least you can do is to shut up.
Maybe just on the same topic...or maybe just as bright...is what Willis Alan Ramsey, who recorded one record in the early 1970's replied when asked when he was going to record another:
"Why? What was wrong with the first one?"
Not all my faves are cynical. this one is from "Ode to a Grecian Urn", by Keats:
""Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."heavy.
The Thirtieth Anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, in October 1997, was as much poetry as music...what to do while the bands set up...a San Francisco poet named Diane DiPrima said something I'll never forget:
"The only war is the war against the imagination. In that, all other wars are subsumed."
kathy suggests "e=mc squared." that and the double helix, I suppose. but it seems to be getting farther from the category of things I've heard of being said...
what's world class bright about both of those things is genius model construction. we have the data...what model does it suggest about how the world works? to consider the double helix, you have to first visualize it...to find the relationship between the energy given off by matter in an atomic reaction and the constant of the speed of light (squared), you have to first be open to the thought that energy, mass, and the speed of light could be related.
heady stuff. but not a pithy observation about the art of living.
I'm kind of fond of "why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip? to get to the same side."
ok, I'll risk being thought egoistic and obscene to boot (my chances of avoiding so being thought of seem slim anyway) and include my joke about my dad:
when I was 8 years old, my dad said to me,
son, I'm no fool. I know whatever I say, you're going to masturbate anyway.
turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy...
I can't believe a human could write these Tom Verlaine lyrics...he has tons of amazing ones
Janie says her heart is just a watch for telling time
goodbye
her hands upon my face turn these hours into days.
also "watching the corners turn corners"
also "new czar in the nothing regime"
ok, I'll throw in :
"I don't know why you're wishin and hopin'
when we could be kaleidoscopin'"
I'm kind of fond of Richard Thompson's :
"you got to ride out in one direction
until you find the right connection."
I think that justifies all sorts of extremist behavior...
lisa suggests, "War is Over if you Want It"
that is a gift that keeps on giving...
from recent religious works, I like a couple from the Star Wars Episodes 1-3...going for nerd cred here...
"Your focus determines your reality."
and when Qui-Gon, Anakin, and Jar-Jar land on Tattooine and go off into the desert to seek money to repair their space ship (which has always seemed stupid to me...you don't call Yoda and ask him to front you a few francs? you ever seen where those guys live? they must have some money stashed away somewhere...)
anyway, Jar-Jar is afraid of the desert. "oh, no, no, don't go out there, me'sa get robbed and crunched!"
Qui-Gon replies, "Jar-Jar, we don't have anything of value. That's our problem."
ain't perspective a wonderful thing?
I'll make it worse by including a rule I have:
when you're solving a problem and looking for causes, don't forget to consider the things you've been doing to solve the problem.
or, doc, I did what you said and used the leeches, but I still feel tired!
or, I'm taking the Prozac, but I'm still depressed!
there's a case to be made for Frank Zappa's "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."...except that I don't consider that a counter indication. dancing, good. talking, good.
among my wierdest guilty pleasures is watching, and having a fairly complete knowledge of, Friends.
I didn't want to. I've never seen an episode of "The Simpsons" I've seen one episode (twice) of Seinfeld and found no likeable characters either time. I thought Friends would just be 90's yuppie scum pandering.
which it was.
but my girlfriend liked it. so one day when she was not around (I have to have some pride, I suppose) I came in partway throughan episode ,several seasons in. Chandler was moving in with Monica, but she couldn't stand the thought of his barcalounger in her apartment. they fought. hilarity ensued. she saw the light though, and the next time he came over, she had a square taped on the living room floor that signified the only exact place she could stand to envision the chair sitting.
"You know what this means, don't you?", said Monica.
"Oh my God," said Chandler, "they've killed Square Man."
that (and Being John Malkovich) was my introduction to the Gen-X penchant for sideways.
sideways kind of does it for me.
I think it's the first episode where Rachel asks Phoebe to help her move.
she says, "I really wish I could help you out, but...I don't want to."
I think that's one of the dumbest smartest things I've ever heard said.
I count on losing 98% of the readership with this one.
perhaps the second proto-rap record ever made ("Hey, Little Girl" by The Syndicate of Sound being the first) was "Let it All Hang Out" by The Hombres. it had numerous mystical spoken moments ("Saw a man walk upside down, tv's on the blink, made Galileo look like a Boy scout, sorry 'bout that, let it all hang out.")
but the one that puzzled me was, "How does that mess your baby up, leg?"
since I am the person designated to think about these things, as all normal folk have better things to do, I said to myself...what phrase is he thinking of?
how does that mess your mind up, baby?
I can't tell you how many years it's been since I uttered that phrase. more likely to ever have been said by me was Nancy Sinatra's "How Does That Grab You, Darlin'?"...and I don't think I ever said that.
but using lyric calculus, we look for the first derivative which would be:
"how does that mess your baby up, mind?"
which gets us halfway there. and isn't unheard of...I've sung, "Mamas, don't let your Cowboys grow up to be Babies."
but the second derivative could well substitute another body part for "mind":
"how does that mess your baby up, leg?"
it's a Sixties thing. you wouldn't understand. lord knows I don't.
from the Reader's Digest: "Much of what is considered progress is more accurately the passing of various ideas in and out of fashion."
then there are the inadvertent wisdoms of commerce...I was always fond of "See Other Side" - good advice in any situation.
"This Page Left Intentionally Blank"well...it was blank...til you wrote on it...
if I ever join a punk band, I really want it to be called "Intentionally Blank"
Tom Lehrer says his 1040 form had a box mark, if blind, check this box. he always wanted to put a mark about three inches away from it.
the Zen guys do pretty well.
asked the meaning of life, the Master replied, "when hungry, eat; when tired , sleep."
I could see where the acolyte might want his money back...but...if you can eat and do nothing else while you do it, sleep and rest during it...live in the present, without acting out past conditioning...you've got a lot going for you
I like David Wilcox's, "If you come upon me neck deep in quicksand, before you try to help me, ask me if I'm done yet."
more me...the glory of a blog...
"Pathology is a sane response to an insane situation."
finally (really?) I remember coping with existentialism in college...those funsters have some words too..."hell is other people" and all...I remember my friend Dave in the 60's saying to me, "Life is meaningless" and me saying, "so what?"
...and wondering if there had been a definitive philosophical pendulum swing against the existentialists yet.
not sure there has been. but I don't think it's too wrong to think of the fifties rockers as Essentialists. it was in rock and roll I found my answer to what was taught to me as Existentialism...certainly having to contain the most intelligent things I've ever heard said.
I love what I love in such an immediate way, in heart and stomach, that larger questions just don't come up about it. and I think that was best expressed by Prof. Emeritus Richard Penniman in his definitive masterwork when he said,
"A Wop Bop A Lu Bop A Lop Bam Boom!"
No comments:
Post a Comment