Month: May 2022

Muuuuuuuunnnday…

Today is Liberation Day in Guernsey and Jersey. On 9 May 1945, HMS Bulldog arrived in St Peter Port, Guernsey, and the German forces surrendered unconditionally aboard the vessel at dawn. The same day, HMS Beagle, which had set out from Plymouth, arrived in Jersey to accept the surrender of the occupying forces there. Sark was liberated on 10 May 1945, and the German troops in Alderney surrendered on 16 May 1945.

Deep End
irritatingwhine

Motherhood

Jonah’s mother: “That’s a nice story. Now tell me where you’ve really been for the last three days.”

Mrs. Columbus: “I don’t care what you discovered — you still could have written!”

Mrs. Angelo: “Michael, why can’t you paint on walls, like other children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?”

Mona Lisa’s mother: “After all the money your father and I spent on braces, that’s the biggest smile you can give us?”

Mrs. Bonaparte: “All right, if you aren’t hiding your report card inside your jacket, take your hand out of there and show me.”

Mrs. Revere: “I don’t care where you think you have to go, young man. Midnight is past your curfew!”

Mrs. Washington: “The next time I catch you throwing money across the Potomac, you can kiss your allowance goodbye!”

Mrs. Lincoln: “Again with the stovepipe hat? Why can’t you just wear a baseball cap like the other kids?”

Mrs. Edison: “Of course I’m proud that you invented the electric light bulb, Tommy. Now turn it off and go to bed!”

Mrs. Einstein: “But it’s your senior picture, Albert. Can’t you do something about your hair? Styling gel, mousse, something?”

Mrs. Locks: “I just got a bill for a broken chair from the Bear family. You know anything about this, Goldie?”

Mrs. Muffet: “Well, if you don’t get off your tuffet and start cleaning your room, there’ll be a lot more spiders around here!”

Mrs. Kent: “Clark, your father and I have decided to get you your own telephone. Now will you quit spending so much time in phone booths?”

Getting close to wedding season…

Today is the birthday, in 1941, of Danny Rapp, frontman for the doo-wop group Danny and the Juniors.

Posted by Tom in doo-wop, Humor, Music

Books and Books…

I’ve been remiss in reporting on my reading. Here are some of my recent reads.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is a great writer. He’s published three novels in the last five years and two of them have won the Pulitzer Prize. He also won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016. The man has skills.

This book is a little lighter in tone and a bit more fun than his previous works. I liked it a lot. This book is set (naturally) in Harlem and begins in 1959. The protagonist is an enjoyable character named Ray Carney who is a husband, father and the owner of Carney’s Furniture on 125th street. Carney is a decent man and a striving furniture retailer but with a sideline in fencing. For a small fee he will take your stolen TV or radio or brooch to a retailer downtown.

He doesn’t consider himself a crook, though. From his perspective he is just “facilitating the churn” of stolen objects, transforming them into legit merchandise. Through his cousin Freddy, though, he does get involved in a real crime. Freddie and his ne’er do well friends enlist him as a fence for their stickup of the Hotel Theresa, “Headquarters of the Negro world”. Whitehead’s description of the heist is fun. “Robbing the Hotel Theresa,” Whitehead writes, was like “slipping Jackie Robinson a Mickey the night before the World Series.” The ramifications of this theft and Carney’s reluctant involvement trigger a series of events, near-misses, murders, tragedies, and thrills that drive the novel’s action.

Ray Carney is a man of wit and a street corner philosopher. He’s also a dedicated family man who loves his wife and child. On the other hand, his in-laws can’t stand him – for one thing, he’s darker than their light-skinned daughter, and he isn’t part of the “Talented Tenth” they’d preferred she marry.

“… Says she wants herself a college man, and I said, I went to college — “

“UCLA,” Carney helped out.

“That’s right — University of the Corner of Lenox Avenue!” The old joke.

This is Ray’s community and neighborhood. We take in the people, sights, and sounds of Harlem from his point of view, from chapter to chapter, from year to year. Whitehead has created a character who exemplifies the classic heist anti-hero while also giving the reader a penetrating look into a Black man’s life in Harlem in the 1960s and the circumstances he might not be able to avoid. No matter how much trouble he finds, we can’t help but root for Ray Carney every step of the way.

I really enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend it. You will enjoy it!

A Brief History of Seven Killings | CBC Books

Let me say at the outset that the title of this book is a bit of irony. There is nothing brief about this book – the hardback version is about 700 pages. I haven’t counted but I think there might be seven killings in the first fifty pages.

It’s a busy book. Characters include the would-be assassins, various gang bosses, journalists and CIA officers. There’s the ghost of a politician, and an even more ghostly Bob Marley, referred to throughout the book simply as “The Singer.” Basically it’s one life after another impacted by violence, music and politics. All of them stuffed, and I do mean stuffed, into a novel of 700 or so pages, told from over a dozen viewpoints, over the course of 30-odd years.

The first part of the book revolves around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. The second part of the book is based in part on the real-life story of the Shower Posse, who began their rise in ­early-’60s Kingston and spread to America, where, by the 1980s, they controlled much of the crack trade in New York and Miami — in the book, they form an alliance with Griselda Blanco of the Medellín ­cartel.

The beginning of the book goes back to when Edward Seaga and the Jamaican Labor Party used the gangs as enforcers in the slums of Tivoli Garden and the rival party, the People’s National Party led my Michael Manley.

This turf war led to spiraling poverty and savage violence. It was the kind of trauma described and transmuted into song by the great Bob Marley (referred to in the novel as the Singer), who in 1976, amid unprecedented bloodshed, announced a free concert to promote peace in Kingston. (Marley was himself caught between the J.L.P. and P.N.P., along with their criminal gangs.) At the same time, outside forces including the C.I.A., anti-Castro Cubans and the Colombian drug cartels were converging on Jamaica with money and guns. All of these characters appear in the book.

It’s a tricky book to read. Each chapter is narrated by a different character. There is a lot of violence and savagery, we are talking about slums here and people encouraged by outside forces to be violent to each other. Not all of the characters are likeable. But it’s a story of people on the wrong side of history and maybe doing the best they can. It’s a long book, but a good one and a dark look at some of the effects of colonialism.

Give it a try. I should mention that it won the Man Booker Prize – not too shabby.

Posted by Tom in Books, Literature

finally FRIDAY!

Today is St. George’s Day in Bulgaria, also known as the Day of Valour and of the Bulgarian Armed Forces.

Signzzzzzz

But cats actually help with jigsaw puzzles!

Cats vs. puzzles: mortal enemies.
Cats vs. puzzles: mortal enemies.
Cats vs. puzzles: mortal enemies.
Cats vs. puzzles: mortal enemies.
Cats vs. puzzles: mortal enemies.

On this day in 1978, the soundtrack album to Saturday Night Fever started an 18 week run at number one. The album featured 7 tracks by the Bee Gees.

Posted by Tom in Humor, Music, sixties and seventies

seems like another THURSDAY

Today, in addition to being ‘Cinco de Mayo’ which commemorates the Battle of Puebla, it is Arrival Day in Guyana. Also known as Indian Arrival Day, this day commemorates the arrival of the first indentured labourers from India on May 5th 1838. By the time the indentured system ended in 1920, British Guiana had received 238,909 workers from India. Today their descendants comprise 44% of Guyana’s population of over 750,000.

When you slack off on hygiene during the pandemic…

pyjamasPLEATED
Are we supposed to pray over leftovers? Lord, it's me again with these tacos...

Leave it under the doormat.

Hilariously terribly hidden package.
Hilariously terribly hidden package.
Hilariously terribly hidden package.
Hilariously terribly hidden package.
Hilariously terribly hidden package.

On this day in 1967, the Young Rascals started a four-week stint at number one on the pop chart with this.

Posted by Tom in Humor, Music, sixties and seventies

Smells like WEDNESDAY

Today is Cassinga Day in Namibia, a public holiday. The day commemorates the Cassinga Massacre that took place on May 4th 1978 During the Namibian War of Independence from South Africa. On the morning of May 4th 1978, the South African Defence Force launched a major air strike on a SWAPO (South West Africa Peoples Organization) camp near the village of Cassinga in Angola. The air attack was followed by an assault by paratroopers. The official toll of the Cassinga Raid was a total of 624 dead and 611 injured. Among the dead were 167 women and 298 teenagers and children.

Now back to our regular program.

Street art – Berlin

Nothing more to say here…

poweroftheBJ

Buy something for your kids!

Today is the birthday, in 1944, of Peggy Santiglia, singer-songwriter of the ‘girl group’ era. She’s best known for this 1963 pop hit which was recorded when she was 18.

Posted by Tom in Humor, Music, sixties and seventies