JEAN SHEPHERD–the joys of Spam
A one-off before continuing with Shep’s kid stories.
How would Shepherd have reacted to spam?
When camping in the wilderness, I enjoyed it un-canned and fried hot.
SPAM-A-LOT
As of May, 2018, wordpress.com, my blog provider, has protected me from lots of spam: “Akismet has protected your site from 21,600 spam comments already. There’s 1 comment in your spam queue right now.” They also give the opportunity to see a fraction of these in the “spam queue.” I suppose it’s for me to decide that they are indeed spam. Yes, they are.
One consistent trait is that they never comment on anything specific in the blog, but just use generalities, yet seem aimed at enticing a direct response. I never respond. Another attribute of these phishing expeditions is that, although they’re written using English words, any member of the grammar-police as I am, can easily see that the results of the word mash-ups are not the product of your normal English language user. The results provoke a smile and shake of the head. I thought others might find a few of them amusing. The following have been directly copied/pasted:
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Next, further Shep Kid Stories.
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JEAN SHEPHERD Bolis Story End & (163) ARTSY Don McLean
He says, “Well, I’m marrying Stella. And you’re invited. We’re getting married the Monday after graduation.”
I say, “Bolis, you don’t know her. Gee, she looks like a nice girl, Bolis.”
“It’s good. Nice girl.”
I say, “Yeah, very nice.”
And Bolis says, “Yes, I believe she is a very nice girl.”
“Bolis, how’d you get together?”
“My mother and father got together with her mother and father and decided we should be married.”
I say, “Oh. She never knew about you?”
“Oh, yes, I guess my mother and father must have spoken to her mother and father about us, but, we’re going to be very happy.”
And I was ushered out into the darkness. With my baseball glove in my left hand and my baseball in my right. But, I will say one thing—I was wearing my White Sox cap a little straighter.
I walked out into the darkness. I could smell the spring flowers just beginning to bud. Overhead the sky arched with a million stars, and somewhere, a mile or two over the horizon, the Great Lake that we had bathed in and played on lo these many years, sent a soft fragrance of spring through the air. It was then that I knew—our scragging days were over forever. Forever and ever.
[END OF PART 10.]
Final 2 stories to come. Shep the kid develops into a man.
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DON McLEAN BREAKS A STRING, ETC.
Don McLean’s “American Pie” is one of my favorite songs.
(I also very much like his “Vincent” and “Dreidel.”)
I’ve seen him perform live three times.
One of those times was in a small church basement in Manhattan, where there must have been a hundred or less in the audience. I had my sheet music of “American Pie” with me and asked him to sign it. At first the pen didn’t work and, to get it started, he squiggled twice on the page—and I winced—he was marring it! He then signed it with a flourish beneath. So I have his signature, his flourish, and his two authentic squiggles.
The first time I’d attended a live concert of his was at Carnegie Hall in 1973.
*
Another of my major memories was his television performance on Austin City Limits (1982?). The You-tube of the song doesn’t have the purity and finish of the official recording, and it’s blurry, but it has the vigor of a live performance and McLean’s reaction to a damn string.
With backup instrumentalists, he began singing “American Pie.” In the middle of it, one of his guitar strings broke but he kept singing–while wrenching out the broken string, picking up packets of replacement strings, installing a new one and tuning it. So without having hesitated he continued singing and playing his restrung guitar to the song’s conclusion.
It was a glorious moment in the immortal life of “American Pie.”
He did this so smoothly and seemingly unperturbed—with what I refer to as
total ARTSY FARTSY aplomb.
*
I remember another moment.
In the era of CD audios I bought one of his “greatest hits.”
In it, disc producers had truncated “American Pie.”
I guess 8 minutes was too long to fit with the rest on the disc.
I flung it into the garbage and bought a complete version.
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JEAN SHEPHERD–Bolis almost at the end & (162) ARTSY A Horse’s Legs
I say, “Yeah.” I’m standing here with my baseball glove and I’ve got a baseball with tape on it. Which is even more embarrassing. I didn’t bring my Sunday baseball, the one without the tape. My tennis shoes, my sweatshirt that says Bluebird Tavern number 12, I’ve got my White Sox cap on sideways.
Bolis says, “Would you care to have a glass of wine?”
Wine! What is this?! I’m still vaguely deciding whether Nehi Orange is or is not better than Ovaltine.
“Would you care to have a glass of wine? Sit down.”
So the four of us sit very stiffly. Mrs. Rutkowski, Stella, Bolis, and me at the kitchen table, and all the while I can see the people having this party. I can see a long table with turkeys and stuff all over.
Bolis turns to me and says, “I’m glad you came over tonight, Shep. I’m very pleased. This is a very important moment of my life, and this is the night that I met Stella, and we’re pleased that you’re coming to our wedding.”
This is the night he met Stella! They’re gonna get married! I lean over to Bolis while Stella and his mother are talking in Polish. I whisper, “Bolis, what’s this all about?”
He nudges me. Five minutes later, Stella and Mrs. Rutkowski go out to the guests, and there’s only me and Bolis in the kitchen.
I said, “Bo, what is this about?”
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WATCHING FOR A TELLTALE LIMP
Among recent New York Times photos that seem to be more eye-catching, quirky, and dramatic than they used to be, is the recent front page image of the Saturday sports section. It’s a photo of (part of) the Preakness favorite, Justify, the article describing the potential problem with a leg. For me, the 10” X 10” image, is a very good and clever way to graphically make an attention-catching statement—nothing but four legs in the air going over a watery place on a practice course. What an extraordinary picture!
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JEAN SHEPHERD Kid Story–Bolis & (161) ARTSY NY Times photo
I say, “Bolis told you he’s getting married?! And you didn’t ask him who he’s marrying?”
He says, “Yeah, I asked him.”
“Well, who is it?”
“He doesn’t know.”
I say, “Bolis doesn’t know? Who he’s getting married…Aw, common, Schwartz. You’re puttin’ me on! Aw, crying’ out…”
He says, “No, I’m not kidding! He’s getting married and he doesn’t know who he’s marrying!”
I say, “Wait a minute, Schwartz.” I can see this—when you get to know a guy real good, you know when he’s not kidding. And Schwartz is not kidding. I say, “Now wait a minute, Schwartz, you tell me that Bolis is getting married and he doesn’t know the girl he’s marrying?”
And Schwartz says, “That’s right.”
“Are you sure he’s not putting you on?”
“No, he is not. He told me he’s getting married and his brother told me he’s getting married, and they asked me if I wanted to come to the wedding. And they said that I should invite you and Flick, and Bruner if he wants to come.”
Man, this is serious! We’re invited to the wedding! When they start talking like that!
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NY TIMES PHOTO COMPOSITIONS
I’ve previously described some of what I categorize as “The New York Times Newspaper Wars.” Esthetically pleasing photos of often sad/horrific events. How does one view such things? How does one come to terms with the attractive visual appeal versus the often tragic event that’s depicted with such thoughtful, artistic care?
Such responses sometimes evoke another question. Is an elegant pictorial effect purely a matter of being in the right place at the right time and recognizing the visual appeal? Although sometimes one might wonder if the result is such a felicitous happening or if a photographer assists the image by positioning the objects or posing the people. With Henri Cartier-Bresson, I trust that his photos aren’t posed. Cartier-Bresson is noted for his black and white images that seemed to capture a scene at The Decisive Moment, as a book of his photos is titled in English. Although some of his work can be called reportage, more importantly it is photography as art.
Three of Cartier-Bresson’s Best Known Photos.
An Internet site quotes part of his introduction to The Decisive Moment, and I quote part of that in its English translation:
In photography there is a new kind of plasticity, the product of instantaneous lines made by movements of the subject. We work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment on the way in which life itself unfolds. But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance.
Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.
The photographer’s eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimeter. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees.
Sometimes it happens that you stall, delay, wait for something to happen. Sometimes you have the feeling that here are all the makings of a picture – except for just one thing that seems to be missing. But what one thing? Perhaps someone suddenly walks into your range of view. You follow his progress through the viewfinder. You wait and wait, and then finally you press the button – and you depart with the feeling (though you don’t know why) that you’ve really got something.
Although some of his images are striking in their composition, it’s that essential moment infused with a human situation that takes precedence. In a way, that captured moment seems a fundamental essence of what photography can uniquely do.
*
While appealing to the eye, a newspaper photo’s purpose is to report an event expressed in a pictorially truthful way. In some of the photos that strike me forcefully in The Times or elsewhere, I wonder if some parts of what is so striking in the composition were carefully shifted or even placed into the view by the photographer to improve the result. A recent image, front page, May 8, 2018, brought this question to mind. I’m not in any way suggesting that the photographer did this—I simply don’t know—I’m simply in admiration regarding the final achievement. I’d like to believe that the photographer, like Cartier-Bresson, purely found the decisive moment and captured it.
I like the way the composition uses the hammock pole’s framing from upper left, slightly tilted downward as it moves to the right, and with a hammock part there angled down toward the middle. They break–the image so asymmetrically, placing the sad woman with the small child to one side. The woman on the far left in red forms a visual balance to the red-bloused woman and child, yet the rope hanging down on the left somewhat dulls that red, allowing the red-bloused woman and child on the right to dominate. And how convenient that red bowl, below, between them and almost in the middle—it forms with them three corners of a triangle of red pieces while also filling the foreground with an object of interest that prevents the whole composition from falling out the bottom. The seated woman, who looks toward the woman on the right, helps focus our attention on her. The scene is dramatically composed in sunlight and shadow.
The Times lately has been using bigger, more dramatic photos
and more interesting graphics in its pages.
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JEAN SHEPHERD–more scragging & (160) ARTSY discussions
We were seniors. We were about to graduate. It was the middle of March, and the last day of April was the day we were going to get measured for our caps and gowns. There was a lot of talk about that. They’d already taken orders for the rings. We were running around with our little invitations for who we were going to invite to the senior prom. There was a lot of worry about that and I had a big argument at home about whether I could use my old man’s car. I had this rotten car.
So we were in that long, sliding, upward glide going inevitably toward graduation day. The four years are behind us. Me and Bolis and Schwartz and Flick hanging around talking about what we’re going to do after we graduate. We’ve got all these comments we’re making about each other’s rings, robes, and stuff.
And then one day. I’m walking along the street. I remember it vividly—because—well, certain memories are etched in your mind. The way tattoos are etched on your epidermis. Schwartz is walking towards me. It is about an hour after school and I’m on the ball team and we’ve been having our afterschool practice session, which was cut short because the ground was wet. I’ve got my baseball shoes with me, I’ve got my glove, I’ve got my little green airline sack full of other junk, sweatshirts and stuff, and I see Schwartz, and Schwartz had just finished his paper route, and Schwartz is walking towards me and I know the minute that I see him that something is wrong. His face is white.
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At the top of my www.shepquest.wordpress.com home page is a topic button titled ABOUT. It contains my description of what I continually hope the blog will be, including this comment: “I encourage everyone to submit ideas, information, and questions to this blog so we can all learn by participating in open discussions regarding every aspect of Shepherd’s creative world.”
I began the blog in February, 2013 and hope to continue it for quite a while. Over the last year or so I’ve been adding illustrated essays on the arts I’ve been involved in: ARTSY FARTSY. That artsy section has about come to a close, simply because, after 158 essays on various topics, I have little else to relay.
Just as I began a draft of this essay I received a comment from a follower of the blog, who writes in part: “Just want you to know that I have enjoyed all your writings that I have read — your Shep books, and your writing in this column. I was surprised at your Artsy Fartsy writings because I never knew of your interest in these things.” Her comments are very gratifying! Another follower had earlier commented that my artsy essays suggested that I am a “Renaissance Man.” Of course I’m flattered—but my insufficient creative inventiveness precludes such an exalted title (no flying machine inventions, no “Mona Lisa” portraits).
I thank all of you who have encouraged me in my Shep and Artsy posts. I recognize that, in our vast world, it’s unlikely that everyone would be conversant or even enthusiastic regarding many of my specific subjects. Now that there are few if any artsys left to post, besides the joy in doing them that I’ve expressed before, I’ve been somewhat disappointed. I’d expected to pique sufficient interest to elicit more replies, to arouse enough interest for some to pursue the subject a bit and respond to the essays with their thoughts, either positive or negative. Following are a few of the artsy topics I’ve covered and the sort of responses I still hope for. (Note that my Shep essays on Bugatti and Dee Snider I find especially relevant to my artsy accumulation.)
A FEW OF THE POSTED ARTSY SUBJECTS I’VE HOPED TO INTERACT ABOUT
GUERNICA COLORIZATION KIT: what is the nature of historical depictions of violence and how is “Guernica” a good or bad response to that? Is that Picasso guy worth all the adulation?
CEZANNE’S ANGRY PATCH: I believe my discovery of Cezanne’s way of sometimes solving his pictorial space is significant. Doesn’t anyone have any thoughts that they’d like to share about the successes and failures of artists such as Cezanne and Picasso?
EMOTION OUTRANKS TECHNIQUE: My somewhat preference for emotion over technique in art must produce some agreement or disagreement. Any pros or cons?
ART OR CRAFT: Are there worthwhile distinctions? What is the nature of art, the nature of craft, and how do they relate? Show and tell me, please.
SCULPTED LANDSCAPES: Machu Picchu enthusiasts? Vietnam Memorial lovers or haters? Even Scottish golf links! Is Mount Rushmore art? Comments? Other examples?
ARTISTS’ BOOKS: They constitute a wide, yet insufficiently acknowledged world. Discussion? Other examples?
GRAPHIC NOVELS: Can they be art? Other examples? Most all book reviews of them I’ve read merely discuss the visuals as illustration to the text—so ignorant, so unfair!
CAVE ART: After decades seeing reproductions and photos, holding the originals in one’s hand! Any thoughts/experiences from other fields of interest? How is the experience of originals different?
FLUTES: Through the sound holes, feeling one’s living breath on one’s fingertips—any other such experiences with musical instruments? Jean Shepherd occasionally, with whimsy, commented on what it’s like to play a sousaphone/tuba.
DEE SNIDER OF TWISTED SISTER: Any opinions on his act and the seeming distinctions between act and ideas in his “The Price”? (The song focuses on the price one pays for the means it can take to pursue one’s aspirations.)
“SUMMERTIME”: What is the nature of interpretation that changes the original “artwork”? This should open up discussion of the whole nature of jazz.
Upon being shown the YouTube of Billy Stewart singing his abstract expressionist “Summertime,” a friend alerted me to the ending of the 2003 movie by the Farrelly brothers, Stuck On You, in which the police invade a musical theater production of “Bonnie & Clyde, the Musical,” and the star must prove he is not the real outlaw, but just a singer. He does a complete and near-perfect rendition of Billy Stewart’s “Summertime.” An artsy, elaborate homage to the 1956 Stewart creation.
BULLS: Surely there are many who disagree with any and all defenses of bullfighting! (PS, I love dogs very much and have had them for half my life. The only animals I’ve ever harmed are mosquitoes, flies, spiders, roaches, and ants.)
NEW YORK TIMES: There must be many pro and con thoughts regarding the publication’s attributes.
BUGATTI: Can any car be a “work of art”? In what way?
DYLAN, MAILER, SEINFELD, THE VAMPIRE LADY: Opinions on any of these people?
WARHOL, “FLAMING CREATURES”: Any ideas on art related to Campbell’s Soup cans and what may be considered pornography?
INTESTINAL DISTRESS: TV ads as art and as maybe just offensive annoyances. I find that Preparation H’s recent TV ad focusing on the real town of Kiester, Minnesota to be a clever take on what’s usually a problematic subject to discuss.
WACKY AIR DANCERS: Fascinating or just annoying? Why?
SHEPHERD, MASLOW, RECENT EVENTS: Should all the arts be supported? One of the few responses I got about any of my artsys complained that he hadn’t expected “politics” to ever be a part of my five-year-old blog—not even this once. What might the arguments be for and against supporting the arts? (I find this to be a “political” subject only in our current, wacky world.)
I could go on and on, but enough!
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shepquest 