For most of my life I’ve been an aspiring artist with my share of successes and failures. It’s really not about being successful or being a failure, it’s having the ability to create something that others find interesting. Regardless of a person’s ability, be it good or bad, there’s always a bevy of critics to look at your work, and then spend a great deal of time and effort cutting it to pieces with little or no concern about the work itself, or the effort and concentration you spent during its creation. I’m not really complaining about the critics because they’re a fact of life no matter what you do artistically or otherwise. Today I’ll offer up some blurbs made by some relatively famous critics about other artists and their work. They’re a bit sarcastic and a little nasty at times but that’s life. Here they are. . .
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
‘Still life with the Bulls Head’ “My little granddaughter of six could do as well.” Norman Rockwell
“If I met Picasso in the street, I would kick him in the pants.” Sir Alfred Munnings 1949
“Picasso finding new ways of avoiding maturity.” Clive James 1984
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
“If Michelangelo had been a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.” Rita Mae Brown 1988
“He was a good man, but he did not know how to paint.” El Greco
Salvador Dali(1904-1989)
“Faced with a virtual complete record of the old phony’s unswerving bathos, it was impossible not to burst out in yawning . . . the uproar of banality numbed the mind.” Clive James 1984
“Senor Dali, more than delirious, considers it folly to be serious.” Phyllis McGinley 1960
“The naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean piano with breasts.” James Thurber 1945
Andy Warhol (1930-1980)
“The most famous living artist in America is Andrew Warhol, unfortunately.” John Heilpern 1979
“Warhol’s art belongs less to the history of painting than to the history of publicity.” Hilton Kramer
“The only genius with an IQ of 60.” Gore Vidal
As you can see, even the most famous artists have people lined up to ridicule their art and everything else about them. I guess if you want to be famous, this is the price you must pay, listening to a bunch of jealous and envious critics. Even a chump like me has been criticized for virtually everything I’ve ever done artistically and truthfully that’s part of the fun for me.
Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress who worked in vaudeville and later in movies. She is best remembered for her dirty jokes and comedy movies. Her name when she was born was Mary Jane West. She was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and died in Hollywood, California.
Let’s have a little fun today. While I’m not the greatest sports fan who’s ever lived, I have a deep and abiding passion for baseball. Not listening to or watching games on television (other than the Little League World Series) but actual playing at it for many years. I find watching sports these days is as much fun as watching paint dry. They’re not the same games as they were when I was growing up. All that being said there are certain things about sports that are universal and forever and one of those is the words of wisdom spoken by Yogi Berra. He was a great ballplayer, but his little tidbits of wisdom made him more famous than baseball. I’ve picked up a few of them here and there over the years and then I discovered a gold mine of them in recent weeks. These are the ones I like the best and here they are for your enjoyment. Let’s go…
“This is like déjà vu all over again.”
“You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
In reference to movie star Steve Queen, “He must’ve made that movie before he died.”
When asked what he would do if he found $1 million, he stated, “I’d find the fellow who lost it and if he was poor, I’d return it.”
“Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.”
“A nickel isn’t worth a dime today.”
When asked for the time, he stated, “Do you mean now?”
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it wasn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”
“It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”
When asked about his hat size he stated, ” I don’t know. I’m not in shape yet.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
“I take a two-hour nap, from one o’clock to four.”
“You give 100% in the first half of the game, and if that isn’t enough, in the second half you give what’s left.”
“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
Well, there you have it folks. The sport of baseball hasn’t been the same since Yogi retired and passed away. We need more like him in all of today’s sports to keep us aware that it’s just a game for kids. That’s how it was before it became nothing but agents, money, negotiations, social media, media interviews, and a few hundred talking heads who think they have all the answers. They’ve all done their best to ruin “Americas Pastime” and it’s a damn shame.
Frederick Adolphus Sawyer (December 12, 1822 – July 31, 1891) was a United States Senator from South Carolina. Born in Bolton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1844. On the night of April 14, 1865, Sawyer was at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. and witnessed the assassination of President Lincoln.
The first mention of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was in the 5th century BCE. They were some of the greatest human achievements at that time. The list was used over the centuries by many medieval writers but was mainly concerned with the accomplishments of the Greek or Roman empires. At that time very little was known of faraway cultures and their creations. Here is the traditional list of seven:
Giza Pyramids (Egypt), The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Iraq), Temple of Artemis (Turkey), Statue of Zeus (Greece), the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (Turkey), the Colossus of Rhodes (Greece), and the Pharos of Alexandria (Egypt).
While these seven were indeed a wonder, there were many other places elsewhere on the globe with achievements worthy of mention. Here are just a few to make my point:
The Great Wall (China), Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Machu Picchu (Peru), the Taj Mahal (India), the Moai Statues (Easter Island), the Aztec Temple of Tenochtitlan (Mexico), the Shwedagon Pagoda (Myanmar), and the Coliseum (Italy).
These were just a few. I could easily have named at least two dozen more. Let’s change categories now to name the Seven Wonders of the Industrial Age.
The Transcontinental Railroad (USA), the London Sewer System England), the Panama Canal (Panama), Hoover Dam (USA), the Three Gorges Dam (China), the Banaue Rice Terraces (Philippines), and the Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland).
What about the modern world and it’s wonders? Here are seven more to consider:
Itaipu Dam (Brazil), the Channel Tunnel (England/France), the Twin Towers (USA), the Zuider Zee Dam (Netherlands), the Petronas Towers (Indonesia), the CN Tower (Canada), and the Burj Khalifa (UAE).
I’ve offered up a lot of information here and many will likely disagree with some of my choices. The point of this historical rampage was to show that creativity and wonder aren’t limited to one country or one continent. The wonders of the world are too numerous to list, and every country has their own favorites. I find it amazing that as a species we have so many similarities and so little understanding of each other. Maybe someday it will improve.
I stumbled upon a stack of old books recently which were reviews of 1940, 1941, 1945, and 1946. I thought it would be kind of fun to drop back into 1940 and get a handle on how things were then right in the middle of a war. It might give us a little context that we don’t have these days except for the damn pandemic.
A couple of famous celebrities were born in 1940, Jack Nicholas on January 21, and John Hurt on January 22. In 1940, Whitman Samplers were the cats-meow for that special date. The men wore wool suits and women wore uncomfortable dresses in order to fit in with current styles. Formal dancing, accompanied by the big band sounds of the day, was always a good way to conclude a celebrity event. Also, roller skating was a popular activity as well as school and church outings. Even in those activities men usually dressed in suits and ties while women dressed a bit more casually.
Now let me supply you with a few movies of that period that were tops at the box office. Boomtown, Fantasia, His Girl Friday, Knute Rockne All American, The Mark of Zorro, The Grapes of Wrath, Northwest Passage, and a kids favorite, Pinocchio. Walt Disney’s Fantasia initially was a financial disappointment. However, in subsequent years the film was edited several times, and eventually became one of the most noted and classic of all the Disney films
Fran Tarkington, a well-known football player was born on February 3. Smokey Robinson rolled in on February 19, and Peter Fonda followed on February 23. A more infamous birthday girl was born on March 26, good old liberal Nancy Pelosi.
With the depression over, consumer food intake became more dependent on canned foods such as soup, meat, and vegetables. Before Spam there was Prem, a tasty and delicious meat made of genuine sugar-cured pork.
The war in Europe continued. 1940 was a pivotal year for England when on July 10, Britain’s factories and military facilities were being bombed by Hitler’s Air Force. The ban on bombing British cities was lifted by Hitler and the blitz began and continued off and on throughout the year, destroying many parts of the cities. Hitler also began marching west and slowly but surely began taking over most of Europe. The British troops were contained at Dunkirk and due to aid from a massive flotilla of private boats were able to be saved from destruction and returned to Britain.
The 1939-1940 World’s Fair was held at Flushing Meadows in New York and was the largest world’s fair of all-time. It featured exhibits like a keyboard operated speech synthesizer, color photography, nylon, air-conditioning, the View Master and the later unsuccessful Smell-O-Vision, among many others.
Sports checking revealed the National Football League, where the Chicago Bears of the Western division defeated the Washington Redskins of the Eastern division 73-0, in one of the most one-sided games in professional football history.
Alex Trebek was born on July 22 and Ringo Starr was born on July 7. The Saturday Evening Post magazine was the biggest seller in those days.
Roadways would be constructed at a fast pace. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, the first tunneled United States superhighway, opened on October 1, 1940. The Arroyo-Seco Parkway was dedicated in December and became the first Los Angeles freeway. The Queens-Midtown Tunnel in New York opened on November 15. Unfortunately, it was also the year that the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed only months after its completion, earning the nickname of “Galloping Gertie”.
Last but not least let’s address some food issues. On May 15 the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in San Bernardino, California by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald. A loaf of bread cost $.08 cents, bacon $.27 a pound, butter was $.36 a pound, and eggs $.33 a dozen. A 5-pound bag of sugar was $.26, gasoline was $.11 a gallon, postage stamps were $.03, a new car averaged $990, and last but not least a single-family home listed at $2938.00. The average salary for a full-time employee was $1200.00 a year with a minimum wage of $.30 an hour. The US population at that time was 132,122,000 and FDR was our president.
Just what you’ve all been clamoring for – more limericks. I made a lucky discovery a few weeks ago when I purchased a book containing 1700 limericks dated between 1810 and 1950. Instead of printing a few here and there I decided to pick a few selections from each decade. They’ll give us a good flavor of the times in which they were written. Many are crass and bawdy and there’s a host of them from the war years in the 1940’s. Just a warning . . . some of these are not for children or anyone whose overly religious or just plain naive. Let’s get to it . . .
There was a young girl in Berlin
Who was fucked by an elderly Finn.
Though he diddled his best,
And fucked her with zest,
She kept asking, “Hey, Pop, is it in?” 1927
Winter is here with his grouch,
The time when you sneeze and you slouch.
You can’t take you’re women
Canoe’in or swimm’in,
But a lot can be done on a couch. 1927
There was a young man named Hughs
Who swore off all kinds of booze,
He said,”When I’m muddled
My senses get fuddled,
And I pass up too many screws.” 1926
There was a young plumber of Leigh
Who was plumbing a girl by the sea.
She said,”Stop your plumbing,
There’s somebody coming!”
Said the plumber, still plumbing, “It’s me.” 1923
There was a young lady named May
Who strolled in a park by the way,
And she met a young man
Who fucked her and ran,
Now she goes to the park every day. 1924
What do you think? It seems the same sense of humor required to write limericks doesn’t change much from one generation to another.
After my last two years of medical issues and treatments, I consider myself something of an expert on my own body. I thought I knew all I needed to know but once again I was mistaken. Here are a few really interesting tidbits that will blow your mind. Even you former and current medical professionals, you know who you are. Here we go . . .
On average there are approximately 75,000,000,000,000 (trillion) cells in the human body.
There are ten times as many bacteria cells living in your gut (750 trillion).
Sixty percent of the solids in your poo are made up of bacteria from your gut.
There are about 100 billion nerve cells in the adult human brain, but 10 times as many support cells to look after them.
Adults lose on average, about 100,000 nerve cells from their brain every day. Over the course of a lifetime this adds up to losing about 7% of the brain.
Your heart beats approximately 100,000 times a day without rest for an entire lifetime – that’s more than 2.5 billion beats in your life.
Laid end to end, a child’s blood vessels would stretch for over 60,000 miles: and adults for 100,000 miles – that’s four times around the Equator.
The blood of an adult male contains more than 25 trillion cells.
An average red blood cell lives for only 120 days. During this time, it will travel 300 miles on its journey round and round the body.
The average male produces 50,000 sperm per minute – that’s 72 million per day. A single male ejaculation contains 200 million sperm – theoretically enough to generate a combined population of Britain, France, and Germany.
Each sperm leaving the penis travels at 8000 body lengths per second, equivalent to a human swimming at 34,000 miles per hour.
Over the course of three years almost every cell in your body will have been replaced by new ones, making you literally a different person to who you were two years ago.
One square inch of human skin has 19 million cells, 60 hairs, 90 oil glands, 19 feet of blood vessels, and 625 sweat glands.
Fingernails grow twice to four times as fast as toenails and the nail on the middle finger grows the fastest.
If you lose a toenail, it will take approximately six months to grow back completely.
I actually love all of these bizarre facts that are available about the human body. I’m just as glad that I found out late in life about all this nonsense because it would have freaked me out a bit in my younger years. I’m just so happy that I get to share it with all of you and if you’re really lucky you might be able to win a few Trivia Night Contests at your local tavern. Have one for me while you’re there.
everyuselessthing.com 