Notes From the Silly Season ’97

Posted on August 7, 2016 by admin

August 8, 1997

Summer is dwindling… & the days float by like so many logs on a river, on their way to the sawmill of mind, to be made into the planks of memory… hm, don’t know that I would show that metaphor in public. Or is it a simile? What was the difference, anyway? So much for my liberal education.

Had a light brush with celebrity last Friday. A movie crew spent the whole day out in front of my office building, shooting something. It’s a good, very urban sort of location, and features a conveniently large traffic island to boot, so they weren’t the first ones I’ve seen there.

But it was no small effort, unlike a TV commercial or some music video. On hand were two huge cameras, a couple of cherry pickers outfitted with artificial shade that they could adjust as the sun crossed the sky, dozens of extras and a lot of technicians and crew waiting around for something to do. As I left for the day, I could see some active filming going on, and the star (as I’d heard) was indeed Bruce Willis, whom I got a short look at. Not my first choice among movie stars, but he was good in 12 Monkeys, anyway.

E-mail has proven itself quite interesting in the month or so I’ve had it. I’ve heard from people I almost never — in a couple of cases, flat-out never — get real mail from. I’ve also found out a number of things I might not have otherwise, not at least for months or years. Just this week an old VU friend e-mailed me to say he was moving to San Francisco after living 14 years on the East Coast. Not long before that, I found out that a Scotsman I knew in Japan had become a father this year.

Then there was the running series of E-Postcards (the sender’s phrase). One fellow I know took a laptop on vacation and has sent a daily report on his movements (mostly on the West Coast) to a large number of e-addresses, mine included.That’s something you won’t catch me doing, taking a laptop on vacation.

2016 Postscript: Since then, a child of mine then in utero has grown up, I often take laptops on the road, but not on vacations per se, and the most recent Bruce Willis movie I’ve seen is The Sixth Sense. I think Mercury Rising was the movie being made that day. It was one of the turkeys that earned Mr. Willis a Golden Raspberry that year.

As for email, I don’t use the hyphen any more, and the in pre-social media days, the regularity with which people corresponded on paper was a pretty good predictor of how much they used email. After the novelty was over, people who were lousy paper correspondents proved to be the same electronically.

Thursday Trifles

Posted on August 4, 2016 by admin

One more picture from Navy Pier.
Saw about a half-dozen ASK ME sign holders on Saturday, and I did ask one which way it was to the tall ships entrance. He told me.

Occasionally I still flip through TV channels, just to see what I can see. A few weeks ago I was doing so, and happened to have my camera handy. Here’s something I found.

By gum, it was original cast Three’s Company. Accept no substitutes. I spent all of about a minute watching it. Enough to get the gist of that week’s comedy of errors: a holiday show that saw Jack and the girls wanting to get away from the Ropers to attend a more interesting Christmas party, while the Ropers were doing their best to bore their young guests, so they could attend a more interesting Christmas party. The same one. Har-dee-har-har.

Then I became curious about Man About the House. It occurred to me that I’d never seen it. In the age of YouTube, there’s no reason not to, so I watched Series 1, Episode 1 (since removed, but it’ll probably be back). It was no Fawlty Towers, or even Steptoe and Son, but it wasn’t that bad. It had a couple of advantages over its American counterpart, such as better comic acting, especially the part of the landlord, and no Suzanne Somers. Remarkable how much of a difference that makes. Well, not that remarkable.

Some of the Man About the House lines were so very completely, breathtakingly British. The last line of the episode, for instance. Off camera, the brunette roommate persuaded the landlord to let the male character move in, as he was on camera in the kitchen with the blonde roommate. When the male character asked her how she did that — the landlord was gone by this time — she said, “I told him you were a poof.”

An announcement on Wednesday from the IOC: “The… IOC today agreed to add baseball/softball, karate, skateboard, sports climbing and surfing to the sports programme for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.”

What, no tug-of-war? Skateboarding, but not tug-of-war, a sport that’s easy to understand, telegenic and opens up the possibility of beach tug-of-war?

Navy Pier 2016

Posted on August 2, 2016 by admin

One of the new things this season at Chicago’s Navy Pier is the Ferris wheel.
“The new attraction, dubbed the Centennial Wheel in honor of the Lake Michigan landmark’s 100th anniversary this July, offers a higher and longer but also higher-speed hoop ride than the one provided by its predecessor,” noted the Chicago Tribune in May. The ride is also significantly more expensive.”

But of course. Can’t let any opportunity pass to grab more of that tourist dollar.

“At 196 feet tall, 48 feet taller than the structure it replaces, the Centennial Wheel is present on the pier but not dominant, occupying roughly the same footprint as the old one, which began offering rides in 1995 and gave its last one here in September.

“The old wheel — expected to start offering rides from its new home on Branson, Mo.’s Highway 76 next month — served up about 760,000 rides in 2014, just under 10 percent of all Navy Pier visitors (both figures were down from pier peaks). That was at $8 for an adult ticket.” The new basic price is $15, with (naturally) other options that cost more, to make those buying the base ticket feel like cheapskates.

Good to know that the old wheel, like so many aging entertainers, is finding a new audience in Branson. I remember that the cars were red and sported the Golden Arches, denoting its sponsor. I only rode the old one once, ca. 2002, on a company outing one summer day. Worth $8 (probably less then) for the views of the city and the lake.

Even so, there are plenty of views from Navy Pier, from the pier itself. Such as of the East Loop.
And sailing craft on Lake Michigan.
It had been a while since we’d been to Navy Pier. Not sure how long. A few years. Saturday was a good day for it, especially since temps weren’t expected to be in the 90s, as they had been the weekend before. While crowded, the expanse of the space — about 50 acres — holds a crowd pretty well, except for the food court.

As mentioned, Navy Pier is now 100 years old, built as Municipal Pier. “Navy” was an honorary title given in the 1920s, as the “Soldier” in Soldier Field, though in fact the U.S. Navy did use the pier for a while during WWII. By the time I got to know it in the late ’80s, the structure was in a state of picturesque decay.

As I wrote years ago: “For those unfamiliar with the pier, it juts into Lake Michigan from downtown Chicago a good quarter-mile or so. In the mid-90s, the City of Chicago fostered a redevelopment of the pier that transformed it from a seldom-visited, decaying relic, to the top tourist draw in the entire state of Illinois, featuring a large array of mostly family-friendly diversions, part outdoors, a good many indoors. Also, it has a relatively small amount of convention space (a gnat’s worth, compared to the elephantine McCormick Place).

“Occasionally, I miss the decaying relic, since it had some charm. I recall going there only twice in the late ’80s, once to see a live broadcast of a live radio show WBEZ no longer produces, at the ballroom at the tip of the pier; and another time to see parts of the AIDS Quilt on display under the pier’s enormous empty shed.”

As a summertime destination this year, Navy Pier wasn’t a random choice. We’d come to see the tall ships, more about which tomorrow.

Boomers 7, Miners 5

Posted on August 1, 2016 by admin

Not long ago I realized that we hadn’t been to a minor league baseball game in a while. I wasn’t sure how long, so I checked: more than eight years. Time to go again. Same stadium, different team, since the old Flyers went under in 2011 — something about a cool million in unpaid back rent to the stadium owners, who happen to be the Village of Schaumburg and the Schaumburg Park District.

Since 2012, the Schuamburg Boomers have been the home team at the stadium, which isn’t all that far from where we live. Besides proximity, there are other advantages to attending baseball games locally, mainly cost. I’m happy to note that the price of reserved seating this year was exactly the same as it was in 2008: $11.

I can’t say the same about the Cubs. It’s a little hard to tell, since the club seems to have changed the ticket pricing scheme since eight years ago, the better maybe to put a fig leaf on their naked avarice, but I think that a ticket at a “middle distance behind home plate” — which was $66 then — no longer exists, though some far-off seats are still in the $60s. Seems that nothing behind home plate is less than $99. My opinion of MLB as a pack of gougers remains unchanged, then.

On Friday the Schaumburg Boomers of the Frontier League — whose mascot is a Prairie Chicken — played the South Illinois Miners, first of a three-game weekend series. Another thing to like about minor-league ball is that the players commit whopping blunders sometimes, and that happened almost right away, with the Miners getting two runs in the 1st inning because of a wildly misthrown ball to first base (or rather, in the direction of first base). But during the bottom of the same inning, the Boomers then got three runs because of poor play by the Miners.

After that, the quality of the fielding — but not always the hitting — improved somewhat. Both teams managed some well-executed double plays, and most of the outfielders caught the pop flies they needed to, with only one more run until the eighth inning, which began 4-2, with the Boomers leading. Around the 6th inning, it began to drizzle.

The weather had been a worry all evening, since heavy rains had fallen that day, only clearing up about two hours before the first pitch, when it was still cloudy. I didn’t want the game to be called because of rain, not because missing a few innings would have been that bad. Mainly I didn’t want to miss the fireworks after the game.

The prospect of rain might have depressed attendance that evening. I don’t know how many seats usually sell at a Friday Boomers game, but last Friday the stands were less than full, with large swatches of seats empty. As the drizzle fell, more people left. We stuck it out. We being Yuriko and I, along with Lilly and three of her friends (Ann declined to go).

I don’t remember whether the announcer was such a minimalist last time around. All this announcer could be bothered to do was tell us the name of the batter up and natter sometimes about some promotion or other at the ballpark. I don’t mind that, but I would like to hear occasional clarifications of what was going on.

At one point, with two men on base — first and second — something happened, an umpire or two suddenly went into motion, there was noise from members of the crowd who might have understood what was going on, and then the two men advanced to second and third. It took me a while to figure out that a balk must have been called on pitcher. Maybe that’s me being dense about baseball, but I got the sense that a lot of other people were mystified as well. A short sentence from the announcer would have helped. Could be interpreting the game’s above his pay grade.

By the top of the 8th, when the drizzle petered out, all the Boomers had to do was keep the Miners at bay for two more innings. No such luck. In short order, bang, bang, the Miners got two runs to tie the game, 4-4. Actually, it wasn’t that short an inning. One batter in particular had a fondness for foul balls, and he hit one again and again and again and again.

I wasn’t looking forward to extra innings. Nine’s enough, especially when it might rain. Luckily, in the bottom of the 8th, the Boomers did pretty much the same thing as in the bottom of the 1st, bouncing back with well-placed hits, and scoring three runs. The Miners got a run in the top of the 9th, but couldn’t catch up, and that was that, 7-5. I don’t care one way or the other much about the Boomers, but oddly enough I was glad to see them win. That’s crowd psychology for you.

The postgame fireworks were dessert. Not the most spectacular ever, but a nice show, everything you want in hanabi (literally fire flowers in Japanese; always have liked that word). Even better, the show was close enough that you could faintly smell the gunpowder, adding an extra layer of enjoyment — and memory. I thought of the fireworks at Tivoli all those years ago, close enough so that the ash rained down on us (and while I didn’t mention it, you could smell the fireworks too).

Nonstop-Kino, Last Day of July 1983

Posted on July 31, 2016 by admin

Why do I still have a movie ticket stub after a third of century? Don’t ask. I don’t save all of them, or even very many. This one, yes. On July 31, 1983, I went to the Nonstop-Kino in Innsbruck, Austria.

Rich and I took in a screening of Manhattan that afternoon. All together only four people — including the two of us — were at the show. Even so, in an example of doing what the Romans do, or in this case the Austrians, we actually sat in Row 6, Seats 7 and 8.

I’ve seen movies in London (Return of the Jedi and Babette’s Feast and Duck Soup) and Rome (I forget what) and of course many in Japan and some in other Asian countries, but the cinemas in the German-speaking world are the only ones I’ve encountered that sold seats like a live theater.

Manhattan was dubbed in German. I’d seen movie before, so that didn’t matter, but I didn’t think the voice actor doing Woody Allen was a good fit. In the age of the Internet, it’s easy enough to find out that the voice actor who’s done Allen for years — the Synchronsprecher, love that word — is one Wolfgang Draeger (who also was Sir Robin in Monty Python und Die Ritter der Kokosnuß). Apparently Draeger’s highly esteemed, especially for doing Allen. Still, I didn’t care for the match. His voice wasn’t nebbish enough.

RTX 2016

Posted on July 19, 2016 by admin

Morbid curiosity inspired me to turn on the TV early yesterday afternoon to see a little live coverage from Cleveland. By complete chance I saw all of Scott Baio’s little speech. Later, I explained to Lilly who that was: “You know the concept of A-list celebrities, right? He’s a D-list celebrity.” Guess the Fonz isn’t in the Trump camp. He never did suffer bullies gladly.

I’m not the person to describe RTX 2016 in any coherent way. That’s because of my willful ignorance, something I disapprove of in many situations, but not when it comes to pop culture. The only sane reaction to pop culture is willful ignorance: pay attention to whatever interests you, roundly ignore the rest, which is most everything.

RTX stands for Rooster Teeth Expo. According to Rooster Teeth itself, “Rooster Teeth Productions is recognized as one of the world’s leading innovators in the field of entertainment production. Over the past 11 years, we have built a global community of highly engaged and dedicated viewers. From podcasts and gameplay videos to one of the fastest growing consumer shows in the U.S., Rooster Teeth continues to become a main hub for community, gaming & entertainment.”

Fine. Good for them. I’d still be wholly ignorant of them except that Ann is a viewer — how “engaged and dedicated,” I couldn’t say, but enough to tell me earlier this year that she wanted to go to RTX, which was in Austin (the company’s hometown) July 1-3. I probably surprised her when I told her attending the show could be part of a longer trip to Texas, and we’d time things to be in Austin on one of those days.

So on July 2, we found ourselves at the Austin Convention Center, site of RTX. I saw crowd scenes.

The exhibit hall was remarkably like that of any other convention I’ve been to — rows and rows of booths featuring companies promoting themselves and their products. The difference being that almost all the products, including media productions and games and whatnot, were completely unfamiliar to me, and none of the attendees were wearing ties. But Ann knew a lot about the products, including many of the characters. All of these, for instance.

She told me who the girl in bird feathers was supposed to be, but I’ve forgotten. I will give the various cosplayers I saw points for effort. Some of the costumes looked like a lot of work.

Toward mid-day, we watched a panel discussion featuring the top guy at Rooster Teeth and some of his top creatives. They filled a ballroom with a few thousand people. At the beginning, they screened a brand-new episode, if that’s the right word, of an online show called “A Million Dollars, But…” The conceit of the show is that you can have a million dollars, but you have to put up with some onerous, and frankly magical, condition (and not, say, paying high taxes on it).

Let’s call it juvenile entertainment. A few of the bits in the episode were funny, but hearing about how it’s put together strained my patience. I’m not the intended audience anyway. But I have to note that not all of the audience were kids — not in the chronological sense. I’d put most of the attendees in their early to mid-20s.

We also attended a performance by a couple of singers, a man and a woman. They were reasonably talented and did songs from various shows, mostly Internet-based (I think). Ann seemed to know most of the tunes. I knew none of them. Time flies, new things happen. Toward the end, the man said, “We always close with a song I’m sure virtually all of you know.”

Then they launched into a song I didn’t know. Turned out to be the theme from Pokemon. Of course I’ve heard of that cartoon. It would take more than willful ignorance to keep from hearing of it, even before Pokemon Go became the goldfish swallowing of the summer of ’16. But the theme? Somehow I never bothered with hearing it, certainly not enough to know it. Ann expressed some astonishment at this.

The last event we attended was a cosplay costume contest. Participants strolled from the back to the front of one of the meeting rooms, showing themselves off as they went up the center aisle. The moderators announced who they were, and who their costumes represented. I actually had heard of a few of them, such as one of the iterations of Batman and Luigi, the brother of Mario, though as far as I’m concerned, Mario Bros. is just an arcade game I never played much.

I was struck by the fact that the participants mostly weren’t interested in playing characters from Star Trek or Star Wars or other such longstanding and well-worn tales. They wanted newer characters. That’s probably a good thing.

If I remember right, this fellow was best in show. I don’t know who he’s supposed to be, but it’s an impressive outfit all the same. Mostly Styrofoam, from the looks of it.

I wore my Gen. Jack D. Ripper PURITY OF ESSENCE t-shirt to the event. I figured he, too, is a fictional character of some import, even if only to earlier generations. As I suspected, I got no reaction to it, not even many quizzical looks, until just before we left the event. We were walking down the main corridor of the convention center, when suddenly a young man walking the other way said, Wow! right at me.

I was startled, but he quickly explained: “Where did you get that shirt? I spent the last two years of high school quoting Dr. Strangelove all the time.” Good to know that that movie isn’t completely lost on youth. I told him I didn’t remember the exact name of the web site where I bought it, but that the shirt should be easy enough to Google. As indeed it is.

Finally, there was this performer, BE INCREDIBLE.
Actually, he had nothing to do with RTX. We took a bus to and from the event, and when we returned, the bus let us off on South Congress a few blocks north of the Austin Motel — and there he was, busking.
Maybe not incredible, but he had some good moves. I put a dollar coin in his bucket.

The Noah Bell on My Nightstand

Posted on May 1, 2016 by admin

Ted Striker: Mayday! Mayday!

Steve McCroskey: What the hell is that?

Johnny: Why, that’s the Russian New Year. We can have a parade and serve hot hors d’oeuvres…

April ended with heavy rains and chilly air. May Day passed under gray skies, with equally chilly air. Yet the grass is long, buds are everywhere, and birds are noisy in their pursuit of making baby birds.

Sometime in the spring of 1986 (probably), I bought a noah bell at a Wicca gift shop in Austin. Strictly speaking, I don’t think Wicca had anything to do with the store, which was stocked with crystals and incense and other esoteric-flavored knickknacks, but that’s how I referred to it later. Maybe that’s gross insensitivity to Wicca, but even my enlightened Austin friends got a chuckle out of the description. Things were different in the ’80s, I guess.

In our time, naturally, one doesn’t even have to go out to find Wicca supplies.

Thirty years later, this is my noah bell.

This is what it sounds like, struck with a stainless steel spoon: Noah bell rung three times.

Interestingly enough, it sounds about the same when struck with a plastic pen. Note that there’s no clapper. There used to be one, which was made of wood, but it disappeared sometime over the last three decades. It wasn’t made of copper, so I know it wasn’t stolen.

My bell is about 4¾ inches (12.5 cm) tall, not counting the ring on top, and 3 to 3½ inches (up to 9 cm) in diameter, since it’s more oval than circular. A smaller noah bell with a clapper sounds like this.

I still have the large tag that came with my noah bell, because of course I do.

So it’s not just a noah bell, but a Maharani brand noah bell. A maharani is the wife of a maharajah, so I suppose that’s like naming your brand Queen or Empress.

OLD INDIAN BELIEF needs to be all caps? That’s told of other bells as well, and I have to wonder what kind of lily-livered devil or evil spirit would be scared off by the sound of a bell. Don’t they cover that in evil spirit training? Then again, I ring it around here sometimes, and we’re not bothered by evil spirits that I know of.

The company that imports these bells from India is called Maharani Imports. According to its web site, “Maharani Imports specializes in whimsically themed wind chimes and mobiles made with recycled iron, handmade fused glass beads, and Noah Bells all assembled together in Mumbai. We also have many costume and semi-precious necklaces, earrings, and bracelets…

“We are based outside of Dallas in a small rural town called Bartonville. The company has been in that location since 1980 and we are located on a 30 acre ranch property with many rescued animals. Namely we have about 6 donkeys and 9 llamas, which we welcome you to come visit by appointment if you are nearby!”

Bartonville’s just south of Denton, and I’m not so sure that it’s particularly rural any more. But I can see how the good folks at Maharani Imports might have discovered Austin early as a solid market for their products. My own noah bell now spends most of its time on the nightstand near my bed, along with a lamp, a stack of books, a small statue of Lincoln, and some other bibelots.

Ravinia Circular ’16

Posted on April 27, 2016 by admin

The annual circular advertising this summer’s shows at Ravinia Festival arrived in the mail recently. Wonder how long printed circulars of this kind will be mailed at all, but for now they are.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the venue, but I’ve enjoyed all of my visits, such as the long-ago August night in 1989 when a lunar eclipse was visible high over the concert. Or our attendance of a children’s concert in July 2002.

Ravinia, in Highland Park, Ill., on the North Shore, is the Midwest’s Wolf Trap. Or rather, since Ravinia’s a lot older than Wolf Trap, with outdoor music performances held there for more than 100 years — Wolf Trap is the Ravinia of the East Coast, open only since 1970.

In any case, Ravinia gets some A-list acts, and charges accordingly. Prices are for seats in the pavilion or for lawn seating, and they’re printed on the circular. Some of the concerts, especially lawn seating for some classical musicians, charge a reasonable $10, and I’d seriously consider paying $25 to hear the CSO play the entirety of The Planets while I relax on the lawn. (And ponder whether that should be “The Planets” or The Planets.)

On the other hand, I was curious to see who commands the highest pavilion seating ticket prices. Is it Bob Dylan? No. Paul Simon? No. Don Henley? Dolly Parton? Diana Ross? Nope. Those are all close, but Duran Duran tops the list at $160 a pavilion seat, and a steep $55 for a lawn ticket. Moreover, they’re playing two nights in a row, which is fairly rare at Ravinia.

Am I missing something? I remember Duran Duran as a tolerable early ’80s band that had a handful of hits. Must be their fan base is larger than I realize. Even so, here’s something I’m sure I’m missing: Duran Duran at Ravinia for $160 a pop.

The Force Awakens

Posted on March 31, 2016 by admin

We went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens recently, since I’m not the sort who rushes out to see the newest thing in the theaters, though that did happen with the first movie of the series those long summers ago (more than a dozen of us went together; it was an event). On the whole, the most recent yarn had everything it needed to: sympathetic characters, old and new, lots of action, lots of spaceships and exotic sets, lots of improbabilities and coincidences, lots of homages — many homages to the original movies, some simply visual, others in bits of dialogue — and so on. My favorite homage was the discussion of throwing a captured First Order minion into a trash chute, though you don’t actually see the heroes do it.

All in all, worth second-run prices. Some quibbles: Interestingly, Finn said that his bad-guy job was in sanitation, which set up the homage to the trash chute. Certainly a necessary function, but if so, why was he part of the death squad detail at the beginning of the movie? Do all of the storm troopers rotate into death squads now and then, just to keep them murderous? If so, why are they such lousy shots?

Why is the armed force defending the presumably re-established Republic called the Resistance? Sure, resistance has a noble undertone, but it implies trying to overthrow tyranny, not protect a government. Shouldn’t it have been the Galactic Force or the Republic Defenders or the like? (Or the Force Force?) Guess the Republican Guard wouldn’t work, the Iranians having taken that one.

And how is it that the Jedi were so thin on the ground that the retirement of just one of them, namely Luke Skywalker, shut down the whole enterprise? Weren’t there others? You know, a second string? Maybe these things are explained in the expanded universe, but I’m grown man. I refuse to have anything to do with that.

Also, I wonder just how much dough Mark Hamill got paid, along with top billing, to stand there for a few seconds and look old? Maybe that sum is a balm for his, shall we say, not-as-stellar-as-Harrison Ford’s career. By contrast Ford had a meaty-ish part in the latest movie, but then again he clearly signed up only for this one, unless there’s some movie resurrection magic ahead for Han Solo.

The supreme bad guy was malformed and ugly, or at least his hologram/projection/whatever of him was. But of course. Ugly = Evil. As I wrote a good many years ago, when I was busy ignoring one of the prequels, I pictured the unseen evil emperor in the first movie as “a handsome yet ruthless tyrant, a spellbinding demagogue, a despot who made the hyperdrive trains run on time, and who had an intensely loyal following in parts of the galaxy that got public works contracts. But no. He turned out to be a drooling, hissing, ugly fellow who ruled by channeling the Dark Side, rather than bread and circuses (and maybe a gulag).

“Better still would have been a despotic Emperor with some virtues, someone who offered peace to a Republic torn by civil war, someone along the lines of Augustus. In that case, the rebel alliance might still be fighting for freedom, but with less purity of motive — and willing to blow up a planet or two itself…”

Christopher Orr in the Atlantic did a reasonably good review of the movie, except for this line toward the end: “The original Star Wars was in almost every way an original, a movie that forever changed filmmaking for both good and ill.” Maybe original if you were 10, as he was.

But it was fully known and commented upon at the time that, aside from the remarkable special effects, very little about the first movie was original, and not just in the sense that all Hero With a Thousand Faces on a Journey of a Thousand Leagues stories tap into archetypes. Still, that didn’t make the first movie any less enjoyable or important in the history of summer blockbusters. Obviously the thing struck a chord. I remember reports of people going to see the first one many, many times. Then again, people also went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show many, many times. That struck a somewhat different chord, I figure.

Pappy Lee O’Daniel

Posted on March 18, 2016 by admin

The day after I visited LBJ’s boyhood home, I discovered this tucked away at my mother’s house.

It’s a campaign card for W. Lee O’Daniel. It’s clear that it dates from his first run for governor of Texas, which was in 1938. Why my mother kept this, I couldn’t say. I don’t remember her ever saying anything about “Pappy” Lee O’Daniel, and in any case she herself never voted for him, since she wasn’t old enough.

On the back are the lyrics to three stanzas of “Beautiful Texas,” a song pretty much lost to time, but written by W. Lee O’Daniel, the singing, flour-making governor of Texas from 1938 (he won the election and re-election two years later) to 1941, when he became a U.S. Senator by being the only person to best LBJ in an election (not counting 1960 primaries). All in all, one of Texas’ more interesting governors.

If he sounds familiar, it’s because the Coen brothers borrowed the name, an association with flour, and hillbilly music for the governor of Mississippi character played memorably by Charles Durning in O Brother Where Art Thou?

Why? Because they’re the Coen brothers. Presumably they were amused by the idea of a flour-merchant governor with hillbilly music on his side. For a couple of gentlemen from Minnesota, that shows a remarkably granular interest in Texas history, even if they put the fictional Pappy in an alt-universe, Coen brothers-flavored Mississippi.

“Moral fiber? I invented moral fiber! Pappy O’Daniel was displaying rectitude and high-mindedness when that egghead you work for was still messing his drawers!” — the fictional Pappy O’Daniel.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Entertainment