Did he really say that?

The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes = GEORGE CARLIN...Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass–give me plain glass = JOHN FOWLES...Music is the mathematics of the gods = PYTHAGORAS...Nothing is more fluid than language = R.L.SWIHART

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Monday, April 29, 2013

Minimalist Duke Ellington Post





Duke Ellington on
What's My Line




"If This Isn't Art, Then Nothing Is"




All I have to do is what the following email says to do:

Paul

No introduction needed!
Today belongs to Duke.

Enjoy!

If you have to take a train then...
Take The "A" Train

- Lester Perkins
Jazz on the Tube

P.S. Please share Jazz on the Tube with your
friends and colleagues.

If they like jazz, they're going to love this.

Happy Birthday #114 Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington

It takes a composer of Duke Ellington's stature to tether a saxophonist known for his "sheets of sound," i.e., John Coltrane.

868 Through The Looking Glass (JDP #2)


Time does not change things, the medium does.

John Dos Passos (1930):
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf...a column of stock quotations...
a set of big-mouthed officials with too many bank accounts






We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies...The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...
one vast and ecumenical holding company

-Paddy Chayefsky (1976)



Mr. Dos Passos


Great writing breeds great writing.
All artists steal. The greatest artists do it with stealth.
If U.S.A. and Network are not works of art, then nothing is.


Mr. Chayefsky

aMErica, aMErica (CR #868)


aMErica
aMErica
god shed
his grace
on ME
MUTTS


MUTTS is the copyrighted property of Patrick McDonnell.

aMErica, aMErica is the copyrighted property of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.
(Complete lyrics available upon request.)

Saturday, April 27, 2013

If...You Knew Mr. Lee Miller Man Ray...


Then you would be familiar with the surrealist photographs of Mr. Ray







The model in each photograph is Lee Miller

There were, indeed, occasions in Man Ray's life when he preferred being addressed as
"Mr. Lee Miller" rather than the name which appeared on a Brooklyn birth certificate in 1890: Emmanuel Radnitzky

What If You Were Lee Miller...

...And you were a war-time photo-journalist with enough female pulchritude
to work both sides of the camera.

You would, like all members of your profession, look for the best photo-ops.

If it could be documented that a tree house had once been occupied
by the most evil man of the Twentieth Century, you might want to do
more than simply photograph an empty tree house.

But that sentence is purely hypothetical.

The next one, however, is not.



The above photograph by David E. Scherman of Lee Miller in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler’s house in Munich is one of the most iconic images from the Miller-Scherman partnership.

But from the other side of the camera, Lee Miller's war photographs did not include bathtubs.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

.......The Son Of Sam O'leaner Artist....... ...........& The Son Of Sam Oliverio...........


The Son of Sam Oliverio
(Also known as me)
Had his mind
Trapped in a tree
But not this one
Specifically



This tree is scratching his head
About a blog caption that he read
In the 2-DIE-4 PHOTO GALLERY
Where there is another Man-Tree

(You can completely ignore my mind
But "Son of Sam O'Leaner" is easy to find:
Just scroll down and you will see
A fixed-position photo atop the GALLERY)

The caption reads
His Father is only one click away
But that is only true
In a symbolic logic sort of way

Yet sculpture is symbolic fathering
And I need to set things right
He who created both Man-Trees
Is a sculptor named Joseph Wheelwright



But a Wheelwright truth
When a sculpting he be:
Not every man
Is made from tree




Blogger's Note
For reasons too personal to mention, this page is dedicated to cousin Bunny.



Alice in RACKHAMLAND


Caryl Hobbes re-introduced me to Arthur Rackham whose 1907 illustrations of Alice In Wonderland were exhibited on the campus of Lewis Carroll School when I was a student there forty-something years ago.


Paul: I had forgotten these illustrations because this Alice had more anxiety than curiosity.

Caryl: Just because Alice got curiouser and curiouser doesn't mean she didn't have anxiety.

Paul: I know that now and feel that I owe Mr. Rackham an apology.

Caryl: He died in 1939.

Paul: What nerve!

Caryl: You are a nut.

Paul: Chancellor, flattery will get you everywhere.

Caryl: You can't have the yang without the yin.

Paul: Chancellor, wisdom will get you almost everywhere.


Arthur Rackham is widely regarded as one of the leading illustrators from the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which encompassed the years from 1900 until the start of the First World War
-Wikipedia

The proof is in this hyperlink



Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Virtues Of Catnapping (CR #863)


We have all been there, or should be
MUTTS ©

A Thin Slice of U.S.A. (JDP #1 PC)


(JDP #1 PC) =
John Dos Passos #1...not recommended for those of the Politically Correct persuasion.



The RAINBOW COALITION, as we know it today, is a melting pot of different races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. Unity and tolerance of people of diverse backgrounds
is a very desirable concept.

At the onset of the Twentieth Century, the unity and tolerance of people of diverse backgrounds was a very necessary idea. It was a time when common laborers in the United States of America worked in uncommonly dangerous conditions. There were no safety codes, health plans, or retirement benefits. ORGANIZED LABOR was anathema to the Big Boss Men.

John Dos Passos belongs in the upper echelons of Twentieth Century American fiction, alongside those of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.
For better or worse, his influence on Modern Fiction is immeasurable but better minds than mine can justify these two sentences.

Published in 1930, The 42nd Parallel is the first book in Mr. Dos Passos' trilogy, U.S.A.

It is multi-layered: narrative + stream of consciousness + global newsreel collage.
At times, it is hellaciously funny, politically profound, or utterly romantic.
It is not an easy read but is well worth the effort. If I live to be one thousand, I will definitely read the thousand-plus pages of the entire trilogy.

Were it not for "Dos" having intimate connections with both the uber-blogged Scott Fitzgerald and Dawn Powell, this page would not exist.

Dos Passos and Hemingway used to read the King James Bible together but not for religious reasons. They did so out of appreciation for the stylized writing.

Here is a quote from the same Paris Review interview:
Shortly after John Dos Passos had completed the three volumes of U.S.A. in 1936, Jean-Paul Sartre observed that he was “the greatest writer of our time.”

The 42nd Parallel begins at the onset of the Twentieth Century.
"Mac" is one of the main characters of the book. The life of this itinerant young man is an exploratory mission. "Big Bill" is an orator. "Fred Hoff" is an associate of Mac. "Maisie" is the girl waiting for Mac in California.
The thin slice of the book (p.92) is set in a mining town in Nevada.



Oliverio's Notes
Speaking of the uber-blogged, within the past two hundred posts of THE GODFATHER OF MATH, no name appears more often than Caryl Hobbes, the Chancellor of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.
My gratitude to Chancellor Hobbes is somewhere beyond infinity: Caryl introduced me to the existential world of MUTTS, the literature of Dawn Powell and then...snail-mailed me a book with a short note.
"The 42nd Parallel is not a math book. Volumes 2 & 3 are available upon request."

I would be remiss in my duties as an author if I didn't acknowledge that Caryl is the invisible hand guiding every word of THE GODFATHER OF MATH.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

............To Do Or Not To Do............ .........That Do Be The Question....... ...................(CR # 861)....................


I have the answer
And the answer
It is this:
Just check off
Everything
On your To Do list

But wait
There is more:
It is easier To Do
When it precedes you
Out the door

.........MUTTS.........
Patrick McDonell ©

From REALLY THE BLUES To You



I eat my breakfast in the Morning
And my teeth and tongue begin to fight

-Sonny Boy Williamson
I'm a Lonely Man

Monday, April 22, 2013

One ONION NEWS Minute...


THE ONION GUARANTEES ALL WHO WATCH NEW AMAZON SERIES SHALL BE SPARED




This video is not recommended for those of the politically correct persuasion


(Posting time for this page = 1 minute 327 seconds)

Louise Lasser...........Tom Mullavey........ Mary Kay Place........Graham Jarvis........



She had a smile that glowed brighter than her freshly-waxed kitchen floor but
Mary Hartman's smile had nothing to do with happiness.

Five nights a week, from January 1976 through May 1977, Absurdity & Irony
wore high-heeled sneakers. And television has never been the same.

...Dody Goodman, Debra Lee Scott, Victor Killian, Philip Bruns and Claudia Lamb were the other original cast members of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

The Google-image hyperlink names one related search: LOUISE LASSER.
The other name most associated with Mary Hartman is none of the above.
It is producer Norman Lear
He feels this episode of Mary Hartman Mary Hartman may contain the best performance
in the history of television.

And I feel obligated to quote Ann Marcus who was a co-creator and chief writer of the show.

We knew it was good, but we weren't prepared for the overwhelming reaction to it. MH2 wasn't just a hit, it was a mega-hit. In no time at all it became addictive, a "pop culture craze," as Newsweek put it, "a sort of video Rorschach test for the mass audience."
Everyone was talking about it or writing about it. Critics were comparing it to the best of Chekhov, Cervantes, James Joyce, John Updike and Ingmar Bergman. Mary Hartman stared out from the covers of every popular, glossy, high and low-brow periodical in the country. And inside there were long analytical pieces on the meaning of it all...
-Ann Marcus
THE TRUTH ABOUT MARY HARTMAN’S WAXY YELLOW BUILDUP

And I will close this page with what Mary Hartman had to say about personal fate and STD.

I know, I must have been born under an unlucky star. You know I have filled out entry blanks for every single drawing in the supermarket for the last twelve years, and the only thing I ever won was a coupon for a small little jar of tomato paste. But they were out of tomato paste, and by the time they got more in, my coupon had expired. And now I have venereal disease.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Josephine Baker From 1932


The United States' greatest gift from France
Is the Statue of Liberty.
France's greatest gift from the United States
Is Josephine Baker



France got the better end of the deal.
Ms. Baker moved the entire country
Into a state of ecstasy
Ms. Liberty hasn't moved an inch
Since she got planted in the ocean.

Josephine famously did a banana dance
But she also had something to say
about tomatoes

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Somebody's Been Reading My Blog...


I must commence with a confession:
I was never a shop-o-holic
But I was a shopLIFT-a-holic
Who got busted for stealing this album
From a New York department store.


The year was 1968. Goodbye and Hello
was Tim Buckley's second album.
It was released in August of 1967.

One month later...
a condensed inversion of that title
was recorded by four lads
from Liverpool.


Hello Goodbye/I am the Walrus was released on November 24, 1967.
Within a week of that date, I purchased the Beatles' 45 RPM from the same store
that busted me for shoplifting the following summer.

I sometimes wish I was insane enough to believe that the Buckley theft jinxed his career
and the Beatles purchase propelled them to stratospheric heights.

I sometimes wish I was gullible enough to believe the Beatles' Hello/Goodbye was directly influenced by Buckley's Goodbye and Hello.
But I am brazen enough to stand by these words:

If ever you read a list of ONE HUNDRED GREATEST ROCK & ROLL ALBUMS
and it does not include Tim Buckley's Goodbye and Hello,
you can toss the list in the nearest waste receptacle.

The lyrics of the title song and the song itself are featured on page 782
of the GODFATHER OF MATH novel web site.
***

I sometimes wish I was stupid enough to believe that the people responsible for the film about Tim Buckley were directly influenced by this blogger's two Buckley pages. I first heard about the movie a week ago but it was filmed in 2012.

The title of the movie is taken from Tim's seventh album

Hong Kong Bar may or may not be
featured in the film but it is featured on this album.

The title of the movie is Greetings From Tim Buckley.

The scheduled release date, in limited theaters, is May 3, 2013.

Mr. Buckley posthumously contributed to a collaborative poem
humorously posted in GoodFatherland. 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Professor Morganfield's Alter Ego


McKinley Morganfield occupies the Posthumous
Chair of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic Music Department

The following letter has inspired another post of
the Professor's alter ego, Muddy Waters




Paul
Blues legend Muddy Waters sings his heart felt anthem for the impoverished,
You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had for a 1960's TV appearance.

-Matt Chauvin
Really The Blues

Where the real blues lives

P.S. Please share ReallytheBlues.com
with your friends and colleagues.
Help keep the blues alive
Tell your friends about us...

http://www.ReallytheBlues.com

Amacord, Inc.,
14 North Road,
Tivoli, NY 12583, USA


***

PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH THE VIDEO...
IT IMPROVES DRAMATICALLY AFTER 15 SECONDS

Two More Philosophers


Ralph Waldo Emerson

If...a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

Then...an excess of inconsistency is the death knell of credibility


Paul Edward Oliverio

The Advantage Of Elsewhere (CR #853)


Two philosophers in motion..................In the air..................And on the ground.....
Calvin and Hobbes


Blogger's Notes
Calvin and Hobbes is the copyrighted property of Bill Watterson

In no way is Calvin's imaginary tiger friend related to Caryl Hobbes,
whose birth name is Hobinski. The spelling of his first name
is consistent with the Polish spelling of the male equivalent of "Carl."

A Driveway Dilemma


ALTERNATE TITLES:

Port-o-Potty Olympics

Polar Opposites
Does A Basketball Player S***t In The Woods?

ShMINIMALIST MUTTS (CR #851)


We all know this restaurant

MUTTS ©


CR = Comic Relief ... #851 = Page 851

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

...............I'm Plaid As Hell And............... ....I'm Not Gonna Take This Anymore....



If the world went Mad
That would be sad
But if it went Plaid
We might all be glad

Tis better to
Percolate with Plaidness
Than to
Meander with Madness



The illustration was taken from this forty-nine year old catalog



As for the title: it is a variation on the timeless scene from the 1976 film, Network
It features Academy-Award Winner Peter Finch as Howard Beale
However, I do not believe that the A&P's Plaid Stamps were ever nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy or a Grampy.

Goodbye GoodFather


The reason for the strikethrough appears here

The reason for the altered spelling of Mr. Hobbes' first name:
that is how it is spelt on the official document promoting him
to Wizard Chancellor of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.



Words pirouette
Out of the mouth
Then fly south

Ideas ferment
In the head
Then are declared dead

The GoodFather of Math
Has taken a bath
Before reality had its say

"GoodFather" will not see
The light of day

Long live
The GodFather of Math
Let it be
This blogger's singular path

-Karl Hobbes

If the Chancellor of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic says it isn't so, then it aint so.
Just because you wanted a sequel, doesn't mean it will be equal.
The italic sentence was scribbled in the margin of Mr. Hobbes' poem.

For fourteen months, I had averaged two blogposts a day...
The idea of a companion blogsite justified a full week without any posts.

Now it's back to work for this GodFather
And that's good news!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

O.N.O. & Claude-Joseph Vernet


photo by Andrew Cowie
Auction handlers Gil & Lari Osistantes are in Vertical Hold mode
They are handling C.J. Vernet's View of Avignon
At the hung-fast moment of the Vertical Hold, the auctioneer
Opens his mouth and The South Bee audience throws number$
At him until they are gavelled into submission
The Oregano News Organization is cognizant of the fact that not everyone is familiar with Dawn Powell's novels or Ambrose Bierce's dictionary
The Oregano News Organization is cognizant of the fact that not everyone prefers alternate reality to fact-based information.
Therefore, we reproduce Mr. Cowie's photograph with blockquoted verbatim text
from Art Daily, the most frequently hyper-linked website within these 850 pages.
Gallery assistants mount the painting
"View of Avignon from the right bank of the Rhone"
by 18th century French artist Claude-Joseph Vernet
at Sotheby's auction house in London,
where it is estimated to fetch 3 - 5 million GBP
in a forthcoming sale.
The work is Vernet’s only recorded painting
of his birthplace, the French city of Avignon,
and was once believed to be lost and
will be offered for sale for the first time
in 200 years at the Sotheby’s London Old Master
and British Paintings sale.
©


Blogger's Note
The Oregano News Organization is an affiliate of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic


Really The Blues Can Really Be ................Yours Daily................


An open letter from our beloved provider, Lester Perkins:

We're starting a new channel tonight...
Really The Blues.com

If you love the blues check it out,
join the list and most important,
spread the word.

(Thanks.)




If Victoria Spivey is not a Pearl of a woman,
We might as well spend the rest of our lives
Counting grains of sand.
In the photograph below, the young man
Standing alongside Victoria needs no introduction.
But he knew about the BLACK SNAKE BLUES
Many years before he found the answer
Blowing in the wind.

To give you a chronological fix
BLACK SNAKE dates back to 1926



On this 1963 live recording of BLACK SNAKE BLUES, Lonnie Johnson introduces Ms. Spivey and accompanies her on guitar. The harmonica is played by Sonny Boy Williamson

The Godfather's Last Poem


When you have a pearl
In the palm of your hand
Don't toss it over your shoulder
Like a grain of sand


Blogger's Note
The next original Paul Oliverio poem© will appear in the The GoodFather of Math blog site.

Revised 4/17/13

F. Q. DAWN POWELL


F.Q. = Favorite Quotes
With one exception, all names are in pronoun form to protect the guilt of the parties involved.
The following quotes are not-so-randomly selected words from a Dawn Powell novel.

Published in 1962, the plot of The Golden Spur is clearly stated in a New York Times review with the conclusion that the author's pyrotechnic wickedness is guaranteed to satisfy

Golden Spur bulletin board:
Sunday painter offers free dental service in exchange for model.

A fleeting echo of a soft, apologetic twine, a hint of unexpectedly eager lips in a dark vestibule with sweet words lost in the roar of passing El trains.

City women were wonderful...but very strange. He heard them arguing over the comparative merits of their diaphragms and had the good sense to know they were not speaking of singing.

Her country twang fooled no one. She never darned a sock, seldom made her own bed, thought coffee was born in delicatessen containers and all food grew in frozen packages.
Her pretty feet were more likely to be on the wall or tangled up in sheets than on the ground, and as for being behind her man, he found out sooner or later, she was really on his back.

The girls never asked questions about a man’s private interests or listened when they tried to tell them. For them it was enough that he was a man and he was there. Who needs a talking man?

If a guy could produce enough background, music, and scenery changes, a girl could stand almost anybody.

***
Fate, that cheap opportunist, never lets a winner down.
***

The customers were not ordinary bar types or even bohemian types but seemed a collection of Rorschach blobs in the watery pink light.

He wanted loneliness so he could suffer the old ache of yearning for human contact.

“Lonely, what do you know about loneliness! Why, you’re not even married."

Some old friends went to their graves without learning to like each other, without even getting to know each other.

He took pride and comfort in the doctor’s remark that he was the only young person who had the gift of curiosity. Students used to have it...the doctor said, but now they had “empathy.”

***
Confession perfumes the sin.
***

At Yale, he ought to have learned that people believe who ever shouted the loudest and pushed the hardest. Deborah was his wife, Anita was his mistress but Amnesia had been his true friend... Amnesia gave him back his arrogance and dignity, the proper contempt for students and fellow men that was necessary for a teacher.

Father and mother were about to engage in one of their obscure duels, flailing delicately at each other with lace-edged handkerchiefs that concealed from the observer the weapon and the wound...

When their opposite views might have led to bickering they used their daughter as a buffer, and had grown so accustomed to speaking to each other through her that they hardly thought of her as a person but as an intercom...A game which excluded her, but afforded her privacy and freedom...

She was such a good child, such an obedient daughter, such a treasure! But what heaven to have her being good and obedient some place else, leaving them to their mature, well-organized selfishness.

***
There was truth in every lie if you waited long enough, and you might as well believe everything while you waited.
***

He had gotten married and later famous–two conditions that forbade a man to have a best friend...His fourth wife was prouder of him for having kept his waistline than for keeping his reputation...He never gave any of his friends any credit. He could use up their money, their life stories, their profitable connections and then complain they blocked his work.

“I don’t know why on God’s earth I missed him after he was dead, because I missed him more when he was alive.”



Blogger's Notes
"Her country twang fooled no one" is a paraphrase, as is the "empathy" sentence. All other quoted words are verbatim, including such Powellisms as "yessiring and nosirring."

(Including quotation marks)
GOOGLE-BALL Scores:
"Dawn Powell Day"==========10
"Dorothy Parker Day"=====28,500
I have been a Dorothy Parker fan ever since I saw my first Big Blonde.
I have been a Dawn Powell fan ever since Mr. Hobbes mentioned her name
two months ago.
Hobbes is the Chancellor Pro Tem of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.

The next Dawn Powell page is here...

Sunday, April 7, 2013

MUTTS & Birthday Billie (CR #844)


HAPPY BIRTHDAY
She was born Eleanor Fagan on April 7, 1915
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer
THE American jazz singer who influenced generations
Of singers and genres of music yet to be born



MUTTS is quoting Longfellow today
And the song is sung by Lady Day
"Written by Harold Arlen" you might say

Not to share an onus
I will share a bonus:
The most opposite of wrong
Is Billie & Louis Armstrong
To culturally improve your eyes
Omit this vid's endquote
"This is a surprise"
By BILLIE & LOUIS is meant
To share what is heaven-sent