That Rhythm Thing

Tags

Catch- 22, Ella, movies, music, observations, Oz

The proper title of  the blog is, as you know, Reading, Writing, Running and Rhythm with Rhythm as a nod toward my music career such as it is.

And as such Rhythm or music if you will has been neglected lately because as previously noted elsewhere that nothing seems to be funny anymore because everything that pours out of your devices at all hours of the day and night seems to be absurd to the point of ” It can’t get much stupider than this” but by golly somehow the bar continues to drop lower than a certain knucklehead’s approval rating and so here we are saying one thing today and cleaning it up tomorrow by saying we really didn’t mean to say what we said yesterday, what we meant to was this and this stands only until someone says something even more stupid than they did yesterday.  Got all that?

An exercise in one of the finer points of the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful Catch -22.  Even more powerful than that Wizard guy who really wasn’t a wizard after all but managed to bamboozle the townsfolk by spouting whatever it was he was spouting and the locals bought it hook, line and Horsefeathers which is a great movie by the Marx Brothers and comes highly recommended by your humble savant.

So the wizard is not really a wizard and just as the good citizens of Oz get wise he skips town as non-wizards pretending to be wizards are apt to do once their non- wizardness has been discovered.

If only…Which leads me for no particular reason other than I need some relief from the Sea of Madness ( Thanx Neil) and this song while not exactly a stairway to you know where is an oasis at midnight along the watchtower.  Before I twist myself into knots trying to be too cute for my own good here is the tune that gets me through.  Through what?

When I ask YT for a version of the tune this is the first one that pops up and with good reason.  Written by Messers Kern and Hammerstein.  It is the perfect song melodically and every other kind of lodically I can think of.  Ella is the best.  Maybe I should titled this piece simply as ” Ella is the Best.

For the Third Time…

Tags

absurdity, books, Catch- 22, novels, observations

I’m reading ” Catch -22″ again for, as the title suggests the third time.  Or maybe it’s the fourth time.  The first time was when I was in high school and I had to read it, second time was when my kid was in high and she had to read it.  Third time was sometime later and maybe this is really the fourth time.

The first time I didn’t get it, the second time it made sense and subsequent readings now horrify me.

I saw the movie sometime in the early 1970’s at Penn State during a visit.  It may have been the highlight of the weekend.

On page nine of this paperback version I stumbled upon the following line… ( no apologies to the author and I have not received permission to reprint this so don’t turn me in to the whoever literary police one turns someone in to for just passing along a great line and a slightly prescient one at that.)

Page nine – ” There was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically that people of means – decent folk – should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk- people without means.”  End quote.

That’s page nine in the Simon and Schuster 2004 paperback edition.  You could look it up.

There are books and movies and songs we read, see and hear in our impressionable years that imprint on our minds, never leave you and sometimes come in handy somewhere down the dusty roads you take.  Catch – 22  has come in very handy many times

Even if this the third time or fourth time it remains Catch – 22 and it’s still the best Catch there is.

Any similarities between my own style of writing and Joseph Heller’s are strictly intentional.

Thank you  Mr. Heller.

 

 

 

 

 

This Makes NO Sense

Tags

Catch- 22

I received an unsolicited piece of mail this afternoon, real mail, not the digital sort.  It was a letter from a too big to fail bank reminding me that my time on the ” Do Not Ever Send Me Junk Mail List ” is about to expire.  I was kind of hoping that on that particular list that I was a lifer.

Let’s think about that again – shall we?  I am on a do not mail list yet I get a letter in violation of my mailing preferences reminding me that I am missing valuable offers and I might want to consider putting my name and address BACK on the ” Please mail me all the crap you want” list.  Yes, and I’ll take an order of intestinal parasites, gout and sharp sticks in the eye too.

I can re-up by phone, by visiting their website ( cookies required) or by stopping into one of their branch offices where I can tell some poor underling to leave me alone and I can do it in person.  Is it any wonder that my favorite book of all time is ” Catch -22?”

Sincerely,

Major Major