Last week Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested after breaking into his own home. The arresting officer's report indicates that when he told Gates he would speak to him outside, the famous scholar allegedly replied, "ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside." What happened when they both hit the street was the most vicious dozens beatdown that a Harvard professor of literary criticism has ever laid on a Cambridge police officer.
"Yo mama's girth is so prodigious, I was compelled to compensate my limo driver with overtime remuneration because of the time required to navigate to her good side."
"Yo mama's intelligence is so feeble, she mistook football's "quarterback" position w/ a refund of 25¢, when in fact it has nothing to do with currency at all."
"Yo mama's so advanced in years, a screening of the motion picture 'Jurassic Park' evoked in her a keen nostalgia for the days of her youth."
"Yo mama's girth is so prodigious that, presuming you reside in a building with multiple floors, the safety notification posted by the responsible authority in your building's elevator reads MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY: 12 Passengers or Yo Mama."
"Yo mama's physical appearance is so repulsive, that John Merrick, better known by his sobriquet 'The Elephant Man', because the combination of terrible deformities inflicted upon his body by a congenital disorder gave him what some witnesses perceived to be an elephantine appearance...of course his name was not really John at all, but Joseph; due to an unfortunate error of recall made in the memoirs of his one-time physician and guardian Frederick Treves, the mistaken name 'John' was perpetuated, and then reinforced in the contemporary public's mind by the Oscar-winning film 'The Elephant Man,' a fictionalized account of Merrick's life directed by avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch, who used Treves's memoir as source material. But none of this is really pertinent to my central thesis, to wit: yo mama's so ugly, the Elephant Man paid to see her."
"Yo mama's intelligence is so feeble, she raised you, a high-handed authoritarian who believes that his position as an officer of the law empowers him to punish disrespect with imprisonment, even when the disrespect has been earned, and comes at the hands of an innocent man who has been humiliated in his own very expensive home, and who has committed no crime other than being in the wrong skin at the wrong time."
As I continue strolling through the songs on my iPod, I've made it up to the letter "H". I'm surprised to find that 230 or so songs on my iPod right now begin with "H", but not so many of them are among my most favorite. Oh, there's plenty of good stuff, but it feels like A-G had more songs that I return to again and again. So picking an "H" theme proved more difficult than some of the previous letters...until I noticed how many of my "H" songs were either silly, or sad, or a little bit of both. Which got me thinking about the idea that a lot of humor has its basis in sorrow or pain. Slapstick is the most obvious example, of course, where the humor lies almost entirely in observing another's painful discomfiture and being glad it's not you. A lot of what makes us laugh is the same thing that would make us curl up in a corner and sob like a baby if we couldn't figure out how to hang a comic face on it. In that spirit I offer up my "H" songs, most of which have humor with at least a little hurt behind it. The Rainmakers were a great Missouri band who played an odd mix of hilarious rave-ups and more serious social satire, but everything they did came wrapped in a tight, catchy rock and roll bow. Lead singer and songwriter Bob Walkenhorst has not only a unique voice but also a biting wit and a great sense of musical humor ("Big Fat Blonde" still ranks for me as one of the great silly party songs of all time). "Hoo Dee Hoo" mixes their trademark upbeat guitar rock with a nonsense chorus and a surprisingly touching lyric of nostalgia and regret.
"Hank" is a bluesy story-song by the Boston bar band Treat Her Right (some of its members, including the late Mark Sandman, later spun off to form Morphine). The song's narrator imagines a cry-in-your-beer story to explain the message found written on a dollar bill: "She lost. You won. I love her. Hank."
I've been laser-burning new pits in my copy of Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" with repeated listenings ever since it came out. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems harder and harder to find bands that are rock-solid musically and also produce songs with thoughtful lyrics about experiences from after college. Right now Wilco is my favorite band for grown-ups. "Hate it Here" is easily summarized by adding the line that immediately follows the title in the chorus, "since you're gone."
And then there are the songs that just skip the humor altogether and go straight to the hurt. Sometimes the marriage of singer and song is so perfect that you just can't imagine the music and words in anyone else's voice. These final two "H" songs, "Has He Got a Friend for Me" performed by Maria McKee, and "Hurt" performed by Johnny Cash, are like that, though neither of these talented songwriters wrote the songs themselves (they were written by Richard Thompson and Trent Reznor, respectively). If someone had told me that Johnny Cash was going to cover Nine Inch Nails, and proceed to make the song his own, I probably would have thought it was some kind of joke. But watch the video. That one's Johnny's now.
I know that online news--especially at the big organizations like CNN--can happen pretty quickly, and there's great pressure to get a breaking story online before the other guy does. But when you're one of the biggest news outlets in the world, you should probably have systems in place that would prevent the kind of thing that happened on Thursday. As I was casually browsing CNN's home page, I clicked a link for a story on an accidental death during the construction of a Madonna concert in France. It was a straightforward account of a sad accident, obviously based on early, sketchy reports. Fine. But the story was accompanied with a file picture of Madonna in concert. Here's the story as it originally appeared (this is an unaltered screen capture from my browser; click the photo for closer look): Yes, a story about a horrible accident that led to several injuries and one death is accompanied by a picture of Madonna giving the two-fisted finger to the world. "Yeah someone died," says Madonna in this version of the story, "but he was French, so who cares? That's just rock 'n' roll mother-f***ers!" Obviously, someone said, "Get me a picture of Madonna in concert to go with this story of an accident involving her stage set." But did no one actually look at this picture before uploading it to one of the biggest news sites in the world? Was someone playing a joke--someone who was hopefully shown the door that very hour? Yes, they replaced the photo within about fifteen minutes or so, but how did it ever get attached to that story? They should thank their lucky stars that printed news is dead; otherwise this one would be haunting them for years to come.
I was putzing around in the kitchen earlier today when my foot struck one of the little flat bowls we use to feed the BHOC, and ZIPPO it slid under the oven like an air hockey puck. Sure, I was now up 1-0, but I knew for a fact that Donna had done exactly the same thing less than a week ago. And LEFT IT THERE. But I digress. Since I knew the cats had occasionally lost toys under there, and the stove hadn't been pulled out for cleaning in months, I girded up my loins and dragged it from its cubby. Let's just take a little...WHOA NELLIE BOZO! I'm thinking of calling the National Geographic, because I have discovered the fabled Ancient Cat Toy Burial Ground. That's Porter investigating the grisly remains, perhaps reconnecting with long-lost friends he thought were gone forever. You might have thought the other picture was of some child's box of cherished collectibles, a hoard of doodads whose pedigree and significance are known only to the little kid who lovingly squirreled them away and invested them with the mysterious power of keepsakes. But no, that's just all the crap I hauled out from under my stove, every single item an accidental goal in our cats' neverending game of kitchen air hockey. The cats have already dug around in the box and pulled out a couple of blasts from the past to play with, but here's a partial inventory of the rest:
10 actual cat toys--some whiffle golf balls, plastic jacks, tiny stuffed mice, and a couple of spiky plastic rolly thingies that look like undersea mines.
Numerous homemade cat toys, like an empty thread spool, some wadded up bits of paper, bottlecaps (twist and flip), and a plastic milk cap ring.
And many completely cat-improvised toys, including a grievously maimed origami kangaroo, two tiny Christmas ornaments, a walnut and an acorn, a pen, a clothespin, and an empty tube of Airborne® cold medicine.
Now I've got to find some place to keep all this junk, so it once again can be doled out piece by piece to thrill and exercise the kitties. At least for the ten minutes it takes them to maneuver back into the kitchen and light the red light. GOOAAALLLLLLLLLL!
If you've ever Twittered away your time online, you're probably familiar with the "Trending Topics" list on the right-hand side of your Twitter home page that identifies the words and phrases that are appearing most often on the social networking site. The trending topics list usually reflects the news of the hour, but it also serves as a sort of meme mine, and often facilitates--for better or worse--a certain brand of flashmob comedy writing. Tonight someone started the topic #coolbandsmadeuncool, which essentially involved changing famous band names to their near--but very disappointing--analogues. The Broken Stove is feeling pleased enough with its own contributions to reprint them here for your delectation.
#coolbandsmadeuncool
The Snuggle Pistols
Telegraphhead
The Butthole Smurfers
They Might Be Padres
Dead Coolidges
and my personal favorite, Public Enema
addenda
Burkha-Clad Ladies
RUN DMV
Dr. Drédel [Yiddish mother voice] "Such a nice young man...AND a doctor!"[/Yiddish mother voice]
P.S. The musically-challenged among you should feel free to request a key to the original cool band names. But then I'll know either a) you're not cool, or b) I'm not as clever as I thought I was. Probably it's a).
Peter Waldron is a writer and bon vivant who currently lives in a tobacco field south of Raleigh. He enjoys cheese, homebrewing, and travel to those places not covered by various restraining orders. He has been a contributing writer for The Onion News Network, and his scribblings have appeared at Yankee Pot Roast, The Science Creative Quarterly, and in his head, where they never fail to get a big laugh.
Last week Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested after breaking into his own home. The arresting officer's report indicates that when he told Gates he would speak to him outside, the famous scholar allegedly replied, "ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside." What happened when they both hit the street was the most vicious dozens beatdown that a Harvard professor of literary criticism has ever laid on a Cambridge police officer.
