Showing posts with label Jean Shepherd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jean Shepherd. Show all posts

Saturday, February 03, 2018

Memo: Tom Brady is Ironman, but People Hate Him




Tom Brady is Ironman -not the Marvel Comics character and bad movie sequel vehicle, but an athlete with the heart and tripes of Joe Kapp, Bobby Douglas, Sonny Jurgensen, Jim McMahon and Terry Bradshaw.






Tom Brady  #12 QB
Height: 6-4   Weight: 225   Age: 40
Born: 8/3/1977 San Mateo , CA
College: Michigan
Experience: 18th season
High School: Serra HS [San Mateo, CA]
TDS
32
INT
8
YDS
4,577
RTG
102.8

Tom Brady is prettier than all of the above; hell, if I were so inclined, I'd take a hard run at him.  Tom Brady is like Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde's post-Raphaelite

Lucifer and must have a portrait of himself at home that looks like Hell - to quote Ken Klipp of Manteno,Illinois.

The Patriots, Bill Belichek and Brady elicit the same levels of foam, spittle and bile frothing from the mouths of P-Hatters, AntiFas and Artists of Resistance from many otherwise sober, serious and sedentary sports lovers.   Too many of these 'lovers' consult fantasy player apps and others check-out SI listings, polls and analyzes on ESPN, where they can also plug into their political and moral soul.

List makers and pollsters are an obnoxious reality plaguing the American soul - always have been.  The great Jean Shepherd warned against them decades ago, but people would rather consult than think, experience, or bear witness for themselves. Americans swallow hype by the yard.


  • Trump will kill us all
  • Tom Brady Deflates
  • Philly Eagles Rule
  • Have You Gone to Au Cheval?  ( why yes . . .meh.)
  • JB Pritzker - Our Common Man
  • Richard Roeper
  • Auburn Football!!!!!!!
Trump ain't done me no harm.  The FICA on my last pay-stub was harmless. Tom Brady is Ironman. 

So, I will not watch another Superbowl ( LII).  Most people say the Patriots are -4 point dogs.  Most people called 2016 for Hillary.  

On Monday, we will see.  Many folks in Asia, Europe and the emerging nations of Sub-Saharan Africa could care less,   but not less than me. 


Saturday, January 16, 2016

Exit Lepidus: End the Damn Lists Already!



SCENE I. A house in Rome.
ANTONY, OCTAVIUS, and LEPIDUS, seated at a table
ANTONY
These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
OCTAVIUS
Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?
LEPIDUS
I do consent--
OCTAVIUS
Prick him down, Antony.
LEPIDUS
Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.
ANTONY
He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar's house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.
LEPIDUS
What, shall I find you here?
OCTAVIUS
Or here, or at the Capitol.
Exit LEPIDUS
THE WAR ON LISTS
Around this time, Shepherd made a rare daytime trip to a bookstore. When he couldn’t find a book he was looking for on the shelves, a clerk informed him the book must not exist because it hadn’t appeared on any publisher’s list the clerk had ever seen. Shepherd was positive the book existed, but no amount of insistence on Shepherd’s part could budge the clerk from his certainty. This encounter would prove to be the fuel for the fire to come.


Only one list matters and that is the mythical list St. Nicholas keeps concerning who is naughty and who is nice.

Those whom our reified Yule Saint pricks down may also keep lists.

If, however, you have come to a point in your life where you no longer believe that a ghostly gent with an Arctic address will be bring sacks full of X-Boxes and Barbies down the chimney, please ignore lists, don't compile lists and,  please, for the love of God,  do not encourage the over-paid imbeciles seated at some keyboard do so.

List-O-Mania, it might empirically and historically argued has helped create American Morons.

Polls and lists have become the drug of choice for people too lazy to read, walk down the street, think for themselves, entertain themselves and most all to love themselves.

Since, the late 1950's, beginning in New York City's radio stations and tabloids, lists have been compiled on any all topic, destination, person, incident and policy. One voice alone, stood in the way of List-O-mania and that was Hammond, Indiana  born writer and wit Jean Shepherd.  He was martyred and only allowed to pop his head above our shallow culture with A Christmas Story, for having taken on the New York Times Bestsellers List.

Shepherd's battle against Lists rivals the Alamo, Wake Island, Bataan, the Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sahn.  What the. . . Sorry, guilty me making a list.

When God created the Universe (First Cause), He put into motion a series of events where matter collides with will and all things tend back to Him.

Like an Omnipotent/Omniscient Minnesota Fats, Mr. Trinity chalks up and stokes the cue in the only Act of Eternal Will that really matters - energy, force and matter scatters with the end of making us balls hit a pocket and return to the Brunswick bay near His loins - Big Bang!

Now, I have played pool and some idiot has, on occasion, grabbed a ball (cue and numbered), blocked the ball, bumped the table, spilled beer on the path of my sure-shot, or. otherwise. loused up the game.  That lousing up by Lists is taking place in our Universe, Boys and Girls.

Polling has given us Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Lists have made us stupid.

Let's pass over Polling, just for sake of not having an argument - 99.9% of my immediate family love Obama and I, because I have met and spoken with President #44 on more than few occasions, think that he is a dope.  Likewise, 100% of my immediate and extended family ( myself included for the same reasons as not in the previous sentence) believe that Donald Trump is the turd in our National punchbowl.

Thus we are free to excoriate Lists. Lists were used to proscribe people deemed expendable by tyrants  from Croesus, to Hitler, to Stalin, To Mao, to Nixon, to Valerie Jarrett.  A proscription list meant that you and your family deader than Kelsey's Nuts.

Lists can be used for good as in the case of Poor Richard's Almanac, Seven Deadly Sins, Cardinal Virtues and such.  Lists comprised by the superior gender stop the flood of cash from checking accounts, due to male impulse buying in grocery stores.  However, as with anything once moderation has been scuttled the ship of sense sinks; bringing us to our Idiocy Universal.

God made the Universe. Who made the world? Carpenters and Bricklayers.  Had to squeeze that one in.

Yes, God made the Universe and saw that it was good.  Now,  God Help Us All, there is a Listverse.  It is bad, very bad.

One can not open a magazine, a newspaper, or website without being hammered senseless by Lists of -Top Tens - Forbes Plutocrats & etc.

I received a 25th Birthday present in 1977 from a cousin. The son of screenwriter and novelist Irving Wallace - one David Wallechinsky had just published a smoking hot bestselling tome of nonfiction -  The Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information.  It was great take to bathroom literature and ,once done so, never allowed on the coffee table ( like I had one).

I have no idea where that gift ended up. I went through it.  Now, I curse it.  I should have smelled this skunk in the underwear drawer of America's soul.

Things went rampant from 1977 onward.

Rather than read great books, participate in drama, study history, practice athletics, live the virtues, Americans examined lists of everything and anything.

People need to go out and discover.  Lists keep people home bound.

Store Front, Homemade Pizzas and Burgers, Drink Specials in Chicago, IL

I discovered a great pizza place on the Northside of Chicago on my last birthday, when I was treated to an Evening With John Cleese Being Talked Over By Roe Cohn *at the Atheneum Theatre.  It was raining and exquisite Miss Terry Sullivan and I wandered in search of a pre-show eatery and by luck took a right going south on SouthPort at George Street and at the end of the block found a tiny saloon with best pizza I have ever tasted.

We managed this discovery without the aid of a YELP, much less a Chicago Magazine Pay-to-Play Listing of approved venues and events.

Our experience was made all the more Nearer My God to Thee, because no list went into our discovery.

That is what God intended all of us to do.

* John Cleese is an enormously talented wit; Roe Cohn is on the radio, despite his limitations, intellectual and social.
The entire show consisted of Roe Cohn talking over John Cleese and telling stories about his shallow life. Tickets were over $56 for general admission.   The pizza at Side Saloon balmed the fact that Roe Cohn bored a hole through a capacity audience. Prick Him Down, Antony!








Monday, December 16, 2013

Lists and Polls are for Donkeys -Jean Shepherd Pray for Us!



"I was new to New York, and I suddenly became aware that New York is almost entirely a city that really does run on lists.  . . . has it occurred to you that these lists are compiled by mortals and that they are human just like you are and, in fact, they have many more axes to grind than you?" Jean Shepherd Not on the Top Ten Famous Guys List

If it is not on the list it does not exist?  I once asked a used book store clerk on Milwaukee Ave.  in the Wicker neighborhood for a copy of J.P. Donleavy's brilliant The Compleat Unexpurgated Code. The tatooed twenty something with multiple piercings sneered,  "Ginger Man?  You mean Ginger Man?" I assured the fiery hipstress," No, this is a work of non-fiction Humor. " She checked the publication directory and the screen of computer and assured me " Jay Pee Donnelly wrote fiction. He ain't on the list."

He is.  J. P. Donleavy wrote fiction and non-fiction. In the ironic patois of the trendy and Kathleen Sebelius, "Whatever."

Consult -

The New York Times Book of Lists
Forbes List of Richest People ( World, Nation & etc.)
10 Best Mexican Recipes
!0  Best Mexican Restaurants
10 Best Mexican Bandits
10 Best Muslim Comics
10 Best Forrest Claypool Salaries

Yep, Lists - Capitalists, Communists, Journalists, Franz Liszt and Socialists -all kinds O lists. From Noah to the Southern Poverty Law Center, list makers jot down names and doom others. Lists; they are not on the lists!!!!!  Power mad creeps tend to love mking lists and cehcking them twice -Marc Antony, Santa, the IHSA, Stalin, Mao, Al Hitler, Organizing for America and Nielsons.

Who cares?  Rather, let's make this a declarative sentence;  its seems to me- Who cares most about lists would be people who do not get out much, don't read much, don't know much, and rarely contribute much.
I can name twenty great eating stops within a mile of Leo High School that would never be listed by professional Wicker Park liberals on the staffs of Chicago, or Chicagoist. . . , but Im not gonna.

I have yet to eat at a restaurant gushed over by Chicago Magazine, placed on a list in Chicagoist, or hit upon by dint of a second hand reader of lists. Seek and you shall find. Like Cliffs Notes, so-called educated and cultivated folks do not bother to read the urban, suburban, or rural landscapes in full and opt to be spoon-fed verities concerning where eat, what to think, what to read, what to believe, and whom to love.

Wanda Hickey
One the most literate and under-read writers, was the disc-jockey Jean Shepherd. Shepherd is now only recognized as the author of Christmas Story.  I read my first Jean Shepherd tome, while a freshman at Loyola.  I read Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, the Hammond genius's collection of eight great short stories that introduced me to Scut Farkas, the Old Man, Schwartz and Flick long before my bride and I caught the Holiday movie as it played in Kankakee, IL at the Meadowview Theatre.  The creator of those wonderful people from Hohman ( Hammond) Indiana living in the actual Hessville neighborhood along Kennedy Avenue had been a disc jockey in New York City which is the national shrine of all lists.  Mr. Shepherd, like your humble correspondent, had a cordial hatred of lists. In fact he concocted a hoax born of this passion.  Jean Shepherd created a besst-seller, without writing a jot - I Libertine!




People listened to his radio show and began to talk about the book that never was.  It became a best-seller, because people who made lists said so.  People who live by lists believe anything e.g. Toni Preckwinkle, Sheila Simon, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Pat Quinn, Bruce Rauner, Marque Kirque, Judy Baar Topinka were all given birth by procreative act of making lists.  People accept comedy from Tyler Perry.  Religion from Jim Wall, Thought from Bill Moyer, and Happiness from Dan Savage.  No legislation comes to Gov. Pat Quinns desk without having passed the smell test of Paul Simon Institute polling.

A poll does exactly the same thing as a pole, though they differ.



O, List to the lay of this bold Irish Harper . . .