Happy, please

These are all images painted by the incredibly prolific J. C. Leyendecker (b. 1874), a highly influential illustrator from the 20th century.

Leyendecker, who preceded Norman Rockwell at the Saturday Evening Post by a generation, either invented or popularized several mainstays of American Holiday iconography: the fat jolly red- garbed Santa, 4th of July fireworks, flowers on Mother's Day, and the subject of the paintings shown here, the New Years Baby. He painted 322 SEP covers and did the illustrations for Arrow shirts, and Kuppenheimer suits among many others.

An openly gay man in an era when such a thing was frowned upon (to say the least), he died in seclusion in 1951, cared for by his lover and friend, who had once been his main model.








In these days of cultural and racial diversity, Leyendecker's and (to a lesser extant) Rockwell's images of an all too white Xmas, New Years and Thanksgiving seem so dated. The sentiment is there, but the inclusion of all America is glaringly absent. A sign of the times.

The Future is Now!

Now that we're hours away from 2010, it's clear that every day is a day from the future. There's just something about the designation 2000 and any subsequent years that screams, "FUTURE!" And of course, 2010 screams it way more than 2009. Just wait 'til we get to 2020.



Obviously I'm not talking about the actual future that never gets here without becoming the present and then the past, but the portentous, oft- predicted- H. G. Wellsian FUTURE, the one that is NOW, the one that has Men of Tomorrow living in it, the one with ray guns, anti- gravity belts, personal rockets, shrinking rays, clothes with stiff epaulets on the shoulders and space suits with huge glass helmets. That future.

Will 2010 see the invention of the time machine? Of course it will! Utopian apartment communities with
glass tubes for transportation? Yes! Weather domes that shield an entire city from snow, rain and hurricanes? Yes, yes and YES!!!

Cars that drive themselves, robot servants, and delicious food made from tiny pellets may have to wait until 2011, but how far away is that? Don't forget recreating dinosaurs and turning invisible. I predict that by 2012 we will have achieved every one of these things.

The future is upon us, my friends- let's use it wisely.

Secret Santa

This photograph has not been digitally altered.

This is a pic by California photographer Andy Thomas, taken on December 12th, 2009 at the Santa Con in SanFrancisco where they certainly know how to have a good time.

B & W Santa goes by BrodyQat on Flickr, and here's a shot from her collection:

Kinda cool, eh?

Call the Cab!

I can't really this date go by without saying Happy Birthday to the hipster's hipster, the Hi- De- Ho man himself, Cab Calloway.

I'm going to skip the biography this time because Ms. Confetta has covered it so thoroughly on her great blog On This Day In Jazz Age Music.

I can't even remember a time when I didn't know who Cab was. He sang an expurgated version of Minnie the Moocher on Ed Sullivan- no gongs were harmed during the Sunday family hour. He stole the movie Stormy Weather, except of course when Lena sings the title tune, and one of the few records that my friend Jock Haight had when we were kids was a Cab Calloway record with The Jumpin' Jive on it. We marveled at the lyrics and finally understood them at roughly the same time we understood Brother Dave Gardner's "Let's blow this joint- pass it on to the waitress" quip.

Then there were the movies at the Biograph Theater in Georgetown. First were the Betty Boops:



followed by the amazing Reefer Man performance from International House:



Back then any pot references from the thirties or forties was like discovering a secret brotherhood of hipsters.

Ultimately it was the first Blues Brothers movie (as bad as it was) that brought him back. I kept trying to meet him (the list again) but I never did. As I began researching jazz more and more I found out that Cab was a canny businessman, a no- nonsense band leader and a tough boss. He travelled to his gigs in a private train car so his musicians didn't have to be exposed to the vicious Jim Crow laws of the South. He was not a jazzman, not really, but a consummate professional entertainer, who surrounded himself with the finest musicians he could get, like Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, Chu Berry, and even Dizzy Gillespie who actually knifed Cab after being accused (wrongly) of having hurled a spitball at the boss.















The Calloway Band of 1936



Because of shows like Sesame Street, even in the '70's and '80's every kid in the US knew who Cab Calloway was.

He performed right up to his death in 1994. Does it get much better than that?


















So Happy Birthday and Happy Holidays and everything else to my lifelong pal Cab Calloway. Have a knish-a, Mischa!

Merry Xmas to All and to All...

Nobody depicted Christmas in America better than Norman Rockwell.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Peace on Earth to All.

Stocks Market

Recently there's been two incidents, affronts really, that have surfaced in the news.


















The first involves the family of the "balloon boy". To recap: six- year- old Falcon Heene was reportedly trapped in a large helium balloon built to resemble a UFO that travelled as high as 7,000 feet before it landed northeast of the Denver airport. Authorities tracking the balloon, worried all along that the boy may have fallen from it, recovered it devoid of passenger.

Falcon was found unharmed, hiding in the Heene family house.











Heene pretending to have found his boy unharmed

As the story unraveled, it turned out that the boy's father Richard Heene had engineered a hoax, purportedly to get the family onto reality television. (Richard had been on some show and enjoyed the resultant publicity.) His wife Mayumi was involved, and they were both finally sentenced to jail time and must pay severe fines.

The second case involves Tariq and Michaele Salahi, a Virginia couple who crashed a high- level White House dinner and then wrote about it in Facebook. Again, to recap: the Salahis, a dubious "socialite" couple were candidates for a proposed reality television show (hmmmm) involving the housewives of DC, in the "Housewives of Orange County" mold. Mr. Salahi, an owner of a very much litigated now bankrupt winery, married Mrs. Salahi in a lavish wedding back in 2003. Since that time the couple has lost most of their money, but not their desire for the lush life.

So, on November 24th, 2009, they decided that since they had no valid invitation to a White House dinner in honor of Indian leader Monmohan Singh, they would just go and see if they could get in anyway. And they did.

In a monumental breach of Secret Service protocol, the Salahis waltzed in, got their pictures taken with a bunch of famous folks and waltzed out with no one the wiser. That is, until they posted pics and bragged about their triumph in their Facebook entry the next day.

The Salahis with Vice- President Joseph Biden

Two cases of arrogance, stupidity, cupidity and utter hubris, not to mention greed and rampant disregard for others.

The Salahis have not been charged (yet), and the Heenes are going to jail. But isn't there a better punishment for the two couples? I think so, but unfortunately it's been outlawed in this country since 1905.

I'm talking about stocks. No, not the kind you buy on Wall Street. I'm talking about this kind:


The kind they put pilgrims in. The kind they locked you into in Medieval times. You know, then they'd tickle your feet (actually that's more of a pillory but what the hey) or throw vegetables or even rocks at you . I'm not saying that we should throw rocks at the Heenes or tickle Michaele Salahi's feet, but I bet you a few hours in the stocks would teach these morons not to watch so much reality television.

The stocks could be set up on the National Mall, right near the Merry- Go- Round. A guard could be posted in case things got out of hand. Those food and souvenir trucks could sell rotten vegetables or eggs and then people could throw them. Or maybe yell pejoratives at the unfortunate couples.

Some choice media coverage, a few You Tube videos and the whole thing is over. Case closed.

And why stop at the Heenes and the Salahis? Remember the Runaway Bride? And how about the producers of these reality TV shows? And all the people who became dubious personalities as a result? Like everyone who was ever on "Road Rules", for instance. Or any politician caught in a humiliating hypocritical position, like Governor Sanford of South Carolina. Or Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. The list goes on and on.

After a few stock punishments you'd see a real decrease in hubristic criminality. And wouldn't that be a relief?

Still Designing

I'm still trying to get the right template for this site, so please bear with me. Kinda like this one, though- comments?