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chiseler · 6 years ago

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TIN PAN ALIAS

They're no longer the household names they once were. In fact their names were not really their names. But between them Harry and Albert Von Tilzer were two of the more successful and prolific songwriters and publishers on Tin Pan Alley, and many of their songs are familiar today as icons of the so-called Gay Nineties and early 1900s. One of them still gets played every day there's a baseball game.

Harry and his brothers were not born Von Tilzers. Harry was born Aaron Gumbinsky or Gummblinsky to Polish Jewish immigrants in Detroit in 1872. He grew up in Indianapolis, where the brothers were all born. The family shortened the name to Gumm, leading to the often-repeated misinformation that Frances Gumm, better known as Judy Garland, was Harry's niece. In fact, her father Frank Gumm was not one of the Gumbinsky/Gumm/Von Tilzer brothers, but a cracker from Tennessee (and predominantly homosexual, interesting when you consider Garland's complex personal and professional relationships with gay men later, not to mention Liza's).

At fourteen Harry Gumm ran away to join the Cole Brothers Circus. He played piano and wrote songs for a traveling theater troupe and changed his name on the road, taking his mother's maiden name and adding the Von for a touch of class. His brothers, all of whom went into the music business after him, followed suit. Making for more confusion, in 1929 a Helen Von Tilzer would marry one of the Marx Brothers -- Gummo, of course. Because of that preposterous-seeming coincidence she's often written up as Harry's sister, but in fact she was born Helen Theaman in New York. Von Tilzer was her first husband's name, and he seems to have been a real Von Tilzer, also not related to Harry and the fake Von Tilzer clan.

Harry worked in burlesque, with medicine shows and in vaudeville, specializing, naturally, in "Dutch" (German) routines. In 1892 he arrived in New York City by train as a groom for a carload of horses. He had one dollar and sixty-five cents in his pocket. For the next six years he struggled, playing saloon piano and writing songs that Tony Pastor and others bought from him at two bucks each.

According to David A. Jansen's Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song, Harry wrote his first hit under some duress. He and lyricist Andrew B. Sterling were sharing a furnished room on East Fifteenth Street in 1898 and were "three weeks behind on their rent. When a final bill was slipped under their door, they used the paper to write a chorus and then a verse of what turned out to be their first successful publication, 'My Old New Hampshire Home.'" It was classic barbershop quartet treacle. William Dunn of the Orphean Music publishing company paid them fifteen dollars for it -- a week's rent on the room -- and proceeded to sell more than a million copies in sheet music.

Then Dunn was bought out by Louis Bernstein and Maurice Shapiro, founders of one of Tin Pan Alley's longest-lived hit factories -- it still exists as Shapiro Bernstein & Co., with a catalogue that includes "Ring of Fire," "Yes! We Have No Bananas," "Walk on the Wild Side" (the original, not Lou Reed's song) and the immortal "Wolverton Mountain." They paid Von Tilzer four thousand dollars, a considerable sum in those days, to join them as a partner in the firm. A few years later he would leave them and start his own publishing company.

In 1900 he was relaxing in a whorehouse (or just at a party, depending on the source), noodling on the piano to some lyrics handed him by the British lyricist Arthur Lamb. When Harry saw the girls around him crying, he figured he'd noodled up a smash hit. It was. "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" sold more than two million copies of sheet music, and was one of the most popular weepers of the age, a song we still associate more than maybe any other with late Victorian mawkishness. This time Harry earned far more than fifteen bucks.

He and Lamb collaborated on two more tearjerkers in 1902, "The Banquet in Misery Hall" and the equally lugubrious "The Mansion of Aching Hearts," which a few singers made into hit recordings. That same year a scrawny Jewish kid from the Lower East Side went busking in the saloons on the Bowery, belting out "Mansion" in a raspy tenor to the pie-eyed sailors and hookers who tossed pennies at him. That kid, Izzy Baline, went up to Tin Pan Alley on Twenty-Eighth Street to meet Von Tilzer, who hired him as a song plugger and "boomer." A boomer was a plant in the audience at the music hall or vaudeville house whose job was to cheer and shout "Encore!" when the publisher's new song was performed. Von Tilzer, who was an expert plugger and boomer himself, showed Izzy the ropes. Izzy, who would invent his own German-sounding professional name, Irving Berlin, went on to eclipse his mentor's fame.

But Von Tilzer was no slouch. "Wait 'Til the Sun Shines, Nellie," "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad)," "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and "I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid!" were all major hits, and he wrote thousands more. That was not unusual. In the crowded Tin Pan Alley milieu, where publishing companies were stacked four and five stories high door-to-door, the competition was brutal, the pace ferocious and the ruling business model crudely simple: Throw as many songs at the public as you can possibly churn out, and hope one sticks once in a while. The lists of songs published on Tin Pan Alley in its glory years, roughly the 1880s through the 1920s, are stupefyingly long -- tens of thousands of songs, hurled at the public in live performances, as sheet music and piano rolls, on recorded wax cylinders, in early versions of coin-operated jukeboxes, on phonograph discs after the introduction of the affordable Victrola in 1906, and eventually on radio. Almost all of those tens of thousands of songs are forgotten now. In fact the vast majority barely made an impression when they were new. You just kept cranking them out, praying for a hit now and again.

Von Tilzer was out there pitching with the best of them. Like all serious Tin Pan Alley composers he jumped on every band wagon that rolled down Twenty-Eighth Street. He wrote Irish and "Dutch" numbers when they were fads, beer-drinking songs when they came into fashion (including one called "Under the Anheuser Busch"), schmaltzy kiddie songs, and songs capitalizing on every new dance craze, from the bunny hug to the turkey trot to the hesitation waltz. He threw three of them together in one song, "You Can Tango You Can Trot Dear but Be Sure and Hesitate." He wrote novelty songs like "The Ragtime Goblin Man" and topical ones like "Old King Tut," a hit for Sophie Tucker the year after Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922.

He also wrote several hit coon songs. Coon songs spun off from minstrel shows in the 1880s. In the 1890s and 1900s hundreds and hundreds of songs with "coon" in the title were published, usually sung to ragtime tunes. They often replaced the Old Plantation nostalgia of the traditional minstrel song with ruder, more overtly racist stereotypes. They were hugely popular, and Von Tilzer wrote his share, songs like "Alexander" (familiar to audiences then as a hifalutin' name for a blackface minstrel character), "Mammy's Kinky-Headed Coon," "My Lady Hottentot" and "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown." Performers of old-timey music still record that one, though it may be best known for the 1970 funk version by the great Rufus ("Do the Funky Chicken") Thomas. In 1911, Berlin would upstage Von Tilzer's "Alexander" with his own ragtime-y coon song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Any similarity to his mentor's hit was purely intentional.

By the middle of the 1920s Von Tilzer had composed something like two thousand published songs, including a dozen million-sellers and as many as a hundred that sold half a million. His output slowed down in the later 1920s and 1930s, but he still credibly claimed to have written some eight thousand tunes. Like many Tin Pan Alley greats, including Berlin, he did it without ever learning to read or write a note of music.

Time and tastes moved on. Harry quietly lived out his last years in the Hotel Woodward, a Broadway establishment favored by show folk, and died there in 1946.

Meanwhile, Harry had brought Albert and the other brothers to New York. Jules worked for Harry. Will started a song publishing company, and Albert and Jack partnered in another. Albert was also a songwriter. He and vaudevillian Jack Norworth collaborated on the giant "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in 1908; according to an unconfirmed but persistent legend, Albert never actually saw a ball game until the late 1920s. Some of Albert's other hits include "Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey," "I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time," the minstrel song "Down Where the Swanee River Flows" (a hit for Al Jolson in blackface), the Prohibition lament "The Alcoholic Blues" ("No more beer my heart to cheer/ Goodbye whiskey, you used to make me frisky/ So long highball, so long gin/ Oh, tell me when you comin' back agin"), the Hawaiian-themed ragtime hit "Oh, How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo," and another novelty hit, the zany bum-diddy-bum jungle number "Oh By Jingo!" with lyrics by Lew Brown. ("We will build for you a hut/ You will be our favorite nut/ We will have a lot of Oh By Gollies/ And we'll put them in the Follies.") Born Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Brown had fled the pogroms with his family and settled in the Bronx. In a long career he collaborated with many Tin Pan Alley and Broadway composers on classics like "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," "You're the Cream in My Coffee," "Sunny Side Up" and "That Old Feeling." It was guys like Brown, the Von Tilzers and Berlin whom the rabid anti-Semite Henry Ford had in mind when he ranted, "The people are fed from day to day on the moron suggestiveness that flows in a slimy flood out of 'Tin Pan Alley,' the head factory of filth in New York which is populated by the 'Abies,' the 'Izzies,' and the 'Moes'..." Ignoring him, lots of people recorded the moron suggestiveness of "Oh By Jingo!" -- Danny Kaye, Spike Jones, Stephane Grappelli and Chet Atkins among them.

Following the addition of sound to commercial movies, the studios lured more and more of the music business out to Hollywood in the 1930s. After all, the first hit talkie, The Jazz Singer, was really a singie. Albert went too. He worked in film and tv, mostly contributing to soundtracks of now obscure pictures. He died in L.A. in 1956. By that point much of the Von Tilzer catalogue, especially the older and mushier songs, had faded away, except at ball games. Then in 1958 Lawrence Welk, than whom no one loved old-fashioned schmaltz more, bought the catalogue and engineered a Von Tilzer revival. When the Songwriters Hall of Fame began in 1969, Harry and Albert were among the first voted in.

by John Strausbaugh

#John Strausbaugh #The Chiseler #Harry von Tilzer #Tin Pan Alias #I want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear old Dad

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impressivepress · 4 years ago

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We Should Be Grateful Charlie Chaplin Made 'The Great Dictator' When He Did

Charlie Chaplin is understood to have confided to his friends that, had he known about the full horrors of the Nazi regime, he would probably not have got around to making The Great Dictator.

“There are things in our century that wipe away even the most poisonous smile from the face of the most passionate satirist,” wrote one of the 20th century’s foremost historians. He was referring to Karl Kraus, the great Austrian journalist-polemicist-satirist, whose book The Last Days of Mankind, written in the inter-war years, is a 20th-century classic. When it came to lampooning National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, Kraus says, “nothing occurs to me”. A little later, he adds: “The word fell asleep when that world awoke.”

When the Holocaust became common knowledge, Chaplin must have also felt that his craft was inadequate to render Hitler’s world in any known cinematic genre – political satire or vaudeville, burlesque or tragedy. The Great Dictator was conceptualised and filmed when it was still possible to make fun of the Fuehrer.

Chaplin started shooting for the film in September 1939, just days after Germany invaded Poland. But he had been planning a movie on Hitler for years before that, and worked on his script through 1938-39. From Nazi newsreels, he had carefully studied Hitler’s mannerisms and the way he harangued large crowds. Chaplin also watched Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda documentary Triumph of the Will (1935) several times over to make sure that he knew Nazi rituals well enough; his incredible talent for mimicry did the rest.

The film shoot took a little over six months. By the time Chaplin sat down to edit and add the music tracks, Hitler was overrunning Belgium and Holland while France was gently nudging itself into surrender. When The Great Dictator released in the US in October 1940, London was being carpet-bombed by the Luftwaffe, Neville Chamberlain had already made way for Churchill as the British prime minister and Warsaw’s Jews were being herded into the first ghettos run by the Nazis. However, the tone of the film had already been set before the active hostilities began. A tragedy loomed clearly enough then, but few thought yet that it was the Armageddon.

This perspective is important for understanding the satirical and political scope of Chaplin’s film. The ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ was not only in the future, it had perhaps not begun to take shape as yet in even the most malevolent Nazi sensibility. Chaplin had set out to spoof the pompous bully who was absurd and arrogant, but not yet quite the hideous hangman history was to know him as. Hitler still regarded Mussolini with something of the awe that the disciple reserves for his mentor – this gave Chaplin the opportunity to flesh out a memorable love-hate-love relationship – and Mussolini’s precipitous invasion of Greece, which annoyed Hitler no end, was not to happen before end-October 1940.

The Great Dictator can very well look a tad too light-hearted today; the fact that an uproariously funny story is being told around what can only be described as unmitigated evil can surprise its modern-day viewers. But it is undoubtedly a film true to its time.

And The Great Dictator is much more than a parody. It is a stirring denunciation of fascism’s core principles – xenophobia, intolerance, bigoted nationalism and anti-Semitism. It is funny, but its world is intrinsically violent. Hynkel is often nervous, even shy, but in the presence of his pretty secretary, his predatory instincts are aroused in a trice. Holding her in a tight embrace, he digs his teeth into her neck with sudden vehemence, the whole act looking more like the tearing of flesh than love-making. The utter casualness with which he gives up his prey when the telephone buzzes suddenly makes the scene even more chilling.

Writing in Criterion, Michael Wood notes the effortlessness with which Chaplin shows us “how lethal the ludicrous can be”:

Nothing in the film is quite as frightening as the sight and sound of the ludicrous Hynkel casually ordering the execution of three thousand striking workers.

Chaplin plays around marvellously with this crossover between rollicking humour and unmixed horror. Wood has pointed out how the harmless barber waving a razor over the bare throat of a customer looks more murderous than Hynkel ever does in the film. But the masterly mixing of the strains of Johannes Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dance no 5’ into this edge-of-the-seat scene adds that piquancy which is signature Chaplin.

Again, as the barber sets out on his first date with Hannah, the storm-troopers arrive to get him. A long shot shows the SS men approaching the couple from one end of the street. The barber stops dead, turns around and heads in the other direction nonchalantly, as though nothing was the matter. Another long shot captures another SS column closing in on him from the other direction. Now in panic, the barber scrambles for safety, running first this way and then that, and the camera pans back a long distance before an aerial shot shows him being swept up by an avalanche of burly SS men.

As masterful as the casual mixing of horror and humour is the blending of the ridiculous and the sublime in The Great Dictator. Gracefully, even tenderly, Hynkel performs the unforgettable balloon-ballet with Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ playing softly on the soundtrack. But then he slips on to a tabletop, and goes on bouncing the globe-balloon off his behind, with loving care, a dreamy, enchanted look frozen on his face. When finally he tries to get both his arms around the balloon, it bursts with a scream in his face.

Again, as the fugitive Schultz plots Hynkel’s assassination while sheltering in the ghetto, a serio-comic drama plays out around a noble enterprise. Each of the ‘volunteers’ (Schultz smartly rules himself out right at the beginning) pledges himself to the great project, but is aghast when he finds the fateful coin in his pie. The scene soon turns into a boisterous farce.

The Nazis hated Chaplin, because they found his humour irreverent, subversive – hardly the kind that promoted the ‘wholesome family values’ so beloved of Hitler. In his 1931 trip to Berlin, Chaplin proved hugely popular in Germany and, though the Nazis did not like his spectacular success in all his public engagements, there was not much they could do at that point.

After Hitler rose to power, however, things changed dramatically for Chaplin, as they did for many other popular artists, German and non-German. In 1935, Goebbels banned The Gold Rush in Germany, presumably because the film ran counter to wholesome family entertainment. Even before that, in 1934, Goebbels had authorised the publication of a slanderous little book titled The Jews are Looking at You which, among other choice epithets, described Chaplin as “a disgusting Jewish acrobat” (Chaplin was not Jewish, though). Chaplin had seen the book, and it is safe to assume that his resolve to make a film around Nazism hardened because of it.

Given this background, he could hardly have chosen to play a part in the film that was non-Jewish. And Chaplin being Chaplin, he decided to deliver the coup de grace by playing Hitler as well. It must have been with grim satisfaction that he wrote into one of the opening credits of The Great Dictator words that dripped with irony: “Any resemblance between Hynkel the dictator and the Jewish barber is purely coincidental”. Of course, Chaplin wanted his audience to not look at the dictator and the barber through the same eyes. He expected the audience to laugh right through the film, but he hoped that while the viewers would laugh with the barber for the most part, they would laugh at Hynkel with derision, loathing and worse.

The Great Dictator represented another momentous event: it was Chaplin’s first ‘talkie’. (Modern Times in 1936 had a character screaming at people from a giant TV screen for a few moments, besides the inspired nonsense of the tramp’s song at the cabaret. But it remained a silent movie otherwise.) Chaplin seems to be exploring the enormous potential of his new ‘device’ with great relish here. Hynkel’s public speeches are pure genius. He speaks a mock German that bristles with coughs, sibilants, gutturals and splutters, with occasional identifiable words like sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) and schnitzel (fried meat slice) thrown in with gusto. It is pure gibberish delivered at an extremely, feverishly high pitch – so much so that the microphone itself cringes on its stem.

In another scene, Hynkel dictates an official note to a typist in a matter-of-fact manner. He is speaking aloud while she is taking it down on her typewriter. When Hynkel spouts a long, solemn sentence, she knocks out just a couple of letters. But when he offers only a monosyllable, she types furiously for several lines, clanging the machine as she works it intently. Hynkel looks on, amazed, but she remains completely unruffled, business-like. This playing-off of sound against meaning is an idea that could only have occurred to someone who was transitioning from silent to talking films, but it is hard to imagine anyone else picturising it as brilliantly as Chaplin.

The film’s last sequence, of the barber speaking as Hynkel to his victorious troops, is an audacious piece of cinematic thinking. The speech’s content is perched on the edge of mawkishness, and as it begins to crescendo, it sounds very nearly shrill. And yet, in the end, Chaplin pulls it off magnificently. The barber hesitates, approaches the microphone apprehensively, and begins speaking haltingly. As he does that, the frame slowly sheds its sharp focus, becomes somewhat bleary, over-exposed, fuzzy. As his speech gains in passion and force, the speaker himself is no longer very real himself, and as Hannah looks up to the sky, the screen is bathed in a soft, other-worldly light. This is neither Hynkel nor even the barber speaking here, but Chaplin himself stepping in to deliver his own message as the creator of the movie. Come to think of it, this could have been the only way The Great Dictator could have concluded.

For years before the film was made, cartoonists had exploited the quite remarkable resemblance of Chaplin’s moustache with Hitler’s. Chaplin was, of course, all too aware of it himself (which is why he thought of casting himself as the dictator). He knew that, with the minimum of effort, his face could be touched up to look like Hitler’s. And he also knew that the similarities stretched beyond their physiognomy: they were born within four days of each other – Chaplin on April 16, Hitler on 20, both in 1889; and both rose from poverty and neglect to power and prominence.

Did these similarities trouble Chaplin? Many believe they did, Chaplin’s own son telling us they actually haunted his father:

Dad could never think of Hitler except with a shudder, half of horror, half of fascination. “Just think,”’ he would say uneasily, “he’s the madman, I’m the comic. But it could have been the other way around.”

Of course Hitler was not only a madman. Nor was Chaplin merely a comic. But in The Great Dictator, the intersection of insanity and laughter produced a memorable movie. Chaplin says he couldn’t have made the film except in 1938-39. We are grateful that he made it when he did.

Anjan Basu · 16. Apr 2019.

#film #Charlie Chaplin #adolf hitler #the great dictator #Film Review #the wire

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sweetlifetownsville · 6 years ago

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Solicitor Barry Taylor's Former Business Mate Gets Two And A Half Years In The Jug

The row over the state governments somewhat clunky internal factional power play about the protection of the Black Throated Finch habitat which is apparently threatened by the Adani Carmichael mine project is a right old knicker twister. The Astonisher iditor Jenna Cairneys dainties have taken a hell of a contortion, forcing her yet again into unintended humour. First we had two News Corpse journos in the same edition of the paper making exactly opposing claims about the birds. One, The Astonishers John Andersen, who knows about these things being a straight down the line bushie, quoted some of his widespread old timer country contacts that the bloody bird was everywhere, always had been, not just near the mine site. In the very same edition, the Astonisher had lifted a piece by tired old Courier Mail click-baiter Des Houghton trying it on that the bird would become extinct, killed off by feral animals (cats and pigs apparently) if the Adani land set aside for its protection area DID NOT PROCEED. Ando is the far more believable in this face-off, rather than the Alan Jones-Lite Houghton, who didnt explain how the dreaded cats and pigs would be kept out of the protection area signage perhaps?. The finch has become our own native Scarlet Pimpernel: They seek him here, they seek him there, Those pollies seek him everywhere, Journos seek him near, they seek him far, Under sun and under star, They try so hard, but they try in vain, For he eludes them yet again. But Bentley was there to record a meeting between avian cousins to solve the mystery.

Then enter the obviously discombobulated Astonisher iditor Jenna Cairney, the very same Jenna who gave a good laugh in a recent iditorial when she insisted the Bulletin only did fair and balanced reporting. Deputy Premier The Treacherous Trad came to town to talk about flood recovery measures during the week, asking what could be best done for the victims, but the Astonisher wanted to talk about the Black Throated Finch. Trad swatted away a few weak attempts to engage on the matter, somehow judging that the governments flood recovery measures were surely the overriding topic of the moment. Boy, didnt that make Jenna stampn her feet in rage, she saw red, and fired off a blistering iditorial, suggesting, (topically if unfortunately), that we were being sold down the river which is where a fair amount of Townsville ended just a few days ago. But then, right in the middle of this foot stamping tantrum, this little thigh slapper popped up from nowhere.

A moment,please (gasp, wheeze, splutter ahem, sorry.) Leaving aside the absurdity of this virtue-signaling boast, this twaddle comes from an iditor who wagged a finger at those who have had the temerity to raise questions about the handling of the flood emergency.

Even your southern betters arent buying that one they can apparently walk and chew gum at the same time, handling more than one story at once heres just one instance from the Courier.

Heres a newsflash, dearie the days of outfits like the Bulletin being the gatekeepers of information are long gone, and you no longer set the news agenda. Some Say The Council Over The Years Has Had A Lack Of Vision Any inquiry into the handling of the flood is should not be restricted to just recent events themselves, but should surely delve back into council building policy and approvals over many years, to see why so many inappropriately designed structures, both private and commercial, were allowed to be built on clearly identified flood plains. A Nest read sent is a photo that might help explain the problem he believes this is the TCC building where these decisions were made.

Mayor Mullet Jumps On The Boycott Bandwagon Again Ms Cairney, under your newly announced tough question policy, any chance of asking Mayor Mullet about her bogan bluster that if insurance companies use southern tradies to do repair work in Townsville, she will name and shame them.

Even your own reporter, Clare Armstrong (the soon to join the Sydney Telegraph), described this piece of electoral grandstanding as extraordinary. Embarrassing empty threat might have been just as apt. Talk about Qantas boycott redux this implicitly means that your paper, Jenna, will have to be the mayors bully pulpit in this naming and shaming exercise of companies that are major News advertisers, going about their legal business funded by shareholders, and who couldnt give a fig about Mayor Mullet and her barroom style bluster. You OK with that? Or is there the odd tough question you might like to ask your pal the mayor? Naming and shaming? The bottom line, if it is followed logically, is that Mayor Jenny Hill is on the boycott bandwagon again, threatening to call for a boycott of companies who legally, if not morally, use outside tradies for whatever reason (like legally binding existing contractual arrangements). Given her shoot from the lip bravado over several issues recently, Mayor Mullets big stick is in reality a squizzle stick: she must have quite a supply of used lying about. And You Can Add Casual Racism To Her CV, Too Another shoot from the lip, when talking about the two blokes who drowned while ruinning from the police.

You cant pick your family members? What the hell does that mean? Judge Jenny at her best. Sorry, what was that? Oh, yeah, right, forgot, Palm Islanders dont have a vote in Townsville local elections Well, remember, all you other folks, you can choose your mayor soon, up to you. Ghosts Of Mates Past Coming Back To Haunt Bazza Taylor

Big Bazza Taylor As reported here recently, solicitor Barry Taylor was once briefly in business in Townsville with convicted briber Wayne Myers. During the week, Chief Judge Kerry OBrien gave Myers two and a half years in chokey, to be suspended after six months, for greasing the wheels of corruption with council and contractor officials in Ipswich.

As reported here recently, back in the early 2000s, Myers and Taylor tried to start a local teleco company with the council, with Barry charged with roping in local bizoids to pony up $20k each for the venture. The then Mayor Tony Mooney saw the scheme was a financial rip-off, and knocked it on the head. While hes living down that little episode, Bazza now waits to see how big will be the embarrassment of another of his erstwhile clients, Craig Gore. The question here is which will be the biggest embarrassment , Gore refusing to keep his promise to return from Sweden to face trial on multiple fraud charges, (how he was allowed to go only God and a Brisbane judge know), or if he does show up (ring Tab Extreme Bets for the odds on that), is found guilty and cops an expected dozen or more years for his grubby rip-offs. Gore was squired around town by Bazza also in the 2000s, while the shyster was spruiking the completely impossible canal estate scheme in front of the casino. To the best of The Pies knowledge, Taylor had no stake in the venture Gore was only here for a short visit but if Bazza had any sense of shame, he wouldve been red faced when all that turned to highly questionable shit. Probably not, since he only hosted the grub to brown-nose his Labor pals in Brisbane. Wonder if Baz will lead the defence in the unlikely event that Gore does return. Probably not, not at Bazs prices. Puppy Love It was Valentines Day during the week, and public mawkishness was all around, it was unavoidable. But then The Pie discovered that zoos around the world they all regularly stay in touch to talk shop had decided that their animals had been left out of the annual love fest long enough. From San Diego to Sydney, to London and all points around the globe, this was the very punny result.

Lets get straight to the point anyone want a shag?

Stop! Youre making me tawny!

Talk birdy to me.

So glad we could support each other on this day, because as they say love is a cattlefield.

Of course I mean it! Id love you to the baboon and back.

Alpaca my bags.

May our love never tapir off.

Seal-iously, we think youre all keepers. A Warning Sign In These Trouble Financial Times

And our gallery of the week from Trumpistan

Finally The Pie normally likes to leave you laughing with a parting joke, but lets break from that rule this week, and ask you to think about this emotive tweets rarely penetrate the Magpie necessary cynicism , but, perhaps because he the father of a daughter, this one hit home for the old bird. Simply but shatteringly highlights the horror of being a school kid America, and the damage being done to an entire generation. It also shows why we are a far saner and safer society, natural disasters and all, here in Australia. A mother in Delaware tweeted this during the week. So my kids school had a genuine lockdown today. Some whack job called in a bomb threat Police came and everything was fine, Thank God! My guys seemed fine when they got home and they talked about it with me, and told me their versions of what happened and then went right into their homework and normal after school stuff, and all seemed fine. It wasnt until later when Vanessa was changing out of her school uniform that I saw this on her arm.

I say to her, why did you write that on your arm?She says, in case the bad guy got to us and I got killed, you and daddy would know that I love you, and she started to cry (as did I as I watched a little piece of her innocence get stolen away) To know that my 7yo was put in a position to think that thought is absolutely gut wrenching and its killing me inside.Its now been a couple hours, and I cant seem to shake this awful feeling, feeling of sadness, fear, and plain disgusts for this new normal our kids have to deal with on any given day..its a very scary and disturbing society we now live in, and its heartbreaking It certainly is. What have they wrought? Its unfathomable. .. A tumultuous week gone, and all The Magpies thoughts to those getting their life back together. Have your say about anything on the blog comments, they run 24/7. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/solicitor-barry-taylors-former-business-mate-gets-two-and-a-half-years-in-the-jug/

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poem-today · 8 years ago

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Another Favourite Tony Harrison Poem

Bookends

I Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead we chew it slowly that last apple pie. Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed. We never could talk much, and now don't try. You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare… The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay, only our silence made us seem a pair. Not as good for staring in, blue gas, too regular each bud, each yellow spike. At night you need my company to pass and she not here to tell us we're alike! You're life's all shattered into smithereens. Back in our silences and sullen looks, for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books. II The stone's too full. The wording must be terse. There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it-- Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse. It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet! After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker (I think that both of us we're on our third) you said you'd always been a clumsy talker and couldn't find another, shorter word for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription, but not too clumsy that you can't still cut: You're supposed to be the bright boy at description and you can't tell them what the fuck to put! I've got to find the right words on my own. I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling, mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

Tony Harrison

#tony harrison #bookends #english poetry

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suzylwade · 6 years ago

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Derek Ridgers “I'm a Londoner, born and bred. I was born in Chiswick, West London in 1950. London has always been the primary location for my documentary photography. I've shot many other projects around the world, but I'm always drawn back to my home city. From a very early age my mum used to bring me up to Piccadilly to go to Lyons Corner House, and afterwards we'd find a place to have a coffee in Soho. From the age of 12 I used to come up to Soho on my own to look for records and second-hand books. I was wandering around Soho a lot as a kid and I'm still wandering around there now, still shooting those same streets.” - Derek Ridgers, Photographer. Derek Ridgers (born 20 October 1950), is an English photographer with a career spanning over thirty years. He is best known for his photography of music, film and club/street culture. On January 13, 1973, Ridgers remembers pushing his way through the crowd at Eric Clapton's ‘Rainbow Concert’ climbing over the fence and joining the press to photograph the rock legend. At the time, Ridgers worked in advertising and was surprised how easy it was to fake being a press photographer. He quickly realised a camera could help him approach his heroes and idols; he has been photographing famous bands and musicians ever since. Ridgers is London born and bred. London is known for all sorts. Its mawkish tourist attractions, its pie and mash shops, its diversity, its unparalleled destruction of everyone and everything that makes it so diverse. But it's also known for its nightlife. The city still offers some of the best nights out in the world – just like it has done through all sorts of scenes and subcultures. Derek Ridgers, known for his 'Skinheads: 1979 – 1984' collection and his photos of Ibiza before the rave generation arrived, has been snapping the capital's club kids for the past five decades. Over the years, the music they move to and the clothes peeling off their sweaty bodies may have changed, but the excitement and exhibitionism of clubbers in London remains the same. A new self-titled tome of Ridgers work will be published September 14, 2018.

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sumpix · 4 years ago

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Book Ends - Poem by Tony Harrison

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead we chew it slowly that last apple pie. Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed. We never could talk much, and now don't try. You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare… The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay, only our silence made us seem a pair. Not as good for staring in, blue gas, too regular each bud, each yellow spike. At night you need my company to pass and she not here to tell us we're alike! You're life's all shattered into smithereens. Back in our silences and sullen looks, for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books. II The stone's too full. The wording must be terse. There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it-- Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse. It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet! After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker (I think that both of us we're on our third) you said you'd always been a clumsy talker and couldn't find another, shorter word for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription, but not too clumsy that you can't still cut: You're supposed to be the bright boy at description and you can't tell them what the fuck to put! I've got to find the right words on my own. I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling, mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

(via Book Ends - Poem by Tony Harrison)

#book ends #tony harrisson. poem

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sweetlifetownsville · 6 years ago

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Solicitor Barry Taylor's Former Business Mate Gets Two And A Half Years In The Jug

Even your southern betters arent buying that one they can apparently walk and chew gum at the same time, handling more than one story at once heres just one instance from the Courier.

Lets get straight to the point anyone want a shag?

Stop! Youre making me tawny!

Talk birdy to me.

So glad we could support each other on this day, because as they say love is a cattlefield.

Of course I mean it! Id love you to the baboon and back.

Alpaca my bags.

May our love never tapir off.

Seal-iously, we think youre all keepers. A Warning Sign In These Trouble Financial Times

And our gallery of the week from Trumpistan

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sweetlifetownsville · 6 years ago

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Solicitor Barry Taylor's Former Business Mate Gets Two And A Half Years In The Jug

Labor influencer Wayne Myers getting jail time for his role in the Ipswich corruption scandal must be embarrassing for Big Bazza Taylor, the worlds most touchy solicitor when it comes to his business dealings. Mind you, Taylor did no wrong when he teamed up briefly with Myers in Townsville more than a decade ago, but unfair perceptions of guilt by association may be about to get worse for our much loved legal foghorn. Our receding floodwaters have revealed some home truths about the cupidity of our council, and the fallacy of the Bulletins tub-thumping agenda. Do you reckon that her call for a Qantas boycott was our mayors finest hour? Well, now the she who would be the Battlers Boedicia has gone one better threatening insurance companies with a big stick, which may well end with a more damaging push back than the Qantas call. But spite of all our tribulations, love was in the air during the week, when we endured that annual dork fest of bad poetry and unrequited lust known as Valentines Day and this year, animals got in on the act no no, you grubby lot, not like that, they just played it for laughs. But first Getting Even Since Indias gift to the desecration of Australian native bird life is the unpleasant Indian Mynah, somehow it seems only fair it is a native Aussie bird that is now taking its revenge on an unpleasant Indian miner. The row over the state governments somewhat clunky internal factional power play about the protection of the Black Throated Finch habitat which is apparently threatened by the Adani Carmichael mine project is a right old knicker twister. The Astonisher iditor Jenna Cairneys dainties have taken a hell of a contortion, forcing her yet again into unintended humour. First we had two News Corpse journos in the same edition of the paper making exactly opposing claims about the birds. One, The Astonishers John Andersen, who knows about these things being a straight down the line bushie, quoted some of his widespread old timer country contacts that the bloody bird was everywhere, always had been, not just near the mine site. In the very same edition, the Astonisher had lifted a piece by tired old Courier Mail click-baiter Des Houghton trying it on that the bird would become extinct, killed off by feral animals (cats and pigs apparently) if the Adani land set aside for its protection area DID NOT PROCEED. Ando is the far more believable in this face-off, rather than the Alan Jones-Lite Houghton, who didnt explain how the dreaded cats and pigs would be kept out of the protection area signage perhaps?. The finch has become our own native Scarlet Pimpernel: They seek him here, they seek him there, Those pollies seek him everywhere, Journos seek him near, they seek him far, Under sun and under star, They try so hard, but they try in vain, For he eludes them yet again. But Bentley was there to record a meeting between avian cousins to solve the mystery. Then enter the obviously discombobulated Astonisher iditor Jenna Cairney, the very same Jenna who gave a good laugh in a recent iditorial when she insisted the Bulletin only did fair and balanced reporting. Deputy Premier The Treacherous Trad came to town to talk about flood recovery measures during the week, asking what could be best done for the victims, but the Astonisher wanted to talk about the Black Throated Finch. Trad swatted away a few weak attempts to engage on the matter, somehow judging that the governments flood recovery measures were surely the overriding topic of the moment. Boy, didnt that make Jenna stampn her feet in rage, she saw red, and fired off a blistering iditorial, suggesting, (topically if unfortunately), that we were being sold down the river which is where a fair amount of Townsville ended just a few days ago. But then, right in the middle of this foot stamping tantrum, this little thigh slapper popped up from nowhere. A moment,please (gasp, wheeze, splutter ahem, sorry.) Leaving aside the absurdity of this virtue-signaling boast, this twaddle comes from an iditor who wagged a finger at those who have had the temerity to raise questions about the handling of the flood emergency. Even your southern betters arent buying that one they can apparently walk and chew gum at the same time, handling more than one story at once heres just one instance from the Courier. Heres a newsflash, dearie the days of outfits like the Bulletin being the gatekeepers of information are long gone, and you no longer set the news agenda. Some Say The Council Over The Years Has Had A Lack Of Vision Any inquiry into the handling of the flood is should not be restricted to just recent events themselves, but should surely delve back into council building policy and approvals over many years, to see why so many inappropriately designed structures, both private and commercial, were allowed to be built on clearly identified flood plains. A Nest read sent is a photo that might help explain the problem he believes this is the TCC building where these decisions were made. Mayor Mullet Jumps On The Boycott Bandwagon Again Ms Cairney, under your newly announced tough question policy, any chance of asking Mayor Mullet about her bogan bluster that if insurance companies use southern tradies to do repair work in Townsville, she will name and shame them. Even your own reporter, Clare Armstrong (the soon to join the Sydney Telegraph), described this piece of electoral grandstanding as extraordinary. Embarrassing empty threat might have been just as apt. Talk about Qantas boycott redux this implicitly means that your paper, Jenna, will have to be the mayors bully pulpit in this naming and shaming exercise of companies that are major News advertisers, going about their legal business funded by shareholders, and who couldnt give a fig about Mayor Mullet and her barroom style bluster. You OK with that? Or is there the odd tough question you might like to ask your pal the mayor? Naming and shaming? The bottom line, if it is followed logically, is that Mayor Jenny Hill is on the boycott bandwagon again, threatening to call for a boycott of companies who legally, if not morally, use outside tradies for whatever reason (like legally binding existing contractual arrangements). Given her shoot from the lip bravado over several issues recently, Mayor Mullets big stick is in reality a squizzle stick: she must have quite a supply of used lying about. And You Can Add Casual Racism To Her CV, Too Another shoot from the lip, when talking about the two blokes who drowned while ruinning from the police. You cant pick your family members? What the hell does that mean? Judge Jenny at her best. Sorry, what was that? Oh, yeah, right, forgot, Palm Islanders dont have a vote in Townsville local elections Well, remember, all you other folks, you can choose your mayor soon, up to you. Ghosts Of Mates Past Coming Back To Haunt Bazza Taylor Big Bazza Taylor As reported here recently, solicitor Barry Taylor was once briefly in business in Townsville with convicted briber Wayne Myers. During the week, Chief Judge Kerry OBrien gave Myers two and a half years in chokey, to be suspended after six months, for greasing the wheels of corruption with council and contractor officials in Ipswich. As reported here recently, back in the early 2000s, Myers and Taylor tried to start a local teleco company with the council, with Barry charged with roping in local bizoids to pony up $20k each for the venture. The then Mayor Tony Mooney saw the scheme was a financial rip-off, and knocked it on the head. While hes living down that little episode, Bazza now waits to see how big will be the embarrassment of another of his erstwhile clients, Craig Gore. The question here is which will be the biggest embarrassment , Gore refusing to keep his promise to return from Sweden to face trial on multiple fraud charges, (how he was allowed to go only God and a Brisbane judge know), or if he does show up (ring Tab Extreme Bets for the odds on that), is found guilty and cops an expected dozen or more years for his grubby rip-offs. Gore was squired around town by Bazza also in the 2000s, while the shyster was spruiking the completely impossible canal estate scheme in front of the casino. To the best of The Pies knowledge, Taylor had no stake in the venture Gore was only here for a short visit but if Bazza had any sense of shame, he wouldve been red faced when all that turned to highly questionable shit. Probably not, since he only hosted the grub to brown-nose his Labor pals in Brisbane. Wonder if Baz will lead the defence in the unlikely event that Gore does return. Probably not, not at Bazs prices. Puppy Love It was Valentines Day during the week, and public mawkishness was all around, it was unavoidable. But then The Pie discovered that zoos around the world they all regularly stay in touch to talk shop had decided that their animals had been left out of the annual love fest long enough. From San Diego to Sydney, to London and all points around the globe, this was the very punny result. Lets get straight to the point anyone want a shag? Stop! Youre making me tawny! Talk birdy to me. So glad we could support each other on this day, because as they say love is a cattlefield. Of course I mean it! Id love you to the baboon and back. Alpaca my bags. May our love never tapir off. Seal-iously, we think youre all keepers. A Warning Sign In These Trouble Financial Times And our gallery of the week from Trumpistan Finally The Pie normally likes to leave you laughing with a parting joke, but lets break from that rule this week, and ask you to think about this emotive tweets rarely penetrate the Magpie necessary cynicism , but, perhaps because he the father of a daughter, this one hit home for the old bird. Simply but shatteringly highlights the horror of being a school kid America, and the damage being done to an entire generation. It also shows why we are a far saner and safer society, natural disasters and all, here in Australia. A mother in Delaware tweeted this during the week. So my kids school had a genuine lockdown today. Some whack job called in a bomb threat Police came and everything was fine, Thank God! My guys seemed fine when they got home and they talked about it with me, and told me their versions of what happened and then went right into their homework and normal after school stuff, and all seemed fine. It wasnt until later when Vanessa was changing out of her school uniform that I saw this on her arm. I say to her, why did you write that on your arm?She says, in case the bad guy got to us and I got killed, you and daddy would know that I love you, and she started to cry (as did I as I watched a little piece of her innocence get stolen away) To know that my 7yo was put in a position to think that thought is absolutely gut wrenching and its killing me inside.Its now been a couple hours, and I cant seem to shake this awful feeling, feeling of sadness, fear, and plain disgusts for this new normal our kids have to deal with on any given day..its a very scary and disturbing society we now live in, and its heartbreaking It certainly is. What have they wrought? Its unfathomable. .. A tumultuous week gone, and all The Magpies thoughts to those getting their life back together. Have your say about anything on the blog comments, they run 24/7. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/solicitor-barry-taylors-former-business-mate-gets-two-and-a-half-years-in-the-jug/

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