Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop To Drink
It's possible to plumb without swearing an oath, I suppose, but I've never been able to do it. Swearing and plumbing just seem to go hand-in-hand, and if you want to know how I spent my pleasant evening at home, well, let's just say that I spent it with a wrench and it's possible that an impolite word or two may have escaped my lips.
Not that I'm a lousy plumber, mind you - I'm way beyond lousy. But a fella ought to be at least a little handy around the house, don't you think? When something minor like a kitchen faucet starts exploding water all over the floors, cabinets and counters he ought to be able to look the situation over and come up with a plan of repair. That's the way I look at it, anyways, and so when some minor disaster strikes the house I'm always game to see what I can do. And true to form I always start each new home repair project the same way by making the same mistake.
"Looks easy," I say.
And this one did look easy. All that was needed was a new hose to connect the faucet to the spray nozzle. Sheesh, turn a couple of nuts, pull the old hose out and put the new one in. Piece of cake, I thought, and it would have been had it not been for the first rule of home plumbing projects.
Rule No. 1.: The part needing repair will always be in the darkest, most cramped and inaccessible spot possible.
Which brings me to the part about swearing oaths.
There I was, lying on my back under the kitchen sink, flashlight in my teeth, with my right arm stretched around the garbage disposal and under the tubes for the dishwasher and my left arm doubled back under my shoulder so I could reach behind the hot and cold water lines and try to get a wrench on the fitting holding the hose to the faucet, and I tell you I wanted to be good but somehow the oaths just started coming.
"If I can just get this wrench on there and turn it a little. Eeuuggghhhh! Yeah, that's it. Got it! Now just hold on there and turn it..."
(CLUNK!)
"Ow! God #@%& it!!! %$##ing wrench!!! That god#$%# son of a &%#$*! How am I supposed to get it when it's way the #%$& up there!?"
"Maybe you should call a plumber."
(Did I mention I had a kibbitzer)
"We don't need a plumber."
(Why do people make comments like that anyways? Don't they know how insulting it is. That's like saying "Why don't you ask for directions?" Geez, no man worth his salt is ever going to take something like that laying down. )
" It's simple. All I need to do is get this fitting loose and the hose will pop right off ."
(In other words, go away and leave me alone. I don't care if I gotta break every knuckle in my hand, we ain't gonna call a plumber. Not after a comment like that)
"Okay, let's try again. Where's that wrench? Oh there it is, under my ribcage. Okay, right arm around the garbage disposal and under the dishwasher tubes, left hand behind the pipes, now just get the wrench around the fitting and..."
(CLANK! CLUNK! CLING!)
"Oooowwww! GOD $#%& IT! "
"Are you sure we don't need a plumber?"
"No, I told ya'. We don't need a plumber."
(Hmmm, there's gotta be another way to do this. Maybe if I took the sink out and knocked out the front wall I could get some room to work in)
"I just need a smaller wrench or something. I can fix this, okay?"
And so, to make a long story short, after much knuckle scraping and oath swearing I finally got the fitting off and the hose pulled out. Now all I had to do was put the new hose in and before you know it the old faucet would be good as new. Which brings me to the 2nd rule of home plumbing repair.
Rule No. 2: 95% of any home plumbing repair is being able to find the right parts.
This is true of any repair project, of course, but where plumbing repair differs from say car repair is that when you need a part for your car you just call up the car parts guy and tell him "I need a conbabulator for a 74 Pinto" and if he's got it, you're all set. With plumbing, however, that's a lot harder to do. Don't believe me, ok quick - tell me the make and model number of your kitchen faucet? Aha, that's what I thought, and unless you've got it written down or make a habit of studying your pipes and fittings, you're probably not gonna know anything beyond "Um, I think it's a Moen, but I don't know the model number."
Luckily, the plumbing industry is aware of this and that's why hardware stores across America stock these universal type things which are supposed to work with any make and model of plumbing apparatus ever manufactured and sold (except for your make and model, of course). I made a quick trip to the hardware store over my lunch break and soon I was all fixed up with just the right part - a universal kitchen faucet spray hose kit with instructions and adaptors included. Man, this was going to be easy.
First thing to do is look at the instructions. Instruction 1 looked pretty good, instruction 2 - I can do that, instruction 3 - "What the hell are they talking about. What parts 1 and 4? That picture doesn't look like what's in the kit." So I decided to skip the rest of the instructions and just get to the job at hand. After all, you hook one end up to the faucet and the other to the spray head, turn and the water and you're set to go. You don't need instructions for that.
And so that's just what I did. I hooked up the one end to the faucet (after much knuckle scraping and oath swearing) and the other end to the spray head, opened the valves and then just stood back and enjoyed the shower of water that came shooting out from both ends of my newly installed home plumbing repair. Man, It was great. Under the sink you had jets of water scrubbing the cabinet floor clean and above the sink you had great geysers shooting high into the air and raining drops all over the counters and floors. I tell you it was like having the Trevi Fountain right there in the middle of the kitchen.
But I knew it wasn't right so it was back to the drawing board. I shut the valves off and then I remembered
"Adaptors!"
Oh yeah, the adaptors, I was wondering what they were for. I looked back over the instructions and still couldn't make heads or tails of 'em, so I decided to just started playing with the different combinations. This with that, that with this, washer here, washer there, and though I never did figure out how they were intended to work I did find combinations that were close enough, so I decided to just hook 'em up and if they didn't work I'd just force 'em to work. I connected this adaptor to the faucet, that one to the spray head, turned the valves and....
It worked.
What do you know, I fixed it. My knuckles were scraped raw, I had cuts and bruises all up and down my arms, my clothes were soaking wet, and the floors, cabinets and counters were all drenched with water, but how about that - I fixed it.
Then I gathered my tools and got some towels to soak up the water, and as I stood there basking in the glow of my accomplishment a smile of satisfaction shot across my face, an inner smile that only comes when you have given your all to a great cause and walked away victorious. I felt tested and proud, battered but not broken, and deeply moved as I quietly thought to myself
"Next time, I'm calling a plumber."
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Economic Outlook 2005
The old adage goes "It is when a man is well honored and well fed that he is at his most agreeable". Yes, it's true, and I might add "most "corruptible" too. That's why I've thought it's always best to be wary of those who honor and feed you. Unless the honor and the food are sincere, you may find yourself being led down a path that prudence and sound judgement would dispute.
Which brings me to the inaugural.
No, on second thought, maybe it doesn't. After all, what more can be said about the corruption of money that hasn't been said before. It's a Washington tradition, for Pete's sake. The big shots give, the politicians take, and the people are left wondering what hit them. I do wish they could be a little more discreet about it though. It's bad enough to be corrupt, but to be openly corrupt just adds insult to injury. I say let's bring back the smoke-filled rooms and put all this influence peddling and deceit behind the curtains where it belongs.
And that, my fellow citizens, is my plan for America.
So, enough of that. Let's change gears and talk about the economy. This is my favorite time of the year for talking about the economy because it's when all the investment guru's and money managers come out with their predictions for the coming year. Are they bullish or bearish, we ask, and then wait anxiously for the answer as if some Harvard MBA is going to be any better at predicting the future than the local astrologer or palm reader. Still, it's fun because nothing makes a person feel quite so much an insider as talking about the stock market. Well, except for sports, perhaps, and since I don't follow sports much, I'll just stick with the stock market.
Am I a bull? Am I a bear? Is there a reason why someone should care? Of course not. Still, if anyone should ask I would have to tell them - I'm neither. You see I'm what I like to call a squirrel. That is, I'm the lowest, dullest, dreariest form of investor there is. My name is Tony Myers, and I'm a dollar cost averager.
Yes it's true. Now any reasonable person knows that a real investor doesn't dollar cost average, he's a timer. He's in and out of all the hottest stocks, he buys at the bottom and sells at the top, he's got the inside poop and he's miles ahead of everyone else. He's a wheelin', dealin', gamblin' man who knows all the insider acronyms and all the insider jargon and even though he doesn't understand a word of it he lays it on thick just the same. That's a real investor, and I've come across more than a few, especially on the internet.
But me, I'm not like that. I'm like my friend Fred. Poor old Fred, he never has the inside poop. He never knows what the hot stocks are. He never knows where the markets are heading. Yeah, dumb ol' Fred just buys mutual funds. And not the flashy sector kind either, but just the solid boring ones with proven market beating track records. Month after month there's feeble ol' Fred setting aside a portion of his paycheck and buying a few more shares to add to his pile. (Yawn) Geez, that's not real investing - that's like having a savings account.
And yet, as the years go by and Fred keeps adding little by little, month by month, a funny thing starts to happen. The pile starts to grow, and get bigger, and bigger, and as it gets bigger compounding makes it grow even bigger and faster than before, and before you know it Fred has amassed himself one nice little pile of money. But this takes years, of course, and no real investor would ever wait years for his pile to grow. It's got to grow right now! He's looking for the next Microsoft (aren't we all) and he's not gonna sit around and wait for compounding to start kicking in. Poor Fred, he just doesn't get it.
Like I said, I'm a lot like Fred. I dollar cost average and don't worry too much about what the market's going to do this year. If I had to take a guess, though, I'd say it's probably gonna be down some if only because all the analysts and guru's seem to think it's going to do just the opposite. Guess that means I'll be accumulating shares this year, and hopefully treading water till the next upturn comes along. It's not a bad way to invest, really, just kind of dull.
So that's my market outlook for 2005. Stay the course and as long as the economy doesn't fall off a cliff I should be okay. Which doesn't mean I'm complacent.
That's because there's more economic news. For instance I read that some Credit Unions are starting to offer 40 year mortgages. Problem is that extending the term of the loan doesn't really do much to lower the payment, so they aren't garnering much attention. I mean the whole point of a mortgage is to get you into more house than you can afford, so what good is extending the term if it's only going to get you into a house a little beyond your means. We want houses way beyond our means.
So then I read that some lenders are starting to offer minimum payment loans. These are adjustable rate loans that let people just make just the payment they can afford. Sheesh, forget interest-only, we're way past that. Just tell me what you can afford to pay and we'll add the unpaid interest back into the principal. Then, later, when you're making more money (or sobered up, whichever comes first) you can worry about paying us what you owe. And you will owe, believe me. Boy, will you owe. Of course, if the housing market should cool in the meantime and prices start to drop a little, you won't just be underwater - you'll be subterranean.
Which brings me to my point. As we look forward to 2005 and beyond could it be possible that America could be the first country to ever spend their way to prosperity. I mean, it looks like we're certainly going to try. Retail now accounts for almost as much of our economy as industrial, which means buying things is now almost as important as making things. The great experiment were engaged in is to see if through sheer indebetedness we can continue to inflate asset prices and prosper in the years to come. When I look at that and see people doing things like mortgaging their houses to invest in the stock market, well, it's not time to panic yet but, you know, we just may fall off that cliff after all.
The old adage goes "It is when a man is well honored and well fed that he is at his most agreeable". Yes, it's true, and I might add "most "corruptible" too. That's why I've thought it's always best to be wary of those who honor and feed you. Unless the honor and the food are sincere, you may find yourself being led down a path that prudence and sound judgement would dispute.
Which brings me to the inaugural.
No, on second thought, maybe it doesn't. After all, what more can be said about the corruption of money that hasn't been said before. It's a Washington tradition, for Pete's sake. The big shots give, the politicians take, and the people are left wondering what hit them. I do wish they could be a little more discreet about it though. It's bad enough to be corrupt, but to be openly corrupt just adds insult to injury. I say let's bring back the smoke-filled rooms and put all this influence peddling and deceit behind the curtains where it belongs.
And that, my fellow citizens, is my plan for America.
So, enough of that. Let's change gears and talk about the economy. This is my favorite time of the year for talking about the economy because it's when all the investment guru's and money managers come out with their predictions for the coming year. Are they bullish or bearish, we ask, and then wait anxiously for the answer as if some Harvard MBA is going to be any better at predicting the future than the local astrologer or palm reader. Still, it's fun because nothing makes a person feel quite so much an insider as talking about the stock market. Well, except for sports, perhaps, and since I don't follow sports much, I'll just stick with the stock market.
Am I a bull? Am I a bear? Is there a reason why someone should care? Of course not. Still, if anyone should ask I would have to tell them - I'm neither. You see I'm what I like to call a squirrel. That is, I'm the lowest, dullest, dreariest form of investor there is. My name is Tony Myers, and I'm a dollar cost averager.
Yes it's true. Now any reasonable person knows that a real investor doesn't dollar cost average, he's a timer. He's in and out of all the hottest stocks, he buys at the bottom and sells at the top, he's got the inside poop and he's miles ahead of everyone else. He's a wheelin', dealin', gamblin' man who knows all the insider acronyms and all the insider jargon and even though he doesn't understand a word of it he lays it on thick just the same. That's a real investor, and I've come across more than a few, especially on the internet.
But me, I'm not like that. I'm like my friend Fred. Poor old Fred, he never has the inside poop. He never knows what the hot stocks are. He never knows where the markets are heading. Yeah, dumb ol' Fred just buys mutual funds. And not the flashy sector kind either, but just the solid boring ones with proven market beating track records. Month after month there's feeble ol' Fred setting aside a portion of his paycheck and buying a few more shares to add to his pile. (Yawn) Geez, that's not real investing - that's like having a savings account.
And yet, as the years go by and Fred keeps adding little by little, month by month, a funny thing starts to happen. The pile starts to grow, and get bigger, and bigger, and as it gets bigger compounding makes it grow even bigger and faster than before, and before you know it Fred has amassed himself one nice little pile of money. But this takes years, of course, and no real investor would ever wait years for his pile to grow. It's got to grow right now! He's looking for the next Microsoft (aren't we all) and he's not gonna sit around and wait for compounding to start kicking in. Poor Fred, he just doesn't get it.
Like I said, I'm a lot like Fred. I dollar cost average and don't worry too much about what the market's going to do this year. If I had to take a guess, though, I'd say it's probably gonna be down some if only because all the analysts and guru's seem to think it's going to do just the opposite. Guess that means I'll be accumulating shares this year, and hopefully treading water till the next upturn comes along. It's not a bad way to invest, really, just kind of dull.
So that's my market outlook for 2005. Stay the course and as long as the economy doesn't fall off a cliff I should be okay. Which doesn't mean I'm complacent.
That's because there's more economic news. For instance I read that some Credit Unions are starting to offer 40 year mortgages. Problem is that extending the term of the loan doesn't really do much to lower the payment, so they aren't garnering much attention. I mean the whole point of a mortgage is to get you into more house than you can afford, so what good is extending the term if it's only going to get you into a house a little beyond your means. We want houses way beyond our means.
So then I read that some lenders are starting to offer minimum payment loans. These are adjustable rate loans that let people just make just the payment they can afford. Sheesh, forget interest-only, we're way past that. Just tell me what you can afford to pay and we'll add the unpaid interest back into the principal. Then, later, when you're making more money (or sobered up, whichever comes first) you can worry about paying us what you owe. And you will owe, believe me. Boy, will you owe. Of course, if the housing market should cool in the meantime and prices start to drop a little, you won't just be underwater - you'll be subterranean.
Which brings me to my point. As we look forward to 2005 and beyond could it be possible that America could be the first country to ever spend their way to prosperity. I mean, it looks like we're certainly going to try. Retail now accounts for almost as much of our economy as industrial, which means buying things is now almost as important as making things. The great experiment were engaged in is to see if through sheer indebetedness we can continue to inflate asset prices and prosper in the years to come. When I look at that and see people doing things like mortgaging their houses to invest in the stock market, well, it's not time to panic yet but, you know, we just may fall off that cliff after all.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
I Thought It Was Just Fish Sauce
January 13, 2005. Mark that date down because it is destined to go down in history as the day that Bud Selig and the Players Union cleaned up baseball. Woohoo! Glad we got that whole scandal behind us. Now we can get back to the business of watching second basemen and shortstops muscle fastballs into the upper deck and be satisfied that it's all good clean american fun.
Oh okay, maybe I'm being a little too cynical here. I'm sure that this new anti-drug effort will be a rousing success and no baseball player will dare risk a 10 day suspension for the tens of millions he can earn with a visit to his friendly neighborhood chemist. I mean, why would he chance such a thing when the stakes are so high? Yes, I think both management and players should be commended for this effort and I'm sure the fans will...will...
will care less.
After all, when this story first broke it was news for all of about 2 weeks before dropping completely off the radar screen. Now that a new drug policy has been anounced, I predict it will be news for about 5 days, tops, and then disappear again until spring training. And it's not that people don't care - it's just that they've got more important things to worry about. Let's face it when people go to a ballgame, well dammit, they want to see the ball leave the yard. That's just the way it is ; after you've paid a hundred or 2 hundred dollars to take the family to the ballpark, you want to see something spectacular.
(Did you notice the semicolon in the last sentence - a semicolon is always the mark of a sophisticated writer).
Which brings us to Barry Bonds - a local favorite. I guess people who don't live in the Bay Area don't know how popular he is around here, but believe me, he is very popular. And yes, we all know about the steroids and frankly, outside of the press which never cared for Barry anyways, no one thinks too much about it. He's big and bad, he hits the ball into Bay, and people usually come away thinking they got their money's worth. That's all that matters, really, and as far as management and players are concerned, just as long as the fans keep ponying up the money there's no real reason to overreact on this steroid thing. Sure, the players and owners may express their concern in public, but believe me behind closed doors they are being very careful not to do anything that could derail this gravy train.
So, you might ask, how is baseball going to handle it when Barry enters the Hall of Fame? Are they going to just ignore the drugs, or are they going to acknowledge that he might have taken some things he shouldn't have but only because his trainer decieved him into taking them and he was too dumb to ask what they were. I tell ya', I don't know what baseball is going to do (but I bet it'll be lame).
Here's what I'd do. I'd go ahead an induct him into the Hall of Fame with all the brass bands and honors and other falderal that goes with it. I'd speechify and venerate and glorify him to heaven, and I'd build him a great exhibit full of all the remembrances and tokens of esteem that go with being the greatest player in the history of baseball. The record breaking bats, the history making balls, the uniforms, the photographs and press clippings that praised him on high; and then down in the dark shadowy corners of the display, I'd also display the syringes, the pills and liquids, the stimulants and growth hormones, and pictures of all the unsavory acquaintances and advisors and trainers that found their way into his entourage. I'd show the fans the whole story and let them come to their own final judgements.
And then, as a final tribute to the great man, I would place Barry Bond's display right next to the Jackie Robinson display. Just imagine, just by standing in one spot a person could look at everything that made baseball great, and then without even turning his head he could see everything that baseball has become.
And then, if he had any sense at all, he could just walk out the door.
January 13, 2005. Mark that date down because it is destined to go down in history as the day that Bud Selig and the Players Union cleaned up baseball. Woohoo! Glad we got that whole scandal behind us. Now we can get back to the business of watching second basemen and shortstops muscle fastballs into the upper deck and be satisfied that it's all good clean american fun.
Oh okay, maybe I'm being a little too cynical here. I'm sure that this new anti-drug effort will be a rousing success and no baseball player will dare risk a 10 day suspension for the tens of millions he can earn with a visit to his friendly neighborhood chemist. I mean, why would he chance such a thing when the stakes are so high? Yes, I think both management and players should be commended for this effort and I'm sure the fans will...will...
will care less.
After all, when this story first broke it was news for all of about 2 weeks before dropping completely off the radar screen. Now that a new drug policy has been anounced, I predict it will be news for about 5 days, tops, and then disappear again until spring training. And it's not that people don't care - it's just that they've got more important things to worry about. Let's face it when people go to a ballgame, well dammit, they want to see the ball leave the yard. That's just the way it is ; after you've paid a hundred or 2 hundred dollars to take the family to the ballpark, you want to see something spectacular.
(Did you notice the semicolon in the last sentence - a semicolon is always the mark of a sophisticated writer).
Which brings us to Barry Bonds - a local favorite. I guess people who don't live in the Bay Area don't know how popular he is around here, but believe me, he is very popular. And yes, we all know about the steroids and frankly, outside of the press which never cared for Barry anyways, no one thinks too much about it. He's big and bad, he hits the ball into Bay, and people usually come away thinking they got their money's worth. That's all that matters, really, and as far as management and players are concerned, just as long as the fans keep ponying up the money there's no real reason to overreact on this steroid thing. Sure, the players and owners may express their concern in public, but believe me behind closed doors they are being very careful not to do anything that could derail this gravy train.
So, you might ask, how is baseball going to handle it when Barry enters the Hall of Fame? Are they going to just ignore the drugs, or are they going to acknowledge that he might have taken some things he shouldn't have but only because his trainer decieved him into taking them and he was too dumb to ask what they were. I tell ya', I don't know what baseball is going to do (but I bet it'll be lame).
Here's what I'd do. I'd go ahead an induct him into the Hall of Fame with all the brass bands and honors and other falderal that goes with it. I'd speechify and venerate and glorify him to heaven, and I'd build him a great exhibit full of all the remembrances and tokens of esteem that go with being the greatest player in the history of baseball. The record breaking bats, the history making balls, the uniforms, the photographs and press clippings that praised him on high; and then down in the dark shadowy corners of the display, I'd also display the syringes, the pills and liquids, the stimulants and growth hormones, and pictures of all the unsavory acquaintances and advisors and trainers that found their way into his entourage. I'd show the fans the whole story and let them come to their own final judgements.
And then, as a final tribute to the great man, I would place Barry Bond's display right next to the Jackie Robinson display. Just imagine, just by standing in one spot a person could look at everything that made baseball great, and then without even turning his head he could see everything that baseball has become.
And then, if he had any sense at all, he could just walk out the door.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin' Along
Back in the 1920's and 30's she was known as America's Sweetheart of Song and the Sweetheart of Columbia Records, she sang for the Ziegfield Follies and starred on Broadway alongside Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn, she sang the top songs of all the top composers - Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, DeSylva and Brown and Henderson, she even made a few movies out in Hollywood, and although it's hard to be absolutely certain it's estimated that she probably had 60 hit records before she retired from show business in the late 1930's. Quite a career and if it were possible to measure her success by the media saturated standards of today, she might possibly be compared to Elvis or the Beatles.
And yet, you probably never heard of Ruth Etting. That's a shame, and that's why I'm blogging on her tonight.
According to her bio, Ruth Etting was a small town girl who left her home in David City, Nebraska at the age of 17 to study art in Chicago. She got a job designing costumes for the chorus at a local nightclub, and as one thing led to another she rose to become a featured singer at some of the hotels and speakeasies in town. She met and married a gangster named Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder who took over the management of her career. He got her a job with a local orchestra and eventually a record company executive heard her and signed her to a contract with Columbia Records.
So she left Chicago for New York City and started making records. A composer named Irving Berlin heard her and recommended her to his friend Florence Ziegfeld who promptly signed her up for his show "Making Whoopee" with Eddie Cantor. With a string of top selling records and a hit show on Broadway, Ruth Etting was a bona fide superstar. She dressed well, ate well, hobnobbed with the rich and famous and appeared on the covers of magazines.
Meanwhile her marriage to the Gimp was on the rocks. He was controlling and suffocating and eventually she divorced him and left New York for Hollywood to be with her new love Myrl Alderman. All would end disastrously when the jealous Gimp came 0ut to California seeking revenge against the new boyfriend. He had brought a pistol and one night he found Alderman and shot him. The wound was not fatal but the scandal that followed along with the changing musical taste of a swing-crazy America effectively ended the career of Ruth Etting.
Quite a story, huh, and if it all seems like something out of a Hollywood movie, you're right - sort of. A biopic called "Love Me or Leave Me" starring Doris Day and James Cagney was made in 1955 that was loosely based on the events of Ruth Etting's life. Rumor has it that Ruth herself wasn't too happy with the result, but the movie won an oscar and can still be seen from time to time on some of the old movie channels and local TV stations. But after the movie and a brief rekindling of interest in her work, Ruth Etting just faded into history.
It's hard to tell why. Maybe it was because she never achieved the kind of movie stardom that Bing Crosby or Al Jolson or other Jazz Age singers did. She came to Hollywood late in her career and, with the exception of "Roman Scandals" in which she had a brief singing role, she never had what can be called blockbuster success. Her movies have mostly disappeared and without the big screen to immortalize her, history just passed her by. Lucky for us, though, many of her records have not met a similar fate. They have been preserved by archivists and historians and still sound as fresh to my untrained ear as the did 75 years ago.
But rather than drone on and on I thought I'd offer a little sample of her work instead. These songs are all from the height of her career and I bet most people will recognize them (even if they don't know who sang them). If they pique your interest and you're just dying to know more, the web is always a good source of information (try Ruthetting.com for starters).
So, with that out of he way let's wind up the old Victrola and take a little trip back to the age of flappers, rumble seats, speakeasies and bathtub gin. It's the Jazz Age, my friends, and we have Ruth Etting ready to sing you a few of her popular hits.
First, this great old song recorded November 3, 1929.
Button Up Your Overcoat
Now another one from January 3, 1927. Judy Garland would have some later success with this number, but Ruth Etting sang it first.
I'm Nobody's Baby
Of course no Ruth Etting sampler would be complete without a torch song. This one's from November of 1929 and is one of the better ones.
More Than You Know
From the Rodger and Hart show Simple Simon and recorded April 3, 1930, one of Ruth's biggest hits.
Ten Cents A Dance
And so many, many others.
Back in the 1920's and 30's she was known as America's Sweetheart of Song and the Sweetheart of Columbia Records, she sang for the Ziegfield Follies and starred on Broadway alongside Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn, she sang the top songs of all the top composers - Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, DeSylva and Brown and Henderson, she even made a few movies out in Hollywood, and although it's hard to be absolutely certain it's estimated that she probably had 60 hit records before she retired from show business in the late 1930's. Quite a career and if it were possible to measure her success by the media saturated standards of today, she might possibly be compared to Elvis or the Beatles.
And yet, you probably never heard of Ruth Etting. That's a shame, and that's why I'm blogging on her tonight.
According to her bio, Ruth Etting was a small town girl who left her home in David City, Nebraska at the age of 17 to study art in Chicago. She got a job designing costumes for the chorus at a local nightclub, and as one thing led to another she rose to become a featured singer at some of the hotels and speakeasies in town. She met and married a gangster named Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder who took over the management of her career. He got her a job with a local orchestra and eventually a record company executive heard her and signed her to a contract with Columbia Records.
So she left Chicago for New York City and started making records. A composer named Irving Berlin heard her and recommended her to his friend Florence Ziegfeld who promptly signed her up for his show "Making Whoopee" with Eddie Cantor. With a string of top selling records and a hit show on Broadway, Ruth Etting was a bona fide superstar. She dressed well, ate well, hobnobbed with the rich and famous and appeared on the covers of magazines.
Meanwhile her marriage to the Gimp was on the rocks. He was controlling and suffocating and eventually she divorced him and left New York for Hollywood to be with her new love Myrl Alderman. All would end disastrously when the jealous Gimp came 0ut to California seeking revenge against the new boyfriend. He had brought a pistol and one night he found Alderman and shot him. The wound was not fatal but the scandal that followed along with the changing musical taste of a swing-crazy America effectively ended the career of Ruth Etting.
Quite a story, huh, and if it all seems like something out of a Hollywood movie, you're right - sort of. A biopic called "Love Me or Leave Me" starring Doris Day and James Cagney was made in 1955 that was loosely based on the events of Ruth Etting's life. Rumor has it that Ruth herself wasn't too happy with the result, but the movie won an oscar and can still be seen from time to time on some of the old movie channels and local TV stations. But after the movie and a brief rekindling of interest in her work, Ruth Etting just faded into history.
It's hard to tell why. Maybe it was because she never achieved the kind of movie stardom that Bing Crosby or Al Jolson or other Jazz Age singers did. She came to Hollywood late in her career and, with the exception of "Roman Scandals" in which she had a brief singing role, she never had what can be called blockbuster success. Her movies have mostly disappeared and without the big screen to immortalize her, history just passed her by. Lucky for us, though, many of her records have not met a similar fate. They have been preserved by archivists and historians and still sound as fresh to my untrained ear as the did 75 years ago.
But rather than drone on and on I thought I'd offer a little sample of her work instead. These songs are all from the height of her career and I bet most people will recognize them (even if they don't know who sang them). If they pique your interest and you're just dying to know more, the web is always a good source of information (try Ruthetting.com for starters).
So, with that out of he way let's wind up the old Victrola and take a little trip back to the age of flappers, rumble seats, speakeasies and bathtub gin. It's the Jazz Age, my friends, and we have Ruth Etting ready to sing you a few of her popular hits.
First, this great old song recorded November 3, 1929.
Button Up Your Overcoat
Now another one from January 3, 1927. Judy Garland would have some later success with this number, but Ruth Etting sang it first.
I'm Nobody's Baby
Of course no Ruth Etting sampler would be complete without a torch song. This one's from November of 1929 and is one of the better ones.
More Than You Know
From the Rodger and Hart show Simple Simon and recorded April 3, 1930, one of Ruth's biggest hits.
Ten Cents A Dance
And so many, many others.
Monday, January 03, 2005
I Love You California
Well, the holidays are over, a new year has begun, and once again Californians up and down the state can rest easier tonight knowing the the State Legislature is once again in session. May God have mercy on our souls.
For those of you who haven't been following the story of the great California budget debacle, here's a recap:
1) We're in the hole
2) The hole is getting bigger
3) Last year we had to borrow $15 billion dollars in the form of deficit-relief bonds to keep our heads above water
4) Looks like we're going to be another $7 billion or so in the red again this year
5) Everyone in Sacramento is committed to balancing the budget so that we won't have to borrow our way out of trouble again this year, which means...
6) Look for California to float another $7 billion in deficit-relief bonds again this year.
Not that I'm being cynical, mind you, but what else can you think when you turn on the TV and see the legislators arriving in Sacramento and the first thing out of the democrats mouths is "We're not going to let ourselves be steamrolled by the Republicans", and the first thing out of the Republicans mouth is " We've already made our position clear to the Democrats and we have no intention of backing down." Ah yes, it's politics as usual in California.
Oh well, what did we expect. That's the problem with the "polarization of America" isn't it; the really big problems seem to get shoved to the side while we argue and bicker over the fringe issues. After all, who has to time to worry about things like roads or housing or Medicaid when weightier matters such as gay marriage or school prayer are pressing upon us. It's a national disease that I think Americans largely bring upon themselves, but whatever the reason there seem to be precious few politicians these days who have shown themselves immune.
So back to California. The democrats have made it clear that they are going solve this budget crisis by raising taxes, and apparently giddy from the recent election where "blue" California showed itself to be one of the few states that backed John Kerry for president, the democrats feel that the voters will be solidly behind them. Unfortunately for the democrats, while California may be "blue" it also has one of the highest state income taxes, one of the highest state sales taxes, and one of the highest corporate income taxes in the country. State tax advocates like to point out that even with our high tax rates we still rank about the middle of the pack when taxes are measured as a percentage of income, however advocates don't seem to realize that incomes in California are highly skewed between homeowners who have grown filthy rich off of the state's housing boom and non-homeowners who are struggling just to make the monthly rent payment (I don't have any facts to back that up but anecdotally I know it to be true.) Don't be suprised if the dems have a harder fight on their hands than they imagine.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have Arnold, and he is worth a dozen John Kerrys. Arnold has made a vow that he won't raise taxes and so far he has made good on that pledge. In fact, he recently created quite a stir here in the Bay Area when he nixed plans for a Bay Bridge retrofit that threatened to run about $2 billion over budget. Now let me tell you, cost overruns are derigeur in California and politicians around these parts routinely expect a rubberstamp from Sacramento when things get over budget, so when Arnold said no there were a lot of people who were more than a little steamed. It was like "What do you mean NO? You can't say NO. That's not in the script." But Arnold said no and stuck with it and now it looks like we're going to have to come up with a Plan B. Geez, such a big fuss over a lousy billion dollars or two.
If the Republicans are going to make good on their no new taxes pledge, though, then one way or another their going to have to cut way past the fat and get into a little meat and bone. That's going to be tough and when push comes to shove don't be suprised if they come up short. And the big problem, as I see it, is the California public school system.
Somehow we have created this monster of a public school system in California that not only manages to suck up every dollar we send it but then has the temerity to come back looking neglected and half-starved and demanding more. We enacted a State Lotto to fund it and that wasn't enough. We passed Prop. 98 which guaranteed it 40% of the State General Fund and that wasn't enough. Each election year we pass billions and billions of dollars in new bond measures to try to make up the shortfall and still the schools are underfunded and closing down. You would think by now that people would stop and take a look at what is happening and ask why it is that no amount of money seems to be enough, but instead just the opposite happens. For California it has almost become a mantra - "money for schools, money for schools, money for schools" - and no one can break the spell or question the logic, and no politician dares to break the cycle for fear the voters would run him out of town on a rail. Not even Arnold.
But maybe someone should ask questions. After all, when you think about it there are lots of kids getting good educations in California. Not all of them by any means, but families who put the effort into getting a good education for their kids seem to be able to get them graduated and into some of the better colleges and universities. I may be over generalizing on this, but you know maybe the educational problems we're having aren't internal to the schools as much as they are external to the culture around them. It seems to me that any educational system is going to struggle in a society that devalues education, where learning is equated with nerdiness and where "street cred" is more important than academic achievement. That may or may not be true, but I do think that there are good schools in California and that there are kids who are making the effort and getting good educations in California, and that maybe the school system is as broken as people claim it is. Garbage-in, garbage-out, that's how the saying goes.
Oh well, that's the subject for another blog.
Meanwhile, back at the budget, the dems won't consider a budget that doesn't raises taxes and the governor won't consider a budget that does. Where does that leave the state? Same as always. We'll get a budget thats late and out of balance and we'll be floating some more bonds to paper it over till next year.
And that, my friends, is the news from California. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Well, the holidays are over, a new year has begun, and once again Californians up and down the state can rest easier tonight knowing the the State Legislature is once again in session. May God have mercy on our souls.
For those of you who haven't been following the story of the great California budget debacle, here's a recap:
1) We're in the hole
2) The hole is getting bigger
3) Last year we had to borrow $15 billion dollars in the form of deficit-relief bonds to keep our heads above water
4) Looks like we're going to be another $7 billion or so in the red again this year
5) Everyone in Sacramento is committed to balancing the budget so that we won't have to borrow our way out of trouble again this year, which means...
6) Look for California to float another $7 billion in deficit-relief bonds again this year.
Not that I'm being cynical, mind you, but what else can you think when you turn on the TV and see the legislators arriving in Sacramento and the first thing out of the democrats mouths is "We're not going to let ourselves be steamrolled by the Republicans", and the first thing out of the Republicans mouth is " We've already made our position clear to the Democrats and we have no intention of backing down." Ah yes, it's politics as usual in California.
Oh well, what did we expect. That's the problem with the "polarization of America" isn't it; the really big problems seem to get shoved to the side while we argue and bicker over the fringe issues. After all, who has to time to worry about things like roads or housing or Medicaid when weightier matters such as gay marriage or school prayer are pressing upon us. It's a national disease that I think Americans largely bring upon themselves, but whatever the reason there seem to be precious few politicians these days who have shown themselves immune.
So back to California. The democrats have made it clear that they are going solve this budget crisis by raising taxes, and apparently giddy from the recent election where "blue" California showed itself to be one of the few states that backed John Kerry for president, the democrats feel that the voters will be solidly behind them. Unfortunately for the democrats, while California may be "blue" it also has one of the highest state income taxes, one of the highest state sales taxes, and one of the highest corporate income taxes in the country. State tax advocates like to point out that even with our high tax rates we still rank about the middle of the pack when taxes are measured as a percentage of income, however advocates don't seem to realize that incomes in California are highly skewed between homeowners who have grown filthy rich off of the state's housing boom and non-homeowners who are struggling just to make the monthly rent payment (I don't have any facts to back that up but anecdotally I know it to be true.) Don't be suprised if the dems have a harder fight on their hands than they imagine.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have Arnold, and he is worth a dozen John Kerrys. Arnold has made a vow that he won't raise taxes and so far he has made good on that pledge. In fact, he recently created quite a stir here in the Bay Area when he nixed plans for a Bay Bridge retrofit that threatened to run about $2 billion over budget. Now let me tell you, cost overruns are derigeur in California and politicians around these parts routinely expect a rubberstamp from Sacramento when things get over budget, so when Arnold said no there were a lot of people who were more than a little steamed. It was like "What do you mean NO? You can't say NO. That's not in the script." But Arnold said no and stuck with it and now it looks like we're going to have to come up with a Plan B. Geez, such a big fuss over a lousy billion dollars or two.
If the Republicans are going to make good on their no new taxes pledge, though, then one way or another their going to have to cut way past the fat and get into a little meat and bone. That's going to be tough and when push comes to shove don't be suprised if they come up short. And the big problem, as I see it, is the California public school system.
Somehow we have created this monster of a public school system in California that not only manages to suck up every dollar we send it but then has the temerity to come back looking neglected and half-starved and demanding more. We enacted a State Lotto to fund it and that wasn't enough. We passed Prop. 98 which guaranteed it 40% of the State General Fund and that wasn't enough. Each election year we pass billions and billions of dollars in new bond measures to try to make up the shortfall and still the schools are underfunded and closing down. You would think by now that people would stop and take a look at what is happening and ask why it is that no amount of money seems to be enough, but instead just the opposite happens. For California it has almost become a mantra - "money for schools, money for schools, money for schools" - and no one can break the spell or question the logic, and no politician dares to break the cycle for fear the voters would run him out of town on a rail. Not even Arnold.
But maybe someone should ask questions. After all, when you think about it there are lots of kids getting good educations in California. Not all of them by any means, but families who put the effort into getting a good education for their kids seem to be able to get them graduated and into some of the better colleges and universities. I may be over generalizing on this, but you know maybe the educational problems we're having aren't internal to the schools as much as they are external to the culture around them. It seems to me that any educational system is going to struggle in a society that devalues education, where learning is equated with nerdiness and where "street cred" is more important than academic achievement. That may or may not be true, but I do think that there are good schools in California and that there are kids who are making the effort and getting good educations in California, and that maybe the school system is as broken as people claim it is. Garbage-in, garbage-out, that's how the saying goes.
Oh well, that's the subject for another blog.
Meanwhile, back at the budget, the dems won't consider a budget that doesn't raises taxes and the governor won't consider a budget that does. Where does that leave the state? Same as always. We'll get a budget thats late and out of balance and we'll be floating some more bonds to paper it over till next year.
And that, my friends, is the news from California. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Happy New Year
My resolution for the New Year is to get myself a crew. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while now, and it really started to hit home last week as I reminisced about my mother and her obsession with spending the week after Christmas scrubbing and cleaning the house to get it ready for the New Year. I don't know if it was a Japanese thing or just my mother's own personal thing, but she considered it bad luck to start the New Year off with a dirty house, and unfortunately for me and my brothers, little boys who would have much rather spent their Christmas vacations playing with their new Christmas toys than doing chores, she had no compunctions about dragging us away from pleasanter pursuits and setting us to the dreary task of cleaning out the garage or washing the windows.
So I was thinking about the old days and it came to me that life would be so much better if I had a crew. You know, a bunch of people that would do my washing and do my cleaning and cook my meals and go down to the store and get my groceries and take care of all those day-to-day things that are just such a bother for a man of refinement and leisure like myself. When there was work to be done around the house or out in the yard they could take care of it, when there were things that needed fixing or errands to be run they could take care of it, and when there were social obligations to be dodged they could make the phone calls and offer my sincere apologies as well. Ah yes, wouldn't that be nice, and just maybe if it was a good crew they could proofread my blogs for me and even get them into a form more closely resembling the english language.
But, I have no crew nor the wherewithal to get one, so I guess I'm stuck. Of course it used to be that a man (and by that I mean a male) could find himself a good wife who would look after all his needs, but those days are gone. True, there are still some guys who can get away with it, but for the most part husbands who sit in front of the TV and snap open a beer while their wives do all the cooking and cleaning and washing are a vanishing breed. In fact I think there's even a word for those type of men in the modern lexicon - they call them "ex-husbands".
No, if you're gonna make it in today's world you've gotta get a crew.
Other than that I don't have any real resolutions going into 2005, although I was thinking it would be nice to learn a new language. In fact I was considering getting some language software and trying to learn Italian. It seems with all the operas I watch it would be a good thing to learn, but I don't know. French was the last foreign language I tried to learn and I didn't do too well with that one. I mean I could learn the words - a chien was a dog and a chat was a cat, for example - but it was all those tenses and genders and things that used to trip me up. Hmmm, is it past imperfect or future conditional, masculine or feminine, active or passive - geez, who can keep all this stuff straight in their heads.
"La crayon, s'il vous plait."
"Oh, ho, ho, monsieur. Ce n'est pas 'la crayon', c'est 'le crayon'. "
"Le crayon?"
"Oui, monsieur. Je pense que votre francais n'est pas trop bon"
"N'est trop bon, huh. Well look Pierre, Je suis l'Americaine, ok? Nous disons 'the crayon' so donnez-moi une break, will 'ya? How about you skip the commentary and just let me have 'the' crayon por favor. "
"Oh, je vois. Vous etes un americain...(mais naturellement). Je comprends, monsieur. Pardonnez-mois, monsieur. Voici le crayon."
"Danka, Pierre. La papier, s'il vous plait."
"Oh, ho, ho, monsieur. Ce n'est pas 'la' papier, c'est ..."
"C'est what? Le papier? Is that what you were going to say? Were you going to tell me I screwed up again? Is that what you're going to tell me, Pierre?"
"Uh, ce n'est pas important, monsieur. (Les Americains sont des idiots)"
"(Les Francais sont des idiots.)"
So, instead of French I thought I'd try Italian, but then I was looking through an Italian phrasebook at the bookstore and it looks like they've got masculine and feminine words too. Man, I don't think I'm up for this.
Of course there's always Chinese.
My resolution for the New Year is to get myself a crew. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while now, and it really started to hit home last week as I reminisced about my mother and her obsession with spending the week after Christmas scrubbing and cleaning the house to get it ready for the New Year. I don't know if it was a Japanese thing or just my mother's own personal thing, but she considered it bad luck to start the New Year off with a dirty house, and unfortunately for me and my brothers, little boys who would have much rather spent their Christmas vacations playing with their new Christmas toys than doing chores, she had no compunctions about dragging us away from pleasanter pursuits and setting us to the dreary task of cleaning out the garage or washing the windows.
So I was thinking about the old days and it came to me that life would be so much better if I had a crew. You know, a bunch of people that would do my washing and do my cleaning and cook my meals and go down to the store and get my groceries and take care of all those day-to-day things that are just such a bother for a man of refinement and leisure like myself. When there was work to be done around the house or out in the yard they could take care of it, when there were things that needed fixing or errands to be run they could take care of it, and when there were social obligations to be dodged they could make the phone calls and offer my sincere apologies as well. Ah yes, wouldn't that be nice, and just maybe if it was a good crew they could proofread my blogs for me and even get them into a form more closely resembling the english language.
But, I have no crew nor the wherewithal to get one, so I guess I'm stuck. Of course it used to be that a man (and by that I mean a male) could find himself a good wife who would look after all his needs, but those days are gone. True, there are still some guys who can get away with it, but for the most part husbands who sit in front of the TV and snap open a beer while their wives do all the cooking and cleaning and washing are a vanishing breed. In fact I think there's even a word for those type of men in the modern lexicon - they call them "ex-husbands".
No, if you're gonna make it in today's world you've gotta get a crew.
Other than that I don't have any real resolutions going into 2005, although I was thinking it would be nice to learn a new language. In fact I was considering getting some language software and trying to learn Italian. It seems with all the operas I watch it would be a good thing to learn, but I don't know. French was the last foreign language I tried to learn and I didn't do too well with that one. I mean I could learn the words - a chien was a dog and a chat was a cat, for example - but it was all those tenses and genders and things that used to trip me up. Hmmm, is it past imperfect or future conditional, masculine or feminine, active or passive - geez, who can keep all this stuff straight in their heads.
"La crayon, s'il vous plait."
"Oh, ho, ho, monsieur. Ce n'est pas 'la crayon', c'est 'le crayon'. "
"Le crayon?"
"Oui, monsieur. Je pense que votre francais n'est pas trop bon"
"N'est trop bon, huh. Well look Pierre, Je suis l'Americaine, ok? Nous disons 'the crayon' so donnez-moi une break, will 'ya? How about you skip the commentary and just let me have 'the' crayon por favor. "
"Oh, je vois. Vous etes un americain...(mais naturellement). Je comprends, monsieur. Pardonnez-mois, monsieur. Voici le crayon."
"Danka, Pierre. La papier, s'il vous plait."
"Oh, ho, ho, monsieur. Ce n'est pas 'la' papier, c'est ..."
"C'est what? Le papier? Is that what you were going to say? Were you going to tell me I screwed up again? Is that what you're going to tell me, Pierre?"
"Uh, ce n'est pas important, monsieur. (Les Americains sont des idiots)"
"(Les Francais sont des idiots.)"
So, instead of French I thought I'd try Italian, but then I was looking through an Italian phrasebook at the bookstore and it looks like they've got masculine and feminine words too. Man, I don't think I'm up for this.
Of course there's always Chinese.
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