josh pincus is crying

The illustrationfriday.com challange word this week is “island”.
The song “Zombie Jamboree” began life as “Jumbie Jamberee”, a calypso song written by Winston O’Conner. Winston performed under the name Lord Intruder in the early 1950s. In 1953, Lord Intruder released the song as the B-side to his recording of “Disaster With Police”. The Kingston Trio recorded it for their 1959 album “Hungry i”. Since then, it has been recorded and performed by Harry Belafonte (on four different albums), Bob Marley and The Wailers , Harry Nilsson and many others. In the early 1980s, a new, a capella version of the song was arranged by Rockapella’s Sean Altman — an arrangement that has since been used by virtually every a capella group on the planet.

In Rockapella’s live performances, bass singer Barry Carl would introduce the song this way…
“This next song is about an island — yesssssss…
Not one of those little islands where you take your winter vacation or spring break — no, no no…
This song is about a big
cold
smelly
broke
island
This island called…
MANHATTAN!

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “clutter”.

Sylvia Frumkin was the pseudonym given to Maxine Mason, the subject of the 1982 book “Is There No Place On Earth For Me?”by Susan Sheehan. Maxine was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The content of her speech revealed what was going on in her cluttered mind.
There’s no such thing as schizophrenia, there’s only mental telepathy. I once had a friend named Camilla Costello. She was Abbott and Costello’s daughter. She said to me, ‘You know, Sylvia, I have a lot of friends, but you’re my best friend.’ I’m working here. I’m an intern at Creedmoor. I’m in the Pentecostal Church, but I’m thinking of changing my religion. I have a dog at home. I love instant oatmeal. When you have Jesus, you don’t need a diet. Mick Jagger wants to marry me. I want to get out the revolving door. With Jesus Christ, anything is possible. I used to hit my mother. It was the hyperactivity from all the cookies I ate. I’m the personification of Casper the Friendly Ghost. I used to go outside asking the other kids to be my friend when I was little. California’s the most beautiful state in the Union. I’ve been there once, by television. My name is Jack Warden, and I’m an actress.
As a result of the publication of Sheehan’s book, Maxine was given more effective treatment. However, she continued to go in and out of mental hospitals and died in 1994.

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “memories”.
This weekend is Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer. I was prompted to think of all of the things I experienced this past summer. While not necessarily the best memory of the summer, the most unusual occurred on Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial beginning of summer.

Remember The Smithereens? Y’know, that band from the 80’s… They sang that song… You remember…
Pat DiNizio is the founder of The Smithereens. In March 2007, I met Pat and the rest of The Smithereens at a “Free-At-Noon” concert hosted by local radio station WXPN. After the show, the band were slated to sign autographs. At the time, my son was an intern at WXPN and one of his duties was to escort band members to the “Meet and Greet” area. I was in line with the other fans as my son led a shuffling Pat DiNizio over the the table where the other band members had already assembled. Pat inexplicably headed right to me and hugged me, then shook my hand and personally thanked me for coming out to the show. He was very nice and gracious and he actually thought he already knew me. Although it was one o’clock in the afternoon, Pat may have been a bit sloshed. Our second meeting was at the WXPN annual summer music festival in Camden, New Jersey. The Smithereens were one of over thirty performers at the four-day festival. I saw Pat briefly and was able to get his attention and wave. He smiled broadly and waved back. Again, Pat was probably soused. Christmastime 2007 brought The Smithereens back for another WXPN Free At Noon show. After the show, Pat gave my wife and me a big “Hey Man” from the autograph table. I am not convinced he remembered me. I think he’s just a friendly guy.
For the past several years, Pat DiNizio has opened up his backyard for his annual Memorial Day Barbecue and Fan Appreciation Concert. For an admission of $50 a person, it’s all you can eat and drink plus all the music you can absorb. The event has been advertised on Pat’s website. I suggested to my family that it would be a cool idea to attend this event. We had no plans for weekend. I said it would be a great experience. If we had a great time, then great! If it sucked, then we’d have a great story.
For the sake of avoiding a long and drawn-out explanation of my family’s dietary restrictions, let’s just say we are vegetarians. I emailed Pat to inquire about the menu before I shelled out $150 for the three of us. I told him we were vegetarians and hoped there would be something available for us to eat. The Smithereens were on a West Coast tour. Pat stated in his “Greetings from San Francisco” email reply: “It’s going to be mostly hamburgers and hotdogs, typical 1950’s and 1960’s picnic-type stuff, but I also usually always have a selection of veggie burgers, and chicken and turkey franks for the non-beef eaters. I could pick up some tofu and veggie burgers, and there will be potato salad, green salad, vegetarian beans, (as well as pork and beans), but, well, you know, how it is, most people like meat, chicken and fish, so it leans towards that area… I was a vegetarian from 1974 until around 1979 and there was NOTHING commercially available to us anywhere, just health food store stuff! It was SO difficult and I was a total outcast, too! I am still primarily a vegetarian as well, too, so feel free to bring your own favorite foods. Hope you can make it over!”
I sent Pat an electronic payment of $150 and we suddenly had plans for Memorial Day.
We drove two or so hours to Scotch Plains, New Jersey. The DiNizio residence was guarded by a tattooed gentleman with a cigar and a sleeveless Harley-Davidson shirt. He was checking admission receipts. He couldn’t locate the submission date on mine, until I pointed it out to him. He smiled a gap-toothed grin and granted us access. Pat’s backyard was small and narrow. It was set up with several long picnic tables butted up to each other. The tables were sheltered by a very long and narrow commercial-variety pop-up canopy. Wedged into an awkward corner of the yard was the grill, which was laden with hot dogs. An adjacent table was stocked with cole slaw, potato salad and a well-worn, opaque, Tupperware-style container. On the lid was a length of masking tape on which was scrawled “vegan”. I was not convinced, so I steered clear. Under the table were numerous insulated coolers housing more beer than Milwaukee.
Off to one side was a makeshift stage, also covered with a canopy. There were microphones and several guitars in stands. A fellow took the stage and began setting up a laptop computer. He approached one mic and thanked Pat for having this barbecue and informed the small crowd that he was the warm-up for the main performance. He strapped on an acoustic guitar and, with the accompaniment of a karaoke computer program, treated us to an over-long set of classic rock songs. From the renditions of a few of the songs, I wondered if he had ever heard them before.
We spotted “The Thrilla” (current Smithereen’s bassist Severo Jornacion) milling around the yard. He and Pat finally began the began the featured performance. They were joined by a friend of Pat’s on guitar and a drummer that Pat claimed he found on Craig’s List. The quartet performed several Smithereens hits, several Beatles songs and a few Smithereens album tracks. The Smithereens had a hit in 1990, a duet with the Go-Go’s Belinda Carlisle, called “Blue Period”. The “backyard band” performed this song with a woman who was not Belinda Carlisle. Pat announced that there would be a brief intermission so everyone could eat. My family and I loaded up plates of cole slaw, grabbed a couple of Pepsis, took a seat under the canopy opposite the stage, and observed  the interesting people in attendance.
Pat was playing the model host, carrying a huge tray that was abundant with hot dogs. He approached my family and offered from his tray. I identified us as the vegetarians. He asked if we brought food for ourselves. I said we were okay and we were able to find enough to eat.
Soon, Pat returned to the stage and sang a few acoustic numbers and a few more Beatles songs (Pat really likes The Beatles). Several additional singers were invited to perform. These included a leather-skinned guitarist with a battered wicker cowboy hat and a guy who claimed to have written a Miller Lite jingle.
The day was winding down. Pat thanked everyone for coming. We said goodbye to Pat. We reminded him that we would see him at the Appel Farm Festival in one week. Pat gave us a blank look, as if he was not aware that his band was booked for that show or what Appel Farms was. Again, I think Pat was a bit inebriated.
On our drive home, we discussed how surreal the experience was and how we probably don’t need to go to next year’s barbecue. We also agreed that we ended up with a great story.
As Pat has sung many, many times - “Only a memory…”

The word offered this week by illustrationfriday.com is “routine”.

Just a few years after his discharge from the US Navy, Leonard Schneider was arrested in Miami, Florida, for impersonating a priest. He had stolen several priests’ clergy shirts and a clerical collar while posing as a laundry man. He then solicited donations for a leper colony in British Guiana after he legally chartered the “Brother Mathias Foundation”. He was found not guilty due to the legality of the New York state-chartered foundation, the actual existence of the Guiana leper colony, and the inability of the local clergy to expose him as an impostor. He made approximately $8,000, sending $2,500 to the leper colony and keeping the rest.
Soon after changing his last name to Bruce, Lenny earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn. From that modest start, he got his first break on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts Show, doing Bavarian impressions of American movie stars.
In the time when stand-up comics would come out on stage in a cute little suit and tell cute little mother-in-law jokes, Lenny Bruce was a trailblazer. His routines touched on previously taboo subjects, like moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. His stand-up act featured lines like “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”  No comedian of that time would dare tread near that type of subject matter. He appeared on the nationally televised Steve Allen Show, where he commented on the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor to Eddie Fisher by making his first line an unscripted ‘will Elizabeth Taylor become bar mitzvahed?’
San Francisco columnist Herb Caen was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Lenny, writing in 1959: “They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating.”
In October 1961, Lenny was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. He had used the word cocksucker on stage. He was acquitted, but other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity. The increased scrutiny also led to an arrest in Philadelphia for drug possession in the same year, and again in Los Angeles two years later. By 1963, he had become a target of Manhattan DA, Frank Hogan, who was working closely with Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York. In April 1964, Lenny appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. On both occasions, he was arrested on obscentiy charges upon leaving the stage. Despite despite positive testimony and support from the likes of Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron and Dorothy Kilgallen, Lenny was sentenced to four months in the workhouse.
Lenny was arrested 15 times in two years. His performances were banned in Great Britian. At his first show in Sydney, Australia, he got up on stage, declared “What a fucking wonderful audience” and was promptly arrested.
By 1966 he had been blacklisted by nearly every nightclub in the United States, as club owners feared prosecution for obscenity. The less work Lenny got, the more he turned to drugs. His last performance was June 25, 1966, at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The performance was not remembered fondly by promoter Bill Graham, who described Lenny as “whacked out on amphetamines”.
On August 3, 1966, Lenny was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home. Lenny was lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. Sportswriter Dick Schaap famously eulogized Lenny in Playboy, with the line: “One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That’s obscene.”
Lenny Bruce paved the comedic way for George Carlin, Robin Williams, Chris Rock and many others. Thirty-seven years after his death, Lenny was granted a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction by New York Governor George Pataki.

The challenge word on illustrationfriday.com this week is “detach”.

All Brenda Ann Spencer wanted for Christmas 1978 was a radio.
That’s all.
Just a radio.
Her father bought her a rifle instead.
On Monday, January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, across the street from her house. She killed two school employees and wounded eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg.
During the six-hour standoff with police, she made such comments to police negotiators as “There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun”; “It was just like shooting ducks in a pond”; and “The children looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.” Brenda showed no remorse, no emotion and was totally detached from the incident.
When asked what drove her to this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Brenda pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. She has been up for parole four times and has been turned down each time.

The challenge word this week on illustrationfriday.com is “sail”.

In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of the dead. The souls of the deceased are brought to him by Hermes, and Charon ferries them across the river Styx, to Hades. The fee for his service was a single obolos coin which was placed in the mouth of a corpse at burial. Those who cannot afford the passage, or are not admitted to Hades by Charon, are doomed to wander on the banks of the Styx for a hundred years.

And then the ferryman said,
“There is trouble ahead,
So you must pay me now,” - “Don’t do it!”
“You must pay me now,” - “Don’t do it!”
And still that voice came from beyond,
“Whatever you do,

Don’t pay the ferryman,
Don’t even fix a price,
Don’t pay the ferryman,
Until he gets you to the other side;

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “poof”.

I have always loved magicians. My mom introduced me to magicians when we watched Tony Curtis’ totally inaccurate portrayal of Harry Houdini in 1953’s “Houdini”. When I was a kid, on every “Ed Sullivan Show” on Sunday night — between a performance by Vikki Carr and Morty Gunty — there was usually a magician. Long before David Kotkin made the Statue of Liberty disappear or Christopher Sarantakos walked across the surface of a Las Vegas swimming pool, there was Blackstone.
Harry Blackstone Jr. was a great TV magician. He was a staple on TV variety shows throughout the 1970s. Unfortunately, if you are younger that 30, you probably don’t remember him. He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a greater and more popular showman. He was a personable character with great audience rapport and a devilish sense of humor. His tricks weren’t spectacular, his act, however, was.
He was my dad’s favorite magician. One of Blackstone’s signature illusions was making a birdcage disappear while it was being held by three guys from the audience. He also selected gentlemen from the audience to assist in a trick involving a length of rope. He would always choose an elderly gentlemen and after a brief explanation, Blackstone would place his face an inch from the old man’s face and scream, “WE’RE GONNA DO A ROPE TRICK!” My dad would roar with laughter.
In 1985, on the 100th anniversary of his father’s birth, Harry Blackstone, Jr. donated to the Smithsonian Institution the original floating light bulb — designed and built by Thomas Edison. This was the first ever donation accepted by the Smithsonian in the field of magic.
He infamously performed during the half-time show at the 1987 Orange Bowl, in which four of the five tricks Blackstone attempted failed miserably due to missed cues and poorly designed props.
He also created four magic kits, from beginner to advanced, which were the best sellers at their time.
Blacktone died in 1997 due to complications arising from pancreatic cancer.
My wife always says that magicians on TV are ridiculous. I certainly understand that most things on TV are bullshit. And magic is bullshit. So, the two together equals double the bullshit. But I still find magic entertaining. Sure, it’s cooler seeing  magicians in person, but I’ll take it where I can get it.

The challenge word this week on illustrationfriday.com is “canned”.

Arthur Godfrey ranks as one of the important on-air stars of the first decade of American television. As the new medium was invading American households, there was something about Godfrey’s wide grin, his infectious chuckle, his unruly shock of red hair and his folksy ukelele playing that made millions tune in not once, but twice a week.
His on-air delivery of sponsor Lipton Tea’s commercials had the American public rushing to their local grocers. No television viewer during the 1950s doubted that Godfrey really did love Lipton Tea and drank it every day. He delighted in tossing aside prepared scripts and telling his audience: “Aw, who wrote this stuff? Everybody knows Lipton’s is the best tea you can buy. So why get fancy about it? Getcha some Lipton’s Tea”. And, boy, did they!
However, when the cameras were off, Godfrey was a crazed, anti-Semitic, controlling megalomaniac. Godfrey ruled his cast with an iron-fist and he took no shit from them. He knew that when someone appeared on his show, their popularity was instant. So, his inflated ego felt entitled to make demands. He insisted his “Little Godfreys” (as his regulars were known) attend dance and singing classes, believing all should be versatile performers. In meetings with the cast and his staff, Godfrey was abusive and intimidating. In spite of his ability to bring in profits, CBS owner William Paley disliked Godfrey. Frank Stanton, CBS president, liked Godfrey, especially because he kept show production cost down.
In 1951, a mutual friend introduced Godfrey to a young singer named Julius LaRosa. Godfrey gave LaRosa a break and put him on his show. LaRosa proved popular and became a frequent guest performer on Godfrey’s show. Along with the rest of the cast, LaRosa was required to take dance lessons. He missed one due to a family emergency. When he arrived at the studio, he was advised via a cast bulletin board, that his services were not required for that week’s show. Soon afterwards, LaRosa had a national hit record with “Eh Cumpari”. He began to receive fan mail that topped the amount that Godfrey was receiving. LaRosa also hired his own agent, something Godfrey was adamantly against. Godfrey felt he was detecting a bit of “cockiness” in LaRosa’s attitude.
In October 1953, Godfrey consulted with CBS president Stanton. Stanton suggested Godfrey actually fire LaRosa on the air, however conflicting stories indicate that he may not have been serious. Nonetheless, after lavishing praise on LaRosa in introducing the singer’s performance, Godfrey thanked him and then announced that this was LaRosa’s “swan song” with the show. LaRosa had to be told what the phrase “swan song” meant. He was dumbfounded, since he had not been informed beforehand of his departure. LaRosa was so popular at the time, America seemed to side with him… a reaction that Godfrey never expected.
As time went on, Godfrey’s own popularity waned, eventually making him a dinosaur among the fleeting and fickle world of television.

The illustrationfriday.com word this week is “enough”.

Dayenu is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The word “Dayenu” means “it would have been enough for us”. This traditional Passover song is about being grateful to God for all of the gifts he gave the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah and Shabbat, and had God only given one of the gifts, it would have still been enough. This is to show much greater appreciation for all of them as a whole. The song appears in the haggadah after the telling of the story of the exodus and just before the explanation of Passover, matzah and the maror.
Dayenu has 15 stanzas representing the 15 gifts God bestowed. The first five involve freeing the Jews from slavery, the next describe the miracles he did for them, and the last five for the closeness to God he gave them. After each of the stanzas, participants sing the word “Dayenu” (“that would have been enough”). The 15 stanzas are:
Five Stanzas of Leaving Slavery
1. If He had brought us out of Egypt.
2. If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians.
3. If He had executed justice upon their gods.
4. If He had slain their first born.
5. If He had given to us their health and wealth
Five Stanzas of Miracles
6. If He had split the sea for us.
7. If He had led us through on dry land.
8. If He had drowned our oppressors.
9. If He had provided for our needs in the wilderness for 40 years.
10. If He had fed us manna.
Five Stanzas of Being With God
11. If He had given us Shabbat.
12. If He had led us to Mount Sinai.
13. If He had given us the Torah.
14. If He had brought us into the Land of Israel.
15. He built the Temple for us.

Jews in Afghanistan traditionally hit each other over the head with green onions during the refrain of the ninth stanza of Dayenu. This may be due to a passage in Numbers 11:5-6, where the Israelites see manna and recall Egypt. “We remember the fish that we used to eat in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the ONIONS and the garlic.
Zebulon Simentov hasn’t had anyone to smack on the head with green onions since Passover 2004. Although Jews have a 2,500 year history in Afghanistan, Zebulon and Ishaq Levin were the only two left since late 1999. They shared living space in the synagogue for which Ishaq was the “shamash” or caretaker. Despite sharing living quarters, Zebulon and Ishaq were bitter enemies and never spoke to each other. The two men silently went through their prayer rituals and their holiday preparations. They blamed each other for their regular arrests and beatings at the hands of the Taliban. Ishaq would tell Taliban officials that Zebulon was a spy. Zebulon blamed Ishaq for the confiscation of the synagogue’s Torah. They glared at each other when they crossed paths in the synagogue’s courtyard. One morning in January 2005, Zebulon found the 70 year-old Ishaq dead in his room in the synagogue. Zebulon contacted his own family, who in turn contacted Ishaq’s family. Ishaq’s family and the Israeli government arranged for burial at The Mount of Olives.
Zebulon’s wife and daughter live in Israel, leaving Zebulon as the only Jew in Afghanistan. He has no plans to leave. He will continue to read from his tattered scriptures and, when Passover rolls around, he will smack himself with green onions.

The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “foggy”.
Let me start off by stating that although this story ultimately ends with THIS, it is not the same type of celebrity story found elsewhere on this blog.

Mel Tormé was most famous for his beautifully mellow voice, but he accomplished so much in his career.
He was an actor in radio serials.
He wrote over 250 songs.
He was an accomplished drummer, playing drums in a big band led by Chico Marx. Mel befriended drummer Buddy Rich and eventually wrote a book about him. Mel also owned a drumset that drummer Gene Krupa had used for many years and he played this drumset at the 1979 Chicago Jazz Festival with Benny Goodman on the classic “Sing, Sing, Sing”.
He helped pioneer cool jazz.
He wrote songs and musical arrangements for the The Judy Garland Show. He later had a falling out with Garland and wrote a very unflattering book about her and his experiences with her show.
He was a licensed pilot.
He appeared in nine episodes of Night Court and one episode of Seinfeld.
He disliked rock and roll music, calling it “three-chord manure”, although he recorded a guest vocal with Was (Not Was) in 1983.
And Mel hated the nickname “The Velvet Fog”.

Mel Tormé’s career spanned seven decades and there was no denying his diverse talent. However, the inspiration for this illustration was a beautiful and touching story that I came across on povonline.com, the website of Mark Evanier (a very talented guy in his own right!). Mark wrote about his “almost encounter” with Mel at a Los Angeles Farmer’s Market. I urge you to read Mark’s story HERE. It is perfect.

This drawing was created entirely onsite at the 2008 WXPN XPoNential Music Festival.