Marx Brothers Blog

Today, for no particular reason, I decided to start a new blog dedicated to the Marx Brothers. I have started the new blog with one of the more popular posts at Lugubrious Drollery: "Lydia the Tattooed Lady Revealed."

Spicer Lake

Today, I went to Spicer Lake County Park in New Carlisle, Indiana to see if I could get some pictures. There were no waterfowl on the lake, and the sky was overcast. I did come away with this picture, showing the water lilies emerging and other vegetation reflected in the lake.

Franklin Pierce on ESPN

These days, it seems the only place to hear about Franklin Pierce on TV is on "Jeopardy." A notable exception occurred during the 2009 NCAA Division II women's basketball championship game on ESPN2. Does anyone really care that Barbara Bush is a distant cousin? Oh well, at least they didn't bring up the urban legend about him running over a woman.

Alas, the Ravens of Franklin Pierce were run over by the Mavericks of Minnesota State-Mankato, 103-94 in the highest scoring championship game in the history of NCAA DII women's basketball.

3 Guys: Byron and Shelley and Goethe

Bust of Lord Byron, Nottingham Castle
Photo by David Cory, October 1, 2008

During my fourth year of medical school, we lived in an apartment across the hall from a dermatology resident from Alabama who made us aware of the Red Clay Ramblers, among other musicians. At the time (1980), Mike Craver was a member of the group, and he wrote a brilliant song based on Franz Schubert's "Freuden Sonder Zahl" (Seligkeit D. 433). The lyrics follow. I'd encourage any interested readers to download the song from iTunes. It appears on the RCR album "Hard Times."

You really have to hear it to fully appreciate it.

"THREE GUYS"
words and music by Mike Craver
Joy and bliss and love
Come from Heaven above
Schnitzel and filet mignon
Come from the animal kingdom
Byron and Shelley and Goethe
Were finishing up their dessert-a
When the garcon came to reckon,
Byron to Shelley did beckon
"You stall the waiter, I'll give the slip
Goethe for certain will hide in the curtain
And think up a jolly good quip"
These Three Mousketeers thought it outre
To travel about on the subway
Pedestrians get there too slowly
And buses are common and lowly
They hailed down a nice yellow taxi
Climbed grinning and gay in the backseat
The fare came to over a fiver
So they replied to the driver
"We have no money, we have no tip
But we can see by the love in your eye
That you'll let us get by with a slip"

They snuck in one night to the Bijou
Drinking vodka and Milk of Magnesia
They littered the balcony boxes
Grinning like toothless old foxes
Saint Peter was watching the action
With a dim view of dissatisfaction
He pinned up a sign on the portals:
"WE KNOW LONGER TAKE IN IMMORTALS"
Oh you stall the waiter,
I'll give the slip,
Goethe for certain
Will hide in the curtain
And think up a jolly good quip
Goethe for certain
Will hide in the curtain
And think up a jolly good quip

Franklin Pierce, Statespersons, Fighting Okra, and Mavericks

You gotta love a school that is named after one of the most obscure U.S. Presidents, who is mostly remembered for being an alcoholic, southern sympathizer in the years leading up to the Civil War. The school eschewed such obvious nicknames as the Doughfaces or the Lushes, and its athletic teams are known as the Ravens. Despite dragging the anchor of its namesake's reputation, Franklin Pierce University can bask in the glory of its women's basketball team, which is on its way to the NCAA Division II championship game, after trouncing Delta State 58-39 in the semifinals. The Delta State athletic teams are officially known as the Statesmen, a politically correct, if somewhat boring nickname. Are the women's teams then the Lady Statesmen? Stateswomen? Statespersons? Perhaps life would be easier if they just went by the unofficial nickname, The Fighting Okra. Consider the following from The St. Petersburg Times Online:

In nickname realm, Fighting Okra snappiest
By HUBERT MIZELL
Published May 23, 2004
------------------------------------------------------

College sports nicknames become powerful identities. Passions are massive around Florida for Seminoles, Hurricanes, Gators and Bulls.

Nationally, dozens are familiar, each with marketing magic, including Fighting Irish, Tar Heels, Wolverines, Ducks, Horned Frogs and scads of Bulldogs, Tigers and Wildcats.

Some universities double dip, like Georgia Tech with its Engineers and Yellow Jackets, also at Virginia Tech where Gobblers were replaced in a screaming landslide by Hokies.

Here's my favorite ...

Delta State, a Division II school with consistently strong athletics, has forever been Statesmen. But, in an inventive generation, the identity now sold on T-shirts, hats, mugs, key chains, banners and even a Beanie Baby is ... Fighting Okra.

Sixteen years ago, Delta State baseball players rooted in a rowdy group at basketball games on the Cleveland, Miss., campus. Creative youngsters found Statesmen a bit boring. They wanted change.

Uniforms are predominantly green, so the hardball suggestion was to become Fighting Algae. "Somebody with common sense suggested that, to rivals, our players would be more grossly labeled Pond Scum," said Delta State sports information director Paul Smith.

Baseball boys kept searching for something "green, Southern and ugly." Soon, the gang began to chant, "Fighting Okra!" Baseballers were so enthused they crashed the locker room at halftime, where stunned basketball chaps were serenaded with bellows of "Okra! Okra!"

Smith says the coach thought intruders were yelling, "Oprah! Oprah!" Being more into X's and O's than promos for a TV host, he ejected the cheerers. It didn't subside. Other patrons soon picked up the arena cry. Local newspaper writers began calling the hoops facility "Okradome."

Even as Delta State traditionalists lobbied to diminish the Fighting Okra movement, demand kept escalating for a veggie known more scientifically as Abelmoschus esculentus. Okra has become a cash cow.

Today's symbol is a sneering, grubby piece of okra that wears boxing gloves and perches proudly on paraphernalia sold at the campus bookstore. What a tasty matchup if the Fighting Okra meets Rice.

You can find Hardrockers at the South Dakota School of Mines, Vixens at Sweet Briar (Va.) and, just for baseball, the Cal State Long Beach Dirtbags. Nothing more yummy than Fighting Okra.

The FP Ravens will be going up against Minnesota State-Mankato in the final game on Friday, March 27, 2009.

Go Ravens! Beat Mavericks!

Chamberlain Lake

Mary and I went back to Chamberlain Lake Nature Preserve this evening and I got a few more pictures of the wildlife there. Photobucket has a new feature to post slideshows to Blogger, so I'm trying it out.

Happy Birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

City Lights Bookstore
Photo by Jeremy Brooks

Today is the 90th birthday of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Books in San Francisco. City Lights became widely known when Ferlinghetti was accused of violating obscenity laws for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl in 1956. I've been to City Lights a couple times, but can't locate any pictures I took right now, so I'm borrowing one from Flickr under Creative Commons license. By the way, this is a great picture by Jeremy Brooks--better than anything I took when I was in San Francisco.

Link to Creative Commons License Agreement.

Link to Jeremy Brooks' Flickr photostream

Link to Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac and more information about Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Dawn at the Ethanol Plant

Ethanol Plant, Predawn
Click to enlarge images.

A few years ago, I attended a lecture by local artist David Allen, who is known for painting urban scenes. He suggested the local ethanol plant was really an interesting place, with its perpetual cloud of steam and numerous lights. I drive by the place frequently and have even made a couple furtive attempts to snap a picture when traffic was light and I could pull off on the shoulder of the highway that goes by the plant.

This morning, I decided to make a concerted effort to get a decent picture of the ethanol plant around dawn. I started taking pictures from across the highway before dawn, as in the picture at the beginning of this post. Then I found a dirt lane paralleling the railroad tracks that go by the plant. Seeing no "Keep Out" sign or gate, I took the lane until I had a clear view of the plant. Fog shrouded the cornfield in front of the plant, and the sun was beginning to illuminate the skies. The tree to the right provides some perspective.

Ethanol Plant, Dawn
Click to enlarge images.

As the sun rose and the fog burned off, the sky became more colorful, and the plant came into sharper focus.

Ethanol Plant, Sunrise
Click to enlarge images.

Leave It To Beaver

I went to a local nature preserve to play with my new telephoto lens. I was surprised to see a beaver feeding offshore. It was just after sunrise, and unfortunately he swam out of view by the time I figured out I should use a higher ISO setting. I did manage to salvage a couple pictures with postprocessing.



I also saw a flock of ring neck ducks, which I believe are in the process of migrating down from Canada and northern Michigan.

Cardinal

The more photography I do, the more telephoto capability I crave. I just got a Sigma 150-500mm zoom lens, and tried it out in the back yard tonight. Here is the one keeper from this learning session.