How do you do? Glad to see you. It’s game day, guys and gals, so let’s get right to it. No, this isn’t about football (whatever gave you that idea?). This is a game about how many of the following ten names ring a bell, and what do they have in common (other than the fact that none were football players)?
Victor Herbert, James P. Johnson, John Ford, Clark Gable, Langston Hughes, S. J. Perelman, Hildegard, George Pal, Muriel Spark, Boris Yeltsin.
How did you do? You say there’s several you didn’t recognize? That will never do. There are no passes here, so before we proceed to what they have in common, here are the names again, followed by year of birth and claim to fame:
1. VICTOR HERBERT, 1859, composer (father of the operetta style Broadway musical, including Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta and Sweethearts)
2. JAMES P. JOHNSON, 1891, composer and jazz pianist (king of Harlem stride piano & composer of such standards as The Charleston, Old Fashioned Love and If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight)
3. JOHN FORD, 1894, movie director (famous for westerns and winner of four Academy Awards for best director: The Informer, Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man, none of which were westerns)
4. CLARK GABLE, 1901, actor (Frankly, my dear, I don’t think I need say more)
5. LANGSTON HUGHES, 1902, poet, playwright and social activist (leader of the Harlem Renaissance and pioneer of literary art form known as jazz poetry)
6. S. J. PERELMAN, 1904, humorist, screenwriter and playwright (credits include humor for the New Yorker, scripts for Marx Brothers films Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, and Academy Award for screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days)
7. HILDEGARD, 1906, American cabaret singer and most elegant, well-known female supper club entertainer of her time; #1 song Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup. Longest-lived (to age 99) of the ten.
8. GEORGE PAL, 1908, film director, producer and innovator of stop-motion animation (Puppetoons); probably the least familiar name here, thus this 1994 biographical documentary (narrated by Pal’s widow Zsoka) should be both edifying and interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlRyE4U-dDM
9. MURIEL SPARK, 1918, novelist and writer (most famous work The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
10. BORIS YELTSIN, 1931, Russian politician. First President of Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
OK, I’ll keep you in suspense no longer. What the above have in common is their birthday: February 1.
But wait — there’s more! What do the following have in common?
Rene Descartes, philosopher; Mary Shelley, novelist; Buster Keaton, comic actor; George Abbot, director; and Gian Carlo Menotti, composer.
They all passed away on February 1.
Today, on this notable day in history, The Observation Post has them coming and going. I hope you had a ball.
Gotta run.
painkills2 12:13 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Saved from what? After you’re dead, no one can save you. But if this is about hell, then I don’t want to be saved — that’s where all the fun people go. 🙂
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mistermuse 6:44 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Think of this poem as if it were written by an agnostic. Then the question becomes: If there is a God and an afterlife, is He any more morally fit to judge you than you are to judge Him? If there is no afterlife, it’s irrelevant whether or not there is a God, because we will never know either way.
I might add that the God(s) of religions and myth only muddy the waters of how to think about this whole business of a possible Creator. The word “God” itself seems to me to be an impediment to rational thinking about life and all that it may imply.
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painkills2 1:09 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
I suppose those who believe in a god also believe that this god is always right and shouldn’t be questioned. As for anyone — supernatural or not — who thinks they have the right to judge me, well, they’re wrong. 🙂
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mistermuse 1:53 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink
That’s the spirit (If you’ll pardon the pun)!
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scifihammy 7:12 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Nice one 🙂
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mistermuse 9:26 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
They say it takes one to know one, so you’re a “nice one” too. 🙂
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Cynthia Jobin 9:41 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
“God is dead.” —Nietzsche, 1883
“Nietzsche is dead.” —God, 1900
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mistermuse 9:51 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
“We’re all dead.” –Kismet, sooner or later 😦
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arekhill1 11:42 am on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Yes, death is the ultimate way of fitting in.
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mistermuse 1:32 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
I’d call it forced integration God’s way….except for Christians, who make Book on to a different afterlife divide: heaven or hell.
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Don Frankel 5:02 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
All things come to an end but nothing really dies on the internet. It just spins somewhere throughout the universe. And, since we’re doing some oldies I can’t help but recall once again my favorite Epitaph on a Tombstone in Tombstone.
Here Lies Lester Moore
4 slugs from a .44
No Les
No More
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mistermuse 8:16 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
I remember that one, Don — it’s one of my favorites as well.
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carmen 6:18 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
I can never think about this topic (death) without this song running through my mind. I heard it for the first time when I was a teenager and it has stuck in my head ever since. Like this post, it’s remarkable for its brevity.
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mistermuse 8:14 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Thanks for the song clip. When it comes to war and brevity, it took William Tecumseh Sherman only three words to tell it like it is: “War is hell.”
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BroadBlogs 7:28 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
I don’t know why God would punish our authenticity. Job is an interesting book to read on this topic.
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mistermuse 9:01 pm on September 5, 2016 Permalink |
Well, this subject would take an entire post to address in depth, including (for starters) whether or not one accepts the story of Job as having a basis in reality. For atheists and agnostics, it’s a non-starter to begin with, because if you disbelieve or doubt that God exists, Job is meaningless. Personally, as a deist who believes in a Creator but not the so-called “revealed God” of most religions, it is not my job to take Job seriously (pun intended).
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Carmen 5:18 am on September 6, 2016 Permalink |
Besides which, if you do read about poor old Job – and take the ‘lesson’ seriously-, you end up wondering why anyone would think Yahweh had any redeeming qualities.
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mistermuse 7:13 am on September 6, 2016 Permalink
Amen, sister! 🙂
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Superduque777 7:49 am on September 8, 2016 Permalink |
CARPET DIEM
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mistermuse 10:09 am on September 8, 2016 Permalink |
You would never guess from that photo what the girl is actually saying to the pope: “Ubi possum potiri petasi similis isti?” (“Where can I get a hat like that?”)
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carmen 10:12 am on September 8, 2016 Permalink |
. . .and he’s probably saying, “Go now and spin no more”. . 🙂
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mistermuse 10:39 am on September 8, 2016 Permalink |
No doubt Jim Beam had something to say about it too, but it looks like the pope is keeping it close to his vest-ments.
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