101 Get-a-'bout alley...

Born Today

"There was no use working in rodeos for social security. Nobody was very social and there was little security."
~Slim Pickens

Billy on the grape

A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

~William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

"my huckleberry friend"

"Oh, yeah, I'm drinkin' again,
it's always the same
That same old story After the kicks
there's little old mixed-up me
Tryin' to lose a dream that used to be"
~Johnny Mercer

Lyricist, composer and singer Johnny Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1909. He had hit songs including "Moon River" (1961, with Henry Mancini). Born in the South, Mercer grew up listening to records of Tin Pan Alley songs but also to so-called "race" records, marketed to blacks. His later songs merged his southern roots with his urban knowledge of sophisticated songwriters.

He died in Los Angeles on June 25th, in 1976.

one for the unknown daddies....

Baby Girl Found

He found her wrapped in a brown towel
Beside the highway department dumpster.
She was so cold she was blue, so new
her umbilical stump still drooped softly
from her belly like the limp stem
of some fantastic fruit.

He picked her up in his huge gloved
highway department hands and
carried her to his truck. Inside the cab
he turned on the light, peeled the damp towel
from her body and held her
under the blast of the truck heater.

Giant midwife bent over her in the frozen morning,
He watched for the smallest sign.
It was her second birth.

~Francette Cerulli, from The Spirits Need To Eat.

Ah, someone has begun a noble exercise,

http://www.mindspring.com/~mccarthys/whiskey/poetry.htm
I plan to do one a night.

I've been workin' far too late...

...And spending too much time on Second Life... projects run long into the night also.... and exploration is addictive especially with pretty little pixel-women who lead you around...

Old King Cole...

Cole Albert Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, on June 9, 1891, the son of a pharmacist.

In the 1930s and 1940s Porter provided full scores for a number of bright Broadway and Hollywood productions, among them Anything Goes (1934), Jubilee (1935), Rosalie (1937), Panama Hattie (1940), and Kiss Me Kate (1948).

These scores and others of the period abound with his characteristic songs:

"Night and Day,"

"I Get a Kick out of You,"

"You're the Top,"

"Anything Goes,"

"In the Still of the Night,"

and "So in Love."

Porter's songs show an elegance of expression (wording) and a cool detachment that are a perfect example of the kind of sophistication unique to the 1930s. He was also a truly talented creator of original melodies.

Like George Gershwin (1898–1937), he frequently disregarded the accepted formulas of the conventional popular song and turned out pieces of charm and distinction.

Cole Porter died of kidney failure at the age of 73 in Santa Monica, California and is interred in Mount Hope Cemetery in his native Peru, Indiana.

Three Epitaphs

For a Postal Clerk
Here lies wrapped up tight in sod
Henry Harkins c/o God.
On the day of Resurrection
May be opened for inspection.

For a Rail Traveler
Here lie Jonah Jones's uncoupled remains:
A cowcatcher caught him as he changed trains.
His fragments took off in a few directions.
May he rise at the last trump to make connections.

For a Washer of Dishes
Here rattle about in the suds of the grave
The porcelain bones of a deep-sink slave.
Impeccable platters were what he wrought
With a face like a rag wrung dry of thought.
Let the scouring rain and the sponging worm
Deliver his spirit from crust and crumb
And stack him up high beyond sin and stain
In the light of the Lord to let him drain.

~X.J. Kennedy, from Peeping Tom's Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008

some Tom for the kids...

"Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue,

scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town,

The one eyed jacks across the railroad tracks,

and the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through..." ~Tom Waits