Author: DOuG pRATt

Van Dyke Parks’ Columnated Ruins Domino

In a post about Grace Kelly in the movie The Swan I asked who the boy was that played her younger brother. It was Van Dyke Parks, first a child actor, but best known for his musical collaborations with Brian Wilson.

Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson

Van Dyke’s lyrics have been characterized as being obscure, most famously the line “columnated ruins domino” in “Surf’s Up,” a song that was originally a centerpiece of the SMiLE album that Wilson abandoned, but finally completed and released in 2004.

Here is “Surf’s Up” as recorded for the Beach Boys album of the same name in 1971. Another great example of the virtues of Vinyl Music. Rubber Soul.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/SEP07/SurfsUp.mp3]

MoCA Chip

MoCA is the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, which is technology that Verizon FiOS TV uses. But MoCA is also the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. I got out there for an overnight trip a couple of years ago. We stayed at a fun and unique place, Porches Inn, which isn’t cheap, but it sure beats the Holiday Inn.

WBUR, Boston University Radio, ran a story this morning about a cancelled exhibition at the MoCA. The artist should feel lucky he was given space to exhibit, and walking away from his piece, then suing the museum, makes him seem loopy even by artist standards.

When Arnie Kogen Went MAD

Here’s an interesting factoid about comedy writer Arnie Kogen, to whom I am eternally grateful. He went from selling typewriters to banging them — so to speak! This comes from a book I referred to previously, Completely MAD, A History of Mad the Comic Book and Magazine, by Maria Reidelbach.

For over thirty years Kogen has been one of Mad’s most consistent contributors of television, movie, and celebtiry satire, and for almost as long he has been one of the most active television comedy writers in the business. Kogen was selling typewriters on the Lower East Side when he was introduced to Gaines and Feldstein by Paul Krasser, who published The Realist in an office adjacent to Mad’s at 225 Lafayette. Kogen’s start at Mad led to writing for a number of prominent stand up comedians and performers, including Carol Burnett, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Ronald Reagan. He’s also received many awards for his television writing, including three Emmys.

The book is from 1991, so Kogen has now been a Mad contributor for over 45 years! In fact, he wrote the Spider-Man 3 parody in the latest issue. In addition to Ronald Reagan, the list of prominent stand up comics includes, of course, Morty Gunty.