The Merry Patreon Marching Society

A while ago, I trimmed back a couple of my Patreon subscriptions to focus on a few favorites; one about audio, one about comic book art, and one about the Beatles

  • Audio Unleashed is a podcast with Brent Butterworth and Dennis Burger. Brent is a friend of a friend, from when they worked at Dolby Labs.
  • Artist Colleen Doran I know well enough to say I consider her to be a friend.
  • Andrew’s Parlogram videos are mostly about the Beatles. Another Andrew of impeccable quality and integrity, named Sandoval, who I have met, has given a thumbs-up to Andrew’s work.

Songs Not on My Playlist

I’m tired of these three songs, even the two that were covered by the Rolling Stones. Here, you listen to them, because I won’t!

‘Love Potion No. 9’ – by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, 1959, originally recorded by the Clovers.

‘Poison Ivy’ – by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, 1959, originally recorded by the Coasters.

‘Fortune Teller’ – by Allen Toussaint, 1962, originally recorded by Benny Spellman.

To me they’re all the same song, and I have never cared for any of them. Whew! There! I’m glad to have gotten that off my chest. 🙂

Summer in the City

Opposed as Dick Cheney reportedly is to Donald Trump’s version of the Republican Party, they share a pathological sadistic streak. Cheney limited his torture to foreign adversaries during a war, but Trump has no such reservation. Cracking the heads of civilian American citizens is fine with him.

It will be interesting to see if the Washington, D.C. crackdown helps or hurts tourism in the nations’ capitol.

Trump says Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland are Blue Cities, referring to their Democratic populations. But of course what he’s really saying is they’re Black Cities, referring to their racial mix.

Ya gotta admire a record that features both an autoharp and a jackhammer.

HELP! Pythons!

When starting this bloggy, with its 19th anniversary coming up on 9/5, I added a gallery section that is no longer working. The first thing I put in there were scans of a fumetti (photo comic) from the May, 1965 issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP! magazine.

Not to be confused with the 1965 Beatles movie HELP! that had not yet been named when the January, 1965 issue of HELP! was published.

HELP! #22, January 1965 – Airbrush photo editing by Terry Gilliam

“Christopher’s Punctured Romance” starred John Cleese as a man with an unhealthy interest in his daughter’s Barbie doll. It starts on page 17.

Terry Gilliam started at HELP! when Gloria Steinem — yes, her — was leaving. Gilliam was the art director at HELP! when he met John Cleese in New York, and “Christopher’s Punctured Romance” was the result.

When Gilliam followed Cleese to England, he recruited Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived just as HELP! publisher James Warren was shutting it down.

I first heard about this amazing sequence of events from Harvey Kurtzman at a Boston NewCon, in 1975 or ’76. Maybe Denro remembers better than I do.