THE INFORMATION #1198
APRIL 22, 2022
Copyright 2022 FRANCIS DIMENNO
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com
Wealth is power, and power is wealth. –Thomas Hobbes
WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK FIVE: THE ADVENTURES OF PENROD ANDROMALIUS
CHAPTER XVI: THE MUSIC CLASS
Most of Penrod’s schoolmates were especially happy when the Friday school bell rang, for often they were left to pursue several interesting means of distracting themselves before proceeding homeward for their dinner. It was on these Fridays that quite a few members of the sixth grade class had taken to congregating at the soda parlors and in front of the town’s supermarket, itself situated in a shopping plaza near the town square and its environs, set scant blocks from the perimeter of the middle school building.
Penrod and Cad were not so fortunate. Both sets of parents insisted that the boys had to participate in an after-school activity which stole from them any opportunity to catch an early start upon the weekend.
“All right, class,” said Miss Johanson, after school, to the assembled members of the
sixth grade music class of Eden Prairie Elementary and Middle School. “Today we are
going to do a final rehearsal of “Of Fruit Hadde Every Tree His Charge,” our
instrumental composition for septet, which, I hope I don’t need to remind you, we will be performing a week from today. Today we will proceed with special attention,” she said, glaring at Penrod, who held his cello awkwardly in front of him, “to the strings. Are we ready? On three, begin. One, two three….”
Amid the ensemble’s uneasy harmony a sawing cacophony commenced, the principal
source of which would have been apparent even to the most untrained ear on the North American continent.
It was Penrod.
“Mister Andromalius.” said Miss Johanson. She spoke in the quavery voice which was the source of much mockery among the more irreverent members of the septet, who included Penrod, Cad Hauras (bass), and even Mario Andrealphus (guitar), as well as the “richest boy in town,” one Salvatore “Little Sal” Saminga (violin). “Mister Andromalius, I don’t know how many more times I’ll have to tell you that in playing the cello, you are to glide the bow across the strings in a graceful bowing motion. You are not required to maul the strings as though you were playing a rustic fiddle at a hootenanny.”
The three girls in the class tittered. These consisted of Doree Lang (flute), Lucy Purson, a guitar player, and daughter of the town’s police chief, and their dark-skinned fellow classmate Jasmyn Orias, a bassist, and the daughter of one of the town’s day care nurses.
“One-two-three…commence.”
Once again, cacophony ensued.
“Penrod,” said Miss Johanson, “I’m going to ask that you play your part extremely softly when next we begin. I can meet with you after class to work on problems of sustaining volume. Ready? One-two-three…commence.”
This time, Penrod did not play at all, and his absence, though noticeable, and constituting a vast improvement, left a vast hole in the composition’s integrity.
“Mr. Andromalius,” said Miss Johanson, with waxing impatience. “By requesting that
you play softly, I did not mean that you should totally neglect your part altogether.”
Jasmyn Orias whispered loudly, “That boy is nothin’ but trouble.” Doree giggled in reply. Miss Johanson looked at them. “Girls…I would request that you conduct yourself in a ladylike manner. Now, Penrod,” she said, turning to him, “I’d like you to play your part unaccompanied.”
A frenetic sawing commenced. When played properly, a cello is ordinarily among the
most resonant and mellow-sounding of instruments, but Penrod’s somewhat strenuous approach was to saw vigorously at the strings as though he were attempting to slice into them with the bow.
Miss Johanson, wise in the ways of pedagogy, attempted some child psychology upon the boy.
“Now, Penrod,” she said, “rather than use your great strength to stomp on the strings as though you were attempting to subdue them, I would like you instead to try to merely tiptoe across them, as though you were a stealthy Indian warrior. Can you do that?” Penrod could do that, and although he hit nearly as many off-notes as he managed to make successfully, Miss Johanson knew from long experience that she could only fight one battle at a time.
“That’s very good, Mr. Andromalius,” she said. “Only try to remember that in shaping
the F chord from the A chord, you must stretch your little finger all the way down to the proper string.”
Penrod was well aware that he was neglecting to do this. However, his little finger was
already sore from attempting to stop the E-string with his pinky.
Miss Johanson, not insensitive to the stress he was placing on the digit, then added,
“However, we will give that little finger a rest for now, and you can shape the note
without the e-string for the present. Only do remember on the night of the concert that you will be needing to use that finger, and that you’ve got to keep that pinky nimble.” The violinist, Little Sal Saminga, instantly seized upon those last four words as a catch phrase, and loudly whispered to Mario Andreaphus, “Yeah–keep that pinky nimble!” and the two sputtered with ill-suppressed laughter.
“Boys!” said Miss Johanson sharply. “That will be enough! Mister Andromalius has
already delayed us enough, and I will not tolerate any further misbehavior!”
The two boys immediately became solemn, though they were ready to burst into renewed laughter at any moment.
“One-two-three…commence.”
Once again, cacophony ensued. This time, the fault was with Little Sal Saminga, who, for the very first time since their practices had begun, had failed to properly shape the A note into the F.
Miss Johanson, not wishing to unduly antagonize her star performer, asked sweetly, “Is something wrong, Mister Saminga?”
“I guess my little finger is getting’ kinda sore,” he said, in a whiny voice.
“You would do well to remember my advice to Mister Andromalius,” said Miss Johanson complacently, not realizing that she was being set up, “and keep that pinky nimble.”
Little Sal and Mario burst into raucous laughter. Penrod glared at them. Miss Johanson sighed. “Perhaps it is time we concentrated on the guitars, bass and flute. Miss Furcas, Miss Orias, Miss Purson, Mister Hauras and Mister Andrealphus. Commence. One, two three….”
These five played their parts to the satisfaction of their taskmistress, while Penrod, in the stuffy May heat of the music room, mopped his brow with a dirty white handkerchief. Little Sal Saminga, dressed in a very expensive suit, sat utterly at his ease, as though the room were as cool as an icebox. The contrast between the two boys did not go unnoticed by the girls. Lucy, Jasmyn, and Doree all periodically shot him furtive glances as he lounged in insolent indifference cradling his violin, idly wielding that expensive instrument with extravagant nonchalance.
At the end of the two-hour rehearsal, Little Sal ended up offering all three of the girls a ride home in the 1968 Cadillac Seville piloted by his equally well-dressed though
somewhat loutish-looking father.
Mario Andealphus was also chauffeured home by his father, who drove a somewhat less grand but no less new 1968 Plymouth Mercury. The father also offered to ferry Cad Hauras home; an offer which Cad was more than happy to accept; he loved the new car smell, as do most small boys and many boys of a larger growth who are otherwise known as adult males.
Penrod was left to suffer an additional interval of patiently administered but, to him,
agonizingly drawn-out supplementary instruction; Miss Johanson, realizing, after twenty minutes, that the law of diminishing returns had already set in, finally sent him home, sans Cello (it was too bulky to attempt to carry by himself), with the admonition to have his father come into school and get him on Monday afternoon so he could practice on it during the week. Penrod’s thoughts were, by this juncture, fondly focused on either reducing the instrument to kindling at the earliest opportunity, or selling the instrument as soon as possible; perhaps he could persuade his father to allow him to trade it for a brand new v-neck electric guitar. These thoughts, of course, he kept close to his bosom as he promised to practice “a whole bunch” during the following week.
By the time he got home from his after-school ordeal, his sister Pearl had already set the table and the six o’clock dinner hour was about to commence.
He ate grimly, with the practiced air of a boy who knew the school week was long and
the weekend short; he wanted to dash outside and take advantage of the waning evening while a modest portion of it remained to exploit, but his father said to him after the meal, “Hold on! Where are you going?”
“Out,” said Penrod.
“I hope you recall,” said his father, “that three weeks ago you were grounded for a
month.”
“Aww, Dad, haven’t I been good?”
“Well, not getting into as much mischief as usual can hardly be called ‘being good.’ I
suggest you go up to your room and get your homework done.”
“But it isn’t due until Monday!”
“Well, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you time off for good behavior, but it doesn’t
start until tomorrow morning. So you might as well do your schoolwork now so I don’t have to hear you whine about it on Sunday night.”
Penrod did as he was told; which is to say, he went up to his room; but his school books remained in their place on his desk while he thumbed through various magazines of the cheapest sort, revealing all the latest gossip regarding the performances of popular musicians. He was more than ever convinced, upon reading these interesting documents, that the Cello was a dead end when it came to achieving stardom on the concert stage. Not once in all the pictures he avidly scanned did the instrument ever so much as make even a cameo appearance. Instead, the electric guitar invariably held center stage. And center stage was, quite naturally, where he wanted to be.
Never mind that his guitar-playing skills were, at best, rudimentary. He had practiced
some on his father’s cherished acoustic guitar; but the strings were old and the sound it produced was more akin to a hollow thud than to the sharp treble whanging that so attracted his ears, as well as those of innumerable millions of children his age and slightly older. For him, an acoustic guitar was as little use to him as it would have been to a stone bust on Easter Island. He well knew that if a guitar were not an electric one, it couldn’t be amplified to produce the sorts of thrilling effects that he, and thousands of boys like him, so doted on.
He was not accustomed to strategizing his plans more than a few steps at a time. But he would have that electric guitar. Whatever it took to get it, he knew that he would have it. And very soon.
*1 SALUTATION
ROMEO VOID
NEVER SAY NEVER
https://youtu.be/4x0fPZrPV3M
2*REFERENCE
JACKNUTS
https://www.google.com/search?q=jacknut&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS960US960&oq=jacknut&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i10i512j46i175i199i512j0i10i512l3j0i10i30l4.2584j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
JACK O’NUTS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXZNiXATBM
JACK’S KNOT
https://usangler.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jacks-Knot.jpg
3*HUMOR
STAND-UP COMEDY
I performed at an awful lot of open mikes and other venues. I have no illusions about what it takes to make it big. You need to be utterly focused and downright compulsive. That’s all there is to it.
Most books I’ve read which were written by comics who try to make with the funny, but often fall flat. Written humor is very different from verbal humor. With verbal humor, you’re trying to evoke a very specific response–a titter or a chortle, but, preferably, a barking laugh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_in_animals
Comics, I find, often have no idea how to string sentences together. Except in the construction of a bit. But schtick logic is very very different from its written equivalent. So much depends on timing, facial expressions, and attitude in the verbal realm.
The silent comics are much revered for being able to perform without words. There was a reason Keaton was known as The Great Stone Face. He was utterly deadpan. Things happened to him and around him. That’s where the humor was.
I like the giants of the old school. I was very much influenced by Don Rickles at an impressionable age. I also dig on Shecky Greene, Dick Davy, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, and Richard Pryor, who, in his heyday was probably the funniest man in the world.
I feel bad that Patrice O’Neal and Phil Hartman are no longer with us.
JERRY SEINFELD
Jerry Seinfeld, as good as his show was, has had a deleterious effect on modern-day standup, because an awful lot of up and coming funny people seem to figure they have to sedulously ape his approach to humor in order to make it.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
JAY LENO
https://youtu.be/_M9yTG19PnE
He came from Boston, so there was that. He did gigs in the Combat Zone and at Kowloon’s, so he paid his dues. At the time he seemed to be hip and cutting edge.
He very likely got word during the 1990s that I was making fun of him. My favorite name for him was “Ratchet Jaw”. He made an oblique reference to me at least once, I’m pretty sure.
He originally said “Cremus”, which is, of course, much funnier.
newspress.com/leno-gets-serious/
SEE ALSO:
SAM KINISON
Sam Kinison. There’s a name I haven’t heard in awhile. Dead at 38.
Charley Hoover. the ultimate trivia question.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hoover
ALSO SEE:
ALLAN SHERMAN
18 year old me liked his book The Rape of the APE.
www.amazon.com/Rape-Ape-Allan-Sherman/dp/B000K72JHU
There is a full-fledged biography of the man.
www.amazon.com/Overweight-Sensation-Sherman-Brandeis-American/dp/1611682568/ref=asc_df_1611682568/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312094773753&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1626989800395021559&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001987&hvtargid=pla-570096614393&psc=1
Of course I read it.
BOB HOPE
“Oh, shut up, Bob Hope.”–Shirley MacLaine
buffalonews.com/entertainment/the-definitive-biography-of-bob-hope/article_4c026351-b52e-5a14-a1c4-0263ef752c8c.html
ALSO SEE:
JOAN RIVERS
Joan Rivers was more offensive and insulting than Chris Rock ever managed to be at the Oscars.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/joan-rivers-dead-her-memorable-730363/
ALSO SEE:
HOW RICHARD PRYOR DOMINATED HIS OWN ROAST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLgzuFvT2v8&t=1561s
4*NOVELTY
DOG GROOMING
Dogs don’t like to be shaved. And with good reason.
lovefurdogs.com/dont-shave-dog/
SEE ALSO:
SAFE FOR DOGS
Ibuprofen
https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/dog-pain-medications
SEE ALSO:
vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/are-over-the-counter-medications-safe-for-my-dog
5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
INDIANA
More carnies and circus folk came from Indiana than from any other state.
indianahistory.org/blog/circus-culture-the-living-legacy-in-indiana/
6* DAILY UTILITY
STUFFED CABBAGE ROLLS
www.evolvingtable.com/stuffed-cabbage-rolls/
ALSO SEE:
KIBBAGES AND KANGS
Kang. A crop of fruit, ‘ A good tidy kang of apples.’ Kibbage. Small refuse and rubbish ; riff-raff.
*7 CARTOON
SLAP HAPPY PAPPY
https://youtu.be/6-hiUTfENko
SLAP HAPPY LION
https://youtu.be/fbEX4z7vm2g
8*PRESCRIPTION
Parsley is very good for you. It has vitamin K.
www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-parsley#1
9* RUMOR PATROL
DRUNKEN MUSICIANS
Free drinks: the downfall of many a musician.
www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/9629131/Why-musicians-battle-alcoholism-behind-closed-doors
10*LAGNIAPPE
MARK KNOPFLER
IN THE SKY
https://youtu.be/U-R4HMVhKdo
11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
SIRIUS XM
I’ve been listening to Sirius XM in the car, since my 2021 Corolla Hybrid has no CD player (though I suppose I could have one installed), and I have been mostly listening to channel 18 (Beatles), channel 25, channel 26, and channel 27 (deep tracks). There is a certain sameness to all the channels. You’ll often hear the Beatles on channel 26. Deep Tracks is about 50/50–there’s a reason some songs aren’t played that much on the radio–basically because they suck.
There’s an awful lot of Who, Rolling Stones (esp. “Heartbreaker”), Zep, Yes, Bowie, ELP, and Springsteen (which I invariably turn off). Not always their best work, either.
Maybe someday amid all the music channels I will find one that I consistently like.
SEE ALSO:
RETURN OF TOWER RECORDS
https://towerrecords.com/
slate.com/business/2021/03/tower-records-comeback-online-spotify-amazon.html#:~:text=Tower%20lost%20%2410%20million%20in,U.S.%20store%20closed%20in%202006.
12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
1000 WAYS TO DIE
1000 Ways to Die looks at the following cases: “#314 Dung For” a man sleeping with a farmer’s daughter dies after being buried in manure, “#622 Brain Worms” a couple gets infected by parasites after eating a dinner of live snails, “#401 Abracadaver” a magician dies after his assistant shoots him during a bullet catch, “#429 Weed Whacked” two stoners die after smoking poison sumac, “#221 Rebel Without a Pulse” a Civil War deserter dies of a heart attack after a firing squad misses him, and “#510 Kill Basa” a man dies of a blood clot after hiding a sausage in his disco pants. It also looks at how a drag boat racer survived a gruesome crash.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1388445/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
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