International Heck Of A Guy Cohen Cabal Expands
In response to Heck Of A Guy posts on the Leonard Cohen Concert in Venice, I received email from an Italian blogger reporting that he had read posts from my blog and wondered if I were the individual he had seen at the Venice show picking up a set list.
I had to answer, disappointingly, that on the evening of August 3rd I was not, alas, seated in Piazza San Marco listening to Leonard Cohen perform the raucous “Closing Time” and salaciously sing “I’m Your Man” but was, as always, ensconced in northwest Illinois watching reruns of “The Big Bang” and “How I Met Your Mother.”
2009 Leonard Cohen Venice Concert Venue - Piazza San Marco
I checked out the baotzebao site where I found lots of nifty material about Leonard Cohen and this self-description of Valerio Flanders, the blogger:
[Google Translation]
BaoTzeBao (Valerio Flanders) lives with a younger woman (Christian) and an older dachshund (Arthur). E ‘generous, confident, bored, unreliable, educated, irritable. And is (also) jew. It ‘a good player. It would have been a great publisher (if only it were more committed). He worked (a little) in radio, fur, television, publishing and communication. He writes, speaks, (sings and dances) on different floors and barely visible, en attendant to keep quiet, finally. Fuma la pipa (English mixes), and when it can also cigars (havana or Tuscan). He likes parentheses. [emphasis mine]
That’s right – a guy who appreciates Leonard Cohen and likes parentheses – were it not for his younger woman and older dachshund, it would be as though I were looking into a mirror.
Of course, this is not the first blog from the other side of the Atlantic to acknowledge solidarity with Heck Of A Guy. Robin Grey’s English site, for example, has suggested that Heck Of A Guy was home to The Biggest Leonard Cohen Fan. And, other than Anjani, no one has been more responsible for Heck Of A Guy growing into a significant Leonard Cohen-Anjani resource than our man in Poland, Apolinary POlek. But Italy is new territory.
Exploring baotzebao further, I was soon to discover Valerio is also gifted with Old World charm, taste, and perspicacity, as indicated by his post of that same day (Google translation provided “below), “10 Unbelievable Secrets About Leonard Cohen.” Ongoing readers may recognize 10 Unbelievable Secrets About Leonard Cohen as a March 2007 Heck Of A Guy post, featuring unbelievable secrets such as the following:
6. Leonard Cohen had a significant, if little talked about, career in TV
The story about Cohen’s inheritance was a face-saving device. Other than a few dollars earned publishing his poetry and the occasional commission as a model for Karoll’s Red Hanger Shops, Cohen supported himself during the early part of his career by working, under assumed names, in the TV industry.
In this role, Leonard Cohen not only polished the lyrics (uncredited) of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme,1 
but also played many minor roles on the series, usually being ambiguously listed in the credits (for example, “Cannibal #2″ or “Angry Headhunter”). He did, however, audition for the role of Thurston J. Howell III, losing that part to Jim Backus and triggering a lifelong feud so intense that Cohen once demolished a TV playing a Mr. Magoo cartoon.
Cohen also provided the voice of Grandfather Clock on Captain Kangaroo, played a number of interchangeable befuddled government officials on I Dream of Jeannie, and, had Bewitched been renewed one more season, could well have been the third Darrin on that show.
Anyone who grasps the profundities of that offering (Valerio’s felicitous phrase was “parodies are epiphanies”) is un amico di miniera.
Heck, I scarcely noticed that he goes on to point out,
Everybody knows One Heck Of A Guy
is simply the best site in the world about Leonard Cohen
What can I say but, “Ah, shucks. As Leonard Cohen has said many times, ‘You are very kind.’”
So, read, enjoy, – and believe.
10 Unbelievable Secrets About Leonard Cohen
(Google Translation)
Original site: 10 Unbelievable Secrets About Leonard Cohen
The answer to the question that I have done in the two previous posts, this was – I seem to have already written somewhere in BaoLine, perhaps – one right answer:
” TA DOO DOOM DUM , TA DOO DOOM DUM, TA DOO DOOM DUM… “ “TA DUM DOO DOOM, DOOM TA DOO DUM, DUM TA DOO DOOM …”
Because of my still visible immaturity and inadequacy of breath that I look to others, and a hip pochetin for missing de no relation, or give the impresion de cavarmela co’ a scherzeto …
But then again, and I swear that I am sure the answer is there.
Everybody knows One Heck Of A Guy is simply the best site in the world about Leonard Cohen
You’ll find pages formidable documentatissime, accurate and beautiful. Original texts, lists, videos, photos, interviews, reviews, gleaning, in short a cornucopia LeonardCoheniana.
Allan, from Illinois when not to follow a concert of our, achieves a genuine Biography To Pieces (as they should be all: the lives proceed in a non-linear, right?) By Leonard Cohen.
Read, for example, this chronicle of the musical climate Concert in Venice, and consider it (please) as a fragment of my two recent Long Post titled “Can A Cohen” and “It is a Flanders, no? “ .“
He does so seriously, so lightly.
The proof is here, where Dr H reveals amazing secrets of 10 Leonard Cohen.
Are you ready for the Truth, You are hungry for it …
Well, hold your breath and click here …
The story about Cohen’s inheritance was a face-saving device. Other than a few dollars earned publishing his poetry and the occasional commission as a model for Karoll’s Red Hanger Shops, Cohen supported himself during the early part of his career by working, under assumed names, in the TV industry.
In this role, Leonard Cohen not only polished the lyrics (uncredited) of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme,2 <img class=”articleimg alignright” src=”http://1heckofaguy.com/wp-content/photos/magoo.gif” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”150″ />but also played many minor roles on the series, usually being ambiguously listed in the credits (for example, “Cannibal #2″ or “Angry Headhunter”). He did, however, audition for the role of Thurston J. Howell III, losing that part to Jim Backus and triggering a lifelong feud so intense that Cohen once demolished a TV playing a Mr. Magoo cartoon.
Cohen also provided the voice of Grandfather Clock on <em>Captain Kangaroo</em>, played a number of interchangeable befuddled government officials on <em>I Dream of Jeannie</em>, and, had <em>Bewitched</em> been renewed one more season, could well have been the third Darrin on that show.
- Cohen changed, for example, the phrase, “an indeterminate period of time contingent on scheduling availability of local stations,” to the more easily vocalized “three hour tour.” He also successfully argued that meter trumped historical accuracy and that, consequently, “Crusoe” in the phrase, “Like Robinson Crusoe,” should be pronounced as “Caruso” [↩]
- Cohen changed, for example, the phrase, “an indeterminate period of time contingent on scheduling availability of local stations,” to the more easily vocalized “three hour tour.” He also successfully argued that meter trumped historical accuracy and that, consequently, “Crusoe” in the phrase, “Like Robinson Crusoe,” should be pronounced as “Caruso” [↩]
Well, DrH, what can say you, what can I possibly say…
Thank You, frrrriend of my frrrriends, friends of Our Man, friends of everyone.
Cristiana AND Artu’ are delighted, and the google translation of the ‘triestino dialect’ included in the post will make us laugh for ever!
I’ll keep on try and found the way to tell what that august the third meant to me, the Cohanim Cohen’s Beraha’ [blessing] at the very end of the rite, I mean the concert…
And, who knows, I’ll be in Tel Aviv September 24, for the very first time in my life. It seems that it has to be Cohen to take me in Israel.
By now the mood is to be right now there, ’cause space and time are masks, for the same old cerymony, don’t they ?
Take care, you and all the people reading Heck of A Guy, you were the light that has got in my crack.
Sincerely, V Fiandra.
PS : of all The Funny Mistakes the Google Translator has done I want to correct just the titles of the posts: A Cohen Can / A Fiandra Cannot ?
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