Best House Showing So Far
Potential buyers toured HeckOfAHouse this week. Now, even in this depressed (and, for sellers, depressing) housing market, a shopper’s request to be shown the place isn’t enough to promote that event to a Heck Of A Guy blog entry.
Even the fact that the visitors were personable, appreciative of the design and features of the house, and - yes - chuckled at my jokes doesn’t qualify the episode as post-worthy.
And while their attestation to being “interested” in further pursuing the possibility of purchasing this home is promising and a definite plus, many others have made similar declarations.
So, what put this showing over the top?
Well, these were the first potential buyers to arrive bearing a gift - and a pretty nifty gift at that: Harrods Peppermint Discs.1
These tiny cookies (with a circumference hardly larger than a dime) consist of a wondrously tasty peppermint filling wrapped in chocolate and encased in a similarly nifty package that resembles the one displayed below.
Harrods Discs also come in Lemon (shown above) and Orange.
While I don’t pretend to have an accurate reading on the likelihood of these folks actually handing over stacks of freshly minted, high denomination US currency in exchange for this place, I gotta admit I’m rooting for them.
The individual who arranges to inspect the house and shows up brandishing a box of Harrods Peppermint Disks is, as far I am concerned, an individual worthy of HeckOfAHouse.
Footnotes
- A signature confection from Harrods of London ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Out Of The Closet Into The Blog
Awakening The Monster
It started innocently.
At the time - a week or two ago - it seemed like a good idea.
I would rearrange1 the books, papers, files, folders, print-outs, food wrappers, ads, and other detritus which cluttered the area around my desk and an adjacent closet in hopes of diminishing the chaos into which my life had descended during my walker-bound summer of 2007, a period during which my philosophical bearings shifted from a classic Kierkegaardian dialectic filtered through my homespun variant of Descartes’ epistemology to a core belief that the essence of what makes one civilized, distinguishing and protecting us from the barbarians, infidels, and philistines always encamped around the perimeter of ones life, at the ready to storm any breach in the defenses, is the capacity to position every item that might be needed in the next 24 hours within an arm’s reach.
And, yes, I am aware that this sorting, assessment, and redistribution of matter could have been completed any time since I re-evolved the capacity for bipedal locomotion some four months ago. To apply the sports cliché of the moment, it is what it is.
Isn’t it?
It is.
What it is, that is.
An Aside Re The DrHGuy Twitter Risk2
I now find it incumbent to allay the fears of those currently wondering if the blogging of my concerns about cleaning my office are a signal that I have succumbed to twittering3 my life away in trivia-projectiles aimed at readers.
No, I describe the cleaning of Augean Closet4 because it has since expanded into …
An All-encompassing Obsession
I fear that - sigh - I feel compelled to put my life in order. You know, actually look at those legal papers and contracts I stuck in that drawer (I think) eight years ago, the ones that the feature articles in The Trib recommend one review yearly. Perhaps I’ll even plan something beyond avoiding problems. Heck, I might even figure out a way to make a buck. That sort of thing.
As one might guess, this will not be an afternoon’s work. And, until I reach homeostasis or come to my senses, whichever comes first, this spring cleaning-priority setting-life agenda writing-maintenance maintaining effort will displace much of the time I usually devote to creating Heck of a Guy posts.
In The Meantime, …
Legendarily abhorrent of a vacuum, however, nature has revealed a source of raw material for blog content via serendipity. Among the mass of material to be sorted, sieved, massaged, and rearranged are a batch of files originally gathered for their potential as shrapnel for the Heck of a Guy howitzers.
Consequently, lucky readers will now enjoy the bounty of content that was once considered to be, to maintain the metaphor, potentially deadly.
For example, the following will, for the immediately ensuing, indeterminate period, be considered an exemplary post:
The Esquire - Heck of a Guy Probably Headline Insertion Comparison
From Esquire, December 12, 2007, page 46:
From Heck Of A Guy, July 6, 2006:5
Today’s Parting Admonition
As per my Eighth Grade Class Motto,
Footnotes
- Note the modesty of the task I set for myself at the time - I would “rearrange” things and, if that went well, perhaps then escalate my efforts to “straighten things out.” In any case, I eschewed more ambitious alternatives such as “organizing.” ~back~
- Does an aside about Twitter qualify as an atwitter ~back~
- For the six people in America who read blogs but don’t know about Twitter, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send ‘updates’ (or ‘tweets;’ text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific. Fans say they [Twitter and similar services] are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel ‘too’ connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they’re having for dinner.” The preceding description is excerpted from Wikipedia ~back~
- I have always found depictions of the cleaning of the Augean Stables spectacularly unimpressive. Wikipedia reports that The fifth of the Twelve Labours set to Herakles/Hercules was to clean the Augean stables in a single day. The reasoning behind this being set as a labour was twofold: firstly, all the previous labours exalted Heracles in the eyes of the people and this one would surely degrade him; secondly, as the livestock were a divine gift to Augeas they were immune from disease and thus the amount of dirt and filth amassed in the uncleaned stables made the task surely impossible. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth. These are the two most common classical art pieces associated with the Cleansing of the Augean Stables.
As one who grew up on a small farm, I assure you that these images provide a totally inadequate sense of what it means to muck out a barn housing a few cows, let alone clean out the by-products of thousands of cattle and goats. ~back~
- See also
- The TWO Best Leonard Cohen Songs You’ve (Probably) Never Heard
January 12, 2007 - Leonard Cohen Song You’ve Heard But Probably Not This Way
January 25, 2007 - Easily Found Leonard Cohen Song You’ve Probably Never Heard
January 24, 2007 - Best Leonard Cohen-Anjani Duet You’ve Probably Never Heard
April 2, 2007 - Another Leonard Cohen - Anjani Duet You’ve ( Probably ) Never Heard …
April 4, 2007 - Idiocracy: The Best Bad Movie You’ve ( Probably ) Never Seen
April 11, 2007
~back~
- The TWO Best Leonard Cohen Songs You’ve (Probably) Never Heard
Possibly Related Posts:
DrHGuy Away For The Day
DrHGuy is taking the day off to mourn his lost youth.
Possibly Related Posts:
The Super Bowl Memoirs Of DrHGuy
As it turns out, DrHGuy is, at best, a fair weather football fan so ferreting out the top three Super Bowl memories is fairly easy.
Super Bowl Memory #3: The First Super Bowl
A high school buddy and I spent an hour or two of January 15 1967 in my 1957 Chevy, listening to the first Super Bowl1 - then known as “The NFL-AFL World Championship Game”2 - between the Green Bay Packers (NFL) and the Kansas City Chiefs (AFL). While the Chiefs had a geographical call on our cheering interests, the Kansas City Chiefs being the closest thing Diamond, Missouri had to a local team, we were both self-styled realists who knew the Chiefs didn’t have a prayer against the legendary Packers.
Super Bowl Memory #2: Maui Super Bowl
Because we habitually departed Chicago for Maui during the last days of January and the first part of February, the Super Bowl occasionally took place during our vacation. I recall watching, with 150 to 200 other guys, the 49ers win a Super Bowl (XVI? XIX?) on a large screen TV - located in a resort’s windowless sports bar. The Hawaiian start time was late morning. Julie opted to spend that time on Kaanapali Beach.
Super Bowl Memory #1: The Greatest Super Bowl Of All Time
The Greatest Super Bowl Of All Time is, of course, was Super Bowl XX when Ditka and Da Bears beat up the Patriots. Yep, anyone could tell that team was going nowhere.
On the other hand, The 1985 Bears performed The Super Bowl Shuffle - and you can’t take that away from me.
Footnotes
- Super Bowl I was televised on both CBS and NBC. I don’t recall why we chose to listen to it on the radio rather than watch it on TV ~back~
- The NFL-AFL World Championship Game was officially renamed the Super Bowl in 1969. ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Graham Chapman And The Parrot Are Dead - A Eulogy To Die For
Heck of a Guy Eulogy Research Lives On
As I noted in yesterday’s post, He Was One Heck Of A Guy - The Eulogy, my personal participation in the preparation of my eulogy appears necessary if the desired high-quality, fulsomely overblown, raucous yet cockle-warming send-off is to be assured.
Currently, that effort focuses on a search for emulation-worthy eulogies that could provide inspiration for my own effort - or, failing that, substantial chunks of prose that could be lifted directly into my personal panegyric.
Today’s post showcases an outstanding specimen of the genre, the brilliant tour de force given by John Cleese at the memorial service for his Monty Python colleague, Graham Chapman.
Left to Right: Graham Chapman, John Cleese With Dead Parrot
Graham Chapman’s Memorial Service
Graham Chapman, comedian, actor, writer, physician, and one of the six members of the Monty Python crew died October 4, 1989.1
His memorial service was held on the evening of December 6 1989 in the Great Hall at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. John Cleese delivered the eulogy. Afterward, Cleese joined Gilliam, Jones, and Palin along with Chapman’s other friends as Idle led them in a rendition of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Graham Chapman’s Memorial Service was filmed and produced by Mark Chapman for the BBC Omnibus presentation of Life of Python, 1989, and dedicated in his memory.
Graham Chapman’s Memorial Speech
Delivered by John Cleese
Graham Chapman, co-author of the ‘Parrot Sketch,’2 is no more.
He has ceased to be, bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now be so suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.
Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries. ”
And the reason I think I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn’t, if I threw away this opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:
“Alright, Cleese, you’re very proud of being the first person to ever say ’shit’ on television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say ‘fuck!’”
You see, the trouble is, I can’t. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I’ll have to content myself instead with saying ‘Betty Mardsen…’3
But bolder and less inhibited spirits than me follow today. Jones and Idle, Gilliam and Palin. Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham’s name. Trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronised incest. One of the four is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar’s cello concerto. And that’s in the first half.
Because you see, Gray would have wanted it this way. Really. Anything for him but mindless good taste. And that’s what I’ll always remember about him—apart, of course, from his Olympian extravagance. He was the prince of bad taste. He loved to shock. In fact, Gray, more than anyone I knew, embodied and symbolised all that was most offensive and juvenile in Monty Python. And his delight in shocking people led him on to greater and greater feats. I like to think of him as the pioneering beacon that beat the path along which fainter spirits could follow.
Some memories. I remember writing the undertaker speech with him, and him suggesting the punch line, ‘All right, we’ll eat her, but if you feel bad about it afterwards, we’ll dig a grave and you can throw up into it.’ I remember discovering in 1969, when we wrote every day at the flat where Connie Booth and I lived, that he’d recently discovered the game of printing four-letter words on neat little squares of paper, and then quietly placing them at strategic points around our flat, forcing Connie and me into frantic last minute paper chases whenever we were expecting important guests.
I remember him at BBC parties crawling around on all fours, rubbing himself affectionately against the legs of gray-suited executives, and delicately nibbling the more appetizing female calves. Mrs. Eric Morecambe remembers that too.
I remember his being invited to speak at the Oxford union, and entering the chamber dressed as a carrot—a full length orange tapering costume with a large, bright green sprig as a hat—-and then, when his turn came to speak, refusing to do so. He just stood there, literally speechless, for twenty minutes, smiling beatifically. The only time in world history that a totally silent man has succeeded in inciting a riot.
I remember Graham receiving a Sun newspaper TV award from Reggie Maudling. Who else! And taking the trophy falling to the ground and crawling all the way back to his table, screaming loudly, as loudly as he could. And if you remember Gray, that was very loud indeed.
It is magnificent, isn’t it? You see, the thing about shock… is not that it upsets some people, I think; I think that it gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realised in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.
Well, Gray can’t do that for us anymore. He’s gone. He is an ex-Chapman. All we have of him now is our memories. But it will be some time before they fade.
Coming Attractions: Still more eulogies, including at least one for a fictional character.
Footnotes
- Chapman’s death occurred one day before the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of Flying Circus; Terry Jones called it “the worst case of party-pooping in all history.” After Chapman’s death, speculation of a Python revival inevitably faded, with Idle saying, “we would only do a reunion if Chapman came back from the dead. So we’re negotiating with his agent.” (From Wikipedia) ~back~
- Cleese and Chapman co-wrote many classic Python sketches, including the “Dead Parrot Sketch.” In the original version, written mostly by Cleese, the frustrated customer was trying to return a faulty toaster to a shop. Chapman came up with the idea that returning a dead parrot to a pet shop might make a more interesting subject than a toaster. (From Wikipedia) ~back~
- During his ‘drinking days’, Chapman jokingly referred to himself as the British actress Betty Marsden, possibly because of Marsden’s oft-quoted desire to die with a glass of gin in her hand. (From Wikipedia) Chapman would sporadically shout odd words, exclamations, and noises with no apparent connection to any ongoing conversations or events; one favorite, frequently invoked phrase was “Betty Marsden.” (From Graham Chapman) ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
He Was One Heck Of A Guy - The Eulogy
DrHGuy Memorial Service Walk-through: Act II, Scene 12, Alternative B
Being Really Prepared
I’ve been considering eulogies lately. I hasten to interject that this is not a subtle signal that my demise is fast approaching. On the other hand, I do have some concerns that, should my friends await my last breath before preparing their tributes or, worse yet, attempt a genuinely extemporaneous last salute, the results will be suboptimal.
While Duke of Derm and Lord of Leisure, for example, are fine buddies, the veritable iodine-added salt of the earth, and precisely the sort of fellows one wants covering ones back, they do not, I’m sorry to report, have the comic chops for the kind of performance that - well, that I deserve.
I am, consequently, faced with two alternatives:
1. Making new friends with a flair for public speaking, compositional skills, and a sense of humor resonant with my own.
2. Preparing a script and stage directions for my eulogy myself, after which my acquaintances can audition for roles in that one and only performance of what should be, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest show on earth, based on stand-up comedy style, acting technique, stagecraft, theatric range, and the likelihood of not only outliving me but also maintaining the physical and cognitive capacities necessary to assure that the show will, indeed, go on.1
It will surprise no one who knows me to learn that I have chosen the latter course of action. 2
The Research
As a result of this process, I’ve come to realize that the time and labors required to live an altruistic, productive life of the sort that offers eulogizers a treasury of good deeds, accomplishments, and evidence of service to humanity from which to choose, can be put to more efficacious use assimilating memorial performances already proven successful in uplifting the spirits of the audience and enhancing the reputation of the deceased. Many of these speeches suggest goals reached and obstacles overcome which can be advantageously attributed to the individual memorialized without the messy inconvenience of him or her actually executing these acts.
I’ve begun the research and will close today’s post with a few excerpts from selected eulogies, not all of which are suitably laudatory for our purposes but all of which are certainly striking.
New York Fire Department Captain James Gormley on Captain Francis Callahan, killed at the World Trade Center:
Rev. Howard Moody on Lenny Bruce:
Robert Hunter on Jerry Garcia, his longtime songwriting partner:
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey’s taste
nor power to truly sting.5
Robert F. Kennedy on Martin Luther King Jr., given impromptu during a campaign stop in racially charged Indianapolis:
Dan Aykroyd on John Belushi:
Jacques Pépin on Julia Child:
Rev. Louis Saunders on Lee Harvey Oswald:
Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on President James Polk:
Rich Tillman at the memorial service for his older brother, NFL player turned war hero Pat Tillman, immediately swearing into the microphone said he hadn’t written anything, he said and with asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides:
From The London Times on French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the founder of Deconstruction Movement, a central tenet of which is that “there is nothing outside the text:”
A conceptual foundation for the deconstruction of mortality
Can there be any certainty in the death of Jacques Derrida ? The obituarists’ objective attempts to place his life in a finite context are, necessarily, subject to epistemic relativism, the idea that all such scientific theories are mere “narrations” or social constructions. Surely, a postmodernist deconstruction of their import would inevitably question the foundational conceptual categories of prior science — among them, Derrida’s own existence — which become problematised and relativised. This conceptual revolution has profound implications for the content of future postmodern and liberatory science of mortality. Is God dead?
It was, perhaps, Alan D. Sokal who most heuristically challenged the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook in his brilliant exegesis of Derridian principles Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Dr Sokal’s inclusive review of the literature (see especially Hamill, Graham. The epistemology of expurgation: Bacon and The Masculine Birth of Time. In Queering the Renaissance, pp. 236-252. And also Doyle, Richard. Dislocating knowledge, thinking out of joint: Rhizomatics and the importance of being multiple), and his eerily exact summary of the complementarity principle (Instead of a simple “either/or” structure, deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither “either/or” nor “both/and” nor even “neither/nor” while at the same time not abandoning these logics either) make his reading of Derrida irrefutable. We know only two things. We do not know. And M Derrida is in no position to enlighten us.12
Coming Attractions: Even better eulogies to follow soon.
Footnotes
- That still leaves finding singer-dancers for the chorus line, composing the music, sketching out the choreography, arranging for soloists, … , but one thing at a time. ~back~
- I had, in truth, rejected the first option by the time I finished “Marking new friends.” ~back~
- Excerpted from A Wonderful Life: 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit by Cyrus Copeland ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- Ibid ~back~
- From The Liberator, June 22, 1849 ~back~
- American Tragedy by Mike Fish. ESPN.com ~back~
- The London Times Oct 11, 2004 ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
The Other Photos From The Thanksgiving 2007 Trip To Mom’s Home
While I’ve already posted all the photos of the specimens in my Mother’s collections1 from our visit to her home this past Thanksgiving, there are a few other pictures of people that I’m posting as an indulgence to the nostalgia rampant at the end of the year.
This photo of Mom was taken at Thanksgiving.
On the wall of the basement, I found this blurry picture of Julie’s parents (on left), my parents (on right), and Julie2 and me (in center) at our wedding.
And this even blurrier photo, also from the wedding, of Julie, her daughter, and me.
In this shot, my brother, Bobby Lynn,3 is on the left and I’m on the right. In the center section, Bobby Lynn is on the left and I’m on the right.
Footnotes
- To read about and view my mother’s impressive collection of doodads, antiques, gadgets, widgets, junk, tchotchkes, collectibles, oddities, curios, odds, ends, and much, much more, see Mom’s Collectibles ~back~
- Julie Showalter was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, wickedly sexy wife and prize-winning writer, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. There are many other posts about her and her writing in this blog. For information, see Julie Showalter FAQ ~back~
- Bobby Lynn, two years younger than I, died at 16 of Hodgkin’s. ~back~