Copious Free Time

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One of my favorite TV stars has passed on. Sheriff Andy Taylor, Matlock, whatever you remember him as.

I first knew him from his comedy record, "What It Was, Was Football," which he recorded in 1953, and which was still being sold in the record store where Dad had his studio in the early 1960s. He broke through to fame with "No Time for Sergeants," first on stage and then as a movie (he teamed with Don Knotts for the first time in the stage show). In 1957 he was daring enough to star in <i>A Face in the Crowd</i>, which turned his folksy persona on his ear by making him an outwardly charming snake in the grass with a mean temper.

My favorite role of his might be the bad-guy rancher in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewVwSrVSKS4">Rustler's Rhapsody</a>, where he was perhaps the only sane person in a movie full of western stereotypes. The scene linked shows some of what he did with the part, as well as setting up another classic moment later in the movie.

Griffith reprised his role as Andy Taylor in a couple of parodies. When Ron Howard hosted Saturday Night Live, he makes a cameo in a take-off on his old show (where Opie returns to find that Mayberry has become a sink of corruption and villainy), and they also harked back to Mayberry in a short political film from the last presidential go-round.

Well. Everybody dies, sooner or later. But I don't have to like it. And I don't.
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I'm trying to think of some way Dr. Kevorkian could have passed on that would not fulfill all the requirements of Cheap Irony (which has somewhat looser standards than the regular sort).
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On March 24, 2003, in China's Anhui Province, Cathy and I stood in a conference room at the Hefei Holiday Inn. Late in the morning, somebody handed us a thirteen-month-old girl named Xi Huan, who we renamed Sarah.

In honor of the occasion, here are some reprints from my Live Journal from 2006.

@ 2006-02-07 18:04:00
questions
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I waited at the door with the camera tonight, to get a picture of the last time my three-year-old daughter came in after school. Tomorrow she'll be a big four year old. I took a couple of shots. Sarah demanded a tuna sandwich. I managed to get a word in, to tell Cathy I'd finally heard back from the insurance people, and we weren't covered for vandalism. "Angie's grandpa died," announced Sarah.

I expressed sympathy. She asked why he died. "Probably because he was old," I said carefully. We proceeded into the den.

She asked me what other reasons people die. "Well," I ventured, "sometimes if they're in a really bad accident, or if they get really, really sick." I didn't want her to think you die from just any sickness. "I hope you don't die," she said. "Give me a tuna fish sandwich!"

( more incontinent nostalgia on the other side )

ps: There's a certain amount of morbidity in the selections. It reflects that particular time in our life when she was figuring that stuff out. This can also be found at The New Pals Club Web-Log.

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ANNIE WARBUCKS
"Daddy" made me feel loved and welcome.
He even got rid of that wife of his
Who acted like I was some sort of trophy;
A proof of her virtue. She was soon gone.
In her place, the lethal Asp and towering Punjab,
And Sandy. Always loyal, wonderful Sandy.
I would see "Daddy" mostly when he came in,
Guns blazine, fists flying, to save me
From the enemies of our country,
As well as from callous orphanages and cruel caretakers,
Just in time to sever them from success
And to protect this nation, and me, and Sandy,
And his own financial interests as well.
As days accreted into years, I wondered
Why my loving "Daddy" always ended up placing me
Back into those dark places where I had no protector
Save the good-hearted weak ones who folded like leaves
And sometimes a sympathetic gangster or mystic,
And I began to notice how my salvation and their demise
Solved at once some pressing business problem of "Daddy"'s
Until, at last, I resolved to contrive a test for him;
A setting of peril for me without any hope of profit for him.
And lo! here I am, beneath this stone forever
As Sandy, faithful Sandy, watches over me
Crying helplessly at the cold white eye of the moon.

more at The New Pals Club Web-Log
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MARY WORTH
Time heals all wounds.
There are other fish in the sea.
I told them. For years, I told them all.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
And when they put me aside,
And pitied me, behind their smiles,
(Let a smile be your umbrella!)
I didn't let on that I saw through it.
You catch more flies with honey!
But I think they realized, most of them.
Happiness isn't a gift, it's earned!
At the end, they knew who to thank.
The end justifies the means.
Toby, plunging into endless night--
It's always darkest just before dawn--
Aldo, dying of natural causes,
(For what is more natural than sleep?)
And all the rest of them, whose stones
Surround mine, as if listening for advice
Which I dispense, as I once sold apples.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
A stitch in time saves nine.

PRIVATE BEETLE BAILEY
I trembled between them. There was no escape.
Then I saw the recruiter's door. I stepped inside.
Things blurred for a while, and I came to myself
With my porkpie hat gone and an army cap in its place.
And I found that in giving up freedom and self,
I had gained blamelessness and slack,
And what was at first temporary became instead
The permanent surrender of choice in exchange
For the permanent evasion of responsibility.
And as I stayed at Camp Swampy, year after year,
I was astonished one day to realize with a start
That nothing ever changed there. Nobody left
And nobody new came in, and nothing happened
Until the day I realized I had been dead thirty years
And that all of us were already in our private hell.

PETER PARKER
I never asked to be bitten. I only wanted
To listen to a scholarly talk about science
But there it was, I had great power now
And learned quickly what that entailed.
A lesser soul, gaining what I'd gained
Might have succumbed to vanity or greed,
But I had the lesson of Uncle Ben before me
And set out to make the world a better place
Whether the world wanted it or not.
For my pains, I was scorned, excoriated,
Lied about in the paper, and had my image
Which I provided for a modest fee, paraded
Before the credulous public as a menace.
Is it any wonder that I finally surrendered,
Took the easy way out, married my girlfriend
And stayed at home most days, watching TV?

THE UNKNOWN PLUGGER
Here I lie, in a humble pine box
None of your fancy caskets for me
If I'd died a few years later, it might have been
A cardboard carton for my eternal rest.
I didn't ever ask for much from the world;
Just a small-screen TV and a padded chair
The one to sleep in, the other to sleep
In front of on the nights when I didn't have to go
And work the next day. I kept my personal data
On the icebox in the kitchen. My watch
Only told time, and didn't bother me with
Phone calls, headlines, music, or games.
When I was hungry, I ate a burger with fries,
Drank the cheapest coffee, married a big chicken,
And played board games with my bored kids.
Until the day I felt my heart burst in my chest
And couldn't puzzle out the medicine cap in time.
Now I nap under a piece of granite,
Carved with my parents' names, with a line
Left for my family to fill in with mine
When they can afford it.

(originally presented in The Comics Curmudgeon)
more at The New Pals Club Web-Log
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Bobby Fischer, dead at 64. In recent years, he's been an isolated anti-semitic nut (his mother was Jewish, by the way), but for a time he was our champion; the Van Cliburn of chess. I knew him from a column that ran under his name in Boy's Life, which was most likely ghost-written. Years later, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess came out and was one of the few chess books that made a swift and material difference in my playing. It uses programmed instruction to hammer a few key facts in. I picked it up while visiting my cousin, and immediately started beating him. He insisted on reading the book as well, and the balance was restored.

It's also said that as a child, he beat Ajeeb the Arab, a chess-playing pseudo-automaton (operated by a hidden player who was a former champion fallen on bad times, according to a possibly accurate report by cartoonist Kim Deitch) and brought home a box of cigars.

One day I was at David Mattingly's house, and we were playing chess. He told me he wanted to play Fischer and said he'd show me how he was going to do it. Two moves later, the game was over: Dave had put himself into the classic Fool's Mate. He seemed so surprised by this outcome that it never occurred to me that Dave, an accomplished actor, might have been pulling my leg.
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Oh my god!

Sir Frederick Gas has died. Once again, I have to utter that wretched cliche I didn't know he was still alive! After appearing with Spike Jones for some years, he slipped out of the music biz and became Earl Bennett and edited films, and then he went back to painting.

A sorrowful 'thank you' to Mark Evanier for pointing out what we have lost.
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