Rolling Stones – "Fortune Teller" (1966)

Went to the fortune teller

Had my fortune read

Check out the cover of the June 1, 2015 issue of the New Yorker magazine:

Who's missing from this picture?

That Mark Ulriksen cover (which was titled “Suiting Up”) depicts seven of the candidates for the 2016 Presidential nomination as if they were getting dressed in a locker room after working out.  

Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio are in the foreground of the cover.  Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee (reading a Bible), Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz (shown tying his tie in the mirror) are also depicted.  (I didn’t recognize Walker at first.  How quickly we forget!)

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is shown in the background, peeping through a window at her half-clothed potential opponents.  (Imagine the mishegas if the cover had depicted Ms. Clinton in bra and panties, blow-drying her hair while Bush, Cruz, et al. gawked at her.) 

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The seven white males on the New Yorker cover weren’t the only GOP Presidential hopefuls, of course.  Carly Fiorina (a woman), Ben Carson (an African-American), and Bobby Jindal (an Indian-American) also sought the nomination – but putting Fiorina in a men’s locker room would have been weird, and including a Republican candidate of color wouldn’t have fit the New Yorker’s narrative.

Of course, the New Yorker left out one other candidate: the one, the only Donald J. Trump, who not only grabbed the Republican nomination but also shocked tout le monde by winning the Presidency.

A more prescient New Yorker cover

You’d think that Trump would have been an irresistible target for the artist.  He was more recognizable than any of the other seven men on the cover, and easy to caricature as well.

But the New Yorker obviously dismissed Trump as a serious contender, choosing instead to include the likes of Scott Walker (who ended up dropping out of the race months before the Iowa caucuses) on this cover. 

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New Yorker staff writer Amy Davidson Sorkin acknowledged that there were plenty of prospective GOP candidates other than those included on the magazine cover.  But she made it clear that she was putting her money on the Ulriksen seven:

[O]ne of these seven men is almost certainly right about his chances for the nomination.   

Oops!

And that wasn’t the only faux pas in Sorkin’s little essay.  Here’s her explanation of why the only Democratic candidate who made the New Yorker cover was the former First Lady:

Some other Democratic candidates might emerge, ones tougher to beat than Bernie Sanders, but at the moment Clinton doesn’t really have to share. 

Hopefully Madame Sorkin has traded in her old crystal ball for a less cloudy model.  Bernie Sanders turned out to be a pretty tough opponent for Hillary after all.

Not as tough an opponent as Trump, of course.

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Former football coach Pat Dye once said that “Hindsight is 50-50.”  (So true!)

Ordinarily I don’t pile on when someone’s prognostication turns out not to be true.  Heaven knows that 2 or 3 lines has made its share of mistakes when it comes to predicting the future.

But the New Yorker is so smug, so self-satisfied, and so high and mighty in general that it does my little pea-pickin’ heart good to see the magazine hoist itself with its own petard.

(You can click here if you don’t know what a “petard” is.  And don’t feel bad – 2 or 3 lines didn’t know either until I looked it up.)

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“Fortune Teller” was written by Allen Toussaint under the pseudonym Naomi Neville.  It was first recorded by New Orleans R&B singer Benny Spellman in 1962.

2 or 3 lines is featuring the Rolling Stones’ cover of the song because it’s better than the original – and better than any of the other covers I know.  (Especially the 2007 Robert Plant–Alison Krauss version, which is a real head shaker.)

I first heard the Stones’ version on Got LIVE If You Want It!, the band’s first live album.  I was a 14-year-old Rolling Stones-obsessed ninth-grader when that album was released, and I played my copy half to death.

I found out today that the recording of “Fortune Teller” that was included on that album was actually a 1963 studio take.  The record company overdubbed that recording with crowd noise and passed it off as a live recording.

The Rolling Stones were not amused, and have essentially disowned Got LIVE If You Want It! ever since.

Here’s the overdubbed “Fortune Teller”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Queens of the Stone Age – "Go With the Flow" (2003)

I can go

With the flow

It’s been almost six months since I retired from my law firm.

I’ve been holding my horses, keeping my shirt on, cooling my jets, and taking a chill pill daily . . . in other words, I’ve been taking it pretty easy.

But now that the old batteries are recharged, I’m looking around for what they call an “encore career” – something that doesn’t take up too much time, but is lucrative and satisfying.

And I think I’ve found the perfect job!

Here’s a headline from the March 22 issue of the Wall Street Journal:  

Demand for American Sperm 

Is Skyrocketing in Brazil

According to the accompanying story, “human semen imports from the U.S. to Brazil have surged as more rich single women and lesbian couples select donors whose online profiles suggest they will yield light-complexioned and preferably blue-eyed children.”

“The vast majority of what we have and what we sell are the Caucasian blond-haired, blue-eyed donors,” said Fredrik Andreasson, CFO of Seattle Sperm Bank, which provides about a quarter of Brazil’s imports.  

(In case you don't know where Brazil is)

Brazil has a troubled racial legacy: Brazil imported more than ten times as many African slaves than the United States, and it was the last Western nation to ban slavery (in 1888).  

But the preference for light-skinned Caucasian sperm donors holds across the global market – it’s not unique to Brazil.

I’m shocked – shocked! – that women are such racists!  (Most of the women who get pregnant using donated sperm are either single or part of a lesbian couple – so you can’t blame males for that.)

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Donated sperm costs a pretty penny.  According to the WSJ, Brazilian fertility clinics charge about $1500 for a vial genetically-vetted sperm from American sperm banks.  

Brazilian women (i.e., potential customers)

I would guess that the American men who provide that sperm are being paid a very small percentage of that amount.  But at least they are paid something – it’s illegal to pay Brazilian citizen to donate sperm, so stocks of domestic sperm are low.

(I think a smart businessman could figure out a number of effective ways to get Brazilian males to donate sperm without having to give them any do-re-mi.  Just sayin’.)

Fortunately for Brazilian women who can’t afford to pay $1500 for American sperm, there are selfless Brazilian men who are willing to help them out gratis.

For example, there’s João Carlos Holland de Barcellos, a 61-year-old computer scientist whose blue eyes and white-blond hair (which he attributes to his English and German ancestry) make him very popular with Brazilian moms-to-be.  

 João Carlos Holland de Barcellos

(Let's be honest: that guy is no competition for 2or3lines!)

Barcellos is apparently motivated by the desire to perpetuate his genes and ensure his existence beyond death. “It’s an atheist’s way to achieve immortality,” he told the newspaper. 

“His wife manages his agenda and transfers his semen via needleless syringe to the near-daily guests to their chaotic São Paulo home,” says the WSJ.  

So it’s clear he’s not doing it for fun – unless he thinks having his wife collecting and transferring his most precious bodily fluids via needleless syringe is fun.  (How scary does that sound?)

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Mr. Bercellos says he has English and German ancestry, but can he prove it?

I can – thanks to a 23andMe kit that one of my daughter’s gave me as a Christmas gift, I have detailed DNA-based information on my ancestry.

A 23andMe DNA testing kit

For example, I now know that my DNA is 99.7% European and 97.9% northwestern European.  In other words, I’m as Caucasian as all get-out.

If you break that down, you get 51.1% British and Irish (I know from my genealogical research that’s all British and zero Irish, so you can rest assured), 16.9% French and German, and 10.2% Scandinavian.  Add in another 19.7% of what 23andMe calls “broadly northwestern European” – meaning they can’t narrow it down geographically any further than that – and I’m at 97.9% northwestern European.

In other words, I’m a wannabe Brazilian mom’s dream come true!

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American sperm banks provide a wealth of information about donors to prospective moms.  Most of their customers want not only sperm from donors who are blonde and blue-eyed men, but also prefer donors who are intelligent, healthy, and good-looking.

One Brazilian woman interviewed for the WSJ article said that she received a 29-page report about her sperm donor.  That report includes everything from genetic testing for cystic fibrosis and other medical conditions, to a childhood photograph of him.

And I bet her donor wasn’t half as cute as a baby as this little guy?

Yep, that’s yours truly.  I think I could be successful as a sperm donor based on those baby pictures alone.  But I’ve got a lot more to offer than just good looks.

Like high intelligence.  (We’re talking a triple-digit IQ.)

And above-average height.  (Six feet, two inches – or maybe six feet, one inch, if you believe the gal at my doctor’s office who measured me the last time I got a physical.)  

And excellent health.  (The gastroenterologist who handled my last colonscopy said I was “as clean as a whistle.”)

So please share this post with any Brazilian you know who would like to be a mommy and tell them to contact me toot sweet for terms and conditions of this limited-time offer.  (I prefer straight cash, homie – but I will accept PayPal.)

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Queens of the Stone Age released “Go With the Flow” in 2003.  It’s a good song, but the music video for the song – which was created by a group of London artists who call themselves Shynola – absolutely fabulous.

It’s not surprising that this bad boy has been viewed over 43 million times on YouTube:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

The First Edition – "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" (1968)

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole

And then I followed it in

At the end of The Big Lebowski, the Sam Elliott cowboy-narrator character offers this pithy review of the movie:  “It was a purty good story, don't you think?  Made me laugh to beat the band.  Parts, anyway.” 

Jeff Bridges and Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski

There’s been a lot of hoorah recently about The Big Lebowski because it turned 20 years old this month.  As a result of that hoorah, I checked the DVD out of the public library and watched the movie in its entirety for the first time.

Like Sam Elliott, it made me laugh to beat the band, too.  Parts, anyway.  

Other parts, not so much.

*     *     *     *     *

The lead character in The Big Lebowski – his name is Jeff Lebowski, but he is usually called “the Dude” – is portrayed by Jeff Bridges at his shaggy-doggiest.  

The Bridges character was inspired by a friend of the Coen brothers – who wrote and directed the movie – whom they obviously found incredibly amusing.  

I guess you had to be there.  To me, the Dude is just another unemployed, long-haired, dope-smoking sixties burnout.  

*     *     *     *     *

The other cast members of The Big Lebowski include a number of actors who appear at least semi-regularly in Joel and Ethan Coen’s movies – including the late Jon Polito, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, and John Goodman.

The Coen brothers have said that they had those actors in mind when they wrote the parts for the characters they played.  

Polito appears in only one scene – a scene which has no apparent reason for existing.  It adds two minutes to the length of the movie but accomplishes nothing else.

Turturro absolutely kills with his over-the-top portrayal of a swishy Hispanic bowler named Jesus:



It’s a small role, but Jesus is as vivid and unforgettable as anything in the movie.  (I don’t think this character would fly today – he’s not only a gay stereotype, but a child-molester as well – but I guess that didn’t bother anyone in 1998.) 

Buscemi’s role is just the opposite: inoffensive and exceptionally forgettable.  You could cut his character out of the movie and not miss a thing.  What a waste of a great character actor.

Goodman’s character is a cliché, and an unfunny one at that.  He swears and threatens and blusters and pontificates, and generally makes you wish 90% or so of his lines had been cut.  (Perhaps the dumbest idea the Coens had was to make Goodman’s character a very observant converted Jew who refuses to bowl on the Shabbos.)

*     *     *     *     *

In an interview that’s included on the DVD of the movie, the Coens explain that The Big Lebowski was inspired by The Big Sleep, another LA-based private-eye flick with a notoriously incoherent plot.  (The story goes that neither the screenwriters – one of whom was William Faulkner – nor the director were sure whether one of the characters had killed himself or been murdered.)

There are some similarities between those two movies.  For example, The Big Lebowski’s Bunny Lebowski character – a lubricious trophy wife and part-time porn star played by Tara Reid, who couldn’t have been cuter if she tried – is an X-rated version of The Big Sleep’s Carmen Sternwood.  

Carmen’s come-on line to The Big Sleep’s male star, Humphrey Bogart, is “You’re cute.”  Bunny’s come-on line to Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski is a tad more explicit:

The movie that the Coen brothers stole the most from was not The Big Sleep, but Robert Altman’s 1973 flick, The Long Goodbye – which was, like The Big Sleep, based on a Raymond Chandler novel.  

The Big Lebowski is not nearly as good as The Long Goodbye, an eccentric film that also lulls you into a state of bemused confusion but then surprises you with the most shockingly violent scene I’ve ever seen in a movie.

The Busby Berkeleyesque “Gutterballs” dream sequence in The Big Lebowski is like nothing in either The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye.  It’s a hot mess that’s redeemed only by its use of today’s featured song:

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The Big Lebowski is the movie equivalent of side two of Abbey Road – it has its moments, but few of those moments have anything to do with one another.  The whole is less than the sum of its parts, and the sum of its parts isn’t anything to write home about.

You can say the same about the movie’s soundtrack.  Bob Dylan’s “The Man In Me” is not one of his better efforts, but it’s prominently featured on that soundtrack, as are several campy selections that were chosen with tongue firmly in cheek – like “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Standing on the Corner (Watching All the Girls Go By),” and “Viva Las Vegas” (two non-Elvis versions).

But kudos to the Coens for making the Dude a devotee of Creedence Clearwater Revival rather than the Grateful Dead or the Eagles.

And for using the Townes Van Zandt cover of “Dead Flowers” over the closing credits.

And especially for choosing the truly fabulous 1968 Kenny Rogers and the First Edition hit, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” to accompany the aforementioned “Gutterballs” dream sequence.  BEST SONG EVER!

Here’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Stabbing Westward – "Save Yourself" (1998)

I can not save you

I can't even save myself

The first day of spring, it snowed in Washington, DC.  

My grandson Jack enjoying the snow

One member of the DC City Council blamed the snow on . . . rich Jews?  (Why isn’t the whole world insisting that this bozo resign his Council seat toot sweet?)

I’m not sure why it snowed on March 21, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the fault of the Rothschilds.

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By contrast, the day before the first day of spring – in other words, the final day of winter – was lovely in the DC area.

I took advantage of the 61-degree temperature to load up my bike on my new bike rack and my new car and head to the C&O Canal towpath for a ride.

The C&O Canal, which is 184-plus miles long, was built between 1828 and 1850.  No freight-carrying boat has used the canal since 1924.  In 1971, a law was passed that established the C&O Canal National Historical Park, and today the towpath is a popular place to hike and bike.

I’m slowly but surely accomplishing my goal of riding the entire length of the canal on my bike.  It’s taking quite a while because I’m doing it by myself.  

That doubles my distance because I have to ride roundtrips.  Say I park at mile 50 and ride to mile 60 – then I have to ride back to mile 50 because that’s where my car is.  That means I have to ride 20 miles for each 10 miles of the canal that I cover.

And while a good part of the canal is no more than an hour’s drive from my home, the western parts of the C&O are more than two hours away.

That’s OK.  I’m retired – I’ve got nothing but time!

*     *     *     *     *

On Monday, I started at mile 22 of the C&O – in other words, 22 miles upstream from the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, where the canal ends.  (It feels like you’re a lot farther than 22 miles from downtown Washington, but you’re not.)

Less than a mile upstream is Aqueduct No. 1, which carried the canal over Seneca Creek.  That aqueduct was constructed between 1829 and 1832, using red sandstone from a nearby quarry.

Here's a photo of a canal boat using the aqueduct in 1882:

Seneca Creek aqueduct in 1882

The Seneca Creek aqueduct is the only one of the eleven on the C&O that also serves as a lift lock – Lock 24, also known as Riley’s Lock (after one of the lockkeepers who manned that lock).

Here’s the house that Mr. Riley lived in:

Unfortunately, the Seneca Creek aqueduct suffered heavy damage in a 1971 flood.  The National Park Service shored up the aqueduct with steel beams, but never restored the entire structure:

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A company that offers outdoor-adventure summer camps for kids parks its busses near Riley’s Lock in the off-season:

My oldest grandson, Jack – he’s 20 months old – is obsessed with trucks and busses, so I took some pictures of the camp busses and showed them to him the next day.  He stared at them like I used to stare at Playboy centerfolds.  

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My turnaround point was Lock 25, which was just short of nine miles from where I started my ride.

The lockkeeper's house at Lock 25

The lockhouse at Lock 25 is available for overnight stays.  It looks pretty nice, but there’s no heat, no electricity and no indoor plumbing.  (There’s a nearby port-a-potty, however.)  The cost?  Only $110 a night.  

Lock 25 is a stone’s throw away from what used to be the town of Edwards Ferry.  This canal had opened to this point in 1830, and a community with warehouses, stores, and a blacksmith quickly sprang up to service the canal traffic.  But the Civil War brought all that to an end.

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There’s not a lot to see between Seneca Creek and Edwards Ferry.  The Potomac River is wide and relatively placid along this stretch of the canal:

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I got back to my car about 5:30, which gave me plenty of time to drive to nearby Poolesville, MD, and enjoy happy hour at Cugini’s, a popular local pizza, subs, and wings joint that always has an impressive selection of local craft beers on tap:

I chose the “Wait . . . Pull What Out?” imperial stout from RAR Brewing, which is located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  (The beer’s name is a quote from the movie Old School.  You could have fooled me . . .)

At 12.5% ABV, one 10-ounce pour was plenty:

I sipped it as I watched the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team play its second-round NCAA tournament game.

I love watching the UConn women, who have been utterly dominant for years.  (One sportswriter described them as “a basketball death machine of epic proportions.”)  

They have never been more utterly dominant than in their first-round tournament game last Saturday, when they beat St. Francis University 140-52.  The score was 55-19 after the first quarter, and 94-31 at halftime.  

No women’s college team has ever scored more than 55 points in a quarter, 94 points in a half, or 140 points in a game.  UConn broke those records not against some winless punching bag, but against a conference champion that won 24 games in the regular season.

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Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus formed Stabbing Westward in 1986, when they were students at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.  Hall once told an interviewer what the band’s name signified:

Since we went to Western Illinois University, Stabbing Westward had a certain “kill everybody in the school’ vibe to it!  The school's way out in farm country and the country is really close-minded.  I was walking around like Robert Smith with real big hair, big baggy black clothes, black fingernail polish and eye makeup.  They just didn't get it. We hated the town.

“Save Yourself,” which was Stabbing Westward’s most successful single. was released in 1998 on the band’s third album, Darkest Days.  

Here’s “Save Yourself”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Chuck Berry – "Sweet Little Sixteen" (1958)

All the cats wanna dance with 

Sweet little sixteen

Friday night, the University of Maryland–Baltimore County’s men’s basketball team – which was the lowest-seeded team in its region – beat the top-seeded University of Virginia men in a first-round NCAA tournament game in Charlotte, NC.

Here’s the headline that appeared on the website of the NBC affiliate in Charlotte immediately after that game ended:

And here’s a corrected headline that appeared on that website about half an hour later:

As the NCAA pointed out in a tweet the morning after the UMBC upset, #16-seeded Harvard upset top-seeded Stanford in the 1998 NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

Until UMBC won Friday night, that was the only time in men’s or women’s tournament history that a #16 seed had beaten a #1 seed.

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My twin daughters were 5th-grade basketball whizzes in 1998, so I watched women’s basketball on television whenever I could – including Harvard’s shocking upset of Stanford.  I don’t remember a lot about the game, but I do remember being in awe of Harvard’s star player, senior Allison Feaster.

Feaster, who had led the nation in scoring that season, was unstoppable in the Stanford game, scoring 35 points and contributing 13 rebounds and three steals in the Crimson’s 71-67 victory.  She played virtually every second of the game.

Allison Feaster in 1997

Two of Stanford’s starters suffered fluke injuries after the team was given a #1 seed by the NCAA tournament committee.  There’s no doubt that helped Harvard’s chances, but Stanford was still a huge favorite.  The Cardinal were perennial national championship contenders – they had been to the Final Four in each of the three previous seasons – and their players had a decided height advantage over Feaster and her teammates.  

Feaster was 5 feet, 11 inches, which sounds pretty tall.  But  Stanford’s roster featured no fewer than eleven players who were taller than Feaster was – including a 6’7” player, a 6’6” player, and two 6’4” players. 

Stanford was coached by the legendary Tara VanDerveer, whose teams had won national championships in 1990 and 1992, and who had been chosen to coach the women’s Olympic team in 1996.  VanDerveer and Tennessee’s Pat Summitt are the only two women to coach Division I basketball teams to more than 1000 wins.  (Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski is the only male coach to reach that milestone.)  

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer

And the game was played in Stanford’s home gym, giving the Cardinal a significant edge – the men’s tournament games are always played on neutral courts.

Here's an ESPN piece about the game that aired in 2008:

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I’m not taking anything away from UMBC.  But there are many fewer upsets in the NCAA women’s tournament than on the men’s side.  While a #16 seed had never won in the men’s tournament until Friday night, eight #15 seeds and 21 #14 seeds have won first-round games over #2 and #3 seeds.

But not only has no #16 seed other than the 1998 Harvard team won in the women’s tournament since it became a 64-team tournament in 1994 – no #15 or #14 seed has ever won either.  In other words, out of 300 games involving #16, #15, and #14 seeds against #1, #2, and #3 seeds, the Harvard win in 1998 represents the one and only game when a low-three seed beat a top-three seed.

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The more you read about Allison Feaster, the more amazed you’ll be her athletic and academic accomplishments.

Allison Feaster in 2014

Here’s an excerpt from a resolution honoring Feaster that was passed by the South Carolina Senate in 1994:

Whereas, Allison Feaster has been named to the 1994 Parade All-American Basketball Team, the 1993 and 1994 Smith and Street All-American Basketball Teams, South Carolina Player of the Year for 1993 and 1994, Miss Basketball by both the Greater Greenville Basketball Club and The Charlotte Observer, and one of the 1994 Top Fifteen Seniors by USA Today; and

Whereas, she has been a member of the South Carolina AAAA State Champion basketball team in 1993, AAAA Player of the Year in 1993 and 1994, selected to All State for five years, the National AAU Junior Olympic Champion team in 1993, and the Most Valuable Player in the North-South All Star game in 1994; and

Whereas, Allison Feaster is the career leading scorer in South Carolina history with 3,427 points; and

Whereas, she has been a member of the 1993 All-Region Track Team and has thrice been a state finalist in both the Shot Put and Discus and has been a member of the 1993 and 1994 All Region Tennis Team; and

Whereas, she is graduating from Chester High School as number one in the Senior Class and will be attending Harvard University; and Whereas, the Senate of South Carolina wishes to hold Allison Feaster high as a role model for all the youth in our State. Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the Senate:

That the best wishes and heartfelt congratulations of the South Carolina Senate be extended to Miss Allison Feaster of Chester High School in Chester County for the many honors and accolades she has received as an athlete and as a scholar and wish her continued success in pursuing her future endeavors.

Did you catch that Feaster was an All-State basketball player for five seasons?  That wasn’t a typo – she made the All-State basketball team as an eighth-grader!  (She started on the high-school varsity team as a seventh-grader.)

After graduating from Harvard with a degree in economics, Feaster was a first-round WNBA draft pick of the Los Angeles Sparks.    (She’s still the only Ivy Leaguer to be picked in the WNBA draft.)

Feaster in the WNBA

She played ten seasons in the WNBA – she took 2007 off to have a baby, but came back in 2008 – and continued to play professionally in Europe until just after her 40th birthday.  

Feaster recently was named Director of Player Personnel & Coach Relations for the 26-team “G League,” which is the NBA’s minor league organization.

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“Sweet Little Sixteen” was a #2 hit single for Chuck Berry in 1958.  (Berry was miles ahead of Elvis in those days.)

The song was a favorite of “British Invasion” bands – you can find recordings of live performance by the Stones, the Beatles, and the Animals on Youtube.

John Lennon included “Sweet Little Sixteen” on his 1975 Rock ’n’ Roll album.  The Phil Spector-produced cover is unlistenable.  

Here is Chuck Berry’s original recording of “Sweet Little Sixteen”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: