Friday, November 27, 2020

Hogan's Heroes – "Hogan's Heroes March" (1966)


We’ve got a slogan

From Colonel Hogan

And Colonel Hogan’s a her0, too!


As the great Nick Lowe once said,


And so it goes and so it goes

And so it goes and so it goes

But where it’s goin’ no one knows


Truer words were never written – 2 or 3 lines proves that over and over.


*     *     *     *     *


So there I was, sitting at my computer and working on a 2 or 3 lines post, when the train jumped the tracks.  Before I knew what was happening, I had lost control of my wildly successful little blog and was up to my neck in weirdness and sleaze. 


To paraphrase the Bobby Fuller Four, I fought the blog but the blog won – resulting in the hot messes you’re about to read.  



Yes, I said “hot messes” – not “hot mess.”  As is my wont, I took what was originally going to be one post and pumped it so full of hot air that I could turn it into two posts.  (If you’ve ever wondered how I’ve been able to generate over 1500 posts since I started writing 2 or 3 lines in 2009, that’s how!)


*     *     *     *     *


I could begin at the beginning . . . but everyone begins at the beginning.  So let’s begin at the end instead.


Here’s the tombstone that marks the burial place of actor Bob Crane, the star of Hogan’s Heroes – the truly appalling sixties sitcom that portrayed life in a Nazi prison camp as being more fun than a barrel of monkeys.


Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not a fan of tombstones with photographs:



And I’m even less of a fan of tombstones featuring bad (and badly proofread) poetry:


Wild Wheat


The Wind Blows O're [sic] The Plains

Through The Wild Wheat

Wild Wheat That's Never Reaped

Wild Wind. Wild Wind. Wild Wheat


And Then The Stillness Comes

And Heat of August Sun

The Earth Is Parched And Dry

All Living Now Must Die


Wild Wheat against The Sky

Once Young Now Brown And Dry

All Signs Of Life Are Gone

Yet In Still Earth The Roots Live On


It's [sic] Seeds Of Life Are Sewn

Wind Blown Far A Field

All Little Ones Must Fly

Wild Wheat Will Never Die 


*     *     *     *     *


“Wild Wheat” is credited to “Patrica Crane, Humanist.”  Patricia Crane (née Patricia Olson) was Bob Crane’s widow, and she was buried next to him when she died in 2007.


So who was Sigrid Valdis, and why is her name on the tombstone next to Crane’s?  


Sigrid Valdis and Patricia Crane are one and the same, boys and girls.  Like her husband, Patricia was an actor – in fact, she and Bob met when they were both appearing in Hogan’s Heroes.  Sigrid Valdis was her stage name.


*     *     *     *     *


Hogan’s Heroes ran for six seasons – from 1965 to 1971 – on CBS.  


In the show, Bob Crane played Colonel Robert Hogan, the ranking officer among the American, British, and French prisoners of war at a fictional German prison camp.  


His POW sidekicks included Richard Dawson (a Brit who later achieved fame and fortune as the smarmy host of Family Feud), and Robert Clary (a French Jew who was the only survivor among thirteen family members who were sent to concentration camps).


The three main Nazi characters in the shows were played by German or Austrian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after Hitler’s ascension to power.


*     *     *     *     *


Sigrid Valdis had a guest role in one Hogan’s Heroes episode in its first season, and then took over the role of Hilda, the German POW camp commander’s secretary, for the rest of the series’s run.  


Hilda and Hogan did a lot of canoodling.  She betrayed her Nazi superiors by giving Hogan information that helped his espionage and sabotage missions to succeed.


Her first husband died in 1967.  Crane and his first wife were divorced in 1970, and he married Valdis later that same year.  (Is it possible he jumped the gun a little?  Just sayin’.)  


The two were wed on the set of Hogan’s Heroes:



Richard Dawson was Crane’s best man.


*     *     *     *     *


Hogan’s Heroes was a top ten show in its first season, which gave someone the bright idea of having the cast members record an LP.


The Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II album, which was released in 1966, included not only a number of songs that were hits during World War II – including “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” “Lili Marleen,” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” – but also a new version of the TV show’s theme song, the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”



The show’s opening credit sequence featured an instrumental theme by famed film composer Jerry Fielding.  Fielding wrote some very clever lyrics for his theme, and the new version of the “Hogan’s Heroes March” was released as the initial track of the Hogan's Heroes Sing The Best of World War II album.


Don’t sleep on Jerry Fielding, whose scores for the movies Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and The Outlaw Josey Wales were nominated for Oscars.


And don’t sleep on Bob Crane, who played the drums on the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”  Crane, who was no slouch when it came to drumming, appeared on a number of TV variety shows in the sixties.  Click here to see his 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour


*     *     *     *     *


Things get very dark in the next 2 or 3 lines, which will tell you all about the sordid stuff that Bob Crane got into after Hogan’s Heroes went off the air.


It’s a creepy story, and I’ve chosen a creepy song to feature in that post – a song that has a connection to Crane and his sleazy goings-on.


In the meantime, click here and enjoy the “Hogan’s Heroes March.”

 

Friday, November 20, 2020

Marvelettes – "Don't Mess With Bill" (1966)


I’ll say it one more time

Don’t mess with Bill!


The singer of today’s featured song makes one thing perfectly clear.


There’s Johnny, there’s Joe, and there’s Frank and Jim . . . just to name a few.  Feel free to mess with any (or all) of them to your heart’s content.  Just don’t mess with Bill.


I hope you’re paying attention, because I can tell from the singer’s tone of voice that she isn’t kidding around.


All y’all are on notice.  If you mess with Bill, you’re asking for trouble.


Do yourself a favor and just DON’T . . . MESS . . . WITH . . . BILL!  (Just don’t.)


*     *     *     *     *


In 1961, the Marvelettes got an audition with Motown Records after finishing fourth in a Detroit talent show.  (I wonder if any of the top three finishers in that contest had professional success.)


Four of the Marvelettes were still in high school when they recorded their first single, “Please Mr. Postman,” which became the very first Motown record to make it to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”


The next year, the group had two top-20 singles.  But none of their next dozen or so releases achieved more than middling success.



After that long drought, the Marvelettes hit pay dirt in 1966 with today’s featured song, which went gold and made it all the way to #7 on the “Hot 100.”


“Don’t Mess With Bill” was written and produced by Smokey Robinson, and featured most of the group of Detroit studio musicians who regularly performed on Motown records, and who later became known as the “Funk Brothers.”  


Click here to listen to “Don’t Mess With Bill.”


Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:


Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1972)


I never lied to you

I’ve always been cool

I wanna be elected!


From the November 4 issue of the Washington Post:


David Andahl died of covid-19 in early October, just as the coronavirus was pummeling his home state of North Dakota.  But that did not keep the 55-year-old rancher from winning his race for the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. . . .


Posthumous victories like Andahl’s are rare in the United States, though not entirely unprecedented.  Since 2000, at least six dead candidates have won elections at nearly every level of government, from mayoral races in small-town Tennessee to a U.S. Senate seat.


Most recently, Dennis Hof, a brothel owner and reality TV star, won a seat in the Nevada state legislature in 2018.  About three weeks before his victory, Hof was found dead at his Love Ranch brothel outside Las Vegas.


(At least Dennis Hof – like Nelson Rockefeller – died happy.)


*     *     *     *     *


This year, voting began at least 30 days before election day in Alabama, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming.


So if David Andahl had been running for office in any of those states instead North Dakota, a number of voters – perhaps a significant number – might have cast their ballots for him before he died.


Since early voting didn’t begin in North Dakota until October 19 – some time after Andahl’s death – we can assume that everyone who voted for him on November 3 either (1) was not aware that he had died a month earlier, or (2) decided it was better to vote for a dead Andahl than one of his live opponents.



I don’t know about you, but I’ve voted in a number of elections where a dead candidate would have been preferable to the live doofuses who were listed on the ballot.


*     *     *     *     *


Imagine if the Baseball Writers Association of America allowed early voting for the annual Most Valuable Player awards.  In other words, imagine that MVP voters were allowed to make their picks over Labor Day weekend rather than waiting until all the games had been played and the season was over.


That’s a pretty stupid idea, right?  After all, what happens in the last few weeks of a season is likely to be very significant when it comes to choosing an MVP.  It only makes sense for all the voters to cast their ballots after the season is over, when they have access to the full-season statistics that are relevant to a decision.


But we do things differently in presidential elections – which are certainly more important than Most Valuable Player votes.  


*     *     *     *     *


Early voting bothers me.  


Not because it makes it a easier to engage in voter fraud – which it does, of course (at least on a small scale) – but because I feel like it just makes sense for everyone to be voting at the same time . . . like baseball MVP voters.


If you vote two weeks, or four weeks, or even longer before the election, what if some crazy sh*t happens between the day you cast your ballot and election day?  For example, let’s say – I’m speaking hypothetically, of course! – that one of the candidates comes down with a life-threatening medical condition on, say, October 2.


What if you had voted on October 1, or even earlier?  Maybe you’d be happy with your vote regardless because you would have voted for your candidate even if Jesus Christ himself was running against him.


But maybe you would have voted differently if you had waited until later.  


*     *     *     *     *


What if your candidate ended up kicking the bucket before election day – like the unfortunate David Andahl?   


It’s likely that the dead candidate’s party would replace him or her with its vice-presidential nominee.  But the party could decide to name someone else – someone who wasn’t on the ballot at all.


If you had voted early for the dead candidate, maybe you’d be happy with the vice-presidential nominee (or a different replacement) taking the dead candidate’s place. But maybe you wouldn’t – maybe you would have voted for the other party’s nominee  instead.  


I have a feeling that if John McCain had died before the 2008 election and been replaced by Sarah Palin, the Democrats would have gotten a lot more votes.


*     *     *     *     *


I admit that the odds of a presidential candidate dying a few weeks before an election are pretty slim.


But it wouldn’t be at all surprising if something happened after early voting had started that caused a large number of early voters to wish they had waited.  


Maybe a candidate says or does something really stupid a week or two before the election.  (That would be a real shocker . . . NOT!)


Or maybe a drug company announces that its brand-new covid-19 vaccine was 90% effective a week before the 2020 election instead of a week after that election?  


Given that tens of millions of Americans voted early – and given that most of those early voters would have voted for a convicted serial murderer over Trump – it’s possible that an earlier announcement of the news about the vaccine wouldn’t have mattered.


But if everyone had had to wait until November 3 to vote, it’s certainly possible that a pre-election day  announcement that an effective vaccine was just around the corner would have altered the outcome of the presidential vote.  


*     *     *     *     *


There are plenty of examples of presidential elections being won or lost thanks to events that occurred shortly before election day.


For example, only eleven days before the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comes infamously sent a letter to Congress announcing that he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.  (Comey later said that he expected Clinton to win the election, and thought that if he held back on his announcement until after the election, people would accuse him of covering up on her behalf – which would have delegitimized her election from the very beginning.)


What if early voting had been as widespread in 2016 as it was in 2020?  Would that have significantly mitigated the impact of Comey’s action?  I think it almost certainly would have – perhaps Mrs. Clinton would have won despite Comey’s announcement.


(Speaking of e-mails and elections, wasn’t there some kerfuffle about somebody’s e-mails that came out a few days before Election Day 2020 – which was after millions of Americans had already voted?)


*     *     *     *     *


The problems caused by early voting would be mitigated if early voters could change their minds after casting a ballot.  


As I understand it, it is possible to change an early vote in some states, but the process is somewhat complicated, which would discourage at least some people who would like to change their votes from actually accomplishing that.


But most states don’t allow you to change an early vote.  If you vote on October 1 and your candidate comes down with covid-19 – or some shady e-mails are found on his son’s computer – on October 2, you’re stuck.  (No mulligans allowed!)


*     *     *     *     *


I’m not arguing that no one should ever be allowed to vote before election day.


After all, we’ve always allowed absentee ballots to be cast early by voters who were going to be out of town on Election Day, or who had to be at their jobs the entire time that the polls were open.


It seems reasonable to me to have a voting period of four consecutive days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday – which would avoid conflicts with religious beliefs and make voting a lot more convenient for working folks.  (There would still be some people who had a legitimate need to vote absentee, of course, but many fewer would be voting early than did so in 2020.)


Of course, that approach wouldn’t have really addressed concerns about covid-19.  Polling places wouldn’t be as crowded if you spread voting out over four days, but it might not have been possible to maintain perfect social distancing at all polling places throughout the four-day period.  Mailing ballots to voters and allowing them to be deposited in outdoor ballot boxes presumably minimized the possibility of any significant covid-19 spread as a result of voting.


But covid-19 won’t be a concern in 2024, right?  And the odds of us having another pandemic that year are probably no greater than the odds of a candidate being struck by lightning.


I guarantee you that we’re not going back to the old ways of doing elections.  It’s not obvious why early voting would generally favor one party over the other, but in practice it turned out to advantage one party greatly in 2020.  That’s going to make both sides fight like cats and dogs when bills that concern early voting are introduced in state legislatures in the future.


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2 or 3 lines previously featured Alice Cooper’s “Elected” on November 6, 2012 – which just happened to be the day Americans went to their local polling places to elect a President.


I noted in that post that Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign raised a whopping 60% more than the campaign of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.


In 2016, Hillary Clinton and her supporters upped the ante considerably, raising almost twice money as much as billionaire (?) Donald Trump.


Trump and Clinton debating in 2016


The final numbers for 2020 aren’t in yet, but it’s clear that the Democrats had a huge fundraising advantage over their poor Republican cousins.  Going into the final week of the campaign, Joe Biden and Democratic Senate and House candidates had spent $6.9 billion, while Trump and the Republican congressional candidates had spent just over half that amount.


2 or 3 lines is so old that I remember when the fat cats in this country were Republicans, and the GOP was easily able to outspend the Democrats in the elections. 


But those days are l-o-n-g gone.  In 2020, Biden raised over four times as much do-re-mi from Wall Street guys as Trump did.


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to watch the original music video for “Elected,” which is silly-bazilly (especially the part where the chimpanzee lights everyone’s cigarettes). 


And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:


Friday, November 13, 2020

Original Broadway Cast of "Hair" – "Don't Put It Down" (1968)


’Cause I look different

You think I’m subversive

Crazy for the blue, white, and red!


2 or 3 lines is as patriotic as all get-out.  Stick 2 or 3 lines with a knife, and I bleed blue, white, and red!


2 or 3 lines is also strictly nonpartisan.  While the offices of 2 or 3 lines are located in Maryland – a deeply blue state – 2 or 3 lines is not deep blue.  Neither is it deep red.  


2 or 3 lines is, and always will be deep white!


(Hmmmm . . . that doesn’t sound quite right.)


*     *     *     *     *


While 2 or 3 lines is nonpartisan, it does address political issues on occasion – always giving due respect to those who may have a differing point of view . . . regardless of how idiotic that point of view may be:



Today, we’re going to touch on a very controversial political topic – voter fraud.


Republicans have alleged that voter fraud in the recent election was widespread, and enabled the Democrats to unfairly steal that election.  


Democrats deny that charge, and assert that they stole the election fair and square.  


Far be it for little ol’ 2 or 3 lines to opine on which side is right and which side is wrong – I’ll gladly leave that determination to the courts (whose decisions are never influenced by politics).



But 2 or 3 lines did have some first-hand experience with voter fraud last month, and perhaps that experience will help illuminate the larger controversy.


*     *     *     *     *


Sometime in September, the great state of Maryland – whose official state motto is Fatti maschii, parole femine (“Manly deeds, womanly words”) – mailed three 2020 election ballots to my home.


One of those ballots was addressed to me, one to my wife, and one to our youngest child.


That child moved out of our house and into an apartment in a different state almost two years ago, so my understanding is that it would have been voter fraud for him to vote in the Maryland election.  


I could have filled in his ballot myself, signed his name to it, and deposited it in one of the ballot boxes that were located on just about every street corner in my county.  


But I chose instead to prevent any possible voter fraud with regard to that ballot by simply tearing it up and throwing it away.    



As for the ballot addressed to my wife, I likewise could have filled it in myself, forged her signature, and dropped it into a ballot box.  (Given that she usually votes the wrong way, such an action on my part would have been in the public interest.)  


But I am NOT that kind of person, and I didn’t give in to temptation and vote my wife’s ballot for her.


Instead, I tore it up and threw it in the trash along with my child’s ballot, thereby preventing any possible voter fraud.  


*     *     *     *     *


Do you ever wonder why it always has to be “the red, white, and blue”?


Why can’t it be “the red, blue, and white”?  


Or “the white, red, and blue”? 


Or “the blue, red, and white”?


Gerome Ragni and James Rado included all those alternative orderings of the color of the American flag in their lyrics for “Don’t Put It Down,” a song from act one of the 1968 Broadway musical, Hair.



But none of them ever caught on – “the red, white, and blue” is how tout le monde refers to our flag. 


Click here to listen to the original Broadway cast recording of “Don’t Put It Down.”


And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:


Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Harvey Danger – "Flagpole Sitta" (1997)


Paranoia, paranoia

Everybody’s comin’ to get me

Just say you never met me


The last two 2 or 3 lines posts featured two covers of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” which I’ve become slightly obsessed with.

Not nearly as obsessed as Sean Nelson, of course.  He penned a 2018 article for a Seattle alternative newspaper that was titled “Who Sang It Best? The ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ Olympics.”  It discussed no fewer than twenty different recordings of “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”


Writer and musician Sean Nelson

I wanted to learn more about my fellow obsessive, so I checked out his biography on the newspaper’s website. 


It turns out that Nelson has written for a number of well-known newspapers, magazines, and music websites – including the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Pitchfork – and also authored a book on Joni Mitchell.  He’s also worked on independent movies, hosted a radio show, and taught  a songwriting class.


But most importantly, he was the lead singer for Harvey Danger, a Seattle group that recorded what might be the best song of the nineties, the absolutely fabulous “Flagpole Sitta” – a work of true genius and a stick of dynamite to boot.


I’m guessing that Nelson and I are the only two people in the world who are wildly enthusiastic about both “Anyone Who a Heart” and “Flagpole Sitta” – two songs that couldn’t be more different.  So I’ve sent him a series of increasingly desperate e-mails in hopes of interviewing him for 2 or 3 lines.


No reply yet . . . but I haven’t given up hoping that I’ll hear from him, and that he’ll become my new best friend!


I originally wrote about “Flagpole Sitta” almost exactly ten years ago.  What follows is a slightly edited version of that post.


*     *     *     *     *


I had a plan for what was going to follow the “Season of the Witch” post.  [NOTE: The previous 2 or 3 lines had featured the Al Kooper-Stephen Stills cover of “Season of the Witch,” which was written and originally recorded by Donovan.]  But when I was listening to that song on my morning bike ride to Lake Needwood a couple of days ago and thinking about the paranoia-related aspects of that song, suddenly the above lines from “Flagpole Sitta” hit me.  


Just like me when I’m mountain biking on Cape Cod, 2 or 3 lines twists and turns and takes little side trails until it doesn’t know where the hell it is.  So let’s forget what I had planned to write – after all, the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley. 


Harvey Danger

“Flagpole Sitta” is a real tour de force of a song.  It’s crazy – but in a really good way.


If “Season of the Witch” is about sly, sixties-style paranoia – one part rational fear of the FBI and the police (and all those government agencies they’re keeping hidden from us) and one part marijuana overconsumption – “Flagpole Sitta” is about paranoia as plain ol’ insanity.


At first, the song is amusingly snarky:


Been around the world and found

That only stupid people are breeding

The cretins cloning and feeding

And I don’t even own a TV


But later it gets really creepy:


Put me in the hospital for nerves

And then they had to commit me

You told them all I was crazy

They cut off my legs now I’m an amputee, Goddamn you


Didn’t see that coming, did you?  It’s all rather Girl With the Dragon Tattoo-ish, isn’t it?  (Now there was someone who had good reason to paranoid.)  



It’s like the old saying – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.


The first line of the chorus is “I’m not sick, but I’m not well.”  The second part of that sentence is clearly true – I’m not sure about the first part.


*     *     *     *     *


By the way, flagpole-sitting was a real phenomenon back in the 1920s.  The fad began when a friend dared stunt actor Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly to sit on a flagpole. Shipwreck’s initial 1924 sit lasted 13 hours and 13 minutes, but his record was quickly broken by many others.  


In 1929, Shipwreck decided to reclaim the title. He sat on a flagpole for 49 days in Atlantic City.  



But the following year, Bill Penfield sat on a flag pole in Strawberry Point, Iowa, for 51 days and 20 hours. 


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to watch the official music video of “Flagpole Sitta.”


Click here to watch the first office lip dub video ever made – which just happened to feature “Flagpole Sitta.”  It was made in 2007 by the staff of Connected Ventures LLC, a new media network and development company with headquarters in New York City.  (I need to make sure none of my mutual funds own stock in this company, because doing actual work doesn’t seem to be a high priority for the employees.)


Click here for another lip dub video of “Flagpole Sitta.”  (Not as well done as the previous one, but the girls who did it are in bikinis most of the time.) 


What the heck – click here for one more “Flagpole Sitta” lip dub video.  (This girl is not a very good lip-syncher, but she’s supercute!)


Here’s a link to use if you want to buy “Flagpole Sitta” from Amazon: