Beau Brummels – "Laugh, Laugh" (1965)

Don’t think I'm being funny when I say

You got just what you deserve

I can’t help feeling you found out today

You thought you were too good

You had a lot of nerve

How about we take a break from picking on the Beatles and pick on Silicon Valley multibillionaire Jack Dorsey for a change?

Dorsey, who is the CEO of Twitter, was hauled before the U.S. Senate a few days ago to do some ’splaining about his company’s inconsistent and hypocritical censorship policies. 

Apparently he is planning to dress up as a dishabille mental patient this Halloween, and chose to give the Senators a preview of his costume:

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A few years, Forbes magazine picked the 43-year-old Dorsey – who is the CEO of both Twitter and Square, and who has a net worth of between five and ten billion dollars – the world’s most eligible bachelor.

Dorsey has been linked romantically to a number of women over the years, including Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition model Raven Lyn Corneil – who was some 20 years younger than Dorsey when she met him in 2018 . . . and still is today.

Corneil once told an interviewer that “A man that doesn’t have any passion in the bedroom will never win me over.”

Raven Lyn Corneil

Only she can speak to whether her interest in Dorsey relates more to his abilities as a lover or the fact that he is worth five to ten billion dollars.

But I think that it’s safe to say that Corneil wasn’t won over by Dorsey’s beard.

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That photo of Dorsey was taken while he was getting reamed by a number of U.S. Senators earlier this week.  

The Senator who took the laboring oar during Dorsey’s testimony was Texas Republican Ted Cruz, who tore Dorsey not one, but several new assh*les.

Like Dorsey, Cruz has a beard:

Cruz’s beard doesn’t do him any favors.  But at least Cruz doesn’t look like a guy who sleeps in the doorway of the neighborhood liquor store and takes a dump on the sidewalk every morning.

Dorsey looks exactly like that.

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When I was younger, I would occasionally go a week or two without shaving.  But I never cultivated a full-fledged beard.

I did grow a mustache when I was in college, and I kept it until I was 42.  (I decided to shave it off a couple of days after my youngest child was born.  My wife was surprised when she came home from the hospital – neither she nor my other children had ever seen me without a mustache.)

My mustache was nothing special, but at least it was a real mustache – I’m a pretty manly guy, after all.

When I was in my twenties, I let the mustache grow down to my chinline – along with my shoulder-length hair, my mustache gave me the look of a Mexican bandido, or a taller Charles Manson.

Soon after graduating from law school and beginning work as a federal government lawyer, a female colleague of mine told me that my mustache made me look dangerous.

It was – and remains – the nicest thing a girl has ever said to me.

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If you have a beard, a mustache, or both, get rid of it – especially if you are anywhere near as old as I am.  (I’m speaking mostly to my fellow males.  But my advice applies equally to women.)

Take my word for it: you will instantly look ten years younger without facial hair.

Are you listening, David Letterman?

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Jack Dorsey is quite a bit younger than me, and he may not be concerned about looking older than he really is.

But he should be concerned about looking like a dumpster-diving hobo.  

It would be different if Dorsey really was homeless – in that case, he would deserve our sympathy and our help.

But someone with billions who chooses to look like the way he looks has a screw loose.  Surely he can’t believe that he looks good this way.

Did none of his public relations minions tell him that he work look incredibly ridiculous appearing before the U.S. Senate with that beard?  (Not to mention his nose ring – I didn’t notice the nose ring at first.)

Add to that the fact that he really had nothing persuasive to say in response to the criticisms from Senator Cruz et al. – he looked like a deer in the headlights the whole time – and you will be forgiven for thinking that you never want to invest your hard-earned money in a company run by a doofus like Jack Dorsey.

Dorsey’s fellow Silicon Valley billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, won’t ever be mistaken for George Clooney or Brad Pitt.  But at least he didn’t make things worse with a ridiculous beard, or eccentric haircut, or crazy clothes:

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I’ve made some serious mistakes over the years when it comes to grooming and fashion.

Here I am in 1977 – at the height of my “dangerous” period:

Here I am in 1980 – somewhat less dangerous:

I just have one question about this photo, which was taken a few years later.  Is it my glasses that are crooked, or is it my eyes?

But as bad as those photos are, they pale in comparison to Jack Dorsey’s:

OMG – I just noticed that he’s got a nose ring.  (If you own stock in Twitter, it’s time to SELL!)

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The Beau Brummels were a San Francisco band that came out of the gate strong – their first single, “Laugh, Laugh,” was a top 20 hit in 1965, and the follow-up release, “Just A Little,” did even better.

But they never had another hit.

What happened?  The owners of their floundering record labels – who were also their managers – essentially dumped them, and the major label they signed with next didn’t seem to know what to do with them.

Some critics say their music stands up very well when compared to groups like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Lovin’ Spoonful.  But no one bought their albums.

They broke up in 1968, reunited briefly in 1974, and broke up again the next year.

Click here to read an article about their career that’s aptly titled “Were the Beau Brummels America’s Unluckiest Band?” 

Click here to listen to today’s featured song.

Click here to watch an episode of The Flintstones featuring the “Beau Brummelstones” singing “Laugh, Laugh.”

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

Beau Brummels – "Laugh, Laugh" (1964)

Laugh, laugh, I thought I'd die

It seemed so funny to me

Sometimes you say something that seems so funny to you, but that doesn’t seem at all funny to others.

In 1794, George Bryan “Beau” Brummell joined the Tenth Royal Hussars cavalry regiment – which was known as “The Prince of Wales’s Own” – and quickly became a close friend of the then-Prince of Wales (who later was crowned King George IV).

After leaving the regiment to return to civilian life, Brummell quickly established a reputation as the best-dressed and best-groomed man in England.  Every day, a group of prominent men – the group often included the Prince of Wales, plus assorted dukes, earls, and other aristocrats – would come to Brummell’s house to watch him bathe and dress.

Beau Brummell

Brummell took a bath every day, which made him exceptional in Regency-era London.  He spent hours getting dressed, and often donned different  outfits several times a day.

Brummell’s wardrobe was much simpler and more modern than that of the effeminate London fops who were known as “macaronis” because they had travelled to Italy as part of the “Grand Tour” of European countries that wealthy young English gentlemen traditionally took after completing their educations.  

Brummell eschewed the beribboned wigs, spike-heeled shoes, and heavy applications of perfume that the macaronis favored.  He rarely wore an article of clothing that wasn’t either white, black, or buff-colored, but the cut and fit of his garments had to be perfect.  

The "Prince of Whales"

Brummell and the Prince of Wales – who had put on so much weight that he was called the “Prince of Whales” behind his back – eventually had a falling out.  The story goes that when Brummell and his friend Lord Alvanley encountered the Prince at a masquerade ball one evening, the Prince spoke warmly to Lord Alvanley but made a point of ignoring – “cutting” – Brummell.

Brummell responded by putting an ill-advised question to his companion: “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”

The Prince was not amused by the bon mot, which seems to be somewhat typical of Brummell’s sense of humor, as these excerpts from the Regency History website demonstrate:

The Duke of Bedford asked Brummell for an opinion on his new coat.  Brummell examined him meticulously from head to toe and then said, in a most earnest and amusing manner, “Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?”

Once when Brummell was dining at a gentleman’s house in Hampshire, the champagne was far from good.  Brummell waited for a pause in the conversation and then raised his glass and said, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “John, give me some more of that cider.”

Brummell lived at 4 Chesterfield
Street in London

Brummell eventually had to beat it to France to avoid going to debtor’s prison for his unpaid gambling debts.  His friends eventually managed to get him appointed as the British consul for Caen, a city in Normandy.  The consulate’s job didn’t pay much, and Brummell recommended to the British Foreign Office that the position in Caen be abolished.

Brummell did so hoping that he would be appointed to a more lucrative position, but that’s not how things turned out.  The Foreign Office took his recommendation, but didn’t appoint him to a better job.    He ended up in a French debtor’s prison.

Brummell’s friends obtained his release from the debtor’s prison, but they couldn’t help him when he came down with syphilis.  He was 61 and insane and very badly dressed when he died in a Caen asylum in 1840. 

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The Beau Brummels – somehow the second “L” got dropped – sounded like a British band, but they were from San Francisco.

The story goes that the band chose their name in hopes that their records would end up just behind those of the Beatles in record stores that organized their stock alphabetically.  According to the band’s lead singer Sal Valentino (who was born Salvatore Willard Spampinato in San Francisco in 1942), that story wasn’t true.

“That’s a total myth,” he told an interviewer a few years ago.  “We just needed a name and [the Beau Brummels] sounded good.  We didn’t even know how to spell it.”

Here’s “Laugh, Laugh,” which was produced by Sylvester Stewart – who is better known as Sly Stone:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: