Wednesday, September 30, 2020
When They Were Young . . .
Donald Trump, age 4
Donald Trump with wife Ivana, Donald Trump Jr (top), Ivanka and Eric (bottom)
Joe Biden, age 10
Joe Biden, age 26
Mike Pence, age 18
Kamala Harris with her younger sister, Maya, and their mother outside of their apartment on Milvia Street in Jan. 1970.
Kamala Harris graduating from Howard University, 1986, aged 22
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, age 2
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, High School photo, 1950
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Dec. 1953 when she was a Senior at Cornell University
Kanye West. 1993
Mariah Carey, 1982
Pink, 1993
Beyonce, 1995
Kris Jenner, age 19
Clint Eastwood, 1949
Eminem, 1989
Richard Nixon, high school football 1930
Barack Obama, age 20
Bernie Sanders, university photo
Bernie Sanders, 21, arrested in 1963 during a civil rights demonstration in Chicago, protesting segregation.
Nancy Pelosi, age 20, with President John Kennedy
William Barr, Yearbook photo
Hillary Rodham Clinton, sixth grade
Plus a few local ones . . .
A very young Scott Morrison
Scott and Jenny Morrison, both in Year 12
Julia Gillard aged 21 as the President of the 170,000 strong Australian Union of Students 1983
Malcolm Turnbull with his father
Gough Whitlam
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Parodies: The Song of Hiawatha
Parody:
Writing, music, art, speech, etc. that intentionally copies the style of someone famous or copies a particular situation, making the features or qualities of the original more noticeable in a way that is humorous.
Cambridge Dictionary
I came across a parody of The Song of Hiawatha, an 1855 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that tells of the exploits of Native American Hiawatha and of his love for Minnehaha. It is a poem that is hard going, albeit unique.
Longfellow
Example: opening words . . .
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing in the sunshine.
Those wishing to read the entire original work can click on:
There have been numerous parodies of The Song of Hiawatha, my own included which appears below.
Even Lewis Carroll had a go, stating in his parody Hiawatha’s Photographing:
In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of 'The Song of Hiawatha.' Having, then, distinctly stated that I challenge no attention in the following little poem to its merely verbal jingle, I must beg the candid reader to confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject.
Here is the first verse of Carroll’s parody:
FROM his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
A real side splitter, that!
And my parody? Patience, dear reader.
The Wordsworth original has these lines:
He had mittens, Minjekahwun,
Magic mittens made of deer-skin;
When upon his hands he wore them,
He could smite the rocks asunder,
He could grind them into powder.
A year after Wordsworth’s 1855 work was published, the Reverend George A. Strong (1832-1912) published a parody that was 94 pages long. Here is an example from the Rev’s parody:
In one hand Peek-Week, the squirrel,
In the other hand the blow-gun –
Fearful instrument, the blow-gun;
And Marcosset and Sumpunkin,
Kissed him, ’cause he killed the squirrel,
‘Cause it was a rather big one.
From the squirrel-skin, Marcosset
Made some mittens for our hero,
Mittens with the fur-side inside,
With the fur-side next his fingers
So’s to keep the hand warm inside;
That was why she put the fur-side –
Why she put the fur-side, inside.
Over time the above passage was altered into a short stand alone verse and is now commonly attributed to the prolific writer “Anonymous”:
He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That’s why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.
Okay, now it’s time for my own humble contribution:
By the Avenue of Pennsylvania,
In the wigwam called the White House,
Lived the big chief known as POTUS,
Called The Donald, GOP tribe.
Fought a battle with his rival,
Amtrak Joe, one Democratic.
One man leaves when two men enter,
Fought for days and weeks and longer,
Fighting still this mighty combat.
Who will be the POTUS winner?
Will The Donald leave the wigwam?
We will know on 3 November.
Monday, September 28, 2020
Tatt's good . . .
A Swedish tattoo artist by the name of Stuckliffe has been creating tatts that are amazing by their hyperrealism and beauty.
As a devotee of the needle and the skin canvas long before it was popularised by Cher (part of the attraction being that in those days only sailors, labourers and criminals were inked), it has always confounded me that tattoo artists are somehow regarded as not “real” artists. These pics should disprove that belief . . .
Separated at birth? Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments
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