Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

And speaking of ac-TORs, here's a question: Whom would you die to meet -- Judy Garland or the latest one-hit wonder? This would seem a stupid question on the face of it -- the sort of question SO stupid no one would ever ask it, but after my recent encounter with BODIES of WUHK in Grate.com* I must, because a lot of hacks turn one-hit wonders into geniuses. Robert "Over the" Hilburn and others such did not get to be exquisite headaches by not seeing the genius in their singularities. For every grunt, for every slant rhyme, for every profanity, for every fifth-rate copying of fourth-rate tunes, for every generous helping of NOODLE, for every drum perforation and guitar smashing, for every brazen stupidity, for the very act of being stupid and proud of it, there must be ART. After all, there is ART in those with more than one hit, isn't there? That their heroes cannot under any definition be considered superior to the past should be obvious even to their champions, but the news hack is nothing without putting the LI in obvious -- or should we say the LIE -- which, though many will deny it a reason, and perhaps plausibly so, might still contribute to the LALATimes (former stomping ground of "Over the") firing 300, or the former ACCENT on NET wiping OVER $5 BILLION in "GOODWILL" from its books.

I am not knocking ROCK for being rock; if these geniuses had a tenth of, say, the Brill Building types -- well, they'd be better anyway. (They won't be as they epitomize GIGO.) The recent memorializing over Buddy Holly et al shows rockers once had a knack. Though rock did not end with that plane crash it may well have been the beginning of.

Speaking of, "That'll Be the Day" puts a smile on your face. [C]RAP takes the smile OFF.

P. S. I am certain the picture above is colorized, but it happens to be a very good one. Now to track down those immortal GAMS.

P. P. S. And since we have mentioned the undying Frances, we should note that in '61 E. Y. "Yip" Harburg wrote a Broadway show based on Offenbach and Aristophanes called The Happiest Girl in the World -- and one of its tunes is called "That'll Be the Day" -- which despite its clever lyrics has that title, and whose presence says even very talented men like Harburg were dense to the culture in the musical's final days.

*This may also help explain why I got so fantastically exercised over THE LAUREATE -- this is precisely the sort of BS a young LAUREATE would write.