I've got pictures:) He had spunk:(
Aug. 30th, 2021 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogYesterday's crops. Plants, then poets. No pups, except one at the latter.
The Lehigh Valley Trail is a short but sweet repast that Pepper came to know in the company of mostly older dogs who are now passed on. It's an occasional trip now, and I think we only passed one other doggo the whole time, so I went with a color motif in the surrounding trees and shrubs:
A little red-
- then a little rust-
-a patch of yellow (golden, if you must;)-
- Some black walnut fruits that look pretty green-
- plus pinkish purple to be seen-
- and last, not least, the rarest view
of an invasive species, the Mylar blue;)
----
We got home for more kitchen fun from the day before, then decided on another poetry adventure. This one is sometimes a competitive Slam among the signups, but this time was just an open mic on the small but beautiful triangle along Elmwood Village's Bidwell Park.
Brandon once again hosted, in the company of his very good dog-
- and our friend Ashley from Wednesday night Zooms was first up after we arrived-
- Next was JB, who we occasionally see in the group but is friends with us both-
- followed by two new-to-us: Robin (reading from a manuscript she's hoping to publish)-
- and Demetria, who already reached out through Ashley and we quickly became friends-
All have stories. All have rhyme and reason. We are blessed to share these moments.
And back home, we even shared this unexpected blessing:
Our oldest and youngest (it was Jack's first birthday yesterday:), as close to cuddling as we've ever seen them. That was Saturday mid-morning, about four hours after I broke up a hissing, hair-pulling fight between the two of them where one of them scratched me. Eleanor thinks drinking my blood may have calmed them down.
Sparkly;)
----
Tempering the happiness of the day was hearing of the death of Ed Asner- from a local friend who spent time in Hollywood in the 70s and got to work with him on and off various sets. Asner was most recently in the hilarious Dead to Me as a nursing home patient (where they presciently killed off his character toward the end of Series Two), but of course to my generation he will always be Ohhhhh, Mister Grant! from the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the star of his own dramatic series Lou Grant which followed.
I responded on Facebook by posting the opening credits of the latter's first season, one of the best examples of Circle of Life I've ever seen. Other than the female lead reporter being switched out after that season, the cast remained remarkably stable for its entire five year run, and the stories and setting were spot-on realistic for the lower-league print journalism worlds I then worked in, both in Ithaca and eventually Syracuse. When I visited the latter's newsroom in my final year (a fairly rare occurrence), I'd usually start humming the jazzed-up theme to the show when the Dome and MONY-Towered skyline suddenly popped into view from the I-81 outskirts south of downtown. Years later, when Aaron Sorkin bought The Newsroom to HBO, it always seemed more a spiritual descendant of Lou Grant than of West Wing; Mason Adams's Charlie Hume and Sam Waterston's Charlie Skinner are practically twins, and Nancy Marchand is only a slightly flooflier version of the latter's Jane Fonda.
But back to the theme music: Never one to leave a rabbit hole unexplored, I found myself wondering who that saxophonist was. Since it was set and filmed in Los Angeles, maybe it was Tom Scott of the LA Express (and the eventual Blues Brother)? Perhaps it was one of the soulful ones we'd just seen in the documentary about the 1969 Harlem festival? Turns out, neither: another Blues Brother alum, Blue Lou Marini, did do session work with Patrick Williams, who composed "Lou's Theme" for the later show as well as most of the original music for Mary's, but it was Jerome Richardson on alto sax for all the years that we watched Lou Grant/but we miss mostly MASH.
That led me into a jump into Patrick Williams's discography. He was one of the most prolific theme composers of the era when I was watching a LOT of tubage; he did the themes for many of the other MTM shows, including the original Bob Newhart Show, the very underrated Tony Randall Show, the Rhoda spinoff Carlton Your Doorman, the less successful comedy The Last Resort, and....
WAIT, WHAT?
We know from Carlton Your Doorman. He was the never-seen, always sounding drunk-or-stoned, guardian of Rhoda's apartment building on her own spinoff from Mare of Minneapolis. He was voiced by Lorenzo Music, one of the writer-showrunners of Valerie Harper's series and later known as the voice of Garfield the Cat in an endless series of animations. He has lived on in our home for decades, as the voice we use when various dogs and cats scratch, hiss, pound, bark and meow to get to whatever side of whatever door they are not on. And just as in Rhoda, it is more effective if CYD's voice is only heard and its speaker not seen.
Apparently, though, the suits at CBS were not informed, for in 1980, Lorenzo Music wrote and voiced the lead in an animated episode of Carlton Your Doorman. And like most of the trash that never quite gets completely taken out, it is available on the Internet in all its doormanly glory:
I have yet to sift through this. The animation seems in the style of Ralph Bashki's Fritz the Cat, which no doubt put off the network from ordering a full boat of it. Carlton looks exactly as you would have pictured him, which ruins it in a backward kind of way. I think I'll save it for a night when I'm not cooking and most definitely drinking heavily.
Still, we come full circle to the loss of Lou, for which there's only one last thing to say:
-30-
The Lehigh Valley Trail is a short but sweet repast that Pepper came to know in the company of mostly older dogs who are now passed on. It's an occasional trip now, and I think we only passed one other doggo the whole time, so I went with a color motif in the surrounding trees and shrubs:
A little red-
- then a little rust-
-a patch of yellow (golden, if you must;)-
- Some black walnut fruits that look pretty green-
- plus pinkish purple to be seen-
- and last, not least, the rarest view
of an invasive species, the Mylar blue;)
----
We got home for more kitchen fun from the day before, then decided on another poetry adventure. This one is sometimes a competitive Slam among the signups, but this time was just an open mic on the small but beautiful triangle along Elmwood Village's Bidwell Park.
Brandon once again hosted, in the company of his very good dog-
- and our friend Ashley from Wednesday night Zooms was first up after we arrived-
- Next was JB, who we occasionally see in the group but is friends with us both-
- followed by two new-to-us: Robin (reading from a manuscript she's hoping to publish)-
- and Demetria, who already reached out through Ashley and we quickly became friends-
All have stories. All have rhyme and reason. We are blessed to share these moments.
And back home, we even shared this unexpected blessing:
Our oldest and youngest (it was Jack's first birthday yesterday:), as close to cuddling as we've ever seen them. That was Saturday mid-morning, about four hours after I broke up a hissing, hair-pulling fight between the two of them where one of them scratched me. Eleanor thinks drinking my blood may have calmed them down.
Sparkly;)
----
Tempering the happiness of the day was hearing of the death of Ed Asner- from a local friend who spent time in Hollywood in the 70s and got to work with him on and off various sets. Asner was most recently in the hilarious Dead to Me as a nursing home patient (where they presciently killed off his character toward the end of Series Two), but of course to my generation he will always be Ohhhhh, Mister Grant! from the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the star of his own dramatic series Lou Grant which followed.
I responded on Facebook by posting the opening credits of the latter's first season, one of the best examples of Circle of Life I've ever seen. Other than the female lead reporter being switched out after that season, the cast remained remarkably stable for its entire five year run, and the stories and setting were spot-on realistic for the lower-league print journalism worlds I then worked in, both in Ithaca and eventually Syracuse. When I visited the latter's newsroom in my final year (a fairly rare occurrence), I'd usually start humming the jazzed-up theme to the show when the Dome and MONY-Towered skyline suddenly popped into view from the I-81 outskirts south of downtown. Years later, when Aaron Sorkin bought The Newsroom to HBO, it always seemed more a spiritual descendant of Lou Grant than of West Wing; Mason Adams's Charlie Hume and Sam Waterston's Charlie Skinner are practically twins, and Nancy Marchand is only a slightly flooflier version of the latter's Jane Fonda.
But back to the theme music: Never one to leave a rabbit hole unexplored, I found myself wondering who that saxophonist was. Since it was set and filmed in Los Angeles, maybe it was Tom Scott of the LA Express (and the eventual Blues Brother)? Perhaps it was one of the soulful ones we'd just seen in the documentary about the 1969 Harlem festival? Turns out, neither: another Blues Brother alum, Blue Lou Marini, did do session work with Patrick Williams, who composed "Lou's Theme" for the later show as well as most of the original music for Mary's, but it was Jerome Richardson on alto sax for all the years that we watched Lou Grant/but we miss mostly MASH.
That led me into a jump into Patrick Williams's discography. He was one of the most prolific theme composers of the era when I was watching a LOT of tubage; he did the themes for many of the other MTM shows, including the original Bob Newhart Show, the very underrated Tony Randall Show, the Rhoda spinoff Carlton Your Doorman, the less successful comedy The Last Resort, and....
WAIT, WHAT?
We know from Carlton Your Doorman. He was the never-seen, always sounding drunk-or-stoned, guardian of Rhoda's apartment building on her own spinoff from Mare of Minneapolis. He was voiced by Lorenzo Music, one of the writer-showrunners of Valerie Harper's series and later known as the voice of Garfield the Cat in an endless series of animations. He has lived on in our home for decades, as the voice we use when various dogs and cats scratch, hiss, pound, bark and meow to get to whatever side of whatever door they are not on. And just as in Rhoda, it is more effective if CYD's voice is only heard and its speaker not seen.
Apparently, though, the suits at CBS were not informed, for in 1980, Lorenzo Music wrote and voiced the lead in an animated episode of Carlton Your Doorman. And like most of the trash that never quite gets completely taken out, it is available on the Internet in all its doormanly glory:
I have yet to sift through this. The animation seems in the style of Ralph Bashki's Fritz the Cat, which no doubt put off the network from ordering a full boat of it. Carlton looks exactly as you would have pictured him, which ruins it in a backward kind of way. I think I'll save it for a night when I'm not cooking and most definitely drinking heavily.
Still, we come full circle to the loss of Lou, for which there's only one last thing to say:
-30-
Aw...
Date: 2021-08-31 12:33 pm (UTC)We have found also that cats sort of make their own peace with one another eventually--usually with none of our blood drawn, though. :O
Newsroom--ah, we love that! Never really watched Lou Grant, though--and I didn't realize it was more drama than comedy. The mention of all the previous series here, though, is certainly a walk down memory lane. I haven't given Carlton a thought for years...
I did see on the news that Ed had passed. Every time someone I remember from a series like this goes, I feel like one more connection to my youth is gone. :(