SOME THINGS I’D LIKE TO SEE GO AWAY SOON

We all suffer from occasional iconic overload. Here are some things I've had more than enough of.




Ikea. Besides the cheap, spindly furniture, they gave their employees bikes, instead of money, as holiday bonuses. Nothing against bikes, but that’s what your parents and Santa are for. To add insult to injury: the bikes required assembly.

“Jersey” anything, and The “Real” Housewives of anywhere. Seriously, do you actually know anyone like that? Oh, and a fake orange tan after Labor Day? Fail.

S#*! My Dad Says. The Twitter page was hilarious for about 20 minutes. When will people learn: Hollywood ruins everything.





Those little white decals, of a nuclear family or some spinoff of Calvin & Hobbes, on the back windshield of cars and vans. It’s not cute if everyone’s doing it. Honorable mention: “Baby On Board” signs. They make people want to intentionally rear-end you, just to knock some reality into your brat in the back seat.

Radio Personalities. Besides the two words being mutually exclusive, aren’t we just over that as a form of entertainment? Isn’t it time for that to just retire, like movie theater Newsreels and carnival barkers?

 “Lazy-Folks” gadgets and products. Admit it, some of you actually bought Snuggies. You know who you are.

Auto-Tune, and every recording artist who relies on it. Getting rid of that alone will thin the herd considerably.





The Palins. All of them. Except Michael from Monty Python.

Constantly being asked to care about water on Mars, the reproductive habits of celebrities, or what Oprah thinks you should be reading. If you honestly believe Oprah has time to sit down and read entire books, please send me a color postcard of your home planet.



 

Lady Gaga.






“American Idol”, “America’s Got Talent”, or any other American no-talent show that promotes glorified Karaoke, with people whose musical “training” has entailed standing in front of a bedroom mirror, singing into a hairbrush.

The recent mushroom-like proliferation of Classic Rock radio stations in major Metro areas. Classic Rock Station? Fine. Five or six of them within a 3-county area? C’mon… how much ZZ Top are you nostalgic for?





People getting famous for having multiple-birth families. It never ends well. Did we learn nothing from the Dionnes?





What did I leave out? Feel free to add to this list. (pleeze keep it G-Rated tho.)  :)

EW, GIRL COOTIES!

I drew this portrait of an adolescent Bambi and Faline, in the process of becoming quite "twitterpated". I noticed the original movie still on the back of an old record. It's water based marker and wax pencil. I don't illustrate nearly as much is I should, but I have to draw Bambi at least once every few years. He's like an old childhood friend.

Within the cocoon of cultural oppression beat the wings of artistic freedom.

Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen was born in Florida in 1911, and worked on the stage until her Hollywood debut in the late 1930s. She gained the moniker “Butterfly”, because she was fidgety; always fluttering with her hands. The film role for which she’s best remembered is “Prissy”, Scarlett O’Hara’s panicky maid in the 1939 classic Gone With The Wind.

Other notable roles included parts in The Women, Flame of Barbary Coast, Mildred Pierce, and the radio show “Beulah”. Unfortunately she never really overcame that stereotype relegated to playing maids and servants, but she was highly admired as a character actress, and provided some much needed diversity and comedy relief to what could otherwise have been some pretty one-dimensional films. In her personal life she was quite the scholar; she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from New York City College.

True to the famous quote by her character in GWTW, McQueen indeed knew “nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies”. She never married nor had any children.

Butterfly McQueen flew away for good in December 1995, at the age of 84.

“I never met a man I didn’t like.” Many people have made similar statements, but when Will Rogers said it, we believed him.

William Penn Adair Rogers was born in 1879 in Oologah Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and was both a cowboy and an Indian; part Cherokee on both sides of his family. As for the cowboy side, Rogers was a champion with a lasso, and even set some performance records. He started his modern entertainment career in vaudeville, and progressed to a few movies and wrote editorials for the New York Times. He was best known for his observational wit, and became the voice of the Everyman, with an iron hand of political and corporate commentary, cloaked in the velvet glove of his unique brand of homespun humor. “We only get to vote on some man;” he quipped, “We never get to vote on what he is to do.” The most significant thing about Rogers’ many quotes (and those tenuously attributed to him) is not just what was said, but that they’re more poignant today than ever.

America lost its most constructive critic in a plane crash near Point Barrow, close to Alaska, in 1935. Will Rogers was 55.

LARGER THAN LIFE

Towering (6'7") actor James King Arness was born in Minnesota in 1923, and as an adult he became a radio announcer, and eventually made his way to Hollywood. Arness first gained notoriety in Sci-Fi films like The “Thing From Another World”, and “Them”.

In 1955, CBS-TV planned a new television show, based on the popular Western radio program Gunsmoke. The lead role, of U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon, was portrayed on radio by the incomparable voice actor William Conrad, but CBS wasn’t interested in casting the stocky, balding Conrad in the TV role. Actor John Wayne was approached, but he didn’t want the role, and suggested his friend Arness. The statuesque, rugged Arness was perfect, and for the next 20 years, personified the ultimate Western lawman. Gunsmoke became one of the longest running TV shows in history, and Arness then went on to portray more law officials in other shows, forever associated with the long shadow of authority.

James Arness died in 2011, at the age of 88. His younger brother was actor Peter Graves.

YOURS, MINE AND OURS

She has been known as “The Queen of Comedy,” and “The First Lady of Television,” but we all know her as simply Lucy.

Lucille Desiree Ball was born in Jamestown, New York in 1911, and was a “Goldwyn Girl” in Hollywood in the early 1930s. For the rest of the decade, Lucy honed her comedic skills, and in 1940, she began the most memorable and powerful partnership in television history, when she married Cuban bandleader Desiderio Arnaz. Lucy and Desi remained married for 20 years, and in that time built a TV empire, producing and starring in the hit TV sitcom “I Love Lucy”, based on a comedy radio program Lucy had starred in, called “My Favorite Husband”. Eventually, Lucy became the first woman to own her own film studio, along with Desi, called “Desilu”. The venture (later sold to Paramount) made Lucy and Desi multi-millionaires.

If you believe urban legends, Lucy also helped with the war effort, albeit inadvertently. It was rumored (though never proven) that she aided the authorities during WWII, when she reported picking up Morse-coded Japanese radio signals via the metal fillings in her teeth.

Lucille Ball passed away in 1989, at the age of 77.

A KIND OF IMMORTALITY

If there is a literal poster child of the brightly-lit illusion of show biz, it has to be young Peg Entwistle.

She was born in Wales in 1908, to British parents, and her family came to America in 1912. By the 1920s, Peg had a stage career, but film was her major ambition. Unfortunately, movie stardom eluded her: she landed a bit part in a 1932 film called “Thirteen Women”. And that was all.

Eventually the resulting despondency and depression got the better of Peg, and on a late summer evening in 1932, Peg ventured out alone to a point on Mount Lee, above Santa Monica, to the 50-foot “Hollywood” sign (it read “Hollywoodland” back then). She found a workman’s ladder, and climbed to the top of the “H”, and leaped to her death. Later, a suicide note found in her purse read: "I'm afraid I'm a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this thing a long time ago it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E." Peg was 24 years old. Unbeknownst to Peg, at the time of her death, a letter had been delivered to her home, offering her another bit part in a film: the part of a woman who commits suicide at the end of the third reel.

Peg’s story did not end with her untimely death, however. Her memory lingered with the superstitious Hollywood community, and does to this day. It’s even said that people light candles for her in local churches; she is considered the patron saint of Hollywood starlets – and unrealized potential… a spirit of what was, and what could have been.