Mike Kimball, Al Pacino, Alvino Rey, Moby, David Bowie, Jimmy Buffet, Stephen King and Others
Tentative September 29, 2006 Rants for The humble Farmer Public Radio Show which you can hear on the Internet: www.TheHumbleFarmer.com
http://playersring.org/
http://www.playersring.org/2006-2007%20Season/Best%20enemies.htm
Mike Kimball’s, one of Maine’s foremost authors, has written another play called "Best Enemies.” It opens in Portsmouth on October 6 and runs for three weeks. Mike Kimball’s plays usually sell out, so if you'd like to reserve tickets please call 603-436-8123. You don't have to pay until you show up at the theater. You can get the website in my newsletter, the Whine and Snivel.
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1. I don’t know about you, but I had a good time at the Common Ground Fair and I’d like to pass along some of the things I learned there. Mark told me that there is spiritual nutrition in waffles. And this --- Some people say their pottery is unique, but mine really is. That from George the Potter. Someone told me that a suicide bomber had been captured and sentenced to death in Jordan. And a woman wearing a sweat shirt saying that she had climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro left the fair early on Saturday because of the rain.
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2. A woman came up to me at the Common Ground fair and asked where she could get a cup of hot coffee. I said, “You must be new to the area.”
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3. When I meet you, you know what my first question is. “What do you have your doctorate in?” And after that I usually ask you what you do. One woman told me that she was a retired police officer. And I told her that the last time I met a retired police officer was last winter and that in the course of our conversation he said that back before he retired whenever he and his partner found someone causing trouble, they’d haul them into an alley and beat them. And she said, “That wasn’t all that long ago.”
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4. In one of the many delightful but all too short conversations I had with you and other radio friends at the Common Ground Fair, someone brought up the topic of certain toys that we had when we were kids. You can’t even mention them today. They are too dangerous. And it reminded me of three pages of close type that I transcribed off a recording from my best friend who was, for many years, a consummate artist when it came to getting off an airplane in a strange city and within 15 minutes picking up a nice looking woman who would have supper with him. It was my plan to offer this admittedly thin textbook on how to pick up women as an extra premium to anyone who bought a copy of my book. Of course, women could use the techniques to pick up men. I wanted 25 or so procedures but my friend only knew two or three. He said that when you had one that worked there was no need to develop any more. But I can’t bring myself to publish what my friend told me because, in the wrong hands, we are talking about an extremely powerful and dangerous tool. What do you think? Did you have a toy when you were a kid that scares you to death now when you think of it? Yes, we believe in the free dissemination of information, but I should I hesitate to publish what could easily be construed as a handbook for predators? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and I value your comments.
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5. Many people at the Common Ground Fair told me that they enjoyed listening to this show in their cars. For one or two friends this voice was the first voice they heard when driving into Maine for the first time and they wondered if everybody up here talked like this. Many told me that this show helped them with their Friday night drive between work and home. One man told me that listening to my calm and peaceful voice once saved him when he was stuck in his car in a snow storm. Of course, it would be nice to have all these things from you in writing, so people couldn’t accuse me of making them up myself, but for now I have to settle for hearing it from you one-on-one once a year at the Common Ground Fair. Oh, David Bright said that he thinks of the humble as a unit of measure. That is, how far you can drive from the time my show starts until it stops. I would guess that one humble is about from Kittery to Freeport, or from Augusta to Trap Corner, now that the bridge is out on 129. The humble can also be how much lawn you can mow during one show, how many papers you can correct, how many birdhouses you can make or how many pies you can bake. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com What can you accomplish in one humble?
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6. You might be surprised to hear this, but I met people up at the Common Ground Fair who don’t trust the folks who are running our country. And I suppose you might expect this from people with no practical business experience who only have PhDs and MDs. One of them started chewing my ear about electronic voting machines and how it took two 15-year-old kids about three minutes to crack into an electronic voting machine and adjust the count. He said he wouldn’t even feel safe nowadays with a paper ballot, because even then they can adjust the court.
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7. http://www.parabrisas.com/d_reya.php
You might want to Google Alvino Rey. I read up on Alvino Rey and he was a very impressive man. Alvino Rey’s daughter was good enough to say hi at the CGF. She claims to be a regular listener. You can easily believe that I had never heard of Alvino Rey, because if I could afford a truckload of paper I would write a book called, Famous People I Have Never Heard Of. Last week in Philadelphia I sat in the front row while two guys interviewed a singer nobody has ever heard of called Moby. They asked Moby what he thought when he learned that he’d sold 10 million records and Moby said, “Clerical error.” I like Moby. He is a guitar virtuoso, a very astute observer of the human condition, and a very funny man. I think that his critic friends who were on stage with him said that he wrote part of the sound track for a movie called Heat, with Robert Di Nero and Al Pacino, and I plan to see Heat just because I think Moby is a smart guy who should be listened to. Moby mentioned another --- I guess he is a singer --- called David Bowie, and said that when he goes over to David Bowie’s house for a barbeque he thinks to himself, “Wow, I can’t believe that I’m here at my favorite singer’s house having supper with him.” You will remember that it was only a year or two back that I heard of Jimmy Buffet, and that was only because one day he filled up Tenants Harbor with his yacht. One of the filthy rich with a house down there on the harbor saw Jimmy Buffet’s boat in the harbor and sent one of his employees down to invite Jimmy Buffet up for a drink --- thinking that it was Warren Buffet, because my Tenants Harbor neighbor had never heard of Jimmy Buffet, either. But you must know that we all live in our isolated little worlds and I’m going to give you an example. A couple of years ago Jesse Jackson came to Maine for a political rally. When he heard they were going to pick him up in a Mercedes, he said he didn’t want to be picked up in a Mercedes. He wanted to ride in a truck. So he was picked up in a truck. And Jesse Jackson had no idea of who he was riding with when the driver of that truck leaned over to shake hands and said, “Hi, I’m Stephen King.”
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8. And while I’m talking about people I’ve never heard of, there was a very pleasant and inordinately attractive woman who introduced herself to me at the CGF. And while I was talking with this woman she introduced me to her son and her daughter who were also very nice. And I hadn’t talked with her very long before I invited her to come down to our house for supper, just like I do with you and everybody else, even though I couldn’t help but think that she looked like the kind of woman who would be married to a king in some small European country. And when I asked her what she and her husband did, just like I do with you and everybody else, I learned that her husband is a well known singer, whose name I cannot remember, who sang or played or wrote a very popular song years ago that I know I have heard because, as Olive Wendell Holmes once said, it contained words like pie, sky and die that fit together by an amazing coincidence. Isn’t it interesting that I would not be intimidated in the presence of this famous singer, any more than I would be by the most famous football or basketball player on earth, simply because I have never heard of them. But if someone like Jay Davis or David Cole or Matt Dunlap or Will Sugg were to come down for supper I’d be in awe of them because of their achievements.
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9. You’ve heard me say that it doesn’t bother me a bit when someone drops by unannounced for dinner or supper. After all, what is the big deal? The way my wife cooks, although she’d deny it, there is always enough for two more. After her daughter’s wedding banquet, everybody in the family thawed and ate American chop suey for the next two years. Even as I speak there are the remnants of two or three complete meals in the refrigerator --- enough to feed 6 or more people--- something that would be unheard of in the home of a bachelor. Dig it out and throw it in the micro when company comes. And on top of that there are cans of soup in the cellar way and boxes of cereal. I would rather open a can of soup or eat cereal than eat an expensive $10 meal in the best restaurant in the world --- unless you count the crabmeat rolls at Perry’s gas station in Stockton Springs or hot turkey sandwiches at Moody’s Diner. Anyway, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, feels she has to prepare a great meal with special desert for guests. I don’t. I was talking with my third cousin Egon Alexandersson in Falkenburg about this a couple of weeks ago and he said that his father and mother had the same situation in their home. His mother made a big fuss any time anyone would come to visit, but his father Thure didn’t think it was necessary. Thure had a saying that enabled him to be a great host who was always glad to welcome guests and I’m going to copy it out and paste it over the door to our dining room. Dar finns vatnet I kranen --- There is water in the faucet.
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10. Please listen very closely to The humble Farmer. You never know when I might mention your name or repeat something of value that you told me. Yes, I met Sydney Bechet’s godchild at the Common Ground Fair. Her name is Sydney. Two nice women who listen to the show told me that their grandfather played with Red Nichols and the Dorsey Brothers. The name in my notebook is Tracy Perez. Someone else told me that he once heard me quoting him on this radio show just as a whole crowd of people came in the room laughing and talking so he never got to savor, or even hear, his 15 seconds of fame. Even Dave Rowe had to go back to my July 21 archived show to hear the good things I said about his father, Tom Rowe. And while I’m thinking about it, someone, whose name I don’t even dare mention, came up to me at the CGF, looked all around to make sure that nobody was looking, leaned over and whispered in my ear: “If God hadn’t intended for us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”
+
11. Thank you for visiting with me at the CGF. Many of you told me about things that you heard me say over the years that, for some reason, you still remember. You asked me to dig out the story about Paunchamides, the hedonist and Procrastines, the student, and read that again for you. Someone mentioned my theory which explained the origin of language. And Arthur --- Arthur said that when I told about seeing the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents it took him back to his childhood days and running for shelter in England. The boys picked up parts of bombs and brought them into school. He told me that one day they heard planes which they thought were the RAF coming back from bombing Germany, but it was 129 German bombers that flattened Bristol. I’ve put off buying one of those small recording devices and when Arthur said all these things and more, I wish I’d bought one.
And now, just for you, by special request: Without productive, culturally-transmitted language, the proliferation of human culture as a whole would never have taken place. But how did language ever start? For years linguists advanced theories that would account for this singular human phenomenon. We have the ding dong theory, that is, that there is a mystic harmony that exists between sound and meaning. Man was able to give a vocal expression to every external impression. And we have the bow wow theory. That is, that man created language by imitating the sounds of animals. Others believe that man acquired language as the result of evolutionary changes in the structure of his mind. Now, I would like to advance the even more plausible itch theory. That is, that language evolved out of necessity when a man needed to tell his wife where to scratch his back. The first words ever spoken, were probably, “Up, up, over, no, the other way to the right, to the right, up, down just a bit, yah, yah right there. Go round and round right there.”
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12. END. A man came up to me at the Common Ground Fair and said that his name was Harold Mosher and that 28 or so years ago he used to work with me in the Navigator Motel in Rockland for our good friend, the late, great Paul Devine. And Harold asked me if I could remember working with him and I said that I couldn’t. And I said to Harold, “How in the world, after 28 years, can you remember me?” And Harold said, “You used to hang your underwear out to dry in the lobby.”
http://playersring.org/
http://www.playersring.org/2006-2007%20Season/Best%20enemies.htm
Mike Kimball’s, one of Maine’s foremost authors, has written another play called "Best Enemies.” It opens in Portsmouth on October 6 and runs for three weeks. Mike Kimball’s plays usually sell out, so if you'd like to reserve tickets please call 603-436-8123. You don't have to pay until you show up at the theater. You can get the website in my newsletter, the Whine and Snivel.
+
1. I don’t know about you, but I had a good time at the Common Ground Fair and I’d like to pass along some of the things I learned there. Mark told me that there is spiritual nutrition in waffles. And this --- Some people say their pottery is unique, but mine really is. That from George the Potter. Someone told me that a suicide bomber had been captured and sentenced to death in Jordan. And a woman wearing a sweat shirt saying that she had climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro left the fair early on Saturday because of the rain.
+
2. A woman came up to me at the Common Ground fair and asked where she could get a cup of hot coffee. I said, “You must be new to the area.”
+
3. When I meet you, you know what my first question is. “What do you have your doctorate in?” And after that I usually ask you what you do. One woman told me that she was a retired police officer. And I told her that the last time I met a retired police officer was last winter and that in the course of our conversation he said that back before he retired whenever he and his partner found someone causing trouble, they’d haul them into an alley and beat them. And she said, “That wasn’t all that long ago.”
+
4. In one of the many delightful but all too short conversations I had with you and other radio friends at the Common Ground Fair, someone brought up the topic of certain toys that we had when we were kids. You can’t even mention them today. They are too dangerous. And it reminded me of three pages of close type that I transcribed off a recording from my best friend who was, for many years, a consummate artist when it came to getting off an airplane in a strange city and within 15 minutes picking up a nice looking woman who would have supper with him. It was my plan to offer this admittedly thin textbook on how to pick up women as an extra premium to anyone who bought a copy of my book. Of course, women could use the techniques to pick up men. I wanted 25 or so procedures but my friend only knew two or three. He said that when you had one that worked there was no need to develop any more. But I can’t bring myself to publish what my friend told me because, in the wrong hands, we are talking about an extremely powerful and dangerous tool. What do you think? Did you have a toy when you were a kid that scares you to death now when you think of it? Yes, we believe in the free dissemination of information, but I should I hesitate to publish what could easily be construed as a handbook for predators? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and I value your comments.
+
5. Many people at the Common Ground Fair told me that they enjoyed listening to this show in their cars. For one or two friends this voice was the first voice they heard when driving into Maine for the first time and they wondered if everybody up here talked like this. Many told me that this show helped them with their Friday night drive between work and home. One man told me that listening to my calm and peaceful voice once saved him when he was stuck in his car in a snow storm. Of course, it would be nice to have all these things from you in writing, so people couldn’t accuse me of making them up myself, but for now I have to settle for hearing it from you one-on-one once a year at the Common Ground Fair. Oh, David Bright said that he thinks of the humble as a unit of measure. That is, how far you can drive from the time my show starts until it stops. I would guess that one humble is about from Kittery to Freeport, or from Augusta to Trap Corner, now that the bridge is out on 129. The humble can also be how much lawn you can mow during one show, how many papers you can correct, how many birdhouses you can make or how many pies you can bake. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com What can you accomplish in one humble?
+
6. You might be surprised to hear this, but I met people up at the Common Ground Fair who don’t trust the folks who are running our country. And I suppose you might expect this from people with no practical business experience who only have PhDs and MDs. One of them started chewing my ear about electronic voting machines and how it took two 15-year-old kids about three minutes to crack into an electronic voting machine and adjust the count. He said he wouldn’t even feel safe nowadays with a paper ballot, because even then they can adjust the court.
+
7. http://www.parabrisas.com/d_reya.php
You might want to Google Alvino Rey. I read up on Alvino Rey and he was a very impressive man. Alvino Rey’s daughter was good enough to say hi at the CGF. She claims to be a regular listener. You can easily believe that I had never heard of Alvino Rey, because if I could afford a truckload of paper I would write a book called, Famous People I Have Never Heard Of. Last week in Philadelphia I sat in the front row while two guys interviewed a singer nobody has ever heard of called Moby. They asked Moby what he thought when he learned that he’d sold 10 million records and Moby said, “Clerical error.” I like Moby. He is a guitar virtuoso, a very astute observer of the human condition, and a very funny man. I think that his critic friends who were on stage with him said that he wrote part of the sound track for a movie called Heat, with Robert Di Nero and Al Pacino, and I plan to see Heat just because I think Moby is a smart guy who should be listened to. Moby mentioned another --- I guess he is a singer --- called David Bowie, and said that when he goes over to David Bowie’s house for a barbeque he thinks to himself, “Wow, I can’t believe that I’m here at my favorite singer’s house having supper with him.” You will remember that it was only a year or two back that I heard of Jimmy Buffet, and that was only because one day he filled up Tenants Harbor with his yacht. One of the filthy rich with a house down there on the harbor saw Jimmy Buffet’s boat in the harbor and sent one of his employees down to invite Jimmy Buffet up for a drink --- thinking that it was Warren Buffet, because my Tenants Harbor neighbor had never heard of Jimmy Buffet, either. But you must know that we all live in our isolated little worlds and I’m going to give you an example. A couple of years ago Jesse Jackson came to Maine for a political rally. When he heard they were going to pick him up in a Mercedes, he said he didn’t want to be picked up in a Mercedes. He wanted to ride in a truck. So he was picked up in a truck. And Jesse Jackson had no idea of who he was riding with when the driver of that truck leaned over to shake hands and said, “Hi, I’m Stephen King.”
+
8. And while I’m talking about people I’ve never heard of, there was a very pleasant and inordinately attractive woman who introduced herself to me at the CGF. And while I was talking with this woman she introduced me to her son and her daughter who were also very nice. And I hadn’t talked with her very long before I invited her to come down to our house for supper, just like I do with you and everybody else, even though I couldn’t help but think that she looked like the kind of woman who would be married to a king in some small European country. And when I asked her what she and her husband did, just like I do with you and everybody else, I learned that her husband is a well known singer, whose name I cannot remember, who sang or played or wrote a very popular song years ago that I know I have heard because, as Olive Wendell Holmes once said, it contained words like pie, sky and die that fit together by an amazing coincidence. Isn’t it interesting that I would not be intimidated in the presence of this famous singer, any more than I would be by the most famous football or basketball player on earth, simply because I have never heard of them. But if someone like Jay Davis or David Cole or Matt Dunlap or Will Sugg were to come down for supper I’d be in awe of them because of their achievements.
+
9. You’ve heard me say that it doesn’t bother me a bit when someone drops by unannounced for dinner or supper. After all, what is the big deal? The way my wife cooks, although she’d deny it, there is always enough for two more. After her daughter’s wedding banquet, everybody in the family thawed and ate American chop suey for the next two years. Even as I speak there are the remnants of two or three complete meals in the refrigerator --- enough to feed 6 or more people--- something that would be unheard of in the home of a bachelor. Dig it out and throw it in the micro when company comes. And on top of that there are cans of soup in the cellar way and boxes of cereal. I would rather open a can of soup or eat cereal than eat an expensive $10 meal in the best restaurant in the world --- unless you count the crabmeat rolls at Perry’s gas station in Stockton Springs or hot turkey sandwiches at Moody’s Diner. Anyway, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, feels she has to prepare a great meal with special desert for guests. I don’t. I was talking with my third cousin Egon Alexandersson in Falkenburg about this a couple of weeks ago and he said that his father and mother had the same situation in their home. His mother made a big fuss any time anyone would come to visit, but his father Thure didn’t think it was necessary. Thure had a saying that enabled him to be a great host who was always glad to welcome guests and I’m going to copy it out and paste it over the door to our dining room. Dar finns vatnet I kranen --- There is water in the faucet.
+
10. Please listen very closely to The humble Farmer. You never know when I might mention your name or repeat something of value that you told me. Yes, I met Sydney Bechet’s godchild at the Common Ground Fair. Her name is Sydney. Two nice women who listen to the show told me that their grandfather played with Red Nichols and the Dorsey Brothers. The name in my notebook is Tracy Perez. Someone else told me that he once heard me quoting him on this radio show just as a whole crowd of people came in the room laughing and talking so he never got to savor, or even hear, his 15 seconds of fame. Even Dave Rowe had to go back to my July 21 archived show to hear the good things I said about his father, Tom Rowe. And while I’m thinking about it, someone, whose name I don’t even dare mention, came up to me at the CGF, looked all around to make sure that nobody was looking, leaned over and whispered in my ear: “If God hadn’t intended for us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”
+
11. Thank you for visiting with me at the CGF. Many of you told me about things that you heard me say over the years that, for some reason, you still remember. You asked me to dig out the story about Paunchamides, the hedonist and Procrastines, the student, and read that again for you. Someone mentioned my theory which explained the origin of language. And Arthur --- Arthur said that when I told about seeing the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents it took him back to his childhood days and running for shelter in England. The boys picked up parts of bombs and brought them into school. He told me that one day they heard planes which they thought were the RAF coming back from bombing Germany, but it was 129 German bombers that flattened Bristol. I’ve put off buying one of those small recording devices and when Arthur said all these things and more, I wish I’d bought one.
And now, just for you, by special request: Without productive, culturally-transmitted language, the proliferation of human culture as a whole would never have taken place. But how did language ever start? For years linguists advanced theories that would account for this singular human phenomenon. We have the ding dong theory, that is, that there is a mystic harmony that exists between sound and meaning. Man was able to give a vocal expression to every external impression. And we have the bow wow theory. That is, that man created language by imitating the sounds of animals. Others believe that man acquired language as the result of evolutionary changes in the structure of his mind. Now, I would like to advance the even more plausible itch theory. That is, that language evolved out of necessity when a man needed to tell his wife where to scratch his back. The first words ever spoken, were probably, “Up, up, over, no, the other way to the right, to the right, up, down just a bit, yah, yah right there. Go round and round right there.”
+
12. END. A man came up to me at the Common Ground Fair and said that his name was Harold Mosher and that 28 or so years ago he used to work with me in the Navigator Motel in Rockland for our good friend, the late, great Paul Devine. And Harold asked me if I could remember working with him and I said that I couldn’t. And I said to Harold, “How in the world, after 28 years, can you remember me?” And Harold said, “You used to hang your underwear out to dry in the lobby.”
posted by The humble Farmer at 6:15 PM
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