More Creeping Meatballism

Creeping Meatballism made me think more about its author, Jean Shepard.  Shepard who wrote Meatballism which appeared in Mad Magazine in 1957 was a great story teller in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. 

He made some recordings, recounting wonderful tales but his greatest achievement was taking a simple story of a child and turning it into A Christmas Story, the wonderful movie where we all feared, "Ralphie, you'll shoot your eye out."

References to Shepard can be found at a number of websites including WBAI where they play his material on a regular basis. It appears, coincidentally ,he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame earlier this month.  I wonder what took them so long.

That led me to the American Film Institute to check some of their lists. On the AFI list of the 100 Greatest Movies,  we find at number 11, It's A wonderful Life.  Yucch. This is the other Christmas movie repeatedly shown by the networks every holiday season.

You wanna watch Jimmy Stewart flailing through the script or Ralpie flailing away at the school bully?

Now get this. A Christmas Story is not on the list. Cool. I can accept that. So I trucked on over to the list of the 100 Funniest Movie.  It is not on that list either.

Whatta a bunch of rummies.  At least they got some great Brando and Bogart films in the Greatest Quotes List and the Greatest Films list.

On the subject of 1950's, and crusaders against Creeping Meatballism, check out Lord Buckley the hippest dude between Los Angeles and Paris, no matter which way you flew. James Dean dug His Majesty.  Check out Buckley's own riff of their meeting. Another, Buckley recount of this meeting with the great swinger, James Dean.

For brief bio of His Royal Hipness check out Oliver Trager, author of Dig Infinity: The Art and Life of Lord Buckley.

My favorite pieces include My Own Railroad, God's Own Drunk, The Nazz, and of course The Black Cross

"You don't b'lieve nothin'," roared the white man's preacher.
"Oh yes Ah does," said old Hezikiah,
"Ah b'lieve that a man's beholden to his neighbahs
Widout de hope of Heaven or de fear o' hell's fiah."

There's a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked...
They hung Hezikiah as high as a pidgeon,
And the nice folks around said, "He had it comin'
'Cause the son-of-a-bitch didn't have no religion!"

And of course, there is was 1957 and the Crown Prince was rapping, as in L.B. Rapping which is on "Wild Truth, The Tales of Lord Buckley, #6. You can usually find his stuff on eBay where his son sells some CDs and once in while a wax disc shows up, If you can find Buckley's Best, World Pacific WPS-21879, grab it.

Comments

[Barry Orton]

Paul,

I grew up fighting sleep every night listening to Shep on WOR in the early 60's. I've invested in quite a few tapes from the guy who does the WBAI show; they are wonderful for late night listening. You'd enjoy them, especially his take on political stuff.

Barry