A bit meandering, but today’s BLOTT leads us to the genus of Rodney Dangerfield.
In the fifth grade, my family lived on a US air force base in southern Turkey. I went to school in a one-room Quonset hut. At the time, all I wanted to be in life was an astronaut, cowboy, or a truck farmer. I was leaning more toward the farm – grow my vegetables, take the produce into town, the sweat of my brow would feed my friends and neighbors and community.
Note: not the actual Quonset huts, but they looked just like this. Also, no snow in Adana, Turkey!
But then one day, while playing in a Little League game, I hit an over-the-fence home run. Truth be told, it only cleared the fence by a foot, and if the outfielder had taken two steps to his right and raised his glove, it would have been an easy out.
But it lead me to add “professional baseball player” to my list of future occupations.
My actual 5th grade baseball glove:
In retrospect, I think “cowboy” would have worked out pretty well. Live in a bunk house, stand in line to get a bowl of chili from a grumpy chuck wagon cook named “Cookie”, go into town on Saturdays and order me a double-double.
But… Reality Sets In
There’s a quote by (I think) Mark Twain that goes something like this: “Once a man gets used to clean sheets, his life is over.” [ed. note: I tried to find this quote, but I didn’t try very hard.]
Then you enter this long period I call “Methodist’s Hell.” You worry about everything. You’re responsible for everything. Your back hurts.
Cartoon by Warren Sattler
Semi-Sequitur: Warren Sattler
Warren Sattler (born September 7, 1934) is an American artist and cartoonist, who contributed work to many popular publications from the early 1960s through the 1990s.
A lifelong Connecticut resident, Warren Sattler started cartooning at an early age and was first published in a newspaper at age 15. He got his education at the Wilcox Technical School in Meriden, Connecticut. He later taught at the Famous Artists School from 1957 to 1962.
To honor Mr. Sattler, let’s check out his high school, Wilcox Technical School in Meriden, Connecticut.
H.C. Wilcox Technical High School proudly continues to be a fixture in the Meriden community. Our students learn high-demand technical skills, take college-prep classes and develop career and employability skills. We offer state-of-the-art facilities where students can choose from 13 career technologies.
Alanny Perez, a senior in the Graphics Technology trade was selected to design the new Wilcox Wildcats logo. Alanny began her design process by researching what wilcats looked like, specifically the way the ears pointed. She made multiple thumbnail sketches of her ideas and gained feedback from her teachers and peers.
Anyhow, if you are lucky, you have a chance to live long enough to reflect on it all.
When all your armor has turned to lace….
That’s where Rodney Dangerfield comes in.
A Little Background: Vegetables before Desert
Jack Roy (born Jacob Cohen; November 22, 1921 – October 5, 2004), better known by the pseudonym Rodney Dangerfield, was an American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, and producer. He was known for his self-deprecating one-liner humor, his catchphrase “I don’t get no respect!” and his monologues on that theme.
Early career
At the age of 15, he began to write for stand-up comedians while performing at the Nevele, a former resort in Ellenville, New York…. He struggled financially for nine years, at one point performing as a singing waiter until he was fired, before taking a job selling aluminum siding in the mid-1950s to support his wife and family.[14][15] He later quipped he was so little known that when he gave up show business that “I was the only one who knew I quit.”
In the early 1960s, he started reviving his career as an entertainer. Still working as a salesman by day, he returned to the stage, performing at hotels in the Catskill Mountains, but still finding minimal success. He fell into debt, about $20,000 by his own estimate and couldn’t get booked. He later joked, “I played one club; it was so far out, my act was reviewed in Field & Stream.“
Career surge
Dangerfield reached national prominence appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show in March 1967.
[ed. note: Rodney was 46 when he got his big break. How’s that for hanging in there?]
In March 1995, Dangerfield was the first celebrity to personally own a website and create content for it. He interacted with fans who visited his site via an “E-mail me” link, often surprising people with a reply. By 1996, Dangerfield’s website proved to be such a hit that he made Websight magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People on the Web”
Dangerfield’s one-liner style of comedy
“My fan club broke up. The guy died.”
“Last week my house was on fire. My wife told the kids, ‘Be quiet, you’ll wake up Daddy.'”
“I was ugly, very ugly. When I was born, the doctor smacked my mother.”
“I went to the fights last night, and a hockey game broke out.”
