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Saturday Odds & Sods: You Keep Me Hangin’ On

Golconda by Rene Magritte.

After a deluge on Mother’s Day, we’re having Indian spring in New Orleans. Is there such a thing? If there’s not, there should be. The best thing about it is that the oak pollen that plagued me got its ass kicked by the rain.

I’ve never re-used an Odds & Sods featured image within a month before, but it’s a perfect fit with this week’s theme song. Besides, if you blog long enough, you end up repeating yourself, repeating yourself, repeating yourself. One side benefit of the vinyl revival is that everyone knows what a broken record is, what a broken record is, what a broken record is. It’s time to lift the needle and move on.

Motown May continues with the Supremes. The crack songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote You Keep Me Hangin’ On in 1966. It was a number one hit song with a bullet, with a bullet, with a bullet. The preceding was an inside joke for hardcore Zappa fans. Everyone else can move on to the next paragraph.

We have two versions for your listening pleasure: the Supremes original and a 1967 “psychedelic rock” cover by Vanilla Fudge, which was also a  top ten hit. I put psychedelic rock in quotes because it’s one of those phrases that’s like ketchup or mayo: some people slather it over everything.

Now that we’ve hung on as well as out, let’s jump to the break. Perhaps all this hangin’ means we’ll land in a hangar. One more thing:

I nearly used Que Sera Sera as this week’s theme song. But I decided to stick to my Motown guns. Here’s the splendid Dave Alvin cover that I planned to use along with the Doris Day original:

One more thing about the Divine Doris’ theme song. It led to a classic Archie Bunker malaprop. He was wont to say, “Que seroo, seroo.” Whatever, meathead.

We begin our second act with a creepy story about growing up in a creepy cult. It gave me the creeps and got me singing Jeepers Creepers.

Lyman Family Values: I never expected to write about the Lyman cult again but life is full of unexpected twists. I wrote about them in an Album Cover Art Wednesday post featuring Jim Kweskin’s America. The noted folkie was a hardcore member of the Lyman family.

Screenwriter Guinevere Turner grew up as a member of the Lyman cult and has written a fascinating piece about it for the New Yorker. She even mentions Kweskin:

Jimmy was the least scary of all the adult men: he had taught me how to play the banjo and sang kids’ songs with us, making us laugh.

It’s a remarkable story. Make sure you read it.

I think we need a musical palate cleanser after that disturbing segment:

One of the funniest, craziest, and most profane comedies in television history had its finale last Sunday. They stuck the landing with one of the wildest episodes yet.

Farewell To Veep: I love Veep. It never failed to make me laugh. Big laughs, belly laughs, Mel Brooks-level laughs. Vulture’s Jen Chaney hung out with the Veep gang as they prepared for the finale and filed a report about the experience.

Selina Meyer was Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ ultimate role. Julia is a nice woman who has specialized in playing awful people. Selina was her evil masterpiece. She actually put her former aide turned minor league Trump, Jonah Ryan, on the ticket. Here’s how Selina defended the pick to her horrified staff:

Trust me, Amy, I’ve been veep, and there is no safer place to stick Jonah Ryan in all of Washington, D.C. Being vice-president is like being declawed, defanged, neutered, ball-gagged, and sealed in an abandoned mine shaft under two miles of human shit. It’s a fate worse than death. Besides, I’m not going to die. I have the heart and the twat of a cheerleader who’s only done anal.

That wasn’t even the worst thing Selina did in the series finale. She threw her devoted body man, Gary, under the bus, then backed it over him. Ouch.

Speaking of brilliant comic actors, we lost one of the greats this week.

Tim Conway, R.I.P. It’s been a sad week for my inner child. Another fixture of my youth, Tim Conway, died at the age of 85. Tim always cracked me up whether it was on The Carol Burnett Show or that underrated gem, McHale’s Navy.

He was a doofus with style as well as a fabulous physical comic. If there’s a comedian’s heaven, he and Harvey Korman are there having a helluva time. Pratfalls will be involved.

The best tribute to Tim Conway is to post some clips:

Finally, the first episode of McHale’s Navy when Conway’s Ensign Parker joins the crew:

Joe Flynn as Captain Binghamton slays me every time: “What, what, what.”

We raise the curtain on our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth: It’s time for the casting subset of SAB. I’d love to see Sam Waterson play Bobby Three Sticks. He played prosecutor Jack McCoy for 16 years so he’s qualified on many levels. Besides, it would make Athenae happy and that’s what matters here at First Draft.

Sam, of course, could only wear white shirts since Mueller is strictly a white shirt kinda guy. He’d need a haircut and/or some gel as well.

Tweet Of The Week: In 2014, the Krewe of Spank mocked the transformation of New Orleans into Dizneylandrieu. With another example of our prophetic powers. I submit for your consideration a photo tweet from blog pun consultant, James Karst:

It’s a small fucking world after all; even at OPP at the corner of Tulane and Broad. Speaking of Dizneylandrieu, here’s the Spank 2014 button collection:

FYI: OPP= Orleans Parish Prison.

Button, button, who’s got the button? On Veep the answer was always GARY.

Saturday GIF Horse: Here’s Gary giving his beloved a pep talk long before she threw him to the wolves.

Betrayal thy name is Selina.

Weekly Vintage Music Video: Robert Palmer’s smooth R&B inflected rock stylings made him an artist to be reckoned with in MTV’s heyday.

The robotic Palmer girls became a staple of his videos as well as grist for SNL’s mill in a sketch entitled the Palmer Bunch. I wish the clip were online but it’s not.  This description by the Wicker Breaker will simply have to do:

The Palmer Bunch was a parody of the Brady Bunch only instead of following the merged Brady family we followed Robert Palmer who’s raising all of the girls from his music video who all look the same except for Alice who has the look but dresses like a maid. In the sketch, Geena Davis played one of the girls who wants to be an individual only to only to end up in shock therapy which causes her to give in to being the same.

I don’t know about you but I find the Palmer Bunch simply irresistible:

Let’s close things out with some more music.

Saturday Classic: I’d never heard of this 1961 album until this week, but it’s really good. It returned the Divine Doris to her roots as jazz singer.

That’s it for this week. It’s time for one final tribute to Doris Day. The last word goes to her and Rock Hudson: