I had a challenging week full of disappointing conduct by people I considered friends. It was beyond irksome. At one point I found myself repeating one of my mother’s favorite phrases, “I’m so angry that I could eat nails and spit bullets”

I’ll get over it, but I don’t feel like writing an expansive introduction. Let’s get on with it.

This week’s theme song was written by Zachary Richard in 1990 for his Women In The Room album. It was Zach’s attack on the citadel of commercial success. That’s a fancy way of saying he tried to hit the big time. It didn’t really happen for him until he started recording French language albums and hit it big in Quebec and France.

We have two versions of Zach’s Who Stole My Monkey: the promo video and live at Jazz Fest. I was there.

Let’s take a trip to Disambiguation City with a different Who Stole My Monkey. This one was written and recorded by Boozoo Chavis who is also from Southwestern Louisiana.

Now that we’ve monkeyed around in Lafayette Louisiana let’s perambulate to the break.

Three more monkey tunes:

I skipped Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey because it was the Odds & Sods theme song on 2/13/2006.

We begin our second act in earnest by visiting Berlin.

Jay Rayner’s Berlin Meeting With An Ex-Nazi: Jay Rayner is the food critic for The Observer, which is the Sunday edition of The Guardian. He’s a funny foodie whose bad reviews are legendary. I learned something new about Rayner: he used to cover right-wing extremists before moving to the eatery beatery.

In 1992, Rayner met with a neo-Nazi by the name of Ewald Althans. They met again recently in Berlin. Althans is no longer a Nazi. Instead, he’s something of a gay rights activist. Go figure.

Jay tells the tale at the Guardian.com.

The last word of the segment goes to Ute Lemper:

Buster Keaton: Television Man The great stone-face was not only a silent movie pioneer, he was a television pioneer. It brought him back from Hollywood purgatory.

Dana Stevens has the details in an excerpt from her new book about Buster, Camera Man: Buster Keaton the Dawn Of Cinema and The Invention of the Twentieth Century. An accurate but not exactly snappy title. Get thee to Vanity Fair.

The last word of our second act goes to Talking Heads:

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth Casting Edition: This is in the nature of a follow up to this week’s Pulp Fiction Thursday. Here’s Truman Capote surrounded by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toby Jones who played him in Capote and Infamous, respectively.

Born On This Day: The January 29th babies are like a can of mixed nuts when combined.

In order of appearance: Feminist pioneer Germaine Greer, drunken comic WC Fields, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis,  and Oprah Winfrey who needs no introduction and I don’t feel like giving her one in any event.

Fields and Louganis were wet in radically different ways…

The Teevee List: I’ve only listed shows that have ended, which is why awful rich people shows Succession and Billions are missing. I would have skipped Ray Donovan were it not for the movie finale that just aired on Showtime.

My Top Fifteen Favorite 21st Century American Teevee Drama Series

1.    The Sopranos
2.    Mad Men
3.    The Americans
4.    Deadwood  
5.    The Wire
6.    Justified
7.    Boardwalk Empire
8.    Six Feet Under
9.    The Shield
10.    Ray Donovan
11.    Breaking Bad
12.    Bosch
13.   Goliath
14.   Battlestar Galactica
15.   Boston Legal

I realize putting Breaking Bad at #11 will be controversial in many quarters. I just never connected with that show the way I did with others on the list. I recapped three of the series: Mad Men, The Americans, and Boardwalk Empire. I liked and respected Breaking Bad but never loved it.

Saturday GIF Horse: Here’s January 29th baby William Claude Dunkenfield playing pool:

Godfrey Daniel, that must have hurt. At least no children were injured in the filming of that scene.

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk down with some more music.

Saturday Classic: Hey, hey, I asked some Monkee besotted musician friends what their favorite Monkees album was: Hey, hey, it’s this one. Thanks guys.

That’s all for this week. The last word goes to Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr.