Okay, not quite Geezer material because, you know, the Beatles. And not quite synchronicity (Andréa sent them to me as “Synchronicity?”).
But while I see what Mr. Rubin was getting at in the first one, I’m not really clear what the joke is. And the Dogs of C-Kennel has me completely stumped.
Comics I Don't Understand 
First one: The song was based on an actual encounter with a
fool. Ha ha, it wasn’t based on some deep thought.
Second one: Alexa is talking to herself because no one else is.
The dogs aren’t using Alexa enough, so Alexa is bored and feeling unappreciated so she has taken to assigning tasks for herself and talking to herself and making snide comments that at least *she* appreciates herself.
They’d seen his face before. He gave them one song by looking, and another one by listening. It was a more inspiring day than yesterday, but tomorrow? Never knows.
And if the pets start talking to each other — I don’t think their human is using them enough.
It took me awhile to get the Rubin, mainly because I was thrown off by the conflation of two songs, but it turns out that is part of the joke. John and Paul, apparently on a hike, were doubly inspired by their encounter with the fool on the hill.
Maybe Mr. Rubin really wants to be a paperback writer.
On a tangental note, would it be inappropriate to plug my self-published ebook?
There’s no need to fear, Mr. Nitpicker is here! The lyric is “. . . nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land . . .” And yet, clearly, this depicted nowhere man is kneeling. Kneeling! Was my childhood just one lie after another?
Minor – plug away. Just remember, you’re the one putting yourself out there. Give me a pitch and maybe I’ll look it up.
Until I realized Alexa was talking to itself, I was trying to find the joke in “something by the Beatles”, since I had a problem once about the difference between “something by the Beatles”, and “Something, by the Beatles.”
CIDU Bill “You’d think it would be easy to come up with a good Beatles-related subject line, but it’s just not happening” –
HELP!
Do you need somebody? Help! Not just anybody? Help! I think you need someone.
I used to be able to rattle off Beatles lyrics when I was younger, so much younger than today….Never needed anybody’s help in any way.
It’s hard to come up with witty headlines eight days a week,
Good Morning! Good Morning!
There was a story in the news about Alexas which were laughing for some reason without user input. That may be what “Dogs” was picking up on. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/03/07/alexas-weird-random-laughter-freaking-people-out/404476002/
Possible Headline: “See the world spinning round”
Saw this item imaged on Spout this morning.
Hunh. Didn’t show up here. It’s a tee shirt printed with a 2×2 divided image, three of Beatles members saying “All you need is love” and finally Yoda saying “Love is all you need.”
You can look at “https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/ef/62/15ef62dbb2f24115d1a5e6f9e3f8d32d.jpg”
Poor Ringo, got left out again.
Well, he only got knighted last week.
Wait, what? You mean Ringo got knighted? I didn’t hear – bully for him!
Yes, by Prince William. Article here –
http://time.com/5207582/ringo-starr-knighthood/
Cool! Sir Richard.
If that’s John and Paul, each one of them got a song–Paul got “The Fool on the Hill” and John got “Nowhere Man.” So that might make sense. Maybe.
“The Fool on the Hill” is about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom The Beatles followed and admired at the time. The point of the song is that people think he’s a fool, but he’s actually very wise. They evantually became disillusioned with him, and John Lennon wrote the song “Sexy Sadie” in criticism of the TM leader.
“Okay, not quite Geezer material because, you know, the Beatles.”
The millenials I know have heard of the Beatles but don’t have any idea what any of their songs are or who the individual beatles were or who many there were or what years they played.
And when I saw the guy’s costume, I thought:
“Expert’s expert
choking smokers.
Don’t you think the Joker laughs at you?
(Ho Ho Ho, Hee Hee Hee, Ha Ha Ha)”
“The millenials I know have heard of the Beatles but don’t have any idea what any of their songs are”
I saw to the proper education of the millennial I raised. I’m not saying she’s an expert on the deep cuts, but she can recognize most of the hits, and sing along to a few of them. There are other songs that get licensed more for TV shows and movies (probably because the asking price is lower), but they do show up from time to time.
And, of course, Paul was on the Simpsons. Ringo either was or was impersonated (not sure which) because an episode featuring Marge’s artistic aspirations included a segment in which she was infatuated with him and sent him a portrait of himself, and he finally answered it because he had so much fan mail back in the day, it took him a long time to answer it all.
Maybe a dozen years ago, I was at Epcot and they had a very good group of Beatle impersonators performing. Some of the crowd was my age, but a lot were 20- and 30-something parents with toddlers, cheerfully bouncing the kids as if this were Sesame Street music. My guess was that their own boomer parents kept the G-rated early Beatles around the house, and they grew up associating the catchy tunes with childhood.
My own childhood included Leroy Anderson pops music, Sing Along With Mitch albums, the Music Man soundtrack, the Longines Symphonette and a smorgasbord of old 78s. The Beatles were then brand-new big-kid music.
When I was young my parents listened to Kingston Trio, Limelighters and Irish Rovers, and then some New Age music and easy-listening radio. My mom preferred any Beatles music to be performed by artists such as The King’s Singers, or, better yet, as instrumentals. She just couldn’t appreciate the original recordings.
Anyone who has ever had a border collie knows that you have to give border collies work to do. Otherwise they will assign chores to themselves, for instance taking all of the towels out of the laundry basket and distributing them around the room and then putting them all neatly in the basket again. So that’s what I thought of when I read the Alexa comic. Is there a border collie in the strip? There was one in “Kevin and Kell” for a while and there were lots of border collie in-jokes.
When I was young (so much younger than today) my parents and Robert’s parents raised us and – at least my – siblings on Big Bands, Broadway, movie,Gilbert & Sullivan, early rock and roll (there was only early rock and roll then), classic and etc. music. We just presumed that other people of our age were raised on the same. We were shocked to find out that people of our age – mostly within 5 years older – have never heard of much of this music. I figured that children just grow up the music of their parents’ generation as their parents play it and listen to it. They also seem to have never heard of movies from the 1930s and 40s- maybe even some from the 1950s. Major stars of our parents and our young childhood are foreign to them – and they are our age or just older. Heck, I have a niece and 2 nephews who know this stuff.
We were going for some time to “classic”movies on Monday afternoons. (The movies were all off copyright so a few of them were much more classic than others.) We were in our late 50s when we went (since discontinued), so we were basically “the kids” of the crowd (except a woman in a wheelchair with her attendant, both of who were on the younger side). They showed one of the short movies made during WWII of big bands playing music with little plot, just enough to make it into a movie – not a well known one,or at least not one we had seen before. The people around us – again, they were all much older than us and of the generation who should remember the big bands – did not seem to know who most of the bands were or the shtick of the various bands or even the songs – surprised the heck out of us.
Unrelated comment to the theme – which I may find otherwise mentioned as I work my way backwards in the posts from today’s to last Tuesday’s –
During the big March For Your Lives event in Manhattan this past Saturday, Paul Mc McCartney was interviewed near the start of the March on the upper West side of same near Central Park. When asked why he was there he said “A very good friend of mine was shot and killed not far from here.” (or something very similar). I thought it a great simple statement of a friend missing a friend – not a celebrity comment.
(Not sure if I need to add, this is close to where John Lennon was shot.)
One of the Kinks’ later songs is a tribute to the Big Band Era.
I was born in 1977 but I mostly listen to music written before I was born (though I’ve lately been expanding to music written before I turned 5). Including a lot of Beatles.