Thursday, November 23, 2017

On Today Of All Days - And Yet They Doubt The Reality of Synchronicity

After posting the late Barbara Cook singing selections from Meredith Willson's magnum opus, The Music Man, I did a little more reading about him.  Just now I found out he wrote and conducted this 1962 classic,  President Kennedy's fitness program's official theme song.



That's Robert Preston's voice, apparently this was composed and recorded during the making of the movie of The Music Man, using the same resources in the movie for the recording. 

How could it not be someone leading me to this information on today's festival of fat, packing on the pounds and vicarious sloth millions sitting in easy chairs watching seriously obese and brain damaged men in a human, drug fueled crash derby?

I don't have fond memories of Kennedy's shaming and coercive sports and competition centered promotion of physical fitness, it had more than a slight amount of militarism about it, as well.  Clearly, it didn't work.   Last time I saw the football star from my high school years, he had about the same shape as Trump.  It was the band members who were more likely to keep their weight down, though I wasn't in that, either.

7 comments:

  1. "I don't have fond memories of [President] Kennedy's shaming and coercive sports and
    competition centered promotion of physical fitness, it had more than a
    slight amount of militarism about it, as well."

    You're so right. If Kennedy hadn't tried to prevent today's American obesity epidemic, we'd never have gotten involved in Vietnam.

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    1. If only Rosalind Carter's efforts to fund mental health treatment had taken, you might not be the way you are now.

      I guess you were too busy watching crap TV and listening to crap music to pay attention to such things but I remember them quite well, dopey. Kennedy did a lot to get us involved in Vietnam even as he promoted a pretty macho, quasi militaristic fitness regime.

      You really didn't understand the 60s at all, did you.

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    2. Oh, and, a lot of that fat went right between your ears.

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    3. It's not Kennedy's fault you were the Pillsbury Doughboy in junior high, Sparkles.

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    4. If you saw the class pictures, I was the short, skinny one with the glasses with my eyes rolled, thinking the one like you was a total asshole.

      Kennedy's idea of physical fitness was like Baden Powell's, preparing boys to become soldiers to further the interests of the American empire.

      I do have to say that I was sympathetic to the descriptions of Joan Bennett Kennedy, as being made fun of by Teddy's brothers and other Kennedys in their stupid games of touch football at Hyannis Port. The poor woman probably thought it was as stupid and boring and pointless as football is, unless you were mostly interested in brow beating the unathletic and unenthusiastic. Ted, asshole that he could be, was the best of the Kennedy boys, Jack and Bobby were A#1 assholes, though Bobby came to a bit after Jack was murdered. Don't you recall, I had to point out to you that Bobby prosecuted your hero, the smut merchant Ralph Ginzburg. You know, the one you said was prosecuted for porn due to anti-semitism and I had to point out that was unsustainable unless you were going to accuse Bobby Kennedy of using the Department of Justice to promote antisemitic policies No, I didn't think you remembered that.

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  2. You know why I love mocking you, Sparkles? Because in all the time I've been doing it, not once have you remotely understood exactly what it is I'm mocking you about.

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    1. Oh, so you don't understand my corrections of your distortions any better than you did what you distorted. Not surprised.

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