Showing posts with label Lenny Bruce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenny Bruce. Show all posts

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Second Coming



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 11 -- March 11, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #106, March 16 & 20:

The Second Coming
(in American Imagination
and Popular Culture)

Nike sportswear ad. All graphics: Click to enlarge

In brief:

Artists & social critics have used the idea of the Second Coming of Christ as a metaphor to highlight social ills. (Bumper sticker: "Christ has come ... and boy, is He p***ed!") We hear & look at 4 works of art that do this: Lenny Bruce's famous "Christ and Moses" routine, a Langston Hughes story featuring the Harlem character "Simple," W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," and The Police's song "Synchronicity II"--which is pretty much Yeats's poem, updated & set to music.

Is that Dick Cheney, in the brown suit?

This week's song

  • The Police, Synchronicity II (1983)

Notes and credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "aegis") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com .

"Simple Prays a Prayer"--which I condense for broadcast--is from the Langston Hughes anthology, The Best of Simple. Support your public library!

Coming Soon

  • March 23 -- Airport Security & Related Scams
  • March 30 -- False-Flag Operations: An Introduction

Bottom: Irish poet and visionary William Butler Yeats

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Langston Hughes in Harlem


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Friday, January 22, 2010

Lenny Bruce and The Meaning of Obscenity



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 4 -- January 23, 2010


This Week in New World Notes, radio program #99, Jan. 26:

Lenny Bruce and
The Meaning of Obscenity

Pink-collar summary

"I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,"
-- Paul Simon, "A Simple, Desultory Philippic"

"This show is all about Lenny Bruce. Well, not just about Lenny. It's also about obscenity, American-style. Dirty words, oral sex, and the fatal stabbing of two women--one in Brentwood, one in the Bates Motel. All of the above, and Lenny Bruce too, are intricately connected."

Featuring a handful of Lenny's greatest routines, recorded 1963-64. (Sorry: no room this week for "Christ and Moses." Soon, though!)

OOPS!

Owing to technical difficulties--that's bureaucracy-speak for "I screwed up"--station WWUH in West Hartford, CT, was unable to air NWN #98 ("Cheap Junk and the Deindustrialization of America") last week. They did have #100, "Merchants of Fear," on hand and so played that. Next week, when the rest of the world is enjoying "Merchants of Fear," people in central Connecticut can settle for "Cheap Junk." Sorry 'bout that!

This week's songs

  • Incidental music: The Trashmen, Surfin' Bird
  • Outro: Supertramp, Goodbye, Stranger

Coming Soon

  • February 2 on WWUH -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • February 2 elsewhere -- Merchants of Fear

Nicole Brown Simpson, June 12, 1994. Click to enlarge.

What makes the photo especially sad, to me, is the riot of
green plants, blooming away in mindless vitality, quite unaware
of the dead woman at the bottom of the stairs. "Where the dogs
go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches
its innocent behind on a tree" (Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts).
I hope somebody is watering them.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "long-suffering sighs") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

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