The unforgiving minute: Re-evaluating my entire adult life

(I also posted this on my Facebook feed, but trust me: no one there will notice this.)

A "mondagreen" is a song lyric that you've gotten wrong because you mis-heard the original, e.g.: "Hold me closer, Tony Danza," or "Revved up like a douche," or "El Kabong, what's that flower you have on?"

Pandora just played The Hollies' 1972 classic "Long Cool Woman," and for the first time I followed along with the lyrics and discovered that over the last 44 years that entire song -- except for the title itself, which I got entirely right -- that song has been, for me, one complete 3-minute 15-second mondagreen. Every single line I had wrong. Every one. That song hasn't even remotely been about what I always thought it was about. Not. Even. Close.

I have to think about this.

The one song I ever came this close to getting entirely wrong was “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the only song my high school garage band ever wholly ruined.

Minute's up.

Forty-six years. So much for all that earnest "never forget" talk

It's just that I know the old version so well

Hail, Caesar! We who are about to hear "The Little Drummer Boy" salute you!

The 2015 "Little Drummer Boy" Competition has begun! Feel free to join in.

The rules are as follows:

1. The challenge begins at 12:01am local time on the day after Thanksgiving – this year that's today, November 27th. It ends at 12:01am local time on December 24th.

2. If you hear even a tiny snatch of TLDB at any time during that period, if it's recognizable as such, the game's over until next year. Thanks for playing.

3. There are two exceptions to Rule #2.

3a. The first exception is that if someone deliberately plays TLDB just to make you lose, it doesn't count (this, I'm sorry to say, is known as the My Sister Jane Exception).

3b. The second exception is that the early 1970s cover of TLDB by Bing Crosby and David Bowie doesn't end the game. I treasure it for its transcendental weirdness.

4. Since the date of Thanksgiving floats, scoring is based on how many days remain until Christmas, not how many days have passed since Thanksgiving. So, e.g., December 15th from any year always beats December 14th from any year. That's based on a 2013 ruling by the Commissioner.

Odds favor those who do not work in retail, and who do not drive around in cars with satellite radio tuned to all-Christmas channels.

Two years ago, I made it until 11:52am on December 20th, which was my best showing in several years. I had my worst recent season in 2012, when I went out at 8:32pm on November 27th. In 2008 I actually got nailed on Black Friday. Depressing. Last year I made it until 2:01 pm on December 15th, which is not bad, but not great.

The precise origins of The Annual "The Little Drummer Boy" Competition are shrouded in antiquity, but many reputable historians of the sport believe it traces to this moment on December 18, 1963.

You can read more about my war with "The Little Drummer Boy." and relive highlights from previous seasons, here.

May the odds be ever with you.

Update: Three friends, among the founding ALDB  competitors, all got taken out in one fell swoop tonight at 8:37pm local while walking to meet step counter goals at a big box store in central Indiana. That's just wrong. The rest of us must carry on in their honor.

Saturday late afternoon tunes: Honoring the people who struggled and died for this three-day weekend

Ten songs celebrating -- and memorializing -- the sacrifices, the rights, and the dignity of labor in America and around the world.

Saturday evening tunes: Disturbing

It's disturbing to realize how much of American history I originally learned – sort of – but not really – and later had to unlearn  – from the works of Johnny Horton.

Saturday really late afternoon tunes: I know that she's no pheasant!

Fifty years ago today, the Beatles performed two shows at Portland's Memorial Coliseum. Ticket prices were $4, $5 and $6, and parts of the upper level was free. Between shows, Carl Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys popped in to chat with the Lads.

This isn't their PDX performance, but it was the first song on their playlist that night.

Saturday afternoon tunes: It's been a long, long time, yeah! Since I got you on my mind.

On this day in 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers were the openers at Max's Kansas City in NYC, as part of their first North American tour.

The featured act was some New Jersey band. Something-something and the E-Street Band.

Saturday afternoon toons: Da-dum da-dum, da-dum, da-dum da-dum da-dum

Henry Mancini died twenty-one years ago tomorrow. There's no real upper boundary to the music he wrote.

But . . .

Sunday evening tunes: Despite the heat it'll be all right

It got into the mid-80s here today, and the forecast calls for it to stay there for several days. I don't mind, but a lot of my fellow Oregonians are feeling like they're hotter than a match head, wheezin' like a bus stop.

Don'tcha know it's a pity. But at night it's a different world.

Saturday evening tunes: I tip my hat

On this date in 1976, The Who found their place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest performance by a rock band – 120 decibels (placing it somewhere between sandblasting and actual physical pain), at the Charlton Athletic Football field. Now you know why it's so easy to sneak up behind Pete Townshend.

And now you also know where that Spinal Tap joke comes from.

Saturday afternoon tunes: Pretty lookin' people

Eighty-one years ago today, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot down in a stolen car by Louisiana and Texas state troopers.

This is from the sound track of the 1967 film, directed by Robert Penn:

Saturday evening tunes: And I feel like I've been here before

In August 1970, I rode with some friends from Indiana to New Mexico and back in a station wagon with exactly two tapes for the 8-track player: "Glen Campbell Live" and Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young's "Déjà Vu," which we pooled our money to buy at a truck stop after about an hour on the road so we would have something other than Glen Campbell to listen to. I can't guess how many times CSNY got played over and over and over on that trip, but the finest tribute to it I can pay is that, all these years later, I still love that album.

Forty-five years ago today, CSNY's first album hit #1 on the US album chart. It also had three top 40 singles: "Teach Your Children," "Woodstock," and "Our House."

Also, on this day in 1962, B. Bumble and the Stingers hit #1 on the UK charts with this.

Sunday morning toons: Oliver Wendell Holmes' bastard child

Professional anti-Arab islamophobe and attention whore Pam Geller must be sleeping with a smile on her face these evenings. As a First Amendment pretty-near-absolutist, I nevertheless accept a number of limitations on the right of free speech: place and time, clear and present danger (again, a trigger on the First Amendment, not the Second), slander, libel, perjury, false advertising. I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that a case could be made that Geller's sponsoring of a "Draw Muhammed" contest in Texas (where they're already competing in the bialthalon of crazy – check out Chris Britt, below) was within spitting distance of falsely shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. The outcome – two yahoos show up and get shot – may not have been 100% predictable, but I suspect it was Geller's fantasy come true. Now she's in the catbird seat: a martyr for free speech without having to risk her own skin. All honors to Robert Ariail, below (the only element missing was "here – hold my beer").

Oh yeah: And there are people who will be shocked – shocked! – at the revelation that Tom Brady certainly lied and probably cheated, but those are the people who imagine that the staggering amounts of money on the table in pro (and NCAA) sports could never lead to corruption. (Sort of like what Anthony Kennedy thinks about money and politics.) Check out Steve Benson, below.

Today's toons were selected by compelling the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, The Nib, About.com, and other fine sources of toony goodness, to run a mile-and-a-quarter track at Churchill Downs.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Signe Wilkinson, Lalo Alcaraz, Robert Ariail, Lisa Benson, Steve Benson, Chris Britt, Jeff Danziger, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Stuart Carlson.

p3 Legion of Merit: Dave Fitzsimmons.

p3 Getting the Irony Award: Tom Toles.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Rebecca Hendin.

And Nick Anderson very nearly replicates the same gag about Texas, and yet it involves two different topics. Is there such a thing as a Self-Reflexive Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence? Or is it simply that Texas politics these days always comes down to some kind of prophylactic headgear with a reservoir tip?

p3 World Toon Review: Van Dam (Netherlands), Bas van der Schot (Netherlands), Obi (Mexico), and Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland),

Ann Telnaes explains a term that may be new to some well-meaning people. As one of my grade school teachers told me, use it three times today and it's yours for life.

Mark Fiore notices the interchangeability of free speech heroes and free speech martyrs.

Tom Tomorrow counts the lessons from Baltimore.

Keith Knight imagines: What if a simple, abusive gesture resonated among the people?

Tom the Dancing Bug recounts the noble history of certain kinds of sports.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson offers Johnny Lemonhead a deal.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon had the same reaction I did: Yes, parody is a protected form of speech, but here's an IP lawsuit waiting to happen.

Comic Strip of the Day pursues the theme: Things we'll have trouble explaining to later generations. And he starts with a classic from my youth.

Get away from me, boys, you bother me! The running Bing Crosby gag – that he was famous for owning race horses that were neverwozzers – made me choose "Hollywood Steps Out," directed in 1941 by Tex Avery of the p3 pantheon of gods, for the week between the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. ("Get away from me, boy, you bother me!" was a W. C. Fields catch line from several years earlier.) It's fun – or no fun at all, depending on your taste – because it's really locked into who's hot from that year. Even the opening music as we watch the searchlights over Hollywood – a conga, which had its top-of-the-pops moment around that year – pins it to a moment in time sealed like a mosquito in amber. You can track the celebrity cameos here. (Many, like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and George Raft, were from the Warner Bros stable of contract players – though not all by any means.) All these years later, and I still don't get the running joke about Greta Garbo's feet. Watch "Hollywood Steps Out" at eBaum's World.

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: Pearls Before Swine, Doonesbury, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Mutts, Over the Hedge, Get Fuzzy, Prince Valiant, Blondie, Bizarro, Mother Goose & Grimm, Rose is Rose, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Rubes, Grand Avenue, Freshly Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and Jumble.

The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We Started Cheating By Welcoming Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

I tried to post the color version of this toon by Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman from his page at the Sacramento Bee a few days ago, and all my Facebook app would do is put the correct link with a photo of linguini and clams. Go figure. So here it is, telling the truth in glorious monochrome.

Possibly Ex-Oregonian (or perhaps that's just what she wants us to think!) Jen Sorensen looks at the political acumen of Texans and finds it's paranoid turtles, all the way down.

Matt Bors wins the Stephen Colbert "I don't see color – my friends tell me I'm white and I have to take their word for it because I don't see color" Award.

I'm not certain which side of the Fast Track debate Jesse Springer is coming down on here.

Test your toon captioning kung fu at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

Saturday very late afternoon tunes: This is Louis!

On this day in 1964, Louis Armstrong hit #1 on the US singles chart with this Broadway number. He caught some flack from purists who accused him of selling out with non-jazz songs like this during his later career. I'm okay with it.

At 62, Armstrong was the oldest artist to hit #1, until Tony Bennett, at 82, released his Duets album in 2011.

Saturday early evening tunes: Lay down your money and you play your part

On this date in 1972, according to This Day In Music:

Bruce Springsteen auditioned for CBS Records A&R man John Hammond in New York. Springsteen played a short set for him in his office; Hammond was so impressed that he arranged a real audition that night at the Gaslight Club in New York for other Columbia executives. Bruce passed the audition.

I like the understatement of that last sentence.

Don't know what he played for the CBS execs; it couldn't have been "Hungry Heart," since it came along eight years later. But I like to think it captures what must have been the spirit of that moment.

Man. They all look so young. And alive.

Saturday afternoon tunes: 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy

Or some mondegreen to that effect.

On this date in 1990, that Fender Stratocaster, played by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, sold at auction for a then-record $295,000.  

Saturday very late afternoon toons tunes: Fame -- a four-play

I admit that I've had had my doubts about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a genuine metric of greatness, but I have to say that this year's class of inductees includes some artists who seriously have it coming.

Ringo Starr, inducted for his solo albums, although a separate induction for his iconic drum work with the Fab Four would be fair:

Joan Jett, mezzo-soprano front for The Blackhearts (inexplicably pegged by Google as simply "guitarist," which is a little like pigeon-holing Lew Reed as a "crooner") just because the Queen of Rock and Roll totally has it coming:

And speaking of whom, Lew Reed for setting rock on a new set of tracks:

And finally, another artist who's owned the jukeboxes of America for decades:

Saturday late afternoon tunes: Harmony and understanding

On this date in 1969, The 5th Dimension's cover of "Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In" – one of several songs that charted from the musical "Hair" – began a six-week run at the top of the singles chart.

It's a longer story than you're going to get here, but the short version is our garage band once got drafted to be the rhythm section to accompany our high school band and choir on this medley, and I can tell you from personal experience that the bass line on this is great fun. I'd do it again tomorrow if someone offered me the chance, and I'd probably only need one run-through to have it down after all this time.

And yes, in the video clips from the 1979 film version, directed by Milos Forman and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, that is John Savage (who'd just come off of "The Dear Hunter"), and that is Treat Williams, and that is in fact Beverly "Ellen Griswold" D'Angelo. And I'm pretty sure there's a quick glimpse of Nell Carter in there, too. Don't sit there gaping. Go watch it. Yes, of course it's dated. In fact, the 1979 film itself was already some distance from the 1968 stage musical. Why is this necessarily a deal-killer? If it was an exact and precise depiction of the way things are today, what would be the point?

Saturday afternoon tunes: There's a reason some people say the Sixties didn't really start until 1964

According to This Day in Music:

The Beatles held the top five places on the US singles chart, at No. 5 'Please Please Me', No.4 'I Want To Hold Your Hand', No.3, 'Roll Over Beethoven', No.2 'Love Me Do' and at No.1 'Can't Buy Me Love.' They also had another nine singles on the chart, bringing their total to fourteen singles on the Hot 100.

Sorry we 'urt your field, Mister.

Meanwhile, here were the contents of Martin Luther King Jr.'s briefcase when he was assassinated on this day in 1968.