JOHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER SMITH: A tribute to Robin Williams and a good laugh

John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith. 

His name is my name too. 

Whenever we go out, 

The people always shout, 

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.

Da da da da da da.

(repeat 1,000 times)

Robin Williams was John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith in his 1995 movie, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Yep, that's the actual title and, as you might guess, it didn't go well. Rotten Tomatoes only gave it 39%... but Robin's fans loved it 71%. Robin always made everything better. His voice and comedy is much needed today... and sadly missing. And so is a good laugh.

Last night my wife and I were texting with several of our kids. And because it somehow fit our silly conversation, I told them I changed my name to John Jacob Jingleheimer Jones thinking that would be funny. My wife reminded me that it wasn't Jones but Smith and, in our stupid funny mood, we both laughed hard and continuing off and on for the next few minutes. Something that simple and not funny out of context just broke us up. That's humor for you... it's a mental disposition to laugh when it's easy.

In those minutes, we were in a different world than the one beset with global warming, a year of 'the plague' and more than a decade of ever-worsening political divide, wider than The Grand Canyon... none of which seemed getting better.

You remember the last time you laughed that way? I didn't.

Humans have five basic senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Science now believes there are more subtle senses that most people never perceive. One would have to be a sense of humor to round out the whole body experience. If you can't/don't laugh or smile, you really can't say you've lived.

I know people who just don't seem to know how to laugh, or smile, or be light-hearted or make you laugh or smile once in a while. Bet you do too. My advice: don't be one of them... or get too close to when they go from somber to serious to dead serious, because that's all they have.

Life is short, then you die. Rest easy, God has a sense of humor. Just look at us. Can you imagine a divine creator not laughing out loud at some of the things we do with the free will he/she has given us?

Here's Robin Williams telling a story (a repeat, I know. Sorry) about his friend, Bono, that made me laugh:

Bono was performing a save the earth benefit in Scotland before a crowded house. Bono started slowly clapping his hands and told his audience, "Every time I clap my hands, an elephant dies in Africa!" A man in the back row stood up and hollered, "THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, STOP CLAPPING YOUR HANDS!"  See? 

A sense of humor represents more 'life in balance' than almost anything else because it comes from the reflection of the world as seen through your eyes. Carry a grudge... seek revenge... harbor hate... see seven shades of gray... fail to appreciate life's delights? Then my friend, I'm sad for you because you only have one crack at it.

Here are a few examples of how funny (and/or stupid and/or ironic or just plain ridiculous) we can be in real life:

• A Nebraska man is in prison for shooting his girlfriend with a pistol. The 22 caliber bullet cut right through her tattoo that read, "Happiness Is A Warm Gun."
• Car-jacking isn't as easy as it seems. When the thief ripped-off the car of a handicapped driver, he didn't know how to use the hand controls. So he got out of the car and handed the wheel-chair bound victim the keys, then stripped off his ski mask and said, "Just kidding."  
• A woman from Arkansas is suing her college for a classroom exercise of 'musical chairs' that went wrong. She claims in her suit that the game was played wrong because the instructor had asked her and two other students to play with only one chair. The resulting game scramble that ensued, she claimed, cost her two broken fingers and forced her into "years" of surgery and physical therapy. She asserted that "everyone knows Musical Chairs should be two chairs for three people." She asks for $75,000.
• In Australia, a man about to board a 14 hour flight to Vienna was stopped by authorities who discovered he had 35 geckos under his clothes, all taped to his skin. Sounds like the kind of guy I get stuck next to on a plane.
• A recent demonstration of 100 people outside Britain's Parliament to protest legislation to curb psychoactive drugs, passed out gas-filled balloons containing nitrous oxide--laughing gas. The demonstration turned funny as the group took hits from their balloons and "erupted in fits of laughter."
• From the 'New Product' department: A Yom Kippur workaround for "fasting" coffee addicts: caffeine suppositories.
• Extensive research by Animal Behaviour Science magazine cautions pet owners that they may be petting their cats all wrong! Felines seem to prefer face-caressing, especially between the eyes and ears, and are negatively aroused by tail-petting, especially at the base.
• The Welsh language is such a severe mutation of the original English spoken in the Middle Ages that it is barely distinguishable from Klingon. In fact, the Welsh government, responding to queries about a possible UFO sighting near Cardiff airport, playfully issued its galaxy-friendly response in Klingon: "jang dvlDa je due luq." And if you wish to say "I cannot understand in Welsh," simply respond "nad oes modd i ddeall Cymraeg."
• In Arkansas, a man representing himself on a disorderly conduct charge was found guilty. So he took down his pants and mooned the judge. Not one to take a joke, the judge added 5 months for each cheek.

Live life to your principles... WITH GUSTO!  What that does for the soul... that is something that amazes me most.  

Elsie had it right: (with thanks to Fred Ebb and John Kander who created the song and Lisa Minelli who made it come alive in Cabaret.)

What good is  sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the kniting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Come taste the wine,

Come hear the band.

Come blow a horn,

Start celebrating;

Right this way,

Your table's waiting.

No use permitting

Some prophet of doom

To wipe every smile away.

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend

Known as Elsie,

With whom I shared

Four sorid rooms in Chelsea.

She wasn't what you'd call

A blushing flower...

As a matter of fact

She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors

Came to snicker:

Well that's what comes

From too much pills and liquor.

But when I saw her laid out

Like a Queen,

She was the happiest corpse

I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day,

I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

What good is sitting alone

In your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

As for me,

I made my mind up back in  Chelsea,

When I go, I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting,

From cradle to tomb

Isn't that long a stay.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Only a Cabaret, old chum,

And I love a Cabaret.

FYI: The ditty, 'John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith' seems to go back to vaudeville days of the early 20th century as comedians of the day used malapropisms and fun-to-sing made-up songs for sure-fire humor.

Huh? The mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with amusing effect, as in, for example, "dance a flamingo" instead of flamenco. 

"John Jacob etc. etc.' was first noted in print in 1931 when a newspaper reported , "At a Boy Scout gathering at Seneca Lake, Troop 18 , upon entering a mess hall, burst into a rousing chorus of John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith," and it has been a popular refrain that most of us have heard and/or sung at some time in our lives. Many more like songs, of course, have followed. Personally, I recall '100 Bottles of Beer on the wall' but get lost because, since the lyrics change in every verse, I can't remember them.)

Grand Finale (I promise):

HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD: listen to someone smarter than you... if that person exists.

This is Greta Thunberg. She is just 17 and her mission is to save the world... and she will, if we listen.

She makes it sound easy. ""We just can't continue living like there is no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That's all we are saying."

As Time Magazine said when naming her one of the "100 most influential people in the world" and its current "Person of the Year," "For decades, researchers and activists have struggled to get world leaders to take the climate threat seriously. But this year (2019) an unlikely teenager somehow got the world's attention."

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To better understand who this young person with Asperger's Syndrome--a developmental disorder related to autism and characterized by higher than average intellectual ability coupled with impaired social skills and restrictive, repetitive  patterns of interest and activities--is, and her total focus on perhaps the most important problem of our lifetime, you must watch the just released documentary, "I am Greta," on Hulu. (Here's a 2 minute trailer) It will show, better than words can tell, who Greta is and how she has captivated the world and led the charge to seriously focus on what we must do to preserve tomorrow. It is most compelling and shows what a voice with passion to match can indeed change the world.

There are those who disbelieve climate change but that is no more credible than those disbelieving the coronavirus... it doesn't matter. Nature will do what it will do, no matter what you believe or not wearing a mask because it violates your rights. It's not like Santa Claus you know. It just is. Period. And it will have its way.

You think she is not direct and can't make herself heard? Here she is at the United Nations Conference on Global Warming in New York last September.

My message is that we'll be watching you.

This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice.

They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not.

Thank you.

The sad story of Henry Bemis, ironically is the foretelling story all of all us readers of the world. There is a book-saving moral here.

 Henry Bemis

"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone."

That's how creator Rod Serling introduced "Time Enough at Last," one of the most popular episodes of his show, The Twilight Zone, a 1959 sci-fi television series. The show, in black and white back then, was loved for its clever plot twists of incredible circumstances.

You see, due to an H-Bomb explosion while Henry Bemis had locked himself into the bank's vault for a lunch hour of undisturbed reading, the outside world was vaporized, leaving him alone, with all the books of the world and all the time in the world to read them, totally undisturbed.

Sadly, just as he had surrounded himself with piles of books to read, he dropped, then stepped on his very thick eye-glasses, breaking them unfixable. And Henry was almost blind without his glasses. 

Unbelievably, his utopia was gone just as fast as it had come, and all the books in the world were left without readers. 

Now jump to today, all you book-loving Henry Bemis's. Remember Borders, a Barnes & Noble rival, no longer in business? Remember possibly your favorite book store, gone. Remember the libraries of the world, shut down to browsing because of the coronavirus?

LittleFreeLibrary.org

There is, of course, Amazon, where almost everything can be bought, books and all, no matter the virus. Thank you--I think--for that. But really, support your local bookstore if you still have one. They need you but in reality, you need them more.  

And cities like Seattle, and others where culture allows, have dozens... or perhaps hundreds, of neighborhood mailbox-like Little Free Libraries where anyone can take a book/leave a book, never a question asked because readers are like that. (You too can have one of these Little Free Libraries by your house. Click the link to see what it's all about. It is exciting for everyone who dreams books.)

Of course there are books on tape and ebooks but those aren't really books, are they? OK, they are, sort of, but not everyone wants to read on a computer or Kindle. And those who like books to be read to them are no doubt fond of being read to. Maybe it takes them back to the time mom or dad would read them The Three Little Pigs or Cinderella at bedtime. Not my thing, thank you, with the possible exception of a long, boring road trip by yourself.

Give me a book book... in any form, really, or a newspaper (what's a newspaper?). Social media or television is not reading. 

The Strand

How much do we miss bookstores (but are thankful and loyal to those we have) here's a story of true love: One of a most noted bookstores is the Strand in downtown Manhattan. If you've been there, you know you can spend happy hours there with every visit. Sadly, the famous Strand is struggling with revenue during this coronavirus era down 70 percent. "HELP!" it's owner asked... and help it got.

On the following Saturday, it received a single-day record of 10,000 online orders, crashing it's website. In the next 48 hours, the store processed 25,000 online orders (compared to about 600 in a typical two-day period. Employees have canceled vacations and coming in to help with the surge. 

You do know how much readers love their bookstore. 

l"es bouquinistes"

It's not all roses though. If you've ever been to Paris, you most probably totally enjoyed 'les bouquinistes," the 230 or so open air booksellers in carts, tents and tables that line four miles on both sides of Seine in the shadow of Notre Dame. Now THAT is a market to love. Sadly, it seems to be a tragedy in the making as the coronavirus lock-downs and its concerns make this, "a sinking ship," as a good number of the booksellers fear. Sales have plunged 80 percent and survival is in question.

Hey Madames et Monsiers, (Excusez mon francais, or thereabout) have you tried a Strand strategy yet? From all the book lovers in the world, good luck. We need you.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORES... AND RETAILERS WHENEVER POSSIBLE. WE NEED THEM AND THEY NEED US!

Is it a Milky Way or The Milky Way? Depends on if you like chocolate, I suppose.

 

I LOVE chocolate, but the other Milky Way will just blow you away! This was just a tease to get you to our Milky Way galaxy in more detail than ever before.

Our galaxy, THE REAL THING!

This is a 26-second video of our celestial home, the Milky Way, that, if you click the link (THE REAL THING) you will zoom straight into the enter of our galaxy... one of the billion galaxies we know are out there, and see an amazing sight. (Sorry if you have to put up with an ad for a few seconds to get to it, but that's YouTube for you.)

And why would you do that? Because you will see our most incredible universe as never before, filled with billions of other  suns in addition to ours. One of the billion or so of those eensy-teensy white dots is VY Canis Majoris, a sun 2,100 times bigger than ours, 3,900 light years away from us. It's so big that it takes 8 hours, at 186,000 miles per second, for light to travel around its own equator. Then there is the Pistol Star, 100 times as massive as our sun and 10 million times more bright, and more... much more, as they say in commercials.

In case you haven't noticed, I am fascinated by all this that was created, so science says, in the first mili-second of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.

To read a good take on what's it like to feel so small Dr. Seuss has great human-like perspective in Horton Hears a Who.  It all puts a different light on who's a big shot and who's not. Hint: certainly none of us.

Now sing a few bars of  Disney's "It's a small world," and see if you can get that out of your head before bed time.

IT'S A MIRACLE! ... or so it seems. Three incredible, unrelated occurrences that you'd never believe were even possible, just happened!

Still think he looks like Stan Laurel

In your wildest dreams these 3 things happened and are hard to believe. But they happened! They really happened!

1: Credit Pope Francis, a man who knows miracles by profession, for the first seemingly miraculous revelation.

The Pope, whose word is seen by Catholics as the word of God, professed, in 'Francisco' a film about his life: 

"Homosexuals have the right to be part of the family. One doesn't have to believe in God to go to heaven. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it."

This news should, it is believed, send an undeniable message to Catholic families with LGBTQ people, that all family members are deserving of acceptance and support. 

To that, I add, "Amen."

Pope Francs also assured atheists, "You don't have to believe in God to go to heaven." In a written open letter responding in a non-Catholic owned newspaper, La Repubblica, he wrote, "You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith. I start by saying--and this is the fundamental thing--that God's mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience." 

Earlier, Pope Francis signaled a more progressive attitude on sexuality asking, ( Best quote ever: ) "If someone is gay and looking for the Lord, who am I to judge him?

God, er, I mean Gosh, I love this Pope. One small step... one giant leap.

Depiction of landing on asteroid Bennu

  2: OSIRUS-REX is the name of the NASA mission  that sent a spacecraft from earth, 200 million miles into the heavens. to actually land on a carbon-rich asteroid named Bennu. (Asteroids are fragments of the early solar system, largely unchanged since they formed 4.5 billion years ago.) The spacecraft has already landed safely but--now get this--is collecting dust and specks of what the surface may hold--which we can see as it is happening with the camera on the spacecraft--and will return to earth with its collection in 2023.

The findings could provide us with an understanding of the building blocks of life on earth.

Here's the take-away on this: We, the people of earth, have actually figured what might be 'out there', what we may find, send a spacecraft millions of miles and actually land on target, all the while with both earth and Bennu moving disproportionally through space at thousands of miles per hour, collect samples of the surface and return to earth for us to analyze and understand how we happened to be. That is 'mind-blowing' unbelievable incredible. 

Are we super intelligent or not? Before you answer, ask, Do we wear a face mask or not? Heaven help us if we can solve so many answers about the universe but still can't put the toilet seat down, agree on anything... or, whatever. 

3. Scientists stretch every absolute boundary of the measurement of time and space while we marvel at what seemingly can't be, but is. 

Today, we know know the smallest fragment of time ever measured:  One trillionth of a billionth of a second. That is the timing of changes in an atom in zeptoseconds (That sounds made up but it's not. A zeptosecond is a decimal point followed by 20 zeros and a 1, like this: 0.000000000000000000001). 

There is, in theory, a yoctosecond, a septillionth of a second. And then there is Planck time where things start to get really ridiculous. Divide that into one second and you realize how fast you'd have to be with a stopwatch just to time it.

If we ever got this on an NBA scoreboard, the last 3 minutes of an NBA game could take lifetimes. On the brighter side, that would be called commercial heaven.

The beneficiary of all this... quantum computing and superconductivity, whatever those are.

This all goes back to Albert Einstein who supposed that this, theoretically, was out there. Science has now proved him right once again. What a brain! (ednote: I saw that brain in the Muter Museum in Philadelphia where all good brains must go.)

All old measures are now passe. So much for the old Catholic question posed by nuns to open-minded little children: 

How many angels could fit on the head of a pin? Answer: An infinite number. Heck, rumor has it that Chuck Norris was so tough and all-accomplished that one time he counted to infinity... twice.