First, happy belated birthday to Evil James and a happy birthday to Brit. She’s turning 37 today so be sure to look up her e-mail and send her a great big birthday greeting. 🙂
I am on vacation and I’m spending most of today devouring “Harpo Speaks!”, the autobiography of Harpo Marx. I can’t really describe it, he wrote it in 1962 near the end of his life and it’s as funny and as engaging as a Marx Brothers movie. I stopped and started on page 80 a minute ago and I’m on page 117 now and wondering where the last hour went. I’m really loving this book.
The Marx Brothers are a lost art I guess. In fact the whole time they lived in is gone; there will be never this much freedom in America again. For example, Harpo quit school in the 2nd grade. Why? Because two Irish kids took great pains in throwing him out the window behind the teacher’s back. When he finally got tired of being chastised by the teacher for “being in the bathroom” (you’d never rat out the bigger kids or face a beating), he let himself get thrown out the window one day, dusted himself off, and walked home. He never went back.
These days the child welfare department would be all over the fact that he wasn’t in school. A commission would probably be set up on race relations as Irish kids (Irish Americans) throwing a young Jewish (Jewish American) boy out a window so much that it built up to the point that he quit school would be great cause of social alarm. People would go to jail and the teacher would loose her job for neglect and letting it happen. To Harpo in 1902 it was probably the greatest thing that could happen to him, it put things in motion that led to great success; today? he’d probably be hopped up on prescription drugs for over activity and put in special ed classes to deal with his dysfunction.
One of his earliest gigs was playing piano at a whorehouse. He only lost it because he came down with the measles. Turns out that his brother Chico (who he was a dead ringer for) was also fired from the same job earlier that year when he was caught getting frisky with one of the girls. Chico was 14 or 15 and Harpo was 13 or 14 at the time.
I identify with Harpo, at least in his early life. As a kid I remember having so much trouble with my accent (I’ve lived SO many places that I speak in hodge podge), and speaking that I’d wish that I could stop talking (much like Harpo struggled with the fact that his voice never really changed). I remember being 12 or 13 and decided to think about everything I said before I said it so it’d come out in a way people could understand it. For a while people thought I was really really wise because it would take 2 or 3 seconds of thought before I’d answer. In reality I was scrambling for the right words to say and how to phrase it. I’d spend my time revising it and listening to how it’d sound like in the back of my mind before I’d actually say anything.
I don’t know why I stopped doing it. I probably should have kept up with it. Now I speak without thinking; I don’t take that time because I was giving myself a complex about it. Sometimes I think I’d be better off not talking, doing the whole Harpo thing and honking a horn instead of talking.
But how would any of you know what an idiot I was if I weren’t constantly putting my foot in my mouth?
k9