Lance Mannionis writing a post today (or so he tells me, the rascal) which explains that everything he knows about the great depression comes from having watched The Three Stooges (presumably in childhood, but you never know with Lance, I mean he “did” go to graduate school in English so one can’t assume anything about his viewing habits).
This reminds me that my last phone call with my dad produced the revelation that when he was in high school he lied to his mother, asserting that he was going to the public library when in fact he snuck off to a vaudeville theater to see a live show starring The Three Stooges.
This was all the more delightful for me because my dad was a college president and a Harvard Ph.D. and as if that wasn’t enough he was a pastor’s kid having grown up with his devout Finnish parents who in turn devoted their lives to preaching and shoring up the Finnish Lutheran church.
The news that my dad had snuck off to see Moe, Curly and Larry conking one another over the heads in a dingy Boston music hall was entirely wonderful. I felt such a sense of kinship with him just then.
The subject of “The Stooges” had come up because I was telling my dad about my meager domestic threat to introduce my stepson Ross to “the Stooges’ work” if my wife Connie didn’t acede to some paltry household opinion or other. Connie would always say: “You wouldn’t do such a thing would you? I thought I’d married a good man, etc.”
SK
Planet of the Blind 