Dear Diary: Chandler Rocks, Ulysses is really Hiram and Carol is a twit

OMG. Jump up and down and do cartwheels. It’s Raymond Chandler’s birthday. Homeboy died in 1959. I got to share the earth with him for 20 months.

Chandler wrote some of the best lines in the history of fiction. At least I think so.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
=The Long Goodbye

That’s so true. Nobody can sabotage your life more that yourself.

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
-The Big Sleep

So true. It is a hell of a lot easier to get over a broken heart than it is to get over being dead. It’s also easier to HELP someone get over a broken heart than it is to help someone get over being dead.

To say goodbye is to die a little
-The Long Goodbye

IKR. Relevant and true.

He once said the most relevant thing about television.

“Television’s perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don’t have to concentrate. You don’t have to react. You don’t have to remember. You don’t miss your brain because you don’t need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man’s nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn’t got the price of a television set.”

I’ve always thought that exact same thing. Ever since I was a kid I thought it. Television is a tool that brainwashes people and turns them into zombies. More so than it educates. The education, of course, being highly ostensible.

Chandler attempted suicide in 1955. Two of the women that he had been involved with assumed Chandler to be a repressed homosexual. I don’t know if he was, but it sure makes perfect sense to me. Who better to write hard-boiled detective and crime fiction than a repressed homosexual.

Anyway, he’s one of my literary heros.

Not to be creepy or anything, but today is also the anniversary of the death of Ulysses S. Grant. He was the 18th U.S. President. He died in 1885. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. Rumor has it that when he went to West Point he didn’t want the monogram on his luggage to be H.U.G., so he went by Ulysees. I don’t know if that’s true because, like I said, it’s a rumor. Somewhere along the way ‘S’ became his middle initial. So, I guess that technically we’ve had a president named Hiram. According the baby name book, Hiram is a biblical Hebrew name that means ‘exalted brother’.

The only reason that I’m mentioning Grant is because I like presidential facts and stuff. There were no U.S. presidents born today, so I just picked one who died instead.

Don Drysdale. Rumor has it that the number 53 used for “Herbie the Love Bug” was inspired by Drysdale’s no. 53

It’s also Don Drysdale’s birthday. He was a pitcher with the Dodgers. He died from a heart attack at the age of 56 in 1993. When he was finally found the coroner estimated that he had been dead for 18 hours. Tragic.

I actually remember Drysdale from his appearance on The Brady Bunch more than I remember him as being a Hall of Fame pitcher. Weirdo.

Wes Parker on “The Brady Bunch”.

There were actually 4 sports stars who made guest appearances on The Brady Bunch. The first was Wes Parker. He was a first baseman for the Dodgers. He also won the Gold Glove award. I know this because Mike Brady said he did. Anyway, in the episode he appeared in, he was Greg’s math teacher’s fiance.

Next was Don Drysdale. Mike was building a house for him. He introduced him to Greg because Greg was also a pitcher. Drysdale told Greg he was a good pitcher. Greg got a swelled head. Wanted to quit school. Talked about being a famous pitcher. Totally bombed out at the game. Got a lecture from Mike about having balance in your life. Lesson learned.

Next came Deacon Jones. He was a defensive end in the sport of Football. He played for the Rams, Chargers and Redskins. He only died a little over a month ago. That left Rosey Grier as the only surviving member of the Fearsome Foursome, the rams defensive line that is widely considered to be the best unit in the history of football.
Anyway, Deacon Jones taught Peter Brady that you can play football AND be in the glee club; even though Peter was an offensive end and bad news for guys like Deacon Jones.

The last sports star to appear on The Brady Bunch was Joe Namath. That was during the last season of the show. Bobby told all of his friends that he knew Joe Namath. He didn’t of course. Then Cindy wrote a letter to Joe telling him that Bobby was sick (which he wasn’t). Then Namath comes to see Bobby, finds out that he’s not sick, but plays football with Bobby and his friends anyway. I’m not sure what the lesson was there. I guess that you could lie to people and get away with it? IDK.

The most obnoxious line in the Namath episode is when Carol says:

We don’t know Joe Namath, do we Mike?

What a twit! Are you really that stupid Carol? Do you really need your husband to tell you if you know somebody or not? You need to study up on your feminism. It’s all over the Wordpress blogdom.

Hmmm, I don’t know how I got off on this Brady Bunch tangent. Probably because I’m kind of an expert about the show. To the point of winning a Brady Bunch trivia contest and having lunch with Barry Williams as the prize. He signed a copy of his book for me. I then proceeded to tell him the mistakes that he had made in the episodes synopsis section of the book. Nobody likes a wiseacre. Not even grown up Brady kids. Lesson learned.