I was not planning an all-out series on Christmas songs some people have no time for, but just hunker down and we’ll get through this together. In 1780, in a little publication called Mirth Without Mischief, the verse appeared in print for the first time, only slightly different from the way we singContinue reading “Twelve Blessed Days”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
That Blessed Drum
All she wanted to do was compose a Christmas song suitable for girls’ choirs, and in 1941, Katherine Kennicott Davis became obsessed with the traditional French carol Pat-a-pan, and wrote her version with pa-rum-pa-um-pum, in place of it. She published it as C.R.W. Robinson, and her Carol of the Drum did reasonably well, beingContinue reading “That Blessed Drum”
Easy as A B…um
Why, what do you know? It’s Monday again! Let joy be unconfined at the return of the week as well as another Old Joke Quiz! (Look, get some of that leftover egg nog from the weekend and put it in your morning coffee. Maybe that will help unconfine your joy.) This set of jokesContinue reading “Easy as A B…um”
Heaping Helping
In our last thrilling episode, we continued out discussion of Round People by considering Round People in Love. Because we are avoiding the whole catchphrase “Nobody loves a Fat Man” and its descendants, this quickly turned into a discussion of the Round Woman and Love. We saw a number of postcards which suggested thatContinue reading “Heaping Helping”
Round and Round
About an eon and a half ago, there was a one woman show in Chicago in which a plumpish wallflower mused on a romantic misadventure with a man who was leading her on just to make her look ridiculous. I am afraid I have forgotten the name of the actress AND the play, asContinue reading “Round and Round”
When in Doubt, Pun
Listen, I know it’s Monday, but even I am appalled by this chapter in my quizbook of old jokes. I had forgotten I had stooped this low. Of course, how old a pun may be is irrelevant, since the audience is SUPPOSED to groan. But if we all stand together and hold hands, we canContinue reading “When in Doubt, Pun”
Round Roast
The whole history of Round People in culture is beyond the scope of this blog. Fashion has been fashion and social life has been social life for eons. For centuries, the poor were thin and the rich were fat, and once over-the-counter medicine became big business, some of the most popular nostrums sold wereContinue reading “Round Roast”
Round and Round
I have nearly as many postcards featuring Round People as I have about fishing, but I took the Thanksgiving weekend off from telling you about them, feeling that none of us would feel like chatting about such things when we were stuffed with stuffing. (Those of you who had tofu and greens probably foundContinue reading “Round and Round”
Wise Guys
So it is the Monday after a four-day weekend, and some of us still imagine the world will go easy on us. To help prepare you for the opposite, this is a chapter from my quiz book of old jokes called “Gotcha”, a series of tales where a wit outwits a halfwit. You mayContinue reading “Wise Guys”
Beach View
It may still weigh on your mind what a huge territory we chose to cover in Friday’s blog, dedicated to postcards which told how a vacation might tend to broaden one’s knowledge, one’s experience, and, especially, one’s waistline. It is such a large field for study that we skipped all the postcards that usedContinue reading “Beach View”
Blogsy Babbles 