Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
I love the Transcendentalists. They aren’t the most practical group. I mean, sure, we’d all love to go live in a cabin by the woods, Henry, but we’re not all friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson. But the philosophy of believing in your own intuition and not being an elitist snot sounds pretty good to me.
Oh, and props to Thoreau for inspiring hundreds of motivational posters.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
So, I’ve heard people argue that Chris Farley was just a funny fat guy. A comic who couldn’t make a joke without using his size as a punchline. And it’s true that he often performed in sketches on SNL or acted in movies that included jokes about his girth.
But dammit, Chris Farley was really funny, despite and because of his size. One of the reasons that I loved him as much as I do is because his comedy almost never traded on the mean. All of his characters, at least the ones I’m familiar with, had a sweetness to them. Those that weren’t so sweet (hey, Matt Foley? You still living in a van down by the river?) were never cruel or vicious, just pessimistic.
As fantastic as Farley was on SNL…I mean, come on, his interview with Paul McCartney was a thing of beauty…his crowning achievement in my eyes will always be Tommy Boy.
Chris Farley and David Spade were poised to be the best thing to happen to buddy movies since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. Farley’s puppy-like desire to please and Spade’s sharp and almost cruel snottiness were such a perfect match that it’s hard to believe they only made two movies together.
(Incidentally, I read on Wikipedia, that David Spade was so shattered by his friend’s death that he couldn’t attend his funeral. To this day, he won’t talk about him in interviews.)
Whether you love him or merely tolerate him, Chris Farley left his mark on comedy. His big, fat, fantastic mark.
I’d love to say I heard Otis Redding whole sitting on my father’s knee and listening to “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”. But I, like many other women my age I’d imagine, first heard Otis when I watched Dirty Dancing. Two of his songs play during important moments in the film (Though there really isn’t an unimportant moment in that film. Just sayin’.)
When Johnny Castle gave Baby the come hither gesture and took her out on the dance floor for the first time, 13-year old girls (and some boys too. Hey, wear your DD love proud, gentlemen.) everywhere swooned. And they swooned to the tune of “Love Man” a raw, sexy song that often gets forgotten for Redding’s more famous work.
However, it was “These Arms of Mine” that cemented my Otis Redding admiration. Baby had finally worked up the nerve to visit Johnny Castle in his cabin (soon to be their looove nest) and what played as she opened the door? Otis of course.
(Stupid youtube embedding disabled clips. If you want to see his song in the movie, here it is.
Otis had a fantastic and malleable voice. He could plead with a woman to come back to him one minute and admonish men to be gentle with the women in their lives the next and each time, his voice sounded a little different.
Otis Redding was only 26 when he died in a plane crash. To think that someone that young produced as much music as he did makes me sad to wonder what would have been. “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” came out one week after he died and is his most famous song. But if I had to choose, “Pain in my Heart” will always be my favorite.
