Random noun: Timpani
Those are the big kettle drums at the back of an orchestra. You know them best as the boom boom boom boom from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is really the opening of the 1896 Richard Strauss “tone poem” called “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” which was based on the book of the same name by Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a dark German philosopher with a mustache so big he once lost a set of luggage in it.
When it comes to ‘staches, the actor Sam Elliott always manages to grow the most majestic soup strainers. A close second is Tom Selleck. I myself could grow a fair mustache, and used to tell my young wife that kissing a man without a mustache is like eating an egg without salt. This line she did not buy. I've been smooth of face ever since.
The so-called Fu Manchu mustache is no longer widely regarded, but at its heyday in 1969 when a brash professional quarterback named Joe Namath took his New York Jets to the Super Bowl to play the vaunted Baltimore Colts. No one was giving the Jets a chance. The Jets were 19 ½ point underdogs. But Namath boldly guaranteed the Jets would win. Guaranteed it! And what do you know, he led them to a 16-7. victory.
Sports Illustrated put him on the cover of the magazine, with the caption: Super Hero, Super Joe. Not a shrinking violet, this Joe, and he immediately grew a Fu Manchu and came out with a book entitled I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow ... ’Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day. He was not shy about his dalliances with beautiful women, and his ability to throw a football. It perhaps ushered in what the social observer Tom Wolfe called the 1970s: The Me Decade. We had moved from we to me, from country and community to egotism and vainglory. Wolfe wrote: “The new alchemical dream is: changing one's personality – remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one's very self... and observing, studying, and doting on it. Me!”
Nietzsche was a big me guy, before it became popular. He had this idea of the ubermensch, the “superior man,” the one who cast off constricting things like religion, and moves on to a higher plane of existence. This notion appealed to a struggling cartoonist named Adolf, who would adopt it as a basis for his rise to power as the leader of a new party in Germany in the 1930s called the National Socialists.
Which proves that “ideas have consequences.” From Nietzsche and ubermensch to Hitler and Nazism (Hitler gave a full set of Nietzsche to Benito Mussolini as a gift. How touching.
Years ago a guy wrote a popular book called Looking Out for #1, with #1 being me, myself, and I.
But there was another book back then, written by Gayle Sayers, the great running back of the Chicago Bears. The title was I Am Third. Sayers wrote that he placed God and others above his selfish concerns. In that book he told the story of Brian Piccolo, the running back he replaced, who became his friend, and who succumbed to cancer at the age of 26.
They made a TV movie about this friendship, called Brian’s Song, starring James Caan as Piccolo and Billy Dee Williams as Sayers. It was a huge hit, with a popular musical score. Hard guy football dudes all over the country reached for the Kleenex.
Now, the idea of putting God and others ahead of yourself is so foreign these days, so untaught, so un-reflected-upon, that it falls upon ears like a timpani of nonsense. But it wasn’t so long ago (depending how you view time) that the heroic Jefferson Smith (the young, naive Senator played by Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra’s 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) made his final plea in a filibuster from the Senate floor:
I wouldn't give you a red cent for all your fine rules, without some plain, everyday common kindness under 'em—and a little looking out for the next fella. Yes, pretty important, all that. It just happens to be blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great man handed down to the human race...
I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don't know about lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for, and he fought for them once, for the only reason that any man ever fights for them. Because of just one plain, simple rule, “Love thy neighbor,” and in this world today, full of hatred, a man who knows that one rule has a great trust!
And then, exhausted, barely able to talk, he pledges to go on, because somebody will listen to him...somebody...
He faints dead away.
But the Senate listens.
Shouldn’t we?
Quote of the Week: “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.” — Leo Tolstoy
Timeless Truth: He who blusters without reason has most reason to bluster.
Joke of the Week: A man was concerned about what his son would grow up to be. So he designed a test for the youngster. He would put the lad in a room with only a Bible, an apple, and a silver dollar. If the boy looked in the Bible, a future in the ministry would be indicated. If he ate the apple, he’d be a farmer. And if he toyed with the money, banking would be his future. The boy was brought in. He sat on the Bible, ate the apple, and after mulling things over he put the coin in his pocket. The father smiled. His boy would be a politician!
Your post evoked nostalgia for me. I attended school with Joe, and Brian's brother was a work colleague. Never knew Nietzsche.
Terrific post. I haven't watched Brian's Song, will put it at the top of my list. Unfortunately, the "Me" general has persisted. Video hosts today often talk incessantly about themselves. However, there are those who espouse biblical virtues and live them. We endeavor to be good examples and stand for righteousness.