I feel really sad that he's going to miss out on it 😥.
He would have loved it 😔.
At least he was with us for the global Fauci Fuckup 🙂.
____________________________________
As an aside, I used to think that everybody knew full and well that Fauci was was responsible for the covid fire and then made himself chief hero fireman, but that out of politeness we aren't going to say so until after he's dead. Because, after all, most people were pretty foolish and complicit during early covidpocalypse.
But now I'm discovering that people are still uncertain about the absolutely forever-obvious Epstein thing? How?
This guy was the only non-interested-party who attended the trial (seems he walked in by accident, lol), and he didn't appear at all unclear about any aspect of it. His video is worth watching. https://youtu.be/BzHYd2Uar6s
Folk Song Army for the win. My wife had my son listening to the execrable "If I Had A Hammer" ( or as I used to jokingly call it If I Had a Hammer I would go looking for a sickle), so I taught him to sign Folk Song Army. He liked it much better!
I honestly never heard of the guy, or did but don't remember, until this dropped from Steve. I couldn't see that he was ever romantically involved with anyone. Strange.
He also seems pretty Lefty but mostly in the old fashioned anti-establishmentarian way. I wonder if he went back to teaching and mathematics after realizing the Left had completed the long march and was humorless and impossible to satirize by the 1970s.
He was indeed teaching math in a light hearted way (maths for tenors) until he was quite old. I think the universities where he taught saw him as a magnet, like they see nobel laureates or important former politicians as teaching staff magnets too.
My parents knew him at Wellesley and my Dad used to sit in on some of his math classes. In one of them Lehrer was talking about misleading statistics and asked why France had many more deaths from lung cancer than the US although they bought roughly the same number of cigarettes per person. Dad was rather proud of being the only one in the room who guessed the right answer --- that the French smoked cigarettes farther down, to near the filter or the last bit of stub.
Maybe. He had jewy red hair after all. But why equate bachelorhood with wanting to snuggle with hairy chests?? Can't a fellow simply not marry for any of the extremely reasonable reasons? And let's say he didn't care to squeeze the plush lady parts so much, how does that lead to the presumption that he wouldn't be naturally disgusted by the notion of closely inhaling the pheromones of men?
I'm not talking about this fellow in particular, just trying to ween "didn't marry" (for folk born before 1960) from innately lusted for sodomy".
I think the two main categories of non-incel "didn't marry" are (1) homo and (2) asperger-y assexual. Just my anecdotal intuition, maybe am wrong. Tom Lehrer was not asperger-y, so there you go.
By the way, not every homo is a practising homo. See Billy Wilder's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
In the same vein a la "That horseless carriage will never catch on! It's just a plaything of the rich!"
and,
"That Cola soda thing will never catch on! People don't like sugary drinks!"
And thus he missed out on immortality. Who instantly recalls Tom Lehrer in 2025 compared to say, Elvis?
"What do you think?"
Music for dorks, nerds, geeks. Question: was Lehrer married? Any children? Was he even straight?
Google, any answers on this one?
Per da G-miester:
"Whether or not Tom Lehrer is gay is unknown. He has kept his personal life private, and there's no public information or statements from him about his sexual orientation. Some have speculated about it based on his bachelorhood and some of his song lyrics, but there's no definitive answer."
Hm. Well there's that, but that's definitely not a very good look, and for someone who had achieved a measure of fame in the entertainment world, and could've passed for Buddy Holly's twin.
At least Buddy Holly was married before he passed.
Seriously, though, another genre that was fairly popular during Lehrer's maturity and he would'e been well familiar with, was the novelty song, (E.G. "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey, A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?)
Actually no, I wouldn't.
And later the novelty reached pop 60's "Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow pokadot bikini"; and "Snoopy vs the Red Barron"
But really, is Mairzy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey more mature than Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin?
Seriously?
So admittedly it does sound like Lehrer's music did lean more toward novelty/comedy genre--King Tut by Steve Martin, and perhaps "Im an Asshole" by Denis Leary, being examples of higher sophistication.
It appears as though Lehrer retired from songwriting just as Rock was becoming fully matured and developed, so he missed out on one of the 20th Century's biggest musical genres/artform.
Also, July has had a number of famous RIP's, from Lehrer, Chuck Mangione, Connie Francis, to Ozzy Osbourne.
Which of these four musicians received the most national/global press? And, which of these four musicians will be well remembered and recalled decades from now?
Don't think it's gonna be Mairzy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey.
I'm sure not sure why you are making fun, as Al has had a steady career for over 40 years now. He was also gracious enough to post a tribute on Instagram
Actually. I’m a fan of weird Al, and not surprised that he posted a tribute.
but lets not mistake his popularity for Elvis. I think he’d get the joke. This kind of humor is niche. Ultimately Lehrer lost mind share not because he didn’t go rock but because he preferred to withdrawal.
That and his humor was often topical. Nonetheless i recently saw Daniel Ratcliffe , recite the element song. But in the 60s and into the 70s and even 80s Lehrer was very well known in the niche .
My college eating house of misfits had one of his albums in the late 70s. That's the only reason I knew of him. Mark Russell had a similar career in the 70s-80s but political.
Rock n roll was definitely, expressly, children’s music, or teenager music. That adults listen to rock n roll, or rock, is partly because it matured with the boomers, even while so many boomers resisted maturation
Yet Lehrer's music wasn't much above it. Novelty songs are at the same level. At least Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis were attempting something new, and expressing the human condition albeit in a more raw, even ephemeral sort of way.
Rock matured with the Beatles and other groups that were technically not Boomers but part of the Silent Generation.
The idea that Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds, the Beatles Revolver, the White Album, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page/Zeppelin, Rolling Stones' etc were playing children's music amply demonstrates that Lehrer didn't know what he was talking about regarding the progression of a new musical form from the 50s on.
Lehrer's music ranks up there with other novelties of the era, such as Mairzy Doats
and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
You can if you want to, but I prefer not to. If that's considered more mature than Strawberry Fields Forever, Pet Sounds album, then clearly Lehrer didn't know diddly about Rock, which came from Rock and Roll.
One interesting comedy duo which while they didn't write their own songs but sung other popular hits of the day, was the Smothers Brothers--excellent harmonies, played their own instruments, pretty good singers and overall pretty funny for their era, all things considered.
My favorites are "Poisoning Pigeons", "Christmas Carol" and "Irish Ballad". I sing karaoke versions of them at springtime, Christmas and St. Patrick's Day, respectively.
Up there with his very best. Every time I hear it I'm struck by the prescience of the final couplet and the reference to learning Chinese, given he wrote it in 1960. A long time before China started its acceleration into the future which I keep abreast of thanks to Zhang Meifang. (An example https://x.com/CGMeifangZhang/status/1949703289018421443)
“The Elements”, set to a Gilbert & Sullivan tune, was good.
His musical career was short. From Wikipedia: “In the early 1970s, Lehrer largely retired from public performance to devote his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”
Ironically, because it made fun of the Catholic liturgy post Vatican 2, enjoying the Vatican Rag set me on the path to becoming a Christian. The chorus went like this:
Get right down there on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries.
Bow your head with great respect and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
Bow your head with great devotion.
When in Rome do like a Roman.
Hey there Maria,gee it's good to see ya,
Doin' the Vatican, gettin ecstatic and kind of dramatic and doing the Vatican Rag!
See this 4-hour Lehrer tribute concert.
https://x.com/foundring1/status/1785741996759658517
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Vatican Rag, We'll All Go Together when We Go. Great music, great memories. I had no idea he had jumped the twig.
I always liked, “We Will All Go Together When We Go!”
I feel really sad that he's going to miss out on it 😥.
He would have loved it 😔.
At least he was with us for the global Fauci Fuckup 🙂.
____________________________________
As an aside, I used to think that everybody knew full and well that Fauci was was responsible for the covid fire and then made himself chief hero fireman, but that out of politeness we aren't going to say so until after he's dead. Because, after all, most people were pretty foolish and complicit during early covidpocalypse.
But now I'm discovering that people are still uncertain about the absolutely forever-obvious Epstein thing? How?
This guy was the only non-interested-party who attended the trial (seems he walked in by accident, lol), and he didn't appear at all unclear about any aspect of it. His video is worth watching. https://youtu.be/BzHYd2Uar6s
Folk Song Army for the win. My wife had my son listening to the execrable "If I Had A Hammer" ( or as I used to jokingly call it If I Had a Hammer I would go looking for a sickle), so I taught him to sign Folk Song Army. He liked it much better!
“…I’d go looking for a Sickle”. Perfect. Miserable commie Seeger and his miserable music deserve no better.
What a great life, and what a smart, hilarious individual. Did anybody harvest his DNA?
I think he was firmly on the other shore. NYT obituary said he never married and had no children up, up to the age of 97.
I honestly never heard of the guy, or did but don't remember, until this dropped from Steve. I couldn't see that he was ever romantically involved with anyone. Strange.
He also seems pretty Lefty but mostly in the old fashioned anti-establishmentarian way. I wonder if he went back to teaching and mathematics after realizing the Left had completed the long march and was humorless and impossible to satirize by the 1970s.
He was indeed teaching math in a light hearted way (maths for tenors) until he was quite old. I think the universities where he taught saw him as a magnet, like they see nobel laureates or important former politicians as teaching staff magnets too.
My parents knew him at Wellesley and my Dad used to sit in on some of his math classes. In one of them Lehrer was talking about misleading statistics and asked why France had many more deaths from lung cancer than the US although they bought roughly the same number of cigarettes per person. Dad was rather proud of being the only one in the room who guessed the right answer --- that the French smoked cigarettes farther down, to near the filter or the last bit of stub.
Maybe. He had jewy red hair after all. But why equate bachelorhood with wanting to snuggle with hairy chests?? Can't a fellow simply not marry for any of the extremely reasonable reasons? And let's say he didn't care to squeeze the plush lady parts so much, how does that lead to the presumption that he wouldn't be naturally disgusted by the notion of closely inhaling the pheromones of men?
I'm not talking about this fellow in particular, just trying to ween "didn't marry" (for folk born before 1960) from innately lusted for sodomy".
I think the two main categories of non-incel "didn't marry" are (1) homo and (2) asperger-y assexual. Just my anecdotal intuition, maybe am wrong. Tom Lehrer was not asperger-y, so there you go.
By the way, not every homo is a practising homo. See Billy Wilder's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
"Thus he called rock ‘n’ roll “children’s music.”
In the same vein a la "That horseless carriage will never catch on! It's just a plaything of the rich!"
and,
"That Cola soda thing will never catch on! People don't like sugary drinks!"
And thus he missed out on immortality. Who instantly recalls Tom Lehrer in 2025 compared to say, Elvis?
"What do you think?"
Music for dorks, nerds, geeks. Question: was Lehrer married? Any children? Was he even straight?
Google, any answers on this one?
Per da G-miester:
"Whether or not Tom Lehrer is gay is unknown. He has kept his personal life private, and there's no public information or statements from him about his sexual orientation. Some have speculated about it based on his bachelorhood and some of his song lyrics, but there's no definitive answer."
Hm. Well there's that, but that's definitely not a very good look, and for someone who had achieved a measure of fame in the entertainment world, and could've passed for Buddy Holly's twin.
At least Buddy Holly was married before he passed.
Seriously, though, another genre that was fairly popular during Lehrer's maturity and he would'e been well familiar with, was the novelty song, (E.G. "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey, A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?)
Actually no, I wouldn't.
And later the novelty reached pop 60's "Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow pokadot bikini"; and "Snoopy vs the Red Barron"
But really, is Mairzy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey more mature than Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin?
Seriously?
So admittedly it does sound like Lehrer's music did lean more toward novelty/comedy genre--King Tut by Steve Martin, and perhaps "Im an Asshole" by Denis Leary, being examples of higher sophistication.
It appears as though Lehrer retired from songwriting just as Rock was becoming fully matured and developed, so he missed out on one of the 20th Century's biggest musical genres/artform.
Also, July has had a number of famous RIP's, from Lehrer, Chuck Mangione, Connie Francis, to Ozzy Osbourne.
Which of these four musicians received the most national/global press? And, which of these four musicians will be well remembered and recalled decades from now?
Don't think it's gonna be Mairzy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey.
Kids these days don’t seem to care much about new musical sounds but do seem to place a high premium on extreme verbal dexterity.
e.g. Rap music.
Just think, he could have been as big as Weird Al!
I'm sure not sure why you are making fun, as Al has had a steady career for over 40 years now. He was also gracious enough to post a tribute on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMnqQGTOtIj/
Actually. I’m a fan of weird Al, and not surprised that he posted a tribute.
but lets not mistake his popularity for Elvis. I think he’d get the joke. This kind of humor is niche. Ultimately Lehrer lost mind share not because he didn’t go rock but because he preferred to withdrawal.
That and his humor was often topical. Nonetheless i recently saw Daniel Ratcliffe , recite the element song. But in the 60s and into the 70s and even 80s Lehrer was very well known in the niche .
I’m no kid, and I’ve never heard a Tom Lehrer song.
I'm with you. I'm nearly 60, and I've never heard of him or his songs.
My college eating house of misfits had one of his albums in the late 70s. That's the only reason I knew of him. Mark Russell had a similar career in the 70s-80s but political.
Rock n roll was definitely, expressly, children’s music, or teenager music. That adults listen to rock n roll, or rock, is partly because it matured with the boomers, even while so many boomers resisted maturation
Yet Lehrer's music wasn't much above it. Novelty songs are at the same level. At least Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis were attempting something new, and expressing the human condition albeit in a more raw, even ephemeral sort of way.
Rock matured with the Beatles and other groups that were technically not Boomers but part of the Silent Generation.
The idea that Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds, the Beatles Revolver, the White Album, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page/Zeppelin, Rolling Stones' etc were playing children's music amply demonstrates that Lehrer didn't know what he was talking about regarding the progression of a new musical form from the 50s on.
Lehrer's music ranks up there with other novelties of the era, such as Mairzy Doats
and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
You can if you want to, but I prefer not to. If that's considered more mature than Strawberry Fields Forever, Pet Sounds album, then clearly Lehrer didn't know diddly about Rock, which came from Rock and Roll.
One interesting comedy duo which while they didn't write their own songs but sung other popular hits of the day, was the Smothers Brothers--excellent harmonies, played their own instruments, pretty good singers and overall pretty funny for their era, all things considered.
The Old Dope Peddler and I Want to Go Home To Dixie
My favorites are "Poisoning Pigeons", "Christmas Carol" and "Irish Ballad". I sing karaoke versions of them at springtime, Christmas and St. Patrick's Day, respectively.
Wernher von Braun
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun.
That was a good one.
He aimed for the stars, but only hit London.
Up there with his very best. Every time I hear it I'm struck by the prescience of the final couplet and the reference to learning Chinese, given he wrote it in 1960. A long time before China started its acceleration into the future which I keep abreast of thanks to Zhang Meifang. (An example https://x.com/CGMeifangZhang/status/1949703289018421443)
That song has a much cleverer verse:
𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘩 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯
𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘦
𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 o𝘭𝘥 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘯 𝘛𝘰𝘸𝘯
𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘰𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘷𝘰𝘯 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘯
Poisoning pigeons in the park.
Poisoning pigeons in the park is my second favorite.
My 96 year old mother who played Tom Lehrer through my early childhood still says "That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun."
Oedipus Rex
“But maybe you had better let it go at that…”
“The Elements”, set to a Gilbert & Sullivan tune, was good.
His musical career was short. From Wikipedia: “In the early 1970s, Lehrer largely retired from public performance to devote his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”
UC Santa Cruz. The Fighting Banana Slugs. A perfect place to finish a career in irreverent music.
UC Santa Cruz has nothing on the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.
Could be but I saw Sonny and Cher in Santa Cruz, 1963.
The Harry Potter kid spoke effervescently about how much you loved that song. Also I think it was the opening song for big bang theory.
Poisoning Pigeons. A Dr Demento mainstay and as such, imprinted on my brain. Though I have to admit, I was *astonished* that Lehrer was still alive.
“Be Prepared”. I first heard it as a young Boy Scout listening to the Dr Demento show. It was perfect then, it’s perfect now.
Of the many great songs on the album, 'That Was the Year that Was,' my favorite was the 'Vatican Rag.' Second was '
'National Brotherhood Week,' about people of varying races and faiths pretending to like each other.
Ironically, because it made fun of the Catholic liturgy post Vatican 2, enjoying the Vatican Rag set me on the path to becoming a Christian. The chorus went like this:
Get right down there on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries.
Bow your head with great respect and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
Bow your head with great devotion.
When in Rome do like a Roman.
Hey there Maria,gee it's good to see ya,
Doin' the Vatican, gettin ecstatic and kind of dramatic and doing the Vatican Rag!
send the marines, We'll send them all we've got
John Wayne and Randolph Scott
Remember those exciting fighting scenes?