Camp Quiz: The Last—Absolutely Last—Johnny Mercer Puzzler.

Here are titles of some of the great songs Mercer wrote. Finish them for us, please:

1. You Must Have Been a Beautiful _________________.
2. When the World Was __________________________.
3. Jeepers ________.
4. [An indolent person].
5. Hooray for _________.
6. Too Marvelous for _____.
7. Day In____________.
8. Come Rain of Come ___________.
9. [The Name of a Railroad].
10. Autumn ___________.
11. I’m Old _________.
12. Something’s Gotta _____.
13. [What You do When You Sleep].



Getting all thirteen entitles you to national recognition as a Johnny Mercer addict (like me).

That’s all for today—I gotta cut it short for some business. Much more tomorrow.

Winner of the Camp Quiz Circa 1940-50: John Curry.

Lawyer and brilliant Republican strategist Curry supplied all three answers: first the line in “Ac-cent-tschu-ate the Positive” —“don’t mess with mister in-Between”…second supplying the word “witchcraft” for the song “That Old Black Magic”…and third supplying the phrase “and one more for the road” from “One for My Baby.” Curry further informs us that he was born in 1953, making him fifty-three, barely the shaving age in the Over-the-Hill club to which I belong. He must have absorbed those songs when he was 10 or 12! Frank Nofsinger came in second at 12:18 p.m. with the correct answers, as well, supplying the fact that he is 69 years old, hardly allowed to take the car keys from this senior citizen writer. At 77 going on 78 I’m looking for a contemporary! Also, the youngest contributor. Anyhow, congratulations to all!

Winner of the Classic Quiz: Frank Nofsinger.

He posted seven—count `em—seven answers, one right after another and all correct. The poem is The Tyger by William Blake. First of all to post was David Graf at 6:21 a.m. Wednesday who is pulling our collective legs by saying that “the author was known as Saki but his real name was H. H. Monro. What do I win?” Nada. Graf is hereby sentenced to read Monro’s only novel, “The Unbearably Bassington” from 1912. Another important contributor, Bob in PF, filed a partial answer at 8:46 a.m. but had only the author’s name. However he adds a very important factoid: Blake tipped off Tom Paine that he was running in trouble in England with his “seditious” writings, Paine nearly dying in a Paris dungeon under the Jacobins with the acquiescence of ambassador Robert Morris which wasn’t reversed until James Monroe got Paine freed and nursed back to health. See what interesting things you learn while striving to answer a poem’s title and authorship? Congratulations.

The Unsung Triumph over Terrorism: Moammar Gadhafi.

The Wall Street Journal has been running an intriguing two-part series on its editorial page written by none other than Judith Miller (remember her? The New York Times correspondent who ran into trouble and spent some time in jail for refusing to divulge her source on the Valerie Plame matter?) Miller who was fired from her paper because she was too conservative has documented the case that proves the value of taking a tough stand on terrorism: that of the dictator of Libya. His decision to reverse his decision on the spread of nuclear weapons has prompted a resumption of full diplomatic ties between the U. S. and his country. It is a triumph of the bold approach that the president has applied—and nary a foreign policy expert has praised it, much less the mainstream media.

The stories certify that after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Gadhafi became convinced that his country was next. He had 4,000 advanced uranium centrifuges and enough quantities of enriched uranium to make a 10-kiloton bomb approximating Little Boy” which we dropped on Hiroshima. To those who say we should not have recognized Libya because it was responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing forget that this is a game of global poker and Libya has already paid $2.7 billion in compensation to victims’ families or $10 million per family. No amount can repay America for the loss of human lives but it shows that a country can come back, can be redeemed. Do you agree? Or do you feel we should never recognize the fact that Libya is trying to come back: stop sponsoring terrorism, stop threatening their neighbors. A good precedent for the future, no? Your comments.

Two Camp Quizzes from Johnny Mercer.

Harold Arlen wrote the music based on a sad song he had heard a black man hum a refrain. He picked it out on the piano, then wrote it down and called Mercer to write the words. It was to be for the film “Hot Nocturne” [1941]. Mercer went away, lolled on a couch and hummed it to himself and then got up, went to the desk and wrote. He applied his memory of the sound of train whistles at Five Mild Bend in Savannah: “Hear the train a-callin’/ Whooee…” The song was, of course, called what?

It starts this way: My mama done tol’ me/ When I was in knee-pants/ My mama done tol’ me: Son--. So that’s the first question: what’s the name of the song that swept the country in 1941?

Next: For bragging rights: Johnny’s lover Judy Garland wanted to record it but, of course, being a woman she couldn’t sing “when I was in knee pants.” How did he change the words to fit her needs? This one is pretty tough unless you’re a Mercer devotee (like me).

Another Classic Quiz: An American Poet This Time.

The poem’s title, who wrote it and why? Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!/ Long has it waved on high/ And many an eye has danced to see/ That banner in the sky;/ Beneath it run the cannon shout/ And burst the cannon’s roar;--/ The meteor of the ocean air/Shall sweep the clouds no more!

The concluding stanza: Nail to the mast her holy flag,/ Set every threadbare sail/ And give her to the god or storms/ The lightning and the gail!

Every school-child in my generation had to read it, some to memorize it.

Personal Asides: Outraged Moralist Marin…Tony Snow as Seen by, Well, One Allison Benedikt…the Awful Starchy Whiteness of the Trib all Before We Get to the Foie Gras.

The Sun-Times’ outraged moralist, Carol Marin writing again about the story she broke two years ago concerning the union leaders’ kids who got city jobs? She can’t find anything worse in our society to complain about? ...You should scroll down and look at the interesting economic colloquy on immigration with Liam doing two part stories on taxing illegals in response to John Powers and a discussion between Powers and Jim Leahy on the subject—as well as a piece by Mike Butler zinging Dick Durbin (appropriately)…Then a bit of erudite theology on the King James version by Will…and a few additional points on immigration from Jason…

The Trib’s review of Tony Snow’s performance at his first White House briefing was written by somebody who has the perspicacity of a 14-year-old, written in fey feature style by one Allison Benedikt (no, I haven’t misspelled it: Benedikt). As always with the Tribune which has a deadly corporate bureaucracy, no one is readily identifiable except for John Kass (superb), Eric Zorn (pretty good) and Mary Schmich (pretty good). Who, for example, is its Religion Editor? Do we have to go to the paper’s corporate directory and thumb through its pages to find out? Is Rick Pearson the Political Editor? At least the Sun-Times tells us their Religion Editor is Cathleen Falsani who is devoted to telling us what Dusty Baker thinks about God—but at least we know who she is…and that the Washington bureau chief is Lynn Sweet…I think it’s the Trib’s stultifying corporate mentality that stymies me.

Ms. Benedikt thinks Tony Snow was rather boring repeating “that old White House sweeps-week favorite, `Let me remind you: It’s a war on terror.’” She evidently doesn’t think so, does she? This is the fatal big city newspaper syndrome wherein the editorial pages believes one thing, and dear little Ms. Allison, who’s probably a year or two out of college the other—each given equal weight. She also has a disconcerting world-weary tone that finds Snow has won more sympathy for his bracelet denoting his near-fatal colon cancer than President Bush has for anything Bush has said. My, that’s what it is, winning sympathy, isn’t it? See how she writes like a Valley Girl talks? “It was a jarring moment, at once moving because, well, the guy had cancer” well-well-well—“and uncomfortable because, well, this is a White House news briefing.” That’s a bad imitation of Tom Wolfe concluding “the guy was pretty unflappable.” This gal Allison is, well, pretty awful.

Which leads one to speculate about the Trib’s very proper starchy white appearance. When Mike Royko switched over there from the Sun-Times there was a feeling that he would not be as good, rather subdued by the Trib’s tower-ing corporatism. Well, he wasn’t but it wasn’t his fault. There’s something about a humor columnist and witty urban commentator appearing in those deadly white pages that drains the juice out of the language. When Royko was in the old Daily News, a paper where the ink would come off on your fingertips as you turned the pages, he fit, somehow. Royko in the Trib never seemed to be comfortable.

Switch now to the Sun-Times’ food section where its editor doubles as a Saturday commentator, dishing up conventional wisdom and run-of-the-mill liberalism when she isn’t concentrating on Hispanic doings. The subject is foie gras which is a liver pate most generally used in French restaurants. The issue, of course, is pro-life vs. pro-choice. Since the Sun-Times in its desire to appeal to the hip cannot afford to make a comment that is not pro-abortion (a law reinforced by the publisher’s stridently feminist wife who writes under the moniker of Jennifer Hunter), the metaphor is strained. But the issue, launched by Charlie Trotter, is that ducks and geese have to undergo terrible torture and foreshortened life spans because of force-feeding that makes their livers more tasty. Trotter, who teaches cooking on Channel 11 (naturally) feels that suffering is a terrible thing to visit on poultry—thus this trendy guy is pro-life, wishing to extend the lives and spare the lives of poultry from torture…while Chefs for Choice believe everyone has a right to make the decision for themselves. The rigidly politically correct, ultra-liberal Democrat Joe Moore, alderman of the lakefront’s 49th is a pro-lifer where it affects geese and ducks but an absolutist pro-death where the issue is human life and partial birth abortion.

The spat begs for some fun but of course the Sun-Times cannot play. The food writer, a Sandy Thorn Clark, makes the comparison between the seriousness of fighting crime and supporting more money for education which she says the council should be concerned with. Were she to have mentioned the loss of human lives by abortion she would likely be either chastised or fired as was Denny Byrne, their very good editorial page columnist, a number of years ago for daring to have a different view from the marketing decision that pits the newspaper to the side of feminism.

At the very least, Ms. Thorn Clark could have written that the issue belongs between a goose and her butcher—but, no, that would probably outrage Ms. Hunter.

Today’s Classic Quiz: One of My Favorite Poems.

Who wrote this (a lion of English literature, pun intended):

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright/ In the forests of the night/ What immoral hand or eye/ Could frame thy dreadful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies/ Burns the fire of thine eyes?/ On what wings dare he aspire?/ What the hand dare seize the fire?

The completion: What the hammer? What the chain?/ In what furnace was thy brain?/ What the anvil? What dread grasp/ Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Honor code in effect: no cheating by looking it up in an anthology.

Today’s Camp Quiz Circa 1940-50s: Portrait of Johnny.

Johnny Mercer [1909-1976], born in Savannah, was the troubadour of the 1940-`50s and my favorite songster-wordsmith. He captured the southern idiom, black and white, writing unforgettable words, sometimes composing great music and also as a recording vocalist for his songs. He had a kind of world-weary Frank Sinatra caste to him. Perhaps you must be in my age group to compete in this quiz, but we’ll see (tell me if you’re younger and win!). One day Johnny caught an oration by Father Divine, a black evangelist and produced his words in a song that rocked the nation.

You’ve got to Ac-cent-tschu-ate the positive/ ee-lim-in-nate the negative/ latch on to the affirmative…

Complete the last line, please.

Mercer was in love for a lifetime with that irrepressibly screwed-up druggie and alcoholic Judy Garland notwithstanding they were married to different people (Judy having a yen for gay men, astoundingly). This is a song he secretly dedicated to her.

That old black magic has me in its spell/ that old black magic that you weave so well/ those icy fingers up and down my spine/ the same old ____________ when your eyes meet mine.

Supply the missing word.

Finally, when it became clear they would never be together again, he wrote

This torch that I’ve found/ must be drowned/ or it soon might explode/ Make it one for my baby and _________________________.

Supply the missing phrase. If you can complete all three you qualify as an unredeemable square and old fogy.

Sunday’s Political Shootout: Kevin White and Russ Stewart.

Kevin White, a newcomer to politics, is a personal, bright Republican lawyer who has volunteered to challenge Rep. Rahm Emanuel for Congress. Pray for lightening to strike to defeat the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. White will appear with Russ Stewart, veteran political analyst for the Nadig newspapers which cover the city’s northwest side. Russ is famous for asking two kinds of questions: tough and tougher. That’s Sunday on WLS-AM (890) at 8 p.m.