Klarinet Archive - Posting 000723.txt from 2003/07

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Benny and Harry (was: [kl] The day Benny Goodman saved Batman (not pornographic))
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:20:28 -0400

Ed Lacy wrote,
> This is from a comic book of the early 1950's, not a pornographic one.
[snip]
>The evildoer is pumping poisonous gas through a small
>outlet near the roof of the room, too high for either
>Benny or the heroic character to reach.
[snip]
> But, Benny gets an ingenious idea. He takes all the keys off his
> clarinet (I guess he must have had a screwdriver along with him), and
> uses chewing gum to stop up all the holes (I guess he happened also to
> have a year's supply of chewing gum with him at the time). Then,
> assembling the two main body joints and the barrel, he places an
> especially large wad of chewing gum in one end of the clarinet. Using
> it as a blowgun, he manages to stop up the vent from which the
> poisonous gas is escaping, thereby saving the day, and saving the hero
> to perform more incredible feats in the ongoing battle of good against
> evil.

Tony Pay wrote,
>>So, Goodman didn't know the fingering for low E, then.

No, but apparently he showed genuine super-hero prowess in stripping all
the keys faster than mere mortals could take them off.

Take them *all* off.

Uh-oh, this wasn't supposed to be the Benny Porn thread. For some reason,
these stories remind me of the 12-year-old boy in the third clarinet
section of my junior high school band [1960]. He sat next to an attractive
girl named Janis who wore short, tight skirts and a pointed bra. She
looked a little bit like Joan Cawford and she "cussed like a longshoreman,"
as my admiring but somewhat scandalized dad put it after she visited my
house. (This was the same girl with whom, in 6th grade, I wrote a short
play called, "The Day I Stabbed the Teacher." We kept that script a
secret, until her mother found a copy and we caught ten kinds of hell, but
we also co-authored a play about Orville and Wilbur Wright that we
performed in class. Janis played Wilbur. I played Orville. The teacher
gave us a D because girls weren't supposed to play male roles. Come to
think of it, that ranked among the many reasons *why* we wrote, "The Day I
Stabbed the Teacher.") Gawky ol' Hairy, oops, I mean Harry, had the hots
for Janis something awful. Since he was, after all, 12 years old, his idea
of a sophisticated gambit was to slither up behind her when she was bending
over to put her clarinet in its case, rub up against her backside
accidentally-on-purpose and say, "Aaaaah, I just love those big, beautiful
hips." This was not exactly Clark Cable material, but in 1960, it was not
commonplace behavior, either.

Anyhow, during band class, when the teacher was busy with the flutes and
turned his back on the clarinets, Harry would brace the bell of his
clarinet against the fly of his trousers, aim the mouthpiece at an angle
suitable for activities not normally welcomed in public, and simulate these
activities vigorously, complete with loud grunting and sundry other sound
FX. The object of his affections finally had about enough of Harry. She
told him if he ever did that again, she'd rat him out. Naturally, that
threat inspired a virtuoso performance. Next morning, the principal called
me into the office and asked if I'd seen Harry do "anything unusual" in
band the previous afternoon. I guess the office needed corroboration for
Janis's story. When I tried to describe what I'd seen Harry do, I felt
myself turning cherry red, lapsed into paroxysms of snorts and giggles, and
never could get the words out. Reckon that was good enough, because Hairy
and his musical dildo got suspended.

> I'm not making this up.

Me, neither!

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

P. S.
I'm making my stupid pet human type this. Tony Pay's automatic tagline
generator wrote,
>>... When I get a better mouse trap built,
>>mice will be an endangered species.

You wish.

Ssst!
Shadow Cat

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