Posted on 04/21/2019 4:51:54 PM PDT by Twotone
At midnight on December 31st 1999, how did the world's only superpower celebrate the passing of the soi-disant millennium and a thousand years of cultural inheritance? Shakespeare? No. Mozart? Not a chance. Instead, Bill Clinton, the Lounge-Lizard-In-Chief, turned up at the Lincoln Memorial to listen to Tom Jones crank out well-loved favorites like "It's Not Unusual" - which, by happy coincidence, was also the President's defense to Paula Jones' allegations about the curvature of his, ah, "distinguishing characteristics". Millennia come and go, and Clinton is stooped and aged now, but the indestructible Welsh boyo is still on stage 250 nights a year driving women wild with "It's Not Unusual" at an age when, sadly, for many men it's all too unusual.
Timeless joke: Patient: Give it to me straight, Doc. Doctor: Well, I'm afraid you've got Tom Jones Disease. Patient: Tom Jones Disease? I've never heard of it. Is it common? Doctor: Well, it's not unusual.
No, it's not:
In my disc-jockey days, the thing I found burdensome was the requirement to be cheery and positive every day of the week. If you chanced to come into the studio with care and woe hanging round your shoulders, even if you didn't utter a solitary downbeat word, the audience could somehow discern you were a little low and glum. And that's not good for ratings.
And then one morning I stumbled on the perfect cure: I found, if you kept a copy of "It's Not Unusual" handy, the sheer exhilaration of that intro was sufficiently infectious to banish the blues and that, after bouncing a timecheck or weather update over that band, no one listening could tell your best friend had just run off with your girl...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
IMO. Mark jokes too much.
I had to mow through all that tall grass of clever quips just to discover this was a stream of consciousness monologue.
Oh well. I also enjoy writing my thoughts. So we have that in common.
etc. etc. etc. etc.
A lot of brave young men died on a beach in Normandy, and in Korea, Vietnam, and fighting terrorism in the Middle East, so that people like Clinton could assuage their great egos and amass fortunes without working and without producing anything. Boxers or Briefs?
I enjoy and respect Mark. I never liked that song or tom jones.
That’s the song they played at the end of Mars Attacks.
Best scene was the senile lady watching Martians attack DC on TV => “They blew up Congress, HAHAHA!”
Listen to “I Who Have Nothing” by Tom Jones, and you will change your mind! I’d BET on it!
Any rational alien enemy would know we’d fall faster and harder WITH Congress than without them....
This was interesting...thanks!
Great post thanks!
With Elton John on piano. What a slider fact. I was not expecting that.
An interesting read. I like Jones, and I like that song, especially the orchestration. That was a great time for music from Europe.
I grew up on Tom Jones. As I kid I’d run through the house singing “What’s New Pussycat” at the top of my lungs. Highly inappropriate for a nine year old, but it was a different time.
It is the story of how Tom Jones came to sing “It’s Not Unusual.” It’s not a monologue at all. It was an enormous hit and the man who wrote it died recently. Thus, the reason for this column.
Here’s the a youtube of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-X4rmwbtns
But listen to I Who Have Nothing by Ben E. King, and you will hear it the way it’s supposed to be sung!
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