Tiny Tim. Climate Change Sage.

Rats. Is this thing front-paged? Good grief (10.50 / 2)

I should have edited that.  Diane, you are more than welcome to put this back on the "Recent Diaries" page.

Well, after one performance by Tiny Tim on "Laugh-In", the following week Dick Martin's line to Dan Rowan, when Mr. Rowan mentioned they were going to have a special guest, was 'you're not going to bring back Tiny Tim, are you'.

Got a big laugh.  'Course not.

But the next week, mention of a special guest, 'you're not going to...', and that time it was 'oh yes we are'.

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by: grunmann @ Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 13:08:11 PM UTC

I want it FP'd (8.00 / 1)

hence why you have been a FPer for a year.

Have to rush off, will comment better later.

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by: Diane G @ Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 13:10:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Lord A'mighty!!! (10.25 / 4)

There it is.

A biblical prophet.

Driven crazy as a bedbug by what he sees.

Lewis Carroll would have recognized him.

Gandhi too.

Bet on it.

Look at the children.

They know.

And then...they forget.

Why?

Y'jes' cain't live with that kind of knowledge.

Bet on that as well.

The preparation.

Herbert Khaury had spent close to 36 years dreaming of celebrity before he achieved it. Living in a small room in his parents' apartment in the Bronx, he was surrounded by stacks of 78s and a wind-up Victrola on which to play them. He was born in 1932 in New York City, at the height of the Depression, but by immersing himself in a fantasy world, he was inoculated against the rigours of life.

As a child, he pored over comic books and movie magazines, listened intently to weekly radio serials. He would play act his own radio shows, ad breaks and all, performing all the characters. At one point, he adopted the middle name 'Buckingham' in honour of Captain America's sidekick, Bucky.

His elderly parents, Tillie and Butros, didn't know what to make of their only son. Both were first-generation immigrants: Tillie, a Polish Jew from a strictly-orthodox family; Butros, a devout Lebanese Maronite. Both worked at factories in the garment district of New York. All their attempts to normalise their child ended at naught. Herbert retreated more and more into his own private world, buttressed by glamour and romance.

A Robert Crumb parallel.

But then...the inoculation from above:

The epiphany.

In 1952, aged 20, he was taken by some local youths to a prayer meeting at band leader turned evangelist Jack Wyrtzen's Word Of Life ministry in Manhattan. 'There I was, living in a tenement on a block crowded with thousands of people, and my heart was filled with cursing and sin,' he told writer (and later actor) Harold Ramis in a 1970 interview for Playboy. 'It was like a miraculous gift when I discovered Christ; I had someone I could talk to personally. I started praying about my career. Then all of a sudden, in 1953, like the snap of a finger, the idea came to me to try singing in a higher voice.'

OOOOOOoooooo!!!

As soon as he heard himself sing, he was convinced it would be the key to his success. Inspired by Rudolph Valentino, he developed a romantic look to go along with the voice, growing his hair long and powdering his face into a deathly white pallor. This began his lifelong affair with cosmetics.

'I clean my body and my skin many times a day,' he explained. 'To me, this is a way to keep in touch with the purity of women. A beautiful woman from the age of 11 to the age of 25 can be the essence of life and youth if she can keep herself morally, spiritually and cosmetically clean. So, to me, this white powder was not a stage effect to help my career; it was the symbol of purity and youth and of my personal 24-hour-a-day involvement with romance.'

By this point, he had incorporated his fantasy world so wholly and absolutely into everyday life that his desire to maintain its purity and efficacy (largely) over-ruled sense and reason. But the outside world, especially in 1953, wasn't so understanding.

Living in New York City he had to run the gauntlet of public displeasure over his appearance every single day. Local children took to calling him 'Crazy Herbie'. He was well aware that his presence caused people extreme discomfort.

'There's no denying that I'm ugly,' he said. 'In fact, I think I've got the kind of looks that can drive people to madness. Once, a guy stopped me on the street and said, "You make me want to throw up my breakfast."'

He would often joke that looking like he did meant never having to worry about finding a seat on the subway. Herbert started looking for his big break by performing at talent shows, parties and even the subway system in the 1950s, swapping his guitar for a ukulele early on because it was less cumbersome if he needed to make a hasty exit.

He was given the name Tiny Tim by one of his first managers, George King, who, according to one apocryphal story, was trying to facilitate bookings at clubs looking for midget acts. Herbert had already performed under a succession of monikers, including Larry Love, Darry Dover, Judas K. Foxglove, Rollie Dell and Texarcana Tex. But Tiny Tim was the one that stuck.

Gone like a motherfucker.

In the world but not of it.

Wandering the urban desert like some crazed saint.

W. C. Fields would have recognized him, too.

Judas K. Foxglove!!!???

Please.

Have faith.

These are the good old days.

Still.

Just as it's always  been.

Just as it's always  been.

Bet on it.

Later...

AG

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by: Arthur Gilroy @ Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 14:10:13 PM UTC

P.S. (9.00 / 1)

 I've got it!!!

A Tiny Tim movie bio, starring, written and directed by...wait for it...

Sacha Baron Cohen!!!

Oh sweet Lord!!!

It's a natural.

AG

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by: Arthur Gilroy @ Thu Dec 17, 2009 at 20:15:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

freaky! (10.00 / 2)

wow.

thanks for the Too Early In The Morning For This, Adjust Your Volume, Warning!!! lol.

thats wild. I am old enough to remember both Laugh In and TT...  man, thats somethin'.

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by: Lady Libertine @ Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 14:18:29 PM UTC

Even though it is a "sing-a-long" song, supposedly, (9.50 / 2)

it's tough, tough, tough to do.

Like who sings along at

"The Red Sea isn't parting anymore,
and Pharaoh's army is drowning, drowning..."

Or to sing along when the big white hurricane waves hit NYC in "The Day After Tomorrow".

Everybody sing:

"The Russian freighter is sailing down the street,
down the street, down the street,
The Russian freighter is sailing down the street,
and we're all freezing to death"

I mean, some songs just are not quite as conducive to joining in.

And a song like that 30+ years before melting ice caps were getting perceptible to average folks?

And having single digit age kids sing along in a song about "washing away sin"?

So, Orel Roberts just died.

OR has nothing on the TimMeister.

 

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by: grunmann @ Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 15:35:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]