Rip, Ray and Rockabilly

Rip, Ray, Ian, Edgar, Lynne, Bill, Bobb, Barbara, Jim, Will, Joel, Art, Steve, Jeanette

Ian was still visibly shattered by a devastating snub from a group of his former fellow students at Trinity College, Dublin.
He said: "Maybe two years ago, my journalist friend Jeremy Lewis told me that several of people I thought were friends of mine at Trinity were putting together a book of reminiscences about their time at the college in the 1960s, which I'd written about many times. I was annoyed because they never asked me to contribute, and finally one of them who I'd known said they'd like something from me, so I just sent them one of my Letters from Lotusland where I'd written about my first day at Trinity.
"A year goes by and I get emails from them about the non-progress of the book, and I just ignored them. It was all organised by a bunch of amateurs, very much an English upper-class set, hunting, shooting, fishing, and I hadn't been part of them. But on Saturday I got an email from a chap in Dublin saying he'd seen a review of a book called Trinity Tales in the Irish Times. I thought I must be in it, so I wrote to Jeremy and he said, 'Alas, you're not,' but all these nobodies are. They turned me down! And the worst of it is, it's a beautifully produced book with 37 contributors - and I didn't make it. I feel humiliated. But I heard from Barry Humphries's assistant asking me to get in touch with them at Megastar Productions in North London. I'd rather have him as a pal than these snobs."
"You think that's bad," said Lynne, "I was at a social lunch once and I got told how to hold my knife and fork."
In what turned out to be a busy night for distinguished visitors, Rockabilly star Rip Masters was just back from playing in Nottingham, England - "I thought I liked Nottingham because it's the prostitution capital of England, but maybe because it's also the because gun capital. I thought most of the prostitutes had guns, so maybe they kinda combined the two - at least the ones I met did. It can be rough, though: they told me not to go down the local pub alone."
Rip reported "good Indian food, good Italian food, good English food. But they have great Indian food everywhere in England now."
"It's because of the Indians," said Ian.
"We went to a little town nearly Manchester," said Rip, "and found an Indian restaurant with a 20-page menu, and it's all great. And the pub food is just great too. I went there in 1980 and it was absolutely horrendous. It was very hard to get a good meal anywhere, but people have traveled more since then and they don't take crap any more. The English had 200 years to adulterate their food, but now it's recovering. They've gotten much better. I love England but no, I would never move there. I had a wonderful week on somebody else's expense. When I went to school in England, in Claygate, Surrey, I used to walk to school. They can't do that any more. It's a meaner world. It's the same way here."
Lynne and I reported on our first comedy class, at the Ice House on Sunday.
"It was very much an introductory session," said Lynne, "about a dozen of us, our teacher Bobbie Oliver explaining the rules most of the time and we each went up to the mike to talk about ourselves for a few minutes, not tell jokes. And it will end up with a graduation evening to which you're all invited.
"She wants everything original, no props, no gags, no playing characters, She was very hard on Robin Williams because he steals material - allegedly. We'll just be interested to see how far we go with it."
Jim asked: "Did the teacher tell you that one good topic is your mother in law?"
No.
Ian: you don't need a teacher to tell her what she told you, you just do it."
Jim added that it's about coming up with some kind of gimmick about yourself - which, said Rip, Some people have made a career out of.
Jim said: "One guy made a career out of 'Wanna buy a duck?'" (Joe Penner, born 11 November 1904, died 10 January 1941, a Hungarian-born American 1930s-era vaudeville, radio and film comedian. He was born Pintér József in Nagybecskerek, Hungary, now part of Serbia).
Ian didn't quite say "Wanna buy a book?" but he did produce a musty, brown-paged Penguin paperback edition of After The Ball, his iconoclastic history of pop music in the 20th century.
Ian recalled: "I used to deliver beer in Putney in south London - it was my first encounter with the working classes. I came across that English working-class mentality that we're not going to get any further so we'll do all we can to destroy the company we're working for - drinking on the job, petty criminal damage to spite their employer."
We were then joined by two more distinguished visitors: Joel Selvin, music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, and musicologist and Phil Spector associate Art Fein, who runs the website www.sofein.com.
Joel's arrival prompted a strange story of a confrontation involving Ian in the garage under San Francisco's Union Square.
Ian was driving out of the garage, with Joel the passenger, but was trying to leave through the entrance. He encountered across a car coming the other way. Both got out of their cars and it looked to be heading for a fight, when the other man got in his car and backed off. Why? Because Ian had said: "I am fully armed."
As people began to leave, Steve and Jeanette were drawn further down the table and into the conversations. It is clear from Steve's blogs and letters that the undying admiration of President Obama is beginning to fray a little at the edges, particularly over health insurance. His equivocation over the Iranian election protests has bothered some on left and right.
We always knew that healthcare was going to be a tough one, and so it is proving.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
The flow is right - it's just that the dates are wrong.
You usually only see behinds like that in Britain or Africa
When I'm not here, you know, even more people come here
The black contribution to rock n roll is nearly zero.
I'm more literate than most English people you will meet.
You were forewarned, forearmed and foreskinned.
I like being told to be a good boy.
Spiders in England are getting bigger - they're this big! They say it's the central heating.
I've never seen such a quick volte-face in my life.
You know I'm a complete and utter mindreader, don't you?
I'm good on the gospels.
Kiss Me Deadly is one of my favorite films, even though I now know that it is also a hit song.
I think we ought to abolish junior highs and put the kids to work.
I'm not trying to put down blacks - well, maybe I am...