The Yale Daily News has been laying into Toad’s on a regular basis for months now. In November, there was a news story, “Alternative venues leapfrog Toad’s,”
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/nov/16/alternative-venues-leapfrog-toads/
which suggested that “changing crowd demographics and a growing number of alternatives are eroding the decades-long dominance Toad’s has held over Yale nightlife.” In other words, Yalies are apoplectic that more riff-raff from other colleges—notably busloads of Quinnipiac students—are daring to set foot on their turf.
In the YDN’s last issue of the fall semester, there were two stories denigrating the club. One was an op-ed by the resident of a nearby dorm decrying the noise and squalor at closing time. This screed which made me laugh out loud, as I’ve lived in neighborhoods where Yale societies and sports teams hold “private” parties, and the students’ squalor far eclipses any found at a state-regulated, police-enforced downtown club.
The other was a news article declaring the Elm Street bar and steakhouse Box 63 to be serious competition for Toad’s. That wasn’t the first article to make such a claim; on Sept. 30, the Yale Daily ran a story titled “Boxing Out Toad’s,” which began “After decades of dominating Yale’s nightlife, Toad’s Place might have some new competition.”
Never mind that the same September story quote managers at both Toad’s and Box 63 as saying they don’t consider each other to be major competition, considering the differences between the two. Never mind that Box 63 doesn’t offer live music or dance parties. Never mind that Toad’s is not a restaurant. Never mind that the YDN’s case for Box 63 cutting into Toad’s audience is based on increased drinking at late-night hours a couple of nights a week.

I was a frequent Toad’s-goer from my mid-20s into my early 40s. I didn’t regard it as a rite of passage—there were plenty of other places, including my neighbor Rudy’s, where I could just drink and converse. The purpose of a cover charge or ticket price is because there is a whole other opportunity being offered: live music, or a DJ dance party or a community benefit.

I’m ecstatic at the swift success of Box 63. They took a building that had been empty for over a year, and which hadn’t been used to its full potential for maybe a decade, and restored it to the glory it once had as Fitzwilly’s and other restaurants.

But it’s ridiculous to tout its success as a slam on another place. Not when there are so many other options also in the neighborhood, from Elm Bar to Mory’s to the new spate of bar/restaurants on Upper Chapel. Not when places like Richter’s, which drew a Box 63-type crowd, have gone under. And especially not when you minimize Toad’s as merely a place to drink with Yale friends.

I don’t fish. I don’t even eat fish. But I was intrigued by this list of songs about fishing, published in 2008 on the Oklahoman newspaper’s blog site NewsOK.
I was lured to add a few of my own, without that whole “angling” angle.

1. The Codfish Ball, Shirley Temple and Ray Bolger. I play this one on the ukulele, and while I’m neither as cute as Ms. Temple or as tap-happy as Mr. Bolger, the song always a highlight when I play live because of the atrocious wordplay: “Catfish is a dancin’ man, but he can’t can-can like a [pause] sardine can.” It’s sort of a Teddy Bear’s Picnic of fish: “There’ll be no hook in sight at the Codfish Ball.”
2. Modest Mouse, The Whale Song. Doesn’t really mention whales, just scouts. But it’s The Whale Song.
3. Tom Waits, Fish in the Jailhouse. From the collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, in 2006. Waits also (with his wife Kathleen Brennan) composed “Fish and Bird”: “A song that we’d never heard, a song of a little bird/That fell in love with a whale.”
4. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine.” An early showstopper in Showboat which also nails the (at that point) unrevealed multi-cultural background of the character who sings it, Julie. “Fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly.”
5. Harry Nilsson, “Think About Your Troubles.” From The Point. There’s a wonderful cover of this, appropriately enough, by the band Jellyfish.
You can take your teardrops
And drop them in a teacup
Take them down to the riverside
And throw them over the side
To be swept up by a current
And taken to the ocean
To be eaten by some fishes
Who were eaten by some fishes
And swallowed by a whale
Who grew so old
He decomposed.
6. Barnes and Barnes, “Fishheads.” Eat ‘em up, yum. Iconic early indie experimental novelty hit from 1978. One of the Barneses was Billy Mumy of Lost in Space “Will Robinson! Will Robinson!” fame. The other is Robert Haimer.
7. The Punk Group, “Fish Sticks for Jesus.” New Wavey keyboard-driven 98-second song with low growling vocals followed by a chirpy guy going “Fish Sticks for Jesus! Fish Sticks for Jesus!”
8. Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five, “Saturday Night Fish Fry.” British TV star Stephen Fry adapted the title for his late-‘80s series Saturday Night Fry.
9. Townes Van Zandt, “The Catfish Song.” It begins:
Down at the bottom of that dirty ol’ river
Down where the reeds and the catfish play
There lies a dream as soft as the water
There lies a bluebird that’s flown away.

Seems you can’t write a song about fish without mentioning birds.
10. Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, “Lazybones”:
And when you go fishin’
I bet you keep wishin’
The fish won’t grab at your line.
Another Carmichael song, “Small Fry,” was turned into a classic 1939 Fleischer Brothers cartoon, in which the mischievous protagonist is a young fish.

One day all these bands will be broken up. Some will wonder if they ever really existed.
Their powers are vast. They can magically distract us from nonstop drinking. Rise above the din of the rowdiest celebrants. Get spat on and take it as a compliment.
The universe is changing shape. Not long ago there were heavens and firmaments, and mortals aspired to dwell there at the feet of gods, looking down at Earth and rocking it. Now, there is doubt and indignity, yet the bands still play. They still gather and serve.
These are their stories.

Our scene here is flat and easily navigable. There is a high-born breed who inhabit the College on the Hill. Down the slope are the people’s temples, with their distinct congregations:
D’Aulaire’s Famous Rock Club Cafe, the colorful mainstream mecca of dance, joy and expensive tickets. Altar for nationally touring bands uplifted by the collegiate economy.
Hamilton’s Tap Room, for glorification of mortals who cover the music of the gods and spread it to those gifted followers who can drink, dance and whoop simultaneously.
There are makeshift meeting-houses of musical appreciation found in basements and lodges and churches and school halls throughout the city. There are boiler rooms and lounges and attics on campus. There are bedrooms with recording equipment stashed under the bed, for private worship. There are diffuse local-band radio programs.
Then there is the Bullfinch. When the gods return to the planet, or create a new breed right here on land. When the outside world traverses the river and finds us and realizes that the gods have landed before them, the mangy location where the lightning strikes will be the Bullfinch.
That’s not why we hang there. But that’s what we believe.

Worship services this night: The Hyperboreans return to the College on the Hill where they formed so many years ago, for a reception and student-only concert. Then they play all night at D’ollaires… Sun Bright Deep and Golden Gardens at Hamilton’s; the latter has several Hyperborean covers in their repertoire… At the Bullfinch, dark dismal calm to counteract the party spirit elsewhere: Winds of the North, Becalmed in Sleep and the live debut Silent Conchs…

Turned off the TV and wrote a play, then a novel, then a cookbook.

Seeker Lover Keeper, Seeker Lover Keeper.
Cute pop. No frills, except the harmonies ahhh harmonies ahhh harmonies. Delightful, delicious, delovely. The lyrics are comforting too: “You can rely on me.” “Rest your head on my shoulder.” Lots of sleepy and restful images, yet these are not lullabyes. Something to listen to when you want to sleep but are up writing and just want to cool down without passing out.

Three Stooges FAQ—Everything Left to Know About the Eye-Poking, Face-Slapping, Head-Thumping Geniuses.
By David J. Hogan (Applause Books, 2011)
Distinctive in how it divides the Stooge canon not into its various line-ups (Moe & Larry plus Curly, Shemp, Curly Joe…) but into their preferred foils and themes: “The Stooges and the Fairer Sex,” “The Stooges on the Job,” “…Out West,” “. Rewrite History,” “…Puncture High Society,” “…and Show Biz,” “…Go to War.” All headings which would fit the Marx Brothers just as well, or Neil Simon for that matter. So whether or not you’re particularly fond of the Stooges (I’m a Shemp man myself, which puts me in a misunderstood subcult of their fan base), this is a useful study of 20th century film comedy in general. It’s augmented with profiles of essential Stooge co-stars. Books like this help me appreciate them for their ability to sustain their act for their entire lifetimes, refine their knucklehead artform and create a vast body of work that, I see now, is underestimated as social satire. So many Stooges books are created for a frat-boy fanbase. This one’s for the classmates who do their homework.

The Register had a heartwarming story yesterday about Dr. Mel. The longtime Channel 8 weatherman had been in hospice with life-threatening pneumonia but has apparently perked up enough to go home again.

Reading this, my mind flashed for a second to the Washington D.C. humorist, who was in hospice for five months, and wrote his last book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, while he was there.

But as the story (by stalwart Register reporter Ed Stannard) explained, hospices aren’t just for the terminally ill but for certain types of emergency care. Dr. Mel has lived for years with multiple myeloma, a

In any case, Dr. Mel has been happily cheating death for years now. I interviewed him several times after he won awards in the New Haven Advocate’s Best of New Haven readers’ polls. He told me that every time he outlived the time he’d been told he had left to live, he held a party.

Dr. Mel’s gifts to the study of meteorology have been massive. Managing his finances so that he could live on what he made from teaching, he used the money from his many media opportunities (Channel 8, numerous radio stations, a longrunning column in the Hartford Courant back when it had a Sunday magazine) to create opportunities for others to study weather forecasting. He built up the state’s only bachelor’s degree program in metereology (at Western Connecticut State University). He wrote the bestselling Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weather.

Mostly, he just made forecasting seem fun and sensible and not like rocket science.

Every time I’ve ever run into Dr. Mel—on the street, at the old Pilot Pen tennis tournament (where he was treated like a god on earth for his weather-predicting abilities), in the Advocate offices for those Best Of awards–he’s been effortlessly affable. Down to earth, not head-in-the-clouds.

Dr. Mel retired from teaching last year, and from broadcasting a couple of months ago. Here’s to him kicking up his heels and resting around the house for many cold, warm, partly sunny and other days to come.

1. “Barney Google,” by Billy Rose and Con Conrad. A massive hit tune in the 1920s, but the Barney Google comic strip was even bigger. Why Mr. Google (with the goo-goo-googly eyes) was pushed from the still-running strip in favor of hillbilly Snuffy Smith is beyond me. The reprints of old Barney Google strips currently appearing on the Daily Ink cartoon site show the beginning the end, with Snuffy and his son Jughaid beginning to dominate Barney’s realm.
But Snuffy Smith has never had a hit song. There was even a sequel to the Barney Google tune, “Come on Spark Plug.”

2. An 1885 poem by James Whitcomb Riley, “Little Orphant Annie,” inspired the name of the character in Harold Gray’s comic strip, which is turn led to a popular song with a foxtrot beat which used the creepy Riley poem for lyrics. The Annie strip endured until just last year, and would have died much sooner if not for the success of the Broadway musical Annie, which is of course what comes up if you Google “Little Ophan Annie song” these days.

3. “Skippy,” Percy L. Crosby’s enlightened scamp, had a song named for his in 1931, just a few years after the character debuted. Poetic and realistic and philosophical and messy-kid funny, Skippy’s is unsung today, but was one of the biggest strips of its time, and an influence on every kid-based strip which followed it.

4. “The Funnies” by Irving Berlin:
Sunday is Sunday to my family
But Sunday is not simply Sunday for me
For Sunday’s the one day when I love to see the funnies
Breakfast is nothing of which you can boast
But breakfast to me isn’t coffee and toast
It’s coffee and toast and what I love the most, the funnies

Oh, I love the funnies
I couldn’t go without the funnies
A cup o’ coffee to my lips and in between the sips
The papers with the capers that are in the comic strips
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

Oh, in my pajamas
I love to read the “Katzenjammers”
A little coffee in a cup and “Bringing Father Up”
I’m dippy over “Skippy” and his little yellow pup
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

I’m not concerned with the news of the day
The stories of who murdered who
And for the columns what they have to say
I have no need of
I don’t want to read of

The guys and all their honeys
The wealthy daughters or the sonnies
The news about the lovely trips that people take in ships
I’d rather read about the people in the comic strips
Which means I’m simply mad about
I mean I couldn’t do without the funnies

5. “I’m the Guy”: “ravings by Rube Goldberg” and “Bert Grant” (1912). The song on this list which is truest to its origins, since the panel cartoon’s creator Rube Goldberg wrote the lyrics. “I’m the Guy”’ is a framework that allows for a multitude of jokes, and works on many levels. There’s the concept of cockiness, taking credit for grand jobs one doesn’t do (“I’m the guy who put the salt in the ocean”). There’s the absurd aspect (“I’m the guy who puts the holes in doughnuts”). There’s the all-things-in their place sense of order (“I’m the guy who puts the humps on camels”). In the strip (and on the popular cigarette-pin series it spawned), these proclamations of identity are parceled out one at a time, and ascribed to many different characters. In the song, it’s a long bout of braggadocio encompassing three verses and dozens of alleged accomplishments.

How do you shatter a spotlight at Hamilton’s? Smash a guitar during a jam on “Stinky Cheese” and let a tuning peg fly skywards.
The Sloom were so involved in the denouement of their psychedelic improvisation that that were blissfully unaware of the damage they’d caused until it was after closing time and their payment was withheld. Up to then, the band thought the club had simply switched off the spot to quell their overzealous musical uprising. But they’d unknowingly fired the first shot themselves.
The battle continues—the club says the band can play free for another half-dozen shows to cover the expense of a new spot, or pay it back some other way. Sloom is panicky, consulting anybody who’ll listen and hoping to forestall a legal jam which may match “Stinky Cheese” for complexity and annoyance.

Hydro Medusa and Style Mys back at the Bullfinch… The The Bonewars and Gal Sweet Tea, insipid jams, at Hamilton’s… Blue Braidings and Chondro, Stay! at D’ollaires… World music nite at a dining hall in the college on the hill with Nebra Scensis, Cross Opterygii and Dipnoi. Free hummus and seafood…

I think I am the only college student in town. I suddenly have three jobs.