I swear, I was going to do hourly comics yesterday (like last year)—I was going to do them on the train back from New York, but the train was pretty shaky, and then the engine broke down and we were stuck in the dark for a couple hours, and by the time the lights came back on, my brain wasn’t really working that well. So instead, I did what any sane person would do under the circumstances: I doodled sketches of mid-century American composers.
I knew Gail Kubik a bit as he was one of the local composers where I grew up in SoCal. He had acquired a certain reputation with local widows. A more appropriate caption for Kubik might have been “On the lookout for wife number five.”
An odd confluence: Strange to say, when I met Daniel Pinkham (another 20th C American symphonist), I was told by a student of his, “Ask him to tell you his dirty joke.”
So I, you know, did.
It was actually really funny. And really, really dirty.
RIP, Daniel Pinkham.
Daniel: That is, to my historical-gossip-addled brain, FANTASTIC. Insert “Gerald McBoing-Boing” joke here!
mta: Lukas Foss had a go-to dirty joke, too, which I'm sorry to say, I don't remember. Maybe every composer does? This sounds like the best AMS presentation ever.