Do What You Do When You Did What You Did To Me

kerbey's avatarThe Blog of Funny Names

These inspired lyrics are from the 80s hit “Do What You Do” by Jermaine LaJuane Jackson. ♫♪ I remember rollerskating to them back in the day, and thinking what a funny chorus that was. But not nearly as funny as the names of his kids, which we will discover today. Shown here is a solid handful of some of them.

http://www.blackcelebkids.com/ http://www.blackcelebkids.com/

Today I learned that  it was not Michael who first parted ways with The Jackson 5. It was Jermaine. While his brothers decided to leave Motown Records, he chose to stay. You see, Motown’s founder was Berry Gordy, and Jermaine was enamored of his daughter, Hazel.

He took Hazel to be his wife in 1973, while still a teen. Together, they had Jermaine, Jr and Autumn Joi (not to be confused with Almond Joy). But fidelity was not his bag, baby. Jermaine got himself a girlfriend named Margaret Maldonado, who gave birth to Jeremy

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Late Afternoon Cattle Drive

Day 1 Ft Worth 020We spent a long weekend in Ft. Worth and caught this 4pm daily cattle drive in The Stockyards. The day before had been a lovely sunny and 75, but a cold front took it down to freezing that night, and folks were bundled up in scarves and hoodies.

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This guy led the drive down the cobblestone street.

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That solid longhorn (in beautiful burnt orange!) made me laugh, because he kept nudging the cow in front of him with his horns.

Day 1 Ft Worth 024It only lasted a few minutes, but it was hard not to want to step out and touch them.

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Big Hoss brought up the caboose, and then it was over. Afterward, we got some old-time bottled soda and meandered through the shops. A fun way to round out the twilight hours. But this sign did catch my editor’s eye and caused me to grimace.

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Inside Lincoln, Nebraska 1943, Part III

Rocket 1943 Yearbook

Today we wrap up the series on Lincoln Nebraska during 1943. All of these pics were taken from the Northeast High School Yearbook, otherwise lost to posterity. I’m so glad to preserve these images digitally, and thereby preserve bits of history.

Rocket43--Yosts

“Making these for defense?” I don’t know how a hog house aids defense, but there’s a lot I don’t know. Like the words “Modernage” and “dirndl.” Maybe a dirndl dress was a good distraction from the worry of brothers and boyfriends fighting overseas.

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Meanwhile, back at the hatchery…Rocket43-HillHatchery

Rocket43-Hatch

Here a woman reviews wallpaper samples at Van Sickle’s Paint Store, and a couple checks out rakes at the hardware store.

Even though life wasn’t “business as usual,” a little butter and rouge could help preserve a lady’s sanity.

Thanks for joining me on this glimpse into Lincoln!

Inside Lincoln, Nebraska 1943, Part II

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Rocket43-Armstrong

Fourteen points! Can you imagine buying meat with points? War changed life on the homefront.

Down at Helin’s Grocery, you could take your pick of produce without using your blue ration coupons. That’s a good way to get folks to eat their greens.

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Able-bodied men who were not overseas were able to advise ladies on fruit purchases.

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But who wants cheap fruit when there’s a bakery nearby?

Rocket43--HarmonyBakery
Harmony Bakery

Inside Lincoln, Nebraska 1943, Part I

Smack-dab in the middle of WWII, life went on in small town America.

The Rocket 1943
The Rocket 1943

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Fortunately, that wasn’t the only place to go for a Coke date. Baker Pharmacy was also well-stocked.

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Aware that their future likely held military enlistment, teen boys from Northeast High School enjoyed the luxury of hometown life, hot food, and picture shows such as World At War.

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Every Last One Bobbed

1926 Pine Burr
1926 Pine Burr Football Sponsor and her maids

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From what I gather, a “sponsor” was like the head of the pep squad. Betty Greer (“origin of the pep”) had maids, all with modern bobbed hair. But it doesn’t sound like she sponsored in the sense of providing funds. Although–props for your nice pearls and mink stole, Betty. PineBurr1926--025

And here are the boys for whom they cheered. These youthful guys, born at the turn of the century, long gone.

PineBurr1926--027Most of their kids are probably gone, too. But Berton’s hair lives on forever.

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The World Before Photoshop

Arrowhead, 1951
Arrowhead, 1951

Here we see some high school class officers. The XY-gene carriers all appear fairly normal. But Norma–Norma appears to have some botched surgery. I can’t quite figure it out. Clearly a female body was present for the photo, but then someone shrunk her head a la Beetlejuice, or took a head from another pic and pushed it inside the hair. Or do you suppose her head is just oddly petite? I don’t get it.

Help. Me.
Help. Me.

Silverback Gorilla

gorillas silver

Imposing, grand, primitive, huge…yet with human eyes and expressions, enormous black fingers delicately and expertly stripping away thorns from vegetation, possibly ignoring you altogether or looking you straight in the eye.  Respect and awe is given, from human to ape. 

These are the words my aunt wrote of her trip to Rwanda earlier this month, in which she was able to witness some of the last remaining mountain gorillas on the planet.

“A silverback gorilla is the mature, experienced male leader of a group of mountain gorillas in the wild. Named for the silver saddles across his back, the silverback is responsible for the safety of his group. A group of gorillas, also called a troop, can contain from 5 to 30 gorillas. The silverback decides where the troop travels, where it forages for food, where it will rest and where it will sleep at night.” (http://animals.mom.me)

 I thought these images she and her husband captured were too awesome not to share with my readers!

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Alligator Skin Walls: The Only Way I Travel

The Consolidated Commodore, jet of Juan Terry Trippe, which carried 22 passengers (source: They Made America)
The Consolidated Commodore, “flying boat” of Juan Terry Trippe, which carried 22 passengers (source: They Made America)
http://www.edcoatescollection.com/
http://www.edcoatescollection.com/

Because Salvador Dalí Was Wicked Peculiar

You’ve seen the mustache. You’ve seen the melting clock, the one that looks like a bad acid trip. The evidence is already there.

"They Made America"--Harold Evans
“They Made America”–Harold Evans

But this is another level of crazy. I don’t mean mental illness. Although, yes, perhaps that. I mean stranger than fiction. Here we see Dalí in a Johnny Depp bob, seated near his wife, Gala. Gala was already in an open marriage when she met Dalí, but decided to divorce her then-husband, poet Paul Eluard, yet continued to sleep with him while now married to Dalí. Yes, that makes sense.

Anyhoo, that’s a Hereford bull sprawled on the crumpled carpet of Mrs. Caresse Phelps Crosby, herself involved in an open marriage (and suicide pact, not to mention ample drug abuse and writing porn as a lark). Crosby, preparing for a ball one night, despised her corset and instead fashioned two handkerchiefs and ribbon into a bra with needle and thread. Of this she said, “I can’t say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”

Speaking for most American women, I couldn’t care less about a steamboat. But I thank you for the bras.

Just in case that surrealist scene isn’t odd enough, try to wrap your head around this. Per www.telegraph.co.uk, Dalí filled up a white Rolls Royce Phantom II with 500kg of cauliflower and drove it from Spain to Paris in December 1955. The reasoning was, he later told an audience of 2,000, that “everything ends up in the cauliflower!” He explained to American journalist Mike Wallace three years later that he was attracted to their “logarithmic curve.” Because that makes sense.

And listverse.com tells of a five-year-old Dalí pushing his friend off a bridge with no railing. Just for fun. Dalí is also noted as saying, “Hitler turned me on in the highest…His fat back, especially when I saw him appear in the uniform with the Sam Browne belt and shoulder straps that tightly held in his flesh, aroused in me a delicious gustatory thrill originating in the mouth and affording me a Wagnerian ecstasy.”

And if that doesn’t turn Dalí off to you forever, I don’t know what could. Enjoy your weekend.