Douglas Whaley

Introducing Clayton to Spiderman  When my son Clayton was a little boy I taught him some of the silly verses that have stayed with me all my life, and that still amuse me at odd moments.  Here’s one: Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today Gee, I wish he’d go away! And here’s another with a very clever rhyme at the end: Shake and shake the ketchup bottle First none’ll come and then A lot’ll So, instead of a heavy tome on politics or social issues, I thought I’d devote a blog post to giving you some of my favorite items along these same lines.  I trust you know this riddle and its famous solution: As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives? Before you get all tangled in an algorithm trying to

As explained before on this blog, in 1961 I joined the Navy just out of high school and spent a year aboard ship [see “Douglas Whaley, Deckhand,” http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2010/12/douglas-whaley-deckhand.html ], before being transferred to the island of Bermuda (!) for my final year of active duty   [see “My Year in Bermuda,” February 9, 2010, http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-year-in-bermuda.html ].   I’ve always been interested in Broadway musicals, and while in Bermuda I first heard the score of the original cast album of the new show “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (hereafter “FTH”—typing that all out over and over is a chore).   This slapstick farce of a musical has a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (first effort at writing both).   It is melodic, very funny, and was a major hit, running for three years on Broadway (and much revived since—in 1996 I saw the wonderful production