ART LANDRY SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN: Mark McGann’s helpless request for "the Zeke Floose photo" inspired the pitiful, yet Immortal Art Landry to action. On Friday, Art sent me this:
"if my brain, riddled with Anheuser's Disease, remembers to do it, I will scan the picture. After all, I still take "credit" for the idea of the photo (although not in mixed company), which was itself pinched from the 1972 yearbook photo of the descendants of Commodore Vanderbilt in front of Old Cornelius' statue."
So on Sunday morning, I wake up and fire up my Blackberry, and there’s an e-mail from Art. I could almost hear the old Kris Kristoferson song "Sunday Mornin’ Comin Down" playing in my head:
"Larry, I ask that you add D.R. Flower avalonF@verizon.net . I think you were gone when DR pledged up, but he was and is a true Tic, and he appears in the picture of the descendants of Commodore Floose, lately mentioned, in his traditional "coat and tie required, shirt optional" garb.Thanks, AWL (ps to DR-what does the F stand for?)"
. . . As fate would have it, that very morning I got this e-mail:
"Well, men, and I use that term loosely, here is the best I could do on a Sunday morning. Long live Commodore Floose!
DR Flower, 3205 Oxford Dr., Rowlett, TX 75088"
Art, your credit for the photo is now charred in the annals for all eternity. Good work in providing new meat - D.R. Flower - for Blogbeast.
BETA PI BLOG WELCOMES ARTHUR LANDRY PROTEGE D.R. FLOWER: D.R., I’ve never met you, however, I remind you this about your mentor Art, he is the Houdini of Excuses, an "excuse artist" if you will - Art always has an excuse for not showing up at Reunions - sadly, Art was a "no-show" at Reunion ‘06. Therefore, D.R., you are hereby commissioned BlogOfficer with the thankless task of personally ensuring Art Landry’s appearance at his next Reunion, which will be Reunion 2011. Could be deja vu all over again superimposed on Back to the Future remembered. Good luck.
NEW BLOG TECHNOLOGY IMPOSED BY AOL, WITHOUT DUE PROCESS: So, I come in to the office last Friday morning, and I pull up the blog site. The pictures are "moving" - and it looks really cool. AOL somehow upgradedblog machinery to provide new tools for posting photos. And did it without any advance notice. Bad news, when they plugged the new technology in to Beta Pi Blog, it applied cool graphics to all of the photos posted in the Archives. Bad news, the captions beneath each photo got killed. No big deal. I had fun playing with the new "toys" which include a graphic called "Ken Burns" which pans across photos and zooms in, fades from photo-to-photo, ala Ken Burns style, seen in his famous documentary "The Civil War." Another feature makes the photos appear as foreign magazine covers, Life Magazine, Time Magazine covers, etc. I invite you to revisit old Blog editions by clicking through the Archives. Thanks to AOL, the Archives have been given a breath of new life. Here are some of the comments I’ve received:
FROM STEVEN "Vinny" STARR:
"Larry: I don't really like the new picture feature because I can't seem to be able to choose which picture to look at when I want to. The old way, I could enlarge the pictures and flip through them one at a time as I wanted to. Can't seem to do that now. Just my opinion. Maybe I haven't played with it enough. Vin"
MY RESPONSE TO VINNY: Play with it more - really grab hold of the thing. Guarantee you’ll feel better.
FROM FRANK "Marty" COLLINS:
"Monsieur La Simons: I think the Zeke Floose photo Marlon refers to was in the 1976 yearbook. I believe we took it in front of the statue of the Commodore himself near Kirkland.
BTW: I dig the new graphics.
Frank
P.S. No poetry from Andrew?"
MY RESPONSE TO FRANK: Frank, thanks for the feedback. Andrew would probably sue me for copyright infringement (kidding).
FROM MARK "Marlon" McGANN:
"I see from the blog that we have a new toy. Very tech savy of you Dr. Simons. Kudos!"
TO MARLON: Marlon, truth be told, I am anything but tech savy, I’m more like tech moron. It was some tech savy dude at AOL who decided to empower bloggers - it was a freebee!
ABER UPDATE! FROM GEORGE "Aber" ABERNATHY, May 21, 2007:
"Aber will be attending Reunion 2008 to show off my good looks and have a few brewkies with you gentlemen (used loosely)."
TO ABER: Hoist the mainsail, Arrrgh!
BETA PI BLOG IS A BEAST HUNGRY FOR NEW MEAT: The Tick-a-lor roster now totals 77 Beta Pi brothers, 64 of whom have e-mail addresses, and are on this Blog. If you can help, getme the e-mail address of a Tic!
Check out BetaPi Blog on the web! The blog address is:
http://journals.aol.com/lasimons4law/beta-pi-blog/
VTL,
Larry Simons
Beta Pi, ‘72
6 comments:
NEWS FLASH: ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES SETS RECORD STRAIGHT:
FROM MATT HART, May 21, 2007:
"May I set the record straight- Zeke Floose was the nom de plume of my boyhood friend, Boss Man, who died tragically in a roofing accident in 1979.
In a momentous visit to Nashville during pledge season Boss joined the rush circuit, got 3 bids and generally caused mayhem, since he was at the time a cab driver in Queens and not a member of the University.
He did have his photo taken with the freshman class of ’74, I believe. The photo that Arthur showed bears no resemblance to the original Zeke Floose."
EDITORIAL NOTE: Your Blog Editorial Staff searched the 1974 Vanderbilt Commodore, and looked for the mystery photo of Zeke Floose, but such was not to be found in Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors photos. The search continues . . .
MARLON DISCOVERS TYPO:
"Larry,
Please fix this. This is the photo that you should have received and the sender was most worthy brother D R Flower, not Moore."
RESPONSE: Say no Moore.
FROM ART LANDRY, May 22, 2007:
"honored to be the subject of all the ink (I will make one of them, Larry, I promise). My recollection is that the Stooges, mostly, kept alive the legend of Zeke Floose. At this late date I don't recall the details that Matt Hart sets forth, if I ever knew them, but I'm sure they're right. The name by itself became a sort of password for the Tics, as I recall, and thereafter was chosen for the juvenile picture which appeared in the yearbook. Since no one knew the original, the choice was made to "mask" it, on the order of an Athenian Sing, with an added attempt to piss off VU by masking the Commodore. Cheers, AWL"
FROM CHUCK WHARTON, May 22, 2007:
"Larry
Here's the identifiers from the Floose picture - Hey, I'm like Vinnie - I can't get the pictures to click from one to the next - I can see each individually, but then I have to click back to the main page and wait
for when they randomly pass by. In any event it looked like there wasn't a scan w/the identifiers so here they are.
Technically inept I am.
Tics!
Chuck Wharton
'79
[Capt. C.W. Floose]"
TO CHUCK WHARTON: Chuck, thanks for your note, hey - whatever photo you sent me by "zip" file would not "decompress" - so I was unable to retrieve it. Suggest you send 1 photo at a time.
Be well my friend.
Larry
NEWS FLASH: THE HEME COMMITS TO REUNION '08
E-MAIL FROM GEORGE "THE HEME" TOMLINSON, May 22, 2007:
"L.
"The Heme" will be in attendance in '08.........someone needs to protect the world from Aber on the loose....and to rehash the story of the "Theft of the Trophy on Athenian Sing night".......
George"
TO THE HEME: Schwab the decks - and make ready at the starboard bow! Arrrgh!
RANDY MARTIN UPDATE, May 23, 2007:
"Larry,
I have moved and changed email addresses. My new email address is rkmartin57@gmail.com.
Thanks,
Randy Martin"
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