Pete Latzo aka Joe Palooka

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Last month was the birthday of Welterweight Pete Latzo, aka, "Young Clancy”, who was born on August 1, 1902, in Colerain, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, near the heart of the coal-mining county.        

He spent some of his early years mining, and working as a "breaker boy" whose primary job was to pick slate and other impurities from anthracite coal.               

          

          

        

 

Cartoonist Ham Fisher met Latzo outside a pool hall and, impressed by his personality and sportsmanship, was inspired to create his popular character Joe Palooka.    

In 1920, Fisher put together a sample package of Joe Palooka (then titled Joe the Dumbbell) but was unable to attract interest. By 1927, he was working as a traveling strip salesman for the McNaught Syndicate. However, Fisher also hawked his own unpublished, unsold strip.

In 1928, after he secured over 20 sales, including to New York's Daily Mirror, Fisher informed his managers at McNaught, who decided to give Joe Palooka a trial run. The comic strip soon became a national success.        

 

   Ham Fisher ~ Joe Palooka 

 

 

In the 1930s the strip appeared in more than 600 newspapers, had a readership around 50 million, and inspired several movies.      

 

The strip helped to solidify the word "palooka" as a boxer who lacks grace or ability, although the character Joe Palooka was the heavyweight champion. A dozen low-budget film adaptations of Joe Palooka appeared from the 1930s into the 1950s. Comic books featuring Joe Palooka began in 1933 and continued through the 1950s.     

 

 

 Ham Fisher ~ Joe Palooka 
 

 

Originally the term welterweight was used only in boxing, but other combat sports also use it for their own weight division system to classify the opponents. If used, welterweight is typically between lightweight and middleweight. The first known instance of the term is from 1831, meaning 'heavyweight horseman', later 'boxer or wrestler of a certain weight' by 1896. This sense comes from earlier welter, 'heavyweight horseman or boxer' from 1804, possibly from c. 15th century welt, meaning 'to beat severely'. A professional welterweight boxer's weight is greater than 140 pounds, and no more than 147 pounds (about 63.5–66.7 kg).     

 

Latzo defeated Larry Johnson in a close ten round points decision before 12,000 at Madison Square Garden on February 21, 1930. He was defeated by future world heavyweight champion Jim Braddock before a crowd of 4,000, on October 17, 1928, at New Jersey's Newark Armory in a ten-round points decision. 

 

Latzo fought Jimmy Slattery, former world light heavyweight champion, in a seven-round No Contest on May 27, 1930, at Boston Garden. The purses of both boxers were withheld and they were ordered to leave the ring by the referee when it appeared they were exerting too little effort to merit continuing. 

 

In one of his last bouts on June 5, 1934, Latzo lost to Pennsylvania's state middleweight champion Teddy Yarosz in a fourth-round technical knockout in Millvale.       

Latzo left Scranton to reside in Marven Gardens, a suburb of Atlantic City, in Margate City, New Jersey, near the end of his boxing career around 1928. He died at the age of sixty-six in Atlantic City Hospital after gall bladder surgery in July 1968, having suffered from gall bladder ailments since his boxing retirement. His gall bladder issues may well have been a result of his boxing history as he was frequently the victim of brutal body blows to the stomach and both sides of his abdomen. He had had major surgery of some form in 1937 when he first retired from boxing, and a boxing benefit was held for him in December of that year. His funeral was held at Scranton, Pennsylvania's Holy Rosary Church on July 11, and he was buried in the city's Cathedral Cemetery, where his wife Catherine was laid to rest two years later.
 

 

 

 

 

 

            

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James J. Braddock        

Ham Fisher        

Pete Latzo        

        

        

        

        

       

        

        

        

        

        

        

         

         

        

        

        

        

        

        

         

Styrous® ~ Thursday, September 3, 2026

       

          

         

         

         

         
         

         

          

         

          

 

 

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Franz Kafka ~ An Existential Birthday

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Today is the birthday of one of my favorite people in the history of Mankind, Franz Kafka. I equate him in my mind with the sonic genius, John Cage and the two of them formed the basis of Tom's butohDrawing.     

 

Wikipedia:

Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his works fuse elements of realism and the fantastique, and typically feature isolated protagonists in bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews.     

My awareness and admiration of Kafka was born in my early teens when I was ass-deep into Sci-Fi. and came across his incredible, novella, The Metamorphosis. Holy ****! It scared the **** out of me and I was irrevocably hooked!     
     
Kafka was born on July 3, 1883. He had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. But those who met him found him to possess a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and a dry sense of humor; they also found him handsome, although of austere appearance. He had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details.      

 

 

 

Franz Kafka - 1906 

photographer unknown

 

 

 Franz Kafka - 1910 

photographer unknown

 

 

 Kafka at about ten with his sisters  

Valli (left) and Elli (center) 

 

 

Kafka never married, was supposedly "tortured" by sexual desire and filled with a fear of "sexual failure". He visited brothels for most of his adult life, and his collection of erotica and pornographic photographs demonstrates a connoisseur's range of interest in the genre. In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company.  

 

 

 

Felice Bauer & Franz Kafka - 1917 

photographer unknown

 

 

Kafka drew and sketched extensively. His interest in art grew from 1901 to 1906. He "practiced drawing, took drawing classes, attended art history lectures, and sought to establish a connection to Prague's artistic circles". According to Max Brod, Kafka "was even more indifferent, or perhaps better, more hostile to his drawings than he was to his literary production". As he did with his writings, Kafka asked in his testament for his drawings to be destroyed. Brod preserved all of Kafka's drawings that Kafka gave him or that he could rescue from the wastebasket or otherwise, but "[a]nything that I didn't rescue was destroyed". Until May 2021, only about 40 of his drawings were known. In 2022, Yale University Press published Franz Kafka: The Drawings. The book brought to light about 150 sketches by Kafka.       

 

 

 

Franz Kafka ~ Der Denker - 1924

 

 

Kafka's laryngeal tuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from Berlin to Prague, where members of his family, principally his sister Ottla, as well as Dora Diamant, took care of him. He went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling just outside Vienna for treatment on 10 April, and died there on 3 June 1924. 

 

 

Grave of Franz Kafka 
 

 

The cause of death was starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him.          
     

           

David Černý - kinetic Head of Franz Kafka - 2014 

"The tremendous world I have inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me." ~ Franz Kafka 

 

Viewfinder links:                   

       

Max Brod        

butohDrawing           

John Cage       

Franz Kafka      

Tom White 

 

YouTube links:                  

 

Franz Kafka: Chronicler of Darkness         

Franz Kafka’s Dark Truth (31 mins., 21 secs.)           

Franz Kafka: The Man Who Begged to Be Forgotten          

Kafka’s Genius Philosophy (33 mins., 50 secs.)          

Kafka’s Metamorphosis Explained – Why We Are All Gregor Samsa    

The Metamorphosis (2 hrs., 8 secs.)          

The 'Philosophy' of Franz Kafka        

Why You Feel Lost in a Loveless World (And How to Stop It)           

Why you NEED to read Franz Kafka           

 

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Helen Keller & The Miracle Worker

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Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan - 1899       

photo by Alexander Graham Bell        

 

 

 

 

 

Today is the birthday of Helen Adams Keller born on June 27, 1880. She was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a college diploma.  

 

At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain". Contemporary doctors believe it may have been meningitis, caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus), by rubella or scarlet fever, (or by Haemophilus influenzae, which can cause the same symptoms but is less likely because of its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time).  

 

Keller wrote 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. Keller campaigned for those with disabilities and for women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace. In 1909, she joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA). As a result of her advocacy, she was placed on the FBI watchlist; the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that although they have not "conducted an investigation with regard to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Keller "reflect the following pertinent information concerning this individual". 

 

She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.      

 

Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), publicized her education and life with Sullivan. The playwright William Gibson wrote a theatrical adaptation, The Miracle Worker, in 1959, which he adapted as a film under the same title in 1962 starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.    

 

 

The Miracle Worker - 1962 

 

 

A commemorative stamp was issued in 1980 by the United States Postal Service, depicting Keller and Sullivan, to mark the centennial of Keller's birth        

 

 

Helen Keller postage stamp - 1980  

 

 

Helen Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut, at the age of 87. A service was held at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her body was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her ashes were buried at the Washington National Cathedral next to her constant companion, Anne Sullivan.    

 

 

  

 

". . . there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, 

and no slave who has not had a king among his". 

                    ~ Helen Keller  

  

Viewfinder links:       

       

Anne Bancroft                

Alexander Graham Bell       

Patty Duke     

Helen Keller            

Postal stamps on the Viewfinder 

Anne Sullivan      

       

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Leonard Cohen ~ Hallelujah: A Magical Song

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Hallelujah is a song written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, recorded in June of 1984 and released on that year on his album, Various Positions.      

 

The song found popular acclaim through a version recorded by John Cale in 1991. Cale's version inspired a 1994 recording by Jeff Buckley which in 2004 was ranked number 259 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.          

Many arrangements have been performed in recordings and in concert, with more than 300 versions known as of 2008.  The song has been used in film and television soundtracks and televised talent contests. Hallelujah experienced renewed interest following Cohen's death in November 2016 and re-appeared on international singles charts, including entering the American Billboard Hot 100 for the first time.      
     

Cohen is reputed to have written between 80 and 180 draft verses for Hallelujah—a number affected by having many versions of the same line. He claimed 150 draft verses, substantiated by his notebooks containing many revisions and additions, and by contemporary interviews. In a writing session in the New York Royalton Hotel, Cohen is famously said to have been reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, filling notebooks, banging his head on the floor. Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, creators of the 2022 documentary film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, said that Cohen took about five years to write the song, and reconfigured it numerous times for performances.     

     

Unlike songs that became anthems, Hallelujah initially was on an album that was rejected by Columbia Records, was largely ignored after an independent label released it, not widely covered until the 1991 Cale version and did not reach the Billboard charts until Cohen's death in 2016. Reflecting on the song's initial rejection, Cohen related that Columbia told him "we know you are great, but don't know if you are any good". (WTF does THAT mean?)          

 

When at age 50 Cohen first recorded the song, he described it as "rather joyous", and said that it came from "a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm, with emotion." He later said "there is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones. When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's hallelujah".        

Cohen's lyrical poetry and his view that "many different hallelujahs exist" is reflected in wide-ranging covers with very different intents or tones, allowing the song to be "melancholic, fragile, uplifting [or] joyous" depending on the performer. Singers mix lyrics from both versions, and occasionally make direct lyric changes; for example, in place of Cohen's "holy dove", Canadian-American singer Rufus Wainwright substituted "holy dark", while Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe sang "holy ghost". 

 

Cale promoted a message of "soberness and sincerity" in contrast to Cohen's dispassionate tone; the cover by Jeff Buckley, an American singer-songwriter, is more sorrowful and was described by Buckley as "a hallelujah to the orgasm"; Crowe interpreted the song as a "very sexual" composition that discussed relationships; Wainwright offered a "purifying and almost liturgical" interpretation; and Guy Garvey of the British band Elbow made the hallelujah a "stately creature" and incorporated his religious interpretation of the song into his band's recordings. 

 

Canadian singer k.d. lang said in an interview shortly after Cohen's death that she considered the song to be about "the struggle between having human desire and searching for spiritual wisdom. It's being caught between those two places." Former Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page, who sang the song at the Canadian politician Jack Layton funeral, described the song as being "about disappointing [other] people"    

 

Journalist Larry Sloman, who knew Cohen well and interviewed him often, described the song as one part biblical and one part the woman that Cohen slept with last night, citing an unidentified critic saying that Cohen was most interested in "holiness and horniness".      

 

Financial Times arts and culture columnist Enuma Okoro wrote that "the lyrics and the tone of the song seem to sway between hymn and dirge, two musical forms that could serve as responses to almost everything that happens in our lives: songs that celebrate and acknowledge the blessings and provisions of our lives, and songs that bemoan our losses, our heartbreaks, and our deaths". Okoro noted that the word hallelujah is composed of two Hebrew words that mean "praise God", adding that Cohen said people have been "singing it for thousands of years to affirm our little journey."      

 

His original version, recorded on his 1984 album Various Positions, contains allusions to several biblical verses, including the stories of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges ("she cut your hair") as well as King David and Bathsheba ("you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you")      

 

My two favorite covers are from the a capella group Pentatonix; the sounds they produce with only their voices is astounding! The second cover is from the duo, 2Cellos; most covers are vocal of one kind or another, theirs is an instrumental and the video editing is stunning and magical!      

 

A couple of versions also worth mentioning are the biggest and the smallest. The biggest was a performance one warm evening on Jun 30, 2016, when 1,500 singers came to Luminato Festival at the Hearn Generating Station in Toronto. Daveed + Nobu (AKA DaBu) taught them back up parts to Hallelujah, then Rufus Wainwright joined them on stage to sing lead. It was an EPIC NIGHT to remember. 

 

The smallest was when Kate McKinnon performed solo with piano during the Saturday Night Live broadcast on November 12, 2016, days after Hillary Clinton lost the election and two days after Cohen died. McKinnon is a fantastic actress but not a great singer but the emotion packed into her performance was electrifying! I don't know if it was Clinton's loss or Cohen's death but I was in tears by the finish of the song! The hairs on my arms still stand up when I listen to it.        

 

 

Kate McKinnon - November 12, 2016 
Saturday Night Live 

            

     
Hallelujah, in its original version, is in ¹²
₈ time, which evokes both early rock and roll and gospel music. Written in the key of C major, the chord progression of C, F, G, A minor, F matches those referenced in the song's famous first verse.      
      

     
     

      

            

     

Viewfinder links:       

         

Jeff Buckley       

John Cale        

Hillary Clinton         

Allison Crowe        

k.d. lang           

Kate McKinnon        

Rufus Wainwright        

      
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YouTube links:       

        

Hallelujah ~        

        

2 Cellos       

Hearn Generating Station in Toronto           

Kate McKinnon 

Pentatonic     

        

        

        

        
        

        
        
        
         
        
        
        
Styrous® ~ Saturday, June 20, 2026         
        

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Tomaso Albinoni ~ Adagio in G minor

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On Monday, June 8, this exact date, in 1671, the Italian composer, Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, was born. He is now only famous for his instrumental works, in particular the Adagio in G minor, which may NOT be his. However, Albinoni was famous in his day as an opera composer as well; his output included operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas; all lost to posterity!      

 

In my first music article, Day Dreams, I stated I may never write another blog on a "Pop" tune unless there was something more to it other than "Pop". In the pantheon of "Pop" classical music, the Adagio fits right in with the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rustican, the Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly, Der König in Thule from La Damnation de Faust and many, many others, for sheer emotion evoking melodies.      

 

In the case of the Adagio, it wrenches extreme emotion from a person whether it is used in a wedding or a funeral; both uses are of equal intensity. In the former, tears of utter joy, in the latter tears of the deepest grief.     

 

The Adagio in Sol minore per archi e organo su due spunti tematici e su un basso numerato di Tomaso Albinoni (Mi 26) (Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, on two thematic ideas and a figured bass by Albinoni), also known as "Albinoni's Adagio", is a 1958 neo-Baroque composition often attributed to the 18th-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni. In fact, the work was composed by a 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer named Remo Giazotto. The piece was purportedly based on the discovery of a bass line by Albinoni in a manuscript fragment.        

 

The Adagio is thought by some to be a musical hoax composed by Remo Giazotto. However, a discovery by musicologist Muska Mangano, Giazotto's last assistant before his death, has cast some doubt on that belief. Among Giazotto's papers, Mangano discovered a modern but independent manuscript transcription of the figured bass portion, and six fragmentary bars of the first violin, "bearing in the top right-hand corner a stamp stating unequivocally the Dresden provenance of the original from which it was taken". This provides support for Giazotto's account that he did base his composition on an earlier source. The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a manuscript fragment (consisting of a few opening measures of the melody line and basso continuo portion) from a slow second movement of an otherwise unknown Albinoni trio sonata.         

 

According to Giazotto, he obtained the document shortly after the end of World War II from the Saxon State Library in Dresden which had preserved most of its collection, although its buildings were destroyed in the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by the British and American Air Forces. Giazotto concluded that the manuscript fragment was a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa, one of two standard forms of the trio sonata) in G minor composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708. Giazotto then constructed the balance of the complete single-movement work based on this fragmentary theme. He copyrighted it and published it in 1958 under a title which, translated into English, reads "Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, on two thematic ideas and on a figured bass by Tomaso Albinoni". Giazotto never produced the manuscript fragment, and no official record has been found of its presence in the collection of the Saxon State Library.      

 

The Adagio has been used in many films, television programmes, advertisements, recordings, and books. It was used in 1961 as the main theme of the Alain Resnais film Last Year at Marienbad, the 1962 Orson Welles film The Trial, in 1974 the Werner Herzog film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, the original 1975 version of the Norman Jewison film Rollerball, the 1981 Peter Weir film Gallipoli, the 1983 film Flashdance and the 1991 film The Doors.      

 

In music, the Renaissance 1974 album Turn of the Cards, the Richard Clayderman 1979 recording Sentimental Medley for his album Medley Concerto, in 1984 Yngwie Malmsteen in the Icarus Dream Suite Op. 4, the 1998 song Anytime, Anywhere from the album Eden by Sarah Brightman and Wolf Hoffmann recorded a neo-classical metal version, released in his Headbangers Symphony album in 2016.       

 

There is a brilliant recording of the Adagio by Stjepan Hauser of Two Cellos as well as the "heavy Metal" version by Wolf Hoffmann on YouTube (links below). 

 

 

Viewfinder links:      

 

2cellos     

2cellos ~ Whole Lotta Love & Beethoven         

Tomaso Albinoni           

Doris Day ~ Day Dreams 

Stjepan Hauser          

Wolf Hoffmann         

Orson Wells          

 

Net links:      

 

Head Butler ~ Albinoni (or is it Giazotto?): Adagio in G Minor 

 

 

YouTube links:       

 

2cellos ~ Whole Lotta Love & Beethoven         

Berlioz ~ Der König in Thule       

Sarah Brightman ~ Anytime, Anywhere        

Sarah Brightman ~ Anytime, Anywhere (live)               

Richard Clayderman ~ Sentimental Medley        

Stjepan Hauser ~ Adagio in G minor          

Wolf Hoffmann ~ Adagio in G minor     

Werner Herzog ~ The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser            

Norman Jewison ~ Rollerball          

Yngwie Malmsteen ~ Icarus Dream Suite Op. 4            

Pietro Mascagni ~ Intermezzo               

Puccini ~ Humming Chorus      

Renaissance ~ Turn of the Cards             

Julian Lloyd Webber ~ Albinoni Adagio              

Orson Wells ~ The Trial 

 

 

 

Styrous® ~ Monday, June 8, 2026      
     
     
                    

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