If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong (Groucho Marx)

It's August! Already??

I seem to be doing these monthly quotes from my 2003 calendar with alarming regularity. 

The one on my August calendar is on the right, although to be pedantic it reads "Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life" (Burton Hills).

Burton Hills seems to be remembered for his quotes and little else - nothing doing bio-wise on google.

August means that July 26 has come and gone. As all who know me (or read this blog) know that was dad's birthday. He would have been 86 years old.

Last year I wrote a poem to remember the date and 'the posterity post' is an old favourite of yours.

Groucho's humour was a big part of Graham's life but ironically dad wasn't the jovial sort. He loved The Goons and The Marx Brothers movies for their intellectual craziness but he wasn't the sort to tell jokes and laugh out loud a lot.

Oddly he didn't connect with Monty Python as my generation did, even though they were similarly anarchic in their comedy.

I believe he was happy though and that's important isn't it. 

Happy birthday dad xxx 000

Me and Ross, having fun in the snow with GNP
(photo by Dulcie)

 
Love and peace - Wozza

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you (Walt Whitman)

I'm a little obsessed with autobiographies at the moment. A vicarious and voyeuristic thrill.

I blame Keith Richards. And Andre Agassi. Who'd a thought?

Since reading Life, and Open I have been rediscovering the joys associated with reading about someone else's life.

Currently I have Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx as a guide to comedy, brotherhood, and living well and waiting in the wings I have four others:

Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy
Neil McCormick - Killing Bono
Ronnie Wood - Ronnie
Patti Smith - Just Kids

The Groucho book is remarkable. For one thing - I love his voice, and his voice shines through every sentence. For another - I love the way he loves his family (including the incorrigible Chico). For another - I love the anecdotes he selects.

Groucho And Me (His real name was Julius Marx) was written in 1959 when he was still active as an entertainer.

As a comedian he was a genius and he's right when he says that comedians 'are a much rarer and a far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. But because we are laughed at, I don't think people really understand how essential we are to their sanity'.

He's also smart. Smart enough to quote the playwright S Behrman (no - I hadn't heard of him either) on how good comic acting trumps straight dramatic acting:

Any playwright who has been up against the agony of casting plays will tell you that the actor who can play comedy is the fellow to shoot for. The comic intuition gets to the heart of a human situation with a precision and a velocity unobtainable in any other way. A great comic actor will do it for you with an inflection of voice as adroit as a flick of the wrist of a virtuoso fencer.

A pretty decent description of the wonderful Groucho!

Love and Peace - Wozza

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me? (Groucho Marx)

This post is dedicated to Graham Nugent Purdy (26 July 1928 - 21 September 2009) because without Graham's world there would be no Wozza's world.

It's been a year but in so many ways it feels like it's been so much longer. Funny how time passes. It's been an unbelievable thirty years since John Lennon was murdered. It's been 27 years since my mother passed away. It's now been a year without dad and those moments remain raw wounds.

Rather than settle into a depressed mood, though, I'd prefer to be upbeat. As Groucho Marx said,

"I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it."

So I'd rather commemorate Sept 21 with a celebration of a great life via some pictures of father and son(s) and grandad (or as he signed himself - Deedoo II) for our children.

First though - some context:

This was Graham's world as four generations of Purdy are captured here by dad's clever organisation and automatic shutter release in the 1960s. Left to right - William Nugent Purdy (his grandfather), Graham Nugent Purdy himself, Christina Amelia Purdy (his mother), Warren Nugent Purdy (his first son), Harry Purdy [a.k.a. Deedoo] (his father), Dulcie Mary Purdy (his wife), Ross Graham Purdy (his second son). We are pictured on the steps at his parents' house in Reimers Ave, Auckland (a.k.a Rochdene).

Dad with 'the boys'. This was taken, also by automatic shutter release, on a holiday in Tutakaka east of Whangarei (which is north of Auckland).

GNP and WNP. We often stopped off for lunch in Hamilton Gardens (we Purdys love routine - we were taught by a master), at a great spot by the Waikato River. Clearly we were well organised - picnic lunch with thermos of tea.

As a teenager I often attended family holidays to Te Rangiita (Taupo). This was taken on one of our last fishing trips together as a family. Pretty soon I would outgrow them and start some family routines of my own with Jacky.

Deedoo II and the gee-kids (L to R: Adam; Samantha; Jade; Keegan) in the nineties at Mickey D's in Auckland.


One of the last father/son photos I have. Thirty years apart - we were so very different, yet so very alike.

Dad loved the Marx brothers so here's a parting thought from Groucho:

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.