Franklin Crawford

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Two Minute Take-out from Ithaca Farmer's Market, July 4, 2010

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Last Updated on Sunday, 04 July 2010 14:50
 

2010 Ithaca Festival: He-Man Chain Saw Marching Band and Belly Dancers on Parade

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Last Updated on Friday, 04 June 2010 22:41
 

O Rare Lando, is Gone

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TINY TOWN, USA – Lando the Lion Hearted, is dead. 

Four legged creatures everywhere weep -- for a Great Friend among the Two-Legged has passed into extinction.

Lando was a lot of things. To the writer of this short memento, he was The King of Drama Queens and a character who will no longer strut across the boards of any human stage ever again. Not on this man's planet.

Lando was more than a character study and an interesting man, he was a great man. Great to the things he loved, where our greatness is most in evidence. He was a good man and for that, leaves the world loved and beloved. 

Some will remember Lando as no more than an Opera-fag and a cranky jackass who hated hunting. I don't think Lando would give a flying fig what any amateur weekend up-from-Jersey hunter had to say about him. For those who hunted for food, he gave little thought. It was the assholes who littered the woods with beer cans, made a hell of the hillsides with random gunfire and staggered back to their 4-wheelers and weaved back Downstate -- those were his enemies. For these slobs, he reserved his bitterest literary gall in his annual Anti-Hunting column. 

And he had gall galore. Lando was a kickass writer. No one so far interviewed has been quoted saying so but he was a topnotch journalist, a real wordsmith. He could write in any style but was most comfortable with a lofty tone, the grammar exact, the logic precise even when being silly.

We've been thinking a lot about him since his great good heart expired Sunday night. Simple things mostly and sad to think they are no more:

He never went out of fashion. When suspenders, bow ties and Indiana Jones hats became popular items, Lando must've sensed the world closing in on him.

He once lost a front tooth and seemed in no great hurry to replace it. When he cackled – and he had a good stage cackle – that missing tooth added a wonderful dash of the dastard to his demeanor. He had very English manners up to and including a healthy Medieval fear of dentistry. He loved clotted cream. Devonshire, we seem to recall. 

He was from Cleveland and his highbrow tone must've been a trickle-down effect from Shaker Heights or too much time rubbing his pate against Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, or maybe it was the Annals of Tacitus, the essays of Montaigne, Shakespeare and company, etc. He was one of those guys who had leather bound volumes on his shelves and actually cracked the bindings. 

He could do a mock-up of Hemingway's style like nobody else. He was a romantic, we think, who was not big on the post-modern literary stuff. But he knew it. 

He was addicted to Neosynephrine long before it was popular to get addicted to OTC medications.

His pipe seemed to be a snobbish prop, and was an easy target for those who thought he was a phony. They were wrong. It was all genuine. When cigar smokers got their own magazine, Lando kept to his pipe. He was no friend to smoking laws. 

Dogs. Cats. My gosh. What a sucker for those furry four legged critters was he! 

Clever, quick with a comeback. He appreciated talent especially if it came with a heaping dose of irreverence and belligerence. In his Lando way, he was as radical as any anarchist-freak on the street. His fondness for opera was an expression of his passion for life, the comic-tragic mostly, the inherent hilarity of the parade of fools who compose the bulk of human doings, he reveled in the evergreen irony and joy of bearing critical witness firsthand to the grand procession of le comedie humaine from the press box and, when needed, jumping into the ring to fight for the underdogs, hand-to-hand, all the while cursing the outrage of it all. The "all" being whatever offense had unleashed his furor from petty to profound.

At a time when we need more of his kind, nature nabbed him. She can be that way. Lando would understand. 

– C. Penbroke Handy, back from another Long Story

Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 15:31
 

Is this Once-A-Mighty's Swan Song?

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 12:12
 

Once-A-mighty with a song about a man who loves full-figured women

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We sent a memo to performer Once-A-Mighty who is crashing at the tinytowntimes.com Electronic Studios asking him to improvise something a little less dark and more upbeat. We suggested, merely suggested, that he write about a guy who was in love with full-figured women. This is what he came up with. The memo he is pretending to read, is not our memo at all. That memo, Once-A-Mighty claims, got lost with his pizza delivery receipts. He drives a rusted-out blue Toronado which he says gets up to 15 mpg in the city. If you happen to find that memo, please let us know here at Tinytowntimes.com/ . If you're ever even seen him on the street, please let us know. We only ever see him at the stuido, which is not owned by Asians or a lesbian couple as Once-A-Mighty says, but by a nice couple who grew up here. A relative guide to Once-A-Mighty's lyrics appear below the clip. Thank you. 

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here comes another one, pretty as the other one, ain't they beautiful? nice, ladies working out at Curves. (repeat) My name is Ernie Johnson and i work at the carpet store, i like to watch the women come and go. I like those big boned girls and the way they move around. Their flesh has got a sequence and rhythm all its own. (repeat chorus) I'm gonna get up Ernie's nerves some day, gonna ask the girls at Curves to come with me to the buffet. I like my pound of flesh and it's all on me -- yes! Ernie's picking up the check! Just like, don't love me, I'm really pretty lonely, but I'm Ernie Johnson, Ernie Johnson from the Carpet Store. I don't like doing Internet and the Craig's list missed Encounters makes me said. So I'm gonna get up Ernie Johnson's pluck some day and ask the girls from Curves to come with me to the Country Inn buffet ... Yes! Ernie's treating! Come along with him -- I won't even ask to buckle your seatbelt in. Ernie Johnson likes the girls at Curves, Johnson, call me Johnson, I just like those girls at Curves.

Last Updated on Friday, 22 January 2010 13:37
 
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Opinion / Letters