A Lot of Johns

I guess today is “John” Day on my blog. That was a complete coincidence.

More Johns (some of which I have written about):
— John Ford (post)
— John Tyler
— John Steinbeck (post)
— John Mayer
— John the guy I dated and wasn’t very nice to (post)
— John Jacob Astor
— Jonathan Papelbon (“With Papelbon, we’re unstoppable!”) (post)
— John McCain
— John Stamos (post)
— Johnny Cash (post)
— John Garfield (yum)
— John Irving (post)
— John Adams (post)
— John Lennon
— King John
— John Gribbin (post)
— John Grisham
— John Patrick Shanley (post)
— John Lithgow
— John Cougar Mellencamp (Ahem)
— John Hughes (post)
— John Dean
— John Travolta (post)
— John Carradine
— John Locke (post)
— John Millington Synge (post)
— John F. Kennedy
— John Keats (post)
— John Ashbery
— John McGahern (post)
— John Glenn
— John Banville (post)
— John Henry (post)
— John Wayne (post)

And then of course there is this – an O’Malley favorite for long car rides:

John Jacob Jingle-heimer Smith
His name is my name too
Whenever I go out
The people always shout
THERE GOES JOHN JACOB JINGLE-HEIMER SMITH
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

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15 Responses to A Lot of Johns

  1. DBW says:

    Oh, yes. There are nuances to that ditty yet to be discovered and explored.

  2. DBW says:

    And while we’re on the subject–Why just 100 bottles of beer on the wall? Why?

  3. Emily says:

    You know what’s funny? The other day I was Googling for “the Playboy riots” to read up about what happened in Dublin after the debut of Synge’s play, and the post you linked up there comes up like third or fourth in the search results. That was awesome, finding a little treasure that a friend wrote that I had looked over when you first posted it.

  4. red says:

    Emily – cool! In one of those weird blog-moments, I received an email a while back from, I think, the grand-nephew of Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh – the actress I quoted from heavily in that post. He’s working on a book about Maire – and my post came up in some of his research.

  5. brendan says:

    Please forgive this minor correction, but I believe his name was John Jacob Jingle-heimer SCHMIDT.

    I know it only because people always used to shout it.

  6. Lisa says:

    Brendan is correct; it is Schimdt.

    We know people — friends of friends — who crawled out from under their rock and named their kid John Jacob [LastName]. That’s just wrong, y’all.

  7. red says:

    I suppose the name was good enough for John Jacob Astor, although he came to a freezing terrible end.

    Legend has it that he said, after the ship hit the berg: “I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous.”

  8. red says:

    I keep adding more Johns to the list. Eventually – the name “John” looked completely wrong to me … Like: it can’t be spelled that way, can it???

  9. Lisa says:

    I think Mr. Astor preceded the song, right? But still, no one in Arkansas knows who John Jacob Astor is (except me) but they sure as hell know the Jingle-Schmidt song. That poor kid.

  10. red says:

    Bren – I always associate John Jingleheimer SCHMIDT with Little Red Caboose, chug chug chug … a strange confluence of our long-car-ride songs!

  11. red says:

    Lisa – yeah, really, it’s like naming your kid Yankee Doodle or something. Or, worse, Doodle Dandy.

  12. brendan says:

    the worst ‘john’ is the cleveland indians player named ‘jhonny peralta’. yes, that is ‘jhonny’.

  13. jenob says:

    OK, I either love or hate you for getting “little red caboose, chug chug chug…” in my head now.

  14. Robert N G says:

    Couldn’t get into the comments on John Ford to add mine, so here’s one: “The guy” John Wayne mimicked in that last scene of The Searchers, holding his arm standing in the doorway, was Harry Carey, the legendary cowboy star and late husband of Olive Carey who played that scene with Wayne. He did it for her, spontaneously. Harry Carey had been with Ford in the silent days, starring in the first version of The Three Godfathers, among many others, but they had a falling out and never reconciled to the point of working together again before Carey died.

    Ford did remember him, however, by doing a dedication to Carey at the beginning of the last remake of The Three Godfathers which starred, among others, Wayne and Harry Carey, Jr.

  15. deirdre says:

    Because I can’t comment on the original post, I’ll post here — my favorite John Irving book is “Setting Free the Bears.” “The World According to Garp” changed my life — I read it at 12 and it rewrote the way I interacted with people and how I felt about myself.

    “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

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