In Impromptus today, as I survey music (casually), I make a little crack about Carmen — referring to it as the soundtrack to The Bad News Bears. (The best movie ever made? Or merely in the top five?) (Caddyshack, I suppose, is the best movie, along with The Ten Commandments.) Several readers have written in about classical music and popular culture. One man said, “No, Bizet’s music is not from The Bad News Bears” — it’s from a particular episode of Gilligan’s Island. Another reader wrote to stress the importance of Warner Bros. cartoons and The Three Stooges and so on in our exposure to music.
’tis true, ’tis true. You know the following joke? Q.: What’s the definition of an intellectual? A.: Someone who can hear the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. You would probably not want to meet such a person (if he’s American, that is). (Elsewhere, they may not know about the Lone Ranger, or Tonto, either.)