#Richard Sherman

I'm not a Twitter person.  I have an account and this blog feeds to it, and once in a while I can construct a complete thought in 140 characters, but I am generally a long form writer. 

This week our friend went into the hospital to have surgery and her son set up a twitter account to keep all her friends up to the moment on what was happening. I thought that was a great idea, she has a lot of friends.  I started checking Twitter every hour or so to keep up with the progress of the operation.  

I don't know when the pound sign became a "hash tag" and I am not really sure what code that sends to the universe of Twitter.  I do know that "trending topics" are represented by this # symbol so I am not totally 19th Century when it comes to tweets.

Richard Sherman- Composer

So this week under the trending topics section there was this: #Richard Sherman. I became very excited.

Richard Sherman is a friend. He is the last surviving member of the Sherman Brothers. Richard and his brother Robert wrote music for Walt Disney. They wrote the music for, among other things: Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose, and the song played more times than any other song in history "It's a Small World".  With all the great music Richard and Robert wrote they can be forgiven for "It's a Small World".  But I digress...

Richard and Robert also wrote the theme song to "Harry Anderson's SideShow" a special I co-wrote and co-produced with Mr. Anderson for NBC.  That is how I got to know the Sherman Brothers. 

After hearing Richard tell stories about his career at the Disney Studio it was very interesting to see some of those stories acted out on the big screen in the movie "Saving Mr. Banks". There it was, an actor playing the role of a much younger version of the man I know.  Some how I felt like my Kevin Bacon number to that film was one relative to that story.

And so there it was #Richard Sherman as a trending topic on Twitter this week. Since it is Academy Award season I was excited to think that my friend was being discussed on the web.  There was a moment when I wanted to call him and tell him he was a social media hit since I am pretty sure Richard is not a tweeter. After reading a few of the tweets it became clear that my excitement was misguided.

Of course they were talking about the Seattle Sea-Hack, "Dick"  who made the game ending play to take his team to the SuperBowl. The tweets were not so much about the incredible play he made but they were lambasting his "rant".

I actually watched it live when it happened on Sunday but pretty much dismissed it.  I was rooting for the 49ers and not interested in the adrenaline fueled steroid driven self-aggrandizing  post game interview of the spoiler. 

Only because of the confusion with my friend Richard Sherman do I have and opinion about Richard Sherman - the other. 

Richard Sherman- the other

What do we expect? We ask a football player to entertain us by hitting, slamming, tackling and brawling over possession an oblong ball. We watch some of them taken off the field on carts like the wounded gladiators where they are to be patched up and put back into game. Most of these mutant tough guys have a muscular neck bigger than my waist. Then in a post game interview we want them to have the wit of Mark Twain and the intelligence of Albert Einstein. We are shocked to hear an ego filled smack talking incoherent dumb-bell speak. #what did you expect?

Long after this next SuperBowl is just the recap on NFL Films and the next generation of hooligans take to the field, Richard Sherman - the other will be little remembered. But even then someone will be humming a tune that Richard Sherman the composer wrote. 

Here is to the real Richard Sherman, my modest, witty friend and talented artist who deserves his own "hash tag" not for a rant, but for the beautiful music he has written.

As you were,

Jay