#AllIvesMatter
Dick Ives, Burl Ives, David Ives…
Dick Ives, Burl Ives, David Ives…
This is a period of greater division than any faced by most of us living today. As a nod to that, we at The Shocker believe it’s important to remind everyone one thing: All Ives Matter. What follows is a list of Ives you should know. This is a primer that’s a million times better than anything Vox has crapped out. Vox, please pay us money or we will continue to make jokes about you. It is very easy. Go soak your head, Yggy.
Dick Ives —
This dude could ball. Never made an impact in any professional league, but everyone knows college basketball is the only form of the game that matters. They actually play defense and play for the love of the game unlike those glory boys in the National Basketball Association. He still has the third highest scoring game of all time for an Iowa Hawkeye. He was nicknamed the Diagonal Dagger. Dick Ives was bad and mean as hell and his corpse would kick your ass in a game of pick up.
Burl Ives — You probably know him as the singing snowman in Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, but his greatest feat was appearing in a bathtub in the 1962 film, The Spiral Road.
And of course there’s his folk music career, which you probably only know about because you heard his version of “The Grey Goose” on the soundtrack to Fantastic Mr. Fox.Burl is like Len Bias: known for one thing. But unlike Bias, it wasn’t dying from cocaine, but rather appearing as a cartoon snowman.
David Ives — There’s a strong case to be made that David Ives is a communist sympathizer. The evidence is all there in one selection from his All In The Timing collection of one-act plays: Variations On The Death of Trotsky. The commie, in exile in Mexico City, comes to realize he has a mountain climber’s axe embedded in his skull and dies and resets, each time to the ring of the bell. It humanizes Trotsky as well as his murderer. There’s no room for that in our public discourse; only red-baiting. But Ives still gets on the list, because it’s important to know your enemy.
Charles Ives —
The biggest and baddest Ives of them all. A baseball dork (is there any other kind?) he played the game AND composed musical pieces based on plays he witnessed or experienced. A graduate of Yale, so you know, totally down to Earth. He worked as an insurance salesman by day and a composer by night. He was an innovator in both fields, having a major influence on estate planning and actuarial tables. As a composer, he rejected the musical traditions of Europe, considering a lot of the music wimpy. He loved dissonance, and his compositions are full of it. They borrow folks songs, hymns, and other popular tunes of the day. He is notable for creating the impression of two marching bands passing by, with one section of the orchestra playing one melody in one key and another section playing another melody in an entirely different key. He is directly responsible for Van Dyke Parks and SMiLE. So he’s the guy to blame for the dork who won’t shut up about Song Cycle and/or Brian Wilson.
Yves Saint Laurent —
Kind of ran out of gas on this one. He’s a fashion designer. Which I guess is a more acceptable career than content creator or social media executive. He was French, so that means a high ranking on the pretension and insufferability scale—am I right?—but a lot of his designs and ideas about fashion have really stood the test of time. Something that can’t be said about that Chipotle tweet referencing Gotye from a few weeks ago. (I bet you don’t even remember the time Chipotle tweeted and referenced Gotye in it: pathetic.) Plus, he designed a lot cool clothing for women, stuff that was actually enjoyable to wear but also stylish as hell, baby! The only edge you have over him is that you’re not dead. But you may as well be. I don’t know anything about fashion, but Yves seems like he’d design something cool that Martin Fry from the band ABC would wear.
