[lit-ideas] Re: Glory or time?
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 00:21:59 -0600
RP:
>Meanwhile, an analysis of long bones found at
> Kato Zakro, 'a well known Minoan site' on the eastern shore of Crete,
> reveals that males in the population studied averaged 167 cm in height
> (a bit over 5' 5") and females 157.5 cm.
That's plenty tall. Any taller is just a sinful waste of protoplasm. For
example, Jesus, they speculate was about 5' 1". If you're taller than that
then you can sing along:
Taller Than Jesus
© 2002 Sean Altman
I'm not bragging - don't mean to blaspheme
But Jesus was a short dude - at least compared to me
The average guy at the time of Christ
Was 4'9 to 5'5"
I...I'm taller than Jesus
I said I...I'm MUCH taller than Jesus
He was long on love - but short of limb
My tee-shirt is like a dress on him
He could heal the sick and save your soul
But he couldn't dunk a basketball
I...I'm taller than Jesus
I said I...I'm MUCH taller than Jesus
Jesus walked on water
Turned water into wine
But if you need to change that
light bulb
Call me - I'm divine
I was hanging with Christ - just guy to guy
He was sitting on a phone book - we were eye to thigh
He said "Hey Sean - what's it like up high?"
I said "Hay-soos - you want a piggyback ride?"
The Beatles claimed they were bigger than you
Well I've the height on the Beatles too
If genes determine the size of your bod
Then my Dad must be taller than God
I...I'm taller than Jesus
I said I...I'm MUCH taller than Jesus...
************
Well, I'm only a little taller than Jesus. But that's fine with
me. Here's a partial list of right sized men folk who were/are as tall or less
so than me (from Famous People Height List)
http://members.shaw.ca/harbord/heights3.html:
Napoleon Bonaparte 5'6-1/2"
Henry Winkler (the "Fonz" on tv's Happy Days) 5'6-1/2"
Woody Allen 5'6" [1.68 m]
Ludwig van Beethoven 5'6"
Peter Falk (of tv's "Columbo") 5'6"
Dustin Hoffman 5'6"
Cheech Marin 5'6"
John (Joseph) Merrick (the "Elephant Man", 1862-90) 5'6"
Marquis de Sade 5'6"
Joseph Stalin 5'6"
T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) (British soldier and writer) 5'5-1/2"
Horatio Nelson (British naval hero) 5'5-1/2
Joel Grey 5'5"
Harry Houdini 5'5"
Curly Howard (of the Three Stooges) 5'5"
Hiroshito (Japanese emperor) 5'5"
Charles Manson 5'5"
Aristotle Onassis 5'5"
Joe Pesci 5'5"
Lou Reed 5'5"
George "Baby Face" Nelson (U.S. gangster) 5'4-3/4"
Alan Ladd 5'4-1/2"
Robert Blake (of tv's "Baretta") 5'4"
Mel Brooks 5'4"
Larry Fine (of the Three Stooges) 5'4"
Michael J. Fox 5'4"
Mo Howard (of the Three Stooges) 5'4"
James Madison (shortest US President) 5'4"
Gustav Mahler (Austrian composer) 5'4
Roman Polanski 5'4"
Pablo Picasso 5'4"
Haile Selassie (Ethiopian emperor) 5'4"
Sammy Davis Jr. 5'3"
King Hussein (of Jordan) 5'3"
Davey Jones (singer for the Monkees) 5'3"
Nikita Khrushchev 5'3"
Mickey Rooney 5'3"
Martin Scorsese 5'3"
Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet, French writer) 5'3"
Prince 5'2-1/2"
Honore de Balzac (French writer) 5'2"
Buckminster Fuller (inventor of geodesic dome) 5'2"
Yuri Gagarin (Soviet cosmonaut) 5'2
Dudley Moore 5'2"
Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) 5'2"
Paul Williams (songwriter, actor) 5'2"
St. Francis of Assisi (Italian saint) 5'1"
John Keats (English Poet) 5'3/4"
Danny DeVito 5'0"
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (painter) 4'11"
Gary Coleman 4'8"
Alexander Pope (English poet) 4'6"
Charles Becker (mayor of Munchkinland-The Wizard of Oz) 3'9"
**********
Randy Newman be damned. If your legs reach the ground, you're tall enough,
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 10:50 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Glory or time?
> Forgive me if I don't reply to all of Lawrence's reply to my original
> comments. I've been trying to find out how tall the Ancient Greeks were.
> We used a secondary text in first-year humanities ages ago in which some
> useful figures were given but I can't remember its title and can't find
> anything on my shelves that might be it.
>
> Here's an exchange that appeared some years back in the New York Times,
>
> October 11, 1987
> Greeks of Stature
>
> To the Editor:
>
> Arthur Krystal comes up a little short when he writes ("How Beautiful
> Was Helen of Troy? What Homer Never Told Us," July 12): "Homer's most
> admirable heroes are so by virtue of their height [ italics mine ] and
> strength." I don't know which "admirable heroes" Mr. Krystal has in
> mind, but in Book Three of the "Iliad" we are told that not only was
> Agamemnon, the titular leader of the Greeks, shorter by a head than the
> others, but that Odysseus, certainly the most resourceful and most
> durable among them, was "shorter than King Agamemnon by a head."
>
> According to the E. V. Rieu translation, "You would have taken him [
> Odysseus ] for a sulky fellow and no better than a fool. But when that
> great voice of his came booming from his chest, and the words poured
> from his lips like flashes of winter snow, there was no man alive who
> could compete with Odysseus. When we looked at him then, we were no
> longer misled by appearances."
>
> Obviously, height may have its shortcomings—unless buttressed by
> brains—even in Homer!
>
> MILTON BIRNBAUM Springfield, Mass.
>
>
> Arthur Krystal replies:
>
> Homer repeatedly affixes the adjective "tall" to his heroes. It is "tall
> Achilles" and "tall Hector of the shining helm." Agamemnon, however, is
> no taller than he should be. Achilles calls him "a wine sack with a
> dog's eyes and a deer's heart," though "tall Priam" describes him as a
> "tremendous" man, a man of "power and stature." As for Odysseus, he was
> shorter than other chieftains, though he looked mighty tall to his
> wife's suitors back in Ithaca. The long and short of it is: we'll never
> know how tall Homer's heroes were. Odysseus was short, probably in the
> sense that a guard in the N.B.A. is short compared to [sic] a center.
> ------------------
>
> One would think that this information would be easy to come by on the
> Internet, but I've given up searching for now. Tomorrow I'll ask a
> colleague in classics. Maybe by Homer's time people
> were somewhat taller.
>
> Robert Paul
>
>
>
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