Last week’s edition brought you advice on what to do with your Thanksgiving leftovers (here’s our advice on what to do with those leftovers this week: COMPOST THEM), and it included the chorus to a song about Ramen Noodles that we once heard on an alternative radio station in another state:Ramen Noodles
Must be made in heaven
For nary a dollar
I can buy me seven
Well, it turns out that both the writer of those lyrics and the musician who recorded them both lived here in the Lowcountry.
Here's the extended story...
Columnist, philosopher and stand-up comedian Tom “Noonan” Werner (Noonan was his stage name) of the Isle of Palms first published An Ode to Ramen Noodles 10 or 12 years ago in his “Rude, Crude, Guy Food” column in Charleston’s Free Time newspaper. He describes the column as something that would be equally at home in both the bathroom and the kitchen.
A local musician named Allen “Alpo” Porche approached Werner about setting the lyrics to a reggae beat. One thing led to another and the track (which also featured Teddy Prause, these days the guitarist for Steve Carroll and the Bograts, and Noonan/Werner giving a "spoken-word" commentary) headlined the self-produced Pop Ramen EP by “Noonan and the Rah-Men.”
Anyway, Prause noticed the chorus in last week’s paper, and — ta da! — mystery solved. We wound up on the phone with Noonan/Werner, trying unravel/remember the history of the Ode to Ramen Noodles lyric, the recording, the musicians, and whatever happened to all that time.
Also mysterious: I remember hearing part of the song on a public radio station in another state, which seemed like news to Tom. The record never had a label and didn't get airplay. He was certainly surprised that I'd heard it in North Carolina -- so surprised, in fact, that ever since then I've been trying to figure out if my memory is playing tricks on me. Thing is, I can't imagine where else I might have heard it.
Back in those days, Tom was working on an idea called "Broke and Brilliant," and you can still find some of it online (another chunk was lost in a computer crash), and the Ramen song fits into that theme nicely.
Today he goes by Tom Werner professionally in his work with a flooring company called Charleston One Source (the Environmentally Friendly Wood Specialists) and even has real business cards that he hands out. So it looks like he's moving up in the world.
But I feel for the guy. As he put it when he dropped by the audio file for this post:
TOM: "You know that thing about how if your work touches just one person, it was worth it?"
DAN: "Yeah?"
TOM: "I'm not feeling that so much right now."
Because I'd hate that too. I'm not exactly the prize in anyone's box of Cracker Jacks.
Anyway, here's your Ramen Noodles song. Enjoy. And if you like it, tell Tom. He could probably use a few more fans.
Editor’s note: Writer and radio humorist Garrison Keillor
of A Prairie Home Companion fame will play the North
Charleston Coliseum on Monday, March 12. He sat down recently -- with tongue planted firmly in cheek -- and answered 10 e-mail questions from Friday 5 guy Dan Conover...
Q: There's a soothing quality to your on-air persona, which makes me wonder: When long-time listeners meet you in person, do they seem either comforted or alarmed by your actual personality?
A: I wasn't brought up to expose strangers to my actual personality. In public I am calm, unfailingly polite, soft-spoken, and modestly intelligent. My actual personality is rather different and involves velvet bellbottoms, heavy oak furniture and torches in wall sconces, the consumption of absinthe, and an obsession with the tango. That is all I care to say about it at the moment. Tall languid olive-skinned women are attracted to me for reasons I can't fathom, and I am putty in their hands. Hours, days, pass in a whirlwind of passion before we return to our senses and for that reason, I am way behind on home maintenance chores.
Continue reading "Garrison Keillor's private tango obsession" »
So here's the backstory about the item that mentions Marjabelle Young Stewart in Friday's Top 5:
Last week I was working on a list called "Five Things to love about the Lowcountry," which was part of the prototype my wife Janet (our Content Development Editor and former chief designer) had come up with, and the first item was "Charm and etiquette." And I noticed that while everybody around here still talks about Charleston being the Most Polite City in America, we hadn't actually received that honor from etiquette writer Majabelle Young Stewart since January 2005.
Whilst poking around, I found out that nobody had received much of anything from Stewart since then. So after a little more research, I worded the original item to say that Stewart was 82 and -- bless her heart -- it would be impolite to complain about the fact that she hasn't said anything nice about Charleston in a couple of years.
Then on Monday I picked up the paper and there she was: in the obits section. And I found out all sorts of things about her. Marjabelle was raised in an orphanage, married at 17 to a prominent scientist, worked as a model, started her own modeling agency, became a popular Washington socialite and worked her way into prominence in her own right:
"Oh, I’m one that dated Jack Kennedy, you know," Stewart remembered with a smile. She was on top of the world, and her marriage with Young was fading. And although she now claims her relationship with Kennedy was platonic, she once described how he liked his morning waffles with warm butter and syrup.
And I'm thinking: Maybe this etiquette business is a bit more interesting than I'd thought.
She eventually divorced her first husband, married a lawyer and became a famous etiquette writer/educator/protocol expert. Marjabelle spent her final years in Kewanee, Illinois, and named Charleston America's Most Polite City from 1996-2005. I don't know whether that makes the real Charleston quite the nirvana of mannerliness that Mrs. Stewart believed it to be (yesterday I watched an irate man verbally assault a driver attempting to back up a trailer on King Street), but the Charleston of the mind is apparently a lovely place indeed.
Color Photo: Fred Zwicky, Peoria Journal-Star/PJNet.com. Original cutline: "Marjabelle Young Stewart laughs as she performs a puppet rendition of her children's storybook that teaches etiquette."
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