Tiny Money Land

I AM SO FRICKIN' HOSED: To once again prove that I know nobody's paying attention to this blog anymore, a moment of personal embarassment...

You Are 40% Boyish and 60% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

 

YEAH, LIKE ANYBODY WILL EVER SEE THIS: My favorite Scott Keith piece, hands down, has to be the Heroes of Wrestling rant, about one of the most atrocious things ever fobbed off on wrestling fandom. That was the one where an obviously hammered Jake "The Snake" Roberts ruining the end of the show inspired this type of entertaining invective: "I suppose it would be harsh of me to wish Jake would just choke on his own vomit one night and spare us all ever watching him ruin his life or the lives of the people that care about him ever again, but at the rate he's going he's probably not far off."

I don't think we're ever going to see him get that worked up about anything ever again, since he's pretty much stopped paying attention to wrestling and retired to his blog to write about things that don't piss him off. That's all well and good, but detailed wrestling-style recaps of sitcoms are just WRONG. Not terribly entertaining, either. The comment section desperately trying to shift things back to the WWE topic has much more replay value.

I've been doing the pop culture thing on and off right here for years, and the most popular entries I've ever done would be me taking a craptacular trend by the scruff of the neck and beating it against the wall until it stops breathing. If you're trying to be a Critic That Just Wants To Be Loved, Michael Medved and Gene Shalit have that market cornered. My favorite book by a movie critic is Roger Ebert's I Hated Hated Hated This Movie, so I've probably got a natural bias to spleen-venting and against critics who just settle for being endearing.

But hey, it's your life, bub. If ya gotta leave the wrestling behind, leave it, and don't be a drama queen about it. Just don't expect to get book offers to write about how good Joey is this season. If that's what keeps the Teeming Dozens in your LiveJournal community happy, whatever...

Oh, and say what you will about the man, you self-involved punk-ass (ugh) IWPers, but THE RICK HAS OUTLASTED YOU ALL! At the rate he's going, it'll be him and the cockroaches when the bombs finally fall.  

THE MUSICAL BATON: Let's get this one thing straight, usually I play my cards close to my vest, so I dodge these so-called blog memes like the plague. The ones I've seen dig into all sorts of personal questions, and if I haven't told you my creepiest secrets in a one-on-one format, I'm not about to tell you in a semi-public format. This wasn't passed to me by anybody, because that would mean that somebody's checking on me on a regular basis (snicker), but I found it on a random search (I do a lot of those) and I'll be damned if I'm not running with it.

There are only four points of discussion, all in caps.

TOTAL VOLUME OF MUSIC: There have to be around 200+ CDs stuck in the nooks and crannys of this place, and at least that many albums in the infamous pile of 8-tracks--probably more, since at one point people were giving them to me by the Hefty bag. I don't even have an 8-T player hooked up right now, which gives me another reason to feel like Montag's boss in Farenheit 451, mocking the tunes of the ages by letting them sit mute on a shelf. Add to that total 40 or 50 LPs and just as many cassettes (not counting all those old-time radio tapes, many of them loaded up with jazz from variety shows) and the scads and scads of MP3s (I'm only admitting to legally purchased ones), and that's my collection. Some of them I've even listened to more than once.

LAST CD I BOUGHT: The 4 Seasons Genuine Imitation Life Gazette, but we went over that story already. See how far back that's dated? Being out of work and out of money will do that to you.

SONG NOW PLAYING: Clarence "Frogman" Henry--"Ain't Got No Home" via the WWOZ In Exile stream. Yeah, still thinking of New Orleans, a place I've never been, filled with absolutely nobody I know except through the radio... I hear this song and it reminds me of a stunningly straight-faced version Madeline Kahn sang (right down to the croaky-frog voices) on her last Saturday Night Live appearance. For the life of me I can't remember what else she did that night, but since it went down during one of the SNL sucky seasons, I'm doubly stunned that I was watching that night anyway.

FIVE SONGS THAT MEAN A LOT TO ME: Not the only five, of course, but the ones that came to mind first. I can't imagine a world without any of these.

1) Beach Boys "Til I Die": It was either this one or "She Knows Me Too Well", but this gets the edge because it came after Brian's big breakdown. Almost haiku-like (it's fading out before you even know it), the lyrics about being pushed by forces beyond your control, and those famous harmonies, this time plumbing the depths of the soul. A nice shock if all you know from the band is "California Girls", and one of the reasons Mike Love should be ashamed for calling "Kokomo" his favorite.

2) Beatles "And Your Bird Can Sing": John Lennon said the song was a throwaway, but I keep coming back to it. You can even read a Taoist subtext into it, although I have my doubts he meant to put it there. Mix in the propulsive guitars and the harmonies, and that's the 60s to me.

3) Gram Parsons "Love Hurts": Just listen to the bone-level ache in that voice, and that great Emmylou Harris harmony. It made the lung-busting, guitar-strangling Krokus version I grew up with seem kinda silly.

4) Jack Teagarden "A Hundred Years From Today": I think I traced Leon Redbone back to the source with Teagarden, and in a pop climate where everyone tries to sound like teenagers FOR teenagers, it's really refreshing to hear someone who actually sounds like a grownup

5) Tom Waits "Take It With Me": This song makes me feel alive and alone. And if my luck holds out, this is the "bloggiest" thing you ever hear out of me.

Bubbling under: Nick Drake "Northern Sky", so much more hopeful than the popular favorite ("Pink Moon"), and sometimes that's what you need; Benny Goodman's version of "Goodbye", the sign-off song of my life; Penelope Houston's "Qualities of Mercy", a gorgeous song about being face down in a bar (which is another thing I've never done, but I'm not dead yet, so you never know). I could keep this list going all day, and maybe I will...tomorrow. Or the day after.

At this point, I'm supposed to choose FIVE PEOPLE TO WHOM I'M PASSING THE BATON, but I'm not sure there are five people in my sidebar that have updated in the past year...not that I know personally, anyway. I don't follow fashion--just look at this haircut, har har--so let's just say since you read this far, I expect you to pick up the baton and run with it.  

NEVER LET THEM FORGET: The hell with talking points, political spin, and buck passing...this is the only commentary worth anything about the breakdown in command and control on the Gulf Coast last week:

MR. BROUSSARD: And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

There's plenty of room in Hell for anybody who has made a glad-handing, back-slapping, self-congratulatory press conference about how well everything was going this past week while people who didn't have to die died. And that goes double for all the cops who stood outside of the Convention Center while some freak inside was raping and killing preschoolers.

Say anything you like about The Blame Game, Mister President, but this happened on your watch, so we're looking at you first.

Good job, Brownie.