Hallelujah!

It looks like Blogger is back!

Now; Where was I?

Oh Yeah!

Sunday night I watched a show on Netflix called Wagner and Me. The star/narrator was an Englishman named Stephen Fry. It was an interesting hour and some.

Basically, Richard Wagner was an 19th Century German composer who wrote, among many other things, The Flight of the Valkyries; brought into popular culture in the movie Apocalypse Now as the music the helicopter squadron would play as they were attacking the North Vietnamese. Wagner also had the misfortune to be the favorite composer of Adolph Hitler. At least, that's the way the relationship was always portrayed.

This show got a little deeper. Fry, who is Jewish (and lost relatives to the Holocaust), has always loved Wagner's music; something he felt guilty about. This show was his journey into that guilt.

Now; how to describe the show and not have to pronounce a SPOILER ALERT?

We usually don't have to 'navel gaze' over our likes and dislikes. I love the movie 9-5 but hate Jane Fonda being in it. I watch it very seldom for that reason. Or, closer to point, you may have a musician who's music you like, but who's politics you hate. But even that is only close, not on, point.

Imagine that you had a visceral connection with the music of Louis Armstrong, and then found out that Bonnie and Clyde were his biggest fans (not true, as far as I know). And then remember that Bonnie and Clyde had killed your Grandfather, a Louisiana Deputy Sheriff. That gives you a better feel, I think. Except that in this case, Hitler killed millions.

And it wasn't just that Hitler was a fan; Wagner's descendants were supporters of Hitler in the late 1920's, before he was powerful. And Wagner himself was anti-Semitic.

Now you may begin to understand Mr. Fry's guilt.

As I said; it is a fascinating journey.

There is a theater in Germany dedicated solely to the music of Richard Wagner, built by King Leopold specifically for Richard Wagner, and every year they perform Wagner's Ring Opera series; a show that lasts over 8 hours. EIGHT HOURS OF OPERA!!! And tickets are sold out for this year. If you wish to attend you will need to buy tickets for the 2021 show. Yes; they are sold out for the NEXT SEVEN YEARS.

Stephen wants to attend, but is still having Guilt Issues. The power of the music versus the power of the guilt.

He travels all over Europe, including a visit to the Wagner Theater in Bayrueth, Germany during rehearsals and a visit to the massive outdoor venue Hitler had built in Nuremberg, site of his most well known speeches, trying to decide which is more powerful.

He has one more visit to make; to see a Holocaust survivor, and it is talking to her that he decides which has the greater power.

What? you thought I was going to tell you which choice he made?

I thought about doing so, but then I thought this: some of you will be interested; interested enough to watch the video. Others of you will just not care; the information on his final choice isn't of any importance.

So by telling, I will have ruined the show for those who care, and not affect those who don't.

See? I think I have chosen wisely.

Yeah, It's Been a Year Already

Today is once again my Birthday.  I usually keep the celebrations low key, not because of any inherent hatred of getting older, but because we just exited the Christmas season, and I, for one anyway, am flat partied out.

Today is my 54th birthday. Well, actually it is the 54th anniversary of my birth day, but no need to become semantic. Unless I want to become semantic. And it's MY birthday, I'll do as I dang well please.

Sorry; I had to get that out of my system.

I use my birthday as a day to review the last year and preview the coming one. To calculate the gains and losses; who I saw born and who I saw buried. To determine if I feel as old as I am.

To me, age is really an average of two things; how old the calendar says you are and how old you feel. When we are young, those two generally coincide, if we ever give any thought to it. 40 is when things start to go awry, usually because that is when we are first asked how old we feel. And then we start thinking about it. I don’t think being 40 is the cause of all of our aches and pains; I think being 40 and acting 25 is the cause of all of our aches and pains.

But the truth is I don't feel any older than I did at 25. Unless I am trying to get up from lying on the floor. Used to be I could pop up like a jack-in-the-box. Now it’s more like watching bread rise, and takes almost as long. That is proof of my failing memory; I can't remember NOT to get down on the floor in the first place.

I know I’m not alone. Everybody I know is facing the same thing, whether they want to admit it or not. But the fact that everybody is in the same boat doesn't help; it just makes it a very crowded boat.

Jimmy Buffet has an old song (from 1980; yeah, I know to my peers, that ain't old) "I'm Growing Older But Not Up"; it is, in my opinion, an anthem of the American over 50. He was 34 when he wrote it. And 64 when he performed it here.

None of us wants to admit not how old we are, but how much we have aged. Like the old joke says; Anybody who claims they can do at 50 what they did at 20, didn't do squat at 20. None of us wants to admit that we are incapable of doing the things we used to do. Toby Keith said it best; “I Ain’t As Good As I Once Was”; another anthem of the over 50 crowd.

You can see, I guess where I am going with this? The calendar tells me that in 366 more days I will be closer to 60 that to 50; closer to 70 than 40; and I'll stop before decide to grab a beer at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

Which is something I would have done when I was younger. When 9:00 Sunday morning was just late on a Saturday Night.

Music Makes The World Go Around

 Have you ever given much thought to music?

Today we don't have to; drag out the iPod; pull up a song. Don't like it? Dump it and pull up another. But that technology, through the iPod, is just over 10 years old. MP3? About 20.

Before that we had Tapes; Cassette; Reel to Reel and 8-Track. And of course before that albums and 45s. Or 78s. Or even further back, wax cylinders.

Before that? All music was live.

We have become accustomed to music being a constant soundtrack to our lives; our MP3 players; the radio or CD in the car; muzak piped in the stores and elevators; even coming through our TVs through the miracle of cable. Pandora coming through your flippin' cell phone!

Less than 100 years ago it wasn't so easy. You want a tune? Whistle it. Or Hum it. Or know somebody who who can play it on some instrument or the other. Sure; you could buy a Victrola in 1913; for $75.00. When the average year's salary was $1300. Two weeks pay; give or take a couple of hours. Plus records at a buck or so each. That one song would lose it's novelty real quick.

Dances in the rural areas were a godsend; a reason to get together and music to boot, provided all of the members of the band could get together.

You think a barbershop quartet sounds goofy? Compare it to no music at all. Sounds pretty good now, don't it? Ever wonder why you always see Uncle Ed with his guitar in old family photos? Because he brought the music.

Stop and think for a minute about how dependent we are on electrons for music today, and how few folks play an instrument. Every high school had at least one band back in the day. The official one that played at football games, and there were always 4 or 5 guys banging around in somebody's garage or basement, hoping to play the school dance some Saturday night.

There was also a community to be had when a band got together and a dance was in the offing.

Something that's hard to achieve with a pair of earbuds.

The CMA Awards

Last night the Country Music Association gacve out their yearly awards. I didn't watch the show, but I did pull up a list of winners (scroll to the bottom) this morning.

And my first thought was:

Who in Hell are these PEOPLE?!?!?!

Toby Keith I like, and I have heard of Blake Shelton. And Willie Nelson of course.

And Believe it or not, Mac McAnally, mostly because of his work with Jimmy Buffet.

Where are Brad Paisley and Alan Jackson? George Strait? Reba McIntire?

Now I know why I don't listen to Country Radio anymore.

Friday Night at the Movies

I was searching through Netflix last night for something to watch and ran across Urban Cowboy. If I have ever watched the whole movie it has been 30 years. Parts of it I remembered, and parts of it were new, probably because I had never seen it before, except bits while channel surfing between commercial breaks.

One of the parts I didn't remember was the beginning, where a bearded Bud, Travolta's character, leaves the farm for the big city.  Something that is not really worked through the whole movie is that Bud is not an Urban Cowboy, but a Cowboy transplanted to the Urban. That puts a whole different spin on the way the movie plays out.

One scenes is still iconic- Debra Winger riding the mechanical bull for the second time really sticks with you. The interiors, shot at Gilley's, (once billed as the largest honky-tonk in the world)  treated the whole world to Texas Excess.

I've never been a real big fan of Travolta's. I have seen Grease a few times, but other than that I probably haven't seen a total of 30 minutes of his other movies, and probably couldn't name more than 2 or 3. But Urban Cowboy is special. For the soundtrack.

I have the 8-Track somewhere in the attic. I was stuck in the radio in my old T-bird for a month back in the day, and I must have heard it a thousand times that month. Mickey Gilley, of course; Johnny Lee, Charlie Daniels, Kenny Rogers and the Eagles, just to name a few. A veritable whos-who of late 70's music.

Even last night I was focused more on the music that I was the movie. the songs that formed the background for the movie were also the soundtrack of my life in 1980. Each was as familiar as an old friend, and brought back another memory.

Well, except one. A song I heard last night for the first time; it wasn't on my 8-Track. The 8-Track held about 10 songs, and there are 18 in the album. As soon as I heard the song I knew who the artist was, even though I had never heard the song before. I was only mildly surprised to hear him; 1980 was probably his biggest year, as far as establishment music goes. He had just had a hit song that was played everywhere- Pop, Country and Rock radio all had that one song in their playlists, and still do today.

Yes, in the movie the Urban Cowboy was that grand purveyor of drunk, Caribbean rock and rock and the Mayor of Margarita-ville himself, Jimmy Buffet.

Who knew?

Well, I guess I would have, if I would have sat through the Urban Cowboy 30 years ago.

So, There I am, Minding My Own Business...

All it takes sometimes is a few minutes with nothing else to do.

So, just like in a Doctor's waiting room, you look for something to read.

So, it's off to do a few blogs.

And then you run into this.

Did you ever wish you could unsee something?

But that's not why I pulled this down from the Ethernet.

Read the comments, if you can. There is one comment that has to be read aloud for it to make any sense at all.

But, if you have a weird sense of humor, like mine, it will be worth it.

Who Takes CRACKED Seriously?

During my daily perusal of Instapundit I found this article from Cracked.

I remember Cracked from back in the day; back when when they were a MAD Magazine wanna be; bad art and all. Apparently things have changed.

I really have no quibble with most of what the article says; they're right, for the most part. In the section about how things are so expensive they mention how most families have two cars, unlike the old days. Yeah, but most families also have two jobs, unlike the old days.

Then we get to Music.

The article is correct; We know Beethoven from his time, but not the hundreds of his contemporaries who were writing music that was not as memorable. Even in the early days of recorded music, some 78 RPM records are worth hundreds of dollars; others... less so. Some of what was popular in the 1950's is forgotten today.

The number one song from 1969 was the Archies. Why? Because they had a Saturday morning cartoon.

Like the Beatles. And the Monkees. Okay, the Monkees was live actors, but how much closer to a cartoon could the show have been? And What about the Banana Splits? Who knew they had a website? Great for a cold splash of nostalgia!

But I digress.

The one point that this article could make and doesn't is that our imperfect memories always remember only the good times, and then compare that to our current situation. And nowadays always comes off second best. Our parents remember the Great Depression and WWII as the good old days for crying out loud.

And our kids will probably remember today's era as the good old days when they are adults. Who could become nostalgic about today for God's sake? Lousy economy, rotten popular music, Global warming burying half the country with feet of snow; seriously, who COULD remember this as the good old days?

Our kids won't remember that Uncle John spent 6 months without a job, and won't recall which piece of dreck it is that beats Toy Story 3 For Best Picture. Hell, the song that will be the most popular from the 'Oughts probably never even made it to the radio top 40, if history is any indicator.

And it usually is.

So kick back and enjoy the Good Old Days now; why wait until when you can only do it in what's left of your memory?

Who Needs a Laugh This Morning?

I was reading this over at Sippican Cottage this morning, and literally had tears in my eyes.

If you are not familiar with the Kingston Trio's MTA, watch the video first, catch the tune, and sing the words as loudly as possible.

Hopefully in a room with the door closed, and not your cubicle.

Maybe I was just in the mood to laugh uproariously at 7:00 in the morning, but I laughed so hard I cried.

I guess I should admit to having cropdusted a time to two...

What A Sunday!

Okay; this week sucked.

Our computers were down at work; the weather was too hot, my father-in-law had surgery on Wednesday and we had a death in the family on Thursday.

This week was bad.

I was looking forward to Friday night. Friday night is my unwind night. Slip into the comfys and drink beer; that is my Friday.

Pop-in-law is still in the hospital and The Wife needs a ride Friday night. Plus, we have the Young'un and she needs to be home at 8:30.

We didn't get back to the house from our errands until 9:30. So much for my comfys and beer.

Well, there is always Saturday.

Yeah, well; about Saturday.

Saturday morning I moved 200 bales of hay for my sister, did a few things around the house and just when it was BEER:30 I found out I need to take The Wife to the hospital again.

While we were there I realized my right elbow was swollen and on the way home we stopped by the Urgent Care for a little medical exam. They really didn't help; it's Saturday night and I can't bend my beer drinkin' arm for crap's sake! A couple of prescriptions and they sent e home.

At 9:30.

One beer and off to bed.

Sunday is not normally one of my beer drinkin' days.

But at 7:00, just by happenstance, I turned on the TV and started surfing.

And ran into a Jimmy Buffet concert- live from the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

I have spent the last hour and a half in my recliner; drinkin' beer and watching Jimmy Buffet perform some of his biggest hits.

If somebody would have bonked me in the head with an inflatable shark I would have thought was there. I had the surround sound cranked and the beer was flowing.

Ahhhhhhhh.....

Now I'm ready for Monday.

Come Monday, it'll be alright, come Monday I'll be holding you tight...

Sorry; for a minute there I was gone to the Bahamas...

Oh what the Hell...

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville...
Lookin' for my lost shaaaker of salt...

(Don't mind me; I'll be here all night)

Some people claim...