Wholeheartedly agree with this one.
Today’s Bumper Sticker
Wholeheartedly agree with this one.
Today’s Theme Music
Life is but a roller coaster, you know? One hour you’re up, the next hour finds you on the ground. We flutter from ecstasy to frustration, coping with drugs, alcohol and other escapes.
Love, wow, love can be the wildest roller coaster. The Ohio Players covered it in song, “Love Rollercoaster,” in nineteen seventy-five. I enjoyed the song when it came out, along with a few other million people. It became one of those ubiquitous songs, played in clubs and on the radio twenty-four/seven.
Besides being one of the anthems of nineteen seventies America, “Love Rollercoaster” is burdened with an urban myth. Not too long into the song is a scream. I never thought much about the scream, considering it part of their presentation, but others assigned serious reasons behind the scream, like people or animals being killed or injured. After explaining what caused the scream (one of the singers – surprise!), the Ohio Players embraced a vow of silence about the song, refusing to talk about the scream.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers later covered it. I enjoy their version, but, being a traditionalist, I stayed with the Ohio Players.
The New Dress Code
After long speculation about what President Trump would do to advance his stalled agenda to Make America Great Again, President Trump signed an executive order announcing a new national dress code.
“Look,” he said at the signing statement this morning, “This isn’t about politics. I don’t want to talk about politics. That’s not what the National Dress Code is about. But have you seen the way people are dressing, especially the Liberals? I mean, have you been to a Walmart? Makes you gag, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it make you want to gag? Sure, it does. Those people don’t dress with any pride. They’re wearing clothes made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. I have nothing against those nations, but they don’t make great clothes. They’re great nations, not as great as America, no, that’s not what I’m saying, especially China, China isn’t nearly as great as America, and part of that is their cheap clothing. We need to wear neater, higher quality clothes. We need to wear clothes made in America.
“That’s why I’m instituting this dress code, and I’m targeting specific states that really flaunt the way they dress. Those states include California, New York, Oregon, and Chicago. Have you seen the way they dress in these places? All the guys in shorts, and all the women showing all their skin, and they’re not good-looking women, either. It’d be different if they were beautiful women, but they’re not beautiful. These women are showing what’s called their muffin tops. You know what a muffin top is? It’s a roll of fat hanging over their clothes. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. Disgusting. It’s not wonder America is losing its position as number one in the world, no wonder. People used to all used to want to come here to America, but they don’t want to any more. You know why? It’s because of the way Americans dress.”
President Trump went on to say that a dress code was perfectly legal because they impose them in schools and businesses, and the courts wouldn’t have allowed dress codes to stand if they were illegal.
Today’s Theme Music
In nineteen seventy-seven, I was a long, long way from home. It feels like I’ve been a long way from home every since. It’s funny how often we refer to the place where our parents live, or where we were raised, as “home.”
As an aside, my wife and I were talking about a friend’s plans. She was flying to SoCal for her elementary school reunion. This astonished us. My wife was certain that if she went to a elementary school reunion, she wouldn’t recognize anyone except family. I agreed, I wouldn’t, either. My other problem was that I attended several elementary schools, because my family moved around America. Mom finally settled in Pittsburgh, and now calls that home. I lived there for about a while in my youth, so I call it home.
Anyway, this Foreigner song came out in nineteen seventy-seven. Twenty-one years old, I was in the Philippines, ending a military assignment, and heading for Texas, for my next assignment. I was going by way of Pennsylvania and West Virginia to pick up my wife. The song, “A Long, Long Way from Home,” starts out with its second line, “I left a small town for the apple in decay,” a reference to moving to New York. The song is subsequently about feeling lonely and being far from home. And although it was my choice, I often felt the same as I traveled the world, even while enjoying myself and seeing historic sights.
Today’s Theme Music
This is one of those songs from my second spring.
The song came out in nineteen seventy-three, which was the spring of my adulthood. Seventeen, I was living in West Virginia with my father. He was newly retired from the U.S. Air Force. Then entering my senior year of high school, I was finding love and thinking about the future beyond classes. Nothing was working out as planned, so I was winging it, the process by which I’d end up living my life: just wing that mutha.
“Ballroom Blitz,” by Sweet, nicely captures and conveys the chaos and pathos of that period as hormones and emotions took over, and I impatiently pursued life.
Today’s Theme Music
I woke up in a Foghat state of mind.
I’d had an exciting and interesting dream about a recent dream. Without disclosing more, it was tremendously uplifting, bolstering my self-confidence to scary levels. I will note that I dreamed about the number eight again, which makes, unofficially, but what I can remember and enumerate, seven times. I’m waiting to see if I’ll dream of eight an eight time to end the series.
Back to Foghat. Those of you of certain ages and inclination will remember this song. “I Just Want to Make Love to You” is a blues staple that’s been well-covered by some great artists. But I encountered Foghat’s version first. It was nineteen seventy-two, and I was sixteen, a wonderful combination. By then, I was enamored with rock and guitars. Foghat’s cover of this song opens with rocking guitars, and doesn’t let up. What else needs said?
Beginning Again
Cut those strings, he told himself. Release the ballast. Unfurl your sails. Anchors aweigh.
He wasn’t certain about that last expression. “Anchors aweigh.” Sounded like he should be readying a scale. He was pretty sure that’s how the song went, “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.” He owned a computer, and could easily look it all up, but he thought it a dated reference, anyhow.
Searching for something more appropriate for the digital age, he came up with “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t use that; the slash folks have trademarked it, and zealously guard their carefully cultivated expression.
Sliding back into the rocket age, he counted down, “Three, two, one…we have liftoff.” But those words failed to lift him, and he became a little depressed, because Major Tom entered his head. The Air Force song came up, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” but yonder construed a vague distance and direction.
“Where are we going?”
“Over yonder.”
“There?”
“Yes, yonder. There.”
Umm.
“Once more into the breach, lads,” he thought, but it would not do. Various people and rock performers sang about being back in the saddle again. Where was his creativity today?
What the hell. He needed an ending so he could start. “Lit ’em up,” he said, wincing. Time to reboot, he decided, pressing start, but it was such a dejecting way to begin. “On the road again,” he hummed.
Curse Willy Nelson.
Today’s Theme Music
I heard this song in the car while running our usual weekend errands, and turned it up and listened. It employs an honesty and simplicity in the lyrics and melody. Later, I learned one of my favorite recent guys, CeeLo Green, was one of the people behind it. The song was inspired by a conversation between CeeLo and Danger Mouse about artists not being taken seriously unless the artists were insane. Yet, watching the news since then, I get the impression, in this era of personality, that being taken seriously when acting insane extends way beyond artists and into politics and business. We’re inundated with the mundane and tedium, so the insane draws our attention. Then, we start listening more carefully to what the insane are saying, and wonder, “Hmmm…can they be right?”
Here’s Gnarls Barkley with “Crazy,” from two thousand five.
Today’s Theme Music
Woke up feeling like some Squirrel Nut Zippers.
I began listening to them in nineteen ninety-seven. I was working for a medical defice startup called P.A.S. in Palo Alto. A young co-worker introduced me to the S.N.Z. sound with the second album, “Hot.”
I became particularly fond of “Hell.” It was a good song to sing along to while seat dancing when I was stuck in the SF Bay Area traffic. I still smile when I hear this song.
Today’s Theme Music
Going to the NCO Club and Open Mess in the middle of the nineteen eighties, I heard a lot of music I would never otherwise encountered. “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” by Dead Or Alive is one of those songs. Now, whenever I hear it, I think, do young people know what’s meant to spin round like a record? It reminds me of expressions like, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” When I was young, I wondered, who’s going to give me a horse, and why shouldn’t I look at it in the mouth? Do horses do something to you if you look them in the mouth?
From nineteen eighty-five, let’s spin this thing. Gotta love the electronic sound. So eighties.
