20 Things About 80's Music

 I also happened to listen to the radio in the 80's. Here's what I learned.


1) Billie Jean is not my lover.

2) She's just a girl.

3) But the kid is not my son. (How many of you thought Michael Jackson was saying "The chid is not my son".)

4) I like Sammy Hagar better in Van Halen than David Lee Roth, which apparently makes me a heretic.

5) Every girl is crazy about a sharped dressed man.

6) I hope when I get old I don't sit around and think about her. But I probably will.

7) The John Fogerty song, "The Old Man Down The Road" doesn't sound anything like his song "Run Through The Jungle" which he was sued for plagiarizing.  Weird because he wrote both songs. Only in rock and roll.

8) What's love got to do with it?

9) Hello?

10) Is it me you're looking for?

11) I didn't know Eddie Murphy could sing. Still don't.

12) You're going to have to face it: you're addicted to love.

13) If you want to hear your body talk, you are going to have to get physical.

14) We are the world, children, and the ones that make a brighter day so let's start giving.

15) I don't know what hooked me more: her raspberry beret or the fact she walked in through the out door.

16) The only part of the song "Take My Breath Away" I know are the words "take my breath away".

17) If you play music you get money for nothing and your chicks for free.

18) There are  Deadhead stickers on a Cadillacs.

19) There's nothing you can do for a total eclipse of the heart, bright eyes.

20) The future will always be bright enough for shades.

Turn Around Bright Eyes

There Were These Two Corinthians...

It is an understatement to say this political season has been weird. It has been strange, bizarre, and totally wacko. Case in point: Donald Trump is making a run at the Evangelical vote in the Republican Party.

Think about that for a second. Donald Trump has been married three times. He has traded in a wife when she has aged and upgraded to a younger/better looking woman. His current wife, a former model, has posed nude. If Trump is elected, this would be the first First Lady that has posed nude since Dolly Madison did it in a colonial version of Playboy.

He has bragged about his sexual conquests.  He claims to have had sex with some of "the top women of the world". No word if this also includes Dolly Madison. (It would be tasteless for me to add Trump's reason for his prowess: "I'm huge".)

He has stated that he never asks for God's forgiveness and that he doesn't forgive.  That definitely includes Dolly Madison who he called "A total fat pig slut who chews with her mouth open."

He really loves money. Almost as much as he loves himself.  Neither the love of money or egotism is a fruit of the spirit.

I'm not judging the guy. (Man, if there is one Bible verse everyone has memorized). I'm simply using my gift of discernment. Trump is as about as pagan as a person can get.

But, he really needs the Evangelical vote to win the Republican nomination. So Trump has been focusing on Evangelicals this week.

First, he dropped by Liberty University to give a speech.  It was truly a work of art.

He was trying to connect to the Liberty students when he said this: "Two Corinthians, 3:17, that's the whole ballgame".  This is a major faux pas. Nobody in the Evangelical world uses the term "Two Corinthians". It is "Second Corinthians".

(In the interest of fairness, because we all know we need to cut Trump some slack, prominent theologian N.T. Wright often says "Two Corinthians". But N.T. Wright is from England so it doesn't count.)

Nope, Trump was just trying to impress the kids with his Biblical knowledge. It made an impression all right. One student said  Trump seemed "on the lower side of being authentic".

Then Trump went to Iowa and trotted out our old pal Sarah Palin. Gov. Palin's endorsement speech was not one of her better efforts. She seemed shrill and was yelling in this high pitched nasal voice like she was begging Tina Fey to do another impression.

Here's part of her speech.

 “He is from the private sector, not a politician, can I get a “Hallelujah!” Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge. So troops, hang in there, because help’s on the way because he, better than anyone, isn’t he known for being able to command, fire! Are you ready for a commander-in-chief, you ready for a commander-in-chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS ass? Ready for someone who will secure our borders, to secure our jobs, and to secure our homes? Ready to make America great again, are you ready to stump for Trump? I’m here to support the next president of the United States, Donald Trump."

The "main thing" here is that Palin has given Evangelicals the okay to use the word "ass" in situations that do not involve talking Biblical donkeys.  This could really liven up a lot of Sunday School lessons.

We don't know if this is playing well in Iowa. While Palin was speaking, Trump was standing by her looking like he was thinking, "Well, if this is what these hayseeds want".  The strategy  is that if Trump can win in Iowa, he can start measuring the drapes for the Oval Office.

If that happens, we'll need all the prayers we can get.

The Dude Drop

One of the problems with trying to write a weekly humor blog is sometimes you run out of material.

Sure, I guess I could write about Donald Trump again, but that gets boring.  The primary season is coming up and I need to save all of my Trump jokes.

But leave it to my hometown, Marietta (or as my friend Tater calls it: "Mayberry-etta"), Georgia to come to my rescue.

First, the details. Marietta has a nifty town square.  It is a gem. The Marietta Powers That Be have really improved the Square over the past thirty years. There's a lot of little shops where you can find cool little do-dads. It has several restaurants, including The Local, which serves really BIG biscuits.

A group of city leaders decided to make The Square a destination this holiday season. The first thing they came up with was an ice skating rink.

Of course, this is the South, where it can still be rather warm during the Christmas season, but I happened upon the ice skating rink and it was really neat. So the ice skating rink can be considered a success.

Then they came up with an idea to have people come to The Square during New Year's Eve: Have a ball drop at midnight just like they do in New York City. This is when it started to get weird.

It was promoted as a ball drop. From the Marietta Daily Journal on December 28, 2015: " To ring in the new year, celebration events are planned across Cobb County, including on Marietta Square, which is set to host its first New Year’s Eve celebration with live music, ice sculpting and a ball drop at midnight." So far, so good, right? The article continues: "The “ball” will actually be an 8-foot cube with the letter M on it playing off of the geometric shape of the Square." Okay, well, I guess, it wouldn't be my first choice, but whatever.  Sterling Wharton, President of The Branding Project which is a group that promotes Marietta said this: "I think it will be a unique surprise to everyone. I think it will be something where folks will be surprised".

As Scooby-Doo used to say, "Rut roh, Shaggy".

Here is what happened, again from the Marietta Daily Journal:

"As the last seconds of 2015 counted down, the crowd on Marietta Square turned its eyes to a box suspended by a crane 50 feet in the air.

Emerging from the box was a shirtless man in sparkly gold pants who performed acrobatic gyrations on a trapeze.

The plan was for the acrobat to perform while a countdown sounded and “Auld Lang Syne” rang out over the speakers, organizers said.

But a glitch in the sound system meant most people couldn’t hear anything as they watched the dancer emerge to greet the New Year like a freshly hatched chick."

So instead of a "ball drop" you have a "shirtless man in sparkly gold pants" performing "acrobatic gyrations on a trapeze". The Marietta Daily Journal then quoted former Congressman Bob Barr: "I would just describe him as a trapeze artist, and he was very good at that, but what a trapeze artist has to do with a New Year’s Eve celebration sort of escaped me."  It did me too, Bob, and I went to Cobb County Public Schools.

There was other negative reactions. On the city's Facebook page someone posted, "Super uncomfortable when the way too young 1/2 naked guy starts falling from the square nothing says happy new year like that, right? … Glad I left my children with their grandparents.”  This sums up the negative response in that people were not prepared for a shirtless man in sparkly gold pants to ring in the New Year.

One of the planners responded,  "Cheer up folks, there is always the corn boiling you can look forward to". (Note to non-Cobb Countians: "The corn boiling" is an event in July that the Sheriff puts on and all of the political people go to it.)

I want to emphasize to the planners that I am not just another one of those local yokel yahoos who's the reason we can't have nice things around here. Just this last summer, my wife and I went to The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. We saw Van Gogh, Monet, and a couple of paintings that were obviously influenced by what art historians call "heavy hallucinogenic drugs".

When we went there was a special exhibit on the "works" of Yoko Ono Lennon. Rock historians generally describe Yoko Ono as "one weird chick".

One of the "works" was a film about a fly walking around on a nude woman's body.  I'm not quite sure what makes this "art" except the woman was naked because if you want to make something "art" just throw a naked woman in it. I just wondered how they got the fly to walk around the body. In my experience, flies do what they want. The only explanation is Yoko told the fly the she was going to sing if it didn't walk all over the body.

So, just a bit of advice, not being reactionary or anything might remotely seem like I'm an uptight Baptist offended by shirtless men. If you are going to promote a New Year's Eve Ball Drop, drop a New Year's Eve ball. If you want to have somebody jump out of a box with an M on it, promote that.

Personally, I think a Big Chicken should have been dropped.  You could even put sparkly pants on it.

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution