Take It Easy

 

 

 

Here's something I don't like: people announcing they do not like a singer or band with the clear meaning that if you like the singer or band there is something wrong with you.  Unfortunately, I do this too, but I'm trying to get better. Honest.

I first noticed it in the movie "What About Bob".  Bill Murray played a goofball under the psychiatric care of Dr. Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss asked about Murray's last girlfriend. Murray said he ended it because there are two kinds of people on earth: those that like Neil Diamond and those that don't. She liked Neil Diamond.

After that, I started hearing many people saying they didn't like Neil Diamond. That's like saying you don't like popcorn.

Soon the movie "The Big Lebowski" came out, and "The Dude" profanely said he hated the Eagles.

Again, saying you hate the Eagles is like saying you don't like popcorn or clouds. The Eagles were popular because they were good. You could sing along with them, particularly Glenn Frey.

I guess I'm defensive about the Eagles because there was a time when they were not on the radio.  But then came "Take It Easy".

Yes, "Take It Easy", the song that put Winslow, Arizona, on the map.  Winslow has a statue of a guy at a corner with a flatbed Ford nearby. When my son and daughter-in-law drove around Arizona on a trip, I asked if they went to see Winslow, Arizona.  My daughter-in-law said she nixed it because it was three hours out of their way.

It was probably the first country rock song I heard on WFOM-1230, the Top Forty station for Cobb County.  It had electric guitars, drums, and a banjo. Frey sang about running down the road, trying to loosen his load with seven women on his mind.  Only one of those women he seemed to like.

Then  Frey announces he's standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and sees a fine sight:  a girl in a flatbed Ford.

As a seventh grader in Cobb County, I wondered how exactly do you end up in Winslow, Arizona and do they lots of girls driving flatbed Fords and would they slow down to look at a short, pimply kid with thick glasses. (Inside my seventh grade mind: probably)

I learned later that Jackson Browne co-wrote this song with Glenn Frey.  He had hit with "Doctor My Eyes".  He was a serious guy that wrote serious songs. I didn't know they knew each other. Probably neighbors at The Hotel California. (Sorry)

In "Take It Easy", Browne says, "Lighten up while you still can".

You read and hear a lot today about the unrest in the country. Some say we are heading to another Civil War.  I doubt that.  I lived through the '60s and the early '70s.

Back then, you had The Vietnam War. You may have heard of it, it was in all of the papers. The War caused protests and a lot of bad folk songs.

Kids were taking drugs and boys were growing "that old long hair".  There were all of these "liberation fronts," each with its own flag and hand signal.

It was intense. So intense Jackson Browne had to tell you to "lighten up".

You never saw Jackson Browne smile or laugh or tell a joke. He was telling us to lighten up.

That's the advice I remember from this song.  Whenever the latest controversy du jour hits,  I think of Jackson and Glenn telling us to lighten up.

It is good advice.

The Old, Old Story

 

 

There's a reason why "Christian" movies aren't very good. It usually has to do with the writing, directing, music, cinematography, and acting.

However, there's a show that's streaming now called The Chosen and it is about Jesus and the Apostles. It is an excellent series that even ye of little faith could watch and enjoy.

Movies about Jesus tell more about the movie maker than they do about Jesus and The Chosen is no different. The creator, Dallas Jenkins, is an Evangelical Christian and takes the view that Jesus was the Messiah and not some fancy Democrat that has nifty parlor tricks.

Jesus is one cool dude in The Chosen. He laughs, eats, and plays chicken in the Sea Of Galilee. The actor that plays Jesus. Jonathan Roumie is, uh, perfect. 

You meet his disciples. Peter, James, John, etc. They seem like regular guys and they bicker and complain about the work. One of the disciples, Matthew, seems like he walked out of a first-century version of The Big Bang Theory. 

 

The one bad apple, Judas, is portrayed as a nice guy, not the sort of guy who would betray you with a kiss.

Now, here's the meat of the post. I will comment on what I think is good in The Chosen and what is not so good.

It is difficult to critique Christian movies because the intent of the moviemakers is good because they do not want to make a lot of money. Instead, they are spreading the "gospel" through film. Plus, and this is a big deal, most Christian moviemakers do not have the budget that the Marvel Universe has.  This makes the movies look "cheap"

You end up watching the movie thinking, "considering everything, it's not that bad of a movie".

You don't have to worry about that with The Chosen.  It is very well made.

 

 Now, here are some of the problems with The Chosen.

There's a lot of padding in The Chosen. Thomas has a girlfriend. Peter's wife has a miscarriage. James and John have a father who quit his fishing business to grow olives with the help of Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately, none of this is in the Bible.

One episode dealt with Jesus and his memories of his earthly father, Joseph. But, again, the Bible doesn't tell us a lot about Joseph. Of course, it was dramatic and all that, but still, it is not from The Bible.

On social media, there were some complaints about Matthew helping Jesus with The Sermon on The Mount. I didn't get that Matthew was ghostwriting the sermon for Jesus, but some did and I need to watch it again.

Then there was Jesus playing chicken.  I was a history major in college. I've never run across anyone saying Jesus played chicken.  I'm not saying he didn't. I don't even know if they played chicken in the First Century. But it is important to note that if Jesus played chicken, somebody would have mentioned it in the Gospels.

 

That's the real problem with The Chosen. In order to make Jesus like one us, sometimes they make him look sort of silly.  In one episode, he meets a blind woman and her sort of boyfriend.  The boyfriend is lame, as the Bible would say. Jesus gives sight to the blind woman (she has a great line when she tells the boyfriend, "You're not as handsome as you said you were") and as they was walking away he heals the boyfriend as sort of a "why not" miracle.

 

Another issue that I have is that some of the language does not sound "Biblical".  No, there are no bad words and there are no "thees and thous".  But, some of the dialogue sounds like it came from around the water cooler. I'm sure it is intentional.  Yet, I doubt the word "integral" was used in the First Century, like it was in a recent episode.  (I'm sure someone will go to the Greek to prove that I am wrong.)

Even with all of this, The Chosen is a heaven of a good show. 

 

Glory Redux

 

The fans of the Georgia Bulldogs and, indeed, the entire state of Georgia owe the 2022 edition a great amount of gratitude.

After last week, when Georgia somehow, someway, defeated Ohio State based on an errant field goal, this state could not take another nail-biter. Especially to a team from The Big 12 Conference, which the SEC sort of looks at like the way the Atlanta Braves looks at The Montgomery Biscuits.

It's not that TCU was a lousy team. Shoot, they beat Michigan, which had defeated Ohio State. But, like Georgia, they have gotten lucky in a couple of games, like the one against Baylor, where they won on a field goal that looked like The Three Stooges designed it.

TCU's quarterback,  Max Duggan, finished second in The Heisman Trophy balloting. That means football fans that many people who know what they are talking about think he is a good quarterback.  And he is.

But this 2023 College Football Championship was just too big of a stage for Duggan and the rest of the Horned Toads. Yes, I giggle every time I say "Horned Toads".   

Georgia, on the other hand, seemed right at home.  They won it last year against the Crimson Tide, which was a big deal.  Georgia hadn't won a championship since January 1, 1981.  Jimmy Carter was still President.

TCU hoped to win. Georgia expected to win.  

I don't know if Stetson Bennett IV is the greatest quarterback in recorded history. But I know he won't have to buy a meal in any restaurant in the state of Georgia for the rest of his life.

There's something about his story. The walk-on that somehow becomes first string and leads his team to two national championships. It says a lot about him that he didn't dump football because he had a lot of opportunities to do so, and nobody would have blamed him if he did.

But he didn't, and he scored two touchdowns last night. (It seems like everybody scored two touchdowns last night. If Uga X had been there, he would have scored two touchdowns.)

The Georgia defense was more than great. They were stifling. Just when it looked like TCU might get something going, they didn't.  They made only one mistake all night, which led to TCU's only score.

It is safe to say that Kirby Smart has his place safely inside the pantheon of great Georgia coaches.  He had his team prepared, which is the greatest compliment you can give a coach.

The morning after, the media was filled with the usual media stuff. Drunk idiot college kids hooping and hollering in front of a TV camera.  Sports talking heads debating this question: Is Nick Saban still THE GOAT (Greatest Of All Time), or is it Kirby Smart?

All I know is winning is better than losing.  Most of the time, the teams I've rooted for has been on the losing end of a beat-down like this. Think of The Atlanta Falcons. Think of The Atlanta Braves. Think of The Atlanta Hawks.  Georgia overcame the powerful Manis Loser Rays.

Georgia fans should enjoy the victory.  Here in the Atlanta area, we have a lot of fans of the other schools who do not like the barking, the woofing, and the hunker downing.

When you win back-to-back championships, you can bark all you want.

Songs I Like: "Brown Eyed Girl"

 

 

 

Welcome to a new Humor Me feature: "Songs I Like".

It will be about songs I like (duh) and will appear whenever. No set schedule.

One of the inspirations for this is the new book by Bob Dylan called "The Philosophy Of Modern Song".  Like most of Dylan's work, it is one part brilliant and one part "whut?".  It is sixty-six essays on sixty-six songs.  It contains no "philosophy," but all of the essays are united by the fact Dylan has heard the song or at least heard about it though with some of them it is hard to tell

The other inspiration is a little Facebook post I've been doing weekly for the past five years called The Lyric Challenge, in which I post six lyrics and ask people to name the song and the artist.  

It has been a fun little exercise where I implant earworms into people and they hear The Carpenter's version of "A Kind Of Hush" all day.

The first song: "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison.

 "Brown Eyed Girl" is probably the first Van Morrison song I have ever heard.  It is perhaps his most famous song. Of course, Van hates it.

Van wrote and recorded "BEG" after signing a contract with Bert Berns who owned a record label called BANG.  (Can you name the other big time singer on the BANG label?  The answer will be at the end of this post.)

Berns figured out a way to have someone write and sing a song without paying any royalties. Because Van did not make any money off the song, he didn't want to sing it.

So over the years, Van has refused to play "BEG".  However, he has loosened up in his later years, and now how finishes his concerts with "BEG", although it doesn't sound exactly like it does on the radio.

Supposedly, the song was supposed to be called "Brown Skinned Girl" and was about an interracial love affair.  I don't know if that's true. Van hasn't said.

To me, the song is about memory. "Do you remember when we used to sing?".  He lists everything he remembers: the waterfall, the transistor radio, and "making love in the green grass behind the stadium".

When I was coming along, kids would tell stories about running across boys and girls getting busy.   I mean, it was the 70s and clothes were just falling off people.  But I never ran across anybody doing it, and I lived across the street from a high school.

I guess that if you made love in the green grass behind the stadium, you would remember it when you saw your former lover just the other day

Van went from making no money with his most popular song to become a famous singer.  He made a string of albums, starting with "Astral Weeks",  that are total classics.

My wife and I saw Van in concert in Alpharetta last year.  He played the saxophone and sang for two hours, which is pretty good for a 77 year old man.

What makes "BEG" different from other Van Morrison songs  is that it almost sounds happy.  Morrison is known to be a bit of a grump. Don Imus used to say Van led a complicated life.  That may be correct, but Van wrote a great song about something simple: nostalgia.

 

*The other big time singer on the BANG record label was Neil Diamond.