About Some 70s Music

 

 

 I hate to tell you that my 50th high school class reunion is coming up next year.

Yes, I and some other Wheeler "Wildcats" are planning a gala 50-year reunion. 

You may remember, in 2017, we celebrated our 40th high school reunion and yours truly was the Grand Host. I told a couple of jokes and introduced The Grammar Hammer himself, Roger Hines, who spoke to us about the importance of split infinitives. Or gerunds. Something like that. All I know it was a long time ago and I didn't study for the test. 

So, I have been thinking about the 70s a lot.  

As a person who majored in history, and yes, somehow managed to find a job, I think the 70s can be defined as the era when hit records, even though they "sounded" good, were actually strange.

I think you can determine if someone is eligible for Medicare by simply walking up to them and say: THE SIGN SAYS YOU GOT TO HAVE A MEMBERSHIP CARD TO GET INSIDE.  If they grunt ("HUH"), then you know they are somewhere in their sixties. 

This is a lyric from the song "Signs" by The Five Man Electrical Band. Upon hearing this song, for the first five thousand times on WFOM-1230, you think it is about "signs" and how they are "breaking my mind," and that is not a good thing. 

However, somewhere in my adulthood, I realized the song "Signs" is about a guy who wants to argue with people. 

The song begins, "The sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply".  The singer put his hair up under his hat and went in to talk to the owner of the business who needed help. This guy was so brilliant that the owner decided to hire him on the spot. The singer took off his hat to show up the owner THAT YES, A LONG HAIRED FREAKY PERSON CAN BE IMPRESSIVE.

This tells me a couple of things. One, the singer is unemployed. Two, the most he would do to get a job is to stick his hair up under his hat. 

The song continues:

And the sign said
"Anybody caught trespassin'
Will be shot on sight"
So I jumped on the fence and I yelled at the house
"Hey! What gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out
But to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here, he'd tell you to your face
'Man, you're some kind of sinner'"

 

I don't know what gave him the right.  The deed of property?  Just a thought.

My Baptist background would add that God would tell him that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, even long-haired freaky people.

I like the idea of this guy sitting on a fence just yelling at the property owners.  They are in their house, watching a ball game or something. Husband says to the wife: "You hear anything?"  The wife says, "Yeah, just another long-haired  freaky person."

There was another song by the ultimate White person's band, Bread.  Bread was actually a bunch of studio musicians who would get together and cut an album.  The head Bread guy was David Gates, who would write these really sappy love songs.

Like "Baby, I'm A Want You".  I need Roger Hines to tell me if this is a grammatically correct sentence. It don't think it is. I'm always wary of songs that put in a superfluous letter A, like "The Times They Are A-Changin'".  Look Bob, just say the times are changing.

Their most hilarious song is "Diary".

 "I found her diary underneath a tree
And started reading about me."

How many times have you run across a book, picked it up and started reading it ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times") and think, "Hey this is about me!"

It continues.

"When she <was>confronted with the writing there
Simply pretended not to care."

Actually, her reaction was, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING MY DIARY YOU KNUCKLEHEAD."

Then he learns the sad truth.

"The love she'd waited for
Was someone else, not me."

That'll teach him to read someone's diary without their permission. 

My friend, Terry McCoy, who is a songwriter in his spare time, commented on my Facebook page about this song, "I’ve always thought it was weird that anyone would write down their deepest, honest thoughts about everything. What good can come from that?"

I'll tell you, Terry. Nothing good could can come from that. But, at least it's not a sign. 

 

 

 

 

"The Madison": A Review

 

 

As you know, this blog has a regular feature called "Like It or Lump It" in which I review various streaming shows and advise if the show is worth watching. 

I've decided to review another show from the Taylor Sheridan TV factory, "The Madison." However, I'm going to leave it to you if you want to watch it or not.

One reason for this is that "The Madison" is a well-made TV show.  It has that Montana (or Utah, standing in for Montana) background which is just awesome.  The rest of the show has some problems.

First, you have to know that THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. You can't review this show without revealing a major event that drives the narrative of the show.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell play a happily married, rich couple who have two adult nitwit daughters and live in New York City.  Russell became rich from one of those jobs in which money rolls in, just because he (in the words of my wife) is "still fine".  

Evidently, Russell is originally from out west because he spends a couple of weeks at a little compound he and his brother own somewhere in Montana so they can fish together and drink booze. 

Michelle never goes on these outings because she is, and this is a direct quote, "a city mouse."  I have never heard anyone use this phrase in my life, and I'm old.

Russell and his brother fly fish, which Vice President Cheney used to do.  I don't get the appeal of fly fishing but my theory is it is a new hobby of Taylor Sheridan just like that hobby of the sliding horses in "Yellowstone." 

Well, Russell and his brother decided to fish at this river, which is just stocked full of fish. They fly over to this river in his brother's airplane, which is just a little prop plane. A storm comes up, and instead of just waiting out the storm, Russell and his brother head back in the little plane.  From there, they are bounced around in the plane, and the plane hits an inconveniently placed mountain.

Michelle is eating at a fancy-smancy New York restaurant, the kind where you see more plate than food, when she receives a phone call from Montana stating Kurt and the brother have been killed in a plane crash.  Montana never calls just to chat. 

Michelle proceeds straight into I'M GOING TO WIN AN EMMY FOR THIS IF THIS IS THE LAST THING I DO mode and begins to caterwaul. She leaves the restaurant to gather the girls to go to Montana.

The youngest nitwit daughter is married to a beta guy who works at Vandelay Industries and is an importer-exporter.  She got mugged early in the episode mainly to show how dangerous it is to be a city mouse.

The oldest nitwit daughter is a divorcee with two daughters who go to The Woke Private School and learn how to scold people for using the wrong words because that promotes equity.

Well, Michelle, the daughters, granddaughters, and son-in-law all travel to Montana to pick up Kirk Russell's body. When they land in Montana, "The Madison" flips to television's favorite trope: the fish out of water.

Despite the incredible cinematography and the big-time star power, "The Madison" is a melodramatic version of "Green Acres", except with more f-bombs. ("Oh, Ollie-vah, I made your breakfast."  "Mr. Douglas, that is one big mother <bad word> pancake.")

Michelle and gang would make a sailor blush with all of the swearing. It is almost non-stop, and I guess you could argue that the tragedy makes everybody lash out, but it makes Michelle the most non-sympathetic widow in the history of mankind. She is always cussing out somebody about something, usually for no reason except Kurt is gone and I feel bad, boo-hoo.

It is sort of like if there was a sequel to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's book "On Death And Dying", called "The Stages of Grief".

Stage One: Catawaulling

Stage Two: Swearing.

One thing about a Taylor Sheridan project is that he tries to own the libs in his shows.  A lot of people (not me) object to this.  I don't object because I lived in the era of the Norman Lear comedies in which somebody, usually Archie Bunker, would say something bigoted or mean, and Rob Reiner would roll his eyes and give a speech proving Arch was full of beans.

Sheridan does spend a lot of time showing what a good salt of the earth people the Montana folk are and Michelle and company are not because they are a bunch of snots. 

But I think the real problem is that while the show is wallowing in grief, nobody ever really addresses this question:  If this man was her soul-mate for lo these many years, how come she never visited the compound before his death?  It looks like she would have been there at least once, if not to prepare everybody for the outhouse.

I know there's a lot of waves of emotion when a loved one dies, but Michelle's performance of walking into a river with her fancy clothes and sleeping by the gravesite seems just a little bit....too much. 

Violence:  None, except for a plane crashing into a mountain.   The one good thing the nitwit youngest daughter did was bust some Gen Z young lady in the chops after that lady celebrated the death of another rich white man. That was pretty sweet. 

Sex:  There's a lot of talk about between Beta Son-in-law and the nitwit youngest daughter about possible doing the South Carolina Lovey-Dovey, but then she gets mad at him for something stupid.

Nudity:  The youngest daughter is stung on her heiney by wasps that had a nest in the outhouse and you see the nekkid wasp stung bottom. (I saw Nekkid Wasp Stung Bottom open for Toad The Wet Sprocket.)

Language: Pretty bad.

"The Madison" has been renewed for a second season, which means Michelle will be able to express her grief in loud wails and cuss words just like a city mouse.

 

 

40

 

 

My wife and I just celebrated our 40th anniversary.

It is really strange because in the past, couples who celebrated their 40th anniversary were always old people.  My wife and I are still spring chickens, which is not unusual for our peer group.  Most of the people we know insist that they are young whippersnappers who just happen to go to bed at nine o'clock.

Anyway, when we married, Ronald Reagan was President.  Donald Trump was still married to his first wife, I think.  

Televisions were big and heavy. Our first "big" purchase as a couple was a VCR.  Somehow, we managed to hook it up without coming to blows.

We lived in an apartment complex. The complex is still there.

I've been thinking about marriage lately and how some make it to forty years and some don't. 

One guy I enjoy reading is James Lileks, formerly of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Lileks is exactly one year older than me and was the Lewis Grizzard/Dave Barry of Minneapolis.  Great writer. Posts a five-day week blog called "The Bleat".

Well, Lileks, to be blunt, isn't quite as woke (and I know that makes me sound like the guy at the loading dock who only watches FOX News) as people who want to control public discourse in Minneapolis expect.  He wrote a joke (a joke!) in a humor column (the nerve!) and had his column yanked away.  He was placed on the fast-paced Twin Cities Architecture beat.  He eventually took a buyout. 

He is getting a divorce from his wife. They were married a year or two after us.  They share a grown daughter.  He writes about the breakup in "The Bleat". Some of it is heartbreaking.

There's a lot of speculation, in the comments section of the blog, but really, there's no way to know. Just two people who are going their own way. 

Roger Miller had an old country song that said it best regarding husbands and wives. "Some can and some can't."

My secret?  I talk to my wife, and if she doesn't want to do something, we don't do it.  It is as simple as that.  If she wants to do something and I don't, well, we do it anyway. I have no strong opinion about a lot of things, like movies, where to eat, and whether we need to go to the grocery store. 

Just decide which hill you want to die on. For example, if my wife wanted to rob a bank, I would argue with her. 

Secondly, I would advise all couples to decide who is going to handle the finances. Make a budget. Try to keep it.  My mother told me that marriages either fail in the bedroom or the bank book.  That's pretty much true.

One thing I would caution young people on: everybody wants the Instagram pictures and all that. That's great, but marriage is not just the wedding. A marriage is something you have to work at. That means talking and listening. It means giving and taking. 

It also helps if you marry a wonderful person, as I did.