Stephen T. McCarthy STUFFS

HOT-BABES-R-US (Or, R U CUTE, PRETTY, BEAUTIFUL AND/OR SEXY?)

2012-02-12T21:18:00.017-07:00

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Y’all know Missed Periods, right? She’s the owner/operator of the cleverly named blog ‘Missed Periods And Other Grammar Scares’, where she educates her readers about punctuation and grammar in such an entertaining fashion that they ain’t got no idea they’re bein’ taught sumpin’. (I could use a few more lessons.)

Not too long ago, Missed Periods posted a blog bit titled ‘Crazy Sexy Men’ which she closed with this sentence:

“And speaking of the dictionary, in your opinion, under the word SEXY, whose picture will you find?”

My comment started thus... uhm... ‘thusly’? [Missed Periods, where ya be when I needs ya?!] :

First thing I need to do is differentiate between the categories. (I once considered composing an entire blog bit about this subject with photographic examples of each group, but I just never got around to it.)

I have 4 categories for desirable women:

1: Beautiful
2: Pretty
3: Cute
4: Sexy

Well, guess what, 'STUFFS' fans! I just now "got around to it."

Being the sort of man who appreciates the look of an attractive woman (in other words, “bein’ an ordinary bloke”), I have given this A LOT of thought over the ~~years~~ decades.

Most women would probably assume that most men would be most attracted to #1: Beautiful women. [Missed Periods, was that too many “mosts” in one sentence?] Followed by #2: Pretty. Then #3: Cute. And ALL women want to be thought of as #4: Sexy, or, at minimum, NOT thought of as a “dog”. (Don’t worry, babe, there are very few dogs out there, and you prot’ly ain’t one o’ dem. Besides, dogs need and deserve love too!)

Well, if that’s generally thought to be true by most men – that “Beautiful” is best and “Cute” is least in the ‘Battle Of The Babes’ - then I just ain’t like most men. (But then if you’ve spent more than fifteen minutes reading my blog, you already knew dat.) I will state unequivocally that there are plenty of Cute women I am more attracted to than Beautiful women.

I find that there really is four different classifications for the attractiveness of women. But I also find that there is a little bit of cross-over at times. For example: there’s sometimes a fine line between Beautiful and Pretty, and I’m not always sure which class I would dump a woman into. (Uh... well... if I couldn’t decide whether she was Pretty or Beautiful, the chances are I wouldn’t “dump” her at all.)

And sometimes there is a hard-to-define line between Cute and Pretty. However, NEVER do I find myself confused about whether a woman is Beautiful or Cute. (Is this classifying and labeling of women offending any of you females out there? Gee, I sure HOPE so! You’re so cute when you’re angry.)

The most intriguing, nebulous, elusive, subjective, hard-to-quantify – HOT! – category is #4: Sexy.

Not all Beautiful, Pretty, and Cute women are Sexy. Sexy women have a certain - I dunno - “It” quality that’s almost impossible to put into words, but it just makes a dudeguy’s motor immediately overheat. It’s not necessarily a good thing. I repeat: It’s not necessarily a good thing.

I can admire and I can desire a woman who’s Cute, Pretty, or Beautiful, but a woman who’s Sexy makes me... LUST! Sexy is a kinda Va-Va-Voom(!) essence that brings out the baser, animalistic tendencies in a man. It appeals to the raw, earthy, Pirate-y “Arrrrr!” instinct in a man. "Sexy" is that indefinable something that silently screams: "Jump my bones; have your way with me, boy!" It’s the difference between “loving” and “something-else-ing”. ...I threepeat: Sexy is not necessarily a good thang. “This world” would probably be better off without it.

Below I will provide two photographs for each 'Attractiveness Category', as seen through Stephen T. McCarthy’s eyes. I’m not trying to imply that I’ve labeled all these women correctly; I’m stating outright that I’ve labeled them ABSOLUTELY correctly.

THE BABE-O-METER ACCORDING TO McME:

1 - BEAUTIFUL :

[GENE TIERNEY]

The founder of 20th Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, said that Gene Tierney was "Undeniably the most beautiful woman in movie history."

Zanuck couldn't have been more right! Gene Tierney is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen anywhere. But the problem is, Tierney was SO beautiful that she seemed almost unearthly, goddess-like. Any woman who looked like that and allowed a man like me to paw her with his grubby little fingers would immediately lose all my respect!

[GENE TIERNEY again ...because she's just so luscious!]
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[CLAUDIA CARDINALE]

2 - PRETTY :

[MAUREEN O'HARA]

[AMY IRVING]

3 - CUTE :

[VALERIE BERTINELLI]

Oh, I had it bad, and that weren't good.
Until she went and married a guy named Eddie who was almost as "cute" as she was.

[RACHAEL RAY]

Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!
Well, roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man

3.5 – PRETTY CUTE :

This is a kinda in-between category. I can't quite decide if these two women are Pretty or Cute, so I've decided to call them "Pretty Cute".

[SUSAN DEY]

I once wrote a haiku about the 1970s:

Loud clothes! Fords explode!
Seventies: silly, zitful.
STILL want Susan Dey!

[SALLY FIELD]

When she was very young and playing 'The Flying Nun' on television, Sally Field definitely fell into the 'Cute' category. But as she got older, some of the cuteness became prettiness, until she was inhabiting that borderland between the two. -- I like her, I really like her!

4 - SEXY :

[LAUREN BACALL]

[JULIE NEWMAR]

Lauren Bacall and Julie Newmar were both Pretty women, but they also possessed that aura or quality about them that just makes a man (well this man, anyway) have impure thoughts. The other women above - I can fantasize about having a relationship with them. I mean, a nice, good boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife relationship. But with Bacall and Newmar, my first thought is of buttons flyin' off and zippers screechin' down! It's horrible, and delightful ...in a sinful way.

I know it sounds exciting - (hell, you should see how exciting it looks in my mind!) - but truth be told, this is not a good, wholesome thang. I REPENT! (...with Penthouse).

How many of the other women shown above do I feel exude that "Sexy"-Appeal aura?

Tierney? No. Too Beautiful to have dirty thoughts about.
Cardinale? Oh, hell yes!
O'Hara? Well, I'd say she's "semi-sexy". She has that quality but it's not quite in full bloom.
Irving? No.
Bertinelli? No. She's too Cute to be Sexy.
Ray? Ditto.
Dey? Don't get me wrong - I would have jumped at the chance, but, no, not really.
Field? No. But she definitely looked "hot" in the movie 'The End' - one of the darkest of Black Comedies.

SPECIAL CASES :

Is it possible for a woman who is NOT Beautiful, Pretty, or Cute to be Sexy? Well, one does come to mind:

[JOAN JETT]

In my opinion, Joan Jett was not Beautiful, Pretty, or Cute [that's the BEST photo I could find of her on the Internet], but she did seem to send that silent signal: "Jump my bones; have your way with me, boy!" Unfortunately, she didn't just come across as "Sexy", but "Sluttish" as well. Because of that, I never lusted for her. She wasn't the type I would bring home to Mother ...nor bring home at all - I'd have to be rather drunk (and good friends tell me that on some nights I was!)

[PAT BENATAR]

I know that a lot of dudeguys from my generation lusted after Pat Benatar. She was Pretty, and she could really sing, but, there was always something about Benatar that turned me off: I always felt she was trying to act "Sexy". But Sexy is an organic thang: you either have it or you don't, and I don't believe anyone can truly "fake it", at least not to me, anyway. I know it when I "FEEL" it, and all your tight clothing, plunging necklines and sashaying around isn't going to convince me that you possess it. I'll know you have "It" when I feel the fire down below!

But, I fourpeat: Sexy is not necessarily a good thang! It makes me think bad thoughts and feel guilty. In a heartbeat I would have married Valerie Bertinelli, but NOT Julie Newmar. (However, there will always be a dark corner in my mind where I will meet Julie for martinis and then let her tie me down like I'm Batman.)

If NONE of this is clear to you, and if ALL of it seems confusing, you need to bear in mind that a person cannot adequately ‘splain sumpin’ unless he or she truly understands it. I confess that I don’t understand this stuffs at all. I instinctively know it, but I can't 'splain it.

All I can state with certainty is that the only women pictured above that I would kick out of bed “just because” is Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. I could embrace the rest of them smoking AND eating crackers in my bed.

Ladies, if all of this yakkin' 'bout women in (almost) strictly physical terms makes you begin to suspect that Stephen T. McCarthy is a "bad" man, please understand that "I'm not bad, I was just drawn that way" ...thirty years ago:

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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F-WORD FICTION! (Or, HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT?)

2012-02-09T21:27:00.009-07:00

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In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
~ George Orwell

LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller

THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

1984 by George Orwell

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner

THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger

A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway

THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee

ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach

Those are the titles found on Modern Library’s list of '100 Best Novels' that I have read at some point in my life. The majority of them I read in my late teens and early twenties. One exception is ‘Lolita’, which I read in 2010 or ’11. I shouldn’t say I “read” it because I didn’t finish it – I got only about two-thirds of the way through before deciding that my time would be better spent reading some nonfiction instead.

Of course, that hardly exhausts the list of fiction I read in my teens and early twenties; some of the books I enjoyed the most aren’t even found above. Titles such as: ‘Tortilla Flat’; ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’; ‘Roughing It’; ‘A Tree Grows In Brooklyn’; 'White Fang'; 'Look Homeward, Angel'; ‘Crime And Punishment’; ‘Green Eggs And Ham’, et al. And make no mistake about it: I thought Kerouac’s ‘Dharma Bums’ was much better than ‘On The Road’.

A comprehensive list of fiction I’ve read in my lifetime would be many, many times longer than the list posted above!

Not too shabby for a guy who denigrates novels, eh? Strangely enough, some bloggers here in my little bathroom of the Blogosphere probably think of me as: “That guy who hates fiction.”

I don’t hate fiction, and I don’t hate the writers of fiction. (Although they do sometimes irritate me to a noteworthy degree.)

Here’s the deal: I think there is value in reading fiction and everyone should have some knowledge of the classics. I mean, there is definitely a hole in your education if you aren’t familiar with Dickens’ character Uriah Heep; and if you haven’t read ‘Huckleberry Finn’ you have missed a couple of the all-time greatest chapters in the history of social commentary and the written word – namely, chapters 16 & 31. I could easily write one of my patented neverending blog bits about the spirit, psychology, and genius found in chapters 16 & 31 of Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn’.

My argument, however, is that when it is plainly observable by anyone with even just two brain cells to rub together that our American society is crumbling down, falling apart, self-destructing before our very eyes, the truly intelligent and wise individual would spend most of their time reading NONFICTION, in order to learn about the world around him or her. And if he or she had a desire to write, that person would aim toward enlightening the world via powerful nonfiction, rather than another “made-up” story from which we are already overburdened!

Look, writer-wannabes, all the great fiction stories have already been written! You ain’t gonna come up with anything genuinely new! “There is nothing new under the sun.” (D’ya know where that quote comes from? No? Then you are not nearly as knowledgeable about the greatest Book on the planet as ya oughter be!)

When it comes to fiction, there’s nothing original left to say; you ain’t doin’ nuttin’ but repackaging something that has already been written before – and most likely BETTER!

Today’s writers of fiction are merely rewrapping old stories or putting multiple older stories into a blender and presenting the “mash-up” as if it were something new. But there’s nuttin’ new in fiction. All of today’s fiction is just one person’s or several persons’ ideas tweaked, twisted, groped, photographed and . . .

. . . wait a second! I’m supposed to be writing a blog bit about writing, not about flying.

See, my problem with fiction isn’t so much a problem with fiction as it is with American priorities. The average American on the street couldn’t begin to explain the Constitution and its Bill Of Rights. The average American on the street couldn’t begin to explain the history and the workings of the Federal Reserve System and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and yet those are the two biggest (secular) problems that the U.S.A. faces today!

Why are Americans so oblivious to the “real world” around them? Because all they know about politics is what gets nearly force-fed to them through their newspapers and TV sets. They COULD learn the truth quite easily if they focused more of their reading time on nonfiction titles rather than works of fiction. But nonfiction, they believe, is far less entertaining than is fiction. And they’re mistaken about that, too!

And most of the Americans (at least of the female variety) who dream of writing, dream of becoming the next J. K. Rowling, as if one J. K. Rowling somehow weren’t enough.

I have no problem with anyone reading fiction; I think it’s a good way to rest the mind from the really serious matters at hand. But fiction should be the dessert you treat yourself to after you’ve consumed the main course:

"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"

Now I’m willing to acknowledge that not everyone is going to prefer nonfiction over fiction to the same degree that I do. But, if you give the slightest damn about the world you live in, about the world you’re leaving to your children and to your children’s children, then nonfiction should/would represent at least 50% of what you spend your 'reading-time' reading.

And there’s a terrible misconception out there: By and large, people mistakenly think fiction is more exciting than nonfiction. IT’S NOT! One element that makes nonfiction MORE exciting to read is the fact that nonfiction is... REAL!

Believe it or not, for just about every wild, exciting, heart-stopping
E-ticket fiction you can find, you can also find real, true-life, NON-fiction stories that match it! There is almost nothing in fiction that does not have its counterpart in a biography or history book. “This world” is a hell of a lot more exciting, mysterious, violent, and remarkable than you could possibly imagine. All of the heroes, heroines, antiheroes, tragically flawed heroes, underdogs, rebels, spies, lovers, fighters, connivers, geniuses, and villains that we love to read about in fictional stories do exist in 'true-life' nonfiction books. You can find it ALL in the real world and recorded in great, awesomely memorable works of nonfiction!

From Agee, James and Bronte, Emily to Yeats, William Butler and Zola, Émile, fiction has been covered. As a writer, you might add quantity to it, but you’re not likely to improve it. If you simply must be rich and famous – if that’s important to you - then go right on ahead and continue writing fiction and reading mostly fiction.

But keep in mind that you are ~~fiddling~~ writing "while Rome burns". And unless the American people turn off their televisions soon, put away the latest Fantasy, Thriller, and Sci-Fi books and turn to the information found in nonfiction that can educate us and preserve our basic liberties, before long the only professional writing that ANYONE is going to be doing will be historical revisionism written on behalf of the Ministry Of Truth.

Allow me, please, to suggest some nonfiction reading material:

If you liked this fiction . . .

I recommend this nonfiction . . .

'THE RESURRECTION OF THE SHROUD: New Scientific, Medical And Archeological Evidence' by Mark Antonacci.

If you liked this fiction . . .

I recommend this nonfiction . . .

'THE HARBINGER' by Jonathan Cahn

If you liked this fiction . . .

I recommend this nonfiction . . .

'THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND' by G. Edward Griffin

If you liked this fiction . . .

I recommend this nonfiction . . .

'WITNESS' by Whittaker Chambers

If you liked this fiction . . .

I recommend this nonfiction . . .

'HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL: The Possession And Exorcism Of Five Living Americans' by Malachi Martin

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Links:

'THE HARBINGER' by Jonathan Cahn

'THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND' by G. Edward Griffin

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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I’LL SEE YOUR WAYLON AND RAISE YOU ONE . . .

2012-02-07T21:34:00.007-07:00

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"You wanna hear 'Waymore’s Blues'"?
"I never heard it."
"You never heard it? - You produced it!"

If you wanna get to heaven gotta d-i-e
You gotta put on your coat and t-i-e
If you wanna get the rabbit out of the l-o-g
You gotta make a commotion like a d-o-g
A-like a d-o-g
["D'ya understand that?"]
Like a d-o-g

When Waylon Jennings asks his sexy wife, Jessi “I’m not Lisa” Colter, “D'ya understand that?”, he seems so much like my Pa [may he rest in peace]. In fact, throughout most of the conversation with Jessi after the song ends, Waylon seems just like my Pa!

Waylon Jennings . Waymore’s Blues solo acoustic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugm0JZhX3CI

He was - by far - the most charismatic singer I ever saw on a stage. Got to see four shows and I loved ‘em all, but my favorite was probably the first one: standing-room only in this little cowboy joint. And at one point Waylon said to the idiot standing next to me:
“You! Shut up!”
He did.

I grew up with long and lean and hungry looks
I learn’t you can't go nowhere when you go by the book!
People all around me earthbound; I learned how to fly
Upside, downside, outside, sailin’ on by!

Waylon Jennings - Trouble Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5_UQJWQG6Q

Waylon kicks Grace Slick’s ass.

I don't explain if you don't understand
I'm my own man - trouble man

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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SLEEP? FUHGEDDABOUDIT! "I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD"

2012-02-06T12:20:00.006-07:00

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At the tail of October and the snout of November, I read a couple of borrowed biographies about Rock stars Warren Zevon and Tom Petty. After finishing and returning them, I immediately went back to my literary métier: tomes about Communist subversion and espionage. (I’ll bet you didn’t think I knew words like that, huh? I’m referring to “métier”, not “subversion” and “espionage”.)

Below are some excerpts I copied from the biographies, as I found these interesting for this or that reason, or for one thing or another.

‘I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD: The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon’ by Crystal Zevon - 2007

I attended one Warren Zevon concert in my life. As it turns out, I attended the very concert at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles that was described in the following passages. I know this because my ol’ pal General Poohregard, who attended the concert with me, did an online search and discovered that Warren Zevon only played but one show at L.A.’s Wiltern Theater.

By 1987, I had seen SOoooo many music shows that I suppose I’d become a bit jaded. Although Pooh recalls it as being a pretty good, hard-rockin’ performance, I’ve always remembered it as basically “just another Rock concert”.

According to the book, however, everyone (except me, apparently) thought it was a very memorable Zevon performance:

Page 225 - CRYSTAL ZEVON:
Near the end of the Sentimental Hygiene tour, Warren played the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Everyone was there. People I hadn’t seen in years. Warren blew us all away. He was in control of the music and he commanded his audience. Ariel and I were sitting with Warren’s dad, and J.D. Souther was right behind us.

I was jumping to my feet, shouting, whistling, acting like a fan. What I also remember is that there was no alcohol backstage, so I kept making trips to the theater lobby to guzzle glasses of wine. That night marked the beginning of the end of my drinking. I didn’t get sober for another six months, but seeing him onstage, I knew sober was the way to live.

Page 226 - WARREN’S NOTEBOOK:
November 20, 1987
…The Wiltern. Nice theater. Nervous. Dad and his friend, Milt, arrived about 7:00. Then, Merle and Beth. When I came out of the shower, there were roses from Michael Ironside. Andy was nervous, too. The nervousness worked for us – the show felt great. The kids were there with their friends, Crystal & Yvonne, LeRoy, Jimmy, Stephan, J.D., Duncan & his wife – it was quite a night. It was a great night.

OK, now this next passage I found kinda humorous in a ridiculous sorta way:

Pg. 361 - WARREN’S NOTEBOOK
March 29. 1999
…Tom Waits called: Stu told him I knew vocal exercises that help hoarseness (the ones J.D. Souther taught me long distance a decade ago). “Are you sick?” I asked. “Define sick.” I said, “Mormon fever that keeps you home from school.” He said he’d gotten a cortisone shot – “Where?” “Austin.” And so on. I told him I just gave ‘em a shit show – “I get a tan and hold back.”

So, let’s see if I’ve got this right: Tom Waits was concerned that his voice was hoarse? The guy who sings ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ thought some of his fans might notice that his voice wasn’t as smoothly polished as it usually is?

Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Lyrics)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztMslNg16og

Pg. 351: WARREN’S NOTEBOOK
April 15, 1998
…Saw “The Spanish Prisoner” with Ariel & Ben. It was wonderful. I turned to Ariel at one point and said, “This is the best movie I’ve ever seen.”

Uh... y’all ever seen ‘The Spanish Prisoner’? It’s a movie that definitely had some potential, and my brother Nappy and I did get caught up in it for awhile. But by the end of the story we had found some holes in the plot that were big enough to drive a Rock star’s limousine through. If it was the best movie Warren had ever seen, then either he had not seen many movies or he wasn’t nearly as brilliant as everyone who knew him says he was. (And, incidentally, Warren was a big film fan - so it’s the latter rather than the former.)

OK, these next passages kind of blew me away . . .

Some of you may recall my blog bit titled ‘ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.A.’ In that bit I wrote the following:

I was thinking that the gypsy wasn't lyin'
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I'm gonna drink 'em up
~ 'Desperados Under The Eaves' by Warren Zevon

Anytime I listen to that song, the line about drinking all the margaritas in Los Angeles immediately makes me think of El Coyote Mexican restaurant on Beverly Blvd. I’ve always thought they made L.A.’s best margarita.

Hokey-Smoke & Hoo-Wee! Gimme an “A” in Intuition! . . .

55 - CRYSTAL ZEVON:
Warren was incredibly jealous. He thought every man on the street was after me, and once we started drinking, it always became my fault. We lived walking distance from our favorite restaurant, El Coyote. The main attractions in those days were the margaritas, the green corn tamales, and the price. One night we were at El Coyote, and the subject of my past relationship with Waddy came up. The fight lasted for days. Warren was convinced that I was sleeping with Waddy, who lived about three blocks away. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I told him he should just leave.

89 - WARREN’S NOTEBOOK:
April 26, 1975
…Torrance Shopping Center huge & teeming like a skyless future city. Lots of people here & excited for Billy Jack: Waddy sang “Most Likely You Go Your Way, etc,” & “Tumbling Dice.” Place did have a pub with Heinekens on tap, so drank plenty. $600. check. Took Crystal to El Coyote.

Based on those passages above, I’d be willing to bet a Dairy Queen Blizzard that when Warren wrote that line – “all the salty margaritas in Los Angeles, I’m gonna drink ‘em up” – he had El Coyote margaritas in mind... just like I always have when hearing it sung!

[Inside the El Coyote bar, Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles.]

[All the salty margaritas at El Coyote, I'm gonna drink 'em up.]

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiin Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went Hmmm – mmmmm- mmmmm...
~ ‘Desperados Under The Eaves’ by Warren Zevon

40 - DAVID MARKS:
One night he [Warren Zevon] ended up at the Hollywood Hawaiian motel somewhere around Gower and Yucca. He was there for a while, I mean, maybe two or three weeks, and he couldn’t check out because he didn’t have the money to pay the bill. So, one night, I got my mother’s station wagon and pulled it into the alley. He threw all his stuff out the bathroom window and we escaped without paying.

40 - CRYSTAL ZEVON:
Years later, when Warren got sober, he actually went back there to pay the bill. Of course, by then he’d written and recorded “Desperados Under The Eaves”, so they settled for a few copies of his ‘Warren Zevon’ album.

David Marks, incidentally, was an original Beach Boy when that band initially formed. And that passage above calls into question whether or not the Princess Grace Apartments at Yucca and Grace was indeed formerly known as the Hollywood Hawaiian Motel, as reported in Art Fein’s book ‘L.A. Musical History Tour’ and repeated in my blog bit ‘ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.A.’

My Nephew helped me locate the Princess Grace Apartments at ‘Google Map’ to determine if there is an alley that runs adjacent to it. The view was inconclusive, but if there was an alley, what’s left of it today is very narrow and is hardly even worthy of the name “Alley”.

The Hollywood intersections of Yucca & Grace and Yucca & Gower are separated by only six blocks, so it is possible that all those years later, Marks’ memory missed the mark by a mere six slim streets. Who can say whose account we should take a-literally?

Well, I pawned my Smith-Corona
And I went to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer Chicken stand
~ 'Carmelita' by Warren Zevon

25 & 26 - HOWARD KAYLAN:
…I wasn’t stable at all, and neither was he [Warren Zevon]. We would drink red wine in the afternoon, we would take acid, we would smoke bongs, and then we would start walking down to Sunset Boulevard.

We wound up using as a hangout Pioneer Chicken Stand on Sunset Boulevard, which was a notorious bad fast food place that caters pretty much to twenty-four-hour biker, hooker, and dealer servicing. But either we didn’t care, or we were just too high to notice.

This too raises some questions. As I wrote in ‘ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.A.’, there was at one time a Pioneer Chicken stand on Alvarado Street, in the parking lot of where the Vons supermarket is located today. That is just a couple blocks from Echo Park. As a youngster in the early 1970s, I passed the chicken stand many times while en route to Dodger Stadium with my Grandfather.

Warren Zevon HAD to be aware of the Pioneer Chicken stand on Alvarado because it was only a block or two north of the Sunset Boulevard ‘Burrito King’ where he used to eat. However, based on Howard Kaylan’s reminiscences, it seems Warren had a more intimate knowledge of a Sunset Boulevard Pioneer Chicken stand – one I don’t specifically recall.

One wonders why Zevon didn’t sing “He hangs out down on Sunset Boulevard by the Pioneer Chicken stand”, since ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and ‘Alvarado Street’ both contain five syllables.

The only answer I can think of is this: Sunset Blvd. is a very long street that stretches from the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles to the ocean, where it terminates at the Pacific Coast Highway. But most people unfamilar with L.A. don’t associate the name Sunset Blvd. with the grimy, graffitied downtown and Echo Park areas; rather, most people think of Sunset Blvd. as a place loaded with glitzy nightclubs and strolling celebrities. (And, yes, it’s that too.)

Did Warren mention the Pioneer Chicken stand on Alvarado Street, rather than the run-down, lowlife Pioneer stand on Sunset Blvd. (which he was more familiar with) only because the name ‘Sunset Boulevard’ would have betrayed the grungy, dangerous word-picture he was attempting to paint in the minds of non-Angeleno record buyers?

68 - CRYSTAL ZEVON:
Elmer started in on Warren. “So, Warren, ya met manual yet?” I’m so naïve, I actually thought he was referring to a person until Bop [Warren’s grandfather] stood up, looked at Warren and me, and said, “If you want to leave now, we’ll understand.” Warren got up to go, but I put my hand on his leg and we finished dinner.

Apparently I’m still as “naïve” as Crystal was then. Does anybody know what “manual” refers to here? Is that a euphemism for some sex act or something?

Mama couldn't be persuaded
When they pleaded with her,
"Daughter, don't marry that gamblin' man."

Gambler tried to be a family man
Though it didn't suit his style
He thought he had him a winning combination
So he took us where the stakes were high

Her parents warned her, tried to reason with her
Never kept their disappointment hid
They all went to pieces when the bad luck hit
Stuck in the middle, I was the kid
~ ‘Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded’ by Warren Zevon

57 - CRYSTAL ZEVON:
…One night Don, Karen, Warren, and I went downtown [Las Vegas] to gamble. Warren didn’t gamble, but he cheered Don on when he rolled snake eyes at the craps table. He’d bet conservatively, but after a couple more good rolls, he upped his stakes. He couldn’t lose. Finally, Don scooped up his chips and we left. We were all drunk on luck and Don split his winnings with us. When we got back to our room [at the Landmark Hotel], Warren talked about his childhood and we watched the sun come up and held on to each other knowing how much we had to lose. Or gain. That night, he scrawled the beginnings of a new song called “Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded” on the hotel stationery.

I have never been able to listen to ‘Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded’ without thinking of my parents: Pa was always a gamblin’ man – ‘The Racing Form’, his daily newspaper – and my Ma married him in Las Vegas, where I was probably conceived. Many’s the time I went to Vegas with my Pa, watched him gamble at the tables, drank with him at the bars [The Landmark, The Fremont, The Mint], and learned from him how to play the horses.

And then to read that Warren actually began to compose that song while staying in Vegas at The Landmark, it’s too much! No wonder the eponymous ‘Warren Zevon’ album has always felt to me like it was my own personal musical statement!

325 - WARREN’S NOTEBOOK:
…When I said that Warren Oates was in my favorite movie, a riotous exchange of lines from “Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia” ensued; one of his [Dwight Yoakam’s] favorites also. Dwight’s great.

Have you ever seen Sam Peckinpah’s movie ‘Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia’?

It could have been titled ‘Show Me The Breasts Of Isela Vega'.

‘CONVERSATIONS WITH TOM PETTY’ by Paul Zollo – 2005

I found this really surprising . . .

Page 288 – Tom Petty:
“I love the ukulele. You can’t be sad and play the ukulele. It always brings a smile into the room.”

Petty used a ukulele in the song 'The Man Who Loves Women'.

Now this will seem a bit insane but I read the book about Tom Petty solely in the hope that it would reveal where his ‘Hard Promises’ album cover photograph was taken.

‘Hard Promises’ is my favorite Tom Petty album and I had been wondering from the time I purchased that Licorice Pizza in 1981 where the cover shot was taken. I had noticed that Petty appeared to be in a Mexican record store and the sign on one wooden crate says “California”, so I guessed it was probably somewhere in Los Angeles.

There were a couple of record stores geared toward Hispanic customers in the neighborhood where I grew up and so I wondered if Petty might have been photographed in one of them.

The answer came kind of late in the book and in the form of a photograph caption. There was an alternative picture of Petty taken in the same record store during the same album cover photography session and the caption said that the shots had been taken in a downtown L.A. record shop in 1981.

Ah-ha! That makes sense because I knew that there were a few Hispanic record stores in downtown L.A. that I myself had browsed through from time to time over the years. The odds are that at one time or another I stood in that same record store represented on the ‘Hard Promises’ album cover. Cool! Let’s hear it for Menudo, Freddy Fender and Los Texas Tornados!

Texas Tornados on Austin City Limits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySNON249yes

BONUS TRACK:

FUHGEDDABOUDIT - The Official Way To Write It:

So I found myself at the Christown AMF bowling alley and waiting for my ol’ girlfriend to finish her frame – she’s in the ‘Over-70-Bowling-League’. (Well, losers can’t be choosers!) While waiting for the dog to roll her wheelchair up to the line and roll her last balls into the gutter, I decided to have a glass of Grand Marnier at the bar.

While nursing my GraMar I was watching the game show ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ which just happened to be on one of the boob tubes in the bar/off-track betting parlor.

At one point a question was asked and answered about some official city signs that read “Leaving Brooklyn. Fuhgeddaboudit.”

This caught me by surprise because I’d never known there were actual signs proudly displaying that slang expression. So I did a little Google searching when I got home and discovered that not only do four of the signs exist, but that I had always instinctively written that slang expression letter-for-letter perfectly.

According to the Internet, the signs are found at:

Gowanus Expressway approaching the Verazzano
BQE approaching the Kosciuczko Bridge
Belt Parkway near the Queens border, and
Belt Parkway, ramp to the Verazzano

Naturally, I was reminded of the time someone said the following to me:

Do me a favor, though - stop using "fuhgeddaboudit." Without any Italian in ya, youze just don't say it right, and it make my ears hurt. In fact when ya types it, it makes my eyes hurt.

In other words, the person was implying that I didn’t butcher English properly - that I was speaking and writing bad English incorrectly. But I found out much later that - according to the Brooklynites themselves - I was butchering it just right.

I may not have “Clue One” about how to cook Steak Pizzaiola, but I am at least capable of throwing together an Italian Slangwich.

Ukulelely Yours . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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DOGS, VOMIT, FOOLS AND FOLLY (ANNEX)

2012-02-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

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Link: No Backmasked Messages

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“CAN YOU WEAR ME NOW?”

2012-02-02T23:07:00.003-07:00

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It will be nearly impossible for anyone who has known me during the 666 years I’ve lived here in Phoenix, Airheadzona, to believe this but, in fact, I DO have a personal style when it comes to clothing.

The reason no one who currently knows me “in the flesh” will accept that statement is because no one who knows me now has seen my “style”. And that’s because the majority of the year, Phoenix is hotter’n ‘ell and so I dress purely for comfort, not for style. I have been forced to abandon my style preference solely in order to survive the blasted heat!

I’m fast approaching the 17th anniversary of my move to Phoenix, but much of my life here has been so hellish that it only FEELS like 666 years. When I arrived here in the Summer of ’95, I almost immediately adopted my brother Nappy’s lifelong style of dress, which can be summed up thus: Put on the first T-shirt at the top of the stack in the chest of drawers.

So, unless I’m working “on the clock”, I’m almost always just wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I’d love to re-adopt my “natural” style, but that won’t happen in the foreseeable future. I own a couple of stylish overcoats. One is grey - it was originally owned by my dear friend Martin Brumer and given to me by his Mom after he passed away. The other one, which I purchased for myself in 1988, is either black or navy blue. The fact that I’m not entirely sure which color it is gives you some indication how long it’s been since I’ve seen it.

My own “style” of preference, however, is jeans and a dark vest worn over a light colored long-sleeved shirt (such as white, tan, pale blue, pale yellow, or even a pale pink). I still have the vests, but they usually just hang around together in the closet, gossiping about what a maroon I am.

Before the unfortunate move to Hell, Airheadzona, here’s the way you’d usually find me dressed:

In my twenties, I pretty much lived in that black leather jacket you see in the ‘Statue Of Liberty’ photograph at the top of this blog. As I matured, I gradually gave up the urban “hoodlum” appearance and replaced it with the classier “Western” vest look. And as I said, that (strictly through necessity) eventually degenerated into the T-shirt thang.

I can tell you precisely what I’ll be wearing for the next three days just by going to my chest of drawers and checking which 3 T-shirts are at the top of the stack:

Tomorrow it will be my ‘U.S. Constitution* - *Void Where Prohibited By Law’ T-shirt. On Saturday it will be my T-shirt with the Henry David Thoreau quote printed on the front (“Always you have to contend with the stupidity of men.”); and the following day it’ll be my “Revelation Riders Rodeo” T-shirt. Oh, boy!

The only thing I am very fond of and still get to wear regularly is the blue-‘n’-green checkered, thermal-lined cotton shirt my Sister gave me for Christmas eons ago. Along with my vests and my black leather jacket of old, this has been the most beloved article of clothing in my lifetime. It has been so practical that it’s been almost like a cowboy hat to me.

I have worn this shirt while camping, walking, flying, and driving. I’ve worn it while horribly sober and while pleasantly drunker’n you could possibly imagine! Innumerable are the nights I’ve gone to sleep in it! And almost every evening from December through March, I wear this shirt in my house to fight off the chill. (I’m wearing it right this very moment as I type this sentence!)

So many times I’ve told my Sister that she needs to find and buy me a new one 'cause I almost done-have worn this shirt out! It’s been one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received.

Think I’m exaggerating? Below are photographs I took of this very shirt at about 16:30 this afternoon (that’s 4:30 PM to those of y’all who don’t know Military Time). I realize the shirt looks like a dog has been roughhousing with it for about six years but, take my word for it, no dog has ever had this shirt in its choppers. It was love, and love only, what dun this to the shirt. [Love’ll do this to ya!] :

The label just inside the collar gives the brand name of this shirt as ‘GRAND BANKS Outfitters’ and indicates that it was “Made In Guatemala”.

I’m sure this was a fairly inexpensive article of clothing, most likely found at a Ross Dress-For-Less store or something along those lines. All I know for sure is that . . . I NEEDS ME ANUDDER ONE O’ DEEZE SHIRTS!

This great shirt has outlasted most automobiles, marriages, wines, and fruitcakes. (Well, OK, maybe not fruitcakes – those things last forever!) But, clearly, as proven by the photographs above, this shirt probably has no more than another decade of service to provide before it bites the dust.

Two Qs:

#1) Anyone know where I can get me another one o’ these shirts?

#2) What is your own all-time favorite article of clothing, past or present?

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF GRAND MARNIER IN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HISTORY

2012-02-01T16:35:00.007-07:00

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‘THIS WHEEL’S ON FIRE: Levon Helm And The Story Of The Band’ by...(yup, you guessed it)...Levon Helm.

[Cool photo borrowed from The Nicole Nelch Blog]

It’s a 300+ page book that was given to me for Christmas by my good friend The Flyin’ Aardvark. (The Flyin’ Aard knows what this boy wants!) And I had probably finished reading the book a week or two after unwrapping it on Christmas Day.

Levon Helm was always my favorite member of THE BAND. And I liked his down-home name so much that I even borrowed the first half of it for a short story I wrote in 1994. The character was a small-town newspaper journalist named Levon Rendman whose research leads him to discover that the local legend is actually more myth than fact and when he publishes the “nonfiction” version - thinking the inhabitants of this “wide spot in the road” will appreciate learning the truth - he unexpectedly finds himself both dogged and ostracized by the community to the point that he up and moves his family out of the state.

Levon Rendman . . . Rendman. Get it? He tears the local legend apart – rends it – and suffers the consequences.

Anyway, whatever.

I found Levon Helm’s story of The Band plenty interesting. I’ll tell you this much: Robbie Robertson does not come off looking too good in this band biography. Hoo-Wee! Talk about getting hit with a heavy wordstick!

But this blog bit is not about Robbie Robertson, The Band, nor even Levon Helm; this blog bit is about Grand Marnier, or “GraMar” as I sometimes call it (because we are such close friends).

Grand Marnier is an 80-proof liqueur made in France from cognac and the essence of oranges. It’s pretty much the only thing that keeps me from despising the French to the degree that I should and would like to.

Grand Marnier (you can call it “GraMar” too, if you like it as much as I do) has, in two ways, figured prominently in Rock ‘N’ Roll – a high point, and also one of Rock’s real low points.

THE “HIGH” POINT:

Well, it’s not news to anyone who has followed ‘STUFFS’ for awhile to learn that I feel the cover of Nils Lofgren’s debut solo LP is the best that Rock ‘N’ Roll has ever given us.

It’s a bottle of Grand Marnier our hero is tilting in that album cover photo.

I’ve already written about this a couple times and I’m not going to repeat myself yet again. If you’re interested in learning WHY I think ‘Nils Lofgren’ is the best Rock ‘N’ Roll album cover and how I think it probably inspired my own ‘Statue Of Liberty’ picture [see photo at the top of this blog!] you can read the older blog bits titled ‘Music’s All-Time 15 Best Album Covers’ and ‘Yakkin’ With Rock Stars Nils ‘N’ Norman’. (I’ll include links again at the bottom.)

OK, the “high” point has already been covered. That brings us to the other.

THE LOW POINT:

Richard Manuel was a member of The Band. He was primarily a keyboardist but he could play just about anything, including drums. He was also one of The Band’s songwriting vocalists.

[Richard Manuel is at the far left in this album cover photo.]

Unfortunately, on March 4, 1986, Richard Manuel committed suicide by hanging himself in a Florida motel bathroom. It seems the last drink Manuel ever consumed was Grand Marnier, as Levon Helm tells us in his book that when he entered Manuel’s room on that morning, there was an empty GraMar bottle on the dresser.

Now if that’s all there was to this, I wouldn’t have bothered composing a blog bit about it. You see, among the many other interesting things I learned by reading ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ is that Richard Manuel was a Grand Marnier hound!

[Warning: What’s coming next is rather sad.]

On page 246, Helm tells of how Manuel, at one point, moved into a bungalow on Zuma Beach in Malibu, near the Shangri-La recording studio. (My grade school, junior high school, and high school buddy Eric used to live just a few blocks from Shangri-La and I remember him showing it to me on one of my many weekend visits to his Malibu house.)

At any rate, Manuel’s Zuma Beach bungalow was originally a shed where TV’s talking horse Mr. Ed used to live. Levon writes: “We had Mr. Ed’s stable converted to a bungalow, and Richard moved in and basically stayed there for the next year, drinking seven or eight bottles of Grand Marnier...a day, relying on the sugar in the liqueur to keep his weight up.”

HOKEY-SMOKE! Seven or eight bottles a day? If I had seven or eight GLASSES of GraMar I’d be gassed! At 80-proof, Grand Marnier is the same strength as most whiskey, vodka, and tequila. Some hard alcohol is a little stronger, such as absinthe and most gin. But 80-proof is the standard “adult dose”. 7,8/80/7? (7 or 8 bottles of 80-proof 7 days a week?) Sheesh! It’s a wonder Manuel lived long enough to hang himself!

Levon later tells us that when they finally managed to get Manuel to move out of Mr. Ed’s Zuma Beach stable, it took “a couple of days to clean out the two thousand Grand Marnier bottles they found.”
[Page 277]

If only I could AFFORD that much GraMar! That stuffs ain’t cheap. I’ll tell you this much though: it’s a helluva high. I’m not surprised that Richard Manuel (and Nils Lofgren) liked it so much. The chemical reaction is different for everyone, of course, but various alcoholic drinks provide various effects.

Examples: Beer usually just makes me sluggish; tequila makes me crazy; wine and GraMar make me happy; gin just tastes good; and vodka . . . well, vodka, I just won’t touch the stuffs - that’s for Rooskies in Commieville.

So, anyway, now you know the Highs and the Lows of Grand Marnier in Rock ‘N’ Roll history.

Hmmm... "Thought I’d something more to say".

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Links:

‘Music’s All-Time 15 Best Album Covers’

‘Yakkin’ With Rock Stars Nils ‘N’ Norman’

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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AMERICA’S FIRST SPORTS DRINK? (Or, "SHAKE YOUR YOO-HOO!")

2012-01-31T13:16:00.001-07:00

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Back when I was a youngster there were no home video games, iPods, or cell phones. And, in fact, there were very few malls. So we boys spent most of our time playing sports. It was always Twinkie, Wally Murphy, my brother Napoleon, and me (plus whoever else had found a way out of doing their household chores) and we were always playing something.

If we weren’t involved in an organized baseball game at Sunset Little League then it means we were out on the street playing Wiffle Ball. Or if it wasn’t that, then we were at Marine Park playing tackle football, Over-The-Line, or Pickle. How many boys today could even explain Over-The-Line or Pickle?

Pickle – as in “you’re in a pickle” – was a way for three boys to practice their base-stealing skills. One kid would be trying to see how many bases he could steal back-and-forth, while the other two boys were trying to get him in a run-down and tag him out. The player who managed to steal the most consecutive bases by the end of the Pickle session was the winner. And a Pickle session ended when the boys were too tired to run anymore or when it was time to go home for dinner. Meaning, of course, the latter, because we boys NEVER reached a point where we were too tired to run anymore! For Twinkie, Wally, Nappy, and I, the bases at Marine Park were usually represented by two trees. (I wonder how big those trees are today!)

And if we weren’t playing Little League Baseball, Wiffle Ball, tackle football, Over-The-Line, or Pickle, then it means we could be found in the backyard playing “Birdie Ball” - a form of baseball we had invented using a miniature souvenir bat and badminton birdies.

Anyway, there were very few fat kids during my boyhood era because we were all too busy playing sports. We never thought of it as “exercising”.

Nowadays, there are a lot of fat kids around because the only thing they exercise are their thumbs via texting and Xbox (“virtual” sports).

In that same era, Twinkie, Wally, Nappy and I also drank a good deal of YOO-HOO. Yoo-Hoo, which is still around today, is a chocolate flavored beverage. I would describe it as tasting like a nonfat or lowfat chocolate milk.

Of course, the packaging design changed a great deal over the years, but back in ‘The Days Of Pickle’, the labels used to say “Shake! It’s Great!” and also “A Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”.

Although in our Santa Monica stores we always found Yoo-Hoo bottled, read the label on the second can from the left in the photo below:

You always had to shake a Yoo-Hoo well before drinking it because otherwise all the chocolate syrup would be coagulated at the bottom of the bottle. “Shake! It’s Great!”

About three years ago, Yoo-Hoo entered into a conversation that brother Nappy and I were having about “the good ol’ days”. And recalling how the labels used to read “A Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”, I jokingly remarked: “Forget Gatorade. Yoo-Hoo was America’s first sports drink!”

I thought that was kinda funny in a facetious sorta way. That is until a year later when I acquired a copy of ‘THE YOGI BOOK: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!’ by Yogi Berra.

You know Yogi, right? The great Hall Of Fame catcher who played for the New York Yankees and who is almost as well known for all his famous malapropistic sayings.

“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again!”

“We were overwhelming underdogs.”

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

“We’re lost, but we’re making good time!”

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

“If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”

And many more . . .

Well, I was greatly surprised to discover in ‘THE YOGI BOOK’ that way back when – long before I was drinking Yoo-Hoo and playing Pickle with the boys - Yogi and some of his Yankees teammates were acting as spokesmen for that “Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”. So, in a sense, I mighta been sorta correct: It seems Yoo-Hoo might really have been advertised as America’s first "sports" drink. (And here I thought I was being clever!)

And wouldn’t you know it? There’s even a screwy Yogi Berra remark associated with Yoo-Hoo! ‘THE YOGI BOOK’ contains this little anecdote:

At a YOO-HOO convention, a woman asked Yogi, “Is Yoo-Hoo hyphenated?” Yogi answered, “No, ma’am, it isn’t even carbonated!”

One of my favorite players on the 2001 World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks team was Reggie Sanders. He only played that one season with the D-Backs, but he had a pretty good year for a power-hitting outfielder: .263 Average; 33 Home Runs; 90 RBI; 14 Stolen Bases.

I’d noticed that Sanders had a quirky little habit. When he was standing near home plate, about to enter the batter’s box, he would often hold his baseball bat at the center of the thick barrel and shake it back and forth three or four times. Whenever I saw him doing that in important, pressure situations, just for good luck, I would call out to Reggie through the TV screen, “Shake your Yoo-Hoo!” It was amazing how often that seemed to bring positive results.

Hey, baby, show us your Yoo-Hoo! . . .

Hmmm... I think I’d rather have Yoo-Hoo in me than on me.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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TEN FAVORITE SPORTS MOVIES (Or, STEPHEN’S SPORTS PAGE... Uhm-- “PHASE”)

2012-01-30T00:07:00.009-07:00

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“Well, Stephen’s just going through a phase”, you could frequently and correctly say. It’s true, I have always tended to go through various phases.

There have been music phases, where for weeks all I’d want to listen to is Pat Metheny, or Glenn Miller, or Bob Dylan, or Tom Waits. I once got on a Blues kick that lasted for over a year, and every few years I’ll find myself going through yet another Mahalia Jackson phase that lasts for a week or two.

It’s happened with books also. I burned through a New Age spirituality phase; a Chistian apologetics phase; a Communism kick (just learning about it, NOT embracing it!); a bunch of books about the Bible Code; everything I could get my hands on pertaining to Virginia City, Nevada; and a P.I.G. phase – that is, I was reading a whole lotta books in Regnery Publishing company’s “Politically Incorrect Guide” series. The Thomas Wolfe phase did not last long because he only wrote three major books. (Wait! Wikipedia says “four”. I must have missed one. Uh-Oh!)

But nothing can “phase” me to the extent that movies do! I just seem to move from one theme-addiction to the next, and sometimes back again. They have been numerous, almost neverending. Twice, many years apart, I went on W.C. Fields and Laurel & Hardy kicks. I had my James Dean phase; my Gene Tierney phase; my Disney phase; William Holden, Judy Holliday, Charles Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock phases. I’m currently in the midst of my second Film Noir phase. But nuttin’ lasted longer than the Western Movie kick that The Countess (girlfriend & saddle pal) and I got on. That was a nearly 3-year phase.

But this blog bit is about my 2009 Sports Movies phase. How did it get started? Well, how do these things EVER get started? Some little inconsequential remark from someone gets me mentally moving in a certain direction. Or maybe it’s an article I come across somewhere. Or I watch one movie that I love so much (‘The Ghost And Mrs. Muir’) that it makes me want to watch EVERYTHING that beautiful woman (Gene Tierney) ever appeared in!

In ‘The Case Of The Sports Movies Phase’, that one got born this way: On September 29, 2008, The Airheadzona Republic newspaper’s ‘Heat Index’ (an ongoing opinion series on page 2 of their Sports section) published an article titled ‘He Shoots, He Scores’, in which they provided the lists of ‘Top Sports Movies’ according to Sports Illustrated magazine and ESPN.Com.

Well, I read it and saved it. For a year. No phase or nuttin’. But in the Fall of the following year – 2009 – I just happened to run across that article again when I was sorting through some files of stuffs and – “BOOM!” [to quote John Madden] – all the sudden the Sports Movies phase began and lasted for at least 6 months.

I already had an idea about which Sports-themed movies would make my own Top Ten list if I were to compile it right at that moment, but there were a few movies on the S.I. and ESPN lists that I had never seen, and I thought I really ought to watch them before compiling my own list.

So, that got me started. First I watched the few movies on those aforementioned lists that I’d never viewed before, and then I started watching a whole bunch of other sports movies that I’d never seen. Anything I’d heard was good (‘The Bad News Bears’) or anything that any friend recommended to me (‘Friday Night Lights’), I was willing to rent ‘n’ watch. The phase lasted about half a year and my updated list of Ten Favorites is posted below, following the S.I. & ESPN selections (with my comments in red) . . .

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
#1: Bull Durham
#2: Raging Bull
#3: Rocky
#4: Hoosiers
#5: Body And Soul
#6: The Hustler
#7: Chariots Of Fire
#8: Requiem For A Heavyweight
#9: Slap Shot
[The only reason to see ‘Slap Shot’ is to view Ralphie’s Mom (Melinda Dillon) from the movie ‘A Christmas Story’, topless and in the role of Paul Newman’s bisexual lover. Not a very good reason, in my opinion.]
#10: Jerry Maguire
[A movie so bad that I actually turned it off before it was over in an attempt to cut my losses short. That this movie was quite popular is a sad commentary on contemporary America.]

ESPN.COM
#1: Bull Durham
#2: Rocky
#3: Raging Bull
#4: Hoosiers
#5: Slap Shot
#6: The Natural
#7: Field Of Dreams
#8: Caddyshack
[Are you kidding me? With all the great sports movies that have been made, you’re selecting a sophomoric movie (with a fake mole) about something that’s more of a “game” than a sport?]
#9: The Hustler

[Sorry! It’s not a bad movie, but billiards is a “game”, NOT a sport! It shouldn’t have even been eligible to make the list.]

#10: The Longest Yard (1974)

And now, on to STMcC’s selections. I can tell you which of the following are my first and second favorites but trying to put them in some order of preference after that would be simply impossible, so I have merely alphabetized my list. Those movies that I had not seen prior to my 2009 Sports Movies Phase I have noted:

BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY
(1973 – Baseball)

This was Robert De Niro’s first major movie role. He plays a catcher who, unbeknownst to most of his teammates, is dying of cancer. I saw this movie in the very earliest days of cable television, when my Pa sold cable TV subscriptions.

It’s a real sad, tearjerking story - sort of the ‘Brian’s Song’ of baseball. Watching this movie now, as an adult, it is clear to me that few if any of the actors had any real athletic ability. However, despite the fact that at one time I was probably a better baseball player than any ‘Bang The Drum Slowly’ cast member, this is still a big favorite of mine.

I love the scenes where the players take money from their naïve fans via the card game TEGWAR (“The Exciting Game Without Any Rules”).

THE BLACK STALLION
(1979 – Horse Racing)

If I were rating these movies by preference, ‘The Black Stallion’ would certainly get the #2 spot. It’s a gorgeous movie about a little boy shipwrecked on an island and who is befriended and saved by a wild stallion. Eventually both boy and horse are rescued (uh, “No, thanks”, I would have said) and returned to civilization.

The little boy eventually becomes fond of an old, retired jockey - Mickey Rooney – who serves as a mentor and surrogate father.

‘The Black Stallion’ includes some of the most delightful and creative photography in the history of cinema, and Mickey Rooney is downright amazing in his supporting role.

To the average viewer, it will appear as if Rooney isn’t doing any great acting at all. EXACTLY! He is so natural and he is so often “reacting” rather than “acting”, that you don’t notice a “performance” taking place. But at the same time, watch carefully and you will discover that he is wonderfully inventive (look for the itch he scratches while playing solitaire!)

I once spent a lot of time and money in professional acting classes trying to learn how to effectively “do nothing” like Mickey Rooney does in ‘The Black Stallion’. Sadly, I never did master the difficult ‘Art Of Nothing’.

BREAKING AWAY
(1979 – Bicycle Racing)

This is a movie that many of my friends and acquaintances referred to over the years but I somehow missed seeing until my 2009 Sports Movies Phase. Well, I may have been 30 years late, but I really loved it when I finally caught up to it.

It’s a low-budget movie about some small-town boys and one in particular whose coming-of-age includes bicycle racing, girl-crazy crushes, and a confused family life. This really is the sort of movie that “they don’t make anymore”, but if they did, I would perhaps start “going to the movies” again.

No special effects, no explosions or machine guns, no women unrealistically beating the crap out of men; just a straightforward, well-told, heartwarming and often humorous story about a simpler and far better time.

FIELD OF DREAMS
(1989 – Baseball)

“If you build it, they will come.”

Baseball presented as mythology, chimerical morality play, and a healing balm for the spirit. Despite the dippy hippie delusions, it's the best and most poetic movie about America's pastime.

It’s hard to believe there could be anybody who hasn’t already seen this movie. It’s also hard to believe that for many years I thought Kevin Costner’s other A-list baseball movie, ‘Bull Durham’, was better than ‘Field Of Dreams’. Uhp! I was an idiot!

Both of those excellent movies should be seen by all baseball fans and everyone else. And true, ‘Bull Durham’ contains some really classic scenes and lines of dialogue [“So, is somebody going to go to bed with somebody, or what?”], but for my baseball movie money . . . make mine “mysterious”.

THE LONGEST YARD
(1974 – Football)

This is another one I first saw on television during cable TV’s infancy (Z-Channel on THETA Cable Television).

Incarcerated professional quarterback Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) is coerced into organizing a football team o’ criminals to battle the evil warden’s team o’ prison guards, BUT . . . he is not allowed to let his team win the game! Will the always self-centered quarterback save his own neck while disappointing the ragtag group of inmates who have come to trust him? Or will he really go for “the longest yard”?

Was this really worth watching about 20 times? “Yeah. For me it was.”

‘The Longest Yard’ is a hilarious movie that needed to be remade in 2005 with Adam Sandler like I need a pink bonnet and a bouquet of pansies!

MIRACLE
(2004 – Ice Hockey)

How many of you were old enough and aware enough to remember the U.S. Olympic hockey team upsetting “the seemingly invincible Russian squad” in 1980? It was probably that, more than anything else, that started the Soviet Union toward its eventual break-up.

Like every other American at the time, I was rejoicing over that incredible and totally unexpected outcome. Our hearts were regularly skipping beats!

More incredible than the U.S. victory, however, is that it took Hollywood nearly a quarter of a century to put this story on film!

In the ensuing years, I have come to absolutely despise the Olympic Games and I never ever watch ANY of them. Therefore, it wasn’t until my 2009 Sports Movies Phase kicked in that I got around to seeing ‘Miracle’.

Considering how I now feel about the Olympics, and considering that I don’t even understand all the rules to hockey, much less watch any of it or root for any team, the fact that I enjoyed this movie so much was almost as incredible as the U.S. hockey team’s gold medal accomplishment in 1980.

ON ANY SUNDAY
(1971 – Motocross Racing)

This is the biggest surprise on my list. The surprise isn’t that ‘On Any Sunday’ is on my list, but that it’s on my list when the surfing movie ‘Endless Summer’ isn’t.

Bruce Brown has made a number of lighthearted documentaries, his most famous being ‘Endless Summer’ (1966), which I love only slightly more than its long-awaited sequel ‘Endless Summer II’ (1994). Mr. Brown also made ‘On Any Sunday’.

Although I never did any board surfing (unless you’re including Boogie Boards, which I’m not), I grew up body-surfing on Santa Monica Beach and, in my youth, I went through a couple pairs of good quality fins. I never rode motorcycles or was the least bit interested in Motocross – although my brother Napoleon was into motorcycles and Motocross at one time. But then Nappy also likes Tony Orlando And Dawn, so what does HE know?

I’m not the least bit mechanical-minded; a motorcycle engine looks like Greek to me. My curiosity about how things work does not extend beyond taking apart a Keurig coffee kup to see its internal design (which I did just a couple days ago). So, it’s a real head-scratcher to find ‘On Any Sunday’ on this list when ‘Endless Summer’ isn’t.

I can’t watch ‘On Any Sunday’ without being reminded of John Milner in the two ‘American Graffiti’ movies.

I remember in the days before BETA and VHS tapes, they’d occasionally show Bruce Brown’s movies at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and I went there more than once. All I can say is that although both of his early documentaries take me back in time to the innocence of my wonderfilled childhood days and engender in me a bittersweet mood or saudade, somehow ‘On Any Sunday’ does it a shade more intensely for me than does ‘Endless Summer’ - despite my love of wave-riding and general disinterest in motorsports.

There’s something about that scene at the end of ‘On Any Sunday’ showing Steve McQueen and his buddies riding motorcycles on a beach at sunset, while that theme song plays, that just wrings my heart of sadness over my ~~Paradise~~ Childhood Lost. It makes me feel like I do when listening to the softer sounds of Bossa Nova:

On Any Sunday Bruce Brown Steve McQueen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qODJEH1JhE

REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT
(1962 – Boxing)

I watched this in 2009 only because it came in at #8 on Sports Illustrated’s ‘Top Ten’ list. Here you have a boxing movie with no boxing in it. Which means, of course, that it’s really more of a character study than it is a boxing movie.

Anthony Quinn (whom I normally do not care for) plays a washed-up fighter who is being ill-treated by his conniving manager (Jackie Gleason). Mickey Rooney, giving his standard excellent performance, plays Quinn’s trainer who goes to bat for the down ‘n’ out pug. And sweet Julie Harris (who played opposite James Dean in the classic ‘East Of Eden’) is the social worker who tries to help Quinn as he becomes increasingly sweet on her.

It is well known that a large part of the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rocky Balboa’ character was supplied by Chuck Wepner and his surprising tenacity in a fight with Muhammad Ali – a boxing match that all the so-called “experts” said would be over at just about the ringing of the bell for round one.

Well, after watching ‘Requiem For A Heavyweight’, I realized (despite never having heard or read this) that Sylvester Stallone must have also been aware of this movie before sitting down to write the first ‘Rocky’ movie. Anthony Quinn is clearly the pre-Rocky Rocky.

The only criticism I have to make about ‘Requiem…’ is that it includes one of the worst punches (if not the VERY WORST punch) I have ever seen thrown in a movie or television show – and believe me, I have seen some really bad movie/TV punches thrown!

The offending punch is thrown by Michael "Let's Be Careful Out There" Conrad of TV show ‘Hill Street Blues’ fame.

[By the way - for the record - I always HATED ‘Hill Street Blues’, regardless of the fact that all these years later I’m still receiving an occasional pittance of a residual check for a little “bit” I did as an Irish gang member in one early-1980s episode. I gladly accepted their money, but I HATED their show!]

Anyway, ‘Requiem For A Heavyweight’ is a nicely told, nicely acted, heartbreaking story. I’ve already watched it a second time!

ROCKY
(1976 – Boxing)

If this list were in order of preference, ‘Rocky’ would be #1. It’s a crying shame that Sylvester Stallone went on to make 364 sequels – one ‘Rocky’ movie for every day of the year – which really tarnished the memory of the original classic. But let’s not allow Stallone’s stupidity to make us forget just how great the first installment was!

I had the good fortune to visit Philadelphia in 2005 with my dear friend Pooh. I’ll never forget the year because Hurricane Katrina hit while I was in Rocky Balboa’s “City Of Brotherly Love”.

Speaking of love – I loved being in Philadelphia, the true birthplace of our country, and having the opportunity to visit Independence Hall, to see the Liberty Bell, and to climb the steps of Rocky’s Museum of Art. (Actually, it is the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it might as well bear Rocky’s name now, because he truly put it on The American Map of popular tourist attractions.)

I would love to return to Philly again someday to spend several more days there; I felt I had only scratched the surface in 2005.

On a personal note: Although ‘Rocky’ takes place in Philadelphia, and most of the external shots were filmed there, the ice skating rink where Rocky takes Adrian on their first date was actually located in downtown Santa Monica (it’s now a Fred Segal store).

That ice skating rink was a regular hangout for my Sister and her friends around the same time ‘Rocky’ was filmed there, and that is also the first ice skating rink I ever stepped on. I also went there occasionally in the mid-1970s in an attempt to pick up girls. It didn’t work. I was such a lousy ice-skater that the only person I ever picked up there was me, from off the ice where I had fallen . . . again.

Rocky - First Date Scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD7_6vj10do&NR=1&feature=endscreen

At the conclusion of ‘Rocky’, Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa are holding each other up in the middle of the ring, both of them utterly spent and barely alive. Then, Creed, the victor in a split decision, informs Rocky, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch.”
Rocky replies, “Don’t want one.”

What a PERFECT ending! Alas, if only dunderhead Stallone had listened to his own characters and honored their wishes.

RUDY
(1993 – Football)

You can’t be anything even remotely resembling a sports fan without having heard of this movie - comparisons to real-life athletes are made weekly! So, obviously, I’d been aware of ‘Rudy’ for years, but it wasn’t until my 2009 Sports Movie Phase that I finally got around to watching it.

It’s the story of too-small, minimally-talented Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, who had a dream. The dream? To play on the Notre Dame football team.

I was sure I would enjoy the movie, after all, it’s an underdog ~~tail~~ tale based on a true story, and who among us doesn’t love an underdog tale?

But, heck, I’ve seen and heard lots of underdog sports stories and, really, the odds of ‘Rudy’ making my Top Ten list were about the same as the real-life “Rudy” making the Notre Dame football team. So I was greatly surprised to find myself “leaking from the eyes” on more than one occasion while watching the movie.

Of course, we all know that most of these “based on a true story” movies usually means that it’s 1% truth vs. 99% Hollywood fabrication (e.g., ‘The Blind Side’). Therefore I was greatly surprised to learn after doing a little research that ‘Rudy’ was predominately nonfiction - most importantly those final minutes!

Bottom line: If you don’t like the emotionally moving movie ‘Rudy’, all I can say is, "Heavens to Murgatroyd!” Why don’t you make like Snagglepuss and get out of my life? You can "exit, stage left!"

The True Rudy Story ( Part 2 )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL4fEUKwdPw&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Honorable Mention:

I would be remiss if I did not mention . . .

HEAVEN CAN WAIT
(1978 – Football)

This movie was solidly on my Top Ten list until right up to the very end when - in a stunning upset – the underdog, ‘Rudy’, displaced it. Nevertheless, I want it known that I love ‘Heaven Can Wait’!

Warren Beatty plays quarterback Joe Pendleton who dies in a roadway accident “before his time”. The Heavenly Powers That Be are persuaded to find another earthly body for Joe to inhabit and they settle on Leo Farnsworth, a greedy, corporate bastard. Enter Betty Logan (Julie Christie), a determined young environmental activist who hates everything Farnsworth stands for.

Farnsworth sets out to purchase the Los Angeles Rams so he can lead them to the Super Bowl, while he is simultaneously falling in love with Betty and attempting to convince her that he isn’t really the greedy, corporate bastard she thinks he is. ‘Heaven Can Wait’ is equal parts fantasy, sports movie, and love story.

Ladies, here’s what I suggest: With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, why don’t you get yourself a copy of ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and surprise your husband or boyfriend with it on February 14th. He will be pleasantly shocked that you got him a sports movie (after all the complaining you’ve done about how much time he spends watching sports on TV), and he will never suspect that you really got the movie so you could watch an A-list love story with him.

I know for a fact that you will BOTH enjoy ‘Heaven Can Wait’ because . . . “It is written!”

And, fellas, I have a Valentine’s Day suggestion for you as well: Get your wife a copy of ‘The Ghost And Mrs. Muir’ (1947) in honor of The Sport Of Love. That incredibly romantic story will have her eyes so full of tears that she’ll never be able to see that you really got the movie so you could vicariously live the sailor’s life of ultramacho-man Captain Gregg (Rex Harrison), and lust after actress Gene Tierney, the most beautiful woman God ever created!

Watch ‘The Ghost And Mrs. Muir’ with your wife and, trust me, dudeguys, you’re going to get some on Valentine’s Day night!

OK then, tell me now, y’all, what are YOUR favorite sports movies?

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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A PISTOL + THE BIBLE = LOL (?)

2012-01-25T14:41:00.005-07:00

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Perhaps it’s only self-delusion but I like to think I’m a mentally well-rounded person who can converse with reasonable intelligence on a fairly wide variety of topics.

I’m not going to have anything useful to add when the conversation turns to cooking, knitting, Reality TV, car repairs, or anything “mechanical” for that matter. But I’d like to believe I can hold my own for a little while on topics such as art, literature, sports, film, and music.

The three areas in which I have acquired the most amount of knowledge are spirituality, including subcategories like “religion” and “The Holy Bible”; American West history, with special emphasis on mining camps 'n' characters; and politics, including everything from the Federal Reserve System, to the “New World Order”, to the life and times of Senator Joseph McCarthy. (I can more than adequately defend Senator McCarthy in any contentious debate with Liberals - as some Leftists through the years have come to find out and won’t soon forget.)

Therefore, some time ago when my friend Kevin, “The Kansas Kid”, sent me the small paperback book ‘BIBLE IN POCKET, GUN IN HAND: The Story Of Frontier Religion’ by Ross Phares (first published in 1962), I was certain I would like it. How could I not? It simultaneously addressed two of my favorite subjects: religion and American West history.

However, considering that the book includes no photographs or illustrations, and the somber black and white cover shows (what appears to me to be) a Colt single-action pistol laid across a roughly-textured black leather Bible, I naturally assumed this book was going to be a very serious affair (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

So, was I ever surprised – and pleasantly so – when I found this book chock full of funny stories and anecdotes. Make no mistake about it, Ross Phares has due respect for his subject matter, but he addresses it with a light touch, and many of the anecdotes - which were pulled together from a large variety of sources - are highly entertaining and sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. Despite his respect and serious intentions, Phares is not averse to illustrating some of the contradictions and ridiculousness that accompanied the sowing of religious ideas in the newly opened Western frontier.

A number of these stories really deserve to be better known, and so I will share with you below some of my favorites – those that are short enough to be typed without too much strain on my fingers. Take it away, Ross Phares:

Many (preachers) by expert marksmanship saved themselves to preach another day. As basic precaution, they often traveled armed to the teeth and made it a practice to lay a pistol and the Bible side by side on the lectern.
. . .

Preachers were thwarted in their work by many of the backwoods people’s lack of a sufficient vocabulary to communicate with understanding on religion … A traveling preacher told of examining a woman at her home on her beliefs, and asking if she had any religious convictions.
“Naw,” she replied bluntly, “nor my ol’ man neither. He war tried for hog-stealin’ once, but he warn’t convicted.”
. . .

The establishment of schools did not quickly bring enlightenment. The story is told that a politician, after making a campaign speech near the Mexican border, was asked by a man in the audience: “What do you think of this teaching of the Mexican language to our kids?”
“I’m agin’ it,” he shouted. “If the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”
. . .

The blessings they sought were simple and understandable. Someone has formulated their vision thus: “For the promise of the Word is that some day the children of the Word will find a land of milk and honey where each man may eat of his own vine, sit under his own fig tree and whittle on his own sticks.”
. . .

But unable to resist attention to the distinguished stranger, [the preacher] finally turned to him and said: “My friend, are you a Christian?”
The distiguished gentleman replied: “Sir, I am a theological professor.”
“My Lord,” said the preacher, “I wouldn’t let a little thing like that keep me from coming to Christ. … You can’t be saved with anything between you and God.”
. . .

A church member commented to a friend about a fine sermon he had just heard that lasted “nigh about two hours.”
“What was the preacher’s subject?” the friend asked.
“He nevah did say,” was the answer.
. . .

After listening to favorable arguments [for raising funds for the education of young ministers], this preacher rose to his feet and said emphatically he was agin’ it. “Not only that,” he said, “I thank God I have never seen a college.”
The bishop asked: “Brother, do you mean to thank God for your ignorance?”
“You may call it that if you wish.”
To which the bishop replied: “All I can say, Brother, is that you have a great deal to be thankful for.”
. . .

“You see, it’s this way. There’s an election goin’ on all the time. The Lord votes for you, the devil votes against you, and you cast the decidin’ vote.”
. . .

A Negro preacher was hearing the confession of a young man. In the middle of it he interrupted him: “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he called. “You ain’t confessin’. You’s braggin’.”
. . .

One [minister] applying for lodging at a tavern was addressed by the landlord: “Stranger, I perceive that you are a clergyman. Please let me know whether you are a Presbyterian or a Methodist.”
“Why do you ask?” responded the preacher.
“Because I wish to please my guests, and I have observed that a Presbyterian minister is very particular about his own food and bed, and a Methodist about the feed and care of his horse.”
“Very well said,” replied the minister. “I am a Presbyterian, but my horse is a Methodist.”
. . .

This [gravestone epitaph] was for a gambler – suggesting the hazards of both clumsiness and avarice:

Played five aces,
Now playing a harp.
. . .

Another couple came to a minister’s home late one Saturday night without a license. The preacher told them he could not marry them without a license – for them to come back Monday. The insistent, disappointed young fellow asked him: “Couldn’t you just say a few words to tide us over the weekend?”
. . .

One minister on Temperance Sunday, to offer undisputable proof of the evil effects of liquor, made an elaborate demonstration with a worm.
He first dropped the worm into a glass of clear water where it wiggled about with apparent delight. Then he removed it and dropped it into a glass of whiskey, where it died instantly.
“Now what does this prove?” the preacher asked, beaming with satisfaction.
A red-eyed brother from the rear rose up and answered: “If you drink plenty of whiskey, you’ll never have worms.”
. . .

Early Baptist preachers were sometimes paid in barrels of whiskey.
. . .

This illustrative story is told of a Negro girl who, accused of improper relations with the opposite sex, was brought before a church assembly and thought by the examiner to be either quibbling or without clear understanding of the charges against her. Finally he asked her the direct question: “Are you a virgin?”

Without hesitation the girl replied: “Yessuh, I is.” Then she hesitated in thoughtful meditation for a moment and added emphatically: “But I ain’t no fanatic about it!”
. . .

One pastor labored six days for his flock, but early every Saturday morning he went fishing and spent the day at it. … Called to account for his idleness, he was asked: “How can you waste a whole day every week fishing when Satan’s so busy in this community? He certainly doesn’t take any time off!”
“I don’t suppose he does,” the pastor agreed. “But I’m not following his example.” And he kept right on fishing and preaching in the same community.
. . .

A Negro pastor was found embracing one of the sisters of the congregation. When summoned before the church to answer for his actions, he defended himself with Scripture: “Doan it say in de Book dat de shepherd taketh de lamb unto his busom?”
. . .
The Methodists, who boasted of some margin of learning over the Baptists (though hardly enough, it would seem, to boast about), took digs at their ignorance. They gave one definition of a Methodist as “a Baptist who has learned to read and write.”
. . .

An old Negro, a member of the Baptist Church, was given a litter of puppies by a Methodist neighbor. Before he left with them the Methodist minister appeared, and to make conversation with the new owner of the puppies, he asked: “What denomination are they?”
In respect to the Methodist donor, who was present, he answered: “Dey’s Methodist dogs.”

A week later the preacher chanced by the Negro’s place, and seeing the puppies running about in the yard asked him again what denomination they belonged to.
“Dey’s Baptist dogs.”
“But you told me last week they were Methodist pups.”
“But dey didn’t have dar eyes open den.”
. . .

Because the people truly believed that God was real, and that His spirit abided in this part of the raw earth they were fashioning according to their beliefs, they approached Him as a deity of the backwoods who required little formality or polished manners on the part of His simple children. …

[One old man] said he did not think an intermediary was necessary to get in touch with the Lord; that “when a feller’s in a jam, the Lord can hear him if he’ll holler.”
. . .

One man at a weekly meeting rose and prayed with calculated restraint: “Oh Lord, we need rain bad, send us rain. We don’t want a rippin’, rarin’ tearin’, rain that’ll harrer up the face of Nature, but a drizzlin’, drozzlin’, sozzlin’ rain, one that’ll last all night and putty much all day, Oh Lord.” …

Downpours following prayer for rain sometimes brought the supplicants to their knees again to let the Lord know they had had enough. One drought sufferer, suddenly turned flood victim, pleaded: “Lord, Lord, stay thy hand! Enough! Art thou goin’ to drown us out like woodchucks?”
. . .

A band of immigrants held up their westward journey just outside Dodge City for prayer for protection, during which the minister-leader pleaded: “…On our long journey Thy Divine Providence has thus far kept us safe. We have survived cloudbursts, hailstorms, floods, and strong gales, thirst and parching heat – as well as raids of horsethieves and attacks by hostile Indians.

“But now, Oh, Lord, we face our greatest danger. Dodge City lies just ahead, and we must pass through it. Help us and save us, we beseech Thee. Amen.”
. . .

Liquor, directly and indirectly, inspired a great deal of praying. An old deacon who had a decided weakness for the bottle got on a terrible bender one night, and thought he was dying. He called his wife, who was a devout woman, and asked her to pray for him. She fell to her knees and prayed: “Oh Lord, have mercy on my poor drunken husband.”
The deacon heard her from the next room, and called to her: “No, no, Margaret! Don’t tell Him I’m drunk; tell Him I’m sick!”
. . .

The frontier folk possessed such a capacity to laugh at themselves they told funny stories about prayer. Where truth ends and fiction begins is sometimes difficult to say. …

All-out faith in immediate answer to prayer is illustrated in this story of an old maid who, feeling that her opportunites for matrimony were fast coming to an end, went out into the woods, greatly distressed, to meditate upon the matter. She finally concluded that since there was no earthly hope in sight she would call upon the Lord for help.

She knelt down and prayed fervently: “Oh Lord, hear my prayers. This day send me a man. Send me a man, Oh Lord, that I may not be lonesome.”
At that moment an owl in a nearby tree sounded out: “Who! Who! Who!”
The old maid jumped to her feet and shouted with joy:
“Anybody, Lord. Just anybody!”
. . .

Evangelist L. M. White said:
“Just at that time, with everybody excited, a regular pandemonium reigning, I threw my Remington on the crowd and howled, ‘Sit down! We came here to worship God, and we are going to do it if I have to kill somebody’.”

- - - - - - - -

Hokey-Smoke! That is so similar to that classic line in the Paul Newman movie ‘The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean’ . . .

Tell them it's going to be a new place. It's going to be a nice place to live. I'm the new judge. There's going to be law, there's going to be order, progress, civilization, and peace. Above all, peace. And I don't care who I have to kill to get it.
~ Paul Newman (as Judge Roy Bean)

If you’ve never seen that movie, people, you have missed a great one!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed exploring religion in the Wild West with me. Tune in again next week when we will explore Marilyn Monroe in the buff.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean 1972 John Huston

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2r5pNGNXpU

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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ARE YOU IN YOUR “RIGHT” MIND? (Or, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ONE?”)

2012-01-22T23:39:00.008-07:00

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Laurel: “Shakespeare.”
Hardy: “Longfellow.”
Laurel: “What goes up the chimney?”
Hardy: “Smoke. What comes down?”
Laurel: “Santy Claus. ...Have you seen this one?...”

You’re confused already, aren’t ya? I could tell by that blank look on your face.

That bit o' dialogue comes from a 1936 Laurel & Hardy movie called ‘Our Relations’. The drinking gang I used to hang with – The League Of Soul Crusaders – we loved all the old Laurel & Hardy movies (although W.C. Fields was really the house hero!)

Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Deputy ~~Dog~~ Dawg cartoons, Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor, and the “Come On, Eileen” music video – those are the things that kept us alive throughout 1982.

Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners (HQ Audio)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXLHUThBib8

In ‘Our Relations’, Laurel & Hardy would go through that “Shakespeare/Longfellow” dialogue exchange every time they would find themselves saying the same thing at the same time. The “Have you seen this one?” bit at the end is actually the pay-off joke that comes later in the movie. But I’m not going to explain it to ya because none of that has anything at all to do with this blog bit!

A couple years ago, my friend The Flying Aardvark sent me this picture of a rotating woman. It came from TheTelegraph.com.au website. [See below]

According to that site, this rotating woman is a . . .

RIGHT BRAIN VS. LEFT BRAIN TEST

Here’s what they say about it:

Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or counter-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain.

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS:
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

If counter-clockwise, then you use more of the left side of the brain.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS:
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality-based
forms strategies
practical
safe

Most of us would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise, though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

I can’t even remember anymore which direction I first saw the woman rotating in. But I do recall that in a minute or so, I saw that she had reversed herself and was suddenly spinning in the opposite direction.

Within a few minutes I found that I could mentally manipulate her and make her turn in either direction I chose. Then it became a game for me to see how quickly I could reverse her direction.

I got to the point where I could (and still can) make her reverse her direction before she’s able to make a full revolution. I like to make her swing her forward leg back and forth, back and forth. But the question is, of course, which leg is forward, the right one or the left one? It depends upon which direction the mind sees her turning, doesn’t it?

What’s really fun is to read all the comments people have left on the TheTelegraph.com.au website about this. Some people swear the woman rotates in only one direction; others swear she reverses her direction every couple of minutes; and some are certain the whole thing is rigged in some way.

It’s not rigged; she’s not changing her direction from time to time. She really can be seen to revolve both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Or even, as I said, not revolving at all, but merely swinging her forward leg back and forth.

I’m not sure that I’m buying any of the Right Brain/Left Brain explanation for how a person views the image moving. All I can state for certain is that this woman has a pretty nice body . . .

With you in no dress
Oh, my thoughts, I confess
Verge on dirty
Ah, come on, Eileen!

So, how do you see her moving? Clockwise? Counter-clockwise? Both at different times? Jus’ swingin’ her front leg back and forth?

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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NOTICE: TO ALL MY BLOG FRIENDS (But Especially Sig, Marjorie, & Missed Periods)

2012-01-19T14:52:00.003-07:00

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Doggs & Doggettes . . .

If you wish to contine leaving comments on my blogs, and would like me to continue leaving comments on yours, you need to read the following:

It seems such a simple and obvious rule that you’d assume no one would really even NEED to learn it, and yet some folks still can’t seem to mentally grasp it . . . particularly I.T. computer geek-like website builders. Personally, I think all but two of them should be publicly executed, just to make an example of people who simply can’t leave well enough alone.

The rule? The impossible rule to learn?

IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T F-IN' "FIX" IT!

And yet these computer geeks can somehow never restrain themselves from tinkering with it, and tinkering with it, and tinkering with it until they have ~~fixed~~ fudged-up a perfectly fine thing.

If you once spent a lot of time at ~~Amazon.com~~ BigBitch.com like I did, then you saw it happen over and over again. Their website geeks kept tweaking things until they’d completely wrecked it. (It’s so bad there now that one can’t even access the Profile Pages of their Friends & Favorites.)

Well, Blogspot.com ain’t much different. I think the problem is that they keep a bunch of geeks on the payroll rather than just bringing them in and paying them on a job-by-job, project-by-project basis. And so in order to feel like the wages are being justified, the Blogspot.com geeks keep messing with a perfectly good thing, and each time they do, something BREAKS somewhere else.

The leg bone's connected to the knee bone
The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone
The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone, etc.

Did you see what these nitwits did recently? Someone (with no aesthetic sense whatsoever) felt our Blogspot Profile Pages needed “fixing” and so they went to work redesigning them. Have you seen one lately? They look like absolute sh!t compared to how they looked just a couple months back. I can’t even stand to look at mine anymore because it just makes me cringe! It's just Amazon.com all over again!

I guess Blogger just doesn't have faith that WE will contact THEM when we feel something needs "fixing" or "improving".

I seriously doubt anyone sent an Email to Blogger saying, "Could you take my perfectly acceptable Profile Page and reorganize it in as ugly and eye-challenging a fashion that you are capable of imagining? Thank you!"

Anybody who thinks our Blogger Profile Pages look better “now” than they did “then”, well, Blogger probably has a job for YOU!

Just some days ago, the Blogspot.com geniuses did it again! Someone tweaked, adjusted, redesigned, or “fixed” something somewhere and the “blowback” (to use a political term) or “unintended consequences” from that “fix” was that suddenly many of us found we could no longer comment on each other’s blogs.

Now, thanks to Kittie Howard’s Blog, I learned this morning how to get around that problem. Or to put it another way: I learned how to fix what Blogger broke when they “fixed” something else or made something “better” for us. (Thanks, Blogspot Geeks! You guys do the bestest stuffs!)

Anyway, it seems it is the bloggers who are using the “Full Page” Comments format who are adversely affected by the “fixing”. If you or someone you are attempting to leave a comment for is using the “Full Page” format, you and they may need to change to the “Pop-Up Window” instead.

It’s too bad, because I really prefer the “Full Page” Comment layout to the “Pop-Up Windows” but Blogspot.com has taken that choice away from us.

When Farawayeyes and I both changed to the “Pop-Up Window” this morning, we found we were able to post comments on each other’s blogs again. (Thanks, Kittie!)

Sig, Marjorie, and Missed Periods are the owners/operators of three of the blogs I “Follow” and that I have been unable to leave comments for recently. (So, Sig, Marjorie, and Missed Periods, if you ever want to hear from me again, you’ll probably need to switch your Comment formats also. NOT switching, however, will be a very effective way of avoiding me from now on. Something to consider before changing.)

If anyone is unsure how to change from “Full Page” to “Pop-Up Window”, here are my easy, handy-dandy instructions:

Go to your DASHBOARD
Click SETTINGS
Then click COMMENTS (found just to the right of “Formatting”)
Scroll down to COMMENT FORM PLACEMENT and
Click the green dot into the “Pop-Up Window” option.
Scroll down to the very bottom and click SAVE SETTINGS.

You’re done. You’ll hear from me again. Unlucky you!

But don’t think this is the end of our Blogspot Bugs, people! The next “fixed” or “improved” thing is only weeks away. You’ll know when our host has completed the project because SOMETHING ELSE will go WRONG with your blogging experience.

Next problem! Next problem!
I love ya, next problem!
You're always
A “fix”
Away.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“IS THAT A SIREN OR A SAXOPHONE?”

2012-01-17T01:59:00.005-07:00

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[This “Blog Bit” is dedicated to (Tom Waits fan) EVE of the blog ‘LITTLE THINGS…']

Lyrically speaking, the greatest song ever written is “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” by Bob Dylan.

Ya wanna argue it with me? Fine. No problem. I wholeheartedly welcome your challenge.

But before you even try to contend with the words, you’ll need to contend with the rhyming scheme. Click HERE, then take a pencil ‘n’ paper and write out the rhyming pattern that Dylan used.

F-in’ amazing, ain’t it?
Well, Shakespeare himself, with his pointed shoes and his bells, wouldn’t have tried topping it!

OK, now that you’re ready to match the rhyming scheme, you can go on ahead and try matching the lyrical content.

What? Admitting defeat so soon?

Well, that’s to your credit.

Lyrically speaking, the greatest song ever written - “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” - belongs to Bob Dylan, but as gifted a songwriter as Dylan was, he wasn’t the best that planet-E has ever produced.

From 1973 through 1982, Tom Waits proved himself to be the greatest lyricist this world has ever known.

But then Tom met this woman named Kathleen and she convinced him to throw his God-given talent away. As Edgar Cayce said: "When the devil can't get a man any other way, he sends a woman for him.”

Oops. Was that politically incorrect? If so, I most sincerely apologize to . . . EVERYONE! (Lord knows I never mean to swim against the mainstream!)

Anyway... tonight, Brother Napoleon and I watched the 1982 Francis Ford Coppola movie “One From The Heart”. I saw it with my acting buddy, Marty Brumer, in a Los Angeles theatre the year it came out.

Pay close attention and you’ll notice that the story begins with a stray dog running from right to left, and concludes with that same stray dog running from left to right. But in between that stray dog’s roaming from side-to-side, there is a tremendous amount of color and beauty.

Story-wise, “One From The Heart” is “wafer thin”.

But cinematically and musically, it is gorgeous beyond description! And there is an abundance of humor in this movie, but it is humor of the subtle variety; some viewers might not even catch all of it.

We’re talking about character-driven humor, not over-the-top joke-telling or physical humor. (If Hank’s pick-up lines used on Leila don’t make you laugh-out-loud, you, my friend, are deficient in the Sense O’ Humor department.)

And character-actor Harry Dean Stanton as Moe (“Moe me, Moe you, Moe life, Moe love!”) almost steals the movie - watch and listen to him closely! Moe cracks me up!

The thin story killed the movie at the box office and drove Coppola to bankruptcy, but regardless, I consider “One From The Heart” to be nothing less than ‘visual poetry’ and one of my Top 25 all-time favorite movies.

The only movies I can think of from that era that are in the same league with “One From The Heart” from a cinematography standpoint are “Koyaanisqatsi” and “The Black Stallion”.

“One From The Heart” is unquestionably a visual masterpiece! I mean, we’re talking diabetic eyeballism here, and equaled only by its musical score, composed by Tom Waits.

This might be the only movie based entirely on a song. Francis Ford Coppala’s son, Gian-Carlo, played his dad the Tom Waits/Bette Midler duet “I Never Talk To Strangers” from Tom’s ‘Foreign Affairs’ album, and Coppola was knocked out by it.

I Never Talk to Strangers-Tom Waits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gav3IgeBbec

Later, Coppola got to thinking that a love story shown from two different viewpoints – his and hers (as in the “I Never Talk To Strangers” song) – might make a pretty interesting movie.

Well, the movie was “pretty” alright – that much is certain.

Coppola later said the movie symbolized Greek mythology pertaining to Zeus and Hera. Whatever! The bottom line is: “One From The Heart” lost millions of dollars – every shot having been filmed indoors, on sound stages, which made it a financial albatross – and Coppola spent about a decade trying to regain his lost money and his lost reputation.

The truth, however, is that “One From The Heart” is a visual and aural feast of Thanksgiving Day-proportions! And it includes a number of dialogue gems that I have regularly used in my every-day smart-aleckness ever since.

Speaking solely for myself (and every other person of good taste), I'm prepared to claim that the soundtrack song “Broken Bicycles” features the best lyrics Tom Waits ever penned (unless it was “San Diego Serenade” instead). "Broken Bicycles" was also probably my good friend Martin Brumer’s all-time favorite song. (Marty was constantly singing it to no one in particular; singing it just because it deserved to be heard by others!)

In 1990 or '91, I had the tremendous good fortune to see world-class musician Jack Sheldon - who provided all of the mournful trumpet-playing on the "One From The Heart" soundtrack, as well as on other Tom Waits recordings - performing on the 4 Queens Hotel/Casino stage in downtown Las Vegas. (Yeah, overall, God has been good to me.)

Anyway, to conclude this blog bit o’ nuttin’, I just wanna tell ya . . .

If you love visual poetry and top o’ da line song lyrics, you must NOT miss “One From The Heart” – it’s Hollywood’s all-time greatest bomb! (Uh... that is... I mean, excluding “Dr. Strangelove”, of course!)

one from the heart_intro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAiJqFhylDQ

One From The Heart 1982 Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6aYLIn9zXs

one from the heart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdqw5irMX7A

Broken Bicycles - Tom Waits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YroQxUyg6k

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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‘THE PRESCOTT BLUES’ (Or, ‘STILL GOT THE BRUISE FROM YOU’)

2012-01-12T14:20:00.003-07:00

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[Stephen and Kelly in Kelly’s truck, circa Hangover 1,982.]

[Stephen’s old publicity shot, circa 1982. Picture by Kelly – fine photographer, artful animator, manic mechanic.]

Brother Napoleon and I drove up to Prescott (Airheadzona) from Phoenix (Airheadzona) on ‘Margarita Day, 2012’ just to take a look around the old neighborhood, have lunch and a margarita.

I can’t remember anything that happened after that fifth margarita.

Jus’ kiddin’. We were good boys. (Hell, we’ll try anything once!)

We had lunch at the Gurley Street Bar And Grill, then a beer at the Prescott Brewing Company, we walked around the courthouse square, and I had ONE margarita at Lyzzard’s Lounge. Then we got outta town. (It weren’t nuttin’ like “The Terrible Night I” or “The Terrible Night II”.)

Awhile back ago, with the help of my friend Mister Sheboyganboy Six, I was able the determine that the Chevy pickup truck owned by my ol’ buddy Kelly Anderson was built in 1953 to 1955 or ’57.

Well, back in Prescott on Jan. 1st (“Margarita Day”) I paid a visit to the woman who runs The Old Sage Bookshop, whom I remembered had a Chevy pickup that looked to me as if it were very much like the one Kelly owned. She told me that hers is a ’53, and it just so happens that she’s got it up for sale. (Wish I could afford to buy it. Bet it ain’t as fast as Kelly’s though – being a manic mechanic, he had that thing all souped-up.)

So, I walked down Whiskey Row to where she had it parked and took another look and I made up my mind that Kelly’s Chevy must have been the same year, because I didn’t see a single detail that struck me as being different or out-of-place. Even the “3100” seemed familiar to me.

[Brother Nappy stands next to the '53.]

I’m still gonna play the Tom Waits song “Ol’ ‘55” every year on Kelly’s birth and death dates though - it’s close enough! And the memories! Oh, the memories:

Well, my time went so quickly
I went lickity-splitly
Out to my ol’ '55
As I drove away slowly
Feeling so holy
God knows I was feeling alive

Now the sun's coming up
I'm riding with Lady Luck
Freeway, cars and trucks
Stars beginning to fade
And I lead the parade

Naturally - to Brother Nappy’s disgust - I insisted on taking yet another picture of the cowboy ‘n’ horse statue behind the Prescott Courthouse. (Incidentally, the only lawsuit I was ever involved in was resolved in THAT courthouse. I doesn’t has to tell ya who won,
does I?) This time I think I finally got a picture I’m satisfied with:

I have no idea why the edges of these pictures make it look like there was Vaseline on the cell phone camera’s lens (probably leftover mayonnaise from lunch) but I dig how it makes the pictures look kinda dreamy.

Why do I like this statue so much? Well, mostly I just like the way the brim on the left side of the cowboy’s hat bends upward slightly more than the opposite edge does. (Look, I’ve told you people I’m odd, strange, weird. Didja think I was just saying it to make myself seem “different”? No! I really AM “different”... odd, strange, weird. "Not that there's anything right with that.")

Directly across the street from the fountain where BILLY JACK kicked all that booty in 1971 . . .

. . . there’s a new age book store called Lifeways. Well, back when I lived in Prescott (Oct. 1992 - Feb, ’94) that book store was a record store. As Nappy and I were walking past it, I got to thinking about where I was at “musically” during my time in Prescott.

By then, Jazz and Blues had replaced Rock as my favorite musical genre. In fact, that transformation had begun about 1983 and was complete by ’85. It’s no exaggeration to say that performers like the Eurythmics, Madonna, Culture Club, Duran Duran, and A Flock Of Seagulls chased me into the waiting arms of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, and Blind Lemon Pye. And from there I eventually found my way to Jazz. Ahhh, Jazz!

So, during my time in Prescott, while I was weaving my way from The Bird Cage Saloon to Matt’s Saloon to Sneakers Bar to The Cattleman’s Bar And Grill and back to The Bird Cage Saloon again, it was Blues songs I had running through my mind.

Yeah, during my stay in Prescott, I had the Blues. I had ‘em bad and that weren’t good! Heck, it was the middle of January ’93 while staring out of my Victorian house apartment window that I composed the darkest poem I would ever write: ‘Ailing Spiders’. I’d post it here but it would only bum us all out.

And when I say I had the Blues, I don’t mean that I had the Sad Blues; what I had was the Angry Blues.

And that’s probably why I was SO READY to hear what I heard that July night in 1993 when I walked into that little record shop and started browsing. I really couldn’t afford to buy anything, but I had a few minutes to spare between drinks.

And then I heard those stinging, rip-roaring electric guitar notes bouncing off the walls of that little store. I stopped browsing, walked up to the counter and asked the clerk, “Who the heck is this you’re playing?!”

He says, “Gary Moore. His new album ‘Blues Alive’.”
Me: “You mean Gary Moore - the Irish dude - who was in Thin Lizzy?”
“Yep. Some time ago he met Albert King who really got him into the Blues, and now he plays this stuff. In my opinion, with this album, Gary has graduated into the Guitarist Big Leagues.”

I was just floored by what Gary Moore was doing. Here was an Irish bloke who had taken his brand of Hard Rock/Heavy Metal, added Albert King’s brand of Urban Blues, and come up with an amalgamation I would call “Hard Metal Blues" .

I was all prepared to part with some of my limited funds to buy a copy of that CD but the store didn’t have any more Moore in stock, so the clerk sold me the store’s own used copy at a big discount. He took it right off the store’s CD player and handed it to me.

I took the CD and some beer back to my Victorian house apartment and cranked that album up to eleven for the next ~~seventy-six minutes~~ eight months!

You know how we associate certain songs, albums or musicians with certain events or epochs of our lives? Well, I will never be able to think of that Victorian house converted into an apartment building on Prescott’s main thoroughfare, Gurley Street, without thinking of my poem ‘Ailing Spiders’ and Gary Moore’s album ‘Blues Alive’.

I’ll bet the landlord was ecstatic the day I informed him that I was moving back to Los Angeles. No more nights of ‘Blues Alive’ cranked to eleven at eleven.

Sometime during that same year, my friend Dean came to visit. Some psychic or geologist or psychologist had announced that California was going to experience “The Big One” on a certain weekend, and Dean figured it was as good a time as any to pay a visit to his old friend Stephen up in Prescott, Airheadzona.

When he got there, we decided to spend the weekend camping in Sedona. Of course I packed Gary Moore into the bag with my toothbrush and my Excedrin.

So, that first night, with our campsite set up and an ice chest packed with cold ones, Dean and I broke out the invisible instrument cases, carefully removed the AirGuitars from them, tuned them up, and then stood side-by-side playing all of Gary Moore’s ‘Blues Alive’ licks . . . cranked to eleven, of course.

All through the Sedona valley you could hear our AirGuitars screaming and echoing off the rock walls! All the dogs in Sedona were barking, the women and children were running, and the tree-huggers were scampering up their trees! And the bears . . . well, the bears were sleeping. Even Gary Moore cranked to eleven can’t wake hibernatin’ bears. (Luckily for the AirGuitarist dudes.)

Not one person approached and asked us to turn the AirGuitars down to ten. But then Dean and I were both wearing red bandanas around our necks, and everyone knows you don’t wanna rile cowboys when they got the Blues. Just let ‘em play; they’ll pass out soon enough.

[A drive-through liquor store in Prescott.
Does M.A.D.D. know about this?]

Some songs found on Gary Moore’s ‘Blues Alive’ album . . .

Gary Moore - Still Got The Blues (Live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O_YMLDvvnw

Believe it or not, I think the version of “Further On Up The Road” found on the ‘Blues Alive’ album is even better than this one:

Gary Moore - Live Blues (1993) #12 "Further On Up The Road"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTY2yTl2l1Q

Link:
Gary Moore - King of the Blues (Live at HammerSmith Odeon 1990)

Albert King:
"He's the hunter with a crosscut saw
Born under a b-A-d sign!"

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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HAPPY MARGARITA DAY – 2012

2012-01-01T00:18:00.004-07:00

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It’s Margarita Day! - It’s Margarita Day!
Hooray! - Hooray! – Hooray!
For Margarita Day!

Well, 2011 is in the books, and mostly . . .

It was a year for the birds
That went to the dogs
‘Cause the cats in Washington
Turned out to be rats
Who golfed and fished while
The Eagle flew the coop
Leaving We The People
To clean up the poop.

Or something like that. At any rate, that sentence is a reasonable facsimile of 2011.

Nope, it was not a banner year for anyone I personally know, and for some of them it was downright lousy.

Nevertheless, my Christmas was fairly good. Here’s a few photos of it:

Brother Nappy and I kept alive our “MAKE A WISH FOR TINY TIM” on Christmas Day tradition by driving to Park Central Deli near downtown Phoenix, tossing a couple quarters into the fish pond on the back patio and making wishes with the fishes that Tiny Tim will someday score a second Top 40 hit song.

While we were there to cast our wishes into the fish pond, I took a picture of my “Ron Paul For President” baseball cap to “cap”ture the moment:

My friend the Flying Aardvark sent me a couple things that really tickled me. One was a photo she had seen somewhere of two houses decorated for Christmas... somewhere. Talk about stealing someone else’s thunder, and with minimal lighting:

Also, on a Christmas gift the Aard had sent me, she had integrated into the wrapping a margarita Christmas tree ornament (she wraps beautifully, too!) I loved the ornament so much that I immediately removed it from the gift and hung it on my tree. It’s very appropriate that I am revealing this here on Margarita Day 2012:

The maggie ornament goes perfect next to my other ‘New Year’s Day’ Christmas tree ornament – a pink elephant holding a champagne glass, that I purchased in Westwood Village circa 1988:

And the margarita ornament segues beautifully into the real point of this January 1st blog bit: I want to wish y’all a . . .

HAPPY MARGARITA DAY!

“A Tradition Since 1986, Except For 1994.”

To those with less imagination, “Margarita Day” is known as “New Year’s Day”. On this day I always ring in the new year with a margarita or two; a tradition that my dear Pa (may he rest in peace) inadvertently started in ’86, and which we both somehow inexplicably forgot to maintain on New Year’s Day 1994, thus giving birth to what I think is a funny slogan.

I have one pretty hysterical Margarita Day story I could tell, but you’d need to get to know me “personally” rather than “virtually” to hear that one in detail because I’d be too embarrassed to reveal it publicly.

Now think about that for a second. After some of the ~~shit~~ stuffs I’ve written on my blogs, here is something too embarrassing to write! How embarrassing is THAT? Here’s just a snapshot of it and you can fill in the blanks with your imagination:

This was perhaps 1989 or 1990, when I overindulged my enthusiasm for the celebration a bit and Margarita Day turned into Irish Coffee Night at El Torito Mexican Restaurant/Bar in Marina Del Rey. Then, after setting what was almost certainly the all-time point total record on the video game PAPERBOY in a nearby arcade, I got on my “real” bicycle and attempted to ride home. Let’s just say “video games ain’t real life!” and leave it at that.

Anyway, feel free to join me by celebrating a new year with a margarita. Well, you’re only going to get ONE Margarita Day 2012 in your lifetime, so why not?...G’wahn and have two. What the hell! Besides, ya know, if there turns out to be any truth in all that Mayan Calendar end-of-the-world prophecy yakking, you’ll look back with regret that you... only had one maggie on Margarita Day.

You lucky folks living in L.A. can enjoy the BEST margaritas (as seen in the pictures above) by going to El Coyote Mexican Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard. Me, I’m going to have to settle for maggies here in Airheadzona.

Regardless, I raise my salt-rimmed glass and wish a Happy Margarita Day to you all! May we bless and be blessed in 2012.

Oh, and – psst! – don’t be a maroon by
forgetting to remember on election day . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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YOUR BULLDOG DRINKS CHAMPAGNE BUT CAN HE SURF? (Or, THE LORD OF DOGTOWN!)

2011-12-30T14:43:00.004-07:00

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D-d-d-dog, dog, dog
D-d-dog is the word!

D-d-d-dog, dog, dog
D-d-dog is the word!

Do you know what “bulldogging” is?

Well, it’s an event you’d find in a rodeo but it does not involve bulls or dogs. (Google it.)

Do you know who “Bill Doggett” was?

He wasn’t a bulldogger, but he was damn good at what he did. (Google him.)

Do you know the song “Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne”? It’s extremely funny. (Google it, then get some champagne before New Year’s Eve arrives.)

Can you explain the term “hotdogging”?

It’s an old expression for someone who does a lot of fancy tricks while riding a surfboard.

Have you heard the instrumental “Surfdoggin’”?

It’s something Gary Hoey recorded for the surfing movie “Endless Summer II” in which I think he may have invented a new musical genre (a combination of surf guitar and country pickin’.)

Have you ever been to “Dogtown”?

That’s where I grew up in the 1970s. To be hyper-specific, Dogtown is that area of southern Santa Monica and northern Venice - pretty much where those two Los Angeles communities meet. I grew up right in the heart of it (in Santa Monica, two blocks from Venice) and there was a time when I used to ride my bicycle right down Rose Avenue to the beach, four or five days a week before work, just for the exercise. Ahh, those were golden days!

The Dogtown area was kind of symbolized by the abandoned, dilapidated (and now long gone) Pacific Ocean Park pier (or POP). As a teenager, I actually spent some nights guarding that pier from vandals while it was being dismantled.

In the mid-1970s, a group of young surfers in Dogtown - later known as The Z-Boys - started the whole skateboarding culture that eventually took the country by storm. My Brother and Sister went to school with one of them (Jay Adams) and my good friend Eric once shared a hospital room with one of them (Tony Alva), and Eric told me that the steady stream of hot girls coming to visit his roommate in that hospital was utterly unbelievable!

Several movies have been made about those dudeguys and the skateboarding craze that they started. One of those movies is titled “Lords Of Dogtown”.

This morning, my dear friend the Flying Aardvark sent me a link to a YouTube video that I absolutely love! I’ve watched it three times now and it has made me laugh every single time.

Maybe your bulldog drinks champagne, but can he surf? This video gives new meaning to the expression “Dogtown Surfer”. In fact, some commenter posted this:

Isn't this dog in ‘Lords of Dogtown’?

This might be the most entertaining video I’ve seen this year. My favorite parts are when the dog is on the skateboard. Watch him, he’s really groovin’ that board back and forth, he’s doin' some serious sidewalk surfin’! And his swaying on that skateboard is perfectly synchronized with the music.

So, I’m closing out 2011 at ‘STUFFS’ with a little gift for y’all: Some sun, sand ‘n’ surf on "a Winter’s day in a deep and dog December". This is where Simon & Garfunkel and The Beach Boys crash into each other, wipeout and meld.

Surfin´ Bulldog (Beach Boys - Surfin´ USA)

Link to the YouTube original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqxTUxzOceE

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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GREAT MOMENTS IN "REAL MAN" HISTORY!

2011-12-28T13:23:00.003-07:00

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We'll call this one 'Great Moments In "Real Man" History' (Or, 'They Are Who We Thought They Were!')

What are the greatest moments in "Real Man" history? Well, there are plenty, and everyone will have their own favorite. If it were possible for a "Real Man" to slap a girl around and make my list of 'Great Moments In "Real Man" History', then I would surely be listing the time Senator Joseph McCarthy earned an Elgin watch "for combat...above and beyond the call of duty" by slapping Drew Pearson around in a cloakroom.

But I guess I'll just stick with the National Football League for now.

Less than two weeks ago, I posted a blog bit celebrating the fact that the Kansas City Chiefs, in a major and unpredictable upset, defeated the Green Bay Packers, ensuring that for at least one more year, the 1972 Miami Dolphins - the team I idolized in my boyhood - would remain the only unbeaten and untied team to win a Super Bowl. (Which is not, by any means, to say that I am conceding this year's championship to the Packers; I am not ready to "crown their asses".)

Two of my favorite "Real Man" moments are tied in with that 1972 Dolphins team.

ZONK!

Throughout his career, [Larry] Csonka played fullback like a horse ploughs a field: doggedly, with a high pain threshold and with great determination.
~ John Doremus

My favorite player on that Dolphins team was Larry Csonka; I loved the way he ran through and over defenders, and I dreamed of being the next Csonka. But then I stopped growing, encountered more athletically gifted dudeguys than myself, and came to realize that I was never tough enough to be another Csonka anyway. (Besides, all that football playing would have damaged my fingers and interfered with my violin lessons.)

But this brief video below will give you a basic idea of why I loved "The Zonk" and wrote his number 39 on everything I owned:

Miami Dolphins Larry Csonka

Link to a mo' bigger screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oa2meWsaOc&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Csonka makes my 'Greatest Moments In "Real Man" History' list by virtue of the fact that he is the only NFL ballcarrier to ever be flagged for "Unnecessary Roughness" against a tackler!

Larry Csonka - Unnecessary roughness while running w/ the football

Link to a mo' bigger screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SF0RaXR4nI

However, in my book, 'The Greatest Moment In "Real Man" History' - not just in the NFL but anywhere ever - belongs to my second favorite player on that '72 Dolphins team: Manny Fernandez.

THE "MAN" IN MANNY!

Manny Fernandez, in my opinion, is the only defensive lineman in the history of the National Football League that can get into a nest of alligators and come out with an alligator... unscathed! Where do you find people like that?
~ Larry Csonka

In my DVD set 'America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions - 1972/1973 Miami Dolphins' there is a segment showing that during his down time, Manny Fernandez liked to go out into the Florida Everglades and catch alligators.

On the DVD, we are treated to some footage of Manny and his Florida buddies doing exactly that. Manny reaches into a swampy spot and pulls an alligator out by its tail.

Is that "Real Man" enough for ya? (I sure as hell wouldn't try something like that, as alligator's can be hazardous to violin-playing fingers!)

But what actually elevates that manly Manny act to GREATEST Moment In "Real Man" history is the fact that while Manny is capturing that alligator with his bare hands, he's wearing shades and he has a cigarette dangling from his lips! Ha! Yeah, it's no big deal to Manny - just another relaxing day in the swamp . . .
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["Don't you make me drop my cigarette, boy!"]

You can watch the cigarette-smokin' Manny pull an alligator out of the swamp by fast-forwarding to the 18:30 mark in the video below:

1972 Miami Dolphins

Link to a mo' bigger screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpdA9LSFNc0

And finally, here's a brief video with both "Real Men" - Manny & The Zonk! - reminiscing about what that undefeated 1972 Dolphins season meant (and still means) to them:

Miami Dolphins - Perfect Season

Link to a mo' bigger screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC4Gnxt_2V4

Well, thanks for readin' 'n' watchin'.

I gotta go practice my violin lesson now or my teacher, she gonna rap me on the wrist with my bow, and that really hurts!

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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"THERE’S A SADNESS IN THE HEART OF THINGS"

2011-12-26T01:14:00.008-07:00

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Doggs & Doggettes ~

Christmas 2011 ended here in Phoenix, Arizona, a little over an hour ago. For a number of reasons – which I could explain in excruciating detail, but which I’m sure you’re not the least bit interested in – Bobby Darin’s song ‘Christmas Auld Lang Syne’ makes me think of my dear departed Ma, who returned to her Creator in the Summer of 2005.

Darin recorded this song on August 18, 1960, exactly one year and ten days after my birth, and it did not do very well on the Billboard music charts. Nevertheless, it has become my custom to close every Christmas Day by listening to it.

For a number of years, it has also been a tradition of mine to remove all of my outdoor Christmas decorations on December 26th (my Brother’s birthday), to send the message that what I have been celebrating is not Happy Holidays or Winter Solstice or Winter Wonder or Season’s Greetings or Frosty’s Fruitopia or any other euphemism for “The Birth Of Jesus Christ”.

My lights and decorations were meant as a symbol of Christ’s birth. And after December 25th, the Birthday Party has come and gone, and my celebration has ended.

But, I fear I have gotten a bit sidetracked, as I often do.

What I really meant to say here is that Bobby Darin’s song, ‘Christmas Auld Lang Syne’, is a window into my soul. Not that anyone will or should care to know.

Every Christmas ends with me honoring my Mother by playing Darin’s Christmas song and acknowledging that, indeed, "there’s a sadness in the heart of things".

Bobby Darin - Christmas Auld Lang Syne
(lyrics and slideshow + good quality)
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfXYSb-KsSQ

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THE WORLD’S SILLIEST CHRISTMAS TRADITION! (Won’t You Please Join Us?)

2011-12-23T01:38:00.005-07:00

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Who cares about "shopping days"? What matters is "blogging days"! And two "blogging days" were lost to me due to a bug in the Blogspot system which prevented me from accessing my Dashboard. That means I was unable to approve, post, and respond to comments left for me; unable to post new blog bits; and unable to read YOUR blog bits.

Thanks to the same someone who saved my blog earlier this year, it seems I am back in the ~~saddle~~ sleigh again! But this particular blog bit shoulda been posted here the day before yesterday. DOH! Don'tcha hate it when that doesn't happen?

If you feel I have been ignoring your blog bits, please know that I have neglected you only because I WAS BUGGED-OUT! But I am determined to read the blogs that I “Follow” as soon as possible. In the meantime, there’s this wonderful opportunity I am making available to you:

I am a collector of quotations and I actually copy and store my favorites. I love all sorts of quotes, from the spiritual and religious (think: Yeshua, C.S. Lewis, and Joel Goldsmith), to the inspirational and patriotic (think: Booker T. Washington, Henry Thoreau, and Patrick Henry), to the humorous and super-silly (think: Mark Twain, Cheech Y Chong, and that Wino Woman on Venice Beach).

If I were asked to select what, to me, is the all-time most amusing quote, I believe I’d have to run with this:

“Most of all, I’d love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns.
I’d also like just one more hit single.”
~ Tiny Tim
[Interviewed by Harold Ramis for
Playboy magazine, June, 1970]

If you don’t find that funny, then I guess you and I are just different. As in apples & oranges different, as in cats & dogs different. Different as in Laurel & Hardy, Jane Fonda & Ann Coulter, Karl Marx & George Mason.

George Mason? Uhm . . . well, don’t worry about it. Never mind - he really doesn’t matter much anymore.

Anyway, the Tiny Tim quote brings us to the purpose of this blog bit and my appeal to you to join what is almost certainly the silliest, long-running Christmas tradition "in the whole United States of Georgia!"

I’ll keep this short, and provide links at the bottom if anyone really wants to learn the history of this tradition and its preposterous details. But in a Tiny Nutshell, here’s what I’m asking you to do:

Sometime on Christmas Day (December 25th, in your time zone), please drop a coin, any coin (penny, nickel, dime, whatever) into a body of water and MAKE A WISH FOR TINY TIM. (Yes, Tiny Tim, the One-Hit Wonder who gave us the song Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips With Me back in 1968.)

Just say something along the lines of: “I wish Tiny Tim will score just one more hit song.”

That’s all there is to it.

From year to year, lots of people say they’re going to do this but, sadly, very few actually remember to. However, so far, seven people really have done it properly and have had their names added to ‘The Tiny Tim Wish Fulfillment Team’ roster. [See the link below.]

In the past, there have been some minor misunderstandings and I want to clear those up right now, because unless you do it correctly, I am constrained from adding your name to the ‘Tiny Tim Wish Fulfillment Team’ list - much as I'd like to. There are only 2 rules and they are very simple:

1) The wish must be made sometime (day or night) on Christmas Day, wherever you are. Not on Christmas Eve, not on the day after Christmas, not on any of the other 362 days in the year. It can only be made on Christmas Day, December 25th.

2) Also, you must drop a coin into a body of water when you make the wish. You can’t just say or think, “I wish Tiny Tim would have one more hit song”; you must simultaneously drop a coin in water while you are saying or thinking that wish. And I don’t care what sort of body of water you use - a wishing well, the ocean, a lake, your swimming pool, a puddle of rain water formed against the curb of Garden Grove Boulevard [that was for you, Karen!], a glass of tap water – It’z all good . . . provided it’z wet.

That’s all there is to it, friends. Make the wish, do it right, let me know you did it right, and I will immediately add your name to the 'Tiny Tim Wish Fulfillment Team' honor roll.

Someday, when Tiny Tim “miraculously” scores that second hit single, we will all know that it was really us - ‘The Tiny Tim Wish Fulfillment Team' - that made it happen for him!

Who will join The Team next? Who will be #8?
And then who will be #9... #9... #9... #9...?

C'mon, people, come out an' play with me!

Ukulelely Yours . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Related Links:

THE MAKERS OF ‘MOTHER CROAKER’S HEMORRHOID OINTMENT’ PRESENT . . .
[See the heading ‘Here’s The Gig’]

TINY TIM'S CHRISTMAS ALBUM [Join The Tiny Tim Wish Fulfillment Team!]

ORIGINAL 'TINY TIM WISHING SITE' [Photo Gallery]

MAKE A WISH FOR TINY TIM - The Early Years
[How And When It All Got Started]

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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"MANKIND SHOULD BE OUR BUSINESS, BUT WE SELDOM ATTEND TO IT"

2011-12-20T00:23:00.008-07:00

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It was in December, probably 1987 or ’88. I was at work in one of the offices of UCLA’s Parking Department, when two of my best friends there, Lonnie and The Countess, broke out in song. They began singing . . .

Thank you very much, thank you very much! That’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me . . .

When the singing finally came to an end, I asked them, “Where did you hear that song?” Their mouths hung open for a minute or two and they looked at me as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

And then at once they both shouted (as if I were hard of hearing because of the lobsters), “SCROOGE!”

And that’s how I first learned there was a 1970 movie musical called ‘SCROOGE’, based on Dickens’ famous ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Yes, SCROOGE is a musical.

Now look here, I’m a “dude”, as in, “guy”. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my friend The Flyin’ Aardvark. Exactly one week ago, after I had made a rude remark, she wrote this to me: Ahem. ... You are such a GUY! Ha!

I was on my high school’s sophomore football team. I was on my high school’s varsity wrestling team. I NEVER cry (where anyone else can see it) and I DO NOT like musicals!

Well, except for Roy Rogers oaters.

And ‘Singin’ In The Rain’.

And ‘My Fair Lady’.

(Alright, I also like ‘The Sound Of Music’, but so help me, if you ever tell that to anyone, I – will – hunt - you - down - and - KILL - you! Twice!)

Therefore, I was predisposed to dislike SCROOGE. But I saw it anyway. With The Countess. I told her, “If it’s a musical, I won’t like it.” And I was right because... I LOVE it! It is by far my favorite filmed version of 'A Christmas Carol'. And, yes, I've seen the vast majority of them.

How good is this movie? Well, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ and ‘Scrooge’ are both on my Top Ten favorite movies list. No, NO, NO! I do not mean “Top Ten favorite Christmas movies list”. I mean Top Ten list PERIOD!

In fact, I’m not sure which of those Christmas movies I love most. It pretty much depends upon which one I’m watching at the moment.

SCROOGE stars Albert Finney and was filmed in England with an all Great Britain cast. For those who know anything at all about acting, that means the acting is way, Way, WAY friggin’ better than what you will find in most American movies!

The direction is fantabulous, the sets are spectacular, the cinematography is delicious, and the music is so addictive it should be considered a controlled substance. For such an old movie, even the special effects are still pretty good.

Two of my all-time favorite quotations come from the movie SCROOGE:

Mankind should be our business, but we seldom attend to it.
~ Jacob Marley

There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish; the thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember, …time is short, and suddenly you're not there anymore.
~ The Ghost Of Christmas Present

I have only one negative remark to make about SCROOGE: There is one song in the score, sung by Tiny Tim, that is so high-pitched, stepped-on-a-cat’s-tail awful that I fast-forward through it every other year.

[Note: I watch my four favorite Christmas movies only every other year, so they don’t cease delivering to me the emotional impact I watch them for. This year, it’s the “modern” classics – ‘Scrooge’ and ‘A Christmas Story’ – next year it will be the old school classics – “It’s A Wonderful Life’ and ‘Miracle On 34th Street’.]

But even that awful song by Tiny Tim has become a part of the Christmas tradition that I share with my brother, Nappy. Every other year, we TRADITIONALLY fast-forward through it!

There’s a part in SCROOGE where - in anticipation of the second ghost’s appearance, and temporarily feeling bold and brave – Ebenezer yells out, “I’m ready for you!”

Well, this year, just as Tiny Tim’s dreadful song was about to be sung, I raised the DVD gizmo, my finger on the fast-forward button, and I yelled out, “I’m ready for you, Tiny Tim!”

Nappy and I both laughed. Yeah, you can make a “Christmas tradition” out of just about anything.

If you’re having trouble finding “The Christmas Spirit” this year – as it seems many people are – then you need to watch SCROOGE.

Here’s a link to about ten minutes of this wonderful ~~life~~ movie! (This is a future Christmas, in which Ebenezer has died, and the people indebted to him are joyfully singing "Thank you very much!")

Scrooge the Musical (1970) Part 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BF5ZcMgd0Q

[Note: In actuality, the movie’s visuals are not as dark as they appear in this video.]

~~Dog~~ God bless us, every one!
~ TinyTim @Dyslexia.moc

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THEY DON'T KNOW IT'S A DAMN SHOW; THEY THINK IT'S A DAMN FIGHT!

2011-12-18T15:41:00.004-07:00

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For me, the most important Christmas gift on my Wish List came early this year.

The other day I sent an Email to my friend Sheboyganboy Six in which I said this:

The only thing I much care about [in the 2011 NFL football season] is seeing the Packers lose at least one game so they don’t do a ’72 Dolphins.

If you don’t already know, the 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only team in NFL history to win every single game in their schedule, from first regular season game through the Super Bowl. I was 11 & 12 years old when that happened, and it was the ’72 Dolphins that turned me into a football fan. Prior to that year I knew as much about football as I currently know about ballet and breeding show dogs.

My big hero was the Mack truck-like running back Larry Csonka, whose number, 39, I wrote on everything I owned.

Here’s a photo of my hero flippin’ the bird at y’all from an August '72 cover of Sports Illustrated magazine:

At 1:39 this morning, I sent the following to Sheboyganboy Six:

I’ve looked at Green Bay’s remaining regular season games, and there just ain’t nobody over the next 3 games who can beat them. I’d love to be proven wrong on that, but I sure don’t see it happening. I truly think it’s up to the Saints in the postseason.

He wrote back an hour ago [1:44 PM] and said:

As I write this, Kansas City is beating them. I cannot imagine that holding up... but we can hope.

See, the Kansas City Chiefs are a team so bad that earlier this week the owner fired its head coach and installed Romeo Crennel as the interim coach.

Here’s a photo of Romeo near the conclusion of his first game as the mastermind of the Chiefs:

And here’s a photo of the final score of his first game as head coach, a game against the (previously) undefeated Green Bay Packers:

[Cocky quarterback Aaron Rodgers, meet
WINNING quarterback Kyle Orton!]

To quote Yukon Cornelius: “WA-HOOO!”

Apparently the crappy Kansas City Chiefs didn’t know this was supposed to be “a damn show”; they thought it was “a damn fight!” The Rocky Balboas surprise the Apollo Creeds yet again! I loves that stuffs!

The Packers went DOWN! And my favorite football team, the 1972 Dolphins, remain (at least for one more year) the only squad to experience a completely undefeated NFL season. My pristine childhood memory remains intact and left alone!

Somewhere tonight, Csonka, Nick Buoniconti, Mercury Morris and some of the other ’72 Dolphin team members will raise a glass of champagne and toast their unblemished ’72 season – as they do every year when the last undefeated NFL team finally loses a game.

And tonight, I too will raise my glass of . . . I dunno, Guizhou Maotaizhen, maybe (if I can find something to mix with it to mask that awful taste), and toast the 1972 Dolphins and my “perfect” childhood.

Oh, in a heartbeat I would give away my car, my Playboy magazine collection, and the key to my liquor cabinet, and go back to relive those Orange County days . . . if it were possible.

Mention My Name In Sheboygan . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Link:
My Friend Went To China And All I Got Was This Lousy Transmission Fluid

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THE DÉJÀ VU BLOGFEST

2011-12-16T02:50:00.001-07:00

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I just learned about today’s ‘Déjà Vu Blogfest’ by visiting Julie Fedderson’s ‘Gypsy In My Soul’ blog. OK, I’ll play along – what the hell.

The basic idea seems to be this:

"This is your chance to do some major catching up, and re-post a favorite blog post of your own that NEEDS to see the light of day one more time."

Well, I’m not sure this “needs” to see the light of day one mo’ time, but I think it was possibly the most humorous blog bit I ever posted here at ‘STUFFS’ – at least to me it was.

Have you ever wanted to “knock me down, step on my face, slander my name all over the place”? Ever wanted to “step on my blue suede shoes”?

Well, you don’t need to, because I do it for you in my May 3rd, 2009, blog bit titled “DEAR DIARRHEA... (Or, JOURNAL NOTES ABOUT A CRAPPY LOVE AFFAIR)”.

In that blog bit, posted before I was including photos or videos and relying solely on my writing (not a smart idea, to be sure), I spoke of coming across a diary I had kept back in 1970. It was filled with “stuffs” about a schoolyard crush I had on a girl named Yolanda.

True to form, the blog bit was way, Way, WAY too long. All I can say for it is that I was being A-list snarky, I was dogging myself unmercifully, and it even made me laugh . . . at myself.

If anyone is interested in visiting or revisiting that exercise in self-flagellation, here’s a link to it:

“DEAR DIARRHEA... (Or, JOURNAL NOTES ABOUT A CRAPPY LOVE AFFAIR)”

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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MY FRIEND WENT TO CHINA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TRANSMISSION FLUID!

2011-12-15T13:58:00.006-07:00

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This blog bit could also have been appropriately titled “The Ultimate Chinese Torture Test”.

I have an American-Chinese friend named Gui Hong, and she recently returned from a trip to China that she had given herself as a Holiday gift. In Nanning, she has a number of extended family members whom she had not seen for a long time; some of them are getting quite old and Gui Hong wanted to see them again while she still had the opportunity.

Just before she returned to the U.S., one of her uncles – or some old goat related to her in some way – gave Gui Hong what he said was a bottle of highly prized and coveted Chinese wine. Since she does not drink alcohol at all, but she knows I’m “the town drunk”, my friend decided to pass the bottle of ‘Guizhou Maotaizhen’ on to me.

My first thought upon seeing it was:

Sheesh! It looks like a bottle of motor oil, power steering fluid, or transmission fluid – something one might pour into an automobile.

[Can you find the Chinese wine amongst these common household products?]

The box it came in was labeled almost entirely in Chinese and the only things that seemed understandable to me were “500ml” and “53% vol”. Naturally I took that 53% to be alcohol content, making this “wine” a whopping 106 proof! Hokey-Smoke! One could set himself on fire with that if he wasn’t careful.

Of course I thanked Gui Hong, and I opened the bottle to smell it. It had a very unusual, complex aroma; I could catch a hint of what seemed almost sake-like, sake being a Japanese rice wine (I loves me some sake!) but there were other scents too, something almost floral and sweet, and who knows what else. I could imagine this wine had the potential to be quite good OR quite bad; the aroma wasn't a good enough clue to the flavor.

Well, a couple nights later, I decided to try Maotaizhen for the first time. I put a couple ice cubes into my little silver cup that Althea gave me in 1959 to commemorate my birth (you know, what I have referred to on my blogs as my “GraMar cup”), and I poured the Maotai over the ice and let it chill for a bit.

Finally, I raised the cup to my lips and took a small sip.

Eventually my body stopped convulsing on the floor and my vision returned to me. I kid you not, that was perhaps the foulest taste my mouth had ever experienced. And that’s saying a hell of a lot, people – you don’t know where my mouth has been!

And then I quickly had this awful thought (and, no, I’m not kidding here and being snarky in an attempt at humor) . . .

Gui Hong speaks only very basic Chinese - having been born in the U.S., her vocabulary is rather limited. How can I be sure this stuffs is REALLY meant to be consumed by human beings? What if she misunderstood that old man who gave this to her and in fact it truly is Chinese transmission fluid? Or perhaps that "53% vol" meant it was 53-weight motor oil!

So, before taking another sip, I immediately went to the computer and started Googling the name of this supposed Chinese wine, and wondering if I had already, just by that one sip, poisoned myself to death.

To my surprise, I discovered that Guizhou Maotaizhen, or Maotai, as it’s more commonly referred to, truly is a Chinese wine. Not only that, but indeed it really is highly prized and admired in China.
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At http://www.cswxjl.com/en/product_info_2186.html it is described this way:

Gather the spirit of mountains and rivers, accumulate the sun and the moon essence.

Open maotai-flavor liquor, the first tree model. Outstanding, quiet and tastefully laid out and delicate, very full-bodied, the aftertaste is long, the empty cup stay joss-stick lasting.

Successive crown of national alcohol comparison, as the national wine.

OK! OK! Color me Convinced. Yeah, it “stay joss-stick lasting” alright!

There was quite a bit of information about this stuffs on a Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maotai

In part, Wiki sez:

Maotai has been used on official occasions in feasts with foreign heads of state and distinguished guests visiting China. It is the only alcoholic beverage presented as an official gift by Chinese embassies in foreign countries and regions.

It received additional exposure in China and abroad when Zhou Enlai used the liquor to entertain Richard Nixon during the state banquet for the U.S. presidential visit to China in 1972. It is one of China's official state banquet wines and claims to be one of the world's three best known liquors (together with whisky and cognac) and is therefore presented to all official guests of state.

For a long time I’ve said that if I could spend a day speaking with any person in history, my first choice would be Jesus Christ, and my second would be Senator Joseph McCarthy.

I’m forced to make an adjustment. Who I would now most want to talk with is Richard Nixon, just to be able to say, “Tell me, Tricky Dick, what did you honestly think of the Maotai?”

I also found a pretty funny Internet exchange pertaining to Maotai between some wine connoiseurs [Whoa! I spelled it correctly!] at the Wine Berserkers site here:

http://wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36568

Believe me, people, this Maotai stuffs will melt the enamel right off your teeth; it could be used to kill fleas on dogs, de-claw cats and execute laogai prisoners.

The real challenging thing for me now is try to come up with something I can use as a mixer for it.

What? - Huh? - Am I REALLY going to drink the rest of this stuffs?

Well, hell yes, I’m going to drink it! How could you even ask me that? What’s wrong with you? Did you not read above where I said Maotai is 106 proof?! Sheesh! You people are a bit slow in the head.

So, what can I use to dilute it and hide the awful taste of it? I’m thinking that first I will try Windex. According to Gus Portokalos in the movie 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', Windex will fix anything.

If that doesn’t cut it, I’m thinking I’ll try the nubile blood of virgin sacrifices. Perhaps I can trade something for some of the leftovers from those nice folks at BOHEMIAN GROVE.

Failing that, as a last resort, I will simply drink straight shots of Maotai, followed by vodka and peppermint schnapps chasers.

You see, even at the height of my alcoholic haze dayz in my early and mid twenties, I never did like the taste of those two drinks. So, I’m figuring that using them as a chaser to wash down the Maotai, at the very least, I will finally learn to love vodka and peppermint schnapps after all these years.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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SPIRITUAL SONGS SUNG FOR YOU . . . FROM THE SANDY SHORE OF MALIBU

2011-12-12T02:16:00.008-07:00

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Caught a wave upon the ocean
Saw a way to life’s devotion

Have you ever heard of John Zambetti?

Neither had I.

Have you ever heard of Walter Egan?

Well, if you were a teenager or in your twenties in the late ‘70s then I know your answer to that second question is “Yes”.

Walter Egan, of course, is the One-Hit Wonder whose ballad ‘MAGNET AND STEEL’ (with Stevie Nicks doing background vocals) climbed to Billboard’s number 8 spot in 1978.

Walter Egan w/ Stevie Nicks - Magnet And Steel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar5GaTC440M

If you bought Egan’s ‘Not Shy’ album in the Summer of Seventy-Eight, like I did, you noticed a picture on the LP sleeve that showed Egan and his bandmates posing around a big ol’ American-made car. Egan and the bloke to his right were wearing T-shirts that said “The Malibooz” on them.

As gin-soaked as my memory is, I can still remember, back in '78, wondering who or what “The Malibooz” was.

Now I know. The Malibooz is a band that Walter Egan has been a part of for over 30 years.

Two or three years ago, I somehow became aware of an album by The Malibooz titled “LIVING WATER (The Surfer’s Mass)”. I’d never heard it - only knew that it was supposed to be a sort of prayerful, meditative collection of Surf Songs sort of correlated to the Catholic Mass. I’ve never been Catholic, but ~~hell yeah~~ “Heck” yeah, color me “intrigued”. But at that time, “Living Water” was hard to come by and expensive.

In the blog bits “Motel, Money, Murder, Madness” and “The Firefly In The Belly Of The Beast” I told you about a recent 3-day trip I made to Los Angeles. I had been planning that trip for a few months, and part of the plan was to visit the record stores Soundsations and Amoeba.

I determined that I would buy a few compact discs that were missing from my collection, but with the stipulation that what I bought should have some distinct Southern California association for me.

[For example: I bought Van Morrison’s “Moondance” which includes the song “Brand New Day”, the song that my screenplay “Billy ‘N’ Billie” – which I wrote in ’91, when I was an Angeleno – concludes with.]

One of three albums that I was absolutely determined to pick up while on this trip was “LIVING WATER (The Surfer’s Mass)” by The Malibooz. I’d heard some audio clips at the CD Baby website [a GREAT music source, by the way!] and I was sure I would enjoy the whole thing. ("LIVING WATER" was chosen one of the Top 5 Albums of 1999 by D.J. Johnson of C.D. Magazine.)

Malibu . . . my oldest friend, Eric, lived in Malibu when we were students at Santa Monica High School (Samohi). Some weekends I would stay at his house near Zuma Beach. He was living in that same Malibu house when he drove down to pick up me, my brother Nappy, and his best buddy, Mike, on our way to ‘Cal Jam 2’ in 1978.

[But Eric had forgotten to bring the tickets! They were still sitting on a coffee table in Malibu. While Eric drove all the way back to Malibu to get those pieces of paper, I walked up and down my street - Sunset Avenue - wearing boxing gloves, and beating the unliving sh#t out of every wooden post supporting a street sign that I could find. Nappy’s best friend, Mike, STILL talks about that!]

Believe it or not, even the superstore Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard didn’t have “Living Water (The Surfer’s Mass)” by The Malibooz. So a few weeks after returning to Airheadzona, I got on the CD Baby website and ordered it.

OH . . . MY . . . GOD!

I wasn’t prepared for this! I was pretty sure I would like it but . . . this is the best new music [released in 1999] I have acquired in, like, ages!

Now think about this: Walter Egan is the “big name” in the band, and yet the relatively unknown John Zambetti is the lead singer and principal songwriter. In other words, Walter Egan is perfectly content to be more of a “background” member of this group simply because . . . it’s a TRUE LABOR OF LOVE!

[And think about the incredible talent – like John Zambetti - that is out there in “this world”, but which we rarely learn about because these artists refuse to compromise their vision and gift by kowtowing to “the talentless, suit-wearing system” that dictates who does and who does not have “It”. What a load of Bullshevik!]

“LIVING WATER (The Surfer’s Mass)” is one of those albums so ~~good~~ great that every time I listen to it in its entirety, I come away thinking that a different song is my favorite.

A few minutes ago, I was sure that “Caught A Wave” (not to be confused with the Beach Boys’ “Catch A Wave”) was my favorite track. Three hours ago, it was “Lamb Of God” [I challenge you to refrain from singing along with that “Ahhh-AHHH-Ahhh!”]. Five hours before that, I was certain it was the instrumental “Crest, Then Broken”.

Had you asked me late yesterday what my favorite song was, I would have told you the best song in the set is “Bitter Water” (which, according to CD Baby, ended 1999 as the #1 MP3 download at Indiespace.com), but earlier in that day it was “Holy, Holy”.

Oh, wait, track 6 is playing again – “Crest, Then Broken” – yeah. Yeah! Oh, yeah! Definitely the best . . . if it’s not “Caught A Wave”.

HOKEY-SMOKE AND HOLY GOD!

I’ve shut off my completely beloved traditional Christmas songs and have devoted my ears to The Malibooz’s “Living Water” – which works equally well for background music to decorate a Christmas Tree to or music to contemplate and forgive by. Or just stuffs to dig no matter what you’re doing or what you believe.

The first thing you will notice in listening to “Living Water (The Surfer’s Mass)” is that The Malibooz love and respect the great music of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys; this is very Beach Boys-ish in style – with the wonderful, intricate, mellow harmonizing we’d expect from that Classic vocal group. But these songs are all spiritual in nature. Which is NOT to say that one must be spiritually-minded or dogmatically devoted to any particular religion in order to appreciate them.

Regardless of your spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof) this is simply breathtaking music that mostly ranges from the extremely pretty (“Bitter Water” and “Lamb Of God”) to the absolutely gorgeous (“Crest, Then Broken” and “Caught A Wave”).

[Who is playing that Classical guitar lead in “Crest, Then Broken”? It’s either Egan or Zambetti, but whichever of them it is, it breaks my heart into a Godzillion pieces! And how about that bass line in “Bitter Water”? Whoa! Du-uuu-de - gnarly!]

I’ve had “Living Water” for about a week, and my first time through the disc I thought it was very good, quite nice, but not necessarily “all that”. But by the 7th or 8th time through it, my mind had been shattered and blown away by it.

I like to tell myself that I’m a fairly good writer, and I’m seldom at a loss for words, but this record – all 33 minutes of it (33, that figures!) – I can hardly describe. The five reviewers at Amazon.com have probably said it better than I can. I suggest you read THESE reviews . . . but BUY the album at CD BABY.

Overall, this is extremely mellow – you’re not going to crank this up on the stereo when The League Of Soul Crusaders is coming over to drink beer and knock holes in the walls – but there are a few upbeat tracks. “Kyrie” and “Doxology/Amen” do rock, but not for long. And “Alleluia” sounds just like Dick Dale or The Surfaris trippin' on God, which, in fact, is quite cool (I wouldn’t even mind having an entire album in THAT style, too), but those three tracks - accounting for three minutes and thirty-seven seconds COMBINED - scarcely make a dent in the lushly layered, beautiful mood that the other songs set.

I know most people perceive us Southern California surfer-type dudes to be shiftless and dimwitted, but I’m here to prove those perceptions to be, like, mostly . . . pretty true. ...Nevertheless, these dudes – these musicians from ‘Surfrider Beach’ in Malibu – definitely dove deep and came back to the beach to tell us of the wonders they’ve found below the Spirit’s surface.

What a Christmas gift I gave myself! (Well, ~~hell~~ heck, I’ve been a “good boy” this year . . . mostly.)

Malibooz Band Benediciti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_cDymVHZLc

Malibooz Band Summer Wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmqraCx2a0&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Malibooz Band Caught A Wave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTgXusqo5jM

Related Links:
The ‘Fat City Cigar Lounge’ Review
I’m “Not Shy” Now . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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I'M “NOT SHY” NOW . . .

2011-12-11T21:05:00.005-07:00

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[From the STMcC archive: 2006, July 15th]

I’m “NOT SHY” now . . . but I'm still rather attached to my body.

I graduated from high school in 1977, and at the Theatre Arts Department year-end banquet, I received two awards: 'SHYEST' and 'BEST BODY'. That said a lot for my acting ability, didn't it?

You wouldn't expect the guy with the best bod to also be the shyest, would you? Well, take a look through some of my blog bits and you'll see that I'm no longer shy (some might even call me an opinionated, loud-mouthed jerk). And, yes, I did have the best formed male body, but that's because I was also on the varsity wrestling team - pumping iron all the time - and my bodily competition in the Theatre Arts Department was a bunch of prancing, dancing sissies singing ‘Westside Story’ tunes. Not much competition there, ya know?

One Summer after graduation, my friend Eric (yep, again, that same bloke I got lost with one night in the Okefenokee Swamp), and I were hitting all of the Rock 'N' Roll clubs and seldom missed the free noontime Friday concerts at Santa Monica City College. One Friday we caught this dude named Walter Egan playing great Summer beach tunes on that diminutive stage, and I liked his catchy Pop so much that I went right out and bought his just released album, 'NOT SHY’. Within weeks, I heard his song 'Magnet And Steel' on the radio and listened as that July and August it steadily climbed the charts all the way up to #8, making Egan yet another One-Hit Wonder. I felt like I was an "insider."

What's surprising is that the album 'NOT SHY' contains at least half a dozen other cuts that could have just as easily cracked Billboard's Top Ten chart, being (to my ears) much better than the "one hit", ‘Magnet And Steel’, but they got no radio airplay. Who can explain that stuff? But if you want an authentic slice of that late '70s Pop pie, you could do much worse than Egan's second release, 'NOT SHY.' It was recorded in L.A. in '77 and contains 36 minutes of music that includes Fleetwood Mac icon Stevie Nicks singing backup on 5 tracks, and bandmates Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood on 2 each, along with Dean Torrance (of Jan & Dean fame) on 1 other.

Let’s look at 'NOT SHY' song-by-song, shall we? . . .

‘SWEET SOUTH BREEZE’ is a real toe-tapper that opens with Egan's twangy guitar. This had Top Ten hit potential.

As I stated in my blog bit titled “Notes From An Unnoteworthy Vacation”, in September of 2008, I put ‘Not Shy’ into the car’s CD player to begin a road trip… and a subsequent tradition. I found that playing ‘Not Shy’ – with it’s first track being “Sweet South Breeze” – was the ideal way to start a trip on the highway.

As I wrote a couple months ago in “Disappointment In Riptide City”:
Over the last few getaways that Nappy and I have taken together, we have developed a new “Trip Tradition”: the first compact disc we spin as we’re just getting "on the road again" is Walter Egan’s ‘Not Shy’ album. The light, joyful, catchy Pop melodies just seem to set the perfect tone for some fun, relaxing days ahead.

Listen to this song [below] and see if you can’t easily imagine yourself hearing it as you look out over the steering wheel through your car’s windshield and as you’re driving down the interstate highway that will take you outta town and into new horizons – [don’t ask me what the images in this video have to do with the song; it’s clear that someone was seriously “Incongrutiating”!]:

Dulce Brisa del Sur (Sweet South Breeze)

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTYs5XXePNQ

‘MAGNET AND STEEL’ is the big hit. A ballad which includes a very Beach Boys-like guitar break.

"Hey baby, ya wanna camp out on the beach with me tonight and build a bonfire and, uh... Oh?... OK, well maybe next weekend?"

‘FINALLY FIND A GIRLFRIEND’ with Stevie Nicks featured rather prominently in the background had "hit" written all over it. After years of being the loneliest guy with a good body, I finally found a girlfriend. But the minute I began joyfully singing this song... she dumped me! And the search began again. (Don’tcha hate it when that happens?)

walter egan finally fnd a grlfriend
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxVspoIN6eA

‘THE BLONDE IN THE BLUE T-BIRD’ is another one that shoulda been a hit. Who can hear this one without thinking of the movie 'American Graffiti'?

Walter Egan - Blonde In A Blue T-Bird
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFlf0Z3GbvM

[That’s gotta be Stevie Nicks driving the T-Bird in this video, am I right?]

‘STAR IN THE DUST’ contains the lyric, "I recall what somebody once told me: 'Only the lucky in love survive'." Here Egan cleverly self-references his debut album which kicked off with the song 'Only The Lucky (In Love Survive)'. So now you know who the "somebody" was who told that to Walter Egan. It was Walter Egan! Ha! I likes it. I likes me some clever stuffs!

‘I WANNIT’ is the weak link on the album. Not offensive but not a stand-out track either.

‘MAKE IT ALONE’ contains some angst-driven guitar playing from our boy which gives the song the edge it requires - really his best guitar work on the album. And, yes, you can make it alone! Just look at me - I've made it alone! But it is kinda lonely to be a lone kinda guy. But you CAN make it... alone... and lonely... very lonely... desperately lonely... oh, so very, very lonely!

OK, that's all I have to say about that because it's starting to depress me.

‘UNLOVED’ - Ah, yes, here's another one about being alone, lonely, unloved. It's about a girl who can't be contacted because she's "unlisted" her phone number. But hey, the singer's gonna make it alone even though he may be a bit lonely... a bit unloved... I mean, really unloved. Oh man, here we go again.

"Hey baby, let's get together and... Huh?... oh, I see. Your hair, huh? OK, well maybe next weekend?"

‘JUST THE WANTING’ - No, this brooding ballad is not about wanting a girl when you're unloved and trying to make it alone… very alone… and lonely! It's about the wanting to attain something in life... something a little BIGGER than a girlfriend... unless, of course, your girlfriend is named Bertha, or something like that. There's a line in this song that says, "I remember when I was seventeen and my life had just begun." That's funny because I was seventeen when I first saw Walter playing on that little college stage, and I too felt that my life was full of pristine promise. Little did I know back then that the best I'd ever do in life was to write semi-appreciated blog bits for a then unimaginable Internet site while trying to.... make it alone... so alone...

‘HOT SUMMER NIGHTS’ - Yeah, I know all about hot Summer nights (today's high here in Phoenix was about 115 degrees and it's still about 100 at 2 AM), but somehow I get the feeling that Egan has a different kind of "hot" in mind. This may be my favorite track. Here's another one with tremendous hit potential that inexplicably never got played over our radios in the summer of '78.
"A-Woo-ooo-ooo-OO-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo, hot summer nights."

Walter Egan - Hot Summer Nights
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-CrpU5y5I

There's nothing fancy on 'Not Shy’, just simple but catchy commercial Pop - Summery and tasty.

Alright, listen, I gotta go now.
No, you can't go with me. And don't let me catch you trying to follow me, either. I'm gonna ‘MAKE IT ALONE’, gosh darn-it, and I can't do that if you're following after me like a lost little puppy dog! "Alone" means alone, and I can make it that way... I CAN.... I just know I can!

Of course, if you're blonde and female... you think maybe I could catch a lift with you in your blue T-Bird? Perhaps we could ‘MAKE IT ALONE’ together?... Oh?... OK, well maybe next weekend?

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THE REINCARNATING JESUS: WILL IT BE HIS "2nd COMING" OR HIS 34th?

2011-12-08T13:15:00.004-07:00

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The concept of reincarnation in general is plenty disturbing enough to those who subscribe to the modern Christian orthodoxy even before one suggests that Jesus Himself may have reincarnated multiple times on this Earth prior to attaining His “Christhood”.

It’s certainly not my intention to start a holy war over this, but merely to point out – as I did in my 2010 4-part blog installment about reincarnation [see the link at the bottom of this blog bit] – that there are Biblical clues, if not outright evidence, to suggest that Jesus had reincarnated a number of times prior to living the life we’re familiar with found in the New Testament Gospels.

I am not going to delve into the minutiae of this subject in this blog bit, but just touch upon a few of the highlights. Should anyone wish to dig deeper into the details with me in the comment section, I will be happy to discuss this topic further. And I do mean “discuss”, NOT “argue”; this subject is not important enough to me to argue about it with anyone.

As I wrote in my earlier reincarnation series, it’s important that right out of the chute we draw a distinction between the concepts of Reincarnation and Soul Transmigration.

Soul Transmigration posits that a soul might return to Earth sometime after death as a human being, an animal such as a dog, a cat, a (sacred) cow, or even as ostensibly inanimate objects such as rocks or raindrops. Reincarnation, on the other hand, implies the soul's return to Earth is strictly in the human form. There is no compelling evidence to support the former theory, and much to support the latter.

And here I am speaking strictly of reincarnation – I believe that Jesus likely lived multiple different lifetimes on Earth prior to the one we’re familiar with from The Holy Bible. I do not believe that Jesus ever appeared here in anything other than the human form.

The story of Jesus Christ in a nutshell goes like this: Jesus was born to the virgin Mary. As early as the age of twelve it was apparent that He was on a mission from God [see Luke chapter 2]. Jesus lived a completely faultless, sinless life [see Hebrews 4:15 & 1 Peter 2:22] and representing an unblemished sacrificial lamb for the Atonement of all mankind’s sins [see 1 Peter 1:18-19], He allowed the religious and governmental authorities to crucify Him on the Cross. Three days later He rose from the dead and eventually ascended into Heaven, having promised to return at a future time to cast out the devil and rule this world in the Name of God.

I believe all of the above to be true. But I don’t believe that lifetime described above is the first one that Jesus lived on Earth. I am not positively certain, but I am fairly well convinced that He lived an unknown number of prior lifetimes – perhaps as many as 32 – and when He returns, it won’t be the Second Coming of Jesus, but maybe the 34th.

Here’s my own take on it, again in a nutshell: The Soul we know as Jesus (or Yeshua) had been on His Divine mission for a long time and over the course of multiple lifetimes He had dedicated Himself to redeeming mankind from its sins with His perfect Holy Blood. But in order to serve as our Perfect Sacrifice, our "Unblemished Lamb", He first had to learn and grow into a life of Godly Perfection. Despite being committed to this mission to a greater degree than any one of us has ever been committed to anything in our own lives, it took Jesus a number of lifetimes to attain the state of “Christhood”.

The Old Testament contained plenty of references to a coming Redeemer or Messiah. The Jews knew Someone was coming to save them but fortunately, when He arrived on the scene, few of them recognized Jesus as being that Messiah promised to them.

Galatians 4:4-5 tells us that “when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

My position is that there was nothing arbitrary about “when the fulness of time came” – the reason it was then “the fulness of time” is because Jesus had now learned to live a perfectly obedient, Godly life; He couldn’t have come to save mankind any earlier because He wasn’t yet able to live a completely sinless life and therefore able to offer Himself up as our sacrificial Lamb without blemish.

I first encountered the concept of a reincarnating Jesus through the psychic “readings” of Edgar Cayce. According to Cayce, previous lifetimes of Jesus that are recorded in the Bible include Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Joseph, Joshua, and Asaph.

At one time I was extremely knowledgeable in the Cayce readings, but I eventually came to dismiss most of the information that came through him unless it came in the course of a “Health” or healing reading for someone.

That many of Cayce’s Health readings proved to be efficacious and supernatural in origin can not be reasonably disputed. Sadly, however, I believe Cayce eventually fell in with a number of people he ought not to have been associating with – people who did not really share his great spiritual sense and concern for the ill – and as a result, his gift from God was often misused, and was sometimes even manipulated by God’s great enemy the devil.

So, although I first encountered the idea that Jesus may have lived a number of previous lifetimes via the Cayce readings, my conclusion that this is so is not in the least bit based on the Cayce material. I believe this concept solely due to my own intensive Bible study over the course of close to two decades. The verses I am going to illustrate below - which I believe cannot be understood at all unless we consider them to be references to prior incarnations of Jesus – were all revealed to me in the course of my Bible studies. I believe that it was the Holy Spirit of God that opened my eyes to them.

I make no claim that these things are absolute facts (although I presently believe them to be) and I make no claim to having special insight into spiritual matters and The Holy Bible. I am merely showing you what I believe God’s Holy Spirit has shown me. Alright, let’s get on it!

These are only some highlights, the more obvious references to Jesus reincarnating on this Earth. There is more, but this will do. And, unless otherwise indicated, the translation I am using for this blog bit is the New American Standard version, only because many Biblical “scholars” (such as John MacArthur) consider this translation to be the most precise or literal of all those drawn from the ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts.

Personally, I am convinced that the most authentic translation of the New Testament (and perhaps the Old Testament as well) into English is found in George M. Lamsa’s ‘HOLY BIBLE From The Ancient Eastern Text’, translated from the ancient Aramaic manuscripts. But since it is largely mainstream Christians who will find these reincarnation verses so challenging, it makes sense for me to utilize a translation that many mainstream Christians consider to be exacting in their adherence to modern scholarship based upon the Greek writings.

Both Colossians 1:18 and Revelation 1:5 describe Jesus as being “the first-born of the dead”. In this case, as it sometimes is in The Bible, the word “dead” is implying not a physical death but a sense of spiritual death, brought about by a perceived separation from God. This must be so, because Jesus was not the first-born from the dead physically, since He Himself raised individuals from physical death, and at the moment that Jesus Himself died, according to Matthew 27, numerous dead saints rose from their graves and returned to life among the living.

If then Jesus is “the first-born from the dead” it means that He was the first person who returned to a sense of Oneness with God after having previously perceived Himself to be “spiritually dead”. I contend that He achieved this spiritual state of Oneness with God over the course of several lifetimes of successes and failures and a progression toward the Perfect Life.

Let’s look at some passages from The Holy Bible that seem to indicate that Jesus had physically lived and died on Earth in prior incarnations:

PSALM 16:10

The writer of the Sixteenth Psalm is rejoicing in a loving, protective and trustworthy God. In the 10th verse, he writes: “For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay.”

Thy Holy One is a reference to the promised Messiah to come, and the reference to Him not undergoing decay is an allusion to the fact that the Messiah’s dead body would not decay in His tomb. It implies that the dead Messiah will rise from His physical death. Remember that, you’ll need it later.

Now let’s look at . . .

ACTS 13:33-39 . . .

33 …that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.’

34 As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no more to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: ‘I WILL GIVE YOU THE HOLY and SURE blessings OF DAVID.’

35 Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ‘YOU WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR HOLY ONE TO UNDERGO DECAY.’

36 For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay;

37 but He whom God raised did not undergo decay.

38 Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you,

39 and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses

Now, did you catch that line “no more to return to decay” in the 34th verse? What could that mean, “no more to return to decay”? Doesn’t that imply that the person in question, Jesus, had PREVIOUSLY experienced decay of the flesh after death?

And yet the psalmist, and the writer of Acts, and all the writers of the four Gospels all tell us that the body of Jesus did not undergo decay for He rose from the grave three days after his death on the cross.

So, what could that line “no more to return to decay” possibly mean if it’s not an allusion to one or more previous lifetimes lived in the flesh by the Soul we know as Jesus - lives in which He died, was buried, and His body decayed according to the natural order of things.

HEBREWS 5:5-12 . . .

5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;

6 just as He says also in another passage, “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.”

7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.

8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,

10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

OK, there are actually a couple of allusions to prior incarnations of Jesus in these verses. First, we know from the Bible that from the moment of His birth through the moment of His death, Jesus was totally, unequivocally devoted to the Will of God; at no point did He ever say or do anything that was not in absolute alignment with the Mind of God. Had He transgressed God’s Will at any time, even in the least little thing, Jesus would not have been utterly sinless, completely flawless, and therefore He would not have been qualified to offer Himself up as an “Unblemished Lamb”, that sacrificial atonement for mankind’s sins [1 Peter 1:19]. One minor slip-up and the mission of Jesus would have crashed and burned.

Bearing that in mind, what then are verses 8 and 9 referring to? “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…”

Wait a second! Jesus was ALWAYS, from the moment of His birth, obedient to God. He did not “learn” obedience “from the things which He suffered”! Heck, it would be more accurate to reverse that and say that Jesus suffered from His obedience, after all, it was His obedience to God’s Will that sent Him to the crucifixion which He suffered.

I see no other way of interpreting verse 8 than to say that it is alluding to one or more prior incarnations in which Jesus learned through mistakes and corrections or discipline how to be obedient to God. [When he transgressed, He suffered, and over time, through those transgressions and negative repercussions, Jesus learned full, loving, Godly obedience.]

[“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”
~ Hebrews 12:5-6]

And verse 9 only seems to confirm that interpretation: “having been made perfect” meaning that having attained the state of perfection through His lifetimes of trial and error, He eventually became the source of eternal Salvation for all of us.

Incidentally, the George Lamsa Bible translation into English from the Aramaic (rather than from the Greek), the Bible I think contains the most accurate rendering of New Testament manuscripts, states the 9th verse like this: “And He grew to be perfect and became the Author of life everlasting to all who obey Him.” That’s an even more compelling wording indicative of the idea that Jesus was the firstborn of the dead, that going from a perceived spiritual death to true Life in the knowledge of Oneness with God, was a learning process for Jesus – a process that took multiple lifetimes to master.

The secondary evidence in Hebrews 5:5-11 that Jesus had been on the Earth prior to His appearance as the Messianic Savior is the material pertaining to the priest Melchizedek. The Bible tells us that Melchizedek was a kind of special spiritual entity – he was not born of woman, but just sort of materialized here; nor did he ever physically die but apparently just dematerialized at some point. The priest Melchizedek was on the Earth during the lifetime of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, and Abraham tithed to Melchizedek [Hebrews 7].

Well, the conundrum presented in those verses is this: How can Jesus be a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek – and not just a priest in the order but THE HIGH PRIEST OF THE ORDER – if Melchizedek never died and still lives in the spiritual realm? How can Jesus forever be the high priest of a priestly order when the father or originator of that order is still alive?

I believe the answer to that little puzzle is this: Jesus and Melchizedek are one and the same soul! And notice how Saint Paul, the author of the book of Hebrews, says of Melchizedek in verse 11, “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” It’s as if Saint Paul knows that the people he was addressing were not prepared to learn the WHOLE STORY – that Jesus IS Melchizedek, that Jesus had been here on this planet before. In the 12th verse he tells them that they still don’t even grasp the elementary principles at work here, that they are still partaking of milk when they ought to be ready for solid food.

Of all the Biblical characters that Edgar Cayce said were prior incarnations of The Master Soul, Jesus, the one I am most convinced about is Melchizedek, because it seems to be fairly obvious to me from passages about that ancient priest found in the books of Genesis and Hebrews.

By the way, a little Post-It note here:

As stated above, other Biblical characters that Edgar Cayce claimed to be prior incarnations of Jesus were Joseph and Joshua. There are a few passages in the book of Exodus that I find super-intriguing, particularly if we consider the possibility that Cayce was correct.

For example, in Exodus 13:19 we are told that Moses instructed the Israelites to carry the bones of Joseph with them into “the Promised Land”. So, isn’t it curious that just as Jesus Christ preceded us and leads us into the spiritual Promised Land, so the bones of Joseph (a prior incarnation of Jesus?) accompanied the Chosen People into the physical Promised Land?

We always think of Moses being alone on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments from God, but according to Exodus 24:13-14 and Exodus 32:17-18, Joshua was right alongside Moses on Mount Sinai. And wouldn’t that make perfect sense if in fact Joshua was also a prior incarnation of the Soul of our Savior?

And this last verse I find extraordinarily compelling: In Exodus 33:11 we find both Moses and Joshua meeting with God in the tabernacle tent, but it says that when Moses exited the tent, Joshua remained within it.

That’s interesting when we remember that Moses was eventually deemed unworthy to lead the Israelites into the physical Promised Land, and it was Joshua who took over the leadership and brought the people into the Land of Milk And Honey. Doesn’t it make sense that the Savior Soul, Jesus, would be the One who would bring God’s children into BOTH forms of the Promised Land – the physical, and later, the spiritual?

Yes, I do strongly suspect that the individual we know as Jesus was also Melchizedek, Joseph and Joshua.

The last verse I will present here pertaining to this subject is a quote that is universally regarded by the Christian churches to have come from Jesus Christ Himself, spoken to Saint John in a vision and recorded in The Bible’s last book, Revelation. In the spirit of full disclosure I want to make it understood that this verse is one that reads very differently in the New American Standard Bible and the King James Version than it does in Lamsa’s translation from the ancient Aramaic.

My interpretation below does not hold up except when considering the wording from the Lamsa translation, so if you are of a mind to dismiss that translation as faulty and not authentic enough for consideration, then you will be equally of a mind to disregard this last bit of evidence I am presenting here, but here goes anyway . . .

REVELATION 2:25-27

In the New American Standard Bible those verses read like this:

25 Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.

26 He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS;

27 AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received authority from My Father

But in George Lamsa’s translation from the ancient Aramaic – the very language that Jesus Himself spoke – those same verses read like this:

25 But hold fast to that which you already have till I come.

26 And he who overcomes and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;

27 And he shall shepherd them with a rod of iron; like the vessels of the potter, they shall be shattered, even as I was disciplined by My Father.

The obvious question here being: When was Jesus disciplined by God? Nowhere in the New Testament do we find Jesus being anything but totally obedient to God’s Will, at no point could He have gotten off the track and still been the unblemished Sacrifice for mankind. Not once was it ever necessary for God to “discipline” the Messiah Jesus who remained constantly faithful to God’s nature and wishes.

Therefore, if the Lamsa translation is more accurate than the New American Standard version, and if Jesus was ever “disciplined” by God His Father, then that discipline MUST have occurred in a prior earthly incarnation because it sure didn’t occur in Jesus' New Testament lifetime.

Now some folks might ask, “If it’s true that Jesus lived one or more prior earthly lifetimes in the flesh, why does The Bible not state that plainly?”

My answer to that is, “For the same reason that there are many allusions to reincarnation in general that can be found in The Bible and yet it is not articulated blatantly.” And why is it not?

Well, you will find that here ---> REINCARNATION & THE HOLY BIBLE [Part 1 Of 4]

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“THE FIREFLY” IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

2011-12-04T21:07:00.008-07:00

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Why is this blog called STUFFS ?

Anyone?

You there – in the vest, is it? Why do you suppose this blog is called STUFFS?

No idea, eh?

Well, class, you’d better hope that I grade according to “the curve” method.

This blog is called STUFFS because most of the time I try to keep things fun and lighthearted here. There are exceptions to that rule o’ thumb, as there are exceptions to most rules, but that’s the general idea. I have another blog for darker, more serious issues, but that blog is by invitation only... and not all y’all are invited there.

However, periodically I have to dig deeper, address more serious issues, even here at STUFFS. Sometimes I even need to dive into the belly of the beast. This is one of those times. Nevertheless, I shall try to gild the Black Mariah. I will also try to keep this blog bit from expanding beyond short dog volume.

Lost already, aren’t ya? I could tell by the blank look on your faces.

Hokey-Smoke! Why do I always get these remedial students assigned to me?!

Black Mariah – a 19th Century hearse.

Short Dog – a cheap, 375 ml. bottle of (usually about) 19% alcohol wine preferred by Skid Row drunks. It goes by various names such as Night Train and Thunderbird, but is always identifiable by the words “serve very cold” printed somewhere on the label.

OK, class, are we all up to speed now?

Unless you’re a total newbie to this very popular blog [Cough!-Cough!], you already know that I am of the opinion that the relatively unknown first and only album by David & David, "Boomtown" - released in 1986 - is one of the great Rock music masterpieces of all time.

I bought it the year it was released and it caught me at a moment in time when I was utterly in sync with its themes and its characters. I was living in Los Angeles (the sometimes stated and sometimes merely implied setting for the majority of the songs on “Boomtown”) and I was at a real poor point in my life: my spiritual sense was at low ebb, I felt alone (kinda like I do now), and I was wallowing in darkness and an anger that I was even too apathetic to express.

One of the things I so love about the “Boomtown” album is that it is like no other. With most musical artists or groups, I can say he or they “sound sort of like a cross between so-and-so and such-and-such”. But David & David had such a unique sound and such original musical arrangements that I have never even been able to come up with any comparison that really works in describing them.

The best I can do is say that they painted musical urban landscapes peopled by mostly down-and-out characters – some of which still retained a slight burning ember of hope for something better. “Boomtown” contains themes like those found on the Eagles’ album “Hotel California”, but it’s more ragged ‘n’ real. Or like the themes found on the albums “Los Angeles” and “Under The Big Black Sun” by the punk band X, but with songs that are far more complex, interesting and . . . musical! “Boomtown” contains early Springsteenian-type characters, but they’re living on the West Coast and they’re much more believable.

My favorite song on “Boomtown” is probably “All Alone In The Big City” (sure wish someone would post it at YouTube).

But another big favorite is “A Rock For The Forgotten”, and that is a song I strongly identified with in 1986. I might as well have been “the cleanup kid” at the Firefly bar who came to L.A. to write but who never made it out of the fringes. Only difference being that I didn’t need to come to L.A. because I was born there:

At the Firefly we all tell lies
And the cleanup kid hangs his head
He's the quiet type, came to L.A. to write
But he never made it out of the fringes
Keeps a low profile, you kick him he'll smile
Thinks blood is his payment for losing
~ 'A Rock For The Forgotten'
by David & David

As I’ve stated on STUFFS previously, back in the mid to late ‘80s when I was listening to David & David’s “Boomtown” so often, I would sometimes drive late at night after work to The Embassy Hotel at 9th and Grand in downtown L.A. – a very seedy, dark ‘n’ dangerous area after the sun goes down – and I would have a couple drinks at The Embassy’s bar.

I don’t know why I would drive all the way to downtown L.A. late at night when there were godzillion bars closer to where I worked. With hindsight, and trying to squeeze myself into that dark psychological tunnel I occupied at the time, I think perhaps I was just BEGGING for something to happen to me. Kinda like the movie “Death Wish”, only I wasn’t armed and I was subconsciously hoping to be the victim, not the killer.

Back then, I always thought of The Embassy Hotel bar as my own personal version of The Firefly bar from the David & David song “A Rock For The Forgotten”.

In my last blog bit – “Motel, Money, Murder, Madness” – concerning my recent 3-day weekend trip to L.A., I wrote the following:

Before driving into Culver City and checking into my motel room, I drove into the belly of the beast: Downtown L.A. I had planned to have a drink at The Embassy Hotel on 9th and Grand like I used to do during my dark nights in ‘86 . . . but that is a story for another blog bit to be posted here soon.

Well, “soon” has become “NOW”.

Long story sad . . . The Embassy Hotel is closed, Closed, CLOSED! Below are photos of what it looked like just some weeks ago:

[Sorry, Stephen, but we don't serve your kind here anymore. Don't take it personally, because we don't serve any kind here anymore.]

I guess it was my drinking there in the late ‘80s that kept The Embassy in business, and when my mental sky cleared up sufficiently that I stopped driving there after work for my nightly medicinals, the place just couldn’t stay in the black. Too bad.

Just before leaving on my trip, I got to seriously wondering if there really had been a bar in the Los Angeles area called The Firefly. In other words, were David & David referring to A REAL PLACE?

So I began some Google searches and discovered a wildly, fascinatingly warped website called “L.A. Bizarro” which answered my question.

Hell yes! Of course there was a bar in L.A. called the Firefly. And where do you suppose it was?

Anyone?

You there – in the vest, is it? Where do you suppose it was?

No idea, eh?

Well, class, you’d better PRAY that I grade according to “the curve” method.

Naturally, it was in the grungy heart of Hollywood! (The only other place a bar like that could have been was in the belly of the beast itself – downtown L.A.)

Now I spent half a lifetime on the streets of Hollywood and I had no recollection of a bar called the Firefly. But according to the folks at L.A. Bizarro, it was located on Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Blvd. In other words, it was somewhere right down THIS street:

They say the bar closed sometime in the late 1980s. I was never in the Firefly (Damn! If only I had known!...), but the moment I saw the black and white photograph of the Firefly’s neon sign on the L.A. Bizarro website, I thought: Wait! Hokey-Smoke and Hoo-Wee! I vaguely recall that sign!

In that same block where The Firefly stood there used to be a small, classy Jazz club called 'The Vine Street Bar And Grill', and in the late ‘80s or very early ‘90s, I won tickets from the great L.A. Jazz and Blues radio station (then called KLON) at 88.1 FM to see Anita O'Day perform there.

To now learn that David & David’s Firefly bar was not more than 10 or so minutes from Antonio’s (my favorite Los Angeles restaurant), and that I could have driven to it any night of the week, really bums me out! Hell, it’s enough to make a guy roam the downtown L.A. streets at night . . . hoping for the worst.

CHECK THESE OUT! . . .

David & David ~ A Rock for the Forgotten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JHqyZkhq8U

The L.A. BIZARRO Website’s Story About “The Firefly” Bar:
http://labizarro.com/2010/08/23/firefly/

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“MOTEL, MONEY, MURDER, MADNESS”

2011-11-28T14:17:00.010-07:00

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It was at 6 AM a week and two days ago that I once again got "On The Road" and headed West toward my homemegalopolis, Lost Angels, California.

This was only a Lya Graf-sized vacation: Six-hour Saturday drive there - Sunday - six-hour Monday drive back to Phoenix, Airheadzona. I really toyed with the idea of calling my good friend General Poohregard to see if he wanted to get the Bitter Brothers together for a Bitter Breakfast Meeting, but I opted not to bring any spur-of-the-moment disorder into anyone’s already disordered life just a few days prior to Thanksgiving. So, this was going to be a short solo all the way.

My primary objective was to see if I could relocate my long lost friend Eric – you know, that bloke I told you about in my story ‘Goblins, ‘Gators And Things That Go “Who” In The Night’ - that bloke I was lost with in the Okefenokee Swamp in ‘83. The last time I’d seen Eric he was working at some very fancy Santa Monica Beach hotel, the name of which I couldn’t recall but I knew I’d know it when I saw it.

Just west of the gigantic space alien flower garden near Palm Springs, I stopped to let out and take in some fluids at Hadley’s Fruit Orchards store.

I happened to be wearing my “Robert Johnson – King Of The Delta Blues Singers” T-shirt and a woman working the cash register – Margie was her name, if I recall correctly – began asking me a lot of questions about Robert Johnson. Her husband is a fan of Blues music and after listening to me yak about the singer, she decided to get him an RJ Blues album for Christmas this year instead of the usual gift card for Home Depot.

Because of the poor running order of songs on 'The Complete Recordings By Robert Johnson' box set, I suggested she buy his two albums separately in the Volume 1 & 2 format. When she asked me to recommend one or the other, I told her I preferred Volume 2. She asked if that would be available online, as someone in her extended family has a computer and could place the order for her.

Pulling back out onto I-10, I made up my mind to buy Margie’s husband a Robert Johnson album at Amoeba Records – a massive, amazing record store on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood that I was planning to visit for the first time the following day.

Before driving into Culver City and checking into my motel room, I drove into the belly of the beast: Downtown Los Angeles. I had planned to have a drink at The Embassy Hotel on 9th and Grand like I used to do during my dark nights in 1986. Due to circumstances beyond my control, that drink didn't happen . . . but that is a story for another blog bit to be posted here soon.

However, in the belly of the beast I discovered that one of the two old “Jesus Saves” signs that long ago disappeared from the rooftop of a building at Hope and 6th Streets has been relocated to the rooftop of a building near the intersection of 9th and Hill. Like, does anybody know this?

You remember the photo I posted on this blog of me posing below one of these signs in the early ‘80s right?

I’m not even certain that it’s one of the same signs as it appeared smaller to me than I think it should have but, really, how many large “Jesus Saves” signs are there?

In the photo below, you’ll see that this sign is now near the blue/green Eastern Columbia Building landmark.

You know the Eastern Columbia Building from the end of the brilliant pilot for the brilliant “Moonlighting” TV series - Maddie Hayes hanging from the clock hands, trying to recover stolen diamonds. Remember?

1x01 - 1x02 The Pilot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SIDb5O3Q4w

Leaving the belly of the beast, I drove to my motel on Sepulveda Blvd. two blocks south of Venice Blvd. in Culver City. The Half Moon Motel - I had stayed here once before, in the Summer of 2005, and in fact I used to live only 7 or 8 blocks from the motel. And that’s the reason I was aware of it at all; I used to drive past it all the time, coming and going, to and from adventures and misadventures.

[The Half Moon Motel on Sepulveda, looking north toward Venice Boulevard.]

As I’ve stated here previously, I once worked as a commercial sign designer and I have always had a fascination and love for old, Old School signs.

[The large yellow sign – drawn by me in 1984 – is located one block south of the Half Moon Motel.]

[Yeah, I stuck a fork in my wiener – it was done.]

There are a few things I like about the Half Moon Motel; first and foremost, of course, is that it has perhaps the coolest neon sign of all time (well, one of my very favorites at the very least) – I love the look of it, the color of it, and the alliteration of it.

Also, the motel is built in that late 1950s/very early ‘60s architectural style with rock walls and the whole thing just shrouded in a kitschy funkiness. It conjures thoughts of wispy cigrarette smoke lace floating through the air, spilled whiskey, and Ben Webster playing some low, soft-porn ballad on his tenor sax.

I can’t stay at the Half Moon Motel without feeling I’ve stepped into the 'Twilight Zone' and found myself living out some Film Noir detective story . . .

I half expect to find Philip Marlowe standing on the second floor walkway in front of the door next to mine, some clinging dame crying into the shoulder of his raincoat and a cigarette clinging to his lower lip while he tries to console her without spilling from the glass of bourbon he balances between three of his nicotine-stained fingers. He's staring at the distant flickering neon 'N' in the "Half Moon Motel" sign, trying to figure out who dun-it and whether or not he should take advantage of this grieving woman's weakened condition, knowing full well that she's Suspect Number One.

Another thing I like about the Half Moon Motel is that the place is a dump. I don’t mean that it’s filthy, just that the rooms are very old and awfully small; not the sort of place where respectable people with money stay . . . nor even respectable people without money, for that matter.

The Half Moon is the sort of place I’ve stayed in most of my life, and to update my analogy of 1950s Film Noir to 1970s Rock, it being located in Los Angeles, the Half Moon Motel also makes me think of the Doors song ‘L.A. Woman’ and that line “motel, money, murder, madness”.

You can always catch a faint whiff of “danger” in a place like this. Stay at a Holiday Inn or a Marriott or a Sheraton or a Four Seasons and nothing is going to happen to you that you didn’t want or plan for; it’s about as uncertain and jitters-producing as a day at Disneyland. But stay at a Half Moon Motel and . . . spend all night wondering who is in that room next door. And what are they doing? And when night falls, what are they planning to do? And are they armed too? And how many rounds do you suppose they have?

The Doors - L.A. Woman Official Video HQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-wgIht3roA&NR=1

I’m not interested in some homogenized, sterilized, sanitized, plasticized, digitalized, uni-sized experience; I want the authentic urban life – romanticized. Just so long as I don’t have to stick my neck out or lose a limb. (“I stick my neck out for no one, baby! Including me.”) That is to say, getting lost at night in the Okefenokee Swamp makes for a great story but you do need to survive in order to tell it.

So, I’m certainly not equating the danger factor of the Half Moon Motel with the Bates Motel – it’s not that uncertain, but . . . to be sure, you might want to pour some Smoking Loon wine into that plastic cup after dark, just to take the edge off a little and to calm your nerves.
What was THAT?! I thought I heard something!

Damn! I love that kind of place! I’m reminded of that line in ‘The Deer Hunter’ when Christopher Walken says, “I like to starve myself, it keeps the fear up.” There’s something to be said for keeping the fear up. It reminds you that you’re still alive. The Half Moon Motel: you don’t take a nap there without first engaging the bolt lock; it’s the kind of joint where you might find blood in the bathroom sink - as I did during my stay. Except it was my own blood . . . I accidentally cut myself with my Swiss army knife. I think that’s called a Hans Owie.

I’ve told this story here before so I won’t repeat the details but, just as a glance of myself in a mirror at The Townhouse Bar in Venice Beach once inspired me to write a full-length screenplay, I think someday I may need to direct my imagination toward the Half Moon Motel and see what sort of story THAT building wants to tell me.

If THIS place has a story to tell . . .

. . . doesn’t it stand to reason that THIS place has a story to tell too? . . .

[Muddy McLoon checked into his room only to find Gideon's Bible...]

Soon after checking into the Half Moon, I drove down to Venice Beach, had a couple glasses of GraMar on the rocks at The Townhouse Bar and yakked with Bartender George; then I wandered down the boardwalk to The Sidewalk Café and ordered my usual – the Garcia Lorca Omelette – and watched the carnival as it passed by my table.

Then I rambled up the boardwalk to Rose Avenue and watched the Sun setting. Below is a picture I took as I was rambling north along the beach. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment . . .

“Venice Beach Freakshow” ? Uhm . . . HULLOooooo! Being freakishly redundant, aren’t we? I mean, c’mon, everyone knows that when you say “Venice Beach” you’ve already said “Freakshow” - the Freakshow is always implied... every... single... time!

When the Sun drowned in the waters off Venice Beach, I got into my car and headed for a ‘Top Secret’ Security Clearance place I know of, but if I mentioned it to ya I’d have to kill ya. However, getting there wasn’t as easy as I remembered. I found myself shouting - not thinking, but literally shouting – "WTF?! How did The Great Western Forum get here?! Who moved it and when?"

And how could I get so turned around in the city where I was born and raised and where I once ruled? Well, by the vast empty parking lot it was easy to know that UFO wouldn’t be opening for Blue Oyster Cult at The Forum. Not tonight. But there was a time, there was a night . . .

Some years ago I coined a couple of new words: “congrutiating” and “incongrutiating”. Congrutiating is when you are simultaneously involved in two or more activities that are thematically or stylistically simpatico.

For example, if you are eating a banana while playing Donkey Kong, you are congrutiating. When you are "reading Chomsky while listening to the Star-Spangled Banner" you are incongrutiating.

One of my most memorable moments of incongrutiating came in 1980 when my friend Eric (same bloke I was lost with in the Okefenokee Swamp) and I drove through the barren Arizona desert wasteland to see the Sun rise over the Grand Canyon. While driving through the desert we listened to my cassette of ‘1969: The Velvet Underground Live’. Now that, people, is incongrutiating.

But while staying at the Half Moon Motel, I engaged in some memorable congrutiating: I played some cool jazz while the neon beckoned to the night through my open door. Here’s the scene . . .

And here’s the tune . . .

Stan Getz - So Danco Samba [from 1963 album Getz/Gilberto]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyHdsQEU9k

[A night at the Half Moon in full bloom.]

It rained most of Sunday. I started the day by driving to Santa Monica Beach to see if I could reconnect with my oldest friend Eric. I mean, really, once you’ve been lost at night in the Okefenokee with a dude, that’s probably a friendship you shouldn’t let fade away.

I found the fancy beach hotel (re-cog-o-nized it instantly) – Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Nice place, but too “safe” for my tastes; I decided to keep my room at the Half Moon.

It didn’t take long before my old buddy Eric and I were yakking in the Loews Hotel lobby. The concierge called him and when he came to the phone I said, “Is this the same Eric who was once lost in the Okefenokee Swamp at night?” I think he immediately had a pretty good idea who was on the other end of the line.

[An interesting businessman/surfer statue stands out in front of the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.]

Then afterwards I drove east through the driving rain and visited the highly praised record store Amoeba Music on Sunset Blvd. in the heart of grungy Hollyweird.

[This external shot of Amoeba Music above is the only photograph in this blog bit that was not taken by McMe.]

Impressive? Yep. How many record stores ever had a name card for ‘David & David’, let alone a second name card for ‘David & David’ in the “Used” recordings section? Yeah, that ‘David & David’, the duo who only lasted long enough to release one masterpiece album in 1986!

I spent six days looking at every single compact disc Amoeba had in stock. Afterwards, I decided that the very coolest album cover I saw in the entire store was this one . . .

Boy, was I surprised to find myself selecting that cover. I was pretty sure no album cover art could ever top The Beatles’ “White Album”.

[Dude was walking his dog in the Amoeba record store. I think they were looking for “Stray Cats”.]

Then it was down to Antonio’s Mexican Restaurant in the pouring rain (the streets were all backed up and the LAFD even had to close some sections) and I had to walk through a twelve and a half inch deep river rushing down Melrose Ave. just to get over to Antonio’s side of the street, but it was worth it, as you can see . . .

After that, I was washed away to El Coyote for one of their legendary margaritas . . . but that is a story for another blog bit to be posted here soon.

Sunday night I decided to check out the little cocktail lounge directly across the street from the Half Moon Motel. In my L.A. daze I passed by ‘The Cinema’ a bazillion trillion times but never even noticed it. (According to one woman I met there, it’s Culver City’s oldest bar and dates back to the late 1940s.) Check out the glow of the cars’ headlights in the rainy street. Pretty cool looking, huh?

[The Cinema: L.A.’s best kept secret.]

I swear to you, I hadn’t taken more than five steps inside The Cinema before I was absolutely head-over-heels in love with the place; it is
so-ooooo my kinda bar! First off, it’s small – the size of a Klondike Bar. Seriously, it was no bigger than two and a half rooms at the Half Moon Motel put together. In one corner is a stage the size of a razor blade, and the bar hosts live bands 7 nights a week.

I got to The Cinema a little before that night’s band showed up and I left while the band was setting up, but I met some very nice people between my first and second Beefeater and tonics.

Two middle-aged couples and I engaged in some discussion about the weather but, believe it or not, it was actually interesting discussion about the weather. Then this character named Eric entered (not related to the Eric I got lost with in the Okefenokee Swamp). Eric was clearly a “regular” and when he told me it was his third time visiting The Cinema I responded, “I don’t think so.”

I can see how a little bit of Eric would go a long way. And maybe that explains why I was the only person who burst into laughter when he said what I thought was one of the funniest things I’ve heard in awhile (maybe the others just thought: ‘Typically Eric’).

I can’t remember how the subject of “East” came up – maybe it was the fact that two football teams back East, the Giants and the Eagles, were playing Sunday Night Football on the boob tube – but regardless, Eric half-shouted: “Fu#k everything east of Lincoln Boulevard!”

Ha!-Ha! I’m still laughing as I type this. If you don’t know the L.A. area that won’t mean much to you, so let me tell ya that 99.75% of Los Angeles is east of Lincoln Boulevard . . . not to mention the rest of the U.S.A. In fact, The Cinema cocktail lounge itself is east of Lincoln Boulevard!

I was the only one in the bar laughing, but I was laughing so hard that I made up for the silence of the two couples and the bartender. I was laughing so hard that my head hit the bar!

Just as I was walking out of the cocktail lounge, the LAPD and the LAFD showed up. It seems there was a scene at The Cinema. Everything stopped, I heard five quick shots, the cops came up for air. And then the Dogtown Gang from the Westside, they’re shootin’ up the street. This cat from Venice starts lettin’ loose but he gets blown right off his feet. And some kid comes blastin’ around the corner but a cop puts him right away. He laid on the street holding his leg, screaming something in Spanish... still breathing when I walked away. And somebody said, “Hey, man, did you see that? His body hit Sepulveda with such a beautiful thud!”

Nah, I’m just kidding. I think some homeless cat was having a medical emergency (probably dying for some of that medical marijuana).

The following morning, I checked out of my room at the Half Moon Motel and just before getting on the 405 freeway, heading to the I-10 and home, I stopped by the apartment of my friend The Flyin’ Aardvark and left a note on her door. It read: “Vote Ron Paul in 2012 / Motel, Money, Murder, Madness -- HiYa, L.A. Woman”.

On the drive home, just before getting to the gigantic space alien flower garden near Palm Springs, I stopped again at Hadley’s.

Margie wasn’t working that day but I dropped off for her and her husband Robert Johnson’s “The Centennial Collection” compact disc which I’d purchased for them while at Amoeba Music on Sunset Blvd. The employee I left the CD with asked me if I wanted to leave a note on it. I told her: “No. Just tell Margie it’s from Santa Claus”.

Nothing too interesting happened to me the rest of the way home . . . except that I suffered terribly from ‘White Line Fever’ and died in a
12-car pile-up “On The Road”, twenty-six miles west of Blythe. Had I survived, I would have told you this story exactly as it appears above.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“ALL THE DOGS IN THE WORLD CAME FROM A ROCK”

2011-11-17T14:36:00.009-07:00

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When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all

I’ll tell you one thing I did NOT learn in high school - I did not learn the correct way to make Evolution Pie. It wasn’t until I was no longer a captive of the public school system and took responsibility for my own education that I learned the really important stuffs. Like how to make a great Evolution Pie.

And now with Thanksgiving just around the corner, I’m going to share this recipe with you:

EVOLUTION PIE

Combine in one bowl, 6 pounds of Theory, 6 ounces of authoritative-sounding liquified Lies, and 6 tablespoons of powdered Bat Wings.

Mix on high until this has a whipped, loose-stool consistency.

Pour this mixture into a Conjecture Crust and bake at 666 degrees for 151 years.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool, then sprinkle with sugar ‘n’ cinnamon and serve. For a really fancy presentation, you can top the pie with eye of newt.

[Serving suggestion: Evolution Pie goes great with a Cambrian Explosion cocktail – shaken, not stirred, of course!]

The video I’m posting below is something that, under normal circumstances, I would post on my OTHER blog, ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends'. But right now I have something posted near the top of that blog titled “Test Your Voter I.Q.” which I don’t want to see buried under a bunch of other posts too soon.

So, for the moment, “STUFFS” is going to take a slightly different (although not altogether unprecedented) turn.

First, I want to publicly thank my brother Mr. VizFact for making me aware of this video by posting it on his own blog. Although Viz and I might not exactly look like we’re related, the fact that his Father and my Father is one and the same Father (capital "F") means we are indeed “brothers”.

So, when Mr. VizFact’s most recent video posting - “100 Reasons Why Evolution is Stupid” by Kent Hovind - showed up on my Blogger dashboard I checked it out and, dang, was I entertained!

Hovind’s dry wit and rapid-fire ridiculing of Evolution’s pseudo-scientists made me GOL (Guffaw Out Loud) more times than I can count. God knows I loves me a smart smart-aleck . . . as Kent Hovind is. Oh, yeah, Hovind is a man after my own ~~heart~~ style.
And funn-eeeee!

I have only one negative remark to make about this presentation:

Mr. Hovind – to steal a question asked by Cheech Marin in the comedy sketch ‘Sergeant Stadanko’ - "Who cut your hair?”

Yeah, I’m afraid Dr. Hovind has "Christian Hair", more commonly known as “Helmet Hair”. I don’t know if there’s anything more damaging to the reputation of Born Again Christians than their hairstyles.

But . . . I’d be afraid to say anything like this directly to Mr. Hovind because, if this presentation is any indication, he’d probably kick my arse and take my nickel for milk in a knock-down, drag-out, roll-around-in-the-gutter contest of schoolyard insults. In other words, despite cutting my taunting teeth and honing my ad hominem debating tactics while fighting for years against Commies and other loony Leftists over the Senator Joseph McCarthy issue, I’d be a-skeered of trying to mix it up with Mr. Hovind. That ‘Christian Hair’ Cat’s got game!

I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate, and I gotta tell ya, when Kent Hovind calls Evolutionary Theory “stupid” he’s being “Christian-y kind” because, truth is, it’s even dumber’n that – it’s retarded!

For sure, ‘Evolutionary Theory’ is nothing more than a cockamamie fairy tale for adults intent on fooling themselves into beLIEving they have no Creator that they’ll ultimately have to answer to. It’s NOT “science” and it’s NOT for intellectually honest objective thinkers!

Two books on this subject that I particularly enjoyed were . . .

THE CASE FOR A CREATOR: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God
By Lee Strobel

And

TORNADO IN A JUNKYARD: The Relentless Myth Of Darwinism
By James Perloff

Another one I certainly found informative was . . .

THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO DARWINISM AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN
By Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.

And if you want to really get on down with yer bad self and investigate some serious science - deep, technical, nitty-gritty stuffs - then don’t miss reading this 600-page tome:

SIGNATURE IN THE CELL: DNA And The Evidence For Intelligent Design
By Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

Obviously there’s a whole lot more to know than what is presented in Kent Hovind’s nearly two-hour video program. Nevertheless, there were a couple of points made in the video that I don’t even recall having encountered in all my book ‘n’ article readings on the subject.

And Kent Hovind’s humorous, fast-talking, “nicely smart-alecky” demeanor alone makes this worth watching. What could be better than laughing while you’re learning? (Although Hovind and I do not see eye-to-eye on all of our Biblical interpretations, I still enjoyed his little bit of Christian proselytizing at the very end of the video presentation; even THAT was funny!)

Here it is – laugh 'n' learn:

100 Reasons Why Evolution is Stupid - Kent Hovind [Full Length]

To see an enlarged-screen version of it at YouTube, click this URL link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v6WyeQJTwc

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Links:

Kent Hovind’s ‘Doctor Dino’ Website
http://www.drdino.com/

Incidentally, Mr. VizFact posts some good stuffs and sometimes adds some humorous, smart-alecky commentary of his own, so you really should sign up to “Follow” his blog too. Here’s a link . . .
http://vizfact.blogspot.com/

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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"FANTABULOUS!" (Or, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KELLY 'ANDY' ANDERSON!")

2011-11-14T01:37:00.004-07:00

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[From the STMcC archive; January 1, 2007]

VAN MORRISON: LIVE AT MONTREUX 1980 / 1974
DVD Released In 2006

In a sense, VAN MORRISON has figured prominently in my life and in an indirect way he saved me from a life of great regret . . .

I was a huge fan of VAN THE MAN in 1986, and one day I returned home practically giddy from having just located what was, at that time, a few hard-to-find Van Morrison vinyl LPs. As fate would have it, just as I got out of my car, with my new used albums tucked under one arm, Kelly “Andy” Anderson - a loyal old “superfriend” of mine - pulled up to the curb in his battered old pickup truck.

Andy and I’d had something of a falling-out over some inconsequential issue and we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for some time. But I was in such a good mood - having just acquired long-sought-after Morrison music - that in that very moment, I buried the past, forgave Andy for whatever slight I’d been holding against him, and I greeted him as the true friend of fifteen years he really was. We spoke briefly and then parted as the good pals we’d always been.

That was the last time I saw Andy – truly one of the greatest friends I have ever had. Not long afterwards, I learned of his suicide in California City.

Many times in the subsequent years I’ve revisited that day in my mind and shuddered to think, “What if I hadn’t just found those Van Morrison records and hadn’t been in such a magnanimous mood? What if, instead, I had given Andy the cold shoulder? Treated him like a dog? How would I have ever lived with that last memory and the tremendous remorse I would have carried with me all these years?”

Fortunately, I haven’t had to beat myself up over a regrettable event that might have occurred twenty-one years ago. In a way, I owe the music of Van Morrison much gratitude for changing my life in an unexpected way!
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This last Christmas, I received the DVD, ‘VAN MORRISON LIVE AT MONTREUX 1980/1974’ from my friend, Kevin, “The Kansas Kid.” Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He’s currently wanted in seven states for crimes ranging from bank robbery and train robbery to shooting innocent zoo animals . . . with a camera. Kevin’s a good buddy and he knows how to please ol’ Stephen T. Even though on the scale of Life’s important “stuffs”, a Van Morrison DVD isn’t going to rate real high, I treasure this 2-disc set because Van’s music is understandably meaningful to me.

I’ve seen Van perform live about four times in my life. When he’s in the mood, he’s a compelling entertainer. At the Montreux Jazz Festival, he was definitely in the mood and his band – as always – consisted of nothing less than the finest musicians. You know Van: if a musician can’t please the man, they’re out on their can!

Both discs in this set are excellent. The June 30, 1974 performance is shorter and more Blues-dominated. I prefer the July 19, 1980 show. It contains some of Van’s more extended Jazzy pieces which are rarely if ever played live anymore – particularly those long, meditative works from his underrated ‘COMMON ONE’ release. Van’s looking pretty trim here (you know, for Van, I mean), and we get to see him with his outrageously talented horn men, Pee Wee Ellis (tenor sax) and Mark Isham (trumpet).

Some of the performance highlights for me include:

‘TROUBADOURS’ – I always considered this to be one of the lesser tracks on what is easily one of Van’s greatest sets, ‘INTO THE MUSIC’, but here, Isham and Ellis are blowing as if to save their lives, and when the audience broke into applause at its conclusion, I very nearly did the same thing right in my own living room!

During the intro to ‘SPIRIT’, John Allair locks into such a spirited, funky groove that he can’t remain seated at the organ – the music itself demands that he stand!

‘SUMMERTIME IN ENGLAND’ – The song moves from a meditation to unrestrained exuberance, where Pee Wee Ellis nearly blows the roof off the place, until the song downshifts back into a meditation just prior to launching into a “fantabulous” rendition of Morrison’s ‘MOONDANCE’ masterpiece.

‘HAUNTS OF ANCIENT PEACE’ – This gives us a tremendously soulful solo from Pee Wee.

There’s a wonderful little moment early on in this ultimate version of ‘TUPELO HONEY’ where Isham and Ellis simultaneously play their respective horn parts and then as they back away from their mics, they glance at each other and exchange self-satisfied smiles. Here is two fine musicians in their prime and immersed in the joy of their art. There’s no competition; there’s no race issue (even though Isham is White and Ellis is Black); there’s no time; there’s just this NOW, and the knowledge that supreme artists are combining their talents in the act of creating something very beautiful!

On the downside, despite the quality of musicianship, ‘LISTEN TO THE LION’ never comes close to matching the studio version from the ‘Saint Dominic’s Preview’ album, but then how could it? That is one of the most introspective and intense pieces of music ever recorded. Morrison could tap that depth only once. (His version on 1973’s ‘IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP NOW’ – unquestionably one of the greatest live albums ever released – never came close either. ‘Saint Dominic’s’ ‘LISTEN TO THE LION’ was just too roaringly glorious to ever be replicated even by Van, the man himself. That was a once-in-a-lifetime performance!) But when Van sings “I believe I’ve transcended myself, child” in the encore, ‘ANGELOU’, for a minute there it almost seems as if indeed he has!

WHY do I think this live concert DVD is so good? Well, sure I could talk about the various camera angles, the clear picture, the crisp sound. I could explain why Pee Wee Ellis is a saxgod. I could discuss in greater detail the topnotch, eight-piece band and the Jazz explorations of one of the world’s great songwriters and his Irish muse. Or I could simply quote from one of his own songs:

“It ain’t why, why, why.
It ain’t why, why, why.
It ain’t why, why, why.
It just IS!”

Hopefully, you have learned two things from this review of mine:

1) You can purchase ‘VAN MORRISON LIVE AT MONTREUX 1980/1974’ with complete assurance that as a Morrison fan (or just a person who appreciates exceptional musicianship) your money will be well spent. And . . .

2) You should always treat your loved ones very good because you just never know when you are seeing them for the
... very ... last ... time.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

Relevant Music Links:

HOUSE AT POOH CORNER

BEAUTIFUL LOSER

GOING WHERE THE LONELY GO

PANCHO & LEFTY

OL' ‘55

WILD CHILDREN

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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MY WASHCLOTH STINKS TOO . . . Uhm, TWO?

2011-11-06T11:09:00.005-07:00

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See, this is what happens when there aren’t enough public funds to house them all in the loony bins. Some of ‘em get turned loose on society and they create cartoon books.

Lonnie Millsap’s second cartoon book is titled “I Hate My Job”, and, really, how many of us can’t relate to that? However, this book is not for everyone. Some may find it crude, rude, distasteful and . . . Well, let me put it this way: If you like 'The Simpsons' but think it’s a little too sanitized; if you dig 'The Far Side' but think it could use some bodily fluids; if you love 'The Venture Bros.' and think that porridge is “just right”, then you are gonna go ‘Screwball Squirrel’ over “I Hate My Job”.

“I Hate My Job” essentially takes up where Lonnie Millsap’s last cartoon book, “My Washcloth Stinks”, left off. ("I Hate My Job" is a book of all new cartoons; there are no repeats. I repeat, "No repeats!") You could even think of this new book as “My Washcloth Stinks 2”. However, it seems to me that perhaps "I Hate My Job" includes a bit more blood, snot ‘n’ vomit than its predecessor had. I guess Millsap found “My Washcloth Stinks” to be a quart low. ...Nah, I’m jus’ kidding. (No, I wasn’t!)

To be semi-serious for a moment (I promise it won't last long), Lonnie Millsap’s cartoons have a lot more than just blood, snot ‘n’ vomit to offer. There are zombie waiters, worm comedians, spider moms, hot dog prostitutes, and hitchhiking giraffes. (“Boy, giraffes are selfish!”) And there’s also God. Yeah, Lonnie Millsap is insane enough to portray God in his cartoons! I’m sure Millsap will be struck by lightning before his third book is published. (Giraffes got nuttin’ to worry about now, ‘cause the lightning’s got Lonnie’s name on it.)

Did I mention that some of Millsap’s cartoons are laugh-out-loud funny? I didn’t? Well, too late now, we’re past that paragraph.

If I had to pick a favorite cartoon in this collection it might be "The Y And W Anti-Discrimination Trial" (talk about yer political correctness running amuck!), or the 'dinner surprise in the oven' (always choose your words carefully!), or “Generational Issues In The Fly Community” (I almost choked to death yesterday while thinking about that one and trying to swallow my meds at the same time). But the blind victim of an April Fool’s Day prank is a personal best new low for Lonnie; if there’s a God in heaven, Millsap will never top that one... uhm, fall below it, I mean.

Being one of Millsap’s oldest enemies, I am in possession of the personally autographed ‘Bitter Deluxe’ version of “I Hate My Job”. But I’ll bet if you contacted the lunatic he’d sign a copy for you, too. Ahh, we “little people” - he loves us!

Overall, I may have liked “My Washcloth Stinks” better’n “I Hate My Job” but the very funniest cartoons in the latter might be even funnier than the funniest in the former. So, which of the two books should you get? I’d say it’s six o’ one, half a dozen of the other. (“Holy Trite Expression, Batman!”) So why not buy both? All of his stuffs, the entire Lonnie Millsap collection – “My Washcloth Stinks” AND “I Hate My Job” – would make a crazy gift for the wacko in your home, office, or insane asylum.

~~You’re a good man, Charlie Brown~~. You’re a sick man, Lonnie Millsap!
Get some help! I’d willingly pay more in taxes to have you put away... again.

Links:
LONNIE MILLSAP DOT COM

WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING WASHCLOTHS!

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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GOBLINS, ‘GATORS, AND THINGS THAT GO “WHO?” IN THE NIGHT

2011-10-31T13:16:00.015-07:00

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Welcome to "H-Owl-O'Weenie Horror", or better yet, "The Village Idiot's Guide To Exploring The Okefenokee Swamp".

Perhaps a couple of you remember my special Halloween blog bit of a couple years back. It was a true story pertaining to the haunted or demon-possessed building I work in.

Well, this year’s special is another true story. Imagine being lost at night in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, alligators are moving in for the kill and you’re armed with nothing but a bottle of Lowenbrau beer and a flashlight. In October of 1983, I really did find myself in that predicament. But first, a dedication and the backstory . . .

I want to dedicate this blog bit to ‘Mr. Halloween’ himself, Arlee Bird of the blog ‘Tossing It Out’, who indirectly provided me with the inspiration for it.

In April of 1983, I visited New York City for the first time and stayed with my friend Eric Anderson who was attending art school there. I remember it was April because I spent Easter Sunday there and had a heck of a time finding a chocolate bunny.

During that first trip to “The Big Apple” I took a picture from the ground, looking up Eric’s nose and up at the two World Trade Center towers that later fell on 9/11/2001.

And after arranging all the elements to capture the photograph I envisioned, Eric took the picture of me guzzling Jack Daniel’s whiskey at the Statue Of Liberty [full story found HERE]. I think it’s the coolest photo ever taken of me.

Late in the Summer of ‘83, I received a couple letters from Eric. He was graduating from art school and returning to Los Angeles, and he proposed that I meet him back East and join him on a cross-country road trip, from THE BIG APPLE to THE PLACE. The return address on his letters indicated that they were from “Anderson Tours Inc.” Naturally, I signed up for the “Deluxe Tour Package” because I was young, carefree, I had a young man’s untamed adventurous streak in me and I was full of vim, vigor, verve, vitality, and alliterative synonyms.

The “Deluxe Tour Package” consisted of driving south from New York City along the East Coast to the Florida Keys and then begin working our way West. Eric wrote:

I just got your letter the other day and I must admit it’s a very creative piece of communicative journalism. Amusing as always. And the photographs, what can I say? They came out much better than I thought they would … especially the Statue of Liberty shot. Of course a good photographer helps too.
…
Anderson Tours Inc. has pulled out all the stops this time. Over 5,000 miles of grueling asphalt. We’ll conquer such unexplored, uncharted lands as the Epcot Center in Disney World and the casino floor of the Sands in Las Vegas. We’ll battle and overcome such woes as speed traps, maddened truckers, and engine fatigue. Above all, we’ll have all the time in the world to go as far as our minds will take us. I believe this is a memory in the making.
…
I have about $600 for expenses and $600 for drinks. Just kidding. … I also like your brilliant idea of the airplane (Jack Daniel’s?) bottles full of East/West ocean water. I had been trying to think of an appropriate symbol for the journey. This is perfect, especially the tying of the knot.

[I had proposed that we toast the start of the trip in New York with little airline bottles of Jack Daniel’s, then fill them with ‘Big Apple’ Atlantic Ocean water. When we arrived in Los Angeles, we’d drink another J.D. toast to the trip’s conclusion, fill the little bottles with Pacific Ocean water and then tie our two sets of airline bottles together with leather laces.]
...
It should be much more successful than your Mexico trip. All I can say about that one is, “UHP!! YOU’RE AN IDIOT.” Well, it’s good you moved out of that mad house on Bay Street while you still have some sanity left.
...
Let the good times roll . . .

Indeed, “let the good times roll, let them knock you around!”

Eric and I spent about two weeks “On The Road” in his semi-automatic tomato-red 1972 VW Bug and although the money didn’t hold out long enough for us to visit all the places we’d planned to, we did have a number of notable adventures and one location I had my heart set on seeing we made sure to visit. Goblin Valley, Utah . . .

[A bottle of wine acting "cool" in Goblin Valley.]

[Goblin Valley, Utah.]

But this Halloween story is more about ‘gators than goblins.

For two decades it was my custom to name all of my trips. Some examples: ‘The Show No Emotion In A Big Way Tour’; ‘Sniffy’s Damn German Fudge Fiasco Trailblaze’; ‘The Last Vacation We’ll Ever Take Together...Again’; ‘Where Da Ghosts Finnin’ To Be? Search’; and ‘The Blistering Bicker Brothers Tour’.

I was blessed to have been able to make a number of memorable road trips in my life and to see so much of my country. But I would have to say that ‘The Jack Daniel’s Cross-Country Tour’ of 1983 - the one time I went from coast to coast on the road – would top my list of favorite trips.

A good portion of ‘The Jack Daniel’s Tour’ was of the hard-core “young men roughing it” variety; we’d usually get designated camping spots but we had no tent, nothing to really establish a campsite with. We’d just lay our sleeping bags on the ground next to the car. In the mornings it was a contest to see which of us had acquired more mosquito bites on our face during the night. About every third or fourth night we’d splurge for a motel room because we needed to recuperate a little from the poor sleep and grunge.

The VW Bug was a "trip" in itself. Along with our sleeping bags, tape player, music cassettes, sets of clothing and an ice chest for “road soda” (a.k.a. “beer”) Eric was toting his mountain bike and whatever personal belongings he most desired to keep after two years of living in New York. So, literally every nook and cranny of that car was jammed with something. Packing the car was a science that we quickly mastered out of necessity; a spot for everything and everything in its spot.

I remember that one time in the Deep South we had made some minor mistake in repacking things and as a result I found myself in the passenger seat with one tennis shoe resting in my lap (no, seriously!) And that’s where it stayed until I took over behind the wheel and Eric rode “shotgun with the shoe”. Ha! One of the small but great details of that trip I remember so fondly.

[Eric with Bug in South Carolina.]

["Road Soda" on driver's side floorboard.]

[Eric mountain biking in Arches National Park, Utah.]

Alright, alright, I hear ya! You wanna know about the alligators and the Okefenokee Swamp. OK, I’ll tell it, but don’t poop your pants (like we did). Here’s what happened . . .

In October ‘83, I flew into New York and met up with Eric. We spent a few days in the city, then we drank our first “Trip Toast” from the Jack Daniel’s airline bottles, filled them with Atlantic seawater, and headed south along the coast.

[A J.D. toast before leaving New York City.]

[Me at Madam Marie's in Bruce Springsteenland.]

As I stated, originally we planned to drive along the Eastern Seaboard and out onto the Florida Keys. Although we did drive down into Florida, ultimately we didn’t make it to the Keys because earlier we decided to spend time making a detour into the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia.

We hadn’t even considered visiting the Okefenokee Swamp because we didn’t realize how near we’d be to it, but when we suddenly discovered our close proximity to it on our road atlas we agreed that a side trip to the Swamp would be worthwhile, even if it caused us to cut something else from the trip’s tentative plan that we’d previously formulated.

Back when Eric and I were teenagers in high school together in the 1970s, Eric owned #6 in the ‘Environments’ record album series which featured an hour of sound recordings made in the Okefenokee Swamp. He and I used to listen to that LP together and we thought it was just “ultra-cool ‘n’ creepy”. We never could have dreamed that someday we’d find ourselves exploring the Okefenokee Swamp together.

So, we drove into the Swamp, rented a campsite, and stretched our sleeping bags out beside the Bug. Eric hopped on his bicycle, each of us grabbed a Lowenbrau beer, and we started off exploring.

[Lowenbrau beer: not exactly an effective survival tool.]

I was walking ahead while Eric was behind me on the mountain bike, jumping logs and such. Then suddenly I heard him make this terrifying sound and I heard the sort of commotion one might expect from a person on a bicycle who had just had a head-on collision with a gigantic spider web. Which, of course, is exactly what had happened.

Eric hadn’t seen the spider web and rode through it, taking it full in the face. Then, looking down, he saw a single thread of web hanging from the right end of the handlebars and scurrying up that thread of web toward Eric’s hand was a massive black spider! I’m tellin’ you people, the creepy crawlies ‘n’ stuffs that live in the Okefenokee Swamp are mind-boggling big, like bugs that have survived an atomic holocaust in a 1950s Horror movie or something. So, this spider that was probably five times the size of the humongous cockroaches that could be found in a Mexican jail (don’t ask!) was practically flying up to Eric’s hand, and I looked back just in time to see him go airborne backwards while, with his legs, shoving the bike as far forward as he could.

There’s the bike lying on the ground, the front wheel still spinning futilely, and one thing was certain: it didn’t belong to Eric anymore. The Swamp spider had taken sole possession of it and we weren’t about to argue the point. So we went on foot toward the edge of the Okefenokee.

At one point we found a path through the foliage and followed it in. This wasn’t an official, designated National Wildlife Refuge trail, but just some trampled plants and vines; a path semi-established by previous visitors. And then eventually the path just came to a dead end, so Eric and I began to blaze our own trail and before too long we found ourselves deep in green and at the edge of the Swamp; we could go no further because we’d hit water.

So, we’re just looking around, taking it all in and thinking how cool this place is. But it was late in the day, and let me tell you, night comes FAST in the Okefenokee Swamp; the Sun doesn’t really “set” there, it “falls”. One moment you’re thinking, ‘Gee, the shadows are getting kind of long', and seemingly the next moment you hear “the insufferable thunderous thump” of the Sun falling into the Swamp and you’re thinking, ‘What happened? I can't see! I once could see but now I'm blind!'

And that’s what happened to Eric and me. The Sun suddenly fell with a “thunderous thump” and it seemed as if we found ourselves in an instant... in the dark... in the Swamp. ...UHP! WE WERE IDIOTS!

And make no mistake about it, despite some peeping moonlight, it gets quite dark in the Okefenokee. It gets darker than an Edgar Allen Poe story; it gets darker than AC/DC when they’re “Back In Black”; hell, it gets almost as dark as a pint of Guinness at midnight during a power outage in the pub!

[A pint of Guinness at midnight during a power outage in the pub.]

Surprisingly, however, Eric had brought a flashlight in his pocket. Evidently he had a fine intuitive sense. Foresight: flashlight. Ahh, good thinking. I guess Eric just had better survival instincts than I had. So, there we are, our only survival tools being Eric’s flashlight and the empty Lowenbrau bottle in my hand, and we’re wandering around a bit and discussing our situation, when we hear some odd noise off to our left. My friend shines the light in that direction and in the water, between the foliage, we can see a slowly advancing alligator. #%&@!

Eric and I waste no time in moving a good distance to the right. But we hesitate to put a great deal of space between us and the ‘gator because we don’t want to stray too far from the general area, knowing that the path we used to reach this point is somewhere in the vicinity. We didn't want to go from "lost" to "hopelessly lost".

We’re standing there in the dark, wracking our brains and flashing the light around the area, hoping to see something that looks familiar. And that’s when we hear the rippling of water. Eric points the beam toward the Swamp and - #%&@ AGAIN! – we can see another alligator, a second one, eyes above the surface, his webbed front claws sort of dog-paddling in the water and bringing him toward us. The alligators were apparently attracted to the light.

‘Gator to the left of me
‘Gator to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with Eric

Now believe me, under normal circumstances, I’m the last one to litter; I absolutely despise littering. But we’re talking life and death here, and I think to myself: I wonder if it would scare the ‘gator off if I threw this Lowenbrau bottle in his direction?

I sure as hell wasn’t going to try to hit him with it, because I wasn’t aiming to piss him off, but maybe a splash in the water nearby would make him rethink his advance. So, I toss my empty beer bottle in his direction. *SPLASH!*

Nuttin’. No reaction whatsoever. He didn’t even blink. His glowing reddish-orange eyes remained trained on us. (And, no, I’m not kidding, in the flashlight’s beam, the alligator’s eyes seemed to glow an eerie reddish-orange.)

Eric shut off the flashlight and we headed a little ways away from the water’s edge. Now there we are, leaning up against a tree and discussing the very real possibility that we might need to spend the night in the Swamp and wait for daylight. And we’re thinking that we’d have to climb a tree because to remain on the ground meant we might become midnight snacks for ‘gators.

To be fully truthful, at no point did Eric or I really panic during our ordeal. Although neither of us ever said it, I think that this kind of trouble was exactly the sort of adventure we were secretly hoping to encounter on ‘The Jack Daniel’s Cross-Country Tour’; we didn’t want to have some completely safe and utterly forgettable trip. We wanted excitement, and, boy, we had it now.

As we’re standing there in the dark, discussing our predicament and creeped out by the thought of nearby alligators and by how many massive black spiders might be all around us, suddenly an unseen owl in the very tree we’re leaning against starts crying out, “Who? Who? Who?”

Oh, come on! Now that was just too much, and I was all set to yell out, “Am I on Candid Camera?” Here we are, Eric and I, lost at night in the Okefenokee Swamp and this potential real-life tragedy was starting to seem cliché. I mean, at this point I’m beginning to feel like I’ve somehow wandered into a really bad Disney movie from the 1960s or ‘70s. With that owl “Who"-ing above our heads, I half expected Dean Jones, Don Knotts, or Hayley Mills to come trudging through the foliage to meet us. Either them or Gilligan and The Skipper.

Honestly, I think it was at that moment I calmly realized we were going to find our way out of the Swamp because the entire scenario had just become too preposterous, and to die in the Okefenokee under those circumstances would have made jokes of our lives and deaths.

And that’s when Eric came up with his A-List idea. (Like I said, he had the better survival instincts in this comedy duo.) He suggested that I remain by the tree so we wouldn’t lose our bearings to an even greater degree, while he tramped through the area with his flashlight. In other words, we would search the area in a kind of spider web pattern with me representing the center point from which the lines of search emanated. The moment his light completely disappeared from my view I was to shout out and he would move back closer to me again, so we wouldn’t become permanently separated, and then he’d try again from a slightly different angle.

So, I stood under that tree with the cliché owl above me, and Eric, flashlight in hand, began to systematically cover the ground, trying to find that thin path of trampled foliage. A couple times his beam became just a small pinpoint of light and then disappeared and I hollered out to him and he’d retrace his steps, readjust his direction and head out again. And it wasn’t more than about fifteen minutes before I heard Eric yell, “I’ve found it!”

Adios, cliché owl; adios, alligators. We’re . . . OUTTA HERE!

When we got back to the abandoned mountain bike, we looked it over carefully. No sign of spiders. So Eric got on and we headed back to camp (a.k.a. two sleeping bags on the ground).

The next morning, with daylight on our side, my buddy and I again walked down that little path, cut through the foliage where it ended and took some pictures in the area where we had been lost only about 12 hours earlier.

[Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.]

[Me @ tree.]

[A 'gator skims the water's surface.]

Although Eric and I made many memories on ‘The 1983 Jack Daniel’s Cross-Country Tour’ and had a number of adventures on our way from New York to Los Angeles, the one that I recall most fondly, the experience that was the most fun was also the one most harrowing: a night in the Okefenokee Swamp.

Lowenbrau? Uh . . . no, thanks. Got Milk?

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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MUTINY IN THE COMMENT SECTION (A Blog Pirate’s Yarn)

2011-10-30T13:33:00.009-07:00

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This is a “super-silly-ous” song I threw together yesterday for my own amusement. Since it is double-themed, pertaining to Pirates (always one of the most popular costumes for kids at Halloween) and Blogging, I am dedicating it to my little community here in the Blogosphere as a Halloween treat. (Think of it as that bad apple dropped into your bag of candy.)

I kind of imagine this song with a Reggae beat, or perhaps a Calypso rhythm. Then again, maybe it should be a Rooskie-like Polka-ski. Well, I’ll leave it to David Lindley to figure out.

It’s a little light on lyrics so I inserted a couple short instrumental breaks to flesh the thing out. I know it’s dumb, but it was first conceived solely to put a smile on my face and a spring in my step... also, I happen to like dumb. The really good stuffs by a real songwriter will follow.

MUTINY IN THE COMMENT SECTION
(A Blog Pirate’s Yarn)

[This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.]

I’ll storm the gates, I’ll maim the guard
Ravage the women, raise my flag in your yard
I’m going to kidnap your cat
Put fleas on your dog and when I’m done with that . . .

Wreck your records with a nail
Seduce your daughter, throw your wife in jail
With my eyepatch and my parrot
I’ll shout at your baby and really scare it

[Chorus:]
I’m gonna dress like Jolly Roger Antichrist and before the next election
I’m-a gonna commit me some outright mutiny in your blog’s comment section

Yo-Ho! Yo-Ho! I’ll drink your rum
And do a Rocky Balboa on your thumb
I’m gonna “Arrrrr!”, I’m gonna brag
I’m gonna rip your jerseys and make ‘em rags

I’ll board your blog, steal your booty
And edit your posts into something fruity
You’ll walk the plank and hit the sea
While I graffiti your blog and boast with glee

[Chorus:]
I’m gonna dress like Jolly Roger Antichrist and before the next election
I’m-a gonna commit me some outright mutiny in your blog’s comment section

[Instrumental Break:
featuring kazoo and bagpipes]

I’ll make your blog my own forum
Line up your “Followers” and then I’ll gore ‘em
I’ll bind John, Paul, George and Ringo
And ship those pinkos back to where they should-go

I’m-a wreak havoc and raise hell
And duct tape your mouth shut so you’ll never tell
It’s true, dead men tell no tales
S'pose I’ll hafta kill ya if duct tape fails

[Chorus:]
I’m gonna dress like Jolly Roger Antichrist and before the next election
I’m-a gonna commit me some outright mutiny in your blog’s comment section

[Instrumental Break:
featuring jug and washboard]

I’ll hoist my colors up your mast
And use your own blog to call you “jack-assed”
I’ll commandeer your computer
And I’ll screw it up with a Roto-Rooter

From your site I’ll tell the nation
My humor’s chock full o’ sophistication
As if that crime weren’t sin enoughs
I’ll take over "Russia" with my "fascist stuffs".

I’m gonna dress like Jolly Roger Antichrist and before the next election
I’m-a gonna commit me some outright mutiny in your blog’s comment section
In your blog’s comment section
Your blog’s comment section
Your blog’s comment section
[Repeat to fade out or pass out, whichever comes first]

BONUS TRACKS (The Blues) :

OK, that’s enough of that ridiculousness. I’m done wid it. Now here comes the good stuffs . . .

In my last blog installment, Julie Fedderson left a comment telling me that she’s “recently started a fascination with the blues”. (Incidentally, Julie’s blog is one of the more entertaining I’ve found in the Blogosphere, so I’ll link you to it at the bottom of this installment.)

So, here are a couple of John Lee Hooker songs that Julie and everyone else ought to be familiar with if they aren’t already.

This is my favorite version of “House Rent Boogie” – love the way Hooker delivers this one! He just gets so worked up when talking about his clothes being tossed out in the street. Ha! Funny stuffs! (Do ya think George Thorogood knows this song?)

I first acquired “House Rent Boogie” on cassette at the Watts Blues Festival in, like, ‘84, and for years I went around saying “Yes, yes, yes” and “You don’t like that stuff!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAWHXNG_4CM

Now, when you’re listening to this next one (it’s much shorter), see what Texas band of White rockers comes to your mind. (I’ll give you a small hint: ZZ Top.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOyj4ciJk34

Link:
Julie Fedderson’s GYPSY IN MY SOUL blog.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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"LET’S GET ON THIS THING!" (Or, "MR. ITCH, MEET DR. SCRATCH")

2011-10-26T13:23:00.004-07:00

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It was beginning to drive me a bit insane. (OK, that’s more of a putt than a drive but...)

Over the last couple months one of my most frequently used expressions has become “Let’s get ON this thing!”

Then one day brother Napoleon asked me, “Where’d you get that one from?” and I confessed that I couldn’t quite remember. It was definitely something I’d picked up along the way, not an STMcC original, because in the dark recesses of what’s left of my mind I could hear the “correct” vocal inflection, I knew the way it was “supposed” to be said, and so I also knew I was borrowing it from someone.

I continued using that expression while the source of it remained on the tip of my mind, just out of reach, teasing me, itching me. Arrgghhh! I just can't... quite... scratch it ...damn it!

I told Nappy it reminded me of the Howlin’ Wolf expression I’ve used for 30+ years (“Alright, let’s get on it”) but I knew this was something different – it’s meant to be said more forcefully. And yet I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that “Let’s get ON this thing!” went back to the Blues. It seemed, and even felt, “Black” and “musical” to me . . . but if not Howlin’ Wolf, who? And where?

Well, just 15 minutes ago – after many weeks of mental anguish – I finally GOT IT! It struck me suddenly, like a Bolt O' Lightnin’!

I was about to play Gary Moore’s album “Blues For Greeny”, and that got me to thinking about the Blues in general, and the Blues in general got me to thinking about Lightnin’ Hopkins, and that inspired me to look up a certain Lightnin’ Hopkins album on a website. Yes, that Lightnin’ Hopkins (is there another?) – the singer of “Coffee Blues”, “Gambler’s Blues”, “Lonesome Dog Blues”, “Big Car Blues”, and--
WAIT! STOP! HOLD IT!

"Big Car Blues"? . . . "Big Car Blues"?! . . . "Big Car--"
Holy Amnesia, Batman, I think that’s it!
Mr. Itch, meet Dr. Scratch! Ahhhhh...

So, instead of playing Gary Moore’s “Blues For Greeny”, I put on a certain Lightnin’ Hopkins album I have which contains songs (including “Big Car Blues”) I’ve owned since before my waters were muddy, and here’s what I heard :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBQHSwV9ByA

OK, so it’s really “Step ON this thing!” rather than “Let’s get ON this thing!” (Please don’t “86” me; I only missed it by that much.)

I loves me some Lightnin’ Hopkins, but more, much more than this,
I’m gonna say it my way!

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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“EMILY”, YOU DON’T KNOW ME . . .

2011-10-23T22:47:00.007-07:00

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This is for a very special someone named "Emily" . . . or Lisa, or Cindy, or Yolanda, or . . .

Well... ~~you know who you are~~ you don’t know who you are.

A BOY LEFT WAITING

The warm safety of daylight yields to the evening
Half of the lake shudders under the moon
While the rusty sky quietly tip-toes away
To cower in darkness

He lies on the new dock and listens to the water
As it gently spanks the shore in contempt
And in the midst of this solitary scolding
He can do nothing but think back on that dream

...and recall her soft face and tender ways

But he knows his arrival is
Years too late
She will not return on this evening
Or any other

There is one duck on the water
Drifting with the current
And, of course, somewhere across the lake
A lonely dog cries into the night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSrhJae02Tk

We will walk on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight,
we will get it right . . . someday . . .
somewhere in time.

*POOF!*

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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