Categories
Uncategorized

Wrasslin’

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. It turned cold, but without precipitation, so we’re ahead of the game. Folks up in Virginia and West Virginia got a bunch of the white stuff, which I’m sure was shocking for the middle of April. We just got a lot of cold wind that made it difficult to move your fingers after a while. Planting a few $5.00 azaleas to spruce up the place became a chore for my old arthritic hands.

It’s a sad thing to have to put behind something you enjoy because your body just doesn’t want to do it anymore. I guess that’s true for every profession that has a physical component to it, not just park supervisor. I often think about professional athletes that have to decide that it’s time to hang it up. Of course sometimes the decision is taken away from them, like Formula One racers. I think about Ayrton Senna who won the F1 world championship three times before his death at 34. In the documentary, “Hunt vs. Lauda”, they point out repeatedly that Formula One racing is the world’s deadliest sport. It was like it was preordained that if you were going to be a champion, you would die in the car. The competition is that fierce. Philosophers wax that if you “die doing something you love” it’s not as bad. Seem like it’s just as fatal to me. Formula One racing is not that important in our area, even though we do have a track nearby in Braselton. The South prefers NASCAR, where longevity is less of an issue.

The South also loves wrestling, or “wrasslin”, as we call it. I can remember following “Georgia Championship Wrestling” very intensely back in the day. My participation in high school wrestling eventually led to the conclusion that professional wrestling was indeed fake, but that didn’t stop of us from attending every live match we could in the Municipal Auditorium in Atlanta. I was also a devotee of the Saturday night telecasts on Channel 2. The TV telecasts were basically build ups for the matches in the Auditorium the following Friday night. There was always some grudge between two fellows that could only be resolved by a cage match in the Auditorium. I remember attending some big battle royal that former professional football player “Dick The Bruiser” won. In addition to a bunch of money, there was a new Cadillac awarded to the winner. “The Bruiser” had the audacity to have a private train car brought down from his hometown Chicago, pre-match,  to take the Cadillac back with him. All of us locals were incensed at the chutzpah.

Stirring up the hoypoloi was what professional wrestling was all about. Finding out that some of the most bitter rivals in the ring, were the best of friends out of the ring came as quite a shock to most of us. It was so easy to get trapped in the theatrics of the show that you were willing to discount the fact that if it was real, most of these guys would be dead. How many times can you get hit over the head with a folding chair and it not cause some permanent damage? Of course, we devotees of the sport believed in the reality of professional wrestling as surely as the Resurrection. Any suggestion to the contrary was heresy.

My first insight into the fakery was watching a wrestler take a bottle cap and open a cut on his own forehead. Profuse sweating made the wound look like he’d gone through the windshield of a car traveling seventy miles an hour. Since the wrestler was the “hero”, all of us locals were outraged at the evil done to our champion. I’m sure that the “Bad Guy” in every match had more to fear from the crowd than he did his opponent. And yet, they survived, and most lived to very ripe old ages. Many of the old school wrestlers continue to compete up into their sixties. One fellow, Bob Armstrong, is 76 and is still wrestling.

In recent years it seems that the thing that professional wrestlers have to fear the most, is themselves. There’s been several losses due to performance enhancing drugs and the effects that they create in the body. I guess the philosophy is that they have to look like the biggest, baddest athletes and if it takes performance enhancers to get there, it’s just how it is. That’s real sad to me. I’d like to think that these guys will still be out there wrasslin’ around in their old age, no matter how choreographed it is.

Well, I’ve got the NCAA wrestling championship DVRed and I’m all fired up to watch some wrestling, not wrasslin. I hear the heavyweights are going to be a real “battle royal” this year.

Categories
Uncategorized

Zero Dark Thirty

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. Windy and blustery with the promise of freezing temperatures tonight. I shouldn’t complain too much, folks to the North of us got up to five inches of snow. I bet their sinuses are doing flip flops with the dry seventy degree temps followed by snowfall. I don’t know if I can live in the sameness of temperature like on a tropical island, but it would be fun to give it a shot for a while.

Imagining life on a tropical island is a good way to pass the time as we head to the Walmart in Blairsville for our weekly re-provisioning. Now, this is not the first time this week Mulva has been to the Walmart, it might be her sixth or seventh. I just have to attend on the Saturday visit. I make good use of my time there by picking out our weekly Date night movie and reviewing the latest in toys and video games. Our grandson, Trey, is too young for video games now, but I want to be up to date on what the industry has to offer for when Trey is ready to be a gamer. Most of the games I can easily pass over as not suitable for Trey. Some I have to play on the in-store setup to check their future worthiness. I must admit that some games require purchasing to further investigate at home. I want Trey to know that any game he might encounter has the Grandpa Lite seal of approval.

I was surprised to find a real quality movie in the $3.99 discount movie bin this week. It was “Zero Dark Thirty” . I don’t have a clue why such a highly acclaimed movie about war and terror and intrigue would have been discounted so. My only clue is that the “folks running things” don’t value too highly one of the Obama administration’s highest accomplishments. Truth be told, if they didn’t want the message to get out they should price the movie at $399.00. Nobody in this area would pay that much for a movie, even if it was documentary footage of “The Second Coming”. We’d just wait long enough for the footage to come out on regular TV.

Anyway, the movie was a corker. I think Mulva really identified with Jessica Chastain’s character, Maya. Maya dealt routinely with pig headed men who knew everything, and weren’t willing to hear one word of advice, no matter how sound that advice might be. Mulva identified so strongly with the character that she’d be pumping her fists and pounding the arm of the sofa to drive home the character’s point. I’m not sure exactly why Mulva empathized so strongly with the character, it must be Mulva’s church work.

In case you don’t know the story, the plot is about how the Obama administration doggedly pursued any and every lead to find Ossama Bin Laden, the supposed mastermind behind 9-11. Jessica Chastain’s character, Maya, is a CIA agent tasked with tracking every scrap of intelligence she can to find the hiding place of the world’s number one criminal. Maya fights every one of her superiors, and generally becomes a pain in the rear to all of them. Maya is a woman on a mission and she is not going to let social protocol or office politics get in her way. Finally, she finds someone to listen to her, and eventually Seal Team Six is sent in to do the job. The great “Mastermind of 9-11” is laid to rest in the Indian Ocean and life returns to normal. For her reward, the real life Maya is transferred to obscurity to where she can never irritate her co-workers again. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

The movie received five Academy Award nominations and won the award for Best Sound Editing. Jessica Chastain lost the Best Actress award to Jennifer Lawrence, and we just can’t explain the politics of Hollywood. Mulva and I are sure who gave the best performance. Check out “Zero Dark Thirty”, it’s got something for everyone, and it’s a historical fact. You can’t beat that.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Road

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. Well, we were deluged by rains that apparently snuck up from behind on the Whiz O Meter. I’m guessing the rains were of the variety that can’t be seen by the monitors of the Whiz O Meter. You know, the monitors whose vantage point is buried deep within the bowels of the Channel 11 basement. The clouds must have been using that new fangled stealth technology that keeps things from showing up on radar.

I mean, not a mention of the possibility of rain, and we got a soaking. I think even the Union County early warning system gave us a call before the bad weather hit. Of course Union County’s situation is somewhat different than Channel 11’s. Union County’s operations are above ground, and they’re able to look out the window to see what the weather is doing. Seriously Channel 11, open a window, look outside and see what’s going on. Otherwise, pay some folks around the state to give you a call when the weather changes.

It makes one wonder if we get so wrapped up in what we think our technology is capable of doing, that we lose sight of the practical things that need to be done. Being a big fan of science fiction, I am always looking at the latest achievements with an eye for their future impact. I honestly don’t think Skynet could take place, but, I don’t discount the idea that something we invent for one purpose could go horribly wrong and produce an unintended consequence.

Something going horribly awry is the setting for a book I just finished, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. I love books like this, and I’ve heard the movie is just as good. I’m not sure I’ll be able to work it into the Date night schedule, but I may try. I’m not sure that the movie could capture the overwhelming despair of the book. Which, if it does, is not a good theme for a Date night. Maybe I’ll just cue it up for a “Home Alone” session.

Being alone is the central theme of “The Road”. A father and son are trying to survive in a postapocalyptic world. We don’t know if the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war, or an asteroid falling to Earth. We do know that the world is in a nuclear winter setting and that even the snow is gray. The world is a very cold place that no longer supports life of any kind. The survivors are left to their own devices for food, and most turn to cannibalism as a means of survival. The father and son have a gun to defend themselves with, or, to take their own lives if they are beset by cannibals. Oh, and to make matters worse, the Dad is dying from some sort of lung ailment he has developed. Now for the bad news….

The Dad is trying to get the son to the coast before he, the Dad, dies. It’s unclear how the son is supposed to survive better at the beach, but that’s the plan. The “road” is the path that father and son take to arrive at the sea. Along the way they have a few happy moments, but for the most part, it’s just one horror scene after another. One of the happy moments was when they found a farm house that had cans of food. For a little while, the pair are able to relax and enjoy a couple of days of “normalcy”, before setting off again for the sea.

Eventually they reach their objective, and the Dad dies after he achieves his goal of delivering his son to the beach. The son is collected by a family who promises they’re “good guys” and the book ends. When you finish the book you just want to drag a lawn chair into the sun and strip down to your shorts, sunblock be damned. The overwhelming imagery of an ashen sky permeated my thoughts for about a day and I marveled at the brilliance of Cormac McCarthy.

McCarthy is 83 now and was 73 when he wrote “The Road”. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky to be able to write a rental receipt when I’m 73. I need to find out Cormac’s regimen. Clearly he’s got a handle on this aging thing.

“The Road”, it is one of the choices best taken.

Categories
Uncategorized

Cognitive Dissonance

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. Rains and high winds are bad for mobile homes, but good for allergy sufferers. I was so glad to be able to go out and pull weeds today without needing to be hospitalized as a result of the effort. I know folks over in Hall county aren’t happy about the wind damage they received, but, like the saying goes, “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good”. I’m happy to have the pollen out of here, and sorry that some trailers got blown over.

While I mull over the thought of being happy and sad about the same event, I think of politicians who must get caught all of the time with issues that might bring a mixture of feelings. Of course politicians have a political party to tell them how to respond to all topics so they don’t get confused by their own feelings. I’m thinking that part of the attraction for The Donald is his lack of a party filter to clean up his language before it airs to the public. I know we all are tired of hearing the same tried and true party answers. Maybe that’s why outsiders like The Cruz and The Donald are leading on the Republican side. They speak directly to their lunatic fringe with no political double speak.

Just for grins, I was looking at some Trump quotes to prove my point. Thank you Google for your ease of use. Right off the top I found a doozy: “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” The Donald forgot to add, “that’s why I’m throwing my hat in the ring”. Not to be outdone, The Cruz comes back with, “Twenty years from now if there is some obscure trivial pursuit question, I am confident I will be the answer.”  I’m not sure that one can be convinced that one will be the President, and, the answer to an obscure future trivial pursuit question. Seems like if you really thought you were going to win, it would not lead to obscurity. I think it’s called cognitive dissonance.

The Donald let a little bit of his dissonance slip through in this famous quote: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.”  “And some I assume are good people”, kind of explains the opposition of thoughts in Trump’s brain that he can’t reconcile, and yet, feels compelled to pontificate about.

Not to be outdone by saying things that he doesn’t really have resolved in his brain, The Cruz is remembered as giving one of his Evangelical motivated prophesies of doom and gloom and being called to task by a little girl in the audience. The little girl had responded audibly to Cruz’s assertion that the “world was on fire”. “The world’s on fire? “, the little girl asked, and The Cruz responded, “Yes! Your World is on Fire!”.  The Cruz then had to spend some time backtracking the statement by telling the little girl her parents would protect her. By voting for Cruz, I surmise.

I’m thinking that women are going to play a large part in electing our next President. I’m not saying that because I believe that all women are going to vote for Hillary in a tsunami of gender solidarity. I’m saying that because there is such a great paper trail for women to familiarize themselves with to let them know how the candidates really feel about women. The Donald says, “Nobody respects women more than I do.” which is a great quote to match up with,“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.” Let’s all be honest here, isn’t it the height of respect being called “a young, and beautiful, piece of ass?”

I guess if The Donald doesn’t mind having his daughters evaluated by their looks and sexual proclivities, there’s no dissonance.

 

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Rusty And Diane

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. Well, thanks to massive overdoses of Tussin DM and Hall’s Mentho-lyptus cough drops, I’m back amongst the living. At some point this pollen thing is going to die down and life will return to normal. The question is, when? I don’t know how to connect global warming to the proliferation of pollen, but I’m sure there is a connection. I sure don’t remember this much pollen back when I was growing up. I think being able to write a note in the pollen on the car of the owner of a car parked sideways in the Walmart, is a fairly recent condition. Might just be my memory, though.

Speaking of memories leads me back to my after church lunch at IHOP this week. Like I was saying, I saw a couple that was sitting in the corner of the restaurant that was familiar, but it took me a while to place them. After an exhaustive search of my data banks, I was able to identify the couple as Randy and Diane Stover. They were Seniors in high school when I was a Freshman. I remembered Randy as the BMOC back then. He was a football player and Diane was the head cheerleader. Randy looked good considering. He seemed to have most of his hair, though it was all grey now. Diane has not aged nearly as well. Her face is wrinkled and her body is very bent over. I guess it’s the osteoporosis, but I don’t know for sure.

They seemed to be having a spirited discussion with themselves and I’m thinking that it’s pretty cool that they’re joking and jibing with each other after fifty plus years of marriage. They even included Levon, their server, in their repartee. Randy and Diane are very demonstrative about their order, and very specific. Diane wants a stack of pancakes with just whip cream on top, not butter, and no syrup. Randy wants the “Breakfast Sampler”, with no ham. Could Levon substitute the ham with pork sausage patties? Levon could.

It was funny watching them order because it was like they were a couple of epicures in a restaurant in France, giving very specific instructions to the maitre d. Their enthusiasm for their order was cute because it was like they were taking an adventure together. Levon was leaving to get their drinks when Diane told “Thomas” that she just wanted water with no ice. Randy corrected Diane’s misuse of Levon’s name, and Levon laughed it off by saying Diane could call him Thomas if she wanted to. Levon went off to get their order placed and Randy and Diane continued on an undercurrent of conversation.

I was mulling over the question of whether to introduce myself now or wait until my stomach stopped grumbling. I decided the reunion might be tainted by the roar of my belly, so I decided to wait. While we all waited for Levon to return with our orders, Randy and Diane kept up a fairly brisk conversation. Occasionally, Diane would say a word louder than the rest of the conversation, but it seemed like it just might be part of a jibing, teasing routine that couples get into sometimes. You know, like, “you never pick up your dirty socks” with a response of, “I leave them in the floor where they’re easy to find”.

Finally, Levon returned  with everyone’s meals, and Diane is effusive in her praise of her pancakes. She can’t thank “Manny” enough for his excellent service. Well, now I’m suspicious. I’m not great with names, and as a result, I tend to not use them when talking to folks. I’ve decided it’s more socially acceptable to not use someone’s name than to call them the wrong name. It’s just my opinion. Diane’s attempt to use the waiter’s name is socially commendable, but getting awkward since she is using the wrong name. Randy’s attempts to correct Diane are severely upsetting Diane. Diane is getting louder and louder and her conversation has veered to talks of “leaving me” and being “done with me”. Randy appears to be trying to calm Diane in a moderate tone while Diane’s voice rises above his with random city’s names throw out loud enough to be heard throughout the restaurant. A restaurant that has now filled with the “church crowd”.

Well, I didn’t need to be a doctor to diagnose this one. Diane is suffering from dementia. My heart breaks a little to remember the head cheerleader at the top of the pyramid, now accusing her husband of “wanting to leave her in Pittsburgh so he could spend the rest of her money”. Randy implores Diane to calm down, “she is creating a scene”. Eventually, Diane is able to talk in a quieter tone, but one laced with anger and acrimony. I can hear assorted customers making cracks about having “dinner and a floor show”, and I resist the urge to blast them. I also resist my previous urge to reminisce with Randy and Diane. That ship has sailed.

Categories
Uncategorized

I Vow To Thee My Country II

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. We’ve had another record day for pollen, and I made the mistake of trying to do my constitutional without a mask. I’ve been trying to do a few laps around the park here at TackyToo to maintain my razor sharp conditioning. Unfortunately, the pollen got the best of me about half way round the loop and I had to make the decision of whether to press forward or go back. Because I’m hard headed, and don’t like to give in, I pressed forward. I just did make it back to the bench in front of the Rec room before the coughing spasm hit.

Well, I coughed so long and so hard that I was getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen. My head actually hurt from coughing so much. I am a person who prides himself on knowing when “enough is enough”. I know that trying to push things a little too far will sometimes cause those things to break. I should have quit midway in my walk and called Mulva for a pickup. Now my hardheadedness was going to put me back on the sofa for a couple of days. Being hardheaded is not a positive personality trait, which brings us back to my recollection of this week’s service at The Full Gospel Original Church of God.

When we left the story, the Reverend Helen Handbasket had moved to the front of the altar in the church and was awaiting the serpents to begin her testament of faith. Now normally the protocol calls for the pastor to do whatever tricks they’re going to do with the snakes before the lost souls approach the Reverend for a blessing. If the lost souls don’t feel like handling a serpent, the serpent is passed off to a wrangler or a “spirit filled” member of the church to be looked after while the Reverend blesses the repentant. The blessing generally takes the form of a few words said in some foreign language like Sanskrit, and then a sharp blow to the top of the head so that the sinner can feel the power of the Lord. The initiate is then free to join the testament of faith, lay prostrate where they fell, or return to their seat.

Well, like they say at Amtrak, scheduling is everything. The Reverend Helen Handbasket had just started into her “tap dance for Jesus” when the first lost soul reached her. The Reverend had not had the opportunity to “warm up” the serpents prior to their introduction to the crowd scene in front of the altar. The crush of people wanting to have the Reverend “lay hands” on them threw off the normally tightly controlled environment. Wranglers and serpents were getting separated by folks who just wanted to get a little closer to the magic that is the Reverend Helen Handbasket. Let me just say here that there is some kind of magic going on, because there were no reports of bites or even strikes while pandemonium held supreme in front of the altar.

Folks were “tap dancing for Jesus”, passing serpents from one to another, and speaking in tongues like it was as normal as going roller skating. Eventually the energy died down and the wranglers collected all of the serpents and placed them safely back in their boxes. The choir raised its voice in, “We’ll Meet Again”, while the congregation closed their eyes in prayer. The benediction was delivered by Elder Diggum so that the Reverend Helen Handbasket could slip to the front door to shake hands as the audience departed. I was headed out the door at the first note from the choir. I’m not ready for a meeting with the good Reverend yet. I know I’m putting off the inevitable, I’d just like to meet the Reverend on more neutral ground.

Well, I felt like I had earned my breakfast at IHOP this Sunday for sure. I made it in record time. I was pleased to find that I had beat the “church crowd” to the restaurant. There were just a few couples in attendance when I arrived. One couple in the corner struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t place them. I mulled it over while I decided whether to order two double dipped French Toasts or three. I decided on two double dipped French Toasts with side orders of ham, bacon and hash browns. My lunch decision made, I racked my brain as to who the couple in the corner was. The man was more familiar, and while he appeared to be in his early seventies, he looked in pretty good condition. The woman looked much older than the man, and was bent from old age. Finally it hit me. They were Seniors in high school when I was a Freshman. They were the “couple” back then. Rusty and Diane Stover. 

More later.

Categories
Uncategorized

I Vow To Thee My Country

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. I hear there’s still folks without power up here in the mountains due to the high winds and all. I’m glad to report our lights have not even flickered. I’ve got my backup generator primed and ready to go to provide power for the Rec room here at TackyToo if necessary, but so far the generator has remained silent.

Unlike all of the major networks, I consider it a component of good journalism to report the good news as well as the bad. I often wonder what would happen if the news folks tried to balance the news by devoting fifty percent of each telecast to people doing good, being nice to one another. It would take a re-education on the part of the viewers. We’d have to be willing to accept a program where part of the time we were saying “ahhhhh”, instead of “oh my God” the whole telecast. It would be refreshing to see politicians being interviewed for some good thing that they’d done instead of running from the cameras. You know that the good has to outweigh the bad, otherwise we would have already killed ourselves off. It would be an interesting experiment to see if we could raise the collective zeitgeist by altering our news coverage, just a little bit.

I realize “if it bleeds it leads”, I’m guilty of that sometimes myself. I just think that promoting the worst of the human condition without paying equal time to the good things we do, sets the bar so low for journalism. It probably is harder to find the stories of good people acting honorably than to listen to the police radio for the latest call. It just seems like we should be promoting good behavior, even if our promotion of the bad is subconscious. Impressionable minds are watching television for clues as to how to act, we should be promoting our highest ideals, not our lowest conduct.

Just one of the many things I cogitate on while I head into Blairsville to this Sunday’s service at the new location of The Full Gospel Original Church of God. I am relieved to find that the parking lot is not filled with the overflow crowd that we had at last week’s Easter service. There are a few people milling about the broadcast truck, but they seem to be more interested in watching the crew than the telecast. Parking is still an issue, and I have to park about four blocks away. I am concerned that the pollen filled walk back to the church will set off my coughing again. The Reverend Helen Handbasket could have serious competition for the crowd’s attention if I get started. I make sure that my two rolls of Hall’s mentho-lyptus cough drops are in my jacket pocket and I head in. 

Mulva has saved my seat on the aisle, third row right. The auditorium is packed, but everyone appears to have a seat. I surmise last week’s attendance was due to the “Easter” bump, and that this week’s smaller crowd is not a reflection of the service last week. I think that folks that came for a “spirit filled” experience got their money’s worth last week, even if the testament of faith had to be foregone for safety issues.

The house lights dim and the choir launches into “Nearer My God To Thee”. There is no puff of smoke, but there is a  “poof” moment, when the Reverend Helena Handbasket magically appears before us. The Reverend is decked out in a Kelly green robe with a white sash trimmed in gold. I’m wondering if the green signifies Spring, rebirth, renewal, or just the only robe that was clean. I’m pretty sure Mulva doesn’t want me to ask. I just think most folks do things for a reason, and the way we get to know folks better is to ask what the reason was. I will defer to Mulva’s sense of ecclesiastical etiquette on this one.

Well, the Reverend Helen Handbasket was in fine form. Apparently this week’s brush with stupidity by the legislature had rankled the Reverend, and she was not going to let her congregation escape without letting them know how she felt about intolerant Christians. I mean we went from Mary Magdalene to lepers without blinking an eye and the segue made perfect sense if you believe in the Golden Rule. Good Christians are all supposed to be united in their love of the Lord, despite their Earthly trappings. So whether you are a person of ill repute, or unclean skin, you are deserving of God’s love. The Reverend wrapped up with Romans 9:12, Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

With that, the choir went into “Love Lifted Me”, and the Reverend moved to the floor in front of the altar to await the lost souls and the serpents. This time they arrived out of order.

More later.

Categories
Uncategorized

Nathan Deal Just Said No

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. Gorgeous weather but for the pollen. I guess pollen isn’t weather, maybe a byproduct of weather, but not weather its self. It does stand to reason that the weather folks will talk about pollen count, though. Folks with a sensitivity to the air quality experience the worst symptoms in the Spring and the Fall, so I guess the advent of either season should come from the folks who watch the weather most closely.

I mean, the sports guy could tell us that Fall is coming because it was football season, or Spring is here because it’s baseball season, but it’s just not the same. Big announcements and proclamations should come from the people who understand the most about the topic, right? The way I see it, there’s nothing good going to come from allowing a minority group of small thinkers to determine big decisions for the rest of us based on their limited understanding of a topic. I bet you could still find people that think the Earth is flat, or that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Just because these people believe what they believe with all of their hearts and souls, doesn’t make their conjecture right, right?

To give another example of small minded thinking that is not only wrong in its supposition, but runs contrary to the values that it states to purport, is the Religious Freedom Bill. First we have to lay to rest this silly idea that the Christians in this country are being persecuted. Nothing further could be true. Sadly, the only the example that I can give for the Christians behavior is similar to when you tell a child no, and the child screams “you don’t love me”. The reality of living in Democracy is that not everyone gets their way all of the time. At least that’s how it used to work before this group of do nothing politicians took office. Now the zealots are trying to claim their “religious freedoms” are being impinged on when they are required to allow others their basic civic freedoms.  

According to the title, “SB 129 “Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act”; provide for the preservation of religious freedom”, was pushed through the legislature ahead of a million of bills more worthy of consideration, so that “religious” shop owners could tell gay people to go to hell when they requested service. Perhaps, I oversimplify, but I like to cut to the quick of the matter. People who have been taught to “love others as themselves” want to push gays out of the door because their “holier than thou” sensibilities are offended. I’m not sure how religious people resolve the “what would Jesus do?” component of this question. Maybe they’re tired of trying to do what Jesus would have done because it doesn’t feed their bigotry and homophobia. Maybe this group of “Christians” just needs to bash folks who are different in some way to feel better about themselves.

Outside of reestablishing segregation, I don’t know what the long term purpose of this bill, and these small minded individuals, hope to accomplish. You can’t make gay go away. You can’t pray it away, and it won’t starve to death because you didn’t make it a wedding cake. It is the Civil Rights issue all over again with a different victim, a different face. It is very easy to see how this bill could have been extended to refuse service to blacks, Hispanics, anybody that didn’t pass the shop owners narrow spectrum of approved people. That’s fine if it is a private club, but, once you are open to the public, you must serve the public. A lot of people lost their lives to gain this right. We don’t need to relive this period of time again.

Fortunately, our governor, Nathan “Can We Make A” Deal, vetoed the passage of the bill. I guess for once I should be glad that Nathan’s interest in getting a piece of every pie led him to do the right thing. There was such a widespread corporate outcry to the bill that Nathan’s chances of landing a cushy board membership after leaving the Governor’s mansion was seriously in question. I suspect that Arthur Blank had old Nathan on speed dial. Building a billion dollar stadium, and then finding out that Atlanta won’t be considered for hosting the Super Bowl because of our discriminatory practices, must have stung Mr. Blank. I’m betting Mr. Blank is a guy who doesn’t get stung much. I’m glad he was there to get in the way of this awful miscarriage, along with all of the other corporate leaders who spoke out.

BTW, Nathan made a nice speech when he vetoed the bill. He actually invoked some Christian values. It will be nice if the rest of the legislature takes heed.

Categories
Uncategorized

Get On Up

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. The weather is a little better, as is the coughing and hacking that has become my existence. We had a few hours of high winds, the blowing variety, not the tornadic variety. I understand some folks lost power due to the lines blowing down. I understand that burying lines underground keeps them from all sorts of peril. Would a lineman still be a lineman if the line was buried underground?

This was one of the great mysteries I pondered as we drove over to the Walmart in Blairsville. I was intent on picking out a good movie for our date night after being short changed last week by the Bread brood. I figured I’d go all the way to the $11.99 discount bin if necessary to find a good movie. Heck, I might even look at the racks. I needed something with an adult theme, not too adult mind you, to get back on track after last weekend.

The $2.99 and $3.99 bins were filled with anime and Care Bears stuff. Just what I was trying to avoid. I found a copy of “Steel Magnolias” in the $7.99 bin, and that was going to be my fall back if nothing better turned up. Fortunately the $9.99 bin held a winner, “Get On Up”, the story of James Brown. Being a movie specifically about a black person that was not involved in a group of white people blowing things up, the movie had not played at the The Bijou. Although he was born in South Carolina, most of us consider James Brown one of the most famous Georgians ever. After all, he started singing gospel over in Toccoa, which is just down the road a bit from here. He lived all of his life in Georgia and died in Atlanta, so I’m willing to call him a native son.

The movie recounts Brown’s life from the time he recognizes he is alone in this world and has to hustle for himself, until the end. In the early scenes Brown appears to be about eight when he is out hustling on the streets trying to take care of himself. He is influenced by the showmanship of an Evangelical minister and finds that he has a voice as well. As Brown hones his craft and his voice, he teams up with a group of singers that bill themselves as “The Flames”. The band evolves into James Brown and the Famous Flames and all of the hard feelings that come from one member being more famous than the others, rises to the top.

Eventually all but one member of the original group quits, and James Brown goes on without them. The movie reinforces the fact that James Brown was a perfectionist, but he expected perfection from his self as well. He was a man whose talents allowed him to meet Presidents and heads of state, but he never lost his common touch. He continually worked to reinforce pride within the black community, and his iconic, “I’m Black and I’m Proud” has stood as an anthem for black children since it was released in 1968.

James had an eye for the ladies and was married at least four times. After his death, there was a huge squabble over his will, as there always seems to be. Ex-wives and children were coming out of the woodwork to claim their share of James Browns legacy. In fact, I don’t know if it is settled today, the movie did not cover that part.

The movie did cover a lot of his music with Chadwick Boseman doing a very fine job of portraying Brown through the years. I can’t imagine how hard Boseman must have worked to get Brown’s dance steps down, even for the little short bursts shown on the film. It was good to see Dan Akroyd in the role of Brown’s manager and Octavia Spencer in the role of Brown’s aunt. In fact the movie was very well cast with Craig Robinson playing the part of Maceo “come blow your horn” Parker.

It was good a Date night pick, more so for the songs than the theme. I’ll leave you with the reminder of what a great entertainer Jame Brown was. This song was originally cut in 1955:

 

 

Categories
Uncategorized

My Cross To Bear

BudLiteGood morning, y’all. The rains yesterday have produced a more conducive environment for those of us with lungs. While pollen time is not over, perhaps we’ll have a couple of days of rainfall to take care of the rest of it. Since last night’s storm I find that I’m down to about 12 CPM, that’s Coughs Per Minute, from a high of 60 CPM or so last week. I’d love to get that back to 0 CPM as soon as possible.

While “sheltering in place”, God I love that phrase, I followed up my Allman Brother’s revival by reading Gregg Allman’s biography, “My Cross To Bear”. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of rock star’s biographies. I read “Slow Hand” by Eric Clapton years ago, and it said pretty much what I thought it would say. Poor kid, smart, but bad in school, found an outlet in music and exploited his talents until he was wealthy enough to become a drug addict. Some really cool stuff happened along the way, and through pictures that were taken and interviews of other people that were there, he remembers the cool things. Don’t do drugs.

Well, I can’t say that Gregg Allman’s book is much different. There are some historical items worth mentioning, though. There was quite a bit of crossover with the Allmans and Eric Clapton. Most specifically, on the iconic “Layla” album. There were also some shared gigs where the Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton and his band would play at the same venue. The fact that Derek and the Dominoes were stuck until Duane Allman arrived is well documented. It was Duane who provided the intro to Layla” and all of the slide guitar work on the album.

In those days, the raging debate was who was the best lead guitar, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton or Duane Allman? Like a friend of mine used to say, “the best damn guitar player that ever lived, died on October 29th, 1971 in Macon, Georgia”. I can’t say that I disagree. In fact, in his autobiography, Eric Clapton refers to Duane Allman as being the best guitarist he’s ever seen. Rolling Stone magazine ranks Duane Allman as number two behind Jimi Hendrix. If he was not the best, he was darn close, and we can only imagine what his loss did to the rest of the band. We can begin to imagine what effect Duane’s death played in Gregg’s subsequent addiction to drugs and alcohol. Gregg helps us out by writing about 19 chapters detailing the loss.

I’m going to draw a hard line here. I know the boys were drinking and drugging before they became famous. There really is no other way that is going to turn out. The unknowns are if you are going to run out of money, or luck, first. Gregg talks often about giving up on the band and becoming a dentist or something. It is somewhat a recurrent theme, Gregg was bright, could accomplish a lot, but chose to follow his muse instead. The fact that his muse required a state of inebriation to be channeled says a lot to me. Thank God he didn’t become a dentist. Using his songwriting regimen as a metaphor, Dr. Gregg would need a bump of heroin to do a filling.

Gregg loved women, so much so that he married six times. I can’t say that all of the women didn’t bear some responsibility in the failures, even Cher. Gregg has appeared to be unapologetically himself. The women who chose him as a mate thinking that they would change him were naive at best. At worst, they were the groupies that were portrayed in the movie “Almost Famous”, which was about the Allman Brothers. These women elevated their status from “road wives” to housewives, to ex-wives. Gregg clearly had issues with women.

Gregg’s relationship with a higher power comes after Gregg’s near death experience. Gregg has had a liver transplant because of the cancer that was found metastasizing there. Gregg spends the last chapter of his book explaining the clarity that he has now that he is sober, and his feeling of peace with the universal consciousness. Being old and sober will do that to you.

It’s an interesting thing to dislike someone as a person while worshipping their music. I’m going to ponder on that while I give tribute to Gregg for writing one of the great songs of all time, named after a little girl in a 7-11.