Year: 2016

Good morning, y’all. I’m happy to report that the rumors of my early demise were somewhat exaggerated. It’s true, the pine beetles had almost as big of an impact on me as they did on the big tree that fell, but I have persevered. I do share the feeling with the downed tree, that, like the big tree, some of my limbs will fall off. Of course that would be anthropomorphism, and trees only have feeling in books and movies and such.

Speaking of movies, it turns out that Mulva has had enough of my ’80’s revival for our date nights. While she appreciates my classic Betamax collection, she apparently felt the need to watch something a little more modern this week. So, while she was over to the Walmart restocking my Icy Hot, she dipped down into the $2.99 movie bin and pulled out a corker, “The Beasts Of The Southern Wild”.

I won’t overstate the obvious, “The Beasts Of The Southern Wild” did not play at the Bijou in Blairsville, or anywhere closer than Atlanta when it was released a few years ago. I’d say it’s rarer than hen’s teeth when we’d drive to Atlanta to see a movie, or anything else for that matter. We decided we’d give it a miss until it hit the TV, or the $2.99 movie bin at Walmart. Patience has paid off. It’s like my Daddy Bocephus used to say, “Be patient, you get the chicken by waiting for the egg to hatch, not cracking it open”. True dat.

I invoke the memory of Bocephus because “The Beasts Of The Southern Wild” reminded me very much of growing up with a mostly dysfunctional father. The movie’s storyline is about the cutest, most precocious little girl ever, “Hushpuppie”, and her ne’er do well father, “Wink”. The fact that Hushpuppie is named after one of my favorite food groups, just adds “flavor” to the story.

I don’t know how universal the story was to a lot of folks, but it plucked a lot of chords with me. I even related to the setting, down in the Terrebonne Parish of Louisiana. As previously related, I used to travel the area, and we have kin down there. I am familiar with the area called “The Bathtub”. It is an area that requires a special mentality to survive in, but the folks that live there are as happy a lot as you’d run into. The movie places all of the characters under stress, by the introduction of a hurricane, and the subsequent flood. We can presume the the event was detailing Katrina, but in truth, the area is below sea level and any high water event would cause flooding. The retention of the water for a long time is “The Bathtub”.

The movie is beautifully photographed and makes the area even more attractive than I remember. I won’t give away the plot, but I will say that there is a wonderful blend of fact and fantasy that a precocious child of an alcoholic would be prone to. There would be real monsters, and imagined monsters, imagined heroes and real heroes. Intertwined in the fantasy is the reality of keeping alive when your whole world is several feet under water, and your protector is dysfunctional. Powerful, powerful stuff.

The film was nominated for four Oscars, in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director (Benh Zeitlin), Best Actress (Quvenzhané Wallis), and Adapted Screenplay (Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin). In what I now feel was the biggest robbery of all time, Jennifer Lawrence won the Academy Award for Best Actress for “Silver Linings Playbook” over Quvenzhané Wallis. You must be kidding! Quvenzhané was five when the movie started filming. It was her first film. I had heard the rumblings at the time of The Oscars, but now I have the proof of my own eyes. Proof once again that the Oscar is more about the personalities involved than the work. I guess Quvenzhané can be proud that she was the youngest nominee ever.

Anyway, Mulva hit this one out of the park with this selection. I guess we’ll give the’80’s a rest for a while and go back to potluck at Walmart.

Good morning, y’all. Dawn broke again on this old body, so I figured I might as well get over myself and force the effort to rejoin the living. To say that I’m not in as good a shape as I once was, is an understatement of monumental proportions. Heck, I’m not even in as good a shape as I was last year, and that is truly the worrisome part. I mean, how long can you keep eating half as much, and exercising more, to maintain what the medical professionals are calling my “target BMI”. BMI stands for Body Mass Index, which is an acronym to use instead of, “you’re the perfect weight for someone seven feet tall, the problem is, you’re five feet ten inches tall.” According to my BMI, I’m 7’4″.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for improving everyone’s health. Even if it’s the insurance companies driving the bus. Insurance companies fixed the tobacco problem in the United States. Now they’re going after the fat people. I suspect at some point they’ll target alcohol abuse, since they’ll get a twofer, cancer and car accidents. Maybe, eventually, the insurance companies will go after the gun manufacturers. I’d love to see it, but I don’t think the numbers support the effort, from the point of view of the insurance companies. There were 52,000 shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2014, with 12,576 resulting in death. This is just a blip on the radar of the insurance companies. Even if 628 of the deaths were children.

The publication “Cancer Facts and Statistics”, predicted in 2015, “there will be an estimated 1,658,370 new cancer cases diagnosed and 589,430 cancer deaths in the US.” See my point? Even if the gun companies weren’t protected from civil suits by our government, the amount of potential liability from gun deaths pales by comparison to the amount of money spent on cancer treatment. Using a bit of twisted logic, that only I can employ, it is actually beneficial to the insurance companies if folks in the inner cities shoot each other, rather than die from the traditional causes of heart disease or cancer. Particularly now that we have the Affordable Healthcare Act. Twisted, I know, but these are the big players that are in it for the long game. They have actuaries that can give you a death toll, down to the last gnat, for every area of the world. Why wouldn’t they use that knowledge to their own benefit?

Speaking of twisted logic, how about the news that North Korea has set off a hydrogen bomb? I think the “hydrogen” declaration is being disputed, but apparently they did set off something big. As I understand it, the hydrogen bomb takes a level of expertise that is relegated to a handful of countries. North Korea has not been a member of the club. Considering that the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, must have some serious compensation issues, it benefits the world, and the insurance companies to limit his reach.

There was a time, before Ted Turner starting buying up all of Russia’s nukes, that the world was set to go into a nuclear “throw down” at  a moment’s notice. The “insurance policy” that was in place to keep both sides in check was called “Mutual Assured Destruction”. “MAD” is the perfect acronym for two super powers slinging thousands of nuclear bombs at one another because one or the other of the leaders “looked at me funny”. To launch a missile attack that would surely bring about the end of the world is indeed, mad. So far, we’ve dodged the “bullet” and neither the Russians or the United States has gone mad. Let’s hope we can give Kim Jong-un the newest version of Ms. PacMan, prerelease, or whatever it is he wants, to keep his hands in his pockets and his finger off the button.

Hydrogen bombs are a different level of crazy. A little google searching has brought me this tidbit: “The biggest hydrogen bomb ever tested, Tsar Bomba (1961), was more than 3,000 times bigger than the atomic bomb that was used in Hiroshima. When it was tested in a remote part of Russia, it was predicted that anyone within 100km of the blast would have suffered third-degree burns from the radiation released. After the test, it was observed that the blast wave broke windowpanes 900km away. That is, if the explosion had occurred in Berlin, it would have broken windows in London.”

Feel free to Google or follow links on Wikipedia if you want to depress yourself further. It just depresses the heck out of me that we spend so much wealth and intellect on the destruction of life. Makes me want to eat a Twinkie. I hear from the movies, they’ll survive everything.

Good morning, y’all. Well, I’m still pretty well all stove up from my labor removing the grounded pine tree. The Icy Hot and the Advil are doing what they can, they just don’t have a very good physical specimen to work with. It might help to get out and walk around a bit, get the old blood a’stirring, as it were. I’m sure Mulva would like to get me out from under foot. You’d think almost 800 square feet of living space would be enough for two people, but apparently not. Particularly when one of them stinks of Icy Hot.

Lest you think I just lazed about the trailer yesterday watching the boob tube, I am happy to report, I did not. I plan on trying to keep my New Year’s resolution of watching less TV. To that end, I started, and wound up finishing, a book by a fellow I had seen on “The Daily Show”. The name of the book is “Between The World And Me”, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I will give you a head’s up, the book is not for everybody. First off, the book is written as a letter to his teenage son. Unlike most letters to our children, giving and asking for updates since our last conversation, this book is a soliloquy. Like a soliloquy in a play, the wording flows like a poem. While beautifully written, I can see where some people might not feel comfortable with the style. Even if you’re ok with the style of writing, there’s probably plenty in the message than will arouse a lot of folks. 

Coates is writing a letter to his son to impress upon his son, that no matter how comfortable the son may feel in his world, that the son’s body is not his own. In the very first chapter, Coates states his premise that his son, a natural born American citizen, does not control the destiny of his own body. I admit, it takes a little while to come around to Coates point of view. Coates takes us through the horror of the black experience of being brought to America as slaves, and I get his point. The more disturbing point is that no matter what level of achievement a black person attains in America, his life can be snuffed out in an instant.

I was already implicitly aware of this reality. That is one of the reasons that I rant about “Toms” like Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson. I acknowledge their accomplishments, but I marvel at their lack of clarity about the danger they could face in the right situation. Thomas and Carson lead very insulated lives, but if they were placed in the wrong situation in the right area, they would be treated like any other “second class citizen”. Thomas and Carson would not have control over their own bodies, solely because they’re black. As Coates points out, and as we see nearly everyday on TV, black lives don’t matter. Black lives particularly do not matter to folks that know they can “stand their ground” without fear of repercussions.

Coates does not go into his call for reparations in this book, but he has in others. I bring it up because some folks might already be “prejudiced” against reading Coates because of his stand on reparations. I think I’m ambivalent about reparations, but I know one old boy who is not.

Andy Anderson used to be our HVAC guy back when Daddy was around. Daddy was too cheap to buy a new system for the Rec room, so he’d have Andy come out two or three times a season and recharge the freon. Daddy’s rational was $300 or $400 a year was cheaper than $4,000. Anyway, I’m talking to Andy about this and that, and he brings up the topic of reparations. I think it was back when somebody was trying to push a bill through Congress. I expressed my ambivalence about it, whereupon Andy got right red in the face and declared he was “damn sure” for reparations. His great great grandma had owned about a hundred slaves over in South Carolina at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. Andy thought the Federal government owed his family reparations for the property that had been taken from them. I’m telling you, he was as serious as a heart attack, and I was at a loss for words. I was aware that all of the South’s “wealth” at the time of the Civil War was tied up in the slave market, but non of my kin have ever been that wealthy. There are no former slave owners in the Lite family. Unfortunately, there are those who walk among us that feel a loss at not being able to benefit from owning other people.

So, now we circle back around to Coates’ letter to his son, and the message of his book. “No matter where life carries you, what heights you attain, it has been preordained that you do not own your body.”

Powerful stuff, give it a read.

Good morning, y’all. I awoke today to a soreness that I can’t remember having before, even going back to my football days. “Tackling” the fallen pine tree has left me feeling like the tree fell on me. I guess the old adage, “use it or lose it”, applies doubly to extreme physical activity like lumber jacking. I have an even deeper respect for those guys who climb up into trees with chainsaws.

If I had a portfolio, I’d be calling my broker to double my holdings in Icy Hot. I’ve covered all of my body that I can reach with about a one inch layer of the ointment. I’ll have Mulva cover everything else when she gets back from the Walmart with my replacement stockpile of creamy relief. I’ve been sitting here in Number Two watching our little 21 inch RCA and trying not to move. Mulva says I should just stay inside and stay still until I feel better, and the smell wears off. I actually think she’s more concerned about the smell than my discomfort. Mulva can not abide the smell.

Anyway, I’m watching the news, and there’s this big story coming out of Rhode Island about this tony private school that during the ’70’s and ’80’s was abusing its students and has been covering it up ever since. The school is called St. Georges. Google says St. Georges is a “private, Episcopal and coeducational boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island”. The school lists its street address as 372 Purgatory Rd. Now I hate to rip off somebody else’s catch phrase, but the address does put me in mind of Bill Engvall’s, “Here’s Your Sign”. I mean, it you were dropping your kids off at the school where they would be basically living full time, wouldn’t the word “purgatory” throw you off a bit? It’s kind of like moving into the “Abandon Hope” trailer park. Not that the name can be used as an excuse for the behavior. To me, there’s just way too much irony involved, and I never though of the Episcopalians as a particularly ironic lot.

So, it turns out the school had been charging folks $56,000 a year to fondle, abuse, rape and take nude photographs of their children. Allegedly. According to reports, the investigation has uncovered at least seven perpetrators who are still alive and could be charged with crimes. The alleged crimes were never reported to authorities until the Fall of 2015. The report is coming out now because of the lawsuits brought by over a dozen former students. It is so sad for folks to have to wait forty years to get some sort of relief from the people who were supposed to be their protectors and mentors. I’m thinking at least tuition times ten per year of attendance should get the ball rolling.

In a twisted side note, I have always referred to Episcopalians as Catholics Lite. Episcopalians have a lot of the same drama and rituals involved in their worship as the Catholics. It appears that protecting child abusers was part of the similarities shared by the two religions. None of the alleged perpetrators in the St. George case were reported to the police. Even when the administration had evidence of their misdeeds and terminated their employment, the school protected their own reputation by not reporting the abusers to the police. Sound familiar? The only thing missing in this case from completing the Catholic trifecta was quietly transferring the abuser to another diocese so they could continue the perversion on another group of kids. Thank the Saints, St. Georges didn’t have another school they could quietly transfer their pervs to. 

What’s in a name? The real Saint George was a wealthy Roman soldier who was arrested for not renouncing his faith and agreeing to worship Roman Gods. He was tortured many, many times, but he would not recant his beliefs. One torture session even included being lacerated on a wheel of swords, but George held fast. Eventually, George was executed by decapitation. He never renounced his beliefs or his moral code. High standards indeed for a school to live up to. Maybe the school’s administration should read up a little on their namesake, and aspire to his bravery.

Wow, just reading St. George’s story has made my back feel better. I might not need that second course of Icy Hot.

Good morning, y’all. You know how some people see a glass as being half full, and others see it as half empty? That’s supposed to be some sort of psychology trick that lets a psychologist tell you whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, and then charge you a hundred dollars an hour for the insight. I’d say it’s as clever a trick as any other to try to label someone’s neuroses and psychoses. I just think it doesn’t give the complete picture.

I bring this up because the big pine tree I’ve been talking about for a couple of weeks has succumbed to gravity and made a god awful mess of itself here at TackyToo. In the lead up to the collapse, the optimist in me was saying, “that tree will hold until the weather gets drier”. At the same time, the pessimist in me was saying, “those tree climbers are going to charge an arm and a leg to climb up into that tree”. The pessimist was also concerned with the risk to life and limb. I figured the tree climbers would get up in that wet tree with the wind blowing and I’d have a huge lawsuit on my hands. Now, we’ll never know.

I guess it’s good that Mother Nature, in the form of gravity, took the decision out of my hands. If you were following along with my train of thought, you can see how the pessimist, “don’t act, it’s too dangerous”, fed the optimist, “no need to act, the tree will stay upright”. I don’t know if anyone else employs the same techniques to try to reinforce the fact that they’ve made the right decision. I guess you’d call it twisted logic, as opposed to a rationalization, which I also happen to be a master of.

Even at my advanced age, I realize that all of my financial decisions are still being shaped by my Daddy’s parsimony. Bocephus, or “Bo” Lite wouldn’t spend ten cents to watch Jesus bounce on a trampoline. How cheap was Daddy? He was so cheap that when he took us to McDonald’s he’d back through the drive through so that the window was on my side of the car. That’s how cheap. Whenever we needed anything, we had to first see if we could “make do”. There has never been a better “make do” person than Daddy. Need new shoes? You can “make do” by putting cardboard in the insoles. Need new jeans? You can “make do” by ironing patches over the holes. There’s not a need that my Daddy couldn’t find a “make do” for. So you can see my decision to put off expenses is well grounded, unlike the dearly departed pine tree.

Anyway, the pine tree came down with  a huge thud and smushed the mail box at Number 24 like a beer can.  Thank the Saints, the tree fell more or less straight down the driveway. A little to the left, and Number 24 would have been Number 23 and a half. A little to the right, and Number 54 would have been 00. Things have been real quiet at Number 54 since Mr. Pickles moved on to managed care. I’m glad Mr. Pickles wasn’t around for the tree fall. He might have taken the crash of the tree as an alien invasion and come out shooting. He was always quick to handle issues with his shotgun. This situation didn’t need a shotgun, just a bunch of chainsaws and a few strong backs.

Well, we got the driveway cleared in about an hour, and that’s even with the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread’s little monster, Devin, “helping”. I finally got Devin to head home by telling him I was concerned he might have picked up some pine beetles. While pretending to check Devin’s head for beetles, I told him about how insidious pine beetles could be. I may have “confused” pine beetles with the old superstitions about earwigs. What can I say, I’m old, I get confused sometimes.

Good morning, y’all. Man o’live it’s cold! Maybe it feels so intense because the cold snuck up on us all of a sudden, with it being summer time in December and all. The air seems much colder than the Coca Cola Thermometer outside the Rec room indicates. How cold is it you ask? Well, just let me say it took me a few minutes to chisel Butts the wonder dog off of a lamppost this morning. He was greatly relieved.

Anyway, the cold weather would certainly be a great excuse for folks to avoid their heavenly duties this week and not attend church. At least that’s what I thought until I tuned in to Channel 99 in Blairsville to catch this week’s broadcast of The Full Gospel Original Church of God. Once again, the little church was packed to the gills. In fact, with people bundled up against the cold, wearing multiple layers and all, there was even less room on the pews than before. I mean, I bet I saw more elbows being thrown in ten minutes of the telecast than in a whole NBA game. Space was already at a premium, and the folks that were Pentecostal, before Pentecostal was cool, are not taking kindly to being displaced from their traditional seating spot.

Some of the good folks at The Full Gospel Original Church of God are fourth and fifth generation church members. They are not used to sharing the pews, where their family has sat for years, with outsiders. Most members can point to the initials of their granddaddies, and daddies, carved in the pew in front of them as proof of ownership. In church real estate, “possession is nine tenths of the law”. Displacing folks from their traditional spots could result in life long enemies having to share their place of worship in close proximity. That sounds like a good thing, in one respect, but with open carry in Georgia, you just can’t predict how that’s going to turn out. It would be a sad thing indeed to hear a breaking news story that involved shooting and snakes. The Full Gospel Original Church of God might never live down that notoriety.

One of the aspects of the burgeoning attendance figures has been that the demographics have tilted towards the under thirty set. Most of these new comers are coming to church in clothes that look like they were pulled out of a Goodwill box. They wear these super tight skinny leg jeans, which are totally inappropriate for worship, in my opinion. I am amused at how many of them wear Chuck Taylor’s or Converse All Stars. Inappropriate, but it’s kind of cool to see these young folks appreciating the old standards. The thing that hit’s me the weirdest with these new folks is that they all went to the same Super Cuts and picked out the same style from the pictures on the wall. Men and women, they’ve all got the same hair cut. This is quite a departure from what we consider “Sunday best” to be. I know the Elders appreciate the new folks fellowship, and certainly appreciate their tithe, I just wonder how they feel about how the newcomers are effecting the old-timers. I’ll have to follow up with Mulva on that one.

Mulva did report, that by the narrowest of margins, the congregation has agreed to move to the abandoned Crystal Palace as soon as possible. The Elders will be sending trades people in next week to clean up, repair and to paint. I vigorously stressed to Mulva that they needed to put plumbers and HVAC people at the top of their list. Nothing will spoil an ecclesiastical experience like a backed up toilet. By the same token, bringing folks into a new worship hall without heat will not engender folks to dig deep into their pockets. Getting the right trades folks in to cross the t’s and dot the i’s before inviting the world to come is just prudent, in my estimation. We’ll see how she goes.

There has been some talk of keeping the little “church in the valley” going as a satellite while the transition fully implements. Maybe even longer. Ironically, the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread might be called in to pinch hit at the old location. I sure hope so. Getting him employed has got to increase my chances of getting his brood out of TackyToo, or at least me getting paid what I’m owed. I haven’t pulled so hard for a satellite since Explorer 1.

Good morning, y’all. It is colder than a well digger’s bottom up here in Nunsuch, but the cockles of our heart have been made warm by the efforts of our boys in the red and black. It is amazing to see how the collective zeitgeist is raised by the results of the efforts of two groups of young men, “kicking a pumpkin up and down this cow pasture”, as Andy Griffin used to say in, “What it was, was football”. 

The game held a great deal of foreboding for most of the Georgia collective. Could our boys actually play better than their coaching, and who was the coach, anyhow? Former coach Mark Richt was laying on the beach somewhere in South Florida, while future coach Kirby Smart was getting ready for Alabama’s run at the national championship. A couple of days before the game, Georgia’s interim coach, Bryan McClendon, was tapped to head to South Carolina as Will Muschamp’s offensive coordinator. I mean, it’s getting to the point that you wonder who’s going to be on the sideline to call time out, if needed. Will the last coach leaving Butts-Mehre please turn out the lights?

Well, speaking of turning out the lights, the Georgia defense played “lights out” against a pretty good offensive team. The final score was 24-17 for the good guys, but not that close until the end. As an example of the “Georgia way”, we decided to turn off the intensity in the fourth quarter and allow the Pedolions to crawl back in. I pray Kirby Smart will cure these lapse’s of intensity first thing. There is the potential for greatness here. So, let’s it break it down by unit.

Defense:
The defense held Penn State to 120 rushing yards, but gave up a whopping 281 yards coming through the air. Perhaps the game determiner came about when linebacker Roquan Smith tackled Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg, and the quarterback landed hard on his shoulder. Hackenberg was then replaced by his freshman back up, and the Penn State offense was not the same. Dominic Sanders had  an interception, and overall the defensive backs played well. There were some big hits provided by Lorenzo Carter, Jordan Jenkins, Malkom Parrish and, believe it or not, kicker Marshall Morgan. It was also good to see freshman Natrez Patrick on the field and getting experience for next year. Thanks to the defense for playing with intensity and shutting down the PedoLions for three quarters.

Special teams:
Well, they’re called “special” for a reason, right? Marshall Morgan made a touchdown saving tackle and was lost for the rest of the game as a kicker. Fortunately, Patrick Beless was able to step in and drive home a couple of extra points. Isiah McKenzie ripped off a beautiful 37 yard punt return that almost scored. Terry Godwin handled kickoff returns and returned a nice 27 yarder. Marshall Morgan was 1 of 1 in the field goal department, and he made his extra point try before leaving the game with his injury. Brice Ramsey shared kicking duties again with Collin Barber. The kicking duo punted 7 times for a 38.1 yard average. A very competent effort on special teams. We even covered a fake punt and a short kickoff. Looks like these lads have learned something this year. I hope not all of them are graduating.

Offense:
Greyson Lambert went the whole way as quarterback, with the exception of one series. Lambert was 10 of 20 for 115 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. Greyson trying to avoid Penn State’s rush is a study in awkwardness, which I believe will hurt him if he’s planning on turning pro. Fortunately, we had wide receiver Terry Godwin come in and throw a touchdown from the Wild Dawg formation. One for one with a 44 yard touchdown gave Godwin a QBR of 100%.

Sony Michel is going to compete heavily with Nick Chubb next year. What a great thing! Sony finished the day with 85 yards rushing on 20 attempts and a touchdown that was just unbelievable. It was our only rushing touchdown, and Sony carried about half of the defense into the end zone with him. Fantastic!

Keith Marshall contributed 62 yards rushing, on 14 runs. He looked close to the Keith of old, and I hope he will be able to get a big payday at the next level.

Malcolm Mitchell had 5 receptions that netted 114 yards, with one touchdown. It will be sad to see Malcolm head off to the pros. Fortunately, Terry Godwin stands in the wings.

Time of possession was tilted in their favor, 31.22 minutes to 28.38. We recorded the most first downs 17-16, but Penn State turned out over a hundred more yards on offense. Luckily, we won the turnover wars 1-0.

Getting ten wins for the Seniors was a great thing. The Seniors will be leaving with 40 wins for their career, something to aspire to. Please join me in chanting the Georgia mantra, “wait until next year”.

Good morning, y’all. Well the New Year decided to get the temperatures adjusted properly. It is cold here in the mountains, with a forecast of cold. Perfect weather for “hunkering down” to watch my Bulldogs take on the Nittany PedoLions from Penn State in the Gator Bowl. It’s called something like the “Taxslayer Bowl” officially, but we all know it’s the Gator Bowl. Let’s hope it’s just the University of Florida that we can’t beat in Jacksonville.

So much activity swirling about that Mulva and I almost forgot that Friday night is date night. As I am the consummate romantic, I didn’t want Mulva to get the impression that we shouldn’t take time out from our otherwise hectic schedules to make time for our relationship. It’s a hard thing for old married couples to keep the spark alive, or so I’m told. If you want to sit through two hours of absolute torture to have that point driven into your brain like a rusty railroad spike, watch the movie “Hope Springs“.

Now that we’re not supposed to be using “extraordinary interrogation techniques”, like waterboarding, I suggest we go to “Hope Springs” on a loop. The suspect could be all strapped in, like Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”, and not be allowed to close his eyes or turn away. I bet it wouldn’t take two showings to get the same results as a near drowning. I suspect eventually the Geneva Convention would step in and stop the practice as inhumane, but until then, let’s give ‘er a shot. We’re being criticized because the “Isis” are so much better at multimedia than we are, I see how we can up the stakes with “Hope Springs”. 

Well, talking about a bad movie doesn’t get us to this week’s selection, and I chose “American Graffiti”, for our date night. I remember how when the movie first came out, Mulva and I saw the movie at the old Starlight Drive In. Little Bud Junior was about 3 or so, and Melody was still a twinkle in her Daddy’s eye, as they say. The drive in was the only way we could see movies back then, having an infant that was given to banshee like yells at unexpected times. Bud Jr. wasn’t hurting, he was happy, he just expressed his joy by hollering like a bear stuck in barb wire. We could take Junior to the drive in movie just fine though. Make a pallet out of the back seat, give him a bottle, and before long he’d be sawing logs. We saw a lot of shows like this. Ah, the good old days.

Anyway, the romantic in me was feeling a little nostalgic, so when I saw “American Grafitti” in my box of Betamax tapes, I knew I had a winner. For the uninitiated, “American Grafitti” was a lot of “firsts” for a lot of things. Certainly the first movie about “cruising”, which was the great American past time for teenagers of that era. Rolling up and down the streets on the weekend, showing off your hot car, and generally preening like a peacock was a right of passage in most small towns. The weekend’s cruising provided conversation for the whole week, and then we got to do it again. Gasoline was about 35 cents a gallon, so a dollar went a long ways in terms of providing entertainment. “American Grafitti” caught the culture perfectly.

“American Grafitti” was directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Copolla, and starred a group of kids who would go along and become Hollywood’s elite, like Harrison Ford. We’ll give a shout out to Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Candy Clarke, Paul LeMat, Charlie Martin Smith and Mackenzie Phillips. Even the cameos are stellar, with Wolfman Jack playing himself, and Suzanne Somers playing the mystery girl. All of the plot is done in vignettes, which allows for great character development. I think everybody could find a character they could identify with from their high school days.

“American Grafitti”, to me, is a perfect film time capsule. The sound track was true to the period, and in this reviewing, Mulva and I were patting our feet through much of the movie. We resisted the urge to get up and dance, though. The cars, clothes and language were spot on to the late ’60’s. Maybe we should do a ’60’s party here in the Rec room. I bet there’d be a lot of fun outfits.

“American Grafitti” has received not only extraordinary financial rewards, but numerous artistic awards as well. It is preserved in The National Film Register as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. All true, but a darn good date night movie selection for us old timers. Check it out.

Good morning, y’all. Well, I stand here ready to take my Zwilling Pure Stainless Steel Meat Fork and plunge it to its full depth into 2015, because that sucker is done, done, done! Holy cow, what a year! You’ll have to go back to my first post to recount the rhyme and the reason to how I became a serial blogger, and I hope you do. To say that it has been a long strange trip, undersells trips. I mean, we’re talking Timothy Leary stuff here, and I’ve been sober all year. Whew!

Well, I guess the New Year is when we all try to sit quietly and reflect on what advances and back slides we made in the previous year. The more adventurous of us will take the data and try to make a plan for the coming year. Most folks call them, “New Year’s resolutions”. I call them, “wishful thinking”.

I mean, let’s all be honest with ourselves here. I need to lose weight, a lot of weight, and God knows I’m well-intentioned, but so are Ben and Jerry. It was Ben and Jerry’s New Year’s resolution to sell me the most Cherry Garcia ever, and they were wildly successful in achieving their resolution. I, on the other hand, failed in my resolution to not spend a quarter of my disposable income on ice cream. At this point, I’m going to claim that I was out numbered, there’s two of them, and just one of me. Although one of me about equals the two of them now. Ok, fine, I resolve to lose weight in 2016.

One of my other issues is my temper. I know some folks are going, “aawwww, not you Uncle Bud”, but it’s true. I was not always the even keeled scholar that sits before you today. Perhaps a little background reading well help. As part of my program, I had resolved to always count to ten before acting, twenty if necessary. In truth, it seems to be working. I hate to admit that Mulva’s admonition that my “first thought is always the wrong thought” might have been more truthful than I had believed. In my defense, I was trying to count to ten, twenty if necessary, before, I was just losing track of the count. Inebriation will totally disrupt your math skills. So, I’ve got a twofer resolution here, stay sober and keep counting. 

There are resolutions that are made at the insistence of others, all of you married folks know what I mean. Mulva is, has always been, worried about my immortal soul. Me, not so much. I’ve outlined my religious philosophy in several blogs, and it boils down thusly: “I have found one truism that transcends every religion, ‘do unto others as you want done unto you’.” To me, that’s the basis for all morality, which is what religions are supposed to be teaching us, morality. Whether we’re handling snakes or bowing down to Xenu, morality is what governs our daily actions. Follow the golden rule, and you will be moral, and not out the ten percent tithe.

Now of course I’m just taking care of the here and now, and Mulva is concerned about my afterlife. We are at a gridlock here. I’ve asked to speak to just one person who has died and gone to heaven, or hell, as proof of the afterlife’s existence. The search continues. To placate my lovely wife, I have resolved to become more involved with our little church, The Full Gospel Original Church of God. You all have read the reports. Resolution accomplished and renewed!

As I slip deeper and deeper into senility, and couch potatoism, I know that the TV is the disease, and not the cure. To address these issues, I resolve to read more, and watch less. Like any contract, I’ve got some fine print to throw in. Any sporting event, most particularly involving the Georgia Bulldogs, is not to be considered watching. Maybe we’ll call that, “gathering research material”. After all, I do blog on the Dawgs. Otherwise, I hereby resolve to read more, and watch less. 

Ok, that’s it. Come on 2016, let’s get it on! Happy New Year everyone.