Sunday, June 27, 2010

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet

I opened the newspaper today, the same as I do almost every non-work day (except in late Jan and Feb), which is to say sitting in the sun that dapples down through the branches of the orange tree, shirtless and shoeless and with the dogs napping nearby. There I found a nice spread about my office in St Petersburg and the $31 million contract we have just begun to execute for TSA. Nice way to start the morning, I thought.

If it wasn't for the steadily increasing thunder and the rain about to blow in on the rapidly cooling breeze I would probably still be out there. Albeit, by now I would be napping since the paper is done and I have finally finished off the backlog of Time magazines (some dating all the way back to the end of March) that had been sitting around. Yep. I have been sitting outside a lot. Jelling. or, perhaps that should be chilling. Either way, aggressively loafing outside has been the norm and blogging has lately been relegated to the most convienent time I could think of....tomorrow. Today the rain that makes the flowers grow will also let the blog be, um, blogged.

The wife will be home next week. Been overseas for 2 months and I think she is ready. But when she was here on a green card she had to watch how long she stayed out of the country or how many times she left or it would lead to closer scrutiny when she applied for citizenship. This was her first chance to just go and hang out. Glad she got it.

I moved to Tampa when the Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer team was the only pro sports team here. Of course, the town was a fraction of the size it is now, too. We went to a couple of games including when the NY Cosmos (?) came to town. The Cosmos had Pele, who was a big deal. We also went to see them play the Chinese National team, but that was before China, you know, owned us.

I remember trying to watch the Rowdies games on TV. It was kind of tough because the station took commercial breaks even though the game didn't. So after an ad for tires, a quick round of tastes great/less filling, and then one more ad for something or another that was totally manly, we'd return to the game. Sometimes to find that the score had changed.

I am not a huge soccer fan, but the US was in the world cup and expected to do well. I mean, well for America anyway. So I watched the games. I had to miss the Algeria game though. Partly because I was working, but mostly because I got sidetracked and forgot that it was on. It took a while for it to sink in, but then it hit me. ABC was not cutting away from the action for commercials. Good deal. Then Ghana kicked our butts and I'm out of the World Cup now.




When I was growing up near Wilmington, NC the local rock n roll station only broadcast 8 AM to 8 PM daily. On the one hand, there was not a lot of repetition going on, like you get nowadays with a few songs in heavy rotation. But still, the station would go off the air and then I had to change over to the country station. I didn't mind that. I love country music. The twangier the better. Oops... let me side bar real quick before I forget.

Just bought Hank William III - Rebel Within. As you may or may not know, Hank 3 vascillates between hard twang country and hard core punk. The country stuff I like. The punk stuff, well, the lyrics have their merits but the songs are a bit too un-melodious for me. So anyway, the new album is OUTSTANDING. He mashed up the punk and the country right smartly. Most of the songs are about drinking. Except one is about heroin and another is about his mom dying from crack. Yeah, I know, for most of you that probably ain't a real ringing endorsement for buying it. But still, not in spite of but because of the rough edges, I found this to be more "real country" than any of the good ol' boys in their pick em ups and Kenny Chesney's Buffett channeling summer songs could ever hope to muster. Put another way, when you are in the country aisle and the CD you just picked up has the Warning: Explicit Lyrics sticker on it, best thing you can do is just buckle up. Video posted below, live version of Rebel Within. Watching it is optional for most of you. It is required viewing for The Appalachianist though. I know that he likes the hellbilly element same as me.




OK, back to my original point. But sometimes I didn't want to hear country. I wanted to hear rock n roll. In those cases the best compromise available was to turn to the soul station. Back when there really was soul music. Temptations. Isleys. Stevie Wonder. Edwin Starr. Etc. There is a Black Eyed Peas song that I have added to my mp3 player called Where is the Love? I absoloutely love that song. It really has the social consciousness that was found in a lot of those old soul songs. I love the message. I love the chorus. It really takes me back to a swampside papermill town in the 70s.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity, out
Ramblin' Ed

First the Nice one:





Now the crazed hillbilly:



1 comments:

Blogger Hill Billy Rave said...

Ed, we suffer from the same thing, not getting around to blogging. Or just not doing it. Anyhow...Rebel Within, liked it. I actually heard a college station, 88.1 WSBF, Clemson, play Hank III. He puts on a great show. But what is starting to concern me, is he's getting like Nickle Back. They can't write a song but about one thing. Although, Hank III has much more depth than they will ever have.
Thanks, that was fun.

Any how, you seem to be well, which is a good thing. And, today should be my last 12 hour shift for a while.

4:07 AM  

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