Let’s Ring in 2020 with Benson’s 20/20 (Vid of the Holiday)

To play Auld Lang Syne at the zero hour / stroke of midnight? Yawn! Too predictable.

To invite George Benson to party us into the New Year. Now that’d be WAY COOL!

Granted… 20 / 20 is not, precisely, about (w)ringing out 2019 and ringing in 2020… but hey… his upbeat song can serve as an indirect, friendly reminder to make it our New Year’s Resolution to draw upon and rely on 20 / 20 foresight to see us / our world through to better days.

To all who’ve stopped by to enjoy the above clip… maybe even to read this post…

I wish you all a healthful, peaceful, thoughtful, insightful, hopeful, cheerful, joyful, successful and bountiful New Year!

 

 

 

 

Capitol Steps (w)ring out the Old Year (Vid of the Holiday)

The best way to set up our Vid of the Holiday, is to quote my 07/24/18 Vid of the Day’s lead paragraph…

“The Major-General’s Song from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan… already a catchy tune in itself… does truly lend itself to the parodies of most sharp-witted songsmiths.”

This early a.m., courtesy of my local NPR FM affiliate, I heard the political parodists extraordinaire… The Capitol Steps… turn in a primo, oft LOL, hour long presentation… best described as their (Way) Off Broadway Musical… a.k.a. their last round-up of 2019’s DC Scene… one “handcrafted” to (w)ring out the Old Year and ring in the New Year / Decade in humorous style. And all things considered, who, among us does not need a good belly laugh at this juncture, huh?

Our above clip is just one of the approximately one dozen sendups, which I heard today. I highly recommend to anyone within earshot of an AM / FM receiver and/or with an Interwebs connection, to access NPR to earwitness the rest of their show. You won’t be disappointed.

Oh, btw, you can consider this post a kinda / sorta Part Two to my earlier, similarly themed post which you can access by clicking onto NSFW BLOG (And be forewarned… although the content only involves anatomically correct clinical terminology, bosses still must maintain a G-Rated workplace).

To all who read and follow this blog, I wish you the Happiest New Year / New Decade imaginable. Party hearty but do play safe… the phrase that pays… Designated Driver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then One Foggy Christmas Morn (Part 5 / Denouement)

Here are the links to parts ONE – TWO – THREE – FOUR

My conflicting emotions go to war on the battlefield of the mind, as I soldier onward, on my December 25th walk at dawn. One faction symbolizes fond memories of hometown Christmases past… the other cabal represents the unmemorable hometown of Christmas present.

In the scant hour, since this all began, the still unseen, rising sun has gradually, somewhat lightened up the blue / gray overcast… driven off a bit of the misty swirling fog.

My observations inspired, recurring question:

“What the hell good is change within a community when there’s no apparent, appreciable betterment of society?

This brings to mind the recent bulldozing of, yet, another Elementary school. That I had never set foot within it, is really not the issue. What is, is what eventually got built in its bulldozer leveled footprint… how the city fathers and mothers had thumbs upped a crass, subdivision developer’s master plan / plot to construct dozens of butt ugly, gargantuan, too cookie cutter and closely spaced, boxy, monstrosity “mansions”.

They remind me of Star Trekian Borg Cubes with tacked on aluminum siding. True, that’s an exaggeration… the siding is not aluminum.

I’m now free associating Malvina Reynolds’ song, Little Boxes, and suspect this will become an all walk long… maybe even all Christmas Day long earworm.

• Why couldn’t the locally empowered have opted, instead, for more affordable and aesthetically pleasing housing?

• How could they justify the negative impact of too damned much, rich, arable soil getting paved over… how that can only worsen world hunger and global warming… the one-two punch that threatens the very extinction of humanity!

Far be it from me to fault folks who are successful beyond their wildest dreams. However, their dreams become our nightmares when high elective office morphs them into the high and mighty. This, for the most part, is what draws the new town vs. old town battle-lines.

And what’ll be next? Gated communities with posted signs warning the commoners to KEEP OUT? Will the mayor wind up in his UnWelcome Wagon’s driver’s seat? Hanging his head out the window to blast over a bullhorn, his bullcrap, “GET OUT” message to the masses? Will he be presenting the key to the city to some vigilante (such as George Zimmerman)?

If any town buys into “of, by and ONLY for the wealthiest of the wealthy”, then commoners, such as I, become class war casualties.

And what then would become of my Chrismases, yet to come? Might one of those walks… uh… the final one… find me outward bound from the main drag’s City Limits sign… unjustly banished… forever run out of town by well-heeled heels?

Well… at least for the time being… my Christmas walk now sends me seeking out the comfort of hearth and home… the house I had inherited from my folks. I’ll soon be scaring up some comfort food, too. Instantly coming to mind is a stack of mouth watering, made from scratch, fresh off the griddle pancakes… all doused with maple syrup and washed down with fragrant, freshly brewed coffee.

All the more reason to pick up my pace. And an even better reason… to leave the new town reality behind me.

No truer words were ever committed to paper than lyricist Kim Gannon’s “I’ll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams” and author Thomas Wolfe’s adage, “You can’t go home again.”

The poignancy of it all can easily well up tears in the eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrissie Hynde’s Key Question (Vid of the Day)

Were we to emulate Pollyanna, it might be possible to pretend that the state of DC is OK. Alas, it actually takes a Doubting Thomas state of mind to, correctly, call into question any member of the trumpeting, marching in lockstep conservative band. Hell, for all we know, this bloc of blockhead righties may’ve even sold their souls to the devil (and that would not, necessarily, be referring to Satan).

Members of the White House Press Corps do know, first hand, just how tough it is to cover a regime that’s tragically, typically and toxically Anti-First Amendment. How toxic? Well, let’s just say that had the fake prez been present, he would’ve been cheering on, egging on and getting off on being an eyewitness to the thugs who were sadistically, (literally) hacking journalist Jamal Khashoggi to death.

Indeed, only a dare devil journalist would risk getting a Sharpie™ squiggled in strategic, final “e” added to her/his Press Corps title… i.e., retribution for asking whomever is standing behind the White House’s Press Briefing Room dais, this Key Question:

“How much did you get for your soul?”

Which, btw, is Pretender Chrissie Hynde’s lyrical hook to and title of our Vid of the Day’s featured song.

Her composition could easily become any left leaning, political parodist’s dream come true, too.

Yet, even AS IS the Pretenders are not pretending when they turn in a live performance that’s totally enjoyable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fortune Cookie Blog (“Loose” Talk?)

 

Ideology and Pharmacology meet Phraseology;
It’ll take mega-doses of Freedom’s Kaopectate™
to bind Fascism; halt a shedload of its Diarrhea.

 

 

 

 

 

Then One Foggy Christmas Morn (Part 4)

 

While Part 4 can stand on its own two feet, here are the links to Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

My at the crack of dawn, Christmas walk keeps me advancing through my lifelong hometown… the dreary, grayish blue cloud deck above… the chilly, misty fog swirling at street level. At this hour, most of the townies are either still abed or about to break bread… maybe even don their Sunday best to attend midweek mass at their chosen Houses of Worship.

We can thank the Heavenly Father that the city fathers have yet to conspire with their like-minded counterparts… the evil, anything for a buck, wrecking ball oriented, developers who likely lust to either reduce the three churches near the town square to ground zero rubble… or, perhaps, re-purpose them… oh… say… as a chain of Pancake House / Houses of Worship?

WOW! What a time saver, huh? Hmm… might the phrase that pays soon become…

“Would you like to wash down your little cookie / communion wafer
with some Coffee? A Frappuccino? Cafe Latte? Milk? Chalice of Wine?

My sarcastic streak leaves me (ever so slightly) chuckling. With nary a soul in sight, my thoughts are free to wander back to where I’ve been wandering off to this very day… my boyhood home and hood, the town square and my folks’ rented domiciles… backdating to their earliest days as newcomer settlers of this Smalltown, Michigan community.

Then I wonder… where to wander next?

At the moment I’m outward bound from the very schoolhouse where my parents, both teachers, had educated young minds… where, later on, as a tween and teen, I had matriculated.

A vehicle whooshing by on the wet pavement disrupts my reveries… heightens the sense of my being afloat in a sea of rudderless, mixed emotions. My decades-old, old town warm memories, constantly clashing with the cold, new town reality, is not unlike the stormy collision of meteorological fronts. To acquiesce to my community’s evolution is proving difficult. After all, what the hell good is change when there’s no apparent, appreciable betterment of society?

Such thoughts bring to mind the bulldozing of, yet, another Elementary school. That I had never set foot within it, is really not the issue. What is? Well… a flood of melancholy, momentarily, tables that thought…

I realize that no amount of wishful thinking could ever, possibly, overcome the inescapable truths my walk is revealing to me… my yearnings echoed by lyricist Kim Gannon’s reminder: “I’ll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams” and author Thomas Wolfe’s adage: “You can’t go home again.”

I exhale my low, long sigh…

 

“Stay Tuned” for Part 5…

 

 

 

 

 

Ester Peony’s Side to the Story (Sunday Song Series)

It’s the final Sunday of 2019 and also Week #68 of our musical adventure into the diverse world of Sunday titled songs. On this occasion, Romanian Ester Peony will be singing her heart out… her broken heart… to lyrically relate her side to the story of a failed relationship… courtesy of her song, On a Sunday… all enhanced by a videographer generated surreal, borderline nightmarish backdrop. Yet another example of performance art at its finest.

Thanks for stopping by. Have fun ringing in the New Year and I hope you’ll be back for our next Sunday song… seven days from now…

 

 

 

 

 

Then One Foggy Christmas Morn (Part 3)

 

While Part 3 can stand on its own two feet, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2.

My at daybreak, Christmas walk through my lifelong hometown now finds me outward bound from the town square… feeling just as blue as the dismal, grayish blue overcast above… just as dispirited as when I had exited my boyhood neighborhood scant moments ago.

Hmm… where next? Seeing how the house my parents had rented… my very first home… was a mere thirty seconds down the main drag, I figured why not?

Of course, there’d be some unavoidable issues. Firstly, my having resided there for only two months, as a newborn, meant any recollections, at best, would be as hazy as this a.m.’s chilly, misty fog. Lastly, only family photo album pics can attest to the existence of this neighborhood… i.e., since that era’s city fathers wound up rezoning the bulk of that city block… thereby clearing the way for a wrecking ball crew to raze a row of homes, houses of historical significance, just to make way for a factory. An ugly factory so close to the town square? YIKES! What were they thinking? Were they thinking?

With really nothing to see, here, I move onward, my “last man on Earth” delusion getting debunked, momentarily, by the sound of two yackety-yakking guys tanking up their SUVs at the Speedway convenience store / gas station.

My next stop finds me admiring the very first house my newlywed folks had rented. Both being public school teachers, they could not have chosen a better locale. They enjoyed a walking distance “commute” to/from the town’s (then) high school.

For a fleeting moment I consider a mid-course correction to reconnect to my old Elementary School… to revive / relive my kindergarten days … but… due to yet another wrecking ball crew… well… why even bother actually visiting a place that only virtually exists?

And so, onward I hike, along the very path my folks had traveled to get to work… simultaneously passing by the school I attended from grades 5 thru 8… where my 7th grade English class had convened in the very same classroom that an old yearbook photo shows my own mother teaching in… five years before I was born.

Alas… long sigh… while this school still stands, it is no longer what it used to be. Nearly a decade ago, the school board opted to auction it off to the highest bidder (the bulding is now repurposed as a Big Biz’s HQ).

And so… here I am, yet again, stuck within this new town reality clashes with old town memories… where these inescapable truths rule…

Lyricist Kim Gannon’s reminder: “I’ll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams.”

Author Thomas Wolfe’s adage: “You can’t go home again.”

 

“Stay Tuned” for Part 4…

 

 

 

 

 

Fortune Cookie Blog (CURB yer Elephant?)

 

Caucasian, Useless, Republican Bootlicker is a
way too cumbersome phrase. Why not whittle it
down to… oh, say… White Elephant Sycophant?

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Clip To Help De-Ice Our World (Vid of the Day)

Today’s video features the lively Woodstock 1999 appearance of Los Lobos… a band renown for their genre spanning diversity of rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional music.

Their translated into English lyrics…

For my mother I am Mexican. By destiny I am American. I am from the golden race. I am Mexican American. I understand you English. I also speak to you in Spanish. I am from the golden race. Zacatecas to Minnesota. From Tijuana to New York. Two countries are my land. I defend them with honor. Two languages ​​and two countries. I have two cultures. In my luck I have pride. Because that’s how God commands it.