This one goes out to the House GOP.
Category: Music that doesn’t suck
Shine on, Harvest Moon
I wish I could tell you that I’ve been enjoying all the decades-overdue dope-slaps Cheeto Benito has been getting from judges lately. Incidentally, you wanna wash those hands afterward, Your Honors. You don’t know where this mook has parked that fat orange mug of his.
Or that the GOP pestilential “debates” featuring the also-rans — a junior-varsity rogues’ gallery that Batman would hand off to Robin (“Here, kid, take care of my light work. …”) — have been must-see TV. I haven’t watched a nanosecond of them, preferring to let Charles Pierce (“doomed and useless”) and Kevin Drum (“shitshow”) handle that thankless bit of heavy lifting.
No, I’ve mostly been riding my bikes, awaiting tonight’s Harvest Moon — the last supermoon of the year — and fiddling idly with the WordPress Block Editor.
I’ve had several back-and-forths with a WP “Happiness Engineer” name of Liz about the Strange Case of the Spastic Comments, and she’s been very patient with this senile old fool, who basically wants to keep driving his 1954 Studebaker Conestoga of a blog editor until the wheels come off.
Which they may very well be doing. Who knows? My WP theme is retired, and so am I, but at least I remain functional. Most days, anyway.
Anyway, with one eye peeled for that instant when a wheel or two or three passes me and my Studwhacker as we’re getting our kicks on Route 66, I’ve been under the hood of an unused WP blog, banging on greasy bits I don’t recognize with a good hammer and a bad attitude.
Any of yis who are still experiencing technical difficulties with commenting on this blog are cordially invited to visit that one and try to comment, see if its swinging door leads to a jukebox and a barstool instead of the Three Heads of Cerberus (Drunk, Confused, and Angry).
It’s a one-post blog, with a new(er) theme called “Hemingway Rewritten” — yeah, I know, the gall of me — and none of the usual bells, whistles, and aaaooogah horns in the sidebar. Plus, since it’s a free blog, there are ads. Ick.
Frankly, you’d be better served by howling at the moon.
Not the best, but not bad
Herself being at the movies with some friends, and Miss Mia Sopaipilla snoozing in her tower, I was nibbling a green chile cheeseburger with fries and checking the TV for something that wouldn’t spoil my appetite when I stumbled upon this John Prine retrospective on “Austin City Limits.”
It’s titled “The Best of John Prine,” but it isn’t, not by a long shot. You’d need a lot more than 54 minutes to cover that vast expanse of musical territory.
But I’ll take it. And don’t I wish we had 54 more years of John Prine. I’ve been listening to his stories for a half-century and I’d be delighted to stick around for an extended encore.
R.I.P., Jimmy Buffett
“Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic,
But I had a good life all the way.” — Jimmy Buffett, “He Went to Paris”
Jimmy Buffett always seemed to be having more fun than the rest of us.
And not just because he got stupid rich — Forbes estimates his total net worth at a billion smackers, which ain’t sponge cake — off restaurants and real estate. No, sir.
Dude hung out with all the right (wrong) people. Jerry Jeff Walker. Steve Goodman. Jim Harrison. Thomas McGuane, who wrote the liner notes for “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” married Buffett’s sister, Laurie, and is the only survivor of this august cluster of poets, musicians, and miscreants.
Buffett died yesterday at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” according to a statement on his website and social media. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”
My friend Hal Walter and I were fans, declaring occasional Parrot Shirt Days in his honor when we were on the copy desk at The Pueblo Chieftain back in the Eighties. Hal actually tried to get him to speak at commencement when he escaped journalism school at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
I still love listening to “A White Sport Coat.” I have it on right now as I sip my morning coffee, and just played along (inexpertly) to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk?” That one is credited to “Marvin Gardens,” which was Buffett on maracas and beer cans.
The 1977 tune “Margaritaville” was his signature tune and biggest hit. But I always preferred “Death of an Unpopular Poet,” which Buffett clearly was not. I mean, he even had a species of Florida Keys cryptofauna named after him.
Many a margarita will be hoisted to mark his sailing away. Some for breakfast, I expect. Lots of vitamin C in those limes.
R.I.P., Tony Bennett
Like Old Blue Eyes, a friend and mentor who called him “the best singer in the business,” Tony Bennett did it his way.
He died Friday in Manhattan at age 96.
But Bennett went down swinging. Despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he kept performing and recording. His last public performance was in August 2021, when he sang with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall.
And he got a top-notch sendoff from The New York Times. His very fine obit in that august publication comes to us via the retired obituary writer Bruce Weber, cross-country cyclist and author of “Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America.”
Mad Blog Media 