Elvis Presley "Don't Be Cruel" (Ed Sullivan Show, September 9, 1956)

From the waist up.

Elvis Presley: In the Ghetto (1969)

Dolly, Tammy, Loretta: Silver Threads and Golden Needles (1993)

Tammy Wynette: Crying Steel Guitar (1974)

Two Hoots and a Holler: Step Fast

You make a lot of plans but you don't know what's in store...

Rick Broussard: "Good Used Heart"

George Jones: I'd Rather Have What We Had

George Jones: "I Don't Need Your Rocking Chair" (1992)

Cats and Plants and Books

I lived in an Austin duplex on Rainey Street from 1991 to 1994, which I paid $310 a month for. (The street is now an uber-developed condo/bar area, but at the time, it was a low-key strip of old 1930s family homes and duplexes.)

At the time, I had just broken up with my first girlfriend, and I was emotionally miserable. But one thing I also wrote in my journal then, and prayed for then: "I want to be surrounded by cats and plants and books..."

I didn't get what I wished then. In fact, I lost many cats during that 3-year time period: My black cat "Frances" disappeared. Her daughter "Toonces" got run over in front of me. A Christmas gift kitty "Katie Scarlett" was also run over (found her dead in my yard when I got home from work). Another gift-kitty died of leukemia a few weeks after I got her.

A miserable time in my life.

But today, RE "I want to be surrounded by cats and plants and books": I've got all of this: A mama cat who bore 3 kittens in my neighbor's backyard, plus a little niece hanging around---all mine now. And I've got all the books I want. And I have all the plants I want.

The girlfriend that I also prayed to have at the time, I did NOT get---thank you, God! :)  But the cats and plants and books---I'm glad to have received 25 years later.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Theme Song

I can't get over how brilliant this movie is!
Both wildly optimistic and psychologically dark at the same time. So skillful on the part of the writers, the choreographers, and everyone else involved. You don't see many works of art like this nowadays.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Doll on a Music Box / Truly Scrumptious

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Chu-Chi Face

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Roses of Success

Every bursted bubble has a glory!
Each abysmal failure makes a point!
Every glowing path that goes astray,
Shows you how to find a better way.
So every time you stumble never grumble.
Next time you'll bumble even less!
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Oh yes!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
(spoken) Yes I know but he wants it to float. It will!
For every big mistake you make be grateful!
Here, here!
That mistake you'll never make again!
No sir!
Every shiny dream that fades and dies,
Generates the steam for two more tries!
(Oh) There's magic in the wake of a fiasco!
Correct!
It gives you that chance to second guess!
Oh yes!
Then up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
Disaster didn't stymie Louis Pasteur!
No sir!
Edison took years to see the light!
Right!
Alexander Graham knew failure well; he took a lot of knocks to ring that
bell!
So when it gets distressing it's a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Me Ol' Bam-Boo

Living Room, 2021

Real proud of the plant stand that I turned into a book/knick-knack stand in my living room. Ha!
Oh, and the chair, too...

I don't feel anything right now other than content with my high-paying non-demanding work-from-home job and with buying stuff and with loving no-one. (The most miserable times in my life were when I loved someone and I wasn't loved in return.) I'm very grateful for the present peace.

 

 

Bay City Rollers: Love Fever (1977)

John Lennon: (Just Like) Starting Over

John Lennon was shot dead at 10:50 pm on Monday, December 8, 1980. I had gone to bed the evening before listening to the first side of "Double Fantasy." When my mother came and woke me up for school on Tuesday morning, she immediately told me what had happened. My first odd thought was, "Did Yoko do it?"

I grew up with parents who didn't like each other at all. They divorced when I was 12. Their dis-ease with each other was obvious, but as a kid I lived with it, and with the some-time violence, but without feeling a sense of horror regarding the entire world.

I first discovered the Beatles and my favorite John Lennon when I was 15, in the summer of 1980. A local radio station was playing all of the Beatles' songs, and a local TV station was running the few Beatles movies. I felt happy when listening and watching. That same summer, I was sent to visit my father in South Dakota. He was awful to me. But while in South Dakota, I heard "Instant Karma" on the radio for the first time. When I got back to Texas, I found out that John Lennon was coming out with his first album in 5 years: "Double Fantasy." Released in November. When I first heard the album in full--at midnight, on a local rock station---I didn't love it at all. In fact, I remember thinking that it would now be sad to have to "leave" Lennon-fandom after all of these months... I bought the album anyway, and listened to it constantly anyway...

John Lennon's shooting on December 8, 1980, introduced me to a very strange feeling that I'd never experienced before. Like I said above, I'd been through awful things as a child, but I'd always somehow just been an observer, and I could consciously say to myself: "My father is behaving terribly" or "My mother is behaving terribly." And I didn't love either of them ("They're not on your side," a voice once said to me), so whatever they were doing wasn't so terrible because they had nothing to do with ME. But I LOVED John Lennon. And when he was shot dead, a weird psychological sense of horror ran through me for the first time. The world, the sky were not the same. This particular sense of horror didn't last more than two or three months at the time. But it came back later over and over again. Lennon's death introduced me to this horrific, other-worldly rift.



RINGS

once I walked in clear blue sky
waiting for the bus
my cheek against the ice-cold pane

Mama didn't work
she watched me at the stop
tearing the curls
she spent all morning fixing

who liked my dress?
all the boys, Mama
they give me their nickels
their jackets to wear

Raymond, Danny, Sylvester
we fly kites together
they walk me home
giving me rings
to wear forever

Workers of the World

The workers in MY world have been getting on my frigging nerves the past couple of weeks. The apartment complex management has gone on a binge of tree-cutting and leaf-blowing lately. 

Trees: The bottom-of-the-barrel tree-trimmers don't know shit about trimming trees. They've just been slicing off major limbs left and right, leaving a big stem, basically. It's awful to look at. Aside from the theoretical gripe with their inability to chops limbs correctly, my personal gripe is: The stupid tree-trimmers broke a couple of my plant pots in the backyard last week and didn't even knock on my door to apologize. And yet another group of tree-trimmers had their portable stereo blasting last week while they were clearing out brush---after about a half-hour, I had to go out there and tell them to please turn down their music. One guy said, "Oh, OK, " then a few minutes later it was blasting again, and I had to go back out there again. Have some respect for the neighbors, you fucking idiots.

Leaf-Blowing: After 6 months of no leaf-clearing (and after 3 or so requests from me to have the dead leaves cleared out from my backyard), the apartment management finally sent a crew out to blow the leaves away. I had to listen to their loud shit for over 5 hours last Saturday. (Prior to 6 months ago, a leaf-blower guy would come every Tuesday and, voila, the leaves on my sidewalk and in my yard would be gone in about 20 minutes. Not sure why it now took 5 hours.) Around 3 pm, the blowing-machines finally stopped, and I thought I could finally relax... Well, until I looked out my front window to see one of the guys pulling out his dick and taking a piss on a bush just outside of my window! Part of me said, "Be cool," but the bigger part of me said, "Tell that motherfucker to get the fuck away from your window." (Latter part won---I jerked open my door and scared that idiot off, then reported him to the apartment office.)

Who needs this stupid shit? I feel like I've been flashed back to my younger self, circa 1990-2000. Only then, I just put up with everything, and now I'm dead set on confronting everything. The ultimate goal, though, is to not be around any of this shit at all.

2021 US National Book Award Winners (asterisk by all)

 First, here's a list of former Natl Book Award winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_of_the_National_Book_Award

Compare this year's to years previous. You'll see that "merit" has degenerated to "politically correct" and "racially diverse."

I hadn't paid attention to literary awards for years, but Sunday night, while trying to find something to fall asleep to, happened upon a re-run on C-Span of what used to be the most prestigious award in US literature.

The host of the literary awards was a young black female: Phoebe Robinson. Humor on the level of a 3rd-grader. For this supposedly literate crowd? She wasn't literate, and she was only barely funny in a juvenile way. Why in the world was she chosen to host? Oh...

Categories that I happened to catch in the last half of the show:

POETRY: Chaired by leftist black man. Board of judges: Leftist Asian woman, leftist Native American woman, leftist Deaf Jewish man, leftist feminist. Winner: Leftist Hispanic male (Martin Espada). 

NON-FICTION: Chaired by leftist black woman. Board of judges: Two leftist feminists, leftist Native American man, leftist black man. Winner: Leftist black woman (Tiya Miles).

FICTION: Chaired by leftist Hispanic man. Board of judges: Leftist white male (the token white male, but then he hates himself: "masculinity can be such a pathology"), leftist lesbian, leftist black female, Asian man. Winner: Leftist gay black male (Jason Mott).

As someone who grew up loving literature, the above makes me sick. Asterisk by every single one of the so-called "winners" of the award: You won not because of your writing merit but because the country was currently in the sway of left-wing racial politics and the National Book Award board was too weak to stand up intellectually.

For shame, all of you. Your sub-par racist criteria are a disgrace to real writing, real literature.

George Jones: Choices (1999)

George & Tammy: It's An Old Love Thing (1995)

The two had been divorced since 1976, and hadn't recorded together since 1980, but, out of the blue, just as I was discovering both of them for the first time in 1994, they put out this album, "One"---I was thrilled. And thought the whole world would receive it as if the Beatles had gotten back together! But, nah... Even the country world wasn't that excited---it reached only #12 on the US Country Billboard chart. (Regardless of who was or was not excited, the fact that George Jones and Tammy Wynette made another album together after 15 years was actually a very big deal.)

"One" was the last album that Tammy Wynette recorded. She died at age 55 in April 1998. George Jones died at age 81 in April 2013. I was able to see him twice in concert in the late '90s: At the Travis County Expo Center, and at Stubb's in Austin. (At the latter event, where I was in the 2nd row with my friend Jerry, the great UT coach Darrell Royal was in attendance, seated in an area above the main floor. George acknowledged him, to great applause. George also made eye contact with me during the show---that sounds wishful on my part, perhaps, but... In all of the shows I've been to, I only remember eye contact with two performers: Kathy Valentine of the Go-Gos at Austin's Erwin Center in the '80s, and George Jones at the Stubbs show. So maybe it's true.)

George Jones & Tammy Wynette: We're Gonna Hold On (Midnight Special, 1973)