76 Trombones (Final Scene of The Music Man, 1962)

Pick-a-Little (The Music Man, 1962)

"BALLLLZAC!"
Who thinks of this?! So weird and clever! :)

Ronny Howard Sings (The Music Man, 1962)

The whole "Music Man" film was a great surprise when I first saw it---

I didn't know much about musicals, and expected to be bored, 

but this whole film was very entertaining! And Ronny Howard, so cute!

Andy Griffith: Turn Your Radio On (The Carol Burnett Show--1972)

I feel so sorry for Griffith having to perform with these idiotic dancers. 

The "Carol Burnett Show" team could have at least put in a call to "Hee Haw" 

re how to stage a gospel song! 

This is extremely embarrassing---not for Griffith, 

who looks perfectly at ease throughout this stupidity, but for every 

gay/urban/clueless Burnett Show minion involved with staging this.
Why the Russian costumes and stilted dancing and overhead clapping?
And who's that idiotic black guy who keeps popping up in the forefront?

And all y'all: Stop wheeling Andy around!

 

George & Tammy: The Jet Set (1974)

 

By a fountain back in Rome
I fell in love with you
In a small cafe in Athens
You said you loved me too

And it was April in Paris
When I first held you close to me
Rome, Georgia
Athens, Texas
And Paris, Tennessee

No we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
There's no Riviera
In Festus, Missouri

And you won't find Onassis
In Mullinville, Kansas
No, we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
But ain't we got love?

No we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
Our steak and martinis
Is draft beer with weinies

Our Bach and Tchaikovsky (who's that?)
Is Haggard and Husky
No we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
But ain't we got love?

No, we're not the jet set
We're the old Chevrolet set
The Jones and Wynette set
Ain't the flamin' suzette set...

Guilt Over the Dead. Why Exactly?

This past year has been particularly bad. Mourning and mourning and mourning. But Sandra died LAST year, in 2024. Why so continually upset in 2025? Well, for one thing, her younger daughter reached out to me in February 2025, after reading my Legacy.com posts, asking if I wanted to speak with her on the phone.. Well, no, a phone-call would have been too much---why? What in the world would we have talked about? (The only thing I knew about this daughter is that Sandra said she did not understand her. The rest of what I knew about Sandra was a lot, lot, lot of awful childhood and adult-hood events.)

RE the above Daughter: When we were in contact this past February: I promised to go into my boxes of old poetry-class handouts from the 1980s and into my e-mails from 2008 to 2018 to give her a complete collection of all of her mother's poems that she'd ever sent to me. In return, the Daughter said she would send me a small painting of her mother's. I've not yet had the energy to dig out my Poetry box from the back of my closet. And she's never sent me a painting.

No Place to Report Online Sexual Abuse

The Federal Government needs to stop certain things online: 
While searching for a killer (Israel Keyes) that I'd just watched on HLN's "Very Scary People," I came upon this entry on the "Simply Confess" website: https://simplyconfess.com/other/599160/
After multiple attempts to report this precise post to online FBI or Child Abuse hotlines, I got numerous ChatBots. I finally resorted to contacting my State Representative---though what is a local rep supposed to do about a national/international website?
This is insane---here's a psycho right in all of our faces getting off on saying exactly what he's been doing to various young girls for years now---and this "Simply Confess" website promotes it. And there's no place to report it.

-------------------------------------------------

Follow-up:  After reporting the above to my State Representative, someone from her office replied a couple of days later: 

You can visit the Texas Abuse Hotline Website (www.txabusehotline.org) or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline (report.cybertip.org) to submit a report online. Both platforms allow for electronic reporting, and for incidents on the internet, the CyberTipline is specifically designed to report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and related online exploitation. 

Please visit any of the above sites if you come across such sites online.

It's amazing how much you can get done when you wake up utterly sober!

(1) 2 loads of wash. (In an apartment complex laundry room, which is always a pain---are the machines full? are the machines working?; doing so would be no problem in my own home!)
(2) Handwashing bras.
(3) Mailing off sold-online stuff at the post office---ahead of time!
(4) Taking out all trash and all boxes sitting around for the past week.
(5) Cleaning up cat hair-balls from the spare room. (For some reason, they go in this room to throw up---and for some reason, the cat puke doesn't cling to the carpet, so it's easy, after a couple of days, to scoop up with paper towels.)
(6) Beer store, for beer and cigs for the next 2 days, and a 12-pack of Coke for the next week.
(7) Oh yeah, and I swept the apartment!
I have yet to clean my toilet---which desperately needs to be cleaned...

Ginny had not appeared to me in over 20 years----

Ginny died in 1988. And she appeared to me only several times after, through the late 1990s. After that, I didn't hear from her any more at all. I assumed she'd gone off into the ether. (I might have been sad at various times after that, but that wasn't her business any more.)

Last night, I had a hard-core, serious dream: Ginny and Cindy were arguing over whether or not Ginny should choose me----and she chose me. 

I didn't wake up feeling "triumphant" or anything. I just woke up feeling a great sense of relief.

While she had disappeared from me in recent decades, in the olden days, she did used to appear in times of my great stress. So I felt very grateful for her appearing to me now, after decades of absence.

In other news: I recently watched the doc on Hawking's "Brief History of Time"---- Everything he said, I already knew: Imagine an hour-glass figure. The stuff of the universe going back and forth through it.

I've also recently been thinking about the term "in love with"---- Not "I love you." But "in love with." As with many other force-fields, I think there's a "love" field. That we can flow in an out of.

Criterion: Streetwise (1984) and Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell (2016)

The first features "Tiny" as one of the street kids in Seattle; the second shows "Tiny" over 30 years later.

https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/4430-streetwise-tiny-the-life-of-erin-blackwell 

In the first film, I feel sorry for her. 
In the second, I don't: She's a hugely overweight methadone addict who has had 10 (!) kids since the first doc in 1984, and now spends her days sleeping on her nice couch in a nice two-story home while her kids and chihuahuas gambol around her.

WHERE did she get the money for this home and furniture? No, not any of her numerous black jobless partners, but directly from the US Government, which has been paying low-lifes like this per-baby since 1968. 

I don't care WHO has 10 kids, be they Mormon or Catholic or Elon Musk, as long as they can afford them on their own. Go for it. But this former whore and drug addict? With 10 kids, because she and her partners never used birth control and the US Govt PAID them per-child for this?? NO. This is insane.

My addendum: I used to think Republicans were just mean for bringing up "welfare mothers." Until I had no car from 2010 thru 2016 and had to be basically "on the streets" and share public transportation with very-low-income people. At one point, I was on a bus, and a guy behind me (on parole, as he revealed) was actually telling his friend: "Yeah, I got her pregnant so she can get money for the kid when I go in." (Prior to this, I'd always mocked Bill O'Reilly on Fox News! After this, I knew he was telling the truth.)

Had I not been forced to take public transportation for 6 years in Austin, I never would have learned half of what I learned. Between taking the bus in San Francisco in the mid-1990s and taking the bus in Austin from 2010 to 2016, I got quite the "street" education. Many of my fellow bus-goers were in no way "noble" poor people. I usually sat next to psychotics babbling and acting out; or gang-bangers trying to get out of the dollar fare and then going off on who they'd fucked the past weekend.

I was just trying to get to work or to the grocery store. But I had to put up with this low-life shit. 

So, yeah: Don't romanticize the poor. (Anyone poor but even mildly competent can get a city or state job and make a decent living with full benefits.)

And, for god's sake, don't pay them per kid, US Govt. Or else they'll keep churning them out to get the extra hundreds per month, and continue to replicate the same insane patterns. ("Thanks," LBJ, for your horrible contributions to the United States: Both the Vietnam War and your illogical social programs.)

Portlandia: A-O River!

Kinda like Austin's Kathy and Tim along the Guadalupe!

Portlandia (Season 3): Candace's Son/Grandchild Visit the Feminist Bookstore

Portlandia (Season 8): NPR Podcast

The Dream of the '90s is Alive in Portland!

My new streaming service YouTubeTV has a 24/7 "Portlandia" station.
I'd never had access to the show until now (it ran from 2011 to 2018), 
but am now knocked out by how clever it is!

Tchaikovsky's Solemn March for Alexander III's Coronation (1883)

Why is this so moving to me? 

Because this is so obviously beautiful. and things are so tawdry today.
And the murders of the Tsarist family in 1918 were so horrible and unnecessary.
And it's purely European culture (i.e. culture).
NO Marxist takeover has ever been good---in any country.

We should stop apologizing for European culture and, instead, praise it. 

"when you were young, and your heart was an open book..."

Now, at age 60, I look back and... Do I wish I'd sought a relationship with Brian? (He would have had me in a second then but not now!) We did share the same birthday and we founded a minor Austin lit magazine---"Trash Soup"---together. Named after a dish served at the cafe where our lit group met for over a year.) Alas, I was constantly upset about my ex-girlfriend Mollie. I couldn't even join him for a once-in-a-lifetime Leo meteor shower.

One of the few truly nice people I've known. 

That said, though: Just because you have a strong intellectual connection with someone doesn't mean you should sleep with, or marry, them! Though I do wish I were still in contact with him. 

Playground in My Mind (Clint Holmes, 1972)

Epitome of '70s cheese, but... it's actually a very good, catchy song!
(Sorry, but I've been listening to the "70s Party Classics" Rhino CD---

everything on this is sounding GREAT to me right now!)
But: Dear Clint Holmes: Oh why the stone horse and the serious face on the album cover? 

There's no sort of mythology involved here...

Andy Griffith (A Face In the Crowd 1957): Free Man In The Morning

If NPR existed back in 1957, Marcia would have been from NPR, sent to explore
"how the other half lives"---while also mocking the "poor white" culture.
(Whereas, poor blacks would have been sanctified.)

A Face in the Crowd (1957) Trailer

As a kid watching re-runs of "The Andy Griffith Show" on TV, and enjoying his handsome face and laid-back character and folksiness, I was amazed to discover this film as an adult! Griffith is a GREAT actor here, running the gamut from wild-eyed raunchy to subtle and disturbing. It's a psychologically great performance. And probably one of my Top 20 films of all time---every time it comes on TCM, I watch it. After 10 or more views, I still never get tired of it.

 

This dark 1957 film was, I think, Griffith's third film. His light-hearted "Andy Griffith Show" ran from 1961 to 1968.

Trying to see the dead again.

Sandra died in 2024. I found out only months later. After howling, I immediately took to a pendant to try to contact her, which didn't reveal anything at all.

She's never visited me post-death. But here is my dream last night---the first time Sandra appeared to me, albeit in a very minor role: I was in the midst of various parties. I was constantly irritated by various things (one lesbian dunked my purse in a toilet). Sandra came to me with something about having ordering food. Then she lay down and went to sleep. (The food guy eventually came to the door, and I got the food.)

This is the most meaningless thing I can imagine. But at least I had Sandra for a few minutes.

Ages 5 and 6 (Iowa Park, Texas)

Dad trying to teach Mom to drive, and screaming at her the whole time. I was forced to ride along in the back seat. I remember begging not to go.

Being scared of a big bat kite that neighborhood boys were flying.

Two neighborhood boys sitting on the curb, and not allowing me to pass, and me having to run past them.

A girl from the neighborhood coming over and stealing all the coins from my Mickey Mouse piggy-bank. She put the coins in her underwear, and walked out of our house in front of my parents---stooped over, with coins literally falling out of her underpants! And my idiot parents didn't do anything to stop her!

The "drama" over a baby-sitter for me: One teen baby-sitter---"Connie"---had invited over a boy, and cigarette butts were found by the fence of our yard. So my parents got a more sedate baby-sitter---"Frieda." Later, Connie confronted me (a 5- or 6-year-old): "No one likes Frieda!" 

Neighbors Al Aceves and family: 
At one point, I helped his wife take her groceries into their home. My mother chastised me for never helping with our own groceries.
At one point, Al Aceves organized a baseball game with the neighborhood kids. My 5-year-old-self proudly brought along my hollow plastic baseball bat... He, of course, dismissed it. I remember watching Aceves and the big boys walking away to their game. (To this day, when I think of something that doesn't measure up, I think "PLASTIC BAT.")

Oh yeah, and there's the "flying ants": I suppose I was seeing air molecules. But I made a big deal out of it: "THE ANTS!"

It's funny---you don't think of much going on mentally when you're 5 or 6, but I had a lot going on! :)

Trump is a raw, honest person.

And that's why I like him. He's, on the surface, a "bullshit artist," but it's with a wink---an over-the-top (stupid!) "America is Hot" kind of thing. (During the 2016 campaign, he once said of a protester tossed out of his north-eastern event: "Get him out of here! Take his coat!"---the "take his coat" part was being funny, but media outlets like CNN then accused him of being "abusive"!)

His actual ideas, though, are completely sane and long-needed in this country: 

No more open borders. 

No more NATO not paying their own fair share of their own defense. (Once Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump was asking why the EU countries were still paying Russia for their fuel. Good question!)

American companies needing to make their own products. 

And then side-issues brought up over the past 5 years: 

How Facebook and Twitter were allowed to ban any ideas that did not align with Biden-handler's Marxism. (Thank you, Musk, for buying Twitter!) And aside from Musk: Why were such companies allowed to BAN thoughts/posts that disagreed with the Marxist orthodoxy?

How all government employees were forced to get COVID vaccines. 

How government agencies and media outlets and colleges forced the bizarre trannie pronouns upon all of the US, and tried to tell us all that men were women, and vice versa. (You can "feel" whatever you want to feel about yourself, but don't try to project your insanity upon the rest of society. Where the Marxists went wrong was trying to make the rest of us kowtow to the deviant 1 percent. And, until now, they were mightily successful in infiltrating media, grade schools, colleges, etc.)

What Trump is trying to do now is stem the tide of psychosis. He's about as "radical" as Bill Clinton was back in 1992. I was a big Bill Clinton fan, and I'm a big Trump fan. I've always been pro GOOD GOVERNMENT and SANITY.

Lincoln: Really a "great" President?

Under Lincoln, over 600,000 men in America died in the Civil War. 

Never, even during Viet Nam, was there such a death rate. Why is Lincoln a hero? Shouldn't he be considered one of the WORST Presidents?

I grew up being taught in grade-school that Lincoln was great---not if 600K of his citizens died under his watch.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): Murder of Freddie

Hoffman is so great in this role; I would have murdered him, too. (Who wouldn't have?)
Hoffman later died (2014) of a drug overdose: After saying he wouldn't let his own children 

be raised outside of Chicago or NYC. How apropos! A snotty dick in real life, too---killed not by the "horrible rednecks" outside of Chicago or NYC that he feared so, but by his own hand.

Tu Vuo' Fa l'Americano: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): Final scene

Oh, dear god, this is the most bleak, terrible thing ever.

 

Until today (thanks to my Criterion subscription), I'd never seen this 1999 version (with Matt Damon) of the original 1960 "Purple Noon" (with Alain Delon). Both films based on the Patricia Highsmith novel. 

I'd thought the 1960 version could not be topped. 

But this 1999 version (directed by Anthony Minghella) was only slightly less beautifully shot, but a thousand times more psychologically complex. (Though the original was also intelligent and intriguing.)

This final scene breaks my heart. 

(Peter had been the one person to show unjudgmental love for Ripley. But on board a ship Ripley and Peter were now sailing on, a woman from Ripley's past has shown up, knowing Ripley by his old identity---a man who has been murdered by Ripley. Why wouldn't Ripley kill HER instead of Peter, who knows his real self?)
Matt Damon should have won an Oscar for this performance.

 

 

I'm older now, and kind of bored with myself...

I'm probably never going to move back to NYC while I'm alive. And I'll never be able to afford a house anywhere while I'm alive. BUT: I CAN afford a plot at Ferncliff in Hartsdale, NY!  :)

I mean, not a crematory urn next to Joan Crawford or anything, BUT: I was just looking up burial options at Ferncliff: $30,000 for regular burials. I have that much, easy, in various past-work-related 401Ks.

Last time I was in that part of the country was in 2009, specifically to visit Joan Crawford's unit of the mausoleum. But while there: The country north of NYC is beautiful, and Ferncliff, in particular, is beautiful. If I'm going to be buried somewhere---why not in a beautiful established place instead of a backwoods graveyard 30 miles west of Fort Worth that developers will ultimately overturn?

$30,000. A new Mazda or a cool place to be buried. I'm leaning toward the latter. I just tonight put in my inquiry to Ferncliff.

Open Letter to My Mother

RE "I love you." You absolutely do NOT "love me." You have never cared what happened to me.

Like I mentioned before: If I were a married woman today with a house and 2 daughters, and Thomas were a bachelor living in an apartment: You'd leave HIM all of your money because I was married and he allegedly had no one. Yet the situation is reversed in reality---and we all know what you've decided to do.

House/Money aside (and it really is an "aside" to me---I've never been money-hungry; it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing):
I am utterly disgusted by your demeaning my political views ("I'm brainwashed") and demeaning the two people that I've really loved (ignoring Ginny in Azle; and "Did you really love Sandra?"). Funnily, when I recently told you what a scumbag Mollie (my first lover) was, your response was: "She seemed perfectly nice." 

I was an innocent virgin at age 23 (I waited until I really was in love someone before I had sex), and Mollie immediately gave me herpes and cheated on me multiple times. It took me 10 years to get over the psychological trauma. But all you had to say was, "She seemed perfectly nice."

When I told you I was raped back in 2000, your first reaction was "Were you drunk?" 
When I was back from NYC and finally got my own 400-sq-ft apt after staying with you, you kept asking when I was going to get my box of albums out of your house.
And, yes, the sewing table: You went on about this for years and years----"Don't lose the sewing table!" I moved to multiple places over 10 years, and I always liked that table, and always kept it with me---it was always a part of my living-room decor. Yet the minute I gave it back to YOU, you got rid of it. After YEARS of suggesting that I would somehow mislay it! THAT is psychotic----pre-accusing me, then doing exactly the same thing!

Here's another psychotic thing: When we visited Germany when I was 18, I lit a cigarette on the street. It was 1984. The years of controversy about women smoking in public had been banished back in the 1920s. Yet you made a big deal in front of your sister about me putting my cigarette out. I put it out to avoid a fight. (Oh, but wait: You later told me that you, yourself, had smoked as a kid---you said that once an old woman had caught you smoking and said something about the Russians coming! So why was my having a cig in 1984 so disgusting to you?)

In short: You always went out of your way to find things wrong with me, even when there was nothing there. WHY??? You must be mad.

Luckily, I had my success in grade school/high school to give me early confidence. I failed early in college, but, ultimately, I buckled down and made it through after 10 years.

When I first got to UT, I lived in a suite with 4 other girls. After long weekends or holidays, I'd listen to the other girls talk to their mothers on the phone: "Did you get back OK?" No one gave a shit if I had gotten back OK.

Words are NOT trite at this point. LISTEN to what I'm saying for the first time in your life. 

Trump’s Father’s Advice: “If the Front Door’s Dirty…”

This reminds me... What sayings did my own father impart to me? Hmm, let me think...

"Can't see through muddy water." (When I was blocking his view of the TV.)
I thought I had at least one or two more, but, alas, I'm stumped.

"You're just like your mother" to an 11-year-old doesn't count. (On this occasion, I wanted to go home instead of driving around with him. Obviously, his company wasn't that great, or I would have enjoyed riding around with my dad!)

 

Same when, after the divorce, me and my brother went to stay with him in South Dakota----he was drunk and awful the whole time. When I got home, I told my mother that I would NEVER go to visit him again, and I didn't. 

 

My visit to South Dakota was early in the Summer of 1980. The same summer that I later got my first period. And when I first discovered the Beatles, and then became especially interested in John Lennon's solo albums. When Lennon was shot dead on December 8, 1980, my father later said to me on the phone: "You wouldn't be so upset if I were dead."

WOW. Well, no, Daddy. You were awful to me in real-life. Lennon, on the one hand, made music and wrote lyrics that helped me through my hard times and made me feel better. YOU, on the other hand, always made me feel like shit. So, no, I wouldn't be so upset if you were dead.

"Take Our Capital Back"

It's about fuckin' time.
If you can't handle the crime in your own city, then the Feds should be brought in.
(Note that Trump has offered Chicago, LA, etc., a large amount of Federal funds for crime-fighting in the past few months. They turned him down. Why? Do they LIKE being drug/crime-addled? Or would that be an admission that they had failed completely in governing themselves?)

p.s. As a feminist since the age of 15: I find it sad that in recent months, the mayors and police chiefs of beleaguered cities have been primarily either female or black or both. How did all of these sad-sack do-nothings get hired? Time to re-think your DEI hiring and instead go for MERIT?

The earlier problem was that some qualified blacks/women/gays were being passed over in favor of dullard white guys. The problem today is the exact opposite: Dullard blacks/women/gays are being given jobs instead of more-qualified white guys. ENOUGH of all of whatever racism. MERIT ONLY. (And that's one reason I despise the low-info Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor: Years ago, she ruled against merit testing for firefighters in Connecticut---and was ultimately overruled, thank god. And does anyone think either Kamala Harris or Ketanji Brown Jackson were chosen for their roles based on merit? Stop the insanity of dumbness.) 

 

The US, unlike third-world countries or the EU, cannot be run on DUMB and DEI. Love 'em or hate 'em, we need alphas and their brain power and their rules to run things efficiently and curb the psychotics.

Gimme Shelter (1970 by Maysles Brothers)

This is a filmed account of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour, including Altamont near San Francisco, during which the Hells Angels murdered one person, and 4 others died.

Funny/Sad to hear Mick on-stage during Altamont exhort everyone to "cool out"--- When his band's music actually had been calling for revolution and violence. (What? You intellectually support it until it actually happens?) The doc also shows the more-interesting aftermath---the attendees as they make their way home.

Sociologists/Journalists (received-info idiots both) say that Altamont and the Manson murders were the "end of the '60s." I agree. But I also think that there were no "drug-filled 60s"----Basically, the psycho-hippie-shit lasted from late 1967 to 1969 (about the same time period that Charles Manson was out of jail). Three years. Prior to '67, things were still under control: Interesting and fun, but not psychotic and murderous.

And after '69, the dull druggie commune-culture staggered on...soon to be replaced by the late '70s druggie gay club culture. Look how both turned out. 

Sympathy for the Devil (1968 by Godard)

Criterion Channel has multiple Rolling Stones documentaries, and I started watching all of them tonight. When I got to 1968's "Sympathy for the Devil" by Godard (yes, THE Godard)... It wasn't really about the Stones at all:

Let me just quote from Wikipedia:

Interwoven through the movie [My note: these aren't "interwoven"---They are over half of the movie ostensibly about the Rolling Stones] are outdoor shots of Black Panthers loitering in a junkyard littered with rusting cars heaped upon each other. They read from revolutionary texts (including Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver) and toss their rifles to each other, from man to man. A group of white women, apparently kidnapped and dressed in white, are brutalized and ultimately shot, off-camera; their bloody bodies are subsequently seen in various tableaus throughout the film.

The rest of the film contains a political message in the form of a voiceover about Marxism, the need for revolution and other topics in which Godard was interested. One scene involves a camera crew following a woman about in a yellow peasant dress (played by Anne Wiazemsky), in an outdoor wildlife setting; questions are asked of her, to which she always answers either "yes" or "no". As can be seen from the chapter heading to the scene, she is supposed to be a personification of democracy, a woman named 'Eve Democracy'.   

[My note: The above lengthy scene in which this woman is interrogated reminds me of pure indoctrination, or, at the least, like Kanye/Bianca. It's VERY disturbing. But Godard did not mean for it to be "disturbing"---he meant for it to be purely a political statement.]

Who had control over the final release of this movie? Did the Stones allow this to come out in their name? 

I'm usually intellectually curious. But this was extreme Communist/anti-female propaganda, and extreme radical pro-black propaganda. To the point of nausea and disgust. 

I'd actually recommend that every sane moderate person watch this entire thing. THIS is exactly what was being pushed back in '68, and what is being pushed today. (AGAIN: This is ostensibly about the Stones, but the vast majority of the film has nothing to do with them---it's primarily Godard and his ill-thought-out support for Black Radical and Communist politics.)

George Jones: Stand On My Own Two Knees (1976)

I've tried everything I know to make you happy
Never knew someone could be so hard to please
Loving you is hard, and I'm not sure I'll make it
But at least I've learned how to stand on my own two knees

I've still got my pride, it's just that I misplaced it
Anyway, it's better lost, then no one sees
Maybe I'm not strong enough right now to hold you
But at least I've learned how to stand on my own two knees

It wasn't long ago you had me crawlin'
Oh, but look how far I've come, can't you see?
Well, I know I'm still not walking tall, but I'm trying
And at least I've learned how to stand on my own two knees
Yes, I know I'm still not walking tall, but I'm trying
And at least I've learned how to stand on my own two knees

George Jones: The King Is Gone and So Are You (1989)

Last night I broke the seal on a Jim Beam decanter
That looks like Elvis
I soaked the label off a Flintstone Jelly Bean jar
I cleared us off a place on that
One little table that you left us
And pulled me up a big ole piece of floor

I pulled the head off Elvis
Filled Fred up to his pelvis
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you

'Round about ten we all got to talking
'Bout Graceland, Bedrock and such
The conversation finally turned to women
But they said they didn't get around too much
Elvis said, "Find 'em young"
And Fred said "Old Fashioned girls are fun"
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you

Later on it finally hit me
That you wouldn't be 'a comin' home no more
'Cause this time I know you won't forgive me
Like all of them other times before
Then I broke Elvis's nose
Pouring the last drop from his toes
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you

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

This man was a sassy performer in the 1950s, and he's still sassy here in the 1990s.
I love his energy (and showing-off) in his fast songs, 

and his utter bereftness in his love-lost songs. 

My absolute favorite singer.

Kudos to My Cinco!

This little stray cat was hanging around my back door, and on my front window-sill, in 2019.
She'd travel back and forth, between front window and back door, and say "hi."

 
One night in December 2019, it was freezing cold and raining, and she was huddled 
underneath a small bush near my back door. I let her inside.

For the next entire YEAR, she did NOT let me touch her. If I even looked at her, she'd scurry away. (If this had been my only cat, I'd have been worried and chasing her around trying to find out what was wrong. But since I had 4 others in the house as of April 2019...Eh---What's one more!)

After maybe 8 or so months, Cinco started to sit next to me at my computer. But I still couldn't touch her. After a year: She finally let me pet her! :)
 

Today, in 2025, she's finally at home: Ensconced on top of a sofa cushion, as all the other cats usually are! (She's also a "bathroom cat"---the second I sit down on the toilet, she runs right in. Cinco and Pete both. Why is that? Do they think they get some extra attention because I'm supposedly TRAPPED on the toilet seat and then must pet them? The other 3 cats never come in there! You two guys are freaks!)

Sleater-Kinney: Jumpers (2005)

I spend the afternoon in cars
I sit in traffic jams for hours
Don't push me, I am not ok

The sky is blue most every day
The lemons grow like tumors
They are tiny suns infused with sour

Lonely as a cloud
In the Golden State
The coldest winter that I ever saw
Was the summer that I spent

The only substance is the fog
And it hides all that has gone wrong
Can't see a thing inside the maze

There is a bridge adored and famed
The Golden spine of engineering
Whose back is heavy with my weight

Lonely as a cloud
In the Golden State
The coldest winter that I ever saw
Was the summer that I spent

Be still this old heart
Be still this old skin
Drink your last drink
Sin your last sin

Sing your last song
About the beginning
Sing it out loud
So the people can hear, let's go

Be still this sad day
Be still this sad year
Hope your last hope
Fear your last fear

You're not the only one
You're not the only one
You're not the only one
You're not the only one, let's go

My falling shape will draw a line
Between the blue of sea and sky
I'm not a bird, I'm not a plane

I took a taxi to the Gate
I will not go to school again
Four seconds was the longest wait

Four seconds was the longest wait
Four seconds was the longest wait
Four seconds was the longest wait
Four seconds was the longest 

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From Genius.com: 

Influenced by a 2003 article in The New Yorker with the same name, the song details its narrator’s loneliness and depression before leaping from the famed Golden Gate Bridge.

Carrie Brownstein elaborated in a 2005 interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

When I was living in the Bay Area, I read the Tad Friend article as I was taking BART into the city, and I found myself just crying and thinking about how out of place I felt. I was certainly thinking about my own struggles – I couldn’t understand why, in this place of such intense beauty and sun, these things that were supposed to be healthy and helping me, I felt such a sharp contrast.

That was my first reaction to the article. By the time I was writing the song, I was living back in Portland, and the song itself partially stems from my own feelings of disparity about the overall political and social climate.

------------------------------------------------

When I myself lived in San Fran in 1994 and 1995, I felt the same thing: "It's so incredibly beautiful; I should be so inspired; why am I so sad here? Why can't I wait to get home?"

When I lived there, I walked all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge once---just to say I'd done so---and, however miserable I was, I didn't ever feel like jumping off. I have always been too curious about what might happen in the future. (I once read a sociological study asking people what their main reason for living was: Family, Friends, God, Knowledge. Most said Family and Friends. Some said God. All of which have always let me down---though I'm trying to be more mature in my approach to God nowadays. But: KNOWLEDGE---There is always SOMETHING new and interesting to learn about!)

(RE Brownstein's "disparity about the overall political and social climate"---that's all utter bullshit. She was feeling something innate and inexplicable that had nothing at all to do with either sociology or politics.)

p.s. "Four seconds" is the estimated time it takes from when you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge until you hit the water.

My Fair Lady (1964): With A Little Bit Of Luck

It's been Audrey Hepburn Day on TCM today (their "Summer Under the Stars" series).
This song made me wonder if Paul McCartney got his "With a Little Luck" from this film.
It also made me think of Cockneys, and about all sorts of Brits.

 

But recently (from Wikipedia):

About 70% of the population increase between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was due to foreign-born immigration. Long-term net migration (the number of people immigrating minus the number emigrating) reached a record high of 764,000 in 2022, with immigration at 1.26 million and emigration at 493,000.^[85]

 

Whenever I view the BBC channel today, I get Hamas propaganda, climate-change propaganda, pro-illegal immigrant propaganda, etc. The majority of the BBC presenters are African (one literally wearing a cheetah-print outfit--how stereotypical!) or Middle Eastern (literally wearing the high-collared shirts of Muslim men). 

And I just heard that the Starmer government is cracking down on any "anti-immigrant" views that might appear on social media sites of UK newspapers like the UK Daily Mail site. ("Anti-immigrant" meaning any opinion that might not agree with allowing ILLEGALS into the country.)

Is there any real UK any more?
Mayor of London: The Muslim Sadiq Khan. (Why would you ever allow a Marxist Muslim to represent your capitol city? I have the same question for New York City, where the Marxist Muslim Mamdani is currently the leading candidate for mayor.)

A thousand years ago, Muslims invading was a real problem to be fought against. Today---liberals of your own country just allow them in, and allow the Marxist academic propaganda supporting them to infiltrate the media and the public. And then, to top it off, these infiltrators---instead of being grateful for being allowed into their new countries---are committing crimes all over the place.

You gotta fight this!

The Beatles: From Me To You (The Royal Variety Performance; November 1963)

As with "Please Please Me": This song is so wildly joyful!
So grateful to be able to feel this way just because of a song!
That's why some artists are revered: Because they make us feel, or make us think. 

Conjured up out of nothing in our own lives. MAGIC.

Please Please Me (1963)

While I was in my dentist's office today, there was a steady stream of bland '90s "hits" playing. I had to sit there for over a half-hour listening to this blandness. No energy, no originality, no nothing. While I was trapped both in the waiting room and in the dental chair, listening to this nothing-ness (and, seriously, at one point, the crappy tattooed dental assistant was humming along to one of these insipid songs), I flashed back to what I found exciting as a teen (and I was a teen when everyone else was listening to the ridiculous Styx and Boston and REO Speedwagon---I HATED those bands, and still dislike them today).

One radio station was playing Beatles songs constantly in the Summer of 1980. Thank you for introducing me to them (thanks also to the extremely well-written "Beatles Forever" book by Nicholas Schaffner).

Dental Visits Today

Up until last year, I hadn't been to a dentist in about 15 years. YES, that long. There has never been anything wrong with my teeth (never a cavity), but last year I thought I spotted a BROWN tooth way back there... Which freaked me out and led me to a dentist. (The tooth turned out to be not-brown, and everything was OK. Although I did have to get "planing" done---I didn't know what that was, but since I hadn't been to a dentist in 15 years, it seemed necessary; and job insurance paid for it.)

After I got all of my planing/scraping done last year, I signed up for check-ups every 6 months. Like in my childhood. Except today, you have to pay extra if you want the fluoride tray. And today, there's no basin to spit in. They stick two tubes into your mouth: One for water, one to suck out the water.

Also, in the "olden days," the dentist used to do the cleaning and everything else. Today: They have some rough tattooed chicks in to do the hard work of the actual teeth-cleaning. (Kind of like in hair salons, where they now have extras in to shampoo you.) My "rough chick" today actual STANK. I don't know what was on her gloves, if she hadn't changed them, but she SMELLED. And she was kind of mean: At one point, I apparently hadn't turned my head in the right way, and she got very agitated. I was at her mercy (or else I would have told her to fuck off), so I asked, "How do you want me to turn my head?" HER: "Don't turn your head any way! You're just not at the right angle." Oh, OK...

I really do remember in the "olden days" of dental care, when every dentist and assistant was pleasant and nice... What happened? How did these low-level tattooed chicks get allowed in to the Dental Care system (or any health-care system)? Come to think of it, how did they get to be teachers?