Sports Make the Year Fun

Growing up with a dad who liked the Dallas Cowboys, the games were on every week in our house, and I thus became interested in football and a life-long fan of the Cowboys.

As a student at UT-Austin in the 1980s, I became interested in the Longhorns.

While in grad school in San Francisco in the mid-1990s, I was utterly alone and had nothing to do but to start following pro basketball on TV for the first time. (Later, once back home in Texas, I became specifically a San Antonio Spurs fan---though today I dislike the leftist coach Popovich and wish he would shut up about his political opinions, AND do a better job of both recruiting and coaching. Post his very great luck at getting David Robinson and Tim Duncan, he sucks as a coach.)

As someone most often on her own, I look forward to games that are on during the week! September thru January means football. Then the exciting college March Madness basketball. Then April thru June are the NBA playoffs. (With Covid and the political BLM propaganda painted on the courts, haven't been watching in the past couple of years---but was happy to discover no propaganda this year and am into it---sans any San Antonio inclusion, hate Lakers and Warriors.)

I dislike those who snobbishly and off-handedly mock "sports." As if doing so makes them feel intellectually superior in some way. The two --- thinking and liking sports --- aren't mutually exclusive. I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink, and I don't trust anyone who doesn't follow any sport.

Random Thoughts

(1) RE Abortion: What species other than human murders their own babies?

(2) RE Climate Change: Before the last Ice Age, polar bears were simply "brown bears." When they migrated north, they became "polar bears" and their fur changed color. Once the climate changes again (as it does every 15,000 years or so), these bears will most likely either stay put or migrate back south; in either case, their fur will change again to brown. (I had to look these facts up after watching numerous TV ads from environmental groups claiming that polar bears were being decimated because of climate change---an utter refusal to believe actual science.)

(3) RE Gay Rights: The original goal of the gay rights movement in the late '60s/early '70s was to make sexual expression free and safe for everyone in their personal lives. The goal was NOT to empower Big Pharma and Big Medicine to encourage kids to get on hormonal drugs and to have mutilating surgery. The point was to be comfortable in your own skin and to be aware that sexuality was fluid and non-binary. NOT that actual biological genders were non-binary. And certainly not that we all should participate in anyone else's mental illness. Just because you've adopted avatars during your formative years online doesn't mean that the rest of us in the real world should be obliged to engage in your subsequent fantasies. Or that sports teams or corporations should have to have "Pride" events.

(4) Ukraine was for thousands of years part of Russia. Why wouldn't Russia get mad about the US sending in "advisors" and NGOs, and about talks of Ukraine becoming part of NATO? Ukraine is Russia. After the (understandable) Russian invasion of Ukraine: Why is the US now sending the Ukraine billions of dollars in military aid? What is our goal? The US has no business in the Ukraine whatsoever.

(5) Why is the US government under Biden allowing China to buy up thousands of acres of land in the US?

(6) Why has the US government under Biden completely opened our Southern border to anyone who wants to enter? Why is every other country "allowed" to maintain borders, but if the US attempts to do so, it's considered "racist" by its own "Deep State" administrators?

(7) Why, if blacks are only 13% of the US population, do they appear in 75% of all television ads and CNN/MSNBC panels?

(8) Why are drug-addicted and mentally ill people allowed to camp out and shit on the streets of our cities? Cities offer drug treatment and shelters---so why aren't these people being guided into them? Could it be that they don't want to go? Why are we all putting up with this? Get into a drug-program or a city-sponsored home---if not, then get the fuck off our streets! We've done all we can for you. Get your shit together.

(9) Oh yeah, re guns: When our country was founded, US citizens weren't allowed to have guns while the occupying British troops were. Our country's founders vowed that never again would we be subjugated because we didn't have guns and the occupying force did. So, yeah, that's why Republicans are so adamant about this issue to this day (as they should be). The solution: Don't allow criminals and mentally ill trannies and autistic kids and domestic abusers to buy/own guns. (Sandy Hook mom bought her mentally ill autistic son numerous weapons and taught him how to shoot---that's not society's fault, that's the dumb mother's fault.)

Merle Travis: Sixteen Tons

Writer and original singer of the song. About working people and how they're screwed over. None of the cheesy snapping posing and eye-rolling of Ford's Hollywood performance.

The Flamingos: I Only Have Eyes For You (1959)

Sixteen Tons: Tennessee Ernie Ford (1956)

Sandy Nelson: Teen Beat (1959)

100 Hits of the '50s

Since utterly creepy fascist kids today on social media sites are so quick to say "Die, Boomers!",
I must first say that I'm Gen X. (Jesus, how I despise anyone under 40.)

And then that I grew up in the '70s listening to AM radio in my father's car. And then when I got my own car in '81 or so, all it had in it was an AM radio. So I could listen to Oldies or sports or talk. I got hooked on Oldies. Discovered the Beatles there, as well as numerous other earlier songs.

And earlier, when I was little and about to start school the next day, I remember my father (born in 1940) belting out Chuck Berry's "Up in the morning out to school...!" And I remember the day that Elvis died (August 16, 1977): My dad went off to another room to be by himself. He was usually so constantly, overtly angry and mean. This was one of the few times that I found him to be sensitive and reclusive.

I received this 4-disc set tonight and have so far only listened to discs 1 and 4. '50s pop music is so exuberant and exciting: "I feel young and defiant and like the whole world is before me!" Compare to today's druggy, lethargic, sheep-like music. Rap and hip-hop started out exciting and interesting but quickly devolved into today's generic idiocy. I've been listening to the same auto-tuned singers and watching the same group-dancing for over 20 years now. I'm bored to fucking death with all of it.

George Harrison: Devil's Radio (Live)

Just watched the 2-part 6-hr George Harrison "Living in the Material World" doc (2011, directed by Scorsese) over the weekend.

 
To me, as a Beatles fan since 1980, George has never been very interesting, and this film kind of affirmed my previous beliefs. He had his heyday of creativity from around '68 thru '70---and that was about it.

 

Yeah-yeah-yeah, his much-touted-by-the-rock-press "spirituality"----but he didn't live it. His own wife said, in a VERY nice and kind way, that he often fooled around on her. 

 

(Speaking of GOSSIP, the theme of "Devil's Radio": An anecdotal story: In the early '90s, my two best friends in Austin had a visit from a Swedish girl whom they'd met during a trip to Europe a few years earlier. She was now a stewardess---very, very pretty [yes, just like Brigitte Bardot and Patti Boyd] and with a very calm and attractive demeanor. And she said that she had been on a flight with both George Harrison and Eric Clapton and that they had invited her over to one of their homes (can't remember whose)! She went... and since I was just a guest during the telling of this story, I was too polite to ask her if she had slept with either of them! But... p.s. We were all in our early '20s and didn't care anything about George Harrison or Eric Clapton, so she wasn't trying to impress us... Given her very-good-looks and her very-good-personality, I believe her.)

 

And his own friends/colleagues commented often throughout the doc that he was an angry person.

 

Guess what: If you're a truly spiritual person, then you're centered and calm and non-angry and you don't fool around on your wife. I have actually known a few honestly nice people like this. But if you're just a regular guy, then stop pretending to be otherwise---but I guess that was George's schtick and he was schticking to it!

Watching the doc, though, did remind me of how great the 1970 "All Things Must Pass" album is---it's truly great! "Beware of Darkness," et al. And then I went and listened to latter-day George---1987's "Devil's Radio" is probably the last good/interesting thing he ever did (Eric Clapton on guitar).

NOTE: When I first heard this song on the radio in the '80s, there wasn't any "online" or a place you could go to read the lyrics. I thought he was singing "God's in" or "Godsend"---I had no idea whatsoever what this song was about, but I liked the groove/energy then and like it even more now that I've read the lyrics. (And yeah, I think he was sleeping with the blonde back-up singer.)

Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip

I heard it in the night
Words that thoughtless speak
Like vultures swooping down below
On the devil's radio

I hear it through the day
Airwaves gettin' filled
With gossip broadcast to and fro
On the devil's radio

Oh yeah, gossip
Gossip, oh yeah

He's in the clubs and bars
And never turns it down
Talking about what he don't know
On the devil's radio

He's in your TV set
Won't give it a rest
That soul betraying so and so
The devil's radio

Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip
(Oh yeah) gossip, (gossip) oh yeah
(Gossip) oh yeah, (oh yeah) gossip

It's white and black like industrial waste
Pollution of the highest degree
You wonder why I don't hang out much
I wonder how you can't see

He's in the films and songs
And on all your magazines
It's everywhere that you may go
The devil's radio

Oh yeah, gossip
Gossip, oh yeah

Runs thick and fast, no one really sees
Quite what bad it can do
As it shapes you into something cold
Like an Eskimo igloo

It's all across our lives
Like a weed it's spread
'till nothing else has space to grow
The devil's radio

Can creep up in the dark
Make us hide behind shades
And buzzing like a dynamo
The devil's radio

(Gossip) oh yeah, (gossip) oh yeah
(Gossip) gossip, (gossip) gossip
Oh yeah, gossip I heard you on the secret wireless
Gossip, oh yeah You know the devil's radio, child
Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip

Did your parents ever forget to pick you up?

My parents presented themselves as good, responsible people. And I suppose they were, for the most part. However, there were a few times when they utterly dropped the ball.

When I was about 6, in first grade, I was a member of the "Blue Birds," which was a sub-category of the Camp Fire Girls. On school days when we had meetings (about once a month), we would wear our Blue Bird outfits to school and then attend the meeting and then assigned parents would drive us home. One day, my mother got the schedule wrong, and I wore my outfit to school when there wasn't a meeting. I felt stupid during the day for wearing the outfit, but no one in the school bothered to ask me how I was going to get home that day! So, at the end of the day, sans anyone to take me home, I started my long trudge along the highway. (I knew vaguely where my home was...) At some point, a random parent who happened to be driving along said highway spotted a 6-year-old kid walking by herself and picked me up, then drove me home.

When I was in Junior High, my dad was supposed to pick me up one day. He forgot about me. I sat there for over an hour in the school parking lot watching all the buses come and go, until there was no one left but me. I guess he finally showed up, because I don't remember having to walk anywhere.

During a summer in my High School years, my mother had dropped me and my younger brother off at a pool early in the morning, and was supposed to pick us up at an appointed time at the end of her work-day. She was only 1/2-hour or so late...

I have never had kids, and I realize that sometimes people are forgetful, but... I don't think I would ever "forget" about my 6-year-old kid and/or my Junior High kid. Or any kid.

I'm still that 6-year-old marching down the highway, relying on the kindness of strangers.

Tab Hunter: The Way You Look Tonight

Tab sings about himself.

Tab Hunter: Young Love (1956 record version)

#1 in both the US and the UK

Tab Hunter: Young Love (1956)

I saw "Tab Hunter Confidential" at the theater back in 2015, but forgot about it... Just saw it again last night on Turner Classic Movies. Hunter is actually very, very attractive!

And he ultimately grew old very gracefully (well, despite "Polyester" and "Lust in the Dust"---but those were actually funny and helped him out in his middle career). Despite his closet gayness and desperation for public attention, he still kept himself up physically and kept up his relationship with the Catholic church, as well as keeping up his riding. All of which sustained him after the spotlight had passed.

Interesting, also, to see the strong resemblance between his early '60s boyfriend Anthony Perkins and his latter-day long-time lover, producer Allan Glaser---Tab has a type!

I love late '50s and early '60s pop---and here's Tab Hunter's #1 hit (in both US and UK) from 1956: "Young Love." (Very off-key, but he's so cute while singing it!)

Part 2: Azle to Boyd, TX

Where I spent my formative years, baby! No escaping it.
(This is an unusual "drive" video that I just discovered---very interesting to me, because I used to live here! Though far off this main road.)

Abandoned Kmart - Azle, TX

These generic, nose-ring, backward-cap people totally have nothing to do with me. But... They ARE talking about the closing of the K-Mart store in Azle (2003), which was the 2nd job I ever had during my high-school years in the '80s. (First job: At age 16, I worked for 6 months at the local Revco drug-store. The newly opened K-Mart paid about 20 cents more per hour, so I went there.)

I hadn't known that the store had closed.

I used to have a turquoise jacket to wear, and I worked in the Women's Wear department, where I also occasionally got to do the announcements for the famous "Blue-Light Specials." As in (transcribed from memory):

"K-Mart shoppers, look up and around and you'll see that the blue light IS flashing in our Women's department, where we now have our nylon panties on sale for only 50 cents!"

Springtime in Sedona

https://5thdimensiontours.com/index.html

I've been curious about Sedona for decades now---first because of the Joan Crawford/Johnny Guitar connection, but later because I've read that this particular place has a psychic vibration of some sort. I just read in my local Austin paper that there was a Sedona tour available...

Usually, I'm OK with being alone and with staying at home, but the above was one thing that I would really be interested in.

There's a huge dis-connect in being alone: When you're living with another person, as most are, you can usually agree on going somewhere interesting. I'm totally stuck. I would feel very weird about signing up for such a Sedona trip by myself, whereas if I had a friend to go with, I would love to go.

A lesson from my earlier life: When I was young, I did not feel comfortable going to gay bars by myself. But after my break-up from my girlfriend, I forced myself to "be brave" and go to these bars by myself---which led to 5 years of unhappiness. So the online lessons of "you go, girl" were all wrong.

I would love to go to Sedona WITH someone. And I'm sad that I have no one to go anywhere with.

Madonna: Ray Of Light (1998)

Madonna's Last Gasp at Relevance
(I hate thinking in trendy terms like "relevance"; but Madonna was great in the '80s---and helped to define the '80s---and managed to hang on in the '90s, including with her "Ray of Light" album. But this album was a heavy-handed producer's work, not a work of Madonna and her personality. Any singer could have been inserted into either this song or this video.)

Madonna: Material Girl (1985)

Madonna: Like A Virgin (1984)

Despite how hideous Madonna and her plastic surgery are today... she was once great, and a momentary social force.

Madonna: Like A Prayer (1989)

Was reading today online about Sam Smith and his supposedly "satanic" stage show. The problem with Sam Smith is that he's fat and unattractive yet still trying to be provocative with cartoonish "devil" images. He's actually not provocative in any way. He's like Lena Dunham: A schlubby person trying very hard to be sexy (and social media also trying very hard to make the rest of us agree that fat, ugly people are sexy and that men are women... Sorry, but... "Follow the science.")

After reading about the Schlubby Sam Smith, I had to run some errands, and on my way back home the radio played Madonna's "Like a Prayer." Also controversial (back in 1989) for combining religious and sexual images---except that Madonna was attractive in 1989, and her race/religion tweaks were very mild though the media/publicists claimed they were "controversial." This song, over 30 years later---despite its video's mild attempts at controversy via race/religion (at the time, who actually cared about the re-hash, except for the fact that it was good artistically?)---is still very good. And when I cranked it up as high as it could go in my car today and rolled down my windows so everyone around me at stoplights could hear it, I got goose-bumps and felt very happy and mighty, a feeling that lingered for hours later.

p.s. Is the black Christ in the video the ex-husband of "Real Housewives Atlanta"'s Cynthia Bailey? Small world!

George Jones: Walk Through This World With Me (1967)