Mr. Garfield's comments made me think back to childhood and I clearly saw myself listening to "Boy named Sue" and laughing my ass off at about age 6. Like Geoff finds Lightnin' Hopkins' "You got to fan it" amusing. Same kind of laughing. I remember developing a hatred for all things country, especially if it was wet-cat Appalachian mountain Carter Family kind of country. Much later in life, I got turned onto the Grateful Dead and their many (GD and Jerry Garcia Band) renditions of fabulous old bluegrass and gospel standards, folksy roots music and beauty all put together with a psychadelic twist.I lean more to Johnny Cash than John Ritter.
Ritter was funny guy, at least in the early days, before he was entombed in "Eight Moronic Rules for Dating My Daughters." He was often genuinely likeable and exhibited a great gift for funny pratfalls on "Three's Company," one of the most successful T'n'A comedy and home lobotomy combos ever.
This morning's news called him "a comic genius." John Ritter??
Letch that I am, I watched for glimpses of Joyce Dewitt. "2.5"
****************************
Now, The Man in Black was the real thing.
I'm just a little Johnny Cash fan --- I don't go out to collect his records, but when one finds its way into my player, I play one side and then the other, and more times than not, if it's one of those albums where it sounds like a train playing along with the guitar in the backround, so there's this choogling sound that runs under all the tracks
and Johnny seems to hardly break a sweat whether he's singing his way through heaven or hellI play it again, all week.
I thought the Johnny Cash Show featuring June Carter Cash was a smarmy bit of Las Vegas showmanship, a tough vehicle for a simple performer. I thought his guest star rolls on "Columbo" were..... unintentional bits of comic genius.
It sounds like we get the best of Cash on record, that he was often a mess in his semi-private life. He left his first wife to hookup with June Carter and there was a Tandem Truckload of whorin', drinkin', and drugs along the way that ended him up in jail for a while.
Hey Porter
Rock Island Line
I Walk the Line
Ring O' Fire
Folsom Prison Blues
and I guess I gotta mention
Boy Named Sue.There's plenty of Cash anthologies out there, you just have to buy one now before they issue one with the Nine Inch Nails cover added on....
... Rank this one "2.2," for that unmistakeable voice, recognizable to 2 or more generations.
I sometimes think that Jerry Garcia and Bono led me to Jesus. Sort of funny if you think about it from some sort of Fundie angle. But music-wise, they turned the words into that which I could hear and feel, songs that became written in my soul. And so I did some delving for a little while, in the Coffeehouse years, listening to old gospel standards done by their original interpreters, most of whom I scorned in the Disco years of my junior high school life.
A new appreciation was born.
Add to that the fact that Doug comes from a long line of family singings where Gospel is the cornerstone, and I found it very interesting to learn more about groups like the Carter Family and Johnny Cash.
I never got full force into Johnny Cash. There's always been a fond appreciation. I actually cried this morning on the way to work when the radio stations were talking about his passing. And it wasn't just because Justin Timberlake gave him mad props at the VMA either. I do believe Mr. Timberlake probably has cried today as well, if the kind and powerful words he spoke at the VMAs about Mr. Cash are true.
Anyway.
On John Ritter -- Jack Tripper was the first "gay" character, at least someone pretending to be gay, that I was aware of in the media or anywhere else for that matter.
How sad is that?
For instance, I was a huge Monty Python fan, but never knew until after his death that Graham Chapman was gay. Who knew. But a man who has to pose as gay to live in a really nice apartment with two pretty women, THAT was funny.
Not so much because I thought gay was funny back then, I thought it was funny that a man who was so openly lecherous (ie: falling off his bike on the boardwalk because he's checking out ass cheeks) would have to pretend to be gay. Har dee har har. The best part of that show was Mr. Roper. He was so stupid. And I loved that.
In looking at his CV on IMDB, it's really sad. He was in so much absolute made for TV dreck and the "Problem Child" movies which give me nightmares worse than anything Freddy or Jason could. The shining gem in the middle of it all was Slingblade, which, if one finds it ironic, is a fabulous gay role for a fabulous actor. It's one of the best jobs the man ever did on film. Instead of that fake gay thing on Three's Company.
I had tried to watch the 8 Simple Rules show. I found it insufferable. I think I'll remember him for Vaughn in Sling Blade. How 'bout you?
Got out of work early today. Seeing as I'm supposed to work a 28 hour week, now that I'm working five days it's far easier to get over 28 hours if you aren't paying attention. I've been getting home at 3 to meet the kids. Usually by 5pm I'm astonished that it isn't 9 pm, and I'm exhausted.
9/13/03 - Spent the day at Honey's flowershop in Boston helping out with their website. Honey's friend Rita designed it. Content-wise it's got a lot of great stuff, organizationally it's easy to get around. It's a good page, but she did it in Frontpage because the webhost recommended it. And she's had nothing but trouble with it. Stupid Frontpage!
She'll apply a theme to the pages, and the theme will fall off a page for no reason, leaving it ... themeless. Links work one day, and the next day they don't work. She's got extra files, files of old stuff she isn't using, crazy amounts of photographs that aren't being used, file names that are all long and crazy. It was complicated. I worked hard to fix the structure and linking, reapply themes and curse the computer because the themes vanished in preview mode.
Dan (Honey's husband) had suggested I take what Rita has done and completely redo it in Dreamweaver, make them customized graphics for their navigation etc... but I refuse to do that as Rita has done a bang-up job. And I know she'll be mad. Don't want to madden a Rita. So I spent the day down there QA'ing the page, fixing links, redoing themes, figuring out Frontpage which I haven't used since oh, 1998 when I bailed for Dreamweaver. And we had it all ready to go, 100% done -- and the FTP information that she'd been given when the account was established was invalid. I called the host. He's a friend of the shop owner. He's on vacation. He'll email me the FTP info possibly Sunday.
So. In short, I may have to swing down and make another visit next Saturday. I don't mind... I loved being there. Without kids, listening to opera, smelling the flowers, listening to Honey and her brother Jimmie interact with customers and then talk in Thai, switching back and forth with no effort at all. I had a smile on my face the whole afternoon. Especially when Honey brought me a huge plate of padthai and the most interesting Thai iced tea drink. When I refused payment for my services, she insisted I take flowers. (If you don't recall my last meeting with Jimmie and Rita, it was at Dan & Honey's wedding.
Jimmy even told me at one point in the day that "it's SO hard being the Queen!" as he swished around the store helping customers. He absolutely revels in his gayness, and it's so fun to be around him. He glows and adores and loves. I had so much fun seeing him in action with people, and flowers).
She gave me an arrangement that has to retail for about 100 dollars. It is HUGE. I had to strap it into the carseat on the way home, with a seatbelt. My kids laughed at me when I picked them up.
Tonight I ran around shopping for the Employee Appreciation day festivities coming up this Friday. I'm in charge of everything, especially the raffles. So I bought stuff for:
- Patriots/Football themed raffle
- Wine Rack and goodies raffle.
- A Blockbuster Movie raffle.
- Some restaurant gift certificates.
I have one more raffle to buy for, and that's a girly frou-frou stuff raffle. Last year the greasiest longhaired Ozzy fan from the plant won that raffle. He gave it to his wife. Instead of scoffing at it, he was really psyched. Everyone made fun of him and he said "When my wife gets this, she'll be all happy and pampered. You KNOW she'll be appreciative, so SHUT UP!"
Heh.
This year, I think the items that I picked out for the raffle gifts are cool. I have a really hard time doing stuff like this because I shop for ME and my interests. I asked dozens of people what they'd want and NO one gave me any feedback. Bastards. If anyone disses these raffles, I'll have to kill them.
When I went to buy the stuff for the Football raffle, I went to Olympia Sporting Goods, and just started picking stuff out that fit the theme. The manager and the kid working there asked me if this was some sort of gift, so I explained the raffle theme. They were psyched and started helping me pick stuff out. They gave me a 15% discount. I got a business card and will give them MAD props the day of the gathering. These people treated me right. Unlike the jerk at Blockbuster who rolled his eyes at me when I asked him for ideas and suggestions. He pointed at the gift card rack and called "Next" to the man in line behind me.
Gah. Jerk.
Anyway -- we rented movies for ourselves tonight but I don't think I'm up for staying awake. I did get to see The Transporter and for a completely mindless fight scene after fight scene no-character development movie, I liked it a lot.
The guy who plays the Transporter, Jason Statham, is awesome. They do cool fight scenes with him wrapping people up in his shirt and fighting in axle grease. He's not quite as good as he was in both Snatch and Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels, but it was him and he's fun to watch.
And the girl who played his cohort, Qi Shu, was in the WORST Jackie Chan movie I've ever seen -- "Gorgeous." Which was hideous. Best scene in the movie Gorgeous is when she comes into the scene in a beautiful dress with wind blowing and she's all glammed up -- and Jackie Chan looks confused. He then turns to the side where a man is running a wind machine. The man says "Oh, I thought she was so beautiful that she needed some wind effect!" Like there'd normally be a guy with a wind machine hanging around some building. It was so bad it was funny.
She's okay in this movie, but when she gets pouty and pleady in the one piece of character development they even attempt, she's awful. I liked the fast driving and car crashing that was going on. Much fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment