So consider 3 Chords & the Truth as your personal fire extinguisher and burn cream. Extinguish flames before applying to skin. I mean, really. Some days, it's just hard to roll out of bed, because the stupid -- and the ugly and mean -- is so strong in this country. And then there's the virus, so you're smart if you don't venture too far beyond your bed. Y'know? WELL, you just have to keep on keeping on, keeping the ugly reality in mind but also hoping for the best. The Big Show is a big part of my keeping at it . . . despite everything. (Don't make me think I shoulda stayed in bed! I do like to sleep.) That said, the music is typically great, your host is typically somewhat adequate, etc., and so on. And I spend one set of music pretty much showing off. If you're a music geek, you'll appreciate it. If not, you'll probably still appreciate it. That's pretty much it. Brevity is the soul of wit -- or something. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
The Big Show, we are proud to announce, is sanitary. Sanitation has been achieved.
Being sanitary is important these days -- there's the 'rona goin' round. And we have a very sanitary lineup of music on 3 Chords & the Truth this week. Except for that one thing. And maybe that other one. We do the best we can; it's a filthy world out there. Ask the president . . . but don't get too close. He's not sanitary. Is this enough for you, Skipper? Sometimes, it gets hard to think of new ways to describe the Big Show. Still, I must write something -- and this is it. So, is this enough for you, bucko? Well, it better be. After all, the proof is in the listening, not in my blathering. And remember to stay away from Donald Trump. Not sanitary . . . or anything else that fittin'. That is all. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
COVID-19: "Shut up! Now c'mon. Your money or your life!"
(Long pause.) COVID-19:"LOOK, BUD. I SAID YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!"
NEBRASKA . . . AND DIRK CHATELAIN: "I'm thinking it over!"
In the hands of the great Jack Benny, that used to be one of the great comedy skits of all time. In the hands of the University of Nebraska and the Omaha World-Herald, it's just another display of our society's seriously screwed-up priorities in the year of our Lord 2020. In the year 2525? Screw that. Apparently, Zager and Evans were off by 475 years.
Consider the hypothetical: The
president of Rutgers University obstructing Nebraska’s ability to
produce one of its biggest economic commodities. Its chief source of
entertainment and cultural influence.
Sounds
foolish, right? But not fictional. That’s essentially what happened
this week when Big Ten leaders voted to cancel an entire college
football season.
This is not
an argument about immunology or sociology. It’s civics. Who has
authority over the welfare of your flagship university? Is it Ronnie
Green and Ted Carter? Or is it Kevin Warren and Big Ten presidents?
There’s
a reason Nebraska school districts made their own decisions on opening
schools this fall. Because the circumstances in Platte County are
different than those in Lincoln or Omaha.
Maybe
losing football doesn’t qualify as a crisis in Piscataway or College
Park or Bloomington. But it’s DEFCON 1 in Lincoln, Ann Arbor and
Columbus. No wonder Scott Frost and Ryan Day aren’t going down without a
fight.
Had
the Big Ten really valued its members this week, commissioner Warren
would’ve resisted the urge for uniformity and enabled schools freedom
this fall. Freedom to compete — or not. If that meant the Big Ten
refusing to sanction games and calling off conference championships, so
be it.
But if Nebraska wants
to play North Dakota State, if Penn State wants to play Syracuse, if
Ohio State wants to play the Cleveland Freaking Browns, let them. This
is not the time to demand lockstop. This is a time to preserve local
economies — and cross country scholarships. This is a time to foster
creativity and open minds.
Excellent question, if I do say so myself. Well, this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we're escaping somewhere deep into the music. When you feel like you can't take another damn thing, it's good to have a bunch of rockabilly queued up and then go from there.
WHICH IS exactly what we're doing this week on the Big Show. It's the next thing to having a time machine and heading back to a world that was COVID-free, where Trumpism sounded like something having to do with bridge . . . and where you (meaning me) sported fewer pounds and more hair. I guess that sort of sums up this week's show. Alas. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth starts out by cleaning up -- or fervently hoping we'll have the opportunity to pick up, sweep up, mop up and wash up after this fine mess we've made for ourselves in these Benighted States of America.
This comes after your Mighty Favog was forced into a week away from the turntables and the microphone, because the doctor was afraid he'd contracted COVID-19 despite his paranoia about catching the Trump virus. The test was negative, but because the test ain't the greatest, there was a week confined to the bedroom and away from the studio.
Here's hoping to make up for lost time here on the Big Show.
And despite everything . . . we persist.
Our backs are against the wall. Yet, we persist.
We will persist. And we'll persist to a hell of a soundtrack, right here on this here program. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It looks like mandatory face masks are coming to this corner of eastern Nebraska.
At long last, and with the bodies starting to pile up.
The Douglas County Board of Health voted unanimously Monday to authorize the health director, Adi Pour, to require wearing face masks here. As usual, Trumpers and other assorted wingnuts lined up to champion their "freedom" to infect others amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Because 'Murika.
Others expressed concerns that masks prevent their children from developing healthy immune systems. And some said fears about the virus are overblown. “Why are we making a mountain out of a mole hill?” Seth Paulson of Valley said.
Pour pushed back against those who questioned public health data.
She said she felt comfortable about local case trends around the Fourth of July. But week by week since the holiday, cases have risen, and Pour said the time is right for a mandate.
Douglas County last week saw its highest three-day run of new cases — 476 — since the end of May. Pour noted that the county recorded a total of 940 new cases of COVID-19 during the week that ended Saturday, a 50% increase from the week before and the highest weekly total since May 30.
In addition, the positivity rate for tests increased to 9.6% last week from 7% the week prior.
“This is not an easy decision,” she said. “If the data had been different the last two weeks, I probably would have said it’s not necessary. But the data tells a different story.”
AFTER THEOmaha World-Heraldstory posted online, former columnist Matthew Hansen highlighted anti-masker Paulson's objection on Twitter and wondered how many bodies would make a mountain. Hansen didn't do the math.
I did. We now have about 150,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, and experts say that number surely is an undercount.
Now, let's assume the average depth of these bodies is 1.5 feet -- fat, skinny, adult, child . . . roughly average it out.
Now stack the bodies one atop the other like a giant pillar of corpses.
Your stack of American corpses would be 225,000 feet high.
Now divide that by 5,280, the number of feet in a mile. That makes the stack of American COVID corpses 42.6 miles high -- 42.6136363 miles, to be exact. I think that qualifies as mountain high. Mount Everest, after all, is just under 5.5 miles high at 29,020 feet. No, Seth. You have it backward. You're making a mole hill out of 7.7532736 Mount Everests.
Now shut the hell up. https://twitter.com/redcloud_scribe/status/1287894430905782274?s=20
“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you."
-- Flannery O'Connor
That goes double in these times of fascists, cranks, the plague and a radically deviant conception of "freedom" and "liberty."
If 3 Chords & the Truthhas to turn into some sort of Resistance podcast, so be it. This thing -- meaning America -- has gotten out of hand, and we'll be lucky to live through it.
We'll have to hope and pray that we get lucky. While we're waiting to see, the Big Show will have some great music to salve your soul just a bit.
Push back like hell, my friends.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Please do not adjust your set. 2020 is experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.
(Cue the peppy, yet soothing instrumental music to accompany the "technical difficulties" slide on your screen.) Please stand by -- perhaps that ought to be the new motto of the United States as the country staggers between a pandemic, economic collapse, civil unrest and a president who manages to be deeply evil and barking mad, too. God knows "E Pluribus Unum" just isn't cutting it anymore. If you have any answers beyond "Just hold on, and do the best you can," the Big Show would like to hear them. Address your reply to 3 Chords & the Truth, Apocalypse Bunker, Omaha, by God, Nebraska, Oh-What-the-Hell-Is-the-Point-Anymore?
AT A TIME when the president sets federal agents and troops upon peaceful protesters just so he can walk unbothered by the hoi polloi to a boarded-up church to stage a phony photo op with a Bible he doesn't read, just holding on and doing the best we can seems to be about all we can do right now. Just hold on. We'll do the best we can to play some good music to distract you from your aching fingers. That's about all I can tell you right now. God help us.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
More than 90,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus. For more than three months, the president of the United States did nothing, despite repeated warnings.
He repeatedly said the virus would disappear -- like a miracle. He repeatedly said it was a Democrat hoax. He repeatedly has touted quack cures.
Americans can't get tested when they need to. Doctors, nurses, first responders and "essential workers" can't get proper protective equipment. The elderly are dying in nursing homes -- alone.
The gravely ill are dying in hospitals, about one every minute. Alone.
America's governors and mayors are trying to manage the gravest threat this country has faced since World War II -- alone, with scant aid from the federal government.
ALL ACROSS our land, high-school and college seniors are graduating -- online. And their future? Up in the air, where the virus spreads. And spreads.
And spreads.
The president -- many governors, too -- pushes to "reopen the economy." We have no tools, no procedures to intelligently and safely do it. Yet we plow ahead into the unknown, hoping magical thinking will conquer biology.
Into the darkness of the pandemic steps a learned man, a United States senator from Nebraska. He beams into little Fremont from the big Internet to shine a digital light -- to offer wise words and sound guidance from afar to the new graduates of his alma mater.
And, perhaps, shaving and lipstick become superfluous?
No matter what, 3 Chords & the Truth is your dedicated follower of fashion . . . and breakout music on the hot spot of your Internet dial. And while you'd be smart -- and considerate -- to mask your face to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there's no masking the reality that good music makes hard times just a little bit better.
And the forecast for the next 90 minutes of the Big Showis a marked improvement in conditions wherever you are.
Now grab a drink, crank up the high-fidelity apparatus, and settle in for the musical journey. It'll be an adventure -- we guarantee it.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
You remember the old Merle Haggard song, "If We Make It Through December"?
Somehow, it has become not insane to wonder if we'll make it to November. That ain't good.
That can send a body into a serious funk. That can seriously harsh one's mellow. That ain't good.
Seriously, what the hell are we to do? Shine a light into the virus-loaded darkness, I guess. I mean, that's what we're trying to do here on 3 Chords & the Truth -- shine a tuneful light into this darkest night.
So, in that . . . light . . . this is gonna be one hell of a show. A Big Show. The price of admission? Wash your hands.
And keep your distance from your neighbor.
And wear a mask when you're out in public -- which you ought to be as little as possible. There's a virus goin' on.
F*** the darkness. Let's shine some musical light. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It's a fine mess we find ourselves in, this coronavirus thing, and the folks one usually looks to when extrication is called for . . . well. they're pretty much useless.
If not outright existentially threatening. So. Well. Um . . . what are we supposed to do, then?
Well, there has to be a better answer than one I've taken to in recent months -- sitting on the front stoop with a drink and a Lieutenant Dan cigar, muttering the F-word a lot. Let's brainstorm this, shall we?
FIRST, keep calm and carry on intelligently. Do what your doctor would tell you to do. I'm reasonably sure that doesn't involve a Lieutenant Dan cigar. Hey . . . do as I say, etcetera and so on. Second . . . chill. 3 Chords & the Truthcan help you with that second thing, and we'll do it by the numbers -- 33⅓, 45 and 78. And at whatever speed a compact disc spins. If music can soothe the savage breast . . . beast . . . both? . . . whatever, music can get us through this epidemiological cluster-you-know-what. Music can mellow us out and calm us the you-know-what down. Lucky for you, the Big Show is just a click (two at the most) away. So, let us all center ourselves for the long slog -- by the numbers.
These are the times that try men's immune systems.
And their faith in mankind . . . political leaders . . . the "American way of life" (snort) . . . human intelligence, God and the universe. Americans, most of us, are not in a good place right now. We're cooped up, the president's brain obviously is f***ed up, people are all head-up, and right-wing politicians and pundits look at the mounting coronavirus death toll, then agitate for the economy to "open up."
It's late 1918 and the Spanish flu all over again. That didn't end well. ON TOP of it all, John Prine died on April 7. Of the coronavirus. It's all enough to make you give up hope. That's exactly why you can't. And that's more or less what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about -- that, paying tribute to the great John Prine, a Woodstock jam and other good stuff. To be frank (because I'm sick of people calling me Shirley), I'm kind of at a loss for what else to say about this go 'round of the Big Show. So I won't. Just listen; you'll figure it out. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
So . . . I just got back from the neighborhood (loosely speaking) Hy-Vee, where I waited for about an hour to pick up groceries. You think I went inside -- on a Saturday?
From how full the parking lot was, and how few people were wearing the now-recommended masks, it's clear a lot of folks haven't gotten the coronavirus memo. Nope, staying in the car, where I know all the germs. Still, it was out of the house for a bit. Speaking to someone not my wife, who is an excellent, witty conversationalist, I hasten to add. Such is life today in COVID-19 Nation, where disease is rampant and we're all on our own.
THAT'S THE mindset behind today's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. If I'm stir crazy and living in a stay-at-home fog, I'll bet your are, too. At least you better be -- for your own health. We're going to try to bring a little musical sunshine into your cloistered existence this week and every week for the duration. I mean, we do that every time on the Big Show, but in a world with an increasing viral load, it's time to double down. Or something. Don't miss one of the program's patented boogie sets, by the way. You've got to get your butt off the couch and move a little, you know? And that's about it. Just listen, OK? You'll be glad you did. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Just saw this on Facebook. This hospital is in Hamburg, Iowa, just down I-29 from Omaha. This is what we've come to in a country that, day by day, is looking more and more like some sort of Third World failed state. In no way do I think this is the biblical End of Days, but one has to wonder whether this might be the beginning of the end for the United States, which no longer can take care of its own -- even those who take care of us when we're desperately ill.
There will be a reckoning when this is over. If there isn't, that would be worse, I fear.
If you can help out the doctors and nurses of Hamburg, which has had much to suffer in the last year, please do.
A friend today summed up these officially interesting times perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.
"This is the Lentiest Lent I ever Lented," she wrote. Yeah, that about covers it. Almost to the point where I have nothing else to add.
It would seem that we are flailing amid a world of hurt, a world of suffering and a world of fear. That's before we get to the religious obligations of prayer, self-denial and penance. This is one hell of a Lenty Lent, all right. We even had to give up church for Lent. America's president and government would have given up common sense and competence for the penitential season, except for one niggling detail. You cannot surrender what you do not possess. AND HERE we are, with too many people unnecessarily giving up good health for Lent. People giving up a sense of security for Lent. People by the thousands giving up their very lives for Lent -- giving them to a virus that U.S. officialdom never took seriously until it was damned near too late. Whether some leaders ever take the coronavirus seriously enough to do any damned good remains to be seen. Let's just say I'm not real optimistic as I sit in the 3 Chords & the Truthapocalypse bunker here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. That's about all the elaboration I can muster. It's hard staying at home. It's hard being isolated from friends . . . and the world. It's hard for me, and I'll bet it's hard for you, too. So . . . we all do what we can to make it through, and to help one another make it through. The Big Show is what I do -- give you some music to listen to and maybe a thing or two to think about. Maybe that's helpful. I pray that it is. Wash your hands, keep your distance, and be careful out there. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
If I see one more social-media post about not listening to the "hysterical" media -- a group I was proud to belong to, and still do in my own way, and to which my wife, over in the dining room busting her ass for the Omaha World-Herald, still belongs -- I am going to go all Ray Nagin on WWL radio after Katrina. If not for "the hysterical media," you wouldn't know what the fuck is coming at you like a freight train. You wouldn't know squat about "wash your hands" and how COVID-19 is spread. You wouldn't know that your health-care system is at risk of collapse if you don't stay the hell home and not cause yourself (or your loved ones, friends and random strangers) to be infected.
If not for "the hysterical media," no one would be sewing face masks for hospitals or trying to help out laid-off workers -- because they'd have no damned idea if they weren't hard hit themselves.
IF NOT for "the hysterical media," you'd know jack shit about jack squat. (Which still, unfortunately, is too often the case in this country, despite the heroic efforts of "the hysterical media.")
Untold members of "the hysterical media" have given their lives to let unreflective and ungrateful people know the things they'd rather not know but damned well need to. On my darkest days, I don't know why "the hysterical media" bother.
Right now, there are hard-working folks in "the hysterical media" who have been infected by COVID-19 in the course of trying tell you about the threat of COVID-19 and how your fellow Americans are suffering under the plague of COVID-19.
Not that people fucking care. At least, won't care about until they're lying on a gurney in the hall of an overwhelmed hospital, gasping for breath, waiting for death because there's no respirator available.
Your governors have been screaming bloody murder about that shortage. You'd know that if you actually had been listening to "the hysterical media."
Now, please don't get all hysterical when you're blindsided by what you refused to believe was coming. It's a bad look, don't you know?
And please don't say the media didn't try to tell you. They did, and you called them all "hysterical."