It started with the Grinch Who Muted Christmas Music.
It ended with the last straw for me on Facebook after a decade wasting way too much time and productivity there. Here is the one thing you need to know about everybody's favorite addiction: Facebookis the devil. Ask Parliament.
Make that co-devil. The incompetent, greedy conglomerates that ate the music industry are just as evil. I eagerly await the leak of their internal memos and emails.
I don't know exactly why it took me this long -- and why the last straw was a geeky string of muted Facebook videos shot on my iPhone -- to delete my account. But here I am. Last week, Facebook and Sony Music Entertainment decided that my 1936 Zenith, playing Christmas music in a video I posted last year, was a threat to the entire music-copyright regime. Thus, I was notified that, for all my Facebook friends and enemies, the sound of yuletide also would be the sound of silence.
This was my entirely unconvincing appeal of patent insanity . . . or Digital Millennium Copyright Act insanity, to be precise:
It's background music played on a bloody antique radio, for God's sake. This is absurd.
If anyone is using this video to bootleg music, he is a moron. This is just insane. Stop it.
THIS WEEK, Russia's favorite social-media platform, some other bunch of music charlatans muted a nerdy, geekly little iPhone video of a 1949 7-inch single playing on my 1957 Zenith record changer. I thought it was a bit of audio-enthusiast fun with sufficiently not-good-enough-to-pirate audio.
Which no one was making a penny off of.
Corporate America thought it was a mortal threat. You know, like women smoking cigarettes are for the Islamic State.
And last night, after the copyright Nazis yet again muted the audio on a video of another exceedingly old 45 I got at an estate sale, the reason for my disgust crystallized in my mind. Short version: Facebook is the devil. Long version: It seems that Facebook is a corporate entity dedicated to eating the capitalistic and societal seed corn. I think you reach that point on a couple of levels -- you successfully addict people to your product, then spend years abjectly exploiting them while you destroy, bit-by-bit, the product's value and utility. The second level? A good example is the virtual impossibility of posting genial little videos like those of mine that keep getting muted (because ambient-sound music on iPhone videos obviously will destroy all music sales on every level). It illustrates a larger issue about Facebook that doesn't bode well for our country (anyone's country, actually) or our society. Basically, it's a crapload easier to post the worst kind of racist propaganda and hatred, then have it stay on the platform and spread like a metastasizing cancer than it is to post a geeky, innocent video of a radio or a record playing that's more likely just to make people smile and wax nostalgic. Then we have Boris and Natasha. Has it not been extensively documented how simple it was for Russian saboteurs to flood Facebook with abject fakery and disinformation in order to steal an American presidential election and perhaps fatally undermine the world's greatest democracy?
THIS IS what happens during the terminal stages of capitalism and capitalistic societies, when human beings -- citizens of advanced Western nation states -- are nothing but pieces of meat whose utility ends at the point some corporate entity extracts their last dime. Bigotry and hatred, corporate America can monetize via platforms like Facebook in much the same manner Donald Trump turns it into political capital. Stupid little videos of old record players playing old records -- or old radios playing Christmas music -- are not nearly so profitable for the platform or those to whom it sells your personal information. Indeed, some music-industry megalith sees your stupid little video as imperiling the extraction of the last nickel from an industry mortally wounded by those self-same corporations' overarching greed and lack of marketing vision. Not to put too fine a point on it, when you find that you're spending too much time somewhere that expressly makes it easier to do bad than good . . . run. Run far away. That's what I'm doing -- running. Plus, if I'm exposed to much more of the average level of language-arts proficiency on Facebook, I'm gonna regress to communicating via clicks and grunts. I suppose one could write strongly worded letters to our corporate overlords. That, however, would take years and cramp millions of fingers. It also, I betting, would avail us nothing.
Or . . . you starve the bastards. Tragically, the only universal language (and common value) today is money. If they can't sell my eyeballs to advertisers, Facebook is diminished just a little. If Facebook can't sell 500 million eyeballs to marketers, it's screwed.
I mean, how many f***ing selfies can you take and overshare? Am I right? Bye, Facebook. I can feel life becoming simpler (and less overshared) already.
The last of the Thanksgiving turkey has gone into a sandwich. It's cold outside, and we're waiting on the snow. Christmas is around the corner, and I may have had a drink or two.
You would even say I glow . . . it glows. Something glows. Happy ho-ho-ho to you, pally. Where was I? Oh, yeah. The latest edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Well, this is it. The show is back after a Thanksgiving break, and we're trying to get in the holiday spirit -- such as it is these days. The Big Show will do its best, which your Mighty Favog is confident is on display with this present episode. It's festive. Yeah, that's the ticket. Ho, ho, ho. Listen to the show. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Pour me another martini, will ya, Jackson? (Thud.)
Let's make Polaroid art while we can, being that the last of the peel-off film left the factory -- any factory -- more than a year ago. There ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future.
And if there ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future, there won't be any wet emulsions on the peeled-off part of the film to plaster onto copy paper to make a second, much funkier print. And if you can't make any second, much funkier prints. . . . I get that time marches on. I get that progress must progress. But I don't like it.
I DON'T LIKE losing more and more of the tactile in technology and in life. I don't like that there won't be that feel -- and that satisfaction -- of pulling film out of an old Polaroid camera . . . and waiting.
I don't like having one less way to be creative that doesn't involve a computer -- not unless you want it to. I don't like having one less opportunity to figure something out myself in a very analog fashion. I don't like a world where creativity is becoming, where everything is becoming, a Walter Mitty exercise -- the technological version of living in your head instead of in the world. And I want people to still make effing Polaroid pack film (the peel-off kind) and reel-to-reel audio tape and flash bulbs that scare the s*** out of people when they go off and drip coffee pots . . . and typewriters. Fat chance, that. This is a world where the under-30 set no longer knows how to write in (or read) cursive, and most of the world's typing gets done with one's thumbs. WHAT IS IT with that?
Let me ask my friend Harvey.
You have your fake social circle on your smartphone. You have your fake news. I get to have a fake 6-foot bunny rabbit. And the last of the peel-off instant film. Yeah, I know. Mighty big talk for someone who's ranting about all this stuff on his blog. Fortunately, hypocrisy nevergoes out of style.
Remember when "instant" photography meant pulling the picture out of the camera, waiting a minute or two, peeling off the print, then trying to find a garbage can for the gooey negative? Polaroids. Your Polaroid camera produced what we simply called "Polaroids."
We went to a lot of trouble to produce what, truth be told, were really crappy pictures. Exposure was a crapshoot, and even the most exactingly focused shots came out fuzzy.
Young folks with no memory of Polaroids and Instamatics (the take-the film-to-the-drug-store version of fuzzy photography) have no idea how spoiled they have been by their smartphone cameras. The Polaroid Colorpack II of my childhood is long lost. But the Colorpack II and the fancy-schmancy Polaroid 320 Land camera of someone else's long-ago now are part of my present, thanks to estate sales. And the pictures still are "Meh." Fun as hell, but decidedly "Meh."
THERE'S JUST something satisfying about snapping a picture, then physically pulling the undeveloped picture out of the camera. The photos on your phone can seem like an abstraction. Your Polaroid shots are anything but.
They're real. They're physical. The experience is tactile. And what you're gonna come out with is a mystery -- at least for 90 seconds or a couple minutes, depending on the temperature.
What I came out with is a little dark. That's what happens when the bloody flash doesn't work. And by "flash," I mean a flash attachment that takes a flash bulb, which you must replace after every flash picture.
Kids cannot fathom this. But I am here to tell them this, to us old people, was the stuff of science fiction at the time. Before Polaroid and flash bulbs, we had to illuminate our subject with a torch to do our cave paintings.
You try it sometime. But one fun, artsy thing you can do with your wet, gooey Polaroid negative after you've pulled off the print is to carefully place it on a sheet of copy paper -- wet side down -- and roll the hell out of it with a hard rubber roller. What you get is an instant print -- a funky bonus artwork from the throwaway part of your Polaroid snapshot. Scan it, then enlarge and enhance it on your computer, and you just might have created something artistic. Like this. It's digital magic. But first, you have to go old school. Is what grandpa is sayin'.
Fire up the flux capacitor, and call me Marty McFly. We're blowin' this pop stand. To paraphrase a great legal mind who's married to a world-class White House bullshitter, 2018 is a shitshow inside a dumpster fire . . . and I can't see how 2019 is gonna be any better. So here's what we're going to do. We've put in a call to Doc Brown, we're gonna get in this here DeLorean . . . and we're gonna put the pedal to the metal. The Big Showis gonna go back in time.
IT'S WHAT one might call a no-brainer. Even if one has to wear a crew cut (with Butch wax, of course) and Ernie Douglas eyeglasses. If you're under 45, you may have to Google "Ernie Douglas." Do it now. Where 3 Chords & the Truthis going, Google hasn't been invented yet. Neither has the Internet. Hop in. The motor's running, the road is straight, and I'm about to stomp the accelerator. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This week is all about the "& the Truth" part of 3 Chords & the Truth.
As in, truth exists. As in, we know certain basic things and, truth be told, we always have. Unless you were raised by wolves -- and, sadly, "wolves" is a distinct possibility for some -- your mama taught you what's what by the time you were 5 years old. Maybe 8 if you were a slow learner. So, amid the fine music this week, the Big Show also is all about getting back in touch with what your conscience could have told you -- us -- if you -- we -- hadn't been telling it to shut the f*** up all these years. Getting back in touch with what you knew all along.
Getting back in touch with what you already know . . . and then acting on it. Holding your ground.
Fighting the good fight.
For as long as necessary.
Until truth one day comes back in fashion.
THAT'S AN important thing to reacquaint oneself with especially if you reside, as about half of us do, somewhere behind enemy lines. Oh . . . did I mention that this week's show is, as usual, filled with great music, expertly arranged? If I didn't, it is. Naturally. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there.Aloha.
What's great? Everything! Everything is great again in America, and everything is great here at 3 Chords & the Truth! Everything is going so phenomenally -- never has anything been so phenomenal -- that we may even add a fourth chord! America is great again! TheBig Show is great again! If America and the show were any greater, we'd be whistling Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah out our . . . well, we'd be whistling. IS THIS a great country, or what? Oh . . . one more thing. Please don't blow us up. That is all. Because we're just great! It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This is for all you descendants of the hordes. You know who you are.
You're the Heebs. The dagos. The Polacks. The micks. The greasers. The spics. The bohunks. The krauts. The frogs. The chinks. The Japs. The gooks. The camel jockeys. The cheeseheads. The Scandihoovians. The Russkies. The towel heads. The wetbacks. The coonasses.
Me, I'm mostly frog and coonass, with significant DNA from the cheeseheads, krauts and micks. All of my ancestors came to the United States "the right way." When they came over to the land of milk, honey and red-and-black genocide, "the right way" generally was understood to be "getting off the damn boat without tripping on the gangplank and drowning in the drink."
Actually, my French and Cajun ancestors never came to the United States -- they came to the Spanish colony of Louisiana in the 1780s. Les Americains came to them in 1803 . . . in 1810 to those on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River after the rise and fall of the West Florida Republic. My people may have thought of les Americains asles hordes -- I don't know.
That's not important now. What's important is that, at some point, in American history, descendants of previous hordes swarming toward American shores decided that the next wave of immigrants were the real horde, the one that totally was going to fuck up "American culture" for everybody. Right after, of course, they stole every last American job. Recently, Real Americans (TM) have been concerned about the tag-team hordes of Muslim Suicide Bombers and Latin American Rapist Drug Smugglers. (Hey! It must be true! President Trump keeps saying it, and millions of people with bad teeth and worse educations keep repeating it!) The tweeter-in-chief (whose personality and IQ may or may not be why they call it Twit-ter) largely managed to stem the tide of Muslims Who Blow Shit Up, but he's having limited success in stopping the Menace Coming From Mexico. (I mean, you'd think he'd extend professional courtesy toward a horde of rapists, but I guess not. They. Must. Be. Stopped.)
THERE IS SOME overlap between our present horde threats; Trump tells us that "unknown Middle Easterners" are mixed in among the Latin American rapists and drug smugglers, and he's "alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy."
It's the nativist obsession du jour. It's The Caravan, it's coming up through Mexico from the violence and grinding poverty of Central America . . . and it's coming for you. That is why our president says it's a National Emergy.
I am unsure what a National Emergy is, but it must be Serious, because it's Capitalized like Border Patrol and Military. And Southern Border. Now, I have no proof of this, but it may be significant that Ellis Island also is capitalized, and that had something to do with why it was bad over a century ago to let in all those Heebs, dagos, bohunks, krauts, Scandihoovians, Polacks and Russkies. Of whom almost none spoke English, which until recently was our unofficial national language before it was replaced by Trumpian.
I digress.
WHAT WE DO know is that The Caravan is a National Emergy because it is almost entirely a horde, which is coming to invade America and rape your women and force all the signage to be en Español. This is bad, because Real Americans (TM) still have to master the English "lanoguage." According to Trump, The Caravan, in fact, is an attack on the United States. Really.
President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to send as many troops as necessary to the U.S.-Mexican border to block a growing caravan of Central American migrants, calling their trek “an assault on our country.”
In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY aboard Air Force One, the president said there were “people from the Middle East” in their ranks, reiterating a claim he made without evidence in a morning tweet. The president declined to say whether his assertion was based on intelligence agencies or some other source. While Trump has made unsubstantiated charges that Democrats had funded the migrants, he said the television footage that showed them straggling north was rebounding to the political benefit of Republicans in the midterms. The caravan could be seen on a TV, tuned to Fox News, on the wall of his office aboard the presidential aircraft.
“I think this could be a blessing in disguise because it shows how bad our laws are,” he said. “The Democrats are responsible for that.” That was akin to the unexpected political repercussions of the bitter Senate confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice. The controversy helped energize GOP voters in advance of the Nov. 6 elections, he said. How many troops was he prepared to send to the border? “As many as necessary,” he replied.
AND THE REFUGEE I saw on television being pushed down a Mexican road in a wheelchair is the same as a resurrected Santa Anna in a Sherman tank. Desperate mothers with their small children? No different than Pancho Villa, no doubt. Really? Really. Ask American Conservative senior editor and blogger Rod Dreher, who has invoked(for the 975th time, but for the first time concerning this continent . . . I think) the dystopian 1973 French novel, Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints, which depicts desperate hordes from India descending on southern Europe . . . and a continent too culturally and spiritually exhausted to defend its borders -- and Western culture and civilization.
THERE'S THAT word -- horde. Not "caravan." Not "column." Not "migrants." Not "refugees." Horde. That's quite the loaded word. There is no such thing as a good horde. Dreher was alarmed Monday that over the weekend, "the migrant horde" had grown to about 5,000. Later media reports said the caravan now might number 7,000-plus. But, hell. The man was slinging exclamation marks like a methed-up fishmonger at a Washington Post report that the Border patrol was apprehending "a caravan a day" -- 1,500 people -- at the U.S. border with Mexico.
"Fifteen hundred a day!"
Holy fuck! It's the Latino Apocalypse! "Fifteen hundred a day!" They're invaders! Invaders, I say! Actually, Dreher did say.
SO . . . like, what do we do? Can we shoot the "invaders"?
To Dreher's credit, he's not so sure. Unless there are no non-lethal ways to keep poor women and children from "invading" the richest country on earth? So, maybe as a last resort 5-year-old Jesus gets a slug in the head just shy of territorii Americae?
It's just so goddamn complicated!
YEP. You know you really and truly live in a Christian nation when mercy is when you don't shoot Jesus bambino and his mama in the head during their flight from Herod into Egyptto keep them from "invading" the United States as they flee violence and grinding poverty in Central America.
But, you may exclaim, "It's a massive caravan! Five thousand, nay, 7,000 people! What if they were armed guerrillas!?!" (Oh, wait. Dreher already brought up the armed guerrillas. Sorry.)
To which I respond "1907."
Specifically, April 17, 1907.
On that day, 11,747 immigrants were processed through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, on their way to permanent residency in these United States of America. As I said before, in 1907, all that was required for the wretched of the earth of legally immigrate to this country was . . . to get here.
Unless, of course, you were Chinese. In 1907, they were chinks, sometimes Chinamen or slants, and we banned their entry from the 1870s to the 1940s.
Anyway, April 17, 1907, was the high-water mark for immigration through Ellis Island. That year, 1,004,756 souls entered the United States there. Averaged over 365 days, that's a "caravan" -- actually, a flotilla -- of (rounding up) 2,753 "invaders" every single day.
That year, 1,285,349 immigrants entered the country via all ports of entry. The estimated population of the United States in 1907 was 87,008,000.
Here's some more perspective for you: In 2016, 1.18 million people immigrated legally to the United States, which had an estimated population of 323,127,513. OVERRUN? Have we been overwhelmed by "the wretched refuse" of countless teeming shores? Can we not accommodate one more of the "homeless, tempest-tost"?
If the perpetually nativist -- and racist -- Donald Trump and the perpetually alarmed Rod Dreher are going to make a case for extinguishing Lady Liberty's lamp beside the golden door, they're damned well going to have to do it apart from numbers and demographics.
In 1910, the total immigrant population of the United States came to 14.7 percent. Remember, there really wasn't such a thing as illegal immigration then. And in 2016, America's immigrant population -- legal, illegal and temporary residents -- came to . . . wait for it . . . 13.5 percent.
If the combined 33,074,071 souls who live in Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador said "Screw it!" got up and started marching toward the southern border of the United States -- then we might have a problem. On the other hand, Cherry County, Neb., is a fair piece bigger in area than Connecticut (and just a little smaller than Hawaii) but has only 5,818 inhabitants.
That's a middling size in this state. Arthur County, which is almost half the size of Rhode Island, has a population of . . . 457. Although some folks may have died or moved out since last year. THEN AGAIN, there never has been room enough in America for "those people," whomever "those people" happen to be at any given point in our history. I don't know -- maybe there always has been room for the English and the Norwegians, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Whenever I see footage of yet another of Adolf Trump's Nuremberg for Dummies rallies (or, for that matter, when I read yet another of Dreher's Camp of the Saints exercises in hand-wringing over the overwhelming of Western Civilization by the "hordes"), I always think of a story our parrain used to tell us about his school days in early 20th century south Louisiana.
Uncle Joe wasn't my godfather -- that's what "parrain" means in English -- but that's what all us cousins used to call the husband of Mama's second-eldest sister. And I guess the fact that we called him "parrain" would be proof enough for tons of alleged Americans that Frogs and coonasses like us don't belong in this country, despite the fact that we were in Louisiana long before "les Americains."
Parrain was a good bit older than Aunt Rose. In fact, he was of the same generation as my maternal grandparents, who were born in the late 1800s, and that was the first English-speaking generation of the family. Which had been in Louisiana, remember, since the 1780s.
Even though my grandparents and Uncle Joe were English-speakers, they were bilingual, and French was the language of their households. That is totally like the situation of many, many second-generation Mexican-Americans (and Dreamers) today -- the kids translate for the parents. In fact, my grandparents were the translators between their French-speaking parents and their English-speaking children. There's a reason their kids only spoke English, and it goes back to what happened to Parrain . . . and thousands upon thousands of French and Cajun schoolchildren in early 20th-century Louisiana. The short version of the story is that one day the teacher, one of les Americains, heard Uncle Joe and his friends conversing in French, and le professeur beat the shit out of those coonass kids. Those stupid coonasses -- and for certain of les Americains, the slur coonass always was preceded by "stupid" -- needed to become American, and Americans speak English. Only. And by the mid-1960s, the French language had almost died out in Louisiana, except among the old folks. Like my parrain. There's a term for that today -- at least among those who don't shit themselves at the thought of a "horde" of poverty-stricken desperates fleeing toward sanctuary in the richest country ever.
I think the term is "cultural genocide."
IT WAS carried out by a country that never even asked the "stupid coonasses" whether they even wanted to be Americans back in 1803. Les Americains were the purchasers, the "stupid coonasses" were the spoils.
And I had to take French in high school and college, because my mother could only speak a few words. My kraut, cheesehead and mick father, I don't think, had any desire to pick up any of that "coonass" lingo. Because, no doubt, us real Americans -- and our blessed culture -- are better than the other guy.
The Big Show is warm and comfy like glowing vacuum tubes and sweet, sweet music from your hi-fi on a chilly autumn's evening.
I admit that's a nerd's vision of warm and comfortable, but work with me here. What we can say that everybody can get his warm and fuzzies around is that 3 Chords & the Truth will make you feel all good inside as your troubles -- and the nasty, ugly world outside -- just melts away. At least for an hour and 30 minutes.
LONGER if you binge listen to every episode on theBig Showaudio repository. As usual, this week's show is an exemplary one . . . and we're confident you'll enjoy the eclectic heck out of it. And that, friend, is just about all there is to say. Except for this . . . . It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
With a little luck, we won't piss off QAnon this week.
That's something that happened last week. Your Mighty Favog said something unfavorable toward the president, etc., and so forth on the Big Show, and . . . well . . . life has gotten weird in these Disunited States. To the best of my remembering, this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is a relative bastion of sweetness and light -- OK . . . it's merely the normal amount of snarkand silliness -- so we should be spared the Two-Minute Hates and the demands to shut up. Or not. As I said, sh*t's gotten weird across the land. Perhaps this episode of the finest music podcast on the Internets just will offend regular-strength conspiracy theorists, not the extra-strength, supersized ones. Look! Black helicopters!
ANYWAY . . . we're here to talk about the music we're playing this week, right? Well, we have some of this, a fair smattering of that, and you can't overlook the other thing that's on the Big Show this week. It's all very, very good. For one thing, we have both country and a set where we funk our way back to the 1940s. Then there's some stuff right out of left field. Oh, crap. I said "left field." I sense some people getting pissed at the mere mention of Not Right. I swear to God, sh*t's weird these days. So very, very weird. Listen, I'm trying not to get into trouble here. So maybe I should quit while I'm behind and just say something like "Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth. It's good." Yeah, I think I'll just do that. SOOOOOOOO . . . it's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there.Aloha.
As Hurricane Michael hit Panama City, Fla., this afternoon with a massive storm surge and 155 mph sustained winds, the staff of WMBB television were in the studio, on the air and getting the news out.
That is, until the folks at News 13 weren't. The cement building was shaking, viewers could hear the roar of the wind outside the station, the wind gauge blew of the roof . . . and then Michael blew WMBB off the air and left the studios and newsroom dark.
Then this happened on Facebook. Live. Via somebody's cellphone.
My wife's college newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan, used to have a T-shirt with the motto "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down." That's how journalists roll. Even when the bastard is an almost-Category 5 hurricane.
Here's your damn "Enemies of the American People," folks.
And if this can't keep the "fake news media" down, neither will the halfwit tangerine toadstool-in-chief, nor will the other little Hitlers who occupied the Republican Party and populate Donald Trump's Nuremberg for Dummies rallies.
In 1961, I was born into a society and a state run by preening, fascist jackasses who weaponized bigotry and hatred as a means of governance and civic intimidation. Such was the Deep South under Jim Crow.
In middle age, I find myself living in a society and -- now -- an entire country run by preening, fascist jackasses who weaponize bigotry and hatred as a means of governance (such as it is) and civic intimidation. Such is the whole damn country under Trumpism. Forget two steps forward and one step back. Try two steps forward, then 60 years back. This week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth comes at the end of a particularly ugly week in American history -- this by the prevailing standards of a time in American history when every week is an ugly week presided over by a president who is the Pied Piper of Pathology. The Duke of Deviance. The Count of Cruelty. And he has a trail of toilet paper stuck to his goddamn shoe. Or the soiled, tattered souls of Republican senators. One or the other.
THIS UGLY WEEK featured the slut shaming of victims of sexual assault. The ridiculing of a woman who had given credible testimony that a nominee for the Supreme Court had tried to rape her when they were in high school. It also featured a sham FBI investigation of that accusation and others against Brett Kavanaugh. Did we know enough to say for sure what happened? No.Was there enough smoke to logically assume something was fully engulfed in flame? You bet. Did congressional Republicans care? Of course not. Does it look like the United States is coming apart at a level not seen since 1968 -- and perhaps since 1861? Looks like it from here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.
This is the week we wish wasn't, and this is a week when we're -- somehow -- supposed to do another episode of the Big Show. Remember the Big Show? Yeah. It's easy to forget in times like these. THE PROBLEM in doing yet another episode of 3 Chords & the Truthwhen shit gets exponentially weirder with each passing week is the specter of overwhelming cognitive dissonance. You start to feel like you're returning to regularly scheduled programming in Detroit as the Motor City burns around you in the spring of 1967. Or, more in keeping with my personal frame of reference, you're the overnight man at Loose Radio in Baton Rouge, La., playing hippie, trippy rock 'n' roll music in 1971 while the rednecks from the end of Easy Rider keep circling the block, shotgun barrel pointed out the window of the pickup truck.
At you. It occurs to me there's only one thing to do in such a situation . . . in this present situation. What do you do? What you do is give the f***ers the finger and keep playing the tunes. In the ruins.
Amen.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
There is only one demographic that enjoys soda fountains -- where one still can find them -- more than grown-up kids.
That would be kids who still happen to be . . . kids. Fortunately, one of my favorite places in Omaha, the Durham Museum, happens to have one of my favorite things -- a soda fountain. The soda fountain is scarcely changed from the days when it was the soda fountain and "travelers' needs" shop at Union Station, the Durham's previous incarnation.
VERILY, the only thing better than grabbing a hot dog, a sundae or a root beer float at a soda fountain is grabbing a hot dog, a sundae or a root beer float inside an early-1930s Art Deco masterpiece of a building.
That's my opinion, at least. I can't speak to the architectural sensibilities of soda fountain aficionados under age 7.
