Friday, August 26, 2005

in hot water

I read a couple of stories the same day last week and I think I finally understand. Since I understand, I think I should let you know what it is I understand.

The first story was about Floridians who say they have had enough of destructive tropical storms and hurricanes and they are selling their property on the beach and moving away. My first thought was, are these people crazy? My second thought was that they aren’t making Floridians like they used to. Maybe it’s because the government is run by one of the bungling Bush brothers. I went to Florida several times in the pre-Bush era and I left with the impression that the place was a pretty good place to be. I remember I looked at the employment ads in the local newspaper the day before we left, once, thinking if a brother could find work this would be a good place to stay. I don’t remember there being many good jobs, however, and I would imagine after Bush’s “improvements” in the economy, it is probably worse today.

Tossing the employment issue aside, however, I would think that the climatic advantages of being in Florida would offset the occasional storm. Although I can understand having your house blown away twice in nine months would make one hesitant to stay. Surely, however, this is a fluke and the frequency of the recent storms would be a harbinger of a long period of good weather to come. Okay, you statisticians out there, I know that doesn’t mean squat, but common sense would seem to indicate that the worst might be over.

Unfortunately, the second story I read made me believe these Floridians might know what they are doing. The second story was about global warming, something I have always opposed, but an issue that is hard to get really excited about when the scientists talk about the temperature going up a couple of degrees every fifty years or so because of it. The story talked specifically about the waters of the Caribbean and noted they are getting warmer.

When it is 80 degrees here one day and 82 the next, I can’t tell the difference, but apparently, when the water in the Caribbean warms up two degrees, it can mean the difference between a storm that blows a couple of shingles off your roof and one that blows away your house. It is recognized that warm ocean water provides the power to tropical storms and hurricanes. If you watch The Weather Channel much, you have probably heard them talk about storms gathering power when they are out over the warm ocean waters and then losing power when they are over land.

The point made in the story I read is that the recent spate of powerful hurricanes is not just a fluke and that as the waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean warm there will be more and stronger hurricanes. The data would indicate that over and above the destruction that would occur in the United States, the less prepared islands and nations in the Caribbean should expect more massive storms and catastrophic loss of life.

This morning a killer named Katrina is on the loose. As she moves across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico she is supposed to pick up strength and, who knows, she may kill again. I wonder how much we aided and abetted her years ago with a spray can in our hand. I wonder how much we are to blame because of not conserving our resources and not finding environmentally cleaner ways to create electricity or power cars. I guess when Florida is an inhabitable wasteland we’ll look back and wonder how it happened. Someone should have warned us this about this.

Surely it can’t be our fault.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

you never even call me by my name

I don’t go to cowboy bars much, but there seems to be a common thread that runs through my experiences at cowboy bars.

Many of you are probably asking, “Jimbo, is it that you always get into a bar brawl and some redneck breaks a beer bottle over your head?”

No, that’s not it.

Some others are asking, “Is it that you wake up the next morning in bed with your arm around a woman named Lauraleen who is so unattractive that you consider chewing off your arm and leaving—like a coyote entrapped in a barbed wire fence—rather than wake her up?”

No, not that either.

A few are asking, “Is it that you, after a few drinks, begin to weep into your beer and start singing a song in lamentation of a love that done gone bad?”

No, but you’re getting warm. It has to do with a song.

It seems that every time I go to a cowboy bar I hear the same song. Whether someone plays it on the jukebox or the band ends their evening performance with it, and the crowd all stands and sings along with them, or whether someone sings it on karaoke night, it’s always a crowd favorite. By the way, if presented with the option of attending karaoke night at a cowboy bar or staying home alone and being bored, there is only one logical choice: you’ll always be able to find something on television to entertain you.

The song I’m talking about is You Never Even Call Me By My Name, performed by David Allen Coe. If you are an aficionado of the song, you probably remember the lines:

Steve Goodman wrote that song
And he said it was the perfect country-western song

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about John Prine’s latest CD and I mentioned Steve Goodman in my critique. I’ve always thought that You Never Even Call Me By My Name was an apropos song by which to remember Steve Goodman. He wrote several great songs, but they were all recorded by someone else, Banana Republics was recorded by Jimmy Buffet; City of New Orleans was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, et. al., and, of course, David Allen Coe recorded the song that got this rambling all started.

I’ve seen Steve Goodman perform this song live several times. Once it was before 20,000 people in Kemper Arena in Kansas City. That night, Steve borrowed a cowboy hat from some guy in the crowd and wore it while he sang. The song was originally written as satire—that there are certain common elements to country songs—and this one song encompassed many of them. Say what you want about hillbillies, they understood the joke and had no problem laughing along.

As a brief aside, you may recall that I told you a couple weeks ago that on Steve Goodman’s live album he said that he and John Prine wrote City of New Orleans, together. In my research this morning I found that Steve Goodman also gave credit to John Prine for co-writing You Never Even Call Me By My Name, but that John Prine “would not admit it.”

It’s early morning here in the great plains and we have a decision to make: whether to put John Prine’s Fair and Square or Steve Goodman’s live CD into the computer and listen. These are the kinds of tough decisions we have disciplined ourselves to make and I’m sure we’ll make the right one.

We usually do, here in Jimbo’s world.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

cooking with pam

Last night we watched some of the celebrity roast of Pamela Anderson. Because it was on Comedy Central we figured it would be funny and we could enjoy a little light-hearted humor. Unfortunately, I didn’t watch Baywatch—I must have been doing something the night it was on—so I don’t have a lot of familiarity with Ms. Anderson’s body of work. Many of the roasters made extensive references to a video the Ms. Anderson made with her boyfriend, a musician named Tommy Lee. Unfortunately, I missed seeing that video, also. I hoped to learn a little about Ms. Anderson, but most of the roasters used a plethora of language that the network felt necessary to censor, so their stories were difficult to follow.

As for Ms. Anderson, she is obviously a nice looking woman with voluminous tetons and a discernible degree of pride in them. It is as if she was saying, “Look at these!”

Now, Mr. Lee, who appears to be a man of average stature, was praised by many of the roasters as being a man of considerable size. They say that television makes one look ten pounds heavier, but obviously Mr. Lee is an exception to that rule.

Also prominent in the roast was Courtney Love. By some of the comments made, it is apparent that Ms. Love possibly once had a substance abuse problem, although she denied that it was still an active problem with her. I am concerned, by her detached mindset, that Ms. Love might not yet have shaken her demons.

Jimmy Kimmel seemed to be the host of the event as he came back onstage a number of times. I have to assume that he and Adam Corolla are a gay couple, not, of course, that there is anything wrong with that. I know I have seen them together on television, but until last night I was not aware of their close relationship. Kimmel described how Corolla had performed a graphic and “unnatural” sex act with him. I thought that was somewhat out of place on a television program.

Overall I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed with Ms. Anderson’s celebrity roast. Perhaps it would have been funnier if it would have been on HBO so the language would not have had to be censored. Possibly it would have been better if the roasters would have watched their language a little more so less would have been cut out, and it would have made more sense.

Of course, had I been more familiar with Ms. Anderson’s work, I might have thought this thing was funny as hell. As it was, I was kind of on the outside looking in and wondering whether I should have been looking.

At least, that is our perspective in Jimbo’s world.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

children of a much lesser god

A couple of blocks away from chez Jimbo’s girlfriend there is a vacant lot that has been taken over by Christians. Actually some local church has replicated the Jerusalem marketplace of the era of Christ. The Christians wave at you as you drive by. Really, they are doing no harm. More power to them, if that’s what they are happy doing, and I can’t complain. My occasional desire to go in there and throw out the moneychangers is only for the humorous value and only in my own mind. I know all of you readers out there who are biblical scholars are coming out of their chairs right now. Before you remind me that when Christ threw out the moneychangers it was because the temple was being used for commercial purposes and didn’t happen in the marketplace, per se, please be assured I am aware of that. Like I said, my thought was for humorous value; in my own mind.

Unfortunately, not far away there are some Christians who need to have their asses kicked. I read, with some distress on Friday, that some Baptists from Topeka, Kansas, protested at the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. They said negative things about the soldier, carried signs and just desecrated decency in general.

Now, there are a number of us that are not fans of the war in Iraq, but one of the reasons for our concern is that American lives are being put at risk. I, for one, have nothing but respect for the American soldiers fighting over there. I hope they all come back safe, and we should honor the memory of those who don’t.

In my further reading I found that the aforementioned Baptists also protest gay weddings and gay churches. They protested at the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was murdered in Wyoming. “When the going gets weird,” said Hunter Thompson, “The weird turn pro.” It seems to me that when you get a bunch of monotheists together bad things happen. They start wars; they fly airplanes into buildings and they dishonor the memory of honorable Americans.

And, of course, this group of Baptists just has to be from Kansas, helping to perpetrate the image of non-sophistication that we seem not to be able to shake.

One of the protesters said the young soldier was in hell right now. If there is a hell—and I hope there is—the protesters have bought and paid for their ticket there, and I don’t think they will see the soldier when they arrive.

I used to go to church with a lady who, when she heard of someone doing wrong to another person, would say that it “wasn’t a Christian thing to do.” Although she too was a Baptist, I don’t think I would be stepping too far out onto a limb by assuming she would have the same comment about these Baptists.

Myself, I would probably go just a little further. I’d say it was a rat-bastard thing to do.

But that’s just the way we feel, here in Jimbo’s world.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

fair and square at last

Last Sunday, Jimbo’s sister showed him an article in a magazine about a new CD by John Prine—his first one in nine years. I came home and went to the OhBoy records website and bought it right away. It came in the mail yesterday and I am listening to it right now and I like what I hear. The CD is entitled Fair & Square.

I started listening to Prine in my late teens or early twenties and I became a fan right away. It was difficult for me to decide who was my favorite folk-rock singer, Prine or Steve Goodman. They helped to make my conflict less of a problem in that they wrote music together, sang together and performed in concert together. I understand they were also close friends. I’ve seen them perform together or separately more than a dozen times.

I associate Prine with my salad days, and I am still a fan, even as I am finishing up the main course of my life and looking forward to dessert.

Goodman, of course, was the one with the most commercial success artistically, probably because he wrote one of the greatest and most recorded songs of all time, City of New Orleans, but Prine started his own record company, OhBoy Records, and has enjoyed considerable commercial success, himself. As a brief aside, on Steve Goodman’s live album, he says that he and Prine co-wrote City of New Orleans. Prine accepted the posthumous Grammy for the song a number of years ago. Goodman, of course, died at a very young age.

If you are familiar with John Prine, you probably remember songs like The Great Compromise in which he was critical of the handling of the Vietnam War. On Fair & Square he comments negatively on the war policy of the one we call Dubya. On the song Some Humans Ain’t Human he says:

Have you ever noticed
When you’re feeling really good
There’s always a pigeon
That’ll come shit on your hood
Or you’re feeling your freedom
And the world’s off your back
Some cowboy from Texas
Starts his own war in Iraq

Prine’s songs are stories with music playing along. You could argue he isn’t the greatest singer of all time, but you could also argue he may be the best wordsmith who ever picked up a guitar. On the many nights I saw Prine and Goodman together on the stage of the Uptown theatre, there was no doubt the best was on that stage.

My favorite song on Fair & Square is Morning Train, a song with a blues track and three-part blues harmony (with background singers Pat McLaughlin and Mindy Smith).

Hey, hey, brother Ray
What’d you mean by “what’d I say”

Some of Prine’s latest recordings have had a country-western tone to them, and although there are a couple of songs on Fair & Square to which you could cry in your beer, Prine has come back to his folk roots.

It’s good to hear from him again.

At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.