He passed away in in 2003 and left a great body of work behind him.

Caution!: He could be vulgar and direct but he was always honest and had something to say.

Most people only know him from the song “Werewovles In London” which while good is not his best.

In light of some of the recent discussion here I would like to post the lyrics to his great song “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” from the CD “Life’ll Kill Ya” from 2000.

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

 
The sky was on fire
When I walked to the mill
To take up the slack in the line
I thought of my friends
And the troubles they’ve had
To keep me from thinking of mine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

The moon has a face
And it smiles on the lake
And causes the ripples in Time
I’m lucky to be here
With someone I like
Who maketh my spirit to shine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

There were at least 500 comments generally taking one side or the other.

Really?

Have we become so vacuous as a people that we care that much about what two actors are saying about one another?

I love movies and music and art and books but I don’t care about the petty feuds of the participants.

I guess this kind of shallow mindlessness is why “reality” TV is such a big deal now. Who watches this crap? It’s clearly scripted and so phony that it makes professional wrestling look like Shakespeare.

But I digress.

I’m really not a culture snob (ask anyone who knows me) but this obsession with celebrities and their lives is beyond foolish.

I’d be willing to bet that the average person could not tell you who their representatives to congress are but can tell you who Kim Kardashhian or Kobe Bryant are.

Hey! Wake up! Read a book and not one about Cher or Gwen Stefani.

This the book that the movie There Will Be Blood is supposedly based upon.

First, the book has almost no resemblance to the movie at all.

I don’t know why Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t just call it an original screenplay and take full credit for it.

Even the names are mostly changed. Some of the places are similar but the similarities stop there.

The book is a long, long overblown treatise on Socialism, Communism, government corruption and greed based in the early part of the 20Th century.

The point of worker exploitation is made early and often. And then made again and again and again and again……………

This is one of those books that I cannot wait to finish I so bored with it.

Dad in the book, who I suppose is meant to be some kind of villain, is actually a pretty fair minded person and generous to a fault.

His spoiled and narcissistic son is a good kid but blown about by every wind that comes his way.

Other characters are lifeless and not fleshed out.

This is another example of a so called “classic” book that may have been something sensational in 1927 but is a big bore in 2009. Like The Great Gatsby, another horribly boring book.

Unlike other great books from the past there is very little here that is instructive or enlightening about the human experience.

I did not know and was never taught in school that there was an American troop deployment in Northern Russia at the end of WW I. that was interesting and I intend to find out more about that.

The only other thing I am getting out of this book is the almost alien thinking of 80 or 90 years ago and this may only be Mr. Sinclair’s opinions.

Don’t buy this book unless you are an insomniac like me.

This person claimed that southeastern Kentucky was the capital of BBQ.

Preposterous!

I have travelled the US and especially the South and can tell you that the “BBQ” cooked elsewhere we would be ashamed to feed to our dogs.

First, true barbecue is NEVER cooked directly over the flames or heat.

It is smoked for hours with the heat and smoke from and indirect source.

Second, sauce is for possibly dipping and is NEVER, EVER put directly on the meat during cooking or immediately afterwards.

Third, the art is in the DRY rub and maintaining heat.

See this article: Texas Barbecue.
We Texans are nuts about many things but one thing we take dead seriously is barbecue.

It is not the slop in Memphis or the Carolinas.

Georgia? Hah!

The setup below is what I use. I realize it’s a little small but I can usually feed 30 or 40 people.

The question is posed if in today’s media saturated world are we better off than say 50 years ago?

I responded on Mr. Monk’s site but would like to respond here as well with my story.

When I was a boy in the 50′s and 60′s we of course had television but it was in no way the center of our lives. Nor was radio.

What we had were neighbors, friends and relatives.

What we had was a true sense of community.

A typical Summer evening was spent with all of the adults gathered on the front porch and in the yard of my grandparent’s home. Nothing was organized people just showed up.

The adults would talk.  They would talk sometimes about world or national events but mostly the conversations were about local subjects.

The high school football team, crop and livestock prices, local politics, church, people who had died were sick or were born.

The talk was of people and events that they knew and affected the daily life of each one.

Even thought there was a television set in the house it was never turned on during these times. The adults found it noisy and distracting and the children had better things to do.

Important things like catching fireflies, seeing the new calf, playing kick the can or  thousand other things that kids can do when their imaginations are given free reign.

The adults gathered there all raised me and my brothers and my cousins and my friends. I had the accumulated wisdom of not just my parents and grandparents (a time machine back into the 1800′s when they were born) but the extended family and their friends. Mrs. Clinton was certainly right about a village but I think she did not mean what I mean.

This all seemed to have started in the early 60′s when President Kennedy was assasinated and we were glued to the tube for days at a time. Then the media circus of the Beatles. Vietnam was brought into our homes in living color.

However, the whole tenor seemed to change with Watergate. No longer did journalists seek to just get the facts and report the story it became more about the “gotcha” factor.

So is the world better?

No!

Today we hardly know our relatives much less our neighbors. I read an article in the newspaper this morning (there’s a shocker) about a man whose neighbors had lost their home in foreclosure and he never knew until they were packed up and gone. he didn’t really know these people at all but wished he could have at least given them someone to talk to.

Today we live in virtual isolation in these 3 bedroom prisons of our own doing. We sit in our homes and offices quaking in fear from the latest panic foisted on us by the media.

It’s not even the media’s fault. Oh, of course they are to blame for giving in to our worst inclinations (my how the world could use Edward R. Murrow) but we have asked, pleaded for the shallow blather that we get. And I’m not even discussing what passes for entertainment I’m talking about the “news”.

There are those lonely voices crying out such as Wendell Berry and Rod Dreher but their voices are lost in the clamour.

I don’t think we can go back. We can try but we are a nation and world of self imposed agoraphobics.

The loss cannot be measured. When we lost our community we lost part of what being human is. Perhaps we are on the cusp of a new humanity but it looks very much like the world of “THX1138” or “Brave New World” and I don’t really want to be a part of it. I guess it’s good that I’m on the downhill side of my 50′s.

Angry All The Time

Find Bruce Robison’s  heartfelt and truthful version from his 1998 release, Wrapped , he is the writer, of this song.

For comparison check out Tim McGraw’s overblown, over produced lifeless rendition of the same song. Who cares where it is? It’s not hard to find country crap.

Basically, country music today sucks.

And what’s with that stupid hat? Is he bald?

Real cowboys don’t wear ‘em inside the house.