Month: December 2019

A song that reminds me of myself

It could make you wonder why

KermitTheFrogTo a greater or lesser degree, LOTS of the songs I’ve linked to in the past several weeks remind me of myself. Certainly, the ones that made me happy or sad fall into that category.

Still, Having been Green my whole life, I know the wisdom of the song first sung by the great philosopher Kermit the Frog.

It’s not that easy bein’ green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer bein’ red or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

Having been around flashy people, I know that’s just not me.

Bein’ Green was written by Joe Raposo and was originally performed by Jim Henson as Kermit on both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

It’s not easy bein’ green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re
Not standin’ out like flashy sparkles on the water
Or stars in the sky

It has been covered by a number of performers such as Ray Charles, Van Morrison, and Frank Sinatra.

However

But green is the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain
Or tall like a tree

In particular, being friendly-like is important to me, particularly at church, where I see myself as an ambassador of the membership to guests and relative newcomers.

Bein’ Green was sung by Big Bird (Caroll Spinney) at the two memorial services for Jim Henson in 1990.

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it’ll do fine
It’s beautiful
And I think it’s what I want to be.

That’s the end of the 30-Day Music Prompt thing I’ve been participating in this year.

Tom Waits

Tom Waits, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician, turns 70 today. Chuck Miller wrote about him recently.

Someone posted these Tom Waits lyrics as condolences to a friend’s loss: “As we scramble on our wheels each day with lights and horns blinking blowing. the loss of such a ray of hope does cause us in our tracks to slow. reflect and remember, recall and assemble.” As was noted: “You may not like his voice but the man has a way with words.”

St Nick’s Day miscellaneous array

The Bob Dylan section

st nick's dayMy annual St. Nick’s Day post. Back on November 7, the Hallmark Channel was showing about eight Christmas-themed TV movies. I’m sure this continues to this day and beyond. This does not bother me whatsoever.

A radio station in Chicago started playing holiday music even earlier than that. As long as I don’t have to actually listen to it, I just don’t care.

Thanksgiving is as late as it can be this year. This encourages retailers to offer pre-Black Friday sales as soon as the Halloween pumpkins are put away. Whatever.

It’s my opinion that people fuss WAY too much about Santa’s sleigh jumping into the turkey’s and jack-o-lantern’s lanes. In fact, I saw a cartoon somewhere depicting that. It just does not rise to an impeachable offense.

But MY seasonal music listening starts TODAY and runs to January 6, which is Three King’s Day or Russian Christmas. Here are a bunch of links, mostly from after last year’s St. Nick’s Day.

The melancholy section

I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Bing Crosby
Winter Snow · Booker T. & The MG’s. It features Isaac Hayes on the piano

The Stan Freberg section

The Night Before Christmas (1955)
Green Christmas (1958)

The Bob Dylan section

Must Be Santa
Little Drummer Boy
Twas The Night Before Christmas

The advertising section

The first ad I came across this season was Argos Christmas – The Book of Dreams (Extended Version). Arthur always has adverts, usually from New Zealand, that tend to irritate me less than American commercials; here are all of them.

More Yule

Et in Terra pax – Vivaldi and Handel. The former, which I’ve sung, is particularly moving to me.

STAR IN THE EAST – The Southern Harmony, from ROSE ENSEMBLE. I stole this from fillyjonk, but the other video in the post was no longer working, alas.

Christmas Eve with Cookie Monster

White Christmas – Julian Neel; Mr. Berlin’s song, more or less Drifters-style

Christmas Wrapping – the Waitresses. I own this song on something called vinyl.

Happy St. Nick’s Day!

The unsurprising “War on Thanksgiving” lie

cheap applause material

war on ThanksgivingYou may have seen the New York magazine article. “Trump Says Liberals Want to Change the Name of ‘Thanksgiving'”.

This bothered me more than his usual rubbish. He tells this tale to his supporters in Sunrise, Florida. “As we gather together for Thanksgiving, you know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don’t want to use the term Thanksgiving.”

If this were correct, it would be distressing. But this “war on Thanksgiving” is untrue. “Even the Fox & Friends crew struggled to substantiate the president’s claim… They… entertained the possibility that Trump was referencing a long-debunked rumor that Barack Obama tried to change the holiday’s name to Celebrate Immigrants Day by executive order.

I was pleased to find that Hot Air, a very conservative site, confirms the BS quality of the story. They speculated that perhaps “a guest or a host made an offhand comment on some Fox News show (e.g., “Next thing you know with these liberals, there’ll be a war on Thanksgiving!”).

TV age

The TV was on and Trump “either misheard it or misunderstood it…” Or intentionally misstated it. “Suddenly the imperative to support [him] in all things requires righties to back him up by at least pretending there’s a ‘war on Thanksgiving.'”

Or maybe, “two Fox News executives bet each other a dollar, a la the Dukes in ‘Trading Places,’ over whether one of them could turn an inane idea like the ‘war on Thanksgiving’ into a bona fide moral panic among Fox’s elderly Republican viewership. Starting with the most important elderly Republican of all.”

It’s likely “they were inspired by a random greenie piece at HuffPost about how to limit one’s carbon footprint on the holiday. Eat veggie instead of eating turkey, for instance… Buy locally to minimize emissions generated by transporting food — you know how this song goes.

“The piece doesn’t call for boycotting Thanksgiving, though, or otherwise object to the concept behind the holiday. And it certainly doesn’t call for changing the name. It’s about climate change, not some bizarre conscientious objection to the practice of giving thanks.”

Of course, the new resident of Florida is also claiming that there was an attack on the big December holiday as well. “But now everybody’s using Christmas again. Remember this?” He claims credit for beating back the fictitious “war on Christmas.” He needed another “win” using “some cheap applause material about political correctness gone mad.”

The United States requires a leader who will bring people together, not a person who prevaricates to show up “them” as somehow lesser Americans.

Actor Jeff Bridges turns the Big 7-0

Starman: I do know the rules.

Jeff BridgesSomehow, I have a difficult time thinking of Jeff Bridges turning 70 because of Sea Hunt. Jeff appeared in four episodes, and his eight-years-older brother Beau a couple of times in the series. Sea Hunt starred their late father Lloyd, an early syndicated show in the late 1950s.

You probably know Lloyd Bridges best from the movie Airplane! Actually, Jeff and his brother both made their film debuts, without billing, alongside their mother Dorothy Dean Bridges (née Simpson) in the film The Company She Keeps (1951).

While I’ve seen Jeff in a few films, I’ve NOT seen most of his iconic roles. Need to fix that, surely. I did catch him in The Last Picture Show (1969), The Fisher King (1991), Iron Man (2008), and Crazy Heart (2009).

Starman (1984) which I loved, has one of my favorite pieces of dialogue:
Starman [Jeff Bridges]: Okay?
Jenny Hayden [Karen Allen]: Okay? Are you crazy? You almost got us killed! You said you watched me, you said you knew the rules!
Starman: I do know the rules.
Jenny Hayden: Oh, for your information pal, that was a yellow light back there!
Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.

I have soundtracks of two Bridges films that I did not see, Against All Odds (1984) and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), the latter containing Joe Jackson songs. I also have the Crazy Heart soundtrack, on which Bridges gives credible performances.

Bowling

But I missed TRON (1982), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1988), and Hell or High Water (2016), among others. And I have never seen, all the way through, The Big Lebowski (1998). I’m quite aware of its cultural significance of The Dude.

The Big Lebowski played at the Madison Theatre, three blocks from my house, less than a half-decade ago, but the timing didn’t work out. Now I have seen large chunks of it, and for that matter, TRON, on TV from time to time. If the Madison ever reopens and brings it back, I’ll be in line.

Jeff Bridges turns the Big 7-0 today.

Two Virgins and the Vermont Republic

Virgin Queen

Vermont road mapVA Virginia, a state – a commonwealth – in the southeastern US. Capital: Richmond. Largest city: Virginia Beach.

Since I wrote about Virginia five years ago, I’ll just note that the state was “named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the Virgin Queen. Historians think the English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh suggested the name about 1584.”

VI Virgin Islands, a US territory in the Caribbean. Capital and largest city: Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas.

The US Virgin Islands were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1917. Other islands in the archipelago are controlled by the United Kingdom.

“Christopher Columbus named the islands after Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins (Spanish: Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes), shortened to the Virgins (las Vírgenes). ”

GREEN Mountain State

VT Vermont, a New England state of the US. Capital: Montpelier. Largest city: Burlington

I wrote about our 2015 vacation. The truth is, I’ve been all over Vermont. A wedding on Lake Champlain, several choir performances in my Methodist days, even shopping. Of course, I’m inherently fond of the state, since it involves the color green.

On the Travel Trivia website, it listed 5 Countries That No Longer Exist. One was the Vermont Republic.

“On January 15, 1777, Vermont became the Vermont Republic, with its own Declaration of Independence, elected assembly, money, postal service, military, and diplomatic relations. Vermont was joined in its decade and a half of sovereignty by sixteen New Hampshire towns and a few more from New York.

“They were eventually given back to their states when Vermont joined the union [in 1791 when it became the 14th state], but it was a process by which Congress, New York, and New Hampshire recognized Vermont’s sovereignty. That means Vermont’s time as an independent nation wasn’t a fun historical quirk; it was a tangible expression of North American international freedom.”

For the verdant ABC Wednesday

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