Texan Love Song?

I'm a huge fan of commercial-free, streamed radio. More specifically, I'm a huge fan of Boot Liquor radio on Soma FM on iTunes. They play incredible alt-country/Americana roots music and ever since I found that station I haven't been able to check out any other radio stations that iTunes has available - that's how good I think Boot Liquor is.

There is, however, a song that plays regularly on Boot Liquor that I find a bit...uh...ironic, shall we say. It's a song by Elton John called Texan Love Song. I would have guessed it was on Captain Fantastic & the Brown Dirt Cowboy - and yes, all because of the word cowboy in the title. I'd be wrong, Texan Love Song is actually from Elton's Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player album, and yes, I still call them albums. Deal with it.

So where does the irony come in? Well, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player was released in 1973, Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy, in 1975. What's my point? Okay, okay already...my point is that Elton hadn't come out then. If he had, one might seriously wonder what kind of cowboy wanted...well, brown dirt in his moniker. I'm just saying.

For the record, I like Elton John. I think he's a phenomenal talent and the songs of his that I like, I like a lot. I've never been a fan of his onstage wear - even when I was a kid and didn't know enough to suspect that something might be up with that, I didn't like it. I thought it was a bit Liberace-esque, but perhaps that was/is the point. I have to say that whenever it was he donned a flippin' Donald Duck costume and went onstage, that was way, way over the line of my tolerance, out or not. Nothing about Donald Duck is rock and roll, it's Disney, nothing about Disney is rock and roll. Therefore, Donald Duck is not rock and roll. Just so you know, I also don't care to see Michael Jackson playing his best tunes in a stadium full of fans and him being dressed as Snow White, and have seven eight year old boy backup dancers dressed as the seven dwarfs...

But I digress. I'm just saying that every time I hear Texan Love Song on Boot Liquor, before or after some seriously kick-ass country stuff, I find it both amusing and ironic. I'm not about to post the lyrics to Texan Love Song in their entirety, but I will cite some lines that I think illustrate both the humor and the irony of this tune, which I like, being tossed into the mix on what has become my favorite radio station.

In the first verse, there's the line:

Well you'd better stay clear I might start acting rough

hmm...I'm guessing that your idea of rough, and an honest-to-God-Texan's are two entirely different things - maybe even three. In the second verse, there's the line that inspired me to write this post:

We're tough and we're Texan with necks good and red

Cracker, PLEASE!! You're Nancies and you're British and your necks, well...never mind. Then in the third verse, there are two lines that really stand out - but only because it's well documented that Sir Elton is out, and again, when this song is thrown in with the likes of Hank Williams, it is somewhat amusing fodder for what I hope is at least a mildly amusing post. The first line in the third verse is as follows:

So it's ki yi yippie yi yi

I beg your pardon? How many brown dirt westerns did you watch to come up with that line? Then there's the line about kids still respecting the President's name - uhm, yeah, not so much these days, but I don't want to get political.

The forth verse ends with Goddamit you're all gonna die - well yes, but so are you, The Brown Dirt Cowboy, anyone and everyone else you can think of. Some day we're all gonna die. Now the fifth verse is the verse that I kind of take offense to each and every line of:

How dare you sit there and drink all our beer

Forgive me Sir Elton, I don't mean to be all inhospitable and all- did you an' the Brown Dirt Cowboy wanna beer? Hell it ain't nothin' for me to holler at the missus and have her brang each of you's a can of Lonestar...beer, however, is not for everyone:

Oh it's made for us workers who sweat spit and swear - ya don't say! Wait, it gets so much better:

the minds of our daughters are poisoned by you/With your communistic politics and them negro blues

Damn near blasphemy if you ask me. And there ain't a damn thing wrong with them negro blues son - you oughta git yourself a good dose of them. Am I supposed to not find it amusing that this stuff is thrown into the mix with some music that for me at least, has some real substance?

Now the first two lines from the final verse will finish us off - so to speak, as it were:

Well I'm gonna quit and take action now/Run all you fairies clean out of this town

Hot damn! I don't know that I'd call this a love song by any stretch of the imagination - I mean it smacks of outright bigotry and narrow-mindedness don't you think? The basic premise of the song is that the singer is pissed off that someone who ain't from these parts is messin' around with a woman he's taken a shine to. Can you imagine? Who are you? "Boys I'm here to tell you that I'm Captain FANtastic, and this here's The Brown Dirt Cowboy - any of you boys wanna mess with me? No? I didn't think so." So we basically have us an ass-whoppin' Texan love song written by two....Non-Texans! Look, I think this is a great tune and I like a fair amount of Sir Elton's music and I recognize the fact that The Brown Dirt Cowboy is an incredible lyricist - truly I do. Whatever their social lives are, it works for them and I'm fine with that. I'm just saying.

Who Writes Fortune Cookie Fortunes?

Seems like a valid question to me.  I'm in between jobs and trying to keep groceries on my table by working in a Thai restaurant.  I'm so not used to handing out fortune cookies with every check - even after a few months of working in this place.  House of MSG.  There's a big barrel of it in the kitchen that the "chef" runs to and scoops from periodically.  I've seen it with my own two eyes.  We're basically told to lie about MSG and say we don't use it.  How fucking stupid do these people think either I, or any of my coworkers could be? Never mind that - I want to know who the fuck writes fortunes for fortune cookie companies.

I want to know because I've seen practically every kind of fortune and if I hear the cliche "add the phrase, "in bed" at the end of your fortune", one more time, I'm going to barf.  It's worse than a college freshman kid who pledges a frat and thinks his altered school fight song is both the wittiest thing he's ever heard and something that no one, repeat, no one outside of his frat has ever heard.  "No, you have GOT to hear this!...so hail to those sons of bitches, hail to those mother-fuckers..."

Shut the fuck up, NOW, and save it for your Natty Lite keg party.  Please, save it for your Natty Lite keg party - because if you don't, I'm going to hope with all my heart that someone beats it out of you.  In my mind, I may even imagine myself beating it out of you - "how funny is it NOW?...NOW what are you hailing, BITCH?" - That's how I feel about the "In Bed" at the end of every fortune read aloud at the table thing.  Shut up - you're not even drunk and it's not even funny.

We had a batch of fortunes that were borderline insulting.  Things like, "this is the worst day of your life" - what is that all about? Then there were the food advertisement ones "order one to go" - shut up!  Same goes for "next time try the shrimp" - how's that going to work in that lame-joke cliche matrix? Like this:

Fortune Cookie:  Next Time Try The Shrimp!  .....IN BED!

                               learn Chinese:  Fish  鱼(y'u)

                               Lucky Numbers 11, 13, 24, 25, 26, 40

Isn't that funny? NO.  Well, actually, that is a little funny.  A video of a monkey peeling a shrimp would be funny, and no one puts the tag cliche after the learn Chinese or lucky numbers part of the fortune cookie.  I want to know who gets paid to write for fortune cookie companies and I want to know what their editors are like.  As a matter of fact, I want to submit a resume to a few fortune cookie companies and I want to talk with the editors of these companies, I want to have lunch with the editor of the biggest fortune cookie company known to mankind - no, I want to have lunch with him or her, then I want to get drunk with him or her.  I'll buy.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to work in a Thai place to keep groceries on my table.  In a near-perfect world, I'd have several different types of fortunes to hand out to the appropriate customers.  I'd have ones by the book, ones for lousy tippers, ones for campers...you get the idea.  Damn could that be fun:

Fortune Cookie:  Never Anger The One Who Brings Your Meal

                               Learn Chinese:  Cheap  粗劣 (fuk-tard)

                               

                               Lucky Numbers - No Luck For You!

Fortune Cookie:  The best tasting food does not come from the kitchen most clean

 Learn Chinese:  bathroom, NOW!  卫生间, 现在!  (hur-eey)

 Lucky(?) Numbers - 1, 2, 2, 2, 2 which is more like one,

                                      but from 2 location

Someone gets paid to write fortunes, that same person is probably their own editor.  I want to know who this person is.

No Thank You, Peanut Butter & Jelly

Peanut Butter and Jelly - an American classic of a sandwich and a favorite of mothers and babysitters, guaranteed to get even the most finicky of children to eat.  Not for me - it's one or the other, but never, I repeat, never, both together.  Go ahead and say I'm un-American, I don't give a shit.  For one thing, I'm well into my 40's - which I'm told are the new 30's, and for another, I have a very good reason why what is arguably this country's favorite sandwich has held no appeal to me since I was 8 years old.

Both of my parents worked when I was growing up and my sisters and I were left to spend the time between the end of our school days and the end of our parent's work days in the company of housewives who made money by babysitting other children in similar situations in their homes.

One such babysitter we had, was a woman named Zola.  There's not much I actually remember about Zola - she had short black hair, was a few pounds overweight and had a husband and two kids of her own, though I couldn't tell you anything about them.  I recall her being fond of country music - which was awful for me at 8 years old as I was a die-hard Beatles fan.  I remember one couple that Zola was friends with and I remember them being horribly overweight.  My sisters and I had never been around people who were overweight and  we simply didn't know what to make of it.  I remember, albeit vaguely now, this couple sitting in Zola's dinning room and talking about how they had come to a decision that they would both "say to hell with it, let's just get fat." - or words to that effect.  I swear, I'm not kidding.  I remember being confused and disgusted and it took a long time for me to realize that people with weight problems don't just decide to "get fat".

What I remember most about being left in Zola's care after school, was Zola herself forever ruining my fondness for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Zola made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like no one I'd ever seen before - and she shouldn't have.  Zola's idea of a PB&J was to put an enormous glob of peanut butter into a big bowl, followed by a glob of jelly.  She would then mix the two together until she had something that looked like apple butter - only it wasn't, not even close.

Go ahead and say that things all end up in the same place when you eat anyway.  I'm here to tell you that even the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are rendered completely unappealing once you've had a PB&J ala Zola.  It is not the same.  Nearly forty years later and I can still taste

that abomination of a sandwich that I used to love.  Ever since then it was one or the other, but never both together.  Oh the scars of my childhood...try making your next PB&J the way Zola did - I guarantee it will change you.