The police in Paris are undergoing the usual criminal training. It goes like this: "If they don't go into crime-filled neighborhoods, nobody will riot."
Although there exist neither recordings of his work nor photos of his visage, this haunter of graveyards would turn a town's musical laughingstock into a virtuoso, seemingly overnight.
***
No, it wasn't Old Scratch who taught Robert Johnson how to play, circumstantial evidence aside. He almost always gets the credit, though. Such is the mythos surrounding Robert Johnson.
***
Without this fellow there'd have only been Robert Johnson, harmonica player.
I'll be declaring my victory tonight, and will be the Queen of All Southern Musical Knowledge.
***
Congrats to Mel for correctly guessing Ike Zinneman.
Everytime the young harmonica-playing Johnson tried to sit in on guitar with the likes of Son House, Willie Brown, and Charley Patton, they'd laugh him out of the place, saying he just didn't have it. Said Son House:"We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy hanging around. That was Robert Johnson. He blew a harmonica then, and he was pretty good at that, but he wanted to play a guitar. He'd sit at our feet and play during the breaks and such another racket you'd never heard. It'd make the people mad, you know. They'd come out and say, 'Why don't y'all go in and get that guitar away from that boy! He's running people crazy with it!' I'd come back in, and I'd scold him about it, ' Don't do that Robert. You drive the people nuts. You can't play nothing. Why don't you play that harmonica for'em.' But he didn't want to blow that. Still, he didn't care how I'd get after him about it. He'd do it anyway."
Johnson left Robinsonville, Mississippi, for Hazelhurst, and when he returned, he played for them again:
"When he finished all our mouths were standing open. I said, 'Well, ain't that fast! He's gone now!'"
That's when talk of a pact with the Devil began. In actuality, in between he'd found a very good, if strange, teacher: Ike Zinneman. Zinneman liked to sit in the graveyard and play, and Johnson spent every moment he could studying with him and practicing what he'd learned. Zinneman was never recorded and is a reminder of what Duane Allman said about while he's famous for his guitar playing, there are guys sitting out on their front porches who are better, and will never be known.
Of course, what Robert Johnson added to those hot licks were the lyrics to his songs and the voice he sung them with.
Interesting enough, it was guitarist Tommy Johnson who went around saying he'd sold his soul. If he did, he didn't get much out of the deal -- people only remember Robert for it: "If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and your go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there be sure to get there just a little ' fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself…A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."
I gotta keep movin'
Blues fallin' down like hail
And the days keeps on worryin' me
There's a hellhound on my trail.
Happy Halloween.
***
Previous postings:
Homefires VI
Homefires V
Homefires IV
Homefires III
Homefires II
Homefires
Y'all should try this, it's so good. Our local Publix was out of all meat but turkey, so for the birthday supper we had turkey-in-the-bag.
After you've tasted the turkey, you can sample the backlash going on locally about early Wilma-whining.
My best present? A Duane Allman Anthology CD that my nephew downloaded, and my mother-in-law CD-Stomped with "Happy Birthday" and "Sky Dog Lives On!"
He sure does. We especially remember Duane on this day, the 34th anniversary of his death:
UPDATE
I see Boudicca's already summed up the whine-fest nicely.
The electricity situation is getting much better, and is inspiring lovely prose from local reporters:
Parts of downtown Fort Lauderdale, Weston, and major arteries like PGA Boulevard and Powerline Road now glow with the glorious gift that makes traffic lights flash and gas stations pump.
Amen.
Half of Dade County has power, and a quarter of Broward and Palm Beach Counties do.
Yesterday, Mr. Cracker tried to siphon gas from my car, swallowed some, and vomited in the driveway. I told him it served him right for trying to steal from me. Today's better: he came back this morning with a full tank of gas, and a cup of excellent Dunkin Donuts coffee for me. Then he wished me a happy birthday.
Since I know all of you want to give me something nice for my birthday, click here for my birthday present list. Let me know which gem you picked for me!
Grey Villet
Soothing her kitten, a girl of Hickman Mills, Missouri, sits in the ruins of her home destroyed by a tornado, 1957
Copyprint of gelatin silver print
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress
This reminds me of the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in the Panhandle -- down-to-the-foundation destruction. Here we're inconvenienced, not devastated.
Check out the LOC photo exhibition at the link. It's wonderful.
When you hear in the news that people are complaining about government response and officials in Tallahassee not anticipating the level of demand for essential items, keep in mind this lady, quoted in a late Wednesday night article in the Houston Chronicle:
In the Broward County community of Miramar, Margaret Avila, 52, inched her car forward in a long line for water that curled around City Hall.
"I've tried to get water for the past two days," Avila said. "I have a terrible migraine. I need ice; everything is going bad in the house and I haven't had hot coffee in three days."
She hasn't been able to get water since the day of the storm, and hasn't had hot coffee since the day before the storm. I've criticized FEMA a dozen times on this blog, but this, this is not FEMA's fault.
"If we weren't prepared, and we didn't do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation."
- Jeb Bush
Why is the media hyping people being pissed at the government because they didn't have water or ice one day after the hurricane? It seems my neighbor is not the only one couldn't be bothered to do the bare minimum to help himself.
Geez, I thought we were retards at hurricane preparedness, but at least we bought ice, water, gasoline, and candles when they said the storm was coming.
I can understand running short after a few days, but don't bitch when the storm hits on a Monday and you supposedly have no drinking water on Tuesday. That's just personal stupidity.
This story is going to sell a hell of a lot better outside of South Florida. We were inundated 24/7 with news that a hurricane was coming and to get ready.
UPDATE
Live from our back patio, it's Hurricane Wilma.
This was part one of the storm, when she was arriving, and the wind was from the south. Our documentarial foray was brief, as I quickly lost all interest in being outside filming. Mr. Cracker informs me that my other two death-defying movies were of the floor.
I really am a lucky gal:
95% of Broward still without power
Florida Power & Light reports that as of 9 a.m., 839,200 customers, or 95 percent, are still without power in Broward.
So far, 23,600 customers have had their power restored, FPL reports.
If anyone deserves to have electricity, it's me. If those other people would straighten up and fly right, they could have nice things too.
With the help of Photoshop, USA Today has gotten Condi Rice all slicked up for Halloween.
It's long since the time that print media could pull this kind of nonsense and get away with it. For a newspaper to print a doctored AP photo is just stupid.
Do send USA Today's Graphics and Photos Managing Editor, Richard Curtis a note (rcurtis@usatoday.com); I sure did. I also wrote AP's photo division. I'll be interested in hearing from them.
(Via Michelle Malkin and From the Pen.)
UPDATE
The altered photo's been removed, and has been replaced, strangely enough, with the perfectly fine original. This editor's note's been added:
Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.
Sorry we made Condi look like she was going to eat your soul, folks!
(Update via Michelle Malkin.)
UPDATE II
Callimachus, a newspaper copy editor, has been doing some digging and has more. Using his AP account, he finds that USA Today had 178 Condi Rice photos to choose from that day to accompany their story on her speaking to Congress. They chose one from four days before and a world away, when she was speaking to the Russians. Then they doctored a perfectly clear image and provided a new caption: "Rice aimed to reassure jittery lawmakers over the course of the war in Iraq." Swell.
Editor and Publisher also weighs in, sans either photo.
Rice aimed to reassure jittery lawmakers over the course of the war in Iraq.
UPDATE III
From a letter from Kinsey Wilson, VP & Editor-in-Chief of USA Today:
"In this case, a newly hired
USATODAY.com editor sharpened the photo and then brightened a portion of
Rice's face."
Oh, it was the new guy. The editor with no experience editing.
We have electricity! Woot!
Thanks, Mr. Edison!
We've had a lovely time pioneering, but are very happy to get back to normal. Our dog Shiloh raced around while I made a tour of the house flicking lights. She likes her routine, and has been depressed since the storm hit.
We did have a good time last night. By candlelight, we watched our Roomba vacuum the carpet, then we watched a DVD of the 'Fellowship of the Ring' on my charged-up computer. Ah, good times.
Today I'll tackle the backyard. There's a giant royal poinciana out there in pieces, amongst other landscaping debris. Mr. Cracker has headed off to check on his company, as he can see their systems are all up now.
It's about time, too. Yesterday people had already gotten cranky. As I was getting home from my mother-on-law's yesterday, I heard the neighbor bitching at his wife that the exit lane into Markham Park for free ice and water was five miles long. I walked over and gave her cake that my mother-in-law had just baked. It's not that lady's fault there's a line.
I've not been out on the roads further than a few blocks, but with only (as of last night) 13 working stop signals in Broward County, things were interesting. In a heavily landscaped area such as where we are, the problem is tree barricades across the roads every few yards. In Ft. Lauderdale, though, my husband saw a lot of businesses with no roofs, and lots and lots of missing windows.
We got way more than we bargained for with Wilma, and I think next time people will be more assiduous in their hurricane preparations. They've only told us a million times to have at least 72-hours worth of essential supplies on hand, and to board up our windows. Not a whole lot you can do about something like this, though:
Pompano Beach resident Zilma Barbosa stands in her front yard trying to figure out how to start the clean-up effort at her home. A huge ficus tree was uprooted by the storm, falling on the roof of her home and lifting her and her husband's car 12-15 feet in the air.
This is a Hurricane Wilma early bird special.
Duane in the spotlight.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE
Reader Jordan thinks this photo session might have taken place at Lake Bradford in Tallahassee. This pic that includes the stone picnic table with the dock in the background looks especially interesting to me. Jordan sees other similarities as well. What do y'all T-Town people think?
Jordan writes:Of the two pictures, the one on top (with them in the canoe): the houses in the background/tree line just appear strikingly similar to the South-West side of Lake Bradford.
The one on the bottom (assuming that both pictures were taken at the same location) is really the one that caught most of the staff's eyes. The pine tree on the right, paired with the Oak on the left, kind of gave a frame of reference for us to go out to the facility and look for "that shot." I believe that in the background (on the left) you will see the Dock that used to be here (was taken down 2 years ago), and the building just to the right of the Dock is roughly the same size, and at the same angle as our existing Recreation Hall when looked at from the direction we believe that the shot was taken from. Also, the bushes just to the right of that building are hiding another (way in the background) building which is now our waterfront office. And the picnic tables they are sitting at (while possibly generic) have the same structure, benches, and detail (in the edges of the table) as our tables out here, which have been here for 30-40 years.
Here is a link to our website that has (albeit a little dated) online, panoramic pictures of our facility. The one from the "Rez Beach" will rotate around until you see the dock and the building I am referring to. And some of the others show the tree line and Cypress Trees that are quite similar to the ones in your photos...
We are still looking/debating this issue at work (it's so much fun after all), and will continue to seek similarities. However, most of us are convinced...
We have almost no water pressure, and sometimes all that comes out of the tap is air. Here at the in-laws, there's a swimming pool, so buckets of pool water are enabling us to continue with our attachment to indoor plumbing.
We're not staying here, just glomming off their electricity several hours a day.
I saw a fellow being interviewed on TV. He said "I wasn't expecting it to be this bad. I didn't prepare and now I'm paying the price." We all nodded. This water situation has us all worried. The nice thing is, a cold front came down, so the weather is beautiful. This would be way worse if there was the usual sweltering heat. They're saying the electricity could be out for a month, but I'm sure it'll be fixed before that. We have plenty of gasoline here, but no electricity to run the pumps.
In any case, we'll be partaking of a pioneer lifestyle for a bit.
She's here.
It's amazingly loud and windy. The wind is coming from the south, so we can step out on the back patio and feel absolutely no wind, yet see and hear everything going by. The other side of the eye isn't going to be so agreeable.
It smells really good outside -- like a Christmas tree lot.
Looking at the radar, Wilma is coming straight in on Alligator Alley.
We're in the SW quadrant of the 75/595 intersection.
UPDATE
I'm across the lake at the in-laws, who have electricity. My father-in-law also has a gas-powered chain saw and is the man of the hour. The two trees in our front yard were on our cars and roof. Everybody's trees are on their cars and roofs right now.
I have to go cheer Mr. Cracker's and my father-in-law's tree-removal activities. It's not much of a job, but I have to do it.
UPDATE II
I'm visiting the in-laws again until curfew starts. Still no phone, no electricity, and there's a boil water order on. The trees knocked a couple of holes in our roof, but we were due for a new one anyways. At least it held. We were surprised, as it's a pre-Andrew roof.
I'm trying to catch up on the news now. We were expecting a Cat 1 here in Broward and got a Cat 3? I guess we'll find out if what Mark Twain said was true: "What's the longest winter in the world? You, me, and a ham."
In Louisianan, that means 'eminent domain':
Officials and community advocates are quietly planting the seeds for an enterprising program that could give the government temporary control over thousands of privately owned homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
An increasing number of Louisiana housing authorities believe the proposal, based on an arcane legal concept called "usufruct," could be a key to determining whether New Orleans will again be a seminal American city or whether it will stagnate with a population, like it has now, equal to that of Duluth, Minn., and Fort Smith, Ark.
---
Kim Hunter Reed, director of policy and planning for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, also welcomed the proposal and said it could prove invaluable in addressing the historic shortage of affordable housing in New Orleans — a dilemma that was compounded exponentially by Katrina.
The grab is on.
(Via the Dead Pelican.)
Lots of offended people in the news today.
Local artists sensitive to the suffering of those with coulrophobia are squirting seltzer water on the plans of officials in Sarasota, former home of the Ringling circus, to put up decorated fiberglass clown statues around the city:
''The clown phobia thing is huge, I had no idea. There are people who just plum hate the images of clowns,'' said Virginia Hoffman, a sculptor and chair of Sarasota's Public Art Committee. ``I'm concerned about fallout. What if there are protests by clown haters, or people who want to vandalize clown statues?''
Commenting on the conflict, Pennywise, a homicidal clown living in the storm drains of Sarasota, said he will eat the still-beating heart of every member of the anti-clown faction.
Meanwhile, in New York, FAO Schwartz's use of a pretend adoption center for babydolls has some adoption advocates squalling:
Nancy Ashe, an editor with the informational websites Adoption.com and Adopting.org, shares some of their concerns.
''Adoption is an adult experience, and this is artificially dumbing it down for children,'' she said.
She's got a point. Next thing we know they'll take motherhood, an adult experience, and dumb it down for children by introducing toy infants.
We're getting our hurricane supplies in order. According to this recipe, long pig makes poor jerky because the fat tends to go rancid. I guess that's why cannibals are always having those big feasts -- leftovers just don't keep.
Wilma's winds should start after midnight, with the hurricane force ones beginning after dawn.
UPDATE
The folks in Key West are continuing with their hurricane preparations as well, and that means having the traditional drag queen parade. This one looks much better than the ones they had in New Orleans and Lafayette two days after Katrina.
UPDATE II
Everglades City
Oh-ho. According to local officials, Broward County will bear the brunt of Hurricane Wilma in Florida. Take that, SW Florida landfall glory hogs. No county's going to suffer like Broward.
UPDATE III
The first squall of Wilma has gone through Key West. On Duval Street, the people cheered and applauded each thunderclap.
The hospitals are closed, the shelters for Keys residents are in Dade County, the storm surge will cut the road to the mainland, and there are no flights running. Oh, and some people in Florida are going to die tonight. Cheer the hurricane, creeps.
Yaba Daba Don't
UPDATE IV
Wilma's one MPH away from being Cat 3.
We'll be getting our hurricane watch later this afternoon. That will trip some trigger in my brain that makes me want to stock up on potato chips. Odd how that works.
If the storm comes in as a Cat 3, I plan to resort to cannibalism.
UPDATE
Oh boy, Michelle Kosinski's in Ft. Myers to report on the storm. I bet she finds a whole canoeful of cannibals. She's got a nose for news, that girl.
UPDATE II
New-fangled street signs in Clewiston, on Lake Okeechobee.
UPDATE III
We're now under the warning.
I got dibs on that big, fat man who lives down the street.
Judging from North Carolina State University visiting Africana studies professor Dr. Kamau Kambon's testimony on C-SPAN, I'd say he's onto us:
Prior to his call for genocide against white people, Kambon, who owns Blacknificent Books in Raleigh, told the panel that “we are at war.” He said that white people had set up an "international plantation" for blacks, which made “every white person on earth a plantation master.” He said that, “You’re either supporting white people in their process of death, or you're for African liberation.”
He stressed one point in particular. “White people want to kill us. I want you to understand that. They want to kill you,” he said. “They want to kill you because that is part of their plan.”
I told y'all it was poor OPSEC to include that one on the to-do list on your refrigerator.
>
Now he's calling for the extermination of white people. All our beautiful wickedness. What a world. What a world.
(Via Michelle Malkin and Lone Star Times.)
Wilma's just landed in Cozumel. Good luck to the folks there.
Everyone here is just waiting and getting ready.
It's not clear whether this Tampa gentlemen went through the exact change lane or not:
A 93-year-old driver apparently suffering from dementia fatally struck a pedestrian, then continued driving through a toll booth with the man's body on his windshield, police said.
Ralph Parker of Pinellas Park drove for 3 miles Wednesday night after striking the 52-year-old pedestrian with his gold 2002 Chevrolet Malibu, severing the man's right leg, police said.
A toll taker on the Sunshine Skyway saw the body stuck through Parker's windshield and notified police, Traffic Homicide Investigator Michael Jockers said.
Let Irishman Conor Purcell give you his take on the South Koreans.
In general, he finds their constantly making "round eyes" with their fingers at him to be an annoying behavior:
The work itself was challenging and in a field I am interested in. But soon the office politics began to get wearing. As did the garbled conversations in Korean the rest of the office employees would have, interspersed with "waygook" and followed by glances in my direction and staccato giggling. One day, one of my co-workers started pointing at my face and laughing. "So red, so red," he exclaimed. He bounded over and started rubbing my face with the back of his hand. "Ooooaaaahhhhhh!" he shouted and soon the whole office was laughing at the poor waygookin (foreigner) who couldn't stand the 86 degrees Fahrenheit the office is normally at.
To stop this farce I literally had to grab his hand and tell him to stop. "Stop, stop," he mimicked and bounded off as happy as Larry. These moments of juvenility were to be expected and I usually laughed them off, knowing that these people really did not know any better. I often wondered how Korea managed to become the economic powerhouse it was before the IMF crisis. I had visions of Chaebol chairmen rubbing U.S. congressmen's faces in Capitol Hill boardrooms.
More of Conor's Seoul Times articles at the link.
Ask FEMA for money. They'll give it to you because they're KA-RAZY! They've got to get rid of the old money to make room for the new money coming in.
I like the lady who got $2000 in cold, hard, gravy train from saying her furniture got wet from her repeatedly opening the door to watch the storm.
The paper says Cat 5 Wilma's now the worst storm in the history of mankind. Looks like we're not even going to get the chance to be wiped out by the bird flu.
Here's the headline before the modification:
Wilma winds intensify to 175 mph as it becomes possibly worst storm ever
UPDATE
No, no, these computer model trajectories will have to be revised. Lee and Broward Counties are not to be included in Wilma's itinerary. These have her either going in at Lee (wrong) and coming out north of Lake Okeechobee (fine), or coming in south of Lee (fine) and exiting through Broward (wrong.) I'll shall write to the National Hurricane Center about this.
For those of you with a sudden hankering for a family vacation, petswelcome.com will give you a list of all pet-friendly lodging for your particular vacation destination.
UPDATE II
The Yucatan works for me.
UPDATE III
On the ball in Lee:
[Lee School] Superintendent James Browder said no government agencies have thus far requested school buses for evacuations, but they're gassed up and ready to roll.
Duane's on the road, and it looks like the boys are still in road manager's Willie Perkins' "economy with dignity" phase of travel.
Wail on, Skydog!
Hurricane Wilma's coming to Florida. What a relief.
Officials will do their jobs and people will freaking cope with life.
Not every German Shepherd is suited for a career in law enforcement, as former Canine Officer Buster demonstrates:
When patroling Rotherham at pub closing times - when the streets are often crowded with drunken revelers - Buster wagged his tail when people came up to him and ate their fries, instead of deterring potential trouble makers, his former handler said.
"He just showed no interest in doing the job," Stephenson added. "He had no fire in his belly."
But fries are good!
Since he's not being allowed to be a canine Officer Friendly, Buster has decided to change careers and has taken on a new position as family pet.
Not interested in rowdy drunkards' fries.
The Cotillion is up. This week it's hosted by TFS Magnum.
Check it out.
-"See, what Bush wants," said poet Amiri Baraka, after performing at a free jazz benefit in Manhattan's Lower East Side, "is to make New Orleans like his mother -- shriveled and colorless."
-"And LeRoi Amiri wants it like his own mama, big and easy."
(Via Lucianne.)
Lilly the Shepherd has the unfortunate habit of stripping little Shiloh the Beagle mix of her collar. Tonight things got out of hand.
Both dogs started screaming, so I ran in to see what was happening. Mr. Cracker was hollering that Lilly had Shiloh's head in her mouth, and he hit her twice trying to make her let go. She didn't. I was confused, because I wasn't hearing any aggressive noises, only distress sounds. Then he realized it was the collar and calmly asked me to get the scissors. Actually, over the cacophony, I heard him shout "collar" and "scissors." By the time that each of us came back successfully with a pair of scissors, the plastic buckle on Shiloh's collar had broken, and she was whooping in air like Ripley in Aliens.
When Lilly had put her jaw underneath Shiloh's collar to remove it, Shiloh had twisted 180 degrees, trapping Lilly's jaw in the twist, and starting to strangle her own self. Everytime Lilly tried to get free, she was choking Shiloh more.
It was very dramatic. Not as dramatic as violent thugs looting and burning to protest Nazis calling them violent thugs, but pretty darn dramatic nonetheless.
From now on, all Shiloh's collars will be made of dental floss.
I don't disagree with tasering when it's done under the right circumstances and delivered in a professional manner. Or when it makes me laugh.
The articles surrounding the release of the book "The Game" are a hoot. I get a kick out of the notion that there's a secret society of lotharios scoring chicks in bars due to their mad pickup skills. The "game" is a happy situation for all involved: neurotic lamers get to think they're Don Juan, and bar chicks get to feel like they're kinda sorta being seduced.
I have to get back to my friends in just a moment,
but I need a female opinion on something.
Dhhhh...
You are in the desert and you see a cube.
How big is the cube?
Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt...
Both Iraq the Model and Hammorabi are reporting all things are go.
Godspeed to the Iraqi people on this historic day.
Early voting was done at hospitals and jails in Iraq.
Give terrorists the finger.
Be sure to check in with Iraq the Model and Hammorabi for their views on tomorrow's historic vote.
I love all those little rules in baseball that pop up and bite people in the butt. Of course nothing beats my very favorite part of the game: a long, evil, demonic rundown -- especially when fat, gasbag pitchers like David Wells botch it and look like fools.
The man who pays my bills casually mentioned the other day that my little blogging hobby was running him over $300 a month. I was horrified. I could have bought some neat stuff with that money. He upgraded my account at our storage site, but over his objections (No! Put 'em back up!), I still took down my tunes section. 99 cents a tune won't kill anybody, although I do agree with him that free is always cooler.
Too bad I'd rather be less cool and have more jewelry.
What's better: attending Harvard or performing at the Grand Ole Opry? Not too many people would be able to tell us, but one of these boys could have.
**
He had no hits, yet he is at the center of many classic, pivotal albums, and had a profound influence on American music.
**
I shall soon be declaring my victory! Perhaps another hint before I do:
A couple of Country musicians, from England and Florida, respectively.
Said a fellow whose famous rock band our mystery man assimilated like a Borg:
"We hired a piano player, and he turned out to be ... a monster in sheep's clothing. And he exploded out of his sheep's clothing -- God! It's George Jones! In a big sequin suit!"
**
Congrats to YO for correctly guessing Winter Haven, Florida's own Gram Parsons.
Without Gram Parsons, there would be no Country Rock, no alt-Country, no Cow Punk. This was his invention.
Gram knew the highs and the lows of a Southern Gothic family. His mother's family owned one-third of all the citrus groves in Florida, so he would have been a wealthy man at some point. His wealth came early, though, after the suicide of his alcoholic father when Gram was 12, and the death by alcohol poisoning of his mother on the day he graduated from high school.
He joined the Byrds after dropping out of Harvard, and within a month they were a Country band performing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Their album Sweetheart of the Rodeo is a classic, and is considered to be one of the most influential recordings of all time. After leaving the Byrds, he formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, and recorded two classic albums with them, including The Gilded Palace of Sin
Keith Richards had always been, and still is, a big fan of Country music. Gram set about to teach him and Mick Jagger everything there was to know about the genre, playing stacks of recordings for them and explaining all the variations and permutations of Country. He was doing this all the way through their recording of "Exile on Main Street."
Gram's solo career included two albums with a very beautiful and gifted young singer by the name of Emmylou Harris.
All along the way, he wasted his time and talent with the foolishness of drug and alcohol abuse. He died of a drug overdose at the age of 26 at Joshua Tree National Monument. Before he could be buried, his road manager stole his corpse, took it back to Joshua Tree, and burned it.
There's so much that could be said about the fascinating life of Gram Parsons. I'll have to direct you to other sites for more detail.
There have been two movies about him, numerous books, and the list of some of the artists he has influenced includes: Elvis Costello, U2, Rodney Crowell, Dave Edmunds, the Jayhawks, Marty Stuart, Black Crowes, the Lemonheads, Nick Lowe, Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, Tom Petty, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, and Emmylou Harris.
***
Previous postings:
Homefires V
Homefires IV
Homefires III
Homefires II
Homefires
It'd be nice if there was always a stranger to come tip us off when we're making a terrible mistake. It sounds like the sh*t really hit the fan when this mom and pop learned that the man whom they'd trusted enough to give a key to their house, was a sex offender fixated on their son.
BTW, Oprah's now offering bounties on at-large predators. $100K a pop. This is a bit more useful than sulking about not being let into the Hermes store after hours.
Harriet Miers, Harriet Miers, Harriet Miers. There.
Although Duane was left-handed, he played with his right.
That's one of the reasons behind his phenominal abilities as a slide player.
Wail on, Skydog!
This has happened before. Some guy snatched up Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and France and just hauled ass. Finally, some by-standers tackled him:
The stress of standing in line to buy the German edition of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" proved too much for a man in Germany, who ran amok and threatened to kill people unless he got a book, police said last Tuesday.
The unnamed 24-year-old man stormed into a book shop in the Hanover railway station and absconded with six copies of the German-language edition, which went on sale nationwide last Saturday.
Finding it hard to carry the books while running, he dashed into another shop on the railway concourse and pushed shoppers aside to demand a shopping bag from a sales clerk. He punched a customer in the face when admonished for being rude.
Harry Potter's latest adventure shatters publishing records in Germany
With police in hot pursuit, the Potter fan raced across a crowded train platform, threatening to kill anyone who got in his way. Officers finally tackled the man, who was unarmed aside from the six 900-page books.
"The suspect said he could not stand the suspense of not knowing who the half-blood prince was," a Hanover police spokesman said. "He was informed however that he will likely have plenty of time for reading long books in his jail cell."
UPDATE
Be sure to check out Arklahomboy's account of his run-in with a group of deranged Potter fans. He had to howl with the wolves to escape with his hide.
You ever eat soooo much turkey you could hardly move? So did this python in Miami.
No, not the one that ate the cat. This is one that got an early jump on Thanksgiving.
If you live in Mexico City, this is one dangerous painting to have. There's a killer on the loose, and, using my CSI skills, I say that as a child he was tormented while wearing a red waistcoat.
A snake isn't dead until you cut its head off. Something President Bush should keep in mind.
This fellow is either a cat-loving caretaker of a wizarding school, or a Florida boy who has written Country tunes that became famous signature songs for the artists.
**
Need a hint? This handsome devil said his 40-year career was salvaged by one of our mystery man's songs. It was an even trade - with his pipes and phrasing, this Texan stamped his name all over the song:
**
Congrats to David Wilson for identifying Bobby Braddock, fourth-generation Floridian, and the writer of 15 number-one hits and fifty top tens. Among them are: "He Stopped Loving Her Today" for George Jones, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" for Tammy Wynette, "I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise Again" for Tanya Tucker, and "I Wanna Talk About Me" for Toby Keith.
Penning hit songs prevented him from continuing to work in the family's orange groves, but he seems to have made the sacrifice OK. George Jones is especially grateful Bobby preferred writing tunes to picking fruit. Possum's rendition of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is considered to be one of the greatest country performances of all time.
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Homefires IV
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Homefires II
Homefires
Drudge has had a pic of Boy George up for four days now. I think it might be a new record.
For HP fans only: a cute video in zip format of Jeremy Irons playing Snape.
Once you realize that almost any agency could better perform its assigned tasks if it had a bigger budget, the mundane budgetary woes of the National Hurricane Center doesn't have quite the shock value that a Miami Herald front page investigative article should.
Perhaps they're trying to play catch-up with the Sun-Sentinel's truly shocking investigation of FEMA's performance in Florida last year. That was a tale of fools, and the money that flowed like wine.
If you're running an illegal dental office like Kenol Pyran, what would be the point of going out of your way to collect canal water to use on your patients, as opposed to using tap water that's available right there in the squalid apartment that functions as your office?
Something tells me that in addition to using canal water and reusing needles, Dr. Pyran probably didn't wash his hands after visiting the restroom. Or maybe he did, but he rinsed them with canal water. But really, who knows what dentists do when our backs are turned? It's a profession fraught with mystery.
The world's most slovenly dentist will serve a little time, then be deported back to the Third World cesspool he came from - Canada.
A big woot for sound structural engineering.
For those of you who think that the only town named "Possum Trot" is located in Texas; you are wrong, wrong, wrong. There's also one in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia.
Congrats to Malalai Joya on standing up to violent Afghan warlords, and winning a parliamentary seat in a country that has had a long-standing history of brutally oppressing women and forcing them to live their lives in darkest ignorance. She's no Martha Burk, but her actions are still pretty brave.
Duane at Muscle Shoals explaining some fine point of music-making to a producer.
Wail on, Skydog!
Not having learned a lesson from Sami Al-Arian's long and profitable sojourn in her city, on Saturday Tampa's infidel mayor Pam Iorio proclaimed CAIR day. Some of CAIR's erstwhile employees and members were unable to attend the festivities due to their incarceration for terrorism.
(Via Paige in mail.)
The Cotillion is up. This week's host is Gray Tie. Check it out.
Like many tales that came out of New Orleans, the story of Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter continues to grow. Since it continues to be written that, as an example of red tape, a Coast Guard officer stopped Perlmutter in the middle of giving chest compressions to a dying patient because he wasn't a FEMA-authorized doctor, I'm going to call bullshit. According to an article that Perlmutter himself had written, he had given chest compressions to a dead patient and was working on someone else when his credentials were questioned.
Googling combinations of his name, 'chest compressions', and 'FEMA' bring up many conflicting articles: He was stopped in the middle of chest compressions; he wasn't. He saw a morgue filled with living people; he only heard about it. Is the female "green medic" whom Perlmutter says didn't know how to treat a diabetic patient, and is put forth as being FEMA-approved while he was not, actually Alison Torrens, the medical intern that he and Dr. Clark Gerhart had brought with them from Pennsylvania?
I agree there was red tape at the triage site where they initially went, but the stopped-in-mid-chest-compression story is a bit too silly to continue to be written up as fact.
I'm currently finding things like this far more interesting than anything political out there.
Those fighting the good fight, go ahead. I'm only interested in nonsense right now.
UPDATE
Judging by this Amazon review of "Half-Blood Prince," not everybody's a fan:
--On the Day of Judgment Allah will ask the learned men, "What did you do with the knowledge and learning I conferred on you?" They will reply, "We spent it in Your way". "LIARS !!! You dwindled it on Harry Potter books", The almighty Allah will respond.
Don't worry, racing fans. Despite his picture being at the top of the story, Michael Schumacher was not murdered in Fort Lauderdale.
If Winnie the Pooh doesn't publicly renounce Piglet, there's going to be violence.
(Via Lucianne.)
