Watering Hole Story
PG and his neighbor DA went out to drink beer and shoot pool. The destination was a place called the Watering Hole. The Watering Hole used to be a VFW. There was a TV repair store next door. When the county legalized bars, the VFW went somewhere else. The TV repair store became the game room. You could see on the floor where the counter used to be.
This was a weeknight. The other customer was past his limit. The drunk was fussing at the bartender when PG and DA walked in.
PG got lucky and hit a good shot on the pool table. He got a bit cocky, and said “and now for my next trick”. The drunk staggered into the game room, and lay down on an empty pool table. DA replied, “Is that your next trick?”
Before long, it was time to go home. As PG and DA were leaving, the drunk was arguing with the bartender. He wanted to buy a twelve pack to take home. The drunk won the argument, and started walking up Clairmont Road with his prize.
PG got a block or so away from the Watering Hole. He saw the drunk sitting in front of a seven eleven store. The drunk was sitting on the curb, drinking a beer. PG drove in front of him, and stopped the car. DA got out, and walked over to the curb. She picked up the eleven pack, and walked over to the car. Her pace was deliberate. The drunk stood up and yelled obscenities. The car drove away. off. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
“Racist” Again
In recent discussions about Donald Sterling’s big mouth, the word “racist” has been universally used. Everybody seems to agree that the comments Mr. Sterling made are “racist.”
It is believed by many that black people cannot be “racist.” The concept is “Black people can’t be racist. Racism is an institution. Although “black people can be prejudiced, we don’t have the power” to enforce the sweeping institutional racism that perpetuates social, economic and political inequality.”
A few years ago, Donald Sterling got in trouble. He was a landlord, and was accused of discriminating against people. This is what “institutional racism” is. This was ignored by the media.
It is worth noting that at the time of the landlord issues, the Los Angeles Clippers were the worst team in the NBA. Mr. Sterling owns the Clippers. Some have speculated that owning this terrible team was his punishment for being a terrible landlord. Currently, the Clippers are a winning team, and Mr. Sterling is the anti-christ. He would turn a profit by selling the team.
So the gf recorded the argument, the old man said some “racist” things, and the national knickers are twisted. Is telling the inamorata not to pose with Magic Johnson perpetuating social, economic and political inequality? Or is it just an old man having a bad hair day?
Maybe the constant use of the label “racist” is what is perpetuating social, economic and political inequality. When you engage in high octane pearl clutching over a famous person saying stupid things, you distract attention from the real problem. What Donald Sterling said, to V. Stiviano, is not going to affect police activity, economic opportunity, or any of the other concerns that people of color have. Maybe it is time to banish the word “racist” from the national vocabulary. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Those were different times.
Jesus And Mr. Gandhi
One day, PG is going to learn not to read facebook first thing in the morning. He was scrolling along, minding his own business, when he found this comment: “Are you kidding me. Judge NOT least you are JUDGE. You have NO right nor do I as a Christain to interpet one man’s thought or opinion or idea of whom our CHRIST is to HIM (Ghandi) or to you or myself. Self judging of other people or life styles was one the things that really ticked Christ off. Til we accept that and stop be so judgmental we are no better than the Devil himself.” PG had a reply: “1-When you have religion shoved in your face, you need to make a judgement… do I agree with this, or not agree? If the religion was not forced upon us, we would not have to make this judgement. 2- When you say I am the devil, you say more about yourself than you do about me.”
The first comment was made by a former supervisor of PG. “Wildman” was the store manager when PG was tormented by the Professional Jesus Worshiper (PJW). During this crucible, PG was forced to re-examine his opinions about Jesus. This was not easy for PG, as Jesus had long been a painful presence in his life.
PG decided that there were two forces known as Jesus. One was the historic figure, whose life was partially recorded in the bible. The second Jesus was a spirit, living in the hearts of those who believe in him. The present day spirit Jesus has little in common with the historic Jesus, other than the name. The best way to know Jesus is through the words and deeds of his believers.
The initial comment was made to a post at Christianity.com. Apparently, the comment was automatically posted to facebook. The post, Gandhi Doesn’t Like Us, was written by Tim Challies. He is a popular Jesus worship blogger, and is much admired at blogs where PG is banned from commenting. The page is sponsored by Christians United For Israel. They are distributing a free ebook, Israel 101, with the slogan “Defend the land Jesus walked.”
Mr. Challies is a competent writer. He crafts an opening to the post which states the points he is going to make. “How many times have you come across this quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi? “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I must have read it a hundred times in books, magazines, articles, tweets. It is used by believers and unbelievers to point to the hypocrisy of Christians and to call us to more and to better. Our inability to live what we preach is driving the multitudes away. Or so we are told. After all, that’s what Gandhi said.
We need to stop using this quote and I’m going to give you two good reasons to do so. In the first place, Gandhi was hardly an authority on Jesus. When he says, “I like your Christ” he is referring to a Jesus of his own making, a Jesus plucked haphazardly from the pages of Scripture, a Jeffersonian kind of Jesus, picked and chosen from the accounts of his life. “
PG agrees with Mr. Challies, but for different reasons. To begin with, no one seems to have a source for this quote. What was the context? What language was it said in? This quote is the best answer Mr. Google can supply:
“A 1926 review by the Reverend W.P. King (then pastor of the First Methodist Church of Gainesville, Georgia) of E. Stanley Jones’s The Christ of the Indian Road (published in 1925 by The Abington Press, New York City) includes the following: Dr. Jones says that the greatest hindrance to the Christian gospel in India is a dislike for western domination, western snobbery, the western theological system, western militarism and western race prejudice. Gandhi, the great prophet of India, said, “I love your Christ, but I dislike your Christianity.” The embarrassing fact is that India judges us by our own professed standard. In reply to a question of Dr. Jones as to how it would be possible to bring India to Christ, Gandhi replied: First, I would suggest that all of you Christians live more like Jesus Christ. Second, I would suggest that you practice your Christianity without adulterating it. The anomalous situation is that most of us would be equally shocked to see Christianity doubted or put into practice. Third, I would suggest that you put more emphasis on love, for love is the soul and center of Christianity. Fourth, I would suggest that you study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically in order to find the good that is in them.”
The quote is less than 100 years old, and it is disputed. The reputed words of Jesus were said in Aramaic. They were quoted, after his death, by scribes who never met Jesus, in Greek. These texts were copied by hand and compiled into a canon for the Catholic church. This canon was translated into contemporary languages. And yet, this record of the teachings of Jesus is regarded as the verbatim, inerrant truth.
Another problem with the quote is the use of the word “Christ”. This was an honorific title, and not the name of Jesus. (Some say that the name was closer to Joshua. It was probably an Aramaic name that we would find difficult to pronounce.) There are many people who say that Jesus might not be the Christ.The two names are not synonymous, nor is Christ the last name of Jesus.
Mr. Gandhi had some name issues as well. His birth name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Many today refer to him as Mahatma Gandhi. “The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi’s given name in the West, is taken from the Sanskrit words maha (meaning Great) and atma (meaning Soul). Rabindranath Tagore is said to have accorded the title to Gandhi. In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he never valued the title, and was often pained by it.”
Mr. Gandhi went to school in England, and worked as a barrister in South Africa. He was a smart man. If you want to put a quote from Mr. Gandhi on your vehicle, here are a few options:
“G-d has no religion”
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
“One who has any faith in G-d should be ashamed to worry about anything ”
As we said earlier, Gandhi Doesn’t Like Us offers two reasons to not use the quote by Mr. Gandhi. Lets take a look. “Whatever Jesus Gandhi liked was certainly not the Jesus of the Bible. Why then should we care if we do not attain to this falsified version of Jesus? I would be ashamed to have any appearance to the kind of Jesus that Gandhi would deem good and acceptable and worthy of emulation. That Jesus would, of course, have to look an awful lot like Gandhi. So there is one good reason to stop using this quote: because Gandhi fabricated a Jesus of his own making and declared his affection only for this fictional character. He never liked the real thing”.
Arguably, this is what the contemporary church does. The light skinned Jesus of velvet paintings looks little like the real thing. Even critics of the church, who like to talk about what “Jesus really taught”, are relying on the product of a Catholic committee. The truth is, we don’t know very much about the historic Jesus. We fill in the blanks to suit whatever the current agenda is. What you think about Jesus says more about you than it does about Jesus.
Here’s a second reason. Gandhi had a fundamental misunderstanding of himself and of the rest of humanity. Gandhi no doubt loved the way that Jesus related to the downtrodden and disadvantages and assumed that he himself was a leper or Samaritan, when really he was a Pharisee. … Perhaps he might even have deigned to put himself in the place of the Prodigal Son, a man who had gone astray but then found hope and redemption. Whatever the case, the Jesus he liked must have been a Jesus who would love and accept him just as he was and not a Jesus who declared that even a man as good as he was an enemy of G-d.
Jesus spoke kind words and did great deeds; he comforted and healed and gave hope and a future. But not to everyone. Jesus reserved the harshest of words for the religious elite, those who declared that they were holy, that they understood the nature of G-d, that they had achieved some kind of enlightenment. Jesus had no love for such people. It was such people who received the sharpest of his rebukes and the most brutal of his “Woes!” They were the whitewashed tombs, the broods of vipers, the blind guides. Such men did not love Jesus. They may have loved Gandhi’s fabricated Christ but they hated the real one.
Who is the “religious elite” elite of today? Perhaps it is someone who publishes on a slick website, with an ad supporting the abuse of the Palestinian people. Perhaps it is the preacher in Lithonia who uses Jesus to lure teenage boys into his bedroom. Perhaps it is the PJW who conducted a vulgar ministry while working on the clock for redo blue. This PJW ended a tirade with the words, What you see is Jesus changing my life. Perhaps it is those who use Jesus to hurt people. The list goes on and on.
This Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, would have rebuked Gandhi as he rebuked the Jewish leaders of his day, the people who led people walking behind them on the road to hell. Like them, he was convinced of his own goodness, his own worthiness. There are two good reasons to stop using this quote: Gandhi liked only the Christ of his own making and he believed that he was worthy of the favor of this Christ. On both accounts he was wrong; dead wrong.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. They are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States. Both sides in this conflict believed that Jesus supported them. This is a repost.
Decades Of Popularity
using the knob handle lock makes it easier to lock yourself out ~ Will you take monopoly money? ~ this will mean work for some law firms, when the inevitable challenge lawsuits are filed ~ I drive by there every afternoon. It is a great place to sit in traffic ~ “Respectability politics will always be in conflict with drag, an art form with countercultural subversion at its heart. When these parvenus create new taboos around language, they’re practically begging drag queens and kings to violate these taboos.” Many queers fancy themselves as taboo breakers. However, the various queer communities have their own taboos. Violate them at your own risk. ~ a great song for an overcast sunday ~ All we know about Jesus… or think we know … is what the council of Nicea chose to tell us. What you say about Jesus says more about you than it does Jesus. ~ that’s ok mom why don’t you try the mashed potatoes ~ Not respecting an office populated by ambitious politicians is a good start. Maybe you could extend this to not respecting the so called son of g-d. ~ the large print giveth and the small print taketh away ~ I just realized what the abbreviation for I Love Lucy was.~ In paragraph one you say “full paragraphs necessitate the formation of full thoughts, which only come to those who write because they actually have something to say.” Paragraph five was “Fine. Maybe not.” ~ There is a town in Pakistan called Mybad ~ Item Five is the truth. You might get called racist. You simply cannot believe everything that people say. With the internet, it is so easy to provide a link to the quoted item. The person making the statement is responsible for providing the supporting source information. Like I said earlier, some people call asking for backup information racist. It makes you wonder who has the problem. ~ Yes, that is insulting to a dog’s ass. ~ With the earth running out of oil, and the government bankrupt, can we afford the Blue Angels? ~ Is Jimi at monterrey the one with Otis Redding on the other side? ~”I don’t care how likable Obama is in interviews or how kind he is on an interpersonal level. He’s a war criminal.” ~ ditto bush clinton bush reagan carter ford nixon johnson kennedy eisenhower truman roosevelt hoover coolidge ~ if bho had a son he would not look like any of these children ~ few things are in more abundant supply than unique people ~ we call our group radical faeries so we can tell ourselves apart from your group of ordinary faeries ~ twitter suggests following @PeeWeeHerman, who is followed by @SharonNeedles it is better to follow him than to sit in front of him. ~ it is more than a parable it is three units of bull ~ I don’t know how, or if, this fits in, but I am going to throw it out. I read this neat quote today. “If G-d hides in the details, maybe we do as well”. ~ Q- Bette, Barbra, Kylie, Donna, Diana, Madonna. Have ANY female pop artists enjoyed decades of popularity without a wildly devoted gay fan base? A- Margaret Thatcher ~ that is an attractive graphic presentation of the thought ~ “Apparently it’s hip now to call people racist, sexist, bigoted etc. just for being ignorant.” Maybe the person applying these labels is the ignorant one. Especially when this person thinks that something worthwhile will happen as a result. ~ This post was auto abbreviated by facebook. The last sentence fragment of the shortened post: ” After class, I finished an ass… See More ” ~ The tree museum charges more than a dollar and a half these days ~ Is this about Cliven Bundy? Why is anyone paying attention to him? The spell check suggestions include cloven bunny.~ “anthropological consensus” sounds like an oxymoron. ~ Did you know that the Pythagorean Theorum (singular) can be disproven? I was told that by a geometry teacher in tenth grade. She took part in the army LSD experiments, and said a shot of whisky would do more for you. And no, a hypotenuse is not a device for hanging people at a ninety degree angle. ~ that is innoveracist ~ A meme is different from a peanut butter sandwich. There are too many words in that meme. If they had stopped after “negativity”, there would not be two words at the bottom by themselves. The result is a top heavy graphic. The words “in your life” do not add anything to the overall message. This is not negativity, this is editing. ~ if only cleaning up after a dinner was as easy ~ When the housing discrimination was going on, the Clippers were the worst team in North America. Maybe continuing to own them was the punishment. ~ why did the white trash fight for the right of their snooty neighbors to own slaves? ~ pictures from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
The Peanut Butter Meme
A facebook friend posted a meme this morning. There is a picture of a piece of bread, covered in peanut butter. There is forty point, sans serif, text pasted on the condiment. “If someone ever tells you that you’re putting too much peanut-butter on your bread, stop talking to them. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.”
PG dabbles in graphics. When he saw the meme, the first thing he saw were the words “your life” at the bottom. Six longer lines of text were stacked on top of “your life.” This creates a top heavy look. PG made a comment: “A meme is different from a peanut butter sandwich. There are too many words in this meme. If they had stopped after “negativity”, there would not be two words at the bottom by themselves. The result is a top heavy graphic. The words “in your life” do not add anything to the overall message. This is not negativity, this is editing.”
There are more issues with the peanut butter meme. This is a sacred saturday, after a long week at work. If PG wants to write snarky commentaries about a facebook picture, that should be his right. No one is making you read this. If you want to skip the text, and look at the pictures (from The Library of Congress,) go ahead. The images are from the FSA depression era collection.
We live in a selfish society. It is all about “your life.” The concept of scarce goods is not considered. What if there is only enough peanut butter (without the dash) for two regular sandwiches, or one super duper helping? Is it negativity to ask someone to share?
“If someone ever tells you … stop talking to them.” Are two people talking at the same time? Or, is one person talking, and the other listening? Maybe the meme should say stop listening to them. But, we are a self oriented culture. Listening is seen as weakness. Talking is seen as confident action. If someone says something you don’t like, don’t talk to them.
You probably weren’t listening anyway. It is all about you, and your desire to pile on the peanut butter. Maybe that is why it was important to add the words “in your life” to the text. The fact that there was not enough room does not matter. It is all about your life. If this throws the overall picture out of balance, that is too bad.
Confederate Memorial Day
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. It is an ancient question…how to honor the soldiers from the side that lost. They were just as valiant as the Union Soldiers. Considering the shortages of the Confederate Armies, the Rebels may have been just a bit braver.
The issue of Federalism is a defining conflict of the American experience. What powers do we give the Federal Government, and what powers do we cede to the States? The Confederacy was the product of this conflict. The Confederate States were a collection of individual states, with separate armies. This is one reason why the war turned out the way it did.
This is not a defense for slavery. The “Peculiar institution” was a moral horror. The after effects of slavery affect us today. Any remembrance of the Confederacy should know that. This does not make the men who fought any less brave.
It is tough to see the War Between the States through the modern eye. It was a different time, before many of the modern conveniences that are now considered necessities. Many say that the United States were divided from the start, and the fact the union lasted as long as it did was remarkable. When a conflict becomes us against them, the “causes” become unimportant.
The War was a horror, with no pain medicine, and little that could be done for the wounded. It took the south many, many years to recover. The healing continues in many ways today. Remembering the sacrifices made by our ancestors helps.
This is a repost from CMD 2010. Pictures are from the Library of Congress.
Anzac Day
Today is Anzac day. Tomorrow is Confederate Memorial Day. Not all soldiers win.
On this day, ninety nine years ago, the troops from the British Empire landed on Gallipoli. The Great War had started a few months ago. The British were allied with the French, and the Russians, against the Germans, the Turks, and others. The War started in West Europe. The British decided to invade Turkey as a strategic move. It was a disaster.
Ninety Nine years later, Americans know little about Gallipoli. There have many other wars since then. Some of them have been more gruesome, or more useless. Millions of men died in “The Great War.” Today, not one person in ten thousand can tell you what they died for.
There was a movie made about Gallipoli. Mel Gibson was one of the players. Someone said, of the Turks and Australians, that we should fight them there, so we won’t have to fight them here. Australia, and New Zealand, were not fighting in self defense. Ninety years later, that same phrase was used to justify the slaughter in Babylon.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They fought in the War Between the States.
Date Rape Drug Warning
Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties & local pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink by any woman. Many females use a date-rape-drug on the market called ‘Beer ‘.
The drug is found in liquid form and is available anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps, and in large kegs. ‘Beer ‘ is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and sleep with them.
A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of ‘Beer’ and then simply ask him home for no-strings-attached sex. Men are rendered helpless against this approach. After several applications of ‘Beer ‘, men will often succumb to the desires to sleep with women to whom they would never normally be attracted. Men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that ‘something bad’ occurred.
At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life’s savings, in a familiar scam known as ‘a relationship’ . In extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer-term form of servitude and punishment referred to as ‘marriage’. Men are much more susceptible to this scam after ‘Beer ‘ is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females.
If you fall victim to this ‘Beer ‘ scam and the women administering it, there are male support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter with similarly victimized men. For the support group nearest you, just look up ‘Golf Courses’ in the phone book.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Gender modification, for contemporary society, is available by appointment. Here is a more graphic warning demonstration.
1941
A few weeks ago, PG was riding his bike on a sunday afternoon, and found the remains of a yard sale. The items which had not sold were left behind. PG scored a few books. Outside of the library, and the dumpster behind a used book store, this is the best way to get reading material. The first book to go before eyes (or be read by four eyes) was 1941 — The Greatest Year In Sports: Two Baseball Legends, Two Boxing Champs, and the Unstoppable Thoroughbred Who Made History in the Shadow of War. What are publishers thinking of with these eternal titles? For purposes of this book report, the book will be known as 1941.
There are five stories in this book. The background tale is the world going over the edge with World War II. A horse, Whirlaway, won the triple crown. Two boxers, Joe Louis and Billy Conn, had a fight. Joe Joe DiMaggio hit safely in fifty six consecutive games. And Ted Williams hit .406.
This was thirteen years before PG was born. It seems like more than that. People took trains to travel. When a major event took place, you went to a neighbor who had a radio, and you listened. When you got in a war, you drafted men, and they died. (On PG’s birthday minus thirteen, Hank Greenberg went into the army. Athletes served in the military.) The internet, unmanned aircraft, and millionaire ballplayers would be considered science fiction.
PG has been an off, and on, sports fan for a while. It has been mostly off. With ball games, it is easy to pick up where you left off. You can watch a few minutes of a game, and know what is going on. 1941 was easy to follow, and a fun story. It was like being a twelve year old reading Sports Illustrated. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Iggy Pop Story
The appropriately named dangerousminds has a video up about Iggy Stooge, who still has a full set of teeth at 62. The video is worth watching, even if it is mostly people like Henry Rollins telling how Raw Power changed his life. I guess the jokes on Henry, he thought they were talking about The Eagles, and the video folks cleverly edited in the references to Mr. Osterberg.
Getting back to Iggy , and music merchandising, he has a new collection of music coming out. Included in this package is a show he did at Richards, across the street from Grady Stadium. One night Iggy was singing at Richards, when Elton John appeared onstage wearing a gorilla suit.
The greatest achievement of Mr. Pop is living so long. ( He was born April 21, 1947). He has done heroin by the kilo, jumps off stage into crowds of punk rock fans, and is a general mess. As the video shows, he still has a great smile, although it is not known how many of those teeth are his own.
One night in 1980, PG saw a performance by Iggy Pop. The site was the 688 club, a storefront on Spring Street across the expressway from Georgia Tech. 688 Spring Street had been the site of Roses Cantina, where PG had seen George Thorogood, The Fans, and some blues band that did Amphetamine Annie with the original lyrics…instead of speed kills, they said love gun.
Roses was a cool place, a long narrow space with the performers in the middle, and a pool table behind the stage. Nightclubs are a tough business for capitalists, and Roses shut down.
At any rate, by the time PG got back from Seattle, some brave investors decided to have a punk rock club at 688 Spring Street. Soon, Iggy Pop would be playing a week there. In the seventies, the bands would play for five days at the great southeast music hall or the electric ballroom, two shows a night, and if you were really cool you would go on a weeknight before it got too crowded. Soon after that, it was one night in town only, and you either saw it or you didn’t.
PG had a friend at the Martinique apartments on Buford Hiway. There was someone living in the complex known as ZenDen, who sold acid. You would go to his place, wade through the living room full of grown men listening to Suzi Quatro, and purchase the commodity.
On to the the 23 Oglethorpe bus, and downtown to 688 Spring Street. Before anyone knew it, the band was on the stage. A veteran of the Patti Smith Group, named Ivan Kral, was playing bass. Mr. Kral sneezed, and a huge cocaine booger fell across his face. He was not playing when the show ended.
There was a white wall next to the stage, and someone wrote the song list on that wall. That list of songs stayed on the wall as long as 688 was open. “I want to be your dog” was on the list, as well as the number where Iggy pulled his pants off and performed in his underwear. Supposedly, in New York the drawers came off, but the TMI police were off duty that night.
The show was loud and long, and had the feel of an endurance event…either you go or the band does. Finally, the show was over, and PG got on the 23 Oglethorpe bus to go home. You got the northbound bus on West Peachtree Street. You could look down the street and see the Coca Cola sign downtown.
Thirty years later,PG, like Iggy Pop, has a full head of teeth, which, in PG’s case are his own. PG has a full head of white care, as apparently does Mr. Pop, although he does appear to touch up his hair. Maybe he really is a blond. This post should be over, but if there are 37 more words then we will have 688. The space on Spring Street is still standing, which is pretty good for Atlanta. It is now an emergency room, or something.
This is a repost. The original was posted four years ago. Iggy is still alive. So is PG. 688 Spring Street stands. 23 Oglethorpe is the answer to a trivia question. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Ru Paul
Years ago, PG worked with someone who liked to say “and a ru hu hu.” This was shortened to ru, and was usually said very loud. Ru became a greeting.
About this time, Ru Paul was living in Atlanta. Many people remember her (“RuPaul Andre Charles, best known mononymously as RuPaul”) as a spectacular self promoter. Ru Paul would sit in an apartment balcony, and wave at cars passing by. Posters for her band, Wee Wee Pole, were on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Avenue.
One night, Ru Paul was working as a gogo dancer in a club called Weekends. During a break, PG went over to talk to her. The use of ru as a greeting was mentioned. Soon, some people came over, and PG started to leave. Before PG could get away, Ru Paul turned to PG, lifted her index finger, and said “Keep on saying my name.”
Ru Paul went on to become famous. Weekends was torn down, and is the site of the Federal Reserve Bank. PG is PG, with occasional excursions into R and NC17. PG does not watch much TV, and has never seen an episode of “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” This is a TV show about a TV.
There is a recent controversy about RPDR. It seems that the phrase shemale has been used. Some people are offended by this. The expression is no longer used on the show.
PG has only one trans person friend. Sashia is the first person that PG heard use the expression shemale. PG does not know if Sashia still uses this expression. It has been a while since PG learned this expression, and ideas about language do change. Spell check suggestion for Sashia: Hashish.
The use of offensive language is to be avoided. If you know something is going to hurt people, then you should avoid saying it. There is a good possibility that Ru Paul knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care. The problem comes when you haven’t received the latest update from the language authorities. Keeping up with with is cool to say can be a full time job. Is it still ok to say ru?
Pictures from The Library of Congress. The images are of women, training to be bus drivers and taxi drivers. This was in Washington DC, November 1942. The photographer was Andreas Feininger, working for the Office of War Information. The picture of a dipstick demonstration is #8d36666.
Dead Saturday 1973
It was dead saturday 1973, the day between good friday and easter. PG and his friend Gibson have traveled from Athens GA to Charlotte NC to see a rock concert. The plan was eight bands in a crowded football stadium.
PG had never been to an outdoor concert, and had some ideas about how it would be. They were in the house early, and set up a blanket about thirty feet in front of the stage. For the first part of the day, the crowd stayed off their turf.
The first electric act was Brownsville Station. The first thing they did was encourage the audience to crowd in front of the stage, resulting in a mob scene for the rest of the day. BS played loud heavy metal, with a guitar/vocals guy painted like a clown. They were a three piece band that day, as their bass player had gotten a job selling furniture in Kansas. “Smokin in the Boys Room” was a hit for this ensemble later that year.
The concept of multiple stages had not hit North Carolina, and there was a long wait between acts. The next band was Mason Profit. “you are talking about boogie, you don’t know shit about boogie.
By this time, the crowd was getting off on their downers, the sun was shining, and PG was out of water. It only got better as the day went on. The scheduled next act was Captain Beyond, but they canceled. The replacement was Marshall Tucker. They were good, but not really memorable.
The afternoon went on and on. Goose Creek Symphony came and went, followed by Wet Willie. WW had a routine where this pretty girl was walking down ___ street, which in Charlotte was Independence Boulevard. Eventually, the sun went down, and ZZ Top came on stage.
ZZ Top was the high point of the day. The beards were only about four inches long. They introduced one song, saying ” this is something you might know about, song called beer drinkers and hell raisers”. They were the only band to do an encore, with “Francine”.
The next act was Mahavishnu Orchestra, which PG was convinced was the greatest band that ever lived. The stadium crowd was not conducive to their style, but they delivered a good show. John McLaughlin played a twin necked guitar, which PG found a bit disconcerting. The electric violin player, Jerry Goodman, was a stand out.
By the time MO finished, PG wanted to get away from the front of the stage. He took to wandering around the back of the stadium while the Allman Brothers played. The back of the house was full, although there was room to walk around. Before long, it was time to hit the road back to Georgia.
Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress.
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