Chamblee54

The New Yorker has a website, with some cool stuff. One of them is a video of Loudon Wainwright III, singing a song about some guy named Krugman. It seems to PG that Mr. Wainwright might be a good subject for a tribute.
Loudon Wainwright III was the son of a man who wrote for Life magazine, who was known as Loudon Wainwright Jr. The son of III is named Rufus, which is Albanian for Fifth. Either he skipped a level, likes to drink, or this is a coincidence. Rufus Wainwright is a musician also, with lots of units sold, and a stay or two in rehab.
The official LWIII website has a biography page, so if you care about such things you can go there. He writes little acoustic songs, many of which are hilarious. Early in his career, “Dead Skunk” became a hit, which was a mixed blessing. It became the song he was known for, but it was far from the best thing he did.
In addition to the Krugman song, there are three you tubes of Wainwright songs. A 95 year old lady dances to “Dead Skunk”. Johnny Cash does “The man who could not cry”, showing a bit of Grecian Formula. ( Wainwright is growing old and bald in honest fashion, even after shaving the puppy beard of his younger days.) There is a performance of “Motel Blues”, by the man. A fourth video, about climate change, is included at the end for those in the audience with entirely too much free time.
PG has seen Loudon Wainwright III in concert twice. In December of 1973, LWIII played at the Great Southeast Music Hall. He had a backup band, for some reason, and PG was not overwhelmed. After the show, PG talked to a high school classmate, and they went riding on the dirt roads behind the music hall smoking reefer.
In May of 1982, LWIII played a show by himself at a concert hall on North Decatur Road, which was formerly a Colonial grocery store and the Texas Tea Room. A friend of PG’s had a story to tell about the TTR. “Maybe, the venue was called the Texas Tea Room—or the Texas something-or-another. I recall that I heard some male duo there. When I heard them, they were past their prime in terms of popularity, but perhaps they were making some sort of comeback. I keep trying to remember who I heard. I also remember going in there one time with short-shorts on. The shorts were totally inappropriate for the setting, but I had been somewhere else and just stopped by the hall (we’ll continue to call it the Texas Tea Room) on a whim. I vaguely remember some guy giving me grief about my attire. I don’t think I went home with him, and I’m sure that was an excellent decision.”
On that May evening 28 years ago, LWIII was spectacular. He had done a lot of shows in the previous 9 years, and had learned a few things about performing. The lines that got a good response were repeated, and played slow enough to understand the lyrics. This is a problem for many lyric based performers…if you don’t know their music, you will not enjoy the show. With Wainwright, he sang slow and loud, and you could hear all the words. You knew why the rest of the crowd was laughing so hard. It is now 2010, and LWIII has not gone away. His records never did sell very well, and he sells his own product over the internet now. His hair is turning gray and falling out, unlike Johnny Cash.( maybe that is a wig in the video). The skunk has dried up, and his bones crushed into powder by the mean eighteen wheelers. The motel was torn down by the health department. Pictures for this entertainment are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” The last picture is the Colonial store that became the Texas Tea Room. It is now a discount mattress store.

Today is the ides of March. In 44bc, it was a very bad day for Julius Caesar. Today we have the Secret Service, and POTUS is a tiny bit safer. It is the people who get a blade between the ribs. Et tu Sonny?
Other than the bad toga day for Julius, PG could not think of much to say today. When this happens, he goes into the archives, and see what he has written on this day before. Today we have a doozy. This was written in first person, and will remain that way. We have also learned the secret of embedding videos, and will have some live entertainment.
This feature was written during the primaries of the 2008 election. BHO was the frontrunner, but his election was far from assured. The emergence of Jeremiah Wright was a crisis, but BHO gave a slick speech about race that had the liberals liberating. BHO went on to win the November election, and is roughly one third through his first term.

YouTube is an impediment to work. I was going to write some clever words to go with these pictures, but I looked at some videos first. All I wanted was the embed gibberish so I could show them to you, but YouTube has more videos on the same subject, and the only way to get rid of temptation is to give into it.
I am glad I got to see the videos of Jeremiah Wright. Friday I was hearing the tapes of him on the radio, and it was most discouraging. When I saw the videos, I realized that this was just another loudmouth for Jesus.
I worked for 6 years with a professional Jesus Worshiper. He was selfish, hateful, vulgar and loud. He frequently directed this anger at me. He used Jesus to hurt me, often  over trivial matters.
Once, this Professional Jesus Worshiper shouted me down, and humiliated me, in the name of Jesus. When he was through, he picked up the telephone and told his friend ” I never felt better in my life”.
One of the videos I found was a man in Harlem named Manning. He has a video where he talks about the Obama name on the shirt of a woman with a 54 D bra. That is not what the number 54 in my screen name refers to.
Mr. Manning says that Mr. Obama’s African father found a trashy white woman to have his baby, and that the child was called Barack. He said this from a pulpit with a sign attached…”Jesus is Lord”. This does not speak well of Jesus.
When you see these videos of Mr. Wright, you see people listening with great enthusiasm. At one point, two men exchange a high five behind Mr. Wright.
One thing I learned while working with the Professional Jesus Worshiper was the importance of the audience. These hatemongers do not just talk to themselves. They need an audience.
These audiences enable these poison spewers. To pray with a loudmouth who shames Jesus is morally equivalent to buying whiskey for an alcoholic.
Barack Obama is that audience.

The state of Georgia is in trouble. The money spent is billion dollars a year more than the money received. Atlanta needs to find a new source of water. What is our legislature going to do? Have a debate about abortion and race.
Billboards have appeared in Atlanta, saying “Black Children are an endangered species”. A url  to a website is shown. The basic concept is the abortion industry targets black women, as part of an eugenic effort to provide a more caucasian population.
HB 1155, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, is a response to this. “As currently drafted, HB 1155 would make it a 10-year felony for a physician to perform an abortion if a patient discloses that she seeks the procedure because of objections to the race or gender of the fetus…The physician and clinic staff would also be exposed to criminal prosecution, and civil suits, if the woman seeks the abortion because of “coercion.”
HT to Jim Galloway. Pictures from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

PG is fixin’ to finish a book of short stories by TC Boyle, “If the river was whiskey”. The book is a collection of 16 stories by what someone called “the most versatile writer in America”. It is like eavesdropping on 16 different conversations in a bar…one is discussing the restaurant business and dealing with persnickety critics, while another tells the tale of a wall street slickie who sold his soul to the devil.
New Yorker magazine sometimes has what they call a fiction issue, with short stories by trendy writers. In one of these was an effort by T. Coraghessan Boyle. The picture beside the story showed a man with facial hair,earrings, and other facial decorations that might be interpreted as fey. (For what it is worth, Boyle is married with three children. “Whiskey”, published in 1989, is dedicated to the three younguns.)
Boyle has soldiered on. He is now known as TC (T is for Tom, and Coraghessan is his mother’s maiden name). This is an american story. TCB was born and raised in upstate New York, fond of heroin as a young man, only to detox. He learns how to write, moves to California, and does well.
“Whiskey” is great fun, and well worth the effort of carrying back from the Chamblee library. The versatility is tough to underestimate. The first story is about the restaurant critic from hell, which is followed by a girl who makes her boyfriends wear full body condoms. A PR agent tries to remake the image of a pre 911 arab, segues into a lady selling home alarm systems to alarmed mortgage owners, so that a freshly minted widow can mourn her husband by turning on every faucet and spigot in the house and leave them running. Mind you these are short stories, with none of the time commitment of a novel. You finish one vision, and are afraid to consider what might be in the next installment.
A comment at Amazon said that some of the stories seem like throwaways. A story called “The Little Chill” is an obvious satire on a movie with a similar title. (Full disclosure…PG never saw the movie.) If you are just looking for distraction on a train ride, there are no bad stories. Even if the english majors write snarky things, the rest of us can enjoy them.
Whatever is going on behind the eyes of Mr. Boyle has not killed him. Sad to say, the opposite seems to be the case with David Foster Wallace. A feature on the New Yorker website tells his tale.
As with Boyle, PG was introduced to Mr. Wallace through a magazine article. It was about tennis, which, to PG, is like watching paint dry. Mr. Wallace wrote a ten page article about tennis, and made it fun to read. Too bad he couldn’t apply the same magic to his own life.
Pictures for this feature are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

This tasteful collection is courtesy of TwentyTwoWords. The question that started it all was “What jokes or quips do you never tire of hearing or telling?.

Why did the cow cross the road ?The chicken was on vacation.
knock knock /who’s there?/ boo /boo who?/Don’t cry it’s only a joke…
It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
A man walks up to a horse and says, “Why the long face?”
two pretzels were walking down the street. one was a salted.
As a friend said the other night,/ “He who laughs last thinks slowest.”
That’s what she said.
“Raise your hand if you’re here.”
Two nuns walk into a bar; the third one ducks.
Q: What did the radio say when it was dropped?/A: “Ow. That hertz.”
I know a lot of musicians but i am not one… nor will i ever be. but i love responding to “And what do you Play?” with “the Radio”
What did the ranch say to the refrigerator door? “Close the door, I’m dressing”
Why don’t blind people skydive?/ It scares the heck out of their dogs…
what did the fish say when it ran into a wall?/ dam.
“I see.” said the blind man as he peed into the wind… “It’s all coming back to me now.”
“Working hard or hardly working?”
What’s the last thing to go through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield?/Its butt.
You can tuna guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.
What do a duck and a bicycle have in common?/They both have wheels… except the duck.
What’s brown and sounds like a bell?/DUNGGGGG.
When the phone rings:/ Every time i hear that thing it’s ringing!
What’s brown and sticky?/ A stick
When people ask the mortician what he does for a living, he says he is a “boxer”.
What did the shy pebble say?/I wish I was a little boulder! .

There is a quote for today. It is from a site called Abu Muqawama, which comments about the middle east. PG found this site while researching a post about refugees created by the war in Babylon. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
“The Iliad is ever mindful that war is about men killing or men killed. In the entire epic, no warrior, whether hero or obscure man of the ranks, dies happily or well. No reward awaits the soldier’s valor; no heaven will receive him. The Iliad’s words and phrases for the process of death make clear that this is something baneful: dark night covers the dying warrior, hateful darkness claims him; he is robbed of sweet life, his soul goes down to Hades bewailing its fate. Again and again, relentlessly, the Iliad hammers this fact: the death of any warrior is tragic and full of horror. Even in war, death is regrettable.” Caroline Alexander, The War that Killed Achilles.

PG saw where two of his FBF had taken a test to see what their “hippie name” was. One was Meadow Lotus Song, when he already used Meadow as an alternative name. The other, formerly employed in law enforcement, became Revolution Breeze.
Facebook applications are full of bugs. Instead, PG made a visit to “Big Android” Google (which is not much better), and a list of hippie name quizzes emerged. The background music was Children of Isizuke Tree. Pictures illustrating this endeavor are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The first stop on this voyage of nomenclature discovery was Testriffic. The slogan at the door was “Flower Power! Wanna see what your groovy name from the 60’s would be.. check it out and dont trip over your platform shoes!” ( Purist PG sniffs that platform shoes were popular in 1973, when America was wallowing in Watergate).
An early sign that this might not be the real deal is question one, What do you like to do on Friday Night? Answer three is “get waisted and listen to Janis Joplin”. How do you waist? Maybe she means eating junk food, washed down with Southern Comfort. The hippie name generated here was “Sunshine”. Changing a favorite color from blue to pink made the name “sunburst”.
The next stop on our mystery tour is the hippiechicknamegenerator. Instead of asking dopey questions, this one gives you a field to enter your name. When PG is typed in the box, he finds that his hippie chick name is “Flow”.
There is a debate whether hippy is spelled with a y or an ie. The people at hippy.com take the non authoritarian path, and do not tell you what your HN is. Instead, a unisexual list is provided, and you can choose your own. Some of the options include Papers, DeLorean, and Tranquilla.
Since PG misses being told what to do, he decided to take one more quiz. Also, his immunity is strong these days, and it is safe to use something called Quizpox. QP offers a list of ten items to be checked as appropriate. A pre aquarian distrust of spell check is in evidence, as you are asked if you are a fan of the Beetles. PG did his duty, and was rewarded with the name Peace Brodderick.

PG went on an open ended walk Tuesday. He does this a lot these days. Sometimes he has a destination, and a chore when he gets there. Other times, like today, he just packs the boots and camera, adjusts his clothes for the weather, and takes off.
When you go over the same paths over and over, you see the same things. When you bring a camera, you take pictures of the same things. Sometimes, you catch something that you missed, or a different light on a familiar object. PG finds the urge to digitally record less and less, the more he goes down these paths.
Today, he went on this trail, that comes out in back of Wal Mart. The glamor of Wally World was resisted, and PG went up to Peachtree Industrial. If we went northeast, he would get to I285 in a couple of miles. This does a pedestrian no good. If, on the other hand, he went south and west, he would go by Lenox Square, through Buckhead, and, if he was really athletic, into Midtown and Downtown. That is a very big if.
There were blue lights at the base of the wonderful bridge, along with a tow truck, and two recently altered vehicles. Traffic accidents can be so gruesome, but there was no ambulance here. This will not stop lawyers from getting involved.
The wonderful bridge goes from the former end of Clairmont Road, over Marta and Amtrak, and dumps vehicles onto Peachtree Industrial. Before the bridge opened in 1986, to get from Clairmont to Peachtree Industrial was a chore. You took a left at New Peachtree, crossed over the train tracks on a rickety bridge made of telephone poles, took another left on Peachtree Road, and cut through the parking lot of the Krystal. It is much easier to go over the bridge.
There was a line of cars on the bridge, waiting to get through the intersection. One opened a door, and said something to PG.
“We’re about to run out of gas, and we have to get to Cartersville”
“I’m poor”
“Thank you, G-d bless you, I love you sooooo much”.

If you go to the WordPress home page, you will see a selection of blog posts they like. One day, they featured Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
MFB ( please, no acronym jokes, except by the blogowner) is another gem of the blogosphere. As you may have guessed, it is named for Millard Fillmore. MF was POTUS ( and many POTUS are MF) between 1850 and 1853. The last whig to serve as POTUS ( history does not record whether he wore one), Mr. Fillmore helped delay the War Between the States for ten years.
After he left office, Mr. Fillmore visited Atlanta GA in 1854, becoming the first POTUS to do so. A road in San Francisco was named Fillmore Street, and loaned the name to a famous concert hall. Johnny Carson made him a punch line to many jokes. And, there is the bathtub.
In 1917, with America mixed up in a European war, H.L. Mencken published a column in the New York Evening Mail. He claimed that the bathtub had been invented in 1842, and was a controversial device. ( The first model was made of mahogany lined with lead.) President Millard Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House in 1850, and greatly increased the acceptance of the invention. The story was a lie, but was believed without question by the (unwashed) public.
The present day Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is one of millions of DYI internet portals. Recently someone found a letter, written by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was seen by many as a disaster. Mr. Stephens disagreed :
“I know the man [Lincoln] well,” [Stephens wrote], “he is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillmore did and better too in my opinion.”
MFB is a versatile facility, and takes an interest in the issue of carbon pollution. Maybe a blog named for a political hoax should take an interest in hot air. The post in question deals with one of the “tipping points” in the downhill slide the planet seems to be on. There is apparently methane gas trapped in the frozen arctic regions. When these waters are heated, they will release methane, which is a strong greenhouse gas. Apparently, the arctic methane problem is worse than previously thought. This is something that cannot be blamed on cattle or Al Gore.

The following is a repost. Today is not Friday the 13th, but Monday the 8th. Some say that any Monday is worse than any Friday, whatever the numbers. The consequence of Monday the 2nd is Friday the 13th. The pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
On this cheerful Friday the thirteenth, the world is going to hell. The economy is beyond horrible. People around the world are unhappy with their neighbors. Many people do not have the correct opinions about Jesus.
Craig, at Puntabulous, has an idea. Take a beverage poll.
1. If you could only have one non-alcoholic beverage and one alcoholic beverage for the rest of your life, which would they be?
2. If you could only have one beverage for the rest of your life non-alcoholic OR alcoholic, which would it be?
Note: Your alcoholic beverage can be any alcoholic beverage, and consist of more than one mixers/alcohols.
PG is a retired drunk. On December 31, 1988, he walked to the gas station, got a six pack of Coors in the bottle, and walked home. Shortly after midnight, he finished the last bottle. He has not drank alcohol since.
One day, PG will get all AA in your face. He does feel that life works smoother without beer…in fact, if he had not quit drinking, he may very well be dead. To be fair, that is true either way.
Getting back to the beverage poll, we see that it is reduced to one question. The answer to both questions is unsweetened homemade tea. This makes PG a double heretic. He lives in Georgia, where the tea is sweet and the folks are bitter.
The cheaper the tea bag, the better the taste. Winn Dixie used to have a store brand, Fishers, which had 100 unwrapped bags for 79 cents. The best value today is the Kroger or Aldi cost cutter, and it is two something for 100 bags. When you use three bags to make a half gallon, this is not going to kill you.
Some say you should only leave the bag in the boiled water for a few minutes, or you will get a bitter taste. Many of these people put large amounts of white sugar in the tea, which covers up half the taste. PG likes the bitter taste, and so he leaves the bags in the water until it is time to make another batch, and NEVER USES SUGAR.

PG got up, and looked at the intercom. He wasn’t looking for trouble. Pyromaniacs came up as if by magic, and there was a post about “redneck atheism”.
Actually, there were two posts about redneck atheism, which someone thinks is a clever phrase. Neither one mentions the connection to racism that is implied in redneck. You can tell all the hillbilly jokes you want, but the blunt truth is that rednecks are people that don’t like people with skin darker than theirs. And that is not the way that it is usually phrased.
PG sent an email about that to one of the perps, who is probably going to ignore it. That does not distract PG from a sentence in the other post, which got his Georgia blood boiling. ( Whether or not PG is a redneck is a matter of perspective. Sometimes it is best to defer to the opinions of others.)
The post that got PG’s britches in a tangle was about prayer. The post is part of a series responding to a list of one liners, that start “you might be a non questioning Christian if…”. These are a take off on some Jeff Foxworthy jokes about rednecks. ( In a bit of full circle irony, Mr. Foxworthy is now born again).
The nugget that inspired the pyroboi today was ” You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% failure was simply the will of God.”
The reply to this, and the reason why PG is sputtering, goes … “I can’t speak for people who deliberately pray for things that are manifestly opposed to the will of God, but my prayers are all answered. ”
PG grew up in a Baptist family, and left the church when he was 17. The next 28 years saw various paths and detours, before arriving at a destination of live and let live. His deeply Christian mother died at the end of 1998, and PG found comfort in the kindness of her friends.
Soon, PG found himself at war. He was working with a Professional Jesus Worshiper, who decided there was a problem with PG. One of the weapons that PJW used was Jesus.
Even after the open conflict cooled off, the PJW conducted an on-the-clock ministry in front of PG. This ministry created ill will for Jesus, and served to alienate PG from Jesus and Jesus worship.
The Third commandment says not to use the name of the LORD in vain. Conducting a ministry, while you are paid to work for your employer, that creates ill will for Jesus…this would seem to PG to be a clear violation of the Third commandment. It would seem to be “manifestly opposed to the will of G-d”
PG prayed every day during this long ordeal. He prayed to G-d to make PJW quit creating ill will for Jesus.
The prayer was never answered.

Several movies have had a world premiere in Atlanta. We will take a look today. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. Information about the films is from the Internet Movie Database.
As some of you may know, “Gone With The Wind had it’s world premiere at the Lowes Grand Theater on December 15, 1939. The Lowes Grand site is the current location of the Georgia Pacific building. There is a vacant lot next door, on top of some MARTA paraphernalia. This lot was the site of the Paramount Theater, another movie palace that did not survive.
The GWTW premiere was a big deal. Ten year old Martin Luther King Jr. sang with his church choir. Clark Gable requested a private meeting with Margaret Mitchell, who became the envy of every woman in America. When Mr. Gable checked out of his hotel, a lady was going to be given his room. The clerk asked for a minute to change the sheets on the bed, and the lady said, no, I want to sleep on the same sheets as him.
It was the golden age of movies, and the next year Atlanta hosted the first showing of “Who Killed Aunt Maggie”. The premiere was at the Rialto, on October 24, 1940. The review at IMDB said it was an enjoyable mystery, even if it was a cliche fest. It is not often seen today.
In 1946, “Song Of The South” had it’s premiere at the Fox Theater. SOTS is a controversial item these days. It was based on the Uncle Remus stories, which were written down by Joel Chandler Harris. For those who don’t know, these stories were told by the rural black people that Mr. Harris knew when he was growing up near Eatonton GA. As Wikipedia tells the tale “Controversy surrounding his southern plantation themes, narrative structure, collection of African-American folklore, use of dialect, and Uncle Remus character, however, has denigrated the significance of Harris’ work”. In other words, Brer Rabbit is not politically correct.
The reviews at IMDB tell a different tale. To them, SOTS is a happy children’s movie. The Disney company seems to wish it would go away and be forgotten. Copies are tough to come by these days. PG would say to see it for yourself and make up your own mind, but the Disney company does not want you to.
The female lead in SOTS was Ruth Warrick. Miss Warrick was a versatile talent. Her first movie role was in “Citizen Kane”, as Kane’s first wife. She was in many movies, before moving to television. She was perhaps best known as Phoebe Tyler, in the soap opera “All My Children”. Wikipedia tells a story about her, that is ironic for the female lead of “Song Of The South”
“In July 2000, she refused to accept a lifetime achievement award from the South Carolina Arts Commission because she was offended by legislators’ decision to move the Confederate flag from the state Capitol dome to another spot on the grounds in response to a boycott of the state by flag opponents. A lifelong supporter of African-American rights, she felt the flag should be removed completely, and commented, “In my view, this was no compromise. It was a deliberate affront to the African-Americans, who see it as a sign of oppression and hate.”
In 1949, the Paramount had the first screening of “The Gal Who Took The West”. The female lead was Yvonne De Carlo, who later achieved immortality as Lily Munster. In November 1951, the spotlights returned to Lowes Grand for “Quo Vadis”.
The last film in the GSU picture collection is “The Last Rebel”. This western had it’s premiere at the Rialto, May 27, 1958. The movie was a return to Atlanta glory for Olivia De Havilland. The film is the story of a man, whose wife dies in a fire during the war between the states. PG questions the use of the Stars and Bars on the marquee.
In 1974, Ringo Starr produced and acted in “Son of Dracula”. The movie had it’s world premiere at the Cherokee Plaza Theater. Cherokee Plaza is a shopping center on Peachtree Road, just east of the Atlanta city limits. The theater was torn down during a renovation, and the space is currently the produce department at Krogers.
A local radio station hired a band to play in the parking lot at the premiere. At some point, a long limousine pulled up to a stage, and Ringo Starr and Harry Nillson got out. Both were wearing sunglasses, even though it was after dark. Ringo got on the stage, waved a wand at the crowd, and said “I am turning you into frogs”. He went inside to see the movie, the crowd went home, and the movie was mercifully forgotten.
In 1981, PG went to a supper in an apartment building (now a vacant lot) across from First Baptist Church on Peachtree Street. There was a commotion down the street at the Fox, and PG went to see what it was. “Sharkey’s Machine” had it’s World Premiere that night. Local pundit Ron Hudspeth wore a tuxedo.