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8/6/10

George Thorogood

Move It On Over...


music break

One of the most underrated American Rock and Roll musicians, in 2005, on his 30th Anniversary Tour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBsRkJ9D4PY

Ben Quayle's Rented Kids

The Family Man...

Just as disturbing is the way one of his opponents, Vernon Parker, is getting mileage from this and tying it in with a social conservative anti-gay marriage message in the mix. Arizona's Congressional District Three has a very crowded field and the candidates are stooping to new lows to garner attention and pull ahead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBJC8bIUaDc

8/4/10

Wanda Jackson

The Queen of Rock...

music break

Long before Grace Slick, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Melissa Etheridge, et al...there was Wanda Jackson. Female singers of the fifties and sixties sang pop, soul or country but not the mix of rock and roll and country that was the style of Wanda Jackson. It was highly unusual for a woman to appear playing her own guitar and swinging her hips as she did. She still tours and performed at the 2010 SXSW in Austin.

"Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad"
on Ranch Party ca 1956


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw86PIIT8Rw

Urban Landscape Photography VII

Go ask Alice...

Ok, why does a U-Haul moving van from Michigan have giant mushrooms?

photo by Gregory A. Z. Nelson

8/3/10

Willie Nelson and Ray Charles

"Seven Spanish Angels"...


music break

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pnLnZo5aWM

Jante Law

Groupthink squashing Individualism...


from A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks
Aksel Sandemose 


Sandemose in his 1933 novel formalized a set of laws that had been a sociological form of behavior in the Scandinavian world for centuries. They are important in the United States, especially in the upper midwest states, because they still heavily operate in that region where many Scandinavian immigrants settled. As these immigrants migrated across the country in the 20th century, they brought these traits with them, permeating local culture, integrating the concepts of collectivism and socialism and enforcing these social behaviors and political beliefs into American society.

They are antithetical to Individualism, Freedom of the Individual, Entrepreneurial Enterprise, Creative Expression and defeat positive thinking ego in the worst possible way. To me they are essentially anti-American because they are based on conformity and discourage originality, open discussion, creative thinking or anything "outside the box." Regardless, they are widely accepted as the norm in many communities, influencing our social, economic and political culture, destroying the potential of creative minds and new ideas.

The chief principle to all of them is: 


Don't think you are anyone special or that you are better than anyone else.


The rules are:


1.   Don't think that you are special.
2.   Don't think you are of the same standing as others.
3.   Don't think you are smarter than others.
4.   Don't fancy yourself as being any better than others.
5.   Don't think that you know more than others.
6.   Don't think that you are more important than others.
7.   Don't think that you are good at anything.
8.   Don't laugh at others.
9.   Don't think that any one of us cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach others anything.
11. Don't think there isn't anything that we don't know about you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybWrY0venT4

8/2/10

Buck Owens and Don Rich

"Above and Beyond"...


music break

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWdTw5Dl9w

Zen and the Art of Writing

Quality cannot be defined but you know what it is...

"Another thing that depressed him was prescriptive rhetoric, which supposedly had been done away with but was still around. This was the old slap-on-the-fingers-if your-modifiers-were-caught-dangling stuff. Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of itsy-bitsy rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified on with the upper classes.


In Montana, however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass."


from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Part II, Chapter 15 
copyright 1974, 1999