Music Friday: "Holiday,"

I've featured the work of James McMurtry before on Music Fridays. 

Today's song takes an acerbic look at Thanksgiving. And as I stated when I featured Choctaw Bingo last year, "Dark realism rarely sells." 

"Holiday" is certainly dark and realistic, and I've provided the lyrics below the video.  





Holiday by James McMurtry
The in-laws are waiting; the games have begun.
The cell phone keeps ringing: “Just don’t answer it hon.”
The whole thing’s arranged just to aggravate Dad.
And it’s amateur day on the old super slab.
The kids are strapped down like a half load of pipe,
All safe in their car seats they fuss and they gripe.
Well, you can’t hardly blame ‘em. 
It must be a bitch, counting the crosses off down in the ditch.
This one’s got flowers, this one’s got a wreath,
This one’s got a name painted down underneath.
Was the road all iced up, were they going too fast?
Here’s five in a circle left from the last holiday.

Holiday.

There’s a three-trailer rig just a throwin’ up spray,
Not legal to run on this kind of a day.
But god damn the smokies and the four wheelers too.
Stay offa my bumpers, or the same goes for you.
Because they'll be none for him,
He that wants it the most
As he hauls it on out to the Oregon coast.
No turkey, no gravy, no Zinfandel wine,
You stay off to the right, and we’ll get along fine.
He’s missing the football, missing the fun.
He’d play with the grandkids, but he’s off on a run.
And some hat’s on the radio singing his song.
But it don’t make a damn--
He’s in for a long holiday.

Holiday.

Now granny she’s yelling,
She’s ready to eat.
She’s havin’ conniptions
‘Cause they won’t take their seats.
But she’s got ‘em all gathered now under one roof.
With her camcorder loaded,
She’s gonna get proof.
But do you have to wear that,
Well I just don’t see why,
Please pass the potatoes,
Aw eat shit and die,
Did you hear about Ellen, she’s leaving, you know
How ‘bout those Packers, think it’ll snow?
And the minute it’s over they’ll scatter like quail
Off down the freeway in the teeth of a gale.
Silent and shattered and numb to the core,
They count themselves lucky
They got through one more holiday.

Holiday.

The highway patrolman,
He stands in the rain.
He just lets it run down to soften the stain
Of the blood on his pant leg
From working that wreck.
And he won’t forget it
In time for the next holiday.

Departing Chicago at 9:52
In clean desert camo, all baggy and loose,
Sits an Iowa Guardsman alone by the gate.
The place sure looked different in 1968.

When he traveled with mom, first time on a plane,
To visit some kin, he’s forgotten their names,
But he remembers the soldiers, still in their teens
In their spit polished shoes and their pressed army greens,
With the creases so sharp, and their faces so smooth,
But their eyes looked so heavy, he wondered how they could move.
And now he’s got that same look, like his insides are black.
He’s in his mid-forties, and he has to go back.
And he can’t even smoke while he waits for his plane.
The uniform’s different, but the mission remains:
To do like they tell you, don’t make a fuss,
Why’s not an issue, so don’t think too much,
You just do what you have to, shut up and drive.
If you come apart later, well at least you’re alive.
You can get you some help, you can deal with it then,
And life will be better ‘til it happens again

‘Cause there’s something inside us that won’t let us be.
It stalks through our days ‘til it’s too dark to see.
And it’s damn near as deadly as Texans on ice.
Lord don’t they beat all.
Y’all have a nice holiday

Holiday. 

Conservatives' Cliches

Hours after I make a post about how I won't probably post about politics much, I read the syndicated op-ed column by Clarence Page in my local paper. In the JG-TC, it is titled "Taking Stock of Conservatives and Their Lists of Cliches," but on website of the Chicago Tribune, it is called "Cliches Conservatives Say."

Page is responding to a book by Jonah Goldberg titled The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

I find it interesting that Goldberg thinks that liberals and progressives cheat by using cliches because conservatives and libertarians use them too. We're human after all.

In addition, and I know Jay Heinrichs who wrote Thank You for Arguing and Word Hero would agree with me on this supposition, I would argue that conservatives and the GOP, on the whole, are typically better at rhetorically/linguistically framing issues than Democrats and liberals are.

A good example are the slogans of "pro-life" and "pro-choice." Sure, people like to have their choices, but "pro-life" is difficult linguistic trap to escape.

Damn reality and its "liberal bias."

Dark Fortunes

We ate Chinese take-out last night, and later in the evening I thought about how I'd like to see fortune cookies that aren't so overwhelmingly positive.

It's understandable that fortune cookies are going to have positive messages since restaurants want their patrons to come away with a good feeling after filling their gullets, but I'd like to see slips of paper that have some dark humor or strangeness in 'em.

So here are some candidates:

• It's really you, not him.
• You've had one too many Tsingtaos.
• It really didn't happen for a reason. Often random stuff happens. Deal with it.
• You need a new hairdo.
• There won't be a second date.
• Bitterness is your friend. Solitude is your spouse.
• He's cheating on you. He's been doing so for months.
• In the Clifford books, they conveniently don't address the dog manure situation. I mean, Clifford's huge, right? Just imagine what kind of pressure that island ecosystem is under.
• Pull up your damn pants/shorts and get a belt to hold them up.
• You're tired of his crap, aren't you?
• In regard to clowns, what's their deal? Do you despise them like I do?
• It's no coindicence that eating fatty foods activates the neurological pleasure circuitry in the same way that cocaine, heroin and amphetamines activate it.
• You're going to regret those tatoos.
• Get off my property.
• One could argue that Jesus was a socialist. Discuss that proposition and its implications.
• Are you going to tell her that she has a booger in his nose or not?
• How have those New Year's resolutions worked out?
• Cookie Monster is a member of Mensa along with a number of porn stars.
• "I'm as serious as cancer" is one of the dumbest statements ever made.
• She's dating you, but she's looking for someone better.
• Why don't the Chinese make better wine?
• That statement you said earlier to your kid--your dad said that to you when you were a kid.
• What's your requested meal before you go to the chair?
• You're such a narcissist.
• Ars est celare artem.

Franz Kafka International

Even if you haven't read anything from Franz Kafka, a report from ONN, the Onion News Network, is funny stuff.

Click HERE and enjoy.

I'd hate to be a janitor there; I bet they have big bugs.