Quickies

This post will be all over the place. No theme, nothing tying it together, no nothing, period. So, strap yourself in.

First off, one night last week I was flipping around when I stopped on a program about the JFK assassination. It surprised the hell out of me to find out the famous Zapruder film of the assassination was shown publicly for the first time on a show hosted by Geraldo Rivera in 1975.

HBO's East Bound and Down is about to air for the first time in the U.K. Here's a brief BBC interview with the show's star and co-creator Danny McBride.

Commander Cody, minus the Lost Planet Airmen of course, has a new CD on the way. It's titled Dopers, Drunks, and Everyday Losers. Considering the Commander customizes "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette)" to his own tastes with references to things like Thai sticks, the title of the new CD doesn't surprise me.

Unfortunately, Garth Brooks is coming out retirement. Here's a quote from his announcement:

We need to take back the music," Brooks said. "We don't realize how powerful we are. (Former CEO of Capitol Records Nashville) Jimmy Bowen told me that once, and he was absolutely right.

No ego in that quote, huh? This Country Standard Time blog post tells a little more about the annoucement, including Brooks adamant statement about his music not being available on iTunes anytime soon.

The Chefs, the Skins and Amarillo Slim (the use of "Chefs" was intentional)

Amarillo Slim, who is considered the world's greatest proposition gambler, once said "You can shear a sheep 100 times, but you can only skin it once". For those of you who aren't knowledgable about the world of gambling and cons, that basically means you can play a sucker for some of his money often, but you can only bankrupt him once.

Here in the D.C. area, Dan Snyder has his hunting knife out and is starting to skin Redskin fans. After ten years of finding every possible way to reach into Redskins fans' pockets and pull out a dollar, Snyder is down to what may be his final con, putting the worst Redskins team in decades on the field and asking fans to continue to pay for admission to FedEx Field.

I won't list out all the scams Snyder has pulled over the years, Dave McKenna of the Washington City Paper is making a career of doing that. And, most everyone in the area read the series of articles a few weeks back in the Washington Post about ticket brokers getting first shot at tickets from the Redskins ticket office and the team filing suit against premium seat ticket holders who broke their multi-season contracts. But, none of Snyder's stunts compare to the fact Snyder continues to fancy himself a football operations expert after 10 years of Redskins mediocrity or worse and that he wants Redskins fans to believe it.

Finally, Redskins fans are seeing the light and realizing they are getting skinned. There are more and more empty seats at Fed Up...I mean...FedEx Field and fan reaction in the media outlets is one of disgust. Of course, we won't know for sure if the skinning is complete until those empty seats at FedEx Field are being driven by unsold tickets and not just no shows. Snyder's skinning of the Redskins fan base will be complete when the fans have turned the tide and put some pain in Snyder's pocket the way he has done the fans' pockets the last ten years.

Today's Redskins loss to the Chiefs continues the Redskins trend of helping teams in the midst of losing streaks break them. A couple of weeks back, I was in Missouri the day after the Chiefs got blasted by the Philadelphia Eagles 34-14. I gave the two sports radio stations in Kansas City a long listen that day while I was driving from Columbia to K.C. It was amazing how similar the calls into the station were to the calls received by the sports radio stations here in the D.C. area. There were the recurring themes in the calls of how the team had no direction, no talent and no hope. A common comment that day was "even Lions won yesterday" (the Lions had defeated the Redskins). For a while, I debated calling one of the stations to make a point I thought all those Chiefs fans were missing, at least they had a real football executive running the team since the Chiefs'owners had hired Scott Pioli away from the New England Patriots during the offseason. That alone puts the Chiefs one giant step ahead of the Redskins. Hell, today's game puts them two steps ahead of the Redskins.
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I'm thinking it's about time the Redskins were the subject of a commerical like this one that once used the Chiefs...I mean the Chefs...as the punchline.

Friday Frolics, Volume 32: Good Hair

I'm hoping Chris Rock's new movie, Good Hair, is as good as some of the mocumentariy shorts he did on his old HBO show. If it is, the movie will be pretty damn funny. Here's a link to the movie's trailer on the movie's own website.

Meanwhile, here's a clip about hair from the aforementioned HBO show....

Midweek Time Killers: Ralph Stanley Then and Now

Tomorrow, October 15th, Ralph Stanley's autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times will be released. Ralph Stanley wrote the book with Eddie Dean, who I often, and with much respect, refer to as the King of White Trash Writers. Today, the New York Times ran this review of the book.

Back before Stanley broke out to a widespread, non-bluegrass audience thanks to his version of "Oh Death" being featured in the Coen brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Stanley was still just a founding father of bluegrass. That was Stanley's status in 1995 when Rebel Records released Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys 1971-1973, a four CD box set which chronicled some of Stanley's most productive years as a recording artist after his brother Carter's death in 1966. In December 1995, The Washington City Paper ran this review and brief Stanley bio which was also written by Eddie Dean. If you're not planning on reading the new Stanley autobiography, and most of you probably aren't, you should at least take a few minutes to read Dean's City Paper piece for an interesting look at an American legend.

Quickies

There's only one quicky this week...

Some of you may have heard about this. An elderly woman was attacked by a "gang" of raccoons in Lakeland, Florida. I feel bad for the woman, but the local TV coverage there is way over dramaticized. Be sure to watch the news report videos that are also on this link. It really seems like reporter Dustin Chase is trying to turn this report into an Emmy winning report. And, Sherriff Turner speaks about the incident like the family of raccoons were members of a street gang.

Friday Frolics, Volume 31: The Fonz in a PSA

This clip was sent to me by "J.D." in Richmond. (I really should turn the Friday Frolics series of posts over to him.) This starts out a little slow, but stay with it. I have no idea who wrote this PSA, but I do really wonder what in the hell the were smoking.

Midweek Time Killers: Austin, Texas

This post if full of reading & video material on places in and around Austin that I didn't get to visit during my recent trip to Austin. In some cases, I visited these places during previous trips to Austin. With others, I've only heard or read about them.

First up, this piece tells the story of the weekly Chicken Shit Bingo sessions at Ginny's Little Longhorn. I've been to Ginny's several times in the past because some of my musician friends used to play there quite often, but I never made to a Sunday bingo session.

Back in August, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named Austin City Limits a historic rock and roll site. You can read it about here.

Finally, Broken Spoke owner James White talks about his Austin dance hall.

Quickies

First off, and on a serious note, singer/songwriter/fiddle player Amy Farris was found dead in L.A. last week. Farris had recently been touring with Dave Alvin as part of his all woman band, The Guilty Women. An obituary from The L.A.Times can be found here.

Second, yesterday (Oct. 4) marked the 42nd anniversary of the debut of Leave it to Beaver on CBS. Have you ever wondered how in the hell in little Theodore Cleaver got the nickname "Beaver"? Me too. And, now since I mentioned the Beaver, I'm going to have the Kinky Friedman song "There's Something Wrong With the Beaver" stuck in my head all day.

Finally, the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards were given out last week. Although Dailey & Vincent won the big awards of Entertainer of the Year andVocal Group of the Year, the big winners were Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper. Cleveland won Fiddle Player of the Year, while bandmembers Marshall Wilborn and Jesse Brock won the awards for Bass Player of the Year and Mandolin Player of the Year, respectively. The group also won Instrumental Group of the Year and Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year for their recording of Bill Monroe's "Jerusalem Ridge". A full list of winners can be found here and a video clip of the band's recent appearance on the Katey Daly show follows.

Friday Frolics, Volume 30: Robin Harris Flashback

Classic stand up from the late Robin Harris.