Countrified Music

Country songs seem to merit parody, don't they? This coming from a guy who likes country music, and I mean the old twangy stuff like Hank Williams all the way up to, oh, the late 1990s. I don't know much about any music since then, except for Weird Al. He's timeless.

But country begs for jokes almost more than any other style of music. Maybe it's the lyrics. This morning I happened to hear, I'm so lonesome I could cry. Not terrible, but I immediately found myself thinking...

I'm so hungry I could eat.

I'm so tired I could sleep.

I'm so thirsty I could drink.

I'm in so much actual physical pain I could take 8 Tylenols or even go into urgent care and maybe have surgery and spent a few days in the hospital recovering.

All right, that last one was kind of forced. But you get the point.

News Feed

I'm getting more and more comfortable with algorithms. Perhaps that's a good thing; perhaps not. I don't see where it's all that bad quite honestly. They're annoying at times, yes. I bought one stupid torpedo heater for the old barn a few years back, one which I expect to last for ages, and still deal with pop up ads for heaters when I log online. Shaddup already, will ya?

Okay, deep breath. One interesting thing which algorithms send me, and I look forward to, are regular lists of hit songs from a given week in the past. It's fun to see, and offer those 'I remember that' moments which are wonderfully and happily nostalgic. Then yesterday I get a list from sometime in 1994 and don't recognize a song or an artist on it. 

What the hell is a Toad The Wet Sprocket? Or do I really want to know? But I only use that as an example. It seems that somewhere between 1985 and 1995 I lost track of current popular entertainers. When I receive a list from before that time frame I generally recall the song and the artist. Then it becomes a mix. Then, well, I ask things like I asked to begin this paragraph.

I'm not, or at least I don't think I am, one of those who condemn new stuff merely because it's new. Yet I also can't recall much about performers in the last 25 or 30 years which stand out for me. The most recent I can think of is (are?) The Offspring, but even they're from the late 1990s. And I cringe at some of their songs.

I know who Taylor Swift is and have likely heard some of her songs, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. Indeed when I want to hear music I pull up the songs of my youth. I never, and I mean never, consciously seek out new tunes. Unless, that is, and I mean this at least half seriously, when I want to hear what Weird Al is mocking.

I might have to get old. But that doesn't mean I have to care about the new.

Two Score and Three Years Ago

As I continue (and hope to continue even further) into dotage I must admit wondering just what aging means. At times I feel it's nothing more than forever pointing at something and exclaiming; "I remember that!"

A few minutes ago I watched the trailer for Weird, the completely faked documentary of Weird Al Yankovic. It stars Daniel Radcliffe as Al. 

Harry Potter, I'm sorry, Mister Potter as Professor Snape would say, as the embodiment of a singer who I grew up admiring (my triune forces in comedy are the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, and Weird Al Yankovic) is either a triumph of casting or, well, just plain weird. And as Weird Al himself is all in with the project, I'm leaning towards weird. Heavily. 

But to the point: as I watched the minute long advert all I could think was, I remember Weird Al's arrival. I remember clearly (well, clearly in that vague, dream like sense) Al's arrival on the stage in 1979 or so. Hence my title: two score (forty years) and three years back I was listening to Weird Al on the syndicated Doctor Demento radio show (Rainn Wilson is Dr. Demento in the movie by the way) and thinking that that guy's funny. Truly hilarious in fact. 

And now I'm anticipating a fake story about him, about which I literally pointed at my computer screen and exclaimed, "I remember that!" about Weird Al's arrival. 

Dotage, perhaps, is more immanent than I might care to admit.