Years ago I lived near a drinking establishment on the boundary of Quezon City and Manila where people essentially killed each other over nothing. The place in question was a really a roofed parking lot that had been converted to a beer garden. It was frequented by off duty policemen, enlisted men and petty criminals. The clientele, plus the combination of strong waters and waitresses ensured that every now and again a shooting broke out essentially for no reason at all. One drunken man might look across the room and lock glances with a similar stare from a similarly unlovely face. Dagger looks would be exchanged and guns would flare in the dark. Another day, another corpse at the beer garden.
But now things have gotten out of hand. The New York Times reports that karaoke has been added to the deadly mix. A series of murders in General Santos City has been attributed to customer rage at hearing yet another cracked rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. The NYT quotes a karaoke bar patron who says, “I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.” That’s right boys. It’s a One Way Ticket to the Blues. The Times describes the travails of a Mindanao barber.
After a day of barbering, Rodolfo Gregorio went to his neighborhood karaoke bar still smelling of talcum powder. Putting aside his glass of Red Horse Extra Strong beer, he grasped a microphone with a habitué’s self-assuredness and briefly stilled the room with the Platters’ “My Prayer.”
Gregorio has successfully essayed the Platters, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck. But bar operators have apparently removed “My Way” from the playlists because it’s like asking for Twilight Time. The NYT tries to fathom the reason for the unreasoning antipathy to Sinatra’s tune.
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country’s many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.
Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.
One contributory cause to the mayhem is probably the presence of Red Horse beer, a beverage mentioned in the NYT article as a favorite of Mr. Gregorio’s. Though not quite as bad as Marca Demonyo gin, it definitely contributes to the atmosphere. But it was only contributory. What is it about guys, gals, guns, guitars and gin that draw people of a certain kind to together like moths to a flame? It’s an ancient and explosive brew which Robert Service described well. If a picture paints a thousand words.
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back at the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks on the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew. ….Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark;
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark;
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the Lady that’s known as Lou.These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know;
They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so.
I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two –
The woman that kissed him — and pinched his poke — was the lady that’s known as Lou.
The Malamute Saloon, Rick’s Cafe, the Mos Eisley Cantina or that joint I used to live close to fill a “hunger not of the belly kind, that’s banished with bacon and beans”. It fills a deeper longing that is met only by Red Horse Beer and a the smile from a waitress in a patched, starched uniform with a dozen bobby pins in her hair, where she is the eternal waitress and you the eternal fool. Only the Lonely. Whatever happens next you had better be ready with My Prayer after Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.
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W:One contributory cause to the mayhem is probably the presence of Red Horse beer
At least it’s not San Magoo in a can.
Last time I sang “My Way” on the Magic Sing microphone in Butuan the neighbors threw a stone on Fely’s mother’s tin roof. It might also have had something to do with it being 2 o’clock in the morning.
Come May 10 and you won’t be talking about Karaoke killings in the Philippines, Wretchard, but rather, the much worse violence over the elections, of which the Maguindanao Massacre was a first installment. Alas.
I remember the dirty-shirt bar at Subic in 1972. They had a small local band that did a mean (as in painful) cover of Country Roads. Nobody ever got shot, tho.
Years ago I lived in near a drinking establishment…
Dude, you need to fix that one way or the other…
I bumped into this post at Althouse before arriving here.
Blogger Tibore said…
Ok, first of all: Cotabato (the province Gen San City is located in) is the southernmost tip of Mindanao, and is very much Moro territory. As big and modern as Gen San is (over 500,000 people), that provincce that city is in is still a violent part of the Philippines. Go a bit more west, and you’re in the heart of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front territory, as well as Abu Sayyaf’s and Jema’ah Islamiyah’s stomping grounds. The NYTimes can make cute stories about Karaoke all they want, but I think this is far less about that and far more about where it’s happening at.
Anything to that W?
General Santos was once called Kidapawan before it was renamed after General Santos himself, who was a campaigner against the Moros in the early 20th century. Gensan, as it is now called, was founded by settlers from the Luzon and Visayas, so the area has a large Christian population. Due to US policy which enouraged large migrations from the northern islands Mindanao is predominantly non-Muslim, but there are areas in which they are interemixed. Cotatabato is one of them. General Santos is a thriving commercial city. Go a little further inland and you find the dead end towns.
Left alone that might work itself out eventually. But Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had the bright idea of buying off the Muslim insurgency by offering them a state within a state, essentially partitioning Mindanao. That proposal has been scotched, but there’s a great deal of controversy over which municipalities get to be assigned to the ‘autonomous’ Muslim local governments. Not surprisingly, the Muslim local government officials want the higher revenue Christian areas and the Christians aren’t so hot on it.
Now some Muslim politicians provided Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s party with huge vote margins in national campaigns. In consequence they are her close allies and she supports them. The recent massacre of journalists by Junior Ampatuan gives you the flavor of what warlords do when they feel they are covered from upstairs. There are fears some towns could be sold out; there are worse fears that this part of a slow motion process, abetted by the support from Islamic countries, to essentially dismember the Philippines.
So when the elections roll around, there’s crosstalk: Christians vs Muslims, Arroyo vs Political Opponents, Christians vs Leftist Church elements and of course, Manila vs the Provinces. I’ve given up following events in the Philippines in detail, but generally speaking the government is hopelessly corrupt. The Army is numerically large but has only a few combat effectives. The military hasn’t got the money, ammo or staying power to crush the Islamic insurgents. They might win if they raised mlitias, but that would be lead to ugly results.
The Philippines has lived through a period where bad governance had no consequences. It was kept afloat by overseas workers. I expect that the current financial crisis is eroding that pillar. Ultmately the Philippines will be under huge pressure. The only reason it survives is that the family support system provides it with an elasticity that keeps things from catastrophically failing.
It’s a terribly complicated place; a chaotic system with a stability of mysterious origins. By rights it should have fallen apart long ago. Maybe it will this time. But one of the things that keep it together is the curious absence of a future. People there live for the present. They have to or they would despair. Part of the reason that they’re so “hapi” is that is the escape from a dreadful prospect. So hoist up the Red Horse, the White Castle and the Marca Demonyo. And haul out the karoke and Take Me Back to My Boat on the River.
Did you that “my way” was first a french melody, that the C. François’ family became millionaire because of the copyrights ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUq2w6_Rhw
I bet that the french paroles wouldn’t have raised such fightings
In a tin-roofed bar in General San
As the midnight hour drew near
At the end of the bar sat a smallish man
Drinking a Red Horse beer
He smiled at the woman by his side
Then strode to the microphones
The room grew hushed and women sighed
Then sighing turned to groans
As the first faint notes came to the ears
Of assembled dames and men
Fierce cries of rage well fueled by beers
Erupted “Not again!”
The singer paid no slightest heed
He bade the music play
A single shot, the merest bleed
But still he sang away
Another shot, one to the head
At that the singer sank
Onto the floor where someone said
By God, you’ve shot poor Frank!
..I guess if I lived for the present and some dude was mucking it up with his tomcat serenade of His Way, I might be tempted to show him that his future is ” all used up”.
Some notes on Cotabato. The original Cotabato province has been cut up into several provinces, thanks to feudalism. Now we have Cotabato and South Cotabato, and more provinces like infamous Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, etc.
Gen San city used to be Dadiangas, while Kidapawan City is the capital of present Cotabato.
I suppose we can blame San Miguel Corporation for Red Horse, the cheaper, stronger, and now “deadlier” version of its world-famous San Miguel pale pilsen.
The NYT reporter should have known, the locals now have a different lingo for the place, it is now referred to as videoke bars, rather than the old-fashioned karaoke bars.
Even in big and nice cities one can find these bars, many hole-in-the-wall affairs, dotting many of its seedy underbellies, like in and near marketplaces, squatters’ areas, etc. Perfect set-ups for trouble and violence.
I surmise it is less that one particular song (an English song the masa easily identify with) incites one to violence, but rather the explosive environment where it is spawned. They could very well be singing Xmas songs as a prelude to violence. After all violence of this nature rises during the holidays.
I understand this. I spent a night in Belleek Castle (think of it as Bleak Castle) in Ballina, Ireland. My room was directly over the bar. They sang “Take Me Home Country Roads” until 3 A.M. I was feeling pretty murderous by the time they called it a night. Got up the next morning to find we were locked in–no staff on site at all.
Perhaps it is simply that the guys came in to have a beer and discovered, horror of horrors, it was Karaoke Night.
That happened to me once. An old friend and his wife came to visit and insisted that I go with them to eat dinner. As usual, they simply had to eat at place where they could see the ocean. They lived 70 miles inland; I could see the ocean out my office window.
So I got to hear them bicker and paid $7.50 for a hamburger I did not want. And then it turned out to be Karaoke Night.
And an Involuntary Karaoke Night to boot. Unfortunately I was riding in their car. Good thing I did not have a gun. I never much cared for “Baby, Baby” or whatever that song is called, but now I avoid any radio station that might play it.
And I have not been to dinner anywhere with those folks since.
Why do men frequent such dives? Because the rest of their existence is boring. Fall of ’63 I’d dropped out of college and taken a job as a Forest Service flunky in Asheville, NC, where I knew no one. After getting off work, I could go to my tiny apt. or stop at the bar without a name, an actual hole in the wall on a downtown side street, reeking of urine and beer. Which would be more alluring? Johnny, the owner/bartender, wielded a thick hickory club a few times a month. Sometimes a brawl would break out that he couldn’t control so he’d turn the lights off and things would settle down. Funny how if you can’t see, you start to worry about a knife in the gut and move for a corner. One episode perhaps bears on the selective advantage of concealed estrous. Johnny blew up at the sole waitress, and after a loud argument he fired her. Her response? She yelled out, “Who wants to f__k?”, and went out the door. Three guys, each from a different part of the place, bolted out in pursuit. The intensity of life therein is what draws the patrons.
In Dallas they have the dance halls of the dead. They cater to Spanish speakers both local and recently arrived. The music can be anything from “Ranchero” to Mex-Rock. It’ll open up and the beer will flow but eventually the violence will escalate. A fight, a shooting, and the then the local law will but on to much pressure that they’ll shut down. Then they’ll move to the next rental location and start all over again. It’s the mixture of lonely men, women, gangers, and beer.
Maybe the problem is Paul Anka — who’s name I’ve heard pronounced Pa’anka. In fact, I’ve pronounced that way myself. After I learned he wrote the lyrics to My Way the song became especially irritating. In fact, that is why I stopped going to Karaoke bars armed. As a control, what results from singing Panka’s She’s having my baby, not yours just before closing time?
Marie Claude: Did you that “my way” was first a french melody, that the C. François’ family became millionaire because of the copyrights
There’s a very cute French song from 1964 called “Laisse Tomber les Filles” (Forget the Girls) that was translated into English by a Francophile, one April March, and her version, called “Chick Habit” was used in two films that I like, including one by Tarantino. But the original one is good too, even if I can’t understand a single thing she sings.
if Carrie Nation
had been Filipeen
things would be different now
the driving frustration
that makes people mean
would’ve faded to mannered kow-tow
as no demonstration
of free-floating spleen
would be something bootleggers allow
Karaoke, all by itself, has a similar effect on me. The song chosen or singing location are purely secondary, imo. Thank goodness for good defense lawyers.
hdg/14 is right –there’s a silent direct challenge parenthetical:
“My Way (stick your way up your bum)”
A Philadelphia AM station Plays Frank Sinatra every friday evening and sunday miday (“Friday’s with Frank” 7-11pm and “Sunday’s with Sinatra 10am-2pm”)
After the last Sinatra song of the program today, the news lead off with “Sinatra, Phillipines, Murder” story…
It’s a small world.
At death man or God sings “My Way” – and eternity depends on who sings.
I remember Filipino bands singing “We gotta get out of this prace”….in Cu Chi EM clubs on stand downs from the field. Nobody got rowdy. Maybe it was the crappy beer, maybe it was seeing girls not in black pjs chewing betal nut. Karaoke is pretty lame in any incarnation due to the pretensions and lack of self awareness of the singers.
Teresita
that song wasn’t a hit here, but rather http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b08RqrmSRMU which won the Eurovion price
France Gall married Michel Berger, the compositor of the “rock opera” “Starmania”, then she became a bit more mature, she sang her husband’s compositions
here one beautiful song of him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUt6YLeECGI
wretchard,
guys, gals, guns, guitars and gin
The perfect pitch. Let’s make a movie.
San Magoo was an amazing concoction. No two bottles were the same, it’s alive.
For the sophisticates there was Tiger Beer. Wonder if it was connected to the ubiquitous Tiger Balm quack nostrum? Some of the musicians in Olongapao were very good.
Marx did have a genuinely good idea in his contribution to 19th Century Psychology of the concept of Alienation. His suggested causes were dubious and his solutions were toxic but the condition itself exists. Durkhiem’s refinement in his theory of Anomie refuted the Marxist claptrap and showed how increasing local autonomy and individual responsibility is what is needed. That is the opposite of Marxist totalitarian collectivism.
We can share the women
We can share the wine
We can share what we got of yours
‘Cause we done shared all of mine
Keep a rolling
Just a mile to go
Keep on rolling, my old buddy
You’re moving much too slow
I just jumped the watchman
Right outside the fence
Took his ring, four bucks in change
Now ain’t that heaven sent?
Hurts my ears to listen, Shannon
Burns my eyes to see
Cut down a man in cold blood, Shannon
Might as well be me
We used to play for silver
Now we play for life
One’s for sport and one’s for blood
At the point of a knife
Now the die is shaken
Now the die must fall
There ain’t a winner in this game
Who don’t go home with all
Not with all…
Leaving Texas
Fourth day of July
Sun so hot, clouds so low
The eagles filled the sky
Catch the Detroit Lightning
Out of Santa Fe
Great Northern out of Cheyenne
From sea to shining sea
Gotta get to Tulsa
First train we can ride
Got to settle one old score
And one small point of pride…
Ain’t no place a man can hide, Shannon
Keep him from the sun
Ain’t no bed will give us rest, man,
You keep us on the run…
Jack Straw from Wichita
Cut his buddy down
Dug for him a shallow grave
And layed his body down
Half a mile from Tucson
By the morning light
One man gone and another to go
My old buddy you’re moving much too slow…
We can share the women
we can share the wine…
Jack Straw by the Grateful Dead For the topic it seemed appropriate.
Why do men frequent such dives? Because the rest of their existence is boring.
Maybe. Or it maybe is is the low-life impulse, which may be more widespread than many would be willing to admit. Being a low lifer is in part an aesthetic choice. The guys who look for trouble; who get a buzz out of just barely getting of scrapes so they can tell the story; who are secretly happiest when they’re eating at a greaspit because they like grease; who are fatally drawn to a certain type of woman. The kind of guys who perk up in certain conversational settings. They are not necessarily evil. But what they do lack, and which they are somewhat at pains to conceal but for which there is no remedy, is their lack of class because they care nothing for it.
I think I told the story about how we washed up at a friend’s on the way to making a loan presentation. My buddy walked away ashen. He said “did you know that ‘Deiter’ (not his real name) has 200 hundred kinds of cologne in his bathroom?” What kind of guy has 200 kinds of cologne? I shuddered at the thought.
Later, I wondered whether there wasn’t really something wrong with me. Maybe the problem is really with the guys who think X-7 brand aftershave is the epitome of masculine scent. It’s the low-lifers who are odd, they just don’t see it. Yes, maybe some people do have 200 kinds of cologne and it’s a real failing that you don’t know any. Just like there are some guys who really do like fine wines and dining, who wear elegant clothes as second nature, who are different without the slightest affectation and who are not low-life by nature. The possibility that there people made just that way; without the slightest desire to hop into a karaoke bar and belt out “My Way” turns out to be an interesting reflection on one’s own character.
But is there any help for it?
MC: I’ve heard a few songs in English that I later heard French versions of, and somehow it was easy to tell which was the original. Even when I couldn’t quite make out all the words, their flow told me they were the originals. It wasn’t just a matter of being “faithful rather than beautiful,” since sometimes the emotional tone of the song was quite different.
And I agree with buddy: “My Way” has always stuck me as an arrogant song, intended to annoy the rest of us (by implication) cowardly compromisers.
Just watched the Super Bowl halftime show. Does the meaning of “Teenage Wasteland” change when sung by 60 somethings? They should change it to “middle age waistline.”
“Get down on your knees and pray!” Good advice that. Who were the performers.
49er #17:
Just have them do a Karaoke demonstration in the courtroom and they will never convict you. And be sure the judge has a gun handy.
“Myyyyyy Waaayyyyy…”
Bang!
“I rule it as Justifiable Homicide! Case Dismissed! Baliff, clear the corpses from the counrtoom!”
HDgreene, that was the Who.
Who?
Exactly. I’m not watching the game, but you quoted a lyric from their 1971 LP “Who’s Next”:
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
It should be the Tea Party theme song.
No
Who’s on first
What’s on second
I don’t know’s on third
The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: To have the parents tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.
The next day, back in class again, one by one the kids began to tell their stories. There were all the familiar types of stories and morals: don’t cry over spilled milk, finish what you start, a penny saved is a penny earned, and so forth. Then the teacher came to Janie.
“Janie, it’s your turn, do you have a story to share?”
“Yes ma’am. My daddy told me a story about my mommy. She was a Marine pilot in Desert Storm, and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory, and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol, and a survival knife. She drank the whiskey on the way down so the bottle wouldn’t break, and then her parachute landed her right in the middle of twenty enemy troops. She shot fifteen of them with the pistol, until she ran out of bullets, killed four more with the knife, until the blade broke, and then she killed the last one with her bare hands. ”
“Good HEAVENS,” cried the horrified teacher, “I…I…hope your daddy told you the MORAL to this…this…HORRIBLE story?”
“Yes ma’m,” answered Janie, “He said the moral of the story is, stay away from mommy when she’s been drinking.”
The most hopeful, inspiring, confidence-building piece about Tea Party you will have ever yet read …and, no BS in it, either. Kudos, Glenn Reynolds –
Here is a photo of the “middle age waistlines” in performance at the Super Bowl.
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100208/482/sb30202080110/
“No, Peter, you cannot go to the restroom until Roger is done singing.”
I saw an ad during the game. It said “Ask kgb!” Is that “the” KGB? Back in business but only in, you know, business? And with friendly, small letters and smiley faces (not at all like the FBI)? Do they now compete with Answer.com? Go ahead. Ask them, “what is Polonium used for?” And they will direct your question to Phds housed in Siberia.
Imagine what it would be like on the New York subway when the blind accordion player comes in if more people were carrying guns. You have not lived until you are in a crowded #4 train stopped for 20 minutes outside of Grand Central with the “Our Lady of Spain” wheezing at one end the tuneless blind violinist at the other, with both the Street Minister collecting to offer free sandwiches and the Acrobatic Youths who do back flips in the aisle clamoring to get in. Your average Mindanao bad guy wouldn’t last a minute.
wretchard,
Tocque is confusing me. How can I have the exalted rank of 4 and others also have the same number? The comments are ranked by the order of the Tocque standing not by the number of up or down votes as far as I can see. Is there any way to see how a comment has been evaluated by others?
hdg/33; the story kgb was trying to shut up –the message sent to whomever might in the future have an urge to tell it –according to an associate of the deceased plutonium tea victim, was that AQ #2 Al Zawaheri “The Egyptian” had been trained at a KGB camp inside Russia. The story is out there on the net. As Speaker Pelosi says, “You be the judge”.
There’s an iteration of it here at 11.20.2006 “Kremlin Poison” –with several links.
***
Trang/21; Nobody got rowdy. Maybe it was the crappy beer, maybe it was seeing girls not in black pjs chewing betal nut.
alls he needs is a publisher and a deadline.
I remember a cartoon I saw once. There was one angel talking to another saying “I invented this thing I call Karaoke.”
The caption under it was “The real reason Lucifer was thrown out of heaven.”
I have always had a taste for the interesting life, I have to admit. It has often been miserable, but rarely dull.
If you’re going to sing karaoke, there is really only one song to sing, and that’s “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” There should be a permanent, global ban on “My Way.”
There is a very lovely establishment on the road to La Calera, above Bogota, with a singer from Buenos Aires named Tony. He sings songs in English phonetically from his MP3 player. I tried to get him to do “Little Pal” but he didn’t have it. He did have “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” though. If you ever go tell him Gringo Jim sent you.
I was pretty buzzed on mulled wine and I though of a Dutch oil painting I saw at the Met showing a musician pouring the last drop of wine out of a glass onto his fingernail. It was apparently supposed to illustrate the fleeting nature of the pleasures of the tavern, and while they are fleeting, sometimes they are deep and genuine.
True Story from one of the toughest bars in Dallas, a few years back. This info is recorded in the official police report of the incident.
The bar was named – of course – the Bucket Of Blood. Biker bar in a bad part of town. But 2 or 3 guys got the idea that some people would be carrying a lot of cash, so they came up with a plan. The hour was getting late, and one went inside and popped the back door open, where his 2 confederates were waiting to jump in. They brandished their weapons and shouted for everyone to put their hands up. Instead, someone dove for the light switch and cut all the lights – gunfire erupted as everyone hit the ground. Bullets flew everywhere but incredibly no one was hit – probably because everyone was laying on the ground and shooting into the air wildly. The would be robbers managed to hop out the back door (with no loot) and got away. The police felt it would be easy to track them down by doing ballistics on the bullets, so they pried as many bullets out of the wall as they could find.
When the lab report came back, they found out that while the lights were off, 32 different weapons had been fired inside the bar. most multiple times.
Now that’s what you call a rough crowd.
Open mike night at at the Belmont!
One tocque over the line, sweet Jesus, one tocque over the line
Sittin’ downtown in a railway station, one tocque over the line
Waitin’ for the train that goes home, sweet Mari C.,
Hoping that the train is on time
Sittin’ downtown in a railway station, one tocque over the line
It is a longstanding tradition in this country to pay attention to the advertisements aired during the Superbowl, as the timeslots are the priciest in the business and the content is supposed to be intelligent and groundbreaking. Watching the television commercials tonight was a bit of a culture shock for me personally, because I barely ever watch the sort of television that carries advertising. Heck, the last time I regularly watched network TV was back when the networks were TV. In any case, the commercials did not live up to their reputation; I found them pretty uniformly insipid. Can we please put an end to this myth that ad consultants are geniuses who know exactly what they’re doing? I don’t think there has ever been a case when a TV commercial influenced my decision to buy anything at all. Surely the untold millions of dollars spent on marketing could be better used elsewhere, especially in this terrible economy.
arrgh! That’s a groaner wws #39.
First thing that came to mind when I read this post was the old Johnny Horton Song: When it’s Springtime in Alaska (it’s 40 below)
Teresita #20
“At death man or God sings “My Way” – and eternity depends on who sings.”
I doubt a more concise statement of the universe of Man has ever been stated. The inhabitants of these dives have made a choice of who they’d rather have doing that singing, and what results in the establishments can be viewed as an attempt by God to get them to change their tune before the Great and Final Karaoke Call.
–JC
Carmax cracked me up –the epiphany-having animals with the orchestral crescendo on the sound track just when it ”dawns” on the critter ”what a good deal Carmax is” –funny, and it stuck the brand in the memory somehow –maybe the ‘max’ sound crescendo –?
…somewhere in Makati after too much Johnny Red, hanging in a dim lit dive(must be before Kareoke) with very friendly ladies and a singer doing “Peelings, nothing more den Peelings”…smokey, swirling …need a cab back to the Intercon…room boys on the 10th floor lay me out with lots of towels…another rough night in old Manila town…but its far and away from the Nam and all that crap.
It was called “The Headquarters”. We called it “The Hindquarters”. It was down the street from “Uncle Nasty’s” which had the most compliant waitresses I ever met. Both were very real Saturday night ‘cut’n shoots’. Cold Bud with a Cuervo back.
mmmm.mmmmmm.mmmmmm
I was lucky and saw The Who before Entwhistle offed himself in Vegas with nose candy. Zack Starkey is a GREAT drummer. Frakkin’ Daltry still has six-pack abs. And Townsend being older makes him calmer and believe it or not … better.
Wretch, why can’t I ever get Toque to work? It never successfully contacts the server. I’m using Firefox 3 point whatever it is… 3.6. I do have some restrictions in place on cookies, scripts and pop-ups, but even when I drop all shields, no cigar. Is it still on the blink?
Back in college days at Columbia in the mid 70′s I played harmonica to Jim Middleton’s guitar from time to time. Once we went to the Wall St subway station and played some Jerry Jeff Walker
Jim was from Austin. His dad was a speech writer for LBJ in the 60′s. He told the story about how after LBJ left the white house he had the LBJ Library built at UT in Austin. He was afraid subsequently that people would not go to his library. So He asked UT officials to make regular announcements over the stadium speakers during football games that students were free to use the bathrooms at the LBJ Libraries during half time. It was never clear to me as to whether the UT officials actually carried out this request.
I don’t know what happened to Middleton. He has not showed up in my facebook account as many of the others from my past have done in the last year or so. Lately some of the guys have taken to recounting the bars there, the west end, augies, the mill, and others whose names I’ve forgotten.
Yesterday after digging out from under two feet of snow here in the DC metro area, I remembered the Gypsy King’s Bamboleo.
And today after digging I recalled a poem I wrote in the 80′s about a trailer inside of which my gradma lay dying. The trailer was outside the old farmhouse in central Pennsylvania on the farm where she raised my dad and seven other kids.
Grandmá Dying
How quiet is the snowy night–
the grey white clouds
lit by the white
sleeves of the branches
of bare trees.
An arc lamp shines through the branches,
the arc light orange like fire.
No breeze,
but snowdrifts
teeth an inch
of arc light.
The limbs sparkle.
Arc light shaded from
the trailer’s wheels beams
upon the snowed door jamb–
wired light upon the chrome.
The crescent moon points home,
the tide of clouds
against the lunar horns
like á half formed thought
or plain mystery–
snow falls about the branches
and of the ground like minerals.
Shiny streaks prick the snow piles.
I didn’t think much of the commercials for the Superbowl tonight.
Was it just a coincidence that the call of the New Orleans saints was
… “Who Dat”
I think not.
Never mind the rankings, what are tocquens? How do they accumulate? Can you lose tocquens, and if so, what does that mean?
Sorry, it’s off thread but I’ve lost my decoder ring and I’m too far into the gin to find it now (fortunately safe at home and in no danger from the maddening influence of kareoke – seriously, is it any wonder they end up shooting each other?)
@45 RagnarD
Daltrey is a great singer. I’ll take your word about Zack Starkey but Keith Moon was in a class by himself. The greatest rock’n'roll drummer of all time- he wasn’t just part of the rhythm section, he led the band.
Wretchard the Cat and Tocquen Sam, what a combination.
Buckfast: No Karaoke Needed
Wreck the Hoose Juice
COATBRIDGE, Scotland — What is it about Buckfast Tonic Wine that makes it so alluring to consumers and yet so repulsive to politicians?
Buckfast is considered a regional favorite in Coatbridge.
Perhaps it is its special caffeine-and-sweet-wine recipe, which allows overly enthusiastic consumers to be tipsy and bouncy at the same time.
Perhaps it is its array of snappy nicknames, including “Wreck the Hoose Juice” — hoose being a Scottish pronunciation of house — or its exotic provenance as the product of wine-making Benedictine monks at an abbey in England.
—
In a survey last year of 172 prisoners at a young offenders’ institution, 43 percent of the 117 people who drank alcohol before committing their crimes said they had drunk Buckfast. In a study of litter in a typical housing project, 35 percent of the items identified were Buckfast bottles. And the police in the depressed industrial district of Strathclyde recently told a BBC program that the drink had been mentioned in 5,638 crime reports between 2006 and 2009 (the bottle was used as a weapon in 114 of them).
A spokesman for J. Chandler & Company, which distributes the drink, said that Buckfast accounted for less than 1 percent of the alcoholic beverage market in Scotland and was being unfairly singled out. Nor, he said, is wine-making a sign that the monks of Buckfast Abbey have strayed from the teachings of St. Benedict, an accusation recently leveled by an Episcopal bishop.
“It’s always wise to remember that Jesus turned water into wine,” the spokesman, Jim Wilson, said in an interview.
Okay, I tried to post this a previous time and it did not make it through moderation, feel free to sing along if it makes it this time. You all know the words.
I love this bar.
By the way, in my youth, it was not an unusual experience for me to be frequently thrown out of bars.
hdgreene, I was wondering the same thing about that kgb thing. Its target market seems to be people too lazy to use Google but with 99 cents to spare. Just for grins, I googled your question, “What is Polonium used for”. The top few links told me more than I really wanted to know about Polonium. Funnily enough, Item 9 on the list was a link to this very thread, and your comment.
The lesson must be select your home away from home carefully. In a word, you must carefully select your battlefield and you must have a battleplan.
The “U&I” in Olongapo in 1973 was ideal. First it was patronized predominantly by young men from my unit, so if chairs started flying we could form a British square, or more likely an American amoeba.
Secondly, the hostesses were primo. “Crazy Amy” wasn’t that much to look at, but she could beat the officers at Scrabble. She even had business cards, “Crazy Amy, Red Leader” of Olongapo, Zambales. No address, but if you had to ask?
Thirdly, when it came to singing we left it to the professionals. The headliner was “Marabella.” Marabella was a husky-voiced (disregard Wretchard’s Malamute Saloon) chanteuse and a transvestite who knew the true meaning of “My Way” better than any of us.
Buddy Larsen at 31: Thank you – you’ve just made my day!
16. buddy larsen:
if Carrie Nation ….. well here’s what happen to Carrie Nation in this countires toughest town, Butte , Montana.
It All Ended in Butte , Montana
The scene was set years before when the US sent future five star general Omar Bradley, then a Captain, to Butte to restore law and order such was the toughness of the town and it’s mix of races and miners.
Carrie Nation showed up with her ax in 1910, having busted up saloons and whiskey barrels from New York to Chicago. But on her first foray in Butte, she ran into May Maloy, a barkeep and madam who beat her so badly that Nation fled town and retired from her jihad for good .
http://tinyurl.com/ar9lzv
54. JDinOslo:
The short of that in the southeast is “if mama ain’t happy; ain’t nobody happy”
At an internet marketing conference in vegas last month, I proposed the other side of it.”if papa’s happy, he spreads it around”
The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street
This piece gets at why the dems aim at the US banks is misguided. (The reason is that the USA has signed international agreements such that if even if we banned US institutions from certain practices we could not ban foreign institutions from doing the same thing in the USA.
The real aim should be at the WTO
Charles,
from your article
“And Foreign Policy magazine ran an article entitled “The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism”, arguing that the power of nations is declining, and being replaced by corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions”
and on an european blog
http://tinyurl.com/yknvxwu
the Americans hedges funds were speculating on Greece, (Portugal and Spain too) arguing they didn’t get enough revenues… fusillez Paulson, and Soro !
some want a global governation
In the “Oh Lord Please Don’t Let Them be Misunderstood” category,
the award goes to Wall Street.
In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to GOP
Here is a visualization of facebook connections in the usa. Mostly about what you’d expect.
re: the Who’s halftime show – I’ve been a longtime fan of the Who, had every album back in the day, and was really pleased that they closed with “Won’t get fooled again”
Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss!!!
(hey bammy, didja think they may be talkin’ about you?)
But I gotta say – the one reason above all that I absolutely knew that it was live and not a lip-synch replay was that no *way* would anyone ever have kept a tape where the lead singer missed almost every high note on the page. Those were painful. It was, come to think of it, pretty close to a Karaoke version of the Who’s Greatest Hits.
I probably know the original versions a little too well. The missed notes were like fingernails on a blackboard to me. On the other hand, it’s amazing that those old farts can still get up on stage and make that good a show of it.
Charles @ 57: The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street
= globalization.
Well then, …
–
wws @ 61: live performance, stadium performance, couldn’t really expect studio perfection in any case. for what it was, it wasn’t bad music. All the CSI fans in the audience could grok it. I’d rather have seen (er, heard) Jack White making a guitar scream, but this wasn’t any worse than having the college marching band messing around for ten minutes.
http://mgiannini.blogspot.com/
it is confirmed here
Karaoke.
I’ve only sung karaoke once. I can’t sing, and I can’t dance.
My girlfriend is an VERY accomplished musican, vocal and instrumental.
One night we headed down off the mountain.
Stopped part way at the Burro Inn, Nowhere, AZ (yes). Got a bit lubricated.
Then headed further on down to the American Legion Club in a town of 750 people. They know us. We are the only outsiders. We randomly show up a few times a year. It was karaoke night. She kept saying, “we can do a lot better than these clowns”. Uh, “no, not me”.
She found my favorite group from the late ’60′s and ’70′s in the book. Delany and Bonnie. They sang and played and jammed with a hell of a lot of the “big names” here and in England. Famous names sat in, and “famous” sidemen. But, they are now “rather obscure”.
So, we DID Delaney & Bonnie’s “Never Ending Song of Love” (for you). We sure DID !
Singing. Dancing. Free-style Spinning around and Touching and Singing in each Other’s Face.
Did I say I don’t sing, and I don’t dance. Will wonders never cease ?
The first and only standing “O” of the evening. Whooping and Clapping and HOLLERING !
When it all died down a bit, one of the bar flies said, in a LOUD and drunken voice,
“Jesus Christ Almighty, you two gotta go out and f__K THAT OFF in your pickup truck ! ! !”.
Which brought the house down again. {:^)
W
“It fills a deeper longing that is met only by Red Horse Beer and a the smile from a waitress in a patched, starched uniform with a dozen bobby pins in her hair, where she is the eternal waitress and you the eternal fool. Only the Lonely. Whatever happens next you had better be ready with My Prayer after Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
Listen to this while you read this post. (open in a new tab)
Funny how at my age, you read or hear something and your old brain kicks in and a vivid memory comes back that you had forgotten for decades.
After I had got (finally) out of WR in I believe April or May of 70, and got back to Texas and stayed the summer with my Mom and Dad, I went and bought me a well kept 68 HD Police Special for $ 450.00. Some of my friends and I stripped it down and rebuilt it with the help of a local machine shop and I painted it black and red. It was the last of the Shovel Heads before AMC got involved and screwed up Harley for years.
Anyway, I said goodbyes and took out to south Texas because it was away from where I was and it promised to be warmer than in West Texas at that time of year. Broke down once because somebody didn’t get the chain link on all the way, got just outside of Houston and missed the turn off and wound up in Pasadena, kinda lost (but who cared) so I pulled into a bar called Gilley’s. I remember that they were remodeling the place and half of it was closed. I spent a good half hour in the restroom cleaning up from a plus six hour ride, then I went out and set down at a table and asked for something to eat and 2 beers. I remember that there was loud music and people shouting, singing and talking, and the bar was full of people much older than me. I being only 21 and fresh out of the Army, I didn’t know what was what or who was who. But it was like cool water on a fevered head.
Anyway, I ordered something to eat and two Lone Stars and was sitting watching the crowd and feeling a little randy, (I get like that when I’m a drinking).
The place was quickly filling up and a guy and his gal asked if they could sit at the table I was at. I said sure and they sat down. It wasn’t very bright in the bar and I wasn’t real interested in talking to anyone anyway so it was several minutes before I even looked at this guy and his gal. There was something familiar about him but I couldn’t place it for a minute or so. Then it hit me like a electric shock.
This guy was Roy Orbison!!
He didn’t have his trade mark sunglasses on but I was positive enough to say to him that I had been a fan of his for years. He thanked me and introduced me to his new (second wife) Barbara Anne.
Needless to say, I was in awe and shock but we managed to talk over the noise and drink a lot of Lone Star and I will treasure that memory until I die.
No there wasn’t any karaoke nor fights or anything else that night. We sat and drinked and ate and talked and drank, and that was the first and last time I ever met an American Legend.
(His new wife was determined to help him get over the lose of his family. That I do remember. That and that she was beautiful and didn’t talk that much)
I sure wish we had more real American legends. Waylon is gone, Willy will be soon and Hank Jr might just be-the last to go.
There are others, gals and guys but I won’t list them here. But they pale against the Legends.
o here is to Roy and his memory. (as I drink a Vodka and V8 with Louisiana hot pepper sauce and loads of pepper.
Thanks for all you gave to America.
Papa Ray
Why is getting drunk, or liquor itself, attractive?
I’m not trying to offend, I just don’t see any sense in it.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Peter…young man, evidently you have missed out on a lot of living.
It’s not the liquor but the freeing of your personality and your soul, that liquor gives to you. For a while you are able to disregard and throw away all of your sanity and your cares, only to be charged double for them when you awake.
Try it for a time, just be careful and courteous to those around you. You might just be surprised along with your dry heaves and headache.
Or not. Most can drink without remorse or taking the next day off, or at least can come up with a good excuse!
But only with practice.
Papa Ray
John J. Miller of National Review did an article of great conservative songs. The winner was the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” When Pete found out about it he almost excreted a large heat-hardened building object and attempted to write an editorial for publication over in England where it would do the most good, explaining why his song was not conservative; in fact it’s a progressive anthem blah blah blah. Interesting that he makes his living writing and talking, because it’s the most incoherent thing he ever wrote. Gotta love Pete, but sometimes I’m not sure why.
O/T– bogie wheel and the other BC yinzers probably heard already– Fox is reporting that John Murtha has died of complications following gallbladder surgery.
Papa Ray and you other bar aficionados– take good care that your choice in likker doesn’t pickle your gallbladders!
FOX News confirms that Rep. John Murtha has just passed away after complications from gallbladder surgery. Before we dissect the political ramifications, let us pause a moment to honor a man who, for all his unsavory positions of late, was in fact veteran and served his country in foreign lands.
This cannot help but roil the Democratic House members, and it will be interesting see what happens in the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. We may not understand the logic of it, but certainly deep changes are afoot in American politics – changes that issue from a source far beyong the designs of mortal men. Again, interesting times.
#66 Peter Warner.
What #67 Papa Ray said.
“the freeing of your personality and your soul” {:^)
But, at age 67 I’ve burned the whole damn candle, not just both ends.
When you retch and throw it and then dry heave it and take more Pepto Bismal again just
so you can try and get more alcohol down the hatch to feed your brain around the clock,
then you are “pretty close” to checking out.
It is a great way to lose weight. Nothing but vodka and Pepto Bismal 24/7 takes the pounds off pretty quickly. And, it takes your brain cells too.
They say you have to hit rock bottom to get help from AA. Yep. It’s been four months now.
I’m healthy. Sickenly healthy.
But, damn, I sure do miss a lifetime of those “good times”.
And, “the freeing of your personality and your soul” {:^)
“Why is getting drunk, or liquor itself, attractive?
I’m not trying to offend, I just don’t see any sense in it.
Best regards, Peter Warner.”
If you are looking for sense in liquor. You might as well be looking for hen’s teeth. It aint there. Won’t ever be there, ever. But like Papa Ray said it will open your locked doors and fling open the windows to your soul. It lets out all the stops. So be careful and ease up on it. And the price you pay at the end of the ride is not necessarily one you would be willing to pay, but you will pay it.
Jim, Been there done that and still looking for my t-shirt. And no I didn’t want to pay that price either.
Murtha, Sorry he didn’t get his chance in front of the courts. All of his past honors were cast to the gutter when he made his choice to throw in with the dishonorable ones.
Maybe the system margins still work. Maybe the oscillation of power is still enough to overcome the insults of progressivism/marxism. And maybe, just maybe time heals all wounds.
Murtha was one of the few people who can be called an ex-Marine. Can the Republicans flip this seat? The Democratic Cloakroom must remember a nest when a predator rips the top off.
Who’d've brought down the house if they’d sung “Teenage Wasteland” as “Old Age Waistline”
***
This is big –i think –in the culture war (esp with the Drew Brees story) the longtime all-time #1 tv show, the finale of M*A*S*H, has been replaced –announced this afternoon — as the ‘most watched tv show of all time’ –last night’s game had 106 million viewers.
(i hated M*A*S*H. wanted to assault and batter most of the characters every time i had to sit thru an episode, which would happen, trying to be sociable with assorted others across the span of time)
Buddy, I’d cheerfully settle for Roger’s waistline — Pete’s, not so much. But yes, that would have been funny. Oh, and I hated M*A*S*H, too.
Ahh, Murtha croaked it. Finally. I always get a happy feeling when one of these miserable Congressional lifers gets his ticket to hell punched.
Oh Lord, please croak Arlen Specter next. Then John Dingell and Charles Rangel and Robert Byrd and Pat Leahy and….
At least that opens up another seat for a possible common sense candidate (read as: Tea Party) and a repeat of MA.
As for Murtha, well, he chose poorly.
marymcl @ 48: Townsend pointed that out and said that Zack had studied Moon. He also noted he became as good or better than Moon. Zack noted that you could not do the band justice without taking that path because he played the drums as many instruments. The proof of the pudding was the opening of “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. It was perfect. You do recognize the Starkey name, right?
wws @ 61: Agreed, that could be painful. I do not watch football so was spared the abortive trip down memory lane. OTOH, check out Robert Plant – two come to mind:
Mighty Rearranger – Robert Plant and The Strange Sensation – They went to Austin City Limits Fest years ago and showed all the kids how it was done. Their version of “Whole Lotta Love” rivals Led Zep’s.
Raising Sand – Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, produced by T Bone Burnett – Just slow smokes, each and every track.
You can see both on Palladia channel via Soundstage shows if you have HD cable.
Murtha is gone. Left an empty airport as part of his legacy. Symbolic? Who knows. His Senate seat is now in play. I expect that the DNC is scrambling right about now. And we will have to listen to empty eulogies for a couple of weeks.
Dan of Az: I have been there for 16 years. K.I.S.S. & work the steps.
wretchard:
By any chance, are you talking about the Hotel California?
@31. buddy larsen:
That “moral story” is hilarious. I’ve sent it to a horde of folk who will make it one of Google’s biggest hits tomorrow!
The Who, I think, were making a political statement. I missed the high notes, but the performance was vintage.
Great job, Wretchard and all who post here. Fabulous stuff!
@81 RagnarD
yes, I recognize the name! And I didn’t see the show, though if it was as good as you say I’m kinda sorry to have missed it (the Who, that is)
jafco/83; heh –glad it tickled you –did me too –yes, don’t cross mommy when she’s drinking!
Hence the popularity of “Blue collar comedy”.
Hard to say why “My Way” serves as a trigger but all who have spent any time in taverns knows, a person looking to go off will find their trigger, no need for any particular song, incident, or trigger. A brief eye lock maybe enough to spur a “what’re you looking at?”
Michael Yon relates a story of a tavern altercation he was in. It ended very badly especially for his opponent in the affair. In this case, it just seems Yon’s opponent was looking to make someone’s day miserable and he succeeded at the cost of his life.