Month: August 2021

Tom T. Hall

Country singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall died yesterday. “Harper Valley P.T.A” was a big hit for Jeannie C. Riley. The biggest hit of his I recall is “I Love”. The Drive-by Truckers covered

Gunpowder Milkshake

Gunpowder Milkshake, a new film on Netflix, is good, not great. It’s an extremely violent action film directed by Navot Papushado. Papushado had co-directed two excellent Israel films, Rabies (2010) and Big Bad Wolves (2013). I recommend both, especially Big Bad Wolves.

All three are influenced by Quentin Tarantino who praised Big Bad Wolves. Gunpowder Milkshake is the most Tarantino-like: excessive violence, outstanding music choices, looks great. Bright colors that remind me of Fassbinder’s film Lola. Acting is fine. There’s just no substance to the film. It’s two hours of relatively mindless entertainment. It is fine that the women are empowered and beat the crap out of the men.

More on cutting off employment didn’t create jobs

I’ve posted about this before.

David Simon’s list of murder songs

David Simon (creator of The Wire among other fine achievements) posted a list of songs about murder in response to a tweet asking about them. He lists 70 songs in a series of tweets.

The most amazing murder song is “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” by Pat Hare who actually did kill his girlfriend.

My view on the Beatles White Album

The Paranoid Style on Twitter is one of my favorite accounts. She does a great job making fresh observations about music. I don’t agree with her about the White Album but I respect her opinion.

When I was bored at work meetings, I would make a list of all the songs from an album when I was in high school decades earlier. One time I was at a conference which was so bad, I did the White Album. I remembered 29 or 30 songs. The nest day,, I recalled the one I missed (“Sexy Sadie”) and I even like that.

To me, “Honey Pie”, “Wild Honey Pie”, “Helter Skelter”, “Revolution #9”, “Good Night” and “Long Long Long” are trash. In “Back in the USSR”, they are parodying a band (Beach Boys) who weren’t as good as them. “When I’m 64” was fresh. The old time stuff got weaker as they did “Your Mother Should Know” and “Honey Pie”.

another viewpoint: The Beatles’ White Album tracks, ranked – from Blackbird to While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The Orioles are historically bad

The 15 game losing streak has been tough to watch. They have tied or set all kinds of negative records along the way. They play the Braves now who have won 9 of 10.

There was a gap between 1958 and 1987 in the list of longest Orioles losing streaks. They were good or great for most of that time.
I saw Opening Day – they lost 12-0. That should have been a sign.