"And Ajax by mad passion borne stern had replied, fierce scorn enhancing scorn to fell extremes…"
My parents had a beautiful Great Dane that I was fortunate enough to know for a couple of short years.
She was obviously very protective of small children.
We also had a beautiful Persian named Hussan.
The two got along surprisingly well.
The day my parents had to put Sheba down was my first experience with death.
“Where’s Sheba, Daddy?”
“She had to go away, son.”
The famous Halloween party at my college girlfriend’s apartment. None of us put any effort into our costumes. Except Jamie. Who, I have since learned, never has to be urged to dress up in some type of ridiculous getup.
I’m wearing one of Pope’s hats. I just pulled it off the wall.
I’m also wearing this horribly scratchy Navy blue sweater that I had since high school.
During my Junior year at Godwin, I met a girl through one of my wrestling teammates, who was dating her older sister. Her name was Anne and she went to Freeman.
One Saturday night, the two of us decided to go down to Pony Pasture near the James River. We were in the back seat making out and I had my t-shirt and sweater off (for some strange reason) when I suddenly saw a light shine into the car.
It was a cop.
We quickly jumped into the front seat and I tried to stealthily pull my t-shirt and sweater on as quickly as possible, start the car, and then leave.
Of course, the cop was laughing at this comedy I am certain and he let us get about 25′ out of the park before pulling us over.
I rolled down the window and in as calm of a voice as I could manage, asked, “Is there a problem, officer?”
With a smirk he replied, “First off, son, you’re wearing your sweater underneath your t-shirt….”
Before Spartan Races and all those types of things, Richmond had an event called The James River Scramble where you not only ran the footpaths along the James River, but also hopped the rocks and crossed the river itself.
I did the inaugural race in 2001 and liked it, so I trained up for the race in 2002 hoping for a better time.
I showed up prior to the race at the start on Brown’s Island and I heard a voice call out to me. It was Lloyd, my old high school wrestling teammate.
Lloyd was the primary motivating factor to the success I had my Senior year.
He had crushed me Junior year so over the summer I vowed to train harder than ever in order to beat him. I lifted weights and ran and turned myself into a beast. When wrestle-offs came to see who would wrestle 160 and who would have to cut weight and wrestle 152, it wasn’t even a challenge. I literally destroyed him and he had to cut eight pounds all season.
So, seeing Lloyd surprised me. He was a very friendly guy, but it was like we were going to have another wrestle-off and I wasn’t expecting it.
And I didn’t like it.
This was going to be MY day. And now I not only had to compete against myself, I had to compete against my old rival, too.
So, after exchanging pleasantries, I lined up at the start and blasted out of the gate. I kept imagining he was right on my tail and that made me run faster.
I finished with a smile on my face and crushed my previous year’s time.
While milling around after the race, Lloyd came up to me.
He was laughing and chuckled, “Dude, I was gonna try and keep up with you and the next thing I knew you were so far ahead of me I couldn’t even see you!”
Story of my life. I’m competing against people who don’t even know it’s a competition.
I discovered the genius of Kris Kristofferson through the addled genius of Todd Snider whom I discovered through my friendship with Pope.
If you don’t know anything about Kris Kristofferson, you really need to read his Wikipedia article, if only to learn how he landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s front yard to try to get him to record “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”
My favorite version of “Me And Bobby McGee” is by Waylon Jennings, whom I discovered due to a jukebox in a smokey dive bar Chowder used to work in across the James River on Richmond’s Southside called The Forest – the same place we all congregated at after my wedding reception.
LINK
I first heard about Nevil Shute’s “On The Beach” around 2000 when HBO did a remake of the original 1959 movie. The updated version starred Armand Assante, Rachel Ward, and Bryan Brown. The original starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner (Lady Brett Ashely in “The Sun Also Rises”), Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins.
Here’s a summary:
“For those unfamiliar with the novel, it was published in 1957 and is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the radioactive cloud from a northern hemisphere nuclear war is spreading gradually and inexorably southwards towards the beaches of Australia and beyond.”
It is one of the most bleak and gripping novels I’ve ever read. I think about it often.
I’ve seen the 1959 film and recently watched the 2000 version on YouTube.
I’d never been a Smiths fan, nor even a Morrissey one. But a couple of years ago, this song came on the radio and I was listening to the lyrics and as soon as I heard this line I knew exactly what he was referencing:
“And a strange dust lands on your hands
(And on your face)…”
I then watched the video, which I’d never seen before. It was exactly what I like.
That was my gateway into looking more into The Smiths and Morrissey beyond just “How Soon Is Now?”
I’ve since turned on Middle Daughter to them and she’s a big fan now. We both find it amusing and terrible sad that this Woke Generation hates Morrissey because he’s now deemed as being Conservative.
We both have “England Is Mine” on our video watchlist. We’re gonna try and watch it together this week.
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Sometimes it’s difficult for men to urinate in public settings, like at a VT football game with dozens of angry, smelly drunks standing in line behind them.
Whenever I’m in a situation like that, I start humming this song and picturing the video in my head.
Works like a charm.
This is my older brother who used to beat me up and if we were playing Dungeons & Dragons and our characters were about to be killed, he’d reach in his mouth and pull out a wad of chewed up gum and tell us we had to chew it, too, to get five extra Hit Points so our characters would survive.
And we’d do it. One after the other. Passing the gum from left to right.
What kind of an asshole does that?
He stopped beating me up after Christmas Break 1989.
I had been in the VT Intramural Boxing Club and I was waiting for a ride back and we were watching a football game. It was a tight one and he suddenly switched channels. I said, “What in the Hell are you doing?” He said, “Changing the channels. You got a problem with that?” I said, “As a matter of fact, I do.” So we squared off and he bowed up on me and started stalking towards me like he was going to beat me up like back in the old days and I gave him a right jab right to his nose, which burst forth in a flower of crimson blood.
He looked stunned and never touched me again.
Posted for no other reasons other than the song is incredible, it mentions “William & Mary,” the video is horrific, these guys are a bunch of dorks, and the fact that the song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” was utilized so evocatively in “Say Anything.”
P.S. “Fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after a “revolutionary” steam-powered dildo mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.”
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“Somehow I’d never thought about the lyrics of this song referring to the capital-P “Passion”.
The interpretation seems well supported, particularly if Stipe’s attitude is skeptical or critical; then “empty prayer, empty mouths…” would make a lot more sense. In this context, “Not everyone can carry the weight of the world” suggests we can’t all be like Christ.
OTOH Stipe has said the song is about hunger. There’s a video for the song which depicts homeless people. “Combien du temps” literally means “How much time,” but in this context it would be a rhetorical question: “How much longer can you look upon this suffering and not want to do something about it?” Put it another way, is the plight of the poor something we merely “talk about,” or is it not a moral imperative to DO something about it?
Considering Stipe’s evident penchant for ambiguity and layers of meaning, it wouldn’t surprise me if both of these interpretations were intended. It seems many people manage to read the Gospels without paying much attention to Christ’s concern for the suffering of the poor, but I’ve always found that mind-boggling as He talks so much about it.
Or, at least, something akin to these interpretations. Who knows what he was thinking. It’s not unusual for him to be deliberately obscure — probably in part a habit he developed so he could write about his personal emotional struggles without giving away his secrets. Think of the repetition of the phrase “don’t get caught” on two of Chronic Town’s songs. I don’t think this was paranoia so much as a desire to keep his private life private.
I hadn’t known Stipe was raised Catholic. Don’t see much here which evokes the Eucharist except “empty mouths” which could suggest someone in the queue at Mass waiting to receive the Host. But it would at least be a more economical use of language; otherwise “empty prayer” and “empty mouths” are reiterating the same concept (i.e. prayer is futile).“
Song Of Ajax 