Supposedly we don't have seasons in The South...or so we're told.
Translated...what that means is we don't have much of a Fall...we don't get much of those muddy brown and orange clammy leaves all over our driveway in October.
Anyway...around the beginning of March those stinky Bradford Pears and Japanese Magnolias will bloom...won't be long before the Dogwoods, man do I love Dogwoods, burst...then Wisteria...and finally the Azaleas.
That's our neighbors yard up there...what I stare at with my morning coffee...beautiful that's all.
I was almost killed by, and may yet die from embarrassment because of...one of these.
It happened in the parking lot at Hudson Salvage in Brandon...I'll never forget it. We had just left the store and were headed across the parking lot to the car when my right foot slid...more like a glide really...out from under me. It was so sudden and severe that Martha grabbed my arm.
I was the first to notice what had happened. I stared at the rubbery fleshy yellow lump in silence...not wanting to believe it while my mind started calculating the implications of what had happened.
Then I heard it...a guttural braying that was hard to place...like a pony and elephant having a heated argument..hahuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh heeeeh heeeh heeh...followed by gasping...huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh and sighing....aaahhhhhhhhhh...over and over. It sounded like the universe was laughing at me but it was just Martha...and when the sister found out....
It's a sound that's echoed in my head for 14 years.
"You slipped on a banana peel." That's their answer to everything.
As has been recently established by one of our loyal readers, I have the looks of a young Marlon Brando..."You slipped on a Banana Peel."
Style? I've got miles and miles. Martha's moseyin' around this morning in a pair of, admittedly flattering, sweatpants and short terry-cloth robe while I'm lounging in a red and white gingham oxford, a pair of perfectly faded jeans and loafers. Ralph Lauren told me he wanted to have my baby..."You slipped on a Banana Peel."
The two of them have a good degree from fine institutions. I have degrees from Superstar institutions...."You slipped on a Banana Peel."
I have a better record collection than both of 'em put together. They think James Chance was a game show host and neither one of 'em could name one Slint song or pick Mark E Smith out of lineup...."You slipped on a Banana Peel."
Etc.
Nothing I've done in life or may yet do can get out from under the shadow of that banana peel. This may end up being the only biographical tidbit that matters in the end.
If you're a long time reader you will have noticed the recent silence of The Sister. She's been on a soft boycott of the blog ever since I told everybody she used to live in Pearl.
While the absence of insults has been pleasant I'm gonna go ahead and buckle...say something nice. It's for the boy. He was hurt when his aunt didn't comment on his smokin' guitar licks...I tried to tell him that it didn't mean she didn't love him, but...the little fella was just crushed.
So...
The sister is not without talents. As y'all know she has an artist's flair for telling people to kiss, stuff, and shut things...and she has the power to sniff out demons.
She's also a superstar at the Karaoke. Below is a still and some audio from one of her classic sets.
For those of you who may not know...this what the sister's on about.
That's where I'd sleep when I would visit...right across the street from Kings Cross Station. It was run by a sweet old Maltese lady. She had passed away the last time I was around.
There was a Kentucky Fried Chicken around corner...and it was the setting for a very funny story involving Martha and her love of mashed potatoes...and a gigantic woman passed out on the counter.
I certainly remember where we were here. Graduation Day at Millsaps, but that's besides the point...the point is obviously Martha in that flowered dress.
Below is me...
after three hours of screwing with the scanner and finally getting the pictures on the computer...to be told by flickr that it can only upload two of a dozen photos...so instead of old pictures from London, Holland, Munich, Rome...I ended up with these two random shots.
I haven't spent a dime with Holiday Inn for at least 15 years..since whenever it was they decided to no longer fly the Mississippi state flag on their Mississippi properties.
The state voted on it...and by a staggering majority(75%+) we, the state with the largest proportion of black folks in the country, voted to keep it.
Get over yourself...you're a low rent road-side motel with stupid television commercials.
You could call it race politics I guess, but it's not really about race. It's really about the insistent, sad and cloying U.S. need to be loved. They can't fathom that a group of people who, though they really don't deserve it, have the glorious privilege of being citizens of the United States of Uh-meeerica would still harbor separatist sentiments...that's all it is...FULL STOP.
Needy b****es.
Well I don't need to be loved (I'm well taken care of at the house thank you just the same)...
I NEED A CUP OF COFFEE!!!!
I've been in L'usiana all week workin'...with a co-worker who's trying to break the Guiness Book Record for loyalty points with Holiday Inn. So, here I am in one of their rooms...for now that is...until I need another cup of coffee. Then I'll be across the street (not a small feet when you're on Causeway in Metarie) at the curbstore standing in line behind 25 construction workers...all waiting to pay a buck fifty for a hot cup of bilge water marked Gourmet.
These morons have decided to remove the coffee pot from the lobby.
It was supposed to be A Room for Romeo Brass, but evidently Netflix has never heard of it. Then I tried for Once Upon a Time in the Midlands...that one isn't available instantly. So I settled on Somers Town. I was a little hesitant because one the characters is an immigrant. Nothing against immigrants, but that's a pretty constant theme in American movies...and well y'all know where my head is right now. I needn't have worried.
It's a funny and sweet movie...and Thomas Tugoose is just good that's all. There's no irony or bite...just two kids becoming friends and crushing on a French waitress.*
"It's called love suuhhn."
As good as it was forget about that for a minute...and think about The Damned United.
FANTASTIC!
I'm not much of a soccer fan...or football if you must...how 'bout Association Football as a compromise? I don't know...y'all just follwo the context. It'll probably mark me out as a nuckle-dragging philistine and someone who is incapable of understanding the beautiful game but...it's the off-sides rule...well that and the fact that there's none of this...
(the audio is atrocious turn it down...but hits so hard the camera can't keep up with some of them)...unless maybe you're talkin' about Leeds in the early 70's.
I think Rugby's probably more my speed.
Anyway, I do appreciate soccer and what it means to people...particularly English football. And I do love sports...especially sports that have a century's worth of stink on them from carrying the hopes and identities of communities on their back. That I do love...that's authenticity and English Football reeks of it. So while I may not clear the calender for Man U. v Liverpool I'd delightfully gobble up a history on the rivalry if anybody wants to send me one.
When The Damned United came up as a suggestion I didn't hesitate...man what a story, what a character...
The other thing it had going for it is that College Football is dominated by coaches...it's a coaches game. They are heralded and blamed for every success and failure a team has. The firing and hiring of these coaches are usually played out with Shakespearean drama..and intrigue. As with everything in college football, nowhere is this more the case than in the SEC. Coaches leave professional teams to coach in the Southeastern Conference...that's how much it means. They become the program..for better or worse...and by extension the face of a State or a Region and take on all the responsibility that comes with it...and with the appropriately outsized egos. Their names are historical and cultural touchstones...Bear Bryant, General Neyland, Shug Jordan, Vince Dooley, and Steve Spurrier (the Brian Clough of the SEC)...just to name a few.
So the psychology of the story was familiar to me and completely sucked me in. The film handled this man, who had greatness in him but who got a little carried away, with the perfect pitch. I genuinely liked him and was mad at him for making a butthead of himself...I didn't feel like he was a jerk, but that he should know better. Quite a feat considering I'd only just met him 20 minutes earlier.
Maybe I'm biased now, but Bobby Bowden...I mean Don Revie and his dirty football team can kiss my grits.
As an aside...when I do come back to England...I'm going to Yorkshire. Yorkshire in the early 70's...and Deep Purple's gonna blare everywhere I swagger.
*It was an unbridled joy after trying to watch that atrocious Kiduldthood. How many times does this movie have to be made before it's seen for precisely what it is...tawdry titillation.
I'm not gonna talk about what I'm giving up for Lent...that would be inappropriate and gross in a forum like this, BUT...
I will talk about what I thought about giving up.
I thought long and hard about giving up wise-cracks for Lent...trying to be nice and thoughtfully responsive to those that comment here on the blog...mainly Adam and the Sister. Allan would get it worst of all, but he's a big Planter now and too busy with the help to stop by and share with us, so...
I couldn't do it though...first of all the Sister deserves most of what she gets. Y'all know how she talks to me. Just last night..."stuff-it moron." Two, I'm afraid after all these years Adam wouldn't know who he was talking to or how to deal with it...he might try to e-hug me. Three, NAT's on the verge of being in need of harassment...especially if he keeps laughing at the Sister's jokes. Four, you never know when Allan might stop swinging the whip for a mint julep break and make an apperance...it's just too much to ask of week soul like me.
With an insatiable need for attention The Sister has been begging for another post of her own.
I thought about it for a while and...maybe the best way to avoid these daily requests...the groveling...would be to start a regular segment devoted to facts about The Sister. Tid bits, points of interest, etc.
For instance...here's a tasty morsel...The Sister lived for a time in beautiful Pearl, Mississippi. The only family member to have done so.
You know I'm suprised...the idea was born out of necessity, but I actually enjoyed this. I'm looking forward to the next one.
Last night as we waited for an apple pie to come out of the oven, my Grandaddy's sweet tooth and diabetes came up.
"How old was he when he when he was diagnosed?"
"Thirty eight...and we wouldn't have found out then if Momma hadn't tricked him into going to the doctor. He thought he was takin' her....boy that's one of the few times he ever really got mad with me."
"Why with you?"
"I wasn't so sure about them people he'd seen...so, I set him an appointment in Tallahassee. He just did not like goin' to the Dr."
I'm 38. Same age as my Grandaddy while all this was goin' on. My Daddy would have been a teenager or maybe his very early twenties.
How am I suppose to actually process and conceive a story where my Grandaddy's my age and my daddy's a teenager?
What like...Fred made an appointment for George and....NO.
Whenever it happened it happened in my mind in the early 80's...that's when and how I mostly remember my Daddy and Grandaddy together before Gradaddy passed away.
On the suggestion of a reader here (flick) I watched Dead Man's Shoes this weekend.
Fantastic. It's a Revenge Flick and a Slasher film...and just campy enough...it's a lot of things. The perspective it forces on the viewer makes for a different experience. Your set against the victims...it's like rooting for Jason against the camp councilors (if you weren't already)...except not entirely. Most of the film you don't really know why he's being quite as vicious as he is...like Lady Snowblood without the first 15 minutes.
It is gory, but considering what it is...no more than you'd expect. I thought it was pretty clever and just a good movie movie. The way Tarentino's films are.
My only complaint was the doctored grainy footage for the kid's flashbacks...it was doctored to almost a comical extent. That's minor.
Thanks for the heads up.
Then there was Fish Tank. What a flippin' movie..or what a story on film. Unlike Dead Man's this one wasn't a movie movie, but excellent none the less. It's southern squalor this time around. Though I do wonder about some of the reviews I read that were little more than hand wringing about poverty. Get out a little more...a lot of people live that way and worse...ever heard of west Yorkshire :). She wasn't missin' any meals...and her track suits cost "20 quid" OK? Her tart of a momma had enough bread to throw parties for her drunk friends.
There was also a lot about her being full of rage. As if it was indiscriminate or misplaced. She had **** to be angry about. Those skanks in the park.
She had a tough row to hoe and suffered some hard embarrassing lessons...but being 15 is pretty embarrassing anyway. I think she handle the situation about as well as you'd expect from a kid (what she did that scumbag's front room carpet was well deserved)...if the little girl had drowned the whole thing would have come undone. The bit with the horse...man I just really liked the movie that's all.
I had a lot of hope for her when it was over.
I'm prone to tangents so the UK film fest may continue for a while.
