Radio Grown Folks...Another Smokin' Installment

Junior Kimbrough...Tramp


Jessie Mae Hemphill...Go Back to Your Used to Be



Asie Payton...I Love You



Y'all are welcome.

More Movies More England

"It's called love suuhhn."

Somers Town.

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.

The Boy and his G'itar.

That's my boy during Show and Tell at his little school. Lots of stuffed animals, pull-toys, action figures and then that.

Flippin rock star...that's all.



It's a little loud, but you know....*


*That's Rory Gallagher and Bullfrog Blues courtesy of some French TV show and Dr. Wommm's Patented Stupidity Cure...links in my reading list.

Lent

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.

Happy Mardi Gras.

The Sister Installment #1

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.

Grandaddy at My Age...Daddy as a Teenager

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.

Dead Man's Shoes and Fish Tank

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.