Category: 3 Inexplicable Things

3 Modern Things

3 Inexplicable Things

…that would have caused my old Dad’s brow to furrow with amazement:

1.) Bottled water.
“WTF?”  Selling ordinary water?  In bottles?  And charging how much?”  That’s not to say he was unfamiliar with the concept — he’d been to France, and after getting the runs from drinking Parisian tap water, he did what the Frogs did and drank Perrier.
But the idea of a society which did have clean and potable water out of the tap (e.g. the U.S. and the U.K.), but still sold bottled water would have been as alien to him as people not being able to drive a stick shift.  So:

2.) All auto, all the time.
Back when I were a yoot and my old man was still alive (early 1970s), you couldn’t take your driving test in a car with automatic transmission.  Which meant you had to know how to take off on an incline without rolling backwards, as well as being able to row through the gears when parallel parking (another required activity).  Once again, he was perfectly comfortable driving his various Mercedes (all auto), he just wouldn’t now be able to understand why almost nobody in the current generation can’t perform so simple an activity.  Of course, that’s not all the modern yoot can’t handle:

3.) No manners, no discipline and no beatings.
The lack of manners in today’s society and the indiscipline not just in kids but in everyone would have driven him crazy.  Tardiness, ingratitude, disrespect not just for one’s elders but for everyone… all this makes me want to reach for the sjambok.  My dad would have been worse.  And all this is because children’s (okay, boys’) backsides have somehow become sacred objects that one may no longer use as a disciplinary receptacle for the above whip.  As I always say, it’s not the punishment  per se  but the fear of punishment that keeps youthful psychopaths on the straight and narrow.  And all this has disappeared from homes, the schools and the court system because OMG the chiiiiildren!  And the children have responded in true Lord Of The Flies fashion, and we are shocked and saddened by all of it because we are morons and can’t understand the root causes of the above.

What a load of bollocks.  All of it.

3 Alternatives

3 Inexplicable Things, Music

Many years ago when I was still living in Chicago, I had a chance to see Procol Harum live at the Vic Theater, a small supper-club type venue which held (at that time) only about 600 people.  (The small number is because of the tables.)  We had dinner, and then the lads came on and blew everyone away.

Their tour was to promote their latest album, Prodigal Stranger, which I still consider one of their very best (of an extraordinary collection of albums, as any fule kno).

Anyway, what that concert confirmed for me was that if I’m ever going to watch a live band, I’m only interested in doing so in a small, intimate venue.  I’d seen the incomparable Leon Redbone in a similarly-small theater a couple of years earlier, but Redbone’s act was by definition a more intimate one, with the crooner entertaining us with many, many sly quips as well as his music.  (Oh, how I miss him.)  And one last such example:  back in the late 1970s I saw Blood, Sweat and Tears perform in Johannesburg’s Empire Theatre (800 seats) and well, blues vocalist David Clayton-Thomas, say no more.

I was reminded of all this by a chance comment made by (of all people) BritRoyal Prince William’s in joking with Ronnie Wood that he’d only come and see the Stones if they brought Taylor Swift along.

The thing that both Swift and the Stones have in common for me is that I’d rather have a rat cage strapped to my face than attend the mega-concerts of either.  This is not just the ranting of an elderly man, by the way:  I’ve always preferred to watch a concert in a smaller venue, as I’ve demonstrated above, even when I was a young rock musician myself.  Frankly, if the concert has to have giant TV screens for the audience to see the act perform, I’d rather watch the concert on a DVD afterwards than be part of a massive crowd.

The whole “Swiftie” phenomenon, of course, leaves me ice cold because, when all’s said and done, young Taylor is just a country singer, and I’m not a particular fan of country music per se, although there are a few country singers I wouldn’t mind seeing live, provided that the show was in a place like the Gruene (Texas) town hall, where I once saw Merle Haggard, or Austin’s Liberty Lunch bar (Bonnie Raitt, in her pre-Nick Of Time days).

And finally (!) I come to the point of this post, which is:  if I were going to attend a concert in a small country bar like Austin’s Broken Spoke or Route 20 in Racine, Wisconsin (where I once saw Bachman Turner Overdrive and Steppenwolf in a double-header), which three country artists would I prefer to see the most (instead of Taylor Swift)?

In no particular order:

  • David Allan Coe

    (I can’t believe he’s still alive)
  • Willie Nelson

    (ditto)
  • Shania Twain

And none of them would have to do a modern-style “show” (lighting, multiple costume changes, massive sound systems etc.);  just a small backing band, a bar stool and (preferably) an acoustic guitar would be fine.  I want to see the artist, not special effects.

Parenthetically, I wonder how well Taylor Swift would perform, under similar circumstances.  Would she still be as impressive?

Your three choices in Comments.

3 Voices I Can’t Stand

3 Inexplicable Things, Music

…and I’m talking about singing voices, not (say) political screeching like that of Hillary Clinton.

When these guys start singing, I hit the Mute or Skip buttons:

  • Bob Dylan (any song except Lay Lady Lay, which I can get at least halfway through before hitting click)
  • Steve Tyler (Aerosmith; Dream On is the most egregious offender)
  • Van Morrison (Brown-Eyed Girl… OMFG kill me now, but everything he sings is horrible)

And let’s not forget the chicks:

  • Joni Mitchell (I’d rather listen to blackboard fingernails ad infinitum  than any one of her songs)
  • Joan Baez (preachy bullshit, and that vibratissimo… ugh)
  • early Dolly Parton (until she stopped warbling and started singing)

Don’t get me started on the modern chick singers;  you all know about them.

3 Dubious Announcements

3 Inexplicable Things

Here they are:  worse even than INSIGNIFICA, these are announcements of things that should inspire fear, loathing or projectile vomiting rather than amusement or amazement:

Okay, the Freebird/Dolly thing struck me the same way as the collaboration between Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan and Luciano Pavarotti:  “Why?”

The Kardashian coven:  as far as I recall, it all started with the “leak” of a video of Kim Kardashian fucking her boyfriend.  Once you’ve done that in front of a camera, all the rest is simple.

As for the Crocs announcement… I hear hoofbeats.

3 Modern Affectations

3 Inexplicable Things

…that make me want to go out into the street and slap random people in the face, just on the off-chance that they support this bullshit.

  • Gender reveal parties:  apart from maybe the grandparents, who the fucking fuck cares about someone else’s unborn baby’s gender?
  • “Hate speech”:  it was fucking iniquitous before it started becoming ingrained into law;  now it’s getting to be really toxic, as a tool for censorship and career destruction.
  • “Net Zero 2030”:  or, how to utterly ruin the global economy with quasi-religious fervor.

Feel free to add your particular contemporary triggers (another fucking burr expression in my shorts)  in Comments.

3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

3 Inexplicable Things, Guy Stuff

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.