Part the Third.

I hate YouTube.

I don’t think anyone (other than maybe Svetlana, or Libby) realize what a pain in the ass it is to actually find something that you’re looking for on that site. Shit’s mislabled, it’s crappy quality, stuff comes up that has nothing to do with anything, there are thousands of “videos” on there that are nothing but static images with a poor quality recording over it, Peter keeps uploading videos with my name tagged to them hoping I’ll search and find his “tributes” to me, people put video recorders in front of televisions and record that way…and holy rolled up balls of crap are there a lot of “second life” or some kind of avatar video game nonsense things set to music.

Do people really want to see screenshots of someone elses’ Guitar Hero?

So mea culpa, there were a lot of videos I had planned to showcase but most of them weren’t on the site, or they were just static images and that just defeats the purpose of a video posting doesn’t it?

But then, well there’s this: Ronnie Milsap’s It Was Almost Like a Song set to scenes from The English Patient.

I mean I can sort of see it? And it wasn’t done poorly, but honestly it’s about the last song I’d ever associate with that movie. I just can’t imagine Kristin Scott Thomas talking about how Candaules became so lustful of his own wife that he convinced Gyges to spy on her to see her beauty, and the queen, seeing Gyges, convincing him to kill Candaules and marry her and rule Lydia because she was shamed. Can you? Do you even have any idea of what in the fuck I’m talking about?

Anyway, let me know what you think. I’m still sort of amused:

Merle Haggard. 1967. Live. Man that sumbitch’s been drinking a LONG time:

The Judds: Mama He’s Crazy

I wish I could have found a video of George Jones alone, but I couldn’t. You can still watch this one and pretend that George Jones walks onstage and instead of just his voice kicking Alan Jackson’s voice’s ass that Ol Possum whooped him and threw him off stage as well. Damn I hate Alan Jackson. Still worth it for the Possum though:

Tight Fittin’ Jeans: Mr. Conway Twitty:

Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love (the kind that would see you through?) BJ Thomas:

And just because I like his voice: two-fer: Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song:

And yeah it’s one of those static image video things I bitched about but so what? My post. Plus I found three or four of them with such low volume it amazed me someone would waste the time uploading it:

“Sweet, let’s upload that video we made of the BJ Thomas concert last night!”

“Totally!”

(start watching video on TV screen realize there’s no volume)

“Aw shit, I held that camera for three hours and the volume sucks. God Da……(starts to throw camera)

“No, don’t do that. We can still upload it.”

“Wha…?”

“Sure, just upload it. Nothing else to do. We’ll spend a couple hours uploading this entirely crappy video quality piece of shit video we stole during a concert and which has no volume and it will be awesome! It will be viral!”

“sweet!”

“Sweet!”

(Michael enters, with a gun: Two shots are heard off screen)

Garth Brooks sings Fuck You in language appropriate for a radio audience:

Sorry John, this next bit isn’t so damned dark but I’m kind of drained at the moment so HAPPY CHRISTMAS MEMORY:

So I guess I’m 13 now and living back with my dad and brother in the N.Georgia mountains in a little two room cabin heated with firewood that I pretty much had to chop and split every day. What I really want is a motorcycle since we live about 15 miles from town, my dad works nights so he leaves for work around 2 pm which means we get home from school, do chores, fend for ourselves and then are incredibly bored for the rest of the day. I start doing chores for some of the neighbors, learn to drive a tractor, and start saving up money.

Now my dad hates motorcycles and still does to this day. I’ll ride out to see him on one of mine and he spends the entire time worrying about this and that and the other and if I’ll be safe and other stuff dads worry about. And I understand: his best friends was killed on one in High School in the 50s. So he takes my brother and me for a drive one Sunday in December (the one day he had off) and we stop at this old junk store and damned if there isn’t an old motorcycle sitting out front. Now at this point I don’t know anything about motorcycles and neither does my dad and the proprieter doesn’t know much either. He just picked it up at some auction with a bunch of other stuff.

It’s a 1973 Yamaha RD350. Now many of you don’t know anything about motorcycles, but you may have seen me racing around DC on an old vintage bike. Yep. Same model bike. And let me tell you there’s a reason the RD 350 was known as “Racing Death” or “Road Death” or rumored to be the revenge of the Japanese for Hiroshima and Nagasaki: when tuned the thing has a powerband that will launch you off backwards as the bike careens down the road riderless with a mind of its own. Shit I still can’t handle it sometimes and I’ve been riding for longer than some of you reading have been alive. Now you may be thinking “a 350? My boyfriend rides a 600″ Well your boyfriend rides a 4-stroke 600. An RD is a 2-stroke which means it creates power on every stroke. And it has a very powerful powerband. Long explanation short, a 2-stroke’s cc power can be doubled (approximately) to equal that of a 4-stroke. And then add in the powerband, which is like a turbo and it’s not rare for 2-stroke 350s to school 600 (and larger) four stroke bikes on the track.

After a bit of negotiation my dad decides to buy me the motorcycle. He paid $75 for it and as I didn’t have a license and he didn’t have a truck and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let me ride it home he tells me if I want it I have to push it. 17 miles. Of course I start pushing. Of course.

Meanwhile he leaves with my brother to borrow a truck (unbeknownst to me. Hell I would still be pushing that thing home today if I had to). About 2 or three miles down the road they pull up and load the bike and we go home.

Dude at the store had shown me how to start it, explained about mixing the gas and oil (the autolube had been disabled) and, well, I just got on and started riding.

Did I mention my dad didn’t know squat about motorcycles and I was 13? An RD is a street bike. We lived down a dirt road in the woods. I wasn’t allowed to take it on the street. I crashed and crashed and crashed that thing repeatedly. At the time I didn’t understand a “powerband” so I’d be in 2d or 3d gear at 4000RPMS and suddenly the powerband would kick in and the front wheel would come off the ground and throw me right off the back of it.

Good times.

Eventually I learned to handle the powerband and I’d ride it through the woods, off jumps, spend hours digging a “track” with the tractor to race it (all with street tires mind you) and be made fun of unrelentlessly by the other kids around who had real dirt bikes until years later it eventually just fell apart. Now of course after a year or so I’d saved up money, had the bug, and started buying proper dirt bikes and began racing and all that other nonsense you do when you grow up in the country, but I’ll always remember that first motorcycle. Always, and will remember that not only did my Dad sacrifice what was, for him at the time, a large sum of money, but also his fears and worries and utter hatred of motorcycles to make his son happy. And it did. And I wonder if he will ever really understand that now, at an age where I can understand these things, that I realize what a sacrifice it was for him. I mean he did something so utterly unselfish and against everything he believed in…

Thanks, Dad.

Shit this is melancholy Christmas so let’s get back to that.

This last song has been recorded by Willie Nelson, Elvis, Gladys Knight, Sammi Smith, Englebert Humperdink and pretty much anyone else who has ever covered a song but it was originally written by Kris Kristofferson (while on an oil derrick off the coast of Louisiana) and my favorite version is his duet with his wife Rita Coolidge. Watching it it seems like they’re unaware of anyone else around them and who doesn’t want that at some point in their life?

Help Me Make It Through The Night