Transheiser Busch?

 I'll be honest with you Boys and Girls, I am almost 100% "Meh" when it comes to the brouhaha - or in this case brewhaha - surrounding Bud Light and Peewee HerHim.  This whole sorry-ass mess has been done before - literally!

Don't believe me?  Have a gander at the following - and pay very close attention to the label on the beer bottle:

'Nuff said.  It's no wonder I'm so damn jaded...........

Easter Greetings

    

Happy Easter, Fellow Babies!!! 

Oh HELL No!!!!

Dig This

What was true in 1948 is still true today -

THE MEDIA DOES NOT CALL ELECTIONS!!!

COUP DE GRACE!!!!

Don't look now Fellow Babies - but Sleepy Joe, Kamel-Toe, Queen Nancy, and all the rest are about to have their asses handed to them by our  PRESIDENT.  

Mark my words - the next several days are going to be truly historic.  Be prepared to have your minds well and truly blown!!!

More shortly..........

Silly Season: Stupor Tuesday

Don't look now, but Bernie's gonna be 0 for 2 when all is said and done.  He was quoted by the Associated Press as "still battling the Establishment," but get real, Folks.  The "Establishment" in this case is the American Capitalistic Republic - the "Grand Experiment" that simply has no equal, in the whole of Western Civilization - period.

To understand what Bernie's "vision" for our country is, one need look no further than Moscow, Havana, Santiago, or even Mexico City; one and all are the end products of COMMUNISM, despite what individual labels one tries to hastily slap on them.  What Bernie and his radical followers don't get at all is that their ideas have already been tried six ways from Sunday over the last 100 years - and there's not a damn one of ANY of them that has succeeded AT ALL.

Hell's bells - 99.99% of the time, a Communist idea never even gets off the ground unless an absolute dictator is in charge.  That's a dictator in charge of the Communist idea, not a dictator in charge of the target territory, although it's been proven that the latter inevitably follows the former.  I mean, can someone name me ONE successful Communist leader that doesn't have a blood-saturated body count under his or her belt that would make the Hildebeast insanely jealous in a New York Minute?

Will Communism stop the spread of the Corona virus?  Or reassure the Stock Exchange?  Or bring Trayvon Martin back to life?  The answer ought to be painfully obvious, my Dear Friends.  I don't care if it's called "progressiveism," or "democratic socialism," or even plain old "socialism;" a pig is still a pig, no matter how much lipstick and perfume you slather on it.

"Progressive thinking" of the type Bernie subscribes to has over the last sixty years utterly ruined our public schools, destroyed our manufacturing base, and has seriously eroded our foundations of morality from the Church all the way down to the individual nuclear family unit.  And I won't even go into how many major American cities have been all but razed to the ground, thanks to "progressive" governing.

It's Bernie-style "progressive thinking" that insists that there are anywhere from six to sixty different "gender types," when those of us with the common sense God gave a potted plant KNOW that there were, are, and always will be only two.  Which, by the way, were originally GIVEN to us by the Creator; they were never, EVER a simple "choice" we could discover on our own.  

Anyone mentally defective enough to believe otherwise ought to do the rest of us a big fat favor by absenting themselves from the gene-pool ASAP - before the Progressives effect the removal themselves!!  Thanks to the current Progressive crown jewel of Planned Parenthood, such a horrifically ludicrous scenario wouldn't be murder or suicide - it would be an "nth-trimester, ex-utero abortion of a non-viable tissue mass."  It's been done before, Kiddos - just ask any German individual over the age of seventy.

I'm sorry Boys and Girls, but I'm simply sick and tired of watching this country go to Hell in a handbasket, at the hands of a sorry group of butt-sore wastes of oxygen like Bernie, Faux-cahontas Warren, Alexandria Occasional-Kotex, or Mayor Pete Ball-gag.  The coup-de-grace in all of this pathetic mess is the fact that Joe Biden is now the likely Democratic nominee for President.  The same Joe Biden that a mere two weeks ago supposedly epitomized EVERYTHING the Progressives are against - a rich old white dude that made his millions off the backs of those he stomped on, during his ascent up the ladder of career-politics.

"Meet the New Boss; the same as the Old Boss," dig?

Is it any wonder why I call an election cycle "Silly Season?"

Oh yeah, before I forget - The President-Donald will mop the floor with Uncle Joe, come November; and after that, ALL bets are off!!

Ought to be a real hoot, too........

Until anon, mi Amigos - smoke 'em if ya got 'em!

Remembering Mr. Neil

My 2020 blogging season kicks off on a bit of a somber note, thanks to the untimely passing late last week of one Neil Peart, the great drummer for Rush.  Mr. Neil held a rather unique position of all the drummers near and dear to me, being the first pure "metronomic" drummer I became aware of.  To be sure, the ultimate impact he had on my own tub-thumping abilities was considerable, although it took more than a little time for his influence to really sink in.  And therein lies the tale.

I was probably around 11 or 12 when I heard Rush for the first time.  As luck would have it, my baptismal tune was the great "2112 Overture / Temple of Syrinx."  I already had a couple years' intensive study of my original four drum Mentors {Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, and Nigel Olsson} under my belt, but Mr. Neil blew me away with his tasty, and incredibly precise chops.  I literally hadn't heard rock drumming like that before, which is part of the reason why Mr. Neil's influence on me was time-release, rather than immediate.  I simply could not fully wrap my head around what I was hearing, at first blush.

Thankfully, the proper explanation of Mr. Neil's technique that I was seeking was run down to me the first week of seventh grade, courtesy my symphonic band teacher.  Good old Director Finbloom explained to me the two basic timekeeping elements of trap-drumming: swing, and metronomic.  Swing allows you tremendous flexibility to essentially treat the tempo like a rubber band with no penalties for doing so.  Swing is the essence of jazz, and is also the main cornerstone of successful freeform improvisation.  As such, it's also quite well-suited for the likes of blues, rock, pop, and country.

On the other hand, metronomic timekeeping demands rigid adherence to the tempo at all times, which requires absolute discipline on the drummers' part.  Whilst it's still possible to make with the improv when it's called for, doing so in metronomic time is always an exercise in walking the razor's edge, much more so than swing-improv.  Make a mistake in metronomic time, and you're liable to ruin the entire piece on the spot, like a jeweler shattering instead of cutting a diamond; whereas a boo-boo in swing time more often than not becomes a "happy accident." 

Thus did I learn the truth about Mr. Neil's special magic.  Yet despite my new enlightenment, I remained somewhat ambivalent about testing the metronomic waters myself.  And for good reason, too.  I quickly discovered the chief negative aspect of metronomic playing, namely that it's damn near impossible to convey deep emotion wherever and whenever the spirit moves you, if at all.  I mean, get real - how much drama and pathos {or any other emotion} can be conveyed by a bleedin' METRONOME, you know?  Technical precision is one thing, but 99.99% of the time it comes across stone cold, in terms of raw feelings.  In other words, a drum machine's still a drum machine, whether synthetic or organic.

Ironically enough, Mr. Neil subscribed to the above notion himself - it's precisely why he spent several years in the latter portion of his career in earnest study of jazz {swing} drumming.  The effect his studies had on him was immediate and powerful, and gave even his most progressive previous works a new richness in sound, when his enhanced technique was applied.  Myself, I was as blas`e about Mr. Neil's mastery of The SLOP as I could be, 'cos by that point in time I had been gleefully slopping my way through "Syrinx," "Tom Sawyer," and "YYZed" in concert for almost two full decades, so I already knew well what the bulk of the slop-possibilities were.

On a final note, I do regret that I never reached out to Mr. Neil like I did with Mitch, Ginger, and Nigel, if only just to thank him for his inspiration.  I'll just have to be content with the fact that in addition to becoming a second-tier drum Mentor to me, Mr. Neil was also the gateway to my discovery of many other crackerjack strict-timers like Jon Hiseman, Simon Phillips, Ric Parnell, and Lars Ulrich.  In the end, it's all good.

Go carefully, Mr. Neil - and thanks again for being such a wonderful influence.  Yours is a spirit I'll miss something fierce.

More shortly...........

'Twas.......

Twas the night after Christmas, and boy what a house!

I felt like the devil, and so did the spouse.

The eggnog and turkey and candy were swell,

But ten hours later they sure gave me hell!

The stockings weren't hung by the chimney with care -

The damned things were sprawled on the back of my chair!

The children were nestled, all snug in their bed,

And I had a large cake of ice on my head!

When at last I dozed off, taking a nap,

The ice woke me up when it fell in my lap.

Then for some unknown reason I wanted a drink,

So I started feeling my way to the sink.

I got along fine til I stepped on the cat,

I don't recall just what occurred after that.

When I came to, the house flooded with light,

And under the table I was high as a kite.

While visions of sugar plums danced in my head,

I somehow got up and then back to bed.

Then what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

The the sleigh seemed to change to a red firetruck,

And each reindeer turned into a bleary eyed buck;

I knew in a moment, it must be Old Nick -

I tried to cry out, but my tongue was too thick.

Then the old devil whistled and shouted with glee,

While each buck pawed the earth, starring daggers at me.

Then he called them by name, and the names made me shudder,

When I heard them I felt like a ship, minus rudder.

Now Eggnog! Bacardi! Four Roses! and Brandy!

Now Fruitcake! Cold Turkey! Gin Rickey! and Candy!

To the top of his dome, to the top of his skull,

Now whack away, crack away, with thumps that are dull!

Then in a twinkling I felt on my roof,

The prancing and pawing of each cloven hoof.

How long it went on, I'm sure I can't say,

Tho' it seemed an eternity, plus one very long day.

But finally the night after Christmas had passed,

And I found that I could really think straight at last.

So I thought of the New Year a few days away,

And I've made me a vow that no tempter can sway.

I'm sticking to water, don't even want ice.

For there's nothing as tasty and nothing as nice.

The night after New Year's may bother some guys,

But I've learned my lesson, and brother I'm wise.

You can have your rich victuals, and liquor that's red,

But what goes to my stomach, won't go to my head.

So a big Happy New Year to you and to all;

I'm back on the wagon, and I hope I don't fall.