Kinky Country Rob, I’m broadcasting to you from Wheeling, West Virginia!

Country ShufflemaniaIs your soul saved? Do you take Texas Country Music to be your rightful, lawful bride? Kinky Country Rob, I’m broadcasting to you from out in Wheeling, West Virginia.

You know that you are a sinner, so why not repent and still save your soul, Kinky Country Rob? No amount of rain is going to put out the fire that God will deliver to a sinner like yourself. Lost as any sodomite could ever be, you chose the liberal environs of the sinful city to rain on your perfidious soul. You chose a life of moral turpitude instead of one following your Lord. You’ve been fired from every honky tonk in town!

Sinner Rob, beware the flames of eternal damnation! Don’t let the tiny flame in your soul flicker out without finding The Salvation as you get dunked into the waters of His Love. God Bless you, Kinky Country Rob. Step aside, Devil, and let Country Rob be saved. Oh Yes, listen in on Country Shufflemania and be saved!

Down every road there’s always one more city… I’d like to settle down but they won’t let me. I’m on the run, the highway is my home. I’m lonely but can’t afford the luxury, because he who travels the fastest goes alone. I’m on the run, the highway is my home.

Kinky Country Rob, how are you these days? I’m broadcasting to you from Wheeling, West Virginia. Hope you’re doing fine? Write me a line won’t you, Kinky Country Rob? Jukebox, play me the truth! Kinky, but I think you’re fine.

For the love of our war profits

The Home Front Cares. This event screams out for parody. The Gazette ran “For the Love of Our Troops” from the website above inside its entertainment pages on Friday, the same time it put the Quaker EWO Boots stuff up on the front page. Here is just a first run idea of how to counter this event:
 
FOR THE LOVE OF OUR UNGODLY PROFITS – HELP US KEEP ON MAKING A KILLING!

$2,500 a Plate Dinner Brought to you by Locknoheed Corporation and the rest of the Colorado Springs Military-Industrial Complex, the trashy local rag, the Colorado Slumlords Association, Mayor Rivera on behalf of Curious George Dubya to thank the US troops for slaughtering off half a million dirty Arab civilians PLUS them dirty Pashtuns of Afghanistan too. So sad some of you good ol’ boys got hurt, too.

5:30 PM, November 8, 2006 Antlers Hotel. Be there, or be shelled! You’ll get food, bad country music, and bullshit philosophy from a basketball coach, and all at the very low price of $2,500 a gold seat!

Leaflet brought to you by peace activist groups who support bringing our Troops Home Now. We’ll be there with you protesting this war without end.

The dark side of white music

What’s insidious about Country & Western Music? I’ll tell you. I thought I was just incensed at its hypocrisy because it rewards multimillionaire entertainers for talking like hicks. Country singers pretend to be simpleton hillbillies, possessed maybe with down-home smarts, but really they are finely-honed corporate media assets.

That used to just burn me up. The lying tight-jeaned shits, selling America on poverty vices like alcohol, tobacco and firearms while appearing to champion the little man. Honoring the blue-collar joe while keeping him down.

The worse consequence of Country Music has not shown itself until recent times, now that we have conservative hayseeds -or appear to have- good ol’ boys in charge of everything. Pretty abruptly we can see the danger of idolizing dim-witted cowpokes.

Country Music elevates and ascribes a kind of wisdom to dumb in-bred kids who eschew school lernin. To them it’s all about thinking from your gut, hell, thinking while drunk. It’s drinking wisdom, commonsensical wisdom, the wisdom of seeing no further than your own holler, of black and white issues and ass-kicking diplomacy.

That’s the damn insidious result of worshiping a west that never was, and a motto that is not real. That’s the uncomplicated, eternally pubescent world of Country Music.

America is a nation dominated by a low common denominator. It gets lower every day as people grow dumber from pellagra malnutrition and being left behind by our education system. That denominator has an anthem: Country & Western Music.

It’s the same melody, the same guitar riff, the same build, the same harmony. You can hum it the first time you hear it because it’s the same song. And it always says:

I’m proud to be a [dumbshit],
Where at least I know [what do I know?]
Bla bla bla [we’ll shit on whoever we please],
Bla bla bla God Bless the [arian nation of dumbfucks]!

Hee Haw rides again

Hee Haw rides again!
Reprise: Junior Samples, Grandpa Jones, Buck Owens and Roy Clark.
 
No I’m messing with you. This is the cast of Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again or something like that. Three funny guys who make an enormous living by speaking for the common man, plus the Cable Guy, their greek chorus, in this case impersonating the common lower common man. Really, when Larry The Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and Ron White appear in promotional pictures, CD covers or movie posters, they are never shown in any other order than where their fans have seen them sit on their Comedy Central special. What an interesting opinion of the intellectual incapacity of your target audience.

I caught a little of this popular act on TV and I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. HEE HAW! It was funny then, and it’s funny still. But back then we didn’t have hicks for country music stars and for race car drivers and for president of the United States. Is this where you get when you idolize people who behave like they were schooled in a barn?

We make multi-millionaires out of people who talk like hayseeds. Nothin’ wrong with hayseeds, on tractors naturally. And clearly country music stars, like redneck comedy stars and like NASCAR driving stars have a lot more going for them upstairs than your average service station gofer. Most of the time we can tell that politicians and preachers who pander to the lowest common denominator, are not themselves so gullible. However, we don’t want our doctors to be hayseeds, nor our scientists, nor our news reporters, nor even customer service representatives. Why are we looking for comedic wisdom from hayseeds?

Lauding a hayseed for comedic wit seems to me to set a terrible example. We’re supposed to laugh at what stupid thinks is stupid? It’s terrifying to me that there’s even an entire auditorium full of stupids who want to hear country dumbkins opine about life. This is misogeny and gay-bashing and oversimplification of everything. Sure it’s funny to laugh at political correctness, until you consider why something is thought correct or incorrect in the first place. Life is a little bit complicated, and we don’t mind admitting that we like the most qualified person to be driving the bus. What is so funny about an idiot sounding off? Especially in a world where the court jester resembles the radio commentator and worse our presidential dauphin.

These guys tell the same jokes to each other, even work in ad libs for each other from their own original routines. This would not be so bad except that the good ol’ boys give each other kudos for their clever repartees, even though the audience would know from the CD they’ve already memorized that even the joviality is canned.

Most of us, when retelling a story in the presence of someone who we might have told already, will begin by saying “I was telling such-an-such…” so awkward are we about repeating ourselves. Performers naturally have to repeat themselves, and have to act among each other like the material is fresh. But to give each other credit for extemporizing a put-down is pretty damn lower denominator.