If You Won't Be With Me, You Won't Be With ANYbody: The 452nd Greatest Song of All Time

 

I've never heard anyone say a negative word about any of Sam Cooke's songs. And rightly so! The mixture of early 60's innocence and smooth, sweet vocals makes a crowd-pleasing combo.

But there's one song of his, "Cupid", that we really should take a closer look at.

On the surface, sure, it seems like a teenager secretly longing to be noticed by a girl he is smitten with:

Now, I don't mean to bother you

But I'm in distress

There's danger of me losing all of my happiness

For I love a girl who doesn't know I exist

And this you can fix

So, Cupid, draw back your bow

And let your arrow go

Straight to my lover's heart for me, nobody but me

Cupid, please hear my cry

And let your arrow fly

Straight to my lover's heart for me

This is clearly a case of homicidal stalking.

She's totally ignoring me

This will not go on

If this girl doesn't come around and admit

How she belongs to me, NOBODY but ME

I'mma hire a hitman

And make it look like a bow-hunting accident

Early 60's innocence, my foot.

Farewell, Dakota Chautauqua

 

Sunday, August 15, 2021. It was a fairly-pleasant afternoon with a sunny sky and low-ish humidity. There was just enough breeze to keep a stage performer from demonstrating spontaneous human combustion.

It was also, as much as it is in my power to foretell, the last time I will perform in the Dakota Chautauqua at the Dakota County (MN) Fair.

It started as a one-time celebration of Dakota County's sesquicentennial (look it up) in 1999. Just a collection of short scenes and original songs, it managed to educate, amuse, and stir the heart all at the same time.

It went so well, someone got the bright idea to make it an annual event, and for the following six summers, with new material being added each year, I got on stage with a slightly-varying group of friends and sang about pigs getting shipped to the stockyards, onion-producing towns sinking into a peat bog, and Ignatious Donnelly writing wacky books and trying to make Nininger a utopian village.

After a three-year run by a different production crew and cast, and a three-year gap with nothing happening, the original writing/directing team of Pete Martin and Eric Peltoniemi cranked things up again in 2012 and, other than the silent summer of 2020, has been making Minnesota history hysterical ever since.

Over the course of 22 years, there have been 16 productions in which I've sweat gallons, sung myself hoarse, eaten enough fried food to KILL a horse, and made some rich friendships.

But now?

Now it's time to close this chapter. Maybe some other fools will pick up the gauntlet and take the tradition further down the road, and if they do, I wish them cool weather, just a few mosquitos, and audiences that laugh loudly and applaud with exuberance.

https://youtu.be/mC2aU_MaTV8

#DropALetterCreateAMovie 2

 

Everyone in the Central time zone: (Happily nodding off to sleep)

Me: I wonder if I could come up with a blog's worth of funny movie titles by dropping just one letter from the title of a real movie?

Also Me: Sure you could. You did it over five years ago, you twit!

Everyone in the Central time zone: (Deeply ensconced in their personal REM cycles)

And Back to Me Again: Still...it's worth another go, right?

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hop  -  A band of plucky rebels create a dance craze.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Kin  -  Frodo and all his cousins move into Bag End.

Snow White and the Seven Warfs  -  The rightful heir to the throne escapes from her hateful step-mother and lives on a series of misspelled docks.

Jurassic Par  -  An escaped T-Rex does okay playing golf once a special set of long-shanked clubs is designed.

Harry Otter and the Sorceror's Stone  -  An orphaned semiaquatic mammal enrolls in a school of wizardry, floats on his back, and plays with a magical artifact.

Schindler's Lit  -  Polish industrialist's wild college days.

Pup Fiction  -  Benji writes a novel.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pear  -  Havoc is wreaked upon the high seas when Captain Jack Sparrow eats some spoiled fruit.

When I'm Sixty-FoYIKES!

 

How the farnsworth did this ever happen?!!?

I was strolling along, minding my own beeswax, content in the knowledge that Jesus loves the little children of the world. Not a care had I. No, not one.

Then suddenly, the morning after taking Abby Dormire home from our Junior Prom, it was the 64th anniversary of my birth. (Actually, this past Monday.)

• Where did this wife and four children come from?
• How is it possible that I have five grandchildren and one more about to make her appearance?
• When did my lower back start waging war on the rest of my body?
• How come there is a worn path in the carpet between my side of the bed and the bathroom?
• Ummm...
• What was I talking about?

Paul McCartney wasn't even 20 when he wrote "When I'm Sixty-Four" and now he's 79.

I'm not sure why that sets me back on my heels the way it does...but it does.