Today we turn away from the Giants of Truckin’ and check in on the seedier side of that endless black ribbon. Rod Hart wasn’t into truckin’ as a career, he was more of a “Weird Al” Yankovic of the Nashville set, recording such thighslappers as “Chicken of the County” (a wild take on Kenny Rogers’s “Coward of the County“) and most famously today’s song, “C.B. Savage”.

I don’t know if “savage” was a 1970s term for “homosexual”, but ol’ Rod certainly watched his share of Charles Nelson Reilly appearances on Match Game to prepare for this song. There’s a lot of CB lingo in this song, but the basic plot is that two men are sharing a big rig truck across the country, when they’re both outrageously freaked out by a flamboyantly gay man coming onto them with radio-friendly CB-centric euphemisms. People in 1977 apparently really loved this sort of thing.

Listening to “C.B. Savage” today raises many questions. Why are two guys sharing a single truck and radio? And how do we handle their response to this “savage”?

They keep hesitating, nearly reaching out to this liberated gay gearjammer, but pull back at the last moment. Were they restraining violent urges to gay-bash? Did each man long to embrace the openly fabulous lifestyle of this rake of the open road? Isn’t a “bird-fed cat” a very happy — some might say GAY — type of cat? Could the fowl filling this trucker’s mouth be, if you will, a cock? The world was unprepared for a Brokeback Mountain-style exploration of these themes in 1977, so a twist ending was tacked on. Things were tough all over under Jimmy Carter.

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I reckon most IOPI readers are not truck drivers, and therefore might be ignorant to the finer points of truckin’ music, and perhaps truckin’ itself. Therefore, I submit this Red Simpson song for your consideration.

Now, the other Ol’ Red was a friend to Merle Haggard and a fine songwriter, but he just couldn’t get a foothold in the hearts of country music fans. Hailing from Bakersfield CA, Red had been writing songs since he was about yea high, and he’d only gotten so far writin’ what he knew: songs about chicken farming, songs about being enlisted during the Korean War. Sure, he’d had some success , but songwriting don’t put your mug in the magazines. So when some record suits wanted more truckin’ songs, Red stepped on up. Never no mind that Red hadn’t never been a trucker; he was a student of the human condition, and truckin’ is most human.

Now, Red Simpson caught a case of skin cancer a few years ago, but he wasn’t gonna go 10-7 on account of such a thing, He’s still kicking, playing regular at Trout’s in his hometown of Bakersfield. Like Red Sovine, Red Simpson got a nice WFMU write-up back a spell, so if you want more info on Red S^2, head on over.

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October is Truckin’ Music Month at IOPI! I’ve been buying cassette tapes like MCA’s Trucker’s Jukebox at truck stops since high school. It seems like the trucker never bothered to upgrade his rig to play compact discs in the 1990s, and now they’ve all got in-dash DVD players. Every time I search the truck stop for some truckin’ discs, they are nowhere to be found!

Luckily, you can still buy truckin’ cassettes, and this past summer Ian and I fired ‘em up for a day-haul to Providence. This renewed my interest not only in truckin’ music, but in evangelizing for it as well.

Ol’ Red Sovine is one of the King of Truckin’ Music: just check out this commercial if you don’t believe me. Red was a sing-talker, creating a crudely interlocking set of narratives of lonesome highways and heartbreak. Did his songs about lost souls and long nights inspire the likes of Craig Finn and John Darnielle? Probably not, but still I can think of no one better to inaugurate Truckin’ Music Month.

“Teddy Bear” was Red’s biggest hit, reaching #1 on the Country charts and crossin’ on over into the Pop charts.

There seem to be at least two recordings of this song, best differentiated by a (semi-spoilerish!) line in the back-half. The original appears to state that

You’d better believe I took my turn ridin’ Teddy Bear!

Presumably someone realized that the truckers were letting Teddy Bear ride along in the truck, not actually riding “that little crippled boy”, and perhaps additionally clued in Red on the implications of “riding” a little boy. A later version of the song revises the lyric to:

You’d better believe that I took my turn drivin’ Teddy Bear!

Now, WFMU has a bigger and better appreciation of “The King of Narrations” on their blog, but we aren’t done with Red by a longshot here either. Come back next Wednesday for more Red, and more about the fate of Teddy Bear! That’s right, there’s more sing-talkin in store for TB yet.

I’m gonna back on out now, catch you on the flipside with another truckin’ tune!

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So? What will you do? What will you do when your child gets punched in the face by a bully? This flyer I got on my parents’ car in New Jersey has the answer! Karate! You will teach them Karate — NO! You will get someone with proper behavioral conditioning techniques to teach them martial arts! They have an “experience system”!

I was just going to stab the kid. Thank goodness I got this flyer.

I’ve known Ian and Jessica for a long time. I knew them when we lived in Kansas. I knew them when we lived in New York. We’ve always liked food: in college we bonded while watching Iron Chef and Good Eats, arguing about the best Mexican restaurant in town, getting drunk and making a disgusting “Mark Henry Sexual Chocolate Pie” from out of the pages of the Official World Wrestling Federation Cookbook. We were even inexplicably profiled in our local newspaper for a Lifestyles piece about how some college-aged males like to cook. This was breaking news in Kansas. I believe the other student profiled had a recipe involving ramen and cocktail wieners.

Anyway, Ian and Jessica are moving to Rhode Island tomorrow. Before they left, we went to WD-50. This was our visit into the Big Leagues, the sort of food we normally only watched on television, or viewed in glossy cookbooks. This was our chance to actually engage with Ornamental Cookery in reality! So of course I forgot my camera and Jessica’s didn’t seem to work.

But we wrote a bunch of words about the experience! I want to reiterate that I have no idea what Jessica is talking about with this “happy food dance” nonsense. I don’t care what the napkins says. The napkin lies.

Okay, so maybe Obama isn’t really a secret Muslim. I mean, I don’t think editorial cartoonists are completely convinced of this. But what other racist spectres can they invoke?

Perrrrrrrrrrrrrfect!

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These are all Subject-Body couplets

The Angelina Series
Mick Jagger reveals Angelina Jolie affair – High speed chase leaves wreckage of 45 cars
Cure for breast cancer in sight – Angeline Jolie gives birth to 5 kids at a time
Angelina Jolie dies in miscarriage – Mud slinging of Tony Snow’s name bring disgrace to his last days in the White House

Inspired by my 1st Grade writing Series
Horses breaks riders skull in freak attack – Girl smashes dog to death, faces imprisonment
Boy pokes fork into sister’s eye – Space shuttle loses wing during training flight, 2 killed

The Ineffable Genius Series
Obama trouser fly slip – Your chance to pick up an iPhone at just $1.99
Barenaked Ladies with cocaine overdose – Public found that Area 51 contains the storage, examination and reverse engineering of crash alien spacecraft

The New Yorker did that Obama cover last week and everyone talked about it. Surely, a fiery Muslim/Negro like Barack Obama would strike down with great vengeance and furious anger at those who would besmirch him in cartoon form!

He was on Larry King, and as the Old Grey Larry looked on with fear, let loose with the following vitriol:

Well, I know it was [their] attempt at satire. I don’t think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what, it’s a cartoon, Larry, and that’s why we’ve got the First Amendment. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Oh. Well, I guess he isn’t that upset. And he certainly isn’t a Muslim, that’s been thoroughly debunked. I’m glad that’s settled and a bunch of retards aren’t going to totally ignore his response and–
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…but this guy is on another level.

Oh, yes, firecrackers are dangerous all right. Any idiot can blow his fingers off — and many idiots do. But many idiots also shoot themselves or others, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, because they are idiots. Thanks to the Supreme Court, their idiocy is of a superior nature now because it is rooted in the exercising of an individual constitutional right.

More local papers should have cranky old men write editorials that are basically internet trolls.

We cannot allow a Theme Restaurant Gap!

Hezbollah gets this:

While we in America are stuck with Good Burger, Home of the Good Burger. I liked Good Burger as much if not more than the average American, but this is some really weak themeing. They don’t even have their promised gimmick burgers.

We are losing.