One More Thing about El Rey Azteca

There’s this heavily brass and accordion-based music playing and no one bats an eye if you take your nephew by the hand and polka around the lobby with him.  In fact, it seems just what the music, the space, and the nephew were created for.

Lefty Frizzell

I heard “If You’ve Got the Money” this morning on the radio and it was like a revelation, one of those moments where you hear a song you’ve heard a million times, but somehow it strikes you just right, so you can hear it again anew.

And there’s something about how his voice hiccups that makes me so happy.

I think Lefty Frizzell may be the country singer most under-rated by me.

Hmm. Did I Ruin Whites Creek?

From the City Paper today, I learn that home prices in Whites Creek have, even in this economy, risen 61.3%.  Even after the lengths to which I went to convince y’all that this is a terrible place to live!

These Short Thoughts of Mine

1. As a side note to what Southern Beale is saying here, the more I think about it, the more I do find it deeply weird that we hear from “Christians” (and I use the quotes only because it’s a specific segment of Christians, almost exclusively) whenever there’s an issue of homosexuality or abortion, but never on other things, like health care?  I know the health care issue is complicated and hardly anyone has read the whole bill (and does the Senate even have a bill yet?), but “take care of the sick” is a pretty big Christian imperative and there is a lot of discussion in Christian circles on the best way to do it.

So, why no media coverage?  It’s weird what the popular culture will accept as proper subjects for Christian commentary and the proper Christians they’ll let comment.

2.  Over at Pith, I write about letting Michael Vick play football again.

3. I don’t have clear thoughts on this because it seems so audacious that I can’t quite believe that there’s not more to it. Legislators who live near Nashville are really charging Tennessee taxpayers to come into the office? (That story’s particularly funny and galling because this is the same guy who didn’t want to extend unemployment benefits for his constituents while he made money doing a commute many of his working constituents do every day for free.)

4. I’m not a gun nut, but if I were, people showing up with guns and not so veiled references to watering the tree of liberty in the blood of tyrannts and patriots, I’d be deeply concerned. Because the whole “gun nuts” thing aside, the biggest progress gun lovers have made is in convincing the rest of us that y’all are normal people we have no reason to be afraid of.  One of these fuckers shoots someone at a political rally and it’s not going to be the Glenn Becks of the world who suffer the repercussions. It’s going to be the folks who have tried very hard to make their side seem like responsible adults.