Funburgers for everyone!

Incrediburgible! Old Burger Chef and Jeff commercial. Thanks, Todd, for reminding me. There was one across the river when I was a kid in Illinois. We'd go there for a change of pace from McDonald's.

Dr. John, Destively Bonnaroo
Allen Toussaint, Life, Love and Faith

Saw the new True Grit last night. It's a movie mostly about rope, I think. There is rope everywhere: stringing people up, rescuing them, holding up the tents, keeping away snakes, etc. Even Mattie Rose's omnipresent braids that heep her head on straight are tendrils of rope. It's probably about other things too, like the art of enjoying making ones movies which is my favorite thing about Coen Brothers films; even when the movie drags, and they all drag, you can tell they love it. But yeah, the movie is mostly about rope with side attribute of elegant smart-mouthing.

Jeff Bridges' crusty grumble made me think mostly about Tom Waits and Dr. John, both of whom have Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame nominations or inductations or whatever, which is cool. I wore myself out on Tom Waits years ago and am just in recent years finding that special Dr. John place in my heart. Becoming newly acquainted to the south as a kid, Dr. John was the corniest-of-the-corny, in the goddamn right-place-but-musta-been-the-wrong-time all over you like noxious gas cloud, all the time.

I hated Stevie Wonder for many years because of "I Just Called To Say I Love You."  My hatred of that omnipresent song  took full fiery blossom in my adolescence and my mom told a family friend that it was my favorite song and I was put in the position of acting appreciative when said friend presented me with a 45 of it at the Christmas party. The friend was all, "It's the song you like, right?" and I couldn't figure out who my mom's  joke was really on, so I said yes, and she said, "Well, c'mon, let's play it." I put it on the old console record player (that I woudl kinda kill to have now) that sat in the front room we only used for holidays, and we collectively grooved on the punchline of an amorphous Christmas joke.

I'm pretty sure that was the last record that ever got played on that console stereo; it was probably still on the turntable when it was hauled to the street to make way for that same friend's old piano, a temporary spot for it while they moved houses and twenty-five years later, it's still in that room. Sometimes it gets played at Christmas too.

This went a lot heavier than I intended. What I really wanted to say is that I hope the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame finds some loophole through which they can give Harry Dean Stanton an award and then put Stanton, Waits and the good Dr. on the same stage fleshing out "Right Place, Wrong Time" and the collective nexus of weirdness among those three will open an extra-dimensional portal where we can transcend Al Tis and Become One, and Burger Chef and Jeff will be there at the end of the light tunnel with Funburgers for everyone!



Edited to add: I just read Matt Bell's great terrible gift story up on The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog so I dropped mine in there as well. It's like the prize with your Christmas Funburger!