AYIMV! #001! Subterranean Homesick Blues!

I’m not a big Bob Dylan fan at all so it’s a bit strange to start off this project by citing an artist I was never really a big fan off but the truth of the matter is this is very likely to have been the first ‘music video’ made and it was something that did have a lasting effect on the world.

The promotional clip for this song is arguably one of the most famous music videos of all time. Shot in 1965 as part of the documentary Don’t Look Back (chronicling his tour of England), it features Dylan standing in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel in London. He is holding cue cards, which he flips through as the song progresses. On the cards are select phrases from the song’s lyrics, often with purposeful misspellings. These cue cards were written by Dylan along with the folk singer Donovan, the musician Bob Neuwirthand, and the beat poet Allen Ginsberg (these latter two can be seen in the actual video, standing just behind Dylan).

I just finished watching this long Martin Scorsese thing on Bob Dylan right before writing this entry and truthfully I found it boring. Oddly enough though I walked away with more respect for Dylan than I ever had only because it was readily apparent throughout the documentary that he was in it for the money, fame and playing the music even though all the people around him tried ascribing all these other qualities to him.

Anyway, on a year long voyage of the music video we start with Subterranean Homesick Blues! This was actually shot by D. A. Pennebaker as the opening sequence for his film Don’t Look Back. Some have said it’s one of the first rap songs as well saying there is little difference between the Dylan tune and Enimen which isn’t really that far off the mark.

It doesn’t take away anything from him or his achievements as an artist, it’s just funny that people really got angry at him round about the time he was doing this video which is something of an achievement and stands the test of time even today over 50 years later!

The addition of a promotional clip, which was the forerunner of the music videos, made the song even more awe-inspiring. The original clip featured in D.A Pennebaker’s film Don’t Look Back, a documentary on Dylan’s 1965 England tour. In the clip, Dylan stands in London’s Savoy Hotel’s back alley and flips through cards as the song progresses. Resembling cue cards, they contain selected phrases from the song’s lines with intentional puns and misspellings. The cards were written by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the musician Bob Neuwirthand and folk musician Donovan, the former two of which can be spotted in the video talking to each other in a corner behind Dylan.

People were upset because he started to play electric guitar and had a backing band - it’s just too funny in retrospect.

So, if you haven’t seen this know that it has the poet Alan Ginsberg in the background and he was in fact one of the people who made up the cue cards being used in the short.

Finally, here are some songfacts on the song.

Johnny’s in the basement / Mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement / Thinking about the government / The man in the trench coat / Badge out, laid off / Says he’s got a bad cough / Wants to get it paid off / Look out kid / It’s somethin’ you did / God knows when / But you’re doing it again / You better duck down the alley way / Lookin’ for a new friend / A man in the coonskin cap, in the pig pen / Wants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten

 

Maggie comes fleet foot / Face full of black soot / Talkin’ that the heat put / Plants in the bed but / The phone’s tapped anyway / Maggie says that many say / They must bust in early May / Orders from the D.A. Look out kid / Don’t matter what you did / Walk on your tip toes / Don’t tie no bows / Better stay away from those / That carry around a fire hose / Keep a clean nose / Watch the plain clothes / You don’t need a weather man / To know which way the wind blows

 

Oh, get sick, get well / Hang around a ink well / Hang bail, hard to tell / If anything is goin’ to sell / Try hard, get barred / Get back, write braille / Get jailed, jump bail / Join the army, if you fail / Look out kid / You're gonna get hit / But losers, cheaters / Six-time users / Hang around the theaters / Girl by the whirlpool / Lookin’ for a new fool / Don't follow leaders, watch the parkin’ meters

 

Oh, get born, keep warm / Short pants, romance / Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed / Try to be a success / Please her, please him, buy gifts / Don’t steal, don’t lift / Twenty years of schoolin’ / And they put you on the day shift / Look out kid / They keep it all hid / Better jump down a manhole / Light yourself a candle / Don’t wear sandals / Try to avoid the scandals / Don't want to be a bum / You better chew gum / The pump don’t work / ’Cause the vandals took the handles

I just had to see…

How fast I could get in and out and get something up on the blog. I’ve been really bad lately. I’ve started a bunch of things and then just run out of steam even though the drafts queue has something of a logjam going on.

Summer is going by way… way… way too fast and honesty I’m just not taking advantage of it the way I should be. There’s plenty of yardwork to do, lots of things to do around the house but all of it is getting undone or even just not started.

Days fly by, weeks rocket past and I simple don’t know where the time goes.

I’m also struggling lately it seems. I don’t know what changed but things are very, very tight. I’m someone who doesn’t like being in debt and I can’t say that I am deep in debt but because of the situation I am living a very monk like existence.

There is so much shit around here that I simply need to sell, stuff that takes up space and that really is worth money that people will buy it but I have to get off of my lazy ass and follow through.

Work has been up and down and that’s likely part of the problem. I thought I would be able to coast through the rest of the summer but some internal dynamics have made the job a helluva lot more difficult that it should be. Holding people’s hand to get them to do their fucking job correctly and running interference with a client isn’t fun.

I really don’t need to spend time covering for the people on my team who are fucking up and somehow think they are being put upon to do their jobs which is something I admittedly find amazing.

I have to admit to being a little worried that the company would bag on me early even though my contract is supposed to run through the end of the year but it’s sounding like that’s just me stressing for no reason and I’ve even made inroads to the point where if my contract for the current role I’m in ends there may be another position in the company they would want me for (this is a good thing).

I actually had someone tell me that if my contract winds up ending and they are cutting me loose to let them know because people with my skills are hard to find and they will be looking for a place for me.

 I don’t want to work FOREVER but I do need to work for another couple of years before I could retire and even then things will be tight so if I can extend it until 70 and increase that SSI payout, why not although one wonders if it will be there when I do retire and if it’s not well I’ll be really fucked!

 Anyway, hope your summer is going well. I have a vacation coming up so I’m looking forward to doing lots of fun things I’ve been putting off! 

Summer is my happy time.

It’s been really hot and truthfully I haven’t been outside too much but summer is still my happy time of the year regardless. The days are longer and for me that’s the biggest bonus there is… give me sunlight, sunlight and more sunlight and I am happy. Banish the dark and banish the night.

Even though it’s my happy time of year I have to admit to just not feeling like doing much.

What’s that about?

In the past few days, I repaired a trash can lid doing some plastic welding and felt like it was a major achievement. I also hung new drapes over my work window which also was something of an achievement. I have a long list of things I need to do around here and the truth of it is I just am not getting to things the way I should be.

Today, I realized I could very well be out of work before my birthday which would be very, very, very, very, very bad.

I simply am not at a point where I can afford not to be working and I am so close to achieving some major goals. Those goals though are dependent on me continuing to work so now the anxiety of looking for a gig raises its ugly head and the first order of business is to scramble around and see if I can latch on somewhere within the company by letting people know this project is wrapping up.

In all honesty? I’d really like to work a little more than another two years, maybe three and then just call it.

It’s so hard to save and so easy to spend it seems.

This year, it seems as if money is in even more short supply even though I have been working and I’m trying to understand why that is. I get a sense I know the answer to it aside from prices going up and my salary staying the same but also some decisions I made as well as some things changing.

Medicare is good but it isn’t great and it is surprisingly expensive between all the premiums and the out of pocket expenses.

Last week I was off for most of the week although I did peek into work from time to time and I had set things up in such a way that the train kept moving forward.

You’d think I got a lot done but I didn’t. I did get a medical test, saw some doctors, met a friend for lunch, took another person out for their birthday and saw Supergirl as well as made sure my cousin got flowers for her birthday and it seemed like the week went by fast. I’ve got another week off coming up and honestly I can’t wait and the another week in the beginning of September but all in all it just doesn’t seem like there is enough time to do everything or maybe it’s that I don’t have the energy.

I keep trying to think about what I did that was so earth-shattering but then I remember I did a lot of cooking. There’s always cleaning to do too… I’m just mister excitement what can I say!

Testing… testing… testing…

We are all of us preoccupied with tests.

When we are kids, we all get to take those standardized tests in school (although not having children I wonder if they are still doing that). For my peers and I that meant being given two pencils and a form that could be scanned by a computers where you filled in ovals with your answers be it A, B, C, D or E.

After you got past those tests in the lower grades, the next big round of tests you got was the SATs. I never took an SAT but I did take a PSAT and scored well. Go figure. It didn’t really do me so much good as I wound up dropping out of high school and then going back to get a GED later when I couldn’t get myself a demeaning low level job and was angry and annoyed about it. Needless to say, the GED thing was a piece of cake and after a night class of a month or so I aced that. Never mind I was ready to graduate midway through my junior year and only a credit or two short before I transferred from prep school to local NYC public high schools where there were metal detectors and education was something of a joke.

Now that I’m older, I get to have the fun of different kinds of test but these tests are even more important then ever before! These are the medical tests!

They are CT Scans, MRIs and Colonoscopies where they look inside of you to figure out where your body went wrong or things have gone awry.

This past week, I had another one of these CT scans, another test. The thing went well and what’s wild is that now, I can log in and actually read the report and look at the images to see everything. One group of doctors orders the test and then I take the info, download it and then upload it so another group of doctors are in the loop.

It’s really kind of amazing when you think about it but a lot of the hoops I jump through are because of the Byzantine way insurance and the whole medical bullshit is set up.

If my doctor who works with a particular hospital arranges for a test it can cost me thousands of dollars but if I arrange the test myself and get the preapproval and all of the lined up it only costs me the $160 dollar co-pay. Think about that… one is a bill for over $14k and the other is $160 out of pocket and tell me again that everything works!

Anyway, I’m off this week and doing self maintenance but checking in on work to keep things moving. That’s some vacation, right? Nonetheless, I don’t want my life to be crazy so this is what I do to keep the waters still. Today I will go see the Supergirl movie, pick up rock salt to salt the earth and kill some unwanted greenery, buy flowers for someone for their birthday and likely go to the local food pantry to gloom some food and coupons for the local farmer’s market. Plus there are other assorted errands to run. It seems like a day but I never get enough done and today, I only managed to wash the dishes and order new drapery for a specific window and nap.

I live an exciting life to be sure but it’s all good as I binge watch Severance.

I’ve been caught up with work.

It’s fascinating in a way, I’ve been so preoccupied with other things between work and just self maintenance I haven’t had the wherewithal to stop and take a break. I also find myself ever so occupied getting into the three versions of soduku on a local newspaper site… easy, medium and hard. I find the easy something less than a challenge and focus on the hard and medium mainly.

I watch things going on and I have to say it’s just fascination how the same group of folks want to project, project and project some more. Who are they? Well, they’re the people who believe they wear white hats, they believe they are ‘freedom fighters,’ they think they are ‘protecting Democracy from fascism’ when the truth of things is they are upset at not getting their way.

All the things they say they are against they embrace and blame the people they don’t like because by projecting they deflect away from taking responsibility for their own behavior.

This week, Democrats were upset because the guy with the Nazi tattoo, a man who not only raped women and was something of a misogynist finally was no longer able to shield himself from his past. This was after a party that is so entirely corrupt and hungry for power couldn’t support the lies anymore.

The people who went around chanting ‘believe her’ not too long ago, once again showed themselves to be total hypocrites who actually did everything they could to discredit victims and not just one but many. The same way they did with Joe Biden, the same way they did with Eric Swalwell. These are the same people who want to have people believe the bullshit story by E Jean Carroll about a purported sexual assault that happened amazingly in a crowded department store in the middle of the day in Manhattan really happened. Never mind that entire charade had been one of the party’s biggest financial donors, Reid Hoffman. Never mind that Carroll had spent the better part of her life tearing down men (ask John Johnson) writing books and columns that defined the word misandry.

Yes, these same people wanted to deny yet again the behavior in their own that supposedly they found outrageous.

You see it all had to do with winning.

That’s what it’s all about you see. It has nothing to do with lofty principals. It only has to do with getting their way and imposing their wills upon others.

And they call the people they dislike fascists, what a joke.

These are people who genuinely believe our nation is evil and root for the true evil in the world.

They are just sad.

But as sad and pathetic as they may be, they are very much a threat. Democrats you see have always cheated. What do I mean? I mean if you know your history, then the I can tell you it’s pretty easy to look it up.

The Democrats are the people who gave us the KKK. There was a reason they were rabid about tearing down all those civil war statues, about removing the names of all those confederate military officers and the like. 

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” 

If you remove the evidence of the past as the Democrats want to actively do, then you can create and control the future. Want to trot out the lie that ‘the parties flipped?’ How about a few other examples…

We also have Tammany Hall in New York. Tammany Hall another political machine of the Democrats where Democrats harvested immigrants and used them to win elections (sound familiar?). Go look at the Scorsese movie Gangs of New York, it’s not a secret. If you know New York’s history, then you know that Democrats had a machine that ran the city for decades.

The city reformed under mayor Fiorella LaGuardia, A REPUBLICAN!

Oh, so I’m just lying right? And that’s an isolated instance. And The Jim Crow South that was run by Democrats and Tammany Hall also fun by Democrats are isolated instances… sure, right?

But then, there’s the Daley Machine in Chicago:

The potent Democratic machine that dominated Chicago politics for nearly half a century formed under the leadership of Anton Cermak, a Bohemian immigrant of working-class origins. After the death of Cook County Democratic leader George Brennan in 1928, Cermak secured control of the party hierarchy and defeated Thompson in the 1931 mayoral campaign.

Chicago STILL isn’t a working city and has only swung further and further to the Left. Imagine… a PRESIDENT CAME OUT OF CHICAGO, HIS CHIEF OF STAFF WAS MAYOR AND THE CITY IS EVEN WORSE TODAY THAN IT WAS BEFORE OBAMA CAME INTO OFFICE!

But wait… let’s just write that off to racism on my part, right? I mean because I dare criticize someone of color that means I have to be a racist even though he is aligned with the party that gave us the KKK. I mean you really CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!!!!

Oh and New York… it wasn’t as if things got better because Democrats regained control and bought the city to the point of bankruptcy. The guy that followed, Ed Koch? The great thing about Koch (who served three terms and we have to remember that when Giuliani talked about running for a third term in the immediate aftermath of September 11th was called derisively Mussolini) had the wheels come off as the city had one Democratic scandal after another starting with Donald Manes, followed by Stanley Simon, Stanley Friedman and Bess Myerson.

That corruption NEVER WENT AWAY!!!

Every major American city in the hands of Democrats has suffered.

Here’s an even better rub for you… you will hear Democrats talk about crime figures being higher in red states that in blue states overlooking the facts that both NYPD and LAPD don’t report their crime statistics to the FBI or the fact that they have decriminalized many things meaning it’s not that crime has gone down as much as they decided to stop enforcing the law.

But to get right back to the red state/blue state myth… when you do a deeper dive, what you come to find is that the most crime ridden areas in those red states, the ones that are the most responsible for those higher crime figures? THEY ARE CITIES THAT HAVE BEEN IN THE HANDS OF DEMOCRATIC LEADERS FOR DECADES!!!!

Little Rock Arkansas, Memphis and Nashville Tennessee, Baton Rouge and New Orleans Louisiana the list goes on and on and on… blue islands in the middle of red states that are like a tumor on the body politic of the nation.

The point here is that for all the hysterics of our friends on the Left… they are the cancer. The things they touch, they destroy. They believe in building a bigger bureaucracy no matter how inefficient it is.

Democrats love unions and one of their biggest supporters are the teacher’s union and the teacher’s union has destroyed education in this country. A recent study here in New York came out with these jewels:

Remember this number: 906.

That’s how many perennial failure factories, out of 1,600 city schools, are allowed to fester year after year.

They enroll 409,379 kids, or 43% of all NYC public school children.

Just how bad are they? In 503 of them, the majority of students failed both math and reading last year, some for a whole decade.

Despite massive amounts of extra resources and attempts at reform, these schools have never successfully turned around.

And bizarrely, the more a school fails, the more categorical federal aid it qualifies for — which gets siphoned into more money for adults before reaching any students. 

Meanwhile, education funding forever ratchets upward: Mayor Mamdani is handing the Department of Education $38.6 billion this year — an increase of almost $4 billion from last year, despite plummeting enrollment — with no strings attached. New York City spent $40 billion on public education in 2024 — $36,293 per pupil, double the national average of $17,619.

And catholic and charter schools are both giving students better outcomes. Kids are failing but DEMOCRATS who get the support of the UFT don’t do a damn thing aside from digging deeper into your pocket.

And that’s by design, don’t think it isn’t because only a fool would vote for Democrats who promise everything will be free and the world will a great place but will only turn around and make excuses and blame other for their failures. 

Just remember all of this you hear another Democrat yell about fascists and protecting Democracy and all that other bullshit they’re pushing because it’s simply a lie.

Doctor, Doctor, Give me the news!

I don’t know if anyone is even paying attention anymore but the BBC pulled the plug on Doctor Who thankfully. The show has been a pale imitation of what it was ever since Jenna Coleman left the series. I for one was not crazy about Peter Capaldi’s doctor. In all honesty since the relaunch? Matt Smith was my fave, there wasn’t a bad note in any of those series and he’s follow by Eccleston and then Tennant which likely surprises a lot of people.

Smith had this great chemistry first with Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan and then with Jenna Coleman. I mean there are episodes that leave me in tears. They’re beautiful, they’re dramatic and they tug at my heart strings. I think some of the best episodes were made with Smith’s doctor, The Impossible Astronaut, A Good Man Goes to War, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Girl Who Waited are just great episodes to watch. Then you have Asylum of the Daleks which is really heartbreaking and The Name of the Doctor which is one of the best episodes ever.

It had gone downhill after The Name of the Doctor and never matched it.

Peter Capaldi was bad, Jodi Whitaker was worse and then Ncuti Gatwa was the final nail in the coffin. Mind you, NONE of those folks are bad actors, they’re just not but the trapping of the stories around them just continued to go downhill as story became secondary to pushing an agenda.

I’ve seen people say that Doctor Who shouldn’t be considered what it was which was a show that was geared towards family watching and children and I have to wonder, WHY NOT?!?!

I mean, what’s wrong with making an entertaining show like that? What’s wrong with leaving your agenda at the door and writing things that can be true to the source material and make people happy.

What’s great is that you had people who called the folks who weren’t happy with the direction the Doctor Who franchise was taking all sorts of names. All the while the ratings just kept dropping and dropping. Some people just don’t learn.

And the critical drinker sums it up once more.

So they’ve been running this commercial…

I actually like the commercial where a guy is asking his ‘devices’ to do things and they just keep getting it wrong or ignoring him. It helps that they’ve got one of the most kick ass songs of the seventies playing under it even if it isn’t the artist and just a cover. I keep thinking how lucky I am to have gone through two really great musical periods both in the 70s and the 90s. It’s not that I’m dissing the 60s which for me was one of big AM radio but I was a kid for much of that and as a kid you listen to the things and the radio that other people put on. The 80’s had a couple of years in the middle where things were in flux.

Getting back to the original thing though… one of my favorite bands did a cover of this star’s songs, Take Me To The River which is a great cover of a great song and the song is STILL AS FUCKING GOOD as it was when it was first released and I defy people to show me anything that comes close to matching it today:

The incredible Al Green!