John Williams is paying the price for agreeing to do the Star Wars prequels.
Also, I'm guessing it doesn't help to legally change your name, since your old one remains with you as an alias?
legally change your name
I recall reading anecdotes in which people have switched their credit cards (with which they purchase the tickets) to reflect only their first initials, and have thus circumvented the hang-ups. Which further demonstrates the inanity. ("Who, me? No, no, no. I'm U. bin Ladin.")
If the Karate Kid beat the devil in a guitar battle he could get Robert Johnson off the no fly list.
Trust the government with power, because they'll do the right thing. Yeah.
Read some of the comments at the CBS link. The guys who claim to be on the no-fly list are kind of interesting, but check out the guy who says, "There's going to be another incident, and then all you namby-pamby 'civil liberties' people are going to be sorry!!!!" It's an amazing kind of disassociative hallucination that I see more and more of recently. It doesn't matter what the story itself says--the story is really only about the ineffectiveness of a measure that has been taken in the name of security, and you'd think a person concerned with taking more stringent measures in the name of security would want whatever we do to become more effective--the reply to anything that looks like a criticism of the state becomes, "You are disloyal, whatever our government is doing is definitionally the best possible thing that could be done, shut up you traitors".
well, sure, he got hell-hounds on his trail. Anybody knows that.
And sin was the cause of it all.
And then they came for the people named Gary Smith, but I didn't stand up, because I wasn't named Gary Smith.
Perhaps the best argument yet for naming one's son Theosophilous.
This is all a big misunderstanding. As soon as Robert Johnson explains that his song is named "Terraplane Blues" and not "Terror Plane Blues," I'm sure they'll take his name of the list.
(Ogged, I beat you to posting this by twenty-seven whole minutes. Booyah!)
Shit, so you did, MAE, so you did. But my post is bigger.
Gah, ogged, you've completely scrambled my brain with lyrics from "Tha Crossroads". And I'm gonna miss everybody/ And I'm gonna miss everybody.
But my post is bigger.
Maybe so, ogged, but that much hand-stretching can't be good for you.
5: When historians look back on our times, they will call it the Era of Stockholm Syndrome.
There's a philosopher named Robert Johnson who I don't know very well but who seems like a nice enough guy. I used to feel bad for him having to suffer through countless lame blues jokes ("I'm gonna universalize my maxim, til I get satisfied, ooo") but now I feel even worse thinking of the irritation of airport searches. What a pain in the ass.
but now I feel even worse thinking of the irritation of airport searches. What a pain in the ass.
Probably.
What a pain in the ass.
It's not that kind of search, Labs.
Or is it?
now I feel even worse thinking of the irritation of airport searches. What a pain in the ass.
Look on the bright side. They're a sure-fire cure for hiccups.
-gg-d is getting pwned coming and going.
Yeah, 9 totally pwns. Well done.
There was a philosopher at U of Toronto who was named James Brown.
I would spend some time trying to work "Hot Tub" into a philosophy joke, but I just woke up.
8 is a good idea. Also, if you ever have to petition Homeland Security for anything, it helps to have an unusual name so you don't get held up in FBI name checks for six months.
When historians look back on our times, they will call it the Era of Stockholm Syndrome.
Right. While there've been many panics before, and those have for the last hundred years or so often been media-driven, I can't think of any examples outside the two World Wars, and possibly early Cold War, where the government and media worked together to promote them. And those were times of great danger and national effort, of mobilization. What's our excuse?
They're a sure-fire cure for hiccups.
Depends on the babe whose finger it is.
Orgasm works too, btw.
Also, if you ever have to petition Homeland Security for anything, it helps to have an unusual name so you don't get held up in FBI name checks for six months.
I suggest giving your name as "Ogged."
My wife Roberta shares the almost-as-common-as-Johnson last name of some guy on the no-fly list, and his first name is Robert, to boot. No strip searches yet, but she gets pulled aside for extra-special scrutiny every single time she flies.
I wouldn't ordinarily say this, but maybe try hyphenation?
That hiccup cure just won an Ig Nobel Prize.
So I always assumed Tommy, in O Brother Where Art Thou?, is based on Robert Johnson, because of the whole crossroads/devil thing. But then I got told, and Wikipedia says too, there's a Tommy Johnson who was a blues musician who sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, also. And that Robert Johnson never said this. So is this a bum rap on Robert Johnson?
21 - there's a professor of religious history at Tougaloo College named James Brown. My dad met him at a conference once and got the impression that as a white man named "James Brown" he had dedicated his life to becoming faculty at an obscure historically black college so that he could fool diversity-minded search committees and conference organizers into flying him into places so that he could visit as many minor-league baseball stadiums as possible. But that may be an exaggeration.
I hope it isn't. That's a man with a well planned out life.
That's a man with a well planned out life
Aren't there more efficient methods of visiting as many minor-league baseball stadiums as possible?
32 - but very few of those methods involve tenure.
Right, but I thought from your 30 that tenure was part of the means, not an end in itself.
32: Obviously the guy was an artist, and not a crass utilitarian. SOmeone who would actually eat his meal with a spoon, rather than blending it all together and efficiently chugging it down. It all gets mixed up in your stomach anyway.
is this a bum rap on Robert Johnson?
As I understand it, Robert Johnson was away from home for a while in his youth, and came back with crazy guitar skills, which he hadn't had before he left. So the legend started that he'd sold his soul to the devil in exchange for guitar mastery. Some blues scholars are skeptical.
What do you have against forks, Emerson?
And, where is Weiner to give us the low-down on Robert, Michael and Lonnie Johnson?
The Robert Johnson stuff is funny, but the part of this that kills me is how people who actually have been detained on terrorism charges or who are currently under surveillance for the same are specifically not on the watch list because it might fall into the wrong hands and tip someone off. So they are creating a separate, ultra-secure watch list for people that really are worth taking a closer look at, which, of course, has yet to be finished.
... and just remember that we should all vote for republicans for the safety of the United States.
And those were times of great danger and national effort, of mobilization. What's our excuse?
Wait, the Palmer Raids-era Red Scare was a time of great danger? I guess, but it wasn't like Italian trade unionists were being thrown in jail because they were objectively pro-influenza.
Tommy Johnson was the one who said that if you hung out at the crossroads at midnight, the Devil would come tune your guitar, but everyone at the Transportation Security Administration associates this with Robert Johnson because he sang "Crossroads Blues" (and "Me and the Devil Blues"). All of us civil libertarians will be embarassed as heck when Jack Johson's infernal powers manage to divert a plane into Hell.
It all gets mixed up in your stomach anyway.
Oh my god, "John Emerson" is actually my mom, commenting under a pseudonym.
It's a good idea on Unfogged not to say anything that you wouldn't want your mom to hear. We're everywhere, you know.
John Emerson is, like facials, purely a creation of the MSM.
as I guess an actual Robert Johnson expert, I'll add my 2c. The figure in Oh Brother is Tommy Johnson, which is the name of another musician (Canned Heat Blues and Big Road Blues were his most famous songs. Canned Heat is about the problem of drinking sterno-- 'mama mama mama that canned heat's a killing me."). He actually sings a Skip James song in the movie.
Tommy Johnson's brother Majer told David Evans (who wrote a bio of Tommy and the book Big Road Blues) the crossroads story about his brother Tommy. In the book Deep Blues, Bob Palmer quoted Majer's version and connected it (with no evidence) to Robert Johnson, I suppose because it seemed a cool connection.
Friends of Robert Johnson who were asked about it later (Honeyboy Edwards, R. Lockwood, Johnny Shines) pretty consistently said stories about Robert selling his soul to the devil were bullshit. Occasionally in those words.
Johnson did leave the area he'd gone to school (around Tunica, MS, near Memphis) and return to the area where he was born (around Hazelhurst, south of Jackson) while in his late teens/early 20s. While in Hazelhurst, he apparently perfected his guitar skills; when he returned, he played in front of Son House, who reported being stunned how much Johnson had learned while gone. There's a guitarist from Alabama Johnson apparently ran with around Hazelhurst who Johnson learned from. Ike something or other (I'm drawing a blank). That guy never recorded.
There's a similar story about Tommy Johnson, leaving the Crystal Springs area to the middle delta around Dockery and Drew, where he would have encountered Charlie Patton and others and coming back playing much, much better. That's when Majer said he sold his soul.
"Gotta keep moving, blues falling down like hail, Blues falling down like hail, Homeland Security on my tail."
I love TomF. Have you collected any of your expertise in writing, Tom?
Is Big Johnson on the list?
max
['And why not?']
nope, Ogged. For Johnson interest, there's a longish article I wrote a few years ago in Living Blues.. Send an email to my-my-first-name at freelandlawfirm.com and I'll email you the text if you like.
So far I've published articles here and there. I have two file cabinet drawers full of research relating to delta blues but it's been going nowhere lately.
Thanks, TomF. Precision and distinction are teh awesome.
24:Does anyone know how to induce hiccups so I can test this?
Eating carrots works for me for some reason. you could try it.
Ike Zinnerman, I think.
In "Cross Road Blues," Johnson goes down to the crossroads and asks "the Lord above" for mercy. He does have a few songs with devilish references—"Me and the Devil Blues," "Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)," "Hell Hound on my Trail."