12 December 2005
It's Chickenman! (BawK-BaWk-bawk-BWA-A-A-A-W-WCK!)
Seminal British blues man Long John Baldry released an excellent album in 1972, in which he assured us that Everything Stops for Tea. My review at my website is here. (Go ahead -- i'll wait here till you get back.)
An excellent album, you should buy it, not what i came here today to talk about.
No, this post is about something else entirely that everything stopped for.
It's Chickenman! (BawK-BaWk-bawk-BWA-A-A-A-W-WCK!)
It's like 14 CDs, it's like $129 dollars or so, and it's every blessed episode Dick Orkin ever made featuring Benton Harbor, shoe salesman and part time superhero, the Wonderful White Winged Weekend Warrior -- CHICKENMAN!!"
"Welll, what sort of predicament does the Wonderful White Winged Weekend Warrior find himself in, this afternoon..."
Some of you* may remember a little doodah that we got involved in forty or so years ago... What was the name of the place... Oh, yeah -- Viet Nam!
Every afternoon around 1700 hours -- 16:45, maybe? EVERYTHING in the ET shack and the radio spaces at the Us Naval Comm Station at Cam Ranh Bay for the next episode of the Wonderful White-Winged Weekend Warrior on AFVNR.
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but i thought that i heard that it went out on all the AFVNR stations simultaneously, throughout the country.
Cheese, if Mr Charlie had discovered that we were all listening to "Chickenman" and not really paying attention to much else, it would have been such an opportunity for co-ordinated assaults throughout the country, while we were all under the spell of the Wonderful White-Winged Weekend Warrior as he attempted to crush crime and/or evil.
Or maybe not.
I have this mildly bizarre mental image of guys in black PJs and BFGoodrich sandals (thank you Tom Paxton) in hidden bunkers, spiderholes and safehouses, gathered around transistor radios tuned to AFVNR and laughing way too hard to even consider starting trouble for the next fifteen minutes or so...
Would it had been so.
Would simple laughter could bring peace forever.
Last night i had the strangest dream...
Buy Chickenman, laugh yourself silly as, for the umptenth time, The Commissioner walks into the closet trying to leave his office -- and think about those guys in holes and bunkers and ET shops laughing themselves silly for a while and forgetting the war for that fifteen minutes, at least.
And remember the guys in Baghdad and other places that were once beautiful cities till we decided to "liberate" them... and think whether it's worth it.
==================================
*I'll be posting a link to the semi-bitter semi-tirade i cut out up there elsewhere; i'm talking about something fun here. ¶ 11:57 AM
An excellent album, you should buy it, not what i came here today to talk about.No, this post is about something else entirely that everything stopped for.
It's Chickenman! (BawK-BaWk-bawk-BWA-A-A-A-W-WCK!)
It's like 14 CDs, it's like $129 dollars or so, and it's every blessed episode Dick Orkin ever made featuring Benton Harbor, shoe salesman and part time superhero, the Wonderful White Winged Weekend Warrior -- CHICKENMAN!!"
"Welll, what sort of predicament does the Wonderful White Winged Weekend Warrior find himself in, this afternoon..."
Some of you* may remember a little doodah that we got involved in forty or so years ago... What was the name of the place... Oh, yeah -- Viet Nam!
Every afternoon around 1700 hours -- 16:45, maybe? EVERYTHING in the ET shack and the radio spaces at the Us Naval Comm Station at Cam Ranh Bay for the next episode of the Wonderful White-Winged Weekend Warrior on AFVNR.
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but i thought that i heard that it went out on all the AFVNR stations simultaneously, throughout the country.
Cheese, if Mr Charlie had discovered that we were all listening to "Chickenman" and not really paying attention to much else, it would have been such an opportunity for co-ordinated assaults throughout the country, while we were all under the spell of the Wonderful White-Winged Weekend Warrior as he attempted to crush crime and/or evil.
Or maybe not.
I have this mildly bizarre mental image of guys in black PJs and BFGoodrich sandals (thank you Tom Paxton) in hidden bunkers, spiderholes and safehouses, gathered around transistor radios tuned to AFVNR and laughing way too hard to even consider starting trouble for the next fifteen minutes or so...
Would it had been so.
Would simple laughter could bring peace forever.
Last night i had the strangest dream...
Buy Chickenman, laugh yourself silly as, for the umptenth time, The Commissioner walks into the closet trying to leave his office -- and think about those guys in holes and bunkers and ET shops laughing themselves silly for a while and forgetting the war for that fifteen minutes, at least.
And remember the guys in Baghdad and other places that were once beautiful cities till we decided to "liberate" them... and think whether it's worth it.
==================================
*I'll be posting a link to the semi-bitter semi-tirade i cut out up there elsewhere; i'm talking about something fun here. ¶ 11:57 AM
