Captain America, the NFL, and Drunk Songs (don't worry, we didn't buy weapons from China)

            Greetings ya’ll and welcome back to the Low Class Blog Spot.  I’m hopeful that this is the first of many blogs that I’m going to write that we’ll call “Bar Talk” or something along those lines.  The main goal is to give some thoughts I have and to hear the thoughts that some of you may have.  As always comments and suggestions are welcome in any form whether they are on the blog, on facebook, or through twitter.  Hopefully this doesn’t bore you too much, but if it does I’m sorry. 

These blogs will be different from the long form writing I plan on doing.  I’m also planning a separate section to come along later.  Perhaps later is tomorrow or maybe it will be never.  But for now this is what you get.

Anyways back to how it’s different.  We’ll have five sections: The Appetizer; which is going to be a short discussion on who knows what, The Main Course; which is going to be the meat of the blog, The Dessert; well it’s the sweet thing to come along at the end, The Drunk Talk; where we make list and talk about stupid things, and the One Night Stand; something we might regret tomorrow but really like tonight.  So let’s begin!

Appetizer

            Not sure if you’ve seen yet but Captain America: The First Avenger is set to come out tonight at midnight.  Do we really need more superhero movies?  I hope I’m not alone in feeling that Hollywood has completely lost their way in the last decade or so.  1999 was such a great year for films and then it seems like after the turn of the century the movies have gotten gradually worse.  Sure there are still some gems out there but by and large everything is a retread of something else.  Remakes, comic book movies, and “reboots” are the norm.  I’m tired of it.  And I’m not saying we need more art house films.  Lars Von Trier is always going to make weird stuff that most Americans don’t care about.  But can we at least get something on par with American Beauty?  Not saying that Sam Mendes isn’t a pretentious prick (he may be, I don’t know the man) but that movie was a smart movie that EVERYBODY saw.  Whatever.  Let’s eat.

Main Course

            Today’s big news story in case you have been hiding under a rock is the NFL lockout.  It looks like finally there might be some resolution to this which in a way I am happy about it.  Everybody loves football and the NFL really is the best football you’re going to find in the world.  The issue I take with this is that it is the main headline for today.  My problem with this being the big news is two fold.

            My first problem is I don’t think either side is really happy with the deal that appears to be in place.  And that’s a problem.  As long as one side feels like they “lost” tensions are always going to be there between the players and the owners.  Now I’m not a genius in these lockout situations but it sounds to me like both sides are unhappy with what they are settling on.  What is really needed is for the owners to say no more 18 game schedule, that they are going to invest more into player safety, and that they are going to work with the union to set up a better retirement package for players and former players.  Football is a rough sport and player safety and health should always be at the forefront.

            The players need to realize though that the owners have to make money.  And sometimes that means rookie contracts will be less than what they are and that maybe you will be franchised more than once in your career.  What we love about the NFL is the parity.  And if we get rid of the franchise tag and start driving the prices on signing rookies and free agents up even more the league will lose parity and turn into the NBA.  One of the best teams of the past decade has been from the microscopic market of Indianapolis.  They drafted good players and kept them long term by winning and then the money they made from all the winning they re-invested into their franchise.  So if Peyton gets slapped with another Franchise tag I don’t see a problem with it.  He’s still going to get his money.  And you shouldn’t see a problem with it either.

            And the fact this is even a story has bothered me.  Right now we know that the owners have approved the deal but we don’t know what the players are going to do.  There seems to be a lack of direction on both sides and I think it is clear that Roger Goddell is way over his head and needs to reexamine his role in the NFL.  He’s a puppet for the owners and has no respect from the players.  Then again the players themselves can’t seem to get organized so it’s like splitting hairs in trying to find who the blame lies on here.

            My real issue though with this is the coverage it is getting.  Forget the fact that the sports coverage is through the roof.  We’re in the middle of one of the best baseball seasons in recent memory yet ESPN continues to force feed us football.  With all the constant talk about football I feel like the season never really ended but just rolled over.

            Forget about the sports journalist for a while though.  I’m talking about the coverage this is receiving in the main stream media.  Our country is in an economic crisis and there are serious political issues in South-East Asia and the Mediterranean.  But what do most of us American’s care about?  Whether a bunch of football players get to play this year so we can make fun of our friends in fantasy football.

            I get news values and I understand this is the story that we want to read about and see.  And that is what makes me sad.  Our country should be more educated than this.  There is an entire world that exists outside the United States and we pretend to be ignorant to it.  Hell we even ignore the problems here in our own country.  But who cares really?  As long as you get Tom Brady number one in your fantasy draft the suffering of millions world wide and the political upheavals that will shape our foreign policy for the next fifty years mean nothing.

Dessert

            Has anybody not seen Black Swan yet?  I’ll go ahead and say it.  Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman are sexy together.  But aside from that the movie itself is amazing.  Darren Aronofsky once again is cementing himself as one of the premier directors in the world.  Hopefully more and more Hollywood types will follow his lead and see that truly thought provoking films can be successful.  Here’s to Terrance Malick’s Tree of Life continuing to have a successful run.  I’ve heard stories of people demanding their money back but hopefully that has been few and far between.

Drunk Talk

            So my good friend Matt Barrett suggested I make a list of my favorite songs to listen to after one to many Dr. Peppers and I feel that diabetic shock creeping in (my mom reads this, do you really think I’m going to say after I’ve had to many beers and I’m fall down drunk?  Of course not).

            In order to oblige him I give you, in no particular order, the “Justin’s doin the Justin thing again” playlist:

1)      Water in the Well-American Aquarium

2)      Devil’s Waitin-Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

3)      MaryJane-Chase Fifty Six

4)      Good to be Home-The Everybodyfields

5)      Wayside/Back in Time-Gillian Welch

6)      Dublin Blues-Guy Clark

7)      Women Without Whiskey-Drive-By Truckers

8)      Codeine-Jason Isbell

9)      Kiss the Bottle-Jawbreaker/Lucero/Foo Fighters

10)  Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy-Johnny Cash

11)  Boomer’s Story-Ry Cooder

12)  The Hardest Part-Ryan Adams

I hope that helps all of you out next time you’ve had one Dr. Pepper to many and you feel a fun night coming on.  Of all of those my top three would be either “Kiss the Bottle,” “Women Without Whiskey,” or “Dublin Blues.”  Look ‘em up!

One Night Stand

            I want to thank anybody who is an ignorant city councilman in any city in America.  I’m not going to name names or through out blame but racist, xenophobic politicians I’d like think went out of vogue sometime in the 1960’s.  And while voters will agree there will always be people who get elected based on their looks and then open their mouths and show how dumb they are.  Sure China sold weapons to North Vietnam.  But America sold weapons to Iran, Iraq, and The Taliban.  The difference is neither Iran, Iraq, nor The Taliban is trying to bring jobs to economically depressed regions of the south.

The Coat of Henry Edgar Williamson

            In my parents house underneath the bed that I slept on when I moved back home is my Great-Grandfather’s World War One coat.  The coat itself isn’t anything remarkable:  it’s a forest-green long coat made out of wool that looks like any other U.S. Army coat issued during that time.  What is remarkable is the story behind the coat.

            My Great-Grandfather was named Henry Edgar Williamson.  He was born halfway between Ashland and Millerville, Alabama in 1893.  He came of age at a time in America when the issues of the day were prohibition, suffrage, and what the best way was to icrease the American sphere of influence around the world and how we would assert ourselves as an international power.

            Then on the 28^th of June, 1914 the Archduke of Austria and heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.  In the blink of an eye Europe was engulfed in war.  But for a young man—barely twenty—from a farming community in East Alabama I find it hard to believe that the immediate reaction was more than a shrug of the shoulders as he continued to labor.

            In time though The Great War, as it came to be called, reached America’s shores.  There was panic in the streets of cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  Conscription became a volatile issue much like it would with Vietnam nearly half a century later.  Men don’t like to die for causes they don’t believe in and hate it even more when they die for the ones they don’t give a damn about.  And certainly no son of the south was going to die for any Yankees, much less a bunch of Europeans.  But while I’m sure the old veterans in the south complained about how the young men from Alabama were betraying their real country, Henry Edgar chose to serve after he was drafted into the army.

            And this is where the story of the coat comes in.

            According to my grandfather after his father and his fellow draftees were processed into the army the young men from Clay County, Alabama were sent about an hour up the road to Fort McClellan to begin the initial phase of their training.   My great-grandfather Henry Edgar Williamson would have begun the slow transformation from citizen to soldier.

            After about a month or two at Fort McClellan the new soldiers were sent to Camp Shelby in south Mississippi to finish their training.  In November of 1917 they finished their training and were pronounced “ready for combat” by the men who decide that boys are ready for combat.

            I have no doubt that the young men from Clay County, Alabama were ready to not only do their country proud but also see to it that the Germans remembered the Volunteer County of Alabama.  However, in their haste to move the soldiers to New York and then send them France to fight in The Great War, the army issued the new soldiers a coat to keep warm and forced them to ride on a train from Camp Shelby, Mississippi to New York City in December.  This was before global warming mind you.  It was cold.

            My grandfather says that his dad told him they had to stand on the train while the traveled north because they were packed in so tight.  The government could spend money on a million different things it seemed, but it couldn’t put these poor young soldiers on a passenger train and then the army forced them to travel over the Smokey Mountains in a boxcar like hobos.  Many died on the way to New York and the conditions caused many more of the soldiers to become ill.  Henry Edgar was one of these.

            He was not a weak man let me be straight about that.  But when riding in a boxcar in freezing weather day and night for nearly a week it is hard to not catch pneumonia.  And so he did.  His condition was such that by the time he reached New York City to begin the final phase of his journey he was unable to continue.  Those Yankee doctors thought he was dead.

            So they laid my great-grandfather on a cot in a room with all the other men who died on the ride up.  He was left in his army issued coat that did not protect him from the bitter cold of the Tennessee Smokey Mountains, much less France.  He was left for dead 4000 mile away from home in a land that many southerners in that time period felt was just as foreign as any country in Europe.

            Only he wasn’t dead.  My grandfather tells me that Henry Edgar lay on that cot and was aware but was too weak to move or speak.  He spent the night on that cot again in the cold with just his coat between him and the elements.  And the next day the dead bodies were moved to the morgue.

            I can only imagine the fear he felt as they wheels of the stretchers carrying the deceased made their squeak over that frozen New York floor.  As they came to his cot and prepared to load him on to his death bed a miracle happened.  Some will say it was divine intervention and others will say it was one Yankee finally paying attention but the attending doctor checked Henry Edgar’s pulse.  Although weak the doctor did feel it and declared “this one is not dead, take him to the infirmary.”

            Over a period of several months my Great-Grandfather healed and was finally discharged from both the hospital and the service and sent back to Alabama without ever setting foot in Europe to fight in The Great War.  He was allowed to keep that coat as he rode by passenger train back to Ashland, Alabama.  He would end up living out the rest of his days on the land he had always lived on.  He died on Christmas Day of 1988 at the age of 95.

            Sixteen million, five hundred forty-three thousand, one hundred and eighty-five people around the world died in The Great War.  Of that number one hundred seventeen thousand, four hundred and sixty-five were Americans.

            My Great-Grandfather could have easily been one of those men who died.  One errant riffle shot or lacking the ability to get a gas mask on fast enough or even being trampled as the boys went “over the top” could have lead to death in The War To End All Wars.  But he didn’t die.  He got sick on the train ride to New York and because of that he married Anne Frank Pitts and had they had eleven children and one of those eleven was Billy Frank Williamson.  And Billy married Betty Jane Jones and they had my mother and she had me.

            It’s funny sometimes to think about how close we walk to the razors edge in this life.  One misstep here, one miscalculation there and we can be dead.  Driving our cars, the things we put in or bodies, the places we go for vacation can all kill us.  What’s even more sobering to think about is that humanity has always walked along that razor sharp edge between life and death.  And it always will.

            So when I go back to my parent’s house I hug my mother and father.  I play with my dog and give my sisters a hard time.  And every once in a while I pull out that old coat.  It’s put up in one of those vacuum sealed bags that keep it from going bad and rotting.  Nothing gets to that coat.  But I pull it out and look at it and when I hold it in my hands I am holding a piece of my Great-Grandfather Henry Edgar Williamson in my hands.  A man whose influence reaches across three and four generations of our family.  And I am reminded when I hold that coat that we should be thankful for everyday we have and everyday we have had.  Because sometimes something as common as a United States Army issued coat can be the most important thing.  It can be the thing that ensures the survival of your family.

            Coats cover us and keep us warm.  They protect us from the elements.  My Great-Grandfather’s coat is nearly 100 years old.  And as long as his memory lives on and continues to cover our family and keep us all warm I don’t see the coat going away anytime soon.

Welcome To The Low Class Blog Spot!

            One day I want to own a bar.

            Anybody who has ever spent more than fifteen minutes with me knows that my only real life goal is to one day own a bar.  It’s going to have a huge, oak bar that runs the length of one of the walls.  It’s going to have some of the finest beer, wine, and spirits that people can ever ask for.  The food is going to be amazing.  Yet because it’s MY bar it’s not going to be one of these snooty up scale bars.  It’s going to be my bar; my own low-class juke joint.  That is my life goal.

            But this is just a blog.  What does any of that have to do with what you’re reading now and hopefully will continue to read over time?  Well, let me explain.

            So after weeks of talking about it and asking the opinions of friends, family, and random people I meet at the bar I figured the time was right to begin this experiment of mine.  What exactly do I want this to be?  Well, I want it to be a blog where I can talk about things that interest me.

            Okay so that is a bit vague.  Let me try to explain this all a bit better.  I write.  I am a writer and all that that implies.  I make minimal money (sorry mom) and try to experience life as much as I can.  And I love to tell stories.  Whether they are my stories or the stories of people I know or even the stories of people I’ve just met I love to tell stories.  It’s one of my true passions in life.  Another one of my passions in life is telling my opinions about any and all things I care about.  Among those things are sports, music, movies, art, literature, and life lessons.

            So that’s what I want to talk about with this blog.  It’s going to be stories and random thoughts.  Basic bar talk if you will.  I am a firm believer that some of the best conversations you can have about anything are the conversations you have when you’re talking to people in a bar setting.  So let’s just kick back and enjoy this. 

We’ll talk about sports and music and all sorts of other small talk things.  If you have a sports topic, an album, a movie, or anything else dealing with the “Justin arts” as I like to call them let me know and we’ll talk about it.

We’ll talk about food.  I love to eat and if you want me to eat someplace and write about it please let me know.  I already have a short list of places I want to write about and I promise you there is not a single Applebees in America that I want to write about.

We’ll make list.  We all do it after we have a beer or two (or five or six) in us.  We’ll make fun practical list and more fun absurd list.  Some of the best conversations of my life have been debating the hotness of blondes in the studio era in Hollywood.  So if you want a list let me know.

And of course we’re going to tell stories.  Lots and lots of stories.  They’ll all be stories that involve people I know or myself.  Sometimes it might be about a trip or a party that we just had.  Or it might be something that happened five, six, seven, or more years ago.  A good story is a good story and old friends never really seem that far away when we talk about them to our new friends.

Some things we won’t talk about include politics and religion.  If you want to brow beat other people take that else where.  Life is to short for people to be mad at each other I believe and since I’m the owner, C.E.O., operating manager, editor, and writer of this little blog what I say goes.

So sit back and read up and let’s have fun with this.  I don’t know where it’s going to go or what’s going to happen here but I do know it’ll be fun.  Mainly because I’m fun.  And maybe you’ll learn something.  But even if you don’t have a drink, chill out, and welcome to Justin’s Low Class Blog Spot.