Elastica – "Connection" (1994)

I don’t understand how the last card is played

But somehow the vital connection is made

2 or 3 lines has been getting a lot of reader e-mails asking about how my trivia team has been doing lately.

I don’t believe in humblebragging – simple old-fashioned bragging is more my style.  So I’ll respond to those reader e-mails by saying my trivia team has been killing it recently! 

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In a typical week, over a thousand teams show up for the Pourhouse Trivia competitions in the Washington, DC area.  Of those thousand-plus teams, about 200 – including my Einsteins – qualified for the playoffs.

Some 52 of those teams qualified for the Pourhouse playoff finals, and you’d best believe the Einsteins were among them.  We know that we have no real chance at winning the Pourhouse championship because many of the teams in that competition are made up of trivia obsessives who spend most of their waking hours in front of a computer studying lists of trivia factoids or playing in online trivia contests.  By contrast, the members of the Einsteins actually have lives.  (At least, most of them do.)  

So 0ur goal is to finish in the top ten – which would mean we were in the top 1% of all Pourhouse teams.  We fell a bit short this year, but 18th place is nothing to sneeze at.  We may not have made the top 1%, but we ranked in the top 2% – which isn’t too shabby.

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The final category in this year’s trivia finals was “Celebrity Beefs.”  

I’m an expert in beefs involving rappers – go ahead, ask me about the Drake-Kendrick Lamar beef, or the rivalry between Jay-Z and Nas, or the “Bridge Wars,” and I’ll quote you chapter and verse – so I was hoping the final question would be something along the lines of “Name the East Coast-West Coast rappers whose beef culminated in both being shot to death?” (the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur) or “What female rapper threw her shoe at a rival at a 2018 New York Fashion Week party, and who was her target?” (Cardi B and Nicki Minaj).   

But the final question wasn’t about rappers:

Going viral in 2019, name either of the two social media influencers whose beef culminated in one posting the YouTube video “Bye, Sister.” 

I was clueless.  But fortunately for the Einsteins, one of our team’s members is a young woman who spends an inordinate amount of time viewing beauty-related videos on Tik-Tok, Instagram, and YouTube.  So she knew that “Bye, Sister” was a 43-minute YouTube video posted by beauty influencer Tati Westbrook that ripped fellow influencer James Charles a new one.

James Charles and Tati Westbrook

Here’s an AI overview of the Westbrook-Charles beef:

The Conflict: Tati Westbrook, who was a mentor figure to Charles, felt betrayed after he promoted a competitor vitamin brand (Sugar Bear Hair) instead of her own company, Halo Beauty.

The Accusations: In the video, Westbrook detailed feeling “blindsided” and accused Charles of using his fame to “coerce straight men into sex.”

The Fallout: Charles lost a record number of subscribers, while Westbrook's channel saw rapid growth.

Charles' Response: James Charles posted an apology video titled “tati,” followed by a 41-minute video named “No More Lies,” where he addressed the allegations, denied the accusations of grooming, and provided evidence to clear his name.

Long-Term Impact: The event . . . is considered a landmark moment in YouTube drama history, prompting debates on influencer responsibility. 

There were a lot of points riding on that question, so thank goodness we got it right – we would have fallen from 18th to 26th place if we had missed it.

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Click here to listen to Elastica’s 1994 hit, “Connection,” which allegedly borrowed its catchy initial riff from Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba” (resulting in a lawsuit and out-of-court settlement).  

Click here to listen to “Three Girl Rhumba” if you’d like to judge for yourself if Connection was guilty of plagiarism.

Click here to buy “Connection” from Amazon.

Rolling Stones – "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968)

I shouted out, “Who killed Kennedy?”

When after all, it was you and me

A young person I know recently posted this online:

Hit rock bottom on the golf course today.  Truly a rotten, vile round.  The kind of round that makes you wish you never found golf in the first place. . . .

To say it didn’t go well is like saying that the Titanic didn’t go well.  

Or that JFK’s car ride didn’t go well.

I know that golf can be an extremely frustrating sport, and that a bad round can cause even a good person to say terrible things.  So I’m willing to overlook that truly tasteless statement about JFK.  (Given some of the stuff that I’ve posted online over the years, it would be the pot calling the kettle black for me to criticize someone for tastelessness.)

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I find it interesting that I reacted much more strongly to the line about JFK than the line about the Titanic.  After all, some 1500 people perished when the Titanic sank – the death of any one man pales in comparison to the loss of 1500 lives.

But while I winced when I read that reference to JFK’s assassination, I didn’t have the same kind of visceral response to the Titanic reference.    

Why was that?  Maybe because the sinking of the Titanic took place long before I was born.

Most of what I know about the Titanic comes from the 1997 movie.  And while that movie depicted the tragedy in very realistic fashion, viewing a fictional recreation of an event – no matter how vivid and dramatic – is not the same thing as living through the actual event.

I experienced the Kennedy assassination first hand.  I saw the graphic and traumatizing Zapruder film of that event over and over.  I remember seeing Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President aboard Air Force One and Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.  And I was glued to the TV during Kennedy’s funeral.  (Who can forget the image of the riderless horse, with the pair of boots placed backwards in the stirrups?  Or the shot of Kennedy’s three-year-old son saluting his father’s casket as it was carried from St. Matthew’s Cathedral?)

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A few of us may be able to give the date when the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, or when the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the moon, or when Richard Nixon resigned.  But all of us remember November 22, 1963.  

Can you even name the year the Titanic sank – much less the exact date?

The person who wrote the message I quoted above is far too young to have lived through the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath.  For him, that event probably feels just as distant from the present day as the sinking of the Titanic feels to people who are my age.

But for people my age, JFK’s death is something that we remember very vividly.  I suppose that’s why I reacted much more strongly to his reference to it than I did to his reference to the sinking of the Titanic – even though that event was a much greater tragedy in objective terms.

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In case you’re wondering, the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 – exactly 114 years ago today.

The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, while Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969 and Richard Nixon left the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.  

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The lyrics quoted at the top of this post were the lyrics that Mick Jagger sang when the Rolling Stones began recording “Sympathy for the Devil” on June 4, 1968.

But when Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan on the very next day, those lyrics were changed from “Who killed Kennedy?” to “Who killed the Kennedys?”   

Click here to listen to “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Click here to buy “Sympathy for the Devil” from Amazon.

Jay-Z and Kanye West – "Otis" (2011)

They ain’t see me ‘cause

I pulled up in my other Benz

Last week I was in my other other Benz

(Think about those Kanye West lines, boys and girls.  Imagine having a Mercedes-Benz that people are used to seeing you in.  But one day you pull up in your other Benz.  Which confuses everyone, because just last week you were in your other other Benz!)

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In case you haven’t been to a baseball game since the 1980s, you may not know that teams play brief snippets of popular songs before each player comes to bat.  

There are “walk-up” songs representing every music genre – from hip-hop to metal to country to Latin.

Some players choose new walk-up songs frequently, while others stick with the same recording.  (Bryce Harper has used Moby’s “Flower” for many years.)  

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Before the New York Yankees’ home opener last Friday, Empire Sports Media – an independent digital media company that covers New York’s professional teams – posted the team’s starting lineup, along with each player’s walk-up song:

The Yankees’ walk-up music runs the gamut.  Veteran sluggers Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton walk up to the plate to hip-hop recordings.  Ryan McMahon uses a song by the country artist Hardy while Jose Caballero prefers Dandy Yankee.  Trent Grisham goes with a contemporary Christian record.

My two favorite Yankee walk-up songs are Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (which is favored by catcher Austin Wells) and “Otis,” the Kanye West/Jay-Z collaboration that samples Otis Redding’s recording of “Try a Little Tenderness” (which is the walk-up choice of second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.).

“Otis” is a silly-bazilly song – its lyrics will remind you just how clever and witty Kanye and Jay-Z could be when they put their mind to it.  (I did a deep dive into those lyrics in 2013.  Click here to read that post, which was published exactly 13 years ago today.)  

Kudos to Jazz Chisholm for choosing “Otis” as his walk-up music.

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The Spike Jonze-directed “Otis” video is one of my all-time favorites.

That video features Kanye and Jay-Z having the time of their lives cutting up a $350,000 Maybach sedan, filling the back seat with hot chicks, and then driving around much too fast.

Click here to watch the “Otis” video.

Skeeter Davis – "The End of the World" (1962)

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Unlike Coke and Pepsi, Dr Pepper is not a cola drink.  (That’s not a typo – it’s “Dr Pepper,” not “Dr. Pepper.”)

I think that’s why my mother allowed me to have one small glass of Dr Pepper daily – she had the idea that colas were bad for you, but Dr Pepper wasn’t.

In any event, I’m still loyal to Dr Pepper.  I have some other strong brand preferences – when it comes to blue jeans, don’t expect me to see me in anything other than Levi’s – but there’s something more fundamental about my preference for Dr Pepper.  It’s partly a personal history thing, partly a tribal/cultural thing.  (I could ask my therapist to help me get to the bottom of this issue, but she has the same answer to just about everything I ask her: “If it makes you happy, that’s what you should do!”) 

I will drink Coke or Pepsi if Dr Pepper isn’t available, but only reluctantly.  But when I was young, Dr Pepper was very much a regional drink – it was big in Texas (where it was created in the 1880s) and nearby states, but very few restaurants on the east or west coast offered it.  So I usually had to do without when I went out to eat.

The closest I could come to Dr Pepper at restaurants that featured Coca-Cola products was Mr. Pibb – the Dr Pepper wannabe drink that Coke introduced in the seventies.  

But Dr Pepper is now the second best-selling carbonated soft drink in the United States, trailing only Coca-Cola.  So you can find it at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Sonic, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Jack in the Box and many other chains.  (Taco Bell is a notable exception – it serves only PepsiCo products.)

I haven’t had a Mr. Pibb in many years, and I can’t imagine what would drive me to drink one today – if Dr Pepper wasn’t available, I’d go with Coke or ginger ale rather than stooping to drink Mr. Pibb.

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I recently watched Hell or High Water, a 2016 film starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine.  That movie is set entirely in Texas, although it was actually filmed in New Mexico.  (The director of Hell or High Water is a Scotsman, so he probably has no idea that there’s a big difference between the two.)

The movie’s script was penned by Taylor Sheridan, who is best known as the co-creator of the Yellowstone series. Sheridan moved to Fort Worth – the most Texas of all Texas cities – as a child, and spent a lot on his family’s ranch near Waco.  He was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2021, and his favorite author is Larry McMurtry – who wrote a number of wonderful novels set in Texas, including The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove.

In other words, the man has some serious Texas cred.  

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There’s a scene in Hell or High Water that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Taylor Sheridan gets Dr Pepper.

In that scene, two brothers who are on their way to rob a bank in a small West Texas town stop at a convenience store to get some refreshments and fill up their car with gas.

The older brother (Tanner) asks the younger one (Toby) to get him a Dr Pepper, and is dismayed when he returns with a Mr. Pibb.  Here’s the ensuing conversation:

Tanner’s not wrong. 

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Skeeter Davis was born Mary Frances Penick in a tiny Kentucky town in 1931.  

When she was a child, her grandfather nicknamed her “Skeeter” (slang for mosquito) because she had so much energy.

As a high school junior, Skeeter and classmate Betty Jack Davis won a yodeling competition.  The two were billed as the Davis Sisters when they subsequently appeared on a local television station, and she used Davis as her stage name for the rest of her life.

Skeeter Davis didn’t have an easy life.  When she was a child, her mother attempted suicide more than once.  “I once slapped a bottle of Clorox she was drinking out of her mouth and sat on her hands to keep her from reaching for a butcher knife,” she wrote in a 1993 autobiography.  On another occasion, her mother attempted to leap from the family’s apartment window with Davis and her infant brother in her arms.

In 1953, the Davis Sisters released “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know,” which held the top spot of the Billboard country chart for eight consecutive weeks.  Later that year, a sleepy motorist crashed head-on into the car in which the duo were riding.  The collision killed Betty Jack Davis and seriously injured Skeeter.

After marrying Kenneth DePew in 1956, Skeeter realized he had married her for her money.  She divorced him in 1959 and married Ralph Emery – a famous radio DJ and TV host who was called “the Dick Clark of country music” – shortly thereafter.  

According to Davis, Emery became convinced that she was cheating on him: “Ralph accused me of being with everybody from guitar players to agents to producers to my hairdresser and believe it or not, to my brother and sister,” she wrote.  “Male or female, it made no difference.”  She divorced him in 1964 after learning that he had impregnated another woman.

Skeeter Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988.  She eventually died of the disease in 2004, when she was 72.  

“The End of the World,” her most famous record as a solo artist, was released in 1962.  It peaked #1 on Billboard’s “Easy Listening” chart, #2 on the “Hot 100” and “Hot Country Singles” charts, and #4 on the “Hot R&B Singles’ chart – the first and only record to get into the top five on all four of those Billboard charts.

“The End of the World” is a classic female weeper.  I decided to feature it in this post after stumbling across an old black-and-white video of Davis lip-synching the song on television.

Click here to watch that video and tell me if you’ve ever seen a woman with more amazing hair – Davis’s do is epic!

Click here to buy “The End of the World” from Amazon.