Cream – "Politician" (1968)

I’m a political man

And I practice what I preach

Tomorrow is April Fools’ Day.  (“April Fool’s Day” is also acceptable.)

April Fools’ Day is observed in many countries, but it’s only an official government holiday in one city – Odessa, Ukraine.

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The term for April Fools’ Day in France and the French-speaking parts of Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada is Poisson D’Avril – “April Fish Day.”  

From a French website:

The French name for April Fools’, Poisson d’Avril, dates back to one of the first pranks played on this day.  A man was sent to the market to retrieve fish on April 1.  Fish season ended in March, so when the runner returned tired and empty handed, he earned the title of the “April fish.”

The tradition in France continues today with children spending the day trying to stick paper fish to their friends’, parents’, and even teachers’ backs unnoticed.  When they succeed with the prank, they shout “Poisson d’Avril!” 

(Those French are somethin’ else!)

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I thought Good Housekeeping was a pretty fuddy-duddy publication, but their website has a bunch of great April Fools’ pranks you can play on your friends and family.

Here’s one that’s perfect for this year’s April 1:

Swap the clear disinfectant within a container of sanitizer for clear school glue instead.  They’ll pump out a sticky surprise right into their hands . . . and wonder why it’s not evaporating as they rub.

I like this one, too:

What’s more frustrating than spinning the toilet paper roll endlessly in search of the end?  Make that exercise even harder by spraying down the loose edge of the toilet paper roll with a bit of hairspray — they can roll and roll, but won’t get the loose edge free before they lose their cool.

But this is the best of the Good Housekeeping pranks:

If you have a baby in the home, smear a diaper with chocolate candy or peanut butter; then call in a spouse or child to observe with horror as you taste the mess.

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“Politician” was released on Cream’s third album, Wheels of Fire, in 1968:

The song was co-written by Jack Bruce – the group’s bass player and lead vocalist – and a poet and performance artist named Peter Brown (who once formed a group called “The First Real Poetry Band”).

Bruce and Brown also collaborated on “Sunshine of Your Love,” “White Room,” “I Feel Free,” and “SWLABR.” 

Click here to listen to “Politician.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Dictators – "Two Tub Man" (1975)

They all know that I’m the one

Not to let your son become

Sirius/XM has hundreds of channels, but the only two that I listen to regularly are CNBC and “Little Steven’s Underground Garage.”

“Little Steven” Van Zandt – a longtime member of Bruce Springsteen’s band who later became a regular on The Sopranos – has described the “Underground Garage” playlist as featuring mostly “the bands that influenced the Ramones, the bands that were influenced by the Ramones, and the Ramones.”

One of the bands that clearly influenced the Ramones was the Dictators, whose “Two Tub Man” – today’s featured song – I heard on “Underground Garage” earlier tonight.

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In 2016, “Handsome Dick” Manitoba of the Dictators said in an interview that the two bands influenced each other, but it seems to me that the Dictators – whose first album, Go Girl Crazy!, was released a year before the Ramones’ eponymous debut LP – were the influencers and the Ramones the influencees. 

From a 2001 appreciation of the Dictators in the Village Voice:

It’s been over a quarter-century since the band started delivering swift kicks to the groin of overproduced cock rock. . . . Go Girl Crazy! established a blueprint for bad taste, humor, and defiance that would be emulated by the Ramones and live on in acts like the Beastie Boys and Kid Rock. 

Michael Little of the Vinyl District website made the same point but much more emphatically in a 2014 review of Go Girl Crazy!:

[Y]ou can draw a direct line between [Go Girl Crazy!] to the Ramones and straight to the Beastie Boys. . . . If the Ramones (who later did a version of “California Sun” off Go Girl Crazy!) and the Beastie Boys didn’t cop their entire shtick from the Dictators’ debut [album], I’m Michael Bolton, mulleted version.

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Speaking of “California Sun,” click here to listen to the Dictators’ cover of that classic paean to California babes – it could not be more perfect.  

It pones both Ramones’ versions of the song – the one of the 1977 Leave Home album, and the much faster version that was used in the 1979 movie, Rock ’n’ Roll High School.

No one in the world loves Rock ’n’ Roll High School more than I do, but I think it would have been even better if it had featured the Dictators instead of the Ramones.

Unfortunately, the Dictators – frustrated by their three albums’ utter lack of commercial success – had broken up before that movie was filmed.

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Click here to listen to “Two Tub Man.”  In case you didn’t grow up watching “Wrestling from Chicago” when you were a kid – a 1950’s-era syndicated TV show hosted by Russ Davis that featured professional wrestling from Chicago’s International Amphitheatre – you may be confused by Handsome Dick Manitoba’s spoken introduction to the song, which name checks “golden age” wrestlers like Verne Gagne and Dick the Bruiser.

Verne Gagne

Click below to buy the record from Amazon:

Elvis Presley – "Kissin' Cousins" (1964)

Yes, we’re all cousins, that’s what I believe

Because we’re children of Adam and Eve

Advice columns are the gift that keeps on giving to bloggers who can’t think of anything interesting to write about.

Here’s a recent letter to advice columnist Judith Martin, whose “Miss Manners” column began to appear in the Washington Post in 1978 – just a few months after 2 or 3 lines moved to Our Nation’s Capital to live and work. 

Dear Miss Manners: Last July, one of my adult daughters died.  I placed the obituary in the Sunday paper, cross-referenced to my maiden name so my relatives would be sure to notice it.

With the pandemic, we did not have an open funeral.  But not one of my 29 second cousins on my father's side even sent a sympathy card, and only four of my 37 first cousins on my mother's side did so.

Now one of them has died, and I'm having mixed feelings about how to respond.  I did send a sympathy card.  But attend the funeral Mass?  Why should I?  They can't even send a sympathy card.  Why should I go out of my way for any of them?

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I thought had a lot of cousins, but I’m way behind the woman who wrote to Miss Manners.

My father was one of eight children – which was an unusually large family even a hundred years ago.

Those eight siblings had a total of 19 children.  One of the 19 is my sister, and one is me – which means that I have 17 first cousins on my father’s side.  

That seems like a lot – my kids have only six first cousins – but 17 pales in comparison to 37.

If the letter writer’s mother was one of eight children, each of her seven siblings would have had to have five-plus children to get the total number to 37.  

Even if she was one of ten children – a very large family indeed – her siblings would have had to average a little over four children apiece to reach 37.  (I have four children, and I don’t consider that to be out of the ordinary – but it would be a real statistical rarity for nine siblings to average four children each.)

Whatever the specific facts were, only a tiny percentage of people have that many first cousins on just their mother’s side .

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I wasn’t that close to any of my 17 first cousins on my father’s side when I was young – most of them lived hundreds of miles away from where I grew up.  I’ve established contact with a couple of them in recent years thanks to Facebook, and I would expect those few to reach out if I lost a family member.  But I wouldn’t be surprised or feel insulted if the others didn’t – for better or worse, we weren’t close as kids, and it’s doubtful that we’ll suddenly become close now that we are in our sixties and seventies.

Based on my experience, it’s no surprise that only four of the letter writer’s 37 first cousins sent sympathy cards when her daughter died.  Did her mother’s siblings remain in the same area where they grew up?  If not, their children – the first cousins – probably weren’t that close as children.  (That was the case with me and my first cousins on my father’s side.)  

The mere fact that there are so many of them probably makes it less likely that more than a few would be close to the letter writer.  For one thing, it would be surprising if most or all of them still lived in the same area where their grandparents lived – Americans are just too mobile for that to be probable.  

And even if most of them remained in the same area where they grandparents lived – which would be surprising – it’s almost impossible to remain close to 37 cousins.  (How would you even remember their names?)  

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My mother was an only child, so I don’t have any first cousins on her side.  

But her mother was the oldest of seven children, and my mother had a total of 11 first cousins.  Which means that I had 11 first cousins, once removed.

Because my mother was the oldest in her generation, most of her first cousins are closer to my age than to hers – so they always felt more like my cousins than hers.  (Two of them are exactly my age, and one is actually several years younger than I am.)

I grew up only a short drive from where all of my mother’s cousins lived, and I saw them regularly when I was a child.  Even though they are first cousins, once removed,  I knew them much better than the “pure” first cousins on my father’s side.

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I’m guessing that most or all of the 29 cousins the “Miss Manners” letter writer describes as second cousins on her father’s side are actually first cousins, once removed. 

Given my experience, it’s easy for me to imagine that her mother might have been an only child, and that – like me – she ended up with a number of first cousins, once removed, who were nowhere near her in age.  If that was the case, I understand why she was disappointed that none of them sent a sympathy card – although I wouldn’t expect her to still be close to more than a few of them.

If they were true second cousins, it’s a different story.  Second cousins are the grandchildren of siblings.  I can’t imagine that the letter writer really expected to hear from a significant number of second cousins, absent unusual circumstances.  

Even if the second cousins’ grandparents and their parents never moved away from where their great-grandparents lived, there would likely be a pretty big age spread between the younger and older second cousins, which probably means they didn’t spend a lot of time playing with each other when they were growing up. 

I’m not aware of any of my second cousins on my father’s side – I’m sure I had some, but I never met any of them, and couldn’t name a single one of them.  (My father’s father died long before I was born, and I know nothing about any of his mother’s siblings – assuming she had siblings.) 

While I know some of my second cousins on my mother’s side, most of them are closer in age to my children than they are to me.  So while I would expect to hear from their parents if a close family of mine died, I wouldn’t expect to hear from any of them.

Given that, I wouldn’t expect to hear from my second cousins in the situation described by the letter writer.

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It’s probably a mistake for me to make assumptions about the “Miss Manners” letter writer based solely on my relationship with my first and second cousins.

Consider my eleven first cousins, once removed, on my mother’s side – who are first cousins to one another.

They all grew up within ten miles of their grandparents’ home.  I know their families all went to the same church – they gathered most Sundays after church for dinner at their grandparents’ farm.  They probably attended the same schools.

All of them live within a hundred miles of each other today, and I think that most of their children – my second cousins – remain close by as well.   Like their parents, they may see each other often and have a much closer relationship with each other than I do with any of them.  (Remember, I not only lived some distance when I was growing up – meaning that I only saw them infrequently – but I was also much older than they were.)

If the “Miss Manners” letter writer was any of my second cousins other than me, she might have had good reason to be upset if none of her second cousins noted her daughter’s passing.

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In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus responded to a trick question from – who else? – a lawyer who was trying to make him look bad:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 

If Jesus was able to sum up all the law and the prophets in just two fundamental commandments, far be it from 2 or 3 lines to go him one better and offer up three commandments.

But if there were a third 2 or 3 lines commandment, it would be “JUST LET IT GO!” – which would be my answer to the Miss Manners letter writer.  (I think that is essentially what Miss Manners told her.)

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Did you know that more than 10% of marriages in the world today are between first or second cousins?

First-cousin marriages are common in certain parts of the world (like the Middle East) but are legally prohibited in China and Korea.  (Korea prohibits marriages between second and third cousins as well.)

About half of the United States prohibit first-cousin marriages.  (Only a few states prohibit marriage between first cousins, once removed.)  

You might be surprised to learn that first-cousin marriages are illegal in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia, but are legal in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York:

The practical reason for prohibiting cousin marriages is that children of first-cousin marriages have an increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders (which include cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease).  Children of more distantly related cousins have less risk of these disorders, though still higher than the average population.

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Elvis wasn’t talking about a first cousin in today’s featured song – the object of his desire is a “distant” cousin, if you take Elvis’s word for it.  (Which I’m not sure I would do.)

(

Two Elvises are not necessarily
 better than one!

Click here to listen to “Kissin’ Cousins,” which was released on the soundtrack of the 1964 movie of the same name, which starred Elvis as both a US Air Force officer and his hillbilly third cousin.

Click below to order the recording from Amazon:

Black Eyed Peas – "Shut Up" (2003)

Shut up, just shut up, shut up!

Shut up, just shut up, shut up!

Shut up, just shut up, shut up!

Shut it up, just shut up, shut up!

The Paper is a 1994 movie that depicts 24 hours in the life of a money-losing New York City newspaper. 

In one scene, metro editor Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton) has an urgent request to make of editor-in-chief Bernie White (Robert Duvall).  But before Henry can ask his question, Bernie launches into a rant about his paper’s columnists:

Bernie:  I hate columnists!  Why do I have all these columnists?  I got political columnists, guest columnists, celebrity columnists . . . the only thing I don't have is a dead columnist.  That's the kind I could really use.

Henry:  Right.  Listen . . .

Bernie:  We reek of opinions.  What every columnist at this paper needs to do is to shut the f*ck up! 

Bernie was definitely on to something.  His only mistake was in limiting his “shut-the-f*ck-up” advice to newspaper columnists.

Although newspaper columnists are #1 on the list of people who need to shut the f*ck up, that advice needs to be taken to heart by just about everyone.  

Which is why it’s the second commandment of The Church of 2 or 3 Lines.

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Judith Martin, who writes the syndicated “Miss Manners” column, is one of the few Washington Post columnists who doesn’t need to shut the f*ck up.

A recent “Miss Manners” featured a letter from a reader who wondered whether it was still considered a breach of etiquette to bring up religion or politics when conversing with one’s fellow guests at a dinner party.  

Here is her reply:

Have you tried, lately, talking with someone with whom you disagree?

Had this not been an old rule, designed to free social life from cantankerous strife, Miss Manners would have had to invent it.

Mind you, she would happily abandon the rule if she could hope to welcome an exchange of ideas. That would be a boon to democracy, as well as a much-needed stimulus to good conversation.

But people no longer exchange ideas; they exchange insults. This is not new, just particularly bad right now. 

The rule surely dates to the first time someone countered a statement with, “Then you must be an idiot” instead of, “Why do you think that?”

 

(This book should be in your library!)

By the way, asking “Why do you think that?” only works if you are sincerely interested in the other party’s opinion, and open-minded enough to give that opinion full and fair consideration.  It does no good to say “Why do you think that?” when you’ve already decided the other party is an idiot, and you’re only interest in hearing his or her reasoning is so you can more effectively belittle him or her.

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I had hoped that all the election-related bullsh*t on social media and elsewhere would die down once the election was a couple of months in our collective rear-view mirror.  But nothing has really changed.  It is still impossible in this country to have an actual conversation about anything that is even remotely related to politics.

Things are fine and dandy as long as you simply agree with and affirm everything the person you’re speaking with says.

But if you express the slightest disagreement with the statements or opinions of someone who is anti-Trump, he or she will immediately accuse you of being a Trump supporter and go off on an anti-Trump rant.

The same thing happens in reverse if you question anything that a pro-Trump person says.

So I’ve decided just to shut the f*ck up until people are prepared to listen to what those with differing points of view have to say and then respond politely and respectfully rather than jumping down the other person’s throat.

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It’s not going to be easy for me to stick to that.  But I know I’ll be sorry if I don’t, so I’m self-censoring myself.

For example, an investment firm recently surveyed Americans who are eligible to receive checks under the recently-enacted $1.9 trillion stimulus law.

Nearly 40% of those people said they planned to invest some of government stimulus money they would receive.  Given that a lot of the money from the earlier rounds of stimulus payments was saved rather than spent, that doesn’t really surprise me.

What does surprise me is that those people said they would invest more money in bitcoin than in stocks.  In fact, the survey indicates that Americans might invest something like $25 billion of their stimulus money in bitcoin.

I found that absolutely astonishing.  I know bitcoin has had an incredible run over the past few months, but I’m shocked that so many average Americans would even consider buying it – much less spend part of their stimulus checks on something so speculative.  (The average household income of those surveyed was only $55,000 so we’re not talking about wealthy people here.)

I almost posted a link to a news story about the survey to Facebook – without commenting on it.  But I decided not to do that because I knew that people would accuse me of being a Trump-loving assh*le if I did.  

Supporters of the new $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation in general – and the $1400-per-person stimulus checks in particular – believe that Americans were in dire need of government help to get through the pandemic-caused recession even if they had never lost their jobs.  (The stimulus bill contained separate funding for those who had lost their jobs.  But the $1400 checks are going not only to the unemployed but also to the millions of people who continued to work and receive their regular paychecks throughout the pandemic.)  

Obviously, someone who is planning to use his or her stimulus money to invest in bitcoin probably isn’t doing too badly – they likely have plenty of money to buy food and pay the rent.  So the survey findings provided ammunition to those who argued that it wasn’t necessary to spend $1.9 trillion – that a smaller amount would have been enough to help all those who really needed help.

Of course, there are a number of reasons why the survey’s results are not dispositive of the question of whether the new stimulus bill’s spending provisions are excessive.  (For one thing, even if some survey respondents say they are going to spend some of their stimulus money on bitcoin, they might not actually do that once the checks arrive – making their survey responses meaningless.)

I would have been interested in hearing what my Facebook friends might have had to say about the survey’s results, and what those results imply about the wisdom of the $1400 stimulus payments.  We all might have actually learned something from such an exchange. 

But I knew that such a post was more likely to result in people telling me to keep sucking Trump’s you-know-what.  So I decided to shut the f*ck up.

Expect me to stick to posting photos of my grandchildren on Facebook for the time being – nothing political from this guy!

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“Shut Up” was released in 2003 on the Black Eyed Peas third studio album, Elephunk.

It was a huge international success, topping the charts in twelve countries – including France, Germany, and Italy.  (It made it to the #2 spot in three other countries, including the UK.)

You American fans of 2 or 3 lines have have probably never heard “Shut Up” because it was not released as a single in the U.S.

Click here to listen to watch the official “Shut Up” music video.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Delta 5 – "Mind Your Own Business" (1979)

Can I have a taste of your ice cream?

Can I interfere in your crisis?

No, mind your own business

I could spend the rest of the year writing posts about advice columnists who failed to observe the first and great commandment of 2 of 3 lines – MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS! – including Amy Dickinson, who pens the syndicated “Ask Amy” column.

Here’s a recent letter to Amy from “Angry Aunt”:

Dear Amy: Last summer my niece come to stay with me. She was 18 at the time.

I could tell that one of my adult friends, “Stan,” was attracted to her, so I asked him not to have sex with her.

A few months later, my niece told me that Stan had had sex with her and that she didn’t like it and was uncomfortable with it.

She asked me not to mention it to him.  Finally, she told me that she had worked it out and that they had stopped.

I was annoyed with Stan because I had specifically asked him not to do this.  He said it was unfair of me to ask him, since she was not a minor.

I told him it would have been better if he had spoken to me about it instead of me having to find out about it from my niece, who is upset about it.

It has really affected our relationship, and I'm not sure if it can be repaired.

Stan says that if he had to do it over again, he would do the same, even though I had asked him not to.

[NOTE: This is my favorite line in the whole exchange between Angry Aunt and “Ask Amy.”  OF COURSE  Stan would do it all over again – are you kidding me?]

Signed,

Angry Aunt

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Here is the advice columnist’s response:

Angry Aunt: Your tone conveys a sense of ownership, rather than concern, regarding this teenager.

You are not your niece’s sexual gatekeeper.  On the other hand, you cast your friend as a predator, and your concern obviously has been well placed.  But shouldn’t you have talked to your niece about this in advance, instead of wasting your breath on him?

Your attention should now be focused entirely on your niece’s well-being.  She is quite obviously (and understandably) confused about the nature of this sexual relationship.  Is she okay?  Is this okay?  She might not know, and rather than you dictating to her, you should be as nonjudgmental as possible, so she will feel comfortable talking with you about it.

Accompany her to a health clinic to make sure she has birth control counseling and STD tests.

Talk to her about consent.  She has the right to decide what she wants to do, sexually.  If she doesn’t consent, her choice must be respected, and if she didn’t consent to whatever transpired last summer, then she has the right to go to the police.

In terms of possibly repairing your relationship with “Stan,” I can’t imagine why you would want to.  Even if — strictly speaking — his behavior wasn’t illegal, unethical or even any of your business — if you don’t like hanging out with an unrepentant horn dog, then there is no reason to maintain the friendship.

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You probably think that I’m going to say that Amy should have saved herself and her readers a lot of time deleted and simply printed the last paragraph of her reply.

But you’d be wrong.  

While you might expect me to agree with Amy’s observation that Stan’s behavior wasn’t any of Angry Aunt’s business, I’m not sure that the great and first commandment of the Church of 2 or 3 Lines really applies here. 

I do agree with Amy’s advice that the aunt should have expressed her concerns to her niece instead of Stan.  Let’s face it – Stan (a/k/a/ “Unrepentant Horn Dog”) wasn’t going to be dissuaded from pursuing a hot 18-year-old by a polite request from her aunt.  

But the aunt’s real failing wasn’t that she didn’t mind her own business, but that she was a little too laissez-faire when it came to what her niece was up to.  

While an 18-year-old is legally an adult, she’s still very young – and by inviting her to come live with her for the summer, the aunt took on the responsibilities of a parent.  

But the aunt seems to have been clueless that Stan and her niece were messing around until the niece informed her a few months after Stan first laid eyes on her.

The letter’s not entirely clear on this point, but I’m guessing that Stan and the niece didn’t have sex just once or twice – it seems more likely that their little romance had been going on for weeks if not months when the niece finally fessed up.

And if I’m right, how in the hell did the aunt not notice?  The niece was staying in her house, after all.  Maybe she and her lover boy were such clever co-conspirators that they would have avoided detection by even a very vigilant aunt.  But I’d bet dollars to donuts that it wasn’t that hard to pull the wool over the aunt’s eyes – I suspect she just wasn’t paying attention. 

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I’m left with three questions.

First, what was the nature of the aunt’s relationship with Stan?  She refers to him as an”adult friend.”  That strikes me as an odd term for an adult to use.  (Would you ever refer to one of your friends as an “adult friend”? I don’t think I would.)  

I also wonder about her use of the word “relationship” to describe her friendship with Stan.  (Maybe you would use the word “relationship” to describe a non-romantic friendship, but I wouldn’t.)

I don’t want to read too much into Angry Aunt’s choice of words, but if she is or ever has been in a romantic relationship with Stan, that would explain a lot about her reaction – right?

My next question is why did Angry Aunt bother writing to “Ask Amy”?  She tells Amy that Stan’s failure to respect her request that he keep his mitts off her niece “has really affected our relationship, and I'm not sure if it can be repaired.”  

That’s sounds more like a wife writing to Amy about an unfaithful husband.  As Amy points out, if the aunt doesn’t like Stan’s behavior, she can simply walk away from the friendship.  Given the seemingly casual nature of their friendship – i.e., they aren’t spouses or lovers or family members or roommates or business partners – what’s the big deal?

The third and most important question I have is this: HOW OLD IS STAN?

Remember the 2 or 3 lines formula for calculating the acceptable age spread between an older man and a younger woman.  You take the man’s age, divide it by two, and add seven.  He shouldn’t date a woman younger that the number you get from doing that calculation.  

For example, a 68-year-old man can date women who are 41 but no younger.  That’s because 68 ÷ 2 = 34, and 34 + 7 = 41.  (Seems reasonable, don’t you think?)

If Stan was 22, you’d divide that number by two and add seven – which gives you 18.  Therefore, it would be perfectly appropriate for a 22-year-old man to “date” Angry Aunt’s niece.

But if Stan was 32 – or 42 – or even 52 (heaven forbid!) – it would be a horse of a different color.

(Angry Aunt, if you happen to read this post, PLEASE write me at 2or3lines@gmail.com and let me know how old Stan was.)

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Delta 5 was a post-punk band from Leeds that sounded a bit like Gang of Four, a much more famous post-punk band from Leeds.

Delta 5

“Mind Your Own Business,” the band’s first single, was released in 1979.

Click here to listen to “Mind Your Own Business.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: