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.

Elastica – "Connection" (1994)

 

I don’t understand how the last card is played

But somehow the vital connection is made

For $99, the genetic-testing company 23andMe will send you a vial to spit into so it can analyze your DNA.

By comparing your DNA to that of the zillions of other people who have sent in their saliva sample, 23andMe can figure out which of those people are related to you.

To date, 23andMe has sent me the names of no fewer than 1501 of its customers who are related to me.

The closest relatives that 23andMe has identified are five first cousins, once removed.  

First cousins, once removed are from different generations.  For example, your first cousin’s child would be your first cousin, once removed because you are from different generations.  

Likewise, your parents’ first cousins are your first cousins, once removed.  

Because my mother is only child, I have no first cousins on her side of the family.  But she has a number of first cousins, who are my first cousins, once removed.  

By contrast, my father was one of eight children, so I have quite a few first cousins on my father’s side – which make their children my first cousins, once removed.  All five of the first cousins, once removed I’ve learned about through 23andMe are children of my paternal first cousins.

This chart should clear everything up:

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23 andMe has also given me the names of ten second cousins (people with whom I have a great-grandparent in common), 168 third cousins (people with whom I have a great-great-grandparent in common), and a whopping 1318 fourth cousins (people with whom I have a great-great-great-grandparent in common).

Given that each of us has 32 great-great-great-grandparents, it’s not surprising that I have over 1300 fourth cousins among 23andMe customers alone.  According to my calculations, the average American of my generation has about 50,000 fourth cousins.  (Don’t ask me how I came up with that number – it’s a l-o-n-g story.)

Which means that you very well may be acquainted with one or more of your fourth cousins and not even realize that you’re related.

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Elastica released “Connection” as a single in 1994, which was the year that Britpop really got off the ground.  (Britpop giants Blur and Oasis both released their debut albums that year.)

“Connection” kicks off with a really catchy riff.  Unfortunately, it appears that riff was “borrowed” from “Three Girl Rhumba,” one of the tracks on Wire’s legendary Pink Flag album. 

Click here to listen to “Three Girl Rhumba.”

Click here to see the official music video for “Connection.”

And click on the link below if you’d like to buy “Connection” from Amazon:

Rolling Stones – "Connection" (1967)

My bags, they get a very close inspection

I wonder why it is that they suspect ‘em

Today’s 2 or 3 lines is going to introduce you to two interesting historical figures who no one remembers.  (By “no one,” I mean 99.99% of you.)

The next 2 or 3 lines will explain the relationship between these two figures, and what it is they have in common – despite being born 125 years apart.

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Albert Pike was born in Boston in 1809.  He had the benefit of a classical education, and learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin – some say he had a photographic memory.

When Pike was 16, he passed the entrance exam for Harvard College, but couldn’t afford the tuition.  So instead of attending Harvard, he taught school in several Massachusetts towns.

In 1831, Pike moved to Independence, Missouri, where he joined an expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  In the middle of the journey, Pike’s horse ran away from him, so he had to walk the remaining 500 miles to Santa Fe.  

After hunting, trapping, and trading in what was then Mexico for a year or so, Pike moved on to Little Rock, where he bought a newspaper with the dowry he received when he married a woman from a wealthy family in 1834.  That same year, he published his first collection of poetry.

While running his newspaper, Pike studied law.  He built a thriving legal practice; his clients included a number of Indian tribes, and he learned several Native American dialects.  

The battle of Buena Vista

Pike helped raise a militia company that later fought in the Mexican War as part of an Arkansas cavalry regiment, which performed badly at the Battle of Buena Vista.  Pike thought the regiment’s poor showing was the fault of its commander, John Selden Roane, and he criticized Roane publicly.  

Roane demanded satisfaction from Pike, and the two men ended up fighting a duel in Indian Territory, just across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith.  (Dueling was illegal in Arkansas.)  The duelists exchanged two shots without doing serious damage, then decided that honor had been served, shook hands, and rode away.  

Pike moved to New Orleans in 1853, where he became involved in efforts to build a transcontinental railroad.  He moved back to Arkansas a few years before that state and its Confederate fellows seceded from the Union.  

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After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Confederate government appointed Pike “Commissioner to all the Indian Tribes West of Arkansas and South of Kansas,” and in that capacity he negotiated nine treaties with the various tribes who lived in Indian Territory.  

Pike in his Confederate general's uniform

Pike was then given a commission as a brigadier general, and assigned to train several regiments of Indian cavalry.  He protested when the commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi ordered him to join a Confederate army camped near Pea Ridge, Arkansas, because Pike’s understanding of his orders was that his troops were to be used only to protect the Indian Territory. 

His men did not distinguish themselves in the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862.  In fact, they were accused of killing and scalping several wounded Union troops.  

Pike was horrified by the reports of scalpings, and tried to identify and punish the guilty party.  (His investigation into the matter had concluded that only one scalping had taken place.)  But Northern newspapers took the story and ran with it, alleging that as many as 100 scalps had been taken and that Pike was a war criminal.  

Pike didn’t get much love from his fellow Confederates either.  He challenged the authority of his commanding officer, was reprimanded by Confederate government for insubordination, and resigned his generalship a few months after the clash at Pea Ridge.

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After the Civil War, Pike moved to New York City, then to Canada.  After being granted amnesty by President Andrew Johnson, he moved to Memphis before finally settling down in Washington, DC, in 1870, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Pike in full Masonic regalia

During his time in Washington, Pike devoted his time and efforts to Freemasonry.  He had become a Mason in 1850, and in 1859 was elected Sovereign Grand Commander of all the Scottish Rite Masonic lodges in the Southern Jurisdiction (which included all the states south of the Ohio and west of the Mississippi) – a position that he held until he died in 1891.   

Pike wrote extensively on Freemasonry.  His most famous book is Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, an 861-page text first published in 1872, which was provided to all new members of Southern Jurisdiction lodges until 1969.

A modern edition of Pike's magnum opus

After Pike’s death, the Masons petitioned Congress to authorize the placement of a statue honoring Pike on federal land.  In 1901, a large and distinguished body of Masons assembled in Washington for the unveiling of that statue, which still stands today.

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James Bevel, who was born in 1936, was a top aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., who has been called the “Father of Voting Rights”    

The Birmingham, Alabama “Children’s Crusade” was Bevel’s idea.  He was also the brains behind the “Selma Voting Rights Movement,” which resulted in the famous “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery in 1965.  

James Bevel with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bevel was also influential in persuading King and other civil rights leaders to join the anti-Vietnam War movement and participate in the 1967 “March on the Pentagon.”

But Bevel jumped the shark in the 1980s, when he became a follower of perennial Presidential candidate and all-around wackadoodle Lyndon LaRouche.  

Bevel was LaRouche’s running mate when LaRouche ran for President in 1992.  LaRouche’s chances of winning that election were somewhere between slim and none – for one thing, he was in jail for mail fraud and tax evasion during the campaign.

According to Louis Farrakhan, Bevel came up with the idea for the 1995 “Million Man March” in Washington, DC, which was sponsored by Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.

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Bevel’s life took a serious turn for the worse in 2007, when he was indicted for committing incest with one of his young daughters.  (Three other daughters also alleged that Bevel had sexually abused them.)  

His trial was about as sordid as a trial can be.  The key piece of evidence leading to his conviction was a telephone call recorded by police without Bevel's knowledge.  During that call, Bevel's daughter asked him why  he wanted her to use a vaginal douche after having sex with her.  Bevel said that he didn’t want to get her pregnant.

Bevel in jail

Bevel was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was released only a few weeks after being incarcerated when it was discovered he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

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What’s the connection between Albert Pike and James Bevel?  

I’ll answer that question in the next 2 or 3 lines.

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I bought Between the Buttons – the Stones album that includes today’s featured song, “Connection” – FIFTY YEARS AGO, when I was a 9th-grade student.

(Sometimes I wish that someone would just put me out of my misery.)

Here’s “Connection”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: