Foreigner – "Hot Blooded" (1978)

I’m hot-blooded, check it and see

I got a fever of a hundred and three

Technically, a fever of 103 degrees doesn’t constitute a medical emergency.  But it’s not something to be taken lightly.

I came down with the mumps shortly after my 12th birthday.  When my temperature hit 103, my mother didn’t take it lightly – she called the doctor toot sweet.

He told her the best way to cool me down was to put me in a bathtub filled with cold water.  (She added some ice cubes for good measure – better safe than sorry!)

Sir Francis Bacon described bloodletting as a remedy that is worse than the disease.  I felt the same way about that ice bath – the treatment was much worse than the ailment.

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I had the mumps in 1964 – several years before the first mumps vaccine became available.  

Mumps usually causes inflammation of the salivary glands, which can make it very painful to chew and swallow.  (I remember trying to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I had the mumps – one bite was enough to make me realize that was a very bad idea.)  

Mumps sometimes causes other inflammatory conditions, including meningitis and encephalitis.  It can also result in sterility in postpubescent males.

Make up your mind, Foreigner!

I think I was physically postpubescent when I came down with the mumps.  (I may not have ever reached mental postpubescence.). But I have at least four children, so obviously the mumps did nothing to reduce my procreative prowess.

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I had to spend the better part of a week in bed when I had the mumps.  There was no television in my bedroom, so I spent most of my time reading and listening to music.  

I remember playing “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons about a thousand times that week.  I also listened to the B-side of that 45 – “Silence Is Golden,” which was covered by the Tremeloes a couple of years later – quite a few times.  

(I still own that record)

“Rag Doll” climbed all the way to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in 1964.   The record that preceded “Rag Doll” in the #1 spot was “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys.  “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals, “Where Did Our Love Go” By the Supremes, and Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Women” were also #1 hits in 1964, which was a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good year for pop singles.  (All five of those aforementioned records are members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.)

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A number of critics – including the great Robert Christgau – thought that “Hot Blooded” sounded a lot like a Bad Company record.  I agree.

One reviewer said it reminded him of the fabulous Crazy Elephant hit, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’,” for two reasons.  First, both records begin with a “chug-chug” guitar riff.  Second, both songs “are about a fellow in search of fleshy fluff” [sic].

The song’s lyrics are anything but subtle.  For example:

You don’t have to read my mind

To know what I have in mind

(Shakespeare, it ain’t.)

Click here to listen to “Hot Blooded,” which peaked at #3 on the “Hot 100” in 1978.

Click here to buy “Hot Blooded” from Amazon.

Foreigner – "Feels Like the First Time" (1977)

I know it must be the woman in you

That brings out the man in me

Facebook works in mysterious ways.  

I recently shared a Washington Post article that one of my friends had posted, not realizing that the article had been published in . . . June 2015.  

That article – which was headlined “Report: U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti had ‘transactional sex’ with hundreds of poor women” – may not be timely, but it’s still worthy of comment.

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Here’s one paragraph from that Post story, which summarizes the findings of an internal United Nations report that found that members of the U.N. peacekeeping force that went to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there had paid 225-plus Haitian women for sex:

The women traded sex for basic needs, including food and medication.

For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the “triggering need,” the report said.  In exchange for sex, women got “church shoes, cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money” from peacekeepers.

U.N. troops in Haiti

Since when did cell phones, laptops, perfume, and especially church shoes qualify as “basic needs”?

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I’m sure you’ve heard prostitution described as  “the world’s oldest profession.” 

The origin of that phrase is a Rudyard Kipling short story titled “On the City Wall,” which opens with these words:

Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. . . . In the West, people say rude things about Lalun’s profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that Morality may be preserved.  In the East where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice; and that is a distinct proof of the inability of the East to manage its own affairs.

Church shoes?

Whether prostitution is literally the world’s oldest profession is a question that can’t be answered with certainty, of course.  But what is clear is that once a human society develops any form of material wealth, people start exchanging that wealth for sex.

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Did you know that animals as well as humans exchange wealth for sex?

From an article on the Slate.com website:

Female chimpanzees living in the Ivory Coast have been observed to trade sex for meat.  In one experiment capuchin monkeys were taught to use silver discs as a sort of money (they could be redeemed for grapes), and it wasn’t long before one monkey exchanged one of the tokens for sex.  Dr. Fiona Hunter, a researcher at Cambridge University, observed female penguins in Antarctica trading sex for stones and pebbles.  Adélie penguins need rocks to build their nests . . . .

Female Adélie penguin offering sex for pebbles 

It seems that prostitution among humans and prostitution among animals have one characteristic in common: it’s the male who pays the female for sex, not vice versa.

All this suggests that it’s probably futile to try to legislate prostitution out of existence.  If monkeys trade sex for food, is it any surprise that humans trade sex for food?  (Or cell phones.  Or perfume.  Or church shoes.)

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“Feels Like the First Time” was Foreigner’s first big hit, but it was far from their last.  

Foreigner’s eponymous debut album

Between 1977 and 1988, the group had no fewer than nine singles that peaked at #6 or higher on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  

My personal favorite is “Hot Blooded,” but “Feels Like the First Time” – which was featured on the soundtrack of the movie I, Tonya – is purt near as good:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Foreigner – "Cold As Ice" (1977)

You know that you are

Cold as ice

The last few 2 or 3 lines posts have featured the tabloid-style e-mail subject lines that the snooty Washington Post is hoping will cause people to visit its website and maybe click on some ads.  

Give the cheap tricks I stoop to in order to get you people to click on the ads on 2 or 3 lines, I have no business casting the first stone at the Washington Post.  But wouldn’t you think that a newspaper with 47 Pulitzer Prizes in the bank would hold itself to a higher standard than I do?

A Pulitzer medal

Here’s the headline from a Post story that was highlighted in an e-mail sent to subscribers earlier this month:

From the Post:

When the Goldsboro, NC, resident spotted the freezer at her neighbor’s yard sale last month, she thought she was getting a good deal.  The neighbor was charging $30 for a deep freezer with a hinged lid — the kind of freezer large enough for someone to climb inside.

But there was a catch.  The buyer was told she couldn’t start using the freezer immediately because the neighbor had promised to lend it out to her church’s Sunday school class.

Surprise!

The neighbor told her the church would come to pick up the items inside the freezer, which was sealed shut with duct tape.  But when three weeks passed and the church folks never showed up, the buyer began to get suspicious.

More from the Post:

[The buyer] was keeping the freezer plugged in in the corner of a spare bedroom, alongside houseplants, an armchair, a vacuum cleaner and spare toiletries.  Last Friday, she peeled off the duct tape and looked inside.

The first things the woman saw were a green sheet and a bag of kitty litter.  Then, her eyes landed on a human foot.

“I saw toes and a foot and ankle,” the woman said.  She slammed the freezer shut.

An autopsy confirmed that the freezer did contain human remains.  The medical examiner detected no sign of foul play, and ruled that the death resulted from natural causes.  

But that doesn’t mean the woman is off the hook entirely.  Concealing the death of a person is a felony in North Carolina, and disposal of bodies is regulated by state public-health and environmental laws.

Here's how one local TV station reported the story:

The woman who bought the freezer told a reporter that she knew immediately who the victim was:  “I recognized the foot.  It was her mother’s foot.”

The neighbor’s mother lived with her, but hadn’t been seen since suffering a stroke last September.  

The neighbor told friends that her mother was in a nursing home in West Virginia, and that she was moving there to be closer to her.  It appears instead that she had stuffed her dead mother inside the freezer some nine months ago and skedaddled out of Goldsboro after selling the freezer at her garage sale in May.

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Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice” was released on the album of the same name – which was the band’s debut album – in 1977.  

Here’s “Cold As Ice”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Foreigner – "Urgent" (1981)

That's why you call me 

In the middle of the night

I’m going to talk about my burgeoning friendship with hot young actor Tanner Kalina in just a moment.

But first we need to discuss a bra Groupon that I’m getting daily e-mails about.

I subscribe to Groupon, Living Social, and several other online deal-of-the-day marketers.  Each day, I get an e-mail from each one of them offering me discounts on local dining and drinking, travel, entertainment, health and beauty services, and so on.

For days now, I’ve been getting a Groupon offering me a “mystery bra deal” – a randomly selected set of six bras pulled from Groupon’s “vault of treasures.”  

The cost?  Only $19.99!  (That’s only $3.33 per bra – or only $1.67 per you-know-what!)

It seems like a good deal.  (Groupon says the value of the deal is $149, so $19.99 is a very significant discount from $149.)  But not for me, even though Groupon titles these e-mails “Recommended Deals Just for You.”  

You see, I’m a man.  And since I don’t suffer from gynecomastia – that’s “man boobs” to those of you who didn’t take three years of Latin in high school – I have very little need for bras.

I suppose I should keep a couple in a drawer just in case a female visitor to chez 2 or 3 lines forgets to pack one.  After all, I keep a spare toothbrush, some shampoo, and a bottle of aspirin in the guest bathroom for forgetful guests, so maybe having some extras bras around would be a good idea.

If I were a woman, would this Groupon “mystery bra deal” appeal to me?

I confess that I don’t know much about women’s attitudes towards bras.  I would think that most of you ladies are fairly picky when it comes to choosing your foundation garments, and wouldn’t want to buy your bras sight unseen – even if you could save a few bucks.  But I could be wrong.

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Richard Linklater, a hot chick, and Tanner Kalina
at the "Everybody Wants Some!!" premiere

Which brings me to Tanner Kalina, the young actor whose performance in the new Richard Linklater movie, Everybody Wants Some!!, is the talk of the town.  (I have to think he is up to his neck in hot chicks these days.)

You can click here to read my 2 or 3 lines post about that very appealing movie, which is my favorite comedy of the year by a wide margin.  

Somehow, Tanner saw my tweet about that post and hit the “like” button.  You bet that caught my attention.  After all, it’s not every day that a future Brad Pitt says something nice about 2 or 3 lines.

Tanner Kalina in "Everybody Wants Some!!"

I followed up my post about Everybody Wants Some!! with one about Linklater’s 1993 movie, Dazed and Confused.  When I tweeted about that post, I mentioned Tanner’s name in the tweet, hoping to reel in this very large celebrity fish.

It worked – Tanner “liked” that tweet as well!

I figure there’s more than enough flattery in this post to get Tanner to follow 2 or 3 lines on Twitter.  But if he doesn’t, you can best believe I’ll keep kissing up to him until he does.

Young Mr. Kalina plays Brumley, one of the freshman baseball players who is shown the ropes by his older teammates when he arrives at college the weekend before fall classes begin.

In this scene, Brumley learns the proper way to apply cologne as today’s featured song plays on the soundtrack:

Kalina was well-qualified for his Everybody Wants Some!! role.  He was a three-year starter and two-time all-district selection at Jesuit College Prep high school in Dallas, and went on to play Division I baseball at Houston Baptist University. 

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“Urgent” was a #1 hit for Foreigner in the summer of 1981.

In other words, Richard Linklater screwed up by including it on the Everybody Wants Some!! soundtrack, because that movie takes place almost a year prior to the release of “Urgent.”

By the way, the saxophone solo on “Urgent” is performed by Motown great Jr. Walker (of Jr. Walker and the All Stars fame).

Foreigner's Lou Gramm

Lead singer Lou Gramm had a really bad perm when this song was recorded.  (So did I.)

Click here to listen to “Urgent,” which is a really bad song.  

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: