Day: January 19, 2020

Who Won The Week? 1/19/20

Fandango22 Comments

10CC3057-4EEA-4C80-B8C1-700C0FC6C906It’s time for another Who Won the Week prompt. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

This week I am choosing Rachel Maddow.

D59D7C8A-28E3-4ED0-9661-409C38C10F1FYou know, as I said in this post earlier this month, I am a big Rachel Maddow fan. But this week, on Wednesday and Thursday nights, Rachel had an exclusive interview with Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. In his first televised interview since being indicted, Parnas unleashed a series of explosive allegations against top members of the Trump administration, among them that Trump knew “exactly” what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine. Parnas also implicated Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General William Barr, saying that they were “in the loop” as far as the Ukraine quid pro quo effort went.

I don’t know what, if any, impact Rachel’s interview with Parnas will have on the Senate impeachment trial of Trump, which starts on Tuesday morning. But boy oh boy, it certainly does make Trump look guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Will the Republican Senators continue to wear blinders and stand by Trump, or will some of them finally say that enough is enough? As Rachel Maddow is wont to say, “Watch this space.”

And now it’s your turn, folks. Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Five Lines or Less — Life

Fandango6 Comments

E1047F85-C5A5-4040-82E9-5AD24A657DCCThere was a time when I thought life was beautiful

There was a time when I thought life was wonderful

There was a time when I thought life was bountiful

Then you left me all alone

Now I think that life without you is dreadful.

5 linesWritten for the Friday Five Lines or Less prompt from Patricia’s Place. The idea is to write a story or poem of five lines or less. This week’s word is “beautiful.”

Song Lyric Sunday — Tom, Dick, and Harry

Fandango20 Comments

Jim Adams asked us to look for songs “that are written or sung by someone named Tom, Dick, or Harry or a song that includes one of these names in the lyrics” for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. So how could I possibly pass up thinking about my favorite folk rock duo, Tommy and Dickie Smothers, aka “The Smothers Brothers”?

The Smothers Brothers are American folk singers, musicians, and comedians. Tommy played acoustic guitar and Dick played the string bass. Their shtick when singing usually led to comedic arguments between the siblings. Tommy’s signature line was, “Mom always liked you best!” Tommy (the elder of the two) acted “slow,” while Dick, the straight man, acted “superior.”

According to Wikipedia, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the brothers frequently appeared on television variety shows and issued several popular record albums of their stage performances. Their own television variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, became one of the most controversial American TV programs of the Vietnam War era. Despite popular success, the brothers’ penchant for material that was critical of the political mainstream and sympathetic to the emerging counterculture led to their firing by the CBS network in 1969. Naturally, I was a big Smothers Brothers fan.

The Smothers Brothers song I chose to feature in this post is their rather unique rendition of “They Call the Wind Mariah,” which is an American popular song with lyrics written by Alan J. Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe for their 1951 Broadway musical, Paint Your Wagon. The song is a beautiful ballad of lonely prospectors hungering for their women in the California gold rush days.

I hope you enjoy the Smothers Brothers cover of the song.

Here are the lyrics to the song.

Mariah Mariah They call the wind Mariah
Way out here they got a name for rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess , the fire’s Joe, and they call the wind Mariah
Mariah blows the stars around, sends the clouds a’flyin?
Mariah makes the mountain sound, like folks were up there dyin’
Mar-i-ah, MARIAH !, they call the wind Mar-i-ah
Before I knew Mariah’s name and heard her wail and whining
I had a girl and she had me and the sun was always shining
But then one day I left my girl
I left her far behind me, and now I’m lost so god darn lost
not even God can find me
Mar-i-ah, MARIAH !, they call the wind Mar-i-ah
Out here they got a name for rain wind and fire only
But When you’re lost and all alone there ain’t no word but lonely
I’m a lost and lonely man without a star to guide me
Mariah, blow my love to me, I need my girl beside me
Mar-i-ah, Mariah,
They call the wind Mar-i-ah.
Mariah, Mariah blow my love to me

FOWC with Fandango — Pressure

Fandango16 Comments

FOWCWelcome to January 19, 2020 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “pressure.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.