Skip to main content

Casey Chalk, Call Your Office!

 In my indelicate way, I may have suggested that listening to “higher” music like opera and “classical” was “snobby.” Well, maybe it is, and please consider me a snob henceforth. I was wrong. And I think it was just a bad day that day.

There’s life before Beethoven’s 5th, and life after. (And Smetana. And Tchaikovsky. And loads else.)

You all know I have an addictive personality, and this addictive personality wants more snobby music. Not tomorrow. Not next week. As I like to say, “Like, yesterday.”

I still love Taylor Swift, at least between 2006-2010. The rest ranges between “Meh” and “Please stop”. And more generally, I don’t trust the taste of people who categorically hate “Country” music. That’s just silly. And Johnny Cash is not country; Johnny Cash is Johnny Cash. The people who say they hate country but love Cash are just hipsters who like Johnny Cash.

Yes, the “bro country” is terrible. And let us explore why. Suppose you’re one of those people who listen only for the lyrics, caring or knowing nothing about the music. You’d have to conclude that we’re a bunch of sex-crazed drunken perverts with no jobs. It actually reminds me of an interview with Katharine Hepburn in 1973. She said that we’d become so focused on personal sexual fulfillment that we can’t tell grand stories anymore. Amen.

[Besides, a sane person you actually know got a piece in The Federalist. Look at the positive.—ed.] Yeah. [Also, you watch PBS and hate Trump. Your connection to the common man is a fiction.—ed.] Can’t argue with that.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Thoughts On The Harrison Butker Commencement Speech

Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that. ...

Dear Alyse

 Today, you’re 35. Or at least you would be, in this place. You probably know this, but we’re OK. Not great, but OK. We know you wouldn’t want us moping around and weeping all the time. We try not to. Actually, I guess part of the problem is that you didn’t know how much we loved you. And that you didn’t know how to love yourself. I hope you have gotten to Love by now. Not a place, but fills everything in every way. I’m not Him, but he probably said, “Dear daughter/sister, you have been terribly hard on yourself. Rest now, and be at peace.” Anyway, teaching is going well, and I tell the kids all about you. They all say you are pretty. I usually can keep the boys from saying something gross for a few seconds. Mom and I are going to the game tonight. And like 6 more times, before I go back to South Carolina. I have seen Nicky twice, but I myself haven’t seen your younger kids. Bob took pictures of the day we said goodbye, and we did a family picture at the Abbey. I literally almost a...

A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

 I once had a friend, a dear friend, who helped me with personal care needs in college. Reformed Presbyterian to the core. When I was a Reformed Presbyterian, I visited their church many times. We were close. I still consider his siblings my friends. (And siblings in the Lord.) Nevertheless, when I began to consider the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded, he took me out to breakfast. He implied--but never quite stated--that we would not be brothers, if I sought full communion with the Catholic Church. That came true; a couple years later, I called him on his birthday, as I'd done every year for close to ten of them. He didn't recognize my number, and it was the most strained, awkward phone call I have ever had. We haven't spoken since. We were close enough that I attended the rehearsal dinner for his wedding. His wife's uncle is a Catholic priest. I remember reading a blog post of theirs, that early in their relationship, she told him of the p...