On the Occasion of Jimmy Fallon and Russell Crowe Covering “Folsom Prison Blues,” The Tonight Show, March 27, 2014

And She wrote:

Smokin’!!!

And I wrote:

Seriously? I watched the show, Russell Crowe has lost it. What a hachet job on Johnny Cash’s song. Aside from the fact that Crowe’s  “got no soul,” he’s  “got no pipes” either. The clips of him as an Aussie “Wanna Bee” singer were far more melodic; at least as a youth, he could carry a tune. His boyish good looks have abandoned him as well, what’s to like, girls? But then I’m not gay, amused maybe, but not gay; he looks like a pudgy no neck two punch fighter… ah, the vainglory of the cinema! Seriously, listen to Johnny Cash’s original cut, and then have a good laugh. Oh, and what’s with Jimmy Fallon falling all over himself, hasn’t he ever seen a movie star? Creepy,  fawning,  foolish… can you imagine Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno acting such a star struck fool? I’m tuning in Jimmy Kimmel, or maybe I’ll drink me some Ponce de Leon Koolaide and watch a little South Carolina Stephen Colbert.

And She wrote:

Ha-ha! Haven’t enjoyed a Bull rant in so long! Yes, I agree with you on much of what you say. But for me it’s always fun to see an “A” list guy cross over (or even try) – like Kevin Bacon a couple of nights ago. And Fallon I enjoy because, like them, he crosses over and makes music with them! And dances with them! Leno and Carson were comedians and entertained with their humor and their interviewing skills. But this guy is multi-talented, and is having so much fun with his guests. I love it!

And I wrote:

I’m pleasantly pleased to have been missed… So, as I understand it, you enjoy watching men make fools of themselves, and indulging in infantile behavior. I think Fallon needs, I really do mean “Needs,” an award, maybe this year’s Sally Fields’ “You really do love me” Best in Class Blue Ribbon Award…  He could place it on his mantle among his numerous Soccer awards… “Awarded to All the Members of the1981 Saugerties, New York Neighborhood Soccer Youth Commune Team for being such Good Sports having allowed all other teams to Outscore you this Season.” Actually, the plaque is too small for all that text, it actually reads: “You are not a Loser!”

Good Lord, I’ve got it!  He really wants to win the next “Jerry Lewis Humanitarian Award!”

Now, I’m even missing David Frost and, dare I say, Dick Cavett? Where once Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal crossed words and grammar in fits of cerebral prestidigitation that sated even a novice polymath such as myself, we are now treated to the multi-mathless playing together nicely in the sandbox. Surely no one can doubt the caustic and deleterious effect of listening and performing “Hard Rock” music on the maturation of the Prefrontal Cortex. Call it anything but symphonic, call it the scourge of modernity, the solipsistic autism of society, millions of minds bobbing together in disharmony like loose apples in a bucket of electrically amplified plasma, and having fun, fun, fun, ’cause there’s no Beach Boys’ “Daddy to take the T-Bird away.”

Immortalized puberty, institutionalized adolescence, perpetual arrhythmic perturbation,; this rant is brought to you by Harvard’s and The National’s Lampoon, and by that agnostic little Seth MacFarlane fellow, and by Lorne Michaels and even by sweet little Jimmy Fallon, all of whom laugh as they trudge to the gallows.

Lutwidge Dodgson, presciently, permanently post pubescent, was quite right, why grow up when it so hurts the brain, better to stay down the rabbit hole:

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don’t do anything at all…

And now, dear Grace Slick, after fifty years of the “Great Society” (you are a maestro and a genius, and I loved you, and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, at The Fillmore), and fifty years of “Entitlements” and fifty years of “Progressive Public Education” you don’t need any pill at all…

With many thanks to “She” – E.R.D.

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