Sunday Drive: San Antonio Rose

The legendary Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys perform the perennial Texas favorite in 1944:




Patsy sang it in her final television appearance in 1963:




And here's the studly Chris Carmack performing it at the Grand Ole Opry in 2015:

Waitin' for the Weekend

The 55th Valentine

After being a couple for 54 years, Jack Evans and George Harris were the first gay couple to wed in Dallas County after the Supreme Court's landmark Obergefell ruling last June.  Now Necco, the makers of the candy hearts we all know and love, are featuring the couple in a timely advertisement:



Sweet, huh?

Sunday Drive: Mr. Sandman

As performed by the late, great Chet Atkins:

Waitin' for the Weekend

I'm With Stupid!

No comment.

Update, 4:15 p.m.: Stephen Colbert celebrates the return of "the original material girl." Too funny:




Oh and Palin, addressing an Oklahoma rally in biker-girl chic says Obama is the reason her drunken son punched his girlfriend in the face, kicked her, and threatened to blow his own head off with an AR-15. Because that "weak-kneed Capitulator-in-Chief" "treats illegal immigrants better than returning veterans." Seriously, she said this:



Palin was the "official Brigade Mom" for Track's unit in Iraq when he served there in 2008, under George Bush.

Queers, Fears, and Crocodile Tears

Taking care to speak out of both sides of his mouth at once, His Grace the Most Reverend and Right Honourable The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Primate of All England and Metropolitan, has appeared on British television to say "how sorry I am for the hurt and pain, in the past and present, the Church has caused" to gays and lesbians. 

This after chairing a meeting last week of the Primates of the Anglican Communion that effectively suspended The Episcopal Church in the United States of America from the high councils of the Anglican Communion for the next three years.  Full text of the official communiqué is here. 

Why?  Because the Episcopal Church loves teh gayz so much they even marry them!  Horrors!  What terrible wickedness!  It's just the worst thing in the world!  Isn't it?

Meanwhile, the heads of the backwoods Anglican churches in Africa, South America, and other places are shouting hallelujah at this blow they have given - with Welby's help - to the "evil of homosexuality."  Some of those archbishops have outspokenly pushed for things like the infamous Kill-the-Gays bill in Uganda, and similar measures elsewhere.

All this is the latest chapter in the slow-motion breakup of the Anglican Communion - all on account of the filthy, nasty, perverted, unnatural gays, like you and me - a pity in one sense, but if the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to end up as merely the tool and titular head of a bunch of howling, foaming, murderous homophobes, that's his lookout.

The American church, of course, has been entirely independent of the Church of England since 1776, and will keep right on loving the gays, as newly installed Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, more charitably than your Head Trucker is able to do:

Wikipedia map of the Anglican Communion,
comprising 38 provinces and 85 million members,
the third-largest Christian denomination in the world, after
the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.
Click to enlarge.  For legend, click here.

Sunday Drive: Buckaroo

This happy, lively tune was the number-one country hit fifty years ago this month, as performed by the late, great Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, who popularized the Bakersfield Sound that influenced many other country-rock performers.

Waitin' for the Weekend

The Bear-Naked Chef: Paccheri con Gamberi

Description:

Enjoy the second installment of this new ground-breaking cooking series. In this episode, Adrian unveils more of his cooking talents and secrets and, a little more skin....with his new italian dish, Paccheri Con Gamberi (translates to tube pasta with shrimp), as he reminisces of his visits to the Amalfi Coast from where this creation was inspired. The beauty of this dish is in its simplicity, highlighting the freshness of its few ingredients. An easy recipe that everyone will want to try and will indulge in its sophisticated flavor profile.

Sunday Drive: Swedish Rhapsody

Brrr.  It's clear and 27 degrees here in Texas this morning, a good time to play something cheerful.  Based on Swedish folk tunes, this lively number was a hit for Percy Faith and his orchestra in 1953.




The inimitable Chet Atkins also recorded this on his 1956 album, Finger-Style Guitar:

Waitin' for the Weekend

Justice Joslin

What's My Line? 11/2/52

Barry Fitzgerald is the Mystery Guest.




For the young'uns who don't know, Fitzgerald was a beloved character actor who appeared in many films and won the Oscar for best supporting actor in 1944's Going My Way, starring Bing Crosby and Risë Stevens:

Awesomesauce!

Kate Arnell reports on the new words admitted to the Oxford English Dictionary last year:

Randomania: Ununoctium and Other Things

This may or may not be the start of a new feature here on the Blue Truck: random gleanings from the Intertubes, of no particular use to anyone but to pass the time with while desperately searching for the Escape key.




Today's subject is the brand-new element of Ununoctium - his friends call him Uuo because he has a half-life of only 890 microseconds - which was just added to the periodic table at square 118, somewhere south of the ghost of Paul Lynde. Wow, how things change - there were only 103 of those little periodic critters when your Head Trucker was in skool. Um, I think.

Despite his blue-blooded background as a member of the Noble Gasses - oh Mary, don't ask! - the modest Uuo is, like, totally hip in his skinny jeans, Wayfarers, and lumbersexual beard, and has an awesome tie-died man bun that's already the envy of his new neighborhood.  Although he claims not to mind all the wild polysexual rumors, Uuo refuses to be pinned down, saying only, "Labels are for canned goods."  Wow, so deep.

He's also a totally cool single dad, with a daughter named Livermorium.  I'm not making this up.  Hey, it's not much worse than naming a girl Madison or Taylor or even freakin' Noah, is it?   Besides, as we now know, gender is just an illusion.  So don't judge, okay?  Just stop it.

Anyway, with her adorable oscillating freckles and neon-aqua pigtails, she's the cutest little thing, only 53 microseconds tall, but already loves sushi and belly dancing and is a whiz at Mario Kart 8.  Did I mention she's finishing her Ph.D. in quantum physics next month, and was elected Most Popular at nursery school too? 

On top of all that, she loves growing organic, low-fat, gluten-free arugula in the back yard, which she gives away free to hungry Third World kids she meets while demonstrating for world peace at the United Nations.  In her free time, she's writing her first novel (about a transgendered, cross-species, time-traveling Kabuki actor's obsessive pursuit of Antonin Scalia) on her iPad Pro.  What a great kid, huh? Political commentators are already sizing her up as a potential favorite in the 2040 election.

Uuo is a very proud dad, needless to say: "I told her, all you have to do is just be yourself, sweetheart, and everything will naturally fall into place - she did the rest."


And you've done what with your life lately, bucko?

Sunday Drive: Unforgettable

R. I. P. Natalie Cole, 1950-2015.

Happy New Year 2016

Here's wishing health, wealth, and happiness to all my truckbuddies in the coming year.