Two Mirandas and a Jason, All in Hot Water

Hey there… I post every day at 1pm central so I’d be totally pumped if you subscribe (you’ll get an email with a link to each post) or just check back for new posts coming out often! Today marks yet another post about country music. I’ve loved the genre for a long time, although I prefer more traditional country like Jon Pardi, or if I’m being 100% transparent… Alan Jackson.

Hot Tub Time Machine. Oddly enough, there are two famous people with the name Miranda in the news simultaneously, and I bet they’d both like to hop in a time machine right about now. One has sort of faded and become old news… Miranda Sings, a character created by Colleen Ballinger. Colleen was/is in hot water because she apparently didn’t know when to draw the line between her professional career and her private life. Things involving minors and mistreating people who work for her has added up to a mountain she won’t be able to climb. It’s all a bit messy and I don’t really want to get into that stuff. My general sentiment is that her jig is up. You do stuff (questionable R-rated, intimate stuff) around or including minors, your career is as good as gone. She won’t be back in the entertainment business, at least on a national scale, with any popularity any time soon, if ever. But the cooler Miranda is in the news, too…

Country Music. At the same time Jason Aldean is being cancelled, removed from CMT, making headlines, having #1 songs for his latest “Try That In A Small Town” which I wrote about here, Miranda Lambert (the country singer I almost dated) is a lightning rod of discussion. In a nutshell, at a recent show she stopped performing mid-song to call out some women who were apparently obstructing fans views when the stood up to take an elaborate selfie pic. I’m siding with Miranda for two reasons:

  1. She’s offering us her most beloved thing, the craft she dedicates her life to, and so it comes across as disrespectful and/or rude to pick a tender moment in the show to worry about getting a picture. Surely there is a time and a place to get a good selfie but from what I can decipher, Miranda was singing a heartfelt ballad when the ladies decided to take the picture. Should she have just let it go and continued to perform for the rest of the fans at the show? Perhaps. But what if a painter was presenting her artwork in a gallery showing and in the middle of explaining the motive behind one of her most cherished pieces of art, a group of people got out their phones for selfies? It’s just bad timing, I think. Plus, disrupting other people’s experiences isn’t a blunder to be overlooked.
  2. Put your phones away. There is something pure and memorable about being “in the moment.” Enjoy the show because you paid money for the privilege. Take a picture or two but then, be all the way in… try to listen for each instrument, watching the drummer slam the sticks into the snare drum, the guitar tech rushing out to swap instruments, the concert lights spinning and twirling to the beat of the song, the entertainer (Miranda, in this case) putting on a showcase of their talents, skills, and personality. When I get my phone out to take a picture or record a short video, I’m snapped out of the moment so quickly because my focus turns to the image on my little screen. I’ve usually lost the magic created by being in the room with fellow fans in a place and time that can’t really be recreated ever again. And just to get a picture to show people that I was here? Who cares? Great, I have picture to remember that time I stopped enjoying the show to take a picture. Whoop-de-freakin-do!

Do either of the Mirandas tick you off? How about Jason Aldean? Something will come along soon that shuffles these stories to the back burner, which will be music to the ears of Jason, Miranda, and Colleen… I’m sure.

-Out of the Wilderness

Who Is Andrew Tate and Why Do We Care?

We don’t. That’s the short answer to the question in the title of this post. We shouldn’t care who Andrew Tate is but I’ve been seeing his name pop up and I guess you have, too. The Independent actually has a great timeline of his relevancy so I won’t try to post it all here. I’d follow the train of thought of what Betty White said about Facebook and apply that to Andrew Tate. She said Facebook was a huge waste of time. That’s about the extent of Andrew Tate, too.

Andrew Tate will fade into history as someone who did a thing once and was in the news for some reason, but no one can really pinpoint exactly what and no one cares. Nothing he says should matter (and if things go a certain way, all his comments will be coming from a jail cell anyway), so his relevancy will disappear faster than a bad act on America’s Got Talent. I guess there is a tiny reason to pay attention to guys like him, though. If he, or any copycats gain any traction, there would be a reason for concern. From what I can tell, he is just controversial for controversies sake, which does nothing good for society or culture.

I was going to include a YouTube video here, a compilation of his ludicrous views about relationships but I wasted 5 minutes watching it so you don’t have to. 🙂

Go out and enjoy your day and let’s forget about this dumb guy, mmk?

-Out of the Wilderness

I really want to cheer for the U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team

The Women’s World Cup is starting this week. Just like previous tournaments, the U.S. women’s team is expected to go far in the tournament, or even win it all. But I’ll just be totally honest here, instigator athletes like Megan Rapinoe really, REALLY turn me off. So much so that I’m finding it hard to even hope the team succeeds. Like in some way if the team wins it validates her irritating and divisive personality. Thankfully there are lots of other women on the team, extremely talented, and not so divisive. It will be easy to cheer those women on. I guess this is a good example of how imperfect I am.

I want to love everyone. I want to be someone who’s kind, compassionate, generous. Someone who overlooks offenses and prays for his enemy’s. I’m not there yet. In fact, if the entire team were full of Megan Rapinoes, I’d be quietly rooting for whoever the opponent is. Kind of like I do with college football. Shhhhhhhhh, don’t tell my family! I went to Florida State but what they did in the mid-2010s, I just can’t forgive them for it. I revoked my loyalty, rejected my alliance, and for what it’s worth I did the same with Nike, too, as they were involved with the FSU stuff that ticked me off. Actually, it might be Nike that bears the majority of the blame. But, I’ll admit the movie Air is pretty great. I loved my Air Jordans in the early 90s. I loved the Seminoles from birth to their 2013 championship. But bridges have been burned, ships have sailed, bonds broken that will never be repaired.

Megan Rapinoe’s appearances (sports, interviews, etc) always leave a bad taste in my mouth, so it’s hard to be excited about anything she’s associated with… but I’m going to try. Let’s go, girls!

-Out of the Wilderness

“Try That In A Small Town” – Is This Strike Three for Jason Aldean?

Thanks for stopping by today! I post every day at 1pm central because when I started out writing every single day, I was in Nashville (central time). Since then, my home switched from bricks to bumpers (I live in a travel trailer) and I now call eastern time zone Florida my home base. How’s that for information you didn’t ask for? 😉

I recently came across the music video for Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town,” and I have a few reasons why this song (and video) might be strike three for the country singer. And it’s not only that the video was shot in Columbia, Tennessee, a nearby town to Nashville. When someone mentions Columbia, I don’t immediately think of Piggly Wiggly or people marrying their cousins, so is it REALLY a small town? I have serious doubts. Although I did run the Mule Kick 5K in Columbia, and there’s nothing more country than a 5K called Mule Kick where instead of water, they hand runners sweet tea. OK, they didn’t do that but you get my point.

I was bummed to find out the video was directed by one of my favorite directors, Shaun Silva. He has a great resume of work, I love a lot of his videos and actually, his signature style is evident in this one. It’s not the video that bothers me, really. I’m just bummed because of the message of the song. If you’ve listened to it already, you can probably pick up on the divisiveness of the lyrics. Aldean’s delivery pretty much comes across as a dare. What someone can get away with in a big city, come try that in a small town and see what happens… is the gist of it.

Was it smart for Jason Aldean to release a song including lyrics about guns after his concert in Vegas where a shooter killed 58 people (or 61, since 3 died years later, some say related to the initial shooting)? Most comments I’ve seen say, “No, this was a terrible idea.” In Jason’s defense, he didn’t write the lyrics (which is common in country music – to sing a song someone else wrote). But he has definitely linked himself forever to the song by stamping his name on it. When things are already on edge culturally, why? Why instigate more conflict? Why add to tensions that are already high in the part of society looking for a fight?

I don’t have much doubt that at least some, maybe most, country fans will like the song. Maybe they won’t love it, but it’s not like Jason will get cancelled or anything. It’s so interesting to me that in one genre of music you can have a song that’s aggressive (this one) and another that’s soft (Brad Paisley’s “Same Here”) and both are so dumb. Brad’s is the dumbest, that isn’t really up for debate (explained here). Even in 291 years, “Same Here” will never be good in any possible way. Where Jason most likely screwed up is not even the song itself. Although the lyrics aren’t memorable, they aren’t terrible (for comparison, see Brad Paisley “Same Here” which is memorable for being so terrible). But the timing of the song hitting radios is not ideal. Well, I mean if peace is what we’re after. It’s a terrible time to release a song that will only feed into division, and what’s worse is that maybe adding to conflict was the point. If that’s true, it makes me like Jason even less. So is this strike three for Mr. Aldean?

He already had two strikes against him after he (strike one) released a video for “Dirt Road Anthem” in which he sings the entire video ON A PAVED ROAD. Don’t even get me started. Then a couple of years after that he (strike two) cheated on his high school sweetheart wife. That’s terrible but the paved road, come on man! Can you tell I’m still upset about the the paved road?

For the divisive message in a time where unity is a loftier and more honorable aspiration, for the video being shot so close to a big city, for not including a video clip of someone going to Walmart in their pajamas (isn’t that what people in small towns do?), “Try That In A Small Town” is strike three for Jason Aldean. The video itself is well done, but the lyrics tank any good that could come from a song about small towns. Sorry, Jason, you’re out!

What do you think of the video? Should the song be listened to without thinking too much about the lyrics? Chime in below…

-Out of the Wilderness

The most absurd thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube

Youtube has been great for so many different types of videos. I can’t tell you how many “how-to” videos have saved my butt when something needed fixin’. The entertainment of dash cam videos, Dude Perfect trick shots, fail videos. Football highlights. Baseball breakdowns by Jomboy Media. There’s just too much to even list for all the stuff we can watch.

But this is where it gets crazy. I think there’s something sinister going on here. First, they ask you 73 times a day if you want to pay for YouTube Premium even if you’ve already said no 72 times. Then they give the ol’ double whammy, a gut punch with the ads they interrupt you with, you know, since you won’t subscribe to the ad-free version. Sometimes they make you sit through all 15 or 30 seconds worth. Other times they give you an option to skip after 5 seconds. But I couldn’t help but document the ad that showed up last time I was watching something. Here’s a pic, do you see what I see?

Someone somewhere is laughing at us (and counting their money) because we’re distracted and this ad has been playing for 27 minutes! The idea of a 42-minute-long commercial is absurd. It’s almost enough to make me subscribe to YouTube Premium.

Almost.

But YouTube… today is not that day. Try harder next time.

-Out of the Wilderness