6 Replies to “Shit”

  1. Listened to the Pill episode yesterday. Great stuff, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch to mention Harper Valley PTA as a banned song. Maybe a few backwoods stations banned it, but I was traveling around the country quite a bit that year, and it was everywhere, even in Jackson, MS. But I’m nitpicking. Excellent episode. The Conway Twitty song is creepy AF.

    While I was at it, I took in the Bobbie Gentry episode. I grew up wondering if she was my cousin. One of my uncles, who was generally pretty full of shit, claimed that Bobbie’s father was related to my paternal grandmother, Amanda Gentry. Amanda, like Bobbie and everyone in my parents’ families, was a Mississippian. She and my grandfather were no longer around to verify anything, and no one was in touch with any Gentry’s by that time. My father said that my uncle didn’t know what he was talking about, but as a nine-year-old, I was keen on the idea of being related to someone with a #1 hit. So I’d nonchalantly say, “oh, that’s my cousin” if Ode to Billie Joe ever came on or up. No one questioned it, because I was living in Ft. Sheridan, just north of Chicago, and, as everyone up there knew, only about one hundred people lived in the south, and they were all related. Of course, it was completely untrue: it turned out Bobbie’s real last name wasn’t Gentry.

    Bobbie’s story is fascinating, and I highly recommend the podcast. One thing Tyler Coe leaves out: the number that a journalist called to try to reach her was a Memphis number. So she was likely living here in 2016. Maybe she still is. Whoever knows isn’t talking. A pretty amazing disappearing act.

  2. The Pill helped remedy some major areas of ignorance for this bastard as I’d never heard that song nor even knew what The Streisand Effect was.

    Agree on Conway Twitty, and was pretty creeped by the Jimmie Rodgers tune, especially after listening to the whole thing. I didn’t quite get the controversy until I read the lyrics

    I’ve got a gal,
    Oh, what a gal,
    She weights two hundred pounds.
    But she is just my kind of gal,
    the best one I have found.
    Can she pet?
    Oh, how she pets.
    Why, each night in the park
    I take my cornfed mama out
    and neck where it is dark.
    Oh, she takes her little what’s it were she goes.
    Her little funny what’s it always shows,
    But when she struts down the street,
    het little what’s it can’t be beat,
    ‘Cause she’s not too fat,
    she’s not too thin,
    but where she sticks out,
    she should cave in.

    She takes her little what’s it where she goes,
    and her what’s it never grows.
    But when she struts right down the street,
    her little what’s it can’t be beat.
    But she’s my gal,
    my dog-faced gal from Nashville, Tennessee.
    Oh she has feet,
    and oh, what feet, she wears a number nine.
    Her feet are big and she is strong,
    this dog-faced gal of mine.
    And when we go,
    we always go to places she likes best.
    I walk a while,
    then she sits down
    to let her what’s it rest.

    Oooohhhhhhh.

    Also, as the unofficial Bastard genealogist, I’m happy to look up your Gentry connections should you be interested. Just let me know.

    1. Monkeystador’s genealogy skills are not to be underestimated! A few years back, he discovered that my great-grandfather was beaten to death in a hotel robbery. (Beaten and died a week later, actually.)

  3. Boomers think they invented sex, but apparently it was around in the 30’s.

    Thanks very much, but I’m currently not in the market for more annoying relatives.

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