Elvis: Hey, are we havin' a halloween shingdig again?
I cut things from Time Machine to M10 Show to AVOID that kind of workload, dude! However, thanks to our loyal fans- one of them, anyway- we do have a halloweenie thing coming up with our Stream-on-Spotify battle! However, I did add a little to it... Debbie suggested a clash between...
...Alice Cooper, who is VERY halloweenie, and...
...the Smashing Pumpkins, who are at least pumpkin-y! I knew because of the charts they charted on, this might be a bit dicey, so I decided to up the stakes, since one good makeup job deserves another, and so I added....
...KISS!!!! And guess what, this also added a layer to things, which we'll start to see right after we play the first of 3 debuts!
Here, lemme do this, it's gonna get crowded around here with alla those cats! First up at #10, a song Chris's been tryin' ta sneak in here for a month or so! No sneakin' about this tune though, Here's the Scorpions...
Thanks, Bud! Now our problem is, one of the acts here hit exclusively (as far as their top streaming hits go) on the Hot 100 (that would be Alice); one of them was mostly on the Alternative chart (Pumpkins, natch...); while the third had some better numbers on Mainstream Rock (KISS). So we're going to do this 2 ways...
As if it ain't confusin' enough now...
We're going to keep two scores- one just the Hot 100 numbers; and one, best number on whichever chart. And we'll get started- right after Elvis plays the second of our three debuts!
Yeah, gotcha! So this'll make two songs from the same lp going up at the same time- not a usual occurrence, but not unique, either! From Blue Rev, here's more of Canada's Alvvays at #9....
Just in case the copyright gods hit us again, so far that's Scorpions with Hammersmith, and Alvvays with Belinda Says. Moving on to our countdown contest, here are the three acts' top streamers on Spotify- and where they fall on the charts.
10- Alice has Only Women Bleed, an awesome song that charted at #12 here, so 1 point in both races. TSP start off with Drown, #24 on Alt but no 100. That's 0 for race 1, 1 for race 2. And KISS leads off with... well, they got bit by the "Hey, there's two versions of this on here" bug, and so I Was Made For Loving You will score later, but bagels this round.
9- Alice posts I Never Cry, which also hot 100'd at #12- both of them should have been MUCH higher. So now Alice has 2 pts in each race. TSP come in with Cherub Rock, which got a #7 alt. KISS hits with Love Gun, which only got the #61 on the hot 100. So Race one is 2-0-0, race 2 is 2-5-0.
Elvis: (Blinks eyes blankly)
8- Alice scores with Welcome To My Nightmare, peaking at #45. TSP join in with their new one, Beguiled, currently at #22 on alt. KISS chimes in with Strutter, and how the heck did that chart NOWHERE?? Race 1, 2-0-0, Race 2, 2-6-0.
7- Alice with Bed Of Nails, which was a no-go. TSP with Disarm, #8 on alt. KISS with I Love It Loud, 102 on the hot 100 (thank you, bubbling under chart) and 22 on Rock. Race 1, 2-0-0; race 2, 2-9-1.
And for this section, we have-
6- Alice with Under My Wheels, which topped out at #59. TSP had its turn with the two version blues here, with two versions of Today right in a row. So it's up to KISS to score, and so they do- Forever was #17 on rock, but gets the #8 from the hot 100! So now, race 1 is 2-0-3, race 2, 2-9-3.
Boy, they're really lightin' it up here...
Hey, howsabout you play the final debut?
Yes, sir! From the new lp, here's our girl Brooke Annibale with Social Anxiety at #7...
Ya want me to do the rest of the M10, or ya wanna finish confusin' everone first?
I'll finish the confusion- but first, let's break for dinner!
Got that right!
****MOMENTS LATER*****
Ah, that's better! Now, finish this up!
5- Alice comes in with Feed My Frankenstein, a non-charter. TSP give us the higher version of Today, which ticked the bubbling under at 103, and #4 on alt. KISS had Lick It Up, a non-makeup song that got them a #66 on the 100 and #19 on rock, so now race 1 is still 2-0-3, and race 2 is 2-16-4.
4- Alice with I'm Eighteen, peaking at 21 (seriously?); TSP have Tonight, Tonight, a top 40 hit at #36, and a #5 on alt. KISS has Heaven's On Fire, #49 on the 100 and #11 on rock. Race 1, 3-1-3, race 2, 3-22-5.
Lookin' like the Pumpkins are gonna roll on the best ball survey...
3- Alice again gets short shrift with No More Mr Nice Guyonly making #25; TSP had Zero, a #9 alt; KISS has Detroit Rock City, which was a double-A side with Beth (which DIDN'T make the list), and I'll give them the #7 for the whole thing. Thus were are race 1, 4-1-7; race 2, 4- 24-9.
2- Alice scores with School's Out at #7; TSP have Bullet With Butterfly Wings, still my favorite, a #22 on the 100 and #2 on alt. KISS hits with Rock'N'Roll All Night, a #12. So, with one song to go, it's 8-2-8 in race 1, 8-33-10 in race two.
And the biggest streaming hits?
Alice tops out with Poison, also a #7 to give him 12 on each list.
The Pumpkins finish with 1979, #12 on the 100 and #1 alt, so they finish up with 3 on the 100, and 43 on the best-number list.
KISS, at long last, with I Was Made For Loving You, #11 on the 100 to give them 9 and 11.
So, the Billboard list is 12 for Alice, 9 for KISS, and 3 for Billy Corgan and co.; The best-ball list is the Pumpkins way out front with 43, Alice 12, and KISS 11.
So everyone gots happy except KISS, right?
Looks that way, Bud! Anyway, the rest of the M10...
8- The Four Seasons up one with Danger;
6- and holding for Beck and Old Man;
5- and slipping to make room, one spot for Alvvays and After The Earthquake;
4- Built To Spill tumbles 2 with Comes A Day;
3- Lucius up 5 big ones with The Man I'll Never Find;
2- Zach Williams does what he did on the Christian chart, up one (to 12 there and 2 here) with Heart Of God.
And the winnah and still champeen...
...Broken Bells and Love On The Run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Next week, I'm pulling rank and picking my own Spotify stream battle! One is the standard; one is the version from MY generation... Barry Manilow vs Frank Sinatra! Be there!
Ecc 4:13 Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.
One question one must ask is, Solomon had a long reign- 40 years. Yet, after about 20 of them, his story seems to end. Only the reproval in 1 Kings 11 about all his foreign wives finishes his tale of accomplishment. But we can piece together what happened from 3 things shown in 1 Kings- and what they involved from his song of repentance in Ecclesiastes.
First, obviously, was the marriage to Pharaoh's daughter, which opened the door to all the rest. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon brings that very thing up:
Ecc 7:25 I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. Ecc 7:26 And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her.
Much of his warnings about the seducer in Proverbs is based right here, and he admits he, "the sinner" fell to her. Without fail, Proverbs describes this path as "the way to death". Solomon KNEW this was the greater part of his failure, and the consequences destroyed his relationship with God:
1Ki 11:4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. 1Ki 11:5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 1Ki 11:6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done.
1Ki 11:9 And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 1Ki 11:10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. 1Ki 11:11 Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant.
More on this later. The second thing that then happened was, his fall began to ruin his other actions. Remember last week:
1Ki 9:10 At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house, 1Ki 9:11 and Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon gave to Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. 1Ki 9:12 But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, they did not please him. 1Ki 9:13 Therefore he said, "What kind of cities are these that you have given me, my brother?" So they are called the land of Cabul to this day.
This must have stemmed from a growing sense of arrogance- one that reached its peak at the visit of the Queen of Sheba:
1Ki 10:4 And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, 1Ki 10:5 the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the LORD, there was no more breath in her. 1Ki 10:6 And she said to the king, "The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, 1Ki 10:7 but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard. 1Ki 10:8 Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 1Ki 10:9 Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the LORD loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness."
I want you to understand this: a woman who had come from her own land, with the equivalent of a quarter-BILLION dollars of our money just in GOLD, on top of a bunch of other loot, for the purpose of giving as a GIFT- this woman FAINTED at the wealth of Solomon! She praised God for it... but I think Solomon stopped halfway through the soliloquy.
I think Solomon began to see himself AS a god.
In the beginning, he was able to say, "So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me." (Ecl 2:9). But as he tried to work things out in the end, he had to admit, "All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, "I will be wise," but it was far from me." (Ecl 7:23)
What happened?
The story in Ecclesiastes starts with him having it all, and wondering what it meant. If a poor man and a rich man die the same, what does it matter? He tried to apply his wisdom, but it failed him because he applied it to gain, instead of where he had asked it for- for his people. That's where the problem began:
Ecc 6:3 If a man fathers a hundred, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, and his soul is not filled with good, and also is for him no burial; I say, a miscarriage is better than he.
He was not seeking GOOD. He was trying to re-write the world in a way God hadn't made it...
Ecc 7:13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?
But lost as he was, trying to play ALL angles, he didn't grasp this- he thought he could be know-all,be-all. But that position has no vacancies, and the attempt broke him:
Ecc 2:20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, Ecc 2:21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.
He tried to debate with God over things, and quickly found out that doesn't work, either:
Ecc 5:6 Never let your mouth cause you to sin and don't proclaim in the presence of the angel, "My promise was a mistake," for why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy what you've undertaken?
All of his study- his attempt at godhood-on-my-own- lead him to see that God had it under control- and he did NOT:
Ecc 7:27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things-- Ecc 7:28 which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. Ecc 7:29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Eventually, he was humbled- and that came when God came back and pronounced the curse on his future. Not that God didn't start setting it up right away, as he was beset by first an enemy he thought destroyed (Hadad, a son of Edom who had fled to Egypt, see 1 Kings 11 for all of these); then, a personal Robin Hood to his Sir Guy (Rezon of Zobah); and finally, the one who would steal the kingdom from his son- a man of his own inner circle (Jeroboam) to break his heart the final extent. And yet, instead of accepting God's judgment as his father David had, he went into "Saul mode":
1Ki 11:40 Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam. But Jeroboam arose and fled into Egypt, to Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon.
At last, at some point, he comes to himself, and humbles himself before God- the writing of Ecclesiastes is the evidence of that. And he tries to repair the damage his 'search' had caused- Proverbs was an attempt to keep Rehoboam from just what he did to cause the revolution. And finally, he admits he had overreached himself:
Ecc 12:11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. Ecc 12:12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecc 12:13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Ecc 12:14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
But of his historical record, all that remains is:
1Ki 11:41 Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the Book of the Acts of Solomon? 1Ki 11:42 And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years. 1Ki 11:43 And Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David his father. And Rehoboam his son reigned in his place.
The thing he feared most- all his works were left to a fool.
This weekend when we were watching the deer watching us, I realized I'd never told you all on blogland my first encounter with deer. Follow me way back in time to about 1974 (which puts me at about 12). We lived out in the country, in a spot that had a name and a church and a few houses. We were midway between New Haven (which does count as a city) and the major metropolis of Zulu (two bars and a repair shop). I had a woods a little more than a mile to the south, and another just under a mile to the north, and up till this day, I'd only seen deer wandering near those woods.
At the time, I had a mutt named Chip, and a cat named Sambo (he was gray, not black- don't ask me, Mom named him), and without getting too far afield of the story, they were best of buddies. Also, Dad had taken to feeding a stray female- short haired in front, LOOOONG in back, all calico)- which he named Mergatroid. Now Mergy had two female kittens from her first litter- birthed in the back of Dad's 37 Chevy, as all subsequent litters were- a tan named Muffin (she was skittish and not at all friendly) and Gypsy (kind of a negative calico- black where white should have been, and the friendliest and most faithful). And of course, they all had litters- Mergy banged out 2 at a time, as did muffin, but Gypsy was 5 at a time. So we had 12 outdoor semi-tame cats as this story happens.
I decided to take me and Chip a walk to the north woods. We were crossing a field, I think something akin to soybeans were thinking about coming up, or it may have been harvested and not plowed, I don't remember. Anyway, Sammy came out and decided to tag along, which was slightly unusual. Much more unusual was the parade of outdoor cats- everybody except, of course, Muffin. It was after dinner and would be getting dark in about an hour or so, so it must have been summertime, but early. So off we tramped to the woods.
No, I'm not drunk, just crappy with Paint. The X is home, with me waving; the blue is the ditches that were the boundaries of our world back then; Green is woods. Not long after you enter the woods, there was a bridge, big enough for farmers to get their tractors across. We crossed the bridge onto the right side,m and at that first corner, we saw a large herd of deer disappear into the junction of woods. Chip and I immediately ran after them, Sammy close behind.
What we never knew until then was that, in the corner all but hidden, was a pathway into that field surrounded on three sides by woods. The deer high tailed it across the field, and when the three of us gave up the chase, we looked around us and realized:
1- we had no idea how we arrived in a field we never knew existed;
2- It was getting dark enough that we needed to be heading home;
3- The entire side of the woods that we ran along was peppered with the little meowing voices of cats and kittens who had decided to run WITH us, panicked, and now were IN the woods with no idea of where they were, or we were.
I had to laugh, but only for a moment, because our time was running out. So slowly, one at a time, we retrieved 11 cats from a quarter mile of steadily darkening woods.
Amazingly enough, we all made it home, and I can't say as I recall any of the cats ever following us to the woods ever again. Mergy and Muffin were around for several seasons- but we lived on the old 2-lane US30, before the 4 lane was built well away, and the road always thinned out the cat population. Pretty much the only non-victim was Gypsy, who was blind and still trying to have litters she couldn't carry to term, when Dad put her down- other than burying Mom, the hardest thing he ever had to do. The woods is gone as well, Buchanan Brothers having logged it out and turned it all into fields.
Chip was also a victim of the road, running out ahead of Mom when she went out to get the mail one morning. Sammy moped for about 3 days, and disappeared, apparently committing suicide by car over the loss of his best friend. It wasn't a surprise; you had to see how they were together. Mom would spend her evenings crocheting ( or if the item was finished, un-crocheting) doilies, with one of them on each side of her on the chair. It always started the same; Chip would set his head on Mom's leg, looking at Sammy; Sammy would reach over and bap him, they'd take to brawling, and Mom would toss 'em. Legend has it one time Sammy jumped Chip from behind, got his arm around Chip's neck, and bit his ear. Chip tore through the kitchen, Sammy riding like a cowboy. It would have been hard to imagine them apart, and I guess Sammy felt that way too.
Didn't catch his buddy was there. Apparently he didn't, either...
Soon he left his mate behind...
...and was off to land elsewhere.
Misty sensed major varmintage here...
Found only plant dust
The Duck Family Robinson at the Swamp
These two watched us all the way down the Bunny Field trail
Misty sees them... only vaguely interested.
This is at the Chihuahua's house. Should be labeled, "Chihuahua as he sees himself..."
Misty and I don't have the knack that Scrappy and I had for finding strange things on a walk. However, there are exceptions, such as a can opener in the middle of someone's yard...
And Saturday- a day my sinuses slowed me down a bit...
Thought it MIGHT be deer... photo evidence says "aluminum bench"
Jet plane race- first to FTW buys the beer
Here's a real wooly worm- looks like a usual winter.
That same spot, there must be a den under that bush
All the way to the barn, and no other people? This usually only happens on High Holidays. Did I miss something?
Sunrise over the pitch
This is a BIG group- I counted probably 9 males and three females
One last look at the river up- at midnight they lower the level for a week for board replacement
Our first human! We would then pass one more walker and a one-armed guy with a dog, in the next few yards, and that was it...
The pin oak at Squirrel Junction finally getting some actual color
Caught Miss Kitty, er, using the volleyball pit right as we arrived home
