Monday, October 23, 2006

When Peach Cobbler is on the Line

I've had so many blog entries for this blog percolating in my head and no time to write them! I'm staring down the barrel of a huge midterm due tomorrow (8-9 pages on Rawls and justice as fairness) as well as a ridiculous number of papers to grade for the composition class I teach. My daughter is in that vortex of senior year of high school combined with applying to colleges and that seems to take inordinate amounts of my time.

So here are a few random observations on the fly:

Cincinnati is a much nicer place to live when the Bengals win. Did you see that looooong fourth and 1 pass to Chad Johnson? Gutty play. Go Palmer! Go Bengals!

It's miserable to watch UCLA lose to Notre Dame. Period. (My dad, conversely, was delirious. His California vanity plates say: ND Freak. Understandably.)

I've been so busy, I just realized I haven't had a real meal in three days.

I've finally figured out what strain of faith I'm most attracted to: Academic Catholics! They rock my world. Can I just get baptized in the library and chew up some of their journal articles for communion?

And last but not least, I finally skunked my dear husband in a battle of numbers. He is always right. Always. I suck at anything numbers related and usually make grandiose, overstatements or totally inaccurate estimates to support my arguments (who me?) which he then rightly tempers with a return to reality.... things like,

Me: China spent like two trillion on beer production last year, honest. Our professor said...

Him: Uh, Julie, I'm thinking China didn't even spend two trillion on their military last year....

He's always oh-so-gentle, but I've taken to doubting any numbers I quote since I am always wrong.

But not this time, homies!

We had a face-off: who has sold more records, has earned more money, is a bigger superstar: Sheryl Crow or Madonna? I took Madonna, he wagered on Lance's ex. At stake: homemade dessert by the loser for the winner.

No contest. Madonna is queen.

What made me laugh so much, though, is that I doubted.... for a split second. Jon's sense of numbers is just that much better than mine. Then I remembered one critical number fact that restored my faith. Jon and I missed fifteen years of popular music out of devotion to all things Vineyard music (which has never come close to equaling either Madonna or Sheryl Crow's monetary take, btw). The last time we knew the title of a Madonna song was while we were dating: "Borderline" is our song. She had ten big years there where we were literally out of the country or totally out of touch.

So wouldn't you know, we resurfaced in the world of pop culture about the time Sheryl Crow was hitting it big. No wonder he didn't think Madonna had had many hits. Can't blame Jon for picking Sheryl. But I confess I'm sure happy to win his peach cobbler.

It. Is. To. Die. For.

I'm now thinking about other statistical wagers, like who has more money: Sting or Bono?

Maybe put an apple turnover on the line?

P.S. New column link in post below.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Send a peach cobbler or apple turnover this way, okay? They both sound incredible.

On second thought, nevermind. I can't fit into any of my clothes as it is. :::sigh:::

Enjoy a piece for me. (Hope you win again!)
Carrie

David Blakeslee said...

OK, I can buy your (plural) alibi about not knowing just how big Madonna was/is. At first I thought, complete no-brainer. I don't know that there's a female singer who's been any bigger since she came up. Yeah, there's Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey and for awhile Whitney Houston who made a consistent habit of topping the pop charts over the past 15-20 years but Madonna is so much more significant on just about every meaningful pop culture scale one could propose. And I like Sheryl Crow, but no, it's not even close between those two.

I don't know who has more money, but I think Sting should - Bono has played up his saintly image to the point where he better have given a lot of that money away!

But again, I think it's pretty clear who is the bigger star and has sold the most music - Bono/U2 by a long shot. U2 has their detractors, but they retain a lot more respect and loyal following than Sting does. Sting has become kind of a joke in many circles - he took the SNAG thing a lot further than many of us are comfortable with - but then, I always saw him that way even when the Police were at their peak. Just a little too much attention to the hair-do for my tastes...

Unknown said...

The thing about Sting, though, is that he is a solo artist with genuine number one hits that continue to earn him money every day of his life (Did you know he earns $2K per day for "Every Little Thing You Do is Magic"?)

Bono gets 25% of the take for U2. Still, they have huge tours and continue to hit number one even all these years later.

I like your question about how much money he's given away. This is one of those questions I do want to follow up and figure out. Each time I think about it, I switch to the other one.

Btw, for the record, Sting... well, he can wear his hair any way he wants. :) Sexy after fifty. Uh-huh.

Julie

kimmy said...

I think my marriage would be 10X more harmonious if I could be as passionate about football as you are :)

David Blakeslee said...

OK, here's more background/baggage re: Sting and me...

I was deeply into my punk rock career back in 1980 when "Outlandos D'Amour" came out. My band, the Church Police, had already laid claim to our name when I see this trendy new wave pseudo-reggae type band come out calling themselves The Police, with full record company backing and all that. I'd already made up my mind that I didn't really care for these guys when I go in to my dad's dentist to take care of a tooth problem and the cute hygienist, whose name really was Roxanne, starts going on about this great new band and their hot singer (or whatever word she used - I don't think "hot" was as ubiquitous a descriptor as it is these days) named Sting and how cool it is that their hit song featured her name. Needless to say, I was not able to get anywhere with Roxanne (having her clean my teeth put me at a relational disadvantage, let's just put it that way) and thus began my simmering resentment of Sting.

Now it's mellowed considerably over the years... I actually grew to like some of their songs as subsequent albums came out. "Spirits in the Material World" is my favorite LP and "Invisible Sun" is my favorite song in their repertoire, and of course "Synchronicity" and "Every Move You Make" were the soundtrack of summer 1983. But even then, that silly shredded-crepe-paper or whatever it was jacket that Sting wore in the "Synchronicity II" video never sat well with me. And when he went solo I tried but just couldn't get into "Dream of the Blue Turtles" and "If You Love Someone, Set Them Free." Even though I had renounced my punk rockin' ways at that time, now married and a dad and much more domesticated than I ever thought I'd be...

Wow, what a digression! I have no idea why I decided to unload all this here, but there you go. I'm not trying to talk you out of whatever kind of a thing you got for Sting... that's way beyond my powers of persuasion and I really have no problem with it in any case! I guess I just wanted to let you know there's more here than you might have guessed...

David Blakeslee said...

Oh, and Rawls and "justice as fairness"? I hadn't heard that one.

I know that Lou Rawls hints at a somewhat Calvinistic view of our utter dependence on sovereign grace when he croons:

"You'll never find, as long as you live

Someone who loves you tender like I do

You'll never find, no matter where you search

Someone who cares about you the way I do"

I'll need to dig deeper into his back catalog in order to see where divine justice is addressed.