House of the Rising Sun ... Explained

"The House of the Rising Sun" is a great song. It was a big hit by the Animals in 1964. I remember first hearing Bob Dylan's version, which was recorded in 1961. I thought, "ah, that's where the Animals got it!" Of course, in the Dylan film "No Direction Home," Dave Van Ronk said that it was his arrangement and that Dylan stole it from him. I had heard years ago that it was a Leadbelly song. I subsequently learned that a lot of Leadbelly songs were in fact old folk and/or blues songs that Leadbelly sort of claimed.

Well, American Blues Scene has a piece on the origins of "The House of the Rising Sun." It was an old folk tune, with versions recorded as early as 1932 by Clarence Ashley. It may have been a tune from over the ocean. In any account, "The House of the Rising Sun" may not be a New Orleans brothel (though, of course, there is some dispute about that).

Ketchup on a Hot Dog? I Agree with Royko

Kevin Pang, writer for the Chicago Tribune, has a piece saying St. Mike Royko was WRONG regarding ketchup on a hot dog (though the point is that it's a Chicago hot dog). Pang quotes Royko thusly: "No, I won't condemn anyone for putting ketchup on a hot dog. This is the land of the free. And if someone wants to put ketchup on a hot dog and actually eat the awful thing, that is their right."

That is a perfectly valid argument. But Pang grows a pair and declares that Mike Royko was wrong.

I am against ketchup on a hot dog. I am pro ketchup on fries. I don't hate ketchup. I do like to soup up my ketchup with hot sauce, mustard, tabasco, and black pepper. But it is still recognizable as ketchup. I eat it. On fries. And like it.

But my kids like ketchup on hot dogs. I told them that they had to quit eating hot dogs that way when they reached 12, but my daughter has not, and she's past that age. My friend, who runs a little hot dog stand that nobody's ever heard of, says that he has no problem if a customer requests ketchup on a hot dog.

Royko was right, however. It's not the way to do, but I would never make fun of someone for doing it. (OK, maybe not never, but rarely.)

Cowboys & Aliens 2: Abe and the Babe

In The Big Picture, Kevin Bacon plays a newly graduated screenwriter who during the course of his search for work in the world of movies goes to a cut-rate movie studio. The sausage maker of a studio boss wants someone to crank out a movie based on America's most-beloved historical figures: Babe Ruth and Abraham Lincoln. Bacon imagines a scene in the imaginary movie Abe and the Babe in which Lincoln finishes whittling a bat for Babe, hands it to him, and asks him to "make sure the Yankees win!"

This is my review for Cowboys & Aliens. Abe and the Babe.

Movies I Would Wait On but Am Seeing Tonight

Cowboys & Aliens is a movie that I really don't want to pay any sort of money to see in the theater, but it looks like we are going to see that tonight. It sounds to me like a couple of film majors were sitting around their dorm room at UCLA smokin' a little rope and coming up with storylines while "inspired."

"I'm sick of cowboys and indians, dude. Why not ... why not ... (heh) ... why not cowboys and Egyptians? No, wait. Why not cowboys and Amazons? Huh? (heh) Why not ... cowboys and ALIENS??? THAT'S IT!"

It's sad to me that my lovely and talented (and did I mention "lovely") wife has no problem going to see a movie like this, but "True Grit" is radioactive to her because it is a Western and not a spoof ... or whatever the hell this is.

Ebert did give it three stars. So there is a little hope.

Eating Invasive Animals and Plants

Finally, the New York Times reports on something that I’ve long advocated: using our incredible power to overfish, overharvest, and overhunt to ameliorate the problem with invasive species. I thought that there must be some way to gather and chop up Kudzu to make barbecue smoke, ala mesquite. I wondered why we didn’t try to make the zebra mussel a delicacy. I would love to see Asian carp become the next “blackened redfish.”

Turns out, there are some who are trying to recast Asian carp as “Kentucky tuna.” Good enough for me. In the article, one “invasivore” as folks who eat invasive species are called, has eaten lionfish, “feral pigs, two species of iguana, armadillos, starlings, pigeons and resident Canada geese. … Our taste for passenger pigeon wiped that species out, he said.”