Keep Rancho Clean

By way of preamble to this message, I'd like to make clear that The Referee has for many years been a fan of Woody Guthrie.  I want you to know that I'm not one of those Johnny-come-lately types who latches on to trendy things because someone at Rolling Stone or OK! magazine decides they're hip.  Oh no.  I'm a hardcore fan.

"How hardcore are you?" I hear you ask.  I'm glad you asked that.  Well, I'm so hardcore that one of the Little Referees (who are not so little as they used to be) is named after Mr Guthrie.  And the other is named after Mr Dylan, who looked up to Guthrie as his hero, famously visited him in hospital in New York when he was suffering with complications related to Huntington's disease, and wrote the wonderful Song to Woody, which was one of the few original songs on Dylan's debut album "Bob Dylan" in 1962.  In fact, it is often said that Dylan moved to New York from his childhood home in Minnesota at least in part to seek out his idol and visit him in hospital before he died.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

For those not too familiar with the great man, Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma in 1912 and died in New York City (so good they named it thrice: see my message of 18/9/06, or 9/18/06, if you prefer) in 1967.  In the interim he wrote hundreds of great American folk songs, most famously "This Land Is Your Land", often played with the words "This Machine Kills Fascists" emblazoned on his guitar, and is considered by many people who know about these things to be the Godfather of modern American folk music.

Why am I going on about this?  A fine question.

Well, the Information Steve Heighway has recently been abuzz (abuzz?) with an extract from the great man's notebook scribblings from 1943 (or 1942; there is disagreement in some parts of the blogosphere about exactly which year he wrote it.)  (Note here the use of the semi-colon, the Godfather of punctuation: neither a comma (let's pause for a moment) or a colon (look what's coming next), it says "let's pause for a moment before we see what's coming next"; and (there it is again), because it's often misunderstood, it's also criminally under-used.)

Anyway, where were we?  Oh yes.  Woody's notebook, in which he used two pages, right in the middle of the book, plus lots of scribbled illustrations, to set out his "New Year's Rulin's" for whichever year it was.

And what a great read they are.  A couple of things are immediately noticeable.  Firstly, there are 33 of them.  I expect it's true for most of us that we attempt at best 2 or 3 resolutions at this time of year: "I'll go to the gym more often, possibly"; "I'll be nicer to the children, or not"; "I'll be slightly less offensive to chuggers and salespeople this year".  Perhaps it takes a great man like Guthrie to take on ten times the number of resolutions that we mere mortals can muster.

The other thing that strikes one is that Woody's rulin's are so, for want of a better word, elemental.  He doesn't mess about with avoiding gluten or donating a larger proportion of his income to charity.  Oh no.  He focuses instead on more basic and urgent concerns, including "Take Bath", "Change Socks", and "Wash Teeth, If Any".

That last rulin' perhaps suggests that Mr Guthrie had intended that his resolutions would not just be for his personal use but would also one day be read by the likes of you, dear reader, and me.  Otherwise, why bother with "If Any"?  Presumably, even in the early 1940s, people were aware how many teeth they had, give or take.  And, if one had no teeth at all, one would almost certainly have noticed.

Whether or not the rulin's were intended for wider consumption, I for one am grateful for the work of the folk who look after Woody's huge archives of song lyrics and other writings, for preserving his down-to-earth resolutions, which perhaps put into perspective the rather pale, post-modern angst of our twenty-teens new year concerns.

Amongst my favo(u)rite rulin's are "Read Lots Good Books", "Listen To Radio A Lot", "Keep Hope Machine Running", its close relative "Stay Glad", the spectacular "Dance Better" (how I wish) and, especially relevant for those us with a rather, shall we say, expansive domestic management style, "Keep Rancho Clean".

And so, for this year, I have resolved not to dream up 2 or 3 lily-livered post-modern whinges that I have only a limited intention of addressing.  Instead, I am going to attach the New Year's Rulin's to the wall of my office (AKA Message Central) and do my level best to embrace each and every one of them with the gusto they deserve.

And so, a belated Happy New Year to all.  Stay glad, read lots of good books, and blogs, and keep your rancho clean.

Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year

So, where were we?

After 3 years and 7 months, The Referee has finally decided to retire from his self-imposed retirement and get back on his blogging horse, if you will.

And so, those of you who have missed reading pointless and rambling stories, who have longed for unfathomable tangents, who have pined for the almost criminal over-use of parentheses (that is to say, brackets) (see what I mean), you need to wait no longer.

No doubt you, dear reader(s) (note the optimistic plural), are wondering why The Referee entered his self-imposed retirement in the first place, and why he has now retired from it.  Both fine questions, if I may say so.

The answer to the former question is far too dull for an action-packed organ such as this.  The latter question, however, can be answered by a simple road sign.  Let me explain why.

I have long been fascinated by the search for the perfect retail moniker, that is to say, shop name.  Creative retailers the world over have often entertained their customers with comedy names for their establishments.  You know the sort of thing I mean.  Herr Kutz the barber.  Paws for Thought the pet shop.  Wok this Way the Chinese restaurant.

My personal contribution to this list occurred to me in a recent visit to Washington DC's national zoo.  While communing at the orangutan enclosure, it came to me, like a Damascene revelation, that orangutans would make the perfect logo for my aspirational chain of tanning salons, which would be named Orange-U-Tan.  If no one else has already done it, I'll be off as soon as I've finished this message to register the name Orange-U-Tan with whoever it is that registers the names of tanning salons.  Presumably the Federation of Authorized Tanning Salon Owners, or something along those lines.

Anyway, this remained just an idle (some would say pointless) (others would say worrying) obsession, until I heard a rumo(u)r that, right here in what the locals like to call the DC Metro Area, there was a Christmas tree selling establishment with the glorious name of Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year.

Elvis Buys His Tree Here Every Year.  Could it really be true?  If so, this was enough to cause me both to seek it out for my own arboreal acquisition purposes, and to emerge from retirement into the warm yuletide twinkle of the blogosphere. How could I wallow in retirement in front of the Fox Asocceration Football Channel, with such rich nuggets of American popular culture almost begging to be mined for your edification?

And so, loading up Mrs Referee and the Little Referees in the back of the RefereeMobile, I set off to find the place where Elvis buys his holiday (don't get me started) tree.

Sure enough, only a matter of minutes from Chez Referee, we spotted clear evidence that Himself had been seen nearby, in the form of a roadside sign that is well known to the locals.  Better still, the folks who run this establishment could not have been nicer or more helpful, they had some top notch trees, one of which we purchased and, to top it all, the sounds of Barry Manilow filled the advent air.

The only downside of the whole experience, which dawned on me as I studied my receipt on the way home, was that the name of the establishment was actually Suzanne Eaton Christmas Trees of Florida.  And the sign was just a sign.  Still, they were fine people, and maybe, just maybe, they had at least one very special customer.  And I'm not talking about The Referee.

Either way, for better or worse, I was already out of retirement.  I'll let you decide, dear reader, whether that's a cause for glad tidings, or bad.  Or something inbetween.  Middling tidings, perhaps.

Which leaves me only to offer something on the true meaning of the season.  I'd like to think it's the time of year for spending time by the fire with family and friends, for thinking back to a time when the King walked among us in person and wondering if, in a sense, he still does.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one.

Jolly Hockey Sticks

For reasons which are complicated and also too dull to relate on a site as dedicated to thrills and entertainment as this one is (!), The Referee recently found himself at the Coliseum in Nassau, Long Island to witness the New York Islanders being hammered at home by the Ottawa Senators. The visitors from north of the border looked superior throughout, so much so that the Islanders were lucky to come second, as they say.

For those who have not already spotted it, I am of course talking about (ice) hockey. (Ice) hockey is known here and in Canada as "hockey", such that if one wants to refer to hockey, one has to say "field hockey". Luckily, I rarely want to refer to hockey, and therefore this additional requirement is not particularly onerous in my case.

I have nothing more to report about Islanders 2 Senators 5 that can't be derived from the score or the brief synopsis above. I do, however, want to relate some of the things I learnt about (ice) hockey that evening, a sport about which I had not previously thought or cared very much at all. Whilst not all, or indeed any, of these things might be accurate, they are at least heartfelt, and that ought to be more important.

And so, The Referee is proud to share with you, dear reader, his hard-researched 5 Things You Never Knew, And Still Don't, About (Ice) Hockey:

1. There are 250 players on each team, although each player is on the ice for an average of only about 10 seconds each. For some reason no one ever thought to build a door in the dug out, so substitutes have to fling themselves over a little wall, hoping to land on their skates rather than their rear ends.

2. All (ice) hockey players have elaborately broken noses. By this I mean that these are not common or garden broken noses, the sort of injury that could befall anyone. Oh no. These are noses so comprehensively and numerously broken that they appear to be marking out a new slalom route for the benefit of a passing downhill skier. How could I tell this from the stands?, you are wondering. Well, I was lucky enough to meet a legendary former Islander before the game. He had clearly once been a good-looking chap, before the slalom bulldozers had moved in.

3. All (ice) hockey players fight, all the time. Except in the game I saw, in which no one so much as raised a question about the masculinity of his opponents. Obviously, fighting is bad, and The Referee was not in the least disappointed not to witness any. Although this to some extent restricted his ability to research the full extent of the game of (ice) hockey for your benefit, gentle reader.

4. The following point might say more about the age and constitution of The Referee than it does about the nature of (ice) hockey, but for quite a proportion of the game I couldn't actually see the puck as it skimmed at high speed across the surface of the ice. It appeared that this was not a problem shared by most of the crowd, since there was a good deal of ooh-ing and aah-ing some seconds before your correspondent had worked out what was happening. Ho, hum.

5. All (ice) hockey players fight, all the time.

Just before his visit to the Nassau Coliseum, The Referee received the news that he was to be summoned to return to the Motherland, AKA the UK of Blighty, without further ado. Again, the reasons for this are much too dull for an entertainment-heavy organ such as this. Suffice to say that The Referee's US odyssey would soon be at an end.

As I left Long Island and contemplated an impending return to the green and pleasant hills of the Motherland, I allowed myself a small and appropriate celebration. "Jolly hockey sticks", I thought.