Tuesday, January 19, 2016

GLENN FREY - Mexican parody: (WELCOME TO) SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Regular readers of this, the "blog of less renown," know that Glenn Frey is too famous to be chronicled here. Unlike some stars who I've defended here (such as Patti Page and Frankie Laine), nobody questions that Frey (pronounced Frye) was a cool and talented musician worthy of respect.

So…below is NOT a Glenn Frey song. You probably own as much solo Frey and Eagles stuff as you want already. Your link is to a parody of his best lyric, "Hotel California." It's by the obscure team of Rick D'Elia and Adam Stone. They impersonate two stereotypical Mexicans illegally invading Southern California, where they delight in the smell of a Taco Bell (the restaurant, not a person). In the low budget video for the song, they are seen selling oranges on a highway and acting like a moronic version of Cheech & Cheech.

This is pre-Donald Trump and his idea of building a wall at the border, but it's still easily categorized as "racist," which is applied to any ethnic comedy today. Let's be honest, it's now impossible to make fun of annoying ethnic characteristics and behavior without hearing a whine of "ewww, yew are prejudiced." You know who says that most? Faggots. But I digress (and I assume I needn't add that I was also joking?)

Fact is,there are a LOT of reasons why something isn't funny, besides racism. This thing barely gave me a chuckle or two. But it's here to a) call attention to Frey the lyricist, and b) point out that Mexicans are annoying. (I keed, I keed).

No, point a is quite valid. Is Frey usually on any a list of lyricists? One that would include Taupin, Robert Hunter, or even Sting? Nah. And yet at times this guy was sort of a working man's Keith Reid, honing the lines down to blunt couplets: "It's a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford" ("Take It Easy") and "Wonder why the right words never come. You just get numb" ("Tequila Sunrise"). He also had a co-write, with Don Henley, on "Desperado."

"Hotel California" is somewhat Dylanesque, as in "what the FUCK is going on, is the place haunted? Who is dead? Is it Frey? But he didn't die till the other day, when Don Felder said "TGIFD, Thank God it's Frey Dead (and not ME, and hey everyone, I wrote the music to that song, dammit! And did you miss me being on the reunion tour??")

Speaking of reunion tours, the Eagles did make it out on the road with Frey a year or two ago, which would indicate that his ulcerative colitis was somewhat under control. The problem is that it can flare, it can be so bad an operation is needed, and drugs for it can leave a patient open to more immune-deficiency diseases. Frey had rheumatoid arthritis, which, yes, is another of the awful-awful illnesses that are becoming more and more common in this germ-infested, stress-filled world. Ultimately, with these two illnesses, Frey was in a very weakened condition. It's also hard to imagine how hellish it was, to be suffering stomach agony, inflamed bowels, and also arthritic conditions rendering the body creaky and immobile and in pain.

Ultimately, as Bob Seger mentioned the other day, "...he caught a very virulent set of pneumonia. They were trying like hell to keep him alive. He'd been at Columbia Medical Center since November...." and Glenn was even placed in an induced coma, to try and give his body a chance to heal. It was reported that Frey had undergone intestinal surgery, which would be the most desperate option for acute ulcerative colitis. It would mostly likely involve removing the colon and creating an opening for a colostomy bag. With someone already having a compromised immune system, pneumonia could be a hazard.

Yeah, combine constant pain and having to run to the bathroom with being too arthritic to run to the bathroom, and you have hell on Earth. As for pneumonia, my late father called it "the old peoples' friend." Meaning, when you're so aged that life is nothing but misery, pneumonia comes along and puts you into a lovely coma, sometimes pretty quickly. But Frey was, at 67, not old. Not by today's standards.

And so, the inevitable happened: TWEETING.

Almost as deadly as the above diseases, are tributes from well-meaning but moronic celebrities and D-list idiots. Below, picked at random from the "Tweeting" that serves as an easy way of sending condolences and a fine publicity ploy, we find three examples. There's media whore George Tacky Takei throwing in some kind of "Star Trek" space-type reference. We find Rita Wilson, a singer better known as the wife of Tom Hanks and proof that he isn't gay, offering something even a Muppet would find maudlin. Yeah, that "rainbow above you" line is actually a glaring clinker in "Desperado" but it is much worse pulled from its comfy musical moorings and thrown on a Tweet like a Hallmark card through the letter slot. And last but not least, Steve Martin. Let's believe he knew that Glenn's last name was spelled FREY but typed FRYE so that everyone would pronounce it right.

The song "Hotel California" is often considered, along with "Stairway to Heaven, "Whiter Shade of Pale," and "The Laughing Gnome," to be a masterpiece of progrock. As such, the blog acknowledges its main creator, the unfortunately disease-ridden-to-death Glen Frey. And also as such, the blog offers a tasteless and stupid parody of the great song.

Hotel California Parody Mexican Illegals: Welcome to South California

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