The Most Boring, Stupid, and Heterosexist State Songs

At every school assembly when I was a kid in Rock Island, we had to sing the state song.  You were also forced to sing it at football games, wrestling matches, and political rallies:

By thy rivers gently flowing, Illinois, Illinois,
O'er the prairies verdant growing, Illinois, Illinois,
Comes an echo on the breeze.
Rustling through the leafy trees, and its mellow tones are these, Illinois, Illinois.

Has any state song been more reviled and made fun of?

Yep.  Across the river, Iowa's state song is just as bad, if not worse:

From yonder Misissippi's stream
To where Missouri's waters gleam
O! fair it is as poet's dream, Iowa, in Iowa.


Who decided that states should have official songs to be foisted upon schoolchildren and the audiences of football teams, and who decided that they should be uniformly so awful?  And heterosexist?

I took it upon myself to read the lyrics of all 50+ state songs (some have more than one).

It was dismal.  Song after song of nonsense.

This state is full of badgers, this state is full of sod,
This state is full of sandwiches, this state is under God.

New York's is hands-down the stupidest:

New York is special. New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else on Earth quite like New York and that's why I love New York.

What, "Start spreading the word, I'm leaving today" was taken?

Contrary to what you might think, it was not composed by a 5-year old, but by Steve Karmen, an accomplished tv commercial jingle writer: "Aren't you glad you use Dial?", "When you say Budweiser," "The Great American chocolate bar."

Maryland's state song is grotesquely bloody:

Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland!

Colorado's is all about mass extinction due to global warming:

The bison is gone from the upland, the deer from the canyon has fled,
The home of the wolf is deserted, the antelope moans for his dead

Fortunately, they replaced it with John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" in 2007.







And over half are disgustingly heterosexist, making schoolkids and football teams sing about "Aren't you glad everybody is heterosexual?  Aren't you glad those pesky gay people don't exist?"

 How many times have you heard Indiana's "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away," without knowing who ir what was on that riverbank?  Some guy's dead girlfriend:

Long years have passed since I strolled thro' the churchyard.
She's sleeping there, my angel, Mary dear,
I loved her, but she thought I didn't mean it,
Still I'd give my future were she only here.

Georgia has Ray Charles' "Georgia On My Mind," in which the guy thinks of his ex-girlfriend while he's in bed with other women.

Other arms reach out to me, other eyes smile tenderly
Still in the peaceful dreams I see the road leads back to you

By the way, when you google "Georgia football player shirtless," what you get is Darian Alvarez, a soccer player from Honduras.  Not that I'm complaining.

Before countering with "South Carolina On My Mind" in 1984, South Carolina's state song was a little more graphic about the guy's girlfriend getting with other guys..

Thy skirts indeed the foe may part,
Thy robe be pierced with sword and dart,
They shall not touch thy noble heart!

After that, Michigan's state song about lost love is sort of a relief.  The girlfriend is receding into the distance, while the guy moans  "What am I supposed to do without you?"

Tennessee has "The Tennessee Waltz," which we had to sing in grade-school music class; "I was dancing with my darling, etc., etc."  Missouri has "The Missouri Waltz," which has a whole complicated story about a father reminiscing to his children about his wife or ex-wife or something.

Oklahoma adopted "Oklahoma," from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which is all about getting married and moving to the land stolen from the Indians:

Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin' lazy circles in the sky

Um...you know that hawk is searching for small animals to kill and eat, right?

Utah's state song is all about Brigham Young, Family with a capital F, and the "No Child Left Behind" Act.

Utah! With its focus on family,
Utah! Helps each child to succeed.
People care how they live.
Each has so much to give.
This is the place!

I just wish these guys were from Mississippi, so there'd be ten of them.

No state song extolled same-sex friendship, and the only one with any beefcake was Alabama's, mentioning two Native American heroes with muscular physiques:

Fair thy Coosa-Tallapoosa
Bold thy Warrior, dark and strong,
Alabama, Alabama, we will aye be true to thee!

Whoops, my mistake.  Those are both rivers.

Still, I imagine that grade school kids in Alabama have a lot of fun thinking of dirty meanings to Coosa-Tallapoosa.

"Cold Pursuit": A Kidnapped Son, for a Change

You probably shouldn't watch a movie with a wikipedia page that says there is a "closeted homosexual" character.  First, the proper term is "gay."  Second, what is this, 1975?

But I'm stuck in Chicago, too tired from sightseeing to go out, and it's either Cold Pursuit (2019) or  whatever they put on network tv on Friday nights.

Besides, the plot is propelled by the murder of a son, not a daughter.  Do you know how rare that is?  99% of murdered or kidnapped loved ones in movies are wives, girlfriends or daughters.  Apparently film producers believe that women are weak and vulnerable, so their loss will tug at your heart strings, but if it's a boy or a man, you'll think "Why didn't he defend himself?  What is he, a pansy?"

Cocksman...um, I mean Coxman (Liam Neeson) is a taciturn but salt-of-the-earth Mr. Plow, named Man of the Year in his small town of Keyhoe, Colorado. He lives with his doting wife, natch, and adult son Kyle, a salt-of-the-earth Mr. Plow in training (Micheál Richardson, aka Neeson's real-life son, who must get very tired of saying "No, it's not Michael").

Then Kyle dies. The coroner says heroin overdose, but Kyle was not a druggie.  He was a salt-of-the earth Mr. Plow in training!   Obviously he was murdered when he stumbled upon a drug deal. 

Coxman loses his wife, too, natch, and then turns vigilante, using guns and a snowplow to go after the murderers, members of a Denver drug cartel trying to expand its territory into the pristine white mountains (white as in snow, not as in white people, I assume.)

That's when things get weird-er.

White drug lord Viking (Tom Bateman, top photo) blames local Native American gangster White Bull (Tom Jackson) for killing off his employees, and kills White Bull's son in revenge.

So now there are two murdered sons.  That's even more rare.

The white and Native American gangs are soon fighting a full-blown war in the small salt-of-the-earth town of Keyhoe.  And it's all Coxman's fault!  How to lessen the body count?

He gets his brother, salt of the earth Wingman (William Forsythe), to take the blame for the murders -- Wingman is dying of cancer anyway.  But that doesn't work, and now White Bull vows to kill Viking's teenage son Ryan (Nicholas Holmes, left) in revenge.

Ryan, by the way, is in prep-school, being mother-henned by his bodyguard Mustang (bald bear Domenick Lombardozzi, below), who is secretly dating White Bull's enforcer Dexter (Benjamin Hollingsworth).

Not surprisingly, the only reviews that mention the relationship are Christian websites that include it in their "objectionable elements" pile, along with the profanity.

Coxman decides to kidnap Ryan to...um...provoke a confrontation with White Bull or something?  Who cares?  The ridiculousness is overpowering.

And the body count.  As each person dies, we get a RIP shot with their religious background noted.

And they all have ridiculous names: Speedo, Limbo, Gip, Sly, Smoke, Shiv, Windex, Avalanche, and Eskimo.

Beefcake:  One guy is killed while having sex, the bullet piercing his genitals (which we don't see)

Gay characters:  Those two closeted gangsters.

Racism:  Liam Neeson got in trouble when he compared his character's "primal anger" to an incident in which a friend was raped.  He asked what color the assailant was, and she said black, so he went out looking for a black man to beat up in retaliation.

Neeson didn't write the script, but this is definitely the story of a war divided along racial lines.  With only one black character: The Eskimo (Arnold Pinnock)

But at least there is a kidnapped son in a universe of kidnapped wives, girlfriends, and daughters.

What do the Crazy Cowboys of Craig, Colorado Do for Fun?

Moffat County, Colorado, population 13,000, is advertised as "literally where the Old West comes to life."

It's in the far northwest part of the state, with Wyoming on the north and Utah on the west, and Denver 200 miles away.  70% of the population lives in Craig, the county seat, advertised as the "Elk Hunting Capital of the World."

The Old West and elks?  What more could you want?

Although there were ranches and farms in the area since the 1870s, Craig was founded in 1908, and named after one of its financial backers, the otherwise forgotten William Bayard Craig.

It's a long, flat town, 3 miles long and 1/2 mile wide, amid the endless brown scrub of the Wild West.  There are some cowboy-type businesses, like Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply, but not many.

Restaurants: mostly chain, Wendy's and such. I'm interested in J.W. Snack's Gulf Coast Bar and Grill, which is nowhere near the gulf of anything, and doesn't feature any gulf coast cuisine.  According to one review, it has "the worst burgers in the world."

Doesn't look great.

City Hall, which is on a street next to Snyder and Counts Feed and Seed and the Goodrich Mud Company, is built in modern Brutopian style.  I was expecting Wild West Rococco.

There are 14 churches in town.  A lot of Catholic, Lutheran, Church of Christ, and Latter-Day Saints.  One interesting name: The Church of Destiny, which turns out to be generic fundamentalist, and not very big.

Two museums:

1. The Museum of Northwest Colorado, the only semi-attractive building in town, has one of the largest cowboy gun, leather, and spur collections in the world
.
2. The Wyman Living History Museum: "the result of years of collecting beginning in 1949 when Lou wyman discovered an abandoned 1932 Lincoln automobile in Elk Springs, Colorado, while he was filling water barrels to take to his sheep herders. He paid $15.00 for it and has been collecting ever since."

But it's not nearly as campy as it sounds.  It's not really living history -- no costumed actors explaining the Wild West.  And the collection is not weird or unique.

What do the cowboys of Craig, Colorado do for fun besides eat bad burgers and look at old guns?

Moffat County High School, motto "I Choose," although I don't think you can really choose to go there, is the biggest building in town., so it must be the seat of culture.

Its activities include a "No Sugar Day," a rodeo, a jazz concert, the musical "Cinderella" in the fall and "You Can't Take It With You" in the spring.

Sports: football, baseball, basketball, soccer, wrestling, and...swimming.

LOTS of swimming.

Who knew that cowboys were such avid swimmers?













I recken it gets powerful hot in the Old West, and a swimmin' hole looks mighty inviting.  Particularly with small town swimmers  lined up beside it. 

Leadville: An Opera House, a 100-Mile Run, and a Lot of Wrestling

If you want to survive the zombie apocalypse, your best bet is Leadville, Colorado.  2 miles up in the mountains, too high for the zombies to reach, with 67 deserted mines around to hide in, and a fishery so you won't starve.

If it's not a zombie apocalypse, I don't recommend Leadville.  It's an old mining town, with some ornate homes built by mining barons, but it's so high up that physical exertion is difficult.

And there's nothing much to do there except exert yourself: camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, biking, and running. 

Every August it hosts the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile race up and down the mountains, including the 12,500-foot Hope Pass (scaled twice on the route). . And you thought a regular 23-mile marathon was gruelling.

 Professional distance runner Matt Carpenter is currently the record holder, finishing in 15 hours and 42 minutes (that's more than 6 miles an hour).

















Lake County High School has a wrestling team.

The historic Tabor Opera House features live performances, but it seems to be mostly musicians, not theater.

So back to wrestling.

Occasionally broken up by a swim meet.

And working out at the Crossfit.

If you can take the high altitude.

Top 16 Public Penises of the Cowboy States

I'm afraid of the Cowboy States, that swath of ranches, grassland, and mountains west of Minnesota and east of California.  I've driven through them four times, and they are very pretty, with the amber waves of grain and the shirtless cowboys and all.

But they also have survivalists, right-wing extremist groups, hate crimes, Republican majorities, homophobic laws, and billboards about Jesus.

Still, if you find yourself driving through the Cowboy States en route to West Hollywood, there are some nice public penises.  Working south from Canada:

1. North Dakota doesn't have a lot of public art, but there's a shirtless CCC worker at the entrance of Fort Abraham Lincoln Park in Mandan.

2. Everyone goes to South Dakota for the Sturgis Bike Rally, but also check out the Crazy Horse Memorial, about 17 miles south of Mount Rushmore.  When it's finished, it will be the biggest statue in the world, 563 feet of pure beefcake.

3. There's also a replica of Michelangelo's David, penis and all, in Sioux Falls.

4. I lived in Nebraska for five weeks with my first boyfriend, Fred the Ministerial Student.  It was awful.  But the Joselyn Art Museum in Omaha has a very impressive collection,  and a naked Sioux Warrior out front sculpted by John David Brcin.

5. Kansas is very flat, and the waves of Protestant fundamentalists made me nervous.  I could see why Dorothy wanted to stay in Oz (in the original novels, not in the dreary 1939 movie).  But I like the loincloth-clad Native American atop the State Capitol in Topeka Sculpted by Richard Bergen in 1988, he's called "Ad Astra" ("To the stars").

6. The Oklahoma State Capitol in Oklahoma City also features a semi-nude Native American, "The Guardian."  He wasn't erected until 2002.

7. Another Native American is offering a peace pipe to students at the University of Oklahoma.

8. For a more modern beefcake image, check out the Air Force Monument in Oklahoma City.  It features a naked young man holding an airplane aloft.


More after the break.