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.

Pretending to be Gay in "Head Count"

Head Count (2018) just showed up on my Netflix recommendations, and I had an hour to kill, so:

College student Evan (Isaac Jay) rejects an invitation to go away for the weekend with his friends.  "I sure wish you were going with us," his boyfriend (Jay Lee) says.   But he has something important to do:

A reconciliation visit with his estranged older brother Peyton (Cooper Rowe), who lives in a trailer in the desert.  Eager to put the past behind them, Peyton has a full weekend of reconciliation activities planned, including a hike in Joshua Tree National Park.

"Are you seeing anyone?" Peyton asks, dropping the pronouns in a way that only gay people do.  "You should get out and try to meet someone.  I'm not seeing anyone.  I'm keeping my options open.

"It's not subtext -- Evan is gay!" I exclaimed.  "A gay star of a horror movie!  The final frontier."

On the hike, they run into a group of gay college students smoking weed:  Camille and Zoe snuggling on one side, another lesbian couple, three gay guys snuggling on the other (I'm pretty sure two of them are holding hands). Evan wants to join them, but Peyton is against it -- he hates drugs, and besides -- brother bonding weekend?

Ok, if Evan wants company: "I'll introduce you to my rock-climing buds.  You'll love them."

Luring him away with the promise of hot guys doesn't work, so Peyton allows Evan to go off with the gay college students to the house they rented.

Where they drink, use drugs, and change positions into four hetero couples around a campfire (Apparently Zoe came without a boyfriend just so she could hook up with Evan).

WTF?  I heard that in the old days, gay people often pretended to be straight in public, going out in boy-girl couples, but this is the first time I've heard of straight couples pretending to be gay in public.

I was so upset that I couldn't continue watching.  Apparently the hetero-couples are menaced by a shape-shifting monster, and you see some of Evan's scrawny body.

Why go through all the trouble of pretending that heterosexual Evan is gay? To place the heterosexual college students deliberately in positions suggesting that they are gay couples?

 I researched Isaac Jay; three thousand instagram photos of him kissing, hugging, and gazing longingly at a woman.

And Elle Callahan, my new most-hated director.  This is her directorial debut, except for some film school shorts, but she was an assistant director on 101 Ways to Get Rejected, about heterosexual high school students negotiating mating rituals.

10 Beefcake Boys of "Riot Girls"

The premise of Riot Girls (2019): most of the population of Potter's Bluff has been killed by a mysterious plague, leaving only teenagers and a scattering of 10-year olds.

So many questions:  How long has it been?  Why are teenagers immune?  Do they succumb when they reach a certain age?  Are there other communities, or are they all alone?  Are they surviving on canned goods, or have they developed agriculture? Why is the electricity still on?

Not to worry, it's not important; the goal is to get the teens alone.  They have divided into two societies, as over-the-top good and evil as Boulder and Las Vegas in The Stand.

 The East Side  is a laid-back hippie commune, run by the saintly, "we're all in this together" Jack (Alexandre Bourgeois). He keeps admitting refugees, such as Sony (Ajay Friese, left), but for some unexplained reason, he doesn't like dogs.

The West Side is a heavily stratified, heavily militarized totalitarian dictatorship, where they kill refugees.  It is ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West.. um, I mean Jeremy  (Munro Chambers), who also kills his own people for such offenses as failing to meet work quotas.

The plot: Jack is captured by Westsiders, who intend to execute him.  His sister Nat (Madison Iseman), the butch Mohawk-haired Scratch (Paloma Kwiatkowski), and Sony rush to the rescue.

It's a surprisingly long way to the West Side; it takes them two days to get there, even with a car.

There's some blood, a lot of rock music, and some heart-to-hearts.  Dr. Evil is killed, and his successor promises "Things are going to be different around here."  The four friends head for home.  The end.

Hetero-horniness:  None.  No one seems particularly interested in sex except for a border guard who tries to rape Nat.  Sony tries to kiss her, but is quickly rebuffed with "I'm not..."

Gay characters:  You're not what, Nat?  The two girls are certainly gay coded, but at one point Nat clarifies: "You're not my boyfriend!", thus establishing her as both heterosexual and unaware that gay people exist.

Bondage: No one has ever heard of rope.  All captives, including Jack, just stand there.

Beefcake: None.  No shirts come off.  There are quite a few cute actors, so I'll try to find shirtless pics from othe productions.  Unfortunately, other than 1. Jeremy, 2. Jack,  and 3. Sony, I have no idea who is who.

4. Darren Eisnor as Todd, one of the Titans (the sports team that now serves as Jeremy's thugs)

5. Atticus Mitchel as Cracker.  Atticus Mitchel is 26.  What's the age range of this Apocalyptic plague?

6.  Darnell Bartholomew as a Westside Guard
















7. Jake Sim (not Sims) as Flick, who I think is second in command.

8. Chris Mark as Sean.  He couldn't have been shot in the locker room?

9.Carson MacCormac (left) as Spit.  Come on, one "frolicking in the river" shot for the gay male viewers?















10. Keanu Lee Nunes as a miscellaneous Titan.

I give up.

I'll give the movie a B-.  Points for its raucous energy and lack of hetero-horniness.  Demerits for the ludicrous villain and closeting the lesbian couple.

And closeting the physiques.