This week's subject: Alan Jackson's "I Still Like Bologna"
But I still
Like Bologna
On white bread
Now and then
And the sound
Of a whippoorwill
Down a country road
The grass between my toes
And that sunset sinking low
And a good woman's love
To hold me close
I like my 50 inch
HD plasma
Kip says: "Jackson uses bologna here in much the same way that Fitzgerald uses the 'green light,' as a symbol of how the past slowly recedes in the modern era. Yet the song also complicates this notion: we see that the narrator is simultaneously drawn to the complexities of modern life (plasma TV's) while still longing for a simpler era that no longer truly exists. Indeed, this is one of the most powerful works I know about lunch meat."
Richard says: "Jackson recognizes the power of bologna to represent a whole way of life, one of innocence (notice the "white" bread: that means 'innocence') but also of experience (the plasma TV). This might as well have been written by William Blake. Also, I'd like to take issue with one of Kip's statements. In the South, bologna is so much more than just a "lunch meat." We also enjoy it fried, for breakfast, with biscuits and gravy."
3 comments:
I never ate bologna or white bread very much as a kid.
My friend, Bill Cruz, would cook it into his huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos.
I had another friend who liked Braunschweiger. One time he ate too much and made himself really sick and clogged up a third friend's toilet with the sticky discharge from his colon.
On a related note, I found the Fratelli's album at the library the other day and checked it out. It's good. I like it. Actually, I guess it's not really a related note, since it's nothing like a sticky, colonic discharge.
This Bill Cruz sounds like a smart young fellow!
Fratellis rock!
Fratellis do rock. I really like that album.
--beth
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