The Lionel Show Blog

You guys know the deal – I’m a huge Elvis Costello fan.

Check out this interview clip from from a 1989 BBC TV series, wherein Costello explains his profound dissatisfaction with Margaret Thatcher and her foreign and domestic policies. If you think his palpable venom makes you tumescent, wait until you get to the performance.

The song is entitled “Tramp The Dirt Down”, and is possibly the most bitterly caustic screed ever twisted in to the form of an Irish folk ballad. The lyrics are reproduced in full below, but I’d like to highlight the refrain regarding the narrator’s feelings on Thatcher:

Because there's one thing I know, I'd like to live
long enough to savour:
That's when they finally put you in the ground
I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

What?!

Congratulations, women of America!

You could be led in to a shining future by a woman with relatively little political experience, personal and political values that stand in stark contrast to basic women’s rights, and who is currently the subject of an investigation in the (foreign and exotic) state of Alaska!

It’s a great day for women across our wonderfully progressive nation.

Sarah Palin?!? If Obama doesn't win, then say good night Rocco.

If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies

Or being hated, don’t give way to hatred,

And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise:

                                     - Rudyard Kipling

Ladies and gentlemen, from parts unknown, weight unknown…The Lionel Show welcomes author and old-school wrestling enthusiast John Capouya in the second hour. Among his many journalistic and literary credentials, Mr. Capouya is the author of the new book Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture. If you’ve not heard of Gorgeous George, Mr. Capouya will graciously provide you with the history of a pop culture lodestone whose influence extended far beyond “the ring” (actually a square, but hey…).

Part paean to a uniquely American art form, part fascinating history of the cultural zeitgeist that gave that art form a place of prominence in our national culture, Mr. Capouya’s book is far more than a simple biographical sketch. Gorgeous George’s journey touches upon the Great Depression, the cultural sea change of post-WWII America, the rise of television (for better or for worse) to an unprecedented pride of place in the United States…in short, this man and this book are about much more than professional wrestling. This is that rare book over which I can see myself fighting with Lionel regarding who gets to take it home first.