A schediastic hootenanny

This morning on the way to work, I saw a somewhat dusty late-model BMW driven by a dude with two day's growth of beard, sunglasses, tousled hair, and a rumpled Oxford shirt listening to NYC hipster-rock. A typical Vice magazine reader is what he looked like. And he passed me, and I noticed on the back of his car, centered on the trunk, a red bumper sticker with white lettering that read:


Proud to be
WHITE


Now, I live in San Antonio. I am no stranger to the unsettlingly open nature of right-wing political discourse around these parts, driven by a strong military presence and a frightening number of ruthless German-Americans in positions of power. There is a guy right down the street from me, in the hippest college-town part of the city, whose big-ass truck is festooned with Jihad Watch stickers. But how does it happen that this guy's car is not under constant assault? I'd have keyed the shit out of it if I could, and I'm sort of white myself! How does it happen?

All I do is watch movies and listen to records and read stuff. This is my legacy: sometimes I notice mistakes. Here is where I will mark pop-cultural items in need of correction.

POP CULTURE CORRECTION #1 (MUSIC, 1A: FILE UNDER GBC0001)

In the Geto Boys' "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me", Scarface talks himself out of a contemplation of suicide by noting that "If I die then my son will be a bastard". This is incorrect. In fact, if he died, his son would be an orphan, and then only if his mother also died. If he is not married to his son's mother, then the son is already a bastard, regardless of whether he lives or dies.

POP CULTURE CORRECTION #2 (FILM, 1A: FILE UNDER KEC0001)

Krakatoa, East of Java is a disaster film, released the year I was born, about a huge volcanic eruption in the Indonesian Sea. Unfortunately for the credibility of star Maximillian Schell and Night of the Blood Beast director Bernard Kowalski, Krakatoa is, in fact, west of Java.

POP CULTURE CORRECTION #3 (LITERATURE, 1A: FILE UNDER FWC0001)

James Joyce's masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, is goo goo ga ga.

TWO GREAT LINES

"We're going to Greece!"

"And swim the English Channel?"

(exchange from "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye", off the Firesign Theatre's How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All? album)

***

"This is my dream! I bought it! I bought the product! And you can believe it if you like, but it happened, folks."

(from John Wesley Harding's "When the Beatles Hit America")