Month: September 2026

Phooey on yesterday

If I had a page and a third standing between me and the rest of this glorious day, what would I write? 

Would it be a poem about sunshine and bird song and the changing of seasons? Or a dark and desolate tale of monsters with two legs and weapons and oppression on their minds? 

Or would I sing a song of love and joy and patience and all those fruits? Or an essay about “how freedom means to sometimes follow higher laws” (quoting a song I wrote 40 years ago that still resonates despite the split infinitive)?

Or would I finally work up the nerve to tackle unfinished business? Or stop and take the dog for a walk; she is after all leaning in with puppy eyes and anxious sighs? No, the whole point was to finish my morning journal pages and then walk the dog.

Why do some days feel “together” and others, like this, feel discombobulated? I guess that’s just how humans are — we frustrate ourselves on a daily basis. “Oh, I missed my chance — I forgot what I meant to say or do — woe is me, well, maybe tomorrow.”

And then another day passes and we wake and say, “Well, phooey on yesterday, today is here and off we go.” 

Every day will fall short of what we wish it could have been, but every day is a new opportunity and another blank page, so if we shoot for the stars at least we will get a few inches or feet or miles off the ground, and pretty soon we’ll be flying, flying I tell you, and at the very least we’ll reach the bottom of the page and give that patient dog her wish.

Song of the year

Ella Langley has been with Mary and me since the beginning. We love to tell the story about how Mary was interested in getting to know me but hesitant about whether to approach me after church, but then she heard the song where Ella says, “if you ever see a man … and you think to yourself, ‘I could use some of that,’ don’t waste your time, just give him this here line …”

The next Sunday morning, she said to me, “Everyone says I’m a hugger, would you mind if I gave you a hug?” and that hug was the beginning of something wonderful. We have followed Ella ever since, and we were tickled when she and Riley Green won a Grammy for “our song.”

And so we have been cheering this year as Ella’s “Choosin’ Texas” has become the biggest song of the year and then — by one key measure — the biggest song of all time. This week it is the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the 24th week, a feat that has never been done before. 

When the song passed Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” as the all-time chart topper last week, Langley got a lot of attention, not all of it flattering. I saw more than one comment online from people who had never heard “Choosin’ Texas,” and once they did they were not impressed. I even had one friend who checked it out and declared it “a horrible song.”

There’s inevitably going to be fallout when something hits on this scale. Back in 1977, I didn’t get around to seeing Star Wars until two or three months after it became a huge phenomenon, and my first reaction was, “It was pretty good, but it wasn’t THAT good.” Eventually I went to the movie theater to see it seven more times, so I guess it grew on me.

“Choosin’ Texas” isn’t my favorite Ella Langley song — that would be “Loving Life Again” — but it’s been a fun watching the song take on a life of its own. It’s a callback to classic country songs with its references to “Abilene,” “Smoky Mountain Rain” and “Amarillo by Morning,” and touches on the same country heartbreak theme as Dolly Parton’s immortal “Jolene.” It’s enough to leave you drinking Jack Daniels all by yourself.

Whether it’s your proverbial cup of tea or not, “Choosin’ Texas’ has made this Ella Langley’s year, quite literally: This is the 49th week that the song has been listed on the Hot 100, three weeks shy of 12 months. Good on you, young lady. 

Could Zero be greater than One?

The sequel to Godzilla Minus One was given a preview over the weekend, and the initial reviews are of the raving variety.

You may recall my rhapsodizing over Takashi Yamazaki’s brilliant 2023 anti-war film and human drama masquerading as a monster movie. I told everyone I knew, and his or her brother, that you would not regret taking a couple hours out of your life to see that movie. Between the theater, streaming and BluRay, I have personally experienced the film at least a dozen times.

Now the people who saw the preview of Godzilla Minus Zero are talking as crazy as I did after seeing the first film.

The Variety article I first saw quoted first reviewers as calling it things like “jaw-dropping spectacle,” “glorious continuation of the first film,” “A truly epic cinematic feat,” and “overwhelming achievement.”

I saw one comment that compared the two movies to The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture in 1972 and 1974. Could Yamazaki’s sequel be as good as, or arguably better than, his first masterpiece?  

The review that sent my expectations into the stratosphere was from a reviewer named Jacob Fisher, who said, “Such a brilliant deep dive into the facets of trauma & never-ending cycles of war/hatred.”

Yes, Godzilla is a guilty pleasure for me, but the reason I obsessed over Godzilla Minus One was that it told a story with themes deeper than any Godzilla film had ever explored — the aftermath of a devastating war, survivor’s guilt, and redemption from shame. Fisher suggests that once again Yamazaki tells a human story more important than the amazing special effects that bring a giant monster to life.

Now the challenge is to avoid spoilers for six weeks so that I can walk into a theater on Nov. 6 not knowing precisely what is about to unfold on screen. Three years ago I had heard the film supposedly was really good but I didn’t know much else. Now I’ve heard that the sequel to one of my favorite movies might be even better. That’s all I really want to know in the meantime.