I've always loved that line from Eugene Levy in Splash, when it's revealed he isn't actually a bad guy after all. I use it all the time, for various reasons. He has been one of the funniest men in television and film for decades now and I've been a fan going all the way back to SCTV, which I watched as a kid in Michigan - where we could pick up the occasional Canadian TV station.
But that's not what I'm here to write about.
Let's start with the music news first - as the many tens of you who read this blog know, I am a musician. I haven't had a superstar career at it, but I've done better than many and I do have a small following. I have been releasing singles under my band name "Chris Reed and the Anime Raiders" all year and for the most part I've been ignored, which in all honesty is okay and about what I expected.
Until this week.
My new single, "He Takes A Knee" is easily my most successful song in over a decade, and it just came out today. The video has over 5,000 views and it's been added to a few playlists and played on radio as well. Not bad considering that this is the first song ever that I've done a scream vocal on, and the first time I've ever done a rap. I would still call this song a rock and roll song - it's just that instead of a guitar solo it has a rap solo.
Understand, it was my original intent to release the song on April 30th. I had two other singles already queued up for release prior to that. Thing is, this business can be fickle and funny. It showed up for pre-sale in a couple of places and then a couple of internet radio stations broke the song early by "accident" (uh huh) and some buzz was born. I pushed the release date to as early as I could and pushed back the other two. I had already had the video made, so I put that up on YouTube and Facebook and BAM! Within a couple of hours it had more views than I have followers.
It's quite gratifying as a musician to have your work acknowledged, and liked. It's also gratifying when people dislike it - because at least they've heard of it. But as a songwriter this sort of thing gives you hope, and face it hope has been in very limited supply as of late.
And on the other front...
Some years back I promised my wife I would finally do the whole DNA and Ancestry search thing. I've never really been interested but my family is kinda odd. On my father's side of the family the tree has always stopped at him. He was adopted/stolen/bought back in 1933 and I despise the people who raised him and that whole damned family. I'm not getting into it here.
But you don't break a promise to your spouse if you can help it, and I finally began the work on that this year. Much to my shock I've been able to trace my mother's side of the family back nearly 40 generations. My family tree grew more and more lopsided while I awaited DNA results in the age of COVID. Last week those results finally came, and within a few hours I suddenly had cousins I had never met.
And within three days I had found my father's birth mother. I went from having nothing to being able to trace back 14 generations to England and The Netherlands. I haven't found the DNA match that would lead me to my genetic grandfather as of yet, but I've lived my whole life with nothing and to suddenly have multiple generations and more family out there is kinda overwhelming.
To be honest, I'm still not sure how I feel about this.
Understand, I'm never going to meet my Genetic Grandmother - she died a year before my father did only a few miles from where I live now (I didn't live here yet then). I will probably never get the full story of what happened that removed my father from his birth mother. But I have generations more data than I did just a few days ago, and still more to discover.
What a week I'm having.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Cheap Shots (Friday is dealer's choice, and I say RUM!!!)
After hearing about this, the only thing I can think of, regardless of the circumstances, is not again.
I do believe that Butthead is going to prison.
A "Fair Number" of morons.
Forced to choose between the state of Georgia and Hank Aaron, they chose Hank Aaron.
Another name to add to the Say Their Names list.
Turns out it's pretty easy to shock an idiot.
Shorter Rachael Maddow: "Fuck 'em."
Of course no one noticed the difference. It's not like he's ever said anything ever.
And because I love you, I give you the group that Rick-Rolled the internet THRICE yesterday:
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