British singer Sam Smith either rocked or shocked with his satanic appearance at this years Grammy Awards. Is this something to hyperventilate about, or just a silly extended skit? Steve and Scott hash it out with guest host Zo Rachel.
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23 replies on “Silly or Serious?”
I am unable to view this video at all. It stops after only 1 second. I’ve tried refreshing, etc.
I was thinking about entertainers who seemingly didn’t stoop into using filth in their shows. “Frazier”, “The Bob Newhart Show”, …, “The Bill Cosby Show” — Oops.
My wife and I recently re-watched the entire series of Frazier. Aside from being exceptionally well-written and acted, there really was not much non-family friendly fare. It was certainly PG-13, but I thought it rarely crossed the line.
Lots of double-entendre. The characters were more likely to jump into bed than real life, but compared to most it was almost wholesome.
Appreciated Zo’s “How about being a light from a candle in darkness?”
I remember when Berkeley was considered to be the “Ground Zero” for Free Speach, but look at it now! Along those same lines, it seems to me that if Hell-A and Frisco do not suffer the rath of something pretty soon, then perhaps Sodom & Gomorra may be owed a bit of an apology. Looks to me like we have arrived at “that” point in our history of the future!?!?
This is Spiritual Darwinism.
That is very inciteful and funny!
I see what you did there!
While I enjoyed the entirety of this episode, my biggest take away and the thing I will steal was Scott’s comment on how to determine if the time taken for something is worthwhile or not.
Paraphrasing: When I am asked to spend 3 or 4 hours on something, I need to weigh that against what else I could be doing.
A great sentence that encompasses what we call “opportunity cost”.
I will work this into my consciousness more.
The cost in this case is my time. And like Scott, as I get older (I am a little younger than Scott) I value the time I have left and there are many more things I would rather “waste time” on then watching an awards show. That is not even taking into account that the folks doing and being honored don’t like me and the policy positions I hold.
I enjoy good music and my tastes run a large gamut: what used to be called eclectic. The first “concert” I ever attended was at Lincoln Center and it was a selection of Arias. I was humming Nessun Dorma for weeks after. In a couple of months we are going to a performance of the works of John Denver – an underrated songwriter IMHO. “Annie’s Song” may be the most beautiful lyric ever penned. Over the years I have seen acts from Ray Charles to the Kinks to the Beach Boys. The fact that what today passes for great music is mostly trite and uninspired. I saw a video recently with some performer whose name I can’t recognize. He told the interviewer that he could play any song in the current pop top 10 with 3 chords. They laughed until he did it. There is very little creativity and what passes for “edgy” is just repackaging of someone else from the 60s and 70s.
I stopped watching awards shows years ago. Not due to politics, but because they became boring. The purpose of most shows on TV is to be entertaining. They stopped being entertaining and became preachy decades ago.
Amen. The first time my father saw me was when he came home from Europe in 1945. I was three years young at the time.
As you can imagine, my time is the most precious entity I still possess, other than our God, my wife, our children, and the way we live. How I spend it is, therefore, more than important.
To be completely honest, much time is spent thinking about where our wonderful United States of America is heading, and my only conclusion is that we don’t have much time left for freedom and truth. I see some of my children (we have 8) drifting away from the customs and morals and principles that we used to have here in the USA. Sometimes I am able to get them to face up to the realities of what is happening, but external forces are strong things to have to battle, for me and for them. I can proudly say they at least listen to what we try to explain to them, and we sometimes get them to understand and agree.
The time is short and the battle is long. I don’t suppose I will live to see the final outcome, but I know that God is in charge, and I pray the prayer that is always answered, “Thy Will be Done”.
Although we are not LDS (Mormon) we live in Utah. Even in this society which is known for its conservative nature, the signs are clear. Satan is winning.
PS My hope is that you will not find this too ‘preachy’ and take in what I have expressed.
A belated Happy 80th Birthday to you!
One of the things my daughter says that irks me the most is when she says in her defense (she thinks) “I didn’t have time” to do whatever it was she was going to do.
We all have exactly the same amount of minutes every day. I try to spend more than 420, preferably 480, of them in restful recovery (aka sleep).
I tend to get quite a bit done. But I never feel “busy” or “Rushed” I just don’t waste my time on things like Tik Tok, or silly YT videos. Most of what I do online could probably be considered learning or educational in some way. This site and PJ are the only ones I go to for political discourse and interaction. This one being much better for interaction BTW.
So when she says, I didn’t have time and then in her next breath wants to show me this funny video she saw, my head goes explodey.
Priorities has somehow become a bad word. I really don’t understand and hope that adult-hood beats it out of her so I don’t have to.
Me too on being well rested, never in a rush or excessively busy, doing more learning than anything else on the internet, etc.
A couple days ago I watched a video where the content provider was exploring some studies done on “time” as it relates to specific cultures and languages. It was very interesting.
In our culture in the English speaking world we tend to equate time and money. As in a resource to be wisely managed. We spend time, we save time, we make time, etc. You could swap “time” for “money” in any of those phrases and end up with nearly the same end result.
English language speakers see time as a finite resource. Which is an attitude I find hard to disagree with.
Now in the latter part of my life, time is MY time. I spend it, save it and make it according to what I think is the best use of that resource. I don’t begrudge anyone my time, I’m not miserly or parsimonious with it, I don’t mind lending someone a hand and using up some of my time doing so. But it’s my time and my choice as to how I spend it.
Because I no longer have to sell my time for money, though I still do it’s not because I have to in order to survive.
‘Priority’ is not the only modern dirty word. Things like seriousness, taking yourself seriously, and many other things that irk the people who live in a frivolous and unserious society are also anathema.
Those people do not understand the luxury they live in and take for granted that priority and seriousness are things they don’t have to worry about. Rather than be grateful, they assume anyone who isn’t like them has something wrong with their viewpoints. It must be nice to be so rich with time they can do that. It’s not something I can muster.
To be fair – I did not have this attitude when I was 22. I thought I had all the time in the world. I can recall the fall many years ago when I thought it was the coolest thing when I could go to my college’s football game Sat afternoon. Watch another one later that day. Watch another one the night. Then watch a 1pm, 4pm, 8pm NFL game on Sunday and think that was a good weekend full of pizza, beer and bros.
This thing called maturity or wisdom or whatever it is takes years to accomplish and more years to appreciate.
One thing I’ll always make time for is reading your and ACTS comments. I always learn something from you gentlemen and, in the words of Karl Childers of Slingblade, I like the way you talk.
Thank you, Susan. That is most kind of you and much appreciated.
Ditto, what Ron SAE said.
Well … Just like it seems everyone else here does, I don’t watch the award shows anymore. I can’t remember the last time I made the effort to sit through one. It’s been at least a few decades since I did that, if ever. There is just nothing in them that interests me.
I wouldn’t even have known that this Sam Smith guy (whoever the hell he is, pun intended) made some sort of ridiculous, cartoonish characterization of Satan if it weren’t for conservative media making an issue of it.
But then there’s a lot of things going on that I wouldn’t know about unless conservative media makes an issue of it. I’m grateful that they do.
Years ago, somewhere around 1968 I think, The Rolling Stones released a song on the album ‘Beggars Banquet’ called ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. I liked that song. If you listen to it carefully it’s Satan begging for attention and recognition. It rightly attributes to the Prince of Darkness several points in history where Evil is obvious.
Jane’s Addiction did a cover of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ that was even better. (Long before ‘Sons of Anarchy’ picked it up and made it widely known.) You can really hear and feel the Evil in that version.
The thing about that is, those two versions of that song expose Evil for what it really is. They are in essence a warning. An accurate warning.
I don’t know who this cherry red Satan that Sam Smith tries to portray is. The only place I’ve ever encountered him is in cartoons. Whoever he is, he’s not the real Devil.
So no, I can’t take Sam Smith or his candy coated Devil seriously.
If that’s who and what Sam Smith thinks the Devil is, he’s mistaken. He’s mocking Satan, which is perhaps not wise but mockery it remains. In exactly the same way men who accoutrement themselves as women and demand we acknowledge their womanhood are sad and absurd mockeries of actual women.
Those men are not women any more than Sam Smith represents the real Satan.
These things are not surprising because they originate from the depravity of the Left. They are in character though, because everything the Left does is a shallow, ridiculous counterfeit of reality.
There’s a bigger point with the Satanic takeover of Hollywood that doesn’t make us Gen-Xers hypocrites. Back then Highway to Hell, Slayer, etc. were part of the counterculture. Now the Devil is full mainstream.
And Ozzy thought the bat someone threw on stage was a rubber bat. Even as drugged/crazy as he was back then, even Ozzy wasn’t crazy enough to willingly put the head of a dead rodent in his mouth
Steve, there is a simple answer why we’ve spily from pop music. And it’s not just becasue we’re getting old, it’s that for the last 20 years music has just been… boring. I can’t remember who wrote this, but each decade of the rock era, from the 50s – 90s has its own sound, fashion, etc that made it distinct. Now I hear songs on the radio I can’t tell if they were made last year or 20 years ago. Case in point, the other day I heard “Somebody I used to know”, a song I happento like, and thought it might be 3 or 4 years old. It came out in 2014.
You have a point. But I wonder if bandwidth broke the music or if it’s just limiting what we hear. Put another way, are people making music for widespread play on apps or do the apps think we like boring music? I’ve noticed my stations start to sound alike after a while.
Why is Facebook for the old fogies and Instagram for their kids and Tiktok is the hip thing now?
I think sounds, styles, computer apps and a lot of things get picked up by the new generation and it takes off with them, while what was good just a year ago is still good and people using it / saying it / listening to it don’t feel the need to switch.
Some people are constantly jumping to the new thing but most get comfortable with what they have. There should be an appetite for new styles of music… I think pop is just a no-style kind that somewhat appeals to most and maybe that’s why it hasn’t really changed much.
I haven’t watched the emmys or the grammys in … probably 25 years.
The more I watch these, the more I’m certain that Scott is ultimately my proxy on these shows. We’ve settled on pretty much the same take on life concerning the now and what to do with the rest of it. The bit about what to do with the time I have left bit today really stuck out – but it wasn’t the only thing.
Two Words.
Overton. Window.
Sure it’s important. But just unimportant enough to allow for dismissal with “well geez why are you getting your panties in a wad over THIS?”
Which is how this works.