Dixie Chicks Review

As promised, I bought the new Dixie Chicks album, Taking the Long Way, on iTunes the day it came out.

The verdict: A quite good album. Now, I really became a Dixie Chicks fan with their last album, Home. More specifically, their cover of Fleetwood Mac's Landslide. Before that, I was pretty dismisive of them. But I decided to buy Home and found myself absolutely loving it, especially the songs Long Time Gone and Travelin' Soldier.

With the new album, they've moved on a bit. This isn't quite what Home was, but it's still pretty damn good.

But who can blame the Chicks for moving on? I mean, they've had kids and been through a witch hunt unlike that of almost else who has dared to criticize the Bush administration.

The best songs on this album cover these issues: kids, witch hunts and war. And they often combine them. Most notably, Not Ready to Make Nice directly tackles the controversy they were involved in with the lyrics:

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don't mind sayin'
It's a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Sayin' that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

Not all the songs are about these topics, but nevertheless, they do show up quite a bit.

My favorite song on the album is the last, I Hope which is a soul song that Al Green wouldn't have sounded out of place singing, with a more or less "Make Love, Not War" type of message. I was amazed to hear Natalie Maines sing a song like this so well. Another song, I Like It has similarly impressive sultry vocals by Natalie.

The Chicks have definitely begun to leave some of the country sound behind. While Home had a lot of fantastic bluegrass sounds, Taking the Long Way is mostly folk music. Most of these songs would fit right in on an Indigo Girls album.

But the rebel attitude is still there. Despite what many would have you believe, unblinking support of the president does not have its roots in country music. Waylon Jennings made his name as an outlaw, and Willie Nelson endorsed Dennis Kucinich, for God's sake. Dolly Parton just had an Oscar-nominated song in a movie about a transsexual. And, with apologies to Chris, I'm stealing this Johnny Cash quote from his blog:

I didn’t vote for Mr. Bush. Let’s just leave it at that.

The Dixie Chicks have more in common with the giants of country music than just about any of their contemporaries, and they are making perhaps the best music of anyone in country music today.

24 Finale

Continuing my finale wrap-ups, I watched the last episode of 24 last night.

Simply put---- best finale of the season. Sure, we pretty much know Jack Bauer's going to save the day, but it was pretty satisfying to see things go down the way they did. And the episode does contain a hell of a twist. Dara, who as of this posting hasn't seen the last episode, has a poll on her site asking what the best twist was during May Sweeps. I cannot in good conscience vote in that poll, because it does not give the best twist of the season as a choice.

Lost Finale

I watched it. Not much to say. It answers some questions and presents some new ones. But then again, that's pretty much like every episode. Anyway, if you want to discuss it in my comments, feel free.

Taylor Wins

And that's all she wrote. You can all breathe a sigh of relief. No more idol blogging!

Season Finales (including Idol blogging)

I just wanted to give all my loyal readers a heads up that I'm going to a baseball game and will be watching American Idol on the DVR when I get home tonight most likely, but I don't know that I'll have enough energy to blog about it afterwards.

And apologies for never commenting about Elliott finally getting voted off last week and McPhee sticking around. So here it is.

Elliott got voted off last week and McPhee stuck around. Bummer.

In case I don't get around to it tonight, I'm pretty sure I'll be saying Taylor deserves to win. So here it is.

Taylor deserves to win.

As for other finales, I was out buying a car last night and missed the 24 finale, which I'll have to watch on DVR.

I tried to avoid hearing anything about the 24 finale, but then I saw this headline:

Jack Bauer Saves Day on Finale of '24'

I didn't read the article, but c'mon, spoiler alert, please! How am I supposed to watch the 24 finale now knowing that there's a major twist like Jack Bauer saving the day? I mean, who would ever predict that Jack Bauer would save the day?

The only finale of note that I have seen so far is The Office, which was pretty good. It reminded me of the cliffhanger at the end of every season of Friends, though. And I think there's going to be something like this at the end of every season of The Office too.

I hear there's some sort of twist on the season finale of Scrubs too. But don't tell me, I have that one on the DVR still.

And, of course, tomorrow's the big night. The second half of the Idol finale, but more importantly, the season finale of Lost. Will people die? Will they be saved? Will we really find out why the plane crashed? Are The Others actually zombies? Is Jack really a woman? Is everything on the Lost island in the imagination of the autistic kid on St. Elsewhere? Only time will tell.

Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code made $77 million this weekend. Take that, critics! As Dara mentioned, It didn't exactly get the best reviews (although Roger Ebert liked it quite a bit).

Ten of those 77 million bucks were mine. I saw it this weekend. I liked it quite a bit as well. It wasn't the Godfather, but I didn't expect it to be. Just as I liked the book, because I didn't expect it to be The Iliad. In both cases, Da Vinci Code was quite enjoyable, in a "popcorn" sort of way. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The backlash against Da Vinci Code says more about the stuffy critics than it does about the movie itself.

Dixie Chicks

Chris pretty much sums up the media's take on the Dixie Chicks at the moment.

I have really come to like the Dixie Chicks, and I think they represent the true rebelious spirit of country music much better than most of the crap on the radio today does. I'd be anticipating the new album even if it wasn't for their comments about Bush.

I'm planning on buying the new album on iTunes the day it comes out. If you are planning on buying it anyway, I suggest you buy it as soon as possible to make a statement. And if you don't use iTunes or you want the real CD, here's the link on Amazon.

Atheists for God

Today, on my way in to the Washington Nationals baseball game, I had the opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a long time.

Over the last few years, Jews for Jesus have hung out from time to time around Metro stops in the DC area, handing out their literature. Today, I came out of the Metro at the baseball game, one of these guys handed me a pamphlet, and as I walked by, I said "Actually, I'm an Atheist for God."

That's it. I just always wanted to make that joke to a Jew for Jesus.

Look, I understand if some Christian denominations want to stay closer to Jewish traditions. For instance, Seventh Day Adventists, who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, same as the Jews. But Jews for Jesus is different. They are mostly evangelical Christians trying to convert Jews.

As much as I dislike the tactics of Jews for Jesus, I am really annoyed by some Jewish groups who have organized campiagns to discredit them. For instance, a couple years ago, the rabbi at a high holiday service I went to wasted time in his sermon to talk about a campaign in the DC area to make sure people in DC know what true Jews believe, and groups like this talk of a "counter missionary movement" and say "the church's effort to evangelize the Jewish people has escalated to a feverish pitch."

Look. I could care less if a Jew wants to claim to accept Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior and still call himself or herself a Jew. No skin off my back. It's all semantics anyway, and as long as people respect my right to believe what I do, I could care less what they believe. I have a problem with Jews for Jesus only in the same sense that I have a problem with all evangelical religions, that they want ME to change what I beleive.

I think the Jewish groups who organize information campaigns to say Jews can't believe in Jesus are doing the same thing. They are trying to force their own uniform belief on a group of people. And as silly as I think being a Jew and saying you believe Jesus was the messiah is, I believe in freedom of religion.

And besides, I've known tons of Jews in my life, and I've never known one who became a Jew for Jesus. Do people really think these people are a threat? That the Jewish religion is going to somehow be lessened by Jews for Jesus?

Most people, like me, just laugh at the term Jews for Jesus. And the smart ones, like me, make Atheists for God jokes.