Snowman, you got your ears on?

Aww…Jerry Reed died. Weird, cause amongst my recent random iTunes purchases was East Bound and Down.

I always liked him. Of course I knew him from Smokey and the Bandit, but he seemed to pop up in lots of other random places too. I used to love the show Alice when I was a kid (I have no explanation…kids like weird stuff) and he was a guest star on that. And he was also on and episode of Scooby-Doo, where he sang that Pretty Mary Sunlight song. (It was The New Scooby-Doo Movies, actually, the one with the guest stars playing themselves. I digress here, but I love the one with the Harlem Globtrotters) That was enough to win me over. Plus, I always thought he was kinda hot.

And speaking of dead 70's icons, I watched The Wiz the other day (again, I have no explanation for my actions) and I found myself intrigued by Richard Pryor.

So, I've seen the film before, but not for a really long time. It was on one of those movie channels I get free with my digital cable…maybe because of Michael Jackson's birthday? I don't know.

Anyway, it was on, for some reason, and I watched it, for some reason. Actually, I tivo-ed it and fast-forwarded through quite a bit. I'm not a fan of Diana Ross (I find divas troubling) and a lot of the songs are boring, as are stretches of the film. I do love Nipsey Russell though. But the thing that stuck me most was the part with Richard Pryor at the end, when they find out that he's the Wiz and that he's just a guy and doesn't really have any powers. That is really Pryor's only scene in the movie, but his performance is not bad. When he's ranting about losing the race for dog catcher and all that, it's a bit much, but at the end when he's asking for Dorothy to help him, he plays it so sad and broken and lonely that it's quite moving.

And now, for your enjoyment, I offer you a random Nipsey Russell poem I discovered while looking up stuff about The Wiz . In honor of the homestretch of campaign madness:

The opposite of pro is con
That fact is clearly seen
If progress means move forward
Then what does Congress mean?