WHAT I LIKE ABOUT US. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA
so many of my blogs seem to be about the things i don't like about america. so here, on our country's birthday, let me list what i do like about us. i have traveled all over the world, including europe, africa, asia, australia and new zealand and north and central america so i have some valid basis for comparison.
our people: while we are not the smartest nor the best educated folks in the world, all in all, we are damn well the friendliest. thanks to my varied (and sometimes checkered) past and my current career, i have traveled this entire country and have mixed and mingled with people from every economic strata from the very, very rich to the very, very poor. by my estimate, i have given shows or speeches to close to a million people so i can claim some expertise in how the americans react to one another. i can tell you that we are just great fun to hang out with! we are, for the most part, open to strangers, more than willing to give a helping hand to someone in need, quick to laugh (it could be argued that one of our greatest contributions to the betterment of man is our humor. from our movies, ranging from charlie chaplin to woody allen, to our writers, be they mark twain or tom robbins, to our artists, from andy warhol to joel pett, to our stand-ups, from henny youngman to chris rock, we have provided the world with billions of laughs.) and we are, it seems, just inherently optimistic as hell. i have always thought we have more smiles per mile than any other place in the world. i like us. not all of us. but enough of us to qualify as us in general. like those signs you used to see on the outskirts of little towns that said, "the home of 3,123 friendly folk and 2 or 3 bad apples." for the most part, you could say, we are a simple, easy going, live and let live, friendly people. and i like that.
the land itself: for all of you who are planning to go out of the country for a vacation and yet have not even seen america, you might want to rethink that decision. beauty? we have an unending supply. i am not going to write a travel guide since each and every one of you has seen such beauty somewhere in this country as to take your breath away. my point is that there are a million million other scenes as equal and unique with beauty, beyond the ability of words to describe, all across this country. go see them. round up the kids, jump in the car and go somewhere and look in wonder and in awe at the beauty of america. you could go every year for the rest of your life and never see it all...and each and every day you will come across vistas and views so stunningly beautiful that no painter in all of history could come even close to capturing them. i love going and seeing those vistas and views. i always have and i always will...and i will never run out of places here in america that i haven't been to yet...and inevitably, when i do get to that place that i have never been to yet, then, guess what?, that place will just up and blow me away with it's beauty. and i really like that about here.
our music: talk about contributions to the world! how about the blues? from the dives of chicago, and the wooden shacks of the mississippi delta, and the honky tonks of new orleans has sprung the music of the soul of the common working man. songs about low wages and loose women. robert johnson may have made his deal with the devil and crossroads still challenges guitar players...and how about all that jazz?...the modern day classical music in it's way. music that expresses the individuality of instruments; the ode to musical improvisation including the human voice as a real instrument 'cause jazz could be skat, cha cha da do ba bow, don't cha know?...dixieland jazz? the saints will always go marching in and saint james' infirmary is never full...then there is country music, coming out the hills of tennessee and small towns of texas on the wings of a snow white dove. before country, there was bluegrass, the original feel good and get up and dance to music. how about that rock and roll? elvis gave big momma thorton's hound dog a new beat to bark with and jerry lee took note there was a whole lot of shaking go on and brothers and sisters we've been rocking the world ever since. how about rap? the modern day blues; the music of the oppressed urban underclass, a voice to the unheard masses. ice cube and nwa came and hit white america upside the head and now youth of all colors and all nationalities know how to hip and hop. so for our music, as they say in new orleans, "let the good times roll!"
our arts in general. we are, for all that i can ascertain, the first country to bring arts and entertainment to all of our citizens, rich or poor. we have ballets and symphonies, television and radio, theaters, movies, musical clubs, comedy clubs, musuems and galleries galore. thanks to public television, great works of theater and music are free of cost and free from commercials for anyone with access to a television set. you can't say we are a "cultured people" but you can say we have culture. it is there for all, and many times free to all. our writers, at every aspect of "writing"are, at the top level, world class...and over time we have made large contributions to the great litature of the world. hemmingway and twain---need i say more? but i could say more, and give thousands a name, for the list of great american writers stretches beyond the horizon. ahab will chase that whale as long as man can read and the bell tolls for us. movies? we made them and gave them to the world and to this day, we give the world the best movies ever made; from casablanca to citizen cane to pulp fiction and thousands in between. same with television. it is hard to imagine modern society without television. television is an art form and, as in all art, some succeeds and some sucks. don't forget there are many more bad books than great books, more lousy paintings than good paintings, more bad songs than good songs and so forth and so on, the difference being we don't have the bad books read to us and no one brings the bad songs and bad paintings into our front rooms so we, thankfully, largely miss out on seeing or hearing them, but we don't have that option with television. as an art form, it can only be judged by its great moments and not its bad ones. it has had some great moments. television brings the world together; from watching man land on the moon to learning about the roots of an american slave, american television has united, if only for a brief moment, millions around the globe and that's a contribution. american art is available to every american in every american town in some way or another. i like that about us.
our roads: we are a big country. and you can get there from here. by road. over mountains and through swamps we built the finest roads in the history of man. as a traveling sort of fellow i really like that about us.
our sports: we are a sports playing and watching society. baseball games at dodger statium or at wrigley field are just wonderful experiences. i got to watch phi slama jamma in houston and tarkanian's running rebels in their championship season. i saw a stanley cup playoff game between the red wings and the black hawks at joe lewis arena; that was high octane excitement. yankee stadium on a fall afternoon against the hated red sox and nebraska vs. oklahoma at norman field. i have watched some great sports, in some great places, filled with some very excited folks. that, brothers and sisters, is a lot of fun. the ncaa college basketball tounament is the finest sporting event in the whole world and it is uniquely american. butler beating the jay hawks was modern david and golieth and the country watched and cheered. you can journey most anywhere in our country and strike up a conversation with a total stranger (male, that is) about some kind of sports and that is cool. if you are at a home game you are with x number of thousands of other people who are all on the same side and that is uplifting to the spirit and even if you are on the "other side" you have nothing to fear other than some good-natured razzing that is part of the overall deal. (an exception must be made for raider fans, but i have already spoken about them before.) i must admit that my two favorite american sports are baseball at all levels and college basketball and i try to go to as many games as i can afford. we golf, bowl, play tennis and softball, we can be found on basketball courts in pick-up games and watching our kids play soccer. some of the most intelligent conversations on radio are about sports; if we gave equal thought to politics we would be better on the whole, but that is another subject. you could say we are the ultimate "good sports" and you gotta like that about us.
our attitudes about ourselves: america is a very forgiving land, it seems to be, somehow, in our national consciousness to always be willing to give someone a second chance. you are allowed to mess up here and, if you fail, you are allowed to try again. (the average self-made american millionaire went broke seven times before they actually made that first million.) the life i have lead is an american life; not "an all-american" life, but a life that could only have been lived in america. my bio of from prison to corporate america to show business, is an example of that second chance opportunity attitude. i will turn 65 this year. i turned 21 in solitary confinement in a california prison. today, i am a happily married man. I own a nice home in las vegas, am respected by my peers, have tens of thousands of fans around the world, am loved and respected by my children, count among my friends phd's and funny people, lawyers and gangsters (retired), movie and television stars, writers and photographers, casino workers and poker players, ballet dancers and political cartoonists, shop owners and philosophers, mechanics and addicts (reformed), people of every color (i lived in harlem for six months or so and was invited to live in east l.a. by a latino gangster's mom when i got out of prison because i had helped her son learn to read when we did time together), comics and saints and sinners, rich and poor and we all met here in america. america is about as close to a "class free society" as there is on the face of the earth and i, personally, love that about us.
america is my home and i like it here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. happy birthday, united states of america.
our people: while we are not the smartest nor the best educated folks in the world, all in all, we are damn well the friendliest. thanks to my varied (and sometimes checkered) past and my current career, i have traveled this entire country and have mixed and mingled with people from every economic strata from the very, very rich to the very, very poor. by my estimate, i have given shows or speeches to close to a million people so i can claim some expertise in how the americans react to one another. i can tell you that we are just great fun to hang out with! we are, for the most part, open to strangers, more than willing to give a helping hand to someone in need, quick to laugh (it could be argued that one of our greatest contributions to the betterment of man is our humor. from our movies, ranging from charlie chaplin to woody allen, to our writers, be they mark twain or tom robbins, to our artists, from andy warhol to joel pett, to our stand-ups, from henny youngman to chris rock, we have provided the world with billions of laughs.) and we are, it seems, just inherently optimistic as hell. i have always thought we have more smiles per mile than any other place in the world. i like us. not all of us. but enough of us to qualify as us in general. like those signs you used to see on the outskirts of little towns that said, "the home of 3,123 friendly folk and 2 or 3 bad apples." for the most part, you could say, we are a simple, easy going, live and let live, friendly people. and i like that.
the land itself: for all of you who are planning to go out of the country for a vacation and yet have not even seen america, you might want to rethink that decision. beauty? we have an unending supply. i am not going to write a travel guide since each and every one of you has seen such beauty somewhere in this country as to take your breath away. my point is that there are a million million other scenes as equal and unique with beauty, beyond the ability of words to describe, all across this country. go see them. round up the kids, jump in the car and go somewhere and look in wonder and in awe at the beauty of america. you could go every year for the rest of your life and never see it all...and each and every day you will come across vistas and views so stunningly beautiful that no painter in all of history could come even close to capturing them. i love going and seeing those vistas and views. i always have and i always will...and i will never run out of places here in america that i haven't been to yet...and inevitably, when i do get to that place that i have never been to yet, then, guess what?, that place will just up and blow me away with it's beauty. and i really like that about here.
our music: talk about contributions to the world! how about the blues? from the dives of chicago, and the wooden shacks of the mississippi delta, and the honky tonks of new orleans has sprung the music of the soul of the common working man. songs about low wages and loose women. robert johnson may have made his deal with the devil and crossroads still challenges guitar players...and how about all that jazz?...the modern day classical music in it's way. music that expresses the individuality of instruments; the ode to musical improvisation including the human voice as a real instrument 'cause jazz could be skat, cha cha da do ba bow, don't cha know?...dixieland jazz? the saints will always go marching in and saint james' infirmary is never full...then there is country music, coming out the hills of tennessee and small towns of texas on the wings of a snow white dove. before country, there was bluegrass, the original feel good and get up and dance to music. how about that rock and roll? elvis gave big momma thorton's hound dog a new beat to bark with and jerry lee took note there was a whole lot of shaking go on and brothers and sisters we've been rocking the world ever since. how about rap? the modern day blues; the music of the oppressed urban underclass, a voice to the unheard masses. ice cube and nwa came and hit white america upside the head and now youth of all colors and all nationalities know how to hip and hop. so for our music, as they say in new orleans, "let the good times roll!"
our arts in general. we are, for all that i can ascertain, the first country to bring arts and entertainment to all of our citizens, rich or poor. we have ballets and symphonies, television and radio, theaters, movies, musical clubs, comedy clubs, musuems and galleries galore. thanks to public television, great works of theater and music are free of cost and free from commercials for anyone with access to a television set. you can't say we are a "cultured people" but you can say we have culture. it is there for all, and many times free to all. our writers, at every aspect of "writing"are, at the top level, world class...and over time we have made large contributions to the great litature of the world. hemmingway and twain---need i say more? but i could say more, and give thousands a name, for the list of great american writers stretches beyond the horizon. ahab will chase that whale as long as man can read and the bell tolls for us. movies? we made them and gave them to the world and to this day, we give the world the best movies ever made; from casablanca to citizen cane to pulp fiction and thousands in between. same with television. it is hard to imagine modern society without television. television is an art form and, as in all art, some succeeds and some sucks. don't forget there are many more bad books than great books, more lousy paintings than good paintings, more bad songs than good songs and so forth and so on, the difference being we don't have the bad books read to us and no one brings the bad songs and bad paintings into our front rooms so we, thankfully, largely miss out on seeing or hearing them, but we don't have that option with television. as an art form, it can only be judged by its great moments and not its bad ones. it has had some great moments. television brings the world together; from watching man land on the moon to learning about the roots of an american slave, american television has united, if only for a brief moment, millions around the globe and that's a contribution. american art is available to every american in every american town in some way or another. i like that about us.
our roads: we are a big country. and you can get there from here. by road. over mountains and through swamps we built the finest roads in the history of man. as a traveling sort of fellow i really like that about us.
our sports: we are a sports playing and watching society. baseball games at dodger statium or at wrigley field are just wonderful experiences. i got to watch phi slama jamma in houston and tarkanian's running rebels in their championship season. i saw a stanley cup playoff game between the red wings and the black hawks at joe lewis arena; that was high octane excitement. yankee stadium on a fall afternoon against the hated red sox and nebraska vs. oklahoma at norman field. i have watched some great sports, in some great places, filled with some very excited folks. that, brothers and sisters, is a lot of fun. the ncaa college basketball tounament is the finest sporting event in the whole world and it is uniquely american. butler beating the jay hawks was modern david and golieth and the country watched and cheered. you can journey most anywhere in our country and strike up a conversation with a total stranger (male, that is) about some kind of sports and that is cool. if you are at a home game you are with x number of thousands of other people who are all on the same side and that is uplifting to the spirit and even if you are on the "other side" you have nothing to fear other than some good-natured razzing that is part of the overall deal. (an exception must be made for raider fans, but i have already spoken about them before.) i must admit that my two favorite american sports are baseball at all levels and college basketball and i try to go to as many games as i can afford. we golf, bowl, play tennis and softball, we can be found on basketball courts in pick-up games and watching our kids play soccer. some of the most intelligent conversations on radio are about sports; if we gave equal thought to politics we would be better on the whole, but that is another subject. you could say we are the ultimate "good sports" and you gotta like that about us.
our attitudes about ourselves: america is a very forgiving land, it seems to be, somehow, in our national consciousness to always be willing to give someone a second chance. you are allowed to mess up here and, if you fail, you are allowed to try again. (the average self-made american millionaire went broke seven times before they actually made that first million.) the life i have lead is an american life; not "an all-american" life, but a life that could only have been lived in america. my bio of from prison to corporate america to show business, is an example of that second chance opportunity attitude. i will turn 65 this year. i turned 21 in solitary confinement in a california prison. today, i am a happily married man. I own a nice home in las vegas, am respected by my peers, have tens of thousands of fans around the world, am loved and respected by my children, count among my friends phd's and funny people, lawyers and gangsters (retired), movie and television stars, writers and photographers, casino workers and poker players, ballet dancers and political cartoonists, shop owners and philosophers, mechanics and addicts (reformed), people of every color (i lived in harlem for six months or so and was invited to live in east l.a. by a latino gangster's mom when i got out of prison because i had helped her son learn to read when we did time together), comics and saints and sinners, rich and poor and we all met here in america. america is about as close to a "class free society" as there is on the face of the earth and i, personally, love that about us.
america is my home and i like it here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. happy birthday, united states of america.
posted by Ron Shock | 1:08 PM
11 Comments:
Well put, Ronno. You are the man.
Peace,
Your Merry Bluester Brother,
Scott May
This comment has been removed by the author.
This comment has been removed by the author.
hey scotty!!! listen, write me at the hrshock@cox.net address and i will send you my personal address so we can keep in touch. hope all is well with you and yours. rhonda and i are rocking and rolling in ultra-hot vegas.
the comedy and films came from the jews
the blues from slavery
the beautiful vistas soaked with blood of native americans
yet another nationalistic screed claiming were better than the rest
To Anonymous:
The Jews in show business came here to escape persecution in Europe...
As far as the slaves go, His name is Lincoln-look it up-American last time I looked.
OK, so some of our forefathers fucked up when it came to the Native Americans, but I don't know anyone personally who has ever done anything wrong to any Native Americans. I certainly haven't.
Nationalistic? Yep. So what? Is it wrong to love your Country? Ron gave a bunch of reasons WHY he loves his country. He served in the Military, did you? Screed? Not as Webster defines it. Ron's blog is one man's opinion of where he lives, and I enjoyed it, and agree. I know Ron's story. There's more patriotism in that man than any hundred of the bloated pseudo-patriot gasbags that litter our radio airwaves like Limbaugh and that idiot Ann Coulter.
I don't think you've ever seen or heard Ron Shock, or any of the Texas Outlaws--fiercely independent Men and Women who champion freedom and peace.
Read it again, Pally.
Peace,
SM
My impression -- which I admit is mostly Internet-created -- of Ron is that of all the things said about him, he's honest.
So I don't think it's right to read a lot of hidden meaning into the post other than what was written there.
For whatever that's worth.
That does it. Once and for all, I am not an "idiot", I don't deserve to be lumped together with Rush Limbaugh, and I've never been screed by anyone.
America is a great country, and I applaud you, Ron, for pointing out all of the things that make our country special, even though you have at times harbored certain liberal views that make me want to scream. In any event, I just have to say that I love everything about America, except when wimps and faggots screw it up.
not nationalistic but a deep abiding love for the country that i was born in and the people who inhabit it. not an homage to our government nor our past but to our ideals, even when we have not lived up to them. i am a second generation american my family having come here from russia. my children are the first in our family to go to college and, i might add, get degrees. my oldest child is part american indian so i guess i am guilty of fucking at least one native american but in russia we were serfs and if you look up that word it is defined as "slave" so this family of slaves found freedom in america.
my grandfather, who had just arrived here, fought for america in WWI and my father fought in WWII. my great uncle, cal farley, (look him up if you want to know the history of an american saint) won numerous medals for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
no country can claim to have been perfect from git go. the u.s. has in the past and in the now committed grevious crimes and made many mistakes, but that does not detract from the goodness of our people in general nor the beauty of our land. if you read my blog you will find i am extremely critical of our government and speak out whenever i can. i, however, seperate 'government' from 'people' and, my brother, it is the people i love.
no where did i say we are "better" than other countries, what i said was we have enough BEAUTY here that it would take a lifetime to see it all and why go elsewhere if it is beauty that you seek.
and another great thing about here and us is that we can disagree. so, for the person who was so critical of me, thanks for writing.
Thanks for the information
You may also find it useful to visit my website: http://www.healinginstitute.info
You forgot:
1) The Electric Guitar
2) The Chili Dog
3) Halle Berry
oh and..
The 1st Amendment
Enjoy Every Sandwich...
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