Jayme vs. Pilikia

Since we moved into the new house more than two years ago, I've been growing more and more interested in tiki. Palm trees and the swimming pool will do that to a person. But up until maybe 6 months or so ago, I had no idea tiki culture remained an active scene, as opposed to one that died out in the '70s. This, despite the fact that I built myself a tiki bar, which made its debut at my book release party back in August. Over the weekend, as you may or may not know, I attended ConDFW in Fort Worth. Well, I had learned that a new tiki bar, Pilikia, had recently opened up in Dallas. Since I had no programming obligations Friday night, and seeing as how I'd never visited an actual, for-true tiki bar before, I thought I'd make the jaunt over to Dallas and check it out.

First advice about driving in Dallas--don't do it. What mapped out as a 30 minute trip turned into an hour ordeal once all the road construction, detours and missed exits are accounted for. Pilikia itself is near the downtown just off the spaghetti snarl of highways, a few miles from both West End and SMU campus. The neighborhood seemed quiet, a mix of old businesses, small warehouses and big, new apartment complexes going up, your typical gentrification process in action. The parking lot seemed smallish, and it's valet only (tip based, with no additional fee) which threw me a bit. There doesn't seem to be any convenient street parking nearby, so to my eye the lot is likely to fill up long before the bar itself does. The pergola-covered patio area with the bright Pilikia sign on top presents well from the street, but the entrance itself, with a thatch awning, flanking tikis and a big moai off to the side, seems a little tacked on.

I was unsure what to expect after the exterior mix of industrial with tiki, but the immediate inside of Pilikia dazzled. To the right of the door was a small seating area separated from the main bar by rope/railing. The entire wall was taken up by backlit, golden skulls. It was really pretty darn stunning, especially if you're not expecting it. Centered on that wall is a small bar, which looked to be dedicated to a DJ setup, or something like that. I can't see them actually serving drinks there.

The wall between the skull wall and the door had a cabinet filled with tastefully arranged clutter. It wasn't jam-packed enough to be entirely authentic, but considering the skull wall overwhelms everything on that end of the bar, I'll cut 'em some slack.

They had some nice lighting effects on this tiki right across the rope room divider.

And this is the main barroom as seen from directly in front of the skull wall. It was neat and clean, orderly, with subdued lighting and good tiki-style eye candy. Pretty much what one would expect of a tiki bar in Dallas, if you took the time to preconceive a notion. I'd arrived about 8:30 on a Friday night, and while there were several groups of patrons there, I'd have expected it to be a little more crowded.

I'd intended to eat there, but it became clear very fast that this is primarily a bar, not a restaurant. The menu (below) appeared pretty much an afterthought, printed on a plain white sheet of paper as opposed to the nifty design of the regular drink menus. And it's geared toward feeding a larger group rather than individuals. Is this normal? I dunno--this is my first tiki bar. After debating for a few minutes, nothing appealed to me so I gave it a pass. Someone else will have to report on the food quality.

The drink menu. Lighting was very dim, and I had to crank the ISO up way high on my camera to get this hand-held (no tripod with me) so it's very grainy. I uploaded this image larger than the others for anyone who wants to click through to parse the drinks more closely.

Since I was driving myself, and had never had a real one, I ordered a single mai tai. The bartender was friendly and chatted as he mixed my drink. It was an impressive display. The drink itself was fine. Was it authentic? As far as I could tell it was, but I had no baseline for comparison. I've never had a real mai tai, that is, one that didn't come out of a bottled mix. I'd happily drink one again. Not so great was the $11 price tag. Ouch. I expected complex tiki drinks to cost more than your standard issue rum-and-Coke, but still. And there was a lot of ice in that tiki mug. I guess I need to reset my expectations.

Here are a couple of detail shots from the bar.

Here's one of the behind-the-bar liquor alcove. There were two of these. And the friendly bartenders at work. Neither one of these guys made my mai tai.

Here's the big, glowing tiki behind the bar. I have to say, this guy was magnificent. Apart from the skull wall, easily my favorite part of the place. He had serious personality, if you know what I mean. And tucked off to big glowing tiki's left was a diving helmet. It was very easy to overlook. I can't help but think they're misusing this piece. Personally, I love these old diving helmets and hope to get one someday for my own tiki project and turn it into a lamp.

Speaking of lamps, with a bar that impressive, they're bound to have some amazing tiki lights hanging on the ceiling above, right? Right? Oh dear...

Let's pretend we didn't see that, and instead look at the big, glowing treasure chest that at one point held what was undoubtedly a potent group cocktail, followed by a view of the main seating area from the bar. See that doorway there in the middle? That leads outside.

Here we go outside. The main barroom area of Pilikia is pretty much a straight rectangle, and the outside forms an L around it. The long part is enclosed, with a patio roof and kind of a wood plank wall to keep the elements out, but it's not climate controlled. The photo below is looking into the bar proper, the windows corresponding to the peacock chair booths.

Immediately to the left coming out of the bar proper is a raised platform with an assortment of lounge chairs, daybeds and the like. I tried a couple and they weren't as comfy as they appeared. Primary decorations here were banana-faced tiki masks on the wall (yes, I know they're supposed to be surf boards. But I keep expecting them to break out into the Chiquita banana song. So sue me). The positive feelings the interior decor begin to erode a little. This is starting to feel more store-bought than sincere.

This guy was tucked into a corner opposite the banana tikis. He didn't feel mass-produced. I liked him. Probably my favorite tiki in the place, apart from the big glowy guy behind the barn.

This is looking down the length of the L. The fireplace is a nice touch, but not particularly tiki. Most of the tiki decor is simply tacked onto the wall--Amazon masks, bamboo panels. It's about this time that I realize I hadn't seen any custom carvings. All of the wood posts, walls and beams are bare. If it's lucky, it'll have a colorful mask affixed to it.

There were a bunch of these guys outside. Tiki by Toscano? Don't get me wrong, as they're cool and I wouldn't mind having them at my place. But everything outside is feeling like they went shopping at Tikis R Us and grabbed whatever was on the shelf.

Decent bamboo chairs at tables on the short end of the L. This is the part visible from the street, with the bright, rectangular Pilikia above. The area's covered by the pergola. The live bamboo screen is a nice touch, and will be nicer once the boo grows in to make a thicker screen. The next photo shows the secondary bar in the L. Old banana face makes another appearance.

After this, I got bored and figured it was time to go. I finished off my mai tai and headed back inside to see if I'd missed anything on my first pass. Above each of the peacock chair booths was this type of lamp. It's a definite step up from those bare bulb things over the bar, but I've seen a lot better homemade lamps on Tiki Central. I realized I hadn't noticed any blowfish lamps, so I specifically looked for some. Found two in the bar proper. The first, here, was behind netting hanging from the ceiling. The effect would've been better with more flotsam and jetsam cluttering the net. As it was, the net was pretty much empty. The other blowfish lamp was hanging not too far away, between the wall of skulls area and the bar. They'd installed color-changing bulbs in them (which I assume is a common practice) and while I'm not the biggest fan of blowfish lamps, I have to admit the effect was kinda cool.

I found this abandoned drink sitting underneath an orchid on an endtable. I thought it an interesting image. Not far away was this pineapple head tiki was at the front, near the exit. It amused me.

Pilikia made a powerful first impression on me, then steadily frittered it away the longer I stayed. The outside/deck came off as an afterthought. The music selection seems to be a big complaint amongst tikiphiles, and I can see why. No exotica played while I was there. Mostly they seemed locked in to playing inoffensive reggae/Caribbean hits. I chuckled a little when "Pass the Dutchie" came on, then cringed when Shaggy's "Angel" started playing (I can't say how much I hate that song). I stayed about 45 minutes and those were the only two tunes I recognized--no Bob Marley or even the Killer Bees. It's like they knew current top 40 was inappropriate, but couldn't be bothered to figure out what they should play instead. If they're not doing exotica, then bossa nova or Cuban jazz would've set the tone better.

Overall, Pilikia is trying for an upscale vibe with this club, and while I don't think tiki bars need to be a dive, I kinda feel they should be more egalitarian. I liked the interior, but the outside decor was just going through the motions. I came away with the impression that Pilikia was comprised of equal parts honest effort and pretentiousness. There's not a whole lot in Dallas that's authentic, and in that sense, Pilikia fits right in.

I'd go again if the opportunity presented itself, but I wouldn't make a special effort visit.

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ConDFW in the rear view mirror

I am home from the 2017 edition of ConDFW, and I have to say I'm wiped out. Maybe I'm just getting old, but that four-hour drive up to Fort Worth and back, braving the construction (Oh! What construction!) and traffic on I-35, simply drained me. This is the first time I've been there in maybe four years, and it was great to see some of those familiar faces I haven't run across in a while. I used to go regularly, but life had intervened to make trips up to the Metroplex more of a rarity for me these days.

My panel Friday, "Preparing for a future in space," was every bit as fun as you'd think it would be. We spent a lot of time talking about colonizing Mars and the Moon, and how we have plenty of theoretical solutions to many of the problems such undertakings would entail. The only trouble is that few, if any, of those solutions have actually been tested. Nobody had an answer for the problem perchlorates pose for Martian colonists. I got to slip in a bit about colonizing Venus there at the end, which is my current SFnal kick. Afterwards, I skipped out on the convention for a while to pursue a personal Quixotic adventure that I'll share in the next day or so. Suffice to say it took longer than anticipated, and when I finally got back to the hotel, I crashed.

Saturday's panel, "Famous last stands," was pretty amazing. My big contribution was that sometimes the aftermath of a last stand is the more gripping history, and belatedly remembered to bring up the fact that Hannibal Barca has many, many "last stands" against the Roman Empire, from which very few Roman legions survived. Tracy Morris shared some of the interesting topic from her podcast, I Am Not Making This Up, and Taylor Anderson left us all wowed with his discussion of the Taffy 3. For my reading, I chose the opening chapter of Sailing Venus. The audience seemed to respond to the humor in the appropriate places, and nobody threw rotten vegetables, so I count that as a win. I shared the reading block with Adrian Simmons, and he read a fascinating piece about a character in a heroic fantasy world who became addicted to a particular prostitute. It was more a character study than anything else, and had a thoughtful, bittersweet tone. I'm embarrassed to say I got involved in fascinating conversation during the beer tasting party that night, orchestrated by convention chair Amie Spengler, and completely forgot to attend the Porn vs. Erotica panel with Melanie Fletcher. Oops. Melanie had no hard feelings and assured me that it went off fine without me. But that's still unprofessional on my part. On the other hand, those beers on hand were stellar! So many rich, complex and surprising beers were there for the sampling, Amie even did the impossible and came up with an IPA that I actually liked. Wow. Sunday's "Interstellar archaeology" panel was just as silly as you'd expect, and I postulated that the destroyed alien spacecraft in question was actually done in by a runaway Mentos/Diet Coke reaction (which they normally used for propulsion, you see).

At this point I should give a shout-out to everyone I saw and talked with over the weekend, but really, I'm just too tired. Here are some pictures I took, so if you see someone you know, let them know. I should identify everyone I know, but instead I think I'm going to bed.

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Letter to the editor

In a recent edition of the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, guest columnist Bryan Feltner made a rather nonsensical argument that not all mosquitoes carry the zika virus, but as all zika virus is carried by mosquitoes it follows that as not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims, therefore they must be banned from entering the country. He then made a rather condescending remark about those opposing a travel ban not remembering 9/11. This provoked me to write a rare letter to the editor, which appeared in today's edition. Alas, my letter was edited by hands other than mine, which truncated some of my heartfelt nuance. Here is the original version in its entirety.

In his guest column of February 7, Bryan Feltner asks, "Have these people forgotten 9/11?" I can't speak for anyone else, but sadly, I remember that awful day quite well.

I remember that none of the hijackers were refugees.

I remember that very few of them were women and children fleeing civil war.

I remember that all of the hijackers were Saudi Arabian nationals, a country which is curiously absent from the current administration's travel ban.

I remember that the San Bernardino shooter was a natural-born U.S. citizen and his wife was a Pakistani from Saudi Arabia. Again, both countries omitted from the travel ban.

I remember that the Boston Marathon bombers were ethnic Chechens from Soviet Union territories. Again, no travel ban.

I remember the Orlando nightclub shooter was a natural-born U.S. citizen.

I also remember a few tragedies Mr. Feltner seems to have forgotten.

I remember on June 17, 2015, a white supremacist gunned down nine people, including a state senator, in a Charleston, South Carolina church.

I remember on January 30 of this year a white supremacist gunned down 6 people and wounded eight more in a Quebec Islamic center.

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing from 1995 that killed 168 and injured more than 600, carried out by U.S. born right wing extremists who hoped to forment revolution.

To quote H.L. Mencken, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Mr. Feltner does not want security, he wants the illusion of security, clad in the guise of decisive action. It is a childhood wish-fulfillment, akin to mommy and daddy making the bad man go away and telling their special little snowflake that everything will be okay.

What a timid little mouse of a man. If his life is so ruled by fear, I will happily buy him a nightlight, because I have it on good authority it is 100 percent effective at keeping the boogie man at bay.

Sincerely,

Jayme Blaschke
New Braunfels, TX

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ConDFW off the port bow!

This weekend I will be one of the guest panelists at ConDFW in Fort Worth! When the convention started up, I was a regular for quite a few years and had a blast. Alas, New Braunfels is much farther from the Metroplex than Temple was, and my brother moved away from that area, so it's become quite difficult to make it up that way. I believe my last appearance came 5 years or so back (and I've never managed to make FenCon at all, darn it!).

Here's my programming lineup for those looking to catch me. And yes, I'll have plenty of copies of Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch with me for anyone wanting a copy, even though it's not science fictional at all (although I suppose some folks could consider it fantasy):

• Friday, 6 p.m.: Preparing for a Future in Space
  Panelists: William Ledbetter (M), William C. Seigler, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Jeff Dawson, Karl K. Gallagher
  Popular ideas in the past of a Moonbase have faded over the years. The most recent idea is for a Mars base. But can a person safely travel there? Can the human body handle weightlessness for that long of a ride? Our scientists take a hard look at the future of space and debate our place in it.

• Saturday, 12 p.m.: Famous Last Stands
  Panelists: Adrian Simmons (M), Taylor Anderson, Lillian Stewart Carl, Tracy S. Morris, Jeff Dawson, Jayme Lynn Blaschke
  If you don’t know history, you are doomed to repeat it. Down through the annals of history there are many examples of epic last stands – from General Custer to Dien Bien Phu to the Alamo. Whether an example of arrogance or underestimating the enemy, there are plenty last stands to learn from and use. Our panelists comment on how to learn from history, rather than merely repeating it.

• Saturday, 1 p.m.: Autographs
  Larry Atchley Jr., Jayme Lynn Blaschke

• Saturday, 3 p.m.: Reading
  Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Adrian Simmons

• Saturday, 9 p.m.: Pornography vs Erotica – How Things Stand [Adult]
  Panelists: Melanie Fletcher (M), Jayme Lynn Blaschke
  Our usual spicy panel comes with a more practical twist: What is the state of the genre? What sells? What doesn’t sell? Has 50 Shades of Grey ruined everything? Our panelists gossip and tell tales.

• Sunday, 1 p.m.: Interstellar Archaeology: Part Two – The Debunking
  Panelists: Chris Donahue (M), Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Michelle Muenzler, Michael Ashleigh Finn, Dusty Rainbolt, Linda Donahue
  The second of two panels where we inflict (discover) startling artifacts of OBVIOUS alien origin. This time, our experts tell us how wrong the previous esteemed panelists were! Last year, Sunday’s panel thoroughly debunked Friday’s experts. But will they solve the mystery? Whodunit!

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The Space Between Us

The new "boy-from-Mars" movie, The Space Between Us, opened this weekend in the U.S. and was pummeled at the box office, earning the distinction of being a massive bomb.

Good.

Never have I suffered through a movie so clueless about what it's actually about, and what's more, absolutely no intention of even trying to find out. To paraphrase A Fish Called Wanda, I can't call it stupid because that would be an insult to stupid films. Rarely have I paid cash money to see a film in the theater and found myself actively hating it 10 minutes in, but that's what happened with The Space Between Us. It opens with a pretentious, unnecessary, 10-minute infodump from a Burt Rutan/Elon Musk tech visionary stand-in called Nathaniel Shepherd that got applause lines from the on-screen audience at entirely inappropriate moments. As the interminable, self-congratulatory scene dragged on, I found myself thinking this actor was doing a very, very bad Gary Oldman impression. Only afterward did I realize that it really was Gary Oldman. Things went downhill from there.

Here's a quick run-down of the plot for those of you unaware of this film: A female astronaut on the first Mars colonization crew discovers she's pregnant two months into the mission. She gives birth shortly after landing, and promptly dies, as birth-giving mothers do in these kinds of films. And naturally enough, the powers that be decide to cover up the baby's existence. Instead, the baby is raised on Mars by astronauts until he grows up to be Asa Butterfield, who falls in love with a girl back on Earth nicknamed "Tulsa" through the miracle of Skyping. When Butterfield is finally brought back to Earth, he promptly escapes his captors, finds Tulsa and embarks on a cross-country road trip to find his mysterious, unknown father. Hijinks ensue. Or, you could just watch the trailer:

This had all the makings of a light-hearted coming-of-age genre romp, a pleasant diversion for a few hours with the potential to be more. Alas, it's none of those things. Which is a shame, because the only time the film isn't mind-bogglingly awful is when Butterfield and Britt Robertson (aka "Tulsa") are onscreen together. Their interactions are charming, and these two talented young actors manage to make even the clunkiest, cliche-ridden dialogue work. For the most part. Robertson, in particular, has been playing the disaffected loner type for most of her career, and if she doesn't quite manage the grit Jodie Foster showed in similar roles at a similar age, she still manages to rise above the material. Their road trip cinematography is lush and alive, from the Albuquerque Balloon Festival to the vermilion stone formations of Sedona (at least, it looked like Sedona), when these two are together the viewer is briefly lulled into forgetting how bad the rest of the film actually is. Don't believe me? To escape the authorities, the pair steal a crop duster, only to have to engine lose oil pressure and force an emergency landing. Apparently, the contrived script believes a burned-out biplane engine is impossible to shut off, because once on the ground they can't stop it ("no brakes" has got to be one on the most ludicrous lines among a host of them) and jump out before it crashes into an old, wooden barn. Which promptly explodes into a gigantic fireball. Seriously. This is the kind of nonsense The Simpsons makes fun of, with exploding soapbox derby cars and the like. I actually threw up my hands and laughed aloud at the tone-deaf stupidity of the script.

Butterfield and Robertson deserve so much better.

Leaving aside the technobabble medical diagnoses of Butterfield and Oldman (I'll cut them a little slack here, even though some of the facts are wobbly at best) the script's basic grasp of reality is horrifying. At one point, with Butterfield dying from "too much gravity exposure" on Earth, their solution is to pile him onto an experimental space plane of Oldman's which may or may not have ever flown before--all the viewers know is that Oldman has repeatedly blown up in a flight simulator before ever reaching orbit. According to the dialogue amongst the characters, if they can just get up into the Earth's stratosphere--a mere six miles up--they'll be far enough away from Earth that the gravity will be lessened and Butterfield will survive. Just flying higher reduces gravity that dramatically? Who knew? The next thing you know, they're in orbit--Oldman took over and flew them there, because hey, he only ever blew up in the simulator but he knew the ship wouldn't blow up this time!--and Butterfield recovers quickly enough for zero-G snuggles with Robertson before returning to Earth and boarding a rocket back to Mars. I again laughed aloud when they showed the space plane (a carbon copy of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, really) orbiting the Earth backwards. Look, space launches go from west to east, harnessing the rotation of the Earth as an extra boost to get into orbit. Going the opposite direction means the spacecraft would have to overcome the Earth's rotational velocity in addition to reaching orbital velocity. The bar is set much higher, which is why nobody launches rockets east-to-west. For a little ship that supposedly can barely make orbit under the best of circumstances... well, maybe it's easier to orbit in the stratosphere?

What else can I rant about? Oh, yeah. The initial colonization mission launches in 2018, which is laughable and throws verisimilitude right out the window. The bulk of the story takes place about 18 years in the future, but everything looks exactly the same as it does today. Everyday technology hasn't advance, apart from a cool projector bracelet Butterfield wears and omniscient iPads which let Oldman spy on Butterfield and Robertson even when Oldman doesn't actually know where they are. Carla Gugino is given little to do as a veteran astronaut/proxy mother to Butterfield beyond expressing worry and frustration. But she gets off better than the other astronauts, none of whom are given names or dialogue, much less personalities. The most offensive element of the film comes in the aftermath of Butterfield's birth, following the death of his chirpy, can-do astronaut mother, Sarah Elliot. Over and over again it's hammered home that "She was irresponsible," "She jeopardized the mission," "I can't believe how selfish and irresponsible she was." Over and over she's blamed for the pregnancy, to the point where he death comes off as a 19th century morality play, that she got what she deserved because she dared to have sex. There is nothing from her perspective given--that her contraception failed (hey, even pills and implants have a failure rate) or some other extenuating circumstance was at play. No, the party line is that she was bad, period. This is particularly troublesome at the end of the film, when it's revealed that Oldman is actually Butterfield's father--a cheap bit of information withheld from the audience until the appropriately-cliched reveal. Actually sharing that information have negated Butterfield's entire road trip to find his father, so the awful script kept it secret. Worse that that, however, is the fact that Oldman is the loudest of the chorus condemning Astronaut Elliot for her "irresponsible behavior" even though he knows that it was he who knocked her up the night before the mission, or whatever. I just... ugh.

Seriously, there is just so much wrong with this movie I'm exhausted just thinking about it. The screenwriter, Allan Loeb, is responsible for the recent turkey Collateral Beauty as well as other cinematic masterpieces such as Here Comes the Boom, The Switch and Just Go With It, so I guess the awfulness of The Space Between Us shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Still, this has all the markings of a prestige picture, where the writer of low-brow fare cuts loose and shows what he's really capable of. Too bad he couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to do actual research, when pulling ideas out of his ass is so much easier.

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Friday Night Videos

No subject has ever made such a popular subject for song as love. As long as humans have been making music, love’s far and away the top choice of lyricists to write about. Writing and discussing Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch, however, got me to thinking. Amid all that blissful romance, the darker flipside beckoned, and prostitution served as the inspiration for more than a few memorable songs. The Greeks and Romans sang about prostitutes, and minstrels in the middle-ages were more than a little bawdy. Cowboys of the American West favored songs so scandalous they could strip the needles from a cactus. It’s no wonder, then, that popular music of the modern era has produced countless songs about prostitution as well.

What follows in the coming weeks is a countdown of the top 10 songs (as compiled by yours truly) about prostitution of the modern era that were not inspired by the infamous Chicken Ranch brothel of La Grange, Texas. Between The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack and ZZ Top’s “La Grange” (not to mention works by Willis Alan Ramsey, Billy Joe Shaver, the Austin Lounge Lizards and numerous others), the Chicken Ranch would simply have an unfair advantage.

1. “Queen of the Silver Dollar” – Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
There have been few songwriters or poets as sly, as clever, as subversive as the late Shel Silverstein, and all of those traits are on full display in the devastatingly cruel “Queen of the Silver Dollar.” Originally recorded by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show for their second album, the quavering, emotion-laden vocals start off borderline-distraught, but quickly become celebratory. Initially, the “Queen” comes across as a fading “It Girl,” trying to hang on to past glories in a smoky bar, fawned over by drunk patrons. But as the song progresses, her tattered, hopeless persona pierces the illusion of royalty, and it becomes clear the Queen is a prostitute, well-worn and reduced to eking out a living amongst the dregs of society. And then Silverstein delivers the coup de grâce: The singer isn’t some impartial bystander, observing the sad state of affairs, but rather the Queen’s pimp, bragging about finding her as an innocent country girl, corrupting and deceiving her to bring the girl to this low place. The buoyancy in his voice isn’t one of admiration or unrequited love, but rather pride of ownership. The Queen isn’t human, but merely an asset, and he’s not in the bar to admire her, but to ensure his own profit margins. In its own way, the friendly exuberance of the song mirrors that of so many pimps, who wear a friendly and caring veneer around women that only masks the dangerous predator lurking beneath. In this way, “Queen of the Silver Dollar” is perhaps the most true-to-life of any song on this list.

Interestingly, Emmylou Harris covered the song on her 1975 album, Pieces of the Sky. Harris singing the third person lyrics overlay a more neutral observational tone to the piece, until the final refrain, where she switches to the first person and admits to being the prostitute in question. Although it lacks the emotional devastation of the Dr. Hook version--Harris' prostitute has seemingly made peace with her lot in life, although she's is aware of its superficiality--it's still a pretty good song in its own right and regardless of anything else, was a daring song for her to record at the time.

Now, I have to close with quite possibly one of the most wrong-headed covers of any song, ever. Dave & Sugar released "Silver Dollar" as their debut single in 1975, scoring a minor hit with it on the country charts. But folks, everything about this version is wrong. They are so incredibly chirpy and upbeat throughout it makes my skin crawl. And Dave, when he sings that line about how he's responsible for her downfall? He's positively beaming! "Hey! I made this girl a queen! Isn't that great? Who else could make a girl a queen? Yay, me!" There is no menace, no guile, no possession in his vocals at all. Never have singers been so utterly oblivious to the actual content of their song since Gail Farrell and Dick Dale crooned "One Toke Over the Line" on the Lawrence Welk Show. The video below isn't quite as bad at the original linked above, but still. Some people simply have no awareness of the wider world.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... O.C. Smith.

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now available from both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. It's also available as an ebook in the following formats: Kindle, Nook, Google Play, iBooks and Kobo.

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