Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
A local hit seems appropriate on Memorial Day. Sent out to those Aggies, still going to the wild & heavy places duty calls: Granger Smith’s “We Bleed Maroon.” Rough version (originally bootleged on local stations). Lyrics.
There late at night if I listen real close
The spirit still whispers through the crooked live oaks
I hear my father and his dad before
And all those brave Aggies who never came back from war
A short clip of the late, great Anita O’Day.
Some go to Montaigne for them, some to Ben Franklin. Certainly Poor Richard’s “God helps them that helps themselves” fits a philosophy that is libertarian economically but hawkish internationally. Ron Paul seems not to understand that Franklin’s observation is hardly an argument for isolationism, though it is for libertarian economics.
Of course, not all recognize the richness of the axioms of country music but Fred Thompson won my heart if not yet my vote when I read Liz Garrigan’s piece:
Shortly after I wrote in 2000 that Thompson bears a striking resemblance to the Klingon “Star Trek” character Worf — high forehead, wide nose and a hairline that exposes a bald top (Google it) — a package from the then-unmarried senator arrived in the mail. It was a picture of Worf that Thompson had signed with this message: “In the immortal words of Sawyer Brown, some girls don’t like boys like me. Ah, but some girls do.”
Two great old versions of one great old song. Check it out:
People knew how to sing in those days.
And they knew a thing or to about coiffure, both sexes.
(I can’t get the embed thing to work, but that won’t stop me.)