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September 9 2004
Phil Collins In The Air Tonight Origin Solved?
The myth (or urban legend, if you will) surrounding Phil Collins' haunting "In The Air Tonight" has been circulating since the song was released on his Face Value album in 1981. Here's the part of the song that started the rumor mills:Well, if you told me you were drowning,
I would not lend a hand.
I've seen your face before, my friend,
But I don't know if you know who I am.
Well, I was there and I saw what you did,
Saw it with my own two eyes.
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been.
It's all been a pack of lies.According to the myth, Collins watched a close friend drown from a nearby cliff, too far away to help, while a man standing nearer to the drowning man stood idly by. Collins then supposedly wrote the song, gave the man a front-row ticket to the show where the song was premiered, then sang the song as the spotlight illuminated the man.
The supposed results of Collins' musical revelation vary: the invited stranger is humiliated (sometimes leading to a divorce or job loss), commits suicide or is arrested by waiting policemen. In another telling, Collins never learns the man's identity and sings the song at every concert as an anonymous accusation. There are as many variations of the tale as there are people to spread it--including infamous rapper Eminem, who included the myth in the lyrics of "Stan" on his Marshal Mathers album released this year:
So this is my cassette I'm sending you. I hope you hear it.
I'm in the car right now. I'm doing 90 on the freeway.
Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka, ya dare me to drive?
You know that song by Phil Collins from "In the Air Tonight"?
About that guy who could have saved that other guy from drowning?
But didn't? Then Phil saw it all, then at his show he found him?
That's kinda how this is. You could have rescued me from drowning.
Now it's too late. I'm on a thousand downers now, I'm drowsy.Just like Eminem (who obviously did not drown, contrary to the above lyrics), Collins was using a metaphor. Collins has repeatedly explained the lyrics to "In The Air Tonight" are not based on any real-life event.
The truth, according to Collins, is that "In the Air Tonight"--like most of the songs on his "Face Value" album--deals with his bitterness and frustration over the end of his marriage to his first wife, Andrea.
The hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you or me.So the mythical event you refer to is nothing more than another case of song lyrics being interpreted too literally.
What Ever Happened to the Name Pontius?
Did you ever meet a kid with the name, or Ponty? Anybody here go to Pontius Pilate Junior High School? Any of you ever drive on the Pontius P. Pilate Parkway? No?
I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Like Judas—whom we’ll meet next week—Pontius
Pilate hasn’t been regarded very generously down through the years.
But You see, you didn’t get to be governor of a Roman province because you were entirely bad or clueless. Pilate appears to have been gifted enough to impress the Emperor Tiberius. He appointed Pilate to be head over of the province of Judea in the 26 A.D. Now, I grant you, it wasn’t the best job in the Roman Empire.
The ancient historians, Philo and Josephus, had nary a good word to say about the man.
Maybe you’ve noticed that the Apostles’ Creed seems to hold him almost solely responsible for the suffering of Jesus. Even Hollywood always portrays him as someone with a bad haircut and a weak chin.
That’s puzzling, in a way. You see, you didn’t get to be governor of a Roman province because you were entirely bad or clueless. Pilate appears to have been gifted enough to impress the Emperor Tiberius. He appointed Pilate to be head over of the province of Judea in the 26 A.D. Now, I grant you, it wasn’t the best job in the Roman Empire.
It was a little like being mayor of Newark, New Jersey, or of Oakland, California. The upside was that you certainly had a lot of power and resources at your disposal. Pilate held the equivalent of an ATM card to the Jerusalem Temple Treasury and had the authority to appoint its High Priest. Caiaphas not only owed his job to Pilate, but the priest’s very vestments were in the governor’s custody and released for Caiaphas’ use only at the governor’s pleasure.
In addition, Pilate commanded a force of about 120 cavalry and some 4000 infantrymen—the equivalent of police cars and officers—commissioned to keep peace in the province.
The downside was that Pilate needed every one of them. Crime and rebellion in the province of Judea was the subject of parlor jokes back in Rome, but the problems there were no laughing matter. Unrest meant an unstable economy and that meant lower tax revenues and that meant that Caesar wasn’t happy. Pilate knew what happened to procurators with whom Caesar wasn’t happy.
And he didn’t aim to be one of them. As he walked through the revolving door of the governor’s mansion—the fifth occupant in a short season—Pilate had to be determined to earn a reputation in Rome as Mr. Clean.
http://www.cc-ob.org/sermons/1998/0398e.htm
Here’s the Answer for a Weak Chin!
by Curtis Shelburne
A GENTLEMAN by the name of Maynard Good Stoddard wrote an article recently for The Saturday Evening Post which my younger brother, for some reason, sent my way. It is entitled, “To Beard or Not To Beard.”
Mr. Stoddard says that one day he finally figured out why he had been pushed around, especially at home, for many years. It was, he says, because his chin lacked authority. Not, he writes, that he wants one of those “Jay Leno jobs,” but that he definitely needs something at least a bit more along that very distinctive line. It evidently occurred to him that, though chin augmentation through plastic surgery might be pricily prohibitive, whiskers are more or less free and do indeed change the character of a chin (or maybe the chin of a character?). A research project on beards was begun.
First, he polled his wife. She’d rather “embrace a camel’s hair pillow than a face full of whiskers,” a feeling evidently shared by a Mrs. Abner Billings (now a former Mrs. Billings) whose husband divorced her because she kept spraying his beard down with disinfectant and getting it in his eyes. The divorce court judge suggested “mowing the hay,” but Mr. Billings countered that the beard was, in general, more of a comfort to him than was Mrs. Billings.
According to Stoddard, “Beards have been causing domestic wars ever since wives discovered that whiskers could be mowed, shaven, or set on fire.”
More of Stoddard’s research.
It was none other than Alexander the Great who first “shot down the beard,” ordering his soldiers to shave lest their manly chins provide the enemy with convenient handholds.
It seems that Louis VIII of France started a war with England that lasted 300 years by shaving his beard, a trimming that his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, dear lady, objected to. After their divorce, she married Henry II of England who had a beard he could “tuck into his belt on windy days.”
During the reign of Henry I, Serle, the bishop, termed the bearded gents of the Norman English court “filthy goats and bristly Saracens.”
According to Mr. Stoddard’s research, Peter the Great levied a tax (“a sirtax”?) on Russian beards. King Charles swept the points of his moustache upward and sported a beard shaped like downward flame. Edward II’s beard was curled into three ringlets. Edward III’s was long and patriarchal. Henry VIII’s was knotted. The Roman Emperor Hadrian grew one to cover his warts.
Beards. I’m pretty sure that God, unlike most wives, is neutral on the subject. What comes out of our hearts is far more important to him than what graces or disgraces, as the case may be, our chins.
The Weak Chin Story
A weak chin is usually the result of an underdeveloped lower jaw (mandible), which also causes problems with how the teeth come together (overbite). This is best corrected by a combination of orthodontics and surgical advancement of the mandible (orthognathic surgery). In patients with a normal dental relationship, the chin can be
enhanced by surgery known as mentoplasty. An artificial chin prosthesis (implant) can be placed in front of the bone to make the chin more prominent, or the bone of the chin can actually be cut
and fixated in a more forward position, using wires or screws. An overly prominent chin can be corrected by the same method, except that the bone is moved backward. The procedure of cutting the bone of the chin is called a genioplasty.
http://www.scofsg.com/lipo_chin.htm
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