It’s the mullet-infused, funny-to-silly country music videos of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Joe Diffie was hot as a café griddle, that I remember most.

I was never a threat to buy a Joe Diffie CD. But gosh, it hurt me to hear he had passed away Sunday at 61 from coronavirus complications.

And as a DW co-founder with no working knowledge of Joe Diffie said, he had a great country music name.

For my tastes, if Willie Mays/Mickey Mantle = baseball and Dick Butkus/Ray Nitschke = linebacker, Joe Diffie = solid second teamer in a particular system. But that’s just my opinion, and what a career he had, one that, if you’d wanted to be a country music star, you’d have killed for (it’s a metaphor!) if, like Diffie, you were bankrupt, the father of two, and divorced in your late 20s, pre-Nashville.

He was a Grammy winner, charted 17 tunes (Top 10ers) on Billboard’s Hot Country songs chart, and had five Number 1s. You can’t have a No. 2 attitude about that. Numbers speak for themselves.

Plus he co-wrote a bunch of songs, and we at DW always give extra credit for the writing part.

Speaking of, DW just now read a headline that songwriter/performer John Prine, 73, has been hospitalized in critical condition with coronavirus symptoms. I hope I am not writing a Top 10 Prine Tunes anytime soon. (Somebody, make it stop…)

So, looking on the bright side, we remember the Top 10 Joe Diffie Songs (Sort of) According to Me, and we wish you the best. We’ve just got to stick together apart.

1. Is It Cold In Here, (Or Is It Just You) Reminds me of the made-up, mythical country song I hope to write someday: “If you want to keep the beer cold, just put it next to my ex-girlfriend’s heart.”
2. Home, his first single and first No. 1, in 1990
3. Pickup Man, an ode to pickup trucks
4. If The Devil Danced In Empty Pockets, (He’d Have A Ball In Mine), because this is my life in a nutshell.
5. 3^rd Rock From The Sun (Now, if any of these other songs listed below came on the radio I would change the channel, but for argument’s sake and for true Diffie fans, the rest of the Top 10.)
6. John Deere Green
7. New Way To Light Up An Old Flame
8. Ships That Don’t Come In
9. Honky Tonk Attitude
10. Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox When I Die

(I hope they won’t actually do that. Again, I’m thinking metaphor…)

-30-

By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

Thoughts and scenes from another day in Stay-At-Home Paradise (except for the hour that I didn’t):

** There’s no way I’m retiring any time soon. Building my day around watching the “Price Is Right” is not my idea of the golden years.

** I got up and did my daily self-obligation — hunting for toilet paper. It’s become the highlight of my day, no matter what the result. Sure, I’ve have kind souls offer to help a brother out, but in some sadistic way, I wanted to see how many times I came up empty at the store before stark reality hit home. I’ve been averaging three stores a day and getting a goose egg every time. As I went to a local grocery store Wednesday to take advantage of my five percent Geezer discount, I saw a guy coming from the paper goods aisle with TP in his buggy. There’s toilet paper in the house! So as I made the corner — keeping my six feet of distance, of course — there was literally one four-pack left. I thought I was literally going to get the last package in the store — which was going to be a great story — but then I saw an elderly woman approaching from the other direction. Both of us quickly calculated the situation and though she was a little bit closer, she took no chances. She had that same walk that kids get by a swimming pool when the lifeguard screams “No running!”  My superior athletic ability could have won out (she was 75 if she was a day), but I accepted the fact that I was 1.5 seconds late. And let me tell you, she was proud. I put my empty buggy to the side and left empty-handed. Proving that the stars always align in situations like this, the next store I visited had the motherlode of TP. I did not leave empty handed, though not quite as proud.

** My cats have no idea what to do with me. They are completely bumfuzzled as to why I’m at home all the time. They’ve taken aloofness to a new level.

** Speaking of cats, I am now on the “Tiger King” train. Too many people touted it to me so I broke down and began watching on Netflix. I’m two episodes into it, but I’m already feeling better and better about the occupational choices I’ve made in my adult life. I’m not a binge watcher; I need a little down time to re-energize before another episode. But I can see that this is going to keep getting better.

** Speaking of Netflix, I’ve previously gone months and never even watched a second. Every once in a while, something would catch my eye, but they’ve been making a killing off me for the last few years. However, I am starting to recoup some of that $12.99/month that’s been building up.

** Speaking of the internet, can y’all imagine what this whole sordid situation would be like if we didn’t have it? I might actually have to read a book.

** Speaking of reading, I have at least 40 Sports Illustrateds that I have never read at my house. I actually have some from when it was a weekly; they’ve changed formats twice since then. I finished an article today from 2018 about how the Washington Nationals are never going to win anything because the organization doesn’t know what it’s doing. How’d that work out last year in the World Series?

Looking forward to cleaning out the gutters tomorrow!