The Occasionally Worthwhile Ramblings of a Sometimes Outraged Mind

Just calling it like it should be…

Those of you who know me, read me, love tolerate me, know that I am not normally given to junk online language pimply hyperbole overly effusive praise. That’s because I don’t deal it out without reason.

But I just found an old friend, even if he doesn’t remember me. Tonight, I have reason to stay way up beyond my bedtime get effusive. After about nine years of waiting, the asshat union jerks got out of my way “powers that be” now allow 99.5 KLOS to stream online. And I am about to listen to Jim Ladd, the DJ who inspired my entire radio career, play me to sleep.

Pluck yew, “powers that be”. You might not “be” much longer.

For the first time, an event here at The House of Perpetual Remodel merits not a Beatles song title, but a dip into the Pink Floyd song title file. Why? As I type this, I’m actually listening to Rodrigo y Gabriella playing a Led Zeppelin song. (Trust me, it leads back to Pink Floyd.) At the same time, I have placed an order at Amazon, I’m keeping up on the DB blog and my newly renewed presence on MySpace, and I’m doing it all on the same computer at the same time!

Oh, sure, that may be unremarkable for many of you, but believe me, it is huge here. “Personal Computing” in the WriterDude household has been better described as “personal consternation” for the last six months or so, due to our 2002 Sony Vaio. Don’t misunderstand me, as that machine, in computer terms, has lasted longer than George Burns did. But do you remember George’s quote, “Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope”? The Vaio never quit, it soldiered bravely on for nearly six years but, toward the end of its run, a constipated cement mixer could perform faster.

So we bid a big ol’ honkin’ Welcome To The Machine, a sexy new (to us; it’s a re-furb) HP Compaq business job with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1GB of RAM (the Vaio had a 64th of that), an 80GB hard drive and no Vista — XP Pro, baby!

Not the most capable of machines out there, of course, but to us it represents an upgrade comparable to, say, the Renaissance. (Better, even, because these days that just means over-cooked turkey legs and $8 beers.) So once again this blog gives a shout out to The Computer Cases, Russell and Sherry Case, as they have delivered us from personal consternation. I encourage anyone local to take their PC needs to this fine establishment.

What about the Vaio, you ask? Well, there’s not much I can do with it in the “parting out” sense, and I know I can’t bring myself to just junk it. Not after six years of faithful service. I may just have to give it a decent burial with honors.

…yup, yesterday was certainly that!

The day began pretty normally, with me heading off to The Airport Job Part II (for hopefully the next to last Sunday I’ll have to work before the schedule shift I mentioned earlier). Had a good if slow day there. While I was at work, The Dude made his way from a friend’s home to the Vans Warped Tour’s stop in Denver, during which he made an accidental interesting discovery I’ll elaborate on in a bit. As I was leaving TAJPII, one of our cashiers… well, come to think, he set up the punchline for the day, so we’ll save that too. (Sorry, the quality of funny didn’t quite fall in chronological order, but go with me on this and I’ll make it work, ok?)

So it was off to the church where I’ll be resurrecting re-visiting my old talents as a sound engineer. Until such time as I get Sundays free, The Floor Guy — Lester’s brother, who’s also a skilled musician and electron pusher — has been working the gig. But last evening was the Fifth Sunday Community Sing, which was not a service/sermon but a rather elaborate and impressive Independence Day-themed music program put together by The Casino Queen, church music director and Lester’s mother. (As much of a mother-in-law as my mother-in-law is, she is by far the most talented pianist/organist I have ever encountered, and keep in mind that I once drank beer with Jonathan Cain. She should be recording with Uncle Bob, no joke.) (If that reference escapes you, click here.)

Anyway, I needed The Floor Guy to give me a run-through so that I could fill in for him, because his daughter-in-law had been so thoughtless as to — weeks ago — schedule her baby shower for last evening without first reading the mind of consulting with The Casino Queen. After it was established that her wish that the shower be rescheduled was colossally preposterous a perfectly qualified alternative — me, the guy who’s going to be doing the job Sunday mornings anyway — was available and willing, The Floor Guy was spared the gallows need to be two places at once.

So the program came off without a hitch, because I caught and corrected the two hitches that presented themselves before they could do their hitching, and I was roundly complimented on my work. Seems that the trouble-shooting we — The Floor Guy, The Earl of Music and I — did last month has not gone unnoticed, as one of the congregation told me it was the best sound he’d ever heard at any of their Fifth Sunday deals. (Note to sound engineers and board jockeys: if a music director asks you to determine why their monitors are constantly feeding back, check first to see if some bozo well-intentioned person has placed the monitors behind the performers.) After we corrected that and several other sound production heresies mistakes, the sound improved dramatically, which is really what generated the compliments — all I did last night was set some levels, punch a few buttons and hit my cues. Or in other words, I was a deejay again for an evening.

Then came time to gather up The Dude, whose day with the Warped Tour was over, and it was then that his accidental interesting discovery became evident. Picture this: his face was (is) sunburned from forehead down around his eyes, across the tops of his cheeks, and to the tip of his nose… where it ends. His lower face is not sunburned at all. He looks like he put on Catwoman’s mask, and it scorched him. After thinking about the physics of his activity, I realized that he spent roughly half of the day with his head tilted up toward the sun, and the other half with it tilted down with his chin pointing at his collarbone. Thus it is that The Dude has what I am calling “Headbanger’s Sunburn” and which, it occurs to me, is actually my discovery and therefore makes him merely my subject. Think I can get a medical journal article or a research grant out of it? Me either.

Which brings us back around to the punchline of the day, set up for me by our cashier as I left the lot. He was curious about the CD I had playing in The Big Bad 4×4 as he processed my ticket, so for his edification I cranked up Avenged Sevenfold’s “The Beast and the Harlot”. He, a guy in his early twenties, then expressed surprise that a guy my age likes his music — or any music — with that much crunch to it. To which I replied, “Man, I was a headbanger before your parents figured out that term doesn’t mean something sexual.”

Then I went straight to sound check. At a church. God is an iron.

…that I’ve never been more proud of the sentence I served time I spent in Fresno! The Bulldogs are winners of the College World Series!!

Not much more than a year ago, the Wells Fargo Theater opened in the newly expanded Colorado Convention Center. By all accounts it’s a really sweet room and I can now confirm this, as I entered it for the first time today. So far, acts as diverse as Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and even Neil Young — among others not coming to mind — have played there.

But for the rest of my life, this room, with a seating capacity of 5,000, will be the site of one of the best memories ever. Despite its size, it could not contain the pride and joy I felt this morning for the very first act I ever saw grace that stage.

For it was none other than my beautiful wife Lester, receiving her bachelor’s degree! Congratulations, babe — you have achieved something monumental. Despite my help.

I love you!

(To the rest of you, I’ll try to get pix or video or both up later.)

You are not alone. Here’s a sign of the times for you.

As has become the tradition here, if I title a post with a song lyric, it designates a special occasion. If I title it with a Beatles lyric, doubly so. If I title a post with a Beatles song title, triple that. Anyway, after licking a few wounds, I now have both good news and bad news to share:

The bad news is, I have been recovering from a fantastically depressing* development — unforeseen and unlikely disaster did strike; metaphorically speaking, I tripped like a future Jamaican bobsledder on my approach to the finish line, and the Secret Agent Man job offer was withdrawn. How bad, so sad — but I’m over it now. I’m convinced that it happened for a reason. You see, to my mind, predestination and freewill remain perpetually tied in the fourth quarter, but I can’t shake the feeling that fate stepped in and saved me from… I dunno, another how many years of working swing shifts and weekends keeping me away from my family, or maybe a slow descent into insanity that could all too easily happen to a card-carrying Libertarian trying to assimilate into a government agency. Whatever — it’s done; onward we go.

The (very) good news is that Scott The Parrothead and The Paisan, our two saviors managers at The Airport Job Part II were all too happy to have me stay (while of course expressing some comforting sympathy — they were genuinely cheering for me). As luck would have it (and I was certainly due for some), they were about to deliver move me from hell graveyard shift to day shift at the time I got the other offer and put in my notice. Thank Ned, I was able to un-resign in time for that to happen anyhow, and now I find that a few weeks of no longer living vampire hours a relatively normal schedule has been a bloody lifesaver rather therapeutic.

Even better, these guys are doing their best to get me on a Tue-Sat schedule, because I’ve landed a side gig as the sound engineer at our local church, which may or may not result in a final score in my mental theological football game mentioned earlier. But it will certainly result in some side income, which will be most welcome every time I stop to get raped buy gasoline. And of course, I look forward to being able to resume practicing our other family religion come September.

“Wait a minute,” you non-local types may be thinking, “aren’t church and football incompatible?” Ha ha — not in Broncos Country, baby. There isn’t a church in Colorado and possibly the entire time zone that schedules sermons to end any later than 10:30 on Sunday mornings. Most major religions try hard to get along with each other, and Christianity and the Broncos are no different.

So, to sum up — I tripped like Darice Bannock, but landed in a bobsled at the human end of the clock and with a side job using my older other talents to boot. Not too shabby.

(*Fantastically oxymoronic phrasing lifted from Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel in “Stranger Than Fiction”, a movie I recommend highly.)

One secret having to do with this development can now be shared: barring unforeseen and unlikely disaster between now and May 12th, I will be leaving professional purgatory The Airport Job Part II for The Airport Job Part III! This is a giant leap for WriterDude-kind.

The above jest is really intended only at the graveyard schedule I have endured for most of the last year, since leaving The Airport Job Part I. Though the opportunities I thought I saw at TAJPII didn’t quite exist materialize the way I thought they would, I’m actually pained at leaving a management team and crew that has just begun to hit their stride. Were this not such a huge spike in pay grand opportunity, I might actually reconsider.

Nah, not really. Because there is no way I could remain there and end up with a job title that actually uses the word “agent”. I’m gonna be an agent; how cool is that?

And what, you may ask, sort of agent am I going to be (other than a darn good one)? Well, it has been well documented elsewhere that it is not a good idea to bring one’s blog and one’s job too close in proximity.

So that information remains secret, man.

Everyone has a best friend, right? Even Dr. Gregory House, the totally misanthropic yet somehow likable diagnostic genius, has his Wilson. And his Wilson, it should be noted, has the advantage of not being a blood-stained volleyball. (If you have not seen both “House, M.D.” and “Cast Away”, please disregard the above references and just go with me on this.) (Thank you.)

In the area of best friends, I must confess to an embarrassment of wealth. I have five best friends, most of whom have either been written about or made appearances here, and some of whom have at long flippin’ last shown up on my radar again recently re-established contact.

To my delight, The Mominator called us up on the phone one recent evening. On others, I have been treated to conversations with The Canuck, who once made me feel like an honorary Canadian by introducing me to his son as “…the one American I know who actually knows hockey” (or something close to that). Today, I got to talk with Woody at length as well.

But to tell you the truth, I had more damn fun meeting up with Wyo Cowboy, linked to over there in the blogroll, last Saturday than I can currently describe. Or, more accurately, than I currently have time to describe, because the clock is crowding me. But this post (well, above this paragraph) has lived in the drafts folder for too long and I feel the need to get something up here today, the effects of blog neglect being what they are.

So I now owe you more on the Wyo meet-up, and musicals. In the meantime, I urge you to rent/buy/Netflix “Across the Universe” as a homework assignment, and I’ll try to figure out why I’m 0-for-2 on successfully directing Dave’s blog folks from out of town into the Denver Pavilions.

Anyone who is old enough to get that fossilized reference to a 70s/80s ad campaign, your Geezer Bus pass is now available at Window “A”. It’s over there, just past the “Group W” bench. And yes, there’s a donut there for you. Please tip your driver. (No, I’m not really old enough to remember Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”. Except for the three times I had to play it on the radio [possibly yours] on Thanksgiving Day instead of watching flies mate enjoying football in Detroit and Dallas.)

Anyway, this post is intended to let you know that I am: A) alive, and B) reasonably well.

I should also warn you — soon, I will let loose knowledge and newfound love of a thing I thought long dead. Should have been dead long ago. This thing is… odd to admit, but… I have discovered a new love for musicals. More to come.

Those were the highlights of my Thursday, in chronological order. Sprinkled throughout were several lowlights, such as navigating Colorado Boulevard into the Cherry Creek North area of Denver on too-little sleep and exchanging single digit salutes with the asshole who cut us off, as well as coming to the realization that I was trying too hard at putting Lester at ease. But I’m getting ahead of myself there…

A few weeks ago, Lester visited her ophthalmologist optometrist obstinate person eyeglasses lady, who told her that she saw scarring on the inside (!) of Lester’s right cornea. She then referred her to a cornea specialist/surgeon, telling Lester that the remedy could involve anything from switching to hard contact lenses to a cornea transplant.

To say that Lester was a bit anxious about this doctor’s findings would be like saying the constellation Orion is a bit outside our neighborhood.

So, I took Lester to her appointment with this guy, and was immediately made to rely upon my forgotten guerrilla traffic navigation techniques unused since my days plying Cherry Creek in an Odwalla truck, which ended in 1999 (my days working for Odwalla, not the truck or Cherry Creek).

Once we arrived at Omni Eye Specialists , we encountered what may have been the most efficient waiting room to ever have occurred in the medical profession — within which, in my estimation, these people are absolute rock stars! My God, do they know how to work their audience patients! Free coffee which is actually potable to a coffee snob like myself, and a radio playing Earth Wind & Fire’s “September”? Sheer ecstasy! A sistah who works there overhears me say to Lester, “You gotta love a waiting room with good soul and decent coffee,” replies with that incredibly cool “Uh-huh” that only black folks can do? Yay! — I think I scored bonus “white-boy” points! (The sistah’s mileage may vary.)

Lester, much as she loves good coffee and Earth Wind & Fire, was not enjoying herself as much as I. Seems it had something to do with the possibility of absolute strangers sticking scalpels into at least one of her eyes surgery.

Here’s where I get serious, and give heaps of praise to my wife. There was a time when I considered going into some field of medicine, which was cured by having formerly lived with a nurse and having had to clean a few restrooms. I was able to establish that I could deal with the sight of my girlfriend holding a guy’s brain in his skull by applying pressure to the piece of his skull that had been shot away (having seen this right after dinner), but a whiff of a bedpan would guaranteed cost me that same dinner, hopefully not on someone’s shoes.

When it comes to nasty smells…I’m a wuss, folks. That’s it. That’s what kept me out of medicine as a practitioner. And it’s what makes me admire Lester as a patient. She can face this stuff as a patient. I’ve seen EMTs and paramedics carve corpses out of wrecks, and yet if I ever had to face more than that minor surgery for a plantar’s wart on my foot back in 2003, I’ll make noises that would register new heights in the “girlish” range.

Lester merely shed a few tears for fears, in the office of a doctor who maybe would have told her he’d have to cut into her eye to keep her vision. Instead, he told us that the most favorable and probable fix would be a switch in contact lenses.

And then, at the end of the appointment, this big burly guy who couldn’t even put a soft contact lens into his own eye without throwing up (that would be me, in case I have overused the pronouns), took Lester to enjoy the best reuben sandwich I have ever had. Too bad she ordered the Club, but she sent the last quarter of it to work with me (and that was damn good as well).

For my part, I keep remembering how Lester was a better mom/wife to me than I was a dad/husband to her that day. Mainly because she kept thanking me for going to this appointment with her, and how I kept telling her that I don’t deserve any bonus husband points for this — standard points only.

Well, maybe I’ll accept a few bonus points for not barfing on someone’s shoes.

…for the most innovative guitarist I have ever met. Jeff Healey has passed after a life-long battle with cancer that first claimed his eyes in infancy. Please keep in mind that I was also privileged enough to meet holy shit real guitar gods guys like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Walsh, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen and at least two or three others I cannot name now in my moment of grief.

Yet none of those guys ever did what Jeff Healey did — endure birth without his eyes, and then figure out how to play guitar like a chosen child of the Gods of Guitar. OVERHAND technique with left hand on the fretboard, as had seldom been done before. And those who had, had their sight. Jeff never knew any other way. He just felt his way around in the dark.

Hoist your glasses, friends. A grand guitarist of many genres, not just blues, has passed.

As I have written (and misspelled his name) here before, I consider Malcolm Fleschner to be the guy who has earned the mantle of The Next Great American Humor Columnist. Not just because he’s way better than I am at writing a timely piece sufficiently ahead of time, thus allowing for actual publication truly funny, but also because Art Buchwald died and Dave Barry semi retired from column writing and was last heard from blogging from an airplane stuck on the tarmac at MIA Malcolm is fighting the good fight to keep an American tradition alive.

This piece from Malcolm really struck a chord for me in two ways: first, it appears he sold it. Second and perhaps more importantly (to me, not Malcolm), he invokes Dennis Farina, a fine actor who is prominently featured in a movie I got from Amazon just today. Take note of who wrote the book.

Therefore, I am shamelessly plugging re-printing (okay, maybe “re-pixelating”?) Malcolm’s next-to-last missive, because I cannot understand why, A) Newspapers are actively killing off their own young and, B) Malcolm hasn’t updated his site since last Feb-roo-ary. Which means that, for now, if you want to get any more Malcolmy-goodness beyond what I’m about to cut and paste below, you have to go to Malcolm’s site (linked to above — c’mon, even my kids aren’t that lazy!) and subscribe to his email list. It’s worth the effort, and will brighten up the task of cleaning up your inbox by giving you something actually worthwhile to read amongst the penis enlargement and replica Rolex spams you currently endure. Or is that just me?

Either way, enjoy:

February 15, 2008 CULTURE SHLOCK
By Malcolm Fleschner

LET’S TAKE THE LEAP DAY

February is, I admit, not my favorite time of year. My distaste has nothing to do with the lousy weather, the perennial hand-wringing over what to get my wife for Valentine’s Day or even that we begin the month by entrusting our hopes for the onset of spring to the prognosticating powers of a near-sighted rodent. In fact, my beef is not even with the month itself – it’s with my fellow Americans, who annoy me no end with their seeming inability to correctly pronounce the word “February.”

Every year at this time a range of professional public speakers, whether actors, media commentators, radio announcers or even as fastidious an observer of the rules of elocution as President Bush, blithely refer to the second month of the year as “Feb-yoo-ary” rather than the preferred pronunciation of “Feb-roo-ary.” “There is an ‘r’ there,” I want to shout at the TV. “It’s right after the ‘b,’ I swear! Look for yourself!”

As you’re no doubt aware, 2008 is a leap year, meaning that we linguistic sticklers must put up with one extra day of “Feb-yoo-ary.” Actually, the so-called “leap day” is by far the best thing February has to offer. It’s as if every four years the universe, after getting fed up with all the whining about how there just isn’t enough time to get everything done, finally breaks down and says, “OK, here’s another 24 hours. Will that shut you up already?”

The sad thing is that, when handed this gift of time, we do so little with it. As usual, Americans will probably treat this February 29th like any other day of the week (except for Dennis Farina fans, that is, who will no doubt celebrate the actor’s 64th birthday in uproarious fashion).

Well, I think it’s time we make a bigger deal out of February 29th. Back in 1989, advice columnist Ann Landers suggested that April 2nd be declared “Reconciliation Day,” – a date for people to reach out and mend fences with friends and loved ones who, for whatever reason, had become estranged over the years. I think this is a terrific idea. Not Reconciliation Day – I have far too many simmering grudges I’m not even close to letting go of to support that (you know what you did, Great-Aunt Agnes!). No, the terrific idea here is for a self-important newspaper columnist to boldly suggest a new national holiday.

The question then becomes how those of us who aren’t huge Dennis Farina fans should celebrate this special day. As far as existing traditions go, there’s not much. According to folklore, February 29th has long been known as a day when single women can break convention and propose marriage to men. Historians date this tradition to 1288 when the Scottish Parliament reportedly passed just such a law during the rule of Queen Margaret who, the historians point out, happened to be unattached at the time and growing a little impatient with the Duke of Edinburgh’s foot dragging.

While that’s not much to hang a holiday on, I do like the idea of celebrating by engaging in some sort of role reversal or “opposite” behavior. Note that this is not the same “opposite day” enjoyed by generations of older brothers, who “celebrate” by asking whether younger brothers would like to get punched in the arm and, upon receiving a “no” answer, say, “Today’s opposite day, so ‘no’ means ‘yes,’” and then proceed to whale away. Younger brothers’ efforts to wise up to these mind games rarely succeed:

Older Brother: “Do you want to get punched in the arm?”
Younger Brother: “Um, is it opposite day?”
Older Brother: “No.”
Younger Brother: “OK, no, I don’t want to get – wait, did you say ‘no’ because it isn’t opposite day, or because it really is opposite day and the real answer is ‘yes?’ Because if that’s the case, then yes, I do want to get punched.”
Older Brother: “OK” (starts punching).

Instead, my idea for an “opposite day” is to announce that on February 29th, all the people who typically get a day off for every nickel-ante federal holiday would have to go to work while everyone else stays home. You know the holidays I’m talking about – Presidents Day, Columbus Day, Flag Day, Arbor Day, Don’t Take Your Daughter To Work Day, their own birthday, Honda Dealin’ Days – throw a dart at a calendar and you’ll likely hit a “holiday” when somebody’s kicking back with Oprah while the rest of us are wondering why the mail didn’t get delivered.

Well, I say that once every four years we non-federal employees deserve a phony-baloney holiday all our own. As an added bonus, we could even use this holiday to improve Americans’ pronunciation problems by encouraging celebrants to spend the 29th drinking beer and calling it, “Put the ‘brew’ back in ‘February’ Day.”

Email Malcolm Fleschner with your support for this holiday, or any other innovative excuse to take off work, at Malcolm@CultureShlock.com

Our most famous native son is back!

(Thanks to Siouxie, via DB)

That’s a really great line from an Eddie Izzard bit in his absolutely brilliant performance, “Dress to Kill”. Don’t worry, I’ll include a link to a really cool BBC thing that The Bird Man of Hemet sent by smoke signal email in here somewhere…

Anyway, “slapdash” definitely describes what I know this post will come to resemble. I have praises to lavish, and fears to share, and maybe some random crap in between. Let’s see where this jet-stream-of-consciousness takes us, shall we?

First off, the praises to lavish. First and foremost among those, the fair and beautiful Lester, for her efforts in tolerating supporting finding some way to live with totally propping me up during the Human Resources equivalent of the Bataan Death March slightly different process that is applying for work with a government agency. Yes, I was stopped at the door on first attempt. Felt like I was slammed out because my eyes were brown and my toenails weren’t properly trimmed, because I am SO qualified for this job. Hey, I can get contacts and a pedicure. I WANT THIS JOB, AND THIS IS NOT STUDIO 54 IN 1978!!!

Ahem. Sorry. Can’t get into details, as I have been advised that HR departments are using Google as an actual hiring tool these days, and Google knows where I live. But I can tell you that Lester reacted in typical fashion: she called up every neuron in her brain trust to help me achieve the perfect application. The COO at her company, a former professor whose class I helped her ace who has knowledge in this area… the list goes on. Suffice it to say that I married the perfect woman for me Lester was of at least some assistance with this matter, in the same sense that my right leg was of some assistance in helping me to remain vertical.

During the course of which, we found occasion to have a late lunch at the recently opened DiCicco’s on Tower Road. Holy cats, folks, if you ever get a chance, go to one of their locations either here in Colorado or in central California. Yeah, take a look and you can see that A) they are a chain and B) their website needs an update. But the fact that they have built a goddam opera house two-story piazza of a restaurant in this area means that they have arrived . Not only that, but they impressed Lester with their menu and their “gravy” marinara sauce! It also means that they spend more time on cooking than they do their website — a good thing from our point of view, but maybe making them a prime target possible future client of SuperSis.

Getting close to lastly, we have this bit of British BBC brilliance (sorry, I’m a sucker for alliteration), courtesy of The Bird Man of Hemet. Those of you in possession of three-digit I.Q.s will enjoy it. The rest of you will curse it. Call it Darwin’s Law of Blogging, if such be the case.

Last but certainly not least, my friend John The Brewer (with a 24 canner of PBR firmly in hand) has succeeded in opening this place: Brighton, Colorado’s first brewpub, Floodstage Ale Works. This is the place my brother-in-law, The Trucker, envisioned for Brighton at least 12 years ago. Alas, Platte Bottom Brewing Company was destined to be sabotaged by a partner’s ex-wife not to be.

Okay, there you go. Happy New Year!

Now, on to business. Isn’t that the way everyone’s new year goes? The holidays are suddenly, slammingly over, and the only thing you have to look forward to is your W2 form arriving before April 15th. Or is it just us, with that 12th anniversary and The Dude’s 17th birthday in between?

Actually, it’s not the way this one is going for us. 2008 may shape up to be a banner year for us. If only we could just decide how.

More to come. Meanwhile I shall attempt to drive you, my readers, off by describing my desktop to you. The Epson printer has been totally neglected by all of us served a largely ornamental function until it became my favorite temporary picture frame. That’s where the best damn picture Grampa Sailor has taken since that one of me at the intersection of Clay and Steiner streets in San Francisco maybe ever, has lived since he was fleetingly here the two days after Christmas.

My granddaughter has her mother’s eyes.

I actually began this post sometime ago, and it has lived in the drafts folder for too long under the title “Holy Cats — I’m a WHAT??“. But it has taken this long to sort through a lot of emotional stuff.

So Grampa Sailor calls not too long ago. Why he didn’t ask me if I was sitting down, I dunno. But I should have been.

The Golden Girl is my beautiful 22-year-old daughter and is so nicknamed for the fact that she resides lives in California, not for any resemblance to any of the ladies from the sitcom. Much to my regret, we’ve been out of touch. I mentioned her in the post/page that this blog was born with in August of 2005, and the knowledge of many phone calls I should have made but did not now makes me want to strangle myself repeatedly yet we have not been very communicative of late. Sadly, it’s much like a re-run of my relationship with Grampa Sailor from about 1978-1990. And Lester fears she has reprised the role of The Ice Princess, my former stepmother, but the fault lies with me.

However, The Golden Girl has been in touch with Grampa Sailor. When last we talked, The Golden Girl and I, she was going to school and more interested in staying home with a good book than going out and looking for a good time. This was comforting to me. It told me that she was much less like the dark side of my past more like the bookish guy I would have been had not my mutant stepfather fate intervened.

As may be. It seems that I have a granddaughter. She is now a few months old, and I can’t wait to see her. My dearest Christmas wish is that it happens sometime sooner than later.

There’s much I want to say to The Golden Girl, beginning with, “I’m sorry”. And ending with, “I love you”. I’ll keep most of the in-between private, except for this: Congratulations, and I know you’ll be a wonderful mother.

Congratulations — you’ve now become a band of thieves.

That is all.

My former career in radio (”wireless” to our British friends) still provides me with, if not some of what the French call carte blanc (and sure as hell no more free concert tickets), certainly a bit of insight into the state of affairs within. Even today, lo these ten-plus years since I got out.

Bruce Springsteen has once again absolutely nailed the pulse of the patient, and the BPM number isn’t good.

How my former industry fails to notice the irony is beyond me, but here we go again. In 1977, Rush scored their first major radio hit (or “add”, to use the industry term) with a song called “The Spirit of Radio”. It was a scathing indictment of a song, lambasting the state of radio even then:

(Please note that this performance comes from Rush’s 1989 concert video “A Show of Hands”.)

Then in 1980 or so, Queen — one of the greatest bands ever — released a song called “Radio Ga Ga”. At first, I hated it. There was no way that A) Radio was dying, and B) John Taylor was drumming a disco beat. But this performance turned my ignorant head around changed my mind:

Now we have “The Boss” (who reportedly hates that nickname but I use it here for emphasis), telling us that this is still true. AND that I made the right career choice. YouTube embedding code has been disabled at Bruce’s direction, so here’s your link. I’d ask you to tell me what you think, but you blurkers never comment anyway…. (yes, that’s a hint!)