You Sure That's Bob Dylan?

Although it was something of a haul to the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden yesterday, we had a great time once we got there: Katie Crutchfield and her band (Waxahtachee) killed it and Sheryl Crow put on quite a show-- Crow is 63 years old and she can still really sing . . . and she's in great shape!-- the only song I felt she couldn't quite pull off is my favorite Crow song-- "Leaving Las Vegas"-- and maybe that's because the recording is perfect-- anyway, then the lights dimmed and Bob Dylan took the stage . . . and we literally could not find him . . . he was hiding behind a grand piano, surrounded by a halo of bright lights directed away from him and pointed at the audience, so you literally couldn't look in his direction-- he was like the unplayed guitar with the price tag on it in Spinal Tap . . . don't even look at it! . . . at the start of his set, he sounded like an ancient bluesman, growling indecipherable lyrics while his band played improvisational twelve bar compositions-- then he played a gritty version of "All Along the Watchtower" and a bunch of jazzy stuff, weird and chaotic, but his band was great-- and, finally, Willie Nelson took the stage . . . people really love Willie Nelson (my mom was quite emotional because he was one of my dad's favorites) and Nelson opened with "Whiskey River" and he played all the old favorites-- "On the Road Again" and "You Were Always on My Mind" and he also covered a Mac Davis song that was perfectly appropriate: "Lord It's Hard to Be Humble, When You're Perfect in Every Way" and Nelson finished up with "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die"-- and while Nelson sat on a stool the entire show and occasionally received back-up vocals and guitar help from Waylon Payne-- Willie still played all his own fills and plenty of instrumentals on his classical nylon stringed Martin guitar, Trigger-- and he can still play that thing-- very inspirational to see a 92-year-old up there doing his thing and doing it well . . . I hope he keeps it up until he hits the century mark.

Even More Revision of the Eternally Entertaining Willie Nelson Joke

My wife and I are taking my mom to see Willie Nelson tonight-- yes, he is still alive! he is 92 years young-- and if you combine his age with his opening act, Bob Dylan, then you've got 176 years of gritty and nasal vocal expertise . . . Catherine and I are more excited for the artists going on a bit earlier-- Sheryl Crow and Waxahatchee-- but I was also excited to tell the infamous "Willie Nelson joke"-- which I told several times today (what's the last thing you want to hear when you're giving Willie Nelson a blow-job? that's not Willie Nelson!) but I think there might be a better, more cerebral punch-line . . . "are you sure that's Willie Nelson?"

Confusing Possibly Drug Addled Mindfuckery

Seth Harp, in his book The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, mentions four Army wives who were murdered in 2002 by their husbands in Fayetteville and how these deaths were first attributed to the drug Lariam (or mefloquine) because all the soldiers took this anti-malarial medicine while in Afghanistan and the possible side-effects of the medicine are hallucinations, psychosis, aggression, anxiety, and paranoia but Seth Harp believes that this attribution to Lariam is a cover-up and that these soldiers were experiencing PTSD and they were also doing all kinds of other (illegal) drugs such as cocaine, meth, molly and bath salts . . . but to make this more confusing, Lariam was pronounced very dangerous by the FDA in 2013-- the issued a "Black Box" warning and notified users that they could experience permanent neurological damage, suicidal thoughts and psychosis from the drug-- and to make this even MORE confusing, your narrator himself might be compromised and unable to write this sentence-- because my wife and I took Lariam in 1999 when we went to the Cuyabeno jungle basin in Ecuador-- a well-meaning doctor in Metuchen prescribed it to us and once we started taking it, we experienced paranoia, technicolor dreams of giant spiders, and lots of anxiety-- but when stopped taking it, at the advice of some Germans out in the jungle with us-- when I asked them what they were taking for malaria, they said, "vee take nothink"-- so once we stopped taking the pills, these chaotic feelings subsided and we had a much better time (except when my wife went to the outhouse, put her flashlight down, sat to pee, and something shot out of the darkness and attached itself to her chest-- she shrieked, flung the creature, and ran out of the outhouse with her pants at her ankles-- and  upon inspection, we found that a giant tree frog, maybe a foot long, had suction cupped itself to her shirt . . . good times) and so now I don't know what to think about this drug and the murders but I still believe it fucked us up mentally and possibly could have done the same to these soldiers.

Malcolm Fucking Gladwell

There's nothing like the ephemeral and fleeting promise of a Malcolm Gladwell book: at the start, you truly believe when you are finished, you will understand how the world works; twenty-five years ago The Tipping Point explained how ideas moved through the society with mavens, connectors, and salesmen-- and how these people operated within the boundaries of The Law of the Few, The Law of Context, and The Stickiness Factor-- good fun and while in retrospect, these ideas only explain a few specific anecdotal incidents, reading Gladwell is still a blast-- you just have to take things with a grain of salt, check his facts, and try to apply his broad theory to some other events to see if it's true-- his new one, Revenge of the Tipping Point, is equally compelling-- Gladwell is an excellent and concise story-teller . . . this time he's explaining how epidemics happen-- how superspreaders can enlarge small area variation and how media events can change the narrative, or "overstory" as he calls it-- and while you might sometimes forget how this is all supposed to hang together, he weaves wonderful narratives about a rash of L.A. bank robberies, COVID, the opioid crisis, the Magic Third, racial redlining, Harvard admissions and obscure sports, and TV events about the Holocaust and gay marriage and they all add up to some idea about something profound which may or may not apply to the rest of the overstories of our time and culture.

Busy Half Day (Off)

Grueling day: online traffic court with my son Ian for his hydroplaning incident-- the case was adjourned because he still has a probationary license . . . he never updated it and to plead down a ticket, you need ot have a full license-- so back to the DMV before we can do Zoom Court all over again; then we went and picked up Ian's new (used) car in East Brunswick-- a 2012 Honda Accord that seems to house no roaches or spiders; then over to New Brunswick to pick up Alex-- it's a zoo over there right now because of all the returning students-- and then a sushi lunch with the boys at Pi's in Highland Park and now it's time for a nap.

Lo & Behold! David Playeth Around the Pole!

In the Book of Acts, God instructs Ananias to meet Saul on "the street that is called Straight" in Damascus-- Mark Twain calls this the only joke in the Bible-- because Straight Street is a actually a winding road, so though it is called Straight, it is actually serpentine-- hysterical in the context of that book-- and sometimes, whence the street is not straight then you must wind how you may . . . such as when David smote the pickleball that was travelling very wide and thus David smoteth the ball around the net-pole and into the field of play, making David victorious both in the eyes of God and the eyes of men.

Car Shopping with Ian, Carmine, One Roach, and Several Spiders

We are currently car shopping for a piece-of-shit-that-baresly-accelerates for my son Ian-- who recently hydroplaned and consequently totaled my wife's lovely and quite nimble Mazda CX-5-- and so we've been looking at reliable cars in the 4K range, which seem to be 2007 and 2008 Honda Accords-- yesterday we went to Keyport, to a little auto dealer on the side of Route 35-- near the strip bars-- and test drove a 2008 Accord . . . and aside from the roach on the ceiling (which Ian brushed onto my head, causing me to leap out of the car) and the spiders in the trunk (and the cracked shift box case and the floppy sun visor) the car was in decent shape-- and Ian, Carmine, and I took it on a test drive-- Carmine is the son of Mel (as is Mel Jr.) and a sister is working there as well-- I didn't catch her name-- but it's a family affair, and they're all working in an office half the size of my living room (and I don't have a big living room) and so on our test drive Carmine asked if we could run an errand? and I said "sure!" and we headed over to Mavis Tires (which involved a convoluted sequence of turns and a U-turn) and the Carmine said-- in his Long Island accent-- "If I'm gone for more than a minute, you can drive away" and I told him "no rush, I'm not planning on stealing this car" then he proceeded to have a spirited convo with a Mavis employee in the parking lot about the price of some tire sensors and then he got back in and he said, "they try to whack ya for deez sensas . . . I can only buy wholesale but ya gotta I need them right now" and then we drove a bit more and we couldn't get the radio to work and Carmine promised he would get the radio to work-- he said he's "put it in writing" and then we got down to brass tacks with his dad, Mel, about the price-- Mel Sr. had certainly smoked cigarettes for five or six decades (he had a pack of Marlboro Reds on his desk) and he had the voice to prove it-- and Mel said Carmine was nuts, that he couldn't fix that radio but maybe the mechanic could on Monday and then Mel proceeded to Google some of the broken parts on eBay and show us how cheap they were-- a new plastic gearbox cover for 18 dollars, a working sun visor for 12 bucks, and he even showed us some options for replacing the stereo and then he started telling us the story about how he got a ticket and got the charge reduced in traffic court but they STILL put points on his license-- they fucked him and then his car insurance fucked him over-- and then the sister was telling us about a traffic ticket she got and then they were talking about Carmine's ticket and I managed to bring the negotiation to an end and told them we'd call on Monday and see if they got the stereo working and go from there . . . car shopping is a grueling experience.

Y'all Ready For This? Probably Not

My new episode of We Defy Augury, "Y'all Ready For This?" is (loosely) inspired by S.A. Cosby's Southern noir novel The King of Ashes and Tana French's wild tale of undercover infiltration The Likeness-- I explore the idea that reading (and perhaps acting, according to Val Kilmer) might train your mind-- in the comfort of your own home-- to tackle life's most wild and weird and disturbing situations . . .particularly 1

1) going undercover and assuming someone else's identity;

2) violent warfare to protect one's family.

Teamwork and Lots of Experience

I made it to 6:30 AM basketball this morning, despite a hip flexor strain- and I shot fairly well from VERY deep but couldn't make space to take any reasonable shots-- but the most exciting moment was when Frank Noppenberger-- the venerable AD from many years ago-- and I combined to rebound a ball under the basket . . . that rebound was gathered by a combined 126 years of decaying athleticism.

Giving Zero Fucks, In a Good Way (Educationally)

Today was my thirty-first "first day of school" as a teacher-- I told them the rules, summarized the course sequence, learned some names, and did a fun icebreaker activity . . . and I am pleased to announce that I've reached the stage in my career where I had exactly zero first-day jitters, nervousness, or anxiety.

The Canadian Allman Brothers?

If you love the Allman Brothers but you've worn out the grooves on their oeuvre, then you could give "Dickie Betts" by the Dean Ween Group a listen-- no surprise that those guys did an Allman Brothers Tribute . . . or-- more surprisingly-- you could listen to "Making Memories" by Rush . . . I've been going through their discology lately and the tone and sound of this track kind of shocked me (in a good way).

Talking Turkey

On the drive home from my mother's house in Monroe yesterday evening, we saw a bunch of wild turkeys crossing the road and the rest of the car ride home, my wife educated me on the many names for groups of turkeys and the names for various age classifications of turkeys . . . this shit is fucking absurd: baby turkeys are called "poults" . . . which maybe has something to do with poultry? . . . and juvenile male and female turkeys are called, respectively: "jakes" and "jennies" . . . and adult male turkeys are called "toms" or "gobblers"-- and then there are a shitload of names for a group of turkeys-- a group of young males is called a "gang" or a "posse" or a "mob" . . . and if it's just a random flock of turkeys, it could be a "gobble" of turkeys or a "rafter" of turkeys or a "brood" of turkeys . . . and I'm certainly skipping a few terms, like "longbeard' and "bearded hen" but it's all a bit overwhelming-- this is ONE kind of bird!-- but I know the turkey is a very important American bird, consumed with great zeal and relish on Thanksgiving and famously preferred over the bald eagle as a national bird by Ben Franklin-- Franklin thought the turkey was a respectable bird of Courage . . . after my wife explained all these various terms-- which I immediately forgot-- she found some other internet compendium of names for groups of every kind of bird . . . I don't know who uses these terms or when, but this list is way beyond "a murder of crows" . . . the only two I can still recall is a "charm" of finches . . . and that is a good one to remember because the goldfinch is the New Jersey state bird, and-- for obvious reasons-- I am also partial to a "squadron of pelicans."

Preparing for Reentry . . . Time to Pedal Up the Hill

Time to reenter the working world . . . and I am also noticing that the big difference between biking here in Highland Park vs. biking at the beach is that around here we have hills . . . so you actually have to pedal, you can't just coast over to Happy Hour, have a few drinks and then coast home and go to sleep, without a care in the world . . . but I guess hills and work are a good thing? because they make you stronger? and feel purposeful? and when you reach the top of the hill-- or the end of a work day-- you feel fulfilled? . . . we shall see.