Stupor Blow Funday

* I am very happy for my 85+ year-old uncle because back in the mists of time he was a steadfast Chicago Cardinals fan, but not as much as he is a White Sox fan. Chicago sports loyalties being what they are (in that generation especially) he never fully embraced the Bears when the Cardinals moved. In fact he used to say "I'm still a Cardinal fan, they just play their games in St. Louis." He is a throwback to the day in this town when if you were a Bears fan you were a Cubs fan, and if you were a Cardinals fan you were a White Sox fan. Nowadays that seems unreal to most people living here now, but it's true. So I'm sure he'll be rooting for the Cardinals, even if they are in Phoenix now.

* I have seen every quarter of every Super Bowl ever played. The more glitzy and acceptable to the general culture and media-centered the event has become the less I have liked it. I like football much better when, like barber shops used to be, it was a refuge for guys. I don't really care how that sounds. Football was better when it was only a guy thing.

* I don't care if you swept his stage and he was nice to you, Bruce Springsteen is the most over-rated music act in the world. He can't sing, his lyrics are forced and disingenuous and did I mention he sounds like a fat cat getting run over by grandma's rocking chair? I remember a bunch of us sitting around the lounge at Columbia Chicago when he was just showing up on the radio and us looking at one another in disbelief. One of the crew repeated the lyrics we'd been hearing over and over...

But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back you wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks. You said, Here's your mirror and your ball and jacks But they're not what I came for, and I'm sure you see that too I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free...

then she deadpanned it and said "if I write that people would say it's the stupidest collection of syllables ever strung together. This guy sings it, and not very well, and he's the next big thing. What record company guy is he blowing behind the bar and will he loan me his phone number too?"

Can't be said better.

* I haven't watched a half-time show. Ever. If you're looking for a lock to bet put your money on that streak continuing.

* I have two $20 squares, one each in separate games. One is 7-7 and the other is 7-0. I stand to win $200 each time the score ends with those numbers in the first three quarters, and $400 if those numbers finish the final score. Football scores are mostly calculated in 7's and 3's, so 7's and 0's tend to be prominent. I have never won a football square in my entire life. Not ever. With my luck the score will have little to do with 7's and 0's.

* I come from the era when if a guy scored a touchdown and pranced around the end zone like a thin-legged prima donna ballerina he'd be talking out his ear hole the next time he touched the ball. It is not true that "celebration is a cultural thing" given to our sports by black people. It is not in black culture to lord over people you have just fooled like a taunting weakling goofball who only scores once every ten years and has never been there before. Walter Payton used to hand the ball to a lineman to spike and go to the sidelines. His mantra? "Act like you've been here before." And he was black.

* In conclusion I suppose it can be said that what I yearn for are the days when football was a guy's refuge, people who taunted other people had their necks broken for being assholes, and the half time show was a marching band making designs (and not the Stanford Marching Band that was once reputed to have marched out a rising penis right there at midfield... I think that's an urban legend anyhow). But I guess I'll have to wait to move through a black hole so I can go back in time.

This Equals That

Do you ever think that you must have done something really bad to deserve or bring on all the bad stuff that's happening now? Anything along the lines of getting what you deserve because you must have done something, or some bunch of things, that set you up for some kind of justice later?

I think like that sometimes but I'm sure you could point to cases where really bad people have skirted through their kharma and come out just fine on the end. So maybe not. Yet it sure feels that way sometimes.

To deserve what happens around these parts every once in a while - mostly in a continuous low-level current that never seems to really ever shut off - I must have kidnapped a puppy and tortured it until it bled to death or something. Yet I know better. It doesn't work like that.

Or does it? It sure seems to me that just at the point MrsRW and I let out a great big sigh and said "ahhhh, now we have our time to ourselves, and we can start living surrounded by some of the rewards of an honest-lived life where we know we did the best we could and all the people coming up can start carrying the load by themselves" - our time without care and worry has shot out of a popped balloon, everybody needs bailing out and there are these loads strewn all over the street.

I've started to actually flinch at the sound of phones. Like a thick core of anxiety just opens up somewhere in the center of my body from my throat to my hips. It gets to the point sometimes where I dread talking to people because I know I'm going to get the rundown on all the shit going on. And yet again - if I didn't get something I'd probably wonder what I'm not being told... if only because I know about the shit part.

I don't know. I didn't kill any puppies ever in my life and I've been kind to strangers. I've helped people get jobs and gave out money I knew I'd never see again the minute it left my hand. You'd think once in a while I'd get a stretch of time where the I rested on the metaphorical sunlit uplands, for like a couple months in a row.

But I can't help thinking, I must have done something somewhere this is all evening up for. I just wish whatever it was was something that I enjoyed so much that this is all worth it. I just can't figure out for the life of me what that might have been...

Life As A Bachelor

Bachelor life sucks. MrsRW started her new job this past week and is gone three or four days at a time now for what I guess will be every week. It isn't as if we spend our evenings attached to each other all the time but it's nice to have another person in the house even if they're "over there somewhere."

I talk to myself. Aloud. And I repeat what I say with a different tonal nuance until I can say it perfectly. I do the cooking every day normally, but now it's stuff I can just grab out of the freezer and heat up - there being no one to cook for. I have that extra beer or drink that I normally don't. As you can perhaps tell my internet time is waaaaay down. I've begun planning an N scale model train set up (pictures to come) and have done a little uninterrupted writing.

So I guess there's good things and bad things, except now when there's a crisis in the family it comes to me first - if only because with the Mrs here I never bother to pick up the phone - and I'm not good at that. I tend to think whatever someone is telling me about I have to GO AND FIX IT. It's a Dad thing. I don't "get" the "just want to vent" stuff. You're telling me this because you want me to fix it, right?

Last night I got a call from my sister in Wisconsin to inform me that one of our cousins - who is just a year older than me - died Monday and nobody knows quite what of yet. They'll be doing an autopsy because he lived alone and somebody found him. A year older than me. Yikes.

Oh well tonight I get the rare privilege of watching the grand daughter for a couple of hours while her Mom, my oldest daughter, takes care of some stuff. This part is no problem. I think we'll color. Most exciting thing to happen all week.

I making frozen pizza for dinner. Heh...

If I Were A Senator

Senator RW: So between 2001 and 2004 you didn't pay your taxes from your salary while you were at the International Monetary Fund?

Timothy Geithner: That's correct Senator. I assumed they took care of that.

Senator RW: In 2001 and 2002 you prepared the taxes yourself, and in 2003 and 2004 you had a professional tax preparer do the work and both of you thought the IMF had taken care of the paid taxes?

Timothy Geithner: That's correct.

Senator RW: In 2001 or 2002 did you get a W2 form from the IMF stating what they paid into the tax?

Timothy Geithner: I... no I did not, I suppose.

Senator RW: In 2003 or 2004 did you hand over a W2 form from the IMF to your tax preparer when you presented him or her with your paperwork?

Timothy Geithner: Well... obviously not, but I take full responsibility...

Senator RW: Oh I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. But were you not aware that when an employer pays in your tax they give you a W2 form, ostensibly by the end of January, so you can correctly figure whether or not you owe taxes or are due a refund?

Timothy Geithner: I am aware that...

Senator RW: I mean, in order to get the figure as to the size of your refund you need a W2 form and the totals on there in order to make the calculation... I mean you can't possibly know what you do or do not owe unless you have an idea what your employer paid in on your behalf, right?

Timothy Geithner: Yes but self-employed... when you are considered self-employed it's your responsibility.

Senator RW: Yes a 1099. When you're self-employed the form is a 1099 that you're responsible for.

Timothy Geithner: That's correct.

Senator RW: Did you get a 1099 from the IMF instead of a W2?

Timothy Geithner: Um...

Senator RW: You know that would kind of be a tip off, there, you know. I mean if your employer hands you a 1099 then it's pretty obvious they didn't pay in any taxes right? I mean you know that, right?

Timothy Geithner: Well...

Senator RW: You did your taxes in 2001 and 2002 and so you would have been given a 1099 by the IMF and that would kind of be a hint they didn't pay any taxes for you, don't you think? And when you had a professional do your taxes you would have had to hand over a 1099 to him right?

Timothy Geithner: These were careless mistakes. They were avoidable mistakes. But they were unintentional.

Senator RW: And your tax preparer didn't ask you whether or not there was any paperwork regarding what taxes you did or didn't pay from your salary? He didn't ask you?

Timothy Geithner: It was... Senator it was a... a...

Senator RW: You're going to be in charge of Treasury but when you get a 1099 instead of a W2, and do the tax preparation yourself, and then when you have someone else do the taxes HE doesn't ask about a 1099 it's a little careless mistake?

Timothy Geithner: Senator as implausible as that might sound...

Senator RW: That's OK. That's OK. No. No no, that's alright. I understand. A mistake is a mistake, careless or otherwise.

Timothy Geithner: Yes sir.

Senator RW: And it turned out you owed over $30,000 in taxes from those years. Is that correct?

Timothy Geithner: That's correct... WHICH I have since paid. But, yes, I absolutely should have read it more carefully.

Senator RW: You paid that tax now?

Timothy Geithner: Yes sir.

Senator RW: Are you looking at any possibility of jail time for tax evasion?

Timothy Geithner: No, I did not and it was not evasion, Senator it was a careless mistake.

Senator RW: OK. Ok... well... I find that intensely interesting. Very interesting. Let me ask you, Mr. Geithner do you see how this could possibly be seen as a double standard? I mean the average guy... if the average guy misses his taxes for four years running he's probably going to have to be looking at jail time. Right?

Timothy Geithner: Well, I don't know that for a fact, actually.

Senator RW: No. No anything can happen. Sure. But do you think it's probably likely he's going to be charged with something?

Timothy Geithner: I'd say it could happen, yes.

Senator RW: It COULD happen.

Timothy Geithner: Yes. but senator I have apologized and admitted my mistake.

Senator RW: And that makes it all better then?

Timothy Geithner: I think under the circumstances....

Senator RW: Oh yes. The euphoric feeling of a new beginning in Washington. A new dawn. Change has come to politics.

Timothy Geithner: That's correct.

Senator RW: It's the dawning of the age of Aquarius, no doubt.

Timothy Geithner: Senator?

Senator RW: Harmony and understanding. Sympathy and hope abounding. No more falsehoods or derisions, golden living dreams of visions, mystic crystal revalation and all of that.

Timothy Geithner: I'm sorry Senator is that a question?

Senator RW: No no. No - it's a comment to a glib little yuppie dilettante who is going to get his spot on the cabinet no matter what.

Timothy Geithner: Sir that's not...

Senator RW: Doesn't matter if he knows what a 1099 or a W2 form is. Doesn't matter if he knows how tax forms actually work. He apologized so that's that. No problem. I have no problem with that. You're not getting my vote and you are an embarrassment to this new administration and don't have the class to withdraw yourself over this so what the hell. It's a new age. Mr. Chairman I release the rest of my time, this little runt is going to skate by so what the hell does it matter what I ask him? He's sorry. That makes everything alright then.

(turns off mic. and exits)

The Thing That's Great About America

...is a thing we automatically take for granted.

We have no concept of it otherwise. It isn't in anyone's memory. It's beyond anyone's comprehension. It would be as foreign and odd and weird and wrong as anything we've ever experienced. We've never seen it. No one here has experienced it in America.

And when you look at the world - I mean the whole world and all it's history - the fact we overlook it is even stranger, because in a lot of places in the world, through history, it isn't unusual at all.

I'm talking about power. I'm taking about men who don't know when to let go. I'm talking about when the election is over the loser arms his supporters and heads for the hills; bombs supply caravans, attempts to undermine the new government. We have no idea. No concept of it. In America one leaves, one enters, people shake hands, hug, wave, write their memoirs.

It's proof that America is a nation of ideas.

In other parts of the world power is relinquished only with violence, if it is relinquished at all. Guns join the debate regularly. It isn't over til it's over, and sometimes it's never over. We have no idea of that kind of thing.

Even when our opinions differ by universes of space, when we truly hate the person who beats us in the game - God help us for telling the truth and saying the word "hate" - or when we're sure the other guy has the wrong idea about everything. Even then, nobody in this country... nobody of any real value... heads for the hills and wages guerrilla war on the new government where people are killed and things blow up.

Despite all the politics, regardless of the differences of ideas, in the context of what happens in the REAL world - the world outside of America - this is what is the thing that's great about America. The people decide. The leader goes home. The pages of history turn. Nobody gets killed. No roads get blocked. No widows are made... all in the name of mere power.

And whether it's because we don't know our fair share of world history as students, or simply because it isn't in our personal experiences, the orderly transfer of power is the single greatest thing that differentiates and ennobles all this mess we call "democracy".

God... I love this country. I truly, truly love the United States of America.

I Always Knew There'd Eventually Be A Black President

...thing is I honestly always felt he or she would be a Republican. The reason I always believed that is because - even now - I know for a fact that no black candidate would ever get the support of the average white person if they were still under the sway of the Ethiopian Church of Victimology where the prevailing worldview is that the reason 70% of black homes are single parent, the reason black-on-black crime is at an all-time high, and the reason in some neighborhoods we say AX when we mean ASK is... wait for it... all because of white people. If you are a candidate who eternally uses white America as black America's excuse white America is not going to go in there and bust a chad by your name.

Which is exactly why, I think, voting for Obama was easy for a lot of people - he just isn't connected to the Sharpton/Jackson wing of the Democratic party.

In another way of looking at it, think about the black guy from Mississippi who was drafted, fought in Viet Nam, put his life on the line in the uniform of his country - then comes back home after an honorable discharge and has some fat redneck peckerwood tell him he "cain't vote hyar bwa." Yeah... I don't know one conservative who wouldn't want to deck that good old white boy. That kind of white not only doesn't represent me - it doesn't represent anybody I even know. And that's the difference here. The incoming President is for the USA, for what we can do in the future instead of all that bad old baggage of the past. That's all a lot of people were looking for; and though the historic nature of this can't be tossed to the side the only thing a candidate had to do to win is look like they belonged in the 21st century. And that's what Obama did. Do that, get out from under the old ways of thinking, and be for America and it wouldn't matter if you're green.

I came to this realization when I heard somebody interviewing some black woman on NPR who still can't get out of 1962 and isn't even remotely hopeful that race relations will ever change. I don't recall her name nor do I care to. That kind of intransigence - that kind of mindset - is what eventually becomes Gaza. We don't need it.

Yes Jim Crow existed, and the scenario of the returning black veteran denied the right to vote was a common (and despicable) thing back in the day. Yes there are bigots on the streets today. Yes there are white peckerwoods who think Obama is a Muslim operative from some al Qaida cell in Brooklyn or whatever the hell. There's no denying it. But I would venture to say that, percentage-wise, there's probably the same amount of per capita racist bigots amongst white, black, yellow, red and brown people. That this isn't the issue anymore is the effort to get to what is called the "post-racial era." I hear a lot of recidivists on all sides who decry the phrase or the idea of a "post-racial" America, unwilling or unable to move on and get busy with the future. Too comfortable with their cozy prejudices and mistrust. or maybe - in the cases of Sharpton, Jackson and Farrakhan - too worried their cottage industries of black victimology are going to take an income hit. Somehow I think the latter is more likely.

I don't think Barack Obama is the savior, or perfect, or the infallible image of Jesus Christ on roller skates. And when he does stuff I disagree with I'll say so. But at least he's intelligent enough to "get over it." He not busy being born is busy dieing. Where have I heard that before?

Life Goes On

The second installment of "Songs That Shouldn't Die" - for those who can remember this series through the fog that is your life and the insignificance of this effort - is from a band that started out scaring a lot of aging hippies, became the vanguard of punk before anybody knew what punk was, presaged the Seattle grunge scene by a decade, and are still touring decidedly NOT doing nostalgia shows. Captain Sensible, Dave, Stu, Pinch, and Monty Oxymoron.

I love the blurb from their web site...

The curtain fell quickly soon after the band took to the small stage at The Nashville club that night back in 1976, following an offensive burst of something that could hardly be described as popular music - intensely loud guitars, screeching vocals, thundering drums - all played at breathtaking speeds.

The audience, there that night to see the band Salt, clucked their approval at the group's dismissal. Who was this upstart band? Who did they think they were, trying to upset a music scene that nightly recognised Elton John and Eric Clapton as being the top of the pops? Good riddance.

And then, from behind the curtain, came the band's bass drum ... launched into the deserving crowd of decaying hippies, overturning their tables and smashing their greasy pints of beer. An uproar ensued.

And the legend of The Damned was born.

Which leads me to the song called "Life Goes On." It will sound familiar to you, somehow. They were doing this when Kurt Cobain was in grade school... listen...

YOU HAVE TO GO THERE BECAUSE THEY'VE DISABLED THE EMBED

Anyhow welcome once again to my iPod. This song should NOT be allowed to die!

Anybody Know This Guy...er... Guys...?

You're More Interesting Than You Think

When I was 19 I was in a traveling stage show that did children's theatre. Three shows a day, five days a week. There were different casts based out of Chicago and our group had the Sunny South. We went through the whole old confederacy from Texas to Virginia and were on the road for six months, changing towns sometimes every day, going into little schools that looked at "people from Chicago" as superstars, and little first and second graders asked for autographs. That end of it was cute / but the other end of it was four young guys getting wasted every other night and making more money than was good for us (I sent it home and then lived on it like a bum for a year - setting a pattern I would repeat as often as I could).

I was thinking about some of the things that happened to us. During the trip my best friend was a guy named Ron who had come to Chicago from Winatchee, WA to get the gig, and we became the two guys in the cast you could count on to get into the most trouble. I remember walking into a biker bar in Lake Charles, Louisiana already three sheets to the wind and - strangely enough - getting drunker and having a great time with those guys (I always got on well with 1960-70's era bikers and have no idea why. Some of the Outlaws of that era were friends of mine, but I've never even been on a motorcycle in my whole life).

In Corpus Christi, Texas one afternoon I was in a used bookstore in a part of town known as Northbeach, which was a pretty rough place in the early 70s. I remember this because I was the last guy to talk to the store owner before his murderer killed him, not three minutes after I left the place. In fact to this day I'm certain the guy I heard down one of the aisles shuffling books was the guy who killed him.

In central Georgia on that same trip we were driving down an unlit country road late at night (we had our sets and gear in a huge van and traveled in groups of four) we turned around a bend and our headlights hit a billboard with a circled cross on one side and the words "Fight Integration - Support The United Klans" next to it. Needless to say when we pulled into a gas station just a couple miles away Brandon, a black guy from the West Side of Chicago, was well hidden under our coats. 1972. Believe it.

I remember the middle aged waitress in one small town in Mississippi who was desperately trying to have us invite her back to the hotel. We didn't. I remember getting free tickets to see the very first River City Blues Festival in Memphis and got to see Furry Lewis and Bukka White on the same stage, in the same show, while they were still alive.

You know, you really should click those. No. You really really should.

Anyway I'm thinking about that because every once in a while you get to feel as if nothing has ever happened to you in your life; like you've led a boring existence and have nothing to show for it. So when people seem to want to get a big head about themselves, or cut you off from their society, or stop having anything to do with you; you may think you're kind of worthless. That nothing has ever happened to you. But it isn't true, you see.

So when you're snubbed or ignored or relegated to someone's personal scrap heap, just think about what's happened to you. You've had a life. Why let people run you down? Think about it - not necessarily that you knew this or that person, but that you've lived a valid life and things have happened to you that are dramatic or grand or terrible... but real, no matter what. You shouldn't think you're boring, you know. You're probably more interesting than you think.

Until You Lose The Game - One Year Of Fighting

LINK

Songs That Shouldn't Die

Starting a new weekend series today called "Songs That Shouldn't Die". My intention is to bring up music that may be overlooked or forgotten. I'm expecting some of the readership will know some of this stuff, it isn't an effort to stump anybody or anything like that. I'm kind of hoping most of you will concur with the choices and know the material already. And if I can introduce something to someone that would be great!

I'm going to pick music that was glossed over, or didn't get a wide audience, plus older songs you really should take another listen at or that - well - don't deserve to die. In fact they need to be remembered. I hope you like the picks.

The first installment is from a group called the Vulgar Boatmen. I don't know, somehow they glommed onto this hypnotic riff and just kept going with it. It kind of gets in your blood. And is it a driving song? Oh you betcha.

Take a listen, and tell me what you think. Hope you like the series.

Drive Somewhere - The Vulgar Boatmen