Hoo boy. Allergies. Good times. Maybe not.
But at least it’s spring, amirite? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaachoo!
Spring fever
Month: March 2017
Rock ‘n’ rage
Jaysis. What a weekend. First we lose Chuck Berry and then Jimmy Breslin.
Berry remains on tour extraterrestrially — “Johnny B. Goode” is on golden records aboard the Voyager I and II spacecraft, launched in 1977.
One of my favorite Breslin books is “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” What could I tell you? There are so many keepers in there, like this graf:
The Baccala Family runs all organized crime in Brooklyn. The gang has been in Brooklyn longer than the Ferris Wheel at Coney Island. It was formed in 1890 under the leadership of Raymond the Wolf. He ate babies. Raymond the Wolf passed away one night from natural causes: his heart stopped beating when three men who slipped into his bedroom stuck knives in it. Joe the Wop, who had sent the three men, took over the mob. Joe the Wop shot nuns. A year later he dropped dead while being strangled.
I didn’t know this quote until I read it in his obit, but it works for me, too:
“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”
I’ve never raged as well as Breslin or Berry, but I keep on trying. If only they hadn’t set the bar so damn’ high.
Reel scored for pennywhistle and putty knife
There was a time when I might have begun St. Patrick’s Day with a dollop of Irish in the coffee and ended it with a few pints of the black, playing Clannad, The Chieftains and The Pogues in between.
Not this year.
We’d been contemplating the renovation of Herself’s office, and as it happens the dude who does that sort of thing for us was available this very week, the same week during which Herself was scheduled to take a business trip to Florida.
Bejaysis.
So instead of getting my Irish on I arose early to feed and water the menagerie, swallow a bit of (unenhanced) java, and record the voiceover on my Trek 520 video (see screenshot, above) before the hooley resumed. The cats took up their positions under the bed and Mister Boo — well, nothing fazes The Boo save a late meal, so he was fine.
And I broke out the old iPod Nano, the better to hear The Chieftains by. May yis all be in heaven a half hour before the divvil hears you’re dead.
The music a’Waits
OK, apropos of nothing in particular, check out this interview with Tom Waits at The New York Times Style Magazine.
Beck and Kendrick Lamar are in there, too, if that’s how you roll.
The money quote for me — from Waits, of course — is about inspiration and how it strikes:
If you want to catch songs you gotta start thinking like one, and making yourself an interesting place for them to land like birds or insects.
The cat’s meow
Miss Mia Sopaipilla reports from the field that spring has sprung, no matter what your calendar may say.
Also, she adds, you needn’t worry yourself sick about health care. Whenever Mia gets the vapors, a sick headache, or the jim-jams, some two-legged type takes her to the vet and picks up the tab.
Apparently this good Samaritan also provides nutrition and sanitation, likewise free of charge.
Mia recommends we all get ourselves one of them there.
Mad Blog Media 