While riding through the north ’burbs toward the Tramway yesterday I saw a tarantula on the prowl, looking to do the nasty.
I considered stopping to snap a pic, but since he wasn’t a truculent tosspot flashing prep-school gang signs en route to a seat on the Supreme Court, it seemed unnecessary to subject him to the harsh glare of the media spotlight.
I know, I know, sometimes it seems as though the bike biz is more about peddling than pedaling, but still, Wired, Jesus H., etc.
Back in August Friend of the Blog Carl Duelmann asked: “Do you ever listen to Jason Isbell? He might be too country for you but he is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard.”
The Guardian’s David Taylor caught up with the Grammy-winning Nashville musician and former Drive-By Trucker ahead of a gig today in Noo Yawk City and the interview is well worth your time.
Isbell is critical of our current “administration” without being shrill, and he doesn’t waste a lot of thought on the “shut up and sing” crowd. (Just how the hell are you supposed to shut up and sing at the same time, anyway?)
Isbell doesn’t even try, though he does prefer to let his music do the heavy lifting.
Asked if he intended to get political during an upcoming six-night run at the Ryman Auditorium, Isbell replied: “Well, my job is to write songs and if I feel like it is an emergency and I feel like I need to say something political between the songs, then I’ll do that.
“But normally, if it doesn’t rhyme and it doesn’t involve me introducing my band, I’m not gonna say it, because I’m not a standup comedian, I’m not a lecturer and I don’t give TED talks. If there’s not a melody and some rhyme there then you probably won’t hear it from me. But I think the songs speak enough.”
While we’re on the topic of songs that speak enough, FOTB Pat O’B. forwards an NPR note about a music video for John Prine’s song “Summer’s End,” the centerpiece to his latest release, “The Tree of Forgiveness.”
It must take a lot of practice to sing a song like this without bursting into tears.
Speaking as an angry white man, all these angry white men are starting to piss me off.
That eternal sense of entitlement was on full peacock display in yesterday’s Cirque du SoWhat? over whether the mendacious and elusive Bart O’Kavanaugh can stand erect long enough to make it to the Supreme Court.
The well of privilege seems bottomless from the top, and these angry white men will continue to draw from it until the bucket finally comes up filled with their obituaries.
Then, I suppose, their angry white sons will inherit the family business.
That business is bankrupt, but failure is for lesser men, and women. The angry white man picks himself up using our bootstraps and plows forward, like the dolt who, when told that he’s penniless, broke, flat busted, says, “That can’t be true. I still have checks in my checkbook.”
Actually, it’s our checkbook. And one of these days the angry white man’s mouth is going to use it to write a check his ass can’t cash.
But I don’t think we’re there yet.
The angry white man still has that big orange credit card we gave him back in 2016. And he’s gonna use that to buy shit the country doesn’t need and can’t afford until we take it away from him.
Remember your Martin Luther King: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
You don’t even have to be on the plane for air travel to suck.
Herself was wheels down at the Sunport around 10 in the peeyem last night, and her luggage took a while to show up, as it will, which meant we were motoring home around the time I usually devote to inspecting the inside of my eyelids while beered-up Burqueños cap each other over right-of-way issues.
I saw one helmetless eejit on a crotch rocket thread various needles at about 20 mph over the posted limit, using all the eastbound lanes on I-40, without signaling, right in front of two cops working a traffic stop. I’m surprised the backup officer didn’t shoot him. Hell, I wanted to shoot him myself.
Anyway, we weren’t lights-out until midnight, morning comes early with a pair of cats in the vicinity, and a darkly comic opera is anticipated at the Senate Judiciary Committee, so if I were you I’d be prepared for all manner of outré behavior in this space today.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
• Late addendum: Jaysis, it’s worse than I had feared. To call this hearing a shitshow is to libel shitshows. Primate houses have a keener sense of the distinction between order and ordure. They’re quieter, too.
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