this is the week, it was ...

wednesday …
hit on by a man at a 4am bar who’s apparently impressed by my rugged good looks & the way I wear a ringer tee. I normally don’t patronize after-hours establishments so late, perhaps because of the crazies, and I usually don’t mind being hit on by anyone as long as they’re not outwardly aggressive about it. However, when you start telling me, in graphic detail, all the things you would like to do with/to me upon getting me home, well, that’s just creepy, and that’s where this’n’ is going. I gather from his demeanor he is what some would call a “top.”
“I gather from your demeanor you’re what some would call a top,” I say.
“Why yes,” he says. “I am a top.”
“You see,” I say, “it’ll never happen. I’m also a top.”
This prompts a good chortle from the friend I'm with, who reminds me I’m really not into men & why didn’t I just tell him that -- I suppose sometimes it’s just better to let ‘em down easy …

thursday...
near the end of my work day a client breaks the news to me Tim Russert has just collapsed & died. I’m still pretty miffed about Bo Diddley’s passing a couple weeks prior, but at least I suppose we saw that one coming. Russert was just so vibrant and still relatively young.

ordinarily, I take the passing of public figures I’ve never met with the proverbial grains of salt, if even that. These were a touch more personal. I’m a guitar-slinging rock musician who also did quite a bit of politicking and somewhere in between dabbled in journalism. In other words, I suppose I was a pretty big fan of both guys.

On Bo’s passing, I felt a lot like I felt when Carl Perkins died. Similar stories, I guess – good old boys who basically invented this art form, rock and roll, and who never really got the credit (or compensation) they deserved. Bo was playing to the masses & helping the homeless until a recent stroke had sidelined him. I was sad for a good while. He walked 47 miles of barbed wire, wore a cobra snake for a necktie.

On Russert, well, what can I say? Meet the Press is one of the only shows I have never really missed. I don’t even have a TV these days & I don’t miss it (gotta love those streaming rebroadcasts). The guy’s humility & enthuisiasm made him a member of everybody’s family. I mean, my friends & I can be pretty damned jaded & pretty much the minute that news broke the texts started to come in. It was sad as hell watching an entire network news team struggle through thursday night and even worse watching Brokaw & co. attempt to hold it together on Sunday. He loved his rock & roll & his hometown sports teams & would rather shoot the shit over beers than guss it up at some white-tie event …

friday…
My mum’s visiting from Ohio, so the plan is to do tacky tourist things, like get deep dish pizza. There’s a great place around the corner where you can get a large pie and a pitcher of beer for $20, but she insists upon Uno, even though she could drive the 50 minutes or so to Pittsburgh for the same thing whenever she desires. Sigh. It’s, OK, though, because it’s Mum and I haven’t had a good pizza in a while. I’m wearing a t-shirt with one of my old bands on it & the hostess asks me about it & I’m temporarily struck w/this weird nostalgic sense of failure until I realize I’m still keeping on musically.

saturday …
I’m playing a U. Utah Phillips memorial/benefit at the Heartland. I have mixed feelings about the venue. It spins itself as some hotbed of leftist populism, but it’s, like, $15 for a freakin’ hamburger. Apparently, the part of leftism about sharing the wealth lost its way somewhere s. of Lunt St. It’s a noble enough cause, though, and turns out being a good time. One of the other performers has engineered for Dylan & the Band. There’s a good us v. them feel to the night. I didn’t realize other performers would play their own songs, too, so I just play songs Utah used to. It’s still pretty cool to get any audience singing along to “Dump the bosses off your back.” Anyway, I’ll get to play several of my own on Fri., 20/6 at the Horseshoe (insert shameless self-plug here). Somehow, Larry Dean is part of both gigs …

sunday …
as mentioned already, I come pretty close to tears watching today’s Meet the Press. Maybe it’s my hangover. Maybe it would be better if it were football season already. Mum gets to the airport & back home intact. I take a long walk.

monday …
I give a guitar lesson on mondays. This student’s more of a friend, so we usually wind up having drinks, shooting the shit, making a night of it. We’ve both had out-of-town guests for the weekend & are both pretty tired, but it’s a good time nonetheless. She relates the story of how this morning at 5 she was awakened by the noise of two men beating up some woman in the deserted lakeview dawn. Another Pleasant Valley Monday.

tuesday …
On the s. edge of the abandoned cemetery now called Lincoln’s Park, I notice some dork on a Ducati gunning his engine so as to prompt his female passenger to grab him tightly. This inspires a song I write in about 5 minutes & call “Hesitation St.” It’s a Petty-meets-Elvis Costello thing in my own head & more than enough to shake the funk of a hundred lousy weeks.

ok, addressing the real politick

I had a pretty good Saturday. Spent the beginning of the day watching the DNC Florida/Michigan hearings and the evening at the Gallery Cabaret rocking out to my friends, We Make Thunder. But back to the earlier part of my day:

I tend to agree with the notion that changing the rules in the middle of game is cheating. I'm also beginning to see the Clintons as sneaky, ruthless cheaters and sore losers, if I didn't already sort of see them in that light. Your goal is to oust the party in power, one who you believe stole an election -- committed voter fraud, essentially, to install itself, and you belittle your best efforts by stooping to essentially the same level.

I posted the remainder of this entry to Lynn Sweet's Sun-Times blog on Sen. Obama divorcing his church. We'll see if she greenlights it ...

I don't understand the assignation of the word "hate" to this church, Rev. Wright, Fr. Pfleger, Michelle Obama, et al. I don't grasp the American right & those Clinton-backers who call out anything uttered by any of these folks as "unamerican." We are a nation founded in dissent -- armed revolt, to be more specific. We are also a culturally/economically/ethnoracially divided people, a nation of opressors and the opressed. Nothing said by Rev. Wright was 'unamerican' so much as it reflected the way a good number of Americans feel about certain issues. Nothing said by Fr. Pfleger was untrue. I suppose if one has lived a sheltered life, and/or a more privileged life than a good number of us, they may not understand or be able to look at a bigger picture, through the eyes of the oppressed.

It's a sad commentary on our nature -- our system, too -- when public servants are strongarmed into renouncing any person or institution whose opinions may or may not offend a few people. As far as any of us who cannot speak for him can tell, Sen. Obama disowned Rev. Wright and his longtime church out of perceived political necessity. Rack up one for the flag-wrapped reactionaries and a loss for free speech.

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well, that's it. I had to go and get all sociopolitical on j'ass (j'ass, btw, being a derivative of "your arse," is the basis for the word "jazz," as in the boppin' music would likely find you, "shakin' j'ass..." THAT is an entirely different story).