If There's A Rock & Roll Heaven

(title from The Righteous Brothers song of the same name)

RIP Clarence Clemens, big man of Bruce Springstein's E Street Band. Saxophonist extraodinaire, who also played on numerous big hits (including a duet of his with Jackson Browne).

We know darn well Santa brought him that saxophone way back on that chilly boardwalk night immortalized in song, and he's playing it now on stage inside the Pearly Gates.

Ah, Just One More Thing...

Lt. Columbo, actor Peter Falk passed. May he rest in peace

Dangerous Imagination

Back in the early days of the 20th Century, as travel became popular, especially cross-country rail travel, entrepreneur Fred Harvey set up hotels and restaurants for the weary travelers to enjoy some amenities away from their homes. the waitresses became known as Harvey Girls and were expected to follow strict policies while in Harvey's employ. Upon mention of a Harvey Girl one will picture the long black dress with starched white apron hanging from neck to hem.

Well, what would happen if these ladies were Lee Harvey Oswald girls? Certainly travelers wouldn't make it much past Dallas before encountering black leather bustier clad goth chicks in fishnet stockings with hardware pierced faces.

THAT would be a wild west for sure; good, bad and such. Just another tidbit from the warped mind that is mine.

For My Mom

This Mother's Day my Mom is recuperating at a physical therapy rehab facility following knee replacement surgery. It done gave out after 35 plus years of dealing with arthritis. Now, I'm not a smushy "aw isn't that a nice sentiment" card kind of guy. I'm the one who buys the Maxine Shoebox cards kind of humor. So I presented Mom with a card about Good moms letting their kids lick the electric mixer beaters but GREAT moms turn the mixer off first.

She loved it.

BECAUSE once she made a pumpkin pie, but super talented cook that she is pulled the mixer out of the bowl before shutting it off, so pie mix went splattering ALL over the kitchen. 25 some odd years later I still laugh about it, and every once in a blue moon will bring it up to her. (Of course my family has MANY embarrassing moments -- some inappropriate for blogging!)

But on the schmaltzy, romantic, sentimental side of the equation -- despite the pie mess -- I have a great mom fer sure.

Horses, Whiskey, Women & The Loot

A tip of the writer's cap to Tom T Hall, whose lyric I've altered slightly for this title.

It dawned on me listening to his "Faster Horses (the Cowboy and the Poet)" that a lot of the common sense people used to learn came from those who came before's experiences and observations -- a good amount of which was then passed along in song and text. Personally, I can't recall a modern day song which conveys wisdom. In fact, not since the mid 1980s can I put a finger on a tune which might relay some tidbit of education.

I think that lack of passing along such information has contributed to what our Global Society has become. Because of the political correctness of not wishing to offend any one single being, such lines and topics are being shied away from. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it seems to me in casual observation.

Sure, at some point I'll contradict myself and eludicate about how imbibing of that magical amount of alcohol will turn the partaker into a blithering idiot -- I've seen it enough throughout my professional careers -- or how whatever certain topic I feel shouldn't be posed to impressionable beings is readily accessible to them, but hey, that'd be alright so long as they learn the right and wrong of it and make the appropriate decision wisely. Well, that much sounds like a load of Buffalo Chips, but that's my reasoning.

Nowadays, it's all about flash and eye-candy -- and while I'm all about the eye-candy -- lest we not forget how we get to enjoy all of that awesome visual stimulation. It's by being smart, taking the lumps when you have to, working hard for what you believe in, and being true to one's self -- for like the poet who gets called out by the cowboy in "Faster Horses" other people can see through the charade and one will just wind up alienated.

So, irregardless of how embarrassing a situation was to go through, share it with the next generation. Extemporate even the inane, forging past their reactions, for -- as I did growing up -- they do actually listen and figure things out, though it may take longer for some. Though, again, to overly generalize, I fear this rationalization is fading away from society, and I greatly miss it.

Can the mysteries of life be summed into four words? Perhaps not, but every three and a half or four minutes clue us in.

Look! MORE X-Men

Indeed it's true! I knew 18 months ago I had more good guys than bad guys and that I needed to rectify that situation. Additionally, Feral Female at Thoughts from a Yodelling Goatherder challenged me to do a Nightcrawler. I stepped up to the task and voila:

Kurt Wagner hangs from the eaves of the florist's shop by his prehensile tail awaiting the cue to teleport into the fray below.

And what's a battle with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants without Magneto?
He's as much a staple to the mythos as Cyclops.

So there you have it. Sure the good still out balances the evil, but isn't that how justice prevails?

New Paparazzi TV Show

The fascination the American Public has with their celebrity actors/actresses, sports figures, and entertainers is legendary. That's why the tabloids sell so well and programs like Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, and TMZ garner such a following.

So I thought, why not spill it all? Even the embarrassing little routine stuff in one's life that no one should ever hear or see and mash that with a popular colloquialism for a program called TMI: Too Much Information. It could be an hour long, the first 30 minutes full of snippets and sound/visual bites about gross surgeries or poor private habits when one thinks no one is watching and the second half could be devoted to has been stars who would otherwise wind up on their own self-produced reality show and/or Dancing With The Stars.

And why stop there? Some animals are celebrities too, we can show them watering the backyard -- potty humor still sells.