The Covid 13.1

The cancelled holidays, plans, family time, swimming, just about everything - it all sucks. The rescheduled concerts are particularly annoying because they will be pushed back to the following year. It is hard to remember who bought the tickets, which friends were going, sometimes the show gets downgraded from a weekend to a school night, and hell, some bands could break up or die in a year! Also, they only guarantee the appearance of the headliner, and sometimes I bought the tickets more because I like one or two of the opening acts. 

I also had like 3 running races cancelled this summer. This is why some friends and I organized our own race in a trail in a suburban forest preserve where we all plan on wearing shirts and bibs from cancelled races. The race is tomorrow, and I will somehow have to run 13.1 miles with very little training. We got a pretty decent turnout and we are raising money for a local children's hospital. 

Got my stuff laid out like a dork. Only running dorks do this.

Hey, I'm now going to get "political" with no segue whatsoever: I had some thoughts about when people seem to freak out and get all defensive about Black Lives Matter and start in with the "all lives matter" crappola. I mean, the obvious explanation is probably that they're just racist, or probably more accurately, they are racist and do not know they are racist. Because why get so mad and defensive? Because here is the what occurred to me today: For years and years the country was way too racist, such as hanging black people from trees, blasting them with fire hoses, making them use separate bathrooms and other facilities, basically dehumanizing them. So, years and years later out of a response to police officers killing black people, we are now saying Black Lives Matter and some white people get mad about that and say, "Not everything is about race!" But here is what I'm saying, if we spent hundreds of years being way too racist, is there really any harm in perhaps being a extremely racially conscious for a little while, and what is the harm in doing so? I think the people who take offense to BLM are likely the same who take offense to having to wear masks in public places. I'm positive there is a correlation. 

Just my opinion and merely theories. I don't claim to know everything. I welcome discussions in the comments, and I'm not a psycho who yells and swears at anyone when they disagree. Or if you want to stay out of the race topic, just comment on (running) races or concerts or whatever from earlier in the post. Or comment on something completely separate from all this stuff. Wish me luck in my race tomorrow morning and do a dance so it doesn't rain on me.

Since I Haven't Blogged In Like 5 Weeks, Here Are 5 Updates.

1. I scrolled through some old posts to check, but I don't think that I've told all of you that we are due for our second kiddo in September. It's actually the same due date as Erik Noisewater, so there is a possibility they could have the same birthday. I suppose that would be the most important update for me, creating more human life and all, but let's move onto the random stupid items because if any of you have been reading a while, you know that is what I'm better at reporting on.



2. I've been doing the intermittent fasting about 4 to 6 days a week. I'll stop eating around 630pm and not eat again until 10:30AM the next day. I have to say I feel a lot better when I stick to it, and when I do I'm regular as a the sun, since you asked. It is also a good fit for me because I can get in bad patterns, such as knocking out entire rows of Girl Scout cookies. Mrs. Noisewater was all excited about a cookie after work only to find that after a few too many IPA's one Saturday evening I had ingested my standard entire row amount to polish off a box. Now it is a battle of wills. I bought another couple boxes to make it up to her and to prove to myself that I can control my inner fat kid impulses. So now when I need that little jolt of chocolate I'll open up the fridge and squirt a small amount of Hershey's syrup directly into my mouth like an uncivilized pile of crap human. Essentially it is like going to the methadone clinic for the heroin addict. Nowhere near as good as eating a row of cookies/mainlining smack, but it gets you through.



3. My good friend HLP (Heterosexual Life Partner) and I have been hitting a concert every month or every other month as our music tastes have aligned to a lot of the same doom/stoner/desert/fuzz bands. One thing we do is switching off who buys the tickets, and the other system is kind of a genius strategy that I am now sharing with you, my friends. What we do is look up the setlists of the one or two, sometimes three bands that we like on the bill on setlist.fm. You'll find that most bands these days don't stray from the exact same songs night after night, so we will take all those songs and make them into one giant (especially if it's three bands) mixed up Spotify playlist that we can share with one another. And we alternate who does that task too. And viola! Now we can listen to that playlist over the course of a few weeks and will be totally familiar with all of the songs the bands will play without wasting any time at all with songs that won't be in the set list. Feel free to steal this system for yourself because, while I do admit it's pretty darn ingenious, I see no possible way to monetize it.



4. And speaking of the rock and roll music, the wife and kid joined me for one of my favorite days of the year, Record Store Day, and we had one heck of a good time (at least I did). What I did is look up which stores were giving out free donuts and coffee and such and made a nice route to hit around four stores. Erik Noisewater had his heart set on a pink donut with sprinkles, and by god I found one for him and four records for under twenty bucks for the old man. While at one tiny store I noticed that there was a good deal of sections for hip hop, trance, drums and bass . . . . But where in the hell was the damn rock music? Then I saw around thirty or fifty vinyls filed under "Dad Rock." That is where they file their very limited actual rock music with guitars. And sure enough the dad with the kid running around the store asking for donuts picked himself up some very, very dad-like rock, a Jerry Rafferty album.



5. Do you all feel like you get smarter or dumber as the years roll on? Recently I started getting the notion that my wits were going in the wrong direction. There was a time where I walked into a room and fancied myself one of the sharpest blokes in the room, and sadly I just don't feel that way quite as much anymore. This is something I feel like I have to turn around, so I started some new habits like reading the newspaper cover-to-cover, doing crossword puzzles, and limiting my social media time. And hopefully writing more. I gotta write more, guys. I'm sorry I have slowed up so much with my output, but that is just another step I have to take to avoid gradually growing duller like the rest of America.

Okay, friends. You got any input on any of these five items listed above? If not, then just tell me something else that will make me laugh because laughing is good for the soul and the gall bladder. Mostly the soul.  

Ozzy, the Bus, the Rockstar On the Bus, and the Sad Bodybuilder Woman On the Bus

Ozzy at last!

I went to see Ozzy Osbourne live for the first time. I have seen him play in Black Sabbath (his band based out of Birmingham, England before going solo, in case any of you don't know of the band who created heavy metal) twice, but I had never seen just Ozzy before. Now that I have, the only remaining and surviving huge bucket list guy is Sir Paul McCartney (a guy from Liverpool, another working class England town, called The Beatles, in case you know absolute jack squat about rock music). It's a little frustrating that 9 out of 10 times when I told people that I was off to see Ozzy their first response was a statement something like this:

1. "Can he still sing?"
2. "Will you be able to understand what the hell he is saying?"
3. "Do they have to drag his old bones out and prop up his mortal remains?"

When in reality:

1. Yes. He sounded just fine to me.
2. Ozzy is actually far more coherent when he sings. It is kind of like if you have ever known someone who stutters but does not do so at all when he or she sings. Ozzy has always seemed more comfortable on stage being Ozzy than when he is walking about being John Osbourne. It is like a lot of comedians who are so confident and quick witted on stage but then do not know what in the heck to say at a cocktail party. Also, the Ozzy most people know was from a reality show called "The Osbournes" where he was stumbling about and had a hard time forming sentences. This is because he was falling back into his drug addictions and was at a pretty much all time low during that period. Pull up just about any other video of him, and he is very charming and downright hilarious. Intentionally funny, that is. Not a caricature of himself that he was marketed as after that damn show. But to be honest I could not understand him very well last night, but I think it was the echoing sound of the shitty suburban venue. And okay fine, maybe a little bit because he is Ozzy.
3. No. I saw no one propping him up. Yes, he looks a little old when he paces back and forth a little hunched over, but for the most part you see that exuberance and that way an audience is never quite loud enough for him and see that youthful excitement in his eyes. "I can't fucking hear you!" he says over-and-over. Mrs. Noisewater joked, "Maybe he really can't hear them anymore." Okay, that's pretty funny. I'll admit.

Wow, that was a much longer rant than I intended it to be, but I just get defensive about Ozzy because he has been a part of my life for so long. It was similar with Harry Caray when he was calling games for the Cubs into his twilight years after a major stroke with splashes of dementia and Budweiser. When people made fun of him I would tell them that he was not always this old and he is an institution of the Cubs and baseball as a whole. He is a God damn Hall of Famer. He called games from a fan's perspective, which was innovative in its own right. I honest to god do not think people separate the man himself from Will Ferrell's intentionally over exaggerated impression. When people picked on him, they might as well have been hurling insults at my grandfather and it's the same with my grandpa Ozzy. Shit, another rant. Let's move forward with the actual tale I wanted to tell here.

One of my oldest and dearest friends who has been popping up in this blog since its inception, Heterosexual Life Partner (HLP), and I took a free party bus running out of a heavy metal Chicago bar to get to the pain in the ass venue deep into the suburbs. The giant yellow school bus finally pulled up to the bar very late with all of us standing outside with no explanation from staff. Checking our wristbands as we climbed aboard was an extremely muscular and powerfully drunk woman in a tight-fitting shirt showing all her hard work at the gym. She for sure was twice as strong as me physically and had muscles in her face that I'm not sure how to get, but there was a sadness and vulnerability about her. She was stumbling up and down the aisles trying to remember people's orders and then stumbling back to the front of the bus to fetch the beers out of the cooler. Swaying back and forth leafing through change in her fanny pack, she told us that it was her dog's birthday. Without any of us asking any follow up questions she lowered her head and revealed, "She died in my arms today" and started weeping uncontrollably. A woman said something to the effect of, "I'm so sorry" and muscular bus bartender dove into her for a well developed upper body strength, vice grip hug. Whoever was next to that customer must have said "me too" because our mourning libations distributor burrowed into that customer for yet another deep hug.

This is not an actual picture of bus bartender. This is, in fact, Nicole Bass , an unfortunately deceased regular on The Howard Stern Show.

This was why the pour woman was so schnockered-drunk. She was in a state mourning. HLP and I were shocked that she showed up to work in her mental state. Luckily for her she has a job with a very lax policy on drinking. And weed smoking. She was offering free hits off her bowl. "Anyone need anymore beer? Or weed?" she would say. When the bus pulled up to the amphitheater she said, "The show doesn't start for a little while so you're free to stay aboard for a while. There's still plenty of beer and weed." She seemed like she needed some friends, but HLP and I had a date with Ozzy. When I wasn't sure if my sister was going to make it do to some severe back pain she was experiencing, HLP suggested we could sell or even give the extra ticket to the bus bartender, but then we realized she would be standing next to us all night crying. We had already checked the setlist and "Bark At the Moon" would be the very first song. Those canine related words were bound to send her into more crying or perhaps even suicide watch. She was best left on the bus looking after our beer and weed. 

This is the album cover that prompted a handy man my parents hired when I was a teenager to say, "Did you know your son is listening to Satanic music?" My mom, always the devout atheist, nodded politely and then laughed her ass of when she shut the door.

Oh, as it turns out joining us on the fun bus was the lead singer and songwriter of a fairly popular Chicago area band that enjoyed some national exposure in the late nineties and beyond. I will not say who it was to protect his anonymity, but HLP, being one of his biggest fans, was gushing a little over him. We were tickled that despite being a fairly successful rocker, he was riding the free bar bus like the rest of us. The rock star was very kind on the ride in like in a "I'll be nice enough to you where you don't tell people I was a big dick when you tell the story" kind of way." Then on the ride home he was nice in a "We should totally hang out sometime. Shit, I love everyone!" kind of way. He and his much younger and quite striking blond rocker-chick girlfriend were very well buzzed. She told us that right at the end of the show she was rather politely thrown out of the venue for peeing in the men's room. This has to be done sometimes when the line in the men's room is long. Someone must have snitched, but who? That has never bothered me. We are all God's creatures (if you believe in that sort of thing) doing what naturally has to occur when you pour way too much beer down your throat. Why should the female species have to wait longer to do so? It's an unfair and potentially harmful policy. 

This album cover used to scare and gross me out as a kid. What in the hell did he just take a bloody bite out of?

Rock star guy and I bonded slightly (in my mind) over hating Bruce Springsteen and hating the fact that Ozzy played nothing off of his second album, "Diary of a Madman," the final of two masterpiece records with Randy Rhoads, the late guitar prodigy taken from the world far too young by a coked up bus driver who fancied himself a single engine plane pilot who crashed the plane into the damn bus. Little known fact, I wanted to name my son Rhoads until I learned that Tom Morello, lead guitarist of Rage Against the Machine had stolen my idea, and I stay stolen regardless of the fact that he thought of it first. In any event, rock star guy and I were singing a number of those songs we had wished we heard on the ride home. And we sang all the songs that came on the radio as if they were all the best things on earth even though they were very similar songs to the ones we heard on the way in when we were far less buzzed and were engaging in polite and much more quiet conversations. 

Rock star guy and his girlfriend were talking about making a trip to the Liars Club (the spot where HLP called home and our favorite place on earth for so many years in our late 20's and roughly all of our 30's) later that evening, but HLP and I now have wives and kids at home who would prefer us to not be like the walking dead the following day. Rock star guy is a little older than us, to be honest, but he can get away with acting like a rock star because his job is actually: rock star. Plus it is probably best that we stopped glomming onto him and his girlfriend and allowed them to enjoy one another. Their relationship looked very fresh and exciting for them and the added company of two drunk-daddy fans would likely have worn thin for them after the bus ride was over if it hadn't already. 

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Okay, rock stars. Hope you have enjoyed this story. I do realize it was an extremely lengthy post with many a digression, but I think when the writer and storyteller in me lies dormant for so long, a stored up monster ejaculate of words is bound to be the result. Keep rocking and barking at the moon, my deer blog buddies. 

Vacation In a Tiny But Mighty State, Too Much Darn Running, My Aching Back, and The Mats

1. Vacation in a Tiny but Mighty State

We just got back from a vacation with Mrs. Noisewater's family in Rhode Island. Her brother rents out a beach house for us every year for us all to get together and be beach bums for a week. It is good for Baby Noisewater to see his cousin (who is close in age to him) for an extended period of time, since his cousin lives all the way out in New York. All his cousins on my side of the family are fully grown. I must say that after a rocky start of smacking each other in the head any time they wanted each other's toys, they gradually became very close and wanted to play together all the time. 

On the final day when we were packing up the rental car I got a call from the airline who gave me an offer to fly out the following day instead in exchange for 600 dollar vouchers each, plus vouchers for the price of each of our outgoing flights, plus the cost of a hotel and our meals for the last day. Hard to pass that up, and we got to check out Providence, R.I. for the first time, a wonderful little city. And now we have dough stored up and ready to take us on our next vacation. I have already been thinking of friends I haven't seen in forever who I should visit, and it shouldn't have been a matter of money to make me consider it. But I guess that's just how it goes. 

2. Too Much Darn Running

I got in some nice runs during the vacation as part of my marathon training. I had a 16 miler scheduled for last Sunday, but because I ended up flying in Sunday instead of Saturday, I had to get on the lake path during the 90 degree heat rather than in the much cooler morning. I met my friend Night Train for the first part of it (as he was wrapping up 16 miles of his own). We started getting back into running together a few years back, but he is a little younger and just a better athlete in most every way. While our pace used to be about the same, now he crushes marathons with a pace well below 8 minutes. That's like my 5K pace. So his long, slow run pace is like me hauling ass as fast as I possibly can. The four miles I did with him in the heat wiped my ass out so badly that I had to stop at 10 instead of the 16 I had planned on. 

Quitting is not something I do when I run, so this was very disheartening. How I perform this upcoming Sunday for a 15 miler is crucial. I want to eliminate the heat factor by getting out earlier, and eliminate the Night Train pace factor by not running with him (which is a little sad because I like his company). If I quit with those variables controlled for, then it's a matter of I'm behind in my training or I have become a quitter. 

3. My Aching Back

I posted a social media video doing push-ups with Baby Noisewater on my back. I did a couple similar baby workout videos when Erik was a baby, but now he is more of a toddler. Naturally he is now heavier and more active. It is perhaps the strain from the toddler push-ups that paved the way for the injury the following morning at the water park. I slid down a water slide with him for like the 15th time, and while half-submerged in water I tried to hoist him out of the trench which is when the lower-left part of my back clenched up. I tried to walk it off and stretch but the pain wasn't going anywhere. Naturally, he wanted to do that slide another 9 times, despite me guiding him towards other less painful experiences. Little kids have an innate sense of knowing what you don't want them to do, and knowing that must be the cooler and more dangerous thing. I guess that's something they continue to master as they reach their teenage years. I sprung for a massage today. I got a deal with the spa connected to my gym for a two for one, but all they had left for today's massages were dude practitioners. Oh well. I needed it today, so I just went with the man-on-man action. Anyone have a preference with sex of their masseuse or does that totally not matter to you?

4. The 'Mats

I read a ton of rock and roll biographies, and I can say without a doubt that "Trouble Boys" about the Replacements is the best of that genre. I was a casual fan when I started, and now I have slipped into that true fanatic status that so many 'Mats fans lay claim to. As a matter of fact, I didn't feel a right to call them The 'Mats before I read it, but after reading the book, which led to revisiting all the albums, watching tons of interviews, and getting into Westerberg's songs to the point where you feel like he is speaking to you, I'm now an obsessed 'Mats fan. I suggest you give the book a read because they are like no other band. You have Bob Stinson's tragic upbringing that led to his severe mental health problems and eventual dismissal from the band. You have his brother Tommy joining the band at 13-years-old, dropping out of school and being raised by a hard drinking and hard drugging rock and roll band. This is something that would never be allowed for in today's society, and it's fascinating that it ever happened at all. 

Then you have the band's leader, Paul Westerberg, who simultaneously wanted to be have a big hit bunform to anything. He would et didn't want to coither self-sabotage the band or just be met with unfortunate circumstances every step of the way. That and they had a brand of music that doomed them to be cult heroes rather than household names. Or maybe all of this was a master plan to be snubbed and broke during their time, but to hold up better than any other band of the 1980's. Yes, the songs themselves have their hooks in people, but those wild and unpredictable drunken shows where they read an audience and decided to do play the exact opposite of what that audience wanted to hear (an all country show for punk fans, for example), made everyone who attended feel like they were part of a one of a kind show, like they were in on the joke, and like that one show they saw was historic. This also extended their legacy. 

When they reunited in 2013 I had a ticket to see them at Riot Fest, a weekend long rock festival in Chicago. My friend smuggled in a bottle of Jack Daniels, and drinking my way through Suicidal Tendencies and the Pixies, I was so horribly over served and tired that I decided to take myself home before the Replacements even took the stage because I had to work the next day. I looked at the set list and it was just about every song I would have wanted them to play. It will always be one of my all-time rock regrets, but then again, getting too drunk to see The Replacements is kind of the perfect story arc. 

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I got a metal show that I'll be seeing tonight (Spirit Adrift), and I don't work tomorrow. A friend I was going with cancelled last minute. With the back killing and needing sleep more than metal at the moment, I almost decided to skip it. But then when I asked an old friend to go, he said he would. Yeah, missing these guys isn't likely to become anything like missing The Replacements, but I'm not taking my chances. I'm not quitting on stuff anymore, be it with concepts, running, staying in touch with friends, or anything else. Talk to you later, my blog buddies til the end . . .

You Asked and Ken Answered!

A little while back I asked you, my beloved readers, to ask me some personal questions so that you can get to know your favorite blogger a little better. I was blown away by all the responses filling up my inbox. It looks like you really want to know more about what makes me tick, and that is very flattering. I chose some of the most interesting ones and put some serious thought into my responses. I hope you enjoy . . .

Okay, I'm full of shit. I never actually asked that you guys ask any questions because there are only like 7 of you that read, tops. Truth be told, I just scrolled around the internet for interesting questions to ask myself because I had no blog topic ideas today. So, now I do have a topic, but it's kind of a crummy one. Whatever, we will make the best of it here at The Gancer. Away we go . . .

1. What do you do if you can’t sleep at night? Do you count sheep? Toss and Turn? Try to get up and do something productive?

I usually read, but when I'm in between books or need a break from reading I play the name game in my head. For example, I'll pick a topic such as "heavy metal bands," and then I'll name a band for every letter of the alphabet. Usually by the time I get to N or so, I'm out cold. My dad also told me that when you are having trouble sleeping, get up to go pee even if you don't have to. That works sometimes too. Thanks for the pee pee trick, dad! You're the best. Also, it sometimes helps when I try to sync my breathing up to someone else's. Now that my wife is pregnant she is snoring like a snow blower (sorry to announce that to all seven of my readers, honey. You're still beautiful!) so it's really easy to get the timing of her breathing down given the volume of the snoring. Pretty soon we're both sound asleep, only she is far louder than me (Sorry again, darling. You're still the sex pot of my dreams).



2. Who performs the most random acts of kindness out of everyone you know?

That would have to go to my good buddy, Night Train. I went to a concert with him the other night, and we were partying in the parking lot with three random middle aged weirdos who were a little rough around the edges. When we walked by they said, "Hey, come hang out with us!" Odd that they wanted new friends so badly, right? We had written on our white styrofoam cooler full of beer that we were selling one concert ticket for face value that came with a free adult beverage. One of our new friends who invited us to hang out took it upon herself to help sell one of the tickets. She seemed to have trouble getting through any sentence without saying "motherfucker," and she didn't make exceptions even when it came to her sales approach. I for one wouldn't want to imply that someone had intercourse with their own mother as part of a first impression, but she had a style all her own. Someone would come around the corner and she would say, "Hey, motherfucker! We got a ticket here for sale, motherfucker!"*

*You see, MF'er appears in both sentences She never missed a chance.

(In case you don't know what a styrofoam cooler looks like)

We were all a little embarrassed by our new friend and were doubting the fact that she could help sell the spare ticket. As a matter of fact, we were convinced she was scaring the shit out of any "motherfuckers" who came near us. Nigh Train never doubted her for a minute, and he even offered her a $20 commission on any leads she brought in that led to a sale. Sure enough, she found someone who paid full price. After the transaction was complete and Night Train paid crazy lady her commission, he noticed that the customer had paid $20 too much. So, he ran after him to give him the money. Then it dawned on him that he forgot to get his free beer, so he ran him down to give him that as well. Night Train is just a solid dude, and that is all there is to it.

3. What are the top three qualities that draw you to someone new?

      3. Not selfish. The person cares about others, and the person actually listens to what others say - doesn't just wait for his/her turn to talk.

     2. An interesting conversationalist. If we've been conversing for the first time and over 5 minutes have elapsed without us extending things beyond the weather, what we do for jobs, where we live, and how many kids we have, then it's just not going to work out for us as new friends.

     1. Funny. It really helps if you're funny. Even if you're not actually saying funny stuff, it helps if you laugh at the super funny stuff that I'm saying to you.
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How about you, Seven Readers? Do you want to answer any of these questions or just comment upon my wildly (mildly) entertaining responses?

Each of these men is either selfless (Andre), a good conversationalist (Wilt), and funny (Arnold). Wilt would have to be a decent conversationalist to bed 10,000 women, or whatever.

I went to see Anthrax last night because 16-year-old Dr. Ken would never forgive 36-year-old Dr. Ken if I passed up the chance.  I was in the pit for about 30 seconds, and I felt my hand go into someone's mouth (no idea who's) and touch someone's tongue. That was enough. Incredible concert. Once I washed my hands.  Then we went out and got horribly drunk.

Taking public transit this afternoon to go fetch my car that I left at work, I was eating a bag of combos, a horribly unhealthy snack and the only thing I have eaten all day, and I saw a friend of mine walking towards me.  I was then relieved to realize it wasn't him.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the guy, and if fact, I like him quite a lot.  It was just the thought of putting forth the effort to have a conversation at that time seemed like a laborious task.  

You ever feel like that?

More Updates from Your Boy Ken

1. It looks like the end of the strike is near, and I should be back to work on Wednesday.

2. That won't be enough time for my hard drive (and all my music) to be recovered to make the Strike Mix to bring to the picket line, which is a shame because I had the whole thing mapped out in my crazy little head.  Shot out to Colby over at the computer place for recovering all my music.  This time I'm going to buy two external hard drives in case something goes wrong with one like it did this time.  Colby said this is recommended, but I'm told wearing two rubbers at once, using the same logic, is not a good idea. 

3. LSD goes back to school Saturday on the west coast for one more school year so she and I will be back to our long distance relationship.  I will really miss having her here every day, giving her a goodbye kiss every morning, but just like the last year, we will be stronger for having gone through it.

4. While typing this up, I'm listening to Aerosmith's "Get Your Wings," an actual good Aerosmith recording from the old days, and I think I figured out where Steven Tyler went horribly wrong.  While most rockers get more laid back and retrospective as they get older, Steven tried to be more flamboyant with yips and howls to make his aging voice stand out on recordings, and he acts stupid to get more attention during public appearances.  This is a horribly embarrassing phenomenon.



5. I finally saw Gwar over the weekend at Riot Fest in Chicago.  I sat at the perfect distance to be really close but not too close where I would get blood all over my clothes and skin.  Whatever means of spurting blood they could find after killing whoever they killed, all fluids would fall two feet short of me.



That's it for me.  Any thoughts on any of this?  What have you been up to?

I saw Roger Waters from Pink Floyd play "The Wall" the Other Night . . .

. . . and here are some thoughts.

1. Roger aged very well into that big face of his, and believe it or not, he is a better looking 65-year-old man than a 25-year-old.

Here he is from the other night

And here he is in the Nineteen Seventies

There were ladies there saying that he looked like Richard Gere.  Yes.  Heart throb and American gigalo Richard Gere.  And these were young and attractive girls saying this.  Girls who would have no idea that back in the day he looked like Georges Muresan.  Of course they didn't know this because few really knew what rockers looked like back then, before the MTV days.  No band will ever make as many amazing records as Pink Floyd for a myriad of reasons, but one is that Roger could just be ugly and make art without people caring what he looked like, what brands he was wearing, or who his date was to the Grammies. 

(This guy didn't put out "Animals in 1977, but he is 7'7" and uglier than just about any animal.)

2. The show was at Wrigley Field, which is where the Cubs play and my favorite place on planet earth, so how could I miss the guy from my favorite band in my favorite place?  One thing you may know about me is that I love a good urinal trough.  What I noticed is that a lot of the people there were not the usual ballgame crowd, so they were shy and waiting for the stalls.  No way all those fellas had to go poop - they just didn't want to join in the trough fun.

Gross, yes.  But more efficient.  

3. During ''Young Lust," the one about him figuring out his wife was cheating on him so he decided to bang every groupie he could get his hands on, they showed very hot and naked women on a giant screen.  As a man in a long-distance relationship, it was all I could do to stop myself from flying in my girlfriend that very night.  Earlier in the show a bunch of little kids sang the chorus for "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," and my partner in crime that night, James Douglass Morison, said, "I hope those kids aren't still here.  They're all going to get their first wood tonight."


(She's naked right about 2:35)

4. When "Run Like Hell" was playing it reminded me of when I ran my first race as an adult.  I believe it was only 5 miles, but that was really hard for me back then because I was a long haired doughy guy who rarely worked out.  While running the race, my long stupid hair flopping around in a stupid pony tail, they played "Run Like Hell" over the loud speaker, and I just remember clapping along and feeling really good.  So, among all the other reasons I have to thank Roger and the remaining, surviving members of Pink Floyd, I can thank them for getting me into running, the thing that keeps me sane, where I can think straight, and put my universe back in order.  Thanks for everything, Floyd.

"Fuck Pilsen!"

So, last night I went to see a band called Maritime at The Empty Bottle, and after many a 312 beer, we went to get burritos at The Burrito House. When we walk in, there are people milling around talking to the staff so I asked if they were ordering. They were not, but somehow a heavyset girl in a full soccer outfit felt a need to tell me that the quite beyond heavyset middle aged man with a beard and a sport coat they were with was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I didn't ask if he was, but, hey, that's great. When I'm a famous writer, I will demand that a chick in sports apparel talks me up to everyone within earshot, especially when I'm dining at 2 in the morning.

At first, when I heard how opinionated and annoying this fellow was, I suggested we sit as far away from him as we could, but the more I overheard, I just had to hear more awfulness! He was spouting off things like "Fuck Pilsen!" Pilsen is a neighborhood in Chicago. We never heard the meat of his arguments because we were laughing too hard and quoting lines from "Billy Madison" because he looked just like Principal Anderson, or The Revolting Blob, if you prefer his professional wrestling name.

The guy a table over from The Revolting Blob was sleeping. When we woke him up, he said, in a British accent "Yes, I need to make a left on Paulina." He was out of it. Probably got mugged later.

Then there were two guys perched at the counter, chatting up customers, and it appears as if they had come to the Burrito House to meet women. It's an interesting thought because women at that hour are perhaps drunk and desperate, but at that point they have chosen their stomachs over their vaginas, so it seems like getting to them a hair too late, no?

The thing about Big Business, is he makes me laugh constantly

when I'm around him. This morning my roommate told me that I woke her up when I got home because I was still laughing, and I continued to laugh intermittently through out the next day. I got a text from him this morning that read, "I wanted to explore that soccer girl. I bet her trench smelled like the floor of The Metro after a Pumpkins show." Trench! Okay, he's gross sometimes, but he's literally the funniest guy I know. So, if you want to honor him in your own way, order a Bizznizz Rocks (Vanilla Stoli and Diet Coke), and if you want to do me a favor, follow me around hanging on my every word and tell randoms about the Pulitzer I deserve for writing a shitty blog.