This is a public service announcement. If you plan on celebrating your birthday in public, you might want to read this first. So let me just say Happy Birthday to you! Oh, yeah…and don't forget to pay those royalties to the maroons at Time Warner!
Well the lyrics say "…sign said Canadian border five miles from here", but for me it's actually more like 2 miles —tops. Looking out my cube window I actually can see more of Canada than I can of the U.S.A. It's right there across Lake Erie. But I digress because that's not what this post is about…
We're here today to talk about the album this little lyrical snippet came from, Bruce Springteen's Nebraska. Now to be perfectly honest, I'm really not much of a fan of "The Boss" and his music. I like some of it and he's talented, but for the most part I've never really felt compelled to seriously listen to it. Generally speaking, it just doesn't click with me. It's odd because I listen to a very wide variety of music, but for the most part I can live without out Bruce. I hear it and I can get into it, it's good, but it doesn't stick. The lone exception being 1982's Nebraska. It was a largely considered a commercial flop as the follow-up to the wildly successful The River, but did garner a good deal of critical acclaim. This is a very stripped down album. A lot of acoustic or electric guitar, harmonica, and vocals. This album was basically a demo recording from his living room that was to become the next album. But during this time Little Steven Van Zandt left the band. During this amicable upheaval, Bruce opted to release this album "as is". This resulted in the American musical treasure that is Nebraska. It's the only Springsteen I own and probably ever will. A raw, stripped down sound with dark tales of desperation from America's heartland. Very good stuff.
I wake today to the sad news that America's greatest "gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out yesterday. I'm sure this will get heavy rotation in the "blogosphere" today and likely for days to come. My admiration of Hunter comes from reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas back in the early 1980's. A bizarre and wonderful tale of depravity and over indulgence while covering a district attorneys' anti-drug conference in the city of Lost Wages. Lets just say it struck a chord with me.
"We had two bags of Grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…. also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls… but the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge…"
Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of AC/DC's Bon Scott's death. Although I don't follow AC/DC as much now as I once did, I still enjoy their music. I remember very well the day that Bon died. I was riding up I-94 North with my middle sister, Melanie driving when I heard the report on the radio. I was very sad to hear this news because they had just started to break into the big time with "Highway to Hell". I pretty much figured the band was done for because after all, how many bands survive losing their lead singer? I'd say they survived very well indeed as the follow up release, "Back In Black" with Brian Johnson replacing Bon selling millions of copies.
Anyhow, Melanie just didn't understand the magnitude of Bon's death. She wasn't into heavy metal at all and didn't even know who he was. Sad. Just sad. This was major news in the rock world, and it completely escaped her. For me this was huge because I lived for rock and roll then…and still do now. R.I.P. Bon.
A tribute get together will be held in Cherry, AU tomorrow.
What the hell is wrong with this country? I generally try to catchup on some news headlines while eating my lunch. Thus my being dumbfounded when I saw today's CNN "QuickVote" question: "Should there be mandatory security checks for everyone entering shopping malls?" So I immediately weighed in my "For God's sake NO!" vote on this lofty matter and then quickly came here to blog about it! I was relieved to see that as I write this, 83% of respondents agreed with the correct answer. That would be a resounding "No" for my mentally challenged readers. But amazingly enough, 17% of respondents think that you should have to go
through security screening when entereing a shopping mall!
Here's the poll at the time I wrote this:
"Should there be mandatory security checks for everyone entering shopping malls?"
Yes 17% 25,332 votes
No 83% 122,535 votes
Total: 100% 147,867 votes
I can only hope that I don't know any of these nearly 25 thousand people. If you fear for your safety so desparately that you think we need security screening at shopping malls, just start building that air tight bunker in your basement now. Either that or you all need to move to your own highly secured private island. Because I'm not about to live in your police state!