With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
2002-07-08 - 11:51 a.m.
It's update time and I'm feeling lazy. I prepared my list of films on TV to recommend this week but think I'm going to post them later. I have to write a guest entry for Leah too.
I discovered a great site today dedicated to Jean Shepherd. I've written about him before, he is the guy who wrote and narrates the film A Christmas Story. As an adolescent I listened to his daily radio show religiously. The site plays tapes of his old shows. The one for this week is my all-time favorite show, the story of Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb. Listen to it, it is amazing. I could listen to it in real audio but I'm downloading it so I can listen to it at my leisure. You can also order tapes from the site. Check the site out, Shep was the world's greatest raconteur.
Yesterday I went to see Slaid Cleaves and Rod Picott at the Ringwood, NJ library, not a typical venue. They have a concert series there; Vance Gilbert did the last one. I had never been there before and had no idea where Ringwood was so I had mapquest plan the route for me. It came up with a pretty straightforward one so I didn't check it against the map. It said it would take an hour and I did it in 45 minutes, not to long a trip at all. The haze from the Quebec forest fire was not as thick there as it is here. On Saturday I was out for my walk and after I walked 3 miles I noticed how dark it got. I thought it was going to rain and walked home much faster. I didn't find out about the fire to the next morning.
But that's not my point; my point is Slaid and Rod. Being a compulsively early Frühead I left my house at noon for a 2 O'clock show. I got there at 12:45 and found about half a dozen people outside the library. It is closed on Sundays and was just open for the concert. The doors didn't open till 1:30. The only person I recognized there was Joe, I think he might have seen Slaid even more times than I have. This was my 10th time seeing Slaid since I started keeping records on 9/11/00.
We were wondering where they would have the concert, where would there be space in a library for 100 people? When we got in we found the seats set up where they read the stories to kids in the children's section. The first half of the seats were reserved for VIPs so I sat in the first row of unreserved seats. I went over to talk to Slaid and Rod and told them that since we are in the children's section they should do all children's songs. I bet they'd be great at that. Slaid does one, You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch and it's the best version of that song ever. I laid a guilt trip on Rod and told him that he has to keep his promise and play in the Baltimore/DC area so that Carey can see him.
Bob, another WFUV volunteer sat two seats away from me. We started talking of course and the poor woman in the seen between us was caught in the crossfire. She asked if I wanted to change seats with her and I did. I noticed that she asked to change seats with me who had the better seat on the center aisle not Bob on the other side. I was feeling guilty so I didn't make an issue of it. Our conversation turned to Jean Shepherd and the guy in front of us heard us and joined in. He is the one that told me that the shows were archived on the web somewhere.
Rod did a half hour set and was great as always. He said that he has known Slaid so long that he has all the dirt on him. He blackmails Slaid into letting me open. It made me think about how good Slaid is at attracting talent. Usually if I heard that an artists boyhood friend was opening I'd cringe. I'd figure it was just nepotism. Rod is really talented though. I even traveled to Baltimore to see him perform without Slaid.
As Rod was introducing his last song I realized it was going to be Tiger Tom Dixon's Blues and applauded. I was the only one of course. Rod then stopped what he was saying and commented on the lone applauder. I felt a bit self-conscious.
Slaid had new musicians backing him up. There was a fiddler and a guitarist. The fiddler really worked. She played the parts that Oliver would play on the accordion. Her quote of the Munsters Theme Song in Monster-in-law was great. When Slaid said, "the next song takes place in Canada" I applauded again because I knew it was Breakfast in Hell my favorite song of his. He too commented on the one person applauding. I don't know if either of them knew it was me. I was hoping that he'd ask for someone to lead the work gang but he didn't. Maybe he was traumatized from the last time I lead it. Or maybe he realized I needed Carey and Shelly to keep me on tempo. Slaid's voice seemed strained on BIH, it's a good thing he's going back home for a bit now. He did sound fine on the Yodeling song he did. He lost it at one point because of Rod. I don't know what Rod did but Slaid looked at him while he was yodeling and broke out laughing. Slaid gave everyone yodeling lessons when he did a Hank Williams song. He said he wasn't expecting us to be good. When we yodeled he said that we met his expectations.
After the show I didn't hang around to talk to Slaid and Rod. I wanted to get home. As it is I didn't get to go out for my walk till it was almost 8. I walked 4 miles but I walked faster than normal and got home a bit after 9. I called Carey up and caught her after Fake David Morreale left and before she went to sleep. She wasn't feeling well so we didn't talk too long, just enough to tell each other the highlights of our weekends and to plot some evildoing. What do turtle, a jar of peanut butter, a Kenny license plate, and a tombstone have in common? I'll never tell.
Shortly after I got off the phone with Carey, Leah called. I haven't spoken to her since she left for camp. She got my package and all her friends were impressed. More importantly her father seems to be getting used to me being in her life.
Ok this entry is long enough already. I am not going to include any politics or philosophy. I will of course give the latest installment of Gella: Revenge of the Jedi
In her excavations of the site where she found the ancient pottery shard she found a gold coin with a picture of Poseidon on it. Poseidon was the traditional patron god of Atlantis, I wonder….
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Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile 2002-07-08
