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.
October 30, 2004 - 12:59 p.m.
Where do I begin? There were several diverse threads to my day. Lets start with my strange dreams. I actually remembered three of them last night. The first was about slime mold. For those of you who don’t remember your biology that’s a life form that has two modes. One is free floating amoeba. Then when some signal is given they come together to form a colony organism. In my dream the colony organism looked just like a frog and could jump. I had one in my basement and it was jumping around. It jumped into my hand and was less slimy than I feared. Sometimes it would jump on the floor and break up and become a puddle. After a few seconds you’d see the frog reform.
Somehow that dream segued into a horror movie. I was a kid with a family and it wasn’t my family. Something, maybe it was the slime mold, was taking people over like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The scene was similar to Night of the Living Dead. We were safe in the house with the taken over people outside. My father, who was nothing like my real father, opened the door to let someone in who he thought was safe. I knew he wasn’t, I shouted, “he’s the most evil one there is!” but it was too late, he was in with the other taken over people who grabbed us and was going to take us over too. That’s when I woke up.
Right before I woke up I had a geopolitical dream. We were going to go to war with Iran but didn’t so Russia did. Their purpose was to get a warm water port. They annexed a corridor through Iran leading to the sea. The entire dream was a discussion of this. Very strange.
Last night I went to see Eric Schwartz at the Minstrel Coffeehouse. I was caught in traffic so to get there then I had to forego my dinner at he Morristown Diner and eat at Burger King. I got to the show about 45 minutes before it was supposed to start, just about when I wanted to. I was able to get the last spot in the close lot. I saw someone standing by his car in the spot next to mine and realized it was Eric. I didn’t ask but I’m guessing he was stuck in the same traffic that I was. He had to bring in his guitar, keyboard, and CDS, so I acted like his Roadie. An advantage of that was I was allowed in before doors opened. I was there for the sound check. It was a late arriving crowd, I usually need to get there early if I want to sit up front, not last night. Most of the people arrived in the 10 minutes before the show started.
The opening act was Eric Erickson, it was the all Eric show. Erickson’s first song was the antithesis of a Schwartz song. It started off sounding like a funny song then became a depressing, serious ballad about aging. Eric Schwartz often starts his songs off serious before going off into lunacy.
This was the first time I’ve seen Eric Schwartz since his new CD came out, it was my first time hearing some of the new songs. I’d characterize the tone of some of his new songs as angrier than his usual fare. He sent a copy of Keep Your Jesus off my Penis to another performer who said, “You are not a satirist, you are a diatribist! We need that, keep up the good work.” If you want to hear the song go to EricSchwartz.com, you can download a video of it there. More than 100,000 have done so since he made it available.
During the intermission I bought the new CD and had him sign it. He was embarrassed because he forgot my name. He said, “I keep thinking it is Lew, but I know that’s wrong.” Those of you that know my email address can figure out why he thought that.
The Minstrel is held in a building owned by the parks department. There is a display case there which has exhibits from the Morristown Historical Society. When I glanced in it one name leapt out at me. On the upper right there was a photographed captioned “Richard Hsu.” It was not the beloved tenor in a now defunct man band but someone with the same name. I had to show it to Eric and Mike Agronoff, who runs the Minstrel. I knew they’d get the joke. I said, “look there’s a DVN reference in the display case. They found it and laughed. Eric said he wanted to do an album with Richard Hsu and Kevin So and call it So Hsu Me! I love it.
After the intermission I was alone on the left side of the front row, The rest of the row didn’t come back. That felt a bit awkward. I can’t decide if it was wrong of them to grab the front row when they knew they wouldn’t be back for the second half.
There is always a get together with the artist after the show at a pub at the Minstrel Coffeehouse. Usually the shows are too late so I don’t stay even when I know the performer. Last night ended earlier and they moved the event to the Morristown Diner so I didn’t have to worry about finding it. I was all set on going when Eric announced near the end that he couldn’t make it because he had totally forgotten that he was invited to a party in Philly with Full Frontal Folk and wanted to get there. I can’t blame him, I have a feeling that FFF can really party.
On the way home I got mad at Jersey for not announcing till it was too late to do anything about it that there was construction on the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. If they said it earlier I’d have gone on the lower level and not had any trouble.
Then I hit more construction on the Cross Bronx Expressway, and that led to trouble. I had a big truck in front of me and another to my side. I didn’t see that my lane was ending. When the truck in front of me moved to left I saw it and I moved too. The traffic was bumper to bumper, stop and go. I was a bit ahead of the truck to my left and moved in front of him out of my lane. He apparently took umbrage at this and decided he wasn’t going to let me do that. He went forward and hit me. His front wheel hit the back of my car, taking off the rear bumper and damaging the rear left panel. There was a cop right there because of the construction and we made out accident reports right there. It was clearly his fault, you could see by the damage that he was behind me and should have let me in so I think I’ll probably not have to pay the deductible but it still a huge hassle. The stupidest thing I’m concerned with is the bumper stickers. I hope they can re-attach the bumper or I’ll have to replace them, I at least need the Cadence Carroll.
Tonight I’m off to see Dave’s True Story’s last local show of the year. I haven’t seen them since may or June. For a while I was seeing them once a month.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 30, 2004
