Let me preface this by saying that in no way do I want you to stop buying Jack Daniel’s Whiskey just because of their political affiliation. That’s merely an ancillary reason – the main reason is that their whiskey sucks. The company also gave tons of money to Trump’s election campaign, ended its DEI initiatives before he was even elected, and then donated to his inauguration. The Fuck-Around-and-Find-Out moment comes now that Trump’s tariffs have pissed off the majority of the free world, including Canada, which has been pulling Jack Daniel’s products from their shelves and urging people to buy Canadian. LOL to that and to the CEO of Jack Daniel’s whining all about it. Go Canada!
And seriously, buy any other whiskey for your Manhattan.
Losing an hour of time is always a bit of a mind fuck. Gaining it back in the fall is fine, but the cost of later sunlight is some crankiness from one less hour of sleep. Especially at a time of the year when there is about to be so much more to do – so let’s take this sleepy Monday morning and do our usual weekly blog recap before we get busy…
This piece of music by the Danish String Quartet is titled ‘The Peat Dance’ and it recalls a windy day in Ireland when I was in some tour group marching across the peat bogs, pausing in a peat-thatched cottage for some Irish coffee to take the sting out of the cold. Humans are funny in the ways we walk through winter together, and apart.
Suzie enjoys the Danish String Quartet, and we are currently in the midst of planning for a dinner loosely called ‘Suzette’s Feast’ in an homage to ‘Babette’s Feast’. Ours will likely be a sad and silly approximation of the wonder that was Babette’s glorious meal (Suzie has already nixed the turtle soup, and I haven’t been able to locate any quails to stuff – we are having Mom do up some Cornish game hens for the latter) but this is how we traverse the final weeks of winter. Together.
Hope is on the swiftly-moving air currents (a clumsily-disguised description of wind because I’m tired of saying that word). It’s in the shift of the sun, and the disappearing hour this weekend. It’s also in the burst of new growth on our indoor plants – a sign that comes before the snow has melted, before the first cranky and crinkled unfolding of the Lenten rose.
This is a fern that we’ve had since I first met Andy – a descendant of one of his Mom’s original plants – and somehow we’ve managed to keep it alive for twenty-five years. It’s in our sunniest window (and if you’re having trouble with ferns, I advise trying them in a bit more light – when the literature says they can survive in deep shade, that usually means the deep shade of the outdoors – indoors is by its very nature already shaded). This fern, like most of us, has had good years and bad years, and right now it’s looking very lush and happy, thanks to a prime spot right beside the humidifier. Ferns always like high humidity, especially in bright light.
I sense spring in its verdant new growth. Promise, too.
Wind has been vicious the past few days. Messages and meanings crash against the house in the middle of the night. When I sit in the attic and write I can leave the music off and listen to the raging tantrum outside. Somewhat strangely, there is comfort in the dull cacophony, muted by the roof and walls and windows. The howling and whistling still seeps in, but the thunderous whirling roar is blunted to soothing form. Background noise, like the rhythmic call of the ocean, so dangerously pulling the unaware to sleep.
The end of winter doesn’t want to arrive, like some reluctant child clinging to the womb. I watch the pine boughs in wild sway as the sun struggles to set the land ablaze, and listen to the avalanche of air – invisible, omnipotent beast.
And then I hear something playful at work, some presence that lets me know things will be ok, that everything will be all right in the end. Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s faith. Maybe it’s someone I miss from the other side.
Maybe a whisper of a God so powerful and angry it comes as a gale and a gust for all the things we’re currently doing wrong. Superstition works both ways; magic and fairy stories serve their purpose in attempting to explain the unexplainable. We believe what we want to believe – sometimes what we need to believe – to get through, to survive, to weather a windy night.
The plastic bag scene in ‘American Beauty‘ was a way to capture wind on film. It’s always haunted me for that, and for other things.
Every time that I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face gettin’ clearer The past is gone
It went by like dusk to dawn Isn’t that the way? Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay
For the 10th anniversary of MTV, the music that once played, well, music, celebrated itself with a few powerhouse performances (and one glorious therapy session in noirish brilliance by Lady M herself). Strangely, for those who thought they knew me, my favorite musical portion was when Aerosmith took to the stage after a piano floated through the air and they launched into their classic ‘Dream On’.
I watched the performance in our basement rec room – lights off, the space lit only by the glow of the television – and with a full orchestra backing the band, the maelstrom of music and spectacle took me out of my miserable life for five minutes. Transported on the crests of musical majesty, I soared through the night, leaving behind the wretchedness of that basement, where I once hid as a child, where I carved out the only safe space I ever knew, and only because it was the space within myself.
This is it – this is the part. Listen as it builds, listen as it becomes salvation, listen as it becomes redemption. Then sing. Sing for your soul, sing for your survival, sing your way out of whatever your life has become. Sing with me…
Sing with me, sing for the year Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear Sing with me, it’s just for today Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away
Boomeranging back to this bad-bangs rock-star wannabe scene, ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale’ gives slight whiplash as we give eyeliner and rouge a bad name. The diva may be divine, but she’s also an admitted hot-mess, with the emphasis on the messy. Still, she gives a good time, a chuckle, and sometimes a guffaw. You’ve never had more fun and you know it.
You… [finger-pointing]… you.
“You’re singing an aria and they’re building scenery in the wings.” – Terrence McNally
“My fire comes from here… It’s mine… It’s not for sale. It’s not for me to give away, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. It’s who I am. Find out who you are.” – Terrence McNally
“This isn’t a freak show. I’m not a performing seal.” – Terrence McNally
‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale‘ lives up to its ‘All Is Vanity‘ theme with this ridiculous set of photos which features a bad dress, a pair of awful shoes, and the worst wig in the world. Thankfully, the garish and the god-awful are part of what this project was about, and things will get a whole lot uglier before we approach prettiness again.
I love the armpit hair, and the push-and-pull tug-of-war between perceived masculine and feminine motifs. That underlying tension gets lost in the funnier aspects at work here. It’s all part of the show, and rather than ruin it by analyzing it to a Virgo’s content, I’ll take my verbal leave and leave you to it.
Our now-non-holiday cactus has decided to grace us with a smattering of blooms, long before we could even consider it an Easter cactus, and so far removed from Thanksgiving or Christmas that it gives up any chance of holiday affiliation. I don’t appreciate it any less, however; in fact, it may have sensed our wish for spring, and flowers, and any glimpse of hope in this gray and barren world, and thus delivered a show out of sync with any human-sanctioned holiday. Those are often the best shows anyway – the unexpected, the unhyped, the unpredicted. The reminder that life is so often a whim that defies planning or expectation. I need to heed that lesson more, to embrace the moment at hand and not attempt to set some rigid outline of what’s going to happen. That takes up way too much space in the brain, and my brain needs what little space remains just to get me through the damn day.
Another winter song to see us through the dimmest days, when being poised on the precipice of spring makes the icy setbacks that much more difficult to bear. I’ve often been called cold, or detached, and I always sort of wore that as a badge of pride. Better to be cold than to be hurt. Better to strike first than have your heart pierced and your life marred forever after. What a foolish attitude to have, or in my case to pretend. A song now for the supposedly-cold-hearted among us:
Come to me Run to me Do and be done with me Cold, cold, cold Don’t I exist for you? Don’t I still live for you? Cold, cold, cold
From the same exquisite album that brought us this winter song, ‘Cold’ was an ideal companion piece, a delicate ballad that gently ticks off a list of adoration and celebration of someone who may or may not be into you. The first person who gave me this song loved me more than I could ever love her. She probably still does. My heart remains icily indifferent.
Everything I possess, given with tenderness Wrapped in a ribbon of glass Time it may take us but God only knows How I’ve paid for those things in the past
Dying is easy it’s living that scares me to death, ooh, yeah I could be so content hearing the sound of your breath, ooh, yeah
Cold is the colour of crystal the snowlight That falls from the heavenly skies Catch me and let me dive under For I want to swim in the pools of your eyes
I wanna be with you baby Oh-oh, slip me inside of your heart Don’t I belong to you baby? Don’t you know that nothing can tear us apart? Come on now, come on now, come on now Telling you that I loved you right from the start But the more I want you the less I get Ain’t that just the way things are?
Sometimes it’s difficult to muster up much compassion for our younger selves, for the people we once were who didn’t know any better, or who did but simply never acted on it. The clarity of how those aspects differ is something we never want to admit. How much easier on our conscience would it be to just pretend confusion, to act like we never knew we were doing the wrong thing? I always knew, and to my shameful acknowledgment, I did the awful things anyway. When shielding the heart, you run the risk of wounding others with your armor, and at a certain point that risk became a reward. The warped masochistic tendencies of a young man lost in the turmoil of not knowing who he was – the casualties left on love’s battlefield – the coldness, the precision, the detachment…
The sake of survival.
Winter has frozen us Let love take hold of us (Cold, cold, cold) Now we are shivering Blue ice is glittering (Cold, cold, cold)
Cold is the colour of crystal the snowlight That falls from the heavenly skies Catch me and let me dive under For I want to swim in the pools of your eyes
Preliminary planning for this year’s BroSox Adventure began on a dismal rainy night at La Mexicana Restaurant and Grocery Store on Central Fucking Avenue. Sidling into one of several empty booths at this cheery hole-in-the-wall, Skip and I dove into brainstorming for what marks the 10th anniversary of our very first Boston Red Sox trip, so it’s got to be epic. Go Big or Go Home (Plate). See, I know baseball lingo. Strike! Dug-out! (The word says it.)
Here is some music to go with our food, and a mock-margarita that is just pure Jose Cuervo margarita mix minus any alcohol, rimmed with salt and adored with a slice of lime. Totally as awful as it sounds, but when in Rome! The company was good, and the food was delicious, so you take the wins when you can, and on a cold rainy night in March, a Mexican meal with an old friend is comfort indeed.
My proposal for #BroSox10 is an ambitious two-page itinerary of box items that touch on classic moments and memories over the past decade of BroSox adventures, with the intent to check off as many as we feel up to doing. The expectation is that two or three might get checked off if we get off our lazy asses and front stoop – no promises for much more beyond that. Perhaps we’ll rally and drive through all of them, or perhaps we’ll meet somewhere in the middle – whatever the outcome, it’s bound to be fun and chill and just what my world needs in such dark times.
Part of the fun is in the planning, so we’ll delve into details and cement game dates as we get deeper into spring. It’s a banner year for so many reasons… stay tuned. And if you have any suggestions what two mid-to-late-forty-something gents should do when in Beantown, send them my way. Skip is always up for a dare.
In this the year that I turn fifty years old, I find myself indulging in bits of nostalgia here and there, something I don’t do all that often mostly because of how messy it can be. I look back at some pictures where my smile is big and my outfits ridiculous, anything to disguise and distract from the bandages on my wrists, and I ache for what we do to ourselves just trying to get through it. For some reason, these recent days have returned my mind to my senior year of high school, an eerie echo of another transitional period of life. Winter music put my youth to slumber then; it breaks my middle age now.
We are the roses in the garden, Beauty with thorns among our leaves.
To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed. What is the reason for having roses When your blood is shed carelessly?
It must be for something more than vanity.
‘Our Time in Eden’ is one of those formative music albums of my youth, thanks to epic cuts like ‘These Are Days’ and ‘Candy Everybody Wants’ – and this one – ‘Eden’ – which is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, in the best possible way. Back in those final days of high school, I felt the quickened rush of time – the clock as another demon – and I struggled to hang onto whatever I could even as I felt it all slipping away. Most of my classmates and friends wanted to grow up as quickly as possible – despite how old my soul felt, or perhaps because of it, I understood that we should not have been in such a rush, that those days, that Eden, would never come again. I didn’t want to let it go.
Believe me, the truth is we’re not honest, Not the people that we dream.
We’re not as close as we could be. Willing to grow but rains are shallow. Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land,
We will be. Waiting for the light arisen To flood inside the prison.
And in that time kind words alone will teach us, No bitterness will reach us.
Whenever I hear this song, it makes me pause and remember. There’s a pit in my stomach – not the usual angst-ridden pit, but a stirring of great and overwhelming emotion. It brings back that tender time when the world was first imprinting itself on my soul, when music meant so much, when beauty could break the heart and the first flush of romantic love hinted at all the exquisite torment to come. Had I known everything that would unfold, I wonder if I’d have bothered with the bandages at all, or simply embraced the pain, knowing how integral it would be to finding the happiness.
Reason will be guided another way. All in time, But the clock is another demon that devours our time in eden, In our paradise. Will our eyes see well beneath us, Flowers all divine? Is there still time? If we wake and discover In life a precious love, Will that waking become more heavenly?
