In The Weeds

  Sweet syrup sitting on the table. The waitress brings it with the pancakes and cornbread. We love to sit at the crowded table at Joseph's and eat the butter-soaked pancake. The noise inside makes your head vibrate. This place is so busy the line stretches out the door and down to Main Street. It is a popular Sunday breakfast spot. It should be. They have the lightest and fluffiest pancakes in the city. Their red bliss home fries are pretty damn good too.  I miss going there. For the past year, we have not eaten inside a restaurant due to the pandemic. I cannot remember the last time we had breakfast at Josephs's as a family. I know the last fast food sandwich I had was a Big Mac at McDonald's the day we brought Cal home from the shelter. Since then we have ordered pizza a couple of times, Marios a couple of times, and Chinese food probably a dozen or more times. Also Mexican maybe three times. But sit inside? Nope.  They are progressing with opening things up in the sta...

  “We got to get the bread and milk!”. The first blizzard of the season is on its way.  When I worked in the grocery business days like today, the proverbial "calm before the storm", we would be slammed. The panic in the shoppers as they lined up before the doors opened in the morning. The only days worse were the ones before Thanksgiving.  They rush the milk aisle, the bread, the meat. Nothing is safe. They have to stock up. They fill their carts with the abandonment of a contest on that old game show "Supermarket Sweep". Except this was real life. This was bloodsport. Most people these days are already pretty well stocked due to carrying extra inventory in the pandemic. In the spring we could not get supplies and were dealing with the first real shortages in our lives. People older than us had experienced worse I am sure. But fighting over toilet paper? That is not an issue right now. But the panic is still out there I am sure.  We get our groceries delivered...

  Chapstick The plastic tube sits in the pocket of my winter jacket. The “secret” inside pocket to be specific. It has been there for a long time. One thing about chapstick is it never spoils. It is a semisolid cylinder of vaseline in a plastic case that has a screw-driven dial on the bottom which as you apply it lets you push more forward until it runs out. But it never seems to. I usually lose the thing before it ever runs out. You only need it a few times a year mainly in the winter. At least for me as an adult. When I was a kid I needed to use it more frequently. Chapped lips were one of those discomforts of childhood like chafed thighs from your corduroy pants.  I cannot remember the last time I applied chapstick, to be honest. It has been a few years. I am not even sure if I have any in my big coat pocket if I was to go and check.  I do have hand sanitizer though. Freshly filled bottle from my wife. We need to be armed with it these days as the deadly virus continue...

On January 17 2017 the human trainwreck and perveted German blowup doll stood on the steps of the capitol and gave one of the grimmest inaugural addresses ever by a so-called American president. He spoke of "American Carnage" repeatedly. We always thought the presidency of Donald John Trump would be a mess. Did you ever think it would be one that would result in the deaths of more Americans in two months than died in nineteen years of combat in Southeast Asia? That over one million people (and climbing) would be infected with a deadly virus that his administration did basically nothing to halt the spread of in January and February as it silently wove its way across this country? Now we are looking at potential food shortages. Mainly in the meat industry as more and more workers contract the virus due to the horrendous working conditions they are forced to endure day in and day out for basically slave wages. They just raised the death projections this morning to 100,000. ...

Who else is sick and tired of the bullshit that is being spewed on us every friggin day by the most incompetent so-called "president" this country has ever witnessed? As I type this they are reporting over 43,000 Americans have died since February 29 from the coronavirus. We have a baby man throwing temper tantrums on Twitter who only cares about himself as more and more Americans die. Schools in my state were just closed until June , having already been close since March 13, one of at least 34 states to do so. Meanwhile the elected leader of the country is laying out plans to reopen and then immediately tweeting against HIS OWN PLANS. When does this madness end? What will it take?

It is almost impossible for me to comprehend that this album is 30.To put it into perspective, 30 years before this album's release, rock -n-roll hadn't been invented yet, at least in as far as mainstream America was concerned. Bing,Patti Page , Perry Como , Sinatra and their ilk celebrated 30 yr old songs when "War" was released. I can still remember hearing the first notes of "New Year's Day" coming out of the television in my livingroom,because in those days MTV still played music, and was the first thing I did when I got home from school.