Laid Up Blues, Trainer Blows Out Back As The World Burns

What a drag it is getting old, eh Brother? I blew out my back getting the old man out of bed on Sunday and these days I spend most of my time flat, laid up, immobilized and otherwise worried to death. I ask myself, will I be able to play my monthly gig at House Wine on Thursday? Will I make it to the Cabaret on Friday? What about Letter Day and the Headlines? Who will judge the righteous? And what about the blog?!
Aho and even darker fears grip me as I lay on my Yoga mat. What if I don’t make it? What if I can’t make this dream real? What if I never live my dreams?

Questions of a different magnitude were asked in D.C. last week, and the answers, if they came at all, were grim&strange&sad.
And in Nairobi and Peshawar and any number of places unlucky enough to land on the other side of the great Wall of American Hegemony.
Aho. I’ll make it through. And with a little help from my friends I’ll be up&swinging again, punching down the savage road, talking shit and stalking this dream. If there’s anything shining in the mire of all this misery it’s that we’ve pulled ourselves back from the brink of war. Common sense would’ve made it a foregone conclusion that we can’t, as a country, continue to bomb dictators from out of their bunkers in small countries in the middle east anymore, without our New World Order coming home to roost. There’s people getting angry in these darkest hours, we’re no longer safe in our own country and we’ve been disabused of even the illusion of safety.
What could this be but the age of Nutter’s Rule? 12 dead at the hands of a mentally unstable Navy Reservist and at least 85 dead in the other hemisphere has become “the new normal”. Hunter Thompson was right.

It’s Sunday-we are not bombing Syria today! No children beneath our rubble-no grandmothers aflame-no death in our message-no shot across the bow. Let’s think how we each will contribute through our active love of those close-through our ease and acceptance of strangers to us as we are to them. Let’s contribute through our work-and our art. Let’s not take this moment-this new week for granted.
-Don Bajema, makin’ ’em know on Facebook last week
Aho. There he is. I dropped the ball last week and failed to bring you Chapter 2 of Too Skinny, Too Small. But as I mentioned, I blew out my back and this much madness was too much sorrow. I’ve been corresponding with Brother Don however, and I’m sitting on 2 Chapters of his latest lament on the bloodsport of American masculinity. Not only that, starting next week Bajema will be providing readers with a new chapter of Too Skinny, Too Small every Sunday until the Super Bowl. Aho. Some fresh wisdom and something other than
these angry alcoholic rants chronicling heartbreak in America and lamenting the death of rock&roll.

I watched 5 guys probably in their 50’s hand most current bands their ass last night and then still Keep going. Energetic, Tight and powerful.
-Jarrett Pritchard on seeing the mighty FLAG in Baltimore on Tuesday
Ah, but not so fast. Those guys are pushing 50 and they’re still raging against the machine. In life, there are those that do and those that criticize. In some strange&incredible twist of fate, it has become my job to criticize. As such, Greg Ginn may try to shut this rig down but rock and roll can never die. That’s from Brother Neil Young, a finer patriot than many Americans born here. But shit, considering the war on the poor in this country, maybe Canada ain’t so bad after all.

we love you so much / our country is fucked.
-GY!BE’s statement regarding their recently awarded Polaris Prize

Aho. I’ve still got 4 letters to send out to folks who responded to my Letter Day post on the GFtT Faccebook page last Friday. The headlines made it out on Monday and we’re booking December in Philly, people. Brother Don Bajema will be F-ing the NFL straight through February and Friday I’ll be revisiting One From The Heart, my music-critic series, and presenting you with a very special album to me.
The 24hour news cycle can be relentless but, ultimately, my petty complaints pale in comparison to the horror folks are subjected to elsewhere in the world and on the daily. As I down another Ibuprofen 800 and stare at the ceiling, I grapple with my own mortality-aho, and even consider the futility of my own existence. But then I punch down another 800 words and send this post off to you, good reader. Transmission, it’s keeping me alive. Your readership is my everything.

And once there was a time to join the army
And once there was a time to hear the news
And once there was a time for easy silence
But now the jury waits for you
–Witness Blues, A.A. Bondy

#fuuuuuuuu