I’ll be absent from the information stuporhighway for the next fortnight.

Until I get back, y’all play nice with each other and let’s maintain that lead, Cubbies!

Arrivederci, adio and hoşça kalın.

If you think you’ve had the worst day ever and are just about as low as you can be, go rent “La Vie en Rose.”

Not only will you sit through 2+ hours of the story of somebody’s life that is much more tragic than yours, it’ll surprisingly make your day just a little bit worse.

The music was cool, though.

When I ride my bike by myself on country roads, I’ve started using my iPod Shuffle at low volume to keep myself motivated and entertained.  My rear view mirror protects me from overtaking traffic and usually I can see a cow crossing the road from a mile away in the hinterlands.

But when I ride from home through downtown up Hermitage Avenue and the hooker/day laborer/hourly hotel/spooky cemetary/quonset hut tavern route that is my daily commute, no headphones for me.  I need 100% attention on the road and my surroundings to have a chance to arrive intact.

Unfortunately, that means whatever silly-ass song that gets in my head will stay there for my 35 minute ride, often hummed and whistled in single stanza segments on both the inhale and exhale as I climb hills.  Some recent brain-worms that have haunted me:

“Hot dogs.  Armour hot dogs.What kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?
Tough kids, sissy kids, kids who climb on rocks.
Tall kids, short kids, even kids with chickepox
Love hot dogs… Armour hot dogs…
The dogs-kids-love-to-bite!”

“Mid-south bizness furniture.  Mid-south bizness furniture. Mid-south bizness furniture.” (repeat x 1000.  I’m not kidding.  That’s all there is to the damn song)

“It’s the New Zoo Revue.  Coming right at you.  With three delightful animals. They have fun with what they do.  They learn from their friend Doug.  (Their friend Doug!)  And his “helper” (quotes mine) Emmy Jo.  (Emmy Jo!) With Charlie! Freddy! Henrietta! They have fun learning what they don’t know.”

“867-5309. 867-530 ni-ee-yine.”

On the rare occasion, I can force these brainworms from my head by singing a verse of “Mustang Sally,” but I doubt the performance is too convincing to the “thirsty-two ouncer lunchbox special” set sitting on the bus stop bench considering I’m wearing skintight spandex pants with a padded crotch pad and a clown-suit jersey with Italian written all over it.

The worst is when I happen to catch a snippet of a commercial just as I go out the door in the morning.   I have a real fear that someday I will find myself in an emergency situation that is not necessarily life-threatening and I’ll end up on hold after dialing 1 (800) 588-2300.

Because the NAMM show has returned to Nashvegas, we can expect to see some incredible music in town this coming weekend.  And some of it will be in unexpected places.

A little birdie (OK, really it was a musician friend of mine) told me about a show on Saturday night that I cannot freakin’ believe.

At 9:30 upstairs in the pool room of the Sportsman’s Grille in Hillsboro Village, Jack Pearson, Tony Monaco and Jim White will be playing as a jazz trio.  For free.  In a sports bar.

For the underinformed, Jack Pearson is a virtuoso guitar player who has played with everyone from Bobby “Blue” Bland to the Allman Brothers.  Tony Monaco is probably one of the top three Hammond B-3 organ players on the planet.  And Jim White, well he’s just plain a motherf*cker on the drums.

It should be an amazing show!  It’s nights like this that make me feel very lucky to live in this town.

Something I really don’t like about myself that is embarrassingly transparently self-revelatory:

When loading or unloading my car, I almost always try to carry more things in my arms at one time than I can handle.  I invariably drop something and break stuff.

Hmm…I wonder what that says about my tendency and inability to attempt to manage multiple projects?

…but even I can do basic math.

Voila a barely legible phone photo from a sports bar menu in Atlanta.

$5.00 for a large and $7.50 for a small?  I showed them.  I ordered two smalls.

I figure I’ll make it up in volume.  My tummy doesn’t feel too good, though.

Dear Pottery Barn, Wine Spectator, Magellan Travel, Target, Sears, Amazon, Red Envelope, Brookstone and any other mass marketer who has sent me an email over the past week reminding me that Father’s Day is coming soon and suggesting the perfect gift for my father,

He’s dead,  OK?

I hope you’re proud of yourselves.

We already bought him a freakin’ urn.  Sheez.

Well, it wasn’t really at Fan Fair, but it is really me and it was really about 1978 and I was really funny looking…

Dear inbred, beer-swilling hillbilly occupants of the caravan of three rebel-flag-flying black SUVs and pick `em up trucks who damn near ran me off the road on my bike ride home in your haste to get downtown on Hermitage Avenue because you were apparently running a few minutes late to see Kenny Chesney tongue-kiss George Strait on his booty-hole,

Screw you and your contribution to the local economy!  I’m pretty sure we don’t take Confederate money anyway.

Douchenozzles.

I just got the strangest fortune cookie at Khan’s Mongolian BBQ.

I’ve always said that if I were a homicide detective in Cabot Cove, Maine I would follow Angela Lansbury’s ass around 24/7 and just wait for the cases to fall into your lap.

So, Newscoma, you might want to come shadow me for awhile. I’m just sayin’…

If you go without doing it for too long, you start to get uptight about not doing it and worrying about whether it’ll be good enough when you actually do do it again and whether anyone will ever want you to do it again so you finally decide to just get off your ass and do it again and when you do it’s usually pretty sloppy and over too quickly.

arrested

Just kidding.

I was listening to “This American Life” last weekend, (yeah I’ve got a yellow-dog liberal streak down my back, screw you, righties!) and David Rakoff told the story about Vinny Ricardo, who was found dead in his New York apartment after mummifying for over a year. Tragically, with the television on.

It got me to thinking, I pay all my bills via electronic transfer. My doctor and my dentist know that I’m responsible enough to make my own appointments on a regular schedule. The folks where I work know that I’d just as soon disappear to my cabin in Sewanee some day forever anyway and catch up on forty years worth of reading and bird watching. After I finished negotiated the sale of the remaining assets from my father’s estate for the family I haven’t heard “boo” from my brothers, other than to hear through the grapevine that they are apparently doing well, which I’m happy about. (Love ya’, bros. Gimme a call sometime!)

So if RUABelle were to get fed up with my shit someday and add some Red Devil lye to my coffee instead of milk or cream, I wonder how long it would take for somebody to really notice I was missing. I mean, we’ve got enough pet carriers to pack up both dogs and both cats, and she does own an SUV and a set of keys to the cabin.

Then I thought of thedryspot.net and Twitter. Y’all might notice my absence after a couple of weeks. So if I take a hiatus, don’t assume it’s writer’s block. Poke me or nudge me or superpoke me or whatever the hell the latest technoterm is, but for God’s sake, don’t leave me dead in the recliner watching election coverage!

In yet another example of egosurfing, apparently Bruce Jenner has found a reference to himself on NewsComa’s blog and left a short comment. The only celebrities to grace the comment section here at thedryspot.net have been George Goldtrap and the children of Bob Lobertini. We’re certainly not talking A-listers here.

Being the suspicious mind that I am, (I’m caught in a trap. I can’t walk out.) I clicked through the link on Bruce’s comment to verify his identity at his website. That’s where I came across this:

Holy crap, Bruce! Botox much? Which part of that word doesn’t scare you? BOtulism or TOXin?

Not only is today the 2nd anniversary of the bodacious Jag and her beloved CookinBoy, but I can’t believe it’s been two years since this little bundle of neuroses came into our lives.

I hope we all celebrate both these auspicious occasions for many years to come.