Revisiting the past…..

At this point in life there are now moments when I sit back and go “I can’t believe this happened twenty years ago”. And then there are the moments I realize are part of time immortal ….. The moment is happening today as surely as the day they first occurred. Such a moment happened for Jon and I when we spent a good portion of this January weekend watching Live –Aid.
Generated by the initial reaction of one pop star to famine in Ethiopia Band Aid/We Are the World/Live-Aid is the closest my generation has to a rallying point of selflessness. The fact that this occurred in 1985 should be noted by historians as nothing short of miraculous. People who remember are nodding their heads with me. Those of you younger cannot begin to understand how selfish we were as a group. And yet it happened. On October 29th of 1984 Bob Geldof penned the chorus of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” Not to be outdone , the American music community got together after the Grammy awards that year and recorded “We Are the World” (It’s still a lame song, but dammit they were trying to help). The faces you see during this 20 hours of footage are a history of Rock & Roll. The performances vary in quality greatly. Some are reaffirming even now… Teddy Pendegrass singing for the first time after his accident and carrying the crowd in Philly… oh and Run D.M.C. doing the sound check…. Best one I’ve ever seen. Some are heartbreaking…. The crowd booing Joan Baez… Madonna performing with shoes that don’t match her outfit ….. and many are, even taken as a moment from today …. The best live music I’ve ever seen performed. As pointed out in the booklet enclosed… this was before faxes, cell phones, e-mail. And they got this concert together in six weeks. Two continents. Over fifty acts. Princess Di makes a joke with Brian May. Bob Dillon come out at the last minute with Ronny Woods and Keith Richards to sing “Blowing in the Wind”. Paul McCartney offers to play after rumors of a Beatles reunion run rampant. The result is “Let it Be” with a non assist from Peter Townsend who tickles Paul mercilessly. 98% of the T.V.s in the world who had access to the feed tuned in at some point during the sixteen hours of telecast. Imagine….
My favorite moment on the newly released video is Maggie Thatcher being outdone by Geldof, right after Thatcher said “What good could butter oil possibly do them when they’ve nothing to cook?”
And in music, simply told Freddy Mercury and Queen ruled the day despite a display of talent and adrenalin from others never again matched.
Watching Live-Aid again all these years later brought a barrage of stories from Jon to myself and from me to him…. “And then we”…. “Oh, this is when” We know each other a little better tonight. So think of a purchase. You won’t be disappointed. And all these years later? The money is still going to Ethiopia. Bob Geldof is many things but good has to be the first word you use. And after this trip down memory lane? This week, I do like Monday.

Ruth

There is an official webbsite that tells about the dvd nd has a place to take donations:Live Aid DVD

It Was 20 Years Ago Today

Well, almost...

I got Live Adi on dvd for xmas and popped it in tonight. It's still giving me chills.
Bono, the rock and roll security nightmare pulling girls from the audience, Ultravox, Queen, Robert Palnt. The whole thing is still amamzing. And money is still going to the right places. Pretty cool.

Hard to beleive I was only 21 when this all took place. And strangely, I remember watching the whole thing on TV and screaming all night.

Jan. Blog Event

This is an idea from Bryon ( I love Showtunes) Quertermous and Dave White. A set of intsrtuctions arrived via courier and we were each asked to write a short story with the the same three things. I'm not sure I'm of equal standing with my writing, but what the hell, I get to kill some people so I decided to go for it.

These are the other blogsites and bloggers participating in the blog event for Jan 25th.

My story follows this list:
Dave White
Bryon Quertermous
Sarah Weinman
Gerald So
Graham Powell
Aldo Calcagno
Duane Swierczynski
Jennifer Jordan
Dave Zeltserman
John Rickards
Ray Banks
Pat Lambe
Bob Tinsley




The Story:
No Cure For Cancer


The car was traveling at around 75 MPH. To Al this didn’t really feel all that fast, but of course he was driving through a subdivision and the speed limit was only 25, so he was in fact going way too fast. The fact that the houses were still under construction didn’t change the speed limit. <>It shouldn’t have surprised him when he saw lights flashing behind him, but Al was in fact surprised. Surprised and immediately nervous. He couldn’t afford to be pulled over and given a ticket. His insurance was already costing him a kings ransom every three months and he couldn't afford for it to go up. He reached over and turned off the radio, even though it was the middle of the new Metallica song. He needed to think.

Because Al is going to die, he really shouldn’t give a flying fuck about insurance. He could be nervous just hoping his plan would go well.

Two options became clear pretty quickly. He could try to out run a car designed to chase other cars, or pull over and hope for the best.

Al pulled over.

The patrolman walked up to the car with kind of swagger you can only get by wearing a belt loaded down with too much equipment. As the cop reached the rear of the car, Al rolled down his window and leaned out. The patrolman leaned down.

“Good evening sir. Can I see you drivers license, please?”

“My hovercraft is full of eels”, Al said with a grin.

“Excuse me?” the patrolman asked with a grimace.

“Sorry, I’m just fucking with you. Hang on a second and let me get my wallet out.”

“Could you step out of the car, sir?”

“Fuck it,” Al muttered to himself and reached between the seat and the door.

As he opened the door he rolled out on to his back and aimed straight up.

The taser hit the patrolman in the belly and for a minute the man just stood and there and shook. When Al dropped the taser, the patrolman dropped right after it.

Al stood up and kicked the cop.

“No sense of humor,” he said to no one.

He reached down and grabbed the cop’s gun and his taser and walked to the back of the car. As he popped the trunk, the car’s owner started to come around. Al walked back, grabbed the nightstick from the prone patrolman, and stopped to give him a blow to the head. When he went back to the trunk he repeated the night stick move on Mr. Murray. With the other members of his party unconscious, Al got down to business.

He dragged the cop back to the trunk and threw him in on top of Mr. Murray. He slammed the trunk shut, walked back to the patrol car and sat in the drivers seat.

Having been for a ride in a few of these, Al knew where to turn off the lights. He put the squad in gear and pulled around in front of Mr. Murray’s car. He hoped out, leaving the squad running and moved over to the sedan he had been driving, and shut the lights off and closed the door.

“What a pain in the ass”

Getting back into the squad car, he drove the half mile to where the property he owned was showing the signs of new construction .He parked the squad around the back, hidden from the street. He jogged back to the sedan and drove that to his property as well.

Stepping threw the framework that would soon be a new home, he slid back the plywood floor. Al insisted on plywood, no particle board for him. Money was no object, after all, he had plenty. When he found out the cancer was terminal he'd taken out he took out a number of loans. It wasn’t like he would need to pay them back. He’d be dead long before then.

With the basement exposed, he reached in and turned on the lights. The basement lit up but left everything else dark. He walked back to the car and dragged out the cop and then Mr. Murray, dropping them on the ground long enough to close the trunk. He then pulled them one at a time over to the opening and slid them down the ramp into the basement. He took the steps down after them.

By the time they came to Al had them tied up and blindfolded. The cop spoke first.

“What are you doing? I’m a cop!”

“Blah, blah, blah. Shut the fuck up.”

Al leaned over and kicked while he spoke.

“Let me guess. I have no idea how much trouble I’m in, your pals on the force will be looking for you, etc etc.

Leans down to speak right into the cops ear.

“Well, I happen to know it will be a while before they do. I know all about you, pal. This is the time of night when you usually take off for a snooze and everyone leaves you alone.”

“What do you mean you know about me?”

“You don’t think this is random do you? You two are just names on a list of people who need to pay.

Al lights up a Marlboro red and takes a long drag.

"Mr. Murray here got me fired from my first job back in high school. I lost my first girlfriend because of that. And you, you dumb ass. You busted me for having a joint when I was 19. One lousy joint. But it was enough for my parents to pull me out of college."

Murray finally spoke “ You’re going to kill us for that?”

<>“Buddy, I’m going to kill every one that ever did me wrong”

“You’ll never get away with it.”

“I don’t need to. I’ll be dead in three months. I decided I’m not going alone.”

Al pulled the blindfolds off and the two men looked around. Their faces took on slack expressions as they noticed the other bodies.

“I killed the lawyers first. And the one in the white? That’s the Doctor with no cure for me.”

Al started for the stairs.

“I’ll be back later. I have a little more trunk music to play before I kill you two.”

The light went off and they heard the car drive away.

They sat in the dark, wondering how long it would be until he came back.

It’s too bad Al was speeding after he left. He ran off the road and died with out anyone
finding out about the basement in time to do anything for numbers 17 and 18 on the list.

Yeeeehaaaaaaa

Saturday morning, early afternoon. Milwaukee is still getting a lot of snow.

My Uncle called and needed a ride to the shop because he could not get out of his driveway.

Jon and his four wheel drive Ranger to the rescue. Cruising down lakefront drive windows down plunging through snowdrifts with out slowing down. Not much other traffic. Ozzy Ozborne singing about a Crazy Train at full volume. Life is good!! I love driving in the snow.

Saw a lot of people downtown and on the eastside shoveling out their cars after getting plowed in. Some people stuck because they were driving in places they should know better than to try and drive.

I kept humming along, tunes cranked, loving the snow!

Got back to the shop, dropped my uncle off at the garage to get the plow and I went and did donuts in the parking lot.......

SICK

This is not a plea for sympathy, nor a cry for back pats.
Just a rant of sorts.

In the last twenty years, with the exception of hangovers when I was drinking, I only got sick twice. I just never caught anything.

This weekend Ruth brought home a very special gift from the pharmacy where she works. It kicked in late friday and she ended up spendning the entire weekend out cold. Every few hours she would come out of her hibernation and take more nyquil and drink a bottle of water, then back to bed.

THis sucked because I hate to see my wife sick. But also I had no one to talk to and I played a lot of spider solitiare.

Well, Sunday night came around and I started getting dizzy. My head hurt, and all my joints ached. I had a fever. I started coughing deep deep coughs that seemed to come from my bowels.

I was sick.

Really sick.

As a result I spent all day Monday in bed under many covers sweating it out. No eating, just sleeping and liquids. By late monday night a started to feel better. Not healthy yet, but better.

The main thing I hate about being sick is the complete lack of control. The body does all sorts of things to mess you up and all you can do is take it and make a feeble attempt with pills to stop it.

I also hate the weird delerium dreams I have, this time out it was lots of square shapes.......

I'm off, back to bed.