Who Asked Me?

Time marches forward and waits for no man. Nowhere is this more apparent than the South Ferry subway station in the chilled wee hours of a Sunday morning in December, half crocked on good whiskey following a rare appearance at a holiday party. I’d appear more if I felt less conspicuous; less alone, sweaty and shiny. Two hours of hotel sleep the previous evening didn’t help. A confirmed bachelor of a certain age not unlike Mad Dog Mattis in a foxhole or Red Buttons at the Captain’s Table in The Poseidon Adventure. It feels necessary to move every now and again, to see the inside of an airport and all of these people doing what people do for no discernible reason. (Well .. “family,” I suppose, but even still.) And further on exiting the party while a Blanche DuBois type thanks me for “manning up” in reference to my 4 a.m. no-show threats and lack of sleep. I slur something about not being a “colossal pussy,” inappropriate for a man of any age and well outside the boundaries of southern decorum. Back to my hotel for a Mexican Xanax and solid six hours passed out atop the covers in my puffy jacket and boots. Another whirlwind trip but what better place for whirlwinding than New York City.

Saturday morning, no sleep and pre party, I’m trying to come to life with a rather long walk along the Promenade and Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s absolutely beautiful and I don’t use a word like ‘absolutely’ casually. So cold, so clear, so many young industrious sorts wrapped in winter running gear keeping themselves in the game. I shoot phone video from a distance of a guy competitive jump-roping, the Manhattan skyline roostering in front of him. Choppers hover and ferries shuffle by. A few hours and large coffee into my stroll I start following path signs for the restroom to no avail. One points in the direction of the next which points back to the first. I press on to Dumbo and something called the Timeout Market, a “bi-level waterfront hangout showcasing a curated lineup of local food and drinks, plus cultural events.” I live for these sorts of packed, bustling toolfests during the Holiday Season. Unfortunately the unisex restroom boasts a forty-person line stretching past two eateries and a candle shop so I circle the perimeter and find an exit. Outside my pace quickens staving off a pressing urge and prospect of public, outdoor urination in New York City. The lowest of lows. Thinking quickly (for me,) I duck past the front of the long line outside Grimaldi’s pizza and ask a waiter for the facilities. They are vacant, small but clean, warm and private. I once leased an expensive Mercedes AMG sports car and at no moment in those three years did I experience the same joy as in Grimaldi’s head. If I never eat their pizza they will still hold fond space in my heart.

On my last night I’m in a Brooklyn bar listening to a large table of 20 and 30 somethings discussing a recent Trump tweet depicting Chris Christie waiting on numerous incoming Jersey drones delivering McDonalds. “Have to admit it,” one says, “he’s hilarious.” Such sentiment would not have been voiced so publicly a few years back but times are changing. And even if they’re not New York still provides the illusion that they are and that you’re beachside for the tidal shift. Later, in a thin crust pizza joint where the Waterfront Ale House once stood, I shoot the breeze with an old friend who’s never really left New York for too long despite emphasizing how awful it is. Listening to her I’m reminded of the Woody Allen line about two women complaining about a restaurant, the first emphasizing the lousy food and the second concurring while adding “And such small portions, too.” This city can mess with your sleep, rub you wrong and put a Cybertruck-sized dent in your budget. But they keep coming back for more.

Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks – Tom Petty

It’s the fifth of May and there’s snow on my deck. A full foot of it by my estimation. I was driving to the 7-11 in a whiteout blizzard last night for a bag of cookies and premade sandwich, thinking “really? …” But weather is a God thing and you get what you get. If only life could be so reactive. Plans are essential but planning is useless. I’m laying the bullshit on a bit heavy here. Must be this inclement weather getting to me. (Full confession: I had to look up “inclement” and am still not sure if it fits.)

I was reading one of those typically inane Instagram posts yesterday with a list of places in America, and one of them was Tahoe. “Most people,” the person or bot generating the list claimed, “have been to five or fewer of these places.” The point was that they were all supposed to be desirable, special places to go. And Tahoe is, undeniably, a beautiful place. For the past three or four years I’ve been remodeling an old family cabin. It began with the idea that it would be a way to solidify some part of my past; upgrade it and invest in its future. What’s puzzling isn’t the revelation that you can’t invest in the future of your past, but the idea that I might have ever thought it possible. It’s taken a lot of coming up here by myself and just sitting with it to realize I’ve done a decent job anyway. The new windows are nice and I took out a wall between the kitchen and living room. This really opened the place up. But, as Bill Stratton’s bumpersticker continues to resonate, wherever you go there you are.

I got into a rather protracted debate with a friend the other day about what it means to “come full circle.” There’s no way to tell this story without risking being revealed a contemptible racist, but here goes: I was talking about the Netflix adaptation of the Tom Wolfe novel “A Man In Full” and how the black, female director had created a series where the black characters were well conceived and human, and the whites were cardboard cutouts and caricatures. I asserted that we’d come full-circle from the days when the reverse was true and most films depicted blacks as minstrel-esque and subservient. He claimed that, for it to be full-circle, we’d have to be right back in that position. I said no, and that while his scenario might qualify even better, mine still worked because the full-circle element was that we’d started in a place where one group had no sense for the other and come back around to it. Yes, the players had been inverted, but the condition itself had come full-circle. Then he called me a racist and we agreed not to discuss it anymore. That I haven’t identified him and refrained from titling this post “Full Circle” is a small sign of progress.

The above notwithstanding, this adaptation of “A Man In Full” was nothing to write home about to Mammy. (OK .. sue or cancel me, but try and do it before this snow melts.) I did watch a slightly better series earlier in what turned into a big Netflix week. “Baby Reindeer” is a troubling effort relating the true-life tale of a Scottish guy who was hounded mercilessly by a female stalker. The woman in question is fat and loud and hard to take at first, but the story is compelling. It made me think about two seemingly unshakeable facts of life: most of us don’t want to be alone and most of us realize that we all die that way. In fact, the “alone” part is probably what people fear most about dying. It would be easier if you could take someone with you, and not just figuratively speaking. (On a side note, my old man probably came closer than most to accomplishing this with my mother .. but that’s another post.) So in a way, being OK with being alone in life is likely decent preparation for being alone in death. Kind of like being OK with having a foot of snow on one’s deck in May. Which isn’t a clever ending, but rather a cheap way of coming full circle.

Scott Coleman Miller, Tom Myers. Lake Tahoe CA, October 2023.

I traveled to Tahoe with Scott Miller and Tom Myers last week for our sexennial Sierra event, which sounds a bit gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but is the proper way to describe something that takes place every six years. I posted on the last trip back in 2017 and included a similar photo with Miller leaning forward, assuming the dominant position, and Tom responding with appreciative, back footed bemusement. I don’t think I’ve known a more “yin and yang” friendship over the years and am struck by this every time the three of us get together. It isn’t that I’m a third wheel or drop of water to their oily bond. I do add a certain, albeit unessential element to the trio. But I’m not exactly a part of what these two have going on, either. Tom is the deferential fuel to Scott’s Zippo lighter and in his absence the Miller flame can flicker and ultimately give out.  I’m like a separate box of matches altogether.

I picked Miller up at the Reno airport where he was flying in from Minneapolis and we made our way to the Silver Legacy casino to watch his Chicago Bears play Thursday Night Football. Part of our youthful interaction involved the mid-80s Bears-Niners rivalry, but those days are long gone. On this night I fed a twenty into a video poker game and nursed it through the second half while Scott made short work of a burger and stepped outside the dining area to cash in on Nevada’s lenient casino smoking laws. There was a time when we could make a night of it, but gambling’s novelty thins with age and Tom was due to arrive back at the cabin. Reno has always been Vegas’s poor relative and post covid it’s acquired a more pronounced limp. Still, it maintains a certain pathetic charm and this followed in our wake over the mountain with the waft of sheep urine from a livestock truck ahead. Soon we’d overtaken said sheep and were back lakeside, embarking on a stargazing stroll. We returned to Myers’ convertible parked in the driveway and the boy himself inside scarfing a Safeway deli sandwich with bag of salt and vinegar chips. “Those were a mistake purchase,” he confessed, the party having officially started.

It was an active few days at altitude and we fit in multiple restaurant meals, nine holes of regulation golf and eighteen miniature (“goofy” in Miller’s midwestern vernacular), some light gambling at the Hyatt past stateline, and kayaking under sublime late afternoon/early October conditions. Too many highlights to rank but breakfast at the Old Post Office coffee shop was definitely among them. Scott has a long and loving history with the place and was disappointed to discover that his beloved biscuits and gravy (emphasis on the ‘biscuits‘) was no longer on the menu. The dark cloud over his head passed when the waitress informed him it was still available as an off-menu item, but returned quickly when a side plate with single biscuit and frugal dollop was placed in front of him. He was decidedly crestfallen (despite making quick work of his child’s portion) and had to flag down the waitress for supplementary grub. Somewhere in the process I snapped a classic “Miller shot” : mouth agape, hand expressively positioned, head cocked sideways looking to rectify the situation. I would like to make note of my not posting it here as evidence of late-life maturity. Besides, my eggs over easy with corned beef hash arrived on time and in plentiful portion.

Toby Keith, someone I’ve long considered a middling musician, recently performed his song “Don’t Let The Old Man In” for an awards show. Context is everything and Keith has been battling some serious health issues lately. That he wrote the song after hearing the quote from Clint Eastwood doesn’t cost him any points with me, either. It’s a simple but effective tune and contains the line “just ask yourself how old you would be / if you didn’t know the day you were born.” And this is the way I can feel on rare occasion with Myers and Miller. They are a reassuring constant, having bonded the first day they met in the Monaco Labs print department. That I’ll never exactly be a part of their deal is unconcerning and I’d be too caught up in sustaining or evaluating things — a condition neither seems to suffer. I’m glad to provide the occasional spectacular setting, jot down a few words, and know that I’m a good friend to each. That anyone should be so lucky is not to be overlooked.

Spending a lot of time on the interstate lately between sea level and Tahoe. I was stuck in a three-hour standstill just outside of Roseville a few Thursdays ago. Ninety degree heat with the engine off watching a lot of men unsuited for shorts getting out of their cars to try and get a look down the road. Sometimes you just have to hunker down and resolve to not going anywhere. It’s a big part of life. Roseville is the kind of place where you’ll catch a sign hung outside some newish, still available prefab condo project. “If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Already.” The ‘already’ is the giveaway. Beware of any location whose primary appeal is being an alternative to a three hour traffic jam.

Having to pass through Sacramento and the like is part of the process of driving to Tahoe. All spectacular locations require wading through crippling mediocrity to arrive. And they typically come with the caveat that no great place goes undiscovered. We may have cheated the Native Americans out of Manhattan for the price of some tobacco and a sack of beans, but they were the last to see Tahoe in August before the Germans arrived. (Using ‘Germans’ here as a general metaphor for any group descending on a area from afar with pale legs and inflatable arm floats.) Still, there’s always the final drop down from 267 and spotting that particular body of water. I had a friend in New York who bragged on her family vacation spot upstate at Lake Luzerne. She contrasted it with Tahoe, where she’d never been, asserting that it was the superior spot. My take at the time, having visited both places, was that if I’d lived at Lake Luzerne I would’ve been home already.

“Never get married.” This is Clarence Williams III’s (“Linc” from “Mod Squad”) advice to Prince in a poignantly funny scene from the movie Purple Rain. My updated version, based on a years-long project at our family cabin, is “never remodel.” Buy new, sure, if you’re young and have it all in front of you. Or, alternatively, rent and enjoy the freedom. But under no circumstance remodel. Particularly if there is nostalgia involved and the idea involves some version of upgrading the past. The past is a memory, the future a mystery, and the present a gift. This is why they call it the present. I stole this years ago from that Indian snake oil salesman, Deepak Chopra. Having undertaken a years-long remodeling project, I now wish I’d had Deepak as a contractor. Shoddy workmanship is a given, even with the licensed variety, but at least he could have spun some first class bullshit to make it more palatable. The first guy I hired was a short, turquoise  and cowboy boot wearing Qanon type. All of which works for me. Unfortunately, he was also prone to rage and stroked-out about halfway into the job. The second guy, an industrious Mexican fellow with a small construction empire out of Truckee, has been marginally better. The work is still rough around the edges, but it’s getting closer to the point where I can sell the place and put the past behind me.

“Champagne problems,” as somebody accurately pointed out when I was in the middle of this maelstrom. (Learned that word too late after wondering why Mr Turquoise called his company “Maelstrom Construction.”) But problems are problems, whether you’re being hit about the head and neck by a homeless chap with a stick or wrapping your Mercedes around a tree. And short of the occasional loving mother or faithful offspring, nobody cares about yours. Instead you get all kinds of hints dropped as you near completion of this nightmare. “Would love to see what you’ve done with the place .. no need for you to come along.” The other piece of this equation, of course, is the unfathomable expense. Mr Qanon dropped that bit of wisdom halfway into his stint and before blowing a gasket. “Actually, remodeling is more expensive than new construction.” You don’t say? Might have mentioned this when you were listing your bona fides. All water under the bridge now and further reason to embrace these Everly Brothers lyrics, later covered by two late greats, Tom Petty and Jimmy Buffett: “And if you ever wonder why you ride this carousel / you did it for the stories you could tell.” Might have to change that last part to “the inane blog posts you could write every four months,” but still better than shelling out for Deepak Chopra.

A long while back I took a crack at answering a post on ‘Quora’, which is a question and answer website. The question was straight-forward: “What’s so good about Bob Dylan?” Here’s what I came up with:

The standard answer here, to paraphrase David Letterman on his penultimate show, is that Dylan is the greatest songwriter of the modern era. And it’s a good point, both in terms of prolific output and quality of work.

Dylan is deceptively simple. He’ll use an unremarkable turn of phrase that becomes ingrained in one’s subconscious. And he does it on album after album. Take “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” from 2009’s “Together Through Life.” It’s an ordinary tune on first listen .. perhaps about a shifting relationship, and set to simple melody. Then a closer look at the lyrics: “the fourth part of the day is already gone.” What exactly is the fourth part of the day, and who uses this as reference? His baby’s comin’ .. “walking with the village beast.” Some assert it’s “priest” but in either case it’s an attention-grabber. “You are as porous as ever / baby you can start a fire.” Of all uses of fire as a metaphor for burning love, who adds “porous as ever”? Talk about a flame-stoker. For me, the image is a Weber charcoal starter, with porous holes in its sides allowing for oxygen, heat, and flame. For you, it’s likely something different. His words mean something powerfully different to each listener.

But why pick “I Feel A Change Comin’ On” from “Together Through Life”? Because unless you’re a fan and attuned to Dylan‘s recent output, you’ll likely never listen to this tune. Nothing about Dylan is particularly flashy or attention-grabbing, outside of his eccentricity and curious moments like his Christmas video “It Must Be Santa” (a brilliant aside in a career packed with them.) It’s his ability to use words, a talent spanning six decades, which sets him apart.

Knocks on Dylan serve to reinforce his greatness. Old hippies who have seen him live at some point over the last decade often complain that his voice is terrible, and that he doesn’t play any of his “protest songs.” Dylan never claimed or wanted to be a protest singer, even when given the label and dubbed the “voice of his generation.” There’s a 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley from years back where Dylan explains that his songs were just songs, “not sermons” and that he never saw himself as a generational voice. “It’s ironic,” Bradley notes, “that the way people saw you was the polar opposite of how you viewed yourself.” Dylan: “Isn’t that somethin’ ?”

This leads to another of Dylan‘s greatly underrated attributes — his sense of humor. He’s always been aware of his surrounding myth and has had great fun with it. Another superb Bob tale from 2009 occurred when he was far from his tour bus in pouring rain, walking in an affluent Long Branch, New Jersey neighborhood. Someone called the cops on him. The young female officer didn’t believe the soaking wet 68-year-old when he told her who he was. “I’d seen pictures of him and he didn’t look anything like them.” She asked what he was doing there. He told her that he was looking at a house that had a “for sale” sign on it. When that didn’t suffice he added “I’m on a big tour with John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson.” Was this spontaneous or a conscious effort to pad his legend? Does it really matter?

So what has Dylan been writing and singing about in recent decades, if not protest themes or social issues? Besides the eternal topic of love — which he hits on like no other — he’s been covering growing older and closer to death. About being there “when the deal goes down.” Not with morbid repetition, but with the same insight and language that has supported him through his entire career. He’s always of his time, regardless of what time it is, and is novel in approach. His voice? Come on .. this is Bob Dylan. Anyone complaining about that never got it anyway. There have been accusations, particularly in recent years and around the era of “Modern Times,” that Dylan steals from songwriters and poets of another generation. And of course, it’s true, just as those songwriters and poets did in their time. Ultimately, what he creates is uniquely his own and a revelation.

The above really only scratches the surface and the best answer is contained within the original question. What makes Bob Dylan so great? He’s Bob Dylan.