KIKI DEE

Had lunch with an old friend today.

We shared some honey-vanilla Greek yogurt, and talked about wax museums and vertigo and death and phlox.

I need more lunches like this in my life...

LIVING FOR THE CITI

OK, the Mets just wrapped a 9-1 homestand, which they have done twice before: 1988 (won NL east, lost to Dodgers in playoffs) and 1969 (walked on moon, won World Series).

Just saying is all...

THEY REALLY THINK WE'RE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL

When I hear tea-party talk radio blasting from BMWs in the Capital Gymnastics parking lot, I am reminded of these wise words:

"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

A NICE DAY TO START AGAIN

Marrying Taeko was such a solid idea that I did it twice, and today is the 17th anniversary of the second time.

And as Rog is my witness, I'd do it all over, twice and again and again.

My love to you, dear...

WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT?

Woke up this morning with Absolutely Sweet Marie in my head. It had the yips and eeyahs of the Scorchers version.

Not sure about the dream that put it there, but I've got no complaints...

COME ON NOW CHILD, WE'RE GONNA GO FOR A RIDE

Lucinda Williams was responsible for one of the most awkward nights of my life.

One afternoon back when Lana was around 4, we were playing in Pottery Barn Kids. Mind you, I don’t think I’ve ever bought so much as a pillowcase from a Pottery Barn, but they had a good selection of toys for freeloaders of fun like us.

Lana started playing with a little blonde girl, and Taeko struck up a conversation with the girl’s mom. I was floating around the edges of the store— a satellite, unaware.

When my orbit finally crossed theirs, I found them talking about Lucinda Williams. Car Wheels On a Gravel Road had been out for some months, and Taeko knew I was a fan of the album.

It turned out that the girl’s mom was the organizer of a benefit that Lucinda Williams was going to be playing that weekend at Old Westbury Gardens. She asked if I’d like to bring Lana, so that our daughters could play together some more. I said sure thing, and after a couple of phone calls, we had arranged for me to pick up tickets and meet them in the event staging area.

The weather forecast for that night was terrible, and the early returns were in— heavy rain, and stiff, persistent winds. We parked the car, picked up our tickets, and ran across the grounds, dodging widening puddles.

We finally made it to the staging area, after some twists and turns. I reintroduced myself, and Lana and the girl made some tentative attempts to reconnect.

But really the girl was too distracted by the night’s events to spend much time with Lana. Her mom was caught up in the welter of her responsibilities, and did not have any time for us beyond the initial greeting.

It was a tony affair, and I felt way out of place, particularly now that my connection to the whole thing had pretty much fizzled before my eyes.

The saving grace would be when the concert started, I thought— until I realized that our tickets were lawn seats. There was a large tent set up with actual chairs, and all but the most peripheral residents of the tent remained dry. But we were out on the grass.

Lana and I crouched under a golf umbrella on the lawn, angling it against the prevailing winds. I gave up after 4 or 5 songs, concerned for Lana’s health, and just wanting to be home. Not to go home— just to be home.

We drove all the way back with the wiper blades on high. I called the next day and left a message for the girl’s mom, thanking her for the tickets— I never heard back, and I never considered calling again…

HUMBLE FOLKS WITHOUT TEMPTATION

Lana came home from school earlier this week singing Poker Face.

Now I got no qualms with Lady Gaga. Girlfriend works waaaay too hard at being “ “unique” ” (she earns those bonus quotation marks), but whatevs.

Anyway, I think she made it into my house via a recent episode of South Park. One of the more vocal boys in Lana's class seems to be a big South Park watcher.

And this is when I wonder if I'm sheltering Lana too much. I make an effort to monitor her pop-culture intake, and I would not willfully expose her to South Park.

Don't get me wrong-- I fucking love the show to this day. It remains one of the few viable outlets for true satire in our culture, as most of the others have pissed their slacks and devolved into easy cynicism and lazily referential irony. South Park still cares enough to be angry.

And I care enough to keep that anger from my 10-year-old daughter for just a little while longer...

SONGS MEAN A LOT WHEN SONGS ARE BOUGHT AND SO ARE YOU

I still remember the first vinyl album I bought with my own scratch. K-Tel's Fantastic. 22 original hits, 22 original stars, a cheap plastic dream.

My first cassette purchase was Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine, a two-tape brick of pyrite that set me back $14.98. A princely sum for a 14 year old whose mom was still buying the groceries with food stamps.

The first CD was Megatrax Vol 2, a Rolling Stones bootleg that I picked up in Japan before I even owned a CD player.

But I'll be damned if I can remember the first MP3 I ever bought...

ANYTHING THEY GOT

That Kidz Bop version of Career Opportunities on Sandinista! is more poignant now that those little Olivers are pushing 40...

LIFE SO SWEET

When I told Babs that Sugar, Sugar meant more to me than Beethoven, it was designed to provoke.

We were having one of our endless High Art/Low Art arguments, and you can probably guess my position on the matter (I favor a peaceful coexistence, for the record).

But it's true, dammit. I have been lifted spiritually by The Archies, and I ain't ashamed...

SUGAR, SUGAR

When I was a kid, we used to dream of the blessed day when Quaker Oats would make a cereal out of nothing but crunch berries.

Come the late 90s, America was feeling good about itself again, and lo and behold, our friends at QO dropped Cap'n Crunch Oops! All Berries on us.

We also hoped one day for an Entenmann's Crumb Cake made entirely of crumbs, but to my knowledge this has not yet come to pass.

Now Vitamin Water has answered a prayer we never placed, and released a flavor called Spark. Which, make no mistake, is nothing more or less than liquid SweeTarts. With vitamins. Yummy, yummy vitamins...

CARELESS MEMORIES

I try not to get too peevish here (I swear), but I've been chafed recently by a number of people who, upon hearing me drop some useless bit of pop-culture trivia, will share that they weren't aware of it because they “played outside” when they were kids.

OK people, I played baseball all day in the summer, then hide-and-seek from dinner to dusk. I played Nerf football in the snow, and mapped the craters of the moon in the subfreezing cold.

I caught fireflies, butterflies, garter snakes under planks at the lumberyard, and bullfrogs in empty peat-moss bags at a swampy pond a couple of miles from my house. To which I rode my banana-seat bike...

Hell, I rolled hoops and whitewashed fences and rafted down the ole Mississipp. Practically.

So don't deride me for being able to do all that AND watch TV, read books, and listen to the radio. And, heaven forfend, remember some of it in detail.

Y'all need to step off...