Rishon (not frisson)

Wednesday 12/19/18

Sick. Things rattling around my chest. Useless again today. Walked three miles and climbed the Monument once but maybe I should wait until I'm better. Drinking so much water and juice and strawberry tea and warm cider. Laying in this horrible apartment, surrounded by books and records and DVDs stacked to the ceiling everywhere, reading an Agatha Christie Christmas mystery on my side, pressed up against the wall on the warped twin bed mattress. I don't know if anything is happening for work because I have barely looked at anything in a while as I am just so backed up with pressure and commitments, and the battle against hopelessness that I assume I will win when I win--if you know what I mean--and away we will go go.

Mailed Christmas presents to niece and nephew. Little shirts. I am not sure I did a good job with this. I think I probably didn't. I got them good cards, though--Snoopy. Doing different things on each card. With Woodstock, I believe. Woodstock wasn't in the 1965 Christmas special. But presumably he and Snoopy hung out on other Christmases going forward, so I choose not to see this as a Peanuts-based anachronism and thus rubber-stamped it as worthy. I was going to record my readings for Downtown for their Christmas and New Year's programs, but I'll cough. Tomorrow should be better.

I ended up seeing a sports radio simulcast on TV today. Are you kidding me? These people have this gig and I'm not being tapped? These...I'm not even going to say half-wits. 1/32-wits. They suck. I am convinced that no one in America, outside of athletes, gets a job because of their ability. I think ability has nothing to do with your gig. I had thought that D.J. Bean was the most annoying person in Boston sports media--what an absolute fecal-drip as a personality, and completely unfunny and smug and unintelligent--but Adam Jones is up there. Such a miserable, migraine-inducing fool. Endless shtick about there being not a single redeeming thing anywhere in the world, apparently. I'm sure everyone sees through his act of radiating perpetual hate. But he actually gave me a headache, one of those headaches that lodges behind one eye and makes it feel like it's going to shoot out across the room.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Felger is Socrates compared to some of these people. Jones has such an annoying voice, like some puling child crossed with that Mucinex mucus dude. There are people in this life that when you're young your parents say you should stay the hell away from, and Adam Jones is bang-on one of those people. You're bad at radio, you know nothing about sports (and this is what you know the most about, by default, so you actually know nothing in this life, let alone thoughts and ideas of consequence, or how to entertain anyone), you're not funny, you're not quick-witted, and your voice is like a fork in the garbage disposal. Or like you're just endlessly snarling away like some self-loathing, rabid dog who wants to infect everyone else with their sickness.

On a side note, what was Mucinex thinking making a mucus monster their mascot? I guess if you're a mucus monster it's the ne plus ultra example of stardom, beyond anything you could have reasonably expected, given the limitations of your species. But still. From a marketing standpoint, that's a weird pitch to have made. Then there is someone out there who is the artist behind the mucus monster. They are probably rich because of that guy. They probably love him, on some level. Maybe they framed their original sketches. I once had an allergist named Rishon. That was his first name. And this guy could not say the word mucus enough. It was like God made a deal with him, that if he hit some quota--and it must have been a massive number--of audible uses of the word mucus he would rule the Kingdom of Paradise--or at least have some enviable position--for the rest of days. That's how much--nay, how fervently--this guy tried to work the word into every sentence. Sometimes he would start and end a sentence--this was one of his bravura flourishes--with the word mucus, like some warped, palindrome-ish paean to nasal discharge. Maybe he was the artist behind the mucus monster? I suppose he could have been. I may have just cracked a very niche-market locked room mystery.

I don't feel very well.

Here is a show Dylan gave on this day in Los Angeles in 1997. It's one of his best of the 1990s.