David Price gave it up tonight in the Bronx. Less than shocking. LeBron James signed with the Lakers. Also less than surprising. Heat, frankly, has sucked. Trying to read at the Starbucks today, no AC. Fled after not very long. Watching sports wrap-up now on TV. DJ Bean is awful on television. Zero talent, and an obnoxious personality. I don't believe there is any kind of vetting process, where it is ability-based, for any job in American any more, save professional athlete, because you need to be able to play. Everyone else gets what they get for other reasons. Ran three miles in the heat and humidity. Then walked three more, went to climb the Bunker Hill Monument, was told it was closed, which is what happens whenever the heat index hits 87%. What manner of weakness is this? Having said that, it was pretty brutal out. My shirt, after that short run, could not have been wetter; like I had just jumped into a pool. That oh-so-sexy nimbus on my shorts in this photo--in which I felt like I was melting into the glass in a spin on that Thriller episode The Hungry Glass--i In years past I might have filled up a cooler with ice, dropped six bottles of Samuel Adams into it, and gone up on the roof to read, but my new thing these days is once I finish a bottle of cranberry juice--and the 100% natural stuff only comes in glass--I cut up three lemons, stuff them in, fill it up with water, drink, fill it up, and repeat about six times. When I was drinking I made sure to ingest a lot of lemon, which helps your liver repair itself. I've kept this up, just because it seems like a good idea, to always promote a healthy liver. So thirsty the last few days, with all of the fluid loss from these runs. As for my Monument climbs, I'll be discussing what that is like, why I do them--from a physical, intellectual, artistic, spiritual standpoint--on Downtown with Rich Kimball this Tuesday. Kind of a Fourth of July theme, as well. The Monument was built 175 years ago. I don't know if it will ultimately loom large in my story, but it will loom interestingly, poigantly.
More importantly than any of this, I have done more work in my my head on a new short story, "Funny Lines TK," which I'll soon type/work out on the page. It's a major one.
It was fifty years ago today that the Band's Music from Big Pink was released. I pitched around an idea or two about it, nothing really came of any of it, didn't really go for it hard. Pitched NPR, for instance. The best Americana album--and made by Canadians at that--and a great Roots rock album, but maybe not even the best of 1968. What about the Everly Brothers' Roots?
This is a fine and fun bootleg from the Band, at the Hollywood Bowl, in 1970, with plenty of cuts from Music from Big Pink.
Comments