'Give me the needle. Give me the rope. We're going to melt them down for pills and soap.' - D. MacManus, 1983

Well, well, well - this whole brouhaha around Obama's back-to-school address has drifted into the Twilight Zone (or, more appropriately, the McCarthy Zone).

It just shows you how polarized our country has become. It's not like Obama is going to whisper to the kids to go run and tell mommy and daddy that universal government run healthcare is the only thing that will stop grandma from dying tomorrow. "And your little doggies and kitties too. They will surely die without mandatory Big Government Health Factories. So will your brothers and sisters. All will be dead soon. Run and tell your parents!"

Wait, that's not right - our country is not polarized, at least not organically. No, there's a lot of pasteurization going on, lots of man-made pesticides being dropped down onto the great unwashed.

And looky, looky who's holding the big barrels of DDT - it's the right wing political and media machine preying on the uninformed and those who harbor a barely controllable hatred for the government (unsurprisingly, the overlap of these two demographics is considerable).

These poor slobs don't seem to realize that 1.) the government they fear and despise is theirs and 2.) the manner in which it is fucked up is institutional and doesn't change much regardless of the temporary caretakers that constitute the administration in power.

They have not really seen the enemy because the enemy is them.

They are missing the whole point regarding government run healthcare. Christ, it's not the fuckin' DMV. Look to higher education as the model. All universities are not private and guess what? Public colleges have not put the Harvards or Browns or Swarthmores of the world out of business. And a great many are superior to their private counterparts. But can you imagine the percentage of college educated Americans we would have with only private options? It would be a significantly reduced number and so would the number of people qualifying as middle class. Likewise the number of scientific and medical breakthroughs, business innovation, etc. We'd have predominantly rich and poor, informed and ignorant. Like the bad old days.

But not everyone gets to go to college free, Steve.  Yeah, sadly I realize that.  So look at public vs. private primary schooling.  It's the model and type of service I'm concerned about.  Comparing it to the DMV or the Post Office is Apples and Oranges.

But people don't see the parallels. The insured and the uninsured. We have the chance (once again) to make that comparison obsolete and the fear-mongering wack jobs are helping to piss this away once again. Please, please, please, guys - hold your ground and deal with the political fall out. Ya gotta have real balls and intestinal fortitude to get this through.

These people are so fearful of a 'socialist' nation, with gray Soviet-issue bread lines and gas lines and vodka lines and line lines, with rows and rows of black and white government-issue buildings housing government-issue bureaucrats providing sub-par government-issue services. Guess what? Even if they're right, sub-par services are better than no services. And if you can afford better, do what you do today - buy it. Will the prices of the private stuff go up? Sure, some. But that can be managed. It shouldn't go up an appreciable sum if government healthcare is limited those who have none right now.

Democracy's a delicate balance - sort of an organizational teeter totter, balanced on both ends. Tip it all the way over in one direction and you have unfettered fascism, tip it all the way in the other direction and you have totalitarian communism. That's the over-simplified view of thing, of course. It's not a three position teeter toter, and right now we're teetering over toward the fascism end of things in the form of unregulated "free markets" (you know, the thing that brought us the economic collapse). You're as free as your balance sheet. We just need to get close to that democratic equilibrium by tipping the scales again in the other direction.

The problem is you have fat slobs like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and Glenn Beck sitting on the fascism seat of our teeter totter and weighing us down in that direction. And Sista Sarah has piled on a shitload of wolf carcasses along with the English Language she's slaughtered. That's a lot of words, some of them quite heavy. Meanwhile there are too many lightweights on the socially conscious end to counterbalance them. We need some big cojones to jump onboard.

"But come on, " a reasonable outsider would exclaim, "you have large majorities in the house and senate and the executive branch - how can you claim that this is so?"

I agree it isn't intuitive. But face it: the administration is there mainly by virtual of the badshit looniness of W. and Our Lady of the Yukon, with perhaps a dash of fear over what Grandpa Munster might do with The Button during one of his senile, hot headed fits. The congress is merely on one of its periodic swings and will inevitably swing back. I say these things having been a supporter of Obama from the moment he announced (actually, from the moment he gave that speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004). And I don't say this with any shame. Our country has always been a tangle of contradictions (that's the core of what makes it great). But we need to be cognizant of it.

Once liberals have a bit of power, we never seem to know what to do with it. That's the other thing complicating what should be an easy go of things. I say this as a commie-pinko gushing heart proud-as-punch card-carrying fellow traveler liberal. The right wing wack jobs still have it all over us in raising a stink and putting The Fear into the Fearful. When money's tight and jobs are scarce, that's not hard to do, and they can do it in the best of times.

"But come on," Mr. Average Joe 'The Watergate' Plumber on the street might say, "I know that Barack Obama is a commie socialist Islamic Kenyan national. I understand he'll soon be leading the nation's school children in a pledge allegiance to Stalin, Bin Laden, and the Socialist Kenyan Islamic States of America and signing them up for mandatory Swahili lessons so they'll be ready once he mandates its use as our official language."

"Steve," you might wonder in return, "aren't you being a bit absurd there?" No, sadly.

Open your eyes and think for yourselves, people.

This 'opt-out' thing is a slippery slope - next thing you know parents will be opting their kids out of art class because of its left leaning tendencies. We'll start locking people up because too many people opted out of whatever activity they were driving, so they must be a criminal. Parents will need to approve every person and topic discussed at the school.

Now you might say, "The parents have that right." They do. It's called private school or, if that isn't sufficiently censored or in line with their philosophy, home schooling.

And I'll ask myself, If McCain was President would I still be saying the same thing? Yes, I think so. Okay, so how Sarah Palin? Ehhhhh! Karl Rove? Ahhhh! Dick Cheney? Errrhhh! And they say waterboarding is torture (well, they don't, but the rest of us do).

Still, in all of those cases, if I had kids and hadn't yet put a bullet in my brain under those trying circumstances, I would still say the same thing: it's the president and he's going to talk mom-and-apple-pie-stay-in-school-get-an-education-help-others. What could be sinister about any of that? What is not good about that?

And I would tell my kid that day what I would tell them most days: Dad doesn't agree with the president about a lot but he does about the most fundamental things (though perhaps not the manner in which we should go about achieving them). Listen to the president closely as he/she emphasizes the importance of education and service. They are important. But never listen blindly to your country's leaders, regardless of the belief you or anyone has in their policies. Always listen critically.

But listen.

'And you've spent the last 10 years of your life in this Emergency!' - Stiff Little Fingers

Firefighter Johnny Gage. Firefighter Roy DeSoto. "Squad 51/Squad 51, overturned tanker truck at 512 Cornell Avenue, cross street Evans - Time Out 10:52." Nurse Dixie McCall, Dr. Kelly Brackett, Dr. Joe Early. Goofy Firefighter Chet Kelly. The Captain. Firehouse antics, the jovial kidding around with the ER staff, the medical back-and-forth on the state-of-the-art mobile communications equipment. I'm referring of course to Emergency!

This show was, as much as any other, the 1970s to me. More than disco, as much as Watergate. It was another show ripped from the headlines as the role of paramedic started to take hold in major cities across America. It was also a show ripped from the mind of Jack Webb and set in the same universe as his Adam 12 (in fact there was the occasional cross over of characters between the two). Adam 12 of course came from the loins of the granddaddy of the genre, Dragnet.

Emergency! shared the same unintentionally comical seriousness and staccato procedural dialog as Jack's other works but had some intentional humor as well. Webb was only one of many creators here and some of the others apparently did not have that same long stick up their ass that had long since severed Jack's funny bone.

Why bring this up? I caught Kevin Tighe (Roy DeSoto) in a bit part on some show last night (I think it was a Law and Order SVU) and it got me to thinking about how Emergency! affected me in my formative years. After the usual little kid cowboy/fireman/astronaut phase, I've only wanted to be three things growing up: veterinarian, paramedic and writer/journalist. Emergency! made me want to become a paramedic.

I can't exactly say what it was about paramedics that fascinated me. It could be that I was on the career dreams rebound, having just had my veterinarian aspirations crushed by the realization it would require eight years of college. My disdain for the hard sciences at the time and the lack of a family nest egg for higher education sort of drove a stake into that. But I was still intrigued by medicine and, gee, those guys didn't have to go to college and study biology but they got to do all kinds of cool doctor-like stuff. Plus they were out and about in the California sun and could hang at the firehouse but didn't have to run into burning buildings (at least not all that often).

And they always seemed to be having fun. More fun than I was having in the 70s anyway. Johnny Gage was hitting on the young Rampart nurses (and getting shot down). Roy was the family man. Yet we never saw their life outside of the firehouse, the field and Rampart General. And they only very briefly talked (or thought) about such things. Typical Jack Webb, all business. Yet lots of laughs and general feeling of happiness permeated the show, except when in the actual act of rescuing folks (sometimes even then).

Geez, they even had Hot Wheels Emergency vehicles and a board game, so you knew it was cool!

It was strangely both a microcosm of the 70s and yet completely out of phase with that decade. Running from 1972 - '77 with regular movies of the week through '79, it was filled with the clothes, hairstyles and technologies of the day, but the scripts themselves could be produced as is for a completely contemporary show come the 2009 fall season.

"Rampart, this is Squad 51. We have a male, early 20s, unconscious, pupils are fixed and dilated." "51, this is Rampart. Start an IV with D5W and transport stat." It was invariably D5W, regardless of the problem. I guess that was because it was an innocuous substance (essentially saline). Occasionally Lactated Ringer's (saline with a glass of milk). Can't trust these firefighters with administering anything stronger - sure they have this newfangled paramedic certificate but any bozo can get one of those. That's what I imagined was going through the minds of Doctors Brackett and Early during each communication with the boys out in the field. As Dixie McCall adjusted her starched nurse's cap in the background and shook her head, chuckling.

I never did become a paramedic (or a veterinarian or a print journalist, or a cowboy/astronaut/fireman for that matter).

Still, for a short time, thanks to this show, it seemed to be an honorable, fun and most of all, attainable profession.

I'm still waiting for the series about the lives of software developers in a large corporate setting. See the hapless bunch as they attempt to bend time, space, budgets and people while the Contractual Obligation clock ticks down to zero hour. How fast can this merry band of code slingers churn that software out? Okay, now how fast with sixteen tons of dead weight and six truckloads of red tape tied to their backs? How much will the resulting software suck? How expensive will it be to maintain going forward? Stay tuned - same bat time, same bat channel.

Ahh, yes. Hot Wheels action mobile mouse and board game coming for Christmas!

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a James"

The wise philosopher and contemporary of mine, one Abraham Simpson, is credited with a wealth of sage advice, a few of which resonate especially strongly for me today:

• The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
• Grover Cleveland spanked me on two non-consecutive occasions
• I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.
  

Contrast this wisdom with the garbage coming from the vacuous idiot who just defecated into my TV in the form of yet another of his endless parade of quackery advertisements.


Am I the only person who has an overwhelming urge to drop kick James Lehman in the nuts and tear that goofy handlebar mustache off his face, mailing it back to Porn Valley, 1977 where it belongs?

That's what ol' James reminds me of - some old out of work porn star from the 70s who somehow finagled a "masters" shingle in social work from a fly-by-night mail order paper mill "college". Every time I catch him mumbling about his Total Transformation package on the tube, I mentally Photoshop in a big ol' Tonka Truck full of pharmaceutical grade horse shit backing up to him slowly then unloading, burying him up to his eyelids. Filling up that pie hole physically with what it's already stuffed full of metaphorically.

"Lying, acting out, blah-blah-blah ... I'll bring peace and sanity back to your home."

Really, James? I find it's quite the opposite: your mere presence on the screen compels me to act out by plastering you with lye (at least in my mind's eye). That doesn't sound like either peace or sanity.

As Abe would say, "Who are you? Get off my lawn!!"

It was 40 years ago today, I was told to go outside and play (or to shut the hell up, you little shit - maybe both)

My thoughts are especially scattered and unfocused this week, not sure what might be causing it. Is it the fact that Nancy Botwin has packed her bags and flown south for the season? Or that age 47 is standing there waiting for me less than two days hence, the cold hand of death lurking in the shadows behind it?

Perhaps that's a touch dramatic, it's probably just the cold hand of an AARP representative lining up to welcome me to the fold. Perhaps the midlife crisis I thought I had averted has finally caught up with me?

Last night I had a dream Dr. G was chasing me around the office with her big rib separators, screaming "Time for your standard 'Y' incision, Stevie!" That's gotta mean something. Well, something besides the fact I watch way too much Discovery Health programming. Which in itself tells you a lot - I'm just prepping for my new demographic.

How the hell did September get here? Hell, it's late enough in the year that they might even be burying Michael Jackson soon. I hear tell its tomorrow, at Forest Lawn in a suitably creepy crypt beside Gable, Lombard and Harlow. Talk about rushing a guy into the ground - I guess his "Summer at Bernie's" is coming to a close. Time to take him down from out front of Joe Jackson's Used Furniture Shack, remove the "Blow Out Summer Sale" sign pinned to the back of his head, dust him off, hose him down and slide him in.

MJ gets a dignified send off and I get Dr. G hunting me down in my dreams like Freddie Krueger. Where's the justice in that?

Christ the time just flies by, what is it about this year in particular?

Maybe it's all these 40th anniversaries that have been popping up. Woodstock, Moon Landing, etc. Now we have Momar celebrating 40 years of repressing a people, terrorizing neighbors, all while looking fabulous. Seems like just yesterday he was Major al-Gaddafi with only one way to spell his name. Not sure how anyone could live like that.

Do you remember where you were when Colonel Khadafi took power? I was almost 7 but can't say where I was or what I was doing. I'm sure we celebrated as all patriotic Americans did. Lynn, you're the one with the photographic family memory - where were we when Quadafi claimed Libya as his? Say, wasn't that the time Dad got really drunk? No help? Doesn't narrow it down?

Hell, even Sesame Street turned 40 this year and I was too old to have ever watched the thing except as a goof. That's the definition of old.

Now it seems the Cookie Monster has fallen from on high. Strung out they say, freebasing Bakery-grade Chocolate-tar 'dough'. That's bad shit, flowing across our border thanks to an army of nefarious Amos Cartel cookie mules. But I have to say, it's what you get for hanging around with Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss. And Mrs. Fields. Act your age, man.

Good thing Cookie wasn't one of my heroes growing up, I'm already top heavy with self destructive role models. Hunter Thompson, Lester Bangs, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald. And that's just the first room in the literary wing of the Buzzard hall of fame. Most of my heroes are dead, done in by their own hand for the most part (directly or otherwise). Time to hitch my wagon to a new generation of degenerates.

Of course, Cookie was hardly the first of that lot to develop feet of clay (well, feet of felt, as the case may be). Gordon, the father figure of the neighborhood ended up decked out in purple plumage and backslapping sadism as Tyrone, Donna Beck's abusive Pimp on All My Children in the late 70s. And we all know the stories circling around Ernie and Bert, not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, of all the characters, those two might be the most believable (other than the Snuffleupagus, of course). Speaking of Snuff, what the hell is the presence of this sort of character saying to kids? The horror.


Something wonderful and evil happened 40 years ago today - The first ATM opened for business in the US. Certainly the advent of the ATM opened up a world of convenience for folks who until then had go to the bank when in need of the paper stuff. But for those of us who have danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, ready access to cash at 1am on a Saturday - or a Wednesday for that matter - is usually not a good thing (well, not in the long term, anyway; it was a wonderful thing indeed 'in the moment').

We've started drawing to the end of the ATM era recently, I think - the register itself playing that role nowadays at most places. I don't carry cash much anymore. But it will be a very long, very slow death as there are still a great many places, people and things insistent on negotiating in hard currency. So happy birthday, you gloriously miserable piece of enabling technological convenience. And good riddance to bad rubbish.

Hey, Altamont is coming up on 40 in December, wonder what sort of magical reunions people have planned for that? Are the Angels going to show up there and nostalgically stab some folks?

Finally, though, I'll remember 1969 (in particular, its summer) as the inspiration for that insipid Bryan Adams song. If for no other reason than that, the year should have its calendar privileges revoked.

'Oh you've caught an even atom tan' - The Clash

What's the deal with the clowns in Cialis commercials? The dudes all have Hollywood tans. You know: deep, fake.

Maybe it's due to all that blood trapped in their facial pigment when it should be flowing down south to help raise the draw bridge? A result of their ED affliction? If so, what does that imply about George Hamilton? He claims to be ED free, but you can't hide from that Coppertone look.

Does Cialis simply free up all that blood from the face? Do you end up looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost "when the moment is right" or "when she gives me that look" or "when Glenda the Good Witch makes her first appearance in Wizard of Oz"? (Oops, that last one hasn't been released yet.)

Or is the tan a side effect of the medication itself? Perhaps that was the original indication? If so, does it turn your dick brown as well?

Lots of questions, but no answers forthcoming from their web site. Though I did learn that you shouldn't use amyl nitrite or other 'popper' drugs together with this particular pecker pepper. Or drink 5 shots of whiskey on a daily basis.



Taking Cialis does apparently compel you to haul bathtubs and perhaps other porcelain hygiene accouterments toward large bodies of water. It's not listed as a side effect, but the home page picture tells the tale.

For no particular reason at all, I found this alternative Cialis commercial to be revealing, though certainly not illuminating. They sidestep the tanning issue here by featuring African Americans. Or at least they appear to be, but it could just be the meds ...

The Lion and the Wolf and the Autumn of Steve

Equus asinus.
Man, has there ever been a bigger braying jackass than Wolf Blitzer?

Perhaps. But ya gotta give it to him: he pours his heart and soul into summiting that equine mountain every time he opens his neatly trimmed hairy white monotoned pie hole.

Howling Wolf's personal donkey is alive and kickin' judging by his voice over commentary this morning as dignitaries flowed into our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica for Ted Kennedy's funeral mass.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were quietly talking prior to the service while Wolf endlessly prattled on and on about obvious and/or meaningless minutia, struggling then failing to contain yet another outbreak of his Dullard's Tourette Syndrome. Hey, children, remember way back three weeks ago when Clinton briefed Obama on his trip to North Korea? Did you know that meeting took place in the Whitehouse Situation Room? "Of course, that's the Whitehouse Situation Room," Wolf unnecessarily explained. "Not my situation room. But they are always welcome to have such meetings there." Thanks for the clarification, Wolf. And the invitation. Now shut the fuck up, Steve said as he flipped to CSPAN.

Hey, who is that young dude with the shaved head and long flowing black beard attempting to blend in with the gaggle of priests and other religious types during the funeral? He's in white robes in the foreground on the left in this picture. He looks more Radical Fundamentalist Muslim than Boston Irish Roman Catholic. He clearly isn't a member of Obama's Kenyan Muslim sect, so he's not there as part of some presidential decree. Maybe a nod to Ted's alliance with Al Qaeda, allowing one of their own be included in the religious delegation? And kudos to Obama for allowing the service to proceed in English rather than Kiswahili, as will no doubt soon be required throughout the land. Oops, sorry - wrong channel. Stumbled upon Fox News rather than CSPAN. Click.

My own reflections on Ted Kennedy? For those who are interested ...

Teddy was a drinker, often a drunk. Born into wealth, privilege and power. He lived, he knew forever, in the shadows of his older brothers. He was compared to them often but usually in terms of disappointment and wanting. Martyred American icons make no mistakes or bad choices and he continued to make plenty of both simply by being alive.

Despite (or perhaps because of) all that, I think Ted was the best of his family and the best the Senate had to offer. He certainly did more good for more people, most of whom had and have no idea. Ironically those who may have benefited most from the legislation he championed over close to half a century are the same salt-of-the-earth folks likeliest to decry the "womanizing, privileged, drunkard, liberal." He was at times all of those things. He was a Kennedy, after all.

It's funny how the most effective people in public service seem to share these characteristics, not all of them flaws; anyway, not to some of us. To me, liberalism is a virtue. And to be born into a life of privilege is not something you choose, it's what you do with the things you've been given that counts. And it might be true liberalism is a luxury only those with money can afford but likely without it, there wouldn't be a middle class.

As for the failings of drink and philandering, often one is fueled by the other and both by a culture and heredity that also ignited tremendous good. That's some of it, but a driven personality at some level doesn't differentiate what it's driving at and toward.

He of course broke the cardinal rule of male politicians ('Never let them find you with a dead girl or a live boy'). He'll forever be remembered by many for that alone. Maybe he deserves to: it was a horrible thing. But for some of us - well, I can count at least a handful of situations that might well have ended in similar fashion for me. There but for the grace of dumb luck go I. So I'm a bit more forgiving.

People who decry the Kennedy clan as a bunch of pampered, self-important patronizing booze hounds who walk through life as though it were their own private stag party are missing the point: most families of power and wealth do that and you only read about them on the society page or Star magazine 'cause partying and whatnot is their full time gig. The Kennedy gang do all that when they're off the clock, sure. But they were and are otherwise chronic workaholics who have had it beaten into them from a very young age that their privilege and wealth must be repaid with a lifetime of service helping those less fortunate. It seems arrogant and patronizing by it's very nature.

Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby (a Kennedy caricature Ted apparently found amusing) has a favorite toast: "May all your indiscretions be private." Ted's weren't but neither were his triumphs.

Hey, that's all just the opinion of this commie pinko limousine hemorrhaging heart liberal.

And now, since it most definitely hasn't been a Summer of George for yours truly, I gotta start planning my Autumn of Steve. It might not be the most fiscally responsible thing I do (that list is small), but it might be necessary for my sanity and peace of mind.

To paraphrase Woody Allen, "Life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness—and it's all over much too quickly." I happen to agree with Woody that life's much too short. I also recognize it has gobs of inevitable misery you have no choice but to deal with so why add to it by enduring the avoidable variety?

Now Santa Claus comes forward, that's a razor in his mit; and he puts on his dark glasses and he shows you where to hit

I had just pulled out of the Dunkin Donuts on my way into into work today and found myself behind a car with the words 'Antibacterial Socks' plastered in huge black letters across the rear bumper.

Antibacterial Socks.

No other explanation (apparently none needed).

I pulled around to pass the guy and noticed lots of advertising on the side, albeit none related to foot odor or other similar hygienic or podiatry needs. The adverts indicated the vehicle was a rental - a zip car - nothing odd about that. Some shitty little subcompact thing, it might have been a Toyota but my attention was elsewhere.

Then it got weird. Starting with the driver.

His window was down and we were across from one another at a traffic light.

The dude at the controls couldn't see over the steering wheel, was wearing a very tall blueish top hat(!) , wrap-around Bono shades, a pink t-shirt and was drumming the dashboard furiously with what looked like latex gloves on (the dish washing variety).

This cat was singing, howling at the top of his lungs. But he had no music on in the car that I could hear and no ear buds or other obvious source for his rhythmic inspiration. The words he was torturing weren't English but they weren't exactly not English either. I felt I could almost make them out, but then at the last instant they'd float away, undeciphered. Out of phase, is the best way I can describe it. And there was no familiar melody or recognizable genre to help place his warbling in some sort of context I could understand.

I felt for just a second like someone must have laced my Dunkin Donuts coffee with a potent hallucinogen. But no one had touched it other than the counter person I see every day, a shy but friendly young Indian gal that most definitely did not seem the deadhead trippy hippie type. Perhaps the java is packaged that way, a new marketing angle for the random customer who asks for "Cinnamon Spice flavor". Wink-wink, sly smile. A tie-in to the new Ang Lee Woodstock flick about to hit theaters, perhaps?

I wanted to ask the zip car drivin' cat-in-the-hat next to me about antibacterial socks but I didn't know how to broach the subject given his operatic focus and my dumbfounded confusion. And then the light flashed green and he was off. I slowed down and watched him continue down route 202 South as I turned right onto Allendale Road and the daily grind.

Antibacterial socks were but one of a litany of puzzles I was chewing on as I pulled into the parking lot.

So I started work today in a state of flux and never regained my balance.

As I write this in the evening I'm still trying to shake the encounter from my psyche. Does it portend something ominous to come? Is this some kind of I Heart Huckabees existential calamity? Is this Short Top Hatted Singer to me what the Tall African Man was to Jason Schwartzman?

Or was he just some clown driving through King Of Prussia on his way to work?

Maybe he was freaked out by my lack of a Top Hat and because I wasn't singing along to music he couldn't hear. And primarily because I did not declare my support for Antibacterial Socks, at least not in the overt way in which he was accustomed.

Maybe I'm just listening to too much Leonard Cohen on the iPod these days. Apart from my Beatles jag last night, I've been fixated on the first three Cohen records of late - my "Early Cohen" playlist has been on a continuous loop: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room, Songs of Love and Hate. Especially the Love and Hate disc. Dress Rehearsal Rag, Last Year's Man, Famous Blue Raincoat. Those three are enough to make you existential ... or maybe it's suicidal ... or perhaps both (though in that case you'll likely not know if you've done yourself in or only imagined you have).

Cohen's lyrics do you in for sure. Though the baritone, unceasingly minor chord progressions and spare bordering on non-existent backing instrumentation do their fair share of damage as well. To compare to another favorite of mine with razor sharp teeth, Elvis Costello's words are even darker and more vicious, but he dresses them up in happy major chords, Lennon/McCartney style melodies and keyboard heavy punkish hues. Leonard doesn't let you off the hook like that: there's nowhere to hide in his well of sorrow. Don't get me wrong, now: he's got some wonderful melodies, they're just more oriented toward the shadows.

The rain falls down on last year's man. Indeed.