ball of confusion

so there I was...Broadway...back in a theater...first time since early March 2020...before the shit hit the fan...theater is different in this world of Covid...and no...we are not post-Covid...we may never be...and even double vaccinated, boostered, masked...there is pause when the person sitting next to you is almost in your lap...the Imperial Theater...home to "Ain't Too Proud" is an oldie...which prompted a women a few seats down to comment during intermission...how small were people when it was built???...or is it the double whammy of that and Covid caboose...anyway...it is sad for me to admit...and I hope so much it changes...but much in the way that I felt last week...nestled in my seat at an early afternoon showing of "Belfast"...only 10 of us sprinkled throughout the audience...the thrill is not gone...but dulled...Covid has numbed my sense of joy...and that leaves me angry...but at who?...or whom?..."Ain't Too Proud"...there they were in front of me...an amazing cast...singing the incredible repertoire of the Temptations...songs that I know so well...the earworms of my youth...when they got to singing "Ball of Confusion"...well...I perked up...written over 50 years ago...not much has changed...and so when we venture out...try to resume life as we know it...there is a low flame of fear burning inside...fear of the intensity of this virus...fear of the growing unrest and violence of our immediate world...and fear that we are powerless in the face of all of it...maybe it's all like riding a bicycle again...wobbly and shaky the first time or two...then soaring with the wind in your hair and not a care in your mind...the sound bites and inane social media kings and queens can't rule you...you've reached a perfect state...and jump from your seat to applaud...like the Temptations sang...cloud 9...

Café Oy Vey...

so there I was at Le Pain Quotidien...my new guilty pleasure...get some walking in at Roosevelt Field...reward?...a hot, frothy café au lait...dutifully standing 6' behind the ladies in front of me, I suddenly heard a voice to my left...maybe a Covid-panicking 1 foot away...at least we were both masked...a small women leaned in to talk...she felt compelled to tell me of her woe...rambled about the fact that when she'd eaten a bread purchased here two weeks ago, her LDL was out of whack after, so there must be butter and other non-listed ingredients in the bread...she went over her exercise regime...the number of steps she did...I mentally thought of my walk that morning...I felt like Sherri the Sloth...she was petite and obviously trim, about ten years older than me...and she wouldn't stop...I was thinking about the croissants at the register...but with my paternal genes just looking at them filled my arteries to the brim...then I thought, without meds they did that with oatmeal...so maybe I would get the croissant...I kept my inner monologue going because the little lunatic to my left was now telling me how she wanted to move to Greenwich and I was hoping it might be in the next minute...I noticed the barista had left her station...or was that baristette here...anyway, now the register person was running back and forth and despite having ordered, it might be Christmas before I got my order...I lost my LDL friend though...she was chewing off the ear of the other woman behind the counter...who was probably glad for the mask as it hid lines of exasperation...I finally heard "Sherri" and took the cup...quickly exited the mall for a walk in the sudden cool air...Indian summer a lovely memory...the wind whipped my hair...tangled my earrings in mask straps that I ripped away bringing the hot cup to my lips...closed my eyes and smiled...then wondered...what was my LDL at my last visit?...oy...

I want my MTV...

money for nothin' and your chicks for free...so there I was watching the 2021 VMAs last night...I am certainly not the target audience...although any one of my contemporaries from NYU TV days...before it was Tisch...when equipment looked like it fell off a truck on 10th avenue...can tell you that we were tinkering with music videos before that launch in August 1981...and so I did kind of watch with amazement...that a show celebrating the medium of video would expect such amnesia from the audience...oh, let's look at Doja Cat dangling from a wire...ooo....ahhh...Pink, anyone?...lots of black dominatrix attire clinging to flesh...wow...except you had the queen open the show...Madonna...and so it went on...for several hours in Brooklyn as everyone put Covid in the rear mirror and celebrated 40 years of MTV...totally forgetting that the medium itself...video...is there for posterity...a permanent mirror capturing society at a moment in time...so if you want to writhe...crawl...bump...grind...you'd better bring something new...because it's been done...and MTV has the tape to show you...don't get me wrong...there were some good moments...and for the target audience...I suppose great moments...if that audience looked up from cell phones long enough to watch...as for MTV...it will go on...how do I know?...sadly, in the pearly white smiles of new video heroines Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish...angst and disdain never looked so pretty...but as the great Peter Allen once sang...everything old is new again...

"you can check out any time you like..."

 "but you can never leave"...it certainly was a surreal feeling last night at Madison Square Garden...my first concert in the age of Covid...and first time seeing the Eagles...after so many years of their music strumming in my head...pleasant earworms...and while listening last night...I realized just how easily the music and words could transport me...way back...I could digress...talk about the men sitting behind me discussing everything they thought they knew about the Eagles...loudly...with a steady stream of misinformation...or about the woman screaming in the ladies room for the attendant...apparently she had seen the largest roach known to mankind in her stall...welcome to NY lady...but instead I will tell you about Deacon Frey...that would be the late Glenn Frey's son...who with Vince Gill has stepped in...trying to fill a space left when Glenn tragically passed too soon...instead creating something new and quite lovely...and when Deacon stepped to the microphone for my favorite song, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"...all the anger inside...bubbling since Covid strangled life as we knew it...seemed to fade...Deacon, living testament that art is created as a mirror of life as the artist perceives it...intimate and universal...and can be reborn with new artists...from generation to generation...and so...well, at least for today...before I look at the headlines...deadlines...frown lines...I'll treasure the lyrics..."don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy"...

the heat is on...

excuse me while I schvitz...another heatwave...wildfires across the globe of epic proportion...tempers on both sides of the vaccine war...political careers aflame...how to cool off...not the ocean waters of Long Island...Jaws-back with a vengeance...such is the summer of 2021...the second year in this decade of our world afire...so how to avoid the rabbit hole of despair...we skirt it every day...and when I reach for the pen or keyboard...and feel nothing...I know I am dangerously close to becoming Alice floating away...I started this blog nine years ago...and much has happened...and not happened...kind of like "breaking news" having a lovechild with "Seinfeld"...and there have been attacks of writer's block...the thoughts don't always coalesce...even if the feelings do...but lately the heat...or life as we know it...is sapping my creative mojo...and this raises my ire...and so this half-assed blogpost...it's my mojo on the offensive...trying to reclaim inner strength...energy...and resistance to all that is swirling around us...that which can fry our health...and that which incinerates our spirit...so I try...a poem here...a letter to the editor there...and pushing this blog uphill...one post at a time...through twenty-first century hell...there's always a little heaven when this writer hits "publish"...

American song...

 "still, when I think of the road we're traveling on I wonder what's gone wrong"...Paul Simon's words from another time...America...she's older and fractured...in dire need of repair and rehab...where's the skilled surgeon...the compassionate treatment team...when can she rest...she's like a nurse in a covid wing in the deep south...pulled in so many different directions...sad, because she knows she will lose some patients...angry, because it didn't have to be that way...and hope is just a frayed thread holding her together...I thought about this nation many times in the past few weeks...as I often do around July 4th...for every beautiful color that lit the night in fireworks...there were cherry bombs and worse that scared animals to death...literally...what the hell does that have to do with us as a nation...or maybe it's the most accurate...we seek to recreate that which is the loudest and ugliest...have we truly become the Ugly Americans?...what exactly can lessen the deep chasm that has formed...it splinters and grows as respect withers in a vacuum...how we move forward...even if we fail...is not etched in stone...it is a series of steps we take as a nation...at times one step forward, two steps back...but always moving forward...together...no one left behind...giving this nation...America...the support she needs...and in turn...hopefully getting what we need...what we deserve...

next to normal...

and so we slide towards summer...covid restrictions are lifting week by week...we are seeing family and friends...vaccinated, we hug...lunging towards life as it had been...but we really can't...we are in the new normal...a unique state where we excitedly embrace all that we have missed...but with pause...for those who lost someone to covid, life will never be as it was...for those of us who had covid, there is either a leeriness to the rapid fire reopening...or a sense of invincibility...to a degree, to move on we kind of need to ignore the news...we did have falling numbers of cases...and hospitalizations...this morning I read of a concerning plateau...which paired with sinking vaccinations rates and increases of a more virulent and dangerous delta variant could spell an unsettling fall for the unvaccinated...and they are a formidable number...but people spin the dial on that one...the thought of another pause is too painful...there are hockey playoffs...and tickets to buy for the return of concerts and Broadway...cheer fellow Americans at the Olympics in Japan...a country currently drowning in the virus...there are masks to burn...and school board meetings to scream at...time to get front row seats as deniers eviscerate Fauci...a modern day Roman coliseum headliner...watch out for the cougher in row 2...