sympathy for the devil

I have several friends around the country who have tickets for the upcoming Rolling Stones U.S. concert tour, and now I bet they're all nervous!

Mick Jagger's doctor has insisted that the Stones postpone the tour due to unnamed medical treatments that Mick needs.... which has ALL of us Stones fans nervous!  I don't think that any of us can conceive Mick Jagger being mortal!  I mean, he's only 75 years old and has always been there for us, showing an alternative way to age from what we had envisioned!

I've been a Rolling Stones fan since they were the "bad boys" of the British Invasion of the mid-60s.  I last saw him in concert here in Minneapolis in 2015, when he was a mere 72, and he for two-and-a-half hours performed his prancing and jumping and singing on stage as if he were still 25.  It was inspiring!

Be well, Mick... We need you!!

Mick Jagger

greetings from 2019

One day — many years from now — when the internet has been replaced by something else and is a nostalgia thing and some bored geek, sitting at a library computer — if there are still libraries and computers then — happens upon this ancient blog post, let me say “Hi!” to such desperate geek.

And, if history is still taught out there in the distant future, I envy that you might know the answers to questions that torment some of us in this particular present; for instance, how does the Drumpt Administration end up?  Does he get his wish of becoming dictator?  Does he go to prison for multiple criminal activities?  Does he instead resign the Presidency and move to the upcoming Trump Tower in Moscow?

How about Brexit?  Does Britain leave the European Union after all?

Or what about climate change?  Did it end up destroying life on earth?  If so, please disregard this post!!

750 to 1

The Powerball payout is up to something like 750-million dollars, less taxes of course.

Somebody will eventually win, and it’s amusing to me that many people don’t play the lottery at all until it gets up towards that kind of crazy win — like winning only ten million wouldn’t be worth their dollar investment.

I realize that many people have as their lifetime financial plan to someday win the lottery, but really!

My feeling is this:  Nobody needs $750,000,000.  Why can’t they structure the lottery so that, like in this case 750 people would win a million dollars instead of one lucky dude getting that whole pot?  And, on a related topic, many winners of those mega-zillions end up seeing it ruin their lives.

I personally would be thrilled to win a million dollars.  If I won 750 million, I’d probably go insane (but I bet I would have a lot of happy relatives, some of whom I never until then knew existed!).

Will I buy a ticket?  What do you think?

moons, seasons, beginnings

So what’s going on, this 20th day of March?

If you’re into full moons (and who isn’t moonstruck ?), tonight is the last “supermoon” of 2019 — a rare super worm moon, whatever the heck that means.

And, as of a couple hours ago, today is the anxiously-awaited First Day of Spring.

So we have happy people celebrating the change of season at the same time people are being their usual full moon crazy.

For me, this March 20th is mostly the 45th anniversary of a beginning — my life as a dad.  Happy Birthday, Jon !!

thanks, saint patrick

Ah, 17 March, another St. Patrick’s Day, the annual day for the world to celebrate the charms of Ireland.  I still want to go back to Dublin one day to write my book...

they’re not ‘bewaring’

“Beware the Ides of March”, back when the Shakespeare play “Julius Caesar” was still being taught in English classes, was a term that everybody used to know meant “beware of March 15th”.  Now, when I say that term to anyone these days, they don’t have any frame of reference, so they’re not bewaring.

Caesar didn’t beware either, and look what happened to him!

no pi for me

Pi, the mathematical constant that starts with 3.14 and goes on for infinite digits, is something that I don’t understand at all and why it’s a thing.

But I do love that March 14 every year — 3.14 — has become Pi Day and has evolved into something much more fun — Pie Day.

Pie is something I DO understand.

Favorites:  Banana cream, apple, cherry....

a quick 20,000

I’m sitting here at the Volkswagen dealership while my GTI gets its 20,000-mile checkup.  It’s amazing to me that I put that many miles on a car in just one year.  I blame that accumulation on my encore career as a realtor.  Plus, there were those two road trips to southern Illinois/Indiana and one to Nebraska.  I guess that’s it.

For 22 years, I’ve been driving Volkswagen GTIs.  This is my fifth one, all of them red.  I love driving, and GTIs are great fun to drive.  Why tamper with success?

ask your doctor

TV commercials tend to annoy the heck out of me, so I mostly stay away from the commercial stations (except during football season):  hence, I find myself too much on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, or, ideally, no TV at all.

But I do like to stay informed and motivated, so, when I do watch cable, it’s almost always a news station — generally MSNBC, sometimes CNN.  Their reporting is intelligent and informative.  Fair and balanced, you might say.

Here is my gripe:  the commercials and sponsors on those networks are primarily pharmaceutical products.  The advertised drugs are designed for a tiny percent of viewers who happen to have the targeted diseases or ailments.  TV commercials are extremely expensive, which partially explains why prescription drugs are so overpriced.

And, after the ad lists all of the potential side effects (diarrhea to death), it ends with “Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you!”   I’m thinking, if your doctor is treating you, why hasn’t he or she already thought of this answer?  And how many phone calls do doctors get from all the hypochondriacs out there who imagine they have every disease described?

Other than that, I love MSNBC (yay, Rachel Maddow!).  I just wish they weren’t so dependent on drugs for their profits and existence.  I’d rather see dish-soap commercials.  Remember Madge?

LAS to MSP

So we head back to face another snowstorm predicted for the Twin Cities....

I’m so thankful for the invention of airplanes that can get us to other worlds in just a matter of a couple hours.

cross section

For some visitors, the best part of being here in Las Vegas is the “people watching...”

As a sat at a slot machine today, I paid extra attention to the people cruising past me.  Cowboys, pretty young things from L.A., couples who look like it’s their first time out of Iowa, and everything in between....  It’s certainly a cross section of America here.  Judging by all of the non-English-speaking conversations passing by me, maybe it’s a bizarre cross section of the world too.  Walking by, there was a guy with a dab on ash on his forecast, which reminded me not only that today is Ash Wednesday (a ritual that I never really understood) but that it’s Wednesday as opposed to any other possible day of the week!  It’s not quite a real world here.

Back home shortly.

MSP to LAS

March roared into Minnesota like a lion.  We haven’t seen temperatures above freezing in weeks, and none are predicted for a while.  So my son Tom and I said, That’s enough!, and booked a last minute flight to Las Vegas, a favorite getaway place for both of us anytime of year.  We fly out today.  I wish I could take all of my shivering friends with us!

bombing in Vietnam

So he couldn’t make a deal.  But at least he got away from the Washington, D.C., winter to somewhere other than Mar-a-Lago, which even he must be getting sick of, and he got a photo op with one of his favorite murderous dictators.

Thank goodness his bone spurs didn’t kick in!

neither Methodists nor Girl Scouts

I was in the mood to blog something about either 1) how the Methodists this week made a decision of non-inclusivity this past week that will, I hope, hurt them long term or 2) how much I love Girl Scout cookie time of year.

Instead, I couldn’t go that deep.

How about this?  As a casual observer and a listener, what I think are the biggest, most popular singalong jukebox tunes (unofficially) at my local bar:

1). “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Queen.
2). “Friends in Low Places”, Garth Brooks.
3).  “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, John Denver.
4).  “Sweet Caroline”, Neil Diamond.
5).  “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”, Frankie Valli.

So do I get an okay to stay with my favorite bar while I refuse to re-think the Methodists?  Meanwhile, I’m chewing on Girl Scout cookies (thin-mints vs. caramel de-Lites, of course).

a device in hand

While sitting at the bar a few minutes ago, I noticed that half of us sitting at the bar were playing on our phones.  Doing what?  Texting somebody elsewhere why that person is sitting at the bar instead of at home?  Games?  Emailing (which is what I was doing!)? .. Playing a song on the jukebox app (That was me too! [in this case, Springsteen])?...