Good Night

I just got an email that knocked me right out of my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room. It said, quote, "Richard, why are you wearing your mother's bra?" My head went zap...and flashed me the most bizarre picture I have ever seen. Perhaps flashed isn't the proper word here. The email went on to say that I must modernize my bra, with a seamless microfiber pullover model that features a ribbed band that eliminates rolls, wires and adjusting straps. And for God's sake...I shouldn't wear an old fashioned bra that hooks in the back or front. When my eyes stopped rotating long enough for me to regain conscious thought, I couldn't help wondering where the hell does this thing does hook.

I'm sitting in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room, mourning the loss of my hevele. I know it's missing, because my friend Susan, who runs the post office down the block just asked me about it. Susan and I have been friends since I awarded her my first Gruntled Post Office Employee Of The Month award. It was a bar of Hershey Dark Chocolate.

She is usually very up-beat and pleasant. But today she looked at me and said, "Why do you look so disheveled?" Disheveled ? Now, I don't take a bow every time I pass a mirror, but on the other hand, I don't think I look like my hobby is stepping on rakes either. And I am in reasonably good health...my doctor recently assured me that regardless of my age, I am still not showing many of the early signs of mummification. And I reminded Susan of what Big Louie, his own bad self, the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie-Louie Generation always says, "It's wasteful to throw a whole face away, just because it's banged up a bit."

It's comfortable sitting here in my big, black, leather pappa chair in my living room...which is good...because I had a head snapping experience today. A total stranger, suddenly stuck his face into my bathroom mirror this morning. It was quick. All of a sudden, he was staring me down, just a fist's distance away from my face. It was like I was playing peek-a-boo with some sinister, Mr. Fist In The Face...and a little voice in my head said he had something important to tell me.

Time to tuck another summer away. Sunrise, sunset. To everything there is a season. And this is the season when Summer falls asleep. The long, laughing, lazy, crazy, hazy days at the beach, the nights full of soft lovers voices under the boardwalk...Saturdays in the park, itsy, bitsy, teeny, yellow polka dot bikinis, roller coasters, Italian ice cups, baseball, the sound of crickets, and lawn sprinklers...you can feel them all slipping away...into fall.

Strange week. Two natural disasters and a natural wonder all in the same week. I was sitting in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair the other day, and I felt the earth move. Really. An earthquake. I've felt the earth move before, but never when my Lady Wonder Wench was in some other room. My Lady Wonder Wench frequently creates testosterone tsunamis which cause hormonal power surges in guys all over our zip code. It is very difficult for me to describe what Lady Wonder Wench looks like without using my hands.

I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room, listening to the soft, Summer, night sounds. In fact, I just recorded them. They're so...calm. So I put them in this podcast for you to do a soft Summer sound chill out.

"Time Marches On" But the parade stumbled this morning. It stumbled. And that shook me up. This gets a little strange, but bear with me, because it may happen to you some morning if you're a member of the Louie-Louie Generation like me.

When I opened the curtain and looked out at our back yard like I do every morning, the sun was hitting the trees from a strange angle. It wasn't the winter angle by any means. It didn't even look like fall. But this morning, it wasn't middle of the summer soft like it has been since early July. It was like something out of the "Twilight Zone."

We're dreamers, you and I...all of us...Americans. That's how we got to the moon. We had the dream, and we made it happen. We dreamed about buildings that would scrape the sky, so we built a sky scraper national park and called it New York. All mankind has always dreamed of flying...and it was a couple of our guys by the name of Wright who made it happen.

That song that Francis Scott Key wrote was about a dream that came true. But Francis Scott Key, the lawyer, was used to staying one step ahead of the competition, and he knew it wasn't a completely done deal. He knew that like any dream, it would take effort, and guts and a little luck to keep it alive. And he wasn't sure that would happen...which is why he ended his song with a question. A question that has...up until now...had a simple answer. And that answer has always been yes...until now. The question is, "Oh say does that star spangled banner still wave...o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" I'm not sure we can answer that question with a simple yes right now.

I just re-recorded the outgoing message on our phone machine. Louie-Louie Generation guys like to think of ourselves as funny phone fellows. Our prostate challenged partners sometimes call us other names. They simply do not understand why we love weird outgoing phone machine messages.

Most Louie-Louie ladies are perfectly content to use the pre recorded message that came with the machine...or they just say "You've reached the Smith residence. Please leave your name and phone number and we'll get back to you as soon as we can." We, on the other hand, savor the opportunity. We have somebody by the ear, and they can't get away until we hit our punch line. Our outgoing phone message is our version of Jay Leno's monologue.

I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room...which is good. Because I got an email a little while ago, with some news that would have knocked me down if I weren't already sitting. When I finished reading it, I called my Lady Wonder Wench, and told her about it. She said something that sounded like, "Oh my God...wow"...while holding her cell phone at arms length as she got to the word "Wow". I only think that's what she said, because the last word came out on a note that was so high, and loud, that I couldn't really hear it, but Golden Retrievers for three blocks around fled in terror, and windows and eyeglasses cracked all over the zip code. It was great news, but it really screwed up my day, because I completely forgot about everything else...including the fact that I was supposed to be interviewed on a radio program about my books and CDs...and I just forgot about it...which was not only un-professional, it was simply inconsiderate and impolite. And I'm a Louie-Louie Generation guy. Louie-Louie Generation guys have manners.