A little ditty 'bout Dylan & Mellencamp

I went to see Bob Dylan last night and left a fan of John Mellencamp. The two, along with Willie Nelson and the Wiyos played to a sold-out crowd at a minor league ball park in Washington, Pennsylvania.

It’s a night I’ll long remember because Valerie and I got to bask in the genius of three legends (well, maybe two true legends) and because I got to confront a face of pure evil.

First, the show.

I predicted my wife would enjoy Mellencamp the most, Nelson second and Dylan the least. I’d never seen Mellencamp or Nelson. It was the 23rd time I’d see Dylan.

I wish my football pool predictions could be as bullseye. It happened just the way I said it would.

But Mellencamp, to me, was a revelation. I’m familiar with all his catchy hits, have about three of his albums and am aware of his shrill, lefty political rants, all of which I whole-heartedly endorse.

I’ve always considered him a credible and authentic artist if for no other reason he finds a way to work accordions and fiddles into great rock.

He opened with “Little Pink Houses,” a song we’ve all heard about 1,000 times. But he and his outstanding band played it with a ballsy blues riff. The thumping bass sent shivers up my bowels, a sensation that might sound unpleasant but is actually quite agreeable.

In fact, if I could somehow spend a part of each day with the bowel shivers, I’d probably do it. But it would likely lead to complaints from the neighbors and the need for me to stock things like adult diapers so I’ll have to find other ways to get my jollies.

Mellencamp and the band played with an adolescent exuberance that was a joy to behold.

The sound was perfect, a condition that only heightened my eagerness to see Dylan. I want my wife and the world, really, to share my appreciation for Dylan.

But Dylan keeps getting in the way.

She enjoys his studio work and like me, absolutely loves his beguiling “Theme Time Radio Hour” on XM Sirius radio.

But every time I drag her to see him live, I can see that she just doesn’t get it. I’m sure my face has the same confused look every time our 8-year-old insists I watch part of iCarly because, really, it’s just so darned funny.

I thought he was great and the band that played most of the songs in a swing tempo kicked ass. But a casual fan has a right to expect one of the world’s greatest songwriters to play some of the world’s greatest songs in a form that is recognizable.

Dylan’s defiant about this and would never, as Val suggested, let someone like, say, David Archuletta, perform the vocals.

I believe it’s a privilege to be within 50 miles of him, but my wife said she’ll never stand to see him again.

So next time I’ll see him by myself. That’ll be a pity because then there will be no one to brag to the next time I win a face off against someone so malignant that he leaves nothing but human misery in his awful wake.

It was Bob Nutting, lowly owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Thanks to cheapskate Nutting, the once-proud Pirates are on track for their 17th consecutive losing season, a record in professional sports.

I recognized him as he walked in through the turnstiles. My blazing contempt was instantaneous.

“Bob,” I said, “what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m doing great,” he said smiling, offering his hand. “How are you?”

I let the hand of this rich and powerful man just hang there, a huge insult, especially coming from a rich-man’s reflexive suck up like me.

“I didn’t ask how the hell you’re doing,” I said. “I asked what the hell are you doing. You keep trading away all our best players.”

He was taken aback and went on the defensive.

“Now, we got some good young prospects for those guys . . .”

“You’ve been saying that for 10 years. As soon as a ballplayer gets good, you trade him away for less expensive prospects. We’re sick of it.”

He’d greeted me expecting friendly banter and was surprised by vitriol. The Pirates weren’t winning but I was. He began to retreat.

“Well, I’m glad you at least still care,” he said. “We’re confident . . .”

“I stopped caring when you traded Nate McLouth.”

With that, he turned and fled. I hope I ruined his night. I hope he spent the night thinking, “You know, maybe that slob in the beer line is right. Maybe I should start signing guys to long term contracts and build up a core so fans will enjoy the game. Maybe . . .”

Me, I spent the rest of the night reveling in my little victory. But whenever Dylan became unintelligible, I found myself thinking of a hundred other witty points I should have made. I wondered if I could have been more clear, more articulate.

Oh, well. It was Dylan show, a night when even barely intelligible mumblings draw cheers.

Set lists: Bob Dylan

Watching the River Flow
It Ain't Me, Babe
The Levee's Gonna Break
Po' Boy
Rollin' and Tumblin'
Forgetful Heart
It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
If You Ever Go to Houston
Highway 61 Revisited
Nettie Moore
Summer Days
Encore:
Like a Rolling Stone
Jolene
All Along the Watchtower

John Mellencamp:

Pink Houses
Paper in Fire
Deep Blue Heart
Check it Out
Don't Need This Body
Take Some Time to Dream
Small Town
Rain on the Scarecrow
Troubled Land
If I Die Sudden
Crumblin' Down
The Authority Song

Pittsburgh Pirates at the All-Star break, 38 wins, 50 losses

I have no black friends

We just spent three days in Washington, D.C., a city I enjoy visiting because of all the big white monuments and regular sized black people.

There’s precious little of either of them here in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. You have to go to the fancy graveyard to see big white monuments and Pittsburgh to see black people.

There’s a poverty of racial diversity where I live and I believe I’m the poorer for it. The only black perspectives I get are the ones filtered by the mostly white executives at places like CNN.

We here in central Westmoreland County are almost uniformly white. Sure, some friendly Hispanics run our tasty Mexican restaurants. Some Asians immigrated here to satisfy our need for dishes like General Tso’s chicken.

But I need to road trip if I ever want to say howdy to an African-American.

I know it’ll doom my Supreme Court prospects, but I always take affirmative action any time I meet black people.

For years, I’ve felt it fell to me to be the white ambassador to the entire African-American race. I’m nicer to black people than I am to white people, and that includes, as I’m sure they’ll angrily attest, my pale-faced loved ones.

I make friendly eye contact. I extend small courtesies. I hope, in my own small way, I can help change any lingering perceptions that we are hopelessly divided by petty reasons of race.

This, of course, is utter foolishness. Any person, black or white, would have to be an idiot to say, “Gee, that white stranger who just introduced himself as Chris and held the door for me seemed like a nice dude. I think I’ll overlook the past 350 years of brutal suppression, slavery and overt racism perpetrated by his fellow Caucasians and go home and download some Barry Manilow tunes!”

Still, it’s the best I can do. I believe other people feel like I do and it’s making a difference.

That’s why I enjoy going to places like Washington and New York. It reminds me that, despite ample evidence of existing racism, things might be improving, even if they don’t seem to be where I live.

I know many of my neighbors would be suspicious if a black family moved in next to them. Not me. I would eagerly cultivate their friendship with an ardor that would have them fending off frequent invitations to dinner, back porch drinks and offers to have me mow their lawn and weed their garden.

Back when I lived in Nashville I could honestly say some of my best friends were black. Now, 20 years later, I can honestly say some of my best friends are rednecks.

They’re appalling racists. But, as I’ve said before, if I were to confine my friendships and conversation to exclusively enlightened people, it would be a very lonely existence and I’d have to stop talking to even myself.

Given all this, of course, I was thrilled by the election of Barack Obama, who I, by lack of any neighborhood alternatives, consider to be my best African-American friend, albeit in a distant FaceBook sort of way.

The others are named Mike Tomlin, Santonio Holmes, DeShea Townsend, James Harrison and Casey Hampton.

Of course, many of even my redneck friends like those guys, too, but only because they are Super Bowl champion heroes of the great Pittsburgh Steelers. Sure, they’re black, but, man, they’re also Black ‘n’ Gold!

If they were just guys from down the street, they’d be suspicious of them based solely on the color of their skin. That’s wrong and I hope one day that kind of ignorance is vanquished.

If it is, it’ll be in small part because of guys like me, the best friend the African-American race has ever had.

It's just too bad not a single one of them has the slightest inkling of the fact.

Musical dictatorship rules the road

Of all the virulently infectious songs by Abba that grate on me, “Lay All Your Love On Me” is the gratest. Once it gets in my ears, nothing short of a full frontal lobotomy will dislodge it.

There’s so much bad music roaming free in the world that it’s hard not to go through life in a defensive crouch. You hear it in the grocery stores, in the banks, on commercials. It’s nearly impossible to escape.

And now it’s even worming its way into a place that used to be my supreme musical sanctuary, my car.

I’ve never been a car guy, per se. The only things I’ve ever known about motor vehicles is how to drive them and how to wash them -- and I don’t wash ‘em.

To me, the car is simply a costly contraption poorly designed to transport me and a really cool sound system around the countryside. Either alone or with my tunefully tasteful wife, nothing beat a long drive with my iPod, its 7,746 song library and miles of highway out in front.

That all began to change with children. Now, tomorrow we’re taking our daughters to Washington, D.C. (with an overnighter in Hershey) where the great totems of the nation will confuse our oldest daughter into thinking she lives democratically free.

Unfortuntately for her and her sister, the drive down and back will be for them a musical gulag and I will be the kommandant.

In fact, I’ll wager the two will learn more about political science from a 4-hour ride in my car than they ever will at places like the National Archives.

See the 8-year-old, Josie, harbors a quaint notion that our music selections should be purely democratic. She believes each of us should pick four songs from tiny jukebox and pass it on.

But that would lead to anarchy. I’d pick four outstanding and tasteful songs from, say, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Robert Earl Keen or Van Morrison.

Then my wife would pick four dandy ditties from guys like Todd Snider, Joe Ely, The Dixie Chicks and Delbert McClinton.

Then it would be Josie’s turn. She’d pick four from Mamma Mia (maybe one or two from, gadzooks, High School Musical) and tension would ensue.

The baby would shout out things like, “Free Fallin’!” “Hey Jude” and “Mamma Mia!” As you can judge by her wide-ranging choices, her soft young mind’s already being influenced by others. Politically, she’s like a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who so far is incapable of conjuring independent thought.

I might try and show diversity by offering a four-song set from Queen, Elton John, Robert Cray and Suzanne Vega. And she’d pick four more from the four pale Swedes.

I might try and show her how sham democracy can be used to repress rather than liberate. I could make my four selections, “East Broadway Run Down” by Sonny Rollins; “Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Creedence; “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straights; and “Highlands” by Bob Dylan. The four songs clock in at a total of 62 minutes and 16 seconds, a musical total nearly 30 minutes in excess of the 10 saccharine tunes that compose the entire vapid soundtrack for “High School Musical II."

Instead, I think I’ll just give her a lesson on the exalted benefits of living under a benign dictatorship. I alone will select all the songs.

So the girls will get the opportunity to bask in the music of the varied greats like Elvis, Ray Charles, Alan Jackson, Lucinda Williams, The Stones, the Traveling Wilburys and others from what I, the Supreme Ruler, believe constitutes the greatest collection of music assembled in one iPod.

If I were to let an 8-year-old decide what the rest of us are to be subject to then we’d be at the mercy of what is fleetingly popular, but inevitably unhealthy to the overall good.

That kind of thing could lead to us all marching to the tune of instant icons like Sarah Palin or Miley Cyrus.

And I can’t tell which would be worse.

Thirsting for bar conversation

Do you know that forlorn feeling that comes along when one good friend goes away? Now imagine what it’s like when two dozen of them vamoose all at once.

That’s what it’s like the week after July 4 here in Latrobe when The Pond for one week goes dry.

Understand, The Pond going dry has nothing to do with the consequences of global warming. In fact, the impact centers more on individual thirsting.

The Pond is a friendly local tavern that’s miles from the nearest discernible body of standing water. I’ve probably been told a dozen or so times about why a landlocked bar is called The Pond, but the story isn’t nearly as interesting as what goes on in the bar beneath where I work.

I moved my office into a vacant apartment above The Pond in 2007 when trying to concentrate in close proximity to two precocious girls at home proved impossible for a guy like me.

So now I try and concentrate in close proximity to about twenty mostly paunchy and mostly male beer guzzlers.

I still can’t concentrate and that’s a pretty disparate sampling.

I must just be a social person. It’s bad for constructive productivity, but it’s good for having fun.

The office overlooks the rear parking lot where I park my vehicle. On days when the girls come over for lunch, we often scramble to the window whenever we hear a car rattle the gravel.

Tucked safely out of view, we wait until the driver closes the door and deploys his or her -- click! click! -- remote door lock. That’s when I press the button for my car alarm.

This sometimes confuses the driver into thinking he or she has mistakenly hit the wrong button. In a panicky effort to silence my alarm, they’ll sometimes press their own setting off a startling cacophony that helps screen our concealed cackles from behind the drapes.

Of course, the best part about working just above a friendly a bar is that it’s just so handy in case of emergency.

I’ve re-defined “emergency” to include real or perceived writer’s block, the need for inspiration, the sight of more than three cars belonging to my buddies parked outside at the same time, the onset of Happy Hour, the hunger for a tasty pizza, and the understanding that if I don’t get down there for lunch at precisely 11:47 a.m., then I’ll be too late to make a hypothetical bid on the Showcase Showdown.

Mostly my emergencies stem from the lack of giggles that come from working all by yourself.

The Pond is the perfect antidote for that. It has a great mix of characters. There are lawyers, farmers, mill workers, newspaper men, electricians, engineers, teachers and a happy assortment of common small town drunks. There’s chalkboard trivia, good food and friendly bartenders.

From years of old school boozy experience, I understand it takes a special sort of alchemy to mix it all together and make it all work so everyone feels welcome.

This bar has been run for three generations of the Carfang family. Dave runs the place now. Here’s a joke he told me the other day.

Mahatma Gandi’s feet became very tough from walking around without shoes.

His vegetarian diet left him with a very dainty sort of constitution.

He was a philosophical seer of future events.

He ignored common dental practices and that gave his breath an offensive air.

He was (say it fast) a super-calloused, fragile mystic, hexed by halitosis.

How many taverns feature that kind of humor? And how will I cope without that sort of thing for the next week or so?

I know what I’m going to do. I’m taking the family and we’re leaving town. We’re heading on a trip to Washington, D.C., to see the sights.

I want to be clear on this: I didn’t plan a family trip just because I wouldn’t have the company of my good bar buddies until July 13. This is purely a coincidence.

It won’t be deliberate until next year.

Cars need energy-saving sleep modes

I was sitting motionless in traffic for so long I began wondering if I could sneak in a refreshing nap. Studies show that a few quick winks can do wonders for increasing our productivity and longevity.

Yet, as I sat there and thought of ways to momentarily shut down for my own benefit, the tank in which I was being cushioned in air-conditioned splendor soldiered on and on, bless its mechanical heart.

The engine of my 2007 Saturn Vue was operating with nearly the same crisp efficiency as if it were powering the vehicle to 65 mph.

Our society is bedeviled by unnecessary motion. We fidget. We’re always on the go. We’re rarely idle.

But our running vehicles often are. It’s an hour drive from my home in Latrobe to downtown Pittsburgh where we go once a week for grannies and giggles. During that time, my trusty Saturn can be completely motionless for up to 25 minutes.

It’s like watching TV in the pre-DVR days when we were all held hostage to all those awful Geico commercials.

I let my mind graze on magazines, books, or newspapers I keep handy for long red lights and the portions of the trip when congestion brings all traffic to a complete halt. But for nearly half the trip, my car continues to consume fossil fuels and pollute the atmosphere when its sole duty is to keep me sheltered from storms or sun and play the groovy tunes that keep my soul sweet.

And I’m not alone. To my left and to my right, from the front to the back for as far as the eye can see are other cars are doing the same nasty and unnecessary business. It’s like being in a mall parking lot at Christmas where all the cars are left running while everyone goes inside and shops.

Why can’t our cars have a sleep mode? Imagine how many fewer barrels of oil we’d need to import if smart cars could power down when the owner instinctively recognized advancing was momentarily futile.

Detroit engineers who right now are feverishly working to find ways to make cars more efficient when they go from zero to 60 need to consider ways to make them vastly more efficient when they aren’t going anywhere.

Concerned motorists everywhere should band together to insist that smart changes are applied to every new car.

It’s a movement I’d lead myself, but I can’t generate that kind of energy.

I never did get that nap.

The Rise of the Over-Educated Goody-Goodies

I was around a good campfire with some good friends recently listening to them talk about their good kids and all the good universities they were striving to attend.

It was a really good time.

Goodness, gracious, it’s going to be awfully difficult for future Nobel Prize committees to select from so many worthy candidates that are bound to emerge from today’s demanding universities.

And I’m not kidding. I was blown away to learn what today’s college applicants need to do to get into a public university.

I’ve been a titular adult, albeit one who still snickers when typing the word titular, for more than 25 years and I’m certain I’d be unable to muster the credentials to attend probably even a mid-level public university these days.

This is rich with irony because I, in fact, teach at a local university. It’s true. Every other year or so, the esteemed administrators at Point Park University deem me sufficiently experienced to teach their outstanding journalism students creative non-fiction.

So I’m paid to educate students at a fine school that wouldn’t admit me if I tried to enroll there as a paying student.

I was told students need at least a 3.0 to even get considered for places like Penn State University, and even at my alma mater, Ohio University (popular T-shirt: “OU, A Fountain of Knowledge Where I Go To Drink”). I’m still buddies with groups of three guys who couldn’t total 3.0 if you threw them all together in one big sack.

That’s not all. Admission offices are rigorous in checking if students have done a certain amount of altruistic community service.

I’ve known many people who’ve done hours and hours of community service, but it was always court-ordered and required to satisfy a basic element of parole.

All this puts what seems to me an unhealthy amount of pressure on today’s high school students. Parents need to relentlessly snipe at their teens to excel academically and be on-duty Eagle Scouts to boot. The margin for error is so microscopic that none of them had better not dare risk failing a drug test or waste an hour or two watching reruns of “The Simpsons.”

I don’t think it’s good for our youth to be that good.

I worry we’re raising a generation of that will devote more time to kindling unreachable ambitions than to the joyful activities that give life its zest.

And someday, inevitably, it’s going to blow up on them. We’ll wind up with a whole world of guys like this week’s exhibit A: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Before he got caught with his own smarty pants down, he was a notorious Christian conservative scold on Bill Clinton’s follies. As a high school student, it’s a given he excelled academically, was active in his church and did the kind of exemplary volunteerism that had all the top schools competing for him to grace their august classrooms.

Live a life like his and you’re bound to run into episodes of hypocritical comeuppance that can only be described with a kharmic sort of oomph:

Good grief.

Dead celebs & the grief tsunami

The passing of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson especially reminds me of my persistent grief deficiency. People, both unsung and great, die in droves every day and I for the most part just don’t give a crap.

Of course, like every boy at one time or another, I really and truly loved Farah, or at least her poster. My wife was commenting on how beautiful she was in a day when Hollywood beauty wasn’t so cheap. And it’s a good point.

She had a great smile. A lovely figure, those blue eyes and that fabulous hair. And it was all bestowed by a generous God at birth. The way it ought to be.

I felt bad that she died too young and her last years were a sad struggle, but who said life was fair?

The obits are packed with old grannies who’d probably would have traded their 93 years as homely spinsters with whisk brooms growing out of their facial moles for the one year that Farah had on “Charlie’s Angels.”

So she had her fun. I’m sorry she’s gone but, hey, we all gotta go someday.

But the soul-rending grief over the death of Michael Jackson, about whom nothing was natural, is surprising even the cynics.

Not me, a cynic’s cynic.

I’ve realized since the tragic passing of Princess Diana that many people have so little love in their lives they need to conscript dead celebrities for grief surrogates to allow them to feel those emotions.

Of course, maybe being a cynic gives me an emotional vacancy that I might enjoy if I only knew how to fill it up.

I thought of this after I read this dramatic statement released by Elizabeth Taylor. Check it out:

"My heart…my mind… are broken,” she said. “I loved Michael with all my soul and I can’t imagine life without him.
“We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together. I was packing up my clothes to go to London for his opening when I heard the news. I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. It can’t be so.

“He will live in my heart forever but it’s not enough. My life feels so empty. I don’t think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest most giving love I’ve ever known. Oh God! I’m going to miss him. I can’t yet imagine life with out him.

“But I guess with God’s help... I’ll learn. I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself, which says, 'To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever.' And, I will love HIM forever.”

I wonder if the apostles grieved Jesus with such emotional virtuosity.

Understand, Michael was not one of her eight husbands -- and I had to check Wikipedia to make sure.

Really, he was just an eccentric friend. I have scores of those. If, say, Frank, died tomorrow (and it wouldn’t be from overwork or stress), my eulogy wouldn’t come close to Taylor’s in its gripping tone.

I’d probably say: “Some people said Frank had a problem holding his liquor. Not true. Frank’s problem was that he could never set his liquor down. I’m going to miss Frank, but there’s a new guy two bar stools down who is auditioning for the role of Frank II so I think we’ll press on just fine.”

And I think we need a little perspective on Jackson’s place in musical history. The guy was a magical dancer. Many of his tunes were catchy. But it wasn’t like he was the King in heaven, and by “King” in heaven I’m of course talking about Elvis Presley.

Still, it’s impossible to deny the affect Jackson had. As CNN anchor Kyra Phillips observed on Friday, “Michael Jackson touched so many people.”

The problem was a lot of them were little boys.

I believe the King in heaven won’t be so willing to overlook such “eccentricities.”

And this time I’m not talking about Elvis.