August Tweets of the Month -- Hooray!

Buy books from me and this is likely to be the return address. I found out many years ago that people treat Rev. Rodell way better than they do plain old Mr. Chris Rodell. Enjoy this month's tweets! 

• Bob Dylan is 79. He's been singing "Knocking on Heaven's Door" since 1973. Who else thinks when he passes on &  knocks on heaven's door, they’re gonna  say, "It's just that Dylan kid again. He's been knock-knock-knockin' on heaven's door for 47 years. Just ignore him. He'll eventually go away."

• Can’t disagreeing on policy be enough? Do you have to say your opponents are blood-sipping pedophiles intent on elevating Satan? You're making hating you right back far too easy.

• Constitutional scholars on all the Sunday news shows advising what to do if Trump loses election and refuses to leave the White House. What to do? Barricade him IN. He can't leave. Then tell him you're cutting the cable.

• An idealistic young friend sheepishly confided in me she dreams of becoming a Supreme Court justice. I told her not everyone can become a Supreme Court justice, but everyone can live in ways that'll ensure they're treated with the same respect as one.

• The only thing getting me through this toxic divisiveness is the knowledge that come Nov. 4, all our differences will be set aside - best man won - and we shall march forward together & solve ALL our nation's problems. Because we're ALL Americans.

Kidding! We're screwed.

• New Muppet show (Disney +) getting rave reviews with one critic calling it "uproarious, joyful & heartfelt." Me, I'm tickled anytime a creation described as "heartfelt" comes with a felt heart. 

• Oh, Facebook, so stingy with your 7 measly emoji! Don't you realize most of us feel 7,000 emotions when we ask ourselves, "Has enough time lapsed since the last time I checked Facebook?”

• I’ll be despondent all week knowing county fair canceled. Deprives me of opportunity of standing in front of rabbit exhibit & singing, "Can ... Any Bunnny ... Find Me .. Some Bunnny Tooo Luvvv? Some Bunny! (some bunny) Some Bunny! (some bunny) Find Me Some Bunny to Love!”

• I’d like to thank the rest of the world for putting up with historic upheaval, civil unrest and more than 773K deaths just so we Democrats here in the US can get rid of Trump. We promise to return you to your regularly scheduled programming Nov. 4.

• Teaching the value of writing to people who don't read is like trying to teach fish the value of fresh air

• Toilet paper hoarders beware: it ain't all it's cracked up to be and sooner or later you're bound to hit bottom.

• I’d like to see Trump deliver Biden's acceptance speech and Biden Trump's. Imagine the eye rolls, the sarcasm, the body language mockery. It'd be as insightful as it was entertaining.

• Even in normal times, most well-off people live lives of deep ingratitude. Ask them to count their blessings and many will begin the count with negative numbers.

• Given our inability to agree on even basic facts, I believe we're on course that in the next few weeks every other American will be able to at any time wear an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt and be indisputably correct .

• Help me understand: What do people who don't like Bob Dylan talk about when there's one of those uncomfortable lulls in the conversation?

Birthdays; Dylan & this blog & my Michael Jordan story

(940 words)

This past weekend this blog turned 12 and Bob Dylan, 79. It is pure coincidence, but I’ve always used Dylan as a creative benchmark against which I measure the blog’s success.

By that standard the blog is clearly superior to Dylan and has been since Day 1.

The blog, you see, was communicating in complete sentences since its inception, something Dylan didn’t do until he was probably 18 months.

He didn’t write “Like a Rolling Stone” until he was 24. The blog was just 4 when it came up with this gem: “Loud bulimics make the worst neighbors. They can never keep it down.”

Just imagine what greatness the blog will display when its voice changes and it begins to sprout pubic hairs.

Of course, it’s all speculative. Another difference: The boy who became Bob Dylan eventually matured.

No indication that’s in the cards for this blog.

A friend — known her since high school — sweetly wondered if I’m feeling okay. She said she detected a lesser visibility on the blog and through social media.posts

Fear not. I’m fine. I’ve not tested COVID  positive. My Parkinson’s symptoms are stable. I’m not an unarmed black man walking down a Minneapolis sidewalk (or one jogging through Brunswick, Georgia/ eating Skittles in Sanford, Florida, etc).

Generally, it’s a good rule of thumb that the less you hear from me here, the more I’m thriving in places that make a difference to our accountant.

In fact, yesterday was the best day of my career. And it’s grown-up stuff, not like someone gave me a coupon for some free Cheese Stix down at the Sheetz, the ubiquitous area convenient mart that sells everything but sheets.

I’ll share the news with you next week.

—-   <<  >>   —-

It was an ironic COVID pity that I was in a building with three bars and I couldn’t find a soul with whom to drink. 

“There are those who worship loneliness. I’m not one of them.” That might sound like me, but it’s not. It’s Bob Dylan, a quote on his website right below a news post announcing the cancelation of his summer shows.

Is this the end of his fabled Never Ending Tour? Begun June 7, 1988, Dylan has toured ever since. That’s 3,066 shows, the last being Dec. 8. What the hell is he going to do this summer without the road routine? He hasn’t been married since 1992 so there’s no mile-long honey-do list. Maybe he’s cultivating bonsai trees or binge-watching Ozarks.

It would be super cool if he read this blog and decided — what the hell? — I think I’ll stop by the Tin Lizzy and have a drink that guy whose blog was born the same day as me. It could happen. He’s very capricious.

I’ll let you know if he does. 

—-   <<  >>   —-

My Michael Jordan story: It was probably 2001. I was a contributing writer to flashy upstart Maximum Golf magazine. They asked me to snag a press pass for the Mario Lemieux celebrity tournament at Nevillewood C.C. near Pittsburgh. Matt Lauer, Charles Barkley and others from that crowd were there. But the biggest deal was MJ. My editors wanted me to score an exclusive interview with him.

My editors thought nothing of requesting the impossible

He was such hot stuff, the press was given instructions on how to deal with him. The instructions were, in essence, do not. Do not address him. Do not make eye contact. And do not even think of asking him a question.

We were to treat him as if he were invisible.

I couldn’t do it. I remember seeing him on the practice range and thinking, man, that is the most magnificent specimen of a human being I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe we were of the same species. Tall, perfectly proportioned, poised and rippling muscles from head to toe, he looked like something out of Greek mythology (if Greek mythology were integrated).

So I decided I had to mess with him.

As he began heading to the tee, a posse of 7 or 8 dumpy little white guys fell in to shield His Airness from me, a dumpy little white guy.

My press pass alerted them to my professional  menace. I spoke, “Mr. Jordan,” and held out a copy of the magazine as we walked briskly across the range. I remember one guy glaring at me and mouthing the words, “NO QUESTIONS!”

Too late.

“Sir, this is Maximum Golf Magazine. The Wall Street Journal just declared it the most exciting new sports magazine in the past 20 years …”

His security ring looked like they were eager to murder me. Jordan was so supremely stoic he seemed to deny my very existence. Still, I pressed on.

“I’d like to interview you for 10 minutes. In exchange, I promise we’ll put your picture on the cover of the next issue …

“We think it’ll make you famous.”

I’ve said funnier things, but situationally, it may have been the funniest thing I’ve ever said.

The group exploded with laughter. Where there had been tension, there was now unexpected delight. No one was laughing louder than Jordan. I sensed he doesn’t get to laugh a lot and my joke reminded him how wonderful surprise laughter feels.

Still laughing, he said, “Man call my agent!”

I never did. 

—-   <<  >>   —-

Think of all the food you ate over the last 24 hours. Was any of it free? Now think of all the media you consumed to feed your brain. Did you pay even a dime for any of it? Did it nourish or decay? Happy Birthday donations welcome here.

Or you can always buy a book or two. Or …

I still accept coupons for Sheetz Cheese Stix!

My thoughts on Dylan & "Murder Most Foul"

(594 words)

So here’s my gut reaction to “Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan’s divisive new 17-minute song primarily about the Kennedy assassination.

• It’s like listening to four mediocre Bob Dylan songs strung together.

• Might as well call it “Pee Break Most Foul” because if he ever plays this live, every concert goer will at the first notes head straight to their designated restroom.

• The idea of riffing over an era with evocative phrasing has already been done and done better by Billy Joel with “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” only Billy scattered his observations over four impactful decades — and he only needed 4 minutes, 51 seconds to get it done! Even better, albeit more narrowly focused, is Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

Of course in 30 years, I might disavow this judgment, and declare the song utter genius, an essential stitch in the American fabric.

It is my contention that everyone who becomes a Dylan devotee starts out by mocking him. That’s how it started with me.

In fact, for me to begin appreciating Bob Dylan he had to cease being Bob Dylan and become some one else entirely.

He became Lucky Wilbury.

Yes, it wasn’t until I heard him with the Traveling Wilburys that a light went off. He didn’t take himself as seriously as every one else did.

And if you’re today having a bad day (welcome to the club!), realize that once upon a time Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan were sitting around and one of them said, “I have an idea. Maybe we should start a band.”

And they all agreed!

Petty said: “The whole experience was some of the best days of my life, really, and I think it probably was for us all ... The thing I guess would be hardest for people to understand is what good friends we were. It really had very little to do with combining a bunch of famous people. It was a bunch of friends that just happened to be really good at making music.”

Okay, enough sunshine. Back to disparaging “Murder Most Foul.”

Some of the rhyming is just lazy, and the song contains what to me is the single worth lyric he’s ever composed. Maybe worst in history.

Wolfman, Oh, Wolfman, Oh Wolfman Howl!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

It’s Murder Most Foul!

This is not satire. It’s not a put on. This is factual.

This from the man who on “Thunder on the Mountain” managed to convincingly rhyme “Sons of Bitches” with “orphanages.” So I expect more from him.

I know many people disdain the idea of a 16:57 song (everyone feels obliged to round it up).

Not me. Some of my favorite Dylan masterpieces (“Desolation Row,” “Highlands,” “Brownsville Girl”) exceed 10 minutes.

This one just feels bloated. At least it’s a welcome reprieve from covering old Frank Sinatra tunes, a trend I’ve facetiously said was a factor in Petty’s accidental overdose.

So I don’t like “Murder Most Foul.”

But who knows?

Give me another two decades and I might change my mind and hail it as genius, just like I did with its composer.

Interested in spending roughly the equivalent time on three Dylan songs I contend are bound to break down the walls that separate mockery from appreciation?

Check out “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky,” “Working Man’s Blues #2,” and “Where Are You Tonight?”

The songs are evidence of a transcendent artist who can be exasperating, tender, charming, infuriating and with every release volcanically compelling.

Just like a woman?

No.

Just like Bob Dylan.

Related …

My favorite Bob Dylan story

Bob Dylan’s the reason I’ll never remarry

Bob Dylan, multiple marrieds and me

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan (& this blog)

Sound fathering at 22 mph

Will I become the last unemployed American?

(753 words)

News that the unemployment rate has descended to 3.6 percent has me wondering if I’ll be the last unemployed man left in America.

I tell people the coolest thing about me is I haven’t had a job since 1992. Then I tell them the most disturbing thing about me is I haven’t had a job since 1992.

The opposing statements are both equally true. 

People say they drive past the Tin Lizzy and see me up here on the 3rd floor staring at the computer. They say they saw me working. A stickler for accuracy even when it’s detrimental to my reputation, I feel obliged to correct them.

“In fact,” I say, “what you likely saw was me sitting. The chances of me doing anything that would earn an actual, albeit meager, wage are next to nothing.”

I don’t look at computer porn but from street level a man sitting at a computer looking at porn is indistinguishable from a man trying to compose a compelling line. 

It’s unfathomable how much time I devote to thinking up a line that might be thoughtful to readers like you for about, oh, three seconds. A line like, say:

“Most people agree room temperature is 70 degrees. Elmer Fudd says womb temperature is 98.6 degrees.”

Took me about 20 minutes to compose and craft that one. Then I spent another 10 minutes trying to find just the right Fudd photo to best illustrate the word play (it’s the one up top).

Then I sat staring at the computer and admired the resulting tweet for like 15 minutes and concluded, "Well, that’s the best I got this afternoon. Might as well call it a day. Time to hit the bar.”

It was 1:45 p.m.!

I used to dream my life would unwind like one of the great, noble figures in literature I so admired, men like Tom Joad or Atticus Finch, respect-commanding figures of substance and drive.

I was sitting up here in the window “working” when it dawned on me that life turned out just like I’d hoped. Sorta. I have, indeed, become a character from American literature. Just one problem.

The character is Ferris Bueller!

I must make it look easier than it is.

People ask me what it’s like to be a “successful” writer. I tell them I aspire to success. Hell, I aspire to mere solvency. I respond to break even the way many of you do to getting lucky on some band kid’s strip ticket.

I’m a 56-year-old man whose idea of a really good day is one that involves me finding a quarter. 

And while I do not consider myself a successful writer, I am becoming a locally  acclaimed one. People know my name. I like that. But mine isn’t the kind of name that’s ever going attract sneaker contract dough. I’d like that better.

Other writers tell me they want to be like me. They ask how I do what I do. I quote to them Bob Dylan from the song, “High Water.”

“Don’t reach out for me, she said, can’t ya see I’m drowning, too?”

My poor wife. I suspect about once every other month or so she wishes she’d married a plumber.

Heck, it’s about once every other month or so I wish I’d married a plumber.

I think the worst part for her is when we’re out and somebody starts to gush about something I’ve written. And, God bless ‘em, some people hold nothing back in their manic praise. Goes straight to my head. 

What I lack in deficient funds, I make up for in baseless ego.

I wake up every single day convinced something wonderful is going to happen to my career and I’ve been saying that every single day since June 31, 1992, the last day the U.S. Department of Labor considered me a gainfully employed individual.

There is a Fool-on-the-Hill sort of beauty in such simple-minded optimism.

The problem is that it keeps smashing up against the complex realities that go hand-in-hand with being the fool in the window on the 3rd floor of the Tin Lizzy, the one who spends so much time wondering WTF.

What The Fudd?

See, I with my whole heart and (most of my head) believe the people who tell me I’m great and that one day I’ll be truly successful in ways more tangible than flattering name recognition. 

And if and when that happens, then the story of my life will become one of the  very best stories of my life.

It wasn’t  my intention, but I guess now is as good a time as any to pass the hat. Donations accepted at PayPal (Chris Rodell) or get in touch about book purchases at storyteller@chrisrodell.com.

Related …

Happy Birthday to this Blog (& Pledge Week)!

A blog on bloggin’

Searching for Mr. Stupid

My history of drinking at or near work

Let’s change Labor Day into Leisure Day

My favorite Bob Dylan story

(1,052 words)

My favorite Bob Dylan story is about the time he was arrested in Long Branch, N.J.

If you think he was arrested protesting some social injustice, you’re mistaken. 

The man who wrote dozens of indelible protest songs has never to my knowledge deigned to ever protest any social injustice.

No, Dylan, was arrested for vagrancy. (Note: it wasn’t an official arrest, but he was detained and given a ride in the back of the squad car. That’s an arrest to me).

It was July 23, 2009. Dylan at the time was 68. The officer involved was Kristie Buble — and, yes, it’s pronounced “Bubble.” I didn’t see her age listed, but I’m inferring she was of the N-Sync generation.

Officer Buble responded to a 911 call of a confused-looking old man wandering the streets in the rain and looking in windows of a house at 7 1/2 West End Court, an address recognizable to fans of another rock icon.

Buble said her late father was a Dylan fan, but “it wasn’t like I sat around listening to his music or looking at his picture.”

She approached him and asked his name.

He told her he was Bob Dylan. 

She asked sarcastically if that was his real name. He said, no, my real name is Robert Zimmerman.

She asked what he was doing at the West End Court address. He said he wanted to see the house where Bruce Springsteen wrote “Born to Run.” Springsteen lived at the address from 1974-75 and wrote the entire iconic album while residing there.

“Well, what are you doing in town?” she asked.

He said he was on tour.

She asked where he was staying. He gave the name of a luxury ocean-front hotel.

She told him to get in the car and she’d drive him there. She said she was all the time assessing the situation for what she could tell the people in the ER.

And in the back of the cruiser, Bob Dylan, who can go years without saying a non-song word on stage much less grant an interview, talked and talked and talked.

“He looked homeless. He was walking around in the rain. But he was saying things like he was rich. I remember asking where he lived and him saying, ‘Oh, I have houses all over the place. I have a house in London. I have a house in California. I don’t live in any one place. I travel so much. I’ve been all over the world.’

“He told me to take him to the hotel and he’d get me tickets to that night’s show and I could see him play. He said that and I thought, ‘This guy is just nuts.’ I thought maybe he was a lunatic imposter.”

And he wouldn’t shut up. He told Buble he was famous for singing and writing songs. “It didn’t occur to me,” she said, “to ask him to sing me a song.”

She calculated the most sensible course would be to take him where he wanted to go and have the people who say they knew him either vouch for or refute his identity.

“We drove up and there were all these tour buses. I helped him out of the car and his manager comes running up and just flips out. He’s yelling, ‘What have you done with Bob! Don’t touch him! Don’t talk to him!’ Just being a total jerk. A real pompous asshole.”

She said her back-seat passenger was the exact opposite.

“Oh, Bob was modest, calm and chill. I never once thought, oh, this guy’s such a total jerkoff and I’ll never think of him the same way. Bob Dylan was nicer than 95 percent of the people I deal with every day.”

Buble’s tale set in motion an enduring daydream of me risking all to impersonate a police officer and incarcerate Bob Dylan for a cross-country joy ride of just me and him shooting the shit.

Winning the Nobel for Literature has landed him in the news once again, but when isn’t he?

It happened again with Bob on "Walking Dead," proving he lives even among the undead.

The show rebounded from its horrific season opener by a more character-driven episode anchored by a magnificent a cappella gospel version of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.”

When people ask if a singer-songwriter is deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature, many say yes and cite the duration of his lyrical contributions for nearly 60 years.

I say he deserves it for a contribution that lasts 11 minutes and 6 seconds.

It’s “Brownsville Girl,” from 1986.

Truly, it sounds like a Larry McMurtry novel. It’s a sprawling story that combines gunfights, painted deserts and an enduring love for Gregory Peck films.

My favorite line: “Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.”

I didn’t hear it until 1994 when I finally bought my first Dylan album. It was Greatest Hits Volume III, which I bought for the heart-seizing protest song, “Hurricane.”

Really, I felt zero warmth for Dylan’s songs or persona until he hooked up with the Traveling Wilburys. That’s when I first got the sense that he doesn’t take himself as seriously as the rest of us do.

He remains controversial. You either love him or you hate him. There’s no middle ground.

It’s as if he’s running for president.

I wish in these divisive times, I could take all the individuals who hate for one reason or another and sit them in my office with me to sip beers and crank Dylan tunes until a light goes off in each and every one as to why he’s so essential. So fun. So edgy.

So America.

He’s so much more than what he told Officer Buble he is. Yes, he’s singer, a songwriter, a performer. But he’s something more binding.

He’s a conversation we can always have.

Like baseball, he’s an elemental stitch in the American fabric.

Even his relative peers appreciate his peerlessness.

It was Tom Petty who said, “Yeah, I’m a rock star, but it’s not like I’m Bob Dylan.”

So, yes, give him the Nobel for literature and the Oscar for acting humble in the back of a Jersey squad car.

In the end, Officer Buble is proved correct.

Bob Dylan is a wanted man.

Related …

Bob Dylan’s the reason I’ll never remarry

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan (and this blog)!

Bob Dylan, multiple marrieds & me

Jeff Lynne, our essential Wilbury