A random post on Pitt-Penn State with nods to Dave, Bruce, Dylan, Quinn and the guy who robbed the bank to end his marriage

I try to avoid taking topic requests because the result always comes across as forced, stilted.

I’m making an exception today because fanatical reader Dave Angus is the one doing the requesting.

Give me 1,000 readers like Dave and I could rule the blogosphere. You may recall from earlier posts that Dave quits reading the blog cold turkey for six weeks every fall so he can then binge read nothing but “Eight Days To Amish” while he’s in his Illinois tree stand waiting for an opportunity to slay an innocent buck.

Knowing this I try and make my posts extra-compelling in the hopes they’ll distract the hunter from his antlered prey.

Still, such devotion must be rewarded so, for Dave, here goes:

“Yeah Pitt! Go Panthers! You kicked Penn State’s butt. Pitt rules!”

Could you tell my heart wasn’t really into that? Sure, I wanted Pitt to win, but not because I enjoy taunting Penn Staters. I love a good rivalry game and Joe Paterno apparently stole that from my fall revelries 16 years ago.

It was a great game Saturday and sports fans can only hope the rivalry resumes and prospers.

Dave wanted me to write a scathing, mean-spirited post jabbing proud Penn Staters for past controversies.

I’d no sooner do that than throw them all into the big basket full of all those deplorables.

Pitt? Penn State? I have no dog in that fight. I just enjoy a good fight.

Really, I look down on anyone who had the opportunity to attend even one year at Ohio University in Athens and went anywhere else.

• I was outside Consol last evening when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band began tearing into “New York Serenade.” Among those inside were my buddy Quinn and his brother Paul. They’d bought $175 tickets, far too rich for me. I figured I could find a scalper, flush with indecent profit, who’d be willing to drop down to around $50. Wrong. They were holding out for $100. I passed and today I’m chagrined at having missed what was my dream set list.

• Still, think I made the right decision and got to spend the afternoon guzzling with Quinn and Paul. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’d rather see Quinn than Bruce. 

• Of course, I met Quinn at OU. Fun guys like him would never have dreamed of going to either Pitt or Penn State. 

• I wanted to get inside to see if there were more black people on the stage or in the crowd of 18,000. I bet it was the stage (seven). How come more black people don’t like Bruce?

• I hope my readership is diverse. I welcome Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, LBGT and both Mormons and morons. I have no idea if any of those demographics show up here. But I do know this much: You’re all gorgeous! Smart, too (except for the morons)!

• Know what else happened on 15 years ago Sunday? Bob Dylan released the outstanding “Love And Theft” CD. That’s not all. Delbert McClinton released “Nothing Personal,” and Alison Krauss & Union Station, “New Favorite.” I was waiting in the parking lot of the local Barnes & Noble to purchase all three when I heard the news, oh, boy. So it was a terrible day for America, but a great day for American music.

• I just did a cursory google check of “famous Ohio University alums.” The list includes (voice of Bart Simpson) Nancy Cartwright, Arsenio Hall, Paul Newman (did not graduate), and original “MacGyver” Richard Dean Anderson and a bunch of other non-celebs I’m sure my Pitt/PSU friends would belittle. I saw one name on the list that pisses me off. He’s sportscaster Thom Brennaman. I used to tend bar with him. He belonged to a rival fraternity of despised pretty boys. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I’ll never get over his Beta taint. I still can’t stand him.

• Just because I went to OU doesn’t mean I can’t still be petty.

• I’m toying with the idea of writing about John Ripple. He’s the 70-year-old Kansas man who robbed a bank because he said he’d rather go to prison than stay married. It’s fascinating. Would the jury convict him? How must his poor wife feel? Sure, it seems like a no-brainer for blog fodder, but my wife caught me cackling at the news and scowled. Doesn’t she know I’m already a prisoner? A prisoner of love!

• Tweet of the Week: I’m so convinced I'll one day die of random gunfire I'm thinking of getting a bullseye tattooed on my chest just to give the folks in the morgue a good story to tell.

• Here’s a 1:37 YouTube of Quinn telling about the lines of mine he’s turned into songs. Includes blatant Natty Light product placement.

• Hey, Dave, a herd of albino trophy buck just sauntered past while you were reading this post!

Related …

Binge reading my blog in an Illinois tree stand

My wild and wussy weekend with Quinn

RIP Bobby Keys: Is this his last song?

Why the closed casket for JoePa?

No. 1 Party Boy from the No. 1 Party School

The good, the bad and the Bruce Springsteen show

9th graders learn who's better: Stones or Beatles

(972 words)

My daughters know not to ask Daddy any homework questions involving subjects like algebra or biology.

I just don’t get it.

Same goes for humanity, sociology, civics, nutrition, astronomy, horticultural, automotive repair, personal finance, IT, physics, chemistry, fashion, hospitality, theology … 

And let’s not even get into why they know to run to Mommy anytime they have questions involving basic grooming and hygiene.

So I was taken aback when our 9th grader approached and said she needed my insights on a subject she’d been assigned to argue for debate class.

Who’s better: Stones or Beatles?

Now, it was my turn to be taken aback.

This is what they’re teaching in our middle schools?

I couldn’t believe it. This isn’t a subject that ought to be discussed in a classroom.

It ought to be discussed in a dimly-lit bar with a really cool jukebox.

And I should be the teacher!

In fact, my entire life has been something of an honors tutorial on the subject. I remember spending hour-after-hour in the Athens bars going point-by-point over every song in their glorious catalogs to divine the answer.

It was Ohio University where I graduated with a .23.

That wasn’t my GPA.

It was my BAC.

I started my answer with a question: Who did you choose to argue: Stones or Beatles?

“The Stones.”

Hallelujah.

If she’s learned anything from me it is musical tastefulness, a realm which to me is far more important than all that scholarly crap that winds up on the resumes.

She was correct.

The Stones are the better band.

I plugged a Stones playlist into the stereo and as the first iconic chords of “Jumpin' Jack Flash” began to play I commenced my illumination.

“First of all, the Stones are the better band merely on the basis of longevity. They’ve been thrilling the world for 54 years.”

That cannot be overlooked.

“Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” “Shattered,” “Sweet Virginia,” “Memory Motel,” “Miss You,” “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Waiting on a Friend” and “Honky Tonk Woman” are just a handful of the hits the Stones recorded after the Beatles hung it up. And if I had the opportunity, I’d play for each of you the outstanding 2005 “A Bigger Bang” album to prove the Stones are still in their fifth decade capable of great studio work.

Many great bands burn out or fade away within five years due to ego, addiction, artistic differences, death, suicide, envy or the other many pitfalls of fame.

The Stones have overcome all those and reign still.

Second, the Stones are more inspirational.

Ask Bruce Springsteen.

I heard an apt interview with him where he summed it up perfectly. He said it changed his world when he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

“I remember looking at them and thinking, well, there’s only four guys in the world who can do what they’re doing and there they are. No one else can do that. Me, included. But when I saw the Stones they were more gritty, more real. They weren’t smiling. They weren’t pretty. I thought, man, I can do that. The Stones are what made me want to be in a band.”

Every musician in the world wanted to listen to the Beatles, but they wanted to be a Stone.

Another point: the Stones were dangerous.

When the Beatles were playing it safe singing, “All You Need is Love,” the Stones were releasing, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

I played it for Josie and emphasized the lyrics with historical context about crucifixions, Russian revolutionaries and WWII holocausts.

I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for 10 decades for the gods they made

I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?” when after all it was you and me

The world in 1968 was raw from war, strife, injustice and the monumental assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. And here comes Mick Jagger beseeching sympathy for the devil.

They didn’t shy away from confronting this. In fact, when Robert Kennedy was murdered during the recording sessions, the Stones had a historic choice to remove the Kennedy line in the name of taste.

Instead, they made it plural.

Even today, it’s incredibly incendiary.

I told her the Stones are the better band is because they are a true band.

I love that about them.

I contend if the Beatles had never met you still would have heard of John, Paul, George and Ringo. They all had the gifts to be famous.

John, Paul and George all went on to individually make tremendous and indelible solo music. They were a trio of geniuses.

And Ringo, well, Ringo would have made a dandy game show host.

Had the Stones never met, the only one anyone would have ever heard of is Charlie Watts and the only people who would have heard of him are the handful of obsessives who can name famous jazz drummers.

Mick would have become a financier, Keith a junkie, Bill Wyman a gynecologist and Brian Jones still dead.

Instead, they had each other and became something the world will never see again.

That Stones solo work is either obscure or sucks just bolsters my point.

And though their lifestyles contradict the opinion, I contend the Stones would to this day still be playing music together in shabby clubs and theaters if they’d never become famous.

I still believe — despite all the inflatable dolls, the private jets and the disposable supermodels — with the Stones it’s the music that matters.

And because this was a school project and I want my darling to succeed, I needed to share with her the one irrefutable reason that would blow away anyone arguing the Beatles — and I love the Beatles — are better.

None of the Stones ever got anywhere near Yoko.

Class dismissed.

Related …

Roll on, Stones

Stones 50 best? ForGrrrt it

“USA! USA!” and why we all whoo

Listening to classic rock with my senile Mom

Lennon vs. McCartney

The divisive Paul McCartney Christmas song

The Boss for God

RIP Maya Angelou & the world's greatest poem

(991 words)

I made a joke to my buddies when the news came on that Maya Angelou, 86, had died. I said, “Is she the one who wrote the poem that begins, ‘I once knew a man from Nantucket . . .’”

It was a very cheap and tasteless joke at the expense of a revered woman of tremendous international consequence.

Still, I made it because it’s funny and that’s the whole point of making jokes.

I always feel bad any time a famous poet dies because I have no appreciation for famous poetry.

Of course, a famous poet dies only once every 25 years so the occasion rarely troubles me. It’s not that being a famous poet guarantees one near-immortal longevity, it’s just that so few poets ever become famous.

Now that Angelou is gone, can anyone name another famous poet?

I tend to think of poets as being lyricists too lazy to learn guitar.

Try this punctuation-free poem:

Madmen drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat

In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat

With a boulder on my shoulder feeling kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round

With this very unpleasing sneezing wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground

If my 13-year-old daughter read that aloud to me for an honest critique, I’d gently advise her to seek career opportunities in the math or science fields because as poems go that one just kind of sucks.

Of course, fans know those are the first four lines from the first song of the very first album Bruce Springsteen ever released. It’s “Blinded by the Light” from 1972.

It makes me feel utterly joyful. Not so much because of the haphazard slapdashery of the words, but because I instinctively hear the guitar melody that is going to propel me through the whole song until it is finally revealed to Mama where the fun is.

It’s 5 minutes 4 seconds of pure euphoria.

But try reading it without the music skipping through your head. As poems go, it’s a mess.

One of the things I sense many poets like about writing poetry is that there are no rules. You can say what you want how you want.

That’s going to change if one day I’m every put in charge of poetry, a position that, I’m sure, would pay only slightly less than hometown blogger.

First of all to me a poem must rhyme. If it doesn’t rhyme then to me it’s just talking without discipline and even toddlers and mumbling drunks can do that.

And a good poem should be short and easy to remember.

That’s why to me the greatest poem of all-time is by an unknown savant who was probably paid minimum wage by some mom ’n’ pop operation looking for a way to remind its customers to be do their job for them.

It is . . .

Be kind, rewind

Bask in that for a moment. It’s concise. It’s informative. It’s memorable. It suggests action.

And, boy, that son of a bitch really, really rhymes!

I swear nothing Shakespeare’s ever done comes close.

The fact that convenient advances in home movie viewing has now made it incomprehensible to two generations of tech-savvy kids does nothing to diminish its impact.

Angelou’s death did give me an opportunity to look up what I’ve been missing and it’s been a lot. Check out some of these magnificent lines: 

 • “The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”

• “Try and be a rainbow inside of someone’s cloud.”

• “I’ve learned you shouldn’t go through life with catcher’s mitts on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.”

• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but no one will ever forget how you made them feel.”

Aren’t those beautiful? I particularly like the last one.

Isn’t it a pity I didn’t know they existed until the day after she’d died? I should have been following her on Twitter instead of former SNL funnyman Kevin Nealon.

But don’t blame me. She’s the one who decided poetry was the best vehicle to spread her ideas.

Imagine her renown if she’d have years ago attached her soulful gifts to someone who could compose a snappy tune?

I’m thinking of the guy famous for singing often inarticulate lyrics like these:

Oh! Candy and Ronnie! Have ya seen ‘em yet? Oh, but they're so spaced out!

B-B-B-Benny and The Jets

Oh! But they’re weird and they’re wonderful. Oh, Benny, she’s a really keen

She’s got electric boots! A mohair suit! Ya know I read it in a maga-Zeeennn!

Oh, ho! B-B-B-Benny and the Jets!

Cut me open and I’ll bleed Elton John/Bernie Taupin songs. It’s a key part of my musical DNA. But Taupin’s a very mediocre lyricist whose reputation is elevated because he happened to pair himself with a genius.

But the honors that will flow forth when Taupin dies will in some ways equal those bestowed on the truly great Angelou.

Lesson?

Kids, if your soul yearns to compose poems, take the time to learn how to at least plunk out a tune on a piano or a guitar. Give yourself a chance at glory, acclaim, adulation and a decent living.

Or maybe get your hands on a book by the great Shel Silverstein and see how one of the most under appreciated poets/artists of the last 100 years did it. And he’s one of the very few who did it all.

That’s enough from me today. I’ve got to start planning next week’s blog topics.

There once was a man from Latrobe

Whose blog was ignored ‘round the globe

He took a shot at a poet and wouldn’t you know it

The remark made it clear he’d been intellectually disrobed

Related . . .

My absence/their fonder hearts

The Springsteen show and when music mattered

Daughter, 7, says God is dead: Is Elton to blame?

Weeping for big box bankruptcies

My wife for president

Re-run: Enough already! Awash in staples

From 2009. I'm almost four years older and I'll bet I've used maybe 40 of the staples from the 5,000 pack that inspired this one. If I could change one thing about this, I'd eliminate the part about Bruce Springsteen. I love his 2012 album "Wrecking Ball," and it makes me eager for his next release. I guess  you can't have too much Springsteen.

Unlike staples.

It dawned on me at the cash register that the $4.29 I paid for 5,000 staples will be the last money I’ll ever spend on staples in this mortal coil. It was the smallest quantity they had in the mega office supply store store named, coincidentally, Staples.

I’m 46 and lead a reasonably healthy and risk-free life. The actuarial tables indicate I ought to make it another good 30 years or so.

But I’ll need to go on a crazy stapling binge to use 5,000 staples during that anticipated spread. I just don’t see it happening. And it’s doubtful someone’s going to come along with a revolutionary new item that will render my vast staple empire obsolete.

So one day in, say, the year 2038, one or the other of my darling daughters will be clearing out the detritus of my spent life and they’ll find the little box of staples about the size of kid’s toy tractor trailer. It’s doubtful it’ll register to either of them that I bought them way back in 2009 and that the tiny unsung office soldiers in the war on disorderliness triggered an odd moment of melancholy.

Who knows? Maybe finding the staples will trigger in one of the girls a flash of fury because if things keep going the way they are, the staples will be the only thing their impoverished father’s going leave behind for either of them.

I may not have a lot of money, but if life’s wealth can be measured in staples then I’m rich beyond measure.

Mr. Staples behind the register asked, “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” I told him. “I have all I need.”

And, truly, I do. At least in regards to staples and guys like Bruce Springsteen.

A friend of mine, a huge Boss fan, said he, like me, immediately bought the new Springsteen album, ‘Working on a Dream,’ when it came out in February.

“I like it, but I just know I’ll never listen to it,” Dave said. “It’s like U2. I listen to their new album and think, ‘Ah, this reminds me of some of the post-industrial grunge of ‘Achtung Baby’ from 1991.’ So why would I listen to it when I can listen to the better and more original album? With Bruce, I like the new album but when I’m in the mood to listen to Bruce, I’ll just listen to ‘Darkness’ or ‘The River’.”

He’s right. I’ve been finding myself saying no to artists I used to reflexively buy. So when new music from artists like U2, Lyle Lovett, Elton John, or Eric Clapton pops up, I just pass.

(I’ll still buy anything from Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Joe Ely, Todd Snider, and the peerless Van Morrison. And, taunt if you will, but The Rolling Stones still kick ass; I’ll argue till I’m hoarse that 2005’s ‘A Bigger Bang’ is a classic).

But I have 7,578 songs in my iTunes library. I’d need to rock for 20.8 straight days to listen to it all, and not even a booze- and drug-fueled Keith Richards can stay awake for that long.

Enough already!

I’ve never bought any music by the techno-pop artist Moby, although I once whooped it up at a swanky private NYC party with him, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, and when I say that -- and I often do -- it winks at the idea that the four of us were giggling and spilling champagne all over one another’s topless bodies. And that may have happened, but if it did it happened after one of us split the party to watch the Mets v. Yankees in the 2000 World Series in a Chelsea dive.

Guess which of us A-listers did that?

But Moby was asked in the current issue of New York magazine if he could, as scientists are doing with mice, erase memories, would he? His answer is brilliant:

“If I erased the memories of embarrassing things I’ve done, it would increase the likelihood I’d do all these incredibly stupid things again. The only memories that might make sense to erase would be the good ones so that way you could experience things for the first time again, you know?”

Perfect.

Once you get past 40, much of life is like the past two seasons of the relentlessly baffling ABC show, “Lost.” It’s an often bewildering story that seems to deliberately go nowhere and is chock full of tedious reruns that fail to shed light on any of the nonsense that’s gone before.

If this all sounds depressing, I certainly don’t mean it to be.

It just makes it more challenging and makes each fresh adventure, friendship or discovery more satisfying.

We need to find creative and exciting ways to use all the staples before we die.

I think I’m going to spend the rest of the day jotting down a quixotic list of all things I want to avoid ever doing again -- taxes! -- and a list of some of the things I want to try and get around to doing -- party once more with Moby!

Then I’ll stack the papers together and affix them with one of my shiny brand new staples.

Just 4,999 to go!

The Springsteen show & when music still matters

(734 words)

I confess to spending a good deal of my time at the Bruce Springsteen show in Pittsburgh Saturday wishing I could turn a 50-something man into my 12-year-old daughter.

I’m not sure whether or not she would have enjoyed the 3-hour concert, but I know she would have paid more attention.

And I wouldn’t have felt like pretending spilling a $7 beer on his bald head was an accident.

This I was really close to doing. Seriously.

Every four or five minutes he’d take out his smart phone to check the college football scores. He was in the seat right in front and one to the right of mine so I’d see it every time over his left shoulder. 

It’s a cowardly move, I admit, but being a beer-spill vigilante is the perfect solution to this sort of craven behavior.

I could pretend like I was an idiot and it was an accident. He’d get furious, storm out for at least the duration of “Racing in the Street,” and if my aim was perfect I might gum up his phone.

It’s not like I could tap him on the shoulder and say, “You know, Bruce Springsteen’s 63-years old. You should pay attention because this could be the last time any of us has a chance to see him and because he’s still magnificent.”

And, indeed, he is. I’d say he’s the last of a rare breed, but that would be selling him short. There’s never been anyone like him. I’ve never seen another performer capable of evoking so many emotions.

His 27-song set made me laugh, exalt, cry and care.

It’s something you just can’t get from the final score of the Pitt-Temple game.

I was feeling a bit melancholy during the show because I sense we’re at the end of an era. All the great bands are simultaneously winding down and aren’t being replaced.

Music no longer matters.

The Oct. 6 issue of New York magazine’s cover features this revealing article about the popular band Grizzly Bear (I’ve never heard of them). The cover asks: “Is Rock Stardom Any Way to Make a Living?” and relates how the band just sold out Radio City Music Hall and the band members are all piss poor.

The article said the first half of 2012 was the first time albums older than 18 months outsold new albums. New music isn’t getting played or purchased and part of our culture is dying.

It makes me want to grab people by the collars and tell them we’re losing something precious.

I wonder if the reason I care so much is I spent some formative years in Nashville. I was friends with many talented songwriters who took me to all the best clubs, including the famed Bluebird Cafe, where I’d spend many nights listening to some of Music City’s finest crafting songs that still demand our attention.

I saw management throw people out for even discreet conversation.

I thought of the Bluebird whisper police as the guy at the Springsteen concert kept distracting me by ignoring one of the America’s greatest artists in favor of frequent Top 25 score updates.

There’s an uproar over the Stones charging $700 for tickets, an amount that will attract an elite class of people while excluding so many others.

I’d like to see promoters for their own good institute a policy where fabulously wealthy bands must sell tickets for $100 a pair. The purchasers would sign a pledge to not fiddle with smart phones or behave in ways that distract fellow concert-goers. Further, they must pass a test proving they have a deep knowledge of the artist’s career catalogue and what the appropriate emotion to register when someone like Springsteen plays his Clarence Clemons tribute during “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out.” 

They must swear securing a seat for the concert will mean the world to them, that attending is matter of life or death.

And they must promise to give the second ticket to some struggling musician who will perhaps be inspired by what they see and may go home and in six months write the next “Born to Run” to save an industry that is dying before our eyes.

That way we’d be guaranteed to be sitting around people who already know the score without having to check their smart phones.

Related . . . 

• Now they’ve ruined jukeboxes

• The Boss for God: a concert review

Who pulled plug on Springsteen & McCartney? Was it Mitt?

We don’t know the identity of the scoundrel who pulled the plug on Sunday’s historic Bruce Springsteen/Paul McCartney Hyde Park performance, but let’s out of speculative spite say it was Mitt Romney.

He’s very uptight, strict about petty rules and may have been upset that both Bruce and Paul will out of principle refuse his millionaire tax cuts.

That’s how polarized we are.

Something inhuman and barbaric like what happened in London happens and we immediately suppose the guy we oppose was behind it.

I only made the absurd charge about Romney to beat Limbaugh to the punch. He’s a day late from blaming the whole fiasco on Obama. And why would Obama pull the plug on such a great show?

Obama hates America, of course.

And what says America more than a kid from New Jersey and a kid from Liverpool getting together in London to play a few tunes by the Union Jack’s greatest export?

The more I think about it the angrier I get. You have Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen, among the top five most beloved musicians in history, playing “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Twist & Shout,” and at 10:43 p.m., right in the middle of “La Bamba” you pull the plug?

Who would do such a thing?

My first guess was Johnnie from the uproarious “Airplane!” movies. He was the flamboyant air traffic controller adept at making things like hats and broaches out of vital weather maps.

He pulled the plug during a crucial approach of an endangered jet liner making it a bad day for Lloyd Bridges’ character to quit sniffing glue.

I wonder if that’s how Springsteen felt.

“I’ve waited 50 years for this!” he exalted as McCartney strolled without fanfare onto the stage.

So something he’d anticipated for years was over in the blink of an eye and failed to live up to his heady expectations. Look for The Boss to write a bittersweet song equating the event with losing his virginity.

I first heard about it when I read some retweets by E Streeter Little Stevie Van Zandt. He was livid.

“English cops may be the only individuals left on earth that wouldn’t want to hear one more from Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney!” he wrote.

And, “I’m sorry but I have to be honest. I’m pissed. Like I said, it didn’t ruin the great night. But when I’m jamming with McCartney don’t bug me.”

This is no idle threat coming from a guy who’s buddies with Tony Soprano, another huge Springsteen fan who may or may not still be alive chewing onion rings in an obscure Jersey diner at this very moment.

It’s been my privilege to see Springsteen 20 times, McCartney once (I still tingle at the sublime recollection).

I guarantee there were tears in the eyes of thousands of fans as the two shared a microphone on “I Saw Her Standing There.”

This will go down in rock ‘n’ roll history as one of music’s worst crimes. We’re left to wonder just what might have been.

As I said, we don’t know anything about who gave the order to pull the plug for what they said were public safety concerns.

But we can make some informed guesses.

It’s a person who doesn’t get high or approve of anyone who does. It is someone who reveres order over spontaneity. It’s someone who if you ask, “Stones or Beatles?” will probably respond “Donnie Osmond -- but only the old stuff.”

It is starting to sound a lot like Mitt

Or maybe Roger Goodell.

We may never know.

But I know this: If they can do it to McCartney and Springsteen, they can do it anyone.

So beware. Any venue, forum or blog is now subject to the no-fun police let loose on society to cause pain in happy places where people seek joy and enlightenment.

Wholesome places like this humble little --

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN BY TEMPORARILY SHUT DOWN BY ORDER OF THE LONDON POLICE. STOP HAVING FUN IMMEDIATELY AND GO STRAIGHT TO BED.

AND NO HANKY-PANKY!