I was walking on the sidewalk just now and saw one of the city ladies in an orange vest slip a ticket under the wiper of a green Tercel. As I passed her I said, Ticket season, and she looked at me and her eyes were big and it occurred to me that the world is full of assholes, they’re everywhere, on the internet and outdoors in the real world. Here in this bar there’s a guy talking to the server like she signed up for some subscription of his. I hear asshole narratives about friends’ and girlfriend’s ex-boyfriends, these shit men who behave like shit; and likewise surely my own ex-girlfriends have stories about me, I’m certainly not exempt from this club. The Iranian government. Pat Robertson and a whole fleet of assholes on screen. Writers, all of us. Skateboarders who throw beers onto floors and get all tackley, in-face finger pointers. Promise forgetters and even worse neglectors. Point being surely this woman has been screwed with and harassed as she’s gone about her job in this city. With the new meters I bet we’re all screwing with her more. But I was smiling and so she smiled back and I liked her, she was lipstuck in the perfect shade for a woman in her upper forties, and had some heft to her. Always! she said and laughed and a step later I said, It’s like wabbit season, but this time she didn’t laugh or otherwise acknowledge amusement and I didn’t know what to say to someone when Bugs Bunny fails to resonate.

I’ve got a reading coming up in February, a guest blog post on Three Guys next week, and an essay this Spring in St. Louis Magazine. The coffee shop was all full (it’s always full) but I discovered that it’s okay to sit in the bar next door and write all day long. The question remains as to whether it’s a Greek, Canadian, or American bar.

Finally, please be advised that it actually is the real Graham Nash, as far as I can tell, commenting on the last post. I hope now his Google Alert goes off again so he comes to see how goddamned tickled I am at the reality of that, and read one final apology from me about my plastic surgery accusation, which was brash and presumptuous and but holy shit, man. Graham Nash!

A few  thoughts recalled from my time watching the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert the other night on Pat’s couch while our two dogs (beautiful bitches, both) watched us:

1. At this point, Stevie Wonder is at least a minor deity. I can’t imagine a single religion that would argue.
2. John Legend is goddamned handsome and I will admit right now that I am jealous of his handsomeness. It’s fine. It’s okay. I’m okay with it.
3. Smokey Robinson would do well to take a cue from Stevie and wear sunglasses at all times.
4. Paul Simon is looking more and more like Jon Lovitz, or rather the animated version of Jon Lovitz from The Critic.
5. Paul Simon’s guitar fingernails, which are vaguely warlocky or wizardish and not at all the sort of thing a camera should zoom upon, truly and deeply freak me out.
6. The thing about his nails, I realize the more I think about it, is that they’re sort of yellow and gray, as if jaundiced, and how exactly do nails get this color? And why is he wearing a purple jacket?
7. Said Pat of Graham Nash during his and Crosby’s cameo with Paul Simon to sing “Here Comes the Sun” in a new and harmonized but definitely not impressive way: “He looks like Ted Danson on MDMA.” (Nailed it, Pat.)
8. Mr. Nash has also had way more plastic surgery than anyone who recorded “Long Time Gone” should ever have.
9. The alternative, however, which here registers as Mr. Simon’s small country’s worth of makeup caked onto his cartoon face, isn’t much better.
10. Art Garfunkel is looking more and more like the clown from the television mini-series of Stephen King’s IT.
11. Metallica’s introduction to themselves, following the set break following a rather embarrassing moment when Aretha Franklin snubbed the shit out of Annie Lennox, I suppose for wearing a t-shirt and silly hat (not to mention grin) onto Aretha’s stage: “We’re Metallica, and this is what we do.”
12. Re: Aretha, I wish, wish, wish Smokey would’ve gone with something else (“Tears of a Clown,” say) for his song with Stevie, which would have left “Tracks of My Tears” for the woman whose version, from the really great Soul ’69 album, is far superior.
13. What Metallica does does not go particularly well with what Lou Reed does, which is wander about with eyes glazed and skin sagging (which is fine, actually, the one real solution to this “problem” of aging that Misters Nash and Simon get terribly wrong, because look these are old men after all, and so let the wrinkles be the ethical argument for why we should listen, the scars, the same weathering and evidence of use that so many boot and jacket and t-shirt companies have been faking for years) and try to sing “Sweet Jane” and kind of fail, and look confused enough that Pat and I get sort of sadly quiet there on his couch, and by this point my dog’s four eyes have burned almost halfway through my body, and it’s clear that she’s ready to go even if I’m not, and so let’s say we call it a night, huh Pat?

I didn’t participate in any of last or early this year’s many outpourings of memorial affection following Dave Wallace’s death, aside from a short note of expressing sadness and gratitude. But as I’m preparing to teach Infinite Jest at SAIC and write an essay of my own about rivalry, athletic fanhood, and envy, I’ve found myself back deep into “Consider the Lobster”, both the book and (right this second) the essay, and I’ve reached this moment here in a particular footnote that just about captures, for me, the true wonder of Dave’s work, a wonder I could no easier describe with English words than I could pull wings from out my ears and fly myself off to Cambodia. The moment, from the tiny type at the bottom of p. 247:

Is it significant that “lobster,” “fish,” and “chicken” are our culture’s words for both the animal and the meat, whereas most mammals seem to require euphemisms like “beef” and “pork” that help us separate the meat we eat from the living creature the meat once was? Is this evidence that some kind of deep unease about eating higher animals is endemic enough to show up in English usage, but that the unease diminishes as we move out of the mammalian order? (And is “lamb”/”lamb” the counterexample that sinks the whole theory, or are there special, biblico-historical reasons for that equivalence?)

Reading this essay now, contextualized by the issue’s recent Foerization and Natalie Portman’s resulting and fairly comical and completely insulting soapbox derby, is a bit like waking up from too long a sleep beneath too many blankets, wearing flannel pajamas (with cute little attached booties) and sweating terribly, then rolling out of bed into a tub of ice water. We miss you, Dave.