I’ve been sick as a dog.

You see I was hanging with Roland Orzabal, who told me his son was in an outdoor play in Bristol, and it’d been raining all summer, and his boy had gotten sick, and the illness had spread itself throughout the family, they’d just all been to the doctor.

Didn’t mean a thing to me back in the seventies. We used to share Pepsis, we were immune to germs. But then I caught a cold, and I got older, and I won’t say I refuse to shake someone’s hand, but I do know people who won’t go places where someone else is sick. Yup, in a can-do society, we don’t want anyone who can’t. We require everybody to be in tip-top shape all the time.

But Roland seemed fine to me.

So I shook his hand and it wasn’t long before I too was under the weather.

But I toughed it out. Six days later I was fully recovered. Without missing that much of a step. I was back in action.

And then I ran around a bit. Well, more than a bit. And last Monday I went to the Bowl to see Aerosmith, and when I woke up the next morning…

I felt like I’d been hit in the head with a brick. I couldn’t even stand in the shower. I figured it was the loud music. That’s what the pain on the side of my head was all about, some weird result of wearing an earplug on that side and not the other. Yes, Tyler sat us feet from the stage, in the pool box. And after fifteen minutes of Brad Whitford’s guitar, who knew he was this talented?, I had to move. Or go deaf.

And we found box seats.

But we never did find Tyler thereafter. He took off for Pink Taco with his buddy Johnny Depp, who’d come out and played “Train Kept A Rollin'” on his Les Paul, quite well, in fact, and after connecting with Ron Jeremy and Mitch Schneider and the assembled multitude, I went home.

And I would have decompressed longer, but Lupe was coming in the a.m. to clean Felice’s house, so I got in the bed and slept…for an hour. And then two more. I was tossing and turning like Flipper. And when I finally arose…that’s when I had that left side headache.

Do you call an ambulance?

I’m prone to panic. I’m either going zero or a hundred miles an hour. It was illegal to be sick when I was growing up. If I told my mother I was ill, she’d say go to school, see if I felt better, her mom was a hypochondriac and she had no tolerance for complainers.

And this has gotten me in trouble. Sometimes you need to go to the doctor. And eventually I did. Two days later. Got to credit Felice for that, I would have hesitated forever and not done this. And I got this nasal spray and a Z-Pak for if I didn’t feel better by Saturday, which I didn’t, and I took it and I’m finally feeling decent, today I’ve turned the corner. So I want to tell you about this book “Gone Girl.”

Maybe you’re paying attention.

But probably not. Most people don’t read books. Then again, they’re reading ” Fifty Shades of Grey .” The publisher has moved in excess of 20 million copies in the U.S.

20 Million Shades of Green: Racy Book Hits Milestone

A huge percentage of them digital. Hell, “Fifty Shades of Grey” doesn’t top the print best seller list. ” Gone Girl ” does.

Yes, it’s the number one best seller. And I wasn’t gonna read it. Because I’m not into genre books, mysteries. Because you end up reading for plot and only plot. And I hate skeletal books. Give me a bit of description, flesh out the story a bit, just don’t write a movie script.

But then I read in “Entertainment Weekly” that ” Gone Girl ” was a “literary read.” As in a “real book.” And the columnist compared it to Jeffrey Eugenides’s “The Marriage Plot.” Did you read that? I won’t say it’s unreadable, but I will say it’s unsatisfying. And this was before I knew the author of “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn, once upon a time wrote for “Entertainment Weekly,” and writers are a backslapping bunch, forever doing each other favors, but I took the bait, I bought it.

And I’m gonna tell you very little about it. Because I don’t want to ruin it.

But I’m gonna tell you to read it.

Because the plot’s interesting. Although there are too many turns. And many believe the end is unsatisfying…

OOPS! Sorry, I screwed up there. I like to go into a book cold, and when a friend told me the end wasn’t as good as the beginning, it stuck with me, and I don’t want to ruin your experience, it’s just that…

The writer nails men and women. Relationships.

That’s all that matters anyway, people. You can’t make love to your computer. Without the dirty pictures and the words, it’s meaningless. We’re fascinated with people. How do we relate, how do we interact?

Hang in there for the whole book. Not that the pearls of wisdom don’t come fast and furious. But mating is a game. And perception is key. And Gillian Flynn gets this so right, that I’m recommending this book.

Which won’t be remembered forever.

But chances are you haven’t read a book in eons anyway. And I won’t say “Gone Girl” is impossible to put down, like Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken,” but it’s close. The book calls out to you in the middle of the night. Read me…read me…read me…

And I was mostly done by time I got sick. But I finished it when I was out of the woods but was incapable of writing. And I just don’t want to let it go, let it pass into the ether of history.

Sometimes number one is more than a train-wreck. “Call Me Maybe” may be a trifle, but it’s a good one. “Gone Girl” is deeper than the Carly Rae Jepsen hit, and it’s even more satisfying.

Read it.

And then let’s discuss it…

“‘Guess what Jeff found in his cabin for me?’ Greta says. ‘Another book by the ‘Martian Chronicles’ guy.’

‘Ray Bradburow,’ Jeff says. ‘Bradbury’ I think.

‘Yeah, right. “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” Greta says. ‘It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”

And while I’m quoting from the book, here’s a few more:

“I picture them at one of the pricier strip clubs, the posh ones that make men believe they are still designed to rule, that women are meant to serve them, the deliberately bad acoustics and thwumping music so no one has to talk, a stretch-titted woman straddling my husband…”

STRETCH-TITTED? Wow, she gets this exactly right. Whether it be the pole-dancers or Kate Beckinsale before she had her implants removed, we all notice, but we never talk about it.

“It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and fucking figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and overstaffed.”

Whew! We can’t get answers anymore. Whether it be at the department store or Facebook. I’ve never seen it put better.

“Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite.”

Which is why Brooklynites look down their noses at Midwesterners. Sarah Palin understands this, but she’s too stupid to understand the other side, she’s completely irony-challenged.

And speaking of stupid:

“This is the hardest part: waiting for stupid people to figure things out.”

 

“It was one of the few stories we told the same way.”

That’s the story of being in a relationship! You lived through the same events, but you always tell the story differently. Except sometimes…

“Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return.”

I posit that’s the story of all love.

Fiction, when done right, is all about truth. There’s enough truth in “Gone Girl” to keep you reading. Dig in.

” Gone Girl “

She won the gold last night.

In case you were oblivious to the hype, last night, in a counterprogramming move against the Olympics, Comedy Central premiered its roast of Roseanne. And Amy Schumer stole the show.

Who is Amy Schumer?

Damned if I know.

Well, I know a little. I heard her on Stern. She was kinda funny and kinda endearing. On late night TV, comedians just do their material, it’s an excerpt of their act, it’s a tease, to get you to partake, hell, everyone’s selling. But on Stern, it’s about the information, the backstory, how you got from there to here. And what I learned was that Amy was a nice Jewish girl…what I mean is she didn’t have one of those hellish backgrounds that cause people to flaunt their dirty laundry in public…who graduated from college, in Maryland, and was on the comedy road.

You remember that road, right? It used to end at the comedy clubs. But then everybody got a sitcom and that became the holy grail. Kinda like being a recording artist and begging to be a judge on “American Idol” or “The Voice” or “X Factor.” Oops, isn’t that what Alanis Morissette is doing right now?

You’re a singer, goddamnit.

And what we love most about our favorite comedians is the material. The jokes. The stand-up. When they’re out on the wire, risking it all in front of a live audience, instead of repeating canned lines written by soporific Harvard graduates slumming after working for the “Lampoon.”

And that was what was so great about last night’s roast. It was comedy, pure and simple. Walking up to the line and frequently crossing it. Because we don’t know exactly where it is unless we journey to the other side.

You’d never get me on one of these things. My skin is not thick enough. No one was left unscathed. But the dirtiest work was done by Amy Schumer.

Who?

In today’s media megalopolis, not only are we unexposed to so much, sometimes we haven’t even heard of you. That guy hosting the VMAs, Kevin Hart. I could be like you, and self-satisfiedly say I’ve been tracking his career for years, but the truth is I’m clueless. I might have heard his name, but I know none of his jokes, whether he’s on TV or just performing in clubs.

To reach critical mass, you’ve got to get in the game and stay there. Wait for your moment, and when it arrives, you must KILL!

Check Amy Schumer’s Wikipedia page:

Amy Schumer Wikipedia

Only in music and movies do people become famous overnight. Without chops. Sailing by on their punims. In comedy, you’ve got to earn your stripes. As you do in computer programming, law, medicine and the rest of the professions. If you see nitwits doing it, it’s probably not worth paying attention to. Because greatness takes time. And reveals itself slowly.

So you think you just want to be on the big show. And close it.

Here Amy just about opened. After her, everybody was an afterthought. Because she wasn’t worried about being liked by the panel. She didn’t play it safe, she immediately went for the jugular and SQUEEZED!

Everybody’s always playing nice, kissing ass. But what made Amy’s performance triumphant was she was doing the act without winking, she was up on the high wire, not looking down, but performing tricks, we could only sit at home and marvel.

So you’ve got to pay your dues.

And you’ve got to wait for your chance.

And when you get it, you can’t be good, you’ve got to be GREAT!

And I didn’t see Amy on the front page of today’s “New York Times.” She’s nowhere where you can quantify success. No Nielsen, no SoundScan. Because success is not something you count, but feel.

If you were watching last night, you witnessed a groundbreaking, historical appearance, Amy Schumer pulling herself up into the big leagues all by lonesome. And I don’t know if she wrote all the jokes, but she certainly delivered them. Because it’s one thing to write the songs, it’s another to perform them.

Just ask Prince. He slayed us at the Super Bowl and has been on a victory lap ever since.

Amy Schumer’s performance last night was thrilling. We live for these moments. When one of us, a human being, casts off the chains of society, digs down deep and WAILS!

________

Because of rights issues, you can’t see an authorized version of Amy’s performance online, for that you’ve got to tune in on TV. And that sucks, because you want your breakthrough moment available, forever. Still, you can see the entire performance here:

http://bit.ly/Qw0sxL
This video has been removed by the user.

And the sound is bad and you won’t get the jokes, so you can see authorized excerpts here:

Amy Schumer – Women’s Gymnastics Team

And here:

Amy Schumer – Wayne Brady & Carrie Fisher

TV is experienced alone, on the couch, on the bed. We’re waiting for someone to reach out and grab us, shake us both awake and alive. These moments are rare. Last night’s was one of them.

P.S. Normally show business is seen as one big club, a giant high school where everybody’s friends and not a bad word is said. Watch the reaction shots during Amy’s set. Jane Lynch is uncomfortably squirming, Ellen Barkin doesn’t know what hit her. And only Amy could nail Jeff Ross:

“You look like Krusty the Clown dressed as Joe Paterno!”

I missed “Waterloo Sunset.”

What kind of wonderful world do we live in where an iconoclastic, irascible rock star who’s alienated almost all the people surrounding him can be featured in the finale of the world’s greatest sporting event?

Long as I gaze on, Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise.

I was gonna watch the PGA finale. But with Rory McIlroy so far ahead, I didn’t see the point. That’s the funny thing about sports. The watching is the reward, once it’s done, not many care. And if the watching is compromised, the whole experience goes out the window.

I didn’t watch a single frame of the Olympics. Because I just couldn’t stand the sanitized jingoistic presentation. America may be the greatest country in the world, but why do we have to keep reinforcing the point, why do we have to be blind to all comers, why do we have to watch the Olympics through the eyes of a network so fearful of frayed edges, of alienating a country reared on apple pie, that it gives the impression the only people on the planet are us, and a few triumphant foreigners?

Olympic spirit?

Hogwash.

But I wanted to watch the finale to see Ray Davies. Because if he can make it to the big top almost sixty years on, then life is truly worth living, there truly is a God.

And speaking of God, speaking of the power of the public, which believes it has a say and oftentimes is ignored by the corporate behemoths for its own good, in some bizarre twist of the Jack Nicholson speech in “A Few Good Men,” outcry resulted in the closing ceremonies being streamed live.

Imagine that. A television presentation without commercials, without cutaways from Take That and other English acts Americans don’t know and understand. Just pure unadulterated kitsch.

That’s what I loved about the festivities. They shot low. Instead of making us feel inadequate, it was a big tent of imperfection, where culture and lifestyle ruled. The U.S. may have eliminated arts education, our culture has become money, but in England, despite a rigid class system, although statistically not as bad as in the U.S., the arts still rule, and music is triumphant.

The highlight for me was Eric Idle singing “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.”

And in America, a newcomer like Ed Sheeran wouldn’t even get to appear, never mind perform Pink Floyd’s ethereal “Wish You Were Here.”

And Brian May wailed and the Spice Girls were both cheerful and laughable. And the whole thing made you smile because there was no pomp, no circumstance, just life.

And, of course, petty infighting could not be cast aside. The Gallagher brothers could not reunite, they couldn’t bury the hatchet for a greater good… Then again, that’s more of an American quality, we love to forgive, if we don’t like to forget. But when the speeches were all done, when the flame was extinguished, when I was just about to click off the YouTube screen, who appeared but the geriatric group that made their bones in Leeds, who disappointed at the Super Bowl, who’ve been running on fumes for the entire century.

I speak, of course, of the Who.

And, of course, it had to be on tape. Well, hard drive, it won’t be long before tape is an antiquated concept the youngsters don’t understand. But speaking of youngsters, they’ve got no idea that once upon a time, the music of their parents was dangerous. The Who finishing the ceremony with “Baba O’Riley,” otherwise known as “Teenage Wasteland,” is like Mitt Romney conceding he was right in Massachusetts, that health care is deserved by all. It’s like Lloyd Blankfein going to jail. Like Mark Zuckerberg copping to the fact that Facebook was built on the sacrificial lamb of our privacy. Like Roger Clemens admitting he used steroids.

You see the original foursome pissed on a slab on the album cover. Back when there were still album covers, when rock was dangerous and ruled the world, despite what those in power believed.

Yes, rock won.

It’s now OUR GENERATION!

Yes, even back in ’65 we didn’t think “My Generation” would last. It was just a trifle, an expression of angst. But here we are, a lifetime later, and it rules, it closed the Olympics.

I bet most people had no idea what “See Me, Feel Me” was all about, it hasn’t been whored out like the rest of the Who’s catalogue, but everybody knows the concept of “My Generation”…they could hear the lyrics and understand.

It was our generation. We were the best and the brightest. We fumbled so much. We cocked up the economy. We didn’t look out for our brother. We didn’t believe in love.

But we believed in music.

Unless you won a medal yourself, almost all of the achievements at these games will be forgotten, they’re already fading in the rearview mirror.

But not music.

Music is forever.

And that’s why it played such a huge part in the closing ceremonies.

Only music is that big.

Only music can truly unite us.

I just heard “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” on the satellite.

It’s turning to fall. The light’s just a bit different. We’re sliding down to the end of the year, we become more serious, more introspectful as autumn approaches. And just as I was ascending Benedict to Mulholland, Vin Scelsa started talking about a song utilizing Kurt Vonnegut lyrics and I knew instantly what he was going to play.

Almost completely forgotten, “Cat’s Cradle” had a huge impact upon the sixties generation. The Dead named their publishing company “Ice Nine” and Ambrosia did this song, with lyrics from the book. This was before Vonnegut wrote his masterpiece, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” back when reading books was something we all did, before cable TV eviscerated that pastime as a general pursuit. I remember lying on my bed reading the red paperback in between after-school activities and my mother calling me down for dinner. “Cat’s Cradle” was our secret world, back before parents wanted to be our best friends, before they were slim and wore designer jeans and got plastic surgery in an effort to never grow up and mature.

Actually, that’s us. But the books we read, the music we listened to, is locked in amber, it’s unchanging, it’s evidence of a magical time, our best selves. And one of my favorite albums from that era is Ambrosia’s debut, from just before rock went completely corporate and society split into two camps, calcified rockers and dancing fools.

But it wasn’t “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” that made me buy the album. That was a bonus. It was “Holdin’ On To Yesterday.” You only had to hear it once and you needed to own it. Even though it sounds like a Top Forty track at this distance, it was initially alternative. And FM spun it. It was a magic transport to another galaxy, where we could see our entire lives in the rearview mirror, we were now old enough to have regret. It’s the best of music, “Holdin’ On To Yesterday” has got a sound that evidences a feeling you just can’t get in any other art form, neither movies nor TV, never mind books. It’s wistful. The singer hasn’t completely let go. Do we ever?

And the guitar solo and the keyboard flourishes distinguish this from the pabulum you found on the AM band. “Holdin’ On To Yesterday” is an aural movie. I had to immediately run out and buy the album. Which never completely broke through. You see it was on 20th Century, back when labels mattered. An equally good album on the label at this time was Alan Parsons’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination.” It’s better than anything Parsons ever did thereafter. And one can say the exact same thing about Ambrosia. Parsons switched to Arista and had hits and Ambrosia switched to Warner Brothers and morphed into a soft rock outfit that had some chart success but became something disposable, a joke, the band was never taken seriously by the cognoscenti. And that’s a pity, because they overlooked this exquisite debut.

The album opens with “Nice, Nice, Very Nice.” Which is what we used to call art rock and is now referred to as prog and at the time it was believed only the English could perform this music, but Ambrosia proved them wrong. Sure, the Vonnegut lyrics are winning, but it’s the dynamics that are so enticing. The way the song goes from heavy to mellow…it’s like riding a roller coaster, although this one does not come back to the same place, it leaves you at an unknown destination far down the line. “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” is so far from everyday life, it’s what we loved so much about music back then, the adventure.

And “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” segued into “Time Waits For No One.” Which began with the chimes of a theoretical clock and a nursery rhyme feel and then there were those prog changes again, and exquisite vocals and Sturm und Drang that whipsawed your mind as you nodded your head and sang along.

Then came the aforementioned “Holdin’ On To Yesterday,” but thereafter was this rockin’ workout entitled “World Leave Me Alone.” Anyone who only knew Ambrosia from what came after would be surprised by this, the band held nothing back, they positively rocked. I remember nodding my head, feeling like my life was its only personal movie, important, and I was starring in it and having fun.

That’s the first side. You couldn’t ask for anything more.

And the second is no disappointment.

I made a cassette. I remember playing it for a girl I wanted to impress as I shuttled her from the bottom of Gad 1 to the Plaza at Snowbird. And I don’t think she got it, but it didn’t really matter, because the music was enough. They say without a partner, life is meaningless, but with the right record, you’re never alone, your life is rich and full.

So I’m driving down Beverly Glen decades later and I couldn’t be happier. And I just had to tell you about it.

P.S. Alan Parsons mixed this album and Ambrosia appeared on “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”!

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