How can we expect the Saudis to tell the truth when our own President tells whoppers on a regular basis?

The WaPo, which I started subscribing to a few months back, because I was sick of running out of free articles, following the paper on Twitter because the NYT overtweets and needing to read Margaret Sullivan’s screeds, and you righties don’t get your knickers in a twist, I get the WSJ too, reports that our President says the Saudis deny killing Khashoggi.

At least Trump says it’s possible, whereas he keeps believing Putin when he denies his illegalities and Kavanaugh lies in Congress.

Am I the chump, the only person who refuses to lie in court? Putting my hand on the Bible and solemnly swearing, at the risk of perjury if I tell a fib?

I don’t know if Kavanaugh would have been confirmed if he’d admitted to occasionally being blackout drunk, I’ve been, but he certainly lied about it, and some other little things. And as my friend Tony Wilson used to say, if you get the little things wrong, how can we trust you on the big ones?

Meanwhile, Putin keeps denying he poisoned that ex-spy in England, even as the press documents not only the identities of the perps, but their true occupations, in contradiction to Vladimir’s statements, and in “Icarus” not only testimony, but visual evidence of cheating is provided and Putin keeps denying it. What kind of world do we live in?

One where character is subservient to cash.

That’s right.

It started in entertainment, which is built on lies. And that’s what Trump is, an entertainer. Lied about his ascension, and built an empire of identity without investigation. The NYT admitted that he bamboozled them, that he was so busy creating chaos with his image burnishing that they didn’t bother to stop and see if it was true.

Character and honesty are something intrinsic. There are not enough police people in the world to make sure you’re toeing the line. Never mind enough IRS people to make sure you don’t cheat on your taxes. Meanwhile, the GOP keeps cutting the IRS to whose advantage, ask yourself that. We all hate paying taxes, but we all hate being called out on our behavior, but is the solution to loosen the reins so that people get away with bad behavior?

When I went to college there was an honor code. No proctors. You could take an exam in your dorm room. Because if we can’t trust the people, if they don’t live up to societal values internally, what chance does society have. And sure, I’ll admit that everybody lies a bit, but where is the line? Like I said, court used to be one. But not anymore.

Or maybe it’s always been this way and it’s me that is clueless as to the true ways of the world.

Then again, there are cameras everywhere these days and the hoi polloi can’t get away with it but the rich can. White collar crime is where it’s at, baby.

So this appears to be a total breakdown of society.

Or maybe we just had fewer checks and balances back then, like I said no cameras in the street, that’s what the Turks are saying, Saudi Arabia has security cameras everywhere, there’s got to be footage.

But when our own President lies incessantly, and a Supreme Court nominee too, why should I tell the truth?

Hell, that’s my reputation, saying the unsayable, it’s what draws people to me in a world of duplicity. Can I be the only one?

I hope not.

You never know how something will play out until you experience it.

I learned this lesson when I was 9, when I didn’t want to go to T.O. Baum’s party. We went to SAAC together, that’s “Science And Arts Camp.” It was held at an elementary school in Westport, Connecticut that no longer exists. It’s weird, you drive around in a circle, you check Google Maps, and then you research online and find out it’s been torn down. And it wasn’t that old. Ah, progress.

This is where I first wanted to be a writer, I think I told you that. I had this small black binder my father had given me and I wrote articles for the paper and the editors laughed at me, they wouldn’t run them, the most I got was sports scores, which were meaningless, since they were in the regular paper previously. And even though T.O. was a year older, I really didn’t know him, and wanted to ignore the invitation, but my mother insisted. That’s my mother, with no social anxiety at all, she’s a goer, she’s a doer, even near ninety two. You couldn’t watch TV during the daytime and not much at night either. But if you wanted to go to a cultural event, the movies, a concert, a play, there was always money for that. Every opera, every Shakespeare play they offered in school, she and my dad coughed up the cash. My dad always said we didn’t live in a fancy house but we ate the best meals and went to the best places. So I went, and had a fantastic time, the party got out of control, we ran through the sprinklers, got all wet, and I remember it to this day. So when I was searching on Yelp for dinner…

My dad had a policy. You never ate dinner in the hotel. He would have loved Yelp!, he was always looking for the best restaurants. And I just searched, and found a place called Eventide, with fabulous reviews, an outpost of the main Maine eatery, I read the menu and decided I was gonna go for the fried oysters, even though I’m temporarily off Crestor, seeing if it’s contributing to my back pain, which I don’t think it is.

And in the seventies, the streets were unsafe. You didn’t walk far in the city. But now that seems untrue, and Google said Eventide was only nine minutes away so I started to walk.

And immediately encountered Fenway Park.

Which proves the point. I was just ragging on baseball, but confronted with the stadium I had a religious experience, akin to the old Yankeee Stadium, I mean the truly old one, the House That Ruth Built, before they redid it in the seventies and then tore the whole thing down. Now only Fenway exists. Oh, and Wrigley Field. But somehow the Chicago park is not the same, even though for a long time it had no lights. And going to Wrigley checks a mark off in your history, but going to Fenway…

It was so SMALL! It didn’t even hold thirty thousand people. There was only one deck. They’ve expanded it a bit. But still… I was walking by it and wanted to be inside, to experience that feeling, of being in a private universe where nothing else matters. And the scale… Fenway is small, and right downtown, but it still dwarfs the surroundings.

But then I got to Eventide.

The help couldn’t care less. The fried oysters were just this side of edible. I remembered the ones I had in Wellfleet, on the Cape. Toasty brown, dripping with gizzards… These seemed to be previously frozen, one step away from McNuggets. And there were so few of them I needed more, I hadn’t eaten for half a day. And the sign said fresh oysters were a dollar, but that was only for the very first one, ain’t that America. And I thought a lobster roll would do the trick, and they were priced at $15 and $23 and I asked the cashier how big the small one was and when she showed me with her hands I decided to pop for the large one which was small-sized and the roll was inedible and all the way there I’d been planning to write about fried oysters, fried clams, the east coast delicacies, but that was no longer possible. I’d have been better off having a sausage from the stand the proprietor had just set up. Seems kinda early, 9 PM the night before a game, maybe he’s saving his space.

I had it all figured out, waxing rhapsodic about Wellfleet, talking about my old roommate Lyndon’s house on a pond there, but the bad food eviscerated that possibility.

And I didn’t know whether to go to Star Market or…

Oh, that’s another thing, the hotel is ABOMINABLE! And nearly four hundred dollars a night. Stinks of disinfectant. And has no amenities, you couldn’t raid the minibar if you wanted to, because there isn’t one.

And I thought I saw a CVS and the Star Market was in the wrong direction and it was cold…

That’s one thing you can’t fathom if you’re from L.A. You start to believe it only gets cold in the mountains. But I’m wearing a fleece, and a windbreaker on top of that, and that’s enough, but I’m contemplating the winter coming, walking in the rain and the snow. And I’m thinking of the skiing, but then I remember, after it gets cold, it gets warm, ah the perils of New England.

So I went to the convenience store where New England Music City used to be, I forgot how small the store was.

But they had no inventory.

So I went to the 7-11, which stunningly had everything I wanted.

And if this is coming across as negative, you’re reading it wrong, or maybe I’m telling it with the wrong spin. You see travel is invigorating, new experiences are fulfilling, kinda like my mother said, you have to go outside, you have to take chances, you never know what you’ll encounter.

That’s life.

P.S. Rereading the above before hitting send, as I always do twice, I suddenly realized it was Michael Baum, not T.O. Ah, memory.

P.P.S. T.O. was my age, his real name was Steven but his older brother said T.O and it stuck, back when we all had nicknames and David was Dave, Steven was Steve and Robert was Bob, or Bobby.

Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston you’re my home

But it’s not. But it was my mother’s. She grew up in Peabody. Which is not pronounced like Mr. Peabody and his Pet Boy Sherman, but Pea-BUDDY! Kinda like San Pedro if you live in SoCal. Outsiders would pronounce it in Spanish, but locals know it’s San PEEDRO!

So I’ve spent a lot of time here, but not recently. The Salem Witch House, the Salem Willows, candlepin bowling…they’re in my blood. Along with blueberry muffins from Jordan Marsh. That’s what too many bakeries get wrong today, the ratio of fruit to muffin, it must be HIGH!

So I left Dublin at the crack of dawn and just got here. Why is it there’s always something broken on airplanes. The divider between Felice and myself wouldn’t go down, and her seat was wet, and when you’re paying beaucoup bucks you feel ripped off. But the truth is the world is really small. I used to luxuriate in long plane flights, reading, I never buy the wifi. But the respite is just not long enough to disengage. And I flew through Chicago which makes no sense, I know, but the airfare game is a riddle wrapped in an enigma and I was waiting for my flight back east and…

A guy started hassling me. First he told me the flight wasn’t boarding and then he kept refusing to let me on the plane. I was Group 1, I may have been jumping the gun, but he was a self-appointed cop keeping me in line. And it was then that I realized…

I was dealing with east coast people.

Yes, it’s one nation, with mostly one language, but the people are oh-so-different. You don’t do this on the west coast, you don’t get in people’s business, you lay back, you’re mellow, of course there are exceptions, but California is all about live and let live, so now I understand the divisions in our nation better. I actually asked this guy why he had a problem with me, he didn’t respond. And I realized how people got in fights and got kicked off planes. I held myself back, I wasn’t going to play his game, and then I peered over at his ticket and freaked out that he might be sitting next to me, but he wasn’t, and I didn’t let it bother me, which kinda shocks me, which is all to say THIS is why I live in California. I moved because of the Beach Boys, because of sixties television, but I didn’t realize I was going to a place where where you went to college and what your parents did for a living didn’t matter. Hell, nobody even knew what Middlebury College was until they shouted down Charles Murray, and that was fine with me, if you want to get ahead in Los Angeles have a good rap, get a good look, an education is secondary.

And the beefy guy next to me was watching a movie on his iPad Pro smudged with fingerprints, eating the carbs, but it wasn’t until we were ready to exit that I noticed the MLB tag on his backpack. I Googled him, turns out he’s an umpire, Mark Carlson, here to officiate at the Red Sox game. Now I’m not saying I used to know all the umps, but at this point I don’t even know most of the players. Sure, some people do. But baseball used to be everything to me and now it’s just another diversion. I still love the game, but I loved it more when I still played, I felt embedded in the culture. And then I realized nothing’s that big anymore these days, everything’s a sideshow.

And when I got to Boston the baggage belt was creaking up a storm, and it made me think of infrastructure, how we have to invest, how we have to pay taxes to keep up our country. And then I could hear in my brain the people saying money is wasted. And I know, erect any edifice and there is waste, but does that mean we have to stop all construction?

Seems so.

Which gets to politics, the sports of today. With the teams and the cheating and the desire to get revenge. I just read a statistic that most people were against the confirmation of Kavanaugh, but that game has been played, there is no instant replay in politics.

And I’m scrolling on my phone. Stay in the air for a day and you’re convinced you’ve missed something, and sometimes you have, but not today. Yesterday the stock market crashed, today it rebounded. And everybody’s on Twitter giving their take, that’s the world we now live in, everybody gets to speak but nobody listens. Makes you want to move to Alaska and live off the grid, at least before the polar ice caps melt and we’re all swept away. That’s another thing, now hurricanes are like school shootings, we’ve seen too many of them, now they happen and we shrug our shoulders.

Not that Logan is decaying, the airport was pretty modern. But it was hard to figure out some of the signs. And when I ultimately made it to the Uber stop it was loaded with people. And I texted my driver exactly where I was and then he called me and…

I couldn’t understand him. I mean there’s so much noise and he’s got such an accent and now I have to be weary of appearing racist, it’s just that it’s funny that so many Uber drivers are now the old taxi drivers, doing it for a living. And for those who say I should take Lyft… I find Uber arrives faster, but that’s not the point, boycotting Uber is like boycotting In-N-Out, which cannot be done, even though left wing politicians in California tried. And at least these Uber drivers have a gig, I saw so many people sleeping on the street in Dublin, it looked like Santa Monica, is this how our world has evolved, where the left behind are ignored? They lift people off the streets in tech-laden India and we keep putting them down in the western world.

And sitting in the tunnel, where I had signal, I read about Lindsey Buckingham’s suit against Fleetwood Mac. Aren’t bands gangs? And if you act atrociously they kick you out? Lindsey’s quoting California partnership law and I’m laughing, weren’t the acts supposed to exist outside the system, be an antidote thereto? But that was before money triumphed over message. That’s what everybody in the arts today says…WHERE’S MY MONEY? As if they’re entitled to get paid, as if there’s federal welfare for musicians. Certainly not in the good old USA, where some of the musicians are now fascists anyway, hell, I hear from them.

And then sitting in traffic the buildings started to look familiar. And I was wondering whether it was a trick, but it turned out my orientation was correct. To my right was Myles Standish Hall, where my sister lived during her freshman year at BU. But they’d given the building a cleaning, it looked nearly new, I wonder if it’s still a dump inside.

And then that record store on the corner, in Kenmore Square, what was it called, “New England Music City”? Where I bought “Mad Dogs & Englishmen.” It’s gone, it’s something else now. And no one would ever know.

Actually, Boston’s been spiffed-up. All of America has been. The changes are palpable if you were around back then. No one flew on a whim. Now people fly to sporting contests, or concerts, and think not a whit about it. And there was bad food everywhere, you ate a boiled hot dog on a spongy bun. But now you expect gourmet options wherever you go.

And I’m reading about the television wars on my phone. How AT&T is now gonna compete with Netflix, Wal-Mart too. Used to be we had our favorite bands, now we’ve got our favorite TV distributors! And Netflix is rock in an age of soporific pop. We thought it was HBO, but that was just a harbinger. Netflix doubled-down. Invested. Caught everybody unawares. Hell, they just bought a studio in New Mexico. Who wants to work in New Mexico?

Can I say that?

On one side we have people who can say anything, insult and tell lies.

On the other, one that issues trigger warnings, is so busy protecting special interests that it hobbles itself.

And I’m thinking about what Bob Geldof said, how rock infected us, was everything. Even music isn’t everything these days, everybody’s a hero on social media, fighting for attention.

And those in the business, the fans, keep expecting music to triumph once again. As if it’s entitled. But I’m not sure. Mariah Carey broke nearly thirty years ago, that’s how long vapidity has lasted. And we’ve got Kanye West self-destructing right in front of our eyes. This guy is absolutely bipolar and is denying it, now saying he was just “sleep-deprived.” But the truth is bipolar people hate taking the meds, because they miss the highs. That’s what Kanye’s on right now, a high. That’s where all the EPs came from, the SNL rant, the Trump appearance. But rather than labeling him sick and having sympathy we’re just watching the show, waiting to see what’s next, we’re not that far different from the Romans, when Kanye jumps out a window it’ll be like Christians being fed to the lions in the Colosseum.

Then again, the antics, the penumbra, are much more compelling than the music.

And the rants, about being a genius, about inventing a new plane…

Then again, today Elon Musk announced Teslaquila, and it doesn’t seem to be a joke.

As Felice’s father used to say, it’s a Barnum & Bailey world.

Then again, the circus is gone now too!

The best story was playing Boggle with Barbra Streisand and Gregory Peck.

Or maybe it was getting a call from the Pope, after telling a Cardinal how to deal with the Russians.

Not that Bob was boasting, but this is is his life.

I was worried, that he’d be irascible and withholding…ANYTHING BUT!

First he came into the dressing room and was so charismatic and conversational I kept telling him he had to stop, to save it for the stage. Talking about being a Boy Scout and going to Lourdes, his very first plane trip. And being excluded from going to the World Jamboree in Seattle. You see some people are square pegs who never fit into the round hole. Geldof was the guy who wouldn’t conform, who questioned authority, and people beholden to hierarchy don’t like that.

And despite being a force of nature, Bob doesn’t see himself that way. Which is always strange, one’s own perception of oneself. I think Bob would make it no matter what he chose to do, he thinks he was lucky…after his mother died when he was so young that he doesn’t remember her and he was raised by his older sisters while his father was a traveling salesman, gone from Monday to Friday. That’s one of the main things he got from his dad, how to pack, he never checks luggage, and insists that those with him don’t either.

So he goes to boarding school and hates it. Picks up a guitar and loves it and…

Here is where we’ve got to get to the philosophizing thing. Bob’s a great philosopher, with a take on everything. Especially the importance and impact of rock music back when. Seeing it as a thread he grabbed on to that saved his life, gave him direction, made him who he was. It doesn’t do that anymore, his words, not mine, although I agree, and they don’t make them like Bob anymore.

Bob is BRILLIANT! Better informed with better analysis than most of the people running our country. Oh, by the way, he thinks Trump will get reelected, because the economy is burgeoning, although the stock market did slide yesterday, and that the rest of the world is beholden to the States, they always were, but now it’s obvious. It’s because of the dollar. It can’t tank, or else the whole world will.

And thus begins an endless take on world politics. You’ll be stunned and your head will spin as you listen. How often do you get an educated, unfiltered opinion about what’s going on? Most people don’t know, and those who do won’t tell you. And Bob has access… I don’t know anybody like this in the music business, I asked Bob who he talked to, what musicians other than the obvious could even discuss these issues. One he said was Jon Bon Jovi, which caught me off guard, since Bon Jovi only went on the record when he was angry at his record company, maybe he needs to lead.

Which today’s musicians don’t.

And Bob is anti-Spotify and won’t use a smartphone because it’s insecure, so the longer you talk with him the more you realize that maybe not everything he says is correct, but you’re wowed in the process, bowled over, this is a guy who leads.

Even though he’s not eager to be a leader.

Then again, did you see his screed against Brexit, how it was gonna negatively impact musicians? He walked me through how he got people to sign it, needing acts from every era. Not that he thinks it’ll have an impact. He thinks first and foremost Britain is a FEELING, and people feel they’ve sacrificed it. But Britain is a wedge and a referee between Germany and France, and if Britain pulls out of the EU, not only is it bad for Britain, it’s bad for the world, trade keeps the world safe.

Actually, I read an analysis of this in the WaPo the other day. The writer said Trump might think he’s winning in his war with China over trade, but the writer said that when a country is crippled in trade, they often turn to war. And Bob thinks war is coming too. And for those who lived through the past seventy years of relative prosperity, that concept is daunting.

Then again…

I think it’s the net effect of globalization. But Bob says globalization is good! And I forthrightly agree, it’s just that there was no provision for those left behind by its effects. But that’s talking to Bob, you basically concur, but he starts and he’s hard to interrupt and you have a hard time telling him it’s the nuances that you disagree with. Like Bob says the problem is social media, we used to get our messages from records, of which there was not an overwhelming number, but now everything gets lost in the shuffle. I wholeheartedly agree, but I mention that this started with the public, with Napster, they dictate and we follow. Spotify is trying to herd the cats.

So you put a dime in the jukebox and Bob goes on, lengthily. We could have talked for ten hours. About Irish history, the power of rock, the world today… And you want to hear it all, he’s fascinating and charming.

And when we went for drinks later, he let his hair down. He poked fun at himself. He ain’t easy to live with, as Don Henley once sang, but it’s one of the things you’ve got to love about him, they broke the mold, there’s not another like him.

As he plies the boards today, on tour. I asked him whether he was selling nostalgia, but he said no, it was about the performance, the energy, what everybody was wrapped up in is brand new, even though it’s based on the old.

Not that he’s got any illusion he can top the charts once again. Hell, he didn’t want the reformed Rats to make another record, but his bandmates said that’s what a band does, so they did. He’s excited about it.

So on one hand Bob can tell stories from the past, but he’s not living in it.

Oh, and what you think are taboo subjects, that have been combed over ad infinitum? He’s got no problem talking about Band Aid and Live Aid, telling insider stories I’m not gonna repeat here, they’re his, but when I run into you….