by Kevin Burton
Serving up quibbles and bits for Saturday breakfast on Page 7. Stray ideas, quick hitters, random asides.
It’s food for thought, albeit maybe not real deep thought…..
So, I spent the first 90 percent of my workday Friday with a washcloth stuffed inside my shirt. I put on a light blue dress shirt without noticing it was there. I obviously hung up the shirt at some point this week without noticing it was there.
The cloth stayed in place most of the day, held in place by static cling and my impressive girth.
Back in the day I made fun of those commercials for dryer sheets which made static cling into a major, shocked-face problem, in order to sell their product. I have used the term static cling to mean a problem that really isn’t a problem. That phrase, used in that way, made it into one of my earlier songs.
In a writer’s group in college, I talked about that song (“Come Out And Play”) I said that “the people I hang out with can figure it out, and just pull the stuff apart.”
General laughter ensued. Now in my old age, that laughter is at my own expense.
My wife picks my ties on workdays, maybe I need her to supervise the entire dressing process. Or maybe I need to lay out my clothing the night before, as I did in fourth grade……
My mother and I have a great time talking these days. Our conversations run to the sublime, but also the ridiculous. She’s 89 now but still sharp enough to put me in my place.
Mom was an obstetrics nurse most of her career, including a stint as charge nurse. Friday night we were talking about writing and punctuation, which is supposedly my area. I’m not sure how we even drifted back into labor delivery., her area. But I got a little puffed up.
“Well, I could deliver a baby,” I said.
“A baby what,” Mom asked, an excellent question really.
My reply, “that was so not kind what you just said,” and we both laughed.
To answer her question though, a baby screenplay, baby rock and roll song, a baby casserole maybe?
For Mom and me, these are the good old days, to quote a line from “Anticipation” by Carly Simon…….
What else did Carly Simon say?
In her song “The Right Thing To Do,” she sang “And it used to be for a while that the river flowed right to my door, making me just a little too free. But now the river doesn’t seem to stop here anymore.”
That’s also true for me these days. Thanks Carly, for the great writing, and happy birthday. She turns 80 tomorrow. Can Carly Simon really be 80?……
My Cincinnati Reds have won 12 straight games and have vaulted to the top of a mediocre National League Central division. They are only six games over .500, and nobody gives out trophies for half a season of work. Still, it might be time for me to figure out who these new players are.
There is talk that the Reds are the new “America’s Team.” How crazy is that?
Well, we use the Fourth of July traditionally to measure the progress of corn and baseball teams. They say that teams in first place on Independence Day will eventually win that division. We are almost there. Stay tuned….
Paul McCartney appears to be milking the publicity over the “new” Beatles song to be released later this year. It’s an old track with John Lennon singing lead called “Now and Then,” sonically enhanced by AI.
“Been great to see such an exciting response to our forthcoming Beatles project,” McCartney wrote. “No one is more excited than us to be sharing something with you later in the year. We’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it. Seems to be a lot of guess work out there. Can’t say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings – a process which has gone on for years.”
Trying not to expect too much. If it were another “Hey Jude” we would have heard it by now. I still can’t wait to hear it.
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