So, I spent the majority of my evening sitting on my back patio, drinking Peronis, smoking Pall Malls and wallowing in self-pity. And before you judge, I know that smoking is bad for you. I’m actually glad that smoking is being banned in public places. It’s pretty disgusting, to tell you the truth. It gets in your clothes, turns your fingers yellow and, in case you weren’t aware, it can cause a pretty bad case of cancer. I know all of this, yet, every now and then, I indulge. Why? Because I enjoy it. I make it a point not to do it every day because I despise vices. At least, I like to think that I do. Gambling, alcoholism, smoking, sex — I’ve been close enough to those who are controlled by their vices to know that I don’t want to allow myself to fall victim as well. Still, I am a man like any another and just as prone to becoming prey to intangibles as the next person. Vices are afflictions of the mind, not the body.

I switched to Pall Malls because I recently read that Kurt Vonnegut started smoking when he was 12 and he lived to the ripe old age of 84. Pall Mall was his cigarette of choice. He probably would have lived longer had he not succumbed to the injuries he incurred due to a fall. I intimated to a friend that Vonnegut probably fell when he was attempting to reach for a pack of cigarettes. How ironic would that be? Anyway, my point was that I chose tonight to drink and smoke and ruminate on life and why I am so dissatisfied with my own.

Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever have days when you are completely dissatisfied with anything and everything that is related to you? You hate your clothes, you hate your skin, your breath, your house, your job, the direction in which your life is going — especially if you feel that you life is direction-less. That’s how I felt today. Like I was just going through the motions. 34 and I’m just trudging along to what?

I used to devour Charlie Brown comic strips when I was kid. I loved Charlie Brown. I still do. I think part of it was the great music that went along with the cartoons. Vince Guaraldi was a genius. But I think another part of it was Charlie Brown’s chronic depression. He wasn’t one of those depressed people that you can’t stand to be around. He was one of those guys that was just blue enough that he could empathize with your own woes, but not so blue that you wanted to blow your brains out if you spent too much time with him.

One time Charlie and Linus were talking and although I can’t remember word for word the conversation, it went something like this: Charlie Brown asked Linus about life, perhaps the meaning of it, or school or something like that and Linus said, “You go to school so you can graduate and go to high school so you can get a degree and go to college so you can get a degree and go to graduate school so you can start a career and get married and have kids so they can go to school and graduate and go to high school….” He explained the never ending and completely depressing cycle of life. I must have seen that cartoon twenty years ago, yet that scene sticks in my head. Why? Sometimes I think that I am so afraid of embracing mediocrity, I end up embracing complacency instead. I shun the cycle. I’ve done the school and the degree and now I am supposed to get married and have kids and send them along their way through the cycle while I wither up and die. Yeah, maybe I take a trip here or there or I read a great book or see a great show, but then, that’s it. I get old, I say, “Peace out” to the world and I’m dust. Great. Like Peggy Lee said, “Is that all there is?”

Not that I don’t admire those who get married and have children. I envy them. Mostly because they seem to do it without any sign of compunction. Here I am, languishing in my complacency and they are moving along, taking in life and exhaling it without so much as a hiccup. Have you ever seen the movie Paris Blues with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll? At one point in the film, Newman and Woodward are looking over the quiet suburbs of Paris and Newman says, “It’s quiet. You know why it’s quiet? Cause they’re all dead inside”, to which Woodward replied, “When it’s quiet at my house, it only means the children are sleeping.” Newman, a jazz musician, thought the whole marriage and children bit was a farce, a quick way to get got and die. Woodward saw the beauty of it. Who was right? Maybe they both were. And if that’s the case, how does it help me?

What’s funny about Vonnegut is that he seemed to spend his whole life beckoning death, egging it on. Cigarettes are “a classy way to commit suicide”, he said. Yet, for all that calling to death, he lived a long, fruitful life. I read that he seemed to take pride in the fact that even though he was enamored with death in a way, he didn’t give in to it and blow his brains out the way Hemingway did. Of course, I’m not certain Hemingway gave in or gave up or however you want to put it. At this point in my life, I can no longer justify judging the decisions other people make about their own lives. We’re all in charge of our own existence, our decisions and our actions (or inactions).

I’m just rambling, I know. Ultimately, I guess I just want to have a feeling of satisfaction. To feel like I am traveling down the right path and not the path others have lain before me. The question is, do I embrace the cycle and perhaps find happiness on the other side, or do I linger in limbo and allow myself to be devoured by my own stagnation.

side note:
I read this evening that Tom Delay says that his affair was different than Newt Gingrich’s because his affair was over (plus he had been saved) by the time he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton, whereas Newt was in the midst of an affair. Ah, once again religion seems to become the springboard for hypocrisy. It seems to me that if you fu**ed around on your wife, humility would prevent you from gloating about WHEN you did it.

I am adding a few new tunes this week:

Barney Kessel
Don Friedman
Art Farmer

I am also adding a number of tunes by Stacey Kent. She’s got one of those “just rushed in from out of the rain and was instantly mesmerized” kind of voices. Very reminiscent of Bloosom Dearie in her sound, but with a slightly deeper timbre, I think.

I will be removed the EM Blog link from the webpages as I find that I am writing a lot more opinionated post and I don’t want my opinions, however educated or uneducated they might be, to sully the purity of the music that plays on the station. But, I do feel a blog should be used to vent, to comment and to opine. So the blog will stay and the link to the station from the blog will stay. But all outside links will soon disappear.

The ruling on whether fees for internet broadcasters has been delayed until next month, so the fate of Evening Melancholy will not be known until then. I would like to continue playing the music I love, but I am in a kind of “wait and see” mode.

I wonder how Colbert’s wife felt about this. Being a good sport only goes so far before she has your jewels in a death grip.

So, I read today in the Wall Street Journal about Vice-President Dick Cheney getting pissed with the Iraqi members of parliament because they were planning to take a two month vacation.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s surprise trip to Baghdad today was meant to deliver a tough message to the Iraqi government – put off your vacation plans and get back to work.

This reminded me of the time when a friend of mine expressed to me his frustration with his new girlfriend. My friend is Caucasian, his girlfriend was African-American (was? still is as far as I know). Apparently, during a discussion on some African-American topic, my friend’s girlfriend displayed a little too much ignorance on the topic at hand and he was quite displaced by this. He told her, “You should learn more about your culture.” Uh-ohhh. At this point, his girlfriend did a Krakatoa and pretty much spewed red hot invective all over my friend’s shocked face. She told him he no right to tell her what she should or should not know when it came to her culture. Dismayed, my friend asked me what he had done wrong.

My explanation went something like this: “You don’t go into someone’s home, vandalize it beyond recognition, then, after you are done, tell the person you just vandalized, ‘You know, you really need to do something about this place. It’s quite an eyesore.” Because the African culture was basically ransacked by a lot of different cultures, but most identifiably by Europeans, having someone who is historically if not directly connected to that culture tell someone who is historically connected to the culture of Africans that they need to learn more about their culture is doubly insulting.

And this is what I thought of when I read this piece about Dick Cheney. Basically, Vice-President Cheney is telling the Iraqi parliament, “Hey, we’re not going to be here forever. We’re trying to help you people out…even if you didn’t ask us to. Um, but that’s neither here nor there. We knew what was best for you, and more importantly, what is best for the American people. Now, it may seem like things are bad now. There is a lot of social upheaval, quite a bit of anarchy. A lot of people have died and the amount of progress so far is…nominal, but it is always darkest right before dawn. So just because we pretty much rumbled in and ransacked your house and acted like we own this town, we don’t. We don’t own it. It’s yours. So…clean all this shit up and get your asses in gear. This is ridiculous! Don’t you people have any pride in yourselves?”

Hell, maybe the people of parliament know that they are royally $%&@#* and they figure, “What’s point? Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em”

Personally, if someone were to come into my home and wreck it without compunction (or permission), then tell me to help them clean it up, I’d go on vacation too.

Apparently, some guy on Ebay is selling the tee shirt shown below to British soldiers who are being deployed to Iraq. The guy selling the shirts

believes if British soldiers in Iraq are wearing the T-shirts it will confuse the terrorists.

Okay…um…these are terrorists, not assassins. John Hinkley…assassin…tried to kill one guy. The 9/11 guys…terrorists….tragically murdered many people (without compunction, I might add). Lee Harvey Oswald…assassin…tried and succeeded in killing one guy. Richard Reid…terrorist…tried to take down a plane full of people. What’s my point? Terrorists kill in bulk. Assassins usually pinpoint one person. If these guys see a bunch of people running around with “I’m Harry” tee shirts, what the hell are they going to be confused about? They’ll mow down the whole lot of them. It’s friggin’ target practice for them.

One more thing: the guy in this picture has some serious man-boobage going on. Those things will confuse the terrorists more than the shirt itself.