I’m late again!

This time, it wasn’t because I went back to sleep after breakfast –tempting as the idea was.

However.

MANY kittens and a couple of cats saw to it that “going back to sleep” was merely a pipe dream… (if I can sort of delightfully mix metaphors there and include opium in the heady mix!) (pipe dream — smoking opium, etc.)

Mainly, though, I took a walk over to the post office to collect a registered letter that contained belated birthday wishes AND cash money!!! Yay!!! “Happy Birthday”, indeed!

But I am here now!

And I have no more contractors coming. I am waiting on 2 remaining price quotes to be emailed to me, then I can mail the whole application off to my local USDA RD office and hope that they haven’t already run out of money for the season. We shall see, gang!!

I’m not asking for much, but the few things I do want fixed around here would really upgrade the safety of this beautiful old house.

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All right. Well.

YES! On the eHarmony front —

We talked for THREE hours last night. And I’m guessing we could have talked on and on, if it weren’t for the fact that I now, more than ever, need my beauty sleep!!

Because we ARE, indeed, meeting for lunch on Thursday. And I’d like to look a little bit better than in this memorable photo!

(Me, in my hotel room bed in NYC, 3 weeks ago, at 5:03 AM) (And ditching the nightgown and wearing a sundress instead will likely be a big help!) (Oh! I might comb my hair, too!)

And in case you’re wondering where we’re meeting for lunch…

YES! Why wouldn’t we meet here? I always wanna go here!

The super glamorous Tequilaville!!

Even though I like the food at Tequilaville — only because it’s better than any other Mexican restaurant I’ve tried around here (which qualifies as “damning with faint praise”) — it turns out that my new friend lived in Texas for 3 years… so. You know. No comparison to Texas Mexican food. But, well, we’re a long way from Texas. We gotta make do with what we have out here in the Hinterlands.

(I know, I know. That’s kinda like “writing about him” which I’m not supposed to do…)

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Okay.

New topic!

A brief excerpt from a recent interview with James Tabor.

And this is the very topic (or quest, as it were) that caused me to decide to continue studying Jesus the man, rather than pursuing a congregation of my own after I graduated from Divinity School and became an ordained minister.

How Historical Methods Get us Closer to the Real Jesus (8 mins):

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I’m making some little strides here with The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, but I’m at a point where a few very important storylines come to a resolution (and the novel itself comes to a close), so it takes an unbelievable amount of concentration.

Thank God, yet again, for that AC, gang. At least I can think. Slow as the process currently is. (I hope I don’t get to the final paragraph and then discover that I need another 26 years to properly finish it….)

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All righty.

Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand File this morning.

Apparently it is FORTY YEARS (!!) since the amazing masterpiece, “Tupelo”, was released by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

How I love that song, gang. I will never forget the first time I heard it, in my tiny little hellhole apartment on E. 12th Street.

In fact, I will never forget riding the PATH train from Hoboken NJ (where I had bought the album The First Born Is Dead in a small record shop) back into Manhattan, and reading the lyrics to “Tupelo” that were printed on the back of the album cover. The lyrics blew me away. I couldn’t wait to get home and play the record.

I loved the whole record (it was my first exposure to Nick Cave), but I particularly loved that song “Tupelo”. I was astounded by it. And, as I’ve posted here before, every single person who came into that apartment after that, was forced to listen to “Tupelo” on the record player in my tiny, godforsaken, hellhole bedroom!!

ME: “Have you heard this song yet??”

EVERYONE ELSE IN MY APARTMENT: “No.”

ME: “Listen to it!! It’s incredible!! It’s about Elvis!”

Well, in honor of the 40th anniversary of this song, a filmmaker friend of Nick Cave’s created a video using Artificial Intelligence, which, as you know, I am not a huge fan of. (That’s a nice way of saying “I despise AI and whoever invented it should be publicly executed in a 1984 doomsday sort of way…”)

Anyway. You can of course watch the video yourself and come to your own conclusions, as I include it here! But I did not like it at all. I found it incredibly creepy and just sort of a violation of so many images from Elvis’s career that, at this point, are practically sacred to me.

I think I’d rather be forced to watch the eye scene in Luis Buñuel’s “Un Chien Andalou” than watch that “Tupelo” video ever again.

But, alas, that is only my over-reactionary opinion and I’m guessing not many people share it.

So, here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

And here is what I much prefer — the audio, as I heard it 40 years ago:

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And on that lofty note!!

I suppose I better get started around here.

Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys! See ya!

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I leave you with this gem!!

Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins do a great duet of the all-out C&W classic by George Jones, “She Thinks I Still Care”. (1970) Enjoy, gang!!

She thinks I still care

Just because I asked a friend about her
Just because I spoke her name somewhere
Just because I rang her number by mistake today
She thinks I still care

Just because I haunt the same old places
Where the memory of her lingers everywhere
Just because I'm not the happy guy I used to be
She thinks I still care

But if she's happy thinking I still need her
Then let that silly notion bring her cheer
But how could she ever be so foolish
Oh were would she get such an idea

Just because I asked a friend about her
Just because I spoke her name somewhere
Just because I saw her then went all to pieces
She thinks I still care
She thinks I still care

 c- 1962 Dickey Lee / Steve Duffy