Happy Two-for-One Day!!

Yes!

Happy 79th Birthday to Ronnie Wood!!

One of the most exemplary role models of my wee bonny teenaged girlhood!!

And here’s this! (And I guarantee you I was not thinking about anyone gettin’ old when this album came out back in 1979!!) “We All Get Old,” Ronnie Wood. From his album Gimme Some Neck. Happy birthday, Ronnie!

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And recently of “the Australian Outback and Vietnam” fame–

Wayne Lewis turns 72 today!!!

Happy Birthday, Wayne!! (We will be chatting on the phone later today, so that I can get the full story about his recent trip. He’s back in NYC now.)

Wayne in Vietnam — but not during the war…

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Well, regarding the play. (See previous posts from the last 10 days.)

The opening zoom meeting with the Dramatist’s Guild happened last night, and now I have a completely different feeling about the whole endeavor.

I lasted about 30 minutes on the call because the moderator didn’t silence everyone’s mics, and even though she said to hold all questions until the end for the meeting, people just kept on asking mostly un-related questions anyway. (There were 200 writers on the call.)

So that was frustrating, because I’d already worked all day and really just wanted the necessary information to get started on the whole write-a-play-in-30-days thing, and then try to just relax.

But what I did manage to learn from the call kind of disappointed me, too.

For instance — there is no pressure whatsoever to get an entire play written in 30 days. You set your own daily goals, whatever they may be, and there is no “failing” — the point is to simply be “creative”. And to “reach out” if you “get stuck.”

I thought the overall stakes would be a little higher than that, because those are essentially my writing goals every single day and have been since about 1973…

But I am grateful that this whole thing brought the Caiaphas play back to my desk. I am still going to work on it, but with absolutely no stress, and I’m certainly no longer worried about taking off for NYC in the middle of all that.

So, I’m disappointed but it also freed up my stress-load enormously, while still putting a project front & center on my plate.

Me ~~dreaming~~. OOPS! I meant: Me hard at work!

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Let me say something about social media now.

I find it to be 99.9% just a waste of time.

I’m still almost always on Instagram but all the other sites that I recently re-joined because of the new book coming out, are so different from how they were in the old days, that I just don’t connect with any of it.

It seems to be just a feeding frenzy of constant information. I have no room in my brain for it.

I’m really glad I re-connected with Iris N. Schwartz on Facebook, though. I cannot wait to see her again when I’m in NYC. (We’re getting together for dinner on Saturday night, then I fly back home early Sunday morning.)

So that was a great reconnection. But other than that, it’s just tedious — although for some reason, I still love Instagram. I am on there constantly.

Granted, I mostly follow cute dogs and alpacas and goats, and painters and photographers, musicians — most of whom, you know, aren’t with us anymore.

Oh!

But for the last few days, I’ve been texting on Instagram with a musician/radio guy in Boston! He plays good old rock & roll. His sense of humor is right up my alley, plus I think his music is great!!

From a couple of years ago, with his band The Thigh Scrapers, their song “8 Ball Shifter”. He’s the singer/songwriter. I really love this song (they also have a full album on Spotify):

Anyway.

I digress just a little, but my point is that I prefer Instagram and real life over all that other social media. But on we go.

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So!

Speaking of Instagram–

From the fantastic Phyllis Stein!

First –Lenny Kaye, David Johansen, and Richard Hell at CBGBs in 1975!! A little drinking & smoking, a little not drinking & smoking!

Followed by just David Jo and Richard Hell at Max’s, then CBGBs — 1976, 1977! (Ditto on the drinking & smoking thing!)

(All photos by Bob Gruen)

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And here’s this!

David Jo and Johnny Thunders, onstage. Photo also by Bob Gruen! (And I actually got to meet Bob Gruen once, outside some sort of event in the East Village. I was with the late great Holly Lane, who was the head of Joan Jett’s record company back then — she knew everybody. Bob Gruen was really nice.)

Anyway!!

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And I love this.

A little drinking. A little smoking.

But the expressions on their faces!! They couldn’t be more different.

Keith Richards obviously has something on his mind, whereas Marianne Faithfull trying to get something off her mind — in Morocco in 1967! (Photo by Michael Cooper.)