Even though it is supposed to rain all day…
Before I talk in detail about my great morning, let’s do this!!!
Happy birthday Richard Hell!!!! Born this day in Lexington , Kentucky, in 1949!!
Smoking, gun-toting, shade-wearing, black & white, in NYC, 1976!! (Photo by Roberta Bayley)
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And on a more somber note–
Tom Petty has been gone 9 years, as of today. I hope he is having the time of his (after) life!
Mature Tom!! Shade-wearing, writing, guitar-playing in black & white!!
Attitude Tom, 1 & 2!! Smoking!!
(The only song of Tom Petty’s that I ever played live in NYC folk clubs!! “Don’t Do Me Like That” !! 1979)
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It’s time for the Story of the Week over at Brown Hound Press!
And it’s a really good one!! (And the editor claims the story is the author’s first publication! And it was submitted as a typewritten manuscript! Wow!)
“And the World Was Wide Open” by Willie James Bess
You can read it HERE. (Free)
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From Johhny Depp this morning!
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Here’s Gram Parsons in one of his many Nudie suits!
And here’s this! Gram, with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, “In My Hour of Darkness” from Grievous Angel, 1974:
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A couple of Stones smoking — but Brian has TWO!!!!
KEITH (looking away, quietly thinking): “Greedy bastard.”
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A couple of great ones — Jack Kerouac, October!
And if you STILL haven’t read or listened to On The Road, get with it already!! He only wrote it 75 years ago!! God purposely made cigarettes and amphetamines so that we could HAVE great literature like this!! What are you waiting for??
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All right!
It has become clear!!
He is WITH the band!! Not hanging out in the audience!!
From Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos yesterday (meaning that, if you were waiting on me, you missed the show in Porto!):
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Facebook has let me down, gang. They had photos of Nick Cave, but not any good ones today.
I had to go to the desktop stash for this one:
Nick Cave!! (Wondering: What the fuck is the deal with Facebook??)
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All righty!!
Here it is: “The wonderfully true tale of LUNCH and how it went!!”
Wow, gang.
I’m not even sure where to start. I can at least start by saying again: What a nice man. And it is safe to also say that it looks like we’re officially DATING.
Even though he leaves for Florida later today. So it’ll be “long distance, over the phone” dating for a while. (He’ll be back for a week in January, to check on his house — furnace, water pipes, etc.)
We share the same sense of humor and he is so easy to talk to. He says the sweetest, while totally unexpected things. For instance:
“You should enter a beauty contest, you know, in the category of women your age — you’d win that, easily!”
Okay, here are a few things, in no particular order.
In all the best ways, I feel like my dad is back. This guy is taller than me, bigger than me, older (mid-70s), he gives great hugs, he’s smart and he likes to laugh, and he can fix absolutely everything.
And he has plenty of money and property (3 homes in Florida and one across the road from me!).
But 2 of the homes in Florida are up for sale. He loves to buy older homes and rehab them and then sell them. He can’t stand being retired and needs to stay busy… The one remaining home that he is keeping (and living in) has 4 bedrooms and 2 baths and is really pretty– he said (more than once) “Come visit me in Florida! I’ll pay for it! I’m all by myself now.”
He’s a widower with grown children and a couple grandchildren.
And probably most importantly of all!! He owns an enormous RV. He keeps it parked on some property not far from my house, where other campers are parked, but his is in an isolated area because it is huge.
(BTW, he was showing me all this stuff on his phone while we were at lunch.)
I love RVs and campers. I love to go camping. But this RV is 2 stories tall. It’s nothing like the campers of the 1960s. The bedroom is upstairs. It looks a lot like this, but this is not his:
He said, “I really hope you’ll come out and see it. It’s just sitting there now.”
And then he showed me the view outside the upstairs bedroom window — green fields and tons of trees . He said, “You could run around naked out there and no one would see you.”
I thanked him for the head’s up on that…
Anyway. He is of course retired. He worked various kinds of construction his whole life. He’s very down to Earth and just very nice. And after lunch, he came inside for a few minutes to meet the cats and they seemed to really like him, too.
He did not ask me anything specific about my life yet, he was being very polite — he knows I’m divorced, that I’m a writer and that I lived in NYC and worked in publishing for about 30 years. He didn’t ask what kind of writing I do, so I didn’t tell him. I have decided I’m not telling him anything unless he specifically asks me. (Oh, and I mentioned I’m returning part-time to the health & wellness store in town and he has actually shopped there before, because his son is into natural healing and health food, etc.) (He grew up, got married and raised his family in that area of town where the store is now, a long time ago, when it was still just cornfields and farms.)
So we’ll just see how it all goes.
We texted quickly this morning around 6AM and he does indeed use smiley-face emojis!!
I thanked him again for lunch yesterday — I really did have a nice time with him. And he texted back that he feels “good vibes”! (So, yes, we are both kinda OLD!!)
But I’m excited to see where it goes. We’ll likely be talking on the phone for 3 months before I see him again. So I should have a pretty good idea by January.
Meanwhile!!
That’s it for today, gang! Gotta work on the M. Christian anthology now, and tomorrow– my book signing!!
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Enjoy your Friday, wherever you are in the world!
Thanks for visiting.
I love you guys. See ya!
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Let’s close with this today!!!!
I don’t think it needs any explanation. Enjoy, gang.
