Okay, well, today I’m heading out to see my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man and it will be the first time I’m seeing him since he found out from his daughter that Annie died.

I’m sort of expecting him to be mostly okay with it, since he has a firm belief that: a.) everyone’s spirits live on; and b.) he believes we all go to a better place when we die.

His daughter has already left for the airport to fly back home this morning. So, we will soon see how today goes.

And Friday, my shift with him has been totally turned around. I need to get to his house by 7:30AM, and help him get into his suit and tie . His stepson from Florida will be picking him up at 8:30AM to take him to the funeral.

So, yes, I’ll be driving for an hour, total, to help him for one hour. And then after that, the new normal without Annie in our lives will officially begin.

But, I will have the rest of Friday off. So that’s, you know, I guess nice.

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On Saturday, I’m heading back to this lovely place:

To drop off a review copy of The Curse of Our Profound Disorder for Kevin at his beautiful gallery there:

Even though we’re both kinda thinking the novel will be too extreme for his tastes, too, he wants to at least try to read it, which I appreciate!! So we shall see. But it gives me a great reason to go back to that really beautiful Historic Arcade in downtown Newark.

It is, of course, sort of mystifying to me that I’ve apparently written a novel that a lot of people can’t handle — even my best friend Valerie in Brooklyn gave up on it because she was afraid it was going to give her bad dreams. And Wendy only finished the book because she was trying to be a good friend to me.

But I think back to 1999, when my first book, Neptune & Surf, was just coming out and Barnes & Noble (at first) refused to carry it because of the novella in it, called “Gianni’s Girl”.

But then they changed their minds when The Guardian newspaper in London chose the book as one of their Top 10 Summer Reads that year.

When I had first completed writing “Gianni’s Girl,” I was so thrilled with what I had achieved, I immediately stuck the story in a manila envelope and mailed it downtown to my good friend, (the late) Holly Lane.

She read it and then called me and said, “What the fuck did I just read??? First, they’re bringing in a Great Dane, next it’s an incredible love story?? You have totally fucked with my head!” And then later, out on the street together one night, she said, “You know you’re a sociopath, right?” (Actually, I didn’t know.)

But N&S eventually came out in 6 editions — including trade paper, mass market, Book-of-the-Month hardcover, eBook, and 2 French editions. (And is now in the Internet Archive for eternity.)

And then I think about that French podcast I stumbled upon in the Archive the other day, wherein the podcaster said :

“… I would say the author possesses a gift for sweeping you away, for immersing you in the world she portrays. Yes, for she tells tales of worlds—of entire eras.”

And she was including “Gianni’s Girl,” which takes place among violent Chicago bootleggers in the 1920s.

So, you know, I guess you just gotta go with what comes out of your head and hits the page, and hope that, down the line, you’ll find that there was a reason for it, overall.

Oh, I do have to add that the guy in NYC who’s reading a review copy, is almost done reading the book and, so far, he’s still really liking the book.

So, don’t forget that you can pre-order it, in eBook or print, HERE if you’re interested in seeing if you can handle it or not…

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Okay, here’s this!!

Two guitar heroes — Steve Vai and Joe Satriani — are once again on tour together!!

From Minneapolis the other night:

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Here’s Keith and Patti (early 80s?) having what might be a pizza together?? Hard to tell, it’s tiny!

And I loved this!!

Perhaps they had Keith under constant surveillance, you know, after he’d famously woken up one night in his hotel bed in Florida, put a riff down quickly on a tape recorder, then passed right out again — and later, what he’d composed in his sleep, basically, became the Stones first huge monster mega hit, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”!!

Here’s this, while we’re at it!!

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And here’s this!!

Warren Ellis, ready for his close-up at the Met Gala!! (I think a day late, but I’m not positive!!)

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And a couple of beautiful shots of Nick Cave onstage. I don’t know when, where, or photos-by-whom, but I love them!!

I think this one is in Croatia, actually, but I’m not positive. And I think the photographer’s name is down in the corner.

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And that is it for now!!

I guess I’m gonna get ready to head to town and find out just what this day is gonna bring.

Have a wonder-filled Wednesday, wherever you are in the world.

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys, See ya!

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Let’s close with these!

You can pre-order Foreign Tongues, the upcoming new album by the Rolling Stones, HERE!! Enjoy, gang!

“In the Stars”:

“Rough and Twisted”:

Just a gorgeous day, here, gang.

So sunny. A totally blue sky. And going up into the 70s Fahrenheit.

I am definitely going to take a walk — go to the post office and mail my birth mom’s Mother’s Day card. Then walk over to the Dollar Store and — yes! Buy more coffee!

WTF?? Didn’t I just do that? Perhaps I should look into buying a larger can…

The laundry is almost done (it’s my day off) and I’ll probably do some of this today:

And I have absolutely 100% decided that the short story needs to be a novella, so the deadline for that is no longer an issue. I’m not sure what I’ll work on today, but it won’t be that.

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I touched base with my dear friend Wendy yesterday, to see if she was making progress reading the review copy of The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, which I gave to her almost 2 weeks ago.

We knew it was going to be a tough read for her — she’s a sort of straight-laced Jehovah’s Witness. She’s had a very different kind of life than I’ve had. (Although, oddly enough — we’d known each other for about 6 years out here in the Hinterlands, before we discovered that we’d both gone to the same high school — over in Columbus!! But separated by about 8 years. How weird is that?)

Anyway.

She is indeed having trouble with the book. It’s very intense. But she is determined to read it through to the end.

Which I really appreciate. But it brought back those feelings that doing a book launch around here might not be the best idea.

But I guess I’ll wait and see how it goes. The book doesn’t come out until September.

(Oh! And if you enjoy the heck out of intense fiction, you can pre-order it HERE!)

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Well, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I sort of “woke up” at around 3AM, thinking about my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man, but this time, I felt a wave of relief instead of that nagging anxiety!

His daughter arrived last evening, so she’s there with him now. Plus, knowing that he isn’t going to be put into a nursing home anytime soon…

It was just a great feeling of relief. So here’s hoping the free-floating anxiety factor can take a backseat in my life for a while.

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I did indeed start re-watching “20,000 Days On Earth” last evening and I am so glad I did! There is just so much about that film that I had forgotten. I probably haven’t watched it in about 6 or 7 years. (I’m not going to get into that “where did the fucking time go???” business again… we’ll just re-watch it and enjoy it!!)

So I am trying to sort of just relax around here.

I’m waiting to hear from Sandra regarding any work that still needs doing on “”The Guide to Being Fabulous” — the play is already done, we just need to sort of get it staged on paper by November.

And the TV project proposal is on hold until at least the end of June.

So, really, I need to just make myself relax and in a sort of non-anxiety way, decide what I want to focus on in the meantime. (For instance — maybe pull the weeds from the rose garden since it’s so pretty outside today?? Then consider finally actually beginning the writing of my memoir of the 1970s!!)

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Okay.

Here’s this!

What could be better than a couple of photos from Phyllis Stein??

Richard Hell at CBGBs in 1978!

And Johnny Thunders enroute to LA from NYC in 1973!!!!

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And here’s this!!

Keith with a bottle of Jack Daniels!!

And for the record, I would like to add that — NO! — Keith did not introduce me to Jack Daniels. That honor belonged to a Jewish girl named Karen that I was friends with when we were 12.

Her parents loved Jack Daniels and she lived a couple of houses away from a house where I used to babysit all the time.

One night, Karen stole a fifth of JD from her parents and then hid it in the bushes of that house where I was babysitting, even though I told her not to! But she did it anyway.

And the following day, she retrieved the bottle from the bushes, concealed it in the basket on her bike, and then brought it over to my house, to keep it stashed in my bedroom!

Okay. Whatever. She liked drinking Jack Daniels. I had never had it before. I tried it and really liked the aroma and the flavor of it, but it burned like hell going down.

So the fifth just sat there in my closet, so that she could drink it whenever she came over. (And Karen also introduced me to smoking cigarettes…)

But anyway.

That was the beginning of me and whiskey…. I’ll regale you with the rest of the story of Karen & the 5th of JD another day. It will tell you all you need to know about my dad’s parenting skills in 1972 and why I always preferred his skills over my mother’s…

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I digress!!

Here’s Keith and Anita and Marlon, in France in 1971!

And a serene sort of photo of Keith onstage somewhere with a Flying V!

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And your guess is as good as mine with this one, gang!

What is Nick Cave holding here?? A gun? A microphone? Something else?? I just don’t know!!

And I love this photo!

His hair. The cigarette. The arch above him. Just the whole feel of it!

Nick Cave, with big hair, a cigarette, and an arch above him:

And I also love this. Something about the jacket…

Nick Cave, onstage in a striped jacket!

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And that is it.

Well, the Agency just texted that my shift for tomorrow is cancelled; the clients will be at doctors’ appointments all day. So now I have two days to figure out what I want to do.

I will begin the thinking process by finishing the laundry and then heading out for that walk.

Enjoy your Monday wherever you are in the world, gang.

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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Let’s close with this — if you have an hour and a half.

This stuff is very illuminating, gang.

From Ross K. Nichols Sunday School yesterday:

“Many of humanity’s most ancient stories share a tale as old as time itself: the account of one righteous man, specially chosen to save the human race from a catastrophic flood that nearly ended all life on earth. We know him as Noah in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, and the Koran, but other ancient peoples also preserved versions of this man’s story….”

Knowing Noah: The Man Behind the Myths (1 hr 31 mins):