Yoko Ono and whatever constitutes the latest rendition of The Plastic Ono Band will be playing Los Angeles the first weekend of October. I’ve been waiting 30 years for this, ever since I picked up the double album “Fly” and was absolutely blown away by it. And — I will be out of town that weekend. This presents yet another instance of needing that clone.
I guess this is as close as I’m going to get: a video shot from behind some guy’s head. (And it’s still terrific.)
Why no post yesterday? I was away from home, and my laptop decided to go on the fritz.
Now that that’s fixed, why no real post today? Because now my home Internet is down. My wife tells me that it “just stopped working” earlier today. (I’m posting this from my iPhone.)
Oh, and by the way, my back yard gate latch needs to be repaired too.
Last night from the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium here in San Francisco where my family and I are visiting, I emailed a picturesque postcard of Kimberly Gordon the pop-eyed woman to a couple of friends. They got the text — but no image.
And so I say curses to these merchant heirs to Robert Ripley! He traveled the whole world and collected and preserved incredible artifacts that were testament to the ingenuity of humankind — and they can’t even do an email correctly!
I’m staying at a hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf with my family through Sunday. San Francisco, being very San Francisco, always gives me strange and interesting dreams. Last night before finally turning in I was reading an appreciation of Timothy Geithner in The New Yorker; I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the main thrust is that Geithner and the Obama administration took the right steps in saving the U.S. economy — and are now paying the price for it. Says Geithner: “We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public.” This gives succor to my fear that Tea Party bottom feeders are going to get elected in November.
In my dream, I’m at a State Department function having a discussion with a senior official. I’m telling her that I supported Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary not just because I liked him and his views, but because I couldn’t abide Hillary Clinton. “She was running on experience. But what experience did she have?” I asked. “Not much more than he did in the Senate. Before that? First Lady.” Then I went on to say that on top of that, I just didn’t like her: she seemed brittle and humorless and overproduced and, worst of all, entitled — as though this presidency thing was supposed to be hers, and who was this guy to try to steal it away? Then I went on to tell this state department official that I had to give Clinton credit, though, because she was proving to be a good Secretary of State. But wasn’t getting much credit for her accomplishments. (You see the tie-in with the article I was reading before bed.) She smiled and nodded and then I woke up. And then I realized two things:
That this hadn’t really happened — it was just a dream.
That the woman in my dream had been Hillary Clinton.
Here’s my feeling when you’re in one of the most glorious cities in the country and you’ve been having a dream about Hillary Clinton: It’s time to get up and get out into the day. So that’s what I did.