I am depressed. Clinically, one supposes. I am spinning in place, with so many projects and ideas in my head, but too few hours in each day, and too little energy to create in the ones available to me to do so. I want to blog, but about what? Does anyone really want to hear me whine about such first world problems?

I am depressed about the political climate in my country. Are these shit-flinging chimps really viable presidential candidates? Have we, as a nation, completely lost the power of critical thinking, the ability to understand nuanced thought and complex concepts? (Don’t answer that. It was a dispirited, and jaundiced, rhetorical question.)

I am depressed about what used to be my career and is now reduced to a mere job, something I do eight hours a day to pay the bills. Although I am dangled carrots, I know them to be nothing more than carrots on a string, to be snatched away when I believe them to be within my grasp.

I am depressed about, well, everything.

This summer is speeding by in a haze of good times had with good friends: all back-lit and golden and soft-focus, like a cheesy beer ad aimed at the demographic of late-season baby boomers, or you know, me and my peers. In any event, we have been having a blast, fueling it with a soundtrack of girl groups, rockabilly, bar bands and tiki/exotica. We started with the Hukilau, and Miz Shoes is here to testify that she is now deeply, truly in love with Grinder Nova. UNO MAS TEQUILLA! We were joined by the Fabulous Flamingos, and in the event, the Hukilau proved to be more fun than any of us had imagined, and we all have great imaginations. One of the highlights of the weekend was meeting MeduSirena, who has reawakened my childhood obsession with

dream of becoming a mermaid. There is going to be a lot more sequined tail in Miz Shoes future.

The following weekend, we left for the annual left coast week. This is a ritual gathering of our pod (to steal MeduSirena’s term). Most of us are women of a certain age who have been friends for either half or all of our lives, depending. We gather on the beach to soak up the sun, reconnecting with our selves and each other, and admitting to our group our alpha male, the Renowned Local Artist. He demures, but he is.

This year found us gathered for the Summer Solstice, and we were crones, practicing great healing magic on the one who needed it most. We swam in the Gulf; we were mermaids and we sang our siren song to the RLA. We ate communal meals and rendezvoused with friends, Total Wine and the world’s best GoodWill store.

And now it’s time to pile up the towels and blast the sound track: it’s time for the annual tank wars and bbq/pool party.

Well, this sucks. The Big Man has gone to the great gig in the sky. He himself believed that we pass from this form into the pure white light, and if anyone ever did or does, then Clarence Clemons would be that one. Clarence was the heart and soul of the E-Street band, and I cannot imagine how the show will go on without him. To all my friends in the E-Street nation, I send you love and light. To anyone who ever saw him live, I tell you that you were blessed. To those who knew the Big Man personally, I cannot imagine the depths of your loss, and do not presume that my words could be of any comfort at all, but I offer them anyway.

The size of the hole he leaves in this world is immense, as immense as his talent, as immense as his soul.

Miz Shoes dedicates this post to The Rude Pundit, for obvious reasons.

So here’s the thing about Anthony Weiner that nobody is willing to talk about. It’s the elephant in the room, connected, if you will, to the trunk in Tony’s crotch shots. Miz Shoes is not going to offer an opinion about Tony being a pervert or a creeper, although, you know, if it sexts like a creeper and lies like a creeper and acts like a creeper, the odds are pretty good that it is, in fact, a creeper. No Miz Shoes doesn’t care about that. Miz Shoes says this as a woman with a history of fondness for men who are not, shall we say, classically handsome (see obsession with Bob Dylan). But LOOK at that man, people. LOOK long and hard. THAT is a man who has never gotten laid for free in his life. Really. Not even a mercy fuck for that monkey. How he scored his wife is a mystery, but the word “beard” comes to mind. He is just a pathetic little man who finally found a medium where he could “charm” with his “wit” and then get his rocks off via e-mail.

And now let him be gone from our national dialog.

As regular readers of this irregular journal are most likely aware, Bob Dylan sits at the top of my personal rock gods pantheon. Or, perhaps more accurately, he is the enlightened fool of the tarot deck. Either way, not a day goes by that there isn’t something from Dylan on my i-pod and thence into my head. I carry on my shoulder a (tattoo of a) Siamese cat. I dream about him more than I dream about the people who populate my waking life. Today is Mr. Dylan’s 70th birthday, and so pundits from the Rude to the New York Times are lauding him and retrospecting him and carrying on as though he’s just been discovered. This year I chose not to bake him a cake, as he never shows up at my house for a slice anyway, and my diet precludes random cake baking. Instead, it is my pleasure to reprint for you all, in its entirety, a little something from the Sept/Oct 1995 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).

The Value of Love, Using the Dylan Model

Somewhere or another I read that the human body completely replaces itself on a cellular level every seven years. That means that today I am a completely different person than I was the day my father died, which was seven years ago this morning.

I suppose that’s true in a metaphysical way as well. I know that for the longest time I felt diminished, as though I was no longer the person I was when Daddy was alive. Getting my bookkeeping in order and my weight down were two steps towards getting back to who I was BMD (before Max died). Still, I’m not the same. I’m more melancholy (hard to believe, I know, especially considering I espouse putting Prozac in the city’s drinking water to improve the community at large).

I miss talking football with him. I miss talking baseball and basketball with him. I miss telling him stories about my dogs. I miss him every Sunday when he doesn’t call. I miss him sending me marshmallow Peeps at Easter time, and a weekly envelope full of newspaper clippings.

I miss his acerbic take on politics, and know that the Tea Party would have caused him to burst a blood vessel in his head. I find myself less tolerant of stupidity than ever, and remember the old man’s favorite saying: “I don’t mind ignorance, but I can’t stand stupidity.”

Not a day goes by that I don’t think “What Would Max Do?” and the answer guides my actions. And saying that, what Max would do about this sorrow and emptiness would be to suck it up and do the things that still need to get done. There is no going back, so there is no use in dwelling in the sorrow. Pick yourself up and live in the now, he would tell me, although not in those words.

Nope, Max would say this: you do the things that need to be done first, and then there will always be time to do what you want to do. So I’ll put one foot in front of the other, and wait until tonight, when I can light a candle for my father.