The Queen took the stage in a flimsy burnoose of chartreuse, beaded, of course. She was wearing a yellow wig that was a tad scary. But then she opened her mouth and the sound of angels was heard in Boca.

Her upper register was a bit shaky, but that meant nothing when you heard the velvet and honey of the lower register. She treated us to her classics, her new music, a little gospel and a little Puccini.
The audience was wild. There was way too much bad white girl dancing, and I don't mean bad girls, I mean bad dancing. There was the escapee from the go-go cage. There was a mother and daughter where the mother had on a white mini skirt and kept shaking something that looked like a sack of wet sandbags. It wasn't pretty. Nor was it moving enough to look like a sack of puppies. Nope. Wet sandbags were hidden under that mini.

There were a couple of terrifying visions: a woman with Suzanne Somers hair (circa 1988) fried, teased, bleached, fried, stiffened with unknown substances and pulled into a fetching pony tail over her left eyebrow. Another woman in what had to be her daughter's quince dress. Or maybe her granddaughter's bad prom dress. Mini. Black. Chiffon drape in white across the bust and over the shoulders into a mini train-like thing. Worn with white (WHITE!!! It wasn't Memorial Day, yet, babe) high-heeled mules. EEK!

Sitting in front of us was something I never thought I would ever see: two gay men who couldn't dance. Lord knows, they tried. It looked like one of them was receiving electroshock therapy. They both had enormous heads. I couldn't even see Miss Aretha, and let me tell you, she is a large, large woman. But those two jokers with the beachball sized craniums completely blocked my view of the stage. If only they had blocked the view of the woman with the sandbags.

Finally, I have this to say about Boca: $11 for a Washington Red Apple? Are you kidding me? And not even Crown Royal? Granted, it was tasty, but eleven fucking dollars? Are you charging me for the attitude? Because when I asked to be seated in the "no screaming baby, no cell phone" section, the Barbie Doll at the desk gave me a look that was meant to kill. Sorry, sweetiedarling, but I've been giving that look since before you were born, and that stare of yours didn't even curl my hair. But I bet the word I called you back gave you a little start.

In the immortal words of Firesign Theater: How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at alllllllll?

I took my car in to the shop to have them check out the randomly soft brakes. My regular mechanic wasn't there, and so nothing could be done. Came to work, got my computer booted up and then all hell didn't actually break loose so much as it just started oozing out around my grasp on life.
The RLA's lung cancer (he was sure) turned out to be a strained muscle. But then, he once thought his newly-developed lats were tumors. He'd never seen lumps there before.

(Update) The RLA insists that he never said it was lung cancer. He says he merely said that he felt a "dead spot" in or on his lung, which he says (now) was maybe something swollen and pressing on the lung. He says that maybe he thought it was his heart. Pleuresy, or something. Maybe. But that he really, really didn't think it was serious. Which is why he really DIDN'T say something to the effect that he'd clean the kitty litter after his doctor's appointment, if they let him come home and didn't check him into a hospital for x-rays and tests.

The phone rang again. It was my mother's neighbor. She's sure that mummy's caregiver is abusing her. I called mummy's case manager to discuss the matter, and my brother called in, very upset, having just had the same conversation with the neighbor.

The Senior VP of Human Resources has noted that there is old and crappy information on the hospital's web site, and has made it their mission to force PR to supply new. Which they are now doing. Stacks and piles of it. And I'm trying to keep both the existing site up to date and do the conversion to the new site, at a rate of 100 pages a day.

But tonight is Miss Aretha. And tomorrow morning, I get to meet my new trainer at the gym. He looks like Nic Cage in "Con Air". Tats. Ripped to the nines. Hubba, hubba. If that can't motivate me, then I'm dead and shouldn't be taking up space in the weight room, anyway.

More news as it happens. Maybe.

I woke up this morning feeling so productive. I felt like a million dollars, allowing for inflation, and like I could just breeze though the stack of work on my desk.

Thinking was my big mistake, clearly, because I can't do jack shit. I am sorting and sorting the link order for the same twelve pages. I can't get it to organize logically. I can't figure out the content, I can't figure out how to convert from one design set to our new look. I just can't get a grip on this chunk of the site.

But the headphones are on, so there is at least a rhythm to my work. Today's playlist includes "Strange Magic, the best of ELO", "Ramones Mania" and "Sony Music: 100 Years, Broadway: the Great Original Cast Recordings".

Oh, ye of little faith. Did you think I'd forget my man's birthday? I would not. I could not. Bob, where ever you are, Happy Birthday, big guy. I wish we could celebrate it together, but alas, as ever, it is not to be. Maybe because you don't know that I exist, but I prefer to think that it's because our schedules just never work out.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dylan. And many, many more.

Who's there? Mr. Kettle, as in Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. We're here to talk about the color black.

So the National Guardsman who served in Iraq, saw war first hand and decided that he couldn't actually support the war effort and had, in fact, to consider himself a conscientious objector, and refused to go back to Iraq after his (first) tour has been found guilty of desertion and must go to jail.

But, the National Guardsman who went into the Guard to avoid actually serving in a hot war (Viet Nam), and who decided that he'd done enough time and went AWOL six months before his tour of duty was over was appointed President of the United States.

Anyone? Anyone? Right. I know. The difference is that the Guardsman sitting in jail is Hispanic with no powerful father in politics.

Fucking chicken hawk hypocrites.
The Battle of the Bands last night was just wonderful. I'd be happy to tell you who won, but we left before the end. (I had a hot gym date today, and I didn't want to be so hungover that I fell off the step. Nor did I want to be so toxed out that the yogini was offended.)

But the bands we saw were awesome. Most particularly, I was impressed with The Kick. They did. They do. They have this little skinny bass player with the most amazing mop of hair who can windmill like Pete Townsend. They had more energy, more stage presence, more ... I was pogoing like a mad woman. They're from Orlando, but don't hold that against them.

Then there was Wha The...? out of Atlanta. They were so good that after their set someone in the audience (not me, really, not me) yelled "This battle is OVER!!!" And it would have been, had not The Kick followed.

Last night was the first time since the whole drama of my father's decline began (two years ago?) that I felt so alive and so happy. I've said it before, and I'll repeat myself now, that the Church of Rock and Roll is the true spiritual savior of my generation.

Please don't write to me and tell me that I'm going to roast in hell, and that my previous statement is sacrilegious and that there are a million other things wrong with that sentence and sentiment. I know. I'm being a touch facetious.

But, really, when I'm in the presence of live music, when the beat is so loud that it takes over for your heartbeat, when the energy is palpable, the smell of teen spirit, as it were, is thick.... well. Children, I have seen the lord in the face of rock and roll. You find it your way, I'll find it mine.

Let me hear you say "AMEN!"

Every now and then, the level of technology at this institution confounds the average user. It is of a level totally incomprehensible to the average moron on the street. Today, that would be the elevator at the train station.
Yes. The fucking elevator was beyond the ability of one of my co-passengers to deal with. This isn't a big elevator, or one that goes in unexpected directions, or even between more than two floors. It goes from the platform (2) to the street (1) and back. Period.

And yet, there we were, on two, when the doors closed. And there we remained, because the one person within reach of the control panel just stared at it in amazement and slack-jawed, mouth-breathing stupidity.

"Press the button, please" I requested from the back of the elevator, wedged against the wall by the vet in the wheelchair.

"Que? Aqui?" the bottle blonde with too much jewelry, too much makeup (for a 20-year-old, much less the 60+ this old crone had to be), knee-highs and black FMPs under a beige Pucci-print maxi skirt responded. And then pressed, wait for it, 2. Yes. The same floor we were on. With the doors closed. And not moving.

And it's not like these are even clean elevators. Due to their proximity to the Metro, the VA, and the county hospital, these elevators do double duty as moving urinals, and gawd knows what else.

So with a quick, but never the less pungent epithet of my own, I stretched across the chair-bound vet (who was looking daggers at me anyway, and for what I haven't a clue) and punched the ground floor button.

Once inside my office building, I was treated to a ride with a random loony, who cursed at the guy who got on at the ground floor to ride up only one stop to the second, and opined that the semi-tall female lawyer should take up basketball and make a lot of money, like, and I quote :"Kobe Bryant."

Great choice of role models, dude.

I am now ensconced in my office, door closed, headphones on and a 4-pack of CDs for today's enjoyment consisting of: The Rough Guide to Bhangra, The Rough Guide to Bollywood, The Rough Guide to the Music of India and The Rough Guide to the Asian Underground.

And tonight? Tonight is the Battle of the Garage Bands. Now, if I can only make it through the day.