It's another Friday night in Black and Gold Country...

Go home. Cut your losses.
Stay. Go for it.
You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, that republic is Italy. All these voices waving their arms and screaming at one another. There’s an ex cathedra riff coming from the Vatican: Repent. Your body is the temple of the Lord and you have defiled it. It is, after all, Sunday morning, and as long as you hdave any brain cells left there will be a resonant patriarchal basso echoieng down the marble vaults of your churchgoing childhood childhood to remind you that this is the Lord’s day. What you need is another overpriced drink to drown it out. But a search of pockets yields only a dollar bill and change. You paid twenty to get in here. Panic gains.

This is one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books, Bright Lights, Big City. Jay McInerney wrote the entire blessed book in second person, as in “You are walking down the street, you slip on a banana peel.” I have just finished Meggin Cabot’s first adult contemporary book (which in publisher speak means a romance that doesn’t have smut on every other page.) Which is now called “chick lit” by everyone else. It is a book written entirely in emails, The Boy Next Door. I got it at the library store for a song. I’ve read it before but had forgotten how it ended so it was a delightful diversion for the evening. The only wrong wrong wrong thing about the book is that the cover is a “Reading with Ripa” release. I think that’s a curse worse than Oprah. I may have to do something to the cover, like decoupage. Meggin Cabot, as in Meg Cabot, who writes all the Princess books that Disney made into two movies, The Princess Diaries and The Princess Diaries 2. The first one is wonderful, the second one is disastrous.

Have I done any dishes? No. But I have laundry spinning in the dryer—don’t you love that right out of the dryer smell? Babelb, my mom’s version of “get that hair out of your eyes” is “how’s your sink?”

I had dinner at my favorite Italian seafood restaurant. I sat in the smoking section, as the entire city of Pittsburgh had decided to eat out tonight and I just wanted a quiet place to sit and read my book. I had ravioli with tomatoes and mushrooms. My waiter was wonderful.

February is an odd month. It is the shortest month. For the past couple of years, it has been the month of the Super Bowl. As if the month that carries Groundhog Day, Black History Month, Valentine’s Day, my grandmother’s birthdays (yes on both sides, yes on the same day), my mom’s birthday, my aunt’s birthday (I think…) needs more fanfare. I don’t want to talk about it. I will be glad for Tuesday, when life will be back to normal, win or lose.

I have a new favorite radio station. It’s called BOB-FM. “We play anything” is their tagline. And they do. What radio station plays “F/X” (from Beverly Hills Cop), “I’m walking on Sunshine” (Katrina and the Waves), and Santana? In between songs, one of the announcers gives little factoids about Bob. “Bob remembers Super Bowl Ten.” “Bob will be spending Valentine’s Day with a pizza and ‘When Harry Met Sally.’” I’d really like to find out the back story on Bob—I mean, it’s a very creative way to run a radio station. But I do draw the line at “Unchained Melody.” When that came on, I switched to one of my other pre-programmed buttons, which are: both country stations, Y108 and Froggy; 3WS, the Oldies station; WYEP “where the music matters”—independent public radio; Word-FM, Christian talk but also a place holder for the next station down, 100.7 Variety something something. I only have one programmed button on the AM frequency, 1320 WJAS, “all the original hits” which is mostly Standards sung by Old Blue Eyes or Dean Martin with a few new arrangements with Diana Krall and Steve Tyrell. I consider myself lucky to hear “Pocket full of Miracles” at least twice a week.

It is past Wee Willie Winkie's hour, so I'll turn in. I will be cataloguing my heart out tomorrow in my black turtleneck and "Road to Detroit" t-shirt.

*****

Fatigue is the best pillow. --Benjamin Franklin