Spirits in the night, all night

I have post-Springsteen syndrome. My throat is sore, my legs ache. I’m fatigued, but have the remnants of euphoria floating around in my head. Last night, I saw Bruce Springsteen at the LA Sports Arena. Oh yeah. He proved it all night.

In the universe of Big Bruce Fans, I’m probably about a six or seven out of a ten. I don’t have all his albums: I skipped a couple of the folksy ones. Sorry, but fiddles bore me. I’ve seen him five times on the West Coast and ten times in the Deep South. There are Big Bruce Fans who would scoff at that meager amount; they are the ones who own every breath he ever recorded and who have seen him countless times, stretching back to the Stone Pony and the Main Point, when Clarence the Sax man lined up the women behind the stage and let them gratify him. There are bigger Bruce fans, with a better Bruce history. But, nonetheless, I’m one of the faithful.

Last night, in every song I sang almost every word. I forgot the words to a lot of the older ones. I’d sing a line, then miss a line. I danced, though. We all danced. Those that didn’t dance stood dumbstruck, like they were watching an opera where lightning and thunder were the actors. The E Street Band was tight, the show short (short for Bruce) and the songs fast paced. They didn’t slow down much. My pal Robby turned to me after the show and said, “That’s the best bar band I’ve ever seen.” The other 17,000 of us in the arena would agree.

I went to the show with two of my best friends: nearly life-long best friends, as I’ve known them both for over thirty years. Not that we are old. Last night, we were teenagers again. AC and I started loving Bruce in the seventies. In fact, I turned him on to Bruce, in much the same way someone would turn a pal onto a drug. “Listen to this,” I said to him in ancient times, in a hushed tone. I pushed the button on my 1976 Dodge Charger’s eight track. "Born to Run" started. “This is the best thing you’ll ever hear,” I promised. "You can't go back after hearing this," I warned. All these years later, AC is still a junkie. Last night, he and I sang every word of “Badlands,” “She’s the One,” and we were so euphoric we nearly had to be carried out on stretchers during “Born to Run.” Jesus Christ himself could have risen from the dead and stood in front of us and we would have told him to move out of our way because he was blocking our view of Bruce.

Robby, the crafty one of the bunch, smuggled in a camera and took photos all night. He memorialized one of the highlights of our lives thus far, and I bet, for years to come. Then, he tried in vain to get us backstage, working his LA trickster magic. At first, we were disappointed, or at least, I was, but euphoria is funny. It tramples disappointment. Two seconds later, we were reliving the show, recalling the set list, and gushing over the rousing encore.

I first saw Bruce perform in Jackson, Mississippi. I was on the floor, about halfway back in the Jackson Coliseum. I could see Bruce, this wiry figure in the distance on the stage, but more so, I could hear him. The Coliseum had bad sound, and the band sounded like they were playing in our high school gymnasium. But they didn’t act like it. I remember thinking I’d just seen Rock and Roll live up to its full potential, and the thing is, I was even evolved enough as a human to know that Rock and Roll had potential. I was fifteen, but I saw my life stretch out in front of me, and I knew it would take me out of Mississippi. When I left home after college and moved to San Francisco, I should have told my weeping mother that she had only Bruce Springsteen to blame. He put that seed in my head back in 1975, ten years earlier, when I heard him sing “Born to Run” that night in Jackson. Bruce Springsteen broke my mother’s heart and she probably never even had learned his name.

Every time I saw Bruce after that, he changed my life—never in as grand away as he did the first time, but in small ways. For a week, I’d be happy. You couldn’t rattle me. I would commit to some small life project, and stick with it. Most of the short stories I’ve written were inspired by his music in some way, even if they had nothing to do with any particular song. After I saw him the last time in Vegas on “The Rising” tour, I committed to getting my book published, one way or the other, and I did.

He inspires and he instills joy at the same time. He succeeds where the self-help gurus fail. Just as he was hyped in 1975, Bruce is still a Rock and Roll Jesus, except he actually delivers “The Promised Land” even if it is just for two hours and fifteen minutes, the length of last night’s show. He is my Rock and Roll deity, and today, tonight, tomorrow, for a few days from now, that’s all I need.

Even as I write this, my toes are still tapping.

In the Land of the Blind. . .

My long-time dear pal Robby came over from LA yesterday, and we went to see Kathy Griffin at Mandalay Bay. Kathy sold out the Mama Mia auditorium. Not bad for a red-headed self-proclaimed fag-hag who likes to tell jokes about Paris, Nicole, Lindsey and Britney.

After the show, Robby and I walked through the casino and we watched one obese woman after another obse woman wearing cropped tops walk by us. Finally, after seeing twenty-seven barely-dressed obese women, Robby asked, “Hey Binx, what’s the tackiest person you ever saw in Las Vegas?”

I told him about the time I was crossing LVB, leaving the Bellagio and going to the then Aladdin. I saw a pregnant woman wearing a bikini top and cropped shorts, smoking a cigarette and drinking a “Yard-long” margarita.

“How did you know she was pregnant?” he asked. Good question. In a town where the obese come to vacation wearing "club clothes," it’s a bit like being the one eyed man in the land of the blind.

“She was fairly thin everywhere else,” I said. He looked suspicious as he eyed two women with asses the size of school busses trundle past us on their way to the dollar Wheel of Fortunes slots machines. They were wearing F-me heels and a micro-minis. Their cleavage showed all-right. In those tops, it is a miracle their nipples didn't show, too.

"Why do women in Vegas show so much breast?" Robby asked.

"Breast are big here," I said, not realizing the pun at the time. "I know woman who invest their entire self-esteem in their breasts."

The next morning, I walked downstairs, groggy, sleepy-eyed, breast smallish yet proud. Robby was already awake, Googling "WHY ARE WOMEN IN VEGAS SO TACKY?"

“Coffee,” I said. With one word, he understood my meaning. We got in my car and drove to the “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf,” which, I assured him, was “classier than Starbucks, and with better coffee.”

Oh how silly I am . . .

We get there and the first thing we saw were two dog leashes sticking out the door. Robby opened large glass doors, and there was a Pomeranian and a Maltese standing there, panting. Their owner wass standing in front of them, talking very, very, very, very, very loudly. I mean she was LOUD.

“OH MY GOD,” she said. “KIDDING, RIGHT? NO? THAT IS SOOOO FUNNY. OH MY GOD.”

She was screaming. She had a thing in her ear, one of those Bluetooth things that people on cell phones wear when they think they are Jordie from Star Trek.

“NO WAY! OH MY GOD.”

“OH MY GOD!” Robby echoed.

I gave him a look. I have the belief, or delusion, that I have at least one last shred of class left in my body.

“OH MY GOD!” She said again. “HAHAHAHAHAHAH!” Do not misunderstand what I'm saying: she did not laugh. She literally spoke the words, “HAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

Robby continued to mock her. I got in line, and maybe it was because it was so early in the morning and I had had no caffeine, combined with her airport PA voice, but I could not concentrate on what the woman behind the cash register was asking me.

“How can I help you?” the girl asked.

I stared at her, laughing at the loud woman with the dogs.

“Ma’am?”

To her, I looked like the ass.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the coke addict.”

She blinked at me then sort of gasped.

“She is loud,” I said, in my defense.

“What can I do for you?” the girl asked.

“OH. MY. GOD. HAHAHAHAHAHAH! YOU ARE KIDDING?” Coke Addict asked.

“A latte,” I said. “And a bran muffin.”

“Make that two,” Robby said.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAH!” Coke addict said.

“Okay, I’m from LA, and we have nothing this bad,” Robby said.

“I told you Vegas has the worst people in the world,” I said, sounding oddly defensive, as if by admitting that I live in a city where the gutter-fish of the universe live made this woman seem acceptable. I forgot to describe her outfit. She had on a skimpy yoga top and yoga pants. Somewhere, a stressed-out yoga instructor told her therapist, “I have this one student . . ..”

The Coke Addict walked outside with her ice coffee and her pedigree mutts. She sat at a table, and from inside we could still hear her on her phone. Whoever she was talking to was a stitch. She kept saying, “HAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

I looked out the wall of windows at her, and then at the other people outside. They all looked as if they had suddenly smelled a gas leak. Any minute, the place would blow. They seemed nervous, twitching, looking for an escape.

I tried to focus on the slow service. A different girl brought us our coffee, but forgot the muffins. “For here or to go?” she asked when I told her that we had ordered them.

“To go.” Two minutes later she returned with them on saucers.

“To go,” I said, again. She looked at me and blinked. A moment later it registered.

“Oh. You aren’t going to eat them here.”

She walked away, and it took five more minutes for her to put them in a bag. That was okay. Robby and I had the Coke Addict to keep us amused. The Maltese was now standing on her table. She was RUBBING ITS ASS. No lie. Then, she slowly wiped her hand across her face, and STOPPED AT HER NOSE. NO LIE, again. Then she swept her hand over her eyes and her forehead and brushed her bangs away.

“Here you go,” the girl behind the counter said to me, holding up the muffins in two small bags.

I took them from her and turned around to see that the Coke Addict had spilled her drink all over the table. She was shaking a guy’s hand. Instead of cleaning up her drink, they moved to another table. She left the dog where it was, lapping up her spilled ice coffee.

We walked outside, just in time to hear her say, “This is Profit,” referring to the Maltese. She then pointed to the Pomeranian. “That’s Chamomile.”

It was clear that this was a blind date. They had met on Match.com or edatesfromhell.com

“So Robby,” I said, as we got into my car. “You asked me last night about the tackiest person I ever saw.”

“Oh hell, I’m from LA and we don’t have anyone was bad as her,” he said again. It was worth repeating. When LA looks better than you, you have to say it tiwce, maybe a hundred times. After all, it is the land of Paris and Britney.

Lady with the two dogs, loud voice and spilled coffee, you take the cake, you take the bran muffin. You take the latte. Congrats. You are one of a kind. Literally, there is nothing like you anywhere. Not Dallas, not Jackson, Mississippi, not Cleveland, not even, LA, land of Lindsey, Paris, Nicole and, naturally, Britney. Thanks, sugar, for making our town the tackiest. By the way, your ex-husband just won custody of the dogs.

Yes, I'm bad

If you know me, you know that once you cross me, there is no going back. Forgiveness happens to other people. That's my motto. As a result, I am short and have wrinkles I'd rather not have. I don't sleep well at night. I'm known for being dramatic.

Recently, a co-worker I don't like died. I didn't like him for a simple reason: he was mean. He was mean to me and others. Mainly, I didn't like him because he was mean to me. I ask you, how could you be mean to me? I'm a pup, a cotton ball, a sack of . . . sugar.

But, he died. Evidently, he was mean to a bunch of us at work, including some clients, because we've joked (yes, I said joked, and the man is dead) that we should form a support group because we feel guilty that he died and we don't mourn him. Oh. We are awful. We know it. But he could be really, really mean. Then there are those others who somehow liked him. To each his own, evidently. One client from India wrote in after hearing about this former co-worker's passing and said, "We are heartbroken by his sudden demise. . . it is a great loss . . . he was a noble man."

I asked Bernice in HR, "are we talking about the same man?" It pains her to talk to me these days, because she feels the need to write me up every time I so much as look in her direction. I am a walking HR violation.

Bernice is troubled lately, not only by this person's death, but how she can classify me in terms of HR violations. Am I insubordinate? Unprofessional? Harassing people? Of course, yes to all three. I'm the kind of gal who likes to go down in flames, my motto, to paraphrase Faulkner, is if you are going to screw up, do it magnificently.

I have been following Bernice around, taking notes of all the odd stories that have come out of this man's death. His daughter is a bartender at a 24/7 gambling lounge in Vegas. It's a smoky joint where balding men who think W and Cheney blew up the World Trade Center towers drink Smirnoff and talk about how cute Paris Hilton is. This man's memorial will be held there. The family is having a private service in a back room, where they will toast him with a Schlitz beer, his favorite. They will then pass around bits of his cremains so people can wear them in lockets around their neck.

No doubt, there are those who loved this man. His family is devastated, as are those few co-workers who knew him differently than I did. They did not see the man who tried to make me feel bad about the job I did, or the man who tried to pawn off on me the work he didn't want to do, or the man who was rude to clients, saying things like, "I'm busy now, what do you need?" or the man who liked to greet people with, "hey, so nice of you to show up today." Or, "Binx, working hard or hardly working?" He reeked of cigarette smoke. He had a TB laugh. He detested gays and blacks. This is my memorial to him, and yes, I am a bad person, maybe bordering on sociopathic. It is people like him that helped me be the bad person I am today. I feel sad for his family. They lost a father, his wife lost a husband. I'm trying to feel something, but, I have to admit, part of me feels relief. There is one less person in the world that will go out of there way to make me feel bad, who will play mind games with me.

It's not right, these things I'm saying. It's not right that his family lost him. And I'm sorry, but the way he treated people, that wasn't right either. I hope that when I go, there is not someone in cyberspace writing about me this way. I hope I never make anyone feel as worthless as he made some of us feel. Mainly, I hope my service is not held in a dive bar, where people toast me with beer.

My "Magic" Review

Thank God Bruce threw out the fiddles from "The Seeger Sessions" and picked up his guitar. You know that when Bruce has both Steve Van Zandt's and Nils Lofgren's guitars backing him, that all is well in the state of Rock and Roll. I'm sure SS was a good album, but I like my Bruce the way I like my men. Straight and strong.

My favorite song on his new album, "Magic," is "Living in the Future," which starts off like "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" but is way hornier and tinged with subtle jabs about what W & Company has done to the country.

It's rare I get the chance to mix two things I love to do, get syrupy over Bruce and bash W, at the same time. But since Bruce has tackled the effects of this administration on our country in "Magic," I get to write not only about how he hates W, too, but at the same time I get to gush like a school girl over him. Did you see his muscles on that 60 Minutes interview? Did I just say muscles? I meant, wrinkles. He's got wrinkles and muscles. He's nearly sixty and he looks good and is sounding even better. He gives hope to all of us forty-somethings worried over aging. Maybe we’ll just get better like him.

I bought 'Magic" on Tuesday, and have probably heard it a dozen times. The album grows on you with each listen. "Gypsy Biker" is a beautiful song about an Iraq vet coming home in a coffin. Like so many of his songs, it's a short story set to music. "We pulled your cycle out of the garage/And polished up the chrome." Then the theme builds in "Last to Die," as Bruce's anger over Iraq is more palatable here. In "Magic," we see him circle back to "Living in the Future," singing, "This is what will be, this is what will be." Oh he's pissed. Well, so am I and that’s why he continues to be the soundtrack to my life.

"Long Walk Home" is being compared to "My Hometown," except it has more balls. A father speaks to his son, who is about to be shipped out, of sacrifices and "Who we are, what we'll do/And what we won't." I for one, won't let a day go by without listening to "Magic." That is till Bruce puts out another album, hopefully ones without fiddles.

Magic Time

I’ve always wondered about people who didn’t like Bruce Springsteen. I realize that each person has their own taste, but, I’ve never been able to figure out how I can feel his songs so deeply, and, I’m just one of many people who can say that, while others shrug him off completely as a mainstream rocker, kinda like Bon Jovi. Actually, one girl told me once that he reminded her of Bon Jovi, “but he wasn’t as cute.” I always thought she was kind of dumb, you know, like Miss Teen South Carolina. But not as cute.

For those of us who love Springsteen, what I’m about to say is obvious and cliché. For those who don’t, listen up: he’s more than just some rocker, and if you have spent the last thirty years wondering what the fuss is about, pause Beyonce on your iPod and read this article NY Times. Maybe it will clarify some things. It’s not the best article ever written on Springsteen, but it’s pretty darn good.

Bruce’s new album “Magic” is out this week, and while I have only heard “Radio Nowhere,” I’m looking forward to not just hearing the music, but listening to the lyrics. After all, this is the man who wrote lines like, “For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside, that it ain’t no sin to be glad your alive,” as well as, “roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair . . . the nights busting open and these two lanes can take us anywhere.” If those lyrics don’t touch you in some way, then maybe you’ve never longed for something--other than Prada. Okay, to be fair I long for Prada a lot, but there are other things I’ve wanted, too, like the strong desire to bust out of a dusty small town growing up, and see the world. I was the kind of person Bruce wrote songs for, and all these years later, as I’ve grown older, and had a career, and a marriage, and this thing called an adult life, Bruce has somehow managed to continue to provide a soundtrack, like the words from this great middle-age lament:

Well my soul checked out missing as I sat listening
To the hours and minutes tickin' away
Yeah, just sittin' around waitin' for my life to begin
While it was all just slippin' away.
I'm tired of waitin' for tomorrow to come
Early on, Bruce’s songs inspired me “to take a right at the light and head out straight onto night,” and I did. Last night, I traveled 20 + hours door-to door from my fourth trip to Hong Kong. I’ve seen a lot of the world, not all of it. I’ve tried to live my dreams, writing, a fun career, and again, I was spurred on to do this in part by Springsteen’s music. All these years later, after I’ve first heard “Born to Run,” I’ve realized something. Seeing the world is great, and chasing your dreams is a worthwhile pursuit, but let’s face it, and if you are a Springsteen fan, you know what I mean: nothing beats dancing to a good song by our guy. That’s why he’s The Boss.