...what I had in mind...

...what I ended up with...

Just about everything I do...

…is done with the thought in mind that I might milk whatever it is - in writing, put it in NOTES, maybe embellish what happened (or didn’t, or even sometimes it is necessary to, ah, shall we say, un-embellish to make ME more palatable; remember, essentially NFTD is by, for & about me me me, - while thee, alas Lad/Lassie, are a necessary secondary…but thanx for being there…how’s that for self-serving gratitude…) to make whatever it was readable; everything going on in my life is a literary device…

…it makes it difficult to love someone and be getting along just fine together all lovey-dovey and happyhappyhappy (boring) - knowing that the inevitable heartache ahead (…one practically swoons for it in yearning anticipation…) will make long suffering a good read – it used to make me wish something along the lines of ‘…how can I soliloquize if you won’t leave or throw me out' – which sooner or later always happened; only a matter of time and bingo!

…here I am again, left with a heart broken and tears like a waterfall flow…abject sorrow 24-7, ahhh, perfect…who could ask for anything more lugubrious?

It went something like this...

…the great Bob Colson, lead singer of The Bob Colson Band, one of the finest bands the world has never known fronted by a voice that knew no equal and was the kind of voice comes along once in a 100 years – had a heart as big as a house; and a heartbreaking voice; Bob Colson’s singular voice could have you crying and dancing at the same time…

…the Bob Colson Band cut its teeth in hard core venues like Whittington’s, The Village, Oscar’s, White Sands, a whole bunch of venues, playing four nights a week to a packed house back in the days when there were no enforced limits on much of anything so the place often went nuts, figuratively and literally.

…often on the off-nights Bob Colson and the band – originally I think it was Bob Colson, Jimmy Kane, Charlie Huntington, Joe Perry, John Finzar and Cliff Maddix – would do pro bono work in the state prisons – on one such occasion in the Big House @ Walpole, now known as Cedar Junction, in the middle of a tune that was rockin’ the whole joint, one of the inmates shanked another and within minutes the place went from very dangerous to VERY dangerous – the alarm system then was not sirens and whistles but rather tape-recorded shotgun blasts played at eardrum-shattering decibel levels and cops were racing everywhere trying to protect The BC Band and its guests from harm as the melee became a riot…

…another time at a concert for one of the Division of Youth Services detention facilities, in Taunton MA I think, on a tour of the place we saw a young black kid naked in a cell and shackled to the floor…we only got in this deep at this place – you weren’t allowed where we were - because Carmen worked here and we knew Carmen so he gave us the inside tour and Bob asked what the kid had done to deserve that and I forget what it was but he was gonna be there awhile, so Bob started talking to the kid and telling him what The BC Band was doing here and the kid said he could sing too so Bob asked Carmen could he sing with him & Carmen unshackled him helped him dress and that young man sang a very sad and soulful song of life in jail…

…in another place with the help of Linda Rooney – speaking of voices which come along only once in a hundred years – at an insane asylum cum school for the insane, the Wrentham State School in which Bedlam lived and hell on earth presented itself no matter where you looked…Linda sang so beautifully that the inmate/patients at first were stunned into a deafening silence as palpable as a conch held to the ear and when she hit that high note in 'Me & Bobby McGee' the place erupted into a shrieking, howling mass of approbation from these poor people who had never heard music before other than Muzak…

Sakis, The Plaka, Athinai, Athens - 1965

...listening to Gay Meyers and her sad songs, and to a huge black dude
Thelonius Monk-ing his way across Europe slapping a big upright bass (I know, I know, Monk played piano, but this guy looked like Thelonius Monk and was certainly cut from the same be-bop cloth) in the dim-red lit, step-down-into cafe in the heart of Athens, The Plaka, a few steps removed from The Acropolis and as such Saki's was an international attraction, many languages every nite...lots of beautiful people - men, women, other.

Cinzano Vermouth all the rage - left you in a daze too after a night of swilling it and Tuborg, eating souvlaki, black bread, olive oil and feta with
tomatoes, much laughter and staggering funnily into the warren of alleys
called streets until there it was: Eekosee threea Othos Panos, 23 PanStreet
dba Our First Home, a tiny room with a broken window (but looking out on the
mountain across town down which one night streamed thousands of pilgrims with
torches held aloft, looking for all the world like undulating lava with feet)
with a mattress on the cold floor, but home is where your heart is and it was
in that room then and is in that room now.

Dateline: Kosovo, Independence Day 2008

…on a more tentatively positive note, I salute from afar the brave people of Kosovo with a Stout, a shout and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as loud as it will go…it is a day for rejoicing - but it could well spell disaster too, for the Serbians can be a nasty lot and in collusion with the Russians will try to undermine the declaration and if that doesn’t work it would be no surprise to see Russian tanks clanking down the streets of Pristina vis a vis Budapest 1956 as the Serbs and the Ruskies slaughter the poor bastards…it won’t be the 1st time…meanwhile, Salut!

Be resolute in the face of adversity…I don’t know how that translates with a gun pointed at your head…do your best…the answer lies within…for not entirely altruistic reasons I toast you again and again and again, good people of Kosovo!

Muggins is my name and Cribbage is my game...

…and I win 90 per cent of the time…
Well, 53.253% of the time, according to my chief opponent, which is this computer with a built-in cribbage game and more statistics than baseball, to which I can say without fear of redress, (or of getting punched-out were it not an, ahem, gentleman’s game…) “Why, you double-dealing son of a bitch! Where’d you get that %$#@&!$ card from?”

When first I discovered I had this Medieval game on my computer I got beat a lot, 2/3rds of the time and more, in lots of a 100. I couldn’t take it, I was solitary & morose, a loser, my self-worth diminished before my tired eyes.

So I started playing best out of three series instead and for some reason I’m way ahead. Now I understand the lassitude, the ennui, which I figure was the end result of the mental stress & strain of this form of intellectual exercise and, yes, physical exercise too, for up and down the room stride I before pitching the next card; it is not a decision to be taken lightly – you could get ‘Fifteen-two’d’ right into another defeat, not a pretty sight, and also it is good for vocal training as I shout & hector and badger & taunt my worthy opponent, this accursed Dell Omniplex 560,the anti-Christ. More about that later…)

I’ve yet to catch it making an error in scoring or anything else, it seems to be the real thing and there are a nearly endless myriad of combinations, are there not? How many different configurations of cards must there be with 52 cards? I suppose the number is actually not infinite being as there are numbers at both ends…what would it be, 52 to the 52nd power is the number of possibilities? I never got past basic arithmetic so I don’t know the answer but it’s a lot, and I’ve yet to see two games alike…(merely finite myself how would I ever remember?) & don’t forget changing the suit is the same thing as changing the number so the possibilities go on…

It’s a very old game is cribbage, I said Medieval and so be it having been put together most thinkingly by one Sir John Suckling – yes poor guy, that was his name and probably how the game came peripherally to be invented as he sat brooding in his lonely stone tower afraid to go out because the neighbor kids called him ‘Piggy’ and said he ‘sucked’: enter cribbage, like about 1542 or something like that?

Is that Medieval or do we have to go back to the Magna Carta for Medieval, anyway a long time ago, and nothing about the game has changed since then except then you played with five cards now you play with six.

...thus ends your cribbage tutorial, something like that…