...Actually, this WON'T be short. I started writing it in February and then....well, keep reading.

The more I listen to this BS&T Best-Of thing the more annoyed I get....surely there must have been more useable unreleased stuff. Even a little studio chatter would have been nice. The book, however, is great. Worth the price of admission.

Well, anyway, up to date: how was your gig with Lowry? Sorry we missed it. We were at the Park Ridge Marriott watching a show called "The Godfather's Meshuggener Wedding." There's a small theatre group from Long Island (strike one) that does two travelling shows: this one, and one called "Joey & Mary's Irish-Italian Comedy Wedding." Sounds awful, doesn't it? Well, in point of fact, "Joey & Mary" was pretty good. We saw it last May. My parents and cousins talked us into going. I was expecting a bunch of lame Guinea-jokes. There were a few of those, of course, but it was actually pretty funny. It's one of those guerrilla-theatre things where the audience is part of the show.

Anyway, this other show is similar but not as good. We shoulda gone to see you instead.

Two Sundays ago, as I told you, we had the distinct pleasure of attending our first Jewish funeral. Down in Interlaken NJ, near Asbury Park. Our friend Mike's mother had died suddenly. She apparently was a pillar of the community and loved by all. Never met her myself, but Mike's eulogy left me wishing I had.

Meaning no particular disrespect to any particular organized religion (I disrespect them all equally) I sat through--or actually adjacent to--Mike & Sue's ordeal, with horror. I left the Catholics years ago over their dopey little rules which resemble nothing so much as land mines, designed to trip you up and land you halfway up Satan's colon for all eternity. Like a big game of Musical Chairs, but with somewhat higher stakes. Like, your immortal soul, for example.

Well, all this time it appears I've been too hard on the Catholics. The Jewish Funeral Experience reminded me of working for Radio Shack. Punishment for it's own sake. It really made me angry to watch these really nice people--people I care about--metaphorically beating themselves over the heads with flaming turds. (I shouldn't suggest that out loud--I fear perhaps some Jewish Theological Hierarchy may get wind of the Flaming Turd concept and actually suggest it for future funerals.) On the worst day of your life, you're actually expected to do things to make it worse. Well, why the hell am I telling YOU this, after all?

The only additional thing I will make note of in that regard: the enormous hypocrisy of this Shiva concept. Okay. It's a tradition that you can only sit on a "block of wood" or a "low bench." Fine, go beat yourself up. But I REALLY got angry when the Rabbi walked into the house with these two foldable cardboard boxes--with wood grain printed on them. Mass-produced. Well, shucks. Guess it doesn't really have to be a block of wood or a low bench, after all--it could be a piece of FOLDED CARDBOARD. As long as you stick to the TRADITION, that is.

Well, anyway. It just seemed so unnecessarily hurtful. But I'll shut up. It's just that two weeks later he was still all busted up and I really don't think any of these "trappings" did anything but make it worse.

Mike's Rule number twelve: Criticize Things You Know Nothing About!!!!!!!!

Well, why you haven't heard so much from me--I've really had no time to write, and no inclination to write during those few moments that are available. My brain is suffering because of some unusually bad s**t at work.......

I can't recall if we've spoken about this woman I have working for me. I hired her last September, when I was alone in the place and would have hired Jeffrey Dahmer. Turns out that, in a way, I did.

What was immediately noticeable was that she stank. I don't mean she smelled bad. I mean you could see the air warping around her. It was such an overpowering smell that you really couldn't stand to be near her. Literally. And it wasn't an "I Haven't Changed My Clothes In A Very Long Time" kind of smell. It was a "Brand New Fresh Body Odor To The Fiftieth Power" kind of smell. Like, what do you do? What do you say?

Well, three days after I hired her, we went on vacation. Our drive through Massachusetts and Connecticut--which I believe was the last thing I wrote you about. Back in October. So that was when I had to put my foot down and go over my boss' head, if you recall, to borrow someone to Mind The Mint for those four days. Well, the poor girl (Debbie) who had to sit there (with The New Person) was beside herself with stench. I told her, with the snappy insight of any good field marshal, that since SHE was also a woman it might be easier for HER to tell her, and then I'd be spared that horror. But she wasn't buying it.

Well, three weeks after I got back--on the very day I had resolved to speak up--it was gone. Just totally gone. Stenchus Interruptus. But the other problems were rolling along heavily by this time.

She had been hired as a "Manager Trainee"--not what I wanted, but what I had to settle for. Well, she quickly developed the opinion that the Chain Of Command slips a link between her and my boss. She has a tremendous chip on her shoulder and I can't tell her anything. But it gets worse.

My biggest problem in that store is keeping it neat. Well, I figured, one thing about having a woman working there is that the average neatness level will rise. Well, I haven't been quite that wrong since the first time I said "I do." The woman is a f***ing pig. I have had some slobs working for me, but she is in a whole other league. Merchandise strewn all over the place, garbage strewn all over the place, half-eaten food left on the counter....once in December, and I swear this is true, she bought one of those huge Hershey's Kisses--the ones that are half the size of your head. She brought it into the store, and up to the sales counter, took a couple of big ugly slurpy bites out of it, then plopped it down on the counter. Unwrapped. With WET GNAWMARKS IN IT. And there it stayed for several days, gradually getting smaller and more grotesque, as she chonked and sknkkkkxed and slobbered her way through it.

Why didn't I say anything , you ask? I simply had to see how far she would take it. Well, she took it right down to the tinfoil. Took almost a week.

She belches out loud--HARD--and then pretends it was an accident. Not as a joke, either--she does it so people will look at her funny and then she can go, "What? What??" I'm not kidding.

The first thing she really took offense at was the fact that I made her go outside to smoke. Yeah, it's cold out. So? I was quite a bit more polite than I had to be in pointing out that I have a big big problem with smoke--so much so that smoking in the store would have to be prohibited even when I wasn't there. So she waits till I leave and then cheerfully lights up. The place smells like a forest fire when I come in in the morning--and then she has the nerve to DENY it.

Quickly it becomes evident that she is a Beatles and Elton John obsessive, and listens incessantly to both of these and NOTHING ELSE. Recoils in horror at whatever else I play in the store and goes into a world-class snit when I won't let her play eighth-generation McCartney demo bootlegs that sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a shark tank. Hello, we're trying to SELL SPEAKERS here--get it?? Anybody????

By mid-December I've noticed something REALLY disturbing. Every time I feel compelled to give a customer a break for some reason--scuffed merchandise sold at a few dollars off, that kind of thing--she would wait till I went home, then run in the back and make a copy of the ticket and take it home with her. (Any printer action is saved in a queue, with date and time, so I always know what went on printer-wise. She didn't know that.)

Eventually I confronted her with this, giving chapter-and-verse on what reports were printed and when and by whom. SHE DENIES IT. I put her face right IN IT. She still denies it. "But you were the ONLY ONE HERE WHEN THIS WAS DONE." Nope, not her.

The next thing I know, I'm getting calls from my District Manager, telling me that customers have been complaining about stuff I allegedly did. It would take several pages to explain, but the irrevocable conclusion was this: she tried to sell something that for some reason didn't work, and she took this opportunity to tell the customer that her manager puts broken merchandise back on the shelf to sell again.

I then hear from several people from other stores, and also a few customers, that she's been bad-mouthing me non-stop.

Both her parents have been customers of mine for quite some time, and surprise surprise, they both smell like they haven't changed their clothes in a while. They look, and seem, perfectly clean otherwise, just like their daughter. All three of them are ham radio enthusiasts and probably do not leave the house much. Her father--I must assume that at some point you have been a Mad Magazine fan, even if it was in 1954--looks a lot like the characters in the Don Martin cartoons. She still lives with them, (in case you didn't guess) and she's 34 years old.

During the end-of-year inventory (New Year's Day) she had a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old when I refused to let her wear a Walkman while she counted.

Well, enough. There's plenty more, much of it even worse than what I've told you about. Why don't I just fire her? Can't. "Trainees" can't be canned by store managers. Why not just demand that she be transferred out? Can't do that either--it would convince my boss that I can't handle "situations"--or worse, that I'm making the whole thing up. After all, would YOU believe this story?

Well, anyway. At the end of February, they sent me to an "awards meeting" in Orlando. You remember last year when Wendy & I got to go to Phoenix for a week. That was because I won the Top Level award last year. I got to bring a guest, and also got three days of actual fun after the two days of twelve-hour meetings. Well, this year I only won the first level, so my "prize" was to go to Orlando, get off the plane, sit through two days of twelve-hour meetings, and get back on the plane. Plus, of course, no Wendy. So I have a ROOMMATE. This dorky little weasel who is away from home for what must be the first time, who keeps referring to how much he misses "his WOMAN." Additionally, he's prancing around the room in his underwear, saying things like "So, we goin' to the Nudie Bars tonight? The woman's away, it's time to play!"

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

The next morning, he bounds out of the shower singing "Taking Care Of Business" and boogies back and forth in front of the mirror barking "You da man! You da man!"

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

So anyway--what else has happened? Oh yeah--at the beginning of March there was the Blues Project show. Just in case no one else has rushed to you with the details: they're awfully good. But you know that. Still, for all Jimmy Vivino's technical expertise, there seems to be something missing somehow.

I should point out one thing: near the end of the second set, Danny and Al had a little fake argument about something or other and Danny turned to the audience, grinned, and said, "He hates me." Kooper took this opportunity to say, "No, no--the guy I hate isn't here."

Andy, Roy, and Danny all laughed--but don't take that the wrong way. It wasn't a real happy kinda laugh. It was the kind of laugh like.....like...... well, like this: like when you're standing in front of an open casket and the dead guy's mistress runs into the funeral home--drunk--and throws herself on the body, screaming, right in front of the widow. You know. I'm sure you've seen that lots of times. I have. Especially since I married Wendy.

Also, I note that the Fillmore East is finally gone. Down in a pile of bricks. I've never been so sad to see a building come down. Many watershed moments of my life were spent therein.

Speaking of the Blues Project, I finally tracked down Danny's "new" solo album--the one he recorded five years ago and only just put out recently. Heard it?

Well, I'm sure there's more stuff but I can't think right now. We can speak.