......This stuff is a week old now but I haven't had any time heretofore......

When we last left Mike and Wendy, they had just seen an Al Kooper show and were awaiting confirmation of an ugly rumor that Randy California was dead--and I'm guessing that YOU will say God must have gotten his 3x5 cards mixed up in these regards, but that's a cheap shot and I won't entertain it. There. So?..........

The very next day, of course, there was a small blurb on the obit page in our New Jersey daily paper--and if you think that Randy California would be outside their scope of notice, let me point out that they check-marked Captain Beefheart's birthday this past week under "Entertainment News." However this comes too late for The Only Other Guy Ever To Record Guitar Solos On The Neck Pickup With The Same Tone Used By Whomever It Was Playing Lead Guitar On Child Is Father To The Man. Hey--that would make a great acronym, yes? Like The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, or "TAFKAP"--we could call Randy California TOOGETRGSOTNPWTSTUBWIWPLGOCIFTTM. Who Is Now Dead. ("W.I.N.D.") Hey--there's a zen lesson somewhere in that last one. Well, anyway--I'm trying to keep my head up on this one but we're both well and truly crushed by Randy's drowning.

Anyway--the following Saturday, one week exactly after the Kooper thing, we went to the Bottom Line again, this time to see a show called "Outside A Small Circle Of Friends--An Evening Celebrating The Life And Music Of Phil Ochs--A Benefit For World Hunger Year." I was dubious, of course--the ad for it mentioned no artists and I was afraid it was going to be all Christine Lavin and such, and I'd end up having to storm the stage and throttle somebody. Well, there were a few cringeworthy performances to be sure--but for the most part it was quite a lot of fun.

There was an opening "community sing" involving most of the evening's participants, on The Power And The Glory, which was kind of dirgelike and didn't portend well. And--horrors!--on the right-hand side of the stage was a woman named Jody Gill, INTERPRETING THE ENTIRE SHOW IN SIGN-LANGUAGE--spare me this dopey post-liberal bulls**t. Wendy, of course, thought it was a nice touch. I didn't. But, you see, we'd already paid for the tickets and it was really cold out. So we stayed. And it was less than a minute later that we were rewarded with the appearance of the evening's Master Of Ceremonies--hello! Oscar Brand. In fine voice, and very funny too. He sang Love Me, I'm A Liberal. How old must he be now? 75? 112? He doesn't look a day past 60 or sound a day past 40. He still has that big barrel-chested Seeger/Stookey honk of a voice--it hasn't gotten all hissy and airy like you'd expect.

I'll skip anything that wasn't particularly noteworthy, good or bad--and that brings us to Kim & Reggie Harris, whom I had never heard of, doing Medgar Evers. He plays an acoustic 12-string, she sings. They were good but not too impressive--she was singing way up out of her range and sounded really strained. Turns out it just wasn't a well-chosen tune for them--they came back later, in the second half of the show, and did Changes, one of my favorites, and blew the doors off the place. Much better.

After they were done, Sonny Ochs came out and talked for a while. Turns out she organizes these shows. We haven't seen her before, just in pictures from a quarter of a century ago--and of course she looks exactly like Phil. That's always a small mind-blower, isn't it? And yet, why should it be? Well, enough questions.

A few FOLKSINGERS later, (and excruciating, too--the audience had a damnable penchant for Sing-Along-Itis, especially the overly shrill New York Cockatoo sitting directly behind me. She HUMMED throughout--except at the end of every other line when they came to a word she remembered. It was kind of like that dread disease Singalonga Dylana--you've seen it--some miscreant babbling along with the record:

"John is in the basement mmm mmm mmm mmmm mmm
mm mmmm bout the government, a man mmm mmmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm LOOK OUT KID")

John Flansburgh (from They Might Be Giants) did quite a faithful version of Chords Of Fame.

Another guy I've never heard of, Greg Greenway, came out and did a solo version of The Crucifixion, which I was predisposed to hate. That song is best left alone; no one else can sing it--so I thought. But this guy was good. Real good. My applause was not grudging at all.

However, right after that was a full-band rendition of Tape From California, the way he did it on the live album--the way, you'll recall, the Wendytones did it at our wedding--or have you repressed that memory? Well, as they started I whispered to Wendy, "This is going to make me really angry," and it did. They sucked. The guitar solo was beyond belief.

[New addition to narrative, July 1999: I am reminded--this morning--by Dennis Diken, that he was the drummer. This is as good a spot as any for me to apologize! Seriously, Dennis was great. He played gamely behind all the great acts and all the "other" ones too.]

Intermission. Go pee if you have to.

A couple more FOLKSINGERS and then Freedy Johnston singing One Way Ticket Home. I'll admit to very few Cultural Bias Blinders, and Mr. Freedy is sucked up into one of them. The category is (with a sneer): "New Acoustic and/or Electric artists that Vin Scelsa Raves About." I hate 'em all, some without having even HEARD them. Which is unfortunate. It all started with Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin. I think this is partially my own fault and not all theirs. But anyway--the Bottom Line has become to these people what the original Bitter End was to the Post-Richie-Havens crop; what Folk City was to the immediately post-Dylan crop. You almost can't go there anymore. But anyway. I was pleasantly surprised by Freedy Johnston, he was good. So there you go. I will be wrong ONCE in a while.

So how come YOU weren't there? I think you could whack out a rather respectable Pleasures Of The Harbor.

So, that's that. Two days later, the year-end personal sales report comes, and I am horrified and enraged to find out that I did NOT in fact hit the quota to take my bride on that San Francisco thing. The year, apparently, began on 12/30/95 and ended on 12/27/96. They went by pay-periods and not by the calendar. So I fired off some beseeching E-mail. A few days later I got a half-reply from the V.P., in which he says basically that he THINKS they'll give it to me. Now I have to wait. Meanwhile, here in the dining room, still in the cartons, is that new computer I bought to hit that quota. Waiting, as am I, for some sort of decision.

Finally--more s**t at work. I can't believe the stuff I get into with employees. I'll try and keep this short:

In early September I hired this girl named Kelly. She's newly Americafied, from Trinidad. She's very proper and very naive, and nineteen.

You may recall that shortly after that, we squeaked a week's vacation. Had to borrow a guy from the Bergenfield store, named [IDIOT'S NAME HERE]. He's 31 years old and an IDIOT. And quite possibly worse--a lot of stuff went missing while he was here, as well as all kinds of other things going wrong.

So anyway, several times since then, I have gotten "intelligence" from various sources suggesting that [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] is "courting", or whatever they call it nowadays, Kelly.

I warn her several times about personal phone calls (some of them an hour or more) while she's on my time. I also warn her, taking pains to point out that it is of course none of my business, just exactly what a guy such as him JUST MIGHT BE AFTER. Apparently also, [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] waits till I go home and then pops in the store AND GOES IN THE BACK ROOM WITH HER. She insists they're "just friends" and looks truly horrified when I ask her about it. So I point out to her that unauthorized personnel can't be allowed in the back room, etc. etc., and I ask her if [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] knows that they're "just friends."

So anyway, I come in Saturday and find out from my other employee that they were at it--whatever "it" is--in the back room again Friday night. I explode. Now he opens up the floodgates and tells me all the rest of the stuff--including the time, about a month ago, when he picked up the phone to order something for a customer, and was greeted by [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] hollering at him to "stop bothering us." Each of my as-aforementioned exploded parts now, itself, explodes. I am a cloud of quivering molecules. For good measure, I yell at Dan for ten minutes for not telling me sooner.

So I wrote her a "disciplinary report" that basically throws the glove down. [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] calls here again--ever--or sets foot in here again--ever--and you're fired. On the spot. She comes in today at 1PM, I sit her in the back room with the letter--and then I run back out front, take the phone off the hook, and simultaneously fax the same letter, with cover sheets, to the District Manager and to [IDIOT'S NAME HERE]'s manager.

She comes out, crying, and says she's so sorry for lying to me and it's all been taken care of already--she had NOOOOOO idea [IDIOT'S NAME HERE] wanted to be "more than just a friend" until just recently--and yesterday he shows up AT HER CHURCH and her mother throws him out. I'm sorry I missed it.