Well, hell.

So, you know - the world is a strange place.  Over the weekend, Puerto Rico was heavy in the press post-hurricane.  The mayor of San Juan made an impassioned plea to basically anyone watching her press conference.  She threw President Trump under the bus, and told us that people were dying.

Trump got butthurt and told us they had been doing tremendous work to help PR, and then we spent a lot of time talking about whether we should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem.   Personally, I don't care what you do during the anthem.  I typically stand and sing along - whether it's the Star Spangled Banner, O Canada or La Marseilles - because I know those three.  The first two far better than the third.  But I like singing, and how often am I asked to sing?  Hardly ever.

That said, I know that the anthem has some racist lyrics in the third verse, and that the point of the protest is not about the anthem itself, but the treatment of non-white America.  I get it.  I don't experience it, not much anyway - but I get it.

So, you know - kneel, stand, turn cartwheels or make meowing sounds. It's a song.  The gesture is so much more.

Anyway - I've been fretting over how to help PR.  I tried "pancaking" - the breakfast version of Tina Fey's "sheetcaking".  And while it was magnificent, eating a stack of buttery, blueberry studded, heavily syruped flapjacks, it doesn't help the good people of Puerto Rico.  I left the nice waitress (Donnis) a huge tip, because she was a sweet as could be, and actually asked me how cooked I wanted my bacon.  Now that, my friends, is how you win my heart.  This is not really the point, though.  It's a sidebar.

Damn, they were here just a minute ago...


After doing some research, the charity that keeps coming up over and over is UNICEF - back in the day, I used to buy their Christmas cards at Pier 1.  Cute stuff.  But anyway, a good charity, reputable, and 90% of their donations go directly to the kids.  I think that's a good thing.

And then.  This morning, I woke up, ready to have a great, productive day off.  And I looked at my phone to find that all hell had broken loose.

Last night, some guy in Las Vegas broke out the window of his hotel room on the 32nd floor and started shooting people at a music festival down below.  At current count, there are 59 dead.  Another 500 and change injured.  One man from Tennessee died shielding his wife.  I would love to tell you I'd have the presence of mind to shield Matt from gunfire.  I hope I would. But realistically... I would probably just run.  And I don't run well.

Anyway.  I got up, got dressed, took out the recyclables and trash.  Cleaned the freezer, a cabinet and a few things in the fridge.  Loaded up a bag of clothes and dropped them at Goodwill.

Then I went to get a pedicure.  They had their TV on CBS News.  Well, that's not entirely true.  One was on CBS, one on CNN, one on HGTV.  That one was obstructed from my line of sight.  I was next to the one on CBS.  At 10AM, it went off of news and onto The Price Is Right.  The woman working on my feet mentioned the whole Bob Barker/Barker's Beauties sexual harassment scandal.  She posited that Drew Carey isn't crazy. Now, I really like Drew, so I hope he isn't harassing any of his prize hotties.   Anyway, today was a Breast Cancer Awareness show - lots of pink.  First woman up was a survivor, had chemo, radiation, and so on.  She had on long pink gloves, a hat,  a boa... she didn't win.  She didn't know how expensive dried pasta is, and that's what killed her.

Contestant number two was a survivor who had lost her sister to it.  Her sister had always wanted to be on TPIR, so she knew her sister was in heaven watching.  She won.  She had to guess which three of four prizes was most expensive.  There was a scooter, some Kitchen-Aid appliances, a collection of leather designer shoes, and a huge UHD TV.  The appliances were the cheapies.

And then, they broke back in with news - a presser with the FBI, some trauma docs, a mayor and the police.  They never cut back to Drew and his Cancer Cuties.  Bummer.  I do love that show.

Anyway - old girl got a little aggressive with my cuticles, and so I bled a little, but the pedicure was otherwise a success.  Met my bff Jim for a little lunch, then hit the WalMart for some groceries.  Quick stops at Home Depot and Walgreens, then I did some clean up on the deck, planted my violas from Home Depot and kicked it old school with my dog.

It was around that time that the Tom Petty crisis began.  He was dead, he was alive, he was dead, it was confirmed, it was unverified...he was clinging to life, he was dead, was he dead?  It was a classic case of Schrödinger's Petty. 

Take it easy baby.  Make it last (make it last) all night.


I don't mean that to be flip.  I recognize that he was an artist whose music touched and affected many, many people.  But on a day where so many lives were lost, a man who lead a relatively full, interesting, meaningful life and died quickly and, I would hope, relatively painlessly - well, it's a shame, and it's sad, but it's not a tragedy.   And his music is quite a legacy to leave.

And that's pretty well it for a day off.  I managed to put clean sheets on the bed.  I put a bland little post on Facebook.  Because posting what I'm really thinking would be incendiary.

Plus, even though I find Schrödinger's Petty hilarious, people don't like having their musical icons made light of.  I get it.  I do.

I hope that I wake up to plenty of nothing tomorrow morning, because I have work to do once I get back to the office.  And it's October, for heaven's sake. Time to get ready for Halloween and beyond.

Be good, be kind, and be patient.

ae




Comments

Christopher said…
I love Tom Petty's music. I love the stuff you don't hear on the radio. And I loved him on "King Of The Hill". Just the fact that he lent his voice to that show cracked me up. And you know something? At a time of such massive tragedy, when nothing seems funny, "Schrödinger's Petty" made me laugh.
And I like to think that Tom himself, the guy who sang "Southern Accents", was the sort of guy who'd be amused by it before telling people their attention should be on Las Vegas, and to not forget Puerto Rico.
In fact anyone who thinks "Schrödinger's Petty" isn't funny is just being...what's the word I'm looking for? Frivolous? Small-minded? Trifling?
There's a word to describe people who get upset at small things, and it ain't "Tom".