Today I felt like Woodward, or Bernstein, maybe a little of both. It was strongly suggested to me, in quite an odd manner, that I ought to blog about certain events currently transpiring in the lives of two people I know. I tossed it around inside the old melon (only current other thoughts in there: another heartbreaking Orioles loss, and how good Kunzler All-Beef Franks are when grilled in beer and wrapped in a wrap) and figured, what the heck, the whole world needs to know this story, and if some hearts get broken along the way, well, remember: some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.
I guess the way to begin weaving the tale is to illuminate the differences between the two people involved here. She was just a small-town girl, living in a lonely world. Later on, she took the midnight train going anywhere, and we all know where that leads! As for him, well, he's a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit. He was also fated to take the same midnight train going anywhere, but at least we know where he started out!
Well, they got involved with each other. Some say they met in a revolving door at the bus depot and just started going around together. But all the ingredients were there...a singer in a smoky room, a smell of wine and cheap perfume, and that's tough, because you can't smoke inside rooms any more, and have you ever tried getting the aroma of wine and cheap perfume out of a denim jacket? We heard later that she was working in a redundant position at a free dental clinic, because according to one of her postcards, "For a smile they can share the night... It goes on and on and on and on" (italics mine.)
The night can be a lonely place, and the heart is a lonely hunter. She saw strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night. Apparently, some of the people she met worked as support poles for nocturnal illumination outlets, because in a email to his cousin Francie, he described "streetlight people, living just to find emotion, hiding somewhere in the night." It is very hard to hide when outfitted as a light pole, as Allen Ginsberg could have told you.
On the Fourth of July last year, we got word that someone had seen him on ESPN in that hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island, where he reported that he was working hard to get (his) fill. He told interviewers that it was true that everybody in the crowd wants a thrill at such an event, but when total abdominal stretch-out has been attained, the experienced competitive eaters among us are out there paying anything to "roll the dice" (euphemism for tossing one's cookies, as it were) just one more time.
Some WILL win, and some WILL lose, but only Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley and (debatably) Barry Manilow were born to sing the blues. Last we heard from our Greyhound lovehounds, they were attending a Matthew McConnaughey cinematic retrospective, where it truly seems like the movie never ends: it goes on and on and on and on.
Don't stop believing, you two crazy kids. Hold on to that feeling. Glad to be able to share your story, if only out of coercion.
And for the sake of the PowerPoint presentation for this saga, here's one of those charts that are often the last thing someone attending a daylong training session can remember from the post-luncheon part of the class:
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