A crisis can paralyze you and it can also help shed layers of denial and nonsense that you clothe yourself in because the reasons you wore those rags don’t have the same impact or value as they once did.
I can see and feel it happening to me and it is not hard to foresee how some of this will play out in terms of my approach to the future.
You can label it anyway you like and say it is a Johnny and June like approach or a Sweetcheeks moment in the modern era.
Don’t need any of that to be clear cuz I damn well know the queen of Shmatas will read it all twice and see what needs to be seen even if I can’t say for certain how it will be heard.
It is the beauty of the unpredictability of life because I am 1000 percent about some things and yet that certainty can be overturned by factors and influences outside of my control.
So you make like Kenny Rogers and try to be known more as the Gambler than as the Coward Of The County.
And so comes along the tests of life and in the midst of this pandemic I find myself listening for and to leadershiop;
Thank You Howard
Ten thousand years ago when Howard Stern first hit Los Angeles I intentionally made an excuse to borrow Dad’s car and left my Camaro parked in front of my folk’s house.
Why?
Because I knew Dad wasn’t going to be inclined to listen to a shock jock or at least I didn’t think he would.
So I took the car and made sure to return it with the radio set to 97.1 and waited for his call. When it came he asked me who this crazy man was and if he always was like that.
I told him I didn’t really know and that is the last time I remember having conversations about Howard on terrestrial radio.
Many years later when I put satellite radio in my car we revisited the show and I pushed dad to start listening because Howard has become one of the premier interviewers anywhere.
I still believe that to be true and I make a point to pay attention to who his guests are so that I don’t miss out.
Truthfully I tend to listen to whomever he has on because it is usually interesting but there are certain who are far more.
It is not uncommon for these interviews to go for an hour or two so it is a commitment but often worth it.
Today I checked in and found two shorter interviews with Paul McCartney and Governor Andrew Cuomo.
They were both very good, but I loved the interview with Cuomo because I hear/saw real leadership and appreciated listening to someone who can speak and show compassion.
Thank you Howard, your show made a difference and even if you don’t have Sirius you can get access now because Howard’s show is free until Mid May.
You can also find more clips from the interview on his Youtube channel and Facebook pages.
There was a chunk of the day when I realized I had started to pound the wall in frustration as well as a desperate attempt to get the attention of my daughter who was working out in her room.
I have had a home office for years so this isn’t the first time I have had to use Morse code to let people know I was in a web conference and the noise/chaos was getting a bit loud.
The difference is my baby girl has started doing some sort of dance workout and her room is directly above my office so the rhythmic pounding was confounding my ability to focus.
Also there was some very challenging stuff going on so I needed to commit wholeheartedly and not let myself get distracted.
By mid day I was in a dark place for multiple reasons and I could feel myself slipping so I had to figure out how to plant my feet and pull myself out of the sinkhole that was forming underneath me.
I did it and if you were in a five mile radius around late afternoon you would know this because I sounded my barbaric yawp because the Uncivilized Barbarian had broken free of the shackles.
And yeah, I really was called an Uncivilized Barbarian many years ago but instead of fighting the term I embraced it.
Anyhoo, tomorrow we’ll see get a sense of what price I paid for breaking those chains because there are no free rides but that is part of the joy of the journey.
And to that I say, let me take you for a ride and I’ll show you a good time or at least a memorable one.
Sometimes there is something to be said for force of will and tenacity, hopefully it is not my picture next to the dictionary definition of stupidity.
Live hard, love hard and fight for more than mediocrity.
