Maybe We're Not That Old, but We're Not That Young Either. 04/26/24

I’m one of those people who refuses to listen to Sirius XM channels like “Classic Vinyl.” I have friends that listen to that, but all they hear is Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Pink Floyd, etc. The consequence is they’re not exposed to new music. And listen, I love those bands (except for Zeppelin, so shoot me), but I also want to be consistently exposed to new music, so I listen to a station called The Spectrum. It plays “the whole spectrum” of music from oldies to newies (is that even a word?) to everything in between. So it was while listening to The Spectrum that I started to appreciate an artist, a country rocker and brilliant lyricist named Jason Isbell. And wouldn’t you know it, he started becoming popular out east, not exactly a country music stronghold. He wound up playing at this old music hall in my town, capacity 850 seats. We eagerly attended the concert and loved it. About a year later he had become so popular he filled Radio City Music Hall, capacity of 6,000. My wife and I eagerly attended, figuring we were in for a similar experience, except the tickets were suddenly way more expensive. He hits the stage with a rock ‘n roll crowd pleaser, “The Two of Us.” The audience leapt up, the music was so driving, you couldn’t sit. Dueling electric guitars, horn sections, drum solos, the whole nine yards. I turned to my wife and said “Wow, this is even better than I expected!” Then the next song starts and we sit down. But a funny thing happened. The people in front of us remained standing. The people behind us remained standing. The people to the side of us remained standing. And nobody sat, even during a slow, contemplative song about love and loss. We took a few songs off and sat. There were two huge monitors on either side of the stage showing the band, so if you sat down, you could see some part of the monitor if you craned you head to the right and looked in the space between this tall guy’s shoulder and his much shorter girl friend’s shoulder. I shared this experience with John and the result was our “Concert Standoff” comic. Gives a whole new meaning to “Standing Room Only.” I mean, even the front row was standing, and there was nobody in their way. So it was a great concert, but note to the other 5,998 people in the audience, “Sit the f*@k down!!!” Just sayin’.

Our second comic was a New 60 spin on a Passover Seder we had just this past Monday. We had our traditional Seder, with 14 people. The meal started around 7:30. So did Game 2 of the NBA playoffs featuring my beloved New York Knicks. That’s right, 7:30, during Passover, in New York City. But, I reasoned, that’s why the good Lord invented digital video recording. As we discussed current events, followed by the story of the Jews going through the desert with their unleavened bread (I happen to love matzoh, but prefer it lightly salted with a little butter), 7:30 became 8:30, became 9:30 as we’re singing Dayenu. And at 10, I went into my bedroom, changed clothing and exited still in my suit, only this time, it was a sweat suit. In a flattering shade of navy, I might add. In case the point wasn't made, I turned the game on at 10:30. John couldn’t believe I did that, but he thought we could mold it into a damned good comic.

If you think this behavior was a one time thing, I once attended a Rosh Hashanah dinner in my Eli Manning jersey. Which begs the question, why do my favorite teams always play at the most inappropriate times? Or, as my wife might put it, it’s not the games that are inappropriate.”

Th-th-that’s all folks for this week. We’ll see next Friday with two new ones hot off our MacBook’s,

Andy and John