To sum up then....

Pretty simple actually....

And in my dream....

Clarion River, Clarion PA

In my dream
I die
and wake
slowly
floating in an inner tube
in the warm water
on a Summer afternoon

 In my dream
I float
closer to the bank
where I can hear
the voices of my friends

 In my dream
there are coolers full of ice cold
 seven ounce bottles of Rolling Rock
and a film can full of Thai stick
and some acoustic guitars

One more perfect day.

 2/27/12

Old school....

My America....

Do the math....

Superbowl stories....

It is Superbowl XLVI madness in Indianapolis this week! Last night I dropped by my local dive bar and was drinking a Sun King when the door opens up and Madonna and Tracy Morgan walk in and take seats at the bar, and begin throwing back shots of Jägermeister.

"Hey Madonna," I said. "How ya' doin'?" She looked at me and, tossing back another Jäger, said "Wasssup?" Anyway, pretty soon we'd all switched to this high-end Irish whiskey, Red Breast, which is just the sort of incongruity I like about this little East Side tavern. Madonna thought it was very smooth, Tracy liked that it had "breast" in the title, announcing that the wanted to "take it out behind the building and get it pregnant." One of the locals mistook his remark to be about the bartender and a moment later some glasses were broken and the three of us ducked back outside.

Madonna shoved me and Tracy into this black SUV and we started driving off down 10th Street toward downtown. Tracy pulled out a TicTac box and shook a few pills into my hand. I popped them in my mouth and asked, "What were those?" "Vicodin" he replied. OK then.

Madonna starts passing around a bottle of Hendricks Scottish Gin and, by the time we get to a downtown hotel, I was feeling very little pain. Inside we hook up with sportscaster, Bob Costas, and Questlove, drummer for The Roots. Switching back to Irish whiskey, we sit at the bar until Tracy starts shouting that he needs some timbales and refuses to shut up about it.  It isn't until I realize he wants "chicken timbales" that I figure out that he's shouting about tamales. Madonna throws down a wad of hundreds and we head back outside and the five of us climb into Questlove's gull-wing Mercedes, Madonna now on my lap, and start driving through downtown Indianapolis on a Thursday night before the Superbowl looking for an late-night tamale stand.

Bob Costas is driving, Tracy Morgan is passing amyl nitrate poppers around and Questlove is in back packing blunts with this Ukranian hydro pot Costas brought back from a field hockey tournament in the Georgian Republic.

But here's the best part.

Just as I notice that Costas has been driving on the sidewalk the wrong way down Pennsylvania, suddenly we get stopped by three IMPD cars, lights flashing. Bob Costas is muttering "Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit" when Madonna says "Don't worry boys, I got this" and reaches into her purse and pulls out an actual "Get out of jail free" card with her photo on it and hands it through the window to the cop.  He takes it, stands there for a second, hands it back and says, "You be careful now" and leaves us sitting there.

"What the fuck was that?" I ask.

"Silly, you get one of those when you get to be rich and famous. We all have them. Last week George Clooney was totally stoked on mescaline and actually ran over a bicycle cop in Miami and that baby worked like a charm."

That's the thing about the Superbowl. You learn something new every day.