Weekend update

We’ll start off with the sad news from the weekend on Richard Pryor’s passing. With the possible exception of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor was the most influential comedian of the twentieth century. He completely changed the fabric of the genre, he influenced topics, language even just the tempo of a stand up routine. Basically anything that you see in stand up today is a direct result of the work that Richard Pryor did in the seventies. He was incredibly funny to boot (and it all holds up. If I pulled my Live on the Sunset Strip 8 track out of storage it would still be hilarious). There are only a handful of people who you could say have completely altered popular culture in the past forty years and Richard Pryor is one of them. All that from someone from Peoria.

Had a pretty quiet weekend. All of the snow has already melted, which saddens me. I know that no one in this town likes snow but having snow on the ground is a much better alternative to looking at brown grass and dead trees for months at a time. If we’re going to suffer through winter it should at least look nice out. Anyway, it just seemed like an odd weekend. I went out on Saturday night and there was just no one out. Seriously, at 11:30 there were more bartenders than people sitting at the bar, which would be beneficial if it wasn’t for the fact that they now let me serve myself (it’s more efficient that way). Maybe people in this town are afraid of melting snow as well.

There is a new bar opening up in my neighborhood this week. Don’t have an over/under on how long this one will stay in business but given that the white trash/biker bar that it replaced didn’t last a year I don’t know how much faith I’ll put in this enterprise. Plus, I don’t know if opening a bar in December is a bright idea. It’s been a little tough for businesses in my neighborhood, we’ve had a sandwich shop go out of business after three months and I don’t know how the hot dog stand is staying open. And it does look like the Westport Flea Market with its really good burgers and music on Sunday nights will eventually be turned into a Hooters. Which means that I will be living next door to a Hooters. Remind me to rethink my life one of these days.

Oh, and if there is anything that describes my fractured personality it is this. Before going out last night I was flipping channels and came across Book TV on C-Span. This is one of those bad habits of mine. Instead of heading out to the bar I sat and watched a guy talk about the Peloponnesian War for an hour and was fascinated by it. Then I make my way out to a night on the town. Does anyone else on the planet do this? Or can equally discuss Shakespeare and pro wrestling? I know that I have made it a stated goal of my life to never be typical but sometimes I wonder if I am too interested in way too many subjects.

(Request to the readership. As you all know the New Year is coming up and I have historically spent January reading a challenging book. That’s usually defined as a book that either a) appears on several top 100 books of all time lists or b) is listed on the back of Cliff Note’s. In the past this has included Ulysses, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Faust, and On the Road. If anyone has any suggestions I’d really like to hear them.)

The five random CDs of the week:
1) John Wesley Harding “Awake”
2) Anders Osborne “Living Room”
3) Aaron Neville “The Grand Tour”
4) Tori Amos “To Venus and Back”
5) I’m not going to admit this one…
5) No seriously, I don’t want people to know this
5) Why? Because once I write it down it means that no one should ever take what I write about music seriously again.
5) Oh well, rules are rules
5) Paula Cole “This Fire”
5) I often wonder what I will have to do to atone for all of my sins. Having to listen to “I Don’t Want to Wait” over and over is probably high on the list