Diamond In The Rough

After you have a kid or two, one of the most important things you can do to keep from killing your partner is to drop the little creatures-of-need with a strange, foreign speaking, slightly untrustworthy woman with a cell phone and silver teeth and get away for a few hours.

The wife and I have been doing just that lately -- dinners with friends, an occasional crappy movie (won't someone fire someone about those things?) and, through a generous friend and those convenience charge junkies at Ticketmaster, a rush of concerts. We've seen Mark Knopfler, U2, Bob Schneider, The Eagles, and just last week, Neil Diamond. That's right, I said Neil Diamond.

Yeah, he's 64. Yeah, his audience consists of 40-80 year old women from Wichita and 1/2 of the NRA who get excited and throw their walkers onstage when he sings Sweet Caroline; yeah, some of his songs have that certain cheese factor that remind me of Bill O'Reilly...and Pat Robertson when he's in a singing mood....

But I gotta tell ya, the guy is the closest thing to Elvis we've got, and I wish I had seen Elvis (even during his LARGE period).

Most of you are thinking I'm crazy. And I am. Maybe it's a hardwire thing. You see, when I was 8 years old or so, my dad thought it would be a good idea to go on a housboat trip to Lake Powell. 3 kids under ten, dog, wife, in the middle of the lake during the middle of summer. Snakes, dehydration, crappy food and nobody for miles.



Anyway, a few days into the trip, I'm sleeping in my bunk (my brother took the bottom one) and I roll off and hit the ground. Head is killing me. Concussion. Spots. The whole nine yards. No such thing as cell phones back then, and Dad's a doctor (it's true what they say) so he puts me on a low bunk in the "salon" with an ice pack and aspirin while he steers us to places unknown, telling me I would be fine.

I was too messed up to eat and I couldn't really see that well, but we continued on our journey, and the one thing I remember from those days in the salon staring at the ceiling were the 4 8-track tapes they kept playing over and over and over. That and the dog licking my face. Well one of those tapes was Neil Diamond's "Hot August Nights".

My head eventually got better and we returned to civilization so we could wait for the CD to be invented. Tonight, I turned on Rhapsody and looked the album up. Still sounds good. Think it's time for a houseboat trip.