New York City

I’m Going To Graceland,Graceland,Memphis Tennessee

/ Phil Strawn / 10 Comments

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar

I am following the river down the highway

through the cradle of the Civil War

I can’t think of a better opening lyric than the first verse of Paul Simon’s song, Graceland, from his acclaimed album of the same name. I’m a Simon fan from way back in the caveman days when he and Art Garfunkle made all the hippies and folkies stop and listen to their lyrics. Simon and Garfunkle were cerebral before it was cool or hip; holdovers from the coffee house Greenwich Village days. One guitar and two voices, no feedback, no pounding drums or wall of sound, just pure, beautiful talent. One could say that Paul and Art ” knew their groceries.” An old Beat term used by the hep-cats.

I’ve played a National Guitar, and it’s a tough hombre. Made from shining chromed steel with a resonator instead of a sound hole, the instrument is a beast that will shred your fingertips in record time. The sound, like the guitar, is unique, so I can see why Simon weaved it into the lyrics. The guitar does shine like the Delta, which I have seen from the air, and it does glow to the point of breaking out the Raybans or at least a $10.00 pair of gas station shades.

Graceland, yes, I have been there too, but it was “back in the day” while Elvis still called it home and was in and out of his kitchen making “peanut butter and nanner” sandwiches when he wasn’t shooting up color televisions or yukking it up with his entourage of buddies.

Memphis, back in the 1960s, when I used to visit, was once a happening city, and Graceland was in a good part of town. Now, you had better be packing if you visit that neighborhood. Beall Street was legendary, Sun Records was still operating, and the best rock n roll acts came to town like clockwork. Perhaps the city intrigued Simon when the boys played there in the 60s. He was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to pen a great tune about the southland. Having South African musicians on the album was the mint in the julip.

Paul and Art are old men now; aren’t we all that played music back then? I doubt there is much more left in the two of them, but man…those guys gifted us with some great music and lyrics that made us stop and think about a winter day in a deep and dark December, being an island, riding a bus while watching the moon rise over an open field, and writings on subway walls. Let’s see if anybody beats that.

New York Gives All The Key’s To The City To Thankful Zombies

/ Phil Strawn / 12 Comments
Jaques Coustou holds Mayor Adams’s Voodoo Doll

Not that Momo and I plan to visit New York in our lifetime, which has shortened considerably in the last three years due to calculated circumstances. Today, I read in the New York Press that Mayor Adams is begging fellow New Yorkers to house migrants/invaders in their private residences. What..are all the four and five-star hotels full? It’s reported by untrusted and misinformed sources that the hordes of illegal river rafters have trashed most of the hotels in New York to the point that they will need total reconstruction if the verminatosious are ever evicted.

One well-meaning moronic family in Long Island, feeling all warm and fuzzy after a Saturday morning trip to Starbucks and Barnes and Noble Bookstore, offered two rooms of their luxurious home as a safe haven for a poor migrant family. They called the appropriate agency, and within an hour, a family of four from Haiti was knocking at their door, ready to move into their new “forever home.” The Haitian family needed a few extra rooms for their goats and chickens, which would be used in voodoo ceremonies, and one of their children, a certified living dead Zombie, ate the family’s pet cat, Doonsbury Jr. After a week of torment, finding voodoo dolls in their likeness all over the house, and fearing for their lives, B.D. and Joanie Caucus and their two children, Zonker and Lacy fled in the dead of night from their 2.5 Million Dollar abode and are now staying at the Fredrick Mercury homeless shelter in Queens. The Haitian family has had the locks and the alarm code changed and has run up a $2,000.00 DoorDash bill using Mrs. Caucus’s credit cards found in a desk drawer. Bet they’re feeling all warm and fuzzy about now.

Tay-Tay Kicks Kanye’s Ta-Ta…Elly Mae Jets In From Beverley Hills

This will be my last paragraph about Tay-Tay Swifter. The Super Bowl did me in. Momo and I went down in flames. Eleven times, the cameras cut to the “anoited one” and her entourage of hangers-on instead of showing the game. Now, I learn that she had poor, old, downtrodden Kanye West barred from attending the event after he had purchased seats in front of her private suite. “Like…you know….like…ain’t nobody gonna…like…. steal my camera time,” she was overheard saying to her new bestie, Elly Mae Mahomes. Poor old Travis, her knuckle-dragging fiance, has been forced to move out of his home because manic packs of young “Swifties” invaded his residence and are refusing to leave until Tay-Tay comes to the house and gives them a blessed Swiftie communion. There’s a song in there somewhere.

“Things That Keep Me Awake On A Sunday Night, But I Forgot To Write About Until Monday Night”

/ Phil Strawn / 7 Comments

Jeez-al-mighty, the radicals have kicked Joe Bee to the curb. He is officially a useless old man that has outlived his pecker. Willie Nelson said it first, and he should know; he’s much older than JB and has access to better weed.

With Joe Bee soon to be in the memory care home, that cute dancing Latino congress girl from New York is now free to roam the hallowed halls of Congress and possibly the White House acting like Castro’s daughter while bossing everyone around. But, of course, Jill ( not a doctor) Biden doesn’t give a street rat’s ass if she does; she got Joe Bee to sign everything over to her, even Hunter’s laptop and collection of ancient Mayan crack pipes.

Since a handful of NFL games were canceled, ratings are up!

My wife and I thought we had the Omicron. Watery eyes, coughing, tearing up, a snotty nose, then we realized we were watching The Sound of Music. I’m better today.

Senator Manchin just bitch slapped the radical Democratic party. He saved the country, the economy, and every God-fearing citizen that lives here. Hats off to Mr. Manchin. The only thing that would be sweeter would be for him to sucker punch Pelosi while she’s drinking her Gin and Tonic ice cream float.

I visited our local on the square bookstore today; I purchased a Christmas gift for my wife. It’s a hometown place with a great assortment of the latest books, hot tea and biscuits, and friendly folks. The business was great, and the place was packed to the walls, and not one person was looking at their phone. Imagine that.

“It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Last Christmas”

/ Phil Strawn / 8 Comments
Cub Scout Den BR549 from Queens has had enough of the shutdown and demands Santa does his job.

New York City is shuttering Broadway for a second year. The Rockets were sent home with a fruit basket and a frozen Turkey, and Saturday Night Live is going on with its infamous Christmas show minus a live audience and limited cast and crew, which would improve the performance. So instead, Omicron has arrived in grand style with the highest ratings yet for a virus.

Why was there no “Omicron” balloon in Macy’s parade? An ” Omicron” dressed as Santa sitting in his sleigh would have made the kiddies squeal with delight. DeBlasio knew it was in his city, waiting patiently to make a late but well-timed entrance, descending a gold lame’ staircase like one of Truman Capote’s society Swans. The pesky bug is full of itself, flexing its Christmas muscle and looking every bit, the superstar that it is.

Maya Sharona, head correspondent humanoid for NPR, caught up with a few typical New Yorkers in Times Square that voiced their displeasure with the new shutdown and mandates.

Mustafa De’ San Angelo, a well-known homeless beggar, and famous Times Square criminal, told Ms. Sharona that his business is down by Eighty percent since last weekend, so he will have to start robbing other beggers or resume mugging the elderly. Ms. Sharona offered him a twenty-dollar bill, but he punched her in the face and snatched her Gucci purse. A nearby cop promptly wrote her a ticket for bleeding on the sidewalk and crying in public.

The New York Post of the Salvation Army, in its attempt to make the organization more white and less racist, sent all-white employees home without pay for the rest of the year. When asked if the Army would be hosting the annual feed the homeless Christmas dinner at Madison Square Garden, their spokesperson said, ” we don’t have anyone left to work, and they took all their food home with them.” They put in a call to Joe and Jill Biden about donating some grub, but they are not returning calls.

This Christmas may be better than last year. Right?