TMV is on the road and the road finally got him.
He has just finished his first major trip since while recuperating from his illness and it was lively indeed.
You haven’t lived until you’ve driven nearly straight up an Arizona mountaintop in the dead of night with lightning all around you.
And done it as your car begins to make sounds that it has a problem.
TMV did arrive but, alas, car problems must be resolved before he can make the looooooooong trek back to San Diego. So he’ll stay an extra day and a local mechanic will happily pocket TMV’s entire show fee in the end.
Ah, but we’re alive. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
Oh, to savor the joys of deserts, cactus, and hot air that doesn’t come from Washington.
To enjoy the sound of birds, the smell of fresh air and people calling you part of the left, conservative blogsophere or a hypocrite who pretends to be a moderate but is really a liberal/conservative (take your pick because we are truly blessed to receive all of these recognitions of the footprints we leave on earth).
Yes, as TMV’s life passed before him on that mountaintop — and he also thought of how it might not be fun being stranded in an area with no light, no cell phone connect, NO INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, no Charmin and possibly a bunch of bears who like Jewish food — he realized the IMPORTANT THINGS that matter.
The sound of a baby’s laugh, a kitten’s first mew, a teenager moving out of the house.
Ah, yes, life goes on.
So TMV will NOT be able to post more than you see today (until maybe later). But going on this long drive when he wasn’t quite well, seeing the lightning, and his car breaking down, has made him think about the real priorities: finding a way to see that key episode of the Sopranos that he missed last night.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.