David Royko Music & Whatever Blah Blah

One long, ranting paragraph... Hard to describe the Chris Thile  solo mandolin performance at Pick-Staiger (in Evanston), without going apesh*t with hyperbole. What I can say is that supreme mandolin master Don Stiernberg and I were commiserating afterwards in being reduced to the Chris Farley SNL talk show host character who simply geeked out over his celebs, "That scene you did was so awesome!" Well, I felt a bit better in reacting that way to Chris's concert when Don was too. He wove the entirety of his Bach CD of sonatas and partitas into a program encompassing songs from his "How to Grow..." and "The Blind Leaving..." CDs, traditional and Civil War era material, plenty of new original stuff ranging from profound to truly hilarious,  an extraordinary atonal extended-techniques avant mando intro to a Fiona Apple number, and, again, Bach Bach Bach, played expressively, with gorgeous dynamic shading, yet with real logic and knowledge of the music'...

These are things that rarely happened before the dawn of iPhone. The first happens daily in my hip, youthful building. Waiting for the elevator, the door opens. I wait a moment for the young woman in the elevator to exit. She stands, looking at her phone, and I start to enter. She glances up and, looking startled (the poor dear), she bangs into me on her mad dash out, saying, "Oops!" I guess oops is the new, hip version of "I'm sorry, I know I'm a fucking idiot." [Unrelated to the iPhone phenomena, the parents of the current generation of 20- and 30-somethings dropped the ball when it comes to teaching basic elevator etiquette in the first place. The few other old guys in the building, having been taught the mystical secrets of the elevator as children, will wait and see if anybody is exiting the elevator before getting in, just like me. But if I'm in the elevator, about to get out, and the door opens, the young'uns waiting to get in are right at the...

  If there’s anything my frequent round trips between Cleveland and Chicago provides, it’s plenty of time to contemplate the big issues of life. Death too.   Some of these deep musings are inspired by the much-holier-than-me Homo sapiens in Indiana, who erect big billboards to tell us what to expect when it’s time for the dirt nap.   This one got me thinking: “After you die, you will meet God.”   Wow. Just, wow.   Think about it from God’s perspective.   That’s quite a receiving line. A lot of hugs and handshakes. And since folks croak every day, no Sundays off for Big G (though I suppose He made the rules, so no sympathy).   Let’s also say (uneducated guess here) there are 24 hours in the Big Boss’s day, just like ours. If He created us in His image, then I’ll assume He did the same with clocks.   And let’s say that, being supreme, He only needs one hour to deal with everything else in the cosmos after the day’s meet ‘n’ greet. (That is, unless H...

  No doubt I will be pegged by somebody or other as a virulent racist for this, to whom I would sincerely and appreciatively say, go fuck yourself. So here’s why we miss them, and it is only one example.   Being a slob, I only take our car to be washed every so often (when Karen finally cannot stand it anymore). But what a difference between where we live now (Beachwood, OH) and where we lived before (Deerfield, IL). And it comes down to one thing:   Mexicans. And it's simple. Cleveland doesn't have any.   Okay, maybe not none. In the years since we've been here, we have seen two, maybe three if I strain my memory. We have been told there is a tiny enclave somewhere or other but we've never driven through it. I think it’s somewhere between Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest.   Anyway, the car wash that we used to go to in Illinois, in the wealthy ‘burb of Highland Park, was staffed almost completely by Mexicans, legal or illegal, I have no idea and I couldn't car...

Back when The Scumfuck In Chief was in his first term and going after Chicago's Mexicans, we (Family Mediation Services of the Circuit Court of Cook County) had couples asking (nicely) for earlier appointments because they expected to be deported shortly. We also had ICE show up at our offices one morning to round up a mother, father and their kid, who were there by court order for family mediation. Our department, being a part of the court, meant that I was able to keep him from going back into our offices. So the agent waited by our elevators, a public space, to nab the family as they were leaving. I called the mediator and told her what was going on, to let the couple know, and we'd try to work out a way to leave safely if they chose. I brought their child from our children's room, and they waited. I felt both enraged and nauseated. I went back up front and sat at our sheriff's desk and kept an eye on the ICE agent, and when he asked our receptionist ...