Notes From The Pandemic

 A special Notes From the Pandemic Presentation of the long lost third Smothers Brother, Sal, of whom his now middle brother said, "I understand why Mom liked him least," and whose oldest brother Tommy said upon meeting him, "I have to say, he is a real Dick."

News item: In an interview with Time magazine, Jared Kushner said that he couldn't commit to keeping the elections going in November.  He was an ambitious Senator named Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip. Promising every citizen $5,000 a year and a return to a strong economy and "traditional values" he ran for President and won. From there, everything changed. He drastically cut down the powers of Congress and set up kangaroo courts to enforce the laws he created. He built a paramilitary unit he called "The Minute Men" to stifle dissent. He eliminated minority rights and sent his political opponents and dissenters to concentration camps. He eliminated individual state governments, carving administrative "corpos" he could control more easily. It can't happen here. Right? Sinclair Lewis would disagree. That was the title of his 1936 book, which essentially predicted the rise of Donald Trump 90 years ago. Think about it. * Yesterday, with the ...

Here's a man so widely respected that with one riff he established his own genre, a riff that has since been imitated by virtually every blues artist around the world. Welcoming him back for one performance, the man about whom  BB King said backstage at the Regal, "I ain't following that motherfucker," the one, the only, the legendary Northern Bluesman, the pride of Astoria, Queens, Muddy Sewer doing his classic, "Still Got the Millennial Blues."

From the man who brought you such hits as "Sour Baby James," "Don't Let Me Be Covid Tonight" and "You've Got A Temperature," let's have a big hand, ladies and gentlemen, for the third in our series of musical PSAs, "Fury and Rain," and as always, featuring the musical stylings of Mr. Sal Nunziato,

I had been having chest pains and finding myself out of breath when walking up the slightest hill so the cardiologist suggested I come in to the hospital for a catheterization, a procedure where like a plumbing snake, they make a tiny cut inside your wrist and run a camera up your arm, through your shoulder and into your coronary arteries. It's terrifying — not the procedure, that's easy and I'm fine,  but just walking into a hospital. I'm 65, have had five stents, so I'm a high risk person, and you don't know what's floating around in the air over there or lurking around on the bannisters, but as the cardiologist said to me through my computer last week, "you have to weigh the risk against benefits," and based on my history he thought it was a risk, whatever it was, that was worth taking. So I drove the car for the first time in six weeks (it was just like riding a bike) with a worried wife next to me. Since it's an in-and-out procedure,...

A few years ago, Sue and I were watching "The Americans" (ever notice on that show that Felicity had a better record as a fighter than Muhammad Ali and more sex than Wilt Chamberlain?) when my right side went numb. I thought God was punishing me for rooting for the FBI, but doctors thought it was a TIA. I went to the hospital and recovered quickly with only some residual quiver in my hand, as if I needed another burden besides a lack of musical talent when trying to play the ukulele. Last year, I came closer than I wanted to to popping off when I found myself suffering from chest pains and shortness of breath while attempting to climb even the smallest of hills. The result was four coronary stents over two surgeries, adding to one that was put in some nine years ago. Tuesday, I go into the hospital again for another catheterization to see if my current symptoms are the result of more blockages. It's nerve wracking to be a high risk person and go to a place where the ICU...