music

Regarding That Which Despicable Beings Create

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Always a conundrum — what to do with something good created by someone bad.

I mean, take HP Lovecraft for instance. Are horrors authors and readers still praising him so for his early contributions to the genre? Fortunately for me, having read his work long before learning he was such a virulent racist, I find his writing flat and uninteresting and way, way overrated so shunning him to the dustbin of the disgraced is no problemo.

But there are a lot of other types of situations and scenarios out there that can put one in such an unpleasant conundrum…

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Eddie Money’s Music will Forever be 💲💲💲, yo

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Wikipedia

My very first concert, the July 19, 1980, World Series of Rock at the Cleveland Stadium, also happened to be the very best and most memorable concert I’ve ever attended.

That day was one massive mess of merriment and music…

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In Eternal Hope and Pursuit of Gridiron Glory

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As an Ohio boy at heart and forever a fan of Cleveland sports teams, I’ve been conditioned by a lifetime of game day let downs, defeats, and disappointments to annually at the end of each football season take comfort in the old saw of a saying…

Well, there’s always next year.

But guess what sports fans, this just may be the next year every long disappointed yet always devoted Cleveland Browns fan has been hoping for.

There’s an energy around this year’s team that hasn’t been felt since Bernie Kosar and the Kardiac Kids days before him…

Yeah, it’s been that long.

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We Should Be Dancing… Not Dying

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With all the constant blood and violence in this constantly bloody and violent nation of mine, a la yesterday’s insane mass killing after a gun-toting asshole goes off his nutty handle during a routine traffic stop, I hardly feel like getting my groove on.

But get my groove on I must or else I will become completely consumed by the constant blood and violence and do nothing more than wallow in a constant state of misery and fear…

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A Poem Illicit by Cindy Knoke

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The popular photographer and poet Cindy Knoke wrote us a poem in response to our ongoing flash fiction contest (which ends at midnight tonight so go vote for your favorite story!). Unfortunately, per the fine print of the contest rules, only flash fiction responses meeting the stated criteria will be accepted. All other responses are to be deleted. Yeah, I get down like that. However, reading Cindy’s poem felt to me like listening to a Tom Waits song and if anyone knows me they know I have a huge man crush on Tom. No way I could abandon her poem to a trash can death. So instead I share it here with you where it can shimmy and shake for all eternity as a special supplement to our weekly Sunday Song to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance…

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Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance

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So for the past two months I’ve been stuck within the tedious and grinding and painful first phase of the developmental process for my next book (while I can’t say the first phase is my favorite phase of the entire book development process — to me the entire process of developing a book is tedious and grinding and painful — I can at least say it is the least tedious and grinding and painful of them all) when it recently suddenly dawned upon me that I am not yet ready to let go of the last book I that tediously and grindingly and painfully developed…

Which of course is The Good Kill, thank you very much.

At first I tried to fight through the desire to not let it go but it wasn’t working…

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So Many Weird Grammar Moods Give Me the Blues

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Weird moods such as…

As do weird modern remakes of classic Moody Blues mood music…

#newisnotalwaysbetter

 

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance

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Notice that the artist’s last name is the same as yours truly. Yes, Willis is my eldest son so I expect and demand that you dance to his music and spread the regenerating and healing vibes forward and forever onward by share, share, sharing his melodious and infective love.

Willis has other such delectable jams at his Soundcloud channel so please go there and repeat as above.

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The Spirit of What Remains

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While I’ve given up completely on superhero movies, ugh, especially Marvels’, UGH!, I am still a fan of the superhero genre in spirit and I have very fond memories of as a child riding my bike to the local grocery store and spending all the allowance I had just received on the latest Batman, Superman, and Spiderman comic books and, at a penny a piece, a handful of Bazooka bubblegum with its own little Bazooka Joe comic strip on the inside of the wrappers.

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