Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Snow (Hey Oh)" (2006)

Runnin’ through the field

Where all my tracks will be concealed

So how’s the weather where you are today?  

At the 2 or 3 Lines World Headquarters campus, we’re up to our ass in snow.  (Speaking of our ass, we’re freezing it off as well. ) 

As Charles Dudley Warner famously said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”  (You probably thought that Mark Twain famously said that, but he didn’t – that quote came from Warner, who was a close friend of Twain.)

My favorite weather-related quote comes from Oscar Wilde:

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.  

True dat.

Here’s a really annoying quote about the weather from the 19th-century English polymath, John Ruskin:

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

I call bullsh*t on John Ruskin.

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I referred to Ruskin as a “polymath,” which is a term used to describe someone who is learned in many different fields. (“Renaissance man” is another term used to describe such a person.) 

Ruskin was an influential art critic.  But he also wrote on geology, mythology, crystallography, ornithology, and economics .  

Ruskin was also a talented draftsman whose three-volume treatise, The Stones of Venice, contains detailed drawings of many Venetian structures.  (Ruskin thought Venice’s architectural heritage was at risk, and wanted to preserve it – at least on paper.)

John Ruskin’s drawing of
the Ducal Palace in Venice 

Ruskin was no fan of industrial capitalism, which he believed polluted not only the environment but also the soul.  He championed many things that are now viewed as standard elements of the modern welfare state — like universal education, a minimum wage, and urban green spaces.

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Law students take classes covering a broad array of legal subjects.  

But the explosive proliferation of laws and regulations over the past several decades have made it impossible for lawyers to be legal jacks of all trades.  Just as most doctors focus on one part of the body, most attorneys limit their practice to one particular legal area – whether that’s corporate law, or patent law, or family law, or criminal law, or something else.

As lawyers get older, they often find themselves narrowing the breadth of their practice in order to deepen their knowledge of their speciality.

One of my law partners formulated a succinct description of how a lawyer’s practice tends to become increasingly specialized as time passed.  “We learn more and more about less and less,” he used to say, “until we know almost everything about almost nothing.”

That’s it in a nutshell.  A legal jack of all trades is almost certainly a master of none.  Even John Ruskin would have to specialize if he were a 21st-century lawyer.

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“Snow (Hey Oh)” was the third single from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2006 double album, Stadium Arcadium.

Stadium Arcadium was recorded at a Laurel Canyon house known as “The Mansion,” which was owned by record producer Rick Rubin.  

The first album ever recorded at “The Mansion” was RHCP’s best record ever, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.  Others who have recorded there include Jay-Z (“99 Problems”), LCD Soundsystem (“Drunk Girls”), and System of a Down (who recorded both the Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums there).

Click here to listen to “Snow (Hey Oh).”

Click here to buy “Snow (Hey Oh)” from Amazon.

Jessie Murph (ft. Gucci Mane) – "Donuts" (2025)

I-I-I’m in the parkin’ lot 

Hittin’ donuts, donuts

As I write this post, much of the country is being hammered by snow, sleet, and freezing rain.

Everyone understands what snow is, but a lot of people don’t understand the distinction between sleet and freezing rain.

Fortunately, the internet provides a crystal-clear explanation of the difference:

That’s brilliant – after all, who doesn’t understand the difference between glazed donuts and donuts with sprinkles?

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I don’t know who first thought of using a donuts graphic to illustrate how sleet and freezing rain differ, but he should have gotten a copyright on the idea because every television station in the country is using it.

Here are a few examples:

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I’m a little late to the Jessie Murph party, but better late than never – it would have been a tragedy if my loyal 2 or 3 lines readers had missed out on the toothsome 21-year-old hip-hop/country artist.

2 or 3 lines is a big fan of Gucci Mane, who is featured on “Donuts” – which was released only a few months ago on Jessie’s second studio album, Sex Hysteria. 

From Jem Aswad’s review of that album in Variety:

As the title suggests, the lyrics are NSFW and up-front: there are lots of songs about sex and lust and partying and, to quote one lyric directly, “You f*cking f*ck, f*ck you” (which takes up three of the album’s 36 f-bombs in five words).  But they’re just as unsparing about the issues stemming from her “sh*tty father” and rough upbringing.  The most harrowing of those, the deeply personal “Man That Came Back,” almost could be a Dixie Chicks song (and is the only one here that could even vaguely be considered country), while the opening “Gucci Mane” looks at the fallout from the daddy issues (“I know I love sh*tty men/They normally contribute to the state that I’m in”), even as it ends on a humorous note: “I’ll sample ‘Lemonade’ to make Gucci Mane proud.”

Click here to read the 2010 2 or 3 lines that featured Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade.” 

Click here to listen to “Donuts.”

Click here to buy “Donuts” from Amazon.

Yardbirds – "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (1966)

Walking in the room, I see

Things that mean a lot to me

Why they do, I never know

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about my recent colonoscopy, and how happy I was that I could go five years before having another one.

It turns out I was wrong about that.  I just heard from my gastroenterologist – which is the second-longest and hard-to-spell medical speciality after “otorhinolaryngologist” – who had this to say about the one “teeny-tiny” polyp she found during my procedure:

The biopsy results show a reparative polyp which is a benign growth that forms in your digestive tract as part of the healing process after inflammation or injury to the lining. . . . These polyps are not cancerous and are not the same as the adenomatous polyps that can turn into cancer. ​ ​

That was certainly welcome news.  But she had even better tidings for me:

Based on your history, we can consider another colonoscopy in ten years for continued colorectal cancer screening. ​ ​​ ​

Learning that I can wait until 2036 to have another colonoscopy instead of having to undergo the procedure again in 2031 made me a very happy camper.  

But it gets even better.

You see, I’m really, really old.  I might manage to live another five years.  But I figure there is almost no chance that I’ll still be above ground ten years from now.  (Given the extreme rock ’n’ roll lifestyle I’ve lived – eat your heart out, Keith Richards! – it’s a miracle I’ve survived as long as I have.)

So the odds are very good that I will never have to undergo the ordeal of a colonoscopy “prep” again.  Hooray! 

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Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck – who hold down the #2, #3, and #5 spots, respectively, on Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists” list – were all members of the Yardbirds at one time or another.

Clapton joined the group in October 1963 but left a year and a half later.  The band wanted Jimmy Page to replace him, but Page turned them down.  He suggested they offer the job to Jeff Beck, who agreed to join the Yardbirds in March 1965.

When the Yardbirds’ bass player quit the band in June 1966, they persuaded Jimmy Page to take his place.  But when Beck fell ill a couple of months later while the group was touring the U.S., Page took over lead guitarist responsibilities.

The Beck-Page Yardbirds

The brilliant “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” which was recorded in the summer of that year, features both Beck and Page as co-lead guitarists.  But Beck left the group in November, leaving Page as the group’s sole lead guitarist.

When the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, Page put together Led Zeppelin, which recorded a song titled “Ten Years Gone” about a decade after the release of “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”  Led Zeppelin was notorious for stealing songs from other artists without giving proper credit, but “Ten Years Gone” doesn’t really have anything in common with “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” other than the use of “ten years” in the title.

Click here to listen to “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”

Click here to buy “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” from Amazon.

David Bowie – "Five Years" (1972)

We’ve got five years

That’s all we've got

In The King and I, Anna – a widowed British schoolteacher who has agreed to move halfway around the world to tutor the children of the King of Siam – advises her anxious young son to “whistle a happy tune” whenever he is afraid.

Acting nonchalant when you’re in a scary situation does two things, she explains.  First, your false bravado fools other people.  More importantly, you can fool yourself:

The result of this deception

Is very strange to tell

For when I fool the people I fear

I fool myself as well

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I used to be a pretty good whistler.  But I seem to have lost that ability.

If I had been whistling a couple of days ago, it would have been to conceal the anxiety I was feeling about my upcoming colonoscopy.  But now that the procedure is over and done with, any whistling that I’m able to do is in celebration of the fact that it’s FIVE YEARS until I have to undergo the procedure again.

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I’m sure that those of you who have had a colonoscopy will agree that the procedure (done under sedation) is a piece of cake compared to the preparation for the procedure.

My particular colonoscopy “prep” was called GoLYTELY.  Whoever came up with that name is a very sick person who should be allowed to marry and have children.  (The “Go” part of the name was certainly accurate, but the “LYTELY” part was certainly not.)

The unpleasantness of going without food for a day and a half pales in comparison to the misery of having to drink eight glasses of GoLYTELY the evening before the colonoscopy, and eight more glasses the morning of the procedure.

GoLYTELY’s primary active ingredient is polyethylene glycol 3350, an osmotic laxative that induces watery diarrhea.  The idea is to empty the colon so completely that your doctor has a perfectly clear view of the colon walls.  

The product also contains essential electrolytes to prevent the dangerous dehydration that might otherwise occur from such rapid fluid loss. 

I can report that guzzling 16 glasses of GoLYTELY worked like a charm for me – after the procedure was over, my doctor gave my colon two thumbs up for emptiness.  

Looking back on the experience, I have to wonder if it was really necessary to consumer 16 doses of laxative in a 16-hour period to achieve the desired effect – perhaps that was a bit of overkill.  

But better safe than sorry – right?  After all, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the woman in the waiting area next to mine.  I overheard her doctor tell her that she would have to redo the procedure in three months because her prep wasn’t as successful as mine was.  “I couldn’t get very far,” he explained to her.

(I never wanted to be a doctor.  But if I had to be one, gastroenterology would be very low on my list of preferred specialties.) 

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“Five Years” – the opening track of David Bowie’s legendary 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – warns the listener that the end of the world is coming soon: “Five years, that’s all we’ve got.”

Five years may not be a long time to stave off an apocalypse.  But I’m not complaining that I only have five years before I have to undergo another colonoscopy – after all, there’s a good chance that I’ll have the last laugh and be dead by then!

Click here to listen to “Five Years.”

Click here to buy “Five Years” from Amazon.