Supertramp – "Take the Long Way Home" (1979)

You took the long way home

You took the long way home

You took the long way home

(If you think Supertramp took the long way home, just wait until you read this 2 or 3 lines and the one that follows it.)

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I’ve violated the First Law of Holes – “If you find yourself in a hole, you need to stop digging” – many times in my life.

2 or 3 lines has fallen into this trap more than once.  When I start reading a book or watching a TV series, I will nearly always keep going until I finish it – no matter how much of a struggle it is.

I do the same thing when I decide to write about something on this blog.  Even if what seemed like a good idea for a post turns out to be not such a good idea, I find myself compelled to keep digging until I find something I can publish.  

But most of the time, I have to dig really deep to find that something – which is rarely is worth all the digging.

So I’m giving you fair warning.  That’s what happened with this post, and with the one that follows.  (When I spend so much time on a post like this one, I try to get my money’s worth by dividing it into two posts.)

I should have just stopped and deleted the damn thing after the first 10,000 words.  But once I invest that much time and effort in a post, I am loath to admit defeat.  So I just kept going, and kept going, and kept going . . . 

You may decide not to stick with me until the end.  But if you do, never fear: I may be taking the long way home, but I promise you that we’ll get there eventually.

Whether the destination is worth the journey is another matter altogether

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New York City is clearly the hottest of the COVID-19 hot spots.  

As of April 25, the coronavirus had caused 11,419 deaths in New York City.  That’s 135.2 deaths per 100,000 residents.  (Many believe that count understates the true number by several thousand, but let’s stick with the official number for the time being.) 

Things aren’t nearly as bad in the San Francisco Bay area – where the first coronavirus death in the United States occured.

San Francisco has just over one-tenth as many residents as New York City – 883,000 compared to 8,400,000.  So you might expect San Francisco to have about one-tenth as many COVID-19 deaths at New York City – something in the range of 1150 deaths.

But San Francisco has had only 22 COVID-19 deaths to date – or 2.5 deaths per 100,000 residents.

In other words, a New York City resident is OVER 50 TIMES more likely to die from coronavirus than a San Francisco resident.

There are a lot of different theories about why New York City has had so many more deaths than San Francisco.  Let’s discuss a few of the more popular ones.

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The most popular explanation for why New York City has had more COVID-19 deaths by far than San Francisco or other cities is that it is the most very densely populated big city in the United States, with 27,000 souls per square mile.  It also has a notoriously crowded subway system that most New Yorkers use to get to work.  The coronavirus thrives on close contact between humans, and you simply can’t live in the Big Apple and avoid such contact.

But San Francisco is also a very crowded city.  In fact, it’s the second-most densely populated city in the U.S., with over 19,000 residents per square mile.  

So New York City has one and a half times as many people per square mile as San Francisco – a significant difference – but its COVID-19 death rate is over 50 times greater.

And while New Yorkers have the highest rate of public transit usage in the country, a lot of San Franciscans use mass transit as well.

If New York City’s COVID-19 death rate was twice as high, three times as high, or five times as high as San Francisco’s, it wouldn’t be a stretch to explain that by pointing to New York City’s greater population density and more popular mass-transit system.

But New York City has a COVID-19 death rate that is over 50 times greater.

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A lot of people think that demographic differences between the two cities may explain the death rate discrepancies.

It’s true that New York City has more African-American and Hispanic residents than San Francisco, and that African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely to die from the coronavirus than whites or Asians.  (San Francisco is only slightly whiter than New York City, but it does have quite a few more Asian-Americans.)

San Francisco is only slightly whiter than New York City, but a much larger percentage of its population is Asian (34% to 14%) – and Asian-Americans seem to die less frequently from COVID-19.

New York City’s population is 22% African-American and 29% Hispanic.  Of the New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19, 28% were black and 34% were Hispanic.  

That’s disproportionately high compared to the overall population numbers, but the differences aren’t that dramatic – they certainly wouldn’t suggest a 50-times-greater death rate.  

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And other demographic differences cut the other way.

For example, young people are far less likely than seniors to succumb to COVID-19.  (Only 1% of coronavirus victims were 24 or younger, while almost 80% were 65 or older.)

San Francisco’s high-tech industry attracts young people like sh*t attracts flies, but New York City’s population is actually younger than San Francisco’s.

For example, a slightly higher percentage of San Franciscans are over 65 – 15.1% compared to 14.1% of New York City’s residents.  More significantly, New York City has a considerably higher proportion of children – 27.4% of New Yorkers are 18 and under, while only 17.9% of San Franciscans are that young.  

Also, about 60 percent of the people who die from coronavirus are men.  (At least that’s what’s happening in New York City.  Believe it or not, the CDC doesn’t have death figures broken down by gender.)  San Francisco has a slightly higher percentage of male residents than New York City (51% to 48%), which would tend to skew the COVID-19 death rate slightly higher in San Francisco.

In other words, some of the demographic differences between the two cities seem to favor San Francisco, while others favor New York City.  There’s nothing there that explains a death rate that’s 50 times greater.

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Governor Cuomo of New York – who has to be feeling some heat over the fact that his state has by far the worst coronavirus situation in the country – came up with another theory recently.  He says it’s the Italians’ fault:

Last November, December, we knew that China had a virus outbreak.  You could read about it in the newspapers, right?  Everybody knew.  January 26, we know we had the first confirmed case in Seattle, Washington, and California. February 2nd, the president ordered a travel ban from China. March 1st we have the first confirmed case in the state of New York. . . .

March 16th, [President Trump issues] a full travel ban from Europe.  Researchers now find and they report in some newspapers, the virus was spreading wildly in Italy in February and there was an outbreak, massive outbreak in Italy in February. . . . [T]he coronavirus flu virus that came to New York, did not come from China. It came from Europe. . . .

A researcher now says knowing the number of flights coming into New York from Italy, it was like watching a horrible train wreck in slow motion.  Those are the flights that were coming from Italy and from Europe, January and February.  We closed the front door with the China travel ban, which was right.  Even in retrospect, it was right, but we left the back door open because the virus had left China by the time we did the China travel ban. 

That’s an interesting theory, but I haven’t been able to find much evidence in support of it.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo

Not surprisingly, there is a lot more air traffic between Italy and New York City than there is between Italy and San Francisco.  So to the extent travelers from Italy carried the disease to the United States, New York City would have received a lot more of them than San Francisco.

But there are a lot more visitors from China to this country than there are visitors from Italy.  And it appears that more of those visitors flew to San Francisco than to New York City.

It’s possible that Cuomo is correct, but I don’t think he’s come anywhere near proving that Italian travelers for New York City’s much greater COVID-19 death rate.

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The final theory about why New Yorkers are 50 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than San Franciscans is that San Francisco and its neighboring jurisdictions ordered residents to “shelter in place” before New York City.

Residents of the San Francisco Bay area were directed to shelter in place on March 16.  The governor of California followed that up with a statewide order on March 19.

The next day, the New York governor issued a similar stay-at-home order that had an effective date of March 22.

So San Francisco (and its suburbs) only shut things down a few days before New York City did.  Could that short delay be sufficient to explain New York City’s 50-times-greater COVID-19 death rate?

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I think I’ve dug a big enough hole for one day.  

But never fear.  I promise that I’ll pick up my shovel in the next 2 or 3 lines and keep digging until I answer that question.

Click here to listen to today’s featured song, which was released on Supertramp’s sixth studio album, Breakfast in America, in 1979.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down – "Phenom" (2020)

I am erupting

Don't interrupt it!

Last month, Thao Nyugen was preparing to shoot a music video for “Phenom,” a soon-to-be-released new song by her San Francisco-based indie group, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down.

Thao Nyugen

But sh*t happens . . . as does coronavirus.  So Nyugen found herself in self-quarantine rather than getting together with a bunch of dancers to shoot the video.

Nguyen said she “entered a light despondency” after California’s stay-at-home order went into effect.  

(Speaking of California, have you noticed how well they handled the coronavirus compared to New York?  Cuomo, de Blasio, et al. really screwed the pooch compared to the folks in California, which has twice the population but only 7.3% as many deaths as New York.)

From the “Phenom” video

But what good is sitting alone in your room when you can fire up the ol’ computer, open up your Zoom teleconferencing app, and create “a fluidly evolving dance video of astonishing visual power and imagination” (to quote dance critic Sarah Kaufman in a review that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday). 

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Boswell once told Dr. Johnson that he had recently attended a meeting of Quakers where a woman had preached.

Dr. Johnson famously responded that “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on its hind legs.  It is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”  (Who knew Dr. Johnson was such an effing sexist?)

(Happens to me ALL the time)

That’s kind of how I felt about the “Phenom” video.  It’s clever and fun to watch once or twice – but I’m not as wild about it as the Washington Post critic was.

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Thao Nyugen has been compared to Regina Spektor as a singer.  I think Spektor’s voice is a little more forceful, and Spektor has a lot less trouble staying on pitch than Nyugen.  (Maybe she sings slightly off-key for effect.  Whatever the reason, I’d rather she didn’t.)

“Phenom” reminds me a little of Spektor’s “You’ve Got Time,” which is the song that’s played over the opening credits of Orange Is the New Black episodes.

That may because both songs have lines that repeat the word “trap” three times.

From “You’ve Got Time”:

The animals, the animals

Trap, trap, trap ’til the cage is full

From “Phenom”:

Careful I’m an animal

Trap, trap, trap

I think Nyugen’s singing on “Phenom” also sounds a little like Eminem at times.

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Click here to watch the “Phenom” video.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Napoleon XIV – "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" (1966)

And I'll be happy to see those nice young men

In their clean white coats

And they're coming to take me away

They say that it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.

As bad as the coronavirus pandemic has been, there is one good thing you can say about it: it gives you an excuse for just about any sin of omission or commission that you need an excuse for.  

A lot of excuses fall into the dog-ate-my-homework category – they just aren’t credible.  

But no one’s going to question a coronavirus-based excuse for not doing something . . . or for doing something badly . . . or for just about anything.

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Scroll down and take a look at the previous 2 or 3 lines post, which is dated Friday, April 17.

Then keep scrolling until you get to my Tuesday, March 31 post.

You’ll see that both those posts not only feature the same song, but that content is about 99% identical.

WTF?

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I try to always have two or three 2 or 3 lines posts (see what I did there?) ready to publish. 

But as Willie Nelson once wrote, it’s funny how time slips away.  Sometimes I find myself with nothing ready when the next Tuesday or Friday – which are the two days I usually post – rolls around.

When that happens, I have to sit down, crank out a post, and immediately put it up on 2 or 3 lines.

I use to draft my posts right in the Blogger program I use to publish my blog.  But that can result in a lot of odd little glitches in the final product, which used to drive me crazy.  

So now I draft my posts in Word and cut and paste the text into Blogger.  I then add links, photos, and videos.  Once everything is ready, I hit the “publish” button and sit back and relax.

Last Friday morning – April 17 – I realized I had no finished post ready to be published.  So I went to my drafts folder to see if there were any draft posts that I had previously started but not completed. (Sometimes I write an entire post in one sitting, but other times I do part of it one day and the rest of it another day – and that second day might be weeks later.) 

Turns out it was my lucky day.  I found a draft post about how the lack of sporting events during the current pandemic made things difficult for people who loved to bet, and which suggested that instead of betting on a Yankees-Red Sox game, hardcore gamblers could bet the over-under on how many pounds the average American would gain during the current self-quarantine period.  (The song I chose to feature in that post was “Go Down Gamblin’,” by Blood, Sweat & Tears.)  

I revised my draft post, cut and pasted it to Blogger, grabbed some suitable photos, added the necessary links, and hit publish.  Easy-peasy.

Then I went back to binge-watching the most recent seasons of Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Succession   (I had a seven-day free-trial subscription to HBO, so there was no time to waste.)

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The next day, I happened to scroll past my Tuesday, March 31, post.  Lo and behold, it was pretty much the same post I had published the day before.  (Bonus points if you know why I said “Lo and behold” in that sentence.)

That’s because when I saw the draft of that post in my drafts folder on April 17, I forgot that I had already finalized and published it on March 31.  

I occasionally will unintentionally feature a song that I have featured before.  Since I’ve featured over 1500 songs in the ten-plus years that my wildly successful little blog has been in existence, it’s not too surprising that I might use a song in a 2018 post that I had already used in a 2011 post.

This time, I not only featured the same song that I had featured barely two weeks ago, I used the same post.

Actually, the two posts aren’t identical.  I started with the same draft text, but the revisions I did before publishing the two posts are subtly different.

What’s more interesting is that I chose completely different photos for the two posts.

(I could give you links to the two “Go Down Gamblin’” posts, but it’s easier if you just scroll down if you want to compare them to one another.)

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After I discovered my error, you might have thought that I would delete the duplicate post and give my readers the fresh new content that they so richly deserve.

No siree, Bob – not this guy.

I not only left the two near-identical posts up, but wrote this post about how the two duplicates came to be.

In other words, I not only turned one post into two, I turned one post into three.  That’s just good old American ingenuity, boys and girls!

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I’m not worried about those nice young men in their clean white coats coming to take me away to funny farm just because I forgot that I had already published the “Go Down Gamblin’” post, but they’ll no doubt find other reasons to drop by soon enough.

“They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” was a huge hit for Napoleon XIV – really Jerry Samuels – in 1966.  (I had just finished 8th grade when it was released, so I was the perfect age to enjoy it.)

Click here to listen to “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Blood, Sweat & Tears – "Go Down Gamblin'" (1971)

I've been called a natural lover

By that lady over there

Honey, I'm just a natural gambler

But I try to do my share

Heaven help you if you’re a sports bettor – there are no sporting events to bet on these days.

Offshore betting sites are offering opportunities to bet on the weather – expected maximum temperature or the amount of rainfall in Houston on Saturday? – or who will win American Idol.  

That’s not quite as satisfying to your hardcore sports bettors as being able to bet on who will win the Masters or Wimbledon or the next Yankees-Red Sox matchup, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

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I’ve had a lot of time to think deep thoughts over the last couple of weeks.

Here are a few of the questions I’ve been pondering, all of which are suitable for wagering on if you're a hardcore gambler:

1.  Will the American birth rate go up nine months from now, or will it go down?  (I’m guessing married women will give birth to more babies, but the birth rate for unmarried women may go down.  But I could be wrong.)

2.  Will the average American gain weight or lose weight over the weeks (months?) that we self-quarantine?  (No one’s ever lost money betting that Americans will get fatter, and that’s where I’m putting my money.)

3.  We are already up to our necks in Monday-morning quarterbacking about how we responded to the pandemic, and I don’t see any sign that the second-guessing curve will start to flatten any time soon.  (Some will say President Trump moved too slowly, while others will say he and the government overreacted.  Some will say that Governor Cuomo’s actions and words were admirable, while others will say that he screwed the pooch and was responsible for the disaster that is New York City.  Cuomo is blaming Mayor de Blasio, perhaps for good reason – de Blasio was awfully blasé about the pandemic.)  Let’s say the over/under for the number of commentaries on the pandemic relying on 20/20 hindsight that will appear in print by the end of the year is a million gazillion and one – do you take the over or the under?  (I take the over.)

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Today’s featured song was written by David Clayton-Thomas, who succeeded Al Kooper as the frontman of Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Clayton-Thomas’s lyrics are as phony as a three-dollar bill, and his lead vocals – he growls, he yells, he sings falsetto, he interjects “Lord, Lord!” when he can’t think of anything else to do – are waaaaay over the top.

David Clayton-Thomas

Despite that, the record is a stick of dynamite.  The members of BS&T's brass and rhythm sections are technically very accomplished, and they really cut loose on this recording.  The horns are used very effectively to fill in the gaps in the first two verses and choruses when Clayton-Thomas isn't singing.  

But all that is merely a warmup for the eight-bar bridge that begins at 3:08 and leads into the final chorus.  It’s barely 15 seconds long, but it may be the most powerful 15 seconds of horn playing I've ever heard on a rock record.

Click here to listen to “Go Down Gamblin’.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Razz – "You Can Run (But You Can't Hide)" (1979)

The shops along the street . . .

They’re not open to me yet

What’s up, dog?

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Perhaps the only positive result of the stay-at-home orders that the governors of Maryland and Virginia issued on March 30 is that there’s very little traffic on the automobile bridges that connect those two states.

I live on the Maryland side of the Potomac, but Virginia has better bicycle trails – hands down.  I’d cross the river to ride those trails more often if the traffic didn’t poop the bed so often.  It’s bad not only during the morning and evening rush hours, but also in the middle of the day and on weekends.

I got so frustrated returning home from Virginia after a bike ride a couple of years ago that I sent a text to my four children – all of whom live on my side of the river – and told them that if they ever moved to Virginia, they shouldn’t expect any visits from me.  

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The most scenic paved bike trail in northern Virginia by far is the 18-mile-long Mount Vernon Trail, which begins at the father of our country’s old stomping grounds and proceeds along the west bank of the Potomac River to Theodore Roosevelt Island.  

The day before Easter, I drove to my oldest son’s house on Capitol Hill to say hello to him, his wife, and their two sons – who I hadn’t seen in person in over a month.  I stayed on the sidewalk and they stayed in their front yard, behind a fence.  There was no touching, of course, but it was infinitely better than just seeing them on Zoom.

From there I drove to Old Town Alexandria, the midpoint of the Mount Vernon Trail, and headed north on my trusty Trek 7.3 bike.

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Once you get out of Alexandria, you ride by the marina at Daingerfield Island:

The trail then skirts Reagan National Airport.  Usually there are planes taking off or landing every couple of minutes, but today was quite different.  Saturday afternoon is a slow time at most airports, but “slow” understates the air traffic at Reagan today.

Just north of the airport is a Gravelly Point, where there’s a large parking lot for people who want a close-up view of airplanes taking off and flying over their heads:  

I had planned to stop there and take some dramatic and noisy video of the jets to send to my grandsons, but the parking lot was closed and there were no planes taking off.

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The stretch of trail between the airport and Roosevelt Island is never more than a few yards from the Potomac.  It passes over (or under) several major D.C.-to-Virginia bridges, and several memorials – including the Navy and Marine Memorial, which commemorates Americans who were lost at sea.

That memorial is surrounded by a wide circular bed of bright-red tulips, which are at their peak right now:

(Look closely at that photo and you’ll see the Washington Monument.)

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Theodore Roosevelt Island is an undeveloped, 90-acre island that’s owned by the National Park Service.  Its walking trails are closed to visitors due to COVID-19 concerns, which seems like overkill to me.  But ours is not to question why, etc.

The northern end of the Mount Vernon Trail marks the southern terminus of the Potomac Heritage Trail, a challenging hiking trail that continues north along the river for ten additional miles.

No bikes allowed on the Potomac Heritage Trail:

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On the way back to my starting point, I stopped and took some photos of a few of the many dogwoods – which is the official state flower of Virginia – along the trail:

Dogwoods are nice, but my #1 seed when it comes to flowering trees is the Eastern redbud:

I also stopped to take some pictures of some of the construction machinery being used in the rebuilding of the Arlington Memorial Bridge:

Here’s a little one-man tugboat that’s being used in the repair project:

(My grandsons eat that stuff up.)

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The trail took me past several waterfront parks in Alexandria, where there was plenty more good stuff to photograph for my boys, including a fire engine and a paddlewheel boat:

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Contrary to the title of today’s featured song, it seems that you can hide from the coronavirus – just stay in your house 24/7 and you should be fine.  (Not mentally, of course.)  

Tommy Keene was the brains behind the Razz, the Washington-area band that released “You Can Run (But You Can’t Hide)” in 1979.  Keene was a very gifted power-pop songwriter and performer who should have hit it big but never did.  It seems his records were too commercial for music snobs, but not commercial enough to get played on the radio.

Keene, who grew up in Bethesda, MD – which is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the home of 2 or 3 lines – died in 2017.  He was only 59.

Here’s an excerpt from an appreciation of Keene that was written by fellow musician John Davis:

There is reliable romance in the story of a brilliant musician who never got the full appreciation he was due.  With the death of Tommy Keene, it might be easy to look at his career and wonder why he remained solely a cult figure among fans of the earnest, infectious branch of rock and roll that is insufficiently dubbed “power pop.”  To do so would be folly: There is only joy in reflecting on a man who brought us elegiac yet ebullient songs . . . .

Click here to listen to “You Can Run (But You Can’t Hide”), which is yet another of the great songs I first heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes’ radio show in 1980.

Original Broadway Cast – "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" (1968)

Listening for the new told lies

With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Today’s featured song popped up on my iPod on Wednesday, while I was on a coronavirus-defying bike ride in Columbia, Maryland.

That ride took place only a few days after the birth of my sixth grandchild but first granddaughter, Eliza – whose desire to depart from her mother’s body was so urgent that there was no time for her parents to drive to the hospital.  She had to be delivered at home by a crew of EMTs from the local fire station.

The only way Eliza could be more beautiful is if she was twins:

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Today – Good Friday – the high temperature where I live was only 48 degrees.  (The low tonight is supposed to get down to 36.)

But two days ago, it was 77 degrees here when I loaded up my bike and headed to Columbia to ride the Lake-to-Lake-to-Lake Trail.  

I started by circling Lake Elkhorn:

Then I rode to Lake Kittamaqundi:

My next destination was Wilde Lake:

After I circumnavigated Wilde Lake, I reversed course and headed back to my starting point.

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Columbia is not a city – it’s a “census-designated place” consisting of ten unincorporated villages.

But it’s the second-most populous community in Maryland (after Baltimore), with just over 100,000 residents.

Sixty years ago, the area that Columbia’s villages occupy today was mostly farmland.  But in 1962, developer James Rouse started quietly buying up land with the intention of building a planned community.  He eventually purchased 140 separate parcels of land covering a total of more than 14,000 acres.

A statue of James Rouse and his partner (and brother) Willard Rouse overlooks Lake Kittamaqundi.  Some wag has put face masks on both statues, which are not six feet apart:

The Rouse brothers

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“The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)” is the final song on the 1968 original cast recording of the Broadway musical Hair. 

I was a high-school junior when I bought the album, and I played it to death – but usually behind closed doors so my parents would not hear the shocking lyrics!

Click here to listen to the original Broadway cast recording of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In).”  Pay close attention at 1:42 of the track, when Lynn Kellogg and Melba Moore go to town.

Lynn Kellogg

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.