Simon and Garfunkel – "I Am a Rock" (1965)

I have my books

And my poetry to protect me

I am shielded in my armor

Hiding in my room 

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I talked to fellow blogger extraordinaire Brienne Walsh Zipperer about her pregnancy, expensive SoHo lofts, and rude subway-riding Hasidic Jews.

In today’s 2 or 3 lines, Brienne and I talk about reading and writing. 

McNally Jackson Books in SoHo

2 or 3 lines: Let's get serious for a moment.  On our way to lunch, we stopped at McNally Jackson Books around the corner on Prince Street.  Everyone knows I get all my books at the public library, so I didn't buy anything.  But you picked up a few books – tell my readers what you bought.

Brienne:  I just bought everything you recommended because you are a genius.  I’m kidding, but not really.  You are one of the few people I know who is as devoted a reader as I am.  I love talking to you about books.    

2 or 3 lines:  Thank you, Brienne – I'm very pleased to know you feel that way.

Brienne at the bookstore

Brienne:  I’m pretty shallow, so I’m very impressed by the fact that you went to Harvard Law School.  What’s even more impressive is that you were accepted by Harvard as an undergraduate but you turned them down, which absolutely no one does!

2 or 3 lines:  Well, Harvard doesn’t see many applications from poor African-American kids from Joplin, Missouri – I’m sure that helped me get accepted.

Brienne:  But you’re not African-American! 

2 or 3 lines:  You know that, and I know that, Brienne – but the Harvard College admissions department didn’t know it.  Anyway, tell me about the books you bought today.

Brienne: I bought We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which I’m going to read first. 

[NOTE:  Between the day we had lunch and today, Brienne read We Need to Talk About Kevin and posted her review of it on her blog.  Click here to read it.  Since I recommended that book to her, you would have thought that she would have given me some credit.  But she didn’t even mention my name.] 

Brienne:  I also bought The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  You recommended Madame Bovary, so I picked up the Lydia Davis translation of it.  Finally, you bought me The Turnaround by George Pelecanos, so I will have to read it.

2 or 3 lines: Yes, you will.

Brienne:  I know our trip to the bookstore is going to significantly improve my life over the next week.  Normally I spend at least eight hours of my day feeling oppressively bored – so thanks for all of the recommendations!

2 or 3 lines:  I need to tell my readers that I recommended a lot of books as we strolled through the bookstore, but you had already read nearly all of them.  Meanwhile, you recommended a number of books to me that I had never heard of – it got to be a little embarrassing after a while.  You're how old – 32? – how have you managed to read so many good books at such a young age?  

Brienne:  Many reasons.  I hate hanging out with people, and rarely ever leave the house.  I’m incredibly lazy.  I love immersing myself in fantasy worlds so that I don’t have to deal my humdrum reality.  I could go on, but I’ll just end up sounding like a Buzzfeed list about introverts.  In essence, books are my great love, which sounds trite, but is true.

2 or 3 lines:  Any book recommendations for me and the readers of 2or3lines?

Brienne:  There’s Elena Ferrante’s four “Neopolitan” novels, and also Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series – only Book I is really worth it, however.  Recently, I read War and Peace, which I expected to be oppressively boring, but I devoured it like I would devour a Downton Abbey marathon after eating a couple of weed brownies.  I loved Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, too.  I just read a great junk science fiction novel called Ancillary Justice.  We talked about Lionel Shriver a few minutes ago – her Big Brother, which is about obesity and overeating, is very good.

Brienne reading Knausgaard's "My Struggle"

2 or 3 lines: Buckle your seat belt, because this interview is about to become really meta.  To tell the truth, we didn't go to the bookstore before we had lunch – we went after we had lunch.  And I'm writing this interview up a few weeks after we met as if we are talking as we are eating lunch, which would mean that we haven't actually gone to the bookstore yet.  But we have gone to the bookstore, of course.  And you’ve already read one of the books you bought on my recommendation and written a review of it.  It's like we’re doing time travel.

Brienne:  It is.  I think we both know and love that we live in a totally constructed reality.  There’s no shame in that.

2 or 3 lines: Which brings me to a very important point.  You and I both write blogs that are largely autobiographical – some would say narcissistic. 

Brienne: I agree that my writing is narcissistic.  That’s because I’m lazy.  It would take a lot of effort to actually leave my apartment and find people worth writing about, so usually I just opt for the easy way out and write about myself.

2 or 3 lines: One thing about your writing that I've always been terribly impressed by is how honest and frank it seems to be – you hold nothing back, whether you are writing about yourself or your family and friends.  Have I been fooled?  Are you being as fearlessly honest as I think you are?  Or do you bend the truth a little from time to time?   

Brienne: No, I’m fearlessly honest about the things that matter.  I might bend the truth when it comes to the details –sometimes I’ll say that something happened in person when it actually happened over the phone.  And sometimes I make the people I write about angrier or more ridiculous than they actually were.  My father, for example – I write like he’s the Robert DeNiro character in Meet the Parents with a healthy dose of Depression-inspired cheapness.   But in actuality, my father’s a very eloquent, intelligent, and funny guy himself – he appreciates my caricature of him because he spends a lot of his time caricaturing people himself.

2 or 3 lines:  For me, it’s not so much that I write things that aren’t true – the real dishonesty comes from self-censorship.  Maybe I should have written my blog anonymously so I didn't have to worry about revealing secrets I don’t want to reveal, or offending my family and friends.  You once told me that your husband doesn't read your blog – is that still the case?  And what about your parents or your sister or others you are close to?  Do you pull your punches at all when you write about them?

Brienne: The most deceptive thing I do is to not tell everything, so I’m just like you in that regard.  A writer inherently manipulates his or her audience, even if that audience is only two or three people.  And yes, I do hold a lot back.  I almost never talk about how much I think about my ex-boyfriends, for example.  And I never write about people who get angry at me for writing about them.

For example, my mother – who doesn’t even use a computer – seems to immediately know whenever I write about her.  It’s like she has a maternal sixth sense.  For example, for my birthday two years ago, she gave me a bag of her old bras.  She threw in a used rainbonnet in case I wanted to wear it at an outdoor Christmas party and look like a madwoman.  This happened in November.  The bras were 20 years old, and neither my mother nor I need them because both of us are AA cups.

In any case, I wrote a funny post about the bras, which she somehow found out about.  She ended up disinviting me from the family Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.  She only started talking to me again after she got in a fight with my sister.   She needs to have at least one adult daughter to call before her tennis lesson every morning.

By the way, I’m pretty sure my mom will find out about this post telepathically, so I blame you if she leaves me alone in the hospital when I give birth to my daughter.  But . . . whatever.

2 or 3 lines:  What effect do you think being a mother is going to have on your writing?  Obviously your new daughter is going to demand a lot of your time and energy.  On the other hand, you're going to have a lot of new topics to write about.

Brienne: I’m not sure yet.  I’m hoping it gives me purpose.  I’m hoping it also opens me up to write fiction, which I’m terrified I’m not capable of.  But otherwise, I don’t see it changing my writing that much.  I’ve always written about what’s going on in my life, and having a daughter is yet another thing that will happen to me.

On a side note, I have almost nothing to do most days, so I’m actually looking forward to having something to fill my embarrassment of free time.

2 or 3 lines: You know how talented how I think you are.  But I know that the odds of breaking through and finding a large audience are stacked against you and other young writers.  You've admitted to having a lot of self-doubt or even self-loathing.  You find it hard at times to make yourself write.  Where would you like to be as a writer in five or ten years, and what do you think are realistic goals?

Brienne: The most realistic goal is that I’m still writing.  I used to think that if you put the work in, you would eventually “make it” – by which I meant, publish some books, get some acclaim, win some awards, be universally adored.  But after eight years of failing, I don’t see that happening for me.  If I’m still writing my blog in five years, even if no one reads it, I will see that as a personal accomplishment.  Not because it’s a struggle to write on it, but rather, because I usually lose interest in things pretty quickly, and I still haven’t lost interest in writing on the blog yet.  It’s been the one thing that has anchored me to my own life for as long as I’ve had the courage to write in the first place.

*       *       *       *       *

If I had to write a two-word or three-word epitaph for myself, “reader” would be one of the words I would choose.

Books are wonderful things, but I know that I use books to avoid facing up to reality at times.  I think Brienne would admit that she does the same thing. 

And based on the lines from “I Am a Rock” quoted at the beginning of this 2 or 3 lines, it would appear that Paul Simon does as well.

Here’s “I Am a Rock”:

Click below to order the song from Amazon:

Paul Anka – "(You're) Having My Baby" (1974)

The seed inside you, baby, 

Do you feel it growing?

It's been a long time since I’ve caught up with fellow blogger extraordinaire, Brienne Walsh Zipperer.

Click here to read Brienne's blog, A Brie Grows in Brooklyn.  (Her father took the words right out of my mouth when he called it "lewd and disturbing.")

I like to refer to Brienne as "The Next Big Thing" because I believe that she is destined to accomplish great things in the world of belles lettres.  

Ever since I made Brienne’s acquaintance a few years ago, I’ve attached myself to her like a suckerfish attaches itself to a great white shark, determined to hang on to her as she rockets to fame and fortune . . . which I see as a foregone conclusion.

Rubirosa Ristorante

I recently sat down with Brienne for pranzo at Rubirosa Ristorante, a charming little family-style restaurant in lower Manhattan.  Here's how our conversation went:

2or3lines:  First things first, Brienne.  You are pregnant with your first child, which is wonderful news for you and your husband Caleb.  You're having a little girl, correct?

Brienne:  Yes, exactly.  I’m actually scared of having a little girl because of how much of my life I’ve spent being ignored by my own mother.  But I’m happy at the same time because I get to dress her in pretty outfits.  Before we found out the gender, I was 100% sure I was having a boy.  So there’s also a part of me that wonders if I’m actually having a transgendered male.

2or3lines:  When is the little bundle of joy due?  From the looks of that belly, I'm guessing pretty soon – hopefully your water won't break before the waiter gets here with our pasta.

Brienne: Is that your oblique, passive-aggressive way of saying I’m fat, Gary? 

2or3lines:  Passive-aggressive?  Me?

Brienne: I’m actually not due until August 26.  I do have a surprisingly large bump.  But my doctor says it’s very healthy, and surprisingly enough, I’ve only gained ten pounds, which is impressive.  Not to mention that a bump is like having a handicapped sticker; in public, it lets you get away with almost anything.

2or3lines:  You've taken your husband's last name and now go by Brienne Walsh Zipperer.  Any particular reason you decided to use your husband's name rather than sticking with your father's name?  I wouldn't think there's any feminist angle to keeping your father's name instead of switching to your husband's -- either way, you've got a guy's last name – but maybe I'm missing something.

Brienne: I actually only changed to my husband’s name on Facebook in a manic fit of excitement after the wedding. Also, I think I was trying to make Caleb’s ex-wife jealous in case she was stalking me? In any case, I’m far too lazy to change my name legally, it involves a lot of paperwork

The happy couple

2or3lines:  All good reasons.  We're eating today at Rubirosa Ristorante on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan.  I guess they call this neighborhood "NoLita" for "North of Little Italy."  Most of my readers aren't trendy sophisticates like you and I, so maybe you can tell them a little about the history of the neighborhood and what it is like today.

Brienne:  First of all, Little Italy is no longer a real neighborhood – it’s really just a fantasy left over from the 1970s.  When I was younger, my father used to take us there on the weekends because I’m pretty sure he only tastes very salty or very sweet things, and he didn’t mind that the restaurants were all terrible.  My father, unlike us, is not a sophisticate.  True story, I bought my first fake Rolex watch from a little store in Little Italy, which was then about five blocks long and five blocks wide.  Now it consists of two blocks of Mulberry Street, and in the past year, even that tiny stretch has been corrupted with Chinese restaurants.  

2or3lines:  Any special reason you chose this restaurant?  Do you have special memories from a previous visit here?  This isn't where Caleb proposed to you, or where you ate before you went to your prom, is it?  

Brienne: Honestly, I just wanted the cavatelli with sausage and broccoli rabe because every day, I crave carbohydrates like a motherf*cker.

2or3lines:  We walked through SoHo – meaning "South of Houston Street" – before coming to the restaurant.  Let me ask you a question: do you know what direction SoHo is from NoLita?  Or are you like most women, who have no idea which way is north, south, east or west from where they are standing?

Brienne:  Gary, I really do love that you are so openly misogynistic.  Most men are too pussy to admit the same.  To answer your question, SoHo is west of Nolita. 

2or3lines:  I know you and Caleb are hoping to move from your current apartment in Brooklyn and buy a place of your own someday.  Is SoHo a possible destination for you?

Brienne: Yeah, if I write the next Da Vinci Code, or Caleb turns out to be descended from a rich slave trader, and ends up inheriting a dirty $5 million from a distant relative, because that’s about the minimum it would cost to buy a habitable SoHo loft.  So no, there is no way that we will ever move to Soho.  The only people I know who live in SoHo are a friend from Switzerland who invented the software for Google Maps, and Kanye West.  

2or3lines: Kanye West lives close by?  Really?

Brienne:  Yes, and I know which building he lives in.  And yes, I have stood outside that building when I think Kim Kardashian is inside in hopes of catching a glimpse of her gorgeous midget frame.

Kim and Kanye leaving
their SoHo apartment

2or3lines:  I’m stunned that SoHo lofts are so expensive.  But your father would probably just write a check for one if you asked him, wouldn’t he?

Brienne:  My father would literally rather cut off his own arm and have them put it on the menu at this restaurant than do that.  The only present he ever gives me are bags of raw potatoes he buys at his local supermarket – but only when they are on sale for 99 cents.  For him, that’s too good a deal to pass up.  But even though he’s Irish, he can only eat so many potatoes himself, so he gifts the rest to Caleb and me.   

2or3lines: I stopped at a couple of darling little SoHo baby stores on the way to meeting you for lunch today, but I couldn't deal with the ridiculous prices they charged.  So I got you something at Baby Gap instead.  I hope you’re not insulted – I know that you personally wouldn't be caught dead in something from the Gap.

Brienne:  Actually, Gary, the Gap happens to be one of my favorite stores.  I am built like a cardboard shipping box, and the Gap has a lot of designs that fit people with my shape perfectly.

2or3lines: Do you have much experience with babies?  A lot of girls learn about babies by babysitting when they are teenagers -- did you do much babysitting when you were in high school?  I’m assuming that the one-percenters where you grew up all had full-time nannies or au pairs, so maybe there wasn't much demand for teenage babysitters.

Brienne:  I actually have quite a bit of experience with kids.  I have five younger siblings, two of whom were adopted from South Korea when I was 20.  I’m also the oldest of 30 first cousins.  I’m f*cking Irish Catholic, you know. 

2or3lines:  It can't be easy having a newborn in a place like New York.  You've got to drag her and your stroller and everything else up and down the stairs in your building, deal with getting down into the subway and back up to the street when you reach your destination, and so on -- it's not like the suburbs where you can drive everywhere and park right in front of stores.  What do you think is going to be the hardest thing about having a baby?  

Brienne: Having to pay attention to someone beside myself.

2or3lines:  I hear you.  Speaking of the subway, now that you obviously have a bun in the oven, are people on the subway polite and give up a seat for you?

Brienne:  Some people are.  One type of person who does not get up for me are Hasidic Jews.  I don’t want to come off as anti-Semitic by slamming Hasidic Jews, but they might be bigger misogynists than you, Gary.  In any case, it’s actually embarrassing to have people pay attention to me on the subway, and I wish I could go back to being invisible.

2or3lines:  As you’ve said, you're from an Irish-American family.  Any thoughts about getting right back in the saddle and going for Irish twins?  Depending on how long and painful your labor and delivery is, of course, you may not let Caleb close to you for a long time, if ever.

Brienne:  Nah, as an Irish Catholic, I’m going to love the inherent suffering involved in childbirth.  I would definitely do Irish twins. I’m more worried about Caleb’s swimmers than I am my ability to withstand the trauma of childbirth.  He’s 42, and I’m afraid those little f*ckers are not up to the task of getting me pregnant again that quickly. 

You can read the rest of my conversation with Brienne in the next 2or3lines.

* * * * *

“(You’re) Having My Baby” was a number one hit for Canadian singer Paul Anka in 1974.

Anka was given the “Keep Her in Her Place” award by the National Organization for Women that year, and named “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year” by Ms. magazine.  Given that the song explicitly acknowledges that the mother of the singer’s baby could have chosen to have an abortion, I would have thought NOW and Ms. would have liked the song.

In 2006, those who responded to a CNN.com poll voted “(You’re) Having My Baby” the worst song of all time.  It easily beat out “Muskrat Love” by the Captain and Tennille and Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life.”

Here’s “(You’re) Having My Baby”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Deniz Tek – "Perfect World" (2013)

In a perfect world

In a perfect world

In a perfect world

You would be my girl

Leibniz was wrong.  This is not the best of all possible worlds – not by a long shot.

* * * * *

Deniz Tek, who was born in Ann Arbor in 1952, moved to Australia when he was 20 to attend the University of New South Wales.  When he wasn’t recording and touring with a number of different bands, he was attending medical school and working as a Navy flight surgeon and ER doctor.

“Perfect World” was released in 2013 on his solo album, Detroit.

Here’s “Perfect World”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jay-Z (ft. UGK) – "Big Pimpin'" (2000)

We be big pimpin’

Spending cheese

[NOTE: Today’s 2 or 3 lines is brought to you by the fourth-generation iPod Shuffle™ (The Official MP3 Player of 2 or 3 Lines), Jockey™ low-rise briefs (The Official Low-Rise Men’s Briefs of 2 or 3 Lines), Gold Toe™ socks (The Official Men’s Cotton Socks of 2 or 3 Lines), and the Christiana Mall (The Official Tax-Free Shopping Mall of 2 or 3 Lines).]

2 or 3 lines moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.  But every so often – today, for example – I like to pull back the curtain and reveal something about myself to my readers, who seemingly just can’t get enough of me.

Last weekend, my second-generation iPod Shuffle finally gave up the ghost.

A second-generation iPod Shuffle

I’m not sure exactly when I bought that iPod.  The second-generation Shuffle was discontinued in March 2009, so I must have had mine for at least seven years.  

I listened to music on that iPod almost every day.  Since it only cost $49, I certainly got my money’s worth from it.

The Shuffle appealed to my minimalist sensibilities.  Unlike fancier iPod models, the Shuffle has never had a video screen, or a camera, or a microphone.  If you’ve never owned one, it’s tiny – it weighed barely half an ounce – but it held about 15 hours of music (which is somewhere between 200 and 300 songs). 

*     *     *     *     *

I bought a new fourth-generation Shuffle (which is even smaller than my old one) at the Christiana Mall in Delaware when I was driving back to my Maryland home from Cape Cod on the day after Memorial Day.  

A fourth-generation iPod Shuffle

The Christiana Mall is a hundred miles north of where I live, but I visit it once or twice a year – which is more frequently than I visit any of the malls near my home.  It’s just off I-95, so I go right by it when I’m driving to or returning from the Cape.  

Not only is the Christiana Mall a convenient place for me to shop, it’s in Delaware – which has no sales tax.  So it’s where I stock up on stuff I need every year – like underwear and socks.

I usually get my underwear and socks at the J.C. Penney store there, but I was disappointed when I stopped there this week.  They had plenty of Jockey full-cut briefs, but didn’t have a single package of white size-36 low-rise briefs.  (They had black low-rise briefs in my size, but I’m not really a black underwear kind of guy.)

There’s a big difference between the two styles.  Here’s a full-cut brief, which is sort of meh:

The low-rise briefs are much racier:

I think I'll eschew these Jockey briefs, which don't leave quite enough to the imagination:

I had more success when it came to socks.  Penney’s had plenty of the black cotton Gold Toe socks I wear most days in a special promotional package: buy six pairs and you got a seventh at no extra cost.  Throw in the fact that you don’t have to pay sales tax and we’re talking MAJOR savings, boys and girls.

*     *     *     *     *

Just as I was about to leave underwearless, I had a brainstorm – maybe the Christiana Mall Macy’s would have white Jockey low-rise briefs in my size.

I trotted down to Macy’s and found exactly what I was looking for.  As I was buying my briefs, I noticed that Macy’s was also selling a special promotional package of Gold Toe socks.  But the Macy’s was giving you two free pairs when you bought six instead of just one free pair.

Those of you who know me well may be surprised to learn that I didn’t buy the socks at Macy’s and return the socks I had bought from Penney’s.  Somehow getting a free pair of socks wasn’t enough to motivate me to go back to Penney’s and ask for a refund.

*     *     *     *     *

I may end up returning my iPod.  After buying it, I found out that it will only work with Macs that come equipped with fairly recent versions of iTunes and the Mac operating system.

My Mac is six or seven years old, and I’m not sure it can handle the software updates that will be required for me to use a fourth-generation iPod.  I might have to buy a new Mac to use my new Shuffle.

Macs start at $1099 and go up from there, so you might think it’s ridiculous for me to consider buying a new Mac in order to use a $49 Shuffle.  But a Mac that’s six or seven years old is almost as antique as I am, so I probably need to buy a new one anyway.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the reason that I bought my current Mac six or seven years ago is because my previous iPod stopped working, and the new iPod I bought to replace it wasn’t compatible with my previous Mac.

The Apple Store at the Christiana Mall

By the way, the Christiana Mall’s Apple store outsells every other Apple store in the United States except Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue store.  Obviously  I’m not the only one who cares about sales tax.

* *     *     *     *

While doing some research about the history of the iPod, I stumbled across a Huffington Post piece titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on Their First iPod.”  (You grammar absolutists out there are no doubt thinking to yourselves that the piece should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His First iPod,” while you feminist grammar absolutists are thinking to yourselves that it should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His or Her First iPod.”)

Those 25 songs included a number that would have been worthy of being featured in today’s 2 or 3 lines – for example, Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite,” Sisqo’s “Thong Song,” and “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys.  

But the most worthy song on that list was definitely Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” which featured a distinctive sample from a 1957 Egyptian recording titled “Khosara Khosara.”

Click here to watch the official music video for “Big Pimpin’,” which is definitely worth watching.

Click here to buy today's featured recording from Amazon.

Beatles – "When I'm Sixty-Four" (1967)

Will you still need me

Will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four?

Admit it.  When you first heard this song in 1967, you laughed at the idea that you would ever be 64 years old – am I right?

2 or 3 lines turns 64 today.  By which I mean that I turn 64 today.  (To paraphrase Louis XIV, “Le 2 or 3 lines, c’est moi!”)

Thankfully, I didn't get a birthday cake like this one:

In case no one has told you, sixty-four is OLD.  

As the French aphorist La Rochefoucauld observed, “Few persons know how to be old.”  (I am certainly not one of them.)

The Italian author Cesare Pavese correctly noted that, “The real affliction of old age is remorse.”

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky – who died when he was still years shy of age 64 – made perhaps the most astute observation about old age when he said, “Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.”  (Trotsky wrote that before he was murdered by an assassin wielding an ice-axe.  Being attacked with an ice-axe is probably an even more unexpected thing than old age.) 

That’s enough waxing philosophical about old age.  When you're 64, the ship of youth – and the ship of middle age – has long since sailed.  There’s no use whining like a little b*tch about it, is there?

Let’s move on to today’s featured song.  “When I’m Sixty-Four” is a Paul McCartney song that was released on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – the most overrated of all Beatles albums.  (“A Day in the Life” may be the Beatles’ best song ever, and there are two or three other good songs on the album.  But much of Sgt. Pepper is total crap, thanks in large part to Paul McCartney.)

Paul McCartney turned 64 in 2006

2 or 3 lines comes not to praise “When I’m Sixty-Four,” but to bury it.

Everything about it – the words, the music, and the stupid clarinet part – is bad.  I’m not sure you could make it any worse even if you tried.

Did you know that when McCartney was turning 64 in 2006, his kids recorded a version of the song with revised lyrics as a surprise present for him?

The McCartneys in happier times

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but McCartney and his second wife, Heather Mills, separated just before McCartney's birthday.  (So much for still needing and still feeding Sir Paul when he turned 64.)

Lady McCartney (which is how Mills is properly addressed) ended up collecting about $48 million when the couple got divorced.  (The McCartneys separated less than four years after tying the knot, so that was a pretty good payday.)

Here’s “When I’m Sixty-Four”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Alice Cooper – "Under My Wheels" (1971)

I'm driving in my car now

Anticipating fun

Earlier this week, I drove my mother’s car (a 2012 Chevrolet Equinox SUV with only 4000 miles on the odometer) from Joplin, Missouri – where she’s lived for virtually all of her 90 years – to Rockville, Maryland, the Washington suburb where the assisted-living facility she is moving to is located.

As I was driving, my sister flew with my mother to Reagan Airport in Washington, DC.  My son met them at the airport and drove them to her new home.

I crammed my mother’s car full of all kinds of stuff.  

For example, I transported a flat-screen television, which I’m hoping will be easy to hook up to cable at my mother’s new building.  Whether she will actually watch the TV or just stare at the wall – which is what she’s spent most of her time doing since my father died – remains to be seen.

I’ve packed up a couple of boxes with framed family pictures.  The walls of my parents’ home were covered with dozens and dozens of pictures of my sister, me, and my four children.  Some were taken over 50 years ago, when my sister and I were very small.  Others are from the recent weddings of my three older children.

I also brought back about a dozen plastic storage containers filled with unframed photos:

Most of those photos feature one or more of my four kids.  But there are quite a few of me as well.

Here's one of the oldest ones of me:

*     *     *     *     *

Don’t tell anyone, but I also brought back about $19,000 in cash – for some reason, my parents had squirreled away all that money in their safe-deposit box at the bank.

Part of that cash was hidden in a small toy savings bank that resembled an old Sinclair Oil gas-station pump.

Mucho Benjamins

I also had what must have been a couple of hundred pounds of silver dollars and half dollars, which we accumulated before the price of silver shot up dramatically in the mid-sixties and people like us began to hoard such coins.  (I don’t know what I’ll do with those coins, but this may be the only time I’ll ever drive back from Joplin rather than fly.  There’s no way I could fly back with those coins in my baggage.)

Three or four hundred Walking
Liberty silver half dollars

Last but certainly not least, I brought back a lot of my old stuff that I never got around to schlepping back from my parents' home to my home.  I'm talking LPs, high school and college yearbooks, copies of student newspapers, sheet music, and much, much more.  (Some of you are wondering why I don't toss all this flotsam and jetsam, but some of you don't know me – I would rather cut off a body part of two than throw away these precious artifacts.)

*     *     *     *     *

I covered some 875 miles on the second day of my drive – I averaged 65 mph, which means I was on the road about thirteen and a half hours.  That's not counting stops for gas, food, and so on.

I got home at 1:30 am.  Ugh.

If you ask me, driving a car isn't any fun.  Stop-and-go traffic brings out the worst in me, and sitting behind the wheel for an extended period of time is very hard on my 63-year-old body.

Flying is a pain in the ass, too.  There’s nothing enjoyable about waiting in the security screening lines at the airport, dealing with flight delays and cancellations, and folding my six-foot-two, 200-pound self into a middle seat. 

But the condition of being on a trip – far away from my home and my office – is a wonderful (albeit temporary) escape from everyday realities.

My favorite New Yorker cartoon of all time depicts a businessman/lawyer type standing behind a large desk and talking on the telephone.  “No, Thursday’s out,” he says to the person on the other end of the phone.  “How about never – does never work for you?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fantasized about responding to a client’s or colleague’s request by saying “How about never – does never work for you?”

(It turns out that this 1993 cartoon – which was the creation of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff – is hugely popular.  In fact, Mankoff titled his autobiography How About Never – Is Never Good for You?  Click here to read a 2014 New Yorker piece Mankoff wrote about his cartoon.)

When you’re in an airplane or driving across the country, it’s very easy deflect people who want you to do something you don’t really want to do.

“I’m sorry,” you say.  “My flight is about to take off."

Or “I really can’t help you right now.  I’m driving from X to Y – I’ll be in the car all day.” 

That’s why I look forward to airline flights and all-day drives.  Not because they are pleasant experiences (which they aren’t) but because you have carte blanche to ignore the rest of world for as long as you  are in the air or on the road.

Once upon a time, you were free once you left your office for the day – anyone who called you after 5:00 pm didn’t really expect to hear back until the next day.  

If you got a call from someone who had waited until the last minute to ask you to do something, it was OK to say, “My schedule’s pretty full today and tomorrow – I won’t be able to turn to your project for a couple of days.”

But today, people expect you to read and respond to e-mail on nights and weekends.  And they don’t understand why you can’t drop everything else and solve their problem immediately – after all, doesn’t every client believe he or she is the most important client you have?

*     * * * *

“Under My Wheels” is the first track on Alice Cooper’s 1971 album, Killer.

John Lydon (a/k/a Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols once said Killer was the greatest rock album of all time.  I don’t know if I would go quite that far, but I do know that “Under My Wheels” is a silly-bazilly song.

Click here to listen to “Under My Wheels.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.