You know, you'd think after all these decades, I'd get tired of Roll Me Away and The Highwaymen. But no such luck. They just get better and better as time goes by.

However, I have grown weary of Bruce. It all started when I got arrested out on the high plains of eastern Colorado years ago going 105 while 'Born in the USA' was blasting out my car and not another vehicle in sight for a 1000 miles.

Gerard,

Good luck in all your endeavors; I'll look forward to messages from America, but I'll surely miss your daily posts.

Maybe it's time to get out there again for me, too. In the meantime, here's some quintessentially American music you may have missed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JFgC3Ub10E

Thanks for all the great stuff, and your beautiful writing.

Rob

Nice song selection, Gerard, although I'd pick "Workingman's Blues #2" as a song for our times. I don't know how to link it here, though.

Wishing you fair winds and gently following seas.

Holler if you get to Utah. Make it a Sunday if you can since I haven't seen a Saturday at home since October.

Today I laid down the grid on the forms of my first ever section of parking deck, and it was good.

On a wholly unrelated note, I recommend to you The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button. I'd like to heartily dislike Mr. Pitt merely out of spite and cussedness (and me not even in my fifth decade) but I cannot deny that he brings a special quality of class to his craft. Call it star power, like John Wayne or Olivier. No mere "box office draw" is this man.

Good luck, sir.

Vanderleun in America?

Best wishes for an eventful, relaxing and productive sabbatical or whatever you intend; your brilliant communiques are very welcome in the The Sceptred Island which is fast becoming the septic islands. You need to keep a very close watch on what is going on on your side of the puddle lest you degrade to our parlous state; the last electoral choice of your compatriots is very disturbing to those of us who have just been through 11 years of counter-culture mechanics at Governmental level, having suffered it in the crypts of cultural chicanery for much longer. Moreover you have one of the architects of our misfortunes, one Anthony Blair, peddling his poison in American Academia (and anywhere else he thonks he may pick up a wodge). I have American friends who seem to admire this phoney Gramscian pimp; what is it about the English accent that seems to disarm Americans of otherwise perspicacious insight and prescience? Anyway - eternal vigilance and we hope that your 'sometime thing' is sufficient to keep the spell working here. Yours is a star of the highest magnitude of brightness in the 'Sphere. May it never wander off orbit or become eclipsed by the ever increasing pollution of dark matter.

Btw - I forgot to thank you for the above links, which have already greatly cheered up 2009 for me already and will be replayed over and over as the year progresses. Delightful Americanola indeed! And apologies for forgetting to sign the above post.

Good lookin'.

Vaya con dios, and, if you're driving, keep the shiny side up and the sticky side down.

TMJ:

I saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" last night.

At apx 2:40 it's a bit long, but nevertheless a highly entertaining movie, although it *does* require more than a smidgen of "willing suspension of disbelief".

Greetings from Austin Texas!