Easy Listening

I'm aging. graying, decaying. It would seem that part and parcel of the aging process is a new found reliance in ritual and habit. My once wonderfully chaotic, spur-of-the-moment, I-want-some-fun lifestyle has been reduced, almost erased, in favor of as many carved out moments of comfort, familiarity, and stress less activity as possible. Even more frightening--I take great pleasure in the successful repetition of these habitual endeavors. That's right, pleasure, i.e. delight, a zoomarama rush of internal gratification. Take Sundays for instance.It was once a morn devoted to coming down, putting the mental pieces back together, crawling from the bed to the couch while angling through the sweaty and discarded undergarments with a piece of processed cheese held limply in soiled hands, fervently praying that somewhere in cableville the shaky clicker finger could land on a western, a Martin-Lewis movie, or a batch of Dragnet reruns. My contempo Sunday game plan is a whole different shebang. Early release of the dogs into the backyard, out of the house by 7:30 AM or so (even after a night of deliciously nectareous alcohol consumption), paper and smoke purchase completed, back to sweet spot in the living room, ESPN on, but muted, and switch on the radio for the 8:00 AM local broadcast of Steve Van Zandt's syndicated two hour radio show, Little Steve's Underground Garage. Then it's 120 minutes of rock and roll bliss, hipster ha-ha's, waves of childhood nostalgia intermixed with childlike womderment about just how coolio pop music can still be. Unadulterated, pure genius. Do me, and yerself a favor, take a bit of time to check out the hilariously erudite Little Steven, a cockamamie mix of Dino, Stiv Bators, and Sal Paradise, and his most recent show (or at least peruse the playlist), a tribute to The Ramones.