All right. I am now officially old. I actually left my house Friday night and went to a concert on the Christian Brothers University campus and, save for a security guard, could have been the father of anyone there. But I must say that I finally saw and heard the band Ingram Hill live and was very impressed. With all due respect to the other members of the band, that lead singer certainly has a future. I even stayed up until midnight to hear them. But it was tough. I ve got that old-age sleep pattern now of going to bed really early and waking up in the middle of the night and never going back to sleep. In fact, it is 8:41 a.m. as I write this, and I have been up for five hours. And because I am too old and lazy to get the satellite-dish people to come turn on the dish that s already on the roof, I am limited to only the local stations. By the time I actualy leave the house, I have seen untold numbers of infomercials for proucts you know don t work I lost two whole dress sizes in 48 hours! and feel as if I m on a personal level with every bankrupcy lawyer in the city. I was so bored one morning that I even called and listened to a prerecorded message about it, which basically said if I would come in and file for bankruptcy I would lose nothing and would be debt-free so everyone and their brother would love to loan me giant sums of cash. I have heard the same news repeated over and over until I start reciting the lines along with the announcers. It s usually at this point that I start doing my other old man thing: puttering around the house. I like to stand in the kitchen and fiddle with the Vent-A-Hood that hangs over the stove but day by day is getting closer to falling out. I like to think that I am going to fix it but know in my heart that I am far too mechanically challenged to do so and that one day I m going to hear a loud crash when it finally falls. I walk around turning lamps on and off and make coffee and call to see which checks cleared overnight and go out on the porch to see which plants I ve killed and, well, just putter. My memory is also at its worst in the morning, fuzzy from being asleep and from being old. I try to figure out who all of my cousins are and who their parents are, but I can t. Even in my wide-awake hours, the memory isn t what it used to be. Just the other day, I was with a friend hitting the yard sales. After leaving one, we started following a sign, driving around in circles until we finally found it. Got out of the car only to realize it was the yard sale we had just left. So there. Anything you read on this page must be taken with a grain of salt, because I can t remember what it is I m supposed to be doing.
Oh, yeah. What s going on around town this week. Here s a brief look. Tonight, Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead, the story of someone forced to watch and listen repeatedly as George W. Bush calls Ariel Sharon a man of peace for pulling his troops out of the refugee village of Jenin after leaving the mothers there to dig their dead babies out of the rubble with their bare hands. Okay, I couldn t help it. It s actually an Eric Bogosian play about the humor, fear, hypocrisy, and rage of Americans and opens at Rhodes College s McCoy Theatre. NSync, with the Mid-South s own Justin Timberlake, is at The Pyramid. Sun House is at the Flying Sacer. And the Keith Sykes Songwriters Showcase is at the Lounge.
