In marking her passing, I’ll simply note that she was a major force in pop music when I was a kid, and even though I was more of a hard rock/heavy metal fan growing up, I can still remember hearing Donna Summer on the radio a lot. My favorite song of hers would probably be this one:

R.I.P. Donna Summer

1948-2012

As it happens, my very favorite band in the world during that era produced a song not long after that particular Donna Summer hit that, to my ear at least, bears a striking resemblance to it. And, perhaps coincidentally, it happens to be one of “The OTHER Jennifer’s” all-time favorites.

That tune appears just after the jump:

]]> http://www.damndirtyrino.com/2012/05/18/the-passing-of-donna-summer/feed/ 0 http://www.damndirtyrino.com/2012/05/17/this-is-why-i-refer-to-her/ http://www.damndirtyrino.com/2012/05/17/this-is-why-i-refer-to-her/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 18:45:19 +0000 Walt http://www.damndirtyrino.com/?p=8416 Continue reading →]]> . . . as “The Winsome Alana Goodman“. (Be sure to click for full context.)

This post is about Andrew Sullivan, so I promise to make it mercifully brief.

Sullivan is a pioneer. He was the first blogger to realize that in the low-knowledge, high-offense Internet age the shortest route to popularity was simultaneous moral outrage and moral dishonesty. I can’t believe you’ve done the thing I know you didn’t do. (See: Bush policy and Abu Ghraib, neoconservatives and wars for Israel).

Just a few more days.

. . . when you plan to get in at a decent hour after a night of tending bar. And, last night was no exception. I rolled in at the ghastly hour of 3:00 AM with every intention of forcing myself to get up by 9:00 AM to write. I ended up sleeping ’til much closer to 11:00 AM, though my creaky old bones seem not to have slept at all.

I suppose I could hold out hope that I’ll get home earlier tonight, but today being Thursday, I won’t. This is the point in the week where people start gearing up for the weekend. A lot of people get paid on Thursdays and, as best I can formulate it, they see Friday as “just one day” before their weekends officially begin, so they rationalize to themselves that all they have to do is get through that “one more day” before they can sleep in on Saturday.

I come to that conclusion after having spent a great many weeks in my younger days with a Thursday payday and making that very same rationalization to myself.  Some people are able to physically function on post-bender Fridays into a much more advanced age than I was. Best I can figure, I lost that ability sometime in my early 30′s.

In any even, all of this is by way of explaining that I’m now heading into the busiest part of the workweek, which means that my ability to generate content will likely suffer over the next four days. And this weekend is set to be a busier-than-usual one, since we’re having a free BBQ chicken dinner and hosting a band this Saturday night. It’s sure to bring in a pretty hefty crowd if the last free dinner we held was any indication. And I suspect this one will be considerably bigger than the last.

By the time Sunday evening rolls around, I expect to be pretty exhausted. So, my goal of posting 500-1000 words per day could be scaled back to almost zero — though, again, I do intend to make an effort. I’m just not particularly optimistic about it. Getting home after 3:00 AM every night isn’t exactly conducive to writing productivity, and I have little reason to believe I’ll be getting home any earlier than that over the next few days.

On the bright side, I’ll probably earn decent tips — which will be nice since bartenders at the F.O.E. volunteer our time. It’ll help to make up for the relatively slow (and long) nights through the early part of the week. So, maybe I’ll earn enough dough to be able to pick up a new (used) lens for my camera in the not-too-distant future.

Which reminds me that I haven’t been on a photowalk in quite a while — well over a month as best I can recall. So, maybe once this week is over and I’ve had a chance to get back up to speed on the passing scene, I’ll be able to get out and take photos again — weather permitting, of course.

And, with that, I’ve managed to write my self-imposed quota of 500 words for the day. They may not be the most interesting or well composed words, but they’re enough to assuage my conscience and keep me from slipping into the blog-killing pattern of inconsistent posting. And if I can manage to hold myself to that commitment through this particularly busy period, I figure I’ll be able to write with demonic speed once something approaching normalcy returns to my daily schedule.

Belly-up!

. . . make for a near-perfect pairing of avocations. They’re actually complementary toward one another when you think about it: A yin and yang of social interaction and introversion. Each has subtle ways of informing and enhancing the other while providing a kind of reciprocal release valve for the pressures built up in the execution of the respective occupations.

In blogging, there’s an ever-present risk of cocooning yourself in a world where differences of opinion can quickly devolve into vendettas that can in turn lead to an overpowering and all-encompassing sense of indignation. When, despite your best efforts, all the work you put into it remains unseen and unappreciated, it’s all too easy to give in to the temptation of self-pity and develop a persecution complex. And if you have no other outlet toward which to direct your energies, you run a grave risk of getting trapped in a self-imposed feedback loop that perpetuates a me-against-the-world posture; and eventually the world reacts to that posture accordingly.

What makes tending bar such a perfect counterbalance to blogging is that it fulls you out of that loop on a regular basis and forces you to confront the way in which the rest of humanity interacts with the world around it. Granted, it’s a particular subset of humanity that isn’t necessarily representative of the whole, but it’s a reasonably close approximation of the kinds of which it takes all to make the world go ’round. There are tipplers and drunkards, eccentrics and jerks, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. Some are there to make memories, and some are there to obliterate them.

Being exposed to that cross-section of the human race helps to lend a sense of perspective to the things you write about when you presume to undertake the task of telling everyone how the world ought to be. And, in my case at least, that’s what blogging is all about: the conceit that anyone should have any reason whatsoever to give a damn what I think. It is a presumptuous notion, but I’m at least able to recognize it for what it is.

Blogging’s complementary contribution to bartending is a bit more subtle and not something that occurs to you while you’re actually doing the job. But, when you think about the key elements to successfully tending bar, one of them is the ability to relate to the wide-ranging menagerie that parks itself before you on a daily basis in search of a respite — whether from the heat, the pressure, or the world itself. Some come to share a laugh, some come to share their burdens, and some come to simply be left the hell alone for once in their lives.

And blogging trains you to find as many ways as possible to relate to people in order to attract a broad readership. It requires you to generate content that appeals to as wide an audience as possible within the confines of your particular niche, which in turn requires you to seek out as much interesting subject matter as you can fit within those confines. This particular blog, centered as it is around politics and culture (at times veering into esoterica), forces me to dredge a fairly broad body of subject matter in search of content.

In the process, I inevitably stumble upon things that I find engrossing, but which don’t necessarily fit within my editorial constraints. I can’t count the number of times those little discoveries have provided me with ways in which to relate to the people I come into contact with in the course of tending bar. Obviously, I do my best to leave my politics at the front door when I check in at work; there’s no more certain a way to lose customers than to mercilessly throttle them in a political debate.

But, when I happen upon a great, long-forgotten song from my youth, or discover an interesting, obscure piece of trivia about a well known public figure or some other entity, I’ve suddenly found a new way to relate to the people I interact with in the course of filling their drinks. And people appreciate that; they enjoy being related to and have a tendency to return to the places where they feel they can find it.

At the same time, bartending often puts you in the company of interesting people with interesting stories to tell. Of course, it also puts you in contact with people who only have a few stories to tell, and who insist on retelling them over and over again. But, again, it takes all kinds.

Still, the experience of interacting with this microcosm on a regular basis offers an instruction set for dealing with vast mish-mash of personalities who populate the blogosphere. From the eternal optimist who stubbornly remains so in spite of every tragedy and setback the world can throw at him to the condescending boor who bases his appraisal of your intellect on your lack of educational credentials (and the fact that you’re just a bartender), you’ll find some facsimile perched before you, offering a broad array of object lessons to carry with you as you set about solving the world’s problems on the internet.

There are some days when I take to the keyboard every bit as full of bile as the churlish drunk who takes his life’s frustrations out on anyone within earshot, further compounding the daily fight he has with the world. And there are days when I assume my station behind the bar in dread of what fresh hell will be visited upon me in the hours before I finally, at long last, punch in the security code on my way out the door.

Today, though, I look back and wonder why I haven’t been doing this all my life, and a general sense that if I can keep doing it for the rest of my days on this earth, I’ll die a happy man.