We Are the World

My mother used to say, “you lie with dogs, you get fleas,” (No, wait, that was my childhood veterinarian, that same one who snipped the nuts offa my childhood kitty, Snoofy.)

Maybe what she used to say was “If you touch pitch you’ll get dirty,” (no that wasn’t it either, that was the Fuller Brush man when he brought around the latest selection of fine bath soaps.

Mom’s advice, now that those Exedrin PMs have worn off and I can recall her words was “Don’t get yourself in a pissing match with somebody who drinks a six-pack before breakfast,” and although she was, of course, referring to my half-uncle Elmo, she just as easily could have been talking about the inimitable (not that anyone would want to do that imitation) Arnica Montana, who seems to have a momentary lapse in recalling that most important admonition of all for anyone as square in the public eye as he and his unique brand of trenchant insights into the American cultural experience surely is: Ain’t no such thing as bad publicity.

All of which to say is that, unlike Monsieur Montana, I have chosen to take the high road and not to behave like the monkeys we are throwing feces at each other across our cage and so I hereby offer the most public—or is that pubic—of apologies for my unfortunate turn of phrase in yesterday’s posting when I might have implied that, in spite of being a perfectly adequate musician, a reasonably acceptable parent, and no worse a blah-gger than many millions of others, he might perhaps—at least on a morning after one of his notorious substance-abuse-induced episodes of attacking a hotel room while on tour—be a few notes shy of the proverbial major chord

So, as the fruit of my own loins is apt to say when I discover her iTunes download bill exceeds the annual budget of a small African nation, “Cool it, Daddio. Sorry.”