Eagles - Take it easy 1977

What I love about this clip is that, 

A, Frey's head is clearly already at the after-concert "Third Encore" party back at the hotel. He is seriously flirting with the hotties in the front row whom the roadies have given party passes to.

B, Joe takes off on a rare smoking jam solo that,

C, You can tell the Walsh jam makes stone-face Henley furious. You can almost see the smoke coming out of his ears he is so pissed. 

Wally the Bunkey

(Part bunny, part monkey) 

One head light, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Olympic gold medal ice dancer, Meryl Davis, won “Dancing with the Stars.” In an equally shocking result, air won “The Best Thing to Breathe” contest.

The NFL is being sued by former players for illegally giving them prescription pain-killers; upon hearing this, the Cleveland Browns fans are suing the NFL for not giving them pain-killers. 

A study says Florida is the most dangerous state for pedestrians. It would have been California, but all the pedestrians they tried to survey had been run over and killed.

A new study of online dating profiles showed men have more success when they use the phrase, “physically fit.” Women have more success when they use the phrase; “I’m not a cop.”

Party.

See? Just saying it is fun. What do you think of when you hear the word party? Me? Music, laughter, drinks, dancing, grilling, pretty women, cool dudes, red plastic cups, laughing kids, a barking dog, candles. Never have liked the use of party as a verb. It goes too well with dude.

Bill Murray’s secret? He lives life like it is a party. David Letterman says of Murray; “He’s always inviting me to a party.”

As a former kind-of neighbor of Murray, I think I can shed some insight into how Bill Murray lives his life like a party.

Like all times and all high schools, New Trier East and Loyola – the private Catholic high school where Bill went – in the Seventies were fueled and driven by kids trying as hard as they can to be cool. Trying to be cool is, besides school and sports, your main job.

There are many factors in being cool, how you look, how you dress, how well you do in sports, how well you do in school and how well you do with the opposite sex.

Let’s use a guy dancing as a device to show just how hard it is to be cool. If you don’t dance at all, that is not cool, but neither is dancing too much. Dance badly? Not cool, but way cooler than dancing too well. See how tricky this cool thing is?

A giant yardstick to measure how cool you were in high school were your parties. Did you have them? Did people go? Did the cool kids go? Were they fun? Did they have booze and possibly other stuff? But not too much. 

Having a mansion to throw the party in could be a plus, or it could backfire badly in that people think you’re a rich spoiled brat.

Bill Murray, I surmise, threw a lot of parties, because his younger brother John, who was my friend, threw a lot of parties. And they weren’t fancy, the Murray’s were rich in siblings and sense of humor only. (The brother and sister infested house in opening scenes of “Caddy Shack” was exactly like their house)

Me? Throwing a party was sort of a sticking point in my coolness. Later in college I threw some good parties, but never in high school. It made me nervous just to think of throwing a party. What if nobody came? What if stuff got wrecked?

The good news is I got invited to and attended pretty much all of the cool parties. Well, not the intimate parties of the super cool kid’s basements, but most of them. Did I do well in sports? Big yes. Did I do well with pretty girls? A yes. Did I do well in school and throw rocking parties? That is a big non-check.

Like Bill before him, John Murray was a good athlete – he made the “A” football team as a freshman. He was good looking, but not a pretty boy and he did OK in school. But his popularity was off the charts. Why? He was funny as hell and he threw a mean-ass party.

Same thing with Bill, I would, again, surmise.

When something is a giant badge of honor when you are 17, it stays with you for life. Being the life of the party is such a badge for Bill Murray.

(Although I will say my one experience of being in a bar with Bill Murray was not warm and fuzzy. It was my intention to go up to him and inquire about John, but he seemed very wary and aloof to strangers, so I begged off. This was in Venice Beach, CA around 1986 and he was wildly post-“Ghostbusters” famous)

You know the phrase all’s well that ends well? That was the case with me and high school parties. All of us helped my buddy, Woodie, throw a party the night of graduation and it was THE party to attend. We were turning away cool kids.

But nobody has partied better or longer than Bill Murray. In “Stripes’ when he offers to party with Lee Harvey? That goof-ball Lee just lights up at the thought.

My buddy, John Murray in the movie "Scrooged."

The Last of the Mohicans [1080p] - (Final Scene) Sachem's Decision - Ali...

If you do not like this movie, there is a 50-50 chance I do not like you…

Busted-ass Selfies is my new retro-rock band, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Credit Suisse has been found guilty of helping Americans avoid taxes and has been fined two and a half billion dollars. Or as Credit Suisse calls two and a half billion dollars, twenty minutes.

The WNBA rankings are out and the Phoenix Mercury are listed #1. That is amazing. The WNBA still exists?

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s wedding is this weekend in Florence, I am beginning to think they may have sent my invitation to the wrong address.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s wedding is this weekend in Florence. It was a little awkward when Kim was first told they would be married in Florence, she said; “OK, but I always dreamed of getting married in Italy.”

New York racing officials have agreed to let Triple Crown contender, California Chrome, use his nasal strip. But California Chrome still has to sit at the lunch table with all the kids with food allergies.

At the Billboard Music Awards there was a hologram of Michael Jackson performing; many people felt the hologram was phony-looking, creepy, weird and not life-like. In other words, just like the real Michael Jackson.

A Tennessee man was arrested for trying to have sex with an ATM. In addition, he was charged by the bank for making an insufficient deposit.

Las Vegas is placing odds on if this guy is from Florida.

After 500 years, they have found the remains of Christopher Columbus’s flag ship, the Santa Maria. This for those who gave up hope finding the lost Malaysian flight #370.

 Since you asked:

This is how freaked out and deep-rooted the fears following a fire storm are: This morning I woke up and freaked out when I saw the white and dark smoke in the sky. Turns out they were clouds. We have not had clouds for the entire month of May.

My top fashion/style faux pas:

My Blues Traveler John Popper hat.

1975 Hip hugger, elephant bell-bottoms with multiple sewn-in seams.

Crocs. Wore them for about a month.

Infinite polyester hippy shirts in the mid-seventies.

Powder blue tuxedo, rented and wore this abomination twice in high school and once in college. And the black plastic shoes that go with it.

Combed in the middle mullet.

My Italia Adidas that I wore during the summer of 1969 without socks until they stunk so much, my mother would not allow them in the house. When I picked them up off the lawn to put them on I noticed they were covered in flies. A giant mound of our dog, Charlie’s poop, was two feet away sans one fly.

Around age 7, I wanted the plain tan buckskin/light brown fringe Daniel Boone jacket. Got instead a shiny brown and cream two tone-number Ricky Ricardo would have loved, with fringe on the sleeves. When worn with my raccoon-skin hat with tail, I looked like a Village Person from West Virginia.

When I moved to New York, my khaki trench coat and my tweed sports jacket were both about two sizes too small.

My polyester light blue – same Robin’s egg color as the Tux – sweat suit when I got to Santa Barbara.

At the time I was the height of cool, but in 1984, when I moved back to San Diego, my cotton short-sleeved purple-striped Ralph Lauren button-down collar shirt and pleated white shorts and tan Top Siders and moussed hair made me look like Tiffany’s lesbian cousin.

Fluorescent lime green super, super short running shorts in the 80’s.

One Halloween, when Ann Caroline was 5, she was the Little Mermaid and wanted me to be King Triton at a friend’s Halloween party. So I got a devil’s pitch fork and painted it gold, got a really good Santa Claus wig and beard, put on a green turtle neck and spray-painted a tight, tight pair of grey sweat pants green. The pants were way, way too tight and the talk of the Halloween party was the King’s wad. Not to brag, but in one of the pictures, it looks like I am smuggling in a Labrador Puppy.

One of my friend’s neighbors was Spanish and, in an aside to him, he said;

“Your friend has quite zee package.”

I'm not going to lie, it was scary and hot for a few days here in San Diego. I was sweating like Donald Sterling in an elevator with Solange.