Give me a pigfoot and a bottle of Bud Light

You know the kind of blues band that's middle-aged white guys in ironic Panama hats and shades, trying to sing like the Howlin' Wolf in the same voice that tells kids how to change the rubber bands on their retainers the rest of the week? These are the guys who buy pre-worn guitars - they look beat up, like you've played them for years. It's the perfect background music for today's bikers, the folks who show up at Sturgis with logowear hanging on every available bodily protuberance. It's sad -- once we had a culture, now we have brand loyalties.

This is your next-to-last warning.

Words can be really hurtful. Like, if you insist on trying to seem clever by scattering grad-student words you've heard on CNN throughout your verbiage, you run the serious risk of appearing to be something much worse than the mouth-breathing dullard you secretly fear you are: A pretentious twit. So here are some hints. The word “exponential” has a precise meaning which you should have learned in 7th grade math. It is not a synonym for “mighty big.” The word “comprise”is roughly synonymous with “include.” And finally, I call your attention to this little essay's penultimate word.

Comeback another day

The newspaper is my radio. I don't dislike reading about pop stars so much as hearing them, and everything I need to know I can get from their getups. So go ahead, show me the shoes, the shirt, the haircut - just spare me the music. Anyway, news has reached me about somebody named Joss Stone. She had a hit record, apparently, then got into trouble with drugs and entered rehab. Now she's booked into casinos alongside bands like 38 Special and Quiet Riot. This may be the quickest transition ever from new talent, to troubled star, to reformed nostalgia act.

You're soaking in it.

Last Wednesday marked Hurricane Katrina's second anniversary. In remembrance, the President flew down here and created a peculiar photo-op by grabbing our mayor's face and sort of squooshing it. The BBC website ran a photo caption stating that Preservation Hall is on “the corner of Bourbon Street and Royal.” (Bourbon and Royal are parallel streets.) And I overheard this conversation as a chef at a local restaurant was finishing up work for the evening:

“So your shift's over?”

“Yeah. I'm going over to Phillip's Bar and remember Katrina.”

“They're having some kind of thing?”

“I'm just gonna get drunk.”