Paul Simon, Pearl Harbor Day, Thoughts of Mortality

Wifey and I saw Paul Simon last night, at the Seminole Hard Rock theatre. It was our first show there.

We arrived early (surprise!) after a decent visit to ancient Mom, and a coffee re charge in Boca, and walked around the casino for a bit. I'm not a casino guy, but something about the Hard Rock struck me as even more sad and pathetic than my visits to Vegas casinos...

I guess that in Vegas, most of the patrons are visitors, and they look happy and excited. The lights seem brighter. At the Hard Rock, more locals seem there, and are decidedly more downscale. The light was dim. I noticed 2 Latin guys, dressed in work uniforms playing the slots, and could only think that they were blowing meager paychecks their immigrant families needed.

Plus, Wifey got a slice of pizza from a surly server, and reported that it was one of the worst she's ever eaten. The accompanying stench of cigarette smoke as she chewed couldn't have helped...

Things brightened up in the theatre, which was sold out. A 5 piece band called the Wildfires opened, and they were pretty good --reminded me of the Outlaws or Marshall Tucker bands of my youth.

The crowd was, Wifey and I estimated, about 50 or 55 in average age. Duh! Paul Simon is 70, just barely pre Baby Boomer, and most of his audience grew up in college in the 60s and 70s (and I guess 80s, when he released "Graceland") and so that's who was the audience...

The show was terrific. He had one of the best backing bands I've ever heard, including some of the African guys from the Graceland period. He sang wonderful new songs from his latest (So Beautiful or So What) musing about love, and mortality (One song was great --with lyrics about having to fill out a form and wait in line) and his earliest periods, and the wonderful 70s albums.

He sang "Mother and Child Reuinion" in true reggae form, and brought down the house with "Late in the Evening." What a career he's had! He could have sung all night and just scratched the surface of his songbook...

So today is Pearl Harbor Day, and as always, I think about my Dad. December 7, 1941 was a true "marker day," as the historians call them, for him. He knew his life would change, and it did, with a draft notice soon after and over 4 years in the Army...

I think about him, at 22, and what he was like. And then my memories turn to the man I knew, and how he died at 63. Although that was so young, to me, he was already an old, retired guy...

And worse -- 63 is just a Bar Mitzvah Boy's age away for me! Caramba!

Aging folks always say that age "doesn't matter," it's just a number. Bullshit, I say! Years are all we have, in the way dollars are the only measure of material wealth. And 13 isn't that many, at all...

So I'm hoping to be lucky, like my fellow Queens Ashkenazi Simon. He's 70 and still at the top of his game --creating, contributing, the whole ball of wax.

But as my father learned 70 years ago today, sometimes change and events hit like a sneak attack...