In addition to old, I am profligate.

And busy. Without going into sufficient personal detail to give much away, work got blowed up in a tsunami of chaos a couple of months ago, and everything's still staggering around. I went from doing twenty hours in four days a week to doing thirty-five hours in the same four days, and throwing in a couple of hours elsewhere to make full-time. And there still are weeks when there's work left on my freakin' desk.

I don't want to bitch about work here, though, I have other outlets for that. Work is about as far from arts and music as anything I can imagine, for that matter, and that was the original point of starting this particular outlet. Just briefly explaining to my nonexistent fan base why I ain't posted nuttin' in almost two months.

I suppose since it involves Todd, I should make a remark about the New Cars. All I've seen so far is the quasi-new single, "Not Tonight," on Leno. As someone remarked elsewhere, it reminded me greatly of Utopia minus Willie and Roger. I mean, it's half the old Cars and half Utopia. Not that I don't appreciate any chance I can get to see Kasim Sulton perform -- I even saw him when he was in the Blackhearts, backing up Joan Jett in 1990. Well, okay -- Cheap Trick also were on the bill, or the odds are we wouldn't have ponied up for the ticket price. I love Kaz, but I wouldn't have paid what we paid to see Kingdom Come and Joan Jett, without the added impetus of the Rockford gang.

My brudda's already bought tickets for the show they're scheduled to play in our neck of the woods. The significant other Expedition Sailor and I have not purchased said tickets yet, though I'm not sure if it's just pure inertia. The show will probably be great. Todd still can sing the paint off the side of a Chrysler. Kaz is a better bassist every time I see/hear him. And we actually found the motivation to purchase the entry fee for Dwight Yoakam. I've loved Todd's stuff for over twenty years.

Gofigger.

I don't know. I guess there's some rebellious part of me that says this whole New Cars detour is really just a way of bankrolling his Roth IRA so Michelle and the Toddclone don't starve when he's past earning a living. I don't mind that, don't get me wrong -- on a personal level, it's fine if Todd's trying to put the Harvard entry fees in the bank for his larva to go to college when Todd himself may or may not be around to earn it anymore. That's good, progressive thinkin' on the man's part, and I'm all for that kind of thinking on the part of breeders everywhere ... but I don't feel compelled to finance it anymore. I've bought most of what Todd's recorded and released under his name, over the years. I've liked at least two-thirds of it, which is as good or better than I can say for any other artist I ever "went catalog" over, including Cheap Trick.

It just smells funny.

I don't even feel good about admitting that. I worry I'm becoming judgmental in my old age, or at least quick to judge. At the same time, I don't see any freakin' reason I should buy something I have a feeling is going to be unsatisfying to me esthetically, or even go so far as to squick me out with its transparently commercial aspirations. I want to be wrong.

I SOOOOOO want to be wrong, you can't imagine.

And yet I'm really much more interested in the new songs the 'Mats are supposed to have on the album that's to be released shortly, here.

Don't get me wrong -- a Utopia reunion? Road trip to Toronto! Chicago! Whatever. I'd do that in a New York minute. But maybe, just maybe, it's the fact that I lost interested in The Cars not long after Candy, Oh! and I just don't give a fat shit anymore. There were perhaps three or four songs from that album on that I care if I ever hear again. I put the Cars in the same cultural niche, for my own tastes, as Foreigner. The early stuff they did that I liked, I really, really liked.
The rest of it just didn't reliably do it for me.

I love ya', Todd, and the same goes for Kaz, but I just don't know that I can justify the ticket price for my local venue to see you cover "Let The Good Times Roll." Especially when I don't know how long after that song was originally recorded I'd have paid the entry vig to see Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr play it.

Man, I feel like such an infidel. I just can't get my enthusiasm behind it at all.

I want a couple new 'Mats songs and a new Sloan album. Because somewhere between the two, I'm convinced that's where the agnostic's line on heaven lies. And heaven lies.