Since I jumped on board the Nitelife Express in April, I have been touring more or less every month. It’s a great band (Nick Curran & The Nitelifes) and I’m still young enough (at heart) that the idea of jumping in a passenger van and driving in a pretzel pattern around the U.S. fills me with that elusive sense of adventure and wanderlust. On the other hand, our tours are usually two weeks at a time, well within the road burnout threshold, and I still have enough down time back in Austin to teach students and keep my fingers in various creative projects. So, in spite of the fact that money is tight for everyone, the “war on terror” is spreading like a fire ant colony, and 99% of popular music is still crap, 2003 has been a pretty good year. I hope my friends out there reading this can, in retrospect, say the same. Here’s a rhetorical question: Is the level of ironic, anachronistic and plain bizarre events in this country actually increasing, or is it just me getting more bemused with each passing year? Every time I turn on the television or read a newspaper some twisted factoid leaps out like a writhing mackerel in the boat of consciousness. (I know, I know, friends keep saying “Well, don’t turn on the TV, don’t open the newspaper.” But I just can’t help it, I’m drawn inexorably to the ridiculous, like drivers rubbernecking a car crash). Examples? Let’s see… Saddam Hussein looking like the Unibomber, grizzled and unkempt, submitting to a medical exam like a new zoo acquisition, while the suits back in D.C. high five each other… Mara Liasson (one of my favorite NPR voices) appearing on Fox News (of all places) in a garish pink suit, trying to put some kind of sane perspective on events, but her voice breaks in a girlish squeak and she is reduced to fits of hacking and throat clearing, while the grey men in grey suits studiously ignore her, take over and blather the listeners back into a tv coma… The founder of Girls Gone Wild (some young bizness jock) getting beat up by hotel security in Las Vegas (”I know why they did it! They know who I am and they wanted to single me out!” - what the f—? why would neckless Vegas security guards give a s— about some two bit porn hustler? are they the new guardians of American morality? In Vegas?!!). Well, one couldn’t help but smile ruefully as the slimy little pimp is pressed back against the quaint masonry of the parking lot fountain pond, screaming like a little girl, two hulking gorillas in monkey suits (that’s tuxes for the younger readers) rearranging his tendons and ligaments. One only wishes that while he was thus spreadeagled, helpless, crying for his mommy, that some girl, having gone wild in the urban desert environs, had come up and flashed him, maybe even bitch-slapped him with her implants. Ah well, a man can dream… So, to sum up, even after 25 years or so of playing music for a living, the bar life doesn’t seem as wacked out as other areas of the giant entertainment industry we call America. Everything about it is appealing, everything about it is so grand! Happy holidays, Paul K