I'm feeling quite shaken, no pun intended, by this massive earthquake that has rocked Japan. The aerial footage of the tsunami wave advancing over the land is just horrifying. Really chilling stuff. The whole thing hits close to home for us Angelenos because anybody who lives here and has half a brain knows that the Big One is not a question of if but only when. I think about it every time I drive into the tunnels on the 110 freeway, or under a freeway overpass, or if I'm sitting under a deck at Angels Stadium, and when I'm at any number of the other precarious places in which one can find themselves over the course of a normal day. It's yet another of those things that makes you realize how important it is to not get cheated. Try to enjoy every day as best you can, hard as it may be to do so these days. Enjoy every sandwich, as Warren Zevon says, because it can all get taken away from you without warning. Death don't have no mercy in this land. So take pleasure in the little things. Like a great song from Dion and the Belmonts, even one you've heard a billion times before. Try and listen for something new every time. Let the song remind you of the good things in your life. I know I'm starting to sound religious here, which is funny since I'm a proud atheist. Tragedy has a way of bringing out the magical thinker in me. Magical thinking for me serves as an obsessive-compulsive bulwark against bad stuff happening, if that makes sense, even though the rational, scientific, evidence-based materialist in me knows that we're all in this alone. We only have each other. This is all there is...
So Dion and the Belmonts. So great. As you watch and listen to tonight's clip, it's weird to think that there's heroin coursing through the guy's veins. I don't think the backing singers behind him are the real Belmonts, but I dig the way they shuffle, and the way the three of them look like they're about 50 years old. You'd never see that today, where youth has become the only thing that matters in the entertainment business. ...There's great little touches in Dion's performance, like when he drapes the microphone cord over his shoulder. That's the move of a total pro, a real entertainer, and he can't be more than 19 or 20 at this point...
Dion's music in this period was a product of the seedy underbelly of the Bronx in the 1950s. I'm obsessed with the whole milieu. Underworld. The Polo Grounds. The Grand Concourse. The L Train. Last Exit to Brooklyn. Jackie Gleason. The Wanderers. C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite. The Naked Kiss. The Killing. Sterling Hayden. J. Edgar Hoover. Whitaker Chambers. Alger Hiss. American Tabloid. City of Night. Phil Spector. Frankie Valli... And Dion. A guido from the rough backstreets who had a monkey on his back for a long time, but he still found a way to shine. I find inspiration in guys who are deeply tortured yet manage to dig way down and find something incredible in themselves. I wonder why. Teenager in love. Love came to me. Gonna make it alone. Donna the prima donna. The wanderer. Lovers who wander. Runaround Sue. No one knows. Where or when. Lonely teenager. The majestic...
On this somber day, I feel blessed to be able to sit here in my home and say a few things about how much I love Dion...
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