What To Do About Twitter

Do you remember where you were when you first heard about Twitter?

I do. I was listening to "The Regular Guys"  on Rock100.5 in February 2008. "The Regular Guys" were Larry, Eric, Southside Steve,  and Big Fat Tim.  It was a radio show marketed to guys. Since I am a guy, I listened to it.

One morning, Eric (who is the brainiest high school dropout ever) announced there was a new web site called "Twitter" and you can post your thoughts on it except your thoughts were called "Tweets" and there was a character limit for your tweets.  The tweets were supposed to be, in a word used a lot back then, pithy.

Well since that time in early 2008, Twitter has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon. You "follow" people and people can follow you.  This enables you to see the tweets of some very famous people and you can tweet back at them. Sometimes, they will tweet back at you.

Here's a list of famous people who have tweeted back to me when I tweeted to them:  Larry The Cable Guy, Jimmy Fallon, Colin Quinn, Hugh Hewitt, and Larry Sabato (he's a presidential historian at the University of Virginia).  You see I run with a fast crowd.

However, Twitter has some problems.

Twitter is basically a gas station bathroom wall put in cyberspace. For every nice thing you see on Twitter, you see a hundred not-so-nice things. Oh yeah, do you remember a world in which women didn't swear?  That world doesn't exist on Twitter.

Part of the problem is that unlike Facebook or real life, Twitter allows you to use a nom de plume and you can have as many accounts as you want. It also allows "bots"  which "autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, re-tweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts".  

A topic that is popular on Twitter is said to be "trending" and it really is a big deal to have a "trending" topic because for some reason journalists don't investigate any stories, they just look at what's trending on Twitter.

Let's say somebody starts a topic #Alanstinks. If a couple of bots get a hold of it and cause it to trend and soon the news media starts reporting that I stink.

But a big problem now involves (of course) the President.

Recently, Twitter and Facebook have decided to "fact check".  That is, you just can't post a meme or an article because it might not be true and people could die.  At least, I think that is the reason. You could post a meme about how wearing masks should not be mandatory because it leads to kooties and Twitter will "fact check" you because somebody might not wear a mask and then grandma gets Cornavirus and dies.

Here is an example of a meme that appeared on Facebook in the 2016 election.

This meme had The Lord and Satan arm-wrestling over the election. I'm certainly no Bible scholar, but I don't remember it saying this is the way the future is determined. Supposedly this was placed in Facebook by the Russians. This is how the Russians interfered with the election. 

Twitter has decided to fact check President Trump, because, well, you know.

I object to the fact-checking for a couple of reasons. 

One, I learned as a student at Wheeler High School ("Where The Students Of Today Are Talking About "Bad Company" Because "Bad Company" Rocks")  to not to believe everything you read. I'm sort of insulted that Twitter and Facebook believe I can't decide for myself what is accurate and what is not.

Like I said, I am a graduate of Wheeler High School AND Kennesaw State University.

Two, I have a sneaking suspicion that Twitter will be fact-checking conservatives more than they will liberals. Conservatives don't believe in "science" and will have to be watched. Liberals, on the other hand, are full of goodness and light and won't need such scrutiny.

However, President Trump is wrong to threaten Twitter.  He is part of the reason, even before he became President, Twitter became popular.  Trump can't shut down Twitter any more than I can shut down Twitter. If he's so steamed about Twitter, he should vote with his feet and stop tweeting. That is more than we can ask for.

Here's what I would do with Twitter. I would ban the bots. I would make people use their real names. Finally, I would make sure it was one individual, one account.

There are some positive things about Twitter. There are some incredibly funny people on Twitter. "Super70sSports" and the Iowahawkblog are two of my favorites. Plus, Twitter is home to my favorite animal program "Jonah Goldberg's Dogs".  Make sure you catch their "treat time". 

#Bestdogsever

                                                                    

 

Hold Your Nose

The Presidential election of 2020 will definitely be different.

On one side is President Trump. Think about how unthinkable those words were just five years ago.  I'm not saying that in a bad way. I don't think most of us could ever picture a scenario in which the brash New York developer would be elected, much less become the nominee of a major party.

I think it is fair to say that Trump has been unlike any President I know anything about and I have all twelve volumes of  American Heritage's Presidents And Famous Americans.

He's extraordinarily crude and rude. He's surprisingly inarticulate. He's incredibly thin-skinned, petulant, and you could say childish, but I don't know any kids who act like he does. He's the poster child for narcissism.

But, the guy is a workaholic and he seems to care if he keeps his promises. While their support for him has come at a great price, he's one of the few figures who seem to care about American Evangelical Christians.

I see this all the time. "How can Evangelicals support someone who is as spiritually problematic as Trump?"  Trump coming out in support of churches opening-up out of the pandemic is a good example.  If Wal Mart can be open, if Costco can be open, and if Home Depot can be open, then churches can be open.  We've got something called the FREE EXERCISE of Religion in this country and it is in the First Amendment, which the last time I checked was not negated by a disease.

In fact, before the pandemic, I thought Trump had a very good chance of being reelected.  Now, I think it is a coin toss.

Trump's opponent from the Democratic Party will be former Vice President Joe Biden.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate when I was in eighth grade. I am sixty years old.  That is a long time being on the American stage.

He's run for President twice before and was out of the running right before it even got started. President Obama put him on the ticket because even Obama couldn't put up with having Hillary Clinton around every day.

Biden is a throwback to the glad-handing, retail politician of the past. Another way of putting it is Biden is a hack.  He's a go-along to get along type of pol which explains why he has accepted, without much apparent thought the ideas of the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

However, he is not Trump and a lot of people have "Trump Fatigue".

He has one big problem and as he would say, his name is Joe Biden.

It is not simply that Joe Biden is too old to be President.  After all, he's only a few years older than Trump.

Biden is, at the very least, in the early stages of dementia. He is in cognitive decline.  I'm not saying this to be a ha-ha funny man or to be mean. He is not there all the time. It is as plain as day.

Take for example his interview with Charlamagne tha God. (It is interesting to note that the toughest interview a Democrat can have is not on NBC, CNN, etc.  No, it is one given by Charlamagne tha God).

Biden was combative to what he perceived to be a hostile question. The tone of his answer "You ain't black" was not sarcasm.  It sounded to me to be an angry old man. I might have cut him some slack if I hadn't heard him respond to questions for regular people in town halls the same way.

This is what makes Biden's Veep selection so critical. Have you ever heard of the 25th Amendment? Can you imagine Biden serving all four years as President?

So far, the names appearing on the "shortlist" does not inspire a lot of confidence. Biden made this goofy pledge to select a woman running mate. The shortlist supposedly includes:  a couple of opponents in the Democratic primary, a couple of unknown members of Congress, a couple of governors, and a former minority leader from the Georgia House of Representatives who is doing everything but putting up a billboard saying "Hey Joe, Pick Me!"

This will be another Inez Principle election   I named this principle after my mother because when I asked her who she was voting for in the Nixon-McGovern race, she said she was holding her nose and voting for Nixon.

I imagine a lot of people will be holding their nose and voting in November.

Good luck.

It's Time

They say opinions are like belly buttons. Actually, they say opinions are like another part of the party, but this is a family blog.  Everybody has one.   Since everyone has one, here is mine. (Opinion, not my belly button.)

It is time. It is time to ease the Covid-19 restrictions and get back to work.

I didn't have a problem with the "lockdown" at first.

On New Year's Eve, my wife went for a physical. After they took her EKG, they escorted her to the Emergency Department of the hospital. She had Atrial Fibrillation (AFIB).  I was working and she called me to come down to the emergency room. When I got there, the emergency room was packed. It was ten o'clock in the morning.  I asked a nurse what was going on.

She said, "It's the flu".

When they came out on those March days and said we had to flatten the curve so hospitals would not be overwhelmed.  I thought back to New Year's Eve. Flattening the curve made a lot of sense.

Here we are two months later and it looks like, in a lot of places, we took that curve and stomped that sucker flat. Okay, maybe not flat, but flat enough.  We should be happy about that.

We should be chomping at the bit and ready to open up small businesses, restaurants, and bars. Bring on the ball games. Let's go to church!

But we're not. We are scared nearly half to death.

We are scared because most of us have never faced anything like this before. A virus of all things, that could change you and your family's lives.

The polio vaccine came out five years before I was born, so I've never had to worry about polio. We've had vaccines to prevent all sorts of maladies from chickenpox to the flu.

We are scared because of the news media.

I'm not saying the news media is overhyping Covid-19.  It is serious.  The problem is how serious.  The media spent a good part of early 2020 telling us Covid-19 was no big deal.  Then when Tom Hanks got it, Covid-19 became the Bubonic Plague.

We are scared because of our leaders.

There's a lot of blame to go around, okay.  Trump's skill set is for building a hospital, not running a hospital. Trump simply isn't wired to be the Clinician In Chief. At times, he wanted to remind you about how great he is (in case you had forgotten) before you die.

But, give the devil his due. He's done what the lonesome friends of science said to do.

The other side doesn't have much to be proud of either. Coming after the incredibly stupid impeachment, you get the impression that a lot of Democrats and news media (I know, one and the same), saw this as their one BIG chance to finally get Trump.

We are scared because of the two sides in social media.

One side believes the whole thing is a plot, a conspiracy by Bill Gates or Hillary Clinton or somebody. It was a "Plandemic" so the whole economy could crumble and Gates can implant his secret Anti-Christ chips in you so that you would have to pay to have them removed to get the new improved Anti-Christ chips two years later.

This side believes the data has been rigged: they've over-inflated the mortality rate. A person dies of a brain tumor but is found to have Covid-19 and becomes a  COVID-19 statistic.

The other side is the side of reason and science. They are always claiming this governor or that governor who oddly enough always seems to be a Republican, will have "blood on their hands", simply because he allowed a hairdresser to open her shop.

This side enjoys the restrictions. Or rather, enjoys enforcing the restrictions which often seem capricious and arbitrary.  You can't buy seeds in Michigan but boy you can get as many abortions as you want.

This side loves to wag their finger in the face of those who may see things a little bit differently.

One person on Twitter wrote these words:  "It seems GENX is hell-bent on killing The Greatest Generation who today are 75+ [Technically, true, but most of the Greatest Generation that is still alive are in their 90s] The people demanding their right to go hang at the beach willfully sacrificing the people who stormed the beaches of Normandy."  Central Park is open, in New York, the hottest of all hot spots.  The Subway is open, in New York, the hottest of all hot spots. If they can be open, a beach can be open.

James Lileks said, "But if you want to go to a beach, your desire is characterized as “demanding your right to go hang at the beach,” which makes both the action and the voicing of your understanding of your rights something to be pilloried. You are now one of those idiots who are demanding their rights, which says it all these days."


This side has moved the goal post.  It used to be: "flatten the curve". Now it is "testing everyone" and/or vaccine. Really. The most reliable test is a swab that is stuck so far up your nose somebody said "it can read your thoughts."  And of course, it could always come back with a false negative or a false positive.

Oh yeah, this side also says the data has been rigged. "They are under-reporting it in Georiga and Florida because the governors are goofball monkey boys of the President".

Look, I didn't sign up for any of this.  I signed up to flatten the curve.

The curve is flattened enough in most places.  Where it is not, keep the restrictions but don't enjoy them as much.
 
Let's go. We have an economy to rebuild.

Covid Annoyances

Is it just me or are things getting under your skin too during this time of our great unpleasantness?

Phone trees, for example.

I make a lot of phone calls for my job. My phone call is very important to them. They instruct me to pay close attention just in case the options have changed since yesterday when I called this company forty times.

I have to press a lot of buttons to speak to a human being.

However, just before I speak with a human being, this company wants me to know that MY HEALTH and SAFETY is their FOREMOST responsibility. This started sometime in March. Before then, I guess I was on my own.

When I finally speak with a human being, the human being says, "MUFWEHNFORPLOB" or something like that. I really can't tell because English is at least the second language of this person and it sounds like I made the call on a short wave radio or tin can with string.

Here is an actual transcript:

Person: '' <short wave radio sounds> ...I have your name?"

Me:  "What?"

Person: "May I have your name?"

Me:  "Beg your pardon. My name is Alan"

Person: "How may I help you, Siegfried?"

Me: "My name is Alan"

Person: "No need for swearing Quincy and I need to remind you we are on a recorded line."

Me: "No, my name is Alan"

Person: "Oh. My apologies Alice, how may I help you".

This goes on all the ding dang day long.

This may come as a total surprise, but a lot of times these people aren't much help at all. But somewhere in the Offshore Phone Center University, they teach this phrase: "Let me double-check that".

I'm sure there was a study published by the Harvard School Of Business which shows that if you say you "double-check" something, your customer will believe anything you say.

While I'm unloading on you, here are some other things that annoy me.

1) TV Shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Premium Cable that use the F-word as the go-to adjective. The classic example is the trailer trash character Ruth in the Netflix show "Ozark" which is filmed here in Georgia. Ruth is played by Julia Garner, a young lady from The Bronx. Garner won an Emmy for her portrayal of Ruth. She should have won it for the most creative use of the really bad cuss word.  Ruth would make the Joe Pesci character in "Goodfellas" blush.   I'm not a prude and I'm a son of a sailor. But I only heard my dad use that word once.  I was 15 when I heard him say it. I was surprised because I didn't think old people knew that word.

2) While I'm at it, the TV show "The Bachelor".  I think this show has been on TV longer than "Meet The Press".  The premise: a single young man is presented with twenty women to woo and he has to go on "dates" with them until he finds the girl he wants to "marry" (and divorce).  As you might guess, there's a lot of crying in this show and the bachelor usually picks the blonde with the biggest breasts.  When people get tired of "The Bachelor", they run "The Bachelorette". The bachelorette is usually the runner-up in "The Bachelor" and by federal law, she must be a brunette that is not, er, blessed as the blonde.  There's not as much crying in "The Bachelorette".  There's just a lot of bowing up with various "bros" saying a certain "bro" isn't playing for the right reasons. Whatever they are.

3) Everything seems to break down Right vs Left, Democrats vs Republicans, etc.  It does get annoying.   Some seem to think that we can stay in a permanent shut down until a vaccine is created, which could take weeks/months/years/centuries and others think it is their inalienable right to sneeze on anybody in a nursing home. Can't we find a middle ground?

4) Another example.  Costco was a subject of a dreaded, dun-dun-dun, TWITTER hashtag because it has asked people to leave their warehouses if they are not wearing masks. Costco says it is worried about the safety of their workers (yeah, right) and their customers.  Actually, Costco is worried about money because if somebody gets sick and they trace back to Costco, the Billboard lawyers come out of the woodwork.  However, Costco is a private company and you have to be a member to go in there so you have to play by their rules. All the Twitter hashtag did was rile up the Trump Haters, because you know this came directly from the President.  The best way to deal with Costco if you don't like their mask rule is, now say it with me, JOIN SAM'S CLUB.  I'm beginning to think we need to put instructions on toilet paper if they ever make it again.

5) Radio commercials for men.  Apparently, the only commercials that are targeted for that underappreciated "Dad" market are for doctors that treat men for a certain condition that only men can have, sorry, ladies, you can't have this condition. Besides, it has never happened before. Okay, maybe once in 'Nam. Oh, where was I? Oh yeah.  They act like this is the only thing men think about in regards to their health. The problem is that it is true. That is all we think about. That's what makes it so annoying.

 

Meditations In An Emergency

We have some good news from the COVID-19 desk.

I went to two different stores on Saturday and both stores had, try to restrain yourselves because this is big news, toilet paper! No kidding!  For real! Honest!

Are you ready for some more mind-blowing news?  One of the stores had hand sanitizers! We must be living somewhere over the rainbow.

It has been a wild month.

It started with a government-ordered shelter in place which caused an economic depression. Yes, that's the word. It will be easier to explain this depression to high school students in the years to come than the Great One in 1929.  Basically, most high school and college survey classes give some details about the Great Depression but they don't make a lot of sense. So students are basically left with the impression that everybody was dancing The Charleston one day and then the next they were singing "Buddy Can You Spare A Dime."

Ours isn't that bad, I think (hope).  For one thing, we're singing "Buddy Can You Spare A Roll".

A lot of people lost their jobs and of course, the government came to the rescue.

One program was called The Paycheck Protection Program and it was supposed to help small businesses stay afloat and pay their employees.  It ran out of funds in about two weeks.

President Trump appeared daily in the White House Press  Room to answer as many questions as possible to calm the country's fears both clinically and economically.

Ha, ha, ha.  Just joking. The President appeared daily to engage in the TEE-TEE Battle he has with the press. Some days, you actually side with the President because here the press has access to the most powerful man in the world to ask him the tough questions. Example: will he use his broad pardoning powers to pardon "The Tiger King"?

But mostly it is Trump repeating the fact that the economy was really doing great until the invisible enemy came along and wrecked it. But, we're providing great big beautiful ventilators and companies are making beautiful awesome masks to wear because you're recommended to wear them but you don't have to, but they're still beautiful.

He reiterates that he's working with all of the governors who are doing a really great job except the ones that aren't like Brian Kemp, who is a great, beautiful guy and doing a great job but not really because he did something I didn't like. But he's a good guy.

This goes on and on. The press will then ask the President questions like, "Sir, most respectfully, do you want people to die suddenly?". Trump will answer that they are fake news and their ratings are in the tank.   Next question:  "Mr. President, you say you are a stable genius, but we've never seen you do any Calculus".  Ninety-nine per-cent of the time, Trump gets mad.

The other day, Trump appeared to endorse the idea that you could inject the body with disinfectants and that could cure COVID-19.  You can't say Trump doesn't think outside of the box.

Here are some other things about our crisis.

They said we should wear face masks even though it wouldn't prevent you from getting COVID-19 unless the person with COVID-19 has a mask on too.  So like everybody else who doesn't want to kill his fellow man, my wife and I got some masks.  Problem: early in the crisis, the news told us that we shouldn't wear contact lenses if we could avoid it. Because of this, I wear glasses. When you wear a mask and glasses at the same time, glasses fog up.  That's why you never see any nearsighted bank robbers or Batman wearing a pair of readers.

Also, it is hard to understand people when they are talking through a mask. It's like "Rocket Man" by Elton John.  For years I thought Elton said, "Rocket man, emy-himy-ear-own" instead of "Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone".

But, on the plus side, you can say some really nasty cuss words.

Another thing about this crisis is that it seems to have empowered a lot of peoples' inner Karen.

In New York City, which COVID-19 has hit hard, a lady was running around Central Park yelling at people that they were not social distancing enough.

When Governor Kemp allowed a slow rollout of non-essential business openings, the Karens were in full-throated outrage that Governor Kemp was going to get people killed.

I really wasn't that surprised by the response. My dad was a "yellow dog Democrat" who thought the GOP platform was 1) Kill people and 2) Take all their money. This was basically the logic the Karens used.

It does sound kind of funny that one of the first businesses to open were bowling alleys and tattoo parlors. Unless you owned a bowling alley or a tattoo parlor. Then maybe it just means you can start making money to support yourself and your family.

The Karens never mention the PITA ("Pain In The...") regulations these small business owners have to go through just to open and serve their clientele.

I'm trying to stay positive. Thankfully, the worst-case scenarios did not occur. We still lost John Prine and that sucks enough, but it appears we won't lose the millions that were forecasted.

Things will get better. Honest. Has Uncle Alan ever lied to you before?

White Trash Freak Parade

We've been in this "shelter in place" phase for a little over a month now.

I guess I've gotten used to not "going out to eat".  It was kind of weird not to go to church on Easter.

I'm still not used to this toilet paper issue. At first, it was due to all of the big bad hoarder people and we were promised that the supply chain would catch up.  Here it is a month later and seeing a pack of toilet paper for sale at Kroger is like seeing Haley's Comet.

My next-door neighbor told me, from well over six feet away, that she found a pack of toilet paper at Costco. It is good to know we have a hookup.

Like other Americans during this time of sheltering, my wife and I have watched the Netflix documentary "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, And Madness" Netflix describes the show as "A zoo owner spirals out of control amid a cast of eccentric characters in this true murder-for-hire story from the underworld of big cat breeding."  A better description would be  "A White Trash Freak Parade.  Oh yeah, there are some tigers."

"The Tiger King" is a guy who calls himself Joe Exotic and he runs a tourist trap private zoo in Oklahoma, not Arizona.  He's a gay polygamist who likes lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my. (I never get tired of that joke.)


He breeds tigers in this zoo to sell to people who happen to have two thousand dollars and just a few brain cells.

He has multiple tattoos and multiple earrings. He has this high-pitched nasal twang and sold music videos of himself singing his songs like the haunting (not in a good way) "I Saw A Tiger"'.

To top it off: he has a mullet. 
 
His enemy is Carole Baskin, a sanctimonious bottle blonde with a bit of a past.  She runs a wildlife animal rescue sanctuary in Florida which takes in wildlife when people learn (the hard way) the novelty of a baby tiger ends when it becomes an adult.

Joe and Carole have a mutual dislike for each other and spend a lot of their time making lawyers wealthy by suing and countersuing. While Carole is more right than Joe, she is one of those smug crusading activists who is trying to make the world a better place and makes you sick.  Joe is just a bipolar mess.

A good bit of the documentary is spent on Joe's accusation that Carole had her millionaire (second) husband killed for his money. Joe's evidence:  The husband disappeared and they have never found the body. Now in the real legal world (I know this from years of watching "Perry Mason"), that is not technically "evidence". But Joe harped on it time and time again how "Care-roll kilt her husband and fed hem to the alliegaters" and "Care-roll fed her husban to the tie-gers" and (my favorite), "Care-roll  burreed her huzban unner neath that septic tank".  

From my observation, a lot of people believe Carole was involved with her second husband's disappearance and/or death mainly because Carole seems like a person that would tell the teacher they forgot to assign homework.  For what it's worth, O. J.Simpson, someone who actually, well, you know, says he thinks Carole did it.

You meet a lot of people in Tiger King.  Kelci Saffery, a  transman who is now an amputee due to sticking his hand into a tiger cage.  John Reinke, the zoo's manager, does not have any legs due to a zip line accident. John Finlay, one of Joe's "husbands", barely had any teeth. It was like you had to be missing something to be associated with Joe Exotic.

The zoo's head keeper was a man named Erik Cowie, who along with John Reinke, didn't seem to have a dishonest bone in his body.  You wonder what road he had to go down to end up working in a private zoo headed by Joe Exotic.  Erik is a walking personification of "Sunday Morning Coming Down".

Joe is always doing something outrageous. Like his same-sex wedding to two other men. I didn't think polygamy was legal in Oklahoma.  He had an internet TV show. He ran for President. He ran for governor of Oklahoma. At campaign events, he passed out condoms with his picture on it.

Joe has turned narcissism into a type of performance art. He makes Donald Trump seem like a wallflower.

Joe brings in an investor from Las Vegas named Jeff Lowe who uses baby tigers to score poontang in Vegas.  In fact, one of the points Tiger King makes over and over again is a tiger is an aphrodisiac and not, as popular legend has it, an animal that can eat you.

Joe begins to spiral out of control, I guess. He looked pretty out of control beforehand to me. He hatches an incredibly dumb plan to hire a hitman with an obese strip club owner who has a worse haircut than Joe to kill Carole. It turns out the obese strip club owner was working with the Feds and Joe is now sitting in jail.

What have we learned from Tiger King?  We've learned that there are a lot of people in the wildlife animal subculture and all of them have a screw loose. We've learned that Wal-Mart donated its expired meat and chicken to the zoo and that the zoo employees could go through it and keep the good stuff for themselves.  We've learned no male in Oklahoma wears a shirt.

We've learned that in the middle of a pandemic, we'll watch anything.

The Happiest Enchilada

He said he was kicked off of Noah's Ark because "there was two of everything but one of me".

He was a quiet man, a middle man, and a solider on his way to Montreal.

He had an illegal smile, sour grapes, a blue umbrella, and an eight-track ("Another Side of George Jones").

He told stories through his songs about people like Sam Stone, Donald, Lydia, Sabu, and Cathy who was cleaning the spoons. People like Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard. People like the happy sailors dancing on a sinking ship.

He introduced us to old people. Old people like the woman named after her mother who was married to a child that's grown old. Old people like Grandpa, who was a carpenter. Old people like Grandma who went to school in Bowling Green. Old people who lost sons in the Korean War.

You could not pick out a less improbable singer-songwriter than John Prine

His older brother taught him how to play the guitar. "Three chords. I liked them so much I didn't learn any other".  After high school, he was drafted into the Army, where somehow, he was sent to West Germany to be a mechanic despite not being mechanically inclined.

When he got home, he became a mailman.

One evening, at an open mike, he got up and played some of the songs he was writing as a hobby. From there, he was the regular act at a small club. One evening, Roger Ebert came in a saw him play. Soon, Kris Kristofferson stopped by.

From there, John Prine went to New York and recorded his first album, "John Prine".  The album cover features Prine sitting on a bale of hay for no reason. It also featured the songs "Paradise", "Illegal Smile" "Spanish Pipe Dream", "Hello In There", "Donald And Lydia", and "Angel From Montgomery".  Prine was tagged "The New Dylan" when in reality he was simply the first John Prine.

Unlike Dylan, Prine never reinvented himself. He was always John Prine.

His first spate of albums was on the Atlantic label. Then he signed with David Giffen's Asylum records.  It was the record company of the Eagles.  He released three albums with that label: "Bruised Orange",  "Pink Cadillac", and "Storm Windows".  The record company had no idea what to do with Prine. He wasn't country. He wasn't rock.  He was a hybrid that years later would be called "Americana".

Prine, miffed at Asylum's indifference towards him, did what any good American would do:  he went out and started his own record company: Oh Boy Records.  At first, it was a mail-order record company.  You send John Prine seven bucks plus shipping and handling and he'd send you his album, "Aimless Love".

Prine toured a lot those days.  My wife and I saw him in 1986 and 1987.  He put on a great show and was very personable.  He also smoked, a lot.  Both of my parents were chain smokers and Prine would haven given them a run for their money.

Well, Oh Boy grew and Prine recorded "The Missing Years" produced by Tom Petty's bass player. It won a Grammy.  Prine also got married and quickly had three kids.  He won his second Grammy for his homage to the country music dueling duet  "In Spite Of Ourselves".

After that album was released, it was announced that Prine had a squamous cell carcinoma on his neck. The surgery he had removed a piece of his neck and severed some nerves in his tongue.  It gave him a new look and added a gravelly tone to his voice.

It was announced last week that Prine has COVID-19 and is on a ventilator.  At this time, Prine is listed as "stable", but he has pneumonia in both lungs. He is right in COVID-19's wheelhouse being a 73-year-old man with health issues.

I have been a Prine fan for almost 43 years.  When people would ask me who I listen to  I would say John Prine and they would say "Who?"  Now, thanks to the years of touring, great records and a lot of hard work, Prine has a lot of fans. His fans include Bob Dylan himself who said, "Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism".  I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds good. Other fans: Bill Murray, Roger Waters, and Johnny Cash.

When I heard of his condition, I thought about his song "That's The Way The World Goes Round".   It is a jaunty happy sounding song that an alcoholic wife-beater and a guy that almost dies from hypothermia.

The refrain says, "That's the way the world goes round, you're up one day, the next you're down, it's a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown, that's the way the world goes around."

At the concert my wife and I went to 1986, he told this story about this song. He told it again at the 1987 concert.  He was telling it in concerts in 2016.

A lady came up to the stage and asked him to sing his song about the happy enchilada.  Prine was confused because he'd never written a song about any type of enchilada "much less a happy enchilada" and suggested that she had him confused with someone else.  She said no, it was him.  Well, Prine asked how does it go?  She said, "It's a happy enchilada and you think you're gonna drown".

I will be a happy enchilada when Prine beats COVID-19.