This week's Wednesday

Wednesday is my day off from retail work, which makes it my designated day to record my parts for each week's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio and to try to get around to doing whatever else needs doing. I always run out out of Wednesday before I run out of Wednesday things to do.

I...wish I'd though to include some Undertones content in today's blog

A scheduled commitment on Tuesday night made it necessary to program the radio show on Monday. I'd hoped to also record the show before Wednesday, but I was too busy to get to it during the day on Tuesday and unwilling to do it later in the evening. The task fell back to its familiar timing on this week's Wednesday.

I did get the playlist timed and finalized on Monday, with minimal changes after that. My friend Beth urged us to pay tribute to the late Gilson Lavis, who had been the drummer for Squeeze. Good suggestion, and we followed through by opening the show with three Squeeze tracks in a row, beginning with what is probably my favorite, "Goodbye Girl." Gilson created the song's distinctive percussion arrangement, and it seemed the perfect choice to commence our small salute to his work.

Wednesday morning brought the promise and adventure of...the first visit to my new dentist. The appointment wasn't until 11:00 am, and I wasn't in any hurry to get out of bed. But! I did get out of bed! Eventually. After a shower, I grabbed the sacrament of my morning coffee, settled the week's banking and bills, enjoyed a corn muffin, and even recorded one of the thirteen spoken segments I needed for this week's show. Granted, it was the shortest of the segments--Once again, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio remembers Gilson Lavis--but, y'know, an accomplishment's an accomplishment.

Then it was off to the dentist. That took a little over an hour--introductory session, entailing a lot of x-rays and the like, a quick exam, and a general pronouncement of Not bad, with two subsequent appointments now scheduled for a cleaning and one filling. My smile remains simply dazzling.

I grabbed a donut on my way back home, then made myself a cup of instant coffee (Café Bustelo instant espresso). By then, it was about 12:40, maybe a little later. Brenda had a 2:00 appointment to get her snow tires put on, and we planned to leave her car with the mechanic and do a few errands together during that time. Before heading out for all that, I had to make an important phone call, and then I tried to do as much of the show as I could within that short window of time. I started by dragging all of the individual song, bumper, ID, and other miscellaneous files one-by-one into the folder for this week's show. With that process accomplished, mirable dictu, I had still time to record all of the back announcements before leaving the house at 1:50.

While Brenda's car got set to swap non-winter tires for Syracuse-ready winter tread, we dropped off an envelope at UPS, picked up my weekly superhero books at Comix Zone, and stopped at Target. We then collected her now snow-worthy ride, and drove in our his-and-her vehicles to an early dinner date at Vicino's Brick And Brew.

Back home, I reviewed the back announcements. Only one of them needed to be redone, and I was finally able to ship the complete folder to Dana a little after 5:00. I hadn't yet had a chance to finish annotating the individual tracks for what will become the printed playlist; I did a little work on that before breaking to join Brenda for a yummy dessert of homemade apple crisp à la mode. We watched Bridge Street and a few game shows (Jeopardy!, Name That Tune, and The Weakest Link) before Brenda retired for the evening.

I returned to the computer to (almost) finish annotating the playlist and write this blog piece. No other writing got done on this week's Wednesday, but Wednesday was the only day this week that I didn't work on individual interview edits for my forthcoming book Make Something Happen! The DIY Story Of A Power Pop Band Called THE FLASHCUBES. Editing interviews is pure drudgery, but I'm making progress and feeling mo' and mo' better about advancing the book an eensy bit forward on its path to becoming a book. Much to do, but I'm starting to do it.

Throughout everything else, politics have also occupied my mind. As my fellow progressives express their anger, their hurt, and their frustration about the eight Senate Democrats who voted with Republicans to end the government shutdown, I find myself increasingly convinced that the Democrats had no real option other than grabbing this least bad among bad, bad choices. Yes, our cause was resoundingly triumphant in last week's elections. And yeah, we have momentum and a growing sense of public support with us. But you know what we don't have?

The numbers. 

In spite of polling and prospects for the future, right now--RIGHT NOW--we are outnumbered in both chambers of Congress. No matter how firm our resolve, our mere resolve will not win the day, and it will not move Republicans to save health care subsidies. It won't. It is pure fantasy to suggest otherwise. And digging in our heels, as noble as it may seem in theory, will not save the Affordable Care Act; it will hasten its demise as provisions expire during a stalemate.

There is no good choice here. The good choice to be made was a year ago, and it would have resulted in Kamala Harris taking the oath of office as our 47th president this past January. The ACA is important, vital, and its survival is literally a life and death issue. I don't care as much about its flaws as I care about keeping it and improving it; its opponents just want to scrap it, replace it with [insert concept of a plan here], and they don't care if people die as part of the scrapping.

The poison pill within the GOP's malevolent indifference is that they won't negotiate--at all--at this time. Which means that if Democrats in the Senate don't agree to end the shutdown, Federal workers will remain unpaid, SNAP beneficiaries will remain unfed, the stability of the system will continue to fracture...and the ACA subsidies will still expire and vanish. That's the worst of the bad, bad choices. The bad guys have the numbers. We can't outvote them on this.

But maybe we can outmaneuver them. The Senate Dems--eight of them--say okay, reopen the government. Pay the workers. Feed the families. Make the trains run on time. And send it to the House. Oh, and while you're at it, swear in that newly-elected Democratic representative you've been stonewalling. One more number. The fight ain't over.

It's a long...no, it's too serious and dangerous to call this a game. But it's a long campaign for a greater good. And the least bad choice among bad, bad choices is, by definition, better than the alternative. It sucks. It's terrible. And it's the best our numbers can do.

For now.

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I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.