Set Me Down on a Television Floor.

I guess this has been what the young kids with their blogs and their face books and their my spaces call a "light blogging" week. I traveled for a few days, had a million things to do over the weekend, and now seem to be having trouble thinking of anything to post about. (Did you notice how I just ended a sentence with a preposition? I've always been a rebel.) Is this writer's block?

Let me tell you what I just did. I lugged an old television set out to the curb. It's out there now, sadly awaiting its fate. Does it have regrets? Is it sorry for having sucked me into hours of mesmerizing trash, when I could have been doing better things, like surfing for porn? I have a feeling it will be rescued by a kindly, if misguided, TV addict who will soon be disappointed to realize that he needs to smack the side of it every three minutes to keep the picture from vanishing. Good luck to you, my trash-picking neighbor friend!

My wife bought the TV twenty years ago; it was black and clutter free and at the time, it seemed quite high-tech. As I hauled it outside, though, it felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, a big, crappy antique.

The first TV set I remember was my parents', way back in the middle of the last century, when I was a little kid. It only received three channels -- it didn't even have UHF. I know what you're thinking: Why didn't the child welfare people intervene? All I can say in response is that things were different in those days.

I would get home from school at about 3:00 and watch Dark Shadows, a vampire soap opera. That's right, you heard me -- a vampire soap opera. Barnabas Collins was the main vampire's name, and I'm sure there were all kinds of not-so-subtle sexual references, what with the biting of the necks and all, but I just wanted to see the guy turn into a bat. Now, as I look at a photo of him, I realize why I thought he was so cool -- he was played by George Harrison, badly in need of a gig as his band disintegrated. You go, Quiet Beatle!

Once or twice a week, I'd walk down the street to a friend's house, a rich kid who had a TV that pulled in five channels. Five! That was living! One of the extra stations was channel 19, WXIX, the home of Larry Smith's Puppets. Larry and his gang would cut up between cartoons. His cast included Snarfy the Dog and, I think, something called Nasty Old Thing who, as far as I can recall, did not wear a stained trench coat and reveal himself to unsuspecting passersby. I could be wrong about that.

The puppet I recollect most vividly was Hattie the Witch, aka Batty Hattie from Cincinnati (not to be confused with the Cool Ghoul). That's Hattie on the far right in the picture below. I remember her being wartier. In retrospect, she reminds me of my old boss, only less ill-tempered.

Funny I'd think of all this now, when it hasn't crossed my mind in years. It makes me wonder a little if this the kind of thing I'll obsess over when I'm eighty-five. I guess there are worse things to remember.

Sing it to You Right.

The trip to Chicago was brief but exciting. On the way there, I made better time than I have in probably 17 years. I drove by myself, a thermos of coffee and an iPod my only friends. I call the the thermos "Speedy." He's nice.

My family had left Cincinnati at noon on Friday. They drove through heavy rain for several hours, and my 6-year-old son vomited a number of times. My wife was in a remarkably good humor when I arrived, all things considered, although it might have been the exhaustion talking. After spending some time with her family, we left the kids with her sister and drove to meet our friends Sara and Steve at their house in Evanston, where we piled into their car and headed downtown. I wore an old, novelty watch and when Steve asked what was on it, I told him it was a newsboy. "A what?" Sara asked.

"A newsboy."

"You have a nude boy on your watch?"

"Yeah," I said, "I got it in Thailand." (That was funny at the time, but now I'm afraid it might get my blog shut down.)

We had an excellent dinner, during which Steve convinced me to get duck confit salad. "The duck is marinated in its own fat," he told me. How could I resist? It was delicious, and the wine and the rest of the meal were, too, but the best part was the conversation. As I've mentioned before, I've known Steve since we were 5 or 6 years old; I've known Sara since the two of them were dating in college, which was over 20 years ago. It was a good feeling, just hanging out.

The concert was kick-ass (this blog now rated NC-17). Amos Lee, a serviceable, competent singer and guitar player performed seven or eight songs that all sounded alike, or maybe it was one long song.

Elvis Costello took the stage next and sent Amos back to rock star school. Elvis had no band, just his guitars and his voice. I saw him in a solo show like that in Ann Arbor, and a quick search of the internet -- friend, advisor, secret lover -- reminds me that show was in 1984. I can close my eyes and envision Elvis of 23 years ago, and I can say that the Elvis of last Saturday sounded just as good. (I guess I'm getting to the age now where almost anything I do, see, say, hear, etc., is an opportunity to engage in nostalgia.)

And Bob Dylan? Steve pointed out that he sounded like the kid with asthma on Malcolm in the Middle, but the fact that I've listened to his music every day for the last 30 years gave me a distinct advantage over the non-fan. Where I understood every word, my wife claims all she heard was "Mwah wmah whah Minnesota mwah . . . "

To which I say, Yeah, and?

I'm (Still) Not There.

I mentioned in another post that I'm seeing Bob Dylan in concert next week (woo hoo!) but I'm missing out on the I-can-die-now combo of him and Elvis Costello (awww) because for reasons unexplained, E.C. is skipping Cincinnati. Maybe he's pissed that he didn't get here in time for the world's largest chicken dance, I don't know.

Anyway, last week I got an email from a friend in Chicago; her husband Steve’s birthday is later this month and she suggested that my wife and I go up there and join them for . . . the Elvis Costello/Bob Dylan concert at the Chicago Theatre (woo hoo!) So I'm thinking about Bob Dylan all over again and my mind is wandering all over the place. It occurs to me that I used a one of his lines as my "senior quote" (now there's a phrase that makes me cringe) when I graduated high school 25 years ago, and here I am today, and how many times have I quoted him just in this shiny, brand-new blog? I realize some people might see this as sad, sorry and even pathetic. I prefer to think of it as an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of thing.

I became a fan when I was maybe 15 years old. This was the late '70s, when Dylan was in his Jesus phase and liking him had long since ceased being cool. I was hooked pretty quickly after hearing Blood on the Tracks, and Steve (the same one who’s turning 44 later this month) and I dug through his catalog and we each developed our own set of favorites, making mixed-tape after mixed-tape.

He and I saw Dylan live in 1981 or '82; I remember turning to an acquaintance and saying, "If he leads off with 'Serve Somebody,' I'm walking out." But I stayed, we all stayed. What a show, a mere two-and-a-half decades ago.

Later, in college, a girlfriend taught me how to write "Bob Dylan" in Hebrew, which gave me innumerable notebook doodling ideas when I should have been taking notes in class. Meanwhile, that new skill was well-timed with the release of Infidels in 1983, one of several Dylan "comeback" albums, and his first secular music in years. A cassette of that record was the soundtrack of a 4 1/2-hour drive Steve and I took from Cincinnati to Ann Arbor, during which we drank beer and smoked cigars with the windows closed. When we showed up at the home of a friend of his, the friend’s minister father did not invite us in, despite our delightful manners. I guess he was more of a "Born-Again Bob" kind of guy.

Got out of college, moved to Chicago, and my first couple of years there passed in sort of a blur. I listened to Bob Dylan on and off, but I wouldn't say he provided the soundtrack for that period. In 1989, when I was in Rome on a boondoggle studying, I attended another Dylan show, this one with "festival seating," which I guess in Italy means pulling away the yellow police tape and letting the throng of drunks stampede to the stands. Being one of that throng, I don't remember much about the show except that Edie Brickell was the opening act and I think she really dug me.

So now I'm seeing him two more times in the next few weeks, once with a guy I've known since kindergarten. It's dawning on me as I write this that it's pretty cool to have been friends with someone for that long. I'm glad we're getting the chance to get together for something we'll both enjoy, and it'll be great fun to throw our underwear on the stage together.