Archive for May 2007
Summer Song
The teams were always the same: Sean and Chris versus Dusty and me. I don’t remember meeting the Wells brothers, they just were. My family moved from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Oak Park, Illionois, in the summer before first grade. Our mint green stucco house on Forest Avenue was just one block from architect Frank Lloyd…
Read MoreLike We’re Twenty-One
You remember my pal Casey Shea, right? Casey and his lovely wife Langhorne are on the road with Casey’s new band, Sundown: think Crosby, Still & Nash, but cuter, and way hipper (and none of that weirdness with Melissa Etheridge). Well, they’re blogging about their adventures for MTV News. You can check it out at…
Read MoreRaise Your Hopeful Voice
Like the film he was encouraging me to see, Ron’s email was short and sweet. “Get thee to the cinema,” it read. “Like, tomorrow.” Sunday, then, found Abbi and I reclining in the perfect optical and aural center of AMC Theatre #15 for the 7:05 screening of “Once.” Like Ron’s subject header said, “Oh man!”…
Read MoreThe Fog Of More
I’m as tired of writing about sleepless nights as you are of reading about them. So I won’t even bother with the twitch I’ve developed in my left eye. Instead, I’ll briefly regale you with an excerpt from an article I read in the New Yorker this morning. In “At Lincoln’s Deathbed,” author Adam Gopnik…
Read MoreThe Things You Want, And The Things You Have To Do
I’m beginning to think I’m schizophrenic. I’m sitting in seat 19C of US Airways Flight #61 en route from Las Vegas to New York City. My seatmate is the one guy on the plane who hasn’t lowered his blind, so not only is my enjoyment of the Cedric The Entertainer Nicollet Sheridan comedy vehicle, The…
Read MoreWasting Away (Again)
Jimmy Buffet’s personal chef bought me shots last night. “Pick the place,” I told Chris. “I’ll meet you in fifteen.” “Bar 9,” he said haphazardly. I stepped out the door just before nine o’clock. “Be home in an hour,” I told Abbi. Some 900 seconds later, I saddled up to the bar. The Yankees were…
Read MoreImitation Of Life
I am almost certainly losing my mind. I’m sitting on the terrace with a cold beer and a bowl full of imitation crabmeat drenched in malt vinegar and Old Bay Seasoning. The imitation part withstanding, it is a flavor ripped straight from my childhood. Though I play up my Iowa roots, the truth is that…
Read MoreBenjamin Wagner 2.0
I need a new website. And I need your help. I launched my first web presence in 1996, a clunky looking site called ubiquityltd.com (thusly named after my boutique record label, Ubiquity Ltd. Records — a pun — that I was later forced to cede to its rightful copyright owner, Ubiquity Records). I tried to…
Read MoreSky Blue Sky
I’d been out of bed just three minutes, but already I’d dropped a ten spot. Sleep was fitful again, at best. Maybe it’s the loratadine. Maybe it’s the blue agave. Maybe it’s all this change I keep talkin’ about. Either way, I was wide awake and clock watchin’ at three o’clock. I lay there tossing,…
Read More2:1:1
In logic normally reserved for toddlers and college sophomores, the decision to whip up and consume two pitchers of margarita was based solely on one fact. I woke with the typical dread I’ve come to associate with Sundays. Behind me, the brief flash of joy that is the weekend fades into rear view. Before me,…
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