EDT

Acclimating to daylight savings time is like getting home from California. I spend all day asking myself, ‘What time is it really?’

What time is it really? My body has no idea. My mind has no idea. Hence, I have no idea. No idea. None.

I was in the back of a cab last night — scratch that, this morning — passing the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn. The digital clock read 3:43. But it was really 2:43. Either way, it was way f’in’ late. When I finally fell into bed (I typically do actually fall into bed) and set my alarm clock forward an hour, it read 5:00. I mean, that’s just stupid. As Danny Glover says (over and over again) in “Lethal Weapon,” “I’m too old for this shit.”

It started out poorly enough. I’d been pushing to rehearse for three weeks. We wing too many shows, and have a tendency to pull them off. But on account that we’re only playing a few more before Kevin moves to Minneapolis, and hence The Smith Family will be no more, I thought we ought to go out on top. So anyway, I’m gunnin’ for rehearsals, kinda’ playin’ the bad guy, and we all finally agree on 6pm before the show. So after the Pope dies and we’re all wrapped up with it at work, I climb under my gray flannel sheets for a power nap. The pitter patter of rain lulls me quickly into sleep …

I wake up at 6:03.

I call Kev immediately and he is pissed off. Which is fair enough. I’m alwayslate. When I finally make it to 23d Street for rehearsals, everyone’s there and ready, and we run the set quickly and efficiently and head off to Hank’s.

Now, have you been to Hank’s? Sakes alive this place is a dump. It’s a long, black room with a tin ceiling and cement floors on the corner of Third and Atlantic in Brooklyn. It’s nothin’ special. But it’s genuine in a way Manhattan bars can’t manufacture. And it attracts all kinds of misfits, ourselves notwithstanding.

The show was good. I don’t know what to say about it except that a) it was hot as hell b) the heat wasn’t helped by my stocking cap and c) the six of us make a beautiful din. Afterwards my father said to me, as I knew he would, “You should stick with country music.”

With all of the endorphins and adrenaline (and maybe a little PBR), I was finally awake. Wide awake. With Nick Beaudoing and the Reverand Nicholi Dedring and Stacey and Roy and Carolyn and Kev and Monica and The Wissler Family and all those bikers who showed up and that dude who panhandled five bucks off of me in exchange for a story about the woman he’d just broken up with (“And I mean beautiful, man!”), well, there was no way I was going home early.

Which brings us past the Fulton Mall at 3:43, home at 4:08, in bed at 5:00, and up again at 8:00 this morning.

But what time is it really?

I have no idea. I lost way more than an hour. But I got more, a whole lot more.