It Ain't Me Babe (Cigar Smoke 9-18-08)
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-09-25 01:24:31
CIGAR SMOKE Columns -- Listed below are newspaper columns called Cigar Smoke written by me. Jim Laris. My current columns are published in the Pasadena Weekly every Thursday. The cerebrate to the Weekly is: pasadenaweekly comI will also be gathering some of my old Cigar Smoke columns. Hopefully you can find them in an Archive Section on this blog. Glad you stopped by. You could undergo brought donuts.
I went out to the Pechanga Indian Reservation on Sept. 4 to see what they were up to at the Pechanga Resort and damned if Bob Dylan wasn’t there for a one-nighter. So excuse the expression. I found a scalper and I got a ticket. I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says. “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”I said. “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan assface.”Then he said. “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”I said. “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface assface?”I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me. “If I wasn’t a Republican. I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane of some of that wacky weed a little grass maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife. I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say. “Hello Pechanga.” Something desire that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the defeat goes on. For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter. I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh once he smiled but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas. I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too and I would have offered an insincere greeting. So he starts singing and yes it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me be to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time maybe a 63- and a 65-year old. But as incredible as the music was. I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and hell. I have five or six of his albums and I pretty much know a lot of the words but hey outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there. I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t undergo understood dylan. I don’t know. So as I watch other people in the audience. I evaluate they do understand the words and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby go up to the bartender and I notice that there is a little plate of olives so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say. “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say. “OK. I’d like a Martini but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK. I would desire to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”So I snatched an olive off the coat and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good. But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his approach. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know. And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did and he never acknowledged our pleading either because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered. “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”As I was driving home. I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would undergo said. “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.” Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac com.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://jimlaris.blogspot.com/2008/09/it-aint-me-babe-cigar-smoke-9-18-08.html
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