Southside Johnny.com: John's Jive

07/27/03

Consider this a message in a bottle...an empty bottle, of course. I know that many of the Juke-acious faithful think that the dastardly Master Bill has finally made good on his threat to dismember my poor ol' broken down person and replace me with a cardboard cutout and a voice track, but 'tis not so! The absence of a new jive for lo, these many months is due to...ah...due to..um...MEASLES! Yea, that's it! I had the measles. Oh, it was a bad case, too. Big red bumps (not the kind I usually get from falling down the stairs), and a fever...STOP SINGING!... and, and, and,...whatever else ya get from measles. Man!, was I sick. Let's hear a sympathetic "Awwwwww" now. Thank you. I feel much better.

As the walking wounded and the partially deafened in England and Europe can attest, we have recently survived another tour of that benighted area. It was just damn-old chockfull of adventures and misbehaviour and goofiness. Hood ate ostrich, Eddie broke the bank in Osnabruck, Joey healed all the streetwalkers in Amsterdam, and the Druids shrunk Bobby's head; a vast improvement, by the by. I, of course, was the soul of comportment and abstinence the entire time, except for that unfortunate but totally understandable incident in Newcastle. Well, I mean, they call it NEW castle and the f*&%ing thing is, like, ancient! At least install indoor plumbing for pity's sake! Or call the damn thing OLDcastle and have done with it. The Disney Corporation would never stoop to such cheap dissembling. A pox on all their houses, the ones still standing, that is.

We are approaching the Thanksgiving Hoo-Haw, and I would like to take this op to thank all a ye for the ludakrisly suppotive support this year and last and all and ever'thin'. Without you, like, zilch! So, thanks....really.

But...Thanksgiving. Ah yes; smoked oysters, creamed onions, brussel sprouts, those stupid raw vegetables crudites with uncooked Campbell's onion soup as a dip...hey! isn't that what we get backstage in England every gig? Shit, bring on the dried out turkey and lumpy gravy and white bread and boiled-to-death-and-beyond potatoes that me mother used to make! (She worked during the day and occasional nightshift and figured, "What? Ya want me ta cook, too? OK then...here!" Thanks, Ma. I, of course, have no time for such frivolities. I, thanks to Master Bill, will be driving to lustrous, shining, gaudy, hell-bent-for-leather, Sodom in the Stix, ALBANY. Place where daydreams almost come true, kinda. I, no doubt, will be thoughtfully masticating a tuna melt and savoring the bouquet of a diet Sprite, while you are all groaning and burping and threatening to light Grandpa's farts as he snores on the settee. I'm sorry I can't be there. I guess we all have a lot to be thankful for.

See you in the obits, Uncle Southside