Keeper of the Clown Bell

One of the many great things about being an American is having a shot at adding your name to the short list of heroes and villains that have clawed their way to the top of the social order and get immortalized in bronze or marble effigy that is shat on by flying rats and spat upon by filthy vagrants ( and southern ladies ) long past your mortal expiration date. Top of that list of quasi-eternals is George Washington who is not only the  Father Of Our Country  but also one of the greatest men in world history and will be studied and remembered for millennia as a person of excellence. The glorious truth is that Washington is so singularly outstanding and his accomplishments so unique that there exists a wide gulf between him and all the conventional "also rans" who incorrectly get equated with him - Founding Fathers Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, etc or POTUS's Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, etc or Moral Leaders like Colonial Evangelicals, American Progressives and Ci

There is a list of the greatest rock n’ roll songs of all time sloshing around my brain in no particular order but on today, July 7th, I’d like to highlight one of the tippy-top greats which is Arthur Lee’s 1966 masterpiece “7 and 7 is…” - check it out. Wow. Where in the hell did this thing come from?  In 1966 Los Angeles. 1966!!! This song is an earthquake unleashed from the grinding fault lines of Mr. Lee's restless mind and rates a magnitude 11.0 on Spinal Tap rock'o meter. Now, read the lyrics: When I was a boy I thought about the times I'd be a man I'd sit inside a bottle and pretend that I was in a jam In my lonely room I'd sit my mind in an ice cream cone You can throw me if you wanna 'cause I'm a bone and I go Oop-ip-ip oop-ip-ip, yeah! If I don't start cryin' it's because that I have got no eyes My father's in the fireplace and my dog lies hypnotized Through a crack of light I was unable to find my way Trapped inside a night but I