Doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo WAH!

Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy: Tony Bennett singing "Snowfall"

Music To Build A Bookshelf By And By The Way Notice That My Music Library Isn’t ALL Show Tunes Just Mostly Show Tunes Because My Tastes Are Wondrously Diverse And Uber Manly Yo

My. Skin. Hurts.

While Productive Cough and the Why Does My Skin Hurt When I Move Pestilence would be a catchy name for an Eastern European boy band, it’s an even catchier description for how I woke up this morning. But I’m too miserable to go on a boy-band tour right now. 

I did just go on an emergency-clinic-to-pharmacy tour though. The clinic was only taking walk-ins and I was told I’d have a 35-50 minute wait when I got there but I was called right in and after the nurse took my vitals and left the room, the doctor came in and OH MY GOD HE WAS HANDSOME and he looked in my ears and throat and did other things that I’m sure in some cultures count as pitching woo but WHY DOES HE ALSO HAVE TO HAVE A SHY SMILE AND A SELF-EFFACING DEMEANOR he had on a jet-black wedding ring THAT MADE HIM EVEN SEXIER IF THAT’S EVEN POSSIBLE which I took to mean he piloted jets or something because that makes sense right AND HE WAS WEARING KICK-ASS RED RUNNING SHOES BUT HE KIND OF IGNORED ME WHEN I COMPLIMENTED HIM ON THEM BUT I’M SURE IT WAS BECAUSE HE WAS HUMMING “TRUMPET VOLUNTARY” IN HIS HEAD BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HE WANTED FOR OUR WEDDING PROCESSIONAL and anyway STOP IT WITH THESE INSANELY HOT DOCTORSCEDAR RAPIDS BECAUSE I’M RUNNING OUT OF CAPITAL LETTERS TO SWOON OVER THEM.

His verdict, unfortunately, was the flu.

You might say I opened the window and influenza.

But you shouldn’t say that. Nobody should say that. Ever.

So anyway, this week brought us Mom’s aggressive UTI and Dad’s COPD exacerbation plus pneumonia plus staph plus MRSA plus five days and counting in the hospital and the only thing our family was missing on our sickening scourge scavenger hunt was the flu so now our punch card is full and we all win a chalupa.

Speaking of chalupas, the pharmacist told me I needed to eat before I took my Tamiflu and it’s almost like we were having a cosmic mind meld because I’d picked up a package of Chips Ahoy! on my way to the pharmacy counter partly because I like using exclamation points in the middle of sentences and partly because pestilent people deserve partially hydrogenated pastries but mostly because I was stocking up on food items to be a responsible Tamiflu taker and WHY ARE YOUR DAMN BLISTER PACKS SO DAMN HARD TO OPEN, TAMIFLU?

So now I’m home eating cookies and drinking Gatorade and listening to Sunday morning 88.3 kcck jazz, which is the balm that cures all ills, but I’m still coughing up hearty chunks of lung and I’m still so feverish that I’m unsteady on my feet and I’m modeling the latest trend in face masks which makes me catnip to the ladies but can you really blame them and MY SKIN HURTS WHEN I MOVE WHY THE HELL DOES MY SKIN HURT WHEN I MOVE?

Cedar Rapids public radio has distressingly meager music offerings on a Saturday afternoon:

88.3: A meandery improvisational jazz combo featuring a dyspeptic saxophone, a trumpeter who has recently discovered how to triple-tongue relentlessly for 36 relentless measures relentlessly, a keyboardist who’s clearly terrified to improvise beyond a dotted-quarter/eighth/dotted-quarter/eighth rhythm, and more dyspeptic saxophone to mask the trumpeter’s tongue-surgery screams

91.7: That one opera where heartbreaking circumstances propel a bunch of people with vibratos tall enough to drive a truck through into a labyrinth of unrequited love, totally plausible misunderstandings, a silly song sung by a person in a ridiculous hat, a fully staged ballet that acts as an Artful Metaphor for people who need to have plot points re-explained to them by waifish women in tulle and high (or low, depending on the contextual emotional-continuum level of anguish) hair buns, atonal recitative that it a totally productive replacement for Earnest Dialogue, three totally plausible deaths, and an emotionally triumphant High C Of Self Actualization

90.9: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT HILLBILLY-ASS NOISE YOU’RE PLAYING?

Fortunately, I now have the Amazon Music app on my phone so I can dig that beat, stomp my feet, dig be-bop and never stop down in Birdland whenever the need arises. Yes, indeed I do.

Happy 176th birthday, Antonín Dvořák!

And happy one-year anniversary of my freedom from Cymbalta -- according to the essay below that just popped up on Facebook. I'm sometimes glad Facebook reminds me of these memories to show me what I've survived and how far I've come ... and how I couldn't have done it without my family, my friends and even my little joys like gorgeously thematic symphonies.

It is 9:30 pm on what would have been Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's 175th birthday, and as my dad and I drove around tonight on our Thursday evening errands we listened to Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 -- also called "From the New World" due to its early American musical themes and the fact that he wrote it in the United States -- almost in its entirety.

It's the last symphony he composed -- and inarguably his most famous -- and in my opinion its brilliance lies in its endless accessibility. Its dominant six-note theme, often sung to the words of the folk song "Goin' Home," is never far from the surface no matter how many variations or complex contrapuntal themes he weaves it through.

As a composer, he was rooted firmly among the late Romantics with their heroic storylines and their soaring emotions and their confident nods to the nascent but growing fascination with the shimmering textures of the Impressionists and the gorgeous discordances of what would soon be revered around the world as American jazz. And this symphony sits right at the confluence of all that history, all that emotion, all that foresight and all that promise. And all with a mere six-note theme.

I'm trying not to make everything I write an endless litany of poor-little-bipolar-boy horror stories about deep depressive dives or unfairly short manic episodes or the spirit-killing side effects of my constantly evolving med cocktails. Honest. But I took my final Cymbalta 72 hours ago and my withdrawal side effects -- which I've been hoping would have waned to nothing by now -- spiked to soul-crushing levels of rapid-fire misery this afternoon and they seem to have gotten even worse in the last few hours. I'm dizzy and floaty and tingly and chompy and bouncy and unsteady and sometimes even actually confused. And I don't even have enough understanding of what's happening to me to know when the waves will hit or how strong they'll be or even when it's safe to stand up and assume I'll remain vertical.

But tonight, driving around with my dad, listening to music that has soothed and exhilarated and inspired and sustained me for 40+ years, knowing enough about it that I could come home and organize my thoughts and write about it all for anyone who cares to read my parades of paragraph-long sentences ... it all gave me a calming sense of purpose. Of much-needed focus. Of obligation to myself and to my family and friends to keep going and to trust that I'll come out at the end whole and balanced and maybe profoundly exhausted but thoroughly tested and ultimately triumphant.

Just like those six little notes.

Oh, dear. That was a plot twist worthy of ... well ... Hollywood.

"La La Land" is still a gorgeous visual and musical and conceptual feature-length riff on jazz and life and chance meetings and go-everywhere story arcs and plot driving song driving plot and reverent visual quotes of classic musicals and everything that pretty much fills me with glee and makes me sit up and watch so I don't miss a single dance step or leitmotif or fleeting exterior shot or subtle emotion on a gorgeous closeup. It's filled with heart, it grabbed my heart and it will forever be my 2017 best picture winner.

So. Yeah. La La Land.

One glorious four-act symphony of jazz riffs rendered in music, choreography, plot, cinematography, character development, set decoration, visual composition, movie-musical quotes, leitmotifs and relentless, thoughtful, loving attention to detail. It flatters its audience by trusting us to connect the dots, celebrates the unbridled joy of spontaneously breaking into song, and winks self-awarely at the adorably implausible plot holes that make personal finances fluid and Doris Day parking plentiful and tap shoes and story arcs and even gravity appear and disappear without regard for any scripted accountability. And though there are some wispy singing voices and some not-quite-synchronized soundtrack-to-visual issues and poor Emma Stone seems to walk miles and miles and miles in unforgiving stilettos, La La Land is hands-down one of the most glorious movies I've ever seen.