PMSimon.com

No, I don't think I'm really recovered, not yet, hence the days off from this particular site. I also kinda wanted to leave the piece about Dad up there so it could stand on its own. It struck a chord with a lot of people, so I'm glad I did. Figures, though, that I did my best P.R. work for Dad after the fact. I wish I'd done that years ago- you'd have liked him, really, you would have liked him a lot. I did.

But it's still strange to be in a state of mourning and confusion and exhaustion while the rest of the world goes about its business. Everything around you appears to be sped up while you're moving in slow motion, much as it is when you have the flu and have to go out to the drug store in a haze of weakness and phlegm. I've been working and trying to get the practical stuff done, but there are still those moments when the big wave hits and knocks me over. When that happens, all I can do is hold my breath and wait for low tide. I'm still waiting.

In the meantime, though, thanks for bearing with me. The outpouring of condolences from all over the world has been amazing and has helped Fran and me a lot. I have no idea how to respond or thank everyone who needs to be thanked, but I'll figure something out. While I do that, though, I hope a simple word of thanks will suffice for now. The first thing that suffers from an emotional tsunami is eloquence (hence the use of a term like "emotional tsunami," which is very Weather Channel of me), or maybe coherence. Either way, if I just say thanks and shut up, I hope you'll understand.

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After a day full of lawyers and bankers, I could use some diversion. But the NBA playoffs don't resume until Sunday, everything else is in reruns, and the Phillies lost early, so there wasn't anything on. What? Hockey? The Cup? Ah... hmmm... maybe the Fairly OddParents are on NickToons. Or something.

Really, has there ever been less interest in a major sporting event than the Stanley Cup Playoffs right now? This doesn't, of course, apply if you happen to live in Calgary or Tampa, but anywhere else, nothing. This hit home a few minutes ago when I realized I've watched exactly zero minutes of the finals- maybe I'd be watching if the Flyers had made it (yes, in fact, I WOULD have watched), but Calgary and Tampa Bay just aren't on my radar. And, yes, I know, there are some terrific players involved, Iginla and St. Louis are real stars, there's even a Simon out there (Chris), and the Flames are a great story, a blue collar team from a city often overlooked by everyone.

But I don't care. I just don't have the time or energy to care. And neither do most other fans, including hockey fans- you've seen the ratings, and they're not pretty. Hockey and me go way back- Bobby Hull and Brad Park and Walt Tkaczuk (when Marv Albert pronounced it "TAY-chuck") and Orr-Espo-Sanderson-Cheevers and the Broad Street Bullies scoring for a case of Tastykake, the WHA with Hull in Winnipeg and Sanderson for like 20 minutes on the cracked ice at the Philadelphia Civic Center and clear dashers in St. Paul. I've seen games in Philly, the Garden, Florida, Hartford, L.A. And by now, I just can't pay attention. What, they're still playing? It's June, you know. I know I'm not alone.

And yet the NHL persists in hurtling towards a lockout/walkout next season. Do these guys know there won't be anybody waiting for them when they return? Oh, sure, in Toronto, they'll still be lining up, but in Florida, Tampa Bay, Phoenix, places where it's an effort to sell those tickets, who's gonna be coming back? Who's gonna care?

The NHL is like the Erector sets and Strat-O-Matic and Sports Illustrated baseball games that were at the bottom of the closet when I went back one more time in the early 90's to my boyhood home- fun while they lasted, but you outgrow them, and they're never quite the same after that. I used to like hockey, but, then again, I used to like riding a Schwinn Sting-Ray and playing Pop-a-Matic Trouble. I don't need a labor stoppage to tell me it's time to move on.

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You can forgive me for thinking that things are just going to get worse and worse- it's been a bad year so far, and every day has brought more bad news, or at least more irritation.

And then, the news came out that Creed is breaking up, and suddenly, the world just seemed like a better place. Even the skunk spray that's wafting through the neighborhood at this moment is, you know, not so bad.

OK, it's bad. But Creed is breaking up. That's a good sign.

(The best part is that the other guys- the two guys not named Scott Stapp, plus a former member also not named Scott Stapp- immediately announced that they'd form a new band, but they say it's NOT "just Creed with a different singer." Oh, no, of course not. Just because it's the EXACT SAME BAND except with a different singer shouldn't lead you to believe that it's "just Creed with a different singer." Now, if they manage to put out a GOOD album, we can accept that it's not "just Creed with a different singer." But that's far-fetched, I'll grant you. And what does this say about Scott Stapp that the rest of the band already had another band formed with a different singer and a new name, ready to go the moment Scott Stapp was outa there?)

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We were supposed to hate Ronald Reagan. I was in college when he was elected, and there wasn't a single soul on campus that would have the temerity to suggest that he be given a chance to show what he could do. He was the antithesis of the people who populated that Quaker school- where they would rather switch than fight, he talked tough. Where they would play rope-a-dope with the enemy- no, actually, there WAS no enemy, just friends we hadn't met- he planned Star Wars. Everyone on campus was sure he'd lead us to Armageddon, sure he WANTED that, because he was not just a conservative Republican, he was Hitler, he was Satan, and anyone who liked him had to be Satan too.

A lot of the people with whom I went to school back then are probably still like that. They're the ones on the Democratic Underground and IndyMedia sites writing stuff like "good riddance" and "I don't feel bad for him at all." They're the ones likening Bush to Hitler these days, and wondering why we don't just abandon Israel and the Joooooos because THAT'S why everyone hates us and Sharia law isn't necessarily worse than our own corrupt decadent Western ways, only different.

They never learn. The rest of the country did. And that's why, today, there's a genuine sadness. While my classmates insisted that he was dumb, a puppet, a warmonger, evil to the core, he was doing pretty right by most folks. By the time he was through, the Soviet Union had spent itself into extinction, the wall was down, and millions upon millions tasted freedom for the first time. Not bad for a dumb warmonger. And that's a good example of why, when you're in an atmosphere where everyone is of a single mind about things, in college, in Hollywood, at DU or Free Republic or IndyMedia, you have to work extra hard to think for yourself. Listen to the prevailing wisdom and you'll miss the real story.

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