Yesterday, to explain to a friend how writing helped with my mental state, I looked up a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and had the pleasant surprise to find that it is available online here. Since I had not read the book in about twenty-five years, I took the opportunity to reread it and I realized that only now, at around the same age as Vonnegut was when he wrote it, do I really seem to get what he was writing about. And though I do not find myself crying "Make me young! Make me young!" as Kilgore Trout (and Vonnegut, indirectly) did at the end of the novel, I do understand the need to clear ones mind of "The assholes, the flags, the underpants," and I thank Vonnegut posthumously for pointing that out. The amazing thing is that the same book that touched me twenty-five years ago can touch me in an entirely different way today. It takes a great writer to work across time, and Vonnegut was one of the few who could work that trick regularly. I believe that Vonnegut is the closest thing we will ever get to the one true literary descendent of Samuel Clemens, in his humor, in his love for what America is and what it can be, and (although he would probably dispute this mightily) his optimism. Each time I read one of his books, he will be missed.

It was my daughter's first soccer game of the season today and they handily bested their opponents 3-0. Of course, it didn't count officially as (a) the parks department didn't have a referee there and (b) as we didn't have our photo id's together yet. All that said, it still gives me hope that the rest of the season will go well. The girls played much better than I've seen them play before. Our current coach is focusing a lot more on fundamentals and it seems to have helped a lot. Go Jack Rabbits!

Finally, Todd Rundgren is appearing at the Aladdin Theater on Wednesday, September 19, and I ordered tickets for myself and my daughter to go see him (and a big FU to Ticketmaster for all of the sleazy surcharges, if i do say so myself). I've liked his music since the A Wizard, a True Star album came out and she learned to like his music from an old tape of his A Cappella that I played whie driving her around to stuff (her favorite song from that album: Hodja). I last saw him at the Assembly Hall in Champaign, Illinois when he was doing his arena sized Oops! Wrong Planet/Ra tour in 1978. His song, Love is the Answer, from the Oops! Wrong Planet album is still one of my favorites (even if you only remember the Hall and Oates version, which he produced for them on their War Babies album). And although he's been in Portland many times since I moved here, family life and/or work always seemed to have prevented me from seeing him. So now that my daughter's old enough to go with me, I'm really stoked. The Aladdin is a small (620 seats) venue, so it should be a very intimate show. I'm really looking forward to it.
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