Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

One more thing, and in this case I'll admit it's one thing too many: I have a long relationship with the StinkyInky and Bruce, and it's based on a one-night stand. Twenty-eight years ago -- God, it was that long? -- some columnist named Stefano or DeMano or DiBruno wrote a, shall we say, tribute. This columnist was famous for his cheesy shticks, exclaiming endlessly about proper nouns ending in "-rama" (i.e., Cinerama, Aquarama, etc.), mince (don't ask), his hatred of cats, and the obsolete characters who still disgraced the comics pages (of the Daily Nooz), like the figure-eight-faced mouthless Henry and Nancy with the spiky Afro, characters he called relentlessly unfunny as relentlessly as they were unfunny. Well, one night twenty-eight years ago this columnist named Stefano or DeMano or DiBruno briefly abandoned his shticks as he'd had...an epiphany. He was at a Bruce concert at the soon-to-be-demolished Wachovia (!!!!!) Spectrum* -- and it was the night John Lennon was...ASSASSINATED, or thereabouts (might as well use the word he'd have used), and suddenly Stefano or DeMano or DiBruno fell prostrate on the ground that had known so many great concerts, or perhaps merely on the seats in front of him, and through the endless tears told his readers HE HAD SEEN GOD, and HE WAS THE BOSS. It was the sort of self-conscious treacle the likes of which I'd never beheld before; but again this was 1980, a year of great newspaper offenses to the public, and Stefano or DeMano or DiBruno was equal to the challenge. The StinkyInky didn't win as many P-Ulitzers thereafter, and soon enough it would degenerate into the jernalistic backwater it was under The Ambassador, and for decades before; yet Bruce endures, because he had a fan club, a fan club run by people who got their tickets for nothing, and paid with priceless flattery.

The last I saw of Stefano or DeMano or DiBruno he was scribbling a few grafs for our free daily sanitation workers' favorite, and they didn't have the old stupid fire and silly pizzazz. Seeing God comes once in a lifetime.

And that I recall this horse manure from twenty-eight years ago shows that despite all one's hope for the palliative effects of superior writing, a thousand good essays can't undo the damage of one very bad one.

*Soon to be demolished if ED (and no doubt EDDIE) can arrange the financing for the super-duper entertainment complex destined to replace it, that is. My advice guys: call Wells Fargo -- or CITIGROUP.