War. Poverty. Flooding. Famine. Pestilence. Hunger. Am I missing anything The Four Horsemen would fight? Oh, forgot age. So here goes byte-size superhero Dr. Birthday on his semi- or annual quest to rid the world of … everything and anything.

Come Sunday, (little if any NFL Football), which happens to be my birthday, in the year that has passed, or about half that since the inauguration took effect, things look different — on the other side of the quarter or bomb.

Right now it’s more about fuses for warfare, than it is about wicks for candles. Either way, the cake is melting fast. So what else to do with a birthday coming …

So go see my longtime favorite bartender Chad — who also happens to have a degree in law — and says the U.S. Dollar is down 12 percent since The First or otherwise in January, the country is printing money faster than it can be rolled off the presses for a 400-pound man on the crapper to support a federal deficit that if not a record now soon will be one, because of that the volatile stock market is up before the inevitable crash, the logical-it-would-seem Kensian course of monetary thinking has screwed up everything, (all bad things), and don’t bet against Bitcoin (we’ll have to see if he is right.) Maybe bit by byte. 

— It’s Pepperfest weekend again, the little set of shows that could, together forming one great big Italian undertaking to shake all of southern Europe.

As far as music, Saturday night is The Luck, and Sunday night Firewater Gospel Choir, both bands whose members, if not joined as a group, have been individually chronicalled on these pages.

So we focus on Friday night and the ’90s with a costumed tribute band to the decade and all its genres and sub-genres called Gen X Jukebox. It’s here as a new brew with everything about — you guessed it — the 1990s in one show that’s called incredible. Re-live what’s called the greatest decade??

This will cover not just country but all the radio hits of pop, dance, rap, rock and of course we can’t forget grunge. This is performed in full costume, bringing (back?) to life the varied characters like Courtney Love, Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Eddie Vedder, Vanilla Ice and Garth Brooks. Can’t be sure about Kurt Cobain! But I saw a Slash-like top hat with tatts and an AC/DC singer style hat and hair. Not the big hair of the ’80s but that in sexy pigtails of the ’90s lead singers. What could be more feel good?

Then take what’s at the Somerset amphitheater to close out the summer, on Friday on the 15th, $uicideboy$, (this written on a video playback journey back into the ’80s that was billed as a historical retrospective to the Filthy 15 on the other side of my screen), and then on the 16th, Hardy, both bands headlining or at least playing with tours. —

But with B-Day approaching, my income is down, although that may be more a procedural matter of time passing and benefits reducing, than the direct fault or effect of the Trump administration. For once.

Remember when the only thing people were questioning about his then-candidacy, in the media or the Capitol or the dinner table or the bar, was his going after the special counsel going after him? The good old days? Like Archie Bunker being just old hat.

Or we could have pondered, with few things to spare, why actual candidate RFK Jr. was asking to be taken “off” the presidential ballot. Must have taken too much of all those things you’re not supposed to take. Candidate, vaccinate thyself.

At least I could have gone back to last summer to celebrate, with a birthday concert. Like the last supper. Both these shows are having come to Minnesota, or Somerset. The former being Farm Aid 40, as least not as old as I, headlined by Neil Young and backed up by Willie Nelson, this time those guys more in their silver years, just like Biden or Trump. Tickets were in the range of $39 to $100, and would seem again dependent on age, as again a range.

Or the party when me and my old lady were out sitting in the shade, or more like the heat of the day trying to hide my face from the sun, outside at the strip mall, lawn chairs, old-person, trailer-park style. (You know, the ones seen actively, except for (certain parts) of the ocean, from here until the Yugoslavia-Hamas north-south intercontinental line.) Prior to our last attempt at a birthday party. There was the Olsen Fish Co. and yes I do believe they have Lutefisk, (while fish was not tariffed), and a hot dog rock and rolla roller with buns and Oscar Meyer sign I also believe, and they seemed to have an issue with their Os and Es, and even Ks and Hs when you get just to the east Hunting Shacks with their deer and ducks and their sales pik. In the next parking lot we encountered on our trek, we wanted to take our own photo of one that when fully erected would become the subject of an ad picture, so we got an invite. It was the size of a veritable airplane hangar. Being grilled, or whatever you do to it, was lutefisk, at the door next to the next door. Next to it, a home’s open house at “920,” as per small sign, was sitting in the boulevard, dwarfed by a pair of Realtor open house placards, for a business at-large.

This wasn’t exactly inner-city — but now return to front — was a cause and reason Snoop Dogg cited for doing The Donald’s inauguration party, going GOP not Dem. The Dogg, not Fogg or Fudd — and it seemed like there was also a gag in here about an election worker named Fuge, or do I have to fudge — said he did so to make loads of money for inner-city charities, although it didn’t seem like that much. The Dogg said his only party is the Gangsta Party, and asked online about doing something at a GOP event, “iz it a crime?” It is one that so many younger people out and about are trying to look like this old soul.

And it may be a crime, now that we can get back on a train, that a Joynsey mafia-ish figure set out to aid the cause of public transit workers on strike. But hey, it might have been he who contributed to building their bridge pillars, (now down after being struck by ships, to complicate matters). And those are likely as reliable as air travel landings when traffic controllers are doing a double. They shoulda been on this problem about the last time I traveled by air. Before that last one.   

It was alas, around then that the stabber of the author of The Satanic Verses, famed writer Salman Rushdie, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. And what, and the prior doer of dozens of felonies gets, what?? 

So that’s a hodge-podge of leftovers that were leftover from the last time I blew out the candles, and then soon ate leftovers.

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