Seems my book, Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories, is still chugging along. One of the contributors, a Chicago lawyer named Michael Pierson, just e-mailed me saying the Chicago Sun Times had mentioned it in the pop critic’s Sunday column. Indeed, Jim DeRogatis, with whom I shared the first Lollapalooza way back when, gave it a few nice words following a long take on Chicagoan Mitch Myers’ fine The Boy Who Cried Freebird (a great collection of fantasies and criticism by a very easy-reading, very wise writer).

Here’s the DeRogatis piece that the Sun Times ran April 22. Naturally, it disses Cleveland (Chicago always tries to lord it over its smaller Midwestern sibling). But DeRogatis was nice about my book:

http://www.jimdero.com/News2007/rockreads.htm

I’m going to the South Euclid City Council tonight to discuss CRRM. The council invited me there because I’m a local guy. It should be interesting. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s been weeks since I’ve blogged and there’s much to catch up on, like our Florida vacation, a downer event right next door, and why Nine Inch Nails doesn’t matter as much to me anymore. First things first: the vacation.

We spent a week in Fort Lauderdale, staying at a modernized Doubletree with some finish problems. The elevators clanked, the engineer never did figure out how to keep the HDTV from switching on at 6:30 every morning, and the front desk seemed a tad shaky. Rousting me to pay my bill before I left didn’t improve my mood, but apparently someone had gotten our schedule wrong. The accusatory tone was not welcome. As for Fort Lauderdale itself, it’s not the best family vacation area in Florida. Next time, we’ll go to Naples, where the rest of my family really wanted to go. The sun and warmth were great, but the vacation was more stressful than it should have been. My losing $600 in American Express Rewards certificates for an Avis car rental didn’t help, either (my dumb). And when AmEx twice told me it would mail duplicates of the certificates to the hotel, then didn’t, and then a third AmEx “customer service” representative told me I was out of luck and would have to eat the expense, I was miffed. I’ve always liked AmEx, but this incident did nothing to increase my affection.

Very close to home indeed: My next-door neighbor lost his job. Three weeks vacation pay, no severance, after eight years. His wife lost her job in March. These facts affirmed my belief that the Cleveland area is not only losing its line workers, it’s losing its brains. I suspect that if my neighbors can land work in Texas (where a company has expressed interest in hiring the man), they’ll leave. They’re both attorneys so they shouldn’t have trouble getting work, though in Cleveland, that might not be easy. A sad development, even though being laid off frees the man from a hateful work situation where his bosses have chronically nicked-and-dimed him and forced a non-compete that has hindered him from looking into alternatives. Now the field’s relatively open to him. I hope the family lands on its feet. That’s likely to be someplace other than Cleveland.

On the new Nine Inch Nails Year Zero CD: I’ve been a fan of Trent Reznor’s efforts since 1988, when I saw the embryonic Nine Inch Nails at the Phantasy in Lakewood. His best stuff is stunning, NIN’s live shows largely riveting. The new album is too long, too doomy, lyrically repetitious even though sonically, it’s as well-crafted as anything else in the dark NIN canon. I just found myself less willing than before to slog through the murky graphics and muffled vocals to get at the core of the new album, a paranoid picture of a bleak near future. I suspect I’ll turn to Year Zero every so often for sonic stimulation, but I care less than I used to. Seems NIN and I are growing older at different rates.

Okay, it’s been three weeks since last I wrote. It’s not that things haven’t been happening, because they always do. But I haven’t had much to push this period: The activity around Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories has died down some, I’ve been working really hard at my full-time job, and I’m way ready for winter to be over (yeah, sure, March 21 was the official spring start date, but the season hasn’t sprung forward quite yet).

So here’s what’s happening: I’m going to spread my (and the CRRM) word at the city council meeting in South Euclid April 23, thanks to Sunny Simon, the councilperson who publicizes local writers (I live in South Euclid). A few days later, Karen and I are going to the Indians game (they’re playing Baltimore), and from May 5 to 10, I’m traveling to EuroDisney, outside Paris, France, for a hotel conference. On May 16, I’m doing a CRRM-related taping at Hudson High School, preparatory to a signing at a Hudson bookstore June 9. Before I drop into the Learned Owl, however, I’m doing a signing at a Barnes & Noble in Geneva-on-the-Lake on May 12.

So maybe things aren’t that quiet on the CRRM front.

In other developments:

I’ve gotten three $95 “speeding” tickets in East Cleveland in the last two weeks. This is the electronic variety, consisting of snapshots of my car, allegedly going too fast, “validated” by an alleged policeman. I’m getting dunning notices for these from a Providence, Rhode Island address, which makes me think they’re not city notices. Rather, they’re coming from the company that installs these surveillance cameras, and I don’t think I’ll respond to them. But I might go to East Cleveland in late April to contest them. They accuse me of going 24 in a 20 mph school zone one day and 25 in a 20 mph school zone the next day. This zone is a stretch of about 150 yards just west of Coventry Road, where Cleveland Heights ends and East Cleveland—arguably the most corrupt and primitive of Cuyahoga County’s cities—begins. Can you spell speed trap?

Before I battle these local injustices, however, I’m taking a week off. Starting tomorrow, my family will be in Fort Lauderdale in south Florida, where we expect to enjoy the sun, the beach and the water. Temperatures there look like they’ll be around 80, which will be great (particularly considering how cold it’s been in familiar, grey Cleveland).

Until we meet again.