JAIMIE VERNON – CAR TOONZ

Bravo to those that waded into the Neil Young debate with my blog from last week. I’m still getting hate mail so clearly it hit a nerve. When Neil solves the energy crisis, world peace and how to tune a guitar, let me know. I’ll retract the entire piece. Now on to something a little more frivolous…

This week Forbes magazine released their straw poll of the Top 20 best driving songs. The list is here. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/01/14/journey-places-two-hits-among-best-driving-songs-list-really/

Segarini: A Monkee, a Montrose, a McQuarrie, and Other Fallen Friends

I felt bad about Whitney Houston. I feel bad about most of my fellow travelers who die from misadventure or self-abuse. I can relate to the fearlessness of youth, the temptations afforded by the entertainment business and more money than brains, and the unforeseen (and oddly unexpected) results some of our most revered icons suffer at the hands of bad decisions and yes-men surroundings.

I appreciate the irony of men of religion and ‘family values’ falling victim to temptations of the flesh, anti-drug celebrities dying because of the very thing they rail against in public, and the folly of those not yet in touch with their own mortality…but it pisses me off when we lose people we care about because of disease, dangerous drivers or delusional fans, lack of resources, or God’s blunder of whisking us off this ball of mud just as we get old enough to start figuring shit out…and that goes for the famous, the not so famous, and the rest of us.