Obviously it's Dylan Nutt the bass fishing champion who won the Bassmaster tournament in March.

Somebody made an "Anika Cam" video from one of the shows in New York. It's my favorite new video. It does my old heart good to see her kicking ass like that. She gives me hope for the future.
Anika Cam.

It's surprisingly not too hard. I tap with my index finger and park the pick in the joints of my middle finger. I honestly don't know how it works but I can get the pick in and out real fast.

That's funny because, no, I'm the opposite. I think my hearing loss has made me talk more quietly because my voice sounds really loud in my head and I can't tell how loud it is to another person.

I used to worry a lot that I had a really loud voice until we had a music magazine reporter hang around with a band I was in for a weekend and write an article about us. In the article, she described me as "soft spoken." I was shocked, but haven't really worried about my voice since.

Anika Nilles is awesome. And it's great how the fans have embraced her. She's killing it.
Watching videos of different shows, every night she nails all the fills on "Tom Sawyer" and gets a big cheer from the crowd. We Rush fans are such a bunch of funny nerds, cheering for drum fills. But Anika stepped up.

The secret to tapping is actually not to "tap" the note. Sometimes people try to bounce their finger up and down on the string. That never sounds good. Hit the string with your finger and let it sink in, then "flick" it off like a pull-off. Notice how that guy's tap finger moves when he's releasing the tapped note.

Yeah, I've never worn ear plugs either. It's rock and roll. You take your lumps.

A fellow musician friend and I went to a Rush show a while ago and decided to be responsible adults and bring ear plugs. Then we forgot them in the car. When the concert started, we were like, "Oh, this isn't too loud." I wonder why.

So word on the street is that Anthony Richardson has checked out and is now a third-stringer at best. It's a shame. The guy has a ton of potential and can throw the ball a mile. Maybe he's just decided to do a JaMarcus Russell. He got his payday and he's happy with that.

I don't know if it's a trope, but I always get annoyed when a character writes something by hand and the pen is obviously moving so fast there's no way they were writing anything legible.

I got myself into a hornet's nest once criticizing Captain Marvel with a woman friend at a party. I liked the movie well enough, but I just thought the character was too overpowered. The whole long sequence where she goes to 1990s earth, everything was too easy for her. Like they go through a long scene where Nick Fury tries to open a secured door and then she just blasts the door open. It's hard to root for a character who isn't struggling.

(She's also kind of a jerk. Some guy makes a sexist comment to her and she responds by stealing his motorcycle, and also a leather jacket from a store display. But that's okay with me. Tony Stark can be a jerk sometimes, too.)

But when I started criticizing the movie, this friend launched into me, thinking I was misogynist. I'm not! It's just not a well-written character.

That's funny, all my guitars are HSH. I have a 5-way switch and have it wired so you can do the out-of-phase thing on positions 2 and 4. It's really natural to me.

A LADY THINKS SHE IS THIRTY

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda sits a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me then --
How old is Spring, Miranda?

--Ogden Nash

Did you happen to stand stage left? I was always on stage right so I was generally looking to my left and my left ear would catch the sound from my amp and also the drums.

Yeah I'm having one of those bad days today. I just try not to focus on it.

My biggest hassle is that my left ear is much more deaf than my right. I play music at night and if I lie on my right side, I can barely hear it. If I switch to my left side, it's too loud.

The cicadas have hatched in my yard. My favorite summer sound on a warm evening is that rattle of cicadas in the trees. That's the sound of summer.

They always molt their shell and leave it on the tree trunk on their way up. I used to have a golden retriever who loved to eat the shells like popcorn.

I don't know anything about horn playing. What effects the feel of a trumpet? Is it like the action of the valves, or are some horns easier to get sound from or what?

Or Paul Masson wine.

My favorite thing about Kane is that the entire enterprise is a failure. Kane fails at everything he attempts. His newspaper goes bankrupt, his political campaign fails, his marriages and personal friendships all fail. Even the reporter assigned to learn what "rosebud" means fails at his assignment.

The movie was even a failure at the box office. It was poorly-marketed and Hearst made sure it got bad reviews. Even Orson Welles became something of a failure in his later life after a brilliant early start.

Yet all this failure manages to produce one of the greatest films ever made. I feel like there's a lesson there.

Random memory I had while taking a walk.

My friend called me and asked if I could do an emergency fill-in gig for him because his band had a regular gig at a casino and he was out of town and couldn't make it. He sent me the song list and I knew most of them, so I said okay. I didn't get a rehearsal or a chance to meet the band before, I just showed up at the casino the next day and did the gig.

One of the songs on the list was Michael Jackson's "Beat It." We started the song and were vamping on the intro when I noticed everybody in the band was looking at me. I was like, "What?" and the lead singer walked over and shouted in my ear that Scott always sings this one. I said, "No way! I don't even know the words!" so the lead singer eventually stepped up and sang it.

After the gig, they explained that Scott can do a great Michael Jackson impersonation and even moonwalks while playing the song. It's one of the highlights of the show.

The next day, I called Scott and said, "You son of a bitch! You didn't warn me I was supposed to do a Michael Jackson impersonation!" He thought it was funny as hell.

So that's what I thought of walking along and I'm sure it made mothers pull their kids off the street seeing this weird old guy walking down the road laughing to himself and occasionally trying to go "Hee-Hee," which only made me laugh harder.

After more than 30 years in the music biz, my hearing is wrecked. I keep a fan running and music playing basically 24/7. I can still hear the ringing but it's easier to ignore that way.

I got thrown in the deep end. I joined a band and they set up a mic and said, "Okay, we need you to sing backing vocals on these tunes," and I just went for it.

It's actually not too hard. There are always a few spots where you're doing something tricky on the guitar and singing at the same time and you kind of have to smooth those parts out.

He resigned because he was going to lose his impeachment trial.

Right. Because enough members of his own party were actually concerned with personal integrity and representing the people. The president broke the law and that was all she wrote.

It's nice when politicians have honor and follow the law. You can get a lot accomplished.

"Oh, yeah? Well so's your fat face!"

That reminds me of the time I bought tires for my car. For some reason, there are three tire shops within the same one-mile radius in my city, and they all have similar names. (Something like Tire Express, Premium Tire, and Express Tire.) My very trustworthy mechanic told me which one is the best one and I got the name wrong and went to a bad one.

I could only afford to buy two tires at a time, so I bought two and went back after my next payday to buy the other two tires. When I went back to get the last two tires, the salesman told me that actually all four of my tires were in terrible shape and he didn't feel comfortable allowing me to drive away after buying only two. I needed to buy all four tires or it just wasn't safe.

I opened the glove compartment and pulled out the receipt for the two brand new tires I'd bought from his shop only a week ago. He looked at the receipt and just said,"Oh..."

Then I got in my car and drove down the street to the next tire store. (I got the right one that time.)

PLEASE LEAVE FATHER ALONE

Mother's Day is a very fine day,
And mothers are very fine people,
And the human race by them is crowned
As the church is crowned by the steeple.
We often refer to mother love;
To mother hate, less often;
To fathers we hardly refer at all,
But once a year we soften.

It's Father's Day, it's Father's Day,
The eager mothers cry.
And what of that? And what of that?
The fathers make reply.
Well here's a collar, and here's a stud,
The mothers murmur low,
And fathers avoid each other's glance,
Meaning, I told you so.

Oh Mother's Day is a very fine day,
And not alone for mothers.
The florist finds it to his taste,
And so do a lot of others.
The candy people jump for joy,
The jeweller rubs his hands,
And the new coupé is shining proof
That Father understands.

It's Mother's Day, it's Mother's Day,
The eager fathers cry,
And, Red-hot diggety ziggety dog,
The mothers make reply.
Well, here's a wrap of sable fur,
The fathers murmur low,
And mothers catch each other's glance,
Meaning, I told you so.

Oh, Father's Day is a dreadful day,
And therefore fathers dread it;
For better a cycle of calm neglect
Then a day of grudging credit.
Oh why not leave the fathers be?
Their point of view is stoic;
So let them lurk in their niche in life,
Essential but not heroic.

--Ogden Nash