"Celebration Day"

"Had Enough"? Well, "I've Had Enough." "No More Tears," I say. "You Can't Always Get What You Want," or "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," but "Just for Today"? "Good Vibrations."

Sep 18, 2025

Let’s see, how many times did I start a new CeeGees post, and not finish it, since my last post on Election Day Eve?

Oh! Only five, apparently. I logged sooooo many more notes and outlines and journal entries outside of Substack, though. I touched on tons of topics I thought would be worthwhile; and points I thought might prove meaningful; and links I thought might help a few folks get through their day.

Never felt compelled to finish ‘em, though, let alone publish ‘em. Just been that kinda 10 months, I s’pose.

Here are the thoughts I thought were important enough to at least make an attempt to document, though:

November 8, 2024: “Evil Woman”???
1. WOW, I was being optimistic? Just like I’d been—FOOLISHLY—the week before. But here I was celebrating one of the very first things President-Elect Trump did after winning: naming Susie Wiles—a woman!—as his chief-of-staff. Inherently, I mused, things won’t be “as” bad if a woman were to hold that powerful position.
2. EXCERPT:
  “There are plenty of evil women in the world. But I wonder how many fewer evil women there are than evil men. …‘Cuz there are definitely fewer women who pose a grave threat to the advancement of civil society than there are men.”
February 19, 2025: "Hold On! I'm Comin'"
1. This one had me lamenting the Dems’ by-the-book, tippytoe-around-the-edges response to threats from the White House to remove federal judges who would dare stand in the way of a clearly unlawful executive order.
2. EXCERPT:
  “The Democrats are finally revving up the Engine of Opposition! Yup, just like a bull preparing to charge the matador, pawing the ground, snorting and drooling, the upper back muscles twitching (the same muscles the matador’s about to cut to keep him from lifting his head, though).”
3. And this was two months before Chuck Schumer sent his “very strong letter” to the White House, sending waves of panic through the Administration…
March 10, 2025: “I’m Movin’ On”
1. …from the Democratic Party, that is. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a Berniecrat from now on. The last straw, I said in March, was the Dem leadership refusing to take a side when Rep. Al Green was up for censure for raising a ruckus at the State of the Union. The crickets in the Capitol led to 10 Democrats voting for censure, ensuring its passage.
2. EXCERPT #1:
  “And I’m done with Dem figureheads like the Pod Save America guys telling us to forget about more than two parties, that it could never happen. As Bernie says when he quotes Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’”
3. EXCERPT #2:
  “Also intolerable: [Kamala] Harris and other establishment Dems urgently asking for more money immediately after they botched the election. No admission of wrong-headedness. Certainly no ‘election autopsy’ offered. Just, ‘Give us more money so we can keep doing what we’re doing,’ which is what they’ve done for decades—for generations! Kamala’s the one we should be calling ‘Big Balls.’”
June 1, 2025: “Everyday People”
1. This was just a glorified note-to-self to find a current event that might complement the title “Everyday People.” In order to provide an excuse to write about Questlove’s Sly Stone doc. Which I hadn’t watched yet, but finally got around to the night before Sly passed.
2. EXCERPT:
  “Reiterate that the goal [of the newsletter and sometimes-podcast] is about bringing average everyday people together, the 99% protesting the 1%, helping the powerful understand that MOST corporate and governmental decisions must help MOST Americans. Or at the very least not actively, demonstrably harm them—or we average everyday people will make sure businesses’ bottom lines and shareholders’ pocketbooks suffer.”
June 5, 2025: “Back on My Feet Again”
1. I was sure I was actually gonna post this time. Bernie Sanders had sent out a fiery email explaining what the “Big Beautiful Bill” was really going to do—especially to the folks who typically voted for Trump.
2. QUOTE (from Bernie):
  “…this bill epitomizes exactly what Trumpism is all about: if you are rich and powerful, and can make large campaign contributions, you are entitled to massive tax breaks that will make you even richer.
  
  If you are working class or poor, and struggling to survive, you are entitled to NOTHING. You have no basic human rights. You are not entitled to health care through Medicaid, you are not entitled to a nutrition program to feed your kids, you are not entitled to a decent education.
  Trumpism is about the belief that we live in a ‘dog eat dog world’ – where it is moral and appropriate for the big dogs to eat the little dogs, where the billionaires get tax breaks while children go hungry and workers sleep in their cars.
  Well. We disagree. That is not our value system and that is not the value system that most Americans adhere to.”

Which brings me to the above video I wanted to share with you. It’s what finally made me wanna get off my ass and start posting again. And yes, it’s Bernie Sanders-related. ‘Cuz, sorry, but in 50 years people are going to be wearing hats that say what Trump’s latest favorite MAGA-hat knockoff says, except it’ll refer to the senator from Vermont:

“Bernie Was Right About Everything.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: OK maybe not everything. He definitely should not have insisted on calling his movement an inherently “democratic socialist” movement so far ahead of the 2020 election. That tag has nothing to do with the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Mussolini like people think it does. But Americans weren’t gonna internalize the real history fast enough to reverse their deeply ingrained opinions and be cool with a full-on socialist president all of a sudden.]

This video from the nonprofit journalism hub More Perfect Union has reporter John Russell chauffeuring Bernie around small-town West Virginia, talking to real people, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, about real issues that matter to them. If every politician did this, and communicated in a way that reassured constituents they genuinely cared about their problems and have ideas to solve them, the only Second Civil War people would be speculating about would be that of the 99 Percent vs. the 1 Percent.

Joining the Tuesday Late-Afternoon Music Club

Hopefully the Bern video cheered you up as much as it did me. But of much greater import is the real cause for a “Celebration Day.”

That’s right. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release of Kiss’s classic 1985 pop-metal album Asylum. [Don’t bother to look up the AllMusic star rating, chump. Just let the truth rush over you: IT’S A FUGGIN’ KISS KLASSIC.]

So it was early 1985. In a few short months, I would pivot from Men at Work (still one of my favorites), Men Without Hats (still one of my…initial early favorites), Culture Club, Michael Jackson, and Steve Perry (I had no clue who Journey was, all I knew was “Oh Sherrie” and “Foolish Heart” made me sing along when they popped up on MTV) to Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Scorpions, and, above all others, Kiss.

Before hearing a lick, riff, or two-handed tap from any of those metal bands’ electric guitarists, though, I saw Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley on the cover of what would become the first rock music magazine I’d ever purchase, Hit Parader. They were promoting 1984’s Animalize. But the Murphy Mart where I found the magazine didn’t carry Animalize! In fact, they didn’t carry Kiss at all!

Ted Nugent, yes. Foreigner, sure. .38 Special, bet. (‘Bet’ means “You better darn well believe it,” some kids just told me.) But no Kiss. It appeared that I’d need Mom to take me all the way to the other side of town, to a far-hipper, more worldly retail outlet.

But K-Mart didn’t have it, either! What was this??

I’d never felt that kind of primal desperation to experience something before. For Hit Parader’s money, this group was apparently “The Hottest Band in the World.” I hadn’t ever knowingly heard a Kiss song to that point. But I just knew, somehow, that Kiss was…

I didn’t know what Kiss was! But…I had to have it!

Then MTV aired Animalize Live & Uncensored. (It was very much censored.) Kiss playing in their home away from home, Detroit. Paul played an animal-print guitar! Gene had a big studded lumberjack axe for a bass, as well as what I thought to be very cool hair! (‘Twas a wig.) They made their entrance standing on a lighted platform as it descended from the rafters and deposited them on the stage!

This was it. It, it, IT.

Now I knew what they looked like and sounded like. But still no Kiss at K-Mart or Murphy Mart.

One day after Dad picked me up from school, we went to a store on the town square that a friend of his from high school owned, The Sound Shoppe. I guess I thought it was just a lame small-town stereo outlet. And I already had my trusty Toshiba ghetto blaster (it’s gross a bunch of white country kids called ‘em that, but, that’s what we called ‘em). But I went in anyway.

There was stereo equipment in the front, all right. But in the back? Ohhhh, in the back. There appeared before me a looooong line of conjoined glass cases, filled from top to bottom with cassettes. I saw some Aerosmith, who I’d read a little about by then. There was Black Sabbath…never heard of ‘em but their name sounded scary, so, great!

I can’t remember seeing any C’s, but the D section was a pure delight: Def Leppard! Dio! Dokken! All Hit Parader mainstays. At that point I simply couldn’t wait any longer. E, F, G, H, I, and J could wait. I crept over to the K’s and saw…

…a lot of Kansas.

But below Kansas, there it was. Not only did the spine of the cassette I’d been longing for say “KISS Animalize” on it; not only was the “KISS” the actual logo and the “Animalize” was scrawled in a stylized font that looked like it had been scratched into the paper with claws (most cassette spines featured uniform white block lettering on a black background, or if you were lucky, red block lettering on a white background.); not only all that, but the lettering was IN COLOR. The logo was yellow outlined in green. And the album title was, naturally, blood red.

“Can I see one of these tapes, Mr. O’Neill?”

My dad’s old school buddy sauntered over and, clearly amused that such a little kid was interested in big-boy records, asked which one I had my eye on.

My recollection is that I answered just like I’d heard the concert announcer say it on that MTV special. He sounded like a carnival barker: “You wanted the best, you GOT the best. The hottest band in the worrrrrld…KIIIIISSSSS!”

So I said…

“KIIIIISSSSS!”

I don’t remember what their reaction was, maybe ‘cuz I was delirious with anticipation by then. All I know is, Mr. O’Neill unlocked the case, slowwwwwly opened the door, reached in, and…picked out a cassette called Destroyer.

Its spine just had the white lettering on the black background. No logo. Just: “KISS. Destroyer.” The band name was, at least, in all-caps.

“This is the one you wanna start with,” Mr. O’Neill said emphatically, “it’s got ‘Beth’ on it, and there’s one called ‘Detroit Rock Ci-’”

“No no, I want the one with the color, Animalize.”

“Erm, you sure? That’s one of their newer ones.”

“I know.”

“They didn’t even have the makeup on anymore when they-.”

“I know!”

So Dad bought me Animalize. And that was that. If there’d been any hope for me at all to that point, I was now a true goner. My favorite song, right away, was…sadly…“Burn Bitch Burn.” It’s the one with the line in it that, as I found out many years later, Gene had long been eagerly trying to write a song around. Finally, he’d found the perfect vessel to deliver the defining Gene Simmons lyric of the 1980s:

When love rears its head, I wanna get on your case
Oh babe, I wanna put my log in your fireplace

Anyway, my Sound Shoppe epiphany came in the spring, and it wasn’t long after that when Hit Parader (or maybe by then it was Circus?) announced a new Kiss album, coming in the fall.

It was almost too much too soon!

But that Tuesday, September 16th (records were released on Tuesdays once upon a time), after school, on the way home, I acquired my first, brand-new, day-of-release album. Critics love to hate Asylum, as do many fans. But I loved its bright, poppy sheen. I mean, how different, really, was it from Men at Work?

OK it was entirely different than Men at Work. But it, too, was catchy. And let’s face it, the silly, juvenile, raunchy lyrics provided much fascination and wonderment for an 11-year-old.

Yes, this new collection of songs just felt different. Animalize may as well have been released before I was born. I was obsessed with it, too, of course. But Asylum was music Kiss had just made, like, a few months earlier. And I was the first person in Bryan, Ohio, to own it (Mr. O’Neill told me so). It felt like the band made the record just for me.

Asylum was mine.

“Tears Are Falling” was the first single, and its video straight-up broke MTV’s Dial MTV call-in request show (it was No. 1 for so many months they had to start limiting how long videos could be eligible).

But my favorite Asylum song was “UH! All Night” (yup, it had to have that all-caps “UH!” complete with the exclamation point), Paul Stanley’s ode to his working-class, blue-collar fans, the sturdy souls whose only wish upon clocking out each day was to rock ‘n’ roll their cares away…just like me!

Well, we work all day
And we don't know why
Well, there's just one thing that money can't buy
When your body's been starved, feed your appetite
When you work all day, you gotta UH! all night
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, whoo