Bruce Springsteen, other artists respond to Minneapolis news

When frustrated, I like to push things around, little bit at a time.

Once during a maddening stretch, trying to explain shady one-percenter duplicity to folks — bootlickers, toadies to the rich they will NEVER become — who insisted on obfuscation, bluster and bloody literal-mindedness over complex reality, I shoveled 27 tons of coal over five days. Same next week.

I know the weight because that’s what the 18-wheeler delivered, twice.

Not the easiest job I’ve ever had, but aside from the dust, which crept into places I didn’t previously know I possessed, a satisfying struggle. Not a solution, but a salve. An outlet. A pressure release.

Shovel hard for 15-20 minutes at a time, then enjoy a 5- or 10-minute break to read, one-eye watching the boiler needle creep back to “feed me” range. Back at it; lather, rinse repeat for an eight-hour work shift.

One night last week at the gym, I hefted against gravity a total of 31,000 pounds, over about 90 minutes. I imagine heat was released, though not in an efficient boiler sense.

Hmm. Maybe develop an interface, sell my frustration? Retirement plan!

I’m decades older than that coal-shoveling kid, but still frustration-strong. Gladly drop back to moderately above-average for a sane world.

In other words, catch me in 40 years Jack LaLanneing, chains clenched in diamond teeth, a string of battleships through the Gulf of Mexico.

Not the Gulf of anything else, regardless of how some dimwit representative (nearly redundant, save a few stalwart examples) postures, wasting taxpayer money to kowtow before the current occupant.

Why this is a strategy baffles me, as Whitest House numbers flop faster than the U.S. economy. The sofa-king VP, destined to become his own heavily mascaraed Funko Pop, all-too-aptly spewed about the country the GOP has been torpedoing since early 2025, because that’s what GOP presidencies do: “You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight.”

Well, no, we don’t turn an infamously sunken, shipwrecked mass around at all. You probably SHOULD have swerved before you left port, deadheaded for an iceberg, and hired someone competent to steer, before Rose is forced to hog that wall panel.

Pretzel-limbo bootlickers of the far-right are struggling to equate an insult with incitement to state-sanctioned murder, after easily proved-false claims Alex Pretti brandished a gun, threatened to break the ICE.

Aren’t y’all the ones toting weapons in libraries, taco huts, and outhouses? The ones who don’t feel safe dropping off at daycare without a vest full of clips? The Gravy Seals, Y’all Qaeda, Rambo-wannabe’s strapping compensation across camo-clad expanses of too-too melting flesh?

So carrying a gun is now reason to pump 41 shots?

Oh wait, that was New York plainclothes officers in 1999, firing on unarmed Amadou Diallo.

If only this newfound gun-regard applied to Kyle Rittenhouse, who bore an assault rifle across state lines, shooting into a crowd, killing two, injuring one. The right-winger not only blubbered his way out of prison, but is held up by the GOP as … a hero?

We are suffering the most foul, ignorant, and vulgar of times.

So guns are only bad in the hands of medical care professionals who volunteer with veterans?

Journalists arrested, sovereign leaders kidnapped, a massively destructive ballroom, a $75 million boondoggle of a documentary depicting the First Mannequin, the Kennedy Center healthy as one of several bankrupted Drumpf casinos, oh, and pay no attention to those Epstein files behind the redacted curtain.

After toddler-like scrawling under portraits, the current occupant hung a photo of him with bestie Putin. No, I’m not making this up. Wish I were.

For a break, here’s Tina Turner and Ann-Margret together. I need this:

The most famous song deriving from current nightmares has been cut by the same guy who wrote about Diallo, who crafted a stirring album celebrating heroes and mourning horrors of 9/11, offering rising balm to a wounded nation. Same guy who wrote and recorded “The Ghost of Tom Joad” 30 years ago, who cut “Born in the USA,” decrying mistreatment of Vietnam vets, 40 years ago.

If Bruce Springsteen has “gone woke,” send truckloads of Ambien, because he hasn’t slept in half a century.

Bruce isn’t the only one striving to eff the ineffable. Here’s a list of 32 songs inspired by Minneapolis at https://www.minnpost.com/arts-culture/2026/01/streets-of-minneapolis-32-protest-songs-inspired-by-the-twin-cities-ice-resistance/.

Art has no purpose.

Except reminding us why we’re alive.

Saturday at Druid City Brewing Company, a slew of musicians and music-lovers gathered to celebrate the far-too-early passing of Billa Bartlett, a much-loved member of the Tuscaloosa community (though she’d decamped to Montana in 2020). Paid her bills here as a bartender, and sang her heart out at weddings, in rock bands, and, as most of us who also do such things do, crooned randomly, wherever possible, in love, with heart, trying to invest into music layers of emotions that fall beyond the abilities of mere words.

Or to, you know, have some fun.

I played and sang with friends Exa, who roomed with Billa, and Wes, ranging from “Love Is All Around” (Sonny Curtis-written theme for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” with extra/adapted lyrics by Joan Jett), a medley of The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek,” and “The Weight,” Prince’s “Kiss” ala Tom Jones, to the Proclaimers’ “500 Miles.” Despite expressed preference for celebration over sorrow, Ham Bagby, Bo Hicks, and others couldn’t resist pouring out what they felt, an extemporaneous three-hour excursion into the finest of Tuscaloosa’s exotic eccentrics and their notions.

I’d trust any one of those lovely weirdos to run this country, this state, better than anyone currently occupying high office.

Are they experts on economy, diplomacy, public service?