Totally bizarre true confession: I once spontaneously bellowed out the first verse of Thunder Road in the middle of doing 108 sun salutations in a yoga class in Mexico...believe it or not, it went over quite well...got a rousing ovation at the end, even...though I was horrified recently to learn there’s video footage out there....it’s a long story......didn’t see Springsteen’s halftime show...missed the whole Superbowl, in fact...but I did go see The Wrestler, with Bruce over the closing credits, which was fitting, since it was kinda like one of his slice-of-a-fucked-up-life songs in movie form...
...listen, I’ve never once referred to Springsteen as the boss...and never bought into the Bruce persona...yeah, I hear ya: what?! The boss doesn’t have a persona! He’s a regular guy from Jersey, just like me!...um...yeah...that’s kinda my point....anyway, each of his albums has at least one or two of these tiny-but-remarkably-complete short stories that make Raymond Carver seem long-winded...about people on the bottom and most likely staying there...American dreams crumbling into the dust of disappointment and desperation...I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote...there’s a sadness in her pretty face a sadness all her own from which no man can keep Candy safe...I’m tired of comin’ out on this losin’ end so honey last night I met this guy and I’m gonna do a little favor for him...like Mickey Rourke, washed up, ailing and alone, doing the only thing he knows, even though he knows it’s gonna kill him...but, somehow, all finding fleeting moments of grace...remembered swimming in a transcendent river, driving deep into the night, walking the boardwalk in Atlantic City, flying through the air as the crowd cheers...or, like Eddie and the other guy in Meeting Across the River, a couple of lowlifes who’ve stumbled into a big score that’s likely to leave them either dead or in prison...that’s their last chance...nonetheless, in the brief moments before their seemingly inevitable doom, saying tonight we’ve got style....
