This morning I heard some unbelievable news: George Carlin had died. That was in sharp contrast to my reaction whenever I saw him on TV or YouTube.com: George Carlin is still alive?

I only say that because he was known to get high before performing. He was one of my favorite comedians dating back to the 1960s when I used to watch him on TV as a boy. I loved watching him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, especially because I was supposed to be sleeping. I remember he did one routine about an over-zealous New York City police officer who broke the record for the most arrests. His chief eventually asks, “What do you mean you arrested your mother?”

Whenever my friends came over, I would have them listen to the one and only George Carlin comedy album that I had. My friends always thought he was funny and I always laughed no matter how many times I heard it. I divided all my friends into those who liked George Carlin and those who didn’t.

I don’t remember the name of the album, but he was pictured sitting on a stool and the there is a brown border around the picture. And in tiny print there were a lot of Carlin witticisms such as, “There’s no two ways about it. There are two sides to every story!” Of course, I never noticed them until my friend Bill Pappas read the entire album jacket and pointed them out to me. This was when I first discovered George Carlin the writer. This last year I watched him on YouTube.com and then showed the clips to my sons. He’s still funny to me even after all these years.

When I was in the seventh grade, we began studying music appreciation. Most of my classmates hated this class because everyone was into the Top-40 music that we heard on the radio. I enjoyed the class because I always liked new and interesting things.

Slowly, but surely, we learned about all the different instruments that comprised the orchestra. We listened to individual instruments on a phonograph so we could recognize them when the orchestra played in unison. These music appreciation classes continued through the eighth grade. As a result of these classes I have had a life-long love of classical music. In the eighth grade, we listened to Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird and his music made a lasting impression on me. It’s funny how this association with Stravinsky’s Firebird always connected me with other Firebirds.

When I was at Divine Heart Seminary, I used to go to the library for study hall and listen to The Firebird on the phonograph with a headset. For driver’s ed, our first car was a 1971 Pontiac Firebird! It had a four-speed manual transmission. Our first day of actually driving in a car, we got to drive on U.S. 30 Highway at 70 miles per hour. We weren’t allowed to play the radio in the car, but I kept imagining Stravinsky’s The Firebird playing while I drove the driver’s ed Firebird on the highway. This was one of my greatest driving experiences ever. The Stravinsky’s music accurately described the Firebird’s forward motion on U.S. 30. The Pontiac Firebird was my fantasy car throughout high school.

Until I was eighteen and I worked at Derby Foods. Despite not wanting to work in a factory as a manual laborer, I made the best of a bad situation. I earned enough money to buy my own car. So, I bought a brand new 1975 Pontiac Firebird.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough money to buy the souped up Trans Am version. But I was the only student at my high school with a brand new sports car. It was Buccaneer Red with white interior. I remember it well. I immediately regretted the white interior because it got dirty very quickly and it was very tough to clean. This was during one of our many previous gas crises (Americans just never seem to learn from the past), so the speedometer only went up to 85 mph since the national speed limit was lowered to 55 mph.

Suddenly, a lot of girls started talking to me because of my car. I ignored the ones who were suddenly attracted to me because of my car. My friends thought I was really cool because of my car. The only thing the car lacked was an 8-Track Player! Well, I drove all over the Midwest in my Firebird with my friends, and later my girlfriend whom I eventually married. That is still my most memorable car. I always think of it whenever I hear Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird.

I like to listen to music while I sleep. I’ve been doing it since high school. But I stopped while I was married. My ex didn’t like to hear the music while she slept.

Now that I’m sleeping alone again, I get to listen to music while I sleep. I like to listen to the classical station, 98.7 FM WFMT, because most classical music is very soothing while sleeping.

For a while, I had a girlfriend who liked to listen to music while we slept and didn’t complain if I tuned in to the classical station. I guess she was different than the rest. She always loved telling me stories. She was an English major and used to call me “sire” during those intimate moments. She insisted I was the only one she ever called “sire.” When she started repeating her stories, she left me and I never saw her again. She was the only one who liked listening to classical music with me.

In high school, I used to listen to 8-Tracks while sleeping because they would play continuously throughout the night. I especially loved listening to Led Zeppelin. I started listened to CDs soon after they were invented because they would play continuously, too. I never listened to the radio because I didn’t like the commercials. The classical station doesn’t play very many commercials at night.

I like rolling over at night while I try to fall back asleep and hear the music. Sometimes I wake up a little if I recognize the music. When I was in in high school, I once made the mistake of listening to a live rock concert while sleeping. What a mistake! I woke up suddenly when the 8-Track started playing the obligatory drum solo! I couldn’t sleep with all the pounding on those drums, cymbals, and cowbells, but especially the cowbells. That lasted about fifteen minutes. I guess that’s why they call it percussion.

All the floods in the Midwest have got me thinking about how lucky I am to live in Chicago where the last major disaster we suffered was the Chicago Fire in 1871. But I didn’t suffer any traumatic experiences from it and I now live a normal life despite the Chicago Fire.

Oh, yes, we also had the Chicago Flood in 1992 caused by a pylon driven into a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River, but that only flooded some tunnels under downtown Chicago and not many people were ever in any real danger. However, a few people lost their plum city jobs because of the incident.

The only flooding I experience in my house occurs during heavy rainfalls when I get an inch or two of water in my basement. And I don’t suffer any damage because I have an unfinished basement with a stone foundation. Other people in the midwest haven’t been so fortunate. I usually go to the Wisconsin Dells every summer, but the heavy flooding washed away Lake Delton, so I probably won’t go this summer. Homes, businesses, roads, bridges, and other infrastructures have been flooded or washed away in recent weeks, with more flooded expected as more rivers will soon crest with the predicted rainstorms. Tornadoes have also caused plenty of damage across the Midwest.

I lived in California for three years while I was in the Marines. Overall, the weather is very beautiful and much more pleasant than in the Midwest. However, Californians have to worry about earthquakes, brush fires, flash floods, and sandstorms, among other things.

I actually considered living in California after my honorable discharge from the Marines. Two things brought me back to Chicago. Most of my family and all of my friends lived in Chicago. And, I was really afraid of the weather and other natural disasters in California. Sure I could have gotten used to them. But why should I place myself in danger’s way unnecessarily?

Chicago is fairly safe in terms of meteorolgical events. The city itself has never had a tornado. We do live close to the New Madrid fault line and we do experience an occasional tremor, but we really haven’t had actually ever had an earthquake. Sure the tradeoff is that we do have a higher crime rate than most places, but at least you have a fighting chance against a mugger or a rapist. How do protect yourself from a tornado that suddenly appears in right front of you? I presently live in a house that was built in 1879, which is pretty old for a house in Chicago, and I feel safe living in this house knowing that it has survived everything that Mother Nature inflicted on it.

I just got back from seeing The Hulk with my sons. A couple of weeks back I took them to see Iron Man in the evening and they liked the thrill of seeing the movie in a packed house. I always preferred to see movies that way, too, but I usually took my sons to an early afternoon show because it was a lot easier that way.

This time I snuck in some Swedish Fish for us to munch on instead of tortilla chips. I had forgotten that I once took tortilla chips with us to the show until my son Adam reminded me. I really felt like my father when I did take the tortilla chips. All I needed was the jar of salsa. The advantage of seeing a movie in a packed theater is that I’m not the only one laughing at the funny parts.

Usually my sons tell me that I embarrass them when I laugh out loud by myself for too long. In a crowded theater, there’s always someone who laughs louder and longer than me. I then tell my sons that I laugh normally compared to these other extreme laughers.