IF I COULD SAVE TIME IN A BOTTLE

I guess I might send a couple years to Jim Croce, even though his damned bathetic little ballads always made me feel a little sick to my stomach. 

Lots of people really liked his songs, though, and he did always seem to be trying quite earnestly to write good songs and please the people who bought them.   Operator isn't as bad (i.e., manipulative) as some, but even it has that little gut-twister at the end. 

Croce died in a plane crash when he was thirty years old, leaving behind the beginnings of a successful music career, a wife and several kids (one of whom, A.J. Croce, has a musical career of his own).  Whether I liked his stuff or not, it's a shame -- I feel exactly the same way about Harry Chapin.

I don't mind saying I'm not fond of songs that baldly attempt to manipulate my feelings.   I'm not fond of books or movies or human beings that do this, either -- Croce's stuff sounds better, aesthetically, than Red Sovine's 'crippled boy/truck driver with a heart of gold' diarrheic miasmas, but in reality, it's pretty much the same mechanism.  But, then, some people like to have their emotions poked and prodded by songs, movies and books -- elsewise, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks wouldn't have careers.

So, yeah, Jim -- I'll give you maybe a year, a year and a half of time out of my bottle ... and if he promises never to play that damned taxi driver song again, maybe I'll throw eight or nine months to Harry Chapin, too.  But as soon as he starts with that shit, he's gotta go get in his VW Dasher and head out for the interstate.  I just wanted to make that clear.  Thanks very much, folks.  I'm here all week.