Free Hank Hill
A dream between 5 and 8 a.m. today — when I woke up to fix a typo I'd made at work yesterday and when I woke up for good – that managed to combine most of this blog's summer yet somehow not Mike Mussina:
I was in some kind of small class, playing Pole Position on a full arcade game, with the machine spitting out quarters as I kept winning races, but no one in the room noticed and I seemed to be keeping up with what the teacher was saying. Somehow I end up at an afterparty or concert where Springsteen and half the band were playing through some kind of work connection. Bruce played a few opening chords from Incident to warm up, but I didn't notice any other songs. Little Steven was banging on the drums. Bruce introduced a couple extra members of the band, two brunettes on the left side of the stage, joking about the first one's chest (she laughed) and introducing the second girl by her ancestral country, causing a blonde member of the crowd with the same roots to get confused and jump up on stage, thinking Bruce was introducing her. He politely ignored her as she stood directly in front of him until we pulled her away. As Bruce came off stage, he summoned me to the side of the club and said, "When I introduce Neuharth, you yell, 'Free Hank Hill!'" I said, "Because that was the crazy presidential candidate Neuharth always liked?" Yep, Bruce replied, I said sure, and he walked backstage. But as I stood around, there appeared to be no next party or second part of the concert. I wondered if something was going to happen the next day because Neuharth was getting up there in years and was probably a morning person now. Then I woke up.
