I See Dead People... Two Weeks In A Row

A few weeks ago I was playing cards on a Sunday afternoon with my wife’s family who was visiting from Utah. I was listening to my ipod and had randomly decided I was in the mood for The Jeff Healey Band – Hell To Pay, an album I haven’t listened to in about 13 years.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Jeff Healy Band for 3 reasons
1) He was blind.
2) His music was really solid, but sounded like it may have a short shelf-life even when it first came out. Even at their peak you could tell the novelty would wear off soon.
3) They played the bar band at the Double Deuce in Road House, one of the greatest films ever made. (So great that it deserves its own posting some other time).

Their biggest hit was Angel Eyes, but I was always partial to their cover of Mark Knopfler’s I Think I Love You Too Much (which was on Hell To Pay). It wasn’t as wussy as Angel Eyes. In fact, it rocked pretty hard with some amazing guitar acrobatics and pulverizing drums.

The next day I see in the news that Jeff had died the day before of cancer. This means, I could very well have been listening to him either just before he died, while he was dying, or just after. Trippy!

So, the very next Sunday it’s about 8 at night and I decide I’m in the mood to watch Car Wash, which I had DVRd, earlier in the week. That movie always takes me back to college. TBS played the heck out of it back in the mid-to-late nineties and it became a running joke with me and my buddy/roommate Dave Haughey because we swore we saw those orange jumpsuits almost every night around 2am. We had countless conversations that went something like this.

I couldn’t sleep last night.
So, what did you do?
Got up and watched TV. Thought maybe Car Wash would be on.

Or, after a late night Denny’s run.

You ready to get back to the apartment?
Yeah, maybe Car Wash is on.

Or, while staying up late to study.

Man, I’m spent.
Me too, maybe Car Wash is on.

I hadn’t seen it in about 10 years, but I had a serious jones that night for some big afros and funky music.

While watching, I was really taken with the character of Lonnie, the cigar chomping ex-con with the strong moral code who’s trying to go straight and raise a family. I look him up on imdb and see that he’s played by Ivan Dixon, who also used to be on Hogan’s Heroes. Now, I never watched that show, but I knew who all the actors were from seeing the opening credits a million times.

And, what happens? The very next day I see that Ivan Dixon died the day before. For the second week in a row, I had been in the mood to experience something from someone who would die the next day.

There's a couple minutes left in this Sunday. Maybe I’ll see if there’s a speech from President Bush running on CSPAN.