And still you do not care about Afghanistan. I know what you mean. Even typing the word is a chore; the peak of the A descending into the mire of FGH before shaking itself off and plodding off across the trackless wastes of ANISTAN.

Rick Kurtz is almost embarrassed that so many people want to help him out. “I am very humbled by it,” he stipulates. “Almost to the point of embarrassment.” The ace musician that songwriter Mike Duke once described as “Birmingham’s go-to guitar guy” has been off the frets since April, when a stroke took him down and laid him up in Nashville’s Skyline Medical Center for about a month. Kurtz is taking time off from his convalescence Sunday, August 8, to be feted by his friends during a very special benefit concert at Keith Harrelson’s Moonlight on the Mountain listening room.

I love the little Limbaughs. I love the way they fill the silences between potholes on my sundry commutes with an earnest blend of fervor and glee to which ordinarily only rookie Mormons are privy.

I’m sure I learned something valuable at Edgewood Elemntary School, but the primary sense memory I retain from those formative years is of yeast rolls, sturdy yet light, with an unmistakable aroma that filled the lunchroom and wafts through the dimly lit corridors of my recollection even now.

I rise to the defense of chickens. Last week, in The Huntsinghamobile News, William Singleton reported the tragic story of one Virginia Murdoch, persecuted by the city of Homewood for sequestering seven American Dominique hens in her back yard. The chickens, a gift from her husband, apparently violated a city law that mandates birds produce no noise, no odor, no pollution and be kept 300 feet from another residence. Mrs. Murdoch might have skated on the environmental issues, but Homewood is a squished-in community where it’s often hard to find thirty feet between residences, let alone 300. Therefore, the chickens have been obliged to fly the coop.

Ordinarily Bob Riley and I have little in common, save the love of a good used car sale, but I was delighted to discover last week our shared disdain for Ticketmaster. Some well-meaning, well-weary individuals decided to put on a big show down on the beach in Gulf Shores to inveigle vacationers into ignoring the tarballs and just having a ball there instead. Perhaps, during a planning session in the vicinity of a bottle of Cuervo, someone remembered one of the old locals and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get Jimmy Buffett?”

For a book that’s inspired great composers throughout its existence, the Bible takes its sweet time getting around to music. Genesis wends its way all the way through creation, taking snakes, an unfortunate apple diet and a famous fratricide before namechecking the first musician, Jubal, “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ” (not to be confused with his brother, Jabal, “the father of such as dwell in tents”).

In the end, none of it worked; not the Top Hat, not the Junk Shot, not even the vaunted Top Kill. As our state’s ocean view begins its ultimate metamorphosis into the Gulf of Petroleum, the likeliest chance to plug that gusher four hundred fathoms down won’t come till August.

A little after two in the morning of May 7, 1970, I was working the last hour of my board shift on “Hedsounds”, a nightly program of rock music broadcast on the otherwise easy-listening WUOA-FM in Tus

Last week was a bad one for local celebrities. Take Roy Hobbs, weekend anchor for ABC 33/40. The Birmingham police did, all the way into custody. According to published reports of his escapades—there